Another Top 10 Disturbing Video Game Moments

#10: The Botchling

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“The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt” (2015) On the trail for his adopted daughter Ciri, Geralt is asked by Baron Strenger to locate the Baron’s wife and daughter, in exchange for information. However, as per the series’ tradition of cruel subversion, it turns out Spenger’s wife vanished after suffering a horrific miscarriage as a result of domestic abuse. If that weren’t ugly enough of a twist, the player then has to confront the fetus – now a mutated creature called a Botchling. Whether you choose to free it from its curse or slay it in battle, the experience of witnessing this poor creature’s plight is utterly horrific.

#9: Revenge against Zeus

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“God of War III” (2010) Imagine for a moment that you’re in the shoes of Kratos, the former God of War, whose quest to strike down every other deity in the Greek pantheon is nearing its end. You’ve got Zeus, the god of thunder, on the ropes… now what? For Kratos, this means taking advantage of the situation and brutally punching Zeus’ face in, reducing it to a bloody pulp. But then Kratos keeps punching, with his onslaught only ending when the player so chooses. It’s senseless, excessive and grotesque as a course of action, yet it feels fitting considering how truly empty of all but his most violent urges Kratos has become.

“NieR Automata” (2017) Death, Faith, Humanity & Robot Sentience? In one of NieR Automata’s most memorable moments, these topics intertwine to form someone quite chilling. Part way through 2B’s mission, she’s is asked by robotic ally Pascal to help negotiate a peace treaty between her village and another robotic community made up of religious believers. Only these believers aren’t exactly your typical ‘pray for peace’ types. (“We’ll all die together and become as gods”) From here the sequence to escape the believers factory only gets darker, with some machines hiding in fear of death from their homicidal brethren, while others opt to take their own lives peacefully yet still with hesitation. Plus the soundtrack constantly repeats the chant “Become as Gods” to make sure the player won’t be forgetting any of this, anytime soon.

“Phantasmagoria” (1995) In a game packed with brutal deaths and cruel twists of fate, this stands out as being especially harsh. While exploring the greenhouse of her newly-purchased New England estate, author Adrienne Delaney happens upon a vase that – surprise, surprise – contains a human skeleton. Already an unsettling moment, we’re then shown a flashback explaining exactly why that skeleton is there: it’s what remains of Hortencia, the first of several wives of the demon-possessed magician Carno. Enraged during a conversation, Carno kills Hortencia by way of shoving dirt down her throat until she suffocates.

#6: The Dark Room

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“Life is Strange” (2015) Sometimes, being the hero sucks. Case in point: as Episode 5 of “Life is Strange” opens, photography student Max Caulfield finds herself strapped to a chair in what appears to be a private studio. Using her ability to time travel through photos, Max discovers that she is in the Dark Room, a location where her teacher Mark Jefferson takes unwilling women and photographs them in compromising positions. Jefferson’s sheer sociopathy and implicit sexual interest in his students gets clearer and creepier as he speaks to Max, illustrating just how warped one’s mind would have to be to justify this behavior.

#5: The Man in Yellow

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“I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” (1995) Certain evils stick with you, no matter how far you go or how hard you try to move on. In her segment of “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream”, the engineer Ellen finds herself dealing with a recurring issue of being uncomfortable around the color yellow. She struggles through the pain to solve puzzle after puzzle before ending up in an elevator she recognizes… and then a man in yellow materializes before her. Ellen’s despair at the sight of the man who, years earlier, had raped her only adds to the unflinching cruelty and horror of the scene.

#4: Your Final Fate

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“INSIDE” (2016) Terrible things happening to children is always going to be tough to watch, yet somehow this is on a whole other level of disturbing. Throughout “INSIDE”, the central character – a young nameless boy – passes by several citizens being guided along to parts unknown. Then, after a trek through a research facility, the truth is laid bare: these people are being merged into giant, blob-like monstrosities as part of a twisted experiment. Alas, the boy is absorbed into one such being, becoming just another set of limbs flailing about on a fleshy abomination.

“Resident Evil 7: Biohazard” (2017) Not long after reuniting with his wife Mia and having to battle her for the first time, Ethan Winters ends up in quite the predicament. Ethan’s exploration of the Baker house gets interrupted by the suddenly revived Mia, who proceeds to impale his hand with a screwdriver. The scene gets progressively more gruesome as Ethan struggles mightily to free his hand… just in time to have it lopped off by a chainsaw. Besides the obvious horror of seeing someone lose a limb, it’s just as disturbing to watch the hand get stapled back onto its stump, all in glorious first-person view.

“BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea Episode 2” (2014) Late in “Burial at Sea: Episode 2”, dimension-hopping heroine Elizabeth completes a task for the enigmatic Atlas, who rewards her assistance by taking her captive. We’re then treated to a first-person view of Elizabeth being given too much truth serum, going into a two-week coma, and waking up to Atlas preparing lobotomy instruments. Every tap on the piercing orbitoclast instrument, every pained cry by Elizabeth as the procedure continues – it makes for a lot of wincing on the audience’s part. That Atlas was also willing to do the same to Sally, a Little Sister, only adds to the troubling nature of this scene.

#1: White Phosphorus

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“Spec Ops: The Line” (2012) Perspective is key when trying to upturn the audience’s understanding of events, as is illustrated half-way through “Spec Ops: The Line. During the eighth mission Captain Walker and his team find themselves overlooking one of the Damned 33rd’s base camps, with a cache of white phosphorus shells conveniently nearby. Walker gives the order to fire said shells on the camp, visualized to the audience as cloudy bursts on a computer screen. The disconnect between our perception of the action and the visceral horror of what actually happened is hammered home when, minutes later, it’s discovered the 33rd were evacuating civilians. And then we’re shown exactly what white phosphorus does to the human body… good luck sleeping after this one.