Mirror Monster

"On reflection, that is a murderously bad look for me."

"What if the mirrors are showing us something that's not real...?"

— Mirrors (2008)

Mirrors are inherently creepy objects. If you're looking in a mirror, there's also someone looking at you. A movement in a mirror can make you jump. It's no surprise that they're associated with badness.

But what if there were something more than just one's own reflection in the mirror? What if the mirror showed something else looking back at you?

This is the Mirror Monster! Though a mirror is really just a pane of glass and silver, in fiction it can become a gateway — something terrible could come out... or something terrible could try and suck you in. A Mirror Monster could be an image only visible in a mirror. It could be a ghost fettered to the world of the living by a mirror. It could be something which comes out of a mirror or communicates via mirror. It could be a variant of a ghost that appears through looking at a mirror. The key thing about this trope is the horror is directly connected to the mirror itself.

Sometimes mirror monsters can be defeated by smashing the glass or throwing it into another place such as a river. Unfortunately, sometimes smashing or throwing away the glass can free the mirror monster and allow it free rein (or make even more of them).

Compare with Mirror Scare, Mirror Routine, Magic Mirror.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Une from Ayakashi Triangle is a living Magic Mirror that can move herself and others through reflections to her Pocket Dimension replica world.
• There's a Doraemon gadget called the Duplication Mirror which can duplicate anything reflected upon, but when Nobita attempts using the mirror to duplicate his friends' toys, in his excitement he forgot to deactivate the mirror, causing a clone of himself to crawl out and attack him before shoving him into the mirror world. Ultimately, the Nobita-clone decide to return into the mirror voluntarily after getting a scolding from Tamako (for spending too much time playing), complaining that "He'd rather go back into the mirror world, the real world is too scary!"
• Engage Kiss: Episode 4 and 5 features a demon capable of traversing in mirrors.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has two Stands that work like this:
  • Stardust Crusaders has J. Geil's Hanged Man, which exists only in reflective surfaces and can jump between them. This gives the impression that it lives in a parallel mirror world, which J. Geil initially claims is how his power works, and it can also attack people's reflections to hurt them.
  • Golden Wind has Illuso and his Man in the Mirror, which generates a mirror world that he can drag people into whole or in part, and by doing this, he can separate a Stand from their user. He is the only villain in the whole story who prompts Fugo to pull out his own Stand of Mass Destruction, Purple Haze.
• In One Piece, Brûlée has eaten the Mirror-Mirror Fruit, which gives her a number of mirror-themed powers. One of them is access to the Mirror World, allowing herself to travel through mirrors. From someone looking from the other side, it comes across as this trope, as she appears in someone's mirror and can reach out and emerge through it. This power is later exploited by both her enemies and allies: The Straw Hat Pirates, realizing that Brûlée, in spite of her fearsome powers, is pretty feeble in strength, decide to tie her to other people so they can also use the Mirror World, for fast travel. Her family members, meanwhile, upon finding out that Luffy is in the Mirror World trying to use the mirrors to quickly get to Cacao Island, order the citizens of Cacao Island to either destroy or submerge every mirror on the island to cut off Luffy's escape.
• Pokémon: Giratina and the Sky Warrior: Giratina travels through mirrors to get to its home dimension, the Reverse World. When it is trying to capture Ash and friends, it uses reflective objects to open a portal through and drag them via whirlwinds into the Reverse World.
• This story was parodied in the Ranma ½ manga, where the mirror is haunted by the girl's lingering presence, and now whoever looks into it will have their reflection pop out. They aren't so much evil as just incredibly annoying.
• Sailor Moon used this trope all throughout the Dead Moon arc of SuperS/early Stars, where Queen Nehelenia would trap people in mirrors in a "nightmare", a mirror leads to a portal to her evil dreamland, and in one episode she creates a house of mirrors and controls the Senshi's reflections and makes them psychoanalyze and hypnotize them, to convince them to give up.
• In Kazuo Umezu's Scary Book: Reflections, the vanity of a girl who admires her beauty incessantly in a mirror causes her evil reflection to escape and attempt to take her place, driving her to the edge of insanity in the process.
• In one Slayers Non-Serial Movie, Lina and Naga ran afoul of a mirror that created clones of them. This mirror, showing the exact metaphysical opposite of the person who looks into it, creates a wimpy, demure Naga and a pathetic, weepy Lina.
• An episode of Sonic X has one character see her face in her reflection replaced with a ghost, which was one of thousands of ghosts that were none too happy with the living using it as a film location.

Comic Books

• This is the modus operandi of The Flash rogue Mirror Master, who can travel via mirror or reflective surfaces.
• Wonder Woman:
  • In The Silver Age of Comic Books, Wonder Woman once battled a villain from a dimension that existed within mirrors.
  • In Volume 1, while Circe is stalking Diana, she (and the readers) keep catching glimpses of a shadowed woman's face in reflective surfaces.

Fan Works

• Boldores And Boomsticks: Before Blake's Gastly Shade can comfort his trainer about being homesick he snaps her out of crying by briefly making seem that her reflection became a monster.
• In The Bridge spinoff The Bridge: A Shimmer in the Dark, the monster Mizu can inhabit reflective surfaces and use them as portals.
• In the WWE story, The Legend of Bloody Molly, Molly Holly is killed by Trish Stratus and Lita, and comes back as "Bloody Molly" (a take on the "Bloody Mary" Urban Legend) to exact revenge on them.

Folklore

• Kids play a game called "Bloody Mary", based of an urban legend, by chanting the name in front of a mirror in a dark room. Supposedly, her face replaces the reflection in the mirror, and naturally, there are urban legends about kids who kept it up for too long, made Mary angry, and died the next day.
• Ungaikyō ("mirror beyond the clouds"), a mirror tsukumogami that reflects nothing but a monstrous face with its tongue sticking out.
• At the very tail end of the 1970s, a Bloody Mary-style urban legend developed from the East Japanese version of Urikohime and the Amanojaku. It had its popularity in the first half of the 1980s and goes that if one says "Urikohime" in front of a mirror at 12 o'clock, Urikohime's resentfulness will manifest and kill the one who summoned her.

Films — Animated

• In Epic (1984), the Spirit of Evil appears a couple of times in the reflection on the water of one of the protagonists.
• Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School features some thing that actually refers to itself as a "mirror monster". It does a Mirror Routine with both Scooby and Shaggy, then traps Shaggy in the mirror.

Films — Live-Action

• The mirror itself in Amityville: A New Generation, which goads people to hurt themselves and their friends.
• Army of Darkness has Bad Ash come about as a result of popping out of a mirror.
• The Broken deals with mirror monsters taking over their originals' lives.
• Candyman: Saying Candyman's name five times in front of a mirror will summon the killer who will slay you with his Hook Hand. At the end of the movie, Helen has become a vengeful spirit who can be summoned by saying her name five times while facing a mirror.
• The Demon: The Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl that was once Sunjid first makes her ghostly appearance by coming out of her own portrait hanging on the wall, where she then kills Khatnaa, the person who was looking at the portrait.
• Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness has Wanda not only escape from the Mirror Dimension through reflective surfaces, but actually use it to her advantage by snatching people through them to an almost certainly horrible death. Then she crawls out like something out of The Ring.
• From Beyond the Grave: Charlton buys a mirror at Temptations Ltd., cheating the proprietor by claiming it is a reproduction when it is really an antique. When he takes it home, Charlton holds a séance at the suggestion of his friends, and falls into a trance. He finds himself in a netherworld where he is approached by a sinister figure. The figure appears to stab him, and Charlton awakes screaming. Later, the figure's face appears in the mirror and orders Charlton to kill so that he can "feed". Charlton butchers people until the apparition is able to manifest himself outside of the mirror.
• Grim Prairie Tales: When Martin is shaving, he loses control of the hand holding the razor. When he looks in the mirror, he can see Colochez (or his ghost) holding his arm and attempting to give him a Dangerously Close Shave. But there is no sign Colochez in the room, only the mirror.
• A Haunting in Venice: The ghost of Alicia Drake pops up in the mirror when Poirot is trying to gather himself in the bathroom, wearing a chilling Death Glare on her face.
• In Hellraiser: Bloodline, the Cenobite Angelique kills one of the future soldiers by appearing in a mirror in her human form as a woman pleading for help before dragging him in and decapitating him.
• The House That Dripped Blood: In "Method for Murder", a shaken Charles is lighting a cigarette on by the fireplace when he glances in the mirror and sees Dominick standing on the landing behind him. But when he turns around, there is no one there.
• There's a movie called In Dreams in which, at the very end, a mirror actually distorts and drags someone in.
• Kuntilanak: According to Miko's book on Indonesian mythology, Kuntilanaks make their lairs either in trees or mirrors. The one they're contending with is inside the mirror Glenn brought home.
• One of the goblins in Labyrinth appears in a mirror briefly as Toby's being snatched.
• Legend (1985): Darkness first appears to Lily by stepping out of a mirror.
• The mirror in Mirror Mirror (1990) contains a demonic entity able to grant wishes. And occasionally it will reach out and inflict a more physical punishment on someone in the real world.
• Mirrors (2008) has what turns out to be a demonic being inhabiting mirrors and attacking anyone who looks into them.
• The 2010 film Mothman reimagines The Mothman as an entity that exists within reflective surfaces, which it can escape from when someone makes eye contact with it.
• Near the end of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, dream invading serial killer Freddy Krueger leads the remaining kids to a room full of mirrors. They see him standing in the largest mirror, upon which he duplicates himself into every mirror in the room and drags them inside kicking and screaming. Fortunately, Joey learns to use his powerful voice — his own dream skill — to attack Freddy and free all his friends.
• In Night of the Demons (1988), there's a demon head that appears in a mirror, looking vaguely like a monstrous cow skull.
• Nite Tales: The Movie: "Storm" follows a group of students whose night of partying takes a dark turn as they play a game of Bloody Mary.
• Oculus has the Lasser Glass, an antique mirror able to alter people's perception of reality. It has a body count dating back to the 1700s, as it drains the energy of its owners and drives them to madness.
• At the end of Phantasm, the Tall Man emerges from a mirror to grab Mike.
• The ghosts in Poltergeist III manifest through the reflections in the mirrors.
• In Prince of Darkness, The Anti-God is on the other side of a mirror trying to get through into our world.
• Inverted with Ozma in Return to Oz. She's the girl queen of Oz and was imprisoned in mirrors as a reflection by Mombi.
• In The Watcher in the Woods, Jan sees a blindfolded girl in a mirror. She turns out to be not a ghost, but trapped in another dimension.

Gamebooks

• Fighting Fantasy: Mirror Demons are a recurring enemy in a few adventures, notably Deathtrap Dungeon, Siege of Sardath and Night Dragon. They attack by grabbing unfortunate adventurers and dragging them into their own mirror dimension, where their victims will be trapped in there forever.
• One of the many spells in Sorcery! allows wizard players to summon one, if they have a large mirror with a golden back in their posession. Once cast, they just need to point their mirror at an intended target, and a life-sized copy of their target will emerge from the mirror's surface and attack.

Literature

• In the Sherlock Holmes/Cthulhu Mythos crossover story "The Adventure of the Death-Fetch" a man is menaced by a deadly doppelganger monster, who can come out of any mirror that shows his reflection. The poor bastard locks himself in a room with no mirrors or reflective surfaces, but in the end gets killed when he catches a glimpse of his reflection in his rifle's polished barrel.
• In the Boojumverse, Doppelkinder are monsters which hunt in mirrors and eat their victims' eyes. They are incapable of harming Cheshires or Boojums, which don't recognize two-dimensional images like reflections in mirrors because they think three-dimensionally.
• The Polish book Bromba i inni (featuring descriptions of numerous fictional creatures) includes the "Wild Viceverses", mirror-dwelling creatures which are created whenever two mirrors are placed opposite each other. While they look more or less like warped abominations, they're a subversion in that they're rather amiable and benevolent. That said, they love playing tricks on vain people by suddenly replacing their reflection in the mirror.
• Bruce Coville's Book of...:
  • Bruce Coville's Book of Monsters: Variant in the story Bloody Mary, where instead of summoning the titular character, saying the name thirteen times into the mirror will turn you into Bloody Mary, and the only way to turn back is to trick the monster into saying her name once, into the mirror, in the dark.
  • Bruce Coville's Book of Nightmares: Through the Mirror sees its protagonist dragged into the mirror and replaced by her own reflection.
• The Dresden Files: This is the reason Harry refuses to keep mirrors around his house. A lot of nasty critters can use them as doorways between the Nevernever and the real world, like the fetches in Proven Guilty.
• A hex in Fancy Apartments causes a mirror to distort the image of any person reflected in it. It's apparently rather disturbing.
• Played with in John Harding's Florence and Giles. Florence, the twelve-year-old narrator, discovers that Miss Taylor, her new and possibly undead governess, magically inhabits all the manor's mirrors. Then again, Florence is both an Unreliable Narrator and completely Ax-Crazy.
• Goosebumps:
  • Let's Get Invisible! features a mirror that turns you invisible, but if you stay invisible too long, your reflection forces you to switch places with it.
  • Then there was Ghost in the Mirror where the mirror is a portal to a dimension full of crab people.
• In a book-only detail of Harry Potter, once the Locket of Slytherin has been turned into a Soul Jar by Lord Voldemort, his young self's eye can be seen watching through the mirror inside.
• In Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, mirrors can be used by fey and magicians as gateways to the fairy realm. They're featured prominently near the end of the book.
• Labyrinths of Echo had the Secret Investigations dealing with one of such creatures, and devouring the life-force, at that.
• In the Mr. and Mrs. Darcy Mysteries Sir Francis Dashwood hides his soul in a mirror and then takes over his great nephew's body using it.
• Oddly Enough: "The Japanese Mirror" features one that lurks within the titular mirror, making Jonathan's reflection look ugly in any mirror he looks in and gradually absorbing his anger until it can emerge and take over his body.
• In the fourth installment of Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz, something briefly materializes out of a mirror to collect someone's soul.
• Pact has Rose Thorburn, Distaff Counterpart to Blake Thorburn, the narrator, who is trapped in a mirror world and can only access the real one by appearing in mirrors, which she can break if she hits them hard enough. Supernatural creatures, however, can enter her mirror world, including an abstract demon who simultaneously exists in its own reflection, a Faerie, and a Bloody Mary that Rose summons to help her out.
  • Later, Blake is trapped in the mirror world while Rose enters the real one, and, lacking Rose's affinity for Summon Magic, is forced to rely on Sympathetic Magic-by moving the reflections of objects, he can move the object itself in the real world.
• The Stephen King short story "The Reaper's Image"
• In The Shadow of the Wind, Julian, as a lonely child, made up stories that he told to other kids that he had a sister who came to visit him through the mirror and lived with the devil.
• In Shaman of the Undead, all mirrors are the gates to the various hells, so demons (or people who walk between mirrors) can and do pull this off sometimes.
• China Miéville short story "The Tain" features imagos, Eldritch Abominations from the other side of the mirror taking over the world. They are trapped inside mirrors by people looking at their own reflections, which causes them excruciating pain. When they manifest in reality, most of them manifest as an Evil Twin, but sometimes as something weirder like hair, hands, lips and other body parts.
• In Robert A. Heinlein's short story "The Unpleasant Profession Of Jonathan Hoag", the Sons of the Bird are powerful evil entities that enter and exit our world through mirrors.
• In the Discworld novel Witches Abroad, the villain uses mirror magic, and when she loses control at the end, her reflection reaches out of a mirror and pulls her in.
• In the Wearing the Cape book Team-Ups and Crossovers, Astra is recruited to be nigh-invulnerable bait to catch a serial killer that turns out to have this power. Like many breakthroughs with odd movement powers, the killer cannot bring other people through mirrors. When Astra grabs his wrist and won’t let go, every mirror in his lair detonates, as does every mirror in a corresponding warehouse in another continuum where he and Astra wind up, resulting in shredded Mirror Monster.

Live-Action TV

• In the Amazing Stories episode "Mirror, Mirror", a phantom-like character appears to Jordan Manmoth, an author of horror novels, whenever he looks in the mirror or any reflective surface. Nobody else can see the monster, even when they look into the same mirror at the same time as him.
• The entire premise of Dark Oracle is that the kids' Evil Twins can reach them by coming out through the mirrors. To say this leaves everyone incredibly paranoid would be an understatement.
• Deadbeat (2014) features a less murderous version of Bloody Mary: she makes friends with main character Kevin, who as a psychic is the only one who can see her in the mirror.
• Doctor Who:
  • In "The Family of Blood", the Doctor grants the Family's wish for immortality in the most unpleasant ways possible. He traps Daughter of Mine inside every mirror. "If ever you look at your reflection and see something move behind you just for a second, that's her. That's always her."
  • Referenced in the creepy nursery rhyme recited by the Doctor in "Listen":
    What's that in the mirror,
    And the corner of your eye?
    What's that footstep following
    But never passing by?
    Perhaps they're all just waiting;
    Perhaps when we're all dead,
    Out they'll come a-slitherin'
    From underneath the bed.
• Grimm: In the final season, Eve is stalked by a skull face that appears in mirrors. First she and Nick see it together, and it just sort of glares creepily stares at them before disappearing. Next time, Eve is alone and is strangled by a demonic hand that comes out of the mirror. Later, Eve travels to another dimension using a mirror, and Nick follows to help her. This turns out to be a mistake, as it allows the series Big Bad Zerstorer to follow them into our world.
• The Haunting Hour: In "Scary Mary", chanting Mary's name three times in front of a mirror will summon Mary, who will send her three faceless servants through the mirror to drag the summoner back so Mary can steal their face.
• In Heroes Nikki's alternate personality Jessica would always manifest in reflections and when she takes control over Nikki's body early on, it's Nikki who gets trapped and slamming against the glass.
• Impractical Jokers: Parody. As part of Sal's haunted house punishment, he has to look in a mirror and say "Bloody Murray" 3 times, at which point a hand reaches out of the mirror to grab him and Benjamin Cat pops out from behind a coffin and chases him out of the house.
• Kamen Rider:
  • Part of the premise of Kamen Rider Ryuki, where Mirror Monsters are simply animalistic creatures that hunt humans and eat them. Some are contracted by the Riders to fight other Riders and Mirror Monsters. While some of the monsters are heroic, they still need to be fed, or they'll eat their contractor. Though they'll wind up eating them if the contract breaks.
  • Ryuki's American adaptation, Kamen Rider Dragon Knight, is near identical except the heroes are never at risk of being eaten by the monsters they're contracted to. There're still scores of evil mirror monsters to deal with though. That and they don't eat people, but rather capture them.
• In one episode of Night and Day, Jane Harper catches glimpses of a monster in her bedroom mirror – with the image flickering at one point between that of the monster and that of her mother, Natalie. Jane's brother Ryan frequently has conversations with his mirror self, who's usually depicted as even more of a sociopath than non-mirror Ryan. The mirror in Josh Alexander's bedroom (in which visions of Jane sometimes appear) is smashed, and we occasionally see glimpses of him having punched it in flashback sequences.
• In the One Step Beyond (1959) episode "The Clown", a jealous, abusive husband kills his wife when he finds her in a circus trailer with a mute clown. He flees leaving the clown as a suspect — then everywhere he goes, he sees the clown in mirror/window reflections behind him reaching for his throat, and when he spins around the clown isn't there until he IS!
• Power Rangers:
  • Power Rangers Time Force: "Reflections of Evil" features Miracon, a Mutant whose entire powerset is themed around mirrors. He can enter and teleport through mirrors, disguise himself as other people's reflections, make clones of himself using multiple mirrors and create entire worlds inside mirrors.
  • Power Rangers S.P.D.: "Reflection Part 1 and 2" features the villain Mirloc, who can travel through any reflection and trap people inside mirrors. When he is first arrested, he is put in a cell with no reflective surfaces, but when Sky tries to interrogate him, he taunts Sky about the death of his father until he cries and escapes through a tear's reflection. When he is recaptured, he is sent to the planet Verinox 12, which has no sunlight so there are no reflections.
  • Power Rangers Jungle Fury: In the episode "To Earn Your Stripes", after Jarrod's many attempts at breaking free from his control (i.e., pounding his head and destroying tableware), Dai Shi briefly enters a mirror to tell him that he was just as bad before he possessed him and that it was the exact reason he did so to begin with.
• The Supernatural episode "Bloody Mary" had this, as it was about a variant of the Bloody Mary Urban Legend mentioned under Real Life. However, this Bloody Mary didn't always kill the person who summoned her: She instead kills someone with a secret that she feels makes them responsible for a death. Said person will start seeing Mary on any reflective surface, their reflection will start accusing them of the death, and they will bleed from the eyes and die. It turns out that Mary is just as vulnerable to her reflection as anyone else, being herself responsible for deaths.
• According to Grover on Sesame Street, seeing a monster in the mirror is not a cause for freaking out but an occasion to sing "Wubba wubba wubba wubba woo woo woo." After all, "That monster in the mirror, he just might be you."
• Raven perceives her dark side as this in Titans (2018). Big Bad Trigon also manifests through a mirror.
• BOB's very first appearance in Twin Peaks was appearing as a blink and you miss it reflection in a mirror at the end of the pilot.
• Ultraman Leo: The alien Mazaras resides in the mirror world and kidnaps children by impersonating their dead relatives in attempts to replace her deceased daughter. She also has a monster lackey named Specter, who she sends out into our world to destroy while she faces Leo.
  • Mozui from Ultraman Dyna is a demon that hides in mirrors, coming out under the moonlight to feed on the fear of warriors. However, Mozui can actually live inside any reflective surface, such as a window or the surface of a lake; the latter of which it originally lived in until being imprisoned inside a mirror that then had the reflective surface covered up to stop it from escaping.

Magazines

• There was a New Yorker cartoon by Charles Addams in which a man in a barber chair with mirrors on either side has a virtually infinite series of reflections, one of them about three-fourths of the way down the line being of a monster sitting where he is sitting.

Pinball

• Done literally with Bally's Space Invaders pinball machine, where the mirrored backglass had a large Giger-esque alien staring at the player.

Pro Wrestling

• During the WCW version of the Hulk Hogan/Ultimate Warrior feud, one infamous segment involved Warrior appearing in the mirror of Hogan's dressing room. The idea was for the Warrior to only be visible to Hogan, as Eric Bischoff doesn't notice. The only problem with this: the Warrior was clearly visible to the commentators and people watching on TV.
• Proving once and for all that the early 2010's era of TNA/Impact Wrestling was basically WCW 2.0, they also gave Winter the same mirror powers Warrior had. She would appear in Angelina Love's mirror and whenever somebody else entered the room she would disappear. They were a little smarter about this because the commentators never mentioned her until she finally showed up in person.

Tabletop Games

• Bleak World has the Princess race's Court of Mirrors, which exists inside the darkness they are a court of princesses that can travel through mirrors and sap the hope and willpower from a person.
• Call of Cthulhu supplement The Dreamlands, adventure "Lemon Sails". The Temple of the Oracle on Sarrub has a mirror which has been taken over by a wendigo-demon that attacks anyone who tries to use it.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • The Fetch in the Dragonlance setting — a Chaotic Evil monster from the Abyss that pops through mirrors and kills people.
  • In Forgotten Realms, Turmish even got the law that prohibits large mirrors for this reason.
  • The Planar Handbook features optional "Mirror Planes", each of which is a plane of existence consisting solely of a featureless corridor and a lot of portals connected to various mirrors all over the multiverse. Entering a Mirror Plane, however, causes an opposite-aligned clone to manifest within, which will attempt to Kill and Replace the original, since there's nothing to do in the Mirror Plane itself.
  • The nerras are a race of always neutral, mirror-skinned humanoids who inhabit the Plane of Mirrors, divided into several subraces: the skulking varoot, hulking kalareem, and faceless sillit. They can use any mirrored surface as a portal to and from their home plane, and spend their time spying on the Material Plane or abducting key figures, specifically to generate their victims' mirror duplicates, which regardless of their alignment are subordinate to the nerras. It's thought that this activity is a prelude to a nerra invasion of the Material Plane.
  • Expedition to the Demonweb Pits: The Mirror Mephit is a denizen of the Plane of Mirrors whose abilities to conjure up more of its kind and to create limitless, obedient, semi-permanent duplicates of any creature from whom it can snag a stray body part make it a Game Breaking favourite of Summoner spellcasters.
  • And of course the classic (A)D&D magic items, the Mirror of Life Trapping (pulls the viewer in, although it has a limited capacity and starts to release captives to make room for new ones once full) and the Mirror of Opposition (viewer's reflection comes to life and attacks them).
  • While the mirror planes do not directly appear in 5th Edition, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything gives rules for the weird environmental effects that they have on places that they connect to, which can include your reflection coming to life and attacking you. The section that provides those rules is the source of the page image.
• Exalted gives us Szoreny, possibly the Mirror Monster. One of the Yozis, he used to represent the World Tree until he got turned inside out and became a grove of reflective trees laced with quicksilver. While his Charms haven't be statted up yet, it's theorized a lot of them would center around mirrors, reflection, and unseen connections.
• The New World of Darkness has two variations of this. The Urban Legends sourcebook gives various rules about the homicidal ghost Bloody Mary, mentioned in the real life section. Secondly, there's a Vampire specific ghost named Red Jack mentioned in the 'Mythologies' sourcebook that functions as a Bloody Mary for vampires specifically. He is much, much worse.

Theatre

• Walking with Shadows features a ghost in a mirror who tries to tempt a teenage girl to suicide.

Video Games

• Saltim, a boss from Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg is this, he jumps in and out of mirrors trying to attack you and will even try to suck you in.
• Castlevania:
  • Paranoia from Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow lives in the mirrors in its boss room, and jumps out of them to attack Soma. Defeating it lets Soma walk through mirrors.
  • Moreover, the first time you fight Paranoia, you really just fight its reflection. Stepping into the next room reveals even more mirrors and a much larger Paranoia.
  • The doppelganger boss from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night made it's debut coming out of a sealed mirror to attack Alucard, and upon defeat it disintegrates into particles before re-entering the mirror whence it came.
  • Earlier, in both Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, there were non-boss mirror monsters. In the former, they attacked you while you were standing in front of the mirror. In the latter, they leaped out of mirrors as you passed by them.
• Chrono Cross: Garai's negative emotions create mirror-like barriers over the island's cave entrances. Hence why a certain special item, a mirror which belonged to him, is required to pass through the barriers.
• In Clock Tower (1995), sometimes a hand will reach out of the mirror in the bedroom and try to strangle you when you check it. It's instant death if you haven't learned to reflexively mash the panic button in these types of situations.
• In Cultist Simulator, the Hint and the Maid-In-The-Mirror are both Mirror Monsters which can be summoned. Both have a rather high Edge aspect, and therefore are very deadly. The Hints can also weaponise the mirrors.
• In The Darkside Detective, one of McQueen's unseen cases apparently involved "a woman appearing in mirrors to other women who look exactly like her".
• In Dark Souls II, the Looking Glass Knight carries an enormous shield shaped like a large ornate mirror that it's named for. Not only does it reflect magic fired at him, but he can also slam it onto the ground to turn it into a portal that a black phantom can smash through to fight for the knight against its foes. This can be an NPC phantom, or even another player if there are any looking for a fight in the Drangleic Castle area. Later in the game, similar mirrors are found hanging on the walls of Aldia's Keep, and NPC phantoms can smash out of them to attack if the player gets too close.
• In Enchanted Sceptres, there's a dead end with a mirror, which seems "as strong as steel" at first. A Black Knight sometimes appears out of the mirror, and if you smash it then, the knight "shatters into a thousand pieces".
• Fallen London:
  • Mirrors within the Neath tend to be rather dangerous. Many have seen glimpses of something unclear looking back at them off the corner of their eyes. Something unnervingly ophidian, for those who get clearer looks. And only magicians seem to try and deal with them in anything beyond looking at your reflection, and are rumored to converse with whatever's on the other side, and even strike deals. This is because mirrors are all doorways to the outer edges of Parabola, which are frequented by unscrupulous magicians, the occasional person who was going so utterly mad they accidentally walked into Parabola from the sheer nastiness of their nightmares, and the Fingerkings, snake-like Animalistic Abominations who run the place, and have both a hidden agenda and mysterious powers with which to carry it out. In these outer edges, you can find hundreds and hundreds of mirrors sticking out of the marshes, and can peer into them back into reality, to whatever it is that's out that particular mirror. It also doubles as a Hungry Jungle full of dangerous flora and chatty fauna. That said, there's also some really valuable things to be found, which is why there are people who take venturing into Parabola and bringing them back as their job, and a very lucrative one at that. You can spot them by their Cosmogone glasses.
  • One slightly amusing and annoying moment once you start entering Parabola with some regularity, and participating in its wars, is that your very own reflection can become increasingly independent depending on which actions you take. If it gets too independent and too strong, your reflection will detach, jack a bunch of your troops and go off on its own campaign, and you have to chase yourself across the land before you do something (both of) you regret.
• Tricia and Lady Rose from Ghost Master are Fetch-class ghosts, who are able to possess mirrors. Among their powers, there are a variety of tricks to scare anyone who looks in the mirror by distorting their reflections. While they are stuck in the mirrors, they both can make a clone of anyone who looks at their mirror, then take control over the clone and go for a walk to spread the chaos further.
• Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft has the Vengeful Visage card from the Murder at Castle Nathria expansion, which triggers when an enemy minion attacks the user's hero and summons a copy of that minion to attack the enemy's hero. Its artwork is a night elf priestess looking fearful as her reflection crawls out of a venthyr mirror.
• Kingdom of Loathing has the Guy Made of Bees, a parody of the Candyman. If you encounter a mirror in the Haunted Mansion and say "Guy Made of Bees" five times, he appears and attacks you. He's a Hopeless Boss Fight (usually) without a certain item.
• Subverted with Dark Link in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. He is Link's reflection who is brought to life through the magic of an enchanted room in the Water Temple.
• The Swamp Spirit in Lord Of The Sword is a mirror master. It has a fireball for a head from which a cloak hangs. There's no body underneath, but a mirror. Whenever the spirit opens its cloak, it raises a swordfighter akin to Landau from the ground. Only by shooting at the mirror can the spirit be defeated.
• Melfand Stories have these type of monsters appearing in a hallway filled with rows and rows of mirrors as tall as you. As you walk along, you suddenly realize - wait a minute, one of those reflections isn't following your movements... cue a doppelganger of your character jumping out said mirror and attacking.
• In Mystery Case Files: The Countess, the Shade is a corrupting, evil entity that dwells in a creepy, pitch black mirror. Once guarded dutifully by an Ancient Order of Protectors, it was found centuries later by lady Gloria Codington, whose creativity the Shade fed on. It also trapped anyone coming close to it into its own dimension, where its hapless abductees were enslaved until death and even in their afterlife.
• At one point in Prince of Persia, your path is suddenly blocked by a mirror. When you jump through it, your reflection separates from you (you re-merge with it near the end of the game).
• In Realms of the Haunting a literal example appears in one of the trials of Sheol where you have to smash a perimeter of mirrors. But if you look directly into them a monster will pop out of it and chase you. The only way to defeat it is to have it reflected in the mirror and break it.
• Silent Hill:
  • Silent Hill 3 features one scare in which you pass through a door into a room that contains nothing but a mirror covering one wall. You cannot interact with, and the door does not open if you attempt to leave. As you move around the room, your reflection suddenly stops. A dark liquid similar to blood then begins to spread around the floor in a vein pattern, spreading across your frozen doppelganger. This is never explained or mentioned again once you escape the room. Hang around for a while longer, and Heather will die. Fortunately, once your doppelganger freezes the doors to the room unlock and you are free to leave - provided your interest in finding what that room is about doesn't induce you to stay (there's no signal letting you know the door is unlocked).
  • Silent Hill: Downpour uses a mirror monster as well. In one of the apartments, Murphy can read about an obsessive tenant who was always focused on making sure his furniture matched the reflection in the mirror, for if he didn't then a monster, only visible in the mirror and able to still harm him (and be harmed), would appear and assault him. Should the player stick around to do the puzzle they'll find that something in the mirror is amiss, and they have to rotate something in the room to match the reflection. Fail to do so, and a Screamer attacks you. It's not a tough enemy, but because it is only visible in the mirror it makes defending yourself difficult as you basically have to use the mirror image to fight it.
• At two points in Splatterhouse, Rick walks down a hall of mirrors. Several of them have his reflection turn, climb out of the mirror and attack him.
• Sweet Home (1989) has mirror monsters, which resemble shriveled corpses, that attack whenever you pass by one of the mirrors in the courtyard. To prevent having to fight them every time you pass by, you need to shatter the mirror with a mallet.
• Tales of...
  • In Tales of Destiny, one of the dungeons in Dycroft is full of mirrors. Stepping in front of any of these mirrors to where you see Stahn's reflection causes a battle between him and a duplicate called a "Shadow". Presumably, the reflection comes to life and emerges from the mirror to attack him.
  • In Tales of Vesperia, when the group explores the Ghost Ship, the Atherum, the ghosts themselves are only visible on the mirrors of the walls.
  • In Tales of Zestiria, Sorey at one point asks if Seraphs (who are normally invisible to humans) can be reflected in mirrors, Lailah answers that only if they focus really hard they can only make themselves visible for a short moment, which is usually enough for them to groom themselves in it; Rose then wonders if people have been freaked out upon seeing a Seraph's image alongside theirs in the mirror, and thinks that maybe that's the origin for the stories of ghosts that appear in the mirrors.
• The Wolf Among Us has Bloody Mary herself from the Real Life section below, now working as what is effectively a Mafia hitwoman. And complete Psycho for Hire, as she happily takes her time off to show up when kids summon her and feed their lungs to dogs, when she isn't already occupied by her equally-enjoyed job. She also shows the ability to sense when the Magic Mirror from Snow White is looking at her and shutting it down, hence why he really doesn't like her.
• In World of Horror, one of the old gods, Goizo, the Thing Forsaken By God, snatches and devours its victims through mirrors. If the Doom meter fills up, it learns that anything with a reflection can serve as a gateway, including eyes.
• Yokai Hunter Shintaro has an Ungaikyō, a mirror demon yokai serving as one of it's bosses, where it bursts through a mirror's surface and turns into an exact duplicate of your character leading to a Mirror Match boss battle.

Visual Novels

• The Magic Mirror in Radical Dreamers is one. It talks to the party by having a bust reflected in the mirror turn around and look at them. And under Lynx's orders, it eventually tries to kill them, though it didn't really wish to do so and eventually destroys itself rather than follow its orders.
• Spirit Hunter: NG:
  • Akira uses his psychometry to view the moment where Ami was in his bathroom, seconds before being kidnapped by the Big Bad Kakuya. There he notices a menacing, shadowy figure in the mirror that Ami can't see herself, with fox ears that match Kakuya's.
  • In the same bathroom, Akira takes a shower after visiting the Miroku Mansion. The accompanying CG shows a bloody hand reaching to Akira from the mirror - though he feels something odd and leaves before it can do anything.

Web Animation

• Don't Walk Home Alone After Dark: In "The Girl In The Mirror", a girl is brushing her teeth in front of the bathroom mirror when she leans down to spit in the sink. Her reflection doesn't move with her, before its eyes roll back and it grows an abnormally large mouth with More Teeth than the Osmond Family, preparing to strike...
• Everything Is Broken: In part 3, Flippy looks onto his mirror and LG Creepybloom looks back at him in it. This is repeated in part 8.

Webcomics

• In Hexameron, Lady in Black is only visible in a mirror, and cannot harm you while being looked at.
• In Nan Quest, you can see Henry's head in the mirror behind him. Then he moves out of the way of the mirror. Mirror Henry doesn't, and then he turns around, smiling.
• Port Sherry: Parodied in "Bloody Mary", where a girl shrugs off summoning Bloody Mary by saying her name thirteen times in front of a mirror. Her friend who had told her about it turns out to be in league with Bloody Mary, lamenting that they have a terrible sales pitch.
• Spoofed by xkcd here, by having two mirrors opposite each other causing the Bloody Marys to attack each other.

Web Originals

• In the Minecraft video One More Fright, at one point Steve wanders into Herobrine's own lair, and when he looks into a mirror Herobrine's reflection looks back and sneers.
• SCP Foundation:
  • SCP-125 ("Contagious Reflection") can live inside any reflective surface, such as a mirror or an animal's eye. It can travel from one surface to another under certain conditions, and if it infects an animal's eye it will blind it and turn it into an abscess.
  • Subverted with SCP-919 ("Needy Mirror"). If a person's image is reflected in the mirror for 15 seconds, the reflected image starts moving independently of the person... and begins pleading and begging for the person to not leave, since if the person leaves the reflection dies.
  • A child went through one of the mirrors in SCP-944 ("Mirror Maze") and ended up in a windowless brick room being tortured by "Zippo the Pyromaniac Clown".
  • SCP-1471 is a phone app called "MalO" that sends users photos of a creature designated SCP-1471-A. Once it's been used for 90 hours, SCP-1471-A will begin to manifest in reflective objects.
  • SCP-1620 ("Reflection Infection") is a rectangular sheet of metal alloy. Any primate (including human beings) that is reflected in SCP-1620 has their reflection changed into SCP-1620-1, a mirror image that is sapient and malevolent.
  • SCP-5056, "The Constant Companions", is a Humanoid Abomination Guardian Entity for a Foundation janitor that was caught in a Freak Lab Accident that inhabits any reflective surface near him and Mind Rapes anyone who threatens him while serving as a physical manifestation of his clinical depression. It would offer "constructive criticism" in the form of jumpscaring him awake when he tried to sleep and reminding him of negative moments of his life, and after 20 years of this he became Conditioned to Accept Horror with its "advice" actually helping him get his life together.
• Unwanted Houseguest: The music video for "Bloody Mary" features the titular Urban Legend in the Houseguest's mirror.

Western Animation

• In the Adventure Time episode "Gotcha!", while on an adventure with Finn and Jake, Lumpy Space Princess finds a room full of mirrors that produce a horde of shadowy Finns to attack her.
• The Amazing World of Gumball: In the episode "The Ghost", when Gumball is talking down Carrie (a ghost he was allowed to use his body up until then) he sees her replacing his reflection in a puddle of water.
• The Boondocks: In the episode "Stinkmeaner Strikes Back", Tom DuBois sees Colonel Stinkmeaner in his reflection after the former gets possessed by the latter.
• In an early episode of Ben 10, when Zombozo is trying to break Ben mentally (and probably physically as well) by taking him through a circus-themed Acid-Trip Dimension, there's a part where Ben enters a hall of mirrors and in one of the mirrors he sees his reflection has Zombozo's face.
• Big Hero 6: The Series: Played with in "Super Driver". Obake terrifies Wasabi by hijacking his phone and then appearing in his car's mirror, but then Wasabi looks back, and Obake is nowhere to be found.
• In an episode of Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, Wilhelmina obtains a magic mirror that hypnotizes her and turns her reflection into a monstrous version of her. When the mirror is broken she comes out of her trance, but the reflection breaks free and goes on a rampage throughout Oz. The only way to get rid of her was for Wilhelmina to commit acts of dog-petting to weaken her until she disappeared completely.
• Gary and His Demons:
  • The episode "Grundleman" features the titular demon, a Bloody Mary-esque mirror monster with a hook gimmick who if you say his name in a mirror twenty-five times, he'll appear and murder you. His usual targets are pre-teen girls and is easily angered when Gary calls him a pedophile for it.
  • Bloody Mary herself is also a recurring character in this series. She murdered Hanley's friends when he was younger and was later reformed by Gary years ago, now acting as his informant. She is not pleased with Grundleman calling her a has-been and brutally kills him when Hanley summons her to deal with him.
• In Monster Loving Maniacs, resident Girl Next Door Ishaani is magically bound to a wraith-like entity called a specubus that she is able to summon from her mirror at night, with the creature acting as her protector. The Van Altens, primarily Ernest, learning more about the specubus and helping Ishaani find a way to separate herself from it is a recurring plotline.
• The Owl House features a rare heroic example in "Yesterday's Lie". Luz enters the In-Between Realm, where she can see (and be seen by) both Earth and the Demon Realm, but only through reflective surfaces. For the rest of the episode, she essentially becomes a benevolent Mirror Monster to Vee and Camila (though Camila thinks it's just a video call on her phone).
• In the Regular Show episode "Jinx", Rigby tries to break his jinx by performing a ritual in front of a mirror. He ends up summoning a demonic reflection from inside a mirror named Ybgir, which can be best described as a demon werewolf raccoon. It's banished back when someone chants its name three times. This has a lot of references to the Bloody Mary myth.
• Robot Chicken has parodied the legend of Bloody Mary a few times.
  • In one Christmas Episode sketch, a boy says "Ho ho ho" in a bathroom mirror, summoning Composite Santa Claus to drag him away.
  • One sketch had three teenage boys decide to taunt Donald Trump on Twitter, inadvertently summoning him to terrorize them. When they show up to school the next day, they're now all dressed and acting like him.
  • Another sketch had a girl successfully summoning Bloody Mary, who is surprised that it worked and summons Candyman, who then summons Beetlejuice, who then disproves God's existence by trying to summon Him.
• South Park has a version of "Bloody Mary" where, if you say his name three times while looking in a mirror, Biggie Smalls will appear in the room with you (understandably pissed because everyone keeps summoning him while he's trying to get to Satan's Halloween/birthday party).
• In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Ghost Host", one of the pranks the Flying Dutchman plays on SpongeBob is enchanting his mirror to show a monster biting his reflection in half. This is after SpongeBob becomes desensitized to the Dutchman's terrors, so he just shrugs it off.
• Steven Universe introduces a sentient mirror in the appropriately named "Mirror Gem". It uses reflections of things it's witnessed to communicate; though it mostly just pals around with Steven, rather than trying to put him in danger. It's played a little more straight in that another Gem, Lapis Lazuli is trapped in the mirror, and once she gets out, proves to be plenty dangerous.
• Tangled: The Series: One episode has the protagonists stuck in a creepy hotel where a mirror starts abducting people and replacing them, trapping the originals inside the mirror. Rapunzel and Flynn soon catch on... Then it turns out that Flynn was actually the first one replaced. Fortunately, Rapunzel manages to successfully imitate her mirror-self long enough to trap the others again.
• ThunderCats (2011): Lion-O's vision in the Blade Reflection of the Sword of Omens takes this form, as he sees a sudden, frightening image of Mumm-Ra's red eyes and fanged face.

Real Life

• Staring at your own mirror reflection in a dimly lit room will often result in you seeing your own reflection distort or possibly change into something completely different. This is due to what's currently being referred to as the "Caputo Effect", which explains that when one focuses on their reflection while the eyes are being deprived of light, the mind will lose its facial-recognition ability, resulting in the subconscious taking over and making one see their reflection much differently. Things people have claimed to have seen vary from the faces of their own parents, to faces of unknown people, to outright monstrous faces. It is often believed that this is the explanation behind the Bloody Mary legend, in that people who claim to have seen her in the mirror were actually seeing their own reflection distorted into what they subconsciously imagined she would look like.
• There is a neurological disorder whereby the afflicted cannot recognize their own reflection. While they are in no danger from said reflection, they are left with the terrifying impression that they are being followed by a stranger that has somehow gotten into their house.
• Most animals can't recognize their own reflections as such, and some will attempt to challenge or threaten their own mirror image, which (of course) returns the threats in kind.

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