Sandbox.Names To Run Away From Really Fast Single Words: Adjectives (The Adjective One) | Nouns (Animal | Body Part | Colors | Weapons) | Verbs | Titles (Noun X | The Person) Etymology:Ancient Dead Languages | Foreign Language Names Named After: Conquerors | Notorious Killers | Redneck Names | Religious Names (Biblical Names | Demons or Angels) | Shady Names Sounds and Letters: K Names | Mor | Names Ending In Th | R Names | Xtreme Kool Letterz | Unpronouncable Names Various: Mix and Match
Names to Run Away from Really Fast, similar to names that sound like adjectives, but these "names" are purely adjectives usually for Eldritch Abominations and really ancient evils, presumably so old their real name is forgotten... or they're from a time before proper nouns existed.
Not to be confused with The Adjectival Man.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- In general, if someone (or something) has -mono at the end of his or its name, you want to be somewhere that is not in their vicinity. Translation to English tend to be awkwardly structured, such as "That Which ___" or "The ___ One". Ninjas were originally called shinobi-no-mono, or that which endures (so he can get a chance in killing you in most unexpected situation, such as when you're going to the lavatory).
Comic Books
- Doctor Strange has the Ancient One: the most powerful sorcerer of his generation — or any generation — for six hundred years.
- Played With: "Fantastic Four" fits this naming format, but sounds goofy, harmless, and overblown. This is a really bad assumption to make.
- Green Lantern: The Green Lantern Probert was known as "The Bad One." He's one of two anti-hero Green Lanterns introduced in the '90s (three, if you include the five minutes Lobo wore one).
- The Endless from The Sandman.
- The Hooded One, the Big Bad of Bone who is well...
Fan Works
- The Big Bad of the Kung Fu Panda Fan Fic A Different Lesson is named Heian Chao, which translates to "the Great Dark One." (His original name, Xun Chao, isn't quite as impressive or unnerving, "the Great Quick One.")
- The first dream in How the Tantabus Parses Sleep, dreamed by Rarity, is a Western whose villain is The Plaid One.
Film
- The Evil One was the villain from Time Bandits. Just Evil for short.
- Mandy (2018) has the Black Skulls, an extremely sadistic biker gang hopped up on some really nasty drug. Though they might be something much worse.
Literature
- The Wicked Witch of the West from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. And her dead sister, the Wicked Witch of the East.
- The Great Old Ones in H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.
- The Wheel of Time: The Dark One
- The Lone Power of Young Wizards, sometimes referred to as "The Lone One", although It has many names.
- The Dark Tower: The Crimson King. One of his flunkies, Randall Flag, uses "The Black Man" or "The Dark Man" as an alias in The Stand.
- The Unholy. A character from the novels of Vampire: The Requiem. She's pure Nightmare Fuel for other vampires.
- The White Witch from The Chronicles of Narnia.
- The King in Yellow.
- Reckless, in which the most prominent fairies have names with colors in them: The Dark Fairy, who is (appropriately) the most direct antagonist and very very powerful, and Miranda the Red Fairy, Jacob's ex-girlfriend, who uses moths in her spells.
- In The Dresden Files an enemy Harry Dresden, the hero, nicknamed "Sharkface" claims names such as Gatebreaker, Harbinger, Feargiver, and Hopeslayer.
- The Reynard Cycle: The seven Demons are named The Ruiner, The Wanderer, Skindancer, The Hollow Maiden, Duskwalker, The Dreamer, and Stormbringer, The Demon King.
- In Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Kronos is often known as "the Crooked One" (note that Kronos was called "crooked" in the original Greek myths but calling him "the Crooked One" is an invention of Riordan).
Live-Action TV
- Angel: Quor'toth is a hell dimension that's so nasty there are no portals to it, cosmic holes have to be punched through to travel back and forth there. The natives of that realm are so terrified of one being there that they know it only by the name of "The Destroyer". When the gang learn it's on its way to Earth, there are several comments from characters commenting that anyone called that has to be someone you don't want to meet. It turns out to be Angel's kidnapped son, Connor.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
- The Master
- The Anointed One, whom Spike (more accurately) nicknamed "The Annoying One".
- The Old Ones.
- Rule of Three: The First Evil.
- The First Ones, from Babylon 5, though those who weren't Shadows or Vorlons weren't really that bad.
- Aerys "The Mad King" Targaryen of Game of Thrones, who thought it was a jolly jape to off people by burning them to death.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power:
- Morgoth, the Great Foe.
- Sauron, knows also the Dark Lord and or the Deceiver
- Once Upon a Time gives us Rumplestiltskin, The Dark One.
- Doctor Who has the Great One ("ALL PRAISE TO THE GREAT ONE!"), the Giantest of the Giant Spiders in "Planet of the Spiders".
Tabletop Games
- Trinités : The Devoured Ones.
- The Dark Eye: The Nameless One, the god of a secret (and evil) cult.
- Warhammer 40,000: The Unclean One, The Nightbringer, The Deceiver, The Void Dragon, The Outsider.
- Warhammer: The other other other ... Old Ones.
- Magic: The Gathering: The Doubtless One, Nameless One, Soulless One, Reckless One, Heedless One.
- Yu-Gi-Oh!: Exodia the Forbidden One.
- In the AD&D 2nd Edition Monstrous Manual, the "Lich" entry states that many ancient liches have abandoned the names they had in life, and now go by pseudonyms like "The Black Hand" or "The Forgotten King."
- The Spawn of Rovagug in Pathfinder all have a title following this scheme in addition to their actual names. The six that are known are The Unholy First, The Monarch Worm, The Endsinger, The Dance of Disharmony, The Firebleeder, The Armageddon Engine.
Toys
- BIONICLE: The Shadowed One, ancient and feared leader of the Dark Hunters.
- Transformers: The Fallen — he's perpetually on fire.
Video Games
- Fran Bow: The vile villain Remor, also known as the Terrible Black.
- Planescape: Torment: The Nameless One, also known as The Broken One. Also, the Transcendent One.
- Demon's Souls — The Forgotten One, and the Old One.
- Bayonetta has Father Rodin, The Infinite One, as a Superboss. He's a heroic character, though.
- The Big Bad of Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Fecto Forgo, is called "the Great One" by their followers, namely Leongar.
- A Superboss of Castlevania: Lament of Innocence is also named The Forgotten One.
- The Old Gods from Warcraft. The Faceless Ones from the same franchise. Also, we almost forgot The Forgotten Ones.
- Star Craft — The Voice in the Darkness, also known as Lord of the In-Between Places, the Living Heart of the Void, and the One True God.
- SpellForce: The Dark One.
- Quest for Glory IV: The Dark One, too.
- Mass Effect: The Illusive Man, The Shadow Broker.
- Star Control (not) 3: The Eternals.
- The Last Remnant: The Fallen. Oh, and The Lost.
- BlazBlue: It's advisable to stay well clear of anyone referring to themselves as "The White Void", "The Just Sword" and "The Cold Steel". It's also advisable to run for your dear life away from anyone who's referred to as "The True Evil" by an Omnicidal Robot Girl.
- Baldur's Gate 2:
- The Big Bad of Shadows of Amn, Jon Irenicus, is also known as "The Shattered One".
- The Superboss of Throne of Bhaal, Demogorgon, is referred to as "The Imprisoned One", being a Sealed Evil in a Can.
- Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep — The Mysterious Figure (The Unknown in Japan, which is just as bad if not worse). There's also The Iron Imprisoner, The Infernal Engine, the titles of all Organization XIII members are phrased in this manner, The Armored Controller (one of Xemnas' forms), and The Lingering Will.
- Devil Survivor 2 has the Anguished One, who in turn refers to the main character as the Shining One.
- Borderlands 2 has Terramorphous, Vermivorous, Pete, Hyperius and several others. All of them are "The Invincible", which means that these guys should NOT be taken on alone if you don't know what you're doing: they're raid bosses, intended to be fought by several high-level players at once and with a strategy to back them up.
- At the end of Legaia II: Duel Saga, after fusing with his Supreme Origin, Igohl, Avalon becomes known simply as the Infinite One.
- GemCraft has the Forgotten, Sealed Evil in a Can that keeps escaping after being forgotten.
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl - The Marked One a.k.a Strelok
- Also The Dark Ones from Metro 2033
- The Imprisoned from The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, an ancient demon of terrifying power. His true form's Japanese name, Shuuen no Mono, follows the example listed under Anime and Manga and literally translates to "Person of Demise". However, the localization refers to him simply as Demise.
- Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan: The second most powerful Superboss of the game is an evil dragon known as the Fallen One, and its destructive power is said to be even above those of the Elemental Dragons.
- A rare heroic example in Tales of Berseria where Velvet Crowe refers to herself as "The Lord of Calamity".
- The Silent Ones in Fe.
- The Big Bad of Turovero: The Celestial Tower is an evil god known as the Dark One.
- The Binding of Isaac has many bosses who fit this naming scheme, namely: The Fallen, Dark One, The Hollow, and The Wretched. Also applies to playable characters The Lost and The Forgotten.
- The final boss of Trails of Cold Steel III is the corrupted Holy Beast of Earth, known as the Nameless One.
Web Comics
- The god of goblins in The Order of the Stick is known as The Dark One.
Web Original
- Protectors of the Plot Continuum: The Mysterious Somebody.
- The Slender Man Mythos has the Slender Man himself.
Western Animation
- Futurama: The Dark Ones.
- In contrast, the hero of Mighty Max is called "The Mighty One" by Norman, one of his guardians, as well as "Capbearer" by the Skullmaster.
- In Total Drama, Mike's Superpowered Evil Side is referred to as "The Malevolent One", making it clear from the beginning that he's not going to be a hero.
- In the South Park episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft", a World Of Warcraft hacker managed to gain extreme powers, to a point where no one could beat him, not even the game developers. Cartman's crew decided to try to save the world, and after multiple weeks of solely grinding on boars, the boys headed for battle. The developers had taken notion of their skill improvements. One then developer asks: "Are they strong enough to defeat the Evil One?"
- One episode of Jackie Chan Adventures features a Living Statue of the ancient warrior who imprisoned Shendu in his statue form. That episode is set before the 1st season's finale and the good guys are unaware of Shendu's existence before said finale. For that reason, the warrior's statue refers to Shendu as "the Ultimate Evil".
- DuckTales (1987) parodied this with "The Garbled One," an ancient, evil spirit that possessed the unintelligible Donald Duck.
Real Life
- In Ancient Greece, certain soldier types were referred to in this way. Heavy infantrymen were known as "hoplites", which is most accurately translated "the equipped ones".
- Byzantine heavy cavalrymen were called "kataphraktoi" - "the armoured ones".
- According to Herodotus' Histories, the Persian army had "The Immortals", an troop of ten thousand elite soldiers named so because as soon as one man died or retired, he was replaced.
- Ivan the Terrible. He was a good ruler early on, defeating many enemies of the Russians, earning him the nickname which could also be translated as "formidable" or "fearsome". Later on, he became The Caligula, making his name scary but appropriate on a whole different way.
- Likewise, Krum the Fearsome, Khan of Bulgaria. Best known for establishing state legislation which featured a lot of corporal punishments for various offences (for example, cutting off a hand for theft, or the tongue for slander) as well as making a wine cup out of the skull of his enemy, Nicephorus, Emperor of Byzantium, after repelling his invasion. Not someone you'd want to piss off.
- Also from Russia, Rasputin the Mad Monk.
