The Necromorphs are intended to instill a sense of unease from the player's fleeting glimpses of their former humanity, though later games introduce other variants made from non-human biomass like dogs and alien lifeforms. The artistic direction on the various strains of distorted Necromorph monsters drew inspiration from seminal works such as John Carpenter's The Thing, System Shock, and Resident Evil 4. Wanat's wife came up with the term 'Necromorph' at a whim later in the development of the original Dead Space the team found it useful as an internal reference, but decided to limit its usage to a minimum as it does not match the serious tone of the video games series' narrative. The Necromorphs' creation and design were led by Ben Wanat, who served as production designer on the first Dead Space and creative director of Dead Space 3, though the team did not initially settle on the Necromorphs as the main antagonistic threat. They are violent creatures driven to murder and infect all life within their vicinity by a signal emitted from mysterious alien artifacts known as Markers. Within the series, the Necromorphs are constructed from reanimated corpses and come in multiple forms of various shapes and sizes. Necromorph is the term for a collective of fictional undead creatures in the science fiction horror multimedia franchise Dead Space by Electronic Arts, introduced in the 2008 comic book series of the same name.

Fictional undead creatures in the multimedia franchise Dead Space Illustration of a Necromorph creature on the cover of Dead Space #1 (March 2008) by Ben Templesmith

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