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* ''VideoGame/IWasATeenageExocolonist'': If the protagonist doesn't convince Dys to stop setting up the bomb near the colony walls, they worry with their friends about Dys's fate. He mysteriously disappears during the explosion, and it's unknown if he died in it or survived.
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* ''VideoGame/IWasATeenageExocolonist'': If the protagonist Sol doesn't convince Dys to stop setting up the bomb near the colony walls, they worry with their friends about Dys's fate. He mysteriously disappears during the explosion, and it's unknown if he died in it or survived. He manages to have this happen even if Sol prevents the bomb planting and he continues living in the colony: immunity to fear and working in Expeditions turn out to be a literally deadly combination in the long run, and he disappears during an "unscheduled expedition" at the Western Wresting Ridge in his late 20s.
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* In ''VideoGame/MetroidOtherM'', the assassin known only as "the Deleter" shoots one of the Federation troops in the back and tosses his corpse into a pool of lava. The victim's identity is not shown in the cutscene, but [[spoiler:Keiji Misawa]] is the only member of the squad left unaccounted for by the end of the game. His corpse is never recovered for obvious reasons, and in the epilogue he is listed as "missing in action".
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* In ''VideoGame/MetroidOtherM'', the assassin known only as "the Deleter" shoots one of the Federation troops in the back and tosses his corpse into a pool of lava. The victim's identity is not shown in the cutscene, but [[spoiler:Keiji Misawa]] Keiji Misawa is the only member of the squad left unaccounted for by the end of the game. His corpse is never recovered for obvious reasons, and in the epilogue he is listed as "missing in action".
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* ''VideoGame/PeretEmHeruForThePrisoners'': If Ayuto is unable to save [[spoiler:Nei Ichikawa]] from being [[AllCrimesAreEqual judged]], Professor Tsuchida invokes this -- they never actually ''confirmed'' whether the victim was [[spoiler:trapped in any of the coffins]], making it entirely possible that they're still alive and can potentially be found deeper within the ruins. This is purely a MotivationalLie, and Ayuto recognizes it as such... but still tries to hold out hope that it's true. [[spoiler:During the escape sequence, Nei ''does'' reappear, but only to crush those hopes by attacking Ayuto as a reanimated corpse.]]
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* ''VideoGame/PeretEmHeruForThePrisoners'': If Ayuto is unable to save [[spoiler:Nei Ichikawa]] Nei Ichikawa from being [[AllCrimesAreEqual judged]], Professor Tsuchida invokes this -- they never actually ''confirmed'' whether the victim was [[spoiler:trapped trapped in any of the coffins]], coffins, making it entirely possible that they're still alive and can potentially be found deeper within the ruins. This is purely a MotivationalLie, and Ayuto recognizes it as such... but still tries to hold out hope that it's true. [[spoiler:During During the escape sequence, Nei ''does'' reappear, but only to crush those hopes by attacking Ayuto as a reanimated corpse.]]
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* The ''VideoGame/{{Tekken}}'' series does this a lot. In ''Tekken 3'', Ogre killed a bunch of people and absorbed some of their moves. However, it turns out that his only victim is the first King, since we have his successor (the second King) taking his place afterwards and his story explicitly said he wanted revenge for the first King. Wang, Bruce, Lee, Anna, and Baek were revealed to be OK (Baek did encounter him, but he didn't die). Kunimitsu simply retires from fighting and thieving, but her health is worsening, necessitating the replacement by her daughter (but bottom line, Ogre didn't kill her). The most important one is Jun: For the longest time, we think of her being killed because Jin said so and he's the 'witness' of her battle against Ogre and her 'death'. Turns out, the trope rears its head again: Jin only thinks of her dead because he can't find her corpse anywhere. Jun instead goes into hiding for reasons, and she officially makes her return in ''VideoGame/Tekken8''.
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* The ''VideoGame/{{Tekken}}'' ''Franchise/{{Tekken}}'' series does this a lot. In ''Tekken 3'', Ogre killed a bunch of people and absorbed some of their moves. However, it turns out that his only victim is the first King, since we have his successor (the second King) taking his place afterwards and his story explicitly said he wanted revenge for the first King. Wang, Bruce, Lee, Anna, and Baek were revealed to be OK (Baek did encounter him, but he didn't die). Kunimitsu simply retires from fighting and thieving, but her health is worsening, necessitating the replacement by her daughter (but bottom line, Ogre didn't kill her). The most important one is Jun: For the longest time, we think of her being killed because Jin said so and he's the 'witness' of her battle against Ogre and her 'death'. Turns out, the trope rears its head again: Jin only thinks of her dead because he can't find her corpse anywhere. Jun instead goes into hiding for reasons, and she officially makes her return in ''VideoGame/Tekken8''.
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** In the ''Return to Ostagar'' DLC, Duncan's body is noticeably missing. You can find his weapons still imbedded in the Ogre but not Duncan himself. WordofGod says he's dead -- and since he hasn't made a reappearance up to the end of ''VideoGame/DragonAgeInquisition'', fourteen years after he started getting the nightmares leading up to his Calling, it looks likely he's not around anymore, making this trope averted in the usual spirit.
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** In the ''Return to Ostagar'' DLC, Duncan's body is noticeably missing. You can find his weapons still imbedded in the Ogre but not Duncan himself. WordofGod WordOfGod says he's dead -- and since he hasn't made a reappearance up to the end of ''VideoGame/DragonAgeInquisition'', fourteen years after he started getting the nightmares leading up to his Calling, it looks likely he's not around anymore, making this trope averted in the usual spirit.
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** Kurtis at the end of ''The Angel of Darkness''. WordofGod confirmed that he survived and was meant to return in the scrapped sequel.
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** Kurtis at the end of ''The Angel of Darkness''. WordofGod WordOfGod confirmed that he survived and was meant to return in the scrapped sequel.
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* ''VideoGame/AyakashiRomanceReborn'''s Keijiro, who was declared dead by the [[AsianFoxSpirit Kitsune]] village he betrayed...but his family suspects he might not be. It's implied he is, in fact, alive, and visited the protagonist in the guise of his nephew, Toichiro.
* ''Franchise/BatmanArkhamSeries'':
** In ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamCity'': Ra's and Talia al Ghul are ''both'' killed onscreen, but both of their bodies vanish shortly after. Given that the League of Assassins is in the area, resurrection seems possible.
** In ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamKnight'' DLC "The Season of Infamy", we see the conclusion of this in the "Shadow War" episode. Ra's has been resurrected by the League, and Batman even mentions that his body wasn't recovered from Arkham City. Talia meanwhile has a morgue drawer with her name on it, but the door is open and there's no body inside...
* The justification for the Moredhel invasion of the Kingdom in ''VideoGame/BetrayalAtKrondor'' is that their leader Delekhan claimed that their previous leader Murmandamus was captured and being held prisoner after their defeat in the last war, something he is able to convince people of because nobody on their side of the battlefield saw Murmandamus' death. At the end of the game, the heroes arrange for the Magician Pug to conjure up a highly convincing illusion so that the Moredhel can see both Delekhan and Murmandamus "die" in battle so that nobody can use that excuse to unite the Moredhel clans again.
* In ''VideoGame/BillyHatcherAndTheGiantEgg'', when you defeat a boss they [[EverythingFades fade away]]. Dark Corvo however, does not. He instead falls into a pool of darkness that materializes underneath him, without fading away, leading fans to wonder whether he's actually dead or not.
* In ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOps'', during the mission "Vorkuta", Reznov and Mason orchestrate a prison break from the titular gulag that ends with them being the only two prisoners that successfully escape. Once outside the prison, Reznov distracts their pursuers by drawing them away from their escape train believing that freedom could only be achieved for Mason. He reappears later on in the campaign and becomes Mason's ally throughout subsequent missions, but later it is revealed that, officially speaking, he died after being recaptured by Vorkuta's guards and that the Reznov we saw afterwards is a hallucination in Mason's mind. Though it is revealed that the body was never found and a man heavily implied to be Reznov gives a CIA contact an e-mail telling him he is willing to help Mason out and provide freedom for both of them this time, his survival has never been confirmed by any subsequent games in the series.
** The mission "Executive Order" ends with Mason and his team hunting down and seemingly killing [[BigBad General Dragovich]] by blowing up his limo. Mason demands that they recover his body to confirm the kill, but Woods assures him that he's definitely dead. Surely enough, he appears later on alive and well.
** In the mission "Payback", Woods and Kravchenko appear to both get killed by the latter detonating his belt of grenades, though the explosion occurs offscreen so it's never confirmed in the moment. ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOpsII'' reveals that they both survived this altercation.
* [[PlayingWithATrope Played with]] in ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger''. Crono is outright obliterated when he confronts Lavos, with the immensely powerful monster completely disintegrating his body. His body ''visibly'' disintegrates in the beam. However, this is a TimeTravel story, and using the titular Chrono Trigger, a life-sized doll of Crono, and a bit of time travel, the party manages to go back in time, freeze time, and swap out Crono for the doll, allowing him to survive. Interestingly, this is the first time in the entire plot that the party actually manages to meaningfully change history -- [[SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong but it won't be the last.]]
* Kane in the ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquer'' series. The first time he was at ground zero of an ion cannon blast, which shouldn't ''leave'' a body. The second, he was run through and left in an exploding temple. The third, all of Eastern Europe exploded. The man has serious PlotArmor.
** In an alternate ending to the first game, he's specified as "missing, and presumed dead" after the player has witnessed him getting a surprised glance up at the rubble from his base coming down.
* This trope is also discussed in ''VideoGame/Condemned2Bloodshot'' when a note found on the corpse of the mayor indicates that Serial Killer X, the BigBad of the [[VideoGame/CondemnedCriminalOrigins first game]], is still alive. Ethan notes that the last time he saw SKX, "[[BoomHeadshot half of his face lined the inside of a trunk]]", to which Rosa responds that there was always the chance he was still alive since no body was ever recovered.
* Subverted in ''VideoGame/DevilSurvivor''. Aya is a major character in the backstory, who disappeared without a trace into the demon world before the game starts. Even when you go there at the game's end, you never find her.
* ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins''
** In the ''Return to Ostagar'' DLC, Duncan's body is noticeably missing. You can find his weapons still imbedded in the Ogre but not Duncan himself. WordofGod says he's dead -- and since he hasn't made a reappearance up to the end of ''VideoGame/DragonAgeInquisition'', fourteen years after he started getting the nightmares leading up to his Calling, it looks likely he's not around anymore, making this trope averted in the usual spirit.
** A Dalish Elf Warden can play this card throughout their origin whenever they're discouraged from looking for Tamlen on grounds that he's probably already dead. Well, it turns out he may or may not be, it just depends on what you consider "[[TragicMonster alive]]".
* ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'':
** This happened to the ''entire'' [[OurDwarvesAreDifferent Dwemer]] race in the {{backstory}}. Sometime around the Battle of Red Mountain in the First Era, the Dwemer, every last one, vanished off the face of Nirn in an instant.[[note]]the only known remaining Dwemer wasn't on Nirn at the time, being off exploring outer realms. Otherwise it covered ''everyone'' -- including a breakaway faction of Dwemer that had settled on the other side of the continent centuries earlier and so far as can be told had nothing to do with whatever the Morrowind Dwemer were up to.[[/note]] Their disappearance remains a RiddleForTheAges both in-universe and out amongst the fandom, though the most commonly accepted theory is that they tried to use the [[CosmicKeystone Heart of Lorkhan]], the still-beating heart of the [[GodIsDead "dead" creator god]] of Mundus, the mortal plane, to AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence, and it either [[GoneHorriblyWrong failed spectacularly]] or it ''[[GoneHorriblyRight succeeded]]''. This also may not technically be an example, as they ''did'' leave behind remains in a few cases -- in one Dwemer ruin, you find piles of ash on beds, at workstations, in the halls surrounded by guard uniforms, etc. as if they disintegrated where they stood. But that doesn't make them necessarily ''dead''...
** In ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind Morrowind]]'', BigBad PhysicalGod Dagoth Ur disappears after [[PlayerCharacter the Nerevarine]] unbinds the Heart of Lorkhan, the source of his (and the Tribunal's) divine power. The chamber he was in also collapses into the lava below, further complicating matters. However, his last words would seem to indicate that he did indeed die.
** In ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'', this happens to [[BigBad Alduin]] after [[PlayerCharacter the Dragonborn]] defeats him in Sovngarde. However, in this case, it's not so much that his body isn't found, but that his [[YourSoulIsMine soul isn't absorbed]]. All dragons can be resurrected unless their soul is absorbed by another dragon or dragonborn, meaning that Alduin will likely return to fulfill his role as the BeastOfTheApocalypse when it is time. It's just that now he will perform his duties on the schedule Akatosh intends rather than pursuing his own agenda.
* This happens with Joseph's body at the end of ''VideoGame/TheEvilWithin'', which gave rise to the belief, or rather to a glimmer of hope, that he is alive and there might be a sequel on the way.
* In the backstory of ''VideoGame/{{Evolve}}'' Sunny pulls this with the destruction of the Sword and Solaris. Justified, as if she had been killed in the explosion there wouldn't have been anything left to find.
* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'':
** In ''VideoGame/Fallout3'', you can discover the logs of a search party that went to look for a child named Cheryl, who they never found, and you only find one of the party members' corpses. Similarly, of the Brandice family that lived in Grayditch, you can only find the father's body.
** In ''VideoGame/Fallout4'', one would suspect nuclear destruction of the world and the passage of 200 years would be enough to kill an insignificant character like the Vault Tech representative from the opening scene, but he turns up later alive and well as a ghoul.
%%* Occurs in ''VideoGame/FarCry2'' with The Jackal.
* Jankowski in ''[[VideoGame/FirstEncounterAssaultRecon FEAR]]'' vanishes early on in the game. Although he continues to appear as a ghostly figure from time to time, his eventual fate is left unknown.
* ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'':
** In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'', Kain is apparently killed in an earthquake caused by a summoned Titan, but his body is never found and he turns up alive later in the game.
** Turned [[ExaggeratedTrope Up to Eleven]] in ''Final Fantasy Legend 3'' when Dion reveals he has a bomb built into his body as a last resort -- which he then uses, blowing himself to kingdom come to eliminate an enemy forcefield. With just a couple tissue samples, the local super-scientist is able to fully reconstitute both Dion and the hero's years-dead father in a matter of moments -- all memories intact.
** This seems to happen constantly in the ''Stormblood'' expansion of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV''. Gotsetsu and Yotsuyu, Nidhogg, and more...and then at the end of the 'Dawn of a New Sun' quest, ''Zenos Yae Galvus.'' The only person who hasn't come back, it seems, is [[ButtMonkey Grynewaht]].
* ''Franchise/FireEmblem'':
** The Black Knight from ''VideoGame/FireEmblemPathOfRadiance''. Ike beats the tar out of him late in the game, but no one can find his corpse because the fortress crashes down after the final duel. He then comes back in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemRadiantDawn'' to aid Micaiah and the Dawn Brigade. In the original Japanese version, he explains that some malfunctioning warp powder sent a shade of himself to fight Ike; in the international version, he states that ILetYouWin and most likely escaped afterwards using some warp powder.
** In ''VideoGame/FireEmblemFates: Conquest'', Takumi jumps off of a rampart after you beat him in Chapter 23 and is presumably killed in the fall...but Corrin and the Nohrians are unable to recover a corpse. Sure enough, he's NotQuiteDead and comes back in the endgame for one last piece of you.
** In ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses'', this trope gets used a few times:
*** Four years before the game's start, the king of Faerghus, his queen consort, and several knights are ambushed and murdered in an incident that comes to be known as The Tragedy of Duscur. However, late into the Azure Moon route, Dimitri learns (from an UnreliableExpositor, admittedly) that the queen consort, his stepmother, was in on the plot as a way to get back to the Adrestian Empire and see her daughter (Edelgard) again. It turns out that, while they recovered the king's body, hers was nowhere to be found. The route then leaves the truth of her involvement ambiguous.
*** Happens with Dimitri during the TimeSkip on all routes except Crimson Flower. Faerghus's regent, Dimitri's uncle, is assassinated, and the court mage, Cornelia, blames Dimitri for the crime. He is arrested and slated to be executed, but the execution is done privately and no body is ever shown. It turns out Dimitri escaped with the help of his vassal, Dedue.
*** In fact, it's how the TimeSkip plays out. During the Battle of Garreg Mach, [[PlayerCharacter Byleth]] is knocked into a chasm by either Rhea (in Crimson Flower) or in Thales (in any other route). Their body is never recovered, leading some to believe they perished in the battle (although others search high and low for them). However, the battle instead left them in a coma, from which they awaken five years later.
* ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys1'':
** The animatronics kill night guards by forcefully stuffing them inside sharp and dangerous animatronic suits, essentially shredding their body (besides the eyeballs and teeth), allowing [[CorruptCorporateExecutive the management]] to simply sweep any blood and guts under the carpet and file a missing person report afterwards (as per stated company policy) to cover their rears from legal repercussions. Phone Guy is even implied to have met his end this way.
** Through hidden posters that randomly show up, you learn that five children disappeared at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza one day and no bodies, alive or dead, were found. However, no one ever seems to have checked inside the suits, as some time afterwards the animatronics began to smell bad, leak blood and mucus, and get compared to rotting carcasses.
* Played straight in ''VideoGame/{{Freddy Pharkas|FrontierPharmacist}}'' by Creator/{{Sierra}}, where at the end of the game it is revealed that Penelope Primm's body was never found within the ashes of the exploded schoolhouse, posing the potential for a sequel that ultimately never occurred.
* Kratos from ''VideoGame/GodOfWarIII''. It took until ''VideoGame/GodOfWarPS4'' to confirm his survival.
* In ''VideoGame/HalfLife2'', Wallace Breen is last seen at the center of an exploding teleporter. Just before, he discusses a "host body" in another universe with his Combine overlords. As this is [[VaporWare the Half-Life series]] we're talking about, we may never know what became of him...
* ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'':
** For troop morale, "Spartans never die!", they only get listed as Missing in Action. Given the missions they are sent on, there are rarely any bodies to cover up (indeed, standard practice is for surviving teammates to detonate the miniature nuclear reactors fueling their fallen comrades PoweredArmor, to prevent the armor falling into enemy hands). Interestingly, Dr. Catherine Halsey, the creator of the Spartans-[=IIs=], makes it a point of keeping track of which ones are really dead. This allows her in ''Literature/HaloGhostsOfOnyx'' to identify Kurt (his EVA suit had malfunctioned before he was thrown into deep space, but he was actually secretly snatched by ONI) when they reunite. Kurt himself goes on to update his status as MIA before performing a HeroicSacrifice by nuking a Covenant army at point-blank range.
** At the end of ''VideoGame/Halo4'', the Ur-Didact falls into a slipspace portal. ''ComicBook/HaloEscalation'' reveals that he survived, but does it to him ''again'' when he's seemingly killed by the Composers; yeah, he was disintegrated, but the Composers store and preserve the "essences" of those they "compose", and can convert them into mechanical constructs...
* ''VideoGame/IWasATeenageExocolonist'': If the protagonist doesn't convince Dys to stop setting up the bomb near the colony walls, they worry with their friends about Dys's fate. He mysteriously disappears during the explosion, and it's unknown if he died in it or survived.
* Despite the backstory not being revealed until, well, the final act, the main villain of ''VideoGame/{{Killswitch}}'' had this happen. When confronted by the protagonist in the backstory, he's told that he's dead, but counters with the question of whether or not they found a body (which they didn't). At the end of the game, after viciously killing the villain, the protagonist's VoiceWithAnInternetConnection asks if the BigBad is dead, to which to protagonist replies, "I see a body. Mission complete."
* In ''VideoGame/LostHorizon'', when Kim is apparently killed in an avalanche, Fenton is unable to go check the truck's wreckage due to some Nazis on the surviving truck arriving to shoot at him. Sure enough, it turns out that Kim survived (albeit still in Nazi custody).
* Subverted in ''VideoGame/MassEffect2''. At the [[DownerBeginning very beginning]], Harbinger springs a surprise attack on Shepard's ship, the ''Normandy'', in order to kill Shepard, given what s/he did to Sovereign at the end of the previous game. The ''Normandy'' is utterly destroyed, and Shepard ''does'' die, but Harbinger specifically sends out patrols to find the body just to be sure. As it turns out, this is justified; human-survivalist group [[NGOSuperpower Cerberus]] gets Shepard's body to resurrect him/her. A tie-in comic reveals that Harbinger actually got Shepard's body first, but Liara recaptured it for Cerberus.
* In ''VideoGame/TheMatrixOnline'', Neo's body was never found...leading to several EpilepticTrees and UrbanLegends about his current status. (Alive? Dead? Reincarnated? Assimilated by the Machines? The world may never know.)
* Zero in ''VideoGame/MegaManZero4'', after destroying a ColonyDrop ''from the inside''. All that remained is his broken helmet.
* Somewhat subverted in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2SonsOfLiberty'', where the game's intro has Solid Snake infiltrate a tanker carrying a new Metal Gear, and then watch as a group of Russian terrorists take over. He goes into the hold where the Metal Gear is kept, and then witnesses Ocelot claiming RAY as his own, and then Snake's clone/brother Liquid takes control of Ocelot using the arm that was transplanted onto him after Liquid's apparent death from FOXDIE. Shortly afterwards, the tanker explodes, and Snake is presumed dead. From then on, you play as Raiden, and soon enough you encounter and team up with the oddly-familiar Pliskin, who makes repeated attempts to assure you that Snake is dead. It's mentioned that they '''did''' find the body. Although it was missing an arm for some reason. Minor detail, really. It was actually Liquid's body, and the missing arm is the one now attached to replace Ocelot's own after he lost it to the Cyborg Ninja early in the first ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid''.
* In ''VideoGame/MetroidOtherM'', the assassin known only as "the Deleter" shoots one of the Federation troops in the back and tosses his corpse into a pool of lava. The victim's identity is not shown in the cutscene, but [[spoiler:Keiji Misawa]] is the only member of the squad left unaccounted for by the end of the game. His corpse is never recovered for obvious reasons, and in the epilogue he is listed as "missing in action".
* We are told in ''VideoGame/{{Moonmist}}'' that Deirdre Hallam apparently died when she allegedly jumped or fell into a deep well at the basement of Tresyllian Castle, and her body was never found, although it is later revealed in the red variation that she was actually FakingTheDead.
* In ''VideoGame/Mother3'', Flint obsessively looks for his son Claus (who went on a search for his mother's killer and never came back) due to not finding a corpse in the area. [[DramaticIrony Unfortunately, he was looking in the wrong places, leaving Claus a target for the Pigmasks]].
* If you revive Ammon Jerro in ''VideoGame/NeverwinterNights2: Mask of the Betrayer'', he's able to tell you what became of all of your teammates in the original campaign after you defeated the LoadBearingBoss in TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon, except for the githzerai cleric Zhjaeve. He didn't see her get out, but he never saw her die either, and has no idea what happened. Lore-minded players have noted that high-level githzerai can plane-shift once per day, so it's possible that, task completed, Zhjaeve got out that way and went home to Limbo.
* In ''[[VideoGame/NinjaGaiden Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom]]'', Irene Lew is proclaimed dead after she falls from a cliff and into the sea while being chased by Ryu's evil Doppelganger. It turns out [[HesJustHiding she was just hiding]]. Also, Ken Hayabusa in the first NES game.
* In ''VideoGame/NoOneLivesForever'', during the first briefing, Cate talks about how Volkov got shot in the face, threw himself off a cliff into an icy river. "It was presumed he survived, as no body was ever recovered.
* Inverted in a particularly bizarre way in ''VideoGame/PlanescapeTorment.'' Your character is an amnesiac, regenerating immortal. At one point, you find ''your own corpse'', and can wield your own desiccated, mummified arm as a club.
* ''VideoGame/PeretEmHeruForThePrisoners'': If Ayuto is unable to save [[spoiler:Nei Ichikawa]] from being [[AllCrimesAreEqual judged]], Professor Tsuchida invokes this -- they never actually ''confirmed'' whether the victim was [[spoiler:trapped in any of the coffins]], making it entirely possible that they're still alive and can potentially be found deeper within the ruins. This is purely a MotivationalLie, and Ayuto recognizes it as such... but still tries to hold out hope that it's true. [[spoiler:During the escape sequence, Nei ''does'' reappear, but only to crush those hopes by attacking Ayuto as a reanimated corpse.]]
* In ''VideoGame/ProfessorLaytonAndTheMiracleMask'', it's stated that eighteen years previously, Randall Ascot -- the Professor's childhood friend and the one responsible for sparking his interest in archaeology -- fell to his death while he and Layton were trying to find the Mask of Chaos, the titular MacGuffin being worn by the main villain. In the flashback depicting this, Randall is seen falling but not landing. It's later revealed that not only did Randall survive, he found the Mask of Chaos and ''[[BigBad is the one wearing it]]''.
* In ''VideoGame/PsychoKiller'', after the titular killer dies by drowning, the game says they never found his body.
* [[BigBad Ad]] [[EvilSorcerer Avis]] in the second ''VideoGame/QuestForGlory''. Though for his inevitable surprise return some two full games later, he was DemotedToDragon because VampireBitesSuck.
* ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'' does this frequently; the most recent example though has Jill Valentine push Wesker out a window and they proceeded to fall off a cliff. Their bodies were never found and they're presumed dead. Turns out she was brainwashed and dressed like a Venetian plague doctor. Of course, considering [[OurZombiesAreDifferent the series]], sometimes the person ''is'' dead, but you don't find the body because it got up and walked away anyway. (Plus, Wesker's defeat is framed in such a way that an official dead body is never seen.)
* ''VideoGame/ReturnOfTheObraDinn'': During chapters IV, VII and IX, several crew members end up vanishing without leaving behind a corpse, so a special "disappearances" page is added to the end of those chapters. The fates of these people are deduced by finding the memory in which they were last seen alive, and determining what was about to happen to them. While the vast majority turn out to have simply drowned, a few actually managed to escape the ship and are still alive at the time of the investigation.
* ''VideoGame/RiseOfTheThirdPower'': For the first phase of the final battle, Rowan and Sparrow seemingly die in a MutualKill. However, neither of their bodies are found when the party returns to the site of their battle. All that's left is Rowan's sword and Sparrow's cloak, along with a trail of blood leading down the mountain. It's unclear if one or both of them survived.
* In ''VideoGame/SaintsRowTheThird'' this occurs when Johnny Gat is presumed dead, implied to have been shot by Phillipe Loren at the beginning of the game. However, in ''Videogame/SaintsRowIV'' we learn that he was really abducted by Zinyak at that moment and Phillipe just took credit for the "kill" (while likely having no idea what really happened) to demoralize the Saints. Though this does [[PlotHole leave the question]]: where did Zombie Johnny Gat come from, exactly?
* An interesting variation occurs with ''VideoGame/{{Smite}}'''s lore. A number of gods are seemingly killed off, and the deaths themselves avert this, as bodies are confirmed. The trope comes into play during the Odyssey: Underworld event where the gods of death confirm that the slain gods never arrived at their respective lands of death, leading into the reveal that they were [[OnlyMostlyDead held captive in a near death state by Persephone]].
* ''Creator/{{SNK}}'' pulled this with Geese Howard and Rugal Bernstein. Geese's version was more complex: he plummets off of the top floor of his tower in the first game, [[NotQuiteDead but manages to survive by the skin of his teeth.]] Then his next plot involves him achieving {{Immortality}} by [[ImmortalityInducer using the Jin scrolls]]. It's implied that when he is KilledOffForReal (by getting a second boot off the tower from Terry) that when he falls to his apparent death, the body is not found. Rugal's was more subtle. He self-destructs his own aircraft carrier and is presumed dead because there were no remains after the crash. This has caused speculation that the Rugal in '95 is an experimental clone used to monitor the {{Orochi}} power. It's also implied that he's working with NESTS somehow, as seen in 2002. Also, he doesn't flicker away like all the other [[PlotlineDeath "dead"]] strikers like Goenitz.
* Played with in ''VideoGame/StreetFighterIV'' where Guile believes that his friend and mentor Charlie Nash is still alive specifically because, well, they [[InvokedTrope never found the body.]] ''VideoGame/StreetFighterV'' makes this worse by showing that he ''is'' alive, but despite seemingly dying at the end of its story mode, his status is listed as "Unknown".
* The ''VideoGame/{{Tekken}}'' series does this a lot. In ''Tekken 3'', Ogre killed a bunch of people and absorbed some of their moves. However, it turns out that his only victim is the first King, since we have his successor (the second King) taking his place afterwards and his story explicitly said he wanted revenge for the first King. Wang, Bruce, Lee, Anna, and Baek were revealed to be OK (Baek did encounter him, but he didn't die). Kunimitsu simply retires from fighting and thieving, but her health is worsening, necessitating the replacement by her daughter (but bottom line, Ogre didn't kill her). The most important one is Jun: For the longest time, we think of her being killed because Jin said so and he's the 'witness' of her battle against Ogre and her 'death'. Turns out, the trope rears its head again: Jin only thinks of her dead because he can't find her corpse anywhere. Jun instead goes into hiding for reasons, and she officially makes her return in ''VideoGame/Tekken8''.
** There are also several characters that, if not immortal beings, have identical successors (King and Armor King, Roger, Kuma, Law, possibly Yoshimitsu) or cyborg reincarnates (Alyssa, Brian), or are robots (All the various Jacks).
** By the way, that is before counting the Mishimas, who frequently get shot, laser blasted, burnt, blown up, trapped underneath a haunted temple for 50 years with the supreme evil being, flung off cliffs, thrown out of helicopters, and in one notorious case ''dropped into a volcano'', with no ill effects.
* ''Franchise/TombRaider'':
** Amanda in ''VideoGame/TombRaiderLegend''. She apparently drowned during the flashback sequence, but when Lara returns to the cavern in the present day, there are no remains except an untied shoe. Later revealed to be NotQuiteDead.
** At the end of ''[[VideoGame/TombRaiderTheLastRevelation The Last Revelation]]'', the temple of Seth collapses, and there seems to be [[NoOneCouldSurviveThat no way Lara could survive it]]. As shown at the end of ''[[VideoGame/TombRaiderChronicles Chronicles]]'', the recovery team found her backpack, but not the body. She was NotQuiteDead yet. Although she suffered a FateWorseThanDeath gameplay-wise in ''[[VideoGame/TombRaiderTheAngelOfDarkness The Angel of Darkness]]''. Heck, this whole story arc was retconned out when Crystal Dynamics took over the series.
** Kurtis at the end of ''The Angel of Darkness''. WordofGod confirmed that he survived and was meant to return in the scrapped sequel.
* ''VideoGame/TrailsOfColdSteel:'' At the end of the first game, Chancellor Osborne is assassinated, starting a civil war. During the second game, we find out that his body has disappeared, so it isn't much of a surprise when he turns up alive and well at the end. He is vague about how he survived: "Maybe I had a body double. Maybe you need to check your eyesight."
* Some mooks discuss this in ''VideoGame/Uncharted4AThiefsEnd''. After Nate ends up in a shipwreck, some guards wonder if he's dead. Another notes that in [[UnluckilyLucky his case, unless there's a body, he definitely is not dead.]]
* In ''VideoGame/VirtuaCop 2'', the plot states that when Joe Fang's helicopter got shot down, his body was never found, then he returns once again as the final boss in the final stage, except he now flies using a jetpack instead but still uses missiles as his primary attack as well as a sword.
* In the last episode of Season 1 of ''VideoGame/TheWalkingDead'', Kenny throws himself into a horde of zombies to help Lee find his way to Clementine and is last seen fighting them off by himself. In the summary at the end, he's stated to have been "lost to the horde". Naturally, he shows up in Season 2, where he [[HandWave simply states that he got really lucky]].
* ''VideoGame/{{Wick}}'' tells the story of the Weaver family whose house burned down. Their five children's bodies were never found.
* ''VideoGame/TheWorldEndsWithYou'' averts, inverts and subverts this trope repeatedly. In the game world, losers' bodies are [[RetGone erased]]. Averted because everyone participating in the Reapers' Game is already dead and they're competing to be returned to life rather than trying not to die, with [=NPC=] dialog and a memorial for two other characters indicating that three of Neku's companions left physical bodies behind when they died (in the game proper, at most an item of importance to an NPC will found post-erasure). Inverted because the body of Sho Minamimoto is found intact instead of having been erased, with some fans speculating from this that he's still alive. Subverted in a previous battle between Joshua and Sho Minamimoto, where the latter deploys a 'nuke' that is presumed to erase them both, although they both turn up alive again. Joshua is the [[PhysicalGod Composer]] and using his god powers [[DimensionalTraveler jumps into another universe]] to avoid it, while Minamimoto [[ThanatosGambit planned for his own death]] and used a [[DangerousForbiddenTechnique Taboo Noise refinery sigil]] to set up his own revival in a stronger form.
* Turalyon and Alleria in ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft''.
** Bolvar Fordragon and Dranosh Saurfang, whose shield and armor respectively were all that could be found of them after their would-be deaths at the Wrathgate. To the surprise of the other characters, [[IKnewIt but not the playerbase]], both of them showed up again in Icecrown Citadel.
** Many characters in the old world, after a [[BigBad big dragon]] [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt re-emerges with a vengeance]] in the Cataclysm expansion.
** In the Red Ridge Mountains, Bravo Company takes on the black dragon Darkblaze and die in a HeroicSacrifice; while the rest of the team dies during the fight, their leader, John J. Keeshan leaps on the dragon and kills it mid-flight. His body does show up, alive and well, continuing the fight after [[TookALevelInBadass taking another 30 levels of Badass]].
* ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles3FutureRedeemed'': Discussed; Matthew has been searching for his sister Na'el ever since the destruction of the City. He bitterly notes that since City people [[DisappearsIntoLight Disappear Into Light]] when they die, there's no way to be sure she's dead. He could keep searching forever and never find any hint one way or another. Of course, at this point, the audience is already well aware she's still alive.
----
* ''Franchise/BatmanArkhamSeries'':
** In ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamCity'': Ra's and Talia al Ghul are ''both'' killed onscreen, but both of their bodies vanish shortly after. Given that the League of Assassins is in the area, resurrection seems possible.
** In ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamKnight'' DLC "The Season of Infamy", we see the conclusion of this in the "Shadow War" episode. Ra's has been resurrected by the League, and Batman even mentions that his body wasn't recovered from Arkham City. Talia meanwhile has a morgue drawer with her name on it, but the door is open and there's no body inside...
* The justification for the Moredhel invasion of the Kingdom in ''VideoGame/BetrayalAtKrondor'' is that their leader Delekhan claimed that their previous leader Murmandamus was captured and being held prisoner after their defeat in the last war, something he is able to convince people of because nobody on their side of the battlefield saw Murmandamus' death. At the end of the game, the heroes arrange for the Magician Pug to conjure up a highly convincing illusion so that the Moredhel can see both Delekhan and Murmandamus "die" in battle so that nobody can use that excuse to unite the Moredhel clans again.
* In ''VideoGame/BillyHatcherAndTheGiantEgg'', when you defeat a boss they [[EverythingFades fade away]]. Dark Corvo however, does not. He instead falls into a pool of darkness that materializes underneath him, without fading away, leading fans to wonder whether he's actually dead or not.
* In ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOps'', during the mission "Vorkuta", Reznov and Mason orchestrate a prison break from the titular gulag that ends with them being the only two prisoners that successfully escape. Once outside the prison, Reznov distracts their pursuers by drawing them away from their escape train believing that freedom could only be achieved for Mason. He reappears later on in the campaign and becomes Mason's ally throughout subsequent missions, but later it is revealed that, officially speaking, he died after being recaptured by Vorkuta's guards and that the Reznov we saw afterwards is a hallucination in Mason's mind. Though it is revealed that the body was never found and a man heavily implied to be Reznov gives a CIA contact an e-mail telling him he is willing to help Mason out and provide freedom for both of them this time, his survival has never been confirmed by any subsequent games in the series.
** The mission "Executive Order" ends with Mason and his team hunting down and seemingly killing [[BigBad General Dragovich]] by blowing up his limo. Mason demands that they recover his body to confirm the kill, but Woods assures him that he's definitely dead. Surely enough, he appears later on alive and well.
** In the mission "Payback", Woods and Kravchenko appear to both get killed by the latter detonating his belt of grenades, though the explosion occurs offscreen so it's never confirmed in the moment. ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOpsII'' reveals that they both survived this altercation.
* [[PlayingWithATrope Played with]] in ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger''. Crono is outright obliterated when he confronts Lavos, with the immensely powerful monster completely disintegrating his body. His body ''visibly'' disintegrates in the beam. However, this is a TimeTravel story, and using the titular Chrono Trigger, a life-sized doll of Crono, and a bit of time travel, the party manages to go back in time, freeze time, and swap out Crono for the doll, allowing him to survive. Interestingly, this is the first time in the entire plot that the party actually manages to meaningfully change history -- [[SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong but it won't be the last.]]
* Kane in the ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquer'' series. The first time he was at ground zero of an ion cannon blast, which shouldn't ''leave'' a body. The second, he was run through and left in an exploding temple. The third, all of Eastern Europe exploded. The man has serious PlotArmor.
** In an alternate ending to the first game, he's specified as "missing, and presumed dead" after the player has witnessed him getting a surprised glance up at the rubble from his base coming down.
* This trope is also discussed in ''VideoGame/Condemned2Bloodshot'' when a note found on the corpse of the mayor indicates that Serial Killer X, the BigBad of the [[VideoGame/CondemnedCriminalOrigins first game]], is still alive. Ethan notes that the last time he saw SKX, "[[BoomHeadshot half of his face lined the inside of a trunk]]", to which Rosa responds that there was always the chance he was still alive since no body was ever recovered.
* Subverted in ''VideoGame/DevilSurvivor''. Aya is a major character in the backstory, who disappeared without a trace into the demon world before the game starts. Even when you go there at the game's end, you never find her.
* ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins''
** In the ''Return to Ostagar'' DLC, Duncan's body is noticeably missing. You can find his weapons still imbedded in the Ogre but not Duncan himself. WordofGod says he's dead -- and since he hasn't made a reappearance up to the end of ''VideoGame/DragonAgeInquisition'', fourteen years after he started getting the nightmares leading up to his Calling, it looks likely he's not around anymore, making this trope averted in the usual spirit.
** A Dalish Elf Warden can play this card throughout their origin whenever they're discouraged from looking for Tamlen on grounds that he's probably already dead. Well, it turns out he may or may not be, it just depends on what you consider "[[TragicMonster alive]]".
* ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'':
** This happened to the ''entire'' [[OurDwarvesAreDifferent Dwemer]] race in the {{backstory}}. Sometime around the Battle of Red Mountain in the First Era, the Dwemer, every last one, vanished off the face of Nirn in an instant.[[note]]the only known remaining Dwemer wasn't on Nirn at the time, being off exploring outer realms. Otherwise it covered ''everyone'' -- including a breakaway faction of Dwemer that had settled on the other side of the continent centuries earlier and so far as can be told had nothing to do with whatever the Morrowind Dwemer were up to.[[/note]] Their disappearance remains a RiddleForTheAges both in-universe and out amongst the fandom, though the most commonly accepted theory is that they tried to use the [[CosmicKeystone Heart of Lorkhan]], the still-beating heart of the [[GodIsDead "dead" creator god]] of Mundus, the mortal plane, to AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence, and it either [[GoneHorriblyWrong failed spectacularly]] or it ''[[GoneHorriblyRight succeeded]]''. This also may not technically be an example, as they ''did'' leave behind remains in a few cases -- in one Dwemer ruin, you find piles of ash on beds, at workstations, in the halls surrounded by guard uniforms, etc. as if they disintegrated where they stood. But that doesn't make them necessarily ''dead''...
** In ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind Morrowind]]'', BigBad PhysicalGod Dagoth Ur disappears after [[PlayerCharacter the Nerevarine]] unbinds the Heart of Lorkhan, the source of his (and the Tribunal's) divine power. The chamber he was in also collapses into the lava below, further complicating matters. However, his last words would seem to indicate that he did indeed die.
** In ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'', this happens to [[BigBad Alduin]] after [[PlayerCharacter the Dragonborn]] defeats him in Sovngarde. However, in this case, it's not so much that his body isn't found, but that his [[YourSoulIsMine soul isn't absorbed]]. All dragons can be resurrected unless their soul is absorbed by another dragon or dragonborn, meaning that Alduin will likely return to fulfill his role as the BeastOfTheApocalypse when it is time. It's just that now he will perform his duties on the schedule Akatosh intends rather than pursuing his own agenda.
* This happens with Joseph's body at the end of ''VideoGame/TheEvilWithin'', which gave rise to the belief, or rather to a glimmer of hope, that he is alive and there might be a sequel on the way.
* In the backstory of ''VideoGame/{{Evolve}}'' Sunny pulls this with the destruction of the Sword and Solaris. Justified, as if she had been killed in the explosion there wouldn't have been anything left to find.
* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'':
** In ''VideoGame/Fallout3'', you can discover the logs of a search party that went to look for a child named Cheryl, who they never found, and you only find one of the party members' corpses. Similarly, of the Brandice family that lived in Grayditch, you can only find the father's body.
** In ''VideoGame/Fallout4'', one would suspect nuclear destruction of the world and the passage of 200 years would be enough to kill an insignificant character like the Vault Tech representative from the opening scene, but he turns up later alive and well as a ghoul.
%%* Occurs in ''VideoGame/FarCry2'' with The Jackal.
* Jankowski in ''[[VideoGame/FirstEncounterAssaultRecon FEAR]]'' vanishes early on in the game. Although he continues to appear as a ghostly figure from time to time, his eventual fate is left unknown.
* ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'':
** In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'', Kain is apparently killed in an earthquake caused by a summoned Titan, but his body is never found and he turns up alive later in the game.
** Turned [[ExaggeratedTrope Up to Eleven]] in ''Final Fantasy Legend 3'' when Dion reveals he has a bomb built into his body as a last resort -- which he then uses, blowing himself to kingdom come to eliminate an enemy forcefield. With just a couple tissue samples, the local super-scientist is able to fully reconstitute both Dion and the hero's years-dead father in a matter of moments -- all memories intact.
** This seems to happen constantly in the ''Stormblood'' expansion of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV''. Gotsetsu and Yotsuyu, Nidhogg, and more...and then at the end of the 'Dawn of a New Sun' quest, ''Zenos Yae Galvus.'' The only person who hasn't come back, it seems, is [[ButtMonkey Grynewaht]].
* ''Franchise/FireEmblem'':
** The Black Knight from ''VideoGame/FireEmblemPathOfRadiance''. Ike beats the tar out of him late in the game, but no one can find his corpse because the fortress crashes down after the final duel. He then comes back in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemRadiantDawn'' to aid Micaiah and the Dawn Brigade. In the original Japanese version, he explains that some malfunctioning warp powder sent a shade of himself to fight Ike; in the international version, he states that ILetYouWin and most likely escaped afterwards using some warp powder.
** In ''VideoGame/FireEmblemFates: Conquest'', Takumi jumps off of a rampart after you beat him in Chapter 23 and is presumably killed in the fall...but Corrin and the Nohrians are unable to recover a corpse. Sure enough, he's NotQuiteDead and comes back in the endgame for one last piece of you.
** In ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses'', this trope gets used a few times:
*** Four years before the game's start, the king of Faerghus, his queen consort, and several knights are ambushed and murdered in an incident that comes to be known as The Tragedy of Duscur. However, late into the Azure Moon route, Dimitri learns (from an UnreliableExpositor, admittedly) that the queen consort, his stepmother, was in on the plot as a way to get back to the Adrestian Empire and see her daughter (Edelgard) again. It turns out that, while they recovered the king's body, hers was nowhere to be found. The route then leaves the truth of her involvement ambiguous.
*** Happens with Dimitri during the TimeSkip on all routes except Crimson Flower. Faerghus's regent, Dimitri's uncle, is assassinated, and the court mage, Cornelia, blames Dimitri for the crime. He is arrested and slated to be executed, but the execution is done privately and no body is ever shown. It turns out Dimitri escaped with the help of his vassal, Dedue.
*** In fact, it's how the TimeSkip plays out. During the Battle of Garreg Mach, [[PlayerCharacter Byleth]] is knocked into a chasm by either Rhea (in Crimson Flower) or in Thales (in any other route). Their body is never recovered, leading some to believe they perished in the battle (although others search high and low for them). However, the battle instead left them in a coma, from which they awaken five years later.
* ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys1'':
** The animatronics kill night guards by forcefully stuffing them inside sharp and dangerous animatronic suits, essentially shredding their body (besides the eyeballs and teeth), allowing [[CorruptCorporateExecutive the management]] to simply sweep any blood and guts under the carpet and file a missing person report afterwards (as per stated company policy) to cover their rears from legal repercussions. Phone Guy is even implied to have met his end this way.
** Through hidden posters that randomly show up, you learn that five children disappeared at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza one day and no bodies, alive or dead, were found. However, no one ever seems to have checked inside the suits, as some time afterwards the animatronics began to smell bad, leak blood and mucus, and get compared to rotting carcasses.
* Played straight in ''VideoGame/{{Freddy Pharkas|FrontierPharmacist}}'' by Creator/{{Sierra}}, where at the end of the game it is revealed that Penelope Primm's body was never found within the ashes of the exploded schoolhouse, posing the potential for a sequel that ultimately never occurred.
* Kratos from ''VideoGame/GodOfWarIII''. It took until ''VideoGame/GodOfWarPS4'' to confirm his survival.
* In ''VideoGame/HalfLife2'', Wallace Breen is last seen at the center of an exploding teleporter. Just before, he discusses a "host body" in another universe with his Combine overlords. As this is [[VaporWare the Half-Life series]] we're talking about, we may never know what became of him...
* ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'':
** For troop morale, "Spartans never die!", they only get listed as Missing in Action. Given the missions they are sent on, there are rarely any bodies to cover up (indeed, standard practice is for surviving teammates to detonate the miniature nuclear reactors fueling their fallen comrades PoweredArmor, to prevent the armor falling into enemy hands). Interestingly, Dr. Catherine Halsey, the creator of the Spartans-[=IIs=], makes it a point of keeping track of which ones are really dead. This allows her in ''Literature/HaloGhostsOfOnyx'' to identify Kurt (his EVA suit had malfunctioned before he was thrown into deep space, but he was actually secretly snatched by ONI) when they reunite. Kurt himself goes on to update his status as MIA before performing a HeroicSacrifice by nuking a Covenant army at point-blank range.
** At the end of ''VideoGame/Halo4'', the Ur-Didact falls into a slipspace portal. ''ComicBook/HaloEscalation'' reveals that he survived, but does it to him ''again'' when he's seemingly killed by the Composers; yeah, he was disintegrated, but the Composers store and preserve the "essences" of those they "compose", and can convert them into mechanical constructs...
* ''VideoGame/IWasATeenageExocolonist'': If the protagonist doesn't convince Dys to stop setting up the bomb near the colony walls, they worry with their friends about Dys's fate. He mysteriously disappears during the explosion, and it's unknown if he died in it or survived.
* Despite the backstory not being revealed until, well, the final act, the main villain of ''VideoGame/{{Killswitch}}'' had this happen. When confronted by the protagonist in the backstory, he's told that he's dead, but counters with the question of whether or not they found a body (which they didn't). At the end of the game, after viciously killing the villain, the protagonist's VoiceWithAnInternetConnection asks if the BigBad is dead, to which to protagonist replies, "I see a body. Mission complete."
* In ''VideoGame/LostHorizon'', when Kim is apparently killed in an avalanche, Fenton is unable to go check the truck's wreckage due to some Nazis on the surviving truck arriving to shoot at him. Sure enough, it turns out that Kim survived (albeit still in Nazi custody).
* Subverted in ''VideoGame/MassEffect2''. At the [[DownerBeginning very beginning]], Harbinger springs a surprise attack on Shepard's ship, the ''Normandy'', in order to kill Shepard, given what s/he did to Sovereign at the end of the previous game. The ''Normandy'' is utterly destroyed, and Shepard ''does'' die, but Harbinger specifically sends out patrols to find the body just to be sure. As it turns out, this is justified; human-survivalist group [[NGOSuperpower Cerberus]] gets Shepard's body to resurrect him/her. A tie-in comic reveals that Harbinger actually got Shepard's body first, but Liara recaptured it for Cerberus.
* In ''VideoGame/TheMatrixOnline'', Neo's body was never found...leading to several EpilepticTrees and UrbanLegends about his current status. (Alive? Dead? Reincarnated? Assimilated by the Machines? The world may never know.)
* Zero in ''VideoGame/MegaManZero4'', after destroying a ColonyDrop ''from the inside''. All that remained is his broken helmet.
* Somewhat subverted in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2SonsOfLiberty'', where the game's intro has Solid Snake infiltrate a tanker carrying a new Metal Gear, and then watch as a group of Russian terrorists take over. He goes into the hold where the Metal Gear is kept, and then witnesses Ocelot claiming RAY as his own, and then Snake's clone/brother Liquid takes control of Ocelot using the arm that was transplanted onto him after Liquid's apparent death from FOXDIE. Shortly afterwards, the tanker explodes, and Snake is presumed dead. From then on, you play as Raiden, and soon enough you encounter and team up with the oddly-familiar Pliskin, who makes repeated attempts to assure you that Snake is dead. It's mentioned that they '''did''' find the body. Although it was missing an arm for some reason. Minor detail, really. It was actually Liquid's body, and the missing arm is the one now attached to replace Ocelot's own after he lost it to the Cyborg Ninja early in the first ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid''.
* In ''VideoGame/MetroidOtherM'', the assassin known only as "the Deleter" shoots one of the Federation troops in the back and tosses his corpse into a pool of lava. The victim's identity is not shown in the cutscene, but [[spoiler:Keiji Misawa]] is the only member of the squad left unaccounted for by the end of the game. His corpse is never recovered for obvious reasons, and in the epilogue he is listed as "missing in action".
* We are told in ''VideoGame/{{Moonmist}}'' that Deirdre Hallam apparently died when she allegedly jumped or fell into a deep well at the basement of Tresyllian Castle, and her body was never found, although it is later revealed in the red variation that she was actually FakingTheDead.
* In ''VideoGame/Mother3'', Flint obsessively looks for his son Claus (who went on a search for his mother's killer and never came back) due to not finding a corpse in the area. [[DramaticIrony Unfortunately, he was looking in the wrong places, leaving Claus a target for the Pigmasks]].
* If you revive Ammon Jerro in ''VideoGame/NeverwinterNights2: Mask of the Betrayer'', he's able to tell you what became of all of your teammates in the original campaign after you defeated the LoadBearingBoss in TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon, except for the githzerai cleric Zhjaeve. He didn't see her get out, but he never saw her die either, and has no idea what happened. Lore-minded players have noted that high-level githzerai can plane-shift once per day, so it's possible that, task completed, Zhjaeve got out that way and went home to Limbo.
* In ''[[VideoGame/NinjaGaiden Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom]]'', Irene Lew is proclaimed dead after she falls from a cliff and into the sea while being chased by Ryu's evil Doppelganger. It turns out [[HesJustHiding she was just hiding]]. Also, Ken Hayabusa in the first NES game.
* In ''VideoGame/NoOneLivesForever'', during the first briefing, Cate talks about how Volkov got shot in the face, threw himself off a cliff into an icy river. "It was presumed he survived, as no body was ever recovered.
* Inverted in a particularly bizarre way in ''VideoGame/PlanescapeTorment.'' Your character is an amnesiac, regenerating immortal. At one point, you find ''your own corpse'', and can wield your own desiccated, mummified arm as a club.
* ''VideoGame/PeretEmHeruForThePrisoners'': If Ayuto is unable to save [[spoiler:Nei Ichikawa]] from being [[AllCrimesAreEqual judged]], Professor Tsuchida invokes this -- they never actually ''confirmed'' whether the victim was [[spoiler:trapped in any of the coffins]], making it entirely possible that they're still alive and can potentially be found deeper within the ruins. This is purely a MotivationalLie, and Ayuto recognizes it as such... but still tries to hold out hope that it's true. [[spoiler:During the escape sequence, Nei ''does'' reappear, but only to crush those hopes by attacking Ayuto as a reanimated corpse.]]
* In ''VideoGame/ProfessorLaytonAndTheMiracleMask'', it's stated that eighteen years previously, Randall Ascot -- the Professor's childhood friend and the one responsible for sparking his interest in archaeology -- fell to his death while he and Layton were trying to find the Mask of Chaos, the titular MacGuffin being worn by the main villain. In the flashback depicting this, Randall is seen falling but not landing. It's later revealed that not only did Randall survive, he found the Mask of Chaos and ''[[BigBad is the one wearing it]]''.
* In ''VideoGame/PsychoKiller'', after the titular killer dies by drowning, the game says they never found his body.
* [[BigBad Ad]] [[EvilSorcerer Avis]] in the second ''VideoGame/QuestForGlory''. Though for his inevitable surprise return some two full games later, he was DemotedToDragon because VampireBitesSuck.
* ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'' does this frequently; the most recent example though has Jill Valentine push Wesker out a window and they proceeded to fall off a cliff. Their bodies were never found and they're presumed dead. Turns out she was brainwashed and dressed like a Venetian plague doctor. Of course, considering [[OurZombiesAreDifferent the series]], sometimes the person ''is'' dead, but you don't find the body because it got up and walked away anyway. (Plus, Wesker's defeat is framed in such a way that an official dead body is never seen.)
* ''VideoGame/ReturnOfTheObraDinn'': During chapters IV, VII and IX, several crew members end up vanishing without leaving behind a corpse, so a special "disappearances" page is added to the end of those chapters. The fates of these people are deduced by finding the memory in which they were last seen alive, and determining what was about to happen to them. While the vast majority turn out to have simply drowned, a few actually managed to escape the ship and are still alive at the time of the investigation.
* ''VideoGame/RiseOfTheThirdPower'': For the first phase of the final battle, Rowan and Sparrow seemingly die in a MutualKill. However, neither of their bodies are found when the party returns to the site of their battle. All that's left is Rowan's sword and Sparrow's cloak, along with a trail of blood leading down the mountain. It's unclear if one or both of them survived.
* In ''VideoGame/SaintsRowTheThird'' this occurs when Johnny Gat is presumed dead, implied to have been shot by Phillipe Loren at the beginning of the game. However, in ''Videogame/SaintsRowIV'' we learn that he was really abducted by Zinyak at that moment and Phillipe just took credit for the "kill" (while likely having no idea what really happened) to demoralize the Saints. Though this does [[PlotHole leave the question]]: where did Zombie Johnny Gat come from, exactly?
* An interesting variation occurs with ''VideoGame/{{Smite}}'''s lore. A number of gods are seemingly killed off, and the deaths themselves avert this, as bodies are confirmed. The trope comes into play during the Odyssey: Underworld event where the gods of death confirm that the slain gods never arrived at their respective lands of death, leading into the reveal that they were [[OnlyMostlyDead held captive in a near death state by Persephone]].
* ''Creator/{{SNK}}'' pulled this with Geese Howard and Rugal Bernstein. Geese's version was more complex: he plummets off of the top floor of his tower in the first game, [[NotQuiteDead but manages to survive by the skin of his teeth.]] Then his next plot involves him achieving {{Immortality}} by [[ImmortalityInducer using the Jin scrolls]]. It's implied that when he is KilledOffForReal (by getting a second boot off the tower from Terry) that when he falls to his apparent death, the body is not found. Rugal's was more subtle. He self-destructs his own aircraft carrier and is presumed dead because there were no remains after the crash. This has caused speculation that the Rugal in '95 is an experimental clone used to monitor the {{Orochi}} power. It's also implied that he's working with NESTS somehow, as seen in 2002. Also, he doesn't flicker away like all the other [[PlotlineDeath "dead"]] strikers like Goenitz.
* Played with in ''VideoGame/StreetFighterIV'' where Guile believes that his friend and mentor Charlie Nash is still alive specifically because, well, they [[InvokedTrope never found the body.]] ''VideoGame/StreetFighterV'' makes this worse by showing that he ''is'' alive, but despite seemingly dying at the end of its story mode, his status is listed as "Unknown".
* The ''VideoGame/{{Tekken}}'' series does this a lot. In ''Tekken 3'', Ogre killed a bunch of people and absorbed some of their moves. However, it turns out that his only victim is the first King, since we have his successor (the second King) taking his place afterwards and his story explicitly said he wanted revenge for the first King. Wang, Bruce, Lee, Anna, and Baek were revealed to be OK (Baek did encounter him, but he didn't die). Kunimitsu simply retires from fighting and thieving, but her health is worsening, necessitating the replacement by her daughter (but bottom line, Ogre didn't kill her). The most important one is Jun: For the longest time, we think of her being killed because Jin said so and he's the 'witness' of her battle against Ogre and her 'death'. Turns out, the trope rears its head again: Jin only thinks of her dead because he can't find her corpse anywhere. Jun instead goes into hiding for reasons, and she officially makes her return in ''VideoGame/Tekken8''.
** There are also several characters that, if not immortal beings, have identical successors (King and Armor King, Roger, Kuma, Law, possibly Yoshimitsu) or cyborg reincarnates (Alyssa, Brian), or are robots (All the various Jacks).
** By the way, that is before counting the Mishimas, who frequently get shot, laser blasted, burnt, blown up, trapped underneath a haunted temple for 50 years with the supreme evil being, flung off cliffs, thrown out of helicopters, and in one notorious case ''dropped into a volcano'', with no ill effects.
* ''Franchise/TombRaider'':
** Amanda in ''VideoGame/TombRaiderLegend''. She apparently drowned during the flashback sequence, but when Lara returns to the cavern in the present day, there are no remains except an untied shoe. Later revealed to be NotQuiteDead.
** At the end of ''[[VideoGame/TombRaiderTheLastRevelation The Last Revelation]]'', the temple of Seth collapses, and there seems to be [[NoOneCouldSurviveThat no way Lara could survive it]]. As shown at the end of ''[[VideoGame/TombRaiderChronicles Chronicles]]'', the recovery team found her backpack, but not the body. She was NotQuiteDead yet. Although she suffered a FateWorseThanDeath gameplay-wise in ''[[VideoGame/TombRaiderTheAngelOfDarkness The Angel of Darkness]]''. Heck, this whole story arc was retconned out when Crystal Dynamics took over the series.
** Kurtis at the end of ''The Angel of Darkness''. WordofGod confirmed that he survived and was meant to return in the scrapped sequel.
* ''VideoGame/TrailsOfColdSteel:'' At the end of the first game, Chancellor Osborne is assassinated, starting a civil war. During the second game, we find out that his body has disappeared, so it isn't much of a surprise when he turns up alive and well at the end. He is vague about how he survived: "Maybe I had a body double. Maybe you need to check your eyesight."
* Some mooks discuss this in ''VideoGame/Uncharted4AThiefsEnd''. After Nate ends up in a shipwreck, some guards wonder if he's dead. Another notes that in [[UnluckilyLucky his case, unless there's a body, he definitely is not dead.]]
* In ''VideoGame/VirtuaCop 2'', the plot states that when Joe Fang's helicopter got shot down, his body was never found, then he returns once again as the final boss in the final stage, except he now flies using a jetpack instead but still uses missiles as his primary attack as well as a sword.
* In the last episode of Season 1 of ''VideoGame/TheWalkingDead'', Kenny throws himself into a horde of zombies to help Lee find his way to Clementine and is last seen fighting them off by himself. In the summary at the end, he's stated to have been "lost to the horde". Naturally, he shows up in Season 2, where he [[HandWave simply states that he got really lucky]].
* ''VideoGame/{{Wick}}'' tells the story of the Weaver family whose house burned down. Their five children's bodies were never found.
* ''VideoGame/TheWorldEndsWithYou'' averts, inverts and subverts this trope repeatedly. In the game world, losers' bodies are [[RetGone erased]]. Averted because everyone participating in the Reapers' Game is already dead and they're competing to be returned to life rather than trying not to die, with [=NPC=] dialog and a memorial for two other characters indicating that three of Neku's companions left physical bodies behind when they died (in the game proper, at most an item of importance to an NPC will found post-erasure). Inverted because the body of Sho Minamimoto is found intact instead of having been erased, with some fans speculating from this that he's still alive. Subverted in a previous battle between Joshua and Sho Minamimoto, where the latter deploys a 'nuke' that is presumed to erase them both, although they both turn up alive again. Joshua is the [[PhysicalGod Composer]] and using his god powers [[DimensionalTraveler jumps into another universe]] to avoid it, while Minamimoto [[ThanatosGambit planned for his own death]] and used a [[DangerousForbiddenTechnique Taboo Noise refinery sigil]] to set up his own revival in a stronger form.
* Turalyon and Alleria in ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft''.
** Bolvar Fordragon and Dranosh Saurfang, whose shield and armor respectively were all that could be found of them after their would-be deaths at the Wrathgate. To the surprise of the other characters, [[IKnewIt but not the playerbase]], both of them showed up again in Icecrown Citadel.
** Many characters in the old world, after a [[BigBad big dragon]] [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt re-emerges with a vengeance]] in the Cataclysm expansion.
** In the Red Ridge Mountains, Bravo Company takes on the black dragon Darkblaze and die in a HeroicSacrifice; while the rest of the team dies during the fight, their leader, John J. Keeshan leaps on the dragon and kills it mid-flight. His body does show up, alive and well, continuing the fight after [[TookALevelInBadass taking another 30 levels of Badass]].
* ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles3FutureRedeemed'': Discussed; Matthew has been searching for his sister Na'el ever since the destruction of the City. He bitterly notes that since City people [[DisappearsIntoLight Disappear Into Light]] when they die, there's no way to be sure she's dead. He could keep searching forever and never find any hint one way or another. Of course, at this point, the audience is already well aware she's still alive.
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