History Main / JustifiedExtraLives

** Still justified. Isn't that considered proving your effectiveness?

* Bottled fairies (no, not [[BottleFairy that kind]]) can heal you in ''TheLegendOfZelda''. If you die, they automatically come out and restore your health to the best of their ability.

It should be noted that [[TropesAreNotGood this isn't necessarily a good thing]]; players are so used to having extra lives or continues that the attempted explanation only serves to emphasise an artificial scenario they'd otherwise have been perfectly happy ignoring; this is particularly true when the explanation is TechnoBabble that, on closer inspection, wouldn't actually work anyway. This is particularly true if the game imagines bringing a clone online would somehow result in it inheriting the consciousness of one that died and hence still be the same person.

** ''{{Chakan}}'''s immortality works similarly. He can be killed, but it just brings him to his inter-dimensional hub where he can go right back to where he was.

* Every time your mech is destroyed in a free Java game called ''Mechquest'', you're told that you managed to eject.

* Conker, titular hero of ''{{Conker's Bad Fur Day}}'', has as many lives as he has tails. The grim reaper of his world, a tiny foul-mouthed skeleton named Gregg, explains the deal to you the first time you die.

* The recent platformer Liferaft: Zero's protagonist is a female text subject with TONS of her clo- sisters backing her up, all eager to go out and get that candy.

!!Non-Video Game Examples]]

It should be noted that [[TropesAreNotGood this isn't necessarily a good thing]]; players are so used to having extra lives or continues that the attempted explaination only serves to emphasise an artificial scenario they'd otherwise have been perfectly happy ignoring; this is particularly true when the explanation is TechnoBabble that, on closer inspection, wouldn't actually work anyway. This is particularly true if the game imagines bringing a clone online would somehow result in it inheriting the consciousness of one that died and hence still be the same person.

* ''MetalGearSolid3'' is presented as an apparent simulation of historical events, so if you die (or take certain actions), it creates a "Time Paradox", as that's not what "really" happened, and you have to try again.
* The ''DestroyAllHumans'' series replaces each dead player characer with a sequentially numbered clone.

* In ''AssassinsCreed'', the player character is plugged into a machine that accesses your ancestor's memories. When you die, it's called "memory desynchronization", and you have to access the memory again and do it the way your ancestor did it; i.e., the right way.
** Gets interesting when you realise what else causes desynchronisation. Apparently said Ancestor did a perfect, never injured, never even seen, 100% run through. {{Badass}}.
*** Considering most injuries would either severely cripple or kill him, he'd pretty much have to do it in a perfect go.
* ''SpiderAndWeb'': In this interactive fiction game, the framing story is that you are a captured spy being interrogated. If you died in your retelling, the interrogator would be cross with you and make you start over.
* In ''Brute Force'', a dead player is replaced with a clone created for the purpose. This is expensive.
** Lampshaded in a few places, such as when your [[MissionControl commander]] tells someone to prepare a backup clone just after ordering you to jump through an untested teleporter without knowing where it will go.

* In ''SystemShock'', this has to be turned on for each area by finding its BS-tech resurrection chamber. Initial incursions may be short and cautious until the chamber's discovery creates a bridgehead.
** SpiritualSuccessor ''{{Bioshock}}'' has the Vita-Chambers, which work similarly.
* ''{{Crackdown}}'' features clone replacements. In fact the "Extract" option just instantly kills your character and pulls up the menu to choose where you want to respawn. It's only the loss of your current progress towards the next upgrade level that prevents it being a better method of transport than driving to get across town.
* ''TexMurphy'': Overseer presented the entire story as a flashback, with all player deaths handwaved by Tex: "Of course, I'd have to be an idiot to do ''that''. Here's what ''really'' happened."
* ''{{Spore}}'': The Cell and Creature phases show that every time you die, you emerge as another member of your species, ready to continue. The Space phase explains extra lives as a combination of "advanced cloning technology" and "emergency consciousness transferral", having you re-emerge as a freshly-cloned pilot with a rebuilt ship after dying.

* ''{{Psychonauts}}'' describes extra lives as "layers of projection": Lose enough and you get booted out of whoever's mind you happen to be inside. It's unclear as to why this also happens in real life, though...
* The game ''{{Sacrifice}}'': The game missions are narrated by the hero. Failing and restarting them makes the hero turn out to be an UnreliableNarrator and say, ''Of course, that's not what really happened. Let me start again...''
** In addition, dying isn't much of an issue because your patron deity's got your back (or your soul, at any rate) and will restore you to life once your mana has recovered to 25%. As long as your [[KeystoneArmy Altar]] is intact, a wizard can't die, and thus the main way to win in ''Sacrifice'' is to desecrate your opponent's altar to keep the wizard from reforming.
* ''Left4Dead'' sort of uses this. Every time a survivor dies, he will respawn in a closet down the road and thank you for releasing him. [[WordOfGod The developers used this as a way to simulate how the survivors would find other survivors that were alive]]. In other words, if a survivor dies, it never really happened as long as you find him in a trapped closet and release him. Only when he dies in the finale will the game consider him KilledOffForReal.
* In ''V2000'', the manual makes the player one of a number of pilots who fly drone craft remotely. Stocks and manufacturing capacity are both limited, so priority is given to those pilots who prove the most effective against TheVirus and penetrate the furthest into its domain. A magnificent example. One that falls apart as soon as hidden trophies start giving lives, but magnificent.
* EveOnline explains this with clones. And actually goes for more realistic approach - when your ship has been blown up, you survive in an emergency escape pod. If you manage to get away in that, you only lose the ship and cargo. If the pod has been blown up as well - then the clone justification comes into play. You lose all the implants your original body had and all the skills that you have learned after you have updated your clone.
* Stargunner tries to explain its extra lives by claiming that they're actually some sort of warp devices that activate automatically when you die and proceed to "teleport you to the closest compatible parallel dimension".
* The flash game DinoRun calls lives "time shifts".
* In ''TheSecretOfMonkeyIsland,'' protagonist Guybrush Threepwood can die (if you're really, REALLY trying to). However, in ''MonkeyIsland2'', the premise is that Guybrush is telling a story to Elaine, so any death would be inconsistent with the fact that he's alive enough to tell about it. Still, in one scene, Guybrush is hooked up to a timed death contraption. If you fail to deactivate the machine within the allotted time, he drops into a vat of acid, at which point Elaine reminds him that he's telling a story. The game then returns you to the beginning of the contraption scene.
* In ''ShadowMan'', killing Mike [=LeRoi=] sends him to Deadside just like everyone else. Unlike everyone else, once there, he becomes Shadow Man, whose powers include the ability to cross back over to certain locations in the world of the living.
* Similarly, the SoulReaver games/portions of the BloodOmen games, Raziel dying in the physical world causes his corporeal body to disolve and he returns to the spirit world, until he can find a gateway to create a new physical body. If he dies in the spirit world, he dies completely.
** No, his soul is snatched back by the Elder God. In the others, his soul seems to have become strong enough to reform itself. This is mostly because [[spoiler: only the Blood Reaver can "kill" Raziel by imprisoning him, and only Raziel can kill Kain.]]
** Kain himself transforms in a flock of bats and reforms in a safer location.
* {{Maximo}} has an offer from Death, where Death will return him to life as long as he continues to work towards resolving the imbalance in the afterlife. This deal is bound by a physical coin Death gives him, and if he runs out of these coins, Death can no longer restore him to life and must reap his soul properly.
* Conker, titular hero of Conker's Bad Fur Day, has as many lives as he has tails. The grim reaper of his world, a tiny foul-mouthed skeleton named Gregg, explains the deal to you the first time you die.

* In CityOfHeroes , the explaination is that every 'registered' hero has a teleport homer on them, that teleports them directly into an ultra high tech tube that revives them if they should be too badly hurt or rendered unconscious. In the original comics run from the earliest days of the game, the climax is made more dramatic by the bad guys having jammed said teleport homers. In addition, at least one mission deals with stopping bad guys BEFORE they can disable the hospital teleport system.
* The premise of ShadowOfDestiny is your character using time travel to prevent his death; if you fail to do so you can just go back in time and try again. Note that it ''is'' possible to die permanently, [[spoiler: by running out of time in the final level, touching your past self, or failing to return to the present when your time machine tells you to.]] You can still reload your saved game, though.
* The MMORPG {{Shadowbane}} explained the ability of characters to come back from the dead as something terribly wrong, but consistent throughout the world. Nobody could permanently die. [[WhoWantsToLiveForever At all.]]
* Bottled fairies (no, not [[BottleFairy that kind]]) can heal you in TheLegendOfZelda. If you die, they automatically come out and restore your health to the best of their ability.
* In ''[[{{Ptitlei5vi1q72}} Prinny: Can I Really Be The Hero?]]'', you get 1000 lives to solve the puzzles. That's not one Prinny with 1000 lives, but 1000 Prinnies dying one after another.
* The {{Futurama}} video game does this, thanks to Professor Farnsworth's invention, the Re-Animator (no, not ''that'' {{ReAnimator}}), which revives the player after every death.

[[AC:Non-Video Game Examples]]
* In ''{{Paranoia}}'', each character is actually six identical clones (officially referred to as a "six-pack" and usually [[DrinkingGame tracked with one]]), to get around the fact that any imaginable action or thought is treasonous (and treason is a capital crime).

* ''DungeonsAndDragons'' and ''OrderOfTheStick'' have resurrection spells.

* ''{{Alternity}}'': [=AIs=] have backups stashed somewhere on [[http://www.sfsite.com/12b/data47.htm The Grid]].

* ''FullMetalAlchemist'': The unfinished Philosophers' Stone will not restore human life, but serves to act as extra lives for the homunculi. Thus, one can kill a homunculus either by destroying the stone, or by killing them over and over again until they run out of lives.
* This trooper remembers a comic in which a person re-tells an encounter with a lion. It ends with the character telling how he got eaten and his crowd of listeners walking away unsatisfied.

* In ''{{Paranoia}}'', each character is actually six identical clones (officially referred to as a "six-pack" and usually tracked with one), to get around the fact that any imaginable action or thought is treasonous (and treason is a capital crime).

* EveOnline explains this with clones.

** In the Hordes of the Underdark expansion, you get a magic relic that pulls you to a pocket dimension, and has limited charges (depending on how many Rogue Stones you buy) for the first two chapters

* The flash game Dino Run calls lives "time shifts".