History Main / TomeofEldritchLore

* ''Gray's Sports Almanac'' from the ''Film/BackToTheFuture'' movies. Technically an ordinary sports almanac purchased in a conventional book store in the then-future year of 2015, this book truly matches the trope when brought 50 years into the past, as it contains information on the outcome of sports events from 1960 to 2000. Biff Tannen is able to use the knowledge to amass a fortune from gambling, eventually creating a BadFuture where he rules. Much like the typical cursed tome, burning it at the end of the second movie is required to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong.
* ''Film/{{Beetlejuice}}'' has the [[AllThereInTheManual Handbook for the Recently Deceased]], [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin which explains important things to know right after you die]], making it a rare instance of a Tome of Eldritch Lore that's actually ''helpful''. Unfortunately, it isn't very reader-friendly, as it [[RunningGag reads like stereo instructions.]]

* In ''Film/MerlinsShopOfMysticalWonders'', Merlin, of all people, gives one of these to a [[StrawCritic snobby critic]], of all people, to try to persuade him that magic is real. As a result, the critic summons a demon, sets fire to a cat, almost crushes himself and eventually manages to provide his wife with the baby she desires by, in a bizarre kind of "reverse incest", turns himself from her husband into her son. Naturally, Merlin thinks this is a jolly delightful jape.

* In ''Film/Warlock1989'', the Grand Grimoire is a Satanic book that was broken up long ago. When brought together it reveals the hidden name of God, which if said backwards will undo all that he created and destroy the world.

* ''VideoGame/EternalDarkness'' revolves around the stories of TheChosenMany of [[EldritchAbomination Mantorok]], as written in the eponymous Tome of Eternal Darkness; to unlock new chapters, [[PlayerCharacter Alexandra]] has to find missing pages. The book itself is larger than a dictionary, bound in human hide and detailed with shrunken bones, and remains hidden in an [[EldritchLocation extradimensional room full of statues and with a floor of screaming faces, held inside a huge skeletal hand]]. Anyone who gains access to the Tome can read it regardless of language[[note]]and from how a very young Cambodian slave can read it, regardless of literacy as well[[/note]] and possession of it allows for use of [[InstantRunes rune-based magicks]]. In a nice bit of GameplayAndStoryIntegration, it also [[DiegeticInterface serves as the menu system]].

* ''VideoGame/ShadowHearts'' has the Emigre Manuscript, a book so evil that it even has skull-shaped pages. Its main selling point is that it contains instructions on how to bring someone BackFromTheDead, something attempted in all four games of the series. Unfortunately, most attempts end up as grotesque {{Eldritch Abomination}}s.
** The Pulse Tract and R'lyeh Text count even more so. The Pulse Tract incarnates a god form the soul of the earth, one which very nearly destroyed all of Shanghai and subjected the our hero to [[MindRape The Mother of All Mind Rapes]]. The [[ShoutOut R'lyeh]] [[DoesthisRemindYouOfAnything Text]] however, besides being named after a certain undead city, 'summons a god form beyond the stars' which was described as being as far above humanity as humanity is above insects. Eldritch indeed.

* The "Black Book" in Fanfic/FalloutEquestria. It contains [[spoiler:dark, necromantic zebra magic designed to conjure flesh-eating megaspells, the creation of {{Soul Jar}}s, BloodMagic and other nasty things]]. Notably, it has a malicious aura that both tempts the owner to read the book, along with other maddening effects; one courier [[spoiler:chewed his hooves off]].

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' has the Krivbeknih and some other unnamed tome, part of a ShoutOut side quest in both the Point Lookout expansion and the original game, respectively.

* A couple of optional quests in ''VideoGame/FableII'' have the Normanomicon, the book of the extremely dead. Said quest is a touch underwhelming, as it mostly involves getting the book back from a bunch of undead mooks two bumbling brothers (Max and Sam) have accidentally summoned.

* ''VideoGame/EternalDarkness'' revolves around the stories of TheChosenMany of [[EldritchAbomination Mantorok]], as written in the eponymous Tome; to unlock new chapters, [[PlayerCharacter Alexandra]] has to find missing pages. The book itself is larger than a dictionary, bound in human hide and detailed with shrunken bones, and remains hidden in an [[EldritchLocation extradimensional room full of statues and with a floor of screaming faces, held inside a huge skeletal hand]]. Anyone who gains access to the Tome can read it regardless of language[[note]]and from how a very young Cambodian slave can read it, regardless of literacy as well[[/note]] and possession of it allows for use of [[InstantRunes rune-based magicks]]. [[GameplayAndStoryIntegration It also serves as the in-game menu system]].

%% Trope was declared Administrivia/NoRealLifeExamplesPlease via crowner by the Real Life Maintenance thread: [crowner link] [=%%https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13350380440A15238800&page=558#comment-13929=]

[[folder:Real Life]]
* All [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimoire grimoires]] are [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Grimoires categorically]] Tomes of Eldritch Lore by definition.
* ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grimoire_of_Pope_Honorius The Grimoire of Honorius]]'' was supposedly written by Pope Honorius III, who was evidently so holy that he got bored fighting off the temptation of the mundane world and took to summoning demons solely to turn down their offers.
* ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_and_Seventh_Books_of_Moses The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses]]'' is a usually single-volume SpellBook which purports to be OlderThanDirt. It was considered by Kurt E. Koch, a German Lutheran minister, to be an ArtifactOfDoom, as he claimed ([[ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontWatch incorrectly]]) that it contained a page asserting that whoever owns the volume belongs to {{Satan}}, which led him to call for the destruction of all copies of it.
* ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Abramelin The Book of Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage]]'', the 14th century grimoire, has stories like this attached to it. Of course, none are verifiable, and S.L. [=MacGregor=] Mathers and Aleister Crowley probably made most of them up.
* AncientEgypt had a few:
** The earliest were the Pyramid Texts, inscribed on the walls of the burial chambers of the later Old Kingdom monarchs (starting with Unas of the Fifth Dynasty). These were prayers for the deceased king, guiding him and wishing him well in the afterlife.
** Next came the Coffin Texts, starting in the late First Intermediate Period to the early Middle Kingdom. These consisted of a set of spells or prayers painted onto the interiors of the beautiful wooden coffins produced for royalty and nobles of this era. These spells or "prayers" differed from individual to individual, although some were very similar or even identical, but each combination was unique and could only be used by the person to whom they belonged. The spells were usually some form of magical protection against demons in the underworld, or incantations to help one reach paradise.
** The most famous is ''Book of Going Forth by Day'', popularly known as the ''Book of the Dead''. A further development of the Coffin Texts, starting in the late Second Intermediate Period and early New Kingdom, this was a collection of various spells for wealthy (or at least reasonably well-off) individuals, painstakingly written on scrolls of papyrus placed in the coffins of the dead. The prayers/spells are in the same vein as the Coffin Texts, but became increasingly complex and ritualized. Meanwhile, the shift from painting on coffins to writing in ink on papyrus made them available to less-wealthy people.
** Meanwhile, New Kingdom monarchs did ''not'' use the Book of the Dead. They had a separate, unique set of texts, descended more directly from the Pyramid Texts, called the ''Amduat'' or ''Imduat'' (variously translated as "The Book of That Which is In the Underworld", "The Book of the Hidden Chamber", and similar). This text, which dealt specifically with the special role Egyptian monarchs had in the afterlife and in assisting Osiris in maintaining the cosmic order (Ma'at), was divided into twelve "hours", representing the long night of fighting chaos that the departed Pharaoh was part of leading. These texts inscribed on the walls of most of the tombs of monarchs in the Valley of the Kings, though usually several hours were skipped for reasons of space or time; only kings with long reigns and big tombs (e.g. Thutmose III and Amenhotep III) have the whole thing.
* The ''Literature/ArabianNights'' stories are said to drive to madness anyone who reads the entire work. [[http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3435 It's online at Project Gutenberg]] for anyone who's [[TemptingFate curious enough to try it]].
* The ''Literature/MalleusMaleficarum'' is a book written by fifteenth-century [[TheWitchHunter witch-hunters]] to record said witches' alleged depraved practices, and the equally cruel tortures that were visited on suspected witches. However, its recommendation by the reigning Pope was forged; he actually ''denounced'' the book as heretical (even though he did overturn previous canon stating that belief in witchcraft was ''itself'' heretical), claiming that the book's authors were acting outside the authority and beliefs of the Church. This didn't stop secular authorities from using it in {{witch hunt}}s, though. It was written by a German monk (who co-credits another "author" without his permission, pissing him off royally once he found out) who was [[AuthorAppeal so hopelessly obsessed with demon rape]] that he got tossed from every monastery he was sent to just by not shutting up about it.
* The ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript Voynich Manuscript]]'' appears to be a 14th-century treatise on the medicinal use of plants, which happens to be written in a [[{{Conlang}} nonexistent language]] and contains bizarre illustrations of otherworldly biology. The language has defied translation even with modern computing technology; all it tells us that it's almost certainly a real language and not a bunch of random scribbles. The plant illustrations, despite resembling other early naturalist treatises, seem to combine the roots, stems, and flowers of different real-life plants into some sort of [[MixAndMatchCritters frankenplant]]. There are some claims that it's a modern-day forgery (perhaps confusing it with the ''Literature/CodexSeraphinianus'', a [[WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs "work of art"]] from TheSeventies that's superficially similar to it), but if that's true, it's a diabolically clever and detailed one. One of the most common and accepted theories is that it was made in the 16th century by known alchemist and con-man John Dee, who sold it to Czech King Rudolf II (a famous patron of science and [[TechnoBabble anything resembling it]]) for 600 gold coins. ''Webcomic/{{xkcd}}'', on the other hand, has a [[https://xkcd.com/593/ weirder (and yet somehow believable) explanation]].
* [[JustForFun/TVTropesWillRuinYourLife TV Tropes]]. [[ArchiveBinge We're all trapped! TRAPPED!]]
* The US Army field manual TM 31-210, "Improvised Munitions Handbook", is a good modern-day mundane equivalent. It won't summon demons, but almost everything in it will summon FBI agents. And unlike most other books on this list, you can get it on Amazon.
* UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler's ''Literature/MeinKampf'' has become something like this in countries where [[BannedInChina it's banned]] or otherwise difficult to get. Its home country UsefulNotes/{{Germany}} had effectively banned it until TheNewTens, as the [[UsefulNotes/TheSixteenLandsOfDeutschland state of Bavaria]] owned the copyright at the end of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII and refused to allow any reprints after the war until said copyright expired. The inability to easily read it — and the sheer number of normal people, especially impressionable teenagers, who became ThoseWackyNazis during the war — led to the creation of a mythos that it was dangerously persuasive and needed to be banned. The actual book is really just Hitler's incoherent rambling about things he hated, and modern printings of the book usually include historians' annotations to highlight that.
* ''Literature/TheTurnerDiaries'' is likewise considered a tool to turn readers to fascism. On its face, it's one of several controversial underground fiction books written by a white supremacist (okay, that may be rather an understatement). However, underneath that, it was intended by its author, National Alliance leader William Luther Pierce (writing under the PenName Andrew [=MacDonald=]), as a manual for organizing a white supremacist revolution, using a novel as a hook and a FramingDevice. Members of American law enforcement knew this book was potentially trouble ''long'' before a great many hate crimes and terror attacks were inspired by it, most notable among them the Oklahoma City bombing. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turner_Diaries#Crimes_associated_with_the_book Wikipedia has a list of such attacks.]]
* Combined with FridgeHorror in [[http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/14032179/ this]] archived [[Website/FourChan /tg/]] about the works of one [[Creator/DrSeuss Theodore Seuss Geisel]].
* ''Literature/HouseOfLeaves''. [[MetafictionalTitle May]][[MindScrew be.]]
* ''The Mystery of the Cathedrals'', written by an alchemist in the 1920s using the PenName Fulcanelli, makes the case that the Cathedrals of Europe, as built by Freemasons, are in fact stone manuals outlining the "Great Work" of alchemy. The work was followed by a sequel, ''The Dwellings of the Philosophers''. A third manuscript was intended for publication, but it was recalled by the author at the last minute with the claim that its secrets were too dangerous for public consumption. Interestingly, the CIA had an extensive file on Fulcanelli and conducted a massive search for him in the years following UsefulNotes/WorldWarII.
* ''The Book of Weird'' (also titled ''The Glass Harmonica'') by Barbara Ninde Byfield. It's a relatively modern book, mostly tongue-in-cheek, but has that grimoire feel.
* ''Literature/TheCatcherInTheRye'' was linked to a number of high-profile shootings in TheEighties. Mark David Chapman cited the book as inspiration for assassinating Music/JohnLennon, and it also showed up in the possession of John Hinckley, Jr. (who tried to kill UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan) and Robert John Bardo (the StalkerWithACrush who murdered actress Rebecca Schaeffer). Some {{conspiracy theorist}}s have proposed that the book is a trigger for {{Manchurian Agent}}s; this idea has received mention in media from ''Film/ConspiracyTheory'' to ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark''. There have also been more serious psychological discussions as to why ''Catcher'' was so popular with a certain kind of assassin; one likely explanation is that it's about an outsider with an unhealthy fixation on innocence and authenticity, one whose UnreliableNarrator tendencies are only visible if you're paying close attention.
* Creator/LRonHubbard claimed to have written a manuscript entitled ''Excalibur'' containing [[TheseAreThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow otherworldly truths about the universe]], which were revealed to him while he was briefly clinically dead during oral surgery. He tried to sell it, but people who read it supposedly went insane or committed suicide. Hubbard retooled it into ''Literature/{{Dianetics}}'', claiming to have distilled his revelations upon realizing that the original version [[MySkullRunnethOver revealed too much information at once]]. ''Dianetics'' became a foundational document of Scientology, and the idea of Hubbard's revelations being too much to take in at once is still pervasive in modern Scientology — most famously, Scientologists claim that if you hear the story of Xenu (the alien overlord who took his subjects to prehistoric Earth, executed them en masse, and fed their souls religious ideas to confuse them, leading them to surround humanity) before you're "spiritually ready", you'll get sick and die.
* ''Theatre/{{Macbeth}}'', one of Creator/WilliamShakespeare's darkest and eeriest plays, is supposedly cursed. An unusually high number of accidents and deaths have occurred during productions of the play, which is why actors avoid referring to the play by name, instead calling it "[[TheScottishTrope the Scottish play]]".
* The ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimorium_Verum Grimorium Verum]]'' is an occult manual generally thought to have been written during the 18th century, though the authorship purports to be from the early 16th century and derived from King Solomon. Interestingly, it nicely averts FantasyGunControl.
* Harvard's library has [[https://roadtrippers.com/blog/harvard-discovers-three-of-its-library-books-are-bound-in-human-flesh three books bound in human flesh]]. They're about Roman poetry, French philosophy, and medieval Spanish law (that one's skin taken from one flayed alive). And apparently, the practice wasn't that uncommon in the 17th century, though mostly for anatomy textbooks.
* Esoteric movements within religions often take the stance that their holy texts have hidden messages accessible only to those who have been "illuminated" with supernatural wisdom and understanding, and that understanding these messages grants a deeper knowledge (and, in some cases, more control) regarding how the universe works. The most famous of these is the Kabbalistic tradition within Judaism, but there are many others. A less literal version of this is pretty much universal in any religion concurrent with or predating early Christianity. While it wasn't usually a literal book due to low literacy rates even among priests, secret rituals and prayers giving the priest greater influence on various things were pretty much par for the course, especially in early Hinduism and the Roman mystery cults. Some [[ChurchOfHappyology current religions]] still work like this.
* The ''Literature/AnarchistCookbook'' has this reputation, as it deals with shady techniques like creating homemade explosives. However, most of the "recipes" are woefully unreliable, meaning that uninformed {{Mad Bomber}}s who use the book are far more likely to injure ''themselves'' than to commit any effective terrorism. Worse, since the early days of TheInternet, sites like UsefulNotes/{{Usenet}} have been circulating various other "anarchist cookbooks" that are even less accurate than the original.
* UsefulNotes/MarieCurie's notebooks are so radioactive, even many years since her death, that they require protective equipment to handled, and are kept in a lead-lined box.
* ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hit_Man:_A_Technical_Manual_for_Independent_Contractors Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors]]'', written under the pseudonym "Rex Feral" and published by Paladin Press, is [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin precisely what its title suggests]], a nonfiction step-by-step guide instructing the reader as to the best tools and techniques for committing a contract murder. The book was famously used in the planning and commission of at least one massacre: a 1993 contracted triple homicide in Silver Spring, Maryland, with the perpetrator following the book's advice almost to the letter. In a landmark case, the victims' families sued Paladin Press and won, claiming that ''Hit Man'' had aided and abetted the killers. On the TV program ''American Justice'', author and First Amendment scholar Rod Smolla said that he could not leave the book by his bedside because it was "giving off evil vibrations." After the case, Paladin Press agreed to stop selling ''Hit Man'' and destroy the 7,000 copies it still possessed, but it's been estimated that there may be as many as 20,000 copies still in existence.
* ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picatrix Picatrix]]'' is a 400-page tome about planetary magic, covering everything from performing animal sacrifices to the planets in magical rituals to using human blood and gazelle brains to make {{Love Potion}}s.
* Nearly a thousands years old and written in Latin, the Domesday Book (or "Doomsday Book") is a subversion. It is one of the earliest demographic surveys in impressive detail conducted for tax purposes ([[IntimidatingRevenueService which can be pretty scary]]), but is either fascinating or boring depending on your point of view.
[[/folder]]

** Meanwhile, New Kingdom monarchs did ''not'' use the Book of the Dead. They had a separate, unique set of texts, descended more directly from the Pyramid Texts, called the ''Amduat'' or ''Imduat'' (variously translated as "The Book of That Which is In the Underworld", "The Book of the Hidden Chamber", and similar). This text, which dealt specifically with the special role Egyptian monarchs had in the afterlife and in assisting Osiris in maintaining the cosmic order (Ma'at), was divided into twelve "hours", representing the long night of fighting chaos that the departed Pharaoh was part of leading. These texts inscribed on the walls of most of the tombs of monarchs in the Valley of the Kings, though usually several hours were skipped for reasons of time or space; only kings with long reigns and big tombs have the whole thing.

** Also, the Grimoire of Alice, which is always sealed up. The one time Alice used the book, she jumped from a 3rd stage boss into a BonusBoss. However, she hasn't used it since then.

* In the [[UpdatedRerelease Final Mix]] version of ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsII'', Sora and Co. discover a book in the Underworld titled "Absent Silhouettes". Said book is also [[PowerFloats floating in midair]], [[SigilSpam decorated with the Nobodies' symbol]] and [[ObviouslyEvil surrounded by an aura of dark energy]]. [[spoiler:Subverted once you examine it, though; it's actually not a book, but [[BonusBoss Zexion's Absent Silhouette]], taking the form of [[ThrowTheBookAtThem his weapon]].]]

* The Grimmerie from the novel adaptation of ''Literature/{{Wicked}}'' is implied to be one of these, but no Ozian can actually read the thing. [[spoiler:Elphaba can make out bits and pieces, but that's because she turns out to be only half-Ozian]]. It's also revealed that the [[spoiler:Wizard's entire despotic reign]] is a mere EvilPlan to get his hands on it.

* The eponymous grimoire of the novel ''Liber Lilith'' is a blasphemous [[{{UsefulNotes/Gnosticism}} Gnostic]] text, apparently written in the early Common Era, that is attributed to Lameth, the son of Cain in the Bible. It describes Lilith as the creation of the Demiurge Samael. She, in turn was the true creator of Adam, as well as being the Serpent who tempted Eve (who was created by Samael, causing Lilith to become jealous). The rest of the grimoire describes the grotesque rituals needed to worship Lilith in exchange for great power and enlightenment, which often involve ingredients such as baby fat and mensural blood. The rituals themselves range from mere possession by her to (spoilered for NauseaFuel) [[spoiler:what the disclaimer at the beginning describes as [[{{Squick}} "sexual necromancy"]] .]] Much of the book is a reproduction of the diary of a German occultist named Karl Steiger who attempts to worship Lilith as the grimoire describes, only to be driven to insanity, being tormented by horrific nightmares and becoming increasingly paranoid and distrustful of the outside world, before losing contact with reality altogether and committing suicide.

* The grimoire in the eponymous novel ''Liber Lilith'' is a highly disturbing, and often blasphemous [[{{UsefulNotes/Gnosticism}} Gnostic]] text, apparently written in the early Common Era that is attributed to Lameth, the son of Cain in the Bible. It describes Lilith as the creation of the Demiurge Samael, who in turn was the true creator of Adam, as well as being the Serpent who tempted Eve (who was created by Samael, causing Lilith to become jealous). The rest of the grimoire describes the grotesque rituals needed to worship Lilith in exchange for great power and enlightenment, which often involve ingredients such as baby fat and mensural blood. The rituals themselves range from mere possession by her to (spoilered for NauseaFuel) [[spoiler:what the disclaimer at the beginning describes as [[{{Squick}} "sexual necromancy"]] .]] Much of the book is a reproduction of the diary of a German occultist named Karl Steiger who attempts to worship Lilith as the grimoire describes, only to be driven to insanity, being tormented by horrific nightmares, and becoming increasingly paranoid and distrustful of the outside world, before losing contact with reality altogether and committing suicide.

See also ArtifactOfDoom, TheseAreThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow, and BrownNote. Not to be confused with the GreatBigBookOfEverything or SpellBook, which are more of a neutral nature, or the DeadlyBook, which is more actively harmful. May overlap with TomesOfProphecyAndFate if they have evil prophecies. May serve in-setting as a MonsterCompendium, especially in stories in the style of Creator/HPLovecraft, in which the heroes sometimes have to familiarise themselves with horrible books, despite the danger to their sanity, in order to understand what they are fighting. Can involve TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou.

* Grimoires in ''LightNovel/ACertainMagicalIndex'' seem to be this, considering that they allow the user to gain ''tremendous'' power, but the results range from (so far) BloodFromTheMouth at best and BodyHorror at worst. Only the eponymous Index of Prohibited Books has been able to read the grimoires and [[PhotographicMemory store them in her head]], since she has no mana to power the grimoires. One of the grimoires within Index is the Necronomicon, which was originally just a fictional book until some magicians decided they wanted to bring the Cthulhu Mythos to life and defictionalized it.

* Caster's Noble Phantasm in ''LightNovel/FateZero'' is Prelati's Spellbook, a tome with a covering made of human skin. It's a self-powering prana generator and allows the user to summon {{Eldritch Abomination}}s. It's also called the R'lyeh text, as a ShoutOut to the Franchise/CthulhuMythos. It can also allow Caster to [[spoiler:[[FusionDance merge with the book]] in order to summon a gigantic EldritchAbomination]]. Is it any wonder that Caster is so absolutely insane?

* The Claire Bible in ''LightNovel/{{Slayers}}''. Its author is benign enough (one of the good dragon-gods of the Slayers world), but its subject is the Mazoku race and the dragons' war with them, with extra details on the Mazoku-powered black magic and the secret magic of the supreme creator deity. The genuine Claire Bible is also not a book, but a sphere holding infinite knowledge, however many fragments of it are indeed scribed as books and scrolls.

** ''TabletopGame/MageTheAwakening'' has numerous books called grimoires, where a mage inscribes all their knowledge of a spell (literally; it leaves their mind forever) so that others can learn it more easily. Needless to say, some grimoires are less than wholesome, including: the book of the life of an Atlantean prophet that turns those who study it enough into a psychic clone of said prophet; a bestiary on [[EldritchAbomination Abyssal beings]] that leads the mage who reads it enough to believe that he's uncovered an important secret and that all his friends have turned on him; and the book that contains both normal spells and spells that draw upon the Abyss but doesn't tell you which are which. ''Grimoire of Grimoires'' is an entire sourcebook dedicated to these.

In [[CosmicHorrorStory Cosmic Horror Stories]], they typically [[GoMadFromTheRevelation drive their readers into gibbering insanity]]; the title alone can make them [[HearingVoices hear voices]].

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

* In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyLegendIII'' the wizard Shar can use the Tablet to free the people of Pureland from the Master's power. Since the whole game is a ShoutOut to the Cthulu Mythos, it's most likely the Necronomicon. In the original Japanese it's a "Goblin corpse".

*** Notice that Snyder confiscated the books, but [[SnapBack in succeeding episodes Giles has them again]]. Apparently, Snyder returned these books to Giles afterwards, [[FridgeLogic no matter how out of character that might seem]].
*** Or maybe some of Giles's friends and associates...persuaded...Snyder to give them back. Or maybe he made him forget the whole thing, and took them back himself. This IS the guy who [[spoiler:introduced the freaky-cool ninja dude to his wife, in the fake-evil-Angel-to-fool-Faith episode]].

* [[Wiki/SCPFoundation SCP Foundation]]: [[http://www.scpwiki.com/scp-140 SCP-140]] is a modern hardcover book entitled ''A Chronicle of the Daevas'', detailing the history of the Daevites, an ancient, extinct, and preternaturally evil human civilization. Readers find the contents simultaneously repulsive and fascinating, but the worrying part is that it absorbs any ink (or, preferably, human blood) it comes in contact with to expand and rewrite its contents, and the ''really'' worrying part is that those expansions [[{{Retconjuration}} alter history to match]], with new artifacts and ruins appearing in old dig sites. When first discovered, the book stated that the Daevites had been wiped out around 200 BCE by Qin Shi Huang; now the book says they were only temporarily defeated, and that the Daevites continued to thrive until Genghis Khan crushed them, some 1,400 years later. Worst of all, there are multiple copies of the ''Chronicle'' out there, and any one of them that expands itself updates all the rest. The Foundation is ''very'' interested in finding out where these other copies are before the Daevites can retroactively insert themselves into the modern era.

** She refused to use it as her WeaponOfChoice because it sounded like a bad idea. [[http://mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=002197 However,]] that didn't prevent her from using it in alchemy to make the [[ArtifactOfDoom Thorns of Oglogoth]], which she does use as weapons even though no sane person should.

* ''Webcomic/HeroesOfHomeroomC'': Damien owns a Necronomicon, which has glowing green eyes, and a glowing green mouth. It's also a sentient, living being capable of speech.

* Grimoires in ''LightNovel/ACertainMagicalIndex'' seem to be this, considering that they allow the user to gain ''tremendous'' power, but the results range from (so far) BloodFromTheMouth at best and BodyHorror at worst. Only the eponymous Index of Prohibited Books has been able to read the grimoires and [[PhotographicMemory store them in her head]], since she has no mana to power the grimoires.
** One of the grimoires within Index is the Necronomicon, which was originally just a fictional book until some magicians decided they wanted to bring the Cthulhu Mythos to life and defictionalized it.

** The ''Necronomicon'' has now become so ingrained in Western culture as the definitive Tome of Eldritch Lore that it's been {{Defictionaliz|ation}}ed, to an extent. Obviously, no one can print a ''Necronomicon'' that actually drives you mad, but enterprising pranksters have inserted fake library card entries for the book (using its ostensible author "A. Alhazred", from the books' "Abdul Alhazred [[InsistentTerminology the Mad Arab]]"). The book has also been used as a sort of shorthand for the Cthulhu mythos as a whole (for example, ''My First Necronomicon'', a primer to the mythos for children, bound in soft felt no less). Some people [[DaydreamBeliever aren't convinced it's fictional]], and during the "[[MediaScaremongering Satanic Panic]]" of the 1980s, several instructional guides on [[CouldThisHappenToYou how to tell if your kid was involved in Satanism]] asked if they had ever read the ''Necronomicon''. Among the books calling themselves the ''Necronomicon'' are:

** In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'', you can get two Grimoires, titled Togail and Aidhed, from certain creatures you kill. Their descriptions say that they contain spells respectively capable of [[ApocalypseHow destroying Ivalice]] and [[KillEmAll snuffing out all life]].