God Is Dead: Difference between revisions

* Volume 48 of ''[[Bleach]]'' is entitled [[God Is Dead]].

* 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.

 

 

** 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." <br />

* In ''Clay'' by David Almond, upon going insane, {{spoiler|Stephen Rose}} claims that God is dead, and died sometime in the 60's.

* In ''[[The Egyptian]]'', the Cretan God (really a kind of sea monster) is dead. The priest keeps killing the human sacrifices to keep people from noticing this.

* In Arthur Miller's [[The Crucible]], Proctor invokes this trope when accused of witchcraft. "I say... I say... God is dead! A fire, a fire is burning! I hear the boot of Lucifer, I see his filthy face! And it is my face, and yours, Danforth! For them that quail to bring men out of ignorance, as I have quailed, and you quail now when you know in all your black hearts that this be fraud - God damns our kind especially, and we will burn, we will burn together!"

** Except {{spoiler|Cultivation, the third of Roshar's shard gods, is still around (although we haven't met her yet)}}, and since the setting is actually part of {{spoiler|the Cosmere, all the other shard gods are still running around on other worlds (apart from the ones Odium has Splintered, like Aona and Skai)}}. Plus, {{spoiler|it would be more accurate to say Tanavast, the man who became Honor, is dead, as Honor's power is still out there and it is possible another person may take up his shard.}} Got all that?

** 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.

 

 

* A ''[[Kids in The Hall]]'' sketch centers around this. "God is dead...and here is the body to prove it."

** ...and what was most surprising was how short He was...

* ''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 ==

* [[Nine Inch Nails]] - as listed in the page quote.

* Elton John, "Levon":

{{quote| When the New York Times said God is dead<br />

And the war's begun }}

 

 

* 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.

* In [http://www.miaminewtimes.com/1997-06-05/news/myths-over-miami/ Miami homeless children's street culture], it is sometimes believed that God is dead.

 

 

 

== Tabletop Games ==

* In ''[[Planescape]]'', dead gods are a part of the setting, their corpses floating in the Astral Plane. There's even a high-level adventure entitled "Dead Gods". Also, [[Dungeon Master|the Lady of Pain]] killed the god Aoskar for daring to set up shop in Sigil; this is one of the greatest demonstrations of why you really don't mess with her.

** She didn't attack him when he merely came there and has a portfolio that covered her portals. She killed him when his followers started to talk about her as his aspect aloud and some of her servants became his worshippers. Not only does she flay people with her gaze even for attempting to worship her as a deity in her own right, but in ''[[Planescape]]'', the "aspect" part alone sometimes causes problems to the target (e.g. Bast didn't make it through).

** The ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' [[Forgotten Realms]] setting has a tendency to kill off some gods and introduce new ones every time a new edition of the game rules is released.

** And then there are resurrection attempts. In ''Finder's Bane'', for one.

* In ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'', all but three members of the [[Space Elves|Eldar]] pantheon were killed with the birth of the Chaos God Slaanesh. The [[God-Emperor]] of Mankind is a far more complicated case - despite his power, he fiercely denied his divinity, but after being mortally wounded during the [[Horus Heresy]] books, he was placed on the Golden Throne and kept in a psychically-active vegetative state, leaving his followers to proclaim him a deity. If ten millennia of worship has elevated him to proper godhood, this trope will probably soon apply due to the recently-discovered irreparable malfunctions in the Golden Throne.<ref>A more optimistic, and therefore heretical, theory is that if the Emperor's mortal shell ever truly dies, he will finally be free to become the all-powerful god he is worshiped as.</ref>

* 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.}}

 

== Videogames ==

* ''[[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|Sufficiently Advanced Aliens]] though.

* ''[[Neverwinter Nights 2]]: Mask of the Betrayer'' features a dead god in an important role.

* The creation myth told by the cultists in ''[[Silent Hill]]'' ends with God dying.

* One of the possible final bosses in ''[[Guardian Heroes]]'' is "The Creator". {{spoiler|When you beat him, he admits that he was just toying with humanity all along, and now that he's dying, humans are free to choose their own destiny.}}

* Implied in ''[[Tears to Tiara]]''. The [[Council of Angels]] are the ones running the show and, without supervision, have gone a little [[Knight Templar|overboard]] on the whole Heaven on Earth thing. Watos (the supreme creator deity) [[Have You Seen My God?|hasn't been seen since existence started]]. Probably seen as less offensive than an actual evil God when we already have a [[Satan Is Good|good Satan.]]

* In the Zul'drak region of ''[[World of Warcraft]]'', the Drakkari trolls native to the region have been killing their gods and stealing their powers in a desperate bid to protect themselves from the Scourge. Your character can go through a quest chain in which you try to save the gods or, failing that, [[Mercy Kill]] them or help them avenge themselves on their killers.

* In the ''[[Left 4 Dead]]'' campaign 'Dead Air', some of the graffiti on the walls says 'GOD IS DEAD'. Occasionally, Zoey can be heard saying, "Oh no, the zombies killed God!" when passing by this message.

* The majority of the Aedra of the ''[[Elder Scrolls]]'' universe invested so much of their essence into the Mundus that they became mortal and died. Earthbones, the laws of reality which bind mortals, are magical restraints created from their deaths. In all, only eight remain alive and they're halfway to dead themselves.

* The Creator Deity-slash-[[Eldritch Abomination]] Ormagoden from the [[Creation Myth]] in ''[[Brutal Legend]]'' chose [[Better to Die Than Be Killed|to self-terminate rather than have his fire extinguished by the First Ones' dirt]], destroying the ancient world and creating the Age of Metal [[Pieces of God|from his own body]] in process.

* 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.