Norse Coyote

The problem is that there aren't many reliable sources that refer to "battle royale" (common noun) as a fiction genre outside of gaming contexts. There are plenty of articles looking at the similarities and possible influences from the Japanese novel and film, but from a quick search the only pieces that refer to the genre as such are articles from Koktail Magazine and Campus Magazine (and the former refers back to Wikipedia). Screen Rant does mention "the battle royale sub-genre" once in this article [linked], and uses "battle royale shows" here [linked], but there are far more sources that refer to the genre as "death game" or "deadly game". That would probably be the better basis for a stand-alone article.

Wikipedia's confusion on the point stems from its insistence that the genre came about solely as a byproduct of the popularity of the Battle Royale novel (1999) and film (2000). This point is understandable, as Battle Royale certainly was influential both in Japan and the West (being a favorite film of Quentin Tarantino), and is often viewed as the starting point for the death game genre's popularity. That the massively popular Hunger Games novel (2008) and film (2012) also featured a battle royale-style death game only compounded the impression of the genre as revolving specifically around the concept of a "battle royale" in which participants fight to the death in an open arena.

The line between a genre and a collection of works imitating a single source is a fine one, and that's the real question Wikipedia is grappling with when it struggles to categorize what is, by this point, clearly a category of some note. The question of genre versus imitation was posed toward Hunger Games itself, which has continually fielded accusations of plagiarizing Battle Royale, most recently expressed by Quentin Tarantino on the Bret Easton Ellis podcast in 2025:

I do not understand how the Japanese writer [Koushun Takami] didn't sue Suzanne Collins [author of The Hunger Games] for every fucking thing she owns. They just ripped off the fucking book! Stupid book critics are not going to go watch a Japanese movie called Battle Royale, so the stupid book critics never called her out on it. They talked about how it was the most original thing they'd ever fucking read. As soon as the film critics saw the film they said, 'What the fuck! This is just Battle Royale except PG!'

Though it is impossible to know for sure, it's likely Suzanne Collins was unaware of Battle Royale when she wrote Hunger Games; if any 2000 film influenced her work, it was probably Gladiator. The literal possibility of plagiarism is less interesting to the question of genre than the perception of plagiarism, though. Nobody, for instance, would describe a story in which a detective solves a murder mystery as plagiarizing Edgar Allan Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue," though Poe is commonly viewed as the mystery genre's progenitor. It is because mystery has reached the level of genre, a collection of shared narrative traits that many works operate within, that accusations of copying such traits seem ridiculous. Only copying the traits of a singular work is viewed as plagiarism.

Despite Tarantino's recent comments, the years have been kind to Collins's defense against plagiarism accusations, as battle royale and death game stories have massively increased in number. Notably, when Magical Girl Raising Project aired in 2016, nobody accused it of ripping off Battle Royale, despite it too following the basic premise of "participants are forced to fight to the death in a battle royale." (Instead, it was accused of ripping off Puella Magi Madoka Magica, a work to which it bears almost no narrative similarity.) In the span of only eight years from 2008 to 2016, the question of whether battle royale was a collection of isolated imitations or its own distinct genre had been seemingly resolved.

Yet still no Wikipedia page.

One of the major problems with the lack of an independent death game genre page on Wikipedia is the inability for it to catalog the genre's prehistory. As it stands, Wikipedia asserts the genre began ex nihilo with Battle Royale in 2000 (despite it listing the obscure 1980 film The Big Brawl and 1997 film Mean Guns as part of the genre). While it's certainly viable to claim the popular understanding of death games as a genre began with Battle Royale—even if that understanding was only truly crystalized sometime between 2008 and 2016—all genres have antecedents, examples or influences that predate the emerging of the critical mass of work necessary to constitute a genre.

For example, fantasy is commonly accepted to begin as a genre in the late 1800s, and only reached widespread popularity in the following century, but it borrows elements from the chivalric romances of the Middle Ages and the myths of antiquity. Science fiction emerges with Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, and Jules Verne, but has predecessors in the speculative utopian fiction of the 1600s and earlier.

Though death games existed in reality in ancient times, they took a long time to appear in fiction. The Romans loved their gladiators, but they didn't care to write about them. The Roman Empire's foundational epic, Virgil's Aeneid, does feature a lengthy chapter describing games, but these are explicitly nonlethal games conducted in all sporting fairness, and contrast the brutal wars fought elsewhere in the work. The most notable gladiator of ancient letters was Spartacus, whose story was chronicled in history rather than fiction, and revolved around slave revolt rather than the specifics of the gladiatorial games.

Nonetheless, the legacy of the gladiators would prove a significant influence on the death game genre. Historical fiction about gladiators eventually did crop up in the 1900s, with Those About to Die (1958) providing the inspiration for the film Gladiator, which itself possibly informed the pseudo-Roman character of The Hunger Games.

Chivalric romance, by contrast, had a heavy narrative emphasis on sport in the form of its innumerable tournaments, and like real medieval tournaments the fictional ones often broke out into actual violence or else caused unfortunate fatal accidents. These likely couldn't be considered "death games" by any stretch, though. The death game genre's focus is on games where the stated consequence of losing is death, not where death might occur incidentally due to the dangerous conditions of the sport. The famous chariot race in Ben-Hur (1959), for instance, features several competitors crashing and dying, but this is an unintended outcome of the event, not an expected result of its defined rules.

My knowledge is unfortunately not encyclopedic, but the first true "death game" narrative I am aware of is the short story "The Most Dangerous Game" (1924) by Richard Connell. The similarity of the story's title with the term "death game" is entirely coincidental, as it refers not to an actual game being played but "game" as in "an animal hunted for sport." The story features a reclusive big-game hunter, Zaroff, who has grown bored of hunting animals and now captures "the most dangerous game," humans, whom he releases onto his private island and hunts to the death.

Despite predating the genre by nearly a century, this story contains many genre staples that remain to this day: the isolated environment, the helpless competitor forced to "play" against their will, the deadly stakes, and the sociopathic oligarch "gamemaster" who enacts the games primarily for sadistic pleasure. (In the story, Zaroff is a Russian elite who fled the communist revolution, establishing the class-based themes that would be echoed much later in The Hunger Games and Squid Game.) The story was immensely popular and has been adapted numerous times, most famously as Predator (1987), which changes the hunter into an alien.

Another significant early death game work features a similar premise to "The Most Dangerous Game": The Running Man (1982), written by Stephen King and published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. While maintaining the core plotline of "a human is hunted by another human as part of a deadly game," Running Man introduces another common aspect of the genre: the game as spectator entertainment. While "The Most Dangerous Game" occurred on a secret island for the pleasure of a single wealthy sociopath, Running Man presents a future dystopia in which reality television has become popular bloodsport. This aspect of the story itself derives influence from the emergent dystopia genre popularized by Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).

These two dystopian works generally define the two main branches of dystopian speculation: the first, represented by Brave New World, posits a future of hedonism and superficiality, while the second, represented by Nineteen Eighty-Four, posits a future of totalitarian government control through intimidation and surveillance. Running Man, with its sensationalized reality TV culture, is a dystopia of the Brave New World branch. In many ways, this branch makes the most sense as a setting for a death game story, given the historical antecedent of gladiatorial combat, often tied to the "bread and circuses" excesses of the Roman elite. Orwell's vision, by contrast, depicts a relatively dull culture based on the tightly-controlled propagandistic art of the Soviet and Fascist regimes, and seems at first a less fitting backdrop for riotous bloodsport.

Yet Stephen King published another death game story only a few years prior to Running Man much more Orwellian in character. The Long Walk (1979) is notable because, compared to "The Most Dangerous Game" and its adaptations, it uses the medium of a game to apply death to an otherwise nonlethal activity. Big-game hunting is, by definition, a lethal activity for the hunted; "Most Dangerous Game" only replaces animals with humans as its premise. There is nothing fundamentally lethal about what the participants in Long Walk are doing—walking—other than the fact that if they fail a soldier shoots them in the head as punishment.

Though subtle, this innovation emphasizes the "game" aspect of the genre. If the tension of the "Most Dangerous Game" style of death game is being forced into a lethal situation with no way out except kill-or-be-killed, the tension of the Long Walk is in the mundane being rendered an object of horror. This style would later find popularity in trapped-in-the-video-game narratives like Sword Art Online (2012), with the phrase "If you die in the game, you die in real life" representing a similar premise. This style also massively extends the range of games that a death game story can feature, as essentially any game from Jenga to tic-tac-toe is rendered lethal if there is some punishing entity waiting to dispatch the loser.

This style of death game also complements the Orwellian style of dystopia. While both "Most Dangerous Game" and Running Man critique hedonistic lust for ever more extreme modes of entertainment, Long Walk's game critiques the ability of a draconian government to render the innocuous arbitrarily lethal at a whim, with no accountability to any sane or fair system of law. Though the game in Long Walk is said to be watched by many, it is an exceedingly unentertaining spectator experience; the competitors walk for hours with nothing happening except their walking, with only very rare flares of action when a competitor is killed upon falling behind. Its dystopian government's power and control is expressed not only in its ability to make the basic human activity of walking lethal, but also that it is capable of forcing the entire country to watch. In this vein, Long Walk's game is a public demonstration of the government's power to say 2 + 2 = 5, to rewrite fact and reality as it sees fit. This "game" of our creation is your entertainment now, this is what you value. The megalomaniacal desire for control over reality itself reappears in later trapped-in-the-video-game narratives; the villain of Sword Art Online, for instance, expresses it as his motivation (after first saying he forgot what his motivation was).

If the death game genre has expanded massively in size in recent decades, it has remained strangely limited by these same few core plotlines for why the death game is occurring. Almost every death game story can be organized into one or some combination of these three styles:

"The Most Dangerous Game"—an oligarchic sociopath, or group of oligarchic sociopaths, hosts the death game for their own sadistic pleasure, profit, and/or esoteric philosophy (i.e., Social Darwinism or "a social experiment"). The game is illegal, but the host(s)'s wealth or power enables them to get away with it. Examples include Kaiji (1997), Spy Kids 3-D (2003), Saw (2004), Balls of Fury (2007), Danganronpa (2010), Sword Art Online (2012), Magical Girl Raising Project (2016), The Belko Experiment (2017), and Squid Game (2021).

The Running Man—Societal hedonism enables the death game as mass-market entertainment. The game is legal by popular fiat (or at least popular fiat of a privileged class at the expense of the underclass), regardless of its moral transgressions. Examples include Death Race 2000 (1975), Rollerball (1975), MrBeast (1998), Jimmy Neutron episode "Win, Lose, and Kaboom!" (2004), Doctor Who episode "Bad Wolf" (2005), The Hunger Games (2008), Deadman Wonderland (2011), Danganronpa V3 (2017), Dungeon Crawler Carl (2019), and Alien Stage (2022). In many of these examples, the "society" is extraterrestrial in nature, with humans as a species being the disposable underclass, though this doesn't really change the concept. Also, Death Race 2000 and Rollerball predate Running Man's publication, though King claims to have written Running Man in 1973. I'm less concerned with determining which example was "first" than providing a framework for categorization.

The Long Walk—A draconian government hosts the game to control the populace through fear, intimidation, or the suppression of dissidents. Examples include Tron (1982) and Battle Royale (2000). This category is, notably, the least common of the three, and often the line between it and the second category is blurred. Death Race 2000 and Hunger Games also feature totalitarian regimes, for instance, though they employ the games more for purposes of distraction than direct control. This ambiguity raises the question of whether it makes more sense to categorize these stories based on who hosts the game, why the games are held, or how they are spectated—or, perhaps, the kind of game being played, regardless of its external circumstances.

There is a fourth style, one that developed more recently and is much less common than the others, in which the death game is a ritual for the attainment of godhead or some other spiritual power. This style is present most notably in Fate/stay night (2004) and its resulting franchise, as well as Mirai Nikki (2011) and Platinum End (2021).

The 2006 horror film Stay Alive manages perhaps one of the more unique reasons for its death game, that being "the ghost of Hungarian serial killer Elizabeth Bathory did it." Or does this count as a "Most Dangerous Game" type, given Bathory's real-world history?

Then there's the always-classic "no reason is given" explanation, favored in particular by shape-themed death games like Cube (1997) and Circle (2015).

Any attempt to categorize a genre of many works into a limited number of bins will pose difficulties, and no genre has perfectly-defined boundaries. Do the large number of isekai where the main character sees the world with a video game overlay count as death game stories? In these stories, the game aspects are more a way the main character perceives the world than a rigidly-enforced game structure, but trapped-in-the-video-game examples like Sword Art Online blur the line on this point. Likewise, I included Death Race 2000 and Rollerball as early examples of the genre, but the game in neither necessitates death despite celebrating and being designed to encourage it. One could argue this places them closer to the dangerous chariot race of Ben-Hur than a true death game; there will always be a spectrum between purist and radical definitions of genre.

Outside of questions of categorization, though, is the question of why the death game genre exists, and specifically why it has only emerged as a "genre" in the past 25 years, with even its oldest fictional antecedents being only a century old.

People who are objectively wrong will sometimes claim that there are no original ideas in fiction, that everything has been done before. Outside of generalizing the definition of "idea" to the point of meaninglessness (for instance, defining all stories as either man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs. self, and so on), or arguing that any recognizable aspect in a work discounts the originality of the whole (an argument that encompasses any work that features humans or is written in a known language), this claim is contradicted by the history of art in all mediums, where new genres frequently emerge that were previously unknown.

For instance, the genres of mystery, science fiction, and fantasy all arose in the 19th and 20th centuries, building upon earlier ideas but undeniably innovating to create types of stories that simply did not exist before. Furthermore, it makes sense why these genres arose when they did. The murder mystery relies on its readership believing in rational and empiric deduction, a philosophy that was not widespread until the Age of Reason. (Consider, in contrast, the medieval jurisprudence of trial by combat, in which accuser fought accused and whoever lived must be right on account of God's grace.) Science fiction, meanwhile, arose naturally out of the radical technological developments of the Industrial Revolution. Before then, technology had developed too gradually to sustain widespread speculation on its future, but authors in the 1800s and 1900s were able to see their lives transform in real time due to the invention of radical new machines, and so it made sense to wonder what other machines were possible, and how these machines might also transform humanity. Fantasy is trickier, since it has more direct predecessors in the form of myth, but as scientific progress and exploration rendered the world more fully "known" and denied the possibility of dragons, elves, spirits, and gods, fantasy developed as a vehicle to produce alternate worlds where these things could in fact exist.

If original genres develop in response to changes in humanity's lived experience, though, there's no explanation for the late development of the death game genre. Philosophy changed, technology developed, and myth was disproven. Death games, however, existed in reality since antiquity, even as a cornerstone of culture during Roman times. They simply weren't seen as a fitting subject for art. Why?

Wikipedia answers this question by attributing the development of the entire genre to the singular originality of Battle Royale. In its battle royal article, it claims:

Outside sports, the term battle royale has taken on a new meaning in the 21st century, from Koushun Takami's 1999 Japanese dystopian novel Battle Royale and its 2000 film adaptation of the same name, referring to a fictional narrative genre and/or mode of entertainment also known as death games and killing games, where a select group of people is instructed to hunt and kill one another in a large arena until there is only one survivor.

It continues:

Battle Royale set out the basic rules of the genre, including players being forced to kill each other until there is a single survivor and the need to scavenge for weapons and items. The "battle royale" concept first gained mainstream popularity in Japan, where Battle Royale inspired a wave of manga, anime, and visual novel works during the 2000s, before the concept gained global mainstream popularity in the 2010s.

I have no doubt that Battle Royale is a massively influential work within the genre. But its importance is not total, not a "Great Man" that through individual potency rewrote history. In the West, despite the praise of Quentin Tarantino, Battle Royale remained a relatively obscure work, certainly in comparison to death game predecessors like "Most Dangerous Game," the two novels by Stephen King, and even Death Race 2000, a domestic blockbuster hit that received a 2008 remake. Yet none of those works sparked the critical mass of interest in death games to generate a genre. If a less popular work was able to create a genre where earlier, more popular works failed, the implication is that it is not the work itself that was most important, but the cultural conditions around the work.

Furthermore, Wikipedia contradicts itself in its assessment of the "genre rules" Battle Royale established, particularly "players being forced to kill each other until there is a single survivor" and "the need to scavenge for weapons and items." These rules apply to less than half of the example works Wikipedia lists in the following two paragraphs, and most works in which both apply are exclusively non-narrative battle royale video games like PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (2017) and Fortnite (2017).

Lastly, Wikipedia's claim ignores The Hunger Games entirely. To take Wikipedia at face value, Quentin Tarantino must be correct; Suzanne Collins was aware of Battle Royale and deliberately imitated it, rather than developing the idea independently from a different branch of convergent evolution. Again, this statement cannot be proven or disproven, though I consider it exceedingly unlikely the 46-year-old MFA graduate and former Nickelodeon show writer was keeping a close eye on the niche Japanese hyperviolence film scene to watch a movie that didn't receive any official American distribution until 2010 (two years after Hunger Games was published). Wikipedia's claim becomes more unbelievable when considering that not only must Hunger Games be derivative of Battle Royale, but so must every other post-2000 death game story, including works as disparate as Fate/stay night and Sword Art Online—works that have their own well-documented lineages that do not include Battle Royale at all.

I instead consider it far more likely that several death game works emerged concurrently but independently around a similar time frame, and also became popular in mostly independent circles (including Japanese and Western circles). In this interpretation, death games were not a genre brought into being by a wave of imitators inspired by a single work, but by an idea that, like science fiction and murder mystery, reflected a change in thinking among the public at large. Death games fundamentally made sense as a type of story in a way that they did not during previous centuries.

But why? What changed in the cultural consciousness?

To answer that question, the first obvious place to look is the dystopia genre, with which the death game genre so often pairs. Despite a long history of utopian fiction speculating on an ideal future society, a history that stretches all the way back to Plato, dystopian fiction doesn't really exist until the 1900s, with Yevgeny Zamyatin's We (1921) usually cited as its first example.

Like science fiction and mystery, dystopian fiction likely required scientific and philosophical advances to be viable as a genre of fiction. If rapid developments in technology presented exciting new possibilities that made speculative fiction thrive, they also produced anxieties about how these technologies might be misused. Brave New World presents a society that abandons religion (and thus morality) in favor of technology, cutting the tops off of Christian crosses to worship the "T" in Ford Model T, while Nineteen Eighty-four demonstrates an all-powerful surveillance and propaganda apparatus driven by machinery. But dystopia is not technologic alone, and another important change that facilitated its rise was Sigmund Freud's popularization of human psychology as a scientific discipline in the 1890s. Freud and his acolytes, while mostly pseudoscientific, helped spark anxieties about social manipulation as a tactic for state control, anxieties that only festered when combined with anxieties about technological progress.

These developments, of course, would coincide with the arrival of new totalitarian states in the early 1900s, most prominently Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, which exhibited complete and barbaric domination of their subjects in ways alarming to the intellectual, book-authoring classes of relatively liberal societies who saw their Russian and German fellows purged en masse. With real-world parallels to draw upon, it only made sense that speculative fiction would begin to speculate with horror on the possibilities of future society.

I already established how dystopian fiction influenced Running Man and Long Walk, the first in terms of moral degradation in the face of mass media, the second in terms of complete state control. Yet while this lineage of thought explains why death games failed to become a genre prior to the 1900s, it doesn't explain the nearly century-long gap between the rise of dystopian fiction and the explosion of popularity of death games between 2000 and 2010. Why the delay, even with popular isolated examples of the death game genre scattered throughout the second half of the 1900s? What specifically about the 2000s caused the idea to seize the imagination, to render it a "genre" only so recently that Wikipedia still questions the basic tenets of its category?

Death games aren't the only new genre to emerge after the turn of the millennium, so maybe a comparison will help. Time loop stories and multiverse stories also started to become popular around the same time. Previously, I've argued that the popularity of these genres is a reflection of the incredible profusion of information due to the internet, which has changed the way people think about and interact with the world. Time loops and multiverses are a way of demonstrating a single idea—one distinct day, for instance, or a concept like "Spider-Man"—with an infinite multitude of facets and permutations. As such, they are capable of expressing massive amounts of information but in a way that remains digestible. Knowing one Spider-Man creates a framework by which any other multiversal Spider-Man, no matter how absurd, can be understood. (Every Spider-Man has an Aunt May, an Uncle Ben, a Mary Jane, et cetera.)

I won't dig into that argument in much detail right now, since it doesn't really apply to death games, which typically follow a single game viewed only once. (There are exceptions, usually ones that combine the death game genre with time loops or multiverses, such as Mirai Nikki.) The Running Man style of death game does deal directly with mass media and modern concepts such as game shows and reality television, but these only account for a fraction of the genre as a whole.

Another direction to look, then, is the "game" part of the death game genre. A large portion of death game stories take place inside video games, or are else modeled on them. Video games as a technology did not really exist in any popular form until Pong (1972), and fiction about video games took a long time to seriously develop due to the cultural conception of video games as being "for kids." (I discuss this point in more detail in my essay on Sword Art Online.) Only the popularity of the internet ultimately changed the way people interacted with and accepted digital spaces, so the increased popularity of trapped-in-the-video-game narratives beginning in the early 2000s and exploding in the 2010s makes sense. This also explains why death game narratives have been so popular in Japanese media specifically, as Japanese companies like Namco and Nintendo were some of the earliest and most important video game developers, leading video games to become a major part of Japanese popular culture faster than in many other countries.

While only a fraction of death game stories specifically feature video games, the popularity of video games along demographic lines might also explain the advent of the death game genre. Other than Long Walk, pre-2000 death games almost always featured adult competitors, and were viewed as adult media. But Battle Royale, Fate/stay night, Hunger Games, and Sword Art Online all feature teenage competitors, a feature that has continued into most subsequent examples of the genre. If video games are the primary driver of interest in the death game genre, this trend makes sense, as video games have historically been popular among teens (and younger children). The slow development of the death game genre is then explained by the slow development of media primarily aimed at teens in general. It might be surprising to hear now, when teens have so much prominence in the media landscape, but for a long time there was either media for children or media for adults, with little room in between. The PG-13 film rating did not exist until 1984; until then there was nothing between PG and R. The term "young adult literature" was coined in the 1960s.

It's arguable whether teenagers were even considered distinct from adults until relatively recent history. They were certainly allowed—often expected—to marry and work jobs, with child labor only outlawed in the United States in 1938 and child marriage outlawed (in most states) in 1950. The concept of a "coming of age ceremony" common to many cultures itself implies an immediate transition from childhood to adulthood, with no intervening period.

The development of a specific teenage identity then necessitates the creation of art for teenagers. The popularity of "game" media in general—whether deathly or not—makes sense as an extension of teenage and childhood interest in play, while the "death" aspect of the genre distinguishes it as less childish and thus distinctively teenage.

Furthermore, the institution of laws protecting teens has also had the effect of depriving teens of adult rights. Teens thus spend a longer period of time under the complete legal control of parents and schools than they did in the past, an arrangement that their semi-adulthood causes them to chafe against. The renewed popularity of dystopian fiction in teenage media is likely a byproduct of teens often feeling as though they are being controlled in uncontestable, authoritarian ways.

Nowhere is this expression of teenage interests more clear than in Battle Royale. Though I've spent most of this essay distancing Battle Royale from the rest of the death game genre to refute Wikipedia's argument that it is all-important, it is notable in how it directly aligns its dystopian government with the schooling system. The participants are a class of students, all of whom continue to wear their identical depersonalized beige uniforms the entire game, and the game's host is referred to as an "instructor." Their bloodthirsty competition to survive parallels the cutthroat competitive environment of a schooling system that ranks and grades students, with the results having immense bearing on their future prospects in life.

The last potential reason for the rise of the death game genre is class-based. After all, there is an entire branch of the genre—perhaps the branch with the most individual examples—that is divorced from dystopian anxieties of cultural degradation or authoritarian control. This is the "Most Dangerous Game" branch, which predates the others.

In this style of death game story, the game's host operates outside of established law and social custom. They are fundamentally criminal in nature, yet their wealth or power enables them to continue the games with impunity.

In some examples, such as the Saw franchise, the class-based implications of this arrangement are deemphasized. The Jigsaw Killer lives, seemingly, in squalor; he is if anything a victim of the system and acts as a vigilante with a twisted sense of justice. He targets lowlife drug addicts as well as rich insurance executives, and only his nigh-omniscient genius prevents his capture by the legal forces that seek to take him down. The films are consistently confused whether he is hero or villain.

But most examples, including "The Most Dangerous Game" itself, are concerned either implicitly or explicitly with class disparity. Not only does the wealth and power of the hosts allow them to act outside the legal restraints that bind everyone else, but their elitism causes them to view the underclass as subhuman, naturally fit to be disposed of either for entertainment or a twisted Social Darwinism (or both).

Due to the historic control of the upper classes and educated elite over art, class consciousness is itself a relatively new innovation in fiction. Most art was historically produced via a system of patronage, in which a member of the nobility—or, in some cases, the wealthy merchant class—directly financed an artist and thus wielded near total control over the art's subject. Only after the Renaissance, and especially during the Industrial Revolution, did the lower classes reach a level of literacy and disposable income that authors could finance themselves by selling their work to the public. Even then, classes with more money wielded more control over what was produced, and works remained subjected to censorship. Even as American literacy reached 99% in the mid-1900s, fiction remained gatekept by publishers and studios who often took it upon themselves to determine what was suitable for the public to read and see. (The Hays Code, which Hollywood imposed upon itself to avoid government censorship, is a good example.)

On one hand, this class-based moral policing of fiction explains the slowness of the death game genre to arise, as it is a genre that is senselessly violent by definition. It's likely no coincidence that many of the early examples of the genre I listed—the two Stephen King novels, Death Race 2000, Rollerball—appeared in the 1970s and 80s, shortly after the Hays Code was abolished, and graphic violence became a more socially acceptable subject of art. (Though even in 2000, Battle Royale was the center of some moral panic over hyperviolence.) On the other hand, it explains the slowness of a genre to arise that is focused on vituperative, uncompromising criticism of the upper classes.

"The Most Dangerous Game" illustrates this critical lineage in how it frames its sociopathic gamesman as a Russian aristocrat who fled the communist revolution. In doing so, it implicitly justifies that revolution, likening the near-feudal pre-communist Russia to a slaughterhouse where the elite thought of the lower classes as not "human," but "game." These pro-communist undertones place "Most Dangerous Game" in the tradition of Marxist literature like The Jungle (1906) by Upton Sinclair, which similarly emphasizes the dehumanization of the lower classes by the upper. One scene in The Jungle, for instance, describes how workers sometimes fall into the meatpacking plant's machines, being churned into lard that is then sent out to customers. One story likens humans to "meat," another to "game"—a strikingly similar metaphor, a similarity emphasized by the title of Sinclair's novel.

There are literary antecedents to this class-based hyperviolence even beyond Marxist literature. Antebellum anti-slavery novels, such as Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) and Twelve Years a Slave (1853), likewise depict an upper class that exhibits total domination over the underclass, whom they subject to dehumanizing and senseless hyperviolence for often arbitrary reasons, such as sociopathic entertainment or twisted Social Darwinist philosophy. It's no mistake that, prior to Battle Royale, the most notable depiction of a battle royale in fiction is in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952), in which white southerners force black men to brutally fight one another for their entertainment.

The anti-slavery and anti-Tsarist works saw publication and widespread popularity because they placed the ills of class stratification elsewhere: the South or distant Russia. (The Jungle persevered because it famously "aimed for the heart and hit the stomach," as Sinclair later put it.) The modern death game genre is capable of expressing similar criticisms against the upper class—regardless of whether those criticisms are as justified as they were in 1852—due to the increasing democratization of fiction enabled by mass media and accelerated especially by the internet, where no gatekeepers to content exist. The popularity of this class-based criticism, meanwhile, is possibly a byproduct of widespread anxiety that the upper class is once more achieving a level of impunity from the law and a dehumanizing perspective on the common man equal to those of certain historic epochs.

One might say, these are stories about a deranged world.

My goal in writing this essay was to provide a historical overview of the development of the death game genre and refute Wikipedia's claim—founded, no doubt, on "reliable sources"—that the genre sprouted fully-formed from the head of Battle Royale in 1999. Unfortunately, even reliable sources seem uninterested in applying any amount of intellectual understanding to a pop culture genre that has only emerged in the past 20 years.

Without the mural, Miss Angola's costume reads more 'ice queen' than 'waterfall.' Unfortunately I still think no costume has ever been improved by adding a giant mural, especially because they're never very well-rendered.

Miss Argentina's costume is inspired by a legendary Argentinian musician. Unfortunately those guitars wobble like crazy in motion, or this would be a solid 7/10.

Miss Armenia is dressed as A Specific Rock Formation In Armenia. Unclear on why the hat and pomegranate (?) prop were necessary, although without them this is dangerous close to just being an evening gown with shoulder pads.

Miss Aruba is a sparkly Sea Queen with a removable skirt. Groundbreaking.

Once again Miss Australia is just wearing a dress. This one is Uluru-inspired and more interestingly structural than the past several years of dresses, but frankly that is not going to cut it at this point.

Miss Bahamas has chosen "sexy pirate" and like. mission accomplised! that sure is a sexy pirate costume!

Miss Bangladesh is wearing a lovely sari, and I do like the way her giant lotus flower unfolded from around her on stage. This might be too tasteful for this competition, sadly, which feels like a weird thing to say about a woman wearing 15 pounds of gold jewelry.

It was shockingly difficult to get decent pictures of some of these outfits. There's no complete gallery anywhere I could find. I had to resort to combing random Instagrams to get something better than a blurry youtube screengrab, thereby ruining my algorithm for the forseeable future. I'm mentioning this now because Miss Belarus is wearing a flag gown with a wheat hat, which is boring.

This is not the first time Miss Belgium has been saddled with a poorly-made, cheap-looking costume at this competition, but oof this is a bad one. Nothing about it says 'swan,' the alleged inspiration. The parasol and the knee-highs are only adding to the 'girl at her first Lolita meetup who bought her whole coord from Amazon' vibe. Big yikes.

Miss Belize's toucan is so big that it's kind of wearing her, rather than the other way around. She's also smiling in a particular "I don't want to be wearing this' way that should be very familiar to fans of this competition.

Miss Bolivia does seem to be enjoying her costume! I could note that the headdress is very wobbly in motion and I generally disapprove of giant arm drapes, but you know what? I'm going to let her have this.

Is Miss Bonaire's Sea Queen doing anything new? Not really, no, but it's lavishly blinged-out and well-designed, nothing wobbles or tilts when she walks in it, and I like the octopus.

Miss Botswana's zebra gown is kind of giving Cruella de Ville, especially from the back.

Miss Brazil made the bold choice to put 1 billion sequins on a Virgin Mary costume. I guess it's not technically Sexy Virgin Mary because she's not showing much skin but like. c'mon.

Oh yikes. This is especially upsetting because last year Miss British Virgin Islands had such a genuinely clever and charming costume, and now we have this mess. Really just combining all my least favorite things -- arm drapes, bad murals, Just a Dress -- into one look.

Miss Bulgaria's rose-themed costume is visually impressive, but unfortunately it did not hold up In motion. She was visibly struggling to keep her balance, the rose 'wings' were drooping severely on one side, and she kept shedding feathers on stage.

This is Cabo Verde's first time being included in Miss Universe, and she seemed really excited about it, so I'm going to suggest she adjust her headdress slightly and move on.

Miss Cambodia is wearing vaguely historical gold and carrying a heavily-rhinestoned traditional string instrument, which is not quite voting Present but still kind of a safe choice. Insane amount of nose contour, though. She needs to have a talk with he makeup artist.

Miss Canada seems a little embarrassed about her maple leaf butterfly look. Which is fair.

On the one hand, Miss Cayman Islands was clearly struggling to walk in this costume. On the other hand, giant manta ray puppet. Tough call.

I do like Miss Chile's Tribute to Torres del Paine National Park, and I'm delighted to see a non-Scandinavian country getting in on the Snow Queen action, but the mural panels are never, ever going to improve a costume. Please stop doing this.

Normally I would be more critical of Miss China for veering so close to Just An Evening Gown territory, but she made the sleeve ruffles undulate in a really cool way that you need to see in motion to appreciate.

Miss Colombia's skirt is made of tragically cheap-looking fabric, and the bodice kind of looks like it's giving you the side-eye. Unfortunately this is giving 'intermediate-level cosplay' in terms of build quality.

I do love to see an ambitiously weird silhouette, but I'm afraid whoever built Miss Costa Rica's costume was not quite up to the task. There's a lot of wobbling and the train is badly wrinkled. I appreciate the attempt, though.

Miss Croatia Is allegedly wearing a "tribute to the Adriatic Sea" but it's mostly conveying Space Empress to me.

This photo caught Miss Cuba in a moment of Hostage Face but she did seem to be mostly enjoying herself in the video. I think she should have probably committed to either the musical instruments or the dominos, but this is a fun look overall.

Things I do not love about Miss Curacao's costume, in order from least to most troubling: 1. There is a blue-and-yellow color palette and a pink-and-purple color pallette and they are locked in mortal combat for control of this dress. 2. The hem mural. We have discussed this. No Murals. 3. Why did you attach half a dozen deeply haunted-looking baby dolls to your outfit. This was a bad call. I didn't think "no haunted dolls" was something I needed to tell the Miss Universe National Costume team, but here we are.

Miss Czech Republic does look like a minor deity invented by cottagecore Tiktok witches, but that's not a criticism. I think this slaps actually. Her weird tinsel deer helmet is great. I would like to see a froth of petticoats filling in the hollow hoop skirt, and that is my only criticism.

Poor Miss DRC got introduced as "Miss Denmark" and had to stand there doing an awkward video game character creation screen dance for a solid 30 second until someone whispered a correction to the announcer. I also wish her team had chosen slightly less shiny metallic fabrics, because they show every single divot and wrinkle. She does win Widest Wingspan for sure!

And here's the actual Miss Denmark, doing a much better job at conveying Sexy Swan than poor Miss Belgium. Still kinda basic, though.

Oh this is fun! We haven't had a good Giant Flower in a while. Miss Dominican Republic can be proud of this one.

Not only is Miss Ecuador dressed as a Sexy Blue-Footed Booby, but she also looks like a JRPG boss and her mask is giving me Dark Crystal vibes. This is impeccable. No notes.

I tried so hard to hold back the "biblically accurate Miss Egypt" joke that my brain instantly leapt to. I was not successful.

Yes, I know that Miss El Salvador is wearing her actual traditional folk costume, and technically that is what the National Costume competition is for. In practice, though, no it isn't and this is boring.

Miss Equatorial Guinea's costume has lots of texture and detail, which I like, and a photorealistic scowling gorilla face, which I do not like. Congrats on getting to go barefoot though.

More countries should follow Miss Estonia's lead and let a furry design their costumes. For real though, this fucks severely and it's well-built enough that she could move around in it easily without anything wobbling or tilting.

Miss Finland's crown and pauldron deserve better than this prom dress, I'm sorry to say.

Cyberpunk Joan of Arc is a great look. Miss France only needs to swap out the flag for a cool light-up sword to achieve perfection.

Today I learned that Ghana has over 800 species of butterfly! That's neat. Please convey that information with a better-designed costume next year.

Oh this is embarrassing. Miss Great Britain's Tribute To My Fair Lady is a very sweet concept, but 1) her white gown only vaguely resembles Eliza's, is not super well made, and has an unecessary boob cutout, and 2) after transforming onstage she had to awkwardly wheel her flower cart away. Also I'm not sure if she fell down as part of the bit or if that was a real stumble and she covered it well.

A special award goes to the contestant who obviously had no help from her parents: Miss Greece!

Miss Guadeloupe was clearly enjoying her Tribute To The Pink Conch Pearl, and good for her! I think maybe they should not have used white pearls on the costume though.

I'm not clear on how Miss Guatemala's costume is a Tribute To One Specific City In Guatemala, but I would watch a magical girl anime about her.

Miss Guinea brought an entire parade float onstage with her, but she nailed "mining-themed Power Rangers villain" so well that she genuinely didn't need it.

Gliding past the obligatory "girl, you're on fire" jokes to point out that Miss Guyana's costume makes it clear how much it elevates a costume when you use better-quality materials and fabrics with some texture. I love this. (The headdress is a little droopy though.)

Miss Haiti, walking right up to the line between Sexy Bird Costume and That's A Furry.

Miss Honduras is clearly having a great time in her baton twirler costume. I love the cartoonishly exaggerated pauldrons.

Miss Hong Kong appears nearly as often as Miss Australia in the Just An Evening Gown Hall Of Shame. Do better, ladies.

Having said that: you can do worse than Just An Evening Gown, as Miss Hungary demonstrates with Just A Cocktail Dress With Detachable Train.

Very excited that Miss India is not just wearing a fancy sari yet again! Also kind of delighted that this is a Tribute To The Buddha Achieving Enlightement. In the Miss Universe Pageant. I love the outfit but you are not escaping samsara like this, Miss India.

Miss Indonesia, your props and your headdress cannot fool me! That is just an evening gown! I can still tell! Go sit in the corner with Hong Kong and Australia and think about what you've done.

It's possible that I don't know enough about Mesopotamian history to understand Miss Iraq's Tribute To The Ishtar Gate. I'm okay with that. It's big and gold and sparkly. Miss Iraq understood the assignment.

This is just an evening gown, but Miss Israel's costume was so bad last year that it's still kind of a relief.

Miss Italy is enjoyably whimsical, but I will admit that I liked last year's costume better.

Miss Jamaica's costume has a whole list of inspirations that might be more apparent to other Jamaicans, but I'm not seeing "historic market" or "ingredients of a national dish" tbh. However, it incorporates lots of vital Miss Universe national costume elements like 1) giant flowers 2) big hat 3) sparkly so it's doing fine anyway.

Miss Japan's transforming kimono-to-crane costume did a great job avoiding most of the common pitfalls of transforming costumes -- she didn't have to leave any costume elements on the ground behind her, both the before and after looked good, she could move in it, and the transformation was smooth. Plus I don't think she shed a single feather.

Miss Kazakhstan's gown is made of traditional yurt materials and she nearly tripped on the hem. At no point were the tulip boobs explained.

I think this is the first time since I started doing these writeups that Miss Korea has worn anything other than a fancy hanbok. I am thrilled that we're breaking the streak with Kpop Demon Hunters cosplay. Genuinely so so happy for her.

Miss Kosovo votes Present.

Miss Kyrgyzstan is a Sexy Golden Eagle. I appreciate that they stuck pretty close to the correct color palette for the real bird, and I like her boots.

Miss Laos is impressively detailed, but her giant flower had a wonky unfolding mechanism onstage and tbh I can't escape the impression that her boobs are making an angry owl face. This just feels like a problem that should have been avoidable.

Sorry, Miss Lebanon. Your bodice fits poorly and your skirt is basic.

Personally I think having an allegedly phoenix-themed gown without any sort of transforming element should earn Miss Macau banishment to the Evening Gown Punishment Corner with Hong Kong, Australia, et al.

Could not for the life of me find a decent photo of Miss Malaysia's costume from the actual pageant, so we're using this one. It has a lot of nice details! I would like to see shoes that match better, is all.

Miss Malta's costume is allegedly inspired by their national bird. I call bullshit.

Miss Martinique is a Sexy Calla Lily. Which, yeah, I guess she is.

You can't fool me, Miss Mauritius. I can still tell that's just an evening gown no matter how much stuff you wear on your head.

Same goes for you, Miss Mayotte. No matter how much I like a cape. Also if you have to hold your hat in place on your head the whole time you should maybe not wear that hat.

Miss Mexico, you are such a relief after all those gowns that I am willing to overlook the way your giant flower was flapping around all over the place.

This is Miss Universe Latina, which I don't think I knew was a thing? Or that she competes in original flavor Miss Universe? Anyway this claims to be monarch butterfly inspired but it's kind of. um. blue? for that.

Miss Moldova is wearing a very well-thought-out and tasteful attempt at reinterpreting traditional folk costume with a high-fashion silhouette. Unfortunately she is in the Twelve-Foot Sequined Wingspan competition.

Miss Myanmar is in the same competition as Miss Moldova, but that's not what we're all here for. Where, I ask you, is the whimsy? Where is the chutzpah?

There it is. Thank you, Miss Namibia. I'm sorry I couldn't find a decent picture of your costume in motion from the pageant, and also I wish they hadn't made you carry a big unnecessary fabric mural onstage.

By now I think there should be some lessons that Miss Universe national costume designers should not need to relearn, like "don't cheap out on materials" and "some design elements will look weird when placed directly over the crotch." Sadly Miss Nepal's team may need to hear them one more time.

Oh this is a breath of fresh air. Miss Netherlands is wearing a Tribute To Van Gogh's Almond Blossoms and she's doing a great job. Love this. May add this to my all-time top 10.

Miss New Zealand's Tribute To Lake Tekapo (And Its Flowers) has lots of layering and detail. Its shape and construction are enjoyably unconventional, keeping her safely out of the Just A Gown Shame Corner. Also it's been ages since we had a recycled-materials gown!

Really enjoying the details on Biblically Accurate Miss Nicaragua. (yes I already made that joke. there are 122 of these things. leave me alone.)

Miss Nigeria has the rare costume that actually looks better in photos than in motion. In the video you can tell that she can barely walk and it's not tailored to her shape very well.

Miss Norway's infamous salmon fit! Upon reflection I think I wish she had worn a salmon-colored bodysuit with more beading, but this Is so good conceptually that I love it regardless.

Miss Pakistan is wearing an absolutely stunning lehenga, it looks incredible on her, and I'm thrilled to see a contestant who's not stick thin. However. This is not the 'grace and class' portion of the competition. This is where the rejected Rupaul's Drag Race costume concepts go.

Miss Palestine, I'm really sorry but this is also just an evening gown. That said, your train has maybe the only well-executed mural I've ever seen in this competition.

I'm not getting 'firefly' from Miss Paraguay's costume at all, but at least it's huge and unwieldy and could probably justify a 'biblically accurate Miss Paraguay' joke. Ooh, and parts of it light up.

Miss Peru is Sexy Mount Huascarán. Thrilled to see another South American Snow Queen but this does feel like a bit of a stretch. I recognize that Sexy Strong As Fuck Ice Mummy would be inappropriate on any number of levels, though.

Miss Phillipines, I know I can always count on you to go super fucking hard in this competition. Thank you for your service, and for this enormous gown.

Sigh. To the Gown Shame Corner with you, Miss Poland. I miss last year's Sexy Salt Mine.

I like many aspects of Portugal's Sexy Carnation Revolution costume, and the camo netting train is hilarious, but I wish her shorts matched her boots better.

Time for this year's Costume That Lets The Contestant Show Off That She Can Dance En Pointe. Miss Puerto Rico is killing it, actually. I love this.

Eh. This is mid. Sorry, Miss Romania. I do feel like a bare minimum requirement should be 'no off-the-rack shoes.'

This is a prom dress from the late 90s, and frankly Buffy Summers wore it better. Shame Corner, Miss Russia.

The 'inspired by' flavor text is a bunch of nonsense, but Miss Rwanda is wearing a giant honeycomb paper ball and I'm almost as delighted by it as she is. Great work.

Miss Saint Lucia is a rosebush Entwife and I'm enjoying it tbh.

I think I would like Miss Senegal's costume more without the flag-lined fur cape. Especially without the truly disquieting face on the back of that thing.

Miss Serbia demonstrates what you need to do to get a passing grade from me while still wearing something that is, technically, just a gown. I might be biased towards this because it has a train on it and it looks like the TARDIS exploding. I'm fine with that.

I appreciate that Miss Singapore chose some lovely fabrics, but anything you could conceivably wear as real clothes in public in the daytime should be disqualifying here.

Really enjoying Miss Slovakia's Tribute To Horse Girls -- love the color palette, love 90% of the details. The bare cage crinoline I could do without, though -- either add a high-low skirt over it, or lose the whole thing.

Miss Slovenia is embarrassing herself and also me with this college-Halloween-party-level sexy bee. I'm not even going to capitalize it. She hasn't earned the privilege.

I like Miss South Africa's costume on a conceptual level and she's got great accessories, but this is another 'where is the chutzpah' one for me.

Miss Spain is a sexy endangered Canarian houbara bird, which, sure! She is wearing bright yellow swimsuit bottoms as a base layer and I think that was not the best choice maybe.

Poor Miss Sri Lanka had to wheel this enormous gold teapot onstage; unlike most parade-float costumes, it does not seem to unhinge to let her out and I'm kind of curious about how she got in there in the first place. At no point did we see any of her body below the elbows; she could be wearing sweatpants for all I know. Good for her if she is.

Miss Sweden my beloved!!! This Tribute To Abba is a all-time fave for me. Talk about chutzpah. Talk about drag! Future Miss USAs, take note. I need one of you to step it up to at least this with a Tribute To Dolly Parton. You could probably even borrow Miss Sweden's wig for it.

The backpiece on Miss Switzerland's Tribute To Swiss Watchmaking is tilting dangerously to one side, a failure of engineering that is, frankly, not very Swiss of her.

Miss Tanzania, showing us all how Sexy Bee looks when done correctly. Miss Slovenia, take notes.

The competition is held in Thailand this year, so I'm sure Miss Thailand was under a lot of pressure. While "vaguely historical gold armor" is not pushing any envelopes, this is at least ornate as fuck.

Miss Trinidad and Tobago has a very ornate costume, complete with a giant decoy head to confuse predators.

Miss Turkey got my memo about some things being too tasteful for this competition; unfortunately, she decided to just crop the under-layer of her gown to mini length and called it good.

Biblically Accurate Miss Turks and Caicos looked like she was struggling under the weight of this costume, but I do think the pelican puppets made it worth the effort.

Miss Ukraine is a Sexy Dove Of Peace (who moonlights as a JRPG boss probably) and I love everything about it except the unecessary prop globe and the dove placement location. We've talked about this, ladies.

Miss UAE is wearing actual regional cultural dress, and this is genuinely the best image I could find of it, so let's just move on.

I genuinely think I could have designed a better Sexy Amethyst Geode costume for Miss Uruguay, and she would not have needed to hold up a chunk of rock onstage for it. Also the rock does not make the spangled nude bodysuit anything other than a spangled nude bodysuit.

Miss USA continues our proud tradition of deeply embarrassing Miss Universe national costumes. Sigh.

lol Miss Venezuela brought two mini parade floats and both of the turtles have moving parts. There is an insane amount of rhinestone and crystal trim on her headdress and sleeves. Delightful. Great work.

Miss Vietnam looks lovely and her ao dai is impeccably tailored but girl. One of your predecessors wore an entire banh mi stand in this competition. A sparkly bicycle is not gonna cut it.

I need everyone to remember that we are grading on a scale with Miss Panama's Sexy Truck and Miss USA's Sexy Optimus Prime at the top end when I say things like "Miss Zambia's costume is a little bit plain for me."

I'm not completely clear on how Miss Zimbabwe's costume is baobab tree inspired unless the baobab in question is actively in flames, but you know what? It's not boring. It's got chutzpah. It also kind of has the Witch-King of Angmar's helmet over the crotch but it's fine. it's fine!

I have to assume there was some behind-the-scenes disaster that put Miss Latvia and her Tribute To The Baltic Sea at the very end of the otherwise alphabetical lineup. That said, I feel like I know any number of cosplayers who could reproduce this and probably improve on it, and it's another instance where upgrading the fabric to something with more texture would make a huge difference.