10 Things You Didn't Know About Half-Life
4. An Unused Enemy Sexually Molested Gordon
Yup, seriously.
"Mr Friendly", as it's become known, still exists in Half Life's data, complete with terrifying model intact.
As revealed in the book Raising the Bar, Ken Birdwell outlines how Ted Backman drew several designs for 'sexual-oriented monsters' which were presented to Gabe Newell. One of these was Mr Friendly, showing an appendage that looked very much like a penis.
When they were asked about it, they outlined how Mr Friendly would drag Gordon towards it and kill him by sexually assaulting him.
Bizarrely, this didn't put Gabe off. Instead they started discussing the implications of psycho-sexual alien behaviour, and how they could distort adolescent sexual fantasies.
The idea was the sexual themes of some of these enemies would exploit the underlying homophobia in some 14-year-old boys, who were one of the game's targeted audiences.
Another of Mr Friendly's potential attacks would involve knocking Gordon's glasses off, leaving him with blurry vision. This proved too tricky to implement, and thank god they decided to cut Mr Friendly out before his other attacks saw the light of day.