A Classic Video Game Inspired One Of Black Mirror's Most Underrated Episodes

Season 5 of "Black Mirror" is rarely ranked among the show's best, but it does contain at least one underrated gem: "Striking Vipers." That's the videogame episode where two seemingly-straight guys accidentally end up having a digital affair. This episode takes a cue from previous standout episodes like "The Entire History of You," in that it understands that it's not enough to just have a cool sci-fi premise; you also have to have a compelling character journey that feels real regardless of whatever social critique you're trying to make. 

In "Striking Vipers," the messy relationship between Danny (Anthony Mackie) and Karl (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is so awkward and riveting that you can easily forget a major hole in the episode's sci-fi premise: why would a VR fighting game come with a hyper-realistic sex option programmed into it? Showrunner Charlie Brooker has no real answer to this question, but he did at least offer his explanation for the idea. 

"The germ for the idea came from the fighting game 'Tekken,'" Brooker explained in a 2019 interview. If you've ever heard two guys playing 'Tekken' or 'Street Fighter,' it sounds like a sadomasochistic sex scene. They go 'oof, ahhh, argh, yes, YESSS'." It turns out the videogame fighting is to Charlie Brooker what tennis is to director Luca Guadagnino: a very handy metaphor for sex itself. 

Brooker added in the interview that his favorite "Tekken" player to play as was the boxing kangaroo Roger, a character introduced in the second "Tekken" game in 1995. The fact that the game series has an option to play as a kangaroo seems notable, given that the "Striking Vipers" video game allowed the characters to play as animals, too. Karl mentions a polar bear fighter at one point, although he famously doesn't use the polar bear for fighting purposes either. One wonders if Karl's famous line, "I f—ed a polar bear and I still couldn't get you out of my mind," was originally supposed to be about a kangaroo, but the writers decided that "polar bear" sounded funnier. (Although it's worth noting that you can indeed play as a polar bear in "Tekken" too.)

Charlie Brooker's love of video games has bled into the show in plenty of other ways throughout the series. It was part of what inspired him to write the videogame-centric season 3 episode "Playtest," the season 4 episode "USS Callister," as well as the game-centric interactive episode "Bandersnatch." Brooker also used to work as a videogame journalist, a profession he gave to the main character in "Plaything" and a minor character in the "USS Callister" sequel, "Into Infinity."

Brooker's love for videogames also influenced the social commentary of "Into Infinity," an episode that could've easily gone for some easy, cheap shots at gamers but instead chose to portray them affectionately. "I trust people who play games a lot more than people who watch sports," Brooker said about the episode. He'd noted earlier, "It's not the intention to say that gaming is violent or all of that sort of crap that tends to get pushed around in the media."