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Game-Over Man
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Game-Over Man (trope)
Better get used to that ugly mug.
"Oh, it's you again. You died so carelessly..."
— Charon, Shin Megami Tensei IV.

The Game Over Man is the character many video games show to the player after getting killed. Often he's The Grim Reaper, or a laughing Boss or Big Bad, but he's occasionally an ally mourning the hero's fall. Sometimes, he offers a "Have a Nice Death" or "It's a Wonderful Failure" message.

The trope name is a play on a line from Aliens.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Action Adventure 
  • Another Crab's Treasure: Whenever you die to a boss, said boss will say a one-liner often related to their motivations.
  • The Batman: Arkham Series will have a member of Batman's Rogues Gallery taunt you in a black void whenever you die, sometimes having unique lines if you're playing as another character.
    • The Joker and/or Harley Quinn will show up with one of several taunts when you get taken out by mooks in Batman: Arkham Asylum. If you get killed as the Joker, though, either Aaron Cash or Batman himself mocks you.
      • Dying during a boss fight with one of the other members of the Rogues' Gallery leads to a similar taunt from one of them (like Scarecrow taunting you for dying during one of his Mind Screw segments, or Bane preparing to snap Batman's spine — complete with a symptomatic quote: "The bat is broken!").
    • In Batman: Arkham City, not all of the mooks follow the Joker, so the taunter will be whoever is in charge of the guys who just took you out. The Riddler will also appear, in all his smugness, when you die in one of his death traps or fail any of his challenges.
      "What's wrong? Has your primitive brain given up and accepted that I — The Riddler! — am better... than you?"
    • Additionally, Black Mask will taunt you upon a game over in any of his challenge map DLC levels, which are the only times he'll appear and interact with the player in any meaningful way.
    • Oh boy, Batman: Arkham Origins continues the tradition by having the villains appropriate to their areas in the game or the gang who just defeated you taunt you when you die. And if you die in the Sionis Steel Mill too early in the game, you get The Joker, effectively spoiling the reveal of him being The Man Behind the Man. You also get different game overs depending on which DLC character you died as: Deathstroke gets to hear from Joker, Bane and Penguin, while unmasked Bruce Wayne simply gets a disappointed but unsurprised Master Kirigi for his unique death scenes.
    • Unsurprisingly, Batman: Arkham Knight has these as well, this time including random unaffiliated rioters and even Alfred and Robin lamenting Batman's death. Just like Origins above, the DLC characters (except Azrael) get their own Game Over Men should you die during their Arkham Episodes. Joker even sneaks in a Metal Gear shoutout in one of his. The DLC Season of Infamy characters have their own as well scenes, with the most noteworthy being Mr. Freeze, who by this point is on Batman's side and not only laments your death, but promises to avenge you.
    • Batman: Arkham Shadow continues this trend, with the Game-Over Man changing depending on whether you were killed by the Gotham Rats, TYGER, or random Blackgate prisoners, with the former two factions occasionally having their mooks taunt you. And like in Knight, characters like Alfred, Gordon and Harvey will lament your death on occasion. The dialogue also changes depending on whether Bruce Wayne was killed using either his Batman or "Matches Malone" identities.
  • Deadpool acts as his own Game Over Man in his own video game. Considering Deadpool technically can't die, it not only makes sense, but fans would probably shout in rage if he wasn't.
    "Don't do that again, ok?"
    "Well, I was bored anyway."
  • Hulahooping oni in Ganbare Goemon. In the second Nintendo 64 game, Goemon's Great Adventure; the faster you shook your analog stick, the faster they shake their moneymakers.
  • Girl Genius Adventures In Castle Heterodyne: Whenever you die, Zola the fake Heterodyne shows up to taunt you.
  • In Kya: Dark Lineage, Brazul appears with his evil laugh if Kya dies by losing all her health in the action-levels; if Kya loses all her health in the hub-town, she simply respawns.
  • Luigi's Mansion 3 has King Boo admiring his collection of portraits (in which Mario, Peach, the Toads, E. Gadd, and Luigi are held prisoner), before turning to face the player and laughing.
  • The Grim Reaper in Maximo: Ghosts to Glory if you don't have any death coins to pay him.
  • In the Game Boy Advance licensed game One Piece, the sole playable character Monkey D. Luffy shows up in the continue screen every time you die, slouching with his tongue is sticking out.
  • If you get killed fighting one of the Colossi in Shadow of the Colossus, a close-up of the Colossus' face shows up on the screen - especially the tenth Colossus, Dirge.
  • Skate or Die 2: "No way, dude!"
  • Borf from Space Ace, who appears whenever you lose a life.
  • In Spud's Adventure, Devi appears on the Game Over screen to taunt you if you lose.
  • In the Sega CD game Wild Woody, besides the Game Over cutscenes where the universe blows up, the ending has Woody putting back the last head. The last head says that he "shall not be defeated." Woody's response? "Sorry pal, but it's Game Over."
  • Ganon in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (North American version), complete with 8-bit Evil Laugh.
    GAME OVER
    RETURN OF GANON

    Action Games 
  • In Avoid the Noid, a Game Over "rewards" the player with the visage of the grinning title character.
  • In the 3DO adaptation of Demolition Man, Sylvester Stallone (who reprised his role for the game) would actually taunt the player upon failure. Since the game was very difficult and not very well-designed, this tended to happen a lot.
    "Hey, Puke Skywalker! Use the force!"
  • Drake of the 99 Dragons has the guardians that keep bringing Drake back to life. Every time you die, you're sent to their realm for them to mock you before sending you back to the stage. Seeing as getting sent there requires two loading screens (one to get there and one to go back), and the game's supremely bad quality will ensure that you die many, many times, this gets old really fast.
  • The Director in The Ooze.
  • In Psybadek, a Game Over is accompanied by the proverbial fat lady's screams.
  • Smash TV has Mutoid Man bellow out "NO WAY!!!!" followed by an Evil Laugh if you don't continue after a Game Over.
  • In Under A Killing Moon, Tex Murphy will have a talk with the Great PI In The Sky (James Earl Jones) whenever he manages to kill himself.
  • The licensed tie-in games for Wayne's World has Wayne say "Denied!" in the NES and Game Boy versions, or "not worthy!" in the SNES version.

    Adventure Games 
  • B.A.T. II: The Koshan Conspiracy has a death screen with what looks like the Grim Reaper in a fedora, trenchcoat and shades, sneering at you and holding a bloody scythe saying "The End". You can see it here (halfway down the page).
  • In Double Switch, some of the Game Over sequences have Lyle the Handyman (played by R. Lee Ermey) take this role.
    "YOU THOUGHT THIS WAS JUST A GAME, DIDN'T YOU? WELL, IT'S OVER FOR YOU!"
  • In Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist, Whittlin' Willy, the game's narrator, will show up to relate the circumstances of Freddy's untimely death.
  • The Wumpus in the TI-99 port of Hunt the Wumpus.
  • Indigo Prophecy (that is, Fahrenheit) has three playable characters. When one of them fails for whatever reason, they narrate out how and why they failed as well as an epilogue for the Game Over. Since some failure states involve death, it can be jarring to hear someone suddenly narrate how they died.
  • King's Quest:
  • The Egyptian-themed supervillain Sutekh looms large over the city when you see Nightshade (1992)'s game over screen.
  • From the same developers, Night Trap has either the leader of S.C.A.T. disconnecting you for either performing poorly or not pushing start, or one of the villains disconnecting your connection and sending you down a trash chute.
  • If you die in Oedipus in my Inventory you wind up on the bank of the River Styx with Charon.
  • In Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh, the Hecatomb will mock you.
    "Face it, Curtis: you're better off this way. And you thought it couldn't get any worse!"
  • The LAUGHING SKULL in Police Quest 1: In Pursuit of the Death Angel VGA. 2 and 3 has Jim Walls berating you for your failure.
  • In Sierra's adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's Rama books, the Game Over Man is none other than a sympathetic, full-motion video... Arthur C. Clarke. He can be seen here.
    Clarke: "Oops, sorry about that. I hope you aren't upset because you just killed your alter ego, the replacement astronaut. We just wanted to remind you that there are some dangers inside Rama..."
  • Failing the final shoot-out in Ripper ends with a POV-switch cutscene where the titular villain kills you, takes off their VR goggles, and then looks at a monitor showing your character's death.
  • The Grim Reaper in Shadowgate.
  • In Space Quest III, the Two Guys From Andromeda.
  • This nut in Total Distortion. Probably better-known than the entire rest of the game.
  • Dying in Uninvited is accompanied with a close-up shot of a skull against a bloody background, or the vicious skull of Scarlett O'Hara, or the Big Bad, or the animals that kill you...

    Beat 'em Up 
  • In Alien vs. Predator (Capcom), if you die as a Cyborg, you get a scene of a Xenomorph looming in front of you. If the last player was a Predator, you see the bomb on their forearm counting down...
  • In Battletoads, the Dark Queen has a wide variety of different taunts when you run out of continues. Seen here...
  • In Cadillacs and Dinosaurs , Vice Terhune (The first level boss, later a recoloured mook called Walther) points a gun at you and mocks you during the continue screen. Fail to continue, and he opens fire.
    Eat lead...baby!
  • If you run out of lives in Coffee Crisis, you get a screen of the alien overlord looming over to enslave the rest of earth.
  • Mortus in Comix Zone will celebrate Sketch's death as he becomes fully alive and declares he'll rock this world... or, if the player has a continue, he'll decide Sketch died too easily and give him another shot.
  • Double Dragon Neon's game over sequence has Billy Lee tied up with Skullmageddon taunting him as he prepares to gouge out his eyes, with him going for the kill when the continue timer runs out.
  • In Dungeons and Dragons: Tower of Doom, dying to a boss in single-player tends to result in a close-up of the boss taunting you, with written dialog under the portrait. Sadly, that feature was removed from the sequel, Shadow over Mystara.
  • In Dynamite Deka EX: Asian Dynamite, a chef serves you a bowl of Game Over rice.
  • The Gladiator have your mentor, Master Chu Yen-Ran showing up in the "Continue?" screen if you die, telling you "there's still hope to save China". But if you run out of lives or chose not to continue, Master Chu will admit maybe the mission's not meant to succeed in the first place.
  • Legend (1998) have the forces of chaos taunting you before you get hacked to death by various monsters, orcs, and skeletons. From a first-person perspective.
  • Legionnaire is an arcade game where you're on a Roaring Rampage of Rescue to retrieve your kidnapped girlfriend. Run out of continues, however, and you're then treated to a cutscene of the main villain menacingly observing your girlfriend hanging on a chain, gloating all the way and probably planning to do some nasty stuff on her.
  • The Punisher side-scroller by Capcom has David "Microchip" Lieberman attempting to revive you if you die as The Punisher, or Alexander Pierce and Kathleen Neville if you die as Nick Fury.
  • Tecmo Knight have a rather gruesome example, where the Game Over screen is you getting your head chewed off by a Beast Man. Followed by another beastman taunting you, "No Future!"

    Driving Games 
  • A laughing skull in a supposedly military vehicular combat game Return Fire.
  • In the Road Rash series, you'll be taunted by one of your rival racers if you wreck your bike and lack the money for repairs. If you get caught by the police and don't have money for bail, your arresting officer will taunt you instead.

    Fighting Games 
  • Relius Clover from BlazBlue. It's rare he shows up in a character's Story Mode, but when he does, your character is usually on a one-way trip to being tortured, mind raped, killed horribly, or some combination thereof. Just check out Noel, Tager, and Makoto.
    • Carl, Valkenhayn, and Platinum all have business with Relius in their Story mode's true path. In their cases, Hazama replaces Relius as the Game Over Man.
  • In Gundam: The Battle Master, your player character fills this role as the camera focuses on their defeat pose for the duration of the Continue screen. In The Battle Master 2/Battle Assault, The Hero Gloria/Heero will say some variation of how they can't afford to give up whenever they lose a Story Mode battle. Be prepared to see every continue quote once you get to the Psycho Gundam Mk-III.
  • Daniel J. D'Arby serves this role in the story mode of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Heritage for the Future. Choose to continue, and he'll utter his catchphrase "GOOD!" Choose to quit, and he'll steal your character's soul with his STAND, OSIRIS, turning them into a poker chip.
  • If you lose to Galactus in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and don't continue, you get Galactus' ending, where he devours both the Marvel and Capcom Earths.
  • M. Bison takes this role in Street Fighter Alpha 3, where losing in the final round gets your character thrown into the Psycho Drive and used to destroy a city. If you're playing as M. Bison on the final stage, though, Ryu becomes your Game Over Man, as the game goes into his ending.
  • Lose to any of the Tekken Tag Tournament 2 bosses, and the opponent will appear on the continue screen. Heihachi and Jinpachi have an interaction in which Heihachi, being a backstabbing Heel–Face Revolving Door, drops Jinpachi down a trap door. Ogre eats you, Jun looks down before walking away, and Unknown... she waits for the counter to count down, then reaches out and if it hits zero she... absorbs you? Because she's not exactly easy, you will see this screen a lot. If you do not lose to a boss, depending on your character choice, there will be various continue screens in which one of your selected characters attempts to convince the other to get up, giving up and walking away when the counter hits 0.

    First-Person Shooter 
  • Batman Doom has Bane serve this role for a Non-Standard Game Over in the final level. You're supposed to fight him with the BFG-equivalent in the seventh weapon slot, and attempting to switch out to any of the other weapons locks you off from your weapons entirely, as an image of Bane covers the screen alongside text telling you "YOU FAILED TO FIGHT BANE WITH YOUR FISTS".
  • In Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold, the Big Bad Mad Scientist Dr. Goldfire pops up with his trademark Evil Laugh on your character's "REBA" personal data assistant to taunt you about your failure when you lose all your lives.
  • In Isle of the Dead, when you got a Game Over, you were treated to a short cinematic showing the circumstances of your death, followed by the Mad Scientist giving an Evil Laugh. Also, when you quit the game, you see a scene of the main character blowing his own head apart with his shotgun (followed by the same mad scientist laughing).
  • Meatgrinder displays a giant grinning digital skull if you die, taunting you with the words "TRY HARDER, MEATBAG!"
  • In Operation Body Count, during game over, a villain shouts "You lose!".
  • While death in Team Fortress 2 is not actually a failure state — except in Arena mode — the freeze cam is subtly designed to allow for a rare multiplayer case of this trope: When you're killed directly by another player, the camera quickly zooms in and freezes on that player for a few seconds, and all audio is muted except that player's voice, so if they choose to taunt, or deliver an automatic taunt line triggered by a domination or revenge kill, you'll get to hear it loud and clear.
  • RoboCop (FPS) penalize you for losing all your lives with a clip of Robocop lying face-down on the floor while a red marker notes him as DEAD IN OPERATION. And some really condescending remarks for your failure…
    Does the phrase Police Academy ring any bells?
  • Terminator Rampage throws in a gloating T-100 skull chuckling at your demise, alongside a cutscene where you get pumped full of holes by the robots. Followed by Los Angeles getting wiped out by a nuke because of your failure.
  • ULTRAKILL has a laughing skull & crossbones accompanying the text "YOU ARE DEAD, PRESS 'R' TO RESTART".
  • Urban Chaos: Riot Response usually plays this straight — if you wait a few seconds after dying, the enemy who killed you will taunt you before finishing you off. However, if you have a partner nearby, you sometimes have them instead (paramedics trying to stabilize you, fellow cops radioing in a man down, and so on).

    Flight Simulator 
  • Chuck Yeager himself appears in "Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer".

    Gamebooks 
  • Horror-themed fantasy duology, The Forbidden Gateway, has a "Death" and "Insanity" exit, a special paragraph the book directs you to for losing:
    • If your stamina runs out, you automatically turn to a Death exit where you suddenly find yourself in a dark, ethereal void, just as Het, the Goddess of the Underworld, beckons your entrance. And you're unable to refuse her, as you (quoting the book directly) "leave the realm of man, for the realm of Het".
    • If your Endurance hits zero, you turn to a page where you suddenly regain consciousness, having passed out from fear and woken up by a different supernatural investigator. You're asked about your name, but unfortunately? You can't remember.

    Interactive Fiction 

    Light Gun Games 
  • On the game over screen of Area 51, the player character morphs into an alien monster, becoming the Game Over Man himself.
  • The Game Over screen for the NES game, Barker Bill's Trick Shooting has Trixie waving goodbye to you as the caption reads "Thank you for playing Barker Bill's Trick Shooting! Sorry, Pal. Your game is over! Come back and challenge Trick Shooting again next time!"
  • Big Buck Hunter, as of HD Wild, if you shoot a doe she will appear right in front of you on screen and shake her head in disappointment while "You shot a doe!" is beside her with a failure stinger playing, it's different per animal too!
  • Born To Fight provides an early example (from 1989); if you lose all your life, you get a single frame showing you keeling over from gunshot wounds. As the game aptly tells you "Sorry but you are a Dead Hero, Try Again?"
  • In Dark Escape 4D, the scientist who put you in the zombie-infested ruins in the first place mockingly encourages you to continue during the countdown timer, and laments with exaggerated insincerity how your game is over when the countdown reaches 0.
  • One of the earliest NES examples is the dog from Duck Hunt.
  • The House of the Dead mixes this with Player Death Is Dramatic, as the game over screen in the series is your Player Character(s) falling into the ground, dropping dead.
  • In Mad Dog McCree and its sequel, the Creepy Mortician serves this purpose.
  • Mechanized Attack has a still of your character getting shot. Accompanied with a "You are dead — NOOOOOOOO!!!!!..."

    MMORPGs 
  • In the original AdventureQuest, the Game Over Man is none other than Death. However, he lets you go free because Death is Chea- I mean, his quota is full.
    • In DragonFable, the second AE game (not counting ArchKnight), does not have this, instead only having a standard message telling you that you fell unconscious, and you wake up at the beginning of the Quest. Ironically enough, Death still can be found (and fought) in game, complete with a scary makeover.
    • The THIRD game, MechQuest, is the same as DragonFable, with no Grim Reaper at all.
    • Death FINALLY returned as of the most recent update to their MMORPG AdventureQuest Worlds. He was at first a minor, minor NPC who you could get baby dracoliches from, and the death screen merely would be a blue screen with a countdown to your Respawn. However, as of the update, the blue screen comes with an ad, and good ole Death grinning at you to advertise it.
  • The Grim Reaper in RuneScape, although only around Halloween.
    • In the current version of Runescape, you appear in the Reaper's home office upon death. However, you needn't fear the Reaper, he just wants to explain how respawning works. For a fee, he'll even retrieve your items for you.

    Platform Games 
  • Jafar in Aladdin (Virgin Games): "Give up, street rat!"
  • The Queen in the SNES version of Alien³. Complete with a digital sample of PFC Hudson's trope-naming "Game over, man!" from Aliens, to boot.
  • Ape Escape: There's five of these characters should Spike get a game over, all of them having multiple lines. Ranging from Casey expressing concern and worry, to Big Bad Specter taunting Spike. Everyone's lines differ in both American and British versions.
  • Banjo-Kazooie: The prettified Gruntilda (and uglified Tooty) serves as a Game Over Woman. Ugly Grunty is heard cackling when you die regardless of whether or not it's a game over.
  • Dying in Ben and Ed will have the smug face of Hans Showmaster pop up on screen. Walking down a particular spot will give you an Easter Egg variation with a Ben Drowned Shout-Out before Ed explodes.
  • Bubble Hero: You get a clip of the Bubble Dragons all exhausted and beaten-up, with the words "Game Over" above them.
  • Bug: The titular Bug appears in the "Continue" screen looking bruised and beaten, and in the Game Over screen he shakes his butt close up to the camera.
  • Bugs Bunny & Taz: Time Busters: Daffy Duck, who is more or less the main villain of the game since it's his actions that are inadvertently causing so much trouble, serves as this. When you die on your last life, he appears in the Looney Tunes window mockingly calling for the next contestant before he gets choked out by the window closing on him. It then flashes forward to Daffy greedily hoarding the Time Gem and openly saying he doesn't care about the consequences of his actions as long as he gets rich. The musical theme from whatever level you died on then continues to play - and this can be very haunting if you died on the final boss fight with Count Bloodcount, the game's Knight of Cerebus!
  • A Bug's Life: "Have you been playing all summer? You think this is a game? Well, guess what? You just LOST!" (This is a quote from the movie, by the way.)
  • Castlevania:
    • Most games have frequently had these since Symphony of the Night. Featured characters include Dracula, Death, Boschian artwork, Bloody Tears, a completely random dragon...
    • That Dragon in Order of Ecclesia? That's the statue in Barlowe's room.
    • Especially meaningful and imposing in Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, where Death shows off possession of, well, your soul.
    • The voice-over in Symphony of the Night:
    "Game... Over... Mu-hahahahaha!"
  • Played with in Conker's Bad Fur Day: the first time you die in, Death appears and taunts Conker, before explaining how the life system works in the game. After that, this cutscene is never seen again, unless you restart. The "Game Over" scene itself is usually the weasels bringing Conker to the Panther King, with a few different versions to reflect the way that Conker lost his last life. It can sometimes be Conker's Face on a Milk Carton, though.
  • Crash Bandicoot:
    • Dr. Cortex plays this role in Crash Bandicoot 2 and Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex, and again in 3 with Uka Uka.
    • It's actually a bit of a giveaway in 2, because Crash thinks that Cortex has reformed for a good part of the game. Obviously he hasn't (it even says something like "A gullible Crash is tricked into working for Cortex" when you hover over the PSN version of the game on PSP or PS3), but seeing him say "Game. Over. Bwahahahahahahaha!" before you've gotten very far in the game is one of the pretty major hints dropped to you in the game.
    • Uka Uka reprises his role as Game-Over Man for all three games in Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, only this time he's in shadows for the first two games; referencing the fact that he was The Man Behind the Man but didn't appear in person or was even mentioned in those games.
  • Cuphead has a lot of Game Over Men. In fact, the Game Over man is always whatever boss managed to kill you (in the case of the run and gun levels, a selection of enemies appear instead) providing a rhyming taunt, along with a progress meter showing how far you got before biting it. The screens are different depending on the boss, which is good, considering how often you'll be dying, and the screens are even different for every phase of a boss, too.
  • In some versions of Donald Duck: Goin' Qu@ckers, specifically versions where it is possible to get a Game Over, Merlock appears and cackles if the player runs out of lives.
  • This happens to a brief extent in the later Donkey Kong Country games upon losing a life. In Donkey Kong Country Returns a silhouette of the world's Tiki Tak boss shows while in Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze a logo of the Snowmads is used instead.
  • Felix the Cat (BMB) gives us an infamous example with Felix himself. If you lose your last life, you'll end up on the continue screen, which innocently shows Felix as an angel on a cloud. Choose not to continue, and you're sent to the game over screen, which shows Felix gorily tearing his own face off and revealing his skull.
  • Ma Fratelli in The Goonies II for NES.
  • Gun Witch: If Beretta falls in battle, a Mysterious Woman takes her Experience Points to her next level and her Lunes and sends her back to her house.
  • The video game adaptation of Disney's Hercules features Hades smoking a cigar and blowing it into the camera, chuckling evilly at the player as the smoke forms the words "GAME OVER".
  • The Jak and Daxter series has sidekick Daxter say something snarky in the first and third games (though these are rare in the latter's case).
  • In the Sega Genesis version of the The Jungle Book Licensed Game, you see Shere Khan protracting his claws in the Game Over screen. In the SNES version, you see Mowgli land head-first into some dirt and struggle to get out. In the Genesis version, he acts as a Continue Man, as this animation appears on the Continue screen instead.
  • A mourning Rafiki in the SNES and Genesis versions of The Lion King, although the 8-bit versions have Scar instead.
  • Pac-Man World's Game Over starts with the loading screen suddenly being interrupted by Toc-Man who jumps down from above and causes a metallic futuristic "Toc" lettering to land itself on the "Pac" in the title, changing the game's name to "Toc-Man World" while Toc-Man just stands there and laughs constantly.note 
  • Got a game over in Peter Pan: The Legend of Never Land? Hook will laugh and say that you're "fish food".
  • The titular Predator in Predator (NES).
  • When you get Game Over in Putty and Super Putty, Dweezil the Cat in Looney Tunes style rings says, "Too bad!" while an off-key version of Shave and a Haircut plays. He does that during the first stage too - except he bursts through the background.
  • The Shantae series:
  • In Shotgun Cop Man, when the title character dies, the game zooms in on him as he says "I DIE." with a sad look on his face.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • In the Genesis games, Dr. Robotnik taunts you with missed Chaos Emeralds if you beat the game without acquiring all of them. Losing all your lives simply gives you a standard Game Over message. Also, your player character is a continue man, waiting for your input so that he can run off the screen and continue the quest.
    • SegaSonic the Hedgehog has a more standard use of the trope. Lose and you get a game over message... with Eggman in it, mocking you.
  • Star Wars:
    • In the Super Star Wars trilogy, there is Darth Vader (Super Star Wars), Yoda (Super Empire Strikes Back), and Emperor Palpatine (Super Return of the Jedi). For Yoda, when you continue, he says, "Do or do not. There is no try." When you quit, he says, "That is why you fail."
    • Emperor Palpatine's expression stays immutable if you decide to quit or run out of continues, but when you continue, he scowls at you.
  • The Game Over in the original Strider (Arcade) has a sound clip of Grandmaster Meio laughing.
  • Super Mario Bros.:
  • The Game Over screen for Vectorman 2 says, YOU LOSE, and depicts the Spider Queen laughing at Vectorman before he falls apart.

    Puzzle Games 
  • If you fail to destroy the pigs' fortresses and kill all of the pigs inside in Angry Birds, then the surviving pigs will all smile and cackle and snort evilly when the Game Over screen appears.
  • In the NES version of Dr. Mario, the titular plumber turned doctor will look at the player helplessly, while the remaining viruses laugh at him.
  • In Irisu Syndrome!, the titular character welcomes you with a heartfelt smile every time you get a game over.
  • The Yellow Face from Minesweeper.
  • In the comic strip "The Boss's Secret" in Jimmy T's stage in WarioWare: Snapped!, the player and a detective are having a conservation, and at the end, the player says that the detective got a message from "Cookie," and says, "Two words: Game Over," which makes the detective gulp.
  • In Wesleyan Tetris, the voice of Pvt. Hudson himself tolls your defeat.

    Rhythm Games 
  • beatmania IIDX 8th Style shows an alien DJ on the results screen if you fail a song.
  • In Elite Beat Agents, if you fail a song, you get a short blurb that you ultimately failed the character you were trying to help, and his/her/their lives enter pure hell.
  • If you lose against Tankman in Week 7 of Friday Night Funkin', he'll proceed to Trash Talk the Boyfriend from offscreen.

    Role-Playing Games 
  • The Grim Reaper shows up if you die in AdventureQuest. Luckily, he's always over his quota for the day, and you just get dumped back in Battleon owing him yet another favor.
    • In WarpForce, the expansion to AdventureQuest set in space, Death is replaced with DEATH 2.0, who is a robot. Other than that, it's the same, except he sends you back to the LSS Alteon so that he "continue to marvel at your antics".
  • Angry Birds Epic: Should you lose a battle, King Pig appears on the defeat screen to laugh and jeer at your birds before running off, dropping a few Snoutlings as a consolation prize.
  • In the Baldur's Gate series, a Holy Symbol of Bhaal fills in for the visage of the dead god.
  • Deltarune: Dying in Chapter 1 has the voice from the intro of the game ask you whether you want to try again. In Chapter 2, this changes to either Susie or Ralsei encouraging the player to get up. Both death screens offer a choice of continuing or not, with the latter option leading to the voice from the intro talking about how the world ends.
  • The Dungeon Revealed shows you the illusion of a skull formed by tree branches in front of a cave.
  • The Elder Scrolls: Arena has two of these. Early in the game your Spirit Advisor Ria Silmane will mourn your death and wish you peace in the afterlife. Later on the Big Bad Jagar Tharn will gloat and taunt you.
  • EXTRAPOWER: Attack of Darkforce: Getting a game over rewards you with a view of a massive Dark Force holding the Earth in his hand.
  • Five Nights at Fuckboy's has Cranky Kong telling you to git gud. Depending on the game, he's either young (in 2), old (in the original), or dead (in 3).
  • Musical version in Mass Effect, where mission failure is accompanied by Saren's theme.
  • Puella Magi Madoka Magica Portable has this, but it's more of a Non-Standard Game-Over Man, and that's Homulily, Homura's Witch form, who will only appear when you are defeated in the battle against Walpurgisnatch. You'll only get a small glimpse at her, however.
  • Shadow Keep superimposes a laughing cartoon demon over the interface when you die.
  • Many examples in the Shin Megami Tensei series:
    • In Persona 2, Philemon laments that you'll die without ever unraveling the game's mystery.
    • Igor in Persona 3 and Persona 4 will transport your corpse to his Velvet Room and read a poem lamenting the end of your journey whenever you die. An odd example in that Igor not only isn't the Big Bad, but a valuable ally, and that his words in the Game Over screen are just him mourning the Main Character's death. He also plays the Non-Standard Game Over Man in 4 if you miss a dungeon deadline, offering to send you back in time one week to have another go.
    • Persona 5: Velvet Room attendants Justine and Caroline bring your corpse to their Eldritch Location and read various poems lamenting the end of your journey whenever you die. After the fight against the Holy Grail, this role is filled by their original form Lavenza, including in Royal's third semester.
    • The spirits of the previous Raidous in Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army.
    • Shin Megami Tensei I features a voice telling you to cross over the river back to the land where all souls originate. The sequel features a demon named Charon as your Game Over Man (or your continue man: you can pay him to revive you at the last terminal you saved at).
    • Charon returns in Shin Megami Tensei IV; the afterlife is so full of dead people that he's perfectly willing to sell continues so he won't be overworked. The player has the option to pay Play Coins alongside the usual Macca. If you choose to pay in Macca, but don't have enough of it, he'll revive you anyway, putting the bribe on a tab that will automatically be taken once you get enough Macca. If you die while still in debt, however, Charon will refuse to revive you and it will be Game Over for real.
    • In Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse, Dagda fills in for Charon. Since he needs you alive as part of his plans and he's a god of death, he'll revive you for free; in fact, one plotline conversation has him informing you that you're free to throw your life away recklessly as much as you want and he'll just casually bring you back every time. If you refuse to be revived, he'll declare you a failure and abandon you, leaving you in the underworld.
    • In Soul Hackers, Redman/Kinap guides the protagonist's soul to the afterlife. The form he appears in and his dialogue change depending on how far you are in the game.
  • Tengai Makyou Zero has short scenes that play out whenever your party is felled by a boss.
  • Undertale: Throughout the game, should you die during a fight, Asgore's voice is the one calling out to you save for two specific circumstances.
    • If you are finishing a neutral run and lose to Photoshop Flowey, Flowey is the one taunting the player in the Game Over screen before crashing the game.
    • If you are finishing a Genocide run, Sans will spare you in one turn. Should you fall for this and spare him, he launches an unavoidable attack. With that, the Game Over screen plays the Dogsong instead of the regular theme.
      "geeettttttt dunked on!!!"

    Shoot 'em Up 
  • Air Zonk/P.C. Denjin had the Big Bad do this... in the form of a song and dance number performed by him and his two underlings. The Japanese version even had lyrics mocking you.
  • Gradius starting with II: "You need more practice!" or "Come on, we're just getting started!"
  • Run out of lives in Hazelnut Hex and you get a clip of your Cute Witch character, Nat, passing out with Wingding Eyes.
  • Hong Kong '97 has an infamous photo of an actual dead body serving as its game over screen, with the text on the photo saying "Chin IS DEAD!".
  • Maboo laughs at you when you get a Game Over in the first Rolling Thunder.
  • Andross in the Star Fox series.
  • Super Aleste has a cute variant of this. You see the two main characters, in Super-Deformed form, poking at a burnt model of their own ship. Like the rest of the anime-style graphics and everything pertaining to the story, it was removed in non-Japanese releases.

    Stealth-Based Games 
  • When getting a Game Over in the Metal Gear series, the various Mission Control characters would call out "Snake... Snake! SNAAAAAAAKE!" before the continue screen. Also, in MGS 4, you'll sometimes see Screaming Mantis's puppet-strings attached to Snake's body, a reference that doesn't get explained until the last 1/5th of the game.
    • The Game Over scream also shows up in Snake's Guest Fighter appearances in Super Smash Bros.. His crowd chant spoofs the scream, and if he's doing a Codec Conversation on his Home Stage and is KO'd midway, his Mission Control will once again do the scream. Even Slippy gets in on it for Falco's Codec Conversation. Luigi's Codec Conversation also spoofs the scream; Colonel Campbell starts acting strangely, prompting Snake to shout, "Colonel, snap out of it! Colonel! COLONEEEEEEEEEEEEEEL!!!!"
  • In Styx: Shards of Darkness the protagonist himself will show up to mock you whenever you get him killed. And he has...quite the colorful things to say.

    Survival Horror 

    Third-Person Shooter 

    Visual Novels 
  • In Ace Attorney, it's the judge declaring your client guilty.
  • Make a game-ending mistake in Hatoful Boyfriend and you'll be greeted by a near-perfect parody of the Shadowgate Game Over screen, complete with an avian Grim Reaper.
  • In Last Window, most game overs have Margaret showing up at Kyle's door to evict him.
  • In Sunrider Liberation Day’s [RE]turn mode, Claude Trilleo will show up whenever the player gets a bad ending (or even a less than ideal one) and chew you out for your mistakes, before giving a hint on how to get a better outcome.
  • TYPE-MOON visual novels tend to have a section that gives the player hints on how to avoid the Bad End they just received. It's often worth it to experience all Bad/Dead Ends because they either give early hints about or additional lore, or because the game over section is simply hilarious.
    • Tsukihime has Ciel explain what was going wrong in the "Teach me, Ciel-sensei!" section.
    • Fate/stay night has the "Tiger Dojo", where Taiga and Illya in comical fashion usually make fun of the player for doing something hilariously stupid — or making fun of them for doing the common sense thing at the wrong time. Seeing all Tiger Dojos will also unlock additional features and scenes.

    Other 
  • Balatro: On losing a round up to Ante 8, the Joker will appear and make a bad joke mocking you. Inverted if you win; he appears on the victory screen to make a bad joke congratulating you instead.
  • In Beauty and the Beast: A Board Game Adventure, if Gaston gets to the end of the board before Belle does, then the last petal from the enchanted rose will fall, rendering Beast to remain a Beast forever. A sad Beast will then appear on the Game Over screen.
  • In Bonkers (Sega), when the titular cartoon bobcat police officer loses all of his lives, whichever villain he loses to appears on the Game Over screen.
  • Genjuu Ryodan has a man who is presumably the king of Earthing lying on the ground, being stabbed at the back with a sword.
  • In Katamari Damacy almost every game has the King Of All Cosmos silhouetted in darkness. The earlier games are a "The Reason You Suck" Speech and are heavily guilt laden, while lightning flashes showing creepy images such as his skeleton, and his arms raised to the both sides in a somewhat eerie manner, and another less creepy one of him making a shadow puppet of a dog with his hands. Later games his eyes are glowing bright red as he shoots lasers from his eyes or hurls asteroids to destroy you. (Which in turn is a somewhat fun endurance minigame to see how long you can avoid them)
  • In the earlier seasons of the live action TV show Knightmare, the dungeoneer's death would be met with the health meter's skull taking over the screen and crumbling down to nothing.
  • The light novel and anime KonoSuba, being a parody of an isekai, has the goddess Eris act as this. Whenever the protagonist, Kazuma, dies in the world of Belzerg, Eris is the one to greet him and ask him about the experience before reviving him. Which is often, prompting her to once say she doesn't like meeting Kazuma this way.
  • Let It Die has insurance agent Kiwako Seto greet you whenever you die, commenting on your death (usually assuring you that this one was "grueso-mazing" too) and offering you insurance to bring you back to life. Unless the Jackals get you.
  • Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor & Middle-earth: Shadow of War: Orcs and Ologs who kill Talion will taunt over your body. Since you have Resurrective Immortality they can continue to mock you in future encounters, and thanks to the game's advanced A.I and Nemisis System they remember when, where, and how you die each time and will never let you forget it.
    • Specifically in Shadow Of War, Shelob will appear if you die in a story mission, mocking you for being immortal, not using her visions to your advantage, drawing comparisons between you and whoever killed you, and foreshadowing the ending of the game.
    • Inversion where Talion becomes the game over man to Orcs. Captains and mooks have a chance to come back after you kill them, angry you defeated them. You can also Mind Rape them instead with a low chance of turning them insane.
  • Monster House has an in-universe example where the "game-over" screen punctuates (the characters treat him like some kind of a wise guru) a nerd's description of the nature of the eponymous dwelling.
    Thou art dead. Ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha.
  • In Capcom's Pinball Magic, all of the mystic masters do this at the end of the game as you're leaving the theater, ending with Matra Manga laughing at you as the door closes.
  • The Yeti/Abominable Snow Monster in SkiFree appears after a certain moment in a very quick speed and eats the player, then mocks their death by jumping up and down victoriously, signaling that the game is over.
  • In the live-action game show Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?, the clock running out in the Trail of Time finale leads to a "cutscene" of Carmen escaping into the timestream with an Evil Laugh.
  • In the original Wing Commander, your commanding officer offers a eulogy to you at your funeral.
  • In XCOM: Enemy Unknown, the Council chairman (under the thrall of a sectoid alien) announces the failure and subsequent termination of XCOM as the nations decide to pursue negotiations with the alien invaders.
  • In XCOM 2, the Speaker for the ADVENT government announces XCOM's demise.

 
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Video Example(s):

Tankman: The Rudest Dude

Unique to Week 7 is that its opponent, the foul-mouthed captain of the Tankmen, insults you with a unique line every time you get blue-balled. Considering that Week 7's a step up in difficulty, get ready to hear a lot of his quips.

King Boo

Guitar Warrior ...

Alternative Title(s): Game Over Return Of Ganon

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Tankman: The Rudest Dude

Unique to Week 7 is that its opponent, the foul-mouthed captain of the Tankmen, insults you with a unique line every time you get blue-balled. Considering that Week 7's a step up in difficulty, get ready to hear a lot of his quips.

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Tankman: The Ru...

King Boo

Guitar Warrior ...