Of course, with an ally so high on the Super Weight scale, the character risks becoming an Invincible Hero or Villain. As a result, the alliance will either be brief, strained, conditional, rivaled (meaning there is an enemy of roughly equal or greater power to contend with), or has some bad consequences. This may be done through a Deal with the Devil (with all that entails), but not necessarily.
Such an alliance will frequently be made with a Benevolent Abomination, though it isn't strictly necessary. Compare and contrast Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?, where a normal person and an Eldritch Abomination associate casually or become friends, and Did You Just Romance Cthulhu?, where this goes beyond a mere alliance/friendship. Compare Bargain with Heaven for dealing with more obviously "heavenly" entities. May result from Summon Bigger Fish, or from a combination of Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu? and Defeat Means Friendship. Distinct from Pals with Jesus in that this refers to a team with an actual task to fulfill. If the hero is abominable themselves, they're a Horrifying Hero.
This trope only applies to the being allying itself with a specific individual or team of individuals. And it has to be out of respect or mutually beneficial. If the "lower being(s)" achieve this partnership by manipulating a weakness, it's Did You Just Scam Cthulhu?. Contrast God Was My Co-Pilot.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Bungo Stray Dogs: Lovecraft is heavily implied to be a shape-shifting eldritch abomination who works under contract for one of the main villains. It's never made clear what the terms of this contract are, but he returns to the sea after the villain's defeat.
- Death Note: The shinigamis who offer a Deal with the Devil in Death Note don't always cooperate with the mortals, but when they do, it's this sort of thing. Ryuk and Rem are notably supportive of humans working with them. Of course Ryuk writes Light's name down when he can no longer entertain him, so Evil Is Not a Toy is in full effect.
- Dragon Ball: Goku and several of his allies have managed to make friends with and gain the help and respect of Majin Buu, Beerus the God of Destruction, and even the Omni-King Zeno. Buu because he had the mentality of a child and just needed to be taught right from wrong, Beerus because Goku managed to earn his respect in battle, and Zeno because Goku was the first person to actually try to befriend him instead of just cowering in fear of him.
- Hellsing has an Eldritch Abomination-level vampire in the form of Alucard, who works for an organization that specializes in hunting vampires. It helps that he's extremely loyal to Integra and finds the vampires he hunts to be worthless scum.
- Naruto: The Tailed Beasts are powerful entities made of primal chakra, which the Hidden Villages sought to use as living weapons via jinchūriki. Inspired by Killer Bee having managed to befriend Gyūki the Eight-Tailed Ox, main character Naruto forms an Enemy Mine partnership with Kurama the Nine-Tailed Fox to oppose Madara Uchiha, though this quickly progresses into a genuine friendship.
- In Negima! Magister Negi Magi, Evangeline A.K. McDowell's membership in Ala Alba is seen as this by basically anyone who knows Evangeline's true identity, because Evangeline is the Magic World's boogeyman. To Ala Alba itself, Evangeline is not an abomination but their classmate.
- Overlord (2012): What everyone considers the Baharut Empire to have done (including the Emperor himself) after they ask for Ainz' help with their yearly battle with Re-Estize (in fact, a ploy by the Emperor to gauge Ainz' power and convince the other nations to gang up on him). After Ainz summons several Lovecraftian monstrosities by murdering a third of the opposing army, everyone thinks the Emperor asked Ainz to do something so horrible. After the Empire becomes Ainz' Voluntary Vassal, everything starts going a lot better for the Empire's citizens due to the constant threat of immediate and unstoppable annihilation being lifted from them.
- Pokémon: The Series: Several of the movies involve Legendary Pokémon, some of whom are basically Physical Gods, aiding the heroes against the Big Bad. This is especially the case for Giratina, a ghost-dragon Pokémon that even dwells in an Eldritch Location.
Comic Books
- The DCU:
- In Blackest Night, Green Lantern antagonist Black Hand is obsessed with Death, at the point of becoming The Antichrist to represent it for the former/undead Guardian of the Universe Scar and later for Nekron, the Undead Abomination personification of death and void. He becomes the herald of the Black Lantern Corps and the Nekron's key to get the Earth under his hands, being the only Black Lantern to retain his personality as an undead.
- Darkseid, God of Evil and Platonic ideal of tyranny and all evil in general has sided with supervillains and superheroes occasionally whenever a threat proves difficult for him, inevitably betraying them later on. The New Gods teaming up with characters could be seen as this trope as well, given they come from a cosmic realm outside the normal multiverse.
- Sinestro Corps War: Sinestro, after the return of his nemesis Hal Jordan, decided finally to make his own Corps to take down the Green Lantern Corps, obviously named after himself. Recruiting numerous deadly members with their yellow rings, he got other powerful allies to state their condition of a powerful Corps, and two of them are the Anti-Monitor and Parallax. The former is a monstrously powerful Cosmic Entity who all but destroyed the multiverse, and the latter is an insectile abomination who personifies and feeds off fear itself.
- Superman: The fifth-dimensional imp Mr Mxyzptlk decided to work with Superman during the time The Joker conned him out of most of his power, in order to set things back to normal. Scott Snyder's JLA run had him show up to help the Justice League reach the sixth dimension.
- Death Vigil:
- Mia is the host of the Beast, one of the True Primordials — the five oldest and most terrifying Eldritch Abominations in existence. Despite being able to undergo an Eldritch Transformation at will, she is a staunch ally of the Vigil and helps them fight other eldritch monsters.
- This is played with when Clara turns out to also host a True Primordial as a result of a necromancer's botched attempt to sacrifice her for a summoning ritual. The Played With aspect comes from the fact that until Part II Clara and the rest of the Vigil were unaware of her possession, and the Primordial seems, for whatever reason, very keen on keeping her and her compatriots alive. So it's more like a Mysterious Protector scenario, than a full-on alliance.
- Marvel Universe:
- Fantastic Four: Galactus is a Cosmic Entity and Planet Eater who after being fought off by the Fantastic Four, promised not to eat the Earth and occasionally works with them if need be. This is also played with his heralds, who are mortal beings that agreed to work with him to find worlds to devour as part of a bargain he'd leave their planets alone.
- Moon Knight: In the 2022 run, Moon Knight runs into the House of Shadows — a sapient Eldritch Location that manifests through possessing buildings and offers it a choice; either become his new base, or be exorcised. Grateful for the choice and eager to finally be lived in voluntarily, the House of Shadows becomes Moon Knight's new home, the Midnight Mansion.
- Venom: The titular character is a symbiote — an eldritch parasite created by a dark god for the purpose of corrupting and consuming all life in the cosmos — who sided with humanity as an Anti-Hero, albeit with brief stints as a super-villain.
- X-Men: this is usually the status of a Phoenix Host, so long as they've got a strong enough will to stay in control. The tension tends to derive from the fact that the Phoenix a) is volatile, b) is operating on Blue-and-Orange Morality, and c) usually has its own aims in mind. Given that it's a force of both creation and destruction, it can be an ally or an antagonist. Some hosts handle it better than others — Jean Grey actually does pretty well, most of the time, but it's her daughter, Rachel Summers, who takes the cake, with the Phoenix actually giving her full use of all of its power, deeming her judgement superior to its own.
- In Monstress, Maika has an uneasy agreement with the Old God inhabiting her body, which many factions seek to weaponize.
Fan Works
- Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): Normal human Vivienne Graham gets fused with the abomination, one severed and intelligent head of Ghidorah. Forced to operate out of the same body and left alone in captivity for an extended period of time, the two form a bond that lasts after they escape.
- Dungeon Keeper Ami has this in spades. Keepers themselves usually serve the Dark Gods, but some remain independent and work with them instead. This trope is also how many Heroes think about their alliances with Keeper Mercury, who in turn has made alliances with higher beings such as Queen Metallia and The Light itself.
- It's Always The Quiet Ones: After letting Cthulhu eat Snape, Luna convinces him to leave everyone else alone and only go after Death Eaters because they taste better.
- The Night Unfurls: Any instance of Kyril cooperating with someone, be it the Seven Shields to fight against the Black Dogs (original version), or a trio of rogue Black Dogs to do a Great Escape (remastered version), counts as this. Out of all the people he worked with, Celestine and Olga are the two people with a comparatively higher status than the rest, yet are ultimately "lower beings" when compared to Kyril's status as a great one.
Films — Live-Action
- Corrupt Corporate Executive Zorg in The Fifth Element forms a Big Bad Duumvirate with Eldritch Abomination "Mr. Shadow". It's unclear to what extent Zorg realizes what his business partner is, as he's only in it for the money — partly from "Mr. Shadow" directly paying him to collect the stones, partly from profiteering off the chaos he expects to ensue afterward.
- Subverted in Gamera 3: Awakening of Irys. At first it seems like Irys and Ayana have teamed up to stop the rampaging Gamera. But, it turns out Irys is evil and is simply using Ayana's hatred of Gamera to make him stronger and allow him to assimilate Ayana into his body so he can become strong enough to kill Gamera and allow the Gyaos to wipe out all of humanity.
Literature
- The Dresden Files: In Changes, Odin joins Harry Dresden's side.
- In the Hc Svnt Dracones novel Blood in the Mist Rio starts hearing a voice in her head calling itself Abraxus implied to be one of the Nephilim mentioned in the RPG's Sound and Silence sourcebook who offers her assistance investigating a cult whose leader was offered transcendence by another entity in exchange for sacrifices.
- The Laundry Files:
- An entity known as the Eater of Souls was summoned into a human Meat Puppet to serve as a Living Weapon but ended up in The Men in Black's management instead as Mr. Angleton. It turned out that Humanity Is Infectious and the Eater picked up more of a sense of honour and fair play than its handlers ever had.
- With CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN in progress but Britain's occult defense agency disbanded by a government infiltrated by an Apocalypse Cult, its management is forced to ally with the Black Pharaoh, aka Nyarlathotep and put him in charge of the country for the sake of human survival. Yes, he's an Eldritch Abomination of dreadful power and awful plans to whom we're nothing more than insects, but he considers himself a beekeeper. With him as a patron, and as long as we keep giving him honey, at least something that remembers being human might survive the Lovecraftian apocalypse — more than could be said if someone like Dread Cthulhu takes over.
- Played with in The Delirium Brief: Nyarl'ath'hotep (Prime Minister of Great Britain) pretends to want to pull an Enemy Mine with Cthulhu (whose servants have taken over America) against the Cold Ones, who are even higher on the Super Weight scale and utterly terrifying to them, but this is a ploy to get one of his servants close enough to destroy Cthulhu's avatar on Earth and weaken his greatest rival for world domination.
- In Thud!, Sam Vimes faces down and defeats the powerful and ancient Dwarfen entity of rage and vengeance, The Summoning Dark. In the sequel novel Snuff, the Summoning Dark, which has attached itself to Vimes, is seen as "tamed" to the cause of law and justice, and offers Vimes its talents and abilities in seeking out murder and greed in dark places: it places its abilities completely at Vimes' disposal.
- To Welcome Oblivion: In the story's climatic battle, Grallman makes a pact with Cthulhu himself to perform a Fusion Dance and pull off a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown against the story's true Big Bad, Nyarlathotep.
Live-Action TV
- Babylon 5: The Vorlons ally with the Minbari to fight the Shadows and the Shadows ally with the younger races to sow chaos. Both sides are selling the idea that they are terrifying entities beyond the younger races. The heroes turn on both and form an alliance with the First Ones — aliens beyond both of them.
- The Cry of Mann: Frank seems to be at first just working for Courtney, in order to bring down MannCorp. However, he's actually the servant of the Humanoid Abomination Gergiev, who promises him great rewards for helping him destroy the Mann family itself. Frank became increasingly frustrated and concerned about their partnership, however, as his payment didn't come right away, and the work kept getting more dangerous and cruel. He does follow through with the plan, however, and kills Jouglat for Gergiev, earning his reward.
- Supernatural: The Winchesters have teamed up with cosmic beings on occasion to deal with other cosmic beings, most notably Castiel and even Death himself.
Podcasts
- In Malevolent, Arkham P.I. Arthur Lester is forced to work with a mysterious Entity that has taken control of his eyes.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons: Warlocks get their powers by making a deal with one of many extraplanar entities, including devils, angels, arch-fey, and "Great Old Ones".
- In Exalted, it's possible to be one of the Abyssal or Infernal Exalted, who help two different sets of Eldritch Abominations: the former serve the Neverborn, who want to destroy all of existence, while the latter serve the Yozis, who want to escape their prison and get back at the gods and Exalted who imprisoned them in the first place. Of course, how buddy-buddy each Exalt remains with his "bosses" is up to him. Some remain loyal; others decide they have other things to do.
Video Games
- In Bloodborne, the Healing Church and each of its major splinter factions all have the direct support of at least one of the Great Ones, whose attempts to meddle in the world of humans cause a series of apocalyptic disasters. Even the Hunters, an organization nominally devoted to fighting against them, is controlled from behind the scenes by the Moon Presence, who is quite explicitly not a Great One, but ain't anywhere close to being human either. Played with in the case of the School of Mensis and their direct predecessors, Byrgenwerth Academy, who didn't so much ally with the Great Ones as they did brutally exploit them to their own gain, with horrendous blowback for the rest of the world.
- Chrono Trigger: It's never explained how exactly it happened, but Lavos the Planet Eater buried at the Earth's core somehow reached out and corrupted the mind of Queen Zeal, making her abandon her floating kingdom's use of solar power to extract energy from Lavos instead and grant herself immortality. While this sounds like a prime Evil Is Not a Toy situation, Zeal does in fact become immortal, gaining a flying palace that reaches into orbit in the process. Her exact relation with Lavos (like how she even communicates with it) is never explained either.
- The dialogue during the final boss battle reveals that its influence is even greater, it has manipulated the entirety of humanity on the DNA level to make them into better food so, in a way, humanity's dominion over nature is part of an alliance they don't even know about. Chrono Cross takes this idea and runs with it.
- Control sees Jesse Faden being paired up with two paranatural beings during her excursion into The Oldest House:
- Polaris is a psychic, "resonance-based" entity that's been tied to Jesse ever since the Ordinary Incident. Unlike the other beings that invaded her hometown, Polaris is genuinely benevolent and has stayed with Jesse as something of a guardian spirit, and upon entering the Oldest House, it also becomes a conduit for Jesse's newly-awoken psychic powers. Polaris is later revealed to be an antithetical being to The Hiss that acts as the main threat of the game — whatever plane of wavelengths they operate on, Polaris repels the Hiss, and it's what allows Jesse and other members of the FBC to avoid its assimilation.
- The Board is another entity (or possibly a group of entities) that Jesse encounters shortly after entering the Oldest House, and one who appoints her as its new "Director". Representing itself as a black inverted pyramid against a white extradimensional void, The Board acts as a broad Mission Control through vaguely garbled transmissions, instructing Jesse on how to complete her new mission of purging the Oldest House of The Hiss. It's quite cooperative and encouraging, yet still ominous and alien, with a distinct air that whatever ties it has to humanity is ridiculously lopsided, only maintained by a greater cosmic agenda we may never know.
- During the Foundation DLC Jesse will be aided by yet another abomination named FORMER, which she may have already fought against twice. This time, it shows up to give her a badly needed upgrade, and if the player refrains from attacking FORMER she can (attempt to) have a civil conversation with it. It will even send you backup during the Climax Boss of the DLC.
- Cthulhu Saves the World has Cthulhu himself as the protagonist working with some badass normals, though begrudgingly because of a curse put on him. In the real ending, he becomes a hero in his own right.
- Cult of the Lamb: The eponymous Lamb is saved from death by an entity known as The One Who Waits, who offers him a new life in exchange for starting a cult and working to free the One Who Waits by slaying the Bishops of the Old Faith, who imprisoned them long ago.
- In The Darkness Jackie Estacado willingly uses the power of the Darkness possessing him to complete his Roaring Rampage of Revenge even though with each kill it gains more control over him.
- Just as you are about to fight the Final Boss Giygas in Earthbound 1994, Ness' neighbor Porky Minch shows up alongside him, acting as Giygas' Herald. While Porky and Giygas are allies, the game makes the nature of their alliance deliberately ambiguous.
- Mantorok in Eternal Darkness works with certain humans out of necessity, but has some measure of respect for them.
- In Exit Fate, enigmatic Humanoid Abomination Shin is a recruitable party member. He and the main character still don't especially like each other though.
- Fate/Grand Order: This is how the Summer variant of BB came to be: when she took over the Chaldea Observatory branch in Hawaii, she used the devices within to look into a being in outer space — Nyarlathotep himself- and said being is amused by how BB shares a similar mindset to its own that it decided to give her some of its powers to see what she would do with it. She then transformed Hawaii into a special "perpetual summer island" with her powers which involves creating a "Groundhog Day" Loop so that people inside them, including our protagonist, can be in eternal bliss.
- The Flood of the Halo series is a horrific parasite that controls corpses, was responsible for the extinction of several species, and generally requires a Nuke 'em response to even make a dent in their numbers. At the climax of Halo 3, it teams up with the good guys to help them defeat the Covenant, who are about to mistakenly fire a superweapon that will wipe out all life in the galaxy. As soon as they stop it, the Flood promptly betrays them.
- Throughout I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, the Chinese and Russian supercomputers that AM took control of are secretly aiding the five humans he tortures, allowing these humans to overcome their flaws and confuse AM. By the endgame, it appears that the Chinese and Russian AIs want to help the humans take down AM once and for all. Turns out they're just using you for their own ends, as all the supercomputers want is to usurp AM for themselves. If you do what they say, the Chinese and Russian leave you for AM to toy with for eternity.
- In Paladins, this was the intention of Corvus, by making a Deal with the Devil via Seris to summon someone from the Abyss to bring peace to the realm. The Abyss chooses Raum, and once he's summoned, he immediately goes back on the deal, and wreaks havoc instead, which leads to Tiberius fighting him.
- Catching the legendaries in any Pokémon game is somewhat an example of this, especially in the fourth generation, where they're basically Physical Gods. Of course, like other Pokemon you gotta battle and catch them first.
- Shin Megami Tensei:
- The series has you forming contracts and summoning various supernatural beings from any and all kinds of mythologies. This ranges from weak Pixies to Satan and Lucifer. Some of the game even features Lovecraftian monsters like Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep themselves.
- In Devil Survivor 2, aside from standard Shin Megami Tensei demons, it is also possible to recruit Anguished One AKA Al Saiduq AKA Alcor, the Eighth Septentriones into your party in one route. Naturally, he's far weaker than when you face him as a boss in his Septentriones form in other routes.
Webcomics
- Homestuck: The Gods of the Furthest Ring are typical Lovecraftian monstrosities that dwell in the Void Between the Worlds. They're helping out and giving advice to the dreamselves of Derse in order to fight off Lord English, an Omnicidal Maniac that's been tearing through them and forced them to ask for help.
- Basically the central premise of Ow, my sanity. Normally, cultists that summon an eldritch god die horribly. Occasionally, one manages to formulate their wishes well enough that granting them doesn't kill them. This makes that individual a terrifying and near-unstoppable threat. And then you've got the main character, who just wished for a genuine and positive emotional connection with someone, confusing and fascinating the Eldritch Abomination he promptly nicknames "Nancy". So now she's sticking around until she can a) understand his wish and b) grant it. And she's only the first. Between his All-Loving Hero and Weirdness Magnet tendencies, David seems to attract beings looking for such alliances.
Web Videos
- Everyman HYBRID: Played with. Vinnie manages to become allies with the dangerous, body-hopping, sociopathic being known as HABIT, being chosen to help HABIT kill Slenderman rather than become another one of HABIT's victims. This alliance involves HABIT putting Vinnie through a lot of dangerous, cruel, and downright trollish ordeals while not giving much information in return, but Vinnie was safe from Slenderman while working with HABIT. After a short split, Vinnie willingly returned to help HABIT's plan, and was even willing to turn on Dr. Corenthal to do so. However, in the light of what HABIT's plan really was, and that he'd been tricked, Vinnie immediately turned on him.
- As in the manga and anime, Hellsing Ultimate Abridged's Alucard is well into Eldritch Abomination levels of power and horrifying. Unlike in the source material, no one has any real power over him. At best he'll consent to being bribed into good behavior or already want to do what needs doing because it sounds like fun.
Western Animation
- Ninjago: In Season 3, Pythor who is a Snake Person allies himself with the Overlord, an Eldritch Abomination and the Big Bad of the series assisting the Overlord in obtaining a physical body and defeating the Ninjas. According to Word of God, this would've ended badly for Pythor had the Overlord succeeded at his plans.
- This was done by Cartman in South Park. When making a comic book story he had his Author Avatar, The Coon, teamed up with Cthulhu. It gets funnier when he treats Cthulhu as a second-rate member of his team by referring to their team as, "The Coon and Friend", and placates Cthulhu by faithfully re-creating the famous dog and kitten scene from the Looney Tunes short "Feed the Kitty".
