Board Thread:Show-Related Questions and Answers/@comment-5989182-20130703185457/@comment-22525977-20131029033231

My theories are that (1) if the heart of a living person is used to bring back a dead one, the living person dies [we've seen that heartless people can die if the person who takes their heart wants them to, as in the case of Cora's zombies] and (2) the coming back wrong happens because of the brain decomposition that happens after death, which is why Daniel is less wrong than Gerhardt [theoretically, then, if you put a preservation spell on a person within a few seconds of clinical death, the coming back wrong could be avoided].

As a sidenote how did Daniel end up with a preservation spell on before rigor mortis even set in (to the point that his blood was still liquid)? Regina didn't know magic on the day he died and Cora sure as hell didn't do it for her.