Video game characters die a lot. Whether it’s missed jumps, running out of ammo during a shootout, or a supernatural creature sneaking out of the shadows to grab them, player deaths are common on a first playthrough. However, these deaths are not canonical and players have come to accept that these are not really character deaths, but failure states that force them to try again.
However, there are characters who have actually died several times. From characters who stubbornly evade death to characters who have been brought back to life by science, these characters are determined to stay alive no matter how many times they get knocked down.
10 Mary (Silent Hill 2)
One of the few friendly faces that Silent Hill 2 encountering protagonist James Sunderland during his journey through the titular city, Maria spends a lot of time murdering it and reappearing alive in another place. What’s especially odd is that she doesn’t seem to remember anything about each time she was attacked by Pyramid Head when she shows up alive and well.
All of this is, of course, the work of the supernatural energies of Silent Hill herself, as Mary is not real. Instead, she is a manifestation of James’ grief and her death is that he is forced to face the loss of his wife so that he can learn to move forward in the game’s better endings.
9 2B/9S (Kidney vending machines)
Kidney vending machines stars two androids named 2B and 9S, who fight to clear the world of machine life forms to allow humanity to return to the planet. However, among the many twists and turns of Kidney vending machines‘s plot is revealed that not all is as it seems and that the protagonists are locked in an endless cycle of death.
As androids, they can be revived in double bodies by uploading their consciousness to a central network, but a malfunction causes 9S’s memories to be incomplete and the two find themselves stuck in a cycle where they eventually repeat the same actions. and more, including their deaths.
8 Albert Wesker (Resident Evil)
In the first Resident Evil Albert Wesker was just a member of STARS who secretly worked for the Umbrella Corporation, and the exercise at the mansion was all part of a ruse to test bioweapons. However, in an act of hubris, Wesker is killed by the Tyrant at the end of the game, and from all records he appears to be completely dead.
This is until he appears alive and well in Code Veronicanow bursting with superpowers, and he would later show up in Resident Evil 5 as the main villain of the game, making him the most iconic villain of the whole Resident Evil series too. Chris Redfield beats him at the end of the game, but time will tell if he makes another comeback, possibly with even more T-Virus improvements than before.
7 Kratos (God of war)
Kratos is a man turned god, so it’s not surprising to hear that he’s hard to kill. While there have been successful attempts to take him out, they have rarely lingered for long. His death in the original Greek trilogy of god of war saw him crushed by a pillar thrown by Ares, stabbed by Zeus, and thrown from Mount Olympus.
In all three cases, Kratos comes back by fighting his way out of Hades, refusing to lay down, only to seemingly kill himself at the end of the third game. But considering he would then move to the frozen north and start a family in the more recent games, it’s clear that death didn’t last long either.
6 Ridley (Metroid)
The nemesis of Samus Aran, the draconian space pirate Ridley, is one of the most persistent bosses in the metro series. He appears in almost every game in the series and keeps returning despite being shot by Samus time and time again.
However, it is Space Pirate science that keeps bringing him back as he returns as a cyborg named Meta Ridley in Metroid Primebut then lose these implants by the time of Super Metroid (set after the Prime games), where Samus actually kills him in the end. This still didn’t stop him from coming back as a clone in Metroid Other M or a parasitic imitation in Metroid Fusionhowever.
5 Heihachi Mishima (Tekken)
Heihachi Mishima is a man who refuses to die. Since the first game, Heihachi has faced trials that would have been instant death for a normal person, and yet he keeps coming back. In the first Tekken, he is thrown off a cliff by his son. In the third game, Heihachi seems to have the life drained out of him by Ogre. Tekken 5The opening movie even states that “Heihachi Mishima is dead” as he explodes along with his dojo.
Tekken 7 seems to have put an end to this once and for all though, as in that game’s story mode, a climactic battle against Kazuya ends with Heihachi being thrown into a lava pit. There is debate as to whether Heihachi will return in Tekken 8but tradition shows that it would not be strange if he appeared again.
4 Dracula (Castlevania)
In pop culture in general, Dracula is famous for hard to kill. This also applies in the Castlevania series, as the mighty vampire lord is the main recurring villain in every game, and his mysterious castle appears every time he is revived. It is the fate of every Belmont family member to enter the castle to find and kill Dracula every time.
Of course, this means that every game is about finding and killing Dracula in this castle, hoping he doesn’t come back. With twenty-six main titles in the Castlevania series, although it has yet to stick around.
3 Ganondorf (The Legend of Zelda)
Officially the Zelda series is set in different periods of Hyrule’s history, and each Link and Zelda in the games is a different person with the same reincarnated spirit. This isn’t true for the series’ main villain, though, as Ganondorf is canonically the same person every time.
This is despite the fact that he has been killed multiple times, usually by a final blow from the Master Sword. To solve this, most Zelda games have a secondary villain, usually one who has found a way to revive Ganon’s mind. Unsurprisingly, fans expect him to make another comeback in Tears of the Kingdomdespite the defeat in its immediate predecessor, Breath of the Wild.
2 The Chosen Undead (Dark Souls)
While character deaths have been ignored for the purposes of this list, The Chosen Undead’s deaths in dark souls are canonical. This is because they are undead, a curse in the world of dark souls that prevents true death and instead brings the afflicted back to bonfires.
This means that every time the player messes up or parries an dodge roll and gets stabbed, it actually happens to the mysterious silent protagonist. However, this also creates a process called Hollowing, where each resurrection causes the undead to lose humanity and become a staggering walking corpse, a fate the player should try to avoid.
1 Most of the Mortal Kombat cast
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Mortal Kombat has a cast of characters with a tendency to get killed at one point or another, both from a gameplay perspective every time a Fatality is performed, and from a story perspective as divine magic, time travel and alternate dimensions have seen repeated deaths of characters.
Even the iconic ninjas Scorpion and Sub-Zero have died several times, usually by killing each other, only to be resurrected or replaced shortly after. In a world where everyone is ripping their spine out in every match, maybe it’s a good thing death doesn’t stick around.
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