Trope Description: A character accidentally contacts an evil entity by accident or sheer recklessness.
- Straight: While researching on an ancient cult, Alice digs out a shrine of the cult and frees a mysterious symbol from dust. By doing this, the Eldritch Abomination C'thiala takes control of her mind and uses her to wreak havoc.
- Exaggerated: Alice just has to think of the ancient cult to get possessed by the monster C'thiala. Then, she infects her whole team of archaeologists with Demonic Possession.
- Downplayed: When Alice frees the ancient symbol, the archaeologists hear a monstrous growl, fear that they may have accidentally contacted a monster, but nothing else happens afterward.
- Justified: The ancient cult put the symbol there as a Protection Spell for their religious site, with the goal of giving getting to close to them a fearsome reputation and being left alone due to that. And the spell still works.
- Inverted: Alice accidentally looses all contact to C'thiala by opening the symbol.
- Subverted: Alice accidentally contacts C'thiala and gets mind-raped by her, but C'thiala is in fact a nice being that helps Alice a lot.
- Double Subverted: Every kind of help by C'thiala needs a sacrifice, what usually means a person dying close by.
- Lampshaded: Alice: "I am not myself since I touched that shrine...what if I accidentally contacted a monster? I thought that only happens in horror movies! Help!"
- Enforced: The author needs a believable threat to build up the plot...and what is scarier than accidentally contacting an evil entity?
- Zig-zagged: Alice is reluctant on brushing the symbol free of dust, but then she does it, seeing a picture of an Eldritch Abomination before her inner eye, but dismisses it due to her mental disorder that gives her hallucinations. Then, C'thiala suddenly speaks to her in her mind, but after she seems gloomy at first, she proves to be a nice being and they make friends. Then it becomes apparent that C'thiala is draining Alice's Life-Force to get a body again, but it is since she wants to be able to live on herself in human form. But in fact, C'thiala wants to Kill All Humans and made Alice an Unwitting Pawn...
- Discussed: "Let's see what the relief shows..." "Are you sure that this won't contact some monster?"
- Implied: Alice brushes dust from an ancient symbol on a shrine. After that, she starts having strange moments in which she behaves unusually Ax-Crazy, and people around her start getting murdered in particularly nasty ways.
- Played for Laughs: C'thiala is contacted...and seen by Alice on the toilet or while having sex, leading to a very awkward first encounter.
- Played for Drama: The focus of the plot is on Alice's feelings of guilt and shame for her deed, and her struggle to end the contact between C'thiala and our world again.
- Played for Horror: The longer the magical symbol is visible, the stronger and viler C'thiala becomes, killing more and more people in increasingly messy ways.
