10 UNSETTLING Facts About Your Favourite Games
6. Post-Traumatic Fatality Disorder (Mortal Kombat 11)
When it comes to video game violence, you'd be hard-pressed to find something more debaucherous, diabolical, and stomach-churning as a good old-fashioned Mortal Kombat Fatality. These notorious finishing moves throw subtlety by the wayside as you finish off your opponents in gloriously gory fashions. They're often so over-the-top that you're left thinking, "How can people make these without losing their minds?" Sadly, the devs aren't as desensitised as you might think.
In an interview with Kotaku, one anonymous dev revealed that they'd been diagnosed with PTSD as a result of working on MK11. They claimed that constantly observing the violent animations led them to suffer from "extremely graphic dreams," so violent they'd often avoid sleep. The dev also discussed how the office was filled with "bloody real-life researching material," meaning you couldn't move for excessive violence. One desk would feature someone "Watching hangings on YouTube" and another "Watching a video of a cow being slaughtered."
Yes, those gruesome displays might be over in a few seconds for players, but for the creators, they last much longer.