Top 10 Sadistic Sports in Fiction

Sometimes you see a particularly brutal football game or boxing match and you briefly question the entertainment value of such ‘sports’ and what it says about us as a people. Or maybe you don’t, whatever. But if you do then you can rest assured that what many fiction writers consider to be sport is little more than thinly veiled executions performed by teams in uniforms.

10. Baskiceball

How I Met Your Mother (Television)

When the Eriksen family come together for the holidays they bond by getting in a few rounds of Baskiceball before dinner. Not to be confused with BASEketball, this combination of ice hockey, basketball and tennis is little more than a small group of players arming themselves with ice skates and rackets and going to town on each other. Perhaps it is for this reason that it never took off outside of the Eriksen household.

9. Assassin’s Guild Wall Game/Aargrooha

Discworld (Book Series)

Amazingly more sadistic than the Eton Wall Game (a viscous game of rugby played against a brick wall), the Assassin’s Guild version of the game bears more similarity to Dogdeball, except on a climbing wall. The goal is to dislodge the climbers and send them tumbling towards the unforgiving ground. Still, it’s safer than playing aargrooha, a troll game that involves kicking around a human head until the ‘ball’ lands in a goal or bursts.

8. Speedball

Speedball (Video Games)

Best described as lacrosse but replacing the funny looking sticks with big metal punch’n gloves. Two teams get together in an enclosed arena to try and score the most goals as possible, with the quickest way through your opponent being a full speed attack. If you’ve got the steel, fist sized ball in your possession you can either pass it to a team-mate and send it into a rivals face. Bonuses exist in the arena adding extra fun like setting the ball on fire. After a season most players will spend their winnings on kitting out their armour with more spikes. The things we do for fun.

7. Transcontinental Road Race

Death Race 2000 (Movie)

In the future of the United States the collapse of the economy, political system and religion has lead to the rise of a fascist state (as usual). In order to keep the masses happy the government provides bloody entertainment with the Transcontinental Road Race proving most popular. The annual three day coast-to-coast race. Arriving first isn’t the key to winning but scoring the most points by running down pedestrians and wreaking the other racers. Different ages groups and gender of the victims are worth the most points, making some pedestrians more valuable targets then others.

6. Brockian Ultra-Cricket

The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Book Series)

Here’s nice, straight-forward sport that involves building a high wall around the players, throwing an assortment of sporting equipment over the wall and allowing the players to use said equipment to give each other a solid thrashing. The full set of rules are convoluted to say the least and the only time they’ve been fully written down they were dropped into a black hole. The rules that exist are as follows:

• Rule One: Grow at least three extra legs. You won’t need them, but it keeps the crowds amused.
• Rule Two: Find one extremely good Brockian Ultra Cricket player. Clone him off a few times. This saves an enormous amount of tedious selection and training.
• Rule Three: Put your team and the opposing team in a large field and build a high wall around them. The reason for this is that, though the game is a major spectator sport, the frustration experienced by the audience at not actually being able to see what’s going on leads them to imagine that it’s a lot more exciting than it really is. A crowd that has just watched a rather humdrum game experiences far less life affirmation than a crowd that believes it has just missed the most dramatic event in sporting history.
• Rule Four: Throw lots of assorted items of sporting equipment over the wall for the players. Anything will do – cricket bats, basecube bats, tennis racquets, skis, anything you can get a good swing with.
• Rule Five: The players should now lay about themselves for all they are worth with whatever they find to hand. Whenever a player scored a “hit” on another player, he should immediately run away as fast as he can and apologize from a safe distance. Apologies should be concise, sincere, and, for maximum clarity and points, delivered through a megaphone.
• Rule Six: The winning team shall be the first team that wins.

Basically you’re looking at a much more violent form of Calvinball.

5. Quidditch

Harry Potter (Book Series)

It could be assumed that everyone in the English speaking world (and beyond) is familiar with Quidditch. A team sport enjoyed by the secret international community of wizards it involves seven players per side riding on high speed, airborne broomsticks. Four players attack and defend the goals with the large red ‘quaffle’, one seeks out the small, speedy ‘snitch’ and the other two carry clubs used to strike two violently rogue balls called ‘bludgers’ with the aim of de-seating rival players. Played by adults and children alike the inclusion of the bludgers adds a tinge of mayhem to the sport, seeing players with broken faces falling to earth after taking a hit. A school that includes a sporting curriculum that has lead to student fatalities might be more shocking if it wasn’t at this nightmare factory.

4. Rollerball

Rollerball (Movie)

Anyone familiar with the increasingly popular sport of roller derby will have an easy time imagining this blood bath. Like the Transcontinental Road Race the future is a place without war, religion or a political system and the only entertainment is the gladiatorial violence that is Rollerball. Contestants skate around a funnel shaped arena trying to score points with the metal ball that is fired out of a cannon while pummeling each other to a pulp with studded gloves. Throw in some motorbikes and some very flimsy rules about contact and you’ve got Rollerball.

3. The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games Trilogy (Book Series)

Once again returning to the dystopian future under a fascist regime that uses bloodsports to keep the population in-line/entertained. The Hunger Games involves random members of the lower class being selected to participate in a fight to the death while the world looks on, placing bets and taking out sponsorships. We won’t dwell on this entry because if you don’t know the deal by this point then you’ve been actively avoiding it.

2. The Running Man

The Running Man (Movie and Book)

In the future the economy has collapsed, fascist regime, yadda yadda yadda. In this entry political prisoners are disposed off by forcing them to compete in The Running Man, a popular televised game show where contestants are given nothing except an unflattering unitard and have to escape the ‘hunters’. Each hunter is based around a theme (electricity, fire and chainsaws to name a few) and are dropped heavily armed into the arena to deal out bloody justice in the form of dismemberment. Things get more interesting when the Governator becomes a contestant…

1. Battle Royale

Battle Royale (Book and Movie)

Without a doubt the most sadistic sport ever conceived. It bears similarity to The Hunger Games and The Running Man in that it’s set in the standard nasty future scenario, is designed to keep people in line, gets broadcast to the public and involves people being forced to murder each other. What makes it more horrible is the fact that the contestants aren’t even given the justification of being prisoners or rebels getting their comeuppance but a randomly selected class of school children. The purpose of the slaughter is seems to be teaching kids a lesson about being disrespectful. Just to make things more unpleasant there’s a couple of psychotic maniacs who have volunteered themselves to join the fray, and those involved are not a group of strangers to each other but students who have known each other all their lives. The ‘prize’ is that the last one standing gets to live – and if there’s more than one at the end their explosive collars will detonate.