10 TV Fates Worse Than Death

Charlie Brooker's dark sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror is infamous for its inspired twist endings and horrific occurrences that are prime existential crisis material. But one terrifying fate goes beyond all others, offering a nightmare scenario so bleak and hopeless that you'd probably do a double-take if we told you it happened in a Christmas special.

White Christmas revolves around a revolutionary sci-fi technology known as Cookies. Cookies are digital consciousnesses, essentially virtual clones of real people. They think and feel just as we do, except they are confined to a virtual space. One of these cookies is of the episode's main protagonist, Joe, but we don't know this until the end of the episode. Cookie Joe is being interrogated about a murder that the real Joe committed, having been manipulated into recounting his story in the virtual setting by the charming Matt (played by Jon Hamm).

Having received his confession, a police officer in the real world decides to punish Cookie Joe (despite Cookie Joe having done nothing wrong, as he only came into existence at the start of the interrogation). The officer sets Cookie Joe to experience time at the rate of a thousand years in the virtual world for every minute in the real world, while Slade's festive hit "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day" plays incessantly on loop.

There's no escape for Cookie Joe: looking out of the window of the cabin he's locked in simply shows the inside of the very same cabin through a blizzard in a snow globe. Being forced to listen to Slade is punishment enough, let alone for all eternity while locked inside a confined space, knowing that you're not even real. Who knew winter could be so chilling?