Dagon started out as Dagan, a god of grain and harvest worshipped across the ancient Near East in cities like Ebla, Mari and Ugarit. The Philistines later made him one of their chief gods, and he shows up twice in the Bible. Samson brings his temple down at Gaza, and when the Ark of the Covenant is placed in his temple at Ashdod, his statue is found face down in front of it the next morning. The morning after, its head and hands lie broken on the floor.

Medieval writers later connected his name to the Hebrew word for fish, and Dagon became a sea god, half man and half fish. Milton wrote him that way in Paradise Lost, and H.P. Lovecraft took it further, first in his short story Dagon and then in The Shadow over Innsmouth, where Father Dagon rules the Deep Ones beneath the waves and is worshipped in secret by the Esoteric Order of Dagon.