Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25701646-20150328045757/@comment-5106672-20150330051402

Well, technically speaking, the "deas is dead" rule has never been broken so far.


 * Maleficent wasn't dead-dead. There was the whole basement-spell-deviced-to-protect-the-failsafe stuff going on which, in case of attempted murder, kept her undead until she was needed again against intruders, so I think Gold and the QoD simply took advantage of that spell to bring her back. I think she was never technically dead, she just cahnged into different forms while her spirit remained bound to whatever remained of her body.


 * Marian (provided it's Marian) didn't die, she just timetravelled, so in the new timeline she was just presumed dead.


 * Also, I think Jafar nearly drowned but didn't die, he was comatose and had a near death experience, but ultimately simply survived drowning.


 * The only characters in the Onceverse to really come back to life were Gerhardt and Daniel through the witchy-science thing, but it didn't really work out. And then Cyrus and Anastasia, but in that case the rules of magic were changed, and then there was the Well of Wonders water which is canonically capable of restoring life. The latter are the only two cases in which actually dead persons came back to life.

With this said, I agree that bringing back characters is really cool, especially because they do that in clever (albeit often unclear if you're not a veeeery careful watcher who remembers everything) ways.