When writing a story, creating stakes for the characters is of the utmost importance. And for a fighting game, this means that, sooner or later, someone will die, raising the bar higher than ever before. However, that would mean losing a beloved character from the roster, and that's just a sad thing. Thus, many characters come back on these sorts of games, and Tekken is no exception.
With a game series that has been going on for decades, quite a few characters have met their demise, and quite a few of those characters have returned from such demise. Life has a funny way to keep on going for them.
8 Kazuya Mishima
Let's kick off with a big one. The protagonist turned antagonist Kazuya Mishima has already fought death, and lost. That is the reason he's missing in one of the most popular entries of the series, Tekken 3. He was tossed into a volcano by the worst father out there, Heihachi Mishima - Though Kazuya is probably the second-worst father.
Thanks to G Corporation, a big player in Tekken's story, he was brought back to life with their biotechnology, and... That's about it. No big sci-fi explanation for his resurrection. Kazuya's intro in Tekken 4 reveals he fell on rocks rather than lava, showing us there was at least a body. But it still states he was brought back to life, meaning he died.
7 Bruce Irvin
Bruce does get a better explanation because even when he 'died', there were characters in-universe who didn't believe so. Bruce worked for Kazuya as one of his best fighters, and he died in a plane crash, resulting in his alleged death.
Bruce was a former police officer - he was even Lei's partner - and turned into a mercenary for Kazuya. Bruce simply returns in Tekken 5 without mentioning the plane crash, leaving us unsure of what happened. The most common theory is that Kazuya helped him stage his death to escape the police, but there's no real explanation for this event. Bruce hasn't been prominent since.
6 Baek Doo San
During Tekken 3, we meet Ogre, one of the most iconic bosses of the series, and one who 'killed' a few characters from previous entries. However, as the series went by, many of these characters return. Baek is one of the people Ogre killed, except he didn't.
Baek Doo San is Hwoarang's Taekwondo master. He was 'killed' by Ogre, and this death was even Hwoarang's motivation in the third game. But it was revealed later that Baek survived and was merely in a coma for a year, returning in Tekken 5.
5 Jun Kazama
Jun's return is a more recent surprise. Jin's mother was another victim of Ogre, and avenging her was also part of Jin's plot in Tekken 3, similar to the previous entry with Baek and Hwoarang. And she never appeared since - except for non-canonical games - making her death one of the few real ones. Well, that was until Tekken 8 started revealing its roster.
They revealed that Jun is back, and she seems to have maintained her behavior. Still, it's unclear how they'll justify her return on what she's been up to for the past couple of decades.
4 Kuma
Kuma is part of a trend that quite a few characters went through here in the series, which is a mantle that is passed across to different people. Essentially, Heihachi didn't just have one pet bear, but two. And they were both named Kuma, which is just Japanese for Bear - very creative.
The first Kuma simply died of natural causes during the 18 years gap between Tekken 2 and Tekken 3. His cub was raised by Heihachi, thus giving us another Kuma. Probably a way to justify how he's been around for such a long time, considering the average grizzly bear's lifespan is between 20 and 25 years. Regardless, it's pretty curious to see considering the series doesn't take itself that seriously and still justifies the bear's lifespan.
3 King
Master of the most complicated grappling attacks, another notorious death in the Tekken series is King, one of the most popular characters out there. Similar to Kuma, the masked wrestler we see during Tekken and Tekken 2 is not the same as we see from Tekken 3 onwards. The original King was another of Ogre's victims, one that didn't make it this time around.
King used his wealth to raise an orphanage - he even participated in the tournament to raise money. After his death, one of the orphanage kids trained to become a powerful fighter and keep King's legacy going. He wasn't very good at it, resorting to needing a teacher...
2 Armor King
A rival to the original King, who became a close friend after a few fights, Armor King also trained the orphan who became King 2 after the original wrestler passed away. Just like King, the original Armor King died after that, in a bar fight against the problematic fighter Craig Marduk.
The character we play with in the most recent games is actually the original Armor King's brother, and they used to fight together as a tag team. His goal is to avenge his brother, in a subplot that has been going on between him, King 2, and Marduk for a while now.
1 Jack
Jack has an easy explanation of why they keep coming back: They're mass-produced robots. There have been countless Jacks, and many of them have also died along the way. Theoretically, each game has its own Jack version, which usually has the same number as the entry - Tekken 5 had Jack-5, for example.
The only case of a unique Jack unit was the original, later upgraded into Jack-2, which reached a form of singularity and started to take care of a little girl named Jane. When he died, she studied robotics and gave him a new body, Gun Jack, which is playable in Tekken 3, who died yet again saving Jane. Once they started being mass-produced in Tekken 4, they became generic units rather than unique characters.
Bonus: They Never Died In The First Place
Throughout the series, some characters disappeared, giving room for new characters to show up. However, it wasn't as common as it is today to have a story properly explained in a fighting game, creating a lot of speculation - when a character doesn't appear for a long time, sometimes the worst is assumed. But just because they haven't been around, it doesn't mean they died.
Characters from the old entries, such as Michelle and Wang, are very much alive - Wang is even more than a hundred years old. A curious addition in Tekken 7 however was Kunimitsu, a character most people thought was dead. Though there is a mantle thing going on, the original Kunimitsu is alive - though extremely ill - and the current Kunimitsu is her daughter. Still, there are characters with unknown fates, such as the animal Roger, and even the aforementioned Wang.