What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic? - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic

Washizu's mahjong power could kill ~~Akagi~~ Jesus.

"Boy, there's nothing worse than an inscrutable omen."

— Calvin, Calvin And Hobbes

So you have yourself a Mind Screw, a Dream Within A Dream, or an episode with lots of Foreshadowing. You have the plot, you have the characters... but something's missing. What could it be...?

I know! Let's add some random symbolism and a few religious shout outs, make the registration plate a Bible index, place some pentagrams in the background of the chase scene, and have a character die with his arms outstretched so that people will compare him to Jesus. As long as it looks meaningful, people will love it!

Not all such references are arbitrary; this trope specifically applies only when someone has added random symbolism as an afterthought to add (illusory) depth and meaning to an otherwise-standard story. Comparing your main character to the Devil or Jesus seems popular.

This technique is particularly popular in Anime, because the Japanese generally only have a passing familiarity with Christianity, and will often use names or apocrypha without regard for their actual significance.

Compare Crystal Dragon Jesus. The secular equivalent is What Do You Mean Its Not Awesome?

Sub-tropes:

Examples

Anime

How much of the religious imagery in Neon Genesis Evangelion is truly relevant and how much was added by this trope is up for debate; however, things like the cross-shaped energy blasts probably qualify. Producer Kazuya Tsurumaki admits that a lot of the material that the staff co-opted from Judeo-Christian esoterica is there specifically to Mind Screw the viewing audience, who, being Japanese, wouldn't be very familiar with it. But even NGE couldn't resist the temptation to throw in one gratuitous Buddhist reference, in the form of a One Hundred And Eight. European and American audiences are Mind Screwed not by its unfamiliarity but by the fact that it appears in totally unexpected contexts.
- There's actually a good collection of Buddhist and even Shinto imagery scattered around NGE — but it's handled a bit more subtly because the (intended) audience could be expected to pick up on it more easily.
Washizu associates his mahjong power with Noah's Ark and his opponent Akagi with Jesus being crucified.
Yu-Gi-Oh: Many of the characters and monsters in the ancient Egyptian Memory World are named after figures from Egyptian mythology (Isis, Set, Osiris, Ra) and have absolutely nothing in common with their namesakes or their stories (though it makes great inspiration for Fan Fic writers and Shippers).
For all the philosophical rambling and half-symbolism in Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex they mostly avoid religious imagery. But in the last episode of Second Gig, Batou grabs a cross beam and holds it over his shoulder before using it to free Motoko. And, well... judge for yourself if this is supposed to be symbolic◊.
- Not to mention the Tachikomas' self sacrifice at that same moment.
- The original film has an interesting moment where the Puppetmaster-controlled tank shoots the hell out of an evolutionary-tree stone relief in attempt to ventilate Motoko; the last round blows the 'homo sapiens' clean off the wall.
Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure Part 3 introduced Stands, spiritual entities named after tarot cards. Note the "named after", not "based on"; few of them have anything in common with their namesakes, the author's handwaves nonwithstanding. For example, Tower of Gray is a superfast fly, so named because it brings calamity; Death 13 is a dream-controlling Stand named only because it looks like The Grim Reaper (while the actual card, ironically, does not), The Emperor is a handgun, and The Empress is a sentient wart which grows on its victim. About the only Stand that was really accurate was The Sun, a miniature sun. But, there weren't enough Tarot cards to have all the requisite enemy Stand users, so the author started naming them after similarly unrelated Egyptian gods. See Horus, an ice Stand named after the sun god. When the author ran out of those he decided to just use name them after bands, and has continued to do so throughout parts 4, 5, 6, and 7, though even those can be sort of wonky at times, such as Super Fly, the tower Stand.
Death Note contains several religious allusions. Some notable examples this editor remembers are Michaelangelo's ''Creation of Adam'' (Ryuk and Light) and ''Pietà'' (Ray Penbar and Naomi Misora) in the first opening credits, as well as the washing of Light's feet by L. Not to mention the symbolism of the apples Ryuk is always chomping on. This was actually the result of a mistake on the part of the manga artist, as it was a suggestion from the author who just thought it'd look cool.
- Not to mention the huge amount of objects in the series that just "happen" to look like crosses.
  - While L washes Light's feet, it cuts to a shot of a catwalk arranged like a cross.
  - In the final scenes of Episode 37, an oil refinery tower looks suspiciously like a cross.
  - The "Wammy House" is just littered with crosses.
Most of Hellsing's religious symbolism was put there simply because Kouhta Hirano was aiming to make a manga that "looked cool".
Mercuremon from Digimon Frontier, stages a huge Church Shootout against Takuya, complete with Ominous Pipe Organ (physical and musical) and a Crucified Hero Shot. The grand finale even involves stuffing him in a coffin. They are fighting inside Sefirotmon, which is basically a living cabbalistic figure.
In the DVD extras for Eureka Seven, voice actor Crispin Freeman discusses how the names of the main Humongous Mecha and its associated Applied Phlebotinum are derived from Buddhist mythology, as well as the series' references to The Golden Bough.
The Big O had this in spades.
D Gray Man. The villains are descendants of Noah (yes, that Noah), the Millenium Earl has commandeered Noah's Ark, the Black Order works for the Vatican, General Yeeger is crucified by the Noah, most Innocences have Creepy Cool Crosses on them, all Akuma have pentagrams on their faces (as does the hero), the Noah have lines of scar-like crosses across their foreheads...
Fafner In The Azure Dead Aggressor outdoes its rivals with twice the pointless mythology: meaningless German myth for the heroes (see: Fafner), and vague Egyptian-ness for the villains.
Trigun semi-subverts this; Nicholas D. Wolfwood carries around a cross that's actually a minigun, rocket launcher, and holster for several handguns. The grip is shaped like a skull. However, his religious beliefs turn out to be very important to the story.
The third season of Sailor Moon (Sailor Moon S) features a lot of this trope. "The Messiah" has to use the Holy Grail to save the world from evil, but there's nothing particularly religion-related about this evil force - it's pretty similar to the Big Bads of the other seasons that don't have religious imagery. The episode where the Holy Grail makes its first appearance takes place largely in a cathedral.
- The Holy Grail appears when the three Talismans are brought together. Interestingly, these talismans are a sword, a mirror, and a garnet, which are three sacred objects in the traditional Japanese Shinto religion.
In the Downer Ending of episode five of Mnemosyne, Big Bad Apos rapes Rin's sidekick Mimi while she is chained and nailed to a stone lamp post as Ominous Latin Chanting and Ominous Pipe Organ plays in the background. This is only one in at least three incidents of Nightmare Fuel in the last five minutes before the end credits roll.
In the manga Samurai Deeper Kyo, Mibu Kyoshiro calls himself the son of God and goes around healing ~~leper~~ wounded children. In a spectacular mix-up of biblical stories, he also kills his own brother, which leads to his leaving the ~~Garden of Eden~~ Mibu lands.
''Naruto's'' Big Bad Pain manipulates six bodies named after Buddhism's Six Paths of Pain: Animal summons giant insects, [Fighting] Demon hides missiles in his body, Hungry Ghost, God (heaven/Pain himself (probably)), Hell, and Human steals your soul/chakra.
When Lelouch's body falls down from the throne in the very end of Code Geass, his blood forms a large cross with the red line on the Britannian flag spread out in front of it. Interpret it however you wish.

Comic Books

In Huntress: Year One #4, the Huntress essentially crucifies Stephen Mandragora, but even though Huntress is all about the Catholic imagery, she only does it to restrain him, and presumably because impaling someone through the palmar radial nerve is one of the most excruciatingly painful injuries one can inflict on someone. Lampshaded when Mandragora points out to her, with his dying breath "You honor me, with...with the stigmata...I knew...I'd be a saint someday."

Film

The Matrix trilogy has hundreds of Bible references, everything from the registration codes of the hovercraft to the dialogue between Smith and Neo. The films' creators were so worried that people might not see Neo as Messiah that they added these arbitrarily just to avoid confusion. (A few of the subtler ones actually meant something, but they got lost in the general noise.)
- Let's not forget the cross-shaped explosions and other eratta in Revolutions.
Superman Returns is rife with Bible Shout Outs, but the most blatant one is the scene when one of Lex Luthor's henchmen holds Superman up, with his arms outstretched, as Luthor stabs him in the side with a shard of Kryptonite. To be fair, Superman has been compared and made similar to Jesus for years in the comics — somewhat of an irony, considering that his creators were both Jewish. He's also Moses, what with the "sent away from home in a small vessel to save his life and taken in by a foreign family" and all.
Live as one of them, Kal-El, to discover where your strength and your power are needed. Always hold in your heart the pride of your special heritage. They can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you... my only son.
Jules Winnfield's recitation of "Ezekiel 25:17" in Pulp Fiction, which couldn't be any more off to anyone who's read the actual excerpt. Quite frankly, Winnfield himself openly admits that he never actually gave the verse much thought, he's just always thought of it simply as something cool to say before executing his targets.
The Doom Generation was so full of this it was pretty much tripping over itself. The main characters' surnames are Redd, White and Blue. The female lead smokes Death brand cigarettes, and has a skull-shaped lighter. The penultimate scene involves "The Star-Spangled Banner" playing behind a scene probably better not described. The whole thing is pretty much Clueless meets Evangelion.
I Know Who Killed Me, which with its strange "symbols" (persistent use of the colors blue and red, an animated heart tattoo, an owl on a tree branch) made the already ridiculous premise even more insane and inane.
The final shootout of John Woo's The Killer has this in spades. The shootout itself takes place in a church, the Killer's last place of peace and refuge, with doves flying everywhere at key points in the battle. At one point, the Killer gets shot, and his arms are outstretched in a Crucified Hero Shot. And just to drive home the point that the church is no longer a sanctuary for him and his blinded love interest, one of the bad guys blows up the church's centerpiece, a statue of Mary, at which point the Handel's Messiah Overture starts playing.
Southland Tales contains constant, inexplicable references to the Book of Revelation.
Magnolia is filled with cryptic references to the numbers 8 and 2, and eventually brings on a plague of frogs straight out of Exodus 8:2.
28 Days Later: Are all the statues of Laocoon in the manor house supposed to mean something? How about the Infected priest? How about the running horses? How about the "hell"/"hello" sign at the very end? Well, how about it?
In Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet, the eponymous tragic hero's body is hoisted awkwardly so that the arms splay and the head flops back giving a brief cruciform. Which would make sense if there were any other sacrificial/messianic imagery in the rest of the film.
Charlies Angels: Full Throttle has Demi Moore falling down a trap door with a leaking gas pipe, which her gunshots ignite. It's not just symbolic, it's awesome.
Paradise Now has a chilling, ironic ShoutOut to Da Vinci's Last Supper. When Khaled and Said eat a supposedly last time with the preparers of their suicide bombings, for some reason they all cluster on the far side of the long table, facing the camera.
Blade Runner has the Replicant Roy Batty attempting to kill Deckard before his body dies. His arm begins to stiffen and numb, and so he drives a nail through the palm. He and Deckard fight on the roof - Deckard is soon driven off the edge and dangles for his life, weakening. Roy grabs him and pulls him up onto the roof just as Deckard's hands slip, the nail through his hand in full view, and sits there, cradling a white pigeon in his hands, before finally dying. At least he had the decency not to splay his hands out in a crucifix pose.
The tagline from Interview With The Vampire is "Drink from me and live forever." Of course, this is completely appropriate, considering that the (modern) vampire mythology is now seen as darkly mirroring Christ's—where Jesus gave his blood so that others may live forever in paradise, the vampire steals other's blood so that he may live forever, and so on.
When you see the heavenly father and son scene in The Lion King, do you think of Christianity first, or Star Wars? This troper thought of ''StarWars'' first, only since it was the same voice actor.
Star Wars itself, aside from some actual symbolism, has a few uses of random asian words and ideas to make it sound exotic and interesting (the word Jedi for instance, the Force and Chi etc). This gets turned on its head when it appears that the Chinese translation for Episode III' used ideas for western culture and Christianity. They translated the Jedi Council as the Presbyterian Church.
- Or, rather, they translated it as "the Meeting of Elders", but the term also happened to be the translation for "Presbyterian Church" (as it's ruled by Presbyters, or elders).
In the Terminator series, John Connor has those initials for a reason.

Literature

The Wheel Of Time takes this to 11. Entire characters are based off of mythological characters, and religious characters.
- Rand Al'Thor (Jesus) battles Ishamael (the Anti-Christ), and Shai'tan (Guess)
  - Not to mention the Crown of Swords (thorns), the wound in his side, and the herons branded onto his palms.
  - Also, the wound in his side and his recent near-blindness are references to the Fisher King.
- Mat Cauthon is based off of Odin right down to getting hanged for knowledge
- Perrin Aybara is based off of Thor, and the Baltic god Perkons
- Gareth Bryne, and Gawyn Trakand are heavily based off of their King Arthur counterparts
- The history of Tar Valon, and the Amyrlin Seat is based off of Catholic Church and Pope, right down to them splitting apart and electing different Amrylin (popes).
- The Forsaken all have heavy Nazi influences. Consider Semirhage as Dr. Josef Mengele.
- The Asha'man, who are ostensibly good guys, are based directly on the Nazi SS, right down to the uniforms and titles ("Storm Leader").
  - Most of this is just the nature of the books — a lot of the characters are supposed to represent something/someone in our 'age', and the repetitiveness of the Wheel of Time. This sort of "legend fades into myth" recycling is a large theme of the series. There are theories that the stories Thom mentions in The Eye of the World are parallels of people/things from our world.
  - Some examples: "Materese the Healer", "Lenn who flew to the Moon on an eagle of fire", and the giants "Mosk and Merk who strode the world and fought with spears of fire".
- You know what, just read this for all the similarities Arthurian, Judeo-Christian, Asian, Norse, Greek, too many other legends to count.
Mark Z. Danielewski's House Of Leaves is chock-full of religious and mythological symbolism, some of it seemingly irrelevant. The most obvious allusions are to the Greek myth of ~~the Labyrinth and the Minotaur~~ because of the nature of the house, but other mythologies and religions have their place. For instance, Will Navidson's injuries mirror similar injuries sustained by figures in Norse mythology: Odin lost an eye, Tyr lost a hand, and Heimdall lost his hearing, which are similar to the one blind eye, the frostbitten (and rendered useless) hand, and the lost ear he ends up with. The house is located on Ash Tree Lane, and the world-tree Yggdrasil is said to have been a giant ash tree. Danielewski doesn't stop at Greek and Norse mythology, but to list them all here would take up too much space.
Partially Lampshaded in Paul Robinson's Instrument Of God where the Chairman of the Afterlife (who while he is a human being, has the effective authority of God), sends Supervisor 246's boss David to go get him so they can have a meeting. He tells David to mention the bible verse Judges 3:20. As 246 is currently working as the equivalent of a municipal court judge, he feels the quote is appropriate, because (as 246 later informs David) the verse reads, "Your Majesty, I have a message from God for you."
Parodied in Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire. This is actually Charles Kinbote's catch phrase when he's doing the footnotes to John Shade's poem "Pale Fire". He keeps relating very minor lines of the poem with some epic romance about a homosexual king fleeing a country in the grips of socialist revolution. Obviously John Shade was so subtle a poet that any mention or imagery of the color gray in "Pale Fire" alluded to the name of the assassin hired by an Omniscient Council of Vagueness to track the forementioned king down.
Done deliberately in Ender's Game with the mind game imagery. While much of it is drawn from various mythologies, and much of it makes sense in itself, taken as a whole it's incoherent. Word Of God explains:
Second, I did not want to create a "plotted" mind game ... When I caught myself having a plan, I subverted it.
Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series is one of the most brutally embarrassing examples of this trope. Virtually every Biblical reference in these books is a shallow attempt to bring a meaning to a story that otherwise is lacking in real depth outside Romance. Among these offenders is the Apple on the Cover of the first book, which, according to the author, represents the forbidden apple from the Garden of Eden, because, like Bella (the Protagonist) and Edward's (A Vampire high school student) love, it was forbidden. Unfortunately, there is no forbidden "apple" in the garden of Eden (It is just described as a "fruit"), and Bella and Edward's relationship is hardly "forbidden" (Few people know Edward is a vampire, so few people care). Another example? Toward the end of the series, Edward states "...and so the Lion falls in love with the Lamb", an attempt to allude to post-apocalyptic prophesies in the Bible that speak of how the "Lion will lay down with the Lamb, and there will be peace". The Bible does not, however, actually condone Lions and Lambs mating.
- And whoever wrote This certainly Likes their Meaningful Capitalisation. To be honest, the 'lion falling in love with the lamb' thing is mostly just for a tagline's sake- at the worst, it's Metaphorgotten, as Edward isn't exactly the most dreadful of undead denizens. And the Romeo and Juliet symbolism is fitting— Bella's a bored teenage high school student, who probably didn't understand her Shakespeare either.
  - Well, she likes to read...

Live Action TV

In the seventh episode of the sixth season of MST3K, the movie, Bloodlust, is mostly a The Most Dangerous Game ripoff. However, at the end, after the bad guy is killed by the lackey he betrayed, said lackey pushes his hands through a pair of metal spikes, giving an obvious crucifixion image.
Tom Servo: So why this symbolism? Did Christ hunt people on deserted islands?
In the Ultraman franchise, crosses and other Christian imagery are used in attacks and story plots, however, it should be noted that the creator of the franchise, Eiji Tsuburaya is actually Christian.
Lost tends to throw in Christian imagery, randomly name its characters after various philosophers, have mysteriously appearing hieroglyphics, etc.
Two entirely different Professional Wrestling promotions have made allusions to a wrestler being Jesus in this manner. WWF, at one point, had Steve Austin attacked by The Undertaker and his almost-Satanic-but-not-quite Ministry, and strapped to a giant version of the Undertaker's personal logo (which looks like a capital T with an X at the bottom point). Of course, as with so many of the WWF's Attitude Era storylines, ECW did it first, and was even more blatant, having Raven and his Brood attack the Sandman and strap him to a wooden cross, then place a crown of barbed wire on his head. Thankfully, we were meant to interpret this more as an indictment of the occult-like Ministry and Brood than any statement on the foul-mouthed, violent Austin or Sandman.
- A few years before these, there was the 1994 Royal Rumble, where The Undertaker, who was a hero at that time, was ambushed by virtually all of the promotion's villains and put in a casket. Then, the inside of the casket appeared on the video wall, with 'Taker giving a vow to return. Then, his image on the screen turned inverse, with lots of white and ascended upwards, with his shadow appearing above the screen and ascending towards the sky before disappearing. This was followed by the appearance of an evil Anti-Undertaker and the return of the original to defeat his evil counterpart, who was worshipping money.
Accusations of the Doctor as Messiah abound regarding the new series. Tinkerbell Jesus rankles the most, though.
- Torchwood has Jesusfied Jack to the extent that he revives after three days after dying for the Team's sins, and later sacrifices himself again by being buried alive in the same year that Jesus was supposedly put on the cross. And that's just getting started.
- In the TV Movie, the regeneration-transfer-machine the Master straps the Doctor into looks an awful lot like a crucifix and crown of thorns.
In the sitcom Black Books, Manny becomes a kind of defective Messiah after literally swallowing The Little Book of Calm, walking the streets in a bedsheet and beatifically spouting random phrases from the book at all and sundry.
- Including some Jehovah's Witnesses, who scream and run away.
In a slightly uncharacteristic moment (based on what we know of Daddy Shut Up and what we know of hell), Supernatural thought it would be a great idea to have him go out in a beautific white light after having defeated the big bad and leaving his sons almost in tears.
As mentioned above, Superman gets saddled with the Jesus archtype from time to time, but it was egregiously done in in the very first episode of Smallville when Clark Kent was Crucified! It was lampshaded in the next episode when Lex Luthor points out that it was a method of torture the Romans reserved for those they hated the most.
In the new Battlestar Galactica, there are countless examples. The numbers 5 (Final Five Cylons, 5 priests of the unnamed God, etc.) and 12 (12 Colonies of Kobol, 12 models of human Cylons, 12 Lords of Kobol) keep popping up, the twelve being a reference to twelve signs of the Zodiac which also inspire the names of the colonies. Not to mention Gaius Baltar, who is absolutely convinced he's The Messiah. In "The Hand of God," at the end, he leans backward on a balcony, stares up at the sky, and says "I am an instrument of God." Then, in "Torn," he is imprisoned on a Cylon basestar, grows out his hair and beard, and wanders around in a white robe.
- In the original Galactica, the 12 colonies (despite their names) were pretty much meant to symbolize the 12 tribes of Israel. It borrowed from Mormon theology, which posits a lost 13th tribe; in the Galactica mythos they're looking for the lost 13th colony, which of course is Earth.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles has more than I can count. While they are not particularly subtle, that's kind of the point. ~~Many~~ All of them mark Crowning Moments Of Awesome.
- Cromartie is killed guns akimbo, arms outstretched, in a church, right in front of a crucifix in an incredibly awesome scene.
- Agent Ellison is very religious, and attempts to teach the Ten Commandments to the proto-skynet called 'Project Babylon'.
- John Connor cuts his hair while the song "Samson and Delilah" plays, in the episode entitled Samson and Delilah.
- In the season one finale, twenty FBI agents are killed along to the song "The Man Comes Around.'' Hint: The Man is Jesus.

Music

Rammstein's song "Laichzeit" has, as this troper is sure, no meaning at all but sounds very symbolic or at least, depending on how you look at it, like a song about sex using metaphors. In this tropers opinion they just wanted to fuck with the minds of fans or critics who read too much in their songs.

Theater

Most of the second half of The Fantasticks is a parade of symbols. The El Gallo number "Round and Round" is particularly trippy in its symbolism; even the actors in the production this editor attended didn't know what it meant.

Video Games

Xenogears and Xenosaga are notorious among Video Games for being chock-full of Pretentious Religious Symbolism. Much like Neon Genesis Evangelion, matters are complicated by the fact that the core story really is based around religious symbolism—Xenogears in particular is heavily inspired by the Gnostic interpretation of Christianity.
- Some of this was lost in translation. The Elementals were named for four of the nine choirs of angels. Cherubina (Kelvena), Throne (Tolone), Seraphita and Dominia.
  - Mr. Inferiority Complex Ramsus has a phonetic Japanese spelling that makes his surname pronounced like Rameses.
  - Miang's surname is a shout-out to Eve (Hawwa/Chavah).
Bioshock carries quite a bit of seemingly gratuitous religious symbolism, from crucified corpses, to discarded Bibles lying around, to the name of the game's Applied Phlebotinum, ADAM (which gives you powers that are fueled by EVE), to the name of the city itself, Rapture. One could argue that Rapture is actually named after "diver's rapture", a state of euphoria brought on by "the bends" — still symbolic, but not in the same way.
- While the rest are valid, the first two are more literal — the character inspired by the heroes of Ayn Rand, Andrew Ryan (easy to anagram, isn't it?) outlawed religion and hunted down smugglers who brought Bibles into Rapture.
In Devil May Cry 4's opening cutscene, Dante puts his sword through the forehead of a statue of his father. Later on, he gets impaled by his sword on the same statue. But then Dante, in every game but the second, gets impaled on his own sword by an enemy.
In Drakengard, you have the Cult of the Watchers, which is a vague allusion to a concept in Judeo-Christian theology and some books of the Apocrypha.
- The book of Enoch, specifically. Monstrous children of the grigori, the Nephilim = those crazyass giant demon babies? Well, maybe?
In Assassins Creed, mild-mannered bartender Desmond Miles is suspiciously modeled with the exact same face as Altair, his ancestor from 1191AD. It also goes in reverse, as Desmond's white hoodie is obviously patterned to resemble Altair's assassin's robe. It's a rather sly application of the Identical Grandson, because Altair wears his hood up and his face is harder to see. This goes in reverse as well, because Desmond doesn't wear his hood. Arguably subverted with the Animus, as it could be simply replacing Altair with Desmond's looks, since Desmond is reliving the memories. This would mean Altair didn't have the cool scar that causes much squee, sadly.
Fire Emblem games generally name characters and weapons after people and weapons in mythologies from EVERYWHERE in Europe. The names don't go any deeper than being names. Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones has a character named Tethys (a Greek Goddess), the sacred spear Siegmund (named after a Norse Hero) and the sacred sword Sieglinde (named after Siegmund sister/lover Ironically, they're wielded by Lords who are twin brother and sister *and* have quite the twincest-y vibes). They just sound cooler than boring names, nothing more.
- Not to mention ~~Mars~~ Marth. Uh, nevermind, I guess.
Persona 3 involves shooting yourself in the head to let the voices out. Of course, the shooting device is apparently not a real gun, and just induces the mental trauma of being shot, causing your innermost psyche to emerge and attack the enemy with magic.
- Not to mention the two crucifixion poses the main character is in (once before Ikutski tries to sacrifice the protagonists, and again after he makes the Great Seal), and the fact that the last "voice in his head" is named Messiah.
- Also, he sacrifices his own life in order to save humanity from the consequences of its vices.
"Jesus Beams" Joshua from The World Ends With You. A God Is He.
The first half of Final Fantasy X draws so many parallels between Yuna and Jesus that it's almost not a surprise when it's revealed that Yuna will die saving Spira if she completes her pilgrimage as intended. The second half of the game then completely subverts this as it's revealed that this way of dealing with Sin, at best, puts a temporary patch on the problem anyway and looks for another way to defeat it.
Two of the first towns your party visits in Final Fantasy III are Canaan and Ur.
Master Chief's name is John 117. John 1:17 is "For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.". This troper has no idea what that means, or whether Master Chief is supposed to be Moses or Jesus, but he wouldn't be named John if it wasn't important, right? The allusion could also be to John 11:7 which is "Then after that saith he to his disciples, Let us go into Judaea again." but it probably isn't.
- Flood. Ark. 'Nuff said.
- Halo. Things that float over angel's heads. Seem familiar?
- 117 is also 819 divided by 7 (seven itself is a major theme in Bungie games). "Hats Off to Eight Nineteen" was the hidden easter egg level in Marathon Infinity. Ironically, "Eight Nineteen" refers to the operator of the "Marathon Story Page", Hamish Sinclair (or H.S., or 8 19 if you translated the letters into numbers). A chat log proves the 8 19=H S point...
Silent Hill: Homecoming has a lot of sexually-related imagery. None of it seems to mean a damn thing, as sexual themes aren't part of the plot nor do they relate to any of the characters. This is a particularly grating example, because, as others have speculated, the most likely cause is the American development team simply failing to grasp the style of symbolism the Japanese devs employed through the rest of the series, especially with monster design. To be fair, most players miss a lot of it, too, but this troper thought The Reveal to be somewhat of a let-down after suspecting since nearly the beginning that Alex was either gay or transgendered.
Metal Gear Solid was doing fine until the fourth one. Then it gives the most Anvilicious sequence involving a church and a big statue of Mary and two factions fighting over different interpretations of a self-sacrificing person's words. Considering the games had multiple Snakes, an EVA, an ADAM, a David, a John, and a driving theme of heroism and idolisation, it was impressive the games managed to resist that long.
- More meaninglessly, Metal Gear Acid 2 names the Test Subjects (Golab, Harab Serap, Chagadiel) after the Kabbalist Qliphoth for no good reason, and names the Metal Gear Chaioth Ha Kadosh (host of angels) and gives it a choral piece as a Leitmotif.
- The opening scene of Metal Gear Solid 2 shows Snake (who had at this point abandoned his dream of having a normal life in order to fight against Metal Gear proliferation, as his 'duty to the coming generations') throwing himself off a bridge with his legs together and his arms outstretched in a wide crucifix pose. He's in Active Camo at this point, so the effect is made even more extreme by the fact that all that's visible is the outline of his silhouette. Oh, and an ethereal choral song plays as he does it. For a while during development, it would have been more extreme, with Snake wearing a brilliant white parachute that would spread out behind his body like a pair of angel wings. A lot of the symbolism is mollified, though, by the fact that when he lands on the surface of the Tanker there's a big Homage Shot to, of all things, Terminator.
It's pretty fair to say that so many fights wouldn't have been had about Final Fantasy VII if the villain hadn't been named after the Kabbalist 'Sephiroth' and he hadn't been obsessed with becoming a god and there wasn't a sacrificed martyr character.
- Add onto that a possible corrected translation of his final form, Sepher Sephiroth, and watch more heads explode.
Yet more examples from Final Fantasy: The summons. Yeah, Ifrit, Shiva, Ramuh and the like make sense in the context of being gods, but Eden? Ark?
The Tattered Spire in Fable 2 is, at its full height, a model of Hell from Dante's Inferno.
Inverted entirely in Max Payne, when most people missed the oodles of valid and proper Norse symbolism.
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption has Samus' infusion of Phazon as a major plot point. Phazon gives Samus increased firepower and abilities, but can only be used for a short time. If Samus stays in Phazon-induced Hypermode for too long, she becomes "corrupted" and dies. Over time, Samus' corruption becomes worse and worse, disfiguring her skin and clogging her veins. At the height of her corruption, Samus has only ten minutes before she dies of excessive corruption. By the end of the game, Samus manages to purge herself of all Phazon and Phazon-related upgrades, saving her life. I refuse to believe that Nintendo didn't intend this as some kind of drug metaphor. There's just no way.
In the Sakura Taisen manga (and possibly by extent the game, but correct me if I'm wrong), the character Setsuna has a scene during his Mind Rape arc torturing Maria with her tied to a cross.
Let's not forget EVE Online, wherein humanity discovers a wormhole (the titular EVE) which delivers mankind to the New Eden system in another galaxy. It only gets better from this point onward, especially if you take the time to read the names of some of the systems and constellations.

Web Comics

Summed up brilliantly by this image◊ (Aptly titled "It makes you sound deep"), brought to you by RPG World.

Web Original

Cody Jenson's discovery of a motorcycle in Survival Of The Fittest, a mundane occurrence tooled up with as much symbolism and imagery as was humanly possible. Oh, and he named it too.

What Do You Mean, It's Not Awesome?

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