Dig Dug features one of the most grotesque kills in video game history. By plugging an enemy through with a hose, Dig Dug pumps them full of air until they grotesquely inflate like a balloon. Once they reach the bursting point, their insides rupture outwards, popping. This gory visual is minimized by the old graphics.

Pac Man features another standard video game death that would go on to become iconic: eating your enemies. By running Pac Man over his adversaries, you can devour and consume the various Ghosts. It’s simple, but ultimately a nightmarish situation.

Mario has often advocated stepping on your adversaries and squashing them under your boots. The sheer force of being crushed under an Italian plumber’s boot is common-place, but really think about it: traumatic head injury, pressure displaced throughout the body, quick smothering. Nightmarish way to go.

Sub-Zero’s spin-ripping fatality resulted in the whole of the gaming world changing forever. It was this death, among the many other gory fatalities, that resulted in the ESRB rating system materializing. Remember that the next time you play Mortal Kombat with friends.

Ever play Oregon Trail? How many of your friends died of dysentery? While death can come in many forms in Oregon Trail – such as drowning when you FORD THE RIVER! – the most memorable cause of death is dysentery. Why? Because it can hit randomly and it forced a whole generation of kids to look up what “dysentery” is.

The Genocide Run in Undertale is an exercise in human cruelty. You take your various friends who you met over the course of the whole game and kill them while they look up in your eyes. Arguably the cruelest death is Toriel, the lovable goat mom who trusts and cares for you. If you show her mercy she’ll become incredibly vulnerable to your killing blow. Her shock and horror at your manipulation and cruelty are...truly heartbreaking.

The Tomb Raider reboot left a lot of fans surprised by the increasingly violent ways survivalist Lara Croft can die over the course of the game. Among the most brutal ways include splinter through the gut and being crushed against the rocks. Another way? Impaling through the throat and out the back of your head, leaving you sputtering on blood rising up your tongue.

Killing Zeus in God of War 3 is one of the most cruelly satisfying moments in the whole game. After spending three games reaching this point, you have an opportunity to just punch Zeus in the face until his skull caves in. The process takes a while, but, once you can do it, it’s satisfying for your whole screen to turn red.

The Needle in the Eye sequence from Dead Space 2 is horrifying. In a game full of grotesque monsters and body horror, it’s remarkable how squeamish needles make us. Especially needles that need to go through our pupils. Make a mistake….and your whole eye is gonna become a crater.

Manhunt 2 remains one of the most controversial games ever made. The game features some brutal kills, most of which are censored in the released version. However, the uncensored version of this game shows you every gory kill in its full glory. Faces are skinned, skulls are caved in, and bodies are sawed open, all with an unpleasant, realistic set of sounds. The sound really is what kills it for you.

Xenomorphs have terrified film audiences for generations, so it’s fitting that gamers got to share that pain. The Xenomorphs have appeared in countless games, but nowhere are they more horrific than in Alien Isolation, where the Xenomorph is a capable hunter who can stalk its prey….only to grab hold of your face, look you straight in the eye, and eat your face in.

What’s worse than eating your opponents? Digesting them. Kirby is capable of devouring all sorts of adversaries in his path, only to turn them into a nutritional snack that fuels them, making them capable of incredible power. Kirby absorbs his enemy and turns their flesh into outfits. That’s...pretty horrific.

Needlers might seem pretty tame from Halo. However, there remains something iconic about these particular homing projectiles, which embed themselves in a foe before exploding. It is one of the most iconic Halo weapons for that reason. A special note also goes to the Energy Sword, but, while it’s satisfying to drive that blade through an opponent, there is something fun about the delayed satisfaction of the Needler.

Spiders are scary. Giant spiders are worse. Limbo features the shadow of one of the biggest spiders ever crawling up to your character’s face, right before it drives its leg straight through the eye socket of your character. As it dangles you up there, it looks at you. Quizzically. There’s something existentially horrific about that.

The best death in any video game is in Spider-Man 3, the game. Yes. You know the one. You mess up the quick-time event, fall flat on your face, and that hostage you’re trying to save has just enough time to contemplate her own death before a fire ignites, swallowing you all in waves of heat. It’s memetic, horrific, and bloody hilarious.