God in Human Form: Difference between revisions

[[File:rsz jesus and krishna 304.png|frame|[[Cyndi Lauper|Gods just wanna have fun.]]]]

 

 

 

Of course, any example of this trope would be justified in saying "[[A God Am I]]", without the usual implications of megalomania. That said, many go the other route and say "[[A God I Am Not]]" due to their new proximity to mortality and humanity.

 

{{examples}}

* A campaign of commercials for Hebrew National (a brand of Kosher hot dogs who claims that [[Catch Phrase| "we answer to a higher authority"]] as far as quality of their products go) shows God appearing as a hot dog vendor; while the viewers cannot see His face, the other people in the commercial who He is talking to clearly can, so this Trope probably applies.

 

* {{spoiler|Hanyuu Furude}} in ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni]]''.

* This is one explanation for Haruhi's powers in ''[[The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya]]''—one both suggested and rejected by [[The Philosopher|Koizumi]]. [[Did Not Do the Research|Fans tend to forget the latter part.]]

* Jesus and Buddha from ''[[Saint Young Men]]'' are buddies who decided to spend their vacation on Earth.

* ''[[Kamichu!]]!'' is all about [[Shrinking Violet|an unassuming schoolgirl]] who becomes one of these. [[Slice of Life|Reality ensues]].

 

* Death in the ''[[Sandman]]'' series does this for one day every hundred years in order to experience life and death and better understand both.

* Doctor Donald Blake. When he hits his cane upon the ground, it is replaced by Mjolnir and he by [[The Mighty Thor]].

 

 

* God does this in the movie ''[[Dogma]]'' in order to play skeeball, which almost leads to the destruction of the universe.

* In the movie ''[[Thor]]'', the god in the title is [[Brought Down to Normal]] when he is exiled to Earth as punishment, after breaking a fragile truce with the Frost Giants.

* In ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]'' {{spoiler|Tia Dalma}} is the goddess Calypso. This particular case was decidedly ''involuntary''; she was trapped that way by {{spoiler|Davy Jones, with a little help from the Brethren Court}}, and spends the whole third movie trying to get her full power back. {{spoiler|It works}}.

** This is also parodied in the second movie, where a tribe of cannibals ''think'' for whatever reason that [[Loveable Rogue]] Jack Sparrow is a God in Human Form. He thinks this is great- until he finds out that they intend to "release" him from said human form... [[I'm a Humanitarian|by eating him]].

* In ''[[The Return of Hanuman]]'', Hindu God Hanuman descends to Earth as a human boy named Maruti because of his boredom as a result of staying in Swarglok (some [[Fluffy Cloud Heaven]]) for many years.

 

* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]''

** Anya was a demon with a great deal of power, [[Reality Warper|warping reality]] to [[Literal Genie|grant wishes]] to scorned women. Then she got trapped in the form of a normal high-school girl.

* Leo in ''[[Charmed]]'', after [[Ascending to A Higher Plane of Existence]] ''twice''. The second time was the reason for his depowering and [[Laser-Guided Amnesia|mind wipe]], as he had betrayed the set of gods he became part of for another more powerful set of gods.

 

* The gods and goddesses do this sometimes in ''[[The Odyssey]]''.

* The [[Ur Example]] of this trope is oldest known work of fiction, ''[[The Epic of Gilgamesh]]''. Gilgamesh is a demigod, and Enkidu is made by the gods to keep him in check. Not sure if that makes them gods themselves or just [[Cursed with Awesome]].

* Emmanuel, the main character in the novel ''The Divine Invasion'' by [[Philip K. Dick]], is, in actuality, the Judeo-Christian [[God]] - and he lost his memories in a car accident.

** Well, in Lovecraft's canon he appears in human form once (''The Dream-Quest of the Unknown Kadath''), and possibly pseudo-human form in ''The Dreams in the Witch-House''. It's also briefly mentioned that he once took human form in the ancient Khem, better known as Egypt for modern readers.

* Margaret Weis's ''[[Dragonlance|The Dark Disciple]]'' series, Mina turns out to be a goddess of light, who was tricked into believing she was a human girl. She becomes a necromancer of death god, Chemosh.

** The Death of [[Discworld]] isn't a god by the standards of his universe, but he does occasionally self-limit his powers and go [[Walking the Earth|walking the Disc]] disguised as a human. Usually fails miserably because: a) in spite of hanging around humans for millennia, he's no good at ''being'' one, and b) some supernatural crisis inevitably drags him back to work.

* In the ''[[Young Wizards]]'' series the most powerful of the [[Powers That Be]] exist [[Time Dissonance|mainly outside of time]] and, to be able to do anything to that which exists inside of time, not only need to insert fragments of themselves into the time stream(s), but also to put that fragment into a physical body. This is usually done by the fragment hitching a ride in an already living being (usually without the mortal host being aware), which limits the amount of power they can use. However, if the host dies they can slap together a blob of physical matter and shove the fragment into that, giving them much greater access to their powers (and in a few instances the [[Big Bad]] starts out that way).

* The Devil from Glen Duncan's ''[[I, Lucifer]]'' is given the choice by God to redeem himself by taking over the body of Declan Gunn. He retains his devilish characteristics, but spends much of his time utterly overcome by the power of his human senses.

* A character in the ''[[Well World]]'' series claimed to be this, more or less.

* The group of so-called "wizards" in [[J. R. R. Tolkien|JRR Tolkien]]'s ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'', while appearing as old human men, are actually five ''Maiar'', a kind of angelic spirit, who are themselves incorporeal but can usually clothe themselves in any form they like. The five have been sent on a mission to help the peoples of Middle-earth against Sauron, during which they are bound in their physical form, unable to change it, and also limited in their powers and knowledge. (When Gandalf the Grey dies and comes back as Gandalf the White, it's hinted that he regained his Maia powers in "death" and this allowed him to rebuild his body. [[Alternate Character Interpretation|It might also have been a near-death experience: the text never explicitly says he died.]])

* In [[John C. Wright]]'s ''[[Chronicles of Chaos]]'', {{spoiler|the children.}}

* In ''The [[Wheel of Time]]'', the [[Sealed Evil in a Can|Dark One]] can manifest in the form of a [[Eyeless Face|Myrddraal]] called Shaidar Haran after the seals on his prison begin to weaken. He mainly uses this to spy on and terrorize [[Quirky Miniboss Squad|the Forsaken]].

 

* [[Jesus]] in [[The Bible]], according to [[Christianity|Christians]], at any rate; [[Judaism|Jews]] have another tale to tell...

* All human beings are seen this way in some religions. Scientology is one example, considering human souls to be the reincarnations of alien souls. Mormons believe that everyone human started off as something approximate to God; the Veil keeps you from remembering properly and the human experience is seen as developmental and helpful rather than evil. In Gnosticism, [[God Is Evil|the Demiurge]] is keeping you in a human state: for instance, Adam, the first human, was originally (and again once his human body died) the archangel Michael.

** In point of fact, the religion scholar Stephen Prothero has gone so far as to say that this is ''the'' defining characteristic of Islam: the belief in the transcendence of God to the point where opposition to Pride is the ''central'' aspect of the faith (and in a way, he's indisputably right: Islam is, after all, Arabic for "submission/surrender"). This is why Islam is ''very'' definite on having no images of God; some very strict Muslims believe it's wrong to create ''anything at all'' (being that only God can create).

 

** In the ''Dungeons and Dragons'' Avatar Series (books and adventures), the deities of the [[Forgotten Realms]] are forced to descend to Faerun in their considerably weaker avatar forms as punishment for the misdeeds of two of them.

** In the ''Dungeons and Dragons'' Dragonlance setting, the god Paladine appears in the mortal world as the wizard Fizban.

** 4th Edition has taken this to new levels by actually allowing player characters to be the mortal embodiments of a god with the various divine Avatar epic destinies, which represent a character discovering that they are a God in Human Form, or at least part of one, and ultimately ascending to rejoin that god.

* In ''[[Warhammer 40,000|Warhammer40K]]'', The [[God-Emperor]] of the Imperium is the God of Humanity ...and a mortally wounded and crippled man kept alive in the most complex iron lung imaginable.

** The Eldar can call forth the avatar of their god of war into one of their own for combat.

** In both [[Warhammer 40,000|Warhammer 40K]] and [[Warhammer Fantasy Battle|Warhammer Fantasy]], Chaos Demons are weak forms of the chaos gods.

* ''[[Scion]]'' has the gods occasionally take on human form in order to conceive the titular Scions. One divine power, Avatar, allows them to temporarily lower their Legend to make the job easier (the higher a god's Legend, the more power they have to expend to take on physical form).

 

== [[Toys]] ==

* While not exactly a human (especially if you go by his toy design, which doesn't have organic features) Mata Nui from ''[[Bionicle]]'' went through such a phase, after having been robbed of his own body, that of a [[Humongous Mecha]] [[Physical God]], and forging a new, human-sized (this time, a mostly organic) form for himself from sand. He lives with "normal" people for a while, but later swaps his body for another giant robot to beat the [[Big Bad]]. May count as a light subversion, as the people he met didn't regards him as a god, as they never even knew him, and those to whom he ''was'' a god didn't get to see him in this form.

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* {{spoiler|Hakuoro and Diy}} of ''[[Utawarerumono]]''. Technically the same person, actually, but due to being unable to die and having a huge mental breakdown some indeterminate but loooong time before, the person called 'Iceman' split into them. They tend to fight each other a lot as they embody separate aspects of his character. {{spoiler|Hakuoro seems to vastly prefer his existence as a human, being the side of him wishing for peace/to be destroyed instead of to destroy while Diy is his violent chaotic side which seems to prefer Godhood so as to blow stuff up as part of his evil darwinist philosophy.}}

* {{spoiler|Joshua aka [[Physical God|The Composer]]}} in ''[[The World Ends With You]]''.

* Lufia from the ''[[Lufia]]'' games is the God of Death who occasionally takes human form.

* ''[[Aveyond]]'' has {{spoiler|The Oracle, who is an old woman despite statues of a young and beautiful Goddess. She claims that [[I Was Quite a Looker|that was what she looked like way back when.]]}}

* If you play your choices right in [[Dragon Age]]: Origins, {{spoiler|You can conceive one of these with Morrigan, a child with the soul of an old god.}} This will presumably have great consequences in the sequels.

* In ''[[Harukanaru Toki no Naka de|Harukanaru Toki no Naka de 3]]'', both halves of the Dragon-God get depowered and assume human forms as a result. Kokuryuu/the Dark Dragon had his weakened human body destroyed and his powers snatched by an enemy, although it didn't cause power loss to his [[Miko]]. Hakuryuu/the White Dragon is initially found in the form of a pre-teen kid (also qualifying for the [[Really Seven Hundred Years Old]] trope as the Dragons have been around for at least 300–400 years by that point); he partially retains the ability to cross time-space, and later regains some of his power and assumes [[Bishonen|a more]] [[Long-Haired Pretty Boy|adult]] form. In one side game, both Dragons can be seen in both childlike and adult human forms.

* In ''[[Final Fantasy XIII]]'' the Fal'cie seem to have the ability to do this. Most prominently, {{spoiler|Barthandelus uses the guise of primarch Galenth Dysley to control Cocoon while avoiding its residents' eyes.}}

 

* Alex from ''[[Captain SNES]]'' is a [[Thank the Maker|Creator In Sprite Form]]. This makes his predecessor, [[Captain N|Kevin Keene]], also one in that continuity.

 

* In ''[[The Gamers Alliance]]'', gods can end up in human form whenever they possess a ''willing'' mortal host. Although possessing a mortal makes the gods unable to use their full powers, it also prevents them from being permanently killed off (if the host dies, the god's essence can simply leave the body and return to the High Plane unharmed).

* ''[[Fine Structure]]'' features {{spoiler|both the [[Big Good]] and the [[Big Bad]] in mortal human bodies, with useful but not unreasonable superpowers.}}

 

* ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'' and ''[[The Legend of Korra]]'' are examples of this: The World Spirit continually incarnates into human form (the namesake Avatar) in order to understand mortal life better and therefore appreciate what it is there to protect. See also the Moon and Ocean Spirits, Tui and La respectively, from the same series.

* Disney's ''[[Hercules (1997 film)|Hercules]]'' series had Zeus turn himself into a human teenager, ultimately even less powerful than Hercules, to prove a point to his son. This backfires on him dramatically, especially after Hades finds out that his nemesis is temporarily mortal. He maintains his memories throughout, and it only lasts a short while before he returns to his godly form.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Otherness Tropes]]

[[Category:Characters As Device]]

[[Category:Religion Tropes]]

[[Category:God Tropes]]

[[Category:Avatar]]