Yellow Peril (sometimes Yellow Terror) was a colour metaphor for race that originated in the late nineteenth century with immigration of Chinese as coolie slaves or laborers to various Western countries, notably the United States, and later associated with the Japanese during the mid 20th century, due to Japanese military expansion.

The term refers to the skin color of East Asians, and the belief that the mass immigration of Asians threatened white wages and standards of living.

Many sources credit Kaiser Wilhelm II with coining the phrase "Yellow Peril" (German: gelbe Gefahr) in September 1895. The Kaiser had an illustration of this title — depicting the Archangel Michael as an allegorical Germany leading the European powers against an Asiatic threat represented by a golden Buddha — hung in all ships of the Hamburg America Line. It was ostensibly designed by the Kaiser himself.

In 1898, the British writer M. P. Shiel published a short story serial entitled The Empress of the Earth. The later novel edition was named The Yellow Danger. Shiel's novel centers on the murder of two German missionaries in Kiau-Tschou in 1897 and features the Chinese villain, Dr. Yen How.

Dr. Fu Manchu is a fictional character introduced in a series of novels by British author Sax Rohmer during the first half of the 20th century. The character was also featured extensively in cinema, television, radio, comic strips and comic books for over 90 years, and has become an archetype of the evil criminal genius while lending the name to the Fu Manchu moustache.

"Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, ... one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present ... Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man."
–The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu

A master criminal, Fu Manchu's murderous plots are marked by the extensive use of arcane methods; he disdains guns or explosives, preferring dacoits, Thuggee, and members of other secret societies as his agents armed with knives, or using "pythons and cobras... fungi and my tiny allies, the bacilli... my black spiders" and other peculiar animals or natural chemical weapons.