When you gotta go...
Being suddenly struck by the urgent need to void your bowels is a game-changer. Usually, decent human beings set a bar for where they'll excrete their bodily waste, and would prefer the comforts of clean porcelain instead of a slimy, unsanitary excuse for a lavatory. But when your sphincter starts to feel like a slowly crumbling dam, you're overcome by the defecation version of fight or flight: you either find a toilet now, or suffer the embarrassment of soiling your pants in public. In these dire straits, what might otherwise seem like the most disgusting latrine on the planet suddenly becomes--for the briefest of moments--a butt-coaxing oasis.
Games, particularly those in the survival horror genre, love to turn bathrooms in nightmarish scenes of filth, gore, and errant feces. Now, we're not talking about the weirdest things we've ever found in toilets--we're talking the bathrooms themselves. Unhygienic, grim, and often smeared in the sort of bodily fluids that aren't restricted to the waist down, these are the nastiest bathrooms weve ever encountered in a video game. But yeah, we'd probably still use them if we were moments away from shitting our pants.
Dead Space
I really feel for Isaac Clarke. If he's not fending off parasitical, spleen-shattering alien organisms, he's reduced to freshening himself up with the galaxy's most blood-clogged sinks. Desperately trying to keep your pelvis intact from carnivorous space beasties is one thing. Expecting a man to survive in a derelict spaceship for 20 hours without treating his hands to the comforting cleanliness of soap and water is another thing entirely.
Duke Nukem Forever
Much like the finale in Journey, the severity of this scene is really just a reflection of the player. Maybe your version of Duke Nukem chooses to defecate into toilets and leave his logs as they lie. Alternatively, some players will be unable to resist the temptation of grabbing wet feces, then chuck it around the room like they're artists enacting a smelly piece of performance art. It's subversive, in a way--the amount of stool splattered on every surface in sight is very telling of who you are as a person. But no matter how much excrement you decide to smear on the walls, there's no getting around the fact that Duke does not wipe, flush, or wash his hands after defecating. Ugh.
Final Fight
As 16-bit bogs go, Final Fight's pixelated depository for human waste is pretty grim. For starters, it's outside, meaning there's a high chance of freezing your balls off before your bladder juice ever graces the urinal. Next, it's covered in sharp implements of death, so you'll probably get stabbed by the suspicious-looking guy on the right. Worst of all, though, the doors to the stalls are adorned with ber-offensive '80s virtual graffiti. "Sexy"? There are kids present, you know.
Doom 3
What you're looking at is the most extreme version of the always embarrassing "WOAH! Occupied!" scenario. There you are, thinking you can take a leak and get back to hellion-blasting before your shotgun turns cold. But what you unwittingly walk in on is far worse than any drunken hobo, utterly defiling a public restroom, with the door unlocked. Instead of bladder relief, you find a Pinky demon chewing on what appears to be the facilities' final patron. On the upside, the pee trickling down your pants leg is a strong indication that a trip to the urinal will no longer be necessary.
Dear Esther
JESUS CHRIST, ESTHER! I'd rather defecate into that rusty metal bucket on the ground than put my butthole anywhere near this brown-strained abomination. The only possible scenario I can imagine that led to this toilet's present state is that ten years ago, someone decided it would be a funny prank if they "forgot" to flush after expelling supersonic sewer sauce from their anus.
Outlast
Let me take this opportunity to salute care workers around the world, because I can think of few jobs less desirable than overseeing the bathroom habits of the criminally insane. The Mount Massive Asylum was already a dreary place before all the psychotic murderers took over, and the state of its lavatories has only declined since. Used to be, you might walk in on a clogged toilet, or a bowl where someone let their yellow (or, God forbid, brown) mellow. Nowadays, it's all severed human limbs and disemboweled organs. On the plus side, chopped-off arms work great as a TP replacement when you're in a pinch. Do not ask me how I know that.
Prey
Over the course of Prey's portal jumping, dimension-hopping, alien-murdering escapades, you'll see some truly repugnant shit. But nothing compares to the truly horrendous sight that befalls Tommy's eyeballs within the first thirty seconds of the game. Show me loved ones getting brutally slaughtered and I'm a cold, detached husk of a human being. Show me a toilet pan after it's just been assaulted by someone with a bad case of bleeding hemorrhoids and I'm a blubbering, inconsolable baby.
Fallout 3
The computerized cans in Fallout 3 are an offense to virtual asses everywhere. Grimy and dilapidated, they're the type of toilets that make you have an accident while trying to hold on until you get home. Even worse, they're filled with irradiated water, which Fallout's reluctant hero often has to drink from. Now that's the sign of a bad toilet: severe radiation poisoning with a big dollop of cancer to look forward to after you've wiped your ass.
Borderlands 2
Having to endure the cramped spaces, funky smells, and strange stains of a Port-A-Potty is already a trial, but this is about as gross as it gets. The second you open the latch on this john, a tidal wave of greenish-brown slurry comes spilling out, possibly causing you to vomit right then and there. Even if you can get over the fact that your shoes and pants are now covered with a thick film of liquid shit, how could any sane person bring themselves to sit on a seat that's been soaking in poo for hours (if not days)? Oh, and if your PC's PhysX engine is glitching out, you'll actually be treated to an endless waterfall of sludgy excrement. Yippee! Or rather, Yippoop!
