As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
As action-packed like it was for Resident Evil 4, RE5 is just as nightmarish as ever, and sometimes having a partner can just make it a bit more horrifying...
Main Campaign
- Meet Uroboros. Imagine a writhing mass of worms tearing away someone's skin from the inside out, leaving only the head and limb muscles and bones intact. Now imagine this mass of worms chasing you with the intent of absorbing you, dead or alive, from the outside in....
- Fun fact: the name is from the Greek "Ourobouros", which normally refers to the symbol for infinity of a snake swallowing its own tail. It literally means, however... "self-devourer". Yeah. Accurate, huh?
- The Adjule, Plagas-infected dogs. Not only do they look like some kind of mutant greyhounds, but then when one takes enough damage their FRIGGIN' HEADS SPLIT APART! Their entire body from the shoulders up has now become a gaping maw, complete with teeth and tentacles coming out.
- Also, when they kill you, you get bitten in half. Messily.
- Later in RE5 you get to fight a swarm of Lickers. Nobody has fed them in a long time.
- Chapter 5-1. The entire level has you going around a science facility, and all you ever actually see are two Lickers initially until the end. You walk around and, horrified, you see the god damn Lickers crawling all over the walls like flies; there's over 2 dozen of them in 2 glass rooms. Any loud noises sets them off, so you quietly head to the next door thinking 'oh God oh God oh God oh God', then you have to break down a door noisily and haul ass to the elevator. And the elevator takes so long that the first few rows of Lickers will be at the door before it arrives, so you have to shoot them. The 2 glass rooms actually spawn many more Lickers than you can see; namely, there's well over 40, and on the hardest difficulty, they will kill you with 1-2 tongue pulls.
- Good news about the Lickers: they are no longer poor sods reanimated twice by the T-virus. Bad news about the Lickers: they can now reproduce. The Squick-ness of it is horrifying because they are essentially reanimated bloodied corpses humping, to create new bloodied corpses to hump YOU.
- Chapter 3-1. Swamp/marshland setting and you have to go to a few islands to grab parts of a key. One of them has crocodiles slowly swimming at you and leaping out to 1 shot you. One has you going along quietly when a swarm of Las Plagas infected locals jump out of the water and kick your ass.
- Perhaps the scariest thing about the crocodiles is that they aren't even mutated — in fact, they're actually a pretty realistic depiction of Nile crocodiles. They really can grow to be that huge, and it's estimated that they kill hundreds of people in Africa each year. In a series full of terrifying fictional abominations, this horror is very much grounded in reality.
- The Duvalia. Forget doing enough damage and being rewarded with a tentacle in your face - try doing enough damage only for your opponent's whole upper body to be replaced by Audrey II. Complete with biting you in half, the upper of which is probably swallowed, if you get too close. And the actual Venus Flytrap part of it is shelled. The part of it you have to shoot to damage it is the tail hanging off the back. Which is actually the remains of the host's rib cage.
- Resident Evil 5 also has the Reapers. First response to them is "Oh, a giant insect thing, I can still kill it oh damn it's taking a lot of bullets what's that cloud of smoke it's spraying oh shit it's rearing up run awOHGODWHATTHECHRISTITTOREMYSTOMACHOUTINONEHIT!"
- When you get hit by them there's a totally unexpected and hitherto unused first-person view of the creature looming over you when it grabs you, scaring the ever-loving crap out of you, especially if you're not a big fan of bugs.
- They aren't even an engineered creature. This is what you get when Uroboros comes into accidental contact with a cockroach.
- Chris's flashback (which you get to play in the Lost in Nightmares DLC) where he tells Sheva about the fateful mission where he and Jill were sent to arrest Oswell Spencer for info on Albert Wesker. They arrive mere seconds after Wesker has already killed Spencer. Wesker proceeds to effortlessly beat Chris and Jill around in a scene that perfectly showcases just why he is the series big bad. At no point were either of them in control of the fight.
- Throughout the fight, the keen viewer will notice that Wesker's intent is almost entirely on Chris. He treats Jill like a minor inconvenience and tries to kill her right away so he can get back to fighting Chris. Needless to say, this is what allowed Jill to blindside Wesker and attempt a "I'm taking you with me" on him. Otherwise, Wesker would've killed Chris right there and then.
- What happened to Jill. She's been captured by her worst enemy, used in experiments, forced to infect people, and forced to fight her old partner and his coworker. And she was completely aware of what she was doing when she fought against them.
- Die in the first level of the game and you are treated to a first person view of the Majini brutally hacking you to bits. Now you know what the victims of Mohammed Farah Aidid went through.
- The tough Giant Majini you occasionally battle in the Wetlands and Ancient Ruins. The faint ululations you often hear, moments before you catch a glimpse of one in the distance and the battle music starts... Not to mention the gigantic odd-looking masks that mark them out as different, the clubs made out of human skulls they wield, and the fact that they are about 7 feet tall. The fact that they mostly walk calmly towards you and make very few noises when fighting doesn't help either.
- Dear God, Irving's transformation. Becoming a sea monster is bad enough, but being the tongue of said sea monster is just horrifying.
- Not to mention the fact that he's screaming through the transformation, and then laughing when it's done. Though the "EXTREEEEME MAKEOVAH!" bit at the end may temper it somewhat.
- The sound track that's called "Excecutioner Boss Battle". The theme itself is like something out of a slasher horror film, with one part that sounds like a distorted scream.
- At the end, Albert Wesker transforms himself into a monster and proceeds to chase you with his Combat Tentacles.
- The music
only makes matters much worse.
- The music
- The Executioner and chainsaw Majini are horribly disfigured and can kill you in one or 2 hits.
- Their intro where they execute Reynard Fisher doesn't help.
- In the first level, Chris says to Kirk that the gate they need to get through is sealed; a few moments later, the Executioner joins the battle and knocks it down effortlessly. And he doesn't stop coming after you unless you kill him. And let's not forget he has what looks like jagged nails protruding out from all over his body, takes several hits to beat and can very quickly put you into Dying status. Have fun.
- Uroborous is a virus that causes its victims to be covered in black slithering tentacles that literally eat the victim from the inside. It gets worse when the Uroborus virus infects someone; the person is left in agonizing pain until they are killed or absorbed by the virus. And Wesker was trying to spread this.
- There's one area near the end of the game, that has a group of corpses being disposed of in a incinerator. The creepy thing is, if you get even close to those corpses, they will get stand up and attack you while others are awoken — for the first time since Code: Veronica the game throws zombies at you and it's a frightening shock.
- The swamp level. The infected Ndipaya tribe are horrifying to behold, their lips and hands eaten away, their hearts bulging out of their chests, and the look of sheer hatred on their faces. They charge screaming at you with inhuman agility and stamina. Then there are the crocodiles lurking in the water to eat you when you least expect it.
- A note you can find in their village makes things even worse, most Plaga infected still keep at least some semblence of their former lives, the Ganados in 4, if you observed them from afar, still tended their farms, lived in their homes, ate food, hung out and used the bathroom, the opening of this game shows that generally most of the people infected still lived mostly normally, but the Ndipaya got the worst, they regressed, the note tells that suddenly they forsook modern clothing and ways of life, started only wearing tribal garb they usually only did for special occasions, becoming caricatures of Hollywood Natives along with the body horror.
- The implications of what would happen if Wesker's plan had succeeded are truly staggering. Umbrella's research determined that one in every 10,000 people would have the potential to become Tyrants or gain Tyrant-like powers, meaning that people within that threshold of genetic potential would survive Wesker's global saturation of Ouroboros. 1 in 10,000 people in a population of 6 billion (the population at the time of Resident Evil 5's release) would be 600,000 survivors note meaning that 5,999,400,000, people would die (unless you count being a zombie as "alive") as a result of Wesker's plan. The implication of 600,000 people with powers akin to Wesker is bad enough, but having those people running around in a world where society has collapsed, as a result of the sheer devastation brought on by the mass number of dead and infected invokes imagery of hell on Earth if there ever was one. Things only get worse when you remember that total societal collapse on the scale would remove all meaningful infrastructure that allows for comfortable living, leaving this new race of super humans to form clans and live off the land to survive; all the while fending off the vast numbers of undead that surround them. The survival of the human race in such a scenario would be extremely bleak, if not a direct path to extinction outright. note
- The Uroboros virus doesn't destroy or kill its victims, it turns them into mindless, bloodthirsty tentacle monsters ready to absorb you. And looking at Excella, the biomatter doesn't need to be alive for it to grow into something truly monstrous. So imagine 600,000 people surviving with superpowers—maybe some of them children, who knows?—amidst 5,999,400,000 tentacle monsters, that only need to happen across a lone cemetary to become something big enough to destroy a major city and even drink up some ocean - with whalefalls as afters. Just imagine them all converging together until they've consumed all life on the planet, and if you do, a Moon-sized living thing that's also a vast mass of tentacles is unimaginably horrific to even think about.
- Thankfully, Wesker foresaw this and had TRICELL launch The Shango Laser Satellite as a countermeasure against massive Uroboros creatures.
- Another chilling possibility? The only evidence we have that people can survive Uroboros is that Wesker says people can. Throughout the series, three people aren't immediately rejected by Uroboros, and those three were already superhuman and killed off soon afterwards. It's entirely possible no one would have survived and those who become superhuman would quickly find themselves consumed as well.
- The Uroboros virus doesn't destroy or kill its victims, it turns them into mindless, bloodthirsty tentacle monsters ready to absorb you. And looking at Excella, the biomatter doesn't need to be alive for it to grow into something truly monstrous. So imagine 600,000 people surviving with superpowers—maybe some of them children, who knows?—amidst 5,999,400,000 tentacle monsters, that only need to happen across a lone cemetary to become something big enough to destroy a major city and even drink up some ocean - with whalefalls as afters. Just imagine them all converging together until they've consumed all life on the planet, and if you do, a Moon-sized living thing that's also a vast mass of tentacles is unimaginably horrific to even think about.
- Despite how much Narm and how much of a Large Ham Wesker is, this game shows how terrifyingly powerful a superhuman like Wesker actually is, this is a man who is so strong he can pick up a man the size of Chris as easily as you would a pillow, and moves so fast that the human eye literally cannot process his movements, making it look like he is teleporting rather than moving, combine that with his sheer Lack of Empathy for anything other than himself, and his willingness to test horrific Body Horror inducing viruses and parasites on people without blinking, adds up to a legitimately scary villain.
Lost in Nightmares DLC
The Lost in Nightmares DLC revisits the original roots, and it's still as unnerving as ever even with the changes.- You go through the first part of the mansion expecting anything to pop out at any time. Right from the moment you enter the Spencer Estate, you're dreading the fight with Wesker the moment you see all of the corpses belong to Spencer's bodyguards littering the main hall with gaping holes in their chests. Jill sounds noticeably uneasy when she reports the bodies to HQ, saying they apparently were killed by "unconventional means" (which really, means Wesker killed them like he does Spencer, drove his hand through their chests).
- On your second playthrough, the Blob CAN sometimes appear in the first part of the Spencer Estate. The good news is, he only pops up on Professional mode. The bad news is he will chase you through the estate.
- What's REALLY terrifying about the Blobs is the kill screen, should you prove an unlucky-enough bastard to become a squelchy sound effect and the horrifying realization that those are Chris' limbs hanging limply from the top of the screen, where the anchor has impaled him through the stomach and he's most likely still (however barely) alive. Go on, try it. Sweet dreams.
- Simply put, Lost In Nightmares makes copious use of Nothing Is Scarier in its first section, with many bonus scares for those who played the first Resident Evil. The L-shaped hallway is back. When you walk through it the first time, you hear dogs barking outside. When you walk back the other way, the windows break, giving a big ass Jump Scare to all those afraid of a Cerberus popping in, only for it to turn out that it was a mere bat breaking through the window. And all the strange stuff that happens, such as hearing footsteps from somewhere in the mansion, or the piano being played. Particularly creepy about the piano part is the fact that when you get to the piano room to check out who's playing it, it is empty - and the only exit is the door you came in through. Once you get into the dungeons, you meet the Blobs, complete with short glimpses of them walking past on balconies or through cell doors before you actually do meet them. They have a REALLY creepy theme, and the first one can spawn right around a corner, swinging its hammer down onto you, or on the stairs you just walked down, even when you searched the entire upper floor and absolutely ensured that it was empty.
