Mission from God

"They're not gonna catch us. We're on a mission from God."

—Elwood Blues, The Blues Brothers

Whether or not one believes in a god or gods, there is no denying that religion can be one hell of a powerful motivator.

Sometimes a character or group of characters are (or come to believe that they are) chosen for a specific mission by their god. Sometimes they are called upon to help people in need (or maybe just bring members of a band back together), or to unite a divided country. But sometimes their mission takes on a more violent form, with the characters kicking ass or even killing for their god.

Whether or not the mission is justified depends largely on the fruits of their work, but it's worth knowing that it takes a special kind of person in order to avoid becoming so caught up in one's religious fervor that they lose sight of what they are actually doing to the world and take things too far, becoming Well Intentioned Extremists, or at worst, Knights Templar.

This is both a case of Truth in Television, as people from all over the world have gone on Missions From God, both in real life and in fiction, changing the world both for the better and for the worse. Who was right and who was wrong concerning such missions is a subject of much controversy, and while good examples of such missions definitely exist, we are more familiar with misguided missions that take things too far, such as witch-hunts and past and present-day holy wars.

See also Church Militants, who are always on a mission from God.

Examples of Mission from God include:

Anime and Manga

Michel from Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch has been convinced that killing humans and turning the world into Mordor is a Mission From God. His actual purpose, planted by a Man Behind the Man, is far different.
Kaitou Saint Tail was a Kaitou that righted wrongs against the devout by stealing back their stolen goods. It's heavily implied that she got her Magical Girl powers from God.
Hellsing even has the phrase painted in the organization weaponry. ("We Are On A Mission From God!")
- Their Catholic counterpart Iscariot believes this as well.
Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne is all about this. Too bad that the angel who was sent to help her has been brainwashed by the devil, so she will bring the caught demons to HIM instead of God! Turns out the suspicious black angel was actually her stand-in, rather than a bad guy.
In Tokyo Godfathers Miss Hana does say something like this about the baby. With Blues Brothers-like Deus Ex Machina in the movie it does seem likely.
Everthing made by everyone in Saint Seiya is in the name of some God.
In Amakusa 1637, it looks like the six Time Travellers were Trapped in the Past via God's will so they can prevent a massacre. Seika, one of the girls, says this openly, but the others aren't fully convinced.

Comic Books

Jei in Usagi Yojimbo thinks he's been chosen by the gods to free the world from evil; unfortunately, he also thinks that just about everyone is evil.
The 1980s comic Evangeline, about a secret agent/commando nun in the 23rd Century, had the tagline, "She really is on a mission from God."
Wonder Woman is one a mission from her gods to bring amazonian peace to the Patriarch's world.

Film

The Blues Brothers go on a mission to reunite their old band for a gig to raise the money to save the old Catholic home where they grew up. For obvious reasons, the brothers consider this to be a mission from God, as seen in the quote above.
- The fact that they have a magic car would seem to indicate that someone's helping them..
- Never mind the fact that for the entire movie, everything works very much in the favor of the brothers, all the way until the last second after they finish the job, and have successfully saved the orphanage from foreclosure. This is to the point that their car survives every possible pratfall and mishap right up until they don't need it anymore, at which point it immediately falls to pieces.
- You're not pronouncing it right: it's Mission from Gaaahd.
The Boondock Saints is about two Irish Catholic brothers who believe they are on a mission from God to kill evil men and become vigilantes.
The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc is one of many movies concerning the life of Saint Joan of Arc.
The kung-fu priest from Peter Jackson's zombie comedy Braindead certainly qualifies: "I kick arse for the Lord!"
Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a comedic telling of one of the best-known Arthurian legends, in which the protagonists are on a mission from God (literally) to find the Holy Grail.
An extreme example would be the So Bad It's Good Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter. Jesus' second coming happens in part because God wants him to fight sunlight-immune vampires that prey on lesbians.
Dogma. Not the angels but pretty much everyone trying to stop them.
- Interesting in that this particular Mission From God doesn't actually come from God, who is missing at the time, although it does come from the voice of God, Metatron. More of a Mission For God.
In Frailty, Matthew McConaughey's family is commanded by God to destroy demons. One of the kids sees "destroy demons" to mean "kill people," hence the drama.
- And then it gets weird when the kid and father, who think they are destroying demons, turn out to be right.
In From Dusk till Dawn, during the height of the protagonists' siege by vampires, bank robber Seth Gecko turns to Jacob Fuller, minister with a crisis-of-faith, and asks him if he's a "faithless preacher or a mean motherfucking servant of God?" He responds that he's a "mean mother...hmmm hmm servant of God".
The protagonist of The Book of Eli. ("And you did all this because a voice told you to?" "I know what I hear, I know what I heard, I know I'm not crazy, I didn't imagine it").
Deconstructed in Kingdom of Heaven by the Hospitaller. He says that throughout his life he's seen various madmen and killers proclaim their actions as the will of God, and he also observes a short way into the movie that even though a number of Templars are dying for what the Pope would command them to do, Jesus probably wouldn't want them to do it.
Done literally in the first two Oh, God! films, with John Denver and Louanne Sirota selected to be God's messengers.
This is what drives the plot of Season of the Witch.

Literature

Parodied in Soul Music by Terry Pratchett, where the characters are "on a mission from Glod" (a dwarf).
- Which is presented as a reference to the page quote from The Blues Brothers. It happens again later on, when they order "four whole fried rats and some coke". (And a previous book, Moving Pictures, had a parody of the "108 miles to Chicago" line.)
  - It should also be clarified that the aforementioned coke was neither drugs nor soda, but an actual chunk of coal. Hey, a troll has to eat something.
- Done more literally with the Great God Om in Small Gods who, while trapped in the form of a one-eyed tortoise, went on a road trip with a minor acolyte from one of his temples. (From the back cover copy, "But what Brutha wants, really wants, is for his God to Choose someone else...")
- Discworld looks at the whole Mission From God idea more seriously in Carpe Jugulum, where Granny tells a young priest that she's better off unconverted because if she ever did gain faith in a god, the next thing she'd do would be to start a Holy War and/or Inquisition.
- Also used in the Discworld novel Monstrous Regiment, in which Wazzer is given a mission by the country's Duchess (who is not technically a goddess but might as well be) to lead the nation's armies, much like Joan of Arc.
The Stephen King novel Desperation is about a small child named David Carter being forced by God to destroy the evil entity Tak with the help of a group of strangers. Other characters point out how needlessly cruel it is for God to drag David out into the desert and get his family killed before asking him to do that.
- In another King novel, Under the Dome, Chef Bushey and Andy Sanders believe that they are on a mission from God to keep a meth lab out of the hands of the 'bitter men' from town by any means necessary. Of course, they are actually just stoned out of their minds on meth, but that doesn't keep them from going through with it.
The titular FBI group of John Ringo's Special Circumstances series is this, more or less, kicking supernatural ass in support of Good (all varieties, not just the Judeo-Christian God).
Sparhawk and his friends are on a Mission From Goddess in the Elenium trilogy of books. Done with a twist, because the goddess in question is not the deity they worship (the knights are members of the story world's equivalent of the Catholic Church, and worship a god), and they don't realize for a long time who's pulling the strings. It's actually something of a concert effort...sort of.

Live-Action TV

Joan of Arcadia is given a Mission From God (for real) in every episode.
Dean Winchester from Supernatural appears to be on one, or at least so the Angels say.
- Which might even be a subversion of the trope, considering that the angels are openly described (by both the show's creators and characters in canon) as dicks and apparently none of them are answering to God throughout S4.
- The villain in "Bad Day At Bad Rock" started thinking he was on one after he managed to track down Sam Winchester through a series of remarkable coincidences and believed them to be signs from God. It was actually just a Necro Non Sequitur caused by Sam's possession and subsequent loss of a Bad Luck Charm.
Eli Stone is about a lawyer who gets messages from God through a brain aneurysm. In the form of musicals that involve whoever's around him at the moment.

Music

Long Arm and Butchie from My Brother's Blood Machine are told by their deluded mother that they have a mission from God: To become Death. The thing is, they're not certain how to collect souls. So, they build a giant corpse-mangling apparatus called the Blood Machine.

Tabletop Games

Certain games, most notably Dungeons & Dragons may use this as the basis for any number of plots. Whether it's a player-character paladin or cleric literally receiving a mission from his or her god, or the PCs undertaking a mission on the church's behalf in return for being healed or even resurrected, the Mission From God is a ready explanation as to why the players have to track down a specific MacGuffin or destroy The Dragon.
In Exalted, more or less all the PCs are on a Mission From either a God, Omnicidal Maniac ghosts, Eldritch Abominations, or a giant robot. Of course, they don't have to do what their patrons tell them (if they talk to them at all). They could just kill them.
The hunters of Hunter: The Reckoning start their missions when the Messengers send them a direct message about the true state of the world and reveal the monsters lurking behind human guises.
The protagonists of Scion are the children of the gods, who first truly receive their powers when their absent parents appear to them and draft them into the war against the Titans.
The Lancea Sanctum from Vampire: The Requiem believes that vampires are damned by God for a reason—to scare mortals from the path of sin and harrow them back to righteousness.
Sometimes during an In Nomine game, an angelic character will be played as a perfect Knight Templar because the angel is literally on a Mission From God. Players of demonic characters tend to avoid over-the-top behavior.

Video Games

Many of the antagonists in the Silent Hill series go on the violent, rampaging sorts of missions.
- Particularly Claudia from Silent Hill 3, who just can't seem to shut up about that wonderful God of hers.
Age of Mythology loosely follows this trope. The hero, Arkantos, is on a mission for Poseidon at the beginning, then gets around to helping Osiris and Thor, before finally settling with Zeus. The twist here is that the Big Bad is also on a mission from a god—Poseidon and technically, Kronos. He also gets help from Set and Loki.
Likewise, Kratos was originally on a mission from the gods of Olympus. It...didn't go so well.
This is more or less the premise of Darkstone, in which the player characters are on a mission to save their goddess (and world) from complete annihilation.
Depending on which installment of the series is being examined, some of the Zelda games may qualify for this. The actual importance of the three Hyrulean goddesses on the plot varies from one game to another. The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess, however, consistently refers to Link as being "the hero chosen by the goddesses," suggesting that in that installment at least, he is on a Mission From Goddesses.
Though not exactly gods, the Focuses that the fal'Cie assign to humans-turned-l'Cie in Final Fantasy XIII are this trope in essence. That said, the l'Cie don't have much in terms of motivation for completing their Focus or not.
- In the ENGLISH trailer for the Sequel, Lightning apparently give herself one, saying (paraphrased): "I'll forever hold up the memory of you, Lindzei."
Recruitable character Leliana of Dragon Age believes she's on one.
A couple different recruitable cohorts in Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir (Umoja, druid of Ubtao, and Soraevora Aeravand, favored soul of Angarradh) were ordered to help fight the Big Bad by their gods.

Web Comics

In Order of the Stick, Redcloak's actions are all based on a plan given to him by his patron deity, the Dark One.
- Then there's Miko, who thinks she's on a mission from the twelve gods....
Stanley the Tool of Erfworld believes that it is the will of the Titans that he gain all of the Arkentools.
- On the other side of the war, Ansom's belief that royal privilege has been ordained by the Titans underlies his determination to eradicate Stanley.
The One Electronic, Calabash, and Angel Eye from Rice Boy have been hired by a being who calls himself God to find the Fulfiller who will realize a particular prophecy, in exchange for eternal life.

T-O-E: Well, Cal and I are... agents of God, or something like that.

Played With in Dubious Company. The temple elder shoos the heroes out, claiming they are now on a mission for Phred. He really just didn't want them sponging off the temple.

Western Animation

Optimus Primal in Transformers: Beast Machines believes he is on a mission from Primus to restore organic life to Cybertron. Tankor tampers with the Oracle to subvert this.
Parodied in an episode of The Simpsons that tells the story of Joan of Arc. Joan (Lisa) is captured and put on trial by the English. She calls on God as a witness, who states that he did, in fact, tell her to lead the French to victory. An English/Scottish solider (Groundskeeper Willie) stands up and claims that God told him to lead the English to victory over the French. God embarrassingly admits he never expected them to be in the same room together and quickly leaves.
In The Legend of Korra, Equalist leader Amon claims to be on a divine mission to supplant the Avatar and bring balance to the world by completely eliminating Bending.