Devil But No God - Television Tropes & Idioms

John: "There's good and bad everywhere, don't you think?"

Jack: "I'd say there's bad everywhere; good, I don't know about."

—Midnight Run

Works of fantasy frequently contain a powerful evil spiritual being who's behind most or all of the evil in the world, a Satan-figure or chief God Of Evil. This Devil is a very real being with followers, worshippers and real power, who takes an active hand in making trouble for the world. But in an odd twist, a lot of stories leave out the Devil's good counterpart; either there is no benevolent God, or he's only talked about and never actually does anything. This is particularly egregious if the series makes a big deal of the Balance Between Good And Evil.

It's worth noting that the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity) tend to forbid visual depictions of God, so this trope may exist out of respect to such traditions.

C.S. Lewis wrote a novella called The Screwtape Letters, detailing the correspondence between a mortal human's literal "personal demon" and that demon's supervisor. In a commentary about the story, Professor Lewis wrote that he wanted to include similar letters between the demon's opposite number, but claimed that it was far too difficult to get into an angel's mindset to do so. The existence of this trope may well be partially explained by similar limits experienced by other authors.

Another alternate explanation is that in most cases He knows the heroes don't actually need His help, so He doesn't give it. Another reason is that God might easily become the ultimate Boring Invincible Hero or Deus Ex Machina, so the writers need to get rid of him.

Examples

Anime

Berserk, which has the "God Hand", a group of five powerful demons as the closest thing to gods. The only other set of deities, the Four Elemental Kings, are said to be loving and protective of humanity, but only seem to help out if consciously summoned.
- There is God, or at lest the Ideal of God but it's only (so far) seem in an semi-canon chapter that was cut for spoilering the plot. However, it's pretty much both God AND the devil.
Chrono Crusade. Is there really anyone above the humans and the devils, except perhaps a Council Of Angels? Aion's entire life can be seen as a quest to find an answer to that (and his Famous Last Words don't exactly help).
- That's the anime version. In the manga, the demons are actually aliens, and Aion is fully aware of this (and subsequently believes that God and religion are just another cog in an "oppressive system") and the Apostles are stated to be "chosen by the Astraline", while God...well, not mentioned much. Either he's carefully manipulating things in the background, or just simply doesn't exist.

Film

Even present in Ghost Busters and its related media; while there's plenty of evil gods and lesser deities (like Gozer) running around, there's no indication of any good gods opposing them, so the Busters have to make do with science.
- Well, Marduk appeared in one episode of the cartoon, and was a depicted as a fairly benevolent "god of the city". He still needed the Ghostbusters' help to defeat his ancient enemy Tiamat, though.
In Hellborn:Asylum of the Damned, there is a Devil that plays an active part in damning the lives and souls of human beings, even the good ones. However, as stated by one of the characters in the film itself, "God dosen't take a look around here."

Comic Book

The voice of God has been heard in certain DC comics, usually talking to The Spectre, who works as its Agent of Vengeance. However it has never been actually seen, and only seems to interfere in VERY rare occasions, even when the The DCU is threatened with destruction.
- A JLA miniseries starring Zauriel the Angel climaxed with the rogue angel Asmodel storming the palace of God only to find it empty. Zauriel lectures Asmodel on the naivete of expecting God to be some mere corporeal form: God is everywhere and swiftly sends Asmodel to Hell.
In Marvel Comics, Satan was a recurring character in the Son of Satan series. God, Jesus or the Angels never appeared or interfered. Later, it was RetConned that Satan was being impersonated by demons such as Mephisto, and that the true Devil had NEVER appeared in a Marvel story. Later still, some angels appeared in some stories (but only as a bunch of bastards); God himself (known as the One Above All) supposedly appeared in a Fantastic Four story- in the form of Jack Kirby.
- Well, Blaze had a guy helping him against Satan who was at some points implied to be JC. (Religious figure, not Deus Ex protagonist.)
A good Marvel comics example is when an old flame allows Bruce Banner to see all his inner personalities (each a different Hulk), one of whom takes the form of a monstrous reptilian devil. Devil Hulk tells Bruce "There's a little bit of God and the Devil in everyone", but the comics have yet to get around to that God part. We do get to see that an incarnation of the Beast lives in Bruce's head as well.
- It's pretty clear that Bruce himself is the God part.
  - Depends on the writer. Sometimes Bruce is shown to be petty and violent (not often but sometimes) and Green Hulk, while lacking control, is shown to be more caring (best example is in the Planet Hulk What If, where Hulk lands on the Illuminati's target planet).
Has thus far been the case in Hellboy, where demons seem quite active while God remains unseen.
- Mignola has commented on the absence of God/Heaven in the series is because revealing too much about the divine order of the universe sort of takes away the mystery/supernatural in a series. To paraphase, things are a lot less fun when you know "OMG GOD'S A ROBOT" and so forth. He has promised we'll see glimpses of Heaven and people who have gotten close to it, but that we would see a great deal more of Hell and its inner workings.
The character King Peacock in Alan Moore 's Top10, at one point, is described as being a devil worshipper, as he is a member of the Yazidi sect. He describes it as God creating the universe and then taking off, leaving Melek Taus (the devil) in charge.

Literature

Redwall, the picture provider, has several bad guys mention "Hellgates", and one of them drops the name of Vulpuz, some sort of evil diety. The good guys have an afterlife, Dark Forest, and earlier in the series at least the appearance of having actual religion, although it was never discussed.
In The Wheel Of Time, the Dark One has hordes of evil creatures, Darkfriend spies infiltrating every level of society, and the Forsaken, and has been trying to destroy all of creation since the beginning of time. The Creator never makes any sort of appearance (not even as a voice cameo in the first book); in a late book, Rand gives a mini-rant about how the Creator created their world and then went on to create countless more without care of whether individual worlds died out. In His place are a variety of automatic error-correcting routines built into the Pattern, like creating/reincarnating ~~Main Characters~~ ta'veren.
The Wheel of Time did it, so of course The Sword Of Truth copied it, only worse. The Keeper of the Underworld wants to break free of the Underworld and enter the world of life, and has plenty of evil wizards and sorceresses willing to help him with his goal. But the Creator is said to be nothing more than a "personification of" the natural force of creation—at one point, the author goes out of his way to explain that some people think of the Creator as an omniscient and omnipotent person much like the Judeo-Christian God, and point out how foolish such a belief is—and the people who believe in a real, personified Creator are either misguided and potentially dangerous WellIntentionedExtremists or evil communist crusaders intent on destroying all liberty and enforcing their dangerous, hateful religion by the sword.
- It also smells of of Ret Con, as Terry Goodkind basically abandoned the whole idea after two books. The final verdict seems to be that both the Creator and the Keeper of the Underworld are essentially mindless, but very real, aspects of nature (representing life and death, respectively), and people who treat either as a deity are doing something silly.
Notably subverted in The Dragonlance Chronicles. As Queen Takhisis's armies of darkness cover the land, conquering all before them, it seems as though Paladine, the god of good, is nowhere to be found, until it's revealed in the third book that he's been traveling with the heroes on and off since about halfway through the first book, under the name of Fizban, helping to guide events to the point where Takhisis can be defeated.
- While its finally outright stated in the last book, it was rather heavily hinted at since shortly after his first appearance.
The Runelords falls victim to this one as well. The heroes eventually learn that their ultimate opponent isn't Raj Ahten, the Darkling Glory that was summoned by Raj Ahten's flameweavers, or even the Reaver queen, but the One True Master of Evil, queen of the Loci. She's actually introduced as a character in the second series, and we begin to see why she's worthy of the title. Glories and Bright Ones are talked about, but scarcely ever actually seen on-stage, and there's no indication as of yet that they have a leader or that there's any good-guy counterpart to Shadoath, the One True Master.
- Fallion is implied to be the reincarnation of Shadoath's good-guy counterpart: as the Torchbearer, he has the power to undo her breaking of the True World. Given Shadoath's Start Of Darkness (when she, being more grasping and power-hungry than truly evil, broke the Runes that held the True World together, the other Bright Ones magically wrote their sorrows on her until it broke her completely, hollowing out everything happy and positive in her), and the stated nature of the True World, the Bright Ones are less God/Satan than heroic-scale exaggerations of human nature like you might see in ancient mythology. Because Shadoath is a Bright One and Fallion isn't (yet), her corrupt deeds are frequently much greater in scope and consequence than Fallion's heroic deeds.
This happens in Piers Anthony's Incarnations Of Immortality series. Eventually, it becomes a plot point.
While the Creator exists, is good, and wants to help in The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, he exists outside of the universe of the Land and cannot interfere directly without causing the end of the world. Lord Foul, on the other hand is trapped inside the same universe which is not a good thing for anyone sharing the place with him.
- However, Covenant's initial appearance in The Land appears to have been the Creator's doing, as part of a huge Xanatos Gambit to circumvent the whole causing the end of the world thing, that hinged on using free will as a means to achieve something greater than could be achieved through either direct intervention or use of a tool of some sort. Just how well this has worked is somewhat up in the air, but the Gambit does appear to still be playing itself out.
In HP Lovecraft's works, there is neither a God or the Devil (altough Nyarlatothep does fulfill the Devil's role in some ways), just ancient godlike beings who don't give a damn about mankind and will kill us all when they return. The closest thing to good deities (the Elder Gods), have no more love for humans than the others; they just want to keep the Great Old Ones imprisoned (and since that is a good thing for mankind, they can be considered "good" from our perspective).
- Notably, the Elder Gods were an addition by August Derleth, who was an avid admirer of Lovecraft, as well as a devout Christian, and couldn't, or didn't want to understand Lovecraft's intentions to depict the universe as a hostile and uncaring place where humanity has absolutely no special position, and instead made Earth the central battleground for cosmic incarnations of good and evil.
- Also, while Nyarlathotep gets continuously interpreted as the Devil by various humans, the implications that aren't dependent on the Unreliable Narrator seem to portray him as a Shiva-like destructive, but impartial deity.
  - Athough he does often appear to enjoy himself immensely when seen in in human form...
While the Otherness in F. Paul Wilson's Adversary novels is a reasonable stand-in for the Devil (with a side order of Lovecraftian abomination), the opposing force that works against the Otherness is fundamentally indifferent to human welfare, and is definitely not God.
Narnia is arguably an inversion. Aslan is a big character, but every villain until the end of the last book is mortal. Tash might be Satan but he is not depicted as The Man Behind The Man.
- Probably still counts, but Aslan isn't God, and The Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea is a mentioned but unseen character.
- Aslan is Jesus aka God the Son, and the Emperor Beyond The Sea is God the Father. Only the Son is meant to have the properties that would actually make Him depictable.
- Another example from Lewis would be Perelandra: Satan (or one of his Rouge Angles) acts directly through his possessed tool the Un-man while the forces of good are represented only by the protagonist, Ransom. Somewhat subverted in that Ransom gets the equivalent of a pep-talk from God before challenging the Un-man to a duel to the death.
The Paradis books justify this—God lost to Satan, who turned everything into a Crapsack World and sends all the dead to Hell. Yes, this is a rather dark series, why did you ask?
In Karen Miller's Godspeaker Trilogy Mijak's religion does not actually worship a god, but a dark power they believe to be God.
K. J. Parker's Scavenger Trilogy is set in a world where the god Poldarn may be very real and active. Poldarn is the very spirit of death, failure, destruction and folly. When Poldarn creates, you won't like what he makes. There is no sign of a more hopeful god.
Averted in The Lord Of The Rings and The Silmarillion (or possibly subverted). While Morgoth (and later Sauron) are generally the most powerful forces directly affecting Middle-Earth at a given time, God does exist and will act directly if pushed far enough (see "The Downfall of Numenor"). Gandalf also implies that He is subtly influencing world events all the time.
Gandalf: Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and you also were meant to have it- and that is an encouraging thought.

Music

Tom Waits' "Heartattack and Vine" gives an inversion: "There ain't no Devil, there's just God when he's drunk."

Live Action TV

Somewhat subverted in Supernatural. The Devil is Lucifer, an angel who was expelled from Heaven for refusing to bow down to man. He created the first demon and is responsible for most of the larger storyline across all 5 seasons. In the season 4 finale, the 66 seals keeping Lucifer trapped are broken, and he returns to Earth as the season 5 Big Bad
- In terms of the Devil's good counterparts, in season 4, Angels appear, despite Dean's disbelief. They are technically on the side of good, but vary in how much they care about helping people versus pursing their own goals and interests. There are plenty of good angels, but they are bound by a strict hierarchy where disobedience is the highest crime.
- As for God, he has only ever been seen by four Angels. In the season 4 finale, :Zachariah claimed God had 'left the building', and that the angels were giving the orders. However, in season 5, God has been implied to have intervened in the storyline, transporting Sam and Dean out of harms way and bringing the angel Castiel back to life. Castiel plans on finding God, but God's existence is still not confirmed.
- There are also a number of Pagan gods and demigods, but they all seem to be either evil or purely self-interested.
The status of God in the Buffy Verse is very suspect. The series has "The Powers That Be", supposedly forces that fight for good, but the show is vague on what exactly they are. They also seem to do little to help the heroes, sending visions that let them know when people are in trouble and have been implied to have directly helped them a few times, but they're often nowhere to be seen when the shit really hits the fan, and the few beings said to work for them are often uninterested and unsympathetic to the heroes' plights. On the evil side, the series has the Senior Partners, ascended demons who work through the interdimensional law firm Wolfram & Hart, who are shown to be VERY active in spreading evil and contributing to mankind's eventual downfall. The show's background has the Earth previously ruled by demonic gods millenia ago and Buffy's last season saw the heroes fighting the personification of evil, neither of which seem to have a good equivalent. In addition, at one point in the series a vampire in the series asks Buffy if God exists, and she responds "Nothing solid".
- This is all countered to an extent by the fact that Buffy was resurrected from a place of perfection and peace, that she is pretty sure was heaven. But whether the existence of an afterlife implies the existence of a god is another debate.
- Also, for all the demons in the series, there's not one angel.
  - Though not all the demons are bad - there was Whistler, who, though referred to as a demon, was 'sent down' from somewhere, and is definitely a force for good. Skip, Cordelia's demon guide, worked for the Powers before allying himself with Jasmine.
- Still, the current evidence suggests that the most powerful terrestrial force for good in the Buffyverse is the Slayer. This is almost certainly true after the events of the Buffy finale.
The Big Bad of Lexx's final two seasons is the immortal sadist Prince of Fire, and while the planet Fire does have a heavenly counterpart called Water, Water has no counterpart to Prince. By season 4, Fire and Water are gone, but Prince has reincarnated on Earth, where once again there are no real forces of good to stand in his way.
Arguably, the Doctor Who universe (the Whoniverse?) when one considers the new series episodes "The Impossible Planet", "The Satan Pit", and the Torchwood season one finale "End of Days" (and the arc it concluded).
- The argument: Does the Doctor count as God?
  - Why would God need a ~~starship~~ TARDIS?
  - The TARDIS is a Magic Feather; The Doctor is a god-in-training.
- Actually, the Whoniverse also has the quasi-Zoroastrian "Guardians". And the Eternals.
Possibly Reaper. The Devil is a main character and several demons have appeared, but neither God nor explicit angels have.
- Well, the demons are all fallen angels, one demon managed to get his old gig back, and God was mentioned as the ultimate winner by the Devil in the first episode. Still, a good deal less good than evil.
In the Season 2 finale of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Sarah Connor mentions that she doesn't know if there's a God or not, but she knows there is an evil omnipresent entity that wants the world to burn (referring to SKYNET). The episode also reveals that much of the show's Myth Arc involves an attempt to build a machine "God" to oppose SKYNET.
With all the false gods in Stargate SG-1, there is no Sufficiently Advanced Alien masquerading as the God of Abrahamic religions — whereas the Goa'uld Sokar is said to have been the inspiration for the Devil in various cultures.
- The ascended beings are sorta stand-ins for angelic beings: clad in white, all-knowing and infuriatingly self-satisfied. Occasionally one of them will get around their own Prime Directive to pull off a genuine miracle, like when Oma Desala fights Anubis to a standstill, or when Morgan La Fey heals Teal'c in The Ark of Truth.

Real Life

In Touching the Void, Joe Simpson falls a hundred or so feet into a deep, dark ice cave (with an already badly broken leg), separating him from his climbing partner. Simpson makes an explicit point that even when all seemed lost, he remained an atheist and did not consider asking God for help. Later, though, he speculates about a powerful "malign presence" that seems to be "teasing" him and might kill him off.

Tabletop Games

Warhammer40K takes this to an extreme. The Chaos Gods are the sentient manifestations of the negative emotions of the galaxy (as well as the positive ones warped into the most extreme and twisted manner possible), but there is a distinct lack of any positive alternatives. Even the surviving gods of the non-chaos factions tend to be genocidal jerkasses, and the worst gods are the C'Tan, who are trying to exterminate every living thing in the universe then eat their souls afterward. Based on information from The Other Wiki, there may be two surviving non-totally evil gods... one is implied to be a C'tan (and therefore is one of the omnicidal gods out to eat souls though in fairness, it may be due to their trickster natures, so it would be unsurprising that the two are separate entities that impersonate each other), and the other is being tortured by Nurgle (who is, incidentally, one of the more likeable deities).
In Dungeons And Dragons, the World Of Greyhawk has Tharizdun, ultimate dark god, Sealed Evil In A Can since he's an Omnicidal Maniac Cosmic Horror. There is no counterbalancing ultimate good god.
- Tharizdun may be the most utterly evil of Greyhawk's god, but he is far from the strongest- in the first three editions of the game, he was ranked as an intermediate deity, and his imprisonment barred him from affecting the world more than a weak demigod.
  - In Gary Gygax's Gord novels, Tharizdun once freed is a nigh-omnipotent being who can easily force all the demon princes, archfiends, and other rulers of the Lower Planes to serve him.
- The most powerful of the evil gods, Nerull the Reaper, does have a good counterpart in Pelor the Sun God. Also, the demons of the Abyss (Demogorgon, Orcus, etc...) are directly opposed by some guardinal dukes from Elysium.
- It's worth noting that early in the company's history, TSR did publish statistics for God, Jesus and Archangels, but later removed them from publication after heavy criticism. So in the case of Dungeons And Dragons the lack of a God is due to outside pressure and not oversight.
  - That or it could be that the whole idea of giving an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent being stats was a bit silly to begin with (unless they were putting infinity signs in front of everything.)
The World Of Darkness did this twice over, as is to be expected:
- In the Old World, there was Demon The Fallen, where the titular fallen angels had finally escaped from millennia in the Pit, only to find that God and all Her angels had vanished during their imprisonment. Then again, so had Lucifer...
- In the New World, there are demons that can be summoned and bound and which can make deals with mortals, and the books are very clear that where they come from is Hell. But there's no clear evidence of any benevolent deity in the driver's seat — the Lancea Sanctum only claims they got their Blood Magic from angels, the gods in the Oneiros are just reflections of mortal belief, and the qashmallim are far from benevolent, fluffy-winged cherubs.

Videogame

DooM has this trope. It seems the only force of Good in the Doom-verse is our Berserker Packin' man-and-a-half, the Space Marine/Taggert, and his trusty shotgun (and chainsaw), taking on the forces of Hell. There's not even a holy weapon around, unless you count the Soul-Cube used by the Martians against the Hellions.
Grandia II's big twist is that Granas, the God of Light, was killed at the hands of Valmar, the Devil of Darkness.
- And then subverted or possibly played double-straight when it's revealed that while Granas was alive, he ruled a totalitarian empire that forced all people to worship him constantly. The creators of the Devil entity were originally just your typical rebel alliance. Oh, and both gods are really just products of extremely (sufficiently) advanced technology.
This seems to be the case in the Devil May Cry series, featuring the Legions Of Hell and their leader Mundus, but nothing supporting the existence of God. Simularily, angels have been mentioned in passing a few times, but the series has yet to explore their existence in depth.
- Berial makes a subtle implication of God existing, when he talks about Sanctus and the Savior in disgust.
Berial: "A human, posing as God? How ridiculous!"
- Most of the religion in the Devil May Cry series revolves around worshiping demons, with Dante's father being a good demon messiah. Also, there are demons that appear to be angels. It seems as if in this universe, that instead of demons being fallen angels - angels are demons who fell up.
The Castlevania series arguably falls into this. Dracula is described as the being opposite to God; God does not make an appearance. Demons are commonplace, but while several angels appear in the story, all have fallen to the side of evil. (Significantly, this includes the angel of death.) While several main characters are religious, all explanations of their abilities have been traced back, canonically or otherwise, to poltergeists, dhampirs or alchemy. Even then, the one visible sign of divine intervention in the series (Rosa's resurrection) may have been retconned! On the brighter side, the church has yet to be portrayed as corrupt.]]
- The Order was separate from the Church of our Holy Lord.
- God isn't directly brought up, but there are a lot of crosses everywhere. A crucifix, with a carving of Jesus included, makes an appearance as Richter's item crash when he's equipped with the cross/boomerang.
- Justified in Aria of Sorrow, where most religious discussion is with the main character's Miko friend, who naturally discusses things in Shinto terms, not Christian.
Final Fantasy Tactics is very heavy on religious warfare and involves a Dark Messiah using Demonic Possession to come back from the dead. Um, isn't God a little worried about this?
- That's because God joins your team in the form of TG Cid.
- Note that in Ogre Battle, made by the same core team, you could recruit angelic units. And the Big Bad of Ogre Battle 64 was an insane goddess.
  - Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis actually has direct intervention by "God" clearly. The big bad himself was sealed away long ago, and, in the good ending, ascends back into heaven in a lightshow that's implied to be God's handiwork. It's implied that the reason why evil was merely sealed in a can and left with a ridiculously weak lock was due to God's Xanatos Gambit to allow the Big Bad bad into heaven.
In one Persona 3 fanfiction Mitsuru ponders why there are ultimate evils (Lucifer, Satan) but no ultimate goods. Turns out God had sacrificed himself to give humans the ability to save themselves and to seal The Reaper away. His knowledge and powers were spread all along the Multi-verse, completely averting God Is Evil.
Inverted in The Simpsons Game, where we don't see the Devil but play DanceDanceRevolution against God.
Diablo and Diablo II. Deckard Cain mentions Hell is always bent on destruction (with Diablo as the Big Bad) but Heaven seems unfathomable (although there are angels).
- The High Heavens and Burning Hells wage an eternal battle of good vs evil, and while there are no perfectly symmetrical counterparts to the Prime Evils, the Angiris Council is good enough. The forces of good (very strong ones, at that) are definitely present in the Diablo universe, they're just not shown that much because they prefer not to directly meddle in human affairs, Tyrael being the obvious exception.
Played with in Dragon Quest VII. The final battle between God and the Demon Lord ended with both MIA, but most of the world was still sealed away by evil, so that only a single island remains intact when the game begins. As you progress, the question of whether or not the Demon Lord won is repeatedly raised. Oh, sure, it looks like God planned for this by setting up a ritual to reawaken him... But when the ritual's performed, the 'God' who's summoned ain't the nicest guy around. Then post game where you do find the real God, it turns out he decided to let humanity sort out the Demon Lord and restore the sealed world themselves while he just watched. Even more telling is that When you call him on it he proves both stronger then the Demon Lord and able to drop in on the DL's throne room at will.
Prevalent in the ElderScrolls series, with the supposed conflict between (the adherents of) The Nine Divines and the Daedra Lords. The Daedra Lords, while not universally evil (some are, in fact, quite decent people, and all tend to hold up their end of a bargain), tend to be amoral, unpredictable, sadistic and, on occasion, prone to attempting world conquest. They are universally reviled as 'evil', and their worshippers are considered misguided at best, and dangerous lunatics at worst. They are, however, very much present in the world. They speak directly to their worshippers, sometimes even appearing in a physical form, and are perfectly willing to offer immediate, tangible rewards for those that choose to do their work. The Nine, on the other hand, do absolutely jack, apart from supposedly granting blessings and healing diseases, but any semi-competent spellcaster could pull that off.
- This is mentioned by the Oblivion NPC Else God Hater, a Deadra Lord worshipper. "The gods don't do a damn thing. Do they even exist? How could anyone tell? Daedra Lords, sure. They exist. They do things. Bad things, mostly, but things you can see. The gods? They don't do a damn thing. So why do we build big chapels and sit around and mumble, and ask them to save us from this and that? It's stupid. And chapels and priests and folks groveling on their knees, they're stupid, too."
- While not in Oblivion, in the previous game, Morrowind, you did in fact meet avatars of the Nine Divine (Stendarr & Mara, I believe), who reward the hero/heroine according to the action they take.
- In Oblivion you see the Avatar of Akatosh when he comes to defeat Mehrunes Dagon, but only after Martin sacrifices himself to call on its power.
There was a God in Tears To Tiara. But not anymore, and the only people who ever met the guy have no idea where he's been for the rest of existence. It's actually a bit of an inversion, however. There is no God, but the Satanic figure is his former underlings the Twelve Angels. Satan himself is a pretty decent fellow here and refuses to be worshiped as a God, as that removes humanities responsibility and will from its own hands. The angels though...

Webcomics

Demons obviously exist in the world of Zebra Girl, but there is noticeably no sign of God or any sort of angelic power. As is evidenced when Sandra (herself transformed into a demon) has a nervous breakdown and begins screaming into the sky, begging God for answers, before coming to the cold realization, "I'm just talking to myself here, aren't I?"
Satan has appeared a few times in Sluggy Freelance, but God has never been seen outside of a dream Kiki had (where he peed on her head). Averted during the "That Which Redeems" arc, however, where there is a Goddess of Good to balance out the Demon King. She's just been stuck in a freezer for a millenia or two.

Western Animation

Futurama has a robot version of this: the robots speak volumes about Robot Hell (the Robot Devil is even a recurring character), while Robot Heaven only gets one measly sentence, and afterward is never mentioned again.
- Robot Jesus is also mentioned. Jewish Robots believe that He existed and that He was a very well-made robot, but He wasn't their Messiah.
  - However, Bender interacted with a semi-corporeal space entity, which is strongly implied to be God - or, as Bender guesses and God seems to confirm, the result of God colliding with a space probe to become a kind of cyborg God. Its cameo in Bender's Big Score seems to suggest that some of its powers can be accessed without its awareness or consent by technological means, perhaps through its "space probe" half.
Trigon in Teen Titans is built up as the series' parallel to Satan in almost every way, but there doesn't seem to be a contrasting "God" figure at all.
Transformers Generation 1, due to Continuity Drift. Generation 1 featured Unicron. Later, it was RetConned that Unicron is the Transformer equivalent of the devil, to go along with the Transformer god, Primus. However, since Primus hadn't been thought of yet as of Generation 1, he was nowhere to be seen.