20 Gaming Facts That Will RUIN Your Favourite Franchise

11. Developer PTSD - Mortal Kombat

If the Mortal Kombat series is known for one thing, it's excessive violence. Even before the franchise had the graphical fidelity to deliver its fatalities in stomach-churning detail, the fighting game famously found itself part of a 1993 hearing on video game violence that led to the creation of the ESRB in the US.

As gleefully satisfying as it is to see characters mutilate each other in the most over-the-top ways imaginable, spending weeks creating these visceral moves took a heavy toll on developers. 

Talking to Kotaku in 2019, an anonymous developer who reviewed the gory animations for Mortal Kombat 11 opened up about their experience. They spoke of how constantly engaging with gnarly cinematics while being surrounded by gruesome research materials caused them to have "extremely graphic dreams" that made them not want to sleep. Their ordeal resulted in them being diagnosed with PTSD, and they weren't the only employee to be affected by the game's development. A co-worker reportedly told them that they couldn't look at their dog without picturing the animal's insides.

Although gaming controversies tend to get overblown by the media, there's a very real human cost to depicting extreme violence in games.