Gibbing



In all Quake games, there is a special death animation called Gibbing. This word is formed from gib, short for giblets.

When Gibbing occurs
When a character dies, their health goes into negatives after reaching zero. Around -50, a character will burst into bloody bits of muscle, bones, flesh, and organs, while making characteristic sounds. This is referred to as "Gibbing". Some characters cannot be gibbed, while some must be gibbed to be permanently killed.

In Single Player levels of Quake and Quake II, enemies will gib if they reach a certain negative heath value. Weaker enemies often require a smaller negative health value while the more powerful enemies require a larger value. This makes certain enemies appear more resilient than others.

In Quake, gibbing a Zombie will permanently kill it, while simply "killing" a Zombie through conventional means only results in the Zombie being temporarily stunned. In Quake II, corpses can be further damaged simply by shooting them until they gib; gibbing corpses will prevent Medics from reviving fallen Strogg; otherwise, the player is not advised to gib enemies because a corpse in its entirety can be a road sign, showing where the player has navigated and making it easier to find the way on a maze-like map, and gibs will disappear after a while. Furthermore in Quake II, Jorg's fallen body can be gibbed to force Makron outta this exo-skeleton faster. When Makron finally fallen both of its halves can be gibbed when fight ended as well, although it requires a lot of firepower over some time. In Quake III: Team Arena, players must gib the corpse of Kamikaze carrier of the deathmatch after fragging him/her to deny the giant energy explosion following shortly after.

In multiplayer players can be easily gibbed with a powerful weapon such as a Rocket Launcher, although if one has a 100 health value and is hit by a direct hit rocket they will die normally instead. For gibbing a corpse further brutality needed.

Trivia

 * Gibbing was first introduced in the 1993 game Doom, also developed by id Software.
 * In Quake III: Arena, even characters like Bones, who is a Skeleton, and Angel, who is a robot, will burst into fleshy bits.
 * In Quake 4, only Guards and Tactical Strogg can be gibbed. On the Xbox 360 version of the game, other enemies can be gibbed with the Dark Matter Gun.
 * In Quake Live giblets turned into impact sparks, most likely to avoid an ESRB's M (Mature) rating.
 * In Quake II every enemy can be gibbed and all bosses except the Makron gib automatically shortly after their death. Flyers, Technicians and Icari always explode into gibs when killed. Most enemies turn into the same pile of gibs when gibbed, whereas in Quake, each enemy character has its unique gibs.
 * In Quake and Quake II, a minor detail is that the first person camera follows the player's head after being gibbed. This detail is not present in Quake 3, as the camera follows the player's "body" instead.