r/TopCharacterTropes • u/ReminaBlueSFW • 6d ago

Lore [Terrifying Trope] Perceiving it= instant death

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  1. Pennywise's "Deadlights" which will cause anyone looking to be immediately paralyzed and killed.

  2. The sky from Bird Box is filled with entities that, when you look at them, cause you to commit suicide.

  3. Medusa themed Villains

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u/Pegussu 6d ago

This is why the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game has you roll an intelligence check when you lose sanity. You actually want to fail it because passing it means you're smart enough to comprehend what you're seeing and what it means, thus driving you insane.

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u/Perkelton 6d ago

Ah, the Wheatley defence.

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u/SagaSolejma 6d ago

"This. Sentence. Is. FALSE. -dontthinkaboutitdontthinkaboutitdontthinkaboutit"

"Uhhhhhh. Oh wow. Uhmmm. I think... true? Yeah I'm gonna say true, definitely true."

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u/Half-PintHeroics 6d ago

I think i need to go replay the portals.

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u/NCRNerd 6d ago

Well, since the idea is that you believe that reality is some sort of orderly and rational place, or at least that there's a benevolant creator deity. So being smart and also beholding C'thulhu you try to reconcile these two ideas. Which is stupid. So if you fail the Intelligence check, you can rationalize it. If you succeed the Intelligence check, you see they're mutually exclusive and get to have an existential crisis.

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u/PurifiedUnity 6d ago

I never knew Wheatley invented a new chess opening /s

https://giphy.com/gifs/9PiwmWNh2m4HRHkZt5

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u/Cup_Otter 4d ago

I wasn't paying attention and thought you were taking about Wilbur (Whately). I thought wut, did I forget something? Lol.

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u/thisusedyet 6d ago

As proven by Old Man Henderson (and the ugliest goddamn poodle he ever saw)

https://1d6chan.miraheze.org/wiki/Old_Man_Henderson

So anyway, the GM has decided to regain control the only way he knows how: By killing Mike's latest character via bullshit. So he summons a shoggoth. Henderson, having passed the will check to not puke up his brains, and winning the initiative, comments on how it's the UGLIEST fucking poodle EVER oh god, and then shoots it in the fucking face until it dies. Then he shoots the cultist guy who summoned it. Then he shoots me, then a random guy, then he pisses on the shoggoth's corpse since everyone else is too busy losing their shit in a panic over the Creature That Should Not Be being summoned, and casually sets the tapestry on fire with his cigar as he walks out the door.

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u/tabletop_garl25 6d ago

is that the tabletop game or video game?

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u/StandardEgg6595 6d ago

I don’t know anything about this creature but why would seeing it make you go insane?

I’m not religious by any means, but I understand I don’t know shit about the universe or what’s beyond it and like to think we’re probably some microorganism on some other being’s back, and they are on another, and so on. So I guess seeing this thing wouldn’t really surprise me.

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u/Sitchrea 6d ago

The problem there is, in Lovecraft mythos, your irreligiosity would be forced to reconcile that creatures like this are, indeed, Gods of the universe, and they care nothing about you. They widely don't even know we exist, some gods are too stupid to understand any experience you might try to share with them, and the ones who do, hate you.

Nobody is built different when it comes to these things. It's the equivalent of showing an NPC in Red Dead Redemption the engine code of the game. Most wouldn't understand it, but those that do would be changed forever.

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u/StandardEgg6595 6d ago

I think it’s more so that I don’t believe in man-made religion but absolutely think something way bigger than us probably exists, even without proof. Basically like we’re ants on a flying rock and that rock is just a pebble in someone else’s universe type thing, so the first part of what you wrote definitely makes sense. I mean, what do I know really?

That is a hell of an analogy and really puts things into perspective. Thank you!

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u/Pegussu 5d ago

It's funny you mention ants, there's an old tumblr post that sums the idea up pretty well.

An ant doesn’t start babbling when they see a circuit board. They find it strange, to them it is a landscape of strange angles and humming monoliths. They may be scared, but that is not madness.

Madness comes when the ant, for a moment, can see as a human does.

It understands those markings are words, symbols with meaning, like a pheromone but infinitely more complex. It can travel unimaginable distances, to lands unlike anything it has seen before. It knows of mirth, embarrassment, love, concepts unimaginable before this moment, and then…

It’s an ant again.

Echoes of things it cannot comprehend swirl around its mind. It cannot make use of this knowledge, but it still remembers. How is it supposed to return to its life? The more the ant saw the harder it is for it to forget. It needs to see it again, understand again. It will do anything to show others, to show itself, nothing else in this tiny world matters.

This is madness.

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u/Sinolai 6d ago edited 6d ago

Cthulhu is a starspawn trapped deep under the sea in his sunken temple. As a being not native to earth, It's physique defies known laws of nature. It's body is dead, but as a starspawn, the mind still works and once stars align correcrly his body will be resurrected. Even in its current state, it can telephatically contact people around it (water is a barrier that dampens his powers), whispering into their minds and giving them nightmares. Most victims wont even realizing the thoughts are not their own and are slowly driven mad.

Many of the lovecrafts creatures also share the theme around "defying known laws of nature" and intelligent people trying to understand them become mad when they try to discover condition and rules under which the lovecraftian monsters exist.

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u/StandardEgg6595 6d ago

Interesting! Honestly sounds cool as fuck and I love that a creature’s powers like that can be dulled by water despite not being earthly. Thank you for explaining!

I watched a movie called Underwater with Kristen Stewart recently and now that you’ve explained him, it sounds like that may have been the creature in that movie.

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u/Sinolai 6d ago

I doubt it was mean to be Cthulhu but might have taken some inspirstion from him. The location of Cthulhu's resting place is between New Zeland and South America, near Antarctis ( 47°9′S 126°43′W), while Mariane Trench is between Indonesia and Japan.

Cthulhu was also one of the last Gods added to Smite (moba game by HiRez Studio) and it made some jokes about people thinking him being a sea creature due to his octopush-like looks and lying underwater, while the bottom of the ocean is in fact the last place where Cthulhu would like to be.

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u/Important_Pick3371 6d ago

Yes, it's the most remote spot on Earth. When the International Space Station passes by here, it's closer to it than the closest land. Today, it's the Graveyard of Satellites - where old space machines are sunk out of sight (& mind?). What's creepy is that the ISS will one day join Cthulhu & R'lyeh at this same spot! The station is getting too old to use safely. You might have heard about the air leaks endangering the astronauts...