Death itself couldn’t keep these fighting games characters from making a comeback and joining the fight once again.
Fighting game series tend to focus on both a roster of playable characters, and a narrative in which to involve them. However, the two goals can sometimes run counter to each other. An overarching narrative may lead to the death of a certain character, even if they are a fan-favorite. Some fighting games, usually crossovers or other non-canon events, will briefly circumvent this and have dead characters be playable.
Other times, however, fighting games will reverse that death and return a character to the world of the living in canon. The exact method by which this is achieved may vary. Sometimes a character’s death is directly undone, other times it’s merely retconned. Either way, these fighters have all been given another lease on life. 5 Liu Kang
In perhaps one of the most infamous examples, Mortal Kombat has killed off and revived its flagship hero on more than one occasion. As this series revolves around literally killing the competition and has a revenant as its breakout fighter, this is somewhat less shocking in context.
Liu Kang was initially killed before Deadly Alliance, by the titular pairing of Shang Tsung and Quan Chi, making it the first game in the series where he was unplayable. However, his « death » was short-lived as his spirit and body returned separately in Deception. While his spirit was still heroic and teamed up with Ermac, his resurrected corpse was used for evil purposes. In Armageddon, he was one of many characters to die once more.
The first reboot had Liu Kang killed around the end of the first game, Mortal Kombat (2009). This is the unfortunate result of a fight he has with Raiden where the God of Thunder tells him they must allow Shao Khan to merge the realms. This leads to Liu Kang becoming one of Quan Chi’s many undead servants in Mortal Kombat 10. This undead version of Liu Kang is fused with another counterpart, as well as Raiden, leading him to become the Fire God Liu Kang in Mortal Kombat 11. It is this incarnation of the character that we see in Mortal Kombat 1. 4 Yūki Terumi
The longstanding BlazBlue antagonist was killed during Chronophantasma. His killer was Hakumen, a warrior whose soul was housed in an armored samurai body known as the Susanoo Unit. Hakumen used a time killer technique which eliminated all of Terumi’s remaining time as a living being.
