I’d like to create an effect similar to 2 death animations that exist in Crash Bandicoot 3.
In one of them, Crash is disintegrated: all the triangle faces get separated and fly apart. A similar triangle separation is seen when he dies from fire, the triangles fall separately.
The second is a simple separation of the legs and torso. One enemy that exists in the 1st stage can cut Crash in half, which will cause the torso to stay in place while the legs walk away.
Assemble your objects from smaller, independent 3D meshes, which you can control separately after destroying an enemy. That’s how I do it in my space shooter game.