Cosmic Horror Story / Web Original

Web Animation

• Parodied for (albeit still very disturbing) surreal political satire by Aamon Hawk. In his series of 3D animated shorts which were all put together as the aptly-named COSMIC HORROR COMPILATION: 2020, various right-wing media pundits and activists all start turning into hideously deformed, insanely evil eldritch monstrosities while they ramble on with their increasingly unhinged political rants. But words alone can't really describe just how batshit crazy and bizarre all of this is.
• Murder Drones isn't so much so at the beginning, but gradually sinks further and further into this genre as the Absolute Solver takes an increasingly prominent role — a terrifying Digital Abomination of murky origin that spreads horrifying, twisted amalgamations of flesh and metal wherever it goes, and seeks to destroy the entire universe for as-yet-unspecified ends.
• Velma Meets the Original Velma: Once Velma realizes that something is wrong, Scooby comes clean to her and reveals himself to be a reality-warping Animalistic Abomination with control over everyone else's lives. Every time Velma asks how he can talk, he kills his friends and reincarnates them into a new reality.

Webcomics

• Awful Hospital: Long ago, before existence was even a thing, there was a single living creature called the Old Flesh. Over time, the Old Flesh succumbed to some unknown infection and died in a state of uncontrollable anger while it broke into several pieces, which broke down further to form the Perception Range. The largest intact pieces remembered the hatred the Old Flesh felt during its dying days. They eventually grew upwards into the Parliament, gained sentience and banded together to rewind the multiverse into its original state. To do this, they engineered an extremely aggressive, incurable pathogen capable of hopping across realities and infecting anything, living or non-living, contaminating their very souls and mutating them into terrifying new forms. After murdering millions of test subjects while perfecting the pathogen, they succeeded with the main protagonist's infant son and began using him as the breeding ground for the pathogen while he was fully conscious and alive. Meanwhile, all doctors back on the infant's home planet (which was eventually destroyed at one point during the comic) were rendered oblivious to his condition before he and his mother were transferred to an interdimensional hospital where the staff and his mother are trapped in a perilious race against time to curb the infection and find a way to save him before it's too late, but the chances are slim - it's very likely that the Parliament might win and successfully reset the multiverse back to its factory settings.
• This Buttersafe strip uses the trope ...as a way to explain where babies come from.
• Captain SNES: The Game Masta has a Humans Are Cthulhu variant, where a major driving force of the plot is a conventional Eldritch Abomination (nevertheless hinted to come from our world, not video games) can cause video game characters to start Noticing the Fourth Wall, at which point, overcome by the knowledge that reality-warping inscrutable beings created them and everything they know, all of their turmoils and suffering, for the sake of children's entertainment, they invariably go mad and then either homicidal or catatonic.
• Deep Rise: The Royals are so incomprehensible and massive that the Nobles are the good guys - sort of. Then in Act IV the Royals pop up on alien planets and the Nobles meet the Royals' space fleet. The Nobles have been fighting toenails compared to the Royal Horde, and in Act V it's revealed the Royals have orchestrated the protagonists' harrowing survival for the sole purpose of killing the only thing that can stop them - and it's also a cosmic force of civilization-ending destruction.
• Homestuck. Entire universes are created for the sole purpose of recruiting players for Sburb, a video game which violently destroys the players' home planets. Victory at the game results in (at best) one's home planet being recolonized, and the creation of a new universe—which will eventually be host to new instances of the game, and that's when things go right. It's stated that the vast majority of Sburb sessions are doomed to fail from the start, never producing new universes, but rather bomb-like tumors to destroy those who try and fail. The protagonists have accidentally rendered the game Unwinnable, by enabling the Big Bad to obtain the powers of a Physical God. Now, the only way to defeat him is to reset the universe—which will pave the way for the arrival (albeit, in a different universe) of a time-travelling demon who feeds on dead universes. In any case, given the way that Stable Time Loops work in this story, the protagonists may already be doomed to fail. And in case all that's too subtle, the comic takes an acrobatic fucking pirouette off the handle and into the deep end with "Jade: Wake up", where the Lovecraft-inspired Noble Circle of Horrorterrors make their on-screen debut. And then we find out that the Horrorterrors need the protagonists' help, because something is killing them. Andrew Hussie cites EarthBound (1994) as an inspiration.
• While the majority of Jack (David Hopkins) is situated in Hell, the narrative gradually descended further into the setting's cosmic implications. The Devil often manipulates time and space to deceive people into committing acts of perdition, while dismissively condemning them for making a choice they didn't have. Souls working towards redemption, including the title character, are curtailed at every opportunity. And Heaven fares little better. God is a frequently unhelpful, hands-off authority figure who reset the destroyed timeline and forced anthros into the same good and evil roles as the previously exterminated humans, effectively damning people before they're even born. As the comic progresses, free will erodes to the point of rendering past lessons about taking responsibility a Broken Aesop when forces of the hereafter direct the living to their doom.
• The premise of Lovecraft Is Missing is that Lovecraft wrote truth disguised as fiction. And now he's missing...
• morphE is at its core a cosmic horror story. It takes place in the Mage: The Awakening canon so it's not too difficult to see why.
• Necessary Monsters could be considered such, since while the comic itself takes a more Spy Fiction approach, the fact remains that the world is actually controlled by an Ancient Conspiracy of every type of monster possible, from Slasher Movie and Urban Legend-style serial killers to outright eldritch abominations, with a vested interest in preserving humanity — because when you've got a self-perpetuating all-you-can-eat buffet with everything you and your pals like to eat in it, you don't want anybody to go around thrashing it.
• Ow, my sanity is a Cosmic Horror Magical Girlfriend/Unwanted Harem story. Word of God is that the comic will have a "Lovecraft ending".
• Ruby Quest is a cosmic horror story about a group of uplifted animals trying to escape an underwater facility plagued by unnatural abominations and horrors, while at the same time trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Rather unbelievably, it actually manages to have a happy ending, thanks to the players going Off the Rails.
• Thanks in part to Real Life Writes the Plot, Thunderstruck has gained elements of a Cosmic Horror Story world. The city in which most of the action takes place is doomed, period. The primary action focuses on a race of gods for whom all of human history is a single generation - and the action is centered on the scions of the preceding generation's champion.
• The Watcher Of Yaathagggu is Post Apocalyptic Cosmic Horror.
• For a long time, The Order of the Stick has The Snarl as the Greater-Scope Villain, with multiple factions trying to manipulate it for their own use and how the world the story takes place is a seal on its prison. But the recent revelations of Strip 1139 drives the whole comic into this. The world is hardly the second, third, or even hundredth iteration, as the Snarl continuously destroys each of its planetary prisons. Try the thousandth, if not the millionth attempt by the gods, each time making it stronger, to no avail. The only reason this one world is special is because its severe flaws, injustices, and outright genocides have created a god of hatred who could stop the Snarl for good, but would rather get justifiable revenge on the rest of the Pantheon for their lack of empathy in enslaving and slaughtering the 'lesser' races they created for adventurers to raid. Even if the Snarl is defeated, which is a poor prospect, many of the gods have been driven half-insane from far too many attempts and will continue to create worlds and cultures that are solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. For all the protagonists' efforts and what's at stake, it's all infinitesimal in the grand scheme of things. Even if they 'save the world', what can they do to save the damaged cosmos, when the gods have tried and failed and went mad from the attempt, over and over?

Web Games

• Arcane – Online Mystery Serial is a 2 season online flash game series based on the Cthulhu Mythos and developed by Sarbakan in 1998, depicting the adventures of a trio of paranormal investigators from The Roaring '20s, and their dealing with a mysterious cult known as the Elder Star and their plans to summon an extradimensional abomination in London.

Web Original

• Most of the continuities of The Arkn Mythos feature overarching story that's one of these. The only exception is Arkn: Legacy (which is Lovecraft Lite).
• The Backrooms: The original meme and all examples of it describe a particularly bleak scenario of being stuck in an infinite Eldritch Location with no hope of escape, being hunted by strange monsters that wander the area. Then you go further into the lore, and find out about things like Nostalgi Gaius...
• The BIONICLE serial, Sahmad's Tale, features a plague that robs its victims of their ability to dream, gradually causing them to go completely insane and eventually die. It is eventually revealed that the plague is caused by an eldritch abomination that resembles a miniature sun with tentacles, who feeds on dreams for sustenance.
• The Castle Series, told with stickmen, but not Played for Laughs. The cosmic horror in this series comes from the titular Castles that may or may not be sentient.
• This comes up now and again in various creepypasta, most notably The Holders Series.
• Dimensional Prophecy of Zohar Redux is a cosmic horror story about scientists using an algorithm to calculate the behavior of eldritch abominations and trying to protect civilians.
• Dino Attack RPG went in this direction toward the end. True, the main plot was about mutant dinosaurs rampaging all over the planet, but let's see... humanity's general insignificance in a vastly uncaring cosmos? Check. Eldritch Abomination capable of destroying the planet with little effort? The Maelstrom makes that a solid check. Eldritch Abomination evil or uncaring on a cosmic scale? Definitely check. The alternate ending December 21, 2010 would be a full-on example, where the Maelstrom has more or less overrun the entire planet with less than ten people still alive by sheer luck and destroys everything in a matter of seconds with no survivors, and the bleak implication that it would spread to the rest of the universe.
• Division by Zero is a love letter to cosmic horror while retaining its individuality by including biblical, psychological and philosophical horror in its framework. We see this in its world-building: The omnipotent God was torn apart by a war between its creations (lesser Cosmic Beings, though fearsomely powerful) in an existence before existence. The multiverse is made up of pieces of God, and, therefore, has an explicit absence of God. We live in infinite and absolute freedom, because we were not created like the knife, with a purpose and explicit meaning in mind. There is no higher reality to be accountable to, or dependent on. No one can hear our screams, pleas or weeping. a/0 explores the horrific terror of existence without a creator, and how its characters—be they human, gods, or the inexplicable—are inevitably doomed to death. The story itself follows characters trying to navigate this existence, with most unaware of the immutable Crapsack Multiverse they are in.
• The surreal creepypasta ''Dogscape'' takes place in an Earth that has been hideously terraformed into a worldwide Meat Moss made of dogflesh and canine body parts, as a result of the planet being taken over by an entity known by the nickname of "the Dog Mother". Any attempt at fighting back against said entity only ends with the rebels in question getting assimilated into it. Body Horror does not even begin to describe it.
• The Magnus Archives, while it starts with a seemingly episodic Monster of the Week plot, it quickly becomes this after the Powers are revealed: Ancient and incomprehensible entities dwelling beyond the universe, which feed on/embody the fears of every living thing on the planet. They defy all attempts at rational analysis; even their own servants, human and otherwise, admit to not understanding what they are or why they do things. The Entities cannot be defeated or even meaningfully fought, any more than you could punch the concept of arachnophobia, and at any moment they might arbitrarily single you out for torment or death because you would be the right kind of afraid while it happens. And the people worshipping them are trying to complete occult rituals that will re-shape reality to be more hospitable to them...
• Mystery Flesh Pit National Park was once a place for fun of all ages, where families could go tour and explore the massive superorganism that apparently dwells dormant under western Texas. Never you mind those stories about park-goers being consumed and turned into half-fused, shrieking amalgamations or getting strange mental compulsions to throw themselves into the pit's gaping maw, rest assured that every effort has been made to ensure your safety! Or...well, at least that was the belief until July 4th, 2007, when, thanks to numerous Failsafe Failures, the Pit consumed 950 park-goers and staff and narrowly avoided waking up before staff was able to pacify it. Now, the Pit is closed off and quarantined, and is just barely kept dormant through the use of massive amounts of sedatives being pumped into it, but every now then, it shifts in its forced slumber, making quakes and "carnal moans" which can be heard for hundreds of miles around...
• The Never Mythos swings between this and Lovecraft Lite. The City of Never is very explicitly a homage to the works of H.P. Lovecraft with a small Mexican village cut off from the rest of the world and made prey to countless horrific eldritch horrors — but uses that premise to deconstruct or subvert more cosmic horror tropes than it plays straight. The short stories, on the other hand, tend to play it straighter.
• On the Threshold's subtitle is "A Descent into Cosmic Horror" so this can be assumed, and so far we've seen glimpses of incomprehensible horrible worlds and abominable occult rituals
• The creepypasta "The Quiet Sky" begins with a response to the 1974 Arecibo message finally arrive to earth, which seems to be an unintelligible radio signal coming from the direction of the Hercules Constellation. Only this turns out just to be the first half; the second is a telepathic voice asking "Where are you?", which is heard by everyone on earth, including the deaf. The entity is thus named the Voice. As if in replay to the question, all the dead on earth — from humans to animals to ancient skeletons — start screaming. The Voice's response: "I hear you. I am coming." Things only get worse for humanity from there...
• In the chaotic universe of the SCP Foundation, the only thing standing between humanity's continued existence and a wide variety of sanity-shattering supernatural artifacts or implacably destructive evil monsters is a shadowy organization of Men in Black... whose sheer ruthlessness and willingness to resort to extreme measures to achieve their goals makes them only slightly less terrifying than the things they're protecting humanity from.
• The Sick Land is a cosmic horror story in the form of an Apocalyptic Log set in an Eldritch Location that transmits The Virus. Humanity can survive on the fringes of the area...for a while.
• The Slender Man Mythos is entirely based around its protagonists trying and invariably failing to understand the titular man, who is completely invincible and has been manipulating and horrifying humanity since presumably the very beginning. It's speculated several times that he runs on belief and the only way to stop him is for everyone who knows about him to die, but he inexplicably causes his victims to want to make records of his existence. And then some series introduce more creatures of great power, including an entire new mythos known as The Fear Mythos.
• Starsnatcher, for the most part, reads like a hard sci-fi take on Lovecraft Lite. It envisions a universe where, thanks to Abusive Precursors, a galaxy-spanning plague exists that's capable of making entire civilizations drop like flies, although the main characters have the means to fight back. However, the epilogue firmly cements the story in the cosmic horror genre. Any civilization beyond a certain degree of advancement is doomed to die. Sufficiently Advanced Aliens have created Mechanical Abominations that exist in a four-dimensional plane beyond spacetime. Gateways to their realms exist in all corners of the galaxy. They are utterly invincible and can, at best, only be locked away temporarily. If a space-faring civilization just so happens to stumble upon them, they will release femtobot plagues that, at best, carry out an Assimilation Plot and, at worst, kill all life in the galaxy. They don't do this out of malice, but simply to ensure that their creators will have fewer competitors for resources. During the story's climax, our heroes encounter one such abomination, but they can, at most, prevent it from being unlocked from its prison at the cost of the protagonist's humanity. There are many more such abominations out there and it is implied that humanity will one day be inevitably get the short end of the deal against them.
• Stickman Exodus traps hapless stickmen in a Cosmic Horror Notebook (Played for Laughs — Black Comedy laughs). Their goal, the Promised Page, the one place the "Great Doodler" can't touch, might not even exist for all they know. We won't either since the series had a No Ending.
• The Whateley Universe has a Cosmic Horror Story backstory, and the Sara Waite stories are all centered around one or more Eldritch Abominations... including Sara Waite herself. Plus, there's an in-universe example, since Sara Waite's previous form Michael Waite wrote a best-seller called "Incongruity" which turns out to be The First Book of the Kellith, which is now in print all over the world. Oops.
• The Myth Arc of Hatchetfield is a classic one involving Eldritch Abominations seeking to destroy the world. Nightmare Time shifts the balance toward Personal Horror, although Word of God is that the Lang Brothers believe all horror must be Personal Horror for the main character to really strike home (as per Sam Raimi's "rules of horror").

Web Videos

• The "Lord Vyce" and "Entity" story arcs of Atop the Fourth Wall became this, with a Dimension Lord Lord Vyce conquering universes because, as it turns, he is trying to protect the multiverse from something even worse than he is simply refers to as "the entity", an Eldritch Abomination that devours worlds and universes, and he is "forcing the issue" because nobody listened to his warnings. The Entity, revealing itself after Vyce's defeat, shows the intent of absorbing all existence, viewing itself as the pinnacle of all creation. The plot however turns into a Deconstruction of the trope, showing in the end that the existence of an Eldritch Abomination is every bit as insignificant as that of Puny Humans.
• The premise of Gemini Home Entertainment. Humanity is at the mercy of an extraterrestrial force that uses the planets of our Solar System against us, infecting and infesting Earth with unearthly creatures that cause serious injuries and death.
• Hitler Rants can sometimes go into this territory. Some of the more extreme Untergangers have written characters as having incomprehensible powers related to time and space. This video sees Captain Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock (through footage of his actor Jürgen Prochnow taken from In the Mouth of Madness — notice a pattern here?) literally tear apart reality for no other reason than to piss off Hitler for laughs.
• The Knight Shift has traces of this at times.
• ''The Last Stage'', a storyline from NatOne Productions, deals mainly with large-scale paranormal threats, one of which may actually be the government agency employing the main characters. The supernatural entities pulling the strings more or less view Earth as lunch.
• ＬＯＣＡＬ５８: Human civilization is at the mercy of some incomprehensible, extraterrestrial force that uses the Moon as a vessel, and those who look at it will Go Mad from the Revelation. Real Sleep demonstrates this even further, revealing that even dreaming will not save you from its influence. Meanwhile, Skywatching implies that something is definitely up there, and its constructions (namely, a network of strange cobweb-like structures, various cylindrical buildings and a gigantic arrow symbol) and the presence of a gigantic bipedal creature that had been growing inside the Moon like a developing chick inside its egg spell only darker times for Earth.
• Marble Hornets, which is loosely based on The Slender Man Mythos. A young man looks through some old tapes belonging to an old friend of his who's gone missing in an attempt to learn what happened to him. He learns of his friend being pursued by a certain Eldritch Abomination and discovers that he's beginning to experience strange events due to watching the tapes. This one is notable in that a semi-normal human proves to be more of a direct threat to the protagonists than the Abomination itself, which is more akin to a force of nature that has been awakened. Also more unusually, the series actually has a surprisingly positive ending. It's bittersweet (and two good guys die) but the protagonists do more or less "win", albeit in a rather ambiguous sense.

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