Kahenraz,
well there are plenty of examples to be found on the internet
some rossman repair group videos on youtube spring to mind that leave the board with a hole in it, a still functional board at that point... 😀

sometimes the board gets lucky and nothing gets carbonized, other times, it's almost a full short, and then there are the worst times were it's a little bit carbonized, which causes a little bit extra current flow, that might or might not be enough to carbonize the board a bit further and cause some sometimes odd behaviour.

Yes, I understand. I've seen some of those videos as well where they're digging through the layers and you can even see small traces appear and they solder to them.

Given the importance of the component on this motherboard, the amount of damage that I had done trying to remove it, and its location (there is a heatsink that sits on top, flush with all of the neighboring MOSFETS), and the fact that the board isn't particularly valuable, I didn't want to risk working with it anymore. I'll triage the situation differently if I encounter this again in the future.

I ended up destroying the pads on either side that the feet needed to connect with anyways. If I had instead cut the component out and filled in the hole with epoxy, it might have been able to get it working again. I was very aggressive with this particular repair on purpose to see what would happen and whether "as much heat as possible" could actually free it from the board.