God-Eating

Baby Poseidon is Cronus' favorite type of seafood.

The idea of cannibalism is one of the oldest taboos in our history. As such, it's unsurprising that many creation myths and stories about gods have stories of them indulging in this act. Some gods have a habit of eating other deities, for various reasons. Sometimes it's to gain the power of the consumed divinity, or it's a means of getting rid of the competition.

Occasionally, the act of deicide will involve mortals eating gods, usually to gain their powers or as some kind of ritual. Often when a god eats another god, it's a sign that they're an Eldritch Abomination. Either way, Assimilation Backfire is a common result.

Compare Monstrous Cannibalism (where monsters or other supernatural beings are not above eating each other) and Kill the God (usually has the same result as god eating, though without the cannibalism). Eating a god may be because they're considered Supernaturally Delicious and Nutritious. Related to Divine Conflict, with one god eating each other being a possible end to the conflict. May occasionally lead to Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth.

Has nothing to do with God Eater.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Dragon Ball: One of the first things Majin Buu does upon re-awakening is turning Dabura, the King of the Demon Realm, into a cookie and eating him. He also considers eating the Supreme Kai before he's able to get to safety. It's later revealed in his original rampage against the other Supreme Kais he enveloped and assimilated two of them, turning Buu from a mindless destroyer of worlds into the Obliviously Evil child-like Buu shown at the beginning of the arc.
• Father of Fullmetal Alchemist seeks to achieve godhood by using a massive transmutation circle to absorb the Truth and the souls in Amestris to have the power to contain the Truth within him. Unfortunately for him, Hohenheim manages to reverse the transmutation that sucked out the Amestrian souls and return them to their bodies, leaving Father with only his original already depleted supply of souls to contain Truth. It does not end well for Father.
• That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: Rimuru absorbs the sealed Veldora Tempest via [Predator], though this was a willing act on both parties' ends as doing so would allow him and Veldora to analyze the Unlimited Imprisonment at their leisure and eventually free Veldora. In a much more serious manner, Rimuru ends up having to do this again on a Brainwashed and Crazy Veldora during the war with the Eastern Empire to put him in a position to free him from the brainwashing. This time, the act of breaking down Veldora's potent magicules directly actually causes Rimuru (who has grown much stronger since then) physical and spiritual pain, but this also ends up in Rimuru properly assimilating Veldora's magicules and becoming a True Dragon/Ultimate Slime himself. And then for good measure, Rimuru does the same thing to Veldora's brainwashed and pissed-off sister Velgrynd to free her of the former and calm her down by showing her brother's okay.

Comic Books

• Marvel Universe has a number of instances of gods eating each other, or being eaten:
  • Marvel Zombies: After the Zombie Apocalypse has turned most of humanity into zombies and/or they've consumed most of humanity, Galactus, a Cosmic Entity, arrives to consume the planet. The zombies end up overwhelming him and eating the Devourer of Worlds. This ends up giving them his Power Cosmic.
  • The Mighty Thor has the appropriately named Demogorge the God-Eater. Originally Atum, he was created to fight off the Elder Gods, who had devolved into demons from devouring each other for power themselves. Slaying and consuming them causes Atum to devolve into Demogorge, who absorbs the power of the deities he consumes. Thor manages to defeat him by using his willpower to take control of the Demogorge.
  • The Ultimates (2015): In order to achieve a new order, Master Order gets his brother Lord Chaos to force the In-Betweener to undergo a Fusion Dance with them. This is achieved by Lord Chaos eating the In-Betweener before being eaten by Master Order, to become a new Cosmic Entity in the form of Logos.
  • The symbiotes — Venom, Carnage, and their ilk — were created by the dark elder god Knull, who refers to them as pieces of himself and his children, and are capable of killing divine entities, with Venom once going on a feeding frenzy in Asgard during Siege. Knull himself implies he engaged in some divine cannibalism during his deicidal crusade against all existence.
• Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse: Wormwood is an extradimensional larva possessing a corpse for greater mobility. His species feed on dead gods for eons, which gives him immense power that he can unleash when he feels like it.

Fan Works

• Dungeon Keeper Ami: Azzathra, the Dark God of Tyranny and Brute Force, ate Murdrul, the Devourer.
  • As a result of several events, Ami drinks a Lesser Aspect of Crowned Death.
• The MLP Loops: In a bit of Death by Irony on the part of the victim, this is half of how, in a Warhammer 40,000 loop, Pinkie ascended as the Chaos Goddess of Parties. The other half was throwing a party for the entire Eldar Empire.
  Big Mac: "How did you even wrest the power from Slaanesh?"
  Pinkie: "It tried to read my thoughts, so I shredded its mind until it believed that it was a fantastic idea to turn itself into a cupcake. Then I ate a chocolate frosted chaos god."
  Big Mac: "Eeyep, because that ain't terrifying at all."

Literature

• Angel Mage: Liliath is able to avoid the cost of using angelic magic because she consumed a number of angels, making her ageless and more than human.
• Deeplight: If two gods come close enough to sense each other, they will fight to the death with the loser becoming lunch. One such battle, between the Gathergiest and the Swallower, is graphically described.
• Everworld: Ka Anor is a god not from Earth but another dimension, who is particularly horrifying to the gods of Everworld because he eats them. We see him eat Ganymede onscreen, and is known to have eaten the Daghda and Thor. Though the latter turns out to be alive.
• The Fortress of the Black Cauldron: If Virilus manages to transcend his mortality, he will become the incarnation of Hunger, fighting, killing, and devouring the twelve major gods over the course of a millennium. In the end, the concepts these deities represented are lost to time, as he becomes the only constant in the universe, finally satiating his hunger.
• N. K. Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy: The Big Bad of The Broken Kingdoms is a demon who's been murdering physical gods to consume their hearts and a fraction of their power. Even the primordial goddess of Hunger, ordinarily a huge fan of consumption in all its forms, thinks what he's doing is unspeakably wrong.
• Old Kingdom: At the climax of Sabriel, Kerrigor devours Mogget who is eventually revealed to be the last Bright Shiner, Yrael, and the setting's equivalent of a god, gaining his powers. However, this backfires as he becomes subject to the same binding spell used to ensure Mogget's obedience as well. When the spell is invoked, Kerrigor is trapped and Mogget is separated from him again.
• The Silmarillion: Eldritch Abomination and Extreme Omnivore Ungoliant expressed an interest in consuming Morgoth, the setting's Satan. He had to summon his balrog squad to fend her off.
• The Shadow of Kyoshi: Yun eats Father Glowworm and gains his power.

Live-Action Television

• In Wonder Showzen God is eaten by Chauncey and co after losing a rock-paper-scissors game.
• Ohsama Sentai King-Ohger features an example done in ignorance. When he was a child, Gira was fed a food dish that he called "rainbow jururira", which in truth was God Kuwagata's crushed up soul given to him in order to turn Gira into a mindless weapon to use against Dugded Dujardin.

Myths & Religion

• Classical Mythology:
  • After overthrowing his father Ouranos, the Titan Cronus is given the prophecy that one day his children would overthrow him. To prevent this, whenever he had a child he would consume the infant and imprison them within his belly. The last child, Zeus, was hidden from him and eventually confronted his father, forcing him to vomit up Zeus' divine siblings.
  • When it's foretold that the unborn child of his first wife Metis will one day overthrow him, Zeus eats her. Sometime later he complains of terrible headaches and asks either Prometheus or Hephaestus (depending on the version) to cut his head open, revealing Athena had been born inside him and emerges fully grown. Unlike with Cronus and Zeus, Athena remains loyal to her father (the myth says that the unborn child would overthrow him if it was male, and Zeus wasn't willing to take the gamble; good thing for him it was a girl and without a grudge since the swallowing plot didn't stop her from being born).
• Egyptian Mythology: During Ra's nightly trip to the afterlife, the monstrous snake-god Apophis would try to devour him. Its hope was that as Ra was the god of the sun, eating him would bring about eternal night and the end of the world. Solar eclipses were believed to be Apophis successfully consuming Ra, only for Ra to escape when the eclipse ends.
  • The "cannibal hymn", part of the funerary Pyramid Texts intended to prepare a deceased pharaoh for the journey through the afterlife, describes the pharaoh butchering and consuming the gods to gain their power.
  • Ra himself is said to consume star deities when he rises each morning.
• Christianity: Jesus said: "This is my body, given up for you." The act of the Eucharistic Communion is a highly benign version of this trope, in which the act of Christ's sacrifice of his life for the forgiveness of mankind's sins is symbolized in the consumption of bread and wine, which stand for his flesh and blood respectively. The degree to which communion involves consuming his literal flesh and blood depends on the specific denomination of Christianity.

Tabletop Games

• The Dungeons & Dragons fan supplement Immortals Handbook features the Akalich, the stage beyond a demilich which remains once the latter has its last bones crumble into dust. Its only material parts are soul gems holding trapped souls... with everything below a demigod having a trapped soul digested within a day, and others being used as charges for the Akalich's special abilities.
• Warhammer 40,000: During the birth of the Chaos God Slaanesh, it grew to strength by devouring both most Eldar souls and most of the Eldar's pantheon of deities. Cegorach, Isha and Khaine were the only deities to avoid this fate, and only the former two survived in one piece.

Video Games

• Arcanum: An in-game book about pagan gods states that Torg fathered an entire pantheon of gods to rule over the ogres, but when he saw that many of them had forgotten what it meant to be ogrish, he slew them all and swallowed their still-beating hearts.
• Daikaiju Daikessen: The dossier for the six-armed Draconic Abomination kaiju Ascha'Vovina notes that it was kept as a pet by the god of war Acubens... until it grew strong enough to turn against him and ate one of his arms.
• Dark Souls III: Aldrich, Devourer of Gods, was once a human who discovered that he had a Cannibalism Superpower, and proceeded to eat people until he became obese, then kept eating people until he dissolved into a Blob Monster. Then he decided people weren't enough for him anymore and turned to eating gods. He succeeded at eating Gwyndolin, whose top half he uses as a puppet to fight you with. He may have also eaten Nito, as he has tipped Gwyndolyn's Tin Darkmoon Catalyst with an ethereal Gravelord Sword, using it as a spear.
• In The Elder Scrolls series, this is how the Daedric Prince Malacath came into being. Originally, Malacath was the Aldmeri (ancestors of the modern races of Mer) "ancestor spirit" Trinimac and champion of the Auri-El, Top God of the Aldmeri pantheon. However, the Daedric Prince of Plots, Boethiah, "devoured" Trinimac in order to speak with his voice and convince Trinimac's followers (the Aldmer who would become the Chimer, later Dunmer) to leave for Morrowind. Boethiah would late "excrete" Trinimac, with his remains becoming Malacath and his remaining followers mutating into the Orsimer (also called "Orcs"). Malacath admits there is some truth in the story but frequently complains that mortals take it too literally.
• The fate of Mr. Eaten from Fallen London, who was offered to cannibalistic priest-kings in exchange for the Third City. The priest-kings didn't turn out so well.
• In MapleStory, the Heroes of Maple blockbuster focuses on the Legends' attempts to stop Damien from absorbing Alicia, the Transcendence of Life and the source of all life on Maple World. Damien succeeds, gleefully declaring that he "devoured" her and her power before twisting the World Tree into a massive Womb Level the Legends climb up to face him down and stop him before he ends all life on Maple World.
• Neverwinter Nights 2's Mask of The Betrayer expansion pack is about your Player Character inheriting a Horror Hunger curse called "The Spirit-Eater". There are a few points in the story when you are given the chance to use the curse to devour gods or god-like beings:
  • You first discover the curse after defeating Okku, a powerful Nature Spirit who is effectively the god of bears, and the sight of his injured body in front of you causes a strange hunger to stir within you. You can either give in to the hunger and devour Okku or suppress it with Heroic Willpower.
  • At the end of the second act, your character encounters the corpse of Myrkul, the former god of death, still holding a semblance of sentience due to Gods Need Prayer Badly. Since Myrkul created the Spirit Eater curse, it's entirely possible to give him an Ironic Death by using the curse to consume what remains of his mind, leaving him Deader than Dead.
  • The evil ending gives you the option of magnifying the Spirit Eater curse to the point that your character becomes capable of consuming gods. If you do this, the ending narration states that the Gods of Faerun declare your character an abomination and band together to destroy you, but many of them are devoured before your character is forced into retreat.
• In Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, Extreme Omnivore Drong wants to eat the benevolent god Lord Sartek. The player character denies the request, then offers to let Drong eat the next god they encounter. This turns out to be Lord Bane, Sartek's evil brother; after the team defeats him, the player character makes good on their promise.
• Terraria Calamity features a massive worm called The Devourer of Gods, who does exactly what its name implies. It has killed an even larger astral worm god before by eating it from the inside out. What's more, the Devourer gains the power of anything it eats.
• Total War: Warhammer III; the goal of the Ogre Kingdoms in their campaign is to breach the Malestrom and find Ursun so they can eat him and sacrifice the remains to the Great Maw. Greasus seems particularly eager to eat god-flesh, a type of meat he's never had before.
• Utsuho Reiuji from Touhou Project was once a relatively normal hell raven, until Kanako Yasaka told her to consume the corpse of the sun god Yatagarasu. As a result, she has the power to manipulate nuclear fusion. The rapid gain in power caused her to go mad with power and try to destroy the world until the protagonists knocked some sense into her, after which, she runs a nuclear power plant in hell, providing electricity for Gensokyo.

Webcomics

• In A-gnosis' comics on Greek myth, Zeus consumed his first love, the Titan Metis, for fear that he would be deposed by any son they had. This granted him her unparalleled knowledge, but "impregnated" him with the goddess Athena, who also inherits Metis' wisdom. Athena is disgusted to learn that Zeus isn't that different from his father Kronos, who devoured his immortal offspring to avoid being replaced by them.
• In Kill Six Billion Demons Jagganoth, one of the Demiurges and a lord of the Multiverse, includes "The God Eater" in his title. Given what we know of him it's unlikely to be a metaphor.
• Penny Arcade: When Tycho is giving Gabe advice on keeping his Dungeons & Dragons game fresh with maximum-level characters, he advises him to kill the PCs' gods. Gabe says they've already killed their own gods, in order to "ingest their godseeds".
• Unsounded: The Gefendur religion preaches that the goddess Yerta (who is said to be pregnant with the world) ate her sister the trickster goddess Tirna, banishing her to have to live among the humans whom Tirna had tried to destroy. This belief led to the tradition of the Gefendur ritually sacrificing and eating younger twins.
• Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic: During her rise to power, Ranna devours several other Gods (such as the Orcish god Gruumsh) and gains their strength.

Web Original

• SCP Foundation:
  • This is part of the Scarlet King's backstory. Originally a weak god known as Khahrahk, he was the first of his brothers and sisters to become aware of and soon came to loathe existence. His first act of omnicidal mania was to consume his divine siblings, becoming stronger so that he can better fulfill his nihilistic agenda.
  • The original goal of the Sarkic Cults was to kill and eat the god Yaldabaoth, using the power gained from this act to create a paradise for humanity free from the gods. They have since devolved into two main sects: one which has faith that their founder, Grand Karcist Ion, will soon consume Yaldabaoth and create that paradise, and one which wants to do it themselves, and don't really care about the paradise part. It's unclear what happened to Ion himself, though it's been implied that he's either turned evil, or that something is impersonating him.

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