Series / Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities

Welcome.

"Picture your mind as a cabinet where you lock up your darkest thoughts and deepest fears. What would happen if you were to open that cabinet for the world to see? We are about to find out…"

— Guillermo del Toro

Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities is a horror anthology series created by… well… Guillermo del Toro. It premiered on October 25, 2022 on Netflix, though in an unusual move for the streamer, the eight-episode first season was released in batches of two over four nights.

In addition to executive producing the series, del Toro also serves as host for the episodes, each of which will have a different director:

• "Lot 36": directed by Guillermo Navarro (cinematographer for del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth), written by Regina Corrado, based on a story by del Toro.
• "Graveyard Rats": written and directed by Vincenzo Natali (Cube), based on a short story by Henry Kuttner.
• "The Autopsy": directed by David Prior (AM1200, The Empty Man), written by David S. Goyer (Man of Steel), based on the short story by Michael Shea.
• "The Outside": directed by Ana Lily Amirpour (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night), written by Haley Z. Boston, based on a short webcomic by Emily Carroll.
• "Pickman's Model": directed by Keith Thomas (The Vigil, Firestarter (2022)), written by Lee Patterson, based on the short story by H. P. Lovecraft.
• "Dreams in the Witch House": directed by Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight, Red Riding Hood), written by Mika Watkins, based on the short story by H. P. Lovecraft.
• "The Viewing": directed by Panos Cosmatos (Mandy), written by Cosmatos and Aaron Stewart-Ahn.
• "The Murmuring": written and directed by Jennifer Kent (The Babadook, The Nightingale), based on a story by del Toro.

Not to be confused with the novel The Cabinet of Curiosities, nor with del Toro’s art book of the same name.

Previews: Teaser, First Look, Trailer

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Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities includes examples of:

• The '70s: "The Viewing" takes place in 1979. Likewise, "The Autopsy" takes place in 1978.
• The '90s: The time period of "Lot 36", as established by a speech by then-President George H. W. Bush on television regarding the Gulf War.
• Absence of Evidence: In "The Autopsy", the lack of blood in the cadavers leads Carl to examine Joe Allen's corpse, thinking the blood somehow ended up inside Joe. It doesn't end well for him.
• Adapted Out: Most of the Lovecraftian Mythos characters and lore are omitted from this adaptation of "The Dreams in the Witch House", likely due to time constraints and to make it stand out on its own.
• Affably Evil: Lassiter in The Viewing is a fantastically wealthy and reclusive businessman who made his fortune selling uranium (presumably for making atomic bombs) and surrounds himself with a rather sinister entourage. Nevertheless he's a very friendly and gracious host of the party, though part of his hospitality involves encouraging, or rather pressuring, his mostly strait-laced guests to use cocaine and other drugs.
• Aliens Are Bastards: In "The Autopsy", they are a race of extremely cruel and sadistic Puppeteer Parasites who love bodyjacking humans and using their vessels to commit all sorts of atrocities, ranging from toppling whole empires to simply trapping people and subjecting them to extremely long and torturous deaths.
  • Ambigiously so in "The Viewing", where the nature of the alien is left as a complete mystery, with some evidence suggesting its confused, and some evidence suggesting it has a plan. After subjecting nearly everyone around it to a vicious psychic and mental probing that melts some alive and bursts the heads of others, it hijacks a human body to move and wanders aimlessly, only deliberately fighting back once when shot at. After taking its time to observe its surroundings and learn how to walk, it stumbles into a storm drain and finds itself in the neighboring city. Whether it's a scared hatchling reacting like a cornered animal when surrounded by strange beings, or a malicious being on a mission to learn something, can't be said.
• All There in the Script:
  • The closed captions refer to the parasitic alien in "The Autopsy" as "The Traveller".
  • Sister Lucretia in "Dreams in the Witch House" is never referred to by her name.
• Ambiguously Evil: Lassiter in The Viewing is a phenomenally wealthy recluse who made his fortune (if what he says is to be believed) selling uranium and plutonium. He employs a man implied to be a former guerilla commando as his body guard and a woman who was once Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's personal physician as his private doctor - or rather, personal narcotics dispenser.
• An Aesop:
  • "Lot 36": Try to see things from other people's point of view, and don't be defined by past injustices — quite often other people will have endured the same thing, and your experiences aren't unique. Also, don't be racist.
  • "The Autopsy": Pride goeth before a fall. Thinking you're better, more intelligent, or from a superior race only makes you vulnerable, especially when you're up against somebody who has every reason to hate you and nothing left to lose.
  • "The Outside": Do not choose beauty over your health, listen to the people who love you as you are, and attempts to reassure people can be patronizing and invalidating, and sometimes, the best thing you can do is listen to them.
  • "The Murmuring": You need to fully feel grief and be open about your emotions in order to heal.
• Animal Motifs:
  • "Graveyard Rats" has, well, rats. The protagonist is slimy and greedy, and is chased after by monstrous rats.
  • "Autopsy" has spiders. Numerous shots show a spider ensnaring its prey, and the alien itself is vaguely arachnid and lives off human blood, much as a spider liquifies its prey.
  • "The Outside" has birds. Stacey enjoys duck hunting and embalming said ducks, and she is outright called "an ugly duckling" and wants to "fit in with the flock".
  • "The Murmuring" also has a strong bird motif, starting with Guillermo's statement on birds as messengers of the gods and the subsequent association with ghosts.
• And I Must Scream: At the end of "The Autopsy", Dr. Carl Winters deliberately mutilates himself with his own scalpel, leaving the alien parasite helpless and imprisoned in his now blind, deaf, and mute body.
  • Also in "The Autopsy", this is revealed to be the case of Joe Allen, the person the alien has hijacked, who boasts that he’s listening to Allen while dissecting his body alive. When the parasite is completely detached, his previously stoic face is now dead and with a small streak of tears running down his face, implying that he regained control again just as he was dying.
• Auction: The main character of "Lot 36" makes a living bidding on storage units in auctions and selling whatever valuables are inside. The auction seen in the episode even includes a fast-talking auctioneer.
• Barred from the Afterlife: In "Dreams in the Witch House", Gilman's sister, who died as a child, is stuck in a form of limbo. She explains that she was afraid to pass on, which is why she is stuck there.
• Beauty Is Bad: In "The Outside", Stacey's co-workers are beautiful but bitchy, gossipy, and obsessed with looks. Once the process is over, Stacey becomes just like them.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Near the end of "Graveyard Rats", Masson ends up caught between the zombified priest seeking the necklace Masson stole from it, and the giant Queen Rat.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • "The Autopsy": Carl sacrifices his life to make sure the alien parasite dies with him, and because he left his tape recorder playing throughout the autopsy, his friend will know what happened, and reveal the secrets of the aliens on Earth.
  • "The Viewing": Randall and Charlotte manage to escape the carnage alive, but the rest of the cast is dead save for the Lassiter/alien hybrid, which might be about to wreak havoc on LA.
• Body Horror:
  • "Lot 36": Dottie Wolmar's desiccated, empty husk of a body that hosts the tentacled demonic being qualifies.
  • "The Graveyard Rats": The reanimated torso of the priest.
  • "The Autopsy": We get a detailed glimpse of the alien parasitizing its host's body, as well as the aftermath of the bodies that it has fed on.
  • "The Outside" depicts Stacy's worsening skin condition, as her body is covered in red rashes from the continuous use of the product. The slimy Alo Glo cream creature also qualifies.
  • "Pickman's Model": Two characters gouge out their own eyes and mutilate their faces in response to Pickman's paintings.
  • "The Viewing": The alien disintegrates Targ and Dr. Zahra's faces and bodies and causes Guy's head to explode. It then fuses with the body of Lassiter to form a disgusting Humanoid Abomination.
  • "The Dreams in the Witch House": The rat-like Brown Jenkin bursts out of Walter Gilman's chest, and then crawls back in to (re)possess him.
• Casting Gag:
  • David Hewlett is once again a Karmic Butt-Monkey terrorized by animals.
  • Michael Therriault once again dies by getting his head destroyed.
  • Also, this is not the first time Peter Weller snorted cocaine, as he had done it before in Firstborn, nor injected heroin and/or other narcotics intravenously, as in Naked Lunch.
  • Sofia Boutella is the henchwoman of a rich, affable supervillain-esque guy who treats her as one of his peers, just like in Kingsman: The Secret Service. She also dies horribly here too, with a view of her decaying body.
  • Rupert Grint is involved with witches and ghosts, and deals with a man who turns into a rat. Also, the "Ritualistic Dagger" that opens the episode and is used by the witch is clearly a wand.
  • Ben Barnes' misfortune begins due to a supernatural painting that changes appearance.
  • Kate Micucci once again appears in the company of ducks.
• Chekhov's Gun: In "Graveyard Rats", Masson gets poked in the eye by a root and in his blind anger, pulls on the root and causes the tunnel to collapse on him. Later, he's pinned by the Queen Rat and manages to kill her by pulling on a dangling root, dislodging a boulder that crushes the huge rodent to death. This is also subverted earlier when a wealthy widower requests that her husband be buried with the priceless saber gifted by George V. Masson finds the sword in a huge pit of human bones, and when cornered between a priest zombie and the giant Queen Rat, decides he'll go down fighting with the sword. However, the rat pounces on him and he immediately drops the sword.
  • Largely averted in the case of a literal gun (a gold-plated AK-47) in The Viewing. Lassiter mentions that Hector, his bodyguard, knows the story behind the rifle, with the implication it will play some important role in the story. In fact, Hector later attempts to kill the Humanoid Abomination created by the alien's fusion with Lassiter by shooting it with the gold AK, but it's a case of Guns Are Worthless against the life form, which proceeds to burn Hector to death with a burst of energy.
• Cthulhumanoid: In "Graveyard Rats", a statue of a humanoid being with a tentacled face is found in the Black Church as an object of worship.
• Creepy Dollhouse: The titular cabinet, as seen in the trailer, has a dollhouse-like design to it.
• Crippling Overspecialization: In "The Autopsy", the alien parasite's body has evolved to be as perfect of a parasite as possible, taking all it needs from its host except just enough sufficient mobility to enter them; because of this, most of its sensorial input comes from the host. While outside of a body, it is blind and deaf and only feels things through its tentacles. It therefore cannot see that it's walking right into a trap as Carl cripples his own body to ensure the alien will be unable to use him to attack anyone or escape.
• Death by Irony: In "Graveyard Rats", the grave robber Masson meets his end trapped in a grave.
• Death of a Child: In "The Murmuring", the protagonists have suffered through this. The woman that previously lived in the house also killed her own child.
• Devoured by the Horde: In "Graveyard Rats", Masson meets his end by the very rats he loathed, who consume him from the inside out.
• Don't Go in the Woods: One segment of the trailer shows off a spooky, foggy woods with a humanoid thing stalking two characters. The narration mentions the woods "taking the dead inside".
• Don't Touch It, You Idiot!: Several instances, such as:
  • In "Lot 36", Roland warns Nick not to do or say anything while they're investigating a hidden hallway. Upon spotting the valuable book that Roland's willing to pay a fortune for, Nick promptly goes to pick it up and unwittingly destroys the binding circle that was keeping a demon contained.
  • In The Viewing, Lassiter repeatedly tells Randall not to smoke in the chamber where he keeps his meteor-like entity. Randall proceeds to light up repeatedly, and his fumes eventually awaken a hostile and powerful alien life form within the rock, sending it on a rampage.
• Downer Ending:
  • Downplayed in regards to "Graveyard Rats" and "Lot 36" as one could argue that the unsympathetic protagonists simply got what was coming to them, but they were still killed in gruesome ways.
  • "The Outside": Whatever process has happened to Stacey has reached its conclusion. She is beautiful, but now is as bitchy and shallow as the rest of her coworkers, her husband has been killed by her, and whatever happened to her in the end, it's unclear and possibly unlikely that she has found any true happiness that way, as the final shot shows brief moments of her horrified and confused face between fits of laughter.
  • "Pickman's Model": Thurber kills Pickman and sets fire to his madness-inducing paintings, only for one of his friends to somehow recover them and place them in the gallery as planned. As a result of gazing at the paintings, his wife is driven mad, cuts out her own eyes, and murders their young son, putting his severed head in the oven as a "feast" for what is said to be the coming of an Eldritch Abomination which will destroy the world.
  • "Dreams in the Witch House": Gilman saves his sister from Limbo and seemingly destroys Keziah, thereby preventing the curse from claiming him. However, Brown Jenkins is still alive and has ended up inside Gilman's chest. He violently tears his way out, killing him in front of his horrified friends. Later he enters the corpse again and puppeteers it, determined to live out Gilman's life as long as he can manage it.
• Dr Feel Good: Dr. Zahra for Lassiter in The Viewing. Her main job seems to be administering opiates and other drugs in just the right purity and dosage to maximize effect and safety.
  • Given her sultry, exotic looks and her past as one of Colonel Gaddafi's female entourage (i.e. concubines as attaches, bodyguards, personal doctors and nurses), Dr. Zahra probably serves a "feel good" role to Lassiter in other ways as well.
• Drink-Based Characterization: Zig-zagged in "The Viewing" when Lassiter gives his guests their favorite beverages to make them feel more comfortable; Charlotte Xie is given a ginger beer, befitting her shy, innocent personality, while the worldly author Guy Landon has a screwdriver cocktail, and the talkative, decadent billionaire Lassiter brings in a bottle of an extremely rare and expensive liquor that has had a colorful history of its own. However, the hippie-like psychic Targ Reinhhard enjoys a simple glass of beer, while Randall Roth - a funky record producer with a massive afro - marvels at the fact that their host somehow knew that he liked lapsang souchong tea with just the right amount of honey in it. It even comes in a delicate porcelain teacup!
• Engineered Public Confession: In "The Autopsy", the coroner leaves his tape recorder running while The Traveller expounds on his abilities and his plan to steal the coroner's body and murder the sheriff.
• Evil Gloating: The Traveller is prone to this. As can be seen above, this is what ultimately leads to his defeat.
• Exact Words: "Dreams in the Witch House" opens with Brown Jenkins assuring the audience that the story we're about to see will have a happy ending. He never specifies who the ending will be happy for, though...
• Eye Awaken: The trailer has a brief shot of a rotting head on a table, an octopus crawling on its scalp, snails and grapes scattered around it... and its eyes shooting open.
• Eye Scream:
  • "The Autopsy": Carl stabs his own eyes out with a scalpel to prevent the parasitic alien that's about to control his body from seeing.
  • "Graveyard Rats": Briefly at the very end, one of the rats writhing inside Masson's corpse pops out one of his eyes.
  • "Pickman's Model": Thurber's friend puts one eye out partially after being exposed to Pickman's paintings. Later, his wife Rebecca puts both her eyes out.
• Familiar: Brown Jenkins in Dreams in the Witch House, a rat with a disturbingly human-like face.
• Fate Worse than Death:
  • Rather than being killed outright in "The Viewing", Lassiter is absorbed by the gelatinous alien mass to form a Humanoid Abomination "hybrid". It's unclear how much of his mind is still intact and trapped inside, but the last thing we hear him say is a strangulated "Help me".
  • The human hosts of the alien parasite in "The Autopsy". The alien boasts that the minds of its hosts are still alive, trapped inside their bodies but unable to do anything except what their puppet master instructs their nervous system to do (which is to kill and feed on the blood of other humans).
  • Walter Gilman winds up as a host to the half-rat, half-human Brown Jenkins in "The Dreams in the Witch House".
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Nick in "Lot 36" is called out on always using the excuse that he had to fight in the Vietnam War as a reason why his life went to hell, totally ignoring how his own decisions and short temper constantly worsen his own life. Despite his racist ideologies, he is called out about the fact that a lot of black and brown men suffered just as much as him and were statistically more likely to be in the front lines, a point he deflects with no counter-argument.
• Genre Anthology: The series consists of eight standalone episodes based on various subgenres of horror.
• Ghostapo: In "Lot 36", the original owner of the titular unit is said to have been a Nazi who dabbled in the occult, even having summoned an “entity” to possess his sister’s body. This is confirmed when her corpse is found in a secret room under the unit, surrounded by a pentagram and inhabited by a tentacled creature.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Twofold in "Graveyard Rats"; Masson owes money to a fishmonger named Hans who repeatedly mentions "employers" who are not happy with him, and while crawling through the rat tunnels beneath the cemetery, comes across a "Black Church" worshipping an eldritch god resembling Cthulhu who is heavily implied to be the corrupting force behind the corpse-stealing rats, along with the zombified priest.
• Guns Are Worthless: In The Viewing, Hector (Lassiter's bodyguard) attempts to kill the alien by shooting it with an AK-47 to no effect. The alien burns and/or electrocutes Hector with a burst of energy and walks off unharmed.
• Happy Ending: "The Murmuring": Nancy finally starts accepting and processing her child's death, in the process reconnecting with her husband.
• Haunted House Historian: Mister Grieves in "The Murmuring". He fills Nancy in on the tragic history of the house, but insists that he doesn't believe in any ghosts himself. In fact, he takes offense when Nancy questions him about it, seeing it as "just a morbid fascination with other people's misery."
• Heroic Sacrifice: In "The Autopsy", Carl, while restrained and knowing he's about to be taken over by the alien, uses a knife to blind and deafen himself so that the parasite will be trapped in his body and unable to actually use it as it wants, and also scrawls a warning for his friend Nate.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In "The Viewing", Lassiter gives Randall Roth a pack of cigarettes (which he is desperately trying to quit) and also insists that Randall partake in the drugs being passed around despite Randall's personal reservations. As such, Randall continues smoking when the team examines the meteorite despite Lassiter's firm warning not to do so; drunk, stoned, and high as he is, he doesn't take the warnings seriously, resulting in the smoke causing the meteorite to hatch into an alien that ends up killing Zahra, Targ, Guy, Hector, and possessing Lassiter.
• Hope Spot: At the end of "Graveyard Rats", Masson sees a light at the end of the tunnel and frantically crawls toward it, believing that he has finally made it out of the labyrinth. It turns out to be a reflection from a plaque inside an empty coffin, which he is now trapped in since the tunnel behind him collapsed... and then the rats start swarming into the coffin.
• Horror Host: Del Toro acts as the Rod Serling of the series, introducing each episode and its director.
• Humanoid Abomination:
  • In "The Viewing", the amorphous, gelatinous alien fuses with Lassiter to become a grotesque humanoid creature.
  • Many of the entities depicted in Pickman's paintings in "Pickman's Model" are hideously deformed and diseased, or half-human, half-fantastical beings.
  • The AloGlo in "The Outside" turns into a pasty, bipedal humanoid.
• Hypocrite: In "Graveyard Rats", Masson works as a cemetery caretaker and is introduced giving a grandiose, flowery speech about the importance of paying respect to the dead to a pair of young grave robbers before chasing them off. As soon as they're out of sight, he jumps into the freshly opened grave to plunder it himself.

• I Just Want to Be Beautiful: Stacey, the protagonist of "The Outside", is extremely insecure about her looks and desperately wants to be accepted by her pretty, but shallow colleagues. It drives her to take very drastic measures.
• In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It: In most marketing materials, trailers included, the show is called GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S Cabinet of Curiosities.
• In Name Only: The episodes Pickman's Model and The Dreams in the Witch House are very loosely based on short stories of the same name by H. P. Lovecraft. However, other than the basic premises and the names of some of the main characters, the content is too different to even qualify as a form of Adaptation Inspiration.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Masson in The Graveyard Rats is a grave robber - certainly a despicable occupation. On the other hand, he's so pathetic and ridiculous as he bumbles his way from one failure to the next one almost feels sorry for him.
• Karmic Death: The Villain Protagonists of "Lot 36" and "Graveyard Rats" are both rather despicable individuals who only care about their own misery and ignore the suffering of others. Both end up meeting a bad end due to their selfishness. Overlaps with Karmic Twist Ending in both cases.
• Laser-Guided Karma: In "Lot 36", Nick refuses to let Emilia get her things back after she lost her unit through a misunderstanding about paying her bill, and when she pleads he simply gives her the original padlock to the unit as the sole thing he'll allow her to keep. When Nick's trying desperately to flee from the demon he unleashed and escape the storage building, the only exit is locked from the outside; Emilia happens to be outside the building at the time and Nick pleads with her to let him out... but she only holds up the padlock he gave her, locks the door with it, and leaves him to be devoured by the demon.
• Light Is Not Good:
  • In "Graveyard Rats," Masson follows a light out of a deep tunnel...only for it to be revealed as the glint off the inside of a coffin.
  • The advertiser for AloGlo in "The Outside" wears bright white clothes, has platinum blonde hair, and appears in the TV light, but is evil and exploiting Stacey's insecurities to mold her into a worse person. This goes perfectly with the Beauty Is Bad message of the segment.
  • In "The Viewing" the alien is golden, has light powers and can shoot golden lightning, but it kills people.
• Lighter and Softer: Very relatively speaking, "The Murmuring" is less horrific than the other stories, and has the most optimistic ending, as Nancy and Edgar finally start to heal their relationship and the ghosts of the house find peace.
• Mad Artist: In "Pickman's Model", Richard Upton Pickman qualifies.
• Magical Native American: In "Dreams in the Witch House", two Navajo spiritualists give Gilman the means to access the forest of lost souls.
• Magical Star Symbols: In "Lot 36", one item found in the storage unit is a circular table top with a pentagram on it. It is identified as a séance table. A secret room beneath the unit has a possessed corpse in a pentagram on the floor and a spell book open to a page with a pentagram.
• Meaningful Name: Joe Allen, the antagonist and main suspect throughout "The Autopsy" is an alien, or rather is being hijacked by one.
• Medium Blending: In "The Autopsy", as the alien enters Carl's body, the inside of his body is rendered as abstract 3D imagery and fractals.
• The Mob Boss Is Scarier: The protagonists in "Lot 36" and "Graveyard Rats" are more terrified of the loan sharks they are indebted to than the supernatural elements they encounter... at least initially.
• Monster of the Week: What did you expect from the "Master of Monsters" himself? Every episode has at least one monster minimum that torments the characters.
  • "Lot 36": The demon possessing Dottie Wolmar, a writhing mass of tentacles living inside her mummified body.
  • "Graveyard Rats": The giant mother rat and the zombie priest
  • "The Autopsy": The alien parasite.
  • "The Outside": The skin lotion itself, which turns into a humanoid being. As well as the people in the infomercial who actually talk to Stacey through the TV.
  • "Pickman's Model": The monstrous witch that was Pickman's ancestor, the ghouls he paints, and the Eldritch Abomination from his paintings, though the last one doesn't appear in the flesh.
  • "Dreams in the Witch House": Keziah, a ghostly witch made out of wood, and her companion Brown Jenkins, a rat with a human head.
  • "The Viewing": The alien creature that emerges out of the strange rock.
  • "The Murmuring": The ghosts in the house.
• Nightmare Fetishist: In "Pickman's Model", Richard Upton Pickman paints very morbid art and is fascinated by death, corpses of small animals and cemeteries.
• No Biochemical Barriers: In "The Autopsy", The Traveller is fully capable of not only feeding on human blood and organs but electrochemically interfacing with their nervous systems in order to control their bodies and relentlessly taunt their trapped minds.
• Non-Malicious Monster: There seems to be nothing threatening about the ghosts in "The Murmuring". The boy is simply a lost child, afraid because of his death, and the mother, while scary for appearing screaming, is mostly just grieving and crying in regret for her own actions.
• Noodle Incident: When discussing the gold-plated AK-47 in "The Viewing", Lassiter mentions that Hector (his bodyguard) knows the story behind it. We see tears running down Hector's cheek, but never find out why.
• Oddball in the Series: The Viewing, which was written by Panos Cosmatos and Aaron Stewart-Ahn, is the only episode that's neither based on pre-existing source material nor unpublished stories conceived by del Toro.
• Offing the Offspring: The ghosts seen by Nancy in "The Murmuring" are that of a child who was drowned by his mother in a bathtub and that of the mother, who committed suicide afterwards by jumping off a cliff into the sea.
• Outliving One's Offspring: The protagonists of "The Murmuring" have tragically suffered this.
• Psychic Nosebleed: In "The Viewing", the characters suffer this as the alien creature attacks them psychically.
• Puppeteer Parasite:
  • In "The Autopsy", the antagonist is a parasitic alien that can control both living and dead bodies.
  • In The Viewing, the alien fuses with Lassiter's body and takes him over. It's not clear how much of his mind is intact and how much control he vs. the alien has in the Humanoid Abomination's actions, though the fact that Hector was burned to death for trying to kill it suggests that the alien is firmly in control.
  • Downplayed in "Dreams in the Witch House", where Brown Jenkins invades Gilman's body in the finale, controlling him from the inside. However, Brown Jenkins didn't seem to have this ability before, so it looks like it's a situational thing for him and not his usual MO.
• Rage Against the Reflection: Lassiter, after being fused with the alien that just hatched, wanders into the woods and looks into a lake to see themselves, causing it to let out a drawn-out scream/roar in despair. Combined with Lassiter groaning out a plea for help earlier, and it’s clear that he’s alive and conscious, with barely any control over the alien.
• Riddle for the Ages:
  • "Graveyard Rats": What is up with the Temple with a zombie priest underneath the cemetery? How is the creature being worshipped involved with the strange rats? Is that why the mother rat is gigantic?
  • "The Outside": What was up with the commercials that were capable of talking directly to Stacey? How does the lotion turns into a person and then back into lotion and why does it happen?
  • "The Viewing": Pretty much everything about the rock and the alien within it is never explained. To wit, the rock is made of an element not present in the periodic table, and is apparently immune to any scientific method to figure it out. It seems to be a meteorite, but it is too perfectly shaped and shows no signs of having crossed the atmosphere. Also, the alien itself, and whether it even has goals.
• Robbing the Dead: The protagonist of "Graveyard Rats" has taken to robbing valuables and gold teeth off the corpses from the graveyard he manages to pay off his gambling debts.
• Rodents of Unusual Size: The second half of "Graveyard Rats" sees the protagonist scrambling through tunnels to escape a rat as big as he is.
• Rule of Symbolism: Between Stacey and her taxidermy hobby, as well as the story of the Ugly Duckling in The Outside Frequently, the television makes comparisons between her being the Ugly Duckling, who will soon become a beautiful swan should she take its advice. Her latest project, a duck, preludes this comparison and serves as her breaking point when the morbid gift embarrasses her at a Christmas party. After effectively ruining her body and health through ointments that make her break out in hideous rashes and burns, she completes her transformation by merging with a creature made of pure ointment, and emerging as a beautiful woman. The last few moments of the episode, however, make it clear that outwardly she's beautiful and perfectly preserved, but is hollowed out and empty within, with her expressions of horror and confusion leaving it ambiguous whether she’s realized what she did, or if the creature she merged is all that’s left inside her.
• Sadist: Because The Traveller's species' parasitic lifestyle is inherently torturous to the sentient lifeforms they use as hosts, they have evolved to enjoy the suffering of others. The Traveller even mentions that torturing others gives him sexual pleasure, not unlike how humans experience it as a reward mechanism for their own biological imperatives.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Masson in The Graveyard Rats speaks eloquently with a rich vocabulary (as in the opening scene where he hypocritically waxes eloquent on the the sanctity of graves), in keeping with his Impoverished Patrician status.
• Shout-Out: The aftermath of the alien reveal in The Viewing closely resembles the scene following the opening of the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark - initial incredulity and ridicule followed by melting faces, exploding heads, burning bodies.
• Smug Snake: The alien in "The Autopsy" is so convinced of its utter superiority to humanity and is so focused on its Hannibal Lecture that it doesn't pause to consider the limitations of the human body as a medium, or that a trapped vessel that knows they're doomed may choose to use their final moments of autonomy to self-sabotage and doom their possessor to being trapped in a helpless body, while leaving all the clues needed for their friends to figure out what is going on and kill the alien. Lampshaded when the alien calls Carl out on his repeated inquiries and tells him that it knows he's just trying to buy himself some time, but it is so arrogant that it just takes the bait and keeps on talking.
• Soundtrack Dissonance:
  • Downplayed in "The Outside". The ending theme is a cover of "You Sexy Thing", which ends with the song playing over weird shots of Stacey's expressions as she revels in her transformation - interspersed with moments of horror. That said, the cover is eerier than the original version.
  • Also downplayed in "The Viewing", when Hector takes advantage of Lassiter's absence to listen to some music on the boss's stereo system - in this case, the ludicrously upbeat "What A Fool Believes" - all while Lassiter, Zahra, and their guests are being horribly murdered in the next room. However, the music cuts out abruptly as the carnage begins spilling over into the rest of the house.
• Spooky Painting: In "Pickman's Model", the titular artist's paintings count, with morbid and demonic looking scenes. They also drive people mad.
• Starfish Alien:
  • The being in "The Viewing" is some sort of Blob Monster that looks vaguely gastropoid, but is clearly not fully solid, and has horrifically strong psionic abilities that it can use to completely disintegrate other lifeforms or fry them with bolts of psychic energy. It can also assimilate other lifeforms and take on some semblance of their form, and its presence heavily taxes electrical lines.
  • The Traveller in "The Autopsy" is a deaf, sightless tentacled Puppeteer Parasite.
• Taxidermy Is Creepy: Zigazagged in "The Outside." Stacey's like for taxidermy is less of a case of her being portrayed as creepy than of her being portrayed as an awkward outsider to the people she is usually around, with her husband talking about her taxidermy as her artistic skill to turn something usually ugly into something beautiful. That said, when she finally breaks under the full effect of AloGlo, she kills her husband and taxidermies him.
• Tentacled Terror:
  • In "Lot 36", the demon possessing Dottie Wolmar's corpse looks like a writhing mass of tentacles.
  • Graveyard Rats features a statue of Cthulhu himself in a buried temple, though the big green guy doesn't appear in person.
  • In The Autopsy The Traveller's true form looks like a small, ugly octopus with no eyes.
  • In "The Viewing", the alien creature that emerges from the rock resembles a mass of tentacles.
• The Television Talks Back: In "The Outside", the blond man in the AloGlo commercial has multiple conversations with Stacy.
• Through the Eyes of Madness: In "The Murmuring", Nancy is the only one who can hear and see the ghosts in the house, while Edgar is completely oblivious. This makes it ambiguous whether the ghosts actually existed as entities, or if they were the product of Nancy's grieving, depressed, and sleep-deprived mind.
• Toxic Friend Influence: In "The Outside", the protagonist's work friends at the bank are shallow and gossipy, inadvertently encouraging her urges to go to extremes in order to become beautiful.
• Trapped in the Host: In "The Autopsy", Carl gets the better of the alien and leaves it stuck in his dying, disabled body while it can only desperately scream to be let out.
• Undiscriminating Addict: In "The Viewing", Lionel Lassiter is introduced just prior to being given a heroin injection, avails himself of a glass of extremely rare and expensive booze, and snorts up a small dune of cocaine laced with Dr. Zahra's special additive. In fact, the only drug he doesn't indulge in is pot, as he claims to dislike "that hippie shit" and seems to get more enjoyment out of watching everyone else at the table pass the joint.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: In "The Viewing", Randall Roth keeps lighting cigarettes (and later a joint) after being repeatedly told by Lassiter not to smoke in the chamber containing the alien. The smoke seems to be what finally awakens the creature and sets it off on a rampage.
• Villain Protagonist:
  • "Lot 36": Nick is a racist asshole whose debts make him screw over even an old lady who wants nothing but to take some of her family memorabilia home.
  • "Graveyard Rats": Masson is a selfish Impoverished Patrician who steals from the dead despite talking highly of the rites for the dead.
  • "The Outside": Stacy doesn't start as that, being for the most part a sweet but awkward lady. Up until she finally snaps under the effects of AloGlo and murders and taxidermies her husband for feeling he was in her way.
• Wicked Cultured: Masson, the grave-robbing protagonist of "Graveyard Rats", has an impressive vocabulary and is shown reading and quoting from Paradise Lost.
• Your Head A-Splode: In "The Viewing", this happens to Guy, courtesy of the alien creature.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: One interpretation of the ending to "Graveyard Rats", in which Masson steals a necklace belonging to what looks like a zombified preacher in front of a statue representing an Eldritch Abomination, whose design is also on the necklace. Noteworthy the preacher is, in that his remains are mostly intact and fleshy while the rats have been devouring everything else they can get their paws on, and leave behind half-eaten remains or piles of bones. Also prior to stealing the necklace, Masson has been remarkably lucky with each prayer he gave to God, but the moment he prays and thanks God while wearing the necklace is when he meets a violent end, trapped in a coffin and killed by rats. Even long after his death, his corpse is still intact while the rats swarm around it, implying that whatever force was in the Black Church has 'blessed' him now.

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“…You are really harshing my mellow, man.”