History Main / MonsterFromBeyondtheVeil

* In the third book of ''Literature/TheDeathGateCycle'', [[WitchSpecies Sartan]] necromancer Jonathon attempts to resurrect his wife, who was just murdered in front of his eyes. Because he does not wait the requisite three days for her soul to depart, however (which would have resulted in a SoullessShell), she comes back as a ''lazar'', an undead entity whose soul has only partially separated from its body, leaving it in total spiritual agony and quite, ''quite'' [[AxCrazy insane]]. The ''lazar's'' first act is to immediately begin creating an army of its kind to overwhelm the living and force them to share in its torment. Jonathon, previously a rather lighthearted GeniusDitz, is horrified by what he's unleashed and becomes TheAtoner for the remainder of the series.

* While most of ComicBook/SolomonGrundy's {{multiple choice past}}s paint him as a criminal at least in his long past human life, a couple of them make him a far more tragic victim of murder, and regardless of which is true the monstrous zombie that crawls its way out of Slaughter Swamp has very little in common with whomever Cyrus Gold was in life.

[[caption-width-right:275: Of course I’m still the same ComicBook/{{Firestorm}}… just one that craves hearts.]]

* The 1902 short horror story ''Literature/TheMonkeysPaw'' by W. W. Jacobs may the the TropeCodifier. A man wishes on a mummified monkey's paw for £200 to buy a house. He gets the money- after insurance coughs up for his son dying on the job. His wife then wishes for his son to be returned to them, and soon hears a knock at the door. But the father, fearing that his son has returned as he had died, in ragged shreds, burns the paw before his wife can open the door; by the time she does, there is no one there.

* In the game ''VideoGame/EvilGenius,'' the player can resurrect dead agents and/or tourists by dumping them in the [[ElaborateUndergroundBase base laboratory's]] biochemical tanks. However, the reborn minions that emerge are little more than [[DumbMuscle cataclysmically retarded blobs of muscle]] that exist only to kill your enemies on sight: since you're an EvilGenius, this isn't much of a problem. Well, given that they tend to kill people in front of witnesses, which raises your heat and brings more enemies to the island, it ''can'' be a bit of a problem, but in red alert scenarios, they're very useful.

* In ''Film/JennifersBody'', this is how Creator/MeganFox's eponymous AlphaBitch character becomes a demonic LiteralManeater. The members of [[RockMeAsmodeus the rock band Low Shoulder]] kill her as a VirginSacrifice in a DealWithTheDevil for financial success. Trouble is, she's decidedly ''[[ReallyGetsAround not]]'' a virgin. Her friend told them that to protect Jennifer's reputation ("and you're right, she ''is'' a virgin, and that beats sleeping with creeps like you!"), and Jennifer herself claimed to be a virgin under the assumption that her captors intended to rape her and that her supposed lack of experience would make her less appealing to them. The sacrifice ''does'' earn them profits, she [[CameBackWrong comes back wrong]]--specifically, possessed by a carnivorous succubus.

** In [[Anime/FullmetalAlchemist the anime]], the [[OurHomunculiAreDifferent homunculi]] originated from such creations. Feeding them incomplete {{Philosopher Stone}}s makes them look nearly the same as they were in life. All of the ones we see are villains to some extent, but it's essentially shown [[InhumanHuman they aren't inherently evil or dangerous]], the series BigBad just managed to manipulate all of them into her service.

* In ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'', [[spoiler:this is the eventual fate of all {{Magical Girl}}s, after essentially becoming {{Lich}}es and falling into TheCorruption (often provoked by TheReveal of what the process did to them). The trade name for these monsters, which Magical Girls are charged with fighting in this series, is "Witches".]]
** [[spoiler: Not all {{Magical Girl}}s change into Witches. The lucky ones die before that.]]

* Liu Kang from ''VideoGame/MortalKombat'' Deception, who was turned into a zombie by the corrupted god, Raiden after being murdered in ''Deadly Alliance'' by Shang Tsung.

[[folder:Anime And Manga]]

* Alice in the ''Franchise/ShinMegamiTensei'' series used to be a human girl who got two powerful demons so smitten with her that they gave her some of their power as a gift. That 'gift' killed her, and revived her as the cute friend-seeking fiend she is today.

* ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist'':
** Attempts to use alchemy to resurrect the dead invariably results in this. Under the right circumstances, the Monsters From Beyond The Veil can assume a human form, which may or may not resemble the original subject, but they remain dangerous monsters.
** It's later revealed that even with the Philosopher's Stone, Human Transmutation is flat-out impossible. The soul can't come back, and when Ed dug up the remains of the failed resurrection, it didn't even ''resemble'' Trisha's genetics (black hair, wrong bone length, wrong ''sex'', etc). So what exactly did they create? It's unspecified, but likely a random, haphazardly constructed, probably-soulless human body that could only live for a couple of minutes before dying. What's rather more creepy is that Al's soul was briefly in that body before Ed bound him to the suit of armor.

** It's later revealed that even with the Philosopher's Stone, Human Transmutation is flat-out impossible. The soul can't come back, and when Ed dug up the remains of the failed resurrection, it didn't even ''resemble'' Trisha's genetics (black hair, wrong bone length, wrong ''gender'', etc). So what exactly did they bring back? It's unclear, but most fans speculate that it was a random, haphazardly constructed, soulless human body that could only live for a couple of minutes before dying. What's rather more creepy is that Al's soul was briefly in that body before Ed bound him to the suit of armor.

* Not ''quite'' a resurrection, but the act of creating a new Promethean in ''TabletopGame/PrometheanTheCreated'' requires that the creator be of sound balance, both of mind and Azoth. If they do it wrong, then the process gets tainted by Flux, and the body ''tears itself apart''. These parts then animate and become Pandorans, mindless (if you're lucky) fiends intent on cannibalizing other Prometheans for their Azoth. Even when created without problems, Prometheans themselves are an example of {{Soulless Shell}}s. They are a walking no-man's-land with no soul. True, [[PinocchioSyndrome they aim to get one]], but odds are against them and in favor of them doing some rather horrifying things along the way.
* A likely result of resurrection magic in the world of ''[[TabletopGame/{{GURPS}} GURPS Fantasy II: Adventures in the Mad Lands]]'' -- in fact, even regular ''healing'' spells can have this effect, due to magic being inherently chaotic and dangerous in the Mad Lands. Furthermore, the land is so suffused with wild magic that dead people often come back as monsters even without any conscious attempt to revive them being made.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'': Nagash, the Great Necromancer managed to turn ''himself'' into one of these. Granted he was already an evil, blood-drinking immortal, but he still appeared human and had [[TakeOverTheWorld human interests]]. After his first death he reasserted control over his body by sheer force of will and used GreenRocks to power his form, mutating it into a [[OurLichesAreDifferent meters-tall skeletal monstrosity]] with [[KillAllHumans zero regard for human life]]. At this point he scares ''gods''.
** It should be noted that in the original lore, Nagash mutated himself into his skeletal Death God form ''before'' his first death. Of course he is eventually killed and comes back, twice, so he's just following the trope out of order.
* If someone comes back from death, this will happen without exception in TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu. We are talking about a game about the monsters designed by the [[TropeCodifier Trope Codifiers]] for CosmicHorror stories.
* The odds vary by edition, but it is quite likely in ''TabletopGame/{{Ravenloft}}'', as one would expect from a GothicHorror setting.

* ''Webcomic/KillSixBillionDemons'': Mottom is an evil, ancient hag-queen, but she's never actually died. Her husband, Hastet Om, has. Hundreds of years ago, they were married and, after months of sexual abuse at his hands, she finally [[EyeScream drove a dagger through his eye]] and thought that the end of it. Instead, [[spoiler:his corpse blossomed into the Tree of Woe, which provided her fruit granting eternal life ([[AgeWithoutYouth and temporary youth]]) in exchange for [[VirginSacrifice the blood of virgins]]. Eventually Allison, the comic's protagonist, reduces the tree to kindling.]]
** Also, keep in mind that demons are basically eldritch Shoggoth chaos that has been tempered and whipped into shape with rituals and masks, so they look human but are the personification of controlled chaos. Once a demon has 'died', its chaos will awaken and rip out of its corpse, quickly turning the former humanoid shell into a beast of multiple eyes and tentacle mouths.

* While most of ComicBook/SolomonGrundy's {{Multiple-Choice Past}}s paint him as a criminal at least in his long past human life, a couple of them make him a far more tragic victim of murder, and regardless of which is true the monstrous zombie that crawls its way out of Slaughter Swamp has very little in common with whomever Cyrus Gold was in life.

* Hinted to be the origin of The Tall Man from ''Film/{{Phantasm}}''. Kindly old scientist Jebediah Morningside steps through his newly created dimensional portal. The thing that comes back through looks like Jebediah. But it isn't him.

* Attempts to use Alchemy for resurrection in the world of ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist'' invariably results in this. Under the right circumstances, the Monsters From Beyond The Veil can assume a human form, which may or may not resemble the original subject, but they remain dangerous monsters.
** It's later revealed that even with the Philosopher's Stone, Human Transmutation is flat-out impossible. The soul can't come back, and when Ed dug up the remains of the failed resurrection, it didn't even ''resemble'' Trisha's genetics (black hair, wrong bone length, wrong ''gender'', etc.). ''Who the hell did they "bring back"?'' Just another of the ''many'' disturbing questions that make this remarkably amusing series remarkably creepy.
*** Unknown why the hair was black, but it turns out that it was ''Al'' in that body, after his original body was taken, his soul was drawn in the [[BodyHorror corpse of that body]], and the only reason he wasn't trapped in it is that it didn't have the capacity to sustain itself.
*** The hair just happened to be black. It could have been any color because they didn't bring anyone back, they made someone new. Al was only in it for a moment, mostly because [[JerkAss Truth is a jerk]].

* ''SamAndMax'' Season 2 has a bizarre Monster From Beyond The Veil: the ''[=DeSoto=]'' inexplicably "died" between the events of the fourth and fifth episodes, and when you resurrect it by ''freeing its soul from hell'', it comes back as a demon car. Curt the voice synthesizer even says the potential trope title: "It came back... processing...''wrong.''"

** Subverted in a sidequest where a UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper style serial killer is murdering young women to create a mishmash body as a vessel to resurrect his dead wife, which you prevent.

* In ''Film/{{Savaged}}'', MagicNativeAmerican attempts to bring Zoe back from the dead. He succeeds, but she returns with a passenger: the angry Ghost of the Apache chief Mangas Coloradas. The ghost sends her on a RoarinfRampageOfRevenge against both the men who raped and killed her, and the descendants of the general who murdered him under a flag of truce.

* In ''Literature/PetSematary'', humans who are buried in the Micmac Indian burial ground annex to the pet sematary are implied to become this. It's unclear whether animals resurrected are this, too stupid to do much other than become slightly more aggressive than they were in life, or {{Damaged Soul}}s.