10 Video Game Deaths That Should've Hit HARD (But Didn't)

Now to be completely fair to the Wachowskis, they've always maintained that 2005's MMORPG The Matrix Online is canon to the world of the Matrix movies, that it wasn't merely some frivolous spin-off trying to cash-in on the franchise's lucrative branding.

And so, fans were shocked when the game's story saw fan favourite character Morpheus be gunned down by a rogue program called The Assassin. 

Though many initially assumed that Morpheus wasn't really dead and had found a way to escape his fate, he indeed stayed dead for the entirety of The Matrix Online's existence.

But between how unceremoniously Morpheus was gunned down and the fact that The Matrix Online just didn't really penetrate into wider pop-culture, it wasn't something that most people took particularly seriously, even though the Wachowskis insisted that it was absolutely 100% canon.

Considering how beloved Morpheus was in the Matrix movies this should've been absolutely gutting, yet beyond the die-hards who fully bought into the world of the game, it was largely met with a shoulder shrug. "Ehhh, he'll come back."

And technically they were right, given that an alternate, programmed version of Morpheus did appear in the fourth film, The Matrix Resurrections, albeit played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II instead of Laurence Fishburne.