RC, you're doing that thing you do again... spending a lot of energy (and verbiage) in an attempt to misunderstand what someone's saying. I'm not talking about the 'possibility' of PC death. I'm talking about PC death. Itself.
If a PC dies (and isn't Raised), no more consequences can befall that character.
Though I know what you mean, that character in game terms probably no longer advances, gains levels, etc., which would seem to be the point of the modern and current version of the game. So death seems like a termination, so to speak, of all that is important in a game in relation to that character, and perhaps even that party. But that doesn't mean the game has to be that way by necessity.
Death can yield some interesting consequences in fantasy (and fantasy gaming) and literature depending upon how it is met, and to what end. I give you the Lich, the Spectre and Wraith, the ghost of the father of Hamlet, Herakles going into Hades to free the dead, and of course, Dante's Virgil...
The dead, especially in the context of fantasy, myth, literature, comics, even some science fiction, can exist as either spectral haunts, a source of doom, a spiritual oracle, a witch's familiar, a relentless Nemesis, or even the guide to uncover injustice or to advise on safe passage through the undiscovered country. The dead can also be played well in both very spiritually oriented games, and in horror games.
It depends entirely upon how one plays death, in what manner, and how it operates.
In my games we have had the dead serve as guides and allies, transmuted into angelic like beings, as inspiration to achieve some unaccomplished end (the heroic death of one character which spurs on the other party members to greater heroism in order to accomplish what the dead could not), as omens, as ghosts and shades, and once as a nearly unstoppable and vicious Nemesis (a former character) determined to hunt down his killers with such brutality and vengeance that eventually the playing party had to mount a hunt to stop him before he slaughtered everything around him.
Death, like life, depending on how it is executed (pun intended) can yield some interesting consequences for play.
You can, instead of playing it as the end, play it as a surprise turn of events, which leads to terra unfamiliar and the land of the dead. The dead can be the secret whisper of an unknown tongue. The language of death is readable in fantasy, and it lingers on long after physical and character death.
Note: By the way, it isn't that hard (I've done it) to prepare a list of possible outcomes of what might occur to a character post death. Everything from moving on to an afterlife, to transmutation into something else, to becoming a ghost, to soul entrapment, to even reincarnation or resurrection in some unique or strange way.
