The Top 11 Video Game Resurrections

Despite its colorful aesthetic and comic book superhero inspirations, Overwatch and its sequel are both games overflowing with death. Characters are dying every few minutes, sometimes seconds, but thankfully Mercy’s Resurrect ability comes to the rescue. As the name of the ability implies, she has the powerful ability to bring characters back to life. It may not be the best resurrection on this list, hence its placement at the bottom, but it is certainly the most resurrection.

Link is low on this list for an important reason. Despite waking up in the Shrine of Resurrection at the beginning of Breath of the Wild after being lifelessly dragged there by Zelda 100 years prior following a brutal defeat… we don’t know that he was ever truly dead. It might have been more of a “mostly dead” situation, as explored in the 1987 film, The Princess Bride. The lore surrounding the situation is intentionally vague, but he seemed pretty dead to me. And you don’t sleep 100 years if you’re alive. That’s science.

Sonic has had some bizarre life experiences. He lived inside a pinball machine for a while, he briefly had really garish teeth for reasons no one ever figured out, and at one time, he transformed into a werehog. Despite those adventures, however, Sonic ‘06 is arguably his most bizarre. Sonic the Hedgehog was pronounced dead, but thankfully Princess Elise – a human woman – was able to channel the power of the Chaos Emeralds into a kiss that brought Sonic back to life and turned him into Super Sonic. Sonic would die and resurrect a few years later in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, but without a kiss.

Ridley, or as his close friends know him, Cunning God of Death, is Samus’ archnemesis. The creature killed Samus’ parents and she, understandably, has never forgiven him for that act of violence. She thought she secured her revenge in Super Metroid, but he keeps getting resurrected, which Samus presumably thinks is quite annoying. Sometimes he gets resurrected as a clone. Sometimes he gets resurrected as a robot. No matter the case, Samus gets upset and shoots him a whole lot.

When I was young, I never understood why the game was called ‘Mortal’ Kombat when characters were literally getting their heads ripped off, only to return for another fight a few minutes later. ‘Immortal’ Kombat seemed like a more accurate title, but I learned later that there is actually a whole dang story and some characters were actually dying. Not Scorpion, though. The yellow ninja begins his narrative as a resurrected, undead warrior seeking revenge for his own death and the deaths of those close to him.

In Mass Effect 1, we all meticulously designed our version of Commander Shepard, carefully deciding their backstory, facial features, and hairstyle. At the beginning of Mass Effect 2, the Geth blew them up and they died before the title screen even appeared. Thankfully, the mysterious Cerberus organization used its Lazarus Project technology to bring them back to life. It may not have been magic, but it still counts as a resurrection.

I admit we are already treading into spoiler territory by including Metal Gear Solid 3 on this list, which is a game I suspect many will be playing for the first time soon with the Delta remake, so I will use our website’s tools to allow you to opt in to reading this entry.

Naked Snake dies at a certain point in Metal Gear Solid 3, and it’s not from eating rats and snakes without cooking them. Instead, he jumps from the top of a big waterfall. Don’t worry – he gets an earful from his superiors for his shortsighted escape plan. Thankfully, as we all should, he keeps a revival pill embedded in one of his teeth and uses it to rejoin the land of the living. But not before encountering every animal and enemy he killed in the game up to that point.

In the original Pokémon Red and Blue, there was another important choice to be made after picking Charmander as your starter (who can even remember the other options). Do you take the Dome or the Helix Fossil? Would you rather have Kabuto or Omanyte in your party? Regardless of what choice you make, you must commit an affront to God (AKA Arceus) by bringing a long-dead Pokémon back to life via resurrection. Then you must live with that sin for the remainder of your attempt to catch ‘em all. It’s fun!

Heihachi, the often antagonist, sometimes protagonist of the Tekken series has a go-to move that he probably never assumed would be used against him. He loves to throw an enemy into a volcano (or off a cliff), but in Tekken 7, his son Kazuya Mishima got the bright idea of doing the same to his abusive father and threw him into a river of lava, which a cursory Google assures me is not something a person can survive. Tekken’s director, Katsuhiro Harada, also made it clear that he was truly, actually dead. But then, in Tekken 8, a resurrection took place in the form of DLC. “It wasn’t a lie,” Harada told IGN last year, “And then, also, the timing is right since it’s the 30th anniversary of the franchise. And so, we need all three of the Mishimas. This is the most iconic in the series. Right?” Long live Heihachi.

I will never forget sitting in a meeting room at E3 watching an early version of the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate trailer with a small collection of other game journalists and frantically writing down every fighter’s name as it appeared on screen. I stopped, however, when the now-iconic “Everyone is here!” text appeared on screen and I fully understood what I was witnessing. What I didn’t understand, however, was that in the coming months, we would be treated to a collection of trailers that systematically and callously murdered every one of those legendary characters. Thankfully, Masahiro Sakurai’s genetic son Kirby (citation needed), survived long enough to resurrect everyone. To think we narrowly avoided a reality where Mario was canonically killed by Ridley from Metroid.

Castlevania’s vampire sorcerer, AKA Vlad Țepeș Dracula, AKA Dorakyura Vurado Tsepeshu AKA Mathias Cronqvist AKA Mr. Alucard’s dad, is the king of never officially, truly, actually being forever dead. Video game bosses love to return after defeat in the previous game (e.g. Bowser, Dr. Wily, Ganondorf), but those guys either don’t actually die, or they’re reincarnated – which is a different thing. In the Castlevania series, you kill Dracula in almost every game, and in almost every follow-up game, some fool decides to bring him back via some shortsighted resurrection ritual. He will never be dead longer than the gap between releases, but that’s okay because we like exploring his wonderful castle.