The people behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe seem to have a real problem with killing off their more popular characters. While the likes of Ivan Vanko, Malekith and Aldrich Killian have all been disposed of, the more beloved characters seem to be too important to the popularity of the franchise as a whole in the eyes of the writers and, as a result, Marvel have bottled numerous chances to cause a stir by killing them off in favour of a plethora of near-misses. It's becoming quite repetitive and, as a result, extremely predictable and Marvel really need to have the guts to off a key character so that audiences get that thrilling "edge of their seat" feeling which adds so much to a movie experience, instead of that safe feeling they're currently getting when it comes to seeing their heroes in action. Regardless, the fact remains that, thus far it has appeared as though we'd lost a number of characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, only for us to find out later that they were actually still alive, one way or another. So, let's take a look at some of those occasions, just to illustrate the point in full. Here are ten times when we thought Marvel Cinematic Universe characters had died when they actually hadn't.
Honourable Mention: Red Skull
At the end of Captain America: The First Avenger, following his relatively brief fight with Steve Rogers, the Red Skull stupidly decided to handle the Tesseract. As a result, he succumbed to its power, and was seemingly eviscerated by it. However, it is probably more likely that he was simply absorbed in to it or sent to the opposite end of the universe - given that the Tesseract can open doors across space. The likelihood of such an iconic villain being completely killed off in a universe where HYDRA is so prominent seems very unlikely. However, we're yet to see Red Skull's return (despite many rumours circulating prior to the release of Captain America: The Winter Soldier that Alexander Pierce was the Red Skull in disguise, that turned out not to be the case), so we don't actually have confirmation that he's still alive - and that's why he doesn't make the full list. And now, onwards with that list...