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{{examples}}
▲{{examples|Examples of Legend:}}
* The [[Trope Namer]] occurs when Raiden and Snake are fighting through Arsenal Gear in ''[[Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty]]''. At one point, the screen flashes white, indicating that Raiden has been killed, but instead of "Mission Failed", the text reads "Fission Mailed", the options read "Emit/Continent" instead of "Exit/Continue", and the action continues in the corner box that normally shows Raiden's cause of death. A few seconds later, the game goes back to normal.
** You can mail your fission at any time in ''[[Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater]]'' by taking the fake death pill, which sends you to a fake Game Over screen, except your inventory button still works, allowing you to take the revival pills. {{spoiler|The Sorrow sends you to the same Fission Mailed screen, and the same remedy works.}}
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** ''[[Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots]]'' has both a tribute to the Psycho Mantis encounter in the form of Screaming Mantis (and in the Codec conversations about how to beat her when the player can't properly control Snake) and {{spoiler|Psycho Mantis' reappearance}}, and the infamous {{spoiler|microwave hallway has Snake's Life bar drain out... but wait, his Psyche is still there!}} Snake can actually complete that part with {{spoiler|''both'' bars depleted, [[Tear Jerker|tragically]] [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|pulling himself the rest of the way with only his fingers]]}}.
=== [[Action Adventure]] ===
* ''[[Legacy of Kain]]: Blood Omen'' actually starts with a Fission Mailed -- the protagonist leaves the tavern right at the beginning of the game and is promptly set upon by an endless horde of bandits, who will kill you no matter how good you are. Then you come back as a vampire, and slaughter all the (now finite) bandits.
* In ''[[Cave Story]]'', after defeating {{spoiler|the Core}}, you will be trapped in a flooded [[Boss Room]] and have no option but to let your [[Oxygen Meter]] run out. After it runs out, rather than the standard [[Game Over]] screen, the screen goes black, then you wake up to find that {{spoiler|[[Heroic Sacrifice|your partner has given you her air tank and drowned in your place.]]}}
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** Similar situation for the final battle in Metroid Fusion. {{spoiler|The Omega Metroid reduces Samus' health to 1 in just one swipe and cripples her. Before it strikes again, the SA-X [[Nice Job Fixing It, Villain|inadvertently saves Samus]] and when the Metroid kills it, Samus can absorb the parasite to fully restore her health and gain the Ice Beam.}}
=== [[Action Game]] ===
* Very briefly appears in the original ''[[Tomb Raider]]''. At the completion of a level, Lara must jump into a well, which turns out to be much too deep for a survivable fall. Lara goes into her "death scream", then lands in the water. But the game goes on to the next level quickly enough not to worry players unduly.
** As long as you land in water that's deep enough to swim underwater in, [[Soft Water|you can fall from any height and survive]]. [[Did Not Do the Research|Whether or not this is a programmer oversight]] is left to the players to decide.
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* In ''[[Ninja Gaiden]] Black'', during the cutscene after the second boss, Ryu is killed by Doku with the Dark Dragon Blade, but [[Disney Death|resurrected]] by the falcon spirit.
=== [[Adventure Game]] ===
* Many, many times in the ''[[Ace Attorney]]'' series. In one especially egregious case in the third game, winning the trial comes down to pressing a single statement in a particularly drawn-out testimony. Any selection you make leads to Godot informing you that you've failed to find anything substantive -- but if you figured out the right one, Phoenix will point out the contradiction a few moments later. If, that is, you haven't already loaded your last save. (This crops up again, which, considering the game's huge amount of [[Foreshadowing]], may be intentional.) In the first game, the Judge even pronounces your client guilty at one point (going through the Game Over sequence) before suddenly being interrupted with new information and the case continuing.
** The particular case in the first game, with the Game Over sequence, the ''only'' indication that you're supposed to let the Guilty verdict continue is that you weren't penalized. In fact, if you haven't been penalized at all, it will seem ''very'' weird, as the judge doesn't give you another chance, and you don't lose one of your markers. Also, the fact that you ''can't do anything to prevent the supposed Game Over''. For someone playing through the first time, these vague indications are ''very easily'' overlooked.
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* "Go West" from ''[[The IGF Pirate Kart]]'' is a text adventure which you win by repeatedly going west, with any other scenario resulting in your character dying '[[Take Our Word for It|a terrible, terrible death]]'. In the last room, if you try to go west, you get the same Game Over, only at the bottom it asks "Would you like to RESTART, RESTORE a saved game, QUIT, UNDO the last command, or GO WEST?" Choosing to Go West wins the game.
=== [[Beat'Em Up]] ===
* ''Maximum Carnage'' pulled exactly the same trick.
* The game ''[[X-Men]]'' for the Sega Genesis asks you to fission the mail; you need to hit the "Reset" button on the console to continue the game at one point. If you were playing the game on a Sega Nomad portable, [[Unwinnable|you got boned]] because the Nomad has no reset button. There is reputedly another way to get past this segment, but it's [[Guide Dang It|so obscure that, if it exists, almost no-one knows about it.]]
=== [[First-Person Shooter]] ===
* During the last level of ''[[Call of Duty]] 4'', your squad is attacked by a Hind while escaping from an enemy base. You are given an RPG launcher and told to fire on the Hind, but {{spoiler|it [[Hopeless Boss Fight|ignores any hits you might manage to inflict on it.]] Eventually, the Hind is responsible for incapacitating most of your allies, who are then gunned down one by one when the [[Big Bad]] arrives. You cannot save your allies, and your only option is to kill the [[Big Bad]] before he and his bodyguards kill you.}}
** And then there's the {{spoiler|nuclear explosion in "Shock and Awe" that kills your character's entire unit, as well as your character.}}
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* In ''[[Star Wars: Dark Forces|Jedi Outcast]]'', the player must 'die' during his first encounter with Desann.
=== [[Interactive Fiction]] ===
* [[Infocom]]'s ''Enchanter'' a point where you have to "die" so that your "corpse" can be brought to another location, and then you get better and wake up there. While it's a bit of a [[Guide Dang It]] puzzle, it's not quite the usual for this trope, since it's something the player has to deliberately set up using an auto-revive effect.
** The sequel ''Sorcerer'' starts you off in an incredibly deadly landscape full of monsters. Then you wake up. Naturally you'll have to go to the same place in person later, this time inexplicably less deadly.
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{{quote|Or have you? No... this isn't quite the end. You see an intense blue-white light at the end of what seems a tunnel, and drift toward it until you realise that you are staring, dazed, into the light of the slide projector, and have not moved at all.}}
=== [[MMORPG
* ''[[Forum Warz]]'' Episode 2 ends with your character's (apparent?) death, then goes on to state that your character has been deleted, your account has been deleted, and that your IP address has been blocked so you can't make a new one. In fact, every IP address has been blocked so nobody else can play again, and the game servers are being physically destroyed.
* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' pulls one like these at Icecrown Citadel. In your fight with {{spoiler|Arthas, the Lich King}}, your whole raid will {{spoiler|be killed, once Arthas reaches 10% health}}. However, this is supposed to happen, and in a [[Deus Ex Machina]] moment, {{spoiler|Tirion Fordring shatters Frostmourne with Ashbringer, releasing the spirit of Terenas Menethil II, who will resurrect the players, who then just have to beat on Arthas until he falls over}}. The fight is basically won once this happens, as long as the players don't {{spoiler|set their spirits free}}
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* The free-to-play MMO ''[[Jade Dynasty]]'' contains a quest that requires you to "understand the secret of life and death". No other indication is given in the quest description of how to do this. The way to complete the quest is, of course, to die. {{spoiler|However, the game is set up so that certain quests fail if you die, and this quest is one of them. Dropping a quest counts as failing it. This means that you don't actually have to die to complete the quest; you can just drop it, and the game will think you have fulfilled the necessary conditions for completing it and move on to the next one.}}
=== [[Platform Game]] ===
* ''[[I Wanna Be the Guy]]'' is so nefarious as to fake a Windows operating system error message... {{spoiler|and then it drops down and squashes the Kid if you hadn't wised up to it.}} What makes it worse is that the error ''actually happens'' sometimes while playing the game; it's a known bug, and the game made the absolute best of it. Of course, since the window is clearly from Windows XP, a person using a newer or older version of Windows or another OS entirely won't be fooled.
** In a further use of this trope, it is possible to die after delivering the finishing blow to some bosses. The death animation and message will play, but if you wait, the boss will die in the background and you will appear unharmed on the next screen. Nefarious in that if you hit 'r' as the screen instructs you to, you will never know that you could have just waited and beaten the boss.
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* In ''[[Drawn to Life]]: The Next Chapter'', {{spoiler|when you first battle Wilfre, he is invincible, and [[Hopeless Boss Fight|you must deliberately die from his attacks to proceed]].}} Then a cutscene shows, and then the real battle begins.
=== [[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 ''[[Warhammer 40000]]: [[Dawn of War]] II'''s final mission, {{spoiler|your cruiser is destroyed and your position is being overrun by Tyranids. Though after the first few waves you'll receive a communication from another cruiser that was presumed lost earlier in the game, that they'll be reinforcing you to finish the mission. The in game objective even changes to indicate that your situation is hopeless and should just take as many of them with you as you can.}}
* 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]] ===
* An ''[[In the Groove]]'' [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMdkF1jm8Xc#t=2m35s custom marathon] uses this. The screen even says "Found Railed".
=== [[Role Playing 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.
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** Also played with earlier on with Shadow Rise. When she uses Supreme Insight, none of your attacks will hit her. The battle will still continue for a few more turns until you're treated to a cutscene of you and your team about to die {{spoiler|until Teddie/Kuma goes [[A Worldwide Punomenon|bearserk]] and kicks Shadow Rise's multicoloured ass.}}
=== [[Shoot'Em Up]] ===
* Done similarly in the ''Trouble Shooters'' (''Battle Mania'' in Japan) game for the Sega Genesis, where the credits begin to roll and a boss interrupts them; the game doesn't actually end until the stage after that.
* In the Azdagari string of missions in ''[[Escape Velocity]]: Override'', at one point, a Zidagar photographer takes pictures of a secret base and attempts to escape the system in a ship. The mission you're given is to destroy it before it escapes. If you succeed, you get congratulated and you eventually get the mission again. You need to fail the mission, however, for the story line and mission string to advance.
=== [[Simulation Game]] ===
* In ''[[Animal Crossing]]'', once you piss off Mr. Resetti enough by abusing the reset button, he says he will erase all your data and will cause the screen to go black. A few seconds later, the screen returns to normal, and Resetti says "Gotcha!".
* In the ''[[Harvest Moon]]'' series, most of the games since ''Back To Nature'' (PS) will trigger the credits sequence once you get married. But the game starts right back up as normal once they finish. Exceptions include ''For Girl'' (BTN's [[Distaff Counterpart]]) and if you're playing as Tina in the PAL version of ''Magical Melody''. In those cases, the game actually does end there.
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** Hilariously, {{spoiler|it will still say "operation successful", even if you've let Adel bleed out}}.
=== [[Stealth Based Game]] ===
* In ''[[Hitman]]: Blood Money'', {{spoiler|the final sequence appears to be Agent 47's funeral after Diana betrays him. However, as the credits are rolling, the player can twiddle the thumbsticks to bring him out of his induced coma and take out everyone present.}}
=== [[Survival Horror]] ===
* ''[[Eternal Darkness]]'' has not only a fake "game over", but a fake "stay turned for the sequel" screen, a fake BSOD, and a fake "Game Deleted Successfully" screen, with a blank saved game list.
** As well as the infamous "Controller unplugged" fake error message.
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* [[Dead Space (video game)|Dead Space]] App has one in Chapter 11: After killing the brute and walking around, the battery low icon appears and then another brute appears out of nowhere before the screen goes thwip - nightmare sequence in a marker-desert comes back on. Excessively scary if you haven't charged your iTouch for a while.
=== [[Turn-Based Strategy]] ===
* The first boss battle in ''[[Disgaea]] 3'' ends in a Fission Mailed''/''[[Heads I Win, Tails You Lose]] situation, as Mao and Almaz have defeated the Overlord's hand, but it sprouts new fingers and wipes the floor with them, inducing a "Game Over (?)", while proceeding to the next chapter anyway. Because Mao [[No Fourth Wall|refuses to let the game end like that]].
=== [[Turn Based Tactics]] ===
* In ''[[Transformers]] G1 Awakening'', the player is facing the [[Big Bad]] with the only controllable unit being Optimus Prime. This appears to be the [[Final Boss]] fight, except there's no way for Optimus to beat Shockwave on his own. [[But Thou Must!|He has to lose]]. This appears to be a loss, until reinforcements arrive that revive Prime and help him end the war.
* The original ''[[Jagged Alliance]]'' has an assortment of randomly picked exit messages, one of which is an error message explaining the game failed writing the player's quick save (to avoid [[Save Scumming]], the only way to save the game during battle is to exit the game) followed by "just kidding".
=== [[Visual Novel]] ===
* ''[[Fate/stay night]]'' has a hilarious false [[Bad End]], complete with false Tiger Dojo. Tell [[Big Eater|Saber]] there'll be no food today if you want to see it.
** ''[[Fate/hollow ataraxia]]'' continues the tradition when Shirou and Shinji sneak into Sakura's room to read her diary. But on a more serious note, due to the looping gameplay it's okay to get killed. In fact, you're going to get killed because you can't progress otherwise. Just ignore the Dead Bad End screen that pops up and continue playing.
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* In ''[[Katawa Shoujo]]'', the good ending to Lilly's path does it's best to make you think you've gotten a bad end, up until the very last scene. In fact, the bad end is exactly the same as the good end except that it ends earlier.
=== Other ===
* In ''[[Die Anstalt]]'', a patient's progress bar going red usually means that you screwed up their treatment and need to reset their mental state with electroshock therapy. For Dub, however, this is actually a required part of his therapy; many players, not knowing this, kept on trying other methods until they realized that letting his progress bar shoot way down and then shocking him was the ''only'' way to continue his therapy.
* ''[[Fisher-Diver]]'' has a nightmare sequence after the first day. There' player has got no fishing tools, will move slower and slower as the time goes on and is eventually bitten death by wireframe fish.
=== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ===▼
▲== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* Not a videogame, but ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' had a [http://www.mangafox.com/manga/mahou_sensei_negima/v16/c140/5.html Bad End] screen after {{spoiler|the party failed to stop Chao from making the existence of mages known to the world and Negi is captured by the teachers}}.
* ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]'' in season four. Yami goes through ''three'' would-be-losses near the end. One is when, against Rafael, he apparently loses for the second time. However, this is just a recall in animation to the first time he lost, and instead, survives an attack with 10 life points left. The other two are against Dartz. When the Seal of Orichalcos starts to enclose around Yami, he manages to repel it twice.
* In ''[[Eyeshield 21]]'', in the Fall Tournament semi-final, the Deimon Devilbats lose the game and everyone believes their dream of going to the Christmas Bowl is over ... Until Hiruma reveals that they can still go there if they win their consolation match.
=== [[Tabletop Games]] ===
* A ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' adventure, ''Vecna Lives!'', has the PCs run through a dungeon playing high-level pregenerated heroes... who are promptly slaughtered by the godlike villain, whereupon the players' own low-level characters pick up the adventure.
** 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''.}}
* The '[[Mutants and Masterminds]]'' adventure "A More Perfect Union" uses this to great effect. The players are given generic police officer characters and told to investigate reports of shouting coming from a house in the suburbs {{spoiler|this is actually because the residents have been infected with a sort of mind-control virus and have slowly assimilated everyone inside into a hive mind. Next on their list? The police that come to investigate. Once the players have lost all of the police to [[The Virus]], play picks up again with their own characters.}}
=== [[Web Comics]] ===
* The ''[[Touhou]]'' webcomic ''[[Touhou Nekokayou]]'' parodies this with an pun in [http://dizzy.pestermom.com/?p=thcomic37 this comic].
=== [[Web Original]] ===
* The season 2 finale of ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series|Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series]]'' was set up as one of these.
* ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Special Edition]]'' has a few examples of this, contributing to the [[Mind Screw]].
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** In the final video, Docfuture beats the [[Unexpected Shmup Level|Unexpected Shmup Finale]] and the ending cutscene starts playing... then Sonic falls out of the sky and lands in an underwater level. An underwater level with no air bubbles, and no choice but to drown. This case was ''definitely'' caused by Tails screwing with Docfuture. It's followed by a cutscene where the boss of a prior level returns and explain that Tails turned against Docfuture because of mind control, and that he's now been cured, so the game can be completed.
=== [[Western Animation]] ===
* In an episode of ''[[Daria]]'', Daria and Quinn are driving out to the middle of nowhere to bail Jane and her brother's band out of jail. At one point they pick up a cute drifter who flirts with Quinn before they drop him back off. A little while later, Daria panics when she realizes he stole their bail money. Cue the "We'll be right back" scene...which suddenly cuts back to the show as Quinn explains what ''really'' happened: ''she'' spent the money to buy him things.
* In the two-part Season 2 finale of ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic]]'', at the end of the first part it looks like Twilight Sparkle falsely accused an innocent Princess Cadence of being evil, and disrupted the wedding to boot. Twilight Sparkle's chastised by her friends, her brother, and by her mentor, and it looks like Twilight Sparkle has just screwed everything up and alienated everyone she ever cared about...only for Princess Cadence to seemingly drag Twilight Sparkle to hell. End Part 1! In Part 2, it turns out that {{spoiler|Princess Cadence is secretly an impostor named Queen Chrysalis who's plotting to rule Equestria and gain infinite love energy for her subjects, and Twilight Sparkle's suspicions were correct. Then Twilight Sparkle is able to expose the impostor and indirectly contribute to saving the day.}}
{{reflist}}
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