‘Born of the Blood, Made Men by the Blood, Undone by the Blood’: Bloodborne as a Critical Reflection of Ghosts of the Anthropocene

Drawing on critical frameworks in criminology, including Popular Criminology and Ghost Criminology, this paper aims to explore how Bloodborne offers a critical reflection of the haunting nature of the harms inflicted by humans in the age of the Anthropocene. More specifically, we aim to examine how the cultural text of Bloodborne illustrates humanity's corruption of the natural and the harms this inflicts, arguing that this can be understood as a reflection of ghosts of the Anthropocene. Using ethnographic content analysis, three main themes were uncovered in Bloodborne that related to humanity's corruption of the natural, the harms this inflict, as well as how this can be understood as a reflection of ghosts of the Anthropocene: Sanguine Exploitation, Horrific Creation , and Monstrous Extinction . We conclude by arguing that Bloodborne , in evoking the horrors of climate catastrophe, is an important cultural script that responds to McBrien’s necrocene and Haraway’s Chthulucene.