Big Red Devil

The devil can play a wicked guitar!

"Well, at least I don't look like a giant ketchup bottle!"

— Suction Cup Man to Satan, "Suction Cup Man 3: One Hell of a Climb"

In Western media, Christian demons and devils often have a very specific appearance. You can usually spot them by their horns, batlike wings, red skin, goatee, furred legs with hooved feet, and sometimes a trident or pitchfork. The horns and hooves are typically goat- or ram-like, but bull-like examples also exist. Satan himself often takes this appearance.

That said, not all of the characteristics are necessary for a character to qualify in this trope. In fact, they don't even have to be red! The character/creature simply needs enough to invoke this classic depiction of demons and devils. The character isn't required even to be a demon. This can apply to characters that are possessed by demons, drawing power from dark powers or magic, or simply come from a race that resembles this type of creature.

This trope has had a long evolution to its modern form. Many characteristics also have their own origin. The red skin seems to have started out as the red clothing worn by Mephistopheles in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust in his guise of a cavalier; this is also the source of the Beard of Evil. The horns came as accessories to the older cloven hoof, which likely comes from Pan and the Fauns and Satyrs of Classical Mythology. Originally the deformed feet were more varied, duck feet, cock's claws, and horse's hooves being sometimes featured. Bat wings were used to show that the demons were fallen angels. Most of these characteristics are not found in representations of devils before the 13th century A.D. Earlier visualizations of devils gave them dark or black skin, as in literally burned black by hellfire, which "red hot" skin still connotes in a way.

Given the many types of demons and devils in mythology and fiction from the world over, few examples can be counted as aversions or subversions. To qualify as such, there must be clear expectations for a demonic character to look like this; if the vast majority of demons and devils in a fictional universe are not explicitly established to fit this trope, a Lampshade Hanging is required.

The color is opposed by Heavenly Blue.

Compare Grandpa God, Red and Black and Evil All Over and Satanic Archetype. Contrast Red Is Heroic, Heavenly Blue. For a less infernal type of creature with goatlike horns and hooves, see Fauns and Satyrs. For another common depiction of the devil, see Dragons Are Demonic (and by extension Snakes Are Sinister).

Not to confuse with Flaming Devil, which is about Satan being fabulous.

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Examples:

Advertising

• Ryan Reynolds' production company Maximum Effort made two memetic commercials starring a Satan very obviously patterned after Darkness from Legend, complete with monstrously huge horns.
  • Match Made in Hell where he finds love on Match.com with the year 2020.
  • Dream Job (for Reynolds' Mint Mobile) where he gets a job at "Big Wireless."
    These guys torture people on a whole other level! I'm learning so much!

Anime & Manga

• Berserk:
  • Zodd from evokes the Big Red Devil more than his more Lovecraftian counterparts, what with his great horns and gigantic bat wings when he goes Apostle, though his appearance, though humanoid, is more a cross between a tiger, a bull and an ape.
  • Another example is Femto, the fifth member of the Godhand, who is blood-red with sinister batlike Cape Wings and has the feet and talons of a bird of prey, though he has no horns to speak of and other than that looks mostly human (fitting considering that before the Eclipse, he was once Griffith, one of the main characters of the manga).
  • However he is black in both the manga and the second anime, in keeping with the black motif of the other four members of the Godhand.
• It is implied Yoko's demonic ancestors in The Demon Girl Next Door were like this, but centuries of defeat on the hands of the Light Clan made them to take a more humanoid appearance. Yuko's sudden growth of horns and tail is seen as some restoration of her demonic powers.
• Digimon:
  • Venommyotismon is red and has horns and bat wings◊.
  • Devimon as well but he is Black and not Red.
  • Daemon is also a red devil.
  • Hunters and Digimon Ghost Game have Phelesmon as a Monster of the Week. He's identified as a "Fallen Angel" Digimon who looks more or less exactly like a classic cartoon devil, with the Mark of the Beast on the side of his head to boot. Ghost Game also featured his prior form Boogiemon, who resembles a large red imp.
• Devilman:
  • Main character Akira transforms into a big, furred demon with bat wings and tail. His fur is black but red-tinged.
  • Amon moreso even than Akira.
  • Subverted with Satan who looks more angelic.
• Dragon Ball:
  • Spike the Devilman in Dragon Ball (The devil fighter in service of Baba). Though he isn't red.
  • Demon King Dabura in Dragon Ball Z is basically just Satan after a few dozen protein shakes - a towering, muscle-bound behemoth with red skin, horns, a neatly-trimmed goatee and a dapper, gentlemanly demeanour.
  • Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F' introduces Frieza's new Elite Mook, Shisami.
• Gabriel Dropout features Vigne, who can materialize twisted horns and bat-like wings, as well as a trident pitchfork. She usually hides these features, though (along with the revealing outfit that often goes with them in character artwork), so as to blend in with regular humans.
• Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt: Scanty and Kneesocks.
• Ruby-Eye Shabranigdo in the anime and manga of Slayers (his appearances in the novels wildly differ).

Comic Books

• Cattivik: While the devils in Un'avventura infernale aren't visibly red, since the comic is grayscale, they're otherwise stout, hairy humanoids provided with pointed horns, goatees, bat wings, goat hooves, arrowhead-tipped tails, and pitchforks with which to encourage sinners along in Hell.
• The DCU:
  • Blue Devil and his (self-appointed) sidekick, Kid Devil, both have horns and technicolor skin. Kid Devil even changed his name to Red Devil later.
  • Lampshaded in Lucifer, which is about the Devil himself, who basically looks like an angel. At one point Lucifer and his brother Gabriel are in the Dreaming, which is of course filled with memes from the collective consciousness of humanity. They encounter a Big Red Devil claiming to be Lucifer.
    Gabriel: I think we found a dream of you.
    Lucifer: (Face Palm) Oh, this is embarrassing.
  • Teen Titans: Raven's father, Trigon the Terrible is a towering red-skinned demon lord. He does differ from the classic example ever so slightly by having four eyes and horns that are better described as antlers.
  • Sinestro from the Green Lantern series. This does not apply to his fellow Koruganians Katma Tui and Soranik Natu, who are more Red Skinned Space Babes. Sinestro would be one too, but the air of fear he cultivates makes him come off much harsher, and closer to this.
  • Wonder Woman Vol 1: While the Emperor of Saturn is an alien rather than a devil and the reddish stripes and splotches on him in most early prints were a printing error he definitely fits the bill, being a horned villain whose realm and throne room have Satanic and Hellish overtones for atmosphere.
• Marvel Universe:
  • Some Hell Lords like Mephisto and Lucifer, the latter of whom turned out to be a rebellious angel named Marduk Kurios who more or less is the actual Lucifer, despite most Hell Lords just pretending to be Satan For the Evulz. Mephisto is slightly less stereotypical in that his "horns" is actually just his pointed red hair, but he is still a tall, red, humanoid demon, if thinner and lither than most. His true form is similar but somewhat more alien, his head looking something like an eyeless lizard with no hair or horns whatever. All demons though, especially Hell Lords, have Voluntary Shapeshifting and Mephisto in particular has taken on a range of nightmarish and horrifying forms over the years (though most are still big and red).
  • Surtur and the rest of the Demons of Muspelheim in The Mighty Thor.
  • Nightcrawler from X-Men has the pointed ears and tail. Depends on the continuity whether he's truly demonic or not.
  • His dad Azazel is the red version. Nightcrawler gets the blue from his mom, Mystique.
  • Daredevil's iconic red costume has the look, though Matt Murdock is definitely on the side of the angels.
• Hellboy is a demon. He has the horns (although he files them down), cloven hooves, and red skin.
• Satan is usually a version of this in Chick Tracts.
• Jack of Fables has sold his soul to a series of devils each embodying a different devil stereotype. So far, we've seen Mr Scratch; a Trickster type who sometimes wears red longjohns and fake horns and tail; Pan; a Miltonian, romantic Lucifer; and Chernobog. Jack may be running out of soul-buyers.
• Al Capone takes the form of a red horned demon The Grievous Journey of Ichabod Azrael (and the Dead Left in His Wake). It's ambiguous whether this is a hallucination of the main character or not though.
• A big red horned villain actually called Satan turns up in one album of Storm, despite it being set on an alien planet with no link to Humanity whatsoever.
• Black Moon Chronicles: Most of the demons of Hell take the form of giant red humanoids with horns and wings.
• Paperinik New Adventures' Imperial caste evronians are drawn to evoke the imagery, with bright red skin and horn-like growths from their shoulders and from their second head. The Emperor takes it up to eleven by being far larger than an average Imperial caste, very muscular, and sitting on a throne resembling a rock while wielding a three-pronged spear.
• Satan's Hollow:
  • The Devil is a rather traditional horned red demon with hoofs.
  • One of his closest demon servants also fits this description, although he's also wearing a Nazi Commissar Cap.
• In Silverblade, Jonathan Lord transforms into his film version of Satan to defeat the Executioner at its most powerful. His version of Satan is a skyscraper-sized red giant, with horns and barbed tail, and wielding a trident. And absolutely terrifing.
  Vane: SATAN!? Bobby, since when does Jonathan have the power to become the DEVIL himself?
  Milestone: Since the film version of Paradise Lost—1959, Virtuous Films. Critics said Jonathan's portrayal made him the most terrifying Satan the cinema had ever seen!
• Lady Death: Lucifer is drawn as the classic depiction of the devil, with red skin, big horns and cloven feet.
• Demons in Hellblazer: Rise and Fall default to this appearance, Lucifer being a svelt Flaming Devil variant while Despondeo was a more typical example.

Fan Works

• Thousand Shinji:
  • Asuka's alternate shape is a big, muscled, red-skinned devil with huge ram horns.
  • Asukhon's Valkyries are female, red-skinned, horned demons with bat wings and hooves.

Films — Animation

• Anastasia: The demons that Rasputin summons look like Little Green Devils.
• In the 1968 Soviet film The Little Mermaid, the Sea Witch has a devil-ish red skin and fangs, and appears in bursts of flames. And she cackles too.
• In My Little Pony: Equestria Girls, Sunset Shimmer is corrupted by Twilight's magic crown into a red anthro-pony devil hybrid.
• The genie form of Jafar in Aladdin and Aladdin: The Return of Jafar due to the films' "blue is good, red is evil" color coding. As a human he already had a very pointy face and Beard of Evil, but becomes a big red genie with pointy ears.
• The "Night on Bald Mountain" sequence from Fantasia focuses on a pitch-black devil with bull-like horns and bat wings. There are also some lesser demons with blue skin, barbed tails, hooves, and horns.
• The devil in All Dogs Go to Heaven is presented as a mix of this, a Hell Hound, and a dragon.
• A traditionally demonic figure, with red skin, a goatee, horns and a deep voice, is among the residents of Halloween Town in The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Films — Live-Action

• Pictured above is Satan from Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny, one of the most played straight versions of this trope. He's played by Dave Grohl.
• The Lipstick-Faced Demon from Insidious definitely fits this trope.
• Dogma has a horned demon who wears a fedora to hide them. He otherwise looks human.
• The Lord of Darkness, played by Tim Curry, in Legend (1985) has red skin and ENORMOUS black horns.
• In The Devil's Advocate, the devil spends most of the movie just looking Al Pacino, but eventually revealing his true form as this trope.
• The Balrog from the Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy is this on fire. Its skin is black rather than red, and it wields a whip and Flaming Sword rather than a pitchfork, but it has the characteristic horns, hooves and bat-like wings.
• In Bedazzled (1967), George Spigot (Lucifer) preferred to look fully human, but always wore red socks as a nod to people's expectations.
  • In Bedazzled (2000) the Devil prefers to appear in the form of Elizabeth Hurley. She briefly transforms into a traditonal red devil, complete with goatee and pitchfork, to convince Elliot she really is the devil. She dismisses the look as "so trick-or-treat". Near the end of the movie she briefly transforms into a giant Chernabog-like monster after Elliot refuses to make his final wish.
• While demonic creatures in Constantine (2005) are shown as having monstrous forms, this trope is averted for Satan's onscreen appearance as a human man dressed in a white suit with feet covered in black sludge.
• In the film of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Hades looks suspiciously like this sometimes.
• Reefer Madness: The Musical: The Devil shows up as a red guy with horns to tempt Jimmy into a life of marihuana in the "Listen to Jesus, Jimmy" song.
• Described in O Brother, Where Art Thou? as "... the Great Satan hisself is red and scaly, with a bifurcated tail and carries a hay fork", though the accuracy of this depiction is immediately disputed.
• In the biblical parody Wholly Moses! John Ritter drops in for one scene and plays the Devil as a mild-mannered guy in a Halloween-level red horned outfit; he explicitly comments that God came over one day and said "Here, try this on!"
• Star Wars;
  • The Devaronian that appears in the background of the Mos Eisley Cantina in A New Hope.
  • Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace has red-and-black tattooed skin, horns, yellow eyes, wears black robes, and carries a crimson lightsaber. Suprisingly, he's a bad guy.
  • In Star Wars Legends, most prominently Star Wars: The Old Republic, are the Sith Purebloods, a red-skinned race naturally powerful in the dark side that merged with exiled Dark Jedi to become the Sith known by all.
• The demon from Annabelle and its sequels is this. Rather than red, its skin is black, but it otherwise fits the "goat devil" imagery. It has prominent horns, hoofed feet, and a goatee.
• Tales from the Hood: Mr. Simms gleefully reveals this as his true form at the end of the film.
• The demon in Night of the Demon looks very much like you'd expect.
• Santa Claus (1959)'s villain, Pitch, is an extremely campy take on this trope, being a skinny little man in a very form-fitting devil suit who likes to dance around.
• In Hocus Pocus, which is set on Halloween night, the three witches run into a guy in a fairly lame devil costume. Not realizing what's going on, they assume he's the real Satan, and ask how they can best serve his will.
• Hellboy (2004), its sequel, and the reboot all star a heroic Big Red Devil who sands his horns down to look more human. A prophecy of a potential Bad Future in the first movie shows a corrupted Hellboy who has allowed his horns to grow out fully, embracing this trope.
• Batman Returns: One member of the Red Triangle Circus is dressed as one, and uses his fire-breathing act to torch buildings.

Literature

• In Pure Dead Brilliant, by Debi Gliori, witch Fiamma d'Enfer fits this trope right down to her name. She's come up with some ingenious ways to hide her demonic characteristics, including human feet prosthetics which screw into her hooves.
• The Discworld demon king Astfgl. Normally looks like a human in red tights and fake pointy horns holding a trident. When enraged, has huge ram's horns, claws and wings that are made of "magnetism and shaped space", but still look batlike because it's traditional.
• Christopher Brookmyre's Pandaemonium has a subversion (or even deconstruction) of this trope as its central message. Just because they're big, red, horned, brutal, pointy-tailed, cower from crosses and Bible verse, seem to be immune to gunfire but are burned by holy water, and come from deep beneath the earth, doesn't mean they're necessarily actual demons. The point is not to rely on superstition even when it's very familiar, and also to deliver a Take That! to the church.
• In Childhood's End the Overlords look like the classical Christian depiction of devils. They are smart enough to warn humans about this before letting themselves be seen.
• In Bored of the Rings, Serutan the Wizard dresses like this, from the black horns pasted onto his head to the cloven patent-leather loafers on his feet.
• In Horns, Ig becomes the Big Red Devil to avenge his girlfriend's murder. He wakes up with small horns and the power to compel people's worst secrets from them. In time, his horns grow larger, and he develops red skin, a goatee, baldness, and finds a pitchfork in the rubble of a foundry.
• Demon Wars Saga: The dactyl demon Bestesbulzibar from R. A. Salvatore's narration looks like this... at first. After his body is destroyed at the end of the first book, he spends the rest of the series in his true form as a completely incorporeal spirit so subtle that his presence is almost impossible to detect, and becomes much more dangerous as he's able to manipulate a succession of human pawns and hosts from the shadows rather than being Obviously Evil like his initial incarnation.
• In The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape advises his nephew Wormwood to use this image as a ploy to prevent his "patient" from believing in real devils, using the fallacious argument that if "something in red tights" is obviously not real, then Wormwood must not be either.
• Spellbreaker ends with the villainous druid Nazek unleashing Shekka's Moon, the ultimate summoning of demons, the first and most powerful of the bunch being the Kurakil, a goat-horned, red-furred, infernal demon. It's gloriously illustrated in both the original and reprint versions of the cover art, too.
• The Great SF Stories: The cover to Isaac Asimov Presents: The Golden Years of Science Fiction: Second Series has a bald red-skinned humanoid with large fangs and a long tail sitting in an iron throne with flames on either side. As artwork, we don't really learn how it relates to any narrative, but it certainly evokes the idea of the classic Christian devil.
• Isaac Asimov's "Hell-Fire (1956)": While the audience of reporters, scientists, and government leaders watch slow-motion footage of a nuclear fireball, a face appears with thin, flaring eyebrows, widow's peak hair, and horns affixed to the forehead.
• Please Dont Tell My Parents Im Queen A Supervillain:
  • Recurring villain Mammon is a red-skinned demon from Hell and tries to enhance the image by dying his hair black and wearing prosthetic hooves.
  • In Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm Queen of the Dead, Chris and Anne Domingo have red skin, black horns, sharp teeth, and spade tails. Neither they nor their mother has an explanation for why they look like this, and they otherwise show no devilish characteristics other than a wicked sense of fashion.

Live-Action TV

• A demon named Izzerial the Devil appears in Angel with this appearance.
• A briefly seen member of the audience of the trial held by the "Witchsmeller Pursuivant" in the Blackadder that is somehow missed by the rest of the peasants while it is frantically looking like the rest of them for the Devil in the room.
• The Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Fear Itself" featured a frat house accidentally getting turned into a giant summoning circle or something that would bring a fear-based demon matching this description into the physical world. In the end, the trope is pretty subverted when he really does have this appearance, but is only about 3 inches tall (they just step on him at the end, problem solved).
• In Charmed (1998), Balthazor, Cole's demon form, is pretty much this; he's larger than Cole's human form, with Bald of Evil, pointy ears and a red face with black markings.
• Doctor Who:
  • The titular being from "The Dæmons" Though not very red, he invokes Satan...
  • The Beast from "The Impossible Planet"/"The Satan Pit", who claims to actually be Satan, and it's hypothesized that he's the origin of every Horned Beast in every mythology across the universe.
• Occasionally shows up on Good Eats, getting (variously) chased off by a woman with a rolling pin in the pocket pie episode, and explaining the origins of hot tamales, and getting blasted with the fire extinguisher by Alton (who is a Christian in Real Life). He also appears as a Louis Cypher character in the Devil's Food Cake episode.
• The Bonus Round of the game show The Joker's Wild has the player attempting to spin money amounts and reach a goal before the Devil shows up; if it does, all the accumulated money is wiped out.
• Kamen Rider Geats: Enemy sponsor Beroba can transform into a giant, pinking-red version of the trope known as Kamen Rider Beroba, horns and all. She also has a sadistic nature to match.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: The Balrog of Moria, once awaken it becomes wreathed in flames and appears to be made of living lava, sporting a pair of thick forward-curving horns and wings.
• Lucifer (2016) plays with this. The titular character takes the appearance of an attractive human male, but occasionally he flashes his true appearance for a split second to scare mortals. While his true appearance is red, it's because of exposed musculature making him resemble a skinned human with red eyes more than anything else. He also points out that he doesn't have horns or a tail, contrary to popular depictions of him. He also had a pair of white angelic wings until he abandoned Hell and cut them off. In season 3, his wings grow back, much to his annoyance, but in season 4 they turn into red bat wings due to his killing Cain and in the finale he assumes a semi-draconic big red devil form when forced to reclaim Hell's throne.
• Nightman: Subverted when a Sinister Minister tried to summon a Celtic god who looked like this and everyone assumed he had a personality to match. Turns out he's not evil at all and is not happy that the villain thought he could be used for evil purposes.
  Dahgda: You assume that because I have red skin and horns that I am what humans call evil. Evil exists within the hearts of men.
• Shows up a number of times on Saturday Night Live. Most memorably in the guise of Jon Lovitz being brought before People's Court. Also, Patrick Stewart's version where he choked on a grape and lost his mystique.
  • And Jason Sudekis' "The Devil", who looked mostly human, with small horns and a kids' Halloween pitchfork. He was evil, but genuinely upset with some truly disturbing things being reported in the news.
• The Big Bad of Scream Queens (2015) disguises their identity by dressing like this.
• The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Devil's Due" features a being who claims to be every species' conception of the Devil. When she presents herself as Satan, she looks pretty much exactly like this.
• Xena: Warrior Princess:
  • The angelic Lucifer turned into a bat-winged horned red devil when he became corrupted by committing the seven deadly sins.
  • A much earlier episode had depicted Bacchus, the god of wine^note  for some reason known here by his Roman name, rather than his Greek one, Dionysus this way, rather than the handsome young man he is usually portrayed as. This is likely meant to reflect the character's Adaptational Villainy, as he's played here as an outright God of Evil, with his Bacchae (maenads) being depicted as vampires, rather than simply drunk, wild young women.

Myths & Religion

• Satan in a good number of his appearances. Interestingly, in The Bible itself, the closest thing Satan ever came to looking like this is the red seven-headed dragon form he took on in the Book of Revelation. Otherwise, given his status as a Fallen Angel that was one of God's most beautiful and as the Morningstar, averted this trope.
• Some Japanese Oni, who often look similar to this, work jobs in Hell under King Enma.
• Depending on the Artist, gargoyles and goblins can look like this, even if they aren't necessarily demonic. It's rather ironic for gargoyles, as they were originally created to frighten demons/evil spirits away. It's much more fitting for goblins though, as the word "goblin" is derived from the Greek word "Kobalos" which means "rogue" or "evil spirit".
• European dragons, especially red ones, can also resemble a more animalistic version of this trope, what with their horns, bat-like wings, and occasional pointed, devil-like tails. There's also the association with fire.
• The Krampus has this appearance, though few depictions of him are actually red, more often black or gray.

Pinball

• The antagonist of Gorgar, a giant horned monster with red skin and fangs who lives in a Lava Pit and accepts Human Sacrifices.
• Bally's Fireball
  • The unnamed "Fire God" might qualify — he's a red humanoid Wreathed in Flames who throws fireballs at the player and has small horn-like protrusions on his head.
  • Played very straight in the sequel, Fireball II, which has horned and fanged creatures throughout, as well as a ball-saving post called "Little Demon".
• The Beast in Iron Maiden: Legacy of the Beast is an archetypical horned red devil.
• Guns N' Roses (Jersey Jack): "No Sympathy for the Devil" centers on combating a traditional horned red devil who's stolen the band's instruments.
• Foo Fighters (2023): A red-colored devil is among the audience members in the Foo Fighters concert held during the Wizard Mode.

Podcasts

• The monster in the Cool Kids Table game Creepy Town takes this form to drag Frank into the fog and kill him.
• A red devil in a suit is the visual motif for Swindled, a true-crime series covering white-collar criminals. The artwork for each episode also shows a devil dressing up as the criminal highlighted in the main story, such as Anna Delvey or Kwame Kilpatrick.

Pro Wrestling

• Red Devil, the nemesis of Mr. Wrestling #2^*Gordon Nelson. Their feud lead up to a mask vs mask match in 1972, where Red Devil was revealed to be Dick Byer.
• AHII looks like a particularly nasty one in All Japan Pro Wrestling with protruding ribs, but he turned out to be a good guy.
• Mephisto isn't that big, but in 2009 he started competing in weight division that he was really too big for and often wore a red mask with horns, giving one the impression CMLL was invoking this image, with an element of David Versus Goliath.
• The first anniversary of Ice Ribbon's 19 O'Clock featured Tsukasa Fujimoto and Makoto "defending" the promotion from captain ersatzes of Kaori Hoshi and Big Devil from the television drama Muscle Girls.

Puppet Shows

• The Devil in The Muppet Show's version of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" looks very much like this, with the addition of a sequined tuxedo. Which is also red.

Radio

• Satan in Old Harry's Game is usually described like this, and appears as such on the CD covers◊. Often, there'll be a distinctive clip-clop sound when he's walking.

Sports

• The New Jersey Devils of the National Hockey League were named for "The Jersey Devil" of local folklore, and not the Judeo-Christian embodiment of evil. However, their logo consists of a stylized red "N" with horns and a pointed tail in the style of this trope, and their mascot is a Big Red Devil, leading to occasional confusion and consternation from misguided Moral Guardians.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons uses this as part of its Fantasy Kitchen Sink.
  • The cover of the 4e Monster Manual features Orcus, one of the biggest baddest demons of the D&D universe, who displays all five traits.
  • Balors on the demonic side (big, winged, fanged humanoids with whips and sometimes horns) and Pit Fiends on the diabolic side (big, bat-winged, red, scaly, fanged humanoids with ears that looks like horns) also qualify, the former once being called Balrogs before the Tolkien estate complained.
  • Many of the archdevils fit this trope. Mephistopheles is specifically called out for being the most stereotypically "devilish" of the bunch: he's red-skinned, he's tall, he has horns, he has bat wings, his favored weapon is a three-pronged polearm (technically a ranseur, but close enough), he has goat legs in some depictions, and his signature technique is hellfire. In fact, one of his more persistent gripes is that after his attempts to cultivate an image as an "iconic" devil has led to him instead being viewed as a "generic" devil, leading to many crediting his actions to some other devil instead and him developing an Inferiority Superiority Complex.
  • Mystara had a race called the diaboli, who other than the fact they were wingless and purple were based entirely off this archetype, with the addition of forked tongues and whip-like tails ending in curved, venomous stingers. The weirdest thing was they were divided into three subraces based on how hairy they are; "normal" diabolus is as hairy as your average person, the "hirsute" has a dense layer of fur on its goat-like legs, and the "bald" is completely hairless from the top of their bald head to the tip of their hooves. The kicker? They were a peaceful race whose most common In-Universe character alignment was Chaotic Good. People just tended to demonise them because, well, they looked so much like devils.
  • Nentir Vale: Tieflings (introduced as demon or devil-blooded humanoids in Planescape) are revamped to having basically this appearance, as well as an origin of having been born due to diabolic pacts forged by a corrupt empire.
• Exalted: Replace Red with Green, and you get the majority of demons. This even applies to Malfeas, the biggest and baddest of them all.
• Hero Realms has Tyrannor, the Devourer, a tall demon with red skin and huge horns.
• In Nomine: In their celestial forms, Calabim, the demons of entropy and destruction who serve as Hell's frontline bruisers, are tall, leering, red-skinned, horned, bat-winged figures. Impudites similarly resemble their most recent mortal guise, but with leathery wings, horns, and a dark halo. Balseraphs are a borderline variant; they remain giant winged serpents like their Seraph counterparts, but blood-red and with batlike instead of feathered wings.
• Warhammer:
  • The more humanoid daemons of Khorne have the most traditionally demonic visual theme of all the daemons of the Chaos Gods, sporting red skin, cloven hooves and horns. The mighty Bloodthirster Greater Daemons of Khorne also add great bat-like wings to the theme.
  • Warhammer 40,000: Tge fallen Primarch Magnus the Red has huge horns along with his naturally red skin makes him resemble the devil.

Theatre

• Classic Mummers' play/ Passion play/ Pantomime devils in their red longjohns and hood with cute little horns on.
• The Devils in Nouvelle Experience, who are not villains but naughty tricksters, are a goofy version of this trope — red-clad with half-masks that have various permutations of horns and squat or extended noses. The ruler of the Magical Land, Madame Corporation, initially dresses in Heavenly Blue but has red hair styled to look like horns, and during the second half of the show she switches to a red version of her costume.
• As mentioned above, Goethe's Faust traditionally gives Mephistopheles as close to this appearance as could conveniently be replicated onstage with a limited budget for makeup, and may be the origin for much of it. Interestingly, though, Mephistopheles actually appears to hang a lampshade on the idea that this is just what devils always look like — at one point he chews out a witch for not recognising him, essentially saying "Look, I've got a hoof and I dress all in red, who else was I gonna be?"

Video Games

• Arena of Valor: One of the leaders of the Lokheim forces is Maloch, a huge red devil with a BFS whose design may be a bit inspired by Diablo. The kicker, though? He's not the ultimate leader despite his design; that honor goes to his close friend, Volkath.
• Barnyard Blast, an Affectionate Parody of old-school horror-action games, have none other than Satan himself (complete with gigantic horns and hooves-like feet) as the Final Boss.
• Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, technically all those weird beings that aren't possessed humans are demons since they all came from Hell. The monsters of the "Demon" lineage are your classic demon depiction except they don't have the red skin.
• The Bloodthirster enemies from Bloody Spell are hulking, demon-like monsters with goat's horns and a Recurring Boss. The strongest versions are bright red, and falls under this trope.
• Broforce: Eventually, Satan will take a form of a classic red devil when decides to put up a real fight against the player.
• The titular Daemon in Daemon Summoner is a Sealed Evil in a Can and serves as the last boss; when appearing before you the Daemon seems to tick every single box associated with classical depictions of Satan, from gigantic horns to leathery wings and huge claws. It's even fought in a burning, hell-like environment.
• Demon Skin have a giant horned devil with red skin and cloven hooves as one of the bosses, who looks just like Satan without being referred by name. Said demon swings a Flaming Sword as a weapon.
• Diablo:
  • Diablo himself is a mix between this, and Godzilla. But if the first ever trailer for the game is any indication, his original design was much closer to this.
  • The most powerful of Diablo's Elite Mooks also took this form: the Balrogs from Diablo (1997), the Megademons from Diablo II, and the Oppressors from Diablo III.
  • The Fallen are a race of typical horned devils. The first and second game sport imps, who are hunchbacked and dwarf-sized, and shamans who are larger and smarter and walk upright. The third game adds several other varitions. Some of them are red, others take on other hues like blue, yellow, black and purple.
• If you're looking for one in Destiny, then you need look no further than Oryx, the Taken King.
• Specimen 11 from Spookys Jumpscare Mansion has the horns and red skin.
• Illidan from Warcraft. Several of the demons including the Succubi, the Eredar and especially the Doomguard also qualify.
  • The Eredar are probably the closest major race, possessing the whole red skin with hooves and horns scheme. Draenei (probably the nicest of the playable races) look exactly the same except for being blue rather than red, a sign of their common heritage.
  • There were also the Daemons from the original Warcraft: Orcs and Humans and Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, who took this form before the Burning Legion was developed and expanded upon in Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos.
• Faust from AdventureQuest Worlds who is more of a Big Purple Devil
• Carlos from Requiem. Interestingly enough, he is one of your Super Modes.
• Hands of Necromancy have the Hell Burners, red-skinned, horned demons with hooves for legs blatantly based on Satan as one of the stronger enemy types. They appear occasionally in the early levels set in the mortal world, but when you reach hell they're expectedly all over the place.
• The recurring summons Diabolos and Ifrit from Final Fantasy.
  • Chaos, the Big Bad of Dissidia Final Fantasy, looks like this. It's implied that he only gained this appearance after growing/absorbing too much power, though.
    • Same look for his original incarnation in Final Fantasy, where he was Garland after gaining the power of the Four Fiends and being sent by them back to the Chaos Shrine two millenia into the past.
• The Elder Scrolls
  • Mehrunes Dagon, the Daedric Prince of Destruction, typically takes this form when he manifests, along with being Multi-Armed and Dangerous. While none of the Daedric Princes are truly "evil", instead operating on their own scale of Blue-and-Orange Morality as dictated by their spheres of influence, Dagon is one of the most outright malevolent of the Princes toward mortals and is thus near-universally labeled as "evil".
  • Molag Bal possibly plays this trope straighter then Dagon, while his skin is usually green or blue he possesses more prominent horns as well as digigrade legs making him fit the goat-like aspects more
  • Sanguine, the Daedric Prince of Debauchery and Hedonism, most commonly takes the form of a short, portly devil with horns. His Daggerfall form even has bright red skin.
  • The Dremora are a race of lesser Daedra, most often found in service to Mehrunes Dagon as his Legions of Hell. They also fit the aesthetic, being Horned Humanoids with gray/black skin and red Facial Markings.
  • Morphoid Daedra, a form of lesser Daedra which appear in the spin-off Dungeon Crawler game Battlespire, play the aesthetic straight (though they appear to be more orange than red).
• The titular creatures from The Horde are bright red and horned.
• Doom has the Cyberdemon, Hell Knights and the Baron of Hell. Hell Knights used to be a Palette Swap of the Baron of Hell until Doom³ and Doom (2016) turned them into hornless humanoid alien figures. The Dark Lord himself, introduced in The Ancient Gods DLC for Doom Eternal, resembles this trope to a T in his Praetor Suit, being hulking, blood-red, and having horns (however, outside the suit, he looks identical to the Doom Slayer).
• Tchernobog of Blood (1997) invokes this, but looks more skeletal.
• Mephistopheles from Neverwinter Nights add-on Hordes of the Underdark. Huge, red, horned, hoofed.
• Raum from Paladins fits this to a T: a hulking red menace with large horns, hind hooves and a tail. He also uses the Hellfire Gatling gun, which can tear away soul fragments from enemies to be used as armor that isn't affected by the Cauterize item.
• The Devil/Devil Gen character from Tekken. Alternative costume was an angel in early appearances.
• Dungeon Keeper and its sequel has the aptly-named Horned Reaper, a powerful (but tempermental) high-end minion that resembles a hulking humanoid with red skin and horns.
• Lucifer from the Ghosts 'n Goblins series fits, with Satans and Red Arremers (of which Firebrand from Gargoyle's Quest is one) being lesser breeds.
• Ultima both plays it straight and subverts. There're the Daemons in Ultima: extraplanar beings, who are usually evil, and often look like big, red, and horned humanoids. However, there're also the Gargoyles, especially prominent in Ultima VI. The Gargoyles are also red and horned humanoids, but they are a mortal race, who just happen to look devilish. Many people in the world of Ultima confuse the two: for example, a sorceress Rotoluncia in Ultima VII Part II, upon seeing a scholar traveling with a Gargoyle henchman, starts pestering the scholar for secrets of controling Daemons.
• Unending Dusk have red-skinned, demon-like horned monsters modelled directly after Satan as recurring enemies, both human-sized and towering Giant Mook-variety enemies in several stages.
• Belial has devils of all colors, notably Satan (whos looks like the standard Big Red Devil, only gray).
• Devilman from Devil World has the standard appearance, but strangely enough, he's blue.
• Horned, the invincible hurry-up enemy from The Fairyland Story. Not that big, though, being Super-Deformed like every other character in the game. Horned is bigger and more vincible as the boss of the homage stage in Rainbow Islands.
• Vargh The Corrupter from Ghostly Matter is the Big Bad (though not the final boss) and a demon who looks just like the Lord of Darkness in the film Legend. There's also an Elite Mook looking like the typical red-skinned devil with horns, a tail and pitchfork who stands still and summons flaming meteors.
• Kid Icarus: Uprising's incarnation of Hades is clearly inspired by this aesthetic, naturally.
• The very Diablo-like demon lord Ssyba, the final boss of Arcuz 2.
• Typhon, the Final Boss of Phelios, though he's purple (in the Arcade Game) or blue (in the Sega Genesis version) rather than red.
• One of the villains in the original King's Bounty is Urthrax Killspite, alias "The Demon King", who is a big green devil. Demons are also a higher-tier army unit (of course Urthrax has some) that line up almost perfectly with the trope description; instead of pitchforks, they attack with Eye Beams that have a chance of instantly slaying half the members of any unit they attack.
• Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell: Satan is an 8 foot tall, bright red, muscular man with giant goat horns.
• Squeeze Box for the Atari 2600 ended the game with a red devil dancing in the flames once you lost your last life.
• Sacred Odyssey: Rise of Ayden will throw red-skinned, horned expies of Satan in the last third, when you're fully upgraded with weapons and equipment. They're the Elite Mooks of the game, far stronger and deadlier than halflings and orcs.
• In Infernal, Hell's chief agent on Earth takes on this form when he's fought at the end, although looks basically human before that point.
• Demons in Nexus Clash cover a pretty wide range of archetypes ranging from Eldritch Abominations to tempters and everything in between, but the Infernal Behemoth plays this trope absolutely straight.
• The Devil in Cuphead is black and furry instead of red, but otherwise fits this trope perfectly. It's later played straight for the Final Boss battle once he reaches his One-Winged Angel form, turning his body dark red.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Walhart from Fire Emblem: Awakening very much looks the part, being a huge red-armored villain whose helmet has a pair of horns.
  • Likewise with Edelgard from Fire Emblem: Three Houses; she dresses in bright red during the war phase, wears a horned Cool Crown, and is strongly opposed to the Church of Seiros. While she is not very tall or bulky, she's the single most powerful fighter unit in the game.
• Hellspawned Demon players in Mutant Football League resemble the archetype a bit. Though skin color can vary by team (all Deadlanta Vultures players are a deathly pale grayish blue, for instance), most are screamingly firetruck red. They also have no stomachs and eerily long, scrawny limbs. No cheeks or lips either, so they constantly have a gruesome Slasher Smile on their face.
• The Big Bad of Grow RPG is all red and have horns.
• In Darksiders, Samael fits the depiction the best of all the demons, and while he's not actually the Big D, he is the next in line for the throne of Hell by virtue of being the most powerful demon alive aside from Lucifer.
• Friday Night Funkin': Week 4 introduces five men working for the Girlfriend's parents, one driving the limo the Mom and the Boyfriend are standing on and the other four dancing on top of another limo in the background — they have pink skin, large toothy grins, and black horns coming out of their flat tops, evoking the standard demon appearance. Interestingly, unused sprites for the backup dancers show that their horns are legitimate, and not hair horns like the Father has.
• League of Legends:
  • Darkin tend towards this aesthetic, best shown by Aatrox; Rhaast, in games where he wins the battle of wills with Kayn, resembles a smaller, wingless version. (Varus doesn't, but Varus was Retconned into a Darkin and his design wasn't updated to match the others.) While they're not demons, technically, they're a riff on the "fallen angel" concept, being ascended Shuriman demigods, corrupted and trapped in the shape of Evil Weapons.
  • There's also Gatekeeper Galio, an alternate skin that transforms the normally boisterous, goofy gargoyle protector into an (oddly-enough) just-as-boisterous and goofy devil giant, complete with horns, wings, and spectral green flames. His personality is changed to be a judge that sends his enemies to a circle of hell based off their sins, and he isn't remotely picky.
• Perish have it's first boss, Katharao of the Damned, an eyeless, horned demon who glows red when you inflict enough damage to it.
• The first boss of Savage Halloween, Big Daddy, is a gigantic red devil with wings, who can swoop in and out of the area to attack you. He can also dispense baby red demons (wearing diapers!) as a Weaponized Offspring attack.
• While the Twisted Metal series has had many characters who were either demons or Satanic Archetypes, none fit this bill like Minion from the second game. He's the towering red demon who Calypso, the creator of the Twisted Metal tournament, stole his powers from when he Escaped from Hell, and he enters the tournament in order to get them back. When he wins, he doesn't bother making a wish, instead simply opening a portal to Hell and furiously throwing Calypso back as he begs for mercy. He's also by far the toughest character in the game, driving a tank that you face as a mid-game boss and which is only playable through a cheat code because it's otherwise a Game-Breaker.
• World of Warcraft: If you belong to the demonic Burning Legion or have, at least, had contact with their Fel magic, chances are you end up like this.
  • Draenei are alien goat people with hooves for feet, curved horns on their heads, and red-to-blue skin. If you corrupt them with demonic magic, you get the Eredar, a near-perfect depiction of this trope. Very notable is Kil'jaeden, who is gigantic and has red skin and corkscrew horns.
  • Continuing the Large and in Charge trend and while not as humongous as most demon bosses, Illidan is drawn way bigger than other night elves after he absorbs Fel magic to hunt demons. He also gets a pair of curved horns and hooves. Although his skin is purple.
  • The Legion's Doomguards are red, muscly, horned, hooved humanoids with bat wings protruding from their backs. The Succubi, also affiliated with the Burning Legion, are very similar except that, rather than having bulging muscles, they are Hot as Hell.
• Pokémon:
  • Houndoom is a Hellhound version of the trope.
  • Hoopa in its Unbound form resembles a giant demon with massive horns, a goatee-like beard, cloven hoof-like feet, and a long, pointed tail.
  • Ironically, Giratina averts this trope, only being big and red, and instead resembling a six-legged insectoid dragon.
• Touhou Project; While Yuma Toutetsu normally wears blue and has a humanlike complexion with white hair, she is able to take on this form of the need arises, such as in her final battle against Flandre Scarlet.

Web Animation

• The Retarded Animal Babies incarnation of Satan actually looks like this... in that he's big, has horns and he's red. As for the rest of his appearance...
• Homestar Runner:
  • "Parsnips A-Plenty" shows the Old-Timey Poopsmith as a devil who torments Sir Strong Bad and The Kaiser (the King of Town's Old-Timey counterpart).
  • One Strong Bad Email had Strong Bad imagine his "stupid baby brother" Strong Sad suddenly sprouting a pair of horns and a tail. Strong Sad then arrives dressed as Calibos from Clash of the Titans.
• Most of the cast of Helluva Boss are imps with red skin, horns, hooves, and spade-tipped tails. However most other demons are some combination of human and animal like their Hellhound receptionist Loona and owl-like investor Stolas.

Webcomics

• In Sinfest the devil is red skinned, has the horns and the tail, and wears the red suit.
  • For quite a while, he had two demon girls, Fuchsia and Baby Blue, who have the horns and tails, but wear bikinis of the color that matches their name. However, after Fyoosh's Heel–Face Turn, he's had to make do with succubi of non-red colors.
• Some of the demonic characters, including the titular protagonist of My Best Friend Marneao, are this, with a varied appereance. The titular character and his father, Lucifer. are red skinned, horned devils with a tail. There is also a secondary character named Miltch who follows the archetype, lacking the red skin.
• In Girl Genius the Jäger general known as Gargantua looks like this, and wears Spikes of Villainy. He doesn't seem particularly evil, but evidently flies into rage when insulted.
• Laampros from The Young Protectors, who is a giant red demon lord from hell with giant black horns and bat wings. Also, he's always naked.
• Zig-Zagged with the devils of Kill Six Billion Demons. Due to their evolving nature, their appearance depends on the color of their mask. While some of the mask colors have very un-demony appearances (such as the skittering bug-like forms of Pale Devils and the skull-faced lizard-things that are Green Devils), it is, fittingly enough, Red Devils who sport the most classically demonic appearance. Shaggy black fur, ram horns and cloven hooves are a common feature, even if there are some deviations from the norm (like Oskar's tengu-like mask or Princess' '80s Hair).
• El Goonish Shive: In the "Parable" storyline, which is a spoof of Fable, when Susan's Character Model Karma Meter is on the evil side, she looks like this minus the red skin (red hair though◊).
• Parodied in this Oglaf strip (two pages). Turns out that every species has its own devil, who looks like one of them in a Big Red Devil suit. They all take orders from the Devil Suit in a Devil Suit.

Web Videos

• Diva from Musical Hell is depicted as a female version of this◊.

Western Animation

• Brady's Beasts: Brady's monster has features evocative of a devil — bat wings, a pointed tail, and cloven hooves.
• The prime-time Bugs Bunny Show had an episode where Sam ended up in Fire and Brimstone Hell in new footage as a device for linking to classic cartoons, where the Devil (big, red, goatee) offers to send Sam back to earth if he'll send Bugs down there. After a few typically unsuccessful attempts, Sam has enough and dons a devil suit, gleefully opting to stay down there.
• Pluto (no, not that Pluto!) is depicted as a red-skinned, tights-wearing pantomime devil in the Classic Disney Short The Goddess of Spring, a loose retelling of the story of Hades and Persephone.
• The Red Guy from Cow and Chicken and I Am Weasel. In the pilot episode he was THE Devil outright.
• Appears twice on The Critic. Once when he declines keeping the cast of Wings on the air for another season:
  Satan: Tell them there are some things even MY power cannot accomplish!
  • And again when he auditions to be Roger Ebert's replacement.
    Auditioner: And so Tim Allen's performance proves, once again, that while Disney movies may not win awards, they keep America smiling. How was that?
    Gene Siskel: You're Satan, aren't you?
    Auditioner: [transforms into Big Red Devil] You win another round, Siskel, but we shall meet again! BLEH!!
• Danger Mouse meets 2% of himself in "The Good, the Bad and the Motionless"—a devil doppleganger who freezes Penfold in time and challenges DM to a fight at Stonehenge.
• In Disenchantment, Asmodeus has this appearance. Satan himself takes on two forms: One is a handsome man, the other is a short, fat, slovenly man. Both forms include a goatee, horns, and bright red skin.
• Donald Duck: There have been many times when he's so angry that he's resembled a devil. The cartoons "Rocket Ruckus", "Trombone Trouble", and "Soup's On" are just a few.
• Shows up on Family Guy along with the "Super Devil".
• Chernabog in Fantasia's "Night On Bald Mountain" sequence, has horns and bat-wings. He was originally called Satan. After the controversy this received, Disney retconned him from Satan to Chernabog, an evil Slavic deity.
• In Fugget About It, Jimmy's boss morphs into one and prepares to eat him alive. Luckily it was a story Jimmy was telling when stoned.
• Beelzebot, aka the Robot Devil of Futurama is the robotic equivalent.
• Doctor Satan in The Haunted World of El Superbeasto becomes this after gaining all the sudsy powers of Hell.
• Hazbin Hotel:
  • Charlie, despite being the daughter of Lucifer normally seems mostly human aside from some colouration. However, when angry she grows red horns and her sclera turn red, dominating her colour palette even more than the red suit typically does. She also has the cloven hoofs associated with the trope—she's just wearing shoes. At her most demonic, she also has the tail.
  • On the other hand, fitting the spirit of the devil more, Alastor, an insanely powerful former human, is quite tall, dresses all in red, and is a dealmaker, but has deer-like antlers instead of goat horns. Promotional material also shows him as being hoofed and wearing shoes over it.
  • Lucifer himself shows where Charlie gets it—while his feet remain unseen, in his demonic form, he shares both the horns and tail. However, red is only a secondary component of his colour scheme compared to white—fitting for a Fallen Angel.
• Subverted with the Heinous Family on Jimmy Two-Shoes, who are Little Red Devils with the exceptions of Beezy and Lucius I (at least judging from his picture).
• Satan's appearances in Looney Tunes and Animaniacs.
  • The short "Satan's Waitin'" depicts him as a dog, as Sylvester, a cat, is the one in Hell.
• Tirek from My Little Pony: Rescue at Midnight Castle and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is a mix of a Big Red Devil, a Killer Gorilla, and a centaur.
• HIM from The Powerpuff Girls has the red skin, the horns, the yellow eyes, the goatee, and rather than hooved feet, crab claws.
• ReBoot: The Season 3 episode "Game Over" had a Mortal Kombat-esque game, where the User chose as his Player Character a red demon with large horns and fiery wings, even named Zaytan as if to make it even more obvious.
• The Ren & Stimpy Show: Satan looks like this during his brief appearance at the end of the episode "Sven Hoek".
• Flanders the Devil in The Simpsons.
  • Also shows up when Bart gets hit by a car. And occasionally, when the Halloween specials take a turn for a demonic, these guys show up. In a twist, when the traditionally demonic-looking mascot of “Red Devil Realty” comes to life in “Attack of the 50 Foot Eyesores”, Bart acts as his shoulder devil to encourage him to destroy Springfield Elementary.
• Smiling Friends: After he died and sent to Hell, Charlie meets Satan who has become depressed due to his mismanagement of Hell. After being tortured by his minions, Charlie pointed out that he made Satan happy.
• Satan from South Park in the flesh.
• Star Trek: The Animated Series: The crew encounters a Sufficiently Advanced Alien who looks like this, and is revealed to be the basis for the myth of Satan. However, he's not evil just a trickster and Kirk refuses to judge him based on his appearance and his reputation.
• In Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Tom's father is a Human Alien, while his mother is a bright red 40-foot tall demon with bat wings. Who cries lava tears.
• Trigon from Teen Titans (2003).
• Unicron from Transformers is essentially this version of Satan in the form of a robot.
  • Transformers: Prime on the other hand his role is more like The Unwilling Creator of Humans
• El Colorado, the Monster of the Week in an episode of Victor and Valentino, has the horns, goatee and pitchfork one would expect, but also has one hooved foot while the other resembles a chicken foot, a fairly common representation of the devil in mexican folklore (as well as him randomly licking a jawbreaker he found under a bed).^note Mexican parents often tell kids to not pick up candy that has fallen to the floor because "the devil licked it already"

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