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Howard Phillips Lovecraft in his seminal work The Call of Cthulhu described this Elder God as "a gigantic thing 'miles high'.

Most derivative works present Cthulhu as "Kaiju-sized". In South Park, for example, It must be 150 meters tall, the size of the largest Godzilla incarnations.

Lovecraft made drawings describing Cthulhu's appearance. Did he refer in any of his writings to his exact size? Did any of the writers who continued to work on the Myths of Cthulhu do that?

I know that Cthulhu's nature is not completely material and that he is capable of changing his shape and size. My question is about:

  1. Its size when described as emerging from Rly'eh in the story The Call of Cthulhu.

    or

  2. Any size in any circumstance defined by Lovecraft or its followers in any of its writings

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    I suspect the second question is quite open ended, and might be hard for someone to answer. The first one is tricky, because on The Call of Cthulhu Cthulhu, and Rly'eh defy normal dimensions, but I can give it a go when I find my old books. It might be worth splitting this into two questions actually...
    – AncientSwordRage ♦
    Jan 14, 2021 at 13:11
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    Here's an analysis on Quora. The writer concludes 30-40 meters for a close estimate, 20-100 for a loose one.
    – Ross Presser
    Jan 14, 2021 at 20:43

3 Answers 3

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In The Call of Cthulhu, Lovecraft doesn't give measurements, but there are a few hints:

The tomb had "an immense carved door", "the men wondered how any door in the universe could be so vast".

Cthulhu "lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway".

Also, "a mountain walked or stumbled!"

"Three men were swept up by the flabby claws".

While pursuing the ship, Cthulhu's head "came nearly up to the bowsprit of the sturdy yacht". This while mostly submerged.

I would say this supports anything from 40 to 100 feet (12 to 30 meters) tall as a guess.

It is said in At the Mountains of Madness that "the Cthulhu spawn and Mi-Go seem to have been composed of matter more widely different from that which we know" and "They were able to undergo transformations and reintegrations impossible" for anyone made of normal matter. Perhaps this means Cthulhu's size was not fixed, but could change as needed.

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    In the paper RPG book Call of Cthulhu 7th edition, Cthulhu is said to have a size of 1050, were the average humain has a size of 60. So I guess 100 feet is closer of the "reality". In comparison, another monster, Ithaqua, has a size of 500, and measures 7 to 8 times an average human. But I don't know if an rpg book can be considered as a reliable source for this answer.
    – Lyzvaleska
    Jan 14, 2021 at 14:40
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    @Lyzvaleska In the versions of that system that I'm familiar with, average human size was 13, so 7th edition must be very different. My books are in a box somewhere, so I'm unable to check what Cthulhu's SIZ would have been in the older RuneQuest-derived CoC system.
    – LAK
    Jan 14, 2021 at 14:45
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    I forgot to precise, 7th french first edition (we have two 7th edition), and characterics are now on 100 instead of 20. I also have the basic core for the 6th french edition (circa 2010), but apparently they didn't gave characteristics to myth entity, they didn't think the investigators would fight them I guess.
    – Lyzvaleska
    Jan 14, 2021 at 14:53
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    The edition of the Call of Cthulhu RPG I played had a size chart showing the comparative scale of the various creatures. i.pinimg.com/originals/06/1b/41/… (Cthulhu is the big guy at the far left of the image, not the similar looking Spawn of Cthulhu facing right.)
    – user3153372
    Jan 15, 2021 at 9:48
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In the original Call of Cthulhu he is described thus

...touched wildly on a gigantic thing "miles high" which walked or lumbered about.

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    A good find, but it's notable that the claim is put into quotes because the author considers it the ravings of a madman
    – Valorum
    May 17 at 22:15
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if I recall most of the outer gods are capable of changing size so it would be impossible to try and understand it but look for the others if you want a more definite answer, he is tall as skyscrapers so basically use the largest building in your country as measuring ng stick would be easy but like i said the others gave better evidence to help your question so check the one you like best

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