About

Divine Light Severed refers to an image macro that appears in the 2021 tactical shooter Cruelty Squad upon the player dying once and the game's default difficulty changing to an easier one. The image macro, which depicts a man sketched in bright red paired with the bright-green caption, "Divine light severed. You are a flesh automaton animated by neurotransmitters," has been a popular subject of memes in the game's community and has inspired fan art based on it.

Origin

On June 15th, 2021, the tactical shooter video game Cruelty Squad was released. Dying once in the game results in the game's difficulty, which starts on the second-highest Divine Light tier, dropping to the easier Flesh Automaton level, with the player notified of the change via a death screen message reading "Divine light severed. You are a flesh automaton powered by neurotransmitters."^[1][2] In Cruelty Squad, the dead player is put back together in the genetic recombinator, and therefore the message implies that the player has lost an essential part of their humanity and is now nothing more than a flesh automaton.

Spread

On March 17th, 2021, during the game's early-access period, X^[3] user @neko_girl92 posted the earliest found meme based on the image macro, an edited photograph of Prince Philip combined with the caption. The post (shown below) garnered over 140 reposts and 770 likes in three years.

Following the release of the game, the macro inspired various memes within the game's community as the caption was paired with color-shifted memes and photographs. For example, on July 8th, 2021, Redditor lyingbabyboy123 posted a When the Imposer Is SUS meme that garnered over 1,000 upvotes in the /r/CrueltySquad^[4] subreddit in three years.

In the following years, the macro also inspired fan art that featured characters from other media. For example, on July 5th, 2023, iFunny^[5] user _Mango posted a Neco-Arc fan art that received over 4,800 smiles on the platform in one year (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References