The Necromorphs

D@ta R34per's Game Blog (Dead Space)

This blog entry is focused on the antagonist of one of the best, if not the best, of all PC horror genre shooting games, Dead Space.
Dead Space's story focuses on a future when humans have achieved space travel and has discovered technology to mine, or "harvest", entire planets. Specialized mining ships, the Planet Cracker Starships, are created and controlled by a galactic mining corporation called Concordance Extraction Corporation, or CEC. So far, humans have not encountered any alien life form. The only evidence they have on alien existence is a strange monolith structure discovered on Earth, the Black Marker.
The Black Marker was said to harbour anomalies which affects its surroundings and anything  near it. Any further information, however, are classified and the Marker itself under military and government control.
The story's main focus is on the first and biggest Planet Cracker of the time, the USG Ishimura, named after Hideki Ishimura, inventor of the Shock Point Drive ( a Faster Than Light engine).
The game's main protagonist, a technician named Isaac Clarke, and his team has been sent to answer a distress call from the Ishimura. Their ship, the USG Kellion, crashed on the  Ishimura, trapping Isaac and his team on the ship. Once inside, they find the crew horribly and grotesquely killed by the antagonists of the game, the Necromorph.

The Necromorphs

Necromorphs are a polymorphic alien species that infect dead bodies for use as their own. They serve as the antagonists of Dead Space.

The Necromorphs are the horribly mutated, reanimated corpses of men and women. The creatures are extraordinarily aggressive, and will attempt to kill virtually any non-necromorph creature on sight. The sole purpose of almost all Necromorphs is to create more bodies to infect, while the role of one particular creature, the Infector is to infect corpses to make more Necromorphs.

Origin

The DNA patterns covering the surface of the Black and Red Markers are the codes for the Necromorph infection. Noted in the logs as a "recombinant life form". According to data logs the first known Necromorph infection was during the reverse engineering project of the Black Marker subsequently creating the Red Marker, which occurred on Aegis 7 hundreds of years ago by the original Aegis 7 doctors. The Aegis 7 doctors copied and recreated the lifeform using the DNA patterns listed on the Markers, resulting in the creation of the lifeform. Initially the "recombinant life form" existed only in a petri-dish and remained dormant (what exactly the lifeform resembled is unknown). The lifeform didn't react to any of the doctor's tests, and was about to be deemed a failure. However, one day, a doctor didn't fully decontaminate himself when entering the lab, and a few dead skin cells fell into the petri dish. As such, the infection by the recombinant lifeform immediately activated and reanimated the dead skin cells (what the skin cells reanimated into isn't detailed).

The Red Marker actually inhibited the necrotic flesh testing and it was then that the scientists noticed that it produced an apparent "Dead Space" inhibiting the Necromorph infection from spreading.

Soon afterwards, a similar accident similar to the petri-dish incident resulted in the infection and deaths of two doctors; and immediately after dying, the two doctors transformed into the very first Necromorphs (one doctor became a Leaper, the other an Infector). This was when the original colony disaster began. The Leaper and Infector were contained, but the Leaper found and broke through a nearby ventilation shaft, breaching the colony. It began to kill the other doctors, which the Infector transformed, and the first outbreak commenced.

It is presumed that after the initial catastrophe began on Aegis 7 that they somehow expanded the projection of the Dead Space field to contain the Necromorph Hive Mind and all infection present on the planet.

There are two unique Necromorphs, the Leviathan and the Slug, both of which are large and grotesque blobs of flesh, which utilizes their tentacles to attack. How they're created and from what is unknown, but they may be independent organisms or an extreme offshot of the Brute Necromorph (i.e made from combining several crewman corpses).

There is a low probability that the Necromorph virus is a natural occurrence, as it is attributed to the Black Marker or to the reverse-engineered Red Marker based upon it, though the exact nature of the relationship between the Necromorphs and the Black Marker, and by extension the religion Unitology which was built around the latter, is impossible to detect

Transformation

Once infected, the transformation of a dead body into a Necromorph is extremely quick (with certain exceptions such as Leapers), typically happening in a matter of seconds (the transformation actually occurs in exactly 10 seconds, according to the game producers). This transformation is extremely violent and distubing for observers. The body of the Necromorph host is forced into new twisted shapes to fit the function of the newly spawned creature. The actual type of Necromorph created stems entirely on the location and circumstances, as well as the host body's current form. For example, Lurkers are created from any infant human. There seems to be some kind of hierarchy within the Necromorph species. However, what that happens to be is completely unknown, though this all may be determined by The Hive Mind. The bacteria responsible for the infection is also referred to as 'The Corruption' in background logs. All Necromorphs are extremely hardy and capable of surviving in lethal environments no human without appropriate protection could even venture into, such as the vacuum of space.

Dismemberment

"Take their legs out, and they'll drag themselves toward you. Shoot off an arm, and they'll use their other arm to rip into you. Nope, the only real way to take these creatures out is to completely rip them apart."

—Glen Schofield, Dead Space Executive Producer

Necromorphs are resilient creatures, and will never stop coming no matter how many bullets are fired into them. Countless have died due to not knowing the only true way to kill the Necromorphs: dismemberment. The only way to kill the creatures is to literally rip them to pieces; remove the arms, legs, and other appendages until the creature is killed.

Dubbed "Strategic Dismemberment" by the Dead Space game team, Strategic Dismemberment is the act of strategically removing the limbs of the creatures. Each creature has it's own strategies when it comes to dismemberment: some creatures will simply die after enough limbs have been removed, some creatures will die instantly if a specific limb is cut off, while some creatures will become even more of a threat if 

Learning how to dismember creatures is mostly done through trial-and-error. However, knowing dismemberment is the only way to stop the reanimated horrors in their tracks.

Trivia

• The Necromorph creature designs were partly inspired by John Carpenter's The Thing, while the story of the Black Marker seems to have been based on the movie Species.
• The Necromorphs are very similar to The Flood from Halo in several ways, as they both use reanimated corpses and also terraform their environments to suit their needs. In addition, the Flood Gravemind and Necromorph Hive-Mind are very similar, however the Gravemind is a intelligent, manipulative creature while the Hive-Mind is a mindless beast.
• The Necromorphs' genesis and rapid ecological spread is similar to the alien life in the sci-fi comedy film Evolution, albeit in a much darker and more horrific way with the creatures reanimating the dead as well as consuming the living.
• In Greek, "Necromorph" means "dead form/shape."
• Interestingly enough the standard way a Necromorph kills it's victims is the exact same way to kill it, by dismemberment and mutilation. This is both ironic and counterproductive to effectively and efficiently spreading the infection and creating more Necromorphs.
• The Necromorphs do not attack those under the Influence of the marker, as showed in the comics Natalia was not attacked by the Nercromorphs as she was making her way to the rover bay, only observed.

The Root of Evil: The Hive Mind

The Hive Mind is the father of all Necromorphs and is potentially the destroyer of all humankind. Ironically, the Hive Mind was created by military scientist trying to reverse-engineer a weapon from the Black Marker.
Created upon the testing of the experimental Red Marker that had been reverse-engineered from the Black Marker for military purposes over a century ago on the remote planet of Aegis 7, then suppressed by the Marker as further experiments were aborted, the Marker proving itself to be too dangerous to wield as a weapon. A tower-like being that is the source of all Necromorphs, this Necromorph telepathically controls all other Necromorphs. The Hive Mind is capable of utilizing its immense tentacles that run along its massive body to crush its enemies. The organs lining its mouth and behind its ribs are vital to the Hive Mind's survival.
In the game, if Isaac should fail to destroy the remaining two pustules on the Hive Mind's head when grabbed, a scripted death scene follows. It will force Isaac into its mouth then pull him out violently, ripping off both his arms. The Hive Mind then grips Isaac between its teeth then pulls him in half. It swallows Isaac's upper torso and throws his legs to the platform. This takes about thirty seconds realtime, complete with screaming and all associated gore. However, it is amusing to note that after it has consumed Isaac's upper torso, the creature shivers and makes spluttering noises, as if it didn't like his "taste."