1. There's A Cut Enemy That Sexually Assaulted You
The inspirations for Half-Life's varied, terrifying alien horrors from beyond space came from all sorts of weird places. It really makes you worry about the mindsets of Valve's developers when, say, you learn that the Gonarch from the original game came to be when somebody wondered aloud "why don't we put a giant testicle on a twenty-foot-tall armoured spider?" The mind boggles. Even worse than that, however, is an enemy that didn't make the cut in either of the games - and you'll be glad it didn't. Mr Friendly was an enemy developed for the original Half-Life, although designs appear again in the accompanying art books for Half-Life 2. According to said book, Mr Friendly's attacks included being able to knock Gordon's weapons out of his hand, knocking off his glasses so that the screen would go all blurry and, erm, raping the player. You read that right. Designer Ted Backman apparently "decided to go with something that elicits a homophobic response" which, well, is being scared of a terrifying alien sexually assaulting you strictly homophobic? Who knows. What's for sure is that Mr Friendly looks like the most terrifying thing this side of Ravenholme, and gamers around the world can be thankful that he never made it into a finished game. Although, there's always Half-Life 3...whenever that comes out...
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
