Ludicrous Gibs: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

[[File:VERYmessy_6373.png|link=Doom (series)|frame|[[Game Mod|Get a mop.]] ]]

 

{{quote|''"Ooh, they're goin' ta' have ta' glue you back together... '''IN HELL!'''"''|'''The Demoman''', ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'', "Meet the Demoman"}}

 

[[I Thought It Meant|Has nothing to do with]] a certain NCIS agent behaving in an amusing manner. [[Dope Slap|As if he'd ever behave ludicrously.]]

{{examples}}

* ''[[Castlevania]]'' was pretty light on the gore for a horror series -- until ''[[Castlevania: Symphony of the Night|Symphony of the Night]]'', that is. Alucard's ability to [[Our Vampires Are Different|heal by absorbing blood]] made it necessary for lots of enemies to bleed. (Kill an Evil Butcher with a sword if you want to see some real gushworks.) Since then, probably because ''Symphony'' became the new model for CV games, enemies have bled profusely.

** It gets even better in ''[[Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia|Order of Ecclesia]]'', where the fight with [[Giant Enemy Crab|Brachyura]] ends with you dropping a spiked elevator on the git, shoving him down fifteen screens of lighthouse and splattering him into a great many bits when you reach bottom. The bits are still there if you come back later.

 

 

* The modern ''[[Ninja Gaiden]]'' release for the Xbox featured decapitations; the sequel on the Xbox 360 goes beyond its predecessor's decaps into full limb dismemberment and body mutilation, as [http://gamersyde.com/news_5057_en.html the video downloadable here] truthfully shows. Averted in the last of the modern trilogy, which does away this trope entirely for [[High-Pressure Blood]].

* In ''[[God of War (series)|God of War]]'', pretty much everything results in ridiculous amounts of gore. Even an arrow to the cranium will cause total disintegration of the head in a massive shower of blood.

 

 

* [[The Dishwasher]] has a whole ''slew'' of ways to turn enemies into assorted bloodstains and organs, including, but not limited to: [[Short-Range Shotgun|shotguns]], [[Shock and Awe|overloading them with lightning attacks,]] pile-driving them into the ground, bashing their skulls into the ground/wall/''ceiling'', ''tearing their necks out with your teeth'', and tried and true method of cutting them down the middle.

* Online [[Adult Swim]] flash game ''Viva Caligula'' does this when the titular character enters "berserk mode" or when a weapon is levelled up in the sequel.

 

 

* ''[[Mortal Kombat]]'', of course. Not only are the fatalities all ludicrously bloody, even normal punches and kicks cause spurts of blood.

** Starting with ''[[Mortal Kombat 2]]'', when the creators went for the dark humor angle, most fatalities would create some ''actual'' ludicrous gibs from one character: a full-body 'splosion would yield about seven severed legs, twenty [[Stock Femur Bone|dog-bone-shaped bones]], a lung or two, and nothing else. Another fatality would [[Rule of Funny|decapitate the victim three times in quick succession]] resulting in one headless body and three identical severed heads.

 

 

* The trope name comes from ''[[Rise of the Triad]]'', which positively revelled in ludicrous weapons and gibbing effects. The message ''Ludicrous Gibs!'' would appear on-screen whenever the player gibbed enemies in the most spectacular fashion allowed. This would usually involve chunks of flesh and splashes of blood being spread in a wide radius and a torn-out eye sliding down the screen. The Flamewall launcher would burn the flesh off enemies in a couple of seconds, leaving the charred (and smiling!) skeletons standing for a moment before collapsing (still smiling!) to the ground. The ''God Mode'' powerup enabled the player to launch enemy-seeking balls of lighting that would disintegrate, albeit bloodlessly, any enemy they touched. And, Apogee never being the types to pass up the opportunity for a cheap joke, ''Dog Mode'' allowed the player to charge up a sonic dog bark, spontaneously popping every Mook within range like a pressed grape.

** Enabling "Engine Killing Gibs" mode in ''Rise of the Triad'' forcibly set all baddie-fragging animations to the "Ludicrous Gibs!" splatter, thereby increasing the amount of gore several times and creating massive clouds of body parts when enemies were blown up. If you watched closely you could see enemies' severed hands ''wiggling their middle fingers'' while flying through the air along with the eyeball splattering into the screen and sliding down. Also, it's worth noting that while modern processors would (and do - look up GLRott) eat the game's code for lunch without missing a beat, in the 386/486 era during which the game was initially released, the amount of gore being rendered (with no GPU assistance as this predated true 3D games) may very well have been literally ''engine-killing'', posing too great a challenge for the CPUs of the day to draw and either slowing the game to a crawl or crashing it completely.

 

 

* ''[[Diablo (series)|Diablo]] II'' has any monster with the 'Fire Enchanted' trait promptly cover a decent amount of the ground with themselves upon death. This gets especially silly with the boss of the Flayer Dungeon, as you have to defeat him twice and has Fire Enchanted in both forms. Necromancers can do this to nearly any dead enemy with Raise Skeleton (Mage) or Corpse Explosion, as well.

** Some monsters also break into gibs upon a normal sword-bashing death. It's funny to cast the resurrection spell with a necromancer on them and watch the death animation play backwards. Gibs fly into the air and connect with each other, forming a fully functional undead monster.

 

 

* In the arcade rail shooter ''[[Carn Evil]]'', damn near everything gibs but the skeletons at the end. This is especially fun when it takes more than one shot to take an enemy down.

* The arcade [[Light Gun Game]] ''Friction'' has enemies occasionally explode into pieces upon being shot. There's no blood though, [[Narm/Video Games|giving the impression that the enemies are made of glass]].

 

 

* Two quests in ''[[World of Warcraft]]: Wrath of the Lich King'' involve collecting meat. One requires throwing high explosives at mammoths, the other requires throwing them [[Feed It a Bomb|into]] giant worms.

** Even ''more'' ludicrously, Death Knights who specialize in the Unholy aspect of their class receive the gruesome attack "Corpse Explosion", which does [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|exactly what you'd expect.]] Not only does this result in ''weaponized ludicrous gibs'', you can enhance the ability so that if it kills an enemy it makes ''them explode'' in a chain reaction.

 

 

* Whenever The Kid dies in the freeware [[Metroidvania]] game ''[[I Wanna Be the Guy]]'' (and trust us when we say he ''will'' die...''[[Nintendo Hard|very often]]''), he explodes into little 8-bit giblets, even for something as minor as touching the edge of a spike pit, or ''getting hit by a falling apple''.

** [[Comically Missing the Point|They're really more like giant cherries]]...

 

 

* In the ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'' RTS ''[[Dawn of War]]'', units in melee can perform [[Finishing Move|sync kills]] on other units, which are often bloody and gory. Of special note are the [[Our Orcs Are Different|Ork]] [[Authority Equals Asskicking|Warboss]]' sync kill against most infantry units, where he grabs the unit in his claw and smashes it against the ground head-first as though a particularly angry child, and most of the [[Humongous Mecha|Dreadnought]] sync kills, one of which involve grabbing the enemy in a claw and [[Kill It with Fire|blasting it with a flamethrower]], another of which appears to show the Dreadnought ''blending'' the unfortunate enemy. Add in that shooting enemies causes blood and gibs to fly out as well, and battlefields can get quite bloody.

** That last instance is definitely an example of the trope: large blobs of blood and organs will fly out of a corpse when they die, but the corpse itself remains completely whole as it falls to the ground, making one wonder where all those chunks of meat actually came from. Ludicrous indeed.

 

 

* Bungie's ''[[Myth]]'' series of RTT games had hunks of blood and gore flying off melee'd opponents and staining the landscape wherever the physics engine had them bounce (with limbs and heads also flying everywhere upon most deaths), high explosives causing victims to be blown to dozens of bloody bits, putrid hunks of pus falling from the undead, and a special unit (the ghol) which would pick up these things to be used as weapons.

** As a matter of fact, ALL of Bungie's pre-Oni games were absurdly bloody, with explosions actually ''liquefying'' those caught in most blasts.

 

 

* ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'' is surprisingly gory for an ASCII-based game. The game's health system is very in-depth, keeping track of every part of every character's body down to eyes, internal organs, and ''individual fingers and toes.'' Gibs, represented as red 2s (or green, or grey, depending on whether it bleeds blood or goo), will litter the surrounding environment if enemies are dismembered, disemboweled, hacked in two, or thrown into a wall with enough force to blow apart. It gets even better in adventure mode, which lets you take control of a single adventurer. This mode includes a blow-by-blow account of every fight, and the ability to pick up and throw the severed bits of enemies (or anything else, for that matter). Thrown objects -- even socks, or [http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=56935.msg1237678#msg1237678 small fluffy animals] -- will often hit with deadly force, breaking bones, damaging organs, or splattering brains across the floor. Ludicrous gibs indeed.

** It's not unheard of for outside-the-fortress battles in DF to involve goblin limbs ending up in trees. And then there's the aforementioned "thrown into a wall" example, in which parts can go several vertical levels above the original goblin. That's taller than the ''tree'' he hit.

 

 

* The first two ''[[Fallout]]'' games rewarded the player with extra gruesome death animations that would play some of the time if the player inflicted a large amount of damage in a single attack. If one gave the player character the special trait "Bloody Mess" during creation, the most spectacular death animations would always play when an enemy died. The full list of splattery animations is:

** Shot or stabbed to death: A large hole appears in the target's torso.

 

 

* The original ''NARC'' arcade game. Blast an enemy with explosives, and watch the graphically detailed gibs fly.

** Even the NES version [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|got this past the radar]]. Then again, with all the other filth in the game, it's a wonder Nintendo approved it at all.

 

 

* Justified in ''[[Dead Space (video game)|Dead Space]]'': it's all about blowing off the enemies' ''limbs'' because headshots don't work.

* In ''[[Resident Evil 4]]'', when you shoot an enemy in the head and kill it, its head explodes -- a bit over-the-top, but not totally unreasonable. Where it gets truly ridiculous is that ''the same thing happens if you kill them by kicking them.''

 

 

* The ''[[Crusader: No Remorse|Crusader]]'' games had, in addition to relatively [[Standard FPS Guns]], also some outlandish weapons with gruesome effects.

** The plasma rifle launched a ball of blue plasma about the size of a fist that enveloped and instantaneously vaporized the victim (rather than just burning a hole the size of the projectile).

 

 

* In ''[[Jagged Alliance]] 2'', a head shot from close range sometimes causes [[Your Head Asplode|the enemy's head to burst apart]], releasing a gush of [[High-Pressure Blood]] from the neck stump. A close-range chest impact could cause a similar burst of blood to fly from the back of the enemy (or even one of your own mercs or [[NPC|NPCs]]) as the unfortunate victim was flung about 1,5 meters backwards. Also, grenades or mortar rounds could turn people into (briefly) living torches.

** Oddly enough, though, said grenades or mortar rounds didn't cause ludicrous gibs, ''when they ever actually killed anyone''.

 

 

* ''[[Scarface the World Is Yours]]'' had a sniper rifle, shotgun, carbine and a Desert Eagle capable of dismembering foes. Of course, there's the chainsaw too.

* Every time you kill someone in ''[[No More Heroes]]'', they explode into a huge shower of blood. The game was pre-emptively censored by the developers for Japan and Europe, with the splatter replaced by an explosion of black pixels and coins raining down, which still kind of fits the mood in an old-school arcade game kind of way.

 

 

* Late in ''[[Shikabane Hime]]'', [[Big Bad|Hokuto]] punches someone so hard they turn into red mist and leave nothing but their kimono floating off in the wind. Noteworthy for being a case of "slapping into a red mist" not being hyperbole.

* Full-body explosion is the fate of more than a few of Kenshiro's enemies in ''[[Fist of the North Star]]''. [[You Are Already Dead]], indeed.

 

 

* Lots and lots in [[Poke Wars]], as a result of the removal of the [[Power Limiter|dampeners]] keeping Pokemon attacks from being lethal.

* What happens to a Scyther in ''[[New World]]'' after encountering Mewtwo.

 

 

* The 2008 ''[[Rambo]]'' film is packed with ludicrous amounts of gore. Which is fine when an anti-aircraft gun is being used, less so when even a mere rifle shot turns limbs into doom-esque fountains of blood and bone fragments!

** Not as unrealistic you may think and actually more truth than gore for gore's sake. The sniper for example is using a .50 caliber rifle originally designed to take out armored vehicles and aircraft! As disgusting as it seems, that's what happens to the human body when high-caliber (even regular 5.56 or 7.62) rifle rounds hit it.

 

 

* In the [[Dale Brown]] novels ''Fatal Terrain'' and ''Warrior Class'', an aircrewman is shredded by a fighter's cannon and a triple-A emplacement, both firing 23mm rounds, respectively. In ''Strike Force'', {{spoiler|Hal Briggs}}, his [[Motion Capture Mecha]] already severely damaged by anti-tank missiles, is put down for good by 30mm cannon.

* The ''[[Halo (series)|Halo]]'' novel ''Contact Harvest'' introduces the M99 Stanchion, a [[Magnetic Weapons|coilgun]] sniper rifle capable of inducing this trope on anyone it hits. Considering it fires a .21-cal round at 15 kilometers per second, the gory effects are realistic/expected.

 

 

* An episode of ''[[CSI: Miami]]'' features a man whose gun has about [[More Dakka|a bajillion barrels]] mounted in the approximate shape of a human body. He calls it [[Spell My Name with a "The"|the]] [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|Vaporizer]]. Its effect on a human body [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|is, well]]....

** [[Special Effects Failure]]? [[Conspicuous CGI]]?

 

 

* There's an example in ''[[Dark Heresy]]'s'' Critical Damage tables, where the developers took what looks to me like a disturbing amount of glee in describing, for example, the results of a high-explosive shell to the head. Some damage results can result in ''other characters'' being injured by flying shards of bone. This is turned up to [[Ludicrous Gibs]] when one considers how [[Critical Existence Failure]] works in this game. A [[Red Shirt|starting character]] can take approximately ten damage before hitting the Critical Damage charts. These charts are rough, but generally survivable, up to roughly 8 points of critical damage. If a starting character is hit with a burst of bolt gunfire for 17 damage, he may be critically injured on the ground. Then when he is punched in the face for two more damage, his head may spontaneously explode, because that's what the Critical Damage Chart says happens.

** ''[[Rogue Trader]]'' and ''[[Deathwatch (game)|Deathwatch]]'', which use the same system, both use the same rules.

 

 

* Belkar Bitterleaf turned his [[Evil Counterpart]] (well, [[Sociopathic Hero|Good Counterpart]]) into a salsa dip after getting a large number of adventurers to [[Zerg Rush|gank him]]. Or at least, cut off his tail and stuck it into a jar of salsa. He also used said kobold's head as a chip bowl.

** The kobold in question is attempting to avenge his father, whose head ended up as Belkar's hat.

 

 

* During the infamous Byford Dolphin [[Explosive Decompression]] accident, one of the divers was sucked through the hatch and "reduced to pot roast".

* Being [[Turbine Blender|sucked into a jet engine.]]