
Content warning: This article contains depictions of depression, suicide, self-harm, and excessive amounts of violence. If you are uncomfortable with any of these topics or they are likely to put you in emotional distress, please be advised that it may be in your best interest not to read this article.
As video games continue to prove their immersive storytelling nature to players around the globe, game developers persistently push the boundaries further when it comes to storytelling and delivering emotional experiences.
But sometimes, they also deliver unsettling and outright disturbing experiences, leaving players with haunting memories of moments that are just hard to shake. Stay tuned as we explore 7 disturbing video game moments that have left players shocked and disturbed.
Oh, and of course, a huge spoiler warning for the games that will be mentioned here! Some of the moments that we’ll discuss might actually give away the story of the game.
The Interlopers – The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
The Gamecube is easily one of the best consoles of all time and Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is easily one of the best games from that console. When I think about disturbing video games, I immediately remember the interlopers cutscene from Zelda: Twilight Princess; why? Here’s the clip!
See what I mean? As a kid, I loved Zelda games for their beautiful worlds and cute characters (Oocco not included, of course!), and once you play the first parts of Zelda games, you know what you’re dealing with. A cute Zelda game like Skyward Sword or Wind Waker will make for a lighthearted and fun playthrough, more serious ones like Ocarina of Time and especially Majora’s Mask will show you some dark stuff here and there, but it’s no surprise.
Twilight Princess has some of the most realistic graphics in the Zelda series, and most of the places in the game look dark or gloomy, but it’s not too bad; you still wouldn’t expect something so serious (at least I didn’t) which is why I was surprised and disturbed when I saw the Interlopers cutscene when I was playing at 11 at night back when I was 12 years old!
As you can see, the whole cutscene was straight-up nightmarish, but seeing and hearing tens of Ilias laughing and floating upside down and seeing Link’s weird facial expression made me shut my TV off immediately.
Of course, I played through and watched the cutscene again the next day, and it was better when I knew what to expect. Still, it was still a bit weird and disturbing, but being taken by surprise is another thing.
Become As Gods – NieR: Automata
NieR: Automata is known to be a pretty dark and disturbing game for its nihilistic plot and endings, and for the first part, you also don’t have any idea what the heck is happening with the game. It starts off as a normal RPG, and you’ve been given the task to destroy alien machines and make contact with other androids down on Earth.

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So you start the game off by going through several areas, but you will end up discovering that the machines are trying to evolve and understand human concepts and trying to mimic certain societal groups. The first ones you’ll see are machines trying to procreate and have families, but eventually, you’ll discover a group of machines that are exploring the idea of gods and religion.
It’s freaky seeing all these machines grouped up in a circle holding torches, but it gets worse when their leader dies and its head rolls; the machines freaked out about becoming gods through dying.
So there they are, trying to kill our main characters to “make them gods” as well (I appreciate being included, but no, thank you!). As we make our way through the factory, you’ll find machines chanting to become gods by dying, but as you might expect, there are also machines who can’t do the deed and are panicking instead. Most of them, though, genuinely believed that dying will make them gods, and a lot of machines even jumped into a pool of lava to kill themselves.
Sure, they are robots and machines, but it’s still disturbing that these evolving robots became so self-aware to think about gods, mortality, and religion. It makes you wonder, did our religion start when we became self-aware? And is there a chance that real-life AIs and robots will develop these traits as our technology progressed?
The Lizard – Heavy Rain
Heavy Rain brings a pretty dark story about the Origami Killer, and while you play four characters in the game, we’ll focus on Ethan Mars and his family for this one.
In the first part of the game, Ethan’s son, Jason, got lost in the mall, and after finding his son on the other side of the street, they both got involved in a car accident. Ethan tried to save Jason, which left him in a coma for 6 months while Jason died in the accident.
2 years after the accident, Ethan spends some time with his other son, Shaun, who became a depressed kid after his brother’s death and his parent’s divorce. They went to a park after school, and unfortunately, Shaun got kidnapped by the Origami Killer (yes, they have the worst luck).
Ethan now has to go through several trials in order to get his son back from this sick Origami Killer. If everything I mentioned so far isn’t disturbing enough, one of the challenges that Ethan has to do is to voluntarily cut off a piece of his finger. If that is still not disturbing enough for you, you, as the player, will have to go through a series of button presses and even shake the controller just to cut off that one piece of finger.
Not only that, there are several tools you can use to cut your finger, a butcher knife, a hatchet, and a pair of pliers, all would’ve made a clean cut, but most of these are hidden. The one most players used is the saw that’s on the floor near the table.
How about you? Can you voluntarily cut off a finger for a chance to rescue your loved ones?
Vocal Cord Parasite Outbreak – Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain
One of the main things that you have to deal with in MSGV: Phantom Pain is vocal cord parasites. These are parasites that infest the body and give zombie-like behavior to the infected.
The thing is, these parasites only activate and spread through the use of whatever language they’re bred for. These parasites proved to be useful for someone like Skull Face (the main villain in the game), who wants to wipe English from existence, and since it is the world’s lingua franca, it would mean chaos for the world.
Now, in MGSV, some of Venom Snake’s soldiers were infected with the parasite, and they got through that first outbreak after setting up a quarantine zone.
The second outbreak, however, is a bit more difficult and quite disturbing to play through.
Venom Snake went to the quarantine zone and discovered that a rescue team was sent to try and get the surviving men, and well, the rescue team didn’t come back. He set out to rescue any survivors, but he discovered that most of them were infected and are already trying to get out.
It’s a classic but extremely scaled-up trolley problem, he can choose not to kill his men, but the infected will eventually break out, and it may cause a worldwide pandemic. It’s an easy choice, only this time, Venom Snake can’t just pull a lever and call it a day. He had to get his hands dirty and kill every single one of his men.
To make things harder, you’re also met with mixed emotions from the men you’re going to kill; some are angry, which is to be expected, but some gave their bittersweet gratitude for setting them free of the infection, which I think is kind of more disturbing.
The Night Folk – Red Dead Redemption 2
Red Dead Redemption 2 is a beautiful open-world game. It gives us a glimpse into the past and what it is like to live in the western frontier, and how nice it is to travel and stay in nature camps away from civilization. Though a lot can still happen, the wilderness is still beautiful in the daytime, but when the sun has set, a ton of scary predators are out and about; there are alligators, mountain lions, and the scariest of them all, humans.
While you might encounter bandits or runaway criminals, if you are unlucky enough, you might learn about the night folk. Who are they? Well, they’re a group of zombie-like people who kills people for who knows what.
You will encounter them in the Bayou Nwa area at night time, usually around Lagras and Bluewater Marsh. You might encounter them randomly, or you might encounter a crying woman that will try to kill you and summon the night folk if you attempt to help.
No matter how you encounter them, if you survived, you will unlock a mission the next day. In this mission, you are given the task to kill the night folk that are staying on someone’s land, and once you do, you’ll still have no idea why the night folk do these heinous things.
Once they kill their victims, they’ll hang the corpse as a trap for the next victim. Oh, they also don’t speak for who knows why. This means they can sneak up on you and probably even jump-scare you. Just make sure you have enough health, dead eye, and ammunition when going out in the Bayou Nwa area at night!
Doki Doki Literature Club
Doki Doki Literature Club is a free game released in 2017, it is a very cute anime-style visual novel dating game. It starts with Sayori, a childhood friend inviting you to join the Literature Club. After doing so, you’ll meet Yuri, Natsuki, Monika, and other members of the club.
The dating aspect comes with you writing poems, which you can use to get the attention of the girls by using their preferred words in your poems.
Everything about the game is wholesome and light-hearted, plus there’s also a ton of replay value to try out different words and attract different girls!
But as you play the game, one of the characters, Sayori, will confess her true feelings to you. Now, whether you accept or reject her, you’ll still find her hanging the next day, with blood on her hands, indicating that this is not suicide but murder. Of course, this is also where you realize this game is messed up and not just some cute dating sim, and this is also what most people will consider the most disturbing part of the game, just for how sudden and out of place it was.
Most people might consider that Sayori’s suicide is the end of the game, but that’s merely Act 1. If you continue, you’ll find out that another character, Monika, became self-aware and starts to alter the game files. As you progress, you’ll find glitches here and there, the characters start to act weird, you’ll get some jump scares, and a ton of creepy fourth wall breaks.

Anyway, the whole game right after Act 1 is disturbing, not just a single scene. That’s why I only put the title in for this one, and yes, feel free to experience the game yourself! I’m definitely going in for a third playthrough soon! Once you play through the game, you should try one of the mods that let you save Sayori.
No Russian – Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Call of Duty games were always violent. I mean, you can even try killing babies in Modern Warfare, but the game reprimands you for that and even kicks you out to the main menu if you do it enough times.
But one mission in MW2 that got some controversy is “No Russian.” In this mission, the player takes control of a CIA agent who’s doing an undercover mission with a terrorist group, and to get the trust of that terrorist group, he has to participate in a terrorist attack on a Russian airport and gun down hundreds of innocent civilians. It’s too disturbing, and as you would expect, Russians were offended that they were portrayed as terrorists in that game. They forced edits for the PC versions and totally banned the console version.
But do you know what’s more disturbing? While most people play through the mission and gun down innocent civilians, you can choose to skip the whole thing or go through the whole mission without shooting anyone. Either way, you can’t change the outcome of that story.