2. Alma Wade (F.E.A.R.)
This is a prime instance of a horror film trope executed extremely well; we've all seen the creepy, pale, black-haired girl in enough J-horror to know what the score is, but when transposed onto the video game medium, it takes on a whole other, more terrifying dimension altogether. What's perhaps most impressive, though, is the attention-to-detail paid to her back story; she's not just a creepy gimmick and little else. We know about her upbringing as a psychic child, and her parents exploiting her abilities for their own gain, which she fights back against with murderous rage, hurled towards anyone in her general direction. Alma appears throughout the game in the most unexpected of moments; we all remember playing the first game, climbing that ladder, and having Alma pop her head out in front of us. It's a sublime jump scare and one of the most memorable in video game history, and even though her motives towards the player often prove ambiguous, that only makes her scarier in a sense; we don't know what she's going to do next.