God Karting with Beelzebub

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Basically, depictions of God and Satan or general equivalents to them as friendly towards each other, or at least allied rather than antagonistic.

See also Go-Karting with Bowser, where this trope derives its name. See also Satan Is Good, God Is Evil, God and Satan Are Both Jerks.

Examples of God Karting with Beelzebub include:

Anime and Manga

  • Ah! My Goddess - Hild, the ruler of the underworld, had a relationship with a member of the divine realm (possibly Kami-sama himself) that resulted in Urd being born. (Had, because dialogue implies they're no longer on good terms.) Urd herself is sort-of friends with Mara, and Belldandy, Friend to All Living Things, would happily have tea with anybody, divine or demonic.

Comic Books

  • In the vampire comic book series Crimson, Satan is closer to God than the other (Knight Templar) Archangels, who both God and Satan disapprove of.

Film

Constantine: What if I told you that God and the Devil made a wager, a kind of standing bet for the souls of all mankind? [snip] No direct contact with humans, that would be the rule. Just influence. See who would win.
Angela Dodson: Why?
Constantine: Who knows? Maybe just for the fun of it.

  • At the end of the remake of Bedazzled, the Devil and God/Jesus are seen playing a friendly game of chess in the park.

Literature

  • In the Incarnations of Immortality books, JHVH is Satan's friend (When he first became an Incarnation, JHVH provided him with valuable advice and assistance. Satan later repayed his kindness by manipulated another Incarnation into making sure the holocaust doesn't happen). At the end of And Eternity..., Goddess(who is a seperate Incarnation from JHVH) is Satan's stepdaughter, as it was his ultimate goal to give her the job.
    • Note that this isn't because he's planning on doing anything evil: it's just the former holder of the position is a useless idiot not doing His job.
  • God and Mephistopheles seem to be on remarkably good terms at the beginning of Goethe's Faust.
  • God and the Devil are on good although misunderstanding terms on the fate of humans in Anne Rice's Memnoch The Devil.
  • In Robert A. Heinlein's Job: A Comedy of Justice, the protagonist finds out that God and Satan are actually brothers and part of an entire race of divine beings. Earth is something akin to a school project that Satan was helping his brother on. But God went on a power trip and rewrote all the rules, making his brother the evil force in his universe and demanding complete loyalty from creatures he had designed to be anything but obedient. He specifically wrote out the apocalyptic prophesy to make his brother look like a jerk and come out a hero for his own ego boost. Satan, quite flatly, tells the protagonist that he isn't going to attend the end of days to deprive his brother of the satisfaction.
  • In Steven Brust's To Reign in Hell, Yaweh, Satan, Michael, Lucifer, Raphael, Leviathan and Belial are all friends and basically brothers (born of the 'First Wave' of order and chaos from which they created themselves and Heaven). The Second and Third Waves created the archangels and angels (including Beelzebub, Lilith, Harut, Ariel, Asmodai, Mephistopheles, Uriel, Abdiel, Gabriel and Zaphkiel), and aside from worrying about the Fourth Wave, they're pretty much all good friends (though Lilith has caused some tension by being the first to take a female form).

Music

  • In "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" by Charlie Daniels, Satan and a young fellow named Johnny engage in a fiddling competition. The prize for Johnny is a golden fiddle, but the prize for Satan is Johnny's soul.

Oral Tradition, Folklore, Myths and Legends

  • Possibly the Ur Example, depending on your interpretation of their relationship. The Bible's God and Satan meet up on several occasions throughout the Bible on comparatively friendly terms, if often with the intent of putting some poor soul through the wringer to figure out if he's loyal to God.
    • In Judaism, the Devil is traditionally not seen as God's enemy. Instead, he works with God's permission, tempting mortals to test their faith in God (see the Book of Job), and after their deaths pointing out the sins they've committed in life that might prevent them from getting to Heaven (essentially working as a prosecutor in God's court).
      • A Minority of Christians also take this view. Others merge the Traditional Satan with the prosecutor, and see Satan as Truly evil, yet also as the prosecutor who simply likes his job too much.

Video Games

Web Comics

  • The devil in Casey and Andy is God's daughter. She was made ruler of Hell during her rebellious teenage years, but they've since reconciled.
  • Occasionally, The Devil's Panties shows "JC" and the Devil hanging out together.

Web Original

Western Animation

  • In Lucy, the Daughter of the Devil, the devil is torn between wanting to kill Jesus and force his daughter to marry a corrupt politician instead, and befriending Jesus.
  • In an episode of Family Guy, God and The Devil are seen at a bar together.
  • One episode of South Park has Satan go to God for relationship advice. Note that they are portrayed as enemies, however—Satan was rather nervous about seeing God for the first time in thousands of years, and God seemed perplexed that Satan's visit wasn't about universal domination.
    • Amusingly, when God hears the details of Satan's problem (having to pick between two different guys), He actually calls him out for going from a "headstrong rebel" to a "whiny little bitch" who can't stand up for himself.
  • The Simpsons, in the Halloween Episode in which Lisa creates little people who think she's God. "The Devil [i.e., Bart] is your brother?!
  • Often done in God, the Devil and Bob. One episode had The Devil throw a strop and remove evil from the world because God "forgot" his birthday. They make up by the end.
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