I'm in the research lab, right? I'm over by the spot where marines are on the table and you can turn the lasers on 'em. Well, when you enter the room some of the floors are destroyed and Iron Maidens come up.

I was standing over one of these spots right when the floor blew up, and I'm INSTANTLY KILLED!!! With over 100 health, full armor, and full power shield! The Iron Maiden squished me even though I was on top of her!

Goddamn it I was so close to having beat the game without even dying once and I'm killed in a fucking lame way. That wasn't even supposed to happen!

I want my stuff back and the death stricken from my records. I don't want to have gone nearly all the way through the game and then die because of some stupid flaw of level design.

Sounds like a physics bug, actually... and you are quite demanding for something you didn't pay for...

I just checked this out, and it seems to be caused by the Iron maiden spawning just after the floor breaks, allowing the player to fall into the monster's bounding box just as it becomes solid. The generic monster spawn function killboxes anything in its way.

So it is indeed a level design flaw- the iron maidens should spawn just before the floors break there.