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And they especially won't do squat about the perils of mentoring.
"Cutscene death: The only death that counts!"

When someone dies in a cutscene, because the story gods have demanded it. It doesn't always fit with how the game handles combat death and wounds, be they Non-Lethal K.O. or Only Mostly Dead and it doesn't matter how many extra lives the player has left. Characters who have taken fireballs (and worse) to the face at pointblank range will be felled with a single gunshot or stab wound, even if they're level 99. Don't even try your resurrection magic, it would be wrong.

A few games actually see magic users or clerics attempting to heal fallen characters, but failing, somehow implying that the dying character is injured in a way beyond conventional methods of healing to help. It's technically a Hand Wave, but they tried. Another reason this could be is that the spells do not have the power to bring back the dead, they just can revive the unconscious.

Sometimes this happens in RTS games as well, where in most levels a death can easily be fixed by building the relevant unit production structure. This is generally because developers found that when players weren't able to build heroes back during campaigns, they'd frequently ignore some of the most powerful units for fear of them dying.

If the killed character is an NPC, it's even worse, the gameplay mechanic usually simply doesn't allow the player to revive such a character.

The flip-side is that, occasionally, what the story gods took away, they may give back; there may be a way to bring someone Back from the Dead in a cutscene, but it's usually optional. If not, well, that's what makes it drama.

Inevitably, a character who is killed in this way will generate an Urban Legend of Zelda regarding how they can be revived, even if actually reviving them is impossible.

Usually a glaring example of Gameplay and Story Segregation, though a few games will make an attempt to justify it. Also the worst form of death in video games, going plotline death, Killed Off for Real, Only Mostly Dead, and Non-Lethal K.O.. Very commonly part of a Player Punch and Death by Origin Story.

Inverse of Cutscene Power to the Max, where a character does nigh-impossible feats, including defying death, merely by the virtue of being in a cutscene. Sub-trope to Cutscene Incompetence.

This is obviously a Death Trope. It contains major unmarked spoilers, so read at your own risk.


Examples

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     Action Adventure  

  • Happens twice in Shadow of the Colossus. One is when Agro throws you off her back to save you from a Broken Bridge, falling into a crevice in the process. This is subverted in the ending, where it turns out Agro survived the fall, but not without a noticeable limp. The other time is at the very end of the story, when Wander suffers a Mercy Kill at the hands of Lord Emon.
  • In King Arthur & the Knights of Justice, at the end of the game, Morgana kills the two knights that were in your party. If you want them back, you have to go to the Land of the Dead.

     Action Game  

  • The difference between Plotline Death and gameplay death shows up again in God of War... But it's the opposite of the usual difference. When Kratos dies in gameplay, it's permanent, and you have to reload the last checkpoint... however, when the plot requires him to die, he's allowed a chance to fight back out of the Underworld and complete his quest.
    • Given the circumstances of the death (killed by Ares seconds after claiming Pandora's Box, the one weapon that can kill him), and knowing Kratos, it's possible that when he dies in the plot, he's finally pissed off enough to kill his way out of there. That, and it's only on that visit that someone drops a rope for him.
    • Circumstances of his death is probably the key, especially since it's implied he needs supernatural help to be able to escape from the Underworld. If he dies before claiming Pandora's Box, then he's just like anyone else who tried to get it and failed. If he dies after climbing out of Hades and challenging Ares, then even the power of the Box wasn't enough to kill the God of War.
    • The same thing happens in Jade Empire. If you die, it's reload time, unless you're killed confronting the Big Bad, since that's where you're supposed to die. You then fight your way back from the afterlife.
  • Regardless of whom Cole decides to save in Infamous, his girlfriend Trish will still fall to her death. This ends up motivating Cole to try to gain more powers and will not run away from the Beast in the future. In the inFAMOUS 2 ending, its either the conduits or the humanity lives depending on your Karma.
  • In Marvel Ultimate Alliance, you must choose between rescuing Nightcrawler or Phoenix from Mephisto's realm. Doesn't matter if you have enough players to attempt to Take a Third Option, it's a case of But Thou Must!. If Nightcrawler is chosen, Phoenix returns in the epilogue as Dark Phoenix. If Phoenix is chosen, Mystique kills Professor X.
    • DLC does allow you to finally Take a Third Option with Magneto, who blows the locks on both cages and lets them walk out.
  • In Batman: Arkham Asylum, it doesn't matter how many guards or doctors you rescue, most of them will be dead before the game's end.
    • Dr Young is probably the most notable. At one point you have to save her from Victor Zsasz to progress, but moments later there's nothing you can do to stop her getting blown up by the Joker.

     Adventure Game  

  • Subverted in Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy in North America) - the last third of the game is played as the main character despite him being technically dead.

     Driving Game  

     Fighting Game  

     First-Person Shooter  

  • In Killzone 2, you play as Sev, a soldier with a "medic gun" that can heal downed soldiers (as long as they haven't been shot in the head). Some time near the end of the game, one of your partners, Garza, is wounded by Radec and eventually dies. Why you couldn't use your Medic gun to heal him doesn't make much sense.
  • Requiem: Avenging Angel:
    • There is a Plotline Death that must be reversed to continue the game. (One of the player's powers is "revive".)
    • Also, later in the game, a semi-major ally character dies. It makes sense that you're unable to revive her, as she is blown to pieces, and your revive ability requires an intact body to function properly.
  • In Clive Barker's Jericho, two of the Jericho Squad members, Devin Ross and Paul Rawlings, have the ability to heal fallen comrades, provided that they maintain visual contact. Close to the beginning of the game, however, Ross dies after being slashed across the chest and dropped from a great height, and, no matter how hard he tries, Rawlings can not bring him back. This is important to the game mechanics during the following levels, however, as Ross' spirit lives on, possessing the bodies of his squadmates, so that he may share their consciousness and use their abilities, as well as still being able to use his own healing abilities.
    • Also, just before the final boss fight, both Simone Cole and Xavier Jones are killed by the Firstborn, who uses its powerful blasts of lightning from its hands to blow them into bloody chunks. They cannot be revived at all, and no-one even tries, quite possibly because bringing back someone from the dead who has been blown into tiny pieces would be a tad difficult. This is also necessary for the mechanics of the boss fight, as the Firstborn is able to use the squad's magical abilities against them, and it wouldn't have been feasible (or really very fair) for it to use Cole's time-slowing/firepower-increasing abilities or Jones' astral projection against the other characters.
  • Pretty blatant in Call of Duty, especially the fourth. Non-plot essential characters drop like flies, but if they are plot-essential, then they're invulnerable to damage. Then in some later scene, they die, of course.
    • Some of the main Player Characters have this happen! You get to play out their final moments in first-person!
  • This is what happens to Bill in Left 4 Dead 2 in The Passing campaign. Despite the fact that survivors respawn in closets when killed and the sequel introducing the Magical Defibrillator to revive on the spot, Bill is truly dead as was revealed in The Sacrifice comic when he was attacked by three Tanks while trying to raise the bridge to help his friends escape. Naturally, an Urban Legend of Zelda spawned from this, saying Bill can be brought back to life with the defib. Obviously, it doesn't work.
  • In the Medal of Honor series, both major NPCs and Red Shirts are frequently scripted to die, sometimes spontaneously dropping dead without even being hit.
  • In The Darkness, Jackie's girlfriend Jenny gets killed by the antagonist Paulie. The Darkness prevented Jackie from saving Jenny in order for him not to be weakened by emotional ties.
  • In Borderlands 2, Roland is killed by Handsome Jack late in the game, immediately after Angel commits suicide with your help.
  • Rather sloppily handled for at least one event in Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri. In one mission the PC is captured by the bad guys and some of your buddies show up to bust you out, the "mission", such as it is, being "run to the exit". Schuyler, one of your guys, dies immediately as the mission starts (even though his health is full, no-one has even fired a shot yet, and they apparently managed to sneak in completely undetected - in full power armour no less). Makes even less sense as teammates (other than you) are almost never killed by running out of suit energy; the suit then "evacs" them from the mission when it hits critical (which is exactly what Schuyler does, complete with Casual Danger Dialogue) so this is rather jarring. Made worse by the fact that it's not even a particularly hard fight to get to the exit, and you are never really under any threat.

     MMORPGs  

  • During the epic "While Guthix Sleeps" quest in Runescape Lucien does this to several NPCs, including Hazelmere, who acted as a mentor in earlier quests, and two Slayer Masters, one of whom (Duradel) was the strongest Slayer Master in the game at the time the quest was released.
    • One of the required quests, Path of Glouphrie, has the player about to be killed in a death trap. Hazelmere, mentioned above, manages to teleport in and use a magic seed to save the day. Before arriving, Hazelmere was having a chat with his god about how he would need that seed to save his own life during While Guthix Sleeps.
    • Invoked during one of the Dungeoneering sagas. You play as a Forgotten Warrior attacking a group of player spoofs. After beating them in the fight, you forcibly take their Ring of Kinship (in Daemonheim, you need to have one with you to enter and to choose your party), and then kill them. The Forgotten Warrior states that they would simply respawn if they had their rings.
    • This trope is eventually given an In-Universe reason for it, namely that fate requires certain people to fulfill certain roles. If someone chosen by fate dies before they are meant to, The Grim Reaper will keep resurrecting them until their destiny is complete.
  • The original Guild Wars features Prince Rurik tragically dying while leading his people to safety. In a world where resurrection is commonplace and takes 4-8 seconds.

     Platform Game  

  • Sonic the Hedgehog (2006). Guess what happens in the last story....
    • And before that, Blaze.
    • And then the game retcons itself by resetting time to before the games starts to ensure that none of the events ever happened, ever.
  • In Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time, Ratchet dies in a cutscene after taking a relatively weak looking energy blast to the chest from General Azimuth's wrench. Clank goes back in time later on to save him and succeeds, but one does wonder why Ratchet's nanotech didn't just heal him in the first place...
    • Fridge Brilliance: He didn't have his armor turned on. The devs game him Holo-armor so that they could turn it off during cutscenes. Due to the fact that he was completely unarmored, the weak looking energy blast offed him.

     Real Time Strategy  

  • Otomo in Battle Realms, if you choose to follow the Dragon Clan plotline.
  • In Rise of Legends Carlini dies in a cutscene near the beginning of third campaign by the god of Death himself, meaning he can't come back at all. Normally it just takes some resources and time to revive a fallen hero. Moreover in this mission you get to control a hero that has ability to resurrect friendly units.
  • The Warcraft series, including World of Warcraft, is fairly loaded with these. The RTSs vary between having missions fail if critical NPCs die or (in III) simply letting you pay to raise them. In the MMO, it's worse: gameplay-wise, every player and every NPC respawns after being killed, in intervals ranging from a few seconds to a week. This applies even if you personally walk into Thrall's room in Ogrimmar and slaughter him. But if an NPC has to die because a quest says so, or the story has to advance between content patches, well... that's it.
    • Confusingly enough, however, the spirits that can raise a player from the dead actually do so in canon as well, one featuring in a cataclysm quest.

     Roguelike 

     Role-Playing Game  

  • Subverted in Ancient Domains of Mystery, giving the Almost Dead Guy an amulet of life saving instead of talking to him actually revives him. This is required for the Golden Ending.
    • It should be noted that an amulet of life saving doesn't prevent a death, it merely revives a dead person immediately after they die. Regular healing doesn't work on the guy at all, should a player try it.
  • Sort of subverted in the Tactical-RPG Agarest: Generations of War. Canonically, the lead character of each Generation and the three females chosen by Dyshana die at the end of their Generation e.g. Leonhardt, Fyuria, Luana and Elaine all die at the end of the First Generation. However, it is possible to bring back a "mindless, heartless" Marionette version of these dead characters by obtaining the Forbidden Book items and taking them to the Alchemist's Guild. These Marionettes have no purpose plot-wise; they exist merely for people who wish to use them in battles.
  • Occurs frequently in the Final Fantasy games.
    • In Final Fantasy VII, Aerith's death is important to the story, so you're not allowed the chance to use a Phoenix Down to bring her back. Unlike what many people think (that her death is a plot hole), Cloud not being able to use Phoenix Downs on her is justified (albeit very vaguely), as her soul refuses to return to her body because it has to connect with the Lifestream.
      • In a Plot Armor reversal, in the Kalm "flashback" when young Cloud is running around with Sephiroth, Sephy is near-invincible in random encounters and will revive Cloud if Cloud dies. It gets more bizarre if in the flashback, Sephiroth's AI decides to be a jerk and never revive you. This can lead to a hilarious moment where after Sephiroth is out of Cloud's party, Cloud is running around town by himself in his "dead" state. (And then Sephy dies instantly if you poke him with a straw at the game's end...)
    • In Final Fantasy V, after Galuf's battle with Exdeath, your other party members attempt to use healing spells and items, including a Phoenix Down, to revive him. It doesn't work, and he dies anyway. (because he was simply too far gone, having single-handedly fought Exdeath even when he was technically dead.)
    • Played with in Final Fantasy IV: at one point, the party doesn't even get a chance to fight Golbez — two side characters are just blown out of the way in a cut scene. After he leaves, they sure look dead enough, but Rydia enters to revive them. The same game has Tellah burn out his life to cast Meteor in an earlier sequence, putting him beyond resurrection. Before that, two sibling wizards petrify themselves to save the main characters from a room closing in on them. Although you can attempt to use spells to revive them, it is explained that the bond between the wizards is so strong that no magic can break the Break spell. An explanation that falls flat on its face, to say the very least, when the spell does get broken off-screen later in the game. By a wizard explicitly less powerful than Tellah, who tries and fails to break the spell on-screen.
      • The game is however generally quite fond of Plotline Deaths as a means to make room for new or returning character. However, most of the characters return to life near the end of the game, and the GBA remake allows the player to choose among them for the final dungeon as well as the two bonus dungeons of the remake.
    • Final Fantasy Tactics usually plays this straight, but one of the sidequests has a cutscene in which Mustadio gets the crap kicked out of him and Ramza starts hollering for a Phoenix Down. Mustadio survives. Now just think, if someone (cough, Ramza, cough, Delita) had thought of this for someone's dead little sister, maybe the game would have been a lot happier...
      • Attempting to do so during the battle with said dead little sister (at least the original PS1 version) gives you the bizarre message that you "missed."
      • This one is especially strange because even if she survived that battle, she would've died during the cutscene afterward anyway. Or in other words, there is no good reason even for the developers to not let you Phoenix Down her.
      • The reason you can't revive Tietra is because, during said fight, she suffers from an inherent status (nicknamed "Auto-Dead") that makes her immune to everything. "Everything" includes having an HP count above 0.
      • It's worth noting though that Final Fantasy Tactics is one of the few games in the series where your playable characters can die permanently outside of cutscenes. When one of your characters runs out of HP, they fall unconscious, and you have only a few turns to use a Phoenix Down or revival spell. If the time limit expires, they're gone forever. (Naturally, if this happens to Ramza, it's Game Over.)
    • Older Than They Think: Final Fantasy II has Josef get crushed by a boulder trap, Minwu/Ming-Wu give up his life energy to break the seal on the Ultima/Xtal Tome, and Ricard/Edward Highwind die to let Firion, Maria, Guy and Leon escape from the revived Emperor. Also, the first Cid dies to the Cyclone.
    • In Final Fantasy IX Queen Brahne dies in the arms of Garnet/Dagger. At this point not only your party shall have a Phoenix Down, but this character already has a couple of healing/reviving spells.
  • Both Chrono Trigger and Suikoden had deaths that could be reversed via time travel, if someone did the right things. In Suikoden II, if you fulfill the requirements the dead person turns out to have literally been hiding the entire time.
    • In the Chrono Trigger example, other special circumstances are required beyond just time travel to pull it off, explaining why other deaths can't be reversed. The specific mechanism for time travel in CT usually only allows you to travel backward or forward by very specific amounts of time. For example, you can travel back exactly 400 years from the "main" time period of 1000 AD, but you can't "redo" events you've already seen in the 600 AD period by traveling back 400 years and 1 day.
    • In Suikoden, on the other hand, the time travel event is explicitly a one-shot deal. It can never be done again, meaning that other major characters who die later are dead forever. And the event can also only be used to bring back one of the current "108 Stars of Destiny", meaning that there's no option to revive the hero's childhood friend Ted, his mentor's girlfriend Odessa or his father Teo instead of Gremio. One of those three used to be a Star of Destiny, but he's not one of the current set, so it doesn't count.
  • Neverwinter Nights 2 doesn't let you bring Shandra back. Though the implication from Elanee's dialogue (if she is in your party at that point) is that normal resurrection spells actually revive people who are almost but not quite dead, and Shandra was way past that point by the time you get to her. In a more meta sense the game actually has no resurrection magic without expansions except for an item you get much later.
  • Various non-player characters in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion cannot die until their role in a given plotline is fulfilled, if then. For example, you can range up and down the Archmage's tower in the Imperial City, killing key members of the Guild, over, and over again. Or go to the Imperial Palace, and cut down Chancellor Ocato until your weapon breaks. Most of the rulers of the cities of Cyrodil are likewise "immortal", save for one. Note that in Morrowind it was possible to kill plot-relevant NPCs, and in so doing, break the plot.
    • The game sometimes disables the player's controls, effectively creating first-person in-engine cutscenes. One example delivers this trope through Cutscene Incompetence, forcing you to stand still and watch while a hostile fighter walks up behind your employer, draws a weapon, and kills him.
    • In the first Expansion Pack for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, before the designers came up with truly immortal NPCs, they simulated the effect by giving the king a magic ring that makes him like unto a god. This was probably necessary because the king in question was such a Magnificent Bastard that otherwise even the most saintly PC would have been tempted to indulge in a little regicide. The fun thing is that this ring also made killing the king even more tempting, as the player would be able to loot it for himself.
    • Unfortunately some of the unkillable allies in Oblivion are seriously lacking in skill, 'dying' over and over again during various missions, this can ruin the immersion somewhat.
  • Subverted in the eroge-SRPG, Genrin no Kishougun 2. When characters die in combat THEY ARE DEAD FOREVER, not only can you not use them again but they can't even appear in story related sequences, which is particularly frightening in the fact that all but one of the first heroines introduced are your main combatants. Don't let them die.
  • In one of the endings in Baldur's Gate II and its Expansion Pack, Viconia is eventually assassinated by the Drow society that she had fled from by means of poison. However, throughout the game there are numerous people who have resurrection spells to bring back the dead, and you can even get a ring that renders its wearer immune to all poisons. Viconia herself is such a spellcaster, and even if another character is an epic level cleric, she's Killed Off for Real. (It should be mentioned, though, that if a character you are engaging in a romantic subplot dies and is resurrected in the game, it breaks the romance...for some reason. It is also possible for a character to be killed beyond the means of magic to revive them, but this normally requires spells like disintegrate, or such massive damage that the character is chunked.)
    • The games also have some cutscenes (in particular the battle at the end of the prologue in the first game) where a character is killed in actual combat... except that he simply drops dead after a while, even if the enemy wasn't hitting him/her at that point.
    • In addition, at the beginning, you find Khalid, Jaheira's husband, dead. Jaheira claims that it's no possibility of getting him back, since your captor had dissected and desecrated his body. Which was partially true in D&D at the time: Only a Resurrection spell — a 7th level priest spell — would work on saving someone whose body is dissected (which would be a fine limiting factor if not for the unfortunate fact that every temple in the game sold them and at least two Rods of Resurrection are on sale in the local adventure mart). The fact that Khalid's body stayed in Chateau Irenicus when it collapsed seals the deal, though.
  • Averted in Planescape: Torment. When characters are killed during cutscenes, fights still take place true to game mechanics, with damage listings and all. When your companions are all killed at the Fortress of Regrets, you are conveniently not there to Raise Dead.
  • In SD Gundam G Generation DS, the Rival Route is accessed by imitating the novelization of Mobile Suit Gundam; in other words, someone other than Char has to deal the last blow to Amuro, which kills him rather than simply damaging the Gundam as per the anime.
  • In Persona 2 Innocent Sin a friend/lover of Yukino dies by bleeding wounds. Even though they didn't try to use magic here to heal him, they did try when Maya got stab by the Spear of Longinius at the end. She too didn't live due to the spear being able to cause wounds that can't be healed.
  • In Persona 3, Shinjiro, Takeharu Kirijo, Shuji Ikutsuki, Jin, and ultimately, the main character.
    • Although in Shinjiro's case, playing as the female protagonist in the PSP remake can avert this. If you max out Shinjiro's Social Link, you can give him a gift watch that will stop the fatal shot that should have killed him. This is largely why Shinjiro and the Female Protagonist have become a Fan-Preferred Couple. Unfortunately, he falls into a coma and does not wake up until the final day.
  • Persona 5 has a slightly more justifiable version. Goro Akechi is killed by his father's cognition of him near the end of the seventh Palace. However, before he dies, he seals himself off with a huge steel door in order to protect the party. They can't use healing spells or items on him because they can't physically get to him.
    • There's also Kunikazu Okumura. The player won't mourn him, but his death causes a LOT of issues.
  • Lampshaded in the RPG Dungeon Siege: You are given a mission to find an elder. When you arrive there, a cutscene plays where he is killed. When you return to town to report the elder's death, they ask you why didn't you just use one of your potions of revival to bring the elder back to life.
  • Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura averts this by allowing the player to revive dead NPCs who are not even recruitable as party members, as long as he has the means - even if they were already dead to begin with. This only applies to a handful of characters, however, and people can still get Killed Off for Real, which is often explained away as a result of certain magicks at work or the body missing some vital parts.
    • One famous example occurs when one of the companions decides to leave the group as part of his personal storyline: by the time he is found, he gets killed, but the player is encouraged to revive him (there's even a conveniently placed Scroll of Resurrect nearby). However, that particular case is actually an aversion, as in some versions of the game the character dies in a normal fight instead of getting killed by a script, and it is possible for him to survive this - though the dialogue never accounts for it.
    • It is possible for the player character to suffer this, should they complete a particular sidequest. A PC with a high technological inclination should be prepared for this and buy or create some revival gadgets beforehand, because the subsequent resurrection they're subjected to is a magickal spell that follows the game mechanics, meaning it'll fail on a technologist.
  • In the Ultima series, the player's party members die and get resurrected all the time... with two notable exceptions. In Ultima V, a character slain by evil king Blackthorne's pendulum is permanently dead. And in Ultima VII Part II, a sacrifice is required for the Balance Serpent, for which one of your party members volunteers who will then be gone forever. Until the much-maligned Ultima IX. *sigh*
  • In an interesting example, Phantasy Star II uses cloning as the preferred "revival" method of fallen characters - why a plot-killed character can't be cloned is vaguely explained in the US version by stating she can't be cloned because she's not human, even though cloning prior to this point works on her; the original JP version instead states that the data required to revive her has gone missing; after the destruction of Climatrol and the death of Neifirst, the technology used to create biomonsters is no longer available on Motavia. The Japan-only PS2 remake adds an optional side-quest to fix this.
    • Bit character Tiem is murdered by her father Darum at the North Bridge when Rolf & co. bring her to see him; it's all a bit strange, since Tiem refuses to remove the veil obscuring her identity, and she mouths off to him when he demands the "stranger's" money, prompting him to slice her in the stomach. After he sees what he had done, he commits suicide, thereby letting the party continue on towards the Biosystem Labs.
    • Also in Phantasy Star IV, Alys is struck by an attack that's used repeatedly in the battle proper, but when it hits her in the plot, the effects are lethal. This is certainly an example of Gameplay and Story Segregation, however the 'lethal' result is interesting in that Alys doesn't die immediately - she becomes sick, and dies slowly over the next few (in-story) days/weeks - an attack that in most RPGs would either kill you or not, actually killed because of side-effects such as infections that most games would just ignore. This attack also seems to suppress healing abilities; the party healer attempts to heal her in the cutscene that follows, only to fail. This actually ends up being a bit of foreshadowing for the second act: The Black Wave's primary effect on Algo's people is' that disease. It can't be cured with magic and will raise corpses as zombies if they're continually exposed after death, with only the most powerful spiritualists actually making a full recovery on their own. The citizens of Mile don't even live long enough to make it indoors''. Having taken a Black Wave attack directly in the chest with no protection against it, Alys was only its first victim.
  • In Sword of Mana, the main character has to kill Amanda after she is bitten by Medusa. They try to bring her back using healing magic, but it only gives her enough time to speak a few final words before dying. One is left to wonder why they didn't try an Angel Grail instead.
  • There are several of these in Mass Effect: Corporal Jenkins gets gunned down by Mecha-Mooks right at the beginning of the game's first battle. Nihlus gets shot in the back of the head by Saren. And on Virmire, Shepard must choose whether to save Kaidan or Ashley; the one not chosen dies in a nuclear explosion. Wrex can also be killed in a cutscene on Virmire, but whether or not he died depends on the player's choices.
    • In the finale of the sequel, choosing poor teammates for specific tasks will get them (or another character) killed in a cutscene. Also, Mass Effect 2 has to enter the history of video games as a game where you can actually put your handcrafted Featureless Protagonist character through a Plotline Death (disregarding the fact that he/she dies in the beginning of the game).
    • The third game guarantees the deaths of Thane and Legion; the former is guaranteed to go out like a badass, while the latter will either make a Heroic Sacrifice or be killed to stop him from killing you, depending on the choices you make. While a lot of former allies, and even some current ones, can die over the course of that game, these two are the only teammates who are guaranteed not to make it to the ending under any circumstances.
  • Jin Uzuki makes a Heroic Sacrifice in the ending sequence of Xenosaga Episode III. Considering that he's a Badass Normal with a katana, probably falls under Too Cool to Live.
  • Valkyrie Profile: Damn near everybody. But in a sort of inversion, since you're playing as a Valkyrie, that's how everyone joins your party.
  • In Tales of Destiny 2, Karell's death is a Foregone Conclusion. Still, it's a bit jarring to see him felled by one little stab wound, and neither Atwight or Harold even bother trying to heal him. Harold might have had the excuse that she was in shock (and she does tell him to stop talking to try to stay alive longer), she knew it was supposed to happen, and her spells take a while to charge, but there's no excuse at all for Atwight not even trying a minor healing spell to buy him some time.
  • In Tales of Symphonia, the party healer's failure to save a dying NPC is Handwaved as healing magic being less effective on people without Exspheres. But it was always completely effective on Genis and Colette even before they got theirs.
    • Nevermind Zelos's death if you choose to end the game with Kratos. He has access to both an Exsphere and Cruxis Crystal. This is Handwaved by no characters even attempting to save him. Of course, in that ending he had just betrayed the party, so bringing him back to life might not have been the best strategic decision. And he turns out to be a Death Seeker, as well - hardly someone you want to be relying on in future battles, in either case.
  • Tales of the Abyss will always include Replica No. 7 Ion dying. Whether he was a Death Seeker at that point is debatable - he was ready to heal Tear, which would've put his own life at risk. Luckily, Anise's betrayal had given him a wonderful excuse for a Heroic Sacrifice to help the party get rid of the miasma and heal Tear, too.
  • In Tales of Legendia, the party healers try to save Stella after she has her spirit bird Teriques eat a cannon beam, but she's apparently too far gone for healing Eres to have any effect. So much for that Romantic False Lead. Later on, when Fenimore is stabbed, Maurits orders his men not to heal her in hopes that this will create impetus for Shirley's powers to awaken. She dies. It works.
  • In Tales of Xillia, Milla performs a Heroic Sacrifice to save the rest of the party when the E.S.S. Zenethra is destroyed after they defeat Gilland and Celsius. The trope is both averted and played straight when she returns to the human world not long after, but as a spirit with a physical body rather than a human.
  • Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader: While it's impossible for any of your companions to die in combat (they just get knocked out, and assuming you win, they just wake up afterwards with an Injury), many of your companions can be killed off (or worse) in the story, often at your hands. Some of the more notable ways are handing them off to Heinrix (an Inquisitorial acolyte), executing (or ordering Argenta to execute) Idira if she gets out of line or loses control, executing Jae for over-asserting her authority, executing (or allowing Idira to kill) Argenta in Commoragh, the list goes on.
  • Wizardry 8 has this in spades. When a PC gets killed, you can resurrect him/her with relatively little effort (Resurrection Powder). Should the same happen to an NPC, he/she is gone (with a rather gory explosion, usually). A particularly egregious example is the death of Jan-Ette, a recurring NPC from the previous Wizardry, who you find imprisoned and dying on Bayjin. She actually manages to talk to your party one last time, then she simply collapses in a heap and vanishes from sight.
  • In Square's SaGa Frontier 2, most of your characters will die in plot deaths fighting in battle, due to old age, or due to illness. Granted, the game spans almost a century (Only one character is shown to have lived to experience the entire game).
    • Johan in this game is a good example of a Plotline Death that avoids Gameplay and Story Segregation. Characters in the game die if their LP runs out, and during Johan's final sequence, his LP slowly ticks away to zero due to a poison as he fights hordes of incoming monsters. Annoyingly enough, main character Gustave dies in the EXACT SAME place and time, from the EXACT SAME HORDE OF MONSTERS without ever getting a chance to fight properly.
  • In Valkyria Chronicles, despite the fact you have a medic that can revive teammates who have taken tank shells to the face, Isara dies of a single gunshot. The medic is nowhere to be seen.
  • Pokémon battles only ever lead to Pokémon fainting, and they can easily be revived at a Pokémon Center. Cubone's mother in Pokémon Red and Blue was just the first Pokémon character to explicitly die - various Pokémon graveyards exist, for one thing.
    • One of the plotlines in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet has the player working to prevent one of these. Arven's Mabostiff was gravely injured by Paradox Pokémon beyond what Pokémon Centers could heal, so he and the player search for Herba Mystica to heal it.
  • Completely averted in Fallout. When a character dies, they STAY dead.
    "Dogmeat has died" Crap, quick load! Stupid dog!
    • Played straight with Essential NPCs in Fallout 3, who have Gameplay Ally Immortality and can only die in cutscenes or scripted events (e.g. James' sacrifice at Project Purity).
    • In Fallout: New Vegas, companions can only be knocked unconscious unless you're playing in Hardcore mode, with two exceptions: Jean-Baptiste Cutting turning Cass to ash with his laser rifle if the player complies with the Van Graffs' orders in "Birds of a Feather", and locking your human companion in the Ultra-Luxe freezer to be fed to the White Glove Society in "Beyond the Beef". Thankfully, neither quest is a requirement for any ending, and there are a number of other ways to complete the latter.
    • At the beginning of the New Vegas DLC Honest Hearts, the Happy Trails caravan is attacked by tribals. No matter how fast you take out the bad guys, the caravaneers are scripted to drop dead, and one of the attackers is invincible until they all die.
  • Modus operandi of Dragon Age: Origins, it seems. All fights in the game are essentially the same, so whether a character is to die or simply be captured, the individual event happens in a cutscene after the fight, and sometimes when they have been lying dead in a pool of blood for half the battle.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey the first sector has Gore killed in a cutscene. Interestingly just before this there is a cutscene fight which visually is a perfect mimic of game battles, but he is killed outside of battle. Unlike most examples, humans can't be brought back through the common resurrection item.
  • One of the bosses in Sion's campaign in Treasure of the Rudra has an ability called 'Foxy Killer' which it uses to force one of these. Foxy can't be revived by usual means after being hit with this skill, only by a trip to the underworld.
  • There's a bloody cutscene in Blackguards when Niam gets killed by the Louse Queen in the gladiator arena.
  • In EarthBound (1994), Buzz-Buzz, the Crutch Character who joins Ness in the prologue, becomes the one prominent character in the game to be killed off permanently when he is swatted like the fly he is. A memorial for him can be seen much later in Magicant.
  • In Ravensword: Shadowlands, the Archmage dies as a result of Kavanaugh attacking him when he opens the portal to Shadowlands.
  • Fuga: Melodies of Steel mostly averts this for the cast, where Anyone Can Die... except for latecomer Britz, who cannot be sacrificed prior to Chapter 11. If you fail to satisfy the Golden Ending conditions, then Britz will kill himself out of grief after his boss fight. Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2 doubles this up with Malt and Vanilla, the latter who will be forced by the Big Bad to detonate a bomb to cripple the Exo-Taranis, killing her in the process, and the former will sacrifice himself to the Soul Cannon automatically against the Final Boss if you fail to get the Golden Ending.

     Simulation Game  

  • Ace Combat deaths (for anyone but yourself) only happen when the story says that they happen. Unlike Gameplay Ally Immortality, this applies to enemy NPCs as well. For example, in Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War Erich Hillenberand will always survive you shooting him down (in fact his first line is about him ejecting as you opened fire), while Anton Kupchenko won't; same goes for Ilya Pasternak who is killed in Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation. A twist in Zero is that your story path determines whether or not Alberto Lopez survives being shot down, although this is inconsequential to the broader story. In any case he ends up dying anyway, with the story path only determining how long it takes to happen.
    • Also done in Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War with one of your squadmates and an enemy. If you shoot the named enemy in the second-to-last mission there's a comment about you being the ace of aces, but the enemy still appears during the final sequence to get his final Karmic Death.
  • In the original Wing Commander, if a character died, they were gone for good, sometimes resulting in you having to fly missions solo. (Given wingman AI, however, it could be argued that you were always flying solo.) Starting with second game, pilots who get shot down eject, until the storyline calls for them to die.

     Stealth-Based Game  

  • In Assassin's Creed II, you could've totally saved your father and brothers with a fair bit of skills and some attempts, but they have to die during a cutscene and your sword had totally be knocked out of your hand even though you could easily pick it up/dodge the attack if it's in gameplay.

     Survival Horror  

  • In Silent Hill 2 there is no way to prevent Maria's death in Brookhaven's basement.
    • Or in the jail cell. Or in the room with the Pyramid Heads. Or when you fight her, in some endings, anyways.
  • The Fatal Frame games tend to conclude their canon endings with a death. In the first, Mafuyu stays behind with Kirie, effectively killing himself to be with her; in the second, Mio strangles her sister Mayu to death as part of a ritual; and the fourth game concludes the introduction phase by killing off Madoka Tsukimori.
  • Peret em Heru: For the Prisoners: While you can save the lives of up to seven of your fellow tourists, there's no way to prevent Professor Tsuchida gunning down his assistant Kuroe before being crushed under a pair of pillars.
  • An interesting aversion occurs in the Survival Horror game ObsCure. The only way a character can be killed off is through your own incompetence; the game continues until all four (later five) available player characters have been killed. You can theoretically finish the game with all five characters still alive, or with only one; in fact, which ending you get is determined by whether or not everyone made it to the end. The sequel, however, plays this very straight, with most of the characters getting brutally butchered as the game progresses, ending with only Shannon and Stan still alive.
    • However, played straight in one case in the first game - Dan, the character Kenny finds in the basement, has to die from being killed by a monster.
  • Resident Evil series:
    • Resident Evil – Code: Veronica has a distinct NPC scenario. Steve, having mutated into a large green monster, can take any and all damage thrown at him by Claire without missing a beat. But he gets killed by a tentacle. A tentacle that had its end chopped off. What?
    • The original Resident Evil has poor Richard Aiken die, despite a Hope Spot being around in the form of finding a serum for him (he's poisoned). In the original game, you'll just get a radio if you give him the serum on time, while in the Gamecube remake, he'll live, but he'll either be killed by the snake Yawn (Jill's scenario) or a Neptune shark (Chris' scenario) shortly after. In the remake, having him die the latter way will net you his assault shotgun, however, so it's worth it to get him the serum.
  • In Ib, there is no way to save both Mary and Garry. One of them will die no matter what. Garry will either be driven incurably insane and left to die or he'll be murdered by Mary, and in a playthrough where he survives Mary will be set on fire. It's also possible to end the game with both of them dead, and in a really bad playthrough Ib will die too.
  • Until Dawn:
    • No matter the choices of the player in the prologue, Beth and Hannah's fates won't change. They will always respectively, die and become a Wendigo. This is lampshaded by Dr Hill who says, "No one can change what happened last year. The past is beyond our control".
    • Likewise, The Stranger will be quickly killed and there is nothing the player can do to prevent it.

     Turn-Based Strategy  

  • In the Fire Emblem series:
    • Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, Sigurd, main character and Lord for the first half of the game dies on you at the end of a chapter. Along with his entire army except for one or two survivors. Fortunately, all the ladies left children behind to carry on the struggle. Two children each, in fact.
      • And there's a justification as to why you couldn't use the dead-raising "Valkyrie" Holy Staff— when you get the wielder of the Staff, Claud, he says that it cannot raise those who have lost their Quintessence, which happens slowly over time, or could be stolen by special weapons... by time you get another Valkyrie wielder, the first gen characters have been dead far too long.
    • In Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, Ninian (playable character) and Hector's brother Uther (NPC). We also have Eliwood's father Elbert and Matthew's love Leila (both NPCs) who also suffer deaths without any chance to save them. Ironically, in Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, we had Hector himself dying.
      • Ninian gets resurrected again though, and lives happily ever after. Athos is the true plotline death in that he apparently overdoes it in the fight against the Dragon, regardless of whether or not you actually used him.
      • Also, Lord Helman (Lord Elbert's friend who gets stabbed by Ephidel, becoming the first victim of the Black Fang in the game).
      • Ninian is replaced by Nils for gameplay purposes.
      • Fairly popular Shaman Canas's death is a Foregone Conclusion, given that his son in the previous game was an orphan. His unavoidable death in his ending led to the cry "Canas was killed by continuity errors!"
    • In Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, we have Glen the Sunstone and the Ismaire the Queen of the White Dunes, though at least the former obeys normal combat rules (he simply attacks from the wrong position in the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors and receives a guaranteed critical hit to boot).
    • In Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, we have Greil and Rajaion.
    • In Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn (for at least your first playthrough), Pelleas.
    • In Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, your decoy in the fourth part of the Prologue, and Marth's parents. The sequel subverts the decoy's death, as Frey (the canon decoy) shows up alive and kickin'.
    • In Fire Emblem Fates, several characters who are playable on one route will be killed off on another route. The most notable deaths, however, are Gunter (thrown into a chasm to his apparent death pre-route split; he is discovered alive later in Conquest and Revelation, but never rescued in Birthright), Kaze (sacrifices himself to save you midway through Birthright if you don't have an A-rank support with him), and Scarlet (murdered midway through Revelation a mere two chapters after she joins you), who are all killed off despite being in your party at the time.
    • Three Houses has Jeralt, from being stabbed In the Back by Monica/Kronya. Justified in that the Player Character actually does use the time rewind mechanic to try and save him. Only for Kronya's boss to show up and stop them from doing so.
  • A remarkable number of people have died in Cut Scenes over the Heroes of Might and Magic games, despite the fact that most characters can learn to cast Resurrection. Easily.
  • In La Pucelle, Alouette the Maiden of Light uses the last of her power to help Prier purify Croix's (the Dark Prince) heart and passes on.
  • In Jeanne d'Arc, one would naturally expect the lead female to be burned at the stake. However, since Jeanne herself had already gone MIA from a crossbow bolt into a river, and the French higher-ups made her childhood friend Liane pose as her for the remainder of the war...yeah, Jeanne didn't take it well when she made it back after the fact. Although Team Pet Cuisses inherits her stats via the Paragon's Armlet, Liane only comes back as a spirit to assist in a Battle in the Center of the Mind against a demonic duplicate, and the player can recruit her ghost as a post-game bonus. Nevertheless, she remains legitimately dead to the plot, and Jeanne and Roger are last seen praying for her at the Chapel near Domremy.
  • Super Robot Wars, especially Super Robot Wars: Original Generation series love this trope. We have Captain Daitetsu Minase and Ouka Nagisa dying on the course of the game with no way to resurrect them. Likewise, some Anti-Villain like Folka's Aloof Big Brother Altis Tarl will also suffer a Plotline Death.
    • But they have also toyed with us with this trope. Axel Almer and Alfimi were supposed to be Killed Off for Real after Original Generation 2, yet they came Back from the Dead when OG Gaiden rolls in. Likewise, put one of your character a Defensive Support skill, and get him/her near Kyosuke during the last mission of the bonus section of OGs. Lamia Loveless would still get killed... until OG Gaiden rolls in and it's revealed that she's only Not Quite Dead.
    • Another version of toying around: According to Compact 3, Fernando Albark, Maysis Mark and Alion Lucada are supposed to die, there's no way you can save them. But their stories get tweaked that they didn't die. Fernando and Alion ends up joining you for good, while Maysis takes the back seat. Likewise, this also happens to Despinis, who ends up doing a Heel–Face Turn before she could get killed, ensuring her survival.
    • And for non-OG examples (for this instance, Z), we have Setsuko's teammates Toby Watson and Denzel Hammer, killed by Asakim Dowin to further traumatize Setsuko.
  • Baldarov from Warsong (Volkov in the original Japanese version of Langrisser) is struck down by an assassin's arrow at the end of Scenario 5, forcing the hero Garett (Ledin) to continue to journey on his own. Hopefully, you'll have given him an opportunity to level/get promoted before Baldarov/Volkov's inevitable death.
  • In Luminous Arc 2, you may have battled and beaten him plenty of times, but Master Mattias only died in a cutscene, complete with a special CG.
  • Odium: Poor Joan McFadden. Killed almost instantly by a poison which inexplicably was particularly deadly and immune to antidotes on that occasion. Too bad that her corpse and everything she was carrying vanished mysteriously shortly thereafter, too. But not before she delivered some annoyingly narmy lines.
  • So when the king is killed in the very beginning of Shining Force, why exactly can the local priest not revive him? Even worse, since he didn't die right away, why can't you just HEAL HIM?
  • Future Tactics has one glaring example of Gameplay Story Segregation in this regard. At first if you lose a single party member it is an instant game-over. A ways into the game, however, you obtain a device that will resurrect any dead party member, and in subsequent fights you only lose a party member for the remainder of the battle if one dies. Then, in a cut scene Pepper is killed by a stray grenade, and remains very much dead even though the immortality device was a huge plot point.
  • Everthing in the main plot of the sixth Heroes of Might and Magic game is kicked off when Duke Slava Griffin is assassinated, and resurrecting him is never discussed as an option. This is in a game where all healing magic, even some wielded by the most basic units in Slava's army, has the power to raise the dead if it raises someone's health pool above full.

     Wide Open Sandbox  

  • In Saints Row 2, Carlos could have EASILY been saved. How? Shock Paddles, some food, walking it off, or calling 911 for an ambulance. Though he does come back as a zombie, and since Zombie Lin from Saints 1 is canon (some goths mention her, and the Boss says he tried to sell the story to Channel 6 in one of the DLCs) then so is he.
    • It's supposed to be a mercy killing due to the mutilation of his pretty face, which hard to swallow with so many cheap plastic surgery clinics around.
    • Johnny Gat suffers one early into Saints Row: The Third, being gunned down by the Morningstar gang offscreen and returning as a zombie Homie at the end of the game, which in the series denotes a character that's Deader than Dead. Taking note of the word "offscreen," the dev team made a saving throw in the next sequel by revealing that Gat actually survived after all.
  • A version of this occurs in Little Big Adventure II. Normally, non-villain characters in the game can't be killed, and most of them won't die even if they accidentally get whacked by a villain aiming at the hero. However, at one point a dissident escaping prison with you gets shot before he can get out of the building, and dies. An interesting thing about this is that your character possesses some sort of a healing ability, and the dissident doesn't really die instantly after being shot — but since the event happens during the cutscene, there's no way you can save him.
  • Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. A character who has the oomph to resist multiple bullets moments ago (on the roof of Madd Dogg's mansion) gets taken down by a single bullet in the foyer.

Non-video game examples:

    Literature 
  • In the post-apocolyptic Kaiju vs Mecha world of Atomic Rex, the main character laments that an attack of giant locusts have damaged the crops in the community that he is responsible for, and that will result in mass starvation deaths. 'The old, the sick, the very young, and even some of the young and healthy people would die a slow and hungry death.' He endevours then to set out with his Humongous Mecha and deal with the Kaiju problem plaguing his world. The first thing he does is load his mecha with "whatever food and water that he had into a sack. Once he had enough provisions to last him for a 'few weeks' he crept back out into the settlement." Either the main character is Jerk Ass Hero who has been hoarding weeks worth of food and water in a place where lots of people are starving to death, or the author thinks that the main character's inventory should be entirely seperate from the plot.

    Tabletop Games 
  • This can happen in tabletop games too, if your GM decides to unleash The Plot Reaper on an important NPC. Even if one of the PC's has healing abilities, they will not be able to help. Resurrection will be completely out of the question. Of course, this works better if the game is already very cinematic/story oriented.
  • In Dungeons & Dragons 3.5, which is the default assumption when someone refers to tabletop games, the various resurrection spells explicitly state that the target must be willing, so the GM usually has an easy Hand Wave of "Sorry, they're enjoying the afterlife too much to come back for your cause."

    Webcomics 
  • Penny Arcade: Parodied in this strip, where a quest giver loudly laments the king's murder and talks over a player character's offer to resurrect him.
  • Dark Legacy Comics: Discussed and Exploited in a strip where Gigz witnesses a Heroic Sacrifice, learns that resurrection magic won't work because it's "part of the story line", and promptly tries to murder her teammate in a sufficiently narratively satisfying way to make it stick.

    Web Videos 

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