The Worst Worlds in Movies and Shows You’d Never Want to Live In

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Ignacio Weil

Entertainment - November 18th 2025, 17:00 GMT+1

Cropped the handmaiden tale — 15. The Handmaid’s Tale

Stepping into Gilead means you wake up wondering whether your own thoughts might betray you – and the answer is often yes. The world distilled from *The Handmaid’s Tale* (Margaret Atwood) became a TV-series nightmare where fertile women are state-property and human rights are tax-deductible. Every red cloak is a walking symbol of subjugation, every whispered prayer a rebellion waiting to happen. If you thought bureaucracy was bad, try it when “breathing rights” can be revoked on a whim. The regime here doesn’t just crush freedom – it commodifies motherhood and fear. Survival isn’t heroic so much as a quiet calculation: what do I surrender today so I can wake tomorrow? In short: This is a world you might live in, but you’d regret the lease. | © MGM Television

Cropped Children of Men — 14. Children of Men

The year is 2027 (in the movie version), and humanity has stopped believing in its own future – first because no babies are born, then because despair became the dominant export. Adapted loosely from the novel by P. D. James, the film world of *Children of Men* traps you in a Britain where refugees crowd the streets, hope is rationed like medicine, and your next breath might be your loudest. Everywhere you look, institutions crumble under inertia, while one fragile miracle tumbles into view like a cliché rebelling against its fate. Day-to-day existence means dodging death, bureaucracy, and your own cynicism – often all at once. You wouldn’t call this a broken world; you’d call it a world that gave up and kept walking anyway. In this setting, optimism is not naive; it’s a radical act. | © Beacon Communications

Cropped The Hunger Games — 13. The Hunger Games

Imagine your town gets told: “Congratulations, you’ve been selected for extermination entertainment!” That’s basically life in Panem, where the Capitol turns children into global spectacles and treats hope like a loan. Based on Suzanne Collins’ novel, this world glazes cruelty with spectacle, making rebellion less a choice than a survival tactic. Districts exist so people remember what scarcity looks like; the arena exists so people forget what freedom felt like. Citizens train for death as if it were a career path, and the insurance is discontent. If you lived here, your professional development plan would say “avoid being televised.” Spoiler: hope isn’t safe, but staying silent is lethal too. | © Lionsgate / Color Force

12. Neon Genesis Evangelion

Picture kids fighting giant bio-machines while the real battle is their internal fractures – welcome to *Evangelion’s* Tokyo-3, a place terrified of itself and everything called “instrumentality.” This anime turns apocalyptic theology into teenage therapy via giant robots, existential dread and EVERYBODY’S trauma. Living here means the air smells slightly of ozone and second-guesses; faith and science have drawn the same corpse outline and shrugged. Streets are safe only until an Angel shows up, and “safe” is a concept on vacation. You don’t just struggle with monsters – you fight your own reflection. It’s stylised, cerebral and deeply uncomfortable in the best possible way. In this world, the only stability is instability. | © Gainax

Cropped 1984 1984 — 11. 1984

Big Brother isn’t just watching – he’s rewriting your memories like bad notes on a board you can’t erase. This world, born from George Orwell’s novel, manifests as a film about totalitarian control so precise it invades your dreams. Privacy is theft, loyalty is a costume, and freedom is misfiled. Every glance might be reported, every sigh catalogued, every heartbeat a statement of treason. If you lived here, you’d whisper so softly your own echo might betray you. Resistance isn’t brave so much as inevitable – the regime simply lacks imagination. Would you live here? You might survive, but you wouldn’t still be you. | © Holiday Films Ltd.

Game Of Thrones — 10. Game of Thrones

If you think your office politics are brutal, imagine the meeting minutes in Westeros. In this world, everyone’s either plotting, freezing, or dying – often all three before the week ends. The medieval fantasy born from George R. R. Martin’s *A Song of Ice and Fire* makes treachery a team sport and loyalty a limited resource. Kings rise and fall faster than you can refill your goblet, dragons keep the skies interesting, and winter refuses to leave the chat. For the average villager, “career growth” means surviving the latest regime change without losing any limbs. Honor is optional; survival, mandatory. It’s a world of crowns, corpses, and snow – and that’s just Monday. | © HBO

The Last of Us HBO Show Teaser — 9. The Last of Us (series)

Mushrooms are supposed to go on pizza, not inside your brain. In the world of *The Last of Us*, a fungal pandemic has turned civilization into a road trip through grief, spores, and moral gray zones. Based on the acclaimed video game by Naughty Dog, the series delivers a post-apocalypse so heartbreakingly human that you almost forget about the clickers waiting to snack on you. Cities crumble into green jungles, hope blooms in impossible places, and trust is the rarest currency. Every friendship doubles as a countdown timer; every safe moment is just prelude to loss. It’s beautiful, brutal, and the kind of world that reminds you how fragile normal ever was. The scenery may be stunning, but the rent’s paid in trauma. | © HBO

Cropped The Walking Dead — 8. The Walking Dead

At this point, even the zombies look tired. *The Walking Dead* paints an America where the dead don’t rest and the living can’t agree on whose turn it is to ruin everything. The apocalypse here isn’t one event – it’s a long, exhausting lifestyle. Sure, there are walkers everywhere, but it’s the humans who keep the nightmare sustainable, reinventing cruelty with every new season. Communities form, crumble, and repeat like bad déjà vu, and trust is as endangered as clean water. The emotional toll of endless survival makes death feel like the only time anyone gets a vacation. In this world, hope is renewable but never efficient. | © AMC

Cropped Fallout series — 7. Fallout (series)

You know civilization’s gone wrong when your best survival tool is a cheerful wrist computer and a gun older than your grandma. *Fallout’s* retro-futuristic wasteland, brought to live-action by Amazon Studios, turns 1950s optimism into a radioactive punchline. Nuka-Cola signs still shine, but the world beneath them is dust, decay, and eccentric survivors who think power armor counts as personality. Life is scavenged, morality is negotiable, and every handshake carries a hint of radiation burn. There’s beauty in the desolation – neon ruins, rusted cars, a dog who somehow keeps finding you – but you can’t drink nostalgia when the water glows. It’s the kind of apocalypse that still insists on smiling at you while it falls apart. | © Amazon Studios

Cropped Mad Max — 6. Mad Max

Sunburn, sand, and the faint smell of gasoline – welcome to the future according to *Mad Max*. Civilization has collapsed into a demolition derby where every friendship ends in fire and every highway is a war zone. The world runs on engines and vengeance, with fuel serving as religion and water as myth. You don’t build homes here; you weld them to your car. Style points matter, because if you’re going to die screaming in the desert, you might as well look iconic. It’s a chaotic ballet of dust, noise, and survival where humanity clings to the steering wheel out of pure spite. In this nightmare, peace is just the moment between explosions. | © Warner Bros. Pictures

Cropped The Matrix World — 5. The Matrix

Every morning you wake up, make your coffee, check your phone – and none of it is real. The world of *The Matrix* is the cruelest kind of lie: a meticulously rendered dream designed to keep you docile while machines farm your body like it’s a battery pack. The illusion of freedom is the most efficient prison ever built, and even when you wake up, the truth is an ice bath in the apocalypse. Humanity’s rebellion feels noble until you realize lunch involves recycled goop and bullets. There’s style, of course – trench coats, sunglasses, slow-motion backflips – but that’s about all the comfort available. The worst part? You’d probably never know you were trapped. Ignorance isn’t just bliss here; it’s the default setting. | © Warner Bros. Pictures

4. Attack on Titan

If your town’s biggest concern is “don’t get eaten by a naked giant,” you already know the homeowner’s association meetings are intense. *Attack on Titan’s* world is a masterpiece of despair – walled cities keeping humanity barely alive while monstrous Titans treat people like tapas. Born from Hajime Isayama’s manga, it’s a universe where bravery has an expiration date and trust is an endangered emotion. The military might call it “defense,” but it looks a lot like “screaming strategically.” Every victory feels pyrrhic, every revelation worse than the last, until the real enemy turns out to be… well, everything. Living here would make therapy a national pastime and optimism an act of rebellion. Walls may keep the monsters out, but they never keep the dread in. | © Wit Studio / MAPPA

Cropped Snowpiercer — 3. Snowpiercer

Life on Earth has literally gone off the rails. *Snowpiercer* takes the apocalypse and crams it into a single endlessly looping train, where the last scraps of humanity live in a brutal class system dictated by train car. Outside: frozen death. Inside: revolution in progress. The upper class dine in luxury while the tail section eats protein bars made from things we don’t discuss before dinner. It’s a world that looks sleek until you realize the engine runs on suffering and denial. Every day is either a revolt or a maintenance check on despair. If humanity’s legacy is one big commute, this is the ride from hell – first class included. | © CJ Entertainment / TNT

Cropped The Road 2009 — 2. The Road

The world has ended quietly, and what’s left is ash, hunger, and silence heavy enough to crush the soul. Adapted from Cormac McCarthy’s novel, *The Road* strips away spectacle and leaves only the bare mechanics of staying alive when there’s nothing worth living for. The landscape is gray, the air tastes like death, and the only warmth comes from the small fire between a father and son who know it can’t last. There are no villains left – just desperate survivors picking through the bones of humanity. Kindness becomes a gamble, hope a liability. It’s haunting because it feels possible, like an ending we could stumble into by accident. A world that’s already over, still forcing you to walk through it. | © Dimension Films

Cropped berserk anime 199 — 1. Berserk

There’s dark fantasy – and then there’s *Berserk*, a world so brutal it makes medieval Europe look like a wellness retreat. Born from Kentaro Miura’s manga before being adapted into anime and film, its setting is a relentless spiral of war, betrayal, and cosmic horror. Demons don’t just haunt the land; they run the economy. Heroes are forged through trauma, survival measured in scars, and faith rewarded with madness. You could spend your entire life fighting and still not scratch the surface of the world’s cruelty. It’s beautiful in that terrible, awe-inspiring way a thunderstorm is – distant, merciless, and entirely uninterested in your suffering. Living here isn’t a question of if you’ll break, but how spectacularly. | © OLM / GEMBA / Millepensee

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Let’s face it – watching movies and TV shows is all fun and games until you stop and think, “Wait… people live here?” From dystopian wastelands to cursed suburbs where everyone has a secret, most fictional worlds are basically elaborate torture devices disguised as entertainment. Suddenly, staying home on the couch doesn’t sound so bad, huh?

If you’re hunting for the absolute worst universes to call home on screen, you’re in the right place. And hey, if you’re more of a gamer and want to see which video game worlds would chew you up and spit you out, don’t worry – we’ve got you covered there too. Now, grab your popcorn (and maybe some emotional support), because things are about to get bleak.