A gargoyle is actually a subset of a grotesque, which are historically seen on buildings but other artwork as well. Grotesque is etymologically believed to derive from the old Italian pittura grottesca (grotto picture) as to allude to the types of painted murals found in excavations of Roman ruins. Today they’re mostly associated with churches, though it’s considered to be a holdover of previously existing pagan traditions and folk beliefs to ward off evil which were adopted (or perhaps stolen) by the Catholic church. We could compare this ward against evil aspect to jack o’ lanterns, also used in the same manner (and, incidentally, Samhain and other harvest holidays around the autumnal equinox were converted into All Soul’s Day in the church which leads to the contemporary concept of Halloween) along with many other folk beliefs that have existed since antiquity.

The trope of statues coming to life has also existed since antiquity, from myths and folktales like that of Pygmalion and the Golem, to cultural and religious practices like the Egyptian Ushabti or the Terra Cotta Army. Myths surrounding grotesques and gargoyles are a bit more sparse, however. The most well-known legend is that of La Gargouille of Rouen, which was not the tale of a stone gargoyle coming to life but of a dragon that terrorized the countryside. After demanding sacrifices, it was finally subdued by a priest who led the dragon into the town for the villagers to burn at the stake. The remains of the head were then used to adorn the town’s church.

In 1932, pulp author Clark Ashton Smith wrote Maker of Gargoyles. While being somewhere between Frankenstein and Pygmalion in plot, it brought the explicit notion of gargoyles coming to life to the page. By this time, it’s notable that the term grotesque had long been favored as an adjective rather than a noun and had reached it’s modern usage as a descriptor for something disgusting or bizarre as early as the 17th century. Our contemporary concept of the gargoyle as a stone-based magical creature is probably unsurprisingly on the shoulders of Gary Gygax, who included the creatures in the original first edition of Dungeons & Dragons, although his iteration of gargoyles were not explicitly statues from buildings brought to life. From there, is was a matter of proliferation into pop culture across television, games, and fantasy fiction as a whole.