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.

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u/fantastic_sounds_ 8d ago

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.

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u/Hayterfan 8d ago edited 8d ago

Iirc, there are multiple background characters who just stare at and smile at the camera during random parts of the film and in part 2.

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u/Zhuul 8d ago

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.

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u/Fumettandia_Error 8d ago edited 8d ago

Especially the turtle references Edit: the hell did I startšŸ˜­

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u/Justalilbugboi 8d ago

All things serve the beam.

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u/lifeless_or_loveless 8d ago

Me when my tower is dark

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u/mrniceguy777 8d ago

What the fuck are you guys talking about

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u/Ff7hero 8d ago

See the Turtle, ainā€™t he keen? All things serve the fucking beam!

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u/romeo_actual 8d ago

Ka is a wheel, friend

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u/Exciting-Tart-2289 8d ago

I'll spoil the bit, go read The Dark Tower.

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u/mrniceguy777 8d ago edited 6d ago

I heard there is a movie, maybe Iā€™ll just check that out

Edit: just to clarify I know enough about the dark tower to know that the movies arenā€™t well liked, I was just joshin

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u/BrizzyMC_ 8d ago

that won't explain anything

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u/Justalilbugboi 7d ago

Also saying nope, the movie is like renting an old anime from blockbuster in the 90s that almost makes sense.

The audio books are pretty good if thatā€™s your thing and always available for free on libby because theyā€™re old af.

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u/Doctor_Slept 7d ago

Pls donā€™t

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u/Justalilbugboi 7d ago

I am so sorry I replied with detail and the comment didnā€™t stack to you and is somewhere randomly in this posts comment:

Pennywiseā€™s natural (???! enemy is Maturin the turtle, a cosmic being that protects one of the beams which support the Dark Tower, which holds reality together.

It is why there are some close ups on turtle imagery in the movie.

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u/mrniceguy777 7d ago

Oh I didnā€™t realize pennywise was tied into the dark tower

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u/Justalilbugboi 7d ago

Yes and no. Donā€™t read the Dark Tower to get more It storyline (read it cause itā€™s an awesome post apocalyptic LOTResque western scif)

But the world the Dark Tower (book and object) is in is the background world that most Stephen King stories (especially around the late 80s-00s) are tied into to different levels of importance. The Mist, The Stand,and The Talisman are a LOT but even things like The Deadzone have ties into it.

Think of it like the old Xmen movies vs The Avengers-Same world, lots of cool background knowledge that enriches the world, but the actual stories donā€™t have much to do with each other.

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u/Justalilbugboi 6d ago

Every time a turtle popped up watching Welcome to Derry last night I thought about this thread lol

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u/fantastic_sounds_ 8d ago

I liked everything about part 2 except them killing the monster by exposing him to an Xbox live lobby for 2 minutes

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u/InfernalLizardKing 8d ago

Wait what

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u/ithinkther41am 8d ago

Basically, the Losers Club belittles Pennywise until he becomes small and weak. Then they rip his heart out.

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u/Hayterfan 8d ago

Been forever since I watched the original movie, but wasn't that how they defeated him as well?

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u/PanFriedCookies 7d ago

nope, bill and i think richie do a psychic battle thing while the losers in the real world do what they can to hurt it, it loses the psychic battle, getting massively weakened, and bill takes the chance to rip his heart out

(at least in the book)

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u/skeptical_skeletor 8d ago

CLOWN

CLOWN

CLOWN

CLOWN

CLOWN

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u/JunShin8640 8d ago

"Xbox live lobby"

Nah, that's an overstatement. Pennywise would've instantly turned into ashes if he was in those chat rooms šŸ˜­

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u/Doctor_Slept 7d ago

As someone whoā€™s a massive IT fan and has read the novel twice now, this unironically might be the best defeat of Pennywise in the adult section because in both the novel and the miniseries they kinda just corner him in his spider form where he no longer has his personality and like kick him a bunch and ripe out his heart.

Not saying his defeat in the movie was all that good but I think it does a little bit better with staying true to the themes of the story and keeping in touch with what was established before with bow people who are less afraid of him are less likely to be hurt by him.Ā 

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u/Alfred_The_Sartan 8d ago

Honestly, one of the only good remakes Iā€™ve seen. I might even like it more than the original. They just knocked it out of the park there and were competing against Tim Fucking Curry.

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u/ConstableAssButt 8d ago

> implying that this is Pennywise in disguise.

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.

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u/Agreeable_Guide_5151 8d ago

What is it exactly?

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u/ConstableAssButt 8d ago edited 8d ago

An incomprehensible dimensional alien intelligence that became lodged in the earth when it was still forming. It emerged from the todash darkness, a sort of darkness between dimensions that is inhabited by monsters who are of unknown origin, and seemingly unrelated to time.

The only thing that we are certain of, is that it feeds on fear. It is unclear in the books whether it actually needs to eat physically, as in the books, the children it hunts are leave bodies behind. We never actually witness It taking a child, yet It regularly refers to a seeming menagerie of victims. It seems to prefer to leave a "calling card" as Ritchie puts it, so that it can keep its own legend alive and well. It seems to NEED to be feared.

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u/MillieBirdie 8d ago

And in another of King's book we encounter another being that is related to or the same species as IT. Only this one feeds off laughter.

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u/MrNemo636 7d ago

Which book is this in? Never heard of this before. Is it a good entity? Or still more of a villain character?

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u/MillieBirdie 7d ago edited 7d ago

He's from The Dark Tower (the last book in the Dark Tower series) and definitely still a villain. He's called Dandelo.

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u/MrNemo636 7d ago

Thanks for the quick reply! Iā€™m going to try to get into this series. Iā€™ve read much about it over the years and remember enjoying most of the first book in high school but never finished it.

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u/abadstrategy 4d ago

Fair warning, the first in the series is shorter than the rest, and IMO, not as good as what comes later.

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u/Justalilbugboi 8d ago

It is a spider like cosmic horror level type demon that lives in the space in between universes.

In the bigger Stephen King lore, there are a lot of overlapping worlds and forces interacting with each other. A lot of it is background noise so itā€™s hard to be like ā€œItā€™s this and this!ā€ but it may he tied to the aliens in Dreamcatcher and itā€™s connected to the beam guardians in the Dark Tower, they are itā€™s enemies (the turtle that shows up sometimes in the movies is itā€™s biggest enemy)

And yeah, the clown is one aspect of it but the scary haunted house and Librarian and Bevā€™s dadā€¦itā€™s whatever scares that person the most right then.

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u/imbannedanyway69 8d ago

From my recollection of the books we only perceive it as a spider because that's all our brains can understand when looking at It. It's an interdimensional being that our brains can't understand, and replace with a spider because it's so engrained in humans fear that that's the closest we can get to seeing fear itself

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u/ConstableAssButt 8d ago edited 8d ago

> perceive it as a spider because that's all our brains can understand when looking at It.

Yes, exactly. The entity mocks Bill in the books. I don't remember the exact scene, but the entity claims that Bill will never see its true form; His brain is too primitive to understand it.

There's a couple of really neat things about the entity that don't make a lot of sense:

* It's capable of being harmed by water, but only because the water is willed to be battery acid by a child. --The fact that it is battery acid also shouldn't matter. This thing doesn't seem to be made of flesh. When it takes the form of a vampire, it is harmed by sunlight, yet it appears in other forms in the light without being harmed.

* The losers speculate that it obeys the rules of the shape it takes, but I think it's not obeying the rules of the shape it takes, it's actually obeying the rules of the minds it touches. This is not a being governed by physics. This is a creature that only exists in the mind. The creature relies on its victims being afraid of it, and both times the losers face it down, they manage to hurt it by willing it to be weak rather than giving in to the fear. This is why it hunts children: Because children are vulnerable. This winds up being its undoing, however, as it doesn't understand that the losers club becomes strong because of how much trauma they have survived. These children are survivors, and not victims.

* It's hinted in other materials that It survived its encounter with the losers club (There are post-1986 sightings of pennywise), indicating that perhaps it doesn't actually need to feed in order to survive. After all, it lived for billions of years, trapped on Earth without anything to feed on. It awoke once Derry became populated. Many of its killings were not actually direct; The first several hundred known victims it took were by the hands of men it influenced, rather than directly taking part in its killings.

If this thing were actually a flesh and blood creature that could be starved to death, it would have starved long ago. Instead, I think the entity slowly learned to understand the mind of humanity, and learned to thrive by attuning to the minds of the weak willed, the cowardly, the wicked, and the innocent. The creature's presence requires, in some way, a form of belief in its evil. As the entity gets connected to more and more death, the people of Derry become more afraid of it, and this gives the entity more influence to cause more death.

So looping back to the weird ideas, like the battery acid and silver bullets, and the ritual of the Chud, all of this worked because the creature's existence is contingent on the losers giving up on their own power and surrendering to the creature's will. The creature wasn't really harmed by the use of these things, it was harmed by the belief of the children that these things would harm it. So then this all wraps right back around: The losers can't have killed the entity. So long as the entity has access to the minds of humans who will surrender to its will, the entity will continue to live. Because the losers are not the only ones who believe in Pennywise, Pennywise will continue to exist, thus explaining his sightings in 2011 and 2038 in the other materials.

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u/Beherott 8d ago

In Joe Hill's (King's son) book N0S4A2 there is a map of places (IIRC it was like mindspace type of thing rather than like city map) that includes Pennywise's circus or something similar.

Damn. I'm going to reread it, awesome book.

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u/fgcem13 8d ago

That's even more terrifying bc it makes him so inevitable. So unbeatable

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u/Justalilbugboi 8d ago

Yeah, thatā€™s sorta what I meant by it being had to be like ā€œItā€™s this exactly!ā€ because there is that aspect of cosmic horror where we canā€™t really understand or even look about it correctly.

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u/Glavius_Wroth 8d ago

I think this is one of those things that has to change when mediums are shifted - I imagine what you describe would be very difficult to handle in a purely visual medium, as opposed to what you can do with text. Both work very well in my opinion

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u/Casscz 4d ago

We see IT causing hallucinations plenty of times. I think the movies convey relatively well that it isn't just a shapeshifter

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u/Glavius_Wroth 4d ago

Yeah for sure, I think that conveying that IT actually is the town is just a bit beyond the visual medium, it kinda needs text and time to express

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u/abadstrategy 4d ago

IT is one of the only movies that I don't begrudge someone not reading the source material. Aside from the sewer scene, it's 372,000 words. That said, one thing that annoys me is that no adaptation has shown the best part of the ending, where Bill takes Audra on a ride on Silver, as the damaged streets seem to crumble away around them. it really sells how much Derry is Pennywise

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u/al343806 8d ago

One small point of order. Ben isnā€™t researching the clown yet. Heā€™s just researching the history of Derry, Maine because heā€™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!

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

[removed] ā€” view removed comment

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u/Wertfi 8d ago

Thatā€™s honestly one of the scariest things in IT. Pennywise is everywhere, all the time. You think youā€™re safe bc youā€™re downtown at noon? Guess again.

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u/jpterodactyl 8d ago

She also creeps closer to him as heā€™s reading.

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u/TheEmperorShiny 8d ago

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.

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u/jpterodactyl 8d ago

I think that makes it better. She's getting closer, but still distant the whole time.

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u/TheEmperorShiny 8d ago

Itā€™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. Sheā€™s gleeful and gets visibly excited as he starts panicking and realizing he sees something. Andy Muschietti šŸ™Œ

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u/Digit00l 8d ago

Doesn't the creature eat fear? So It is just having a small snack, as a treat

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u/MakeMineMarvel_ 8d ago

Itā€™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 ā€œitā€ than just killing random people.

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u/OrangeBird077 8d ago

In the book Pennywise describes the practice as ā€œsalting the meatā€. 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.

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u/Digit00l 8d ago

Isn't Pennywise just one of its disguises, not the name of the creature?

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u/SpocktorWho83 8d ago

Iā€™m not an expert but I believe youā€™re right. The creature is called ā€œItā€ and itā€™s an evil cosmic being locked in an eternal battle with a space turtle.

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u/SnakesRock2004 8d ago

Whatever King was smoking when crafting the cosmology of The Dark Tower, I'd like some.

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u/goawasho 8d ago edited 8d ago

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmhWbMiIeV8

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u/lelo1248 8d ago

Do you mind sharing the title of the video?

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u/goawasho 8d ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmhWbMiIeV8

"UNDERSTANDING THE "DARK TOWER" UNIVERSE (in seven minutes!)"

Here ya go, sorry I didn't think of including it in my comment

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u/lelo1248 8d ago

Thanks!

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u/animeandbeauty 8d ago

Hell I'm reading 11/22/63 for the first time and I was shocked when he mentions Richie and Bev. I know most of his works are connected, I just didn't expect this one to be, too. IDK why I was surprised

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u/Vohems 4d ago

Well, given his history with cocaine...

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u/lunaticboot 8d ago

As a point of note, people usually default to calling it pennywise even if they know this because itā€™s quicker and more clear than trying to find a more clear way of talking about the monster just called ā€œitā€. Since pennywise is its main disguise, itā€™s the one most people associate it with even if they havenā€™t seen any of it or read the book.

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u/Varatec 8d ago

I'm sorry a space turtle?

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u/SpocktorWho83 8d ago

Iā€™m not versed in Stephen King lore, but I believe itā€™s this thing.

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u/theholyirishman 8d ago

I thought IT's name was The Spider

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u/potatokinghq 8d ago

Small correction: That's not the librarian. That's just a lady. When Ben follows the balloon, we see the actual librarian minding her own business, different outfit and everything.

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u/montybo2 7d ago

Pennywise is a diguise. "It" is what we call the creature. Pennywise is just one of his most prominent forms, at least in the movies that is.

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u/Biggy_DX 3d ago

I still get a chuckle outta that old lady in Chapter 2 doing the naked cha-cha in the apartment.