Mr. Friendly

Mr. Friendly is a controversial alien enemy cut from Half-Life. It can be found in the game files.

Overview
Mr. Friendly's model is the size of a small horse. It was to be a crawling creature walking on hoofed legs on its back and spurs on its front, moving in a very awkward, shuffling manner and making a noise resembling "fingernails on a chalkboard" as it moved around.

Behavior and skills
One of its proposed attacks was to pound the ground and knock the player's weapon out of his hand. It was even suggested that Gordon's glasses fly off and leave the player stuck in combat with blurry vision, a feature that would have been challenging to implement considering the game technology available at the time.

Its most recent attacks in the game's development are shown in the model animations. They show it standing on its rear legs and slapping the player with its front arms (one being a double whip), as well as vomiting, probably in the vein of the Bullsquid or other spitting enemy.

Behind the scenes
According to the book Raising the Bar, Valve member Ken Birdwell had a friend whose 12-year-old brother who used to draw. Ken had always liked his work so he asked him, several years later, to do a couple of sketches of possible monsters. He presented sketches of several very sexual-oriented monsters to him and Gabe Newell, managing director, the kind of stuff Birdwell didn't expect. Among them was this "Mr. Friendly", with something that looked like a penis. The creature was to literally "rape" the player, holding them with its tentacled arms until the point of fatal copulation. Birdwell was quite disturbed by the concept and wondered if Newell would like it; it turns out he did. They then chatted about possible psycho-sexual alien behaviors and their relation with disturbed teenager sexual fantasies. The sexual themes of some of the enemies were intended to appeal to the innate homophobia of 12 year old boys, the targeted audience for the game.

Trivia
Mr. Friendly appears in several Half-Life mods, such as Absolute Redemption, USS Darkstar and Deliverance.

List of appearances

 * Half-Life
 * Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar