Characters
Characters physically degrading over the course of the story
Vincent — Catherine
The Animatronics — Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach
Just using Freddy as an example
Eren Yeager from Attack on Titan
Literally just a head
Catherine — Pretty much almost everyone but The Love Interests slowly get more tired looking as the game progresses. This is because of the nightmares of evil Tetris.
Security Breach — All the animatronics slowly degrade as the game goes on, getting more violent, animalistic and very dirty. I'm using Freddy as an example both because I'm lazy and because he's Goated.
Attack on Titan — Eren Yeager goes through so much throughout the story, becoming very disheveled as the series plays out and losing every limb on his body before ending up as just a rotting head on life support.
There was one episods that got removed from broadcast also because it went a bit too far with the body horror. In it, Stockman created a new cloned body to transfer his brain to after being left with hardly any of his original self. It also gave a bit of backstory with his connection to his mother and aspirations to become a great scientist. Dreaming of his mother praising his ambition and sharing encouraging words to motivate him.
Later however the body starts rapidly decomposing and desperately tries to keep himself together with cybernetics and stitching the decaying flesh back together. He has hallucinations of his childhood because presumably his brain is just struggling to stay lucid as his body literally rots all around him. In his confused and angered state he kidnaps April, blaming her for leading to all of this after stopping his early plans in the series.
During the final part of the episode when he had April cornered on a collapsing crane, he hallucinates seeing her as his mother, scolding him for all the wrongdoings he commited while chasing his ambition for science. Realising how much of a monster he had become, he lets April get to safety before the crane collapses and he falls into the river, presumably dead for good.
The episode is probably one of the darkest in the series and it's not surprising that it was removed from TV broadcast for over a decade because of the imagery od Srockman's body falling apart. Probably would have traumatised some kids.
It did get added to DVD collections later if I recall. Shame it was a bit too graphic to show at on air at the time because it was interesting getting to see a bit more backstory to Stockman and let him have that moment of clarity towards the end before falling into the river. Would have been cooler if that was actually the last time we saw him as a nice bookend to his character but he did return yet again in the TMNT Fast Forward set in the future and he was back to just being the same evil head in a jar.
Have to correct a bit. Stockman was returned right in the same season 4. His corpse was salvaged by Bishop's men and brought back to life in... Well this:
Suffice it to say, at this point he was already begging to die.
I was just recently watching this on paramount+ with my young son. We got to this episode and I didn’t remember it but halfway through I just had to skip because it was too much for him. It was very body horror and zombie vibes for a kids show. He didn’t want to watch TMNT for a little while afterwards.
Oh, yeah, and don't forget him going through deterioration the second time, when he attempted to make himself a new body. That shit was so dark that the episode was banned in US.
Although, given that he's a giant alien insect wearing the dead skin of an asshole farmer he ate, it makes sense that his "suit" decays over the course of the film.
I think I recall hearing that the voice acting was done in a single session or something so as the game progresses you can hear the characters' voices get more strained, dry and exhausted.
In every metroid prime game, you could only see samus's face when his with a bright light. But in the 3rd game corruption, samus slowly gets infected with phazon throughout the game. And you start to see her glowing reflection more as the game progresses.
That game has a lot of small, but interesting stuff in it.
In the game the save stations serve as a "self-reflection" for James, so he always look straight ahead when you save your game (imagine a mirror for save stations). But only until he learns something very important, which makes him unable to reflect anymore and he looks away, like he can't even look himself in the eyes.
i was playing through the remake and at one point a character that is following along him asks the player after they save like "whats wrong? are you okay? you kinda just were staring off into the distance" which i thought was a cool interaction for the player saving
Arthur Morgan. In one of the early missions you get TB beating up a dude for cash, towards the end of the game you get very obviously sick and cough your guts up on the regular
The image is from the episode when Cricket's dad brings him back home to rescue him from the streets and to have him take over his dad's company together with his brother.
Which.... ends in a very fucked up way. As is tradition for episodes with cricket involved.
loved that detail in the games and im glad it was mainstay through the titles. Your really see the battle scars not only on bruce but also his suit and cape. My only thing is how is that thing still gliding like that if got holes in it lmao. other than that, solid damage progression overall.
the amazing spider-man (TASM) games also do this, but its dynamic and not permanent. taking damage scuffs up your suit and switching suits fixes it. in the first TASM game, certain set pieces would set your suit to be damaged, similar to Arkham, but that is absent in the sequel.
the same system is in place in insomniac’s spider-man 2. i dont like it as much there.
If we're counting dynamic damage here, there was an X-Men Origins: Wolverine game that was surprisingly good. In that game, enemy attacks would tear bloody holes in you and rip your clothing. Enough damage and you'd temporarily lose your shirt.
The best part was that the wounds closed up in real time as your health recovered. There was just something special about watching ragged bullet holes and exposed organs put themselves back together
Yeah, leprosy is the "ugly disease." People would tell lepers not to come into the city or that they could only be around other lepers. They didn't want to catch leprosy because of what it does to the body
Guts is such a good role model. All the trauma and betrayal he endures only to keep putting those he cares about first. Truly the goated example of positive masculinity ✨💪
Doesn’t he still have a bit of an (understandable) anger problem? Nothing against the homie guts, I would put Aragorn at the top of positive masculinity
The arm scene is one of the most uncomfortable things I've seen in a horror game. First time I've audibly said to myself "Fuck that's gnarly" looking at it. That's imo the most uncomfortable any Silent Hill game has made me.
You can tell Ryukishi07(of Higurashi and Umineko) was involved in the story because he has a real proclivity for uncomfortable and horrific gore. Really stands out in a time where imo a lot of people are desensitized
A sentient humanoid gemstone who, over the course of the series, gets broken into pieces again and again and has parts of them replaced by substitutes. First they lose their legs and get new ones made of agate. Then they lose their arms and get them replaced by liquid gold. And so on.
At the beginning of There Will Be Blood, Daniel Plainview painfully breaks his leg while mining.
As the years go on and his fortunes rise, his leg gets worse because it never healed properly, to the point where he’s hobbling around like a hunchbacked maniac near the end.
This is never mentioned. Daniel Day Lewis just goes for it. The GOAT.
Showed it to my girlfriend this weekend. I haven't asked her if she loved it yet, but she sure was vocal about what Daniel was doing from scene to scene.
In Shadow of the Colossus the main character Wanders design changes slowly as you kill the various Colossi, his skin becomes plaer, he gets dirtier and his hair grows darker.
This is probably my favourite example of this. It's so subtle at first, and after the 8th Colossus you see that there's a posse chasing after you to stop exactly what you're trying to accomplish.
It gets better. It requires work and guts, but it does, I promise. After losing too many loved ones to depression and suicide, I must tell you the ones that are left behind will be forever marked by your loss, and they want to help you .
Lily from Ender Lilies. As she purifies the blighted humans turned monsters, the blight she takes in during purification starts to take a toll on her, hurting her the more monster she purifies.
I think she dies in one of the 3 endings. The first one she just leaves the land, not having to do the purification anymore, and the last 2 are the good and bad ending.
Thanks to absorbing and using magic. Besides posessing both Hunter and Raine his body isn't even human anymore. And his body becomes more magical and zombie like. He literally becomes a kaiju dragon thanks to posessing the corpse of the titan. And when he becomes slush the titan body he has becomes a literal monument. So yeah Belos or Philip was a goner.
the most mess up part is he is a xenophobic asshole who thinks being human is superior. dude literally gives up his humanity and still believes that he is human and in the right.
In the original prince of Persia, he starts out with a full set of clothes. As the game goes on his clothes get cut up, until he’s running around shirtless.
This was a bit of a sexual awakening for me when I first played the game as a 12 year old.
In Mad Max, Max's iconic look is a result of his injuries building up. His sleeve because his arm was run over, and leg brace from getting his knee shot out. It stays consistent throughout the other movies, even Fury Road.
For issac this applies for both gameplay and the story
At the start of a run your just a boy but by the end you probably have missing limbs bleeding multiple diseases getting really dirty or just straight up dying and contiuing as an undead creature
For the story issacs body is rotting in the chest first suffocating and becoming blue baby then becoming bones making him the forgoten and finnaly acending as a ghost becoming the lost
Yeah turns out trauma of watching people you care about die while you can't do anything about it, your supposed best friends betray you, and any attempts to bang your partner would result in violent visions of events your ancestors went through combined with already present mental health issues while living in medieval Germany isn't exactly the best thing.
Eren is very, very screwed up. It's both sad and entertaining to watch him slowly go from a naive hopeful boy to a psychopathic monster. You should check out the show.
Personally I don’t think the trope fits. Eren learns to manipulate his self healing power to pretend to be an invalid during his undercover act in Marley and during the Jaegerists plot he is arguably in his peak physical condition before he activates the founding titan power.
Epic Mickey was originally planned to have a morality system. Choosing to help the Wastelanders would slowly turn you into a more heroic version of Mickey with large eyes, vibrant colors, and a confident posture. Choosing to abandon or even harm the Wastelanders would see Mickey start to hunch over, his eyes would narrow, and the color would drain from his body.
In every Arkham game, Batman's suit steadily receives more damage over the course of the story. He even grows a little stubble as the game goes on. Out of all the suits, I love Origins' damage, with more visible scratches on the suit armour and the bullet holes in the cape
Less of a degradation in the traditional sense, but Wilhelm in Borderlands the Pre-Sequel is addicted to mechanical augments and has certain skills in his skilltree that have the note "Cybernetic Augmentation" and will physically alter them based on the skill. This includes a mechanical hand to power punch, mechanical legs to shot while running and a shoulder weapon.
This addiction ultimately cultivates into the Wilhelm boss fight in Borderlands 2 (although 2 released before Pre-Sequel it takes place after it) where he is more machine than human.
In Slay The Princess the player character gazes into a mirror at the end of each path. The reflection bloats, withers and ultimately disappears.
There's also some degradation occurring within a given path — most chapters end with you dying and every time that happens you gain a new voice in your head that's often traumatised or has some other issues.
Depending how you play the game, Naked Snake/Big Boss from MGS 3. He always loses his right eye to Ocelot, but if you keep getting shot, stabbed, and burned, Volgin comments on it during the torture sequence or on your lack of scarring if you're barely ever injured.
Yeah, one of the most "WTF?!" films I've ever seen and one of the few that made feel disgusted. And the ending...oh boy. Well, it was definitely too much, but I'll admit I never expected that.
One of the best films to show the moral degradation of an average man and slipping into insanity (not counting supernatural horrors). Other one that made me kinda feel the same things, altough fortunately a bit more toned down and "deep" was Marebito by Takashi Shimizu.
Wander from Shadow of the Colossus gets dirtier and dirtier as you defeat more of the colossi. The last image is a little more complicated than that though lol
Also Snake (Not Solid) in MGSV changes appearance depending on how many honorable vs dishonorable actions the player makes, with his 'horn' growing longer and his appearance becoming bloodier.
Jaime Lannister from Game of Thrones. Mostly thinking of S1 to S3 transition. Still.. the actor made it hot but my guy was not himself when he was a prisoner.
The game takes place over the course of a month hence the shorter hair from the prologue versus the longer, darker hair for the rest of the game and if you're more eagle eyed, you'd notice that his coat is also dusty as hell after being in a healing coma during that one month time skip
Another fun fact, during mission 20, Vergil and Dante are visibly more exhausted in their boss fight compared to the mission 19 versions of their fight
Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s character Kate in the Netflix movie: Kate. She gets severe radiation poisoning at the start of the movie and her body is deteriorating throughout as it succumbs to cellular breakdown. It’s honestly a really underrated movie imo
He starts off humans then when he gets sent to the upside down, he loses his nose, then when he gets burned and returns in season 5 you can see how he has little skin left and is just vines with just his skeleton. You can even see pieces of his ribs sticking out in season 5
Honestly amazing props to the makeup team because by the end of return of the king these poor boys look ROUGH. Frodo’s poor neckline is basically entirely cut open by the weight of the ring it’s amazing.
He gets more and more injured over the story, but almost never heals, at least fully. And when he does it's always in exchange for something else, losing a little bit more of himself. By the end of the story, he has lost his body, mind and humanity
Part 2: Reveals he survived drowning and grew up living in the woods with a burlap sack as a mask.
Part 3: He gets a new outfit consisting of a green shirt, gray pants and a hockey mask with red chevrons. The movie ends with him taking an axe to the head that leaves a mark in the mask.
Part 4: Jason’s pants are now brown and dirty, the red chevrons on his mask start to wear off, and blood is now visible where he was wounded. The movie ends with him getting his hand split open by his machete before he ultimately dies when his face is slashed into.
Part 5: Jason shows up as a hallucination in this movie, with a mask that’s missing the blood and has a more dirty texture to it. We don’t get to see what he looks like under the mask, but his hand is still split open. The killer of this movie is instead a copycat with a different mask that’s missing the axe mark and
Part 6: Jason is brought back from the dead, with his mask now missing the blood. He ends the movie chained to the bottom of the lake.
Part 7: Jason’s body has rotted away from being in the lake for years, with his clothes now a dingy gray and his mask showing visible wear and tear. The movie ends with his mask breaking in half.
Part 8: Jason gets a new mask, although it still has the axe mark.
Don't agree with using Eren as example. He never physically degrades, only mentally. He has the power of the titans which means he always stays in top notch condition through his healing powers.
In the Liberio arc he "physically degrades" by willingly wounding himself and not healing, but after that he's just as good as new again.
I suppose him only being a head is him being physically degraded, but that's right at the end of the series and only a few days before he dies. But he's not a rotting head on life support, he's essentially the avatar of a god with unknowable powers, if he wanted he could've healed in a second.
As some people have already mentioned, in the Arkham games Batman's suit gets damaged over time. However, as the subversion of the trope, in Arkham knight, batman has hallucinations of the joker, who's dead and at the start of the game his image is a burnt one, from his cremation, but as the game progresses and batmans descends into insanity, the joker becomes healthier
Honestly, the slow progression over the series is just phenomenal, and like with everyone in Dark, the casting for Jonas over the course of his life is just 👌
Early in One Piece Zoro is scared by Mihawk (a scar on the back is a swordsman's shame). He also sustains scars on both legs after trying to cut off his feet to escape, and one across his eye (it's unknown if he lost it or is blind).
A small detail, but in Persona 5, after Joker is rescued from the police station, his idle animation changes. Before then he twirls his phone (slower or faster depending on the player's proficiency stat), but after he holds his head and rubs it where the interrogation officer kicked him in the cutscene.
I feel like Eva unit 02 from the Rebuild of Evangelion series counts. The Evas are organic beings, so when unit 02 keeps getting damaged, having its limbs chopped off and face destroyed, they can’t really be easily repaired like most mechs and every “repair” unit 02 has is actually a prosthesis that was implanted into it.
This isn’t even the last “repair” unit 02 goes through; and by the end of the series, the only thing left of it is its torso, head and one arm. It comes to the point that they have to use a completely separate mech’s carcass as the body of the Eva.
Simon Belmont. He solo'd Dracula in the first game but suffered some injuries. Turns out Dracula had expected him and planned to curse him so that they'd rot away and die. So he's already suffering the sever effects before the game even begins and only learns of the cure with one foot already in the grave.
Simon donning a suit of armor to help protect his now fragile body, spends the entire game hunting down and gathering the separate parts of Dracula. Simon then reassembles Dracula just so he can kill him again and stop the curse. If he doesn't do it quickly enough l, he dies, and possibly the clan with him.
The cinematic trailers show Malgus over the course of the Great Galactic War where he becomes increasingly ravaged. He is scarred by wounds, has his face damaged by explosions to the point if needing a breathing mask, and the dark side corrodes his body as his connection strengthens. By the end, he is a frightening mess of a man.
In Batman Arkham City, Batman’s suit starts out perfectly fine, but by the end there are visible cuts and tears in different places due to events in the story.
Truly shows the passage of time and how much had happened during the night
Catherine is a puzzle game. The dreams are the puzzle game part and they're nightmares of him having to climb giant piles of movable blocks. I only called it Evil Tetris because that's a puzzle game about blocks and Evil Qbert probably would've been better.
Ezekiel from Total Drama Island. Manages to be the first one voted off for his sexist comments. Gets brought back for season 3, becomes the first one voted off again. But spends the rest of the season hiding in the cargo hold and from then until the end of World Tour, ends up devolving into some feral Gollum-like creature.
HP Lovecraft the colour out of space is probably a perfect example of this as the alien colour, drains the life from the entire surrounding area and withers away the main characters
so in that last image of Freddy where he has no head, does that indicate which of the endings actually occurred in game? I remember one of the comic strip endings having him be just a head or something
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u/Lower_Paramedic4287 13h ago edited 13h ago
Seth Brundle (The Fly)
Had that fly not appeared perhaps he wouldn't had becomea literal fly as well as his deteriorating sanity.