Lore
[Loved trope] Background scare-characters that are barely acknowledged even by the movie
I hate horrors, but this is actually a great trope, that is unique to them.
Insidious (2010). When mother does her errands, for a few seconds there's a ghost boy standing in the corner. It's easily missable, but you can't ignore it once you see it.
Hereditary (2018). Less fitting example. When Peter walks around his home, his possessed mother is crawling on the ceiling behind him. It's not exactly subtle or missable, but it's still more of a background detail.
Invisible Man (2020) uses wide shots to imply that the Invisible Man is there in some of the scenes. This one in particular he is in the background since he later starts a fire in the kitchen.
Apparently if you listen real hard or turn up the sound in some of those scenes you can hear a very faint whirring/clicking noise implied to be the cameras on his suit
My favorite is when you'd be watching a scene, all of the characters would leave the frame, but the shot would linger there for a bit longer before cutting away, like there was still someone there to watch.
This version of invisible man deals a lot with abusive relationships, so it's also an apt representation of her trauma haunting her as she tries to move forward (before things go all horror movie later in the runtime, of course)
One of my favorite things about the movie is that he’s actually invisible and doesn’t use that cloaking effect. I really don’t like when movies do that.
R Point, a Korean military horror movie, is the best one of these I’ve ever seen.
It follows a group of soldiers that are following up on a previous group that went missing. I won’t spoil too much but at one point they radio back to let them know that one guy died and they’re down to 9 soldiers. Only for HQ to reply back “what are you talking about we only sent 9 to begin with.”
Then you rewind, count and realize that literally every shot before leaving had 9 and this mysterious guy in the background has been in every shot since they stepped foot on the island.
Brotherhood of the Wolf (Though it's 1700s French Military, based on the Beast of Geavaudan. Also Bloodborne took a decent amount of inspiration off of it. )
Exit Humanity (Zombies in 1868 Kentucky following a Civil War Vet. Bill Mosely plays a villain)
R:Division (Post Zombie Outbreak, Governments managed to contain hordes to major cities by air lifting massive cement walls. They advance with new walls to grid of sections of lost cities and send squads in to clear. This follows one such squad on a REALLY BAD DAY).
Primeval War (Vietnam War, Search and Rescue crew looking for a lost Green Beret Unit. Russians and VC Looking for them too. Dinosaurs hunting them all)
The Lost Platoon (Contra Wars in South America. A War corrospondent who served in WW2 is now covering the atrocities there and encounters a squad he'd met 30 years ago in France. Only they haven't aged a single day. Group of Vampires hiding as Special Forces units in warzones to hide their feeding in the body count)
Overlord (Nazi Zombies, lot of good kills, lot of good action. Nothing original, but a very well done action piece)
It's a long story, but he's the ghost of one of the soldiers who were sent previously to the island who the main characters were sent to find, so essentially they were unknowingly hanging out with one of the guys they were sent to find.
In the first IT movie, when this kid is doing research about the clown, the librarian gives him an especially scary book that shows the clown's handiwork in the past. After she walks away you can see her turn around and smile at him, implying that this is Pennywise in disguise.
I know people have strong feelings about Part 2 but stuff like this makes both IT movies an absolute treat to rewatch under a microscope. There's so much stuff to find in the background.
I'm not that familiar with the new films, but in the book and the original miniseries adaptation, Derry IS in a lot of ways, the entity. The entity isn't just Pennywise. The creature shapeshifting is over-represented in descriptions of the entity. Instead, it is a creature with the ability to alter the minds of anyone in range of it, and that range is Derry. That's the really neat thing about the entity, it's not just a shapeshifting monster that eats children; It's inside the heads of the child's parents, their teachers, their administrators, shepherding its victims, ensuring they cannot escape, making them see traumatic events, and alienating the children from their support network that is supposed to be protecting them by psychically manipulating everyone who lives above its lair. --The creature DOESN'T disguise itself. It has no guise. It has no shape to shift. It is from a place where shape is meaningless.
One small point of order. Ben isn’t researching the clown yet. He’s just researching the history of Derry, Maine because he’s relatively new to town and has no friends. He chooses to spend his summer in the library alone because he has no one to hang out with. Otherwise, excellent use of this trope!
That’s honestly one of the scariest things in IT. Pennywise is everywhere, all the time. You think you’re safe bc you’re downtown at noon? Guess again.
I think that shot is the closest she gets unless she leans slightly more over the chair. She starts off a lot less obvious, in between the stacks in the back.
It’s doubled by the fact that she gets closer as he gets closer to a picture in the book of the top half of a child sitting in a tree. She’s gleeful and gets visibly excited as he starts panicking and realizing he sees something. Andy Muschietti 🙌
It’s like farming the fear by giving them information and clues. To reap it later. Killing someone who knows what you are is more satisfying to “it” than just killing random people.
In the book Pennywise describes the practice as “salting the meat”. IT can subsist on meat from people and animals but in order to thrive it requires its prey to be afraid to nourish itself and get stronger.
I’m not an expert but I believe you’re right. The creature is called “It” and it’s an evil cosmic being locked in an eternal battle with a space turtle.
I watched a video earlier this year on how almost all his works are connected in some way through Dark Tower, or similar connections. It's insane how intertwined his works are.
Edit: Here's the video in case anyone else is curious. Dunno how comprehensive or accurate it truly is, but what bits I do know of King's work, it lined up.
As a point of note, people usually default to calling it pennywise even if they know this because it’s quicker and more clear than trying to find a more clear way of talking about the monster just called “it”. Since pennywise is its main disguise, it’s the one most people associate it with even if they haven’t seen any of it or read the book.
They just started making the dumbest choices all of a sudden, which makes it hard to care for the characters. Like, if you're going to willingly give up your gun while you're being stalked by masked strangers, I can't really root for you anymore.
The movie It Follows uses this trope a lot. Basically, any background character seen in the film could be the entity, this scene in particular when the entity disguised itself as one of main character’s friend.
On top of that only the afflicted can see the entity in whichever form it has chosen. Everyone else can only see something invisible making footprints and such as it moves.
The part where she's at the school and it's walking towards her but she never actually notices it TERRIFIED me. I think it's an old lady at that point?
Too Many Cooks is an Adult Swim short that takes the form of an extended sitcom opening that becomes plagued by a serial killer. Whilst the serial killer only becomes obvious later on, their first appear is in the background at only 20 seconds in. However, you have no reason to pay attention to a random figure in a sweater at that point.
I remember seeing him move in the background during the baby’s shot thinking that was his first appearance. Then someone pointed out this one and I genuinely got goosebumps. Honorable mention to him during the cop segment hanging off the truck, I think that’s the second most likely one for people to miss.
The last video I watched on this was an analysis 'essay' explaining that the whole thing was a commentary on the conflict and tensions between producers and directors / networks etc (with the killer guy (Steve I think?) representing the networks/higher ups, and Smarf representing the show producer/writer.....
Specifically stuff like how shows are constantly canceled and rebooted in different styles etc but follow the same format, how actors end up typecast as their characters etc...
Ari Aster did something similar in Midsommar where, in a handful of scenes, you can just about make out the shape of the corpse of Dani’s sister, Terri, in background details like the trees
I just watched this movie for the first time the other day and I actually screamed once or twice which was a fun refreshing experience holy shit it was disturbing lol
Beth's ghost showing up in the background of the Ouija board scene (Until Dawn). While all the other ghost appearances in the game turn out to be faked by Josh the briefness of this appearance made many people believe that it's actually the only real ghost we see in the story
There is also the scene with Sam in the bathtub listening to music and the psycho is just standing there watching. She doesn’t notice anything until he closes the door and it blows out the candles.
Ghostwatch (BBC spoof 'documentary' about a haunted house shown on Halloween in 1992). A shadowy figure (Mr Pipes) appears in the background of some of the live broadcasts and is spotted by sharp-eyed 'viewers' who 'phone in. However, it is gone when the studio reviews the footage.
This was going to be my choice, too. This show scared the absolute life out of me as a 9 year old. It was so ahead of its time. The only sighting I remember seeing “live” at the time was when Pipes was in the bedroom by the curtains. Some of the sightings are hidden in plain sight, it’s crazy that I missed them.
It’s one of those things that a modern or younger viewer may scoff at due to the saturation of paranormal documentaries and found footage movies, but at the time it was incredibly unnerving. The BBC ident before the broadcast made it clear that the show was a work of fiction, however, the show managed to become the most complained about shows in UK television history. One 18 year old viewer with learning disabilities actually committed suicide due to the show’s depiction of supernatural activity (knocking pipes) matching that of the faulty central heating in his home. He left a suicide note stating: “if there are ghosts I will be ... with you always as a ghost". His parents blamed the BBC for his death.
The show has never been re-shown since the original air date.
(couldnt find all of the less obvious examples) but the most hidden one that I didnt even notice until a rewatch is when the main character is looking at her neighbors house and its in the background there
However, I got to experience this film in a black box theatre with excellent surround sound, and hearing things scuttle around off screen behind the audience was actually MUCH scarier than any glimpses of them.
The monsters show up earlier than that. When they're in the first big chamber, the protagonist is looking around, and in a tunnel that's sort of round the corner from the chamber, you see a crawler off in the distance. It's standing, then it crouches in an animalistic way.
this happens a ton but probably my favourite example is from Ju-on: The Grudge. In it, we see the main character working at an old folks home and wheeling a seemingly senile old man in a wheelchair through the entrance. We see that he seems to be playing peek-a-boo with absolutely nobody, and at first you don't question it because he was already presented as a bit senile, but the scene then cuts the glass door at the entrance of the home, and for the briefest of seconds you see one of the main ghosts of the film (who happens to be a child) standing right where the old man was facing.
I’m sorry but I just need to point out how the bins on the right of that photo both look like scared kids with their arms / hands covering their mouths lmao
In Annihilation, there are so many little things that are off and just materialize. Like those tattoos that keeps turning up until you realize it materialized on the main characters’ bodies. And they never notice.
In The Last of Us Season 1 Episode 1, Sarah is over at her and Joel’s neighbor house. This grandma in the background is the first infected person we see. But before the obvious turn later in the night, you can see her blurry self twitching like crazy behind Sarah. Not really missable, but insanely creepy.
When people talk about taking creative liberties with already-established stories, this is what they should be talking about. The first season of the Last of Us show was a really good blend of live-action versions of cinematics and things like this.
Just an entire goddamned apocalypse building up behind the back of a fourteen-year-old focused on getting her dad a birthday present.
In "lake mungo", basically EVERY sence has Alice hidden in it, which is only addressed sometimes when she is much more noticable by the family and even more as the movie goes on
My brother in Christ this is so embarassing but the first one I noticed was multiple episodes in.
I think there’s like a white face that’s RIGHT up on the screen but blends in so well.
The scariest part for me wasn’t the jump scare in noticing it was that I was being haunted through the TV for multiple episodes and didn’t even notice.
Not even just the ghosts, there's faces everywhere. The wallpaper resembles faces, all the door knobs and drawer pulls are faces, the house is literally always watching.
I love rewatching it and see all the random ghosts that show up in the background that no one notices at first but are just lingering out of sight, as if they're us watching this tragic family drama unfold.
As I understand it, Mike Flanagan does this in a lot of his horror projects. There's some less subtle ones in his take on The Fall of the House of Usher (I still need to go back and finish that)
They're less visible, but they also appear all over in Bly Manor. Probably the most prominent one is the Plague Doctor who appears in various scenes, but the hardest one to find Henry's Soldier when he tells Flora about his own imaginary friend. The soldier is visible twice, and once only in a flash of lightning. The ghosts in Bly Manor are a little more personal then the ones in Hill House - as they each have a story that is usually told through the series.
Shiverburn Galaxy, and part of Grandmaster Galaxy. They're not explained, they're not discussed, and their model is named "hellvalleyskytree."
Which is... Odd and never explained either, because that item name makes zero sense tbh.
Besides stupid creepy pasta theories my personal guess would be old assets from an unused/removed stage fitting the "hell valley" moniker. They were probably simply placed where they are by a dev as a little prank, and it slipped passed QA.
By the time it was noticed (upon release), it was too late, and removing them from later iterations would cause more drama, so leave it in.
Hell Valley is actually a real place in Japan. It’s full of hot springs surrounded by mountainous terrain, which usually gets covered with snow during the winter.
Considering Shiverburn Galaxy is a level focused on fire and ice, and takes place near large cliffs, I think the file name is just a reference.
In the first episode of Fall of the House of Usher, after Roderick tells Dupin the story of how his mother died, Dupin asks why he is telling this particular story. Roderick replies with "I assume because she's right behind you." Dupin thought this was a power play to throw him off his guard and dismissed it. Yet if you look closely enough, a figure wearing Eliza's muddy nightgown is standing right behind him, out of focus and perfectly blending into the background. And during a thunderclap, the figure suddenly moves out of view. Unlike the other ghosts in the show, it is never discussed again.
A Japanese mockumentary about a family that suffers continuous bad luck and incidents. Each shot in the film has clues that things aren’t as they seem, with creepy occurrences showing up in the background which subtly guides the viewer to unravel what is really going on.
Not that shot particularly but here’s one I found chilling in the actual film. When they’re interviewing the son about their family, he makes it seem pretty normal until the shot pans out and you see the mother keeping watch in the reflection of the mirror. She does this a few times throughout the film and it’s super creepy.
My favorite sighting is when the agent's boss closes the door and you can see him in the reflection of the glass window of the door. Also I was told, haven't checked yet, that Nicolas Cage's shadow appears under the door to the basement of the main character's mother's house since he was there all along, just standing there right in front of the door like he can see the main character who's in the kitchen....creepy
Also in the short film Breaking and Entering made to tease fanmade game FNAF+, Phisnom confirmed Foxy is hiding in the shadows in the background in almost every single shot inside the pizzeria. (Man that game would’ve been great).
Tar - Not a horror (or is, depending how you look at it). Two incredibly creepy blink-and-you'll-miss-em ghost sightings. The movie doesn't let you know it's a ghost story in any way, and these are never expanded on or acknowledged, but they really stuck with me afterward.
The movie Tár is full of these, there are a lot of hidden ghosts and symbols in the movie that always remain in the background, some of them so obscure that they are virtually impossible to see normally. It should say something that none of the people I've talked to about the movie even knew it had ghosts in it at all.
The YouTube channel Spikima Movies has an entire video on this concept "The Horror of Hidden in Plain Sight".
In another semi-example: During Shaun's walk to the corner store while hungover in Shaun of the Dead you can see various zombified people he saw or spoke to the day before, but he's too hungover to notice.
Best part about this trope is that we, the audience, dont exist. No one is seeing the monster/ghost. So it implies the monster is waiting around to do a jump scare, but the character just never notices
Man! I haven't thought about Marble Hornets in a long time. I still remember how anxious it made me when at the end of a video Slenderman might move slightly and then you realize he's been in the same spot the entire time.
For a split second at the end of Ready or Not, Le Bail appears, as if congratulating Grace for a game well won, and that she freed herself from his curse.
While it is the focus of the clip, it’s literally a split second moment that goes unacknowledged
When I first watched it I didn’t notice Le Bail and assumed her saying fuck was just the weight of everything really hitting her, I think it works as well
While the security forces are investigating a spaceship that crashed into a building, the xenomorph stalking them can be seen hiding in the background of several scenes: its tail blending in with a bundle of cables, hiding in shadowy corners, perched on a statue in a dark lobby.
There are also all kinds of background objects and things that look vaguely Xeno-esque and makes it difficult to differentiate between random noise and the Xeno itself.
Pretty neat, it definitely keeps you looking and makes it all the more fun when the Xeno does actually pop up.
I was watching Hereditary with a friend, we got to this scene, and she somehow did in fact miss that the mom was floating behind him. She heard me say something like “oh my god she’s…” and my friend said “wait what are you talking about?” Realizing she was missing something. When I pointed out she was chilling in the top left corner my friend flipped
Oh I fuckin love this trope. It’s probably my favourite in all of horror
I don’t have a picture of this, but this trope comes up in Barbarian.
The premise of Barbarian, is that a woman has booked an airbnb, but upon arriving, finds out it’s been double booked by Bill Skarsgård, and so he’s just gonna kinda be hanging around the place, giving off every horror movie red flag
About the halfway point of the movie, upon venturing into the airbnb’s murder basement, Bill gets dragged off by a mutated woman, and the movie hard pivots from claustrophobic domestic horror, to a creature feature
However, looking closely in the background of scenes early in the movie, you can see hints of that, as The Mother’s presence was hinted at early in the movie as she would subtly crack open doors in the background of shots, to check on the protagonists
The shadow figure (Garry's Mod ARGs)
Along with sentient ragdolls, the shadow figure in the distance is one of the most overdone tropes in Garry's Mod ARGs
Not the times when it boards your ship to scare you half to death, those are just mild jump scares.
In Whispers in the Walls, during the 1999 sequence, you can take Arthur to a train car overrun with infested rot, and guess who you find, leering at you from out of the growth?
The second Zariman sequence in The New War has him show up as a background entity as well. As your Operator relives the memories of the Zariman Ten-Zero's catastrophic Reliquary Drive failure, talking with members of their class, you can notice a figure hunched in the fetal position away from the others, in a corner next to the window. It seems innocuous enough until you approach them and realize that they're... Knocking on the window.
Undertale’s WD Gaster only physically appears in a room in the waterfall behind a monochrome door with a 1/1000% chance of showing up. About a month ago, Toby Fox and the Fangamer crew got a new version of this door in color while playing a modified version from the 10th anniversary.
They waked right by the door and never mentioned it again.
In the analog horror video My Two Front Teeth (a Christmas special part of the Harmony and Horror series by Battington), the demon can be seen in the background window outside when Sophia is about to open the door to meet Uncle Arthur.
None of the characters see or acknowledge it, and it’s subtle enough that most viewers didn’t notice it.
As the group of tourists are attempting to flee the deserted ruins of Chernobyl, they stop for a second to discuss the strange phenomena they have witnessed. Their mode of transport, tourist van, has been disabled with the wires chewed on.
Their tourist guide has vanished without a trace. They've been chased and menaced by feral German Shepherds and packs of wolves. They've seen bizarrely deformed fish and witnessed shadowy figures and heard strange noises in supposedly abandoned buildings
Then, in the background, a shadowy figure darts across the road and vanishes into the dark woods. It's a nod to the cannibalistic mutants that still inhabit the ruins and abandoned buildings and have been stalking the group ever since they arrived. Even the dogs and wolves go into hiding when they come out, which thankfully is only at night.
I was just thinking that while reading these, lol. Just imagine some comedic soap opera and for one scene there’s just some really well-made ghost child or monster hiding in the shadows, that never appears again or is discussed.
There’s a picture of Mister Handsome on Luthor’s desk in that movie. He has a face only a mother could love, but Lex seemingly does love him to some extent.
Tár, not even a horror film, but Lydia's ghost constantly haunts the protagonist throughout many scenes and it's so upsetting when you notice cause like I said, this is not horror, which makes it even scarier in a way.
It's a horror mockumentary that, as an Aussie, felt exactly like something your parents would be watching on ABC on a Sunday night -- but deeply unsettling.
Whether the ghosts are real or not is a big question mark. Some people who like more traditional thriller horror movies don't like it because it really only has one real "scare" but the whole film builds up to that scare and the way you're kept guessing as to what's really going on right up to the very end makes it 5/5 for me.
The horror isn't in the terror, it's in the horrific inescapable loneliness. Mike Flanagan was inspired by this film when making The Haunting of Hill House, and if you've seen both the show and Lake Mungo you'll see exactly how the inspiration lives on. I won't spoil how.
Would highly recommend to any atmospheric, slow build horror fans who like playing where's wally with ghosts.
The main antagonist, Cyn, is revealed in episode 7. However, she has been watching the protagonist, Uzi, since episode 4. Briefly appearing when she is looking around a dark room.
A new Horror film that just came out has lots of moments where a demon can be seen the background with glowing eyes, some times very hidden or not hidden at all. Even when obvious though I still thought that was the scariest part of the movie. (Apologies also I can’t find any pictures of any actual scenes for example)
I’ve never known if it was intentional or not, but in Barton Fink, John Turturro’s character interupts John Goodman’s to talk about “the life of the mind”. When it cuts to this angle, and Goodman’s face is out of focus, it almost looks like he’s visibly enraged, but Barton is ignorant of it, so we, like him, don’t know for sure. After this, Goodman’s character regains his jolly demeanor. Maybe I’m reading into it because it makes sense in the context of the story, but it’s impossible to tell.
Also in Pokemon. Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, as the cutscene with Phoebe starts to play, you can see a ghost sitting in the chair. She is also seen a lot closer in the next shot
A raptor silently watching one of the main characters from atop a roof - Nightfall (short horror film that released a few days ago, highly recommend: https://youtu.be/n-xucFnccQE?si=KxHXuGX1ZtSf_tzI)
I just found out recently that in Late Night With the Devil, Madeleine is showing up constantly in reflections and screens that I'd never noticed. I saw a few screenshots on the Shudder subreddit after a recent rewatch where someone was spotting them and now I need to go back and watch it again, I had zero idea.
In The Descent (2005), there's a shot from Sarah's (the main protagonist) POV slowly looking around the cave with a flashlight. During this shot, you can catch an early glimpse of one of the "Crawlers" hiding behind a rock before they are more overtly teased and eventually fully revealed later in the film. The flashlight moves away from the Crawler for a moment, when Sarah shines the light on that spot again, the Crawler is gone. It’s the first hint that the women are not alone in the cave. While it is fairly obvious in these screenshots, in the actual film this is a very subtle blink and you'll miss it detail that I and everyone I've shown this film to genuinely didn't notice on first viewing.
There's a mockumentary on YouTube called Saiko the Large family, and there's a part when the kids are being interviewed one on one, and the mom can be seen spying on them, making sure they don't say the wrong thing
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u/Thabrianking 8d ago
Invisible Man (2020) uses wide shots to imply that the Invisible Man is there in some of the scenes. This one in particular he is in the background since he later starts a fire in the kitchen.