History Main / FantasticReligiousWeirdness

** Ivanova's childhood rabbi visits the station, triggering a brief discussion of the difficulty of determining the kosher status of non-Earth food. The Rabbi's conclusion is that anything not mentioned in the Torah was probably OK, but he isn't certain. Or maybe he just wasn't too strict in his beliefs and wanted to try the food.[[note]]For the record, traditional Judaism argues the opposite, that questionable animals (like many birds) should be considered non-kosher unless tradition says otherwise. The food in question was actually a kind of fish, and the fish rules are fairly technical.[[/note]] The creator discussions mention that they would have loved to do more on it but didn't really have time. Ivanova, the only Jewish regular on the show, solves it by not bothering to keep kosher (her only objection to having bacon for breakfast was her tablemates' jealousy over the fact that Marcus hadn't provided her enough to share), though she probably wouldn't have on Earth, either.

* ''Fanfic/{{Goldstein}}'' is a ''Literature/HarryPotter'' fanfic where [[OCStandIn minor character Anthony Goldstein]] is an Orthodox Jewish Muggle-born, and explores how that would work. Chapter two is basically just the family's rabbi examining all the arguments for or against him going to [[WizardingSchool Hogwarts]] at all. (Conclusion: Since suppressing magic could make him a PersonOfMassDestruction, attending is required under the principle that protecting lives overrides most commandments.)

* Another Dracula parody, ''Film/TheFearlessVampireKillers'', has Shagal, a Jewish vampire who's immune to crucifixes.

* In ''Film/TheMummy1999'', Beni, when confronted by the newly resurrected Imhotep, pulls out several holy symbols that he apparently wears on a chain around his neck -- on the eminently practical grounds that ''one of them'' has to work -- displaying each and saying a prayer in the appropriate language to try to ward him off. First, he pulls out a crucifix, then a [[UsefulNotes/{{Islam}} Crescent]], then a ''[[UsefulNotes/{{Taoism}} taijitu]]'', and finally, a Star of David. Only the Star of David and a Hebrew prayer averts Beni's imminent demise -- but only because Imhotep recognizes Hebrew as [[Literature/BookOfExodus "the language of the slaves"]], and thinks Beni will be useful as a translator.

* Then there's the question of how a Muslim is supposed to fulfill their obligation to pray facing Mecca five times a day while in space. When the astronaut Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, who is Muslim, had an extended say on the International Space Station; a group of Malaysian Muslim scholars [[https://makkah.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/a_guideline_ibadah_at_iss.pdf came up with answers.]]

** By the 23rd century, the most popular religion in [[TheAlliance TeTO]] space are the Church of the Cosmic Spirit, a dualistic faith that believes in a Spirit of Light responsible for all good in the universe, and an opposing Spirit of Darkness responsible for all evil, with major important and influential historical figures of all species believed to be avatars of one or the other. Reincarnation is also a major aspect as well.

** In the early part of the story, Christians view dragons as [[DragonsAreDemonic Satan's servants]]. This attitude starts changing, and it many cases, outright reverses itself with dragons being compared to angels and saints as the story progresses. After [[spoiler:Fearless's sacrifice]] allows Hiccup to bring back Buffalords, whose saliva is a {{Panacea}}, [[spoiler:Fearless]] starts to become something of a folk saint.

** Buzz Aldrin is a devout Presbyterian. Realizing that Apollo 11 would be landing on the Moon on a Sunday according to the calendar in Houston, he took a communion wafter with him to eat during a convenient break. How to decide what day it was on the Moon was left unaddressed.

* When insulin replacement was first developed for treating diabetes in the early 1990s; insulin was extracted either from cows or pigs. Cue extended arguments about its use by Hindu and by Muslim & Jewish groups respectively. Since the 1980s, animal insulins have been replaced by human insulin produced by genetically engineered bacteria and yeast. This avoids the previous set of arguments but causes another.

** Buzz Aldrin is a devout Presbyterian. Realizing that Apollo 11 would be landing on the Moon on a Sunday according to the calendar in Houston, he took a communion wafter with him to eat during a convenient break. How decide what day it was on the Moon was left unaddressed.

* Then there's the question of how a Muslim is supposed to fulfill their obligation to pray facing Mecca five times a day while in space. Some Muslim scholars have [[https://makkah.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/a_guideline_ibadah_at_iss.pdf come up with answers.]]
* When insulin replacement was first developed for treating diabetes in the early 1990s; insulin was extracted either from cows or pigs. Cue extended arguments about its use by Hindu and by Muslim & Jewish groups respectively. Since the 1980s, animal insulins have been replaced by human insulin produced by genetically engineered bacteria and yeast. This avoids one set of arguments but causes another.

* According to declassified documents, prior to the Apollo moon landing in 1969, the US government determined that should Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong be stranded on the moon to a certain death as a result of a failure of the lunar module, a clergyman should adopt funeral rites [[SpaceIsAnOcean consistent with a burial at sea, commending their souls to "the deepest of the deep"]] and concluding with the Lord's Prayer.

** The spin-off manga ''Manga/PuellaMagiTartMagica'' feaures Joan of Arc herself as the title Magical Girl. Naturally, it has fun with this trope. Joan/Tart believes that Kyubey is an angel (and Kyubey comments that [[ExactWords people have called him an Angel in the past]], and becomes a Magical Girl to help save France. Kyubey, meanwhile, alludes to how the Bible tells followers to not allow witches to live, which Tart sees as justification to keep fighting Witches. [[spoiler: This is how Kyubey keeps Tart in line as a Magical Girl when she learns that Witches in the setting are Magical Girls who fell to despair, something she learned earlier than Madoka and the cast of the parent series.]]

* In ''Fanfic/TheSecondArchonWar'', the Archons being isekai'd on Earth-Bet and openly identifying as gods cause a great deal of reactions -- the Catholic pope swiftly condemns Raiden Ei as the Antichrist while the Japanese people insist to worship her as an avatar of Amaterasu or the Spirit of their country embodied in a very pleasant female package, while the Jewish Naomi Cohen concludes her friend Venti better fits the criteria for an angel and he actively encourages her since he dislikes being worshipped.

* In ''Comicbook/{{Grandville}}'', the inhabitants of a WorldOfFunnyAnimals are Christian, but a version of Christianity that starts with the Flood, and presents Noah as God, releasing the animals onto Earth. It is also a matter of considerable debate what species Jesus was [[spoiler: because the Church is suppressing the evidence that claims he was a member of the human underclass]].

** Several religions are [[AllHailTheGreatGodMickey based on misremembered bits of pre-Deluge pop culture]] — Disney is viewed as its own pantheon; Gallifreyenism is primarily based on ''Series/DoctorWho'' with other characters [[TheNthDoctor portrayed by numerous actors]] (including Franchise/JamesBond and Franchise/SpiderMan) being in the pantheon; Etherianism is based on ''Franchise/MastersOfTheUniverse'' (primarily ''WesternAnimation/SheRaAndThePrincessesOfPower'') with some Disney thrown in; Dreemuritism is based on ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}''; Senshiism is primarily based on ''Franchise/SailorMoon'' with other anime/manga thrown in, etc. Oh, and cosplaying is considered a sacred practice of personifying the gods by most of these.

--> Captain America: Met [[ComicBook/TheMightyThor two]] [[ComicBook/{{Loki}} gods]], still a Christian\\

In the simplest form of this trope, the setting makes religiously forbidden things harder to avoid, or mandatory things harder to do. Maybe it's impossible for Jewish vampires to keep kosher without starving.[[note]]This is probably true unless [[VegetarianVampire they can live on fish blood, which is permitted according to the Talmud]]. However, ''Pikuach nefesh'' refers to a concept in Jewish religious law where certain prohibited behaviors are permissible if they preserve a life. Ergo, a vampire would be allowed to consume non-kosher blood because it was required for their survival, so long as no one was murdered to get the blood... Although at least one rabbi, asked the question, replied that he didn't think ''pikuach nefesh'' would apply to the undead, [[ExactWords as it specifically refers to the preservation of life]].[[/note]] A group of Muslims on a GenerationShip is likely to have trouble making a pilgrimage to UsefulNotes/{{Mecca}}.[[note]]While Muslims are only required to make a pilgrimage to Mecca ''if they are capable of doing so'', don't expect this distinction to be brought up in fiction because that takes away the drama.[[/note]] (It's also possible in principle for a setting to make religion ''easier'',[[note]]For instance, a planet with an orbital period of 354.37 Earth days, were it to exist, would synchronize with the Islamic lunar calendar, potentially making fasting during Ramadan much easier — particularly if it falls in local winter in the planet's habitable regions. Another example is that many rabbis say that in vitro meat — even if it is derived from pig cells — is kosher.[[/note]] but that's less likely to happen as it fails to follow the RuleOfDrama, although it might be used for world-building or a one-off gag[[note]]Like having a Hindu Brahmin chowing down on a lab-grown hamburger or [[JewsLoveToArgue a Jewish family arguing]] whether it's OK to have a lab-grown ham for Shabbat dinner[[/note]].)

* ''TabletopGame/{{Aberrant}}'': There is a note that upon the humans becoming super powered Novas the Catholic Church debated the matter and concluded that they are human and therefore subject to the same matters of sin and salvation and the like. Most world religions come to similar conclusions, though some extremist groups disagree. The main one focused on is The Church of Archangel Michael who hold that Novas are all agents of Stan and should be killed.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Aberrant}}: There is a note that upon the humans becoming super powered Novas the Catholic Church debated the matter and concluded that they are human and therefore subject to the same matters of sin and salvation and the like. Most world religions come to similar conclusions, though some extremist groups disagree. The main one focused on is The Church of Archangel Michael who hold that Novas are all agents of Stan and should be killed.

* In the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' novels, there are several off-hand remarks about vampires working at kosher slaughterhouses. Which is strange because there isn't an actual Judaism in that world. Presumably, there is a religion that has a similar edict about the consumption of blood.

The tenets of a real-world religion can interact...oddly with fantasy or futuristic settings.

** [[Recap/BabylonFiveS03E04PassingThroughGethsemane "Passing Through Gethsemane"]] asks whether a criminal subjected to DeathOfPersonality and then converted to Catholicism can receive absolution if he can no longer remember his sins.

* According to The Koran and other Islamic sources, djinni (invisible spirits made of fire and the inspiration for genies in Western literature) follow the same religions that humans do -- there are Muslim genies, Christian genies, Jewish genies, etc. -- and will be judged at the end of time in the same manner that humans will.

* The question is OlderThanTheyThink. One Medieval Theologian on being asked about how TheFairFolk fit in, replied simply that it was probably better to wait until they knew they existed. Creator/CSLewis noticed this in his book ''Literature/TheDiscardedImage'' (an overview of Medieval beliefs for use in understanding Medieval literature). The book devotes a whole chapter to TheFairFolk. Creator/JRRTolkien, on the other hand, in part wrote his mythology specifically to fit elves into the picture. In one essay, he commented "God is the Lord of Angels, of Men -- and yes, of Elves". One interpretation is that Tolkien's Elves are meant to represent an Unfallen humanity; this is what Mankind would be if they had never been cast out of Eden -- Eden in this case being the Undying Lands, which the Elves can leave by choice but can always return to.

* The inhabitants of the Colony, the national-level WorthyOpponent in ''Literature/TheGeneral'' series, are Muslims. They dealt with the Mecca problem by bringing a fragment of the Kaaba with them (Mecca itself was apparently destroyed in a war just before they left) and substituting their original landing site for prayer and pilgrimage purposes. Of course the whole point of this is just to keep the 'Fifth-Century Byzantium [[RecycledInSpace IN SPACE!!!]]' setting as much as possible, so it's brushed over pretty quickly.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Banestorm}}'' has this conceit as one of its central premises. Since the humans of the setting were initially yanked from [[UsefulNotes/TheCrusades Crusades]]-era Earth, and eventually became the dominant race, the major human religions are Christianity and Islam, with most nonhumans having converted. The introductory fiction in the setting book has an English sailor from the 16th century ending up on Yrth, Banestorm's world, and the first person he meets is a Catholic priest... who just so happens to be a [[OurGoblinsAreDifferent goblin]]. Being transported to another Earth and meeting nonhumans raised *a lot* of theological questions, from which direction to pray in a world without the Mecca to whether or not nonhumans can be converted, but they eventually acclimatized (although some races are considered beyond salvation, such as demons, spirits, medusas, trolls, and vampires).

** Mormonism does surprisingly well for itself among other species, being shown to be quite popular with the Race, [[Franchise/MassEffect quarians, and asari]], among others. Though they do have to make adjustments to the faith depending on the quirks of other species' values and biologies — for example, as the LDS Church prohibits same-sex marriages, and asari are all physically female (and the Church doesn't want to forbid asari members from marrying in their own species), asari converts have to declare themselves "officially" male or female so that their marriages aren't technically same-sex.

* ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'', though usually cursory in its detailing of religion, mentions theological disputes that delayed Islamic expansion into space, with the result that Islam is a minority faith in most every state in the Inner Sphere. Among other things, they decided that 'towards Mecca' can be approximated as 'towards the planet Earth', and really relaxed the ''hajj''. The ''hajj'' was further complicated by Mecca being destroyed by a nuclear warhead during the fall of the Star League. ''Fanfic/AnEntryWithABang'' used this for [[OverlyNarrowSuperlative possibly the most positive moment involving Islamic warriors ever to appear in a Tom Clancy fanfiction]]. Another little detail of religion: Catholicism has split at least once more. The New Avalon branch of the church has its own Pope and all, although it's on generally good terms with the Earth-based one. This came about back when the Star League fell and the Pope decided to transfer control of the individual branches of the church to his immediate subordinates in each Successor State -- but the transmission to New Avalon (in the Federated Suns) was garbled and the cardinal assumed he had been put in charge of the ''whole'' thing instead. By the time the misunderstanding was cleared up (there was a war going on, after all), both sides had grown just far enough apart to make a simple reunion impractical, and so the division has stood.

* Jo Walton's ''Thessaly'' trilogy (''The Just City,'' ''The Philosopher Kings,'' and ''Necessity'') explore a setting in which the goddess Athena uses time travel, magic, and robots to create something resembling Plato's Republic thousands of years in the past (ItMakesSenseInContext), including some Christian characters' reactions to finding themselves living well before the birth of Christ.

* The book ''Warp Angel'' by Stuart Hopen features a mercenary who, much to her surprise, falls in love with a rabbi/prominent religious leader who later gets kidnapped and shipped to a hellhole planet. The marriage was already kind of weird for her before that, and later Adam tries to figure out how one keeps kosher on the planet (by eating weeds).

* In [[Creator/PoulAnderson Winston P. Sanders]]' novella ''The Word To Space'', the SETI Project finally made contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life. Initially they were ecstatic -- but then they discovered the extraterrestrials were the equivalent of the Jehovah's Witnesses or the Mormons, who saw making contact as a way to spread the Word and send Earth the equivalent of ''The Watchtower'' or ''ComicBook/ChickTracts''. The story dealt with the consequences of this bizarre dogmatic extraterrestrial religion making converts on Earth and the way they ignored all polite Earth requests that we'd quite like to get to know about you, your planet, its people, its science, etc., if you could throttle back on the word of God a bit, please. A Jesuit priest is brought in to consult and sets off a chain of events that results in Holy War at their end and the collapse of their theocracy.[[note]]Enabling the scientists to finally talk about the really interesting stuff. [[/note]]

* ''Rogue Emperor'' by Crawford Kilian features a modern-day sect of religious fundamentalists who take over an alternate Rome at around 100 AD. Being both anti-semitic and not particularly historically literate, they persecute the Jews and also go looking for early Roman Christians -- a highly counterproductive course of action, as the Christians still identify as Jews. While pretending to work for them, the protagonist takes on the assignment of finding the Christians, and tracks down Mark (the gospel writer), who refuses to believe that the cultists would honor him, as they ''murdered his grandchildren''.