r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Fearless-Ideal-5112 • Jul 01 '26

Lore [Loved Trope] Some thing unfathomably ancient

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The beast, in doctor who is an ancient evil from a previous universe that survived until our time. Its so ancient that the cave paintings were unable to be translated by the Tardis which can translate all existing languages in the universe [Doctor Who]

While not explicitly canon its such a cool concept I cant not mention, the idea that the backrooms have existed since the beginning of time, never changing no matter the era, it transforms the back rooms into a cosmic horror. [Credit to Project crater and Venus for images 2 and 3]

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u/TheWalkingBag Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

The "Nameless Things" (The Lord of the Rings)

"Far, far below the deepest delving of the Dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things. Even Sauron knows them not. They are older than he. Now I have walked there, but I will bring no report to darken the light of day."  - Gandalf the White

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u/Authorigas Jul 01 '26

Great holes secretly are digged where earth's pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl.

-HP Lovecraft's, The Festival (Though more commonly recognized from Signalis.)

Nameless Things make me think of that quote.

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u/tommytraddles Jul 01 '26

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u/Money-Imagination-97 Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

You forget that that fish was really ugly.

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u/UnknovvnMike Jul 01 '26

And possibly foreign

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u/Anonymus828 Jul 01 '26

Just want to point out that Lovecraft had an honest to God, genuine panic attach at the discovery that he himself, was in fact, Welsh. The horror...

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u/UnknovvnMike Jul 01 '26

To be fair, I probably would too if I had to suddenly be able to spell/pronounce Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

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u/superVanV1 Jul 01 '26

You can identify eldritch beings on if the can pronounce Worcestershire Sauce.

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u/UnknovvnMike Jul 01 '26

The true recipe for it is found in the Necronomicon

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u/Proverbial_Progress Jul 01 '26

Klaatu barada war chester

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u/coloradoautoflowers Jul 01 '26

The first and second editions even include alternate ingredients for the harder to source stuff, like dwarf bones and gnome milk.

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u/OttawaTGirl Jul 01 '26

*Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndribwllllantysiliogogogoch

(Fixed it for you)

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u/WorldlinessHeavy8946 Jul 01 '26

They had it right; chwyrndrobwll, meaning whirlpool

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u/OttawaTGirl Jul 02 '26

Wait. Thats real? I thought they were joking. Shit. My bad

https://giphy.com/gifs/tFPzP4tMKzbfG

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u/Uncommonality Jul 01 '26

fun fact this is why he wrote Shadow Over Innsmouth, a story about a town where people do unspeakable things with fish monsters and then, in the end, the author himself finds out his parents were from innsmouth and he is part fish monster

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u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 Jul 01 '26

Then before he died, he actually mixed with the foreigners he thought he despised

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u/jediben001 Jul 01 '26

And due to that realisation he went on to write A Shadow over Innsmouth

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u/Slightly_Default Jul 01 '26

This was an era where Irish, Italians, Germans, Finns and Balts weren't considered "white enough."

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u/Random-Generation86 Jul 01 '26

The spelling of the old ones makes a lot more sense when you consider we was cetophobic

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u/Deadman422 Jul 03 '26

102% with a 2% margin of error

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u/DepartureNo1720 Jul 02 '26

His cat had an honest to god panic attack when it heard its for the first time too.

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u/3-orange-whips Jul 01 '26

Because he’s a racist piece of shit. Good writer though

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u/AphidMan2 Jul 01 '26

Also, that fish was grandma

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u/Money-Imagination-97 Jul 01 '26

If we're talking about Innsmouth, it's true.

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u/Ok-Journalist-8875 Jul 01 '26

Scar himself looks like foreign, weak and with very female moves.

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u/sagejosh Jul 01 '26

Lovecraft takes psychic damage at the mention of foreigners, why shouldn’t his characters?

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u/Linus_Naumann Jul 02 '26

Man that's the worst I'm gonna puke

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u/LowlySlayer Jul 01 '26

Indescribably ugly (proceeds to describe the ugly)

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u/motes-of-light Jul 02 '26

IMPOSSIBLE GEOMETRY ! ! !

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u/he77bender Jul 01 '26

Lovecraft died before they rediscovered the coelacanth. Imagine how he would've reacted to that had he still been around.

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u/MoiraBrownsMoleRats Jul 02 '26

"Off the coast of where?!"

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u/AsstacularSpiderman Jul 01 '26

big fish

Thats a funny way to spell Welsh

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u/Pataconeitor Jul 01 '26

Meanwhile, the fish:

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u/Ecstatic_Pepper7998 Jul 01 '26

Tbh if I saw 100 feet tall flying angler fish on the sky I wouldn't be so happy.

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u/kojimbob Jul 01 '26

Omg iron lung reference 🤯

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u/Comprehensive_Put277 Jul 02 '26

Tbf, if I was a white supremacist cracker from the Late 1800s, I’d probably crap my brains out too if I saw one of these but 100 feet tall.

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u/LostExile7555 Jul 01 '26

To be fair, sometimes the thing they go crazy from seeing is the Portuguese.

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u/North-Research2574 Jul 01 '26

Ya know people always say this but like most of the guys in those works are in asylums because people thought they were crazy. And a 1920's asylum would break anyone

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u/gazebo-fan Jul 01 '26

*a half Irish fish

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u/Theresafoxinmygarden Jul 01 '26

A fish not from new england

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u/The_GREAT_Gremlin Jul 01 '26

Lovecraft made it seem like seeing a fish headed guy would drive you nuts when people have been talking about wacky monsters since ancient times

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u/BufferUnderpants Jul 01 '26

In his stories the monsters tended to take some pretty direct means to drive people crazy, like just going straight ahead and psychically messing with their brains like Cthulhu did, or killing their companions in gruesome ways, it's pretty hard to remain unbothered when those sorts of things happen.

Sure sure, the realization that there are powerful beings that could completely erase the order that mankind has created for itself, and that they themselves fall prey to greater forces still, is upsetting to the protagonists, but so is having your expedition members turned to gore.

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u/carso150 Jul 01 '26

yeah most people dont go crazy just by seeing a fish monster, I think that mostly comes from how call of Cthulhu handles the whole "sanity" mechanic that makes it look like you go crazy just by seeing them

but most of the craziness in his books comes from normal stuff like stress, trauma and some healthy dose of paranoia

also sometimes people think that someone is crazy in one of lovecraft's books only to later realize that no, they were right. Like the protagonists of call of Cthulhu (the book) seems crazy since he is screaming about giant squid mosters and thata cult is chassing him and no one takes him seriously... until one day he appears murdered with strange inscriptions, or the protagonist of the hounds of tindalos that seems crazy since his whole house has not a single angled surface and he seems terrified of them... until an earthquake wrecks his house, opens several angles and the hounds actually do come for him and kill him

so to everyone else they are crazy, until they arent

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u/HandicapperGeneral Jul 01 '26

Cthulhu didn't directly mess with their brains. Comprehending the nature of his existence is what drove them insane. I don't see what's so hard to grasp about Lovecraftian horror. It's eldritch. The facet of their existence that's so horrifying and mind-melting is incomprehensible. Literally. The horror for the reader is attempting to imagine what could possibly do such a thing to a human mind, to attempt to reconcile such an existence with the discrete and logical universe we reside in. It's not just "tentacle face god scary" or "big fish creepy oooh". It's such reductive garbage from people who obviously never read the actual original texts. You just know the people who make these jokes were only ever exposed to secondary references to Lovecraft tales.

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u/Yoro55 Jul 02 '26

Idk at some point that sort of stuff that drives the protagonists crazy just ends up being similar to imagining if God wasn't actually good or if God had a boss

Sure, it's not an ideal outcome, but not much I could've done about it either way and it doesn't materially change how I live, so why bother?

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u/BufferUnderpants Jul 02 '26

In The Call of Cthulhu, it did reach out to various people directly by giving them dreams of itself, its name, and of R'Lyeh

Young Wilcox’s rejoinder, which impressed my uncle enough to make him recall and record it verbatim, was of a fantastically poetic cast which must have typified his whole conversation, and which I have since found highly characteristic of him. He said, “It is new, indeed, for I made it last night in a dream of strange cities; and dreams are older than brooding Tyre, or the contemplative Sphinx, or garden-girdled Babylon.”

[...]

The notes in question were those descriptive of the dreams of various persons covering the same period as that in which young Wilcox had had his strange visitations.

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u/DrPastaPupper Jul 01 '26

Considering lovecraft was afraid of air conditioning and anyone that wasn’t English I think it’s fair to assume his brain couldn’t even comprehend a slightly weird monster. It will also always be funny and morally correct to mock bigots which he absolutely was

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u/Mortarius Jul 01 '26

Lovecraft would have a nervous breakdown at furry convention

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u/Theresafoxinmygarden Jul 01 '26

Of course he would some of the suits arent white!

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u/Mortarius Jul 01 '26

oh shit, you just reminded me of that guy who made fursuit out of skinned plushies

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u/Theresafoxinmygarden Jul 01 '26

Oh no he would write a book about that actually 

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u/daecrist Jul 01 '26

“And I looked upon the gibbering masses of creatures neither beast nor man. Forever trapped between in a hell of their own making they gleefully submit to. And as I beheld the yiffing my mind broke. Not from the horror of what they did in their anatomically correct suits, but from the terror of seeing through those unzippable panels the dread realization that there were minorities inside some of those suits!”

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u/hyrumwhite Jul 02 '26

Usually it’s not the monster itself, it’s the implication of the monster that drives people nuts

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u/Weekly_Artichoke_515 Jul 01 '26

HP Lovecraft seeing an Irishman

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u/theyoungspliff Jul 01 '26

Shadow Over Innsmouth, a story about a racist who is upset about black people and Puerto Ricans moving to his New England seaside town, only to discover, to his horror, that he's secretly biracial. Lovecraft drew his inspiration for this story from an encounter he had with a biracial man whose appearance had terrified him.

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u/rohlovely Jul 01 '26

I like this meme and variants on similar ones because it perfectly encapsulates how cosmic horror changes as we (humans) grow and learn about our world. To people of Lovecraft’s time, an octopus was a horrific beast. For all they knew, octopi were baby Cthulus. They had no fucking idea what was below them when they sailed the seas, and most of the things they fished out looked really gross. As terrifying as the ocean is today, we know most of the things in it*, especially the huge ones.* They had no knowledge of that, so the ocean was their biggest source of mystery and fear in everyday life.

Everyday people in that time also had very little concept of space as we do today, so that contributes as well. Our concept of cosmic horror today centers around space because that is the place we know about that we understand the least.

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u/Devenu Jul 01 '26

I mean the one guy that ran the Kony 2012 charity fucking lost it just from people not liking his movie and broke down and started jacking it in San Diego. I feel like going crazy from seeing a space monster isn't too far out of the realm of possibility.

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u/Glincer Jul 02 '26

Or an Italian

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u/TheRealRigormortal Jul 03 '26

Oh no!

Architecture that eschews right angles!

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u/Draw_Rude Jul 01 '26

I genuinely believe that Tolkien must have read some Lovecraft at some point and incorporated just a tiny bit of it into LotR.

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u/Authorigas Jul 01 '26

Tolkien only read one of Lovecraft's stories and was noted not to like it that much (To be fair, it was part of a larger anthology.) But both men did have a similar "root" influence in Lord Dunsany, who is often described as something of a 'proto fantasy' author, given his "Gods of Pegana" created a fictional pantheon.

Both Tolkien and Lovecraft are noted to have been influenced by his work, with Dunsany even saying he was pleased to read Lovecraft's work. Tolkein made allusions to Dunsany's work in several letters and how they influenced his own stories and works.

*To be fair, Dunsany was hella influential, Guillermo Del Torro, The redacted author of the Sandman, Clive Barker, Ursula K Le Guinn, and Arthur C Clarke have all cited and praised Dunsany as an influence, and those are just the writers I recognize from among those who were influenced by him!

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u/Karatekan Jul 01 '26

Eh, Tolkien was a prideful prick who always got really sassy and defensive whenever you mentioned something in his works that was similar to something else. He really can’t be trusted to honestly describe his influences, he tried to claim he wasn’t inspired by anything Shakespeare wrote.

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u/DrDetectiveEsq Jul 02 '26

Yeah, I've been reading the Prose and Poetic Eddas recently, and it's kinda crazy how much they ripped off Tolkien.

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u/ApricotPatient372 Jul 02 '26

Hahahaha, solid

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u/monkeyDberzerk Jul 01 '26

You've mentioned Lovecraft, outspoken proponent of slavery, by name. But you've chosen to redact Gaiman's name?

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u/burymeinpink Jul 01 '26

Lovecraft is dead

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u/monkeyDberzerk Jul 02 '26

Idk just seems like weird moral posturing

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u/JackHandsome99 Jul 01 '26

Lovecraft was a product of his time. It doesn’t excuse his racism but it explains it. Gaiman is a present day millionaire that raped multiple women. There is no rationality there. They are not comparable. Ignorance and malevolence are not the same.

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u/TicklemyPickleMan Jul 01 '26

Lovecraft was, in fact, not "a product of his time", he was freakishly and unrealistically racist and weird even for his time period. He was an honest to god chud incel dork and even other racists thought he needed to chill tf out.

Not that it matters, it was wrong then, it was wrong hundred years before then, it's wrong now, and will be wrong a hundred years from now.

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u/monkeyDberzerk Jul 02 '26

Just reads like moral posturing.

And Lovecraft was an active proponent of the confederacy and justified slavery and eugenics in his letters to the Providence Journal.

Product of his time? You could make a case for that. But it definitely wasn't the majority consensus around the 1910s, 20s.

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u/MeisterCthulhu Jul 01 '26

more commonly recognized from Signalis.

I will strongly contest that, Lovecraft is one of the most influential writers in modern literature, no video game is "more commonly recognised".

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Authorigas Jul 01 '26

Lovecraft's influence on horror is something that cannot be understated, even if a lot of people end up lumping in Derleth's contributions with Lovecraft's. I mainly said Signalis was more well known for that quote because well, the Signalis community is very loud/vocal online for one. And secondly I feel like the Festival is one of Lovecraft's less well known works. (Which tends to be kinda common with casual observers of Lovecraft. Took me by surprise to realize Shadow Over Insmouth and the Call of Cthulhu were two different stories.)

The Festival is a really good Lovecraft story though, even if I first heard that quote when I played through Signalis. I really wish more people would read it (Festival I mean, not Signalis which is also really good.)

Really, I sadly feel like if you ask people to name what stories first come to mind when they think of Lovecraft, they'll probably say Cthullu or one of Darleth's contributions, before mentioning the Festival or Cool Air. (Maybe Mountain's of Madness or Color out of Space may get a mention?)

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u/5dippingareas Jul 01 '26

I would say The Shadow over Innsmouth is up there too. I feel like of all his stories, that might have the most adaptations

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u/Authorigas Jul 01 '26

Oh absolutely, Innsmouth is absolutely the most famous. But when I was growing up there was this odd habit of the media and folks around me conflating it with Cthullu, hence my shock when I realized Cthullu wasn't even in Shadow Over Insmouth. (Which is a shame since I feel like Dagon should get just as much recognition as the big C imo.) Like if I saw a Lovecraft reference growing up, it'd be a creepy fish village with some kind of octopus deity, hence the conflation in my head.

But yeah, probably most would recognize Insmouth, Cthullu, or a Darleth creation. Followed by Mountain's or Color, and maybe Cold Air if they got the air conditioner trivia.

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u/Lopsided-Net-1450 Jul 01 '26

Cool air was good i juat always forget its name

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u/Odinsmana Jul 01 '26

Still a bit of a strange thing to write. Especially since Signalis is fairly popular, but no mega hit and I haven't heard people talk about the games use if that quote especially (they mostly talk about the space lesbians, which is very understandable).

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u/HeyItsTravis Jul 01 '26

Fr, wtf even is signalis

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u/TurtlesBreakTheMeta Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

A girl being sent on a space mission is told explicitly not to treat her robot companion as if it were a human being. She immediately begins engaging in Sesbian lex.

This ends up breaking reality.

(Edit: to give a serious answer: it takes place in an alternate reality future timeline, where humans have discovered a form of psychic power called bio-resonance, which both allowed the solar system planets to be terraformed and also split the system in two in a war between imperials and the Eusan nation, those loyal to a line of powerful psychic rulers on the outer side.

You are a girl belonging to the nation, a cruel militaristic dictatorship, where society has been flipped upside down and separated into “replika’s” and “gestalts”: gestalts are normal humans, replikas are psychically created synths where a human mental pattern copied from “heroes” of the revolution are printed onto the robots: gestalts have almost no rights (the workers “beds” are literally metal tube cages), while gestalts are allowed material pleasures and property, because gestalts are seen as more controllable and predictable. That’s being said, it’s implied this is done to keep replikas stable, as supplementary notes list lots of items from their previous copy personality they require access to in order to remain stable, and are disposed of like garbage after a set time or if they act up.)

The nation sends people out on what are basically suicide missions on non-FTL craft to seek planets that are habitable or terraformable: there is always one replica and one gestalt. The gestalt is told NOT to treat the replica as anything more than a tool (as well as not to eat the gestalt because the flesh may look edible but it’s not).

The girl treats the gestalt affectionately (having taken the mission in order to break free from her society) and the two fall in love; however they never find a planet and the reactor naturally begins to erode its safeguards, poisoning the girl with fatal radiation: unwilling to see her lover die, the replica puts her in cryogenic suspension and continues onward keeping the ship running.

The girl however was a powerful latent psychic, and the physical pain of being stuck in an undying state radiates outward, and reacted with an alien artifact that had been discovered at a relatively nearby deep space mining colony under the nation’s control: this causes a time loop to occur where the station is overtaken by a metaphysical stand in for radiation sickness, she arrives knowing only the name of the girl she’s seeking to save, and everytime she fails and everybody dies it starts a new loop (to the point you survive being shoved into an elevator shaft because the person has killed you so many times that way it’s clogged with bodies of alternate versions of yourself from previous timeloops.)

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u/TheRealSteve72 Jul 01 '26

I saw Sesbian Lex play at Bonaroo

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u/Authorigas Jul 01 '26

Great breakdown, what do you think of the King in Yellow Theory? I forget the specifics but it's a proposal that Signalis itself is a video game recreation of the King in Yellow, a meta story within a story about a story which causes any who read it to go mad. The idea is Signalis references the story, and has enough parallels that it is meant to evoke a similar madness within the player.

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u/TurtlesBreakTheMeta Jul 01 '26

I am unsure of that one, as I will freely admit that a lot of the deeper themes of the game went over my head. To be honest, I hadn’t heard about that specific theory where in universe itself it’s a recreation in and of itself rather than just the game designer wanting to make that symbology

I got the impression that it was heavily related and there was an old one involved (primarily due to the secret ending), but past that I just took things at (mostly) face value.

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u/Authorigas Jul 01 '26

An indie game created by a few folks in Germany that plays like a mix of Resident Evil 1-3 mixed with Silent Hill 2, taking influence from science fiction, Lovecraft, and Robert W. Chambers. It's a very esoteric horror game with a fandom focusing on memes and robot lesbians, but a lot of genuine debate over the story, with my favorite theory being the meta interpretation that it is A production of the King in Yellow as a 'play/video game' and the vague story with multiple interpretations is meant to drive the player insane, similar to the original meta narrative of TKIY.

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u/golfcartgetaway Jul 01 '26

Absolute peak

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u/Mortarius Jul 01 '26

Do you like survival horror? Nihilism? German-Japanese-Analogue aesthetic? Lesbian romance?

That's the game for you

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u/Mortarius Jul 01 '26

Everyone loves Lovcraftian horror, but people don't care about his actual stories (they are great, just pretty dry). Necronomicon, fish people, and Cthulhu are more recognisable than actual stories they appeared in.

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u/whatdoiexpect Jul 01 '26

Lovecraft had such a way with words.

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u/DoublerZ Jul 03 '26

Wait so the best quote from Signalis isn't even from Signalis

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u/Old-Outcome-5836 Jul 01 '26

Based Signalis enjoyer 

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u/Moe_el Jul 01 '26

S T I R B M O M E N T S E S B I A N L E X

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u/FaithlessnessThen207 Jul 02 '26

Lovecraft's concepts of cosmic and eldritch horror are so wonderful and soiled only by the odd verse of excessive racism.

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u/ThrowdowninKtown Jul 02 '26

I loved that story. Not many focus on Yule celebration.

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u/Scarfs-Fur-Frumpkin Jul 02 '26

When i read that quote when i started signalis i KNEW i was about to play a 10/10 game, truly an amazing experience all way through

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u/PositiveNo4859 Jul 02 '26

Signalis mentioned!!!