5. The Punisher
The Punisher was doing brutal torture sequences back when Grand Theft Auto Vs Trevor was but a sketch in his designers eye. Whilst 24: The Game also featured some now-questionable depictions of extended enemy-thwacking, Punisher got down to business by introducing the criminal underworld to the business end of a piranha tank. Even though the game received a black and white filter somewhat akin to Kill Bills infamous censoring of the Crazy 88 sequence, the actions of what were happening on screen were still very much controversial and deliciously violent in a way that aped Garth Ennis work on the Marvel Knights series, or his now-legendary MAX run. The Punishers four basic methods of perp-handling involved strangulation, punching them repeatedly in the gut, shoving a pistol in their face, or throwing them to the ground and bashing their face off the pavement. That was all without the contextual kills that allowed you to hold a man up to be gored by a rhino, feeding someone else to a hungry shark, locking a blokes head in between some moving gears until it burst, or just caving their skull in with a coffin lid.