The year was 1997. Canned video game death animations were becoming stiff and predictable. Luckily, as CPU power progressed so did the possibility of having a more immersive environment for the player, this included the use of physics behind death animations. At first ragdoll physics was both awe inspiring and a joke. Players of the early Max Payne games for example would frequently gasp at the sheer amount of possibilities that this procedural animation could provide; every death was different. The flip side to that coin would be laughing at your enemies as their bodies would convulse on the ground and pull off BJ Penn like feats of flexibility post-mortem. In the years since the early days of rag doll physics our gaming rigs have become powerful enough to create realistic whole-body muscle/nervous systems, as seen in Red Dead Redemption and GTA IV.
In real life, Douglas Lima’s heavy fists met the dome of Chris Lozano at Bellator 53, jarring his very real nervous system but rag dolling him just the same.
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