Gorecore is an aesthetic primarily characterized by graphic visual content, focusing on elements such as blood, death, violence, and murder. It often features imagery drawn from horror fiction, including slasher films, and can encompass highly disturbing or unsettling visuals, though often stylized. This aesthetic is a compound term, incorporating anything disturbing, terrifying, or horrible, often with explicit depictions of blood. Its visual and stylistic expressions are also seen as a way to challenge conventional beauty standards and, for some, to subvert the male gaze. It sometimes overlaps with Pastel Gore and Cutegore .

Visually, Gorecore is very graphic and often takes screenshots from gory horror movies. Common Gorecore images consist of creepy children's drawings, bloody knives and organs, clothing stained by gore, bones, and corpses, etc. The lighter, more social media friendly, version of this aesthetic uses mostly fake/animated gore.

Hair done in a Gorecore style is often dyed two different colours, split down the middle. It also makes use of gore and knife-themed hair accessories, such as a headband that makes it look like the wearer has a knife going through their head.

Gorecore clothing has punk and goth influences as well.