10 Creepiest Video Game Enemies That Gave Everyone Nightmares

7. The First Zombie (Resident Evil)

Everyone remembers their first time, don't they? For me, creeping into a hallway in the original Resident Evil to find a lone zombie, quietly chomping on one of your missing team members before its attention turns to you, was one of the first times a video game properly chilled me to the bone. And I'm sure everyone has a story just like that about this genre-defining game. After a tense build-up exploring the ground floor of the eerily vacant mansion, the first zombie encounter in Resident Evil essentially comes out of nowhere. By this point you've already gotten accustomed to the game's mechanics; the fixed camera, the tank controls, the tense transitions between rooms - each and every new feature builds to this first reveal. The scene itself is perfectly done too, as the camera looms up to a close-up of the now-iconic zombie. That creepy build is immediately matched by the terror that comes with having to actually face-off against it, drawing your weapon against the monster in a claustrophobic part of the hallway with barely anywhere to run. In fact, It was such a well executed first encounter that pretty much every survival horror game since has copied it verbatim.