Eldritch Transformation

"Kaori... help me..."

"We see the Shade Stalker. Reality bubbles and drips where they step. Did you know they were human once, sweetling? It is hard to tell, harder to fathom. They have become so like the Dreamers, little fractal effigies. The changes you see are only the tip of the black iceberg. They have grown appendages in dimensions you cannot perceive."

— The Buzzing, The Secret World

Ah yes, Eldritch Abominations. The embodiment of the incomprehensible, the grotesque, the omnipotent. Nothing can be so terrifying as a Cosmic Horror monster, regardless of its origins. Especially if those origins are someone as mundane as your average Joe.

Perhaps by some odd circumstances, a person, often from humble beginnings, ends up being transformed into something truly terrifying and grand in scale, possibly involving Body Horror. Sometimes they may transform into a Genius Loci somehow. It may be used simply to give a final boss a One-Winged Angel form, if nothing else, as there is plenty of overlap.

This can be caused by otherworldly viruses, a curse, or a consequence from Deal with the Devil.

However, this only happens once and is most often involuntary. Lovecraftian Superpower, while closely related, covers habitual and usually voluntary transformation. However, these are not mutually exclusive; one with a Lovecraftian Superpower may undergo The Corruption and end up transforming permanently into an Eldritch Abomination, with Transhuman Abomination usually being the end result.

Subtrope of Eldritch Abomination, and can overlap with many of its Sister Tropes. Related to From Nobody to Nightmare. Compare and contrast the Demon of Human Origin, usually a less eldritch, less hideous-looking equivalent of this trope. Compare Body Horror and The Corruption. Related to Power Makeover. Eviler twin of Superpower Meltdown. If the transformation itself is horrific, see Painful Transformation and Transformation Horror. Contrast Bishōnen Line when a character gains a more human form as their power increases.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• AKIRA is the Trope Codifier. Tetsuo transforms into a giant human amoeba after his psychic powers get to be too much for him to control. It takes the intervention of Akira — himself a walking apocalypse — to stop his transformation, destroying Neo-Tokyo in the process (again) and, in the film adaptation, transporting Tetsuo and the Espers^note as well as Kaneda... almost to a new universe.
• Naruto: Jinchuriki are ninja who have had one or more of the powerful Tailed Beasts sealed inside them. Drawing on the Tailed Beast's power to augment their own generally results in three stages: an initial release,^note Where the Jinchuriki develops bestial traits like fangs, claws, red irises, and slitted pupils. Version 1,^note Where their body becomes covered in a translucent aura of crimson chakra vaguely shaped like their Tailed Beast, which is capable of acting independently of them. Version 2,^note Where their body becomes covered in an exoskeleton of opaque red-and-black chakra with a Jagged Mouth, sometimes accompanied by manifesting the bones of the Tailed Beast. and a full Tailed Beast transformation.^note Where their body will be transformed into that of their Tailed Beast. For jinchuriki who lack a good relationship with their Tailed Beast — like Naruto, initially — the transformations are generally unwilling, result in their Tailed Beast seizing control of their body, and a full transformation is fatal and results in the Tailed Beast being fully unleashed.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica: This is revealed to happen to all Magical Girls who don't clean their Soul Gems with Grief Seeds, resulting in the Soul Gem itself turning into a Grief Seed that their Witch form sprouts from. As Kyubey once implies, there is no known way to reverse this effect.
• In Sailor Moon, Wiseman was a depraved mass murderer who was banished to the Planet Nemesis. He fused with the planet to become a Genius Loci Eldritch Abomination through The Power of Hate.
• Soul Eater: While Asura was already made of Lord Death's fears to begin with, it's implied becoming a Kishin from consuming enough souls escalated him to the horrifying Humanoid Abomination he's depicted as in-story.

Comic Books

• The Bad Bad Place: Lady Malise Castavette, after communing with the things beneath the Estate, gradually begins to metamorphose into a Lovecraftian monster; initially only sporting a nightmarish grin after emerging from the tunnels for the first time, by her second visit she's gained a lot of weight and can now only amble about on crutches; her clothes are eventually revealed to be hiding multiple breasts — as part of her new role as a Mother of a Thousand Young. She also gains greater magical powers, enough to imbue the Estate with its most horrifying traits. Over time, she grows progressively less human: when she finally re-emerges in the 21st century, she has transformed into a bloblike mass of teats and tendrils, a minor Eldritch Abomination in her own right.
• Death Vigil: Necromancers make deals with eldritch entities, hosting them in exchange for Lovecraftian superpowers. Hosts of the four True Primordials can transform from their human form into immensely powerful eldritch abominations and back. Mia hosts the True Primordial known as the Beast and managed to hijack it with help from her father, while Clara is — initially unwittingly — host to one that's thus-far been content to lay dormant and only take action to defend its host when she's endangered.
• King Thor: Merging with All-Black enables Gorr to unleash the primordial symbiote's full power, using it in an attempt to consume what's left of the universe. This lets him create monstrous "Berserker Moons" in an attempt to devour the gods, conjure cosmic storms of Necro-Power, and snuff out stars just by existing.
• Phase IV of Zenith reveals that the Many-Angled Lloigor that the heroes have been fighting against all this time were once human — and not just any humans: they were Cloud 9, the original superhero team, having self-evolved to a level so far beyond humanity that they became Lovecraftian gods existing beyond space and time. In fact, not only have they fought their past selves many times throughout the series but actually inspired their own creation by giving the super-serum formula to the Nazis, prompting the creation of the first superhumans. Issues 9 through 10 of this Phase feature the very moment in which the villain team ascend into the black sun and are reborn as the Lloigor; initially taking the form of naked, glowing humanoids with no genitals, they quickly transform into giant tentacled insects and go on the attack - with apocalyptic consequences.
• Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham:
  • Mister Freeze was once an ordinary human on the Cobblepot Expedition. When they find Yib-Nogeroth frozen in an iceberg, it turns Freeze into an undead monster that gives off an aura that freezes everything around him. His ice-suit is used to keep the cold in, whereas his canon-counterpart had the opposite problem.
  • Ra's al Ghul creates Poison Ivy to curse Harvey Dent. First it manifests as an ugly rash that spreads to the entire left-side of his body, only for it to grow more and more grotesque. By the time Batman finds him, his flesh had turned into a Meat Moss that makes up a portal to an Eldritch Location, what remains of Dent begging to be put out of his misery.
• This is the ultimate fate of Able in Silk Hills. After being abducted by a moth cult, the victim suffers several days of ritual abuse, ultimately resulting in him being found trapped in a coccoon, apparently of his own creation. After his death, his body sprouts wings, legs, and mandibles, ultimately transforming into a truly colossal moth creature, which flies into the night.

Fan Works

• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): Played Straight and downplayed in this Godzilla MonsterVerse fanfiction. San, a piece of a Draconic Abomination, transforms Vivienne Graham into a human-Ghidorah Artificial Hybrid whilst merging with her to form a Two Beings, One Body, but due to San's lack of understanding of human biology, their first hybridized form ends up being a Body Horror-crippled, semi-skeletal Monstrous Humanoid which can barely move without breaking its own bones. The Many, however, are essentially a Captain Ersatz of The Thing with a Hive Mind.

• Dungeon Keeper Ami: A fairy that was changed by chaotic magic turned from a Winged Humanoid into a moving hole-filled web of sorta-bony material.
• Elementals of Harmony: This occurs occasionally to characters.
  • "Where Parallel Lines Converge": If planeswalkers are forced out of a plane in the wrong way, this happens to them. They get huge and dangerous and impossible anatomies.
  • My Little Praetor: Phthisis is Magic: Has this happen to at least two characters on opposing sides:
    • "Biopsy Punch": Technically, Punchline, turned from a "weed [with] contact telepathy, transmutative poison, and a sense of humor", into a dryad, a.k.a a humanoid in a land of non-humanoids, and also "a bizarre entity with abilities and senses wholly alien to normal plants", such as eyes, ears, and mouths.
    • Also, due to the effects of glistening oil, a unicorn has been described as an "aberration" for gaining:
      the details, the deviations from the norm, began to register. Silver shone on her hooves, flowing up her legs here and there like a stretching axon or an exploring slime mold. A hint of the same was visible now and again in her tail, as though the flesh beneath the hair had become metal. Her horn was similarly metallic, in addition to being longer and sharper than was acceptable for polite society. A crown of some sort rested on her head, or perhaps it extended from it. The line between jewelry and scalp seemed oddly blurred. Most disturbing of all were her eyes, matte spheres of solid black, swallowing any light that fell into them.
• The Game of Thrones fanfic (Il)Logical Conclusions features none other than Bran Stark undergoing one of these as the result of a very Long Game arranged by himself and the Children of the Forest: first, he becomes the nexus of a colossal Weirwood forest spreading throughout Westeros, erasing all signs of civilization wherever it goes, killing millions of innocents, and converting children into his Humanoid Abomination servants. Then, he uses the countless deaths as part of a Blood Magic ritual that transforms him into an eldritch deity of flame and shadow existing outside of time - to the point that Bran becomes directly responsible for every aspect of Game of Thrones that wasn't explained. This deity's name? The Lord of Light. However, the finale reveals that a small cabal of maegi, sorcerers, and warlocks are planning to repeat the process for Meera Reed so they can transform her into the only thing that might be able to stop Bran before he does anything worse: The Great Other.
• The Night Unfurls:
  • The readers don't get to see the transformation process, but Shamuhaza transforms into an Eldritch Abomination that looks a thick arthropod, awaiting for Kyril's arrival to fight him as a One-Winged Angel. Prior to this, many Innocent Bystanders and Mooks from the Black Dogs have sprouted many deformities resulting from his experiments. Said experiments contain elements of the research done by the Healing Church or the School of Mensis, both of which have invoked this trope before in the game.
  • Of course, readers shouldn't forget what happened to Kyril, or rather, which ending he picked prior to the events of the fanfic.
• Pokémon: Equestrian Champions: This happens to Sombra during his Villainous Breakdown. When he sees his entire plan falling apart right in front of him, right as he was having his Near-Villain Victory, including his Co-Dragons Chrysalis and Doom Raizer being defeated, his Team Shadow grunts surrendering, and his ace Pokémon Tyrandark defeated by Flash Sentry and Shining Armor, he refuses to accept defeat and screams that he is worthy of controlling the Legendary Pokémon Alicormony and Dischaos. He grabs the Crystal Heart, declaring that no matter what happens as long as he has this he can always start over again, only for it to suddenly start firing energy out of control, zapping Tyrandark, Alicormony, and Dischaos, and fusing them all together with Sombra. This results in a giant monstrous titan, resembling a giant Crystal version of Tyrandark, with its arms taking the shape of the absorbed Legendaries, and Sombra the one in control of the new body.

Film — Live-Action

• In the Mouth of Madness:
  • Anyone who makes the mistake of reading Sutter Cane's final novel is not only driven insane but ultimately mutated into a Lovecraftian horror. The final form of this mutation is only glimpsed, though the Creepy Changing Painting in the Pickman Hotel suggests that it's essentially a huge, tentacled wormlike thing.
  • Sutter Cane himself is beginning to transform into an eldritch being as a result of the patronage of the Old Ones, having not only been granted reality-writing powers but also a hideous body sprouting from his back. In the climax, he transcends reality and essentially becomes a god alongside the Old Ones.
• Shin Godzilla: Godzilla originated as a marine reptile exposed to radioactive waste, and transforms into a horrendous living nuclear reactor capable of spontaniously adapting to its environment in ways the team of eccentric scientists trying to study it admit shouldn't be possible.
• Slither: Grant Grant becomes fused to a parasitic alien life form that's bent on multiplying and assimilating all life on Earth; after he escapes the police and disappears for several days, we see he's mutated into a slimy, tentacular monstrosity with only vaguely humanoid features.

Literature

• In A Bad Case of Stripes, Camilla gets a disease that makes her change depending on what other people say (for instance, while saying the Pledge at school, her skin turns the colours of the American flag). Eventually, she ends up with many plant and animal parts growing out of her body, then when told to "become one with [her] room", she literally turns into a sentient version of her room.
• David Conway's short story Black Static ends with Reinhardt Stahl and the main character becoming indescribable Hyperbreed Omnibeasts through a combination of Stahl's made techno-magical rituals and the efforts of the other Omnibeasts imprisoned in Maximus Prime. Together, they go on to enslave the human race to their whims for all eternity.
• Quantum Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner: This is what happens with Harley Q. In the beginning, he just like every other person in the Junkyard was infected with the Atma virus, which gives those who have it the ability to transform into Asuras, but forcing them to eat human flesh to maintain it. Harley Q went through a Villainous RRoD — as is typical with those who are not sufficiently feeding — but instead of kicking the bucket, he ended up in the sewer system where all the data from all the dead people are stored. From there, he absorbed all that information and eventually turned into a black sludge made of pure hunger and the desperation of all the dead, and he grew large enough to cover and devour the entire Junkyard.
• Whateley Universe: Sara Waite, who is technically a living mass of tentacles that just look sort of human, is the end result of her previous male form, "human" Michael Waite, being an Uneven Hybrid with the larger parts being non-human and related to the Cthulhu Mythos.

Live-Action TV

• Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: In the final season, Sabrina Spellman becomes the host of the Weird, one of the Eldritch Terrors and the in-universe inspiration for Cthulhu, and begins to transform into a creature with a hardened radula for a tongue, ammonia for blood, and ink-sacs.
• The pilot to Lovecraft Country has the main cast members and the racist sheriff's deputies who were going to lynch them chased into the woods by a shoggoth. As they all take shelter in a cabin, Tic mentions that, in horror stories, getting bitten by a monster means you become a monster. Guess what happened to the Sheriff...
• Night Gallery: In the episode "Professor Peabody's Last Lecture", a professor at Miskatonic Univerisity attempts to show that The Necronomicon is bunk by reading aloud from it in class. As he reads from it he completely fails to notice the obvious magical effects his reading is causing, culminating with him being transformed into an Eldritch Abomination.
• Stranger Things: In Season 3, the Mind Flayer begins infecting ordinary people and rats in Hawkins to allow itself a physical presence in our world. When it decides to take a personal hand in hunting down Eleven (the only one it perceives as a threat), it melts down and assimilates its hosts into a single horrific, arachnid-type body.

Music

• The music video for "Fantasy" by DyE sees a group of teenagers sneak into a swimming pool at night... then suddenly start mutating into eldritch monsters and attacking one another. The only survivor dives into the pool and finds herself in the presence of a being so horrifying her eyes burst.

Tabletop Games

• Call of Cthulhu:
  • A worshipper of the Cthulhu Mythos deity Y'golonac (which is an Eldritch Abomination) can be forced to become an avatar of the deity and assume its form whenever the deity wishes. In the supplement Shadows of Yog-Sothoth adventure "The Warren", this happens to the Non-Player Character Philip Boucher.
  • The milk of Shub-Niggurath transforms those who drink it into vicious monstrosities.
• Magic: The Gathering: The plot of the "Shadows over Innistrad" block is kicked off by Nahiri summoning the Eldritch Abomination Emrakul. Emrakul's presence on the plane slowly drives its residents insane and mutates them into tentacled horrors like this one. This was also hinted at in the original "Rise of the Eldrazi" set by Eldrazi Conscription.
• In Vampire: The Masquerade, the legendary third generation of vampires — the Antediluvians — have in many cases transcended all semblance of humanity and become godlike monsters.
  • Ennoia, the Gangrel founder, has permanently merged with the Earth itself, kept asleep by its rotation and when she awakens in Gehenna, manifests entirely as earthquakes.
  • Malkav exists as intangible madness, linking his children together as a Hive Mind and becomes contagious enough to drive human beings into solipsistic psychopathy during Gehenna.
  • Lasombra now exists as a Living Shadow within the Abyss and goes so far as to spread himself across the entire planet in Gehenna, creating an endless night.
  • Tzimisce takes the cake: as the founder of a clan dedicated to pursuing this very metamorphosis, he has expanded into a hideously organic Genius Loci sprouting and growing under New York. During Gehenna, he takes this to the next level by becoming first a gigantic Blob Monster that eats the city alive, then a disembodied intelligence controlling and deforming anything that possesses his blood, and finally, the entire human race.
  • Zapathasura, the antediluvian of Clan Ravnos, is the first one to wake up. Appearing as a humanoid figure made of ash, he lays waste to Bangladesh, and it's heavily implied that his mastery of Chimerstry is enough to let him shape reality itself like it's clay.
• Arkham Horror has the mission card "Join the Winning Team" which displays a human being monstrously transformed with their chest bursting open from one side and their arms and legs becoming little more than numerous tentacles. A player who completes this card kills all other players and wins the game (which is not how this cooperative game is supposed to be played), implying that, in-universe, your character sacrifices their humanity to become an abomination akin to the Ancient One destroying the city.

Video Games

• Bloodborne has, in its most obtuse-to-get ending, the Hunter transforming into a newborn Great One, though if this is a good or bad thing is highly subjective. Prior to this, a lot of misery is caused by the Healing Church's attempt to use eldritch blood to transcend humanity, and while this usually goes off the rails in a "hideous werewolf monster" direction, some of the creatures born from it are closer to this. The alien-looking Celestial Minions, the bug-headed Gardens of Eyes, the twisted Celestial Children, and by some implications the Brainsuckers, are all examples.
• BoxxyQuest: The Shifted Spires: The final form of Voluntary Shapeshifting user Prophyria, a non-human mass of tentacles that covers the whole screen, with all the other forms seeming to follow a less eldritch trend of Full-Frontal Assault-ish women.
• Brave Hero Yuusha: The final form of the Puppeteer is a result of this, having lost a humanoid form.
• In the Control DLC AWE, it was revealed that Dr. Emil Hartman (a minor antagonist from Alan Wake) was taken into the Federal Bureau of Control when the Dark Presence's... er, presence in Bright Falls reaches their attention. They discover his various experiments relating to it and arrest him for his "violation[s] of paranatural law", only to release him when it becomes apparent that he poses little threat. His research confiscated, he dives into Cauldron Lake, becoming a Taken possessed by the Presence and thus kept in containment at the Oldest House. When the Hiss begins invading the Oldest House and possessing everyone there, the mixture of Hiss and Presence in him mutates him into a horrific Humanoid Abomination, indiscriminately killing anyone he comes across.
• Cultist Simulator: Most of the major victory conditions consist of your character becoming immortal, which typically involves this in some way. The Sensation ambition has your character twist and mutate, growing larger and developing extra appendages and organs; the Enlightenment ambition has your character slowly become a being of pure thought and light, growing thin and gaunt with soft bones and light leaking out of gaps in their sagging skin; and so on.
• Darkest Dungeon: When reaching the titular area, the Darkest Dungeon, most of the Cultists fought throughout the game "Ascended" thanks to their eldritch master, which means they've turned into horrifying, fleshy, tentacled creatures which barely resemble their humanoid form. Of note are the Cultist Priests, which on the outside look like humans with robes that obscure their face and bodies, but are actually the most monstrous and eldritch out of all of them underneath. Darkest Dungeon 2 adds the Plague Eaters, whose consumption of tainted crops and Meat Moss has turned them into horrible, bloated creatures with More Teeth than the Osmond Family.
• Dark Souls: Over the course of the three games, it's revealed that this is one of the possible outcomes of the Lord Souls' power being misused — particularly the Dark Soul and the shards of it known as Humanity. Manus' humanity raging out of control transformed him into a horrifying monster, creating the Eldritch Location known as the Abyss — from which many of the series' more Lovecraftian bosses originate.
• Diablo: Characters in the series who possess one of the Soulstones eventually transform into one of the Prime Evils. From what we see in the games, their bodies gradually become more corpse-like until abruptly tearing apart to reveal the demon beneath. Their minds seem to undergo a similar process. We also see the reverse of this in Diablo (1997): after slaying Diablo, his Big Red Devil form reverts to that of Prince Albrecht.
• Dragon Age:
  • A lot of the time, a mage possessed by a demon will transform into a horrible monster known as an abomination, wrapped in excess flesh and twisted to suit the needs of its possessor.
  • Exposure to the darkspawn taint is notoriously corrupting. Especially for females of all species, who transform into the hideous, cannibalistic spawn factories known as Broodmothers.
  • First Enchanter Orsino in Dragon Age II deals with the late-game disaster by turning into a giant monstrosity assembled from dead bodies.
• EarthBound (1994) has a very nasty, and very tragic example in Giygas. The prequel shows that at first he was a gray Tragic Villain, but by the time of EarthBound he became an insane Eldritch Abomination.
• Fate/Grand Order:
  • The "Foreigner" Class consists of individuals who encountered a Great Old One but, by keeping their sanity intact, became able to use their eldritch powers. This results in turning innocuous people into Humanoid Abominations or Monstrous Humanoids. Abigail Williams, as seen in the Salem Epic or Remnant, is the best example of such a transformation: she goes from a normal, innocent little girl to an eerie, washed-up, sinister channeller of Sut-Typhon. This is inverted with Summer Abigail, who starts off as the sinister eldritch witch and turns into a normal girl in her later Ascensions.
  • Anything that gets absorbed into Tiamat's Chaos Tide will be transformed into one of her monstrous offspring. Humans become spider-like creatures called Lahmu, while Servants like Ushiwakamaru become Humanoid Abominations able to replicate endlessly at will. Notably, they're still changing after being transformed, with the Lahmu growing wings and becoming Bel-Lahmu, and Ushiwakamaru changing from a Rider to a Berserker before losing her class altogether (which means she's no longer affected by the Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors; it's implied that she would have gained Tiamat's Beast Class if she had continued to evolve).
  • Koyanskaya's endgame is to apotheosize into a Beast, and she eventually succeeds in becoming the nightmarish Kitsune-like Beast of Cherishment.
• Fear & Hunger: This happens to the Girl in Ending A, going from a relatively normal little child to the God of Fear & Hunger, a thing resembling an organic scarecrow.
• Final Fantasy VII: Professor Hojo turns into a weird monstrosity after infusing himself with Mako energy and Jenova cells.
• Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers has the people of the First who mutate into sin eaters after enough exposure to corrupted light aether. For many, the transformation is very gradual, as constant exposure to light results in increasing illness and extreme palor. In this case, at least, the victim can die before mutating fully into a sin eater, with some opting to commit suicide. Conversely, it is also possible to become a sin eater via a sudden and massive introduction of corrupted light aether into one's body. Transformation in this fashion is much faster, much more painful, and much more gruesome.
• Freedom Planet: In the third stage of Final Dreadnought, Lord Brevon mutates Milla into a horrific scorpion-esque monstrous form of herself, which is fought as the penultimate boss of the game. After being defeated, she reverts back into her original form, but seemingly dies, which drives Lilac/Carol into Unstoppable Rage. A lesser example occurs just a stage prior with General Serpentine, and is seemingly killed by the heroes when they fight him, only to show up alive in the end credits, and unhappy that his prosthetic arms are gone.
• Just Shapes & Beats: The Boss, after faking its defeat in the supposed final battle, steals the last of the three triangle MacGuffins and impales it into its own head, turning into a monstrous blood-crying Eldritch Abomination summoning eldritch spiny tentacle centipedes. Halfway through the battle, it hatches into the spiny Nightmare Face with skeletal-like appearance.
• Katana ZERO: Invoked with the secret boss fight against the Psychologist, who injects himself with a bunch of super-soldier serums and undergoes a transformation into a grotesque horror that Zero has to defeat. However, this was all just in Zero's head, courtesy of a hallucination.
• Kirby has several examples you rarely expect from its cutesy image:
  • In the "Milky Way Wishes" sub-game of Kirby Super Star, when Kirby summons Galactic Nova to wish for Sun and Moon to stop fighting, Marx steals his wish and wishes to control Pop Star. Nova then transforms him into a bat-like monstrous form of himself, which is fought as the Final Boss of the mode (and, by extension, the original game). In the remake, Marx's dead body absorbs the destroyed Nova's parts and mutates into an even more monstrous form known as the Marx Soul, which is fought in the True Arena as the True Final Boss of the game.
  • At the end of Kirby: Canvas Curse, when Kirby defeats Drawcia in her sorceress form, she ends up uncontrollably mutating into a monstrous blob of paint known as Drawcia Soul, which is fought as the final boss of the game.
  • In Kirby's Return to Dream Land, Magolor deceives the main cast into helping him to defeat Landia and then tries to take the power of his Master Crown for himself. Though he initially turns into a more powerful form of himself, he gets defeated, after which the crown ends up taking control over his body, transforming him into an Eldritch Abomination fought as the final boss of the game.
  • At the end of Kirby: Triple Deluxe, Queen Sectonia, the true Big Bad of the game, fuses herself with the Dreamstalk, turning herself into a Botanical Abomination version of herself.
• Michigan: Report From Hell has a few. Pamela has her waist mutate into a giant mouth; Dr O'Conner turns into a giant, snake-like mouth with two tiny legs; and the Patient Zero mutates into a giant ball of flesh upon being killed.
• A common characteristic of the more exotic monsters in the Resident Evil series, especially the bosses. The general rule is that, the more damage a boss monster takes, the more it will mutate as it tries to heal.
  • The G-Virus, best exhibited in Resident Evil 2, mutates its victims in a far more grotesque manner than the T-Virus, which simply turns them into zombies and/or makes them bigger. William Birkin is the most extreme example, having injected himself with the G-Virus in order to save himself after he was gunned down by Umbrella mercenaries, and whose mutations included an eye growing out of his shoulder before eventually degenerating into a tentacle/blob monster after taking enough damage.
  • Nemesis in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis starts out with a humanoid form, but with each subsequent boss fight, he grows increasingly disfigured and mutated until, by the end, he's a mass of flesh and teeth.
  • In Resident Evil 4, the villagers in the later stages of the game turn into extremely disgusting and repulsive tentacled horrors when wounded enough, with their heads exploding so the tentacles can get out. Leon has to put them down quickly before they get too close, as their tentacles have blades on them that inflict heavy damage. And of course, there are the game's boss encounters, which include a man whose spine extends to make him twice as tall while tearing his torso open, a man whose arm turns into a massive blade, and the Final Boss fight being against a man who turns into a spider monster.
  • Uroboros in Resident Evil 5 turns its victims into masses of black tentacles, as seen with Excella Gionne after Wesker infects them with it as punishment for failing him. Wesker himself also willingly infects himself with Uroboros before you face him as the Final Boss, though the transformation isn't as extreme in his case, as he seems to be able to at least partly control his transformation.
  • The J'avo in Resident Evil 6 have regenerative abilities that have this effect, growing masses of flesh and bone where missing limbs used to be that they then use as weapons.
  • In Resident Evil: Revelations, infectees of the T-Abyss Virus turn into slimy humanoid monsters called the Ooze.
  • In Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, people infected with the Mold who take sufficient damage eventually start to mutate. This is best illustrated with Jack Baker's transformation over the course of the game, as well as Marguerite turning into a spider monster, and of course, the final boss fight against Evelyne.
• The Secret World:
  • People infected by the Filth, if they survive the initial Zombie Apocalypse phase, gradually become less and less human until they transform into beings of pure Filth known as Shades. The ultimate iteration of this is the Shade Stalker, a gigantic spidery mass of Filth that's essentially a scaled-down edition of the Dreamers themselves.
  • As a result of being at the very epicentre of the Filth bomb used in Tokyo, John Copley transcends physical existence altogether and becomes a minor Eldritch Abomination known as the Black Signal. Now part of the Dreamers' collective but unbound by the Gaia Engines that normally keep them under control, he is capable of creating bodies out of pure Filth, speaking in Brown Notes that induce spontaneous suicide in listeners, and manipulating technology in any way he pleases, to the point that he's actually able to hack the game's lore entries just so he can talk to you.
• In Sonic and the Secret Rings, Erazor Djinn tries to absorb the seven World Rings to take their power and remake the world of Arabian Nights in his own image. As he tries to sacrifice Sonic, the one who collected the rings, Shahra takes the strike for him and dies. Because Sonic wasn't the one who got sacrificed, the ritual was botched, and Erazor ends up mutating into a horrific six-armed monstrosity known as Alf Layla wa-Layla, who is fought as the Final Boss of the game.
• Sonic Unleashed has Dark Gaia achieving his true, and mature, form. Already an Eldritch Abomination himself in his immature form, this transformation, which involves a whole lot of eyes coming out of his mouth and four more arms bursting from underneath his arms and shoulders in a shower of green blood, only doubles down on that.
• Sundered: Eshe can acquire Lovecraftian Superpowers by corrupting the abilities she acquires with Elder Shards, with the Embrace ending having her merge with the Shining Trapezohedron and transform into a Humanoid Abomination.
• They Bleed Pixels: The unnamed protagonist begins to undergo a transformation into a purple-skinned Humanoid Abomination with razor-sharp claws for hands, courtesy of a Tome of Eldritch Lore she finds in the school library.
• A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky: The Final Boss transforms into a humanoid form called "The Nameless," twice as tall as a normal one with a Red and Black and Evil All Over aesthetic.
• Weird and Unfortunate Things Are Happening: Evocations' Demonic Possession of their hosts causes this, growing larger and inhuman.

Web Original

• Battle for BFDI: Four, already Eldritchy to begin with, merges with Earth after his show is overtaken for a second time.
• This is what happens to the avatars in The Magnus Archives. They have a close encounter with one of the fourteen eldritch horrors, and they (or whatever remains of them) are corrupted into a Humanoid Abomination which hunts for other victims in our realm. The narrator, Jon, is being slowly transformed into an avatar of The Beholding, though he doesn't realise it until season three.

Visual Novels

• Fate/stay night: The Greater-Scope Villain of Fate/stay night and its prequel Fate/Zero is the Avenger-class Servant Aŋra Mainiiu, who Fate/hollow ataraxia reveals was once a mortal man chosen by the ancient Zoroastrians to be ritually sacrificed as the incarnation of all the world's evils. When the Einzbern family tried to summon the Zoroastrian God of Evil in the Third Holy Grail War, they wound up summoning the man who'd inspired the myth instead. Upon Avenger being slain, the Holy Grail misinterpreted the Zoroastrians' belief that "Aŋra Mainiiu" was a God of Evil as a wish for him to become exactly that, turning him into a nascent Eldritch Abomination that seeks to be born so that it can annihilate humanity.

Western Animation

• Batman Beyond: In the episode "Splicers", the LEGO Genetics-loving villain, after transforming himself into a Mix-and-Match Critter, is given a couple dozen more injections by Terry, turning him into a nightmarishly malformed creature◊ with What Do You Mean, It's for Kids? level of Body Horror.
• Generator Rex: Being turned into an EVO is almost always this, with rare lucky exceptions like Bobo, a chimp who merely gained human-level intelligence and speech. The nanites responsible for the mutation draw matter from somewhere and give the victim extra features with varying degrees of Body Horror, from having freaky skin, to sprouting new appendages, to getting the occasional superpowers, to growing extra faces where they don't belong. On the lowest level are EVOs who can pass off as human until they transform, like Circe, who you can't tell has a pharyngeal jaw until she opens wide. On the second level are still-humanoid or animaloid EVOs who clearly aren't normal anymore, but get to keep their minds and memories. On the third level are EVOs who become feral beasts with little resemblance to who or what they were before, both physically and personality-wise. The fourth and worst level is reserved for EVOs who become building-sized monstrosities that would require nukes to bring down if Rex didn't have the ability to cure them. Speaking of Rex, he's managed to be all four levels of EVO transformation at separate points throughout the series.
• Inside Job (2021): When Brett tries to burn a horde of JFK clones, they begin to mutate into a giant mutual flesh blob and eat "Grassy" Noel Atkinson. When Brett warns Reagan about it, he even name-drops AKIRA.
  Reagan: Of course I've seen Akira! Anime's very mainstream right now!
• Loonatics Unleashed: Otto the Odd tries to thwart the Loonatics by using his DNA scrambler on the Ringmaster, transforming the bizarrely dressed human man into a hodgepodge of LEGO Genetics: a thirty-foot-tall monster with a whip-like tail, crablike pincer claws, and a carapace, among other features. This ad hoc creature is soon defeated, though not easily.
• Steven Universe:
  • In "Cat Fingers", Steven almost permanently becomes a mass of cat faces after a botched first attempt at shapeshifting, in a confirmed reference to the aforementioned AKIRA.
  • In the finale of its sequel Steven Universe: Future, Steven becomes so corrupt he transforms into a giant crystal dragon, and it takes The Power of Love to bring him back to normal.
• The Owl House: Luz Noceda undergoes an incredibly rare heroic version in the Grand Finale "Watching and Dreaming". As a result of the Titan giving her the last of his powers to bring her back from the dead, Luz gains a more nightmarish form as a hybrid half-human, half-titan witch wielding absolutely monstrous magic power. This new form is much more Adorable Abomination than most as while Luz does gain monstrous traits, she is very much a Cute Monster Girl due to her Titan form following the style of her Azura costume, and simply adding in new traits such as skeletal hands and black sclera.

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