The Cargo Cult, which worships a non-living MacGuffin of some kind.The Apocalypse Cult, which tries to induce The End of the World as We Know It.But these are the most interesting, so that's why fiction likes that kind of cult.īroadly speaking, fictional cults fall into one of these subtropes:
Many a comedy show, meanwhile, will base a funny cult on the Church of Happyology.Ĭertainly, only a minority of cults are like this.
federal agents, or Aum Shinrikyo note (responsible for the 1995 sarin attack on the Tokyo subway). Many a drama show will draw from infamous real-life religious groups like the People's Temple note (committed ritual suicide and in the process helped name the trope Drinking the Kool-Aid), Heaven's Gate note (also committed suicide, hoping to hitch a ride on a UFO), the Branch Davidians note a subset of the Seventh Day Adventists portrayed in the media as a Right-Wing Militia Fanatic group - the truth is more complex - most of whom died (including 25 children and two pregnant women) when their home was raided and they were gassed by U.S. In Science Fiction, the aliens they worship might be real, but so sufficiently advanced that the cultists cannot understand their technology or such aliens might be leading the cult in a God Guise. In comedy, they may be relatively harmless but believe in something truly ridiculous like aliens or Ancient Conspiracies. In a Crime Time Soap or Police Procedural, they show up as the bad guys. The leader is often a grifter who demands absolute loyalty and abuses their power.Ĭults can be played a number of ways. The most stereotypical fictional cult - and thus the most tropeable - is a small and relatively obscure group of people, centered around a single charismatic leader, which recruits the credulous and vulnerable and brainwashes them to believe something weird. But in fiction, a "cult" is generally a pejorative term for a relatively new and unusual religious movement. Our Analysis page lists the most common definitions. Its exact definition in Real Life can vary considerably most such definitions are controversial, viewing cults in a negative light. A cult is a religious movement that's unusual in some way.
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