This is hardly any kind of astonishing revelation, but let me spell this out explicitly anyway, because if you don't think of it this way, you can tend to migrate away from making this true. Maybe that's your intent, and that's great, but maybe it's not, and explicitly linking elements of D&D to Yog-Sothothery and Lovecraftian Mythos maybe something that you want to do. Let's first spell out the context:
First, most of the foundational works of sword & sorcery was fairly heavily steeped in the Weird Tales Yog-Sothothery (or very similar) traditions. Robert E. Howard wrote some explicitly Lovecraftian stories set in the modern day, like "The Fires of Asshurbanipul" and "The Black Stone" as well as historical Lovecraftian stories, like "The Gods of Bal-Sagoth" or "Worms of the Earth", but even his explicitly sword & sorcery creations, which really kind of created the genre as we know it were Lovecraftian, like "The Tower of the Elephant" or "Vale of the Lost Women." Fritz Leiber also had a lot of Weird Tales like stuff in his works, and he's also considered perhaps another founding pillar of the genre, as did Michael Moorcock.
Second, D&D started off with many of those same vibes. However, in part because of Gygax's personality, and in part because of things that had been happening to Yog-Sothothery since Lovecraft's death, much of the Yog-Sothothery became too categorized, too burdened with lore and game statistics, and too neat and... well, explainable. The "monster(s)" in "The Fires of Asshurbanipal" or "The Black Stone" or "The Gods of Bal-Sagoth" are barely even physically described, much less burdened with histories, personalities and lore. They're just weird monsters that cause the characters to fail a sanity check. Because Howard wrote those stories instead of Lovecraft, they were more prone to a fight response rather than a flight response to a failed sanity check, but still... what happened is pretty clear. What the monsters actually are is less so. This was present even from the beginning; Demogorgon is a great Lovecrafitan monstrous foe in the original Monster Manual, or even in the Eldritch Wizardry book a little bit earlier. However, by making him the "Prince of Demons" and associating him with a hierarchy of demons, even as vaguely defined as it was, and giving him rivalries and personality, he became less of a Lovecraftian monster and more of a monstrous Fu Manchu or Professor Moriarty. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, but the two tend to work at cross purposes, and Demogorgon was a better Lovecraftian monster than he was a Fu Manchu manipulator who just happens to look like a monster.
Third, many of the monsters later characterized as aberrations have this same problem; they started off as pretty good Lovecraftian-like entities, but when they were saddled with a culture, a society, and all-too-human-like personalities, they became, by default, less like Lovecraftian monsters and more like just really ugly bad guys. They simply haven't been used like Lovecraftian monsters, as they could be, which greatly dilutes their Yog-Sothothery vibe. Lots of monsters could apply here, but beholders, mind-flayers and aboleths strike me as the most obviously Lovecraftian inspired yet not very Lovecraft-like in their actual appearances and usage by the game.
So... obviously, they needed a way to kind of roll back all of that burden of lore and bucketing of monsters to make them more mysterious and monstrous again. "Elder Evils" is a semi-category that they created late in the 3.5 era that did part of it. Chris Perkins has even confirmed, in a brief clip of an interview I saw, that elder evils is a semi-category that just means old, powerful and not part of some other fiend or aberration category... although many of them are associated with aberrations. But back in the middle-late 00s when 3.5 was getting a little long in the tooth, there were three works that all kinda sorta did this, and Elder Evils was only one of them. Although it did pretty good for what it was, it didn't always have that really Lovecraftian vibe to all of the elder evils, just some of them.
The Lords of Madness was the aberrations specialty book, and while it didn't exactly do the same thing, it did open the doors for some additional Yog-Sothothery within D&D, especially for those that are races, that could be seen as equivalent to the mi-go or the elder things. Not every Elder Evil needs to be Cthulhu himself!
And Hordes of the Abyss also was a really Lovecraftian book in many ways, and it was fascinating to see them claw back demons into a Lovecraftian paradigm in many ways. The obyrith stuff was straight-up Lovecraftian, and the Black Scrolls of Ahm fictional book was pretty much exactly like the infamous Necronomicon itself, including an author who died under equally mysterious and sinister circumstances as Abdul Alhazred did. Well done. Dagon became the "face" if you will of the obyriths in many ways, and of course, he's basically exactly the same as the Lovecraft Dagon from the stories "Dagon" and "The Shadow Over Innsmouth."
But by and large, the ability of D&D to tread into true Yog-Sothothery has been limited. And maybe that's OK. Maybe, even though Yog-Sothothery was a crucial component of early sword & sorcery, it simply doesn't fit what D&D has become. And honestly, maybe Yog-Sothothery has become to much of a pop culture in-joke to work super well anyway. But I do feel like occasionally D&D got it right, and in a way that I would have really enjoyed. One of those, ironically, because it stumbles in many ways, is with Zargon, the monster of B4 The Lost City and various other iterations of it. It is one of the elder evils mentioned in Elder Evils, although it comes across there as... well, as too D&Dish to really feel Lovecraftian. And it was unfortunately saddled with a very stylized Wayne England illustration that didn't really do the old guy any favors. And honestly, Zargon is a pretty corny name anyway. But just based on his description, and some of the really good illustrations of him, Zargon would have been great if "cast" as the monstrous villain of "The Gods of Bal-Sagoth", "The Fire of Asshurbanipul", "The Black Stone" or many other Lovecraftian tales—and yes, I know I specifically picked three Robert E. Howard Lovecraftian tales. But I've read those recently and they fit very well.
While I'm not a huge fan of 5e, and I only play (occasionally) in it somewhat reluctantly, they do occasionally have some really cool illustrations, when they're not trying to be too cozy or too DEI. These two Zargon illustrations are fantastic. But I'd rename him to something like Zo-Kalar or something (an offhand name dropped by Lovecraft in The DreamQuest of Unknown Kadath), and do away with all of the weird lore; he's a monster in a remote place that really only becomes a problem if you disturb him... although the place is foreshadowed for a long time as a place that's cursed. And it probably needs some reference to Xuthltan or his (possible) alternate spelling Xaltotun from the Conan story.
Sigh. I wish D&D did what I wanted a little better sometimes. But I've said that for 45 years now, so I've made my peace with it, more or less. But it's sometimes harder when they come so close and yet... still manage to not quite get there.
I'm finishing up the Enemy Within "director's cut" books shortly. I'll still have the last companion to read, but before that, I think I'm going to take a break and read those three late 3.5 era D&D books: Elder Evils, Lords of Madness and Hordes of the Abyss. I miss that kind of stuff.
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