Not Quite Dead / Video Games

Characters who weren't quite as dead as they seemed in video games.

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• In The Adventures of Lomax, deployed two times by Evil Ed. First, destroying the floating rock that he's standing on will make him fall down, presumably to his doom, but then he pulls off a One-Winged Angel moment. Then he falls down again but hangs to the stage for his life. Only making him fall for the third time causes him not to come back.
• Early during Another Century's Episode: R, the audience learns of one Dr. Shiki, who, according to the antagonists, was killed by human colonists of the planet Eria prior to the events of the game. As it turns out, he inserted his consciousness into one of the evil androids before that happened, and proceeds to reveal himself to be The Man Behind The Evil Boss Android at the expense of the 'droids once he deems them as having outlived their usefulness.
• In Army of Two, Phillip Clyde goes through this one a lot, to the point where even after you kill him in the final boss battle, they Never Found the Body.
• Borderlands has a downloadable side quest, called The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, in which Dr. Ned is defeated and the credits roll. But in the middle of the credits, a horrific twisted undead version of Dr. Ned tears through the screen and another battle begins.
• Call of Duty:
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops II: Late in the previous game, Frank Woods shoves Kravchenko off a ledge and is presumed killed by the latter's explosive vest. While it's hinted in intel that he's still alive, the reveal trailer for this game outright confirms him to still be living.
  • In Call of Duty: Ghosts, Rorke survives a .44 magnum round to the gut, a LOKI strike to the face, and near-drowning in a submerged train to come back in the ending and capture Logan, intending to brainwash him into joining his campaign against the Ghosts.
• Captive (RPG Maker): In the Free end, after the captor is shot down by police and Dies Wide Open, The Stinger shows their eyes blink for a split second.
• In Cave Story, this trope is important to the secret ending, when if you don't actually see professor Booster die, he survives and gives you an improved jetpack later on.
• In Chrono Cross, it's revealed that Lavos, the giant space tick that was destroyed by Crono in Chrono Trigger, wasn't quite dead; instead, it fused with Schala and became the Time Devourer. The Devourer itself is also an example; killing it the normal way doesn't work. Due to the nature of the Chronoverse, there will always be a timeline where you didn't kill the Devourer, and it'll just come back from there.
• Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest: Seems that for King/Captain K. Rool, being beaten; punched; thrown from a cliff, bouncing twice on the rocks on the way down and splashing into the ocean; then getting attacked by hungry sharks didn't stop him from showing up again as the secret/lost world boss, soaking wet and mad. Topping that, being defeated again and getting thrown inside a volcano that erupts shortly after causing the island to sink also doesn't prevent him from showing up in the next game without a scratch and under a new alias.
• Pulled multiple times in the final route of Duel Savior Destiny. First, Kaede is poisoned, and then rocks fall on Berio Trope while Nanashi/Rubinas appears to be falling apart. Lily Sheerfield gets booted into an alternate dimension that we know would take her mother a thousand years to escape, though granted she's not implied to be dead. They all make it back in time for the finale.
• In Ecco the Dolphin: The Tides of Time, it turns out that the Vortex Queen not only survived having her eyes poked out and her jaw destroyed, she is strong enough to invade Earth, create a new hive, and destroy the Asterite.
• Echocalypse: Rayna did not die in her older sibling's first encounter with Wadjet, she was still alive within the red crystals. To set her free, the protagonist will need to find a relic that will do the trick.
• Fate/stay night:
  • In the Unlimited Blade Works scenario, Archer carries this to ridiculous levels by first being cut off from any mana at all, then being stabbed through by Shirou, then taking several full-on attacks from Gilgamesh, finally culminating with him suddenly reappearing when he should have disappeared long ago, just in time to both save Rin and then finish off Gilgamesh, yet still managing to stay around long enough to have a good-bye talk with Rin. Talk about hard to get rid of...
  • Also done to Lancer in the same route, who gets impaled on his own spear (which is supposed to cause certain death), but hangs around out of sheer willpower long enough to drive off an antagonist, save Rin, and set the entire place on fire once she leaves.
• Glas in Fear Effect gets his arm chopped off by Mr. Lam and is left hanging on a hook inside a meat locker. After conversing with Wee Ming, she bandages up his arm and he passes out from his wound, presumably dying from blood loss. After some progression in the story, Glas wakes up and frees himself, and is no worse for wear other than his lost arm, which prevents him from dual wielding pistols.
• Final Fantasy IV:
  • Scarmiglione comes back from the dead in a much more powerful and grotesque form after you beat him the first time on Mt. Ordeals, proclaiming that he, in no uncertain terms, will knock you all down!
  • Kain is apparently killed by an Earthquake spell from a Titan summoned by Rydia, but shows up later in the game perfectly fine, albeit under Golbez's mind control. However, it should be noted that Cecil survived the same earthquake spell unharmed, so Kain's survival does seem plausible.
• Final Fantasy XIV:
  • Lahabrea is seemingly killed off by Hydaelyn at the end of the '"A Realm Reborn'' story, but he turns up alive and well later on. It's explained that Ascian souls hang between the planes of life and death when their host body is killed and they just hang about until they recover their strength to hijack a new body. He does managed to get Killed Off for Real when Thordan in his primal form eats his soul.
  • Zenos at the end of the Stormblood story pulls off the same thing due to his artificial Echo. He hijacks the body of a random soldier until he manages to get back to his original body that is being possessed by Elidibus.
  • As revealed in the endgame storyline of Endwalker, this is natural in the Void: the nature of the imbalance of Light and Darkness that plunged the Thirteenth into unending night has also completely disrupted the cycle of life and death. No one actually dies in the Void: when a Voidsent's physical body is destroyed, their aether lingers about until it reconstitutes into a new body, unless their aether is devoured by someone else first — and even then, if the person who devoured them dies, they might be able to free themselves. The Memoriates who fought the Voidsent on the Thirteenth would defeat them by a different means — instead of trying to kill them, they would instead seal them away in a crystal prison called a memoria. Conversely, when a Voidsent dies in the Source, they become subject to that world's perfectly-functional cycle of life and death as their aether returns to The Lifestream. As such, Golbez's motivation for invading the Source is to free himself and the others of the Thirteenth from their stagnant undying existence.
• While Fire Emblem is well-known for characters being able to die permanently, the series has made the occasional exception. Two such examples are in Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, where characters who "die" in the tutorial campaign simply retreat so that they can return in the game proper (where they're more susceptible to perma-death,) and Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, where certain plot-critical characters (but not so critical that We Cannot Go On Without You) will suffer career-ending injuries and be relegated to the sidelines for the rest of the game.
• Forum community/MMORPG Gaia Online's storyline is notorious for this. Many of the main characters have been shot, dropped off freakishly tall towers, and then crushed by said tower, all in the same plot update. Every single person killed in that particular incident was later revealed to be alive and well in later updates. Two by use of Applied Phlebotinum, and the other two simply by turning out to be vampires. In fact, the only characters ever to be Killed Off for Real are characters introduced solely for making the current Generic Horror Movie Parody plausible.
• In God of War Ragnarök, Atreus recklessly releases Garm, the Hound of Hel, after which it proceeds to go on a rampage and tear rifts in the fabric of reality, unleashing Hel-Walkers upon the rest of the Nine Realms. Rather than get mad at him, Kratos comforts his son and assures him that they will fix his mistake together. This is easier said than done, as after Atreus fails to tame Garm the first time around, Kratos decides to try things his way and, after a long fight, breaks Garm's neck and leaves it for dead. As father and son attempt to leave Helheim, however, Garm catches up with them and unrelentingly attempts to kill them, healing itself everytime it is weakened; Atreus realizes that Garm cannot be killed because, being The Soulless, it is technically not alive in the first place. This gives Atreus an idea: rather than tame or kill Garm, both of which are impossible, he transfers the soul of Fenrir into Garm, which as an added side effect resurrects Fenrir in Garm's body and makes the new entity loyal to Atreus and Kratos.
• A key mechanic in The Godfather 2. If you don't kill an enemy Made Man using the specific "condition" needed, he'll just come back for more later.
• Prince Rurik in Guild Wars is brought back from the dead by the Lich at the end of Prophecies as an enemy. You fight and nobly kill him in order to end his suffering.
• In Jak II: Renegade, the mercenary Sig falls into a Bottomless Pit together with a giant Metal Head. He shows up at Daxter's party in the final cutscene, without a scratch.
• At one point in Kindergarten, the player has to get Monty attacked by the Ax-Crazy janitor, which is a death sentence if it happens to the player. Monty, however, will survive the beating and lie twitching on the floor, with the janitor estimating that he'll recover in a year or two. In Kindergarten 2, which takes place the very next day, Monty has been confined to a wheelchair as a result, but is otherwise just fine.
• Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories: Part of Ansem, Seeker of Darkness (the Big Bad of Kingdom Hearts) still survives in Riku's heart, but he lacks a physical form for most of the game. Riku has to beat him as the Final Boss to conquer the darkness in his own heart.
• In Knights of the Old Republic, Darth Revan was killed when Malak bombarded the bridge of his flagship with turbolasers. He manages to come back, destroy Malak's plans, and kill him anyway.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • In A Link to the Past, Link nearly kills Agahnim, but the crafty sorcerer sends the hero to the Dark World before Link can finish the job.
  • In Ocarina of Time, after Link defeats Ganondorf, he and Zelda have to escape the castle, only for Ganondorf to climb out of the ruins and transform into Ganon for one final fight.
  • Twilight Princess:
    • Ganondorf again as the Sages try to execute him; he survives and kills his killer with the sword before being banished to the world of Twilight. Ganon does this quite a lot throughout the franchise, as while he possesses the Triforce of Power he's effectively immortal, even to weapons forged by the gods themselves (which can usually nonetheless seal him away for hundreds of years at a time). And even when he is actually killed, he invariably gets resurrected or reincarnated anyway.
    • After Stallord is seemingly defeated and his skull is lying motionless, Link uses the Spinner to raise the central platform into a pillar, only for the skull to reveal itself to be perfectly okay and attack Link, forcing a second round of the fight.
    • Once Armogohma is defeated, Link does the standard victory pose as the victory fanfare plays... only to be brought to a halt as Link realizes that the giant eye in Armogohma's back is actually the real Armogohma. Fortunately, this time it can be killed in one slash.
  • In The Wind Waker, after Link beats the first form of Puppet Ganon, the normal victory theme plays with Link dancing, until it is revealed that it still has two more forms.
  • In Phantom Hourglass, when Bellum is defeated by Link, he falls, and is believed to be dead, although Oshus's power has not yet returned. He believes it will eventually, but guess who attacks them later on... and guess who regains all his power once we officially see Bellum turn to sand and explode.
  • Hyrule Warriors: The DLC reveals that Cia somehow survived her last stand and is being life-drained by Phantom Ganon via a shadowy doppelganger.
• Ghaleon appears to be dead after you defeat him in Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete, but the fact that he leaves a body behind instead of fading into nothingness like everything else does is a big tip-off that he's not quite done. Sure enough, he gets up shortly thereafter to deliver a Final Speech before finally dying in an explosion of darkness.
• When Commander Shepard shows up on the Citadel in Mass Effect 2, they're stopped by security guards who observe that their records say that Shepard is dead. "I was only mostly dead. Try finding that option on government paperwork." Unusually for this trope, this is a lie. Shepard was first brain-dead (from lack of oxygen) and then dead-dead (from impact with a planet's surface) for about two years. Details on how their resurrection was accomplished are still uncertain.
• A lot of Metal Gear antagonists:
  • Vamp is shot in the forehead three times (justified by his healing factor) and, more implausibly, sinks to the bottom of some really light water and doesn't drown.
  • Liquid walks away from a chopper that goes up in flames the instant it crashes, survives having a bunch of Stinger missiles blowing up in his face, and comes back from a fall (which kills you if it happens to you) with nary a broken bone. His spirit lives on in his arm that was transplanted onto Ocelot, but this is subverted when it turns out that Ocelot used hypnosis to give himself a second personality which isn't really Liquid.
  • Big Boss is presumed dead at the end of Metal Gear, but survives to challenge you again in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. (Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain reveals how: The Big Boss you fought was a Body Double named Venom Snake.) And then he does it again: He survives that and returns at the end of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots to explain the series's Kudzu Plot so far and finally die for real from the new FOXDIE that killed Ocelot and EVA.
• Metroid:
  • Super Metroid: Big Bad Mother Brain pulls this one off twice in the epic Final Battle. First, Mother Brain appears as it does in the original NES Metroid game — stuck in a glass tank, attached to various life support systems, incapable of attacking on its own, and apparent missile fodder. Once enough damage is done, the entire structure holding Mother Brain in place will be blown away, and the brain will crash to the ground, seemingly defeated... until it starts to rise up into the air, newly attached as a head to a gigantic grotesque body, and emits a horrible shriek at Samus, letting her and the player know that she won't go down quite so easily this time around. Second, the reformed Mother Brain proves to be too much for Samus to handle, but the eponymous Super Metroid shows up at the last second to save Samus from the brink of death and seemingly incapacitate Mother Brain, transforming it into the same sepia coloring that the player has seen from the rest of the Super Metroid's previous (deceased) prey, and starts restoring Samus to full energy. Unfortunately, as this is happening, the final boss BGM continues to play — already never a good sign that the foe you're facing is truly defeated — but just to hammer the trope in, suddenly some drool and puffs of smoke emit from Mother Brain's mouth... cue the upcoming Tear Jerker scene where the Metroid sacrifices itself in a last-ditch effort to stop the revitalized Mother Brain's advance, followed by Mother Brain's third (and final) asskicking from Samus.
  • Ridley is the poster boy of the trope for the Metroid series. Ridley dies five times, the first four of which he comes back from. Subsequent appearances in the chronology (Metroid: Other M and Metroid Fusion) are merely clones, though his clone's appearance in Other M is enough to make Samus go through a terribly controversial Heroic BSoD.
• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor:
  • Midway through the game, Ratbag gets whacked in the head by the Hammer of Sauron and is left for dead. Come Middle-earth: Shadow of War, it's revealed that he survived when you find him in charge of the fortress at the Sea of Nurnen.
  • This can also apply to Orcs and Trolls throughout both games, who often survive your defeats to come back for another shot at you. Some of them can even survive being cut in two!
• Monkey Island:
  • The grand villain LeChuck, who is actually a ghost in the first game and is seemingly destroyed at the end of it, comes back as a zombie, a demon, and a ghost/zombie/demon over the course of the next three games.
  • In Tales of Monkey Island, both Guybrush and Morgan LeFlay are killed, but return in spirit form (the former in zombie) to combat LeChuck.
• Saya from Namco × Capcom is killed by Reiji with a Boom, Headshot! from his revolver. Cue Endless Frontier and Project × Zone, where she's still alive and kicking with Reiji and Xiaomu on her tail while all three do not know why she's back alive.
• In Nier, you fight a robot named P-33 aka Beepy. It seems to be killed at the end of Junk Heap, but it's revealed in the short story The Fire of Prometheus that it repaired itself and helped the other robots gain sentience.
• Part of The Reveal in Overlord I is that the previous Overlord, whom you believed dead, is in fact possessing the body of the Wizard, and has been using him to corrupt the heroes who defeated him.
• Pikmin 2 has some enemies that, after they're defeated and left alone for a while, slowly recover their health and eventually come back to life.
• In Portal, the credits song indicates that GLaDOS isn't dead, even after she's been taken apart and incinerated.
• In Receiver 2 the Killdrones don't bleed out or feel pain, so they won't stop trying their damndest to kill you until they've been rendered utterly inert by a shot to the battery, camera or ammo box (Assuming they don't have a round chambered). If you shoot out a turret's motor it can still shoot straight ahead, if you destroy its IR processor it'll just take longer to start shooting, if you take out a taser drone's engine it can still zap you while it's on the floor. This can easily trick you into thinking that something isn't a threat only to be hit by a stray ricochet or for a turret to fire its chambered round into your chest.
• Resident Evil loves playing with this trope:
  • The original Resident Evil:
    • In several endings, Albert Wesker is impaled by the Tyrant, and is presumed dead up until Code Veronica, where he turns out to have survived and becomes the Big Bad of the series. According to Wesker's report file in Code Veronica, he planned this by injecting himself with some (unnamed) virus that would give him super speed, super strength, and preserve his mind — but it could only be activated by him almost dying. Not even Capcom could believe something that ridiculous, so they then retconned their retcon by simply having him disappear during your battle with the Tyrant in one (apparently canon) ending of the Resident Evil Nintendo GameCube remake. Which was re-retconned in Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles as showing Wesker being impaled by the Tyrant, rising from the dead as a superhuman, and being highly pissed that the place is about to blow.
      
      However, it should be noted that it is possible to beat the original game with an ending in which Wesker does not get stabbed by the Tyrant. The game franchise does not specify which ending officially counts as canon. Furthermore, if certain conditions are met, instead of Wesker being killed by the Tyrant, you can find his body decapitated by a Chimera in the self destruct control room. The Battle Game in the Saturn version even has a zombie Wesker. Seems he was going to be Killed Off for Real, but Capcom changed their mind and saved that for Resident Evil 5.
    • Also in the GameCube remake, if you assume that the bodies of the zombies you shot are staying there to avert Everything Fades, you're in for a very nasty surprise in about an hour when they get back up stronger and faster than ever. In The Umbrella Chronicles, all the zombies you killed in the first mansion mission get up in time to serve as the enemies during the second mission when you back-track out, with Chris even evoking the trope:
      Chris: I thought we already killed them!
    • In the remake, the following absurdity can occur: You have to fight Lisa Trevor on a platform of some sort, surrounded by a huge pit on all sides. If you fall off, it's an instant death. If you play as Chris, Wesker backs you up by firing on Lisa. However, it's possible for Wesker to get hit by Lisa and fall into the pit. If that happens, he'll still somehow turn up none the worse for wear in the Lab final battle, with absolutely no explanation. If you choose Jill, Barry Burton helps fight Lisa, and if he dies, then he's Killed Off for Real.
    • The remake also does this to the first boss, Yawn the giant snake, in Jill's story. If you saved Richard, he will assist you in fighting the snake. The snake will collapse after taking enough damage, but it then gets second wind and attacks again, prompting Richard to shove Jill out of the way and take the fatal blow, being swallowed whole.
  • Resident Evil 2:
    • Ada Wong dies either by falling into a Bottomless Pit or being slammed against a computer console. No matter which way she "dies", she always appears at the end of the scenario B story, where she gives Leon or Claire a rocket launcher to kill the relentless Tyrant monster once and for all. It's also revealed in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis's epilogues that she survived. Resident Evil The Dark Side Chronicles has a bonus mission where you get to see how she did it: badly injured and with a bit of help from Wesker, she limped through hordes of zombies and monsters and stowed away on an escaping Umbrella chopper.
    • William Birkin gets shot to hell by a machine-gun-wielding Umbrella soldier, but doesn't die right away. He uses the last of his strength to inject himself with the G-Virus.
  • Jack Krauser in Resident Evil 4 has this as well. It appears that he's Killed Off for Real in the final battle with Leon, only for him to appear and be killed at least three more times in Ada's mini game that is taken as canon. Fans still believe that he's alive, assuming he got off the island in time.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • If any video game villain embodies this trope more than Ridley, it's Dr. Eggman. At the conclusion of most of the earlier Sonic games, Sonic has destroyed Eggman's mech and blown up his base, supposedly killing him as he is not seen again in the game, but he always escapes somehow and returns for the next game. Once his Joker Immunity became apparent, they even stopped pretending to kill him off in later games, often showing him after the defeat of the final boss. In fact, this serves as part of the plot for Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood. At the start of the game, Eggman is apparently killed when his battleship explodes while he is in it. Naturally, he's still alive. The trope is even lampshaded by the protagonists, many of whom suspect that Eggman is still alive before there's even any reason to suspect as much.
  • Happens to Shadow at the end of Sonic Adventure 2. He seemingly dies at the end of the game, falling from space and presumably burning up in the Earth's atmosphere. Come Sonic Heroes, he's alive and well, albeit suffering from amnesia. In a somewhat convoluted explanation, Shadow the Hedgehog reveals that Eggman somehow managed to save him.
• Star Wars: The Old Republic:
  • At the end of the Ilum storyline, Arc Villain Darth Malgus is dropped down a Bottomless Pit in a Space Station that then explodes. Twelve in-game years later, he reappears in the Jedi Under Siege expansion being forced to serve the new Sith Emperor,^note either Darth Acina or Darth Vowrawn, depending on which side the PC took in the Iokath storyline with no explanation for how he survived Hammer Station.
  • On the Imperial side, the Battle of Corellia in the Onslaught expansion ends with Hero Antagonist Jedi Tau Idair collapsing a building on herself in an attempt to take the PC and Darth Malgus with her. She reappears in a cutscene ahead of the "Old Wounds" storyline no worse for wear.
• StarCraft: Alexei Stukov is shot and killed near the end of the Terran campaign in StarCraft: Brood War, and the UED gives him a funeral ceremony and blasts his casket off into space. He inexplicably returns in StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, where apparently his body was taken by Dr. Narud and used for experiments, turning him into an advanced human/zerg hybrid.
• M. Bison of the Street Fighter series has apparently been killed off several times throughout the series, only to come back in the next game. Chronologically, his first death occurs in Street Fighter Alpha 3, in which his body is destroyed by the Psycho Drive, but his consciousness survived and he receives a new host body for the Street Fighter II series, which doesn't have the same abilities that his "original" body from the Alpha series had. Apparently Bison's body is destroyed again at the end of Super Street Fighter II Turbo, this time by Akuma's "Raging Demon" technique, only for him to get another new host body for the Street Fighter IV series (which reveals that he has a factory of host bodies). He then dies and returns again in Street Fighter V, where he gets blasted with a pure Hadoken by Ryu. Apparently he's really dead this time.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • In Super Mario Galaxy 2, the final fight with Bowser seems to be just like the previous two fights, only with more attacks from Bowser. You beat him, he falls into the darkness, and he loses the Grand Star just like in his previous battles. Before Mario can claim the star however, Bowser quickly rises up and eats it, becoming more massive than he ever has been in his history. Epic battle ensues as Bowser tries to fly closer to Mario and punch him while Mario leaps from meteorite to meteorite and smashes Bowser with a few of them.
  • This happens with Bowser again in New Super Mario Bros. Wii. After Mario defeats Bowser just like he does in Super Mario Bros., Kamek makes him giant, and he reemerges from the lava for the final phase of the battle.
  • In Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, Elder Princess Shroob is defeated, and turns into a mushroom. At the end of the game, she is eaten by Bowser, and the two become the final boss of the game before Elder Princess Shroob's spirit is finally destroyed.
  • In Super Paper Mario, Dimentio seemingly blows himself up in what appears to be an attempt to kill one of the protagonists. It turns out that he was setting him up so he could possess him and become the final boss of the game.
• In scenario 11B of Super Robot Wars Compact 3, Tekko Oni has arrived in town and demands that Getter Robo battle him. The Getter team responds by deploying Shin Getter Robo. Ryouma recognizes Tekko Oni, who says that he has come for their death-match. Hayato and Benkei can't believe that Tekko Oni is still alive. Tekko Oni says that his Tekko Ki can only be commanded by him, so it is truly him, and Ryouma asks why he wants to battle them to the death now, as the Hyakki Empire is destroyed. Tekko Oni says that it's now that they can guarantee no interference. Last time, Hidler forced him to deploy the unfinished Tekkou Ki and intervened in their fight. Ryouma says that they have no reason to fight, but Tekko Oni says that his dream is defeating Getter Robo. Ryouma asks if they cannot fight elsewhere, like on the soccer field like before, but Tekko Oni says that he no longer wants that. He joins the group after an Enemy Mine situation.
• System Shock's resident diabolical AI, SHODAN, is not destroyed at the end of the first game. Nor at the end of the second game, apparently.
• Chief minister Onsen Kinugawa, the Big Bad of Way of the Samurai 4, manages to survive being shot in the shoulder and a fall into a pot of boiling water. The only thing this seems to have done is turn his skin red and steaming.
• Amanda Evert in Tomb Raider: Legend is shown to be trapped behind a gate while underwater and her leg being stuck under a rock. She then gets crushed by falling rubble. Logically, Lara assumes Amanda is dead and swims away before she drowns as well. Cut to the present and Lara discovers Amanda is actually alive and well, but is very pissed at her for leaving her to die.
• Varth: Operation Thunderstorm: Just as DUO in the body of DELTA-7 seemed to go down in Stage 29, it gets back up with repairs in a last ditch attempt to kill the heroes during Stage 30.
• The Wind Road has the unnamed Brutal Butcher boss who's fought twice in a row, in two different boss fights. You kill him a second time and leave, but the cutscene that suspiciously focuses on his hand shows his fingers twitching. So nope, no surprise when the same boss re-appears in yet another later level for a fight.
• Multiple cases in World of Warcraft:
  • Illidan Stormrage, the Well-Intentioned Extremist, is struck down and left bleeding on the ground. However, we later find out that he did not die.
  • Magtheridon, a demon Illidan defeated and supposedly killed, is revealed to have been imprisoned instead. Admittedly, Illidan later used his blood to empower an army of enhanced orc soldiers.
  • Maiev Shadowsong, the night elf warden defeated by Illidan, is also revealed to have been imprisoned instead of being killed, which makes even less sense since she is of no use for him and the only reason she lived was to kill him anyways. Guess who ends up killing him? Worth noting is that Maiev was employed as Illidan's warden for his ten thousand year imprisonment. Small-minded as Illidan was, he had the intent to do the same to her.
  • Muradin Bronzebeard is believed to be dead (though you can say his death scene in Warcraft III is questionable at best), then turns out to just have Laser-Guided Amnesia and survived the event.
  • Several old classic bosses are confirmed alive in 'Cataclysm. Including Hogger, Ragnaros, Balnazzar, and Nefarian.
  • In the comic about Varian Wrynn, it is revealed that assassin Garona Halforcen and Twilight's Hammer leader Cho'gall are still alive.
  • There's also Kael'thas "merely a setback" Sunstrider. The lore says that he's dead now, but since Tempest Keep was merely a setback, fans would not be surprised at all if it turned out that the Magister's Terrace was too. The quest to beat him in the Magister's Terrace is even called "Hard to Kill".
• It happened to Leon Ferris in The Callisto Protocol, who turned out to become the final boss of the game as Subject Alpha and has a personal grudge against Jacob. Granted, his corpse was never witnessed by Jacob when he was presumed dead after getting pushed out of the window and fell down.

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