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alt title(s): Omniscient Morality Licence
Omniscient Morality License
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"I'm the Doctor. And if you don't like it... if you want to take it to a higher authority, then there isn't one. It stops with me." — The Tenth Doctor, New Earth
A character with an Omniscient Morality License is usually one of the Powers That Be or very close to it. Basically, they can do anything to the hero and still be considered one of the good guys, because they just know it will turn out okay, regardless of the seeming randomness of chance and choices made. Sometimes this is accredited to supernatural rules (like the Balance Between Good And Evil) or Time Travel.
If the heroes were to attempt anything resembling these actions, they would be called on it by their manipulated "friends" and punished by the plot for their arrogance. Usually.
This trope is subverted (their license revoked) when the heroes rebel against them for playing God.
This is an Appeal to Authority logic failure combined with Karma Houdini, if in doubt about the validity of an omniscient morality license ask yourself when was the last time a major issue had a "best" solution rather than came down to opinions about what's more important. Compare to In Mysterious Ways where the acts tend to be a lot more low key and often not unethical of themselves.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- CLAMP has been guilty of this in several series, thanks to Clow Reed, his reincarnation Eriol, and his old partner-in-crime, Yuuko. In Card Captor Sakura Clow and Eriol frequently manipulated the cast, threatened Sakura's friends and family, and even risked erasing everyone's feelings of love, and yet are still considered good because it was "necessary" for Sakura to be subjected to these things. (Sakura didn't even want to be a mage at first, and in the anime it's not necessarily clear what the pressing reason was for her to become one. Clow's even responsible for the cards escaping when they did. In the manga, it's made clearer: if he didn't do what he did, the magic of the Clow Cards would fade, and two of her friends would die.)
- Also, at the end of both arcs, Sakura and the readers find out that there was no "disaster" (everyone losing their feelings of love), and that Eriol made sure that nobody not already involved with the Cards was anywhere near his magical disturbances. Sakura forgives them when she finds out, and even says she's glad she didn't know that there wasn't any real danger, because she wouldn't have tried her hardest.
- The reason why Sakura needs to be a mage gets clearer in the later chapters of Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle and xxxHoLiC, where we see a truly epic Xanatos Gambit planned by Clow and Yuuko enter its endgame. Some of the details of this plan make you hope the Tsubasa gang get to give Yuuko some choice words after they get done destroying Fei Wong Reed.
- The details of the plan on the whole make you hope that those words include "what the hell just happened?"
- It is worth noting, however, that what Yuko was doing was worthwhile, given that everything she did to Watanuki was to ensure that he would continue to exist, and that she did as much as she could to help the Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle crowd within the limits of her Deal With The Devil shop ownership. Which she took up in the first place as payment to give two innocent souls passage into the wheel of reincarnation that they wouldn't otherwise get.
- Sailor Pluto from Sailor Moon, particularly in fanon.
- Fanon also tends to have Pluto called on this, frequently in the form of losing her powers.
- Oh, the irony.
- There's an entire manga about this trope, a shoujo series named Seigi no Mikata (Ally of Justice). The protagonist's sister is a loud, lazy, gluttonous, extremely manipulative cow, but somehow all the selfish, self-centered things she does work out great for her and everyone else. Apart form the protagonist, everyone in the series adores her. Mary Sue, much?
- Kage Houshi from Flame Of Recca.
- Debatable in Gundam Seed Destiny, where protagonist Shinn Asuka and Older And Wiser hero Kira Yamato ended up on opposite sides of the conflict, which obviously lead to trouble and flame wars (which still continue years after the series' conclusion). Although the director insisted in interviews that Shinn was always the hero, and that Kira had "strayed from the path of justice", some fans of Kira and his allies insist that they were in the right and that Shinn was the "true villain". (That Shinn spends the climactic battle sidelined after being defeated and humbled by Kira's best friend Athrun, and had up to that point been fighting for the side that Kira and company were trying to stop from using a Wave Motion Gun, probably had a lot to do with that perception.)
- The flame wars have gotten so bad amongst Gundam fans, that even after all these years that Word Of God has changed his initial position, and now posits that Athrun was the main character. It hasn't helped.
- Urahara Kisuke in Bleach. He causes Rukia to lose her powers and get potentially permanently trapped in the human world in order to store the dangerous MacGuffin he created, an action that almost gets Rukia and all the main characters killed. Ichigo forgives him for this almost immediately. The jury is out on Rukia, who has yet to actually bring it up for discussion. Additionally, it is revealed in a flashback arc that it was he who released Mayuri, a genocidal Psycho For Hire, from Shinigami prison, making him indirectly responsible for the murder of Ishida's grandfather... And technically, the torture and deaths of thousands of Quincies. And a bunch of Twelfth Company shinigami. He's also technically responsible for the creation of the Arrancar, since it was his MacGuffin that enabled making them into super soldiers. And the Visored affair, and enabling Aizen, and Orihime's kidnapping by Aizen, and... Well, let's just say that Urahara fucked up a whole lot, and the entire series is about everyone trying to fix what he's screwed up.
- Technically, the mass murder of the Quincies happened two hundred years ago and Urahara only freed Mayuri one hundred years ago. So Urahara is still indirectly responsible for the death of Uryu's father's father, but so far we have no reason to think he was involved in the original extermination, which was ordered by Soul Society. Of course, this could also be a case of the author forgetting his own established time line.
- The impression I got was that all of the Quincy Mayuri got his hands on were the survivors and the descendants of the survivors of what happened two hundred years ago. I still count Urahara indirectly responsible, since if he hadn't let Mayuri loose on an unsuspecting world, the Quincy race would probably be recovering by now instead of dwindled down to two (That we know of).
- Don't forget his effing-screwed-up plan to get Ichigo's power back that came so close to turning him into a Hollow that he turned into a Visored and got the Superpowered Evil Side that has allowed him to become a level-grinding beast and keep being almost on the level of whatever the third most powerful thing in the story is at the moment. Okay, so this one worked out, but that's the idea of this trope; it was twisted beyond belief, but it worked.
- In the Suzumiya Haruhi series, Present Mikuru will accept any indignity, abuse or manipulation that her time-traveling superiors throw at her, because, you know, the future will get messed up if she doesn't. This is averted in the later books, when Kyon calls them on this, explicitly stating that he believes them to be manipulating Mikuru for their own selfish goals, and not for the good of the timeline.
- This is made even more tied to the timeline (creating a Stable Time Loop) because Present Mikuru's boss is her future self.
- Subverted in Dragon Ball Z: after Trunks' first time travel and after he has warned the heroes about the incoming threat of the Androids, Bulma suggests seeking out Dr. Gero, the Androids' creator, and kill him before he can enact his plan, which they know for sure he will enact. Goku refuses, partly because he wants to fight the Androids, and partly because he doesn't think it's right to kill someone who still hasn't done anything bad (forgetting that Gero was the lead scientist of the Red Ribbon Army, and so most of their tech was probably built by him).
- To be fair, Trunks spent most of the arc being insistent about things he turned out to be wrong about.
- Piccolo (regarding Gohan).
- Aeolia Schenberg from Gundam 00 is revealed to be one of these when its revealed that his plan was that if mankind did not change than he would force them to change using Celestial Being. While his plan is hijacked a couple of times its put back on track by the heroes.
- Though Celestial Being itself has no difficulty recognizing the fact they are terrorists and because of that they're never going to stop being fugitives from the A-LAWS and the world governments as a whole.
- In Goshuushou-sama Ninomiya-kun, the hero and heroine's family is a mass of absolute jerks willing to continuously mentally and physically torment the main characters, up to and including faking their own death just to get them riled up, as part of a "training" course. While they aren't explicitly stated to have God-like powers, their ability to be anywhere and everywhere at once borders on Deus Ex Machina.
- From Naruto, there's Itachi Uchiha. Notably, his plan so far didn't work, but it remains to be seen if his contingency plan (i.e. Naruto) will. Be prepared for an enormous Internet Backdraft if you discuss this online.
- Light thinks that he has this.
Comic Books
- X-Men villain Mystique had a psychic lover for most of Chris Claremont's run, who, according to his own Ret Con, drove Mystique's apparently evil actions until driving her insane by dying.
- Tony Stark, in Marvel comics. "I'm a futurist!"
- Of course, by this point, it seems like Marvel has realized that the only way to make Tony likable again is to turn him into the Marvel Universe Butt Monkey, so he's going to lose his position, be made a wanted man, and have his world fall down around his ears. Bet you didn't see that one coming, eh Tony?
- Two words: Character Derailment.
- Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four is also an example. He saved the life of Galactus, the devourer of worlds. When a group of aliens put him on trial for crimes against the universe, it's handwaved that Galactus is somehow necessary to the survival of the universe. How (or even whether) Reed knew this when he saved Galactus is debatable.
- It should be mentioned that what brings the decision in favor of Galactus is the embodiment of the Universe itself showing up to testify in Galactus' favor.
- Galactus maintains the seal on a Cosmic Horror known as Abraxas- to be specific, Galactus devours worlds so that the energy not used to keep him alive goes to keeping Abraxas from escaping and destroying the multiverse. Of course, Reed didn't know this at the time, he just knew that Galactus said he was helping somehow.
- There are plenty of problems with the various "justifications" for Galactus' continued serial-genocides. For one during the trial the actual argument used by Odin was identical to the ideology of Benito Mussolini, in stating that any civilisation not strong enough to repell Galactus per definition deserved to be slaughtered. Then during "Secret Wars" we were told that Galactus can in fact feed on stars or other energy-sources as well, and that these give him lots more nourishing energy. Then this is repeated in the Thanos maxi-series when Galactus is shown as able to indefinitely feed from cosmic energy sources, that he has already had billions of years to find these alternatives, and as such, despite sprouting his usual "manifest destiny" crap, is verbally chewed out and deconstructed as just an absolutely conceited and entitled rationalising mass-murderer unless he starts to actively seek alternatives. Then there are the Unfortunate Implications regarding ritual blood sacrifice when transmitting the Thugee "ritual murders to stave off the Kali Yuga" myth to Abraxas, and that G still doesn't actually need to feed on low-energy sentient life-forms. He'd get a lot more power from stars and the like. Then to make him an even bigger hypocrite he is shown as being perfectly all right with killing other important cosmic functions such as Epoch to stave off his hunger, which using his own rationale would damage the universe. Then the "Galacta: Daughter of Galactus" mini states outright that all he really needs is the pure Joule/raw energy content of whatever he feeds on, but is simply an entitled apex-predator who doesn't care about lower life-forms, returning him to his original appearance portrayal, wherein he simply reasons that most of humanity wouldn't care about destroying an anthill, coming full circle.
- In another comic example, an early Golden Age superhero known as Stardust
 the Super Wizard is virtually all-powerful and, from the readers' perspective, quite insane. Yet he always winds up being treated as a hero in the story.
- Fletcher Hanks was a fairly nasty piece of work in Real Life, so a bit of dissonance in his stories of heroes is not too much of a surprise.
- In a text feature in 1910, the most recent chapter of Alan Moore's League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, it's revealed that a number of other heroes finally took Stardust down, imprisoning him in a super-dense ice block.
- Cable generally acts like this, thanks to coming from the future and already knowing how everything turns out.
- Curiously, although he's also from the future and is accompanied by a floating repository of 21st century history, Booster Gold doesn't.
- Let's compare: Booster ended up in his past through screwing up his own career, and was mainly out to make a quick buck. Cable arrived in his past with a plan to prevent Apocalypse from rising to power, while battling his own clone, and has a Messiah complex the size of a small moon.
- And it turns out that Booster Gold ultimately is employing Obfuscating Stupidity to make himself look like a big dork, while single-handedly protecting the timeline.
- Yet everyone hates the black guy, errr Bishop, for wanting to do the same exact thing.
- Bishop shot Xavier in the head while trying to murder an infant. He's not very popular.
- Cable has good intentions and believes in these good intentions even if they (seem) to go wrong, which he tries to set right. Bishop (for the past years) knows that things he do are considered morally not appropriate, but he embraces this role, although he has been proven wrong several times (like Xavier being the traitor or Gambit not being identical with Witness)
- Cable was one of many characters who didn't quite act like themselves during the Civil War. Besides perhaps the unmentionable Liefeldian years, Cable rarely acted like he knew the future since he was actively trying to prevent it. The worst part was that after the events of the Twelve storyline, Bishop's and Cable's futures were erased so he couldn't have known the ramifications of the Civil War.
- Lucien Draay in the Knights of the Old Republic comics thinks he has one of these, and acts accordingly (to be fair to Lucien, his mother and closest friends are all absurdly powerful seers, so he has reason to believe this). Unfortunately, he interpreted everything they said through the lens of his Treacherous Advisor, who was really a Sith Acolyte working to bring it down from within and used Lucien as a convenient pawn to accomplish this. Lucien's response to learning he's been had could basically be described as: Villainous Breakdown, Villainous BSOD, Heel Face Turn.
Fan Fic
- The God-Emperor of Mankind, in his Thousand Shinji role, persuades the other canon!40k gods to send back a sadistic Keeper of Secrets rather than a Lord of Change on the basis that Shinji had to learn that "when the gods are assholes, mortals suffer". Somewhat understandably, Shinji gets enraged and punches him.
- ...then he apparently forgets the lesson entirely because when New Chaos begins their expansion in The Open Door, they operate under 40K's traditional "we have carte blanche to be assholes because we're fighting Eldritch Abominations" excuse. This might be understandable if they were only like this to people and groups worse than they were, but it begins to wear just a bit thin when they start killing/torturing/brainwashing genuinely good people like Hayate and company. And people wonder why this series has a hatedom...?
Film
- Although not explicitly stated in Star Wars, Obi-Wan and Yoda used From A Certain Point Of View as what they felt was the best way to get him to stop Vader and the Emperor.
- In the end it's subverted, as Luke wins by NOT heeding their advice. If he had killed Vader like they asked, the Emperor would have won.
- Mary Poppins. Those nannies waiting in line in the beginning did not deserve to get blown away in a windstorm, no matter how stuffy they were. Her presence also seems to spread a magical flying hysteria that kills the Bank President, but hey, he "was his happiest in years."
- Slightly justified in that Mary Poppins is, apart from the bits where the children follow their nanny on her day off to visit the stars or party under the sea, or get caught in china plates or play in chalk drawings, a sort of 'magical realism' scenario where Rules Need Not Apply.
Literature
- Hari Seldon in Isaac Asimov's Foundation develops a new science - "psychohistory" - that allows him to predict large-scale future trends and future historical events. He further develops a complex plan for the future to create a new Empire. He's the only one that actually knows exactly what it is, but he has a whole planet dedicated to successfully carrying out his 1000-year "Seldon Plan". However, he's repeatedly told everyone that the reason that he can't make the details of the plan itself public is that doing so would guarantee its failure. Someone would eventually use that knowledge to Screw Destiny and cause the plan to Go Horribly Wrong: the predictions made by psychohistory are still vulnerable to a Butterfly Of Doom, and psychohistory itself is a powerful enough butterfly to derail any prediction it can make. In fact, the entire plan itself was an attempt to Screw Destiny and create a better future by setting up a planet to become such a butterfly.
- WRONG. He trusts the plan to the psychohistorians or the Second Foundation and he checked his results with many other experts. The plan was far more advanced and developed after the second foundation had been improving it for a few centuries.
- Incidentally, in the second half of Foundation and Empire, the second book in the Foundation series, the plan does go horribly wrong, but for a different reason.
- Subverted in the third book, where Asimov revealed that the Second Foundation is using its psychic powers and mind control to push humanity towards that future, rather than it coming from the Butterfly of Doom effect of having the Foundation. (Let's not even get into the later books tying in his robot stories.)
- The Second Foundation apparently has its own Omniscient Morality License, which covers the act of laying a false trail that led the Mule to destroy some other planet thinking that it was the Second Foundation's homeworld.
- To some degree this is Truth In Television. When a method of accurately determining the best value to set on futures markets in the real world became generally known, day traders and big investors used the formula to constantly update the best price for futures. Which resulted in positive feedback that sent the system out of control when the prices changed sharply.
- Most of the characters' issues with God Emperor Leto II in God Emperor of Dune revolves around his near-omniscience and the resulting path he leads humanity down because of it. Duncan Idaho in particular takes issue with it, as well as Leto's transformation into a nigh-immortal sandworm/human hybrid.
- And his father Paul.
- Of course, the plan hinged on humans eventually scattering to avoid his rule, so this was all according to plan.
- Leto II had near omniscience. He could literally see how the future would be altered by every possible decision he made.
- Dumbledore's relationship with Harry Potter in the later books begins to resemble this. In the final book, the characters openly question if Dumbledore knew what he was doing. He did, and even correctly predicted that Harry would be willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good. He even knew, or at least guessed, that Harry could survive as long as it was Voldemort that delivered the Killing Curse, but by letting Harry think he would die, enabled Harry to grant his friends the same protection his mother had given him by her sacrifice.
- A lot of people complain how, in The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz, Glinda the Good Witch of the North basically manipulated Dorothy by not telling her how her Ruby Slippers she got when she first arrived in Oz could send her home. In the original novel, this is because it wasn't Glinda (who's the witch of the South) Dorothy met in the beginning, but the other Good Witch, who didn't know how the shoes worked. Presumably, the movie didn't want to use more actors than it had to. The 1978 adaption The Wiz corrects this by having an older witch meet Dorothy.
- Annalina Aldurren from the Sword Of Truth series often invokes this trope, believing that she has a right to steer the protagonist's life because she's spent hers studying prophecies about him. She is quite often called out on this by the other characters (most notably said protagonist's wife), is more often than not wrong in her interpretations of the prophecies, and on several occasions suggests doing things such as erasing the protagonist's memory and having another character seduce him in order to have him do what she thinks he should. In fact, it's outright stated that, had she not meddled in the protagonist's life in the first place, many of the events of the series would never have taken place.
- Interestingly, Anna is called on this and finally broken of the habit, only for the villains to mess with the timeline/people's memories and her to revert to form.
- In the same series, Nathan Rahl occasionally delves into this territory, but is more successful as he's an actual prophet, and gets the total experience and meaning of his prophecies. A more or less straight example: When he's introduced, it's mentioned that while entertaining a young woman, something he whispers to her makes her run screaming from his room, and eventually leads to riots and tens of thousands dead. Much later, he remarks that in that war, a young child died who otherwise would have grown into a horrible dictator who would have killed far, far more.
- So couldn't he just have gone and shot that one child and avoided the collateral?
- He was imprisoned by Annalina at the moment. She thinks he's too dangerous to be kept free because he's a prophet.
- As the series gets more and more into Objectivism, though, Richard and his partners-in-crime, Kahlan especially, begin using Omniscient Morality License as their MO, under the guise of Moral Clarity (i.e. protagonists can do no wrong). Even in the second book Kahlan decides to have 70-odd people killed, which is proven a good decision because it turns out they were going to go and join the people who sacked their city, who they had been fighting against until a few hours ago. She had no way of knowing this.
- The Arisians of Doc Smith's Lensman universe use this extensively over a period of two billion years, gradually shaping the evolution of intelligent species and specific bloodlines within those species until their descendant civilizations can defeat their ancient and truly foul enemy, Eddore. They manage all this without ever letting on that they are, in fact, Sufficiently Advanced Aliens to do virtually everything their descendant cultures do, and easily.
- Virtually everything, except for the part about actually breaching Eddore's final defenses and making them stay dead. The Arisians had evolved as far as they could and still weren't quite buff enough to break the stalemate. Hence their plan for gradually evolving a species superior to them.
- Xanth's Good Magician Humfry will send the story's protagonists to face life - and occasionally world - threatening peril with nothing more than an objective and a general path to follow. Justified (albeit by Humfry himself) in that if he gives his supplicants the full story, they'd get things wrong and go straight for the end goal, instead of going through the experience and ally gaining journey actually needed to succeed. (That, and most Xanthians expect to be given the runaround, trusting that things will work out in the end)
- Polgara from the Belgariad/Malloreon universe demonstrates this tendency a lot. Admittedly, it goes with the job - Belgarath describes how he often has acted as Aldur's holy hatchet man - but Polgara has the biggest attitude about it.
- They are not, themselves, especially fond of it. They've merely become somewhat inured to their own little damnations for the sake of the goal.
- In Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Liu Bei and his companions (most notably Guan Yu and Zhuge Liang) can do no wrong, even when this means killing hundreds of thousands in various ways over the decades in the name of Liu Bei's vision of supporting the crumbling Han Dynasty, while Cao Cao is the big-time villain despite all the good works, major successes (against others who are not Liu Bei) and personal niceties that he's acknowledged to have.
- Guan Yu does get called postmortem on just how many he's killed, while Zhang Fei eventually gets his (when two victims of his violent drunkenness finally have enough and kill him), and Cao Cao does have his own less than flattering moments (besides being the "usurper"). And Zhuge Liang? A Magnificent Bastard, even if during the debate with the officials of Wu he pulled the "go Han Dynasty" card a few times.
- In book 9 of the Lone Wolf series, the Crocaryx were created by Kai solely to guard a Lorestone. Once that Lorestone is no longer in their possession, the narration announces that this is the beginning of their race's demise. Makes one wonder when humans will fulfill their reason for existing.
- In S. M. Stirling's and David Drake's series The General, an ancient computer called center (always lower-case) establishes a telepathic link with General Raj Whitehall and drafts him into reuniting the human colony-world of Bellevue in order to restore the lost high-tech civilization of the long-collapsed interstellar Federation. Whitehall is a volunteer in this enterprise and retains his free will — except that center is for all intents and purposes omniscient, and can always show him vividly, with a stated degree of probability, exactly what outcome will result from a given choice, so that Whitehall really has only one way to go.
- In Larry Niven's Protector, the Pak Protector Phssthpok feeds the Tree-of-Life fruit to human Jack Brennan, causing Brennan to metamorphose into a superintelligent Protector himself, and then immediately starts laying down instructions about what Brennan has to do to save the human race from a Pak invasion. At one point, as Brennan recounts it later, he is about to protest, "Don't I have any choice?" And then, before he can even get the words out, immediately realizes, "No, I don't have any choice. I'm too intelligent."
- In The Wheel Of Time, the Aes Sedai all act like this, to the extreme annoyance of both characters and readers. To be fair, some of them are smart enough that things do kind of work out. Others, not so much.
- In Dragonlance, Fizban's way of helping people is by being a nuisance and hindering the progress of the heroes, even when it endangers their lives. It turns out his hindrances end up helping them in the end, and that is his unique way of helping them out. He can do this because his secret identity is none other than Paladine, the chief god of light.
- The Culture novels are primarily about Contact exercising the Omniscient Morality License they believe themselves to have over all less advanced civilizations.
- In their defense, they can prove (to five decimal places) that they are creating a future with less suffering. Although they do screw up from time to time and acknowledge this.
- Deconstructed in Mark Twain's The Mysterious Stranger, in which Satan explains exactly why his seemingly immoral actions, including causing deaths and madness, are in fact for the best.
- Matthew Sobol in Daemon or at least his posthumous actions through the Daemon itself.
- The Companions in the Heralds Of Valdemar series have a tendency to succumb to this temptation from time to time, which is a major reason for their Prime Directive not to interfere with human affairs unless asked. A particular example occurs in the Mage Winds trilogy, when Elspeth's companion Gwena manipulates her toward her Glorious Destiny in an Anviliciously unsubtle way, and is soundly called on it by her Herald. This doesn't stop her from trying, though, and it isn't until Gwena gets a stern talking to from Yfandes in Winds of Fury that she finally gives up.
- In Mage Storms, the Gods themselves are revealed to have been playing this game for millennia; nearly every single one of the myriad disasters and near-disasters that have occurred since the first Cataclysm was engineered for the specific purpose of putting in place all the pieces necessary to avert the second Cataclysm.
- Vlad Taltos is often subjected to this excuse from his patron goddess, Verra, but he objects rather vehemently to it. After one of her plans blows up spectacularly, he comments to a friend (with whom he had been discussing the concept of the Omniscient Morality License earlier) that he has concluded "when a god does a terrible thing, it's still a terrible thing".
- Callum of Raised by Wolves has one thanks to his precognitive powers, and he uses it to justify putting the heroine through an absolutely hellish couple of months, including her being beaten to within an inch of her life by an angry werewolf. In fairness to him, nearly everyone involved does come out of it having lost nothing and gained something. The only casualties are Ali and Casey's marriage and the Big Bad, who totally deserved it.
Live Action TV
- Toward the end of the classic series of Doctor Who, during the epoch known to fans as "The Cartmel Masterplan", the Doctor could often be found pushing the bounds of morality, justified by the incredibly complex machinations of his long-term plans, and the desire of the production team to inject a new sense of mystery into the character.
- The Tenth Doctor has shown tendencies towards this too, subverted in that the show treats it as a character flaw, and a very serious one at that. Of course, Ten also gets incredibly worked up over perceived injustices and forms strong emotional attachments to characters he's only known for a few hours, in contrast to classic doctors who held a much more detached attitude.
- It looks like the Doctor's OML has finally expired in The Waters Of Mars, where he tries to interfere with a fixed point in time and save a woman who, for the sake of humanity's future development, absolutely must die. She gives him a deeply angry What The Hell Hero speech and then kills herself, just to right the timeline.
- He never had one, he just thought he did. The Waters Of Mars was the most dramatic response though. While he's kept himself in check before (compare "Voyage of the Damned" where he rewards a man for reminding him "if you could decide who lives and who dies... that would make you a monster."), "The Waters Of Mars" was the point where he snaps, sick and tired of having lost so many good people on his watch, trying to walk away from the burning Martian base with their screams on the radio.
- He could've saved her if he'd had his A God Am I moment earlier and not told her her death was necessary. Hell, he could've saved her by crossing his time line (since he's already breaking the laws of time) and stopping himself from telling her.
- In Power Rangers Mystic Force, senior Knight Daggeron sends the young 'uns into Another Dimension without their gear to test their mettle, and doesn't stick around to watch (he had to go take on the Monster Of The Week.) Our heroes very nearly wind up as a giant's breakfast. When they manage to get themselves out of it and return, Daggeron's "I never doubted their safe return" just doesn't ring true - you really feel like the writers threw the line in so that Daggeron wouldn't appear to be criminally irresponsible. To be fair, Daggeron appeared to have arranged the whole thing, since the giant was a vegetarian and he had conveniently given the green ranger an inane task of practicing the spell he would need over and over again. So either it's a Xanatos Gambit, or sloppy script work.
- In Joan Of Arcadia, God gave Joan her "assignments" with little to no concern about how Joan's activities would be perceived and reacted to by her family and friends. At least twice, Joan's life was directly endangered by her following God's orders.
- The Vorlons on Babylon 5 acted like this was in force, and pretty much everyone went along with it for the first half (or so) of the show's run.
- Lost: While there are numerous examples of characters in authority positions abusing their powers because they know everything will turn out alright, the straightest example of this trope is Jacob, the island's ageless supreme protector, who lives in isolation away from the people he brings to the island. His ultimate goal is to prove wrong the theory of his (currently) nameless archenemy, who thinks humans are inherently flawed with sin, and so he allows them to form their own ideas of good and bad on the island while avoiding corruption by the nemesis. If Jacob intervenes, so he believes, his theory will be worthless: they must make their own decisions without his guiding hand. Regardless, in getting characters to the island, he has exercised some moral license: allowing Sayid's wife Nadia to be killed or knowing the plane they intended to return to the island on would crash.
- Beautifully subverted in an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation, in which the nigh-omnipotent Q, in one of his rare straight-faced moments, tries to claim this license as the Continuum's right to judge and possibly execute the half-Q, half-human Amanda for being too potentially dangerous to live. When he responds to Picard's questioning that right with the simple, terse words "superior morality", Picard nearly chokes: "superior morality? I haven't seen any evidence of any morality at all!"
- Subverted and mocked in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. After Buffy gets in trouble for slaying-related activities, Cordelia complains that she should have some sort of "special licence" to do whatever she wants, since she always saves people.
Willow: Sure, in a fascist society.
Cordelia: Right! Why can't we have one of those?
- Played straight in an episode of Angel where the people helping to keep Billy trapped in a cage of fire are "aligned with the forces of good". When Angel sees Billy in the cage and talks to Billy's jailer, Skip:
Angel: What keeps him in there?
Skip: My will.
Angel: How come he's not screaming in pain?
Skip: Oh, he is. My will keeps him from being heard.
- Then Skip makes a horribly insensitive comment about how the reason he keeps it from being heard is because he finds the screaming annoying. When Angel mentions that he plans to break Billy out of the cage but also mentions that he works for the Powers That Be:
Skip: Shouldn't you be trying to help me keep him in here?
Angel: I know, I don't like it any more then you do.
- In other words, even Angel himself agrees with the torture. Granted, Billy is a horrible person himself who enjoys his supernatural power to make any man he touches want to bludgeon women, but still....
- The Inquisitor, the villain of the Red Dwarf episode of the same name, behaved as though he has one. After surviving to the end of time, he concludes that there is no god and no afterlife, and that the only purpose of existence is to live a worthwhile life. To this end, he travels through time, deletes those he judges to have wasted their lives and replaces them with another possible version of themselves. Subverted, though, insofar as he technically allows his victims to judge themselves.
- In a Fridge Brilliance moment, Daniel Jackson fits this trope. He's been to heaven and back, most of his ideas and choices are good, and he even has the right, power and morality justification to question ascended beings. Lampshaded later when he becomes a Prier and asks for a little cooperation for his Xanatos Gambit (his CV should have spoken for himself). He's not, but he proves his worth and his loyalty, and his actions are still the ones saving the day. To a lesser extent, SG 1 and Stargate Command is for the countries of Earth who don't profit as much from the technology as the US, and want to screw the ones that actually work in the process. They still do what they know best, and save the world(s) through it every time.
Tabletop Games
- In Warhammer 40000, there's really no morality to speak of anywhere, but the Eldar are very fond of acting like this trope is in effect. Of course, it helps that they can see the future...
- Also, the mega-oppressive Imperium can justify all of its actions, because the alternative is much much worse...
- Not all, just most. There's still no good explanation as to why the people of Veyna were worked to death on a forge world, for example.
- Maybe they wanted to increase productivity.
- Some interpretations of the Ravenloft setting's Dark Powers invoke this trope, depicting them as harsh but well-intentioned judges who consign the multiverse's foulest villains to The Punishment. Too bad for innocent bystanders living in the domains which confine said villains, because they're left at the mercy of the punished, as are the poor saps who get dragged into the game-setting by the Mists.
- Urza, in Magic The Gathering, had this regarding the Phyrexian invasion. The results of this ranged from creating an entire race who were basically nicer-looking versions of the Phyrexians to recruiting a treacherous murderer onto a strike team so the guy would shank some of his allies and Urza could justify using his life energy to arm the mission's bomb payload.
Video Games
- "Wake up... and smell the ashes."
- In the Golden Sun games, the Wise One does this to the entire group at the end of The Lost Age by sending a three-headed dragon to stop them, and only after they defeat it do they learn that said dragon was actually Isaac's father and Felix and Jenna's parents, and are on the verge of dying as a result. But upon restoring the powers of Alchemy with the last Elemental Star, the three adults are healed miraculously. It's later revealed that the Wise One did this to test their virtue and dedication, so as to make sure that the power of Alchemy would not be misused (like they had been in the past) if they were revived.
- Moreover he never does anything except frustrate the heroes' goals; even the entire first game was set up by him so the "heroes" of that game would try to stop the ones from the second. In fact, he is in every sense a pure villain except for a single line where the wise bearded and bespectacled scholar speculates for no apparent reason about him NOT being pure evil.
- Well he did save the actual heroes from the first game and their village from the disaster the Anti Villains caused, guide them on a path that eventually led them to learn about the true nature of the world, revive the lead characters' parents (after he used them as a Threshold Guardian), and set up a massive Xanatos Gambit that ensured that one way or another the Golden Sun's unlimited power would only be used responsibly. It wasn't nice, but considering the sheer power that they were dealing with and Alex playing everyone against each other, it wasn't unjustified.
- In Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of The Betrayer, it gets... complicated due to a multi use. The former god of the dead Myrkul's actions (creating the spirit eater curse to punish a deciple who rejected his self believed license) comes from believing as a god he has one. If the player takes a specific coarse of action granting him an ironic, yet peaceful death, he chastises the player, accusing the player of believing they have an Omniscient Morality License "You have no right spirit eater, judgment is the purview of the gods". The new god of the dead's reason for doing the exact same thing as Myrkul, using a Fate Worse Than Death to punish people who don't worship gods, borders on this as well. Note: in Forgotten Realms canon, Myrkul is designated evil, and his replacement is neutral (i.e., not good).
- Wilhelm in Xenosaga. Though he does show concern for the future of humanity, he has no concern for anyone who perishes during the course of his plans, even his closest allies, and sees all of life as a grand stage performance.
- On the other hand, we aren't forced to like him. He engages in some horrific dog kicking at times and shows no hesitation in hiring some of the biggest mass murdering Psychos For Hire in the business.
- Hell, he himself doesn't care if anyone doesn't like him (in fact their defiance to his plan may be, in fact, his plan all along). He doesn't expect anyone either, since he exists solely to protect humanity regardless on how much humanity itself hates him.
- Subverted in Super Robot Wars Alpha 2, when the Guardian Goddess of Earth, Ganeden, lashed out at all the humans who decided to move into space and all the aliens. She then began erecting a dimensional barrier around the Earth. For that, the good guys tore her apart.
- Touhou has Yukari, and in fanfic, also Eirin playing this card whenever they are the instigators of whatever plot is the reason for the battle royale today.
- In Disgaea, Master Lamington is basically the posterchild of this, as he manipulates Laharl's group, the EDF, Vulcanus, and even the Angels, all for the purpose of achieving something Flonne probably would've done eventually anyway.
- It's not explicitly stated that Lamington manipulated Vulcanus (who manipulated the EDF): When Vulcanus tells Lamington that Flonne harmed a human (Gordon), he says to himself that humans were not supposed to get involved.
- Before the last battle, Lamington outright told Vulcanus that he knew what he was up to before punishing him. In this case, Lamington probably did some investigation and from there decided to use the EDF invasion to his advantage knowing Flonne would return to Celestia about it. This IS a Chess Master we're talking about.
- Also, Laharl calls him out. Very hard.
- The plan wasn't entirely his, either. King Krichevskoy, aka Mid-Boss, was helping to guide the plan along from the Netherworld's end. Though his parts didn't make him look like as much of a Jerk Ass.
- In Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, the human-supremacist organisation Cerberus seems to think they operate under one of these, believing that any action they take to elevate humanity's position in the galactic community will be vindicated by history. On the one hand, they acted to prevent the release of a biological weapon on the Citadel, and tasked Shepard with stopping Collector attacks. On the other hand, they've conducted nightmarish experiments on aliens and humans, unleashed Thresher Maws and Husks on unsuspecting colonists, trained rachni as shock troops (which ultimately kill two marine companies), tortured children to make more powerful biotics, and "accidentally" detonated starships over colonies to infect unborn children with element zero (keep in mind that 30% develop fatal cancerous growths).
- Shepard, too. No matter what actions s/he takes, s/he's still hailed as the saviour of the galaxy, even if you killed the previous Council and replaced it with a human one.
- Technically, Shepard doesn't kill the Council no matter what path is chosen. It's the Geth that take out the Council, and Shepard simply refuses to save them from their own stupidity. Still tries to justify it afterwards by saying it was for the best, though.
- Good lord, Baretreenu. You want to Mind Rape someone to prove their innocence?! Why are you not getting called out on this?!
Webcomics
- This strip from DMFA explains it well.
Dan: And here I thought you did it all because you were an insane sadist...
Fa'lina: Well that too! But that comes with semi-omnipotence also!
- Despite being The Hero (or, some would argue, the Designated Hero), Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire's eponymous main character has often invoked this trope to justify his morally questionable or just plain ridiculous methods of defeating the villain, especially after his Power Creep starts setting in after the Storm of Souls arc.
- Schlock Mercenary features a super-intelligent AI which epitomizes this trope. He could probably solve the universe's problems if he didn't think it was better for everyone to "work things out themselves".
- He's trying; the universe is a big place, he's fighting some very powerful creatures along the way, and politics keeps getting in the way. But yes, the time he locked an entire government in a building and then obliterated that building from space because they were being irresponsible about orbital defense (ie, "if you had fixed the defenses, I wouldn't be able to do this") is this trope in spades.
- Petey seems to feel that his level of power requires him to act as he does. Apparently he is a follower of The Gospel of Uncle Ben.
- One of the students at PS 238 has an ability that can best be described as hypercognition, an ability to form connections and make deductions that completely ignore quantum uncertainty and chaos theory. This leads to doing no small amount of questionable acts.
- Tom Davidson, who can time travel, has much the same deal going on.
- Sarda the Sage from 8-bit Theater subverts this trope, with White Mage convinced he's operating under this license while the "Light" Warriors know damn well he hates them (and now they even know why).
- The Great Bird Conspiracy of Kevin and Kell, in addition to manipulating the inner workings of government and other institutions, carried out a long-running plan to prevent society from destroying itself by establishing computers to run it. In order to accomplish it, they abduct Vin, Fenton and Ray and have them work for Microtalon when they find out too much about it, and cause Lindesfarne to believe that her boyfriend Fenton is dead. While the people in question are eventually returned with their memories of their time at Microtalon wiped this caused a considerable amount of anguish for the cast.
- Misfile features a clever subversion with God himself, who is all-knowing and yet apparently allows his angelic underlings to get away with errors. However, the twist (which is implied) is that God knows that these errors, such as the titular misfile, result in more actual good than harm, making him one hell of a chessmaster...
- Dr McNinja can do pretty much anything he wants as long as he gets back to his office and calls "Base". Why he doesn't simply declare, "ABC, 123, I've got base all over me," has yet to be seen.
- Lampshaded in Cheshire Crossing when Dorothy finally confronts Glinda the Good Witch with the accusation that Glinda deliberately withheld information about the ruby slippers to get Dorothy to murder the Wicked Witch. Who got better anyway.
Web Original
- Played perhaps uncomfortably straight with the Tao in the Whateley Universe, which ostensibly always knows just what is required to maintain 'the balance'. So far a few people have coughed but only Strawmen have actually debated against it
Western Animation
Truth In Television
- Richard Nixon. Just ... Richard Nixon.
Frost: So what in a sense, you're saying is that there are certain situations ... where the President can decide that it's in the best interests of the nation or something, and do something illegal.
Nixon: Well, when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.
Frost: By definition.
Nixon: Exactly. Exactly.
- And sadly, he started something of a trend. During the Bush presidency, as regards the war on terror, the justice department made the exact same argument. And Obama shows no signs whatsoever of rejecting this school of thought.
- Signing Statements are a key mechanic that allows this. They allow the signer of a law- namely, the President- to add small touches to a finished law. Like that it doesn't affect the members of the Executive Branch when they don't want it to. This happens depressingly often.
- The Westboro Baptist Church seems to believe pretty much that God has free rein to decide what "Good" and "Bad" are and if you disagree, it's your problem. This is apparently why they feel justified in happily saying that God strikes entire nations with earthquakes or floods because of something like homosexuality. Of course, it's hard to tell if they're serious or some sort of attention whores...
Religion and Mythology
- A core tenet of almost all major religions is about God or Gods having sovereignty over the universe and being allowed to do what they feel is right. And that's all we're going to say on the subject.
- Hinduism, and other polytheistic religions, not so much. Even the top gods have avatars, which can make mistakes. The prevelance of this is mostly because so many people worship a single god, not lots.
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