The excellent Resident Evil 2 remake throws players headfirst into a virtual toybox full of mutated horrors hell bent on showing you what your spine looks like.
Perhaps the most unsettling of all the abominations that stalk the player is Mr X, an imposing figure that will persistently hunt Leon or Claire down for vast sections of the game.
Anyone who’s played the remake will be all too aware of the terrifying audio cues signalling the approach of Mr X. Heavy stomping echoes down the halls, and if he bursts into the same room as you and gives chase, a haunting, tense score begins to play until you to make it to (relative) safety.
The internet (being the internet), has already had some fun playing around with Mr X and his musical cues, using a variety of smash pop hits from yesteryear to create encounters that feel a lot less terrifying, and a hell of a lot funnier.
One of the most prominent (and obvious) examples is X Gon’ Give It To Ya by DMX, which has been employed to great effect by a number of players. It’s hard to say who came up with the idea first, but this version by Bad-Idea-Man over on Reddit is easily my favourite.
Predictably, the above has already turned into a mod which can be downloaded here.
It hasn’t stopped with DMX though, as Calamity Brandon on Twitter can attest. He managed to create a Mr X meme that is perhaps the greatest use of In The Air Tonight I have ever seen in my life.
Check out out:
If you still need convincing that Mr X works with pretty much any track, here he is busting skulls to Lou Bega’s delicious late 90’s pop cheese hit Mambo No. 5.
Have you come across any other majestic musical Mr X memes? I’m personally hoping someone can do one with Drowning Pool’s Let The Bodies Hit The Floor, because I’m definitely too lazy to make it myself.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.