“Understand that there is no point in living. Cry, that there is no answer! Where there is darkness, there are shadows. I, myself, am all of you humans!”
Nyarlathotep is the God of Chaos, source of all evil in the Persona series and serves as the ultimate main antagonist of Megami Ibunroku Persona, Persona 2: Innocent Sin, and Persona 2: Eternal Punishment. He is the final boss of the latter two games.
Nyarlathotep is the "Persona" of Takahisa Kandori. After Kandori is defeated by the protagonist and his friends, Nyarlathotep forcibly enters Kandori's body and transforms him into God Kandori, saying he will grant him the power he seeks. Retroactively, Nyarlathotep has been mentioned to have engineered the whole incident with the intention of giving the humans a chance to destroy all of reality, allowing him to win his bet with Philemon.
He is described as the destructive side of Humanity's collective unconscious, and as such, the living embodiment of Mankind's collective evil; every thought, action or feeling that derives in experiencing the desire to bring harm to others or oneself in any form fuels Nyarlathotep's existence. His reason for providing the human race with the means to drive itself to destruction is given as a bet between him and Philemon, who holds that they instead will ascend to a greater destiny.
Physical Appearance[]
Nyarlathotep's true form, the Crawling Chaos, is a being of darkness with hundreds of tendrils covered with white masks. It has green and blue accents and embodies darkness, fear, and chaos.
Design Variants[]
In Shin Megami Tensei II and other subsequent SMT games, Nyarlathotep takes the form of the "Faceless God," a demon with black skin and no face wearing a gold grown with red wings. He also takes this form as a boss at the end of Persona 2: Eternal Punishment's PSP remake during the Tatsuya Scenario.
After being defeated, Kandori fuses with his Persona to become "God Kandori," where Kandori's naked body sits atop a golden statue's face with giant disembodied hands and a gold halo around him.
At the end of MIP, Nyarlathotep becomes a usable Persona. This form of his resembles the Faceless God form but with six unholy long tentacles with red at the ends.
In the spin-off manga, Persona: Crime & Punishment, Nyarlathotep appears as an antagonist named Rago. He appears as a man with long black hair and a suit with a ruffled collar. At the end when he is revealed to be the Crawling Chaos, he shows more of his true form, with his tentacles.
Also in Innocent Sin, he briefly appears as Maya's father, wearing a beige detective uniform and orange sunglasses.
In the Persona 2 duology, he also appears as the "Time Count," a shop owner in Sumuru City.
In the final moments of Innocent Sin, Nyarlathotep primarily takes the form of the reborn ruler of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler, although with sunglasses.
His second Persona form is that of Joker-Nyarlathotep, which is the Persona of Joker.
As the final boss of Persona 2: Innocent Sin, Nyarlathotep takes the form of all of the protagonist's fathers combined in the terrible "Great Father" form. Each father is attached as one of his limbs, with Kashihara as the head. He has the same black, blue, and green motif with blue holes in his design and pale skin.
For the majority of Eternal Punishment, Nyarlathotep takes the form of his greatest enemy, Shadow Tatsuya Suou.
The first phase of his final boss battle in Eternal Punishment, known as his Moon Howler form, is a large beast with black skin and green and blue design elements. He has many tendrils and hundreds of blue eyes that cover his body.
After once again fusing with Takahisa Kandori in Eternal Punishment, Nyarlathotep once again assumes the form of God Kandori, where the statue from before gains a full body that is being worn by Nyarlathotep's Moon Howler form.
In-game Models[]
| In-game appearances | |
|---|---|
 Joker-Nyarlathotep's model God Kandori's model in Megami Ibunroku Persona  Nyarlathotep's Persona design in MIP: Iku no to Hen  Kandori's Persona model  Fake Kashihara's model in Innocent Sin  Shadow Tatsuya's model in Eternal Punishment  God Kandori's model in Eternal Punishment  Crawling Chaos's model |
History[]
In the Persona series, he is symbolic of the destructive potential of Carl Jung's collective unconscious and actively seeks to agitate the universe into madness, woe, and discord.
In the series, he is given a prominent plot role, known as The Crawling Chaos, as the counterbalance to Philemon in the Persona series. Unlike Philemon, Nyarlathotep is able to operate in the outside world and take an active role. Throughout the series he employs the use of Shadow Selves of characters to accomplish his goals. Shadow versions of Tatsuya Suou, Lisa Silverman, Eikichi Mishina, Maya Amano and Yukino Mayuzumi appear as bosses in Innocent Sin thanks to rumors. In Eternal Punishment, Maya Amano, Katsuya Suou, Ulala Serizawa, and Baofu all have Shadows Selves which attack the party as bosses in pairs. Nyarlathotep is also capable of appearing as anyone he chooses. It is revealed in Eternal Punishment that he is represented by a black butterfly.
Megami Ibunroku Persona[]
Nyarlathotep is the "persona" of Takahisa Kandori. After Kandori is defeated by the protagonist and his friends, Nyarlathotep forcibly enters Kandori's body and transforms him into God Kandori, saying he will grant him the power he seeks. Retroactively, Nyarlathotep has been mentioned to have engineered the whole incident with the intention of giving the humans a chance to destroy all of reality, allowing him to win his bet with Philemon.
Persona 2 Duology[]
In order to rig things in his favor to end humanity, he gave Sumaru City the ability to spread Rumors which are events that would become true when being spread by people, effectively allowing him to alter reality as he wishes. He manipulates an organization in each part of the duology to fulfill his objective, being the corrupted child playgroup Masked Circle in Innocent Sin and the political group New World Order in Eternal Punishment. In either case, his final goal is complete and utter world destruction, which he deliberately advances the progress of in order to display to Philemon that people will ultimately guide themselves to their own ruin.
Persona 2: Innocent Sin[]
He appears as Jun Kurosu's late father (Akinari Kashihara), and the Fuhrer, who was supposedly revived by rumors. Due to his charisma and self confidence compared with his real counterpart, he acts as an ideal substitute parent for Jun. His goal in this game is to fulfill the Oracle of Maia to guide humanity to destruction, which he orders his Masked Circle and Last Battalion servants to fulfill regardless of cost.
The rumors orchestrated by Nyarlathotep include the revival of Nazis in Antarctica and the Oracle of Maia, both of them which are fictitous events brought to life via people's thoughts. He also manipulates Jun Kurosu into exacting revenge against Tatsuya Suou as the Joker by making him think Suou killed Maya Amano. This is a blatant lie intended to manipulate Jun, and the true arsonist was an insane man known as Tatsuya Sudou and Maya was seen alive and well early on in the game (albeit suffering from pyrophobia).
He serves as the game's final boss in the form of the Great Father, a fusion of the main cast's fathers. The Great Father's arms and legs are each a particular character's father; Lisa Silverman's father (Steven Silverman) is the left arm, Maya Amano's (Masataka Amano) is the right arm, Eikichi Mishina's (Kankichi Mishina) is the left leg, and Jun Kurosu's Akinari Kashihara is the right leg. The head takes the shape of a fake Akinari Kashihara based on Jun's delusions.
After the fight, he uses Maya Okamura to stab and kill Maya Amano with the Spear of Longinus, killing her and fulfilling the Oracle of Maia. This causes the earth to stop rotating with Xibalba being the last vestige of humanity alive, rendering him victorious. However, his victory was undone when Philemon erases the party's memories and creates the Eternal Punishment reality, resetting the events as if they never happened. However, Suou refused to forget the events in the old timeline due to refusing to kill his shadow, allowing Nyarlathotep to have the chance to repeat the same events again.
Persona 2: Eternal Punishment[]
Nyarlathotep fulfills a similar role as he did in Innocent Sin. While he does not restore Tatsuya Sudou's memories of the events from the previous game, he does talk to him and tease him with comments intended to spark the general idea of the same events in Sudou's addled mind, so he would be driven to repeat them in the Other Side. He appears before the party as Tatsuya Suou.
Because of his past defeat in Innocent Sin, he took the opening Tatsuya Suou provided him with when he refused to abandon his memories of the Other Side, implementing a new plan to let Mankind destroy itself, and branded Tatsuya with a mark to remind him that he doesn't have much time before the Other Side comes back.
He continues similar schemes trying to annihilate humanity by engineering people's thoughts, but this time he uses the New World Order, a group of corrupt politicians to act as his servants. He spread the unearthing of the mummy of a fabricated tyrant known as Kiyotada Sumaru who via kotodama, supposedly told the New World Order to extract Kegare from people and insert them into the earth's core, which will result in the earth dragons arising from it and they will destroy the world out of rage. The rumor of Takahisa Kandori's revival was also spread, causing him to literally return to life. In order to fulfill the prophecy, Nyarlathotep turns Tatsuya Sudou into the JOKER, a contract killer, and uses Chizuru Ishigami to spread a mystical infection on anyone who called him that will result in the host turning into a bloodthirsty maniac. The New World Order then extracts Kegare from the Jokers and fills the earth's core with them, causing the destruction of the world while they board Xibalba to utopia.
Save for this rumor, he was implied to fabricate historical events surrounding Gozen and bogus ancestors of Maya Amano, Tatsuya Suou and Jun Kurosu to mock them. It was also revealed later that the Time Count is Nyarlathotep in disguise.
In the end, a new group, formed by Tatsuya, Maya, Baofu, Tatsuya's brother Katsuya Suou, and Ulala Serizawa again stood against him and his plans of extermination. After the defeat of Kiyotada Sumaru, Xibalba is thrown into the collective unconsciousness and the party climbs the Monado Mandala to confront him. Despite unleashing his true forms against the party, he was defeated once again. Following his second defeat, he was banished to parts unknown, eradicating the power of Rumors and allowing Philemon to win the bet. He wasn't destroyed forever, though, because he is an undeniable, indelible presence in Humanity's heart, and may still return.
In Tatsuya's new scenario in the remake, Shiori Miyashiro's self is shattered into Trapezohedrons; Nyarlathotep's avatar, The Faceless God, seizes the last of the eleven stones, the one containing Shiori's shadow, and confronted Tatsuya and his group in the Kadath Mandala. Upon his defeat, he tells the party that soon they'll meet the real him in the flesh and is forced to leave behind not only Shiori's Trapezohedron, but also Randolph Carter's Trapezohedron of Emotion. Unlike the Nyarlathotep from the main story, The Faceless God appears as how Nyarlathotep is depicted in the traditional Shin Megami Tensei games.
Literary Origins[]
Nyarlathotep, known to many as The Crawling Chaos, The God of a Thousand Forms, The Dweller in Darkness, The Faceless God, The Floating Horror, The Haunter of the Dark and many others, is an Outer God in the Cthulhu Mythos. Like many of the well-known Old Ones, he was created by H. P. Lovecraft.
Personality[]
Nyarlathotep is the main antagonist of the Persona 2 duology. An extremely manipulative, charismatic and cruel entity born from the human consciousness, he and Philemon are acting on a bet to see if humanity will become enlightened or ultimately destroy itself.
Powers & Abilities[]
Nyarlathotep has been mentioned to have engineered the whole incident in Megami Ibunroku Persona with the intention of giving the humans a chance to destroy all of reality, allowing him to win his bet with Philemon. He is able to make rumors come to life and possess countless characters. He has as much power as Philemon does but he is able to leave the Collective Unconsciousness, unlike Philemon.
Appearances[]
- Shin Megami Tensei II
- Shin Megami Tensei: if...
- Shin Megami Tensei NINE
- Megami Ibunroku Persona
- Megami Ibunroku Persona: Iku no to Hen
- Persona 2: Innocent Sin
- Persona 2: Eternal Punishment
Trivia[]
- Nyarlathotep's original character design, first seen in Shin Megami Tensei II, is actually a composite character based on several different monsters from Lovecraft's writings. Its dark, featureless gaunt and featureless appearance with bat wings, resembles The Haunter of the Dark, one of Nyarlathotep's "1000 Masks." The pincer-like hands and spiny crown might reference the Mi-Go: crablike, winged fungoid aliens with a mass of feelers in place of a head first appearing in The Whisperer In Darkness. His black, winged body makes him look like the Night Gaunts which appear in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.
- The design of the Moon Howler boss in Eternal Punishment is a reference to one of his avatars in the Cthulhu Mythos, specifically his avatar The Howler in the Dark. Similarly, the Faceless God form that originated from Shin Megami Tensei II may be a reference to the avatar The Wailing Writher.
- Shadow Aigis' intro for Persona 4 Arena Ultimax shows her with a black butterfly, Nyarlathotep's symbol. Despite this, he has no role in the story.
- The broken Buddha statue on Kandori's Persona-Nyarlathotep in Eternal Punishment is identical to the intact Buddha face that appears as the body of God Kandori in Megami Ibunroku Persona.
- The fact that Nyarlathotep is the only known character to disguise as a Persona deliberately to manipulate a main antagonist (Kandori in the first Persona and Jun Kurosu / Joker in Innocent Sin) references his roles in the Cthulhu Mythos universe; while the other Mythos gods are often described as mindless or unfathomable, rather than truly malevolent, Nyarlathotep delights in cruelty, is deceptive and manipulative - deceiving the antagonists into believing he could grant them power (which he did at the cost of nearly losing their humanity) and manipulating them into becoming his pawns - and even cultivates followers and uses propaganda to achieve his goals - using rumors, Wang Long fortune-telling, Sumaru TV (broadcasting Wang Long), and the Masked Circle (Innocent Sin) / Tenchu Army (Eternal Punishment) to ultimately destroy the world around Sumaru City.
- Additionally, Nyarlathotep's nature to offer deals with humans for power in exchange for their bodies reflects one of his forms in the Cthulhu Mythos, namely the Black Demon. It would appear to distraught cultists and offer them unimaginable power for the permission to enter their body, but would never follow up on his end of the deal.
- The Malevolent Entity in the Persona 4 Arena games is easily mistaken for Nyarlathotep before his true identity was revealed due to both sharing a tendency to manipulate others' emotions into achieving their goals (although Hinokagutsuchi was only able to manipulate someone by personally contacting them), their lack of regard to their surrogates/subjects such as Minazuki or Labrys, their ability to manifest Shadow Selves out of nowhere and their goal of complete and utter world destruction. Therefore, prior to the release of Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, fans speculated that the Malevolent Entity was in fact Nyarlathotep, further reinforced with sharing the same English voice actor, before the reveal of differing Japanese voices.
- Nyarlathotep disguising as the Time Count is similar to Yaldabaoth impersonating as Igor in Persona 5, as both are final bosses that appear as vital service providers in the game, and provide the services as a part of their plan.
- As of Royal, Yaldabaoth is no longer the final boss, however, the new dungeon contains many Shadows related to Lovecraftian Mythology, with Maruki's ultimate Persona, Adam Kadmon, assuming full control over Maruki after he willingly surrenders himself to his own Persona in desperation, also sharing many similarities to Nyarlathotep.
- Nyarlathotep's form of summoning in games of the series, most notably Eternal Punishment's additional Tatsuya's Scenario is a direct reference to the Cthulhu Mythos. In the mythos, the Shining Trapezohedron is an ornate stone used to contain Nyarlathotep's Haunter of the Dark avatar, usually driving those who have it mad.
