WARNING: This is a subpage of a Death Trope, so all spoilers are UNMARKED. Read with extreme caution.
- Stahn, the main protagonist of from Tales of Destiny, is killed offscreen by the villain Barbatos in Tales of Destiny 2 before the game's story even begins. However, this is averted by the Reset Button in the end.
- Kaileena from Prince of Persia: Warrior Within plays a pivotal character and the main antagonist in the game who is spared by the Prince at the end of the true (hidden) ending...only to be killed off within the first 15 to 20 minutes of the third game in the series, Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones. Subverted in that she continues to narrate the game after her "death", and is ultimately restored to her true form once the Prince defeats the Vizier.
- Simone Taylor was one of three characters to survive 5 Days a Stranger, the first game of the Chzo Mythos. (The second character would come down with a case of Chuck Cunningham Syndrome shortly afterward, and the third was the player.) The second game, 7 Days a Skeptic, is set in the distant future, and the player finds a letter that mentions, among other things, that Simone was killed very shortly after the events of 5 Days. The third game, Trilby's Notes, goes back and actually is set very shortly after the events of 5 Days and the prologue/tutorial ends with the discovery of Simone's body.
- Johnny Cage is killed off off-screen prior to the events of Mortal Kombat 3, then brought Back from the Dead in 4, Liu Kang is killed off at the start of Deadly Alliance before being brought back as a zombie later, and a large number of the Earthrealm warriors are killed at the beginning of Deception. They are all brought Back from the Dead for Armageddon, only for nearly all of them to die before Raiden sets things right just before Shao Kahn finishes him off.
- Vic Vance is killed in a gun battle mere minutes into Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, but later appears in its prequel, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories as the protagonist. This trope only works, however, if one plays the games in chronological order.
- In Grand Theft Auto V: in Trevor's introductory cutscene, he walks up to Johnny Klebitz (the lead protagonist of the Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned) and, after a short conversation, proceeds to bash the latter's brains in. The mission immediately following this has Trevor massacre all of the surviving members from the Alderney chapter, including Terry Thorpe and Clay Simons. Additionally, Ashley Butler can be killed by Trevor as she's grieving over Johnny's body; if not, she is revealed in a news report to have died during a meth orgy.
- Bottles in Banjo-Kazooie serves to teach Banjo and Kazooie new moves. In the opening cutscene of Banjo-Tooie, he gets killed off by Gruntilda, with some Lampshade Hanging: "He wasn't the favorite character in Banjo-Kazooie anyway," Kazooie says. He comes back to life in the end, though.
- Liam Spencer from The Getaway. You don't even know he'd survived the events of the first game until you find his corpse in the second level of The Getaway: Black Monday.
- Harry, the protagonist of the first Silent Hill game, is killed in the third (since the second was a standalone story) after being ambushed in his home by a boss-type mook, without his weapons.
- Instead of attempting to Road Cone which girl ends up with the protagonist from the first Sentimental Graffiti, the second game opens up with the new protagonist meeting all of the girls at the first's funeral (he died in a car accident).
- In Killzone 2, the heroes of the original Killzone all appear as Older and Wiser NPCs helping the new player character Sev, until they all end up getting killed over the course of the game. Killzone 3 confirms that only Rico survived.
- Brad Vickers survives the events of the first Resident Evil, only to make a hidden cameo in Resident Evil 2 as an overpowered zombie who carries with him the key to the wardrobe locker. In the beginning of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, it turns out that Brad was hunted down and killed by the Nemesis a day before the events of the previous game.
- Both Jill Valentine and Albert Wesker were falsely presumed dead for two years in Resident Evil 5, after she tackled him over a cliff.
- In Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, after the previous game ended with him Faking the Dead, Arkham Series Batman is brought back only to end up Brainwashed and Crazy before being Killed Off for Real by Harley Quinn.note
- 16 possible party members from the first Baldur's Gate game who make an appearance of sorts as NPCs in the sequel. Five are party-joinable members: of the rest, over half end up dead. Of particular note are Dynaheir and Khalid, who are killed off shortly before the game even begins - this being of import because the sequel assumes they were in your party at the end of the first game (which is highly likely assuming you played a Good alignment and met them early on in the main questline: the "canonical" party includes them and their respective partners Minsc and Jaheira, both party-joinable but newly single in the sequel, and Imoen who turns out to be your sister, and makes major plot points out of all of these events.) Of the rest: Faldorn ends up as an evil sidequest boss you have to kill, Montaron and Xzar both die (the former on-screen, the latter off-screen) as a result of Harper/Zhentarim factional bickering, Ajantis is killed by your own party while both of you are under an illusion spell and you don't even get to learn his identity unless you have a paladin or knight in your own party, Tiax dies in a battle in the asylum, Safana is killed by werewolves in a battle which Coran will probably also die unless the players win the fight fast enough, though the sequel comic series has him alive and well. With Viconia and Edwin also being party-joinable (until the former is killed in Baldur's Gate III), only Quayle and Garrick actually survive their appearance as non-joinable NPCs. On top of that, this was originally meant to be the fate of Imoen, until her popularity with the fandom made the developers change their mind and restructure the plot of the game around her.
- Metal Gear:
- Master Miller was one of Solid Snake's radio support crew in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. In the sequel, Metal Gear Solid, Miller gets killed off-screen and impersonated by Solid's evil twin, Liquid Snake, a fact that isn't even revealed until it is casually mentioned just as Liquid drops the ruse.
- Naomi made it through MGS relatively intact, and was just about the only villainous character to be redeemed (sort of) instead of killed or arrested. In Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, she dies of spontaneous magical nanocancer from nowhere for no real plot reason other than to make Otacon cry. Overlaps with Strangled by the Red String, since Otacon had never even met her until this game.
- MGS4 also kills off two rather important characters from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, namely Para-Medic and Mr. Sigint, by retroactively establishing that they were actually DARPA Chief Donald Anderson and Dr. Clark, two characters who were killed offscreen. Dr. Clark never appeared on-screen in MGS (being killed two years prior to the events of the game) and was originally referred as a male in the script (with an an attempted Hand Wave that few people had ever met her in person).
- In Double Dragon, Billy and Jimmy Lee spent the entirety of the game trying to rescue their friend Marian from the Black Warriors. In the sequel, Double Dragon II: The Revenge, she gets gunned down at the start of the game by the gang's leader, rendering the whole point of its predecessor moot.
- Irene Lew falls seemingly to her death from a cliff after being chased by Ryu Hayabusa's evil doppelganger in the opening sequence of Ninja Gaiden III. However, it later turns out that she survived her fall and was really hiding from her adversaries.
- The manual hints that the events of Ninja Gaiden III occurs before Ashtar's rise to power in Ninja Gaiden II, which makes Irene's survival a bit less surprising to anyone who reads between the lines — as does the fact that Ryu still has the Dragon Sword, which he lost at the end of II.
- After surviving the events of ObsCure, Kenny gets killed in the sequel — in the most drawn-out, painful way possible, involving a Face–Heel Turn. Oh, and the other two heroes who don't return are eventually implied to have been horribly killed off-screen.
- Chrono Cross introduces a computer AI, reveals it to be Robo's AI transplanted into a computer by Lucca, and then unceremoniously deletes the AI in a single text dump, accomplishing nothing except shock value.
- Most of the cast in Chrono Trigger were killed offscreen, missing in action, or erased from existence before Chrono Cross even begins.
- Crono and Marle presumably died when Guardia fell, Lucca is killed by Lynx and Harle, Frog/the original Glenn probably dies a natural death, Ayla isn't even born yet, (as you can play as her implied mother when she was a child, sent to the present through a gate), and Robo is killed onscreen. The only character who is still alive is Magus, who is heavily implied to be Guile who erased his memories.
- Most of the cast in Chrono Trigger were killed offscreen, missing in action, or erased from existence before Chrono Cross even begins.
- Wing Commander loves these:
- Wing Commander II - The Tiger's Claw is destroyed in the intro sequence, killing many of the characters from the first game (eg. Halcyon, Shotglass).
- Wing Commander III - Similar to the above, the Concordia from Wing Commander II is seen crashed on a planet. Also, Angel is executed by the Kilrathi as part of the opening sequence, though the full scene isn't shown until later.
- There's also Hobbes' Face–Heel Turn, leading to his death.
- Wing Commander IV - Vagabond is killed a short way into the game.
- Averted, however, with the TCS Victory, which is said by Maniac to have been made into a museum.
- Wing Commander Prophecy - Christopher Blair is missing in action/presumed dead by the end of the first act, but then recovered, only to be missing in action/presumed dead again by the end of the game.
- And Hawk is killed, a little after halfway through.
- In the Fire Emblem series:
- Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light allows you to recruit an enemy general named Lorenz. In Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem, he is the boss of Chapter 1 and absolutely will die, either in combat with Marth or as a result of injuries sustained in battle with Lang's occupation forces. Even in the Video Game Remake, you can't save him.
- Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade has several inversions due to its status as a prequel to Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade. Canas' ending has him and his wife unceremoniously killed in a blizzard, Hector is captured and killed early on, Hector and Eliwood's wives are both said to be dead, Nino's twin children are orphans, Karla died of illness. Lucius is implied to be the bishop who ran the orphanage Lugh, Raigh, and Chad lived in who was killed early in Bern's invasion, and Sue only has concern if her grandfather is alive, not her father (Rath). Sheesh.
- In Diablo II, the helpful townsfolk from the first game are skeletal scenery when you return to Tristram...except for Deckard Cain, of course, and poor Griswold, who is now the zombie Level Boss. On the plus side, Peg-Leg Wirt's body yields a buttload of coin and a surprising magic item.
- Even better example? The Rogue is corrupted by Andariel and becomes Blood Raven, the Sorcerer goes insane and becomes the Summoner, the imposter sub-boss of Act 2; and the Warrior becomes the Dark Wanderer — the new host of Diablo himself.
- Most of the cast of Diablo II is either dead or insane come Diablo III, including Warriv, everyone in the city of Harrogath, and the Sorceress (who was killed by the Assassin). And Deckard Cain himself, who survived the first two games, dies early on in the game.
- Mujari and possibly Teresa and Logan die in Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow. Since Sony has officially abandoned the series, we will never see it resolved. Alima Haddad, the chopper pilot who first appeared in Omega Strain, also dies.
- In Neverwinter Nights 2, between the original campaign and Mask Of The Betrayer, many of the main character's companions are killed off when they seemed to be in sight of safety. All characters who weren't killed in the final battle were making their escape, but most of them are killed. The ones that survive are decided by how the player answers certain questions in the expansion.
- Mass Effect:
- Navigator Pressly is killed during the opening sequence of Mass Effect 2 when the Normandy is attacked by the Collectors. Commander Shepard also dies, but is revived two years later...and given a new Normandy into the bargain.
- For a non-character example, the original Normandy's destruction in Mass Effect 2 counts. It's Shepard's primary base of operations in the first game, so most players spend a substantial chunk of gameplay wandering its halls between missions and getting acquainted with the crew. You get to walk through it in exactly one level in the second game — when it's being destroyed by the Collectors, and its entire third deck is exposed to the vacuum of space. Though Shepard does get a new Normandy after joining up with Cerberus, its design and interior layout are drastically different.
- The third game promises to allow you to resolve all those story arcs continuing them from wherever you left them in the first, their lack of interactive progression in the second game is to keep the amount of possibilities in the 4 digit range. Expect the rest of the first game as well as the returning Mass Effect 2 cast to once again be susceptible to Anyone Can Die. Indeed, there's exactly one recurring main character who is completely without a potential Plotline Death in the entire series, and therefore not susceptible to this trope: Joker, who can only die via Nonstandard Game Over in the second game during the brief period the player controls him. Liara almost counts, as she can only die towards the very end of the game if your Military Strength is too low.
- Executor Pallin (the top cop of C-Sec) was absent in the second game, with his role mostly taken by newcomer Captain Bailey. Pallin is later killed off in a comic book sidestory by Captain Bailey.
- The downloadable content for Left 4 Dead 2 ("The Passing") reveals that Bill sacrificed himself to save the survivors of the original Left 4 Dead before they met the cast of the sequel.
- The normal ending of Fatal Frame III heavily implies that Mio from the second game fell victim to the curse.
- Samantha Clarke in Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance. She dies in the opening cinematic before you can even create your profile.
- Orthopox-13 in Destroy All Humans! 2. To be fair, he didn't confront much of the action in the first game, but it says something that he was nuked in space in the intro to the sequel; in fact, the crashing debris of the mothership is what creates the setting for the prologue. He does get better fairly quickly, though.
- In Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, Ezio's Uncle Mario is killed off in the first half hour.
- Saints Row:
- In Saints Row 2, Aisha gets beheaded by Jyunichi after faking her death in the first game.
- Johnny Gat is offed before the end of the second mission, in Saints Row: The Third. Subverted in IV, when it's revealed that he was abducted by Zinyak instead...apparently, Gat was so badass that he felt it was necessary to take him out of the picture years before he was ready to invade Earth.
- Then, in Saints Row IV, Oleg and Josh are killed when Zinyak destroys the Earth. Naturally, it can probably be assumed that everyone else who didn't get put into the simulator met the same fate, though those two are the only ones specifically shown when it happens.
- In Modern Warfare 3, Griffin (the sergeant who assisted you in the MW1 mission "Crew Expendable"), Russian loyalist Sgt. Kamarov and former main character 'Soap' MacTavish die.
- Most of the Servants' backgrounds and ambitions were explored in the first two routes of Fate/stay night, so come the third, Heavens Feel, almost everyone is killed off quickly in the first few few days. To be particularly egregious, most of the deaths are also rather unceremonious. Lancer, Caster and Assassin get killed off almost immediately and with little to no resistance; Gilgamesh barely gets a word in edgewise; Archer and Berserker are killed/absorbed in their first fights; Saber (though not killed) is beaten early by sheer plot device.
- Helena Pierce suffers this at the very beginning of Borderlands 2, being killed off-screen and the audio-logs of her death retrievable by the players as a small foretaste of what a Smug Snake Handsome Jack really is.
- Rather infamously, Joshua Fireseed kicks the bucket in the opening cutscene of Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion to make way for his younger siblings taking the mantle of Turok. Considering he was the proverbial face of the series (albeit the cover artist of the first game used Joshua instead of its real protagonist Tal'Set), most fans didn't exactly agree with this, and it's not helped by the game's Contested Sequel status. It says a lot that the following game, Evolution, dialed itself far back to go for a Prequel story with Tal'Set rather than try to continue with Josh and Danielle, but then a wholly independent set of problems happened.
- Subverted in Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair; one of the characters claims to be Byakuya Togami, a returning character from the first game, and then ends up as the first murder victim. However, he's actually the Ultimate Impostor. (And by the end of the game it turns out he's not exactly dead either.)
- In Battlefield 4, this is the fate of two Battlefield 3 characters: Dimanote and Kovicnote , although Dima is the only one whose history in the prior game is referenced at all.
- Detective Bravura was a Hero Antagonist in the first Max Payne, and Da Chief in the 2nd. He shows up early in the game during a firefight in which Max is ambushed, outnumbered and unarmed, appearing just long enough to shout a warning before he's gunned down. It's only technically a subversion that he lived (probably helped that he was shot in a hospital,) since for the rest of the game he's in critical condition, assumed dead any second, and has no further bearing on the plot. A flashback scene in the 3rd game indicates he died of a heart attack between the 2nd and 3rd game, leaving Max with no influential allies left to get him out of the trouble he's always getting in.
- The Walking Dead:
- Season two kicks off with Omid, Christa, and Clementine having somehow reunited after the Downer Ending of Season One. They're in good spirits, they've found shelter, and they're having a chipper conversation about what to name Christa's baby, due soon...and then Omid is shot by a bandit. Poor guy didn't even last ten minutes into the new season. And just for an extra punch to the gut, the baby that Christa was pregnant with back in Season 1? It's never shown, or even discussed after a 16-month Time Skip.
- Season two ends with Clementine choosing to kill either Jane or Kenny. A flashback early in season three shows the survivor dies during the Time Skip regardless: Jane killed herself shortly thereafter when she found out she was pregnant*. Kenny died in a car crash while teaching Clementine to drive, though that at least happened several years later.
- Director Lazard in Crisis Core seems to be doing fine in his latest appearance, but just randomly dies after Zack fights Genesis at the end of the game.
- Played for Laughs in the fan-made flash FF Crisis Core in 3 Minutes
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Zack: Hey Lazard, still alive? How come you don't appear in the next game?Lazard: Gah! Instant Dead by Damn-I'm-Not-In-The-Sequel! - Played for Laughs in the fan-made flash FF Crisis Core in 3 Minutes
- After being rescued in Time Crisis II, sometime before the fifth game, Christy Ryan is Killed Offscreen by Robert Baxter.
- Harvest Moon 64 is one of the few direct sequels in the franchise. If you marry Elli the game kills off her grandmother Ellen, who was a character in the original game. As the game takes place two generations in the future it's not "suddenly" to the characters however it is to gamers.
- Between Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, Capital Wasteland Brotherhood of Steel Elder Owyn Lyons dies of old age, and his daughter Sarah is either killed in battle or assassinated, resulting in the now grown Squire Maxson becoming Elder and reverting the chapter to the elitist and authoritarian ways similar to their West Coast counterparts but with nation-building in mind. Also, former Little Lamplight resident Lucy was killed by feral ghouls shortly after marrying and having a child with ex-mayor RJ MacCready.
- Cosette Cosmos, a recurring antagonist in Sunrider Mask of Arcadius, can be killed off at the end of Sunrider Liberation Day’s opening mission depending on choices the player made in the first game.
- No More Heroes:
- Bishop, the owner of Beef Head Video in the first game gets killed right after the first boss fight in No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle and his severed head delivered to Travis to spark his Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Lovikov is also killed at some point in-between the first and second games, and surprisingly both Destroyman and Letz Shake survive their deaths in the first game to show up for rematches (where they're killed again.)
- Bad Man, the father of Bad Girl in Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes, gets killed by FU shortly after the first boss fight in No More Heroes III, as an act of vengeance against Travis for having killed Mr. Blackhole earlier, and this causes another Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Meanwhile, Destroyman somehow survives his death in the second game to show up for another rematch (where he's killed yet again).
- The last time Wrinkly Kong is seen alive is in Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!. By the time of Donkey Kong 64, she's died of old age, but she comes back as a ghost to help out the five playable Kongs.
- Olivia DeMarco and Damien Cavanaugh, who in Dreamfall: The Longest Journey helped protagonist Zoë Castillo uncover a conspiracy by WATICorp, are both dead by the time the follow-up to the story, Dreamfall Chapters, begins. WATI's involvement is suspected, but not investigated or confirmed.
- In Sakura Wars 2: Thou Shalt Not Die, Shinnosuke Yamazaki/Aoi Satan, the main antagonist of the original game, is abruptly killed off by the Demon King/Kazuma Shinguji after the Flower Division defeats the former at the end of chapter 1.
- Brandy from Happy Tree Friends Adventures is shown buried in his own grave in HTFA Legends, after he debuted in HTFA6.
- Initially, it was assumed that all the characters from Tekken 2 who didn't return for Tekken 3 were killed by Ogre in the time skip between games. It's since been revealed that most of them were actually in hiding and the only character who actually was killed by him was King 1. Kuma 1 was also originally stated to have died of old age in the time skip, but was later stated to also be in hiding.
- The Last of Us Part II begins with Joel's capture and murder by a group of former Fireflies with a score to settle sometime after the events of the first game. The main plot begins after a Time Skip with flashbacks detailing the circumstances of Joel's death and pushes Ellie toward a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
- In Shin Megami Tensei IV, you last see Navarre when you evacuate him from the angel-controlled Mikado to Tokyo. In Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse, when he is reintroduced, it's revealed he unceremoniously got himself killed peeping on a Hunter bathing in a river. Specifically, his pants were down enough to make him trip, tangle his legs, and drown.Nozomi: ...Pig.
- Like a Dragon:
- Zig Zagged in Yakuza 2: Yukio Terada was introduced in Yakuza as a member of the Omi Alliance and a man that Kiryu's Parental Substitute Shintaro Kazama trusted implicitly; at the end of the first game, Kiryu promotes him to chairman of the Tojo Clan. Yakuza 2's plot kicks off when Terada is assassinated by Omi Alliance goons, which he reveals at the end of the game he faked to get Ryuji Goda to take over the Omi Alliance and invade Kamurocho; he is then killed (for real) five minutes later.
- In Yakuza 4, Goh Hamazaki comes back to help Taiga Saejima escape from prison, and eventually dies after protecting the latter's sister Yasuko.
- In Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories, Kelly Austin / Natsumi Higa, the only character who's appeared in every game in the series since the original Disaster Report, gets crushed to death by a collapsing building after pushing her students and the protagonist to safety.
- The avatars from the original Tee KO are shown as ghosts in Tee KO 2, implying their death. The only exception is the rabbit, who has visibly aged.
