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"It's a shock, you know? I mean, I knew the Sith were evil and all, but the reality of it kind of slaps you in the face."

—Mission Vao, Knights of the Old Republic

There's some times when playing a Video Game can be a little dehumanizing. After all, if your character is The Faceless, then there's no cinematic depiction of his grief that his Doomed Hometown was wiped off the map. And to the player who doesn't see it except if they possibly read the instruction manual, it's not that motivating.

Enter the Player Punch. The script gives our hero a Sidekick or supporting character who is given a good degree of characterization or is just plain adorable. Over time, the player begins to take a liking to them when suddenly BAM! The villain displays a startling And Your Little Dog, Too action in killing them off (usually in a non-resurrectable Plotline Death), or worse, forcing the player to kill them by kidnapping them and turning them into a Tragic Monster. It isn't just personal now for the character. The player has been drawn into the situation because they liked Skippy the Adorable Airedale, and now that villain is going down. HARD.

Can also be utilized by making the villain into such a smug jerk that the player wants to rearrange his face, or by suddenly having a former ally commit a Face Heel Turn.

See also Death by Newbery Medal, Dropped a Bridge on Him, Stuffed Into the Fridge. MacGuffin Delivery Service is one way of doing this. Contrast Moral Myopia. Related to The Computer Shall Taunt You.

Has nothing to do with the player taking part in combat with the characters.

As a Death Trope, Spoilers ahead may be unmarked. Beware.

Examples of Player Punches are listed on these subpages:

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 {{examples on subpages|suf=es}}
-{{examples}}
-== Video Games ==
-=== Real Time Strategy ===
-* In ''[[Sacrifice]]'', depending on which plot branch the player follows, this can happen with Shakti (arguably the most sympathetic character in the game, including is the plot branch where the player chooses to follow the banner of Stratos: After a number of levels where the player character and Shakti collaborate, Stratos decides to break his alliance with Shakti's patron, and signal the break by having Shakti murdered - and gives the job of murdering her to ''the player''.
-* In [[StarCraft]] it's Mengsk betraying Kerrigan.
-** In Brood Wars in the Zerg missions the player has to kill Fenix.
-* In the first half of ''[[Stronghold]]'' 's military campaign, the player gets to listen to the [[Headbutting Heroes|friendly banter]] of [[Badass Mustache|Sir Longarm]] and Lord Woolsack in-between missions. Some time later Sir Longarm has to leave so to negotiate with the captors of the king, while you and Woolsack attack the remainder traitors in two fronts(though for what reason [[Badass Grandpa|he of all people]] is sent to do such a thing while the obviously inferior Woolsack gets to smash things [[Deus Exit Machina|remains a mystery]]). Soon after the player character learns that while his forces were preoccupied with [[Big Bad|the Wolf]], [[The Brute|Duc Truffe]] has defeated Woolsack's army and put him down. Having about a second for that information to sink in before the player hears the Pig [[Evil Gloating|boasting about]] how he [[Cold-Blooded Torture|violently tortured the old wheezer to death]] doesn't help much.
-** After all of this, burning his place down ''twice'' before finishing him off seems legit.
-===  Rhythm Games ===
-* In the ''[[Bit.Trip]]'' series, the players themselves are forced to kill CommanderVideo to beat the [[Recurring Boss]] Mingrawn Timbletot. Given that the series is a metaphor for human life, it's believed this actually is symbolic of the protagonist being [[Driven to Suicide]].
-=== Shoot 'Em Up ===
-* The flash game ''[http://armorgames.com/play/5706/viricide Viricide]'' has you slowly but surely repair EXADI, the [[Fun with Acronyms|EXtremely ADvanced Intelligence]], purging viruses from her systems. Then she asks you to do "one last thing" for her, and this turns out to be the deactivation of her Emotional Core. She explains that this will remove her self-awareness, essentially AI suicide. And the game forces you to do it. The final conversation with her consists of a few lines of text indicating that EXADI is ready to function. It doesn't help that the voice actor is superb, and the writer did [[The Company of Myself]].
-** Made all the more poignant by several things she mentions throughout the game. At one point, she mentions her creator being depressed and taking pills to fix the problem (antidepressants). It seems innocuous, until she later relates that one day he took all the pills he had at once, said he was going away, and left. She tells you that she hopes she's happy wherever he is now. Later, as you fix her up, she starts to realize that she'd done something horrible, and she let the virus in deliberately to forget what she'd done. Feelings of guilt and sadness weigh her down so much, she begs you to shut down her Emotion Core, because she just can't bear the pain of feeling any more.
-* ''[[Panzer Dragoon|Panzer Dragoon Saga]]'' spends most of its third disc in and around the town of Zoah. The [[Evil Empire]] would like very much to blow it up, so you spend a lot of time foiling said plans, culminating in an epic attack on a military base and chasing after a missile ''after it's been fired'' and taking it apart before it hits the town. Barely ten minutes after this, the Empire cheerfully [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|flies its gigantic dreadnought battleship over to Zoah and uses the ship's stupid-huge laser to blow the town to bits.]] Admittedly you do find out later on that most of the key NPCs from the town escaped, but still...
-* A different kind of punch is delivered in ''[[Metal Slug]]''. After finishing the game, the credits cutscene shows you what you have been doing so far in the game. Dead bodies everywhere. The final blow is a mourning widow/daughter at a grave of a rebel soldier.
-** A happier version of this ending with most of the soldiers still alive is shown if the game is beaten with 2 players, making it sort of a twisted version of [[The Power of Friendship]].
-* ''[[Sin and Punishment 2]]'''s 6th Stage. After defeating a Keeper, you come across its offspring. At first Isa and Kachi decide to spare it, which turns out to be a very bad idea: the hatchling takes control of a crane and holds whoever you're not playing as, and now you have to rescue him/her. Oh, and did I mention that said hatchling holds your partner over a ''rising sea of lava'', which you must outrun by raising the platform that he and the crane is on as well as shooting the hatchling to force him to raise your partner higher? Not only that, if your partner gets too close to the lava, the hatcling '''will''' [[It's a Wonderful Failure|dump him/her into the lava]] and you get to watch as he/she falls in screaming and DIES.
-=== Simulation Games ===
-* In ''[[Ace Combat]] 5'', during one of the last missions of the Wardog Squadron, you and your fighter wing are flying security over a peace rally in your capital city when an enemy vanguard of fightercraft leads several wings of bombers into the area. You mop them up as the civilians evacuate the stadium, but your wingman Chopper's aircraft is critically damaged. To prevent the injury of innocents, he stays in the stricken fighter until the stadium is cleared, aiming to eject after setting a crash course for the now-empty field. Only.... his electrical systems fail, and he goes down in flames, unable to eject. Cue a final wing of enemy aircraft flying into the area, their radio chatter proclaiming that the Wardog squadron isn't invincible after all. It's a powerful, dramatic moment of [[Unstoppable Rage]] for the characters (and probably the player, too).
-{{quote|'''Enemy Pilot''': What the?! They're flying even better than before?!}}
-** Made even more dramatic by the fact that there is no dramatic music immediately after this, and no radio chatter from your own squadron. Their missiles say more than words ever could...
-** And it's especially powerful because of just how damn ''[[Heroic Sacrifice|noble]]'' Chopper is in the moments leading up to his death. He has the chance to ditch his fighter and let it crash, but that would mean letting it fall onto one of the thousands of houses below. The other wingmen suggest dropping it into the stadium, but he wants to wait for more people to evacuate. By the time he's able to safely dispose of his craft, he finds out that it wouldn't make a difference either way, because he can't eject. Rather than whine about it, he accepts his fate, aims his aircraft directly at the center of the field, and crashes. The whole time, everybody is pleading with him not to do it. Even ''Thunderhead'', the AWACS Commander who has insisted on referring to him as "Captain Davenport" in every mission leading up to this, starts calling him "Chopper." In fact, he ''screams'' it. This prompts Chopper's last words:
-{{quote|'''Chopper''': Heh. I'm gonna miss that voice....}}
-* In ''[[Wing Commander (video game)|Wing Commander]]'', if one of the other pilots died on a mission you would be treated to a short funeral cutscene where your player delivered a eulogy and their coffin was sent into space. What made it worse was that none of their deaths were scripted to occur, so the player knows that they could have prevented it.
-** Also, in ''Wing Commander 3'', an old wingman commits possibly the most shocking ''[[Face Heel Turn]]'' in video game history.
-** ''Wing Commander 4'' had  {{spoiler|Vagabond}} die out of nowhere in a cutscene. Though it was [[Fore Shadowed]] if you are familiar with ''Wing Commander'''s history of forecasting characters' deaths  {{spoiler|via poker games.}}
-* In all ''[[Harvest Moon]]'' games taking place in Forget-Me-Not Valley Nina dies once your child is born and they go to the 3 year timeskip.
-* In ''[[Free Space]]'', your capital ship and captain for the first half of the game are blown to bits while all you can do is watch from your fighter. For the last half of the game, the menu screen is different (reflecting being on a new ship) as are the briefing voiceovers (reflecting your new, not-dead captain).
-=== Stealth-Based Games ===
-* In the [[Final Battle]] of ''[[Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater]]'' Snake has to fight his best friend and mentor in a duel to the death. She gives a long final speech about her motives and why she is willing to sacrifice everything to fulfill her duty, and tells Snake that he has to fulfill his own. Like in most fights of the series, she's not immediately dead after being defeated and with her last words demands that Snake shoot her with her own gun. But you don't get to simply watch Snake shoot her. [[Tear Jerker|You have to press the fire button yourself.]] Which directly leads to the [[Start of Darkness|birth of Big Boss]].
-** A cutscene in ''Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops'' has the villain indirectly kill off the first soldier you collected in the game, who gets a little bit of screen-time, but has almost all of his emotional connection to the player being the fact that he'd been there since the beginning.
-** The original ''MGS'' has the death of the horribly mentally and physically twisted Grey Fox, crushed under the foot of Metal Gear REX. As an added bonus, you then get to repeatedly fire ''missiles'' into the ''face'' of the bastard that killed him.
-*** Go ahead, call Revoler Ocelot's bluff about him killing Meryl if you give into the torture.
-** How often do you keep a dying villain company for his last minutes, and especially villains who repeatedly shot at your friend with a sniper rifle to lure you out of your hiding place? For Sniper Wolf you do, and it's unbelievably sad.
-** ''[[Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots]]'' has ''multiple'' Player Punches. So many, in fact, that it's possible the game will ''seriously injure your psyche'' if you're not careful. Almost everyone comes out okay in the end, but ''man''.
-** Even more incredibly hard hitting is the [["The Reason You Suck" Speech]] given to Raiden, by GW near the end of the game. Even though it doesn't actually involve anyone dying, it makes a huge emotional impact by ''practically chewing out the player more so than the character''.
-** Another Player Punch from ''MGS3'' was the [[No-Holds-Barred Beatdown|torture]] [[Cold-Blooded Torture|sequence]]. By the time it was over, I wanted to ''kill'' Volgin like no other video game character I have yet seen.
-*** A slight one, also from ''Snake Eater'', is if you let The End die of old age in your duel. All he wanted is a [[Final Battle]] against a [[Worthy Opponent]] and you couldn't or wouldn't give it to him. Even Snake was saddened by that.
-* More or less completely inverted in ''Manhunt''. The villain in the game is a disturbing sadist who compels the player character to acts of excessive, wanton violence for his own entertainment and watches the proceedings through a series of disembodied cameras. Not many games end with the player killing the personification of the part of themself that enjoys the game.
-** A non meta example involves Cash saving different members of his family from a group of crazed hunters, only to be told at the end of the level that their deaths would be necessary, and are killed shortly after.
-* In ''[[Assassin's Creed II]]'', the first hour of the game introduces Ezio's family, and aside from the initial fight with the Pazzi, all the missions show you that the Auditore household is solid and full of love. You hang out with affable big brother Fredrico, beat up sister Claudia's cheating boyfriend, collect feathers for sickly little brother Pettruccio, and do jobs for his [[Reasonable Authority Figure]] parents Giovanni and Maria. They look like they're going to be part of the story for a while, especially considering the detailed profiles regarding them in the database. Then his father and brothers - yes, including the twelve-year-old Pettruccio - are hanged at Rodrigo Borgia's order, and his mother goes mute from shock when the guards who came for them tried to rape her. Oh, it is ''on now.'' Those Templar fuckers are ''going down.''
-** Made even worse when Ezio finally confronts Rodrigo, who says he only had Ezio's brothers hung to show the Templar do not offer mercy to their enemies.
-** ''Brotherhood'' has Rodrigo Borgia's son Cesare kill Ezio's uncle Mario to conclude the siege of Monteriggioni. ''Oh, it's really fucking on now''. We're not gonna spare you this time, Borgia, you had your chance, and you blew it.
-*** The siege of Monteriggioni also laid waste to your hard work synchronizing (outside of the story) with Ezio in the second game. All the renovations, all the money spent, all the collectibles... gone in a single morning. For the split-second that it's visible, apparently not even the Armor of Altair survived (intact).
-*** Juno forcing Desmond to stab Lucy while Desmond can do nothing but struggle and ''watch'' is possibly the worst, the fact that it comes without warning doesn't help at all.
-**** Even worse? The ''player'' is forced to do it, as well. The cutscene cannot continue until you move the control stick. One. Step. At. A. Time. And then, you must deliver the attack with the familiar "press any button" input.
-*** Caterina's admittance that their only night together was all politics for her definitely feels like this. The novelization actually has Ezio angsting about this for quite a bit, even contemplating abandoning it all and running away with Caterina, only for her to reiterate that she doesn't love him. Then, just to hammer it home, Desmond in the present asks what happened to her, and it's revealed that she never got her city back, then got sick and died. While this is pretty much Caterina's fate in [[Real Life]], it still sucks.
-* ''[[Assassin's Creed]]'' introduces you to each of the targets by showing them commit an atrocity. The first brutally stabs a man to death for talking back to him, the second has a man's legs broken because he tried to flee the hospital of horrors, one throws a scholar onto a pile of burning books because the man argued (peaceably and politely) that books are treasures to be preserved, not destroyed, and another murders an innocent priest because he thinks the man might be ''you''...the list goes on. The player is always completely unable to intervene and has to watch these terrible things happen, even though some of them would be so easy to prevent because you're literally a few yards away from the target.
-** Then the game punches you a second time by having a long conversation with each target in which he justifies his actions, or makes the player pity him, or etc. In short, the game takes away the first punch and in doing so makes the second death another punch.
-*** All of them except for Majd Addin, who turns out to be a psychopath who killed people for fun.
-=== Survival Horror ===
-* In the bad ending of ''[[Fatal Frame]] II'', the main character chases her possessed sister into the caves under the village, but will find herself forced to undergo the barbaric ritual of the village that you've been (indirectly) suffering the consequences of all game: Mio chokes Mayu to death, turning her spirit into one of the Crimson Butterflies that have been fluttering around the village. And the worst part? THIS WILL ALWAYS HAPPEN TO YOU YOUR FIRST TIME THROUGH THE GAME. The good end isn't even available unless you're playing on a higher, unlocked difficulty.
-** The real Player Punch? This is the canonic ending. And the very fact that the deliberately brutal and emotionally cruel sacrifices are supposed to be the right thing to do in the games' setting was a pretty big Player Punch.
-** Even better? That's not even the worst ending. In that ending, you just [[What the Hell, Hero?|run and leave Mayu behind]] getting a creepTASTIC promise from Mayu and Sae that they will always be waiting for their sisters... Though, if [[Take That|you didn't like Mayu...]]
-* Even if you have already been spoiled on the truth about James in ''[[Silent Hill 2]]'' or picked up on the disturbing implications of the anvilicious foreshadowing, the inevitable reveal is still a kick in the gut. (L0rdVega's [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_bjPakYti8&feature=PlayList&p=85F32E1CCBAF3343=33 Blind Playthrough] is the perfect example of this. Listen to his muted "I knew it" at 3:12 and compare to how mercilessly he'd otherwise been mocking James' incompetence in other videos.)
-** ''[[Silent Hill 2]]'' actually plays with this trope in several ways. In addition to what was described above, the game twists the knot on this trope with Maria, whose presence results in at least ''three'' Player Punches—and, in most cases a fourth, which you yourself must deliver. Alternatively, in the case of a particular ending, instead of Maria dying a fourth time, the player encounters his own wife, who is (sort of) alive and (completely) furious with you, and after you've spent the entire game ostensibly trying to find her, only to discover that you killed her yourself, ''you have to kill her again''.
-*** And that's after you've had to kill Eddie. Though granted he wasn't very simpathetic, but Angela was and you had to just watch as she walked away into hell. Having some actual people around just to make terrible things happen pretty much highlights what a twisted place Silent Hill is.
-*** Then, of course, we have the "In Water" ending, where James commits suicide, and the full text of the letter from his wife (which was a posthumous note) was read by the VA... and we find out that ''she wanted him to live his life''.
-** In ''[[Silent Hill 3]]'', Harry is killed specifically to piss off Heather (and by extension the player). Vincent's death is also a pretty powerful Player Punch, the charming [[Smug Snake|bastard]].
-*** Agentjr discovering Harry's body [http://www.youtube.com/user/agentjr#p/c/D53EF790C7EB3627/18/pj7yT34YN0s in his playthrough] is pretty much how most Silent Hill fans felt. The [http://www.youtube.com/user/agentjr#p/c/D53EF790C7EB3627/19/afKOm8TauCE aftermath] to the player punch is also very bitter.
-**** The original ''Silent Hill'' also has Harry pushing away and running from a desperate and horrified Lisa Garland.
-** The Good ending of ''Silent Hill'' delivers a huge Player Punch by  {{spoiler|making you kill Cybil, only to later find out that the innocuous red liquid you picked up in the hospital and forgot about four hours ago could have saved her.}}
-** The [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akYdjHkleek Wicked and the Weak ending] to Silent Hill Shattered Memories.
-* In ''[[Dead Space (video game)|Dead Space]]'', you find multiple logs from Temple and Cross, two people who survived a while and are built up as quite sympathetic as you hear from them... but they're probably already dead. You find out they're ''not'', just in time for the evil [[Mad Scientist]] to brutally kill them while a security lockdown keeps you from doing anything but watching.
-** Even worse; NICOLE IS DEAD. Sure, it was foreshadowed heavily, but finding out that Isaac's entire reason for being there, the one reason he kept going, had killed herself before he even arrived and the rest was all just a [[Mind Screw]] kinda hurt.
-** Hell, even Hammond's death. It's easy to go back on forth on him throughout the game—is he a good guy, is he a backstabbing bastard like Kendra is saying? But that tends to fade after he puts his all into helping you get the ship back together and encourages you to keep going, and even nearly dies from toxin inhalation. Then you finally meet up with him again, only to watch him be viciously torn apart by a Brute.
-* The original ''[[Resident Evil]]'' and the [[Fan Nickname|REmake]] has this with Richard. The original had him dying even if you got the serum for him in time, and in Remake, he lives long enough to get eaten by something. Chris's scenario is the worst of the two, as you can actually watch over Richard while he sleeps.
-* In the case of ''[[Eternal Darkness]]'', maybe this could be called something along the lines of [[Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu]] And Cthulhu Punched Back, as eleven twelfths of the game take place within the chapters of a book of the fight against an [[Eldritch Abomination]] God on the rise spanning history, each chapter focusing on a different character's efforts. Every one of these characters was a [[Badass Normal|perfectly ordinary (essentially) and usually quite lovable person who just had to get mixed up in the whole thing]], often by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and even though they usually strike a blow, it's at a dear cost. Say, life or sanity. Some of the hardest punches are when Ellia, a dancer seeking entertainment in a temple to Kali, finds out that the temple houses yet another [[Eldritch Abomination]] God and is made to hold its essence - which keeps her from dying even when she's killed for knowing too much, the last bit not something you know until another character over a thousand years later finds her remains and she passes it on to him and Anthony, a messenger for Charlemagne, gets blasted with a curse meant for Charlemagne that slowly turns him into a zombie and, long story short, by the time he gets to Charlemagne to tell him of impending treachery he finds out he's too late and is left zombified, unable to die, and alone for centuries until the player, as yet another character, is forced to put him out of his misery themself. And he still whispers "Charlemaaagne!" and lets out this pathetic moan now and then, too. That Anthony played by wonderfully talented Cam Clark helps.
-** The Lovecraftian themes of ''Eternal Darkness'' lend themselves well to the player punch as only four of the playable characters come out merely scarred for life with most of their mental faculties intact. For another example there's Paul, the very sympathetic priest, who has to fight Anthony later as an enraged zombie. He prays for Anthony's soul afterwards which, although arguably futile given the Lovecraftian universe the game exists in, helps bring some closure to poor Anthony. Then what happens? You get to the end of the chapter and meet a giant . . . thing that either eats Paul's head or [[Your Head Asplode|makes it pop like a balloon]] and there's not a damn thing you can do about it because it's a cutscene. Peter Jacobs gets to take that blasted head-eater down later, thankfully.
-* ''[[Penumbra (video game series)|Penumbra]]: Overture'' has the player crawling through a dark, crumbling mining complex filled to the (cracked) rafters with [[Eldritch Abomination]]s and once-living creatures, all the while being lead by a seemingly kindred spirit known as "Red" who is clearly insane from isolation. However, he befriends the player in a one-sided way, and you'll likely get attached to him as well. However, in the final moments of the game, to open the door and move on, the player must incinerate poor Red, who is laying in an oven, to get the key to move on, as Red had been suffering alone for so long, and had convinced himself, in his madness that he could not take his own life, as "That was against the rules". The second you get your guts up to start the machine he screams bloody murder. Cue [[My God, What Have I Done?]], [[Heroic BSOD]] on the PLAYER end, and ending it all with a [[Tear Jerker]] from being Player Punched so hard.
-** [[It Got Worse|It gets worse]] in the sequel, ''Black Plague''. There, you befriend Amabel, a scientist that needs your help to escape and find a cure for a virus that's going around... which, incidentally, infects ''you'' and results in [[Hearing Voices|Clarence's snarky comments echoing in your head]] for the rest of the game. But the topper is when you finally reach Amabel, and are greeted with an Infected instead, which you then have to kill by dropping a crate atop it... only for Clarence to say "Gotcha" and reveal that it was Amabel the whole time.]] The exact phrasing used in that scene can be found under [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero]] in ''[[Penumbra (video game series)|Penumbra]]'''s page.
-*** Not to mention that any [[Genre Savvy]] player that kept their wits about them knew it was her, only makes the Player Punch that much harder.
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