Fission Mailed: Difference between revisions

* In ''[[The Secret of Monkey Island]]'', wandering too close to the edge of a cliff cause Guybrush to fall off and a game over screen parodying [[Sierra]]'s [[Have a Nice Death]] tendencies to appear... and then Guybrush pops back up ("rubber tree").

** In ''[[Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge]]'', there was a scene where Guybrush was suspended over a cauldron filled with acid. When you took too long to get out, you fell into the acid and died—only to be reminded that you can't die in a story you are ''yourself telling''.

* In ''[[The Adventures of Sam & Max: Freelance Police|Sam & Max Hit The Road]]'', if you use the wishing well at Bumpusland, Sam says "I wish this game was over." You get a "The End" message and the screen fades to black, then Sam says "Hold it! Get back here!" and the game continues.

* In ''[[Omikron: The Nomad Soul]]'', as the name would imply, dying at certain points (not a difficult feat) results in the player's soul merely transferring to a hapless passerby. In fact, {{spoiler|your first character ''cannot'' survive the game; offending the [[Big Bad]] early in the plot has him labeled as a wanted criminal, and he is unceremoniously shot dead attempting to reach the next zone.}}

** Since the forsaken are zombies this happens to the character just before you start playing, in fact the very first npc you encounter as a forsaken tells you that they though you might not wake up after all.

* The year 2009 Crimbo event in ''[[Kingdom of Loathing]]'' did this. Don Crimbo was unbeatable, but losing to him was followed by a [[Talking Your Way Out]] scene.

* ''[[The Lord of the Rings Online]]'': If you play as a hobbit, you ''will'' get knocked out by bandits within the first few minutes of the tutorial.

** Also, if inevitable eventual deaths count, then the fight with Sambrog in the barrow of Othrongroth is a Fission Mailed. He keeps healing himself when he gets to a certain health level, during which he's untargetable. The only objective is to survive until Tom Bombadil gets there.

=== [[Real Time Strategy]] ===

* ''[[Hostile Waters]]'' has a example that narrowly avoids being annoying. The first time you see a helicopter with the scientist you were supposed to rescue take off, it means you failed the mission. When the same happens several missions later, it's just a scripted event.

* In ''[[Command & Conquer]]: Red Alert'' you have to capture the Chronosphere for Stalin, but it explodes the in the cutscene after you capture it. Then you are ordered to be shot. Then the blame is (accurately) pinned on someone else and you're reinstated.

=== [[Rhythm Game]] ===

* ''[[Ultima IV]]''. Many players [[Rage Quit]] and reloaded when their boat was sucked into the whirlpool, since the game went black and you got the same initial text that you got when you died. Except - it's actually a ''portal'' to another world under Britannia. D'oh!

* ''[[Demon's Souls]]'' ends the tutorial with a boss fight that will result in your death (if you defeat the boss, you'll be able to get a few things before a later boss punches you in the face via cutscene). Thus setting up the gameplay mechanic of recovering your body after you die.

** Notably, if you [[Socialization Bonus|bring over items from another game]], [[One Game for the Price of Two|which would have to have already gone far past this point in the plot]], [[Disc One Nuke|you can remove Bass's barrier and take out his HP]]. [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|Bass will keep going.]]

* The [[Amiga]] classic ''Captive'' had an occasional blinking "''Droid link failure - Guru Meditation''" message pop up on the screen of the "briefcase computer" the player was using to control the Battle Droids—a spoof of the Amiga's notoriously user-unfriendly critical errors that almost always required rebooting the computer.

* ''[[Mother 3]]''. Let's just say that [[The End]] isn't the end.

** Also, the fight against the mechanical lion in the chimera factory.

=== [[Tabletop Games]] ===

** Likewise, in the adventure ''Death Triumphant'', the conclusion of the ''Grim Harvest'' trilogy, the party of heroes manage to infiltrate Azalin's castle with the intention of stopping him from using the energy of thousands of souls harvested throughout the trilogy to [[Sealed Evil in a Can|unseal the can he was stuck in]]. As it turns out, they don't quite make it in time. The flavor text is meant to suggest that [[Total Party Kill|everybody's dead]]. However, it turns out that the unleashed energy has turned the party, along with everybody else in a twenty-mile radius, into various forms of the undead. Which ''does'' technically make them dead, mind you, but...

*** The ''Tomb Of Horrors'' has illusions and traps galore, but the most insidious of these (serious spoilers) {{spoiler|1=is the false tomb. The players find a trinket that acts as a powerful holy weapon against a false [[Big Bad|Acererak]], and when the fake's defeated the room and, indeed, the entire tomb itself [[Load-Bearing Boss|seems to collapse]]. It's all an illusion. The text of the adventure states that if the PCs panic and leave the tomb that the DM should ''end the session''.}}

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Video Game Tropes]]