39,327
edits
Ultimate Evil: Difference between revisions
m
Mass update links
m (Mass update links) |
m (Mass update links) |
||
Line 14:
* ''[[Mao-chan]]'' parodied the trope with an alien that was too cute to be shown, as it caused all who gazed at it to swoon with heart shapes in place of their eyes. While the program never reveals the alien to the audience as per the trope, the shadow of the creature suggests an amoeba-like form with eye-stalks and possibly small tentacles as well.
* ''[[Berserk]]'' {{spoiler|The true [[Big Bad]] of the manga appears only in a [[Missing Episode]] that was never issued out of concern of revealing too much. We only catch a brief, unclear glimpse of the Idea of Evil, the entity responsible for Midland's [[World Half Empty]] that only the Godhand have met.}}
* ''[[
* Sebastian's true form in ''[[
* Sedna in ''[[Umi Monogatari]]'' has no real form, only seen as a cloud of red sparkles.
* Ultimately subverted in ''[[Fairy Tail]]''. Zeref is played up as this for 200 chapters, with characters commenting on what a horrible killer he was whenever he's mentioned, several demons he created nearly killing people or being part of a character's tragic past, powerful wizards reacting to his name as though he were Voldemort, and evil cults forming dedicated to his worship. [[Killer Rabbit|When he finally makes his debut...]]
Line 21:
== Comicbooks ==
* [[Depending
** Current consensus is that both versions are true- originally it was a small scar, but the armour he has made to hide it was put on too early, before it was cooled, so he really does have horrifying burns all over his body. Also the scar was not caused by a labloratory explosion but by [[Demon Lords and Archdevils|the demon Mephisto]] scratching his face (the result of said experment, followed by the explosion) and thus it wasn't simple vanity that drove him to do that; he rushed to put the armour on because he could still feel the demon attacking his face.
* In ''[[El Eternauta]]'', the true invaders are never to be seen, relying on several [[Body Horror|enslaved races]] to carry out their bidding. Essentially, all we get on them is that they are the "[[Cosmic Horror|cosmic hatred]]".
Line 40:
** This is because the makers couldn't afford a really scary monster effect or suit. [[Nothing Is Scarier|It ended up working better than if they had.]] There were, unfortunately, a few toy releases of the witch which {{spoiler|portrayed it as a [http://www.cracked.com/article_19261_7-action-figures-that-managed-to-ruin-great-characters.html stereotypical movie monster]}}. To be fair, these toy releases are not official.
* The same goes for the demon of ''[[Paranormal Activity]]'', in which only footprints and the shadow of the demon are visible (3-toed footprints to make clear it isn't human).
* Many of the tenets of this trope evolved from the 1942 horror classic ''[[Cat People (
** The origin of this particular usage was dramatized in the fictional film ''The Bad and the Beautiful'', in which Kirk Douglas (playing a [[Composite Character]] based partly on ''[[Cat People (
* Similarly, ''[[Jaws (
** ''[[Robot Chicken]]'', in a parody of the reediting of the original ''[[Star Wars]]'' trilogy, had a sketch where Steven Spielberg announces his decision to redo the special effects in ''[[Jaws (
*** "You missed me, you dried-up douchebag!"
* ''[[Alien (
** The design of the suits in ''Aliens'' were actually simplified, not just to cut costs (because they needed a lot more suits), but to allow the actors a greater range of motion. In a well lit room the original would look ''far'' better, but because Ridley Scott kept them either in the shadows or moving too fast to clearly see, he gets away with it beautifully.
* Bubba Ho-Tep of the eponymous ''[[Bubba
* Throughout most of the original ''[[Star Wars]]'' trilogy, Darth Vader's mask symbolized not only his evil, but the notion that his face must be so horrifying ''concealing it could not make it worse''. The fannish disappointment was rife when the mask was finally removed, and revealed what one fan called "Uncle Fester with blue sparkles". This was probably an intentional subversion. The notion that Vader underneath the frightening armor was intentionally made to be a broken and pathetic individual has been noted in numerous interviews. In Lucas's own words, Vader is less a monster and more "a sad man who made a deal with the Devil...and lost".
* Galactus in ''[[Fantastic Four (
* SKYNET, the [[Big Bad]] from the ''[[Terminator]]'' franchise, has never been depicted on-screen (except for in various non-canonical video games and the Universal Studios Terminator ride). Justified in T3 when it turns out that SKYNET is, in fact, the Internet. An avatar of SKYNET appears as a character in ''Terminator Salvation'', played by {{spoiler|[[Helena Bonham Carter]]}}.
* In ''[[Children of the Corn]]'', He Who Walks Behind The Rows is never openly shown on screen. Presumably, the kids' murderous fanaticism was sufficiently horrifying that seeing the god/demon/spirit/whatever which they followed wasn't deemed necessary.
* In Disney's ''[[
** [[Word of God]] states that the human that shot Bambi's mother was, in fact, [[Beauty and The Beast|Gaston]].
* Subverted in ''[[Scrooged]]'', where a character actually calls the bluff of the menacing hooded figure that claims to be a supernatural creature, and looks under its robes. The ghost is genuine, and the view is not pretty.
* This was the original intent of Jacques Tourneur in his 1957 ''[[Night of the Demon]]'', preferring to show only smoking footprints and fiery clouds, but [[Executive Meddling]] had a rubber-suit monster put into the ending ''and the beginning''. Still, most critics of this move agree it ultimately doesn't hurt the movie.
* Used humorously in ''[[
* This trope can apply to mortal humans, too. In ''[[Road to Perdition]]'', [[Al Capone]] is deliberately kept off-camera to evoke a sense of mystery and dread about the most powerful criminal in [[Useful Notes/Chicago|Chicago]].
* The monster from ''[[Cloverfield]]'' is never directly seen until the end (and even then, it isn't that clear). We see glimpses of it at times earlier in the movie. There is, however, an official toy release of the monster showing its full body.
Line 64:
== Literature ==
* The [[Cosmic Horror|stories of]] [[
** Lovecraft himself is speculated to have been parodying overuse of the concept in the story [http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/theunnamable.htm "The Unnamable"], although it's hard to tell since he always wrote like that. It's definitely parodied [http://www.gamejag.net/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=79459&sid=4a7d1dfab144103575e2a4e6a41f9f4e here].
** [[Eldritch Abomination|Ghatanothoa]] in "Out of the Aeons" was a kind of meta-example. It wasn't just that the readers weren't ever "shown" it (the narrator gave a partial description but didn't think he could even try to really explain what he had caught a glimpse of), but the real catch was that within the story, you really, really wouldn't want to see it. Just the sight of Ghatanothoa would turn a living human being into a petrified but living mummy. If you were magically warded against this effect, you might still die.
Line 80:
* {{color|red|The Minotaur}} in ''[[House of Leaves]]''. In reality, {{color|red|the Minotaur}} isn't so much a character as it is a concept invented by characters journeying through the {{color|blue|house}} to explain the uneasy feeling that they're being watched, followed, and hunted down by some [[Cosmic Horror|horrific creature]]. Tom Navidson even calls it "Mr. Monster" at one point. It is only called {{color|red|the Minotaur}} by Zampanó, who later struck through every passage containing that title, and this would be reflected in this Wiki if strikethroughs hadn't been disallowed because of abuse.
** The strike-throughs are actually provided by Truant, who reconstructed the passages after Zampanó ''attempted to destroy them.'' On at several occasions, he succeeds, most notably on pages 372-373, the former of which contains the phrase [2 pages missing] and the latter of which is a series of XXXXXXXX interrupted only by one word and one partial word, though the footnotes survived.
* A series of short stories by Robert W. Chambers leave us (and a young fan named [[
* ''[[Chronicles of Prydain]]'' [[Big Bad]] Arawn was never seen (or even described) in his true form.
** Wrong. Well, mostly wrong. {{spoiler|After he took the form of a snake and had his head cut off he returned to his true form: a man in a black cloak. However, his head fell face down and so his face was never seen}}.
* Just after the [[The Stoic|stoic]] [[Doc Savage]] escapes through the entrance of [[To Hell and Back|a strange underground cavern]] he looks back {{spoiler|to see [[Cosmic Horror|something]]}}{{spoiler|[[Luke, I Am Your Father|or SOMEONE]] reaching out to him and [[Heroic BSOD|screams for the first time in his life]]}}.
* In ''Beyond the Deepwoods'', the first book of ''[[The Edge Chronicles]]'', the Gloamglozer is handled this way... but according to its descriptions, seems to be a fairly underwhelming bogeyman not much worse than some of the threats you actually do see. {{spoiler|In an inversion of how this usually works, when it actually shows up toward the end of the book, it turns out to be something far, far worse; A grotesque and malevolent [[The Trickster|trickster]] with more than a little in common with [[Satan]].}}
* Ultimate Evil is the subject of [[
{{quote| "In Machen, the subtlest story ''The White People''is undoubtedly the greatest, even though it hasn't the tangible, visible terrors of ''[[
* [[Alan Dean Foster]]'s ''[[Humanx Commonwealth]]'' [[The Verse|universe]] features a classic [[Eldritch Abomination]] as its Ultimate Evil -- a galaxy-sized region of space in which no matter or radiation exists. Moreover, it is sentient and mobile, traveling across the universe in search of new galaxies to devour. It has been discovered by several species at various points in galactic history, even the most advanced of which could barely do more than find a way to flee. Naturally, Flinx, the protagonist of the series, is the [[Chosen One]] who is said to be the key to its destruction. However, as scary as the concept is, the thing never actually gets to our galaxy before Flinx manages to destroy it, leaving its implacably hostile nature something of an in-universe [[Take Our Word for It]].
* Played with by both main villains in ''[[Mistborn]]''. [[Evil Overlord|The Lord Ruler]] is kept off page for most of the first novel, building up an air of mystery and fear about him; as a result, even though other main characters have met him before, [[Action Girl|Vin]] is stunned the first time she sees him and realizes he's a pretty ordinary-looking man. Later on, the ''real'' [[Big Bad]], [[Omnicidal Maniac|Ruin]] is portrayed for the first part of the third book as a completely inhuman force of nature. Later, it starts interacting with mortals in suprisingly humanlike fashion, using images of people they've known as its avatars. Vin speculates that this is just a mask, though {{spoiler|and she's proven right when she becomes a god herself and sees Ruin in his true form. What little description the reader gets could easily be summed up as "[[Eldritch Abomination]]", proving that while the heroine can now face the villain on his own terms, he's still brain-breakingly horrible to mortals}}.
* ''[[
** We do manage to get a glimpse of it/them,however.
* In ''[[The Wheel of Time]]'', the Dark One fits this trope perfectly. It's a nigh omnipotent evil god that has existed since the beginning of time and is the [[Bigger Bad|ultimate cause of all the conflict in the series]]. So far it's still mostly sealed away from reality, and even if it does break free, it's been implied that it probably doesn't have an actual physical form. The only time anyone has encountered it directly is when it communicated mentally with one of the Forsaken. Even then, we only hear its voice, and that alone was enough to make the person hearing it weep from a combination of agony and ecstasy.
Line 100:
** And according to Illyria back when she was ruling the world they were just small fries barely worth acknowledging. Makes you wonder...
*** The Senior Partners started out weak, but used Wolfram&Hart to increase their power and influence by feeding on humanity's evils.
* The Source on ''[[
* Similarly, the aliens in ''[[The X
* The Family Channel had a short-lived series called ''Scariest Places on Earth'' which would use a night vision camera to capture the horrified expressions of those visiting the eponymous places and seeing the eponymous scary stuff, but that was it. Short-lived because '''nobody''' who watched the show once was stupid enough to want to watch it ''twice''.
* The new series of ''[[Doctor Who]]'' season 4 episode "Midnight" has a chillingly effective Ultimate Evil. Unlike all of the Doctor's other adversaries, it has no shape or form and is only known by its influence on others. The Doctor proves to be utterly mystified and helpless against it, and {{spoiler|were it not for a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] by the tour guide}}, it would have succeeded in killing the Doctor. In its one appearance, it evokes the same fear from the Doctor that the Doctor usually inspires in other alien menaces, such as the Daleks.
Line 113:
* Pale Night, a demon lord from ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' fits this trope. She appears as a ghostly woman wearing a shroud. Her true form is so horrifying, though, that ''reality itself'' rejects it; the shroud is not hers, apparently, but something the multiverse forces on her. (This is implied to be because Obyrith demons themselves are chaotic beings of entropy and madness; the reason for their hideous forms is because the, for lack of a better term, ''intelligence'' of the Abyss is forced to adhere to the rules of a lawful universe to bring its servitors into being. Pale Night's true form, though, managed to break those rules.
** Her deadliest attack is the ability to suppress her shroud for an instant. Unlike almost every other example in the game, if you succeed on the Will save against this ability, your character is considered [[Weirdness Censor|to have NOT comprehended what he saw, and blocked it out]]. Whereas if you fail they understand what they see and die instantly. If the character is ressurected, they will have no memory of what was seen.
* Gwydion, a powerful [[Sealed Evil in
* [[Eberron]] has ''Kyber, the Dragon Below'', who is one of the three beings from the beginning of time and now ''is'' the underworld. Same goes for Eberron, who is the world, and Syberis, who is the Sky, but they are not considred to be evil.
* ''[[Warhammer 40000]]''. The four Chaos Gods and the Emperor of Mankind all get this treatment to varying degrees. The [[Cosmic Horror]]-flavored C'tan, sadly, do not.
Line 120:
== Videogames ==
* An example in ''[[
** And then in Hollow Artaxia {{spoiler|it gets subverted as Angra Mainyu takes a human form as Avenger and [[Was Once a Man|he was originally just a human caught in a set of bad situations]]}}.
* King Stan in ''[[Okage Shadow King]]'' is trapped in the form of a shadow for 95% of the game, citing that the entire world will shake in terror once he regains his True Form. It turns out to be less than impressive (although that chin ''is'' pretty scary).
* Demonica of ''[[Stretch Panic]]'' is a monster so horrifying that merely ''seeing'' her causes Linda to die of fright. You must prevent her from entering the shack you are inside by following her shadow in the windows and attacking through the entrances she tries to use.
* Giygas, the [[Big Bad]] of ''[[
** In ''[[MOTHER]]'', the first game of the ''MOTHER'' series ''does'' have a physical form: the form of his ''attacks'' is still "inexplicable", but the above "implications" are merely the result of uninformed speculation. It doesn't change the fact that this must have been quite a shock for Japanese players who were expecting to see the original Gyiyg only to be treated to the swirling nightmare Giygas becomes.
** ''[[
* Parodied in ''[[Star Control]] II'': The cowardly Spathi live in perpetual fear of the [[Trope Namer]], the '''[[Doomy Dooms of Doom|ULTIMATE EVIL!!!]]''' (emphasis theirs, every time). They know absolutely nothing about it, and have never even seen it, because (they claim) it always lurks just outside the range of their most advanced sensors. This is, of course, [[You Fail Logic Forever|further proof of its nefarious intent]].
** The player may discover that the Spathis' {{spoiler|next-door neighbors are avatars of a ''real'' Ultimate Evil from another dimension.}} Hilarious as it would be, there's no way to point this out to the Spathi in the game.
Line 134:
* Subverted in ''[[Darkened Skye]]'', where the [[Big Bad]], known as "He whose face must not be glimpsed" and universally feared by all, is ultimately revealed to literally be a tiny maggot. As the heroine puts it "He Whose Face Must Not Be Glimpsed? That's because he's too small to see!".
** Deliberately or not, this might be a [[Shout-Out]] to [[Captain Marvel]]'s enemy, Mister Mind. When he first appeared in the 1940's, it was over a year of comics before he appeared as anything but a voice over a radio, sending his Monster Society of Evil to wreak havoc. When he was finally revealed, his true form was... a superintelligent alien caterpillar about 4 inches long, wearing glasses.
* The Dark Master of ''[[The Legend of Spyro]]'' series was not seen in the first two games (Except in animated cut-scenes which are not very representive of his real appearance) or heard, until he finally appears at the ''very end'' of ''Dawn of the Dragon'', fufilling the trope completely. And he actually is every bit as horrific, powerful, and [[Complete Monster|monsterous]] as he'd been made out to be. He's a Purple Dragon like Spyro, but he's far larger than normal and pretty much looks like a dragon straight out of the pits of Hell. He's also an [[Omnicidal Maniac]] whose sole goal is to destroy the world, and he comes so close to succeeding the world is already starting to break apart when {{spoiler|Spyro lets loose a [[World
* The eponymous ''[[Siren (
** [[Word of God]] is that the siren is just the sound of Datatsushi, but this contradicts the game itself; a secret cutscene shows the fall of Datatushi and the first appearance of the siren, and there, the cry of the siren and the cry of Datatsushi are clearly two entirely different sounds, the siren responding to Datatsushi's scream.
* In ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]] II'', you never actually see Darth Nihilus's face. The only scene where his mask is removed is done by a different character and his corpse is destroyed before you can look yourself. According to other sources, Nihilus is actually dead, and just takes the form of a mask and cloak through the force.
** Kreia implies that he has, through eons of hate, malice, dark side power and soul draining '''entire species''', become literally nothing but Evil with a lightsaber- making him possibly the only villain to ever hate himself out of the laws of reality.
* Inverted in ''Riddle of the Sphinx'': when you finally look inside the {{spoiler|Ark of the Covenant}}, all you see of the {{spoiler|Ultimate Good}} is blinding white light.
* [[Zork
** And in the fourth Zork game, they introduce the Ur-Grue, which is the progenitor of all grues and is capable of creating an aura of utter darkness around itself. Ya know how Grues don't show up if there's light? Yeah. He doesn't have that problem.
* The Vasari from ''[[Sins of a Solar Empire]]'' are running away from a terrible, nameless evil that destroyed all of the inner colonies of their once-great empire. We never learn much more about it, because in their eagerness to get the game out, the developers forgot to include a campaign mode, and as a result [[All There in the Manual|the plot ends at the beginning of the game]] and (until the expansion) [[Excuse Plot|the lore serves only as an explanation for why the sides' units look and act the way they do]].
* At the end of ''[[
* The menace in ''[[Dark Fall:
* ''[[Silent Hill]]''. The town itself. Especially in Silent Hill 2. In this particular game is where this trope gets applied the hardest, as the town is unquestionably malevolent, and capable of shaping itself to inflict the most pain possible on its victims. However, nothing ever really confirms ''what'' makes the town the way it is, or ''why'' it does it. There's even some speculation that the God of the cult that lives there is actually also an illusion the town has created to inflict more suffering on the world.
== Webcomics ==
* In [[Kaspall]], a box shaped robe with one arm and a cane becomes horrific this way. Of course, knowing the things that it DID to its victims helps.
* The Monster in the Darkness of [[Order of the Stick]] qualifies as this; so far, he has [[Exactly What It Says
** Subverted in that {{spoiler|Monster-san isn't actually Evil, just easily manipulated ''by'' Evil.}}
*** The creator has also stated that he will be revealed eventually, and that he's actually a pre existing monster. Whatever he is, he is confirmed to be ugly.
* ''[[
* ''[[
Line 160:
** In the few pictures you see him, he's always slightly out of focus and difficult to see amongst the trees. We can't even see his ''current'' form properly.
* Lo and behold the concentrated abomination that is [[Cracked|Popsicle Pete]]!
* [http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-055 SCP-055] is the most mysterious and potentially dangerous SCP contained by the [[SCP Foundation
** It is possible to remember what it ''isn't.'' Which somehow makes it worse.
* [[Zalgo]].
Line 169:
* Dr Claw, the villain from ''[[Inspector Gadget]]'' was [[The Faceless|never shown]] on the original animated series. For the first [[The Film of the Series|movie]], he was played by Rupert Everett, but was clearly meant to be a [[In Name Only|completely different]] villain. An action figure of Dr Claw was made, when it was revealed that he {{spoiler|disappointingly looked like your [http://doctorclaw.ytmnd.com/ stereotypical "Mad Scientist".]}}
* ''[[Gormiti the Lords of Nature Return]]'' gives us Obscurio, the supremely powerful leader of the Darkness Gormiti. While the toyline does feature a figure of him, he has not been seen in the series proper, only appearing as a spiritual entity {{spoiler|which hides in a specially-forged crown that possesses [[The Hero|Toby]] in Episode 6}}.
* ''[[He
* Similar to Darth Vader, [[Big Bad|Slade's]] mask is generally used as a symbol of absolute evil on ''[[Teen Titans (
** Subverted with Trigon from the same series, who for his first few appearances is just a deep voice, [[Red Eyes, Take Warning|glowing red eyes]], and a silhouette, but is ultimately revealed in all his glory when he breaks through into the mortal world. Think [[Satan]] ''on steroids''.
** Well, actually, we see Trigon in the very first season. Or at least, we see Raven's Inner Darknesss and it looks exactly like him. So more of an inversion, or perhaps a zig-zag, with avatar of villain revealed-> true form of villain concealed-> true form revealed.
| |||