Black Mirror’s creepiest bits of technology

We at Gizmodo Australia love weird and scary gadgets, so we’re naturally drawn to the technology that appears in Black Mirror.

Also, Season 6 of Black Mirror is (allegedly) a go. To celebrate the return of the mega scary show, here are five of the most memorably spooky and weird bits of tech the show featured.

Clear spoiler warning if you haven’t seen much of Black Mirror! But since it’s an anthology series, these gadgets won’t ruin the whole show.

The Men Against Fire neural implant (Season 3)

This one is creepy and all sorts of screwed up insofar as it means to the episode’s main character and us as humans.

In the season three episode, Men Against Fire, soldiers are given neural implants and sent on active duty. They are sent out to kill “Cockroaches, ” humanoid creatures. It’s filmed as a very Call of Duty-esque scene, where a squad of soldiers clears a building of cockroaches and acts like the good guys.

It turns out that the neural implants created an augmented reality overlay in the soldiers’ brains, causing them to see members of an ethnic group as cockroaches. Technology-led genocide, it seems.

This was some seriously twisted technology showcased in this episode, made even more creepy because soldiers’ memories could be erased and their dreams affected (a good soldier could be rewarded with an erotic fantasy, for example).

It completely shields soldiers from committing war crimes and says something about how insensitive we have become about war through the media. Polygon recently made a fantastic video about this.

Image: Netflix

The Black Museum Pain Hairnet (Season 4)

During the season four episode Black Museum showcases a wide range of technology; one stands out as particularly creepy.

In the episode, as a museum curator recalls a techie’s stories, one of the gadgets turns out to be interesting: a hairnet that transfers the wearer’s physical sensations to another person, provided they have a neural implant.

This story is particularly murky: a doctor gets the implant and uses the hairnet to investigate what’s happening with his patients. It makes him an incredible doctor until one day; he wears the hairnet when one of his patients dies.

The sensation eventually becomes so intense that he becomes a sadist of the event, injuring himself and eventually killing a homeless person while wearing it. It puts him in a coma.

Yes, bah. Tech billionaires and entrepreneurs, please don’t see this as a good idea.

The Striking Vipers Video Game (Season 5)

So, I’ll be honest, when I first saw this episode of Black Mirror, I burst out laughing and couldn’t take it seriously.

Season five episode Striking Vipers released a new video game that uses advanced virtual reality, enabling a sensory experience beyond sight and sound. It is a fighting game very similar to Mortal Kombat.

Anyway, you can have sex in the game. Like, with other people, you both play as the chosen characters. In the show, two straight men play the game together and have sex. They both enjoy it immensely, but one of them is married.

The episode eventually takes a very interesting moralistic turn when it’s decided that the two can keep blasting in the video game Striking Vipers (the joke of the name is only dawning on me now). At the same time, the married woman goes to a bar and meets a stranger without her—The wedding ring.

Will this ever happen? Probably not; who knows? Is it interesting to see how technology influences moral decisions? Yes absolutely.

Image: Netflix

The Crocodile Memory Technology (Season 4)

In Crocodile, a season four episode, an insurance investigator uses special technology to retrieve the user’s memories when assessing an insurance claim.

Quite an evergreen concept, right? That your memories (at least what you experience with your own eyes and senses) can later be observed via a piece of technology? Evergreen technology as far as Black Mirror goes, at least.

Anyway, this kind of memory technology makes the protagonist do some… pretty screwed-up things, including killing people so their brains can’t be used to remember the event (one line of the episode is that the memories of deceased people cannot be approached). Doing something screwed up and then doing more screwed up things to cover it up because of technology. Again, woof.

It’s… not a pretty episode, especially toward the end. Yaks.

The San Junipero Simulation (Season 3)

Okay, this technology is from such a good episode that it might as well be considered a different show from the rest of Black Mirror. It’s not even a horror episode, honestly.

In the season three episode of San Junipero, it was revealed that the entire city was a simulation for people who had died or were near death. For those who had died, their consciousness would be uploaded to the San Junipero system, free to reenact their lives in a virtual afterlife. Those near death (old and sick) can visit the simulation occasionally.

As for creepy tech, this is probably one of the more evergreen ones, but it will e. On the other hand, isn’t it a bit sickening to imagine reality going on indefinitely in such a small town? That’s what annoys me the most about this.

A whole virtual heaven where people can act young again, woof.

Image: Netflix

When will Black Mirror season 6 come out?

A release date for Black Mirror Season 6 hasn’t been announced, but hopefully, we’ll find out more soon. In the meantime, you can watch Black Mirror and all its scary tech on Netflix.

Could you read our article? Lease reread all he thallat sciethattion, fantasy, thriller, horror, and adventure movies set to hit theaters in 2022.