All Soap Operas are prime offenders, in order to allow for their equally copious Back from the Dead moments. Many also subvert this, with a mangled body having been found and assumed to be that of the character in question. A few egregious examples:
All My Children. Characters go over waterfalls, drive off cliffs, or are lost in wreckage. Rarely is an established long-term character killed off without leaving such an opportunity to return.
As the World Turns has Colonel Mayer, who jumped into the ocean to avoid being captured by the police. He is presumed dead by the entire cast, but the viewers just KNOW he'll turn up again the second something is needed to drive (another) wedge between Luke and Noah.
Colonel Mayer does return, but he gets sent back to prison.
James Stenback has done this numerous times, having been a villain on the show for decades. He is eventually Killed Off for Real, and everyone is shocked (and overjoyed) that they have actually seen the body this time.
The sixth season of 24 ends with two baddies — Grechenko and Philip Bauer — supposedly dead. Philip may well have the indestructible Bauer gene and his body is never found but he doesn't return. It is explicitly stated that Grechenko's body is found by CTU.
With the amount this occurs in Arrow, one would think people would be slower to assume a person's dead. Sara Lance, Malcolm Merlyn, Slade Wilson, and Isabel Rochev have all been "killed" at some point or another. This trope may even apply to Oliver himself. Oliver's final death as the Spectre leaves no body behind, which is lampshaded. But, he's truly gone this time.
It's said that the protagonist of Life On Mars, Sam Tyler, died in a car accident after spending seven years in 1973 onward. One year later, when Ashes begins, his body has yet to be found.
In the opening episode of Series 3 Alex rediscovers Sam's file and keeps it for later reading, and a new DCI alludes to Gene Hunt's secret, heavily implying that it may have to do with Sam's apparent death. It later transpires that this death was indeed faked, however he had 'died' in that world, just in a different way.
In The Avengers (1960s), Mrs. Peel's husband Peter is discovered to be alive in the Amazon after a plane crash years ago, signaling her character's exit from the series.
John Sheridan, on a hostile planet, dropped a nuclear bomb on his own location. While jumping into a bottomless pit. The rest of the station command staff couldn't even make sense of the reports about what happened, let alone find the body. Some of them refused to believe that he was dead. He was. He got better.
An established part of Minbari legend states that Valen, their warrior-prophet from 1,000 years previous, disappeared in this fashion, somewhere out in space. Some of them apparently believe he'll eventually return...and they're right, in an odd sense.
The same thing happens to John Sheridan in the Distant Finale. Because his ship was found with sealed airlocks and no trace of him on board, many believe he'll eventually return too. And because both characters make up part of the trio known as The One, many fans take it to mean the same thing also eventually happens to the third member, Delenn.
Delenn vocally invokes this trope when Lennier goes missing in hyperspace and all the evidence says he can't have survived this long. (In this case, the audience already knows he's still alive, and how, but Delenn doesn't have this information.)
G'Kar invokes a variation of this when negotiating with an Arms Dealer to get weapons for the Narn resistance, warning him that if he takes the money and doesn't fulfill his end of the deal, his body might eventually be found but would be in no condition to be identified.
A grisly subversion in Bad Girls — Prisoner Yevone Atkins. Apart from Jim Fenner (her prison officer killer), everyone else thinks she has escaped, which was her plan. The problem: the building plan she and her escape partner had used didn't feature a wall which turned a corridor into a cell because the door to the corridor only opened from the outside. Fenner shut the door behind her and left her there. Her escape partner after spending weeks in solitary confinement (for a different matter) saw the escape route as still being viable as it wasn't discovered by the prison officers. She goes to make her escape only to find the wall blocking her path and Yevone's rotting corpse.
Invoked in Band of Brothers when Easy Company is pulling out of a Dutch town swarming with Germans. Denver "Bull" Randleson was separated from the main force and forced to hide until he can escape. Meanwhile, his friends are trying to organize a rescue, and when told he was probably dead "Wild Bill" Guarnere responded, "If there ain't no body then there ain't nobody dead."
"Better Luck Next Time". Catwoman falls into what Batman says is a bottomless pit, and he says that she probably went straight to the bottom. She re-appears again in the second season episode "Hot Off the Griddle".
"Scat! Darn Catwoman". At the end of the episode, Catwoman falls off a building into a river. Her body is never recovered and Batman says he "doesn't think she'll be bothering us anymore", so he considers her to be dead. However, she appears again in the episode "Catwoman Goes to College".
In the Season 1 finale (which also ended the series) of Blade, Krista throws Chase down the stairwell (a pretty big drop). A few minutes later, she looks down and doesn't see either Chase's body or ash. Van Sciver tells her that even if either of those things were found, he'd still look over his shoulder for the rest of his immortal life.
Breaking Bad: In-universe for Emilio Koyama, Krazy-8, Victor, Drew Sharp, and Mike Ehrmantraut. All were dissolved in acid with no one outside the clean-up knowing their fate.
In a Behind The Scenes video, Hector's actor jokes that, even though he was inches away from a large explosion, this trope applies because the dead body wasn't shown onscreen.
Better Call Saul: In-universe for Howard Hamlin and Lalo Salamanca:
Mike tells Gus that until Howard's body washes up from the supposed cocaine-induced accidental drowning (which it never will as it is a cover-up to his murder by Lalo), the police investigation of his disappearance can't be closed.
Except for Jimmy and Kim, Lalo is believed to have been killed at his estate with only Gus and his men knowing the truth to his death and burial (Lalo survived the attack and used a burnt body double with identical dental records, only to be shot by Gus and buried with Howard in the foundation of an underground drug factory).
Lalo's actual death for Jimmy. When the ordeal is over the next morning, he is simply told by Mike that Lalo is dead for good. Because of how traumatizing the whole incident was for him, he is still skeptical of Lalo's death years later during Breaking Bad that he assumed his captors were sent by Lalo to finish him off. Even more time later while hiding as Gene Takavic that he mentions his skepticism of Lalo during an argument with Kim.
What with the deaths and returns of The Master, Angel, Spike, and Drusilla, the Buffyverse variant seems to be "never count a vampire dead unless their bodies turn to dust". And even then, there are ways around it (case in point: Darla, who for the record has died four times).
Invoked improperly after the Spike/Drusilla fight in "What's My Line, Part Two", which takes place in a burning church. Later, in "Surprise", the Scoobies suspect Dru may have survived, with Buffy saying, "We never found a body." Oddly, no one points out that vampires don't leave bodies, and checking for vampire dust in a burned-down church is nigh-impossible. Still, points for being Genre Savvy, though.
At the end of the Burn Notice episode "Dead to Rights", a building explodes, killing recurring villain Larry and two Red Shirt security guards. However, the next day's newspaper headline simply said that two people were killed in the blast, indicating that Larry (who makes a habit of this) is still Not Quite Dead.
In one episode a murder makes no sense...until near the end, Castle realizes this about an important participant in an event that took place 20 years earlier:
Ryan: Susan Mailer, alive? Castle: Her body was never found. Beckett: Yeah, because she was vaporized in the explosion. Castle: Well, maybe she was thrown clear.
In a much later episode, Castle shoots a serial killer several times, knocking him off a bridge. They never find the body — in fact, Beckett goes so far as to state, direct quote, "they never found the body". Castle postulates that the killer had planned the whole thing in an attempt to disappear.
Morgan: You checked for a pulse right? Chuck: ...Well he fell into a river. Morgan: He fell into a river? Of course Shaw's alive. Haven't you ever seen a John Carpenter movie?
The Criminal Minds episode "Blood Relations" features a killer more inspired by slasher movies than their typical fare, so it's no surprise that his body isn't found in the end, though most of the team is confident that he is in fact dead. The Stinger confirms that he managed to survive.
In the Cold Case episode "Fireflies", the victim is a young girl who disappeared and whose body was never found. It turns out her killer drove her to a different state to kill her so that no one would know who she was... except that unbeknownst to him, the girl actually survived, but had severe amnesia and didn't remember who she was. The Cold Case detectives track her down and break the news to her.
In the CSI episode "The List", the cops did find a torched car filled with the victim's blood and believed that proved she was dead. She wasn't, and the steps she takes to fake her death, including murdering her own sister, are so awful that they make her lover/partner-in-crime realize she can't be trusted.
CSI: NY: Det. Taylor's wife died on 9/11 and not a speck of her DNA has ever been found. Interestingly, a flashback shows that she escaped the first tower's collapse...Considering that, you know, 9/11 actually happened and thousands of real people died and haven't been found, she's probably not going to show up with amnesia in the season finale. Fanfic writers, on the other hand...
She did actually tell Mac during their phone call that she wanted to go back and help other people. Mac told her to stay out where it was safe, and then the call was cut off. So, it's possible she died going back to help others.
Dallas: This was done with family patriarch Jock Ewing after his actor Jim Davis died unexpectedly. Jock was said to have disappeared on a trip to Venezuela; a search by his sons eventually found the site where his helicopter had crashed after a mid-air collision with a small plane, but his body was never actually found.
Lydecker in the early second season of Dark Angel. It's revealed in the last book that he was alive after all.
Destinos: Rosario, Fernando Castillo's first wife, was apparently killed by a bomb during the Spanish Civil War, but it was never confirmed. Fleeing to Mexico, Fernando hid all evidence of his first marriage from his family, until a letter from Sevilla turned up indicating that she may have survived.
The Time Lords. All of them. Allegedly, all of them were erased from existence except for the Doctor. And the Master. The Daleks were supposedly also wiped out as well, but that's been proved wrong many times now.
...And Romana, meanwhile, had gone to E-Space some time before then, and it's never been statednote In the TV series, anyway; the novels and Big Finish Doctor Who audios made her President of Gallifrey if she came back for the Great Offscreen Time War or not. She's potentially still out there.
The Master has Joker Immunity, and (s)he will usually get disintegrated at the end of each story, to the point where writers don't even bother explaining how (s)he survived after a while. The one time a body is actually found, at the end of "Last of the Time Lords", the Master has to be straight-up resurrected.
Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, upon receiving news that Paul and Jessica Atreides were dead after flying into a sandstorm, asks explicitly, "You've…seen the bodies?" He was right to doubt. In the novel, it is more explicit, but his entire plan is based upon the fact that this means of executing Paul and Jessica would not leave bodies. Once his underlings are gone he himself states that they are undoubtedly dead, that nothing could possibly survive a sandstorm, and he was stressing the need to find the bodies as an educational experience to never take anything for granted, not because he actually feels this situation requires a body to be definite.
They do, at least, recover the body of Duncan Idaho, even though we're not told or shown it (there probably wasn't much left after he received a missile to the face). It was a few years, but the Tleilaxu manage to regrow the remains into a ghola.
The first death of Dennis "Dirty Den" Watts in EastEnders was perhaps the longest gap between killed and brought back, 14 years passed.
Irene Adler in Elementary. All that was found was a pool of her blood, more than a person could survive losing. Sure enough, she turns up alive in the penultimate episode of the first season. Furthermore, Sherlock eventually discovers that the man who supposedly killed her was actually set up by the mysterious Moriarty...which turns out to be Irene's true identity. She has been playing him all along, even managing to put on a very convincing American accent for the role of Irene.
Scorpius was shot and buried on-screen in an episode of Farscape but that didn't stop him from coming back anyway. Likely due to his huge popularity with fans. The fact that he came back only two episodes later makes it pretty clear that this wasn't as much of a Retcon as one would think.
Benjen Stark's horse returned riderless and two of his comrades' corpses are found — reanimated by White Walkers. While he is officially only missing in action, his comrades-in-arms are not optimistic and he is 'presumed dead'. He returns in Season 6, alive and kicking, so to speak.
Syrio Forel. We don't see him losing the fight, and there's no mention of his head being with the others on the spears. In "The First of His Name", The Hound inadvertently throws gas on this particular fire by pointing out how crappy a fighter Meryn Trant, the man who supposedly killed Syrio off-screen, really is. If Syrio was able to beat five Lannister soldiers with a wooden sword, he should have been able to beat Trant without breaking a sweat. In the books, one of the more common fan theories is that Syrio was actually Jaqen H'ghar in disguise. The second season might actually support this: in his last scene, Jaqen bids farewell to Arya by calling her "Arya Stark", a name that Arya never told him.
In Haven, when The Bolt Gun Killer tries to escape the heroes in a motorboat, they shoot the engine and it explodes. Since they don't find any remains, they assume the Killer survived and is still at large. They are correct.
Discussed in Homicide: Life on the Street, involving two men put on trial for murdering one of their business partners, with the fact that the body was never found raising questions about whether a murder was even committed. In his closing argument, the defence attorney dramatically declares that the 'victim' is in fact about to walk right through the courtroom doors, prompting everyone to turn in astonishment... but when he doesn't show, the attorney confidently declares that, since everyone was nevertheless convinced he would, the only possible option is to acquit his clients since no one can be certain that he is dead. When, against all probability, the jury convicts, the astonished attorneys corner one of the jurors, who reveals that while everyone was looking at the doors, she was looking at the defendants, who were the only people in the courtroom not to turn around.
Juror: They knew he wasn't going to be walking through those doors.
In Episode 12 of Kamen Rider Build, despite being shot and falling from the bridge, there is a distinct lack of Utsumi when Sento looks over the edge for him, and no one says anything about there being a body afterwards. Sure enough, Utsumi shows up several episodes later and explains that he was saved from the river by Blood Stalk.
Simon Kingdom in Kingdom (2007) is presumed dead after leaving his belongings on the beach and walking into the sea. He comes back in the first season finale, and at the end of the second season he disappears in a flood.
Nicole again and is Goren's reaction on when Nicole Wallace's heart is found, but a lab tech confirms it is, indeed, a DNA match. (Of course, if anyone could spoof that...)
It is later confirmed that Goren's teacher admitted he did in fact kill her.
This confirmation is sketchy, since that entire conversation, as well as previous ones, make it clear that the guy is absolutely out of his mind. He may have only thought he killed Nicole, and Nicole is certainly capable of using that to her advantage. Since the series has now ended, we will probably never truly know whether Nicole really is dead or not.
One of the suspects in "Revolution", Axel Caspers, had previously been implicated in a firebombing which is presumed to have killed a banker, his wife, and their toddler daughter, but Nichols learns that only the adults were positively identified; no remains were found that could be confirmed as belonging to the child. And it just so happens that Caspers has a daughter exactly the same age as the banker's child, despite the fact that he was serving a prison sentence during the window of time where a child that age would have to have been conceived...
One of the earliest mysteries on Lost involved Jack seeing hallucinations of his dead father on the island. When Jack finally found his father's coffin, the body was not inside. Over the course of the series, Jack's father started appearing more and more often, and to other character to whom he may or may not have any connection, and even began interacting with them, casting obvious doubt on whether or not "hallucination" is really a good term to use.
Later, Eko discovers his dead brother's corpse in the drug smuggling plane. But when he returns sometime later, the body has vanished. Suddenly, his brother starts walking around and interacting with Eko. Eko finally has a conversation with the "hallucination" of his brother and addresses him as such. The person then replies "you speak to me as if I were your brother" and walks off, leaving Eko rather confused. When Eko pursues the individual, the smoke monster appears and kills him. This scene cemented in many fans' minds the theory that the smoke monster can impersonate others if it has a body to steal.
Confirmed in Season 5, when Alex is quite clearly the Smoke Monster judging Ben.
This theory ends up being thrown for a loop in Season 5. Locke's body is brought back to the island, and keeping with this theory, most fans assumed he'd come back to life. Sure enough, he did. Except then he began acting strange, turning into a Jerkass, and annoying Ben and Richard among others. In the season finale, a group of survivors from the new plane crash bring with them a container... and inside is Locke's body. As it would turn out, the mysterious nemesis of Jacob (who had never been introduced before that episode) was impersonating Locke in order to use Ben to kill Jacob. And Season 6 confirmed he was the Smoke Monster and had him confessing to Jack that he impersonated Christian.
In an instance not involving the smoke monster, Frank Lapidus is hit by a steel door pushed in by the water rushing into Widmore's sub after it blows up. We see Sayid get blown up by the bomb and bodies of Sun and Jin after they drown, but we don't see Lapidus' body and we were lead to believe this was the last we would see of him but he reappears, floating on a piece of flotsam a few episodes later in the series finale.
From that same scene, subverted with Sayid. The audience knows he's dead, but Hurley says something to the effect of "We gotta save Sayid too!" and Jack screams that there's no Sayid left to save.
Every time Murdoc "dies" in MacGyver (1985). You'd think Mac would learn to stop knocking him off cliffs.
The Mandalorian: invoked — Moff Gideon, an ex-Imperial officer who is seemingly being set up as a founder of theFirstOrder, crashes his TIE fighter in the Season 1 finale and is assumed dead by the protagonists, but we the audience see that he survived and the second season makes no secret of this when we're shown a live transmission from him to another ex-Imperial officer. The fourth episode of Season 2, "The Siege", has the protagonists find a hologram record that was sent to Gideon and they assume it's long outdated before learning that it's only three days old, revealing to them that Gideon is still alive.
The Defenders (2017): Matt Murdock is seemingly killed in the destruction of Midland Circle while fighting his revived and crazy ex-girlfriend Elektra. In the church, Karen explicitly mentions that Matt's body hasn't been found, though Foggy reminds her that at this point, it has been days since the collapse of Midland Circle. Sure enough, Matt is discovered to be alive and well in the care of some nuns, in a moment that foreshadows what may be to come in Daredevil Season 3. Similarly, while Madame Gao's and Elektra's bodies are not seen, it is strongly implied that they may still be alive as well.
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: As stated in the first episode, Hiroshi Randa is presumed dead after his bush plane disappeared in a storm over Alaska, though neither a wreckage nor a body was found by the authorities. In episode 3, the main cast find the wreckage in the Frost Vark's territory, along with Abandoned Camp Ruins which confirm that Hiroshi survived the plane crash though his current whereabouts remain unknown.
In Moonlight, Mick stabbed his wife Coraline and left her trapped in a burning building. Taking a No One Could Survive That! attitude, he never actually saw her ashes. Turns out she's Not Quite Dead. He should have thought something was strange, when she was able to get up after being stabbed in the chest with a stake, an act that normally paralyses vampires.
Scylla goes missing after the attack on the Bellweather estate. Everyone else assumes that she died, but Raelle refuses to believe it because Scylla's body never turned up. Naturally, Raelle turns out to be right.
Raelle's mother. She's alive and she's high up in the Spree.
In the Season 3 finale, after a chase and explosion, the accomplice's body is found, but not that of Sally Pendrick. As of yet this has had no effect on the story, as Season 4 returned to the self-contained episode format.
In "Murdoch in Toyland", after managing to escape his own hanging, attempting a psychologically disturbing plan of revenge and getting caught by Murdoch again, the police wagon carrying James Gillies back to prison plunges over a bridge into a river. While the bodies of the driver and the guard are found, Gillies' is not.
The same character dives into another river at the end of "Midnight Train to Kingston". Murdoch is particularly (and understandably) anxious about the lack of a corpse. They find the body seven episodes later.
Zig-zagged in NCIS with Ziva; they found a body which they did identify as her, but several of the cast (including Tony, who found out that Ziva gave birth to their daughter before her "death") express some serious doubts that she was killed. When he leaves the team to walk the Earth and take care of his daughter, he somewhat implies another reason for his departure is to investigate Ziva's murder himself. It turns out she wasn't killed.
Neighbours seems to have a fetish for this trope, especially where the Bishop family is concerned.
When Harold Bishop was swept off a rock by a wave, all that was found was his glasses. He turned up alive but amnesiac five years later.
Liljana and Serena Bishop went down in a plane crash in the Bass Strait, but their bodies were never found, though other victims were.
Dee Bliss was presumed dead after Toadie accidentally drove their car into the sea on their wedding day. Nearly fourteen years later, an Identical Stranger by the name of Andrea showed up claiming to be Dee. Her story was that she had escaped the car but had been separated from Toadie and was missed by the search party. She washed up on a beach with a head injury and was mistaken for an abuse victim by the woman who found her and chose to hide her while she recovered. As of 2019, the real Dee has returned, and her own story was far less credible than what Andrea made up — in short, she was hiding from an organised crime family who had put a hit on her over a case of mistaken identity set off by Andrea in the first place.
When Connor O'Neill left in 2006, he was last seen being threatened by Paul Robinson's murderous son Robert. After Robert's arrest, Connor was presumed dead and Robert never suggested otherwise. But Connor was later confirmed alive when his wallet was reported found in China and when he sent his friends souvenirs, also from China. He would later return in the flesh for a guest stint in 2012.
Nip/Tuck: Kimber Henry jumps off Mike Hamoui's yacht in Season 6. But it's never confirmed if she died or not because the Coast Guard gave up searching for her after a few days.
In Once Upon a Time, the only thing found of Kathryn is the heart. In The Stable Boy, it's clear that the DNA results on the heart were tampered with when Kathryn is found alive.
At the beginning of Power Rangers ZEO, the rangers find out Rito and Goldar had been caught in the explosion that destroyed the Command Center. No sign of their bodies had been found but Adam Park was sure there was no way they could have survived the explosion. Unlike the rangers, the viewers soon learned Adam was wrong.
The Season 1 finale of Preacher (2016) concludes with a methane gas explosion that is stated to have wiped out the whole town and everyone in it, including by implication the four main characters who hadn't left by that point — Emily, Donnie, Sheriff Root, and Odin Quincannon. The totally destructive nature of the incident means that no bodies are recovered. However, Wordof God states that they've all been Killed Off for Real — while ironically, a fifth lead (DeBlanc) who was killed off in the penultimate episode and whose body was seen on screen and by at least two other characters, is still hinted to be making some form of a return in Season 2.
This is the original fate of Kevin Bruckner in the Quantum Leap episode "Another Mother." Al notes that the authorities only found Kevin's bloody clothes in an abandoned van, the case was never closed, and Kevin's mother spent years searching for answers. The goal of Sam's leap is to prevent Kevin from meeting this fate.
Victor Comstock is struck and killed by a falling bomb during a broadcast from London at the end of Season 1 of Remember WENN. He shows up alive at the end of Season 2.
In Rentaghost, the recently deceased Fred Mumford brings this up when explaining how he will be able to ask for financial assistance from his parents. As his body was never recovered, no one knows he has died. Mumford keeps up the pretence that he is still alive to his unsuspecting parents for the duration of their time on the show.
Subverted in Riverdale. At the start of the pilot, it's shown that the Blossom twins went to a lake but something occurred that caused Jason to go overboard. His body is unable to be found at the time. The end of the pilot shows that a few days later his body washed up on the shore, with a bullet in his head showing that his death wasn't accidental.
Subverted in Sanctuary. Helen spends the entirety of "Eulogy" trying to prove that Ashley is alive...only to find out that, nope, she's history. Confirmed by Wordof God that Ashley won't be back.
First, Irene fakes her death. Sherlock views the body himself and confirms that it is hers, but she's still alive. They reconcile, and later she fakes her death again. Mycroft is positive that she is, in fact, dead this time, he says, "It would take Sherlock himself to fool me." Well, Sherlock himself was there, and helped her. Finally, in the season finale, Sherlock jumps off of a building. John even takes his pulse and confirms his death. Somehow, he survived.
Also invoked by many fans of Moriarty, who shot himself in the head in the finale. However, a tie-in news report posted online doesn't mention a body being discovered, so many people think he'll return.
Steven Moffat also lampshaded it in an interview, stating that no body always means that they've survived.
Played with in "The Abominable Bride". The Bride's body is in the morgue, but she still manages to murder her husband with plenty of witnesses. Later, she also appears to murder several more people. It turns out to be a big conspiracy. The Bride didn't actually kill herself in public, faking her death and putting a look-alike in the morgue. After killing her abusive husband, she allowed a co-conspirator to shoot her to put a proper body in the morgue (she had TB anyway). All the other killings were committed by members of the conspiracy dressed up as the Bride, frequently by the men's wives themselves. It's heavily implied they deserved it. This also serves to convince Sherlock that Moriarty is indeed dead, and that someone else uses his name to commit crimes.
In an episode of Sliders, the group slides into a world where America has an aristocracy, and Rembrandt's double is a nobleman (for reference, Rembrandt is black). The press mentions that their Rembrandt was last seen dragged away by a river never to be seen again. After their Rembrandt is assumed to be him and impregnated (It Makes Sense in Context), the sliders start looking into the clues. They fairly quickly find out that this world's Rembrandt faked his death in order to escape all the media attention and enjoy a peaceful life. However, after finding out that his baby is in another man's body (once again, watch the episode for context), he returns to the world.
Clark has a routine of x-raying the graves of anyone who's supposed to be dead, like Emily Dinsmoore or Chloe, determining whether or not there's a body. Emily's body is used for Lex's cloning experiments and Chloe is shoved into an underground tunnel before her house blows up, although Lex lies to him and said there isn't a body to bury because she was blown into millions of pieces.
When Lex was stranded on a deserted island his father buried a coffin for him thinking that he must be dead.
Inverted with Stargate SG-1 baddies where finding the body is a prerequisite for the sarcophagus and resurrection. Apophis didn't die until he was left for dead on a Replicator-infested ship about to crash into a planet. Because of the number of times he actually survived things like this, the scene was complete with Replicators crawling across his Personal Shield, an inarticulate scream of rage, and the viewers actually getting to see the ship crash.
It still didn't stop them from making a Lampshade Hanging in the very next episode, when Jack O'Neill, after claiming that there a 100 percent chance of Apophis being gone for good. He finds himself looking at the unconvinced faces of those around him and changes it to a 99 percent certainty.
Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis both frequently use this trope, with many of the Big Bads simply "dying" by ship explosion or freezing. See Anubis, a few dozen times, as well as most other system lords at least once, and Michael in Atlantis.
Given the fact that Anubis has no body, this trope is conspicuously accurate.
The cast of Atlantis doesn't believe that Weir is actually dead until told so by her replicator-clone when they finally pack up her quarters after she's taken out. A copy of Weir is shown to be alive as intro to a plotline that isn't followed up on for a while after the replicator planet is destroyed. She eventually comes back, in a different body and ultimately dies via Heroic Sacrifice.
Back in the first season an episode started with the rest of the team coming back through the gate saying that he had been incinerated by a gas vent, but shortly after his funeral it turned out that they had actually been abducted and everyone but Daniel had been given false memories and allowed to escape.
Much later he actually did die (and partially ascend) but the others had no idea of his fate and Jack vehemently refused to declare him dead, having noticed his tendency to turn up alive every other time.
In Season 1, Dr. Brenner is last seen getting attacked by the Demogorgon, but his death is never explicitly confirmed. His appearances in the subsequent seasons consist entirely of hallucinations and flashbacks, until he appears live and in the flesh in Season 4 to help Eleven regain her powers. He's eventually Killed Off for Real after being gunned down by sniper fire.
At the end of Season 3, Hopper is presumed dead following the explosion that shuts down the dimensional portal in the Russian base, yet no one is able to find his body. The following season reveals he's alive and forced to do manual labor in a Russian gulag.
In the Season 4 finale, despite having his underlings slain and losing power and subsequently taking multiple molotov cocktails and shotgun blasts before falling out of an attic, Vecna manages to muster the strength to run off and hide. Will outright confirms that he's still alive at the end of the episode.
Titus: "Your father said you fell into a bonfire, and were swept into the sea, and then your body was eaten by rats." "Well, yeah, but I didn't die."
The original Stig on Top Gear, who drove off an aircraft carrier, leaving only a black glove behind. Wordof God states, however, that he was Killed Off for Real.
Cigarette Smoking Man on The X-Files was shot by a sniper because of his increasing closeness to Mulder and distance from the rest of The Syndicate, early in Season 5. His body was never found, but there was supposedly too much blood for him to have survived the shooting. He wasn't mentioned again until February Sweeps, when he was revealed to be alive and well and living somewhere in Canada. This was perhaps a bit different from the usual way this trope is played out since it was pretty clear that the writers intended the death to be temporary from the start and the fans knew it.
