In older versions of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup there were special death messages if your stats were drained to 0. I remember my Minotaur forgetting to breathe after a worm ate their brain.
In ADOM there is a chance proportional to your strength of the dungeon collapsing on you when you kick the stairs.
Another World had some good ones. And I just now learned that Another World has music (aside from the introduction). While the dramatic music is an important part of the Castlevania 4 deaths, it seems out of place here.
edit: i think lemmings just started out as a stack of disconnected death animations and later people started making their own versions in the same vein