I have started pods with command
$ kubectl run busybox --image=busybox --restart=Never --tty -i --generator=run-pod/v1
Something went wrong
I experienced a similar problem: after deleting the deployment (kubectl delete deploy ), the pods kept "Running" and where automatically re-created after deletion (kubectl delete po ).
It turned out that the associated replica set was not deleted automatically for some reason, and after deleting that (kubectl delete rs ), it was possible to delete the pods.