History NoBodyLeftBehind / VideoGames

'''As a DeathTrope, this naturally involves spoilers.'''

** Averted in the first two games, where corpses remain as 2D textures, but played straight in ''VideoGame/Doom64'' and the UsefulNotes/GameBoyAdvance ports, due to performance reasons.

** The remake of ''Resident Evil'' for UsefulNotes/NintendoGameCube pretended to avert this to give you a nasty surprise. Any zombie killed remains behind, unless you burn the corpse or destroy the head. Later on it turns out they're NotQuiteDead; about an hour after killing a zombie it gets up and starts ''running'' around as the more powerful and deadly [[DemonicSpiders Crimson Head]]. Other enemies play it completely straight and vanish once you leave the room.

* In ''VideoGame/DragonsDogma'', the corpses of non-human enemies rot if you left them for a while, large enemies would decay and melt into a pile of bones. Corpses of humanoid enemies disappear instead of rotting however. The ''Dark Arisen'' expansion turns this as a gameplay mechanic, the corpses of enemies in Bitterblack Isles rot into piles of remains which stay on screen, and they allure various [[BonusBoss Necrophagus Creatures]], including ''[[TheGrimReaper Death]]'' himself.

* In ''VideoGame/AlanWake'', the Taken dissolve when they're killed. Alan gets freaked out by it.
* In the original ''VideoGame/AloneInTheDark'' trilogy, defeated monsters dissolve into bubbles(or maybe it's 3D smoke).
* ''VideoGame/{{Arknights}}'': People infected with Oripathy dissolve into active Originium dust upon death, which means dead Infected are a biohazard threat and requires containment or cremation to destroy the Originium in their bodies. The fate of dead Infected came up multiple times during events - most notably during the ''VideoGame/RainbowSixSiege'' collab event "Operation Originium Dust" where Team Rainbow witness Doctor Miarow's body dissolving after the Rhodes Island team sealed it inside a building.
* ''Franchise/BaldursGate'' averts this trope. Everything you kill lies there dead for the rest of the game, unless you killed it in some way that doesn't leave a body (e.g. vaporizing zombies with your enchanted mace).
** It is played straight in cutscenes with the Bhaalspawn (including [[spoiler:your very character and the BigBad]]), because their essence gets back to Bhaal, and their body is seen getting pulverized like in a Thanos snap. This leaves the room open for a major plot hole in the sequel though: [[spoiler:Imoen is retconned into a Bhaalspawn too, but she can die normally and even get resurrected like every other character]].

* To emphasize that he is DeaderThanDead, Crono, the ''main character'' of ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'', is utterly vaporized by an attack by Lavos in the Ocean Palace of 12,000 B.C. The first immediately available sidequest involves TrickedOutTime to save him, in which a large doll in his image is substituted for the real thing right at the moment of death.

** Other semi-spiritual beings such as banshees can't leave land-markers, and they simply disappear instead.

** Semi-spiritual beings such as fairies don't leave behind bodies when they die. Instead, they may leave specific land-markers. [[spoiler:The dead hawthorn tree that was uprooted in January 2023 was the "body" of the fairy that was killed by a drunk driver in 1959, but since it wasn't legally classified as a "remains", the witnesses couldn't prove that there was a body, and the case was dismissed.]]

* Averted in ''VideoGame/{{Thief}}: The Dark Project'' and its sequels, which all involved hiding bodies (corpses or unconscious foes) to avoid alerting guards and other traffic (and inspired the body-disposal game mechanic of ''No One Lives Forever'', above). With rare exceptions, such as haunts and fire elementals, all kills in ''Thief'' leave a corpse and a liability.

* In ''VideoGame/TotalAnnihilation'', destroyed units leave behind beaten shape of themselves, blocking way for other units and fire. Fortunately, they are easy to destroy. Or they can be recycled for resources, but this takes a lot more time.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'', monsters disintegrate into dust when they die. Sometimes, dust can be found on items, suggesting that if it didn't belong to a monster that had died, it belonged to someone who killed a monster. In a No Mercy-run, [[CloudCuckooLander Papyrus]] will comment on your dusty state.

* ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'':
** Averted in the first two games, where corpses remain as 2D textures, but played straight in the UsefulNotes/GameBoyAdvance ports, due to the performance reasons listed above.
** Played straight in ''VideoGame/Doom3'', for the performance reasons listed above. Power gamers, annoyed that their rigs weren't being used to their full potential, rapidly modded the game to force bodies to stay put.
*** Only demons burn away when they die. Zombies are left behind, unless you splatter them. Then they’ll disappear.

* ''VideoGame/FugaMelodiesOfSteel'' runs with this whenever the [[DesperationAttack Soul]] [[PoweredByAForsakenChild Cannon]] is used. During the tutorial, the Voice on the Radio states that whoever enters the chamber to power the Soul Cannon will "fade away", and the only thing left of their existence is a TragicKeepsake you can pick up for extra experience points proportionate to the sacrificed child's level. The manga adaptation goes into gruesome details on not only how the Bio-Energy is extracted from the child in order to power the Soul Cannon, but also the amount of brutality needed for this trope to occur, as the sacrificed child is ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice multiple times in quick succession while the chamber itself is heated to temperatures hot enough to eviscerate skin and bone. And it's not quick, painless, or clean either, [[BloodyHorror as the entire chamber and everything surrounding it is coated in the blood of its victim]].

*** Aircraft can lead to bizarre situations when they are shot down but the pilot is not killed, as you remain in-game and can control the vehicle until you inevitably crash or decide to bail out: sometimes it can be "destroyed" yet still be partially flyable, to the point that an able or lucky player can even kill an opponent while being registered as "dead" by the game. "Killed" aircraft with enough speed and stability left could even manage (with some difficulty) to land to the airfield, repair and take off again, something that in realistic battles was [[LoopholeAbuse NOT properly intended]] to be possible for airplanes registered as "dead" (after late 2022 updates [[ObviousRulePatch nerfed this possibility]], the game forces a bail out when you land while being counted as "dead").

** Averted with aircraft, as they are rendered until they crash, and if the pilot is snipe-killed but the rest of the vehicle is not damaged, it can potentially glide away until the match ends. Even if you land to the airfield and bail out, the vehicle can still be seen intact on the runway by other players.

** Bizarrely averted with aircraft, as sometimes they can be "killed", but still be partially controllable before crashing, to the point that an able or lucky player can even fire some shots and kill an opponent while being registered "dead" by the game. "Killed" aircraft with enough speed and stability left could even manage (with some difficulty) to land to the airfield, repair and take off again, something that in realistic battles was [[LoopholeAbuse NOT properly intended]] to be possible for airplanes registered as "dead" (after late 2022 updates [[ObviousRulePatch nerfed this possibility]], the game forces a bail out when you land while being counted as "dead").

** Bizarrely averted with aircraft, as sometimes they can be "killed", but still be partially controllable before crashing, to the point that an able or lucky player can even fire some shots and kill an opponent while being registered "dead" by the game. Mainly this happens when the vehicle gets critical damage to some parts of the fuselage and a wing missing, but not enough to make the airplane spiral into the ground, and the pilot is still alive. "Killed" aircraft with enough speed and stability left could even manage to land to the airfield, repair and take off again, something that in realistic battles was [[LoopholeAbuse NOT properly intended]] to be possible for airplanes registered as "dead" (after late 2022 updates [[ObviousRulePatch nerfed this possibility]], the game forces a bail out when you land while being counted as "dead").

** Bizarrely averted with aircraft, as sometimes they can be "killed" but still be partially controllable before crashing, to the point that an able or lucky player can even fire some shots and kill an opponent while being considered "dead" by the game. Mainly this happens when the vehicle gets critical damage to some parts of the fuselage, but not enough to make the airplane spiral into the ground, and the pilot is still alive. Before late autumn 2022 updates (which nerfed this possibility), "killed" aircraft with enough altitude, speed and stability left could even manage to land to the airfield, repair and take off again, something that in realistic battles was [[LoopholeAbuse NOT properly intended]] to be possible for airplanes registered as "dead".

* ''VideoGame/WarThunder'': Zig-zagged with tanks, as destroyed husks remain on the map and their players can respawn and still find the wreckage of their previous vehicle in the same spot where they were killed, except when they disconnect or leave the match - in which case the wreckage explodes and get cleared. Bizarrely averted with aircraft, as sometimes they can be "killed" but still be partially controllable before crashing, to the point that an able or lucky player can even fire some shots and kill an opponent while being considered "dead" by the game.

* Zig-zagged in ''VideoGame/WarThunder'', as the husks of destroyed tanks remain on the map, except when the player disconnects - in which case the wreckage explodes and get cleared.