King of All Cosmos



"God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."

- Voltaire

A deliberately bizarre or unusual portrayal of gods (especially the Christian God), usually without the intent of being deliberately offensive. This goes well past using a woman or a minority (or both -- Whoopi Goldberg has played God at least once).

This may have something do with the cliches often associated with God, and the use is sometimes a soft commentary of humans assuming the nature of gods and the so-called superior place humans have in the universe.

The King of All Cosmos frequently mentions that he (or she) is not omnipotent.

The secular nature of Japan typically translates to this being applied to nearly all kami at some point.

See also Celestial Bureaucracy and Crystal Dragon Jesus. Not to be confused with the King of All Media.

Trope Namer

 * This trope is named for the King of All Cosmos (pictured above), from the game Katamari Damacy, who destroyed all the stars in the sky after a drunken bender and made his diminutive son, the Prince, help with replacing them. He speaks with a Royal We.
 * The second game is all about fans of the first game  his  Their fans requesting specific Katamaris, which he initially refuses until they compliment him, usually accidentally or indirectly. In Katamari Forever, he loses his memory and the Prince builds a robot version of him to do his job. What's the first thing he does?

Anime & Manga

 * He Is My Master (Alligator, also an Author Avatar)
 * Kami-sama in Ah! My Goddess is not quite Odin, not quite the Christian God. We never see him directly, but it would appear that he resembles Captain Harlock.
 * In the OA Vs, he has long black hair and dresses in red and white. In the TV series, Hild remarks upon how much Skuld looks like him.
 * Well, they've both lost an eye...
 * Dragon Ball Z features Kaio-sama (The Lord of Worlds, aka King Kai) who is an obese, catfish-like being with a bad sense of humor, and quickly gets demoted from supreme being to comic relief. And we're not even going to talk about the succession of little green men who hold the actual title of God.
 * Basically King Kai holds 'control' over one quadrant of the galaxy, there being 4 gods to each galaxy. And then there is a god for every quadrant of the universe, and then Daikaioh, aka God.
 * Note, however, that the Kais are not Physical Gods, being neither omnipotent nor omniscient. Yes, each was Badass enough to have (apparently) killed Freeza with a single punch, but that didn't stop Majin Buu from toasting most of them effortlessly.
 * Indeed, Supreme Kai appears at the beginning of the World Martial Arts tournament and proceeds to be permanantly gobsmacked for the entire Babidi Saga by the seemingly limitless strength of Goku, Vegeta and Gohan.
 * Hey, I thought we weren't going to talk about them!
 * Urusei Yatsura depicts Benten, the Japanese goddess of beauty and art, as a tough, chain-smoking biker chick.
 * While Kamichu! has her as an idol singer, along with the rest of the Seven Lucky Gods as a J-pop band.
 * Truth, the entity at the Gate in Fullmetal Alchemist (manga and Brotherhood version), is a creepy Jerkass with a fondness for cruel irony that appears as a blank white outline in the shape of the person who sees it. It also likes to steal body parts from people.
 * A recurring character in Pani Poni Dash! is a cat-like creature with a Verbal Tic who claims to be God and likes to hide in vending machines (and torment the almost literal Chew Toy, Mesousa).
 * Digimon went so far as to have an ultimate-level form called "Goddramon". (It only showed up in the Expanded Universe, however).
 * There is also Yggdrasil in Digimon Savers, who appears to be rather sociopathic and unfeeling.
 * Yggdrasil may or may not be universal canon, as it also appears in Digimon X-Evolution, and in the same role.
 * There are also some other deities (The Four Gods of Japanese mythology or three angels loosely based on Christian mythology) who rule the Digital World, depending on the continuity.
 * In Twentieth Century Boys, God is an old homeless guy who's obsessed with bowling and can predict the future. Granted, he probably isn't really God, but damned if you can convince his homeless buddies otherwise.
 * The Great Will of the Macrocosm, Excel Saga's Reset Button incarnate, is depicted as a night-sky-colored disc with two arms. In the show's typical zany style, she is actually.
 * In the manga version of Magic Knight Rayearth, the Creator of the Universe is revealed to be.
 * The above is true, but because of the giant snarl of Gambit Roulette that Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle and xxxHolic have become, CLAMP fandom is starting to joke that Clow Reed is the real God of the Clamp Multiverse.
 * If Kamen no Maid Guy is any indication, God has a thing for panty shots. Fubuki's panties in particular.
 * The Law of Ueki features a God who drinks, dresses like a Rummage Sale Reject, and is a womanizing Dirty Old Man. Once it turns out that he has a strong sense of justice, it becomes hard to tell if he's just faking the personality, or if he really is like that.
 * In a bit of a subversion, the main character of Suzumiya Haruhi, Haruhi, could be seen as an example, as it's a pretty unusual stretch for God to be in the form of a high school girl, especially when said girl is pretty damn strange by herself.
 * And then you have what may or may not be a real King of All Cosmos, the Data Integration Thought Entity/Data Overmind.
 * The Five Star Stories has some pretty weird gods & god-like beings. Amaterasu is an easily flustered hermaphrodite with an Oedipal complex & Lachesis is an airheaded teenager, although both of them can be surprisingly competent when they need to. It has also been implied that Amaterasu's insane court jester, Spector, is actually the creator god of their universe, or at least the titular stars.
 * In Code Geass, God is all of humanity's subconscious merged together. Which kinda looks like the planet Jupiter. Which is kinda appropriate, considering Jupiter is named after the Roman deity who held the position of God Of Gods.
 * In Oyasumi Punpun, God is an unhelpful grinning (actually more like the most annoying trollface you could imagine) afro'd man who appears whenever the main character chants "Dear God, dear God, tinkle tinkle hoy."
 * Actually he appears fairly more often than that: he shows up whenever the main character is in deep emotional turmoil and proceeds to give him not just unhelpful the worst, most evil advice possible. His answer to the Romantic False Lead? "KILL HIM! STAB HIM IN THE EYE!". All with a constant, fixed grin that starts to feel more and more like a trollface with each successive appearance.
 * Deus from Mirai Nikki is described as the "lord of all space and time". His head looks like Unit-01's. Note that Deus is a bit darker than most examples here.
 * Saint Young Men. Not God, but rather Jesus. And He is weird.
 * Then there's The Dorm Mistress. She even calls herself God more often than not, seems to be able to control the weather, is implied to have orchestrated a lot of the history of Ancient China and threatens students with everything from death to time-space distortion torture, a large amount of which have hit Kanako. To make it even more horrifying, she insinuates that she's being forced to do the job by a being stronger than herself.
 * Then there's The Dorm Mistress. She even calls herself God more often than not, seems to be able to control the weather, is implied to have orchestrated a lot of the history of Ancient China and threatens students with everything from death to time-space distortion torture, a large amount of which have hit Kanako. To make it even more horrifying, she insinuates that she's being forced to do the job by a being stronger than herself.

Comicbooks

 * While the focus of Crimson is on reluctant-but-destined-vampire Alex Elder, and the various vampires, werewolves and hunters that surround him (as well as the incarnation of St. George), there are also a squad of archangels who cross his path, while Lucifer himself repeatedly intercede on Alex' behalf. God is not seen... until Lucifer recognizes the young, black, mute, flower-selling girl hanging around in the background.
 * The Invisibles: "If the Buddha were from Liverpool and swore a lot, he'd be a bit like Jack."
 * Speaking of Grant Morrison, Doom Patrol's Red Jack (assuming he's actually who he says he is; It's hard to tell).
 * A Fantastic Four arc sees the Four travel to Heaven where they are given the opportunity to meet the Almighty... who turns out to be a comic book artist. One who possesses a striking resemblance to Jack Kirby—and has an unseen 'collaborator'.
 * Galactus, a giant planet-eating Physical God, was created for the purpose of having the Fantastic Four "fight God", and while he isn't played for laughs, he is a giant purple dude with a ridiculous helmet.
 * But that's just how human beings are able to perceive him. At least one comic has indicated that his true form is beyond mortal comprehension and has shown that each sentient race in the universe sees a very different Cosmic Horror when they look at him (including one form that appeared as a giant black void, covered in warped and screaming faces). Apparently the big purple humanoid with the weird helmet is as scary as humans can understand.
 * The Marvel Universe also has Eternity; literally a personification of the universe
 * In (what turned out to be) creator Steve Gerber's final Howard The Duck story, he finds Yahweh in a bar, along with Jesus and The Holy Spirit (who are described as manifestations of His "tripolar disorder".) "Yah" (as He prefers to be called) describes Himself as an ordinary slob like His creations, explains that He never created religion (other than Zoroastrianism as a practical joke,) and that He created the universe as a work-for-hire - His employers don't pull the plug on existence because it is a popular tourist attraction.
 * Scud the Disposable Assassin depicts a God that vaguely resembles the Judeo-Christian model, but is more of a force of nature than a sentient being - at the end of the series,
 * God's appearance when Johnny the Homicidal Maniac goes to Heaven (he just does, okay?), where God is a little fat man in a flying recliner who's "a little tired" from creating the Universe.
 * The Jhonen Vasquez solo story (yes, the creator sometimes stars), in which a late-night convenience store clerk denies him Cherry Ice Sucky. "You're the Devil, aren't you?" Jhonen asks. Yes. Yes, he is.
 * Sandman has the seven Endless. Immortal and almost all-powerful and knowing beings who have been around since the beginning of the universe. The oldest, Destiny, appears like a man in a hooded cloak carrying a large book and looks the most like a traditional God figure. The second one is Death, who is by far the most unusual by appearing as teenage punk girl who is one of the nicest and sweetest person you'll ever met. (As well as the first and the last.)

Film
"Supreme Being: "I think it has something to do with free will.""
 * The entire Time Bandits can be seen as predicated on the foibles of a rather inept and idiosyncratic version of the Christian God.
 * Hilariously Lampshaded in the little speech given by Evil about God's lack of interest in computers and technology.
 * To give an example, the Supreme Being (in the movie) literally can not remember *why* he created evil when Kevin asks:


 * The Oh, God! series portrayed him as the old vaudevillian George Burns.
 * The Kevin Smith film Dogma features a God who at first appears in a bodily incarnation as a stereotypical old bearded man (who likes skee-ball). When freed from this body, God takes a true (or truer) form of a beautiful young woman who giggles, does cartwheels and seems to look at everything with childlike awe, played in one of the most audacious moves in Stunt Casting history by Alanis freakin' Morisette.
 * Terry Jones' Erik the Viking portrays the Norse pantheon as a bunch of literal children, self-absorbed and petulant, who claim to have no particular influence over what mortals do to each other.
 * Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter is one long, intentional play on this trope. A martial-arts and wooden-stakes-wielding Jesus... who shaves and dons modern clothing... and saves the lesbians of Ottawa from vampires... and sings and dances... and squeezes someone's ass. The movie also features the Virgin Mary talking through a nightlight, God talking through a Hooters bowl of ice cream and cherries, and a fabulous transvestite Good Samaritan. Oh, and the most saintly man on the planet is the legendary masked Mexican wrestler El Santo.
 * In Xanadu, Zeus turns out to be a forgetful, flawed retiree who's perplexed by human emotions and our perspective on time.

Literature
"H.P. Lovecraft: They danced insanely to the high, thin whining / Of a cracked flute clutched in a monstrous paw / Whence flow the aimless waves whose chance combining / Gives each frail cosmos its eternal law."
 * The last book of Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series, And Eternity, ends up making a mortal into God - the incarnation of Good. The whole series is about mortals becoming gods or godlike beings - Death, Time, Fate, War, Nature, and Evil (the Devil) are the others. In every book, the character starts out completely incompetent at their task, and often requires assistance from others to achieve their goals. Not a perfect example, since the Incarnations are the protagonists of their respective books, though.
 * And the reason Evil gets away with so much in the series is that the previous (unimpeachable) God was vain and lazy, and negotiated a non-interference agreement which Evil, being Evil, promptly ignored and ran rampant on Earth, while God sat around. The replacement God takes a more activist view. The new God is, surprisingly, female, not that there's anything wrong with that, and was put in place by a massive, centuries-long Gambit Roulette planned by none other than... . That's right,
 * That's not entirely correct. The "God" who got impeached was a former mortal so enraptured with his new status that he was oblivious to everything. Similarly, whose plan got 'God' replaced was actually
 * who happened to be both
 * In H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, the greatest gods are terrifying inhuman monsters whose form and thought processes (if they exist) are utterly incomprehensible. Depending upon how you look at it, either Azathoth or Yog-Sothoth is King of All Cosmos.
 * If you squint, both of them, Shub-Niggurath, and Nyarlathotep are the same entity, which makes things a bit messier.
 * Azathoth in particular is horrifying in that he is a mindless gibbering idiot, thrashing blindly at the formless center of infinity amid the maddening cacophony of drums and pipes.


 * While not precisely a deity, the Hitch Hikers Guide to The Galaxy series by Douglas Adams assures us that the galaxy is run by a crazy man who lives in a tiny hut with his cat.
 * Also, while we are not shown the actual God, his Final Message to His Creation:
 * Harlan Ellison's short story The Region Between takes this to a Lovecraftian extreme:
 * The entire Discworld pantheon. Not only the straight deities who venture more into Crystal Dragon Jesus territory, like Blind Io and Fate, but the slightly odder ones, like the god of great ideas you forget to write down and will never remember again, the goddess of the afternoon, the goddess of small dead things left half-digested on the porch (she has a cat head), the goddess of things that get stuck in drawers, and *cough* the Lady.
 * Aslan (Jesus Christ is a lion, get in the wardrobe!) from The Chronicles of Narnia. He's literally Jesus himself, but in a form that's more suitable for Narnia. On Earth, which is dominated by humans, he took the form of a man. In Narnia, which is mostly populated by Talking Animals and mythical creatures, he takes the form of a giant talking lion who gives you rides on his back and lets you stroke his mane.

Live-Action TV

 * In the TGIF comedy Teen Angel, God has a unique intermediary to mortals: his cousin Rod, the giant, disembodied head of actor Ron Glass. Rod admits to being responsible for the Black Plague, The Chevy Chase Show, and killer bees (though at first they weren't called 'killer bees' they were called 'Fun Flies.' Then they started killing people.) His arch-nemesis is the Devil's cousin Neville.
 * In one episode of Blossom Joey plays pool with a very nonchalant God.

Tabletop Games

 * The Unconquered Sun from Exalted appears, at first, to be a fairly typical four-armed sun-deity... until you look closer and realize that he essentially started a war against the actual creators of the universe which wrecked 90% of Creation, simply to get his hands on the cosmic X-Box (which he and the other ruling deities are now addicted to the point of completely ignoring Creation itself.) And those actual creators, now trapped in Hell? Their head honcho is a crazy brass man/city with an embarrassing penchant for wild dancing.
 * The Unconquered Sun's true form is a vaguely dragon-shaped nuclear fire.
 * As mentioned on the game's own page, some recent releases clarified things a great deal and made him much less of this.

Video Games

 * The Trope Namer himself comes from Katamari Damacy, where he regularly orders his son (and other family members) to roll up various sizes of objects on earth - or even the earth itself - in order to throw them up into the sky to fix the stars he knocked out of it during his drunken revelry. He's selfish, infinitely vain, Camp Gay in dress (but has a wife), and whisks you around with fabulous rainbows. He'd be a huge Jerkass if he wasn't so hilariously endearing.
 * from Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 looks like
 * The Lord of Games (or L.O.G.) from Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts.
 * Amaterasu in Okami is a rather odd god. "Leap before you look" is her literal mantra (often jumping off of high, probably bottomless ledges just because they're in her way or picking fights when she doesn't really need to), and it's an ongoing joke that she has some sort of aversion to bathing. Oh, and she's a wolf.
 * To be fair, all of this is information (aside from the wolf bit) we get secondhand from wisecracking Ninja Butterfly Issun, who may just be projecting his own negative character traits onto our silent protagonist.
 * True, but either way, she DOES seem to get a little TOO excited when meeting a scantly-clad (female) tree-nymph. Also, parts of her fighting-style is... in questionable taste. Specifically, the moves 'Golden Thunder' and 'Brown Rage'.
 * The Black and White series of games has the protagonist taking on this role. You can be good or evil, but either way, your avatar is a giant (Godzilla-sized) animal that poops everywhere, likes to dance around, and occasionally eats people.
 * Well, your avatar is actually a hand/glowing light, and the Creature is more like a pet, but that's not as funny.
 * In the ero-game Let's Meow Meow!!, the Cat God whose blessing dumps a not so Unwanted Harem of animal-eared girls on the player is lazy, erratic and whimsical. He manifests as a classical "beckoning cat"-statue. He is appearently the Lord of All Cosmos in his own Cosmos, where your harem comes from. One latecomer is one of His priestesses.
 * In Spore, the great mystery at the center of the galaxy turns out to be a
 * What does God need with a starship? Well, in Homeworld, God is a starship. Sajuuk, the Creator entity in the various religions of almost every race in the galaxy, is revealed in Homeworld 2 to be an incredibly powerful Precursor starship lying dormant at the center of the galaxy.
 * In Sacrifice, Stratos, the God of Air, also known as "Lord of the Heavens" is a floating white robe with a tire for a collar and a yellow helium balloon with a smiley face painted on it for a head. Underneath his benevolent and somewhat nutty facade, he's also.
 * Any of the gods in Gensokyo who aren't outright Jerkass Gods are usually this, most of them being of the Cloudcuckoolander variety.
 * Most of the gods in Kid Icarus: Uprising are this. To name three, Palutena is a shameless Troll who constantly messes with Pit during gameplay, Thanatos is a Camp Gay shapeshifter who likes to transform into strange objects, and Viridi is a Bratty Half-Pint and huge Deadpan Snarker even in the game's World of Snark.

Webcomics

 * Dinosaur Comics features God as a recurring character, audible only to T-Rex, with a rather bizarre personality. A good example can be seen here. The Devil (also only audible to T-Rex) also appears regularly and has something of a video game fixation.
 * In the Mr. Deity online shorts, God is essentially characterised as a George Lucas parody.
 * Angel Moxie portrays the "Grand Poobah" as an uncaring bureaucrat who cares more about the upcoming hockey season than he does the status of Earth.
 * In the Goats comic strip, God went off to dress like a pirate, telling Woody Allen and a bunch of monkeys to take over writing new scripts for The Multiverse. Then two of the main characters tricked God into becoming a pork chop so they could eat him. This eventually places all existence in peril. Goats also features a guy with glasses and a mustache who may be Satan, although his name-tag originally reads "Stan".
 * The Judeo-Christian God, as depicted in Sinfest, enjoys mocking His subjects using hand puppets and has a sense of humor approximating that of a fourth-grader (but His decisions are still Serious Business.) Buddha is depicted as an eternally cheerful cloud-riding-Cloudcuckoolander. Jesus is frequently depicted as a super-hero (when he's not moping about the sins of the father visited upon the son.)
 * Also pretty much how God (usually referred to simply as The Boss) appears in Life and Death, albeit with some Handwavium due to the fact that All Myths Are True in that scenario.
 * Life and Death has Boss, a short white-haired man. Usually serious, but he does occasionally crack a few jokes. Don't ever piss him off though. He won't kill you, he'll just make you wish you were.
 * The comic also has Jesus appearing in a few strips. Steve gave him a stripper in a cake. God was not amused.
 * In Problem Sleuth, Pickle Inspector ascends to godhood and becomes Godhead Pickle Inspector. Naturally, this happens since Pickle Inspector was pretty eccentric as a mortal. After retroactively creating the universe, he spends most of his time fondly regarding things that rhyme with "creation".
 * In Blur the Lines, God is a Hard Gay, of the bear variety, specifically.
 * Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal portrays God as a sentient sundial. True to the themes of the strip, while not intentionally malevolent, he is flighty, petty and impulsive, and has an...interesting sense of humor.
 * Did I already mention impulsive?
 * There is an even weirder depiction, too.
 * Overcompensating has God and Jesus living in the Pearly Gates Trailer Park. They are rather eclectic.
 * Breakfast of the Gods depicts God in the form of the Quaker Oats mascot.
 * The Titans who created Erfworld are depicted as giant Elvis impersonators, both in the first panel representing the event and in in-universe iconography.

Western Animation

 * South Park depicted God as a short-tempered hippo/monkey hybrid creature in "Are You There, God? It's Me, Jesus". Oh, and he's a Buddhist.
 * Made weirder because Buddha is a member of The Super Best Friends (a parody of The Super Friends featuring Jesus, other religious beings, and an Aquaman parody named Seaman). That's right, God is a member of a religion based off of the teachings of one of his son's friends.
 * Though curiously, from a Buddhist perspective it would make perfect sense for the Christian God to be a Buddhist: the goal of Buddhism is to achieve a state with no desires, and God isn't exactly there yet, with His desires to grant salvation and defeat evil.
 * In the Futurama episode "Godfellas", Bender encounters a galaxy-shaped being who may or may not be God, and takes a rather laissez-faire view on divine intervention: his philosophy is "When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."
 * He does make a surprisingly profound statement during their conversation: "Bender, being a god isn't as easy as it looks. If you do too much, your worshipers get dependent on you, and if you do too little, they lose hope."
 * It is "probable" that he's the remains of a computerized space probe that collided with God. Which is actually significantly weirder than just saying outright he is or isn't God...
 * Transformers has a Giant Robot God. Primus, while not always Mr. Nice God (at least in the comics, he comes across better when he appears in the cartoons), is in fact the creator of the Transformers, and their homeworld is his body. Surprisingly little goes on by way of religious ceremony, though he is connected to both the Autobot Matix of Leadership and Cybertron's Omega Lock, and granted the Autobots the Spark of Combination in Energon, as well as the Cyber Keys from Cybertron being derived from his power. And all this while he's sealed away in a deep slumber.
 * And by the time of the Cybertron series, it turns out that he is a Transformer himself. Created in his own image, you could say...
 * Primus's opposite number Unicron is no slouch, either. He eats planets, created the Mini-Cons to give the Autobots and Decepticons something to fight over in Armada, and is directly responsible for the "hyper power" upgrades of most of Energon's Decepticons.
 * The short-lived God, the Devil and Bob allowed God to be, well, God, but put him in sunglasses, t-shirts, and sandals. He looked a lot like Jerry Garcia, although it should be noted the show's producers actually used the stereotypical Christian image of God for their character, just with a different fashion sense. He also loves beer and Pop-Tarts.
 * Avatar: The Last Airbender and its crazy-amazing.
 * Arguably, Aang himself also fits. The Avatar spirit is the soul of the planet (or something), continually reincarnating into human bodies...and in this incarnation, it's a twelve-year-old boy with giant arrow tattoos and a penchant for riding wild animals.
 * Chowder features a parody of the King of the Cosmos from Katamari Damacy. The other characters don't seem to acknowledge him, though, much less worship him.
 * In one episode of Beavis and Butthead, the titular characters meet God (or at least someone claiming to be him). In addition to slipping pop cultural references into his sermons, he's eventually revealed to be not too different from the duo themselves, watching porn and having a very similar laugh.
 * Apparently he finds what they did at the church in Beavis & Butt-Head Do America sucks.

Web Originals

 * Open Blue's God is Zod, an Expy of the God from Monty Python and the Holy Grail who loves drinking parties, and armwrestling with Kukulu (an Expy of Cthulhu), and doesn't give a rat's ass about the hundreds of millions of humans praying to him.

Other

 * The Flying Spaghetti Monster. According to The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, He spent most of creation being drunk (or hung over), accidentally created land twice (due to being drunk and hung over), and generally rushed the whole thing. Due to the overwhelming amount of errors in creation, his followers have introduced the notion of "Unintelligent Design," a theory stating that, while omnipotent, the Creator isn't necessarily very bright.
 * Ceiling Cat iz in ur ceiling watching u masterbate. He now can haz Baibel.
 * Not everyone beleevz however.
 * One of Lore Sjoburg's "Lore Brand Comics" posits the theory of Belligerent Design: the Universe was created to annoy him.