My perhaps rose-tinted memory is that the deaths were pretty comic in Space Quest.

Some of the best parts of the SQ4 talkie are the sarcastic narrated death screens. And SQ5 has neat animations.

The manual tells you to "save early, save often" for a reason.

My subconscious has just dredged up the memory "you take a good long whiff of the acid, and .. whoah, talk about clean sinuses!". That might have been from the later remastered SQ I even?

Sounds like Space Quest 4. That one had a Nose/Smell and Mouth/Taste icon.

The narrator (Gary Owens) was also amazing in the CD version.

I enjoyed the death sequences too.

I was sure to have plenty of savegames before I tried anything, of course.

You can die in Monkey Island. Twice.

One is a Sierra Spoof complete with a Sierra death dialog. That one lets you continue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6F55am-rOY

The other has to do with the fact that Guybrush can hold his breath for 10 Minutes. And only ten minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah5o3aAeZso

If I remember correctly that is the only real game over in any later Lucasfilm/LucasArts adventure game.

EDIT: I just remembered the jumping puzzle in Indy3 where you died all the time when jumping on the wrong tile. Or the Knight Statue that axed either Indy or his father. Or you got shot when you punched Hitler... You could also die in Manic Mansion and Zak McKracken.

Lucasfilm games killed you quite a lot. LucasArts stopped doing that.