In real life, most sports employ rules and regulations to ensure fair play and sensible goals. The appeal of sports, after all, is that anyone who knows the rules can play, at least casually. In the realm of fiction, though, things get much, much weirder.

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Without constraints like logic or morality, sporting events can quickly spiral into major freakiness. Players make use of magic and heavy weaponry, death and dismemberment are regular sights on the field, or otherwise, the game is tweaked in a very small, yet very noticeable way. No matter what, though, you can guarantee it still makes for quality Sunday night television.

10 Mutant Football - Mutant Football League

A sandworm attacking in Mutant Football League

In a dystopian world populated by monsters, machines, and mutants, all with hair-trigger tempers, a brutal spectator sport is pretty much a necessity for maintaining any semblance of peace. Enter the Mutant Football League, with the inherent violence of American football cranked up to its not-so-logical extreme.

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While the basic idea of the game is the same, players will regularly beat each other to death over the ball, employ ridiculous superpowers to get an edge, and occasionally bribe the ref to disregard everything we just mentioned. Oh, and every field is littered with explosives, flesh-eating monsters, or both. It's fun for the whole family!

9 Blitzball - Final Fantasy 10

FFx blitzball game

Blitzball is the most popular sport in Spira, going a long way toward helping the populace of Final Fantasy 10 forget about the gigantic eldritch beast that lurks in the ocean. Two teams of players swim around in a gigantic, magically-suspended sphere of water, where they attempt to throw the titular Blitzball into the opponent's goal.

It's not unlike water polo, except players can perform flying karate kicks and use magic to either put opponents to sleep or even poison them. And no, we don't know how the players are able to hold their breath in there for so long.

8 The Rites - Pyre

The start of The Rites in Pyre

While not identified as a sport per se, the Rites that govern the hierarchy of Downside have all of the trappings of a typical sporting event. Three players vie for possession over an orb, with the intent of either carrying it into the opposing team's goal or lobbing it in.

Of course, then comes the numerous magical wrinkles, including banishing opponents from the field with your spiritual aura, the various non-humanoid competitors, and the occasionally living landmarks that house the fields of play.

7 Monday Night Combat - Monday Night Combat

The clones from Monday Night Combat

In a similar vein to Mutant Football League, Monday Night Combat offers a view of a dystopian future society, though this one is governed almost exclusively by corporations rather than regular old violence.

In this world, the sport of choice is Monday Night Combat. It's a game where two teams of cloned combatants trade blows and bullets, in an effort to lead their respective robot armies to take down the opponent's Moneyball. At any time during the game, the competitors can sign fresh advertising deals, which in turn give them access to bigger and better weapons and abilities.

6 Terror Is Reality - Dead Rising 2

Chuck Greene about to play Terror Is Reality in Dead Rising 2.

Whenever a zombie outbreak occurs somewhere in the world, society ends up with a lot of surplus shamblers that seem a waste to just kill. This is why they're put to use in Terror is Reality, the combat game show where contestants compete to brutalize the undead in new and interesting ways.

Standout events include the Slicecycles, where contestants drive around on dirt bikes with mounted chainsaws, and Stand Up Zomedy, where contestants compete to stick as many silly objects to zombies as possible. Of course, the show drew massive controversy after a while, since people weren't really stoked on the shambling corpses of their loved ones being pulverized for sport, so they weren't able to hold many contests.

5 Grifball - Halo Series

Grif and an Elite playing Grifball in Halo

A bit of a meta example, Grifball was originally a game devised by the creators of the web series Red vs. Blue as a fun little fan mode for Halo 3. From that game on, though, Grifball has become a mainstay of the multiplayer catalog, both for fans of Red vs. Blue and sporting enthusiasts. It's a simple game; two teams of players armed with Energy Swords and Gravity Hammers make a run for a bomb in the center of the field, the Grifball.

The player that picks it up turns orange (becoming Grif) and can't use their weapons anymore, so their teammates need to protect them while they run the bomb to the opposing goal. Place the bomb to score a point, as well as blow yourself up. It's fun!

4 Tossball - The Outer Worlds

Tossball ad in The Outer Worlds

When humanity ventures into distant, uninhabited worlds, it's only a matter of time before everyone gets bored with colonization and wants to have some fun. This is, presumably, how the game of Tossball rose to prominence in the Halcyon colonies. While you never get to play it yourself in The Outer Worlds, Tossball comes up multiple times through incidental conversations and flavor text.

Based on what we can surmise, it's a sport not dissimilar to lacrosse — with the caveat that cheating, physical altercations, and even outright murder are not only permitted, but borderline required. A Tossball player can be ejected from the field for "overly sportsman-like conduct."

3 Turf War - Splatoon Series

A multiplayer battle in Splatoon 2

If you ever felt a strong compulsion to make an absolute mess as a child, Turf War in Splatoon is the sport of your dreams. The game of choice for hip, young Inklings, Turf War features two teams of four attempting to paint as much of the game field with their color of ink as possible in a set time.

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To facilitate this, the Inklings employ all manner of ink-based weaponry, from simple squirt guns to giant paint rollers, as well as various kinds of explosive weapons. It's a good thing Inkling ink evaporates after a while, or it'd be a nightmare to clean up.

2 Rocket League - Rocket League

Farmstead Cars Flying After Ball in Rocket League Arena

Despite its unusual premise, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of lore to Rocket League — or if there is, the developers aren't sharing it. Even in a vacuum, though, Rocket League is a pretty wild little sport.

Two teams of cars, which we can only assume are either directly manned or radio-controlled, vie for control over an oversized ball, with the simple goal of knocking it into the opposing goal, soccer-style. It does make you wonder, though, what kind of leap in logic resulted in "soccer but with fast cars."

1 ARMS League - ARMS

Min Min and Ribbon Girl punching out Spring Man and Ninjara in ARMS

The ARMS phenomenon has manifested throughout the ARMS world for as long as anyone can remember, but at some point, someone said to themselves "what if these superpowered stretchy people started punching each other?" While the sport of ARMS may seem like regular boxing on the surface, it's escalated by the various pieces of glove-based equipment utilized by combatants, including small missiles, chakrams, and even explosives.

It's not required that those who receive ARMS compete in the ARMS league, as they're more than welcome to just go live their lives, but if you've got stretchy limbs and nothing better to do, you might as well market yourself, right?

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