The demons of Stranger Things: where their names come from, and why they are not demons
Universe · Bestiary · Dungeons & Dragons
The word "demon" appears in no laboratory report: it comes from a role-playing manual and from a very real moral panic. In this article: what the word covers, who coins Demogorgon, Demodog, and Demobat, what these names designate in the original game, the hive biology that explains everything, the case of Vecna, who is not the Mind Flayer, and the crusade of the 80s against role-playing. By the end, you'll know why the word is false, and why it stayed.
Nobody, in the show, fights a demon: the demons of Stranger Things are names borrowed from a role-playing game and stuck onto organisms that have nothing supernatural about them. The word arrives through the Dungeons & Dragons manual, through a figure left on a table in November 1983, and through the adults' fear. Here is who invents each name, what it meant at the origin, and what these creatures really are.
The essentials
- The word "demon": borrowed from Dungeons & Dragons, never from a theology
- Demogorgon: named by Mike, Dustin, and Lucas, in November 1983
- Demodog: coined by Dustin in 1984, a contraction of Demogorgon and the English dog
- In the original game: Demogorgon is a demon prince; the mind flayer, for its part, is not one
- What they are: the members of a single organism, linked by a hive mind
- Vecna: a transformed human, Henry Creel, and nothing else
Contents
- The demons of Stranger Things: what the word really covers
- Who invents these names, and when: it all starts from the basement table
- What these names designate in the original game
- What these creatures really are: a hive, not a hell
- The two cases apart: a transformed human and a consciousness without a body
- The satanic panic, or why the adults say "satanic"
The demons of Stranger Things: what the word really covers
The word circulates everywhere and never designates anything precise. No creature is presented as an infernal spirit, nobody exorcises anything, and the laboratory is not looking for a demon: it is looking for a door. The demonic vocabulary arrives through three channels, and none of them is scientific.
The first is the game: the children open the manual and take from it the sheet closest to what they saw. The second is graphic: the Hellfire Club logo, the high school's Dungeons & Dragons club, shows a horned demon holding a mace and dice. The third is the accusation: in March 1986, Jason Carver talks about a satanic cult before the town council.
The three say the same thing. The word "demon" is a cultural borrowing: it translates a fear, not a species. The creatures obey a biology that the story lays out with the precision of a wildlife documentary.
One detail proves it better than the rest. The prefix "Demo-" of Demodog and of Demobat does not shorten the word "demon": it shortens Demogorgon. Take that name away, and not a single demon remains in the group's vocabulary.
The Hellfire Club T-shirt, the one the town took for a uniform.
In the shopKids' black Demogorgon hunter T-shirt24,90 €See the product
Who invents these names, and when: it all starts from the basement table
All these names come from the same table, and almost all from the same person. On November 6, 1983, in the Wheelers' basement, Mike holds the role of game master and drops a Demogorgon on the group, a demon-prince figure taken from the manual. Will throws a fireball, misses his roll, rides home by bike, and disappears that same night.
When the creature appears for real, the boys have only one word available: that of the figure left on the table. It holds. It is the method that will structure the whole story: open the manual, look for the closest sheet, adopt the name, deduce rules of combat from it.
The following fall, Dustin picks out of a trash can a slimy creature he names D'Artagnan, "Dart." In a few days, it molts, reaches the size of a large dog, and devours the family cat. Dustin refuses to use the adult predator's name for his animal: he invents Demodog on the way to the junkyard, with Steve.
The same boy will name the Mind Flayer, after a creature from the game capable of enslaving minds. Then, in March 1986, with Eddie Munson, he opens the manual again for a killer who strikes through the head and pulls out the name Vecna. The Demobats inherit a name built on the same model.
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6 Nov. 1983 The Demogorgon leaves the table
Mike drops the figure on his players after ten hours of play. Will misses his roll and disappears that same evening.
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Oct. 1984 Dustin coins the word Demodog
The animal taken in on Halloween night molts into a quadruped. Dustin contracts the predator's name with the English dog.
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Oct. 1984 The Mind Flayer is named
Dustin looks in the manual for the entity that enslaves minds, and draws from it a name for the shadow of the red sky.
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March 21, 1986 Vecna comes out of the manual
The club plays Vecna's Curse the evening of the first death. Dustin and Eddie give that name to the killer shortly after.
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March 1986 The Demobats guard the Creel house
The flying swarm inherits a name built like Demodog: the prefix of the first creature, plus the animal it imitates.
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Fall 1987 No name left to invent
The final season lets the old bestiary loose on Hawkins and adds a colossal form to it. The vocabulary no longer moves.
What these names designate in the original game
In Dungeons & Dragons, only one of these three names really designates a demon. Demogorgon carries the title of Prince of Demons there, which he gives himself and which his peers recognize. He enters the game in 1976, with the supplement Eldritch Wizardry: a reptilian creature about five meters long, two mandrill heads on snake necks, arms as tentacles. Nothing to do with the gaunt silhouette that crosses the woods.
The name is much older than the game. It is said to come from a distortion of the Greek dêmiourgon, the "demiurge," the craftsman of the world. Boccaccio brings it into literature with his Genealogy of the Pagan Gods, in the features of a pale old man lodged in the bowels of the earth. Milton, then Shelley, take the word up again.
The second borrowing does not belong to the same category. The game's mind flayer, the illithid, is a humanoid with an octopus head that devours brains and commands slaves by thought. The rules class it among the aberrations, never among the demons.
The third one neither. Vecna is a wizard who refused to die: a lich, then a god of secrets. His name is an anagram of Vance, the writer whose magic system inspired the rules. Out of three borrowings, only one therefore points to a demon, and it is the one that, on screen, designates an animal.
What these creatures really are: a hive, not a hell
Take the names away, and a biology remains. The predator of 1983 is a gaunt biped, with gray and damp skin, without eyes or a face: where a head should be, five petals of flesh fold over a maw lined with teeth. It hunts at night, alone, and a drop of blood is enough for it to find its prey. Nancy understands it first, and all the traps of the first season start from there.
The story even shows the full cycle, through Dustin's animal: a slimy larva, then a petaled quadruped, then an adult, in less than a week. A demon does not molt. An organism does.
The decisive point is elsewhere. Since the second season, the show repeats that these creatures do not form independent species, but the members of a single body linked by a hive mind. The tunnels dug under Hawkins are roots through which this body breathes. When the laboratory gate closes, in November 1984, the whole pack collapses at once.
The rule holds everywhere. The bats that guard the Creel house stop flying the second their master is hit. The creatures held in a Soviet prison falter when the hive is struck thousands of miles away. And in 1987, Will Byers, linked to this consciousness, kills predators by the force of the mind alone.
That is why the word does not hold. A demon acts on its own account, wants something, can be bargained with. Here, nothing of the kind: the creatures are fingers at the end of a hand, and that hand has a name, an address, and a childhood.
The predator figure with a petal head, to set the right name on it.
In the shopBuildable mini figure Dark Demogorgon14,90 €See the product
The two cases apart: a transformed human and a consciousness without a body
Two figures escape this zoology. Vecna is not a creature born on the other side: he is a man. Henry Creel, born in 1947 in Nevada, arrives as a child in a large Victorian house in 1959. He gets into people's heads, moves objects with his mind, kills his mother and his little sister, lets his father carry the charge, then falls into a coma. Dr. Brenner makes him subject 001.
In 1979, at the laboratory, he manipulates Eleven so that she removes the chip that curbs his powers, massacres the other children, then gets thrown into the other dimension, which burns him and deforms him. The name Vecna does not belong to him: two teenagers stick it on him seven years later, looking for a sheet in a manual.
The Mind Flayer, for its part, was never human and never had a body of its own. It is a consciousness made of particles, a shadow with spider legs that rises in the red sky of the other world. It does not hunt: it possesses. Will in the fall of 1984, Billy Hargrove and dozens of residents in the summer of 1985. It does not speak a word in five seasons.
The final season closes the question. As a child, in a mine, Henry opened a case that contained a fragment of this entity. He did not create it: it contaminated him, and he became its spokesperson.
Hence the rule the group applies at the table. Vecna is not the Mind Flayer: one speaks and chooses his victims, the other has neither voice nor face. The Mind Flayer is not a giant Demogorgon: it possesses, while the other hunts. And the Demogorgon is not Vecna: the beast does not speak, remembers nothing, chooses nothing. Three entities, three different pages of the manual.
The satanic panic, or why the adults say "satanic"
The word "demon" does not arrive only through the manual, but also through the newspapers, the sermons, and the parent meetings. That part is not a screenwriter's invention.
In the United States, in the 80s, a campaign accuses Dungeons & Dragons of pushing teenagers toward suicide and the occult. Patricia Pulling founds the association BADD in 1983, "Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons," after the death of her son Irving the previous year. She sues the game's publisher, without success.
The crusade changes scale in 1985, when the show 60 Minutes devotes a segment to it: more than twenty-two million viewers watch a report that links role-playing to suicides and murders. The most spectacular claims will be contradicted. The suspicion, for its part, will remain.
The fourth season transposes this climate almost to the letter. The high school club is called the Hellfire Club, its logo shows a horned demon, and its members wear that drawing on a black T-shirt. When Chrissy Cunningham dies in Eddie Munson's trailer, on the night of March 21, 1986, the town needs no proof: the culprit is named by his clothing.
Before the town council, Jason Carver accuses the club of satanic rituals and raises a militia; his speech takes up the arguments of the time almost word for word. The boy he hunts will die shortly after, on the other side, saving the town that was chasing him.
That is where the word finds its real function. "Demon" describes no creature: it describes what frightened adults make of a teenager who wears the wrong T-shirts and plays the wrong games. A culprit was named before anyone had understood what was striking the town.
Dice and manuals: enough to replay the game of November 6, 1983.
Dans la boutiqueDemogorgon second-skin bodysuit62,90 €Voir le produit
Frequently asked questions
Are there really demons in the show?
No. No creature is presented as a supernatural entity. The word comes from the Dungeons & Dragons manual, from a high school club's logo, and from the accusations brought in March 1986.
Where does the name Demogorgon come from?
From a demon-prince figure set on the Wheelers' table on November 6, 1983. In the role-playing game, this prince appears in 1976; the name is said to come from a distortion of the Greek dêmiourgon, the "demiurge."
What does the prefix "Demo-" mean?
It shortens Demogorgon, not the word "demon." Dustin coins "Demodog" by contraction with the English dog, and "Demobat" follows the same model.
Is the Mind Flayer a demon?
No. In the original game, the illithid is filed among the aberrations. On screen, it is a consciousness made of particles, with neither a body of its own nor a voice.
Is Vecna a demon?
No: he is a human, Henry Creel, transformed after being thrown into the other dimension in 1979. The name is given to him seven years later by Dustin and Eddie Munson.
Why do the creatures all die at the same time?
Because they share a hive mind. Closing the gate or striking their master cuts the thread, and the pack collapses at once, wherever it is.
Did the satanic panic really exist?
Yes. The association BADD is founded in 1983 by Patricia Pulling, and a 1985 report links role-playing to suicides in front of more than twenty-two million viewers.
Why did the word "demon" stay?
Because it arrived before the explanation. The children needed a name in order to act, and the adults a culprit.
