If the health bar wasn't enough to tell you about how he's doing, then look at the face!
If the health meter shows [two hearts] or less, it begins to shake violently, warning that the player is low on health.
— Wiki article
on Minecraft
on Minecraft
A lot of video games have a Life Meter or similar which shows you how close you are to losing a life, dying, hitting Game Over or whatever. Most of the time you have to read the meter to find out how much health you have, but sometimes, the meter will do something to let you know and that's this trope.
Maybe the meter moves (shaking is a common motion), or maybe there is a Character Portrait or a face next to the meter that winces whenever your character gets hurt or gradually looks more and more angry/scared/sick/sad/tired/dazed/beat up. Maybe the character themselves changes in some way (slows down, becomes more cranky, appears tired/injured/sickly, for example). Perhaps it also makes a sound or flashes. Sometimes, if it really wants to get your attention, words or frowny faces or similar might flash onscreen or the Exposition Fairy won't shut up about you being low on health. Running out of health usually invokes the character dying (or at least, being knocked out) in the portrait as well as in-game, the former often accompanied by the classic "dead" Xs replacing their eyes.
This is probably a way of getting the player's attention; after all, it's easy to ignore a life meter when it just sits innocently in the corner, but if it starts shaking or the face now doesn't look so good, it might get your attention.
Can sometimes overlap with Songs in the Key of Panic (for the "key of warning" type). Critical Annoyance is almost a subtrope: it's for sounds that play when you either have low health or are playing incompetently. Compare Notice This, which is also about getting players' attention. Note: Changing colour does not count as that is extremely common. Neither does greying out a character who is knocked out unless something else happens to indicate they are knocked out.
Sub-Trope of Status Line, a display element showing the current disposition of the player, e.g. score, health, ammo, etc.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Beat'em up Games
- The arcade Asterix Beat 'em Up by Konami has player portrait states for flinching when getting hit, being flustered when receiving a kiss from Panacea, a frenzied expression when under the influence of the Magic Potion, dizzy when losing a life and even sleeping for the inactive player character in single-player play.
- A downplayed example as the game in question doesn't do this based on health, nonetheless, in River City Girls whenever either of the titular protagonists speak during gameplay, their portraits have them lean onto and look at the main game screen. Even the inactive player character shows up to talk in single-player.
- The licensed Beat 'em Up games based on Sailor Moon have this, depending on the game:
- The first Super Famicom game only has a crying portrait when the player's chosen Senshi loses a life.
- The second Super Famicom game has a portrait of the Senshi in a pained expression, but only when being knocked down to the floor, in addition to the crying one upon losing a life.
- The Mega Drive game only has the pained portrait, but it always changes upon the Senshi being hit, there's no crying portrait (or losing animation, for that matter).
- The Arcade game features the same portrait change variation of the Mega Drive version upon the Senshi being hit. If the player's health is low, the portrait alternates rapidly between the pained and normal ones. And upon losing a life, the pained expression stays blinking until the next life (no crying animation here either).
- Skinny & Franko: Fists of Violence has portraits - both player and enemy portraits - flinch whenever their characters get hit, and their faces get increasingly bruised as their health get lower (the titular Franko would lose the short samurai ponytail for a Barbarian Longhair akin to his classic look he sported in the game's precedessor). These also go gain Glowing Eyes of Doom whenever their characters perform the Berserk move.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game has the turtles smile when the player inserts a coin, and cry when they lose their last life.
Fighting Games
- Fatal Fury 2 (as well as Fatal Fury Special) has three lifebar portrait states: Normal, one for when the opponent's health is low enough to be able to perform their Desperation Move, and one for when the opponent had been defeated.
- Fatal Fury 3 (as well as Real Bout Fatal Fury) also has portrait states for normal and being low enough on health (also accompained by the lifebar flashing) as well as just getting hit. Oddly, the portraits are only present in single-player matches, as these are hidden in player vs player fights.
- In The Final Round, your boxer has 100% health with good color and posture when you face an opponent. Each time you get hit, your color gets drained, and your posture gets weaker and weaker. If your health gets reduced to 0%, you face a potential knockout, unless you get up quickly before the count reaches 10. If you get KO'd three times, it's a TKO.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Heritage for the Future: The character portrait next to the health bar goes from "normal" to "pain" whenever the character is hit.
- Legend of Success Joe: Both Joe and his opponent show physical damage on their faces the more lower their health bar drops, showing bloody, bruises and swollen faces.
- M.U.G.E.N: When playing as (or against) SCP-999, both SCP-999 and its opponents will have "happiness bars" above their heads, both types of which have a face. SCP-999's "attacks" don't deal damage but will fill up the opponent's bar, causing the initial angry face on it to become happier and happier until it turns into SCP-999's smiling face when filled, KOing the opponent by forcing them to Happy Dance. Opponents' attacks don't deal damage to SCP-999 but will decrease its happiness bar, which causes the initially happy face on it to become sadder and sadder until it turns into a crying face when depleted, KOing SCP-999.
- The arcade versions of Power Instinct first games before Groove on Fight have the character's side face with the health bar, which changes from normal to being-hit animation when you were hit by the opponent. This got more dramatic in the first game, where the portrait's backgrounds also change of colors from blue to red when you got hit and the character's face got more agitated when the health bar is low.
- Primal Rage: If you have the gore enabled, the gauge displays with a long artery-like graphic and ends in a beating heart, and the lower your remaining life, the faster the heart beats. Lose a round, and the heart blows up into a bloody mess. There's also a stun bar that's represented by a spinal column attached to a brain: if it's depleted and your character ends up stunned as a result, the brain crackles with electricity, and upon losing a round, it's fried into ash.
- The NES version of Punch-Out!!, in addition to an actual health bar, has Little Mac's sprite change depending on where his health's at in-between rounds, going from happy, to happy with a swollen eye, to sad with a swollen eye.
- Shaq Fu has lifebar portraits that have increasingly depressed expressions whenever the health goes down by thirds. They also make Screaming Warrior faces whenever the character they represent wins or is under the influence of the Fury Mode.
- Street Fighter X Tekken: the health bar shakes losing a portion of the remaining health whenever an attack is landed on a character.
- Them's Fightin' Herds has portraits of the two fighters next to the health bars, which change expressions when taking damage, using a super move, or getting KO'd, and become visibly injured when low on health.
First-Person Shooters
- Apocryph has a portrait of your character in the middle of the status bar. Unlike other examples of this trope which use this method, there are only three steps of bloodiness - it begins getting bloody at about 66% health left, and becomes significantly more bloody at 33% health.
- Beyond Citadel features a Virtual YouTuber-esque avatar of The Martyr on the lower left corner showing from her bust that reflects not just the health but also the vestment and armor, with the armor being overlaid on top of The Martyr's visage. The Martyr's face gets bloodied on lower health levels, and with the enemies having a fond tendency to mangle The Martyr's corpse whenever she dies, it's not uncommon for her dead avatar to go from a bullet hole in the head to getting literally reduced to bloody pulp with not much beyond the nerves and the brain.
- The first Catacomb first-person shooter, Catacomb 3 D, has a portrait of the hero which gets replaced from the bottom up with a skull as you take damage. The Catacomb Fantasy Trilogy uses a face that gets more beaten up and bloodied with each 25% health lost.
- In CULTIC, the animated beating heart at the lower left of the screen does visibly bleed in addition to losing color vibrancy at lower health levels.
- Being a Doom reskin, Chex Quest uses the same kind of animated picture system as the game it's based off of. Only instead of getting increasingly bloody, the Chex Warrior gets more covered in slime the more health he loses, with him being completely covered upon hitting 0%. And when picking up a powerup or new weapon, he gives a double thumbs up.
- In the PC version of Daikatana, the status bar portraits of Hiro and his sidekicks get bloodied from right side to the left depending on their condition. Like with Doom and Quake, they also gain Glowing Eyes of Doom whenever they are under the influence either of the Mana Skull or the God Mode cheat mode.
- Doom: The heads-up display includes an animated picture of Doomguy's head. As he takes damage, his head looks more and more bloodied and bruised, getting worse at every 20% lost.About the SNES port... At 20% or below, Doomguy is bleeding from his nose, mouth and scalp, his eyes are severely bloodshot, and his posture is slumped, though still attentively peeking left and right. Depending on the port, Doomguy's head can explode upon death, too. With an Invulnerability, the portrait will display Doomguy with his eyes glowing a pale yellow similar to a Pinky's. Receiving damage will cause him to grit his teeth in pain and look in the direction the damage came from, and if the damage is high enough note , he'll make a shocked face (though this feature is bugged in the original release and only shows correctly in source ports). The status bar face also sports a huge evil grin when you pick up a new weapon.
- I. M. Meen: When your character takes a hit, their face will depict surprise.
- Ion Fury features Shelly's face in the bottom left corner getting more bloody as she takes damage alongside a numerical health meter. When she dies, her face can be simply mangled like Doomguy's face when he dies in his game, or it can have part of her head blown out if she died to Boom, Headshot!, or in extreme cases, almost her entire head could be removed leaving a stump just above her neck.
- Mullet MadJack: When the titular character isn't using his left hand to do things like reloading his gun or drinking soda, he holds his phone set to a health/time monitoring app that features his grimacing face. His face gets bloodier when he's down to six seconds (during the boss fights there are more stages of the bloodiness) and his visage gets replaced by a beating heart once his health/time gets down to a critical level.
- Nightmare Reaper also features your character's face in the bottom left corner getting progressively bloodier with damage. If her health zeroes out, her face slides down off the screen (suggesting her collapsing). Her appearance also changes up depending on the active powerup, with the titular Nightmare Reaper powerup giving her demonic look complete with horns, while the reflection power-up makes half of her face darker, making her look a bit like Baron Samedi.
- Nitemare 3D uses a picture of your character which, while it doesn't get bloody, the skin does begin wearing away for every 10% health lost, eventually leaving you with just a skull when you're on your last 10% health. When you die, the skull goes dark.
- Only Lead Can Stop Them displays your health icon on the bottom-left corner with your face, who visibly winces and get bruised if you suffer damage. When your health reaches one-third your icon starts getting bloody from cumulative damage.
- Project Downfall features the protagonist's face on the upper left corner, which can range from having few bullet wounds on his face to being subject to some really nasty Facial Horror whenever he gets anywhere close to death (to say nothing of dying, which can happen very often). The face also makes a crazed expression whenever he's under effect of the pills and gains Fireball Eyeballs when his rage mode (done by holding down the pill button when the andrealine bar is full) is active. His face can even become bandaged during hospital-based missions.
- Quake I features Ranger's face as an additional health status indicator alongside the current health indicator. The face will contort in pain with every hit taken. Similar to Doom, Ranger's eyes will glow yellow when picking up a Pentagram of Protection, and when a Ring of Shadows is active, the status bar shows only a helmet and a pair of eyes, which can combine with the Pentagram's eye glow and makes the status bar face an empty helmet with two angry narrowed glowing yellow eyes inside. The face also changes into a psychotic Slasher Smile with bloodshot eyes whenever the Quad Damage is active, but sadly this doesn't overlap with any other powerups.
- Quake III Arena downplays this with the player character's head representing health that briefly zooms in whenever they get hit.
- Shaw's Nightmare: The status bar displays Shaw's relative status. At full health, he looks confident. When his health gets low, he begins to look sickly. When he dies, he becomes a skeleton.
- Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer: In addition to Zane's face becoming more beaten and bloodied as his health drops, it also Mouth Flaps along with his one-liners.
- The Spy Who Shot Me: While the Doom-inspired portrait of Agent 7 doesn't change appearance based on health, he still grins whenever he's shooting, bobs whenever he's sprinting and even lowers down to the point he's only visible from his nose up whenever he's crouching.
- Viscerafest: The heads-up display includes Doom-inspired animated portrait of Caroline, grimacing when taking damage and bloodiness increasing as the health lowers included. Power-ups also affect the apearance, with The Ring of Invincibility giving her blank, alien eyes while the Blood Fury also adds that as well as a Monster Mouth. Even character development seems to affect the portait, as the last two levels have her unwilling to smile even at full health, reflecting her mental exhaustion during these levels, while the very last level has her..... literally unable to smile.
- The Wheel of Time has a portrait of Elayna (or the current player model in Multiplayer) on the top left of the screen. At lower health levels, the posture in the portrait gets increasingly limp.
- Wolfenstein 3-D: The status bar includes BJ's face, which looks increasingly bloody and swollen as the player takes damage. If you get low enough, the face shows that one of BJ's eyes is so mangled that it doesn't move.
- Zortch: Taking damage causes Zortch's head next to her HP counter to rattle around, and dying causes her head to flip over with Xs in place of her eyes. Her portrait also turns invisible (except for her eyes) when wearing Invisibility Paint and gets demonic glowing eyes when using an Anger power-up.
Hack-and-Slash Games
- In BloodRayne 1, Rayne's portrait fades into a skull at lower health levels. Her eyes would also become red when her Blood Rage is ready to use, and she even snarls a bit when the powerup in question is active. The bosses have their own portraits, and these too are subject to skeletonization once their health goes low.
- In Devil May Cry, when Dante's health gets particularly low, the health bar ornamentation turns red. This serves as an indication that Last Chance Hit Point is no longer in effect.
- In Devil May Cry 2, the border of your health bar flashes or pulsates green every time you recover health, whether by picking up Green Orbs or regenerating through Devil Trigger. Otherwise, it flashes or pulsates red when you take damage. Against certain enemies, the latter cue helps in letting you know if your character is still poisoned.
- In Gauntlet, when a player's health falls below 200, the number flashes, accompanied by an ominous musical cue that speeds up as the player's health is depleted.
- Get Medieval contains animated player portraits, with expressions based on their health level as well as seperate animations for getting hit and dying. It also has to be noted that the game's title glows in red whenever the Announcer is speaking.
- Honkai Impact 3rd: For the enemies, whenever they get hit by a "heavy attack", their life bar will flash white and shake.
- The arcade version of The King of Dragons have the player characters' portraits flinch whenever they get hit, and the portraits would remain in flinching state shall their character be in low health or dead.
- The health bar in Magenta Horizon - Neverending Harvest includes an image of Gretel's face. As her health gets lowered, her owl mask takes more damage and her expression becomes more fearful.
- No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle: Alongside a traditional battery symbol, the player's current energy meter for his Beam Katanas is also represented by a very phallic, smiling, bouncy blob which shrinks and becomes less happy as the player runs out of energy, requiring recharging with a suspicious shaking motion.
Horror Games
- Frictional Games' Amnesia:
- Amnesia: The Dark Descent represents health and sanity as graphics of the heart and brain organs respectively in the inventory screen, and these visibly get deteriorated as either of these get in worse state.
- After being absent in two games since The Dark Descent, this trope returns for Amnesia: The Bunker in the form of Henri's hand that gets increasingly bloodied as he has less health.
- The first Clock Tower game features this. While the background is usually a prime indicator, Jennifer's 'health' is represented by her facial expression, and it changes based upon whether or not she is being attacked by something (such as a crow or most regularly Scissorman). This even carries over to cutscenes.
- In the H-Game Demonophobia, Sakuri's health is primarily indicated by her portrait, with her looking increasingly exhausted the closer she is to death.
- FAITH: The Unholy Trinity sort of has this even if this only comes into the display with the True Final Boss fight, as John - who was up until this point a One-Hit-Point Wonder - gains a Godly blessing to survive a few hits during this encounter. Each time John would get hit would cut to a scene of him praying for more strength with his appearance depending on his health, starting out with few bruises and cuts, then these bruises miracously healing, then his eyes glowing, then bleeding out from his eyes and then having a torn down skeletal face at which point he'd be just one hit away from death.
- Gregory Horror Show's PlayStation 2 game Soul Collector also features this. Whenever the character is given a status ailment, their face in the Heads Up Display will change to fit it - and when they are being chased (or experiencing a horror show) they will be inevitably scared.
- Lamentum: Victor's portrait in the inventory screen looks increasingly ghoulish as his health gets lower.
- Resident Evil 1-3 and Code: Veronica display your health in your status screen as an electrocardiogram, which goes from being green, fast and ample if you're "Good", to being weak, slow and red if you're in "Danger". In addition, the closer your character is to dying, the more slowly they will move while limping increasingly harder.
- Silent Hill 2 and the remake generally only shows how injured you are when you go into your inventory screen: if you're fine, the background will be green. If you're injured, the background will be orange, and if you're badly injured, the background will be flashing red. The remake also includes a red vignette effect around the edges of the screen, and an empty cross will show up when you're close to death (both can be turned off if the old school experience is preferred).
Licensed Games
- In the video game version of Alien: Resurrection, the health bar blinks red when its at Critical status.
- On the Genesis version of Beavis and Butt-Head, both characters start out happy at full health. With each hit they take, they become sadder and more tired. When they're a couple of hits away from dying, they have bandages on their faces.
- In the console version of the Coraline video game, the heroine's health is measured by a multicolored half-circle bar with her character portrait going along with its status. Coraline's expression starts out perky and confident when health is full, but turns pouty whenever health starts to dip. When the health bar is nearly gone or empty, she looks anguished.
- Deadpool: In several video games, most notably Marvel vs. Capcom, Deadpool can physically pick up his health bar and use it as a weapon to strike enemies.
- In Donald Duck: Goin' Qu@ckers, Donald's status is represented by his face in the corner of the screen. He's happy when at full health, angry after being hit once, and shouting during Mercy Invincibility.
- In the SNES Flintstones game, Fred's face is the health bar. When he takes a hit, his eyes cross and his tongue hangs out. One hit from death, and his eyes are popping out of his head and his hair is standing on end. Making it even weirder, the game is based on the live-action movie, so the face is a digitized portrait of John Goodman.
- In Izzy's Quest For The Olympic Rings, Izzy's eyes in the HUD indicate his health, if Izzy gets hit once, the eyes become "dizzy", which is a "danger" state where Izzy loses a life if he gets hit again. Gathering three medals restores Izzy back to normal.
- In "Germ Squirmish", a licensed game of The Loud House, as the "infection" meter rises, Lincoln's face next to it looks more and more disturbed, then sickly, then if it fills completely, he gets sick and you lose.
- Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City: Michael Jordan's head in the HUD changes expression based on how much health the player has. With ranges from him smiling at full health, grinning, neutral, angry, tired, then finally unconscious when losing a life.
- Nicktoons Unite!: If one of the heroes is at low health, their face icon will change from their regular smile to worried and freaking out.
- In Jungle Stumble, a licensed game of Rugrats, your player character whines whenever you take damage.
- The console version of Scooby-Doo! Classic Creep Capers has an icon of Shaggy's head which changes depending on how much health he has. He is smiling at full health, but every time he comes into contact with an obstacle he gets gradually more nervous until at very low health, he looks completely petrified with hair sticking out on end.
- The Simpsons video games:
- In The Simpsons Game, your player Simpson has one. With a full health meter showing them happy and/or confident. At mid-health or lower, they have a worried expression. Fortunately, they have Regenerating Health, so they should be patched up in no time.
- In Bart's Nightmare and Virtual Bart, Bart has a health meter which also depicts his relative status. At full health, he seems confident. As health drains, he begins to look sickly, and when he dies he becomes a skeleton.
- South Park 64 uses an icon of a face aside the health meter. It starts out green and smiling, but every time your character is attacked and the health decreases, the face changes to yellow to orange to red and the expression will progress from normal to bothered to completely ticked off.
- Both of the Game Boy Advance tie-in games of Teen Titans (2003), Teen Titans (2005) and Teen Titans 2, have the health bars of the Titans and most of the bosses (Gizmo, Jinx, Mammoth and Brother Blood in the first game, General Immortus and Monsieur Mallah in the sequel) accompanied by an icon of the character's face that grins when at full health, starts to frown the moment damage is first taken, becomes more annoyed or worried as more damage is taken and looks completely terrified when health is extremely low.
- The first Tom and Jerry video game for Game Boy has a picture of Jerry as the health meter. When Jerry is at full health, he is smiling. Each time he is hit with an obstacle, the smile gradually fades to that of a worried expression. By the time he is fully out of health, Jerry is completely petrified.
- In Warlock (which is based on the first two films in the Warlock series), your health comes across as a fine face with red eyes, but every time you take damage, your face gets chipped away from your bits of flesh until it's close to being a skull. If you can't heal up quickly before your last hit turns you into a skull, you're dead.
- In the Winnie-the-Pooh game Tigger's Honey Hunt, the icon of Tigger's head next to the health meter changes depending on how much health Tigger has. When he's at full health (3), Tigger is smiling; at half health (2), Tigger looks confused; and at low health (1), Tigger is drooping sad.
Life Simulation Games
- Baby Hazel: If you delay, the adults will get a hangdog expression and the kids will cry.
- In The Farmer, if your sleep meter is low, the words "I am tired" will flash on the screen.
- Frenzy: In many of the games, people will start to look ticked off if you don't tend to them within a period of time.
- In I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, the Stress meter acts like an HP meter, which goes up until 100 each time you work or get sick or injured. Your character's expression changes along with it, and they get exhausted when they reach maximum stress, leaving them unable to do anything but relax.
- The Sims has several other ways besides the color-changing diamond to tell if a Sim's needs are low:
- If they're hungry, they will refuse to do tasks and become irritable, unless they are a baby, whereupon they will cry.
- If they're uncomfortable, they'll also become grumpy, although they'll generally still do tasks.
- Having to pee also causes grumpiness (although, like discomfort, they'll generally do tasks) and when it gets to be urgent, they'll run towards the toilet. Some Sims who need to pee might also do a Potty Dance. When babies need a diaper change, a green stink cloud will appear on them.
- If they're dirty, they slowly become visibly dirty and occasionally sniff themselves and then gag.
- If they're tired, they'll generally act tired.
- If they're sad, they'll have a dejected expression and, if they're a baby, they'll cry. If this sadness is caused by loneliness, however, they won't indicate it unless it's The Sims 2, whereupon they'll become delusional and start seeing the "Social Bunny".
- In later entries, their mood will often be shown to the player when the player highlights them.
- In Super Sized Family, if a kid is sick they will look green-faced and Virginia will have her arms down (she normally holds them up.)
- In Terrible Triplets, the parents' faces look more and more worried the lower your health.
Multi-Genre
- Moshi Monsters: When a Moshi Monster is sad or hungry (both your monster and the ones on the Ice Scream Parlour game), a little face that indicates their mood will change to a neutral expression, and then a frown.
- Neopets: If a Neopet's hunger goes below "very hungry", they start looking sad (each species has its own "sad face"). Weirdly, if their happiness goes down, they still look happy. If they're sick, they make a different negative face, which doubles as their disgusted face (when they're fed a gross food). If they get given something (such as a food, toy, book, or petpet) they dislike or you type your password wrong, they snarl.
- Tribal Hunter: Munch has a character portrait next to his health bar; at full heath he has his usual grin, at half health he looks tired and uncertain, and near death he's battered, bruised, and teary-eyed. His portrait also changes if he's nearly full, becoming worried with distended cheeks.
Massively Multiplayer Online Game
- Toontown Online: The Laff Meter on the bottom left is your Toon's health meter, which is shaped and colored after your toon's species. At full Laff (Health), the Laff Meter has a closed smile. If you've taken some damage, the mouth opens, with the "teeth" shown dependant on the percentage of health left (1-6 teeth). When you go sad (lose), the Laff meter turns green and shows a dead face.note You will passively recover health in any Toon Playground, but there are also treasures themed after each playground that replenish health faster. You will also recover from going sad in playgrounds.
- World of Warcraft played with this - while the character always had a static image, they would either flash red or fade in and out at low health (but only when you targeted them.) Players also could mod this to actually it more or less obvious - such mods were common back in the day.
Platform Games
- Aladdin (Virgin Games): The health bar in the PC/Amiga version is the face of the genie, accompanied by a hourglass which indicates Aladdin's health by the amount of sand in the upper bulb. When Aladdin's health is at max, the genie is smiling, but the more damage Aladdin takes, the more nervous the genie starts to look, until near the bottom he is biting his nails in anxiety.
- In the Animaniacs Licensed Game for the Sega Genesis, the Warners' health bar is on the upper-left corner of the screen, and it consists of a face with its expression changing depending on how much health they have (they can take up to eight hits). If their health gauge is full, the expression is excited, if they take two hits, the expression is calm, if they take four hits, the expression is terrified, and if they take six hits, the expression is tired. If they're one hit away from losing a life, the expression starts flashing.
- Awesome Possum... Kicks Dr. Machino's Butt: Awesome's expression sours as he loses health until he eventually puts on a comedic "dead" expression, complete with cross-shaped eyes and his tongue hanging out. In the original prototype, he'd start losing flesh until only his skeleton is left.
- Banjo-Kazooie: The health bar is paired with an image of the titular duo's face. As the player loses health, their expressions go from grinning to sad, ultimately falling unconscious when they lose a life.
- In Bubba N Stix the mugshot of Bubba has expressions for getting hit, running out of health and even swimming underwater (at which point it also doubles as an Oxygen Meter, getting increasingly filled with blue).
- Bubsy II on the Sega Genesis and the SNES gave you a three-hit health meter, represented by Bubsy's face next to the life counter (a cocky smirk at full health, a nervous grin after one hit, and an Oh, Crap! face after two hits; get hit while on the Oh, Crap! face, and you die).
- Coneru Dimension Girl contains a Virtual YouTuber-esque avatar of Coneru herself on the lower left corner, reacting to plenty of in-game events including but not limited to picking up items, using special movement or Coneru Beam attacks, activating the RunRun mode and getting hit.
- Conker's Bad Fur Day has an expressive Oxygen Meter, consisting of a stream of bubbles coming out of Conker’s mouth. As the stream of bubbles gets shorter, his expression gets more desperate and his face starts turning blue, ultimately drooping if you keep him under water for too long (about 25 seconds). This carries over to the remake, Conker: Live & Reloaded, where you get about 70 seconds of oxygen, and the desperation really starts happening when the last bubble goes at about 15 seconds remaining.
- Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex: A variation occurs, having an expressive Life Meter instead. When Crash dies, the face next to it either turns blue (when he turns into an angel or gets frozen) or the eyes on it close (all other deaths).
- Grapple Force Rena: Rena and the bosses have a few facial expressions based on their status such as low health or defeat.
- Gravity Circuit: Kai's portrait on his health bar will flinch when he takes damage and look tired when he's low on HP. The same is true for most of the bosses.
- Heidelberg 1693: There's one for both the player and one for the bosses.
- Your onscreen musketeer have an avatar next to his Life Meter on the upper corner of the screen, who gets increasingly bloody and bruised when he suffers damage. When losing a life the avatar turns into a skull until you respawn.
- All of the bosses have the date of their birth next to their name above their lifebar. When living ones are killed, it then adds the date of their death. Undead bosses take this further with a date of birth, death, and undeath. When they're killed, it adds their date of second death.
- The James Pond games have the protagonist's expression in the heads-up display be tied to the number of lives rather than current health, sporting a wide grin when he has four lives (in the first two games) while looking agitated/worried when he's down to two lives or less. Within the first two games he also counts the number of lives with his hand.
- In Kirby games starting from Kirby's Return to Dream Land, whenever a character picks up the Invincible Candy, their health bar will flash rainbow while the effect's active. Similarly, Kirby's face on the side of the health bar changes to a sad one if health is low.
- The Lost Vikings has a downplayed variant as it doesn't do this based on the titular protagonist's health, just whenever they are alive or dead, the latter which has their portraits be skeletonized.
- The TV in the top-right corner in Pizza Tower displays Peppino's face reacting to various events throughout the game, such as receiving power-ups, running fast, and of course, getting hurt. This video displays all of Peppino's reactions to getting hurt, which flash on the TV after every ten hits.
- Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal uses this trope for Qwark Vid-Comics. As Qwark gets hurt, his mug next to his HP goes from happy to somewhat cheery to neutral to desperate.
- Rayman 2: The Great Escape: Rayman's portrait next to his lifebar gets a worried expression shall he get really low on health.
- The computer versions of Risky Woods has the portrait of the protagonist at the bottom right flinch whenever the player gets hurt, and give a thumbs up whenever he completes the Eye Key or rescues a priest, as well as buying anything from the shopnote .
- Shredded Secrets: Every character has a picture of their face next to their life meter, but as they take damage, the face changes. For Oakley, the bully, he actually changes his expression to try to look tougher when he gets low on health, as if trying to hide the pain inside. For London, the secretly depressed teacher, her face looks pained if she exhausts her attack power, which is shooting compassion hearts.
- In Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, as you damage the bosses, their faces below their health bars go from angry, to worried, to eventually, bruised and beaten up.
- A variation in Sonic the Hedgehog games: whenever the player has zero Rings, the Ring counter will blink or flash red to indicate that taking damage again will result in a loss of life.
- Stitch: Experiment 626: An icon of Stitch is shown next to his health bar, where he starts out looking excited before gradually appearing more worried as he loses health, and finally showing him knocked out if the bar runs out.
- Downplayed in Top Banana. The player character's portrait shows how much health she has, but instead of showing any facial expressions, the portrait just slowly disappears depending on how much health you have.
- Munch's face in Tribal Hunter is used with his health bar to determine how much health he has. The lower Munch's health gets, the more exhausted and beat up he looks in the HUD. Munch's face uses Wingding Eyes when his health plummets to zero. If Munch grows fatter or becomes inflated, his cheeks puff out and his eyes go wide in surprise. If Munch is near the point of exploding from being too full, his cheeks get even more swollen and his eyes are squinted closed from the strain being overly full.
- Yo! Joe! Beat the Ghosts has miniature representations of the protagonists (the titular Joe being one of them) wandering around within the hud at the bottom of the screen, and they do a jump of joy each time their real counterparts collect a goodie as well as whip out their nunchucks whenever they're attacking, throw a temper tantrum whenever they run out of lives.
- Yoshi's Story: The player's health bar is represented by a smiling flower, which loses its petals and becomes less and less happy as the player loses health. If the player manages to eat a Heart Fruit and become temporarily invincible (which also fully restores their health), the flower instead breaks out into a wide grin and starts pulsating.
Point-and-Click Adventure Games
- The Updated Re-release of Space Quest I: The Sarien Encounter includes an arcade-style driving section tasking the player with avoiding rocks as they speed along. Unlike the One-Hit-Point Wonder segments of the rest of the game, the player only dies if they hit five rocks (or if they hit a big rock, which kills them instantly). Their current health is represented by an odometer, which starts to crack after the third hit and shatters if the player dies.
Puzzle Games
- In Kuru Kuru Kururin, Kururin appears increasingly distressed as his ship takes damage. Lose all hearts and his portrait blacks out, signifying his ship being destroyed.
Rhythm Games
- In Friday Night Funkin', both the player (typically Boyfriend) and the opponent share the health bar, as indicated by the side-by-side icons of their faces. When either character is losing, their icon on the bar changes from confident to defeated. Boyfriend, for example, gains Xs in his eyes when he's losing.
Role-Playing Games
- Alter A.I.L.A.: Before and After. The red-haired guy, called "Blue", gets wounds on his face after he gets hurt.
- The character portraits in Dragon Age: Inquisition get bloodied and battered if a character is low on health.
- Eternal Senia: Hydrangea After The Rain: Senia's Character Portrait has her wince once her health goes below half.
- Epic Battle Fantasy 5: If a character is at low health, they begin to look injured (For instance, Matt gains a noticeable black eye).
- In Stars and Time: All of the party members have portraits along the bottom of the screen, and react in various ways to how the battle is going. Such as smiling when being healed or buffed, flinching when hit, and wearing more serious expressions if their HP is below a certain threshold. Losing all their HP results in them being shown unconscious, and they generally have startled expressions if frozen in time, though Mirabelle is immune.
- In Kingdom Hearts (with the exceptions of Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep and Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days), the current playable character's portrait will show them wincing when they get hurt. And when their health gets low enough, they will look exhausted. Much later on, Kingdom Hearts III would extend this to the other party members, and add to it by having the characters' expressions change to angry, determined ones while in combat.
- Lands of Lore II: Guardians of Destiny has Luther's portrait snarl whenever he's attacking or jumping, flinch whenever he gets hit, gain Glowing Eyes when casting spells, and some dialogue gives him Mouth Flaps and at times even an eye expression. There are also a few levels of blodiness of his face depending on health, and a lot of that also applies to his transformations.
- In the earlier Madou Monogatari games, the only indicator of your health is a portrait of the player character which has a big grin when your HP are full and becomes less and less happy as you lose health.
- The Might and Magic games since The Mandate of Heaven do this with the player's party members, flinching whenever they get hit, having various faces for status effects and being unconscious whenever appropriate (dead characters have their portraits replaced with a gravestone, while eradicated characters are represented as skulls).
- In the Mother series, EarthBound (1994) and Mother 3 will sometimes have the health bar shake if they take a fatal attack or a critical hit.
- In NieR: Automata, the health bars are configurable parts of the robotic Player Characters' combat interface. Whenever said characters get hacked, the first thing to change is usually their health bar being stretched beyond the screen boundary, rendering it effectively useless.
- The first two Paper Mario games have the "character looks tired" version.
- Planescape: Torment has status portrait states for whenever the party members get frozen or similar status effect (which has them slouched sideways and get a blue tint), get low on hit points (with has them slouched forwards/look tired and the background gets of blood red color) and whenever they are dead (which usually has them skeletonizednote on a background full of skulls)
- In Pokémon, the health bar shakes when a strong hit collides with your Mon.
- In Pokémon Mystery Dungeon, when your belly is empty your health bar will start flashing yellow instead of red.
- Princess Remedy In A Heap Of Trouble: In REALLYDAD difficulty, Remedy's eyes close while she appears to be yelling, when she loses a fight.
- Multiple games in the Tales Series incorporated this after Tales of Symphonia brought the series into 3D. Characters' portraits will sometimes change depicting the character talking, looking sick when they are under a status ailment, or unconscious when they are reduced to 0 HP.
- In addition of ShadowCaster having Kirt's portrait reflecting the current form he's shapeshifted into, also has him turn into a ghoul upon his death.
- In Undertale, hit enemies become shocked/angered/saddened as their sprite shakes, before a number indicating how much damage you dealt rises out of their depleting heath bar.
- In World of Horror, the player's character portrait Shows Damage as their Stamina and Reason depletes. Low Stamina results in the character having visible injuries, while low Reason shows the character looking tired and haggard. If either reaches 0, the character's face will be obscured by a splash of blood.
Shoot 'Em Up Games
- In Desert Assault, four teammates each have a kind of health bar. A health bar in the blue indicates that they are fine, but as soon as you take damage, they each show a damage animation; if you get burned by a Fire-Breathing Weapon, they each have a kind of a fire dance animation (complete with "I'm burning!"). If you eat food items that restore your health, they each get an ecstatic display (with a "Right on!"). If your health gets in the yellow, each teammate has a "hurting" animation; if it gets in the red, they each have a "dying" animation (with a voice clip of "Are you alright?"), and you have to be careful. The next time your health bar gets empty, each teammate has a "death" animation, with the words "Sorry, guys."
- In the SNES version of U.N. Squadron, the health bar flashes and player portrait grimaces while the player's plane is in a vulnerable state (during which time it's a one-hit kill for the player if they take any damage). The Arcade version shows this effect when the health bar falls to 1/4 or less.
Simulation Games
- The labels on the Multiple Life Bars in Dead In Vinland change color as they creep toward the fatal 100% damage. 0-24% means a green label, 25-49% means a yellow label, 50-74% means an orange label, and 75%-99% means a red label with an ominously pulsing red skull icon attached.
- In Plantasia, flowers turn grey and have frowning expressions when they’re thirsty. If they’re not watered in time, they’ll flash red for a few seconds before dying.
Turn-Based Strategy Games
- In some Fire Emblem games, the health bar will visibly shake when a character is hit with a critical strike.
- In the 3DS games, critical hits or some skill activations give a little cut-in of the character art along with a Pre-Asskicking One-Liner. However, Fire Emblem Fates animates these, having the characters' facial expressions change.
- Fire Emblem: Three Houses surprisingly incorporates these - much like the previous example, if characters do a critical hit, an animated cut-in with the Pre-Asskicking One-Liner appears. But if the character is at low health, they will have a desperate or scared looking expression instead.
- Fire Emblem Heroes also incorporates these, but with a more Fanservice touch to it. Much like the two examples, if characters do a critical hit, an cut-in of that character with the Pre-Asskicking One-Liner appears. But if the character is at below health, they will be portrayed with Clothing Damage instead, along desperate or scared looking expression.
- Hard West 2 has portraits of the player's posse members with more agressive facial expression and a flaming outline of their icons for whenever their Bravado is active.
- In the original Hard West, whenever a battle involves having to rescue a character, said character is already selectable (not like they can do much before recovery) but their portraits have cell bars superimposed on them.
Visual Novels
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney has the health bar explode when you take a penalty.
Wide-Open Sandboxes
- Minecraft: The health bar shakes when the player dies or when the health is below two hearts. The hunger bar shakes whenever one hunger point is lost.
- Stardew Valley features an energy bar and health bar. When the player character is exhausted, an icon showing a tired face appears above the energy bar, and in-game, the character moves slowly. When the character's health is very low, the bar shakes while periodically erupting red droplets.
Word Puzzles
- In Hangmouse, a parody of Hangman, every wrong guess you make has the cat look more and more aggressive.
Other
- In the Nickelodeon Flash game Bikini Bottom Bust Up, all four characters have three different expressions above their health gauge changing at half health, and again at a quarter.
- The original Carmageddon is a rare Racing Game example thanks to its Prat Cam feature on the top left, featuring an animated reaction window of either Max Damage or Die Anna reacting to a wide number of events, including but not limited to car impact, car flight, skidding, running over pedestrians, wasting opponents, getting powerups or bonuses, completing\failing a race, and plenty of more.
- In Cold and Flu Invasion, as your health goes down, your character's face becomes red, he starts to walk slower, and red bubbles begin to form above his head. He goes back to normal if another level begins without him getting sick or if you take a med kit.
- Not exactly a health example, but in Disney's Herbie: Fully Loaded, Herbie's expression & posture reflect your current position in a race; as you move up in position, Herbie will gradually perk up more & more, until eventually he's standing upright & smiling; start to lose positions & eventually Herbie will go back to leaning down on his front wheels & frowning.
- Downplayed by Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver which doesn't do this with health but does denote the realm Raziel is in, with the Spiral lifebar having a jaggy appearance within the Spectral Realm and a much more smoother appearance within the Material Realm.
- Psychopomp: In addition to a traditional health bar and an exact listing of your HP in your inventory, the protagonist's portrait is used to visualize your current health. Notably, if your health gets too low, the protagonist stops smiling.
- Richman franchise:
- In 6 and its expansion, the character's portrait has 4 variants depending on their current status: A neutral one, an unhappy one if the character when possessed by a bad god, a happy one when the character is possessed by a good god or under a free/invincible/invisible buff, and an unconscious one when the character is asleep, hospitalized, kidnapped or bankrupt.
- In 4 Fun, the character's face will also be shown sleeping if the character is put to sleep.
- Stronghold along with it's standalone expansion Crusader have an expressive approval meter, with the scribe's facial expression on the lower right corner of the screen reflecting the player's popularity, with him smiling at higher levels, fading into a neutral expression as it goes into middle expression and scowling as the player gets anywhere near 0% Approval Rating. He can also briefly show a shocked expression depending on certain events.
- Vet Set Go: When a patient's health is getting low, they will turn pale, break out in spots, and their mouth will become a zigzag. On the other hand, if their health is high, they will stick their tongue out and lose their blush.
Conversed examples
- Conversed in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid book "Cabin Fever", where Greg mentions that his virtual pet looks unhappy if he doesn't tend to him.
