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This one isn't for the faint of heart. We're diving deep into the grisly, the gruesome, and the psychologically scarring fates that video game characters have endured. Find out who suffers the most in our list of fates worse than death.
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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.