Eldritch Abomination/Video Games

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


"Understand, that there is no point in living! Cry, that there is no answer! Where there is darkness there are shadows! I, myself, am all of you humans!!" ref>Nyarlathotep. Yup, that one.</ref>
  • Skullgirls has Double, a shape-shifting creature that often appears as a disgusting lump of flesh, bone, and teeth vaguely shaped like a woman. She usually hides her true nature by taking the form of a smiling nun. When Double enters the battlefield, the nun opens her mouth five feet wide, and basically turns inside out through the hole, revealing Double's true form.
  • Zophar from Lunar: Eternal Blue is a colossal, floating monolith whose body is a black tower extending from the heavens, leading down into a face resembling an Olmec Indian sculpture with glowing red eyes and skeletal dragons for arms. He feeds off the hatred and evil in the hearts of humanity, influences these emotions in order to gain strength from it, and when he's grown powerful enough he physically manifests in the form described above. His goal? To gain the power of creation from the goddess Althena, and remake the entire universe as he sees fit. And if his fortress is any indicator, it's going to be very icky.
  • League of Legends has quite a few of these as playable characters. This includes: Cho'Gath, a demon; Fiddlesticks, an extraplanar crow god; Kog'Maw, an acid-spewing alien; Xerath, a mage-turned-Energy Being of terrifying power and virtually inhuman morality; and Nocturne, a nightmare-dwelling monstrosity who murdered people in their dreams just for kicks before being forcibly pulled into the land of the awake. Kassadin and Malzahar, meanwhile, derive their powers from the Void, though their motives for using said powers are radically different.
  • Big Bad Bacterion, The Dragon Dr. Venom, Dragon Ascendant Gofer, and Zelos the Planet Eater from Gradius are all Eldritch Abominations with the ability of regeneration and cell division.
  • The Lambent from the Gears of War series, especially the Lambent Brumak and Drudges. If Drudges take too much damage but do not die, they will hideously mutate into three different forms: Mutation 1 is when its head surges upwards as its neck elongates, forming a thick serpent-like appendage. The head itself mutates into a gaping triangular mouth, which could spray a stream of Imulsion at close-medium range, causing significant damage to enemies. Even when it is killed, the head would continue to function, acting like a snake-like predator on the hunt for enemies (hence the term "Headsnake"). Mutation 2 is when its arms mutate into grotesque, over-elongated limbs with giant claws. Mutation 3 is when its legs grow in length and fuse together to form a trunk, which places the upper body on a high pedestal above the battle.
  • The Crawler Zombie from the Nazi Zombies mode of Call of Duty[context?] has an over-sized angler fish-like mouth as the only prominent feature on the face.
  • Lavos from Chrono Trigger—a horror from space that descended to Earth when it was young, and slept and ate until it was awakened to destroy it in 1999. While Lavos' initial form is just a giant magical space tick, it evolves into full-fledged Eldritch Abomination in Chrono Cross after it merges with Schala and became the Time Devourer. The Time Devourer lurks at the Darkness Beyond Time, where cancelled timelines go, growing in power and preparing to destroy all of time and space. Even worse, it can't be killed—no matter how thoroughly you destroy it, because of the infinite nature of the timelines there'll always be a timeline where you didn't destroy it, and it'll pull itself out of there and return to the Darkness.
    • We see the Time Devourer in its full hideous glory in the Bonus Dungeon of the DS remake, there known as "Dream Devourer". After you "win", you discover The Battle Didn't Count since it just absorbs a self from another reality where it doesn't die, though Schala uses the last of her power to rescue you; the new ending implies the beginning of the massive Xanatos Roulette that is Chrono Cross.
    • Lavos is also explicitly stated to be just one member of an entire species. Multiple times in the end game, you fight "Lavos Spawn", Lavos' children, with the clear implication that they're how Lavos began its own life. Fortunately, it only gained its alternate reality reincarnation power by absorbing Schala, so at least the spawn can't do that. But that's small comfort against the fact that there could be billions of Lavos's species eating planets all over the universe.
    • Even better, Lavos is summonable through occult ritual, and is itself a source of magical power. Originally, man used the sun as a source of magical power, but the sages of the great magical kingdom of antiquity tapped into Lavos and apparently he beat the hell out of the sun's magic, managing to power an entire floating continent of mages even before they managed to directly tap into its power. Mind, the main characters end up using sun-granted magic to defeat him, so there.
  • Undertale gives us Omega Flowey and the Amalgamates.
  • The Primagen in Turok 2, who threatens to break out of his prison and unravel the fabric of the universe. There's also Oblivion, another Abomination who is the Big Bad of the third game.
  • Star Control
    • The Androsynth disappeared before the beginning of Star Control II, and their region of space is now occupied by the Orz. Trying to put together an accurate assessment of what happened on their homeworld results in the scientist who read about the Androsynth's IDF research going insane and being attacked by invisible creatures. It's not exactly clear what went down, but the Arilou put it best: "You do not wish to be seen. The Androsynth were seen. There are no more Androsynth anymore. Only Orz."
      • This is an especially subtle example: early on, the Orz seem comical, with their round bird-beaked bodies, their nearly-untranslatable speech and their silly voices. But if you ask the Orz about the Androsynth, they attack and take no prisoners. Also note that "going insane and being attacked by invisible creatures" is a good description of what happened to Abdul Al-Hazred, writer of the Necronomicon in H.P. Lovecraft's works. As if the Orz needed any more creepy stuff said about them, It Got Worse: According to developers, Orz as the captain sees them are actually a projection of some higher-dimensional being's fingers. At one point, you can also find them above what used to be the Taalo homeworld. Now, for context, the Taalo were exterminated several thousand years ago. The Orz claim to be currently interacting with the dead Taalo, chasing them and describing it as excellent fun. They also imply that this will be humanity's eventual fate if they continue to be good campers.
    • In Quasi-Space, part of the background music is quite obviously something screaming. It doesn't ever actually appear, which somehow just makes it worse.
    • Star Control 3 has the completely Lovecraftian Eternal Ones: they're invincible and feed on "sentience", so they wait for advanced civilizations to develop and then come and harvest them.
  • In Earthbound Beginnings, Giygas was just a very angry Grey alien who tried being human for a while, but was upset when humanity took advantage of his knowledge. In the sequel EarthBound however, Giygas has become something far more horrible. Mindless, he exists in the future and the past, and has no physical form. He's practically Azathoth with less tentacles and about as aware of his surroundings, and became the Trope Namer for one of the main characteristics of Eldritch Abominations, You Cannot Grasp the True Form.
  • Shadow of the Comet, Prisoner of Ice and the better-known Alone in the Dark by Infogames are all in the same Cthulhu Mythos-haunted world, with several direct Lovecraftian references including the Necronomicon and De Vermis Mysteriis. The name of the mansion from the first Alone In The Dark, Derceto, is revealed in-game to be an alias of Shub-Niggurath, the Mythos' equivalent of a fertility deity... Oh, and there's a Cthonian in the basement.
    • Shub-Niggurath's other title is "The Black Goat of the Woods with a thousand young". Those three-legged, tree-sized monsters in the picture at the top of the page? Her children. And of course Mommy is watching over the whole thing.
  • The Zelda francise has various bosses that fit this bill, many of which serve as Big Bads:
  • Most games in the Shin Megami Tensei series and its spin-offs will let you control or fight with at least a few dozens of these - some of the designs of demons are themselves Eldritch, if they weren't already. Taken a gander at the Mythology and Religion sub-page yet? Some of those handsome fellas (most of them, really) found their way to these games. Whole paragraphs could be devoted at an attempt to explain as to what Satan looks like.
  • Devil Survivor 2 has The Septentriones. Considering the likely inspiration for the fellas, not really surprising.
  • The Phantasy Star series has Dark Force and The Profound Darkness.
  • Despite its cute and fluffy aesthetics, the Kirby franchise is famous for its many genuinely creepy Lovecraftian horrors that are often pitted against everyone's favorite super-tough pink puff.
    • Most Kirby final bosses are at least somewhat Eldritch. Nightmare is the manifestation of everyone's bad dreams, Dark Mind from The Amazing Mirror is an evil mirror demon, and Dark Nebula from Squeak Squad is a sleeping Eldritch Abomination said to be the Lord of the Underworld itself. Also, all of these beings are heavily hinted to have some kind of connection to Zero/Dark Matter...
    • Dark Matter is an immensely powerful Hive Mind formed by a swarm of shadowy eyeball creatures that can possess any living beings they come into contact with, as well as corrupt entire planets into eldritch hellscapes choked by darkness. Further, judging by how often it's reappeared, it appears to be impossible to permanently destroy, and can only be temporarily defeated. It's even creepier when considering the setting. Thankfully, it's also far more defeatable than most major abominations, but you usually need some kind of special weapon to do so - it's so strong that the all-mighty Star Dream, a living supercomputer with its own abominable powers, can't comprehend its true form and can only replicate its less powerful Swordsman form.
    • 0 (Zero) is the "heart" of Dark Matter, essentially a giant bloody eyeball in a white sphere that fights by spraying its own blood at Kirby before tearing its eyeball from its body in a last ditch effort to kill him. It returned as 02 in Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards, looking like a nightmarish angel complete with wings and halo while still bleeding from its eye.
    • To a lesser extent, the chief servant/decoy/imperfect form of Zero/0² known as Miracle Matter has the same red eyeballs/simplistic white body aesthetic... but it looks less like a giant eye and more like a multi-sided die covered in eyeballs, and can transform into seven different bizarre-looking forms over the course of its boss fight. Unless you use attacks that correspond with its current form, you're not going to hurt it, and its base form is immune to all damage. And unlike any other form of Dark Matter that have some kind of vague explanation as to what they even are, there's nothing explaining Miracle Matter, which might just make it the most unsettling abomination of the bunch.
    • Kirby's friend Gooey is said to be an offshoot of Dark Matter, but is fortunately kind, goofy, and cute instead of horrifying. But during the fight against Zero in Dream Land 3, he transforms into something that looks closer to his brethren, showing that he's still in touch with his eldritch roots.
    • Clockwork Stars like Nova and Star Dream are planet-sized supercomputers that can warp space, time, and even reality itself to grant wishes to those who seek them out. And if Star Dream is of any indication, they can affect people's minds to the point of wiping memories, causing batshit insanity, and ultimately absorbing and deleting them entirely, as poor President Haltmann would show you. While just as beatable as Dark Matter, they're also incredibly powerful, with Star Dream itself constantly teleporting in and out of reality and summoning large, surreal objects from another dimension during its boss fight.
    • Later games would portray recurring boss Kracko as this, at least from a lore standpoint. In terms of power and appearance, he isn't anything too special - just a living cloud with an eyeball and spikes that can shoot lightning, rain, and laser beams. But he's an immortal beast that's been around since the dawn of time and is impossible to truly kill since the presence of clouds anywhere will allow him to revive himself. And by anywhere we mean anywhere: he can rematerialize on different planets and even other dimensions entirely.
    • Marx seems to become one after making his wish upon Nova. He spontaneously grows plants made entirely out of spikes, can generate knives from nowhere, and can rip himself in half to create a hole to a dimension made entirely out of pain. He gets even freakier in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, where he can attack by turning his eyeballs into large shadowy blobs and siccing them on you, turn them into uncomfortably gigantic multi-pupiled laser guns, and sprout a complex web of tendrils that look disturbingly like veins or even blood vessels.
    • Kirby Star Allies would go on to give us the series' Most Triumphant Example: Void Termina, a known destroyer of worlds that exists in all dimensions and has ties to not just Dark Matter and a number of darkness-tainted objects through the series, but Kirby himself. The implications are definitely unnerving to say the least.
    • Kirby's proposed origin in the anime series Kirby: Right Back at Ya! more or less posits that he himself is an Eldritch Abomination that went good, which explains a lot. While this is an Alternate Continuity, the games would later hint that this is the case for the canonical Kirby. After all, he's ridiculously adaptive to all kinds of elements and weapons, can absorb and eat ridiculous amounts of matter in way that almost suggests that he has a literal Black Hole Belly, regularly fights godlike beings without breaking a sweat, and is even stated at different times to have unlimited power... or almost unlimited power. Star Allies all but confirms that he's a friendly reincarnation of the eldritch Void Termina or closely related to one, with Void's core taking on a very similar appearance to Kirby during the fight, which also ties him to Dark Matter and Zero/0² given that it also takes forms similar to them.
    • Fecto Elfilis from Kirby and the Forgotten Land is a genocidal interdimensional alien with the power to open portals into other dimensions. It can also worm its way into the minds of other creatures and Mind Rape them into feral beasts, or shatter their souls into pieces before possessing them outright. While it has a recognizably humanoid form, its appearance is unlike that of any beast encountered in Dream Land or the Forgotten Land.
  • Yuris from Tales of Rebirth. It's the physical manifestation of all of the negative emotions produced by the Huma and Gajuma after they're subjected to a Hate Plague, and has a rather indescribable appearance.
  • Tales of Vesperia has the Adephagos, which is a Sealed Evil in a Can abomination and is released about 2/3rds into the game. It's destroyed by stopping using aer as an energy source and switching to using mana instead. A cookie to those who get the aesop.
  • The eponymous being from Chzo Mythos. Chzo is a pain elemental who absorbed all its rivals, to the point where it became a literal mountain of flesh that took over a sizable portion of the Ethereal Realm. A whole lot of events (that it could plan out ahead of time, thanks to it being in every possible time) and manipulations later, Chzo had a Religion of Evil on his side, a practically invincible right-hand-man, and had all but succeeded in creating the bridge between our realm and the Ethereal Realm... Of course, we'd be all boned, had everyone not been fooled to the point where they hadn't realized that Chzo would actually die if he crossed over to Earth. He wasn't intending to cross over, anyway -- he was actually trying to get a New Prince. And he succeeded. After all the deaths, trauma and general misery, nobody was expecting Chzo to actually win in the end.
  • Shadow Hearts is filled with these things. The Final Boss of the first game, Meta-God, is a Sufficiently Advanced Alien with a moderate resemblance to Cthulhu crossbred with a horse, and is beyond human reasoning. Covenant sets up Amon, one of Yuri's strongest Fusions from the first game (second to Seraphic Radiance), as part of a triumvirate of eldritch horrors, opposed and matched by Asmodeus and Astaroth.
  • Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem takes one of the most interesting twists with this trope: the most powerful Ancient, Mantorok the Corpse God, is actually mildly fond of humanity, even serving as a fertility god in a small village in Cambodia. He's ultimately responsible for the main character's destruction of the "evil" Ancients, using the Roivas family to kill three of the other Ancients in three separate timelines, and then merged those timelines together, and he's probably the only abomination in the Eternal Darkness games to ever even come close to being good.
  • In Drakengard, The World Is Always Doomed because the gods are not just evil, but also composed entirely of Eldritch Abominations. There are not slithering masses of tentacles that cause insanity by their very sight, but something very morbid.
    • And they're not just restricted to one dimension either! Their very presence in Shinjuku in Ending E causes such horrifying destruction to that world (due to a supernatural disease they brought with them) that humanity is driven to near-extinction, AKA the world of NieR. Which itself has more than its share of abominations as a result.
    • What Caim's sister comes back as in Ending B probably counts as well.
  • Warcraft 3 introduced a faction of vaguely Lovecraftian entities, the Faceless, presided over by a stock Eldritch Abomination called the Forgotten One. They were pretty easy to kill, though.
    • Warcraft also features the Old Gods (of which the Faceless are servants), which are basically Shout-Outs to Lovecraftian entities. They are behind some of the truly nastier fellows who originated in Azeroth, such as: corrupting Neltharion into Deathwing along with his entire dragonflight; corrupting Queen Azshara, the most powerful Night Elf sorceress; and creating the Naga, the silithid, the qiraji, and the nerubians. They're also the (partial) creators of Humans, some Giants, Dwarves, Gnomes and Troggs by use of their parasitic weapon, the Curse of Flesh, designed to make its targets more like them and less like the original seed races.
      • However, one Old God has been killed by mortals. The raid boss encounter with C'thun takes place after he had gotten his ass kicked by the godlike Titans so badly that they thought he was dead, leaving players to face him with only a fraction of his full power. Apparently, the remaining Old Gods pulled the fun trick of tying their existence to Azeroth - meaning that if they die, they take Azeroth down with them. There is the question of whether they can even be truly killed regardless; they are said to exist "outside the cycle" of life and death, and even though C'thun is technically dead, it was still able to mutate and transform Cho'Gall into a monstrosity.
    • The Faceless return in World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King in the form of three Forgotten Ones and Herald Volazj, who are very Lovecraftian in appearance. The Herald periodically causes the player characters to go insane and fight one another. The power behind the Faceless, not to mention all sorts of other weirdness in Northrend, seems to be an Old God named Yogg-Saron (not to be confused with Yog'Sothoth, of course). Just Yogg-Saron's existence beneath the lands drove creatures to madness and its very blood is forged in to equipment for arming the armies of undead in Northrend. When Yogg-Saron was fought as a raid boss after a content patch, he is able to drive characters insane and make the entire raid hallucinate about past events, true to the trope. Despite this, within twenty four hours he'd met the fate of all raid bosses, though it required the aid of four previously corrupted guardians that must be slain. The battle without their aid is considered to be one of the hardest in game and was even outright dismissed as 'mathematically impossible' on initial inspection.
    • With the final major content release, N'Zoth hasn't appeared in person but it has been revealed that the corruption of Deathwing was so extensive that, after tearing off his elementium plates, he transforms into something very like an Old God - complete with a spell that can destroy the entire world.
    • Cataclysm also features Iso'rath, a gigantic Old God spawned monstrosity in the Twilight Highlands that consists of a giant pit of a maw in the ground and numerous spiky tentacles. Though it's not actually much of a challenge to kill through a series of quests, it is theoretically a lot nastier than most opponents; being inside it puts you in danger of being digested, and in one of the quests you will actually fail to survive its inner defenses and be plunged into a "nightmare" where you are likewise unable to stop the world from being destroyed by the Big Bad.
  • The Elder God of Legacy of Kain fame claims to be an omnipotent demigod, existing beyond any casual interpretations of time and space as "The Engine Of Life" that turns "The Wheel Of Fate", and physically manifests himself as an enormous mass of eyeballs and tentacles. It is eventually speculated by the protagonists that he is little more than a parasite who feeds on the souls of the dead, masquerading as an omnipotent god to strike fear into the hearts of his servants. Oh, and he's voiced by the late Tony Jay.
  • The Roguelike Incursion has among its pantheon Kysul, the Watcher Beneath the Waves - an unspeakably ancient and foreign being from a long-dead world, keeper of eldritch mind-shattering secrets, whose mere form is so alien that it can cause insanity in the unprepared. In a spectacular subversion of the expected attitudes of such a creature, it is also strongly Lawful Good.
  • In most Final Fantasy games, the final boss appears as an Eldritch Abomination at some point.
    • Chaos from the original Final Fantasy is an eldritch demonic being created by an endless time loop.
    • Cloud of Darkness from Final Fantasy III: Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
    • Zeromus in Final Fantasy IV is more or less the Anthropomorphic Personification of hatred, borne from the soul of an evil wizard. And he looks like this.
    • Final Fantasy V:
      • Exdeath is just plain is the part normally, as he was born from an aggregate of evil souls sealed into a sacred tree, and later becomes an embodiment of The Void. He really looks it in his ultimate Tree from the final battle, and then during the last stages as Neo Exdeath.
      • Those nameless... things that lurk below the ocean floor.
    • Kefka from Final Fantasy VI actually subverts this, even after absorbing the power of the Warring Triad - however, as the Final Boss, he stands atop a large tower of human flesh and organs whose floors represent the levels in Dante's Divine Comedy.
    • Final Fantasy VII:
    • Final Fantasy IX:
      • Necron, AKA "The Darkness of Eternity"/"Eternal Darkness" in Japanese releases, fits this to a T, with the effect being accentuated by Nightmare Fuel scenery and music. It's essentially the embodiment of death itself, and appears as a pale blue otherworldly being with a "skinless" humanoid torso and a mask-like face, with two arm-like limbs that taper off into tentacles with stingers at the ends; it is fought as the game's Final Boss, and the 20th Anniversary Ultimania describes it as "a being awakened by Kuja's fear, despair, and hatred, which called out to it as he learned of his mortality, just as his ambitions were within reach". Necron concludes from Kuja's actions that all life exists to seek death (as Kuja would not have struggled so much against the concept otherwise), and seeks to revert everything to perpetual oblivion, thus removing both life and the need to fear death.
      • Also, there's Bonus Boss Ozma. It's a spherical Energy Being of otherworldly origin, found within an "eidolon cave", and its true nature is unknown.
      • For a less boss-ish enemy, the Mistodons. Giant, undead... bug things... with creepy yellow eyes that flash in alternating patterns giving them an unearthly machine-like feel, and they come out in droves to attack Alexandria.
    • Final Fantasy X:
      • Sin is a giant monster the size of an entire city that emerges from the depths of the ocean to completely annihilate all settlements larger than small villages at random intervals and terrorizes Spira for a thousand years. Even if it is defeated by a High Summoner by sacrificing themselves and their friends, it returns a few years later by reincarnating from the body of the High Summoner's closest friend to continue its rampage. Sin leaves swarms of smaller monsters in its path and everyone who survives coming into contact with its toxins (fortunately) suffers from massive memory loss. And apparently it can wipe out entire armies by causing distortions of space.
      • Yu Yevon and The Final Aeon can qualify as well. Yu Yevon is the still lingering sentiment of a long dead summoner who frequently possesses Aeons for the purpose of destroying the world and is the unholy will powering Sin. The Final Aeon, while benevolent (usually) is hellishly powerful, and its warped form crafted from the loving sacrifice of a Guardian for their Summoner. An example is Seymour's Anima, whose domain is pain.
    • Final Fantasy XI brings back Atomos, everyone's favorite inter-dimensional nightmare from V and IX. This time, it is actually quite capable of devouring an entire timeline
    • The world of Ivalice in Final Fantasy XII is so heavily populated with them, it's a wonder anyone is still scared at this point. All of the summons are varying degrees of this, as well as the final boss of the sequel DS game, the Occuria...
      • The Esper Famfrit was apparently a cloudlike being before the gods shoved him into a suit of armor with spikes inside.
    • The Fal'Cie from Final Fantasy XIII are also this, looking for the most part like bizarre machine-things.
    • In Final Fantasy Tactics, practically every major enemy in the game transforms into one of these at some point in the game. One of these Eldritch Abominations, Wiegraf/Belias, even fills in the game's role of That One Boss. And the final boss is one from an innocent little girl.
    • Xagor of SaGa 3.[context?]
  • The Elder Scrolls has a lot, and the vagueness surrounding the franchise's intentionally contradictory lore only serves to make them all the more unknowable and mind-breaking:
    • At the very peak of the series' sorting algorithm of otherworldly beings are Anu and Padomay. Calling them gods isn't quite accurate: they're more or less primal forces that serve as the embodiments of Stasis and Change, and their interplay within the Void gave birth to the universe and with it, Creation. When Padomay tried to destroy Creation, the blood spilled by their resulting fight is suggested to have created the Aedra and the Daedra in some texts, while most sources unanimously agree that the fight ended with Anu and Padomay being removed from time itself, ensuring that their struggle could never threaten Creation again.
    • In a series full of weird cosmic horrors, Sithis easily takes the cake. Later games attempted to pass him off as a more traditional god of death, but the game's backstory reveals that he is actually a great void, the undying soul of a dead primordial force that is the antithesis of all things and worshipped by his followers as the embodiment of chaos and change. Some even claim that Sithis Is Not, or in other words is the very concept of "Is Not" itself. There are other hints that he could be the aformentioned Padomay, or at the very least an aspect of him.
    • The Daedric Princes appear to be at least heavily influenced by this concept. They are extradimensional beings said to be born from the spilled blood of Padomay, one of the universe's dead creators, and are alien beyond human understanding in both morality and form, though they often [[A Form You Are Comfortable With|take a humanoid (if not outright human) form to deal with mortals.] .How they feel about the mortal races varies from prince to prince; many enjoy being worshiped, and some just enjoy toying with mortals' lives for their own amusement. Particularly malicious ones have sought to subjugate the plane of Mundus itself and absorb it into their own hellish planes of reality. But all of them have demonstrated a willingness to reward mortals they find particularly helpful, loyal, or amusing.
      • Hermaeus Mora is freaky even by Daedra standards and never bothers with a palatable humanoid form. Often appearing as a vast expanse of eyeballs and tentacles, and on one occasion a swirling vortex of chaos and darkness, he's a seeker of forbidden knowledge who offers forbidden knowledge of his own to any mortals willing to serve him, which risks breaking the minds of those who delve too deeply into it. According to Mora, he himself is forbidden knowledge incarnate, specifically the living incarnation of rejected concepts and ideas from the creation of reality. Or in other words, a sentient rough draft of existence itself!
      • Namira's sphere of influence covers many things mortalkind finds revolting on a deep instinctual level. Cannibalism? Vermin? Decay? The diseased and disfigured? She's the god of all those and more thanks to her ultimate role being that of the Prince of the Ancient Darkness, the primal fears of mortals given shape. She's also got ties to the aforementioned Sithis, and is said in some obscure texts to be a piece of the Void that broke off and gained sentience.
    • While entirely benevolent as opposed to the far more unpredictable Daedra, the Aedra worshipped by the denizens of Tamriel (save for Talos/Tiber Septim) are just as alien and unknowable as their cousins, if not moreso. Like the Daedra they are said to have been born from the spilled blood of Anu and Padomay, but unlike them they sacrificed their power and possibly even their lives to create Mundus, meaning that they cannot directly interact with it and can only subtly influence it. The latter theory adds to their eldritch nature because it postulates that they're still able to function due to "dreaming they are alive", somehow subconsciously ignoring their own deaths to do so. And the weirdness doesn't stop there: while the Daedra have personalities and roles that are easy to pin down, the Aedra are much harder to comprehend thanks to embodying so many natural laws of Mundus at once that they manifest as aspects with their own personalities, leading to wildly different interpretations of the same deity across various religions. Official lore also states that the planets occupying the infinite void of space outside of Nirn are the bodies and planes of the Aedra themselves, filtered through mortal eyes that can't comprehend what they're looking at.
    • Don't be fooled by their mundane appearances, because Hist Trees aren't ordinary trees. They're a hivemind of impossibly ancient and sentient trees that are quite possibly the sole survivors of the twelve worlds that existed before the creation of Nirn, and are the ruling body of the Argonians of Black Marsh. They created the Argonians in the first place by influencing primitive lizards into drinking their sap, which has other strange properties such as altering any lifeforms that drink it, driving the drinkers insane, and allowing them to communicate with the Hist themselves. They also possess unfathomably deep knowledge from all points in time, ranging from the dawn of creation to a limited understanding of events that have yet to transpire.
    • They don't look too different in comparison to your stereotypical Western dragons, but Elder Scrolls dragons aren't fire-breathing lizards so much as they are divine beings with a connection to Akatosh himself. They're immortal creatures that can't be permanently killed unless their souls are absorbed, and find mortality to be so alien of a concept that it hurts them if they're forced to comprehend it. They also don't breathe fire, but instead speak it into existence, with the dragon language giving them all sorts of other fantastic powers that include becoming ethereal and greatly weakening anyone they fight.
      • Alduin, one of the most powerful dragons in the series, cranks this up even further. He is either the firstborn son of Akatosh, an aspect of him, or Akatosh himself, and that's ignoring the likely explanation that he's all three at once somehow. His powers go further beyond his weaker brethren, and include being able to raise dragons from the dead as well as travelling directly to Sovngarde, the Nordic afterlife, and devour the souls of the honored dead to get even stronger. His role is meant to be that of a living apocalypse that plays into the world's cycle of death and renewal, hence his moniker "The World-Eater".
    • Several Eldritch Abominations called the Deep Ones live in the caverns under the Imperial town of Hackdirt, and have most of its populace under their thrall. They seem to require or enjoy ritualistic sacrifice and have their followers kidnap innocent people as part of their religious rites, with said followers having seriously off-looking faces and being incapable of showing emotions beyond primal bloodlust. Some context clues hint that they're connected to the Daedra in some way, but others hint at a connection to the grotesque Sload race. Yet they could easily be some horrible unknown threat unlike anything seen on Nirn: we never encounter them, and only have their distant, ominous roars from deep in the unexplorable reaches of the Hackdirt Caverns to go off of.
    • In The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, the horrors of the Sixth House are twisted, disease-ridden abominations that were once the followers of Dagoth Ur before he twisted them into living conduits of the horrific Corpus plague. Dagoth Ur himself is also this, having ascended from a mortal Dunmer to a dangeorus godlike being thanks to the powers of the dead god Lorkhan's heart.
    • Numidium is one of the mechanical variety. It's a thousand-foot tall robot powered by the heart of a dead god, granting it abilities far beyond that of any mere machine. Just being active allows it to passively warp reality to unimaginable extents, such as allowing multiple mutually exclusive events to all happen at once, or remove anything from existence just by refuting it. In fact, some sources believe it to be the embodiment of refutation as a concept, which may or may not have allowed it to play a role in the mysterious disappearance of the Dwemer, its creators.
  • Pokémon:
    • Missingno. and its glitchy ilk fit this on a gameplay level: they are essentially junk data given form, and many of them warp or alter music, graphics and save data, possess bizarre dimensions ('M is 23 feet tall, and Missingno. itself is more than three thousand pounds), and can induce game crashes. It's a common speculation that In-Universe, they might as well be Primordial Chaos to the player character.
    • In terms of canon examples, Giratina is able to counteract Dialga and Palkia, which are which are Eldritch beings in their own right due to being the draconic incarnations of time and space. It lives in the Distortion World, a dimension where time and space do not work like they should. It can travel to different universes, and warp reality. There's a good reason why people compare it to Yog-Sothoth.
    • To a lesser extent, Groudon, Kyogre and Rayquaza. Ancient, slumbering entities responsible for the enviroment. They're millions of years old, and when the former two are awoken, they start to cause the end of the world, requiring the third to intervene and set things right. As Expies of the Behemoth, Leviathan and Ziz, who are arguably cosmic horrors on their own, they may very well be Pokemon Great Old Ones to the Creation Trio's Outer Gods.
    • Spiritomb is a lot more alien than most Ghost types, since it technically isn’t a singular being. Instead, it's a swirling, malevolent Hive Mind made of 108 wicked human souls trapped in a special keystone. While not a legendary Pokémon, the methods used to encounter them in most games are weird, such as interacting with a certain amount of people with its keystone in your pocket, or exiting a menu while in a room that it's said to haunt.
    • Arceus, the creator of the universe and THE Top God of the Pokémon pantheon. While a benevolent and divine creature, it's hinted to be something far more unknowable and alien given that it's said to have created the universe with "one thousand arms" that it doesn't have, and puts the player through a disorienting and terrifying Mind Screw that may or may not rewrite the universe just from birthing a new member of the Creation Trio. It also lives in a pocket dimension above Dialga and Palkia’s summoning grounds, and all music associated with it just sounds... wrong.
    • Darkrai is a Living Shadow that traps its unfortunate victims in painful and deadly nightmares that slowly Mind Rape them to death. Whether it's a malicious Freddy Krueger wannabe or a peaceful creature unintentionally hurting people is unknown (with its appearances in the franchise going back and forth between interpretations), but the sole consistent trait of these nightmares is that they can be triggered passively just from Darkrai being too close to a sleeping person.
    • Unown are an entire race of these, being sentient letters of the alphabet that are weak individually, but are capable of reality-bending feats as a group. Because they help Arceus give birth to a member of the Creation Trio in the Johto remakes' Sinjoh Ruins event, they might possibly be the aforementioned 1000 arms that helped it create reality as we know it. It’s also worth noting that in their first appearance, being in their presence causes your radio to play some freaky transmissions, and upon being summoned at the Ruins of Alph, the tourists milling around suddenly vanish into thin air. Either they got spooked and fled, or something far worse happened to them...
    • Xerneas and Yveltal are the living incarnations of life and death respectively, and are otherworldly to a T. Xerneas breaks the usual mold of cute, cuddly Fairy types and is a divine, imposing stag who can grant eternal life to those it deems worthy of it. Yveltal, on the other hand, is a ghastly vulture who can suck the life out of people, Pokemon, and the very Earth itself, and upon dying will steal the life force of everything in its immediate vicinity.
      • Eldritch as they are, neither Xerneas nor Yveltal hold a candle to the third member of their trio: Zygarde. While Xerneas and Yveltal at least have recognizably animalistic forms, Zygarde’s status as a hive mind collective of tiny cell-like creatures makes it a lot weirder. Depending on the amount of Zygarde Cells gathering around a "Core", it can take on the appearance of a dog, a bizarre alien serpent, or a hulking monstrosity that looks like some sort of alien Gundam. No matter the form, it’s a hyper-vigilant protector of nature that will eliminate any and all threats to the ecosystem with extreme prejudice. Thankfully, it's an otherwise benevolent and gentle creature.
    • Hoopa may look the part of a mischievous imp, but its true form is that of a gargantuan monstrosity that can warp reality and casually phase into and out of other dimensions, thanks to its power over rings that serve as hyperspace portals.
    • The Ultra Beasts of Pokémon Sun and Moon and their Ultra second versions are only barely recognizable as Pokémon, and are interdimensional beings whose appearances and powers are unlike those of even the most Eldritch of their fellow Abominations. While all of them are fairly Lovecraftian, a select few are especially so:
      • Nihilego looks like an oddly humanoid jellyfish, but is inexplicably a Rock/Poison type instead of anything even remotely aquatic. It secretes a venom that turns victims into rabidly insane husks of their former selves, and drives the conflict behind Pokémon Sun and Moon by turning the once kind and loving Lusamine into a narcissistic sociopath who terrorizes her children and innocent Pokémon alike.
      • Xurkitree is a massive, dancing treelike creature made entirely out of electrical cables, and has no face whatsoever. It can also grow to the size of mountains, as seen by the gigantic Xurkitree hanging out in the background of their home dimension.
      • Blacephalon vaguely resembles some kind of abstract, faceless, candy-colored alien clown, and has a Fire/Ghost typing that's every bit as non-indicative as Nihilego's Rock/Poison typing. Its head isn't connected to its body, and serves as its weapon of choice by doubling as a powerful regenerating bomb that it loves to toss at its enemies.
      • Serving as something of an unofficial "leader", Guzzlord is a gluttonous Draconic Demon that acts as a living black hole. Its monstrous appetite allows it to devour anything, whether it be people, buildings, or nuclear waste, and convert it all into energy. It never leaves any waste behind, and is hinted to have been created by nuclear disasters that devastated its home dimension.
  • In Kingdom of Loathing, the "...att008 Crimbo" event resulted in the Crimbomination. Just look at that thing. It's also about as unbeatable as a typical Eldritch Abomination, no punching out Cthulhu here. To hammer in the Lovecraftian overtones, it's made clear that the guard that was assigned to the factory has been driven completely insane just from looking at it.
    • This is also a rare case where the Eldritch Abomination was created by human hands penguin flippers. The Crimbo factory was taken over forcefully by the Penguin Mafia, and the Crimbo Elves were forced to work in a factory powered by grimicite, which is highly radioactive and caused the elves to mutate. After curing a lot of elves of their mutation, the remaining mutated elves fused together to create the Crimbomination. The Kingdom's adventurers were able to weaken it to the point where the penguins could seal it in a gigantic crate.
    • Unsurprisingly to anyone who knows KoL penguins, they released it next year at the end of Crimbo 2009. The player community brainwashed it into becoming Father Crimbo, and it and its twisted presents will likely be the focus of the 2010 event.
    • There is also the Squamous Gibberer, a fragment of horrible monster from beyond reality who whispers horrible secrets and paranoia-inducing mutterings straight into your mind. Who happens to be a pretty useful familiar.
  • In fan-made Free Space 2 campaign Transcend, the Big Bad is a being known only as "the Transcendant", who distorts the laws of reality itself just by being there, and unconsciously evokes human souls to play out particular roles. It turns out that the Transcendant was originally human, and was somehow expelled from the physical universe, growing into an Eldritch Abomination, then attempting to return home only to very nearly break the universe in the process. He did none of this on purpose either, being pretty well-insane by the time he attempts to re-enter reality. All you hear from him directly is his static-broken voice over your radio begging for help... and thanking you when you finally kill him.
  • City of Heroes:
    • Rularuu, a Planet Eater who was only defeated by banishment to the Shadow Shard, a weird, twisty dimension. His minions are things like giant eyeballs with teeth and giants made of crystal, he commands reflections of the inhabitants of the worlds he's devoured, and you never face him directly—just fragments of his personality, which in and of themselves are ridiculously powerful archvillains (except for the heroic fragment who helps you).
    • Hamidon, a giant single-cell monster that is the largest Giant Monster in the game and leader of the Devouring Earth faction, may count. Though it is implied that he was once a person that became what he is through a combination of science and magic, there are some people that will swear (rightly so) that he is a god. (He was actually referred to as 'a dark god' in a press release, though the writer later admitted they Did Not Do the Research.)
      • The Devoured, humans contaminated by the Devouring Earth, are smaller, wingless versions of Cthulhu, while Hamidon itself is recognized in the fluff as arguably the greatest threat to all other life on Earth in a world filled with superbeings, gods, demons, and aliens, and is known in-game as the most powerful enemy yet, who you should only try to tackle in 50-character raids. The Praetorian version of Hamidon is even more powerful, having taken over most of the surface of the Earth.
    • Mot, a god of death buried under Dark Astoria who becomes active in late-game Incarnate-level content. It's large and non-Euclidean enough that you never actually see more than parts of it (including the inside of its stomach in one particular trial).
  • The Myrmecols from the UFO series are a pretty-much-textbook example: they're enormous, spacefaring creatures with the power to control the populations of entire planets on a regular basis as part of their reproductive cycle.
  • The Necromorphs and Leviathan of Dead Space.[context?]
  • The Reapers in Mass Effect are massive mechanical beings from beyond the edges of the galaxy. Whenever galactic civilization becomes advanced enough, they wake and wipe it out. Just one of them is able to wipe out nearly the entire Citadel fleet and it wasn't even trying to fight back, and is only defeated because Shepard is able to distract it. True to the classic Eldritch Abomination style, the Reapers appear to be giant space cephalopods.
    • There's also the Thorian from the first game.[context?]
    • In Mass Effect 2, you can board a "dead" Reaper. But even dead gods can still dream...

Chandana said the ship was dead. We trusted him. He was right. But even a dead god can dream. A god -- a real god -- is a verb. Not some old man with magic powers. It's a force. It warps reality just by being there. It doesn't have to want to. It doesn't have to think about it. It just does. That's what Chandana didn't get. Not until it was too late. The god's mind is gone but it still dreams. He knows now. He's tuned in on our dream. If I close my eyes I can feel him. I can feel every one of us.

  • The Reapers often claim that their minds are incomprehensible to organics, and that Reapers think on a level so high that organics cannot even begin to imagine the thoughts a Reaper has. This is apparently not just arrogant boasting: in Mass Effect 3, Legion is at one point in direct contact with a Reaper mind. Despite being a synthetic intelligence itself, and therefore probably closer to the Reapers than any organic mind, it admits that even a single Reaper thought was overwhelming, infinitely complex, and beyond even the geth's comprehension.

"You touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding... you cannot even begin to comprehend the nature of our existence."

  • Also in Mass Effect 3: the being or beings that built the Reapers, the Citadel and the Mass Effect relays and is controlling them. Or maybe it's God? It's confusing.
  • In Eversion, a major character is one. In the bad ending, she eats you. In the good ending, you're one, too..
  • The Smoky Progg in the first Pikmin, a horrific cloud of evil that trails black death smoke behind it; when you kill it, it bursts into flames and sinks into the Earth without a trace.
    • The Waterwraith boss from Pikmin 2 is anchored in another dimension and being capable of causing fear to the point of insanity.
  • In this flash game, you get to play as one.
  • Custom Robo has the Big Bad Rahu. Originally an intangible force of destruction that annihilated anything it came across, and very nearly caused The End of the World as We Know It, it for some reason merged itself with a children's toy (the eponymous Robo). That turned out to be a very stupid move: while Rahu is still pretty powerful, it is also defeatable in that form.
  • The Dark One from Quest for Glory 4 is one of these, and an obvious Cthulhu reference.
  • The eponymous town of Silent Hill may be considered one, while the God its cult is trying to raise definitely qualifies. Though, according to the Book of Lost Memories, there is a good chance that said god is also just a monster manifested by the town itself, according to whomever has unwittingly influenced the environment.
  • Several entities in Super Robot Wars fit this category, such as Einst, the inter-dimensional race that claims to have watched humanity from the beginning. Now they wish to "reset" humanity by choosing a new Adam and Eve. They also appear in Endless Frontier, and claim to be the ones who created the titular world, by creating the Crossgate dimensional portal and turning the world into several mini-dimensions separated by a dimensional wall. It turn out that Einst's goal is to return to the original world, "the world of silence". One thing that makes them very strange is they appear to be made of some kind of material that's both organic and metallic.
    • Super Robot Wars D has Perfectio, king of the Ruina Energy Beings from another dimension. Since Perfectio feeds on despair, the Ruina try to turn Earth into his cattle farm by sealing Earth in another dimension. While it's possible to destroy the Ruina, Perfectio is immortal and can only be stopped by sealing the gate to its home dimension.
    • Super Robot Wars K has Lu Kobol, an evil being defeated by Crusians long ago. The Crusians even hid Lu Kobol's fragments in planets across the galaxy to ensure it won't return easily. Yet Lu Kobol resurrects as Energy Beings and seeks to reform itself by destroying every planet that hides its fragments.
    • Super Robot Wars Z mentions Taichi as the entity that controls the fate of all universes by manipulating the Origin Law. It is also the one that created twelve Spheres that grant their holder immense power and limited access to the Origin Law. However, the holder will slowly lose their humanity in exchange for said power. Taichi is a concept that originates from Taoism with some Mind Screw-level properties - see here for full details.
  • In the 3rd season of the Episodic Telltale Sam and Max games, Yog-Sototh - who looks supciously like Cthulhu and has many of the attributes of a cosmic horror - makes several appearences throughout the season. In episode 304, he is actually seen. Then there's Junior, who is even more fearsome, and Maxthulhu, when Max's psychic powers combine with Junior's Taint.
  • Knights of the Old Republic II:
    • Darth Nihilus Was Once a Man, but through sheer hatred and hunger became effectively a vampire feeding off of Force energy, wiping out (nearly) all life on at least one planet by his sheer presence, and it is implied that he would eventually grow in power to the point where could kill everything.
    • The Jedi Council consider The Exile to be one of these. The real reason she was exiled in the first place was because they were terrified of her nature as a Force black hole.
  • The Mask of the Betrayer expansion pack for Neverwinter Nights 2 lets you create one by stuffing a legion of evil and insane murdered souls into the withered husk of a dead bear god. And then the absolute "Evil-With-A-Capital-E" ending has you become a soul-devouring abomination capable of unmaking gods.
  • In Jade Empire, following the destruction of Dirge and the desecration of the Water Dragon's body and spirit, the agonized spirits of those who died in battle were trapped in an unending war between worlds. The resulting spiritual wound in the world was so great that the Nameless Evil, a purely malevolent force that feeds on the mental anguish of the dead, growing ever stronger, was able to find its way into the world. The Water Dragon and other gods had no power over it, because it came from outside of the world and it had no place within the world, no role in the grand order that governs mortals and gods alike.
    • There is mention of Death's Hand outgrowing his form and becoming a monstrosity in the Closed Fist epilogue.
  • In Xenogears, a being named Deus strongly exemplifies this, even looking irreconcilably bizarre to boot. (Incidentally, Deus is located aboard an interstellar spaceship named Eldridge.)
  • By comparison, in Xenosaga it is believed that God Is Evil and one of these... but then it turns out that God is actually benevolent. It's just that His actual form drives humans mad.
  • Wild ARMs:
    • Ragu O Ragula, a monster of practically unimaginable destructive power, appears in pretty much every game, and is almost always a Super Boss sealed safely out of human reach (and out of its reach of humanity). Unseal it at your own terror.
    • ...Well, might be scarier if it weren't a constantly recurring boss in the series. In Wild ARMs 2, Ragu O Ragula can be defeated using only Brad. What does that make the titular Hero of Slayheim?
    • Wild ARMs 2 also has the Planet Eater "Encroaching Parallel Universe" Kuiper Belt which qualifies in a decisively terrifying way, complete with music that perfectly captures "too terrible to exist in my universe".
  • The Heartless of the Kingdom Hearts series qualify while still being cute as a button. Their ultimate goal is to devour the hearts of people and entire worlds and turn them into beings like themselves, and they can never be truly defeated because they come from the darkness in people's hearts. In a minor subversion, it's quite possible that the Heartless were only a minor threat until Ansem's research turned them into a veritable army of darkness.
    • It's later revealed that pureblood Heartless were always around and can exist in harmony with the world. It wasn't until emblem heartless were thrown into the mix as a result of Ansem's experiments that they became a world eating heart stealing menace, and as a result Nobodies came into being as well.
    • Their counterparts the Nobodies fit just as well, being the remnants of a powerful being absorbed by the Heartless, they are beings that stand at the exact edge of existence itself. They are essentially human-shaped voids, but unlike their dark cousins, retain their human memories and intellect to properly use their new power. You also play as one for a game and a bit.
      • Unversed are created from the dark emotions in people as a result of the laws of the world becoming unbalanced by the creation of a being of pure darkness, Vanitas. Just Vanitas being near someone with negative thoughts will spawn an Unversed creature and he can also generate them on his own. They are "Unversed" because they are unversed in the complete ways of the world being composed only of dark emotions such as anger or jealousy.
    • Xion is halfway between this and Humanoid Abomination. And also one of the few generally nice examples. Mostly. While generally humanoid, their appearance changes based on the memories of the observer, having been described as male, female and puppet-like by different individuals.
  • Cubia From the .hack// series is a computer program that fits this bill within the realm of The World, it very much qualifies. For one thing, it's a mass of purple tree-root-looking things with a very creepy skull for a head that can materialize anywhere it chooses, and it's even referred to as "The Anti-Existence" once or twice. All of the other AIs running about seem to have some purpose that they're trying to accomplish, but Cubia pops up out of nowhere, and even with a somewhat vague explanation of what it is, no one in the series seems to be able to explain what its goal or purpose is, nor how it was created. Oh, and it's unkillable, save for one very specific method, one the heroes are understandably reluctant to use. Throughout the series, it's specifically said (usually by Helba) that Cubia is the anti-existence of the shadow bracelet/the avatars (which are basically the same thing in a different form). As long as they exist, Cubia will exist as well.
  • The unfortunate researchers of the Black Mesa Research Facility from the Half-Life series by Valve discovered a border world, Xen, which all teleportation must be routed through. This border world is ruled by Nihilanth, a monstrous being that looks like a warped, legless fetus, which Gordon Freeman has to take on and destroy. By default, it is invincible: any damage dealt to it is instantly regenerated unless the crystals supplying said power is destroyed first. Once that's done, enough injury will open the creature's skull like a flower, revealing a huge portal inside.
  • The Flood of Halo, a Hive Minded parasitic entity of such ancient, alien power that even the near god-like Forerunners were ultimately forced to sterilize an entire galaxy to put them down... and even then, they eventually rose up again, with the Gravemind calmly pointing out the second time it is being destroyed that this victory will simply delay the inevitable.
    • Heck, the Gravemind on its own is a vast, immortal, reincarnating intelligence. Its physical form is a vast Flood hive full of tentacles and Flood combat forms. And even if this body is destroyed it can rebuild itself if but one Flood Spore survives, it doesn't even have to be from that hive specifically. Any Flood under its control will do. And if that nigh invincibility isn't enough the Gravemind also has telepathic abilities which it can project across interstellar distances. Factor in its love of trochaic heptameter and morbid metaphors and you have one creepy abomination.
    • The Prisoner from the Cryptum novel. Described as a huge, misshapen humanoid with four arms and compound eyes on an indescribably ugly face. And to top it all off, it's kind created the Flood.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog video games:
    • Dark Gaia, a Sealed Evil in a Can released by Eggman in Sonic Unleashed, is a sentient force of nature who helped create the universe (by destroying the old one, but meh). Since the "stars aren't right" this time around though, it breaks up into various Heartless-esque critters - the Balance Between Good and Evil causes his Good Counterpart to be released as well, and he helps Sonic seal Gaia up again.
    • There's also a case for the Black Arms: Starfish Aliens with a fairly horrific reproductive cycle, a deadly toxin that can wipe out an entire planet and an innate talent for Chaos Control apparently hard coded into their DNA. And then, of course, Black Doom's ability to turn one of his eyes into a literal Starfish Alien.
    • Chaos from Sonic Adventure. However, it is usually benevolent, but was driven to evil by Pachacamac's Moral Event Horizon. It turns good again at the end of the game.
    • There's also examples from Sonic the Hedgehog (2006): Iblis, a massive beast of destruction made only out of fire; Mephiles, a gasseous-liquid mind of complete corruption and shadowy powers; and Solaris, an interdimensional being trying to destroy reality.
    • In Sonic Generations, there's the Time Eater. While most of its presence in the game is as a roboticized/cybernetic vehicle operated by Robotnik and Eggman, Eggman reveals its natural purpose when he discovered it is to erase time, making most of what the Eggmen have it do already a natural ability. Between that, its looks, and the dimension the game takes place in, as well as the location of the last boss fight...
    • The End from Sonic Frontiers feels like something straight out of the Cthulhu Mythos. A sentient void with no true form that appears differently depending on people's perception of death and possessing unfathomable motives for the atrocities it commits, The End wiped out the Ancients and countless other civlizations, and is said to have been impossible for Super Sonic (who regularly fights eldritch abominations and wins) to defeat in its prime. Its Motive Rant during the final boss fight, assuming it isn't all arrogant boasting, implies that it's further beyond the likes of Perfect Dark Gaia, the Time Eater, and even Solaris in power, and that the moon-like incarnation of it that Sonic and Sage fight is just that: one incarnation. It's doubtful it can be truly killed at all, meaning that it likely hasn't been defeated so much as it's been forced to delay its omnicidal plans for a bit.
  • Sanity: Aiken's Artifact has individuals given psychic abilities. However, these abilities cause them to become insane if they are overused, and were given through an artifact that was planted by a Sanity Devourer, who will harvest a planet once psychic abilities becomes commonplace enough for easy eating.
  • In Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis, the main character's wish-granting power given "physical form" comes close. It was given a Bonus Boss Palette Swap called "Pain", described this way:

The strongest, worst thing in the world. A concentrated mass of power, this being hints that the end of the world is near...

  • The Soulless Ones of Lusternia. Prototypes of the eventual template used to create the Elder Gods, they were born without souls and exist solely to devour - Gods, infant Gods, mortals, nature spirits, animals, even each other. They imbibe the power of those they devour, making them stronger with every meal. By the present day only five remain, but those five have devoured so much of reality that they can no longer be destroyed, unless you want to take down the universe with them, so they're sealed away. For the time being...
  • Baal in Disgaea is just as old as the universe, absurdly powerful and immortal.
    • It's implied that the most ridiculously powerful of Disgaea demons start to turn into these. The true Overlord Zenon was becoming a completely inhuman (so to speak) Omnicidal Maniac, and had to turn to Reincarnation for a way out.
    • This is a surprise in Disgaea 3 when you realize that Mao looks a whole lot more like his father than initially implied.
    • Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten has you say hello to Death/Extermination Submersible Combat Organism—aka Desco, the cutest widdle eldritch abomination that ever wanted to be the Final Boss. Of course, just because she's Moe doesn't mean she's incapable of turning you into a gibbering mass of fear and insanity, if her attacks are anything to go by.
  • Prototype has the Blacklight Virus. A sentient virus that consumes biomass, can shapeshift, absorbs peoples' memories, singlehandedly demolishes entire armies, and is Nigh Invulnerable (even a nuke couldn't kill it in the end). Even other viral monsters end up on its menu. And it's the protagonist.
    • There is also Elizabeth Greene, a Humanoid Abomination who looks like a normal, good-looking woman, but is basically the Blacklight Virus's beta version.
    • And there's also PARIAH. He's only mentioned, but it's implied that if he and Alex Mercer ever meet, it's The End of the World as We Know It.
    • In Prototype 2, the Blacklight Virus now has a new host: James Heller. And his powers are far more monstrous than Alex Mercer's in the first Prototype, thanks to his "tendrils" power. Whenever tendrils are involved, the result is masses of flesh dangling from the buildings with strung-up corpses caught like flies on spider silk.
  • Yume Nikki takes place entirely in a girl's demented nightmares, and it shows. Between the infamous Uboa, the screamer-like event generally known as "FACE", almost every inhabitant of the White Desert, the strange Mayincatec figures floating around beneath the floor, and the assorted other bizarre monsters inhabiting corners of her head, Madotsuki could give more than a few Cosmic Horror Story writers lessons. Whether any of them are real outside her head is a matter for Wild Mass Guessing, however.
  • The Castlevania itself is described by Alucard in Symphony as a "Creature of Chaos", explaining why the castle never looks the same. In Aria of Sorrow, it turns out that the castle spawned from the Chaotic Realm in response to the Dark Lord.
    • This series' depiction of Dracula is actually closer to this, with a dash of The Antichrist, than to a traditional vampire.
    • Legion/Granfalloon, a terrifying floating ball of screaming corpses with some sort of tentacled thing in the middle. Oh, and in some games, the corpses reanimate and attack you.
  • In Fable, the Jack of Blades and the rest of the Court may well count, given their origins lie in a realm referred to as The Void, and his form seems entirely dependent on his host body. Fable 3 introduces a new one named the Crawler.
  • The entire setting of Prey, albeit being techno-organic alien in nature. Big enough to host every level save for the introduction and ending, and never seen in its entirety. Reality-violatingly ugly as in portals, spatial anomalies and multi-directional gravity. Happens upon the Earth on one night without any warning. The hero even meets survivors who demonstrate knowledge to survive and assist him.
    • It is implied that it seeded Earth with life just so it could come back and eat everyone.
    • Even worse. They can, apparently, invade the spirit realm via portals. Although, even they are taken aback by the sudden spirit activity.
  • Metroid:
    • Metroid Prime has the sentient planet Phaaze. Among other things, it is inadvertently responsible for introducing the Starfish Alien-like Ing to normal space.
    • Phantoon. It's a ghostly... thing that inhabits abandoned ships. Its primary projectiles are eyeballs made of blue fire, it can turn invisible and intangible, it can open dark rifts and summon flying disembodied hands with eyes in their palms Phantoon itself resembles a sea creature of some sort (with Combat Tentacles, naturally) with a gaping toothy maw... which houses an eye. And no apparent throat. This creature just makes no sense - Metroid: Other M concept art shows that Phantoon has a humanoid-shaped body to go along with that tentacled head and disembodied hands. The reason the head and hands are disembodied, though, is because he pulls the common Eldritch Abomination trick of having most of his body existing in dimensions the human senses aren't built to handle.
    • Additionally, Mother Brain. She's a sentient, cyclopic spiked brain who reveals [1] a rather grotesque body as her One-Winged Angel form, as seen in Super Metroid and in the opening of Metroid: Other M.
    • Samus herself could be considered to be almost an Eldritch Abomination from the Space Pirates' perspective. Entire armies of their forces have been slain by her, she regularly shows up and wrecks their plans (usually just because they happen to be on the same planet as her actual objectives), and many of their bases, not to mention the planets said bases are on, are most likely going to explode in the near future; they've even dubbed her "The Hunter". In Echoes, the arrival of Samus on Aether shortly after Dark Samus' appearance prompted an entry into their database that boils down to "Oh fuck, there's TWO of them now!"
  • Super Mario franchise:
  • Played for Laughs in Japanese Super Mario World hack VIP MIX 2. The final boss is supposedly the creator of the game himself, who appears as a cluster of 2ch memes.
  • Gobtron.
  • In Ratchet and Clank Future A Crack In Time, you actually get a gun that opens a portal to a cosmic horror that will eat your enemies. Its name is Fred.
  • BlazBlue has The Black Beast, a horrifically powerful monster that appeared about a hundred years before the game's story kicks off, nearly destroyed the world, and turns out to be a fusion of Ragna and Nu-13 trapped in a Stable Time Loop. There's also Arakune, a crazy blob... thing who is actually a failed attempt to create The Black Beast. And of course Terumi, whose true form resembles the Anti-Spirals.
  • The Bydo in R-Type. As the instruction manual puts it: "A living weapon built with the self-replicating properties of DNA, the Bydo has physical mass, yet exhibits the properties of a wave. It diffuses easily and fills any environment it encounters. The Bydo can even interfere with, and ultimately consume, human thought itself." They can also infect and corrupt both living things and machinery. How? A Wizard Did It—no, really. They're canonically stated to have been created using both science and black magic.
  • The Serpent Riders from the Heretic and Hexen games are immensely powerful alien demons from beyond the crystal wall at the edge of normal space that slipped in when it was damaged. Only one of them really has the Cosmic Horror look, though - Korax from Hexen, who is a bizarre humanoid-reptile-Xenomorph thing. "Surely even hell would never spawn such a being." (D'Sparil looks like a cowled wizard, admittedly riding a humanoid serpent, and Eidolon like a more regular demon.)
  • The Maw has the player character guide the title character, an Extreme Omnivore that grows in size as it's fed. It can also take the physical properties of what it eats (eating a salamander-like creature makes it a lava beast and eating an electrified creature makes it firefly-like). Think of an Ugly Cute Kirby as your pet.
  • In the Quake (series), the Final Boss of the original Quake is Shub-Niggurath... not that it lives up to the name though.
  • Homeworld:
    • In the first Homeworld, there is a small Breather Level called "The Sea of Lost Souls". It takes place, fittingly, inside a proto-star nursery (giving the level a very ethereal skybox), and in it is a ship known only as the "Ghost Ship", which projects an energy field that instantly subverts your capital ships and causes them to attack anybody that comes in range. When you finally disable the field and retrieve data from it, you learn that it is millions of years old (possibly older than the proto-stars around it) before the Bentusi (powerful, ancient alien benefactors) arrive and request the information for themselves... because this ship terrifies them. You never learn anything else about the ship, in any of the games.
    • The Virus in Homeworld: Cataclysm is one of these. The local Precursors apparently picked it up in subspace and disabled their ship in an attempt to contain it. They failed, obviously.
  • The Lord of the Rings Online:
    • Players get to explore unpleasantly organic looking caverns around the nameless lake deep beneath the bridge of Khazad-Dum, caverns which are home to a mind-controlling fungus. It grows on various creatuers including orcs and trolls, reducing them to pulsing masses of green fungus erupting from their skin, almost like exposed brains. (Don't ask what the giant spiders look like under its taint; just don't.) Now consider, these abominations can be found within sight of the base of the endless stair, the deepest point reached by dwarfs, but the tunnels beneath Moria go far deeper than that. What else might be down there?
    • Also, the Nameless make some appearances when you're at very high level. They include headless creatures with fanged mouths between their shoulders, massive hulking beasts resembling lobsters gone wrong, and the Watcher in the Water. Their leader is a massive sluglike monstrosity called the Mistress of Pestilence, which has an exposed brain and multiple eyes and is also the source of the previously-mentioned fungus.
  • The Nightmare Ned video game features several shadow creatures that are responsible for Ned's nightmares.
  • Alan Wake implies that the Dark Presence is one of these - and it's trapped under Cauldron Lake, waiting for someone to set it free... Even worse: it controls a human Avatar which is also implied to be the avatar of an even worse thing.
  • The third Jak and Daxter game has the corrupted version of the Precursors, known as Dark Makers. Basically, they're Precursors that were overexposed to Dark Eco. Given the different types of Dark Makers, their resemblance to the Precursor Oracles, and the fact that Dark Daxter's form looks nothing like them, there is plenty of evidence for the popular fan theory that they're really just robots. Until official confirmation, however, they're this.
    • No love for the Metal Head Leader from Jak II?[context?]
  • In La-Mulana, one of the bosses is a giant eye monster with tentacles and a massive eye, which is reminiscent of a eldrich abomination. However, the real award goes to The Mother, who is actually the entire temple itself. It helps with the non-eulicidean geometries of the temple, not to mention the fact that the different areas have no correlation in how they are connected. Oh, and the fact that the Mother came from the sky, and created life (e.g. Us) in hopes that it would find a way to return her there.
  • Sin and Punishment: The inhabitants of Outer Space (which is apparently a separate dimension/realm/something from the space we know, which is called Inner Space) are described like this. They are not alive in any sense known to Inner Spacers, and can shapeshift to mimic anything... including entire planets. They are defeatable, but it is really not easy to do (and the only inhabitant of Outer Space we see seemingly effortlessly survives the heroes' efforts to eradicate it, though they are unaware of this). Even some of the Inner Space characters get distinctly Lovecraftian at times; see Armon Ritter of Sin and Punishment 2, particularly his final form.
  • In Bayonetta, these are usually summoned by Bayonetta to finish off bosses or Giant Mooks. These range from multieyed crows to giant worms that sound like elephants. In fact, the final boss has Bayonetta summoning Queen Sheba, perhaps the setting's equivalent to Satan, to Megaton Punch Jubileus through the entire solar system and into the sun.
    • The angels themselves count, specially Iustitia, one of the cardinal virtues, intentionally designed like a mixture of a carnivorous plant with a tentacle monster with creepy cherubic baby faces everywhere because of its moral ambivalence.
  • Devil May Cry:
    • The boss Nightmare definitely qualifies as this. Its natural form is a pile of hideous steaming goo, filled with the remains of those it has killed. It is completely invincible in this form, and constantly attempts to assimilate Dante into itself. If it succeeds, it sends Dante to a cavernous void that the enemy file says is a manifestation of Dante's subconscious fears. When the magic seals in the room are broken, it changes from its goo form to a form that can be damaged... and is also much more dangerous. This form looks like something straight out of an H. R. Giger painting. It shoots homing projectiles that are best described as demonic leeches, constantly drains your magic, and only has one weak point. However, get too close to it, and it shoots out huge spearlike appendages created from its inner core at blinding speed. The enemy file on it says it's not sure whether or not the thing is even alive, or whether it's some form of horrifying machine.
    • In Devil May Cry 2, Argosax the Chaos is this. It's a repulsive hivelike creature made from a mishmash of almost a dozen already-horrific monsters, half of which are eldritch abominations themselves!
    • In Devil May Cry 3, the second to last boss in the game also has traces of this. It is a amorphous blob with an ever changing amount of tentacle like limbs, and can summon out of itself an army of fishlike monsters that constantly close in on you. Looking at it, it is difficult to tell if it is supposed to have a face, or even a head, or perhaps several dozen.
  • StarCraft:
    • The Zerg Overmind might arguably be classed as something like this. While it's made from normal cellular matter, its "form" is nothing more than a vessel for the collective intellect of trillions of Zerg, with enough psychic power to rip open space-time with ease and bend anyone to its will. It doesn't help that it's a hideously large brain-like... thing with a great big eye reminding people of Sauron. Or that its purpose is to assimilate or exterminate everything, everywhere.
    • Starcraft II makes it into a Woobie and a Big Good by revealing that soon after its creation, another... thing corrupted it and imposed its millenia-old directive of exterminating the Xel'Naga and the Protoss (and presumably everything else). Since the Overmind was created without free will, it could only follow this directive while raging inside its own mind. Said thing, going by the names of "The Fallen One", "The Lord of The In-Between-Places" or "The Living Heart of the Void" (identified by the humans as "The KL-2 Entity"), was released from imprisonment and promoted to Big Bad of Starcraft II.
    • Word of God at BlizzCon 2010 said that "The Fallen One"/"The Dark Voice" Big Bad who altered the Overmind is NOT "The Voice in the Darkness" (and all those other names) that was freed by the humans. They are separate Eldritch Abominations. Also, it was said that the Zerg, in spite of their Woobie'd leader, are going to remain Exclusively Evil (along with Kerrigan, but that remains to be seen exactly), even though they are needed to defeat the Fallen One and his protoss-zerg Hybrids.
  • Aquaria features the Creator, who starts out safely beyond the Bishounen Line but gets more and more monstrous as the battle progresses. Some of his earlier creations also qualify on looks alone, if not on powers.
  • Epic Mickey:
    • The Phantom Blot has been changed into one of these. He was unwittingly created by Mickey and left to corrupt the world of forgotten toons for decades.
    • The robotic Beetleworx, which The Mad Doctor has built, were originally created to reconstruct the Wasteland. Eventually, they were altered to try to destroy the titular character. The concept art is worse compared to final product, considering the normally child-friendly-associated Tigger was found on one. With Fangs!!
  • Every Single True Final Boss in the Etrian Odyssey series. The one in the third game takes the cake. Just try to count all those eyes and tentacles...
  • In Amnesia: The Dark Descent, you are being followed by these "things" or "shadows" as you explore the castle. You have no weapons/defense other than hiding either, so there is a sense of hopelessness. While their appearance is a blurry/melted shambling humanoid, staring at them for more than a few seconds will cause you to lose sanity. Worse, those are just mooks. The journal scraps/notes you find hint that the main antagonist "comes from beyond the void" and "warps reality with its presence," which you experience as you progress through the game and parts of the castle are warped into nightmarish versions, with raw flesh coming out of the walls.
  • While the Parasite Eve series can be considered to have skirted the trope at times, it seems that the upcoming sequel, The 3rd Birthday, has dived head-on with its new menace, known simply as the Twisted. Colossal tentacled monstrosities, the first thing we learn about them in the trailer is that they somehow erode time and space, and it seems the only way to stop them is by using Time Travel Body Surf to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
  • Galvaran, Jabir, Napishtim, etc. in the Ys series. Many of these were created when the humans who stole the Black Key attempted to recreate White and Black Emelas.
  • Resident Evil:
    • Resident Evil Outbreak had this in the form of Nyx, a giant mass of seemingly acidic goo that had the corpses of the troops it digested, as well as the corpse of a digested Tyrant unit hanging out of it. Speculation claims it's some sort of plant matter, fungus, or a piece of T-Virus somehow magnified, but it's still horrific, especially it's implied ass cheeks...
    • The final mutations of most of the Big Bads, especially G, Nemesis, Alexia, and Saddler.
    • The Las Plagas itself may be this: it was found a hundred years prior to the story, centuries before Umbrella employed its scientific techniques to produce its famous viruses.
  • The Chaos beings in Ancient Domains of Mystery. Most of the monster descriptions for them are Description Porn about how Mind Screwy they are.
  • Leave it to the designers of LittleBigPlanet 2 to make an Eldritch Abomination out of a vaccum cleaner! The Negativitron travels the cosmos, constantly sucking up all material in Craftworld. It can also be considered an Eldritch Location too.
  • While the six dragons in Rift are explicitly stated to be mere manifestations of the Elemental Lords, Akylios takes the cake: his description mentions he was mad BEFORE he started gathering all knowledge, and that he doesn't actually care what all the other dragons do...
  • The abominations in the circle tower and the Broodmother in the deep roads within Dragon Age.
  • The Big Bad of SaGa 3 is a blobby mass of goo and tentacles which can absorb the power of a Physical God via Body Horror. Not to mention creating an Eldritch Location outside of time and space. As the most powerful of the setting's divine creatures, it could easily be a stand-in for Azathoth. Many of the other enemies could count as well, some being direct Shout-Outs to the Cthulhu Mythos.
  • In Return to Krondor, the Dark God seems to be this. An entity that is very dangerous and had to be sealed away. A group of depraved individuals worship this god, and want to release it into the land of Midkemia. Releasing it would be a Very Bad Thing To Do.
  • There is the Red Queen of American McGee's Alice, especially in her true form.
  • The Old One from Demon's Souls.[context?]
    • The Bed of Chaos in Dark Souls is an unholy fusion of the Witch of Izalith and the Flame of Chaos after the Witch attempted to recreate the First Flame. It's a massive treelike monster that sprouts a being of pure fire after its defenses are broken.
  • The Destroyer from The Legend of Spyro: Dawn Of The Dragon counts. It's an ancient mythological monster whose existed since the beginning of time for only one reason: to cause the end of the world in a wave of fire and ash when unleashed. Oh, and it's as big as a mountain and made of rock and lava. The only way to actually stop it is to destroy every Dark Crystal in it's entire body, including flying inside it and blowing up its heart. And even that didn't stop it - because Malefor, Chessmaster that he is, had a backup crystal ready just incase.
  • Subverted with the "Dark God" Doma, the final boss of Fire Emblem Gaiden. He clearly appears as one, but his intentions are more Darwinist than most other comic horror entries.
  • Also, there's Abaddon, the God of Secrets from Guild Wars.
  • Borderlands has the thing that was inside the Vault. Okay well, it was supposed to be something like this, but it basically became a Narm-riddled festival of "Shoot the tentacle-thing's giant wobbly arm-testicles". No, really.
  • Septerra Core. Ouroboros is a giant monster that dwells somewhere near the Core of the world and is said to be as old as Septerra itself. It can be summoned with Fate Cards to inflict massive fire damage to the target and the only part of it seen are it's three heads, that alone are comparable in size with other, rather huge, summons. And it isn't known how large the rest of it's body is. It's also rumored that it's an inteligent being and that if it's heads will ever all agree on something, it will cause The End of the World as We Know It.
  • In the F.E.A.R. games, Alma gradually becomes one of these as the series progresses. She starts out as simply a whispered presence flitting about at the edge of the Point Man's vision, occasionally emerging to inflict horrific violence on bystanders, up until Harlan Wade releases her from the Vault. At that point her power is fully unleashed, and she heads into full-on Lovecraftian horror that ressurects bodies, brings spirits of massacred civilians back as violent wraiths, and is surrounded by miasmic otherworldly tentacles and appendages whenever she manifests her physical body. By the third game, Alma's presence is ripping reality apart, causing manifestations of demonic beasts and hostile physical spirits, as well as driving the civilian population of the city to madness, turning them into savage cultists that worship her.
  • Spectrobes has the Krawl, which are amoeba-like monsters that are bent on destroying planets; the smaller ones are simply living blobs, and become more eldritch as they increase in size and power. Jado of the High Krawl is a notable example, and refers to himself as being "The Great Negative"; Krux, the Big Bad of the series, is a Humanoid Abomination.
  • Not only is Shikkoku no Sharnoth full of these in the form of the <<Metacreatures>>, but M, the protagonist's cryptic guide, benefactor and possible love interest, is later revealed to be Nyarlathotep.
  • Terraria has the Wall of Flesh: An enormous wall of flesh with eyes and mouths that can only be encountered by throwing a voodoo doll of your guide into the lava pits of the underworld, which will chase you through hell until either you or it dies. It will spit giant leeches out of its main mouth that chase you down, try to eat you with its many mouths, and shoot you with eye beams. Oh, and you can't escape without killing it.
  • One of the chief reasons Fatal Frame is so scary is that it avoids this trope: all the ghosts are humanoid and that much more frightening for it... except one. Utsuro from the Xbox version of Fatal Frame 2 is fought at the end of Survival Mode in the Hellish Abyss. It emerges from the Abyss itself, and resembles a giant... mass of... stuff with short stumpy arms and a vague face. It's described as a manifestation of all the pain and despair of the people who have died there, and it constantly makes noises that sound creepily like a bunch of people sobbing in terror. Fortunately, the Camera Obscura still works on it.
  • The various Domz aliens from Beyond Good and Evil. Especially the Domz Priest, who looks very squid-like.
  • The titluar Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet was created by a small Eldritch Abomination that assimilated the Sun and turned it into a bio-mechanical-shadowlike mnostroity. You can unlock a movie that details the origins of a much greater being that assimilated an entire star system and now spreads his "seeds" to others. That thing you defeated? That was only one of those seeds.
  • Many Cthulhu Mythos deities appear in Demonbane. Although the Great Old Ones are treated as just powerful monsters, the Outer Gods still play it straight. Unlike in the mythos, most Outer Gods are sealed in a compact universe inside the Shining Trapezohedron. But Azathoth still generates countless universes from within, making it the center of that multiverse - and the destruction of Shining Trapezohedron will doom everything if Azathoth is freed. At least two Outer Gods are already free, as neither of them can be sealed - Yog-Sothoth, the embodiment of all time and space, and Nyarlathotep, who is the will of the Outer Gods. Sealing Nyarlathotep simply drives it from your universe for a while - and then it re-emerges with another mask in an alternate universe). One of its forms, Clockwork Phantom, is an analogue to the Tik-Tok Man in mythos, being a Mechanical Abomination that assimilated the whole universe into itself.
  • Many of the major bosses (especially later in game) from the Super Famicom Enix RPG Mystic Ark definitely follow this trope with its disturbing boss designs (which are all animated). Even more-so for the final boss Wicked Heart/Malice.
  • Soul Calibur:
  • This game allows you to play as one, demonstrating either Video Game Cruelty Potential or Video Game Caring Potential... Although it's All Just a Dream in the end... Or Was It a Dream??
  • RuneScape has several examples:
    • The Inadequacy and other monsters fought during "Dream Mentor", all of which are embodiments of Cyrisus' negative emotions.
    • That... thing that Tolna has become in "A Soul's Bane". Specifically, it looks like three heads with abnormally long necks and glowing eyes, coming out of a deep chasm.
    • The Stalkers, otherwordly multi-eyed beings that can cause headaches with their speech alone. Several of them are bosses, and all of them are grotesque monstrosities. Did we mention their leader has the title "World-Gorger?"
  • Gohma Vlitra and Chakravartin from Asura's Wrath are relatively hard to comprehend, especially when the latter changes into its final form. The extra materials state that their gender and age are unknown.
  • Kid Icarus: Uprising has monsters such as Ornes and the Chaos Kin.
  • Golden Freddy from the Five Nights at Freddy's games seems to be one of these. Unlike the other animatronics, he seems to lack a physical body and is more of a spectral entity. In the first game, he teleports right into your office if you look at a certain poster, and the only way to get rid of him is to pull your camera back up, basically un-summoning him by throwing common sense out the window. Failure to do so will allow him to assault you with a barrage of hallucinations before shattering the fourth wall by crashing your game. He's a little less weird in the sequel due to losing his fourth-wall breaking capabilities, but he makes up for it by taking the form of a giant levitating head when he kills you. Whatever he is, he is not normal.
    • Shadow Freddy and Shadow Bonnie from the second game seem to be of a similar vein, because they aren't proper animatronics so much as they are terrifying Living Shadows that crash your game if you look at them for too long. While Golden Freddy at least has some sort of explanation behind his existence (he's possessed by the ghost of a child who was violently murderered like the rest of the original Fazbear gang, but even that doesn't explain why he's so damn weird compared to the rest of his buddies), there is nothing to give context to these two. The latter's official name (RWQFSFASXC) drives this status home even further due to being so gloriously Lovecraftian in its unpronouncability.
  • The Epic Battle Fantasy series has a twist on eldritch horrors, with intentionally glitched creatures with scrambled sprites simply known as "glitches" in the 4th and 5th games. In spite of very weak stats, they can uniquely absorb Non-Elemental damage of either the physical or magical type depending on the glitch, and their attack instantly kills a character. The party's encounter with a small group of glitches in the 4th game makes them question the nature of their universe (Lance in particular, being the tech specialist). An encounter with an even more powerful and self-aware glitch in the 5th game that toys with them, essentially using them as vessels to taunt the player and messing with the game's interface by replacing every icon with random piles of pixels, and keeps coming back shortly after being defeated, leaves them all traumatized for life.
  • Super Smash Bros.: No matter the game, you always tend to face at least one as an end boss.
    • While they're ultimately just floating hands (heavily implied to be the hands of a child playing with his toys, at that), Master Hand and Crazy Hand are presented as this trope. Their status as large, disembodied hands with weirdly deep voices makes them feel wrong when pitted against familiar video game characters, and they have a number of weird and inexplicable powers - lasers shot from their fingers, laying spike traps made of light on the ground, and shooting gigantic bombs and bullets despite having no mechanical components to them whatsoever. Even their more mundane attacks like slaps and pokes deal elemental damage and status ailments for some reason. As weird as they are though, from Brawl and beyond, they're often the prelude to even weirder and more powerful abominations - no telling what those are meant to represent...
    • Tabuu from the Subspace Emissary mode of Super Smash Bros. Brawl looks like a bald human man made of neon blue light, with rainbow-colored butterfly wings that can instantly kill anyone that's hit with the "off-waves" they produce. Said to be the embodiment of Subspace itself, he can't leave his realm, so he instead pulls bits and pieces of the Smash world into his so he can warp it into an abominable hellscape that's more to his liking.
    • Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS / Wii U has the Master Core - either a superpowered form of Master Hand, or some sort of abomination that took his guise, and neither option is pleasant. A swarming mass of darkness, Master Core takes on a number of terrifying forms: the gigantic humanoid Master Giant, the hellish scorpion-tailed Master Beast monster, a swarm of vicious living swords called Master Edges, and the player-duplicating Master Shadow. Exclusive to the Wii U version is the dangerous living Master Fortress. Its true form seems to resemble a Smash Ball and is harmless... unless you decide to take your sweet time killing it. Then, it unleashes a flurry of one-hit kill attacks that look uncomfortably similar to Tabuu's off-waves.
    • Galeem from the World of Light mode in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is a malevolent, living sphere of light wreathed in freaky blade-like angel wings that kicks off the plot by killing everyone in the universe except for Kirby, and proceeds to enslave the spirits and bodies of those he killed as his "puppet fighters" that go on to infest the world he destroyed. Not much, if anything about him is explained, but if there's one thing we do know about him, it's that he's cruel and sadistic to a fault. A trait shared by...
    • Dharkon, a fellow Eldritch Abomination and the embodiment of chaos and shadow that is locked in a brutal war against Galeem. This thing introduces himself by shattering the sky like glass and slithering in from his home dimension, and looks like a hellish Sauron-style eyeball enveloped by thorny tentacles. He chases off a wounded Galeem and takes control over all his puppet fighters, before trying to destroy the world outright instead of merely shaping it to his liking.
  • Many of the horrors infesting Spooky's Jumpscare Mansion are otherworldly abominations that count as this to some extent.
    • Specimen 7 is a horrific wall of twisted, red-and-black corpses that looks uncomfortably similar to Giygas, and one of the few Specimens capable of instantly killing the player. What this thing is isn't really explained that well, but it seems to be some kind of entity based on Jungian psychology, and is possibly a manifestation of the player's past trauma given shape.
    • Specimen 8 looks like a humanoid deer wearing a robe, but its "body" is a mass of screaming faces of its past victims tucked under its ribcage. It kills its victims by assimilating them into itself, and every time it attacks you you're assaulted by disturbing imagery in the form of subliminal messages and sudden closeups of its freaky face.
    • Specimen 9 is a red, creepily realistic floating skull-like head that manifests if you idle for too long in a room, or get lured into a deathtrap in certain rooms, and will instantly kill you once it touches you. Oddly enough, it has something of a mundane origin, simply being a mass of clay that came to life under unclear circumstances, but something happened to make it completely and utterly wrong. It survived its own death, corrupts its CAT-DOS entry simply from existing, and can warp reality itself in a handful of rooms. It says a lot when Spooky is afraid of this thing. And then you discover that it's the Final Boss of the main story.
    • Specimen 12 doesn't look that special, and is seemingly a creepy old man who stalks you around a mansion inside of Spooky's own mansion and instantly kills you if he catches you. But you find out later that the specimen is the mansion itself... which isn't even a mansion, but an anomalous being that takes the form of one. And after possessing the old man who investigated it, it uses his corpse as an avatar through which it can hunt and kill anyone unfortunate enough to end up inside of it.
  • Elder Dragons as a whole tend to skew towards this status in Monster Hunter: they're incredibly powerful monsters that don't fit into the tree of life like every other monster classification, and often have their powers manifest in ways that can't be explained away by an elemental sac or some other biological function. Some are worshipped and revered as gods, others feared as demons, and they often have a visible effect on a map they're present on - namely, some kind of environmental anomaly that has caused all monsters native to the area to flee for their lives.
    • The Fatalis is easily one of the most eldritch and unholy monsters in the series, which is no small feat. Flavor text descriptions for the armor and weapons made from their body parts state that they plague those who wield them with horrifying nightmares, dark voices in their heads, and animalistic bloodlust, until their wearers go insane or die under mysterious circumstances. They can also possess their wielders, and possibly turn them into another Fatalis entirely. This, combined with the fact that the Fatalis sword in Pokke village is constantly regenerating scales and a Crimson Fatalis somehow hatches from a clutch of Tigrex eggs in 4U's eggstraction quests implies that it's impossible to truly kill a Fatalis since they'll always find some way to come back, no matter how impossible it should be. Their powers are also anomalous even by the standards of other Elder Dragons, with Crimson Fatalis being able to somehow send meteors crashing down to Earth while the White Fatalis is introduced triggering a solar eclipse by emerging from a mysterious portal, hinting that it might be extradimensional to some extent. The standard Black Fatalis is comparatively more mundane, but even it famously wiped out an entire civilization overnight.
    • Yama Tsukami is weird. It looks nothing like a traditional dragon and is more like a gigantic floating octopus covered in moss and earth, possessing a mouth full of disturbingly human teeth. It isn't aggressive or malicious, but it can destroy entire ecosystems by devouring everything it flies over, including entire lakes and forests.
    • In a series where wielding two different elements can make a monster especially dangerous, Alatreon having power over all of them is downright mindbreaking. While it doesn't go out of its way to cause chaos, its powers are so unstable that it's practically a natural disaster in the form of a dragon. Like with Fatalis, equipment made from its body parts are said to drive the wielder completely insane over time.
    • Dire Miralis, which is treated less like a monster and more like Satan himself, is feared as a harbinger of the apocalypse. A titanic Elder Dragon that looks like a Fatalis carved out of volcanic rock, Dire Miralis's body can naturally generate lava that it fires from its "wings", which are basically an organic gun battery as opposed to any sort of proper animal appendage. It's so powerful and destructive that it can sink entire islands, and even when it isn't being actively malicious it can still boil entire oceans into lifeless wastelands just by stepping into them. Like with Fatalis, it's hinted that killing it doesn't even stop it for good, since its heart beats independently of its body and is rumored to be able to regenerate a completely new Dire Miralis over time.
    • Gore Magala looks like the unholy spawn of Venom, a Xenomorph, and a dragon, and is such a biological anomaly that no one really knows what to classify it as, ultimately settling for a class simply labeled as "???". It's essentially a plague given life, and casually spreads a virus that turns monsters exposed to it into rabid berserkers. It turns out to be the juvenile form of the Elder Dragon Shagaru Magala, which is still a dangerous plaguemaster in its own right despite being a "proper" life form... or as proper of a lifeform as an Elder Dragon can be, anyway.
    • Gogmazios is framed as something truly horrible and unknowable, even by the standards of this series' Elder Dragons. It looks like a skeletal dragon submerged in a tar pit, which said tar being passively generated from its body and weaponized in the form of explosive projectiles and superheated tar lasers. And despite being roughly as big as Godzilla, it's a skillful flier and stealthy to the point that there are no recorded sightings prior to the player's encounter with the beast. Some players believe it to be a heavily mutated relative of the Gore Magala, while others believe it to be the fabled Equal Dragon Weapon from the series' old concept art and background lore. But if there's one thing the fandom can agree on, it's that its weird biology, bizarre powers, and mysterious nature make it feel like an obscene and otherworldly anomaly.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy:
    • The game's true villain is The Magus, Adam Warlock's dark and evil desires given form. While he can take a more conventionally humanoid form boasting an obnoxious and eloquent Psychopathic Manchild persona, he spends most of the game as a formless, silent mass of metallic shadowy crystals that warps the minds of millions, if not billions of people, into becoming a cult of fanatical zealots that worship him. His influence spreads across the galaxy so damned fast that he almost feels like some sort of sentient virus, and unless you have the Soul Stone on hand to seal him into? Then you can forget about defeating him, because he can't be killed. At all.
    • Downplayed with the Dweller-In-Darkness. While it looks the part due to being a creepy, powerful squid-thing straight out of the mind of H.P. Lovecraft, and its bio describes it as an interdimensional horror, Lady Hellbender keeps it as a pet and the Guardians kill it without too much of a hassle. Definitely a lot less impressive than Magus.
  • Bugsnax gives us none other than the Bugsnax themselves. Each and every one of them, no matter if they're a tiny Strabby, a lovable Bunger, or a mighty Mothza Supreme. Their cutesy "sentient food with googly eyes" appearances hide the fact that they're a sinister collective of malicious parasites capable of things far fouler than "merely" stealing the nutrients of their hosts.
    • Bugsnax prey upon the Muppet-like Grumpuses, specifically ones with insecurities and other severe mental problems, and compel them into eating them by making them believe that they're the answer to all their problems. Every time a Grumpus eats a Bugsnax, a part of their body turns into the Bugsnax that they just ate, or at the very least gains their properties. This continues until the Grumpus has been entirely "Snakified", and at that point their mind has been broken and twisted into that of an addict who will happily eat Bugsnax until they die.
    • When a Bugsnax-addicted Grumpus eats themselves to death, they fall apart and are reduced to a lifeless heap of "Snax" that are promptly absorbed by Snaktooth Island... which is itself a titanic Bugsnax amalgamation that merely looks like an island. Within the bowels of the island, or the Undersnax, the remains of the Snakified Grumpuses are transformed into newly born Bugsnax.
    • While most Bugsnax don't look freaky in the slightest (likely as a way to lure in more victims), there are two exceptions to this rule. The first is the "Queen of Bugsnax", a monstrous creature that Elizabert Megafig transformed into when hundreds of Bugsnax forcefed themselves to her in a bid to assimilate her. Thanks to her insane willpower, she assimilated them at the cost of turning into a freaky hybrid of the four big "boss" Bugsnax that can barely keep the rest under control. She isn't evil, and actually saves the player and their friends at the end when hordes of malicious Bugsnax drop the cutesey act and try to assimilate them all.
    • The other overtly eldritch Bugsnax is the Snaxsquatch, a cryptid that looks like a cluster of unrelated Bugsnax body parts clumsily mashed into a humanoid shape. It's an extension of Elizabert's will and never attacks anyone (save for if you go down the wrong path while exploring the Undersnax), but it freaks out and terrorizes the islanders in a bid to make them leave Snaktooth Island before it's too late.
  • The Radiance from Hollow Knight is a cosmic horror that vaguely resembles a fluffy moth crossed with one of the Bible's more outlandish angels. She can invade the minds of bugs and manifest a viral plague that Mind Rapes them into feral shells of their former selves, and can stop existing entirely if enough people forget about her... only to rematerialize upon being remembered. Even her roars are mind-bending and otherworldly, sounding more like an angry ethereal choir instead of any kind of earthly creature.
  1. ↑ Jack Frost, the series' resident Mascot Mook
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