God Is Dead: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

In the beginning, God created Heaven and Earth. Whether it took six days or six billion years for Him (or It, or Her, or Them, you know) to complete the Creation, there's nobody to give the award plaque to. Why not, you ask? Because, somewhere along the way, God croaked. Went belly up. Bought the farm. Kicked the bucket. [[Hurricane of Euphemisms|Answered the last prayer]]. [[Dogma|Played the last game of skee-ball]]. [[Overly Long Gag|Named the last prophet]].

 

{{examples}}

* In ''[[Dragonball Z]]'', a creature named Buu killed off much of the order of the Kais, the closest thing to a god in their universe, since they rule over everything.

* ''[[Angel Sanctuary]]'': The very first sentence: God Is Dead. {{spoiler|He's not actually dead until the very end. [[Have You Seen My God?|He's just been absent from Heaven for so long that a lot of the angels think he's dead.]] [[God Is Evil|He turns out to be kind of an evil dick]], so it's not a big loss when he gets killed.}}

* Yukko in ''[[Nichijou]]'' uses this exact phrase, in English, after Mai hits her on the head with a book. This is followed by a dramatic camera angle change to focus on the (possibly reincarnated) wooden Buddha statue on the desk in front of her, and the narrator exclaims "''[[You Are the Translated Foreign Word|Kami ga shinda]]''" accompanied by a lightning strike in the background.

* This happens with ''[[High School DxD]]'' where the protagonists find out that {{spoiler|Micheal's the one running heaven}}.

 

== Comic Books ==

* At the end of [[Preacher (Comic Book)]], the Saint of Killers kills god.

 

* When Bower confronts {{spoiler|Payton/Gallo}} in ''[[Pandorum]]'', he asserts that God died along with the rest of humanity, and that there is nobody left to judge their actions as the concepts of right and wrong and good and evil have ceased to exist.

 

== Literature ==

** Well, {{spoiler|[[Not Quite Dead|Not Quite Posthumous]], as it turns out. At the end of the second, though, He gets [[Killed Off for Real]]}}. The third novel is about how a visible reminder of God's death—a giant skull in geosynchronous orbit—affects Western civilization.

* God (aka "The Authority") died in ''The Amber Spyglass''. In the [[His Dark Materials]] [[The Verse|verse]], God was simply the first and most powerful angel. By the time Lyra and Will show up, he is senile and tortured by [[Who Wants to Live Forever?|his eternal life]]. They simply let him out of his protective enclosure and he is freed, {{spoiler|but he's too fragile to live in the world from sheer age, so he disintegrates from a slight breeze.}} Oh, the vicious irony.

* ''Our Friends From Frolix 8'', by Phillip K. Dick:

{{quote|"God is dead," Nick said. "They found his carcass in [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future|2019]]. Floating out in space near Alpha."

"They found the remains of an organism advanced several thousand times over what we are," Charley said. "And it evidently could create habitable worlds and populate them with living organisms, derived from itself. [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien|But that doesn't prove it was God]]." }}

* Robert Rankin's ''Waiting for Godalming'': God is shot dead in an alleyway. {{spoiler|Later subverted, when it is revealed that God's death was faked as part of a massive insurance scam.}}

* In the book ''[[IT]]'', by [[Stephen King]], the Turtle created the universe (because of a stomach ache). Later, {{spoiler|it's revealed that the Turtle died in the thirty-year time gap of the novel.}}

** As far as Vorinism, Roshar's dominant religion, is concerned, the trope is in full force, since Honor/The Almight is/was their only recognized god.

* In [[Clive Barker]]'s ''[[Imajica]]'', God {{spoiler|is [[Hoist by His Own Petard|killed by his own fire]] when the restoration of the titular circle causes it to boomerang through the dominions}}.

 

== Live-Action TV ==

* ''Possibly'' the case in ''[[The Lost Room]]''. Some say that the Event that created the Objects was the death of God.

* Stated by Anthony Jr. in season 2 of ''[[The Sopranos]]'', as part of his briefly becoming a [[Nietzsche Wannabe]].

 

== Music ==

* One of the most famous songs by Italian band ''I Nomadi'' ("The Nomads") is [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|titled just that.]] Except, in this case, "God is dead" is meant as a metaphor, with God standing for near damn every value and ideal. The last part of the song [[Subverted Trope|subverts]] it though, because as long as there's "a newborn hope", as the song itself puts it, "if God dies, it's just for three days, [[Earn Your Happy Ending|and then he's born again".]]

 

* In [[Norse Mythology]], most of the important and well-known gods, such as Thor, Loki, Frey, and Odin end up dying permanently in the final battle of Ragnarok. Interestingly, when the Scandinavians began to accept Christianity, they actually merged Norse mythology with Christian ideas, by stating that Ragnarok had actually taken place already, and that it was a "prequel" to Christianity—that Adam and Eve were the only survivors of Ragnarok.

** ''[[Digger]]'' based an in-universe myth on this.

 

== Puppet Shows ==

* God from ''[[Wonder Showzen]]'' {{spoiler|kills himself after losing a competition over the fate of the Earth and then they eat him}}.

 

== Tabletop Games ==

* In ''[[Exalted]]'', this can (depending on your ST's preference for where to take the story) happen in the Endgame chapter of ''Return of the Scarlet Emperor'' with {{spoiler|Infernal Exalted, possibly backed up by demons or even Abyssals, breaking into the Jade Pleasure Dome through a long-forgotten 'back door' and assassinating the Unconquered Sun, who lacked his usual invulnerability because he was addicted to the Games of Divinity. The Ebon Dragon never expected the [[Oh Crap|massive power boost every Solar Exalt in Creation got]] when their patron Incarnae was killed.}}

 

* The ''[[Baldur's Gate]]'' series is essentially the [[Thanatos Gambit|posthumous]] [[Batman Gambit]] of the god Bhaal, who foresaw his own death and arranged to be resurrected. Things usually don't work out quite perfectly for him. There's a side quest in the 2nd game in the temple of a different dead god who has since stopped being dead.

* ''[[Grandia II]]'' has the revelation that Granas, the God of Light, died fighting Valmar the Devil of Darkness long ago. Turns out they were both just [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien]]s though.

* In [[Mass Effect]] Cerebus agents find the corpse of a Reaper who they estimate had been rendered non-operational 37 million years ago. As they investigate it they begin to become indoctrinated by the Reaper, despite it being dead, and their minds start melding together as shown by them sharing memories that only logically they should know which is a side effect of the Reaper's hive mind. After a while everyone goes crazy and the only survivor makes an [[Apocalyptic Log]] talking about the Reapers as if they were Gods and that even a dead god (in this case the dead Reaper they found) can dream. In his own words he talks about how a true god, not the white-bearded old man with magic powers told about in mythology, is a verb, a force of nature that warps reality just by existing it doesn't have to desire affecting things around it for it to do so. In this case he wishes that they had never found god.

 

* In [[The Salvation War]] Satan's already dead {{spoiler|via anti-ship missile to the face, Jesus appears to have been nuked,}} and Yahweh's {{spoiler|been killed by [[The Starscream|Michael-Lan]].}}

* Played for laughs in the [[Team Starkid]] production [[Starship]], set in the distant future. Tootsie Noodles mentions early on that there is empirical proof that science killed God.<ref>He'd like to think that when [[Too Dumb to Live|He died, He went to heaven]].</ref> Anytime the word God is used, dead precedes it.

{{quote|'''Junior:''' Thank dead God I caught you!}}

 

== Real Life ==

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Religion Tropes]]

[[Category:God Tropes]]