Basic Trope: A story seemingly grounded heavily in its own base understanding of reality turns out to be hiding elements of a Cosmic Horror Story.
- Straight: Detective Bob is investigating a string of kidnapping when he notices a strange sigil that appears in every location the abductions take place. He also starts running into tentacled monsters. It then turns out they're all linked to an Ancient Conspiracy to assist K'minr the Shaded in coming to Earth.
- Exaggerated:
- Detective Bob finds himself investigating cases that turn out to be eldritch in nature every. Other. Week.
- Bob was just trying to find a lost cat, only to end up exposing a global conspiracy to summon K'minr to earth.
- Downplayed:
- Bob has an object that is incomprehensible in nature, called K'minr's Cube. He uses it to help him catch criminals. Its origins and K'minr are never revealed.
- Skeptical Alice and Believer Bob take down a cult dedicated to K'minr. Their crimes are all perfectly natural, but there's a number of elements that don't add up. Alice offers tenuous rational explanations, while Bob points out it's evidence the cult may be right, and the story doesn't give a canon answer but subtly tips its hand towards Bob.
- The Villain Pedigree of Occult Detective Bob keeps rising. First it was vampires and werewolves, then The Fair Folk, followed by demons. Now it's K'minr's turn, but at this point the ramp-up feels natural.
- Justified: Humans haven't even managed to make it to Mars by now. It only makes sense that the universe at large (if not the multiverse) holds forces that are completely beyond our comprehension.
- Inverted:
- The story starts out in a dimension that is the home of K'minr... in a video game.
- The story starts out in K'minr's home before it turns out to be a trivial venue in the human world.
- The story starts out with a Government Agency of Fiction desperately trying to stop K'minr from rising and destroying human civilization. Turns out the whole thing was actually a "Scooby-Doo" Hoax enacted for disappointingly petty reasons.
- Subverted:
- K'minr and its underlings turn out to be Halloween costumes.
- K'minr is initially terrifying, but in the climax, it turns out it isn't bulletproof.
- Double Subverted: While bobbing for apples at the Halloween party, K'minr's reflection appears in the water.
- Parodied: K'minr is the name of Alice's pet cat. Her and the entire neighborhood perceive it as mundane, but Bob becomes increasingly more aware that it is no ordinary cat as it starts reciting Black Speech and mentally torturing him while he is over at Alice's home.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: K'minr and it's dimension are never alluded to.
- Lampshaded: Bob reads about K'minr for the first time and goes "When did this shit become a Lovecraft story!?"
- Defied:
- The precursors have implemented so many foolproof security measures that it's impossible for K'minr to even get close to Earth, so the only thing Bob has to do is get rid of the cultists so the abductions can stop.
- Detective Bob, through methods best left for the author to devise, destroys the K'minr the Shaded extremely early in the story.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Implied: A random dog starts growling at a nearby K'minr sigil.
- Deconstructed: Beating back the cult of K'minr and buying time for humanity is not the end of the story. The psychological effects this revelation has on Bob are examined in detail, with a brutally realistic rendition of the trauma such horrific knowledge would have on a person.
- Reconstructed: The psychological effects this revelation has on Bob are examined in detail. The changes go deep and are noticed even by those not in on the truth, but he was chosen to be a hero because he was particularly strong-willed and is able to integrate this reality without breaking.
- Played For Laughs: Bob reads about the 12th Eldritch Abomination this month that he has to get ready for and merely rolls his eyes.
- Played For Drama: The trope is used in a metafictional way to hammer in just how insignificant humans are. We all have our petty little stories, but they all go out the window when an Eldritch Abomination starts to stir.
Here to return to Cosmic Horror Reveal.
