Ultimate Evil - Television Tropes & Idioms

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.

Examples:

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.
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).
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.
A magnificent example (from a movie) 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 movie The Blair Witch Project.
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.
- Even within his work, the level of use varies- The Music of Erich Zann, for instance, barely even mentions any nasties explicitly, they're never seen or heard, and the guy who tried to explain was mute and had his long explanation blown out a window before disappearing. By comparison, The Call of Cthulhu gives a Purple Prose-filled description of the title character and got rid of him by the rather mundane method of ramming him with a big boat. This troper suspects that's why the former gave her the heebie-jeebies and the latter made her laugh like hell.
- Maybe a tale where this trope worked really good was "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs", were the protagonist, which happens to be the ilusionist Houdini on vacations in Egypt, after saying all sort of half-animal-half-human mumified horrors, went mad after seeing the entity which originally represented the Sphynx of Giza before Khafre (who ruled over the horrors and precided abominable adoration ceremonies with them) modified the erosioned face of the idol with his own
- Donald Tyson proposed in his "Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred" that the entity was in fact showing Nyarlathotep's real face, isntead of the "masks" he uses most of the time.
Movie example: 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!"
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".
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.
Literary example: 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.
- Actually he dosen't fall, he gets erased.
Video game example: 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.
Chronicles of Prydain Big Bad Arawn was never seen (or even described) in his true form.
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.
  - Gollum makes it less clear that Sauron does in fact have psysical form, with 4 fingers.
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.
- If you're carrying the Franklin Badge (which reflects lighting-based attacks), rarely one of Giygas's attacks will be reflected. Maybe you can grasp some attacks.
- In Earth Bound/Mother, the prequel to Earthbound (Mother 2 in Japan), Gyiyg (Giygas' original name, pronounced "geeg") 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 (which Pokey/Porky says outright is the result of Gyiyg being driven insane when he obtained ultimate power).
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.
- Of course, the existence of the Orz proves that they might just be right.
- An alternative explanation could be that it's just the Umgah having a laugh with their hyperwave caster. They set the Ilwrath on the Pkunk, after all and a caster was found when the Spathi move back to their homeworld.
  - The caster was used by the Umgah to impersonate "Grand Master Planet Eaters" in order to scare the Spathi. The Ultimate Evil is probably just the logical result of the Spathi's extreme covardice and paranoia. Probably...
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.
Ultimate Evil was the villain in Time Bandits, as played by David Warner.
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. This troper finds the concept terrifying. Anyone else?) Anyone who sees it and can't stop themselves from understanding it dies instantly. If they make a very difficult saving throw, they just fail to process what they see. If a character is killed by this effect but ressurected, they will have no memory of what they saw. Thankfully, even she only has the power to pull back the shroud for a few seconds once per day.
- Pale Night is also the most horrifying of the remaining Obyriths, ancient progenitor demons with blasted, twisted, monstrous, hideous forms that drive all who seem them insane (except, of course, in Pale Night's case; apparently, she is that damn ugly).
~~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?
During the course of Jade Empire, what has been done to the Water Dragon is described as pretty much the Ultimate Sin. Of course, when this troper finally saw her mutilated disemboweled body being used to water the drought-plagued empire, he was utterly unimpressed, as it looked more like some theme park water slide.
- Although, perhaps a better example can be found at the end of Chapter 5, where, your final challenge in purifying the Dirge temple and returning to life is to defeat a Cosmic Horror type faceless evil that exists beyond the Celestial Bureaucracy's jurisdiction. It manifests as.....you (Enemy Without), or at least 3 doppelgangers representing aspects of Despair, Rage, and Sorrow.
Subverted in the video game 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!".
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 appearence) 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.
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 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.
Galactus in the film 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.
- And a cloud of smoke wasn't silly looking? Besides, it's quite possible to do classic Galactus well◊.
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.
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.
Warhammer 40000. The Chaos Gods, C'Tan, and Emperor all get this treatment to varying degrees.
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.
An example of Ultimate Evil appears in the first book of the Lone Wolf Gamebooks series, Flight From the Dark. If Lone Wolf ends up in the Graveyard of the Ancients, he'll stumble upon the tomb of an ancient king. If you hand him an Idiot Ball and he opens the sarcophagus...
You are in the presence of an ancient and timeless evil, far older and stronger than the Darklords themselves.
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.

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