10 Red Dwarf Fates Worse Than Death
5. Trapped in a Total Immersion Video Game
Series 2 "Better Than Life" and the novel of the same name introduced the concept of Total Immersion Video Games (a 1980s take on virtual reality), and demonstrated not only the enjoyment factor, but the outright torture they can become too.
If all goes well, the 'Game-Head' becomes addicted to the perfect life the game allows them to live vicariously through while their body withers away to nothing and they essentially starve to death... If all goes badly, joining the game with a neurotic character (such as Rimmer) will see the player trapped in the simulation as it slowly deteriorates around them in the ultimate virtual self sabotage.
The show itself was limited by the technology of its time and a mediocre BBC budget, which meant exemplifying just how badly things can go wrong was restricted to Rimmer slowly losing control of his own happiness and ending up having his thumbs broken by an Outland Revenue tax collector.
Not great, but this isn't a patch on the way the novel tells the tale. Rimmer's fall from grace sees him lose his wife, his fortune, his mind and even his body as the walls of his sanity crash around him.
Sometimes, it makes you wish the novel could be played out on the screen if only to bear witness to this abysmal fate.