Ridiculous Ways TV Characters Were Killed Off And Brought Back

There were lots of reasons why Dallas was among the most-watched TV series of the late '70s and early '80s. Similar to other nighttime soaps like Falcon Crest and Dynasty, it offered the fun of rich people behaving like brats, particularly the gleefully wicked oil tycoon J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman). But plenty of fans tuned in to ogle mega-hunk of the era Patrick Duffy, who portrayed Bobby Ewing, just about the only decent and kind person on Dallas. 

It was positively heartbreaking then, in a 1985 episode, when Bobby died after heroically saving a life ... because Duffy wanted out of the show. "I left because I had done the show for seven years. My contract was for seven years," he told The Huffington Post. "I thought if it was ever a time at the height of the popularity of that show, that I might be able to launch into something that was more of a single, starring venue, that that would be the time to do it." 

That "starring venue" didn't happen, so after about a year, Duffy acquiesced to Dallas producers' request to return to the series, and the writers resorted to one of the worst cliches in narrative fiction. In a May 1986 episode, Bobby's widow, Pam (Victoria Principal), awakens to the sound of a shower. She goes into the bathroom, and there's Bobby showering. The entire Bobby-free year of Dallas? It was all just a dream.

The whole idea of Lost is that weird and wacky stuff happens on the island where a plane crashed and left a bunch of people for dead (or somewhere between life and death). Lost had a secret hatch related to long-ago activities of an organization called DHARMA, a character called the Smoke Monster, and some wild ideas about time travel, but surely the manner in which one of the main characters conquered death is the oddest and most unlikely thing to ever happen on the show.

In the sixth season, Sayid Jarrah (Naveen Andrews), a member of the Iraqi National Guard turned Oceanic Six survivor, finds himself back in the year 1977, thanks to some of that old island weirdness. The DHARMA Initiative takes him prisoner, but he escapes and tries to kill the young version of Lost character Ben Linus, only to be shot by the boy's father, Roger. Sayid, mortally wounded, then finds his way back to the present-day island, to a pool of funny water at the Temple, an important place for the rival camp known as the Others. 

Too bad he dies before anyone can help him, right? Well, Sayid is held under that strange pool, and while it doesn't seem to do the trick at first, eventually the healing waters administered by mysterious forces bring Sayid back to life. Of course, he's more than a little evil now, so yeah, you win some, you lose some.

For eight seasons, Roseanne was an acclaimed sitcom about the Conners, a Midwestern family that faced labor instability and money problems. That kind of situation was extremely rare on TV, and the relatable show became incredibly popular and made a star out of John Goodman, who played supportive, hard-working Dan Conner, husband to Roseanne (portrayed by comedian Roseanne Barr). In the show's ninth and final season (1996–97), Roseanne became a completely different show. The Conners won the lottery, and out went the stories of regular life struggles and in came ones with the newly rich Conners acting like fools and engaging in baffling adventures, like fighting off terrorists on a train. 

But the weirdest event of all occurred in the series finale. Roseanne reveals that the entire lottery season hadn't actually happened, and that it was all part of a book she'd been writing to deal with personal disappointments and tragedies — like how Dan had died of a heart attack. 

Then ABC ordered a revival of Roseanne to air in the spring of 2018, with Goodman in the cast. How would the show explain all of Roseanne's revelations, particularly Dan's death? They made a joke about it and then moved on. The first episode of the revival, Roseanne screams off-camera, "Dan!" The scene cuts to the couple in bed, where Dan awakens. "I thought you were dead! Roseanne yells. "I'm sleeping," Dan explains. "Why does everybody always think I'm dead?" 

Beginning its life as a campy, '70s television knockoff of Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica returned in 2004 as a thoughtful sci-fi epic that questioned what it even means to be human in the wake of an uprising of powerful man-made androids called Cylons. Those events were explored in the prequel spinoff, Caprica, set six decades before the events of Battlestar Galactica. Zoe Graystone (Alessandra Torresani), the unruly teen daughter of computer engineer Dr. Daniel Graystone (Eric Stoltz), tries to head to the planet Gemenon to follow the monotheistic Soldiers of the One cult, defiant to the polytheistic state religion of the planet Caprica. But in a transport vessel, Zoe's boyfriend reveals himself to be a suicide bomber and kills a number of passengers, including Zoe. 

Dr. Graystone can't handle the death of his daughter, and fortuitously, he finds a digital avatar of Zoe — a sentient, lifelike one at that — that she left behind in a virtual reality nightclub. With the aid of some stolen tech, Graystone creates a Cylon prototype and tries to upload Zoe's consciousness into it. He thinks he fails, but he didn't. The rest of the one-season show tracks the actions of the adventures of the first Cylons, Zoe-A and Zoe-R.

The November 2013 Family Guy episodes "Life of Brian" begins with baby genius Stewie and talking dog Brian on one of their time-traveling adventures. After they nearly die in a shootout in an alternate version of the present, in which Native Americans control the U.S. (because Stewie gave them guns to fight off European settlers in 17th-century Jamestown), Stewie decides he's had enough of those scrapes and destroys his time machine. The duo then sets up a street hockey net in front of their house, but as they play, Brian is run over by a car and left brutally injured. He's rushed to the vet, but it's too late, and after telling his family he loves them, Brian breathes his last breath. That's right. Family Guy killed off its signature character and a dog. 

If only Stewie could use his time machine to prevent Brian's death, but he can't — he destroyed it. Time passes, and Stewie, still missing Brian, goes Christmas shopping and runs into another Stewie from another time-traveling stint. He has a time machine in his backpack, so Stewie steals it and uses it to bring Brian back to life by traveling to the past and preventing the car accident. After the episode aired, Family Guy creator (and voice of Brian and Stewie) Seth MacFarlane tweeted, "I mean, you didn't really think we'd kill off Brian, did you?"

The Walking Dead has made killing off main characters (in a bloody and gruesome fashion) a matter of course. For example, it happened to Glenn Rhee (Steven Yeun), who met the deadly end of Lucille, the barbed wire-covered baseball bat wielded by the villainous Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). But about a year before that episode aired, Glenn died already — or at least Walking Dead audiences were manipulated into thinking the beloved, heroic character had suffered a particularly gut-wrenching demise. 

In the episode "Thank You," Glenn and Nicholas (Michael Traynor) attempt to redirect a massive horde of zombies, but they wind up in an alley, surrounded. All they can do is climb onto a dumpster while walkers grab at their feet. Nicholas, thinking he's a goner, opts to quit running and shoots himself in the head. He falls into the crowd of zombies ... and Glenn falls with him. A pained Glenn is shown covered in blood and screaming. Zombies are tearing him apart and eating his guts, right? Nope, it was all a fake-out. Yeun's name was left out of the credits of the next episode, but then a few weeks later, he emerged — alive and well. He'd just crawled under the dumpster while the zombies ate Nicholas, then waited for them to leave.