Video game scenes that upset you AS AN ADULT?

[WelcomeToTheNextLevel]

For these purposes, adult is 17 or older, old enough by the ESRB to buy Mature rated games.

Please keep games to Mature rated or lower (no AO games).

For me, it was the intro scene in Dead Rising with the mother and the daughter and it implied that they got eaten by the zombies. It shook me up - BAD - when I was 15 or so and first saw it. I am 21 now and that scene literally gives me the chills. Funny thing is that Dead Rising itself, the game and the cutscenes within the game don't bother me. I love Dead Rising, but a fair warning - if you start it, you go into the game. Don't go get a popcorn or a drink, start the game, load your game, and pause when you're in the mall. If you leave it on the intro screen for over 30 seconds, you get this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BNjgDn5Dkk. You get to see the character personalities and their last five minutes of life. I can't watch the whole thing. DR came out in 2006, so I'd imagine that scene upset a lot of people born in the 1980s if not even earlier.

[Emperor Megas]

Oh, I thought that you meant "upset" as in disappointed; like games that upset us because they sucked or something.

The Dead Rising scene didn't bother me much at all really, but I'm pretty jaded when it comes to things like that I guess. I wish that I wasn't because I love getting those unsettling feelings you're prone to when you're not desensitized to stuff like that.

In any event, I suppose Silent Hill 2 bothered me plenty. I don't know how, but it sort of STILL does today, and I've played through the game several times. There are so many elements that really troubled me. Pretty much every character in the game's situation but the little girl's was really disturbing to me. I was fortunate in that I figured out a lot of the symbolism as I played through the game the first time. It was the first Silent Hill I ever played, and I figured out early on that there was more to what happened to James' wife than was first revealed. Silent Hill 4: The Room had some really troubling shit in it as well. It was my least favorite in the series (I haven't played them all), but it still had some disturbing stuff in there that made me step back a few times and turn the game off for a while.

There was a LOT of really unsettling shit in the Dead Space series, too (exploding baby, really EA!?). The whole cult shit really bugs me out, and the completely bat-shit things they do when the effects of the marker and their religion convictions combined play out. The sort of things that trouble me in games, movies, books, are when you explore the darker side of humanity like in games like Dead Space and Silent Hill.

[Tanooki]

I hate to sound like I'm picking on you, but there's nothing about that scene that is disturbing in the least bit other than what your mind can draw a conclusion on. It peels away from a large distance before stopping with a mob of zombies around a closed car. Clearly they're zombie chow, but you don't see so much as a drop of blood spilled. There's far nastier scenes to watch let alone play in games.

I honestly can't think of a sequence I've seen that would be considered really disturbing to me personally and most of it in general either as games are not real, might as well get scared of movies and books too.

The closest I've ever been to unsettled was playing just the first Dead Space. That whole game, not even the monsters, but the whole environment screws with your head. Things slowly change from ship to alien biomass that isn't friendly at all. Combine the weird sounds, things falling apart, blown out or already dead lights, shadow, you get uneasy going from place to place as you know something has to happen.

[Little Miss Gloom]

Zach's gunning down by Shinra soldiers in FF7 still makes me uneasy.

[JSoup]

I assume the spoiler warning is implied and expected, given the subject.

Final Fantasy 6.
The part with Kefka killed off a bunch of Espers in their village.
I can't say that it outright upsets me, but I've always found it an unpleasant sequence to watch, when the game was new and still now.

[SuperEliteGamer]

Pyramid Head scenes.

[kupomogli]

I'll watch horror movies with blood and gore, but a lot of the time I'll see my hand and only part of what's going on because I don't like watching a lot of the gore. These two games have scenes somewhat similar to those horror movies. Both of these links below are spoilers. If you've played through both games you'll know the parts I'm talking about.

GTA5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjlSmCm1K74

Heavy Rain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkJ8XaBAfOY

[Vigilante]

To this day, Resident Evil, when the dogs smash thru the window in the hallway, gets me every time!

[BHvrd]

[cityside75]

Not a scene in an actual game per se, but since it's game related I'll mention it here. It was the original trailer for Dead Island. It was pretty notorious when it came out, so maybe everyone's already seen it, but if not:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZqrG1bdGtg

As a father of a daughter about the age of that girl when this came out, it just really resonated. I also think it's especially effective because it's actually quite beautiful in its sadness. It "upset" me more than anything else game related that I've seen.

[Lictalon]

For me - it had to be the "stealth" knife attack you can perform with a knife in GTA San Andreas.

Outside of missions, you can sneak CJ behind anyone, like some lady crossing the street, and slit their throat. Felt like a serial killer simulator.

[Gamevet]

Walking into a store and seeing a display with Mario in a cat suit.

OMG! Nintendo has turned Mario into a furry!

[Manhattan Sports Club]

Probably the morgue area from the Killerman stage in Illbleed. I played that game in the dark straight through multiple times for all the endings. It was both funny and scary because of the twisted black humor. The maze chase with Banbalow was also crazy. Man, there were so many other twisted things in that game that that is only touching the surface.

[BlastProcessing402]

To this day, Resident Evil, when the dogs smash thru the window in the hallway, gets me every time!

Me too, but it's just a jump scare. I wouldn't call it upsetting (not that you're not free to consider it such).

Walking into a store and seeing a display with Mario in a cat suit.

OMG! Nintendo has turned Mario into a furry!

They turned Mario into a furry before furries were a thing. Remember Super Mario Bros. 3? Tanooki suit? Or even to a lesser extent the raccoon ears and tail (or even the frog suit)?


The ending to Heavy Rain upset me, no so much in a "this is disturbing" sort of way but in a "no, that's bullshit, that person couldn't be the killer, as it required that person to have committed a murder while you were playing that character, without knowing about it" way. I can't even play the game any more, it upset me so much that they'd pull something like that.

[Arkanoid_Katamari]

I have a pretty high threshold for things that upset me, but I did think a lot of the content of GTA 5 were just not right for a video game, cuz I know that theres 7 yo kids playing this game, and they absolutely should not be. It shocked me to see actual nudity in a game, and hear tonsa swearing and messed up shit, and the scene where u torture the guy with a car battery and all that, cmon.

It's definately a lot more explicit then GTA 3 or Vice City. Just saying. I did beat the game tho and enjoyed the crap out of it, but I'm 27, I'm old enuff to watch that kinda stuff.

[kupomogli]

[SPOILER]

The ending to Heavy Rain upset me, no so much in a "this is disturbing" sort of way but in a "no, that's bullshit, that person couldn't be the killer, as it required that person to have committed a murder while you were playing that character, without knowing about it" way. I can't even play the game any more, it upset me so much that they'd pull something like that.

He committed the murder and did know it. He was collecting all the evidence that pointed towards him so he could destroy it while placing blame on another. The one time he did kill someone as you controlled him, they didn't want the player to know of it, to keep it suspenseful until the player could find out on their own. So instead of seeing the killing, you saw what he made up to the person that was with him.

[/SPOILER]

[Koa Zo]

Goldeneye. Headshots.
Seeing a group of people playing Goldeneye and getting their jollies from shooting characters in the head, that was profound.

[Gamevet]

They turned Mario into a furry before furries were a thing. Remember Super Mario Bros. 3? Tanooki suit? Or even to a lesser extent the raccoon ears and tail (or even the frog suit)?
.

Yeah, but the promotional material never took it over the top like they have with the latest Mario. You have Luigi and Mario looking far too excited about being dressed up as furry cats. It's kind of creepy.

[RP2A03]

Yeah, but the promotional material never took it over the top like they have with the latest Mario. You have Luigi and Mario looking far too excited about being dressed up as furry cats. It's kind of creepy.

If dressing up as a furry cat gave me powers I would be pretty excited too.