Older women in video gamesoften fall under two categories: the kindly, supportive grandmother, or the malicious, terrifying she-beast (sometimes harboring a supernatural monster). Older women are not chosen to be the protagonists of their video games or stories, commonly deemed uninteresting and irrelevant to the type of content that audiences want to experience. What is it about the older woman that primes them to be suited for the horror genre and relegated to cliché villains in gaming? It could be speculated that fear of old women in horror gaming stems from the fear of the fragile turned threatening; the facade of innocence and physical weakness associated with aging produces scares in gaming when an elderly woman suddenly demonstrates physical strength that defies the laws of nature.
Another answer could be the superficial fear of women who show signs of aging, who appear haggard and unappealing and are therefore “creepy” to look at, in an industry where players can extensively customize their avatars to swipe away unsightly imperfections. Whatever the exact root cause of innate terror regarding older women in gaming, irony is hugely prevalent: women are expected to be kind, weak, and in need of assistance past a certain age, so senior female antagonists are cruel, independent, and demonstrate superhuman strength. This being said, just because the trope of sinister, creepy older women has been overplayed doesn’t mean that theseformidable older female antagonistsdon’t effectively stand out as horrific villains in their own right. On the contrary, the mere sight of these mature villainesses and their sadistic crimes should trigger immediate screaming and fleeing from most gamers.
The main female antagonist inResident Evil 7: Biohazardfirst appears as a young child calledEveline, using her innocence to lure unsuspecting victims into protecting her, and as a result, contracting the Mold infection. However, Eveline ages rapidly (twenty-five times faster than a normal person) between theDaughtersDLC timeline and the arrival of protagonist Ethan Winters inResident Evil 7: Biohazard.This means that the old woman slumped at the Baker’s dinner table (that players mistakenly assumed was the Bakers' grandmother) is actually Eveline.
Players encounter this withered, older version of Eveline multiple times throughout the gameplay, immobile in a wheelchair and seemingly a docile victim in the Baker house. Deceptively, Eveline sobs “Why does everyone hate me?” before her body decays into a black sludge, converting into her true form of black Mold with a distorted human face. This transformation triggers the final boss fight of the game, whereby Winters mustdefeat Eveline in battleby using anti-toxin bullets. Eveline truly embodies the horror trope of a “scary elderly woman in wheelchair” despite posing no threat, as most players are likely to be unnerved by her presence even before uncovering her true identity as this game’s big baddie.
Masquerading as an level-headed, peaceful liberator,Sofia Lambis the tyrannical matriarch that inherits the underwater utopia of Rapture in the sequel to Irrational Games’ highly acclaimed first-person shooter,BioShock.Formerly a psychiatrist who treated victims of the Hiroshima bombing, Lamb rejected the world above when her ideology was used to justify violence; she instead provided free therapy for the underprivileged in Rapture until her popularity made her a threat to Rapture’s leadership and resulted in her imprisonment. Despite her noble, altruistic beginnings, Lamb is quickly corrupted by a vengeful, power-hungry trajectory whereby she uses her cult following to escape prison and conquer Rapture.
Her arc as the primary antagonist inBioShock 2is solidified by a series of cruel, ruthless tactical decisions, sacrificing innocents for the “greater good,” including kidnapping little girls from the surface world to help harvest rare, addictive genetic material. Worst of all is Lamb’s treatment of her daughter, Eleanor, who she grooms to be a hyper-intelligent vessel carrying her mother’s ideals with no autonomy of her own. To gain full control over her daughter, Lamb severs Eleanor’s connection to hersurrogate father and designated ‘Big Daddy,’Delta, by forcing Delta to kill himself in front of a traumatized Eleanor. However, Eleanor refuses to forget Delta, reviving him and linking them so that Delta is conscious as long as Eleanor’s heart beats. Undeterred, Lamb suffocates Eleanor to disable Delta again, and attempts to detonate bombs to ensure Eleanor lives or dies for Lamb’s ideals. As players fight throughBioShock 2as Delta, desperate to reconnect with their surrogate daughter, they consistently hear Lamb’s sinister, twisted monologs play over the radio, immersing them in the eerie feeling of being steadily brainwashed by one of theBioShockseries’ greatest villains.
As matriarch of the violent, cannibalistic Baker family,Marguerite Bakercemented her reputation inResident Evil 7: Biohazardas one of the creepiest older female antagonists in recent gaming history. The tragedy of Marguerite is that she was originally an empathetic, kind mother who welcomed strangers into her home, as seen in theDaughtersDLC prequel. Her husband Jack rescued Eveline from the ship wreckage brought about by a hurricane, unaware that Eveline was genetically engineered to be the host of the Mold, and infected the Bakers during her stay, until Marguerite and her family were unrecognizably warped.
Marguerite’s kindness is reflected even in the way she inflicts terror through generous gestures, such as cooking (putrid) food for her guests, and becoming murderously violent if her hospitality is declined. In her worst possessed form, Marguerite moves like a spider, climbing walls and projectile vomiting bugs, her face and voice harsher in every way. Marguerite Baker is the epitome of happy homemaker turned homicidal monster.
Terrifying female antagonists in Red Barrel’sOutlastfranchise have been few and far between, especially since the inmates that debuted inOutlastin 2013 were all part of an all-male asylum.The Outlast Trialsturned a page for the series, not only switching from the isolating single-player format to a chaotic multiplayer co-op, but bringing a new female antagonist into the flickering spotlight.Mother Gooseberryis a former dental assistant and children’s show host and (if her previous occupations weren’t scary enough) the owner of a disturbing duck-like puppet with a top hat and a whirring drill in its mouth, used to attack players and her “children.” The puppet is said to embody her aggressive father, confirmed by the fact that Mother Gooseberry grew up with the name Phyllis Futterman, daughter of a dentist, and she calls the puppet “Dr. Futterman” and “Daddy.”
As a child, Phyllis was her father’s dental assistant, using a puppet to comfort and entertain his young patients. She was so charismatic that she went on to host a children’s TV show with the persona “Mother Gooseberry” at the family’s Futterland Studios. After her father’s mysterious death in 1951, Phyllis’ Mother Gooseberry persona became increasingly sinister and dangerous, her TV show quickly transforming into a front to facilitate hooking her child audience on narcotics and encouraging them to commit horrific crimes. During a police raid, Futterland TV Studios was found to be a place of horrors akin to serial killer H.H. Holmes’ infamous hotel, implying the gruesome crimes that Mother Gooseberry committed there. Her TV studio would only be the start of her reign of terror, as she was later recruited by the Murkoff Corporation to torture and run tests on the “Reagants,” a name for players inThe Outlast Trials. Alongside her bloody history, her physical appearance is independently terrifying, due to the experiments enacted on her that left her skin red and peeling, her hair thinning and patchy, and a creepy skin mask lined with faded makeup self-consciously stapled onto her real face. Mother Gooseberry is absurdly fearsome in almost every way, always accompanied by the pale animatronic children that she claims to parent of, and often prone to screeching and giving a murderous chase when spotting players.
Wolfenstein: The New Order and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is the highly-anticipated sequel to the critically acclaimed, Wolfenstein: The New Order developed by the award-winning studio MachineGames. An exhilarating adventure brought to life by the industry-leading id Tech 6, Wolfenstein II sends players to Nazi-controlled America on a mission to recruit the boldest resistance leaders left. Fight the Nazis in iconic American locations, equip an arsenal of badass guns, and unleash new abilities to blast your way through legions of Nazi soldiers in this definitive first-person shooter.America, 1961. The assassination of Nazi General Deathshead was a short-lived victory. The Nazis maintain their stranglehold on the world. You are BJ Blazkowicz, aka “Terror-Billy,” member of the Resistance, scourge of the Nazi empire, and humanity’s last hope for liberty. Only you have the guns and gumption to return stateside, kill every Nazi in sight, and spark the second American Revolution.
Although she appears first as a secondary antagonist inWolfenstein: The New Order,Irene “Frau” Engels’cruelty and sadism from her first moment on-screen marks her as undoubtedly evil and creepy, promoting herself to the main antagonist of the sequelWolfenstein II: The New Colossus.The firstWolfensteintitle was released in 1981 by Muse Software, launching an RPG shooter franchise in which the protagonist fights against Nazis, whether they are part of the occult, zombies, or in abizarre alternative historical timeline. The torch was passed to multiple developers over decades, until MachineGames picked up theWolfensteinlegacy in their reboot series, where Irene Engels was incarnated. A high-ranking SS General, Engels is as unthinkably murderous and twisted as one would expect of a top-ranked Nazi.
Her debut inWolfenstein: The New Orderculminates at her extermination camp, where the intended execution of protagonist B.J. Blazkowicz is foiled by a robot malfunction that causes her face to be horribly disfigured; only minutes later, Engels is attempting to manically gun down Blazkowicz and his friends during their escape. By the game’s end, players kill her lover, Bubi, in front of her, distressing Engels and enraging her to seek vengeance in the sequel. Her reappearance inWolfenstein II: The New Colossusis no less fearsome; within minutes, she beheads a rebel hostage, Caroline, and later decapitates Blazkowicz before he is revived, laughing and mocking their suffering along the way. Not only this, but Engels demonstrates her demented parenting skills by tormenting her daughter, Sigrun, about her weight, threatening to send her to a death camp for “disgracing the family,” which eventually pushes Sigrun to join the rebellion against the Nazis. Engels’ warped ideology is backed up with horrifying violence that theWolfensteinreboot does not flinch away from, making her eventual bloody demise at the player’s hands all the more satisfying and comforting to know that this mature female monster is no longer around.
