The Unspeakable Vault (of Doom)
is a webcomic created by François Launet and featuring some of the more famous entities from the Cthulhu Mythos, depicted in a humorous manner.
The Unspeakable Vault (of Doom) provides examples of the following tropes:
- Adorable Abominations: Due to the art style. (Their manners are less adorable.)
- Affectionate Nickname: To most of them, related to the above. Nyarly for Nyarlathotep and Shoggies for Shoggoth, for example.
- Affectionate Parody
- Auto-Incorrect: Parodied in this strip of The Unspeakable Vault (of Doom). Apparently, computer-generated pentacles aren't that great an idea.Cthulhoo: For once, drawings are good, but using "Childhood" unstead [sic]] of "Cthulhoo" and "Feting" for "Fhtagn" is more than a beginner's mistake.
- Berserk Button: Don't mention to Yogzotot that he looks like soap bubbles. He will ZAP you.
- Big Eater: Cthulhoo. Of humans, of course.Cthulhoo, during mealtimes: Yum yum!
- Black Comedy: Oh yes.
- Bunny Ears Elder God: All the characters have their own problems... Cthulhoo eats humans, the Shoggies have little intelligence, 'Zatoth is just as stupid, Yogzotot has a bad temper, and Dagoon bashes stuff with a stone pillar, to name a few.
- Catchphrase: "Fhtagn!" for Cthulhoo, "soooo cooooooool" for the Shoggies. "Yum, yum", usually by the big C. "I'm the gate, I'm the Key" for Yogzotot.
- Conspicuous Robe: Hast-erm, I mean "The Unspeakable One" always wears a gold king mask and robe, looking like The Burger King with tentacles. Amusingly enough, he becomes the mascot for a fast-food chain.
- Eat the Summoner: Cthulhoo eats cultists that just summoned him.Cthulhoo: Yum yum!
- Engrish: The author is French, and occasionally makes some very odd grammatical errors. The worst of these are usually corrected.
- Evil Is Not a Toy: As usual, invoking Cthulhoo is an incredibly bad idea. Of course, invoking the other gods can be just as bad, and summoning them all... well...
- The Faceless: Hast...
- Faceless Masses: The cartoonist doesn't draw facial features on his human characters. (And when he does for once, probably something unspeakable has happened to the poor guy.)
- The Fundamentalist: Runs into some trouble.
- Grotesque Cute: This is still the Cthulhu Mythos, and the gore factor actually goes up compared to Lovecraft's stories (since here you're more likely to see someone dismembered than be told they suffered unspeakable horrors).
- Honest John's Dealership: Nyarly loves selling miscellaneous GOO items like sacrificial knives, cultist robes, GOO-customized cameras, etc.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Cthulhoo's most defining trait. In fact, the whole point of his invocation phrase is to let him know where to find lunch.
- LOLCats: of Ulthar.
- Lovecraft Lite:
Fridge Brilliance style. The element of Cosmic Horror Story remain unchanged. Cultists still kill people for sacrifices, reading text from Tome of Eldritch Lore... uh, RPGs sourcebook is enough to get you devoured and mythos beings are still extremely dangerous. However, they are a bunch of goofs and humans can be awfully annoying to them. - Mother of a Thousand Young: Shubby, obviously. Here, it's Played for Laughs.
- Mugging the Monster: Heh heh heh
- Mundane Utility: A cultist once summoned Yogzotot to ask the time. Needless to say, it doesn't end well...
- Pardon My Klingon: Context implies that "Fhtagn!" is a swearword.
- Ring-Ring-CRUNCH!: Cthulhoo. As you know, he likes his sleep.
- Rock Me, Asmodeus!: The Gods (and Sauron) made Heavy Metal and saw that it was good.
- Running Gag: Lots of them. Cthulhoo's gluttony, the Shoggies' stupidity, cultists getting eaten, etc. Not to mention people summoning Cthulhoo by accident every couple of strips.
- Scully Syndrome: A frequent reaction of Cthulhoo's victims, shortly before they get eaten. Justified in one case with an outright Shout-Out: "I DON'T want to believe!"
- Shout-Out: Several of them, notably to Discworld.
- Spell My Name With An S
- The names used for a lot of the Mythos characters are spellings Lovecraft never used; this is to avoid the ongoing copyright controversy involving his work.
- Actually, according to the author notes for this strip, " the mutation of the God's names in the UVoD were not made to avoid legal problem, but rather to illustrate the difficulties to transcode the Great Old Ones's names in human language."
- Actually, according to the author notes for this strip
- If one broadens the trope to any spelling troubles (not strictly character-wise), the completely unspeakable R'lyeh-ish gives rise to many in-universe jokes: "And it's fhtagn, not fthagn! (yum yum)"
- The names used for a lot of the Mythos characters are spellings Lovecraft never used; this is to avoid the ongoing copyright controversy involving his work.
- Sufficiently Advanced Alien: One of the justifications Cthulhoo uses for eating his own followers — he's more like a wild animal than a god anyways.
- Team Pet: Tindaloo
- Tentacle Rope: Played deadly straight by Cthulhoo, much to the annoyance of Nyarly, who clearly prefers, eh, a certain related red-linked trope.
- Tongue on the Flagpole: Apparently, a pile of shoggoth(s?) grew some tongues for the specific purpose of sticking them onto a glacier when teleported to the Antarctic by the Elder Things in this comic.
- Too Dumb to Live: The cultists. All of them. Literally.
- Total Party Kill: Thanks to one idiot.
- Way Past the Expiration Date: One fine day, one of The Elderz wanted to make an instant soup. Except, as he was already cooking, he noticed, that the expiration date has passed a few million years before. The result of his mistake were the Shoggies, who soon ate almost all individuals of their (accidental) creators' kind, before being banished to Antarctic.
- Weird Crossover: The author paid homage to Albert Uderzo's death by drawing Cthulhoo disguised as Obélix.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Played with with the Deepoines.
