Note: As a Death Trope, all Spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.
Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated in Literature.
- In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Tom and Huck are mistakenly thought dead until they show up at their own funeral.
- Animorphs: One book sees a new alien race that according to Ax was killed off millennia ago. "Reports of their extinction may have been exaggerated" indeed, they're trying to kill us right now.
- In John Steakley's Armor, the protagonist is the only survivor of a military unit that gets wiped out. The confusion of circumstances results in parts of the computerized record-keeping system thinking he's also dead, while other parts are aware he's alive; this, to put it mildly, does not make his life any easier.
- The BattleTech Expanded Universe novel "Blood Legacy" features the specific Twain quote sent cryptically by Precentor Martial Anastasius Focht to mercenary commander Morgan Kell, early into the Clan invasion. Because of the interference of the Primus of Comstar, this is the only way he can try to inform the grieving Kell family that the son they thought killed early in the invasion is actually alive, captured by the Clans. It also serves as a very subtle hint that Focht is not all he's cracked up to be either. He's actually Frederick Steiner, who was also presumed dead over a decade by that point.
- Ben and Me: Ben accidentally convinces some locals that he's drowned when he runs off chasing a dog that had stolen his cap, leaving his clothes on the banks.
- Catch-22: Doc Daneeka is listed as dead because he was on the flight roster for a bomber that flew into a mountain. The fact that he was standing there in person, telling them he wasn't dead, failed to convince the army bureaucracy.
- The Cat Who... Series: In book #11 (The Cat Who Lived High), the vacationing Qwill's car is stolen and the driver turns up dead. The local law enforcement where the car is found, who don't know Qwill, assume the dead man is the owner of the car and issue an incorrect report. While most of Moose County is thrown into deep mourning, Arch goes to where Qwill is staying to get the cats — and almost has a heart attack when he finds Qwill alive and sort of well, having just fought off an attempt on his life.
- Near the end of The Conformist, Marcello discovers that Lino, the man he shot as a child after he attempted to molest Marcello, is still alive and that the obituary he read in the paper shortly after the event was erroneous.
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time: Christopher's father told him his mother died. Then Christopher finds all the letters she's been writing to him since she left his father.
- In Enoch Arden, the title character returns after being shipwrecked for more than ten years to find his wife has married another man.
- Nicoma Cosca in the First Law novels has this happen many times over the course of his life, and declares it "wishful thinking on the part of my enemies."
- Grent's Fall: While his army may have been scattered before the story started, the Bladecleaver survived unharmed.
- Harry Bosch is surprised in Two Kinds of Truth when his appeal for help in the 15-year-old Esme Tavares missing person case results in Esme Tavares contacting him. It seems that Tavares, who was presumed dead by everyone after she disappeared from her home while her infant daughter slept in a crib, had simply skipped out on a bad marriage and changed her name.
- In J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, when Bilbo Baggins finally returns to his house, he finds a huge crowd gathered for his estate auction. Since he had left without telling anyone, and not returned for a year, everyone in the Shire had assumed he was dead. His heirs, the Sackville-Bagginses, are rather disappointed when he turns up.
- A Hole in the Fence: Flammèche explains Grisón that his biological mother asked her to take care of her baby boy for some few years; but she never came back for Grisón because she died in the earthquake which shook the city of La Morlaye two years later. Later, a shepherd called Basile reveals Grisón that his mother is alive, and mystified, the boy asks why his adoptive parents lied to him. Basile replies he was not lied to: it's difficult to identify and locate all dead and missing persons in the aftermath of a catastrophe. Still later, his mother explains it was her husband who died in the earthquake.
- Honor Harrington:
- Honor herself says a variation on the line when she returns to Manticore in Ashes of Victory. In this case, not only has she been gone for the better part of two years, but the People's Republic of Haven actually faked footage of her execution and broadcast it throughout the galaxy. This causes a lot of complications, not least of which that her estate has been divided up according to her will. Honor is less bothered by this than by certain twenty-foot-tall memorials to her. Even the Peeps thought she had died in a failed attempt to escape. But no one was going to believe that, so they claimed to have formally executed her, to put a badass face on the debacle.note
- Roughly half a decade later, Honor's best friend Michelle Henke is seemingly killed at the Battle of Solon. Turns out she actually made it off the ship and was tucked safely away in a Havenite POW camp. When the two meet again, Michelle remarks that "now we're even for that jaunt to Cerberus you took."
- Joel Suzuki: The shaman Blackspore disappeared after the Fourfoot War and was presumed dead, until Legend of the Loudstone, when the protagonists finally find him on the atoll where he's been stranded ever since he tried to teleport to Six States but couldn't get far enough.
- Lost Voices: On Luce's thirteenth birthday, her father's fishing boat went missing in a storm. Her grief over his apparent death is part of what triggered her transformation into a mermaid following a Near-Rape Experience at the hands of her uncle a year later. But in Waking Storms, Luce finds him alive on a small island somewhere north of the Aleutians. She helps him build a raft and tows him to an inhabited island.
- The first third or so of The Martian is driven by astronaut turned reluctant Martian colonist Mark Watney's urgent need to contact Mission Control before reports of his death cease to be greatly exaggerated.
- The Mermaid Chronicles: When Cordelia was thirteen, her family was attacked by a shark (actually a shapeshifter called a selachii) who took her mother and her twin brother Dylan. She learns years later that Dylan was saved by merfolk who transformed him into one of them. In Quest for Atlantis, Cordelia and Dylan learn that their mother is also alive, and has been held prisoner in Atlantis for almost six years.
- Mermaids of Eriana Kwai: Meela's older brother Nilus was supposedly killed by mermaids when she was eight. In fact, he fell in love with the mermaid Ephyra, who transformed him into a merman so he could be with her. When Lysi meets him in Ice Crypt, he's going by Coho.
- Drizzt thought Jarlaxle was dead since the end of Gauntlgrym, the first book of The Neverwinter Saga, but he is rescued by the drow mercenary in The Last Threshold. Drizzt even runs up to hug him, while he banters about his supposed death.
- Old Mortality: Everyone thinks Henry drowned in a shipwreck. He wrote to Edith after his supposed death, but the letter never reached her.
- In The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie, Saladin Chamcha has trouble with red tape and getting his career back in order after being presumed dead in the plane crash.
- A Series of Unfortunate Events: Lemony Snicket.This obituary is filled with errors. Most importantly, I AM NOT DEAD.
- Sherlock Holmes: Used by Arthur Conan Doyle to implement Holmes' return. Conveniently, in the story which was originally planned to kill Holmes off for real, Watson never actually saw Holmes die, but instead found supposedly incontrovertible evidence after the fact. So his lack of observational skills was used to explain away the originally-described-as-sheer rock face as actually being climbable by Holmes, with much of the other evidence of Holmes and Moriarty's fight at the waterfall having ended in a Mutual Kill being Holmes deliberately Faking the Dead to evade and track Moriarty's second in command.
- Star Wars Legends: Corran Horn has been reported dead and turned up alive again so often (3 times in the five X-Wing novels he features in alone) that it has been joked that when he really dies, nobody will believe it and will assume he's just in hiding and will turn up again sooner or later.
- The Stormlight Archive: In Words of Radiance, Shallan is witness to Jasnah being assassinated by the Ghostbloods, and the ship they're traveling on sinks (by Shallan, trying to escape from the Ghostbloods). Shallan carries this information back to Jasnah's family, unaware that Jasnah used her Elsecalling powers to escape into Shadesmar, and her Stormlight to recover from her wounds. It took her until Oathbringer to actually get back though.
- The Sword of Saint Ferdinand: Since García has been missing for four days, rumors start flying around the Castilian camp that he has been killed in action. The whole army is already about to raid Seville to "take revenge", when García shows up, revealing he was rescuing a hostage from the enemy.
- In Lewis Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno, the Vice-Warden arranges for a false report of his brother's death."Is the Warden supposed to be dead?"
"Well, it's supposed so: but, mind you, I don't believe it! The evidence is very weak—mere hear-say. A wandering Jester, with a Dancing-Bear (they found their way into the Palace, one day) has been telling people he comes from Fairyland, and that the Warden died there. I wanted the Vice-Warden to question him, but, most unluckily, he and my Lady were always out walking when the Jester came round. Yes, the Warden's supposed to be dead!" And more tears trickled down the old man's cheeks. - Tarot Mysteries: Biddle was apparently shot by some mobsters they conned in a flashback in the first book but at the end of the second book it's revealed that he survived and he reappears at the shop.
- Teddy London: Referenced in book 4, All Things Under the Moon. The day before the London Detective Agency goes to face a werewolf, they get into a discussion that involves quotes on death; Paul Morcey says he prefers Mark Twain's famous quote on death and hopes to be around to say it in a few days.
- Temeraire: In Victory of Eagles, Laurence is thought dead by Temeraire after the ship he was imprisoned on is sunk by the French (a stray cannonball opened his cell, and he tried to help the crew before making it to the lifeboats with the survivors).
- Serge, the Tim Dorsey novels' usual protagonist, is on a quest to find out the truth about his grandfather Sergio's death after a fiasco with rare stolen diamonds. He believes his namesake is still alive and is actually quite right. The "dead man" in question even explains that no one bothered to check how deep the water was, he was actually standing up to his chest and watching the chaos unfold on the docks.
- Unofficial History by Sir William Slim. During WW2, Brigadier Slim encounters some British troops under his command fleeing an attack by Italian bombers. They earnestly inform him they are the sole survivors after their unit was wiped out, one of them adding that the brigadier is dead as well. Slim assures them that he's very much alive, then orders them back to their unit (which is still intact, just demoralized having never been in combat before).
- Warhammer 40,000: A footnote in one of the Ciaphas Cain, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!!! books reveals that Cain was listed as "killed in action" and then showed up alive (and typically saving the day) so many times that the Munitorum finally gave up trying to keep track and kept him on the payroll regardless — even long past his confirmed death ... and burial with full military honors.
- Wayward Children: During Antsy's two-year stint Trapped in Another World in Lost in the Moment and Found, not only was she presumed dead, her stepfather was convicted of her murder — no loss, given his pedophilic intentions towards her. Christopher remembers the news coverage of the story when she joins Eleanor West's School in Mislaid in Parts Half-Known.
- The Witch of Knightcharm is set in The Scholomance, an infamous Wizarding School know for teaching The Dark Arts. The Scholomance was supposedly destroyed by heroic witches and wizards several years before the book was set. However, as the protagonist Emily learns, reports of the school's death were exaggerated. The Scholomance survived and is still causing problems, leading Emily to embark on a quest to undermine it and end it for good.
