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Back From The Dead / Video Games

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Resurrection in video games.

  • ANNO: Mutationem: In the bad ending, Ryan makes an impulsive move to help Ann which results in him getting fatally shot. In Ann's Moment of Weakness, Amok tells her that Ryan will be revived once she enacts her vengeance. Amok does indeed keep her word and brought Ryan back, only he's now woken up in a world that's been completely destroyed.
  • Asura's Wrath: Some 12,000 years prior to the beginning of the game's main story, Asura is betrayed by his comrades, is framed for the death of his wife and the Emperor of Shinkoku, has his daughter kidnapped, and is finally killed by being thrown from outer space to fall to Earth after being electrocuted. He climbs his way back to the world of the living through sheer anger alone.
  • Baldur's Gate III:
    • Party members can be brought back to life via the Revivify spell or by paying Withers a small fee at camp should they fall in battle. However, there are certain plot events that can lead to them being Killed Off for Real.
    • Auntie Ethel the hag will return in Act 3 even if the party killed her in Act 1, having made arrangements to bring herself back from the dead and even taunting the player in Act 1 about how she'll be back if they decide to try Interrogating the Dead on her.
    • Bhaal will kill the Dark Urge if they refuse to serve him, but Withers will reward the Dark Urge's heroism by ressurecting them.
  • BioShock 2 starts with the main character dying and the continues ten years later with him coming back to life, only to die again at the end.
  • Blaseball: If players are returned from the dead by the actions of Fans, they return with Debt, which forces them to Balance Death's Books by marking other players for death. This has not stopped it from happening multiple times.
    • In Season 6, a Blessing called "Lottery Pick" was introduced, which would allow whoever got it to steal the 14th most idolized player. Fans found a way to idolize dead players. Jaylen was rapidly pushed to #14 and stayed there for the rest of the season. Then they came back with "Debt".
      FIRE AND SMOKE
      AN EGG
      HATCHING
      JAYLEN HOTDOGFINGERS RETURNS
      MIKE TOWNSEND RETREATS TO SHADOWS
      • Jaylen died again at the end of the regular season in season 10, but then she played a game against the Peanut's team, switched onto their team during the game, and after they were dispersed, she ended up on the Lovers.
      • The Election at the end of Season 14 resurrected two more players: the recently incinerated York Silk, who then played for the Baltimore Crabs, and Chorby Soul, who was incinerated all the way back in Season 3, and then played for the Seattle Garages before being reclaimed by the New York Millennials before being incinerated again in Season 16. (Chorby Soul was resurrected again by the Boston Flowers at the end of the season, then traded to the Crabs, where they were incinerated in the first game of Season 17.)
      • Lottery Pick appeared as an option again during Season 23, where it was used to resurrect incinerated Atlantis Georgias player Niq Nyong'o, commonly lored as the team's original captain. She was resurrected by the Philly Pies.
    • Subverted by Sutton Picklestein, who was resurrected for all of nine seconds and then immediately died again at the conclusion of that very same election.
    • On a few other occasions, players can be resurrected in situations that do not cause Debt, such as the Mass Resurrection after the Semi-Centennial Exhibition Match.
    • Players with "Roaming" can just decide to walk out of the afterlife and back into play, with (seemingly) no consequences whatsoever.
  • Just before the final battle in Breath of Fire II, the Big Bad brutally murders Ryu's party members one by one, taunting him all the while. Ryu resurrects them almost immediately afterwards.
  • Bungo to Alchemist: All playable characters are resurrected famous authors from the late-modern period.
  • Castlevania: Dracula has been resurrected over twenty times throughout the main timeline. His (as of yet still undepicted) defeat and death in 1999 at the hands of Julius Belmont stuck, however.
  • Chrono Trigger: Performing this becomes a major plot point when Chrono is atomized by Lavos. However, performing that resurrection is completely optional — you can go on to defeat the Big Bad with the other characters, and gain a different ending.
  • Command & Conquer: Whether he's obliterated by the ion cannon or impaled by Micheal Biehn, Kane somehow survives to keep leading the Brotherhood of Nod, even if he winds up with a lot of crud on his face and just a disembodied torso.
  • Dark Souls: The Darksign of the Undead causes this constantly, each time sapping away a bit of your humanity.
  • Dawn of War: Eliphas the Inheritor had his soul bargained for by Abbadon (of all people) and has been returned to life at least twice. The real-life reason was his Popularity Power had the devs bring him back for the sequels.
  • Destiny: This is a staple of the game.
    • The game begins with the player being resurrected by their Ghost, a tiny drone who carries the Light of the Traveler, a benevolent Sufficiently Advanced Alien. Nearly every Guardian, it turns out, is resurrected from someone who was alive during the golden age who died during the Collapse. Furthermore, the Ghost can resurrect their Guardian indefinitely as long as their reserves of Light remain intact, to the point that specialized tactics and weapons are needed to truly kill them, usually in the form of draining their reserves of Light or destroying their Ghost.
    • The Hive are frighteningly good at this technique, to the point where killing any of the Ascendant Hive permanently is incredibly hard, as destroying their physical body does not destroy their souls, and the reality-twisting magitek of the Hive lets them do things like create "oversouls" that store their souls safely outside of their bodies, or keep their souls in "throne worlds" where the Ascendant Hive is the master of the realm. For example, the only way to kill Crota or his father Oryx is to lead a team into the throne worlds of those Hive deities and slay them there, which will permanently end them... but even so, there's the possibility that they may return or live on. The Touch of Malice exotic scout rifle, for example, is implied to be another vessel for Oryx's soul intended to eventually merge him with whoever wields it.
    • The Vex have their own method of resurrecting: if an Axis Mind — a part of the Vex network that contains all instructions for a particular project and thus serve as their "leaders" — is destroyed, the Vex simply use their Time Travel technology to reach back and yank a slightly earlier version of that Axis Mind to replace it. One of the game's strike missions involves taking out an Axis Mind that specializes in doing this to prevent them from resuming their Hostile Terraforming of Venus.
  • Detroit: Become Human:
    • An early chapter called "From the Dead" involves Markus rebooting in a solid waste landfill after being shot. He then has to search the landfill for spare parts, as many of his own are damaged beyond repair, and then make his way out.
    • In "Eden Club", Connor manages to fix a broken Traci android and questions her about what happened before she shut down. However, he only has about a minute to talk to her before she loses too much thirium and shuts down again.
    • Androids that died in prior chapters can briefly be brought back to life in "Last Chance, Connor" in order for Connor to interrogate them. This is done by taking a component from one android and putting it into another one.
  • Paul Denton may die in Deus Ex and he's always back in Invisible War, it's handwaved by having him cryogenically frozen.
  • The Lucasarts Adventure Game The Dig features a ruined alien civilization so advanced that they could even bring the dead back to life using 'life crystals', which becomes a central point of the story, as it turns out there's more to the crystals than just resurrection...
  • One of Lewton's first lines in Discworld Noir is "I've never woken up dead before". He's been stabbed with the stolen sword he was searching for, but revived because his client had infected him with lycanthropy and the blade wasn't silver.
  • In Dominions, Pretender gods can be called back, immortals only die permanently outside of your dominion and spells can be used to revive commanders who made it into the Hall of Fame.
  • Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest: Krow is the boss of the first world, and dies after its defeat against Diddy and Dixie. In the fifth world, Krow returns as a vengeful ghost called Kreepy Krow, but is defeated once again by the two Kong lovers.
  • In the NES version of Double Dragon II: The Revenge, Marian, who was murdered in the opening sequence of the game, is brought back to life as a result of a vague prophecy mentioned by the True Final Boss during his dying breath. Averted in the original arcade version, since the final boss in the NES version was a character created for that version and the game ended with Marian still dead.
  • Dragon Quest:
    • Dragon Quest III: One of your wishes to Xenlon can be to bring your father Ortega back to life. When you see him back in Aliahan, he wishes you well on your quest and not to make your mother worry too much.
    • Dragon Quest IV: In the remake, one extra chapter allows you to resurrect Rose, whose murder let the real Big Bad manipulate Psaro into becoming an irrational monster.
    • Dragon Quest VI: Lizzie's return to life is never really explained, and it freaks out the guards.
    • Dragon Quest VII: Hadid is murdered by Setesh just before the party can reach him, but is resurrected by Fertiti after Setesh's defeat and the Likeliness's destruction.
    • Dragon Quest IX: King Godwyn was defeated and killed three hundred years before the beginning of the story, but he has somehow returned.
  • Dyztopia: Post-Human RPG: Played with in Rosie's case, since Clyde lobotomizes her with his ESP, resulting in Death of Personality. Although Virgo syncs with her, Virgo can only read her memories but can't revive her consciousness. If the player maxes Rosie/Virgo's sync, Rosie will make a full mental recovery in the post-credits scene, playing this trope straight.
  • The Elder Scrolls:
  • Endless Frontier casually reveals that Saya, the Big Bad of Namco × Capcom came back from the dead even though she was killed via a Boom, Headshot! and she pointed Reiji's revolver at her face. No one knows why she's back, not even her.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Final Fantasy IV seems to kill and resurrect its characters more often (and more improbably) than the novel Candide. In particular, one character jumps out of an airship with a nuke strapped to his chest and detonating it in mid-air in order to seal up a giant hole in the ground, replacing it with a mountain range. You'd think he'd be killed by 1) the fall, 2) being crushed by thousands of tons of rock, or 3) being right at the center of a nuclear explosion, but later on your party visits the underground realm of the dwarves, and guess who they find lying in a hospital bed (the explanation being something along the lines of "the dwarves nursed me back to health!")? Tellah's the only party member to actually STAY DEAD, simple as that.
    • Two of your animal companions in Final Fantasy V die. Syldra dies quite early on and Hiryu does a Heroic Sacrifice just before the round-up-the-bonus-weapons sequence. Both of them can later be found as summons. Also, if you fail to revive any party member who died in the final battle, Galuf will revive them in the epilogue.
    • When sentient beings die in Final Fantasy X, their souls must be Sent to the Farplane (by a Summoner or a Yevon priest with similar spiritual abilities) lest they become Fiends. However, those with sufficient strength of will can resist either fate, and roam the world as Unsent: "people" that are, for all intents and purposes, dead, but retain a physical shape and can interact with others as though they were alive. Such is the case with Seymour, after being killed at Macalania Temple, Auron, who was killed by Yunalesca ten years prior, the Yevon High Clergy, and Belgemine. Ostensibly, Yunalesca is also an Unsent.
    • Final Fantasy Tactics:
      • Algus/Argath came Back from the Dead in the PSP remake but he did not change his personality, and thus only came back so Ramza can kick his ass again, now straight to hell. Considering how much hated Algus is, him coming Back from the Dead to get his ass kicked again can be considered Pandering to the Base.
      • At the end of Chapter 3, Marach takes a bullet for his sister Rapha. The character dies and stays dead for a while afterwards, until the Zodiac Stone/Auracite channels power from... somewhere and resurrects him, proving that the auracite itself isn't evil, it's just the Lucavi using it for evil purposes.
  • In the Fire Emblem series:
  • Where most dead characters in the series come back as Hostile Animatronics, the protagonist of Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location comes back in his own decayed, hollowed-out corpse (if he ever truly died at all; Ennard claimed that he wouldn't, yet his skin rotted as if he did). Even he's confused on why and how he's still around after the fact.
  • Frederic: Resurrection of Music stars Frédéric Chopin resurrected in the modern age.
  • The Galaxy Angel II trilogy pulls this with Roselle Mateus, who was disintegrated when he detonated his Holy Blood's Chrono String engines to take out Will lieutenant Parfait at the end of the second installment. By the latter half of the third, he's back, albeit under Will commander Herea's possession (which is attributed to him having come back without the memories of his deceased sister Bianca). Kazuya himself gets taken out by the possessed Roselle before coming back as well, courtesy of all six Angels utilizing an enhanced combination sequence to thwart the Will's plans of initiating a Big Crunch.
    • For those playing Nano's route, the above would be Kazuya's second occurrence; the first was thanks to a lucky critical shot to Brave Heart's cockpit causing Nano to sacrifice herself to bring him back, which then causes the rest of the Angels to work together to bring Nano back.
  • In Grand Theft Auto IV, if you accidentally kill a girlfriend or other character important to the plot, they will later come Back from the Dead and tell you to pick them up from the hospital. However, it is possible with some of the lesser girlfriends to kill them off permanently if done a certain way, as in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
  • The protagonist of Gungrave was murdered by his best friend thirteen years prior to the beginning of the game. He was revived as a product of necrolization — technology that resurrects the dead as immortal and nearly unstoppable super soldiers. Returning from "Beyond the Grave" (which is also now his new name), he was brought back to exact revenge on his former friend and the organization that betrayed him.
  • Gyromancer, Laska doesn't stay dead for much longer than is necessary for Rivel, the protagonist, to see her corpse and blame himself. She's brought back by the Lord of the Wood, as fitting for a Forest Ranger.
  • In Guild Wars 2 Path of Fire the player is flat out killed by Balthazar and their soul is sent to the Domain of the Lost. As it turns out Balthazar has been stealing souls from the Domain so the Judge overseeing it is willing to work with the player to find a way for them to revive and take out their common enemy.
  • Halo:
    • It was originally implied that Sergeant Johnson was consumed by the Flood in Halo: Combat Evolved, but he's back by your side come Halo 2. How? Sorry, it's classifiednote .
    • Halo 4 ends with Cortana sacrificing herself to save the Chief. In Halo 5: Guardians, Cortana comes back thanks to the Domain, but is significantly more evil than before.
  • A main plot point in Jade Empire, the main character is killed by their master-turned-evil-mastermind Li, and has to fight through the afterlife to come Back from the Dead.
  • Happens with Liane in Jeanne d'Arc. Jeanne must fight an illusion of Liane within Roger's heart. She's joined in this battle by the ghost of the real Liane. After finishing the game once, Jeanne can win Liane's charred pendant at the Colosseum, and ask Liane's ghost to rejoin the party permanently. The ending doesn't change, however, implying that she remains dead afterwards.
  • Kanon features Kawasumi Mai, who dies but comes back to life in the ending, in the same scene she dies, no less. This also applies to her mother, although it's in the past, and possible that Misaka Shiori gets this too, though she may never have died in the first place.
  • In Kid Kool, the "Continue" sequence has the protagonist returning to the King as a ghost and being resurrected to continue his quest.
  • Kingdom Hearts:
  • In Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, the Fae respawn to relive their lives in an endless cycle whenever they "die" thanks to their strong connection to the Weave of Fate. This makes fighting the Tuatha Deohn a zero sum game, since any Tuatha "slain" in battle respawns in their home kingdom. To even the odds, the gnomes attempted to create the Well of Souls, a device capable of bringing mortals back from the dead. The player character is the only successful resurrection. As a side effect, he/she is also Immune to Fate. This also means that the player character is the only one who can permanently kill a Fae since he/she can sever their connection to the Weave.
  • Kirby: This usually happens after the Final Boss returns in the True Arena being brought back in their Soul forms; while they become stronger, they also return at the cost of their sanity.
    • In Kirby Super Star's True Arena, it is shown that after Marx was presumably destroyed at the end of Milky Way Wishes by crashing into Galactic Nova, his limp body absorbs some of its pieces. This gives him enough power to come back as the more unstable and zombified Marx Soul.
    • Queen Sectonia in Kirby: Triple Deluxe. After she is destroyed at the end of the game, in the True Arena, she consumes four Miracle Fruits and becomes Soul of Sectonia, hellbent on destroying Kirby at all costs, even if it means losing herself in the process.
    • Void Termina of Kirby Star Allies actually does this twice. In Soul Melter, he is brought back as Void Soul, now gaining sentience without having to be fueled by The Power of Hate from Hyness. Then, he comes back as Void in Soul Melter EX where he can now destroy everything around him because he can before he is finally destroyed by The Powerof Friendship Kirby managed to show him after being defeated twice.
    • In Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Fecto Forgo manages to come back as Soul Forgo despite being destroyed at the end of Story Mode, taking Leongar with them to Forgo Dreams, shattering his soul in the progress and using his body to possess him and turn him into Forgo Leon. Even being forced out of Leon's body and getting assimilated by Morpho Knight doesn't stop them from being gone for good, as they return as Chaos Elfilis in the Ultimate Cup Z.
  • Done for the players themselves in Left 4 Dead 2. You can sometimes find a Magical Defibrillator, which has the power to bring back dead players on the spot, despite how they died (whether it would be being crushed by a Tank, having a Tank plow a car over the player, falling 10 stories down to the ground, ripped to pieces by a Witch, etc.)
  • Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver: Raziel, who was thrown into the Abyss by Kain at the beginning of the game to die a Cruel and Unusual Death, only for the Elder God to resurrect him, albeit horrifyingly disfigured.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • Even though Link and Zelda are legacy characters, Ganondorf is basically the same guy in each of the games. He has died at least seven times in various branches of the timeline, but is capable of resurrecting through various means; while in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link and the Oracle Games his resurrection involves some kind of human sacrifice, Hyrule Historia and Breath of the Wild imply that he can resurrect on his own courtesy of Demise's eternal curse from Skyward Sword. The plot of the Oracle Games revolves around the witches Twinrova attempting to kidnap Zelda in order to sacrifice her to resurrect Ganon, which results in the witches sacrificing themselves so that Ganon can come back, albeit as an Almighty Idiot, and have Link kill him in the final battle, while The Adventure of Link has him show up on the Game Over screen, because the manual explains that he can be resurrected by spreading Link's blood over his ashes. So far, The Wind Waker's timeline is the only one where he's apparently stayed dead.
    • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: Link's uncle is wished back to life by his nephew in the ending.
  • In Little Big Adventure 2, Dr Funfrock, who Twinsen supposedly killed at the end of the first game, pulls a Hijacked by Ganon. Justified, since he spent most of the first game perfecting cloning technology.
  • The Protagonists themselves in Malicious, the backstory had Valeria and Erica die by the hands of their own tyrant father King Eldrake, in front of their mother Queen Ashlelei no less. After much trauma the Queen got the power to kill her own husband who killed their children, in turn Ashlelei also turned corrupt and Valeria and Erica were brought back as Spirit Vessels to put an end to their estranged mother's tyranny.
  • Marathon:
    • The player kills Durandal at his request so he could escape being tortured by Tycho. After Durandal is killed, his data is stored in a secure quarantine that can not be escaped, according to Tycho. However, this is all part of Durandal's Thanatos Gambit. He later carves the phrase "Fatum Iustum Stultorum" (The just fate of fools) in thousand mile long letters in Lh'Owon's moon.
    • The other Marathon AI, Leela, comes back from the dead in Marathon 2's epilogue.
  • In Mass Effect 2, the main character Commander Shepard dies during an ambush from an unknown alien starship at the start of the game. The commander's body is recovered and re-built by the enigmatic pro-human group Cerberus, leading to the game starting two years (and one very confused Commander) later.
    Garrus: The Collectors killed you once and all it did was piss you off.
    • Shepard also experiences some issues, inasmuch is possible with this trope. Because this is not a setting where resurrecting the dead has even been heard of outside of mythology, and the fact that the number of people outside of Cerberus who were aware of the Lazarus Project can be counted on one hand, the vast majority of people upon learning that Shepard was alive came to the conclusion that Shepard was Faking the Dead. This created some major problems when combined with Shepard's newfound association with Cerberus, in large part because Cerberus predicted this would happen and took advantage of it.
  • Mega Man:
    • Mega Man (Classic): A Robot Master whose Personality Chip isn't destroyed can undergo this or a Disney Death depending on how much you damage his or her body without hurting the Personality Chip.
    • Mega Man X: In the Boss Rush stages, you fight the bosses again as you did in the stages the bosses made their lairs in.
    • At the beginning of Mega Man Zero, Zero is resurrected one century after his death in Mega Man X5 (that is, if you insist so), and the saga begins.
    • The Count of Groundsoaking Blood in Boktai and a similar counterpart, ShadeMan.EXE, in Mega Man Battle Network 4: Red Sun and Blue Moon just refuse to die. Both have been victims to a Pile Driver (which is supposed to utterly wipe all trace of a vampire's existence) at least twice, once in their own game, once in the other (and the Count even gets a third one in the JP-only Boktai 3), and both were blasted into oblivion via MegaMan.EXE's Megabuster. It's assumed that even that didn't kill ShadeMan.EXE, only the utter obliteration of all Dark Chips.
  • Metal Gear:
    • Liquid Snake in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty comes back from the dead by possessing Revolver Ocelot. However, by Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, it's all a ruse. That is, he apparently really did possess Ocelot in 2, but Ocelot removed the possessing limb and then brainwashed himself to appear possessed to fool his enemies from then on.
    • Also from 4, it's revealed in the Screaming Mantis boss that Psycho Mantis from Metal Gear Solid returned as a ghost possessing Screaming Mantis. He's later exorcised by the ghost of The Sorrow from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.
    • Another one from 4 is Big Boss himself. In the middle of the story, Liquid Ocelot burns Big Boss' remains and you believe that his existence has been terminated for good...until it is revealed in the ending with Big Boss' reappearance that the remains was Solidus.
  • Metroid: Samus Aran's archnemesis Ridley is definitely up there in the ranks of continuously resurrected villains. He explodes in Metroid/Metroid: Zero Mission but is rebuilt for Metroid Prime. He falls off a cliff and blows up again, and comes back in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption as if nothing ever happened. He vaporizes this time, but Ridley reappears anyway in Metroid: Samus Returns and Super Metroid. Samus blows him up again in the latter and the planet his remains are on explodes too. Ridley officially dies here, but then the Galactic Federation are stupid enough to clone everything that has traces on Samus's suit, so he comes back again in Metroid: Other M. He gets beaten up again by Samus, and then killed by a Metroid Queen. His corpse appears again in Fusion and is promptly infected by an X Parasite and dies. For now. Plot-wise, this is justified by him having an ridiculously good Healing Factor and access to advanced resurrection technologies.
  • A running gag in the Monkey Island series, where villain LeChuck is dead even before the series begins (he is a ghost in the first game). Even though hero Guybrush kills him at the end of every single game, he always comes back at the beginning of each new game to be the villain again. Further parodied in that he comes back wrong in a slightly different way every time, leading to names like The Demon Zombie Ghost Pirate LeChuck.
  • Mortal Kombat is pretty much built on this trope, with a frankly ridiculous number of fighters meeting their ends at some point or another, and then being resurrected a game or two later (or within the same game, in some cases). Seriously, it's easier to count the characters who haven't had this happen to them.
  • In Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark, Elven paladin Aribeth de Tylmarande, with the help from the player character, manages to pull off a "technical resurrection" (even though beings from Outer Planes are still considered "spirits" in the Material Planes) while also subverting a case of Came Back Wrong and actually redeeming herself from the villain status in the process.
  • Occurs in the ending of Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos for the NES. Irene gets killed by stray lighting before the final boss appears. After the fight is over, Ryu regrets not being able to save Irene. The Dragon Sword suddenly turns into a ball of light and enters Irene's body, bringing her back to life.
  • Occurs in Ōkami, where it's a major part of the plot, having Amaterasu as the resurrected/reincarnated form of Shiranui.
  • Open Sorcery features an unusual version of this, as the character in question died before the events of the game. He is introduced as a spirit, and the protagonist — who doesn't quite understand the concept of death — can spend her own life energy to resurrect him.
    Bringing the dead back to life seems to be more difficult than i had anticipated.
  • Raikoh, the hero of Otogi: Myth of Demons, is revived no less then FOUR times over the course of the game and it's Sequel. The only other people that come back from the dead only do it once. Raikoh just has more important things to do then staying dead.
  • Terminus from Paladins was a living stone warrior of the Paladins who was slain during the first uprising against the Magistrate. However, the Magistrate collected his shattered body and resurrected him as an obedient undead brute who can piece himself back together should he ever fall again. This translates into gameplay in the form of his Ultimate ability. When he dies with his Ultimate ready, he can use it to resurrect himself on the spot instead waiting to respawn back at the home base. Ressurecting also creates an explosion that severely damages any enemy nearby.
  • In Planescape: Torment, not unlike Mr. Immortal (see Comics, above), this is the main character's whole power. You're actually trying to find out how to stop doing it in a way that is spiritually satisfying. (If you want, you can get a Nonstandard Game Over by pissing off the Lady of Pain or other being of deific might.)
  • Pokémon:
    • There are a fair number of extinct Pokémon, such as Aerodactyl and Cranidos, that the player can resurrect using their fossils. Though fossils of it can't be obtained, the Mythical Pokémon Genesect (who hails from the Paleozoic period) was revived in such a manner and enhanced with cybernetics.
    • Raikou, Entei and Suicune are established in Pokémon Gold and Silver to have once been three ordinary Pokémon who died in the fire that destroyed Brass Tower, only for the legendary Pokémon Ho-Oh to resurrect them in their current forms.
    • AZ's backstory in Pokémon X and Y tells how he, upon receiving the coffin of his Floette 3,000 years ago, built a machine powered with the lives of many Pokémon to bring it back to life and end the war that took it. The Floette was also rendered immortal after the fact (as was AZ).
    • In Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers, the hero ceases to exist as a result of preventing the Bad Future they came from, only to be brought back into being by Dialga for the sake of their partner. In Sky, it's shown that Grovyle and his friends met the same fate, but were also brought back, though according Dialga, by an even higher power than himself (Presumably Arceus).
  • In [PROTOTYPE], Alex is shot dead just as he releases The Virus and then comes back to life without any memories. It later turns out that Alex is dead, and you are actually The Virus in Alex's form.
  • In the Quest for Glory series, the final confrontation with Ad Avis in the second game has him plummeting off the railing. Good news is that the fall kills him. Bad news is that he rises from the grave a vampire Hellbent on revenge. And in the final chapter of the series, the hero can resurrect one out of two people from Hades.
  • Raid: Shadow Legends: After the initial raiding party is turned into smoldering charcoal by the sudden appearance of a powerful dragon The Arbiter allows the player to revive a single one as their starting Champion to begin their adventure.
  • Tezkhra in The Reconstruction, who first appears to be a God of Evil, but turns out to be a perfectly nice guy who was killed by an evil creature that stole his name. One endgame sidequest allows you to recover his soul by defeating a Optional Boss, then have a Necromancer restore his body.
  • Resident Evil:
    • Resident Evil 2: In Leon's first scenario, Ada gets shot by Annette and falls off a ledge, in which case it's a Never Found the Body, so she would be Not Quite Dead. In Leon's second scenario, she is clearly killed in front of him, blood loss and all. In both scenarios, however, she apparently comes back in a Deus ex Machina moment during the penultimate battle with Mr. X, to throw a rocket launcher to the player character. Either way, she returns in Resident Evil 4. Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles shows her escape from the sewers after said fall as one of the playable chapters. It doesn't show how, but apparently she just barely survived the fall and starts the mission in critical condition.
    • Played with in Resident Evil 0 with the revived James Marcus. He has James' memories, appearance, and even he thinks he's James. In reality he's a hive-mind B.O.W. that inherited his memories by absorbing his D.N.A.
    • Big Bad Albert Wesker came back in Resident Evil – Code: Veronica, despite being impaled right in front of the heroes in the first game thanks to an experimental virus that he injected moments before that revived him.
  • All of the Ascended (read: player characters) in Rift. In the case of the Guardians, it's because the gods needed you alive again; in the case of the Defiant, it's thanks to years of magitek research.
  • In Sands of Destruction, Kyrie Came Back Strong after Morte found a way to revive him atop the Temple of Light.
  • Ryōki, the older sister of Ryōbi and Ryōna in Senran Kagura, is revived early on in Senran Kagura: Estival Versus, though she hasn't completely returned to life since she has a Holy Halo over her head.
  • One of the main elements that ties the various Shadow Hearts games together is the Emigre Manuscript, a Tome of Eldritch Lore that supposedly contains the secret of resurrecting the dead. In practice, it almost never works out. The book being shaped like a skull should have been a clue that the Manuscript is something to avoid like the plague. Johnny Garland, the main character of the third game From the New World, is the only known successful resurrectee. His sister, the other person their father was trying to raise, sacrificed her own mind and soul to complete Johnny's resurrection. This had the unpleasant side effect of raising her as a soulless Monster from Beyond the Veil whose very existence is distorting reality with Malice. Johnny himself isn't completely normal either, looking younger than his real age and possessing a Malice-infused Superpowered Evil Side that is eerily similar to his sister.
  • At the beginning of Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse, the Player Character is barbecued on a routine supply run and resurrected by Dagda in a Deal with the Devil. Later on, in the Peace route, a reincarnated Dagda brings back all of Shesha's victims, including your Childhood Friend Asahi. Finally, in the Final Boss fight, Satan brings back Flynn's old buddies Walter and Jonathan to lend you a hand.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode I had the Death Egg Robot as the final boss, like in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, where it was rebuilt by Eggman like the other bosses. However, this would become the start of the Death Egg Robot being brought back to be battled once more, with the Sonic Level Pack in LEGO Dimensions having Sonic state that the Death Egg Robot that is fought here is the fourth time that Eggman has used it.
  • Super Mario Bros.:
    • Bowser, while he rarely truly 'dies' in a game, played this trope straight in New Super Mario Bros.. Mario/Luigi drops him into lava, and watches his flesh burn and melt off of him in an uncharacteristically gruesome manner. He appears again later, resurrected as a skeleton by his son, who eventually also completely restores him to a bigger, badder form.
    • In Super Mario Galaxy, everyone except Mario, Luigi, and Rosalina dies when the universe implodes; and is brought back by the Lumas.
  • Super Robot Wars:
  • Leon Magnus goes through this twice: once in the original ps1 Tales of Destiny and again in the sequel. In his original game, he is briefly brought back by the Big Bad as a puppet (albeit one with his mind intact) to fight the party. They kill him again.
  • Happens to Raven twice in Tales of Vesperia. The first time was 10 years before the game, during the Great War. It's more or less implied he was killed with a shot through the heart and then resurrected when his heart was replaced with a Hermes Blastia. Literally right after he tells you this, he's forced to hold up a collapsing roof so the rest of the party can escape a dungeon. He's squashed by the ceiling... and then he shows up later, perfectly fine, with zero explanation. That Hermes Blastia must be really something if it can protect you from being crushed to death...
  • Tekken: This is a staple scenario in the series. After being thrown to the ravine and thought to be dead, Heihachi Mishima turned out to survive, climbed back up, beat the one who did this to him (his son Kazuya), and threw him to the volcano. But Kazuya still manages to come back to life, because some researchers retrieved his remains and gave him a new body. And finally, the fifth game, Heihachi was thought to be killed after he was nuked... (Heihachi Mishima is dead, or so Tekken 5's prologue states) but he still came back! Even the resident ninja Raven lampshaded this.
    • Though it could be inferred before this, Tekken 8 seems to set in stone that this is the nature of how users of the Devil Gene activate their dormant Devil. Reina deliberately deliberately allows herself to be attacked by Kazuya and seemingly killed by him, though she was not of Hachijo descent. Conversely, it can be inferred that Kazuya's fall from the cliff as a child did kill him before his Devil Gene activated, and Jin's Tekken 3 ending outright shows that he was gunned down and shot in the head before being revived in his Devil form. Reina may not be of Hachijo descent, but it seems she does possess the Devil Gene, as she also awakened from her apparent death with newly acquired Devil powers!
  • A Total War Saga: TROY: Downplayed. Although the Hydra didn't strictly die, its fate in the backstory was the same as in myth — Heralkes defeated it, killed its central body and all but one of its heads, and buried the last, immortal head under a rock. It stayed there a long time, until its blood, leaking into the land, was able to corrupt enough people to have it dug free, after which it eventually grew a new body.
  • Touhou Project: Fujiwara no Mokou and Kaguya Houraisan are immortals who simply can't die, age, or get ill forever because they drank the Elixir of Eternal Life. Since it's eternal, it also rendered them irreversible. They will resurrect even if their bodies were completely destroyed. It goes beyond that. Even the concept of death isn't a part of their existence. So they'll come back to life no matter what happens simply because they're incapable of not existing.
  • Town of Salem: The Retributionist can do this only once to a Townie of his choice. The ones who mostly get a second chance are Sheriffs, Investigators and Bodyguards.
  • Trails Series:
    • An Awakener is someone who pilots one of the seven Divine Knights, Humongous Mecha that are fragments of the Great Power. If an Awakener dies, they can be brought back to life as an Immortal, but are living on borrowed time, as they only live so long as their Knight is not defeated and absorbed into another in a Rivalry. In Cold Steel IV, Crow Armbrust, who had been resurrected in this way, is defeated by Rean Schwarzer, but remains alive because Rean chooses not to have him and his knight Ordine absorbed, but instead keep them as partners. He later tries the same thing with Lianne Sandlot, who has been kept alive for over 250 years in this manner, only for Rufus Albarea to appear and kill and absorb her and her Knight's power instead. At the end of the game, in the Golden Ending, the Knights combine their power to bring Crow properly back to life before fading away.
    • Millium Orion is killed at the end of Cold Steel III, forged into the Sword of the End. Before dying, Liane Sandlot grants her the ability to appear in spirit from through the Sword. In the Golden Ending, Class VII returns to the Black Workshop laboratory where she was originally created as an Artificial Human on the advice of Franz Reinford and discover a backup body waiting there for her, which they succeed in transporting her spirit to.
  • In the indie RPG series Vacant Sky, the main character dies in the first half hour of the game. But then she got better. It's implied that dying is in fact the prerequisite to becoming a badass.
  • Taken to insane levels in Wild ARMs: Million Memories. First, Rudy and Brittany create a new ARM based on their friendship and adventures with the other characters, which not only wallops Mother and breaks her hold over Filgaia's fading memories, it brings back your entire party. Likewise the entire world is brought back from the dead through the power of memories. This even includes Zed, Boomerang, Lady Harken and Siegfried of all people.
  • Joshua of The World Ends with You seemingly comes Back from the Dead (another of his many Faux Symbolism moments), but it's subverted when we discover that he didn't actually die — he simply teleported to the Alternate Universe Bonus Chapter to avoid the deadly attack of Minamimoto.
    • The entire point of the Reaper's Game is to win a second chance at life; as such, all Players are Dead to Begin With. By the end, four characters are effectively brought back to life.
  • Though death and resurrection are nothing more than game mechanics for players in World of Warcraft, for story characters death is usually more permanent. Nevertheless, there are many exceptions. Typically it's done with major villains, such as Kael'thas, Mal'Ganis, Balnazzar, Teron Gorefiend, Anub'arak, and all of Naxxramas, who are brought back to serve as loot pinatas again.
    • In a rare heroic example, Muradin Bronzebeard who was thought killed in Warcraft III is revealed to be alive and well in Northrend, though initially amnesiac.
    • In the original game the dragons Onyxia and Nefarian were both killed. Come Cataclysm Nefarian was resurrected as an undead dragon by Deathwing. Nefarian in turn revived Onyxia as a mindless, Frankenstein-esque horror.
  • Albedo from Xenosaga has been left for dead, killed, and been in situations where he should have been killed numerous times in the series, but gets revived somehow every time. This has to do with the fact that he is immortal, but it's amazing how many times it's been tried anyway.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! Reshef of Destruction, the Winged Dragon of Ra's Phoenix Mode, Vampire Lord, Different Dimension Dragon, and Dark Flare Knight can revive after they were sent to the graveyard. Discarding them from the hand is a very powerful move to summon strong monsters.

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