Entities
Anomaly Detected entities and threats: the lurking figure, hallway silhouettes, face and eye anomalies, jumpscare triggers and how a shift ends permanently.
Introduction
Entities covers the things in Anomaly Detected that are not scenery. Most of the catalogue is furniture that has moved or a light that has died, but a minority of anomalies are presences: a shape at the edge of a feed, a pair of eyes inside a photograph, a silhouette standing in a doorway that was empty when you built your baseline. These are the anomalies that end shifts, and they deserve a section of their own because they behave differently from every other class. Scenery anomalies are passive — they sit there waiting to be noticed. Figures are also still, but they are threatening in a way that changes how a player scans a frame, and once enough reports have been missed the game escalates from static silhouettes to an entity that actively hunts through the camera grid. The escalation is tied to the miss counter rather than to time, which is why a run can feel calm for several minutes and then abruptly turn. Comprehension of this section also covers the failure state itself: what the lurking figure is, what triggers it, and how a shift ends permanently for a contract.
Threat Classes Ranked
| Threat | Trigger | Behaviour | Priority |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lurker | Repeated missed reports | Actively hunts the camera grid | Highest — ends the shift |
| Silhouette | Spawns in doorway or corridor | Stands still until reported, then relocates | High — easy to miss |
| Face / Eye | Planted inside a room detail | Static close-up fright, no movement | Medium — needs zoom |
| Environmental | Late in a shift | Shadows move, lights die, doors change | Lower — background pressure |
Entity Profiles
The Lurker
The entity that ends a shift outright
Hallway Silhouette
Still, patient, and easy to sweep past
Face and Eye Anomaly
A fright planted inside ordinary scenery
Environmental Threat
Background pressure that builds late
Core Mechanics
The entity layer exists to make observation genuinely stressful, and it does that by tying the failure state to your own performance rather than to a fixed timer. Scenery anomalies wait to be noticed; the escalation works the other way around. Each missed or wrongly reported anomaly moves the shift closer to the point where passive figures are replaced by something that actively hunts the camera grid, which means the pressure you feel is a direct function of how well you have been reporting. That design has a mechanical consequence worth internalising: the entity is not a separate challenge to be beaten, it is the consequence of a challenge you have already been failing. There is no report that removes it, no item that repels it and no route that avoids it. The only reliable counterplay is prevention, which happens earlier in the shift than most players expect. Layered underneath are the three static presences — silhouettes, planted faces and environmental changes — which do not chase you but are individually responsible for a large share of failed runs, because each one is deliberately tuned to be hard for human attention to catch.
Advantages
The clearest advantage of understanding the entity layer is that it converts the game from a series of jumpscares into a readable system. Knowing that escalation is tied to the miss counter rather than to elapsed time tells you exactly when a shift is in danger, and it explains why a run that felt calm suddenly turned: the cause was something you did, several reports earlier, not a random event. That knowledge changes priorities in a way that raises clear rates immediately. A player who knows the Lurker is coming will file a confident report rather than deliberating for another five seconds, because the marginal accuracy is worth less than the counter position. The individual profiles are useful for the same reason: knowing that face and eye anomalies are static, zoom-only reads turns an occasional lucky spot into a systematic part of every sweep, and knowing that environmental changes trigger late justifies the second pass that most players never bother with.
Challenges
The honest limitation of this section is that the entity layer is partly inferential. The developer has never published a full behaviour breakdown, so much of what is described here is assembled from player observation, and the exact escalation threshold has not been documented precisely enough to quote as a number. The specific names are community conventions in most cases: Veteran is confirmed through badge data, but labels like the Lurker are descriptive rather than official, and they may not match whatever the game calls the thing internally. There is also a perceptual ceiling that no reference can lift. Silhouettes and planted faces are difficult to notice by design, and understanding why they are hard does not make them easy, so the section helps most when it is used to build a deliberate zoom and checkpoint routine rather than read once for information. Finally, entity behaviour is balance-sensitive, and the newest contracts may ship with escalation tuned differently from the older maps.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I kill or escape the entity that hunts me?+
Are the figure anomalies always hostile?+
Why do I keep failing runs that looked completely normal?+
Quick Tips
Treat every doorway, corridor end and window as a named checkpoint you inspect deliberately on each pass. Figure anomalies do not move, and human attention is tuned to motion, so the only reliable way to catch a static silhouette is to look at the places it can occupy rather than waiting for it to catch your eye.
Zoom on every framed picture, mirror and reflective surface before you decide a room is clean. Face and eye anomalies are planted inside ordinary decorations and occupy only a handful of pixels at normal magnification, which makes them invisible to a general sweep and obvious the moment you look closely.
Re-check rooms you cleared earlier in the shift before you finish. Environmental changes frequently trigger later in a run, so a room that was genuinely clean during your baseline can become anomalous after you have moved on to other cameras. A second pass late in the run catches almost all of the environmental class before the shift can end.
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Anomaly Detected Hostile Anomalies: Death & Survival Tips
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Anomaly Detected Ghost: Paranormal Lore, Silhouettes & Story
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