The most startling "Game Over" screens

[TheyCallMeTheSwede]

OH CRAP, I ALMOST FORGOT!! The bad ending from Chrono Trigger when you fail to defeat Lavos. Oh that ending sequence haunts me and just seeing the earth turning blood red and fade to gray, hear Lavos last screech and with the words "But...The Future Refused To Change", seeing that made me die a little inside, it just felt like all that hard work trying to change the future for the good of all mankind, you approached Lavos, you made one bad move and your whole party is killed in the battle, and Lavos just destroyed the world and leaving everyone in there absolute doom, and its all because I made one bad move.

http://youtu.be/iC_BUaKN3is

[weaponepsilon]

The game overs in Conkers Bad Fur Day were pretty hilarious.

[scarper]

The homoerotic devil in Gomeon Mystical Ninja for the N64:

[GameMasterGuy]

The homoerotic devil in Gomeon Mystical Ninja for the N64:

Already posted.

[Razzmatazz]

I always found the Game Over screen in the Trauma Center games startling as not only have you killed someone, your character gives up his profession and pretty much becomes a drunk who later commits suicide. And makes you feel really guilty!

[sgt.flanders]

This game over screen always got to me for some reason.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJqsT1_9eIE

[GameMasterGuy]

The OOTD version is much worse.

[GSZX1337]

This is THE pit of death!

That's happened to me before.

The music on the Truxton continue screen sounds like it should be in a cutesy platformer rather than a badass shmup.

I always liked that music.

[pakopako]

Some of King's Quest's 5 "you have died" screens were removed because people found a grinning inn-keeper moving toward your unconscious corpse a bit touchy.

I personally found the 8-bit Sweet Home deaths jarring, but then again, I was stunned at some of Tex Murphy's digitalized dooms. Some of the trippy game-over illusions from Eternal Darkness were pretty sweet.

But yeah, JT got it on the head in post 1: NINJA GAIDEN THE ARCADE! (More dangerous than anything Axel or Haggar have ever been put through because I remember they showed the saw blade actually going into Ryu for a moment as opposed to the sudden black screen when you fail to blow out the dynamite or are about to get crushed by a spiked wall.)

[J T]

Has there ever been a death scene that captured the "life flashing before your eyes" penomenon?

I think it would be cool if when you died in a final battle, you saw a quick stream of images from earlier points of your playthrough just before you died and the game over screen hit.