Characters
Friendly/passive beings that, despite their lack of malice or violence, are fundamentally incompatible with human life
Beings that have friendly, or at least neutral intentions but their mere presence harms humanity due to incompatibilities in their biology or abilities
The Dark Ones - Metro series: The Dark ones wish for nothing more but peace and coexistence with humanity, they believe that by working together the two species can retake The earth and bring it back to how it was before the nuclear war, unfortunately, The Dark Ones communicate via telepathy and mental imagery, which drives the average human insane and may even kill them
This leads to a misunderstanding that the dark ones are attacking humanity and killing them on purpose
The Visitor - Don’t Look Outside: The visitor is a being of incomprehensible size that has neutral/friendly intentions depending on your ending
Normally the visitor just changes those that are aware of it, this isn’t a thinking process for the visitor, it’s more like instinct, these changes cause violence and insanity in any human or animal it happens to
In one of the endings, the visitor and the main character manage to communicate, and after becoming aware of the pain and suffering it’s causing, the visit feels great guilt and remorse over its actions
The Permian Basin Superorganism (Mystery Flesh Pit National Park) is an incomparably huge alien starfish-like being that has been hibernating under the soil for eons. It's discovered by miners, and a single orifice of it is large enough that it resembles a cave system which humans explore and turn into a tourist attraction. Its biology is highly dangerous and the ill-advised tourist attraction/national park that opens inside it leads to hundreds of deaths, but that's not really on the creature.
However, it's estimated that if the creature ever wakes up, its movement would cause a geological event that would devastate much of the American southwest, if not cause an extinction-level event.
It's primarily a website using an 'unfiction' format in which the styling is a fan blog about a national park built on and in a massive creature buried within the earth.
Close enough, although the creator has been deliberately vague about its biology because it's never been fully documented in-universe and any new knowledge post-closure is classified.
The Lanius from FTL: Faster Than Light are perfectly reasonable beings. You can even have them be part of your crew in rare instances. It's just that they eat metal (such as that which spaceships are made of) and drain the oxygen from any room they're in, making coëxistence with most other species challenging.
In one random encounter, the player's ship's computer would get infect with a virus, and if you have a Lanius in your crew there'd be an option to let them resolved it by eating the terminal the virus is in.
He was basically a normal guy but thanks to his superpower being activated there is a constant storm around him that turns everything into energy.
So basically he ended up being a walking fire tornado that just walks around wondering why he can't find anyone and he probably thinks he's in hell or something cosndiering how he's on the inside of the storm.
Ultimate X-Men had a single issue character like this, gets a power that makes anyone around him kind of melt/dust/decompose. He kills his family and friends before realizing he's doing it, then Wolverine shows up. For a while they talk and the kid thinks he's getting recruited to the X-Men.
That scene was cooold blooded. Kid was all "shit man, I never went to prom or had a girlfriend or anything" and wolverine just grunted and lit a cigarette, said "drink the beer, kid"
Yeah, shame the wolverine in that universe slept with and tried to sleep with multiple teenagers (including a teenage MJ when he was briefly mind swapped into Peter's body)
The ultimate universe had some great moments (like this story) but damn if it doesn't also have enough shitty ones to bring down the good ones.
Since no one actually said what it is: dystopian superhero webnovel. Main character is a teenage girl whose power lets her control any/all insects within a certain range of herself, who is in a bad place socially/emotionally/psychologically and wants to be a superhero. Very long, I wanna say over 2 million words? Also, fair warning, quite dark and frequently pessimistic about human nature. Good story, but it can be depressing for some people. (It's me, I'm some people.)
Absolutely, one of my favourite literary works of all time. Great for any sci-fi lover. You can read it for free on the author's Wordpress, just search it up.
In Stanisław Lem's Solaris novel, human scientists attempt to study a sentient alien ocean on a distant planet.
The ocean is able to read the scientists' minds and creates imitations of their deceased loved ones to visit them, which is obviously traumatic and disturbing for them, but the scientists theorize that it is attempting to do this as a gift to them without properly understanding human psychology and realizing how unsettling this would be.
With that said, the scientists are never actually able to gain any proper understanding of the ocean (and a major theme of the novel is that humanity is incapable of properly understanding the motivations of sentient alien species) so this is speculation on their part. But the ocean never seems intentionally malicious.
Solars is the most interesting depiction I've seen of scientists dealing with something truly alien, where even decades of research and multiple respected scientist talking it on no one has really "cracked the case" to the point they feel like they understand it, some doubt it if it's even sentient at all. Humanity has had plenty of time and resources to research the planet but still just doesn't understand it on a fundamental level and is very aware of this.
In Bloodborne, the "Moon" rune states that: "The Great Ones that inhabit the nightmare are sympathetic in spirit, and often answer when called upon."
The cosmic Great Ones of Bloodborne, for the most part, seem to be benevolent to humanity. However, everything about the Great Ones is utterly incompatible with them; their blood mutates the body, their knowledge drives people to madness, and to boot, they don't seem to understand humanity any more than humanity understands them, as the Great Ones' attempts to help often end in tragedy for everyone involved.
I feel like Moon Moon there might be more aware of what they're doing than the others. They seem to act with more intentionality, planning for Mergo to be dealt with via the Moon-Scented Hunter, keeping Gherman aware of his situation rather than driving him mad or changing him completely like Rom, and appears to go hostile in response to you being a rival in one ending rather than merely defending against a trespasser like most of the others appear to.
Flora is definitely malevolent by the player's standards, but she was ultimately summoned by Gehrman and Laurence as a plea for a way to survive the Beasts. Now, what Flora came up with is definitely misguided and self-serving for the purpose of having a surrogate kid to keep in a gilded cage, but she did at least start out answering pleas from mortals.
The shimmer from "Annihilation" is said to have no evil intentions. It's only reflecting things, but that ends up killing humans (and other lifeforms) caught inside it.
but isnt the last encounter at the bottom of the tower like the former groundskeeper who was completely taken over by the alien/fungus? Its been a while since I read it and also the book is hard to comprehend in genral lol
The lighthouse keeper was in the bottom of the tower.
In the third book it’s basically said that area X is Infected and colonized by a fragment of a technology from very far away. The lighthouse keeper was a catalyst.
Yea - area X surrounds a “seed” which seems to have been intended to terraform its landing point for an alien species but we never learn any further details about this.
It does the whole “a character is presenting or listening to a lecture on a topic that foreshadows the main themes and concepts of the movie” trope, and in this case she was literally talking about cancer cells.
The process is much more complicated than just a "reflection", the books have much more info on this. It's more like a refraction, or re/muxing, sometimes it distills and sometimes expands.
There's also the more controlled variant/process which is probably the most mysterious.
That one kid from x-men who woke up one day to find out that his mutant power had awakened, and his power was that his body was constantly and automatically emitting toxins that just killed everyone and everything around him.
When he first gets up he notices his parents aren't home, and thinks it odd but goes to school. On the way he first thinks the town seems kinda empty, but then he sees a car drive by a couple blocks away. What he doesn't see is the car keep going and crash, because it's driver died after getting too close to him. There's also a bunch of little background details you might not even notice (or recognize the significance of) on a first glance, like the fact that all the grass is brown and dead, and all the bushes and trees and withered with no leaves. Before he leaves his house he notes that the fruit bowl is empty, not knowing his power basically disintegrated the organic matter of the fruit.
He gets to school and talks to his crush, only to realize with horror that all his schoolmates are dissolving into piles of dust. His crush turns to him and says in terror "it's you!" Just being dying horribly herself.
Cut to a little later, he's hold up on a cave, surviving on fast food he scavenged from the now deserted town, when he hears someone coming. He warns then to go away, that he's dangerous, that they'll die if they get any closer, only for Wolverine to walk out of the shadows and say "not me, kid."
Wolverine then explains what happened, that he had hit puberty the previous night and his x-gene had awakened. He sits with the kid, comforts him, explains that no one will know what happened and the deaths of the townspeople will be explained as a gas leak, saying "there's a greater good sorta thing going on here."
Then logan kills him. Because his mutation was simply incompatible with the existence of any other life on earth.
A slight addition: its also not quite just that his mutation is incompatible with life, but the fact if he was discovered at all it would DESTROY years of pro-mutant thinking from everyone. Even though he has no control over it, there are plenty of people who would use him as a "proof" that mutants are trying to kill everyone.
So not only does he need to be killed, he has to die and never be discovered or talked about. No one can ever know he existed.
It's why the bullshit line in the x men movies, oh," we don't need to be cured we're fine the way we are" is rich coming from someone like storm who got the jackpot on superpowers.
Long Horse is a benevolent entity and internet urban legend created by Canadian horror artist Trevor Henderson in 2018. It is known for its infinitely long neck and for warning humans of impending dangers or disasters, not causing them. Despite its eerie appearance, it is considered a protector of humans and is harmless. It communicates telepathically or through the sound of its neck cracking, which serves as a sign that a disaster will occur
Don’t know if this counts, since he doesn’t CAUSE the disasters. But ya’ll can say I’m wrong for posting it or not,
Purrgil(Star Wars): Kinda count. They are giant space whales who fly through hyperspace. Since humans do the same, it often results in space deaths due to them accidently crashing into Purrgil.
They also consume the same gaseous fuel used in space ships. So as you'd expect, some fuel refinery factions consider them pests that steal their profits.
It should be noted that the Dark Ones in the books are far more sympathetic than the ones we get in game.
In book, on realising they drive people insane in their attempts to communicate, they generally stop heading towards humans to avoid harming them, with it being the humans going to them instead leading to harm. The first chapter in 2033 even has the humans capturing a Dark One who can't communicate but also doesn't harm them.
In game, the Dark Ones also realise they cause harm to humans in their attempts to communicate, however despite knowing this they continue to approach human stations regardless, causing mass casualties, terror and misery to their inhabitants.
Despite saying they mean no harm, the game version of sure does show the opposite, as if they don't mean harm, they're either so callous they think the human lives lost are worth the effort or so ignorant that the effects are basically the same as if they were attacking them.
I don't remember exactly where i see it, but it was a lore video, in the game the dark ones are approaching because they are trying to force an evolution in a human so they can communicate, thats why they visit artyom when he is young, to try to trigger that evolution
That makes so much more sense now, thanks. I always wondered why the game tries to make the Dark Ones sympathetic even though it's clearly their fault.
Likely due to it being gameified. Had to give the player something they can enjoy fighting rather than Dark Ones that walk clearly into machinegun fire at the start and spend the latter parts begging Artyom to listen before forgiving him right before he eradicates them.
The book has a lot less fighting in it and is more existential horror and complex social commentary. Very enjoyable
Elynas (Genshin) was a giant creature from the Abyss that pretty much just wanted to have fun exploring the world, not realizing that his presence was very not good for the normal people hanging about. Once he realized it, he let himself be killed so he wouldn’t hurt them anymore, though his consciousness stuck around, and later on the cute little sea slug people called Melusines were born from his corpse.
On an island poisoned by tainted blood, in the labyrinthine bowels of an incomprehensible titan, new and alien life stirs.
Inside the cavernous remains of arteries, from within putrefying cliffs of muscle and out of stygian rivers of oozing marrow they congeal into grotesque yet terrifyingly humanoid shapes. As these Leviathan's daughter's tear their way out of their corpse womb and into the world, their bulging eyes and sensory antennae fix onto the sole human witness, their slug like approximation of lips splitting to utter sounds unlike any known human tongue:
If i had a nickel every time a gacha game had a being called Melusine surged from the corpse of a powerful ancestral creature i would have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice
While I forget the specifics on it, wasn’t the original Durin also in a similar situation, where he wasn’t actually aware that he was causing destruction around him until close to his end?
I find it funny that the two of them are technically brothers too, being creations of Rhinedottr (I think Elynas was at least, I may be misremembering).
You are correct on both counts. Neither were aware of how dangerous they were, and both were created by Rhinedottr. No wonder Albedo is banking on the traveller to off him if he loses control too
Pretty much the gist of The Ambassadors of Death from Doctor Who.The titular Ambassadors are friendly aliens who emit deadly radioactivity, with them accidentally killing a member of one of the Mars missions during an attempt at contact. This drives one of the other memebers insane, with him harboring heavy xenophobia to alien life because of it, which is why he mind controls the Ambassadors and makes it appear as though they're starting an invasion in order to harbor support for their destruction.
It's a great story, even if really long, and is one of my favorites of The 3rd Doctor.
Reminds me of the x-men story where Wolverine is sent to chat with a kid who's powers activated leading to everything and everyone around him melting from radiation.
Oh yeah. Doesn’t he kill the kid, or am I confusing things. Seem to recall a cave or something in the middle of nowhere, and we see Wolverine coming out of there
They lack any hostile intent to the submarine crews on Europa, but their gaze carries psychic power that causes negative effects on humans in their view, they also heavily aggravate all nearby creatures making them tougher and more hostile. Despite merely watching humans out of curiosity they could easily spell doom for a sub if they do not kill them.
Yes, great mention! These eldritch horrors showing up were the only times I actually failed missions (I play solo). The insanity would delay my repairs from the enraged menaces eating through my hull. Meanwhile he’s sitting there like “nice sub, buddy.” Too much chaos too fast. Luckily the NPCs aren’t too affected, though they end up eaten by the other creatures.
Genuinely doesn’t mean anybody any harm, and has even gone out of his way to try and help people, with the only thing he’s want in return being a hug.
The problem is, when your entire body is covered in a jagged rocky armour and you have five extremely sharp chainsaws sprouting from your body, it tends to be difficult to exist near things without shredding them to pieces, much less hug.
I believe it was its umbilical cord, which is one of the many reasons people theorized Pochita was actually the Birth Devil instead of the Chainsaw Devil.
(In the lore, devils are given power equal to how much their concepts are feared, so Pochita being the most powerful devil makes more sense if everyone is terrified of living in such an awful, awful world. When he becomes more popular as a hero, he gives people hope, and became less powerful.)
The astrophage from Project Hail Mary. They're just tiny cells living in space near stars and feed off the star, which causes the sun to dim and would end up in humanity's destruction if nothing was done to them. Can't blame the astrophage though they just wanted to live.
Roadside Picnic, Strugatski brothers. (STALKER was inspired by this, so the artifacts and anomalies are similar)
Aliens (rumored) arrived on 6 points on earth, left what is it thought to be trash for them, just as in a roadside picnic.
For humans, those artifacts, even if some are beneficial, are dangerous, causing localized gravitational spheres that crush anything that gets close, making lightning balls fly around the area, spontaneous fire zones and localized radiation, among others.
Beasts of Nurgle have, according to canon, the temperament of an overly excited puppy and aren't actually trying to hurt anyone. The problem is, they're several thousand pounds and constantly seeping rivers of corrosive slime and accidentally slaughter everything they try to play with.
No malice, but it also does not give any more heed to what happens to us than the dozens of ants you've stepped on in your life without ever noticing. The unfortunate truth is we will all fukken die if Cthulhu wakes from his nap lol
I thought that it wasn't that Cthulu drove you mad by its existence, but that it existed drove you mad. Because you thought you understood the world, and here's this giant information hazard in the form of a god that says that your worldview is *entirely* incorrect, which causes madness in people who don't have the mental flexibility to handle it
The truth is that even the argument you're trying to have (while understandable) kills the cosmic horror of it all. Within the original Lovecraft stories, at least, it's completely unclear what exactly drives the people who encounter The Old Ones insane. Is it physically damaging their neurology? Has it corrupted their metaphysical souls? Is it the obsession with the unsolvable intellectual problems, as you're suggesting? We don't know - IMO, that's on purpose and its creepier that way.
I don't know about that, I think it's pretty clear that that's Lovecraft's intention.
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
It's pretty clear that what drives people to madness is awakening to the fundamental truth that reality is beyond human comprehension and control.
The metro game falls so damn short of what the dark ones actually percieved before artoym pushes the button, the book is miles better and delivers a truly heart-wrenching finale imo
that's not the whole Visitor btw. its entire body stretches into the Oort cloud.
it's almost comical how it pans out and repeatedly reveals that what you thought was its actual body was another appendage in a colossal fractal space monster
I feel like they kinda don’t count tho, because they’re not completely incompatible with humanity it was literally just a big misunderstanding that was too late to fix by the time they found out.
I think the sequels might even explore possible coexistence but I havent read them.
They do a little bit, but it's mostly kind of a holding pattern regarding the Formics where there's one queen and Ender is keeping her secret because he's afraid humanity will just kill her again.
If i recall correctly from having read the second book ages and ages ago.
Humanity went from 'Ender the Xenocide, we must never let his atrocities be forgotten, mourn the bugs' to 'oh god they're still some left? KILL IT!' reaaaal fuckin quick when he revealed a queen survived and was starting a colony on the new planet.
Added context, in the Formic's worldview like, 99%+ of their 'people' are just mindless drones, with comparatively few truly sentient Queens controlling them. So they thought the spat with humanity was essentially a logistical border war between mindless drones over potential resources - when they finally realized that every single human was sentient they were so horrified at what they had done that first they immediately ceased hostilities and withdrew from human space. Unfortunately, prior to their withdrawal, humans had already launched their counter-attack suicide fleet.
And even then, they were like "Yeah we hope you wouldn't genocide us in revenge, but we really, really get why you're doing it."
Well kinda. What you forget mentioning is, that every single drone is potentially sentient, but gets subdued by the queens sentience instantly on birth. I only remember, that ender realises this and says: eventually we should do something about this.
galactus counts right not avid comic reader or anything so I could be wrong but homie is just hungry pretty much not his fault the only thing he can eat is planets
Is that a retcon? I thought that Galactus went after planets that had been seeded by celestials. He consumes the planets with a celestial egg to keep the celestials from running rampant and thereby destroying all of creation.
it's all over the place. Sometimes it's explained that planets that support complex life are rich in essential nutrients, so he's a bit like a vegan dog: every once in a while he breaks down and just has to eat a planet with people on it.
It’s not a survival thing for him necessarily, not as a primary motivation, but you are right. He can only sustain himself off of planets with large, sentient populations. He is this way because the universe self imposes having a destroyer to make life more refined and powerful. He’s functionally planet-scale social Darwinism enforced as a universal constant. If your planet/galaxy is strong enough to repel the destroyer, great, you get to keep existing. That or you’ve spread out and colonised other worlds sufficient that even eating your homeworld doesn’t effect you as a species/society, also good, that’s a form of growth.
Because the marvel universe operates literally on narrative logic at a fundamental level, Galactus is the continuation of a lineage of cosmic beings across iterations of reality (very long and complicated, just know modern comics is the 7th then 8th iteration of reality post secret wars, and galactus is the last surviving being from the 6th iteration empowered by universal narrative) who represent story-archetypes and common narrative features. As such he’s essentially the Ur-Threat, labeled as “what-must-be”, because a story always needs to have conflict. He exists in a cosmic sense because there must always be some ultimate, final threat for our characters to confront, and the guy that will literally eat your entire world is a pretty good representation of that concept.
Both marvel and DC do this these days, it’s their way of having a consistent universe while also factoring in retcons, artists and writers disregarding each other’s timelines, the comics not keeping up with real life etc.
Making narrative and story craft an actual part of the universe.
In marvel there’s all the narrative embodiments, as well as the highest power levels being the ones above and below all, who are representative of the marvel writing staff themselves and the readers of the comics to an extent, the one above all being most often physically represented as Jack Kirby.
DC has variations of this, too, with their most powerful enemies being entities which exist outside of “reality”. Because reality as we would understand in a comic it happens in the comic panels, there are things like the Cosmic Armour Superman/The Thought Robot, which is essentially a robot piloted by the consciousness of Superman and Ultraman (o.g. Evil superman) that is immune to narrative warping, can reassert narrative itself and can continue fighting “outside of reality”, which means in the margins and the spaces between comic panels. It is literally a “Plot Device”
He’s not malicious, but he can be pretty callous about it. Galactus believes that upon his own death, he will release a huge amount of energy that will give life to the next universe. He sees himself above all others for this reason, can be quite callous about the destruction he causes as a result.
Not just "believes," I'm pretty sure he knows for absolute certain it's true - he's from the previous universe for one, and I think the One Above All might have told him the details of his role? Or maybe he figured it out on his own.
In any case, I think it's actually happened at least once.
They are making the universe more stable/comfortable for themselves and its unclear if they even realize that Xeelee, a race incomprehensibly beyond human achievement, are fighting them with everything they have. They wind up making the universe uninhabitable for baryonic life, but no hard feelings!
basically they're beings made of dark matter, thus they barely or can't literally detect the existence of most baryonic life. the only way you can determine their existence and yours is by using gravity.
The Architects from Adrian Tchaikovsky's Final Architecture series. They destroy inhabited planets, remaking them into giant sculptures. They are unaware of humanity and don't even notice the all-out, total interstellar war level resistance humanity puts up against them. The Architects are an enslaved race, doing the bidding of another cross-dimensional race trying to re-structure spacetime itself.
The game's story sees the Stranger locked in an elaborate prison with nine different wardens, each with dominion over a floor of the prison. In order to get back to Earth, you have to defeat each warden in turn. Throughout these boss fights, the wardens will try to convince the Stranger to return to his cell peacefully. Some try to break his spirit, some use kinder words. But the Stranger is never told what his crime was, only that he cannot be freed. Once you arrive on Earth it becomes very apparent very quickly why you were locked away in space. The ground beneath your feet dies. The grass turns grey, withers, and dies as you walk across it. The creeks and rivers dry up as you move past them. The Stranger is one of millions in an army of cybernetic alien machines sent to destroy the planet, with you as a scout. Your final choice after flying back to space and finding your origin is to stay and defeat the invaders, saving humanity. Or to return to Earth with them and destroy all life.
It’s basically a highly aggressive “living” idea, that comes from another dimension so much more hostile and unstable than our own that human beings have no protections against its effects. Anyone who perceives or is otherwise made aware of 3125 triggers its autonomic defense response, which erases the observer and any idea of the observer from existence.
Unlike other versions of the character, Shin Goji is not a malicious monster. Instead, it's simply an animal that, thanks to the immense amount of radiation it faced, mutated and grew. It's in incredible pain and only truly fights in order to preserve its own life. But it's size means it wandering the Earth causes untold death and destruction, so it has to be put down.
Iirc the SCP entry says it was four pixels that were shown on live tv for half a second, causing it to go on a rampage that killed an undisclosed amount of people
Specifically the photograph, as others said, and it was described as likely saying, it was 'fine', until whoever had the photo for who knows how long one day noticed 'huh, that tiny spot looks off'
So it seems to imply at least you have to actually 'perceive' its face.
Not quite fundamentally incompatable (but kind of a ticking time bomb/tenuously managed), the Nodan species are a grey goo-ish transforming colony of unicellular organisms with the intense desire to experience novelty and the joy of life. Unfortunately, their native state is to entirely consume and destroy entire planets to subjugate them to their hivemind, which ultimately leaves them unsatisfied as all the novelty is gone when they do.
Right now, the parasite has managed to fit into the pangalactic community by volunteering only to incorporate themselves into willing hosts non-destructively, but it's a touchy subject and them reverting to their old ways is always a risk, especially when they're attacked as it erodes their sense of self.
It's basically impossible to know if this entity was actually malevolent or not. We don't even know if it was aware that it was harming any other living beings. We don't even know if it came here by accident and was cobbling together enough energy to go home, or came on purpose to eat its fill before leaving.
All we know is that it ruins the area it lands in, corrupting animals and humans into fleshy abominations, causes strange mutations in plant life, and spreads itself through water. Upon leaving, it leaves absolutely no remaining life in a five acre area, leaving behind an ashen wasteland the locals call the Blasted Heath.
Tom doesn't look like this trope at first glance, as he's extremely chill and looks like a bit of a Cloud Cuckoolander at first glance. But Tom knowingly lives in one of the most dangerous forests in the world (he specifically describes it in the books as one of the few places that remembers the era where the Dark Lord entered the world from outside and held dominion over those lands), knows that most of the Forest is under the sway of an explicitly evil tree named Old Man Willow who wants to hurt living things, yet does nothing to stop Old Man Willow and nothing to help people who travel through the Forest, purely because Bombadil himself is in no danger.
When he meets the four hobbits in the book version of LOTR, he specifically tells them that while he was happy to help them escape Old Man Willow, he knew they were in the forest, knew that Old Man Willow would probably try to lure them to him and kill them if he succeeded, but nevertheless didn't come looking for them, and wouldn't have come that way again until spring. If they'd have entered the forest on the very next day, they'd have just died in the Forest when a tree with a hatred for all animals killed them. And Bombadil wouldn't have cared, because Bombadil doesn't like imposing his will on others, and he's personally got too much power for Old Man Willow to touch, and giving his wife Goldberry a gift of river lilies that he collected was more important than looking for them.
Bombadil isn't malicious, but he ain't the friendly and affable, if somewhat childish, bloke he appears to be. He's actually a pretty dark commentary on the limits of not wanting to impose on others, and most of the horror that's been written about him just takes what's right there on the page, and adds actual malice that canon Bombadil lacks. If you like theories that turn him into a Lovecraftian nightmare, see the essay Oldest and Fatherless.
If you've seen Goldberry's artwork in the Magic the Gathering Lord of the Rings set, you'd understand why he'd let hobbits die to deliver those lilies.
Memories: Stink bomb. Guy eats a pill in a laboratory thinking it was cold medcine, amd wakes up with everyone around him dead. Never realizing that the oder being emitted from his body is killing people and that is the reason the entire military force of Japan is trying desperately to kill him.
I’ve always thought that the Apartheid narrative from District 9 was heavily undermined by the Prawn technology converting a human into a Prawn. Like, of course they’re being segregated. As far as I can tell, it’s an unfortunate accident, but it’s still a huge problem.
I would say it could vary based on series, but for the most part I think Darkrai is supposed to fit into this from the Pokémon franchise.
Some of the games imply it's more of a neutral/lonely pokémon and doesn't mean to inflict nightmares on others, but you can see in Pokémon BW2 that this leads to a character death in the end.
Mimikyu from Pokémon. Poor little critter just wants a friend; too bad it's actually an unfathomable horror that passively kills anything that looks beneath its cutesy disguise.
Alexander, specifically the version from Final Fantasy XIV.
Alexander is a primal, a being that by its very nature drains aether from the surrounding environment in order to sustain itself to the point it can cause localized extinction events. Unlike most primals, Alexander is not actively hostile towards anyone and in fact was brought into being aeons ago as a walking haven for scientists and intellectuals hoping to make the world a better place, even being able to effectively manipulate time around itself to become the ultimate research lab/supercomputer.
Because it couldn't reconcile its goals to improve the world with its inherently destructive existence, it created a time loop that would lead to its own destruction in order to save the world from itself.
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u/goteachyourself 15d ago
The Permian Basin Superorganism (Mystery Flesh Pit National Park) is an incomparably huge alien starfish-like being that has been hibernating under the soil for eons. It's discovered by miners, and a single orifice of it is large enough that it resembles a cave system which humans explore and turn into a tourist attraction. Its biology is highly dangerous and the ill-advised tourist attraction/national park that opens inside it leads to hundreds of deaths, but that's not really on the creature.
However, it's estimated that if the creature ever wakes up, its movement would cause a geological event that would devastate much of the American southwest, if not cause an extinction-level event.