History Main / JerkassGods

In real-life mythoi, this trope is often a product of ValuesDissonance and DependingOnTheWriter, as whatever the gods do in their stories is often considered okay in the time period where the stories were written, but not in the present. Also, having different people write and tell different stories and myths about gods means that the deities in question are ''very '' prone to AlternateCharacterInterpretation by whoever is writing the story, because even back then, [[WriterOnBoard people liked to project themselves and their opinions onto characters]], even if the characters are gods. Because of that, mythological characterization and continuity regarding the gods and other mythical figures tends to fluctuate wildly from story to story. Some of these authors and storytellers [[AdaptationalJerkass also made some gods]] grab the JerkassBall from time to time, which eventually spread out among public opinion and turned some deities from being viewed as nice to being seen as evil due to [[{{Flanderization}} people remembering deities more for the bad things they did rather than for their heroic actions]] (the EverybodyHatesHades trope is a good example of that). What was considered okay and acceptable back then isn’t always what is considered okay and acceptable today, because society and its values change over time. Gods and the stories surrounding gods often reflect the cultures and societies that worshipped them. Since civilizations of ancient times or societies of other nations have different values and codes of ethics than the ones we have, then a god who is considered a Jerkass God by one civilization and time period may be viewed as a heroic god instead by another civilization and time period.

* The demigods of ''VideoGame/EldenRing'' are on a spectrum. [[TheAce Godwyn]] and [[NotGrowingUpSucks Miquella]] were the closest to white morality, being beloved by all who knew them and never doing anything questionable we know of. The grayer ones ([[PrinciplesZealot Morgott]], [[GravityMaster Radahn]], [[WalkingWasteland Malenia]], [[{{Lunacy}} Ranni]], [[TheGoodKing Godfrey]], [[spoiler:possibly [[FieryRedhead Radagon]] if he still has free will when trying to prevent the Tarnished from mending the Ring]]) are WellIntentionedExtremist types with many noble attributes who nonetheless still cause tons of collateral damage in pursuit of their goals. Finally the morally black ones are purely power-hungry butchers with no higher goal than personal gain, and are completely unapologetic about it ([[AppendageAssimilation Godrick]], [[SnakesAreSinister Rykard]], [[BloodMagic Mohg]]).
** From a normal human being’s perspective, none of [[spoiler: the [[EldritchAbomination Outer Gods]] seem to have good plans for humanity, despite their BlueAndOrangeMorality: The [[KillItWithFire Frenzied Flame]] wants to [[OmnicidalManiac destroy every living thing]], The [[TheCorruption Scarlet Rot]] wants to [[MakeThemRot spread and corrupt everything]], the [[CombatSadomasochist FormlessMother]] wants her followers to [[HumanSacrifice commit murder to empower themselves and her]], [[DarknessEqualsDeath Destined Death]] is causing a ZombieApocalypse with corrupting Deathroot, and what little we know of the Fire Giant's [[{{Cyclops}} Fell God]] [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast doesn't sound good]]. Even the [[GodOfOrder Greater Will]], the one most widely viewed as conventionally "good", [[HaveYouSeenMyGod abandoned the Lands Between the moment the Shattering started]], leaving humanity to the predations of rampaging demigods fighting for power. As for the [[{{Lunacy}} Dark Moon]]... it may be a case of DarkIsNotEvil, being an EnigmaticEmpoweringEntity that may unintentionally spread AlienKudzu, but is overall benevolent.]]
* ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'':

* The demigods of ''VideoGame/EldenRing'' are on a spectrum. [[TheAce Godwyn]] and [[NotGrowingUpSucks Miquella]] were the closest to white morality, being beloved by all who knew them and never doing anything questionable we know of. The grayer ones ([[PrinciplesZealot Morgott]], [[GravityMaster Radahn]], [[WalkingWasteland Malenia]], [[{{Lunacy}} Ranni]], [[TheGoodKing Godfrey]], [[spoiler:possibly Radagon if he still has free will when trying to prevent the Tarnished from mending the Ring]]) are WellIntentionedExtremist types with many noble attributes who nonetheless still cause tons of collateral damage in pursuit of their goals. Finally the morally black ones are purely power-hungry butchers with no higher goal than personal gain, and are completely unapologetic about it ([[AppendageAssimilation Godrick]], [[SnakesAreSinister Rykard]], [[BloodMagic Mohg]]).
** From a normal human being’s perspective, none of [[spoiler: the [[EldritchAbomination Outer Gods]] seem to have good plans for humanity, despite their BlueAndOrangeMorality: The [[KillItWithFire Frenzied Flame]] wants to [[OmnicidalManiac destroy every living thing]], The [[TheCorruption Scarlet Rot]] wants to [[MakeThemRot spread and corrupt everything]], the [[CombatSadomasochist FormlessMother]] wants her followers to [[HumanSacrifice commit murder to empower themselves and her]], [[DarknessEqualsDeath Destined Death]] is causing a ZombieApocalypse with corrupting Deathroot, and what little we know of the Fire Giant's [[{{Cyclops}} Fell God]] doesn't sound good. Even the [[GodOfOrder Greater Will]], the one most widely viewed as conventionally "good", [[HaveYouSeenMyGod abandoned the Lands Between the moment the Shattering started]], leaving humanity to the predations of rampaging demigods fighting for power. As for the [[{{Lunacy}} Dark Moon]]... it may be a case of DarkIsNotEvil, being an EnigmaticEmpoweringEntity that may unintentionally spread AlienKudzu, but is overall benevolent.]]

** From a normal human being’s perspective, none of [[spoiler: the [[EldritchAbomination Outer Gods]] seem to have good plans for humanity, despite their BlueAndOrangeMorality: The [[KillItWithFire Frenzied Flame]] wants to [[OmnicidalManiac destroy every living thing]], The [[TheCorruption Scarlet Rot]] wants to [[MakeThemRot spread and corrupt everything]], the [[CombatSadomasochist FormlessMother]] wants her followers to [[commit murder to empower themselves and her]], [[DarknessEqualsDeath Destined Death]] is causing a ZombieApocalypse with corrupting Deathroot, and what little we know of the Fire Giant's [[{{Cyclops}} Fell God]] doesn't sound good. Even the [[GodOfOrder Greater Will]], the one most widely viewed as conventionally "good", [[HaveYouSeenMyGod abandoned the Lands Between the moment the Shattering started]], leaving humanity to the predations of rampaging demigods fighting for power. As for the [[{{Lunacy}} Dark Moon]]... it may be a case of DarkIsNotEvil, being an EnigmaticEmpoweringEntity that may unintentionally spread AlienKudzu, but is overall benevolent.]]

* The demigods of ''VideoGame/EldenRing'' are on a spectrum. [[TheAce Godwyn]] and [[NotGrowingUpSucks Miquella]] were the closest to white morality, being beloved by all who knew them and never doing anything questionable we know of. The grayer ones ([[PrinciplesZealot Morgott]], [[GravityMaster Radahn]], [[WalkingWasteland Malenia]], [[{{Lunacy}} Ranni]], [[TheGoodKing Godfrey]], [[spoiler:possibly Radagon if he still has free will when trying to prevent the Tarnished from mending the Ring]]) are WellIntentionedExtremist types with many noble attributes who nonetheless still cause tons of collateral damage in pursuit of their goals. Finally the morally black ones are purely power-hungry butchers with no higher goal than personal gain, and are completely unapologetic about it (Godrick, [[SnakesAreSinister Rykard]], [[BloodMagic Mohg]]).

* ''LightNovel/SoImASpiderSoWhat:''

* In ''LightNovel/TheRisingOfTheShieldHero'', this is the case for the majority of the [[AGodAmI self-proclaimed gods]]. They like to play games with less-advanced worlds, abusing the populace either for their own game or simply amusement. [[spoiler:The final villain is the goddess Medea Pideth Machina, who engineered the Waves as a way of both amusing herself with the suffering of the people and harvesting energy, and (in the web novel) whose fragment in Malty S. Melromarc resulted in her being such a sociopathic villain.]]
* ''LightNovel/SagaOfTanyaTheEvil'' has "Being X", as Tanya calls him; a rather off-put god who is tired of people not being faithful and praising him as often as he'd prefer. Thus, he decides to take the biggest, most staunch atheist he could find and put them through the wringer with the intent of making a believer out of them, reincarnating a JerkAss atheist {{Salaryman}} as a young girl forced to fight in an alternate version of World War I with a weapon that will kill her outright if she doesn't pray to him, though she usually does so in a bored monotone voice to reflect the fact that she is eternally against him in the long run. As such, she still retains her original mindset of seeking to rid the world of Being X's horrid influence, since while Tanya does act devilish, it's a freakin' pat on the back compared to the ruthless influence that Being X exerts on those too weak-willed to resist becoming completely influenced by him.

* ''Manga/ShuumatsuNoWalkureRecordOfRagnarok'' opens with [[AllMythsAreTrue all of the gods]] unanimously voting to KillAllHumans on the basis that we're selfish and wasteful. One of the many problems with this is that the gods themselves [[StrawHypocrite aren't much better]]; an [[SuccubiAndIncubi incubus]] describes them all as [[EvenEvilHasStandards cruel]], ruthless, "self-centered assholes". As the story progresses, however, it's shown that while several of the gods most definitely assholes ([[Myth/ClassicalMythology Zeus, Poseidon]], and [[Myth/NorseMythology Loki]]), several of them are [[AffablyEvil overall decent people who just so happen to be fighting for humanity's extinction]] ([[Myth/HinduMythology Shiva]]), and several are [[TokenGoodTeammate outright fighting to save humanity]] ([[Myth/ClassicalMythology Heracles]] and [[spoiler:[[UsefulNotes/{{Buddhism}} Buddha]]]]).

* The gods in ''VideoGame/PillarsOfEternity'' tend towards this. Even the generally benevolent Eothas ([[GodIsDead while he still lived]]), Hylea and Berath are absolutely ''[[DisproportionateRetribution brutal]]'' if crossed, leaving significant collateral damage in their wake. The rest tend towards sometimes-inscrutable BlueAndOrangeMorality, with special credit going to Skaen, the god of hate, who rewards his followers for petty cruelty and engages more or less routinely in HumanSacrifice, and Woedica, goddess of vengeance, [[spoiler:the Greater Scope Villain who has been devouring unborn souls for power]]. The kicker? [[spoiler:All of the gods were ''man-made'' through animancy. The Engwithans apparently believed that a world run by these was preferable to a world with no gods at all.]]

* The gods of Myth/ClassicalMythology are widely remembered today for being spoiled children with fancy powers at best and total assholes at worst. Part of this is due to [[{{Flanderization}} flanderizing]] their jerk side and ignoring their benevolent side combined with ValuesDissonance. [[BlueAndOrangeMorality They were held to different standards from humans]] and were the [[OmniscientMoralityLicense center of the universe]] instead of humans. The other reason is they often were just massive jerks because they could be. Even the best of them have one or two stories like this (generally)- "The best of them" being (generally) Hades, Persephone, Demeter, Hestia and Athena, (and even then, they had some questionable moments of their own too).
** Athena tended to stay out of the petty squabbles of her family (unless she absolutely needed to get involved for one reason or another) because being the goddess of wisdom, she knew that bullying mortals or other gods was not a good idea. Also, like Hermes, she helps heroes on their journeys by lending them a hand and giving them guidance from time to time. She’s also portrayed as a CoolBigSis to her younger siblings because she often gives them guidance too and if Hera’s not their mother, then Athena will often discreetly protect them from Hera’s [[{{Yandere}} murderous wrath and jealousy]] (Heracles/Hercules being a good example of that, from when Hera wanted him dead and Athena had to step in and take measures to protect him when he was a baby).

* The ''FanFic/BoundDestiniesTrilogy'' has Din as a downplayed example. She's unmistakably on the side of good, but is [[GoodIsNotNice largely condescending and disdainful of most mortals]] and isn't afraid to show it.
* ''FanFic/BringMeToLife'': In chapter 24, Buffy outright declares that all gods and higher powers are "a bunch of selfish dirt-bags who don't care about anyone but themselves," using Glory and Jasmine as examples.

* In ''Fanfic/PokemonTheGreatAdventure'', the Legendary Council seems to be this toward Silver, with Dialga and Palkia hating him and the others basically treating him as a slave and threatening to genocide his people in case of rebellion. The issue is so bad Lugia states it's the main reason the man is DentedIron. On the flip side, said Lugia, Darkrai and some others feel sorry for him and try to alleviate his task.

* Maledict and Allysion in ''FanFic/SonicXDarkChaos'' fit this to a tee. One of them is {{Satan}}, the other is CrystalDragonJesus; both of them are cruel, manipulative, sadistic, genocidal maniacs with a [[FauxAffablyEvil thin veneer]] of [[WellIntentionedExtremist good intentions]].

* ''Wiki/SCPFoundation:'' PlayedForLaughs by [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1541 SCP-1541]], an ancient, forgotten deity that harassed the descendants of its followers. Via text message. While drunk.

* The [[NatureSpirit Gods of the Mountain]] in the ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure'' SpinOff ''Manga/ThusSpokeKishibeRohan''. They created the Millionaire Village, a cursed land in which those who enter have to follow unreasonably strict etiquette guidelines. Those who succeed become rich while those who fail [[spoiler: [[DisproportionateRetribution lose a loved one for every rule they break]]. Rohan and his editor Izumi enter, believing it to be an ordinary village, and Izumi unknowingly breaks three obscure rules so the gods kill her mother, fiance, and the baby bird she encountered in the beginning. When Rohan uses his [[GuardianEntity Stand]] on the CreepyChild working for them to get answers, they give Izumi a heart attack and he has to cheat at their game to get them to undo everything.]]

** Evil God "D" is [[ItsAllAboutMe completely self-centered]] and watches Kumoko's desperate attempts to survive for her own amusement. If Kumoko tries to ignore or thinks badly of her, "D" responds with threats of annihilation or "punishment" consisting of debilitating agony. Worst of all, she created [[spoiler:Kumoko by attaching a piece of her soul and some shoddily modified memories to a house spider]]. "D" expected [[spoiler:Kumoko]], who was essentially her ''child'', would die quickly and confuse the other gods so "D" could continue slacking off.
*** Her status is cemented when it's revealed "D" [[spoiler:created the System not to save the world but to ''amuse'' herself by watching the mortals kill one another in an interesting way, and that it's heavily implied she could have come up with a much less bloody way if she actually cared]]. And then she got ''bored'' and left the whole thing to spiral into disaster.

* In the Franchise/{{Nasuverse}}, pretty much all the gods were assholes, in accordance with their mythological portrayals. [[VisualNovel/FateStayNight Rider's]] backstory illustrates this quite clearly; [[spoiler:she is actually Medusa, and she and her sisters were born out of the wishes of mankind for deities who ''weren't'' complete dicks. The Greek gods became jealous of them and conspired to turn their worshipers against them, which led to Medusa becoming a monster.]] [[DeathOfTheOldGods The gods aren't around anymore though]], which is probably for the best. Played with in ''VideoGame/FateGrandOrder'', which gets to showcase some of these divinities in action and shows that, while they can certainly be dicks, many of them run [[BlueAndOrangeMorality on a Divine mentality that doesn't quite mesh with human ideals]] [[spoiler:like what happens to Artoria Pendragon after she became the Goddess Rhongomyniad in the Sixth Singularity]], and they can be just as, well, ''human'' as anyone else given time [[spoiler:like what happens to Ishtar, Ereshkigal, and Quetzalcoatl in the Seventh Singularity]].

* Zeus in {{Creator/Marvel}}'s ''ComicBook/TheIncredibleHercules'' justifies this by claiming that gods ''need'' to be jerks so that humans have someone to blame when everything seems to be going wrong.
** Stretched to unsurprisingly baleful extremes with his wife Hera, who, after ascending Olympus's throne, went so far as to attempt to erase reality through a washover of antimatter saving only those most faithful to her religion and selfish whims. Even then she was a cruel, abusive, and self-obsessed paranoiac who treated her own flesh & blood kids like throw rugs whenever she'd throw a hissy fit.

* In ''Fanfic/EntirelyOutOfSpite'', people aren't that surprised when Ajax starts praying Rex Lapis for help instead of the Tsaritsa, in spite of being one of her higher-ranked followers since she's more feared than loved by her subjects. Indeed, Zhongli outright suspects she doesn't ''care'' about Ajax suffering from Abyssal Taint and threatening to turn in an AxeCrazy BloodKnight when she could easily restore his sanity.
** For all he's presented as a much more benevolent and palatable option, Rex Lapis is nonetheless giddy about stealing one of the Tsaritsa's mortal followers to be turned in his devoted priest, claiming she's to blame because she "dangled" the mortal in front of a dragon greedy for treasure and pretty things.

* [[spoiler:Notch]] in ''[[http://kleinerkiller.deviantart.com/gallery/41037509 Yognapped]]'' [[spoiler:murders Herobrine and Rana, his siblings, with very little justification]]. To make it worse, nobody finds out for several eons, over which he's lovingly worshipped and [[spoiler:Herobrine and Rana are turned into urban legends or forgotten, respectively.]]

*** Athena tended to stay out of the petty squabbles of her family (unless she absolutely needed to get involved for one reason or another) because being the goddess of wisdom, she knew that bullying mortals or other gods was not a good idea. Also, like Hermes, she helps heroes on their journeys by lending them a hand and giving them guidance from time to time. She’s also portrayed as a CoolBigSis to her younger siblings because she often gives them guidance too and if Hera’s not their mother, then Athena will often discreetly protect them from Hera’s [[{{Yandere}} murderous wrath and jealousy]] (Heracles/Hercules being a good example of that, from when Hera wanted him dead and Athena had to step in and take measures to protect him when he was a baby).
*** Hades was feared as the God of the Dead and Lord of the Underworld and he was someone even other Gods feared crossing. However, he was not a malevolent God (despite commonly portrayed as such in many modern media). He was actually fair and lawful and he didn’t mess with mortals for his own amusement. Contrary to the Disney movie, Hades wasn’t an enemy of Hercules. In fact he allowed Hercules to fight Cerberus on the condition that Hercules didn’t seriously hurt his beloved dog. The worst thing Hades did was abduct Persephone. However even that is subject to interpretation and even then Hades and Persephone have one of the happiest and healthiest marriages with both loving each other and staying faithful to each other.
*** Demeter is also a good[[note]]if wrathful--recall the story of Persephone[[/note]] mother and even acted as a nanny at one point to a mortal baby. Not to mention that even Demeter has her bad side too - most of which happened when she was searching for Persephone. Other times, her wrath was incurred more by people [[IShallTauntYou provoking]] it or being a jerkass first.
*** Hestia was the most peaceful and is hardly involved in any myths probably because non-jackass gods are less interesting (on the flip side, she probably was the most trusted and prayed-to of all the Olympians--the hearth and family are kind of a big deal).

* ''Manga/ShuumatsuNoWalkureRecordOfRagnarok'' opens with [[AllMythsAreTrue all of the gods]] unanimously voting to KillAllHumans on the basis that we're selfish and wasteful. One of the many problems with this is that the gods themselves [[StrawHypocrite aren't much better]]; an [[HornyDevils incubus]] describes them all as [[EvenEvilHasStandards cruel]], ruthless, "self-centered assholes". As the story progresses, however, it's shown that while several of the gods most definitely assholes ([[Myth/ClassicalMythology Zeus, Poseidon]], and [[Myth/NorseMythology Loki]]), several of them are [[AffablyEvil overall decent people who just so happen to be fighting for humanity's extinction]] ([[Myth/HinduMythology Shiva]]), and several are [[TokenGoodTeammate outright fighting to save humanity]] ([[Myth/ClassicalMythology Heracles]] and [[spoiler:[[UsefulNotes/{{Buddhism}} Buddha]]]]).

* The gods of Myth/ClassicalMythology are widely remembered today for being spoiled children with fancy powers at best and total assholes at worst. Part of this is due to [[{{Flanderization}} flanderizing]] their jerk side and ignoring their benevolent side combined with ValuesDissonance. [[BlueAndOrangeMorality They were held to different standards from humans]] and were the [[OmniscientMoralityLicense center of the universe]] instead of humans. The other reason is they often were just massive jerks because they could be. Even the best of them have one or two stories like this (generally).
** "The best of them" being (generally) Hades, Persephone, Demeter, Hestia and Athena, (and even then, they had some questionable moments of their own too).

*** Persephone is shown to be a very competent and strong Queen of the Underworld but like her husband is very fair and generally is a kind-hearted Goddess. And as mentioned above she and Hades (despite the rocky start) adore each other and have the happiest and most loving marriage in the pantheon.

** Also worth a mention is Ares. Even back then, Greek scholars wrote about how men run in terror from this bloodthirsty god of war. However, Ares's bloodlust only showed during wartime, he has never been portrayed as a rapist and was always depicted as a PapaBear, unlike his father Zeus. He was portrayed more positively by the Romans however, due to them having a stronger military tradition than the Greeks. In the Iliad, the phrase Homer uses to refer to Ares is ''kukleion athanaton'': Evil Undying.

* While the gods of ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'' are, for the most part, [[GodIsGood good]], they've also done some extremely questionable things in the past. It's [[DiscussedTrope discussed]] particularly in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker''. After [[BigBad Ganondorf's]] first defeat at the hands of [[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime the Hero of Time]], he eventually managed to return to the world and attacked again. Since Link wasn't around to assist, the denizens of Hyrule desperately prayed to the gods in a bid to save them--and the gods responded by choosing a few people to escape the land's highest mountains, then sending a massive rainstorm to [[KillEmAll drown all the rest]]. Ganondorf outright points out that "Your gods ''destroyed you!''", and it's hard to argue with that logic--civilization is all but dead, as there are only a few settlements left on the Great Sea, and they seem to have very little contact with each other. It's somewhat [[JustifiedTrope justified]] with the reveal that these gods [[GodNeedsPrayerBadly require prayers to function]], but even so, you'd think all-powerful deities would be able to devise a solution beyond "Drown 95% of the world's population."

*** Another example: Thor returns from Jotunheim after fighting giants, and needs to cross a river. Odin disguises himself as an old man and refuses to take him across (note that Thor is Odin's son). While Thor boasts about slaying giants and protecting Midgard, Odin brags about how many women he had sex with in the meantime. Eventually Thor gets tired of it and leaves.

*** Another example: Thor returns from Jotunheim after fighting giants, and needs to cross a river. Odin disguises himself as an old man and refuses to take him across. While Thor boasts about slaying giants and protecting Midgard, Odin brags about how many women he had sex with in the meantime. Eventually Thor gets tired of it and leaves.

** By ''Videogame/GodOfWarPS4'', Kratos has nothing but contempt and mistrust for all gods. He believes they are all monsters who do nothing but cause misery for mortals. He is most ashamed of himself and what he did with his power when he was a god. This strains his relationship with his son Atreus because he has tried to keep Atreus' heritage hidden from him. It doesn't help that the Norse gods don't seem to be any better than the Olympians. Just about every story Mimir shares can be summed up as "Odin and/or Thor is a jerk."