Brian Cox Starred in One of the Most Controversial Video Games Ever

In the vein of rock ‘n’ roll or Dungeons & Dragons, there was a period of time where video games were pointed to as the latest scourge corrupting young minds. The wanton violence that was accessible to the youth with the press of a power button was greeted with widespread parental and Congressional pearl-clutching. Looking back at some of the games they were mad at, like Mortal Kombat, is laughable, given their cartoonish quality. 

Looking back at Manhunt, however, you start to see how it ruffled some feathers.

Manhunt, released in 2003 by Rockstar Games, already under fire for their Grand Theft Auto series, was hyperviolent in a much less comfortable way. Even if we remove all the actual audiovisual content and just relay the basic elevator pitch, it’s still something most studios would squirm at. The game followed a death-row inmate, controlled by the player, who is forced by a mysterious director to create snuff films. You would walk around and use various less-than-surgical objects to murder other characters, receiving style points based on how gruesome each kill was. Even some of the people making the game found it disturbing, and even the version that hit store shelves had a bunch of scenes removed just to avoid a full-on ban. Not that it stopped the game from being outlawed outright in New Zealand.

All this is well-documented, though, and I’m not here to retread those details. If you look up the game on YouTube or watch any footage though, there might be something else that bothers you outside of the gore. While listening to the voice of Lionel Starkweather, the “Director” that’s instructing you to murder people and congratulating you on your bloodcraft, you might ask yourself, “Is that Brian Cox?”

Yes. Yes, it is. So, if you’ve ever wondered what it would sound like if Logan Roy encouraged someone to create “torrents of gore, TORRENTS!”, wonder no longer.