One campaign I played in, we found a book called Central Casting which had a lot of extra ways to flesh out your character. One of the players was rolling on a table for something (I forget what), and it ended up killing his character. Before we'd even started the campaign. We joked that he died in a black & white flashback.

There's also a common occurrence (if you can't get your character resurrected) to play a distant cousin with a different name but same class and level, who inherits your previous character's equipment. This would honestly be the ideal opening scene to any D&D movie.