Man I remember there used to be an urban myth about a game called 'Killswitch' which was made by a Russian Developer (I think) where you could play as two characters, but one of them was completely invisible so no one ever played as it.
And towards the end of the game, almost every single player got stuck until one player on a forum worked out how to get to the very end of the game and revealed it, and so everyone got through and finished it. And lo-and-behold, upon the game being finished, it would delete itself. Like physically wipe itself from existence.
The Developers, much much later, revealed that the invisible character was a lot more important than the visible one, and of course no one ever had the chance to play the invisible one because there were no more copies of the game left. And so everyone tried their hardest to find the last few copies of the game ever made.
It's an interesting story, and an interesting take on real,
real permadeath, even though I'm pretty sure it was debunked.
Some sources