Note: As a Death Trope, all Spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.
Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated in Live-Action Films.
- In Are You Being Served?, Captain Peacock briefly believes Mr. Lucas is dead when he sees a cabinet he was hiding in get riddled with bullet holes, but his distress quickly goes away when Mr. Lucas emerges unharmed from the other side.
- In Avengers: Endgame, Scott Lang (a.k.a. Ant-Man) is falsely assumed to have been one of the many victims of Thanos's Snap. However, in reality, he was in the Quantum Realm, and the only three people who knew he was there and knew how to get him out were actual victims of the Snap, as seen in the mid-credits scene
of Ant-Man and the Wasp. He finally escapes from the Quantum Realm in Endgame, but five years have passed in the real world while only five hours passed from his perspective. This leads to an emotional scene where he reunites with his now-teenage daughter Cassie, who assumed he had died. Later, he and the remaining Avengers exploit the Timey-Wimey Ball rules of the quantum realm to go back in time and steal Infinity Stones to create a new gauntlet to bring everyone back. - In Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne goes on a multi-year incognito journey to find himself, and when he gets back Alfred tells him he's been thought dead. It's mostly played as a throwaway joke, though, and is sorted out between scenes with no lasting complications. Alfred mentions that there have been moves to have him declared legally dead, and Bruce says it's a good thing he left everything to Alfred then.
- In Beat the Devil, Peterson and Dannreuther are pushing a broken-down car along a mountain road when it gets away from them and careens off a cliff into the sea. They are reported as dead, which surprises them when they return. Besides being funny, this is plot-relevant: Harry finds out about the uranium scheme when Rovello, believing his partner to be dead, approaches Harry and tries to get him to join.
- John Wayne's character in Big Jake hears everyone he meets tell him that they thought he had died. Eventually, Big Jake gets so annoyed, he promises to kill the next person to say it to him — who, of course, turns out to be the Big Bad...
- A Bridge Too Far. Urquhart's paratroopers are quite astonished when the General turns up alive, having been holed up in a Dutch house for several days. Unfortunately, things have gotten even worse since he was away.
- Buddha's Palm: The ancient Firecloud Devil, which was once The Dreaded in the Martial World, is assumed to be dead. But early in the film, after the hero Long Jian-fei botches his suicide attempt, he ends up in a cave and encounters the Firecloud Devil, who had been living as a hermit ever since his supposed death decades ago. It was here he decides to pass his knowledge in the titular Buddha's Palm to Long.
- In Cast Away, Chuck Noland is declared dead after being stranded on a deserted island for years. They even held a funeral for him.Chuck Noland: You had a coffin? What was in it?
- The Comedy of Terrors, having suffered from catalepsy all of his life, Trumbull and Gillie would frequently believe Lord Black to be dead, only for him to wake up much later, usually telegraphed to the audience by his nose twitching and asking "what place is this?"
- Deep Impact: The initial announcement about the Wolf-Biederman comet states that both Dr. Wolf and Leo Biederman died in a car accident before they could share their discovery of the comet with anyone. In reality, only Dr. Wolf was in the car when it crashed. Leo Biederman and his family, watching the speech at home, are bemused to hear that he's supposedly "dead". During an assembly at his school, Leo theorises that because Dr. Wolf put both of their names in his notes the investigators assumed Leo had died with him.
- Everybody in Escape from New York, when meeting Snake Plissken, will say something along the lines of "I thought you were dead!"
- Plissken mutters to the girl in the coffee store, "I am dead."
- Exploited by the hero in Fury (1936). Joe is presumed dead but actually escaped the fire and explosion at the jailhouse which was brought on by an angry mob. He then stays in hiding to watch the townspeople get sentenced to death for his murder.
- In The Jungle Book: Mowgli's Story, Shere Khan is shot and presumed dead early in the film. When he returns later, he reveals that he was merely Shot in the Ass.
- Word for word, this trope is the tagline for the Kingsman: The Secret Service sequel Kingsman: The Golden Circle, confirming that Harry Hart is somehow still alive.
- In My Favorite Wife, Ellen Arden returns after being shipwrecked on a Deserted Island for seven years. When she returns, her children (who do not recognize her) tell her about how their mother was drowned and mention that they put flowers on her grave every Easter. Her mother also tells her that her funeral was "Lovely—Dr. Blake preached a wonderful sermon."
- In Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Jack Sparrow relates the (Real Life) myth of how the body of Blackbeard swam three times around a navy vessel after it'd been decapitated. As he relates this story to Blackbeard, who's alive and intact, this trope presumably applies within the PotC Verse.
- The biopic Saint Laurent portrays a real incident when it was announced on the radio that the famous designer had died. He was busy working on his next collection and refused to be interviewed, but his partner Pierre brought a group of reporters into his atelier to confirm he was, in fact, still alive.
- 7th Heaven: Chico comes home from World War I just as his wife Diane is being told he was killed. As they embrace, he says that they said he was dead, but he'll never die.
- Played with in Star Trek: First Contact. "Reports of my assimilation are greatly exaggerated."
- In the Starship Troopers movie, Johnny Rico's friends bring him a copy of his own death certificate, while he's still in the hospital recovering from his wounds. They all have a big laugh over it, except for Rico's Love Interest, who doesn't know the report was incorrect.
- Later on, her Jerkass boyfriend discovers Rico is still alive, and immediately informs the Love Interest.
- In Sullivan's Travels, famous director Sullivan is believed to have been run over by a train and killed. It was actually a bum wearing Sullivan's shoes. He's actually in jail, but no one knows he's not dead until he finds a way to escape and make his existence public.
- In Too Many Husbands, Bill Cardew was declared Legally Dead after a boating accident, but he was actually stuck on a Deserted Island for a year. Meanwhile, his wife marries his business partner and best friend, leading to some awkwardness when Bill returns.
- In Vanilla Sky, following the car crash, Tom Cruise's character at one point mildly jokes that "The rumors of my death have been mildly exaggerated."
