Gaming Urban Legends Wiki
Advertisement

The "Evil Otto is Real" legend is an urban legend revolving around the 1980 arcade shooting game Berzerk.

Description

In 1981, a year after the game debuted, 19-year-old gamer Jeff Daily scored a new high score of 16,660. After entering his initials into the systems for his high score, Daily immediately began suffering a strange heart attack and died soon after. A little bit over a year later, 18-year-old Peter Burkowski hit two high scores and, like Daily, went into cardiac arrest immediately after entering his initials.

These were the first known instances of video games being linked to real-life deaths. Some began to speculate that the game's main antagonist, an otherworldly smiley face named Evil Otto, was actually killing players directly through some supernatural means. Used as evidence of this theory was Daily's score, which included "666". No other deaths since have been connected to Berzerk.

Images

Advertisement