The wild minds behind FromSoftware know their strength, and they know how to play into them. This usually refers to the soulslike combat and RPG mechanics. But that’s not the only thing they’ve refined down to a highly skilled science. They have a history of creating some exceedingly, upsettingly grotesque boss encounters.

To be clear, I’m not talking about the scariest bosses, or even the grossest ones, per se. When I say “upsettingly grotesque,” I mean exactly that. These are bosses whose physical and conceptual form gives me that sickening sink in the stomach. The kind of creatures that make you go “🤢”.

For the record: I don’t find insects grotesque. FromSoft’s penchant for bug women is clear, but regardless of how tragic their lore, none of them made their way to this list.

Godrick, The Grafted

Elden Ring

One of the earliest major bosses you encounter, Godrick the Grafted is known for his namesake. He would take the severed body parts of countless soldiers and attach them to his own body. The more he grafted, the more his form became a frightful and unsettling amalgamation of flesh.

But Godrick had the unfortunate circumstance of being in Elden Ring, a game so rife with disturbing creations that the visceral plug-n-play abomination of a body pales in comparison. Even so, he’s still far more disturbing than the average Dark Souls encounter, especially when we see the grafting in action.

The One Reborn

Bloodborne

There are a lot of terrifying concepts in Bloodborne. One of the more recurring ones is the various ways that people have attempted to become a Great Old One, a powerful being of otherworldly form and unknowable power.

The One Reborn was a failed attempt at this. While the details of their creation are not known, it appears to be an entire town’s worth of people’s corpses, melded together to form a rotten, gaunt creature that only vaguely resembles a human. This is like Godrick, but cranked up to 11.

Blood Starved Beast

Bloodborne

The concept of the Blood Starved Beast is terrifying enough. They are creatures (once human?) that have been skinned alive, with their mostly detached skin now draping off of their backs. Their blood has long since been drained from their bodies, making the pink flesh beneath their skin show through splotches and veins.

This one is made worse by the game’s physics engine. The flayed skin flaps and sways with both the creature’s movements and the strikes of our attacks. This one really pushes the “upsetting” part of “upsettingly grotesque.”

Demon Of Song

Dark Souls 2

I’m going to be frank with you all. I don’t fully understand why the Demon of Song freaks me out so much. A random area boss, this monster looks like a lumpy toad, up until it opens its mouth and a face with two arms extends out to swipe at you.

Something about the sudden shock of it, and the inherently wrong nature of finding human features INSIDE a large amphibian, really triggers the nauseated part of my fight-or-flight response.

Putrescent Knight

Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree

At first glance, the Putrescent Knight might not seem that remarkable. But it takes only one small environmental realization to make this one almost vomit-worthy. Ask yourself: what IS the putrescence?

In the context of the Elden Ring DLC, you find the Putrescent Knight at the bottom-most space of a deep chasm of graves. Cursed by eternal slumber, all living things down there gradually continue to lie dormant until their bodies decay and melt into nothing more than a dark, viscous fluid. THAT is what the Putrescent Knight is made of. It’s a living melding of countless corpses, rotted down into a liquid. The theorized smell alone is enough to make me sick.

Ludwig, The Accursed

Bloodborne: The Old Hunters

One of the more common names in Bloodborne, Ludwig was the leader of a group of hunters within the landscape. He was considered a brave warrior by most and was guided by the whisperings of a holy moonlight blade.

In the Old Hunters DLC, we find Ludwig, long since transformed into a strange mish-mash of animal shapes, combining the features of human, wolf, and horse. Rotted skin and loose flesh on disjointed bones serve as a terribly tragic end for the character, and knowing his valor before then only made the encounter more upsetting.

Brain Of Mensis

Bloodborne

Mensis finds that perfect middle ground between being both physically repulsive and narratively terrible. A Great Old One, they were supposedly responsible for sharing a madness-inducingg level of insight to humans, often called “eyes on the inside.”

Mensis embodies this concept. We encounter them as a giant, chained up brain withering and blackened, with eyes scattered all throughout the outside. The mere sight of the creature initially causes us to become filled with Frenzy before dying. Only by releasing the chains can we get close enough to see how awful this stringy mass of biological matter looks.

Metyr, Mother Of Fingers

Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree

A lot of the creatures I’ve listed so far have been examples of the human form gone terribly wrong, some through mutation, others through mutilation. Metyr breaks that mold, showcasing the downright wretched idea of something that was never close to being human, showing a resemblance to one.

Metyr is, to put it plainly, an alien creature. Capable of powerful cosmic magic, yes, but still just an alien. It’s by sheer coincidence that they happen to look like a giant mass of human fingers all intertwined and writhing together. We as humans recognize the fingers, but seeing them in such an ‘incorrect’ alignment triggers the same negative reaction as something from the uncanny valley, especially when she moves around.

Ebrietas, Daughter Of The Cosmos

Bloodborne

Is it any surprise that a Bloodborne boss tops this list? Ebrietas, Daughter Of The Cosmos is another Great Old One. Little is known about her, other than her involvement in teaching humans new forms of cosmic magic.

What makes her the most upsettingly grotesque boss is the way her design perfectly captures the worst aspects of everything I’ve mentioned so far. A purely inhuman creature, her physical form is disjointed, discolored, and wholly in contrast to what a normal living thing might look like. Masses of tendrils, broken bones, and a constellation of dark, shining eyes hide inside a mouth-like orifice. And yet, there’s something oddly human about her. Limbs bend and form to look like she’s kneeling in prayer, or mourning the corpse found within her lair.

Her form has a clear intention, and I don’t understand any of it. The fear of the unknown, paired with the pale, monstrous body, makes her the most disgusting thing in FromSoft history.