God Guise: Difference between revisions

 

'''[[No Real Life Examples Please]]'''

 

== Anime & Manga ==

* ''[[Ice Age]]: The Meltdown'' has a similar situation with Sid and a race of mini-sloths. Subverted in that the mini-sloths are the only ones who know the scientific reason for the impending ecological disaster. Ironically played straight, in that their solution is to {{spoiler|sacrifice their fire-king, Sid, [[Appease the Volcano God|to a volcano]]}}.

* Captain Jack Sparrow, at the start of ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]: Dead Man's Chest'', has been captured by the Pelegostos tribe, who believe him to be a God trapped in human form. They intend to free him (by killing him) and then to consecrate themselves by eating the flesh of his mortal vessel.

* In ''[[Mad Max]]:Beyond Thunderdome'', Max happens upon a tribe of youngsters (the two "tribal elders" are almost certainly in their late teens), where they believe him to be a messiah-like man named Captain Walker. To hear them tell it, Captain Walker was in charge of a "sky raft" (commercial jet plane) that got brought down by a "gang called Turbulence" after the "pocky-klips" (apocalypse). Walker and some of the others who weren't "jumped by Mr. Dead" formed a rescue party and set out for parts unknown, with him promising that he would return one day to lead the others to "Tomorrow-Morrow Land" (ironically, the world as it used to be). At the end of the story, a painting of Captain Walker is revealed by the story-teller, and Max looks just like him. Though they don't have a "pitchfork party", the tribe is quite disillusioned when they learn that Max isn't Walker.

** The painting of Walker isn't quite so prophetic as it sounds: the kids probably painted it while Max was unconscious. (Otherwise, how would they have known about the monkey?)

* Averted twice in ''[[Discworld (Literature)/The Science of Discworld|The Science of Discworld]] II'', where the Lecturer In Recent Runes proposes that the wizards proclaim they're the creators of Roundworld so its natives will cooperate. A double aversion, as the wizards really ''did'' create Roundworld (though they're not Gods), and [[Genre Savvy]] Ponder Stibbons shoots down the idea, saying that mortals who claim to be gods are likely to come to the same bad ends on Earth as they would on Discworld.

* In the [[Enid Blyton]] adventure story ''The Secret Mountain'', published 1941, this is how the main characters escape from the titular mountain. They find out that there's to be a [[Convenient Eclipse|solar eclipse]] the next day, so at the appropriate moment their father throws his hunting knife off the mountain. The lights go out and the tribe think he's killed the sun, at which point the [[Cool Plane|"big white bird"]] turns up to carry the heroes to safety before the tribe realize they've been had.

** The Multiverse in question is "Shadow," the vast number of worlds radiating away from Amber, the True City. The Amberites' ability to walk between worlds is half-blurred into ''creating'' these worlds to order. Which is to say, the natives may have a ''point'' in this case. The Amberites themselves don't really know, either.

* [[Christopher Moore]]'s ''[[Island of the Sequined Love Nun (Literature)|Island of the Sequined Love Nun]]'' uses the WWII setup of [[Cargo Cult|Cargo Cults]]. An American doctor and his beautiful but sick, greedy wife use the beliefs of the natives (who [[Cargo Cult|worship the pilot Vincent and his plane the Sky Priestess]]) in order to {{spoiler|[[Squick|harvest their organs]]}}. The main character is being used by Vincent to settle a bet Vincent made with {{spoiler|Jesus, Buddha, and Moses}}.

** Leading to a [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]] for Salvor Hardin when the Anacreonian leader tries to invade the Foundation {{spoiler|with a ship that the Foundation had rebuilt for them}}.

{{quote| For it is the chief characteristic of the religion of science, that it works, and that such curses as that of Aporat's are really deadly.}}

* James P. Hogan's ''Giants Trilogy'' of science fiction novels includes as one of its premises that all Earth's religions are differet God Guises deliberately started by a different, extraterrestrial branch of humanity in order to retard Earth's cultural and scientific development.

* In the early [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]] novels, the [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens|Yuuzhan Vong]] mistook Jaina Solo for Yun-Harla, their Goddess of Deception. This gave the New Republic an advantage, as the Yuuzhan Vong were incredibly frightened and demoralized at the thought that one of their deities had turned against them.

** The Thrawn Trilogy also had Thrawn making use of a race that worshiped Darth Vader as a god. Leia managed to sabotage this by going right to the leaders of the race and saying, "Screw Thrawn, I'm Vader's ''daughter.''"

* In [[David Weber]]'s ''Heirs of Empire'', the third ''[[Empire From the Ashes]]'' book, the [[Lost Colony]] natives of Pardal decide that the stranded off-world protagonists are angels, which does not sit well with the repressive theocracy governing the planet; the end result is a full-scale religious war. Harriet and Sandy insist that they not be called angels, but the locals only humor them to their faces, and aside from the insistent terminology the crew largely goes along with it anyway.

** Also from Weber the [[Safehold (Literature)|Safehold]] series has the Church Of God Awaiting,in which a bunch of megalomaniacs set themselves up as "archangels" through [[Brainwashing]] and [[Clarke's Third Law|sufficiently advanced technology]].

* This is how the angels in ''[[His Dark Materials]]'' created the Abrahamic religions. The first of them all convinced the ones that were born after that he was the supreme creator and being, and so [[God Is Evil|he came to rule them]]. Later, when the rebel angels gave sentience to mankind and other races, all he had to do was to send his agents and see the awestruck people convert to his cause.

** The witches in Lyra's world worship deities based on our Finnish mythology, but no indication about their nature is present. One of said witches does, however, kill the false gods that a human tribe worshipped - [[Panthera Awesome|tigers]].

* In the fourth book of ''[[Tales of the Magic Land]]'', Urfin Jus uses a lighter to convince a savage tribe he's the god of fire, and uses them to launch a conquest. Unfortunately for him, while lighters are unknown in the Magic Land (his came from an outsider), matches are sold in every shop, so after a short while, the army starts to smell something fishy...

* ''[[The Dresden Files (Literature)|The Dresden Files]]'' has the Lords of Outer Night, the heads of the Red Court who posed as the Mayan pantheon - the Red King is implied to have done a stint at Kukulcan. Played with in that there's a point where the Lords of Outer Night show fear in the face of a divine assault, and Harry wonders if they just picked up the mask when the ''actual'' deities got out of town and they're afraid they're being called on the carpet.

*** Interestingly enough, Elan ALSO worships his own hand puppet. But that's just because he has the brains of a five-year old.

* In ''[[Yamara]]'', the titular protagonist had ascended to Godhood for a storyline, and accidentally had a religion grow around her by the time she returned to normal -- except for the three wishes she was granted as a "parting gift". She finally tries to talk her followers out of it with a heartfelt and humble speech -- which she ends by saying "I wish you all the finest things in life" when she's on her last wish. An audience member says, "Whatta kidder!"

** ''She'' presumably knows why, but she isn't exactly the sharing type.

* ''[[Buck Godot]]'' also uses this. The Winslow, an indestructible creature resembling an animate plush toy with the mind of a five year old ([[Obfuscating Stupidity|maybe]]) is believed by various interstellar races to be an equivalent of [[God]], [[Jesus]] or [[Satan]], or weirder. [[Sufficiently Advanced Aliens]] put it in the care of [[Humans Are Special|humans]] because we just think it's [[Small Annoying Creature|annoying]].

* In one episode of ''[[Teen Titans (Animation)|Teen Titans]]'', Raven crash-lands on a planet inhabited by tiny aliens, and is worshiped as a God simply for being more than three inches tall.

* In one episode of ''[[My Life As a Teenage Robot (Animation)|My Life As a Teenage Robot]]'', Jenny is mistaken for a prophesied comet goddess by adorable tiny aliens.

* Toot from ''[[Drawn Together]]'' ends up in India and is worshipped by Hindus as a talking cow.

* In ''[[Kim Possible]]'', technologically advanced but naive alien Warmonga sees an image of Dr. Drakken in a transmission and believes him to be the [[The Chosen One|"Great Blue"]], who according to prophecy will lead her people in conquest.

** A berry-dyed Race Bannon rises from the water and shouts at the Po-Ho in English, causing them to think that he's their water god Akesio.

* Nobby of ''[[Doctor Snuggles]]'' used super powers to impersonate an Egyptian god.

* Happens to Dagget in ''[[The Angry Beavers]]''. He and Norbert were after "knots" in the wood, and Dagget pushed one out of a tree (sacred to a bunch of female raccoons on the other side) and wound up in their land with the knot balanced on his head. He rather enjoyed being "The Mighty Knothead" until he learned that he had to become the boyfriend/husband of The High Priestess.

** In another episode, Dagget has ingested a large amount of a stupidity-inducing potion...except that he was already pretty stupid to begin with, so it actually made him a super-genius. He then ponders what happened to Norb (who responded to the potion exactly as expected). Cut to Norb on a [[Mayincatec]] pyramid, being fed fruit, with the worshippers bowing down and repeating his mantra: [[Crowning Moment of Funny|"DUUUHHH!"]]