...And this was the survivor.

For such an advanced technology, cryonics is subject to a surprisingly high failure rate. Whenever our far-future heroes discover some long-forgotten set of Human Popsicles, at least one of them is inevitably dead or otherwise can't be revived. (Mainly so they can give a good skeleton scare.)

In some cases, this is practically a "cherry popsicle" in that a great number of the unrecoverables are insignificant to the story.

This might be an example of Truth In Television, though, given the real-life uncertainty of the process. For the situation when someone is frozen and then deliberately smashed to pieces, see Literally Shattered Lives.

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Ripley: He figured he could get an alien back through quarantine if one of us was... impregnated, of whatever you call it... then frozen for the trip home. Nobody would know about the embryos we were carrying; me and Newt. Hicks: No, wait a minute, we'd all know. Ripley: Yes, the only way he'd be able to do it is if he sabotaged certain freezers on the way home, namely yours. Then he could jettison the bodies and make up any story he liked. Hudson: You're dead... you're dog meat, pal!

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Wheatley: The reserve power ran out, so of course the whole Relaxation Center stops waking up the bloody test subjects. [...] And of course, nobody tells me anything. Nooooooo, why should they tell me anything? [...] And who's fault do you think it's going to be when the management comes down here and finds ten thousand flippin' vegetables. [...] We should get our stories straight. If anyone asks and no-one's going to ask, don't worry but if anyone asks, tell them as far as you know, the last time you checked, everyone looked pretty much alive. Alright? Not dead.

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Cryonics Failure - TV Tropes