Resident Evil Games With The Best Body Horror

Resident Evil is one of the most popular survival horror game franchises of all time, embodying horror within its menagerie of monsters, ranging from zombies to overgrown animals and mutated humans. All of these creations stem from the minds of scientists, abandoning all ethics on the quest to create powerful organic weapons.

6:15

Related

The Scariest Resident Evil Games, Ranked

Few game franchises match the sheer awe and horror exhibited in the chilling Resident Evil titles. But which in the series were the scariest?

In typical sci-fi horror fashion, nearly all of these creations escape, leaving it to the heroes to confront and put an end to. As these are the results of experimentation, oftentimes these creatures only mutate further in absolutely grotesque fashion, giving iconic body horror movies like The Thing a run for its money.

8

Resident Evil Remake

Lisa Trevor Embodied a Tragic Side to Body Horror

Resident Evil Remake

Systems

Released

April 30, 2002

ESRB

m

Developer(s)

Capcom Production Studio 4

Lisa Trevor was just one of the changes Capcom made when they created the fantastic remake of the original title, and became one of the most feared and iconic enemies in the entire series. The story behind her and her mother Jessica is one marred in tragedy, as they were just more of Spencer’s victims, immediately detained and experimented on when they arrived at his mansion.

This is what transformed young Lisa into the monster fans know and run screaming from every time they encounter her. Lisa was the only one who survived the experiments out of her and her mother, gaining supernatural strength at the cost of her sanity and mind. Her mind was somewhat restored after further experimentation, but that did not stop Lisa from cutting off the faces of any woman she met.

7

Resident Evil 5

Wesker Becomes a Monster as Part of His Nefarious Mission

Released

March 5, 2009

ESRB

M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language

OpenCritic Rating

Fair

Resident Evil 5 was a pivotal game in the franchise, introducing a focus on action and cooperative play as it was mostly designed with the idea that the player would have a friend join them, as evidenced by Sheva’s lackluster AI. In this game, Chis is sent on a mission in Africa to apprehend a man named Ricardo Irving who has possession of BOWs, and is intending to sell them. A local agent by the name of Sheva Alomar joins him to help with the extraction.

3:20

Related

Resident Evil Games With The Best Combat & Gunplay, Ranked

Resident Evil’s combat has changed a lot over the years, with some ageing out quickly, and others reshaping the combat of entire gaming genres.

It turns out an old adversary, one Albert Wesker, is the true evil mastermind behind the goings-on in the city, and he wants the influence of Uroboros to spread across the entire globe. In order to achieve these goals and dispose of Chris, Wesker himself turns into a monster, abandoning humanity to take on a stronger form in typical body horror fashion. Though not as grossly mutated as other creatures, the very reasoning of Wesker’s transformation, and how Uroboros transforms its victims, does make RE5 an example of body horror.

6

Resident Evil 4

Las Plagas Can Transform the Heads of its Victims into Writhing Tendrils

Released

March 24, 2023

ESRB

M for Mature 17+ due to Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language

OpenCritic Rating

Mighty

Resident Evil 4 brought Leon back to the series, no longer a rookie cop but a government agent working directly under the President of the United States. One of his first missions is to travel to a remote Spanish village to rescue his daughter, who was kidnapped by cultists. Beyond cultists, Leon has to contend with numerous threats, including monsters, and villagers, who are more than what they seem.

For the most part, the cultists and ganados look like ordinary humans, but there is a chance that at the point of death, their head explodes, revealing a mass of tentacles, or a monstrous mouth. Normally, headshots are a sure-fire way to kill enemies for good, but this adds an element of danger to doing this in RE4, as they could witness this grotesque and gory transformation. The sight of these mutated heads on top of ordinary human bodies is a stomach-churning and terrifying sight to behold.

5

Resident Evil: Revelations

The Scagdead is One of the Most Grotesque and Frightening Boss Fights

Released

January 26, 2012

ESRB

M For Mature 17+ due to Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Language

OpenCritic Rating

Fair

After the more action-oriented titles such as Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6, Revelations brought the game back into true horror, and brought back familiar faces such as Jill and Chris. The former finds herself on an abandoned cruise ship called the Queen Zenobia looking for Chris, and it is here she meets the communications officer, who has not been spared infection.

He is one of the bosses players hear before they see, as he begs for call, the word ‘Mayday’ echoed with a more monstrous tenor. A terrifying enemy with one arm that is an organic buzzsaw, the Scagdead still has a human head that still retains some of their humanity, trying to fight against the impulses of his monster half. This true hammers home the body horror angle of this game, as it revolves around the decay of humanity, and the rise of something far less human.

4

Resident Evil Village

House Beneviento Houses a Horrifying Fetus Creature

Released

May 7, 2021

ESRB

m

OpenCritic Rating

Mighty

Capcom wasn’t quite done with Ethan Winters, bringing him back into the fold in Resident Evil Village. This time, he was searching for his infant daughter Rosemary, who was taken to the remote Romanian village, the villagers living in fear of the Four Lords and the lycanthropic creatures who terrorized them.

One of these four lords is Donna Beneviento, a mostly mute woman who owns the sassy loudmouthed doll Angie. Her lands contain some planta that cause very vivid hallucinations which Ethan experiences while exploring the house’s basement. As he searches for an escape, he encounters a creature that looks like an impossibly massive fetus. It crawls through the corridors, chasing Ethan while constantly babbling like an infant. It is by far one of the scariest scenes in the game, and a twisted use of body horror.

3

Resident Evil 3 Remake

After Each Encounter, Nemesis Mutates Even More

Released

April 3, 2020

ESRB

M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language

OpenCritic Rating

Strong

A remake of the original Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, it was met with a somewhat lukewarm reception owing to the far more obviously scripted encounters with the beast, and it felt far more like an action game than it did horror. It was still an enjoyable jaunt for RE fans, and it leaned a little more into body horror when it came to its infamous villain.

Related

Resident Evil Franchise Boss Tier List

With over eight mainline entries behind it, the Resident Evil series has amassed a catalog of boss battles which vary wildly in their quality.

Jill had to tangle with Nemesis on more than one occasion, and it would return even more mutated than before, providing more of a challenge than their last fight. Nemesis was already a pretty mutated form to start with, given his size and the features of his face, but each fight makes Nemesis appear even less human, and more like a partially melted fleshy mass with teeth, limbs, and deadly attacks.

2

Resident Evil 2

Birkin Turns Himself into a Monster

Released

January 25, 2019

ESRB

M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Strong Language, Intense Violence

OpenCritic Rating

Mighty

Resident Evil 2 featured separate campaigns divided among its two playable characters: Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield. These two plucky protagonists find themselves in Raccoon City for their own reasons while zombies have completely taken over, and flee into ROD hoping to find help and answers, only for the situation there to be even more dire.

Zombies, lickers, the terrifying Mr X and the mutated William Birkin are all found throughout the game, with the latter being the shining example of body horror in this title. After being caught trying to sell company secrets, Birkin makes the foolish decision to inject himself with the G-virus, turning himself into a monster. He mercilessly hunts down Sherry as s host to spread the infection to, and either Leon or Claire face off against it, only for it to mutate further along with the game.

1

Resident Evil 7

The Minds and Bodies of the Bakers Undergo Drastic Transformations

Released

January 24, 2017

ESRB

M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language

OpenCritic Rating

Mighty

Resident Evil 7 marked a tonal shift in the series, introducing the ordinary Ethan Winters as the new protagonist, who traveled to Dulvey, Louisiana in order to track down his wife Mia, who had been missing for three years. He entered an old homestead close to the Bayou, and there he met the deranged and dangerous Baker family, who did not quite offer him warm Southern hospitality. Instead, they attempted to kill him at every turn.

They were once an ordinary family, but Eveline’s ‘gifts’ transformed them into creatures that were night unkillable, and could undergo pretty horrid transformations. Jack could turn into a large mass of black mold, as could Eveline, and Marguerite might just be the most grotesque in the family given her affinity with insects, some of which she birthed herself. It is thoroughly nightmare-inducing, and an effective implementation of body horror.

More

Resident Evil: Freakiest Looking Enemies In Capcom’s Series

Resident Evil boasts a menagerie of grotesque and terrifying monsters. Here are the the freakiest looking from across the franchise.