The Game Markiplier Wasn't Supposed to Play.

Summary

The Hospital is a small Unity horror game developed by Elias Damian Perez and released on Game Jolt in January 2016. The player is a drug addict searching an abandoned hospital for drugs while a monster lurks nearby. The creature is invisible unless viewed through the player’s camera, giving the game an Outlast-like setup.

Markiplier uploaded a playthrough on January 22, 2016. The game used dark, shabby environments, loud noises, and sudden images to scare players. Two jump scares featured photographs alleged to show real human gore. Their precise origins—and claims linking one image to cartel violence—remain unverified.

Online posts questioned the images in the years after the upload. The issue drew wider attention in July 2023, when clips and discussion spread on TikTok. The original video was available on July 11 and gone by July 12.

In a July 15 livestream, Markiplier said he had not known the images were real when he played the game and deleted the video after learning what it contained.

The video’s main takeaway is that using real images of suffering as ordinary jump scares was a disturbing, cheap substitute for creating horror. It also emphasizes that the photos’ exact provenance is uncertain and that Markiplier was not shown to have knowingly included them.

Gamers and sources featured

• Gamers: Markiplier, PewDiePie, and Jacksepticeye.
• Other sources: Elias Damian Perez; Game Jolt; Reddit posts on r/creepy and the Markiplier subreddit; TikTok; archived records of the video; and Markiplier’s July 15 livestream.