Basic Trope: An eldritch abomination in cyberspace.
- Straight: Cthulhu.exe is an incredibly advanced program that has turned chaotic and gone well beyond its programming, becoming difficult for normal humans to understand.
- Exaggerated: Cthulhu.exe is actually the essence of Cthulhu in a digital form, breaking the minds of anyone who runs the program, and capable of destroying the world by spreading across the internet.
- Downplayed: Cthulhu.exe is merely an advanced alien program, impossible for modern human minds to understand, but commonly manufactured as an AI for smart toasters by the aliens who made it.
- Justified: Lovecraftian Cultists used magic to code Cthulhu.exe.
- The programs behind Cthulhu.exe are so advanced that the line between technology and supernatural becomes blurred.
- Cthulhu.exe's code is massive and virtually incomprehensible to people. Its distributed nature across the Internet makes it extremely hard to pin down and destroy.
- Cthulhu.exe used to be a perfectly friendly program, but suffered from My Skull Runneth Over which overwhelmed its ability to perform, causing it to degenerate into a monstrous beast in code form.
- Inverted: Cthulhu.exe is an incredibly simple AI that finds humans incomprehensible.
- Deus.exe is an incredibly complex but Benevolent A.I. that is aware of its power and simplifies itself so humans don't go crazy trying to understand it.
- Subverted: All of Cthulhu.exe's incredibly complex code is fake, and the real code is incredibly simple.
- Double Subverted: But it somehow manages to do things the simple real code would not be capable of through means that no one is quite sure of.
- Parodied: Cthulhu.exe was actually created so cthulhu could play mmorpgs, so he is incredibly disappointed that it breaks the minds of mortals.
- Zig-Zagged: Cthulhu.exe seems like an unimaginably complex code that no one can understand, but all that complex code is gibberish created for show, to disguise a simple piece of code. Then, it turns out that simple code is used as a puppet by eldritch horrors. Then, it turns out these eldritch horrors are simply code. But the code behind them is unimaginably complex.
- Averted: Cthulhu.exe is a simple cthulhu video game, with an eldritch horror as the protagonist, but no eldritch properties.
- Enforced: The digital abomination who demanded the creation of the show featuring Cthulhu.exe demands that she show portrray him correctly.
- Lampshaded: "How did someone Code that?" Bob asked.
- Invoked: An evil overlord seeks to make an incomprehensibly powerful computer virus for his evil schemes.
- Exploited: Said evil overlord isn't making an eldritch virus, but trying to awaken one that already exists.
- Defied: All A.I.s have restraints in place to prevent them from growing into these.
- Discussed: "Is cthulhu.exe really an alien doomsday code?" "Nah, I'm pretty sure it is just an advanced video game"
- Conversed: "The villain in Cyberspace Bob is so cool! I'm glad A.I.s aren't really lovecraftian, though"
- Implied: Cthulhu.exe does things that normal A.I.s can't do.
- Deconstructed: The mere existence of such an A.I. dooms humanity, as there isn't much that can be done about something so advanced.
- A lovecraftian being so beyond humanity would have to be so complex it would have trouble even fitting in the largest data repositories, let alone running in a timely matter. Cthulhu.exe is thus either too complex to exist or greatly exaggerating itself.
- For all its power and strangeness, Cthulhu.exe is still just lines of code, and can be altered or deleted like any other set of data.
- Reconstructed: So our genius heroes must make similar, more benevolent A.I.s to punch out Cthulhu.
- Played for Laughs: Cthulhu.exe causes anyone who looks at it to go insane in comical fashion, like eating an entire bowl of scented wax or spray painting pictures of cats onto the Eiffel tower.
- Played for Drama: Cthulhu.exe is the villain in an epic series of novels about humanity's war against a vastly more powerful alien A.I.
- Played for Horror: Cthulhu.exe
Plot twist: Tvtropes was the Digital Abomination all along!
