History Main / MortalityGreyArea

* In ''Manga/DeathNote'', all mortals have a universally destined time of death, and it is a shinigami's job to carry out those deaths. One particular shinigami named Rem developed affections towards Misa Amane, going far enough to overlook her job and protect her from her time of death by directly killing the man who was destined to stab Misa. Misa is aware that her life was spared. She's still biologically alive, but the universal rules no longer dictate when she is going to die. She wonders if this means she is going to live forever or if her life can still be claimed by a mortal injury.

While inanimate objects qualify by default, ''animate'' beings are more notable. [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman Depending on who you ask]] robots are usually considered "alive", but occasionally this gets brought up of them technically not being living or dead beings. [[CosmicEntity Cosmic Entities]] who exist above life are considered this by default. Someone who's BarredFromTheAfterlife is liable to become this if they aren't a form of the undead.

Not to be confused with TheUndead, as they are considered dead, but are animated like a living being. That said, sometimes undead are categorized as neither living or dead. These beings can't be considered living or dead, or are equally both. This may also be the case with {{Dhampyr}}s. May overlap with ChildOfTwoWorlds. Sub-trope of LiminalBeing. This trope is not to be confused with UncertainDoom, which is when it's unclear whether or not a character has survived a seemingly lethal event. See also LifeDeathJuxtaposition.

* Creator/DCComics:
** Anything that's bonded to [[ComicBook/NewGods the Source Wall]] is as good as dead, however more accurately a case of [[AndIMustScream conscious]] TakenForGranite. This middle ground between life and death allowed [[Franchise/GreenLantern Black Hand]] [[{{Necromancer}} to reanimate them]], only to backfire when they revive no longer bonded to the Source Wall. One [[ComicBook/TheNew52FuturesEnd "Future's End"]] scenario has Hal exploit this arrest of living by being placed in it when mortally wounded.

** ''ComicBook/JusticeLeague2011'': In issue #11, The League travels to Mount Sumeru where an entrance to the valley of souls exists. Cyborg is the only member of the League who is able to see the entrance, something that is only possible for those walking the line between life and death according to a book written by the villain David Graves.

** ''Franchise/WonderWoman'':

* ''Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbeanTheCurseOfTheBlackPearl'' features Barbossa and his crew, as the result of plundering the cursed treasure chest of Hernán Cortés. None of their desires can be satisfied; their hunger cannot be sated, their thirst cannot be quenched, their lust cannot be slaked. Under direct moonlight, they transform into rotting skeletons. And on top of all of this, they cannot die, no matter the state they are in[[note]]this includes a group of pirates impaled through the chest and then blown to bits by a hand-bomb, and a pirate tied to a cannon and then dropped into the ocean[[/note]], not until each piece of Aztec gold is returned to the chest it came from, along with a blood price from the one who took it.

** Discworld golems are only animated as long as they have a chem (a paper with magic words) in their heads. Remove the chem and they're just very big humanoid statues with empty heads that creep everyone out (as Angua puts it, the living hate the undead and the undead loathe the unalive). It doesn't mean they don't have wants, however, and after the events of ''Literature/FeetOfClay'' it turns out [[spoiler:putting a golem's bill of sale to itself along with its chem frees it from its need to have a master]], and the golems start working to free themselves. [[spoiler:Dorfl]] argues with a bunch of priests that if they want to prove he's not alive, they can grind him down to the finest powder to find a single spark of life, but to make sure the test is fair, the same must be done to a fellow priest. The priests see the difficulty in the proposal, because the golem can just be remolded and baked to be restored. One golem in ''Literature/GoingPostal'' is shown to have a soul after it dies, but Death isn't sure what to do with it. The golem answers that not doing anything is the greatest freedom a golem can have, and so it stays where it is.

[[folder:Music]]
* Music/Apollo440: "Liquid Cool" describes [[HumanPopsicle cryonic preservation]] this way:
-->''Certainly someone who is frozen is not alive, but neither are they dead.\\\
They are in a third state. A biostasis what I would use to describe... ''liquid cool.
[[/folder]]

* In ''Series/{{Charmed|1998}}'', the episode "Styx Feet Under", Paige casts a protection spell on an innocent bystander when the demon Sirk attempts to murder him. However rather than keeping the man from harm, the spell merely bound his soul to his body so he was unable to pass on. TheGrimReaper then shows up and reveals that although the man was dead, he was unable to claim his soul. Said man continued roaming around being unable to properly die despite his fatal injuries due to the spell.

* ''VideoGame/DarkSouls''

** Dragonslayer Ornstein is stuck with a very bizarre case of this: In the first game, he's fought as a DualBoss with Smough the Executioner and killed by the player in order to progress through the game. Then came along ''VideoGame/DarkSoulsII'' with a boss called the Old Dragonslayer...who was all but named to be Ornstein, despite the game being a DistantSequel of the first game. ''Then'' came along ''VideoGame/DarkSoulsIII'', in which his armor can be found and described the fact that he left "the ruined cathedral" (the place where he's fought in the first game) in search of the Nameless King, and thus it's [[MindScrew technically impossible for him to have been fought in the first game at all]]! To say that this created a lot of EpilepticTrees is an understatement.

--> Immortality doesn't mean absence of death; it means the boundary between life and death disappears, and you are in a state neither alive nor dead. Just as if you were in the living world and the Netherworld at the same time, a Necrophantasia."
** Youmu Konpaku is a half-human, half-ghost who lives in the Netherworld where dead souls await reincarnation, and is often described as half-alive and half-dead. Her higher soul exists outside her body as wispy blob, while her lower soul remains in her body to animate it, and both halves of her person are described as having a [[GhostlyChill temperature]] in-between that of living creatures and ghosts. Youmu's unusual status also means she's half human, half {{youkai}}, which has had [[StoryAndGameplayIntegration both story and gameplay implications]]. In ''[[VideoGame/TouhouEiyashouImperishableNight Imperishable Night]]'' the Netherworld team[[note]]Consisting of Youmu and her ghost employer[[/note]] has a lopsided Human/Youkai gauge, while solo Youmu is the only solo character with an evenly-balanced one. In ''[[VideoGame/TouhouShinreibyouTenDesires Ten Desires]]'' Miko is unable to read Youmu's personality correctly because she has neither an urge to live nor a death drive.

* In ''VideoGame/QuestForGloryIV'', the [[TheGhost oft-mentioned-never-seen]] Archmage Erana is revealed to have been stuck between life and death for about 80 years before present. While her physical body is unequivocally dead, killed by the Dark One Avoozl during her semi-successful attempt to banish it, her spirit is not, as after killing her, Avoozl latched onto it, so that both it and Erana's soul are stuck between the material world and the Chaos Realm together. Because of this capture, Erana has not become a ghost, unlike Paladin Piotyr, Anna, and [[spoiler:Nikolai]], and so is not fully conscious and cannot interact with the living. She can, however, still dream (and share her nightmares with the Hero if he sleeps near her staff or in her garden), and at the end of the game, the Hero manages to break Avoozl's grasp on her, giving her just enough time to finish her banishing ritual and save Mordavia, before her soul is pulled into the afterlife.

* ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'': As part of his DualityMotif, when Sollux sacrifices himself, he doesn't become a ghost like the rest of the cast would; he becomes a "half-ghost", separate from his dead body with the powers of a ghost and a blank white eye in addition to an empty black eye [[spoiler: from being struck blind shortly before his death]]. When Gamzee chucks his corpse into a Kernelsprite, Sollux's ghost parts are stripped, rendering him fully alive again.

** Constructs and TheUndead count as neither living nor dead. Depending on the edition and the specific creature, they're immune to some effects that the living can suffer (like {{Critical Hit}}s and [[PerpetualMotionMonster fatigue]] in 3.5 Edition), but are unaffected (or [[ReviveKillsZombie harmed]]) by HealingHands and can't be brought BackFromTheDead. The line is further blurred by ''TabletopGame/{{Eberron}}''[='s=] playable [[MechanicalLifeforms Warforged]], which are a special "Living Construct" with more of the strengths and weaknesses of true life. ''Eberron'' also has the Undying, beings very much like undead except that the energy that reanimates them is ''positive'' energy, the energy of life (instead of negative energy, the energy of death, like undead).

Not to be confused with TheUndead, as they are considered dead, but are animated like a living being. That said, sometimes undead are categorized as neither living or dead. These beings can't be considered living or dead, or are equally both. This may also be the case with [[{{Dhampyr}} Dhampyrs]]. May overlap with ChildOfTwoWorlds. Sub-trope of LiminalBeing. This trope is not to be confused with UncertainDoom, which is when it's unclear whether or not a character has survived a seemingly lethal event. See also LifeDeathJuxtaposition.

* ''Creator/DCComics''

** Discworld golems are only animated as long as they have a chem (a paper with magic words) in their heads. Remove the chem and they're just very big humanoid statues with empty heads that creep everyone out (as Angua puts it, the living hate the undead and the undead loathe the unalive).
** It doesn't mean they don't have wants, however, and after the events of ''Literature/FeetOfClay'' it turns out [[spoiler:putting a golem's bill of sale to itself along with its chem frees it from its need to have a master]], and the golems start working to free themselves.
*** [[spoiler:Dorfl]] argues with a bunch of priests that if they want to prove he's not alive, they can grind him down to the finest powder to find a single spark of life, but to make sure the test is fair, the same must be done to a fellow priest. The priests see the difficulty in the proposal, because the golem can just be remolded and baked to be restored.
** One golem in ''Literature/GoingPostal'' is shown to have a soul after it dies, but Death isn't sure what to do with it. The golem answers that not doing anything is the greatest freedom a golem can have, and so it stays where it is.

-->''Certainly someone who is frozen is not alive, but neither are they dead.''\\\
''They are in a third state. A biostasis what I would use to describe... ''liquid cool.

** The 3.5 spells ''shroud of undeath'' or ''kiss of the vampire'' surrounds the caster in negative energy, making undead confuse her for one of their own. Any spell specifically affecting undead creatures (including ReviveKillsZombie effects) treat the subject as undead. She stays a living being throughout, however, and can still be targeted by spells affecting living subjects. The more powerful ''undead mask'' goes one step further by, temporarily, fully giving the subject the Undead creature type, including all of their immunities and weaknesses. The weaker ''living undeath'' doesn't grant such drastic changes but makes the subject immune to precision damage and critical hits like an undead.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

[[folder:Web Original]]
* ''WebVideo/CriticalRole'': The beings known as “hollow ones”. [[TheAgeless They don’t age past their moment of death]], and they have an uncanny knack for resisting death as they cling to life. Two of them have been introduced on the show thus far:
** Campaign 2 NPC Jamedi Cosko, a former hired hand of Captain Avantika. His nature is first glimpsed by Caduceus as jungle insects ignore him, due to his faint aura of undeath.
** 30+ years prior to Campaign 3, [[CreepyGood Laudna]] was killed as a young woman in her 20’s, but upon being hit by a necromantic force she came back to life, believing that she exists somewhere in-between life and death. Although she registers as undead to magical detection, [[HealingHands healing magic]] works as though she's alive, and her heart beats... three times per minute.

* ''Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbeanTheCurseOfTheBlackPearl'' features Barbossa and his crew, as the result of plundering the cursed treasure chest of Hernán Cortés. All of their desires cannot be sated; their hunger cannot be sated, their thirst cannot be quenched, their lust cannot be slaked. Under direct moonlight, they transform into rotting skeletons. And on top of all of this, they cannot die, no matter the state they are in[[note]]this includes a group of pirates impaled through the chest and then blown to bits by a hand-bomb, and a pirate tied to a cannon and then dropped into the ocean[[/note]], not until each piece of Aztec gold is returned to the chest it came from, along with a blood price from the one who took it.

** In ''Literature/{{Mort}}'', Princess Keli was scheduled to die, but TheGrimReaper's apprentice [[MeaningfulName Mort]], due to having a crush on her, makes it so that the guy who was destined to kill her doesn't. This results in her being somehow dead but alive at the same time. It takes people a while to realize she's there; [[ImColdSoCold her skin is cold to the touch]], the other people at the castle make preparations for a funeral before belatedly realizing they don't need to, and [[HowlOfSorrow dogs howl]], but then immediately wonder why.

* ''Literature/HarryPotter'': [[https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Amortality Amortal beings]] are a distinct category from immortal beings, despite functionally being the same. Their immortality comes from the virtue of never being alive in the first place, and thus technically can't die. "Non-beings" like [[{{Poltergeist}} poltergeists]], [[YourWorstNightmare boggarts]], and [[TheDreaded the Dementors]] fall under this category of not being recognized as living or dead.
* The Breathless Ones of ''Literature/HisDarkMaterials'' were half-killed warriors who were unable to die doe to their lungs having been harmed by their captors to the point their daemons have to pump them:

* ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'': The Nazgul/Ringwraiths. As they are eternally bound to Sauron's will as his top enforcers, they can never truly die as long as the One Ring, and by extension Sauron himself, still exists. But neither are they truly alive, as they are also powerful ghost-like entities with no physical bodies of their own whose primary weapon and purpose (when not pursuing the Fellowship) is to sow terror and discord among their master's enemies, and without fire or a Numenorean blade, it's impossible to so much as even scratch them.

It's generally accepted that a character is one of two things; alive, or dead. Some dead beings [[TheUndead can act like a living being]], however they are still considered technically dead. But some beings fit in a grey area, or no area at all; they aren't alive or dead, or simultaneously both like a UsefulNotes/SchrodingersCat. Perhaps they used to be one, but have [[WasOnceAMan transformed]] into a being that can't be classified as either. Or they're such a ParadoxPerson or EldritchAbomination that labels like "dead" and "alive" can't be used with them.

* ''TabletopGame/ArsMagica'': Magi succumb to Final Twilight when they build up enough residual magic to glitch them out of reality forever. {{Necromanc|er}}y doesn't register them as ''dead'', but they either [[NoBodyLeftBehind vanish forever]] or [[{{Metamorphosis}} transform into something else]], and no one knows what that means for the mage's soul.

** The 3.5 spells ''shroud of undeath'' or ''kiss of the vampire'' surrounds the caster in negative energy, making undead confuse her for one of their own. Any spell specifically affecting undead creatures (including ReviveKillsZombie effects) treat the subject as undead. She stays a living being throughout, however, and can still be targeted by spells affecting living subjects. The more powerful ''undead mask'' goes one step further by, temporarily, fully giving the subject the Undead creature type, including all of their immunities and weaknesses.
** Another 3.5 spell, ''living undeath'', doesn't grant such drastic changes but makes the subject as immune to precision damage and critical hits as a true undead.

* ''VideoGame/EldenRing'': When the demigod Godwyn the Golden was assassinated by the Black Knives, they somehow botched it and killed only his soul while leaving his body alive. As such, when Godwyn was interred in the roots of the [[WorldTree Erdtree]], traditionally considered the source and final destination of all life in the Lands Between, his mindless, still-living corpse could not be properly absorbed and instead became an infection propagating through the Erdtree's roots called Deathroot, which reanimates the dead wherever it spreads. By the time you see it yourself, Godwyn's corpse has bloated into a gigantic, bizarrely mermaid-like figure embedded in the Erdtree's roots, still neither really alive nor dead.

** Discworld golems are only animated as long as they have a chem (a paper with magic words) in their heads. Remove the chem and they're just very big humanoid statues with empty heads that creep everyone out (as Angua puts it, the living hate the undead and the undead loathe the alive).

* ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'': Due to regenerating to everything they throw at it, the Foundation has come to believe that [[OmnicidalManiac SCP-682]] can't be considering alive. While functionally a reptilian monstrosity with a HealingFactor and AdaptiveAbility, the Hard-to-Destroy Reptile can adapt to the laws of physics being altered around it and survive [[BeyondTheImpossible things that are outright impossible to do so]]. It has even easily adapted against assaults (including SCP objects) that explicitly target living matter, somehow growing protections and even limbs that are unaffected. As such, it's seen as too much of an EldritchAbomination to be truly considered a living being.

** The 3.5 spell ''shroud of undeath'' surrounds the caster in negative energy, making undead confuse her for one of their own. Any spell specifically affecting undead creatures (including ReviveKillsZombie effects) treat the subject as undead. She stays a living being throughout, however, and can still be targeted by spells affecting living subjects.

Not to be confused with TheUndead, as they are considered dead, but are animated like a living being. That said, sometimes undead are categorized as neither living or dead. These beings can't be considered living or dead, or are equally both. This may also be the case with [[{{Dhampyr}} Dhampyrs]]. May overlap with ChildOfTwoWorlds. Sub-trope of LiminalBeing. This trope is not to be confused with UncertainDoom, which is when it's unclear whether or not a character has survived a seemingly lethal event. See also LifeDeathJuxaposition.

Not to be confused with TheUndead, as they are considered dead, but are animated like a living being. That said, sometimes undead are categorized as neither living or dead. These beings can't be considered living or dead, or are equally both. This may also be the case with [[{{Dhampyr}} Dhampyrs]]. May overlap with ChildOfTwoWorlds. Sub-trope of LiminalBeing. This trope is not to be confused with UncertainDoom, which is when it's unclear whether or not a character has survived a seemingly lethal event.

** It doesn't mean they don't have wants, however, and after the events of ''Literature/FeetOfClay it turns out [[spoiler:putting a golem's bill of sale to itself along with its chem frees it from its need to have a master]], and the golems start working to free themselves.

** 30+ years prior to Campaign 3, [[Creepy Good Laudna]] was killed as a young woman in her 20’s, came back to life, hasn't aged since, and believes she exists somewhere in between life and death. Although she registers as undead to magical detection, [[HealingHands healing magic]] works as though she's alive, and her heart beats... three times per minute.

* ''WebVideo/CriticalRole'': Laudna was killed as a young woman, came back to life, [[TheAgeless hasn't aged]] in the 30 years since, and believes she exists somewhere in between life and death. Although she registers as undead to magical detection, [[HealingHands healing magic]] works as though she's alive, and her heart beats... three times per minute.

* "Liquid Cool" by Music/Apollo440 describes [[HumanPopsicle cryonic preservation]] this way:
--> Certainly someone who is frozen is not alive, but neither are they dead.
--> They are in a third state. A biostasis what I would use to describe... ''liquid cool''.

** Constructs and TheUndead count as neither living nor dead. Depending on the edition and the specific creature, they're immune to some effects that the living can suffer (like {{Critical Hit}}s and [[PerpetualMotionMonster fatigue]] in 3.5 Edition), but are unaffected (or [[ReviveKillsZombie harmed]]) by HealingHands and can't be brought BackFromTheDead. The line is further blurred by ''TabletopGame/{{Eberron}}'''s playable [[MechanicalLifeforms Warforged]], which are a special "Living Construct" with more of the strengths and weaknesses of true life. Eberron also added Undying, beings very much like undead except in that the energy that reanimates them is ''positive'' energy, the energy of life (instead of negative energy, the energy of death, like undead).

** The ghost-blooded are the children of unions between living mortals and ghosts, a rare occurrence only possible in shadowlands and are metaphysically neither truly alive nor actually dead, hence their common moniker of the Half-Dead. Their nature means that they're metaphysical mistakes that shouldn't exist; there aren't even supposed to be an Underworld and lingering dead in Creation, let alone people who aren't strictly alive or dead and don't have a true place in among either the living, as they're too connected to the dead and unable to recover Essence in the sunlit world, or the dead, as they're still flesh-and-blood creatures who can't thrive in Underworld societies.