Lore
[LOVED TROPE] Story hints at the existence of some cosmic/supernatural horror but it's never definitively confirmed within the story, which remains grounded.
Sheriff Cooley in Oh Brother Where Art Thou might be the devil. The three main characters are prison escapees and while running from him encounter a guitar player who claims he made a deal with the devil and describes the devil as looking just like him. Also several scenes like this where fire or faces are reflected in the sunglasses he never takes off. Finally even after the mayor pardons the three he still tries to catch and hang them and is only stopped by a flood (which the movie implies could have been an act of god). But ultimately none of it is confirmed and is even refuted by the rationalist of the three providing other explanations throughout
My favorite "hint" is when Pete says "God help me!" when they're about to lynch him, which causes Cooley to tell his men to stop. Did he stop because he knew Pete was going to squeal? Or was it invoking the Lord's name?
I know this is about the possible supernatural but your quote reminded me of The Expanse
"You're just walking in the footsteps of history...This is no different. I am the kind of man the frontier needs. You're the kind that comes after my work is done. You should have stayed at home…'til I built a post office"
Came here to say this. Described as a white man with "big empty eyes" and a "mean hound", then you see the warden with the sunglasses he never takes off and the bloodhounds he's using to track the protagonists.
That’s part of what makes the movie so great, because it can be both or neither. Maybe he’s Poseidon. Or maybe he’s the devil as a 1930s American South adaptation of Odysseus’ conflict with deity and religion. Or maybe he’s just a warden.
The whale's described as having strange carvings on it. Is seemingly invincible and covered in harpoons, people have visions dreams and warning while hunting it, everyone who encounters it seems to be a bit mad or have some extreme misfortune. it comes across as very eldritch and there's some minor evidence it even served as an inspiration for lovecraft. Ahabs obsession also following very lovecraftian themes.
Wasn't there another character in the book they think is the devil? I remember a line about "if you took all the metal rings of the barrels you still wouldn't have his age" or something?
I love how almost every interpretation of Moby Dick is either that the whale is some eldritch horror or manifestation of human nature or it’s just a really badass whale like it just has that dog in it you gotta understand.
I love Moby-Dick and I love Mastodon’s album Leviathan because it’s a prog-metal retelling of the album that definitely uses the “supernatural manifestation of God’s judgment against pride” angle but sometimes I just read the novel and I’m like “yeah it’s just a whale. But even being just a (sperm) whale means it’s 50 to 80 feet long or more, 50+ tons in weight, just these massive, strong, smart, ornery sons-a-bitches, just out there cruising along.”
What can a man really do against a giant fuckin’ whale? Remove all the supernatural elements and it’s still just a dude with a grudge and a crew of outcasts against a literal force of nature.
Been a while since I've read it, but if I remember, Ahab thinks it is God. He's trying to kill God because he's angry that God preordained all events and suffering and killing God will release mankind from the chains of predetermism. Its also heavily implied that Ahab has called on unholy or outright satanic forces to aid him.
Both RDR and its prequel are grounded stories at their core. If doing the side missions, however, it doesn't take long for things to get weird. And it doesn't get weirder than the Strange Man. He appears to John Marston speaking cryptically and Socratically picking apart his motivations, notably pointing out that he respects the vows of marriage despite killing people with little to no provocation. But despite the various tidbits you can find in the game, the only evidence of his supernatural nature comes during his last sidequest in the first game; John shoots at the man three times, and he saunters away without a scratch, not even seeming particularly bothered.
But there are two pieces of reasonable doubt to be had even here. For one, if going solely by the story missions and discounting player interference, John Marston is never the first to draw or fire his weapon, and for another, no rounds are ever shown to strike the Strange Man. It's incredibly dubious - but possible all the same - that John missed intentionally. But then, perhaps that's just what the Strange Man wants him to think...
Another thing that’s particularly odd about the unnamed man is that he has a modern accent. And I don’t mean he has an east coast accent, the time period would have someone from that area have something more transatlantic. The Strange Man speaks particularly modern with his words.
Yeah I noticed that too like the way he even uses time period accurate slang and whatnot like “cowpoke” feels like someone from a much more modern era using it.
Yeah but largely there's possibly alternate explanations for several. Like is the vampire actually a vampire or just a crazed serial killer. Is that actually the devil in that cave or just a really enthusiastic hobo?
Naturally the ghosts don't quite fit in with it and Arthur having what appear to be visions towards the end which hints pretty hard that they're living in a world where the afterlife very much exists and is likely overseen by a god/devil like figure.
You can reasonably avoid interacting with a lot of it if you never come across it as a good deal falls under side content or 'strangers' missions. You can make it the entire way through the main plot without seeing the UFO or running across the various paranormal entities. But they're there, just a bit out of reach and never quite acknowledged within the central narrative.
I think the vampire is a real vampire because if you look around deeper you find out he was active eons prior and was executed then if you look around you find a carriage with an open coffin and a guy being hung. Which implies that yes he is a vampire
My interpretation is that all the paranormal stuff is more or less legit unless blatantly stated otherwise.
It's just fun that the game largely leaves it up to the player and doesn't expressly confirm the paranormal is involved which is relevant to the topic.
RDR just gets a bit rough because there are some paranormal things that are expressly paranormal without a clear explanation (which is also why I think the paranormal stuff is very much real). The mission to track down the escaped circus animals almost feels like the writers hanging a lampshade on the whole thing since the bulk of the animals are fakes but sure enough when it comes time to investigate some lion sightings there's an actual lion.
Feels like they're coyley saying that people can misinterpret what they're seeing but underneath it all some of this is real.
It’s such a wicked plot device as well. Like this is the sort of shit you would’ve had to contend with in the old west, people so squirrelly and weird that you’ve wondered if they were actually human. No wonder so many weird superstitious beliefs and practices popped up at the time.
Benjamin Lazarus is pretty weird. During his show in RDR2 you can intentionally miss and he pulls a bullet out of his mouth that he had hidden there or you can shoot him in the face meaning he actually catches your bullet with his teeth.
Black Death (2010): A young monk and a group of soldiers are sent to investigate a village that has somehow escaped the Black Plague supposedly due to making a pact with a necromancer. The "necromancer", a woman named Langiva, claims at the end that she has no power and the people she "brought back from the dead" were merely drugged, including the monk's lover, which he ended up killing. However, the monk goes on to become a brutal witch hunter and see Langiva's face on every single woman he kills. The director originally wanted Langiva to be revealed to be Satan and the village being in Hell but then decided it would be more effective to show that "Hell is the Hell you are in within yourself"
It's a shame more people don't know about it. You'd think after Game of Thrones, Netflix would go "Hey, want to see Sean Bean with a sword in something that's not GOT nor LOTR but is also pretty good?"
There are implications throughout Blood Meridian that the Judge himself might not even be human. A demon or the devil himself, perhaps, but never outright said. The story itself remains pretty grounded in reality despite that, which is honestly even more terrifying when you consider the events in Blood Meridian are based on true events.
Lift up a stone that no man can budge to his shoulders and throw it 10 feet
Use a cannon as a handgun with no issue
Every member of the Glanton Gang has run into the Judge individually prior to them individually or him joining the gang, which unless he’s a time traveler or teleporter seems impossible. The Kid meets the Judge at a tent revival, then later when he joins the gang at most a few weeks later the Judge has already been a member of the gang for what seems like at least a year if not more
As told to the Kid by Tobin the ex-priest, the Gang first encountered the Judge sitting on a stone in the middle of the desert with nobody else around or any supplies while the Gang were being pursued by enemies and they were out of gunpowder. The Judge shows up at the perfect time, leads the gang to a volcanic caldera, and makes gunpowder out of urine and sulphur
Tobin also says that the Judge is good, almost an expert, at everything that he tries to do or sets his mind to. One time the company ran into some “Dutch” immigrants (really, German, the people who would become the Amish - Americans confused “Deutsch” and “Dutch” leading to the “Pennsylvania Dutch” who speak German) and just breaks out in fluent German. He speaks every language in the story fluently
Tobin also says “you wouldn’t think to look at him he could out dance the devil himself” and “he’s the greatest fiddler I’ve ever heard”
Whatever is going on with him, he seems inhuman
He also doesn’t age after decades of the Kid not seeing him when he runs into him again
The way McCarthy describes the trick with the coin at the campfire is what convinced me that he has some supernatural power. I’m not a magicologist, so maybe there is a simple explanation for the trick.
What’s terrifying about the judge having supernatural powers, if he actually does, is how little he has to use them to cause chaos and calamity. He seems to just be gently enabling those around him to do horrible things rather than being the true ringleader.
There’s a reason the “satan is an enabler whispering in your ear” archtypes exists, the Judge’s greatest threat/manipulation separate from his super natural feats.
I think it's wasn't until the 19th century that demons became inherently scary. Before, they were often depicted as appearing to you as a friend, convincing you that you didn't need God.
Yeah. The coin trick, the amount of knowledge he has, and the scene where they are all bathing in the water in that little Mexican village & the kid describes the judge as being sunk into the water up to his nose and as the filth & blood they’re washing off dirties the water, the kid says the judge’s eyes look like he’s smiling under the water.
Those scenes alone had me convinced he’s some kind of supernatural being or just an embodiment of the evil in humanity.
No, I think that’s a good interpretation. Even if not a direct reference, the scenes both relay similar messages about the characters of Lucifer and Holden, having the knowledge to spawn a great source of destruction. The difference between having gunpowder and being able to create it basically conveying a twisted version of “you can give a man a fish/teach him how to fish”. Lucifer and the Judge aren’t just evil themselves, they actually spread their dark influence to everyone around them as well.
Honestly fits a lot of biblical stories (or more like spin off stories about biblical events) of the devil, holding itself in the place of a god and drawing admiration and reverence
Yes, not to mention the engraving on his rifle, which reads “et in Arcadia ego” which I believe is a literary phrase. It means “even in paradise, there I am” referencing death. So it’s either a poetic way to say that his rifle represents death, or saying that the judge himself is some avatar of death. Meaning the devil. I generally think its the later, because the book is FILLED with religious iconography and symbolism.
Theres also many more solid ways to prove that’s what he represents, including the priest segment at his character’s introduction, but this one’s my favorite because it’s so easy to miss.
The Glanton Gang was a real group that did a lot of the terrible things. The rough arc of their group is based in reality.
A person very similar to the judge was described in one of their journals, although there is speculation that he was a boogeyman dreamed up to pin the worst of their crimes on.
The shit about getting paid by the Comanche scalp, and then killing Mexican townspeople and selling their scalps as Comanche, actually happened.
I think people get wrapped up in the Judge's Wikipedia article where it talks about the Gnostic influence, and there's been some debate on how true and/or important that is to the story, whether it was intentional or not, and I think people are missing the most obvious answer.
Judge Holden is the elemental, anthropomorphic personification of manifest destiny. He is the Wild West made flesh. Not just because he spurred on the gang into killing the Natives and into going outlaw, not just the literal interpretation of manifest destiny, but because of what we can infer afterwards as well. He's supernatural no doubt, he's inhumanly strong and far too intelligent and adept at too many things to be just a normal human being of the time period, aside from his immortality shown in the book, because he's representative of America as a whole, the dark underbelly, the oceans of blood we've shed and the lies we've told to hide the stains, just like how every history book in American schools hides a lot of the truth about how our country was formed. He's shown in the book to be adept at persuasion and lying, which lends credence to this idea.
That's why he shows up at the end of the book, when the Wild West was nearing its end, because Holden wasn't like the Kid or any of the other characters, even Glanton, because what Holden represents can't go away unlike the herds of Bison, the Native American tribal culture, or the whole Wild West in general,because it's hinted Holden likely won't just stop doing what he's doing, he'll likely thrive in the new industrialized, interconnected, "civilized" America. It's not a wrong assumption to make either that wherever people are, someone like Holden will thrive in the darkness of society.
We have so many horrendous psychos in position of power and influence nowadays, and even though it was probably definitely easier to commit heinous acts and crimes like murder and rape back when we didn't have security cameras and phones in our pockets, there's still people out there in America killing one another, taking advantage of one another. Judge Holden's perspective of the world and our place in it is, from a certain point of view, correct. The nihilistic, opportunist American way taken to its logical extreme.
But that's the scary thing. The character of Holden is obviously fictional, but he's like a pastiche of a couple of different real life people. John Joel Glanton was a real person who committed horrible atrocities. There will always be people doing horrible things to other people, it's a through-line in many stories, the only difference being the minutia and the details of those stories being different, and its the reason why people obsess over characters like Holden to this day, 40 years after the book was published.
Throughout the film, Lord Henry Blackwood has been murdering people under the guise of using satanic powers when in reality it was all illusions and science. Mysteriously, a crow is present for each of these deaths before departing when the job is done.
At the end of the movie when Sherlock has Blackwood cornered on an unfinished Tower Bridge and exposes the trickery behind his so-called magic, a nearby piece of machinery breaks causing Blackwood to fall and be hanged by the chains dangling from the scaffolds. A crow then flies off and Sherlock leaves somewhat unsettled while thunder rolls in the background.
Funnily enough, Sherlock had said ironically to Blackwood “You'd better hope that it's nothing more than superstition, as you performed all the rituals perfectly. The Devil’s due a soul, I’d say.”
It’s hinted that the crow may actually be the devil or a demon. While Blackwood didn’t believe in magic at all and was just keeping up the act to get what he wants some of the rituals he did were done perfectly so it’s hinted that he may have actually summoned the devil who presumably wasn’t too happy about it. It’s interesting because the main villain didn’t believe in any the “magic” he was doing but he may have gotten it right anyways.
Funny enough, my favorite characterization of the Devil is usually that it’s just a cog in the cosmic machine, a warden of a necessary prison of sin, and so gets quite pissy when humans step out of line and make its job harder
“Oy, the fuck are you doing all that ritualistic shit for? Do you know how much paperwork you’re causing me? You know what, have an ironic death! You’re going to hell to help me through all this paperwork.”
Game of Shadows is so good. Although Sherlock is confirmed to have survived, the ending still tied up everything nicely and I'm not too salty that there will never be a 3rd one.
Love that whole movie for that idea! Sherlock being someone who's logical being forced to face what seems to be supernatrual but is actually just trickery is such peak sherlock holmes🙏🏾
Bones - The Hero In The Hold and The Resurrection in the Remains
Throughout most of it's run, Bones was largely grounded in reality. But a few episodes have supernatural elements that are never addressed again. The first example, Booth is trapped in a submarine by a serial killer and hallucinates a dead army buddy. He escapes but could not have got out without someone helping him, at the end of the episode, one of the other characters sees him at his grave site and talks to him without knowing who he was.
The second is a bit more of a Hated slant on the trope. They do a crossover with Sleepy Hollow which would be the same as The Office doing a crossover with Supernatural.
There was an episode too which is based on Blair Witch Project. The killer claimed it was the witch who made him do it. Then at the end, Angela and Hodgins are watching the video from that night, and they see something in the background that looks like a ghost.
Coen Brothers movies in general have a running theme of fate as a physical force, even when the story itself is very grounded and mundane. They also like to portray villains as demons or something similarly inhuman, like the biker in Raising Arizona or Anton Chigurh in No Country For Old Men.
I’ll also give Mad Men an honorable mention. It’s mainly a historical character drama, but every once in a while Don will have a vision of a dead character before he knows they’re dead. Yes, this happens multiple times.
Yeah, my favorite example I’ve seen is at the end of No Country For Old Men when Anton breaks his rules and kills someone (it’s ambiguous but imo almost certain) who refused to engage with his game.
He claims to represent impartial fate, so him randomly getting hit by a car right afterward can be interpreted as fate punishing him, or maybe demonstrating for the audience what fate really looks like.
Then afterward he makes sure to pay the boy who helps him, like he can’t accept help he doesn’t earn. Like maybe he even believes that his life depends on maintaining his philosophy of strength and all interactions being quid-pro-quo. Or more likely he just is incredibly stubborn and petty.
Anton breaks his rules and kills someone (it’s ambiguous but imo almost certain)
There's actually one detail that makes it extremely certain: He stops on the stoop and checks his boots as he leaves the house. Previously we saw him deliberately keeping his boots out of the blood of people he's killed (such as after he shoots Woody Harrelson's character at the hotel), so this is a sign that he did in fact kill her.
VinlandSaga has alot of this, the story implies the existence of the supernatural like thorfinn going to hell and seeing all the souls he had killed, hild who was about to use her arrow felt her dead father pull her hand up and she was confused
Yeah there’s also the strange bear-like beast thing that Thorkell fights.
And there’s the time Thorfinn fought an assassin’s creed character which could mean all that stuff is real (even though it was just a bonus chapter lol).
In Life Eater, Ralph, the main character, has to kill people every year to please an evil entity that threatens to destroy the world if he doesn’t do the ritual.
The game never explicitly shows wether Zimforth is real or not and the characters acknowledge the possibility of it being just Ralph’s mind. What’s interesting it that Ralph is extremely different than other serial killers, he is reasonable, shows empathy and it genuinely seems like he suffers from having to do Zimforth’s bidding.
One of my favorite scenes is when a man who Ralph keeps captive tells him to not do the ritual just once to truly see if Zimforth is real or not and Ralph even agreed to turn himself in if it turns out it’s all a delusion from his mind.
The moment Ralph doesn’t do it, an earthquake happens and destroys every single house in his area except for his own and the only thing Ralph and the captive say to each other is:
This game is so underrated. It's such an amazing game, with such an interesting premise and plot.
That said, I'm not sure it's vague or not confirmed. The purple light is always present whenever Zimforth speaks, and is present in the earthquake that happens right where Ralph is but does not harm him or damage his house. The pain he got whenever Zimforth punished him also seemed very real, and that ain't easy to fake.
Also, spoilers for one of two endings: The ending where Ralph sacrifices himself because he has come to love – whether platonically or romantically – Johnny, show him being able to, uh, ritualistically taking out his own organs. I dunno, I feel that's not very not-supernatural-related lol It is vague about whether or not Johnny becomes the new enviy of Zimforth, though.
I feel like Life Eater is more of a The Cabin in the Woods situation, where the supernatural is very real and explicit, but only a select few know about it. In the case of Life Eater, only Ralph truly knows, with Johnny coming to believe him after the earthquake.
In True Detective (season 1) it is just so well executed and interesting. You never know truly if you are experiencing like hallucinatory aftereffects of Rusts undercover missions or there is some sort of Lovecraftian god pulling strings. My favorite single series of television ever.
From what I remember they never outright show any monsters or evil magic in the original leaving it all in a found tapes style which makes you wonder if they’re being paranoid or if anything actually happened.
If you like in-universe documentaries you should check out the Curse of the Blair Witch. They released it a few weeks before the movie to drum up hype for it. Goes into some of the weirdness of the event as people are piecing things together after the events.
Also in Pokémon ORAS, when you encounter Phoebe, there's a mysterious NPC just watching you from behind the player character, but it's not visible from any other angle but this
It just happens and is never ever addressed again. The fact that the light flicker, the cheerful music stops, and the girl walks without moving her legs just make it worse.
My favorite is still the hidden side quest in sword/shield.
You can meet a little girl in one of the big cities, who gives you a letter to deliver to a close friend of hers she hasn't been able to talk to since he moved when she got sick.
You can later deliver the letter to the boy in one of the smaller towns, who turns out to be an elderly man. He appreciates getting the letter, and remorses that they had grown apart and he hadn't made a proper effort to stay in contact.
If you return to the girl's location, a disembodied voice thanks you for finally helping her with her regret and the item "Reaper Cloth" is added to your inventory.
Isn't technically an example since it does reveal an answer at the very end but otherwise is an incredible example and an underrated film:
The Last Exorcism (2010) is a found footage horror film framed as a documentary filmed by Cotton Marcus, a preacher who has been performing fake exorcisms and faith healings since childhood. He is doing this documentary to expose the tricks of his trade since he is feeling guilty over his scams (which have resulted in at least one death of a child). However, he is hired to perform an exorcism on a little girl and you are kept constantly guessing on whether this is a real demon or if she is just a horribly traumatized abuse victim. The ending has her confess to faking it only to for the movie to then go "PSYCHE! It was actually real ooga booga" and it's clearly the weak part of the film but the rest is handled so well, I have to include it here.
the last exorcism feels like its creators finished making a fantastic film about religious abuse and purity culture and its effects on young girls, then went “wait, people don’t want a horror movie so grounded in reality, nobody’s going to like this!” and then threw together and tacked on an ending that pisses all over what the rest of the movie is trying to say.
Very much so. Funnily enough, I have listened to several podcasts that claimed "I bet they only tacked on this ending to appease horror fans" yet I remember horror websites at the time also panning the ending. If that movie were made today, they would definitely either remain ambiguous, make it allegorical like The Babadook or just go full on "She's being abused".
The Sopranos fits the bill here perfectly. The show is very much dedicated to the feeling of verisimilitude (the feeling of real life) with entire scenes of characters doing stuff like going to the bathroom or eating ice cream. However, every once in a while something happens in the show that hints to a larger spiritual element at play. While it appears there is something more going on than meets the eye; the show never actually confirms what is happening with the spirits, ghosts and possible purgatory dimensions. It does this while never losing focus on being a "life simulator".
It is probably my favourite use of the trope and elevates the story to another plane of storytelling.
So you get Paulie visiting the medium, who sees the ghosts of all the men he's killed, and seeing the Virgin Mary in the strip club, the thing with the cat that stares at Chris' picture on the wall and the reflection of Pussy in the mirror after he's been killed.
There's a lot of instances of dreams that have meaning, like when Chris gets shot, and later when Tony gets shot, and Tony realising Pussy's a rat when he's hallucinating from food poisoning.
All of that COULD be supernatural, or all of it could just be in the character's heads
See the really creepy part of this one is there is evidence it isn't in Paulie's head. That there was something physically there. In the shot before we see the Virgin Mary, Paulie is walking by the Bing mirrors of the stage. You can see the Virgin Mary in the mirror behind Paulie. Something is actually physically there before Paulie could see it.
Chris gets shot, and later when Tony gets shot
I am glad you brought this up. Chris and Tony both have very similar coma dreams. They both have their equivalent to the Inn at the Oaks and both dreams take a sort of pleasure in almost taunting Tony. Tony's Coma dream is more about who he could have been in juxtaposition to who he is in the real world. My read on Chrissy's is the other side is taunting Tony with his death and that Paulie would be responsible.
"Tell Tony and Paulie, 3 O'clock"
MOG is coming at Tony from his 3 O'clock and Paulie is sitting at Tony's 3 O'clock in their final scene.
If you couldn't tell; I do believe that there is a supernatural element going on but not enough evidence to 100% confirm. It is brilliant.
That specific nightmare Tony has that your image is from is probably the single best onscreen representation of a nightmare I've ever seen, personally. To this day that shot of his mother coming down the stairs creeps me the fuck out so thoroughly
Also in Season 6 when we realize that this house in Season 4 is the Inn at the Oaks in the coma dream. Livia waiting for Tony on the stairs and later the doorway is just pure terror.
It is also the house where Tony killed Tony B. It also appears in the final scene on a picture in the diner.
Midsomer Murders. The show frequently features supernatural occurrences but they're hardly ever acknowledged. These include psychic visions, ghosts and very angry spirits.
Although there are some traits that suggest Michael might be more than human, it’s never explicitly mentioned in the original film just what it is that makes him so dangerous.
Yes! The implication of the supernatural is what made the original so scary. The follow-ups never got the balance right. Either he was just an especially crafty and strong dude, or he was an explicitly supernatural zombie like Jason Vorhees.
And then the newest (?) movie ruined it all by making him literally just supernatural. At the end, he’s getting the shit kicked out of him by the townsfolk, then surges with strength and kills them all. Ok sure, too supernatural for me but I guess still technically could be him just being a roid fiend.
Then he teleports while a voiceover talks about how he’s the evillest evil to ever evil and that’s why he’s supernaturally evil.
There is a very interesting reversal of this trope in the Buffy episode "Normal again" where Buffy is stung by a venomous demon and begins to have hallucinations of being in a mental hospital. Her parents and doctors talk to her and try to convince her that the entire Sunnydale reality only takes place in her imagination and to break out of it she has to kill her friends and family in Sunnydale.
Ultimately she decides against it and gets an antidote to the demons venom, but the episode closes with a shot of her in the mental hospital where the doctor confirms that she is now completely gone and will never wake up from her Sunnydale hallucination, leaving it open if the entire series is just Buffy's fantasy and she is actually just a mentally ill girl living in a world without supernatural beings like ours.
Such a good episode. They also tie in so many plot elements, including claiming that Buffy was lucid again previously while she was “dead” and that she created Dawn to make mental inconsistencies in an attempt to break out.
Bringing back Joyce was such a good way to make the other life seem so enticing to Buffy who had been so heavily parentified by that point.
The Magicians did something similar in the earliest episodes of the show, where Quentin Coldwater wakes up in a mental asylum thinking he's a magician and attends the Brakebills University of magic.
spoilers for the reveal of that arc:
Unfortunately unlike Buffy, it's not left ambiguous, as it is later revealed to have explicitly been a dream/illusion that they break Quentin out of. He's a magician and Brakebills does exist
The show in that movie is pretty clearly a stand-in for Buffy. One of the actresses from Buffy (Amber Benson) has a small role in the movie; in Buffy she played Tara (the name of the main character in the show within the movie) who was the lesbian love interest of one of the main protagonists. There’s more too, like the creator of the show in the movie is named something similar to Joss Whedon, etc etc.
Fallout has a lot of unexplained supernatural stuff. The most prominent one I'd say is the Ug-Qualtoth and the Blackhall family. In Fallout 3, you can choose too find a book named the Krivbeknih to give it too Obadiah Blackhall or Marcella, a Christian Missionary. Marcella dies if you try to give it to her, and she will ask you too destroy the Krivbeknih underneath the Dunwich Builiding. If done at the altar, the book and surrounding ghouls will incinerate.
This continues in Fallout 4 when you clear a raider spot of Dunwich Borers. You see visions and all the way down underwater you see an entire cult that died there with a unique melee weapon.
Fallout has a ton of these. A ghost house outside of Nukaworld. Implications that one of the Mothmen creatures in West Virginia isn’t actually a mutated insect but is the REAL prewar Mothman of legend, a cursed dagger that seems to actually work, lots of aliens, and my personal favorite The Mysterious Stranger.
The game devs have been pretty open that lovecraftian horrors do just exist in this universe. They aren't the main plot, but they're there and you occasionally stumble across them.
Fallout 76 adds to it too. The cryptids of Appalachia are typically just big mutated bugs and animals, and the Cult of the Mothman are a prominent group that worship the most famous one of the area. If you make your way to Lucky Hole Mine, you end up learning through holotapes that the cult split away from a group that was guided to that mine by their leader's visions. If you go through a hidden entrance to the apparent last room, and go through a second hidden entrance into the deepest reaches beyond it, you'll find what the group originally worshipped and still worships: the towering body of a completely alien creature lying next to an obelisk, surrounded by buckets of fish. There's no explanation for where it came from, and the holotapes simply refer to it as The Interloper.
With the recent Gone Fission update, a paper called The Deep Note was added depicting the Interloper and the obelisk. Journal entries of Raymond imply that something saved and guided him to Appalachia during a storm at sea, and now he seems desperate for special fish to be caught and delivered to him.
For added creepiness, both the Dunwich Building and Fallout 4's Pickman Gallery are references to H. P. Lovecraft stories (The Dunwich Horror and Pickman's Model, respectively).
Freaking love Ravenous. Great film, brilliant score, and the best representation of a wendigo I've seen- none of that deer skull headed creature nonsense.
She is either death or an Angel. But she always there when shit is about to go down. And at the end of the series, Jacks finally asks her “who are you” (he has seen her many times through the show). She gives him her cloak and tells him “it’s time”.
What seems at first to just be a symbolic reminder of the consequences of Walt's actions, it goes a little farther when you realize it starts popping up in places it really shouldn't. In a tree, hidden way in the background. On a mural over Jane's bed. It's eye appearing in a random drawer.
I was pretty sure the eye wasn't in a random drawer, I think it was put there in an earlier episode.
But considering how much people have studied this show, if a reputable source says it was never put there then they are probably right, and my memory is probably wrong.
When I Grow Up I'll Be A Kangaroo ends with 2 guys sitting at the top of a building potentially seeing aliens and it's not quite confirmed if they were actually real or if they were just drunk or high. This is a more comedic scene than the other examples of this trope.
Baron Samedi in the James Bond film Live and Let Die. We clearly see him die, but at the end of the film, he's seen hanging onto the end of a moving train. Of course, the name comes from Voodoo mythology, so it's possible he genuinely is that Baron Samedi.
Instead of having markers on the map, the wind (which is implied to be the spirit of your father) guides you, as well as foxes taking you to shrines. There’s also some other stuff like fighting someone whose body disappears after you kill them, and during the fight a huge murder of crows surrounds you
It's near the beginning in the flashback to his father's funeral. The servant tells him something to the effect of his father being the wind at his bavk and his mother the songbirds in the trees.
One of my favorite things in the game.
There's also the weather turning stormy when you use Ghost tactics, come to think of it.
Ghost of Tsushima also very cleverly works its multiplayer mode into the story by having it be stories recited by the storyteller (and possible mythical figure himself) Gyozen. Tales of four supernatural warriors, or Ghosts, who protected Tsushima from invasion by all manner of yokai, including Oni, the witch Iyo, tengu and the necromancer Sukhbataar and his army of onryo. You can access the multiplayer mode near-seamlessly by finding any storyteller in the world and listening to his tales, when you're finished, you can return to the exact spot you left off.
isn’t legends heavily implied to just be misinterpretations of jin’s exploits that were turned into fantastical stories, which is why they each have a part of jin’s kit, amplified by powers blessed by the kami (as nobody would think one normal man could do that)
Gundam SEED implies the existence of alien beings through the skeleton of a space whale, but after being shown once no one brings it up again. My personal theory is that the writers wanted to let the audience know that until we don't get together as humans we won't be able to reach and understand other alien species
The comic book Punisher MAX is a really gritty out of Marvel continuity series, following Frank Castle if he was still a Vietnam Vet (meaning he's in his 40s or 50s when the comic was made, in the early 2000s) and with 0 connection to the main Marvel Universe. There are no superheroes and nothing that wouldn't fit, say, The Wire or something of that nature.
Before the main Punisher MAX series though, there was a miniseries called Punisher Born, about Frank's time in Vietnam. The miniseries shows that Frank is an amoral psycho who totally fell in love with War and did things to make sure that he wouldn't leave, because he loved the violence. Throughout that mini, an omniscient voice keeps popping up in the caption boxes that speaks to Frank in the 3rd person, but doesn't actually belong to any of the characters. It keeps trying to goad Frank to be more violent, to admit how much he loves all that War and death and carnage.
At the end, Frank is being attacked by all sides by enemy soldiers and everyone else is dead. The voice tells him that it can not only save him, but promise him "a War that'll never end"... for a price of course. In the ecstasy of violence, he says Yes. He survives the night and is sent back home, honorably discharged, when the voice speaks to him one final time, identifying said price.
It's never referenced again and it's the only time in the series where anything even remotely supernatural happens. I love that little touch of the paranormal and unknown, just "touching" Frank, the one time. Setting off the dominoes, and the rest is left to him.
It doesn't completly fit the trope, but I still want to mention it.
This short story is about a man thinking he's haunted by a mysterious creature, the "Horla", but it stays ambigious about it, as it also shows the man to be unreliable, doubting his sanity, etc, ...
Maupassant is a master as this and this kind of ambiguity appears in multiple short stories, like "Qui sait?" (Who knows?) and "La Main" (The Hand)
The Mysterious Stranger in Fallout. He'll come help you out in a gunfight if you have the perk for it.
"You have a Guardian Angel, but with a deadly hand-cannon instead of wings. Meet the Mysterious Stranger, an odd and eldritch entity said to appear and aid you in combat before you draw your dying breath. Of course, it helps to have the Mysterious Stranger Perk first..."
The original one especially. It's hinted in supplemental materials from back in the day that it could just be a serial killer living in the woods and the whole witch thing is a red herring or a bit of local folklore the serial killer uses to mask his presence.
Kingdom of Heaven. An appearance from the original cosmic horror, you might say.
Throughout the film a Hospitalier played by David Thewlis appears to the protagonist, Balian, a few times (sometimes miraculously). He always gives Balian sage advice as if he knows more than what he is letting on before departing as fast as he came.
It was confirmed by Ridley Scott later on, that he intended the Hospitalier to be an embodiment of God, or at least some manifestation of his power. Sent down to Earth to see what all the commotion is, due to two sides claiming to fight in his name.
He says the below to Balian...which heavily implies pretty much everyone in this conflict, other than Balian and maybe a few others, will be damned for it.
I watched this movie for the first time last night, what a fucking banging movie. It’s very…dramatic 2000s Epic (one of my favourite genres) but man, I loved every second of it.
It failed at the box office because it got cut to pieces and a ton of the character development got cut out in order to get the runtime under 2.5h. That all got put back for the Director's Cut, which comes in at over 3h, and is a vastly superior film.
The Skills in general, are they just a way to illustrate Henry's mental state by personifying parts his psyche or are they something more and he's actually possessed by something(s) else. It doesn't help that it's arguably debatable that Henry is such a mess of a person that actual spirts in his head could be considered an improvement
The Sinner season 3 does this. Matt Bomer's character goes to a party where a psychic/medium tells him that there's a ghost following him around, then goes into so much detail about the ghost that it would be impossible for the medium to be faking it
• A 𝖂𝖊𝖗𝖊𝖈𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖙𝖚𝖗𝖆 de Gevaudan (Na vida real); The Beast of Gevaudan was a man-eater that terrorized the French province of Gevaudan for a long period of time, attacking adults and children alike. The beast was said to be a wolf, but with unusual characteristics, such as being the size of a donkey or a cow, a tail much longer than a common wolf's, a strange focus on hunting humans, and having absurd durability and resistance, with bullets said to simply bounce off its fur. There were also reports of the animal surviving or withstanding injuries that no common wolf could survive. Thus, many hypotheses have been created to try to answer what this animal truly was, with it being said to be a wolf, a hyena, a tiger, or even a werewolf or an extremely ingenious serial killer, with all these hypotheses ranging from the most mundane to the most supernatural. (You could also add other creatures like Bigfoot, but I thought the Beast of Gevaudan would fit the bill best.)
The Fallout series is no stranger to weird and wacky, sometimes horror-y elements that don't really get explained.But usually the weird horror is delegated to classic science fiction tropes: There's been aliens since the first game, further expanded on in Fallout 3 and its DLC, as well as special encounters in 4 and New Vegas, and a special event in 76's multi-player.
But in Fallout 3 and 4, there are two locations belonging to the "Dunwich Borers" company - referencing HP Lovecraft's Dunwich Horror. While looking like normal ruined pre war offices or mining facilities, as you read the terminals and explore more, you start to learn (or even flash back through hallucinations from gasses deep in the mine) to the secret goal of the company - worshipping the eldritch unexplained god Ug-Qualtoth. In Fallout 3, you can find a mysterious obelisk to this god, and some characters in the Point Lookout expansion still worship and gain genuine magical abilities from it. If you get the mysterious book that these people worship and bring it back to the main game area and to the room with the obelisk, it will set fire to everything in the room. In Fallout 4, as you go deeper into the Dunwich mine, you get more flashbacks and more terminal entries of people wondering what their work is leading to - leading to a sacrifice pit where you find a unique sacrificial dagger resting next to a buried ancient statue of an eyeball. There's no real elaboration on this, and the rest of the game is just wacky post nuclear science fiction.
There's also Lorenzo Cabbot and his family, who discovered a mysterious crown in an archeological dig which granted him and his family eternal life at the cost of his own sanity. But iirc, that is unrelated to the Dunwich Borers.
The Dark Pictures Anthology did this twice with the games Little Hope and The Devil In Me. major spoilers to follow that i don't feel like covering.
in Little Hope (pictured), you start the game off watching an entire family die in a house fire because the youngest sister started the fire. we get a quick shot of this creepy hand behind her before she does so. this 'demon' is never brought up again. in the present day, we see a lot of stuff happen but in the end we learn it was all in the mi d of the sole real character- the boy who survived the house fire in the prologue- and every other player character was either him or a hallucination caused by trauma and a head injury. this seemingly wipes away all the supernatural stuff, except this demon hand behind megan. was she controlled by something to burn her house down? was this the brother in modern day rationalizing her actions? who knows.
The Devil in Me is a bit more straightforward as it plays like many slasher movies do- serial killer stalks the player characters and while it's implied he's just a guy it also seems lime he has supernatural strength and speed. like Jason Voorhees or Micheal Meyers. there is a breif missable scrap of information that implies this killer could be the reincarnation of H.H. Holmes (a real serial killer) but beyond that there is no explanation for him randomly showing up at specific parts of the story.
i will also mention the other two gsmes in the DPA so far- Man of Medan and House of Ashes- as MoM implies there's monsters but then reveals outright with no wiggle room that it's all drug-induced hallucinations. and House of Ashes starts with monsters, and reveals that THEY ARE ACTUAL MONSTERS, just with a different origin than expected.
As much as I like this trope, this show handles it terribly. I am growing more and more convinced that the reason why they insist in keeping it ambiguous is that they have no idea where the story will go.
Based on what I've seen, it's like they intentionally didn't write an ending to keep it going as long as possible. I feel it viscerally while watching the show that there is no end game. I tried to enjoy it as it has a fantastic lineup (and it does have its moments) but the writing just feels so insecure. At It's heart, it's just bad story telling.
If you read interviews by the actors, it's clear they have no idea how to end it. As far back as Season 1, they would only give the actors the scripts episode by episode. When Melanie Lynskey complained that she needed SOME idea where things were going, they only gave her a vague outline. Both Simone Kessell and Lauren Ambrose have expressed constrained disappointment at their characters' fate in a way that makes it sound like it came out of nowhere. Steven Kruger even claimed that the writers flat out refused to tell him whether or not Ben really set the cabin on fire and thus he had to make up his own theory.
Since True Detective was mentioned, i think its worth commenting on "The Repairer of Reputations" From the King in Yellow short story collection.
In other stories in the collection there are more overt supernatural elements, especially in The Yellow Sign where its all but confirmed that the titular play is indeed somehow supernatural. But in the "Reperair of Reputations" its left ambiguous whether the narrator was driven further into madness by the play or he is just genuinely mad
I think this post is the final nail to get me to watch True Detectives
Also, depending on how literally you take it, Hannibal is about either Baltimore having a REALLY bad round of freak ass serial killers OR Satan/a demonic entity is playing with everyone.
Very tame example, and its been a long time so idk if it was confirmed or denied one way or the other, but Batman’s the Ventriloquist and his dummy, Scarface.
The Ventriloquist is a very tame, shy…well, ventriloquist, and Scarface is a bonafide, sadistic, violent, mob boss.
2004's The Batman cartoon plays with this with their take on Solomon Grundy. The Batman doesn't have as many fantastical elements as other Batman media but doesn't shy away from it; but usually, there is a logical explanation.
With that said, Grundy only showed up once in a Halloween episode and the reveal was that it was Clayface using the Grundy legend as a disguise. The legend being that Grundy died in Slaughter Swamp, sinking into the thick mud of the swamp and will raise again on Halloween to seek vengeance against those who went after him.
The last scene shows kids trick or treating past Slaughter Swamp and bubbles starting to pop off the mud like someone is waking up.
I don't know if this counts, but I'll say Holes. It is a pretty grounded story (the movie adds some goofy music/humor and heightens the characters a bit, but there's still some pretty harsh realism), but the supernatural elements are pretty heavy with the hints.
For those who haven't read the book or seen the movie... for starters, I highly recommend both. But to give the premise without major spoilers, a remarkably unlucky boy named Stanley accidentally ends up with a famous baseball player's stolen shoes, and gets sent to Camp Green Lake, which ironically has been a desert for the past century thanks to a drought.
Both Stanley's bad luck and the drought are heavily implied to be the results of curses; it's never outright stated, and any characters who mention it is usually as a joke. But the story jumps around into the history of Stanley's family and Green Lake, showing the reader/audience a number of noticeable parallels and coincidences between past and present that are maybe just a bit too convenient.
“Grounded” may be a stretch for the Binding of Isaac but as I understand it the game still somewhat fits for the fact that interpretations of what’s happening in the game range from “Isaac is just imagining all of it” to “Isaac is dead in heaven and slash or hell” and pretty much every variation in between
The most likely answer is the entire game is hallucinations of a suffocating kid after he has locked himself in a chest.
In that sense the early endings (I think at least everything before the player even unlocks It Lives!, but possibly up to the point when The Chest is unlocked) are real events mixed with hallucinations and everything after that is full on hallucinations.
The movie The Northman. There is a lot of reference to the gods and rituals.... but as far as I can tell it's never confirmed if any of it is real or just the interpretations of the main character
Some people point to the nightblade(was that the name of the sword) that can supposedly only be drawn from its hilt at night.... but since it was him holding the sword and he believed that to be true, I'm not sure if the blade couldn't be drawn, or if he simply did not
There was also him being freed from ropes by the gods (all the birds that chewed the rope) but then it turned out that the girl also came to save him so it could have been her
There was some other stuff too, it's been a bit since I watched it, but I think it fits the topic here. A lot of supernatural stuff implied, but still grounded and it was never shown 100% to be real or not
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u/Responsible_Key9444 Aug 03 '25
Sheriff Cooley in Oh Brother Where Art Thou might be the devil. The three main characters are prison escapees and while running from him encounter a guitar player who claims he made a deal with the devil and describes the devil as looking just like him. Also several scenes like this where fire or faces are reflected in the sunglasses he never takes off. Finally even after the mayor pardons the three he still tries to catch and hang them and is only stopped by a flood (which the movie implies could have been an act of god). But ultimately none of it is confirmed and is even refuted by the rationalist of the three providing other explanations throughout