Cheap deaths

[Bad Jim]

Old Sierra Adventure games were notorious for this. The most absurd one I've seen is from the first Leisure Suit Larry game.

Flushing a toilet.

Yup, you score points for doing your business in it, but if you pull that chain the entire room floods before you can react and you drown. Never mind that the cistern is there because ordinary water supplies (or even a fire hydrant) cannot possibly provide water that fast. There is also no warning whatsoever that this might occur, and no justification for it other than 'Al Lowe is a troll'.

 

[SantoUno]

Jackal Snipers
Jackal Snipers
JACKAL SNIPERS

There are three points in Halo 2 where when you shoot one Jackal Sniper, a second Jackal Sniper instantly spawns behind the first, facing you and in it's 'fire' position.
On legendary, you cannot fire a follow up shot with any sniping weapon fast enough to kill both, you must kill the first, duck behind cover, then duck back out and immediately fire. If you try to make the second shot straight away, don't enter cover fast enough, miss your second shot or simply duck back out of cover to soon, you die, instantly, Jackal Snipers can one shot you, on Legendary and Heroic if they fire, they hit you, even when they don't.

The only way to learn this is by dieing, over and over until you figure out that you are not missing the first Jackal Sniper at all, because the first ten or so times this happens to you, you will think you simply missed the first Jackal Sniper and got counter sniped, it happens that fast.

I hate Jackal Snipers.

I actually played this part a few months ago, and I never noticed any extra Jackal spawning like that. I cleared the area when I was younger so I guess I didn't dwell on it too much.

As for me, two extremely unfair deaths happened today when I was playing Dark Souls 2, and was revisiting Iron Keep to find the bonfire I had missed.

In the giant room with the Belfry Sol bonfire, there are several platforms, and some of them collapse shortly after walking on them. The first one always seems to collapse, BUT this time when I went to one on of the corner platforms that piece of crap immediately collapsed upon stepping on it! It has NEVER done that in every single playthrough I've done, but today it just happened to do so to make me lose my souls which I failed to retrieve.

Second death was of a different sort. I fell victim to the Mimic in the same room, but what made it a cheap death was that it is the only Mimic in the game that hides in an iron chest. I went through the game several times without ever reaching this chest, so I thought mimics were only in wooden chests.

 

[Dying_Jester]

While it wasn't a player character in the sense of something that can die being killed, and I won't list anything from Dark Souls(those 80+ deaths were all justified, the first being not figuring out how to jump and falling into a pit), but I will say Need for Speed: Most Wanted on Wii U. The rubber banding in that game is so bad other racers were being launched into me a few seconds after I knocked them out.

 

[Neverhoodian]

Jackal Snipers
Jackal Snipers
JACKAL SNIPERS

Oh God, you had to bring that up, didn't you?! Years of therapy gone, just like that...

As a longtime TF2 player, I'd have to say random crits are a big one, particularly when explosives are involved. I often play Medic (because hardly anyone else does), and it can be extremely frustrating getting instagibbed along with my patient by a random crit rocket. Bonus points if I had an Ubercharge ready. At least Spies and Snipers have to work at getting their one-hit kills.

 

[small]

i dug up a grave in divine divinity and it exploded for 100x my hp in the starting village

 

[lionsprey]

dark soul's only cheap deaths (as in "out of the blue") are the mimics, and that's only if you didn't read the messages. All other deaths are the player's fault for not paying attention to the game.

iwannabetheguy / boshy/ is king of cheap deaths

That's kind of the point of the mimics. You're not supposed to know it's a mimic.

Anyway, at least in Dark Souls 2 the mimics are very easily identified. They actually have a big difference in their appearance than the normal chests. If a chest has a lock on it, it's a mimic.

In the first game it's a bit harder, it's the way the chains face. I forget which direction means what though.

also mimic chests breathe

 

[Buzz Killington_v1legacy]

Came in to mention the toilet scene from the first Leisure Suit Larry, but got ninja'd. Early adventure games were famous for killing you off like this, as well as happily letting you get into unwinnable situations. Forget to pick up that inconspicuous doohickey back in the game's first screen, and now you need it at the end of the game? Well, you can't go back for it at this point, so START OVER, SUCKER. It was kind of a big deal when LucasArts came out with games that wouldn't do that.

 

[LaughingAtlas]

You can really just say 'Dark Souls' and close the book, but as this is 'cheap deaths' not 'cheap answers'...

There was some weirdness in the old Jedi Knight games where lightsaber combat would sometimes be over depressingly fast. I know they're lightsabers and all, but every now and then my or the enemy's saber would just insta-kill their opponent, which didn't really make for fun jedi fights.

Payday's cloakers operate on interesting logic. "You've been getting shot full of holes for the last hour by SWAT teams and blown up by your idiot team-mate's inability to aim grenades, but this guy in a Tom Clancy mask kicks you once, so you're down and helpless."

In Katamari Forever, there's a level where you're meant to roll up warm things to make a fireball. The temperature constantly drops and there are cold things all over the place, if the temperature hits zero, you lose. Some objects are apparently goddamn freezing, but you can only guess what is and isn't going to instantly drop the temperature by 100 degrees, and some things are so small, but have so much impact that you're more likely to beat that level through trial and error or looking up a how-to video than much of anything else. (also works in Dark Souls, coincidentally)

 

[Lotet]

Dark Souls 2, getting stepped on by the Ancient Dragon when it clearly didn't step on me. Getting hit once by a giant that blatantly ignores my shield (didn't shield-break, ignored) and proceed to get smashed into the ground by said giant. Rolling instead of jumping, Dark Souls has purposfully bad platforming controls and sometimes they like to challenge you to figure out how bad it is. Try to pick up a dropped item, character decided to open the mimic instead. Kill an enemy, walk backwards, camera auto-switches to an enemy on the left, fall off ledge that I was standing next to.

Maldron the Assassin. He's a special kind of designed cheap.

 

[Reincarnatedwolfgod]

i dug up a grave in divine divinity and it exploded for 100x my hp in the starting village

I don't remember that existing in divine divinity. I know there is a grave in divinity original sin that actuality asked two times if you are sure if you want to dig up said grave. if choose ignore those to warnings then an explosion kills you.

 

[Silvanus]

Destiny Bond [http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Destiny_Bond_%28move%29] is the epitome of a cheap move (even more so in the TCG).

Limbo is also a long succession of deaths, some of them pretty cheap, but that may be part of the point.