Omniscient Morality License: Difference between revisions

A character with an Omniscient Morality License is usually one of the [[Powers That Be]] or very close to it. Basically, they can do ''anything'' to the hero and still be considered one of the good guys, because they just ''know'' it will turn out okay, [[Gambit Roulette|regardless of the seeming randomness of chance and choices made]]. Sometimes this is attributed to [[A Wizard Did It|supernatural rules]] (like the [[Balance Between Good and Evil]]) or [[Time Travel]].

 

 

This trope is subverted (their license revoked) when the heroes [[Rage Against the Heavens|rebel against them]] for [[A God Am I|playing God]].

 

Compare to [[In Mysterious Ways]] where the acts tend to be a lot more low key and often not unethical of themselves. May overlap with [[The Extremist Was Right]] where the actions genuinely work out for the good of most/all. Related to [[Designated Hero]].

 

== Anime and Manga ==

* Aeolia Schenberg from ''[[Gundam 00]]'' is revealed to be one of these when its revealed that his plan was that if mankind did not change than he would force them to change using Celestial Being. While his plan is hijacked a couple of times it's put back on track by the heroes.

* In ''[[Goshuushou-sama Ninomiya-kun]]'', the hero and heroine's family is a mass of absolute jerks willing to continuously mentally and physically torment the main characters, up to and including faking their own death just to get them riled up, as part of a "training" course. While they aren't explicitly stated to have God-like powers, their ability to be anywhere and everywhere at once borders on [[Deus Ex Machina]].

** {{spoiler|After being revived, Itachi pretty much gets his revoked and admits that in the end his attempts to fix everything himself failed and just created a giant mess. He warns Naruto not to make the same mistake.}}

** There is also {{spoiler|The Fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze, who decided to seal the Nine Tailed Demon Fox into Naruto, simply with the conviction that it was his responsibility as a parent to have faith in his recently born son's ability to set things right as motivation}}. Contrary to the above example, this gambit is turning out surprisingly well, irresponsible though it was.

* Hari Seldon in [[Isaac Asimov]]'s ''[[Foundation]]'' develops a new science - "psychohistory" - that allows him to predict large-scale future trends and future historical events. He further develops a complex plan for the future to create a new Empire. He's the only one that actually [[Gambit Roulette|knows exactly what it is]], but he has a whole planet dedicated to successfully carrying out his 1000-year "Seldon Plan". However, he's repeatedly told everyone that the reason that he can't make the details of the plan itself public is that doing so would guarantee its failure. Someone would eventually use that knowledge to [[Screw Destiny]] and cause the plan to [[Go Horribly Wrong]]: the predictions made by psychohistory are still vulnerable to a [[Butterfly of Doom]], and psychohistory itself is a powerful enough butterfly to derail any prediction it can make. In fact, the entire plan itself was an attempt to [[Screw Destiny]] and create a better future by setting up a planet to ''become'' such a butterfly.

** And without that licence, he really is kind of a dick. He talks to someone knowing they'll both be arrested for it, because that's part of his plan. He then gets 100.000 of his employees exiled, because that way they are sent where he wants them to go. And that's in the first chapter.

* Dumbledore's relationship with [[Harry Potter]] in the later books begins to resemble this. In the final book, the characters openly question if Dumbledore knew what he was doing. {{spoiler|He did, and even correctly predicted that Harry would be willing to [[Heroic Sacrifice|sacrifice himself]] for the greater good. He even knew, or at least guessed, that Harry could survive as long as it was Voldemort that delivered the Killing Curse, but by letting Harry think he would die, enabled Harry to grant his friends the same protection his mother had given him by her sacrifice. He also sincerely loved Harry, and honestly regretted the hell the poor kid would have to go through.}}

* Annalina Aldurren from the ''[[Sword of Truth]]'' series often invokes this trope, believing that she has a right to steer the protagonist's life because she's spent hers studying prophecies about him. She is quite often called out on this by the other characters (most notably said protagonist's wife), is more often than not wrong in her interpretations of the prophecies, and on several occasions suggests doing things such as erasing the protagonist's memory and having another character seduce him in order to have him do what she thinks he should. In fact, it's outright stated that, had she not meddled in the protagonist's life in the first place, many of the events of the series would never have taken place. Interestingly, Anna is called on this and finally broken of the habit, only for the villains to mess with the timeline/people's memories and her to revert to form.

* Polgara from the ''[[Belgariad]]/Malloreon'' universe demonstrates this tendency a lot. Admittedly, it goes with the job - Belgarath describes how he often has acted as Aldur's holy hatchet man - but Polgara has the biggest attitude about it.

* In ''[[Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Literature)|Romance of the Three Kingdoms]]'', Liu Bei and his companions (most notably Guan Yu and Zhuge Liang) can do no wrong, even when this means killing hundreds of thousands in various ways over the decades in the name of Liu Bei's vision of supporting the crumbling Han Dynasty, while Cao Cao is the big-time villain despite all the good works, major successes (against others who are ''not'' Liu Bei) and personal niceties that he's acknowledged to have.

* In ~S. M. Stirling~'s and [[David Drake]]'s series ''[[The General]]'', an ancient computer called center (always lower-case) establishes a telepathic link with General Raj Whitehall and drafts him into reuniting the human colony-world of Bellevue in order to restore the lost high-tech civilization of the long-collapsed interstellar Federation. Whitehall is a volunteer in this enterprise and retains his free will -- except that center is for all intents and purposes omniscient, and can always show him vividly, with a stated degree of probability, ''exactly'' what outcome will result from a given choice, so that Whitehall really has only one way to go.

* In [[Larry Niven]]'s ''Protector,'' the Pak Protector Phssthpok feeds the Tree-of-Life fruit to human Jack Brennan, causing Brennan to metamorphose into a superintelligent Protector himself, and then immediately starts laying down instructions about what Brennan has to do to save the human race from a Pak invasion. At one point, as Brennan recounts it later, he is about to protest, "Don't I have any choice?" And then, before he can even get the words out, immediately realizes, "No, I don't have any choice. I'm too intelligent."

** Beautifully subverted in the ''[[Star Trek the Next Generation]]'' episode "True Q", in which the [[The Omnipotent|nigh-omnipotent]] Q, in one of his rare straight-faced moments, tries to claim this license as the Continuum's right to judge and possibly execute the half-Q, half-human Amanda for being too potentially dangerous to live. When he responds to Picard's questioning that right with the simple, terse words "superior morality", Picard nearly chokes: "superior ''morality''? I haven't seen any evidence of any morality at all!".

* Toward the end of the classic series of ''[[Doctor Who (TV)|Doctor Who]]'', during the epoch known to fans as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartmel_Masterplan "The Cartmel Masterplan"], the Doctor could often be found pushing the bounds of morality, justified by the incredibly complex machinations of his long-term plans, and the desire of the production team to inject a new sense of mystery into the character.

*** The 11th Doctor still has moments of this, he is almost as manipulative and secretive as Seven when it comes to using his companions as chess pieces. Seems that the whole "Time Lord Victorious" is still there, he's just a bit more selective and sneaky about how he uses it.

* In ''[[Power Rangers Mystic Force]],'' senior Knight Daggeron sends the young 'uns into [[Another Dimension]] [[Fight in The Nude|without their gear]] to test their mettle, and doesn't stick around to watch (he had to go take on the [[Monster of the Week]].) Our heroes very nearly wind up as a giant's breakfast. When they manage to get themselves out of it and return, Daggeron's "I never doubted their safe return" just doesn't ring true - you ''really'' feel like the writers threw the line in so that Daggeron wouldn't appear to be criminally irresponsible. To be fair, Daggeron ''appeared'' to have arranged the whole thing, since the giant was a vegetarian and he had conveniently given the green ranger an inane task of practicing the spell he would need over and over again. So either this trope or sloppy script work.

== Tabletop Games ==

* In ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'', there's really no morality to speak of anywhere, but the Eldar are very fond of acting like this trope is in effect. Of course, it helps that they can see the future...

* Some interpretations of the [[Ravenloft]] setting's Dark Powers invoke this trope, depicting them as harsh but well-intentioned judges who consign the multiverse's foulest villains to [[The Punishment]]. Too bad for innocent bystanders living in the domains which confine said villains, because they're left at the mercy of the punished, as are the poor saps who get dragged into the game-setting by the Mists.

* Urza, in ''[[Magic the Gathering]]'', had this regarding the Phyrexian invasion. The results of this ranged from creating an entire race [[Not So Different|who were basically nicer-looking versions of the Phyrexians]] to recruiting a treacherous murderer onto a strike team so the guy would shank some of his allies and Urza could justify using his life energy to arm the mission's bomb payload.

* In the ''[[Golden Sun (Video Game)|Golden Sun]]'' games, {{spoiler|the Wise One does this to the entire group at the end of The Lost Age by sending a three-headed dragon to stop them, and only after they defeat it do they learn that said dragon was actually Isaac's father and Felix and Jenna's parents, and are on the verge of dying as a result. But upon restoring the powers of Alchemy with the last Elemental Star, the three adults are healed miraculously. It's later revealed that the Wise One did this to test their virtue and dedication, so as to make sure that the power of Alchemy would not be misused (like they had been in the past) if they were revived.}}

** The Wise One kind of dropped the ball there, since {{spoiler|committing patricide}} probably tests as much for sociopathy as it does for virtue or dedication. If not more.

* {{spoiler|Wilhelm}} in ''[[Xenosaga (Video Game)|Xenosaga]]''. Though he does show concern for the future of humanity, he has no concern for anyone who perishes during the course of his plans, even his closest allies, and sees all of life as a grand stage performance.

* Subverted in ''[[Super Robot Wars]] Alpha 2'', when the Guardian Goddess of Earth, Ganeden, lashed out at all the humans who decided to move into space and all the aliens. She then began erecting a dimensional barrier around the Earth. For that, the good guys tore her apart.

* In ''[[Okami]]'', Waka could very likely be accused of this trope, in the game, it's shown that he can see the future, and is pretty strong, at one point even ''fixing the coastline of it's corruption'', staggeringly, he does very little in the way of progress, when, theoretically, he could fix most of Nippon's problems, and a lot of problems would probably have been solved if he took a more direct approach in saving the world, rather than let destiny play out.

** Of course Waka, knowing the future, would know that he's not powerful enough to defeat the [[Big Bad]] without a powered-up Ammy's help.

* ''[[.hack GU Games]]'': Ovan, full stop. He {{spoiler|puts Shino in a coma and enables [[Complete Monster|Sakaki]] to [[Mind Rape]] people and attempt to take over the world. Why does he do all this? So that [[The Hero|Haseo]] will be able to stop AIDA.}}

* In the [[Myth Arc]] of the ''[[Assassin's Creed (Video Game)|Assassin's Creed]]'' series, [[Precursors|The Ones Who Came Before]] are capable of apparently perfect precognition, yet bore witness to the near absolute destruction of their First Civilization on Earth 75,000 years ago thanks to a solar flare. Dying out due to underpopulation, they [[Fling a Light Into The Future]] by manipulating the course of history such that the modern day Assassins can use their [[Lost Technology]] to attempt to avert a recurrence of the same catastrophe in 2012. Thousands of years of war, betrayals, scheming, and suffering as the Assassins battle the Templars for control of the future of humanity are part of this scheme, but they have no choice when the alternative is potentially the extinction of the human race.

{{quote| '''Dan:''' And here I thought you did it all because you were an insane sadist...<br />

'''Fa'lina:''' Well that too! But that comes with semi-omnipotence also! }}

** He got called out on it after the Snowsong arc with the Supergreg silliness, and made to do community service, for solving a problem by manipulating everybody. He could have solved it conventionally, but that would have damaged his ability to [[Save the Villain]].

*** Most of the time he's actually pretty straightforward about his moving-people-around-the-board ploys; given his ability to confront problems that exist anywhere besides the psychoplanes almost always consists of 'knowing more than anyone else' and 'communicating with people,' he ''has'' to do his part by networking.

* One of the students at ''[[PS 238]]'' has an ability that can best be described as hypercognition, an ability to form connections and make deductions that completely ignore quantum uncertainty and chaos theory. This leads to doing no small amount of questionable acts.

** Tom Davidson, who can [[Time Travel]], has much the same deal going on.

* ''[[Misfile]]'' features a clever subversion with [[God]] himself, who is all-knowing and yet apparently allows his angelic underlings to get away with errors. However, the twist (which is implied) is that God knows that these errors, such as the titular misfile, result in more actual good than harm, making him one hell of a [[The Chessmaster|chessmaster]]...

* The ''Wizard of Oz'' example is lampshaded in ''[[Cheshire Crossing]]'' when Dorothy finally confronts Glinda the Good Witch with the accusation that Glinda deliberately withheld information about the ruby slippers to get Dorothy to murder the Wicked Witch.

* A mild version of this can be found in ''[[Time Squad]]'': to prevent history from "unweaving", the crew needs to engage in some morally objectionable actions (making [[Edgar Allan Poe]] have a mental breakdown, create mutual tension between the Hatfields and the McCoys, etc.)

* Subverted in ''[[Yin Yang Yo (Animation)|Yin Yang Yo]]'', when a Lie Fairy creates a villain that grows every time Yin and Yang lie. At the end, she shows up and congratulates them on learning their lesson... only to have the townspeople angrily point out that she destroyed the city in the process.

** Justified both times this happens because they happen to be only ones who ''can'' do the job. Celestia can't use the artifacts that defeated said abominations in the past anymore.

** Princess Celestia acts [[In Mysterious Ways]] rather than uses an omniscient morality licence. She manipulated her student by saying she needs to get out and make some friends, and by asking her to perform some light official duties. Both were well within her rights as a teacher / monarch and neither are unethical in of themselves.