Hollywood Satanism

Artwork by americanvendetta

"Oh come on Hollywood, what in the name of Belial did we ever do to you?"

— Real Life Satanists, The Editing Room's abridged script of Annabelle

You know you're looking at Hollywood Satanism when you see Satanism portrayed as a Religion of Evil with bizarre, often disgusting rituals parodying Christian services and a particular fondness for Human Sacrifice and/or sex orgies. Common hobbies of the Hollywood Satanist include sacrificing people's cats, slipping backmasked messages into popular music to corrupt the youth, and engaging in carefully calculated world-domination schemes that have been in the works since the beginning of time. (These usually involve breeding The Antichrist — extra points if he's Aryan!)

Hollywood Satanism actually goes back to Medieval Europe, when it was believed that witches made a Deal with the Devil to gain their power and engaged in rituals intended to mock Christianity just for the heck of it. Basically, it was thought that Satanism was essentially reverse Christianity, and the idea stuck. Rosemary's Baby gave it a shot in the arm in The '60s, and during The '70s through The '90s, the Satanic Panic that many of the tropes associated with it became ingrained in the public consciousness (a Sub-Trope of the broader Witch Hunt).

Individual Satanists are often presented as criminals, unless they're outwardly respectable politicians or public figures, or the whole town, and of course, a single ritual performed by drunk teens will always make the Big Guy himself (or one of his minions) show up to raise hell.

Real Life Satanism can be divided into two categories. One of them, sometimes called "LaVeyan Satanism" after one of its more famous figures, doesn't consider Satan a physical entity and instead refers to him as a symbol for freedom to follow your own desires and/or for fighting against tyranny (i.e., God). The other one, which is called "Theistic Satanism", worships or reveres Satan as a deity. Both of them, generally speaking, view Christian morality as self-destructive for both individuals and society. It's a religion whose followers, generally speaking, are no more or less likely to be evil than the followers of any other religion, though their sense of what constitutes right and wrong is likely to veer far from the mainstream. In reality, it is more akin to the Pagan religions of old, their primary belief being that Satan and the demons are a corruption of the old Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Greco-Roman gods. And no, human sacrifice is not a widely accepted practice in most branches (though symbolic sacrifices might be — but that isn't so different from the Christian Communion, which is itself a symbolic sacrifice of the body and blood of Jesus).

Of course, if the work of fiction portrays its Satanists as part of a Secret Circle of Secrets, then the above objections can arguably be Hand Waved: if such a secret society existed, then we wouldn't know about it...

Note that just because a Black Mass or any other such Satanic activity is held in secret does not make it an example of this trope. Real Life Satanists have every reason not to boast about their religion, especially if they happen to be an influential politician or a movie star, even if personally they are some of the nicest people you'd ever encounter, unless they wish to have their careers flushed down the toilet and receive dirty looks from passers-by and media until the end of time.

Compare Religion of Evil, Always Chaotic Evil. Also compare Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters. Also compare Hollywood Voodoo, as Hollywood isn't always clear on the difference.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• 3×3 Eyes has Pai captured by a cult of self-proclaimed Satanists in Wales, of all things, looking for a human sacrifice. The Grand Priest downright tells her about their worship of Satan, though not all the members wear hoods, capes and goat masks (only the head priest is in full regalia). However, since Pai is actually an immortal Triclop and her Wu Yakumo soon comes to her rescue, they are harmless villains at most, and not taken very seriously, as they're just Muggles compared to Pai and Yakumo's usual opponents.
• In Dorohedoro, the Sorcerers are a Mage Species who worship and live under devils with many of them being Chaotic Evil sociopaths who like to test their spells out on unsuspecting muggles, fueling Fantastic Racism on both sides.

Arts

• Witches' Sabbath (1798): It features various symbols associated with Christian artwork, just twisted so the object of worship is Satan instead of the Abrahamic God. Ugly women reunite around a goat-like demon, offering him a starving child. They are also implied to be insane.

Comic Books

• Batman: Averted in Batman (Grant Morrison), which shows Dr. Hurt performing a Satanic ritual to summon Barbatos (actually one of Darkseid's weapons). All the components for a satanic ritual are present (nude woman, black robes, star of Baphomet, etc.). The only Hollywood aspect is when Dr. Hurt eats the heart of a bat, but then again, Hurt is portrayed as pretty extreme even by satanic standards.
• Chick Tracts: Several Chick Tracts have this theme, especially the ones pertaining to Halloween.
  • From Boo! (which also claims that October 31 is "Satan's birthday")
    Teenager: Carrie will sacrifice a cat to Satan at midnight.
    Other Teenager: What a way to end a party! Haw haw!
    [later]
    Moralizing Adult: Satanic human sacrifices are a slap in God's face.
• Ghost Rider: Ghost Rider frequently fights◊ these kind of Satanists.
• Ms. Tree: The comic had a story in the DC period where Tree investigated a murdered girl who joined a satanic church and was found dead with a inverted pentagram on her body. She was predisposed to suspect the church of course, but her findings with a freelance reporter who met up with her about this case showed her how many allegations about satanists causing trouble are often overblown. In the end, Tree discovered the girl's murderer was actually an insane Christian fanatic who was posing as a local anti-Satanist activist to cover-up his crimes.
• Nightmare World: The horror anthology series had a story about a death metal fanboy who fit this trope, and sacrificed his artist friend to the Devil in hopes of being given metal fame and fortune like his idol, a Marilyn Manson Expy. However, the demon that shows up in response to the sacrifice tells him that Hell no longer fulfills wishes that doesnt stand to corrupt enough souls, and the market for death metal is way too small to justify the effort. When the fanboy begs and promises to do whatever it takes, the demon grants him his request by transforming him into a star that's guaranteed to reach a massive fanbase; a member of a Boy Band. On the final page, that contains The Reveal, the fanboy admits to himself that he's okay with this, as he does get to enjoy fame and fortune, even if it's not the way he had originally envisioned.
• Requiem Vampire Knight: Several of the people who ended up becoming vampires in Resurrection were satanists in their human lives, including Claudia Demona and Thurim. Of course, they loved Human Sacrifice.

Fan Fiction

• My Immortal is probably the most confusing case of Hollywood Stanism... er, Satanism that ever existed. The characters worship Satan (Satan, not Voldemort, whose nickname in high school was Satan), but we never really see them do anything beyond getting high and yelling at people. One implication is that they worship Satan by insulting preps and getting high on "crak".
• "a/n I DONT BELEVE IN GOD I AM N ATHEIST. i thnk saten created dis universe god bles u satan u r alwayz in mi heart".
• Witching Hour: At the height of the accusations against her, Gaz falls unconscious in her personal chambers and wakes up lying in the middle of a pentagram formed by the body parts of an entire herd of slaughtered cows, complete with an inverted cross painted in blood on her forehead. When she's caught by the nearby villagers, they immediately take it as undeniable proof that she is a witch. Zim actually drugged her and planted her there, using the information he got from Nick about human superstitions to set up the area to look like what Medieval peasants would expect a Satanic ritual to look like.

Film

• The Black Cat (1934) features Boris Karloff as a Satanic high priest with a fondness for human sacrifice.
• In Spawn (1997), a trio of "weekend Satanists" bump into Spawn and Clown (a.k.a. Violator) and completely freak out when faced with Spawn's transformation, much to Clown's disgust.
  Clown: How come God hogs up all the good followers, and we get all the retards?
• Faust: Love of the Damned: The Hand. Orgies, human sacrifices, wishing for the death of all humanity, led by the Devil himself, it's all there.
• Rosemary's Baby. See Literature below for details.
• Race with the Devil: Two ordinary couples on an RV trip witness a Satanic human sacrifice and are pursued by the cultists, who wish to silence them.
• Jennifer's Body: A band sacrifices Alpha Bitch Jennifer to Satan so they can be huge rockstars.
• The Omen and its sequels. The entire series is centered on The Antichrist, Damien Thorn, and a cadre of satanist followers who created the means for his birth, supporting him from the shadows and helping him remove any obstacles to his rise to power (not that he needs a lot of help, especially once he grows out of childhood). Damien's ultimate goal is to prevent the return of Jesus Christ and usher in the End of Days in Hell's favor. He fails
• The main villains in Drive Angry are this. Oddly enough, though, the actual minion of Satan, who is there to take the protagonist back to Hell, isn't really shown to be all that bad in this movie, and says that Satan, who is more God's prison-warden than His opponent, does not approve of the cult.
• The plot of the B-movie Devil's Prey features a cast chased around by masked practitioners of Satan.
• Demonic Toys does this to an extent. A demon in the form of a child (a la Rosemary's Baby) dies shortly after being born and is buried near a toy factory. Blood is spilled and he comes back to life. He has a baby doll draw a pentacle on a floor in the warehouse, complete with candles, since he plans on having sex with a pregnant cop in the circle so he can possess the fetus. Oh yeah, and this is on Halloween.
• Satanists who lure a babysitter for a ritual appear in The House of the Devil.
• The villains of the Hammer Horror film The Devil Rides Out attempt to do a Human Sacrifice. Main characters arrive to investigate.
• In The Legacy, a group of modern practitioners of the black arts are invited to hear the will of a dying powerful warlock. Soon, one of them starts to bump off the competition.
• In I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle, the trouble starts when a bunch of Hollywood Satanist outlaw bikers are attacked and killed by non-religious rival bikers during a demon-summoning ritual, freeing the demon to cause havoc.
• 12/12/12 has a Mayan death cult who nonetheless hit every point of Hollywood Satanism right down to symbols of Baphomet painted on the walls of their temple.
• The main antagonists of Hack-O-Lantern are every Satanism stereotype imaginable, in that they are dark wizards who will murder anybody who gets in their way of corrupting the children. They also try to do the "Devil Horn" symbol, but due to errors in the filmmaking process, end up doing "I Love You" in American Sign Language.
• Hell House LLC II: The Abaddon Hotel: The former owner of the Abaddon Hotel, Andrew Tully, is the head of one that sacrificed hotel guests and eventually themselves to get into the Lake of Fire. After the events of Hell House LLC the hotel has started luring in additional victims.
• Hereditary has a cult manipulating the events of the film in order to create a body for the demon lord Paimon.
• The The VVitch by the same studio, A24, features a witch coven in league with Satan.
• The Blackcoat's Daughter implies the nuns running the boarding school where most of the film takes place are secretly devil worshipers.They're not. The main character is.
• We Summon the Darkness uses this extensively In-Universe as a False Flag Operation. The trio of main characters pretend to be murderous Satanic cultists but are really Knight Templar evangelical Christians who stage their killings as over-the-top Satanic ritual sacrifices, all to stoke up an atmosphere of panic and hysteria and drive people to join their church.
• The Babysitter (2017): Bee and her friends are members of a cult trying to make a Deal with the Devil.
• The Satanists in Satan's Cheerleaders practice Human Sacrifice (or, at least, would like to) and can perform actual black magic.
• Babysitter Wanted (2008): Jim and Violent have a Satanic altar in their house, and believe they are raising the son of the Devil.
• Hail Satan?: This is discussed at length, and an obvious source of the hatred the Satanists face. Though they do not even worship Satan (as it's a symbolic thing for them) people's idea of Satanists as sacrificing or raping children due to the Satanic Panic along with general Christian animus colors their perception heavily.
• Ready or Not: The Le Domas family worships the demon Mr. Le Bail (an anagram of Belial), in exchange for their wealth (though most of the younger members aren't sure he exists, they go along just in case). Worshipping him is usually just a matter of sacrificing a few goats every now and then, but whenever someone marries in to the family, they have to play a game drawn at random. If the game is Hide and Seek, the bride or groom becomes a Human Sacrifice after being hunted through the manor all night. In the end, Mr. Le Bail turns out to have been Real All Along when he explosively punishes the remaining family members for losing the game.
• Many religious documentaries about Satanism during the time of the Satanic Panic, such as Devil Worship: The Rise of Satanism (1989), go fully into this territory.
• Fresh (2022): The last scene shows a group of robed people eating then a Baphomet symbol is shown, implying these are Steve's clients, Satanists eating human flesh.

Literature

• Dennis Wheatley, a British thriller writer who was very popular in his day, wrote a series of novels about Satanism (beginning with The Devil Rides Out in 1934) which may have helped to codify this trope - especially when The Devil Rides Out was filmed in 1968, forming a double-whammy with the film of Rosemary's Baby the same year. To be fair, Wheatley at least did some research, basing his villains around real (but much less evil) figures such as Aleister Crowley and Montague Summers. However, he is no longer considered the occult expert that he was at the height of his popularity.
• In Good Omens, the demon Crowley identifies two kinds of Satanist. Most are ordinary people who only partake in Satanism because they were raised in the faith and don't think about religion much except when they go to Black Mass, akin to your ordinary less-than-devout Christian. But others, like the ones you sometimes hear about on the news, give even Crowley the creeps.
• Russ Martin's series about an evil Satanic organization, including The Possession of Jessica Young, The Obsession of Sally Wing and The Education of Jennifer Parrish.
• In Conspiracies, one of the conventioneers had been brainwashed into accusing her father of molestation and Satanism, by a shrink her mother hired to ensure she'd get custody in the divorce settlement. Years later, she's plagued by nightmares of terrible encounters with Hollywood Satanism that never happened. The fact that genuine evil forces are exacerbating these baseless dreams for their own purposes only makes it worse.
• Ape And Essence by Aldous Huxley has literal Hollywood Satanism, with the worship of Belial in a post-apocalytic Crapsack World Southern California presented in the framing story as the unfilmable opus of a Hollywood screenwriter. Sex orgies, Human Sacrifice and intense misogyny are involved.
• Rosemary's Baby, in which not-so-friendly neighborhood Satanists see to the impregnation of the titular Rosemary with the spawn of Satan and the Antichrist.
• Babylon Rising features a shadowy and secretive group of Satanists that have existed since Satan made contact with a Babylonian priest during the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar and started up a cult.
• Hotel Transylvania, the first book in Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's Saint Germain series, is MADE of this trope. Devoted Satanists centuries before Satanism existed? Check. Inverted crosses to shock and horrify Christians? Check. Raping and sacrificing virgins to get power from Satan? Double check.
• One of the most famous books in the Fighting Fantasy series was House of Hell, where the antagonists were a cult like this. (And a very unsubtle one at that.)
• Lukas - Vier Jahre Hölle und zurück (Lukas - Four Years in Hell and Back) is a German book published in 1995 portraying a teenage boy named Lukas who gets involved with Satanists. The Satanists disturb church services, practice animal and virgin sacrifices that are combined with drinking blood and Gratuitous Rape (the reason why nobody ever finds suspicious leftovers is handwaved with the use of Hollywood Acid), new members have to prove themselves by biting off a hamster's head, are subject to psychological abuse and other cruelties, supposedly to "clean" their souls from love and compassion, most children born to members are sacrificed practically as soon as they are born, they are generally nasty to their female members, practice slavery (up to and including sex slavery) and their top rule is "Anyone who leaves must die.", a rule they follow to the letter. It was criticized as most probably a fraud, since some of the actions described are straight-out impossible (at least without any evidence ever being found).
• The First Reformed Church of the Antichrist in Mr Blank is evil to the point of self parody. Just don't tell them that.
  • The sequel introduces even more Satanist groups, though the Order of the Morning Star appears to be an inversion of the trope.
• The Scream: Discussed. The book is set during The '80s, when metal was at its height of popularity. The book centers around two rock bands, one of which uses heavy Satanic imagery. The leader of the other band, Jake, points out that most of the time, Satanic imagery and lyrics in music are just part of the act. Not so with The Scream.
• Metro 2033: The Satanists are a minor faction within the Moscow Metro. They believe, with the nuclear war, the end of the world has already come and gone, and that the metro is a tunnel that'll lead them to Hell. While their station isn't shown, it has a huge pit dug in the center by slaves they kidnap from other stations.
• Elantris has a Crystal Dragon Jesus version. While there's no Satanic Archetype in the setting, the ritual of the Jesker Mysteries that King Iadon is caught performing looks like it's taken straight from the page image. Naked, he disembowels a young woman on an alter and writes demands in her blood, surrounded by chanting sycophants in dark robes.

Live-Action TV

• In the The X-Files episode "Die Hand Die Verletzt", the agents encountered a group of "real" Satanists who were accused of being the Hollywood Satanist type. That they were all school teachers didn't help. It ends up being a parodic subversion, in that the Satanists are far from the Hollywood Satanism stereotype; they never do human sacrifices or molest children or anything like what the moral panic suggests; they're just normal, everyday people who happen to worship Satan, and are pretty half-hearted about it at that (they're lapsed Satanists, it transpires). Unfortunately, one of their now-teenage kids has gotten some hazy childhood memories confused with the sensationalist stuff she's seen in the media, thus prompting a hysterical panic. Even more unfortunately, someone does a ritual and manages to actually summon the Devil, who is less than pleased with their lack of faith.
  "Did you really think you could summon up the devil and then expect him to behave?"
• Starsky & Hutch episode "Satan's Witches": While on vacation, the title characters run into a town being threatened by a cult of devil-worshipping Satanists who wear hooded robes, paint pentagrams with extremely fake-looking blood, kidnap the sheriff's daughter to be "forever wed to Satan," and march in circles chanting "Hail Satan! Dominus Satanis!"
• The "Hail Satan Network" on Mr. Show. It's essentially like a real gospel show, only its hosts and audience are Satanists who worship the devil, encourage the seven deadly sins and chant "Hail Satan!"
• Adam Adamant Lives!: In "The Last Sacrifice", Adam battles a British lord who is running a satanist cult complete with hooded robes, orgies and human sacrifice. He is mostly using it as a source of blackmail, but Adam mentions that his family has a history of satanism cropping up every third generation.
• Mission: Impossible: In "The Devils", the team investigates a member of the English gentry who involves foreign and domestic officials in Satanic rituals and human sacrifice for blackmail purposes.
• On Misfits, the local Boy Scout troop is revealed to be a cover for Satan's agents, who manage to turn Finn and Abby into agents as well. They have rituals involving chicken blood and Satanic literature.
• Dead of Summer has a gang of Satanist bikers running around causing trouble, led by a guy calling himself Damon Crowley. Deputy Garrett believes that they're behind the mysterious occurrences at Camp Stillwater. They're actually the Unwitting Pawns of the real villain, Amy Hughes.
• Defied by Criminal Minds; in one episode that dealt with a murder that looked like Hollywood Satanism, the agents specify that Satanic ritual murder hasn't taken place to their knowledge (that's not to say crazy people didn't associate Satan with their crimes, but that there was no proven instance of organized human sacrifice). In the end, the "satanists" in the town are mostly just edgy punk kids who don't hurt anyone, and the killer was one of the popular kids who pinned the murder on the satanists as a ploy to get away with it.
• Lucifer (2016):
  • The focus of the episode "#TeamLucifer". Lucifer himself finds Satanism a disgusting and insulting perversion of what he stands for. He doesn't want people worshiping him — that's God's schtick. When he barges into a Satanic ritual and starts complaining, the coven like what he's saying and start chanting his words, causing Lucifer to complain that they're missing the whole point of being a rebel. In the end, the coven is portrayed as just a group of harmless kids. When someone starts murdering them in "human sacrifices", Lucifer is genuinely angry, as he regards them as misguided idiots, not evildoers who deserved to be punished, especially not in his name.
  • The High Priest admits that while he agrees with Satanism's beliefs about free will and honesty, he's grown tired of the "weirdos" who take it too seriously. He happily complies with Lucifer and Detective Decker's investigation into the first murder, as he'd tried to talk the victim out of joining the coven.
  • Oh, and the whole Satanic obsession with goats? Turns out it's a centuries-old prank by Lucifer's brother Amenadiel, and Lucifer still hasn't figured out where it came from. In real life it's speculated to come from the Greek Pan, portrayed as a horned, goat-legged wild man, whose image was used by Christians for Satan.
• Inspector Morse. In "The Day of the Devil", a rapist who is a committed satanist escapes from prison. In this case satanism is just something the criminal uses to justify his sociopathic view of the world. He is a true believer though, which eventually causes his downfall.
• Supernatural. Lucifer is accidentally resurrected by this type in Season 12 and is not impressed by the quality of his followers on Earth, quickly deciding to Neck Snap them as petty annoyances.
• On Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, all witches worship Satan (also referred to as the Dark Lord). On their sixteenth birthday, witches have a "dark baptism" in which they sign their names into the Dark Lord's Book of the Beast. Because of their service to the Dark Lord, witches do not go to hell. Another ritual, the Feast of Feasts, includes a randomly selected witch being sacrificed and eaten. Inverted pentagram are used liberally throughout the series. They do pay lip service to the beliefs of real life Satanism when Sabrina questions pledging herself to the personification of evil and the High Priest tells her that the Dark Lord is actually the personification of free will. Subsequent episodes make it clear that Satan is a very real figure and the Church of the Night is actually far more restrictive of its members' free will than Father Blackwood indicated.
• Logan's Run: In "Night Visitors", the Prince of Darkness worshiping ghosts Gavin, Marianne and Barton were looking for a Human Sacrifice in order to revive one of their number. Rem was out of the question, and Logan was too much a skeptic (and too good at fighting) for them to trap, but Jessica was fair game.
• Invoked in Mindhunter; Tench and Ford are often exasperated when local law enforcement suggests a Satanic Cult as a culprit in their unsolved cases, and when interviewing David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz, Ford points out that Berkowitz had bought a lot of books about Satanism before being arrested, and gets him to admit that his story of demonic possession was just Obfuscating Insanity.

Music

• The song "The Number of the Beast" by Iron Maiden tells of a man witnessing Satanic rituals that horrify him.
• Murdoc Niccals of the Gorillaz is openly satanist, is never seen without the inverted cross on his neck and has apparently made a Deal with the Devil.
• Marilyn Manson was honored with the title of "Reverend" by Anton LaVey himself in 1994 and has played to this stereotype on occasion (particularly during the Antichrist Superstar era).
• Alice Cooper is an interesting subversion: he's often been accused of being the Hollywood Satanist, and his stage shows may very well give the impression to some that he is... when he's actually a Christian.
• Katy Perry played with this in her performance at the 2014 Grammy Awards. Unfortunately, many people took it as an indication of her being a real life Satanist. A matter not helped by the fact that, around this time, her "turbulent" relationship with her parents (who are both fundamentalist Christians) was getting extensive media coverage (Perry had once been a Gospel singer herself).
• Everything Ghost writes is about this trope as the band's stage personas are part of a Satanic cult. Their first album was so over the top as to go into complete Card-Carrying Villain territory, though it was toned to an extent in the later albums.
• Indie duo Twin Temple use this a gimmick. Perhaps best exemplified by their debut album being titled, Twin Temple (Bring You Their Signature Sound…. Satanic Doo-Wop).
• Venom, the Trope Namer band for Black Metal always maintain that their used of satanic imagery is just for shock value, while many later Black Metal acts would take their Satanism much more seriously.
• Three 6 Mafia is named after the Number of the Beast, and their first album Mystic Stylez plays up a very Satanic image, but like with Venom, mostly for shock value. Member of the group, Gangsta Boo bought a real book of Satanic rituals to use as source material, but being young and still living with her parent, the book was found and her mother made her burn it.

Professional Wrestling

• Kevin Sullivan's big Heel run in Florida in the 1980s, complete with face paint, bizarre rituals (Summoning the Purple Haze ["Maniac" Mark Lewin] from under the sea) and apparent hypnotism (turning "Maniac" Mike Davis into "Dusty Rhodes.")
• Kaiju Big Battel lists Hell Monkey's height AND weight as "666 bananas stacked end to end."
• The Undertaker's Ministry of Darkness in WWE in 1999. The group officially debuted on the January 11, 1999 WWF Raw is War, as the Undertaker, with manager Paul Bearer and the Acolytes standing by, cut into Dennis Knight's chest, causing "blood" to come out, and renamed him "Mideon." Another time, the group abducted Ken Shamrock's "sister" Ryan Shamrock and strapped her to the Undertaker's symbol in a sort-of crucifixion.
• James Mitchell has done this gimmick a few times. He arrived in ECW in late 1999 as the Sinister Minister, a name he would reuse in MLW in 2003. He arrived in TNA in 2002 as "Father" James Mitchell, the leader of the New Church, and described himself as a Satanist. Earlier in his career, he had an abbreviated run in SMW as Collector of the Strange Daryl Van Horne, which was the name used by Satan in The Witches of Eastwick.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Evil cults of Demons and Devils (yes, they are different things in this context) have existed throughout the history of the game, and they almost always behave like this (Devil worshippers even more so, as Devils are actual analogues to demons as portrayed in Christian Demonology). These depictions were toned down significantly following the Satanic Panic, but have since cropped up again as villains in campaigns: Devil worshippers who perform grisly rituals involving human sacrifice to bring forth an evil from beyond.
  • Generally subverted with Warlocks that strike a pact with Fiends: As per 5th Edition, Warlocks don't need to believe in the cause of their patrons or worship them. The relationship between a Warlock and a Devil is purely practical, after all, and it's perfectly possible for a Warlock to work directly against the interests of their patron (as long as they're clever about it).
  • Fifth edition introduced the Oath of Conquest archetype for Paladins. These Paladins are obsessed with order and do not tolerate dissent, seeking to crush chaos and establish a lawful rule, by any means necessary. This means they are not only usually Lawful aligned, but they often stray into being Evil as well. The lore describes a radical faction of Conquest Paladins called Hell Knights who swear their allegiance to the Lawful Evil plane of Baator (The cosmology's equivalent to Hell). They are denounced as sacrilegious in-universe and serve as an unexpected foil to the traditional archetype of the pious, priestly Paladin.
• Crops up, as you'd imagine, more than a few times in both versions of The World of Darkness:
  • Mage: The Ascension has the Nephandi, fallen mages who want to corrupt/annihilate all of reality in the name of their dark masters. The Infernalists are one faction of them, whose tendencies most often involve tempting others into wickedness and selling their souls to dark entities.
  • Nearly every sect in Vampire: The Masquerade has a "kill on sight" order for infernalists, as swearing eternal devotion to a demon also means serving as a recruiter for ways of deprivation and sin, which is just another form of servitude to the Sabbat and the Anarchs, and a threat to stability and the Masquerade to the Camarilla. The Baali, however, walk the line on this - while their arts are infernal in nature and they spread sin and atrocity merrily, many of them doing it to keep their dark masters (which could be demons or could be monsters that predate existence) from waking up and making everything much worse.
  • Belial's Brood from Vampire: The Requiem plays credit to LaVeyan Satanism while still invoking a number of Religion of Evil tropes. A number of members of the Brood don't worship Satan as an actual entity, but regard him as an ideological construct that represents the Beast that screams in the souls of all vampires. However, as the Beast is a representation of all that's savage and terrible about the vampiric condition and grows stronger the more detached one becomes from Humanity, they do the usual black mass/virgin sacrifice/dark pact stuff in an effort to reach true divinity.
• Warhammer:
  • Used in Warhammer 40,000: it's mentioned that many cultists don't actually know what they're doing, merely enacting rituals from what they've seen in scary holos and whatever sounds cool, and thus totally fail to summon daemons. On occasion, however, some of them succeed... if they're very unlucky.
  • Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Part of 1^st Edition's Early-Installment Weirdness is that "Demons" are summoned into a ritual pentagram. Later editions have "Daemons" and use an octagram, an in-universe symbol of Chaos.
• Humanoid cultists of Baphomet in Pathfinder have this sort of flavor, more so than the actual church of Asmodeus, the setting's Satanic Archetype, does.
• This is the plot of the Fighting Fantasy gamebook House Of Hell, with the protagonist becoming stranded near an old mansion belonging to the Earl Of Drumer (and it's implied that he was deliberately lured there by being given false directions in the town). While the Earl puts on the image of a gracious host, he's in fact the leader of a local Satanic cult, which includes high-ranking political and social members of the nearby town, and they kidnap wayward travellers and out-of-towners to sacrifice to their dark masters. However, the Earl is not the Big Bad, it's his butler Franklin, who is in reality a Hell Demon in disguise
• kill puppies for satan is a huge parody of this trope, portraying the Hollywood Satanists as pathetic, incompetent Harmless Villains, with Satan mostly seeing them as a huge embarrassment. The puppy-killing is busywork intended to keep those idiots away from his actual plans.

Video Games

• Bendy and the Ink Machine's Joey Drew, if the pentagram beneath the ground floor is any indication.
• Blaze Stalker, the Big Bad of the old 90s game Blackstar Agent Of Justice. He's very much an individual version of this trope, runs a Snuff Film ring that targets hookers, and was responsible for the murder of both of Blackstar's parents, his father to get at his mother, and his mother to fulfill some sick lust and desire for power. No dark magic is involved here; just one man's all too human evil.
• The optional "Lucifer's Own" secret society in Crusader Kings gleefully serves Satan, granting its members unmatched dark powers in exchange for plentiful Human Sacrifice. In Crusader Kings II each major religion has its own demonic equivalent, performing atrocities in the name of various evil gods such as Kali, Chernobog, or Hel.
• Darkstalkers: Lord Raptor's backstory is that he was a rock musician who secretly ran a cult and at his final concert killed himself and 100 concert goers in a demonic ritual. This caught the attention of a demonic entity that raised him as a zombie.
• The Gulf Cartel in Eternal Golden Dawn is led by real-life occultist and Satanist Adolfo de Jesús Costanzo, who became infamous for his kidnappings and extremely brutal rituals to grant himself supposed powers. Having grown his real-life criminal gang/cult Los Narcosatánicos to control the entire cartel, he's doesn't seem any less deranged than in real life, and is also enabled to do his rituals on a much larger scale without having to fear any repercussions.
• The Blood Raiders in EVE Online are a heretical splinter sect of the mainstream Amarrian religion (itself a sort of Space Catholicism at its most militant and medieval, including supporting slavery) that operates as a composite of Satanic Panic myths and real-life LaVeyan Satanism. From the former, they get the blood rituals, the Human Sacrifice, and the breeding camps to ensure a steady supply of blood and sacrificial victims, and from the latter, they get a pseudo-Nietzschean ideology that proclaims that certain people are destined for greatness and that others exist to serve them.
• FAITH: The Unholy Trinity has a secret coven of Satanists in one of the endings of Chapter I. They take major stage as the main antagonistic group in the succeeding two chapters as they attempt to unleash The End of the World as We Know It - their leader, Gary who's really the demon Astaroth, serves as the Big Bad.
• The first Manhunt title has the Innocentz, a group of Latin American hoodlums who has a couple of members that combine the worst aspects of Holier Than Thou and Eviler than Thou with their Grim Reaper motifs and worship of Satan.
• In The New Order: Last Days of Europe, there's a secret, extremely dystopian path for the Russian wasteland in which genuine Satanists can emerge. If Sergei Taboritsky, an Ax-Crazy fascist obsessed with restoring the Romanov dynasty under the long-lost (and actually long-dead) heir to the throne Alexei, manages to reunify Russia, his rule quickly ends in such disaster that Russia collapses back into a collection of warlord states even worse than before. One of those warlord states, the Brotherhood of Cain, is descended from a group of Imperial Shturmoviki who, upon the revelation that Taboritsky secretly had Jewish blood, decided that God Himself was an enemy of Russia and pledged themselves to Satan. Their leader Anatoly Motsny (in real life a former Hero of the Soviet Union who was stripped of his honors after murdering his five-year-old son Gennady) changes his name to Abbadon, and he and his lieutenants dress in cloaks and masks straight out of a horror movie. While none of the post-Taboritsky warlord states can reunify Russia without cheating, there is content◊ buried in the files in case a player decides to cheat anyway, revealing that, should the Brotherhood of Cain reunify Russia, they turn it into the Kingdom of the Hellborn and engage in a massive campaign of Human Sacrifice writ large across an entire nation.
• The Dragonfall campaign of Shadowrun Returns features the cult Glory escaped from, which was dedicated to the worship of the 'Horned Man', an aspect of the Adversary mentor spirit. Normally the spirit in question simply represents opposition to the established order and isn't inherently evil, but in the toxic form that this cult follows, it amounts to the ugliest form of Satan worship, and the cult leader Harrow and his followers are shown happily indulging in human sacrifice, brain washing and orgies.
• A lot of websites in Welcome to the Game are not so subtle about their Satan-worshiping.
• Witchery: As is fitting for a mod focused around allowing the player to play the part of the Witch Classic, the mod allows the player to get up to some good old-fashioned demon-summoning, which involves Human Sacrifice and dark bargains. Satan himself is never actually mentioned, though Baphomet, Beelzebub, and Lilith make appearances.

Webcomics

• Parodied in the "KITTEN II" storyline of Sluggy Freelance. Two of the minor characters in the Slasher Movie parody turn out to be Satan-worshippers who betray the group. Behold the proud majesty and sheer classiness of their '80s Headbanger Satanic Rituals!
• Ellen of Leftover Soup actually was one of these for a few years of her childhood, after her mother died of thyroid cancer and she got mad at God for not existing.

Web Original

• The Play-by-Post game What Time Is It, Mr. Wolf? features a boy who seems to practice this; possibly justified by the fact that he's thirteen, likely has no clue how Satanism works, and may or may not have a demon - or possibly the devil, himself in his head.
• Inverted in the creepypasta story "The Satanist with Christian Friends", wherein the young protagonist is a Satanist and sees it as just as normal as being Christian or Jewish or Buddhist or whatever—but the reason his family has to keep moving every so often is that the Moral Guardians tend to find out and flip out with a vengeance. The story itself culminates with a "good Christian" trying to make the narrator (who is in grade school) repent of Satanism by any means possible—including invoking the Salem Witch Trials.
• The creepypasta story "From Hell I Write" centers around a family of Hollywood Satanists that worship an ill-defined, goatlike demon that requires blood sacrifices, preferring the children of the neighborhood. The narrator's friend is a reluctant participant of these bizarre ceremonies, which eventually culminate in the narrator's entire family, including himself, being possessed by demons and condemned to Hell.

Western Animation

• Parodied in Metalocalypse, when Murderface joins the Church of Satan and goes to Black Mass. They come across as rather timid, cowardly people that can't stand up for themselves. Then played straight in The Stinger, when the Church of Satan actually does summon a demon (although considering DETHKLOK was there, it could've unknowingly been their doing).
• Subverted on Moral Orel. Coach Stopframe worships Satan, believing him to be some powerful being that can help him win over Clay's heart and help the school's team. When he joins actual satanists, they turn out to be a bunch of sloppy hedonists, and are utterly horrified that Stopframe brought Orel to be a Virgin Sacrifice (they said to bring a virgin, they meant an adult virgin to join their orgy) and don't bother Orel at all (in fact, he gets along rather well with them). Coach Stopframe does wind up disgusted with them, but it's more because they're uncouth and unattractive than any religious reason.
• South Park has the Woodland Critters, a group of cute talking animals who are also Satan worshipers that frequently participate in horrifying rituals such as sacrifices and blood orgies.

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