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You approach the door in the old, deserted house, and you hear something scratching at it. The audience holds its breath along with the protagonist as she/he (more often she) approaches that door. The protagonist throws it open, and there is a ten-foot-tall bug. The audience screams, but this particular scream has an oddly relieved sound to it. "A bug ten feet tall is pretty horrible," the audience thinks, "but I can deal with a ten-foot-tall bug. I was afraid it might be a hundred feet tall." — Stephen King, Danse Macabre
A villain-specific type of He Who Must Not Be Seen, Ultimate Evil is evil so horrifying it cannot be shown on screen. Used when nothing the art department could come up with could possibly be horrifying enough. Or because you have no budget for effects, and need an easy out (see Raimi Vision).
In some cases the Ultimate Evil is eventually shown on screen, perhaps because the heroes are finally at the end of the Sorting Algorithm Of Evil and need something tangible to oppose. These cases usually end in disappointment, and prove the original decision not to show anything correct. If said disappointment is intentional on the authors' part, then the villain is just The Man Behind The Curtain.
Compare Satan. And, for that matter, God, who often gets portrayed this way for entirely different reasons. May also show up in a Cosmic Horror Story.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- An example in Fate/stay night; he heroes eventually find out the Mac Guffin they are fighting for was actually corrupted some time in the past, and will eventually 'give birth' to a being that is 60 billion curses personified and the antithesis of human goodness. And it hates back.
- The sequel then subverts this by showing that "All the World's Evil" is actually a random guy who was selected to become Evil Personified so that his other villagers can feel good about themselves. In the end, he basically became the concept of evil; he hates it, but he's accepted his fate. But he still hates you.
- The Boss, or "Ano Kata" in Detective Conan; it's never been revealed who it is. Maybe it's one of the original characters...
- Mahou Sensei Negima eventually gave a glimpse of the final Big Bad, titled "Life Maker" or "Mage of the Beginning". Naturally, his face was never seen behind his Black Cloak.
- Mao-chan parodied the trope with an alien that was too cute to be shown, as it caused all who gazed at it to swoon with heart shapes in place of their eyes. While the program never reveals the alien to the audience as per the trope, the shadow of the creature suggests an amoeba-like form with eye-stalks and possibly small tentacles as well.
Gamebooks
Films
- A magnificent example of Ultimate Evil is The Last Wave, which is all about the end of the world and about doom. There isn't a single effects shot.
- Ultimate Evil is the entire premise of The Blair Witch Project.
- Many of the tenets of this trope evolved from the 1942 horror classic Cat People. In that case, the film's budget was very low and the only special effects the production could afford was tatty off-the-rack "man in a cat suit" suits; the director thought it would be much scarier to not show the creatures at all but merely use cinematographic tricks and the actors' performances to suggest them. The effect worked, and has been endlessly copied ever since.
- The origin of this particular usage was dramatized in the fictional film The Bad and the Beautiful, in which Kirk Douglas (playing a composite character based partly on Cat People producer Val Lewton) and Barry Sullivan spend a scene or two working on a B-movie called Cat Men.
- Similarly, Jaws also used this trope as a loophole to film a movie about a shark attack virtually without a shark, due to the ceaseless problems with their mechanical substitute. Given how bad the props are in the sequels, the wisdom of this move is all the more apparent.
- Robot Chicken, in a parody of the reediting of the original Star Wars trilogy, had a sketch where Steven Spielberg announces his decision to redo the special effects in Jaws. The results are not pretty, to say the least.
- "You missed, you dried-up old douchebag!"
- Alien pulled the same trick; the director realized that while Giger's design was awesome and the creature did look scary in glimpses in the dark, it ran the risk of looking fake if it was too visible. When the special effects caught up with the design, we got Aliens.
- Bubba Ho-Tep of the eponymous Bubba Ho-Tep was shown in shadows for the majority of the film; it was handwaved that he's so powerful that he sucks the energy out of light bulbs, so whenever he's walking down a hallway the lights in front of him will suddenly flicker out, etc.
- Throughout most of the original Star Wars trilogy, Darth Vader's mask symbolized not only his evil, but the notion that his face must be so horrifying concealing it could not make it worse. The fannish disappointment was rife when the mask was finally removed, and revealed what one fan called "Uncle Fester with blue sparkles".
- Ultimate Evil was the villain in Time Bandits, as played by David Warner.
- Galactus in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is only shown as a massive cloud of smoke. This is likely because his common depiction in the comics is, frankly, rather silly looking.
- SKYNET, the Big Bad from the Terminator franchise, has never been depicted on-screen (except for in various non-canonical video games and the Universal Studios Terminator ride). Justified in T3 when it turns out that SKYNET is, in fact, the Internet. SKYNET actually appears as a character in Terminator Salvation, where it's played by Helena Bonham Carter.
- In Children of the Corn, He Who Walks Behind The Rows is never openly shown on screen. Presumably, the kids' murderous fanaticism was sufficiently horrifying that seeing the god/demon/spirit/whatever which they followed wasn't deemed necessary.
Literature
- The stories of HP Lovecraft used Ultimate Evil quite a bit; sadly, movies and TV shows based on said stories don't use it nearly enough.
- The Crimson King, Big Bad of Stephen King's meta-continuity among his novels, possessing various incarnations across dimensions, such as The Man Behind The Big Bad of The Stand, is constantly said to be the horrific source of all evil. However, behind-the-scenes Villain Decay sets in, and by the time he's revealed, he's a gibbering old man in a red cloak, who attacks the hero with weaponized Harry Potter toys while continually screeching "Eeeee!" and then falls to his anti-climactic death. Given the absolute terror he inspires in his subordinates (some of it due to firsthand experience), there has been elaborate Fanon created to explain this inconsistency.
- The degeneration of the main villain fits in with the overall theme of The Dark Tower, where eveything is breaking down. Things fall apart, the center cannot hold...
- Just look at the Gunslinger Born Prequel comics—the Crimson Kind is this scary spider-demon-thing that is eating a person.
- Chronicles of Prydain Big Bad Arawn was never seen (or even described) in his true form.
- Wrong. Well, mostly wrong. After he took the form of a snake and had his head cut off he returned to his true form: a man in a black cloak. However, his head fell face down and so his face was never seen.
- The Lord Of The Rings, where the titular villain Sauron is mentioned often but never actually appears. He is, however, given some description in supplemental material. In the film adaptation, Sauron was given a full costume for the prologue, and was even intended to appear in the climax and duel Aragorn, before filmmakers realized how goofy that would be and digitally replaced him with a big troll.
- The Silmarillion makes it clear that he was unable to take a physical form, at least without The Ring's power.
-
The Minotaur in House Of Leaves. In reality, the Minotaur isn't so much a character as it is a concept invented by characters journeying through the house to explain the uneasy feeling that they're being watched, followed, and hunted down by some horrific creature. Tom Navidson even calls it "Mr. Monster" at one point. It is only called the Minotaur by Zampanò, who later struck through every passage containing that title.
- A series of short stories by Robert W. Chambers leave us (and a young fan named HP Lovecraft) wondering, "Just what the hell is the The King in Yellow?
- Just after the stoic Doc Savage escapes through the entrance of a strange underground cavern he looks back to see somethingor SOMEONE reaching out to him and screams for the first time in his life.
- In Beyond the Deepwoods, the first book of The Edge Chronicles, the Gloamglozer is handled this way... but according to its descriptions, seems to be a fairly underwhelming bogeyman not much worse than some of the threats you actually do see. In an inversion of how this usually works, when it actually shows up toward the end of the book, it turns out to be something far, far worse; A grotesque and malevolent trickster with more than a little in common with Satan.
- Ultimate Evil is the subject of Arthur Machen's short story ''The White People''
 , with elements of The Fair Folk . As written by Lovecraft:
“In Machen, the subtlest story—The White People—is undoubtedly the greatest, even though it hasn’t the tangible, visible terrors of The Great God Pan or The White Powder.” (to Robert E. Howard, 4 October 1930)
- Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth universe features a classic Eldritch Abomination as its Ultimate Evil — a galaxy-sized region of space in which no matter or radiation exists. Moreover, it is sentient and mobile, traveling across the universe in search of new galaxies to devour. It has been discovered by several species at various points in galactic history, even the most advanced of which could barely do more than find a way to flee. Naturally, Flinx, the protagonist of the series, is the Chosen One who is said to be the key to its destruction.
Live Action TV
- The First Evil in Buffy The Vampire Slayer was a type of Ultimate Evil, as it was shown briefly onscreen three times, but for the rest of the time, we never got to see it directly.
- And was very disappointing when it was finally seen, thus proving the point of this trope.
- The Wolf, Ram, and the Hart, aka the Senior Partners of Wolfram&Hart from Angel are a great example of Ultimate Evil. A powerful and ancient cabal of demons that are the true power behind the series main antagonist Wolfram&Hart, they are never seen or even heard once. The demon that appears for the Review was just possessed by one of them. Yet the series makes their influence an undeniable and terrible thing. By the end of the series, they ultimately prove to be an unstoppable force of Evil that Angel and company can only fight, but never defeat.
- The Source on Charmed. A good example of what's problematic with showing the Ultimate Evil, as well — after several seasons of only being mentioned in passing he's finally revealed as a mysterious cloaked figure. With each sucessive appearance, the Source gets more stupid looking and more like a traditional Big Bad, until finally he's killed off and replaced with new Big Bads.
- Similarly, the aliens in The X Files were, for the entirety of the first season, represented by slo-mo and flashlights.
- The Family Channel had a short-lived series called Scariest Places on Earth which would use a night vision camera to capture the horrified expressions of those visiting the titular places and seeing the titular scary stuff, but that was it. Short-lived because nobody who watched the show once was stupid enough to want to watch it twice.
- Anubis from Stargate SG-1 possibly fits this trope. Actually he is seen, but it is only a black shade inside his dark hood. In fact, he has no body but is an energy being that uses the mantle combined with a force field to keep his form intact. In the episode of his "death" we get to see his real body.
- The new series of Doctor Who season 4 episode "Midnight" has a chillingly effective Ultimate Evil. Unlike all of the Doctor's other adversaries, it has no shape or form and is only known by its influence on others. The Doctor proves to be utterly mystified and helpless against it, and were it not for a Heroic Sacrifice by the tour guide, it would have succeeded in killing the Doctor. In its one appearance, it evokes the same fear from the Doctor that the Doctor usually inspires in other alien menaces, such as the Daleks.
Tabletop Games
- Pale Night, a demon lord from Dungeons and Dragons fits this trope. She appears as a ghostly woman wearing a shroud. Her true form is so horrifying, though, that reality itself rejects it; the shroud is not hers, apparently, but something the multiverse forces on her. (This is implied to be because demons themselves are chaotic beings of entropy of madness; the reason for their hideous forms is because the, for lack of a better term, intelligence of the Abyss is forced to adhere to the rules of a lawful universe to bring its servitors into being. Pale Night's true form, though, managed to break those rules.
- Warhammer 40000. The four Chaos Gods and the Emperor of Mankind all get this treatment to varying degrees. The Cosmic Horror-flavored C'tan, sadly, do not.
- Not on the table, where they've basically been torn out of space and rammed into an airtight liquid metal skin. In their natural form they operate on a scale so large they were surprised when they found out that planets exist, let alone the little noisy things on them.
Video Games
- King Stan in Okage: Shadow King is trapped in the form of a shadow for 95% of the game, citing that the entire world will shake in terror once he regains his True Form. It turns out to be less than impressive (although that chin is pretty scary).
- Demonica of Stretch Panic is a monster so horrifying that merely seeing her causes Linda to die of fright. You must prevent her from entering the shack you are inside by following her shadow in the windows and attacking through the entrances she tries to use.
- Giygas, the Big Bad of Earthbound, is an Ultimate Evil in similar ways to Cthulhu, for example, all of his battle messages read "You cannot grasp the true nature of Giygas's attack!" While he is shown as a whirly red ghost thing, it's implied that this is not his true form, but the only form he can manifest of Earth.
- In Mother, the first game of the Mother series does have a physical form: the form of his attacks is still "inexplicable", but the above "implications" are merely the result of uninformed speculation. It doesn't change the fact that this must have been quite a shock for Japanese players who were expecting to see the original Gyiyg only to be treated to a swirling, nightmarish background-from-hell.
- Parodied in the computer game Star Control 2, the Spathi are convinced that the universe has an Ultimate Evil, since he lurks just outside the limit of their most advanced sensors, thus proving it's nefarious intent.
- The Watchers in Drakengard are made out to be ineffable and all-powerful by their servant, solidifying their position as the Ultimate Evil in the game. Except when they appear near the game's finale, they take a form that is indeed horrifying and morbid. Part of it probably comes from this editor's expectation of the writers playing this trope straight, and the other part comes from the symbolism latent in their appearance.
- During the course of Jade Empire, what has been done to the Water Dragon is described as pretty much the Ultimate Sin.
- Subverted in Darkened Skye, where the Big Bad, known as "He whose face must not be glimpsed" and universally feared by all, is ultimately revealed to literally be a tiny maggot. As the heroine puts it "He Whose Face Must Not Be Glimpsed? That's because he's too small to see!".
- Deliberately or not, this might be a Shout Out to Captain Marvel's enemy, Mister Mind. When he first appeared in the 1940's, it was over a year of comics before he appeared as anything but a voice over a radio, sending his Monster Society of Evil to wreak havoc. When he was finally revealed, his true form was... a superintelligent alien caterpillar about 4 inches long, wearing glasses.
- The Dark Master of The Legend of Spyro series has yet to be properly seen (Except in anmated cut-scenes which are probably not very representive of his real appearance) or heard, though he will appear in Dawn of the Dragon, fufilling the trope completely, but look at the evidence, and you'll discover that he is one of the most powerful video game villains of all time. Not surprising, considering he happens to be a purple dragon like Spyro.
- The eponymous Siren. You hear its cry — something like a distorted, unearthly air raid siren, in a play on the dual meaning of the word — but you never actually get to see it. The Sorting Algorithm Of Evil skips right over it, taking you straight from the shibito to Datatsushi, The God That Fell, the creator of the siren, the shibito, and the red water.
- Word Of God is that the siren is just the sound of Datatsushi, but this contradicts the game itself; a secret cutscene shows the fall of Datatushi and the first appearance of the siren, and there, the cry of the siren and the cry of Datatsushi are clearly two entirely different sounds, the siren responding to Datatsushi's scream.
- In Kot OR II, you never actually see Darth Nihlus's face. The only scene where his mask is removed is done by a different character and his corpse is destroyed before you can look yourself. According to other sources, Nihlus is actually dead, and just takes the form of a mask and cloak through the force.
Webcomics
Western Animation
- Dr Claw, the villain from Inspector Gadget was never shown on the original animated series. For the first movie, he was played by Rupert Everett, but was clearly meant to be a completely different villain. An action figure of Dr Claw was made, when it was revealed that he disappointingly looked like your stereotypical "Mad Scientist".
- Gormiti The Lords Of Nature Return gives us Obscurio, the supremely powerful leader of the Darkness Gormiti. While the toyline does feature a figure of him, he has not been seen in the series proper, only appearing as a spiritual entity which hides in a specially-forged crown that possesses Toby in Episode 6.
- He Man and She-Ra gave us Horde Prime, the man behind both Skeletor and Hordak. All we ever saw of him was a greenish glow and a huge mechanical fist.
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