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Southern Gothic Satan
- 140 statements
- 25 feature instances
- 22 referencing feature instances
| Southern Gothic Satan | type |
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Southern Gothic Satan | |
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| Southern Gothic Satan | comment |
Who's that tall dark stranger coming to town? It's Satan! Well, not the traditional Christian Satan, but an American Gothic concept that's half the European character of Mythology and Religion, who shows up in town to gamble for your soul over a game of tallywhackers, and half the First Nations concept of the Wendigo, a monster created or summoned by a community's greed, cruelty, or other evil. While the archetype originally took shape in the Deep South, this sinister stranger out to bring out the worst in people can appear anywhere. When a town is pretty on the surface but hides bad deeds underneath, in comes this mysterious character to reveal their sins and punish those who have committed them. He (or she) generally does not directly punish, though. Instead, they work on the townsfolk's worst impulses, until they reveal their corrupt nature and destroy themselves. Sub-Trope of Satanic Archetype. Contrast with the The Corrupter, who changes someone from innocent to evil, while this character stirs up the existing-but-concealed evil in people, then often walks away once everything is wrecked and on fire. Often a Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane character who is implied to be Satan, or sometimes a Came Back Wrong version of someone the town wronged in the past. Examples will often have Names to Run Away from Really Fast — or some variation of "Louis Cypher". Often a Badass in a Nice Suit, a Southern Gentleman, and/or and a Man of Wealth and Taste. May sometimes be Tall, Dark, and Handsome, but often has a Red Right Hand or some other creepy attribute. May present himself as The Drifter or the proprietor of The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday. A common element of Southern Gothic fiction, hence the name. Warning: Being as the identity or presence of this character can sometimes act as The Reveal, beware of unmarked spoilers. You Have Been Warned. Examples |
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| Southern Gothic Satan / int_1f0bc3d3 | type |
Southern Gothic Satan | |
| Southern Gothic Satan / int_1f0bc3d3 | comment |
The Crooked Man, from the Hellboy story of the same name, doesn't have a Red Right Hand so much as a Red Right Everything, but he checks a lot of the boxes of this archetype. (He's also explicitly described as a mere servant of the big guy himself, but by the time Hellboy gets involved, it's not clear how much of him is human anymore, and how much is an extension of his master.) | |
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| Southern Gothic Satan / int_22532d78 | type |
Southern Gothic Satan | |
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Lorne from Fargo, season 1. He comes to the outwardly pretty town of Bemidji, Minnesota and its Minnesota Nice inhabitants, in order to up the murder count and encourage everyone's bad impulses. At one point, he even quips, during a Casual Danger Dialogue with a former cop-turned-diner-owner, that "I haven't had a pie this good since the garden of Eden." However, he's still a mortal man with a Devil Complex, and is eventually killed by one of his victims, in a manner drawing parallels to the animals to which he compares humanity. | |
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| Southern Gothic Satan / int_31aedabc | type |
Southern Gothic Satan | |
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In the Cthulhu Mythos, as the messenger of the Outer Gods, Nyarlathotep is unusual for commonly taking human form, typically handsome and well-dressed, often insinuating himself into communities to foster cults who practice profane rites and human sacrifice, and eventually succumb to madness. In the Lovecraft story that bears his name, he travels across the world as a kind of showman, showing off wonders of science far beyond modern humanity — and secrets that fill entire cities with screaming nightmares each night. When the skeptical narrator and his friends decide to heckle the man, he drives them out... then somehow sends them hurtling across space, screaming in terror at visions of other worlds and the colossal true forms of the other gods. The story then ends: in true Cosmic Horror Story fashion, Nyarlathotep was no fraud, the Outer Gods are real, and skepticism is no protection against them. | |
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| Southern Gothic Satan / int_3539a85f | type |
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| Southern Gothic Satan / int_3539a85f | comment |
Needful Things: An example where the Tall Dark Stranger explicitly is the Devil or at least a demon. Leland Gaunt shows up in a shop that wasn't there before, and gives the townsfolk of Castle Rock special little things in exchange for pranks. The little pranks eventually set the townsfolk against each other till everything's dead and on fire. | |
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| Southern Gothic Satan / int_48e57619 | type |
Southern Gothic Satan | |
| Southern Gothic Satan / int_48e57619 | comment |
The Backwater Gospel: The undertaker (with his black shadow wings) comes to town which makes the pious townfolk believe that someone will die. So they all kill each other in an attempt to not be the one the undertaker comes for, and so they all die. | |
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| Southern Gothic Satan / int_4cb94f7f | type |
Southern Gothic Satan | |
| Southern Gothic Satan / int_4cb94f7f | comment |
The Traveller in Black: Dressed in black, with many names but only one nature, the titular character travels from town to town, causing people's wishes to come true in ironically appropriate ways, leading to the downfall of the selfish and the proud. | |
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| Southern Gothic Satan / int_51a7df31 | type |
Southern Gothic Satan | |
| Southern Gothic Satan / int_51a7df31 | comment |
High Plains Drifter: The Stranger is the maybe-brother-maybe-ghost of the Marshal who the town whipped to death in order to keep their secret gold. He's back to take advantage of the townsfolk's cowardice and greed by painting the town red, renaming the town Hell, and inflaming their quarrel with the outlaws until everyone's dead and everything's on fire. | |
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| Southern Gothic Satan / int_53a10f26 | type |
Southern Gothic Satan | |
| Southern Gothic Satan / int_53a10f26 | comment |
The episode was remade for The Twilight Zone (2002), with the fear of aliens replaced by fear of terrorism, and the experiment now carried out by the Army. It's less of an example here, though, as the Army's goal isn't to get the town to destroy itself, but to see how it would react to a terrorist attack, and they are expressly disappointed in the results in a way that the aliens from the original weren't. | |
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| Southern Gothic Satan / int_58bea563 | type |
Southern Gothic Satan | |
| Southern Gothic Satan / int_58bea563 | comment |
Subverted, parodied, zigzagged, and even played for heroics in Horns: Ig Perrish is a once-promising young man accused of the brutal rape/murder of his girlfriend, and is innocent but has no way to prove it. One morning he wakes up to find a pair of horns growing from his forehead and everyone he meets confesses their darkest sins and impulses to him. Ig returns to his hometown and uses his power to hunt the real killer, stirring up a vipers' nest of sin, which ironically improves some peoples' lives, and also evolves slowly into the red-skinned, bearded tempter we all know and love. In the end he's quite happy to ascend to the throne of Hell itself, with his dead girlfriend at his side and everything on fire. | |
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| Southern Gothic Satan / int_6c1d09b3 | type |
Southern Gothic Satan | |
| Southern Gothic Satan / int_6c1d09b3 | comment |
Fallout 3 has a variation with Mr. Burke. With his genteel manners and nice suit, he looks like he's going to be this for the post-apocalyptic frontier town of Megaton, but his idea of manipulation is to ask a stranger (the Player Character) to murder the local sheriff and set off the undetonated nuke in the middle of town square. Subtle he is not. | |
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Southern Gothic Satan / int_6c1d09b3 | |
| Southern Gothic Satan / int_7b625c79 | type |
Southern Gothic Satan | |
| Southern Gothic Satan / int_7b625c79 | comment |
Nanno from Girl from Nowhere is a mysterious, clever girl who transfers to different schools, exposing the lies and misdeeds of the students and faculty at every turn. She doesn't seem to age and is generally implied to be something inhuman. | |
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| Southern Gothic Satan / int_871c4f98 | type |
Southern Gothic Satan | |
| Southern Gothic Satan / int_871c4f98 | comment |
Diablo (Chile) has the "Lord of Entropia", a Man of Wealth and Taste who's dressed as a man in black and he was the one who made An Offer You Can't Refuse to Alex and so becoming in the Anti-Hero Diablo. Also counts for Vardan, The Dragon of Lord of Entropia, who dresses as him but he's a Long-Haired Pretty Boy instead. | |
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| Southern Gothic Satan / int_87218726 | type |
Southern Gothic Satan | |
| Southern Gothic Satan / int_87218726 | comment |
Linguere Ramatou from Hyenas is an old woman with a gold artificial leg and hand who returns to her impoverished home village of Colobane, which banished her at 17 for bearing a child out of wedlock. Now "as rich as the World Bank", Linguere offers to bestow a fortune upon Colobane in exchange for the murder of the village shopkeeper, the man who impregnated and abandoned her many years ago. Zig-zagged in that only one person dies, and the town gets improved rather than burned down, but even though the town is fancier with all the money Linguere gave them, the townspeople's enjoyment is tainted with the knowledge of what they did to gain the money. The film is an African Setting Update of the play The Visit, described in the theatre section. | |
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| Southern Gothic Satan / int_8a76eb6b | type |
Southern Gothic Satan | |
| Southern Gothic Satan / int_8a76eb6b | comment |
The Master and Margarita: Professor Woland is a richly-dressed Devil in Disguise who comes to Moscow to host the Satan's Grand Ball, and punishes sinners he happens to come across while at it. | |
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| Southern Gothic Satan / int_8bc12edb | type |
Southern Gothic Satan | |
| Southern Gothic Satan / int_8bc12edb | comment |
In The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires, James Harris is a corrupting presence in the Old Village, but all he does he does by taking advantage of longstanding issues there, particularly the authorities ignoring the black community, the husbands' misogyny and greed, and the community's obsession with keeping up appearances. As a vampire, he mostly preys upon the poor black kids in the Six Mile neighborhood because he knows nobody will investigate deaths in the ghetto, only going after Patricia's kids when she makes it personal for him, while his crimes in the Old Village amount to getting the community in on a development scheme that he intends to walk away from after stealing all their money. He also shares his name with a Recurring Character from much of Shirley Jackson's horror fiction, who goes back all the way to "Ballad of the Deamon Lover". | |
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| Southern Gothic Satan / int_94b67b1c | type |
Southern Gothic Satan | |
| Southern Gothic Satan / int_94b67b1c | comment |
The Zombie Priest from The Goon originally is this archetype, rolling into town from parts unknown, trying to destroy it with voodoo and Satanic magic, he doesn't even have a name, flashbacks show he's done this to many towns in the past. But eventually enough time passes thanks to his stalemate with the Goon that the Zombie Priest's character gets some depth, and he turns into more of a Diabolical Mastermind. | |
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| Southern Gothic Satan / int_98375510 | type |
Southern Gothic Satan | |
| Southern Gothic Satan / int_98375510 | comment |
Dogville: A twist on the concept in that Grace is far more Jesus than Satan, but her vulnerability still reveals the worst of the townfolk's natures, and by the end of it she decides that yes, everything in the town (except the dog) needs to be dead and/or on fire. | |
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| Southern Gothic Satan / int_a2b42653 | type |
Southern Gothic Satan | |
| Southern Gothic Satan / int_a2b42653 | comment |
×××HOLiC: Yuuko the witch is a more benign version of this trope. Having a mysterious little shop that's implicitly Invisible to Normals (customers notwithstanding), she offers tempting bargains to her customers at fair - if high - prices. Many of these end up going south for said customers, leading to either a Karmic Death or an Ironic Hell (or at least a Cool and Unusual Punishment). Unlike many other examples on this page, however, Yuuko isn't malevolent - while a bit of a troll to her friends, she usually explains both the properties of the objects she sells and the price to be paid; the problems typically come from the customer's either ignoring her warnings due to Hubris or Suicidal Overconfidence or because of some unexpected complication no one predicted. It also happens - rarely - that neither the price nor the item end up harming the customer, leaving them satisfied. | |
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| Southern Gothic Satan / int_a59fdd0b | type |
Southern Gothic Satan | |
| Southern Gothic Satan / int_a59fdd0b | comment |
Little Dogs on the Prairie: Miss Kittey, in her first appearance, manages to be this unintentionally. Her only intention is to provide a touch of sophisticated European hairstyling and make her customers happy. Yet because the series's town is a simple one without such luxury, they quickly become addicted to changing styles and one-upping each other and bringing on ironic fates via pride and envy (it's a Christian toon) that nearly destroy the town before the status quo is restored. It's implied that this has happened before to the point that towns avoid her when they see her coming, and a bewildered Kittey has no idea why. | |
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| Southern Gothic Satan / int_cd6bad8a | type |
Southern Gothic Satan | |
| Southern Gothic Satan / int_cd6bad8a | comment |
The Twilight Zone: "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" from The Twilight Zone (1959) is a sci-fi version. The Reveal shows that all the strange occurrences on the show were, in fact, the work of aliens like the townsfolk feared... but none of the townsfolk were themselves aliens. Instead, the real aliens were sitting outside of town watching from afar, opting to destroy humanity by turning its own paranoia against it and making them all kill each other for them. The episode was remade for The Twilight Zone (2002), with the fear of aliens replaced by fear of terrorism, and the experiment now carried out by the Army. It's less of an example here, though, as the Army's goal isn't to get the town to destroy itself, but to see how it would react to a terrorist attack, and they are expressly disappointed in the results in a way that the aliens from the original weren't. |
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| Southern Gothic Satan / int_dac26836 | type |
Southern Gothic Satan | |
| Southern Gothic Satan / int_dac26836 | comment |
The Intruder: Adam Cramer is a mundane example — a charming, zealously patriotic cross-burner who comes to the fictional Southern town of Caxton intending to help its residents fight school desegregation, amplifying the townsfolk's already-present racism to a peak of violent white supremacism. | |
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Southern Gothic Satan | |
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The Dressmaker: Tilly comes back to the town that tormented her as a child and unjustly blamed her for murder. With her inhuman sewing abilities and bag containing infinite material and shoes, she dresses up the town in couture, and by the end of it multiple people are dead, arrested, in asylums, or otherwise ruined, the townsfolk are humiliated in the local play competition, and Tilly has burned the town down. | |
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| Southern Gothic Satan / int_ea4158ee | type |
Southern Gothic Satan | |
| Southern Gothic Satan / int_ea4158ee | comment |
Blood Meridian: Judge Holden. Full stop. A corpulent, hairless giant of a man without any morals, any positive traits or even a hint as to his origins. He's an educated, omnipresent and possibly omnipotent figure that preaches the futility of life, morality and purpose while committing the most disgusting acts of sex and violence imaginable - either to prove a point or just because he can. It's never made clear if Judge Holden is Death, Satan or some other type of Humanoid Abomination. What is certain is that he is pure goddamn evil. | |
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Southern Gothic Satan | |
| Southern Gothic Satan / int_f1c84c54 | comment |
Jack Reacher: In many of the novels, there is a Town with a Dark Secret and Jack, with his almost supernatural size, strength, fighting skills, and detective ability just happens to wander through and, upon receiving some sort of threat or attack by a town member, decides to stick around to find out just what's going on and bring everyone to justice. | |
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Southern Gothic Satan | |
| Southern Gothic Satan / int_fc2e2163 | comment |
Friedrich Dürrenmatt's play The Visit has a naturalistic feminine version, in which a billionairess returns to the little town where she grew up... to offer the population a huge sum of money to kill the citizen who seduced, impregnated and dumped her when she was a teenager. | |
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