Some moments in video games escape the industry bubble and become known in pop culture and news, and sometimes, that happens for weird or wrong reasons. These are missions in games that caused a bit of a stir and made people talk, maybe even made some people upset. Look, a lot of these things might sound kinda lame to some of you hardcore guys out there, but trust us, these video game levels cause controversy one way or another.
10. “Ready or Not” – The Elephant Mission
Starting off at number 10 with something recent, Ready or Not. This is a game about a big city SWAT team, but the developers flirted with widespread controversy with multiple missions. There are multiple levels inspired by real-world shootings, which, I mean, does make sense. This is a realistic police simulation game, so it makes sense to include realistic SWAT scenarios for your heavily armed coppers to fight. The world is grim, this work is grim, and it’s trying to reflect that.
But look, up to you. Whether any of these missions are in good taste is another matter completely because several levels were built to actually mirror the real-life counterparts, and one of those missions is a pretty queasy recreation. The Elephant mission depicts an active shooter situation at a community college. There are four suspects in gas masks and body armor that plant bombs in the school and actively search for civilians to shoot.
It’s pretty eerie spotting one of these guys and inevitably taking ’em down, even if our SWAT team ended up being, like, one of the best ever. We managed to arrest all four suspects. Now, without getting too graphic, that kind of peaceful outcome is pretty unlikely in this game.
Now, what the real thing with this isn’t the tense shootouts, it’s how the school is explicitly designed to kind of match the Columbine High School massacre. The shooters look the same and have the option to say some pretty gross things, even if we only heard some of them regularly say they’ve gone too far to stop now before actually opening fire.
Like, you might be asking, “Is this really that controversial?” The mission did cause a stir years ago online, but the real controversy is actually pretty recent. So, to ensure a console release, the developers were required to remove a whole lot of the mature or grim real-world content from the game. That was to get on PS5, but it wasn’t just on PS5, it also reflected the previously released PC version. Patches removed the content on PC.
Now, look, you can always argue or naval-gaze, like, whether Ready or Not stuff here is, you know, ready to tackle these big issues in depth. Like, that’s besides the point. Cutting content out post release, like having cut content on a game you already bought, that kinda sucks, man.
Also, statistically, some of you watch but aren’t subscribed, and you would’ve known more about Ready or Not if you caught our Before You Buy video we did on this. So, maybe consider subscribing for more stuff like that.
9. “The Punisher” – The Zoo Level
Next over number nine, The Punisher video game, one of my favorite. It looks almost adorable in a world where Mortal Kombat fatalities are rendered in this, like, extreme detail, but this game genuinely caused a stir when the demo dropped way back in 2004.
The ESRB almost dropped an Adults Only rating on this game and for a pretty ridiculous reason. It has to do with the interrogations, so, like, Frank Castle essentially can grab dudes and then threaten them with violent death. There are wood chippers, windows you have to shove people’s head through, knives, pots of hot oil, but it’s the fish that set off the ESRB.
So, in the zoo level, you’ll actually be able to grab a bad guy and stick their face in a fish tank full of deadly piranhas. You gently move the analog stick, shoving their face in there. The zoo level is the playable level in that demo that we mentioned, and therefore became like a real lightning rod for controversy among the type of people that wouldn’t ever even buy a video game.
The zoo isn’t any more violent than any other part of the game. And still, the kills were completely censored. Instead of watching a cute little gruesome, like, murder of bad guys, you get a black and white version that sometimes totally obscures the actual deaths.
Maybe it’s the fact that you get to control the kill, like I said, like moving the joystick slowly like some kind of weird serial killer. But again, hey, I think they’re just going for The Punisher experience here. They were trying to be authentic to the source material.
And from a modern perspective, like, none of this is even remotely that violent. You get, like, a big poof of blood. That’s what the ESRB had to censor to protect us. Sometimes, controversy really just makes no sense here.
8. “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II” – No Russian
Next at number eight, sometimes controversies are inevitable. Like, we couldn’t do a list of controversial missions in games without talking about No Russian from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II. This is like the undisputed king of controversy, just a disturbing mission.
This mission is so infamous, it has a warning message before you play, and it offers to let you skip the level entirely. That’s pretty impressive because the mission is also the entire linchpin for the story, but also, we don’t blame anyone for skipping this one.
Look, we all know what this mission is by now, but we’ll recap it anyway. So, in No Russian, you take part in a full-on active shooter massacre. You’re a spy, you’re working undercover to capture a team of terrorists, but you’re unexpectedly forced to help them. You’re not a bad guy, but you’re actively participating in the outright slaughter of civilians, essentially to maintain your cover.
Whether you pull the trigger is actually up to you, but you’ll still have to walk and watch as armored men just blow away dozens of digital people in an airport. It’s all a little cheesy, a little over the top, but it still can be uncomfortable to certain players.
On the other hand, it’s also been memed to death at this point in 2025. Look, No Russian is controversial for obvious reasons. It’s an uncomfortable level that feels a little too real to be fun, but that’s the point. It’s the shocking moment to end all shocking moments, and it exceeds at that.
And believe me, you had to be there ’cause this one totally popped off. It hit mainstream media, mainstream news. Talking heads were complaining about it, how violent video games are. That whole argument ramped up once again. It’s inevitable, it’s never ending.
Honestly, they’ve tried since No Russian to top that. They’ve tried to push boundaries again, but they’ve never really come close. Whether you like it or not, it’s one for the video game history books, for sure.
7. “GTA V” – By the Book
Now, next over at number seven, it’s surprising that a relatively tame mission caused such a stir in GTA V. There are multiple missions where your characters gun down dozens of cops or soldiers or even civilians that didn’t get any media attention at all.
All the controversy, all the outrage, all the questioning went to a little mission called By the Book, where Trevor tortures a dude for information. So, you’re switching between Michael in the field and Trevor in the warehouse, and you’ll get to choose different torture implements to get answers, but they all basically do the same thing.
What’s controversial here is the use of waterboarding, which isn’t really a new thing in video games, I don’t think. The novel part of this mission is that you choose, so you’re basically implicit in torturing a dude in some pretty violent ways.
Look, it doesn’t seem that much worse than anything depicted on TV shows or movies or other video games at the time, but GTA V exposes this stuff to a much, much wider audience. It’s the world’s most popular game, so of course it caught mainstream attention and people took issue with it.
This scene was apparently cut from the Japanese version of the game entirely, just proving how much of a lightning rod it had become, and you don’t even need to do all the torturing either. Once you reach the sniper section, if you know who to shoot and where, you can end the mission there and help save the dude from having to spend more time with Trevor.
A lot of conversation at the time, but I’ll be completely honest, I totally forgot this mission existed until I started talking about it in this video.
6. “Hitman: Absolution” – Saints Mission
Next at number six, the Saints mission in Hitman: Absolution really exemplifies the grindhouse aesthetic that the game chose to embrace, a bit of a shift or really a ramp up from the previous Hitman games. This is the fifth one, and it really rolls in its own filth. You can practically feel the grime dripping.
There’s a more slimy quality to Hitman: Absolution that was very in vogue for video games at the time, and the Saints mission caused the most stir, even if it’s hardly the weirdest or craziest thing we’ve seen in a game.
In Hitman: Absolution, our bald pal, Agent 47, is targeted by the agency he works for and they send a team of BDSM latex ninja nuns to take him out while he’s staying at this hotel. This leads to a series of encounters where Agent 47 has to defeat each of these ninja assassin nun ladies. You can go loud with guns or sneak around, discover hidden methods like dropping a piano on their heads. It’s like a patently ridiculous mission.
That’s easily more controversial because of the trailer showing Agent 47 fighting the over-sexualized nuns violently, something that you can’t really do that much in the actual game. Controversial for some people, you know, the violence, the depiction of women, but also just it was so stupid and it also just felt really out of character for a Hitman game.
They were edgy, they pushed the boundaries in certain ways, but this just felt more cartoony and comic book-y than what we were used to as Hitman fans who had played from the beginning. The missions did even have some flashes of brilliance, though. Agent 47 gets to kinda stalk some of these targets around in a cornfield, and you could disguise yourself as a scarecrow and wait around. That’s pretty cool, I gotta admit.
5. “Spec Ops: The Line” – Chapter 8
Next at number five, the developers of Spec Ops: The Line were given a really tough task. They had to make a sequel to the long dormant Spec Ops franchise and they had to make it interesting. The devs at YAGER Development might have gone above and beyond because we’re still talking about this game while other bottom-of-the-basement military shooter franchisees are really forgotten.
Spec Ops: The Line was designed to be shocking, to say something, to subvert the expectations of military games enthusiasts, and really hold up a mirror to the people playing these types of games.
Whether it does any of those things well is a discussion for somewhere other than here and for smarter people. But look, Spec Ops wanted to shock, tell an interesting story, make you think. And if there wasn’t any controversy over Chapter 8, you didn’t really read every major news and video game website in 2012.
So, what actually happens in Chapter 8? In this game, you lead a squad of soldiers into a ruined Dubai to fight a rogue American general and his battalion of soldiers. You’ll use a variety of cool military weapons to do this, and one of those weapons is a white phosphorus mortar.
That’s a mortar shell that rains down incredibly hot, incendiary material that burns so bright it turns white. This stuff is used for signaling in the real world, but in video games, it’s used like an over-the-top flame thrower.
Your team targets an enemy camp you can’t see, then they do it, and then they go on in to check on the destruction and make sure it’s all clear. That’s when you realize it was a refugee camp and you’ve just wiped out a group of innocent people. It’s an iconic scene these days.
A memorable moment in the gray and brown years of video games where, like, a shocking, genuinely horrifying moment broke free of the gamer bubble. Really cool, really creative effective storytelling in the realm of video games.
4. “Fallout 3” – The Power of the Atom
Next at number four, the Power of the Atom quest from Fallout 3 is one of the biggest temptations in games. You’re offered to help a town by disarming an unexploded nuclear bomb or you can set it off yourself.
On one side of the coin, you’ll have a huge town full of characters and shops to use for your future adventures, and on the other, you get to watch a big town blow up for (chuckles) no real reason and no worthwhile monetary reward.
Sure, it’s one of the quest completion states, but saving the town will always be more worthwhile from a gameplay perspective than destroying it. But we really, really wanted to see what happens. Like I said, it’s tempting. It’s a kind of choice only a video game can do.
We’ll do anything out of morbid curiosity in a game, and this mission is one of the most absurd. It’s kind of amazing Bethesda even gave us this option because there’s really no good reason to blow up the town, except that we wanna see an Earth-shattering kaboom, and we get one.
If you choose to help out the rich weirdos at Tenpenny Tower, you’ll flip a switch and blow up Megaton while watching from a high balcony. It’s a really crazy sight. And you can even return to the smoking ruins of the town to find a few survivors that’ll just attack you on sight.
Sure, the crater isn’t exactly nuclear bomb-sized, but Fallout 3 works on a different scale. And the controversy comes in from, like, the game actually removing this mission entirely from the Japanese version. The character of Mister Burke who gives this quest also never appears in that version of the game.
Whether this is an act of self-censorship, we don’t really know, but that removal does show that, you know, this was a sensitive topic for certain people. And even that aside, it is a mission that’s just notorious in Fallout 3. If you talk about Fallout 3 today, that’s the mission everybody really references.
3. “Manhunt 2” – Censorship and Cut Content
Now at number three, Manhunt 2 might be one of the most scrutinized games of the 21st century. If you were around to remember it, it’s a game that sparked multiple controversies just after its announcement.
Manhunt 2 was accused of many things by many different government agencies in many countries, but nothing in the game seems particularly worse or more gruesome than the first Manhunt game. If anything, Manhunt 2 is an easier story that seems a lot less bleak than the original game, where packs of mass killers just hunt your character for sport in a twisted televised game show.
The sequel was censored in a variety of ways, and I think it was the controversy of the first game. Kills were removed, filters were applied to cover up some executions, and an entire gameplay mechanic got pulled out at the last minute.
In early versions of the game, apparently, there were innocent people the player could choose to murder, all at the behest of a sinister voice inside your character’s head. The ending would then change, depending on whether you listened to the voice or ignored it, and obviously, that’s a pretty big change to the overall story.
The game actually caught the attention of notorious Jack Thompson, an infamous lawyer that sued basically every video game publisher. That was really kicked off by Rockstar Games and Grand Theft Auto.
But the real controversy came from US senators writing to the ESRB, concerned with content from the game and pushing for an Adults Only rating. All this led to yet another gameplay mechanic totally removed.
In Manhunt 2, you would be scored on how quickly and how brutally you killed enemies. By charging up your stealth kills, you’d perform more violent executions. This feature was totally removed to avoid the dreaded AO rating, even though the first game used this exact system with no issues.
Controversy doesn’t need to make sense. People need a scapegoat, and Manhunt 2 was picked, and that was that.
2. “Night Trap” – The Senate Hearings
Now at number two, if you thought the controversy surrounding Manhunt 2 was overblown, then get a load of Night Trap. This extremely cheesy, now classic FMV game, it got caught up in this whole Senate hearing over the perceived violent and sexual content of the game.
Night Trap somehow is actually, like, one of the reasons the ESRB exists. All those little E, T, or M ratings slapped on video games, that’s thanks to Night Trap, and more specifically, it’s about a single scene from Night Trap that made a whole bunch of people upset in the real world.
Night Trap is a game about watching a weird family of vampires, but these aren’t normal vampires. Instead of sucking blood with their teeth, they use giant plastic grabber devices. Also, they wear dumpy hazmat suits and they hobble around like cartoon henchmen.
This supposedly violent video game doesn’t actually feature a single drop of blood, and even the infamous attack sequence in the bathroom features no nudity, no actual violence, but just, like, a lot of awkward shuffling around.
It’s next level absurd that Night Trap, of all things, received any scrutiny, a game that most video game players at the time didn’t really wanna play, that would’ve come and gone as another bizarre FMV curiosity, but it is now cemented as one of the most important video games of all time.
Controversy and getting attention is like that sometimes.
1. “Command & Conquer: Generals” – Cosmodrome
Now down at number one, Command & Conquer: Generals is probably a lot of people’s least favorite C&C game. It has all the over-the-top silliness, but none of the fun of the Red Alert games, and it doesn’t have a consistent story or world building like the mainline titles.
It’s simply this goofy, stupid game that just reflects a time in American history. This is straight up a war-on-terror game and it’s one of the few that lets you take control of its fictional terrorist faction. If you’ve been paying attention to this list, you might understand why this is something to talk about.
There are three story campaigns in C&C: Generals. You’ll play as the Chinese Red Army, the Americans, and a fictional Middle Eastern organization called the GLA. The GLA are your basic Al-Qaeda analogs that time period had with everything that entails. Suicide bombers, trucks full of explosives, all that, and it’s all handled with the level of sensitivity you’d expect from an extremely silly game.
It’s a cartoon with cartoon accents and no nuance.
The GLA is just like cartoonish bad guys, and you get to join in on the fun in the final controversial mission of their campaign. In the Cosmodrome mission, your band of wily terrorists take over a post-Soviet rocket base. After defeating the American and Chinese defenders, the bad guys load a rocket full of anthrax. Yes, again, this is very of the time. Remember anthrax? And then they do this and they bomb a major city.
Look, it’s really hard to take any of this seriously. The tiny models, the bad voice acting, you know, it might be a shocking scene to someone, but to most people, it’s just funny. But not everyone agreed. This mission was censored in European countries like Germany, where the final cut scene was removed entirely. It isn’t the only cut with multiple other references to real locations and organizations changed.
Look, it’s a dark mission, and now you all know about it. It isn’t even the darkest mission in the game though, there’s actually a cut GLA level where you control something called a toxin tractor? I don’t know, we’ll leave that up to your imagination.
Final Thoughts
Anyway, those are 10 controversial video game levels that maybe didn’t deserve as much scrutiny as you’d expect. Either way, you can feel how you want. We don’t care either way. We just wanted to take a look back at video game history. And honestly, we probably missed some levels. There are plenty of weird, wonderful levels out there, so let us know what you’re thinking. But as always, thanks for reading. We’ll see you guys next time.
