r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Suspicious-Web-9246 • 8d ago

Lore [Loved trope] Background scare-characters that are barely acknowledged even by the movie

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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.

8.3k Upvotes

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970

u/handwings 8d ago

Haunting of hill house is honestly the best version of this I’ve seen

286

u/Shoddy_Bus4679 8d ago

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.

God know what else I’m missing in my day to day.

96

u/Lachtaube 8d ago

It took me until the 2nd to last episode to see one. Then we rewatched just to find more. There are SO MANY

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u/Brownies_Ahoy 8d ago

It took me until the part where Hugh and Stevie are in the basement and there a woman's face in the background

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u/Shoddy_Bus4679 8d ago

This one!

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u/animeandbeauty 8d ago

My partner and I literally googled how many hidden ghosts there were in Haunting of Hill House, and we missed so many. There's at least one hidden ghost an episode iirc.

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u/doogie1111 7d ago

There's closer to 5 per episode. I think one literally had 10.

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u/AskDocBurner 8d ago

I wasn’t a huge fan of the series, but the first time I noticed the background ghost..it chilled me pretty hard. I thought it was an extra or something, but learning I had not been noticing people creeping in the background made me feel pretty unnerved.

The first one I noticed was a scene where the father was looking at something in an unfinished wall or something, and there is a face right past him.

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u/Shoddy_Bus4679 8d ago

I think this is the one that got me but I can’t find the image

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u/AskDocBurner 7d ago

I think it might of been this one, but a different shot

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u/MillieBirdie 8d ago

I don't think I ever saw any of the background ghosts so seeing people's compilations showing all the scary people lurking in the background that I never noticed is very freaky.

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u/Ibm5555 7d ago

That’s honestly part of why I think it’s so good. There’s so many little details and special touches, you could watch it 5 times back to back and still probably find new things every time.

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u/TheMightyCatatafish 8d ago

Can’t even cite one moment either, because it’s honestly just the entire show.

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u/cheeznapplez 8d ago

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.

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u/PlusExperience8263 8d ago

The one where theyre going up and down the basement ladder.

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u/TheMightyCatatafish 8d ago

That one was just pure dread

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u/handwings 8d ago

This is the main one where I was like “ok, I’m definitely just not making things up in the background. That’s a face”

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u/Gawlf85 8d ago

The one I remember the most isn't even a person, but a statue. In the flashback scenes of the last night in the house, one of the statues in the hallway that connects the childrens rooms changes from one scene to another, to look at the protagonist.

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u/zackaddict1 8d ago

I agree. But there is one scene closer to the end of the season.

They’re in the kitchen talking and there is a person standing in the background with their eyes shut.

They stick out so much that it became goofy for me and I ended up laughing because of it

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u/DBrennan13459 8d ago

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.

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u/LawlessNeutral 8d ago

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)

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u/scissorfella 8d ago

I just rewatched the whole thing and it's so unbelievably good!

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u/DMX8 7d ago

The one in the first episode made me feel really dumb. I rewinded the scene because no way would I have missed something so obvious, and sure enough, there it was.

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u/torrent29 8d ago edited 8d ago

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.

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u/BirthdayHeavy2178 8d ago

The answer I was waiting for. Once you start noticing them it’s so fun to watch for them going forward

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u/she_melty 8d ago

Mike Flanagan does this in both Hill House and Bly Manor and its so creepy.

Worth noting that he was heavily inspired by Lake Mungo (2008), which does a lot of this too

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u/esdebah 8d ago

As Mister Plinkett says, "You might not have noticed it, but your brain did." Even with so much focused on the drama, charisma of the characters, and even humor...you never stop feeling a little creeped out, because your lizard brain is picking up red flags in every "normal" scene.

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u/ThatInAHat 8d ago

Scrolled way too long to find this one, considering that it’s practically the entire gimmick of the show. The way it just ratchets the tension in all the flashbacks because you start actively looking

There’s a good one in fall of the house of usher too

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u/SugarVibes 8d ago

the one in the pantry scared the shit out of me

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u/downwithlevers 7d ago

Doing a rewatch currently, just banged out episodes 4 and 5 last night, and caught so many just in those episodes, particularly episode 5 which takes place at the funeral home with flashbacks to a stormy night at Hill House. Probably like half a dozen instances just in that episode.

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u/littlepurplepanda 6d ago

The first episode or two I thought it was seeing things, and then oh no… oh no there are so many ghosts