History VideoGame / STALKER

** ''Call of Pripyat'' has you decide the fate of multiple characters, factions, and settlements based on your actions. However, there is no true Golden Ending because at least one person will get the short end of the stick no matter what you do. Arguably, the best possible ending has [[spoiler:the Loners staying in Skadovsk and kicking out the Bandits, the Bloodsucker Lair destroyed, Duty and Freedom reaching an uneasy truce, the Ecologists getting all the data they need, solving the mystery of Cardan's friends, and recruiting all optional members for the underground trip to Pripyat and keeping them, the Army survivors, and Strelok alive until the evacuation.]]

*** Between the Rookie Village and the crashed truck in the Cordon, there's a box that, when broken, yields 400 9x18mm rounds, way more than you need early on. At the entrance of the vehicle graveyard near where you enter the Garbage from the Cordon, a similar thing happens: two boxes on top of a tower with a broken ladder can be shot open, containing over a thousand high quality 9x19mm rounds, just in time for the player to score a MP5. Keeping this ammo equals never having a dry sidearm, and seeling it earns you a tidy little profit early on.

** Don't forget most of the early-mid game weapons, like the [[KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter MP5, AK-74, AN-94, Walther P99, Browning HiPower, Colt 1911, and TOZ-34.]] None of them are flashy in any way, but all use common ammo types and perform well enough to get the job done. The second pistol you can find is a Makarov with a permanently attached HollywoodSilencer and (while seriously underpowered) is good for starting ambushes until you can find a silencer and a higher-powered weapon to attach it to.

* ObviousBeta: Both ''Shadow of Chernobyl'' and ''Clear Sky'' were this at release, though they were both eventually patched to full playability - sort of. ''Call of Pripyat'' was playable straight out of the box, because the non-English versions were the ObviousBeta. In any case, for all three games, there are still a few GameBreakingBugs that fans have created "[[GameMod unofficial patches]]" for.

* DontGoInTheWoods: The Red Forest, named after the red coloration the trees took after the disaster, is one of the most dangerous places of the Zone, where even Duty and Freedom dread to go in anything less than platoon-strength groups and the only inhabitant is [[BadassGrandpa Forester]]. The mutant population (mostly large packs of Snorks and dogs, with [[BossInMookClothing a lone Pseudogiant]] near the local anomaly field) is thriving and there's radiation hotspots all over the place in ''Clear Sky''. Monolith controls the area and set up several patrols and outposts, while assaulting on a regular basis the barricade Freedom set up to cordon off the area in ''Shadow of Chernobyl''. On top of that, it's right into the range of the Brain Scorcher. [[spoiler:It's also where it's control bunker's entrance is hidden]].

** The biggest example is probably the [[BadassGrandpa Forester]], though - he lives in what is unambiguously the most dangerous area in the entire Zone (''Pripyat'' is safer) by himself, is actually doing rather well for himself, and has been living there since ''before the power plant even exploded'', making him the single most experienced veteran in the Zone to boot.

** In ''Clear Sky'', while you're better equipped than in ''Shadow of Chernobyl'' thanks to Clear Sky and your tangles with the Military in the Cordon, the Bandits control the Garbage and will rob you of ''all'' your money the first time you enter it. Refusing to hand over your cash makes them permanently hostile and what they lack in equipment, they more than make up for it in numbers, as well as being all over the place. The only safe spot on the map, at first, is a tiny half-collapsed building occupied by Loners, which is not emission-proof and frequently harassed by blind dogs. If you take the time to help the local Loners as well as Duty and Freedom in their respective areas nearby, the difficulty drops as they send teams to slowly chip away at the Bandits' numbers and take control of the entrances. By the time the battle ends, the Bandits are down to a few resistance pockets and their main base, which you can wipe out by joining the Loners. Once you're done, the Garbage rivals Cordon in terms of safety.

* GuideDangIt: ''Call of Pripyat'' (COP) demonstrates this trope with the "tools" you need to find in order to be able to upgrade your weapons and armor. Gear has 3 tiers of unlockable upgrades, and there are 2 main technicians in the game who can upgrade your gear, which means that there are 6 of these tool sets available in the game. For each technician, you need to find tools for basic work, tools for fine work, and calibration tools. The game tells you at the start that these exist, but it doesn't tell you ANYTHING about their location. Even if you were to come across them, they don't look like anything out of the ordinary, and can EASILY be mistaken as just some some random metallic rubbish lying around, like an old tin of tuna or similar. Seeing as COP takes place in 3 separate, large, open environments, which each have multiple well detailed areas and buildings to enter, many of which are filled with garbage due to being abandoned and rotting, finding these tools becomes highly unlikely without using a guide. Considering these tools are essential in upgrading your weapons and armor, which are extremely important in a game like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. where character upgrades exist in almost no other way, this can cause players a lot of grief, as they end up using under-powered equipment against difficult enemies.

* FullBoarAction: All three of the games have wild boars, and appearance-wise, they're the least scary-looking of the mutants. However, they're still not to be trifled with since they usually have a ton of health, dish out fairly great damage with their charge attack, are always aggressive when attacking, and are quite dangerous in packs. Fortunately, their large size allows for well placed shots, and their correspondingly large heads makes it easy to score a [[BoomHeadshot headshot]].

** TheLancer: Vano.
** TheSmartGuy: Strider.
** TheBigGuy: Zulu.
** TheChick: Sokolov.

* EarlyGameHell: In ''Shadow of Chernobyl'' especially, since unless you know where to look, all you'll have is a basic leather jacket and a Makarov to take on a fairly well-armed bandit camp on the mission to get the flash drive from Nimble, which is frustratingly hard unless you're very good at scoring headshots. Once a player gets their hands on a decent suit with NightVisionGoggles and an automatic firearm, the game's difficulty drops dramatically.

** Played straight in the penultimate round of the Arena in ''Shadow of Chernobyl'', in which you fight a Master Stalker in full PoweredArmor armed with the EleventhHourSuperpower assault rifle... while you're armed with only a knife, 4 grenades (which do jack against powered armor), and no armor of your own. It's not as hopeless a fight as you might think, though, since the alt-fire of the knife in ''Shadow of Chernobyl'' is a one-hit kill.

** [[spoiler:In ''Call of Pripyat'', it seems that the main purpose of the Mercenaries is to silence everyone who digs too deep into the secret of the Zone, including our hero, Degtyarev]].

* TownWithADarkSecret: Limansk-13 was this before the Chernobyl disaster. The Forester claims that, on top of being so remote and secretive many people doubted it's existence, the population was extremely distrustful of non-residents, mumbling to themselves and constantly praised the Soviet regime, even during food shortages. In addition, the inhabitants of the smaller villages nearby always had violent headaches when they stayed nearby, something he blames the radio research center the city housed and their massive antenna for. [[spoiler:The research center studied possible applications of mind control via radiowaves, with the antenna being the first field test of their research.]]

* WastelandElder: A few have shades of this, with Beard from ''Call of Pripyat'' being closest to this trope.

* WeaponizedLandmark: The Brain Scorcher is the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duga_radar Duga-1 radar]], albeit much smaller (the real life Duga has 25 antennas; the Brain Scorcher only 5). The real Duga-1, nicknamed the "Russian Woodpecker" due to the tapping noise it created when it's frequency was picked by radios, was an over-the-horizon radar part of the Soviet missile defense systems, is located inside the real Exclusion Zone; it was the source of several conspiracy theories that the radar was actually an emitter used for mind or weather control purposes, or that the Chernobyl Disaster happened to cover up the failure of said experiments.
* WeCanRuleTogether: [[spoiler:After Strelok successfully discovers the C-Consciousness and makes his way to their control center, they offer him an opportunity to join them in their efforts to help contain the Zone (and it's implied in the other ambiguously good ending that you end up helping them continue their experiments to create a species-wide HiveMind). Canonically, he refuses, and then proceeds to fight his way through their entire guard force before killing the entire Consciousness with assault rifle fire while they sit helpless in their pods.]]

** The FN F2000 in all three games. A balance of above-average firepower, precision and reliability, comes out of the box with a grenade launcher and a scope integrated ''and'' uses the common 5.56x45mm ammo. You get it in ''Shadow of Chernobyl'' by looting the bodies of Monolith troops in [[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon the Sarcophagus]] and in ''Clear Sky'' after crossing all of Limansk-13, right before reaching [[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon the Chernobyl NPP]]. It loses this status in ''Call of Pripyat'', where you can get one at the beginning of the game if you can give enough money to order an assault rifle from Nimble and some luck.

* KnowledgeBroker: Owl.

** The FT-200M (FN F2000) in all three games cumulates firepower, precision, comes out of the box with a grenade launcher and a scope integrated and uses the common 5,56x45mm ammo. You get it in ''Shadow of Chernobyl'' by looting the bodies of Monolith troops in [[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon the Sarcophagus]] and in ''Clear Sky'' after opening the doors to Limansk-13, right before assaulting [[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon the Chernobyl NPP]]. It loses this status in ''Call of Pripyat'', where you can get one at the beginning of the game if you can give enough money to order an assault rifle from Nimble.

* InTheHood: The less advanced suits that stalkers outside of the military and Ecologist faction have typically has them wearing a hood in their outfits. Bandits are always depicted wearing hoods in their outfits, as a consequence of their shady nature and to [[RuleOfCool look cool]].

** The LR-300 in ''Shadow of Chernobyl''. Not the hardest-hitting, or fastest-firing, but it's bizarrely lightweight for a NATO weapon, accurate, accepts all the accessories for the NATO weaponry (grenade launcher, scope, and silencer), and you can get almost a dozen in good condition off the mercenaries in the Wild Territory/Rostok with about half an hour's work, making them trivially easy to replace when one wears out. Ammo is also easy to come by. It's a match for the Strelok's (unique) fast-firing AK, but can be found in numbers.

** Strelok's unique SGI-5K. While somewhat heavy, by the time you pick it up, chances are you won't care as much about weight. When fully upgraded, it can match both top-tier NATO weapons for hitting power and while it is less accurate than the [=GP37=] and has a lower rate of fire than the [=FT200M=], it has better handling and unlike either of them can mount every NATO accessory, giving you a weapon that can act as a marksman rifle and an assault weapon, while still mounting a silencer, grenade launcher, and a variety of scopes. Finding it is relatively simple, [[GuideDangIt once you know where to look.]]

*** There's a Merc Suit hidden in the attic of one of the houses of the Rookie Village. Getting there requires some roof-jumping, but as the best Tier One armor, it'll go a long way until you can fork over the cash for a Stalker suit.
*** The Tunder 5.45mm is sold by Sidorovich in the early game (before you speak to Wolf and after you've rescued Nimble) for 20,000 RU. Needless to say, it's highly unlikely you'll get this amount in time. You'd need to gather all of the loot in the first map and maybe some of the second to amass the amount needed. However, it's a '''very''' useful gun in the early game, as it is a high tier assault rifle chambered for an ammo type common throughout the entire game. The only other way to get it is to loot it off a dead Duty stalker, Barin, and that has the problems that either A) you have to kill him yourself and make an enemy out of the faction that controls the Bar area, or B) you have to wait until he's killed by bandits or mutants, a LuckBasedMission at best.
*** A lesser (but still unusually overpowered) nuke is Strelok's fast-shooting AKM-74/2. You can pick it up in the tunnels underneath Agroprom, where you need to go for one of the first big missions anyway; it's placed so close to the objective that it seems like it was ''meant'' to be found by starting players. It fires 50% faster than the standard AK with substantially reduced recoil when fired on auto (which makes it seem unnaturally accurate), uses common 5.45mm ammunition, and is just as supremely reliable as a regular Kalash. When loaded up with armor-piercing rounds, it's useful throughout the endgame.

*** As soon as Sidorovich's mission in the Agroprom is done, the road north is open. From there, it's child's play to pick up a Vintar BC suppressed armor piercing sniper rifle in ''perfect'' condition, left abandoned on the floor of a dormitory in the Freedom base. A box on the roof immediately above it contains a lot of good ammunition for it. With it, you're free to pummel '''any''' group of stalkers out in the open even before you talk to the Barkeep. It makes the Dark Valley missions absurdly easy. For reference, the Vintar BC is a silenced sniper rifle that fires as fast as a semi-auto pistol, and with the right ammo can kill even Exosuit Stalkers in just 4 torso shots or 1 headshot.
*** In the same vein as the Vintar above, a savvy player can net a whole lot of good gear by heading from the entrance of the Bar straight into the Army Warehouses. The initial Freedom squad killed by Skull's team yields a few decent NATO guns; if you tattle on Skull to Freedom and head with them to ambush the invading Dutyers, you can net yourself a VLA silenced assault rifle for when the Vintar's scope is too unwieldy and lots of high-level guns and grenades (''without'' pissing off Duty as long as you don't shoot at Skull's squad); the next mission from Freedom is an opportunity to nab yourself a [[ShotgunsAreJustBetter Chaser 13 pump shotgun]] for a step up from the sawn-off; and finally, in the Barrier defense mission, at least one Freedomer is bound to be killed and leave a juicy G36 for you to swipe, along with all of the gear from the dead Monolithians.

*** Between the Rookie Village and the crashed truck in the Cordon, there's a box that, when broken, yields 400 9x18mm rounds, way more than you need early on. At the entrance of the vehicle graveyard near where you enter the Garbage from the Cordon, a similar thing happens: two boxes on top of a tower with a broken ladder can be shot open, containing over a thousand high quality 9x19mm rounds, just in time for the player to score a Viper 5 SMG. Keeping this ammo equals never having a dry sidearm, and seeling it earns you a tidy little profit early on.

*** Scar's old Vintar BC is up for grabs in the Great Swamp, near the train tracks. It's totally broken, but putting together the cash to repair it is not as difficult as it may seem at first, and ammo for it is not too hard to collect if you trade with the right stalkers. Given that the Vintar BC is an endgame-level weapon, being able to acquire it on the first map if you know where to look is really something.

*** Inside the Skadovsk, the first real hub of the game, there's a weapons dealer called Nimble. You can place special orders for high-quality weapons and armor, including the vaunted Exoskeleton, from him at ''any'' point in the game. The prices are somewhat steep early on and he demands an initial pay, but judicious artifact and gun trading with Beard and Owl quickly makes cash a non-issue.
*** Within the first hour, you can go to the sawmill and one of the zombies will always carry an AC96/2. While in poor condition, it is easily repaired for cheap (very easy if you grab tools while at the sawmill), but is very accurate, reliable, and uses 5.45mm ammo that is extremely common early on. Plus, you can get a scope added to it for cheap if Owl stocks one. It will more than last you until you can pay Nimble's prices for a Storm.
*** You can find a Vintar BC in perfect condition right after the beginning of the game, provided you know where to look. It's on top of one of the burnt-out houses in the burnt farmstead. There's also an SVD up for grabs leaning against one of the trees on the northwest edge of the map.

* DontGoInTheWoods: The Red Forest, named after the red coloration the trees took after the disaster, is one of the most dangerous places of the Zone, where even Duty and Freedom dread to go in anything less than platoon-strength groups. The mutant population (mostly large packs of Snorks and dogs, with [[BossInMookClothing a lone Pseudogiant]] near the local anomaly field) is thriving and there's radiation hotspots all over the place in ''Clear Sky''. Monolith controls the area and set up several patrols and outposts in ''Shadow of Chernobyl'', as well as being right into the range of the Brain Scorcher. [[spoiler:It's also where it's control bunker's secret entrance is hidden]].

* BrainInAJar: During the quest to disable the Miracle Maker in the [[spoiler: Lake Yantar's Lab]], you might be a little too busy fighting zombies to look at the device you're trying to disable - a ''giant'' computer-controlled brain.

** Mutants have a limited [[Franchise/MetalGearSolid MGS-style]] area they can move in. You can actually shoot from outside this area. This makes killing even the most dangerous mutants like the Chimera and Burer a sniper's cakewalk. However, if you don't manage to kill them, one hit will cause them to run away from whoever is shooting at them until either they encounter another opponent or go back to loafing off when no one else is around attacking them.

* MysteriousEmployer: Nobody knows exactly for ''who'' the Mercs work, as their jobs range from "artifact hunting" to "wetwork". The Eastern versions of the games implies they're agents working for Western powers such as [=NATO=] or the European Union, as they speak Russian with heavy European accents.

* ShownTheirWork: At this point, the good folks in GSC Game World probably know more about the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone than the people that used to ''live there''. They took numerous trips there in order to make the gameworld as close to reality as possible, with the only significant changes being that places of interest are put closer together, as trekking through the empty countryside for 5 hours in real time would be boring. The actual town of Pripyat and NPP are also amazingly detailed, from building exteriors to small things like old Soviet-era propaganda posters, foliage and sounds. And as the RealityIsUnrealistic example states above, they also managed to create one of the most realistic ballistics models ever, with correct bullet drop calculation and real life firearm specs being just the icing on the cake. One example is the British [=L85A1=] rifle, whose early models in real life had very poor reliability and so were pulled from mass production; STALKER's lore actually plays on this and states that the decommissioned rifles made it to the Zone via the black market. Of course this is reflected in gameplay as well, with the [=L85A1=] having a ridiculously low reliability rating and starting to jam after the ''third mag'' of firing.

*** Inside the Skadovsk, the first real hub of the game, there's a weapons dealer called Nimble. You can place special orders for unique weapons and armor, including the vaunted Exoskeleton, from him at ''any'' point in the game. The prices are somewhat steep early on and he demands an initial pay, but judicious artifact and gun trading with Beard and Owl quickly makes cash a non-issue.

* DontGoInTheWoods: The Red Forest, named after the red coloration the trees took after the disaster, is one of the most dangerous places of the Zone. In addition to a thriving mutant population and radiation hotspots all over the place, Monolith controls the area and set up several patrols and outposts, making a trip here arduous on every account, as well as being right into the range of the Brain Scorcher. [[spoiler:It's also where it's control bunker's secret entrance is hidden]].

** The military Spetsnaz units, generally used for surgical strikes deep into the zone. Also, affiliated to them, the rarely encountered Military Stalkers, who are sort of the Elite of the Elites. These guys are equipped with the best non-exosuit armor in the game (Spetznaz can soak more than a full mag of AK-74 fire to the torso, and Military Stalkers are even tougher), and the Military Stalkers are armed with Russian Special Forces VLA assault rifles - silenced, accurate, and powerful.

* PointOfNoReturn: In ''Shadow of Chernobyl'', the Chernobyl NPP doesn't have a path back to the previous area, and neither does Limansk in ''Clear Sky''. Both times there's no warning given in advance.

* BadassBookworm:
** Dr. Kruglov, a minor character that the player can encounter in the Wild Territory in ''Shadow of Chernobyl''. His science team is being besieged by a group of heavily-armed mercenaries attempting to get the data he is carrying. The player can, of course, choose to help him, but if you don't, the mercenaries will continue to pick off his team one by one until he's the last one left. Wolfhound, the leader of the mercs, will then call him up over the radio and try to negotiate with the scientist - his life for the information. Kruglov ignores him; when Wolfhound gives up and says, basically, "I've had enough. Looks like this is going to get ugly," Kruglov defiantly replies, "As you wish." If the mercs manage to kill him and you search his corpse, you find out that his last act was to [[spoiler: delete the data so the mercenaries couldn't get it]]. Bad. Ass. If the player ''does'' choose to help him, he becomes the subject of one of the most bearable escort missions in game history, as, although he calls himself a 'third-rate fighter', he's actually a fairly skilled marksman who will score headshots with any decent assault rifle regularly and is equipped with the rather tough SSP-9M armor. If he survives to the end of the mission, he replaces Semenov as your partner in the later Ecologist missions, and proves to be a substantial improvement over his colleague - while Semenov tries to leave you behind after a blowout, Kruglov will stubbornly refuse to leave you behind.
** Also Lebedev, the leader of the ''Clear Sky'' faction. He is virtually a scientist turned militiaman. In ''Call of Pripyat'', we learn that Lebedev was the physicist [[spoiler: who, among other things was charged with development of the Gauss Gun]].
* BadassBystander: Noah from ''Call of Pripyat'', a batshit-insane lone stalker trying to build himself an ark to protect against mutants. He's got a ''tame pseudodog'' (for those who don't know, [[http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100212004823/stalker/images/0/01/Noah%27s_dog.jpg this]] is a pseudodog, and they're well known for tearing well-armed-and-armored Stalkers to shreds) named [[FluffyTheTerrible Lassie]]. When a military squad came they tried to detain him for shooting at them (he does that to everyone), but instead ''he'' tried to detain ''them''. At one point in the game, the player's tasked with tracking down an incredibly rare artifact, one which hasn't been seen in a very long time, and apparently Noah has a lead on where to find one. Turns out he has ''three of them'', which he will just ''give away'', implying he has ''even more''. Finally, if he survives until the end of the game, his ending describes some Stalkers taking shelter in his ark during a particularly bad blowout/emission. Turns out it actually works, and during the ensuing mutant attack he charges into battle backed-up by Lassie and ''three pseudodog puppies''. Not to mention that part of the main storyline involves getting on top of a plateau that is otherwise inaccessible. Noah's said to be the only one around who knows how to get up there. You'd think he'd want you do to or give him something in return, right? Nope, he just takes you directly to a space anomaly that'll get you up to the plateau and then just leaves, no muss, no fuss.
* BadassGrandpa: Two examples implied in ''Clear Sky''.
** While [[DemonicSpiders bloodsuckers]] can take out even veteran stalkers with top-tier gear with ease, the old Forester (Lesnik), who lives near the Red Forest, was able to bag himself one with little more than a double-barreled shotgun and an [[NiceHat ushanka]] for protection. He says that he has a supernatural ability to ''feel and avoid anomalies''. In addition, he lives in the [[DeathWorld Red Forest]] (a place where most Stalkers are afraid to set foot even in heavily-armed groups), ''alone'', and it's mentioned that he was a forester there long before the 1986 incident and ''refused to evacuate after CNPP [[GoingCritical went critical]]''. Dude is hardcore.
** Scar himself. His facial appearance in the intro cinematic shows his stubble is white and his facial features place him in the 35-45 years old age bracket, older than most stalkers. On top of that, he's only referred to as "young" by the certifiably old Forester.
* BadassLongcoat: Scar again. There is also the option for the player to invoke this by wearing the Trenchcoat in ''Call of Pripyat''. Of course, this tends to make the game even more difficult: it's even lampshaded in the item's description that it's useless in the Zone but many bandits wear them anyway, [[RuleOfCool just because they're cool]].
* BadassNormal:
** The Marked One, a.k.a. [[spoiler: Strelok]], and ''how''. He wakes up with amnesia after a truck crash, which essentially makes him a rookie no matter what, and his first mission is [[spoiler:to infiltrate a heavily fortified military base and steal a bunch of documents. From there, he moves on to slaughtering an entire bandit tribe, infiltrating several extremely dangerous labs, eliminating two clans of mercenaries, surviving an emission with nothing but a fainting spell, pacifying the zombie-infested Lake Yantar so it's inhabitable outside the mobile science bunker, surviving an explosive booby trap, chewing through so much of the [[EliteMooks extremely strong Monolith faction]] [[DwindlingParty that very little of it is left by the time Degtyarev fights them]], opening the path to the previously inaccessible Pripyat by shutting down the legendary Brain Scorcher, infiltrating the Chernobyl Power Plant and slaughtering the [[BigBad C-Consciousness, controller of Monolith and, essentially, the Zone itself]]. And it's not the first time he achieved this many feats: he did it in the past, right before his mind wipe, and only failed to reach the C-Consciousness because another badass (Scar) stopped him]]. All of this is done ([[OneManArmy for the most part single-handedly]]) by a guy that is, by all intents and purposes, physically nothing more than an average stalker. He isn't credited as being the most influential man in the whole Zone for nothing.
** To a slightly lesser degree, ''[[WorldOfBadass every single person in the entire Zone]]''. The ones who aren't [[AnyoneCanDie generally don't last long]] - or are well-burrowed traders.

** Snorks are mutated soldiers who were assigned to patrol the Zone. They look like withered humans with clumps of flesh missing here and there, including their lips. For some reason the skin and flesh on their back has peeled back to expose their spines. Despite appearances, they are extremely agile, RunningOnAllFours and [[DeadlyLunge leaping at their enemies]]. Why on all fours? Because ''something'' weakened their spines so much, they can't hold a bipedal stance like a normal human. Their arms and legs, however, are hypertrophied, so they are very quick in spite of their unnatural pose.
** Bloodsuckers are former humans whose mutations include, but are not limited to: skin thickened to a rugged leathery texture; [[{{Cthulhumanoid}} mouth deformed into a tentacled jaw reminiscent of Cthulhu]]; fingers strengthened into claw sharp enough to ignore any kind of body armor; and severe tissue rot, leading to bits of missing flesh and, in later games, an exposed brain.
** The Pseudogiant probably takes the cake in twisted nightmares of flesh. As the name implies, it is big, but the worst part is its shape. It has a central body mass with no particular shape and out of that juts a huge face that is twisted but still resembles a human more than any animal. It has two enormous arms which it uses both for walking and attacking. At the same time, out of its central body juts out at odd angles several smaller and more normal-looking arms and legs, hanging useless most of the time. This coupled with its size suggests it ''might'' be the result of several human bodies fused together. Imagine the Centaur mutant from ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' but remove the tentacles and give it bipedalism and two arms then make it 1.5x bigger and this is the result.
** Contollers look like shirtless men with deformed, oversized heads. They still wear pants and are wrapped in bandages, which should tell you that their origins are a bit more man-made than most of the Zone's nasties.
** The game files contain another type called Izlom (Russian for "fracture"). According to background material, they were prisoners performing hard labor in the Zone of Alienation when the first emission created the zone. Like the snorks, they were caught in the open and twisted into something inhuman. Izlom are unnaturally tall with bizarrely long arms ending in nasty claws. Their bodies are also assymetrical, with one a being noticeably longer than the other, and can emit psy fields. They can either shuffle around on two feet or bound rapidly on all fours and are highly aggressive. The Izlom are dummied out of the main games, but many mods (including Misery for ''Call of Pripyat'') restore them.

* BossInMookClothing: The Burers. A short humanoid wearing a cloak doesn't look as menacing as a Bloodsucker or Snork, but can put up a fight even against a well-equipped stalker. He boasts high health, can drain stamina and disarm the player, his telekinetic throw often ends in a OneHitKill... and if you think an all-out attack to kill him quickly will work, ''he'll stop the bullets and grenades mid-air [[Film/TheMatrix Matrix-style]]''.

* BrainwashResidue: Ex-Monolith squad leader Strider and the rest of his squad. Strider himself is unable to talk in anything but CreepyMonotone, while some of his squad are said to be unable to verbally communicate at all. If you recruit Strider later in the game, you might notice he has a tendency toward DissonantSerenity, calmly [[CasualDangerDialogue mentioning that places or things seem familiar]] during firefights. This soon becomes InfallibleBabble: [[spoiler: the tunnels seem familiar because the Monolith have an outpost down there, from which they ambush you.]]

* DrivenToSuicide: [[spoiler:In ''Call of Pripyat'', TheMedic from the main wrecked ship offs himself when he is discovered by the protagonist for his actions against fellow stalkers. You do, however, have a couple of seconds to shoot him yourself before he does this after hearing his little story, thereby averting this trope.]]

** In ''Clear Sky'', while you're better equipped than in ''Shadow of Chernobyl'' thanks to Clear Sky and your tangles with the Military in the Cordon, the Bandits control the Garbage and will rob you of ''all'' your money the first time you enter it. Refusing to hand over your cash makes them permanently hostile and what they lack in equipment, they more than make up for it in numbers, as well as being all over the place. The only safe spot on the map, at first, is a tiny half-collapsed building occupied by Loners, which is not emission-proof and frequently harassed by blind dogs. If you take the time to help the local Loners as well as Duty and Freedom in their respective areas nearby, the difficulty drops as they send teams to slowly chip away at the Bandits' numbers and take control of the entrances. By the time the battle ends, the Bandits are down to a few resistance pockets and their main base.

** The FT-200M (FN F2000) in all three games cumulates firepower, precision, comes out of the box with a grenade launcher and a scope integrated and uses the common 5,56x45mm ammo. You get it in ''Shadow of Chernobyl'' by looting the bodies of Monolith troops in [[TheVeryDefinitivelyFinalDungeon the Sarcophagus]] and in ''Clear Sky'' after opening the doors to Limansk-13, right before assaulting [[TheVeryDefinitivelyFinalDungeon the Chernobyl NPP]]. It loses this status in ''Call of Pripyat'', where you can get one at the beginning of the game if you can give enough money to order an assault rifle from Nimble.