Overcoat, The

Because the man in the black overcoat - the man, in effect, selling American pizza - is Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union.

Transitioning into ready-to-wear, Armani made the overcoat the statement piece of the season, with the focus on texture.

Poor Akaky Akakievich spends all his savings on a new overcoat; the coat is stolen; after a series of further humiliations, trying to reclaim the coat, he dies of a fever; there are reports of his ghost haunting St. Petersburg, stealing coats from others.

It made for a creative catwalk show trumpeting genderless fashion and featured unisex wardrobe staples, such as “the overcoat, the caban, the cape.”

You can find dozens of stories in r/nosleep about other monsters who are barely differentiated from this archetype of an amorphous, omniscient, scary dude with unclear motives — see Lollipop Man, The Man in the Overcoat, The Fire Man, The Mango Man, The Ice Cream Man, and The Skinny Man, just for starters.