Sometimes, in Mon games, the game will allow the player to capture and control creatures that a preteen hero has absolutely no business owning. A kind of Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu? moment for The Kid with the Remote Control, Mon games will allow the player to capture cosmic, and other supernaturally-powerful beings. Of course, other media occasionally have gods captured by humankind as well.
Don't expect this power to be easy to come by, however. A lot of Olympus Mons require that you prove yourself worthy to command them by defeating them in combat first. If this is the case in a video game, this often means that the fight against them will be That One Boss, or a Bonus Boss that isn't accessible until later in the game.
Strangely, these beings seem to be perfectly content with their human masters, and rarely rebel. If they do, though? Be very, very afraid. See also Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?.
The name is a pun on Olympus Mons, Latin for Mt. Olympus and also a volcano on Mars that's also the largest mountain in the solar system. This trope is the exact opposite of Com Mons.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
Yu Gi Oh has the playable Egyptian GodCards. There are also a number of arch-demonlike/godlike cards out there. Timaeus & company, Exodia, Dark Ruler Ha Des, Dark Creator, the Sacred Beasts, Black Luster Soldier and Chaos Emperor Dragon, Five God Dragon, and the list goes on. Most characters who use these cards do so frivilously; Yugi, being the hero, is likely the only one who at first realizes the potential danger they may pose. (As he says when he wins Sky Dragon Osiris, "I must be very careful with this...") Heck, even Blue Eyes White Dragon had a god-like backstory before the game's Power Creep got the better of it. And there's still its fusion forms, the Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon (which even after the power creep still has the 5th highest attack power in the game, with all of the stronger cards being ludicrously impractical to use) and the even more powerful Dragon Master Knight.
The spinoff manga Yu-Gi-Oh! R features the Devils, demonic doppelgangers of the God Cards. The second series, Yu-Gi-Oh! GX has the Sacred Beasts, another set of Evil Counterparts of the Egyptian God Cards (there's seriously something wrong when a three gods have two sets of Evil Counterparts. To make that even worse, there's even a far stronger monster that's summoned by fusing all three of them. The third series, Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds, features two opposing sets of "God Cards" in the form of the eponymous Five Dragons, each wielded by chosen heroes called Signers, and the seven Earthbound Gods, nightmarish monsters of enormous size inspired by the Nazca Lines whose masters, the Dark Signers, came Back from the Dead through a Deal with the Devil.
Trueman took it Up to Eleven in the fourth season of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, actually summoning two copies of Five God Dragon at once. (Which kind of makes you wonder, just how many people in this reality have access to this card, which is stronger than Obelisk? Even Judai had a copy.) In fact, the method he used was even possible in the real game at the time. (But not anymore, at least currently, because Future Fusion is now illegal.)
In Digimon Tamers, Guilmon's "dark evolution" turns him into Megiddramon, a Dragon who can destroy all of reality. Note, his name comes from Megiddo, the name of the Valley where the Apocalypse will take place. (and the word "Armageddon" comes from). Unlike most examples, Takato could not control him, and he had to come to grips with his own anger at someone who had killed a friend before Guilmon would revert back.
In fact, most of the Digimon games (especially the recent ones) have something like this. It's possible to obtain, through evolving cute little In-Training level Digimon, godlike Digimon such as Alphamon and Chaosmon who have unfathomable amounts of power.
Don't forget Goddramon, often translated as Goldramon in English.
In Digimon Savers, awakening and controlling the apocalyptically-powerful demon Belphemon is Kurata's ultimate plot.
Those that go Serial Escalation, the rarely seen "Super Ultimate" or "Ultra" digimon, which include the likes of Daemon Super Ultimate and Chronomon. The latter is the final boss of Digimon World DS, where it can be befriended and trained.
In Narutaru, two characters get control of a shadow dragon of incredibly ridiculous proportions: the Earth itself.
In Pokémon, Ash has encountered a couple of trainers with Legendary Pokemon on their teams, such as the Pyramid King Brandon who owned all three of the "lesser" Regis, and the mysterious Tobias, who owned Darkrai, Latios, and possibly others. (He defeated Brandon after the third attempt, but failed to defeat Tobias, although he did put up a far better fight than any of Tobias' other opponents did. While Ash himself has never managed to actually tame a Legendary, he has befriended a lot of them over his career. In fact, Ho-Ohnote First seen at the VERY FIRST EPISODE seems to favor him at times, as it has appeared on many occasions to give him inspiration when he is considering giving up.
New Media
Well, the creator has never really mentioned whether this is correct or not, but it's safe to hazard a guess that Vivipahge, Vaccuthax, Psychodrome, Azavoth, Grenzo, Ziafel, Chimerinsect, and most of the Devilbirds are these for Mortasheen. Caterpucker and most of the "Ultimate Garbage" are this combined with Magikarp Power
And as of now, we have the Ultimates, which include Tormanshee, which turns people into a neural network computer with Mind Rape, Mothneaser who is a giant floating pillar of flesh which creates horrible things out of its own blood, as well as using it to puppeteer beings that come into contact with it, Hestermoan who is a horrible Nucklavee looking thing that spreads plague and was; to quote; "engineered by an unknown party as an instrument of genocide against an entire civilization, and so effective that their very name remains unrecoverable", and Necromon, who is the Mortasheen equivalent of Mew who specializes in Karmic Transformations.
And as of now, we have Oovule, which can only be described as a Crystal Dragon Jesus that has brought countless beings back to life, and its considered a Zombie type; the Abnortis, which is a Zombie type and a corrupted clone of Oovule; and two Devilbirds, Astarath the ultimate liar and Mephilas, which can extend your knowledge to the point that you'll become a Straw Nihilist... and no one knows where they come from.
Monsters And Other Childish Things is pretty much based on this concept. Your character (who may be anywhere from 8 to 18 years old depending on the game) has a pet monster that's his or her absolute best friend, and backs the character up in fights against other kids and their monsters. The adult world generally knows about these monsters, but is powerless to stop them - only monsters can really hurt other monsters, and they can tear through people and most earthly materials like tissue paper. Most monsters are some form of Eldritch Abomination to boot.
Video Games
Pokémon allows you to capture, among other things: The common ancestor of most other Mons and its Super SoldiercloneGone Horribly Rightnote Mew and Mewtwo; a time-traveling avatar of floranote Celebi; the embodiments of the earth, sea, and skynote Groudon, Kyogre, and Rayquaza; the masters of time, space, and antimatter/deathnote Dialga, Palkia, and Giratina; the creators of free will, emotion, and knowledgenote Azelf, Mesprit, and Uxie; the new moon/a living embodiment of nightmares and the crescent moon/living embodiment of dreamsnote Darkrai and Cresselia; another avatar of flora for good measurenote Shaymin; golems of rock, ice, and steelnote Regirock, Regice, and Registeel; elemental birdsnote Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres and beasts note Suicune, Raikou, and Entei of water, thunder, and fire; two psychic dragonsnote Latios and Latias; a colossal golem that supposedly moved continents and created the aforementioned rock, ice, and steel golemsnote Regigigas; a metal-and-lava volcano monsternote Heatran; a wish granting Fun Size starnote Jirachi; the prince of the seasnote Manaphy; a rainbow phoenix and a draconic bird that can cause storms with a flap of its wingsnote Ho-Oh and Lugia; a shapeshifting alien virus creaturenote Deoxys; and what is outright stated note In the Heart Gold and Soul Silver Dex entries to be the creator of the Pokemon universe itselfnote Arceus. That last one is currently in the picture at the top of this article.
As of the newest gen, we get a small critter that is the personification of victory (and possibly a nuke)note Victini, The Three Musketeers and D'artagnannote Cobalion, Terrakion, Virizion, and Keldeo, dragons of Yang, Yin, and Wuji note Reshiram, Zekrom, and Kyurem, the Japanese gods of wind, thunder, and fertilitynote Tornadus, Thundurus, and Landorus, a musenote Meloetta, and a long since extinct insect resurrected from a fossil and cybernetically enhanced by Team Plasma scientists in the hope of creating the ultimate weaponnote Genesect.
Volcarona could be considered one, it is said that it can serve as a replacement for the sun when Volcanic ash blocks it out and it even has a special altar where you can catch it post-game. Oh, and its not even a legendary.
Apparently, you can do this because the Pokeballs work as power limiters, allowing you to control them. This is one of the reasons why the big bad of Pokemon Diamond And Pearl wants to control the masters of time and/or space by force, rather than capturing them in Pokeballs.
"You can say whatever you want. A Pokémon, even if it's revered as a deity, is still just a Pokémon."
Mind you, Arceus isn't the monotheistic conception of 'God'. In the most common religions in Japan and Asia, the 'creator' deity that Arceus is based on usually creates the world partly or entirely by accident, and doesn't necessarily control it.
Some Legendaries are allowed in standard tournaments, because some of them aren't built to play competitively. Regigigas, due to its terrible ability (half speed and attack for five turns) is in the same tier as Beedrill.
Made even more evident in HeartGold and SoulSilver, when the player is able to have his/her lead Pokemon walk behind the player. A "second-tier" legendary such as Zapdos looks like nothing out of the ordinary, but try putting Ho-Oh in the lead. It's at least twice the size of a normal Pokemon, and you can't even have it out indoors. Yet the NPCs take no notice of it.
The same with people who judge your Pokemon's potential, name raters or Pokemon Salon workers, since they're scripted to say the same thing, they have no unique reaction when you bring "God" in for a massage. It's kind of a let down actually...
In all fairness, many of these Pokemon cannot be caught simply by playing the game as it is. In the case of Arceus and a few others, in order to catch them, information has to be downloaded into the games from special events, some of which involve a Wifi system, and others that infolve seperate games.
Arceus in particular can only be gained through Wi-Fi events or visiting certain shops on certain dates. Originally Arceus was to be catchable in Generation IV games via an event item but it was Dummied Out and so Arceus became limited through distribution via events only. This becomes somewhat of a Fridge Brilliance because the player technically does not catch Arceus, but rather has its power being "loaned", so to say.
NetHack lets you tame two of the three Horsemen of the Apocalypse (the player is implied to be War). It's a bit tricky, and requires you to hit them with a few Level Drain spells first. You can get the third if you slime him, but then he's permanently transformed and thus not a Horseman anymore.
On the other hand, NetHackGame Mod "SLASH'EM" makes it possible to transform monsters temporarily. Thus, in it you can potentially lead all three of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse around on leashes.
In TOME, you can wield one of the Bonus Bosses as a symbiote if you have a high enough level, and make the other two "join" you by killing them, then using a wish spell to create a loyal companion possessing spirit to revive their bodies. Plotwise, it's not their souls running the bodies, but mechanics-wise it works. Note, one of these characters is the Author Avatar of the programmer.
The Shin Megami Tensei series has several examples over the course of its history. Satan? The Fates? Pretty much every mythological god ever? Sure—you can order them around to your heart's content! Notably, however, the ultimate antagonist in each game can only be defeated and/or destroyed even if your party has previously subdued the opposite-aligned equivalent — not that there would be any point in a capture.
For clarity's sake, a concrete example: in Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, Kagutsuchi sends out Metatron, the Voice of God, to warn you against doing a very bad thing. You do the very bad thing, and Metatron fights you. You defeat the Voice of God, and it becomes just another one of your footsoldiers. Whom you can use against Kagutsuchi himself. And that's just the tip of the iceberg!
It's quite possible to have LITERAL Olympus Mons, too: the Greek pantheon is well-represented in the series. The game's version of Cerberus is also one of the game's mascots, along with good ol' Jack Frost.
You'll probably have Cerberus if only because he has some hilarious lines of dialogue.
One particularly brutal deconstruction of this trope is Devil Survivor; you play as a group of teenagers with Nintendo DS-like portable gaming consoles that can summon demons to attack their enemies — and so can anyone else in the city with the same device. Society quickly begins to break down, since people aren't supposed to have this kind of power without restriction, and the whole area is devastated within a week's time.
In the MMORPG, Shin Megami Tensei IMAGINE, one creature implies that when they allow you ally with them, you gain huge control over them via the device used. This implies that if they don't like you, such as being allowed to die all the time, they still have to serve you because the device controls them directly. She notes:
Fairy: I don't like being told what to do, but when my partner presses that button I just can't help myself.
In the Undead Nightmare expansion pack for Red Dead Redemption, it is possible for John Marston to tame all four of the Horses of the Apocalypse (Death, War, Pestilence, and Famine). All are incredibly fast and have infinite stamina, and Death causes any zombies it touches while sprinting to have their heads explode.
In Dragon Quest Monsters, you can create your own versions of the bosses. Multiples, even. In Joker, it's not difficult (though it is time-consuming) to have an entire party of the final boss by the time you fight him.
Additionally, two of the higher-level Monsters in Joker are the Final Bosses of Dragon Quest II and III. The punchline? They're most useful as healers.
The freeware RPG Well of Souls has several unusually powerful creatures available for taming, such as the embodiments of all the world's elemental forces. However, it also averts it, in part—there are some monsters whom you can never, ever tame; usually because they're a higher level than you can ever be, and you must be at least a level higher than a monster to tame it.
World Of Warcraft occasionally scratches this with Hunters being able to tame creatures far more exotic than your average bear or turtle. Indeed, a recently added Beast Mastery talent lets Hunters tame several types of animals classified as exotic, including two-headed hounds (one variety looking like a raid boss, one being almost exclusively encountered in a raid dungeon, and, most recently, one that IS a raid boss, and gets to keep it's raid boss level tag) and the infamous Devilsaurs. And then there is the collectors edition bonus, noncombat pet from another Blizzard game.
Perhaps more fitting to the trope, there are some minor god-things (like Arikara or Anzu) that can be used as mounts or hunter pets.
And there are tried and true gods hunters can tame, Loque'Nahak, mate of the snow leopord godess Har'koa, and three more loa (a cougar, an alligator, and a gorilla) in stranglethorn vale as of cataclysm, the latter of the three don't even need to be beast masters to tame and use.
Gotcha Force also features this, though attempts to mitigate it by having borgs above the Com Mons level require "data crystals" - "A" and "B" for things a bit beefier than the basic set, all the way through "A" through "E" for the most powerful. The problem is that you need one of each letter, so it's common to sit on multiple copies of "B" while you wait for a single "A". Also, the different palettes do not have interchangeable crystals - good luck getting some of those.
In Dwarf Fortress Certain large and potentially quite dangerous creatures can be tamed if captured without killing a dwarf, including dragons (officially bosses). You can KO the Hidden Fun Stuff via cave-ins and stuff them in cages; they aren't tameable without a minor hack, but can be tossed into a pit to be fed with enemy prisoners.
RuneScape has the summoning skill, where a player can keep a series of more dangerous "familiars" that approach Olympus Mon strength as the player levels up.
Frigisaur and Ignosaur in Fossil Fighters. Not only do they belong to an Infinity+1 Element, they're the only viviosaurs stated to be imbued with actual magic, instead of the merely functional variety.
Scribblenauts lets you summon, and then mind control, Cthulhu. You may then RIDE HIM AROUND.
You can also summon God and Death and have them fight each other for your amusement. Really, Scribblenauts is practically built on this kind of power-abusing potential.
It is unclear in Final Fantasy lore exactly who or what the Knights Of the Round are, and even more unclear why exactly they are taking orders from creatures they could kill 10 times over with a single go.
Let us not forget the leader of the Wild Hunt and patrician of all glorious souls, the king of all dragons, either the female side of the Hindu god(dess) of destruction (and currently second or third most worshiped deity, behind the Abrahamic god) or a deity from another pantheon, an embodiment of untamed and destructive nature that had to be imprisoned by a more civilized god, another god of death (named after the Greek deity, portrayed as the Celtic Arawn or Dagda), the Garden of Eden, and a living black hole (that doesn't kill the players). None but perhaps that dragon or the Garden of Eden are as powerful as Knights of the Round, but it's not surprising that the eponymous Unlimiteds from Final Fantasy: Unlimited are described as having power surpassing that of the gods.
In Final Fantasy IX, the summons are treated like the god-like beings they are by the plot, and controlling them is a very big deal.
Tales Of Symphonia has Sheena, who can control the eight beings that embody the elements (known ingame as Summon Spirits), along with Origin and Maxwell, both essentially gods, and Corrine, a manmade (not exactly) lesser Summon Spirit.
And its predecessor (chronologically its distant sequel), Tales Of Phantasia has Klarth/Claus, who can do the same thing.
In Custom Robo you can acquire the illegal parts for your robo. These parts are said to be so powerful that they actually pose a high chance to cause mental and physical harm to those who use them. Yet, the main character (usually a kid who basically started using Custom Robos a week ago) is fully capable of using them. That includes the parts for the final boss of the Gamecube one, which was bio-mechanical and destroyed most of the Earth and Humanity, save for a single dome.
In Monster Rancher, the Gali species (and, in the first game, the Magic species) are said to be gods in the guise of monsters, with all the attendant power. People and other monsters are awed by them. This, however, is actually a case of Gameplay and Story Segregation, as Galis are no more inherently powerful than any other monster, and still need careful training to achieve their full potential.
In the DS game, Xenon is said to have been granted the title "King Of All Monsters" by the gods, and is said to be the strongest species ever. Sadly, this is pretty much true, making them look like God Mode Sues in comparison to other monsters (for which the idea has always been, you have to work to be awesome.
The Valsharess in Neverwinter Nights Hordes of the Underdark summoned and bound Mephistopheles. And if you find his True Name you can claim absolute authority over him in the endgame.
Azure Dreams has 15-year-old hero Koh obtain the world's only Shadow-type dragon monster which is supposedly capable of destroying the world. That is not hard to believe, given that its two main abilities are bestowing invulnerability and unleashing an One-Hit Kill on anything...
Long before obtaining The Ultimate Egg, though, Koh trains up a lot of other terrifying monsters - from the lowly Pulunpa up to Golems, Killers and Dragons. Quite a few of these creatures qualify as Olympus Mons themselves.
In Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, CJ at one point in the game owns an abandoned airfield which holds a couple of old airplanes, not much, but eventually a Sikorsky Sea King (Leviathan) a Harrier Jet and an experimental jetpack and an AH-64 Apache. Not exactly what you would expect from a guy who still lives in the South Central 'hood.
Happens occasionally on Pokebattles due to its Pokemon style format. The quote above was probably taken from one.
The page pictures comes from a VG Catspage where Aeris voices her concerns with letting people harness the power of gods, only to be dismissed with the quote.
Western Animation
In one episode of Pinky And The Brain, the Brain actually gave the Earth itself a voice and befriended it. This was possibly the closest he came to truly conquering the world, as he was able to force nations to submit to him, able to drag them under the sea if they didn't comply. Unfortunately for him, he made it angry at him and it wanted to kill him, a very good example of why this trope is so dangerous. When it looked like his only means of survival would be to escape into outer space, Pinky convinced the Earth that it wasn't happy the way it was, and it let Brain reverse the process and return it to an inanimate state.
The Ancient Psychic Tandem War Elephant in Adventure Time reads Finn's mind to determine if he is worthy to command it. He is.
