They Killed Kenny Again / Video Games

• Tough fight in Bioshock? Chip their health down until you die, respawn at a nearby Vita-Chamber with full health, and carry on chipping away at their still damaged health.
• Demon's Souls and Dark Souls as a whole make the player character this Trope. The player character, and many other side characters, are afflicted by a curse that makes them come back to life after death, losing sanity each time until they turn into mindless Hollows. Naturally, this does not happen to the protagonist.
  • It could be argued that the player character does not go Hollow, because the player has not given up, still has the resolve to continue. Only once the player gives up the character truly goes Hollow. The whole hollow mechanic could be seen as a metaphor for depression. Though on the other hand, it's been hinted multiple times that going Hollow is something that just sort of happens no matter the state of mind of the individual just after dying a certain amount of times, with some characters going from sane and joyful to Hollow out of nowhere and some trying to hold to their sanity even while still in their Human forms, so you can interpret the player character's immunity however you want.
• In Detroit: Become Human, Connor is a Super Prototype android working for the MegaCorp responsible for creating androids, meaning that he's the only character who will be rebuilt whenever he dies. However, this typically has negative consequences regarding the story and is detrimental to his relationship with his partner Hank. Near the climax, circumstances make it so that rebuilding Connor is no longer an option, meaning that a death from that point onward is a Permadeath. To give you an idea of how often this is used, you can get Connor killed in the prologue. In two different ways.
• The titular Drake of the 99 Dragons, a supposed master assassin, dies in-story a grand total of seven times. He actually dies so much that he drains the guardians's power due to having to bring him back, forcing them to shunt him into one of his previous corpses.
• DRIV3R has the Tommy Vercetti Expy Timmy Vermicelli who can be killed a whole of 30 times throughout the game, ten times in each city. Killing all Timmies in one city will unlock a cheat-like bonus feature.
• Played with in Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard. The titular self-aware video game protagonist discovers a plot to kill him off and replace him with a new hero. He's not that concerned about it, given his nature as a video game character, until he learns his saves have been deleted!
  • Played straight with his rival/ostensible replacement, Sting Sniperscope. Matt must fight and kill him in 3 separate boss fights throughout the game because Sting has been equipped with multiple lives.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • The series has the Daedra, loosely demonic spirits of varying levels of power who possess Complete Immortality. They can manifest in physical forms, and those physical forms can be slain ("banished"), but the spirit ("animus") simply returns to Oblivion to reform in new bodies. Daedra have been battered, beaten, defeated, and even fundamentally changed, but nothing in the setting has ever been able to actually kill one permanently. One of the most prominent examples of Daedra that have died multiple times throughout the series is the Golden Saint Staada, who has died in all three games in which she has made an appearance.
  • Oblivion has a few named NPCs, such as the Adoring Fan, who respawn a few days after they are killed.
• The Carmine Brothers from Gears of War. Clay is an exception.
• Lynne from Ghost Trick. The game has 18 chapters, 5 of which feature her dying and you being forced to go back and save her. She can, of course, die many more times if you fail at said "saving" often enough. Eventually, she herself stops taking her deaths seriously. Also, she almost dies once more in the last chapter, just before Sissel decides that he's had it with Lynne dying and stops it before it happens.
  Sissel: It's Lynne! And she's not dead, for once!
• The Ship Captain in God of War gets killed by Kratos on three separate occasions. In the first game, Kratos deliberately lets him fall into the belly of the Hydra, then when they meet in the Underworld, Kratos kicks him into the Styx and leaves him to drown as he escapes. When the Barbarian King summons the Captain as an undead minion to do battle with Kratos in II, he screams "No! Not you again!" before Kratos kills him.
• Information Guy in Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass. He dies twice in the demo, and also died of food poisoning in the blog post announcing the demo.
• There is a running gag in Live A Live where each chapter whenever there's someone called Watanabe, he's a random person that will get killed, and usually a son sharing his name will run in streaming tears dragging them away. Not played for laughs in Akira and Cube's chapters.
• The Black Baron in MadWorld. He introduces every death trap-based Mini-Game in the game... and is always thrown into them by his wordless girlfriend. "Aw, hell naw..." Then he turns out to be the Final Boss and is actually a really tough opponent.
• Recurring mini-boss Allen O'Neil from the Metal Slug series has been killed, yells "See you in hell!", and comes back fine the next game. There was even that one time he was chewed up and and spat out by a killer whale. The creators jokingly state he's survived them all because he has a family to go back to.
• The Nemesis system in Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and its sequel Shadow of War can allow an Uruk to die multiple times, but always come back with nothing more than a few injuries that match their previous "death". Unless they get decapitated, in which case they get Killed Off for Real. And in War, sometimes even that's not enough.
• In Minecraft, there is a variant with the Wandering Trader, who owns two llamas. You can kill the llamas without issue (though they may spit at you). Even if the trader stays in the same place the whole time, his llamas will respawn like nothing ever happened to them.
• Mortal Kombat:
  • The series' original poster boy for this trope was Johnny Cage, who is also the first character in the franchise to canonically meet his demise. He dies in Mortal Kombat 3, is temporarily resurrected in Trilogy (meaning that he's dead again at the end), is resurrected in Mortal Kombat 4, dies during the events of Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, is resurrected in Mortal Kombat: Deception and then dies for the final time in aftermath of Mortal Kombat: Armageddon. He also dies in in the first five minutes of the second Mortal Kombat movie. In the games, Johnny actually rejected a role in the movie "The Death of Johnny Cage" in Deadly Alliance because he was tired of starring in roles where he died and came back to life again. This makes him surviving the events of Mortal Kombat 9 and Mortal Kombat X very surprising!
  • Jade, the bodyguard and best friend of Kitana, is a close second, especially in media outside of the main games' continuity. To list them off, she gets offed by Liu Kang in Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, eaten by a demon in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, killed in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, does not survive the events of Mortal Kombat 9, and Mortal Kombat X's Continuity Snarl seems to imply she dies as a revenant sometime before the events of that game^note Mortal Kombat 11 Has both her past revenant and past living selves.
  • Kung Lao seems to have taken Johnny Cage's place in regards to being the character most likely to be killed off. He was supposedly killed in MK3 but revealed to be alive in the update of MK4, was revealed to have been killed along with all the other heroes except Sub-Zero in the opening of Deception, was shown to be dead again in the events of Armageddon in the opening of 9 and died during the story mode of 9. In Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath, Kung Lao is drowned in the Sea of Blood by Shao Kahn and Sindel while his Revenant self is killed by Shang Tsung. Mortal Kombat (2021) continues the trend by having Kung Lao be the only casualty among the heroes. Mortal Kombat Legends Battle For The Realms also has Lao killed by Shao Kahn.
  • Kitana's mother Sindel is a more interesting example considering that her backstory in her debut game has her being revived from the dead. Ever since the Netherealm Studios era, Sindel dying has become a staple of the plot. She is killed alongside most of the characters in Armageddon, dies in the story proper of 9 after wiping out most of the heroes, her past self is killed by Shang Tsung in 11's Aftermath expansion and she dies again in Mortal Kombat 1 at the hands of her past evil incarnation.
• Naughty Bear: The bears killed in an episode simply come back to life in the next episode.
• The New Order Last Days Of Europe: Oskar Dirlewanger is bound to find a different death in every playthrough of the game, and he always dies. His deaths go from the expected to things as unlikely as getting crushed by Göring's Sun Gun, straight-up spontaneously combusting on camera, and realizing you're watching him die every time and having a psychotic break that forces his men to put him down. Even if thermonuclear war breaks out before this can happen, there is always the one missile that will go off-course to nuke his camp point-blank. The developers added over a hundred different paths for him to die, mostly because both in-game and in the original timeline he was one of the worst men to walk the Earth to the point of deserving each and every one.
• While the series in general runs on Death Is a Slap on the Wrist, the ridiculously broad cast of Nexus Clash includes an obvious Shout-Out to Kenny, who has died so many times that he became a lich.
• In Planescape: Torment, the nameless main character is immortal. Several of the puzzles in the game actually require you to die.
• Shipwrecked 64: Discussed via the the Fourth-Wall Mail Slot, when someone asks Stumbler O'Hare why Bucky Beaver seems to get upset and disgusted whenever Rex Broadside — the creator of Bucky's in-universe cartoons — is mentioned. Stumbler says that Rex had a fascination with the macabre, and Bucky's invokedearly cartoons were a Sadist Show that ended with Bucky dying at the end of every episode up until his Retool midway through his lifespan. The reason Bucky hates Rex so much is that, even years after Rex has died, Bucky still remembers his deaths and holds a grudge about them. He also dies one last time in the game itself, by his own hand... and then appears alive again on the now-corrupted title screen. He just can't catch a break.
• Maria in Silent Hill 2 dies multiple times throughout the game with no knowledge of dying every time she turns up again; however, James fully remembers the deaths and is completely confused about the situation.
• Charlie Nash from Street Fighter dies in just about every game he appears in. He was killed by the hands of M. Bison in all three of the Alpha games, though only his death in Alpha 2 is canon. In Street Fighter V, a resurrected Charlie seeks out to kill M. Bison to avenge his death from Alpha 2, and sacrifices his own life in a last ditch effort to kill him.^note M. Bison survives the attack, but is weakened enough to be finished off by Ryu. He's also killed in one episode of the anime series Street Fighter II V.
• Bowser from the Super Mario Bros. series gets thrown into lava many, many times throughout the series, and as New Super Mario Bros. confirms, he's not immune to it and his flesh will actually be burnt off. Jesus.
  • Justified in which it is implied in the above game and Luigi's Mansion that Bowser is constantly being revived by his henchmen after dying.
• It's a Running Gag for Yoshi to fill this role in Platform Hell hacks of Super Mario World, to the point where several of them lampshade this. For example, Springboard and Shells Hack has him say, "All right. Let's just get this over with already. I am going to see you again anyways. I hate being used as a sacrifice in many Kaizo hacks." (Naturally, the hack requires you to sacrifice him less than a second later.)
• In the Team Fortress 2 "Meet the..." shorts, the entire BLU team, especially the BLU Soldier. The BLU Spy deserves a mention, too.
  • And BLU Heavy, who was killed in "Meet the Heavy" (killed in the background), "Meet the Soldier" (blown up twice by rockets), "Meet the Demoman" (gets caught in a Sticky Bomb explosion), "Meet the Engineer" (shot off-screen), "Meet the Sniper" (shot in the head), "Meet the Spy" (stabbed off-screen), and "Meet the Pyro" (axe to the head).
• Time Crisis: Wild Dog, the villainous mascot of the series, is always blown up in every game, only to come back in the next game for more. His apprentice, Wild Fang, also gets in on this habit, from being fatally shot to getting his spine crushed by a speeding plane.
• Gamon from World of Warcraft is a player-based version of this. He's the only NPC in all of Orgrimmar that can be attacked, and due to his low level and the fact that he's sitting in an inn (where people usually hearth to after questing), he seems to exist solely to die over and over again. This is somewhat infuriating to low-level rogues who need to pickpocket him to complete a class-based quest. He later appeared as a card in the World of Warcraft trading card game with the flavor text "Not again!"
  • It appears that in the chaos of Cataclysm◊, he Took a Level in Badass.
  • And later in Mists of Pandaria, Gamon is not happy about his Butt-Monkey treatment over the years and helps players in the Siege of Orgrimmar against General Nazgrim.
• Vandham in Xenoblade Chronicles tends to end up dying - notably in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Xenoblade Chronicles 3.
• John "Y" in Yesterday is very much this, due to how his immortality works - whenever he is killed, he remains dead for a few minutes, then gets back up. Much like Planescape: Torment, a few times you actually have to force John to die to progress.
• Valkyria Chronicles has an Elite Mook named Ty the Immortal. He's killed something like three times, and he comes back stronger each time.

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