Elegance and terror in one package
The Phantom of the Opera, based on the book and play, is considered by many to be one of the best movies of all time due to its gripping combination of drama and horror. The title character himself is very intriguing, being a masked madman with a lot of tragedy and sadness has made him one of the most iconic villains (if not characters) in movie lore.
As with most successes, the concept of a "phantom of the X" has since been used countless times since its introduction. In comparison to the original, characters based on the Phantom are often varied. Sometimes they are a Captain Ersatz, sometimes they're a thoughtful parody of their inspiration, but they often share a few key features:
- The character will almost always wear some kind of mask.note The mask usually covers some kind of gruesome deformity, though as with the original Phantom, the derivative characters have gotten Progressively Prettier over the years.
- The Theatre Phantom will often haunt a place of entertainment, with live action theaters being the most commonly used as the character's stomping grounds because the Phantom can potentially harm the people who attend, as well as damage the establishment's revenue and reputation. Sometimes, they aren't associated with a single location at all.
- The Theatre Phantom will either be depicted as a Badass Normal or actually be a supernatural creature when finally confronted.
- They'll often be dressed in evening clothes.
- They tend towards being a Large Ham, due to where they dwell and the efforts they make to inspire fear.
- They may play scary music on a pipe organ.
If a character like this does appear, don't expect many other references to the original story. The Theatre Phantom may act similar to the Trope Namer in the original story, but often the other characters and the plot of the original work will never be alluded to at all.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, the episode "Vissi d'arte, Vissi d'amore" centers around one. He turns out to be the boyfriend of the opera singer Aiyan, who is living underground with him since people wouldn't approve their relationship.
Comic Books
- In All-Ghouls School, minor student Christine is implied to be the niece of the original.
- The Elseworlds story Batman: Masque has an 1890s version of Batman fighting a villain called the Phantom who is terrorising the ballet. The Phantom is Harvey Dent, once a proud and accomplished dancer, who was horribly scarred on stage when his costume caught fire from one of the stage lights. He is now obsessed with up and coming ballerina Laura Avian and will do anything to make her happy. Even commit murder.
- In Detective Comics (Rebirth) #950 Cassandra Cain is shown to live in the attic of the Gotham opera house, giving rise to a rumor that it is haunted due to her eerie, stitched-up black mask, and she has taken a particular interest in a ballerina named Christine. The allusion is very obvious, though unlike usual examples she is both silent and entirely benign.
- The Judge Dredd story "Phantom of the Shoppera" features a phantom that hits all the marks, except for haunting a shopping mall instead of a theatre. It's also a robot.
Comic Strips
- Jason and Marcus of FoxTrot once wanted to go to start attending the opera. Andy saw they were up to this since they made the mistake of applying the Phantom's well-known mask before asking her for permission.
Films — Live-Action
- In Bruiser, Henry becomes one during the company's masquerade. Having organised the masquerade, he attends dressed as the Phantom of the Opera, incorporating his white mask of doom. As usual, most people fail to notice him. He then skulks around backstage and uses the props he arranged to be present to take his revenge on Miles Styles.
- In Phantom of the Paradise, a disfigured composer writes his music for a woman he loves so that she will perform his music. However, a record producer betrays him and steals his music to open his rock palace, The Paradise. Betrayed, the composer dons a new appearance and exacts revenge on the producer.
Literature
- Angels of Music features Erik, the original Phantom of the Opera, now seemingly immortal and still dwelling beneath the Paris Opera House. Although he now largely delegates things to his Angels of Music, the climax shows that he can still haunt a theatre with the best of them and instill terror into his enemies.
- Goosebumps: In Phantom of the Auditorium, Brooke Rogers and Zeke Matthews are chosen to play Esmeralda and The Phantom in their school's version of The Phantom of the Opera, but a chain of accidents impede production and threaten to have Zeke kicked off the cast.
- Maskerade presents the Discworld's take on The Phantom of the Opera, with the mysterious 'Opera Ghost' haunting the Ankh-Morpork Opera House. Ultimately there turns out to be two different Opera Ghosts.
- Monster of the Year: One makes a brief cameo in one scene. He has exactly one line of dialogue, suggesting they try to improve their reputations via an appearance on Broadway, and is never specifically mentioned again.
- The Trope Maker is, of course, The Phantom of the Opera, with its subsequent film and theatre adaptations keeping the archetype in the public eye.
- The Trapdoor Daemon in The Vampire Genevieve by Kim Newman, who haunts Detlef Sierck's theatre, and has his own box. This being Warhammer he is much more deformed than the original, with warpstone having transformed him into something utterly inhuman.
Live-Action TV
- The Dingo Principle had a sketch parodying The Phantom of the Opera and then-current events in Australian politics with a theatre phantom dropping a Falling Chandelier of Doom on members of the Liberal Party.
- Doctor Who: In "The Talons of Weng-Chiang", Magnus Greel is a disfigured genius dwelling the cellars of a theatre; his mangled face concealed by a mask. Occasional sightings of him by the theatre staff give rise to a belief that the theatre is haunted.
Puppet Shows
- Uncle Deadly in The Muppet Show. In episode 121, he is "the Phantom of the Muppet Show". One by one, the Muppets tell Kermit that they have seen a phantom, but Kermit refuses to believe them until he sees Uncle Deadly with his own eyes. Once revealed, Uncle Deadly explains that he used to perform at the Muppet Theater, where he played Othello until he was killed... by the critics.
Roleplay
- In It's Curtains, Winslow becomes one in his revenge plot, hence his Plague Doctor mask and clothes.
Video Games
- Doctor Lautrec and the Forgotten Knights has the Phantom as the leader of a faction of iron - masked knights.
- The Android game Dragon Coins has Phantoms as a recruitable Mon, you can get one by evolving a Death Mask, which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
- Haunt the House: Terrortown: The Phantom character lives in an underground lair below the theater, wears a half-mask, and owns a pipe organ.
- Invoked with Phantom from Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle. He's a ghostly Rabbid opera singer who considers himself The Rival to Mario and wants Peach to himself. In promotional material, he's even referred to as "Phantom of the Bwahpera".
- The Messenger (2018): Despite his name, Phantom was originally not this trope, but the Demon King fixed that by placing a cursed mask on him and imprisoning him in a music box to play the pipe organ for all eternity.
- Zizz from the pop'n music series is a literal phantom that takes many of the cues from the Phantom of the Opera - including an Ominous Opera Cape, a White Mask of Doom that covers half his face, and an Ominous Pipe Organ for background music - and has Marionette Master powers on top of it. Like the original Phantom, he attempts to take control of his own "Christine", ALT, only he does it with greater force.
- Psychonauts has The Catwalk Phantom, which is the main villain of a Mood-Swinger starlet's mind.
- Don Octavio from Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves is an Opera performer turned Mad Bomber after music tastes changed when his career was taking off. He takes to dressing as a phantom while running the local mafia and planning to extort the populace into seeing him perform.
Web Comics
- Girl Genius: When Gil is listing the threats he had to rescue Deliberately Distressed Damsel Zola from, one of them is "some overly dramatic maniac who lived in the Paris Opera House", who is depicted as a theatre phantom playing a bass drum.
Web Original
Western Animation
- One episode of American Dad! had Roger become the "Phantom of the Telethon", seeking to get Stan to admit that he'd had the CIA Telethon idea first and Stan didn't give him any of the credit. This results in sabotage, Steve being kidnapped and dressed like Christine, and a terrorist getting loose and setting bombs behind the telethon donation counter.
- Courage the Cowardly Dog had The Great Fusilli, a crocodile who ran a stage that transforms its actors into puppets. Ironically he falls for his own trap when he mistakes Courage for a Theatre Phantom.
- A brief gag in the Danger Mouse episode "The Return of Count Duckula" is that Dreary Lane Theatre is home to the Phantom of the Panto, although he looks more like some kind of gargoyle.
- An episode of the spin-off series Count Duckula features a more traditional Phantom who lives beneath the Paris Opera House.
- In Dan Vs., Dan takes on a locally owned theatre by becoming a phantom to ruin it. He dons a mask with a Gag Nose so the crew won't recognize him.
- The villainous "Phantom of Vaudeville" and his ventriloquist dummy, Elmo, as featured on The Ghost Busters may be a reference to the Phantom, as both are masked, and, as Kong notes, "the only way to send a Phantom back is to unmask him."
- An abridged version of the original story called "Spooks", featuring the Winkler and Lantz version of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit of course has a ghoulish Phantom. After Cornering Oswald he asks "What sound does a chicken make when it lays a square egg?" (Cue Oswald saying "Ow!" from the Phantom slapping him), "Correct!" And then he disappears.
- The Real Ghostbusters: In "A Fright at the Opera", the New York Metropolitan Opera House does have a Phantom, but he never appears until the end of the episode. The guys only met him in passing, just as he was about to vacate the opera house: The appearance of the ghostly Valkyries was too much, even for him!
- Scooby-Doo has gotten some mileage out of this kind of character. The fact that the original story was a "Scooby-Doo" Hoax (Long before Scooby-Doo was around) too probably helps.
- The Simpsons: An episode set in the future said Martin Prince went missing after a science fair explosion and lives beneath the school, playing the piano and wearing a Phantom mask.
- There is an episode of The Snorks (called "Summer and Snork"), where Junior takes on a Phantom-like role to scare All-Star out of the lead part. Tooter takes over the role of a crossover between Sherlock Holmes and The Persian from the Gaston Leroux novel.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987): An episode titled "Phantom of the Sewers" has the eponymous character haunting a pizza restaurant. The Phantom even has a secret lair full of booby traps! It turns out that his business partner had betrayed him (as he wanted to use the robots he'd built) and threw chemicals in his face, disfiguring him. But in another twist, the "chemicals" were actually paint, so his face wasn't actually disfigured at all.
