A classic twist that’s been present in fiction is the reveal that the story’s protagonist has been dead all along. Such a reveal often paints their circumstances in a new light and raises interesting questions: how were they talking to people, what did their journey represent, is this a supernatural story or just the last thoughts of a dying person, and so on.
It’s a little tricky to pull off a trick like this in an interactive medium like video games, especially in games where you can be “killed,” but some games do manage to pull it off with a bit of creativity.
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Some go for the classic approach where the protagonist is just a ghost or on their deathbed, but others get a little more creative with it. Protagonists may be comatose, a copy of a deceased individual, or maybe they just never existed at all. If you don’t mind your stories getting a little abstract, these are some games where you’ll find examples of this trope.
Be advised, we’re getting into spoilers for most of the following games.
9Final Fantasy X
A Ghost By Any Other Name
Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster
InFinal Fantasy X, whenever Tidus claims to hail from the city of Zanarkand, he tends to get sideways looks. This is because, as we learn, the city of Zanarkand was destroyed in a war with Bevelle a thousand years ago. How, then, can Tidus be from Zanarkand? The answer is thatboth the Zanarkand he knows and he himself are illusions, conjured forth from the Fayth.
This “Dream Zanarkand” is meant to preserve the city and its residents in perpetuity, maintained by the power of Sin’s core, Yu Yevon.Through Yu Yevon’s power, those who manage to leave the city like Jecht and Tidus have tangible forms.When the party defeats Yu Yevon at the end of the game, though, that power dissipates, and both Dream Zanarkand and Tidus vanish.
Given the presence of Shuyin in Final Fantasy X-2, who was an actual resident of Zanarkand in the past, it’s possible that Tidus never actually existed in the original Zanarkand. Tidus’ existence may have just been a product of the Fayth’s dream remembering Shuyin wrong.
Me, Myself, And I
ThroughoutKiller7, you’re constantly swapping between the seven personas of the Smith Syndicate: Dan, Coyote, Con, KAEDE, Kevin, Mask, and Garcian (plus an occasional dalliance as Harman).
Giventhe bizarre supernatural elements of the game’s story, the idea of a group of people constantly swapping in and out of the same space isn’t really that strange, and is easily written off as just “a thing they can do.”
However, in the game’s final chapter, the reality of the situation becomes clearer. After the majority of the syndicate is wiped out by the Black Smiles, only Garcian is left. Upon revisiting the Union Hotel, he has visions of an unseen assailant murdering each of the Smiths.On the roof, he finally comes to a realization: he was the assailant, a young assassin named Emir Parkreiner.
Spiraling and panicking, Garcian opens up the briefcase he always has with him in search of answers. What he finds are the weapons of the other six Smiths. There was never a “Killer7,” it was all just Garcian using their weapons and skills while under Harman’s influence. Every other member of the group is long dead.
7Prototype
Are You Who You Think You Are?
When Alex Mercer awakens at the beginning ofPrototype, he’s missing nearly all of his memories of his life. He wouldn’t even know his own name if the soldiers pointing guns at him weren’t using it. Given his new freaky virus monster powers, his natural assumption is that he’s been subjected to some manner of inhumane experiment, and he sets off in search of answers.
In time, he learns two very important pieces of information. Firstly, Dr. Alex Mercer was the original creator of the Blacklight virus, a bioengineer and virologist working for Gentek. Secondly, and perhaps much more importantly, Dr. Alex Mercer is dead.
When he realized those working on the Blacklight project were being silenced, he took a sample vial and tried to run, then smashed it open when he was cornered.
Dr. Mercer was shot dead after this, prompting the unleashed virus to assimilate his biomass. That’s the true identity of the “Alex” we’ve been controlling; he was never even a person, much less alive. He isthe avatar of the Blacklight virus, which is a big reason he reaches full-on antagonist status in the second game.
6Resident Evil Village
Mold Yourself Into Shape
Resident Evil Village
In the introduction sequence of Resident Evil 7, after defeating the Mold-controlled Mia, Ethan is cold-clocked by Jack, who promptly stomps on his head. He awakens a few hours later, seemingly no worse for wear beyond his amputated hand being stapled back on by Zoe. This was probably a warning sign, but immaterial in the face of his imminent predicament.
InResident Evil Village, though, the reality of Ethan’s situation becomes more apparent. In both 7 and Village,Ethan receives all manner of horrific wounds, often to his hands, yet always seems to bounce back with a quick spritz of healing fluid. Obviously, a normal human being can’t reattach their limbs with a little goo.
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As a specter of Evelyn reveals, when Jack stomped Ethan’s head in 7, he actually killed him. Since he was alreadyinfected by Evelyn’s Moldat that point, though, he was reconstructed as a seemingly normal human. Ethan had been functionally deceased for nearly the entirety of both his adventures.
5Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
At the beginning ofGhost Trick, our protagonist is confronted with a startling realization: he’s dead, and a ghost. Seeing the corpse of a man nearby and hearing him identified as “Sissel,” he deduces that that is his corpse and Sissel is his name.
As Sissel realizes later in the story, though, his initial deduction was wrong: the corpse he saw wasn’t his, because it gets up and starts walking around on its own. That body was actually Yomiel, a man who can’t die.When Sissel confronts Yomiel, the latter admits that he has no idea who Sissel is or how he became a ghost.
The ultimate reveal is that Sissel isn’t even human. Rather, he was Yomiel’s cat, also named Sissel, who happened to take a stray bullet prior to the story’s start. We’re admittedly bending the rules a bit here, but in Ghost Trick, the conceit of the mystery isn’t just that Sissel is dead, it’s that his death has no clear point of origin, which is like a second layer of death.
4Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga
A Ghost In The System
Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga
Shin Megami Tensei spin-offDigital Devil Sagais set in a derelict world known as Junkyard, with all of its denizens being largely emotionless soldiers and warmongers. When the demon virus descends and Sera appears, though, all the Junkyard’s residents, including the members of our protagonist faction, the Embryon, start to attain emotions and goals along with their new demonic abilities.
As we learn later in the first game and further in the sequel, though, Junkyard was never a real place. Rather, it was a simulation created by Sera as a coping mechanism, with its residents being facsimiles of people she knew. The first game’s protagonist,Serph, is a copy of Serph Sheffield, the architect of Sera’s suffering and the origin of her strange abilities.As he and his associates were already deceased by the start of the first game, that means Serph and the Embryon are all digital copies of dead people, ghosts of ghosts.
This is why, as we learn in the second game, all of their personalities are slightly off from their original counterparts. They were all made from Sera’s one-sided interpretations of their characters. Serph, in particular, is nearly emotionless because Sera barely understands the real Serph.
3Spiritfarer
Work Through The End
Spiritfarer
Spiritfarerbegins with a young woman named Stella awakening on a raft, drifting along a misty, unidentified river. She’s then introduced to Charon, the ferryman of souls, and assigned his duty of transporting and comfortingthe souls of the departedin their last days. Of course, no matter how bright and colorful this supposed sea of the afterlife is, there’s only really one reason you’d be there.
After ferrying the majority of wandering spirits to the Everdoor and whatever comes after it, Stella is confronted by Hades, lord of the dead. As Hades reveals,Stella herself is actually on the verge of death in the real world, and it’s time for her to take the trip through the Everdoor as well.
The game is deliberately vague about whether or not the story is really happening. It’s possible Stella is ferrying souls in the land of the dead, but it’s also possible that it was just the elaborate dream of a woman on her deathbed, working through whatever lingering regrets she may have.
2The 7th Guest
Hostage Or Lost Soul?
In The 7th Guest, our unseen, unnamed protagonist awakens in the middle of the abandoned Stauf Mansion. They have no idea who they are or what they’re doing there, and their only hint of whatever’s going on is ghostly visions of the mansion’s guests. Based on the guests’ conversations, they were all there for a party and were ordered by the mansion’s owner, Henry Stauf, to find a hidden 7th guest and bring them to him.
As the protagonist solves the mansion’s puzzles and uncovers more of the mystery, they find the truth of Stauf’s request.He had apparently made a pact with a demonic entity and needed the soul of this 7th guest to solidify his dark powers. This guest is revealed to be a young boy named Tad, who was dragged up to the attic by one of the other guests.
The protagonist finally realizes that they are, in fact, Tad themselves, having perished at Stauf’s hands that night and remained in a purgatorial loop ever since. With his newfound influence, Tad can rescue his younger self and break the cycle, earning his peaceful rest.
1Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth
Not All There
Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth
Early in the story ofDigimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, Takumi/Ami Aiba is attacked by an Eater, a mysterious digital entity that devours whatever data it can get its tentacles on. Normally, an Eater attack results in EDEN Syndrome, wherein the victim is rendered comatose due to corrupted mental data. However, because Aiba’s attack was just a brief brush, they successfully made it back to the real world, albeit with a body partially composed of data.
Unfortunately, this is not a lucky superpower situation. As we learn later in the story,Aiba has indeed been rendered comatose by EDEN Syndrome, and the version of them we’re controlling is their cast-off consciousness, given form as a “data body.” They’re not exactly dead, but they’re not exactly alive either.
As the game reaches its climax, Aiba’s data body starts breaking down, placing them at risk of disappearing completely and leaving their real body permanently comatose. Circumstances force them to exhaust their strength, causing their deletion, but thankfully, Alphamon and Aiba’s Digimon are able to reconstruct their data from their memories as a fresh copy.
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