These are actually some of the first nonhuman horrors you might encounter in this game, depending on the path you take, and at first glance they appear to just be very big, very filthy and aggressive corvids of some kind. Certainly not nearly as distorted as the crows would be in Elden Ring a few years later. But if you ask me, Bloodborne's crows are the creepier of the two. Not scarier, no, these are actually pretty easy to dispatch and hardly threatening once you get the hang of things. But creepier, yes, by far, for the simple fact that they don't move and act like you expect.

Bloodborne's carrion crows are usually seen lying on the ground, wings spread out like corpses themselves, but they don't suddenly spring into the air when you approach, or even typically stand up. No, their most common locomotive mechanism is to slither. That's what it looks like, anyway. Maybe they're using their little feet under there, I don't know, I just know these big, floppy, rotten looking birds essentially slide around on their stomachs and wings more like slugs than anything else. It's splendidly terribly wrong for them to do, and makes them one of my favorite video game creatures to ever otherwise just be a largeish bird.

It wouldn't be a horror game, at least certainly not a Fromsoft horror game, without horrible dogs of some kind. The basic "rabid dog" is just an exceptionally nasty looking, emaciated canine with hideously matted fur, but it also comes in a "hunting dog" upgrade; this one is covered in metallic blades, needles and spines that look artificially embedded in its flesh, including a serrated, crescent blade held in its mouth like a set of tusks.

Then there's the specialized hunting dogs associated with the "keeper of the old lords," also pictured here, a Chalice Dungeon boss who's both a swordfighter and pryomancer. Her dogs have long, protruding tongues, brightly glowing eyes, ram-like horns and slightly more elongated looking, partially hairless bodies. These also happen to breathe fire, so together with the horns, these feel a lot more "magical fantasy" than a lot of other Bloodborne creatures. Nothing wrong with that, though! You do meet them in a dungeon after all.

Of course there are also big rats! Almost as big a person, but nice and chunky, a good solid lump of ratness and real mangy. Some of them are even covered in big blisters, and those can poison you and everything! All of them also have lovably HUGE, wet, sickly looking eyeballs. Of all the giant, diseased rats in the video game world that basically just look like giant, diseased rats, I can honestly say Bloodborne demonstrates their peak possible quality.

Oh, sorry, they're called "maneater boars." They don't really look like boars, though. Boars are a lot sleeker, a lot closer to their wild ancestors; a domestic pig actually takes on characteristics closer to a wild boar in as little as six months if it's left to fend for itself! Yharnam's "boars" still look a lot more like the unnaturally bloated hogs you might find on some horrible-quality factory farm, or something, but even larger. Pigs get pretty massive, I mean, some of them get bigger than some cows, don't they? But these are REALLY big piggos. Just crazy big. And they can breathe clouds of pinkish toxic funk, and they've got mouths full of sharp teeth, and are basically just the absolute worst thing that could ever lurch out of a dark sewer with the intention of eating you. Or is that just me? I just feel like there's something about being eaten by a pig that's more viscerally upsetting than being eaten by any other conceivable animal. The pigglies have a secret, though!

Later in the game, you'll encounter boars whose heads are completely covered in slimy, lidless eyeballs. Positively deranged looking! These have a breath attack that causes "frenzy" instead of poison, so basically their breath just drives you mad. I could be misremembering, but I believe there are even boars in the game who appear in the many-eyed form only under certain conditions, like, you can go fight the same pig earlier in the game and it'll be the regular pig instead of the eyes balls pig. Something like that!

Finally, we have these horrible variant carrion crows with the heads of dogs, encountered only in the Nightmare of Mensis locale. I have to say the only thing worse than a huge greasy black bird oozing along the floor towards you is one with the face of a scabby wet dog with solid white eyes. In the context of Bloodborne it's nothing, really, but if you met this in the real world I think it would probably traumatize your brain a lot worse than just a big tentacle creature. With a big tentacle creature you can at least think "oh, okay, this is just some undiscovered space creature." When a huge bird with a dirty puppy dog face oozes up the sidewalk, that's when you might think "oh, okay, the devil and hell might be real then."

Snakes in Yharnam get pretty messed up. They travel around in big, tangled balls, for one thing, or maybe they branch into a bunch of heads and tails? They typically consist of one large, central snake head - with way too many fangs - and a bunch of smaller snakes, which can vary in their degrees of malformity. Notice they can even have additional lower jaws!

Weirder still is that the snakes in this game can be "parasites," or at least, they can puppet human bodies around, which in some cases appear to still be alive before a bunch of writhing snakes burst out of their neck hole and replace their head, kinda like the little fellas in Parasyte as well as in Resident Evil 4. If those bodies are just corpses to begin with, then the snakes aren't really parasitic, since they're not feeding on another living thing. If the bodies are still alive the entire time, then they're proper parasites. If the bodies only die after the snakes reveal themselves, of course, then what we have are parasitoids!

There are also much, much larger snakeballs that come in a few variants; ones with just a single giant-size head act the same as the smaller ones, which also typically accompany them. The ones with two giant heads keep their distance and spit poison, and finally one with three of the extra-big central snakes that can breathe a poisonous gas cloud. The most interesting thing about these to me, though, is the fact that they have so many TICKS! That's what those "boils" or "warts" actually are. I shared this in my past review, too, but it may be a distressing image for some: here's a wild snake with a lot of ticks for your comparison.

This isn't a meaningless detail thrown in for visual creepiness, either; this game is called "bloodborne" for a reason! If you're new to its lore, the entire plot begins with a blood disease that turns people into "beasts," and that's also what's wrong with everything on this page. These snakes would have likely gotten the infection from the ticks!