Fission Mailed/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A fake game over is used to Mind Screw or fool the player.

  • Straight: Alice ends up swimming around in circles after a ship wreck. The usual game over seen of her in Fluffy Cloud Heaven appears. Wait a bit and Michael hands her the sword of light and tells her that it's not yet her time. Cue to her washed up on a beach holding the sword of light.
  • Exaggerated: Alice dies, the player is given an error message saying that their save file is corrupted and they're taken back to the start screen. If they don't turn off the console in a rage then they get to continue as normal.
  • Justified: Alice is being preyed upon by a Reality Warper but manages to break free of its grasp.
  • Inverted: See also Kaizo Trap.
  • Subverted: If Alice gets severely poisoned by a scorpion, she sees the game over screen distorted. It wears off, then she dies for real.
  • Doubly Subverted: ...And then, after about fifteen seconds of a black screen, Alice opens her eyes again, and she's in the hospital and cured of her poison.
  • Parodied: Alice's ally Bob asks the player to input cheats, before giving up and activating god mode himself.
  • Deconstructed: Alice was mortally wounded on a battle, and now is slowly dying. Everything goes black, and she passes out. When she wakes up, she's in a hospital, and she's slowly, very slowly, recovering herself, through medications and surgery. She may recover movement and her motor abilities in a long time. During this time, she's informed of her mission. She hadn't completely failed, but almost getting herself killed almost risked it all. By the end of her recovery, she'll get some quick training, and she will be back on the mission...
  • Reconstructed: ... however, Alice now learned a lot about her mission, what with almost dying, she knows of the dangers on the field, and she now has a more careful attitude, maybe coupled with a stronger will to end her mission. She thought she died, but it wasn't the case, and now, with the quick training, and her new knowledge about the Big Bad and his Mooks will help her along the way.
  • Zig Zagged: Alice's demise comes. Or not. It was just a fake screen of death, and you can continue with the game. Or, wait, you chose "continue", and it lead you to the start screen? Okay, you can just press "load game", and start where you continued... only to lead you to a cutscene that continued your false death. What.
  • Averted: There are no fake game overs.
  • Enforced: ???
  • Lampshaded: Alice breaks the Fourth Wall and says to the player "Heh. You thought I had gone down for real, didn't you?"
  • Invoked: Alice is being pursued by her enemies, and the player is given the option to fake death to throw off pursuit or fight it out.
  • Defied: ???
  • Discussed: ???
  • Conversed: "So I'm playing this game and I get a game over screen, but then it continues the plot anyway. Why? All it does is confuse me."
  • Played for Laughs:???
  • Played for Drama: ???

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