I’ve been thinking about how some horror and game enemies break their own rules in clever ways. It really caught me off guard the first time I experienced it.
There’s this creature in ALTER’s short film that supposedly only moves when unobserved and mimics sounds it hears. The protagonists split up after hearing it repeat something suspicious. One person goes to investigate while the other stays to monitor the entity. But here’s the twist - when the first person returns with answers, they discover the rule wasn’t “it can’t move while being observed” but specifically “it can’t move while YOU are watching.” The creature had been free to move around and even fabricated dialogue instead of just repeating existing sounds.
Similar thing happens in various horror games where monsters follow specific patterns until they suddenly don’t. Some hide and seek with you, others avoid light sources, some even disguise themselves as environmental objects. But they always have tricks up their sleeves. Your equipment fails at crucial moments, time limits force risky decisions, and they try psychological manipulation through fake communications.
Even boss fights can pull this. You spend the entire game learning that bosses stay in the arena and trade blows with you. Then the final encounter retreats off-screen mid-fight, turning combat into a climbing puzzle while projectiles rain down from above.
Have you encountered enemies that completely changed their behavior patterns partway through? It’s such an effective way to create tension.