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"Disemboweler IV, the game where condemned criminals dig at each other with rusty hooks."
Fictional video games on TV tend to be disgusting, ultraviolent messes of blood, guts and severed limbs as the hypnotized player kills everything that moves, and more than a few things that don't. Many games are about killing everything, of course, but with some style.
Also, the names for these types of video games on TV tend to be rather unimaginative and generic as if every game was named like Mortal Kombat, with names such as "ACTION KILLTACULAR DEATHMOWER 5000" or simply "The Decimator", when in Real Life, they're often much more sophisticated and clever, like Half Life, Halo, Contra, Time Crisis, or The Chronicles Of Riddick. Granted, some ultraviolent Real Life games are named like the Trope, but not all.
Often just used for name-dropping as a gag. If such a game is shown, it can be an example of Pac Man Fever (another case of producers not getting it) and/or bear a surprising resemblance to a well-known game.
In a Crime And Punishment show these can cause innocent victims to act out the events, possibly including An Aesop about why video games are horrible and teenagers should be watching responsible adults shoot each other on TV instead.
Sometimes the corruption comes not from the violent games, but from the very influence of computers themselves — from the Internet. This is because Meddling Executives worrying about the time you spend away from your TV want to convince you that New Media Are Evil.
Though they may sound similar, this usually has nothing to do with Super Punk Octo Pudding Gas Mark Seven nor Trope2000.
See also Murder Simulators.
Constrast with Ultra Super Happy Cute Baby Fest Farmer 3000, where the game is a really kiddy game.
Not to be confused with Gears Of War, which this trope is an accurate description of.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- Interestingly, Serial Experiments Lain did something like that. In one of the early chapters of the series, there are several teenagers stuck in an online shooter called Phantoma without even being logged on to their computers, and confusing random people with enemy NPCs as a result. One of them commits suicide, while the other one murders a little girl.
- This troper had an odd dream along those lines, killing a random person under the presumption that he was an enemy mook, only to be yelled at by the person's brother. In retrospect the random person wasn't even armed, and the setting was just a a normal apartment building. This probably doesn't bode well.
- Subverted in Paranoia Agent. The detectives are interviewing the suspect for the Shounen Bat assaults. The boy seems convinced that he is living in the world of an RPG he played, and all the people he assaulted were, to him, the enemies controlled by the Big Bad that needed to be cleansed with his magical, holy sword. In the end it turns out that the kid wasn't the real Shounen Bat, he was just an attention seeker.
- Mamimi from FLCL spends half the second episode playing Fire Starter, a handheld video game with the objective of "burn down a demon-infested city while dodging the cops". (She spends another quarter hanging out with Naota, and the last quarter starting fires.) But being Mamimi, she's incredibly whacked anyway,so the game's probably not really to blame.
- In the manga, the point of the game is to simply burn down the city so it doesn't expand and devour the Earth.
- Subverted in Pure Trance: some of the games that are mentioned are "Connect the Bowels" (kind of appropriate since most of the characters are nurses), "Throw The Baby Around", and "Real Fight", a fighting game that uses "ordinary things like scissors and razors as weapons (not for children)".
Film
- In the Spike Lee film Inside Man, the leading bank robber sees one of the hostages, an African-American boy, playing a GTA-like game of plotless violence with racial overtones. He's not happy. It should also be noted that the graphics on the game are pretty good. For a handheld device. Then again, the robbers weren't meaning to harm anyone. They don't even steal any bank notes but the diamonds collected from the traitor turned Bank manager.
- Mike Teevee's updated "sin" in Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is having a passion for violent video games. Oh, and being an Insufferable Genius.
- In the Robin Williams film Toys, the General Ripper antagonist sees children playing violent games at an arcade and has the bright idea to use the children to fight wars by remote control, in the style of Ender's Game.
General: (very heavily paraphrased) What happens when you hit the UN trucks?
Kid: You lose points.
General: That's ridiculous. (blows up every vehicle on screen, UN trucks included)
- The Swedish So Bad Its Good 1997 crime/detective movie Beck - Spår I Mörker, a gang of teenagers who live in the underground tunnels beneath Stockholm run around armed with swords and knives and decapitate random people on subway platforms and trains at night. It's quickly revealed that they do it to get the most frags, and that they are inspired by the game Final Doom (the script writers probably did not know that a version of Doom actually existed by that name), and in the end the gang's underground hideout is raided by the police, and you clearly see the game Marathon on their computer screens.
Literature
- In Harry Potter, Dudley Dursley is fond of "blowing up aliens on his computer." He has a Playstation game called Mega Mutilation Part Three. As an odd side note, he destroys his Playstation in The Goblet of Fire, which is set in 1994, before it was even released in Europe. (J.K. Rowling admitted she Did Not Do The Research.)
- Dave Barry's Money Secrets includes a passing reference to Death Killer of Fatal Murdering II: The Slaying.
Live Action TV
- CSI: Miami went to town with the trope. A not-GTA-honest game was essentially a nonstop synaesthetic rollercoaster of violence, robbery, murder and rape (though only on bonus rounds), causing easily influenced youngsters to mimic these acts point-by-point while shouting "9000 points, bitch!" The protagonists got lines like "It'll all be very real soon" and "So he played <dramatic pause> to death." Also notable for gamers giving their nicks as their names in interrogations, total ignorance of sites like GameFAQs... you get the picture.
- Computer game CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder had an "episode" where fictional game "Gut Wrench 3" was central to the plot. And yes, fictional game was a FPS, was that bloody, and yes, murder imitated game's poster. Although in subversion the murder had nothing to do with the nature of the game, real motive was boss cheating one of his employees out of their promised bonus. Resemblance to poster was there to throw suspiction at somebody else.
- The District, episode "Something Borrowed, Something Bruised." Complete with flashes to and from reality and screams of "It was only a game!" The goal of the game is to beat an unarmed bystander to death.
- Killer Instinct, episode "Game Over." Constantly used the phrase "murder simulator" and went downhill from there.
- Which is sad, seeing how a NINTENDO fighting game shares the same name. Although it IS violent...
- For the record, Killer Instinct was the name of the show. The game in question was a Grand Theft Auto Expy called, as I recall, Murder One.
- Law And Order Special Victims Unit featured a subversion in one episode. A boy obsessed with a console RPG was suspected of killing another child. After playing through the entire game, the detectives realized that he had tried to save the girl by imitating the game's "rescue the princess" storyline.
- There was a later episode with a GTA clone, but "the game made them do it" was the defense, which the prosecution quickly set to tearing apart.
- Another episode revolved around Second Life, where the rapist used the game to track down his victim. However, the detectives turn the tables and use the game itself to find the necessary evidence to convict the felon. The tacky clothing on the game model was actually purchased in a tacky in-game store.
- This one could be easily Truth In Television; though this troper hasn't any reports of rape victims stalked through Second Life specifically, after it has happened in other social networking and forum sites, Linden Labs tries to head it off in SL. Linden Labs also takes every reasonable effort to keep minors away from the main Grid and adults away from the Teen Grid. Other than that, Second Life is absolutely no different from the web with regards to the content and individuals to be found there, so if it's been done on the web, it's conceivable in Second Life.
- The X Files did this one too, with its usual flair. A virtual reality game is killing its players, so our heroes get called in. Scully got to act as the voice of disapproval, while Mulder and the Lone Gunmen were "reduced... back to moony adolescence." Interestingly, this episode was cowritten by William Gibson, one of the people with a claim to inventing Cyber Punk.
- Averted in NCIS, where at least two of the protagonists are gamers themselves. One case is solved because one of these has played GTA 3, thus knowing which real-life car a teenager referred to when he named the ingame equivalent. This editor considers such storytelling and knowledge from TV writers to be positively saintly, when concerning this topic.
- Given that the writers aren't gamers themselves, the show still suffers from a bit of Pac Man Fever now and then.
- This troper recalls an episode where two navy crewmen who played an MMORPG 'Immortals', a fairly transparent World of Warcraft parody, ended up dueling with swords, and then killing themselves, all because of the game. Of course, the whole series seems to have a Nerd Culture Is Evil Vibe going. Makes you wonder why they bother doing all this investigative stuff when they could just walk in and arrest the guy with the biggest knowledge of sci-fi/comic books.
- True, but that was before McGee joined the team full time. after that it seemed seriously more balanced. Heck, he nearly nailed a Redskins cheerleader that he met in an Armani store because she played on the same server. This troper thinks it's funny that they use so many real video games but they never actually state what MMO McGee plays.
- That episode also featured Abby kicking butt and taking names as she played through the game. And Abby, for all that she's always wearing black, is basically the personification of sweetness and light.
- Avoided in The Office (American), season 2, when the members of Jim's new office play Call Of Duty as an office team activity.
- And again, where Jim finds Dwight's character on Second Life. Dwight's Second Life has his own Second Life. He also flies, a feature Dwight finds very liberating.
- In Kamen Rider Ryuki, Shibaura Jun (Kamen Rider Gai) creates a fighting game that gradually makes the players so obsessed with the game that they start re-enacting it in live-action, to the death.
- Star Trek The Next Generation had an episode featuring a 24th Century version of such a game used as part of an attempt to take over the minds of the crew and thus the Enterprise as a whole. Data and You Know Who successfully resisted the "lure" of the game, the latter resorting to what can only be described as video-game inspired tricks to lead the mind-controlled members of the crew on a merry chase through the rest of the ship while Data worked on an antidote for the addictive qualities of the game. And then he got to kiss Ashley Judd. Lucky bastard.
- An episode of Tekwar: The Series featured a Tek video game where the point is to kill cops. The game was designed to convince the players that they were still in the game even after they stopped playing, causing them to kill cops in real life.
- Then a Tekwar videogame was made, but the objective is apparently to convince people that they should go out and kill the developers.
- Despite the quality it's notable for being one of the first (or perhaps the first) game to feature a Hub World (a subway station).
- In an episode of the CBBC series Stupid! one character is playing a game called Killing People 3.
- Gutwrencher 1, a classic arcade game on the show The Middleman, is so violent, it's banned in 17 countries and is the only arcade game ever to have been condemned by both Tipper Gore and the Dalai Lama. And it's the game that leads to Wendy and Tyler's first hookup.
New Media
Newspaper Comics
- The comic strip Fox Trot likes this one, with "Doomathon 2000" being my personal favorite. Hmmm, what could that possibly be in reference to?
- The strip sometimes uses the names of real games. When they referred to Carmageddon this troper initially thought it was another joke name (and quite a clever one at that) and was startled to discover it was an actual game.
Video Games
- The Wii game MadWorld does its best to live up to this trope.
- The third incarnation of the Doom franchise, itself a common target of this trope, contained a very silly playable Mini Game in an arcade machine called “Super Turbo Turkey Puncher 3.”
- One news report in Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines involves a "Senator Limperman" railing against violent video games such as Rape and Pillage and Abe Lincoln Teaches Killing. (He's also upset about a crude Take That directed at him in another unnamed game).
- In real life, the game Killzone fits this trope nicely.
- Postal and its sequel manage to live up to this, as well...of course, it doesn't help that when you go to do something as innocent as picking up your paycheck that you run into trigger happy Media Watchdogs who want your head on a pike.
Webcomics
- Gunnerkrigg Court plays this one for laughs on this page
 , where we see Antimony's first (and presumably last) exposure to video games. To most of you, Antimony's voice will probably sound like the Englishwoman that Peter Griffin put into a coma with a dirty joke.
- In the Jack arc "Two for You", the character Evan mentions a game entitled "Killing Killers and the Killers Who Kill Them."
Western Animation
- The Simpsons has mentioned such games repeatedly and featured them at least twice in the early seasons, once with Super Slugfest, which might have been played straight, once with the hottest new beat-em-up Bonestorm, which really wasn't. Recent addition: Death Kill City 3: Death Kill Stories. 3 guesses what it's based on.
- In Daria (particularly the fanfics), the title heroine and her best friend love playing the video game 'Cannibal Fragfest'.
- Ben Tennyson, the titular hero of Ben 10 is so enamored of the video game "Sumo Slammers" that he has abused the Omnitrix to get at it and even in it.
- This trope wouldn't be complete without a mention of the "Vampire Piggy Hunter" series in Invader Zim.
- This troper is a little fuzzy on the details because I only saw the episode once, but I remembers an particularly Anvilicious episode of Pepper Ann that was about this. Pepper Ann's aunt was asked by someone to do a study on the dangers of video games, so she borrows Pepper Ann's system and plays it continuously for "research". As she plays the game more and more (which looks like a simulation of the Vietnam War), she starts to think she is actually in the game, which looks like Vietnam veteran flashbacks. In the end she declares that videogames are dangerous because they blur the line between reality and fiction.
- An episode of King Of The Hill features Hank playing a GTA-esques game known as "Pro-Pain". (Where's the button to turn yourself in?)
Web Animation
- One Strong Bad email throws a few gag titles up: Blood Bleeder, Head Chopper II, Scab Wars and Blistergeist. There is the strong suggestion that these games would be really fun to play. It also pokes fun at the Moral Guardians' alternative, because Homestar can only play Clapping Party: no, it's not like DDR, it's just clapping... This is, of course, a one shot joke, and most of the games that Strong Bad plays and enjoys aren't evil whatsoever, varying between Sundae Drivin' and Thy Dungeonman, which is also a real game playable on the site.
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