A God Am I: Difference between revisions

* ''[[Thousand Shinji]]'' ends with {{spoiler|Shinji, Asuka, Rei and Misato ascending to becoming the new Chaos gods}}, leading after a [[Time Skip]] into ''[[The Open Door]]''.

* ''Until the End of Time'': [[Dragonball Z|Super Saiyan]] [[Those Wacky Nazis|Hitler]]. Complete with a [[Shout-Out]] to the ''[[Street Fighter (film)|Street Fighter]]'' movie.

{{quote|To understand everything important there is to know about the universe, apply that knowledge to become omnipotent, and use that power to rewrite reality because I have some objections to the way it works now.}}

* There are fanfiction roleplayers who fall under this trope. They really love God Moding, even if it's a huge annoyance to others. Can you say "[[Mary Sue]]"?

* In ''[[Divine Blood]],'' this is averted as Tessa Testarossa became the first Ainur more about ensuring the psychological and spiritual survival of her people against things like [[The Virus|this fic's version of Kodachi Kuno]] and to serve as a message to the Gods and Demons that humanity can't be pushed around anymore. She still insists on being kept in the normal chain of command and suggested that having a full Ainur division would be a mistake and point of vulnerability.

* In [http://avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Fanon:A:TLAR A:TLAR], the interpretation of the Avatar (of the series [[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]) is a bit different. The Avatar Spirit is er, was a resident of the Spirit World that aspired to create a physical world that would teem with life. Once it had crafted the earth and humanity, it blessed humanity with a genetic trait that would allow a being to manipulate the molecules of elements, otherwise known as bending. The gift of bending divided humanity into four peoples that were isolated from each other, the Air, Water, Earth and Fire civilizations. It selected one airbender to be its host, so that it could teach the Air people the principles that it believed humanity needed to be taught. Once its host had died, it began a cycle that continued for generations by choosing to inhabit one of the Water people next, then one of the Earth people, and lastly one of the Fire people. Once this cycle had finished, it repeated itself. After each cycle completion, the role of the Spirit is taken over by the soul of one of the last generation's hosts, i.e. after the first cycle, the spirit of the first air host became the new Avatar, then after the second cycle, the spirit of the second water host became the Avatar, etc. Although the Spirit is a full-on [[Reality Warper]], the hosts are not. The hosts can only have limited access to the Spirit's massive power reservoir by going into the Avatar State, which can only be achieved by severing all of one's earthly ties, also known as the Transcendence ritual. Beings that take the role of the Spirit and have undergone Transcendence have difficulty relating to entities of the physical realm, which can eventually go from bad to worse as ([[Foreshadowing]]) the Spirit loses all empathy for humans and embodies A God Am I. Problem is that theory is jossed by canon.

* ''[[The Lawnmower Man]]'' (has [[In Name Only|nothing but the title in common]] with the [[Stephen King]] short story), where Jobe declares his intention to be the "Cyberchrist." His defining line (referring to [[Cyberspace]]): "[[Punctuated! For! Emphasis!|I am God here!]]"

* ''[[Groundhog Day]]''. After reliving the same day over and over again, and attempting suicide in a vast number of different ways, Phill eventually concludes that he's God, then tentatively adds, "Not ''the'' God. Just ''a'' god." Lampshaded by the character himself when he explains logically ''why'' he's come to this conclusion.

{{quote|"Something wrong, Colonel?? You came here expecting to fight a madman, and instead you find [[Large Ham|a god]]?}}

:: After kicking Guile's ass for the next couple of minutes, Bison delivers one of the [[Ham and Cheese|hammiest lines ever recorded]].

{{quote|'''Benedict''': "If God were a [[Card-Carrying Villain|villain]] ... he'd be me!"}}

* In ''[[Almost Famous]]'', rock star Russell Hammond takes too much acid and climbs on a roof at a house party to declare "I am a golden god!" Later, when he has sobered up, he doesn't believe he said it. This is actually in reference to Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin having said the same thing on a hotel balcony.

* Inverted and/or parodied in the movie ''[[Ghostbusters]]''

{{quote|'''Gozer''': "Are you a god?"

* One character's pursuit of this trope is the plot driver for the second ''[[Dragonlance]]'' trilogy. {{spoiler|Raistlin succeeds, with rather horrific results for all involved. [[Pyrrhic Villainy|Including him]]. But through a continuation of the somewhat involved time-travel storyline, Caramon warns him of this early enough on for Raistlin to upgrade his condition to [[Redemption Equals Death|sort-of-heroically sacrificed and dead]]. (Or tortured for all eternity in Hell.) Though this does not prevent him from making postmortem cameos.}}

** Don't forget the Kingpriest of Istar who went as far as demanding the gods serve him. What brought about the cataclysm was his demand that the gods make him a god himself.

* Obould Many-Arrows from ''[[Forgotten Realms]]'' acquires the moniker Obould-Who-Is-Gruumsh at the height of his power, Gruumsh being the chief god of the Orcs.

** Gruumsh sponsored Obould as his Chosen (divine minion given with a shred of godly power without extra strings attached) before this and vassal demigod after (upon death), so it's only a little exaggeration.

* Sun Wukong, the Monkey King from ''[[Journey to the West]]''. After taking the Ruyi-Jingu-Bang from the palace of the Dragon King of the West, he was given a position in the Jade Emperor's court to satiate his desire for acknowledgement. However, once Wukong realized that his position was a janitorial position, he set up a plot to, and succeeded in, taking over Heaven, declaring himself "The Sage Greater than Heaven." It wasn't until the Jade Emperor asked Buddha himself to do something that Wukong was ousted.

** Ironically, after he was freed and assisted Xuangzang in his journey, he DID become worshipped as a god, and in Buddhism is proclaimed the Buddha of Courage (not a godly position entirely, but as close as someone can get to godhood in a religion which itself has no real gods).

* This is more or less the plot of Dave Duncan's ''Great Game'' series, in which {{spoiler|all gods derive their power from people worshipping them. The plot revolves around the attempt by the existing gods to stop a new god from accruing sufficient power to topple them all, and the main character's attempts to stop him by becoming a new god as well}}

* In Fiona Patton's ''Tales of the Branion Realm'' series, the royal family of a fantasy England is physically possessed by a fire god, making the sovereign something of a Christ-figure. Not only does she have divine right, she can prove it. She can set things on fire with a thought, and her family has blazing eyes. Most of the books center on the oddities of religion under such a system: What do you do when God is your mother (and is being abusive)? What do you do when God is a five-year-old child? What do you do when God converts to the worship of a different God? (The answer to the latter is that you seduce God and raise his kid up in the correct religion.)

== Live Action TV ==

 

** In the episode "Return to Tomorrow", [[Energy Beings|Sargon]] explains that his civilization destroyed itself when it became so advanced and arrogant that "we dared think of ourselves as gods".

* The [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien]] Q plays with this in ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]''. In "Tapestry", Picard dies and enters the "afterlife", where he finds Q awaiting him, who informs him that he's dead and that Q himself is God. Picard rejects this, because he doesn't think that "the Universe is so badly designed". Q just snarks that Picard is lucky Q doesn't smite him for his blasphemy.

* ''[[Blackthorn Corporation]]'': {{spoiler|General Alan Jericho and Jean-Baptiste, respectively the messiah and a high priest of a demonic cult.}}

* ''[[Shadowside]]'': Whenever someone says this, suffice it to say there's trouble.

* ''[[Modern Day Alchemist]]'':

** [[Magnificent Bastard|Aurelius Schwarz]], through and through. When he isn't fulfilling his [[Xanatos Gambit|master]] [[All According to Plan|plan]], he's... Well, his master plan is always in motion.

 

* The accurate assessment version of the trope appears in ''[[Nobilis]]'', where everyone of significance is equivalent in power to what a human would call a god. A great deal of the game's drama comes from dealing with this fact.

** Which effectively makes him one, due to how the Immaterium works. Not counting the one thousand Psykers sacrificed daily to keep the Astronomican lit/the Emperor alive, he is slowly gaining more and more power as people believe in him and die in his name - hence, his position as the up-and-coming Fifth God of Chaos, the "God of Mankind". Then again, seeing as how he stopped a great fleet during the Age of Apostasy by creating a Warp Storm which is still raging five millennia later...

** The Chaos worshippers who win the Gods' favours and turn into Daemon Princes, which are, according to the fluff, pretty damn powerful in and of themselves.

** In the fourth edition of the game, this is one of the possible epic destinies awaiting characters that reach 30th level.

** Cyric, from ''[[Forgotten Realms]]'', goes this one step further. After becoming a deity, he creates a book, called the Cyrinishad, which will make anyone who reads it believe that Cyric is the most important being in the universe. He then [[What an Idiot!|reads it himself]]. He now believes that he is the most important being in the universe, and (for example) that if someone thwarts his plans, he is simply letting them do so.

** And Sir Grodus in ''[[Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door]]''. As with this quote: ''Yes? I, Grodus, will build a new world! A perfect, ideal world? made by me, about me, and FOR me! GAAACK ACK ACK ACK ACK!''

* An example of the latter (benevolent) god transformation comes in the Nightfall campaign of the MMORPG ''[[Guild Wars]]'' when {{spoiler|the leader of the Sunspears, Kormir, ascends to godhood.}}

** There's also the fact that he wakes the player cerebrate with a magnificently biblical: "Awaken my child, and embrace the glory that is your birthright. Know that I am the Overmind; the eternal will of the Swarm, and that you have been created to serve me." For being a [[Hive Mind]] unable of god complexes, he does it pretty well.

*** That's because the Overmind is NOT a [[Hive Mind]]. A [[Hive Mind]] is a decentralised intelligence, such as ants coordinating to find food. The Overmind, on the other hand, is a centralised intelligence (as the name obviously implies). Being a nigh-omnipotent intelligent entity that controls the Swarm, the Overmind IS virtually the God of the Zerg.

{{quote|'''Prefontaine:''' ...What's clear is that SHODAN shouldn't be allowed to play God. She's far too good at it.}}

* Durandal, the resident [[Magnificent Bastard]] AI from ''[[Marathon Trilogy|Marathon]]'' frequently claims that "Escape will make me God," and has many a [[Gambit Roulette]] in place to escape from the humans, and later the ''entire physical universe,'' just in time to watch it collapse 15 billion years later, no doubt. {{spoiler|He (probably) failed. But he understood the entire universe before it ceased to exist.}} Oh, and he even comes back to life for seemingly no reason at least once in the series (though there are a couple other instances that would probably count as well). Hey, [[Faux Symbolism]]...and yes, that would seem to make Tycho the devil.

* ''[[Deus Ex]]'' plays with this trope and the aforementioned AI variant. Bob Page plans to become the {{spoiler|[[Physical God]] of the entire world}} by {{spoiler|merging his own mind with the AI Helios (who coincidentally is the [[Everything Is Online|Internet and other assorted global communications networks]], a [[Nano Machine]] [[Mook Maker|Assembler]] and a [[The Virus|nanomachine plague]] present in large amounts of the world's population, so that he becomes omniscient and omnipresent}}, with total control of the world. However, {{spoiler|Helios wants no part in this, and the player may choose to merge JC (not initials) with Helios}} to become the ''benevolent dictator'' of the world. There's a small distinction, but the ending's tagline notes that {{spoiler|JC}} has effectively become as a god anyways.

* Both ''[[Summoner]]'' and its sequel apply. In the first, {{spoiler|Joseph, the Summoner, must become Urath Reborn,}} and the second takes it a step further when Maya, named in the blurb as the Goddess Laharah, is {{spoiler|revealed as Aosi, creation itself, far beyond any mere god.}}

* Implied in the way that the site [[Acts of Gord]] is written—Gord sees himself as god over his video game store, making him a local deity.

* Inverted (subverted? averted?) in [[Orion's Arm]] with the [[Deus Est Machina|Archailects]] who tried explaining that they weren't gods to the modosophont masses but eventually gave up and let themselves be worshipped. You'd expect this to happen fairly often considering the frequency of [[Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence|transcension]], but then again most new transapients are still insects to the weakest archai.

* ''[[Comic Fury Werewolf]]'': Attempted in Game 13 by the host of the game.

* ''[[Super Mario Bros Z]]'': Mecha Sonic tends toward this mindset, especially when he gets his hands on four of the Chaos Emeralds.