Gibs



Gibs are the little bits of internal organs, flesh and bone that are left when a player or monster has not only died, but has exploded into body parts. The term, "gibbing" can also refer to making the player or monster explode into gibs.

Gib death occurs when a character has suffered from an overkill attack that drains its health to less than the negative of its spawn health (or original hit points). In other words, the character has suffered, in total, more than twice the damage needed to kill it in the normal fashion. For example, a Zombieman having 1 hit point left (initial health of 20 hit points), would require an attack dealing 22 points or more of damage to be gibbed.

Only seven characters in Doom have an animation to denote a gib death: the player, Zombieman, Shotgun Guy, Heavy Weapon Dude, Wolfenstein SS, Imp, and Nightmare Imp. A single special death sound, DSSLOP (a squishing sound), is used for all of these. In the PlayStation port, the status bar face explodes when the player experiences a gibbing death, and in the 3DO port, it always explodes when the player dies.

There are various methods of gibbing enemies. The rocket launcher and the BFG9000 are the easiest ways, although setting off explosive barrels nearby the intended target or punching while under the effects of berserk can also work well. On occasions, the second shot from a plasma gun can gib a Zombieman that has survived the first shot. Getting telefragged also results in gib death, as it deals 10,000 damage.

While the BFG9000 and telefragging can be used on other monsters to meet the above damage threshold, the normal death animation will still be used for any monster that does not have a gibbing animation.

Another form of gibbing occurs when corpses are crushed either by a crusher or a closing door, resulting in a pool of blood.

An Arch-vile can resurrect a gibbed corpse as though it were not gibbed, although the animation is different. If an Arch-vile resurrects a gibbed Lost Soul, when it spawns, it will be invincible. This is a glitch that occurs in Ultimate Doom and Doom II.

Doom 3 also features gibbing. However, only Zombies and dead humans can be gibbed, since all other monsters burn away immediately when being killed. This can work if the player constantly attacks corpses, or if they launch an overkill attack (i.e. Shotgun blast at close range) to Zombies. DOOM features gibbing as well, which works in the same way as in the other games and inspired by Brutal Doom, although the body parts disappear after a while, as they do in Doom 3 but somewhat slower.

In Heretic and Hexen, the threshold to suffer a gib death is lower, set at half the health, rather than full health. For example a player is gibbed at -51 health and lower, instead of -101 health. The various player classes, as well as the gargoyle and weredragon for Heretic, and the affrit, ettin, centaur, chaos serpent (both green and brown), reiver, and stalker, as well as Zedek, Traductus, and Menelkir can all suffer gib death. In addition, if Corvus or Baratus is gibbed, his skull will fly into the air. When this happens, the camera detaches from the player's body and attaches to his skull, allowing him to see his own remains.

In Strife, the humanoids (player, peasant, beggar, acolyte, rebel) and the reaver can all be gibbed.