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Joker Immunity / Video Games

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Joker Immunity in Video Games.

  • Batman: Arkham City: Averted. At the end of the main story, Joker finally succumbs to blood poisoning from the Titan formula he injected himself with in the last game. That said, he still leaves a legacy that characters in Batman: Arkham Knight continue.
  • Batman (Sunsoft): From the Joker himself; as in the film the game is based on, Batman throws the Joker out of the cathedral at the end of the first game. However, unlike in the film, the Joker survives the fall and becomes the Big Bad in Return of the Joker.
  • BlazBlue's Big Bad Hazama not only has Joker Immunity, he even resembles the Joker with his green hair and maniacal laughter. He's explicitly dead, but is kept alive by people's hatred of him. And as it's a Fighting Game series, leaving him off the roster will just attract the fans' ire. Specifically:
    • In BlazBlue: Chronophantasma, he's hit by Hakumen's Time Killer, which should theoretically eliminate his future lifespan until the heat death of the universe. His boss Izanami also seems to just want to leave him to die. He still survives this via self-Observation, though on a time limit.
    • In BlazBlue: Central Fiction, he gains a third form by hijacking Hakumen's armor unit (which originally belonged to him in the first place) in order to get over his Living on Borrowed Time state. Ragna finds a way to yank the soul out of that unit and evaporate it from existence. This implies that the other two units (or at least Terumi) have had their immunities revoked, as this resolves a major plot point for Ragna. That said, Hazama is still probably okay as long as he doesn't antagonize Ragna again.
  • Carmen Sandiego can't be caught, at least not for long, no matter which medium she appeared in. The kid's game show came the closest; if the contestant won, she would be captured, but she will have freed herself by the time the next game starts.
  • Zig-zagged with Dracula in the Castlevania series. He spent most of the series being defeated and resurrected over and over again, before finally being defeated off-screen in 1999 — and then being reincarnated as Soma Cruz in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. Thankfully Cruz is no longer a bad guy. It's hinted that he gets stronger each time he returns. It's enough to discourage at least one member of the Belmont family, who tries to refuse to fight him (only to learn the hard way that he can't).
  • Kane from Command & Conquer has survived from the 1950s to the 1990s without aging, survived an Ion Cannon strike, and a metal pole to the chest, all while manipulating the Scrin into invading Earth.
  • In the Crash Bandicoot series, Dr. Neo Cortex has survived numerous supposedly inescapable demises; then, again due to the series' slapstick nature, this is par for the course for the series' Rogues Gallery, which includes the Evil Twins being eaten by Evil Crash in Crash Twinsanity). It helps that Cortex and a lot of other villains are Iron Butt Monkeys.
  • Danganronpa's Monokuma always comes back to start another killing game. The first game, Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, has Monokuma/Junko Enoshima seemingly killed, but she comes back as an AI in Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls and Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, where she is seemingly killed again. In Danganronpa 3 Side:Future and Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, this is subverted as she is dead for real in the former (although her influence still lingers), and in the latter the sixth trial has her coming back, but it's not the real Junko, it's Tsumugi cosplaying. The "real Junko" never even existed: she is fictional in the V3 world, just like everyone from the previous games and the games themselves. According to Tsumugi, anyway.
  • Averted in Deus Ex, where nearly every boss can be killed before the big confrontation. Sometimes they can be killed while they are still aligned as friendly and through surreptitious and underhanded ways.
  • The title villain of the Diablo series has already returned from defeat twice, and it's a safe bet that he will have Joker Immunity for as long as the series lasts. Firstly because the lore suggests that he cannot be destroyed, only imprisoned. And secondly because Blizzard would have to rebrand their rather Villain-Based Franchise.
  • King K. Rool in Donkey Kong Country has survived getting blown up, punched through windows, attacked by sharks, falling into a volcano, electrocution, destruction of his home country (by his own actions), and just getting beaten up by the Kongs over the course of many games and spin-offs, but he keeps coming back for more. It looked as if he was gone for good when both Returns and Tropical Freeze used different villains, but then he appeared as a playable character in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (though that game obviously has no bearing on DKC's continuity).
  • No matter how many times the Pilot blows Hibachi to smithereens in every DonPachi, it's back and flooding the screen by the end of the next game.
  • Executioners' Final Boss, Cannibal Ed Bujone, survives his defeat (a Taking You with Me destruction of the factory) purely because Word of God said he's the developers' favorite character. He has a particularly Unexplained Recovery when he surprises the heroes as they celebrate their victory in a fine restaurant.
  • The Bacterians as a whole from Gradius are extremely hard to kill. Though this is justifed, whenever they are defeated, pieces of them will scatter throughout the galaxy, and eventually they begin to regenerate and start their invasion anew.
  • Final Fantasy:
  • William Afton of Five Nights at Freddy's is the Purple Guy — the serial killer responsible for all the child killings and haunted animatronics that form the foundation of the series. He dies three times throughout the series: His first death is when he fell victim to a springlock failure: He eventually possesses his own corpse and becomes Springtrap: 30 years after his original death, he seemingly dies for good when Fazbear's Fright burns down. Three games later, it's revealed he survived, although badly damaged. Pizzeria Simulator ends with Afton and the remaining animatronics dying in a second fire: But he barely survived it, and the next game, Ultimate Custom Night, is William being tortured in his nightmares. It was originally believed he eventually escapes this form of punishment too, being scanned into a VR game as a virus, and getting a new body in Security Breach, but hints that these were actually the Mimic make this uncertain. Nonetheless, the third game's trailer said that William will always come back, and William is sure as hell determined to make this statement come true.
  • In House of the Dead, Caleb Goldman continually comes back, even in the fourth game. However, it becomes a subversion when it turns out that his appearances are just flashbacks and recorded messages. Similarly, the Magician has also returned several times as an Optional Boss, solely because of his popularity.
  • Kingdom Hearts:
    • Axel seems to die toward the end of Sora's Story Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, only to be revealed to have survived in Reverse/Rebirth. He seemingly dies in the prologue of Kingdom Hearts II, then comes back again and actually dies at the end of the game when Sora travels to The World That Never Was, having reformed and dying to help Sora get there. He was scheduled to actually die in the prologue; his popularity with the fans bought him some extra time. He returns in 3D, now going by his old human name of Lea and becoming one of the main heroes.
    • The main villain, Xehanort/Ansem, is very hard to get rid of. Sora kills his Heartless in the first game, but Chain of Memories makes it clear that he's still bumping around inside Riku's mind. He returns in Kingdom Hearts II with his Nobody, Xemnas; Riku also takes his form, having somewhat lost his battle with his darkness. Both are defeated by the game: Xemnas is dead for good, and Riku is back to normal. However, according to Word of God, this just means his Nobody and heart will merge to form a whole person again (like Axel/Lea), and Xehanort will eventually be back for another round. The prequel game Birth by Sleep reveals that he's been doing this for a while now, having stolen Terra's body after being defeated for the first time. Kingdom Hearts III, touted as the Grand Finale of the Xehanort Saga after nearly two decades of buildup, sees Xehanort finally get his immunity revoked, albeit under his own terms. Defeated by Sora and his friends after a grueling, multi-stage battle, Xehanort bows out peacefully and departs for the afterlife after some coaxing from an apparition of his old friend Eraqus. Even then, due to the Me's a Crowd nature of Xehanort's schemes, it can be argued that he isn't truly dead given that Xigbar, one of the many vessels for his heart, is still alive by the game's end and ready to bring a new plan to fruition — albeit one with a different goal in mind, since Braig/Xigbar was actually Luxu from Kingdom Hearts χ all along and manipulating Xehanort for his own purposes.
    • Maleficent is killed in her dragon form in the first game, but when her pet Diablo brings her cloak to the three fairies, their sheer terror of her is apparently enough to resurrect her in II.note  She then does the same for Oogie Boogie, resurrecting him as a threat in II. The really confusing case is Ursula showing up again in the prologue of Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] to battle Sora and Riku after being defeated in I and II.
  • Knights of Ambrose: Lilith is defeated in every game in Timeline 2, but is such an iconic villain that she never dies. Even when she loses her angelic and demonic powers at the end of Celestial Hearts and is reduced to being an extremely powerful human, she survives her defeat in Absinthia.
  • In The Legend of Zelda, Ganondorf/Ganon continues to appear in the series, no matter how many times he gets killed. It happens often enough to have named a trope about situations where a new Big Bad turns out to just be a patsy for a resurrected Ganon. It's even a plot point; although Link and Zelda are Legacy Characters and the different games have different Links, the Ganon in each game is the same entity. The sole exception to date is the Ganon in Four Swords Adventures who is a reincarnation of Twilight Princess's Ganondorf... who is, in turn, the Ocarina of Time Ganondorf, having been ousted as a Treacherous Advisor to the Hylian Royal Family by a time-traveling Link but surviving his execution due to the Triforce of Power.
  • Subverted in The Legendary Starfy. Ogura is killed off in the third game after performing a Heroic Sacrifice, and stays that way for the following two games (both of which have brand new villains).
  • Mega Man:
    • Dr. Albert W. Wily from Mega Man (Classic) always avoids total defeat. When Mega Man finally lands his ass in prison, he easily breaks out of it (albeit six months later). In Mega Man 7, Mega is literally a trigger pull away from killing Wily once and for all, but when Wily brings up the First Law of Robotics (a robot must never harm a human), he hesitates just long enough for Bass to save him. In Mega Man 8, after Mega's apparent (and American-exclusive) sanity break, Wily never actually gets cornered, so Mega doesn't get to try killing him again (Duo takes care of things, keeping Mega from a final blow). Mega Man 9 apparently has Mega back to his Thou Shalt Not Kill attitude for no readily apparent reason, but then, considering he lost his charge shots and his slide ability, it's no wonder he's lost a few other things.
    • In the Mega Man X series, Sigma keeps getting killed — sometimes he dies twice in a single game. But as he's a sentient computer virus, and there's all sorts of robots for him to take over, he won't ever stay dead (though he sometimes doesn't return with all his mental faculties intact, as infamously seen with the "Zombie Sigma" in Mega Man X6 after stretching himself thin during the Eurasia Incident). His immunity is finally revoked in Mega Man X8, where he's blown up on the Moon, finds that there's nothing to take over on its barren surface, and dissipates harmlessly and somewhat anticlimactically. Zero-era supplemental materials pour (more) salt on the wound by having X use the Mother Elf, a "Sigma Antibody Program" created from Zero's data, to completely eradicate the Sigma Virus, deleting Sigma's existence (and finally ending the Maverick Wars) for good.
    • In addition to what's mentioned above, Wily is notable in that the X games handed him a second (if not somewhat confusing) case of Joker Immunity. As the creator of both Zero and the original form of the Maverick Virus, Wily is the Greater-Scope Villain of the series but is often assumed to have no direct role in the story because he would have long been buried by 21XX. However, Serges of the X-Hunters in Mega Man X2 is heavily implied to be a roboticized Wily in the Japanese version of the game, calling X "Rock" when the group issues a challenge to the Maverick Hunter and referring to him as the "robotic memento of (Dr.) Light" when defeated — a fact few people from the current era would be privy to. Then, in X5, Sigma mentions that he gained a collaborator, one suggested to be Wily due to their knowledge about Zero's origins and animosity toward X. Word of God would confirm it was indeed the doctor, Wily even having come back to life to help Sigma settle the score with X and Zero. This revelation would be mostly dropped after X5 went from Grand Finale to Series Fauxnale, though the following game introduced Isoc, a Reploid scientist who not only harbors an interest in Zero (while having nothing but ire for X) but also was responsible for repairing him (much like Serges presumably was able to in X2 if the player doesn't reclaim all of Zero's parts note ) and has knowledge of his inner workings. (Note that X and Zero's systems are considered to be Black Boxes, meaning neither Serges nor Isoc should have been able to successfully restore Zero in full.) If that wasn't enough, Isoc even shares a voice with Wily. The common theory is that Wily lives on through the virus, furthered by the fact that Isoc's lifeless body is found late in X6, not because he died per se but because his CPU seemed to have simply vanished in a manner similar to the Erasure Incident of Xtreme 2.
    • In the Mega Man Zero series, Doctor Weil/Vile's Joker Immunity is explicitly part of his ability set; he has eternal life and Nigh-Invulnerability (through regeneration) as punishment for his earlier crimes. He appears to be really dead in Zero 4, but his remnants pop up again as the driving threat of the Mega Man ZX series, Model W.
  • Revolver Ocelot, the only surviving boss from Metal Gear Solid, went on to plague Snake in every subsequent game. In his second appearance, he evades doom by wearing a kinetic shield, making him literally immune to bullets. The prequel focused on his early career in Spetnaz, so you can assume he's safe in this outing; but even then, Hideo Kojima can't leave well enough alone, lobbing bullets, bees, rockets, explosions, planes, and who knows what else at poor Ocelot. He survives everything, even a few tight scrapes with Big Boss himself, who consciously spares Ocelot's life (as he feels a certain kinship with a fellow "Son of The Boss"). Ocelot finally dies in Metal Gear Solid 4.
  • Metroid:
  • Monkey Island's Ghost Pirate LeChuck always finds a way to come back for every new game, despite explicitly dying at the end of almost all of them; as the Voodoo Lady notes, true evil can never be destroyed completely. The first game implies that he was undead to begin with; he gets revived by voodoo as an explicit zombie for the second game, and in subsequent games, he becomes a demon who can escape the pirate afterlife. For his part, Medium Aware protagonist Guybrush knows that LeChuck can't die because they need him for the sequels; in The Curse of Monkey Island, he begs LeChuck not to kill him because he's also necessary for the sequels (and to prove his point, asks LeChuck if he's ever heard of Bobbin Threadbare).
  • Mortal Kombat, being a game populated with bad guys whom you defeat in particularly gruesome ways, naturally gives nearly everybody Joker Immunity. The most egregious is Big Bad Shao Khan's survival in the reboot; The Hero Liu Kang punches straight through him and all his lieutenants surrender, but the next scene shows Shao Khan limping back to his throne and announcing his next evil plan. It takes the Elder Gods' intervention to get rid of him at the end of the game, but Mortal Kombat X implies he's still alive and kicking: one set of Mirror Match dialogue for Ermac suggests the emperor's soul is now part of the myriad collection of fallen warriors comprising Ermac's being. This Sequel Hook is seemingly negated when Kronika, the Big Bad of Mortal Kombat 11 — and perhaps even more of a Greater-Scope Villain than the One Being — uses her powers over the flow of time to engineer a Cosmic Retcon so that she can guide history along its "rightful" course, only for the resulting Time Crash to bring a MK2-era Shao Kahn into Kronika's circle. This doesn't last long, as the Kitana from the same time period ultimately ends up defeating Kahn in battle, culminating with her going for the jugular. For added measure, the game ends with Fire God Liu Kang (Liu Kang imbued with Raiden's powers) going through with a clean wipe of the timeline in response to Kronika's (attempted) meddling. As a result Liu Kang makes him Sindel's Supreme Commander rather than the Emperor in the new timeline. Shao Kahn doesn't fare any better in the Aftermath expansion either, this time having his soul sucked dry by Shang Tsung and ending up a withered husk.
  • Saya from Namco × Capcom, Endless Frontier, and Project × Zone. No matter how many times Reiji Arisu kills her, she always seems to come back. It's not until Project × Zone 2 that her immunity finally seems to be revoked (albeit in a somber fashion), whereupon an explanation is also given for how she survived the events of Namco × Capcom in the first place: spare bodies.
  • In the first No More Heroes, Travis Touchdown slices Destroyman in half; this doesn't stop him from returning in the sequel as two separate people (New Destroyman) with cybernetics replacing the missing halves. When Shinobu kills New Destroyman by blowing up both bodies, many fans quickly began joking that he'd come back again as New New Destroyman... which was more or less the case in No More Heroes III with the fully cybernetic Destroyman True Face.
  • The older versions of Sid Meier's Pirates! had a variety of evil Spaniards to chase down, but the 2004 version recycles Montalban, Raymondo, and Mendoza, giving them this status.
    • To drive the point home, you cannot sink a ship belonging to any of these three, regardless of how many times you score a massive hit with all your cannons at close range — You have to board it and fence the villain. In fact, you can use Grape-Shot to whittle their crew down to just one man (presumably, the villain himself), and it will never drop below that.
    • Downplayed in the iPad version of the game — you can sink Raymondo's ship with a well-placed broadside. You get nothing from him and have to track him down from scratch.
  • For a robot, Dr. Nefarious from Ratchet & Clank is surprisingly indestructible.
    • Even as an organic lifeform he proved to be unkillable: he got knocked into a bunch of gears and machinery by Captain Qwark and was presumed dead but instead he was transformed into a robot. In a later confrontation he's decapitated by Qwark, who tosses his head in a trash can (where his butler Lawrence rescues him from and later reattaches his head back to his body). Years later in Up Your Arsenal, he fights against Ratchet who fires at him with machine guns, missile launchers and all sorts of futuristic weapons that barely leave a scratch on the doctor. Nefarious then controls the Biobliterator which turns into a gigantic mech that is destroyed by Ratchet, Clank and Qwark. The mech explodes in a spectacular fashion, but Nefarious and Lawrence manage to teleport to an asteroid floating in space while still being able to breathe and are left stranded.
    • Years later in A Crack in Time, the asteroid finally crash lands on planet Zanifar in the Polaris Galaxy (though not before coming in contact with the ruins of the DreadZone Battledome). Nefarious survives this crash landing and sets up his base of operations, the Nefarious Space Station, in Polaris. Ratchet and Clank confront him there yet again, where Nefarious suffers a complete mental breakdown after his defeat and his broken down body is left there as the space station explodes. Word of God says that Nefarious was originally meant to be killed off here, but Sony wanted the series to keep going so the comic book series and All 4 One explained that Lawrence teleported Nefarious away just before the station exploded.
    • Even in the alternative continuity of Ratchet & Clank (2016) Nefarious, in his organic form, refuses to die. After betraying Chairman Alonzo Drek, he confronts Ratchet, Clank and Qwark at the climax of the film and is about to kill Qwark by using the RYNO. Ratchet uses his wrench to knock Nefarious into the Deplanetizer, sending him crash landing on planet Umbris where he's transformed into a robot yet again. Somewhat subverted in the tie-in video game where Ratchet and Clank fight Nefarious in an ultra-mech, knock him into the Deplanetizer's artificial supernova where he appears to be incinerated and finally killed off. Of course, the game is Qwark's retelling of the events from the original game and the player knows that Nefarious shows up in Up Your Arsenal, so he probably survived this event as well.
  • Albert Wesker from Resident Evil. He gets impaled by a Tyrant in the end of the first game, but it's just used to activate the virus that he injected himself early on that gave him his powers. In 5, he manages to survive from Jill's Heroic Sacrifice. That is, until he dies for real in the end. Then along came Umbrella Corps (an entry clarified by Capcom to be canonical despite its Excuse Plot), which implies Wesker is still around in some capacity years later since his voice can be heard at multiple points in-game.
  • Rocket Knight Adventures: Although the Big Bad always dies at the end of each game, Axel Gear does not.
  • SNK's Geese Howard is an odd example; in the continuity of The King of Fighters, he's alive and well, but in his home continuity of Fatal Fury and KOF's own Alternate Continuity, the Maximum Impact series, he's dead. And even then, he's appeared in games where he's canonically dead in the form of "Nightmare Geese", a much more powerful "spirit" version of his normal self.
  • Doctor Robotnik/Eggman from Sonic the Hedgehog hasn't even been in prison for his crimes (except for the one time he broke in deliberately), so he's always back to fight the heroes in the next installment.
    • Most games have him surviving otherwise inescapable explosions with little more than Amusing Injuries, such as how the first game ended with giving the player the option to attack an escaping Eggman and send the Eggmobile tumbling down. Most egregiously, his Death Egg burst into flames and crash-landed on Angel Island in the climax of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, but Sonic 3 reveals that he started work on his next scheme almost immediately after that. And then the second part of that story, Sonic & Knuckles, ends with his escaping mech getting blown up by Sonic in the vacuum of outer space.
    • The first two Sonic Advance games and both Sonic Rush titles end with his ultimate mechs being similarly blown to bits in space (both the aforementioned Sonic Advance titles and the normal final boss for Sonic Rush), a dimensional rift (the True Final Boss for Sonic Rush), and the core of Blaze's world (Sonic Rush Adventure).
    • Shadow the Hedgehog seemingly subverts his immunity; in three possible endings, it's implied that Shadow breaks his neck after defeating him. However, these endings were subject to Cutting Off the Branches and Eggman survives to the Last Story.
    • The ending of Sonic Generations shows both the modern Dr. Eggman and the classic Dr. Robotnik trapped together in the same nowhere-space outside time, explicitly trying and failing to find a way out. Both are perfectly fine when we next see them in Sonic Lost World and Sonic Mania respectively, despite Sonic Forces confirming that the time travel plot of Generations did happen, in some fashion, at least.
  • In the Star Fox series, rival team Star Wolf is more resilient than any villain, always coming back from defeat for another shot at you — sometimes in the same game. They've survived things other than defeating you; in the default ending of Star Fox Command, Star Wolf flies into an acidic ocean to attack the enemy base and come back in one piece. The only exception is Star Fox: Assault's Corneria level where Fox rides on Wolf's wing, where he will die if you fail to protect his ship.
  • Any Star Wars video game in which you fight against Darth Vader, either in his TIE Fighter or a lightsaber duel, Vader can't be killed. In games that depict the Battle of Yavin (the 1983 and 1998 games), Vader's TIE fighter can be shot and hit but it will spin out of control; or after his hit points are depleted, he will veer off. Vader's wingmen can still be killed with one shot, however. You aren't told explicitly that you won the lightsaber duel with Vader in the 1998 game, but when he runs out of hit points he does acknowledge that "The Force is strong in you but... you are not a Jedi yet."
  • M. Bison in Street Fighter can't stay dead. Akuma's iconic Dynamic Entry moment in Super Street Fighter II Turbo, where he pulls the Raging Demon on Bison, was retconned away, as Street Fighter IV: The Ties That Bind shows Bison killing himself to avoid capture at the hands of the heroes. Even then, his soul hovers around post-mortem until a suitable replacement body can be made (much like the aftermath of Alpha 3), leading to his inclusion in the events of Street Fighter IV. In his next chronological appearance, Street Fighter V, his current body appears to show signs of degradation (again, like in Alpha 3) and Bison seemingly dies at the end of "A Shadow Falls" following his battle with Ryu. However, the Capcom Fighters Network profile for "Phantom Bison" (Bison's consciousness manifested through Psycho Power whenever his body is destroyed) as well as the Character Stories for Ed and Falke, two of Bison's potential hosts, indicate that he's still around even after the fall of Shadaloo.
  • Bowser from the Super Mario Bros. franchise seems to enjoy complete immunity to death. Otherwise it's very hard to explain how he comes back from falling off a chandelier, being melted to a skeleton in lava, getting crushed beneath a giant wedding cake, falling into a star, or any of the other crazy things that happen to him throughout the saga. Sometimes, though, it's really weird:
    • In Super Mario Galaxy, which provides the "thrown into a star" example, Bowser ends up apparently dying for real, except the entire universe gets sucked into a black hole, resulting in a Big Crunch and a new Big Bang, which recreates the universe — including Bowser.
    • Super Paper Mario reveals that he's one of the four heroes (along with Mario, Luigi, and Peach) who are destined to stop Count Bleck from destroying all worlds. Near the end, when Bowser is seemingly crushed, Peach says she isn't worried about him because he isn't easy to get rid of and has survived worse. She's right; he just crashed through the floor.
    • In New Super Mario Bros., Bowser is seemingly killed three times over the course of the game and has to be brought back to life each time. He "remains" Dry Bowser for the second fight, so it's implied that he spent the entire game in-between those battles in skeletal form.
    • In Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, you are actually tasked with saving Bowser from what would otherwise be certain death by activating his body's desperation Hulk Out. In the other Mario & Luigi installments, he always survives his fights with the brothers while one-off villains like Cackletta and Antasma are killed in battles that play out the exact same way gameplay-wise.
    • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door lampshades the phenomenon; during the stages where you play as Bowser, he has infinite lives.
  • Mara Aramov from the Syphon Filter series gets headshot twice, but survives until Dark Mirror.
  • Heihachi Mishima from Tekken had this before finally meeting his end in Tekken 7. Among other instances where he should have been killed, he survived being thrown off a cliff by Kazuya in the original Tekken, was smashed through a wall by Devil Jin in Tekken 3, and was blown up point-blank by several Jack-4 robots (and subsequently launched several miles away, crash-landing in a cemetery and remaining there for close to two months with no food or water) in Tekken 5. It took a Combat Breakdown after beating Kazuya out of his true Devil form through nothing but sheer willpower and being tossed into a lava flow for death to claim him, though many were skeptical it'd actually stick. Even with Tekken 8 confirming his death and Katsuhiro Harada himself outright saying (in English!) "Heihachi is completely dead" when asked about his fate, there was still skepticism despite — again — Heihachi being thrown into a river of lava, making it very unlikely he'd cheat death. That said, T8 newcomer Reina is revealed to be Heihachi's secret daughter (not unlike Lars before her in the sixth game), pursuing her own agenda.
  • Mandler from Terra Cresta refuses to stay dead no matter how many times humanity defeats it, though this is justified as it's powered by the Power of Void. Mandler is eventually Killed Off for Real at the end of Sol Cresta, the Grand Finale of the franchise.
  • Wild Dog from the Time Crisis series. Despite being blown up in every game you fight him, he always comes back for more. Lampshaded by Alan and Wesley in the third game:
    Wesley: Wild Dog?!
    Alan: Don't you ever die?!
  • Eliphas the Inheritor of Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War is supposed to be dead in Dark Crusade, but due to his popularity, he was inexplicably resurrected for Chaos Rising. He gets killed there to then he's resurrected again. The same happened to the wonderfully hilarious Gorgutz, who not only survives the games he's appeared in, he's established as the canonical winner of the Soulstorm campaign in Dawn of War III.
  • There are several World of Warcraft villainous characters who are all but guaranteed never to be permanently killed due to being fan favorites, Sylvanas Windrunner probably being the biggest.

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