Talk:Cthulhu Mythos in popular culture

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[edit] Cleaning Up

I humbly request that some one with some amount knowledge on the subject completely revise this list and carefully pare down some of the bloated parts that are stretching relevance, particularly the music section. By this I mean there are plenty of entries that include more information than is really necessary and are worded in a very fan page like style, also many of the references sited here (again particularly in the music section) seem to be a stretch into maintaining topical relevance, to what extent is a band that few have heard of belonging here because of a song title. Here is a short quick scan through list that i'd encourage someone more knowledgable to review as I feel woefully inadequate in my capabilities to handle this article: Many of Caitlin R. Kiernan's ... (Overly wordy and going beyond articles scope) In an episode of Quantum Leap ... (Irrelevant, reference to author not "Mythos") The Fog references ... (Seems to be stretching especially with misspellings) Alone in the Dark: ... (No description) Demonbane: A super robot adventure ... (wordy beyond the scope) Eternal Darkness: ... (wordy, too long) Final Fantasy Tactics: ... (stretching it, certainly if its the only reference in the game) Golden Sun: The Lost Age: ... (stretching it) Myth: A series of RTS games ... (Overly vague, fanpage style writing) Shin Megami Tensei: ... (Mesh with Persona 2) The Lurking Horror: ... (Vague, possibly a reference to author more than "Mythos") Thief: The Dark Project: ... (cut the last sentence) Tribe 8: ... (ISBN code standard?) Vampire: The Masquerade-Bloodlines ... (Vague poorly worded) World of Warcraft: ... (Clean up and compact) X-COM: Terror from the Deep: ... (Irrelevant reference to first game) Little Cthulhu ... (formatting, wordy, scope) Aarni ... ("pop culture"?) Bal-Sagoth ... ("Pop culture"?) Beatallica ... (Second hand reference at best) The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets ... (Wordy, too long) Drakkar ... ("Pop culture"?) Drunk Horse ... ("Pop Culture"?, Promotion material style) Insignium ... ("Pop culture"?, promotion styled) Metallica ... (Wordy, needs condensing) Immortal ... (stretching, "Pop Culture"?) Rage ... ("Pop Culture"?, Vague/Poorly Worded) Rudimentary Peni ... ("Pop Culture"?) Thergothon ... ("Pop Culture"?) Therion ... ("Pop Culture"?) Tri-Cornered Tent Show ... ("Pop Culture"?, promotional) Twin Obscenity ... ("Pop Culture"?) Electric Wizard ... ("Pop Culture"?, Vague) Terrence Chua's ... ("Pop Culture"?) The Axis of Perdition ... ("Pop Culture"?, fan style writing) Doom band Moss ... ("Pop Culture"?) Nile ... ("Pop Culture"?, Promotional style) Catacombs ...("Pop Culture"?) Explicitly Lovecraftian ...(fan style writing) GWAR ...(vague) Blue Oyster Cult ...(Vague) In general, and conclusion, I think the comics section should be split with comics and webcomics as they seem to contribute a large portion, also most of the bands that aren't popular or appeal to an extreme niche should be purged from the list (I'm looking at you generic european fill in the blank with dark sounding work metal bands). I didn't explicitly mark two bands because they seemed slightly more relevent than most above, but they should most likely be purged as well (Explicitly Lovecraftian, The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets). To resolve this removal of non-popular culture content a sentence at the end of the section commenting on the popularity of Cthulhu Mythos in metal might be reasonable. Finally I stopped there because the list is riddled with such stuff and frankly I'm bored, best of luck to the brave person that actually edits it.--68.231.168.20 00:13, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring and Pirates of the Caribbean: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

The Watcher in the Water in the first Lord of the Rings movie cleary looked like a monster directly taken from the Cthulu mythos.

Wrong. The watcher existed in Tolkien's fiction already.

Also Davy Jones looks a little like Cthulu himself...

These things shouldn't be based on speculation--but would it have been impossible for Tolkien to have read Lovecraft in Weird Tales? "Call of Cthulhu" appeared well before he wrote LOTR. I know he read Robert E. Howard, but I don't know if that was in Weird Tales or not. Nareek 06:19, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Army of Darkness

The link goes to the movie, and not the comics.

-Agent Tachyon.


[edit] Requested move

References to the Cthulhu mythos → References to the Cthulhu Mythos – Move to version most commonly used by authors, critics, and scholars.
-,-~R'lyehRising~-,- 20:37, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~
  • Support: "Cthulhu Mythos" is the standard style in the field. Nareek 23:29, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
Done. —Nightstallion (?) Seen this already? 08:57, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Odds and ends

Can we leave items off until their reference is explained a little? I've removed two references for the time being:

(No explanation at all)

(The Dungeon Dimensions resemble some Lovecraftian themes, e.g. From Beyond, but including them in this page is like saying Pratchett copied them.)

Also, why are the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy cast suspected of being Mi-Go?

--Yath 22:23, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

There was an episode of "South Park" where all of the boys and men in town became Metrosexuals. It was revealed to be a plot by the Queer Eye cast (who were really aliens from another world) to take over Earth. RickK 22:26, 22 May 2004 (UTC)
  • [Pratchett's Discworld] In a number of the books, 'Things' from the Dungeon Dimensions leak into the magical universe and wreak havoc.
    • I'm going to put those two back; it's my fault for not explaining them better. In the Discworld, (which is magical) there are 'dungeon dimensions' which the wizards break into periodically. The creatures there are all tentacled monstrosities like the ones in Lovecraft's stories. In Moving Pictures, one of the characters actually uses a line from Lovecraft: That is not dead which may eternal lie."
  • As for The Illuminatus! Trilogy, I've never actually seen a more explicit series of references. The characters all read the Necronomicon, and a number of the Things appear in person. Or what passes for person, anyway. Can I put them back now? -Litefantastic 22:38, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

Be my guest. I haven't read any Discworld novels and can't judge it myself; I just hope they aren't being included because of a strong resemblance. That would be like saying every story that has a beautiful, honorable elf race is a reference to LOTR. Yath 06:40, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

I think the Dungeon Dimension things fit nicely in here... there's definitely some links between them and Lovecraft. By the way, I added a link to Good Omens in the specific Hastur section: it was mentioned at the top of the page, but not in that section alone. -RogueNine

[edit] Illuminatus

I feel there's something amiss on the "Illuminatus!" part of that article. I'm referring to the "(along with Hitler, Atlantis and many, many drugs)" part. I don't quite understand it myself, so it's hard for me to clarify it. First, you're really talking about Atlantis, the lost city, right? If so, I suppose you're just using those examples as references to other things you'd find in the books. The way it's worded, it sounds a little dubious, so I think you might want to disambiguate it, so that it'll sound a little better for people who don't know much about the subject.

Anyone else here has this feeling? — Mackeriv 04:01, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

Me, but I might be able to explain. The plot of the books deals with every conspiracy theory, ever. There are aliens, there are monstors, there are Nazis there are secret agents, there are lost civilizations, there are secret societies and after a while you don't know how much is to blame on the drugs all the cahracters are doing. The whole trilogy is about 700 pages long; there's room for all sorts of stuff in there. But maybe, for everyone who hasn't read the books, a disambig would be in order. -Litefantastic 11:01, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

Ah, ok. I haven't read them, but that sounds pretty interesting. Maybe I should give it a look. And yes, the article sounds a little better now. — Mackeriv 13:23, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Tri-Cornered Tent Show

How can their music be "based on" the music of Erich Zann when Zann was a) fictional and b) his music was never written, only described, by Lovecraft in one story? -khaosworks 17:17, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Brian Lumley

There were quite a few references to Lovecraft's literary body in Brian Lumley's Necroscope series, I'll dump a few of them here, someone else can translate them into proper English if they feel like it.

  • The Dreams in the Witch-House - The protagonist of the Necroscope series, Harry Keogh, used a mathematic formula to "teleport" from A to B through another dimension - this was probably inspired by the Lovecraft short "Dreams in the Witch-House", where the concept was mentioned.
  • The Case of Charles Dexter Ward - #1 - Some guy from "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" studied some ancient texts in some abandoned castle in a strange country. The villain of book 4 of the Necroscope series, Janos, was present in the castle at the time. #2 - Remember how the bad guy from The Case of Charles Dexter Ward called people back to life in order to torture them to make them reveal various secrets and such? Janos did the same. He even chanted this wacky "Lovecraftian" line while doing it.

[edit] Clean up and combining

I propose to combine certain elements from Cthulhu_in_popular_culture with this page Cthulhu_Mythos_in_popular_culture and putting it under either one of those headings. Or, restrict Cthulhu_in_popular_culture to references that are specific to the Cthulhu character itself (as opposed to the mythos in general, which includes reference to some of the other beings and Elder Gods, etc). There are a few things that overlap or are redundant between these two pages, especially in the entertainment fields such as music and games. I'm just not sure which page gets more traffic at this point. GuardianZ 22:27, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

  • I think that Cthulhu in popular culture should contain only references to the character and Cthulhu Mythos in popular culture should contain everything else (minus direct references to Cthulhu). If you want to move these items yourself, I say go for it!

    BTW: I recommend being explicit about what you're doing in the edit summary (you may already know this, but other editors may benefit from this advice), otherwise other users may think you are blanking content. It is also a good idea to include a link to the destination article in the edit summary; for example, something like: Moved refs to [[Cthulhu in popular culture]]. This lets users know where the stuff went.
    -,-~R'lyehRising~-,- 05:08, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Added link to CoC movie

To the existing reference to the silent movie adaptation of Call of Cthulhu, I added a link to the wiki page for that movie.Hodgson 20:34, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A plan for compression

I think I share the feeling of a number of editors here that this article needs considerable shortening. I'd like to make three suggestions:

1. The Cthulhu Mythos is a body of fiction that shares a common sci-fi/horror background. Thus examples of fiction in the sci-fi/horror genre that contain Cthulhu Mythos elements are not examples of the Cthulhu Mythos in popular culture--they are the Cthulhu Mythos. Not that every work of fiction that name-drops Cthulhu is part of the Cthulhu Mythos--but those works that are should be cut out of here and I guess put back in the Cthulhu Mythos article.

2. References to specific aspects of the Cthulhu Mythos could be cut from here and put in the pages that relate to those aspects. For example, the sections on Specific Gods could be taken wholesale and put in those gods' articles.

3. There's a number of not-all-that-notable references to Cthulhu and whatnot that could just be mentioned without description--if there's large number of webcomics that make Cthulhu jokes, maybe we could just list them instead of trying to give a plot summary for each one.

Any thoughts? Nareek 21:22, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

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