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"They were Gods once, but their worshipers either died out or were converted to the worship of other Gods. They wail and flutter around the edges of reality without substance or even thought. All they have is need. ... We go out of fashion, Sparhawk—like last year's gowns or old shoes and hats. The Powerless Ones are discarded Gods who shrink and shrink as the years go by until they're finally nothing at all but a kind of anguished wailing."
In the world of fantasy, it is a largely accepted fact that the power of any given deity is proportional to the amount of belief in them or the amount of worship they are currently receiving.
Possibly, the deity was originally conceived and shaped by the needs and desires of one small group. But like any good meme, this 'idea' grows with each new person who responds, then spreads the word of this great new 'god on the block'. Soon, the deity has enough collective belief behind their 'name brand' that they actually come into existence, and use that power to fulfill the needs of their worshippers.
But the opposite is also true: As a deity's power base of worshippers shrinks, their divine strength fades; if all worship of them ceases, they may completely fade out of existence in a Puff Of Logic.
In a similar manner, the well-being of an Anthropomorphic Personification is often tied to whatever concept they personify. Big concepts like Fate or Death are pretty safe, but Disco is in critical condition.
A subtrope of Clap Your Hands If You Believe, which can be used to explain why The Powers That Be care whether or not anyone worships them. Or in games where you play as a Physical God, this is often used as a game mechanic to explain why you can't just Deus Ex Machina your way through everything. Or maybe it's just as a Take That against organized religion.
Possibly derived from those "manifestations" of a god's earthly power that can be empirically proven - it's been a long time since anyone built a hospital or started a holy war in the name of Zeus or Quetzalcoatl - although Real Life belief in gods that actually function this way seems to be restricted mainly to some forms of neopaganism.
Named for Gauntlet's " <character> needs food, badly!" catchphrase.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- Very important in Kannagi. Since Nagi's sacred tree which once sustained her has been cut down, and Zange's is inside a church, the sisters are fighting to become the god of the land. Zange already has a head start over her sister. The more believers they get, the more powerful they become.
- In the end of Pita-Ten it is revealed that angels' and demons' existence depends on human faith in them, and once some entity is forgotten it ceases to exist which is a way to kill demon or angel, however if memory is restored it is possible to revive a dead demon or angel. Strangely enough these virtual creatures have quite strong real powers and can manipulate human memory as well.
- In the Slayers world, the dragon gods gain strength from praise and worship, which is in contrast to the opposing Mazoku who feed on human suffering. This plays a role in a war between one of the gods and the Mazoku race that occurs a thousand years in the past from Lina's time. The Mazoku crippled the Water Dragon King by killing all the worshipers and destroying all the temples dedicated to the latter.
- The second episode of Natsume Yuujinchou has a very poignant example of this trope (that also doubles as a Tear Jerker) when a Youkai that took up residence in a roadside shrine begins to lose his power (and his tether to the living world) as the people who once prayed to him all begin to die of old age. Natsume himself offers to pray to him but the Youkai refuses saying: "It's impossible, because you are my friend."
- A key theme in Serial Experiments Lain; Masami Eiri defines godhood as this, and the main thrust of his scheme is ensuring he will have people believe him to be God, so that for all intents and purposes he will be.
Comic Books
- This is how The DCU versions of the ancient mythological pantheons (Greco-Roman, especially) gain their power, as well as the New Gods and other similar deities don't count, as they're just Sufficiently Advanced Aliens.
- Except that the New Gods are really deities (or close enough), they just happen to use magitek.
- Subverted in an issue of Walt Simonson's Orion, in which the titular New God explains that "every time a mortal turns on a computer, puts a piece of bread in the toaster, opens a door, strikes a match, or wonders at the stars ... he worships at the altar of the New Gods." In the same speech, he asserts that "gods are not dependent on their worshipers; worshipers are dependent on their gods."
- The Endless are similar in that they need at least one living being capable of performing the function they embody in order to exist (i.e. as long as something is capable of dreaming, Dream will still exist and personify it). Death is apparently the exception; at one point it's mentioned that she is the only one of the Endless who will last longer than the current version of the universe, and also she is the one who will "put up the chairs and turn off the lights" after the last living thing dies.
- Mind-boggling. Destiny should die before Death disappears, but Destiny will be around until the last thing dies, because death is everyone's destiny. Ouchhh, brain reset button please!
- There is actually a canonical answer, for what it's worth. In The Books Of Magic, the protagonist visits the end of the world, when Death and Destiny are the only two beings left. Death kills Destiny and then sends the protagonist back to his own time - telling him that she's about to kill the universe itself. What happens to her after that is not stated, though the simplest theory is presumably that her final duty will be to kill herself.
- The Sandman series also heavily features other gods, who fit the usual version of this trope more closely. The Endless are described as "more powerful than gods," and one difference between the Endless and gods appears to be that, although the Endless require someone capable of performing the function they represent, unlike gods they do not need (nor, in general, want) active worshippers (although some of them have been worshipped as gods on occasion).
- The version of Thor in the Marvel Universe wonders about that
 ◊. Would he still exist if no one believed in him?
- In the alternate future of the Marvel Universe, Earth X, it is established that basically, belief rules all. Loki is the one to discover this. Loki turns into some sort of gender neutral asexual entity. Thor turns into a woman. So Yeah.
- In general in the MU, it's established that belief doesn't play much of a factor. The various pantheons all swore off direct involvement on Earth thousands of years ago, something that, had worship been a serious concern, would have been against their interests. The most powerful Skyfather is (or, currently, was) Odin, who by the time the modern Marvel Age began, hadn't been worshipped by any serious number of people for over 1000 years. The Elder Gods are worshipped by no one and remain uber (the same with Demogorge, the God-Slayer).
- In Knights of the Dinner Table, after Bob's character, Knuckles III, dies, his next character (Knuckles IV) manages to get Knuckles III promoted to gawdhood. Temples to Knu-Kyle-Ra are now a recurring feature in the comic. Unfortunately, they don't owe Bob's other characters any favors.
- In My Faith In Frankie, gods gain power from the belief of their followers. Judging by Jeriven, they only need one true believer to be at full strength, but more may have more effect.
Film
- In Q The Winged Serpent, the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl is prayed back into existence and begins terrorizing New York City in the form of a giant flying snake-bird thing with four legs.
Literature
- The work of Robert E Howard may be the Trope Maker. Conan The Barbarian's world is littered with lost civilizatons, and old gods looking to make a comeback.
- A prime example of this came in a (non-Howard) story where Conan literally defeated a demigod by making his followers question why they were even worshipping him. To summarize, Conan was impersonating a demigod named Shan at the behest of an evil king. Shan had been a folk hero of the king's people, who ascended to godhood after his death and promised to return in their darkest hour. The tyrant used the fake Shan to put down a rebellion. Suddenly, the REAL Shan, appearing as a giant version of himself, shows up and slays the king. He then tries to defeat Conan in combat. Conan, of course, is doomed ... until he begins questioning Shan's motives for finally appearing after centuries of igoring his followers. Conan called out Shan for allowing his worshippers to suffer while still receiving their adulation. It was because that worship was threatened by Conan's fraud that he came down to earth to deal with the false Shan. Shan's followers begin questioning their devotion as Conan battles the god, and their doubt literally causes Shan to shrink. Conan eventually runs him through, sending Shan back to the realm of the gods to grovel at their feet without the prayer of believers to sustain him.
- Fritz Leiber's stories of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser have a unique take: all temples in the city of Lankhmar are located along the Street of the Gods. Less-popular religions are located at the end of the street closest to the city gate; the more numerous a deity's followers, the farther from the gate his temple is located. Religions ebb and fall up and down the street throughout Lankhmar's history.
- In the A.E. van Vogt story The Book of Ptath, gods are powered by "prayer sticks", which are actual machines (albeit, Sufficiently Advanced ones) that are physically manipulated by their worshipers to send power to the god.
- Neil Gaiman loves this trope. Gods in American Gods and The Sandman are diminished by their loss of followers and worship.
- There's some major Fridge Logic (or perhaps Fridge Brilliance) in American Gods given the slighting way one of them refers to Jesus. Given that deities are powered by belief, he (probably along with Vishnu) would likely be the most powerful god around at present.
- He is brought up and presumably established to exist, during a conversation about how low in the world the local version of Jesus is in Afghanistan, and how fat and happy the American one is. Apparrently, though, he has no interest whatsoever in the doings of other gods (he does, after all, belong to a monotheistic religion). It's probably his attitude that engenders the scorn of the pagan gods.
- It's probably also likely that Wednesday wanted Jesus getting nowhere near his Xanatos Gambit, as the effect would be something like a tidal wave taking out an anthill.
- Neil Gaiman actually said in an interview that Jesus and Buddha were too successful and busy for anything the gods had to offer to interest them at all.
- In American Gods, it seems that deities are also localised - that is, the Thor of America is not the same as the Thor of Norway, and so on.
- The greatest illustration of this trope in American Gods is the mention of the Car Gods as "the recipients of the largest series of human sacrifies since the fall of the Aztecs".
- David Eddings uses it in the Elenium and Tamuli trilogies (the source of the page header quote). At one point, the goddess Aphrael becomes ill because her worshippers are being killed.
- Averted in his Belgariad series - although apparently all the worshippers of Mara were killed, Mara is still a force to be reckoned with, driving mad those who would plunder the homeland of his worshippers. Also Aldur only ever had a dozen or so disciples - all immortal wizards - and never felt the need for more.
- Both Mara and Aldur are at least believed in by most of the world's population - all the gods in those books are part of a common body of mythos. They don't seem to be getting power from that belief or from worship, though. The most general rule in both series is that gods can act the most freely within their territory and/or to their peoples... disciples (as opposed to priests) counting as a "mobile territory".
- Some notes about both 'worlds' that need to be clarified. The Gods of the Belgariad are self-sufficient and do not require worshippers - but there are many rules in place that restrict them from using the fullness of their divine powers (cf the Purpose asking Them to channel power through Garion to return Durnik to life). The 'gods' of the Elenium, however, correspond more closely to the Higher Powers of the Forgotten Realms, such that they can kill each other, and require worshippers to increase their power. The Ur-Gods of that universe (Bhelliom, Klael and maybe others unmentioned) are completely unlimited and restrict themselves through 'games' with their own rules. As Anakha, Sparhawk is himself a god and has significant God-Killer powers, precisely because he is outside the natural order. Oh, and the world is his sister. Which means, if he spills his seed on the ground...
- Douglas Adams' The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul: Old gods who have fallen out of belief become powerless destitutes, while a new god is actually spawned as a critical mass of Guilt builds up through the book.
- Terry Pratchett uses this one a bunch throughout Discworld. The Discworld is lousy with small gods, most of them just "a pinch of existence".
- In Small Gods the god Om was a big deal at one time. Then he went on an extended vacation, neglecting his worshippers. When he gets back, he finds only one person who actually believes in him, rather than giving lip-service or worshipping the institution of his church, and Om finds himself trapped in the body of a small tortoise, looking to make his comeback. The book generally details Pratchett's version of this nicely, including an encounter with both unborn and abandoned gods in the desert desperately trying to get a follower for a new start.
- In Hogfather, this fact is deliberately used in an attempt to kill the Disc's Crystal Dragon Santa by using mind control to stop children from believing in him. When the Hogfather falls out of existence, all that belief goes into completely random concepts that never existed before, such as the Verruca Gnome; the Eater of Socks; and Bilious, the Oh God of Hangovers.
- It is worth noting that the Hogfather ceases to exist a significant period before the plot to kill him actually takes place, and this breach of causality clues in other parties far enough ahead of time to allow them to prevent the assassination from happening at all.
- The Last Continent features the God of Evolution, who has no worshippers. He exists because he believes in himself very strongly, or more precisely, what he does.
- The books also include a Crystal Dragon Jesus parody of the unpleasant Old Testament god idea through the god Nuggan. He has an ever increasing list of "abominations" forbidden to his worshippers. When people start coming to their senses, he declines in power and later dies.
- Pratchett's Discworld, it should be noted, operates on a different system of belief than Roundworld (Earth) — belief is extremely important to the 'final' shape of a being. Death, according to this principle, is only a scythe-wielding humanoid skeleton because that's what people expect Death to look like. Lack of belief has even been addressed, with excess amounts of 'belief' being allocated to create otherwise non-existant supernatural beings.
- However in Pyramids the newly dead Pharoah expected Death to be a three headed scarab. Death did once try to fulfill peoples expectations in appearance, but since he doesn't know what they expect until he meets them he eventually just gave up and sticks to what he likes.
- The majority of the Discworld believes that Death shows up as a "skelington", equipped with scythe. Presumably, having more belief towards the reaper, as opposed to a three-headed scarab, results in the reaper man showing up more often.
- Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman in the The Rose Of The Prophet series (the prominent plot point actually), I think they also use it in a few of their other series.
- They did. The gods of the Dragon Lance setting don't die without worship, but getting it does make them more powerful.
- Mercedes Lackey can't make up her mind on this one. Most deities in the world of Valdemar are actually just aspects of the God and the Goddess (and the One is implied to be both at once), whose power descends down to the clerics instead of the other way around, but in one vignette it's explicitly mentioned that a demon can ascend to divinity by running a sex cult and feeding off all the worship (and a few worshippers too).
- And in a later book, the local gods are all limited to their tribe, (and the worship they get there) and are shown to both split off from each other (forming new gods, similar to the old) and rejoin, when their tribes do the same.
- Tamora Pierce's Trickster series mentions this principle, although it's not necessarily the number of people who believe, but who's in power. The trickster god Kyprioth needs his followers to defeat the mortal followers of his siblings Mithros and the Great Mother Goddess in order to gain enough power to defeat them, return from the exile they imposed, and resume rule over the Copper Isles.
- The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas: Gods are created by belief and, of course, gain power from worship. Apollo Smintheus, the mouse god, has a cult of six guys in Illinois with a website. As you might guess, he's not particularly powerful.
- In For Love of Evil, Piers Anthony shows that YHWH used to have a lot of power, but since belief in the Hebrew God had waned, his place had been usurped by the Christian God.
- Subverted nicely in the Soldier's Son trilogy by Robin Hobb. The main character attempts to denounce that he owes ones of the "Old gods" a favour, saying that he "Believes in the Good God - You have no power over me" at which point the Old God laughs and tells him "How weak do you think Gods are? Do you think we require your belief in us to exist, how weak would such a god be?"
- Star Trek New Frontier brought us the Greek gods (who were also the Roman gods, the Norse gods, etc.) known as The Beings, who were kin to Apollo in the original series ep "Who Mourns for Adonis". They eventually get all powerful thanks to the worship of the Danteri... and the fear of the Excalibur and the Trident. They're beaten by said crews becoming quite literally fearless, along with the help of Mark Mc Henry (the descendant of Apollo and Carolyn Palamas)... and Woden/Zeus/Santa Claus, god of all gods.
- The short story anthology Gods of War (by Christopher Stasheff, et al) features this, but also indicates in addition to the Greek, Norse, and Japanese gods (among others) who fall into this trope, there is the 'one god' who is above the others and has no such concerns or limitations.
- This is how it works in Dave Duncan's Great Game trilogy. The balance of power in that world is being upset by one demigod who has discovered a much more efficient means of getting divine power from worship—human sacrifice—and threatens to overthrow the major gods.
- Played very straight in The Acts Of Caine, but with a history. A long time ago, gods had whatever power they could draw from T'nalldion a.k.a. Home, the fundamental pattern/source of all magic on Overworld. Then this lowly human named Jereth got involved in a religious war, kicked some ass, earned the title of Godslaughterer, and died to establish the Covenant of Pirichanthe, which limits the power of all deities to what their believers provide. The exceptions are the Outer Powers which feed on the suffering and fear of sentients, and the Blind God, who is happily nigh-omnipotent on Earth despite the fact that his worshippers neither believe he exists nor care.
- Partly how gods are created in The God Eaters, where a human born with magic is worshipped until (at least in the case of Medur) they gain enough power to return after death. Eventually, however, they amass enough power that they don't need belief to keep going. Still doesn't mean they're indestructible, though.
- Several short stories by Lord Dunsany explore this trope, most literally Poseidon, in which the eponymous deity complains that he can no longer cause earthquakes without the blood of bulls. Perhaps humans just got smarter over the years.
- In the Books of Swords, when people find out gods can be killed, their faith is shaken. Eventually, it is discovered that humans created gods by believing... which they stop, destroying all the gods. This leads to the question of "If humans made the gods, where did humans come from?" (Inversion of a question often asked theists in Real Life.)
- Yahweh, in Armageddon. "Like the Ori", as an intelligence officer lampshaded.
- Expanded by Dan Simmons in his short story Vanni Fucci is Alive and Well and Living in Hell, where different versions of Hell as well as God become true on the basis of the number of people who (consciously or not) believe in them. Vanni Fucci, one of the many people condemned to Dante's Hell simply because Dante did not like him very much, takes an opportunity to take over a televangelist's show and convince everyone not to believe in Dante's Hell anymore. Hilarity Ensues.
- In Jennifer Fallon's Demon Child Trilogy, the "Primal Gods" are the ones that will exist as long as life exists (Love, War, the Oceans), and don't need humans, although their power increases with worship. On the other hand, the "Incidental Gods" are demons that gather enough worshippers to become gods. The Big Bad is one of these.
- In Harry Turtledove's Magi Tek novel The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump, this has become the province of bureaucracy; the EPA is responsible for creating artificial cults to sustain "endangered gods".
- Averted in Percy Jackson and the Olympians, the Greek Gods continue at seeming full strength despite virtually no following in the modern world.
- The series in some ways seems to substitute this for the idea that the Gods are tied to Western Civilization, rather than any kind of worship.
- The Nameless Ones in Ursula Le Guin's The Tombs of Atuan
- In Orson Scott Card's Enchantment, the old Slavic gods Mikola Mozhaiski and the Bear of Winter aren't killed by a lack of belief, but their concerns are much smaller and they try to live normal lives until they're needed again for godly duties.
- In Simon R. Green's The Nightside Series, gods function rather like this. They even have harkers out on the Street of Gods trying to increase their base of worship to gain more power. Who often dissolve into shouting matches over who's dogma's right. It's a God eat God world out there...
Live Action TV
- The initially conventional Christian-themed horror series Brimstone, in which a damned policeman is given a second chance at life by Satan in return for tracking down 113 souls who had escaped from Hell, undergoes a dizzying Genre Shift when the LAPD policewoman who had been his inside track with Earthly authorities is revealed to be the ringleader of the souls, a dead Canaanite priestess who had engineered the escape from Hell by seducing Satan. (The policeman had, unwittingly, been helping her to eliminate members of her "gang" that had gone rogue.) Her plan is to systematically eradicate belief in the God of Abraham from human culture, thereby causing God, Heaven, and Hell, to all blink out of existence. The protagonist realizes that Satan had been desperate to retrieve the escaped spirits, not out of some altruistic desire to restore the Cosmic Balance, but because if the priestess were to succeed in her agenda, Satan, being part of the Abrahamic mythos himself, would blink out of existence as well. Naturally, just as the series threatened to actually become interesting, the network pulled the plug.
- The Merlin TV miniseries explicitly says that creatures like Mab and the Lady of the Lake only exist because people believe in them. Once Christianity moves in and people don't believe in magic, it doesn't exist any more. The climax has Mab literally fade into thin air because the crowd turns their back on her and moves on with their lives.
- This causes a bit of a Fridge Logic to pop up, as the claim was that Queen Mab can only die when people forget her. Since Merlin is telling this story to a fascinated audience, it's clear that she isn't forgotten, but is still supposedly dead. The claim wasn't about belief, but about memory, after all.
- The Ori from Stargate SG-1 gain power from human worship, although unlike most examples of this trope they're still extremely powerful on their own. Once Adria takes their place in The Ark Of Truth, SG-1 needs to take away her worshippers to make her vulnerable.
- The Ascended Orissi Adria, being the focus of everyone's worship as the last remaining Ori, is not invulnerable - she simply had waaayyyy too many HP and MP (so to speak) for SG-1 to take her down; for that matter, for a single Ascended Being to take her down. Once the Ark of Truth was deployed and the Priors stop believing in her and hence she loses a significant bulk of that power, it opened the way for a Oma Desala gambit.
- In Valentine, it's said that it isn't so much prayer or belief that the gods need as it is "relevance". What this means for the main characters (Aphrodite, Eros, the Pythia, and Hercules, disguised as humans running an LA matchmaking service) is that if they don't do a better job at uniting soulmates, they'll cease being relevant to humanity, and will consequently lose their immortality.
- In an episode of Supernatural the guys come across the haunting that wasn't - it was just a practical joke. The prankee buys it and posts the story on the internet where it becomes well known in a Urban Legend kind of way. Once enough people believe that there is a ghost there it actually appears. It was defeated by writing a weakness into the text - once enough people believed it, the ghost was defeated that way.
- The original Star Trek episode Who Mourns for Adonis involved a cosmic entity claiming to be the Greek God Apollo. Apollo said that his fellow gods faded away as humans stopped worshiping them. Apollo tried to force the Enterprise crew to worship him, but their resistance to the idea ultimately convinced him that humanity had indeed outgrown him, and chose to fade away himself.
Mythology
- A Greek myth/folktale likely written in Christian times by Plutarch times tells of the death of the god Pan when people start thinking of him as only a made up story. Fridge Logic — with the rise of Neo-Pagans beginning worship of Pan again, does that mean they rose him from the dead?
- Well, it wouldn't be the first time...
- Depending on who you ask, it's possible to worship/serve a god without ever paying the actual deity the slightest attention.
Tabletop Games
- Many D&D campaign settings have this, in particular the Forgotten Realms, where a god's power is determined by his/her number of worshippers, and needs at least one worshipper to maintain Divine status (albeit at a demigod level). The only exception is the overdeity Ao, who needs no worshippers to maintain power because he rules over all of the universe.
- This is fairly recent, as the deities were independently powerful before the Avatar Crisis, when Ao got fed up with nobody doing their duties or taking care of their worshippers anymore.
- In the Planescape setting, this mechanic is explained via the fact that the Outer Planes (where the gods live) is shaped entirely by belief.
- The Binder class depends on this: To get powers, they bind vestiges (basically souls/beings with no place in any of the afterlives) to themselves. One source of vestiges is gods who aren't worshipped anymore.
- This is taken advantage of in Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of The Betrayer; in order to prevent his death former god of the dead Myrukl makes the soul of a traitorous follower (Akachi "The Betrayer") part of a curse that regularly returns to haunt the world, ensuring Akachi's tortured soul remains forever and ensuring that as at least one person will remember him, he will live forever albeit as a nearly powerless stationary giant skeleton floating in the astral plane.
- In Demon: The Fallen demons need faith to fuel their powers. They can either force steal it, which causes spiritual damage, or set up cults of various stripes to get a small but steady flow without necessarily hurting their worshippers (unless they want to be hurt).
- The new World Of Darkness has the Astral Realms, which include the Temenos, the collective consciousness of humanity. Among the conceptual archetypes present there are every god ever worshipped. In this case, since they are formed through human belief, their power is proportional to how much humans regard them, not necessarily through worship. For example, Anubis exists in the Temenos, and though not as powerful as he was when he was actively worshipped by a powerful nation, he is still a relevent and well known symbol, which means he still possesses the power of a minor god. Other gods are less fortunate. Since the Temenos is a focal point for all human knowledge and experience, even a completely forgotten god would still exist somewhere, albeit significantly weakened. Its also suggested that some Temenos gods might be based by humanity on truly divine beings (a theory particularly popular with devout mages who suffur crises of faith upon learning they can meet their deities in the Temenos).
- The Chaos Gods in Warhammer and Warhammer 40000 are both formed and fuelled by the concepts they represent. On the other hand, they don't really need prayer: every feeling of anger, ecstasy, hope, or despair feeds one of the Chaos Gods, whether the person who has the feeling is a follower of Chaos or not.
- And it's not just them, particularly in Warhammer Fantasy. Background material implies that all deities are shaped by belief - or, more specifically, by the effect that this belief has upon Chaos.
- Strangely inverted by the God of Atheism and Agnosticism, Necoho the Doubter. His power is directly proportional to the amount of disbelief in the universe.
- Also, with enough belief (or as mentioned above, via emotions), it's possible to create an entirely new god. This was how Slaanesh was born in 40, 000.
- In Exalted, not only do Gods little and big benefit from worship as the currency of Yu Shan, but anyone can earn Essence if they get a Cult worshipping them. Something many player characters will find handy.
- As an interesting note prayer manifests as a sweet substance wrapped in gold leaves and stamped with the mark of heaven. The gods are being paid with chocolate money.
- This actually forms the basis of the celestial economy, as the prayer-generated substance can also be forged into different items. Sidereals get their salary in this form and the rule book actually states that "Young Sidereals are advised not to eat their operational budgets."
- In Rifts, Gods are naturally more powerful in their own home dimensions, and ones where they have a strong base of the devoted, than in any other dimension.
- Before coming up with Magic and acquiring TSR, Wizards Of The Coast released a supplement called The Primal Order to provide formal system-independent rules for deities and ways they interacted with mortals and each other. As described, all gods had a certain amount of power at all times (unless deprived of that by suitable attacks, at which point they could expect to shortly cease to exist barring possession of a loyal home plane to regenerate from over the course of a century), but gathering worshippers both living and dead as well as acquiring planar real estate and spheres of influence all provided significant boosts that only the strangest gods would want to do without.
- This is the status for the gods in the Scarred Lands campaign... except for Chaotic Evil Vangal, who derives his power from how many people his worshippers slaughter. Otherwise, he would've died, since most people aren't too keen on worshipping a Blood Knight who doesn't even pretend to have any other motive besides fun.
- In Scion, a character's Legend rating represents how well-renowned an individual is, and determines the strength of his divine powers. Full-blooded deities have very high Legend ratings, but some very famous mortals even without divine Ichor can have very low Legend ratings.
- The godlike Reckoners/Manitou of Deadlands gain more power when they spread fear and belief in the supernatural.
- The non-Abrahamic gods in In Nomine are called Ethereals, explained as being formed by humanity's imagination and empowered by their worship. Yves came up with the different Abrahamic religions in order to undercut their power, and Uriel opted to wipe them out directly before God yanked him up to the Higher Heavens to have a little chat with him about it. Of course, the Ethereals say that Yahweh/Jehovah/God was one of them and simply managed to gain enough worship to Ret Con reality.
Theater
- This one might be actually Older Than Feudalism, as in The Birds, the Greek gods lose power because the prayers they were offered couldn't reach them because of a great wall built in the sky.
Video Games
- Prayer is the source of Mana in Black And White, and determines the size of your territory.
- Power-ups in Okami come from the praise you get for performing miracles. And at the end, Ammy becomes a literal A God Am I through people praying directly to her.
- This trope seems to be one of the game's underlying themes, as it's mentioned quite early on how people's faith in the divine has dwindled.
- In Age Of Mythology, the player literally generates favour for their gods to produce miracles. Greeks pray at temples, Egyptians build monuments, Norse go to war, and Altanteans own real estate to generate favour.
- Used as a plot point in the Expansion Pack campaign; killing the followers and destroying the monuments of the gods weakens them (specifically, allowing a mere mortal to reach the top of Mount Olympus), allowing the Titans to escape from Tartarus, in which the gods had kept them imprisoned (Nice Job Breaking It Hero). Fortunately, one of the Titans, Gaia, is benevolent and helps fixing things up.
- This troper's interpretation was that you generate favour from the gods in your civilisation. They aren't gathering the power to perform Powers, they're waiting to get enough love from you to bother helping you out.
- Seven Kingdoms had temples where you'd sent people to pray to your nations "Greater Being" (based on a god of the respective mythology). In this case, you'd could either summon the god himself (some are fighters, some have special abilities) or trigger a random miracle.
- Used for evil by the Church of St. Eva in Breath Of Fire II, whose high priest is knowingly aiding and abetting the resurrection of the evil god Deathevan by passing him off as a benevolent Crystal Dragon Jesus. All that prayer the worshippers offer their "god" is turned directly into power for the Omnicidal Maniac via a cruel contraption that requires a living human being to function.
- In Populous the more worshippers you have, the more powerful miracles you can perform.
- The premise of the 10th Touhou game Mountain of Faith has a goddess moving her shrine (which wasn't even really hers) to Gensokyo to avoid losing her ability to work miracles from lack of devotees. Unfortunately she also tries to muscle in on the local religious "authority", which turns out to be a very bad idea.
- Meanwhile, the God of the local shrine has more or less become a non-entity from the lack of followers, and at least two characters have called the protagonist out on this.
- Touhou also has an inversion, as Gensokyo itself runs off of the disbelief of the outside world, being a repository for everything in which humans stopped believing. The actual gods *
or possibly just shrine gods, the specifics are unclear require more normal faith.
- Maybe. It's actually just a theory on one character's part.
- Lampshaded in Blood Omen: Legacy Of Kain when Kain remarks, "The act had taken on the feel of ritual. Isn't it strange how we must bribe our gods to stay?"
- In Fate Stay Night, the Heroic Spirits (not outright gods but at least a few levels of spiritualism above humans) mostly exist due to — and are partially sustained and empowered by — the belief they've inspired in humanity. Their strength appears based partly on their actual power and partly on pure Popularity Power. As Rin explains in the game prologue, even fictional characters count, what matters is the image created by the minds of the people. The game features two major explorations of this — Assassin is a nameless samurai called forth to play the role of Sasaki Kojiro, an opponent of Miyamoto Musashi, who is entirely fictional in the Nasuverse. In other words, the pure belief that humanity has in the existence of said hero is so strong that it allows him to exist, albeit through summoning a nameless spirit to take on his name and fill his role. On the flip side, Archer is a hero from the future; nobody knows of his existence and he therefore owes neither his existence nor any of his powers from belief, persisting as a Heroic Spirit only through the connection all Heroic Spirits have with the earth itself. Heracles, naturally, gets top billing either way you look at it.
- In Actraiser for the SNES, you gain Experience Points for each follower your character has. With enough followers, you gain more max Hit Points.
- In Actraiser 2, one of the towns you need to save is initially closed off, because the townspeople there don't believe in you (and thus you can't read their minds).
- In Baldurs Gate 2, during one sidequest, you meet an avatar of a god with so little belief that he is fading away. Amunator and a small village of followers were bound to immortally guard "the device" forever, over the years their faith has transformed to hatred and the avatar can barely even show himself, much less do anything.
- In Illwinter's Dominions II the faith of people in various provinces is represented by a candle. This affects the knowledge you have on the province, the level at which you can affect it and, should you move it into the area, the hitpoints of your Pretender God.
- In Ultima VIII the old gods reveal to the player they are nearly powerless now that about everyone worships the four new gods instead.
Webcomics
- Was played with to an epic extent in the (now completed) Indefensible Positions. It took this to it's logical extreme by having EVERY meme being a god powered by people's thinking about them. One of the characters becomes a small god after her death this way.
- Fans has the occasional god make an appearance. These gods usually claim they were conceived by Roman clergy, during nights with a little too much wine. These gods include the god of gaming, and the anti-cupid (who shoots you with a tommy-gun and takes away your devotion to another person).
- The Order Of The Stick universe in general employs this trope to explain any god not in the
four three original pantheons. In particular, Elan and some orcs are Banjoists, worshippers of Banjo the clown, god of puppets. He doesn't have many followers, so his divine lightning is little more than a spark.
- In Start Of Darkness, it is revealed that mortal beings can be ascended to divinity by sufficient worship. This is how the goblin deity the Dark One (posthumously) became a god, as after his assassination, his followers embarked on a year long rampage of genocide in revenge.
- The elves are also mentioned as having raised their own gods prior to the goblins raising the Dark One.
- The Gods of Arr-Kelaan gain power from their followers, but mostly they provide their own power.
- In Parallel Dimentia, most nightmares (read: supernatural beings) gain power from belief. This also works for human, as demonstrated by a legendary assasin who faked her death who still gains power from people believing in her former name, Mistress of Blades.
Web Original
- Seen in the Whateley Universe with the New Olympians. After escaping imprisonment (by whom hasn't yet been revealed) into the modern world, the old gods of Olympus find themselves greatly weakened and without worshippers to draw power from, and end up having to take mortal hosts. Who in the present day form their own loose school clique at Whateley Academy... — It's also been mentioned in the canon background material that even simple spirits (basically considered randomly occurring self-motivated 'knots' of magical energy) may be able to evolve into 'gods' over time if given a source of worship to draw on.
- Used in Adylheim where the less powerful gods require constant supplication and sacrifices to be made in their honour, whereas the more powerful ones merely use this as something of a divine power up. In return they're usually inclined to offer everything from providence to small miracles.
Western Animation
- In Thundercats, while negotiating a system of catacombs as part of a ritual ordeal, Lion-O discovers a beautiful, brightly-lit room full of treasures. A mysterious figure, clearly terrorized by his presence, attacks him but is too weak and decrepit to put up any resistance. After Lion-O assures him that he is not a thief, the creature introduces himself, explaining that millennia ago he was a much-renowned god, but that his power has withered to virtually nothing after enduring many centuries without having been worshiped. He goes on to explain that anyone can become a god, but few attempt it as without worshipers this is certain doom.
- He also comments that Lion-o would make a good cat-god. Maybe he was positioning himself to be Loin-o's promotion agent. That must contain a better retirement package than turning to stone in a forgotten crypt.
Real Life
- The Aztec believed their gods needed worship and blood, especially that the world would end if the Sun wouldn't get human blood every day!
- Myth busted!
- This troper has read a story where a hidden tribe of Aztecs' descendents still commit the sacrifices daily... and woe if they stop!
- The neopagan scholar Isaac Bonewits describes gods as functioning basically as the trope says.
- Certain African tribal belief systems have this characteristic.
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