Video game characters die a lot. Whether it’s missed jumps, running out of ammo during a shootout, or a supernatural being sneaking out of the shadows to grab them, player deaths tend to crop up a lot on a first playthrough. These deaths are not canonical, however, and players have come to accept that these aren’t really character deaths, but failure states that force them to retry.
There are characters who have died multiple times for real, however. From characters who stubbornly evade death to characters resurrected through science, these characters are determined to stay alive no matter how many times they’re knocked down.
10 Maria (Silent Hill 2)
One of the few friendly faces that Silent Hill 2 protagonist James Sunderland encounters in his trek through the titular town, Maria spends a lot of time getting killed and reappearing alive again in another place. What’s especially odd is that she doesn’t seem to remember anything about being attacked by Pyramid Head every time she shows up alive and well.
Of course, all this is the work of the supernatural energies of Silent Hill itself, as Maria isn’t real. Instead, she’s a manifestation of James’ grief and her deaths are him being forced to face the loss of his wife, in order to allow him to learn to move on in the better endings of the game.
9 2B/9S (Nier Automata)
Nier Automata stars two androids named 2B and 9S, fighting to clear the world of machine lifeforms in order to allow humanity to return to the planet. However, among the many twists and turns of Nier Automata’s plot it’s revealed that not all is as it seems and that the protagonists are locked in an endless cycle of death.
As androids, they can be revived in duplicate bodies through the upload of their consciousness to a central network, but due to a glitch, 9S’s memories are incomplete, and the two end up locked in a cycle where they end up repeating the same actions over and over, including their deaths.
8 Albert Wesker (Resident Evil)
In the first Resident Evil game, Albert Wesker was simply a member of S.T.A.R.S. who was secretly working for the Umbrella Corporation, and the exercise at the mansion was all part of a ruse to test out bioweapons. However, in an act of hubris, Wesker is killed by the Tyrant right at the end of the game, and from all accounts, he appears to be fully dead.
This is until he shows up alive and well in Code Veronica, now bursting with superpowers, and he would later show up in Resident Evil 5 as the game’s main villain, cementing him as the most iconic villain of the whole Resident Evil series too. Chris Redfield defeats him at the end of the game, but time will tell if he returns yet again, possibly with even more T-Virus enhancements than before.
7 Kratos (God of War)
Kratos is a man who became a god, so it’s not surprising to learn that he's difficult to kill. While there have been successful attempts to take him out, they’ve rarely stuck for long. His deaths in the original Greek trilogy of God of War saw him crushed by a pillar thrown by Ares, stabbed by Zeus, and thrown off Mount Olympus.
In all three instances, Kratos comes back by battling his way out of Hades, refusing to stay down, only to seemingly kill himself at the end of the third game. However, since he would then go on to move to the frozen north and start a family in the more recent games, it’s clear that death didn’t stick long either.
6 Ridley (Metroid)
Samus Aran’s nemesis, the draconic Space Pirate Ridley, is one of the most persistent bosses in the Metroid series. Appearing in almost every game in the series, he keeps returning despite being blasted by Samus time and time again.
However, it’s Space Pirate science that keeps bringing him back, as he returns as a cyborg named Meta Ridley in Metroid Prime, but then loses these implants by the time of Super Metroid (set after the Prime games), where Samus finally kills him for real. This still didn’t stop him from coming back as a clone in Metroid Other M or a parasitic imitation in Metroid Fusion, however.
5 Heihachi Mishima (Tekken)
Heihachi Mishima is a man who refuses to die. Ever since the first game, Heihachi has faced ordeals that would have been instant death for any normal person, and yet he keeps coming back. In the first Tekken, he is thrown off a cliff by his son. In the third game, Heihachi appears to have the life drained out of him by Ogre. Tekken 5’s opening movie even states “Heihachi Mishima is dead” as he’s exploded along with his dojo.
Tekken 7 seems to have ended this once and for all, though, as that game’s story mode sees a climactic battle against Kazuya end with Heihachi thrown into a lava pit. There is debate on whether Heihachi will return in Tekken 8, but past lore shows that it wouldn’t be strange for him to show up again.
4 Dracula (Castlevania)
In pop culture at large, Dracula is famously difficult to kill. This is also true in the Castlevania series, as the powerful vampire lord is the main recurring villain in every single game, his mysterious castle making an appearance every time he’s resurrected. It’s the fate of every Belmont family member to venture into the castle to find and kill Dracula every time.
Naturally, this means that every game is about finding and killing Dracula within this castle, with hopes that he won’t return. With twenty-six main titles in the Castlevania series, though, it’s yet to stick.
3 Ganondorf (The Legend of Zelda)
Officially, the Zelda series takes place in different periods of Hyrule’s history, and each Link and Zelda in the games is a different person with the same reincarnated spirit. However, this isn’t true of the main villain of the series, as Ganondorf is canonically the same person each time.
This is despite the fact he has been killed off multiple times, usually through a final blow from the Master Sword. To solve this, most Zelda games have a secondary villain, usually one who found a way to revive the spirit of Ganon. It’s not surprising that fans expect him to return yet again in Tears of the Kingdom, despite being defeated in its direct predecessor, Breath of the Wild.
2 The Chosen Undead (Dark Souls)
While character deaths have been ignored for the purposes of this list, the deaths of The Chosen Undead in Dark Souls are canon. This is because they are undead, a curse within the world of Dark Souls that prevents true death and instead sees the afflicted brought back at bonfires.
This means that every time the player messes up a dodge roll or parry and gets skewered, it actually happens to the mysterious silent protagonist. However, this also creates a process called Hollowing, where each resurrection causes the undead to lose humanity and become a shambling walking corpse, a fate the player would do well to try and avoid.
1 Most Of The Mortal Kombat Cast
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Mortal Kombat has a cast of characters with a tendency for being killed off at some point or another, both from a gameplay perspective every time a Fatality is performed, and from a story perspective, as godly magic, time travel, and alternate dimensions have seen repeated deaths of characters.
Even iconic ninjas Scorpion and Sub-Zero have died several times, usually through killing each other, only to be resurrected or replaced soon afterward. In a world where everyone’s getting their spines ripped out in every match, it might be a good thing that death doesn’t stick.