YMMV / Dead by Daylight

A — G

• Accidental Innuendo: When Pinhead teleports to a Survivor while they solve the Lament Configuration, he announces his presence with "You opened the box. And I came." Fans immediately started joking about an alternate interpretation of "I came". Especially considering Pinhead's whole deal revolves around the blending of pain and pleasure...
• Awesome Moments:
  • Managing a No-Damage Run, especially against some of the more agile or powerful Killers, certainly counts, especially if you end up as the Sole Survivor and still escape. No matter what the Killer does, they're unable to touch you, either by being distracted by other Survivors or you being far too nimble and tricksy for them to catch. You may not be able to take them down in a straight fight, but you can still humiliate them by completely avoiding being harmed by them and escaping without a scratch!
  • Some of the Survivor perks let you directly retaliate against a Killer, confuse the hell out of them, or bounce back from certain death, whether it be striking them while they're carrying you and slipping out of their grasp (Decisive Strike), punishing their attempt at generator regression by blinding them (Blast Mine), or make them go to a generator that nobody's working on and wasting their time (Red Herring). The Survivors will never be able to fight a Killer on even ground, but they can still ruin their day with the right setup.
  • For Resident Evil fans, finally being able to see Chris, Jill, Leon, and Claire all playable in a game together for the first time is certainly awesome. Additionally, unlike the rest of the survivors, while the Resident Evil cast can't defeat the Killer, they are more than capable of fighting back. It's payback time!
  • If you’re a huge Silent Hill fan, the entire Silent Hill chapter is a huge one. With the inclusion of one element from the first three games (Midwich, Pyramid Head, and Cheryl - with Lisa, Cybil, and James as skins released later on), the entire chapter reads like a love letter to one of the most legendary horror franchises in gaming history. Bonus points for it being announced after many fans were losing hope after the latest entry ended up being cancelled a while back.
  • Resident Evil came back for another night in the Entity's Realm. Ada Wong and Rebecca Chambers join their fellow zombie hunters as Survivors. And the Killer? None other than the overarching Big Bad of Resident Evil and one of Capcom's most iconic antagonists, Albert Wesker. And not only did they give him and the new Survivors voicelines, but they went back and gave all Resident Evil characters voicelines and unique interactions in the lobby! And that's not all: joining the game via skins are Carlos (for Leon), Sheva (for Jill), and even HUNK as a skin for The Legion!
  • Wesker's Mori starts with the victim punching him in the face and knocking his sunglasses off. They still die, but it shows the Survivors still have fight in them after all they've been through.
• Awesome Music:
  • The main theme of the game is simple but effective. The survivor's version wouldn't sound out of place as a somber little campfire tune, while the killer's version gives you the vibe that what you're playing as is powerful.
  • The Stranger Things version of the theme also deserves a mention for how well it blends the themes of both Dead by Daylight and Stranger Things together.
  • Likewise, the Silent Hill chapter theme, which was composed by the one and only Akira Yamaoka himself. The theme manages to be a great cover of the original, while also adding motifs from Silent Hill into the mix.
  • The Descend Beyond chapter theme is an amazingly tragic tune that may very well work with a scene featuring a Character Death and fits well with the Blight's backstory.
  • The All-Kill chapter theme remixes the usual tune into a dark and sinister pop track that fits the Trickster like a glove, with its deranged beats and heavy ambiance.
  • The Resident Evil chapter theme is fully orchestrated with a bombastic, action-movie feel to it, as befitting of the series and its many kickass moments. There are even hints mixed in of Nemesis's theme from Resident Evil 3 (Remake).
  • The revised Legion chase theme. Not only is it a banging heavy metal track that increases in intensity the closer you are to a chase, it even changes depending on which mixtape(s) are brought along, with each tape bringing a new type of remix to the table:
    • Julie's adds an intense guitar riff into the track.
    • Joey's layers a bit of techno over it.
    • Susie's has an epic guitar solo playing alongside it.
    • Frank's makes the drum get an even deeper beat and sound to them.
    • Fuming mixes in indistinct vocal screeches, as if even the Entity was personally hunting alongside the Legion in the chase.
  • As part of cross-promotion with Attack on Titan, the main menu changed to a Survey Corps camp near Wall Maria with an amazing rock remix of the main theme that heavily resembles the work of Hiroyuki Sawano. The event came with several costumes for Survivors and Killers that change the lobby music while equipped. The Survivor version is a slow and methodical acoustic guitar track with horns blaring in the background, while the Killer track is a faster and even more energetic version of the main menu music.
  • The Resident Evil: Project W chapter brings yet another kickass action-inspired theme, and even gives the RE survivors a new menu theme on piano that brings to mind the famous save room music.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • The Spirit has long been one of the most controversial Killers. Prior to her desperately needed nerf in September 2021, there were still plenty of people who fully believed that the Spirit was Necessarily Evil for the game in her broken state, as it was generally still considered to be Survivor-sided back then. These people maintained that Spirit only deserved to be looked at when the strongest Survivor items and Perks had been toned down, while on the other hand, there were people who disagreed and felt both sides had plenty of broken things that could be abused and should both be dealt with fairly. Even after her nerfs, the debate didn't fully settle: many people point out that her ability is heavily based on sound cues both to do well with her and play against her. Therefore, the only thing required to win as Spirit is a good pair of headphones, while hearing-impaired Survivors are unable to counter her. So the debate has evolved into this: is the Spirit a rightfully strong Killer who gives Survivors enough counterplay, or is her ability too strong for how easy it is to use, and how awkward it is for hearing-impaired Survivors to deal with?
  • The decision to have this game's version of the Ghost Face be an Original Generation take on the Legacy Character rather than one of the actual Ghostface Killers from the Scream movies has made Danny Johnson rather controversial. Some fans of Scream think that it's a shame that they can't play as this iconic slasher, and that his Chapter also lacks a Survivor from the series such as Sydney Prescott. Others begrudgingly accept that the licensing issues surrounding Ghostface^note The Ghostface mask existed before the Scream movies and was designed and produced by a different company, so to include a character from the movies would require Behaviour to buy the license for both the character and their mask separately. would make it unfeasible to put someone from the films into the game, even if they wish it wasn't the case. And then there's those who think that the original Ghost Face is a well-designed addition to the Ghostface legacy, who fits in the Dead by Daylight universe better than any of the killers from the movies.
  • Similarly there's Freddy, or more specifically the decision to have him be the Remake incarnation of the character instead of the original (while Mortal Kombat 9 also used Remake Freddy, fans weren't as upset since there were plenty of Mythology Gags to the earlier films in the franchise; not the case here). One camp views him as a Replacement Scrappy, especially since almost all of the other licensed Killers are their original incarnations. Another camp feels the Character Rerailment introduced in the Remake meshes better with DBD's aesthetics. A third camp feels that this was merely a result of Executive Meddling on the part of Warner Bros (despite more evidence contradicting this theory than supporting it, such as modern merchandise all being based on Robert Englund's Freddy or the fact that WB would be promoting a film that was several years old and viewed mostly negatively by fans) and are happy that any incarnation of the character is in the game at all.
  • Felix Richter is a strange case. Ignoring his other reputation, you either think he's a cool addition to the game because his lore opens up new doors for the story to go through, and that he's a refreshingly written and more down-to-earth survivor compared to the past few survivors before him, or you think he's a terribly bland character who is really only popular for his looks, and that Elodie's lore told the same story he has but better.
  • Ever since his reveal, and long afterwards, The Trickster has proven to be quite possibly the most divisive Killer to date. The concept of a K-Pop Idol Singer turned Serial Killer is quite out there, and so is his brightly-colored design. Some people enjoy his presence, finding him to be a breath of fresh air and a unique idea that stands out from the other Killers in a good way, while others think he clashes unpleasantly with the game's atmosphere.
  • Yun-Jin Lee, keeping up with All-Kill's status as a divisive chapter, has certainly taken this view in the eyes of the fandom. She's either a perfect example of a selfish and cold survivor that the fandom has been wanting as a change of pace to every survivor being a Jerk with a Heart of Gold at their worst, or you're disgusted with her taking inaction for her own gain while letting people be murdered by Ji-Woon, and believe that she deserves everything she gets in the Entity's realm.
  • Since her release, the Skull Merchant seems to have taken the Trickster's place as the game's most controversial killer. Gameplay-wise, her special ability has drawn criticism due to being focused on tracking above everything else, which some say make her playstyle solely based around 3-genning, a tactic that many players find unfun to deal with. Design wise, while some fans find her attractive, others believe her design is unappealing and too gaudy. Lorewise, some find the ideal of a psychotic otaku CEO to be an interesting concept and think the idea of the entity influencing her through her father's comics is a neat idea, while others think she clashes with the atmosphere of the game, perhaps even more so than Trickster. Some have even questioned if she was actually an originally designed killer, or if her design and toolkit was originally meant to be given to the Predator. It's gotten to a point where there are players who will disconnect if someone plays the Skull Merchant, people have claimed that she cannot be reworked and needs to be removed from the game, and some players will even yell at anyone who has a positive opinion on the character. While things have become a bit less heated due to substantial reworks to her kit both stripping away 3-gen viability and focusing her power on other tactics, the stigma around her still remains somewhat prominent which has kept her somewhat controversial, and current debates about her usually discuss whether or not the rework should have focused more on maintaining her tracking capabilities instead of focusing on upgrading her chase abilities, and if more should have been done to improve the experience of playing both as and against her.
• Broken Base:
  • Killers camping the hooks is a point of contention. Some say it's a legitimate strategy to catch more players that try to save them, while others say it hurts both the Killer's chances of winning (as the other players can just ignore the person writhing on the hook and finish starting the other generators) and makes the experience so unfun for the Survivor that they are essentially Griefing.
  • Hex: No One Escapes Death has caused a lot of debate. Its effect is that once all five generators are fixed, if there's still a Dull Totem standing on the map, the Killer gains increased movement speed while Survivors are Exposed, making them vulnerable to a One-Hit Kill. Some players think the perk is a balanced Comeback Mechanic, as Survivors should have been cleansing totems throughout the game while working on gens, as they give a huge point bonus to them anyway. Meanwhile, detractors of NOED think that the perk rewards Killers who find themselves unable to kill Survivors a little too well, and it's in bad practice to have to rely on the generators being completed to be able to perform well.
  • Boons. No one argues that they're good meta changing perks. The argument comes from if they shake the meta too well. Detractors point out Boons can be placed as many times as needed (whether they're destroyed or not), and that it's one perk that affects potentially everyone in a massive way. There's also the group that feel the concept is fine, but that Circle of Healing is what everyone is upset over more than anything.
  • Dead Hard is very commonly brought up as a point of contention between killers and survivors. Supporters of Dead Hard maintain that it is a perk that is sometimes necessary to give survivors another tool to evade the killer, and that there are simple ways to counterplay around it. Detractors say that Dead Hard is too powerful a perk for survivors who have many other tools to evade killers such as pallets and windows, and that it mostly ends up being a "Get Out of Jail Free" Card for survivors who make blatant mistakes that should be punished. It also doesn't help that Dead Hard is one of the most commonly picked perks among survivors. Even after its nerf, some say it's too strong.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Playing as the killer and using a Memento Mori on a survivor to instantly kill them, especially if they've been rather troublesome.
  • Breaking walls while playing as the Nemesis or the Oni who, instead of using their main weapons or kicks, smash it with powerful punches. Breaking walls with chainsaws or charging attacks also count.
  • Playing as a survivor and kicking Victor in the head, which is one of the few times the survivors get an opportunity to fight back.
  • Equipping the "Franklin's Demise" perk as a killer makes the survivor drop a carried item upon being hit by a basic attack, particularly cathartic against those wielding flashlights or the Lament Configuration when playing as the Cenobite.
  • Stunning the killer with a pallet.
  • Using the "Blast Mine" perk as a survivor to plant a flashbang on a generator to have an unsuspecting killer try to damage it only to get blinded and stunned for the trouble while the survivors hear a deafening, explosive sound across the map.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • The game has had many, MANY different metas over the years, usually in the form of Perks for Survivors, though Killer Perks, specific Killers and items are not uncommon either. Right from 2016, the meta was undeniably clear for Survivors: use Exhaustion Perks like Sprint Burst and Balanced Landing to lead the Killers to the strongest loops that were available, (these back then usually taking the form of two windows that were very close to each other) and then using Perks like Spine Chill and Resilience to speed up your vault speed, making it impossible for M1 Killers to catch you. Back then, Survivors had no medium-vault animation and Killers vaulted windows nearly twice as slow as now. Balanced Landing had a passive effect of negating the stagger slowdown Survivors got from dropping large distances, so it could be used to convert otherwise strong loops for Survivors into true infinites, such as old Haddonfield's main building. Exhaustion as an entire status effect didn't exist in the beginning, so Sprint Burst and Balanced Landing had effects that could both be used together, and recovered while sprinting.
  • Up until the 6.1.0 update, which reworked the strongest Survivor perks, Dead Hard, Decisive Strike, Unbreakable and Borrowed Time, sometimes with a couple of Perks swapped out for Sprint Burst, Adrenaline, Spine Chill etc, was insanely common to see. This build gave Survivors the most powerful chase Perk (Dead Hard), a Perk that prevented Killers from tunneling a hooked Survivor (Borrowed Time), gave Survivors an entire minute of effective godmode that prevented Killers from hooking them (Decisive Strike), and prevented Killers from slugging Survivors too (Unbreakable). In short, the build countered mostly everything a Killer could do, so it's no wonder it became so popular. After most of these Perks were heavily reworked or nerfed, Survivors began bringing more diverse loadouts.
  • Circle of Healing, simply because the entire team effectively has access to a free healing perk only one person brings. The only ways for most killers to counter it is to over-commit to chases, which can often lead to one survivor sacrificed at best, or equip Shattered Hope, which takes a perk slot that could be occupied by something more useful.
• Complete Monster:
  • "The Doctor", Herman Carter, was formerly a neuroscientist who became obsessed with the brain and the power he could hold over people by cruelly experimenting on them. Recruited by the CIA, Carter became feared for the constant screams coming from his lab thanks to his torturous research, eventually killing his mentor and being recruited by the monstrous Entity, which was impressed with his cruelty. Becoming a sadistic hunter for the Eldritch Abomination, Carter savagely sunders the minds of his targets before killing them.
  • "The Clown", born Kenneth Chase, was disturbingly fascinated by murder since his youth. He first murdered animals before moving on to humans. After his father found out about Kenneth's murder of a young man, Chase immediately ran away to avoid the authorities. While running, he encountered a traveling circus group who took him in as part of their community where he changed his name to Jeffrey Hawk. As Jeffrey Hawk, he acted charming and sociable, but it was all a facade for his boredom where he went through multiple vices before going back to murder. He became a Serial Killer who dressed up as a clown to lure out visitors, including children, into isolation before drugging them and then taking them back to his caravan to torture them mentally and physically before killing them and taking one of their fingers as a memento. One day, he got caught after one his victims managed to escape, but Hawk was able to run away again, and roamed the country for more victims. He was then invited by the Entity to his realm, which he gladly accepted to continue his murders.
  • "The Trickster", Ji-Woon Hak, was a K-pop superstar by day and a sadistic serial killer by night. Ji-Woon was recruited for the K-pop band NO SPIN, only to let his bandmates die in a fire to take their fame for himself. Unlocking a bloodlust from his bandmates' screams, he began kidnapping, torturing, and killing innocent people so that he could record their screams for his own music, experimenting on his victims so as to ensure he got the sounds he wanted from them. When his executives took away his ability to self-produce his music, Ji-Woon created his masterpiece, slowly butchering everyone from the guilty executives to innocent stagehands while forcing his manager to watch. When the Entity came for him, Ji-Woon entered the Fog willingly, excited by the opportunity to continue making his "art" while basking in his own glory.
• Crack Pairing: Thanks to a couple of parody animations by Samination, the Huntress x Detective Tapp ship exists. In said animations, they even get married!
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Many of the aesthetic choices and mechanics seem to be designed to make Ghost Face a sort of "joke killer" by invoking this trope. He's seemingly much more laid-back and blase about everything he does, and seems to behave like a typical guy… which is contrasted with him actually being a Serial Killer who kills for sport. A few of the prime examples:
    • His reveal trailer is just plain meant to be funny. Ghost Face proceeds through a hardware store, and goes to the checkout as normal. The clerk checks out tape, rope… and the BLOODIED, OPEN PACKAGE OF A HUNTING KNIFE. The clerk looks up, and Ghost Face coyly waves at him, brandishing said knife, before lunging at the poor man. The crossing back over the line? Ghost Face's follow-through is to haphazardly toss the money he owes over his shoulder… to be processed/received by the corpse he just made. And he even forgot to retrieve the knife he bought from the clerk's back!
    • His lean ability and crouch are meant to be tools to make him a more efficient and stealthy stalker, highlighting his efficiency at sneaking up on victims. However, the lean is relatively conspicuous and goofy, and the crouch… come on, admit it, you just use it to tea-bag survivors you've downed, like everyone else, don't you?
    • From the survivor's point of view, instead of bringing his weapon near the survivor head like most killers, his locker grabbing animation has him first making a brief "Surprise, it's me!" gesture before grabbing them.
    • And finally… Ghostface's Mori. Straddling then stabbing the survivor in the back multiple times? Par for the course. Taking out his camera and holding the survivor's head to take a selfie with them? Crosses back into being hilarious.
    • Only further exacerbated by the fact that the October 2022 update added a Ghost Face mask from Scary Movie as a potential cosmetic.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: It's been suggested that Renato might be on the autism spectrum since he is gifted with high intellectual abilities but has low social skills, viewing every interaction with others as a social experiment.
• Early Game Hell: While the core gameplay remains consistent regardless of level, especially on the survivor side due to their lack of unique powers, players have to manually unlock the vast majority of perks in their respective character's bloodwebs or by purchasing them through the Shrine of Secrets. This includes some of the more powerful perks in the game, and means that a player can easily spend dozens, or even hundreds of hours leveling each character with perks they want up to level 50, even if they have no interest in playing them.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Susie of the Legion is the most popular of the group. She's usually seen as a Rose-Haired Sweetie because of her dyed pink hair, and hinted to be a troubled youth that got involved with the wrong people.
  • Jane Romero is popular because of how curvy and beautiful she is.
  • The Hillbilly. Poor, poor Hillbilly. His character very quickly became beloved by the fans from the very beginning. His lore is very tragic and still considered to be some of the best lore Behaviour has put out, his power is (was) beloved for striking a perfect balance between being strong, but still counterable for Survivors, and he was considered one of the most fun Killers to play as, and perhaps THE most fun to play against. However, tragedy struck when Behaviour nerfed him grotesquely in the 4.1.0 update by taking away his strong set of add-ons, and replacing them with a mishmash of much weaker and worse-designed add-ons, as well as giving him an Overheat mechanic that, while not game breaking, made him Hillbilly feel consistently worse to play. Not only this, but in recent years, Behaviour developed an obsession with making maps that were considerably less open than before, filled with lots of random objects that had collision pointlessly. These maps are so debilitating that most people refuse to play Hillbilly out of fear of encountering them and many play him only with map offerings equipped. As a result of all of this, Billy has become a little-picked C-tier Killer, and Survivors and Killers alike rue the day Behaviour gutted him. Anybody who still mains Billy is renowned as a hero in the community, people repeatedly ask for Hillbilly buffs and any attempts to further nerf him are met with immense backlash from the entire community.
• Epileptic Trees: A number of players have pointed out that the human skin worn by the Unknown looks very much like Dwight, leading to speculation that the monster is wearing the skin of (or is) an alternate Dwight.
• Evil Is Cool: Several if not all of the killers apply due to being nigh-unstoppable death machines with fun playstyles while having interesting and horrifying backstories.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Ranking/de-ranking is often called "pipping"/"de-pipping".
  • Looping the same window so the killer can never catch you is an "infinite". Another variation, which replaces windows for pallets is called "pallet looping".
  • Small spaces where a survivor can loop around while being chased with little risk of getting hit is a "jungle gym". They have been reduced in effectiveness, though. The "pallet looping" version of this is sometimes called "Pallet Town".
  • Leaving one or multiple survivors on the ground and wait for their bleedout timers to deplete, thus killing them, is called "slugging".
  • Repeatedly going after a single survivor until they've been fully eliminated is called "tunneling", since the killer has developed tunnel vision.
  • When a killer hooks a survivor and then stays nearby, refusing to leave the area even if there are no other survivors around, it's called "camping"—as in, the killer has "set up camp" by the hook. More specifically, if the killer just stands there and looks right at the hooked survivor and the immediate surroundings to make it impossible to save them without being seen and attacked, it's referred to as "face camping"; they're camping while facing the survivor.
  • The full victory for a killer, sacrificing all four survivors, is sometimes called a "4K" or "Quad".
  • The Unbreakable perk, which is one of Bill's unique teachable perks, is sometimes referred to as "UnbreakaBill".
  • The killer's basement has received an affectionate nickname: "The Sex Dungeon".
  • The Entity has been affectionately nicknamed "The Glorious Hug Spider" or "Huggy" due to its arachnid-like limbs and that it looks like it's attempting to hug any hooked survivors.
  • Claudette is often referred to as "Blend-ette" due to her skin tone and the muted color palette of one of her default outfits making her very effective at blending into the environment to the point less observant killers can walk right past her. This can also be used derisively to refer to a Claudette who is trying to do this to less than optimal results and insisting on ALWAYS slowly crouch-walking to try to stay stealthy - wasting precious time in doing so.
  • Players often refer to Megs that are doing anything but helping their team as "Megheads".
  • Jumpscare Myers or Silent Michael. The nickname for Shapes who take advantage of their reduced terror radius at Tier 1 to get very close to inattentive survivors.
    • Burger King Myers. This nickname is for the joke build where the player intentionally equips perks and items to make Myers as slow as possible.
  • The large tree on the Coldwind Farm maps that has various cow and pig torsos dangling from its branches has been nicknamed "Dimitri". As in De Meat Tree.
  • The Wraith is sometimes nicknamed either "Bing-Bong" or "the Bing-Bong Boy", for his bell.
  • The Plague is affectionately referred to as "Vommy Mommy"
  • The Hillbilly's nickname is often shortened to "Billy"
  • The Pig is often affectionately nicknamed "Peppa" (referencing Peppa Pig), "Miss Piggy", or simply just "Piggy".
  • Leatherface is often referred to as "Bubba", in reference to one of the names he's been known by throughout The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise.
  • The Blight is referred to as the Pinball, because of how his power works by encouraging players to bounce off of walls and obstacles.
  • The Trickster is occasionally called "Korean Joker", due to his resemblance to Jared Leto's portrayal of the character in Suicide Squad (2016). Other fans will refer to him as any of the members of a K-Pop band, with "Jimin from Music/BTS" being one of the more popular options.
  • Due to the polarizing nature of Skull Merchant as a character, the base has mostly split into two factions with their own nicknames for her. "Skull Mommy" for the pro-Skull Merchant side, and "Dull Merchant" for the Anti-Skull Merchant side.
• Fanon Discontinuity: The more poorly-received Archive character entries (e.g. The Doctor, The Legion, Dwight, The Nurse) are considered non-canon by parts of the fanbase that are interested in the lore.
• Franchise Original Sin
  • In regards to the Archives:
    • A number of the Archives have been criticised for rewriting the established lore of several characters. While accusations towards these changes only started to appear following the release of Tome II (and the Doctor’s divisive entry), in truth this sort of thing has been present in the Archives ever since the first Tome. Nothing in the Trapper’s original lore suggests that he was a victim of his father’s abuse and brainwashing, nor that he ever disagreed with his father’s methods of running his business. The reason’s fans didn’t have a problem with these changes was because it made the Trapper a more complex, and arguably sympathetic, character, and because the changes were arguably inconsequential to his pre-established background. Later Archive entires, however, would include information that outright contradicted pre-established lore and, in some cases, would, unintentionally or not, remove implied depth from the characters they were focused on.
    • The Nurse’s Archive entries were heavily criticized for coming off as ableist and making a character that had long been regarded, both by fans and the devs, as a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds come off as Unintentionally Unsympathetic. In truth, the Nurse’s lore has arguably always contained ableist elements, with Sally’s murder spree being said to have been brought on by “concepts of purification” emerging inside her. Fans found this particular part easy to ignore or gloss over, however, as Sally’s pre-established background noted that she also killed a number of staff members, while certain add-ons implied that she was sympathetic to some of the patients, leading to many fans believing that her murder spree was a form of twisted Mercy Kill, brought on by Sally being unable to continue seeing the patients suffer. Sally outright expressing feelings of hatred and discomfort towards the patient’s physical and mental abnormalities in the Archive entires, however, makes it a lot harder for her actions to come off as sympathetic (to a degree).
• Game-Breaker: Enough to get its own page.
• Game-Breaking Bug: To note:
  • Ever since times immemorial, killers have to be stealth gods if they want to yank survivors out of an action other than hook rescues. Even if the animation for the grab has already started, it can be unceremoniously cut short and the action aborted just because the server seems to give priority to the survivor stopping their action over the killer finishing the grab.
  • A now-fixed bug involved Pinhead's Lament Configuration getting stuck in a hedge in the Garden of Joy, where neither Pinhead nor the Survivors could interact with it. This results in the Chain Hunt being completely unstoppable and uncounterable, which rendered Generators extremely difficult to work on as they took several times longer than normal due to the chains interrupting the repairs. While it was incredibly frowned upon if done intentionally, if the Pinhead player decided to press this advantage, they would typically bulldoze the Survivors unless the bug happened very late into the match.
• Good Bad Bugs: While most of the bugs tend to be too one sided or game-breaking for both survivor and killer to enjoy, but there is a bug that makes lobbies start with one or more less survivors, and replace them with killers instead.
  • During 6.1.1, Pinhead's Mori caused a notable graphical anomaly where the face of his victim was stretched further than it was supposed to. Some players were sad to see this glitch get fixed, as that level of facial stretching was unintentionally accurate to some of the kill scenes in the original franchise.

H — W

• Heartwarming Moments:
  • A lot of the Altruism-related actions are this, as they're all about helping your fellow Survivors out. From healing them so they're back to full strength, to diving in and taking a blow from the Killer to give them a chance to escape, to simply reuniting with them after being separated for some time. Alone they're fragile and very susceptible to death, but together, they can really make the Killer work for their sacrifices.
  • During the menu animation for the Twins, Victor and Charlotte sometimes hold each other's hands.
  • Certain archive entries give some of these. Admit it, reading about how Claudette's father was very supportive of her "weird" interests is at least a little heartwarming - doubly so for any autistic players who can relate to Claudette, and especially so when the ending cinematic has her mother finally give up on trying to make her conform, and instead give her a science kit.
  • Spirit and Oni being named after Akira Yamaoka, especially now that he himself did work for the Silent Hill DLC theme.
  • "Boop the snoot"
  • The official trailer for the Resident Evil Chapter has Meg be fatally thrown against an abandoned police car and she unfortunately dies a second later. Leon Kennedy comes running from behind the aforementioned police car and immediately tends to Meg, checking her pulse to see if she's still alive. It's a great reference to how in Resident Evil 2 (Remake), Leon will do anything and everything he can to try and help others.
  • A few seconds later, Jill Valentine vaults over the car and after Leon expresses that Meg is dead, Jill's expression briefly becomes one of sorrow before she becomes pissed and whips out her gun to shoot at the Tyrant. It isn't just heartwarming, it's bad-ass.
  • If you idle in the main menu as Ripley, eventually Jones the Cat will make an appearance and demand pets. Naturally, Ripley obliges and gives the adorable kitty some much needed petting.^note even moreso since the cat actor/actors who played Jones in both films back in the early '80s are long dead
• High-Tier Scrappy:
  • While certain killers' viability in the game are debated by players, the Nurse is almost unanimously agreed to be the best killer by a wide margin. Her ability to chain-teleport on demand makes escaping from her nearly impossible as it renders almost every tactic survivors have at their disposal useless. While this is somewhat mitigated by her having a higher skill curve, a good Nurse is nearly impossible to beat. Much of the high-level survivor meta revolves around being able to play against the Nurse; Many of the most frustrating survivor perks to play against (Decisive Strike, Sprint Burst, etc.) are considered the bare minimum needed to win, and even then the survivors have to pray that the Nurse player makes a mistake more often than not. As of late 2019, however, she has received heavy nerfing, which, while still makes her uncounterable in a skilled player's hands, has made her near-impossible to use if you aren't a skilled player. Ironically, she's the Killer in the game with the lowest kill rate by far because of just how much effort needs to be put in to get her to this level. Although in recent years, many people assert that she's not as hard to play as she's made out to be. They insist that the Nurse's power breaks the game's core gameplay loop apart at the basic level, and the ONLY way to fix her is to rework her power from the ground-up_an opinion that gathers more supporters the longer the Nurse stays broken.
  • The Blight has slowly but surely achieved this status in the community. His power was (and still is) quite clunky, to the point of him almost being unplayable when he first came out, but when those issues were ironed out and his add-ons received considerable buffs, people realised just how strong he could be. His power at basekit is already very strong, which is very uncommon in a Killer, but his buffed add-ons are considered very overpowered, giving too many benefits in exchange for minimal effort, and some of the strongest add-ons push Blight from the territory of being a very strong but fair Killer, to uncounterable by the majority of Survivors. Thankfully, his add-ons finally received a noticeable tuning on the January 2024 update and some received entirely new effects, that finally makes them tolerable for the players (However, the PTB versions of these add-ons ended up being just as broken before BHVR nerfed them).
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Being Dueling Works with Friday the 13th: The Game, since the game started to add Jason Voorhees' old cinematic rivals as antagonists via DLC.
  • The Hillbilly was clearly designed to be an Expy of Leatherface, and now he's actually a killer in the game!
  • Freddy Krueger joined the line-up, making it a grand total of three of Jason's rivals that have made it into this game.
  • The banner for the Wintertime Collection shows the Oni smashing through a wall to attack Yui and Nea◊. A few months later, the release of Chapter 15 would see Killers being given the ability to break through certain walls.
  • The Spirit and The Oni's family name, Yamaoka, is a Shout-Out to Akira Yamaoka, the composer of the Silent Hill games. The man himself would end up working on the game, helping compose the music for the Silent Hill crossover DLC.
  • The Spirit is a Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl and a clear Shout-Out to Japanese onryo like Sadako from Ringu and Kayako from Ju-on. Then it was announced that March 2022's licensed chapter would be Ringu, bringing the most famous onryo to the game.
  • David King shares his name with a Resident Evil: Outbreak protagonist; now Resident Evil is crossing over with DBD.
  • Around the same time The Unknown was announced in early 2024, Willy's Chocolate Experience, a poor-quality Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory-themed live experience in Scotland went viral for its insane, AI-generated script... including a random villain also called The Unknown that supposedly lived in the factory's walls. Even further, the Homemade Mask add-on for The Unknown bares a noticeable resemblance to the mask worn by The Unknown from Willy's Chocolate Experience.
• Jerkass Woobie: Right here.
• Just Here for Godzilla: The licensed DLCs can make the game this for those who just want to play as their favorite movie slasher or survivor.
• LGBT Fanbase: Surprisingly, over the years the game has garnered a very noticeable following among LGBT gamers and horror fans. The cast of good-looking survivors and killers, especially David, Felix, Vittorio, The Oni, and The Trickster have a notable amount of LGBT fans thanks to their designs and charm, and BHVR has even noticed this by promoting drag queens who are fans of the game such as Kim Chi on their official twitter account, and even posting a fake trailer for a "shirtless" skin collection for April Fool's 2021!
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • The Wraith is considered to be a particularly weak killer normally. His ability, which is to turn himself invisible, does not help him out in chases like Nurse's blink, Trapper and Hag's traps or Hillbilly's chainsaw. Even when he does use his ability, it's super easy to spot him due to the Predator-like cloak effect he has, along with his loud growling. This has been addressed by giving him significant buffs to his add-ons, such as large boosts to speed in his cloaked state, ability to destroy obstacles faster, and the fact he can render the bell that heralds his cloaking completely silent, no longer giving out warnings to survivors. These have upped his game significantly, and made him more viable to score some kills with but he still will find himself lagging behind other killers without such, since his basic skillset has remained in its currently weak state, so good luck grinding up your BP to get them.
  • Legion is widely considered by many to be the weakest killer of the game (including pre-rework Freddy). While their ability to go into a frenzy and race at rapid speed over palettes and windows is considered fun and refreshing in theory (and actually more-or-less guarantees a free hit), the problem is that Legion is useless when it comes to actually downing survivors. They have some of the slowest movement speed of the game, their Frenzy ability only causes Deep Wounds (which means it takes approximately four-five hits to down a survivor. You can break a chase and they'll be downed if not mended, but survivors can mend themselves with no healing penalties, meaning there's no point in it. Additionally, the deep wound status does not lower when a survivor is in a chase, much like the Pig's RBTs, meaning that you can't simply chase the survivor until time runs out). Injured vs. Healthy Survivor Status also has no impact on how serious a Deep Wound is, meaning survivors actually can focus more on generators and less on healing, completing the game quicker. As a whole, Legion excels at causing an injury, but absolutely sucks at actually downing and hooking a survivor (what is ultimately a killer's goal). This was made worse when Mathieu Cote said they weren't interested in balancing around killer viability and essentially dismissed any and all critiques about how useful/useless Legion is. They would later rework Legion, giving them a wider radar, faster movement after each Feral Slash, and a one-hit down attack if they chain enough Feral Slashes together.
  • Update 2.7.0 has, in the eyes of much of the community, made the Pig into one of the weakest killers. Originally, the idea was to stall survivors with her Reverse Bear Traps, which only activated when a generator was completed. But with Endgame Collapse, the Entity blocks all generators, meaning that if one was placed on a Survivor after the event begins, it won't be activated. Additionally, inactive Reverse Bear Traps no longer trigger when running through the exit gate, which was one of the Pig's most powerful abilities, using the Reverse Bear Trap to keep them from escaping.
  • After the rework of both Freddy and the Doctor, the Clown was in a terrible spot. Freddy in particular now does what the Clown was designed to (slowing down survivors to end loops faster), but simply being a lot better at it. While for Freddy it's as simple as putting down a snare or fake pallet within a second, the Clown has to aim more precisely with his bottles and line up the trajectory since they go in an arc on top of having to slow down and reload after a base maximum of four bottles at a time. A later rework improved this.
  • Once known as one of the better killers just alongside Spirit and Nurse, Hillbilly's eventual mini-rework gave him a very restrictive overheat mechanic that effectively killed any potential for using his power in a chase, removed any add-ons that allow revving the chainsaw up faster (instead replacing quite a lot of them with either ones that reduce overheat in certain cases - making it look like a case of creating a problem and having to grind for a solution - or some downright nonsensical ones, such as ones that increase revving speed after getting stunned by a pallet or increasing chainsaw cooling speed when being blinded by a flashlight, giving off the impression that those were made with his base perks in mind rather than anything in his usual ability kit). Overall, a lot of players just consider Hillbilly simply not worth the trouble of trying to master anymore due to the insane amount of restrictions on his kit and no add-ons to even remotely lessen said restrictions, effectively removing the Awesome part of an otherwise Difficult, but Awesome killer.
  • The Twins are not so much an actual killer, but a list of hard counters made into a killer. Just about everything can counter anything they can do. A survivor hops into a locker while Victor is chasing them? They're staying in there until you switch back to Charlotte (though this was rectified by allowing Victor to hold lockers shut). You use Victor's speed to your advantage and down multiple survivors? Hope you brought Deerstalker or the survivors are right next to Victor when you switch back, because chances are Charlotte can't reach them in time. You miss a single pounce as Victor? Chances are that Victor is doomed to get squished by a survivor which means you wasted a ton of time, and so on. The one thing they're good at is guarding hooked survivors with Victor, but even then everything else they can do wastes precious time. It also doesn't help that they were released with almost no changes from the PTB besides Victor's pounce charge time, and the fact that their perks are viewed as niche at best and laughably bad at worst (with Hoarder being completely broken at launch). All these reasons have solidified players' views on The Twins being one of the worst killers in the game.
  • The Cannibal, Spirit, Ghostface, Doctor, and Nightmare all had extremely clunky powers in their initial Public Test Builds, and most of their problems carried over to Live. The Cannibal and Ghostface were criticized as their Powers were mostly recycled in concept from the Hillbilly and Shape respectively (Cannibal and Hillbilly even shared most of their Addons for quite some time). The Cannibal received a rework that helped differentiate his power from Hillbilly, made him stronger and gave him his own unique addons...in the same patch that brutally nerfed the Hillbilly (see above). The Ghostface's power was originally so ineffective that it was often mostly used to locate Survivors by highlighting them when stalking or being revealed. It then received a rework and buff to make its intended use more feasible and giving him a better set of Addons, though still not quite perfected. The Spirit after her PTB was given such substantial buffs without any foresight that she immediately became a High-Tier Scrappy and a borderline uncounterable Killer with very powerful addons, though she was thankfully overhauled and is in a much better state balance-wise. The Nightmare has had a rough start, as while his rework did elevate him from being the worst Killer in the game by a significant margin, it came at the cost of stripping away his uniqueness, and even that didn't last, as overtime, he received substantial nerfs that made him a very weak Killer once more. The only Killer to have a wholly unproblematic rework was the Doctor, who, while still weak, is still a very unique Killer and pretty streamlined.
• Memetic Badass: Michael Myers. It's a running joke within the community that he actually has a secret fourth tier, which can range from allowing him to teleport and summon another killer to moriing survivors even after they have escaped.
• Memetic Loser:
  • Several jokes and memes have been made by the fandom at the expense of Jason Voorhees, often depicting him being left out while other slasher villains such as Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, and Leatherface enjoy being playable. Not helping matters are the legal issues that led to the premature end of support for Friday the 13th: The Game.
    • Most licenced Killers are guaranteed to suffer from this, as they go from a force to be reckoned with in their home franchises to having to function as a balanced character in an action game. The most egregious example is Freddy Krueger; maybe it's a mercy Jason couldn't get in the game, as Freddy's current state in game is either being mocked by both Survivors and Killers for being both weak and uninteresting, OR players completely forgetting he exists, and then getting a very unpleasant surprise. Mind you, Freddy used to have it much worse when he was first released, he was considered to be the weakest character in the game on launch day, and that version of Freddy is still remembered for being so harmless. Not helping matters is the brutal Nerfs he took a week after releasing. This spawned 2 memes in the community at his expense: "Darn" and "Sharp Hand Joe", the first of which is Freddy expressing frustration over his helplessness and the second about players refusing to believe this is the real Krueger, just a watered down imitation of him.
    • The Pig, as a result of her constant baffling and pointless Nerfs, achieved this status quite quickly. Her ability in general is not impressive, the Crouch in particular, being a worse version of Ghostface's in every way. Her lion roar is intimidating at first glance, but not only does it come from a part of her ability so mediocre that most players never use it, but the intense Vocal Dissonance between the sound and its owner is considered funny by many people. The squeak she makes upon being pallet-stunned is considered Moe by most players, not very impressive for a character in a horror-action game. And as what how the community thinks of her... Check out the Memetic Mutation page.
    • Sadako from Ringu, Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the Demogorgon from Stranger Things and the Xenomorph from Alien are also subjected to this, in a different but just as humiliating way. To put it simply, the fandom treats Leatherface, Demogorgon and Xenomorph as cute, harmless puppies that couldn't hurt a fly. Leatherface in particular, when he's not facecamping, is considered the funniest Killer to go against, with his squeals, chainsaw swing and Tantrum mechanic in particular being treated as hilarious, in a sort of inversion of Faux Horrific. Sadako is a slightly different case. Her stiff, cold demeanor ingame is often treated in fanart as The Comically Serious, and fans joke that nobody, not even the Entity itself takes her seriously. This sort of joke has considerably died down after Sadako's rework, which changed her from one of the weakest characters in the game to a much healthier and stronger one.
    • The Nemesis from Resident Evil 3 is occasionally subjected to this. He was a hulking powerhouse in that franchise that could break through brick walls, turn people into jelly, and cause and receive horrific mutations with his T-Virus. Here, however, his tentacle has been converted into his main ability, with his brute strength completely ignored. Not only this, but the zombies that come with his kit had an infamous reputation for either being harmless, or actively bothering the Nemesis more than the Survivors. As such, memes of Nemesis being exasperated at his zombies are common to see, and many Nemesis players often kill their zombies for no tactical reason just to get back at them. However, this meme has considerably decreased after a Nemesis patch that considerably improved the AI of the zombies.
  • Many Survivors also suffer from this.
    • Dwight, because of his demeanour, is stereotyped in the community as being played mostly by the frightened and newbie Survivors that still haven't learnt how to loop the Killers and immediately hide in lockers in fear of one approaching.
    • Meg is stereotyped as being played by the densest Survivors who make stupid decisions that often get their team killed. Such Meg players are often labelled as "Megheads".
    • Claudette players don't fare much better. In the olden days, Claudette was the best Survivor to hide in the pitch-black maps from the Killers. This variation of Claudette players was labelled "Blendette" and such a play style was considered incredibly unfun for the Killer to go against. Since the maps have been brightened, such a play style has mostly faded, but Claudette's unique teachable perk, Self-Care, is another blemish on her reputation. This Perk is extremely inefficient when used to heal damage on yourself (which is its main function)... And this is exactly what many Claudette players use it for, earning them a bad reputation of hiding in a corner, trying to heal their injuries rather than helping their team in a meaningful way.
• Memetic Mutation: Has its own page.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: The Trickster is well-liked among Korean fans. The fact that Korean language is used in his trailer, as well as his spoken dialogue helps a lot.
• Mis-blamed: A month following the Hellraiser chapter's release in September 2021, Behaviour announced it was doing NFTs based on Pinhead's model in collaboration with Boss Protocol, provoking massive backlash accusing Behaviour of selling out to the hype surrounding crypto and NFTs despite their massive unpopularity among the playerbase and most gamers (primarily due to NFTs' reputation of being a scam). However, Behaviour later released a statement clarifying that 1) the NFTs would have no bearing on Dead by Daylight itself^note Which is a necessity as around the time of this announcement, Steam issued a hard-line ban on all blockchain games on the platform, and 2) they were made in partnership with the people who actually own the rights to Pinhead and Hellraiser altogether, with Behaviour's involvement more or less beginning and ending with having their models be used as the basis. While not explicitly stated, it's believed that Behaviour were contractually obligated make the NFTs as part of their broader licensing deal to make the crossover happen, and were either not aware that their models would be used for NFTs until it was sprung up on them, or they chose to bite the bullet and move on as fast as possible. The possibility of being forced by the franchise's rights holders to develop NFTs based on whatever Hellraiser content they produce is likely the reason for why Pinhead has received no new cosmetics since release.
• Narm:
  • The player can invoke this by equipping some of the sillier cosmetics on the survivors while they are getting Mori'd. For instance, equipping Ash with his "Ashy Slashy" cosmetic while being on the receiving end of the Mastermind's Memento Mori will have him smack the killer in the face with his cartoony Hand Puppet only for Albert Wesker to give him a Neck Lift while his victim grabs his arm to support himself, with the puppet looking like it bites into Wesker's arm before the latter offs him.
  • Some of the screams are so strained, overacted or downright weird-sounding that they come off as unintentionally hilarious, with Steve Harrington, Laurie Strode and Mikaela Reid being of particular note.
  • With how huge she is, the Xenomorph Queen trying to be sneaky in Crawler Mode just ends up looking silly.
• Nausea Fuel: The Hag's execution, where she mauls her victim and eats its organs like a bear feasting on its kill.
  • Everything about the Plague: She can vomit a green contagious bile that infect survivors, making them constantly puking once fully infected in turn. Her mori has her strangling the survivor witht the chain of her Thurible, and drown them in that bile. And if the plague cancel a puking attack, you can hear an audible gulp as she swallow the vomit back.
  • The Blight's entire design features some heavy Body Horror, with an extremely deformed mouth, with the lower jawbone having visibly being replaced by small tusks that leaves his mouth permanently wide open and drooling glowing orange saliva.
  • Similarly, any Killer with a cosmetic skin that makes them corrupted and twisted by the Blight (the serum). This often includes the orange goo seeping out of their mangled bodies, with their wounds and stomachs being full of the stuff. What's more, the sounds of dripping fluids can be heard when these skins are worn, making them even more nauseating.
• Nightmare Retardant:
  • The hooks that are piercing the Trapper's shoulder make him look like a terrifying, unstoppable man… until you notice they're just there to hold up his overalls.
  • The wider shoulders of the Wraith (actually caused by his cloak) compared to just how thin his legs are has made people say the Wraith skipped leg day, or has chicken legs.
  • The executions may look violent, but the only gore they produce is a few splashes of blood with no actual visible wounds, which can make it look like the characters are simply pantoming attacks.
  • The Blight is a monstrous-looking man, horribly disfigured from his experiments on himself… Horrifying, until you realise that his mouth bears a passing resemblance to a vagina.
  • Victor as a whole is mostly this. While the first few times encountering him can be scary, the image of having to hightail it off a generator because of a demonic, cooing baby-like creature is hot on your trail becomes a lot more funny than terrifying. Add onto the fact that survivors can stomp on him, and you get a character that’s less scary and more hilarious.
• Obvious Beta:
  • Looking on the Steam forums and in the reviews, there are dozens of reports of bugs, from the game crashing when you try to start a generator to the Trapper's traps clipping through the ground to lag because the killer's player is also the host of the game. Also, there's abundant hacking and griefing the game, and the fact that the developers seem to be constantly balancing the game based upon fan complaints.
  • Even after the game was officially released and thus no longer in "beta", things such as keyboard control remapping, a very basic feature necessary for playing on non-QWERTY keyboards, were not added until several months after launch.
  • On release, Pinhead was by far one of the buggiest killers ever. When playing as him, the game would often crash if more than 1 survivor was killed (which seems to suggest the developers never expected him to kill more than 1 survivor, otherwise they would have encountered the bug during playtesting). His melee lunge was bugged so that he'd stop dead in his tracks if his momentum changed, preventing him from lunging around corners like other killers can. Also, his voice lines were completely missing.
• One True Pairing: In terms of shipping, Dwight/David is the most prevalent pairing in the entire fandom, receiving the most fanart, and if the loading screen blurbs from the Anniversary event have anything to say, it's favoured by some of the devs too. The ship only continued to grow in popularity with David being revealed as gay in his second tome.
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • When you read the Survivors' lore, notice how diverse their backgrounds are. Then realize that The Entity could pick almost anyone to be the next victim it drags into its world. It doesn't matter whether you're a good person, a jerk, a coward or a hero... what if you're the next one to be trapped in this terrifying game, doomed to spend eternity being hunted and brutally killed over and over again?
  • The Wraith. The game’s original stealthy killer. His power is pretty straightforward and easy to understand. He can turn invisible with his wailing bell. When he’s invisible, his terror radius diseappears and he gains a speed boost. Imagine that you’re repairing a generator when all of a sudden, you hear the noise of a bell… only to find out that the Wraith was standing right behind you all along.
  • Michael. Myers. At the first tier of his ability, he has almost no heartbeat. Meaning he can get startlingly close to the point of jumpscaring the poor soul he has chosen to stalk. Additionally, he can stare at survivors to build his ability from afar. Meaning that he could be watching you at any point, waiting for the right moment to strike. And he could be anywhere.
  • The Hag… well, more specifically, the Hag’s traps. Unlike the Trapper’s traps, the Hag’s traps are pretty hard to spot and they can act as jumpscares if you stumble upon them. The worst part is that the Hag can use them to teleport straight to you. And again, since they’re pretty hard to see, they could be placed literally anywhere on the map.
  • The Pig. Not only does she have a silent heartbeat when crouching, her short height and relatively human appearance can cause players to mistake her for a fellow survivor from a distance. This leads to them running over to her to join forces, only for her to turn around and reveal her pig mask...
  • Ghostface is an unholy combination of Myers and Amanda, being able to enter an undetectable stealth mode AND crouch while not being all that tall, allowing him to creep up on people with frightening ease.
  • Freddy is the shortest male killer and and has the most normal human shape. From a distance, you could easily mistake him for another survivor and he could be close enough to slash you before you realize your mistake.
  • The Onryo, who is able to mask her presence and appear from any active TVs to ruin everyone's day, giving people jumpscares if they're not careful about watching their surroundings.
  • Wesker's Terror Radius is the largest of any character, which you think would put him at a disadvantage by making it even larger. But the reality is that unless the Survivors are good at triangulation, it'll be harder to actually tell where Wesker is or how close you are to him.
• Popular with Furries: Furries were quite pleased when the Trapper and Oni received their Krampus and Minotaur skins, respectively. It's led to a decent number of people asking for a werewolf Killer to be added.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Up until mid-2018, the Hag was a Low-Tier Letdown who was probably the least played character in the game, due to being a very weak killer who was also paid DLC while also not being part of an existing pop culture franchise like any of the Guest Fighter characters. A mid-2018 balancing patch significantly increased the speed the Hag sets traps, making her much more viable both in being able to set up more quickly as well as being able to use her abilities in the middle of a chase to block off escape routes. The fact that most of her add-ons would actually make her weaker in one stat to compensate for increasing her power in other stats was also removed as gratuitous. A decent portion of the community now ranks her as one of the strongest killers in the game.
  • The Trapper received a similar upgrade to the Hag at the same time, increasing the speed at which he sets traps and removing the gratuitous drawbacks of his add-ons. Unlike the Hag, these changes have made him somewhat less frustrating to play, but still haven't dramatically changed how he ranks compared to the other killers.
  • The Wraith received a similar re-work to address the fact that he and Freddy were generally considered the weakest killers in the game. His basic kit was largely unchanged, but his add-ons were generally improved in numerous ways to make him more viable. He's now significantly stronger than he used to be, at the cost of being dependent on good add-ons to perform at that level.
  • Freddy received a complete rework of his power in July 2019's Mid-Chapter balancing patch, fixing a majority of the problems that made many consider him the worst killer in the game. He no longer had to wait 6 seconds before attacking a Survivor, as he could now attack awake Survivors which automatically puts them to sleep, he can now put down snares that slow down Survivors which can be replaced with fake pallets using add-ons, and he can teleport directly to a Generator every so often.
    • ..And then subverted in that extensive nerfs ended up launching him right back into the scrappy heap, as he became something of a MasterOfNone after the removal of slowdown add-ons.
  • The Legion's 2022 rework removed a lot of the frustrating aspects of their power (mainly the lengthy fatigue that wasn't justified by anything and the equally nonsensical power gauge drain on basic attacks), gave it some added lethality, and changed a lot of the add-ons, creating quite a few new builds outside of the usual duration+recharge combo everyone would run. While the changes resulted in Legion going from low-tier to mid-tier at best, they are overall seen as a massive success.
  • At the same time, The Ghost Face received an equally successful rework that aimed to do much of the same - removing the frustrating aspects of his power (particularly the incredibly buggy reveal/stalk mechanics were made a lot less frustrating for both sides, yet marked survivors can no longer reveal Ghostface while the mark lasts), changing the add-ons (Once again, this opened up quite a lot more potential builds, from slowdown to mobility), and overall making him a lot more enjoyable to play. That, on top of the healing/medkit meta meaning there was an increased demand for instadown killers, launched Ghostface out of the low tiers and into mid-tier.
  • Years after his absolutely brutal nerf, as of late 2023, the Hillbilly has received a rework that launched him right back into the glory days with one simple change - instead of Overheat, which outright punished him for using his power, he instead gained Overdrive, which, when active, increases the chainsaw's charge speed, sprint speed and reduces miss/hit cooldowns on it. Not only that, but his add-ons were likewise rebalanced, with some useless ones being outright replaced. Overall, after the rework, most players agree that the Hillbilly is back to his glory days and then some.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The complete lack of a party system in public games upon release. If you want to play with friends in a public game, you could be hopping lobbies for upwards of ten minutes. Private games, which you can invite friends to, don't give rank points, meaning that you can't get upgrades this way.
    • Ironically enough, this has become the opposite since the addition of a Survive With Friends function, primarily due to the poor implementation. Dead by Daylight is very much designed around having no comm devices for survivors, which a large amount of SWF groups use, giving them a significant and often game-breaking advantage, making the experience for both killers and solo survivors rather miserable. Many killer-players and solo survivors wish the mode had never been added, and a large majority of players either want SWF to be placed into separate lobbies, allow killers and solo survivors to opt out of playing with such groups, or to at least be hit with some notable nerfs to try and balance this.
  • For the killers, vaulting, dependent on the level design. Essentially, if there are two vaulting spots next to each other, a survivor could hop between them forever without getting caught. It has led to 30 minutes of non-progress when the survivor was the last one left.
  • The Skill Checks for repairing generators — they happen at completely random intervals, meaning you can get one every five seconds or see only a single one when repairing the generator. They are very easy to fuck up. Fucking up means the killer now knows where you are. Far from being a measure of any skill, they're really just a measure of how fast you can react, which isn't always doable.
  • The fact that the killer is also the host of the game has been met with consternation by some. There have been reports of killers using programs to intentionally create lag for the survivors, making killing them — and winning — much easier.
  • Many survivors are not fans of instant-down abilities that are available to killers. All but two killers have some access to a killer-specific way of activating it, and all killers have access to No One Escapes Death, which activates when the generators have all been finished. Survivors feel the mechanic is cheap and unfair due to the lack of counterplay and killers love them for their ability to secure kills that were otherwise lost.
  • The game's Peer 2 Peer structure, due to the inherent insecurity of the platform and the fact that the killer is the host. A laggy killer can result in unplayable amounts of lag as survivors are teleported around while being chased, making it hard to control where you are running, but also nearly impossible to hit. This would be later changed into having server-based matchmaking… which has caused a completely different set of people to complain about lagginess.
  • Green Glyph challenges. Once you complete a generator, a green glyph will spawn somewhere on the map, except you'll only see it within an 8 meter radius, which is tiny for the game's purposes. You're given a distant view of nearby ones once the endgame collapse starts, but that's small consolation and brief to boot, especially if you're running the challenge as a survivor, which forces a longer delay on how quickly you can collect one you've found.
• Seasonal Rot: Has occured several times in the game's cycle, though thankfully as an exception rather than the norm.
  • The Leatherface paragraph and the A Nightmare On Elm Street chapter were both released side-by-side and quite close to each other. And unfortunately, as a result of Behaviour having to juggle two huge licenses, both came in a terrible state. Leatherface was very weak and clunky at release, and even shared most of his Addons with the Hillbilly. This paired with his immense aptitude at facecamping left a bad taste in both Killer and Survivor mouths. But Freddy's chapter was worse, as he was released as the weakest a Dead by Daylight Killer has been at launch, and was hard-countered by the meta Survivor perks at the time, like Self-Care and Object of Obsession. He was, despite his genuinely laughable state, further nerfed as a result of his power being very difficult to understand for new Survivor players, which had greatly boosted his killrates. Killer players were not happy, and the Nightmare on Elm Street Chapter on Steam was bombarded with negative reviews. Thankfully, both Killers are tidied up and considerably less problematic today, atleast for the Killer side (although Freddy's entry in Low-Tier Letdown still speaks for itself).
  • Darkness Among Us, the Legion's chapter, got off to a rocky start. From a Survivor considered unexceptional upon release, and largely ignored by the Devs in terms of cosmetics (Jeff Johansson), a map extremely Survivor-sided on release, and then, the Killer themselves, the Legion. The first controversy did not even come from gameplay, as the Legion's trailer was criticized for making it seem like the Killer's power would be to pretend to be a Survivor to trick the real Survivors. This was a Killer concept fans had badly wanted, and the in-game reveal that the Legion's power was just...running fast didn't sit right. At release, they were despised by both Survivors and Killers. The Legion's ability, as detailed under Low-Tier Letdown, came with heavy nonsensical cooldowns and outright baffling design decisions that made the Killer feel very unpolished and unfun to play as. But Survivors playing against the Legion had a whole new level of frustration waiting for them. The Legion's chase ability was borderline uncounterable. The Survivors could not do anything to fight back if the Killer wanted them dead. They would eventually be injured, placed in Deep Wound, and downed as the Killer repeatedly slashed them. But the kicker was that the cooldowns on the Killer side were so long that downing a Survivor using the power was incredibly inefficient. The Devs eventually had to give Legion a plethora of buffs, nerfs, reworks, and changes before they became palatable. However, they are still considered both weak and unfun to play against at the same time, even today.
  • The Spirit's chapter, Shattered Bloodline was considered this by many Survivors, purely as it introduced the Killer that remained almost uncounterable for years into the game, and, unlike with the Legion or the Nurse, this time the Killer was both incredibly strong and easy-to-play, meaning she was easily used by most Killer players. She was so hated that a DC once Survivors realised they were up against her was not uncommon at all.
  • The three Chapters of 17 (Descend Beyond),18 (A Binding of Kin) and 19 (All-Kill) are remembered as a low point in the game's history. Three original Chapters in a row were being released at the same time as the Realm Beyond update (in which the Devs updated the older maps to have the same graphical quality and scale as the newer ones) was taking place. As a result, these Chapters came with no new maps, an incredible shame as fans believe they had a lot of potential, especially All-Kill maybe getting a neon back-alley map. Descend Beyond was mostly unproblematic, aside its extremely buggy PTB. A Binding of Kin was plagued by a large amount of gamebreaking bugs, along with a forgettable Survivor and Killers with the lowest pickrate in the game to this very day: the Twins. Their power, putting aside the bugs, was unique, and actually pretty strong, but a plethora of terrible design decisions and severe nerfs (see Low-Tier Letdown) cemented them as forgettable and terrible. The developers also fixed almost no bugs from the PTB, meaning this chapter was sold for money by the Devs while badly broken. The Twins were promised a rework, which has been delayed to 2024, while their few remaining players patiently wait. All-Kill came into problems mostly because of its Killer, the Trickster. There were strong debates at his first unveiling of whether he fit into the game at all. Other than his visual design, criticism also befell his power for being weak, unoriginal and extremely unfun to play against_complaints that persist even today.
  • If we talk about low points in the game's history, nothing comes to mind more than Chapters 26-28, the next three original Chapters in a row. Forged in Fog, Chapter 26 was flamed on several fronts: the Survivor Vittorio's very niche Perks, the Shattered Square map that had an immensely saturated red filter and was grossly Survivor-sided, and lastly the gameplay as and against the new Killer, the Knight. In a surprising twist, the Knight was not criticized for being too weak, but rather his uninteractive Power that was considered to be boring for the Killer side, and borderline frustrating for the Survivors. That paired with his affinity for 3-genning and crippling reliance to some of his best Addons, made many players give up on him. But mentioning 3-genning gives a perfect segue to the next Chapter, Tools Of Torment. This Chapter was despised purely because of the Skull Merchant, a Killer not only reviled for being weak and having an uninteractive and underpowered chase ability, that ended up synergising her best playstyle with 3-genning, but also for her unappealing and underwhelming character design and lore. Behaviour had to take action on her kit very quickly, and while they made her considerably more powerful and slightly less effective at 3-genning, she is still considered one of the most undesirable characters to play as and against. Many players would not hesitate to outright remove her from the game if they had the chance. She received a full rework mere months after her release, which showed what an unhealthy effect she was having on the game. While the rework absolutely demolished any proficiency she had in 3-genning, many players were still not happy, as she was still considered to be an unfun Killer to play against, and quite a few Killer players were displeased that the rework had completely replaced her tracking abilities with strength in chase, which was considered a very generic approach by them.The last Chapter, End Transmission, was received very warmly by the community after the previous two Chapters, but still came with a myriad of problems. The new Survivor came with a very strong meta-defining Perk, Made for This. Despite backlash from the community, Behaviour refused to nerf the Perk and it was pushed to Live in the same state. The new map, Toba Landing was flamed for its extremely cluttered and dense environment, that made navigating or even seeing through it a chore for both Killers and Survivors. Thankfully, the foliage and collision was considerably decreased from PTB to Live. The new Killer, the Singularity...was quite powerful and fun to play as and against. But he was forgotten quite quickly, ending up with one of the lowest killrates and pickrates soon after his release. The reason? His power was too complicated and difficult to understand and use for most players. This, coupled with the Electromagnetic Pulses that spawned in the map being pretty easy to acquire and use for Survivors, strongly countering his power, destined a low pickrate for Singularity. Despite the Devs quickly introducing fixes to reduce the number of Electromagnetic Pulses, making them harder to acquire and riskier to use, it appears the damage has already been done, as the poor malfunctioning AI still is largely forgotten.
  • While to a much smaller extent than the last 3, a sizeable number of the playerbase considers the Alien Chapter to have been a disappointment. The map and Survivor of the Chapter were very well-received and it was only the Killer which caused issues this time. The Xenomorph came with three perks, one of which, Ultimate Weapon, was slightly overpowered, but the other two were quite weak. Alien Instinct was considered weak and forgettable, being a worse version of an already existing licensed Perk. While Rapid Brutality saw a lot of use, it was moreso because players attempted to find synergies with it, and it was also considered poorly designed by some on account of being a Haste Perk. The Xenomorph's power itself was contentious; for starters, fans were disappointed that the Xenomorph's powers didn't incorporate Facehuggers or its effective stealth at all, which are the two MAIN things it is iconic for. Instead, the power ended up being a hybrid of Nemesis and Demogorgon, and better than them to boot. It was a little too good, as the tail attack that was unique to the Xenomorph was considered uncounterable by most Survivors. They pointed out the tail had an immensely short windup that gave Survivors no time to react and dodge the tail. There was also a technique where the Killer could wiggle their camera to control the direction of the tail to hit the Survivors anyway, even if they dodged fair-and-square. The turrets which came with the Xenomorph, intended to help the Survivors counter the tail attack by knocking the Xenomorph out of the mode in which it had it, were found insufficient. Any halfway-decent Xenomorph player could destroy the turret before they were knocked out of their power. Even if they WERE knocked out, they could receive the power again instantly by entering a tunnel. Many people began accusing the character of being Pay-To-Win. Behaviour combatted the issue by..... making the tail attack more difficult to use. This has caused Xenomorph to end up in the same boat as Nurse, an overpowered character justified by how difficult they are to play. Finally, players point out that the Steam numbers of the game dropped off considerably during the Chapter's release. Most claim this is a combination of Made For This + Hope, a vaulting bug that made Survivor unplayable for many, and the release of a rival game, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, at this time.
  • And that doesn't mean that only Chapters or Killers can be subject to this. The game's newest maps have have been known to earn ire from the community for one or more of the following reasons:
    • 1. Being too Survivor-sided by including very strong loops with god pallets and windows.
    • 2. Being too large, making it time-consuming for Killers to move around the map to patrol generators, and tedious for Survivors to travel around the map to reach those generators in the first place.
    • 3. Having extremely cluttered and dense environments making it impossible to easily get from point A to point B.
  • Some fans claim that there were no good maps released between Chapters 16 and 29. The map reworks of Chapters 17-19 are often poorly regarded for taking away the creepy and suppressive atmosphere of these maps and brightening them. R.P.D used to be despised for all 3 of the reasons shown above, and considered the worst map in the game by many prior to its rework, which still only improved it a little in fans' eyes. Eyrie of Crows, Garden of Joy and Decimated Borgo are brutally hated for the first two reasons. Decimated Borgo is also reviled for its saturated red colour scheme, so fans find it visually unappealing. Toba Landing, as detailed above, was certainly improved from its Public Test Build, but it's still not considered a good map. Mother's Dwelling (reworked) and Temple of Purgation (reworked) are hated for all 3 of the above reasons. Fans don't deny that they're probably the prettiest maps in the game, but they are awful to play for the Killer side, especially for Killers like Hillbilly that are inconvenienced by bad hitboxes.

  • Believe it or not, even the recent chase music (music(s)?) have come under fire. While the unique Killer chase themes aren't perfect, (the Oni's, Executioner's and Onryo's are the ones to be most criticized), they were still generally well-received. The most recent ones however, are not finding themselves much in the community's favour. This is because of a trend that the community is affectionately calling "washing machine chase music", where the terror radius (buildup) portion sounds like apt Nightmare Fuel, the actual Chase portion is usually a 2-second loop that has a lot of overwhelming noise, and often abandons the sounds and tones being used in the past layer. This trend started with the Ghostface, whose PTB music was flamed for being torturous to listen to. It was updated several times (with different fans having their own preferred version), and while it was no longer painful to listen to, the new chase theme was considered to be unfitting for Ghostface's character, leaving fans disappointed. This trend then continued with Skull Merchant, Hag, Nurse, Singularity and the Xenomorph (atleast its PTB theme). Fans give their own terminology to different chase music, calling Hag's a dryer, and Xenomorph's a windshield wiper. Fans yearn for the chase music to be properly composed again, and wish every chase music was as good as the Deathslinger's and Mastermind's, who between them are considered to have the best chase music.
• Self-Fanservice: A lot of fan-art depicts the killers as being cleaner, more cheerful, and less grungy than they appear in the game, or imagine that they appear conventionally attractive underneath their masks (for applicable killers), on top of heavily downplaying the fact almost all of them are monstrously sadistic serial killers.
  • Spirit and Plague, despite being shown to be beautiful women prior to the Entity taking them in, are also among the prime examples of Body Horror in the cast. Fan art tends to downplay their grisly mutilations in favor of making them into cute women.
  • While Ghostface and Frank (of the Legion) aren’t ugly per say, what we can see based on their unmasked appearances (via what we can see on Ghostface’s license add on and Frank’s character model respectively) indicates that they’re more on the plain side. Expect fan artists (especially those who ship the two together) to ignore this and instead make them look more conventionally attractive, especially giving Frank piercings and making Ghostface look way younger than his intended age (mid-30s at the youngest).
  • Not even survivors are exempt from this. The female survivors, especially Nea, are prone to being drawn with softer facial features and given feminine demeanors, while the male survivors tend to be given more muscular builds (excluding Jeff and Ace, where most artists keep their beer belly and smaller frame respectively) in art, especially when being shipped with each other.
  • Huntress and Yui get their own version of this, with many fans drawing them as Amazonian Beauties.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • Using a Memento Mori on a survivor while equipping the Mastermind's S.T.A.R.S. uniform will make it look like the survivor grabs onto an invisible bracelet on Wesker's arm since it was designed with his default outfit in mind to avoid animation clipping.
  • Most of the Moris just have the Survivor spurting blood out of thin air as they're struck, with no visible wounds, making an otherwise terrifying finisher into something laughable. It's especially apparent with the older Killers like Trapper and Wraith. This thankfully doesn't apply to later Killers who have more creative Moris like Singularity and Xenomorph, who actually leave visible and fittingly horrible wounds on their prey's forms.
• That One Achievement:
  • For The Shape, Evil Incarnate requires you to kill (not sacrifice) all four survivors with your T3 Evil Within ability. Not only does this require the usage of one of two specific very rare addons that impose disadvantages on you, but a particularly malevolent survivor can just get inside a locker to force you to grab them, kill themselves on their first hook, or just disconnect, just so you don't get the achievement. It's one of those achievements where everything has to go right for you, and even then you may still not get it because someone got salty.
  • Similar to the achievement above, "From The Void She Kills" requires you to grab a survivor after chaining three blinks together as the Nurse. Due to balancing after her release, the Nurse now only has two blinks in her repertoire, requiring the use of a very rare add-on that enables a third blink but significantly increases blink cooldown, forcing the Nurse to be very careful about when to try for a successful chain-grab. Combine that with the infamous issue of "grab-cancelling" and most players just have to hope to get lucky around a pallet.
  • The killer adept achievements in general. While they were originally "get a 4k with the killer's base perks", it became "get a Merciless Victory with the killer's base perks". This means not only do you almost have to get four kills, but you need to almost max out the amount of each category, and this comes with a set of problems. You need to pressure gens, which can be hard depending on the killer with few of them having little to no gen pressure abilities or perks. Having to earn enough points for chasing survivors will also be needlessly difficult for killers like Myers and Plague who encourage to break chases and end them faster with their instant downing abilities.
  • For survivor adepts, we have Adept Laurie and Adept David. Adept Laurie means playing with Object Of Obsession, which makes your aura visible to the killer when you stare in the same direction as them - something that can spell a careless death if you have no idea what you're doing, alongside Sole Survivor (a perk that decreases the meters where your aura can be read - but only usable when your teammates die) and Decisive Strike (a perk that can only be used in a very short time-frame after being unhooked, and will be disabled if you do anything while in that timeframe). Adept David is slightly easier, seeing as how Dead Hard is good at extending chases and We're Gonna Live Forever is a simple bloodpoint-boosting perk - but No Mither means you start the trial injured. For the rest of the trial. Good luck if you get paired with a skilled ranged killer like Huntress or Deathslinger!
  • Another hard survivor achievement is Outbreak Breakout, which requires you to escape Raccoon City Police Department after opening the gate... 20 times. Not only do you need to actually get either of the RPD maps and escape, you also have to be the one to have opened the door. People who try to game the achievement by equipping the map offering often end up being targeted by the killer, or have the teammate or killer disconnect because of the general hatred of the map (see That One Level, below). As a result, this is the most-complained about achievement on the DbD subreddit except Evil Incarnate.
  • Anything involving keys after their rework. To clarify, keys require you to open the hatch (which now only spawns when you're the last survivor in the game) after the killer has already found and closed it. The original key achievement, Escape with the entire team through the hatch, was also not exactly an easy thing to accomplish, since you had to finish all of the gens and then locate the hatch without anyone dying.
• That One Level: Certain levels can prove a chore for certain killers and survivors to deal with.
  • Coldwind Farms. AKA, Killer Kryponite. With its dreaded cornfield being a nightmare for those playing the killer. Especially The Shape, whose survivor detecting ability can't penetrate the corn.
  • Cramped, smaller maps like Lery's Memorial Institute and Springwood are murder for The Hillbilly. Leaving him almost no room for his chainsaw charge.
  • Haddonfield is by far one of the best maps for survivors and worst maps for killers. There are many good hiding spots, a mixture of both indoors and outdoors, boatloads of safe pallets, and has three houses that are incredibly easy to loop in. If the survivor also brings in Balance Landing, the loops become even easier to perform. Due to this, Haddonfield was reworked in the April 2022 patch.
  • Badham Preschool is hands-down the most annoying map to play if you're not using Iron Grasp and/or Agitation. If the killer basement doesn't spawn on the school, then the boiler room is more often than not a safe area for survivors, since no hooks spawn near enough for you to reach, even if you down someone. Triple points if someone body-blocks you.
  • Mount Ormond. Even Fog Whisperers are prone to disconnecting if they get that map, just because of how survivor sided it is. Not even enormous maps that are nigh impossible to patrol are as hated as that mountain resort.
  • Midwich Elementary School has quickly drawn ire from the playerbase. Being another mostly indoor-map, it can take a Killer ages to get across the map with the many hallways and the two levels of the building. This also makes it hard to properly apply gen pressure, thanks to the long hallways and the stairs to the upper level being put into the corners of the map. Its sole perk for Killers is that the hallways are mostly straight with only obstacles on the side, allowing for Killers whose powers are focused in straight lines (like the Hillbilly's chainsaw charges or the Trickster's knives) an avenue of keeping a Survivor in sight and a better chance at hitting them compared to being in the open.
  • Raccoon City Police Department has quickly gained the title of "worst map in the game" as far as some are concerned, and some people thought it would be bad the moment it was unveiled, having all of the problems of indoor maps and then some, with its authenticity to the game it came from actually making it even less fun to play. Turns out trying to make a map that was made for a completely different game work in this one without serious reworking of the layout was never a good idea. It's arguably bigger than Red Forest due to its maze-like layout, there are multiple infinites, an incredibly safe three-vault window in the library, but also some palletes that are completely useless, the sheer number of walls everywhere basically renders the abilities of many killers completely useless, and the maze-like layout makes it tedious and slow to get to generators the killer knows are being operated on if they're on another floor. Scott Jund has a fairly concise explanation on why the map is so badly designed. Luckily, the stage was given some updates that have included separating the east and west wings into two separate maps and making navigation far easier, especially between floors. This seems to have helped alleviate issues, though the maps remain somewhat contentious.
  • The Game is widely reviled among killers due to the simple fact that the level has a frankly ridiculous number of pallets packed into it. This, combined with it being an indoor map with many narrow hallways and chokepoints makes it extremely difficult for killers to chase survivors as a survivor can basically stall a killer for the entire match by just running from pallet to pallet, of which the level can have at least 20 of.
  • Garden of Joy was likely named from a survivors point of view, as few killers are happy to be here. It's absurdly common to run a killer for an entire game through the sheer number of windows and pallets the game generates within close proximity of each other, up to and including the Gazebo which can potentially lead into the main building. The main building itself is somehow even worse than the House of Pain of Badham, with no less than three windows the killer can't get to the other side of quickly enough to keep up.
• That One Side Quest: Some of the dailies are noticeably more difficult than others.
  • In general, any given daily can be awful if you don't have good perks on those characters. What's that? You have a perfect build for Dwight? Too bad, you gotta escape with your unupgraded Meg today.
  • Perform cooperative actions for 3 minutes encourages you to group up, risking everyone being pressured by the killer at once, especially with generator work. While there's times where grouping up is a good idea, they're few and far between.
  • By your hands, kill a survivor. With a few exceptions (Sadako and Pyramid Head specifically), no killer has a natural way of killing survivors personally, so you have to bring certain items or perks to do it. And of course if the killer isn't good in the first place...well, good luck.
  • Land 4 ambushes as The Pig, due to the fact that The Pig is awful at stealth and getting close enough to guarantee a dash strike without being seen is a challenge in itself.
  • Send 2 survivors to Cages of Atonement as The Executioner, simply because there are very few times when sending someone to a cage is preferable to leaving torment on the survivor to potentially kill them later, which doesn't count towards the daily.
  • Down 4 survivors with Victor as The Twins. They're already a difficult killer to play as without much going for them, but most of their strength comes from the fact that hitting survivors with victor means whoever is now carrying him can't do anything for 10 seconds minimum AND broadcasts the position of any other survivor near them. Since actually downing survivors doesn't do that (and has potential for Victor to immediately be punted if there's another survivor there), it takes some of what makes Victor useful and forces you to not use it. Also, Victor can't down the person they injured in the same lifetime, making it the hardest daily you can get.
  • Have a guard injure a survivor 5 times as the Knight. Guard A.I.s are already finicky as is, with them sometimes not going after survivors properly from time to time, but the Knights laundry list of weaknesses (including you can't body block survivors specifically so a guard can hit them instead of you) can make anything but lucky ambushes unlikely to get anyone.
  • Hit 4 survivors within 10 seconds of them being in a drones active zone as The Skull Merchant, simply because active zones are very noticeable no matter how you look at them, meaning only people who are already injured will ever go into them if at all.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Few of the people interested in the lore of the game were happy with changes made to the Doctor's backstory in the Archives. Many shared the opinion that changing Herman Carter from a man who slowly went over the deep end as a result of the CIA encouraging him to abandon any moral restraints, to a psychotic sadist who was already performing experiments on innocent people before even being recruited by the CIA, cheapened his character and made him come off as one-dimensional psychopath.
    • The Legion's lore entries in the Archives weren't well received either. The cutscene only show Frank and Julie killing the cleaner, while the written entries portray Julie as outright wanting to kill someone (compared to how she was initially reluctant to murder the cleaner in the official backstory). The written entries also imply that Julie, Joey and Susie already participated in acts of anarchy and vandalism way before Frank came to Ormond. On top of that there's the fact that many of Frank's actions are given to Julie (e.g. the suggestion to vandalise the store Joey had been fired from), Joey and Susie are portrayed as simply accomplices, who don't have any problems with their friends are having them do (such as causing road accidents and committing arson), and that the log entires contradict details from Jeff's backstory (in the Archive logs the group doesn't come up with the name "The Legion" until they decide to vandalise the store, whereas in Jeff's backstory it was implied that they were already going by the name when Jeff painted a mural for them).
    • The Archives weren't the first time the fanbase disliked changes made to The Legion. People weren't happy when a cosmetic contained the blurb that Susie had previously stabbed a man in an attempt to impress Frank, which contradicted the implication that Susie was (in a certain way) the group's Token Good Teammate.
    • The Nurse was also hit with this hard in her Archives lore. While the original lore for her made her a full Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds after snapping under pressure working in an asylum, the Archives instead made her a much less sympathetic character by having her behave more knowingly evil and showing her being heavily into eugenics, as well as seeing the patients as less than human and unfit to live.
    • The Pig's Archive entries have also caused a bit of friction, due to depicting Amanda Young as a self-confident and cocky apprentice that thinks John Kramer's legacy would be safe with her. In the actual Saw franchise, Amanda was shown as someone who desperately requires John's approval and support, with her believing that despite all his efforts, she still remained fundamentally broken and uncurable, and she also is appalled by some of the more gruesome contraptions. Contrast this to her behavior in the Tome, where she is arrogant enough to believe that John wouldn't question her methods and in fact would be proud of having her set up inescapable traps for the "subjects", also enjoying the brutality of her word. It seems that this was made in order to make her appear as a more cruel female Killer who would be a less controversial option than the aforementioned Nurse and her changed backstory.
  • Pinhead losing his voicelines was very unpopular with many feeling that, even putting the memes aside, it took the character's charm away. Thankfully, a few patches later it was revealed the lines would returned and the new ones would be added, voiced by Doug Bradley himself.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Mikaela Reid, while still having a sizable fanbase upon her reveal, has been hit with this. When a solo survivor chapter was leaked back in Summer 2021, many were expecting the survivor to be Haddie Kaur, a woman who was featured in several tome stories and being heavily hinted as a playable character, like Blight and Elodie before her. When leak sites revealed that it wasn't Haddie, but instead a witch character, many were hyped to see what the new survivor would have to offer. The end result was a survivor who had zero connections to any preexisting lore outside of being haunted by the Entity, and even then many fans were disappointed that the witchcraft she practiced in her lore isn't based on any cultural witchcraft, but instead was a more generic take on it. While her perks were praised, especially since she brought Boon Totem perks to the meta, the general opinion is that Mikaela is a decent character on her own, but she isn't a significant enough character to justify her being hyped up as a mid-chapter DLC.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The lore behind the game is absolutely fascinating, but it has effectively zero relevance in the game itself, with just about all of it only being available in out-of-game material. Thankfully, this is starting to be fixed with the release of the Archives, which allow you to unlock new lore entries and cinematics.
  • Quite a lot of fans felt that the established backstories of characters that have been focused on in the Archives contained potential for interesting stories (e.g. Herman Carter's slow descent into madness following being recruited by the CIA. Julie, Joey and Susie slowly changing for the worst as a result of Frank's influence, and just exactly what Sally Smithson dealt with in Crotus Penn that made her turn to murder), and that the retconned backstories that were depicted in the Archives came off as cliche, and removed a lot of the complexity that had been implied to be present in the characters.
  • A criticism of the Trickster's backstory is that it's a missed opportunity to explore the darker side of the K-Pop industry, which is notoriously plagued by such problems as extremely harsh and exhausting work conditions, strictly-enforced Contractual Purity, Loony Fans who stalk and assault artists, and abusive managers. These issues could have played a role in Ji-Woon's Start of Darkness, such as by having him snap under the pressure of the brutal training regimens, murdering a higher-up who mistreated him, or (for a dramatic rewrite) even making him a good person who suffered a Kill and Replace at the hands of an obsessed fan, instead of simply having him murder people for art and fun, which is a much more generic motive.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The premise can be downright discouraging: Neither dying nor escaping frees the Survivors from their "Groundhog Day" Loop, and the Killers and The Entity are Invincible Villains by default. And while most Killers are tragic/sympathetic to varying degrees, it's the most-evil and least-sympathetic ones who are the happiest with all this. Hence many preferring to just Play the Game, Skip the Story.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Like many other Konami IPs, Silent Hill languished for much of the 2010s, with the series being relegated to pachislots after Konami decided to stop making full games. That the Dead by Daylight crew managed to not only get in touch with Konami, but convince them to allow Silent Hill to appear in the game, was a shock for many.
  • While many had predicted that Nemesis would join the roster the moment the Resident Evil collab was announced, practically nobody expected the franchise's rank-and-file zombies to be incorporated into his gameplay.
  • Saw getting a killer shocked many, as the killers of the series are not slashers, instead preferring to kill their victims through traps. And even then, many people expected the representative to be Hoffman. Instead, it turned out to be Amanda.
  • While The Ring being brought into the game was hardly out of left field, it was rather more surprising that the original Japanese film was used as the basis instead of its American remake.
  • There’s also a cosmetic case for the collab with Attack on Titan. Who would’ve thought that we’d get cosmetic items from that franchise, of all things?
  • In May 2023, it was announced that a celebrity actor would be joining the fog As Himself. And who did it turn out to be? Nicolas Cage.
  • The Alien cosmetics collection shows a surprising amount of love for Alien: Resurrection, with both Ripley 8 and a what-if failed clone both being available options for Ripley and the Xeno.
  • Despite high demand for him, Behaviour stated that Chucky of Child's Play was just not possible to be added, as his miniature size was impossible to implement with the game's hitboxes. So it was a surprise to many when Chucky was announced as the game's 31st killer. The hitbox issue was in part dealt with by having Charles Lee Ray (Chucky's human form) show up as a spirit when size is of significant importance.
• The Woobie: The survivors, who are forced to be endlessly hunted and killed by serial killers presumably forever, while an Eldritch Abomination claims more of their soul and hope every time they die. Even if they escape a session, they still find themselves stuck within the "Groundhog Day" Loop.

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