Mirrors are staples of classic horror and spooks. You look into a mirror, and all you expect to see is your own reflection, so when you see something that is very obviously not you, or even worse, something that looks just enough like you, it's a guaranteed recipe for scares.
In gaming, these creatures run the gamut of natures and tones, from lighthearted pranksters using mirrors as a hiding spot to cosmic horrors breaching our plane of reality. No matter what, when you cross one of these monsters, you'll think twice about washing your face at night.
10 Mirror Ghosts - Sweet Home
In the courtyard of the Mamiya Mansion, there are a handful of unusual mirrors placed around several corners. When the party looks into one of these mirrors, a specter resembling a shriveled-up corpse will appear in it and attack them.
These mirror ghosts can be fought like any other enemy, though they do have one critical weakness: they need their mirrors as a conduit to appear. All the party has to do is smash the mirror with a mallet, and they're completely banished.
9 Paranoia - Castlevania: Dawn Of Sorrow
In one of the higher locations of Dracula's Castle is an area known as the Demon Guest House. As the name implies, it's an opulent place covered in fine drapery and staffed by demonic maids and butlers. As Soma explores this area, he comes across a room containing a large mirror, within which a red-cloaked mystery man mimics his movements.
This man is Paranoia, a spellcaster who can jump in and out of the mirror to protect himself, as well as project his hands to other nearby mirrors to fire off ricocheting lasers. After he's defeated in this room, he appears again in the very next room, super-sized by an even larger mirror.
8 Strangling Hands - Clock Tower
As Jennifer explores the Barrows estate in search of her missing friends, she comes across what appears to be a humble bedroom with two beds, a caged bird, and a vanity mirror. If Jennifer attempts to gaze into the mirror, a pair of large hands will suddenly lunge out and grab her by the throat, killing her without prompt mashing action from the player.
The first couple of Clock Tower games frequently skirted the line between mundane or supernatural, so it's not clear if this is an actual mirror-bound specter, or just Mary Barrows hiding in a little closet behind the vanity. Then again, Mary is something of a monster herself, so it still counts.
7 Ghosts Of The Atherum - Tales Of Vesperia
As Yuri and company sail aboard the Fiertia toward Nordopolica, the ship somehow finds its way into a deep fog. So deep, in fact, nobody realizes they're about to crash into a frigate until it already happens. This frigate is the Ghost Ship, Atherum, lost at sea long ago.
As any good ghost ship should be, it's absolutely lousy with ghosts, but a few of them have adopted some clever tricks. In several hallways, the ghosts are completely invisible to the naked eye, only revealed by the mirrors covering the far walls. Even with the mirrors revealing them, the weird perspective can make it difficult to avoid them.
6 Saltim - Billy Hatcher And The Giant Egg
Saltim is the boss of the Crows that have covered Circus Park in darkness, taking residence within the funhouse in the center. This impish monkey conjures mirrors from the ground and can freely jump in and out of them, hiding from Billy's attacks and ambushing him.
Billy can shatter his mirrors to cut off Saltim's escape route, though when he's really cheesed off, he'll attempt to forcefully drag Billy into the mirror world where he can attack him freely. If Billy can escape capture, Saltim will eventually tucker himself out and leave himself open to egg-based punishment.
5 The Spirit Of The Magic Mirror - Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep
The famous Magic Mirror used by the Evil Queen in Snow White has never been known for anything besides truthfully answering questions, but for some reason, after a perceived slight from a wandering Terra, the Queen orders the Spirit of the Mirror to destroy him.
The Spirit shrugs its metaphorical shoulders, lacking any such ability, but after the Queen douses the mirror with a strange potion, the Spirit transforms into an Unversed, dragging Terra into its realm for a one-on-one fight. Apparently, some of that potion was still on the mirror afterward, because it does the same thing to Aqua unprompted a short while later.
4 Dark Link - The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time
Midway through the Water Temple, Link enters an unusually large, misty room covered in a shallow pool of water. As Link crosses the water, his appearance is reflected beneath him as you'd expect, but after passing by a small island, his reflection suddenly disappears. Turning back, Link sees his reflection has sprung to life as Dark Link, a shadowy, red-eyed fiend cast in his own image.
Dark Link has all the same sword-fighting prowess as Link himself, though he's also agile enough to leap and stand atop the Master Sword when Link attempts to stab him. When Dark Link is defeated, the room disappears, and Link's reflection is restored to him.
3 Bloody Mary - The Wolf Among Us
Much like the many other Fables of The Wolf Among Us, the urban legend of Bloody Mary is all too real and all too vicious. Mary has the ability to move between and appear in just about any mirror or reflective surface and uses these skills with deadly efficiency as a criminal hitwoman.
According to Mary, the myth of her being summoned whenever someone says her name five times into a mirror is quite true, and she makes a hobby of finding the most gruesome ways to kill them. Bigby had to use his full strength as the Big Bad Wolf just to fight her on even ground.
2 The Bleeding Mirror - Silent Hill 3
Heather Mason lives with a mild case of spectrophobia, the fear of mirrors. She can look into one if she needs to, but would really rather not, fearing that they serve as windows into a terrifying world. As she learns in the Otherworld of Brookhaven Hospital, her fear is not unfounded.
A certain storeroom in the Hospital's Otherworld contains a giant mirror covering the far wall, and as Heather stares into this mirror, blood-red tendrils begin to cover everything within, even paralyzing her reflection. If Heather does not escape quickly, the tendrils begin to emerge from the mirror, and will eventually kill her.
1 Goizo, The Thing Forsaken By God - World Of Horror
In a time before time, Goizo was a terrifying Eldritch horror with an insatiable appetite. It was sealed into a pocket dimension by a race of humanoid reptiles, but as time passed, the seal began to weaken, and Goizo found it could touch our world by reaching through mirrors. As it draws closer to Shiokawa, it begins snatching unfortunate souls through their mirrors to devour them.
In the worst-case scenario, residents are taken en masse until a survivor group manages to smash every mirror in town. It's only when gazing into a lover's eyes does the protagonist realize that Goizo doesn't need a full mirror to enter our world... just a reflection.