The Battle Didn't Count

"Well, thanks for the entertainment...pretty good warm-up there."

- Yuuki Terumi, BlazBlue: Continuum Shift

When you drain a boss's health bar and knock their HP down to 0, they're supposed to be dead, right? I mean, that's what happens to you!

Well, unfortunately, some bosses don't play by these rules. Murder them in battle, and they'll just stand up again in a cutscene and say "Wow, that was a fun fight! I haven't had this much fun in years!" (And even worse, you're staggering or already collapsed regardless) Other times, they will be visibly weakened, but will still be alive enough to say "I Have Underestimated You, You Are A Worthy Opponent, This Is Not The End, We Will Meet Again!" and inexplicably get away. Yet other times, they will be mortally wounded... but they'll somehow have enough strength left to give a 40-minute monologue as they die.

And still other times, they'll stand back up and proceed to slaughter you; often this is used as a variant on a Hopeless Boss Fight. Occasionally this happens when the devs miscalculate the difficulty of the Final Boss Preview and have only created content for the defeat you were supposed to suffer.

Either way, it's clear that The Battle Didn't Count, because somehow, the boss is still alive and kicking. The Quirky Miniboss Squad is especially prone to this behavior.

A type of Story Overwrite, which is a type of Gameplay and Story Segregation.

"Mao: Damn you for using such a convenient game mechanic!"
 * Many, many, many times in El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron. It is, in fact, possible to beat the fallen Grigori every time; at least get the fight to where you knock their armor off. Their comments after the fight change depending on how you do.
 * An amusing example occurs in Suikoden 2 where you fight Captain Rowd. It's really unlikely that you beat him; but if you do; you get a very short cutscene where he steps back in disbelief; and then calls on about 50 soldiers to all dogpile you to get the plot back on the rails.
 * In Grandia, this trope is used so often with so many characters that you will spend most of the final cutscene waiting for the Big Bad to get back on its feet again after trouncing it only twice. Particularly Egregious examples are Nani, Saki, and Mio, as well as.
 * The 2008 Prince of Persia. You have to face four of the bosses FIVE TIMES each, before finally defeating them in their lairs, at which point they become Load Bearing Bosses.
 * In Super Robot Wars, in some cases when a battle is related to one of the original anime plots, this trope shows its face with pride. The enemy in question will regain between a quarter and all of its HP, and the series hero will rush up to it and finish it off the way it was originally supposed to be done. In general, the trope is most common when an enemy must be defeated a certain way; a Zonder type enemy, for example, has to be defeated by removing it's core, something only GaoGaiGar and J-Ark's strongest attacks will do (it will simply regenerate otherwise). Real Robot bosses, in general, can be taken out however you like; it's possible to erase recurring characters from existence or transform them into photons, only to have them return later.
 * Particularly galling examples in Final Fantasy include Seymour (X), who actually "died" thrice and still managed to do this. Seymour, at least, justifies the first occasion (you do kill him, but thanks to Spira's soul mechanics that isn't enough).
 * Scarcely less galling is Golbez in Final Fantasy IV, who does this at least twice. The first is a Cutscene Power to the Max battle, but the second is a fair-and-square, player-controlled battle. Though the heroes don't exactly help their cause afterwards,
 * Kefka in Final Fantasy VI does this at least twice, as well as having a One-Winged Angel version in his final battle.
 * The Turks in Final Fantasy VII will always have the power to run away no matter how soundly you supposedly beat them.
 * Final Fantasy VIII's Quirky Miniboss Squad(s) Biggs and Wedge and Fujin and Raijin don't mind being beaten either. Seifer, on the other hand, is left face down on the floor on several occasions but never quite dies; the player may conclude that this is mostly Squall not quite having the heart to finish him off.
 * Defeating Edea at the end of Disc One in Final Fantasy VIII leads to a cutscene of Edea stabbing Squall through the shoulder with an icicle, which also happens if you lose the fight. This makes the fight meaningless, as far as the story's concerned.
 * In a rewarding bit of Fridge Brilliance when you latter control Edea you will find the ice attack is her limit break. Which implies that your team successfully did enough damage to Edea to nearly kill her before they were defeated
 * Crisis Core. Zack's not good at killing important people. Of course, this is because it's a Foregone Conclusion that anyone important survives.
 * In one mission in Final Fantasy XI, you get to fight with Professor Shantotto. Win, and "Shantotto" will turn into a doll, only for the real Shantotto to reveal that you'd been fighting with a doll she magic'd into life.
 * She pulls the same trick in Dissidia Final Fantasy; when she loses, she turns into a doll, rather than just collapsing like the other characters. Her death quotes range from giving the opponent a B-, to the doll talking in a Creepy Monotone before turning back. However as it is her loss animation, the battle does count... the ONE time she's fought in story mode. All other fights with her are Muliplayer or Arcade matches which are equally meaningless to the story line.
 * Averted in Final Fantasy XII: if a boss needs to run away, they'll do so with a good margin of HP left.
 * Final Fantasy Tactics Inverts this trope with Guest characters. Guest characters cannot be killed like normal units in battle. If their HP hits zero they simply lie unconscious for the remainder of battle until they are revived or until the battle ends. Once they join your team, however, they can be Killed Off for Real. Played straight in a number of 'kill the leader' battles where even if you manage to kill the boss, they will immediately get back up and teleport away to safety.
 * Averted in Chrono Trigger. When fighting Lavos in the Ocean Palace, his first attack is meant to wipe out the entire party instantly. But if you are on such an immensely high level that you can actually beat him, it results in you winning the game and getting a special ending.
 * Also played straight a few times. For example, when you barge into Queen Zeal's room, Dalton summons the Golem to finish you off. If you are defeated, you get captured and the prophet sends you back through the portal. If you defeat the Golem, Dalton comes back and imprisons you anyway, then the prophet sends you back through the portal.
 * Every time you defeat Spekkio, he gives you a reward, heals you, and sends you on your way, but is ready for another battle the next time you come around. Also inverted in that, if you lose, there is no Game Over; you're simply restored on the spot, and can challenge him again.
 * When you defeat Magus in his castle, he does not die. Rather, he gets sucked into a time portal with you and your party, only to reappear later in the game, ready for another battle.
 * Although not a conventional battle, Crono's trial is a good example of this. Regardless of whether Crono is declared innocent or guilty of kidnapping Marle at his trial (which is dependent on what he says, and what he did at the Millenial Fair), he is thrown into prison, and the Chancellor attempts to have him executed.
 * Chrono Cross plays it straight. After  you're matched up against your old allies in three-to-one odds, and in the first playthrough they are going to kick your ass, period. But in a New Game+, you can win... yet.
 * The final boss of Skies of Arcadia does this twice.
 * The fight with Meta Ridley down the shaft in Metroid Prime 3 uses this. Right before the after battle cut scene kicks in, you can see Ridley's life bar has a sliver left.
 * Of course, when you fight him again his name has changed to Omega Ridley and his appearance is different, implying you did kill him and the pirates just revived him with Phazon. Ridley getting resurrected is a little out of the ordinary for the Metroid series, but it could happen.
 * Dark Samus in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes games does this a few times. No matter how much you kick her ass in the 2nd game, she's always able to get away and recover. First, she explodes. Then, she falls out of a several-mile-high window. Then, she gets trapped inside a collapsing dimension with Samus taking the only visible way out at the last second. Dead? What are you talking about?
 * The in-universe justification for this apparently goes beyond the usual "boss gets wounded and flees" routine and justifies her survival with by the game's Toxic Phlebotinum. One of the Pirate logs you can find mention that "the Dark Hunter" reformed out of stray particles in their Phazon storage, where the thing then proceeded to absorb the entire load and wreak havoc upon the crew. The only thing that is able to finally kill Dark Samus is.
 * The other hunters in Metroid Prime Hunters always fade away every time you reduce their health to zero. They always come back no matter how much you beat them.
 * Very common in the Tales series. In fact, it's easier to count the times when The Dragon, the Big Bad or the members of the Quirky Miniboss Squad don't do this. Particularly Egregious examples include in Tales of Symphonia, who has enough energy to lumber across the room over to a self-destruct mechanism and activate it, unopposed by the party, and  (also Symphonia), who post-battle summons about three Mooks and promptly takes the party captive without so much of a sword lifted to oppose him.
 * Hasta from Tales of Innocence does it twice. The first time, he seems to be down... then he surprise-stabs Ruca and jumps into a volcano. Think he's dead? He later shows up in a battlezone, where you beat him down again... after which he gets up and leaps over a fortress wall to escape, not even bothering with the trickery. The third time, at the end of the game, he finally goes down for good.
 * Subverted in Tales of Hearts. Shing challenges The Rival Chalcedny for a MacGuffin early in the game. You aren't supposed to win this one, and the party normally collects the MacGuffin while attending to business in the next town. However, if you do manage to beat him, he hands it over immediately, and the next town goes as normal except you don't have to collect it.
 * Used in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door; when you beat Cortez, he immediately comes back, pointing out that he's a ghost and you can't kill him. He then hands over the star anyway and lets you use his ship.
 * Well, he thought you wanted the whole treasure. He never much liked the star anyway, and if you'd only told him that was all you were after he probably wouldn't have put up a fight to begin with. The whole thing is a measured attempt to make everyone involved feel foolish.
 * The Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games do this with pretty much every boss.
 * Except for Groudon in Red/Blue Rescue Team.
 * Actually, every NPC that you battle in the main series games could count given the fact that your character seems to be the only one to ever white/black out when the party is KO'd. Or it could be that everyone you battle thinks it's funny to attack the trainer after their Pokémon are downed.
 * It's even worse in games with the VS Seeker. You can knock out all of a person's mons, run up and down 100 times, then VS them again with their full party.
 * Warcraft:
 * In World of Warcraft, the final boss of the Ring of Blood, Mogor, will resurrect and fight you a second time. Justified by the fact that the Shaman character class has precisely this ability, though player characters have a less powerful version of the spell than Mogor.
 * Just about on par with bosses using far more powerful versions of spells than the player characters. Whitemane (a priest) in Scarlet Monastery: Once you kill her superior, Highlord Mograine, she appears, puts the whole party to sleep (nevermind that such an ability wasn't given to priests until recently, and even that just prevents the priests allies from being attacked for a short time) and revives him (nevermind that only druids can do this in combat). For an extra bonus, any other enemy left alive will be able to beat on the sleeping players for the entire duration.
 * Sleep was originally planned to be a priest spell, but was removed in alpha or beta for balance reasons. And all bosses that are based on player classes are far more powerful than the classes themselves, for the obvious reason that you outnumber by at least 5 to 1, often more.
 * Mal'Ganis did this both in Warcraft III and the recreation in the MMO in the "Culling of Stratholme". Quite intentionally so as he wanted to lure Arthas to Northrend.
 * And
 * Kael'Thas is well known for this, having reappeared in the level 70 instance Magister's Terrace following his supposed death in Tempest Keep. Thus leading to his well known (and mocked) quote: 'Tempest Keep was merely a setback...'
 * And that's the best case. If you fight him in the Halls of Reflection, you can deal enough damage to kill him, but he'll remain at 1 health without so much as an "Immune" or "Absorb".
 * Happens with certain important characters in City of Heroes and City of Villains. Sometimes you'll see the character collapse and be informed through dialog afterward that they actually retreated or teleported or whathaveyou, other times they'll actually play a teleport-away animation. Some of these characters don't even HAVE a defeated animation, and will play their teleport-away animation when defeated even if in-context you really did defeat them for real.
 * Mary MacComber is the most extreme example. You fight her, she is defeated, she comes back stronger to fight again nine times.
 * In Dead Rising, you have several fights that don't count with before that character is finally Killed Off for Real by another boss psycho.
 * The trio of convicts that commandeered an army jeep also seem to adhere to this for every battle you have with them. They're in the center of a massive courtyard of zombies, and even if you blast them multiple times with a shotgun point blank, then wreck their jeep (and steal the mounted fifty calibre machinegun) they'll respawn later. And the jeep will be fine. And the gun will be back.
 * Galleom in Super Smash Bros. Brawl does this twice in a row.
 * Metal Gear Solid is pretty fond of this as well. You can shot someone with a few dozen bullets, and drain of his life points. But often enough he either gets away anyway or at least tells you his life story before dying. (examples? Psycho Mantis is quite talkative before his end, while Sniper Wolf gets away after the first battle. Revolver Ocelot escapes whatever you throw at him, it though he sometimes at least shows he got hurt. Liquid is the King of the Trope, however: his first battle with Snake ends when the helicopter he's piloting gets shot down in flames, and when he reappears uninjured a matter of hours later, it is probably the least absurd comeback he pulls off (the others involve an explosion right next to him so strong it knocked Solid out from across the room, and being beaten to death followed by a twenty-story fall).
 * The sequels are better with this. In 2, you only tranquilize Olga, so no problems with her survival, Vamp... is immortal, so don't ask me how his life bar works anyway, Fatman does seem to meet his end when you beat him, so does Solidus. In Three, Ocelot does survive no matter what you hit him with, but the Cobras all have the decency to blow up after you beat them. And in Four, all battles are final.
 * Interestingly justified in MGS3: Snake Eater. All of your fights with Ocelot end with him either narrowly surviving or knocked out. When he is knocked out, you can pull out a weapon and kill him...but because the game takes in the past, and we have already seen him in the present, the game ends with a screen that says "Time Paradox." You can even hear Col. Cambell say "You can't go changing history like that!"
 * Assassin's Creed: Although the deaths of the are ultimately fatal, the fact that they were stabbed through the throat (despite their actual manner of death) does not seem to prevent a rather lengthy Final Speech detailing their motivations first.
 * Not to mention that the entire dialogue takes place seemingly out-of-time.
 * Kingdom Hearts:
 * 358/2 Days pulls this on the final boss fight between Roxas and, because the events of Kingdom Hearts II begin almost immediately after. Averted, however, in an early mission that forces you to fight one of your allies—the battle ends when his health is reduced to a bar and a half, at which point your target shows up.
 * Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep: So Terra managed to beat up Master Xehanort and everything's fine and dandy right?
 * The online browser-based MMORPG Kingdom of Loathing has the appropriately-named Ed the Undying, who keeps getting back up after you beat him (looking increasingly beat up and with worse stats each time) until finally after seven fights you sweep what's left of him (which is still trying to kill you) into a corner and leave him there.
 * The final boss in this game also has three forms - A Naughty Sorceress, some kind of tentacle monster, and finally a sausage, who can only be killed with a certain weapon.
 * Star Wars video games are prone to this sometimes, particularly with recreations of the duel between Luke and Vader from The Empire Strikes Back. No matter how much damage the player does to Vader, he's still going to chop Luke's hand off. Nicely adverted in the PSP version of The Force Unleashed, which simply swapped around who was the Player Character and who was the boss.
 * How about the main Force Unleashed game itself?
 * In one level of Jedi Outcast, Luke and Desann get into a fight. Since the fight is randomly generated with both characters having X number of hitpoints, on occasion Luke loses and dies if Desann gets a few lucky shots in. Unsurprisingly, this has no actual effect on the game.
 * Also notable is the boss battle against Tavion. Within the game's mechanics, it is entirely possible to end a fight by slicing your opponent limb from limb.
 * Both Knights of the Old Republic games involve this as a Final Boss Preview, with Darths Malak and Sion respectively. The fight against Sion is awesome; the one against Malak isn't.
 * And when you kill the first time she just gets back up and gets a bunch of flying lightsabers to kill you with.
 * This happens a lot in Yggdra Union.
 * In Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, Kurtis and Vulcanus are all just fine after their respective battles. Mid-Boss generally appears bandaged up after his fights and missing some teeth (Most notably the second time, where his sprite looks like a friggin' mummy.)
 * This continues well into Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories and Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice, where, Axel the Prism Rangers, Mao's Teachers, The Vatos Bros, and the Final Boss of Disgaea 3 are all more or less perfectly fine after their final battles.
 * Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice spoofs it with, who, after apparently being killed, pops right back in good as new and reminds you that, as the Final Boss, he gets to fight you again in his true form.
 * Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice spoofs it with, who, after apparently being killed, pops right back in good as new and reminds you that, as the Final Boss, he gets to fight you again in his true form.


 * Justified in that the netherworlds are sort of the afterlife anyway, and they seem to have excellent healthcare.
 * Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten does this quite literally when the chief of the Information Bureau decides that, since she controls all the information in the Netherworld, she can erase her defeat by Valvatorez simply by refusing to acknowledge it as a fact. After the team tries and fails to counter her Insane Troll Logic, Valvatorez shrugs his shoulders and decides she's right—so he'll just have to beat the crap out of her again. Over and over. Forever. Upon hearing this, the chief decides that The Battle Did In Fact Count.
 * You will fight Cave Story's beloved toaster-shaped mini-boss Balrog many times, and he will usually fly away afterwards, looking suitably upset but otherwise no worse for the wear. At one point, he will easily toss a gigantic boulder across the room immediately after being thoroughly trounced by you. The game evokes this trope at several other points as well.
 * One notable example of a justified The Battle Didn't Count is the island's core-once you've beaten it, Misery and the Doctor show up and rant at you about how abysmally stupid you are to have destroyed the floating island's Master Emerald-equivalent. Then they haul it off to the Doctor's lab, where he works out a way to keep it nominally alive so the island won't crash out of the skies.
 * Seen in Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 1 and 2's Story Modes. The only way to advance the plot is to win every fight, even if the ensuing cutscene shows that you lost the fight miserably. Partially averted when you manage to beat unbeatable opponents; fully averted in Budokai Tenkaichi 3, where you are simply assigned to use whoever is supposed to win.
 * The Wild ARMs games have so many Quirky Miniboss Squads and Goldfish Poop Gangs that when you fight a human enemy, you can almost guarantee they'll get back up when they're done. Interestingly, you will generally get experience from all of these fights, but you'll only get gold and (sometimes) items from the one in which you finally do the bad guy in. The only exception is the fourth game, where instead of fighting the same group over and over again, you simply fight each member of a much larger group exactly once.
 * After exploding the president's escape pod, which has the explicit effect of "Destroy the craft, and kill their leader", the president is still shown walking sadly away perfectly unharmed in Shadow the Hedgehog.
 * One community-created Neverwinter Nights module, entitled Dastard's Morrow: Maiden Voyage, contains a boss who can't be killed so long as she has a charged magic urn (all of which get recharged every few moments by the artifact you are trying to recover). You either need to get the artifact (which requires a will save) or smash all the urns (which are rather tough) to finish her
 * In Langrisser, you're supposed to run from the first battle, while King Alfador remains behind to die with dignity. You can, however, win it if you're awesome enough with the tactics...at which point the King sends you to go get reinforcements. Needless to say, while you're away, the story corrects the little matter of His Majesty's survival...
 * Baten Kaitos Kalas fights Giacomo, Folon and Alyn at one point, and Giacomo uses a device to cut off the guardian spirit's influence (somehow this doesn't affect the battle at all.) and the party beat the three down. As in, lying on the floor not moving. In the battle scene at least. The cutscene then followed up has them standing up, and the device breaks, and the party fight them again. Full health, full power for them. Party? ......Not so much.
 * In the Dynasty Warriors series (and the related Samurai Warriors and Warriors Orochi), after you defeat opposing playable characters in battle, they are usually shown retreating, only dying if the story requires it or it's the last stage. This is most noticeable in stages where your objective is to chase down the enemy commander before they get a chance to retreat and live to fight another day. After catching and defeating them, you then get a cutscene - where they retreat and live to fight another day.
 * In Defense of the Ancients, one of the heroes has a spell that makes the enemy have to kill him twice.
 * In Star FOX Assault, you very clearly defeat Star Wolf by shooting down their ships, causing them to explode, but they are perfectly fine in the immediately following cutscene.
 * In Star FOX 64, after you whittle down Andross's "Weapon X" health bar to 0, the robot just gets back up with half of his health refilled. And then Slippy gets in the way and is knocked to another planet if you take too long.
 * But then you only have to get the health bar down halfway before it suddenly drops to nothing (and stays onscreen instead of disappearing for the cutscene). And the boss doesn't explode like every other one does. It's fairly clear something is up even before it suddenly revives.
 * An interesting inversion occurs in the bonus chapter of The World Ends With You: Any time the player loses a match of Tin Pin Slammer, his opponent will usually allow the player to try again with no penalty. If this happens during the tournament at Molco, even Neku is surprised when the tournament's sponsor signs him up for another attempt.
 * Devil May Cry. Every single boss in the original game. All of them.
 * A fair few of them refuse to go away in Devil May Cry 3 too.
 * In Devil May Cry 4, three of the bosses survive to fight another day be killed by Dante when you repeat the game backwards. Two of them survive Nero to be pummeled by Nero again later on. Hell, one of those two comes back a third time, to be killed by Dante again. These guys just don't die.
 * Happens very frequently in Odin Sphere.
 * Many of the bosses in the game are fought by most of the five playable characters. Naturally, this means that these bosses have to survive being "killed" by the player several times..
 * Several times, you fight other playable characters as bosses. Since all of them are alive for the climax, they obviously survive getting defeated by you.
 * At the end of the game, you must choose which of your characters will fight which of the five final bosses. Choosing the wrong boss for a character will result in a Heads I Win, Tails You Lose scenario after you deplete the boss' health bar.
 * Immortal Defense has the second boss whose suppose to be unstoppable. The Dev Team Thinks of Everything does not happen here. The entire plot for the next several campaigns is based off losing to him. The developer said as much as I couldn't beat him so I thought no one else good. Considering that the rest of the game takes place Through the Eyes of Madness as a result of losing makes this example suck.
 * There are several bosses in Zeno Clash who will get back up and one hit kill you, after you reduce their HP to 0. At least the same thing happens if you lose, avoiding the even more annoying Heads I Win, Tails You Lose trope.
 * In multiple character's story mode endings in BlazBlue, defeating v-13 is followed immediately by dying (or worse) to Cutscene Power to the Max v-13. When you defeat Terumi in Arcade mode, he writes it off as just a warmup.
 * This happens to MegaMan.EXE all the time. Bosses visibly explode when he defeats them, but only on the battle screen; they'll still be in the cutscene afterwards. Sometimes they'll be exploding again at this point, lasting just long enough to deliver a final line. Other times, they'll be damaged but not out of action—because MegaMan can't thwart Stage One, or because the boss will be an ally later, or because ProtoMan is going to show up and save MegaMan from a last-ditch attack.
 * Shown here (at 5:55), versus Mega Man Geo-Omega, as he falls to one knee instead of exploding like normal.
 * The Xenosaga franchise has plenty. Granted, often they're done by A God Am I characters, or ones that have Ascended to a higher plane of existence. Still pretty funny seeing them reel in pain one instant then stand up and give you a speech about how it was all futile the next.
 * Jak II has a frustrating Boss Battle against Baron Praxis to stop him from getting the Precursor Stone. It's your second fight against the guy, so him escaping and gloating is no surprise. But even winning doesn't stop him from getting away with the MacGuffin! Come on!
 * Done almost frustratingly in Naruto: The Broken Bond with the Sound Four. After you fight each one, you immediately go into a refight with a special condition. Some of them are to survive for a certain amount of time, even if you've been kicking their ass up to that point and could easily end the battle in 30 seconds instead of 90.
 * In Fire Emblem, a character who is defeated in battle is Killed Off for Real. However, many games have a Hopeless Boss Fight in which you're supposed to avoid the boss instead of fighting them. However, if you do manage to beat them, either through the use of a glitch or just really strong units, they retreat but remain alive.
 * Fire Emblem: The Blazing Sword has a noteworthy exception: you aren't supposed to be able to kill Vaida in Chapter 24/26 but rather keep your distance, and she'll becomes recruitable a few chapters later; if you do kill her, however, she is Killed Off for Real and never appears again. In fairness, she's not a particularly major character so unlike most Bosses, her death doesn't impact the gameplay very much.
 * A similar thing happens for the player's party in some recent Fire Emblem games. For characters vital to the plot, except the main character, a dialogue will take place in which they say "I'm retreating." Then, though the units remain unplayable, they still appear in cutscenes to make it so the game wouldn't require a million cutscenes to replace the events of what happens when important characters die. However, not much explanation goes into the reasoning of why the retreated characters can't be healed by a team of high-leveled healers...
 * In Radiant Dawn, if you manage to defeat Ike in Chapter 3-13, he merely says that you've held out longer than he expected before being informed by one of his soldiers that his forces have breached your defenses at another location. The wounds that would have resulted in a Game Over were he under your control don't seem to bother him much.
 * The SNES game The Death and Return of Superman does this with the battle against Doomsday, who killed Superman in the "Death of Superman" arc of the DC Universe continuity. Even if you defeat him, he'll simply get up again and proceed to kill him.
 * You can't actually kill Vico if you choose to fight him in the dwarven inn in A Dance With Rogues. He becomes invincible as soon as he has 1 hp left and you have to fight him in the Drow arena anyway. Though at the end of that one you get to decide if you kill him there (and get lots of evil alignment points) or let him live, in which case you have to fight him later in the tunnels anyway.
 * This happens constantly throughout the PSP game Jeanne D'Arc. The most egregious example happens to be English general John Talbot who you fight at least a dozen times, and he's always frustratingly hard. What the game doesn't tell you is that Talbot is actually immortal, and will never die for real, no matter how times Jeanne cuts him down. Eventually you're saved from Talbot by him just bored with fighting you.
 * Happens all the time in Sonic Adventure 2. However, this is justified as most of the bosses are other playable characters, and the story does not change when playing as a different one (the perspective just changes). This means that every one of these ends in a stalemate.
 * The first battle with Albert Wesker in Resident Evil 5 will always end with Wesker mocking you, even if several rockets blew his face open a few moments ago.
 * In Digimon World 3, Bulbmon is a boss character which is extremely hard to hit. Yet when one finally whittles down his health and is about to deal the killing blow, he flees, netting you no experience or other rewards. Of course, you must fight him again later, when he's even harder.
 * The Big Bad of Ghouls and Ghosts. If you actually manage to beat that hellish game once, you discover you must beat it AGAIN while somehow managing to keep the weapon you receive by beating the final boss the first time through.
 * Edward Diego, the dragon of System Shock, only bites it after the third encounter.
 * In Iji the Komoto Assassins have the ability to teleport around. If you damage them to the point where they drop loot and disappear, you didn't really kill them, you just made them teleport away to recover. This is mainly so you don't have to feel bad on a pacifist run.
 * Defied in the second battle with Asha.
 * Averting the hell out of this trope is pretty much the entire point of the Mobile Suit Gundam: Gihren's Greed games. Killing named characters before or after the point they were supposed to die in the original series can change the way the entire story progresses, creating any number of Alternate Histories of the Universal Century timeline.
 * Up to and including the survival of Gihren Zabi himself.
 * In Legacy of Kain: Defiance, Raziel has to battle  After defeating him
 * After the final boss of EarthBound,
 * In Mother 3,  and   will both fly away after the first time you beat them in a fight.
 * A form of this is a vital game mechanic in Mutants and Masterminds. A villain who is defeated will have had their plot foiled, but will escape in one form or another to fight another day, giving the heroes a bonus "Hero Point" for the GM Fiat. This is in part due to the Four Color Comic basis of the system where villains always make miraculous escapes or suffer accidents where No One Could Survive That.
 * In Sunset Riders when you finally defeat Chief Scalpen, he doesn't die like the other bosses, he is simply wounded, and his sister enters the screen and pleads for mercy... "Please, don't shoot my brother, he was only following orders!", "Alright, Ma'am, we won't shoot him!" (Despite the fact we've already shot him about 50 times!)
 * Lufia 2, in the battle against Gades. You win, but he blasts you anyway. Then again, you're really not supposed to win, unless you've grinded an unholy amount. He drops a nifty weapon, though, so it's in your best interests to try.
 * Lufia: The Legend Returns has several similar fights, in which you're expected to lose, but if you do win, you get a powerful piece of equipment and then get blasted in a cutscene.
 * In Soul Nomad and The World Eaters, Feinne clocks in at a thousand levels and is supposed to be unbeatable without Gig's help, but thanks to grinding and planning, you can actually defeat her in those battles where you're really expected to lose. While the very first one leads to an Asagi encounter (and a very sudden end due to the plot - and the world - being broken) later ones (such as after Feinne destroys Raide) simply have the cutscene act out as though you were beaten. (May be justified since merely defeating Feinne is not enough to actually kill her.)
 * Ace Combat series is often guilty of this. In Shattered Skies, you can kill the early boss squadron you are supposed to run away from, but nobody remembers it afterwards. In the penultimate level of The Unsung War, you can kill before going into the tunnel, but he will still chase after you inside.
 * Many, many times in the Sengoku Basara series. It's all well and good that some of the characters don't want to kill their Worthy Opponents, which allows them to pop up later in the story, but most of the major battles end with the loser not even showing signs of being hurt.
 * In Solatorobo, the first battle versus outside their robots. After getting them to half health, they just say they're tired of playing around and just shoot a huge, undodgeable fireball at you.
 * In Vampires Dawn you're supposed to lose your first fight against Abraxas. Since the game has a New Game+ feature, it's possible to win the fight, but the game proceeds just as if you had lost.
 * This is actually necessary for a couple of boss fights in Enter The Matrix, such as a sparring fight against Trinity and a non-hostile Secret Test fight against Seraph. The amusing part is that the fighting system, while appropriate for the rest of the game, ends up looking ridiculously brutal for a friendly sparring match. It gets all the more absurd when you have the unlockable katana, which has quite a few brutal slashing and impalement animations.
 * Monster Girl Quest Paradox:
 * The first chapter has the story bosses Morrigan and Astaroth, and the optional boss Reaper. None of them are using their full power (especially Reaper, who's the Anthropomorphic Personification of death). Notably, Morrigan will actually reveal her true power after you defeat her, but outside intervention prevents the party from being killed.
 * The second chapter has, who's specifically intended as a Hopeless Boss Fight. If, by some miracle, you manage to beat her, she stops holding back and wipes out the entire party in one attack. As with Morrigan, you only survive thanks to outside intervention.