For the love of all holy, can someone please tell me how to fix this follower bug? I had Farkas following me and I killed him while battling a dragon. I saved it before I realized he was dead and I don't keep auto save on (husband's game auto saved over my last game and I lost it so we turned it off). So I go to search his body and it disappears. Right there in front of me. I go back to Jorrvaskr and try to get someone else to follow me but they tell me I already have someone following me. I walk around some more and find Farkas's body laying in his room. He's still dead and I'm still being told that I have a follower. I've tried waiting, I've tried follower quests, I've tried sleeping. Its getting frustrating. Now there are quests that I can't complete because I need someone to follow me. I'm playing on the PS3. Thanks!

I'm on PC and had this happen once. You just have to go back to your original save and fight the dragon again. After it happened to me I always look carefully for anyone around when I start swinging.

Not sure how to fix this on the PS3 without console commands. A good way to avoid saving over each others files is that when one of you is done playing make an actual save file, not quick save or auto save but go to the menu and save and new save, then the other person can autosave all the want and the other person can just go back to their savegame when they play again.

I honestly didn't think Farkas was killable, I thought all the companions who had quests linked to them were essential and would just be knocked down but get back up in a bit.

I don't think there is any fix for this on the PS3. Consoles that glitch out like this can only be fixed by reloading a save.
One thing you could try is to wabbajack his body and see what happens.

The Wabbajack has some scripts attached to it that can reset NPCs.