Death as Escape in Villa Incognito

"No one really knows what happened to ___ after the explosion. Maybe he's dead, maybe the feds got him. Some have reported seeing him in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Johannesburg, and Rio." Not so much a quote so much as a style parody, ala Weird Al's parody of Dylan, "Bob."
I noticed an interesting trend in a few recent bits of media imbibed by yours truly, and I'm certain I could come up with more, if my brain weren't so fried by space gerbils. At the end of Tom Robbins's Villa Incognito, The guru-esque Stubblefield character falls precipitously from a wire stretched across a ravine, shouting the advice, "Keep 'em guessing." His body is never recovered, though none of his acquantances in the novel get a chance to see him further. Similarly, in the film The Men Who Stare at Goats both Clooney's and Jeff Bridges's characters (both of whom also serve as gurus to Ewan) fly off into the sun in a helicopter, under the influence of copious LSD. No one can conclusively report on the fate of these two. The uncertainty of the people who write these stories as to the mortality of these mysterious incidents is intended to give us hope for their metaphorical rebirth. We are meant to believe that they become in the terminology of Harry Harrison, "Stainless Steel Rats." Men who have slipped the springe of the authority and responsibility of their current social frame and restarted themselves "Incognito." Thus our social life is a metaphor for life itself, and the freedom of the lives of these bodhisatvas in their life incognito is nirvana. The falsehoods of rules and structures in society is like the Mara in buddhist thought. All that we know through (perception/socialization) is an illusion. It is no coincidence, I think that both Tom Robbins and this film about "Jedi Warriors" have a hippy bent. Where else is this concept of simulated suicide/accidental death as a means of escape written about? Post in comments your thoughts.
[Edit: It is a plot device used in the end of Terry Gilliam's Brazil also, though that is more of an anti hippy tract. Unsurprisingly, the attempt at faking the death of the characters to get them off of Big Brother's grid is intercepted by the government and fails.]
Faked Death