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The 10 Nastiest Video Game Foods That’ll Ruin Your Appetite
Polygon has compiled a list of the most stomach-churning food items found in video games, highlighting how developers occasionally use their design skills to create deliberately unappetising virtual meals rather than tempting ones. The feature celebrates these grotesque details as memorable moments of world-building or dark humour, even though the foods typically serve a practical gameplay purpose, such as restoring health or boosting stats.
Examples include Fallout's radroach meat, which heals the player while raising radiation levels, and Final Fantasy 15's cake baked from a "Killer Tomato" enemy. Death Stranding features Sam Porter Bridges eating wriggling alien creatures raw for an instant stamina boost, while Xenoblade Chronicles 2's character Mythra prepares a "Literally Killer Tart" from cicadas, scorpions and other insects. The Castlevania series also features unexplained chunks of meat embedded in dungeon walls, which restore health when eaten despite their bizarre and unexplained origin.
In short
- Polygon lists gross-but-functional food items from popular video games.
- Examples include Fallout's radroach meat and Death Stranding's raw creatures.
- These items usually restore health or stats despite their off-putting design.
Explained simply
Video game food is often designed to help players, restoring health or improving abilities during a game. Developers can also use food to build a sense of place or add humour, and some fictional meals are deliberately unpleasant.
The examples come from several different games and series, including Fallout, Final Fantasy, Death Stranding, Xenoblade Chronicles and Castlevania. Their worlds range from post-apocalyptic wastelands to fantasy settings, where strange ingredients and unexplained food can make the surroundings feel unusual.
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