A Forthcoming Edgy Winnie-The-Pooh Game Is Making A Lot Of People Wish Disney Hadn’t Let The Poor Guy Fall Into The Public Domain

Last year something exciting happened to Winnie-the-Pooh: He and his cadre of woodland critters entered the public domain. The rights to A.A. Milne’s beloved characters had spent decades held hostage by The Walt Disney Company, who milked him for numerous beloved shorts, movies, and shows. Once Winnie, Eeyore, Rabbit, et al. were free, people have gone above and beyond to give them makeovers. There was that horror movie adaptation. And there’s a forthcoming body horror game that’s making people wish Disney had never let its rights lapse.

Players will embody a virus tasked with capturing cells to grow more limbs and overtake Winnie the Pooh in the 2D strategy dungeon crawler roguelite RPG. pic.twitter.com/Fx1CM7VRu2

— IGN (@IGN) October 3, 2023

It’s called Winnie’s Hole, and believe it or not the title is not the most shudder-inducing thing about it. It comes from the Australian game studio Twice Different, and, as IGN reported a while back, players play a “virus traveling through Winnie the Pooh’s body.” It gets worse:

“As you spread throughout the bear’s rotund vessel like a cancer, you branch out the map and gather the resources you need to capture healthy cells and mutate them to grow as many extra appendages and eyes to transform Winnie into a monstrosity of your liking and adapt his form for survival.”

The game was announced back in June, but sometimes traumatizing things take a while to fully horrify the general populace. After IGN brought the game up again a few days ago, on Wednesday it finally went viral. And when it went viral, a lot of people couldn’t handle Winnie-the-Pooh going David Cronenberg.