Science is fantastic. By way of the perfect combinations of imagination and logic, scientific pursuits make the impossible possible. Not only is this true in reality, but it also serves as a great foundation to storytelling. That said, stories wouldn’t be interesting if everything always went the way we wanted, would they? Of course not. That’s why science and the dreams of tomorrow often turn into nightmares ranging from failure to outright unethical horror. And what better place to explore failed science than in video games where the consequences must be faced head-on?

We just had to go into our favorite games and pull the best examples of this concept together into one place. Often times, they’re the primers that set off plots of stories ranging from one game to entire franchises. Sometimes the backlash is more positive and other times it’s a catastrophic event of epic proportions, but regardless of where it lies on the spectrum, these science projects run amok inform some of the most interesting worlds in the video game history. Heaven help us if most any of them come true. These are the top video game science projects gone awry.

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