Demons in media

[CrazyCrab]

Hi guys,
my game is going to feature a lot of demons and I just don't want to make them all the 'Omg such cool very evil much world destruction' stereotype so I've been watching and reading as much about their portrayal in popular media as possible. I've tried to vary it a bit and covered things from the Dictionnaire Infernal to the 'Devil works as a part-timer' anime... If anyone's monitoring my browser history they must think that I'm either a satanist or have a weird fetish...

Anyway, I'm looking for more stuff I can have a look at. Anything from truly bizarre to frightening, everything can serve as an inspiration.
What's your favorite way in which the demons are portrayed and why?
Thanks in advance.

 

[Queen Michael]

I really like the demons in Paradise Lost by John Milton. They got that old-school biblical feel to them. I like that. They feel like actual creatures and not just "evil energy" in general. They appear in the first chapters so there's no need to keep on reading in order to find them, and as an added bonus it's available for free on the web completely legally.

 

[Frezzato]

I actually enjoy things about demons that will probably be of no use to you. These are all depictions in movies, and more often than not, portray demons not so much as the traditional vision of demons or the devil, but rather as manifestations in alternate forms. These forms can be Keyser Soze (open to debate on this one) to the more conventional representations like in the movie Insidious [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1591095/] (see also: The Conjuring [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1457767/] and Sinister [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1922777/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_14]). Incidentally if you've never seen those three flicks I highly recommend them.

Other notable movies along this line include V/H/S [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2105044/] (again, recommended) and even that awful M. Night Shyamalan movie that takes place in an elevator, Devil (2010). Hell, I even enjoyed the demon aspect in another Shyamalan movie, The Village, believe it or not.

 

[Jamash]

One game that springs to mind is the Shadow Hearts series.

It drew heavily from Christian/Abrahamic Demonology (and other world religions and myth cycles), for example in the second game, most of the antagonists and summons were "real" demons from The Key of Solomon ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_of_Solomon ), e.g the protagonists main form was the demon Amon, whilst the antagonist Rasputin was actually in a soul pact with the demon Asmodeus.

If you want inspiration, you could simply read walkthrough for those games and then name check and cross reference any monster, summon and antagonist, all of which would most likely be based on entities from Demonology and other folklores.

 

[Asita]

Well there's Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials series, which you might recognize from the Golden Compass movie that came out in 2007. Dæmons (sic) in that world aren't evil in the slightest, or at least not by nature. For all intents and purposes, they are essentially the physical manifestation of a person's soul in an animal form that is representative of the person's nature, and act as lifelong companions to those they represent.

What else...well, demons are also among the recurring characters in Piers Anthony's Xanth series, wherein they're soulless shapeshifting immortals whose existence can largely be summed up as 'looking for ways to make the eons entertaining'. It's worth noting though that despite being soulless very few are portrayed as actively malevolent and are far closer to being amoral than immoral...much like the Demons (note the capitalization. It's important), which are...well I suppose they're probably best equated to the Elder Gods of Lovecraft fame in that they're massively beyond the scope of mortal comprehension (read: 1% of their attention is about all that mortals can handle), eternal and if they are not omnipotent they're damn near close to it.

For all that it's a comparatively minor point in the series, a Demon (Maybe. At the very least it's introduced as such) does make an appearance in the anime Baccano (and the light novel it's based on). In this case the demon is summoned by a group of alchemists and at their request agrees to give them the formula for the "grand panacea" (elixir of life) and is rather forthcoming with the rules associated with it.

Then of course Yu Yu Hakashou, Inuyasha and Berserk all boast a LOT of demons in their respective casts...as does Atlus's Shin Megami Tensei series of games...

You know what, I think I'll just go ahead and toss up a relevant tvtropes page.

 

[AtenSet]

First we decide what ontology we're using

Than we decide if it's the focus or just a piece of the legion that's fucking with you

Than we decide if God is active

Than we decide if the story stays "grounded"

Than we decide if it expresses itself independently or adapts in whatever way best benefits a leach

Than we determine if it's nature is due to its personality(rebelled/was a dick in heaven, or if it's personality is due to its nature

 

[Master_of_Oldskool]

I'd recommend you check out Disgaea 4. Like the other Disgaea games, it has demons sort of default to "evil" and cartoonish villainy, but it also gives an explanation as to why- essentially, because humans need a boogeyman to keep them in line, and the demons' acts of (flashy, cartoonish, usually ultimately harmless) evil work nicely. Really, most of the demons in the Disgaea series are basically good people/dragons/giant moths/what-have-you who are culturally predisposed to theft, laziness, and mass murder (in a world where bringing people back to life with no ill effect is cheap and easy).

That, and it's just a kick-ass SRPG that I recommend to any and all.

 

[Programmed_For_Damage]

I'm currently reading The Demonologist which is the biography of Ed and Lorraine Warren, the supernatural investigator couple The Conjuring is based on. Very interesting.
I like the theory of the demon being a fallen angel, which retains a lot of their angelic powers but they have been corrupted. Their expulsion from heaven has given them utter hatred toward God and their sole purpose is to pervert God's creation and win souls for Satan so they can go to war. Satan himself was the greatest and most beautiful of all the angels before the fall so it would make sense that his appearance is far more subtle and seductive than brutal and terrifying.

 

[davidmc1158_v1legacy]

I cannot believe that Crowly doesn't get the love. I mean, no one has mentioned Good Omens yet?!? Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaimen's take on the forces of Heaven and Hell and the End Times is just . . . . wonderful.

On the more serious side, the Denzel Washington film Fallen from 1998 has a pretty good angle on the subject.

 

[Eamar]

Might be kinda cheesy, but I like how Buffy handled demons: there's a huge amount of variety. Some are bona fide world-ending terrors, some are little more than animals, some are generally benign so long as you know what you're doing and don't cross them, some (thinking Vengeance Demons here) are pretty much just people, but with a different set of moral values.

"Demon" has always been a pretty broad term after all. They can be whatever you want them to be so long as they're in some way unsettling, no matter how subtle. Have fun with it.

[small]I'm currently playing around with an idea that has angels be just another sort of demon, and therefore less harps and singing, watching over humanity and more terrifying Old Testament power than we tend to think of them today.[/small]

 

[Tom_green_day]

This is going to sound really weird but I always saw Jack Bauer as the best demon. Although he's not actually a demon he kinda gets heartless towards the end and achieves the 'greater good' without regard for the people he just murders along the way.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I always thought demons should be about human failings, rather than just "Rar! I'm going to bludgeon you cause I am not very nice".

Though, I did like the South Park episode where Satan boxed Jesus, in which

Spoiler: the gist of the ep

Jesus is a pacifist, and Satan is a 12 foot tall muscley monster, so everyone in the town bets against Jesus, nobody thinks Jesus will win.

But it turns out that the only person betting against Satan was Satan himself, and he very obviously threw the fight to take all their money cause he's a bastard.