History YMMV / CthulhuMythos

* BrokenBase: August Derleth's contributions to the Mythos are probably the most divisive. On the one hand, there are numerous fans who will never forgive Derleth for ditching Lovecraft's BlueAndOrangeMorality in favor of BlackAndWhiteMorality. On the other hand, there are still many who find his stories enjoyable, and some of his creations (e.g. Ithaqua) and ideas (e.g. Hastur being one of the Great Old Ones) remain popular. The fact that Derleth's work was hugely influential to a whole generation of Mythos writers only adds fuel to the debate.
%%** Almost all of the works in the Cthulhu Mythos that weren't originally written by Creator/HPLovecraft count for this.

** The second biggest is the idea that Lovecraftian abominations could all drive people crazy as a result of some kind of power, as if they could drain a video game SanityMeter. There is very little evidence for this in the text itself. It is true that losing one's sanity is a common enough occurrence in Lovecraft's works, but it doesn't always happen to characters who saw an EldritchAbomination. Some simply can't handle the existence of comparatively mundane fish-men, ape-like creatures or cannibal cults either (as in ''The Shadow over Innsmouth'', "Arthur Jermyn", and "The Rats in the Walls", respectively), and it helps that many Lovecraft characters are mentally weak to begin with. As for the eldritch beings, some of them, like Cthulhu, are known to mess up with people's dreams, but the notion that the mere sight of them would break anyone's mind is, at best, an exaggeration[[note]]of the two sailors who survive the encounter in "The Call of Cthulhu", one does go mad and die, but the other recovers quickly and escapes[[/note]]. Besides that, many of Lovecraft's protagonists simply never went insane at all, even after encountering or [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu punching out]] cosmic monstrosities, like in "The Dunwich Horror". Whenever a protagonist genuinely did GoMadFromTheRevelation, it was usually after a prolonged period of physical and mental duress, of which the sight of the horror is simply the final straw, as in ''At the Mountains of Madness'' and "Dagon". Even then, of the two characters from ''At the Mountains of Madness'' who actually saw the shoggoth[[note]]on top of trekking for ages in the harsh Antarctic mountains, losing members of their party, being deprived of sleep, water, and food, and learning that mankind was created by aliens[[/note]], only one of them went mad from the experience. And that was only after seeing [[RiddleForTheAges something else that he won't tell anyone about]]. Simply learning about the Great Old Ones, or seeing them without any context, does nothing to one's sanity whatsoever. One character carefully pored through the ''Necronomicon'' several times and kept his sanity intact, as he viewed it no different from any mythological text which describes things that do not really exist. Heck, one Great Old One (Rhan-Tegoth) was able to be stuck in a wax museum disguised as a statue, and no one even caught on to the fact that he wasn't wax, much less went insane just from looking at him.
** The idea that humanity was totally insignificant before various alien horrors. While it was key to Lovecraft's works that we ''were'' insignificant, what seems to be missed in the pop version is that ''so were the alien horrors''. Not all of them were Azathoth or Yog-Sothoth. More often than not, [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu the protagonists would stop]] or at least survive whatever the alien threat was. Even Nyarlathotep wasn't immune to getting [[DidYouJustScamCthulhu tricked by a human]], to the point that ''The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath'' ends with the Crawling Chaos brooding over his defeat. ''Call of Cthulhu'' has a cultist remarking that, while the rise of the Old Ones can't be stopped, by the time they come back we'll have learned so much and would have become so powerful that "mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones."

** Cthulhu has so little role in Lovecraft's work, yet is the most famous now. The fact that he lent his name to the franchise should be evidence enough. It helps that Lovecraft himself seems to have been fond of him, as he often name-dropped Cthulhu his writings (including his own stories, his revisions, and letters to his friends).

** The term ''Fire Vampires'' were first used for Fthaggua's servitors. Later, Lin Carter used the term to describe Cthugha's Flame creatures (while making Fthaggua himself a son of Cthugha), and it became the depiction that most associate with, popularized by ''TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu''.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: Similar to Slender Man in present day, some consider the character of Cthulhu to be so overused and [[ItsPopularNowItSucks well-known]] that he's become a cliché of the CosmicHorrorStory genre. Fortunately, there's plenty of other monsters and villains in the Mythos for writers to use to avert this.

* ValuesDissonance: There's no real beating around the bush; Lovecraft himself was an unabashedly racist man even by the standards of the era he was born into, and this, unfortunately, reflects a lot in his writing. 'Savages' are some of the ''nicer'' things he uses to refer to non-white people, and racial slurs being thrown around by his protagonists are unfortunately really common, as is (almost) every non-white character in his stories either being a villain, or part of a cult for one of the elder gods. Even the rare sympathetic portrayals, such as Chief Grey Eagle, still have racist tropes attached to them (in his case MagicalNativeAmerican and TontoTalk). Needless to say, this can make getting into the mythos by reading his original writing incredibly uncomfortable.

* BrokenBase: Almost all of the works in the Cthulhu Mythos that weren't originally written by Creator/HPLovecraft count for this.
** August Derleth's contributions to the Mythos are probably the most divisive. On the one hand, there are numerous fans who will never forgive Derleth for ditching Lovecraft's BlueAndOrangeMorality in favor of BlackAndWhiteMorality. On the other hand, there are still many who find his stories enjoyable, and some of his creations (e.g. Ithaqua) and ideas (e.g. Hastur being one of the Great Old Ones) remain popular. The fact that Derleth's work was hugely influential to a whole generation of Mythos writers only adds fuel to the debate.

* CommonKnowledge: There are many misconceptions about the Cthulhu Mythos, usually perpetuated by later writers such as Dereleth.

** The second biggest is the idea that Lovecraftian abominations could all drive people crazy as a result of some kind of power, as if they could drain a video game SanityMeter. There is zero evidence for this in the text itself. Lovecraft's protagonists often lost a bit of sanity for the mundane reason of "that monster is really ugly", but that's the closest they came. It helps that most of his protagonists were mentally weak to begin with. Besides that, many of his protagonists simply never went insane at all after encountering or [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu punching out]] various cosmic horrors (e.g. ''Call of Cthulhu'' and ''The Dunwich Horror''). Whenever a character genuinely did GoMadFromTheRevelation, there was always a very specific reason for it (such as the narrator of ''Shadow Over Innsmouth'' learning he's part Deep One and currently changing into one, or the narrator of ''At The Mountains of Madness'' learning that aliens exist and might have spawned humanity, when he presumably thought like most in his time that a benevolent god has created humanity alone and in His image). ''At The Mountains of Madness'' has the protagonists encountering the Elder Things and shoggoths, after having trekked for ages, lost members of their party, being deprived of sleep, water, or food, on top of being stressed and likely having hypothermia. They "just" went temporarily bugnuts from stress, then went home and made a fortune selling books. Another character in the stories had carefully pored through the ''Necronomicon'' several times and kept his sanity intact, as he viewed it no different from any mythological text which describes things that do not really exist. Heck, one Great Old One (Rhan-Tegoth) was able to be stuck in a wax museum disguised as a statue, and no one even caught on to the fact that he wasn't wax, much less went insane just from looking at him.

* CreepyAwesome: Any and all of the gods.

** Cthulhu has so little role in Lovecraft's work, yet is the most famous now. The fact that he lent his name to the franchise should be evidence enough.

%%* EvilIsCool: Nyarlathotep

** Non-Euclidian Geometry [[labelnote:Explanation]]Used by Lovecraft to describe supposedly impossible or strange angles.[[/labelnote]]

** The term ''Fire Vampires'' were first used for Fthaggua's servitors. Latter, ''TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu'' used the term to describe Cthugha's Flame creatures, and became the depiction that most associate with.

* ValuesDissonance: There's no real beating around the bush; Lovecraft himself was an unabashedly racist man even by the standards of the era he was born into, and this, unfortunately, reflects a lot in his writing. 'Savages' are some of the ''nicer'' things he uses to refer to non-white people, and racial slurs being thrown around by his protagonists are unfortunately really common, as is every non-white character in his stories either being a villain, or part of a cult for one of the elder gods. Needless to say, this can make getting into the mythos by reading his original writing incredibly uncomfortable.

** The second biggest is the idea that Lovecraftian abominations could all drive people crazy as a result of some kind of power, as if they could drain a video game SanityMeter. There is zero evidence for this in the text itself. Lovecraft's protagonists often lost a bit of sanity for the mundane reason of "that monster is really ugly", but that's the closest they came. It helps that most of his protagonists were mentally weak to begin with. Besides that, many of his protagonists simply never went insane at all after encountering or [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu punching out]] various cosmic horrors (e.g. ''Call of Cthulhu'' and ''The Dunwich Horror''). Whenever a character genuinely did GoMadFromTheRevelation, there was always a very specific reason for it (such as the narrator of ''Shadow Over Innsmouth'' learning he's part Deep One and currently changing into one, or the narrator of ''At The Mountains of Madness'' learning that aliens exist and might have spawned humanity, when he presumably thought like most in his time that a benevolent god has created humanity alone and in His image). ''At The Mountains of Madness'' has the protagonists encountering the Elder Things and shoggoths, after having trekked for ages, lost members of their party, being deprived of sleep, water, or food, on top of being stressed and likely having hypothermia. They "just" went temporarily bugnuts from stress, then went home and made a fortune selling books. Another character in the stories had carefully pored through the ''Necronomicon'' multiple times and kept his sanity intact, as he viewed it no different from any mythological text which describes things that do not really exist. Heck, one Great Old One (Rhan-Tegoth) was able to be stuck in a wax museum disguised as a statue, and no one even caught on to the fact that he wasn't wax, much less went insane just from looking at him.

* EveryoneIsJesusInPurgatory: Interpreting the end of ''Literature/TheDunwichHorror'' to be a parody of the Crucifixion.
** Until you [[https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Dunwich_Horror re-read it]], and realize that it ''undoubtedly IS'' a parody of the Crucifixion...
* EvilIsCool: Nyarlathotep

** Non-Euclidian Geometry [[labelnote:Explanation]]Used by Lovecraft to describe supposedly impossible or strange angles. However, non-euclidian geometry is just geometry on a curved surface like a sphere, making this a massive case of both ArtisticLicensePhysics and WritersCannotDoMath.[[/labelnote]]

* {{Fanon}}: A lot of the "mythos" could be considered this, since so much was built up by later authors, rather than Lovecraft and his contemporaries. Of particular note is the belief that "Dagon" is a Lovecraftian God and a servant of Cthulhu. Pretty much any reference Lovecraft makes to "Dagon" in his own stories could be read as in-universe mythological allusions, out-of-universe mythological allusions, or a code name used by Cthulhu worshippers to avoid attracting attention.

* FriendlyFandoms: The franchise is popular with HeavyMetal fans and artists and said genre has been one of the most prolific mediums when it comes to representing Cthulhu and its mythos, thanks to songs like ''The Thing That Should Not Be'' by Music/{{Metallica}}, ''Behind the Wall of Sleep'' by Music/BlackSabbath, ''Horror of Yig'' by Music/{{GWAR}}, ''Thy Horror Classic'' by Music/TheBlackDahliaMurder, and ''Beneath Oceans of Eternal Sand'' by Music/{{Nile}}.

* GermansLoveHasselhoff: [[https://lovecraftzine.com/2013/01/09/the-cthulhu-mythos-in-japan/ The franchise is very popular]] in Japan to the point that it had a huge influence on many Japanese works.

* ValuesDissonance: There's no real beating around the bush; Lovecraft himself was an unabashedly racist man [[UpToEleven even by the standards of the era he was born into,]] and this, unfortunately, reflects a lot in his writing. 'Savages' are some of the ''nicer'' things he uses to refer to non-white people, and racial slurs being thrown around by his protagonists are unfortunately really common, as is every non-white character in his stories either being a villain, or part of a cult for one of the elder gods. Needless to say, this can make getting into the mythos by reading his original writing incredibly uncomfortable.

* FanworkOnlyFans: Many people are fans of the Cthulhu Mythos and its many related works while avoiding the original stories of Creator/HPLovecraft that inspired it, rejecting the works for the author's racism and xenophobia. Indeed, some popular offshoot works such as Literature/LovecraftCountry can easily be described as DeconstructionFic for Lovecraft's white supremacist perspective.

* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: Virtually all modern stories set in the Cthulhu Mythos assume the protagonists of Lovecraft's original stories were [[UnreliableNarrator Unreliable Narrators]] due to their racist views. Another interpretation that's been used in stories like ''Literature/TheBalladOfBlackTom'' and ''Literature/LovecraftCountry'' is that racial minorities are more willing to deal with the EldritchAbomination not because they are "primitive," but because they are desperate.