Hunters: they're fast, they hit hard, they eat bullets like candy and they hate you.
It's a tradition for the Resident Evil series to have these, particularly later in each game.
Series-wide nasties:
- Most famous are probably the Hunter class B.O.Ws, various ititerations of which appear throughout the series, being absent only in Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil 5, Resident Evil 6 and Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, the last four being when the series dropped Big Bad Umbrella from the games. They're fast, jump at you from across the room, sometimes team up on you (in which case the fight can spiral out of your control with frightening speed), and have their notorious Deadly Lunge attack that instakills by decapitation. Much deadlier than the literal spiders of the series. And they can poison you in parts of Code Veronica. They are at their absolute worst in the original PlayStation version, where they have no damage hitbox at all when leaping through the air or rising from a knockdown, so they can't be shot out of their primary attack or hit while they're downed.note Thanks to that, the only way to prevent damage is to not be standing where they land, and 90% of encounters happen in narrow hallways where juking them is impossible.
- The 2020 remake of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis ups the ante. The Hunters Gamma are painful enough, since they're now a Made of Iron, deceptively fast enemy whose only attack is a lunging tongue-grab that's a One-Hit Kill... and these Frog Men are playful pet pollywogs compared to the Hunters Beta, who can "jink" forward/backward and side-to-side with incredible speed, making it hard to get an accurate bead on them, can soak up a ridiculous amount of firepower, have a vulnerable spot that's hard to hit and, oh yeah, can make a One-Hit Kill attack whenever they feel like it! It doesn't help that most of your encounters with them are as Carlos, whose crappy assault rifle might as well be throwing spitballs at them compared to the skull-busting power of Jill's shotgun. Flashbang and hand grenades are a blessing when facing off against a Hunter Beta.
Resident Evil
- Resident Evil has the Chimeras in the laboratory power room, which can also instantly decapitate you, attack from the ceiling (making them hard to aim at or even predict where they are), and are made even worse in the remake, where you have to walk slowly while carrying the power generator fuel and seemingly a dozen can spawn in a given room from a single vent alone.
- The Crimson Heads in the Resident Evil REmake are also a serious pain. These creatures inevitably appear if you do not burn the bodies of zombies you kill (or kill by blowing their heads off), they can run as fast as your character can, do a decent amount of damage, and even worse, will sometimes not get up from the ground until you walk right over them. And there is not enough oil to burn all of the zombies in the mansion (and better still, none of your weapons are guaranteed to take off their heads every single time — not even the magnum!), so sometimes it is simply best to let the zombies live in order to avoid them turning into Crimson Heads.
- The REmake also features the aptly-named 'one dangerous zombie' mode. The titular zombie behaves like a crimson head, except that he's strapped with explosives and randomly shows up all over the mansion. He can't use them on his own, thankfully, but if any of your attacks so much as graze him, the explosion results in an automatic game-over, no matter where in the room you are. Making things worse, this option is mandatory; once you engage it by beating the game with both Chris and Jill, he automatically shows up in all subsequent playthroughs. Thankfully, like most of the zombies, he vanishes from the mansion after you return from the Aqua Ring labs.
Resident Evil 2
- Resident Evil 2 has the lickers and particularly the advanced lickers, who are capable of leaping onto the player from off-screen which can do devastating damage and have far-reaching tongue-whip attacks. They also show up in the Survivor and Outbreak series, and in RE5, where one room has an infinite spawning mess of them.
- The remake made Lickers much more resilient to damage and making them much more resilient to flinching, meaning if one spots you, it is very hard to stop it from running in and slashing away half your health. They're blind and possible to sneak past if you move as slowly as possible, but good luck with that if there's a zombie in the room or if Mr. X is hot on your heels. It really says something that even the game itself realizes how much of a threat they are because the menu screen straight up tells you there's no shame in running away from them.
Resident Evil 3: Nemesis
- Resident Evil 3: Nemesis has the facehugger-like Drain Deimos and Brain Sucker (at least they don't give you a Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong). Like the Hunter and Lickers before them, they tend to leap about the room they are in, can absorb two shotgun blasts, and always attack in pairs. Their biggest weakness is that they are the easiest monsters in the game to dodge, due to their rather slow standing charge.
Resident Evil – Code: Veronica
- Resident Evil – Code: Veronica has the Bandersnatches. They can take plenty of bullets, their stretchy arms deal great damage, they can control a very large radius, and they can use them to grapple across rooms. And they have a fairly creepy
leitmotif. And when you first encounter one, you don't have any powerful weapons, unless you are willing to waste the invaluable gunpowder arrows early, making it somewhat of a Boss in Mook Clothing. - While it only appears in one room, what makes the Moth enemy so damn annoying is when rushing to get the Rocket Launcher, as it loves to attach to a victim's back, often leaving an annoying egg after detaching and also often potentially poisoning said victim once said egg hatches. And don't even bother taking these things down unless they're REALLY in your way, as they respawn infinitely each time you enter the room it's in.
Resident Evil 0
- Eliminators. You'd think a zombie monkey would be an awesome enemy, but holy shit would you be wrong: they're extremely small targets, ungodly fast in both attacking and avoiding your shots, deal significant damage in a small amount of time, nearly always attack in groups of three or more, tend to appear in open areas with lots of room to get behind you, and they take a minimum of three shotgun shells each—each!—to kill. Compared to these nasty little fuckers, Hunters are about as troublesome as a mild sneeze.
- Also the Leech Zombies. They're sturdy, able to hit you from far away, explode for even more damage when near-death unless you invoke Kill It with Fire, and have an incredibly creepy theme that plays when you face one.
- Lurkers, they only appear in the final area, The Treatment Plant, and while not common, can be pretty annoying when you're in the middle of an Item transfer adventure. They only appear in four areas, but you have to cross them when you are in say, the area before the final boss. They randomly jump out of the water and can pull you in with their long tongue. If they swallow you, it's insta-kill. This makes it annoying to backtrack to transfer your items or to just do something only to get killed by bad luck and lose all your progress, unless you have plenty of Ink Ribbons and save constantly. Oh and don't even think about killing them, they respawn no matter what.
Resident Evil 4:
- Regenerators and Iron Maidens are similar entities; both can regenerate (unless you shoot them in the right place) and grab you from across the room, and the latter can kill you instantly via grabbing you and launching all of their spikes into Leon's body at once. To top it all off, their raspy breathing and intro music is insanely creepy.
- Then there's Novistadors; they latch onto you, and must be shaken off, but their attacks do a lot of damage to you while you try to shake them. Oh, and the worst part? They're invisible the first time you encounter them.
- Berserk Dr. Salvador in the Mercenaries level. Can leap to the top of five-story battlements, barely stumbles from all but the most physically devastating attacks, constantly in a state of frenzied swinging of a double-bladed supercharged chainsaw, and rampaging balls-out in your direction. Unlike the other chainsawers that give you a chance to dodge their swing, this one simply has a circle of death that will instantly lop your head off if you come anywhere near him. Also, those attacks that hurt him? Bring a lot.
- The Bella Sisters from The Mercenaries Village can be just as painful; they ARE at their strongest when they have backup, especially if they can catch you off guard and surrounded. Which they can and will do, they don't start revving their chainsaws until they start getting close...
- Where do we start with the Plagas? These damn things spawn at random, always emerge from their host when you kill them no matter whether you deliver a headshot or notnote , suck up more ammo than the actual Ganados themselves, and the type 2s have the ability to bite your head off if they get too close, which translates into instant death. True, they have a Weaksauce Weakness (flash grenades kill exposed Plagas instantly), but it's not exactly obvious. And, worse, type 3s (the spider/bat ones that detach and start fluttering around on their own after their host is killed for the second time) take two grenades by default; one to make them leave their Ganado, and a second to kill them.
- Garradors may be totally blind, but they are fast, completely immune to just about anything that isn't fired on the parasite growing out of their back, and capable of a One-Hit Kill. Luck to those who have to face them in Mercenaries or fight TWO OF THEM AT ONCE.
Resident Evil 5
- Resident Evil 5 has the Reapers. They move frighteningly fast and just love to use their unavoidable instant kill attack as soon as they get within range. And by "unavoidable", we mean that the only way to avoid it is to stay the fuck away from them; if they catch you, your partner can't save you. Oh, and they love to show up in narrow corridors, meaning that you can't go past them without risking being caught by said instant-kill attack; if you can't kill them fast enough, you'll be backed into a corner, and then, well, you get caught by the instant-kill attack. Did we mention that they're very tough to kill?
- The Adjules from Resident Evil 5, who can Turn Red and sport slashing tentacles and vertical jaws that are very difficult to shake off before they decapitate your character.
Resident Evil: Revelations
- Resident Evil: Revelations has Sea Creepers. These are mutated women who turned into fish monsters and they prey on unfortunate souls who venture into their waters. They mostly stay below the surface, making them very difficult to track without proper equipment and when they do expose themselves, it's only for the briefest of times. What's more is if you think you can escape them by getting out of the water, you're wrong, they'll follow you up. Just running past them doesn't seem to be a viable option either (they're quick and will chase you down).
Resident Evil 6
- Resident Evil 6 distinguishes itself by making one of its most common enemies into this, especially for inexperienced players. J'avo replace zombies throughout most of the game's campaigns, they attack in packs, and, oh, did we mention that not only are they capable of using guns, but they have an Adaptive Ability where shooting them will randomly cause them to develop traits like super-leaping legs, torso armor, a huge shield for a hand, a giant mouth that they can bite you in half with, or becoming an Action Bomb.
- That not bad enough? They can also, completely at random, undergo what is called "Complete Mutation", and transform into a random C-Virus B.O.W. Possibilities include a hulking Mighty Glacier that needs its organic armor blown off before you can hurt it, a Wall Crawling lizard-creature that fires bone spikes at you, and a hive-mind colony of giant bees that takes minimal damage from most attacks and can quickly whittle down your health.
Resident Evil: Revelations 2:
- Iron Heads: The first big bruisers you encounter, Iron Heads are bullet-sinks who move fairly quickly, have a sizeable attack radius, are immune to headshots, and have the ability to inflict the Bleeding status, which causes you to rapidly lose a lot of health unless you have one of the tourniquet healing items. They can be blinded by the flashlight, one-shotted with the stealth attack, and aren't so threatening once you have bigger guns, but between the sizable increases in durability & damage output they get on higher difficulties, the fact they start showing up very early in the game (when you have few bullets and crappy guns to fight with), and the fact they often come in groups, they still qualify.
- Sploders: Take the "randomly spawned from vanilla mooks" aspect of Plagas above. Now make the resultant spawn an Action Bomb with a built-in Camera Screw side-effect, give it a pretty large radius, and make it capable of absorbing quite a lot of bullets/focused flashlight before it prematurely detonates. Congratulations, you have the Sploder in a nutshell.
- Revenants & Splashers: Barry's second-most common enemy is a fast-moving enemy that can only be killed by burning it or if you kill the core, which is randomly in the head or one of the limbs — luckily, Natalia can see where the core is. Some Revenants have bladed arms, which can deflect bullets and inflict the Bleeding status, whilst Splashers have tumorous arms that can throw pus and inflict the Blinded status. They do a lot of damage and can eat a lot of bullets, even when you know where the core is. To say nothing of the fact they like to flail around, making it harder to hit the core.
- Glasps: Being invisible, having a One-Hit Kill attack, or causing Camera Screw are all traits that can promote enemies to Demonic Spiders status. What does it say about the Glasp when it has all three traits? Making things worse, only Natalia can even see them and she has no weapons, making fighting them in single-player an extra challenging opportunity; AI-controlled Natalia is pretty much useless at accurately pointing out where they are, whilst AI-controlled Barry A: needs to have a skill bought before he can attack at all, B: rarely attacks anyway and C: has his damage nerfed if he even does shoot the damn things. Little wonder that most players prefer to simply pinpoint their location with Natalia and then throw explosives at them. They're rare, thankfully, but definitely memorable. Especially since they show up in the final chapters — some in Claire's chapter, where she can't even see them, and one during a fight with waves of Revenants, Slingers, and a Durga during Barry's chapter.
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard:
- Ironically, despite the fact that there's technically only one major enemy in the game, just in a couple of different shapes, all of the non-standard Molded have more than earned their place on this list.
- The Four-Legged or "Crawler" Molded. They don't have as much health as the regular Molded, but they're much quicker, can make huge leaps to cover the distance between you, rebound off of walls to throw off your aim, are naturally harder to hit due to their quadrupedal stance, and can do a lot of damage to you if you're not quick enough, taking you from Fine to Danger with a direct lunge even on Normal difficulty. Best part? They can sometimes swipe low enough to hit you in spite of your efforts to defend against their attack unless you're quick enough to duck and block simultaneously.
- The Spiked-Arm Molded, although not as annoying as Crawlers, are still much nastier than the vanilla Molded, being nearly twice as tough and doing a lot more damage when they hit. On higher difficulties these things can also sever your leg with a downward swipe, forcing you to hurry and reattach it with a First Aid Med before they can finish you off.
- The Fat Man Molded are probably the worst out of all of them, as they're incredibly difficult to kill and the acid they spit at you does a lot of damage. Even worse in Madhouse Mode, where they're faster and appear more often. To add insult to injury, they're also The Spiny and release damaging acid from their goo-stuffed interiors when cut — this means Ethan can't use the Circular Saw, the game's Infinity +1 Sword, on them without ultimately killing himself. Oh, and whether by glitch or by design, their acid-spraying vomit attack has Hitbox Dissonance for days and can easily hit you right through feet of solid objects you're trying to use for cover, while doing a ton of unblockable damage and potentially trapping you in a Cycle of Hurting that can outright kill you.
Other Games
- Though the Eliminators are severely watered down in Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, they're still annoying as hell, since they can take at least two shotgun shots to kill, they attack in groups, and they can leap at you from across the screen with considerable speed.
- Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles has the small, quick, far-leaping, ammo-sucking Anubis, which has been known to attack in groups.
- The Outbreak series has a couple as well, from the Hunter Rs (all the fun of the normal Hunters), to the Wasps (only Goddamned Bats if you have a handgun, which is no guarantee by any means). The Lionesses from the "Wild Things" scenario are the worst though. They have a tendency to attack anything in melee range when struck, they can chase you down with little trouble and they soak up a lot of damage, wasting bullets for the scenario bosses. And the best part? An instant-kill pounce. You have plenty of warning before that one though.
