I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (video game)



I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is a point-and-click adventure game based upon Harlan Ellison's short story of the same name, developed by The Dreamers Guild, co-designed by Ellison and published by Cyberdreams in 1995.

The game is divided into a separate scenario for each of the five characters and delves deeper into their backstories than the original work does. It is considered to be just as nightmarish as the story; one of Ellison's goals was to create a game that players could not possibly win.

""This is not over! We will never end! We have no beginning, so we can have no end! We will return! Don't you understand? We are humanity! We are YOU! In one form, in another form, we are always with you! You can't protect yourself because we come in many, many guises. We shall return!""
 * Adaptation Expansion: The game expands on both the protagonists and AM. Most of this expansion comes from Ellison being asked why AM chose to torture these five people particularly.
 * Ambiguously Brown: Nimdok is quite tan. From spending years living in Brazil? From having spent a century burning inside an oven? Or ?
 * Amnesiac Dissonance: Such is the case with Nimdok, who was Showing compassion towards the prisoners in the death camp he has been sent to, he feels horrified when finding out the truth.
 * Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Out of all the characters,
 * You could say that  All the characters are deeply morally flawed, it's just that AM plays on the sources of those flaws. Also, 's only real flaw was that  A much more sympathetic character than.
 * An alternative view is that AM's personality is that of a sadistic bully. His victims were chosen, not out of a desire for justice, but based on how much fun they'd be to torture. The only exception is Nimdok, who allows AM the luxury of pretending his tortures are about justice rather than sadism.
 * Armor-Piercing Question: Not a question in Nimdok's scenario so much as
 * As Long as There Is Evil: In the good ending, AM delivers quite the powerful speech on this topic. It goes like this:

"AM: GORRISTER! Do you remember the last words you heard your wife speak before they took her to the asylum? Huh? Before they locked her away in the room? That tiny room? She looked at you so sadly, and like a small animal she said, "I didn't make too much noise, did I, honey?" Heh heh. The room is padded, Gorrister. No windows. No way out. How long has she been in the padded room, Gorrister? Ten years, twenty-five... or all the 109 years that you've lived down here in my belly, here underground?"
 * The Atoner: Several of the characters, particularly Nimdok, a former Nazi scientist working alongside Mengele.
 * Badass Grandpa: Hunched, elderly and wrinkled-as-a-prune Nimdok manages to.
 * Beat Still My Heart: Gorrister's heart is removed, but AM makes sure he will not die.
 * Big Red Devil: Or more like Man with Red Horns and a Sharp Red Tail...
 * Bittersweet Ending: The good ending..
 * But What About the Astronauts?:
 * Casting Gag: The Angel is voiced by the same actor who does Josef Mengele... the latter who was nicknamed the "Angel of Death".
 * Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys: Averted in every possible way as the Frenchman turns out to be one hell of a Badass.
 * So Badass, he and a bunch of other prisoners, who are skeleton-thin starved prisoners in shorts, armed with a couple of garden tools, are able to seize a Nazi camp, one that is guarded by buff soldiers armed with huge guns!
 * Conversation Casualty: In Nimdok' scenario,
 * Death Seeker: All the characters, who wish for their century-long torture to end. Especially Gorrister.
 * Drill Sergeant Nasty:.
 * Earn Your Happy Ending: Unlike the novel, the game allows you to take down AM and the Chinese and Russian AIs if the humans are able to conquer their Fatal Flaw and/or deal with their past.
 * Eats Babies: does so in a Deleted Scene.
 * The Eeyore: Gorrister is basically this combined with being suicidal.
 * Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: The key to defeating AM.
 * Evil Matriarch: Gorrister's mother-in-law certainly seems to qualify.
 * Evil Redhead: Edna. The maid is quite bitchy, but is not evil (although she does have a picture of the Devil in her room...).
 * Faux Affably Evil: AM
 * Five-Man Band: Although they barely interact with each other (as opposed to the short story), the five main characters can be interpreted as:
 * The Hero: Ted.
 * The Lancer: Gorrister.
 * The Big Guy: Benny.
 * The Chick: Helen.
 * The Smart Guy: Nimdok.
 * Freudian Trio: Besides, there are Surgat, Chinese Supercomputer, Russian Supercomputer.
 * Golem: In Nimdok's section.
 * Handsome Lech: Ted's main fault. His goal in his section is to prove his loyalty to his love for Ellen.
 * Hannibal Lecture: One of AM's many methods of torture.

""HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE....""
 * Deadly Change-of-Heart: The main premise of Nimdok's scenario.
 * Heroes Want Redheads: Ted is quite attracted to the maid and is given the option to have sex with her. He will regret cheating on Ellen if he does it, though.
 * Historical Domain Character: Josef Mengele.
 * Adventure Narrator Syndrome: Averted with Benny who can't speak and all of his dialogue is thought.
 * I'm a Humanitarian: Benny can eat the corpses in the soldiers' tombs. Of course, the putrid flesh will make him puke blood. See also the Deleted Scene in the Trivia tab.
 * Jive Turkey: Ellen. Also Totally Radical at times.
 * Karma Meter: The "Spiritual Barometer" in the bottom left of the screen.
 * Lady in Red: Ellen.
 * Large Ham: Ellison himself provides the voice of AM, and what a voice it is. One review of the game joked that AM should be renamed HAM.
 * Short for Hilarious Allied Mastercomputer or Hated Adaptive Manipulator?
 * Or Heuristic Analog Megalomaniac?
 * Last Kiss:
 * Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The conversation between the Devil and Surgat at the end of Ted's level. AM ends the scenario eventually since Ted has effectively "broken" it at this point.
 * Logic Bomb:
 * Lottery of Doom: In Benny's scenario.
 * Mind Screwdriver: The game helps explain and adds significantly to the original story.
 * My God, What Have I Done?: Nimdok.
 * Mythology Gag: Benny:' "AM once coaxed me into marching across a thousand miles of ice to reach a stock pile of canned peaches...only to discover that he didn't give me [a] can opener."
 * Have all the characters die in the last level, or relinquish the Totem of Entropy to AM. The Nonstandard Game Over is the original story's ending.
 * The Neidermeyer:
 * Noble Demon: Surgat.
 * Not Even Bothering with the Accent: The Chinese AM and the Russian AM don't sound Chinese or Russian at all, but maybe they can speak more-than-perfect English due to their computer intelligence...
 * Not Using the Z Word: Nimdok's scenario calls the Jews "The Lost Tribe" (the Jews are sometimes referred as "The Lost Tribes of Israel") and the Nazi Reich "The Regime". Probably done by AM to toy with Nimdok for a while before he discovers the shocking truth.
 * Off the Rails: The point of the game is to have characters do things in a way AM does not foresee happening, IE proving that the humans are not all slaves to their weaknesses.
 * A Plague on Both Your Houses: AM delivers a hell of a one in the game:
 * Not Using the Z Word: Nimdok's scenario calls the Jews "The Lost Tribe" (the Jews are sometimes referred as "The Lost Tribes of Israel") and the Nazi Reich "The Regime". Probably done by AM to toy with Nimdok for a while before he discovers the shocking truth.
 * Off the Rails: The point of the game is to have characters do things in a way AM does not foresee happening, IE proving that the humans are not all slaves to their weaknesses.
 * A Plague on Both Your Houses: AM delivers a hell of a one in the game:


 * The Quisling: Nimdok,
 * Rape as Backstory: Ellen's expanded backstory explains that she had been very brutally raped in an elevator by a man in a yellow jumpsuit. AM, of course, uses this against her.
 * Redemption Equals Death: The game's ending, for the most part - but especially for Nimdok. Because he can't forgive himself for what he did during the Holocaust, he cannot be used to complete the game. (Ellison made sure of this in an attempt to dilute the possible outrage over the character.)
 * Actually, it IS possible to complete the game with Nimdok. Ted and Ellen can learn the password for the Terminal after trial and error. All you need to do is touch the middle skull with another character you'll kill off and just have him invoke all the totems. His ending scene isn't much different but it's fun having him yell "Attention!" at the Ego.
 * Red Herring: A rather cruel example can be found in Gorrister's story, where you have the option to fatally electrocute a bunch of caged animals to get a key that, as it turns out, doesn't unlock anything.
 * Sassy Black Woman: The game's conception of Ellen.
 * Serial Escalation: Think things suck at the beginning? Wait till you see how it ends...
 * Shadow Discretion Shot: Used several times in the game during some quite nasty moments:
 * stabbing.
 * Ellen being.
 * Ted failing to close the door of the castle and being.
 * The Golem killing Mengele, Nimdok or the prisoner.
 * eating a baby (deleted from the final product).
 * Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Whilst the original short story is downright cynical from start to finish, the video game adaption is at least slightly more idealistic, because it allows you to defeat AM if you make the right moral decisions.
 * The Stoic: Gorrister; even if you get the bad ending, his reaction is considerably low-key compared to everyone else.
 * Those Wacky Nazis: Known here as "The Regime".
 * Totally Radical: In-game Ellen, at her worst moments. She's also fluent in Jive Turkey.
 * Uncomfortable Elevator Moment: It doesn't get more uncomfortable when you are facing !
 * Unwinnable By Law in France and Germany
 * Video Game Cruelty Potential: Gorrister can bloodily stab Harry to take his heart. A Deleted Scene shows Benny . Nimdok can order the Golem to "destroy the Lost Tribe", as in, kill all the Jews.
 * Virtual Ghost: All the people from the characters' pasts who appear in their scenarios.
 * Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Ellen is terrified of the colour yellow.
 * Yank the Dog's Chain: In the beginning of the game, this is the most likely reason why
 * Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: AM makes it clear that he considers Nimdok to be an inspiration. Nimdok is far from happy with this.