If you think what the Nazis do to prisoners are bad, this is what the IJA would do.
Being the Darker and Edgier version of the original Call Of Duty, World at War has this in spades:
- The main menu theme.
No. That doesn't play during Nazi Zombies; that's the theme for the whole game... - The VERY FIRST mission has the first-person view of Miller and his recon team being captured and... "interrogated" by the Japanese. One of your squadmates is being brutally hit in the face by a Japanese Mook, to the point it seems most of the skin is cut off and bleeding. Then, when he spits (Blood!) in the face of the the Japanese officer interrogating you, the officer shoves a burning cigarette into his eye, and orders the Mook to execute you both. Once the Mook slits your friend's throat (complete with blood splattering the nearby wall), he grabs you by the neck, and threatens to do the same to you. If it wasn't for Sgt. Sullivan and the other Marines, your game would've been over before it even began.
- In the second mission, as the US Marines are approaching the shores of Peleliu Island, a Marine leans over the side of their landing craft to see what has caused them to stop; he's shot in the head, revealing part of his brain to the player. While he's still alive!
- Then there's the opening of the Russian Campaign: Vendetta. You start off, face-down in a courtyard fountain, surrounded by your dead and dying comrades. From your position, you can barely see German soldiers, casually strolling past, shooting any Bolshevik they missed in the initial fight. Then, one hops into the fountain, fills a few more of your squadmates full of lead, and barely misses you by that much. Unlike Miller, Dmitri doesn't survive his opening by friendly reinforcements riding to the rescue, but by pure, dumb luck. And if it wasn't for Reznov's guidance in evading the Germans, said dumb luck probably wouldn't have lasted much longer in that carpet-bombed hell-hole of a city.
- And in the rest of the Russian campaign, YOU AND REZNOV are doing the same thing to the Germans! When Reznov said "Their Land, Their Blood", he wasn't kidding - the Red Army is shown blowing away wave after wave of German soldiers, (who aren't even actual soldiers anymore but "the young, the old, and the weak"), while perfectly willing to sacrifice millions of their own troops to drown Germany in their blood, and smother them with their corpses. In a game where the player character often got an automatic pass for being the good guy, in spite of needing to shoot up HUNDREDS of enemies, World at War takes great pains to emphasize the Grey-and-Gray Morality the Eastern Front was in real life.
- And it's not like the Americans are any better either. Roebuck's solution when they have to punch through maze of trenches and artillery? Burn'em out.
- The Imperial Japanese Army as a whole. While the German forces are initially just as ruthless, as shown in "Vendetta", by 1945 they're mostly reduced to desperate, tired, and weakened units, retreating or trying to surrender when the Red Army overwhelms them. These soldiers? Quite the opposite. Rather than grow desperate and throw in the towel as the Allies get closer and closer to the Japanese mainland, they'll literally fight to the death, through any means necessary. Fighting an enemy with nothing to lose and with a determination to stop you and your buddies at all cost is pretty unsettling.
- The Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service is arguably just as bad. Their solution to taking down American ships with nothing but obsolete planes and inexperienced pilots? Why, simply use kamikaze tactics. As shown in the second half of "Black Cats", the effects are devastating, with several American ships either dead in the water or sunk.
