Please Wake Up in Video Games.
- In Alter Ego (1986), this is a possible event. The player owns a goldfish during the early stages of their lives, and the goldfish eventually dies. The player, however, doesn't understand why the goldfish won't go after her food or interact with the player. The player can then decide to either hide the fish's body in their drawer or ask their mom about it. Even if they do the latter and Mom explains the concept of death to them, the player still doesn't seem too fazed about death even after flushing the goldfish down the toilet.
- ANNO: Mutationem: In Dr. Doyle's backstory during an optional quest, after having exhausted his efforts to hopelessly attempt curing his child's terminal illness, his son could only look at him one last time before closing his eyes. Stricken, Doyle then attempted to wake him up by showing off a large stuffed toy hoping to ignite a reaction, then realizes his child has already died and immediately mourns him.
- Arrogation: Unlight of Day have the final cutscene where you managed to save your sister from a Human Sacrifice ritual. You then approach her prone body, her eyes closed, as you shake at her to wake up. And then, she opens her eyes and the screen goes dark.
- In Assault on Dark Athena, shortly after Jaylor, the resident former crewmember of the Athena, now a prisoner and seriously sick guy overall, randomly shoots Silverman, another prisoner and resident Wrench Wench, in the back, Riddick, of course, then must kill Jaylor. Of course, shortly afterwards, you soon have an obligatory encounter with Lynn, her daughter. "Is mommy asleep, Mr. Riddick? Is she asleep?!" Different in that it's not actually said to the corpse.
- In Beyond Good & Evil, as Pey'j lies drained of his Life Energy, you have an option of talking to him: "Pey'j, say something..." After talking to him, if you only press the action button one, Jade will just stand there, waiting for him to answer. As you might have guessed, he won't. (He gets better, eventually.)
- In BioShock 1, the Little Sisters go "Mister Bubbles, please wake up!" when their Big Daddy is killed. This is apparently a side effect of their mental states since they get over it rather quickly when the player heals them. They also can't tell the difference between the various Big Daddies, since, in the sequel, they will treat the Player Character, a Big Daddy himself, as if he were the same Big Daddy he just killed, with a happy "Mr. Bubbles, you're back!!" Some Splicers also say: "Come on, get up. I was only foolin'!" after they shit-kick you.
- Baldur's Gate:
- Baldur's Gate II expansion pack Throne of Bhaal has this as well. Subvertible however in you can solve this with a resurrection spell, easily accessible when you are this high level thus causing him to wake up.
- In Baldur's Gate III, you can meet a dog named Scratch, whose master had the misfortune of getting attacked by gnolls. Scratch is convinced his master is still alive and is just taking a long rest. If you offer him your scent so he can follow you later, he'll eventually make his home in your camp after coming to terms with the fact that his master is never waking up.
- In the canon route of Blaze Union, this is Eimi's reaction when the party gets together to mourn Siskier. It's a partial subversion, as Eimi is stated in other routes to have seen a lot of death on her journey to find her brother and has a full understanding of mortality—she just doesn't seem to want to accept it.
- Darkstalkers has this reaction from Cecil whenever Huiztil/Phobos is defeated.
- Divinity: Original Sin: If you kill the troll guarding the bridge to the Dark Forest, his son will say this.Wake up daddy. The humans need clobbering.
- Should Hawke fall in battle in Dragon Age II, expect to hear at least one line like this from the members of the active party. They'll make comments about any one of them falling, but these are sometimes more sarcastic than concerned; if it's Hawke, they range from angry to panicked. It's especially true of Hawke's brother and sister, who are justifiably terrified at the idea of losing their elder sibling; Bethany in particular literally tells Hawke to "Get up!" in a voice that sounds close to tears.
- In Dragon's Dogma, pawns scream panicked variations of this when the player character is killed.
- In Eternal Ring, the God-child recovers from his defeat and goes to his deceased caretaker Lyta's side, asking her to tell him about the baby birds again. He asks her to wake up again and again, to no avail. Realizing that she is dead, and with it the knowledge of what death is, causes the God-child to mentally and physically mature into an adult.
- In the 'Save Your Friends' ending of Far Cry 3, Dennis tries to stab Jason with a machete, but Citra jumps in front of the knife. When Dennis realizes what he's done, he breaks down crying and pleading with Citra's body.
- Easily one of the most heartbreaking moments in the Final Fantasy franchise, in Final Fantasy V. Galuf has just given his absolute all to save the heroes from Exdeath. The rest of the group tries absolutely everything they can to bring him back, from cure spells to resurrection magic to elixirs, all the while begging him to get back up. He doesn't.
- Celes's reaction to Cid's death in Final Fantasy VI, assuming you let the old guy die (or killed him deliberately).
- Subverted in Final Fantasy Tactics. Rafa wants the dead Malak to wake up to watch the sunrise... and that prompts the one time that God acts through a Zodiac Stone instead of the Lucavi, resurrecting him.
- Similarly, in the ending of Final Fantasy VIII, Rinoa does this wordlessly after finding Squall's apparently lifeless body in a wasteland beyond time. Her Sorceress powers kick in, bringing them both back to their own time, and possibly bringing him back to life as well (open to interpretation as to whether he really was dead, as there is no dialogue).
- Also, from Final Fantasy IX, you meet a Black Mage who's just buried his friend after he 'stopped moving'. "I sure hope he wakes up soon. I'm going to wash him off in the pond'. Semi-subversion in that most of the mages look like adults and don't understand death (or much about the world), while Vivi, the one that looks like a little kid, understands exactly what's going on and only avoids calling it death out of politeness. Some of the mages eventually grasp the concept but continue to use the term anyway.
- Fire Emblem:
- Fire Emblem: Awakening, whenever the Avatar dies (which is a Game Over), Chrom begins screaming "OPEN YOUR EYES!"
- In the Birthright path of Fire Emblem Fates, Keaton does this when one of his fellow Wolfskin is suddenly killed in the opening scene of Chapter 15. He begs them to get up and stop messing around before acknowledging that they're really dead.
- In Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, if a character dies and another who's very close to him/her is still alive, some of their prospect reactions to their deaths fall into this:Tobin [if his best friend Gray dies]: "Come on Gray, quit messing around! ... Gray? GRAY?!"Delthea [if her older brother Luthier dies]: "Get up Lu, you big dummy! GET UP!"Luthier [if Delthea dies]: "Delthea? Delthea! Open your eyes!"Forsyth [if his best friend Python dies]: "For goodness sake Python, get up! (...) Python?!"Boey [if his best friend/love interest Mae dies]: "Mae? Mae, this isn't funny!"
- In Guilty Gear Xrd SIGN/REVELATOR, Bedman's Instant Kill has him subjecting his rival to (thankfully off-screen) Mind Rape. If his victim is Johnny, he can potentially deal the following line, implying that he's reviving his father's death.Johnny: "Pops... Wake up... it's still the afternoon..."
- In .hack//G.U. Rebirth, when Haseo defeats an AIDA infected Pi, Subverted when she does wake up and he blushes.
- One of Carter's sermons you can listen to in Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, features this trope, in the form of a little boy deciding to save up his pocket money to buy an alarm clock to 'wake up' his mother, after his father tells him that she's 'sleeping'. Carter then questions whether it was right or wrong of the father to lie to his son.
- Hollow Knight: Dream Nailing the Maggots holding a wake for the False Knight after you kill him will show that they're begging for him to wake up and defend them again."Wake up, brother! Help me!"
- Ib: In some story paths, Garry performs a Heroic Sacrifice to save Ib. Examining his corpse always gives the same message: "Garry is sleeping...." Since the player character is nine, the implication here is that she's too young to realise the full truth.
- Done non-verbally in Just Shapes & Beats. When you inevitably die to the True Final Boss, you are sent to the respawn screen, only to be unable to respawn, since the boss smashes you again before you can. Eventually, your friends appear. The helicopter whacks at your shards, and the boat tries to splash you with water. Only the sad square seems to know what's going on, as they pick up your shards gently before putting them back on the ground and covering their face. Fortunately, the square realizes there’s still a chance to fix this and resurrects you to turn the tables on the boss.
- Kirby:
- This happens at the end of Kirby and the Rainbow Curse. After defeating the Final Boss, Claycia, she falls to the floor, and as Kirby moves in to take a closer look, Elline appears and cries over her body. Claycia comes to a few seconds later, having been freed from the possession of Dark Crafter by the fight.
- In the post-game campaign of Kirby and the Forgotten Land, after exorcising Fecto Forgo from Leongar (and subsequently defeating Morpho Knight when it shows up to claim Fecto's soul), it seems that Leon has become lifeless once again, to the sadness of Kirby and Elfilin as they nudge his body. Fortunately, Leon's wife Clawroline, along with the other members of the Beast Pack, arrive with the scattered pieces of Leon's soul, recollected during Kirby's fight. They get returned to him and Leon wakes up, finally free of Fecto's influence for good.
- In League of Legends, several champions consisting or more than one entities have in-game death animations evoking this.
- The straightest example is with Nunu and Willump. Only Willump bites the dust upon "dying" while Nunu tries desperately to get him back up, then quietly rests by his friend's side. Occasionally, he'll even shout "Don't leave me!"
- Maokai is usually carrying an animate little Sapling in his hand. When he dies, he flings it away (seemingly as to not crush it under his weight while keeling over), and all the Sapling can do is scramble over his body before quietly expiring itself.
- Dragon Trainer Tristana dies in a similar fashion to Nunu, except it's Tristana who dies while her dragon companion Riggle tries to nudge her back awake. Hilariously referenced and subverted, however, with Dragon Trainer Heimerdinger, where as he dies, his dragon partner Pythagoras nicks a chicken drumstick from his corpse and flies off.
- Louis' despair over Zoey's death in Left 4 Dead has a variety of lines, including one that fits the trope perfectly. "God damn it, Zoey! WAKE UP!." Zoey herself will sometimes react this way to Bill's death.
- Life is Strange: After shooting her, Nathan desperately shakes Chloe’s body several times as if urging her to still be alive. In a silent scene, it’s one way of showing that he was mainly using the gun for intimidation, and he didn’t mean to actually shoot her.
- Mass Effect:
- Tali, in Mass Effect 2, during her loyalty mission, finds her father dead, due to the experiments he was conducting on geth and thus being responsible for Tali's predicament throughout her personal mission and keeps saying that he would have some way of faking the dead and there is no way he could have died. It takes a second for it to really sink in that he is dead. It is heartbreaking due of the fact that relations between the two are distant and revealing the truth to the Admirality Board will demonize Tali's father which Tali will not accept.
- In Mass Effect 3, some recordings of geth history are shown, including one of a pro-geth quarian resistor trying to protect geth platforms from quarian fighters who are sanctioned to eliminate the entire geth. The fighters activated an explosive that killed the resistor and damaged the geth. Cue "Creator Megara, what is your status? Creator Megara?" Geth, being primarily software, don't die the way organics do. They just lose data. They are still saddened over the deaths of their creators who stuck with them when the rest of the quarians already disowned them.
- In any of the Metal Gear games, if and when you die, 99% of the time, someone from mission control screams "Snake? Answer me! Snake? SNAAAAAAAAAAAAKE!"
- Metaphor: ReFantazio: During the final fight against Louis, Will is transformed into a monster and resorts to tearing out his own heart to stop himself. As he lays in his own blood, Gallica breaks down in tears begging him to wake up, which manages to get through to him and wakes him up during his last confrontation with More.
- In OMORI, After Sunny accidentally throws Mari down the stairs in a fit of rage, Basil finds him with her lifeless body like this...and then the story gets REAL bad...
- Orta in the fourth Panzer Dragoon begs her fallen dragon to open its eyes once they have crashed to the ground from their battle with Abadd. He doesn't. But that doesn't mean he left her alone.
- When the main character dies in Persona 3, your Mission Control will occasionally exclaim "Oh no, please wake up!" In addition, when the protagonist dies at the end of the main game, it's played as just being very tired and falling asleep. Only in The Answer is it confirmed that he did, in fact, die. The other characters also thought he was sleeping, and by the time they realized something was wrong, it was too late, and he was dead. Except for Aigis, who, judging by the tone of her voice and subsequent breakdown, was fully aware that the protagonist was dying.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies has an incredibly disturbing variation. In her childhood, Athena Cykes did not fully understand the differences between humans and robots. After witnessing her mother's murder, she attempted to "repair" her by dismantling her, as if she were a malfunctioning robot.Athena: Something's wrong with mom, so I'm taking her apart to fix her.
- Primal Rage's continue screen has your selected characternote 's followers trying to revive them, with one of those followers begging you to continue the game.
- In The Reconstruction, upon seeing that Father Sikohlon has killed all his brothers and gone insane, Dehl says "What happened to our brothers? Why aren't they moving?" Justified in that he is a Sikohlon, and probably still pretty young by that point.
- Resident Evil 3: Nemesis has Jill fending off Nemesis at the Clock Tower after it infects her with the T-virus. Jill collapses and falls unconscious, prompting Carlos (who arrived moments later) to apologize for not being there for her and begs her to wake up. Subverted that Jill survives and was simply out cold for a few days, but the virus still inhabits her body until Carlos can get the vaccine from a nearby hospital to cure her.
- Happens in Return of the Obra Dinn: two of the Indian seamen, Soloman Syed and Renfred Rajub, have caught pneumonia while at the lancar house. During the ship's voyage, Syed is coughing in the middle of the night, waking up another Indian seaman, William Wasim, who senses that something is wrong and gets out of his hammock, frantically telling Syed in Hindi to wake up and "drink something," but to no avail, as Syed succumbs to his illness moments later.
- In the Bad Ending of Path A in Rondo of Swords, Altrius/Serdic is tired after a long battle and decides he needs to rest right then and there. This is followed by Marie trying to continue their conversation, calling his name, "Altrius? ...Altrius?" His lack of a response strongly implies that he has kicked the bucket.
- Averted in SIGNALIS. When you check the unresponsive Isa after a boss battle, you get the message "She won't wake up." This is not a euphemism for "She is dead," but a clue about using a revival item.
- Stray (2022): After B12 AKA, the Scientist clears out all the energy he had in his drone body to finally open the city, the drone falls down to the ground, now completely out of power. The cat nudges it with its nose to try a get a response form it. When that fails, they curl up next to him and sleeps.
- In Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Elena is caught in a blast during the finale and spends much of it limping, barely conscious. After killing the Big Bad, Nathan Drake carries her the rest of the way out. When they reach the surface, he lays her down on a slab and she is not moving or breathing and appears to be dead. Nate, visibly upset by this possibility, starts attempting to wake her up whilst saying she'll be alright. Turns out, he was right. She is seen recovered at the end of the game. Good thing too, otherwise that could have been a major Tear Jerker.
- Aruruu, the resident Badass Adorable of Utawarerumono goes through this after her grandmother dies early on and may have again when Teoro dies.
- Done with a heartbreaking extent in Xenosaga Episode 3, though the Bowdlerized version disturbs this with a good measure of Narm - someone tries to put blood back into someone who has died. Since the blood is removed in the English version, this becomes rather silly.
