Fission Mailed: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

 

 

A variety of [[But Thou Must!]]. If very few clues are given, this is often one type of [[Guide Dang It]]. Fission Mailure often occurs on a fake [[Final Boss]]. [[Hopeless Boss Fight|Hopeless Boss Fights]] in general are a subclass of this trope. Contrast [[Kaizo Trap]], which is when you look like you've won, but your "victory" is actually impending death.

 

{{examples|Examples of Legend:}}

** The first ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'' had Psycho Mantis, a boss with an attack that pretended to turn off the console. There was the big green [[Hideo Kojima|"Hideo"]] in the top right corner as a giveaway, but this was another level of [[Interface Screw]]; it had a similar [[Useful Notes/Fonts|font]] and positioning as the "Video" input indicator on Sony Trinitron model televisions that were made at the time.

 

=== Other Examples and Counter-Examples: ===

== [[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.

** {{spoiler|Worst of all is that her death is preventable [[Guide Dang It|but you have no way of knowing that.]]}}

* ''[[Super Metroid]]'''s giant Metroid pops up, is unavoidable and quickly drains your life. When you're at 1 energy, it [[Androcles' Lion|remembers you're its mother]] and backs off. Health Refill station is in the next room, enjoy!

** Super Metroid does this ''again'' in the incredibly creepy final boss fight, just a few minutes after the Giant Metroid event. The boss is almost dead, and it uses its most powerful, unavoidable attack. You're left with hardly any energy left -- and Samus just sits on the ground, panting. While said unavoidable attack is being charged again...

** 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.

* In ''Gunstar Super Heroes'', the GBA sequel to the Genesis game ''[[Gunstar Heroes]]'', Black's dice maze includes a new room. In the Japanese version of the game, upon entering this room through sheer (bad) luck, you are treated to a message that claims that failure to complete this challenge will cause your game file to be erased and if you think you can't do it, you should press Start+Select+A+B to reset the game and start the stage over from beginning. Next, you have to frantically blast through the floor of a seemingly endless vertical shaft while a literal representation of your game file crashes down from above. In the (extremely) likely chance it eventually catches up to you and crushes you, it turns out that the game was only kidding, but even if you survive, you still have to redo a large portion of the level. The US version has the same room, but the effect is lost because there's no message and the tombstone graphic has been altered so that the text in it refers to your character instead of your save file, although the location is still called File Crasher on the map.

** Furthermore, if you try to {{spoiler|skip the twisted version of the opening cutscene, the game will prompt you to press the J button to skip.}}

* In ''Wiz'n'Liz'', one of the available spells (which you have to try out to find the effect) does "Game over! ...Just kidding!"

* In ''[[Quest for Glory III]]'', leaving a campfire burning in the savanna will give you a [[Have a Nice Death]] message stating that you have gravely upset Smoky The Elephant, and you are provided with the usual options to restore, restart or quit. Picking any option will make the game admit that it was a joke and send you on your way.

* 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 ''[[King's Quest VI]]'' in the Minotaur's lair, there are many rooms with deadly trap doors, and one with a not-so-deadly trap door. If you, like many, restored every time you ''started'' to fall, it took a long time to realize you '''had''' to fall into one of them.

** Also, some of the places where you observe cutscenes of your demise (or failure) are visitable while you're alive later in the game, such as the underworld.

* In ''[[Myst|Riven]]'', you have to enter the trap book you're carrying to prove to Gehn that you're sincere. After you enter the book, the screen shows the view through the "link window", with Gehn deliberating if he should or shouldn't enter the book. Then, Gehn finally decides to enter the book, catapulting you out... on the opposite side of the prison bars.

** When you first enter the Rebel Age, you are discovered and knocked out by the rebels. When you come to, you get to helplessly watch as you are transported by boat to the "Hive".

* Classic text adventure ''Heroine's Mantle'' has this. There's lots of foreshadowing (if you pay attention), and it fits well with the game's theme of sacrifice. {{spoiler|You still have to have your protagonist jump to her death, and pass the Heroine's Mantle on to the next Crusader. Which you then get to play for the grand finale.}}

* In ''[[The Adventures of Willy Beamish]]'', one of the puzzles near the end requires you to get captured by the villain {{spoiler|after rescuing several frogs from being boiled alive}} and nearly drown. The first several seconds appear exactly the same as the actual failure of the puzzle, but letting the game over screen play out {{spoiler|sees the rescued frogs come and rescue the protagonist}}.

* The flash game ''A Small Favor'' referenced this trope, in a way. There was a Mission Failed ending that was only possible by using the postal service to mail a nuclear bomb. Kongregate made it a 15 point badge, so in a way it's a success only through failure.

* In ''[[Heavy Rain]]'', any of your main characters can die, but the story will go on regardless. One potential death sequence actual features the terrified death screams of your heroine.

** Then again, there are sections that ''look'' life-threatening but won't actually kill your character if you fail. And {{spoiler|Ethan and Scott}} can't die at all before the final showdown at the old warehouse.

* "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.

 

== [[First-Person Shooter]] ==

*** [[Bolivian Army Ending|Or so it seems.]]

* In a cutscene in the beginning of ''Project: Snowblind'', {{spoiler|where you are being rushed to the hospital after being bombed to death}}, the screen suddenly becomes filled with static for a few seconds, as if something had broken.

** Only {{spoiler|Gunther}} ignores damage, seeing as he's somewhat important to the plot. You can kill all the other mooks and even the mechs if you're packing enough heat.

* In ''[[Doom]]'', at the end of the first episode, you go into a teleporter and are "killed" by a group of monsters.<ref>It's not the monsters that are supposed to do you in, it's the room's setup - it disables any invulnerability you previously had, gives you ONE hit point you cannot lose, and then damages you until you reach a certain health.</ref> Then you find yourself on the lost moon of Deimos, which happens to have been transported into the Hell dimension.

** A quirk in the ACS used in Hexen (and, through porting, ZDOOM) allows for a level transition while the player is dead. Normal behavior for that situation is to "respawn" the player on the new level. With enough delicate scripting, it is possible in ZDOOM to note the entire inventory of a player before instant-killing them with a scripted death and then force a level transition to the next level, which would then give them their entire inventory back. Fission Mailed indeed.

** Another major example is the final [[Mind Screw]] battle at the end of ''Project Origin'', while Alma is {{spoiler|raping Beckett}}.

* Happens at the beginning of ''[[Half-Life]] 2''. You are beaten severely by Civil Protection officers, and the screen blacks out. Soon after, you hear [[Action Girl|Alyx Vance]] kicking the shit out of them, and you wake up to a cheery "Dr. Freeman, I presume?" Several Fission Mailed instances are set up later in the game and throughout its Episodes, displaying overwhelming odds which are actually easy to overwhelm or evade if you know what you're doing, and the {{spoiler|bits in the Citadel where you're being carried around through the Stalker Pod lines certainly seem like Freeman's death is inevitable}}. Similarly, {{spoiler|Episode One climaxes with the Citadel exploding, the speeding wave of energy quickly engulfing your train and Alyx shouting "Gordon!", at which point the credits roll. Freeman's survival is, of course, the starting point of Episode Two.}}

** This is a callback to the first game, where one segment ends with you walking through a door -- the screen blacks out, there are sounds of a scuffle, and then a HECU grunt is heard radioing in that "we got him." The next sequence begins with you escaping custody.

 

== [[Interactive Fiction]] ==

* ''[[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}}

** There's a quest where you need to kill yourself to talk to the ghost of the architect of Blackrock Depths. He'll tell you how to craft a master key to the doors in the dungeon. Made somewhat more obvious since Cataclysm as the game drops you off right next to him so long as you're in the general area of Blackrock Mountain.

** The first time you come face to face with Akama, you discover that instead of being [[The Dragon]], he is actually a deep cover mole. In order to preserve his cover, as soon as he hears one of the demons coming he kills you. You then have to lie there dead and listen to their conversation; he brings you back to life once the demon leaves.

* 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.

* ''[[Runescape]]'': In one quest, you die. Three times. And go to the <s>Viking</s> Fremennik afterlife. Oh, and that prince/princess you were engaged to and possibly got married to a few minutes ago? Yeah, they're both dead for good.

** 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.

* 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.}}

* The only way to get the Flame in ''[[Prince of Persia]] 2: The Shadow and the Flame'' is to be killed by the [[Mook]] on the same screen and ignore any indications to press keys to continue.

* In ''[[Futurama]] the Game'', the first level has a forced Fission Mailed -- Fry ''has'' to grab a hammer and be crushed to death. Then, after a game over screen, Farnsworth brings Fry back with the Reanimator. The Game Over itself is then lampshaded when Leela asks what death is like.

* In the comedic ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' fan game ''When Tails Gets Bored'', right before the final level, there is a cutscene that starts with a reproduction of the game's Game Over screen. As it turns out, this is because Sonic is frustrated with the game and refuses to continue.

* In ''[[Eversion]]'''s later worlds, {{spoiler|one of the screens that occasionally replaces the "READY!" screen is a false Game Over screen.}}

* Not a straight example, as it's not a requirement, but something similar to this can happen in the ''[[Donkey Kong Country]]'' games. Player characters' hitboxes remain active throughout their defeat animations, meaning that it's entirely possible to take a fatal hit on your last life, but fall onto a [[Law of One Hundred|hundredth banana]] during this animation, [[One Up|getting that life back.]]

** The final boss [[Turns Red]] during the Fake Kredits.

== [[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 and 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.

 

** And prepares you for the many, many, many, hopeless battles ahead.

** Some particularly skilled players found that it is possible to beat the tutorial's boss. Then a ''dragon'' shows up to finish the job.

** In ''[[Paper Mario the Thousand Year Door|Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door]]'', when the player fights in the battle arena, the player must lose to the (invincible) Armored Harriers in order to continue. Doing this causes a Yoshi to join the party. He can defeat the Harriers by spitting one at the other.

** Also in that game, Mario fights a Duplighost named "???" who turns into a purple Mario. Upon "winning" the fight, we see that Mario and "???" have switched bodies. You can only set things right by finding out "???"'s real name, {{spoiler|Doopliss, and the letter "p" to spell it with}}.

*** {{spoiler|Actually Mario and Co. are sent to the [[Punny Name|Underwhere]] still alive, but the player doesn't know that until Mario and Luigi are able to return.}}

* Reaching 100% on the d-counter in ''[[Breath of Fire]]: Dragon Quarter'' normally means Game Over. However, [[Dangerous Forbidden Technique|the attack necessary to defeat the final boss]] will fill it to 100%, and this is in fact the only way to win the game.

** Pretty much all of the ''[[Breath of Fire]]'' games except the first one require a Fission Mailed at some point. Some of them more obvious than others. And if you need a list:

*** In ''[[Breath of Fire IV]]'', at some point in the middle where the player must lose to a general. Also sort of subverted in that the one of the final decisions in the game {{spoiler|allows the player to be the final boss to wipe out their teammates}}.

* The final and only boss in the Playstation version of ''Azure Dreams'' must bring you down to zero hit points in order for you to win the game. This is a particularly nerve-wracking example, since normally being defeated in battle causes you to lose all your precious equipment and have your save overwritten, and the player is actually capable of escaping the battle.

* 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.

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

*** Subverted. You can kill it, it's just really, really hard.

* ''[[Final Fantasy II (Video Game)|Final Fantasy II]]'': The first battle is extremely one-sided, and ends with [[Total Party Kill|the entire party being killed]]... then revived in a nearby castle, which kickstarts the plot.

* ''[[Final Fantasy IV]]'': The first real boss fight with Golbez starts with him paralyzing the entire party and summoning a dragon that proceeds to use a Death attack on each of your party members. Just as he is about to finish off Cecil, the Mist Dragon appears out of nowhere to defeat him and cure Cecil. Right after, Rydia (who summoned the Mist Dragon) rejoins the party mid-fight and the battle continues. Of course, the game also has it's fair share of [[Hopeless Boss Fight|Hopeless Boss Fights]].

** Note, however, that this fight comes immediately after a rather difficult [[Puzzle Boss]] fight. If Cecil is dead at the end of that fight, you won't have time to resurrect him before Golbez paralyzes and kills your entire party, causing a ''genuine'' Game Over.

** In the fight against the Dark Elf where you can't use any weapons and armor made of metal, you have to lose so Edward plays on his harp weakening the Elf.

*** If you're not playing the DS version and reequip all your metal equipment before the battle (since you know it's throwaway), you're all paralyzed, so it's a Game Over. (The DS version goes directly to the weaken cutscene if this happens.)

** Happens again with the Arrival DLC if {{spoiler|Shepard gets "killed" in the Object Rho fight, instead to be knocked out and sedated. If you survive your [[Last Stand]], then the artifact simply knocks you out for the same thing to happen}}

** In the SFC version, you just lost hitpoints.

** The fight against {{spoiler|Dozo and Okiyo in the Euclid Arena}} qualifies, but it is possible to win with some extra grinding/Infinity Plus X swords available elsewhere (It goes up to Infinity Plus 5!)

** [[Tales of Symphonia Dawn of the New World|Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World]], the sequel, features a few of these as well. {{spoiler|Under the Tower of Mana against Lloyd, who you can defeat, but the game will continue as if you lost anyway, Richter toward the end of Chapter 7 can be beaten, but losing to him changes nothing about the plot, and against Lloyd and Marta at the end of the game, only this time winning gets you the Bad Ending and losing will get you the true/normal ending}}.

* In ''[[The Elder Scrolls]] III: [[Morrowind]]'', one of the side quests requires you to {{spoiler|go to a specific canal in Vivec and allow yourself to drown to death in order to find a hidden shrine.}}

** Similarly in ''[[The Elder Scrolls Four|Oblivion]]'', there's a quest where you have to let a NPC kill you. This time though the game explicitly tells you what you must do.

** You can actually defeat Lavos there, either with a [[New Game+]] or with a crazy amount of grinding. Doing so will earn a different ending.

** You can also {{spoiler|get an item, the titular "Chrono Trigger", and go back, freeze the instant of time Crono was supposed to die, and replace him with a clone. Surprising, this part is actually '''optional'''. You can choose not to do it, leaving Crono to his fate}}.

*** {{spoiler|Well, you as the player can. Beating the game with Crono dead shows the party reviving him.}}

** Actually, it's the leader of the group of NPCs that reloads the game.

* Happens three times in ''[[Terranigma]]'', the first two being optional. The first time you go into a poisoned room that has Ark doing his fainting animation but he is thrown out. The second happens the first time you try to cross a certain desert, giving the standard game over text (however the town music is playing all the time). The only obligatory time is when you meet {{spoiler|Light World Ark}}, which plays the fanfare with the text and it's implied it actually kills Ark.

* In ''[[Arc Rise Fantasia]]'', the first boss fights against Ignacy, and much later {{spoiler|Luze}}, play out like this. It's impossible to win both fights, so you have to let them kill you to advance the plot. The two fights against {{spoiler|Alf, Adele, and Leslie/Clyde}} ''would'' count; except in the first fight, you CAN defeat them, but it is very difficult to do so, and the plot continues on whether you win or lose (though you lose out on getting a [[Mons|Rogress]] if you lose). In the second fight, while it's impossible to win, if you lose you get the standard Game Over; the key is to stall out the fight until it ends on its own after enough turns have passed.

* In ''[[Persona 4]]'', during the final battle with {{spoiler|Izanami}}, it's impossible to kill her. Even if you knock down her health bar all the way, she'll wipe you out with an instant kill spell, at which point [[Mission Control|Rise]] will freak out, just as she does when you lose normally. However, [[The Power of Friendship|the power of the Social Links you've built]] will kick in and give you the [[Eleventh-Hour Superpower]] necessary to beat her.

* ''[[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.

* The dark dead-end alley sequence in ''[[Silent Hill 1]]'', where Harry has to be "killed" by the demon children to proceed. Then he wakes up in the cafe, not much worse for wear. {{spoiler|In the [[New Game+]] this gets skipped and Harry wakes directly in the diner after the opening cinematic.}}

** ''[[Silent Hill 2]]'': Maria's {{spoiler|many deaths}} serve as a sort of Fission Mailed as well, as triggering them outside of scripted events causes a [[Nonstandard Game Over]].

** The interactive nightmare at the beginning of ''[[Silent Hill 4]]'', where [[The All-Concealing "I"]] is accosted by a Victim in first person perspective. (It's actually {{spoiler|Joseph's last memories}}.)

** And the beginning of ''[[Silent Hill Homecoming]]''.

 

* 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]].

 

 

== [[Visual Novel]] ==

* ''[[Princess Waltz]]'' gives you a "Bad End" halfway through the game, at which point you need to go back to the title screen and choose to play its second half.

* 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.

 

== [[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}}.

* 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.

*** 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]] ==

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

* ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Special Edition]]'' has a few examples of this, contributing to the [[Mind Screw]].

** First, in Hill Top Zone, Docfuture successfully defeats Metal Sonic but gets a Game Over screen anyway. After getting three such Game Overs, he suddenly advances to the next level with no explanation. It's suggested that Tails was deliberately causing these, just to screw with Docfuture.