The Mindless Almighty

"So, isn't this terrifying? I'm terrified too... Giygas cannot think rationally any more, and he isn't even aware of what he is doing now. His own mind was destroyed by his incredible power...What an all-mighty idiot!"

- Porky Minch describing Giygas, EarthBound''

A (usually) mortal being falls to the temptations of attaining significant and often god-like power and eventually succeeds; but where temptation proved too great for them, the power proves ten times more so, and they begin to literally lose their mind&mdash;sapience, sentience, individual will, sense of self: at least one of more of these will be eroded, possibly completely, from the sheer force of the intake. Alternately, someone who is already a deity (or at least strong enough to be one) undergoes a further enhancement that pushes them beyond their bounds, eroding their mind and/or soul until they're an empty shell of their former self.

In summary, With Great Power Comes Great Insanity and the potential to create an Unknowing Almighty. The name is derived from the phrase "all-knowing, all-mighty", often used in reference to the Judeo-Christian God.

The Unknowing Almighty is a being with god-tier power or better, but with severely diminished or nonexistent capacity for cognition - effectively an omnipotent vessel driven by nothing but the most instinctual impulses. Aggression, rage, simple curiosities, and hunger are some of the most common ones. This state often draws comparisons to that of a wild animal or a child... at least by human standards, anyway.

Many animals display their own form of understanding and self-awareness in ways we humans have yet to fully understand - of course, it hardly needs stating that even the most "intelligent" animals are still incredibly dangerous if they go feral. The idea of such a ravaged mind being likened to that of a child, though still similarly problematic, is also technically more accurate: in psychoanalytic theory, the mind of a newborn child is regarded as the purest form of id. If the deity is a literal child, though, that's Goo-Goo Godlike.

Cosmic Horror Stories employ this trope frequently, as monsters like the Elder Gods can be even more frightening when they're not acting out of malice - any morality or intelligence they possess (if any at all) might be completely alien to us, and they might not even be aware of our own existence might not even occur to them.

Becoming an Unknowing Almighty may transform the victim into an Eldritch Abomination if they weren't one already.

Compare:


 * Mad God, which overlaps significantly due to the base concept of "deity whose mind is shattered".
 * Tortured Abomination, where a sufficiently strong Eldritch Abomination is subjected to enough torture to render them 'feral' enough to lash out (or worse).
 * Severe cases of Superpower Meltdown or being Touched by Vorlons.

Contrast:


 * King of All Cosmos, where the deity is more highly eccentric or outright weird than anything else.
 * Goo-Goo Godlike, when a being with god-like power is still in the actual stages of infancy.
 * A God I Am Not, for characters who are fully aware of their godlike power but refuse to think of themselves as such.

Video Games

 * The final boss of EarthBound, Giygas, is described as such by his Dragon Pokey Minch, who released him from the Devil's Machine (which was likely keeping his sanity tethered to him in the first place). His attacks are preceded by completely random statements in this form, and the attacks themselves are the Trope Namer for You Cannot Grasp the True Form.