Cthulhu being the face of Cosmic Horror was really just a matter of good character design, like, most people who know Lovecraft’s other works agree that Color From Out Of Space was way better, the King in Yellow has been around longer, Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlathotep and Azathoth were more important (Lovecraft actually considered Yoggie the most important member of the myths, to the point where he considered naming the myths after him,) but we all went with the priest who got his ass beat not by eldritch rituals, another god, or even just sufficient artillery, but ramming a boat into him.
Yet none of them had the simple, yet memorable design of a green dragon-man with a cuttlefish for a head.
Yeah... The Great Dreamer isn't that important in the grand scheme of things. She's still a wonderful character to write about, very iconic and even quite scary. But he's very much not the main player here.
Yog-Sothoth is much more powerful and important, especially when you consider its omnipotence and neutrality, maybe even some benevolence towards most lifeforms and civilizations.
Yog-Sothothery is a different name for Cthulhu Mythos, although it's not as widely used.
The King is powerful, although not the strongest or most sinister out there. She is evil, but can be avoided.
Azzie is where it all started, although she can't really do much herself. She sleeps all the time and isn't really consciously aware of the universe she created, unless we remember it wrong.
And then we got the Crawling Chaos, who is one of the more powerful entities in the pantheon, and definitely the most evil one. She also takes an active role in shaping history of most if not all civilisations, most of the time ultimately leading to their destruction. Plus He enjoys being evil, and is quite human in this regard. Which is what makes them so horrifying. Most gods don't care, and xe does. It is probably the most dangerous one too, exactly because it cares. The lack of apathy for lifeforms lower than them is precisely where the danger comes from.
So yeah, there were other options. We guess Cthulhu is just much easier to understand and much less scary than most of them. Quite ironic in our opinion.
(We use she/her for Azathoth, it/its for Yog-Sothoth, she/her for The King in Yellow, she/he for Cthulhu and any/all for Nyarlathotep. Because we do not think beings like them would care for human gender norms much.)
Cthulhu I suppose also had the advantage of being the first book Lovecraft wrote in the mythos, but Yog-Sothoth was also mentioned way more than her. He ironically didn’t become such a major character until Lovecraft died and other writers started writing for her.
It’s actually a really interesting evolution of the character. First, she wasn’t even a true god, just the high priest of the Old Ones, who’s motives and morals were utterly alien to the characters beyond, “Wake up his siblings living within the confines of the Earth,” and a light amount of eating people (could be wrong about that, been a bit since I read it.)
This lack of real motive and appearance was probably what allowed for such variability in her characterization later down the line. Some have her hate humanity, some give him a kid who she may or may not care about, she may be working to effectively uplift humanity or just as easily destroy it.
Really, while I still believe what makes her so well known among wider pop-culture is a memorable design that isn’t impossibly hard to grasp or amorphous, her enduring popularity among writers is how easily she can be written into a story.
(I also support the above’s usage of pronouns, may use these for later writing.)
