Film and television • The movie
City Under the Sea (1965) is loosely based on
The Shadow over Innsmouth. • Colombian writer
Andres Caicedo adapted
The Shadow over Innsmouth into a screenplay in 1973. He traveled to Hollywood in 1975 to sell it to
Roger Corman, alongside his adaptation of Clark Ashton Smith's
The Nameless Offspring, but failed in his purpose. Neither of the screenplays was shot and remain as part of the Andres Caicedo Collection in the
Luis Angel Arango Library in
Bogotá. •
Chiaki J. Konaka adapted it into Japanese as . •
The Shadow over Innsmouth forms the principal storyline in
Stuart Gordon's 2001 film
Dagon.
Full Moon Entertainment was going to release Gordon's original adaptation (under the original novella's title) in 1991, using
Bernie Wrightson's character designs, but the project was unrealized.
Dagon uses some of Wrightson's designs from that project. • The 2007 film
Cthulhu is loosely based on
The Shadow over Innsmouth. • The 2014 music video for "Escape from Midwich Valley" by
Carpenter Brut and the 2015 short film
Innsmouth are also based on
The Shadow over Innsmouth. • A 2005 episode of
The Mighty Boosh, "
The Legend of Old Gregg", appears to draw inspiration from the story, including a town with strange residents surrounded by mystery, an elderly fisherman who tells the main characters the history of the town and Old Gregg himself, who is a human-fish hybrid. • In 2015, the production and eventual publication of a film titled
The Shadow over Innsmouth was announced on the website
The Lovecraft Ezine. The film project, cited to be a very faithful adaptation of the novella, was directed by
Bryan Moore, who worked on a previous
cinematic conversion of the Lovecraft short story "
Cool Air". A trailer was published, but the film itself has remained in
development hell. • In 2020, a visual effects studio (Providence VFX) has for the first time reproduced the city of Innsmouth in computer graphics. • The 2020 film
The Deep Ones, set in modern Southern California. • The opening part of
The Simpsons "
Treehouse of Horror XXIX" takes place in 'Fogburyport' where the Deep One-esque locals trick the family into attending an eating contest that is a ruse to sacrifice them to
Cthulhu. • The
Ultraman Decker episode "Lord Ragon" connects recurring Ultra kaiju Ragon to the Deep Ones and specifically brings up an historical incident at Innsmouth involving the creatures.
Tabletop role-playing games • Innsmouth plays a key role in the backstory of the horror role-playing game
Delta Green. The raid that takes place in the end of the novella leads to the U.S. government becoming aware of the Deep Ones, and prompts the creation of the Delta Green, a covert organization dedicated to investigating and combating supernatural threats from the
Cthulhu Mythos.
Video games •
Shadow of the Comet, a 1993 adventure game, takes place in a cult-controlled town of Illsmouth, an alteration on Lovecraft's Innsmouth. •
Innsmouth no Yakata (インスマウスの館, lit. "
The Mansion of Innsmouth") is a 1995
3D first-person shooter video game for the
Virtual Boy, released in Japan based on Chiaki J. Konaka's 1992 television series
Insmus wo Oou Kage. It featured a branching level structure and four possible endings. • The 2005 video game
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth uses many elements from "The Shadow over Innsmouth" with a great degree of accuracy. It has the town of Innsmouth as the backdrop followed by the opening plot that leads to the second, third, and fourth chapters of the novella. Although the protagonist differs greatly with a different name and background, the majority of the characters from the novella are included in the game like Zadok Allen, the Marsh family, and the grocery store clerk, who is given the name Brian Burnham.
Dark Corners of the Earth was supposed to be followed by a sequel set in the 2000s, titled ''
Call of Cthulhu: Destiny's End'', but due to the closure of its developer
Headfirst Productions, the game was cancelled. •
Indie game Chronicle of Innsmouth (production started in 2015) is directly based on the plot of
The Shadow over Innsmouth. • In the fictional universe of the 2013 fighting game
Skullgirls, there is a neighborhood known as "Little Innsmouth", which is inhabited by fish-like humanoids, and which also serves as the stage for Ms. Fortune, one of the game's characters. • In the DLC of
Bloodborne,
The Old Hunters, a hamlet inhabited by gruesome fishermen allegedly draws its inspiration from the accursed fishing village in
The Shadow over Innsmouth. The game also features several deities which are referred to as "Great Ones". •
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has a quest named "A Shadow Over Hackdirt", where the player goes to a mysterious small town and finds out the townspeople are part of a cult who worship beings known as "The Deep Ones". • The online video game
The Secret World features a town called Kingsmouth in which many supernatural events occur. Additionally, the Innsmouth Academy is a part of the Solomon Island zone in which Kingsmouth may be found. The Secret World borrows heavily from the Lovecraftian mythos as well as many other continuities. • The narrator of
Darkest Dungeon states that he met one of the game's bosses, the Siren, after striking a bargain with eldritch fishmen in which he provided sacrifices of humans and artifacts in exchange for gold. The Cove, one of the game's main areas, features these fishmen as the primary enemy. •
Call of Cthulhu is a 2018 video game, set in a fishing village called Darkwater that closely resembles dilapidated Innsmouth; its residents are secretive cultists influenced by characters from the story. • The game
The Sinking City, a 2019 horror game, takes inspiration from the novella with the inclusion of Innsmouth, the Esoteric Order of Dagon, and residents with fish-like physical appearance called the "Innsmouthers." • The game
Call of the Sea, a 2020 adventure game, takes inspiration from the short story. • The game
Shadows Over Loathing derives its name from the short story and features several references to it and other short stories by H.P. Lovecraft, such as
The Music of Erich Zann and
The Colour Out of Space. • The second chapter of the 2026 video game
Escape from Ever After takes place in a parody of the book, called "The Shadow Over Innsbeak".
Comics •
Alberto Breccia adapted the story in 1973. • Several plot elements from
The Shadow over Innsmouth appear in two comics of the
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise, namely in the
Mirage comic "Men of Shadow" (
TMNT Vol.1 #29) and the
Archie comic "In the Dark" (
TMNT Adventures #27). •
Ron Marz adapted the story for a one-shot comic book
The Shadow Over Innsmouth, published by
Dynamite Entertainment in July 2014, a
crossover retelling with the pulp character
The Shadow, therefore establishing a double meaning in the title by having the characters of Lamont Cranston and
Margo Lane finding themselves trapped within the town. •
Gou Tanabe adapted the story into a manga in 2020. •
Steven Philip Jones and
Trey Baldwin adapted
The Shadow over Innsmouth into a graphic novel published by
Caliber Comics in 2020. • Several plot elements from
The Shadow over Innsmouth are adapted to the 2021 fourth season of the webcomic series
Witch Creek Road, in particular across the ten-part storyline
Innsmouth (collected in the
omnibus edition as
Infested).
Card and board games •
Magic the Gatherings "
Innistrad" block and its follow up, the "
Shadows over Innistrad" block, contain minor references to
The Shadow over Innsmouth. "Shadows over Innistrad" tells the story of the planeswalker Jace Beleren investigating the source of madness affecting the residents of Innistrad and their angelic protectors. The source is revealed to be Emrakul, one of a race of ancient beings called Eldrazi, who draw heavy influence from Lovecraft. In addition to inducing madness, Emrakul's influence warps the physiology of living beings in her vicinity, giving them a distinctive "look" of latticed flesh, additional appendages, and other strange mutations. • The board game
Mansions of Madness Second Edition utilizes the story of
The Shadow over Innsmouth as one of the scenarios players can choose to play. Players begin the scenario in a hotel room in a rundown seaport town and take turns trying to uncover the mystery of what happened in Innsmouth before they find themselves stranded in a town flooded with supernatural problems. The companion app for the board game includes quotes from Lovecraft's original work and there are several miniature figures referred to as Deep Ones. Additionally, an expansion for the board game
Arkham Horror features the town of Innsmouth and includes references to Lovecraft's piece. The game is titled,
Arkham Horror: The Innsmouth Horror Expansion. •
Arkham Horror The Card Game: The Innsmouth Conspiracy Other • The
H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society produced
Dark Adventure Radio Theatre: The Shadow over Innsmouth, a
Dark Adventure Radio Theatre adaptation of the story. In January 2012, the
Cape Cod based Provincetown Theater announced a reading of a full-length play of the story, entitled ''HP Lovecraft's The Shadow over Innsmouth'', adapted for the stage by Bragan Thomas. • A reading of the story performed by
Richard Coyle was produced and first broadcast by
BBC Radio 4 Extra in 2011. • The short story "Shoggoth's Old Peculiar" (
Smoke and Mirrors, 1998) by
Neil Gaiman contains many similarities to "The Shadow over Innsmouth": a student visits the coastal town of Innsmouth (in England rather than New England), he gets to talking to two drunks (pastiches of
Peter Cook and
Dudley Moore), he sees horrors in the water, and he passes out. • The short story "The Shadow Over Doinksmouth" written by Will Menaker and distributed as a bonus for pre-orders of
The Chapo Guide to Revolution is a satirical modernization of
The Shadow Over Innsmouth. • Author
Serena Valentino used Lovecraft's tale as the inspiration for the beginning of her novel focusing on the Sea Witch
Ursula,
Poor Unfortunate Soul. In the beginning of the story, Ursula stalks through a town and transforms the citizens into half fish, half human horrors for their mistreatment of her and her father. •
WildClaw Theatre of Chicago presented a world premiere stage production of The Shadow Over Innsmouth in 2013, adapted to the stage by Scott Barsotti and directed by Scott Cummins. • BBC Radio 4 released the third installment of
The Lovecraft Investigations, a radio play in the style of a mystery podcast-like serial, based on and titled "The Shadow Over Innsmouth". Technically a sequel to the original story, the setting is changed to 2020 during the
COVID-19 pandemic, with Obed Marsh established as an alias of the
Count of St. Germain, Innsmouth's settlement being by those fleeing the Witchfinder
Matthew Hopkins during the
English Civil War, the Deep Ones also being responsible for the disappearances of the
Roanoke Colony and the urban legend of Hoer Verde in Brazil, and the
Somerton Man as a Deep One. ==
Shadows over Innsmouth==