00:00Death is simply a part of life and so too is it a part of video games. Really more so
00:05video games
00:06if you really think about it since most games are having you face off against hundreds if not
00:10thousands of enemies before the credits roll and a bunch of them will be taking you out.
00:15However being filled with lead in an FPS or slice to ribbons in a fighting game is sweet
00:20relief compared to what we're going to be talking about in this list today.
00:24This video absolutely isn't for the faint of heart, it's a little bit grisly,
00:29but if you've got the stomach for it stick with me, it's pretty entertaining.
00:33I'm Jess from WhatCulture and here are 20 video game fates worse than death.
00:38The Cordyceps brain infection, The Last of Us. If hundreds of video games have proven how much
00:44it would suck to become a zombie, The Last of Us one-upped that with its even more horrific
00:49humanity-annihilating disease, that being the Cordyceps brain infection. The fungus grows within
00:55the host while they're still very much alive, so for a time they're 100% aware of what's happening
01:02to them. See I told you it was going to be grisly. Transformation is a four-stage process. As the
01:08host
01:08loses their higher brain function and becomes aggressive, that's stage one, then the fungus
01:14alters the victim's vision, turns them blind and forces them to rely on sound, and if they live long
01:20enough they'll develop extremely resistant fungal armour. Fun. That's stage four.
01:27Without the intervention of a well-armed human, you can even live for decades in this state,
01:32and if you're super lucky, or probably super unlucky, you can even combine with other infected
01:39to become something approximating the Rat King that we encounter in part two. And boy do you not want
01:44that. Even if you do get put out of your misery by someone like Joel or Ellie, you're still able
01:50to
01:50release spores into the air and potentially infect other people. Basically none of the stuff I just
01:56told you is preferable to a bullet in the head, so if you happen to be infected by this one,
02:01save
02:01yourself and everybody else the trouble and go quickly. Deathloop Portal 2. The first Portal game
02:08concludes with the sadistic GLaDOS finally being defeated. The player uses some strategically placed
02:14portals to send a bunch of missiles flying towards the evil computer system, and a final scene shows
02:20some of GLaDOS's machine parts strewn across the car park area of the Aperture facility.
02:26Unfortunately for GLaDOS though, that death only led to more suffering. After being reawakened,
02:32the villain returns in Portal 2 and spends a lot of time feeling resentful and bitter towards the
02:37player for what they did at the end of the last game. And when you learn what happened, you kinda
02:43get why. You see, after dying, GLaDOS was forced to relive the last two minutes of their life over
02:50and over again. During the incinerator room section of Portal 2, the machine describes how its black box
02:56quicksave feature trapped it in a persistent loop of dying, again and again and again. It's doubtful
03:04that GLaDOS actually feels pain in the same way that humans do, but still, the idea of being trapped
03:09in a Groundhog Day style scenario of experiencing your near death and ultimate death over and over
03:15again sounds super not fun. Self-aware Freaker. Days Gone. Players who slogged through the entirety of
03:22Days Gone's unnecessarily long campaign were, at least, rewarded for their efforts with a pretty cool
03:28twist. Throughout the game, protagonist Deakin works with a neuroscientist called O'Brien,
03:33a flaky yet kind survivor who constantly wears a thick bodysuit with an enormous protective headpiece.
03:40At first, it seems like he's wearing it to protect himself from the Freaker virus, but it turns out the
03:45reason he's wearing it is because he's already been infected. This twist is revealed in a cutscene
03:51after the main plot has been wrapped up, and it makes you feel even more sorry for O'Brien than
03:56you
03:57already did. Whenever you encounter him during the story, you get the sense he's a bit of an outsider,
04:02a bit of a loner, not really accepted by the rest of his Nero colleagues. Now, the universe is just
04:08kicking him when he's down, infecting him with an incurable virus that must make him very comfortable,
04:14if not in a significant amount of pain. Now, one of the extra worst parts of the whole thing is
04:20that
04:20normally this is a virus that turns you into a mindless zombie kind of thing. Zombie. Freaker.
04:27You get it. But O'Brien is still fully self-aware, meaning he can physically feel what's happening to him.
04:33It's a permanent illness that he can't escape from.
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05:31gaming movies to watch. Clinging to humanity, Apex Legends. Introduced in Apex Legends during
05:38Season 4, Revenant is a deadly robotic assassin with a tragic backstory that sent him toward a
05:44truly unenviable fate. Once upon a time, Revenant was a normal human man, a hitman for the mercenary
05:51syndicate. He was probably the most skilled killer the Outlands had ever seen, able to murder any target
05:57anywhere at any time. But everything changed when he was transformed into a simulacrum by shady tech
06:03organization Hammond Robotics. In the Apex and Titanfall universe, a simulacrum is basically a
06:09metal body that houses a digital imprint of a person's memories and knowledge, meaning that subjects
06:15of this process still think and feel like regular humans, when in reality, they're just robotic shells
06:21with delusions of humanity. Demonstrating this, Apex's Season 4 trailer showed Revenant attempting
06:27to shave his metallic face, seemingly thinking that he was still a man. It wasn't until a shard
06:33of glass got stuck in his neck that his simulacrum programming was interrupted and he was able to see
06:38what Hammond had turned him into. Imagine going about your daily life and then all of a sudden one day
06:44you realize nothing is what it seems and you're actually a robot. Potentially hard to imagine,
06:49but it would be bad. No basic human pleasures, no friends, nothing. It would make you miserable and
06:56death would likely feel like a viable escape route. Trapped for all eternity, Mother 3.
07:02Here's a question, would you trade your freedom for absolute safety? If someone gave you the
07:07opportunity to live in isolation, but with the promise that no harm would ever befall you,
07:12would you take it? The reason we ask is that Porky Minch, yes that is his actual name,
07:18inadvertently dooms himself to this very fate at the end of his boss battle in Mother 3.
07:23During the game, you'll be confronted by the villainous Porky, who tries to attack you while
07:29sat inside a spider-like mech suit. It's a tough fight, but once you defeat him, he'll retreat to
07:34his absolutely safe capsule, believing that he'll be immune to all damage while still being able to
07:40attack the player. Oh Porky, how wrong you were. What actually happens is that Porky has sealed
07:47himself inside an inescapable prison for all of eternity. The absolutely safe capsule is a pretty
07:53literal name, as it turns out. It does keep you safe from all harm, but it locks you completely in
07:59isolation from everything around you. Porky can never leave the capsule, but he also can never die.
08:05Instead, he has to just live until the end of time itself. Even Dr. Andernuts, the creator of the
08:12capsule, says he feels bad for Porky. And you know what? We kinda do too.
08:17Rooted to the spot, Fallout 3. The Fallout series is full of colourful side characters,
08:22and there are a lot of interesting stories to discover if you choose to venture off the beaten
08:27path. One of the best, and most disturbing, this is Fallout after all, is the story of Harold,
08:33who was forced to live in a vault as the Great War started. Now, eventually, Harold decides to
08:38leave his safe haven and head out to the post-apocalyptic wasteland to make something of
08:43himself. Unfortunately, though, this led to him being exposed to the FEV virus, and as a result,
08:50his body started to transform in a grotesque manner. Over the years, Harold's state grew worse and worse,
08:57and when you encounter him in Fallout 3, he's been turned into a tree, rooted to the spot and
09:02unable to move. The worst part, though, because of course there's a worst part, is that he is still
09:08fully sentient. He just can't sleep, can't eat, can't do anything to pass the time other than
09:14sitting, rooted to the place that he currently is. Because of the constant torture that he's in,
09:19he even asks you to kill him, stating it would be doing him a favour. If you choose to oblige,
09:25you can off him painlessly, or you can burn him alive and listen to him scream in agony.
09:30I don't know why you'd do that, but if you do, you're a monster. But let me know what happens
09:35in the comments, because I wouldn't do that. Living in Fear, The Witcher 3
09:39An expert on all things occult, Primaethine Shakeslock's supernatural expertise landed him
09:44in a whole lot of trouble when he was tasked with investigating Gaunter O'Dim. O'Dim, as you may have
09:50guessed from his spooky-sounding name, is not a nice chap, or one you want to cross, ever. He's a
09:57entity that likes to play games with his victims by getting them to agree to pacts that don't seem
10:03so bad on the surface. They always are. But of course, there's a catch. When you meet Shakeslock
10:09in The Witcher 3, he reveals that simply just researching O'Dim caused him to go blind,
10:15while also describing how he was drawn into one of those pacts himself. Shakeslock says that O'Dim
10:21drew a small runic circle on the floor, claiming that he would be safe within it. And while that was
10:27technically true, what Shakeslock didn't know is that he would end up being trapped inside this
10:32circle, unable to leave, and living in constant fear of O'Dim and his power. Now this one is a little
10:38similar to what happened to Porky Minch, but instead of being encapsulated by a metal container,
10:44it's just a thin chalk line. But he still has to constantly battle with the temptation to step over it,
10:50because if he does, he knows he's going to die. Fortunately for him, Shakeslock is eventually
10:55killed after stepping outside the circle, but it's those years he spent trapped inside it that earned
11:00him a spot on this list. In many ways, death was a relief for him at that point, because his
11:06life
11:06consisted of suffering and anguish born from his inability to leave the tiny space around him.
11:12This feels like the right point in the video to remind you that if you haven't already, you can
11:16subscribe to us for a bunch more lists. Some of them are definitely not as sad as this one. In
11:21fact,
11:21most of them aren't as miserable as this one. But if you like the miserable, we got those too. So,
11:26you know, think about it. All right, let's keep going. Bugs Inside the Body. Resistance.
11:31The Resistance series is set in an alternate history Earth, where an alien race known as the
11:36Chimera has infected millions and millions of people on a global scale, mutating them into an
11:42assorted range of Chimerian hybrids. And for a process that transforms regular humans into slimy
11:49alien monsters, that transformation process is, as you can imagine, appropriately horrible.
11:56It starts with a swarm of insects called crawlers, which enter the body through its airways,
12:01allowing them to distribute the virus throughout the host's bloodstream. Once the job is done,
12:06the victim is sent into a comatose state. But the scariest thing about this is that the human
12:12still remains conscious while the crawlers are infecting them. A collectible intel document that
12:17you can find within the original game, Resistance Fall of Man, describes, and let me get this right
12:23word for word, victims can possibly try to tear the creatures out of themselves, which causes
12:29self-inflicted bruises and lacerations. Ouch. People can feel the crawlers moving around inside them,
12:36which leads to them scratching and clawing at their own flesh in a desperate attempt to pull the bugs
12:42out of their body. Yeesh. We'd sooner take a bullet to the head than have to endure any of that.
12:48I mean,
12:48Fall of Man even has a level called Fate's Worse Than Death. And yeah, it's about right. Pulled into the
12:55huddle inside. Playdead's gorgeous puzzle platformer inside ends with an unforgettable
13:00sequence where the boy protagonist makes his way through the various laboratories to discover the
13:06huddle, a gigantic fleshy blob creature comprised primarily of other human bodies. Towards the end
13:13of the game, the boy is consumed by the huddle and becomes a part of this monstrous rat king, yet
13:20somehow
13:20even nastier than rat king monstrosity, and you get to rampage through the facility. It's a wonderful
13:25sequence, but also the implications. It goes without saying that being absorbed into a fleshy mass is
13:32one of the most existentially terrifying things imaginable, made only worse by the game's ambiguous
13:37ending, where the huddle escapes to the coast and just stops moving. Whatever truly happened to the boy,
13:44it was clearly a lot worse than drowning, getting chewed up by dogs, or any one of the other
13:50dramatic ways you can die in that game. 109 years of torture, God of War. Even though Mimir cracks a
13:57lot of jokes and could even be considered God of War's comic relief, all of that humor is masking a
14:03truly tragic backstory. Once a king's errand boy in Chester, Mimir's travels eventually lead him to the
14:09mighty Allfather Odin, who was so impressed by his intelligence that he hired him as his primary
14:15advisor. In the time that followed, Mimir made many allies, and one of the ones he befriended was the
14:22giants of Jotunheim. Now, Odin wasn't particularly keen on the giants of Jotunheim, and decided that he
14:27became particularly paranoid of Mimir, which is, as you can imagine, not a good start to what happens next.
14:33Mimir is then accused of aiding the enemy, so the king of Asgard decides to punish his subject.
14:39Odin imprisons Mimir on Midgard's highest peak and bound him to an indestructible tree,
14:46while also tearing out his left eye. As if that wasn't bad enough, Odin still had more to dish out.
14:52For the next 109 years, until the events of the game, where Kratos encounters and frees him,
14:58Odin tortured Mimir on a daily basis, inflicting so much pain that he eventually started to long for the
15:04sweet release of death. Mimir was tortured every single day for over a century, and given that
15:09we're dealing with someone as powerful as Odin, you can be pretty sure that no minute of that entire
15:15time wasn't spent in unbelievable agony. Turned into a headcrab zombie, Half-Life. Small, swift and
15:23slimy creatures that attach themselves to the heads of their victims have been haunting our dreams ever
15:28since facehuggers were created, and the Half-Life series' iconic headcrabs continued to prove how
15:34frightening that concept was. Headcrabs are similar to facehuggers in that they really enjoy diving right
15:40onto the heads of their victims, but they're a little different as what a facehugger will do
15:44is inject its victim with an alien egg with the intention to impregnate it, while headcrabs
15:50somehow have an even more ghastly MO. Headcrabs start by affixing themselves to the heads of a
15:57suitable host, at which point they break into the person's skull and take over their motor functions.
16:04The host's body then essentially rots, losing a lot of skin and muscle tissue, while having the organs
16:10inside the chest cavity exposed. Sounds absolutely awful, right? Well, it gets worse. At least facehuggers
16:18have the decency to put their victims to sleep. No such luck with a headcrab. The host retains some
16:25level of consciousness, even after the headcrab is taking control, meaning they can feel everything
16:30that's happening to them. Those sounds that headcrab zombies make? Those are actually cries for help.
16:46Does make you wonder why Sam Bridges would want to have worn one in the Death Stranding crossover,
16:51but each to their own. The Guardians, Dead Space. The Dead Space series has no shortage of horrific
16:58creatures to throw at the player, from Exploders to Lurkers to the enormous, deadly Leviathan. Now,
17:04you wouldn't want to turn into any of those monsters, but somehow, as far as fate's worse
17:09than death, the Guardians seem like the worst ones, as whilst the body of the initial human host gets
17:16absolutely mutilated, you best believe the human inside, still there, can't die. Guardians are
17:22corrupted human bodies that are anchored to the wall, unable to move. Now, that's bad enough as it
17:28is, but wait, there is more. Their legs have been cut off, so even if they weren't stuck in one
17:33place,
17:33they wouldn't be able to walk, and their abdomens have been split down the middle, leaving their
17:38insides dangling out into the open. Normally, as you can imagine, an injury like that would prove
17:45fatal. You don't have to be a doctor to know that, but unluckily, because of the infection itself,
17:50not only is the human still conscious, but it's powerful enough to keep their host alive,
17:56dissipate all of the insides becoming outsides. You can put them out of their misery, of course,
18:02but until you do, their howls of torment can be heard, a clear sign that dying would probably be
18:08the preferable option to being torn apart like a dog's chew toy. Let me know down in that comment
18:13section which one of these non-death sounds worse to you. That is such a weird thing to ask you
18:19to do
18:19in the comment box, but I'm standing by it. Will the filter get those? I don't know. Let's find out
18:26together. Immortal, but decapitated. Mortal Kombat 11. Okay, you're gonna have to listen to me closely
18:33on this one, unfortunately, because there's no way we can properly show you this on video without
18:37getting demonetized, so bear with me. Mortal Kombat 11's story mode kicks off with a prologue,
18:43where Raiden tortures the evil Shinnok, who taunts Raiden that even he isn't powerful enough to kill
18:49an elder god. Raiden then responds by telling Shinnok quite plainly, there are fates worse than
18:56death, and then proceeding to chop his head right off. This of course doesn't kill Shinnok, instead
19:01simply incapacitating him, as Raiden leaves him to live out an eternity as nothing more than a severed
19:08head, a living warning of his own wrath. As if being robbed of your own mobility and agency isn't bad
19:15enough, you also continue your entire life being a symbol of what happens when someone crosses the
19:21powerful lightning god Raiden. So what's worse, having no body or being super embarrassed? I don't
19:27know. Both really not good. Sealed in crystals and drowned in sorrow. Final Fantasy XIII. Though the
19:35Final Fantasy franchise has a loose grasp on the finality of death, Final Fantasy XIII nevertheless
19:41touts perhaps the series' most unsettling alternative to a dirt nap to date. In the game,
19:48L'Cie are people branded by divine entities and given an important task, better known as focus, to
19:54carry out. But those L'Cie who fail to complete their focus will eventually transform into a Seath,
20:00a crystalline mindless monster who walks the earth awash in sorrow, in a state of living death. That is
20:08until they lose all their energy and become a seemingly inert Seath stone. Yet it doesn't even
20:13end there. The L'Cie are still conscious even while they're being turned into a Seath stone, and will
20:18periodically cry out in anguish, begging that other L'Cie do not suffer the same fate. Now the alternative
20:25isn't great either, as L'Cie who do manage to carry out their focus will be put to sleep in
20:31a
20:31crystalline form until they're called upon to complete another focus. So kind of a lose-lose.
20:37Turned into a surgically altered slave. Half-Life 2. And you thought being turned into a headcrab
20:44zombie was bad. Though not nearly as common as headcrab zombies, stalkers are humanoid grotesque
20:50guardians that can be found protecting the Citadel's core in Half-Life 2. Once upon a time,
20:56every stalker was a regular human being who was believed to be an undesirable by the Combine,
21:02causing them to be sent to the prison Nova Prospect. There, their extended limbs are removed
21:08and replaced with metal augments, while the majority of their organs, including the digestive tract,
21:14vocal cords, and genitalia, as well as most muscle and fat, are removed, and their brains likely tampered
21:22with. Basically the experiments turn the victim into nothing but an inert slave, nothing resembling
21:28their former selves, and really just existing in the basic technically correct version of that word.
21:36Ghoulification. Fallout. Those poor poor ghouls. As monstrous as they may look, ghouls are actually
21:43fully sentient humans who've just been irradiated to hell, causing massive damage to their skin, and
21:50well, you probably know what they look like. A lot of stuff. They're real messed up. Though they still
21:56retain most of their mental faculties and can live for potentially hundreds of years, they're also in
22:02never-ending pain. They're rendered sterile, they can turn irreversibly feral at the drop of a hat,
22:07and are basically viewed as pariahs by society at large. Potentially the most horrifying reveal of
22:14what it can be like to be a ghoul in Fallout is a side quest you can discover in Fallout
22:194, where you
22:20find a kid called Billy Peabody in a fridge, just randomly, in the wasteland. It turns out he hid in
22:27there when the Great War started 200 years earlier. Unable to free himself or even die, he had no choice
22:33but
22:34to just hang out until he was rescued. As if trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic hellhole isn't hard
22:40enough, most people hate ghouls simply for how they look. It all adds up to an eked out existence that's
22:46absolutely not worth it. Imprisoned Within the Earth, Baldur's Gate. The Baldur's Gate franchise touts
22:53the Imprisonment spell, which confines its victim to a quite intensely horrible fate indeed. The spell
23:01immediately transports the victim into a spherical prison far below the Earth, and the only way to
23:06undo this is to cast the opposite spell, Freedom. There's literally no other way to combat imprisonment.
23:13Because the victim is left in suspended animation, they're also unable to die of natural causes,
23:19meaning they're basically trapped within the planet until the Earth is consumed by the Sun in,
23:24oh you know, only another four billion years or so. It goes without saying that even those with a firm
23:30mental constitution would quickly find their brains turning to jelly when faced with the fate of
23:35having to be left to their own devices for, well, what may as well be eternity.
23:40Assimilated by the Flood. Halo. By far the most iconic recurring enemy in the Halo franchise
23:46is the Flood, the parasites responsible for devouring and assimilating most sentient life in the
23:52galaxy. Humans will typically be mutilated rather than killed, with the Flood essentially latching onto the
23:58human's spinal column and causing a drastic, to say the least, physical transformation.
24:05Most humans will become the Combat Form Flood, which while still humanoid in appearance,
24:10have severe alterations to their exterior flesh and internal organs. The infected human is largely
24:17conscious of this as the organs are shifted around inside their bodies and they're submitted to the
24:22will of the collective. To make matters worse, the Combat Form Flood are fairly durable combatants,
24:28meaning you can't even wish for a speedy demise on the battlefield as a grant because you're a little
24:34too tough, so hopefully you end up losing a few more battles than you should. Surely the most extreme
24:40example of this is Captain Keys, who in the original game is discovered to have been absorbed into the
24:46gigantic Flood biomass known as the Proto Gravemind. This is before Master Chief mercifully puts him
24:53out of his misery. Stranded alone at the bottom of the abyss, Soma. Cult classic survival horror game
24:59Soma follows human protagonist Simon Jarrett, who wakes up in a remote underwater research facility.
25:06Later, Simon discovers he's not the original human Simon at all, but in fact a brain scan uploaded to a
25:11modified corpse by an AI. The AI, known as the Warden Unit, has been creating biomechanical human-machine
25:19hybrids in this way to try and preserve what remains of humanity following an extinction event on the
25:25surface. Though Simon is ultimately able to send off a copy of his brain scan into space in a black
25:31box
25:31wherein he can live in a utopia, the same can't be said for our OG Simon, the one we've been
25:37playing as
25:38all game, who is instead trapped where he's been the entire time within the bottom of the abyss.
25:44To make matters worse, his only form of company, the brain scan of Catherine, is effectively killed
25:50after the machine it's placed within short circuits, confining Simon to an eternity of loneliness in the
25:56most remote place on earth. Turned into a soft jelly thing. I have no mouth and I must scream.
26:03I have no mouth and I must scream was the brainchild of the legendary sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison.
26:10A point-and-click adventure game set in a dystopia where the AI of the allied master computer, AM,
26:16has eliminated all of humanity save for just five people, AM has kept said five people alive for 109 years,
26:24while, well, it tortures them, of course. After which it decides to subject them to a series of adventures based
26:31on their own lives,
26:32designed to prey explicitly on their own flaws, fears, and insecurities.
26:38Even if you appear to defeat AM though, five of the game's seven endings will see you turned into,
26:44and I quote, a soft jelly thing where all you can do is just exist trapped with AM unable to
26:51do anything at all.
26:52Literally, you can't speak per the game's title, your eyes are replaced with white holes filled with fog,
26:59and your limbs are now pathetic fleshy protrusions. Given that AM himself is effectively immortal,
27:05there's no end to the suffering in sight. Horrifying.
27:09Well, that was fun. I hope you enjoyed that one. It actually is pretty interesting. If you did like it,
27:15maybe hit that subscribe button. You can follow us for plenty more lists. Some of them aren't as brutal as
27:21this one.
27:22You can find us on Instagram at our website. We're also on Facebook, TikTok, anywhere you might want
27:28to find us on your social media platform of choice. You can also hang out with me if you want
27:32to. I
27:33stream on Twitch at Jess McDonnell. I'm on Instagram at Jessica McDonnell, and I'm on YouTube at Jess McDonnell.
27:39So hopefully I'll see one of those places, or you can catch me here reading out plenty of gross and
27:45less gross lists pretty much whenever you want to find me. So hopefully I'll see you then soon.
