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Jerkass Gods: Difference between revisions
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Perhaps they view all of life as a cosmic game, with humans as mere [[Cosmic Plaything|pawns and tools]]. Perhaps they're hungry for worship, either [[Gods Need Prayer Badly|literally]] or figuratively, and are willing to resort to manipulation to get it. Maybe it's the age old adage "[[A God Am I|power corrupts]]", or maybe they're just [[Troll|trolls]], but whatever the case, the deities are just ''jerks''. They view human life as a source of entertainment, or an inconvenience.
This trope is [[Older Than Dirt]]. The ([[Genius Bonus|literally]]) Ur-example might be Inanna, Sumerian goddess of getting laid and ultraviolence. As might be expected from someone of that description, she took exception to being spurned by the hero Gilgamesh and summoned a heavenly bull to go on a rampage through his city. It did not help that as he turned her down, he [["The Reason You Suck" Speech|listed all her exes and how she arranged their terrible deaths]].
Compare and contrast [[Abusive Precursors]], and for cases where [[Jerkass]] doesn't really cover it, [[God of Evil]], and [[God Is Evil]]. Anyone playing [[Religious Russian Roulette]] with a Jerkass God probably won't like how it ends. In video games, where ''you'' are the god, see [[Cruel Player Character God]]. For the inversion, see [[God Is Good]].
{{examples
== Anime & Manga ==
* Kami-sama in ''[[Ah! My Goddess (Manga)|Ah My Goddess]]'' frequently doles out unnecessarily harsh punishments and will wipe out an entire planet to preserve the integrity of the Yggdrasil with little hesitation.
* The gods in ''[[Saint Seiya]]'', unsurprising considering they're based on the Greek Pantheon. Poseidon wanted to [[Utopia Justifies the Means|drown the world to fix it]] (well, it worked [[The Bible|the first time]], didn't it?), Hades just plain wanted to kill everyone "[[Motive Decay|Just]] [[For the Evulz|Because]]", ditto Abel/Lucifer and Apollo. The big exception is [[Messianic Archetype|Athena]]. Lesser non-evil gods are Odin (whose avatar-priestess was corrupted by Poseidon's men) and Artemis, being more a [[Lawful Neutral]] type devoid of her peers' narcissistic megalomania. Poseidon also gets an honorable mention as being not so evil that, even though he was [[Sealed Evil in A Can]], helped thwart Hades' plot.
* ''[[Saiyuki]]'': Most of the gods are universally pricks to humans and one another. Even the Merciful Goddess herself comes off as manipulative and self-centered.
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== Comics ==
* In ''[[Preacher (Comic Book)]]'', God is a pathetic, needy, abusive, enraged creature. So are his angels.
* In ''[[Lucifer (Comic Book)|Lucifer]]'', God is an aloof and dickish meddler. As is Lucifer, who wants nothing more than to be his own creation.
** Part of this is caused by the filter we see things through. When God finally shows up he's more out of touch than anything else.
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* In the original ''[[Bedazzled]]'', God and [[Fallen Angel|Lucifer]] (called George here) had a wager: if George could get ten billion souls into hell before God could get ten billion souls into heaven, then God promised to allow him to return to heaven. George achieves this, and then some, but God reminded him of another condition he had to fulfil: he had to perform a selfless good deed. George then goes off and allows Stanley (to whom George had given seven wishes in exchange for his soul) and released him, [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog Story|only to be told that, since he only did it to get back into heaven, it wasn't really selfless.]] George is understandably steaming at this revelation, while God laughs in his face.
* Calypso of ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]'', goddess of the sea, fell in love with a mortal man, who was then offered the position of captain of the Flying Dutchman. The conditions of the captaincy are that you do the job for ten years, and if, after that time, your love is waiting for you when you get your one day on land for the decade, you can go free and someone takes your place; otherwise you've gotta keep doing the job until someone kills you. Calypso didn't wait and Davy Jones was stuck being the captain of the Flying Dutchman. She claimed that Davy shouldn't have expected anything else from her because she's the embodiment of the capricious and treacherous sea.
* Loki in ''[[Thor (Film)|Thor]]'' and ''[[The Avengers (Film)|The Avengers]]'' hopes to [[Disproportionate Retribution|exact revenge]] on his [[The Unfavourite|brother Thor]] by first taking over the throne of Asgard and then [[Big Bad|subjugating the entire population of Earth.]] Along the way, he causes a lot of chaos and manages to make pretty much everyone really angry on a [[
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** Loki, the trickster-god of firelight, is certainly not the most admirable god in the pantheon. But many consider him a [[Magnificent Bastard]] or [[Loveable Rogue]] on account of his antics and tricks generally causing more trouble and indignity for the other gods than for humans.
*** Not to mention, the other gods mostly seem to have deserved it since he was probably traumatised by the number of times his pantheon treated him as expendable or suitable rape victim. Yeah, you read that right. Odin, Loki's father, decided to get out of paying the guy who was building Valhalla was to get rid of his work-horse. Instead of just killing the horse, he orders Loki to become a mare and seduce it. Loki gets pregnant and trapped as a horse until he can give birth...to a giant, eight-legged horse...that his father then takes as his own personal war-horse! It's hard not to cheer when you hear that Odin is doomed to be eaten at Ragnarok, especially since it is apparently Loki's giant wolf-child that does it.
** Odin, while generally a good guy, [[Trickster Archetype|sometimes comes off]] [[Jerkass|as a massive jerk]]. Sure, he generally likes people and helps them, but he's not trustworthy, prone to have his devoted or especially competent followers killed in messy ways [[Well
* The [[Japanese Mythology|Shinto pantheon]] wasn't free from its share of jerks. Given that there's around 8 million gods in the Shinto pantheon, that's not exactly surprising....
** When the goddess Izanami died, her husband, Izanagi, traveled to [[Fire and Brimstone Hell|Yomi]] to save her against her wishes. When he saw that his wife had turned into a rotted corpse, Izanagi ran away in fear with [[Hysterical Woman|an enraged Izanami]] pursuing him, and pushed a boulder into the mouth of the cave which led into Yomi, trapping Izanami inside. Out of anger, Izanami declared that she would kill 1,000 of his people every day.
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== Video Games ==
* The {{spoiler|Occuria}} of ''[[Final Fantasy XII (Video Game)|Final Fantasy XII]]'' fit the bill perfectly. Most of the plot of the game turns out to be an {{spoiler|attempt to overthrow}} them and {{spoiler|return control over Ivalice to humanity}}. To put it in perspective: Venat, one third of the game's [[Big Bad Duumvirate|Big Bad Triad]] is the [[Satan|fallen angel]] figure among them, who they try to convince you to kill at one point, and he acts completely in line (ie, [[Deal With the Devil|getting others to help him as he himself cannot act in the human realm directly]])... {{spoiler|and he ''still'' is the primary [[Anti
* The fal'Cie of ''[[Final Fantasy XIII (Video Game)|Final Fantasy XIII]]'' also fall under this trope, being basically giant elementals who subjugate humans into fighting their civil war for them. And that's just scratching the surface. It turns out that {{spoiler|Every Fal'Cie from Cocoon wants their creator The Maker to return, and believe that this demands no less than the sacrifice of ''Cocoon's entire human population''. [[Death Seeker|They don't even mind that The Maker's return would likely lead to their destruction as well]]. Since the Cocoon Fal'Cie are bound to their duties to Cocoon and cannot directly destroy it, they turn humans into L'Cie in the hopes that they can do it for them}}. The Cocoon Fal'Cie see humans as nothing more than {{spoiler|cattle to be sacrificed to ''their'' god}}.
* The entire human race {{spoiler|is created by [[Deus Est Machina|"God"]] to be replacement organic components for a malevolent interstellar weapon}} in ''[[Xenogears (Video Game)|Xenogears]]''.
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* The AI Director of [[Left 4 Dead]] conjures up health kits and ammunition whenever you ''really'' need it, and a million zombies whenever he's bored. [[Zero Punctuation|Which is all the time.]]
* Xom in ''[[Dungeon Crawl]]''. To a lesser extent, Xom's fellow chaos god Makhleb also qualifies. He not only awards power and favor to his worshipers for killing everything under the sun (thus making life more miserable for ''non''-worshipers), but he also grants the ability to summon demons (up to and including the most powerful non-unique demons in the game)... which have a chance of spawning hostile to the summoner!
* The Elder Gods of ''[[Lusternia]]'' each follow their own agenda. Some, like [[For Science!|Elostian]], are relatively benign; others, like [[Knight Templar|Eventru]], less so; still others, like [[Manipulative Bastard|Fain]], veer into [[God of Evil]] territory. And that's not even getting into the [[Cosmic Horror|Soulless Gods]]...
* Unsurprisingly (if you're versed in [[Classical Mythology]]) [[Shock and Awe|Zeus]] is the [[Big Bad]] of [[Will Rock]]: He resurrected all the monsters and undeads of Greece in order to take over the world and want to marry (or have as a sacrifice) Will's girlfriend.
* Mother of mercy, {{spoiler|Zanza}} from ''[[Xenoblade Chronicles]]''. Basically, he's a [[Generic Doomsday Villain]] who constantly destroys and rebuilds the universe... why? [[A God Am I|He's a god]]! [[For the Evulz|Why the hell not]]!? Needless to say, he gets [[Lampshade Hanging|called out on this]] a ''lot''.
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* In ''[[The Simpsons (Animation)|The Simpsons]]'', near the end of "Mr. Plow" Homer and Barney decide to join forces in their snow plowing business. Homer declares that their friendship is so powerful that even God himself can't stop them, so just to prove him wrong God melts all the snow and puts them out of business.
* God is pretty much of a [[Jerkass|jerk]] in ''[[Family Guy]]'' too, pressuring women for sexual favors, neglecting his son, starting fires, and what not.
* [[Manipulative Bastard|Discord]] from ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (Animation)|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]''. He's an all powerful [[Reality Warper]] who can do pretty much anything he pleases. And just what does he use this power to do? Turn Equestria into a [[World Gone Mad]] and [[Driven to Madness|drive everypony insane]] for his own amusement. Though he's a bit more straight up evil than ''just'' a [[Jerkass]].
** The fandom usually enjoys turning Princess Celestia, the resident [[Big Good]] into this, though she's really just a [[Trickster Mentor]] with a sense of humor.
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