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Other examples:
Animated Films
- The Heart of Atlantis in Atlantis: The Lost Empire is a gigantic hovering crystal that feeds on the emotions of dead Atlanteans, making it conscious, or in the words of the King, alive but only "in a way". It is largely benevolent, protecting the city and giving the Atlanteans long life and supernatural powers as well as powering their technology, but will also absorb and potentially kill members of the royal family to protect itself, and is responsible for sinking Atlantis beneath the sea when the King displeased it by using its power as a weapon of war.
- In its planning stages, The Emperor's New Groove originally had Vain Sorceress Yzma summon a force of darkness, called Supai, to blot out the sun and plunge the entire world into eternal night.
- The Big Bad of Epic (1984), the Spirit of Evil, is this; even when its physical form is defeated, its disembodied spirit rises to the sky in the form of an angry face, from where it continues to harass the heroes.
- The Big Bad of Godzilla: The Planet Eater and the Godzilla Anime Trilogy is Ghidorah, who in this version is a truly gigantic dimension-crossing organism made of energy that takes the form of a golden three-headed dragon whose necks alone are 20 kilometers long. It's revealed that Ghidorah was pulling the strings ever since Godzilla appeared on earth in 2030, and that all the human-alien orchestrated events (the emigration, the info dump on Godzilla, and the return to Earth) were all orchestrated by the Exif on his orders. When Ghidorah destroys the aratrum, it is shown that he can warp space and time itself, causing the crew to come the realization that they're already dead. When Godzilla attacks Ghidorah using his atomic breath, Ghidorah easily bends the atomic breath away from him.
- One Piece:
- The Lily Carnation from Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island is probably the scariest monster in the franchise, and there's absolutely no explanation to what exactly it is or where it came from other than being called a "a rare flower". In its base form it's just a cute little flower with eyes and mouth that's seemly growing out of Omatsuri's shoulder but then it turns out the titular villain is the flower's host and his been feeding it pirate crews so it can produce plant-replicates of the his dead crew. The pure Nightmare Fuel comes in when the most of Strawhats (Zoro, Nami, Usopp, Sanji, Chopper and Robin) have been swallowed by the abomination and Omatsuri reveals its horrifying true form
◊. It's especially freaky when Baron Omatsuri uses the flower's power to reduce Luffy to a terrifying zombie-like state. Though the Lily Carnation is killed by a simple bow and arrow, it's nevertheless probably the most demonic and scary One Piece movie villain to date. Movie 6's writer Masahiro Ito is one of the creators of the Silent Hill series, which may explain the darker mood of the story compared the main series as well as the Eldritch Abomination in the aforementioned Lily Carnation. - The final opponent in One Piece Film: Red is Tot Musica, a being that can only be described as the demonic embodiment of music. Twelve years before the film's present, a young Uta accidentially summoned it. While she quickly ran out of power to sustain it, the kingdom of Elegia was destroyed regardless, with only the king and Uta surviving the devastation. In the movie's climax, she summons it once more, having eaten poisonous mushrooms that prevent her from falling asleep beforehand. And as it exists, Tot Musica begins to merge the real world with Uta's Dream Land.
- The Lily Carnation from Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island is probably the scariest monster in the franchise, and there's absolutely no explanation to what exactly it is or where it came from other than being called a "a rare flower". In its base form it's just a cute little flower with eyes and mouth that's seemly growing out of Omatsuri's shoulder but then it turns out the titular villain is the flower's host and his been feeding it pirate crews so it can produce plant-replicates of the his dead crew. The pure Nightmare Fuel comes in when the most of Strawhats (Zoro, Nami, Usopp, Sanji, Chopper and Robin) have been swallowed by the abomination and Omatsuri reveals its horrifying true form
- Pokémon:
- In Pokémon 3, Unown are, collectively, the most impenetrably enigmatic force in the setting. They barely look like Pokémon, no one knows where they came from, what they want, why they look like writing, how they think, or how they combine their individually miniscule psychic powers to arbitrarily rewrite local reality, or even what the curve of Reality Warper potential looks like as a group of Unown gains members. Their name even comes from the word "Unknown", and the only move they can learn is called "Hidden Power".
- A notable case is the Creation Trio in the Sinnoh movie trilogy. Dialga and Palkia's clashing can send a small city to a pocket dimension as well as dissolve it into another dimension. Giratina lives in an Eldritch Location that looks and feels off (especially with the wonky gravity) and Arceus is still the equivalent of God. Most of these overlap with Animalistic Abomination.
- The Angel of Death from The Prince of Egypt, the last and most horrifying of the plagues of Egypt. It appears as a mass of glowing smoke that emerges from what appears to be a dimensional portal and kills the firstborns of Egypt with a touch that steals away their breath.
- The Nightwalker/Daidarabocchi in Princess Mononoke is the enormous and scary night form of the benevolent (but admittedly unsettling) Deer God/Shishigami, an already eldritch entity. While it's normally unsettling but benevolent, he's harmless to humans... until his head is shot off and cut, resulting in the Nightwalker turning in a blob-like tide of dark matter which consumes all life in his path.
- Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure has The Greedy a G rated version who is unironically one of the most faithful incarnations of an Eldritch Abomination in animation due to a clever use of Deranged Animation. He is a giant Blob Monster made entirely of taffy who constantly eats and is rarely the same form twice. He is very similar to Abhoth from "The Seven Geases" but instead of obscene monsters, it's junk food.
- The demon that Mok wants to summon in Rock and Rule lacks a fully defined, stable form, has immense power, and its actions are more akin to an all-consuming supernatural force of destruction than those of a recognizably sentient being.
- The Secret of Kells has Crom Cruach, a massive, Ourobouros-esque serpent, made of light, referred to as the Dark One, a being whose eyes can reveal unfathomable patterns and knowledge. It's beaten by a boy with a piece of pink chalk.
- Katsushi Boda's segment in Winter Days features a giant monster. Although he is vaguely human-like, most of his body seems to be made out of pulsating tentacles.
Live-Action Films
- While seemingly more benevolent than most examples, the Black Monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey qualifies. It's a thing of Alien Geometry, a perfectly-proportional inert black slab that may or may not exist across multiple dimensions. It's unfathomably powerful, capable of uplifting living beings to sentience or helping them Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence. It operates on a moral code that no mortal being can comprehend. And it's either incapable or unwilling to directly communicate its intentions to humanity.
- The gigantic entity that lurks below the mysterious radio station in AM1200. The viewer can only catch a glimpse of a single eye and a hungry, gaping maw.
- Bird Box: Despite Charlie calling them demons, the creatures are closer to this. Simply looking at one will drive you to suicide on the spot. The drawings that Gary made of them certainly resemble look quite bizarre, as well.
- Found-footage movie The Borderlands is marketed as and initially appears to be "Paranormal Activity in a church". As the movie progresses it becomes clear that it's much more Lovecraftian than anything, with an Apocalyptic Log, murals of something inhuman that feeds on children and a tunnel that turns out to be a huge organic orifice for something huge, unseen and hungry, that painfully devours the main characters.
- The Ancient Ones from The Cabin in the Woods. We don't know much about them, but it's said that their awakening would be the end of humanity, and every horror movie ever made was secretly part of an ancient ritual designed to keep their bloodlust sated.
- In the film adaptation of Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the malevolent green mist takes the form of Edmund's deepest fears in the form of a surprisingly Cthulhu-esque sea serpent. Earlier in the film, it's revealed that Edmund and Lucy read a lot of fantasy books, so this could potentially be interpreted as a suggestion that Edmund has read some of HP Lovecraft's work.
- The Omega Mimic from Edge of Tomorrow. It's utterly incomprehensible and alien (even the expert can't truly explain just what it is), its motives and reasoning are Blue-and-Orange Morality at best, and it can control time.
- This trope seems to perfectly describe whatever the eponymous ship from Event Horizon encountered after activating its experimental faster-than-light drive for the first time. Although mainly hinted as being a place rather than a creature, the ship is at one point said to have become some kind of malevolent entity. Quotes such as 'Hell is only a word. The reality is much, much worse.' suggest this trope. At one point, a character gets first-hand experience of what is on 'the other side' and returns catatonic and suicidal, only managing to whimper rather ominously 'I saw things...' Allegedly, a lot of scenes were regarded as just too horrific and were sadly cut.
- "Mr. Shadow" from The Fifth Element. Never really explained other than being pure death-bringing evil from deep space. He/it/whatever even returns every so often when the stars are right.
- In the Final Destination series, Death's real form is never seen and it is treated as an inhuman force of nature, its motives in causing such cruel deaths are inscrutible to all beings except itself, and it is so powerful and omnipresent that it can claim whatever humans it wants before directing its attention to some other corner of the planet.
- Forbidden Planet: The "Id Monster" is the manifestation of the unconscious evil desires of a vanished race as an ephemeral, super-powered vaguely mammalian-looking creature that’s invisible until coming into contact with energy.
- Gozer the Traveller in Ghostbusters (1984), an interdimensional being who seems to have no fixed form of its own. It's taken the form of a "large and moving torb", a "giant sloar", and... the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Zuul and Vinz Clortho, Gozer's demonic dog disciples, have magical powers, but aren't quite at the Eldritch Abomination level.
- Gods of Egypt: Apophis, based on the mythical deity of the same name, is a colossal worm/serpent beast, made mostly of smoke, that is locked in constant battle with Ra, who repels him from consuming both Earth and the afterlife every night.
- King Ghidorah, Godzilla's Arch-Enemy, could be considered one at least in the Showa films and the Rebirth of Mothra trilogy. Sure, he may just look like a three-headed dragon, but considering that he is described as an ancient and powerful monster that travels through space destroying everything it comes across, he has the vibe of cosmic horror. Godzilla: The Planet Eater, the finale of the Monster Planet trilogy, makes King Ghidorah even more explicitly eldritch. He's an entirely extradimensional creature that can warp reality, the Exif are basically a culture-sized apocalypse cult, and he needs to be summoned - which leads to him fighting Godzilla by bending the laws of physics around him.
- The first Hellboy film featured the Ogdru Jahad, depicted as a group of ginormous be-tentacled crustaceans inhabiting The Void outside the universe, as well as a tentacled monstrosity (referred to as Behemoth in the supplemental materials, though it was obviously based on the Ogdru Hem from the comicbook) that burst out of Rasputin's body and grew from man-sized to warehouse-sized in minutes.
- Leviathan, the Greater-Scope Villain of the Hellraiser series. It is a giant, floating black prism that feeds on souls and is constantly shooting an Agony Beam.
- John Carpenter used different permutations of the trope in some of the movies he appropriately called his "Apocalypse trilogy":
- The titular monster in The Thing (1982) is a Starfish Alien, so bizarre with no definite form that it can't be called anything other than "The Thing." It seems to stick to netly biological rules, but the biology involved is entirely alien to what we know on Earth even if some parts of it can be figured out. If it has any goals, it also never reveals them, though we're left to assume one of them (or a step) is to assimilate all biomass on the planet into itself.
- In Prince of Darkness, Satan is described as being such an organism; what we see is some kind of living liquid, contained within a swirling canister, that quickly starts to leak into the ceiling and can take control of humans both by direct contact and telepathically. It's also attempting to bring forth its true father, The Anti-God, of whom we only see a single hand trapped behind the mirror. Both of these are implied to not entirely cooperate with reality, and just Satan stirring within its prison causes the laws of physics and nature within the church to start slipping, with one example being an amateur magician attempting the "make a card disappear" trick accidentally removing the card from existence.
- The unreal horrors trying to find purchase into our reality through the works of Sutter Kane from In the Mouth of Madness are definitely abominations. The numerous shout outs to H. P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos help.
- Korrok in John Dies at the End is the source of all the monsters in the film and looks like a giant mish-mash of different animal parts with a giant red eye that is capable of reading minds and absorbing knowledge by eating people. Basically, it's a living computer created in an Alternate Universe where humans have developed Organic Technology (by mating different animals together) in the 19th century, which is why all those creatures look so weird. The during-credits ending implies that Korrok has attempted to invade other worlds as well. This is also mentioned by John at one point that Shitload (one of Korrok's creations) has once taken over a world in a matter of days. We are shown what looks like Earth being rapidly taken over.
- The Kamen Rider Blade film Missing Ace gives us Jashin 14, an ancient creature which has existed since the beginning of time whose power is reserved for the winner of the Battle Fight. It's a gigantic creature with four arms and incredible power. That's not even mentioning its role in Kamen Rider Decade, where it takes over the world and forces everyone into 'peace' where violating the smallest rule results in being robbed of your free will.
- "Calvin" from Life (2017). Not only is his biology, well, strange but he is theorized to be responsible of the extinction of all life in Mars and grows more strange, intelligent and sadistic as it assimilates every living thing it can catch.And, at the ending, is likely it will be responsible for the extinction of humanity.
- The vampire space-ship in Lifeforce (1985) fits the definition almost exactly. It comes from across the universe, turns out to be in fact alive, is utterly inhuman (although its servants assume human form for convenience), arrives to consume the planet, and the heroes have no chance in hell of defeating it. They merely manage to contain the destruction it causes, and it goes back unharmed to Halley's Comet to return in 95 years for its next feeding.
- The Marvel Cinematic Universe wasn't going to be a stranger to this trope for long, specially once its cosmic and magical sides started being expanded. Thankfully, the setting subscribes to Lovecraft Lite so there're ways to trick, coerce or even kill them.
- Doctor Strange (2016): Dormammu is a Multiversal Conqueror with no clear shape, older than time, and it's implied that it's part of the Dark Dimension itself. Its power is outright infinite and, with the very arguable exception of Thanos (and even he would only be a match if he collects the Infinity Stones), the most powerful entity introduced so far in this universe. To make matters worse, the Ancient One implies that Dormammu is only one of many such beings.
- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: Ego is a Celestial, a primordial entity of considerable Imagination Based Super Power, whose preferred form is that of a planet. It's powerful enough it can take a shot at assimilating the universe, albeit after millions of years of planning and a whole lot of screwing.
- Played for Laughs with the giant alien at the end of Men in Black. The Big Bad of the movie was looking for a galaxy which turned out to be a marble-like macguffin; apparently, our galaxy is like a marble compared to certain things beyond it. And no one is aware.
- While one of them is used as the page-image above, the creatures in The Mist are only borderline examples; they are very lethal, both to each other and to humans, but they are ultimately biological entities that can bleed and die. One possible exception being the Behemoth, as no creature of such size could exist in Earth's gravity and atmosphere. It would be unable to move, and suffocate under its own weight.
- No One Gets Out Alive: The monster in the stone box Red and Becker own is a white-looking creature with giant arms for legs, a gigantic growth on its back, a face that looks covered in cloth, and inside the other cloth binding its hands together is a giant mouth big enough to bite a human head off.
- Played with in Nope: "Jean Jacket," the organism which serves as the film's main antagonist, certainly looks the part; it initially appears to be a classical Flying Saucer, but it proves to be a living creature made out of a strange canvas-like material, and when threatened it is capable of unfolding into something that can only be described as a cross between a gigantic jellyfish and a biblically accurate angel. It also constantly emits an EMP field that shuts down all electronics in the vicinity while it's present, is capable of generating a perfectly static cloud around itself, and feeds by sucking animals or people into the "mouth" in the bottom of its body and slowly digesting them over the course of what's implied to be days. The catch is, in terms of behavior, it couldn't be further from this trope; beyond its bizarre appearance and abilities, the "alien" really is nothing more than a hungry wild animal prowling the area it's claimed as its territory, and the main characters are able to manipulate it, and eventually capture proof of its existence, by applying their own animal training expertise. In fact, Jean Jacket's species was confirmed to have evolved on Earth, belonging to the fictional phylum Nubaria.
- Kagutaba from Noroi: The Curse. A chaotic entity once used as a tool by a village of shamans, it stopped cooperating at some point, forcing the villagers to perform an annual ritual to bind it underground. It has no definite shape (although its influence is felt everywhere), but when it manifests itself physically... well, let's just say it makes for one of the most jarringly scary endings of any film EVER.
- The entity in Resolution is never shown, reaction shots indicate that it's tremendously horrific and large (and pretty much appears out of nowhere), and it can apparently change reality at its whim including creating recordings of events happening in the past, present, or current future.
- In the film's Stealth Sequel, The Endless, the same entity is referred to as being "made of impossible colors." In the end we do see it, briefly, as a mass of black shards, explosions and shadows.
- Although none directly appear in the Japanese version of The Ring, it's hinted that Sadako's mother had contact with such beings due to her psychic powers... and that one may have been Sadako's father, rather than the man who was believed to be. Mr. Towel says he's from the ocean, in any case.
- Whatever it was that was impersonating Freddy Krueger during Wes Craven's New Nightmare. Its description in the film is really vague, except that it's ancient, enjoys hurting people, and can only be contained when a story captures its essence (which Freddy seemed to do). Minus the last part, it sounds a lot like Nyarlathotep.
- X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes: Dr. Xavier's eyes develop such powerful X-Ray Vision that he can see straight to the center of the universe, where there is an eye that "sees all." The preacher who hears his vision interprets it as Satan.
