Examples of different types of increased background intensity in EPIC observations which have been assigned a Cauchy probability above the limit of 87% and do not have a HIGH_BACKGROUND warning flag in 3XMM-DR7: continuously high background, exceeded by few sources only (obs. id. 0200171401 MOS1) (panel a), single reflection patterns, caused by a bright X-ray source outside the field of view, but close to it (obs. id. 0604820101 pn) (panel b), extended diffuse emission (obs. id. 0650220201 MOS2) (panel c), different brightness levels of the EPIC-pn quadrants owing to continuous counting mode (obs. id. 0406752601) (panel d). The images are created with a linear brightness scale ranging from zero to half their exposure time in kiloseconds.