As Player Punch is usually a Death Trope, ALL SPOILERS ARE UNMARKED.
- In Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War, 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).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 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:
Chopper: Heh. I'm gonna miss that voice.... - In Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, Mission 04 ends with you firing a missile, likely to intercept one of the Erusean drones harassing the plane carrying former Osean president Vincent Harling (who players of Ace Combat 5 will remember), but then the game cuts to what seems to be your missile shooting his plane down, killing him. Many players have a My God, What Have I Done? moment and with no alibi to speak of, you quickly get convicted of assassinating the former president and are thrown in a penal unit afterwards.
- Can Your Pet?? looks at first glance like a harmless little virtual pet game where you get to customize an adorable baby chick, feed it, shower it, play with it and so forth. The more you do with your pet, the more options get unlocked at the bottom of the screen, leading all the way up to the bicycle at the far right... It's not a bicycle at all. Click it and the floor drops out from under your pet, sending it falling into a black void; the bicycle icon then grows huge, flips upside-down, and reveals itself to be a pair of buzzsaws that promptly process your pet Ludicrous Gibs-style into a pile of chicken parts which fall down into a can labeled with whatever name you gave your pet. And all the while this obnoxious chicken song is playing. That's right, the game tricks you into not only killing your pet, but butchering it as well. And its title is a terrible pun.
- In FreeSpace, 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).
- In all Harvest Moon games taking place in Forget-Me-Not Valleynote Nina dies once your child is born and they go to the 3 year timeskip.
- An earlier one occurs in Harvest Moon 64, where Ellen, Elli's grandmother, will pass on right in front of you. This event is random, but avoidable if you know what to look for: If Ellen is sitting at the side of her house, not in front, DO NOT TALK TO HER.
- In the same vein, Story of Seasons (2014) has sweet old lady Eda die. Unlike the previous examples, this one is unavoidable, and always occurs in Winter of Year 1.
- In Hypnospace Outlaw, the player gets to know a number of quirky folks while patrolling Hypnospace, the game's simulacra of the 90s-era internet. Even the ones racking up violations are Jerkass Woobies at worst. Then, thanks to an issue with the Brain/Computer Interface Hypnospace uses, several of them die at the turn of the millennium.
- First-time players of I Was a Teenage Exocolonist who make Tammy, the sweetest and kindest one among their peers, their childhood best friend and bond with her for the first few months may get caught-off guard when she suddenly gets electrocuted when she turns off the creche's holoprojector while the other kids get candy. If the protagonist decides to get cotton candy, too, they get overrun by grief because it reminds them of Tammy's pink hair, and they and their friends get angry over how pointless and unfair her death is. Thankfully, she can be saved in subsequent runs thanks to the protagonist's Past-Life Memories.
- In 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 Vagabond die out of nowhere in a cutscene. Though it was foreshadowed if you are familiar with Wing Commander's history of forecasting characters' deaths via poker games.
- Yes, Your Grace: The game sure loves pulling those on the player:
- Lorsulia's death and the Domestic Abuse leading up to it has left many players wishing it wasn't a mandatory part of the plot.
- Discovering that the Radovians under Beyran's command didn't want to fight and aren't the people looting villages can lead to the realization that many people were killed for no good reason.
- The game isn't tender with some of the deaths the player can prevent, either. Refusing to let refugee peasants into the castle during the final siege will result in their decapitated heads being used as catapult ammo by the enemy.
