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{{trope}}
{{quote|''Tell the king; the fair wrought house has fallen''
''No shelter has Apollo, nor sacred laurel leaves''
''The fountains are now silent; the voice is stilled.''
''It is finished.''
|The Oracle of Delphi to Emperor Theodosius}}
A common fantasy trope where the polytheistic pagan gods are slowly giving way to a single unified Christian god (or the [[Crystal Dragon Jesus|nearest fictional approximation]]), although giving way to new polytheistic gods or no gods at all is not unheard of.
Normally their departure is a result of [[Gods Need Prayer Badly|people no longer believing in them]], although it's not unknown for them to [[Ascend to
The fading gods and their worshipers are normally portrayed sympathetically, but there are normally underlying messages that their time is up and they should accept their fates.
Sometimes the result of a [[War in Heaven]]. Contrast [[Gotterdammerung]], where the gods go out with a bang instead of a whisper. While the [[The Old Gods|old gods]] will [[Physical God|interact with the mortals on a common basis]], the [[Have You Seen My God?|One True God will rarely make appearances despite his new found popularity]] ([[Painting the Frost
{{examples|Examples}}▼
{{deathtrope}}
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* In [[Marvel Comics]] the pantheons of Earth were forced to stop intervening in humanity's progress (overtly anyway) 1000 years ago by [[Cosmic Entity|The Celestials]], beings who guide evolution. Most
** Apparently, being a superhero doesn't count as "overtly intervening", given the examples of [[The Mighty Thor|Thor]] and [[The Incredible Hercules|Hercules]], and occasionally a few others.
* In [[DC Comics]], the Old Gods literally died in a huge war only to be replaced by [[New Gods]]; none of these were Earth gods, however.
** Since the death of the [[New Gods]] in ''[[Final Crisis]]'', and the foreshadowing that even newer gods will arise, the [[New Gods]] are now also old dead gods.
* Justified in ''[[Thousand Shinji
== Film ==
* ''[[Beowulf (
* The film version of ''[[The Egyptian]]'' draws parallels between Akhenaten's worship of the sun god Aten and later
* The miniseries ''[[Merlin (
== [[Literature]] ==
* In ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'', the Faith of the Seven, [[Crystal Dragon Jesus|which resembles the Catholic Church]], has largely replaced the Old Gods, who were worshiped by the original inhabitants of the continent. The only worshipers left are [[Grim Up North|up north]]. Later in the series, the religion of R'hllor, a militant, monotheistic religion from the East, begins to take a foothold.
* ''Winds of the Forelands'' series there is a monotheistic god, Ean, with steadily increasing worship and the favor of most of the aristocracy, but the religion of the old gods isn't out of the fight yet.
* [[Juliet Marillier]]'s ''[[Bridei Chronicles]]'' series has this, it's set in Scotland and England during their conversion from paganism to Catholicism.
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* The original ''[[Dragonlance]]'' trilogy actually subverts this. After the Cataclysm, a world-shattering disaster visited on the world by the gods as punishment for a variety of sins, humanity decides to find itself a new pantheon, and the dwarves and elves seem to be less interested in worship generally speaking. It's later revealed, however, that the old gods were around all along; it was people's loss of faith in them that made them believe the old gods had departed. And, interestingly, it winds up being the goddess of evil who becomes active again in the world first.
* Most of [[Thomas Burnett Swann]]'s fantasy novels are about the fading of the old magic, mythology and gods, though it's implied that some have survived in hiding.
* [[Neil Gaiman]]'s ''[[
* In [[Merry Gentry]]'s world, the many of the Sidhe were <s> worshiped as</s> well-known Pagan gods, but lost their worshipers to Christianity. This marked the beginning of their decline in power. It is explicitly stated that Sidhe draw power from such worship, and are therefore forbidden to set themselves up as gods as part of the treaty with Jefferson. Furthermore, the older Sidhe have referred to the Elder Gods and Firblogs, which implies that there may have been even ''Older'' Old Gods, that the Sidhe didn't just [[Put
* In ''[[The
* ''[[The Dresden Files]]'' notes that most of the old gods {{spoiler|except Odin}} have effectively gone into hibernation over the last few centuries. The Lord Almighty (as Harry calls the god of Christianity) is still very active in modern times.
** ''Changes'' also reveals some of the Old Gods, specifically [[Mayincatec]] ones, to have actually been very powerful, very old [[Our Vampires Are Different|vampires of the Red Court]], called [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|the Lords of Outer Night]].
** There is also a whole bunch of ancient deities so dangerous to the world that an [[Ancient Tradition]] of Venatori has been struggling for centuries to erase every trace of their presence, thus preventing mortals from believing in them and allowing them to exist. This is appropriately known as the "[[Secret War|Oblivion War]]".
* The end of ''[[Lord of Light]]'' has a Buddha analogue that replaces the Hindu gods.
* Part of the backstory of ''[[Arcia Chronicles]]'' includes the Seven [[Light Is Not Good|Lightbringers]] physically destroying all the Old Gods of Tarra. This returns to bite Tarra mightily in the ass nine thousand years later when the Lightbringers leave and a bunch of [[Cosmic Horror
* In [[Poul Anderson]]'s ''[[
* In [[Robert E. Howard]]'s [[Conan the Barbarian]] story "[[
{{quote|
"The nameless, forgotten ones. Who knows? They have gone back into the still waters of the lakes, the quiet hearts of the hills, the gulfs beyond the stars. Gods are no more stable than men."'' }}
* ''[[The Mists of Avalon]]'' has this going on for most of the book, and being fought against tooth and nail by several main characters. Not that it has much effect in the long run.
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* In the finale of Lawrence Watt-Evans' ''The Lords of Dûs'' series, it is revealed that {{spoiler|the prophesied end of Time was simply referring to the death of the god of Time and all that he had personally created. As his main creations were the fourteen greater gods, the world was largely unaffected. With their passing, the lesser gods step forward to begin a new age}}.
* The basis of the plot of [[Margaret Weis]] and [[Tracy Hickman]]'s ''Dragonships'' series involves the old gods (a pantheon obviously inspired by, though not identical to, that of the Norse) getting their territory muscled in on by ''two'' sets of interlopers (the Gods of Raj and the Lord of the New Dawn, Aelon), and how that conflict spills over into the mortal world.
* This is how the ''[[Books of Swords]]'' end. As humanity ceases to dream of the gods, they lose their power and fade from existence. As the last of them, Vulcan, dies, he senses the presence of some new power, or perhaps a [[God|returning old one]], come to claim or reclaim the earth.
== [[Live
*
* An episode of ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'' has two pagan gods eating humans around the Christmas season and one of them reflects on how Jesus is the big new thing.
** "Hammer of the Gods" has a bunch of the "old gods" telling Sam and Dean to deal with Lucifer because they don't want the word to end when it's no longer theirs. By the end of the episode, most of them are dead. Like the earlier pagan gods, they seem to subsist on human flesh where once they subsisted on faith. Despite the fact that [[Hindu Mythology|Ganesh and Kali]] are among their numbers, so apparently, India must've converted to Christianity at some point in the Supernatural-verse.
** The [[Unfortunate Implications|show suggests]] that all non-Christian gods are just powerful people-eating monsters, who kill people themselves because they're no longer receiving sacrifices. Why they went down in the lore as mostly benevolent deities while all the other people-eating monsters show up as, well, people-eating monsters, is anyone's guess.
* ''[[Xena: Warrior Princess]]'' plays fast and loose with this. Early on, {{spoiler|she runs into a monotheistic cult that seems to be analogue of early Christians but later turns out to worship [[Pure Evil]]}}. Later, {{spoiler|she is sent forwards in time a couple decades and sent on a quest by the the prophet Eli to wipe out all the remaining pagan gods}}.
** She also ran into a Greek [[Expy]] Abraham before any of that (and played a big part in his NOT sacrificing the Isaac Expy).
* The ''[[Star Trek:
* More or less the plot to [[Stargate SG
* The BBC version of the Arthurian legends, ''[[Merlin (TV series)|Merlin]]'', can't seem to be able to make it's mind up about the 'Old Religion' (the pagan religion that existed before Christianity and, despite the show's claims, did not involve priestesses using pygmy hydra to control peoples' minds): after three years of portraying these old ways as almost uniformly evil, Series 4 begins with the royal court of Camelot celebrating the feast of Samhain, briefly mentions Ostara and ends as they prepare to celebrate Beltane. All of which are fire festivals celebrated by the aforementioned 'Old Religion'. To confuse matters further, King Arthur (in this same series) "swears to God" at least twice.
==
* Most modern re-tellings of the [[King Arthur|Arthurian legends]] have this going on at least in the background.
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* The main idea behind [[John Milton]]'s poem "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity."
== [[Tabletop
* In ''[[Pendragon]]'' the Christian religion is replacing the old nature gods of Britain.
* Averted in ''[[Scion]]'', where [[All Myths Are True]] and each newly risen pantheon gets the divine equivalent of a fruit basket from the old ones. The reality of the Abrahamic religions are left up to the Storyteller, but they don't seem to have done any damage to the old gods (most of which don't really care about having worshipers, since Fate ''loves'' to screw with them via those links).
== [[Web Comics]] ==▼
* [[The Godsof Arr Kelaan]] has a very unusual example. The old gods are gradually forced away from earth by the expansion of the universe but {{spoiler|Hephaestus designed the Abrahamic faiths around a non-existent god so all the worship could be redirected to a big battery.}} They didn't so much remove the old gods as outlast them, most of the angels were originally one of the old gods. The planet of Arr-Kelaan qualifies too, but just barely. The Traveller gods do kick out the old gods, but the old gods are immigrants from Earth's universe who've barely held established religions longer than the Travellers.▼
▲== [[Fan Fiction]] ==
▲* Justified in [[Thousand Shinji|“Thousand Shinji"]] by Academia Nut where several deities from Warhammer40k sacrificed themselves to create the neoChaos gods so that the C'Tan can be defeated. However, in the sequel [[The Open Door|“Open Door”]], the neoChaos gods’ learn that an alternate version of their predecessors exist elsewhere in the [[The Multiverse|multiverse]] and have devised an elaborate [[Gambit Roulette]] to manipulate [[Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny|the inevitable war between the Old gods and the New gods']] for their own benefit.
== [[Video Games]] ==
* In ''[[Dragon Age]]'' the Old Gods of the Tevinter Imperium (AKA [[Our Dragons Are Different|Dragons]]) were struck down by the Maker. Most of the world now worships the Maker and his prophet Andraste, and the Old Gods slumber beneath the Earth until they're awoken, one at a time, to lead the corrupted darkspawn in a Blight.
** The elves' gods were tricked by a being known as Fen'Harel that trapped both them and their mysterious enemies beyond the reach of their followers, presumably keeping them from helping the Elves when their ancient empire was destroyed.
* ''[[God of War (
* In ''[[
* In the ''[[
** Though there are Gods that serve YHVH willingly and aid him.
* In ''[[Arcanum:
* Happens in ''[[Touhou]]'', magic giving way to rationalism and thus the old gods give way to a whole new godless world. Suwako was prepared to accept it, but Kanako decided to fight this fate. On the other end of spectrum, the oni also accept that they have no place in the modern world, and retreated underground. Except Suika.
* ''[[Castlevania: Lords of Shadow]]'' mentions this, that all the old physical gods and mythical beasts are slowly dissapearing from the world. {{spoiler|When Gabriel kills Pan in self defence during a test of his worthiness, the last of the gods has died.}}
▲== [[Web Comics]] ==
▲* ''[[The
{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Religion Tropes]]
[[Category:Tropes of the Divine]]
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