Referenced By / Cthulhu Mythos

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Anime & Manga

• A Certain Magical Index: The Cthulhu Mythos was originally just a normal fictional universe, until some magicians for some reason created spells designed to bring the events and beings in the Mythos to life. The Amakusa sidestory has a group stealing the Necronomicon and attempting to use these spells for their own ends.
• Digimon Tamers references Hypnos, Yuggoth, Shaggai, and Miskatonic University.

Comic Books

• Robin: Tim comes across an Eldritch Abomination flitting from one Town with a Dark Secret to another in the Appalachian Mountains.
• Zenith: The extradimensional villains are explicitly identified as Lloigor.

Fan Works

• Plan 7 of 9 from Outer Space
  • Doctor Zarkendorf claims to have "conducted the archeological evacuation of a paleogean cycle of invertebrate evolution utterly beyond our powers of speculation", causing Proton to suggest that he throw away his thesaurus.
  • While in Antarctica the optical distortions of the fata morgana makes mountain ranges look higher than the Himalayas, with strange cube-like buildings clinging to their peaks. Gneelicks also mentions they had to replace their pilot as "he was dragged off screaming 'Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!' which I assume is some sort of political slogan."
  • Proton contacts an Underwater City and asks to speak to whoever's in charge down there.
    "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu Rl'yeh wgah'nagl fhtagn," came the reply.
    "Zey says ee's 'aving a snooze. Ees eet eemportant?"

Literature

• Diogenes Club:
  • "The Case of the French Spy" features a Fish Person, who speaks an unknown language of which the only word the narrator passes on is "f'tagn" (which the protagonist assumes from context to be a swearword). One character, listing famous mythical underwater cities the Fish Person might have come from, mentions R'lyeh.
  • In "The Gypsies in the Wood", Charles Beauregard (an occult investigator for the Club) mentions owning a copy of De Vermiis Mysteris "illustrated with brass-rubbings that would curl your hair".
  • "The Big Fish" also features a Fish Person, Janice Marsh of the Innsmouth Marshes.
• The Doctor Who Expanded Universe has an odd tendency to reveal the main show's native Eldritch Abominations as "actually" Mythos figures. In particular, Fenric has been claimed to be Hastur, the Great Intelligence to be Yog-Sothoth, and the Animus from "The Web Planet" to be a Lloigor.
• Dresden Files: In Peace Talks: The cornerhounds are creatures created by Frank Belknap Long called the The Hounds of Tindalos. They're attributed to H. P. Lovecraft by Harry, though (Lovecraft did mention the Hounds in The Whisperer in Darkness, however).
• Green Antarctica takes heavy inspiration from Lovecraft's works for its Rule of Scary, and the man himself appears as a character visiting Antarctica in the 1920s and writing a travelogue. Creatures inspired by Lovecraft include demythifications of Gugs, Shantak, and Shoggoths. Places such as Leng, Tcho-Tcho, and Lake Hali are also named after locations in the Cthulhu Mythos.
• Wayne Barlowe: Barlowes Guide To Extraterrestrials includes an entry on the Elder Things, while Barlowes Guide To Fantasy includes one on the Gugs.

Live-Action TV

• Ultraman Tiga: The Big Bad is Ghatanothoa. There's also Zoigar, a monster based on the Lloigor.

Music

• Metallica has four songs inspired by the mythos, one of which is titled "The Call of Ktulu".

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition: Lords of Madness: The Book of Aberrations draws heavily on the themes of Lovecraftian literature to hint at a vast, alien universe where Aberration creatures come from. The chapter on the aboleths, primordial fish creatures that ruled the world in dark times past and plan to one day rule again, leans particularly heavily on this, and includes suggestions for treating the "Eldar Evils", primordial entities that the aboleths respect but do not worship, as simply being alternate names for famous Outer Gods and Great Old Ones like Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlathotep, Shub-Niggurath, Cthulhu, and Tsathoggua.
• Pathfinder makes very extensive use material from the Mythos. The Great Old Ones and Outer Gods are present as pantheons of demigods and true deities, respectively, with a major role in the setting's cosmology — Nyarlathotep, in particular, has historically had a great deal of influence in the history of Osirion — while the Dreamlands sit in the middle of the Dimension of Dreams and connect to the plateau of Leng. Creatures such as Denizens of Leng, Leng ghouls, gugs and shantaks are also statted out as regular creatures that can be encountered in most settings.

Video Games

• After the End: A Post-Apocalyptic America has the Occultists, a pagan religion primarily situated in post-apocalyptic New England, and featuring numerous deities and symbols found within the Mythos. Both versions of the Elder Sign show up as the religion's symbol (a "branch" of some sort) and the icon for a trait associated with the religion (the distorted star).
• Assassin's Creed Syndicate has a weapon called "Great Old One's Caress", and its description reads as following:
  The knuckles's description reads that they "were hupadgh n'gha ng n'ghft" and are shaped like a tentacle that curls over the hand.
• Chasmal Fear is a game inspired by Lovecraftian horror, set in an Underwater City consumed by some abyssal eldritch evil, and at one point you come across an old recording that borders on Tempting Fate:
  The good news? We haven't seen any signs of Cthulhu, Azatoth, or other eldritch horrors...
• Civilization: Beyond Earth: In the description of the Abyssal Mirror wonder, it mentions this giant and innovative underwater signal magnifier got its name when a test was performed that aimed it toward deep space, instead of planet orbit. After filtering out the background noise from distant spacecraft, satellites, and cosmic static, an unknown (yet steady) flute-like "monotonous piping" was received.
• Darkest Dungeon: The intro cinematic shows the Cthulhu statuette or fresco for a brief moment. The DLC "The Color of Madness" is a Whole-Plot Reference to "The Colour Out of Space", featuring a farmstead mutated by a Color pouring from a comet that crashlanded there.
• Dark Devotion has the Eibon Book, a spell book dropped by the Ritualist.
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: In the Dragonborn DLC, the Daedric Prince Hermaeus Mora appears as a floating, ever-shifting mass of eyes and tentacles, reminiscent of some descriptions of Yog-Sothoth.
• Fantastic Danmaku Festival: A series of loose fan remakes of the earlier Touhou Project games begin to include small nods to the mythos starting with the second entry. Yukari, a mysterious Youkai in the main cannon, takes on far more eldritch qualities with all of her spellcards being various Lovecraft nods. In the third game, one of the Original Generation characters, known only as Thanatos, has a creepy doll called Tinda in reference to The Hounds of Tindalos.
• Fate/Grand Order:
  • The Cthulhu Mythos was supposedly just a fictional universe; however, Demon God Raum sought to break the barrier between reality and fiction to bring forth a god capable of achieving the salvation of humanity, and so enacted a complicated scheme in a singularity set in Salem to call forth an Outer God. While Chaldea did succeed in killing him and stopping his plan, he did succeed in calling forth one using Abigail Williams as a vessel called "Sut-Typhon" (who is all but outright stated to just be another name for Yog-Sothoth). Abigail was later revealed to retain these powers and ended up joining with "Randolph Carter", who is heavily implied to be Lovecraft himself, and became the franchise's first Foreigner class Servant.
  • Later events reveal that that the Mythos wasn't so much "fictional" as Lovecraft interpreting the true beings in question through his dreams and stories, as they are very much real, but utterly alien and not even native to the Nasuverse. And the previously mentioned events? They successfully attracted the Outer Gods' attention to said reality and have made several more interested in actually coming over. Luckily, for every Outer God willing to team up with another to get their invasion plan going, there's another one willing to screw them over for their own selfish gain.
• Piratez: Quite prevalent, with the Deep Ones being the most glaring example.
• Scribblenauts: Maxwell can summon anything by just writing the name on his magical notepad, which includes Cthulhu and Shoggoth; "Lovecraftian" is an item that can be summoned and turns its wielder to look like a Lovecraftian monster.
• Shin Megami Tensei:
  • Nyarlathotep and Cthulhu are standard demons that you can fight against and summon in a number of games.
  • The plot of Persona 1 and Persona 2 is pretty much Nyarlathotep screwing with the player characters and the world in general.
    • In P1, Nyarly is the Persona of the Disc-One Final Boss, and you fight Yog-Sothoth earlier in the game. Nyarlathotep is also available as a Persona.
    • The P2 duology takes up this plot and makes Nyarlathotep the Big Bad and Final Boss for both games. Especially prominent in Eternal Punishment; you can summon Hastur as a Persona — with the card needed to summon him called The King in Yellow — and the PSP remake adds boss fights against entities such as Cthulhu, Byakhee, and Shub-Niggurath. There's even a visit to the Dreamlands, references to the cult of Cthulhu, and an appearance from a member of the talking cat tribe that opposes the abominations.
  • The Updated Re-release of Persona 5 (called Royal) brings back the old theme, with fights against entities like Hastur, and the new villain using Azathoth as a Persona.
• Tokyo Afterschool Summoners has transients that originate from the world of the Old Ones. They include, Nyarlathotep, Tsathoggua, Azathoth, and Cthugha, with Yog-Sothoth being an Exception in the story.
• The Tower - Idle Tower Defense: There's a "Cthulhu" event themed around the eponymous Eldritch Abomination of the Cthulhu Mythos.
• World of Warcraft: The Old Gods are Eldritch Abominations heavily based on Lovecraft's gods, with names such as C'Thun and Yogg-Saron and lore focused around their being ancient, monstrous gods long sealed away but still scheming to return. The Murlocs are also a clear Expy of the Deep Ones.

Webcomics

• Freefall: Lovecraftian Eldritch Abominations are invoked when Sam starts to explain the correct way to steal; Qwerty observes, "The tentacled horror from beyond my stars spoke, and von Neumann help me, in my madness I understood its words.◊" (Sam, annoyed, says he's giving them a sustainable business model.)
• Girl Genius: A pub is mentioned in passing as selling eldritch meat and in particular, shoggoth meat.

Western Animation

• Futurama: In "A Bicyclops Built For Two", one of the other aliens that Alcazar seduced and left waiting at the altar is a Yithian.
• Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated had a couple of episodes featuring one H.P. Hatecraft, and his novel The Shrieking Madness of Char Gar Gothakon: The Beast That Hath No Name. Adding more fun is that Hatecraft is voiced by Jeffrey Combs, who appeared in numerous Mythos film adaptions including one where he played Lovecraft. In the final episode, the gang go on a road trip to see Harlan Ellison, who's taken up a teaching post at Miskatonic University.

Fan Works

• Emma the Vampire Slayer: In "Collateral", Jeff calls the recently-defeated tentacle monster "Cthulu Junior", to Emma and Mary Margaret's confusion as he realizes that he is the only one who reads Lovecraft.

Film — Animation

• Turning Red: Priya says "Thank Cthulhu" in relief at one point.

Tabletop Games

• Transhuman Space: Lovecraft and related works are quite obscure by 2100, but uplifted octopi have discovered his work, and formed an actual Cthulhu religion. Nobody quite knows what to make of this, and the few who recognise the reference can't figure out if they're kidding.

Video Games

• A Castle Full of Cats: Cathulhu's name and design are based on Cthulhu.
• Chaos On Deponia: McThulu is the owner of a fast food restaurant in the Floating Black Market.
• Smite: Ah Muzen Cab's Dark Whisperer skin makes him resemble Cthulhu. The Great Dreamer himself was added as a playable character in 2020 as the sole member of the Great Old Ones pantheon.
• Super Conductors: One rising foe in train-themed game is the Dark Lord Choochoolhu.
• Terraria: The Eye and Brain of Cthulhu are independently-animated early-game bosses. The final boss is the Moon Lord, a creature greatly resembling Cthulhu himself.

Websites

• SCP Foundation: SCP-2662, AKA Cthulhu is a large, tentacled humanoid creature that causes cults to spontaneously form from people around it. The cults have a tendency to treat 2662 as a chaotic deity that must constantly be appeased through violent, sexual, and profane rituals. Ironically, 2662 displays the mentality of a typical teenager, and responds to rituals with shock and horror.

Web Videos

• Dark Dungeons (a parody/adaptation of one of the more infamous Chick Tracts) has the main villains attempting to summon Cthulhu himself.
• Freshy Kanal: Cthulhu stars in one of the Rap Battles against the Kraken.

Western Animation

• Justice League: The league fights "Ichthulhu" and its hordes in one installment. The writers later said they weren't aware that Cthulhu is public domain, otherwise they would have just used him.
• Rick and Morty: Part of the intro sequence shows the flying saucer careening through R'lyeh. As the camera Zooms into the cockpit, we see that Summer has a Star Spawn in her arms, and Cthulhu himself is chasing the vehicle.
• The Simpsons: In "Halloween of Horror", Cthulhu is one of the monsters seen in the background at Krustyland.
• The Venture Bros.: An unnamed monster that looks exactly like Cthulhu and came out of a portal to hell appears at the start of "The Better Man" before being destroyed by the Outrider.

Anime & Manga

• Fate/Zero: Caster Gilles de Rais possesses Prelati's Spellbook: Tome of the Sunken Spiraled City, which is Necronomicon. In the anime, he uses it to summon various Eldritch Abomination. He also keeps it in Fate/Grand Order, and thanks to its contents he knows a lot about the Mythos-like entities that start showing up.
• Touhou Suzunaan ~ Forbidden Scrollery: The Necronomicon makes a cameo in the first chapter. It's claimed that it the original manuscript of the kanji edition but at the same time the language is unknown.

Comic Books

• Daredevil: In Daredevil (2019), the book that gives instructions on how to use the Norn Stone is called the Necronordic.

Films — Live-Action

• Evil Dead: Many of the problems in the films are due to the Necronomicron ex Mortis (though in the first film it was named "Naturom Demonto").

Literature

• Discworld: Several novels refer to an extremely dangerous and near-sentient magic book for contacting paranormal entities called the Necrotelecomnicon or Liber Paginarum Fulvarum^note Dog Latin for "Book of Yellow Pages".

Music

• Necronomidol is an idol band (see what they did there?) named after the book that makes lots of Lovecraft references in its lyrics and general imagery.

Tabletop Games

• Fabula Ultima: The Necronomicon is one of the game's rare arcane weapons. It's a book which must be wielded in two hands in order to whack people, inflicting dark damage to whatever it hits. And if you're a spellcaster, it makes any offensive spell you cast inflict the Shaken status effect to its targets.

Video Games

• Crusader Kings II: In the Way of Life DLC, you can find and attempt to decipher the Necronomicon if you choose the scholarship focus (although you may Go Mad from the Revelation).
• Golden Sun: In the Japanese version of Golden Sun: The Lost Age, the book is an equipable item, changing the user's class and granting them the ability to summon monsters. In America, the book was renamed to Tomegathericon, but still retained the same aspects.
• Shin Megami Tensei:
  • Digital Devil Saga: Al-Azif is a collectible item that spams the Mamudo spell.
  • Persona 5: Futaba's Persona is the Necronomicon. In the Updated Re-release, it upgrades to the Al-Azif.
• Tales of Phantasia: The Necronomicon is but one of many Mythos tomes that is Claus' weapon.
• Tokyo Afterschool Summoners: Shiro Motoori is granted the Necronomicon from the App as his Sacred Artifact and is able to summon small demons to battle, locate others, or perform other helpful tasks.

Visual Art

• H. R. Giger has a collection of his works titled after the ancient tome.

Web Animation

• RWBY Chibi: In the "Books Fix Everything" segment of Season 3 Episode 7, Ruby ends up finding the Necronomicon, with it having the subtitle of "Open at Your Own Peril". Professor Oobleck urges her not to open it, but she does anyway, causing it to release hundreds of evil spirits, before the book falls to the floor and crawls away on its own.

Webcomics

• MegaTokyo features the Necrowombicon, a parody of the Mythos book.
• Nixvir features the Necrotelephonicon, a nod to both the Necronomicon and Pratchett's Necrotelecomnicon.
• Penny Arcade features the Necrowombicon, a parody of the Mythos book.

Web Videos

• VG Myths: The Necronomicon is mentioned in an image from "How Many Shines Can You Get In Bowser's Fury Without Jumping?".

Western Animation

• The Simpsons: Apparently, the Republican Party of Springfield has a copy of the Necronomicon.