The Heartless

"Nega-Scott" artwork by ScarecrowArtist
Used with permission.

"Don't bother, your voice can no longer reach [Riku] where he is. His heart belongs again to darkness! All worlds begin in darkness, and all so end. The heart is no different. Darkness sprouts within it, it grows, consumes it. Such is its nature. In the end, every heart returns to the darkness whence it came! You see, darkness is the heart's true essence."

— Ansem, Seeker of Darkness, Kingdom Hearts

The Heartless are monsters born out of people's negative emotions. They can be a special case of Body Horror, but can also be a part of the victim's Soul Anatomy that has been separated from them, and like a ghost they may not have a physical body at all — in which case, they may be considered a kind of Tulpa. This part of the soul may represent all of a person's animalistic desires without any of the restraint, similar to a Jekyll & Hyde situation, or all of their feelings of suffering, sadness, and anger condensed into a distinct figure. They can be a convenient Monster of the Week since they are an unlimited resource; there always seem to be plenty of victims loaded with problems and angst for The Heartless to feed on. They can also have a self-propagating "zombie" effect.

The trouble for the heroes is that these are difficult to get rid of, especially if The Heartless still displays an awareness of the world (usually, as a ruse of the Enigmatic Minion). If an established character becomes one of The Heartless, they may act as if they have undergone a Face–Heel Turn.

The All-Loving Hero's power is usually to combat The Heartless or even to heal them. The Anti-Hero or Well-Intentioned Extremist usually insists the victims are too far gone and should be put down before more people get hurt. Occasionally, a victim who is Fighting from the Inside can resist The Heartless' control.

Depending on the context, this trope may be a subtrope of Abstract Apotheosis. This is because nearly every series that this trope is used in presents these critters as An Aesop about them being in everyone's hearts. Contrast/See also Made of Evil.

Obligatory Heart Drive link thrown in for good measure.

Not to be confused with the Let's Player of the same name, the film Heartless (2009), or the single Heartless by Heart.

---

Example subpages:

• Anime & Manga
• Video Games

Other examples:

Trope Namer (Kingdom Hearts)

• The Kingdom Hearts video games name the trope, with the manifestations of the darkness that exists in people's hearts; the darker the heart, the more powerful the resulting Heartless, which explains why Sora's Heartless turned out to be a Shadow (a lowly mook). They mindlessly seek out other hearts to steal (and thus increase their ranks) and tend to allow themselves to be directed by those who have control over darkness, or simply by those powerful enough. However, they are described as having started out decidedly less destructive before the series' Big Bad, Xehanort, started his experiments on them and created the Emblem Heartless.
• The Unversed, which are the 'opposite of human life', are born from raw darkness. They apparently feed off of negative emotions, in a different way than the Heartless do. There's also Vanitas from the same game, who is the darkness from Ventus's heart, removed and made into a separate entity. The Unversed simply extend the process; each is a living incarnation of one of Vanitas's emotions, so, effectively, they are the Heartless of a Heartless (in terms of this trope's definition). Once Vanitas dies, however, they cease to be.
• The Dream Eaters of Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] play it a bit differently. Dream Eaters are the naturally occurring manifestations of the Darkness that exists within Sleep and Dreams, and they are split into two kinds. Whereas Nightmares are bad and devour happy dreams, Spirits consume the Nightmares and act as helpful and friendly Mons.

Comic Books

• In DC Comics, this is basically what black kryptonite is all about. It splits people in two halves. One of those halves is an evil half that represents the victim’s dark side. The black kryptonite clone is the embodiment of the victim’s inner darkness.
• In Marvel Comics, this is the Void's relationship to The Sentry.
• The Martian Manhunter expels the Heartless in an issue of his own series (a flashback to his Justice League International days). Then he destroys it with Eye Beams.
  • His personal Heartless is his addiction to Chocos. Seriously.
• Grant Morrison's run on Doom Patrol had one of these as the ultimate baddie — the Candlemaker, an embodiment of mankind's fears of nuclear annihilation.
• The emotional spectrum entities in Green Lantern are creatures born from, and embodying the emotions of sentient beings. Naturally, the ones born from fear, greed, and rage are particularly nasty.
• Despite the whole Zombie Apocalypse motif, this is what the Black Lanterns from Blackest Night really are—the unresolved emotions of the dead given form; they just pretended to be the actual (zombified) person in order to trigger emotions in their victims, which they fed on. The dead person's real soul was not involved, and if the person had died in peace, they couldn't be duplicated.
• Nega-Scott in Scott Pilgrim (comics only; the movie version is completely different).
  • To explain: In the comics, Nega-Scott is basically an Anthropomorphic Personification of Scott's repressed memories and his denial to admit he's been a Jerkass since he started high school. Scott doesn't really "defeat" him; rather, through revelation of his true high school past through Kim (which was altered into him being an eternal moral do-gooder by both his repression and Gideon's tampering), and through contemplation during Nega-Scott maiming him, Scott accepted his own faults and absorbed Nega-Scott back into himself. In the movie, it's just a Giant Space Flea from Nowhere that Gideon sends to fight Scott at the end, which backfires when they become instant friends.
• The main villain of one Aquaman story arc is "The Thirst", a golem that is animated as the shadow self of the chosen waterbearer should they use their power to harm rather than heal. His only desire is to drink life itself. They take this role to the waterbearer, their strength proportional to the bearer's negative emotions. Only after Aquaman finds it in his heart to forgive his archenemy can he muster the strength to defeat him. And when he's then betrayed by said villain, the response leads to him doing a Fusion Dance with The Thirst, leading from a fake ending into a far worse scenario.
• Marvel Universe: Mephisto's "son" Blackheart was born from the evil of Christ's Crown (named after the crown of thorns used to torture Jesus), a place with a dark and bloody history.
• Several Supergirl enemies are born from her dark emotions: Satan Girl, Kara's negative side given shape and sentience by a fragment of Red Kryptonite; Nightflame, her death wish's embodiment; and Dark Supergirl, who is born from her self-loathing, grief and Survivor Guilt.

Fan Works

• Child of the Storm has the Spirit of the Fallen Fortress, which is composed of the pain, anger, and suffering of all the thousands of beings that died in the Fortress, and aspects of their spirits were trapped there, before the resultant entity started hunting in earnest.
• In Part 2 Clash of the Elements, the trope namers themselves have appeared as of Chapter 21
• Crowns of the Kingdom has the Dispirations, although it's not so much that they eat negative emotions as that they crave any thought pattern that might bring them closer to reality.
• Hellsister Trilogy has Satan Girl: Supergirl's dark side's embodiment, born from her repressed dark desires and impulses.
  Supergirl: It happened some years ago, both in my time and yours. I was coming to your era to attend a Legion meeting. Just routine business, but the bylaws stated that a member had to attend a minimum number of meetings to keep her status, and I chose this one. And just after I popped into your time, I ran right into a chunk of Red Kryptonite.
  Shrinking Violet: That's the stuff that always has crazy effects on Kryptonians. Makes 'em fat, or crazy, or giants, or gives 'em ant's heads, and like that.
  Blok: Please continue, Kara.
  Supergirl: All I knew at the time was that I had a fainting spell. While I was out, the real Red K effect came through. The thing... it... I was cloned! It cloned me, and the clone was, well, my evil side. My dark side. And it was just as real as... as real as me.
• Her Inner Demons: The fic argues that Midnight Sparkle was the result of Human Twilight's feelings of alienation and bitterness.

Film

• In Forbidden Planet, the Monsters from the Id are invisible, invincible, incredibly strong beings of pure vengeance. Their existence is a side effect of the Deadly Upgrade.
• The Brood is about a woman who gives birth to her inner demons.
• The Nothing in The Neverending Story is the result of children no longer believing in fairy tales. However, in the original book, it's implied to be more a result of increasing cynicism and loss of imagination, as it's spread by people lying.
• The curse in Ju On was created by a fit of rage.
• The Pink Slime in Ghostbusters II was generated by the negative emotions of New York. The substance itself is actually neutral, but New York is just that cynical and negative a city.
• Played with in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World where the titular character is forced to face Nega-Scott and demands to face him alone. A few minutes later the two emerge together, laughing and talking, and Scott says they decided to just talk instead:
  Scott: We just shot the shit. He's... he's just a really nice guy. We're gonna get brunch next week. We actually have a lot in common.
• Ralph Breaks the Internet: A computer virus that copies and replicates insecurities in systems ends up scanning Ralph and picks up his emotional insecurities. It responds by creating a ton of Ralph copies that embody all his negative traits, like his possessiveness and fear of abandonment, which have no other desire but being friends with Vanellope... whether she likes it or not.

Literature

• The Camp Half-Blood Series: Monsters - as in, the monsters from Classical Mythology - are frequently described as such. Chiron in Percy Jackson and the Olympians calls them "archetypes" who are born "from the chaos and barbarism that is always bubbling underneath civilization", just like the gods are the collective spirit of Western Civilization. As a result, monsters can never truly be killed, as they have Resurrective Immortality and can only be sent back to Tartarus to regenerate.
• A Christmas Carol has Ignorance and Want. A pair of Humanoid Abominations who were born of Humanity's flaws.
• The Spectres of His Dark Materials.
  • The truth is much worse than that: as it turns out, they're really Eldritch Abominations spawned from the Abyss, the great void of nothingness between Universes. They devour the souls of unfortunate people who happen to be near them. They're also created whenever the Subtle Knife is used to cut between the worlds. They destroyed civilisation in the world that originally created the Knife. Oh, and you can't kill them by physical means.
• Harry Potter
  • Dementors are a borderline case. We never learn how they came to be, or, indeed, if anyone knows this at all, but their presence drains the positive emotions of everyone around them, and they will swallow the souls of anyone too weak to fight back if given the chance. The Ministry actually uses them as prison guards, although some (such as Dumbledore) question the wisdom of this approach—with good reason, as they defect to Voldemort almost as soon as he asks since he doesn't impose any restrictions on them.
  • Boggarts are another borderline case: they take the form of what the person nearest them is most afraid of.
• Forest Kingdom: Across the series, the demons are just humans who've been taken over by the Darkness, completely against their will. There's also something of an extension on the trope by having the Infernal Devices (swords) chosen to fight the demon armies capable of burning the humanity right out of the user, in essence making them the same or worse than the things they're fighting.
• In Neil Gaiman's American Gods, Odin thrives on death and Loki on chaos. Shadow thwarts both of them by standing before the impending war of gods and explaining exactly that. The gods go their separate ways, and the death Odin was counting on to resurrect him evaporates.
• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is about how Jekyll tries to chemically rid himself of negative impulses and emotions but instead leads to his transformation into the embodiment of them.
  • Hyde could be seen as the Ur-example of this trope. Also unmentioned above but relevant to this trope and the quote, the story not only makes much of Hyde's utter lack of any kind of positive emotion or morals, but also points out that because he has none of these things, and hence no limits, he has an unrivaled love for life. It is this addictive sensation that actually draws Jekyll into continuing the experiment until it is absolutely too late to turn back.
  • In the second volume of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Mr. Hyde discusses this with the others; he explains that he's been getting bigger over the years while Jekyll's been wasting away because Jekyll kept all the restraint for himself.
• The Beast in Lord of the Flies is initially thought to be a physical threat, but eventually we come to understand that it is the darkness of man's heart, and is the corruption of human kind's minds. Though the Beast is never actually seen because it's all in the characters' minds.
  • They do, however, mistake other people for the beast, one being a dead airman who has ejected from his aircraft above them and the other being Simon, who they kill and who Golding gives a beautiful burial.
• In "The Fisherman And His Soul" by Oscar Wilde, a Fisherman cuts his shadow (which holds his soul) free from his body so that he can live in the sea with his love, a mermaid. The soul, lacking a heart, becomes evil.
• The Serpents in The Death Gate Cycle were created by magic gone mad fused with their creators' fear and hatred- their goal is to turn the universe into "a prison house of suffering and death" because negative emotions give them power and prolong their existence. Unlike a lot of examples they're actually very smart (most of the time), and can take whatever shape they want to further their goals, though they prefer appearing as hideous snakelike creatures in order to best terrify people.
• The Overlook Hotel in The Shining is depicted as being The Heartless in architectural form, if you go by the interpretation that the paranormal side of what's happening in it is genuine.
• The Shadowen in The Heritage of Shannara are very much this trope: smoky, bodyjacking wraiths made up of people's negative emotions and hatreds.
  • From the same author, the feeders in The Word and the Void are creepy, shadowy beings that feed on negative emotions, and induce them in people to boot. The demons, on the other hand, are closer to The Soulless.
• The Fearlings in The Guardians of Childhood, shadowy wispy spirits that spread fear into the minds of children by turning their dreams into nightmares and converting them into their ranks if overdosed.
• The Voices from Of Fear and Faith are powerful demonic monsters created by humankind's negative emotions that instill these emotions in anyone who gets near them.
• The unnamed shadow-creatures in Lamplight only prey upon those who have become completely socially isolated, both physically and electronically.

Live Action TV

• Somewhat inverted in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, with regard to Angel/Angelus being basically two variations on the same character, with/without a soul.
• Red Dwarf makes ample use of this trope in many episodes, such as:
  • In one episode, the crew land on a moon that forms itself to mimic the mind of Rimmer, who is... all the worst traits of humanity. They are trapped and decide to build up Rimmer's self-esteem in order to escape. This culminates in giving Rimmer a group hug.
  • "Polymorph", which features a monster that feeds on emotions such as fear, guilt, rage, and vanity, and changes its shape in response to each person's inner demon in order to elicit these emotions.
  • Rimmerworld, which is populated entirely by descendants of Rimmer who have weeded out any trace of bravery, kindness, or loyalty, in favor of all of Rimmer's worst qualities. They're all named Rimmer.
  • Legion, a "gestalt entity" comprised of the four crew members' combined consciousnesses. They defeat it by knocking themselves unconscious.
• Doctor Who
  • The Mara are parasitic beings of pure hate and rage that require the fear of their victims to survive. As the Doctor learns from a mystic in its second appearance, "fear is the only poison". When forced to reveal itself, it looks like a rather pathetic giant carnival snake.
  • The Valeyard is the Doctor's worst possible future self, created by the Time Lords to condemn him. In return, he would get the Doctor's body. He's so bad, he terrifies the Master, who once held the universe for ransom.
  • The Dream Lord is more a Master of Illusion and personification of the Doctor's darkness and self-hatred than the Valeyard.
• In one episode of The Amazing Extraordinary Friends, Applied Phlebotinum splits the heroes into separate beings embodying their good and evil sides (although their 'evil' sides are selfish more than anything else).
• The creature Armus from the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Skin of Evil describes himself as having come from a race of Titans who learned to physically manifest the dark part of their natures as a second skin, which they then discarded. Armus is the amalgamation of all of the discarded evil, or potential for evil, of a race. To say the least, he's a bit peeved about being left behind.
  • An interesting example in that Armus is defeated by confronting him with the fact that he is less heartless than he first appears.
• Super Sentai:
  • Daimaou of Ninja Sentai Kakuranger is the embodiment of human hatred and despair. This means that killing him would unleash a Hate Plague on humanity so he can only be defeated by sealing him away.
  • Don Armage of Uchuu Sentai Kyuranger was born from the despair of the universe and wants to save the universe by destroying it and creating a better one.
  • The High School Heroes: The Mazins are humans who have been corrupted by an evil smartphone app that takes advantage of the pain in their hearts, which is represented by the giant nails that are driven through their chests in their transformed states.
  • Avataro Sentai Donbrothers uses a very similar idea. The monsters are Hitotsuki, humans who spontaneously transformed into monsters as a result of being consumed by their desires. The Donbrothers and Nouto are in conflict over how to deal with the Hitotsuki. The Donbrothers save humans who transformed into Hitotsuki while the Nouto simply delete them from existence.
• Ultraman 80 had a whole series of monsters created by negative emotional energy that was called "Minus Energy." Examples include:
  • Hoe is considered the most iconic of the bunch and arguably presents the trope better than any other Minus Energy kaiju. The creature forms from despair and depression, constantly cries tears of explosive acid, and can breathe a beam of Minus Energy. He tends to reappear in other Ultra Series.
  • Crescent, a dinosaur-bear kaiju, is the very first one and also 80's very first enemy.
  • Delusion Ultraseven, an Evil Twin of Ultraseven that manifested from the anger of an Ultraseven-loving kid whose soccer game was ruined by 'bosozoku'' (Japanese bikers).
  • And in the proud tradition of the Ultra Series giving us truly bizarre kaiju, 80 in one episode must contend with Glovusk, a creature spawned when a baseball glove absorbed Minus Energy due to a boy's frustration over his struggles at playing the sport.
  • Plazma and Minazma were the final ones to appear in the show and considered the most powerful Minus Energy monsters. While pretty strong on their own, their combined strength almost defeated 80 until Yullian transformed for the first time.
• The Shadow (created as a side effect of the leyline Nexus under the manor), the Source (an evil bestowed on the Underworld's leader), and the Hollow (a parasitic entity Above Good and Evil which feeds on both forms of magic) from Charmed. Cole became host to each power once.

Tabletop Games

• The Shadows from Wraith: The Oblivion. Each wraith has a nihilistic voice in the back of their head, urging them away from the things that defined them in life and towards oblivion. Wraiths who give in to this voice too deeply become Spectres, agents of Oblivion focused on destroying all existence.
  • However, the reverse is also true: Spectres have a Psyche, the voice of life and hope that tries to talk them into doing 'the right thing'.
  • Werewolf: The Apocalypse also had Bane Spirits, spirits of violence, anger, misery, and corruption used to harrow humans and turn them into fomori and servants for the Wyrm. While the Bane Spirits are born of mankind, the gameline makes it clear that just shoving an anger spirit in someone doesn't make them the Hulk; they need to give in to its subtle insinuations first...
• In Inferno for the New World of Darkness, demons are the Anthropomorphic Personification of this trope, seeming to be created from human evil (although due to their universal Lord of Lies ability, this is nearly impossible to verify). They start off as bodyless, nameless voices called Whisperers, spirits transformed by a combination of human evil and...something, Enemies Without who gained a life beyond that, and the ghosts of the evil. After tempting people to sin or write Testaments for them, they evolve into Dominions, who exist to make themselves more powerful through spreading sin and darkness.
• Fan-made expansion Genius: The Transgression has an interesting variant in Manes, who represent popular concepts disproved by science. Entire worlds can be created this way — the moment the Viking probe sent back pictures of Mars as a barren wasteland, the Martian Empire came into existence. They're not always bad though, they just want to continue existing.
  • Additionally, while they're more like normal people than most, the Clockstoppers are anti-Geniuses; they possess no spark of creativity and reduce wonder and Wonders to emptiness. In place of a creative "spark" they possess a gnawing "void" that essentially means they run on spite.
• Princess: The Hopeful: While many Darkspawn are born from those who cross (or are pushed across) the Moral Event Horizon, others are composed of random bits of negative emotions that congeal together until they attain a crude self-awareness, or composed of sadism and despair given body by dark rituals.
• In GURPS Fantasy II, the various monsters infesting the Mad Lands not only are often humans corrupted by their dark sides, but their naming even follows the "-less" format. E.g. people who don't speak out when they should become Soundless, people who are too quick to take offense become Skinless, etc.
• The four gods of Chaos in Warhammer 40,000 are born from base emotions. Khorne is the God of Hate, Rage, Blood, War, Honor, and Killing. Tzeentch is the God of Change, Hope, Ambition, Manipulation, Scheming, and Sorcery. Nurgle is the God of Decay, Despair, Love, Destruction, and Disease. Slaanesh is the God of Decadence, Excess, Pain, Pleasure, and Self-Indulgence.
• In Dungeons & Dragons, there is the Fihyr (from the Monster Manual II.) To quote the description, "Fihyr are the collected fears of humanity made corporeal."
  • The sorrowsworn are misshapen manifestations of negative emotions such as anger, hunger, loneliness, and panic native to the Shadowfell. While in previous editions they were demons, in Fifth Edition they are Monstrosities that can be weakened by acting against the negative emotion they represent. For example, Angry sorrowsworn become confused and disoriented when their would-be victims don't attack them.
• Demons in Pathfinder are born from the sins of evil souls, and it's mentioned that even a single such soul can spawn hundreds if not thousands of demons.
• The Nightmares from Don't Rest Your Head are things from unfeeling bureaucracy to sleazy journalism to hatred itself given flesh, either by a person transforming into one due to severe insanity or by more exotic means — the Ladies in Hating are either trained in the High School or created from young girls poisoned by the blood of other Ladies in Hating, while legend has it that Mother When came from... somewhere else when someone tried to pick the lock on a door out of the Mad City during the Thirteenth Hour. They are almost universally cruel, twisted, and vicious, incapable of mercy, compassion, or kindness... and the very fact that the Wax King doesn't match this description is sometimes taken as proof that he isn't actually a Nightmare at all.
• Most Deadlands monsters are of this variety. The setting runs on Clap Your Hands If You Believe Fear, and the Big Bads, who are the primary Heartless of this verse, harvest human fear and use it to animate anything the local populace fears, be it jackalopes, wendigos or living blast shadows. These created abominations are powered by fear too, so they are also The Heartless.
• The Horrors of Earthdawn and Shadowrun are Eldritch Abominations from another dimension that feed on pain and negative emotions. They vary wildly in their intelligence and habits, from near-mindless beasts that slaughter indiscriminately to diabolical masterminds who start wars and plagues. Then there are those like Yserthgrathe and Chantral's Horror, who go for quality over quantity - find a single "perfect" victim and dedicate your existence to inflicting misery on them, including making them immortal so that there is never any escape.
  • As Shadowrun has had to break away from the Horrors due to a number of licensing deals, new horrors have cropped up in the setting - such as Shadow Spirits, entities that drain the life and power of metahumans in order to feed on their lust, their fear, their sorrow, their violence, or their creative urges.
• Magic: The Gathering gives this sort of origin to devils (as having come from demons) on the plane of Innistrad, as described in the flavor text of Riot Devils—"Devils are demons' unearthly desires made flesh."
  • Demons, angels, and devils are all created from mana (aka the magic-powering energy directly tied to your philosophy and emotions), so potentially any of them can be born of negative emotions, provided there's enough mana.

Web Animation

• Flipnote Warrior: The Art Fairies feed on negative emotions of struggling artists, which benefits both. But when this cycle is unbalanced, they are turned into Anti-Sakuga monsters and parasite off people.

Webcomics

• The Order of the Stick: This is how vampires work, witnessing and being shaped by the darkest points of their host's life at the moment of their creation.
  High Priest of Hel: And that's who I am. Your worst day, personified.
• In Unsounded when people die their memories all remain in the khert, where devoid of a living mind to keep them unified they scatter, like calling to like, creating "ghosts" coagulated from many different people's worst experiences. Of course this does happen with other sorts of memories too. The First Silver monster Delicieu creates acts as a beacon to these negative ghosts, drawing them into the world in massive numbers, while Boo proves so full of good memories that the monster can't harm it.

Web Original

• The strangers from Goodbye Strangers possibly are a form of the heartless. They do not appear to be alive and appear spontaneously when conditions are right and they come in a variety of strains that appear to be themed around different emotions and concepts, especially negative ones like loneliness, grief, rage, and lust. Although unlike a lot of other examples on this page, many of the ones based on negative emotions are Non Malicious Monsters or are entirely harmless, and sometimes are so pathetic that they are kind of adorable. For example, the buledroni doesn't do much besides constantly crying and the only effect it has on humans is increasing the production of tears. But plenty of other strangers will attack and kill humans in gruesome ways or have effects that can leave people with permanent disabilities.
• The Yamiko in the Sailor Nothing novel are a particularly gruesome version, with the interesting twist that their being pure evil also makes them incompetent, with no self-control or self-discipline (see the Quotes page for the full version of the page quote). This may be considered a deconstruction of sorts.
  • The Yamiko are also interesting in that they're made by magically cloning a human, with the cloning process doing nothing more harmful than knocking out the human. The first act of a newborn Yamiko is usually to murder the original, but not only is it possible for the whole and unaltered human to come face to face with the living embodiment of their dark side, it happens a few times over the course of the story, and if a Yamiko has let their human counterpart live, it's usually so they can be Forced to Watch as their Yamiko copy brings their whole world crashing down in the most sadistic manner possible.
• Though Word of God says that the Devilbirds are supposed to be Mortasheen's demon-equivalents, they fit equally well under this trope. For those who don't know, they're Boschian bird-monsters each embodying a negative emotion, which feed by inducing said emotions in other people. Let us take the Devilbird of Gluttony for example. It feeds by inducing a hunger so fierce in a bystander that they will eat anything in sight. They then are psychically forced to go back to the Devilbird's nest and vomit up what they've eaten in said Devilbird's mouth. In the advanced stages of this hunger, they may become so ravenous that they begin to eat themselves just to fill their hunger. And yes, almost all of the Devilbirds are this horrible. Even the one based on positive emotions turns its victims into hopeless addicts. The only exception is the Devilbird of Sloth, which is so overcome with its negative emotion that it doesn't do anything — harming and exploiting others or even hatching from its egg are far too much work for a creature that is completely slothful.

Western Animation

• Penelope Spectra from Danny Phantom was a ghost posing as a school guidance counselor. She made her patients more depressed, however, because she needed their negative emotions to keep herself young. At least, until she was able to make herself a new ectoplasmic body that wasn't falling apart.
• In the final episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog has Courage's insecurities conjure up a Sadist Teacher that punished him for even the slightest imperfections. She melts away when Courage learns to accept himself for who he is.
• Oil Can Harry is billed as Harry the Heartless in the Filmation Mighty Mouse serial "The Great Space Chase."
• Ahsoka becomes this in the middle of the Mortis arc of Star Wars: The Clone Wars; complete with Mind-Control Eyes and Tainted Veins. It could also be a supernatural case of More than Mind Control. Things get particularly heartbreaking when the Son decides You Have Outlived Your Usefulness and kills her with a Death Touch. Thankfully she is resurrected.
• Teen Titans (2003) gives us Trigon (an Eldritch Abomination) who was able to produce an Evil Twin for each of the Titans (minus Robin and Raven). Things looked bleak until they started switching opponents
• In Miraculous Ladybug, the Peacock Miraculous can manifest powerful creatures called "sentimonsters" from people's emotions. In theory, this would be used to make allies of good out of positive emotions, but much like how Hawk Moth abuses the Butterfly Miraculous to create supervillains, Mayura uses the Peacock to birth monsters from negativity.
• Angel Wars: There are several monsters the guardian angels have to contend with that don't appear to be demons per se, including giant glowing bugs that humans can't see or feel. It's implied that these are manifestations of negative human emotions.

---