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{{trope}}
[[File:illusomirror 1637.jpg|link=JoJo's Bizarre Adventure|right|frame]]
{{quote|He's the hot new mirror monster. Run'n his mouth about how the old guard is out of touch. "Bloody Mary" dates back to the 1500s. I am mirror monster. That's me!|Bloody Mary|[[Gary and His Demons]]}}
Mirrors are inherently creepy objects. If you're looking in a mirror, there's also someone looking at you. A movement in a mirror can make you jump. It's no surprise that they're associated with badness.
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But what if there were something more than just one's own reflection in the mirror? What if the mirror showed something else looking back at you?
This is the '''Mirror Monster'''! Though a mirror is really just a pane of glass and silver, in fiction it can become a gateway - something terrible could come out... or something terrible could try and suck you in. A Mirror Monster could be an image only visible in a mirror. It could be a ghost fettered to the world of the living by a mirror. It could be something which comes out of a mirror or communicates via mirror. The key thing about this trope is the horror is directly connected to the mirror itself.
Sometimes mirror monsters can be defeated by smashing the glass. Unfortunately, sometimes smashing the glass can free the mirror monster and allow it free rein (or [[Asteroids Monster|make even more of them]]).
Compare with [[Mirror Scare]], [[Mirror Routine]].
{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* ''[[JoJo
* In Kazuo Umezu's ''[[Scary Book: Reflections]]'', the vanity of a girl who admires her beauty incessantly in a mirror causes her evil reflection to escape and attempt to take her place, driving her to the edge of insanity in the process.▼
▲* ''[[JoJo's Bizarre Adventure|Jojo's Bizarre Adventure]]'' has a couple of mirror monsters. The first one attacks your reflection in the mirror (or any shiny surface), which in turn damages you. The second actually pulls you through the mirror into the "mirror world".
▲* In Kazuo Umezu's ''Scary Book: Reflections'', the vanity of a girl who admires her beauty incessantly in a mirror causes her evil reflection to escape and attempt to take her place, driving her to the edge of insanity in the process.
** This story was parodied in the ''[[Ranma ½]]'' manga, where the mirror is ''haunted'' by the girl's lingering presence, and now whoever looks into it will have their reflection pop out. They aren't so much evil as just [[Rule of Funny|incredibly annoying]].
* In one [[Slayers]] [[Non-Serial Movie]],{{verify|reason=Wasn't it an Original Video Animation?}} Lina and Naga ran afoul of a mirror that created clones of them. This mirror, showing the exact metaphysical opposite of the person who looks into it, creates a wimpy, demure [[Ms. Fanservice|Naga]] and a pathetic, weepy [[Action Girl|Lina.]]
* ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' used this trope all throughout the Dead Moon arc of SuperS/early Stars, where [[God Save Us From the Queen|Queen Nehelenia]] would trap people in mirrors in a "nightmare", a mirror leads to a portal to her evil dreamland, and in one episode she creates a house of mirrors and controls the Senshi's reflections and makes them psychoanalyze and hypnotize them, to convince them to give up.
==
* There was a cartoon by Charles Addams (famous for inventing the Addams Family) in which a man in a barber chair with mirrors on either side has a virtually infinite series of reflections, one of them about three-fourths of the way down the line being of a monster sitting where he is sitting.▼
* This is the modus operandi of [[Flash]] rogue Mirror Master.
== Film ==
* ''[[Legend (film)|Legend]]'': Darkness first appears to Lily by stepping out of a mirror.
* ''[[Prince of Darkness]]'': Satan's father (the "Anti-God") is on the other side of a mirror trying to get through into our world.
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== Literature ==
* In [[Robert Heinlein]]'s ''[[
▲* In [[Robert Heinlein]]'s ''[[wikipedia:The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag|The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag]]'', the Sons of the Bird are powerful evil entities that enter and exit our world through mirrors.
* In the novel ''The Shadow of the Wind'', Julian, as a lonely child, made up stories that he told to other kids that he had a sister who came to visit him through the mirror and lived with the devil.
* In the fourth installment of [[Odd Thomas]] by [[Dean Koontz]], something briefly materializes out of a mirror to collect someone's soul.
* In the [[Discworld]] novel ''[[
* ''[[The Dresden Files]]'': This is the reason Harry refuses to keep mirrors around his house. A lot of nasty critters can use them as doorways between the Nevernever and the real world, like {{spoiler|the fetches in ''Proven Guilty''}}.
* The [[Stephen King]] short story "The Reaper's Image"
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* ''[[Labyrinths of Echo]]'' had the Secret Investigations dealing with one of such creatures, and [[Your Soul Is Mine|devouring the life-force]], at that.
== Live
* The ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'' episode "Bloody Mary" had this, as it was about a variant of the Bloody Mary [[Urban Legend]] mentioned under [[Real Life]]. However, this Bloody Mary didn't always kill the person who summoned her: She instead kills someone with a secret that she feels makes them responsible for a death.
* Part of the premise of ''[[Kamen Rider Ryuki]]'', where Mirror Monsters are simply animalistic creatures that hunt humans and eat them. Some are contracted by the Riders to fight other Riders and Mirror Monsters. While some of the monsters are heroic, they still need to be fed, or they'll eat their contractor. Though they'll wind up eating them if the contract breaks.
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* According to Grover on [[Sesame Street]], seeing a monster in the mirror is not a cause for freaking out but an occasion to sing "Wubba wubba wubba wubba woo woo woo." After all, "That monster in the mirror, he just might be you."
* The entire premise of ''[[Dark Oracle]]'' is that the kids' [[Evil Twin]]s can reach them by coming out through the mirrors. To say this leaves everyone incredibly paranoid would be an understatement.
* A program called ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Paradise Strange Paradise]'', conceived as [[Follow the Leader|competition]] for the original ''[[Dark Shadows]]'', included at least one scene of a woman cringing away from a mirror which, rather than her reflection, showed a man in Renaissance clothing reaching menacingly toward her. Then he faded out of the mirror ... and there was a cut to a room where he'd [[Scooby-Doo Hoax|apparently used TV cameras to produce the effect]]....
== Newspaper
▲* There was a cartoon by Charles Addams (famous for inventing the Addams Family) in which a man in a barber chair with mirrors on either side has a virtually infinite series of reflections, one of them about three-fourths of the way down the line being of a monster sitting where he is sitting.
== Professional Wrestling ==
* During the WCW version of the [[Hulk Hogan]]/Warrior feud, one infamous segment involved Warrior appearing in the mirror of Hogan's dressing room. The idea was for the Warrior to only be visible to Hogan, as Eric Bischoff doesn't notice. The only problem with this: ''the Warrior was clearly visible to the commentators and people watching on TV.''
==
* ''Walking with Shadows'' features a ghost in a mirror who tries to tempt a teenage girl to suicide.
== Tabletop
* ''[[Call of Cthulhu (tabletop game)]]'' supplement ''The Dreamlands'', adventure "Lemon Sails": The Temple of the Oracle on Sarrub has a mirror which has been taken over by a wendigo-demon that attacks anyone who tries to use it.
* ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'' has 'fetch' -- a monster from [[Chaotic Evil|Abyss]] who pops through mirrors and kill people.
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== Video Games ==
* In the game ''[[Ghost Master]]'', there are several ghosts who can be anchored to mirrors, and can scare mortals who look into them.
* Paranoia from ''[[Castlevania]]: [[Dawn of Sorrow]]'' lives in the mirrors in its boss room, and jumps out of them to attack Soma. Defeating it lets Soma walk through mirrors.
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* Subverted with [[Evil Counterpart|Dark Link]] in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time|The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time]]''. He is Link's reflection who is brought to life through the magic of an enchanted room in the Water Temple.
▲== Webcomics ==
* Spoofed by ''[[Xkcd]]'' [http://xkcd.com/555/ here].
* Amy tries to summon ''[[Erma]]'' this way. It works.
== Web Original ==
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* ''[[South Park]]'' had a version of "Bloody Mary" where, if you say his name three times while looking in a mirror, Biggie Smalls will appear in the room with you (understandably pissed because everyone keeps summoning him while he's trying to get to Satan's Halloween/birthday party).
* In an episode of ''[[Regular Show]]'' called "Jinx", Rigby tries to break his jinx by performing a ritual in front of a mirror. {{spoiler|He ends up summoning a demonic reflection from inside a mirror named Ybgir. It's banished back when someone chants its name three times.}} This has a lot of refrences to the Bloody Mary myth.
== Real Life ==
* Kids play a game called "Bloody Mary", chanting the name in front of a mirror in a dark room. Supposedly, her face replaces the reflection in the mirror, and naturally, there are urban legends about kids who kept it up for too long, made Mary angry, and died the next day.
** ''[[
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[[Category:Horror Tropes]]
[[Category:Reflective Tropes]]
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