Due to its extremely graphic content, Broken was never officially released, but was leaked as a bootleg which became heavily traded on VHS in the 1990s and more recently online.

The movie then cuts to footage of an amateur video taken from inside a car going through various parts of a city, from the middle-class suburbs to, literally, the other side of the tracks into a shoddy industrial area.

The camera zooms in on a toilet flushing, and a network of pipes is shown leading to a contraption with a large gear system and a pressure gauge on it.

As the camera zooms out, a tight plastic bodybag-like suit suspended in a padded cell with six rods by the side is shown, with the end of the pipes attached to the mouth portion with water gushing in, presumably to drown the person inside.

The middle of the music video for "Wish" is again interrupted by amateur footage, showing the victim chained to a table with a large wad of a dark substance on his face.

Reznor later admitted to distributing different copies of Broken to his friends, each with a different part of the video blacked out so that he would be able to identify the culprit if it were to be leaked.

Finally, the film cuts back to the victim strapped on a table, as the murderer hacks his limbs off with a chainsaw, rapes him, and slices his chest open to eat his heart.

The film and the "Wish" video was directed by industrial music pioneer Peter Christopherson[7] of the band Throbbing Gristle and co-founder of Industrial Records, although the other music videos were directed by various other people: "Pinion" and "Help Me I Am in Hell" is credited to Eric Goode and Serge Becker, while "Happiness in Slavery" is credited to Jon Reiss.

[7] The film has not been given an official commercial release because Reznor wanted to stop it from overshadowing the prominence of the music,[11] thus adding to its mythological status in alternative culture.

The original hand-dubbed tapes were distributed by Reznor to various friends with technological glitches implemented at certain points, in order to identify the leaker of any copies that might surface.

Reznor, commenting in the "Access" section of the Nine Inch Nails website in 2007, implied that Gibby Haynes was responsible for the most prominent leak.

Menu screens, a chapter index, and the option to listen to the audio tracks from the CD without added sound effects are all distinct features of "Broken 2.0".

As of January 2020, the entire uncensored film is available to view when accessed by a hidden link on the discography page of the official Nine Inch Nails website, leading to a copy in the Internet Archive.