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God: Anyway, I'm here to offer you a job.
Bruce: J-Job, what job?
God: My job. You think you can do better, so here's your chance. When you leave this building, you will be endowed with all of my powers.
Bruce: ...Sure. Whatever you say, pal.
[Bruce rushes out, walking on water in the process]

Bruce Almighty is a 2003 comedy film directed by Tom Shadyac and starring Jim Carrey, along with Morgan Freeman, Jennifer Aniston, and Steve Carell.

Bruce Nolan (Carrey) is a down-on-his-luck television reporter in Buffalo, New York. After being turned down for a job as an anchorman, he complains to God (Freeman) that He isn't doing His job the right way... so God gives Bruce His powers to see what he can do with them.

Though the film received mixed reviews, it is currently Carrey's highest-grossing film, picking up almost half a billion dollars worldwide. It received a sequel, Evan Almighty, with Steve Carell's Evan Baxter (a supporting character from this film) as the lead.


"Trope Me, O Mighty Troper":

  • 555: Averted in the initial theatrical release, but played straight for the home versions because, as explained in the commentary, the phone number wasn't owned by the studio and people who owned the same number across the U.S. were getting plagued with phone calls.
    • By sheer coincidence, the original phone number in the movie release was also the number to two different churches on opposite sides of the United States. (And the pastor at one of those churches was actually named Bruce.)
    • Weirdly, it's not a valid phone number in area code 716, where the film takes place.
    • In the home release, the pager says 555-0123, but God still says the original number when reading the location.
  • AB Negative: Grace proudly declares herself to be AB+.
    Grace: I've got a very rare blood type. I'm AB positive.
    Bruce: Well, I'm IB positive—I be positive they ain't touching me with no needle.
    • This turns out to be a Chekhov's Gun when Bruce is nearly killed by a truck near the end of the film and ends up having gotten a blood transfusion while he was out. Guess what his blood type is?
    • Incidentally this is literally the worst blood type to use for this plot. AB positive is the one blood type for which any blood will do.
  • Actually Pretty Funny: God, recounting Bruce's breakdown of blasphemies earlier on.
    God: [quoting Bruce] "The gloves are off, God!" "God has taken my bird and my bush!" "God is a mean kid with a magnifying glass! Smite Me, O Mighty Smiter Now, I'm not much for blaspheming, but that last one made me laugh."
  • All Wishes Granted: Bruce is put in charge of the prayers of Buffalo, but within a few minutes of starting he decides it's too much work, and so just decides to grant every single one of them.
  • The Alleged Car: Bruce's old, beat-up two-door coupe before using his divine powers to give it a Cool Car upgrade.
  • Almighty Janitor:
    • God appears to Bruce as a janitor... played by Morgan Freeman.
    • This trope was also illustrated by a line used in one of the trailers: "This summer, the guy next door gets to become the Man Upstairs."
  • Alpha Bitch: Susan Ortega. Albeit a subtler-than-average example.
  • Ambulance Chaser: One deleted scene shows Bruce answering some peoples' prayers when he first logs on to Yahweh!. One of them is a woman in financial trouble slipping in a puddle of spilt milk. Before she can get up, a personal injury lawyer (played by Stanley Kamel) instantly shows up.
  • An Aesop:
    • If you're ever having a bad day, take a look around; you might just have it better than you think.
    • Having absolute power doesn't make you a better person, it's how you use it.
    • Instead of wishing for a better lot in life, every person has the power to better the lives of themselves and those around them, no divine intervention necessary:
      God: Parting a soup is not a miracle, Bruce, it's a magic trick. A single mom working two jobs and still finds time to take her kid to soccer practice, that's a miracle. A teenager who says 'no' to drugs and 'yes' to an education, that's a miracle. People want me to do everything for them, and what they don't realize is they have the power. You want to see a miracle, son? Be the miracle.
  • And I'm the Queen of Sheba: After Bruce's meeting with God, he says to himself, "If that was God, then I'm Clint Eastwood!" He pretty quickly realises he shouldn't have said that.
  • Answers to the Name of God:
    Grace: "Oh my God."
    Bruce: "You can call me Bruce."
  • Answer to Prayers: After God grants Bruce his powers, Bruce starts receiving prayers from the people around the world. God tells him he needs to start answering them. Bruce, not thinking the situation through, decides to grant EVERYONE'S prayers, without regard to consequences. This results in, among other things, EVERYONE winning the lottery, and a woman losing substantial weight on the "Krispy Kreme" diet.
  • Aroused by Their Voice: When Bruce comes home after getting the powers, he makes his voice much more...pleasurable.
  • Artistic License – Geography: After Bruce moves the moon, he sees a news report saying the unusual lunar activity has caused a tsunami in Kitamoto City, Japan. Kitamoto is an actual city slightly inland from Tokyo. In order for a tsunami to hit Kitamoto, it would have to either go through Tokyo or take out 3/4 of that stretch of the mainland on the other side. So it's unlikely that Kitamoto would be singled out in a news report.
  • Ass Shove: What Bruce uses to get revenge on a street thug who beat him up earlier.
    Bruce: Hey there, little anal-dwelling Butt-Monkey. Time for you to go home little buddy!
  • Audience Surrogate: Bruce, since most anyone has had points in their lives where they failed to see what they truly have, or wished that God would essentially "do His job better".
  • Bait-and-Switch: What the entire scene with the Blue Palm appears to be for Grace.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For:
    • The main lesson Bruce is set to learn. He also learns he can't give everyone what they wish for when he starts answering prayers with a unilateral "yes."
    • Invoked directly by Bruce's reflection after he scoffs, "If that was God, then I'm Clint Eastwood!"
      Clint-esque reflection: Be careful what you wish for...punk.
  • Being God Is Hard: The movie explores this trope in detail, with God giving a mere mortal (Bruce) all his powers for a short time, to teach him a few things. Bruce at first thinks he can do a better job than God, but has trouble even dealing with prayers from his own neighborhood, let alone the entire world. His attempt to make everyone happy (and deal with his workload) by just giving a blanket "yes" to every request results in everyone winning the lottery, which causes rioting. And most importantly, he can't just make people be happy because he has to abide by free will.
    Bruce: How do you make someone love you without affecting free will?
    God: (scoffs) Welcome to My World, son. If you have an answer to that, let me know.
  • Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: In a deleted scene, Bruce goes skydiving, and wills his parachute to fail. He saves himself by landing on Bigfoot!
  • Bigger Is Better in Bed: One deleted scene shows Bruce answering more prayers directly. One of them is a man wishing "Please make me bigger". Cut to him looking down his trousers, smiling.
  • Big Honking Traffic Jam: Bruce seems to get stuck in a loud, honking traffic jam during his commute almost every day.
  • Black Comedy: Bruce uses his powers to make a police dog discover the corpse of Jimmy Hoffa, who disappeared in 1975, buried under the ground; he uses this as an exclusive report to get his job back.
  • Blatant Lies: When Bruce rather cruelly and selfishly leads Grace on and crushes her hopes at the dinner at the Blue Palm, she very clearly fakes enthusiasm for him and tells him that nothing's wrong with her when he asks. He's too self-absorbed to figure it out though.
  • Body Horror: Played for Laughs twice.
    • First, during the How Many Fingers? scene, Bruce tries to trick God by continuously changing the number of fingers. God eventually says "seven", and when Bruce holds up one hand in triumph... only to find that God is right, to his horror.
    • Second, the literal Butt-Monkey scene - complete with the monkey "going home."
  • Bookends: The movie begins and ends with Bruce doing field reporting. Significant since his opening line is "God, why do you hate me?", whereas the ending is him accepting the job happily and being who he is.
  • Breast Expansion: The morning after Bruce first gets his powers, his girlfriend Grace wakes up to find her breasts have grown bigger. Coincidence?
  • Brick Joke: Using his powers, Bruce is able to instantly train his dog Sam to use a human toilet, which stops him urinating behind the sofa. Later in the film, Grace walks into the toilet to find Sam sitting on it, reading a newspaper.
    • As it turns out, Bruce really was free on "the 7th at 7" to help God with the mops.
  • Butt-Monkey: Although literally in this case. See Ass Shove above.
    • Bruce himself is pretty prone to self sabotage.
  • The Cameo: Tony Bennett As Himself singing "If I Ruled the World" at the Blue Palm during Bruce and Grace's date. Bruce gestures to him at one point and he gestures back, implying that Bruce arranged for him to be there somehow.
  • Captain Obvious: "It's a funny thing about pleasure, it can be quite pleasurable!" He was trying to work the word "pleasure" in as much as possible.
  • Cardboard Box of Unemployment: Twice:
    • Reporter Bruce goes ballistic during a live TV broadcast when he finds out his co-worker, Evan, was promoted to the position Bruce wanted. The next scene shows Bruce fired from his job; literally tossed out of the WKBW-TV 7 building, followed by security throwing a bankers box full of his personal items at his junk.
    • Later on Bruce uses his newfound divine powers to win back his old job, then to cause Evan to have a similar on-air breakdown. Bruce is promoted to Evan's position, and though he is initially happy at the downfall of his rival he has a change of heart after he sees Evan clearing out his office with a similar bankers box. (Bruce then offers Evan his job back.)
  • Catchphrase: Bruce's "It's gooooood." Also, "B-E-A-utiful!"
  • Central Theme: Happiness and what that actually entails as opposed to what we think it should be. Using his powers to get the things he wants doesn't make Bruce happy like he thought it would, especially when his self-centered attitude about it all drives Grace away from him when she's had enough of his behavior. Not only, but using his powers to give everyone else what "they wanted" ends up causing more problems than it actually fixes, teaching Bruce that depending on God to just give us what we want won't actually make our lives as meaningful or full as we think it would.
    Bruce: (referring to the prayers) There were so many...I just gave them all what they want...
  • Chekhov's Gun: Bruce's dog Sam always starts peeing next to the same recliner. Bruce is eventually able to successfully potty-train him by taking that recliner outside and having him pee there before eventually removing it without Sam noticing.
  • Clapper Gag: God uses his powers to this effect to show off to Bruce and to close the movie at the end. Bruce later uses his own powers to turn the lights off in his apartment before sex, and again at the news station during a transformer failure that he caused by bringing down a meteor.
  • Cold Turkeys Are Everywhere: Played with. After Grace leaves Bruce, she sees signs everywhere reminding her of how much Bruce loved her. However, with Bruce being God, the signs were created by him as a means of trying to win her back.
  • Cool Car: After getting his God powers, Bruce decides to transform his beat-up old Datsun 280Z into a Saleen S7. Immediately some kids walk up to his car and give him compliments about it.
  • Comedic Underwear Exposure: After getting his powers, Bruce makes a pretty girl on the street's skirt fly up.
  • Comes Great Responsibility: A big part of the film is Bruce learning not to use his new powers to be a selfish dick and to help people instead (and then learning to use his powers to help people more responsibly.)
  • Cosmic Plaything: How Bruce treats just about everyone around him once he's endowed with God-like powers, though whether this results in them benefiting note  or suffering note  depends entirely on how much he likes them.
  • Cue the Flying Pigs: The scene where Bruce, newly endowed with God's powers, confronts the thugs who'd beaten him up earlier, demanding an apology.
    Thug: Okay, cool, man, me and the homies'll apologize the day a monkey comes out of my butt; then you'll get your "sorry".
    Bruce: [laughs] What a coincidence! Because that's today!
    [On cue, a monkey emerges from the thug's butt]
  • Curse Cut Short: "Holy sh... cow."
    • Bruce is cut off by his girlfriend while trying to explain to a kid that saying ass is OK when referring to a donkey.
    Kid: Hey, you said ass!
    Bruce: Yeah, but it's OK if I'm talking about a donkey. I didn't say "hole". If I said ass-
    Grace: Oh wai-wait! OK, you know what honey, let's go.
  • Deity of Human Origin: Bruce is a perfectly normal human before God gives him his powers.
  • Destructo-Nookie: The morning after Bruce's "heavenly" sex with Grace, we cut to him laid in bed, with the mattress cover on the floor, the mattress itself dislodged, the pillows stuffed down the back of the bed, and the duvet sloppily placed to cover Bruce's groin.
  • Didn't Think This Through: Much of the third act happens because Bruce failed to consider what might result from his irresponsible use of his divine powers. Pulling the moon closer to the earth plays havoc with the tides, a meteor crash messes up the power grids, all the people who won the lottery only make seventeen dollars a piece and start rioting over it, and making the Sabres win the Stanley Cup adds to the rioting by causing a lot of crazed sports fans to go nuts. Nice going, Bruce.
  • Disproportionate Retribution:
    • Due to everybody winning the lottery jackpot, they only get $17 each. They start a riot over this.
    • The news crew that laugh at Bruce just before his return to glory end up busted with a comical amount of illegal drugs in their van. Leading to what must have been a serious set of sentences for all of them, just for laughing at a disgraced reporter.
    • How dare Evan Baxter be a better news reporter than Bruce! Bruce completely embarrasses him on live TV, and (in a deleted scene) gives him a nosebleed and lights him on fire. Twice. Of course, considering that Bruce was omnipotent and could literally do anything to them, you could say that they got off lightly. A minute or two of unbearable pain from having a monkey force itself in and out of your ass, or a life sentence for drug possession, is a lot better than the eternity of hell that Bruce could have given them.
  • Divine Assistance: The entire premise of the movie. Even as God, Bruce still needed help from the original.
  • Divine Date: Bruce and Grace's relationship qualifies as this, at least when he has God's powers.
  • Divine Race Lift: God is played by Morgan Freeman. He's also a homeless white man.
  • Don't Make Me Destroy You: Bruce tries this with God by warning him to back off after making two extra fingers briefly appear on Bruce's hand. God calls his bluff.
    God: You haven't won a fight since the fifth grade, and that was against a girl.
    Bruce: Yeah, but she was huge! She had been held back...
    God: ...And the sun was in your eyes. Oh, the ego.
  • Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: A very downplayed example, yet an example nonetheless. Susan kisses Bruce without his consent, and it's obvious from his reaction and dialogue later he didn't want it. Yet the movie still acts like she did nothing wrong and Grace is mad at him for "cheating" on her even though it's obvious he didn't want it (and he himself even points this out, to no avail).
  • Drama-Preserving Handicap: Most of the difficulties that Bruce encounters could have been solved if he did not have to obey the two rules, that he can't reveal he's God ("Trust me, you don't want that kind of attention") and that Bruce cannot mess with free will. Justified as part of God's lesson He's imparting on Bruce, that there's more to solving problems in life than simple cosmic power.
  • Dramatic Shattering: Bruce jokes while driving after his meeting with God that "If that was God, then I'm Clint Eastwood!" Immediately after he says that, the rear window smashes.
  • Dub Name Change: The Italian version is called "Una Settimana da Dio" (can translate as either "A Godly Week" or "A Week as God").
  • Dude, Not Funny!: In-Universe example. When Bruce appears on the peak of Mount Everest, God makes a joke that makes Bruce think he's dead. He isn't, God is just messing with him. Bruce's response is this trope.
  • Empathic Environment: When Bruce is at his lowest ebb, he's soaked to the skin in torrential rain, an external representation of how bad he feels inside.
  • Enslaved Tongue: Bruce uses his god-powers to make Evan speak gibberish during a live newscast.
  • Establishing Character Moment: When God and Bruce first meet, God turns on the lights just by clapping, then tells Bruce the lights aren't sound-activated by clapping some more. Not only does it clarify his supernatural abilities, but that he practices restraint with them.
  • Ethereal White Dress: God is depicted in a stark white suit.
  • Everybody Helps Outdenouement: At the end of the movie, decides the mundane approach, creativity, and willingness to work are the solutions to his problems, instead of working miracles. Instead of doing it all alone, he is happily assisted by Aniston's characters and many others from throughout the film.
  • Everything but the Girl: Bruce actually already has the girl, but his arrogant behavior while he has his powers causes Grace to leave him. He then discovers that pretty much the only thing his near-omnipotence can't do is get her back, since he can't mess with free will, so no forcing her to love him, and all the other stuff he does just freaks her out.
  • Face Palm: Grace does this after seeing Bruce's live broadcast incident, as she exclaims "Oh my god,"
  • Fist Pump: Bruce ends his disastrous Maid of the Mist report by pumping his fist and saying, "Back to you, fuckers!" In a cable TV edit only, because on VHS and DVD, Bruce gives us the finger.
  • Flipping the Bird:
    • "Do you like jazz, Evan?"
    • "Back to you, fuckers!"
  • Flowers of Romance: After testing out his new, near-infinite Godly Powers, Bruce uses them to create a new breed of flowers, in order to make up with his girlfriend after an argument. Heavenly coitus ensues.
  • Forced Orgasm: Bruce uses his powers to make Grace have a spontaneous orgasm.
  • Forceful Kiss: How Susan reveals to Bruce that she has feelings for him. Unfortunately, Grace was watching.
  • Foreshadowing: Bruce is driving along by the lake on the night he is fired, and he has an accident by driving into a lamppost. At the end of the film, he's walking by the same lake in torrential rain and is involved in another accident where he gets hit by a truck.
  • A Form You Are Comfortable With: When Bruce decides to answer people's prayers, he tries to make the process into something tangible. File cabinets prove unsightly and post-it notes clutter everything, so he settles on using email to answer them all.
  • Freeze-Frame Bonus: If you watch the screen frame-by-frame when Bruce is downloading the prayers, you will notice that the list repeats itself periodically. You'll also find a very weird one... "RE: Bra For My Sports Car"... and one that is not so funny... "RE: Mommy And Daddy Not Fight".
  • Freudian Slip: Bruce, after Grace has made him breakfast, and says that her breasts have gotten bigger.
    Bruce: Listen, I uh, have to go. But this has been the breast bek... breast... thank you.
  • Funny Spoon: "Excuse me, I need a spooo-ulgh!" [a spoon comes out of his mouth]
  • Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul: Bruce tries this on Grace after she leaves him, before remembering he can't affect free will.
  • Gigantic Moon: Bruce invokes this, albeit on a smaller scale, when he pulls the moon closer to Earth for his and Grace's romantic night.
  • A God Am I: The God job quickly goes to Bruce's head, with him deciding anything he did was justified.
  • God for a Day: The plot, basically, is Bruce taking God's job and powers for a while. Some foreign translations even retitle the film along the lines of "A Week as God" (even though strictly, neither this title nor the trope name is completely accurate, as Bruce has God's powers for an amount of time that is unspecified beyond the fact that he starts answering prayers about one week in).
  • God in Human Form: God obviously, but Bruce technically counts too.
  • God's Hands Are Tied: God lets Bruce do anything except interfere with free will, and tell people he has God's powers. It's likely God Himself can interfere with free will, but he doesn't because that would negate the purpose of free will in the first place. At the very least, when Bruce tries it later in the film, it doesn't work, so even if God can do it, He apparently didn't give that ability to Bruce.
    God: You can't mess with free will.
    Bruce: Can I ask why?
    God: Yes, you can! That's the beauty of it!
  • God Is Good: How God is conceptualized; Bruce thinks he can do a better job running the world than God, and he's wrong.
  • God Test: Bruce tries to catch God with a How Many Fingers? test. He cheats. So does God.
  • Good-Times Montage: The film has three:
    • The first comes right after Bruce learns he really does have his powers, where he frolics through Buffalo, bursting a fire hydrant and lifting a woman's dress by blowing wind.
    • The second comes after Bruce gets his job back, and he uses his powers to create lots of amazing news stories.
    • The third is when Bruce learns to get things done and help others without using divine powers.
  • Grand Romantic Gesture: Bruce literally re-arranges the night sky to seduce his girlfriend. Later, when she leaves him, Bruce creates many signs of his love to try and win her back.
  • Grandpa God: Instead of the normally long beard and hair that the image invokes, God here just has a tightly trimmed goatee and crew cut.
  • Greasy Spoon: The diner where Bruce realizes God really did make him almighty, though it's a fair bit cleaner than most examples.
  • Groin Attack: After Bruce gets fired and literally thrown out of the WKBW-TV 7 building, a security guard tosses a box of Bruce's personal effects after him. It lands directly on his groin.
  • Heaven Above:
    • Bruce starts his journey with God by cursing and yelling at the sky as if God's hiding behind a cloud. When He does meet Bruce, he does so by climbing down a ladder (implied to go directly into Paradise) and then teleporting the two to Mt. Everest, which is so high up Bruce thinks he's died and gone to Heaven. When he does die and briefly go to Heaven in the third act, the camera rapidly zooms up and away from Bruce's body. When he's revived, the camera rapidly zooms in and down onto Bruce's face.
    • When Bruce begs God not to leave him, he appeals to a need for answers. Morgan Freeman's God laughs and says that the problem with humanity is that they keep looking "up." Up here seems to refer to the divine plan for each person that only God can know, meaning God is saying to focus on what is rather than what should be.
  • Heroic BSoD: Bruce experiences one of these during a live report after finding out that Evan beat him to the anchorman's job, soon resulting in Bruce losing his own job.
    • Bruce gets another one towards the end when he hears Grace's prayers. That she wants to forget about Bruce and move on.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard:
    • Bruce only gets beaten up by the thugs because after he told them to go away, he said "Yeah, you'd better keep walking." If he had just kept his mouth shut, he probably wouldn't have got beaten up.
    • Later, Bruce finally wins his coveted anchor promotion, but isn't even able to enjoy it for a second because of the consequences of his own powers. The studio keeps losing power because of the meteor strike he inflicted, and he ends up getting cut off by a field reporter covering the riots that have happened because of his actions.
  • Home Porn Movie: The unseen photo from Bruce and Grace's weekend at the lake, where she's said to be "perky".
  • Holy Backlight: Bruce uses his powers to give Grace a series of extremely powerful orgasms, followed by him having "Heavenly" sex with her. While this is happening, he causes the bathroom and bedroom lights to get extremely bright and flicker, bathing them in a white light.
  • Hydrant Geyser: As Bruce walks gleefully through Buffalo, testing out his powers, he points a finger at a fire hydrant, causing this.
  • Identification by Dental Records: When Jimmy Hoffa's body is discovered, Bruce says the procedures to confirm his identity will be just a formality because he happened to be buried with his dental records.
  • Immodest Orgasm: One of Bruce's first divine acts entails, ah, satisfying his girlfriend Grace.
  • Invocation: Being near-omnipotent, Bruce needs only to will something to happen, but he quite often says "magic words" when he uses his powers, either just for fun, or from the sheer manly thrill that comes from, say, making your girlfriend orgasm whenever you say a certain word.
  • Innocently Insensitive: Bruce himself actually ruins the dinner at the Blue Palm for Grace, even though he doesn't realize he's doing it. After treating her very well lately and then setting up what appears to be a very romantic dinner at a luxurious restaurant, you can't really blame her and her sister for thinking Bruce may be about to propose to her, especially when he gets down on his knees in front of her, holds her hand...and proudly declares he's an anchor now and that's why he has been doing everything as of late. The disappointment in Grace's face and her voice is almost crushing.
  • Ironic Echo: "I hear they stockpile that stuff in a warehouse somewhere."
    Bruce: He could fix my life in five minutes if he wanted to. invokedBut he'd rather burn off my feelers and watch me squirm.
    God: You can fix everything in five minutes if you need to.
    • Bruce ends up needing to.
  • It's All About Me: The reason God figures this particular man needs a personal confrontation. Grace even tells Bruce this during their argument.
    Bruce: Don't make this about you.
    Grace: About me?! How can I make this about me? It's about you! It's always about you!
    Bruce: Perfect! Perfect! I'll have the worst day of my life, with a side order of guilt, please!
  • I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Bruce at the end of the movie.
    • Grace. She stuck by Bruce even though he doesn't seem to appreciate his life and always wants more. She prays every night to help Bruce. In the end, Bruce broke her heart for the last time, but she still loves him and prays to God to remove those feelings.
  • Jerkass Gods: Bruce, to an extent. Everything he does is for his own benefit, or occasionally, for Grace, in the form of some spontaneous orgasms or a lavish house to live in, though even those could arguably also be for his own pleasure. In fairness to him though, he doesn't actively try to cause people to suffer most of the time. Most of the suffering he causes is simply out of negligence, and even with Evan and the thugs, he didn't cause them any permanent damage. The only people he intentionally caused long-term harm to were the reporters he got busted for drug possession.
    • God himself too. He gave Bruce his powers, allowing thousands of people to suffer at his hands. He also tends to jerk Bruce around a lot. Not only with the extending drawer throwing him about, but also in a deleted scene where he talks to Bruce at the same time as he's talking to Grace, for seemingly no other reason than to make it more awkward for him. And then there's bullying Evan in the sequel.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Bruce becomes one after his Character Development. He's a bit of a jerk at the start and has a big It's All About Me attitude, but he does want his life to go right and he does love Grace. Eventually his goodness shows through in the third act, when he helps a man push his broken-down car, resigning the anchor position to give it to Evan, and offering him sincere congratulations in the process, much to Evan's surprise. And of course, his I Want My Beloved to Be Happy moment.
  • Jizzed in My Pants: Bruce uses his powers to make his voice have this effect on Grace. She's not complaining.
  • Just Woke Up That Way: Grace with her new boobs.
  • Key Confusion: After angering a gang harassing a homeless man, Bruce runs to his car but ends up slowly trying to find the correct key which gives time for his enemies to catch up and tackle him to the ground.
  • Kick the Dog:
    • The thugs harass the homeless guy, beat up Bruce for telling them to go away, then smash his car window and scratch "Hero" on the door.
    • Although Evan earning Bruce's coveted promotion to anchor can be seen as just a case of him being more qualified, he does invoke this by deliberately plagiarizing Bruce's story about the giant cookie and his send-off, charming everyone in the studio when Bruce just got made fun of for it earlier (including by him).
  • Kick The Son Of A Bitch: Arguably Bruce using his powers to screw up Evan's first bulletin as anchorman alongside Susan. Bruce most likely sees Evan as such due to Evan plagiarizing part of his story earlier.
  • Lampshade Hanging: "Cue the cheesy inspirational music!"
  • Large Ham: "ERRRROOOOOODIIIIIING!!!" Yeah... let's just say that Jim Carrey was not afraid to unleash the hog in this one. Which is hardly surprising...
    • "I am Bruce Almighty! My will be done!"
    • "It's a funny thing about pleasure. It can be quite...PLEASURABLE!"
    • "Hi ho Silver, away!"
    • "B-E-A-utiful."
  • Let's See YOU Do Better!: Basically what God says to Bruce as He gives him His powers.
  • Light Is Not Good: Bruce drops to his knees in pouring rain while on a road, and is suddenly bathed in white light. He has an Oh, Crap! when he realizes it's a truck headed straight for him.
  • Loophole Abuse: God tells Bruce that he's unable to affect free will. Apparently, this only applies to humans though, because Bruce is seen being able to directly control the behavior of animals throughout the movie, such as getting his dog to potty-train himself and having a formation of birds spell out "CALL HIM" to Grace in the sky. It's also demonstrated that while he can't affect someone's mind, he can do whatever he likes with their body, such as when he messes with Evan's vocal cords to make him spout gibberish. Also, with Bruce not being allowed to tell people he'd God, this only seems to apply to directly telling people, as several times in the film, Bruce very openly uses his powers in front of others, such as when torturing the thugs, or giving Grace orgasms.
  • Magical Gesture: Bruce is rather fond of these, often pointing at or raising his hands towards the thing/person he's using his powers on.
  • Magical Homeless Person: The random recurring background hobo that is always shown with a board with "apocalyptic" writings is revealed to be God himself in disguise.
  • Magical Negro: Morgan Freeman is often cast in this role, but only in this movie and its sequel is it also taken literally.
  • Marilyn Maneuver: Soon after getting his powers, Bruce did this on a random woman in the street by creating a sudden gust of air, and he saw that it was good.
  • Mathematician's Answer: Subverted, when God lays down the rule that he can't mess with free will, Bruce counters with "Can I ask why?" God's answer "Yes! You can!" is immediately clarified with "That's the beauty of it!"
  • Meaningful Name: Grace, Bruce's long-suffering girlfriend. (In Christian theology: Grace- a. the freely given, unmerited favor and love of God. b. the influence or spirit of God operating in humans to regenerate or strengthen them.)
  • Misapplied Phlebotinum: Bruce's first act as God is to... part his tomato soup. All the next uses he finds for his divine powers are consistently petty, selfish and/or moronic.
  • Mistaken for Afterlife: God takes Bruce to the top of Mount Everest, which he assumes is Heaven.
  • Modernized God: Newly-divine Bruce gets stressed out from hearing everyone's prayers all the time, so he creates an e-mail inbox on his computer to collect and manage them.
  • Modesty Bedsheet: After a night of pleasurable pleasure with his girlfriend, Bruce wakes up to find the bed in shambles, but the duvet is still pulled up just enough to cover Bruce up to his waist. Gets even more obvious when he sits up, with his legs being exposed, and only his waist and groin covered.
  • Mundane Made Awesome:
    • The creators sure must have been enjoying themselves in the Parting of the Red Soup.
    • Bruce pouring milk, to the theme tune of "Chariots of Fire". In slo mo. Into the glasses of hungry people waiting to eat the world's largest cookie. It also helps to show that despite his dissatisfaction with his local-interest news job, he's really good at it.
  • Must Have Caffeine: Before getting to work answering the prayers of the world, Bruce says he needs to "manifest himself some coffee." Juan Valdez and his donkey show up at his window and pour him a cup.
  • Nice Guys Finish Last: Discussed. Evan gets a promotion Bruce wanted and Bruce complains to his boss, essentially asking what he has to do to be more like Evan. His boss says that nobody would want this because Bruce is a decent guy while Evan is an asshole, and Bruce basically says well based on the results he should start being an asshole, too. So Bruce at least thinks the Nice Guys Finish Last is in effect, but mostly it just looks like Evan earned the promotion more than Bruce did.
  • No Antagonist: The film has no defined bad guy. The closest thing that qualifies is probably the group of thugs that harass the homeless man and beat Bruce up, but Bruce deals with them pretty quickly soon after he gets his powers and they're never seen again.
    • On the other hand, this actually winds up being a pretty realistic depiction of life in general as the main antagonist Bruce actually does face over the course of the movie is none other than himself. He does want better for himself, but in his desperation to have better, he sadly blinds himself to what he has and what he can do with those things and blames God for holding out on him. Once he is given God's powers, his choices only make things worse and his daily life sadly deteriorates worse and worse until he begins to relent and see that he is the one standing in his own way.
  • No Good Deed Goes Unpunished:
    • Lampshaded. After Bruce tells the thugs to leave the homeless guy alone, he idiotically tells them to keep walking, and gets beaten up for it. Once the thugs leave, he lampshades the trope by saying, "That's what I get for trying to help someone."
    • In creating a romantic atmosphere for Grace by pulling in the moon, Bruce accidentally (and unknowingly) causes a tsunami in Kitamoto City, Japan.
    • In Bruce answering "Yes" to all the prayers he receives without considering the consequences, just to get people to stop bothering him, the Sabres win the Stanley Cup and about 400,000 people win the lottery. This causes a riot with people celebrating the Sabres' victory, as well as people infuriated about only winning $17 each in the lottery, and people thinking the world is going to end after the meteorite strike Bruce had caused earlier in the film, which itself had caused numerous power cuts.
  • No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Bruce is subject to one of these when he sees the thugs harassing the homeless guy and he tells them to leave the man alone.
  • The Nudifier: Bruce's new powers take on this role. In preparation for some "heavenly" lovemaking, Bruce removes his clothes (minus his underwear) with a single gesture.
  • Obscured Special Effects: Most of the conjuration (Coffee summoning) and transformation (Changing clothes, transforming his car and enlarging his girlfriend's boobs) takes place off-screen, presumably to avoid the infinite power of God looking like bad CGI.
  • Oh, Crap!:
    • Bruce when the thugs he has just warned away from the homeless man start coming towards him.
    • Bruce when he sees he's about to crash his car into a lamppost.
    • Bruce gets one when the rear window of his car shatters, and then when he sees Clint Eastwood's face in the mirror.
    • The thugs that beat up Bruce have one when Bruce make a monkey come out of the leader's backside, after he falls over. Said leader has one when it happens, and then when the monkey runs after him to re-enter him.
    • Bruce gets another one when Jack tells him people are rioting in Buffalo outside the news building.
    • Bruce again when he's bathed in white light on the highway and hears the horn of a truck headed right for him.
  • The Omnipotent: God seems to be this. He then makes Bruce omnipotent too, aside from not being able to affect free will. There doesn't seem to be anything he can't do. However, it never occurs to Bruce to give himself omniscience, so he struggles more than you'd expect an all-powerful being to.
  • Only One Name: Subverted with Grace. We don't find out her surname (Connolly) until near the end of the film.
  • Orifice Evacuation: Taking a pun just a bit too far.
  • Orgasmatron: When Bruce is done testing his powers, he rushes home to Grace, and uses his powers to bring her to orgasmic bliss without even being in the same room as her.
  • Parodies of Fire: Happens during the Mundane Made Awesome scene as Bruce runs along the line of people and pours the milk out.
  • Parting the Sea: To test his powers, Bruce holds in hands out over his bowl of tomato soup. When he spreads them, the soup parts in two.
  • Paste Eater: One of Grace's students is constantly eating arts and crafts supplies. She comments that she expects him to poop an ornament any time now.
  • Pen Pushing God: When Bruce receives his powers, he is suddenly confronted with the prayers of millions of people, which are presented in one scene as a massive layer of "Post-It" notes covering every wall and surface in his home. He then clears the clutter by instantly converting them to an e-mail format on his computer ("You've got prayers!").
  • Perception Filter: Bruce transforms his car in full view of two teens, but aside from commenting on how nice his car is, they don't seem to actually notice anything out of the ordinary.
  • Perspective Magic: Bruce adds new stars to the sky just by pointing, and erases them like they're on a blackboard.
  • Pet the Dog: After Bruce gets fired from Eyewitness News, he notices some thugs harassing a random homeless man, and tells them to leave the man alone, and then sincerely asks him if he's all right. Bear in mind that Bruce is still a jerk at this point, and this is one of the first signs he's not completely self-centered.
  • Planetary Relocation: Bruce decides to use his newly-acquired omnipotence to bring the Moon closer to Earth, so as to make his evening more romantic. The next day, Grace sees the news about the massive tidal wave that resulted.
  • Power Incontinence: Bruce had this at first, mainly due to denying he actually had powers, probably meaning that God was just doing it to convince him. Once he'd accepted that he actually had powers, he had no trouble at all in controlling them.
    • The script however had a few more scenes of the powers apparently acting on their own. One scene would have had Bruce shouting "Damn You!" at an annoying guy at work, causing him to become possessed by a demon, while another scene had him unable to get in the bath, due to involuntarily walking on the water, having to concentrate in order to sink in.
  • The Power of Creation: Bruce uses his powers to create many things, such as a bouquet of flowers, a spoon, a plague of locusts, and a Columbian man.
  • Power Perversion Potential: Bruce uses his powers to indulge in his fair share of perversions, including:
    • Giving Grace a mind-blowing orgasm without even touching her.
    • Making her boobs bigger.
    • Causing a gust of wind to lift up a random woman's skirt.
    • Deleted scenes on the DVD and in the script show a few prayers that fit this category. One man wishes for a larger penis, which Bruce gives him, and some construction workers wish to see the breasts of the girls walking past.
  • Precision F-Strike: Bruce's "back to you" line on live TV accompanied by him Flipping the Bird directly into the camera. The filmmakers deliberately used their one PG-13 f-bomb here as it justifies Bruce immediately being fired by the network.
  • Product Placement: When Bruce is first talking to God in room 7, God claps his hands and the light turns off. Then he sings the little "clap on, clap off, the clapper..." jingle after it is mentioned by Bruce. Also Juan Valdez coffee.
  • Rage Against the Heavens: Done in a humorous manner, as quoted in the Actually Pretty Funny trope above.
  • Rapid-Fire Typing: Bruce uses his powers to type at inhuman speeds in order to speed up the process of answering prayers.
  • Reality Warper: God can re-arrange the cosmos with a thought, and with His powers, so can Bruce.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: Jack. When Bruce tells him at the start that he needs sweeps, Jack gives him the job of reporting live on the Maid of the Mist, something Bruce clearly appreciates (at first).
    • God. He hands cosmic power to Bruce in a genuine effort to help Bruce understand how to better himself, knowing that Bruce can touch the lives of many through his community presence as a local reporter. Despite making Bruce think the latter is in complete control, God is still always on duty; he only gives Bruce the ability to hear those in need within a certain area of Buffalo (although that's still plenty for one person to deal with) while God still attends to the rest of the world, and anytime Bruce is on the cusp of problems he can't fix, God steps back in with the right counsel to get Bruce back on track.
  • Required Secondary Powers: God claims he's giving Bruce all of his power, but it's clear at some points that Bruce doesn't have some of the required secondary powers. For example, Bruce starts hearing all prayers, including mental ones, but he is unable to process the information with his human brain, so he solves the problem by having the prayers download to a computer so he doesn't have to listen to them.
  • Removing the Rival: After Evan gets the anchor job Bruce wanted, Bruce uses his powers to make Evan act out on live TV in order to get him fired.
  • Reset Button: One of Bruce's complaints is that God has access to a proverbial "reset-everything button" but doesn't use it. Bruce gains access to it as well, and needs to use it after he's messed everything up.
  • Rule of Funny: While AB+ is a rare blood type, it’s not in high demand because AB+ people can receive donations of any other blood type but can only give their blood to other AB+s. The rare blood type that is in high demand is actually O-. But then Bruce wouldn’t have been able to reply with “I’m IB+. I be positive they ain’t touching me with no needle.”
  • Say My Name: "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!"
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Supernatural Powers!: With all the divine fun it's easy to forget Bruce actually commits quite a few crimes with his powers. He damages public property (Making a fire hydrant explode), steals clothes from a shop, sexually harasses a woman (making her skirt fly up), he assaults a thug (The monkey incident) and plants drugs on the reporters. Never mind all the death and destruction caused by the tsunami and the meteor.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When Bruce realises his answers to prayers have caused people to start rioting, he has an Oh, Crap! and leaves his own anchorman position to sort it out.
  • Selfless Wish: At the end of the movie, after having been hit by a truck and apparently going to die, Bruce meets God one more time. God asks Bruce if he wants Grace back, but Bruce admits that he wants Grace to be happy, and that even if it's not with him, she deserves someone who will see her the way Bruce sees her. God is impressed, saying "Now that's a prayer," and revives Bruce via some EMTs with a Magical Defibrillator.
  • Sex God: In a rather literal example, one of the first things that Bruce does with his powers is to have hot sex with his girlfriend. And what does this involve? Making her have the most intense orgasms of her (and probably everyone else's) life, simply by saying the words "pleasure" and "pleasurable" to her, followed by some off screen screams of pleasure as they "get busy". Bruce even lampshades the trope name in the morning when he describes the experience as "heavenly".
  • Sexy Discretion Shot: After telekinetically being given the greatest orgasm in history, Grace pounces on Bruce, and we simply see the outside of their apartment, as their bedroom light flickers with holy power, and their moans and groans of ecstasy fill the night.
  • Shaped Like Itself: "It's a funny thing about pleasure, it can be quite PLEASURABLE!"
  • Shout-Out:
    • Bruce and the Butt-Monkey.
      • God even says "Alrighty then" at one point in the movie, albeit more low-key than how Ace Ventura usually said it.
    • When Bruce fends off the thugs in the alley, he sprays a torrent of locusts at them out of his mouth a lot like Imhotep from The Mummy.
    • When Bruce parts the Red Soup, the theme from The Ten Commandments plays.
    • Joan Osborne's song "One of Us" is referenced twice. First, Bruce sings the chorus when coming home and bringing Grace flowers. Later, as he's leaving for work, he sings an earlier part of the chorus, changing the line "Yeah, yeah, God is good..." to "Yeah, yeah, I am great..."
    • The scene where Bruce pulls the moon down is very similar to a scene in It's a Wonderful Life where Jimmy Stewart offers to lasso the moon to make his girl happy. Guess which old film just happens to be on the TV later on in the movie?
  • Signing-Off Catchphrase: "And that's the way the cookie crumbles." He changes it to "Be the miracle" at the end of the movie.
  • Sitcom Archnemesis: Evan Baxter to Bruce, who is merely a bit of a jerkass to Bruce and "steals" (according to Bruce) a promotion from him as the new main news anchor of the station they work at, despite clearly having earned it. This is enough reason for Bruce to torment him after he gains godlike powers by publicly humiliating Evan on live air (and in a invokedDeleted Scene, set his hair on fire).
  • Smite Me, O Mighty Smiter: The Trope Namer. Bruce shouts numerous insults at God after a particularly bad day.
  • Something Else Also Rises: Bruce suddenly spurts ketchup over his breakfast when his girlfriend asks if he thinks her boobs are bigger than they were last night.
  • Sophisticated as Hell: "Surely I say unto you dudes. I do not wish to fight."
  • Source Music: As he walks out onto his balcony, Bruce commands his stereo to play some romantic music.
    Bruce: Barry, help me out here.
  • Space Whale Aesop:
    • One of the film's messages is that the reason God doesn't answer a lot of prayers is because no matter what you do you can't make everyone happy, even if you have godly power. For example, making so many people that prayed to win the lottery win at the same time means they all had to split the prize and only won $17.
      • A deleted scene delves into this more fully, showing specific people whose prayers Bruce answered, and then eventually showing that while he did make them happy in the short run, it ultimately wasn't what was best for them (i.e. a bullied kid suddenly becoming strong enough to fend off his bullies, only to become a bully himself, eventually becoming a pro wrestler, testing positive for steroids, and ending up managing a fast food joint, when he originally would've channeled his memories of bullying into becoming a best-selling author.)
      God: If you want to paint pictures like these, you have to use some dark colors.
    • You can't make people love you even if you're omnipotent.
  • Spear Carrier:
    Bruce: Hey kid, you know how to work one of these things?
    Kid: Duh.
  • Stealth Hi/Bye: Justified example. God pulls one on Bruce in the diner, suddenly appearing opposite him when he parts his soup, and saying, "Having fun?" Bruce is understandably freaked out.
  • Stealth Pun:
    • One of Bruce's first acts of God is to part the Red Soup.
    • The movie's Brand X version of Yahoo! is Yahweh!, the proper name for God in Judaism (doubles as a invokedGenius Bonus.)
  • Stock Unsolved Mysteries: Bruce uses his powers to find the body of Jimmy Hoffa.
  • Stop Worshipping Me: Bruce wishes people would stop sending him prayers.
  • Sudden Humility: Why God gives Bruce his powers in the first place is to teach him humility; even with divine might, Bruce can't fix his problems because they're based in his own arrogance and/or stupidity.
  • Superpowered Date: Bruce and Grace have 2 during the film:
    • On Bruce's first night as God, he uses his powers to create a new breed of flowers, and to re-arrange the sky to be more romantic, before they retreat to the bedroom for some "heavenly" sex. Not a bad night in.
    • Later, Bruce takes Grace out for dinner, where he makes Tony Bennet perform.
  • Suspiciously Apropos Music: Bruce conveniently seems to have a CD which exactly describes his situation, and it even (Perhaps through divine power) only plays the most relevant lines:
    • "Make love to you right now, that's all I want to do": Referencing the fact that Bruce is preparing to make passionate love to Grace.
    • "'Cause I've found what the world is searching for": Bruce has literally found God, as well as the path to happiness (Being omnipotent).
    • "For someone just like you, who makes me feel the way you do": Bruce is completely in love with Grace.
    • "Never never gonna give you up, I'm never never gonna stop. About the way I feel about you": Bruce never gives up trying to get Grace back when she leaves him.
    • "Girl I just can't live without you": When Grace leaves Bruce, he is killed while at the height of his despair.
    • There is also Tony Bennett singing "If I Ruled The World", but this is also likely something Bruce engineered with his powers.
  • Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Many of the things Bruce does for his immediate gratification have lasting and sometimes disastrous consequences. Pulling the moon closer to Earth causes a tsunami and a meteor impact screws up power grids.
    • Bruce drops the prayer beads when he drives over a pothole and in taking his eyes off the road for too long, he crashes his car.
    • At the end, Bruce drops to his knees in the middle of the highway and gets hit by a truck. The only reason he doesn't stay dead is, well, God.
      God: You can't kneel down in the middle of a highway and live to talk about it, son.
    • Bruce giving a blanket "yes" to everyone's prayer results in so many people winning the lottery that they have to split the prize and only win 17 bucks each, sparking a huge riot.
  • Sweet and Sour Grapes: Bruce finally becomes the Channel News 7 anchor like he always wanted, but doesn't even get to report anything because of his own actions causing the studio to blackout and riots following the lottery incident and the Sabres' victory. When he realizes that the city is in chaos because of him, he despondently faces the camera and says that he must leave. By the end of the film, he returns to field reporting, realizing that he was always able to find happiness in it.
  • Telepathic Sprinklers: Feeling depressed at a party, Bruce sets them off with his mind to get everyone out of the house.
  • They Plotted a Perfectly Good Waste: As noted by a lot of the other entries on this page, Bruce's life isn't quite bad enough to warrant his perception of God as a mean kid frying ants with a magnifying glass, so some of the audience lost sympathy for Bruce. This is intentional; a key theme of the movie is that Bruce doesn't appreciate the blessings he does have, so he was supposed to come off to the audience like his responses to his problems were disproportionate to the actual scale of those problems.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich:
    • The sandwich that Bruce knocks out of Jack's hands to "prove" he can be an asshole like Evan.
    • Bruce orders soup and proceeds to part it with his powers, but never actually eats any before he leaves with God.
    • Grace makes Bruce grilled cheese, but he only has one bite before he leaves, to avoid talking about her enlarged breasts.
  • Thought-Controlled Power: How Bruce's powers work. He simply needs to will something to happen, and it happens.
  • Threat Backfire: When God finally convinces Bruce that he is talking to God (by suddenly making two extra fingers appear on his right hand), Bruce warns him to stay back, saying he will try to fight if provoked. God throws it right back at him by saying that Bruce hasn't won a fight since Grade 5, and even that was only won because he was fighting a girl, and the sun was in his eyes.
  • Title Drop: "I am Bruce Almighty! My will be done!" and "Well hello there, Bruce Almighty."
  • Too Dumb to Live: Bruce by kneeling on a highway and getting get hit by a truck, and basically dies. Not only does he not know how to help people, despite having the powers of God, but he also doesn't realize that he could call up Einstein (or anyone else, for that matter) for advice. The only thing stopping Bruce from simply making himself smarter or, better yet, wiser, to go with the whole God schtick is that he's too stupid to come up with the idea.
  • Troublesome Pet: Bruce's dog is always peeing on his furniture. Eventually, he manages to train the dog to pee outside by bringing his furniture outside.
  • Unscrupulous Hero: Bruce is selfish, entitled, abuses any privilege he gains and takes things for granted. Once he becomes omnipotent, he sexually assaults a woman by flipping her dress up, frames a rival news team, causes several disasters and attempts to override Grace's free will when she breaks up with him. It's only after finding out that he actually can't do that last thing that Bruce begins to reflect and eventually becomes a better person.
  • Urine Trouble: The movie has a Running Gag about the dog peeing on anything he feels like in the house until Bruce finally succeeds in training him as part of his understanding that he has to be responsible for his own life.
  • Vetinari Job Security: God taking a vacation resulted in the Dark Ages. That's why he doesn't take any more. He is that necessary to human civilization.
  • Visual Pun:
    • Bruce's Parting of the Red Soup. Also includes (localized) wind and lightning, and the score suddenly swells to become reminiscent of The Ten Commandments for bonus points.
    • In the movie poster included on this page, Bruce has the world on a string.
    • Bruce leans on a golden calf during the party as he surveys all he's accomplished for himself, meanwhile, everything important in his life (the things he should have been worshiping instead of meaningless things) is going to hell around him.
  • Walk on Water: Nicely played with.
    • At first it appears that God and Bruce are walking in a park or some such, until a sailboat glides behind them.
    • It's used as the first sign that Bruce truly does have the powers he was told he had, as he walks on top of a deep puddle that he had previously stepped into.
    • A planned scene from the script would have had Bruce struggling to get into the bath, because he keeps accidentally walking on the surface.
  • Wanting Is Better Than Having: Brought up by God, clearly referring not only to the people whose prayers were being answered by Bruce, but also Bruce's desire to become an anchorman:
    Bruce: There were so many. I just gave them all what they want.
    God: Yeah. But since when does anyone have a clue about what they want?
  • Weird Moon: Bruce moves the moon closer to the Earth using his powers, resulting in Grace's comment that's she's "never seen the moon that big".
  • Weirdness Censor: Most of the people around Bruce don't seem fazed when extremely bizarre things happen in his presence, even when he clearly directly invokes them such as the exploding fire hydrant or willing the power to come back on. Even the moon moving closer to the Earth doesn't seem to elicit very much of a reaction from the people of Earth, who realistically should be panicking massively about what happened. Grace doesn't even spend time questioning things like the dog suddenly being able to use the toilet like a human, the fact she has spontaneous orgasms whenever Bruce says "pleasure" to her, or Bruce being able to plant signs all around her trying to convince her to get back together with him.
  • Welcome to My World: When Bruce is in danger of losing his girlfriend, despite having been gifted with near-omnipotent powers, he laments to God "How do you make someone love you without affecting free will?" and God replies "Welcome to my world, son."
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: While Bruce makes things right with most of the people he's wronged, some things are left unsolved. The news reporters he got arrested for drug possession are presumably still looking at life sentences, and all those people who were left homeless after the tsunami he accidentally caused are still homeless, the moon is still way too close and some stars have just came into existence or disappeared, possibly collapsing entire galaxies. It might be possible that God fixed them up somehow, but this is not confirmed.
  • What You Are in the Dark: When Grace breaks things off with Bruce and he's too far gone to be able to make amends with a simple apology, he gets desperate and tries to force her to love him again.
  • White Is Pure: God is always shown wearing white and it's to reflect his divinity and how he's supposed to be morally pure.
  • With Great Power Comes Great Perks: Bruce is certainly keen to take advantage of the perks, whether it's getting revenge, improving his career or having the greatest sex in history with his girlfriend.
  • Wowing Cthulhu: Getting God to chuckle, and with a blasphemous insult of all things, deserves props.
  • Yank the Dog's Chain: As mentioned above, Jack gives Bruce the job of reporting live on the Maid of the Mist, which makes Bruce very happy, right up until, barely two minutes before he is due to go live, Evan is announced as the new anchorman, a position Bruce himself very much wanted, and it gets worse when Evan plagiarizes part of Bruce's story about Buffalo's largest cookie, which causes Bruce to screw up his own story in his rage.
  • Yet Another Baby Panda: In a scene that never made it past the script, Bruce makes a zoo full of pandas successfully mate, by making them insatiably horny.
  • You Are Better Than You Think You Are: A small moment between Bruce and Jack.
    Bruce: Maybe I should be more like Evan.
    Jack: You don't wanna be like Evan, Evan's an asshole.
    Bruce: Well, I can be an asshole.
    Jack: No Bruce, you can't.
  • Your Mime Makes It Real: including, but not limited to:
    • Bruce mimes about throwing a lasso at the moon and then pulling it - and the moon does come closer. Justified; he's almighty.
    • Bruce blowing to cause a gust of wind to lift a woman's dress, mouthing gibberish to cause Evan to say it, and throwing pleasure and orgasms at Grace.

 
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God (Bruce Almighty)

Bruce meets God (played by Morgan Freeman) in a pure white building, where everything Bruce ever did is stacked into a filing cabinet.

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