Unexplained Recoveries in webcomics.
- 8-Bit Theater:
- Fighter uses this to explain how he survived being stabbed in the head by Black Mage
.Black Mage: Your brain was pierced with a sharp stabbing implement. I was going to add to it today so it wouldn't look like an accident.
Fighter: Oh yeah, that was yesterday. This is today. I slept, it's cool.
Black Mage: And?!
Fighter: And now I'm better. - This is, of course, because in most Final Fantasy games, characters are revived after a stay at an inn or the use of a tent. Not, however, in the first game, off of which the strip is based.
- Fighter uses this to explain how he survived being stabbed in the head by Black Mage
- Ansem Retort:
- Darth Maul had "gotten better" from his death in The Phantom Menace by the time he shows up in the comic. All he says about it is Obi-Wan got in a Hollywood cheap shot.
- Note that Riku getting better at the end of Season Six is NOT an example despite it looking to be. He says he's got an explanation.
- Happens in The Cartoon Chronicles Of Conroy Cat, "The Brat Came Back".
- Casey and Andy featured "Two Mad Scientist Roommates Who Occasionally Die." Through a run of exactly 666 strips, this was lampshaded continuously, directly questioned by other characters numerous times (including Satan), and explained not once.
- In Ctrl+Alt+Del Ethan jumped off a second or third-story fire escape in his underwear because according to video game logic if he's lighter he'll be less injured. He lands on concrete and winds up with about two inches of bone sticking out of his arm. He goes to the hospital and is sent home the same day (in real life he'd probably have to stay for at least one night's observation) with "Paaaaaaaiiiiiiiiin killers!" and a cast. The next comic he's featured in there's no evidence he was ever injured despite having a break that would've taken months to heal (then again...) and would've at least left a nasty scar.
- In Dead of Summer, Ed returns at the end to save everyone, having last been seen in Book 1, drowning.
- In Deep Fried, a long story arc has characters Beepo and Squints killed off, leaving Roadkill the cat as the only main character. After a while, Roadkill decides to find a new supporting cast, which leads to him being in an abusive relationship with Lyman from Garfield. Desperate to restore the status quo, Roadkill tries a ritual that will resurrect Beepo, only for a demonic Lyman to interrupt. It turns out that the ritual has managed to create a tiny, incomplete homunculus. Lyman prepares to kill it, only for a nationwide debate to erupt over the personhood of homunculi and whether killing them is murder. Finally Dabney Coleman declares Beepo must live. The story ends with the gang gathered together, Beepo somehow restored to his adult self, Lyman mysteriously disappeared, and Squints inexplicably alive again. Beepo protests that this whole ending doesn't make any sense, but the rest of the friends are too happy to care.
- In FreakAngels: "I don't want to say 'I got better' because it's a rotten cliche, but..."
- Girl Genius:
- Othar Tryggvassen (Gentleman Adventurer!). So far, he has been tossed out of an airship on three separate occasions, as well as dropped into a bottomless pit, and comes back each time with no real explanation. Made of Iron doesn't even start to cover the bugger's inability to just die.
- Othar's repeated survival of freefall is explained in his canon Twitter Adventures: He has rocket boots. Of course, this is only revealed when he tries to use the boots to survive a fall and his suitcase blasts away to safety because he's not wearing them... He survives anyway, somehow (involving honey).
- Othar has become so infamous for this that in a later comic, Gil actually takes advantage of it by making Othar accompany Tarvek when the latter has to escape an airship.Gill: Don't worry, Othar here is the master of escape! He's always falling out of airships and stuff, so if you're with him, I know you'll get away! Oh, and let me know how he does it!
- During the same sequence, he emerges unscathed from having a seven-foot-tall super-soldier land on him feet-first thanks to "Special trousers. Very heroic."
- El Goonish Shive has the following exchange. Funnily enough the explanation is truer than not, as his ex is a red-headed macho mage lady, he did get transformed against his will due to someone being mad at him, and said transformation would have worn off on its own eventually without outside influence, because it was designed to do so. You'd think a partial animal shapeshifter wouldn't be so quick to disregard such an explanation... though in his favor, he only knew about born-shapeshifters.Sarah: He's not your cousin! He was a cat because... his ex-girlfriend was mad at him!
Hedge: What?
Sarah: Yeah! His ex is a crazy red-headed macho witch woman! She got mad, and turned him into a cat! ...he got better...
Hedge: Not buying it. - The return of Fructose Riboflavin in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!
- Irrelevator has this, they die and come back, often directly lampshaded. "Repeatedly coming back to life seems kind of unrealistic, don't you think?"
- Kagerou has this exchange:Kano: I think I died over there one time.
Starless: Indeed.
Kano: I got better. - In the beginning of Kid Radd, Kobayashi's kill count is "one half."Radd: How did you "half" kill somebody?
Kobayashi: Um, he got better. - Ahbon from Kiss Wood got crushed by a building, but he's later seen with only a broken arm.
- MegaTokyo has two; Ed who has been rebuilt from scraps by Sony twice (at least on screen, more times are implied), and Miho, who was blown up quite thoroughly by Ed, and mourned by all of her 'followers', only to be found in a hospital by Yuki, using instructions Miho gave to Piro years earlier.
- Agent 300 wasn't supposed to survived his introduction comic, and he's last seen in it with a pretty graphic head wound. But Humon liked him so much that he pops up completely unharmed in the next strip.
- Pointed out by a third character complete with Lampshade Hanging in No Rest for the Wicked.
- In No Rest for the Wicked, November tells Perrault how Red had told her about being eaten by a wolf — well, obviously she recovered.
- Visage invokes this trope by name in this strip of Parallel Dementia.
- Tycho and Gabe of Penny Arcade have each died numerous times and come back without any explanation at all. Of course, the strip avoids continuity like a plague...
- In one strip of The Petri Dish, a comic that usually has a solid continuity, Thaddeus Euphemism is seen as a skeleton after waiting for Bob to check the time on his phone. However, in the next strip, he's right as rain. It's possible that that skeleton wasn't the real Thaddeus as Bob did say, "Don't be so dramatic".
- Played for laughs in this "Questionable Content". (Not actually a Questionable Content strip.)
- The dwarf killed in the very first strip of Rusty and Co. (and eaten by a gelatinous cube) comes back in strip #40, simply saying "I got better." Okay, not for long.... The FAQ section's answer to "Will we be seeing <character name> again?" is "Yes.", so...
- Schlock Mercenary:
- Overall, while the comic has people regularly get healed from excessive amounts of deadly injury, it isn't unexplained recovery due to setting's medical technology being just that good. However, some occasions still apply or at least reference the trope.
- Kevyn gave quite a surprise to his captain and ship's AI by having made a clone of himself before the original blowing himself up along with a bunch of military goons that were holding him hostage and were nearly about to kill him anyway.
- Der Trihs claims he just got better after having parts of his brain removed and eaten by a torturer. Notably, the technology at the time was not equipped to easily restore brain damage like that. Later on, the explanation follows: the torture story is a cover-up, he was a test subject for military program that attempted to enhance his brain and instead partially broke it.
- Flinders "almost" murdered a guy, but she's claiming self-defense. Also, "he got better." She thought he was going to stay dead, but she was unaware of the super-secret Healing Factor nanomachines he had.
- Since then, limited application of those nanites has became mainstream technology. It became possible to restore people after their brain was lost as their memories are backed-up in the nanites spread through their body. Murtaugh and Ebbirnoth needed to have a go with it. As well as making remote back-ups of people that can be used to recreate them from a case of complete and total disintegration. Schlock had been restored like that even before the technology made it available to more normal meat-made species, and Captain Tagon needed such a recreation after his Heroic Sacrifice, later followed by a sizeable chunk of the company, including Kevyn and Para after their ship got destroyed with them on board.
- Once or twice in Sinfest, the Old Year brought Death with him, when Death finally killed him. Death always got better. Justified because if Death didn't recover, there would be no death.
- This seemed to apply to Sluggy Freelance's leggy redhead ninja assassin Oasis after she'd seemingly died at first. Later, it was proposed that she just had a really good chance of surviving due to superior physique — only to have her clearly die and pop right back again. However, by then at the latest it became clear she can come Back from the Dead for a mysterious reason that has been unrevealed for ages since — it's a plot point how she does it, not just an un-justified joke or because Status Quo Is God as in this trope.
- The Suburban Jungle has a character who got eaten more than a decade ago in Kevin & Kell turn up. He too "got better."
- Tower of God: How did Bam not drown after hours at the bottom of the lake until they drained it?
- VG Cats has this strip. His severed arms were also restored with no explanation.Leo: You've got a Time Machine?! You gotta let me use it!
Aeris: But... but I aborted you. From time.
Leo: I got better. - In the Walkyverse, how Mike came back from being Deader than Dead and unrevivable in It's Walky!, to working at a toy store in Shortpacked! is only questioned once when Robin started. It's finally explained by Joyce that she sent the resurrection chamber blueprints to a rival company as well as Mike's bloodstained shirt to thank him for saving her life. Making this the second time Joyce helped resurrect a SEMME agent through his bodily fluids.
- Wonder Momo: Ahiko/Amazonia is killed by a power-tripping Momoko/Wonder Momo ripping out her power orb. Ahiko reappears about a dozen strips later; no explanation of how she survived OR got back to Earth. Ahiko changes the subject when someone tries to ask.
