Every Shift At Midnight threat, compared

Seven named threats appear across this wiki's bestiary, each with its own page and its own counter. Read individually, it is easy to lose track of which ones you can actually shoot, which one you can only outsmart, and which one is off-limits until you finish Story Mode. This page puts all seven side by side, with figures pulled straight from the achievements page and each monster's own page — nothing recalculated, nothing new claimed.

Last verified 11 September 2026 · game version: 29 July 2026 patch

The comparison table

"Achievement" unlock rates are the global percentage from the achievements page as of this check, not each monster page's own copy — a couple of monster pages carry a slightly older snapshot of the same figure, so this table uses the single freshest source rather than mixing two.

Marionette	From Shift 9, Story Mode. Killable — hold E on the music box to rewind it before the melody finishes three times. Achievement: Last Performance, 41.6%. Details: Marionette page.
Entity	End of any shift where a doppelganger's purchase completed, or any Blood Moon shift. Killable — weapons, traps and barricades all contribute; it is blind and tracks sound. Achievement: Still Breathing (survive), 93.8%. Details: Entity page.
Demented	Appears during regular shifts. Not killable by gunfire — freezes only while you look directly at it; the confirmed counter is breaking your gaze and leading it into a trap. Achievement: Freed, 79.8%. Details: Demented page.
Shrieking Doll	Appears during regular shifts. Killable — the most fragile threat in the game, a few shots. Achievement: Silenced, 89.8%, the easiest monster achievement. Details: Shrieking Doll page.
The Dentist	Shift 13 only, the final story shift. Cannot be killed — firearms and melee are confirmed ineffective; only Sheriff Clyde ends the encounter, in a cutscene. No achievement of its own. Details: Dentist page.
Norbert	A doppelganger-category customer, not a hostile monster. Not lethal either way — sparing him ends it cleanly; killing him triggers repeated non-lethal pranks for the rest of the shift. No dedicated achievement. Details: Norbert page.
Rake	Post-Story Endless Mode only, added 29 July 2026. Killable — the developer's own instruction is to shoot it before it reaches the playable area. No dedicated achievement (predates its addition). Details: Rake page.

Jack-in-the-Box is deliberately left out of the table above: this wiki's own page treats it as an item that summons the Marionette, not a threat with its own kill method or achievement.

What actually matters: three groups, not seven

Seven entries in a bestiary read like seven different fights to learn. In practice they split into three groups, and which group a threat falls into decides how you should be spending your attention.

Group 1 — shoot it: Entity, Marionette, Shrieking Doll, Rake

Four of the seven have a direct, confirmed kill method involving weapons or a specific interaction under time pressure. These are the ones where the survival guide's advice about weapons actually applies — buy the arsenal, know your ammo, and treat the Marionette's music-box timer and the Rake's shoot-before-it-arrives instruction as the two cases where a delay is punished more than usual.

Group 2 — outsmart it: Demented

The Demented is the one exception to "shoot the problem." Gunfire does not work on it; the confirmed solution is behavioural — break your gaze, lead it somewhere with a trap already set. Treating it like Group 1 and trying to shoot your way out is the single most common mismatch between what a player expects from a horror-game monster and what this specific one requires.

Group 3 — there is no fight: The Dentist, Norbert

These two do not resolve through combat at all, for opposite reasons. The Dentist is confirmed immune to everything except a scripted Sheriff Clyde intervention, so any strategy built around damaging it is wasted effort on the final shift. Norbert is not a combat encounter in the first place — the choice is social (spare or kill), and killing him is confirmed to make your remaining shift harder, not easier, through repeated harassment. Both are covered in more decision-focused detail on Norbert's own page and the endings page, since the Dentist's outcome is one of the two variables that decides your ending.

Story Mode vs. Post-Story Endless

Only one threat on this list is gated by mode rather than by shift number: the Rake exists exclusively in Post-Story Endless Mode, which itself only unlocks after finishing all 13 Story shifts. A player who has never touched Endless will never encounter one, no matter how their Story run went. Every other threat on this table can appear within the 13-shift Story campaign; the nights & Endless Mode page covers exactly which shifts guarantee which encounters, including Blood Moon shifts that force an Entity Hunt regardless of your counter performance.

Which one should worry you most, by playstyle

If you play solo, the Entity is the one to prepare for first — it is both the most frequent (any missed doppelganger triggers it) and the one the survival guide spends the most space on, since sound and barricades matter more than weapons alone. If you play co-op, the Demented is worth flagging to your team specifically, because a squadmate who has not read this comparison will likely default to shooting it, and that default does not work. If you are Post-Story and running Endless for the achievement grind, the Rake is the newest variable and the one with the thinnest official documentation — see its own page for exactly what is confirmed versus reported.

Quick answers