History Main / TheJoysOfTorturingMooks

*** Okay, is it wrong that you've now got me giggling like a maniac... at work?

*** And a wide variety of other bodily assaults including stabbing through the abdomen with serrated blades, snapping the spine or removing it from the thorax, and impaling through the thorax and anus, resulting in a gameplay which succeeds by bringing out the AxCrazy in players.

* ''MetalGearSolid'' as a series had several of these but the worst was ''Metal Gear Solid 2''. It allowed you to do plenty of awful stuff, from shooting harmless animals to knocking over then lying on top of to feeling up the TheWoobie's sister you're supposed to be rescuing. Although doing those things does piss off your VoiceWithAnInternetConnection along with several other {{NPC}}s.
** And then of course, there's the classic move of [[http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=48 delivering anal "surprise sex" to unconscious guards]]...
*** [[http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y8ArzlU_nM Jungle Boogie! Get it on.]]
** You can even be a sadistic monster to your own player character, at multiple points - in the most egregious example, you're given the opportunity to stand Raiden under a constant stream of urine, if you don't feel like distracting the guard mid-flow, and there's no penalty for doing so. Or you can goad Snake into killing you by ''running into him enough times''.
** Of course, you can also plant C4 on the backs of unaware guards, and detonate them when appropriate. For bonus points, plant the charges on them while they're busy taking a leak.
** There's also the potential to make a tranq dart "hedgehog" out of guards, raising the question of at what dose the tranquilizer becomes lethal...
** ''Metal Gear Solid 3'' had a higher cruelty potential than ''2''. You could hold a soldier hostage and slit his throat while he begs for mercy, for example. Other ways to mess with them are throw snakes and scorpions on them, feed them rotting/poisonous food, play ''{{Predator}}'', and this editor's favorite, shoot their arms and legs and watch them try to hobble away. Also, knocking Eva unconscious actually makes the last area easier to get across. The games get more cruel every time a new one comes out.
*** In addition, any indirect method of killing guards (such as throwing a poisonous animals on them, electrocution, drowning, food poisoning, setting off the soldiers' own traps or dropping unconscious enemies off cliffs) ''does not count'' towards your final "kill" total [[spoiler: though enemies killed with these methods still show up while walking through The Sorrow's river.]]
** And in the extension of ''3'', ''Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence'', you can also throw up on guards to make them freak out.
** Let us not forget that you can kill a man, let a vulture eat him to fatten the vulture up, then ''kill the vulture and eat it.'' Doing this results in [[spoiler:''the men you ate'' with vultures on their shoulders [[TheDevTeamThinksOfEverything appearing in the Sorrow's river of people you killed]]. And they will groan ''"You ate me!"'' as they pass you.]]
** The Nikita! Remote-controlled Rocket, with a camera you can switch into. So you can not only get to aim one of those babies right into some Mook's (or Boss, if you're REALLY good at working the controls) face, and immediately switch into First-Rocket-View to see the {{Oh Crap}} Reaction. [[YourHeadAsplode BOOM]] baby! [[EvilLaugh Muwhahhaha!]]
** ''Metal Gear Solid 3'' also reverses the trope by inflicting emotional cruelty on the player in its last moments. [[spoiler:In the endgame, the player is tasked with killing The Boss, the player's lifelong mentor and mother figure, only to learn in the end that it was all an act on her behalf to be framed as a traitor to her country. The game even makes you '''[[TearJerker pull the trigger]]''' on her, for chrissakes!]]
** Try dragging Emma through the bugs in front of the Shell 2 elevator instead of clearing them away for her. Or planting C4 on the ground, putting a magazine over it and detonating the explosive when a guard stops to look at the magazine (even better if they lean down to look at it rather than sit on the ground).
*** The tranq provided some serious cruelty potential. It was generally the best way to take out guards, because if you missed a headshot with a handgun, the enemies would be alerted to your presence, but if you missed a headshot with the tranq, they'd just take a moment longer to fall asleep. And if you shoot and kill a guy, and another guard finds him before you can hide the body, alert mode again. If you tranqed him? Just wakes him up. So it's just much safer to use the tranq than any other gun. However there is still one problem: the guy isn't actually DEAD, so he will wake up eventually and start causing problems for you, and who wants that, right? So you're gonna want to murder him in his sleep. Often the most efficient way of dealing with this in ''Metal Gear Solid 3'' was, after tranqing a guard and dragging him off to some secluded spot, maybe in some tall grass, to take out the hunting knife. Crouch over the guard and go into first person view and carve that poor bastard up until the Z's indicating sleep stop coming off his head -- the tranquilizers are thankfully strong enough that he won't wake up screaming as you're stabbing him, because it does take multiple swipes to kill. Particularly disturbing in the heavily fortified areas with few hiding places that appear later in the game, so you end up piling five or more corpses in the same spot.
**** Glad to hear I wasn't the only one...
** The fourth games gives you the option of frisking enemies. This plays out as a quick time minigame, with icons popping up. Hit the button at the right time, and an item pops out. The last button press is always as Snake's searching the crotch, and pressing the button here makes Snake grab and twist. It's an instant knock out on any male enemies. Of course, it causes Snake to get slapped if he does it to a female enemy.
** And let's not forget the extended dialogue you're forced to go through if you piss off Rose enough and then contact her to save your game, which includes telling her that "you won't make her save."
** In one of the very first areas in MetalGearSolid4 you get your first chance to try out the thermal vision and end up in a room full to bursting with unconscious wounded friendly units. They had just introduced you to the tactic of knifing unconscious enemies and no one makes a point of telling you not to kill all the helpless people in the room.
** In ''MetalGearSolid 3'', upon obtaining the Raikov disguise, you are actually ''encouraged'' by the other characters in the game to run around punching people in the face, or stalking scientists, or whatever. Because of the kind of person Raikov is, Snake can get away with it. It's one of the most memorable, satisfying portions of the game.
** Also in ''Metal Gear Solid 3'', there's so many fun things you can do with TNT. Consider this: Plant a TNT charge on the door of the locker you put Raikov in, then set a Claymore mine in front of it. Get somewhere you can see it, and then trigger the TNT. The locker door (with Raikov on top of it) falls outwards, triggering the Claymore which blows both of them back into the locker. Also, if you have the Invisibility Cloak item "Stealth Camo", try planting TNT on every person in an inclosed area (the Shagohod construction area is ideal) then bringing friends over and taking bets on who explodes next.
** Metal Gear Solid has one of the worst: in one area, it's infested with wolves. You can shoot them to make it easier to get through. But if you call Otacon first, he'll tell you that those are Sniper Wolf's pets, and that he and she would feed them. [[YouBastard Then he begs you not to kill them]]. Snake's response: "Gimme a break."
** The End in ''MetalGearSolid 3''. You can snipe him while he's in his wheelchair so that you never end up having to face him. If you do choose to face him, you can either shoot or capture and eat his parrot, or save and wait an entire week before playing again to find that he dies of old age.
* Okay, so you don't kill people, but BatmanArkhamAsylum has the Caped Crusader getting vicious on henchmen once he's leveled up enough. Throwing henchmen into their buddies, assorted takedowns, and all the ways you can use the gadgets to attack or screw with the henchmen. It gets really obvious in the challenge mode where you can use the upgrades from story mode, and you also have railings over bottomless pits in the beat-em up rooms.

* ''DarkSector''. Glaive-Cam view of limb-detachment, decapitation, incineration and electrocution - and of course, the always-impressive 'Finishers'. One of the most frequently-seen of those involves grabbing a guy by the hand that holds his weapon, then cutting off his arm at the elbow, and finally beating his skull in with his own weapon.
* ''DestroyAllHumans'' allows you to telekinetically toss people around like ragdolls, smack them into walls, floors and each other, and continue to do this to their corpse after they die. You can also forcibly brainwash and then take over their bodies, the process of which slowly kills them.
** And there is the joy of having some actual mook ('cause they live longer than common townsfolk), stuck in the floor, some glitch that happens in DAH 2, you can push them, pull them, and they will remain stuck, in which looks like excruciating pain, for as long as you have them in TK grasp. You just have to drag them all over the floor for a bit until you find the right spot. You can even hit them with cars while stuck, if you're fast enough to do it before they unstuck themselves by getting up.
** Also, there is nothing more cathartic than slamming ninjas against the floor, then electrocuting them while they're down, that'll teach them to stay put, the nimble bastards.
** And drown them! You can hold someone under the water with telekinesis and them will eventually die. And then there's the zombie gun...
** And how could we have forgotten about the [[AnalProbing ANAL PROBE]]? The anal probe that shoots a burst of sizzling green fluid up the unsuspecting arse of a human being, who then goes dashing off, unable to stop crapping himself until his brain explodes?
** The training level commands you to kill cows with telekinesis. It is possible to beat one cow to death with another cow.
** Fly over the crowd, abduct them and close the hatch as they shoot towards the saucer. A successful "Tonk" is ever so satisfying.
** The Dislocator, which fires fluorescent disks of energy that bounce people around like rubber balls, fun times ensue when the disk tries to force its way through a mesh fence, with the human still attached.
** Oh, and the brain extraction. Just jump on some house's roof, wait for it to be surrounded with policemen, MIBs and Soldiers, then begin the head popping.
* As quoted above, ''PennyArcade'' [[http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/8/20/ notices the particular cruelty potential inherent]] in TheForceUnleashed's gameplay...

* [[{{Jaws}} Jaws Unleashed]] has this in spades, primarily because you play as the shark. Chomp on a scuba diver and rocket through the water at blinding speed while he's helplessly stuck and screaming in terror...then tear him to bloody bits. They're using shark cages against you? Smash them open, then brutalize the divers inside. Now they're in boats? [[BeyondTheImpossible Leap out of the water, arcing high above the boat, and bodyslam it into splinters]], sending the screaming occupants flying in all directions. Grab hapless swimmers, get up to a good swimming speed, then [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDkqZ9px-Dc launch them through the air to splatter dozens of yards inland]].

* There is a part in the 'It's War!' chapter of the game ''[[{{ConkersBadFurDay}} Conker's Bad Fur Day]]'' where you see a fellow squirrel grunt strapped to an electric chair. There are two levers next to the player character. One of them opens the door, and the other fries the grunt. The cutscene that follows when you activate the electric chair is so long that Conker actually gets bored and starts reading a magazine.
** And at the end of all the torture and anguish, [[ImOkay he is still alive]], even though [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel his eyeballs are fried out of their sockets]].

* ''Area 51''. One of the aliens is hooked up to an electrical machine. It's possible to fry him so many times he bursts into flame.
* Oddly enough, the standard side-scrolling platformer ''Ultimate {{Spiderman}}'' for the GBA. You can:
-->Knock enemies to their death, complete with an "Urghh!" sound effect.
-->Punch them into flames in a burning building, instantly killing them.
-->Likewise, knock them into a LaserHallway; one assumes they are sliced up.
-->Throw them into a running electric current between broken wires.
-->And as Venom, the whole ''point'' is to ''eat'' your weakened opponents.
** And then there's ''SpiderMan 2'' on the PS2. You have to go out of your way to do it, but it's possible to take a street-level mook, sling him over your shoulder, swing up to the highest building in Manhattan, and just toss him off. This editor likes to dive down and try and catch him before he hits the ground.
*** There's also hanging a thug from a lamppost for extended punching, drowning thugs in nearby bodies of water, seeing them run over by cars, using physics-defying combos to elevate a thug so high the zoom map has to flip upside down before letting fall, and (my personal favorite) pile drivers off the Empire State Building.
*** Hell, taking advantage of gravity sucking was the easiest way to beat the first SpiderMan movie game's first level. Jump on head, wait until thug runs over to edge, use flip button, laugh maniacally as goon plummets to his death.
* ''{{Halo}}''. The grunts are portrayed as comical, cowardly goofballs, making the act of gunning them down seem, at times, quite sadistic. With the melee attack you can splatter an unlimited amount of purple alien blood onto the floor. One room allows the player to execute an entire roomful of aliens in their sleep. The player can also easily kill off his own compatriots in a variety of amusing ways.
** Plasma grenades. Fun at the best of times, but if you stick one to a grunt, it goes running back to the other grunts just in time for the pretty blue fireworks. Extra points for their anguished, terrified wails.
* ''TimesplittersFuturePerfect'' featured, in the underground zombie lab level, a testing cell with a zombie inside. The computer next to the cell allowed you to do various fun things to the zombie inside - setting it on fire, electrocuting it, stretching it, squashing it, and so on. Then you go to the next cell, and there's a scientist hiding from the zombies in it, who begs you to let him out...but you can't actually let him out, which only leaves one option...
* ''Choice of the Dragon'': after defeating your rival Axilmeus, one of the choices for "dealing" with him amounts to [[spoiler: injuring him repeated until he can no longer run away, then letting him bleed to death. Even the narrator will call you out on your level of bastardness.]]
* {{Portal}}... Those poor little robots. I enjoy configuring portals so they fall in one and out the other in an infinite loop, shooting wildly in a panic the entire time. You can also sneak up behind them and pick them up, while they scream "Please put me down! Who are you?" in their excessively cute voice.
-->''I don't want to kill you...''
** With careful portal placement, you can have a turret ''shooting itself to death,'' while it begs itself to stop.
* In ''[[GunstarHeroes Gunstar Super Heroes]]'', after the fight with Black, you can choose to either exit the level by walking into the beam... or you can choose to stay as long as you please and beat the everloving HELL out of Black, who is on his knees begging for mercy as you waste your fire on him.
** In the original ''Gunstar Heroes'', Black would [[KaizoTrap try to kill you with an exploding gem after being defeated]]. You have to shoot him again to make him give up the real one, but he doesn't do so until you ''stop'' shooting him; until then, he'll just bounce back forever.
** And just in case you saw it coming, in the sequel he drops THREE bombs before giving up the gem (on hard mode anyway). This means hitting him four times with your sword is required to progress.
* ''ThePunisher'' video game ''is'' this trope, allowing you to inflict the JackBauerInterrogationTechnique on ''any'' mook in the game to regain health. Such torture methods range from holding a gun to their face or slamming their head repeatdly against the floor to dangling them over a hungry shark or threatening to ''impale them with an about-to-charge rhino''. It's especially satisfying when you grab a random mook and interrogate him, at first he will try to sound tough and start trash-talking the vigilante, but after some more torture he'll start wimpering and begging for his life. Once you finally break him, it's time to find a kill spot (perhaps that hungry giant snake over there...)
** Or show a case of TheBatman style sparing where no mook is killed but all of them are left in rather cruel torture traps, left at the mercy of whatever deathtrap you placed them in. AFateWorseThanDeath if there is one.
* This is the entire premise of obscure PS1 action game "Wild 9". You're armed with a tractor beam, and you use it to constantly fling enemies into hazards, or each other, or just smash them around on the terrain. Hazards you can use to kill things include: Lasers, bottomless pits, spike pits, fires, giant fans, land mines, electronic highway signs, circular saws, gigantic pistons, and machines that make more mooks. This troper's personal favorite is that last one, because it [[BodyHorror fuses the mook it was going to make with the mook you tossed in there into a horrible monstrosity, which shivers slightly, and then explodes in a shower of gore]]. Yes. Really.

* ''DeusEx'' uses this trope liberally, to the point that it almost seems like the game is urging to do this to enemy (and [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential non-enemy]]) combatants. Aside from killing them, you can injure them enough to have them run around like headless chickens any time they come within eyesight of you, poison them (which accomplishes the same thing - except it makes them faint afterwards), snipe one in the head and watch as his teammate loudly freaks out, hack security bots so that they pump thousands of rounds into everyone in the vicinity, cut them down with sentry guns, blow them to giblets with rocket launchers, blind them with pepper spray, drop heavy objects on them, convince ''other'' unkillable NPC's to do your work for you by luring the goons into their sights, chuck a couple of grenades into a closed room with an enemy inside (and prevent the door from opening when he tries to run away), etc.
* Upon a level up spaming method of FinalFantasyTactics. You can corner an enemy and spam attacks on it to near death, let it heal itself or you heal it, and then repeat the process. Poor yellow chocobo usually falls a victim to this due to its Choco Cure, which cures itself and anyone surrounding it.

* If you ever get bored in {{Red Dead Redemption}}, all you have to do is ride around a bit. You're bound to run into somebody to torture. If you see those two random guys out in the middle of nowhere with what looks like a pile of TNT, just shoot in their general direction and watch the ragdolls fly. There's of course the general "shoot them in the limbs until they die" way of torturing, but then again, you could always lasso them and THEN shoot at their feet until they don't HAVE feet anymore! Or equip the Evans Repeater, go into Deadeye, and paint all 22 marks on their bodies and watch them jerk around as you pump lead into them so fast they do backflips. Lasso twenty men and put them on the traintracks! Lasso a guy(or gal) and drag them around behind you until they snap their necks! Or drag them into wolf or cougar-infested territory, and feed them to the animals! Lasso them, then set them on fire! Blow them up! Trample them with your horse! The possibilities are endless!
* In Left4Dead its really fun to kill common infected in numerous methods, Like watching them run heedlessly to a pipe bomb then get blown up with their intestines flying like streamers, burning them with fire and watch them run around in agony, or watch them beat each other up when you slime them with boomer bile.
** There's also an achievement on bopping a zombie clowns nose to make it honk.
* In {{Minecraft}}, a popular [[strike:recreation]] method of gathering resources is to [[MookMaker find]] or [[DarknessEqualsDeath make]] a region where enemies will spawn in great numbers, then direct them by way of water flows and/or standing nearby [[DeathTrap to their death]] by [[DrowningPit drowning]], lava, or gravity. [[http://i.imgur.com/k9h7r.png Illustrated.]]

----

** And how could we have forgotten about the ANAL PROBE? The anal probe that shoots a burst of sizzling green fluid up the unsuspecting arse of a human being, who then goes dashing off, unable to stop crapping himself until his brain explodes?

* In Left4Dead its really fun to kill common infected in numerous methods, Like watching them run heedlessly to a pipe bomb then get blown up with their intestines flying like streamers, burning them with fire and watch them run around in agony, or watch them beat each other up when you slime them with boomer bile. There's also an achievement on bopping a zombie clowns noes to make it honk.

* If you ever get bored in {{Red Dead Redemption}} , all you have to do is ride around a bit. You're bound to run into somebody to torture. If you see those two random guys out in the middle of nowhere with what looks like a pile of TNT, just shoot in their general direction and watch the ragdolls fly. There's of course the general "shoot them in the limbs until they die" way of torturing, but then again, you could always lasso them and THEN shoot at their feet until they don't HAVE feet anymore! Or equip the Evans Repeater, go into Deadeye, and paint all 22 marks on their bodies and watch them jerk around as you pump lead into them so fast they do backflips. Lasso twenty men and put them on the traintracks! Lasso a guy(or gal) and drag them around behind you until they snap their necks! Or drag them into wolf or cougar-infested territory, and feed them to the animals! Lasso them, then set them on fire! Blow them up! Trample them with your horse! The possibilities are endless!

* If you ever get bored in {{RedDeadRedemption}} , all you have to do is ride around a bit. You're bound to run into somebody to torture. If you see those two random guys out in the middle of nowhere with what looks like a pile of TNT, just shoot in their general direction and watch the ragdolls fly. There's of course the general "shoot them in the limbs until they die" way of torturing, but then again, you could always lasso them and THEN shoot at their feet until they don't HAVE feet anymore! Or equip the Evans Repeater, go into Deadeye, and paint all 22 marks on their bodies and watch them jerk around as you pump lead into them so fast they do backflips. Lasso twenty men and put them on the traintracks! Lasso a guy(or gal) and drag them around behind you until they snap their necks! Or drag them into wolf or cougar-infested territory, and feed them to the animals! Lasso them, then set them on fire! Blow them up! Trample them with your horse! The possibilities are endless!

* ''Prototype''. Good ''Lord'', Prototype. One of your standard moves, unlocked from the very start of the game, is a one-hit kill which involves pulverising anyone soldier you've got your hands on into tiny bits of flesh, which you then absorb in order to regain health. If that doesn't take your fancy, you can just run up to the top of any skyscraper in the city, gripping the poor unfortunate soul you've just grabbed by the face, dangle him over the edge for a while, then hurl him full pelt into the skyscraper opposite, all for the pleasure of watching his corpse ragdoll down to the streets below. Or if that sounds too convoluted, you can slice him in half with the Claw ability, or mulch them with burning helicopter, or drive a tank over him and everyone else behind them on the street, or...well, there's a lot to do. Nor is it limited to enemies.

* Upon a level up spaming method of FinalFantasyTactics. You can corner an enemy and spam attacks on it to near death, let it heal itself or you heal it then repeat the process. Poor yellow chocobo usually falls a victim to this due to its "Choco Cure", which cures itself and anyone surrounding it.

** A standard move for taking down a thug involves Batman kneeling over the thug and punching his face very hard. Occasionally, Batman gets flipped around during this animation, and ends up punching the thug very hard in a different, rather more wince inducing area, IfYouKnowWhatIMean. [[spoiler: His penis.]]

* ''Aliens vs Predator'', a game based around [[{{Alien}} two of the greatest]] [[{{Predator}} sci-fi movie monsters]] of all time, is high on VideoGameCrueltyPotential of the mook torturing variety. Playing as both the Alien and as the Predator involves large amounts of stalking usually terrified humans and mutilating them in a variety of [[{{Gorn}} gornographic]] and invariably fatal ways, several of which [[FaceFullOfAlienWingWong deliberately evoke images of rape]]:

*** And a wide variety of other bodily assaults including stabbing through the abdomen with serrated blades, snapping the spine or removing it from the thorax, and impaling through the thorax and anus, resulting in a gameplay which prides itself on bringing out the AxCrazy in players.

** A standard move for taking down a thug involves Batman kneeling over the thug and punching his face very hard. Occasionally, Batman gets flipped around during this animation, and ends up punching the thug very hard in a different, rather more wince inducing area, IfYouKnowWhatIMean. [[spoiler: I'm talking about his penis.]]

** Oh, one of the nastiest things is the bone-breaker instant takedown move. Batman seems to have a thing for legs, especially. This troper did quite a lot of wincing.

** At one part, you can ''cut the rope a mook was using to avoid the Joker's gas and let him fall''. Though Batman does mention needing to save him, OrSoIHeard.