The Satanic Panic is a moral panic and phenomenon that took root in The '80s and The '90s, mostly in America, though examples have been found worldwide. The phenomenon features Moral Guardians who become obsessed with Devil worship and, specifically, Hollywood Satanism. Usually, it extends to panic on behalf of the Culture Police including Heavy Metal music, Dungeons & Dragons and other fantasy games, and any other youth-centric interests, fueled by hypnosis and a new interest in psychiatric care. Many of the creators of such works would try to downplay the occult connections to avoid such accusations, while others leaned into it for the shock value.

It was also believed to be inspired in part by the turn towards They Look Just Like Everyone Else! paranoia in media of The '60s and The '70s. The popular success of Rosemary's Baby, The Omen, and The Exorcist (1971) and its following adaptation, and the many, many Satan-themed paperback horror novels that followed in their wake, are believed to have inspired it. Rosemary's Baby is the Trope Codifier as it depicts a Satanic cult in a New York City of the Big Applesauce variety; Ira Levin even went on record to say that he felt partially responsible for the ensuing Satanic Panic as he believed he had played some role in mainstreaming it. Real-life cult activity throughout the late '60s and '70s (most notoriously, those led by Charles Manson and Jim Jones) and occult-adjacent serial killers (like the Zodiac Killer and David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz, the latter of whom — like later serial killer Richard "Night Stalker" Ramirez, who was active at the height of the panic in The '80s — genuinely claimed to be a Satanist) gave the whole thing a patina of "but it really happened" plausibility. Meanwhile, several supposed non-fiction books Based on a Great Big Lie like Michelle Remembers and The Satan Seller, respectively by a supposed ex-victim of the Satanic underground^note Michelle Smith, along with her psychiatrist (and later husband) Lawrence Pazder and a supposed high-ranking ex-member of it,^note Mike Warnke gave the claims an air of legitimacy.

While a few influential works of art and high-profile crimes can be credited as starting the Satanic panic, the masses had already been primed to accept this idea by a variety of socioeconomic factors. One was the drift towards conservativism that arose in response to the social and political changes of the 1960s and '70s — namely, the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, the second wave of feminism, and the nascent gay liberation movement — and the accompanying rise of Christian evangelism as seen in the formation of groups such as the Moral Majority, who viewed those who strayed from their outlook on morality as not simply people with different worldviews but literal agents of the Devil. Typically, it overlapped with existing anti-Catholic sentiment common among Protestant evangelicals as well, with "Satanism" often portrayed as replete with Ominous Latin Chanting and other gothic imagery that had previously been used to demonize Catholicism. This coincided with the hardship and uncertainty many faced due to the "stagflation" of the 1970s, and the neoliberal reforms of the 1980s and '90s that occurred in response. The tightening economic conditions (together with second-wave feminism) led to an increasing number of dual-income households, and thus led to more parents entrusting their children to day cares while they were at work. As day cares were still looked at as a relatively new thing at the time, many parents had concerns that made them easy prey for the hysteria drummed up by allegations of Satanic ritual abuse, and day cares were frequently targeted during the Panic. Others were also easily drawn in by the reasonable-sounding premise that if something bad is happening to children, we should surely investigate it, and due to the suggestive techniques the police used while questioning children who were allegedly victimized, plenty of false allegations were produced. While many of said allegations were absurd on their face, they were still taken seriously by police and parents, and as such a number of day care providers were still charged and brought to court despite a lack of concrete evidence. Among the cases brought to trial was what at the time was the longest and most expensive series of criminal trials in American history in the form of the McMartin Preschool case, which involved allegations of Chuck Norris being one of the perpetrators and secret tunnels beneath the preschool where the abuse had supposedly taken place.

As a result, it is a Sub-Trope of Witch Hunt, and Satanic Panic accusations often resembled historical Witch Hunt claims as well. Other common features include Horror Hippies, Rock Me, Asmodeus!, Drugs Are Bad, and Loners Are Freaks, due to the general fear of the "other" and youth culture that fueled it. It will usually involve Everyone Is Satan in Hell being invoked in-universe and supposed conspiracy members being spuriously accused of child molestation.

By the Turn of the Millennium, it had finally died out in mass culture after being largely discredited over the course of The '90s, though it still features heavily throughout media, especially for a Genre Throwback or Ripped from the Headlines storylines. Certain elements of the Panic — namely, literally unbelievably widespread child abuse^note  — that children are abused is, sadly, undeniably true; but if children were being abused and murdered on the scale alleged, it would be impossible to conceal; allegations made against celebrities and other prominent public figures; and the notion that a vast shadowy "them" is simultaneously concealing all evidence of these crimes, and also publicly confessing to them via coded messages — have surfaced again in the form of things like the Pizzagate and QAnon conspiracy theories, the latter of which has seen some promoters explicitly describe it as being a Satanic conspiracy, though others have a wide variety of alternative explanations.

There are two mostly distinct forms of the trope in media: one treats it as though it is all real and a justifiable fear, and another that takes a more historical look at it as a phenomenon of media hysteria. The former is likely to have Unfortunate Implications in the modern day — especially with regards to its roots in blood libel.

Examples: