Anytime the Player Character is killed in a video game, Critical Existence Failure is sure to manifest. Sometimes, the player character just flops dead like a rag-doll or jumps out of the screen. Other times, they explode (normally if they're a robot, but in chunky salsa if they're not), or the enemies start Beating a Dead Player. And if you're particularly unlucky, the game will show in full detail the many creatively grizzly ways your character can be reduced to a pile of flesh and/or bones, and then make fun of you for dying.

We're not talking about those. We're talking about when the death of the player character is treated with some actual drama, as the player themselves would, and takes it completely seriously. It does so by conveying to the player that the player character is truly defeated, and that the game cannot go on without them. This often serves as a Player Punch; and if done well, can be a good source of Nightmare Fuel and/or be a massive Tear Jerker. Either way, it encourages the player to not screw up again.

How this manifests itself varies, in some early video games, everything except the player would disappear and be replaced by a black void, removing all distractions from the character's corpse. In more modern games, all entities that are not the player (enemies, bosses, NPCs, etc.) would freeze in place as the player character dies. Dramatic Spotlight may be involved if the work is being showy. Due to the nature of this trope, it's very rare for The Many Deaths of You to apply, but if it does, expect all death scenes to have something in common, even if it's Yet Another Stupid Death.

The nice thing about this trope is that it avoids having to invoke Bloodless Carnage if a character should be reduced to paste, while simultaneously dodging having to give the player character a Family-Unfriendly Death. The death scene is always the same, but what would realistically happen to a character when they die like this is entirely left up to the player's imagination.

It's worth mentioning that the player character doesn't necessarily need to die for this trope to come into play, any type of failure can apply, as long as it's Played for Drama. If the rest of the game world keeps going on despite the player character dying, then it's not an example.

Permadeath is more or the less the ultimate version of this trope, since the dead character will remain dead. This isn't to be confused with It's a Wonderful Failure, as that is for showing the player the dramatic consequences of their failure, often in specific circumstances, while this about the player character themselves dying being dramatic by itself. However, the two tropes work exceptionally well together if you really want to rub the player's failure in their face.

Contrast Have a Nice Death; whereas that trope is intended to make player mortality humorous and even reward curious or sadistic players for torturing the protagonist in creative ways, this trope is very clearly a punishment for the player not keeping their character alive.

Examples: