Monster From Beyond the Veil: Difference between revisions

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*** Unknown why the hair was black, but it turns out that it was ''Al'' in that body, and it was only pure luck that he wasn't trapped in that body permanently.
*** The hair just happened to be black. It could have been any color because they didn't bring anyone back, they made someone new. Al was only in it for a moment, mostly because the [[Jerkass|Gate is a jerk]].
* In ''[[D .Gray Man-man]]'', when a person dies and a loved one grieves over their death, there's a chance the Millennium Earl will appear, and offer the loved one a chance to resurrect the dead person. He gives them a metal body and asks them to wish the dead's soul into the metal body. What happens after this is that the dead one is resurrected as an Akuma- a tortured soul bound to a metal body- and the first thing they do after being resurrected is curse the loved one for damning them, then the Earl takes control and they murder the one who resurrected them and steal their body. In fact, Akuma are a combination of [[Monster From Beyond the Veil]] and [[Damaged Soul]]. With each stage an Akuma reaches, the body becomes more humanoid in appearance but the soul heavily deteriorates.
* This, combined with [[Empty Shell]] and/or [[Our Zombies Are Different]], ''might'' be what's happening in ''[[Black Butler (Manga)|Black Butler]]'', when Dr. [[Dracula|Stoker]] brings a [[Frankenstein's Monster|stitched-up corpse]] back to life and the first thing she/it does is [[Horror Hunger|take a big bite out of her mother.]]
 
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* In an issue of ''[[Justice League of America]]'' following [[Metamorpho (Comic Book)|Metamorpho]]'s death, his son Joey wishes for his father back [[Exact Words|(not "alive")]], without knowing a [[Jackass Genie]] is listening. He and his mother are confronted by an [[Eldritch Abomination]] with Metamorpho's powers, and apparently no consciousness whatsoever. But just before he gets wished back to oblivion, he says "Joey..." (This being comics, he later came [[Back From the Dead]] for real.)
* In the ''[[Hellblazer (Comic Book)|Hellblazer]]'' arc ''Son of Man,'' John Constantine knowingly makes one of these; he knows resurrection's out of the question, so he cuts a binding symbol into a demon as a scar and makes it pretend to be a dead kid, using the body as a puppet. Of course, there are extenuating circumstances; the kid's father is a crime boss, and has threatened to horribly torture and murder John's sister and niece if he doesn't resurrect his kid. Still, no excuse for John running the fuck away [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|when there's a demon in the body of the heir to a criminal empire... all the while knowing that scars]] ''[[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|heal]]''.
* This is apparently how the [[Blackest Night|Black Lanterns]] work. The ring reanimates a dead person's body and gives it a personality close to the one they had in life -- except the Black Lantern version is also a bloodthirsty monster that wants to eat people and rip out hearts for power. The soul apparently has nothing to do with it; when a ring took control of Boston Brand aka Deadman's (a superhero ghost) corpse, Deadman tried to take back control of his body, but the ring drove him out. This means that a Black Lantern is simply a corpse controlled by the ring (making them technically a [[Soulless Shell]] as well) that mimics just enough of their old personality to make them completely unnerving to those who knew them in life. Add to that any powers and abilities the person had in life, the standard power ring protective aura and energy constructs, an incredibly powerful [[Healing Factor]], and immunity to magic makes for one ''terrifying'' example of this trope.
 
== [[Literature]] ==
* A [[Monster From Beyond the Veil]] shows up in ''[[Something Wicked This Way Comes (Literature)|Something Wicked This Way Comes]]'' by Ray Bradbury as well. There's an electro-mechanical chair in the story that can bring a dead body back to a horrify mockery of life just long enough for magic to be used to heal the person.
* In the third book of ''[[The Death Gate Cycle]]'', [[Witch Species|Sartan]] necromancer Jonathon attempts to resurrect his wife, who was just murdered in front of his eyes. Because he does not wait the requisite three days for her soul to depart, however (which would have resulted in a [[Soulless Shell]]), she comes back as a ''lazar'', an undead entity whose soul has only partially separated from its body, leaving it in total spiritual agony and quite, ''quite'' [[Ax Crazy|insane]]. The ''lazar's'' first act is to immediately begin creating an army of its kind to overwhelm the living and force them to share in its torment. Jonathon, previously a rather lighthearted [[Genius Ditz]], is horrified by what he's unleashed and becomes [[The Atoner]] for the remainder of the series.
* The [[Big Bad]] of James Byron Huggins' ''Cain'' is a [[Monster From Beyond the Veil]]. [[Government Conspiracy|The military]] took it into their heads to take the dead body of one of their finest killers, named [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|Cain]], and [[Super Soldier|rebuild him into a nigh-unkillable vampire assassin]]. The problem? Cain woke up on the slab, possessed by ''[[The Devil]].''
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== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* In ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)|Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'', vampires are all like this. The original soul is gone, and a demon inhabits the body, remembering the original person's life, and apparently believing themselves to be the same person. Some of their personality retains intact, but other aspects tend to warp somewhat, and they lose all conscience. When Angel got his soul back, the demon Angelus became an [[Enemy Within]], constantly frustrated at the amount of fun Angel's heroics were costing him.
** It was strongly implied that Dawn's attempt to resurrect Joyce in Season Five was an example of [[Monster From Beyond the Veil]] (we never see the resurrected Joyce, but the juddery-POV cam we get as she approaches the house bodes... poorly). Not to mention the fact that Spike, who at this point did NOT have his soul back and thus was still evil, is visibly unnerved and a bit [[Squick|squicked]] by the thought of what was going to come back when he learns about what Dawn is planning.
** Aside from the [[Soulless Shell]] that [[Frankenstein's Monster|Ad]][[Cyborg|am]] made of Professor Walsh and the lackey scientist, he made a [[Monster From Beyond the Veil]] of Forrest, a turtle demon, and [[Magitek|some spare electronics]], and planned to do so with Riley and every other demon and soldier in the Initiative. However, it's possible that he was actually just a [[Inhuman Human]], and more susceptible to the control chip than other characters we'd seen. Adam himself is ''[[Off the Rails|definitely]]'' a [[Monster From Beyond the Veil]].
* The ''[[Torchwood (TV)|Torchwood]]'' episode "Dead Man Walking" gives us Owen slowly becoming a kind of one of these after being shot and brought back with the second resurrection glove- when he came back, not only was he still a corpse (albeit conscious and mobile, he had no heartbeat, no reflexes, etc.), ''[[The Grim Reaper|Death]] came with him'', and would walk the Earth forever killing people if it could get its hands on thirteen victims. This was an unusual variant, in that once Death had fully manifested, it left Owen's body, restoring his free will, and he was ultimately able to defeat it (it couldn't kill him since he was already dead).
* ''Trilogy Of Terror II''. The last story featured a woman doing a dark ritual to restore her son to life, "whose life was taken by accident." The son comes back, but quickly becomes a monstrous stalker who plays hide and seek with the mother. When the mother is cornered, the son tells her that she was wrong; the son died not by accident, but because he took his own life to get away from this mother's abuse. The son sent a demon in his own form to return to the mother instead. Then the son transforms into a demon form; lots of KISS-like makeup, and kills the mother.
 
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** There are several kinds of mojo (inherently magical places, magic items, etc) in ''[[Deadlands]]'' that make returning from the grave as Harrowed more probable. Most of them give the nasty spirit an extra buff of Dominion, and some automatically make the demon in charge of the body (that is, a pure [[Monster From Beyond the Veil]]).
** This trope is so common in Deadlands that when the developers of ''Doomtown'' (the Deadlands [[Collectible Card Game]]) announced that the prize for a tournament would be the resurrection of a character chosen by the winner, they had to make it absolutely clear that this trope would not be invoked, but would be an honest-to-God resurrection. (Indeed, the only way you can get this in ''Deadlands'' is with a literal Divine Intervention.)
* Not ''quite'' a resurrection, but the act of creating a new Promethean in ''[[Promethean: The Created|Promethean: the Created]]'' requires that the creator be of sound balance, both of mind and Azoth. If they do it wrong, then the process gets tainted by Flux, and the body ''tears itself apart''. These parts then animate and become Pandorans, mindless (if you're lucky) fiends intent on cannibalizing other Prometheans for their Azoth. Even when created without problems, Prometheans themselves are an example of [[Soulless Shell|Soulless Shells]]. They are a walking no-man's-land with no soul. True, [[Pinocchio Syndrome|they aim to get one]], but odds are against them and in favor of them doing some rather horrifying things along the way.
* A likely result of resurrection magic in the world of [[GURPS]] Fantasy II: Adventures in the Mad Lands - in fact, even regular ''healing'' spells can have this effect, due to magic being inherently chaotic and dangerous in the Mad Lands. Furthermore, the land is so suffused with wild magic that dead people often come back as monsters even without any conscious attempt to revive them being made.
* [[Dungeons and Dragons (Tabletop Game)|Dungeons and Dragons]] 4th edition provides, in ''Open Grave'', the Unrisen. Basically, they're what happens when a Raise Dead ritual goes horribly, horribly wrong; family pets turning into psychotic monsters, for example.
** Also, the 3.5e supplement Heroes of Horror provided similar examples, including rules for player characters brought back wrong.
* ''[[Geist: The Sin Eaters (Tabletop Game)|Geist: The Sin Eaters]]'': ''Every single Sin-Eater is like this''. They come [[Back From the Dead]] after making a [[Deal Withwith the Devil]] from the underworld, and said devil then ride them into the world of the living. [[Downplayed Trope|But don't worry]], every Sin-Eater can tell the devil (actually a ghost-spirit thing, the eponymous Geists) to shut up and stay in the corner of their host's soul, and the Geists usually only want simple pleasures of living they remember from the time when they were humans (sex, food, etc).
** Then again, as the SAS module ''[http://dc335.4shared.com/doc/VtAYxDXs/preview.html Dem Bones]'' shows, sometimes a geist just won't listen; the eponymous geist is obsessed with reanimating bodies and has kept on singing the same fragment of the song that gives it its name, constantly, for months, to the point that its host has resorted to ''repeated suicide attempts'' to get something resembling peace and quiet.
 
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*** Averted after the spell was reworked into a typical in-combat resurrection spell(alongside the Druids's Rebirth). It still places a debuff on targets that it resurrects, but the debuff has no real effect, visual or otherwise.
* In ''[[Heroes of Might and Magic]] V'', Queen Isabel's attempt to resurrect her husband Nicolai turns him into a genocidal vampire. It probably wasn't the smartest idea to ask a ''necromancer'' for help, after all. The plot of HOMM3 featured a similar [[Monster From Beyond the Veil]] resurrection that - while at least intentional - still didn't quite go as planned.
* In the game ''[[Evil Genius (Videovideo Gamegame)|Evil Genius]],'' the player can resurrect dead henchmen by dumping them in the [[Elaborate Underground Base|base laboratory's]] biochemical tanks. However, the reborn minions that emerge are little more than [[Dumb Muscle|cataclysmically retarded blobs of muscle]] that exist only to kill your enemies on sight: since you're an [[Evil Genius]], this isn't much of a problem. Well, given that they tend to kill people in front of witnesses, which raises your heat and brings more enemies to the island, it ''can'' be a bit of a problem, but in red alert scenarios, they're very useful.
* In the first [[Drakengard]], Furiae is brought back with a "Seed of Resurrection", only as a [[One-Winged Angel|horrible monster]] which brings about the end of the world by being cloned a million times over.
* Liu Kang from ''[[Mortal Kombat]]'' Deception, who was turned into a zombie by the corrupted god, Raiden after being murdered in ''Deadly Alliance'' by Shang Tsung.