Every Necromorph Type in Dead Space: all forms from Slashers to the Brethren Moons

Necromorph types are the different creatures a Marker's signal makes when it reshapes dead flesh, and Dead Space has dozens of them. Some are built from a single corpse, some from several bodies fused together, and a few are grown from children, dogs or the long-dead alien natives of Tau Volantis. Every type serves the same goal: kill the living, gather the dead and build towards Convergence. For how the infection itself works, see our main Necromorph article. The tools that cut them apart, from the Plasma Cutter up, are on the Dead Space weapons list. (Dead Space; Dead Space 2; Dead Space 3)

Common forms#

These are the Necromorphs Isaac Clarke fights most often. Each is made from one body, usually a human corpse, and they come at survivors in numbers. Most of them also turn up as Enhanced versions, darker and much tougher, and some as Phantom versions with red eyes and even more staying power. (Dead Space; Dead Space 2; Dead Space 3)

Slasher#

The Slasher is the basic Necromorph and the one you'll see more than any other. It's reanimated from a single human corpse, with long blades of bone growing from the arms. Alone it's slow to react and easy to cut down, but in groups Slashers wiped out whole crews. It appears in every main game and in Extraction. (Dead Space; Dead Space: Extraction; Dead Space 2; Dead Space 3)

Spitter#

The Spitter is a Slasher made from a female host. It fights the same way up close, but it can also spit acidic bile over short distances, so it harries survivors while other Necromorphs close in. It appears on Titan Station. (Dead Space 2)

Leaper#

The Leaper is made from a single corpse whose legs have fused into a long tail tipped with a scythe. It uses the tail to launch itself across rooms and to stab like a scorpion, and it climbs walls and ceilings with ease. Leapers hunt the USG Ishimura, turn up again on Titan Station and come back on Tau Volantis. (Dead Space; Dead Space: Extraction; Dead Space 2; Dead Space 3)

Lurker#

The Lurker is a small ranged form. On the Ishimura and Titan Station it's made from human infants. On Tau Volantis it's made from infected dogs instead. It clings to walls and ceilings on sticky tentacles and fires barbs of sharpened bone from its back. (Dead Space; Dead Space 2; Dead Space 3)

Twitcher#

The Twitcher is a fast, jerky Slasher variant. It's made from hosts who had Stasis Modules built into their suits, such as soldiers and security staff, and the stasis tech running in reverse makes them move faster than any other strain. Isaac first meets them in the wreck of the USM Valor. They come back on Titan Station in Gabe Weller's DLC campaign and on Tau Volantis. (Dead Space; Dead Space 2: Severed; Dead Space 3)

Stalker#

The Stalker hunts in packs. It hides behind cover, peeks out and then charges in turns, which makes it one of the smarter common forms. Its armoured, eyeless head can't be cut off, so you aim for the legs. (Dead Space 2; Dead Space 3)

Puker#

The Puker is a body melted and reshaped by its own digestive acid. Its legs twist together, a third leg of guts grows between them, and it sprays corrosive bile that slows anyone it hits. (Dead Space 2; Dead Space 3)

Exploder#

The Exploder is made from a single human host and carries a glowing explosive pustule at the end of its left arm. It's slow and clumsy and tries to get close enough to blow itself up. Shoot the pustule off and you can even throw it back. (Dead Space; Dead Space 2; Dead Space 3)

Waster#

The Waster, also called Fodder, keeps most of its human look, so it can pass for a survivor until it's close. It first appears during the outbreak on the New Horizons Lunar Colony and then all over Tau Volantis. Damage it enough and it splits: hit the upper body and tentacles burst out of the pelvis, hit the legs and the torso sprouts new limbs and keeps coming. (Dead Space 3)

Feeder#

The Feeder is made from a person who ate Necromorph flesh. They come from starving Sovereign Colonies soldiers on Tau Volantis, who turned to eating the dead creatures to survive. Feeders are emaciated, hate bright light and track prey by sound. (Dead Space 3)

Creeper and Shambler#

The Creeper and Shambler are two halves of one threat. The Creeper is a detached head that burrows into a corpse's neck and takes it over. The body it rides is the Shambler, and on Tau Volantis the Shamblers are dead soldiers who can still fire their guns. (Dead Space 3)

Large forms#

These forms are bigger and tougher than the common types. Some come from a single body pushed to extremes, others from several corpses fused into one. (Dead Space; Dead Space 2; Dead Space 3)

Brute#

The Brute is built from several human corpses wrapped in a spiked shell of bone and hardened skin. It charges and crushes, its front armour shrugs off most gunfire, and when it's crippled it fires explosive organic blobs from its chest. Get behind it and shoot the soft joints. (Dead Space; Dead Space: Extraction; Dead Space 2)

Pregnant#

The Pregnant is one heavily mutated corpse with two scythe arms growing from its back and a huge sac on its belly. The sac is full of smaller Necromorphs, usually Swarmers, and they pour out if you shoot it, so you go for the limbs. On Tau Volantis the sac releases Swarm Infectors instead. (Dead Space; Dead Space 2; Dead Space 3)

Divider#

The Divider is tall and thin and strangles prey with a long tongue. When it's badly damaged it falls apart into a head and limbs that each crawl off on their own. The head is the real creature, and in later outbreaks it learns to take over fresh bodies. (Dead Space; Dead Space 2)

Tripod#

The Tripod is a three-legged form built from several corpses. It strikes with long arms and a bladed tongue, and it's one of the more aggressive forms on Titan Station. A single female variant, with an infant's body growing out of it, attacks Isaac in the Church of Unitology. (Dead Space 2)

Alien Necromorph#

Alien Necromorphs come from the extinct native species of Tau Volantis. They lay frozen in the ice for millennia and woke up when humans returned to the planet. They're tall and heavy, and the alien bodies they come from give them a different build from any human form. (Dead Space 3)

Split-Face#

The Split-Face is a compound form built from a mass of human torsos. It has two heads, seven bladed legs and a pustule slung under its body. It only appears in the novel set at the Chicxulub research facility, where Michael Altman kills it. (Dead Space: Martyr)

Swarm and support forms#

These Necromorphs aren't built for straight fights. Some make new Necromorphs, some flood an area with small attackers, and some hold ground like living turrets or mines. (Dead Space; Dead Space 2; Dead Space 3)

Infector#

The Infector exists to make more Necromorphs. It wraps a corpse in its wings, stabs a proboscis into the skull and pumps in infectious tissue, and the body gets up as a new Necromorph. It's often the first form a Marker produces, which is why outbreaks spread so fast. (Dead Space; Dead Space 2)

Swarm Infector#

The Swarm Infector is a small, crab-like form that hunts in droves on Tau Volantis. It burrows into corpses to raise them, doing the Infector's job and the Swarmer's at once. (Dead Space 3)

Swarmer#

The Swarmer is the smallest Necromorph, a scrap of flesh that attacks in large numbers. Swarmers spill out of ruptured Pregnants and other corpses and latch onto victims until they go down. On Tau Volantis their job passes to the Swarm Infector. (Dead Space; Dead Space: Extraction; Dead Space 2)

The Pack#

The Pack is made from the intact bodies of children. Each one is fragile, but they come in big groups and shriek in childlike voices as they swarm. They hunt the Sprawl, and a new-looking Pack turns up again in the Awakened DLC. (Dead Space 2; Dead Space 3: Awakened)

Crawler#

The Crawler is made from an infant and carries a swollen explosive sac. It crawls towards you and bursts. On Tau Volantis it appears in an alien form. (Dead Space 2; Dead Space 3)

Guardian and Pods#

The Guardian is a single corpse fused to a wall by the Corruption. It can't move, but it lashes out with a tentacle at anything that comes close and spits out Pods, small embryo-like creatures grown from underdeveloped infants that fire sharp projectiles. On Tau Volantis, Guardians spit Swarm Infectors instead. (Dead Space; Dead Space 2; Dead Space 3)

Cyst#

The Cyst grows out of the Corruption and works as a living mine. It flings an explosive pod at anything that moves past, Necromorph or human, so you can turn it against other creatures. (Dead Space 2; Dead Space 3)

Wheezer#

The Wheezer never attacks directly. It sits in place breathing out poison gas, making the air around it deadly to the living. On the Ishimura, Wheezers fouled the air on the Hydroponics Deck, and two more turn up in a warehouse on Tau Volantis. (Dead Space; Dead Space 3)

Nest#

The Nest only grows in zero gravity. It's a female host fused back to back with at least one other body, with three bulbous arms that launch swarms of small exploding Necromorphs. Only the arms can be hurt. Nests guard zero gravity areas on Titan Station and around Tau Volantis. (Dead Space 2; Dead Space 3)

Medusa#

The Medusa drifts through the zero gravity spaces around Tau Volantis. It's a floating mass of limbs and yellow sacs, thought to come from a native sea creature of the planet's ancient oceans, and its sacs fire projectiles that chase their target. (Dead Space 3)

Flier#

The Flier is a winged form that attacks from above, diving past its prey to bite or slash with its tail. It's first seen in the Megavents of the Aegis VII colony and later turns up aboard the Ishimura. (Dead Space: Extraction)

Grabber#

The Grabber lurks in the flooded drainage system of the Ishimura. It lies still like an ordinary corpse, then whips its head out on an impossibly long neck to grab and stab its prey. (Dead Space: Extraction)

Tentacle#

Tentacles are huge Necromorph limbs. Some hunt on their own, like the one that drags Isaac down a corridor on the Ishimura. Others are the arms of far larger creatures such as the Hive Mind, the Leviathan and the Tau Volantis Moon. (Dead Space; Dead Space 2; Dead Space 3)

Unique and boss forms#

These are one-offs or rare strains, mostly fought as bosses. Several of them run the outbreak rather than just fight in it. (Dead Space; Dead Space 2; Dead Space 3)

Regenerator#

Regenerators regrow any lost limb within seconds. Cutting them up only buys time, so they have to be frozen, trapped or destroyed with something bigger than a gun. The strain includes three named threats below. (Dead Space; Dead Space 2; Dead Space 3)

The Hunter#

The Hunter was made on purpose. The Unitologist scientist Challus Mercer grew it from a living patient, Brant Harris, aboard the Ishimura. It stalks Isaac across the ship. He traps it in a cryogenic freezer, but it gets loose again before the end. (Dead Space)

Ubermorph#

The Ubermorph is a unique Regenerator from the last hours of the Titan Station outbreak. It leads the assault on the Government Sector and follows Isaac through the labs around the Marker until he escapes. (Dead Space 2)

The Hunters of Tau Volantis#

The Hunters were once the Sovereign Colonies' Deep Dig Team, men who went mad near the Markers and carved Marker symbols into their own skin. Sealed away for two centuries, they get loose again on Tau Volantis. (Dead Space 3)

The Hive Mind#

The Hive Mind is the huge worm-like creature that controls the Necromorphs on Aegis VII. It was made under the influence of Marker 3A, and it directs the horde on both the colony and the Ishimura until Isaac kills it in 2508. It belongs to the Nexus organism class, the commanders that relay the Marker signal to lesser forms. (Dead Space)

The Nexus#

The Nexus is the Hive Mind's counterpart on Tau Volantis, a gigantic commander grown from the remains of the planet's extinct natives. It swallows Isaac and Carver, who have to destroy it from the inside. (Dead Space 3)

The Leviathan#

The Leviathan is a huge shapeless mass that hit the Ishimura's hull and holed up in Food Storage on the Hydroponics Deck, where the Corruption spread around it. Isaac poisons it through the Wheezers, fights it in Food Storage and later has to clear its remnant off the comms antenna. (Dead Space)

The Slug#

The Slug clamps itself over a set of blast doors on the Ishimura's hull, blocking the comms array Isaac needs. It's beaten by turning the ship's own anti-asteroid cannons on it. (Dead Space)

The Spider and the Urchin#

Two more giant forms grew aboard the Ishimura. The Spider is an armour-plated monster on the outer hull that attacks Nathan McNeill after he disables an anti-asteroid cannon, clamping its tube-like mouth over his head. The Urchin is a tentacled mass in the ship's water purification works below Hydroponics. (Dead Space: Extraction)

The Tormentor#

The Tormentor is a towering form built from many corpses that attacks Isaac on Titan Station. Its bone armour shrugs off even a gunship's guns. Both of them get blown out into space, and Isaac finishes it by shooting a floating fuel canister. (Dead Space 2)

The Boss#

The Boss is a massive mutated Necromorph lodged in the reactor core of the Titan Station outbreak. It has no human features left, it directs lesser Necromorphs, and the saboteur Vandal has to take it down before the reactor overheats. (Dead Space (mobile))

The Snow Beast#

The Snow Beast roams the frozen surface of Tau Volantis, thought to be a reanimated ancient crustacean. It ambushes with tentacles and a lashing tongue and pulls back whenever it's wounded. (Dead Space 3)

The Tau Volantis Moon and the Brethren Moons#

The Tau Volantis Moon is a half-formed Brethren Moon, frozen in place by the Alien Machine when an earlier Convergence was stopped. It's the final boss of Dead Space 3. The Brethren Moons are what such creatures become when finished: planet-sized, intelligent Necromorphs that seed Markers across the galaxy, harvest the life that grows around them and make more of their kind. Every Necromorph on this list is, in the end, raw material for them. For when each outbreak happened, see our Dead Space timeline. (Dead Space 3; Dead Space 3: Awakened)