Characters / Back 4 Blood: The Ridden

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In General

• Attack Its Weak Point: Many Special Ridden and Common Variants have glowing boils that can be shot for additional damage.
• Our Zombies Are Different: They are the result of a parasitic brain worm that enters through the eyes, with the possibility of developing serious mutations.
• Not of This Earth: The Devil Worm is implied to be extraterrestrial in nature, seeing how it was discovered in a meteror impact crater.
• Parasite Zombie: The Ridden are the end result of the Devil Worm infecting a host, turning them into savage and feral monsters as the Worm reaches the brain and they lose their minds.
• Real Event, Fictional Cause: Not directly, but it's implied the asteroid that carried the Devil Worm to Earth caused the Pingualuit crater.
• Time Abyss: If the Devil Worm really was delivered to Earth by the Pingualuit meteor, that would make it at least 1.4 million years old.

Common Ridden

• Elite Zombie: Certain corruption cards give the common ridden faster movement speed, body armor, explosive boils, or make them drop pools of acid on death.

Special Ridden

Sleeper

Barnacle-like Ridden that lie in wait for unfortunate Cleaners to pounce upon.

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• Captain Ersatz: The Sleeper is effectively the Hunter, trading its mobility and durability for stealth.
• Glass Cannon: Are easily taken care of if spotted early, but will pin down a Cleaner and can inflict large amounts of damage before they’re killed.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: The only recognizable part of the Sleeper is above its waist, and detaches from its anchor to attack.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: It only takes one bullet to kill them, but the challenge is detecting them in time or having a teammate handy.

Stinger, Hocker, Stalker

Four-armed, wall-crawling mutations. The Stinger and the Hocker spit their acidic phlegm to damage and disorient Cleaners, and the Hocker has the additional ability to immobilize a Cleaner from range, requiring a teammate to break them out. The Stalker, however, jumps right into the action to grapple a Cleaner and drag them away.

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• Captain Ersatz: The wall-crawling and pinning ability of the Hunter with the projectile attack of the Spitter. The Hocker can immoblize from range like the Smoker and the Stalker takes after the Jockey.
• Long-Range Fighter: The Stinger and Hocker tend to stay out of melee range to use their projectile attacks.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: They have grown a second set of arms.
• Super Spit: The Stinger and Hocker spit a ball of caustic gunk as their main attack, with the Hocker’s attack having the secondary effect of pinning the victim in place.

Reeker, Retch, Exploder

Car-sized, bloated Ridden filled with noxious fluids and gas. Reekers try to get close, coating the Cleaners in digestive juice that attracts a horde. Retches instead spit stomach acid and Exploders go all in explosive force and damage.

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• Action Bomb: The Exploder's main attack is to get in close and explode upon death, knocking Cleaners back and dealing damage from the blast.
• Body of Bodies: Several human skulls are visible on the Reeker's body.
• Captain Ersatz: A new take on the Boomer, being far more bulkier with abilities rolled in from the Spitter.
• Zombie Puke Attack: The Reekers and Retches attack by puking their guts up at the survivors, either attracting a horde of Ridden or soaking them in acid.

Tallboy, Bruiser, Crusher

Tall Ridden with an oversized arm they use to either bludgeon or squeeze the life out of cleaners. The Tallboy simply charges forward for a powerful swing, the Bruiser smashes everything in a circle around them, and the Crusher grabs a Cleaner and hoists them in the air to squeeze them.

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• Carry a Big Stick: Their arm is the big stick.
• Captain Ersatz: Very similar to the Charger, though only the Crusher has an immobilization ability.

Snitch

A wandering, passive Ridden with a long neck. If disturbed, lets out a scream that calls the horde if not killed quickly.

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• Elite Zombie: Elite Snitches, created by Corruption Cards, will summon a horde even if you kill them before they can scream.
• Captain Ersatz: To the Screamer, a cut special infected from the original Left 4 Dead.
• Eye Scream: Has a tendril emerging from one of its eye sockets.
• Enemy Summoner: Is able to call out the horde.

Boss Ridden

Hag

A passive Ridden that if attacked, will stop at nothing to kill the Cleaner that provoked it.

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• Achilles' Heel: Using a stun gun or the Breakout perk when grabbed by the Hag will immediately get you out of its grab and cause it to attempt to retreat, during which you can pump bullets into its vulnerable back with impunity.
• Captain Ersatz: Very similar to the Witch.
• Eaten Alive: What the hag does to the cleaner that startles it, running away to burrow underground afterwards.
• Skippable Boss: Killing the Hag isn't required to progress and it can potentially be stealthed around. Also, if you have the "Kill the Boss" secondary objective, simply driving the Hag away will fulfill the objective and you're not required to actually fully deplete its hit points.
• Unstoppable Rage: The Hag will stop at nothing to kill its assailant if provoked, eating up a hail of bullets like candy and plowing through anyone in its way in the process.

Breaker

Deceptively agile, car-sized mutations that leap and smash their way through even the most entrenched Cleaners.

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• Anti-Escape Mechanism: The Breaker summons a swarm of insects that flood the map and deal continuous damage to you outside of a small designated arena area, which is designed to prevent you from exploiting larger levels or complex terrain against it.
• The Berserker: Like its previous inspiration, it will charge blindly into gunfire and savagely pummel anyone it can get its meaty hands on.
• Captain Ersatz: Back 4 Blood's version of the Tank.
• Lightning Bruiser: The Breaker can jump and move surprisingly fast for its bulk, though it's not as fast as the Tank was.

Ogre

Building-sized amalgamations of flesh and bone that emerge from the earth, far larger than any one human to mutate into. In addition to tossing the Cleaners around like ragdolls, it can throw chunks of its own flesh as a projectile.

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• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: It's a humongous monstrosity, to say the least. It easily towers over every other Ridden that isn't the Abomination or the Harbinger.
• Body of Bodies: Like many of the other large Ridden, the Ogre is not a single mutated human but an amalgamation of human corpses.
• Company Cross References: Rather than the Tank, its size means that fights against it function more like boss battles from Turtle Rock's previous game Evolve.
• "Get Back Here!" Boss: Drain its health quickly enough, and the Ogre will attempt to flee by burrowing into the ground.

Abomination (SPOILERS)

The final boss of Back 4 Blood's main campaign, an absolutely massive creature that has tunneled under Finlayville.

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• Combat Tentacles: Possesses several large tentacles which it will not hesitate to use against the Cleaners as they fight it.
• Final Boss: Serves as the final battle for the base game.
• "Get Back Here!" Boss: The final phase of its tight is chasing it down and shooting at its weak points to kill it before it reaches Fort Hope.
• Kaiju: A titanic, worm-like mutation the size of a ship.
• Sequential Boss: Has three phases. First, you battle against four of its tentacles above ground. After that, you go underground and take on its head while trying to shoot its mouth weakpoints. Finally, it shambles its way towards Fort Hope, and you have to defeat it once and for all before it gets there.
• Tunnel King: Despite its size, it has dug massive network of tunnels straight through rock.

Harbinger (SPOILERS)

The final boss of the River of Blood DLC campaign, and of the game as a whole. It's a humongous creature, somewhat smaller than the Abomination but similar in appearance, that the Children of the Worm have apparently created to use to cleanse the world of the uninfected.

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• Attack Its Weak Point: It's only vulnerable in a single weak spot just under its neck, however this is only exposed periodically during the fight.
• 11th-Hour Superpower: A number of LAW rocket launchers are scattered around the arena that you can use to fight the Harbinger. There's an achievement for beating it without using the rocket launchers.
• Final Boss: With River of Blood being the game's final campaign DLC, the Harbinger serves as the final boss of the game as a whole.
• Foreshadowing: Hieroglyph-like murals depicting the Mother of Worms worshipping the Harbinger can be found in the Children of the Worm DLC.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: The Harbinger is too heavily armored for you to kill by yourself, but shooting its weak spot enough causes it to go berserk and start smashing the arena, eventually causing the jumbotron above it and various support girders to fall onto its head and impale and kill it.
• Kaiju: Not as big as the Abomination, but its torso alone is still quite a bit larger than an Ogre.
• Mind Control: The Children of the Worm have implanted scaled-up versions of the electrodes that Tala uses to control Jeff in the Harbinger's head, allowing them to control it.
• Sequential Boss: The Harbinger is fought 3 times in sequence; unlike the Abomination, each phase is more or less the same, although each takes place in a different section of the arena bleachers, and the Harbinger doesn't use its spike attack until the second phase. In the 3rd phase it also has triple the amount of health.
• Stationary Boss: Its torso is embedded in the floor of the sports arena the Children of the Worm are apparently growing it in. It attacks by spitting large boulders of goo or spraying a barrage of surfboard-sized exploding spikes at you.

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