Sometimes showrunners want to have their cake and murder it too. Faced with lead characters who totally can't die, they occasionally decide to build a fake death into the plot. Of course, sometimes deaths are retroactively faked, because a previously written-out character decides to come back, but mostly it's just for fun.
Here's some of the most ridiculous examples.
1. New Adventures of Superman - Clark gets shot
When Clark finds himself being shot several times at point-blank range by a gang of cloned criminals, he takes a brief moment to realise "Oh yeah, there's loads of witnesses here so I can't just shrug this off" before collapsing to the floor.
Luckily, he was able to use the whole cloning thing as an excuse to come back from the dead, but not before Lois and all of his Daily Planet mates totally mourned his passing.
2. The X-Files - Mulder comes back from suicide
Faced with the 'truth' that his whole life has been a lie, and that every alien encounter he's ever had has been falsified, and that his sister really was just kidnapped, Mulder loses all hope and commits suicide. The FBI investigates, and Scully confirms the body's identity. That's at the end of season four.
Several episodes into the fifth season, following Scully's hospitalisation, Mulder returns and is immediately interrogated, which leads to one of The X-Files' best ever scenes (which you can watch above).
It's all a bit silly and convoluted, but it's absolutely worth it for the pay-off.
3. 24 - Jack shoots Nina
Basically anyone can die at any time on 24, so the writers didn't necessarily do this one because they had to – they did it because they could (sort of).
This is one of the rare death fake-outs where the 'victim' didn't actually know it was happening – Jack shot Nina after slipping a bulletproof jacket onto her, which she somehow didn't notice.
Still, she gets over it pretty quickly, probably because she's the villain of the series.
Jack would kill her for real two seasons later.
4. Sherlock - the fall from grace
This is definitively the most ridiculous faked death on the list. It's potentially ironic that Sherlock jumped the shark by dropping to his death, but the 'explanation' of what happened was easily the show's nadir (we still don't really understand it).
We – sort of – got why he did it (he wanted to go undercover to take down Moriarty's global network) but we'll never know how he did it, mainly because she show didn't seem to know either, offering a load of weird explanations that seemed to be satirising fan-theory culture, but came off as a bit lazy and mean-spirited.
5. Doctor Who - No more regenerations
You'd think Doctor Who's writers would have had their death-lust sated by the fact the character is essentially killed off on a fairly regular basis, but, no, even they threw a fake kill into the mix when Amy, Rory and River randomly witnessed the Doctor DYING in 'The Impossible Astronaut'.
Except we find out in 'The Wedding of River Song' it's not the Doctor, it's a combination of a shape-shifting robot and some timey-wimey nonsense. Yay!
6. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia - Charle and Mac's death-pact
When Mac's dad is released from prison, Mac and Charlie worry that he's out for revenge against them for putting him there – so decide to fake their own deaths to get out of the situation.
Unfortunately, they're pretty terrible at faking deaths (and everything else), and no-one believes them, despite the fact they leave behind VHS wills and blow up a car. Their friends do organise a funeral in their honour, but it's purely to mock them. Ridiculous (and hilarious) doesn't even begin to cover it.
7. The Simpsons - death and taxes
After Bart accidentally exposes Krusty as a massive tax cheat, Krusty commits suicide by flying his plane into a mountain. Except he obviously doesn't, because he's in this feature.
No, instead, he survives to live in obscurity as Rory B Bellows, a grizzled sailor.
But when Lisa and Bart realise what's going on, they convince him to return to his former life. When he decides to do so, we get two fake deaths for the price of one – when Krusty fakes Bellows' death, collects the insurance money and pays off his taxes. We love a happy / preposterous ending.
8. The Walking Dead - Glenn's dumpster fire
Wow, did this one ever backfire. Fans don't call it "the dumpster fire" because there's a fire. There isn't. It's just a disaster.
After Nicholas kills himself atop a dumpster fleeing a horde of undead, Glenn tumbles to the ground and is visibly torn to pieces.
Except he wasn't, and literally no one was fooled. Three episodes later they revealed that he was in fact hiding under the dumpster, and that it was Nicholas who was torn to pieces.
