History Main / DeadCharacterWalking

* In ''VideoGame/PsychoWaluigi'', there is a glitch that is very hard to pull off that lets you do this.

* In ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'', interrupting a FinishingMove animation (for example, by using a [[MakeMeWannaShout Shout]] to make the characters involved stagger) can result in the victim dying and yet not dying. Which means if you stop your follower in the middle of hacking off a bandit's head, you could very well be attacked by that headless bandit. However, the "undead" character only has about 1 hit point, meaning it doesn't take much to re-kill them.

* Can be done in ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarII''. First, kill off everyone except [[SpoonyBard Shir]], then enter a shop repeatedly until she steals something and leaves the party. You'll now be able to walk around with an all dead party, though the second you get into an encounter, you'll die immediately.

* ''VideoGame/{{Blood}}'' has a glitch where, on occasion, enemies who are killed by being set on fire would continue to run around in their on-fire animation indefinitely. It seems the game gets confused at some point in the process of switching them from a moving fire damage source to a static corpse, since they can still hurt you past the point where they should have stopped moving, but you can only remove them by hitting them with the splash damage from an explosion.

* Literally in ''VideoGame/Mother3''; since the characters walk [[AllInaRow one after another]], they are still able to walk around, but their sprite looks excessively tired. In its predecessor, ''VideoGame/EarthBound'', dead characters were actually ghosts following the leader of your party.

* The original ''VideoGame/GoldenEye1997'' on the Nintendo 64 does this with the BonusBoss Baron Samedi, whom the player fights in the Egyptian El-Saghira temple level upon obtaining the Golden Gun. Even as you manage to take down this bad boy not long after meeting him, he still keeps coming after you and you have to beat him two more times. After the third time he's down, a cutscene will show James Bond escaping the temple, with the defeated Samedi [[TheEndOrIsIt still alive, following closely behind and letting loose some maniacal laughter]] while allowing James to get away. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] by the fact that Samedi is an undead villain fueled by voodoo magic, but there's a way to put down this stinker for good: [[spoiler: If you've set up your controls such that "fire" is mapped to a second controller, you can use the "[[ScriptBreaking shoot during cutscenes]]" trick to deliver a final blow ''while he's laughing.'']]

* ''VideoGame/TombRaider'' has an endgame level where a skinless clone of Lara mimics your movements and you have to manipulate it into falling into a lava pit in order to progress. Sometimes the clone may glitch out by "dying" when it falls off a ledge, but it'll still mimic Lara's actions when she uses her guns. Unfortunately, this glitch prevents you from progressing in the level and you'll have to reload your last save or restart the level.

* In the murder mystery text adventure ''{{Deadline}}'', there's a bug that makes it possible for a character's death to be followed by that character running into the room and reacting to seeing a corpse (their own) on the floor.

* In ''[[VideoGame/PuyoPuyo Puyo Puyo Tetris]]'s'' Swap mode, if a player's current board gets topped out just as the swap timer reaches zero, they won't lose right way, the boards will swap out and gameplay continues as normal. They'll immediately lose when the boards swap back, so that player's only chance of winning at that point is to knockout their opponent before that happens.

* Literally in ''VideoGame/{{Mother 3}}''; since the characters walk [[AllInaRow one after another]], they are still able to walk around, but their sprite looks excessively tired. In its predecessor, ''VideoGame/EarthBound'', dead characters were actually ghosts following the leader of your party.

** Both this game and ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' occasionally have dead-on-arrival [=NPCs=] spawn alive, with no dialogue options. On other occasions, enemies killed offscreen [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LASKohDRQKU will have their corpse continue to animate in some fashion as if they're alive]] once you catch up to them.
** ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 4}}'' has a bizarre glitch where the player can ''[[LosingYourHead lose their head]]'' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFBvunP4bps and survive]]. Perception is reduced to 0, and head customization and headwear are no longer available, but at least enemies can't target what you don't have. The same can happen with [=NPCs=].

* Occasionally in ''VideoGame/{{Conduit 2}}'''s online multiplayer, a killed enemy's model will remain in their standing pose, even though they are counted as killed. Continuing to shoot at these models (which other people will most certainly do if you don't) will give you a "Double Tap" medal.

* ''VideoGame/{{Diablo}} II'' had one of these bugs; though it's long since been fixed (1.04), if your disc is old enough you can see it anyway by uninstalling and reinstalling your game.
* In ''VideoGame/{{System Shock}}'' 2, if you died with the right timing while making a level transition, such as dying as you went down the maintenance shaft from medical to engineering, after loading the other map, you would be completely immortal, but the camera would be in a "death mode", resulting in the rest of the game being played with a messed up camera angle.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Halo 3}}'', it's possible to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXYt6-2OasM save Sergeant Johnson at the end of the game and have him ride along with you in the final escape sequence]]...but pulling it off can be quite difficult and time consuming.
* ''VideoGame/{{DayZ}}'': Bug leaves husks of dead corpses standing and actually reacts to hits and such by looks but just quiet otherwise. [[http://www.cracked.com/article_21694_6-creepy-glitches-that-turn-famous-video-games-horrifying.html Cracked covers this.]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Postal}} 2'' has a fair share of these, particularly in ''Paradise Lost''. For instance, Enhanced Mode is supposed to make the Revolver be able to deal instant-kill headshots even without using its secondary fire, but [[http://www.imfdb.org/images/7/7f/P2-Revolver.jpg some tougher NPCs can take the "instant-kill" part out of that]].

* If using an infinite health cheat code on VideoGame/ConkersBadFurDay in multiplayer, the character will remain alive no matter how many hits they take. If, however, they take a hit that ''should'' kill them, but thanks to the cheat code, doesn't, which includes many a one-hit kill strike like a run-in with a chainsaw or a headshot by either a knife or a gun, the character will still go through their death animation as well as lose the weapon they had, but they'll be brought back to life, albeit missing bits and pieces of their body depending on how severe an attack it was. They will also still be able to take even more damage and similar normally-one-hit-kills unfazed even after missing most of their body parts. The only thing that can kill a character even with the code on is when they are hit by something that'll make them explode, including a strike from a grenade launcher, a bomb, or falling an incredibly high height (also if you cheat further, a few characters can't be killed even with this, or maimed otherwise for that matter).

* The original VideoGame/{{Tenchu}} has a player-accessible DebugMode that can cause all sorts of amusing glitches when abused: much like the ''VideoGame/MegaMan3'' example above, if you jump into a BottomlessPit and then use the debug menu to teleport back to the beginning of the level after you drop to 0 HP, you'll be essentially invincible and all enemy attacks go through you. However, this also gives you the same SuperDrowningSkills the enemies suffer from, but thanks to the debug menu, you can teleport yourself out of the water as well and revive yourself on command: depending on how long you let your character drown before you revive then, their lower torso [[HalfTheManHeUsedToBe might disappear entirely]] or they might turn completely invisible with only their weapon floating in the air.

* ''VideoGame/NamuAmidaButsuUtena'': Unlike games that spiritually precedes this game, sorties are not aborted and can proceed as usual even when the captain dies, as long as someone's still alive on the team. Not only that, the captain can ''still play resource/boss node voice clips'' even when they're already been blown out of the battle.

* In ''[[Website/FunOrb Steel Sentinels]]'', a minor programming oversight causes mecha to not die until their hit points are negative- meaning that mechs with precisely zero hit points will cling to life with an empty health bar until they are felled by a stray point of damage. Although this glitch isn't much use against [[MoreDakka machine guns]] or [[DeathOfAThousandCuts lasers]], it is immensely satisfying to complete a [[PvP Fleet]] CaptureTheFlag objective while technically dead.