1. Neo
Neo cheats death in the most literal sense of the word, because he exists in a computer-simulated world not unlike a video game, meaning that when he's shot to bits by Agent Smith at the end of the first Matrix film, we can basically accept that he overcomes the bullets, because he's The One, and technology, and yadda-yadda-yadda. Even if we assert that Neo should have "died" in The Matrix, it's reasonable enough that he can perceive them as lines of code, and therefore, they do not affect his real-life status in Zion. However, at the end of the third film, The Matrix Revolutions, after negotiating Zion's saviour with a literal
deus ex machina that resembles a giant metal baby, Neo sacrifices himself - complete with a ham-fisted Christ pose - at which point audiences are left wondering if Neo just died, or if not, what the Hell happened. The final lines of dialogue are optimistic that we'll see him again, and the video-game follow-up The Matrix Online similarly suggests that Neo's disseminated code could be reconstituted one day, but...wouldn't it have been a lot more emotional if Neo just died in a sacrifice for everyone hooked up to The Matrix? Instead we get this shaky, uneven finale where we're not even sure if Neo's dead or not. It seems that he's not dead in the strictest, most definite sense, but in more than one way, he absolutely should be. Which other movies characters should be pushing daisies by now? Let us know in the comments below.