20 Video Game Fates Worse Than Death

Death is simply a part of life, and so too is it a part of video games

Really, more so video games if you really think about it, since most games are having you face off against hundreds if not thousands of enemies before the credits roll

and a bunch of them will be taking you out. However, being filled with lead in an FPS or sliced to ribbons in a fighting game

is sweet relief compared to what we're going to be talking about in this list today

This video absolutely isn't for the faint of heart, it's a little bit grisly

but if you've got the stomach for it, stick with me. It's pretty entertaining

I'm Jess from WhatCulture, and here are 20 video game fates worse than death

The Cordyceps brain infection, The Last of Us. If hundreds of video games have proven

how much it would suck to become a zombie, The Last of Us one-upped that

with its even more horrific humanity-annihilating disease, that being the Cordyceps brain infection

The fungus grows within the host while they're still very much alive, so for a time they're 100% aware of what's happening to them

See, I told you it was going to be grisly. Transformation is a four-stage process

As the host loses their higher brain function and becomes aggressive, that's stage one

then the fungus alters the victim's vision, turns them blind and forces them to rely on sound

and if they live long enough, they'll develop extremely resistant fungal armor

Fun. That's stage four. Without the intervention of a well-armed human, you can even live for decades in this state

And if you're super lucky, or probably super unlucky, you can even combine with other infected

to become something approximating the Rat King that we encounter in part two

And boy, do you not want that. Even if you do get put out of your misery by someone like Joel or Ellie

you're still able to release spores into the air and potentially infect other people

basically none of the stuff i just told you is preferable to a bullet in the head so if you

happen to be infected by this one save yourself and everybody else the trouble and go quickly

death loop portal 2 the first portal game concludes with the sadistic glados finally

being defeated the player uses some strategically placed portals to send a bunch of missiles flying

towards the evil computer system and a final scene shows some of glados's machine parts

strewn across the car park area of the Aperture facility. Unfortunately for GLaDOS though, that

death only led to more suffering. After being reawakened, the villain returns in Portal 2 and

spends a lot of time feeling resentful and bitter towards the player for what they did at the end of

the last game. And when you learn what happened, you kind of get why. You see, after dying, GLaDOS

was forced to relive the last two minutes of their life over and over again. During the incinerator

room section of Portal 2, the machine describes how its black box quicksave feature trapped it

in a persistent loop of dying again and again and again. It's doubtful that GLaDOS actually feels

pain in the same way that humans do, but still the idea of being trapped in a Groundhog Day

style scenario of experiencing your near death and ultimate death over and over again sounds

Super not fun. Self-aware Freaker, Days Gone. Players who slog through the entirety of Days Gone's unnecessarily long campaign

were at least rewarded for their efforts with a pretty cool twist

Throughout the game, protagonist Deacon works with a neuroscientist called O'Brien, a flaky yet kind survivor who constantly wears a thick bodysuit

with an enormous protective headpiece. At first, it seems like he's wearing it to protect himself from the Freaker virus

but it turns out the reason he's wearing it is because he's already been infected

This twist is revealed in a cutscene after the main plot has been wrapped up

and it makes you feel even more sorry for O'Brien than you already did

Whenever you encounter him during the story, you get the sense he's a bit of an outsider

a bit of a loner, not really accepted by the rest of his Nero colleagues

Now the universe is just kicking him when he's down, infecting him with an incurable virus that must make him very comfortable if not in a significant

amount of pain. Now one of the extra worst parts of the whole thing is that normally this is a

virus that turns you into a mindless zombie kind of thing. Zombie. Freaker. You get it. But O'Brien

is still fully self-aware meaning he can physically feel what's happening to him

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Now I've got some underrated gaming movies to watch. Clinging to humanity, Apex Legends

Introduced in Apex Legends during season four, Revenant is a deadly robotic assassin with a tragic backstory

that sent him toward a truly unenviable fate. Once upon a time, Revenant was a normal human man

a hitman for the mercenary syndicate. He was probably the most skilled killer the Outlands had ever seen

able to murder any target anywhere at any time. But everything changed when he was transformed

into a simulacrum by shady tech organization Hammond Robotics. In the Apex and Titanfall

universe, a simulacrum is basically a metal body that houses a digital imprint of a person's

memories and knowledge, meaning that subjects of this process still think and feel like regular

humans when in reality they're just robotic shells with delusions of humanity. Demonstrating this

Apex's season four trailer showed Revenant attempting to shave his metallic face

seemingly thinking that he was still a man. It wasn't until a shard of glass got stuck in his

neck that his simulacrum programming was interrupted and he was able to see what Hammond

had turned him into. Imagine going about your daily life and then all of a sudden one day you

realize nothing is what it seems and you're actually a robot. Potentially hard to imagine

but it would be bad. No basic human pleasures no friends nothing It would make you miserable and death would likely feel like a viable escape route Trapped for all eternity Mother 3 Here a question would you trade your freedom for

absolute safety? If someone gave you the opportunity to live in isolation but with the promise that no

harm would ever befall you, would you take it? The reason we ask is that Porky Minch, yes that is his

actual name inadvertently dooms himself to this very fate at the end of his boss battle in Mother

3. During the game you'll be confronted by the villainous Porky who tries to attack you while

sat inside a spider-like mech suit. It's a tough fight but once you defeat him he'll retreat to his

absolutely safe capsule believing that he'll be immune to all damage while still being able to

attack the player. Oh Porky, how wrong you were. What actually happens is that Porky has sealed

himself inside an inescapable prison for all of eternity. The Absolutely Safe Capsule is a pretty

literal name as it turns out. It does keep you safe from all harm, but it locks you completely

in isolation from everything around you. Porky can never leave the capsule, but he also can never

die. Instead, he has to just live until the end of time itself. Even Dr Andernutz, the creator of

the capsule, says he feels bad for Porky. And you know what? We kind of do too. Rooted to the spot

Fallout 3. The Fallout series is full of colourful side characters, and there are a lot of interesting

stories to discover if you choose to venture off the beaten path. One of the best and most disturbing

this is Fallout after all, is the story of Harold who was forced to live in a vault as the Great War

started. Now eventually Harold decides to leave his safe haven and head out to the post-apocalyptic

wasteland to make something of himself. Unfortunately though, this led to him being

exposed to the FEV virus and as a result his body started to transform in a grotesque manner

Over the years Harold's state grew worse and worse and when you encounter him in Fallout 3

he's been turned into a tree rooted to the spot and unable to move. The worst part though because

of course there's a worst part is that he is still fully sentient. He just can't sleep, can't eat

can't do anything to pass the time other than sitting rooted to the place that he currently is

Because of the constant torture that he's in he even asks you to kill him stating it would be

doing him a favor. If you choose to oblige you can off him painlessly or you can burn him alive

and listen to it and scream in agony. I don't know why you'd do that, but if you do, you're a monster

Let me know what happens in the comments, because I wouldn't do that. Living in Fear, The Witcher 3

An expert on all things occult, Primaethine Shakeslock's supernatural expertise landed him in a whole lot of trouble when he was tasked with investigating Gaunter O'Dim

O'Dim, as you may have guessed from his spooky-sounding name, is not a nice chap or one you want to cross, ever

He's a devilish entity that likes to play games with his victims by getting them to agree to pacts that don't seem so bad on the surface

They always are. But of course, there's a catch. When you meet Shakeslock in The Witcher 3

he reveals that simply just researching Odim caused him to go blind

while also describing how he was drawn into one of those pacts himself

Shakeslock says that Odim drew a small runic circle on the floor

claiming that he would be safe within it. And while that was technically true, what Shakespeare didn't know is that he would end up being trapped inside this circle, unable to leave, and living in constant fear of Odim and his power

Now this one is a little similar to what happened to Porky Minch, but instead of being encapsulated by a metal container, it's just a thin chalk line

But he still has to constantly battle with the temptation to step over it, because if he does, he knows he's going to die

fortunately for him shakes lock is eventually killed after stepping outside the circle but

it's those years he spent trapped inside it that earned him a spot on this list in many ways death

was a relief for him at that point because his life consisted of suffering and anguish born from

his inability to leave the tiny space around him this feels like the right point in the video to

remind you that if you haven't already you can subscribe to us for a bunch more lists

Some of them are definitely not as sad as this one. In fact, most of them aren't as miserable as this one

But if you like the miserable, we got those too. So, you know, think about it

All right, let's keep going. Bugs inside the body. Resistance. The Resistance series is set in an alternate history Earth

where an alien race known as the Chimera has infected millions and millions of people on a global scale

mutating them into an assorted range of Chimerian hybrids. And for a process that transforms regular humans into slimy alien monsters, that transformation

process is, as you can imagine, appropriately horrible. It starts with a swarm of insects

called crawlers, which enter the body through its airways, allowing them to distribute the virus

throughout the host's bloodstream. Once the job is done, the victim is sent into a comatose state

but the scariest thing about this is that the human still remains conscious while the crawlers

are infecting them. A collectible intel document that you can find within the original game

Resistance Fall of Man, describes, and let me get this right word for word

victims compulsively try to tear the creatures out of themselves, which causes self-inflicted

bruises and lacerations. Ouch. People can feel the crawlers moving around inside them

which leads to them scratching and clawing at their own flesh in a desperate attempt

to pull the bugs out of their body. Yeesh. We'd sooner take a bullet to the head than have to endure any of that

I mean, Fall of Man even has a level called Fate's Worse Than Death

And yeah, it's about right. Pulled into the huddle inside. Playdead's gorgeous puzzle platformer inside

ends with an unforgettable sequence where the boy protagonist makes his way through the various laboratories

to discover the huddle, a gigantic fleshy blob creature comprised primarily of other human bodies

Towards the end of the game, the boy is consumed by the huddle and becomes a part of this

monstrous Rat King, yet somehow even nastier than Rat King monstrosity, and you get to rampage

through the facility. It's a wonderful sequence, but also the implications. It goes without saying

that being absorbed into a fleshy mass is one of the most existentially terrifying things imaginable

made only worse by the game's ambiguous ending, where the huddle escapes to the coast and just

stops moving. Whatever truly happened to the boy, it was clearly a lot worse than drowning

getting chewed up by dogs or any one of the other dramatic ways you can die in that game 109 Years of Torture God of War Even though Mimir cracks a lot of jokes and could even be considered God of War comic relief all of that humor is masking

a truly tragic backstory. Once a king's errand boy in Chester, Mimir's travels eventually lead

him to the mighty Allfather Odin, who was so impressed by his intelligence that he hired him

as his primary advisor. In the time that followed, Mimir made many allies and one of the ones he

befriended was the giants of Jotunheim. Now Odin wasn't particularly keen on the giants of Jotunheim

and decided that he became particularly paranoid of Mimir, which is, as you can imagine, not a good

start to what happens next. Mimir is then accused of aiding the enemy, so the king of Asgard decides

to punish his subject. Odin imprisons Mimir on Midgard's highest peak and bound him to an

indestructible tree while also tearing out his left eye. As if that wasn't bad enough, Odin still

had more to dish out. For the next 109 years until the events of the game, where Kratos encounters

and frees him, Odin tortured Mimir on a daily basis, inflicting so much pain that he eventually

started to long for the sweet release of death. Mimir was tortured every single day for over a

century and given that we're dealing with someone as powerful as Odin, you can be pretty sure that

no minute of that entire time wasn't spent in unbelievable agony. Turned into a head crab zombie

Half-Life. Small swift and slimy creatures that attach themselves to the heads of their victims

have been haunting our dreams ever since facehuggers were created, and the Half-Life series

iconic headcrabs continued to prove how frightening that concept was. Headcrabs are similar to facehuggers

in that they really enjoy diving right onto the heads of their victims, but they're a little

different as what a face hugger will do is inject its victim with an alien egg with the intention to

impregnate it, while headcrabs somehow have an even more ghastly MO. Headcrabs start by affixing

themselves to the heads of a suitable host, at which point they break into the person's skull

and take over their motor functions. The host's body then essentially rots, losing a lot of skin

and muscle tissue while having the organs inside the chest cavity exposed. Sounds absolutely awful

right? Well, it gets worse. At least facehuggers have the decency to put their victims to sleep

No such luck with a headcrab. The host retains some level of consciousness even after the headcrab

is taking control, meaning they can feel everything that's happening to them. Those

sounds that headcrab zombies make, those are actually cries for help. Does make you wonder why Sam Bridges would want to have worn one in the Death Stranding crossover

but each to their own. The Guardians, Dead Space. The Dead Space series has no shortage of horrific

creatures to throw at the player, from Exploders to Lurkers to the enormous, deadly Leviathan

Now, you wouldn't want to turn into any of those monsters, but somehow, as far as fate's worse than death

the Guardians seem like the worst ones, as whilst the body of the initial human host gets absolutely mutilated

you best believe the human inside, still there, can't die. Guardians are corrupted human bodies that are anchored to the wall

unable to move. Now, that's bad enough as it is, but wait, there is more

Their legs have been cut off, so even if they weren't stuck in one place, they wouldn't be able to walk and their abdomens have been split down the middle, leaving their

insides dangling out into the open. Normally, as you can imagine, an injury like that would prove

fatal. You don't have to be a doctor to know that. But unluckily, because of the infection itself

not only is the human still conscious, but it's powerful enough to keep their host alive

despite all of the insides becoming outsides. You can put them out of their misery, of course

but until you do, their howls of torment can be heard, a clear sign that dying would probably be the preferable option

to being torn apart like a dog's chew toy. Let me know down in that comment section

which one of these non-deaths sounds worse to you. That is such a weird thing to ask you to do in the comment box

but I'm standing by it. Will the filter get those? I don't know

Let's find out together. Immortal but decapitated, Mortal Kombat 11. Okay, you're gonna have to listen to me closely on this one, unfortunately

because there's no way we can properly show you this on video without getting demonetized, so bear with me

Mortal Kombat 11's story mode kicks off with a prologue where Raiden tortures the evil Shinnok

who taunts Raiden that even he isn't powerful enough to kill an Elder God

Raiden then responds by telling Shinnok quite plainly there are fates worse than death

and then proceeding to chop his head right off. This, of course, doesn't kill Shinnok, instead simply incapacitating him as Raiden leads him to live out an eternity as nothing more than a severed head, a living warning of his own wrath

As if being robbed of your own mobility and agency isn't bad enough, you also continue your entire life being a symbol of what happens when someone crosses the powerful lightning god Raiden

So what's worse, having no body or being super embarrassed? I don't know. Both really not good. Sealed in crystals and drowned in sorrow, Final Fantasy 13

Though the Final Fantasy franchise has a loose grasp on the finality of death, Final Fantasy 13

nevertheless touts perhaps the series' most unsettling alternative to a dirt nap to date

In the game, Lassie are people branded by divine entities and given an important task

better known as focus, to carry out. But those Lassie who fail to complete their focus will

eventually transform into a Seath, a crystalline mindless monster who walks the earth awash in

sorrow in a state of living death. That is until they lose all their energy and become a seemingly

inert Seath stone. Yet it doesn't even end there. The Lassie are still conscious even while they're

being turned into a Seath stone and will periodically cry out in anguish, begging that

other Lacy do not suffer the same fate. Now the alternative isn't great either as Lacy who do

manage to carry out their focus will be put to sleep in a crystalline form until they're called

upon to complete another focus. So kind of a lose-lose. Turned into a surgically altered slave

Half-Life 2. And you thought being turned into a headcrab zombie was bad. Though not nearly as

Common as headcrab zombies stalkers are humanoid grotesque guardians that can be found protecting the Citadel core in Half 2 Once upon a time every stalker was a regular human being who was believed to be an undesirable by the Combine

causing them to be sent to the prison Nova Prospect. There, their extended limbs are removed and replaced with metal augments

while the majority of their organs, including the digestive tract, vocal cords and genitalia

as well as most muscle and fat are removed and their brains likely tampered with. Basically the

experiments turn the victim into nothing but an inert slave, nothing resembling their former selves

and really just existing in the basic technically correct version of that word. Ghoulification

fallout. Those poor poor ghouls. As monstrous as they may look, ghouls are actually fully sentient

humans who've just been irradiated to hell, causing massive damage to their skin and, well

you probably know what they look like. A lot of stuff. They're real messed up. Though they still

retain most of their mental faculties and can live for potentially hundreds of years, they're also in

never-ending pain. They're rendered sterile, they can turn irreversibly feral at the drop of a hat

and are basically viewed as pariahs by society at large. Potentially the most horrifying reveal

of what it can be like to be a ghoul in Fallout is a side quest you can discover in Fallout 4

where you find a kid called Billy Peabody in a fridge, just randomly in the wasteland

It turns out he hid in there when the Great War started 200 years earlier

Unable to free himself or even die, he had no choice but to just hang out until he was rescued

As if trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic hellhole isn't hard enough

most people hate ghouls simply for how they look. It all adds up to an eked out existence that's absolutely not worth it

Imprisoned within the Earth, Baldur's Gate. The Baldur's Gate franchise touts the Imprisonment spell

which confines its victim to a quite intensely horrible fate indeed. The spell immediately transports the victim into a spherical prison far below the Earth

And the only way to undo this is to cast the opposite spell, Freedom

There's literally no other way to combat imprisonment. Because the victim is left in suspended animation, they're also unable to die of natural causes

meaning they're basically trapped within the planet until the Earth is consumed by the sun

in, oh, you know, only another 4 billion years or so. It goes without saying that even those with a firm mental constitution

would quickly find their brains turning to jelly when faced with the fate of having to be left to their own devices

for, well, what may as well be eternity. Assimilated by the Flood, Halo

By far the most iconic recurring enemy in the Halo franchise is the Flood, the parasites responsible for devouring and assimilating most sentient life in the galaxy

Humans will typically be mutilated rather than killed, with the Flood essentially latching onto the human's spinal column and causing a drastic, to say the least, physical transformation

Most humans will become the combat form flood, which, while still humanoid in appearance

have severe alterations to their exterior flesh and internal organs. The infected human is largely conscious of this

as the organs are shifted around inside their bodies and they're submitted to the will of the collective

To make matters worse, the combat form flood are fairly durable combatants

meaning you can't even wish for a speedy demise on the battlefield as a grant

because you're a little too tough. so hopefully you end up losing a few more battles than you should

Surely the most extreme example of this is Captain Keys, who in the original game is discovered to have been absorbed

into the gigantic flood biomass known as the proto-gravemind. This is before Master Chief mercifully puts him out of his misery

Stranded alone at the bottom of the abyss, Soma. Cult classic survival horror game Soma follows human protagonist Simon Jarrett

who wakes up in a remote underwater research facility. Later, Simon discovers he's not the

original human Simon at all, but in fact a brain scan uploaded to a modified corpse by an AI

The AI, known as the Warden Unit, has been creating biomechanical human-machine hybrids

in this way to try and preserve what remains of humanity following an extinction event on the

surface. Though Simon is ultimately able to send off a copy of his brain scan into space in a black

box wherein he can live in a utopia the same can't be said for our og simon the one we've been playing

as all game who is instead trapped where he's been the entire time within the bottom of the abyss

to make matters worse his only form of company the brain scan of katherine is effectively killed

after the machine it's placed within short circuits confining simon to an eternity of loneliness

in the most remote place on earth. Turned into a soft jelly thing, I Have No Mouth and I Must

Scream. I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream was the brainchild of the legendary sci-fi writer

Harlan Ellison. A point-and-click adventure game set in a dystopia where the AI of the allied

master computer, AM, has eliminated all of humanity save for just five people, AM has kept said five

people alive for 109 years while well it tortures them of course after which it decides to subject

them to a series of adventures based on their own lives designed to prey explicitly on their own

flaws fears and insecurities even if you appear to defeat am though five of the game's seven

endings will see you turned into and i quote a soft jelly thing where all you can do is just

exist trapped with AM unable to do anything at all. Literally, you can't speak per the game's

title, your eyes are replaced with white holes filled with fog, and your limbs are now pathetic

fleshy protrusions. Given that AM himself is effectively immortal, there's no end to the

suffering in sight. Horrifying. Well that was fun, I hope you enjoyed that one, it actually is

pretty interesting. If you did like it, maybe hit that subscribe button, you can follow us for

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