Eldritch Abomination/Live-Action TV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Eldritch Abominations in Live-Action TV include:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

  • The tentacled monstrosity underneath the Hellmouth is implied to end the world if it were ever released, which almost happened twice, with the heroes barely preventing it.
  • Glorificus, better known as Glory, of season five. Sure, we saw her as a Humanoid Abomination, but that's just because she was a Sealed Evil in a Can. She's a hellgod and was so horrific that other similar gods sealed her and banished her from their dimension. Even in this form, she's an unkillable monstrosity that rips out and eats the sanity out of people unfortunate enough to run into her.
  • Illyria in Angel is from a time when the world was ruled by those like her, who saw (and caused) the deaths of innumerable lesser beings and casually travelled between all dimensions, and dismisses the Bigger Bads as inconsequential. While she spends her appearances in the series possessing Fred's body, her true form is seen in Angel: After the Fall.
  • The Season 8 comics have Sephrillian. And Fray gives us Neauth, Boluz, and Vrill. And the EU Dark Horse comics showed Ky-laag and Azogg-Mon.
  • The First Evil, the origin of all evil in the Buffy-verse.
  • That thing from season 7 who told Giles and Anya about The First. It's composed of sentient eyes and lives in a dimension outside time and space. And it's Sophisticated As Hell.

Doctor Who

  • The eponymous creature in "Image of the Fendahl"; everyone who saw it died of fright, and that was only a crippled ghost of its true self, 12 million years dead. In the Doctor Who Expanded Universe, the Time Lords deliberately created the Fendahl Predator, a malign void which could reach across time and space to feed on the stuff of thought and hungered to devour all eternity, from the Big Bang to the end of time. Those who looked at it saw an endless procession of grotesque images, as their mind struggled to comprehend the incomprehensible. And then the Time Lords released it to use for warfare.
  • The Beast from "The Impossible Planet"/"The Satan Pit", so much so that the Doctor refuses to understand it. It's very much implied to be the literal Devil.
    • In Torchwood, we meet its son, Abaddon, who also counts. (Interestingly, the Beast claims that "Abaddon" is one of its names.)
  • The eponymous Big Bad in "The Curse of Fenric" could definitely count as an Eldritch Abomination, albeit one without a body of its own, instead possessing others' bodies. One of the spinoff novels actually identifies Fenric as Hastur the Unspeakable from the Cthulhu Mythos.
  • The Doctor Who Expanded Universe also says the TARDIS itself is an Eldritch Abomination, which considerately disguises itself to avoid reducing the passengers to gibbering wrecks. As a living shape-shifting creature, at home in extra-dimensional spaces, with a mind even the Doctor deems unfathomably alien, it's certainly a good candidate. A minor story even comments on the TARDIS' mind as completely and utterly pandimensional.
  • The...creature from "Midnight". We don't see much of it, so it's nothing definite. But it Mind Rapes the Doctor and, by turning the people he's trying to save against him, comes closer to killing him than anything else.
  • There's a lot of evidence pointing towards the Time Lords being an entire species of this trope, given their incredible age and intelligence and how easily and often the very laws of reality are twisted like playthings by them. Indeed, several of the conflicts between the Doctor and the Master play out a lot like battles in an endless war between two Eldritch Abominations, with the poor lesser beings caught between. If they weren't this initially, then they definitely became this during the Time War, given the Doctor's description and the events of "The End of Time".
  • On that note, remember the Doctor's line from "The Pandorica Opens" about the thing the Pandorica was designed to hold: "There was a goblin, or a trickster... or a warrior... A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it or hold it, or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world." It's the Doctor himself.
  • An assortment of Eldritch Abominations apparently rose from the midst of the Last Great Time War, such as the Skaro Degradations, the Nightmare Child, the Horde of Travesties, and the Couldhavebeen King with his armies of Meanwhiles and Never-weres. The Time Lock around the War is there, in part, to stop these things from ever getting out.
  • The Eternals, beings that live outside of time in eternity, are immortal and use the imagination of people from our universe (they call us Ephemerals) to form realities. They can take anyone they want from any point in time and force them to do whatever they wish. They are not invincible, though; if somehow trapped in our reality, they are mortal and vulnerable.
  • The Ancient Old Ones, beings from the previous universe that follow different physics, which allows them vast Reality Warper abilities; this can be inverted with beings from the next universe that have similar powers.
  • The Nestene Consciousness, a formerly squid-like, later molten energy being that can control plastic, which is, according to the Expanded Universe, one of the thousand children on Shub-Niggurath.
  • Sutekh, Last of the Osirans, from "Pyramids of Mars". At the time, the Doctor describes him as the worst threat he has ever faced, the greatest time of peril in the history of the Earth, and given his awakening would have rendered the planet a barren wasteland before he spread across the universe to kill everything, his concern was very much justified.
  • The Animus from "The Web Planet". In the Expanded Universe, it's actually one of the Great Old Ones from the Cthulhu Mythos.
  • The Weeping Angels: impossibly fast creatures, indistinguishable from ordinary statues until you look away, able to transport people through time, reproduce via Mind Rape, and can exist as pictures.
  • The Great Intelligence, from "The Abominable Snowman" and "The Web Of Fear". Acting through its "agents", the Yetis, and never directly, it functions as the Bigger Bad for these serials.
  • The House from "The Doctor's Wife", a malevolent, ancient living asteroid that eats TARDISes.
  • The Sarah Jane Adventures has had "ancient lights", Hive Queens to at least part of the universe that existed before the Big Bang.
    • The Abomination. In this case a Brown Note painting and not a flesh and blood being. Unfortunately, it was painted with psychically active ink, which was capable of bringing the creature depicted to life. Oops.
    • The Trickster, part of a Pantheon, whose sole motivation is to cause chaos in the universe at large.

Star Trek

  • Star Trek: The Original Series second season episode "The Doomsday Machine" has the titular planet-killer: a bizarre and virtually indestructible ship that appears from outside the known galaxy, it is irregularly shaped and resembles a giant cone carved out of granite, with an abominable eye at its center looking suspiciously like a gateway to hell. It's virtually indestructible and is capable of destroying and consuming whole worlds and star systems. When the USS Enterprise crew is on its destructive trail, they find Commodore Matt Decker, who lost his entire crew and nearly his ship to the machine and was left in severe mental shock. Out of guilt for his crew's deaths, Decker steals a shuttle and commits suicide by flying it directly into the machine - his sacrifice only weakens the planet killer slightly, but inspires Kirk to devise a plan that involves flying Decker's USS Constellation deep into the planet killer before detonating the impulse engines; Kirk only narrowly escapes the planet killer's destruction with the aid of Scott and Spock.
  • A stronger case can be made for Redjak from "Wolf in the Fold", a formless creature that feeds off pain and suffering. When it possesses the ship's computer, the view screens show a bizarre multicolored, constantly shifting chaos that Kirk speculates is where it comes from.
  • A case could be made also for the Crystaline Entity from Star Trek: The Next Generation. It's a large, amoral being that they can't understand or communicate with, and it destroys every living thing it encounters.
  • Let's not forget that sentient white blob that takes over the cargo bay in Enterprise.
  • What about the guy at the center of the galaxy in Star Trek V? Eldritch enough to pose as God.
  • Q. Sure, he shows up as human, but it's made clear that he could show up as Cthulhu if he so wanted; on the occasions when humans and similar beings are taken to his home, the Q Continuum, they are explicitly told that what they perceive is not the reality of the Continuum, but merely a convenient metaphor for something that no being on their level could begin to comprehend.
  • "The Immunity Syndrome" featured an 11,000 mile long space amoeba that 400 Vulcans (and their computer) could not fathom, drained the life force of every living creature (presumably - and ironically - down to microorganisms) in an entire solar system, and was surrounded by a moving zone of space in which the laws of physics were fundamentally altered.

Other Shows

  • Power Rangers contains a whole stack of them, occurring at a rate of about one per season. There was Lokar, Master Vile, Maligore, Dark Spectre, Queen Bansheera, Master Org, the Master, Omni, Dai Shi, and probably a few others. But one of the greatest things about the Power Rangers is that the vast majority of these characters share a single thing in common. They got the attention of the Power Rangers, and the Power Rangers killed the hell out of them.
  • Babylon 5 featured a race of ancient aliens that were a kind of Eldritch Abomination in the TV-movie 'Thirdspace', inhabiting a different type of space (neither normal, nor hyperspace) and waiting for a very, very long time until someone finds the Artifact of Doom and activates it, allowing them to be released. Oh, and they have tentacles and extremely strong telepathy, and they cause insanity. Even in the Vorlons. According to the RPG, they move like locusts from reality to reality, devouring and using up each in turn before moving from the ruins of the last to their next prey; the mere psychic shadow of their ancient depredations INSPIRED Lovecraft and analogous authors, not to mention several varieties of cultists, in other intelligent races.
    • In the Season One episode 'Mind War', Catherine Sakai is investigating a planet while looking for a rare ore, and her ship's engines are overwhelmed by the mere presence of an unknown alien ship. She is only saved because G'Kar suspected what would happen, as that planet was known to be dangerous, and sent two fighter ships to rescue her. When she asks G'Kar what she saw out there, he makes an analogy using an nearby ant that's listed in the quote page.
    • In fact, pretty much all of the Babylon 5 First Ones are this... some more than others.
  • Already touched upon in the Literature section, but the made-for-TV film adaptation of The Langoliers is pretty traumatizing if you had the misfortune of seeing it as a child.
  • Charmed had "The Nothing", a creature imprisoned inside another dimension (located in an ice cream truck). It's been put to good use by devouring demon children.
    • There's also The Hollow, an ancient entity that exists simply to consume power. It can possess any living being and use it to absorb all power. It's said that if it is let loose long enough, it will consume everything. The threat was so great that Good and Evil had to join forces to seal it away. Though, in the series finale, it's revealed The Power of Three can destroy it.
  • Some Monsters Of The Week from Ultra Series fit this trope. Notable is Ultraman Tiga, where Ghatanothoa appears as the Big Bad. However, these are Superhero shows that punch out Cthulhu on a weekly basis.
    • Another good example is Gan Q from Ultraman Gaia. It is a bipedal giant eye with many smaller eyes all over its body. Coming from another dimension, Gan Q found everything on our side funny, especially when things got destroyed. It also has a Psychic Power that can drive people mad just by sight. Its never-ceasing laughter doesn't help either.
  • True form Angels in Supernatural. Physically, they (to each other) meet the descriptions of them in religious literature. People who look at an angel in his true form have their EYES BURNED OUT. They inhabit human vessels to be able to interact with other humans safely, however. It's notable that they're the other adversaries are almost all Humanoid Abominations, where the Angels are Eldritch Abominations that occasionally take Humanoid guises.

Castiel: This is... a vessel. My true form is approximately the size of your Chrysler building.
Dean: Alright, alright, quit bragging.

  • Discussed in The Good Place in season 4. Despite every demon appearing to be human, Michael reveals they actually are just incomprehensible beings wearing people-suits which are assigned randomly. Some get hot bods like Chris, others are in child form, and Michael got an old white man form which is charming and healthy. When he's accused of being Vicky wearing a Michael-suit, he refuses to take it off because he says that his true form -- a squid bigger than any squid on Earth-- will traumatize the main cast and is so large that it will blow the cover for their experiment. Vicky's form is apparently a giant snake.
  • Wishbone (!) of all shows featured this by faithfully adapting most of Journey into the West. The climax of Wishbone as Monkey's story shows him trying to prove himself to the Buddha, a large man with a golden mask, who chides him for trying to take shortcuts in achieving a place in the Jade Palace and for causing trouble in heaven. They make a bet, where if Monkey succeeds in leaving the Buddha's palm then he will prove he has learned enough to earn the throne and title of Jade Emperor; if he fails, he has to return to Earth, to his people and earthly kingdom. He thinks he flew to the edge of the world and left a paw-print on a pillar; the Buddha reveals the paw-print on his finger. Unlike the original Sun Wu-kong, Monkey is a Graceful Loser. He prostates himself before the Buddha within his palm, saying that he accepts he is not as powerful and submits to his will. The Buddha corrects him; Monkey needs to learn wisdom, not power. He says Monkey needs to spend 500 years on Earth, gaining this wisdom, before going on a mission that will earn him more than a meaningless title. Monkey thinks this is fair enough, and his agreeing rather than trying to flee again implies he will not be trapped under a mountain for this time as he was in Journey.
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