Basic Trope: The given deity of a setting is evil.
- Straight:
- God is the creator of the world, the designer of the human race, and the supreme power in the universe. He also considers humans to be nothing but a culture of bacteria He is experimenting with, to be snuffed out when they overextend their bounds - or when He grows tired of the experiment.
- Elysium the Creator is known to create humanity and manipulate her creations into violence and misery and she is amused by it.
- Exaggerated:
- God created the world for the sole purpose of torturing everyone and everything for His own sadistic pleasure. The reason why we even have a life is because He wants us to experience hope before it is ripped away and revealed as a cruel illusion.
- God is every single negative religious stereotype combined. He rewards those who torment, oppress, and murder in His name, and sends everyone else to Hell.
- God is Made of Evil.
- Downplayed:
- God is not a Card-Carrying Villain, but He enforces His not-unreasonable morals with horribly disproportionate punishments.
- God is just a Jerkass.
- A new God is chosen every few millennia, and sometimes the person is evil.
- Elysium the Creator may be evil or a jerk but she has a few lines she won't cross.
- God is antagonistic specifically because He's Good.
- God Is Flawed.
- God is just Affably Evil.
- God started out as good before slowly becoming evil over many millenniums.
- In a polytheistic universe, there are about twenty evil gods, and three gods who are definitely not evil, but similar in most other ways.
- Justified:
- The classic Epicurean Problem of Evil
, no wonder. - It's a Cosmic Horror Story.
- The crapsackness of the world is Inherent in the System, God is the Anthropomorphic Personification of it.
- Omnipotence actually makes anyone drunk, insane and bored. Why should gods be exempt?
- If God possesses eternal life, then Immortality Immorality and Who Wants to Live Forever? are in effect.
- Elysium the Creator exists because people believe in Her. Some humans believe She punishes "evil", but each has biased and severe definitions of "goodness". Others see Elysium the Creator as a cosmic cash machine. Still others reject Her existence entirely thinking that only a malicious god could make an imperfect world anyway. The end result isn't pretty - a Goddess who makes EVERYONE miserable and imposes ridiculous and paradoxical standards no one could meet. You Bastards.
- God created everything, and by extension feels entitled to control of everything. How would you feel if the shed you built got mad and ran off?
- Who is more likely to have a god complex than God?
- Being an immortal omnipotent entity, God has a very poor understanding of human suffering.
- God is ancient and by extension has very ancient values.
- The classic Epicurean Problem of Evil
- Inverted:
- Satan Is Good.
- Evil is God (As in humanity's collective depravity creates a powerful cosmic being that is pretty much close to God)
- or God is the greatest force for good ever.
- Subverted:
- The protagonist begins the story believing God Is Evil, but comes to see that God was really looking out for him all along, in a roundabout kind of way.
- The god that is evil is actually the devil in disguise
- The "god" is actually a Sufficiently Advanced Alien posing as a god.
- The "god" is actually a Naytheist Evil Sorcerer who acts evil to destroy people's faith in deities.
- This "god" turns out to be a Sealed Evil in the earths core.
- This "god" is just the God of Evil in a polytheistic pantheon with more moral deities.
- As it turns out, God doesn't know what he doing is wrong - He either genuinely doesn't realise he's being a dick, or is trying to be good, but failing miserably.
- Elysium the Creator was just in a bad mood. Other than that, She's a Jerkass Goddess With A Heart Of Gold.
- God has been horribly misinterpreted by their corrupt or extremist followers.
- God was evil, but had a Heel–Face Turn since he last saw us.
- Elysium is being impersonated by Sophia.
- Elysium's most devoted follower, Faye, manages to bring her back onto the path of righteousness.
- Double Subverted:
- ... And then God destroys the hope he just instilled.
- ... But then it's revealed that the Devil IS God.
- ... But god is no better, or is worse than the Devil
- ... Who is sufficiently advanced enough to count as a Physical God by the 'verse's settings.
- ... Because his own hope was destroyed by an evil god.
- ... Then its revealed that The Earth forms around The Sealed Evil technically making this Sealed Evil the unwilling creator of humanity.
- ... But is then shown to be a Tautological Templar who smites everyone who points out that he's screwing up.
- ... But this didn't stop Her from torturing humanity more sadistically than before. For that, She's a Jerkass Goddess With A Heart Of Jerk.
- Parodied:
- God is an over-the-top, comically ineffective Dastardly Whiplash.
- Elysium the Creator inflicts Cool and Unusual Punishment on non-believers.
- Zig Zagged: God keeps the world in a miserable state, but He reveals to the heroes that this is for humanity's development... until God sends the heroes to Hell to be relentlessly tortured For the Evulz.
- Averted:
- God's alignment is beyond good.
- Elysium the Creator isn't explicitly good nor evil.
- Elysium is
Lawful Neutral - God is a mindless creator and cannot comprehend good nor evil.
- God's personality is exactly like in the belief system.
- God Is Neutral
- Enforced:
- The author of the work is trying to make an Anvilicious criticism about a religion they disagree with.
- The writer wants a metaphor for the dangers of unchecked power; what kind of power could be more unchecked than God's?
- Lampshaded:
- "Why can a benevolent God exist, yet all the problems of the world do? Clearly God cannot be benevolent!"
- "God always answers our prayers. It's just that the answer is usually 'Screw you'."
- Invoked: Evil sorceress Alice summons Bob the Eater of Worlds and Mutilator of the Unborn! Alice makes a point of researching into Bob to make sure he's a sufficiently evil enough god to do her bidding.
- Exploited: A person is given godlike powers for the sole reason of corrupting him.
- Defied:
- Allen becomes a Physical God, and makes a concerted effort to prevent going mad from power.
- God imposes a Constitution onto himself and turns the Celestial Bureaucracy into a democracy.
- God's followers explain to everyone that God isn't evil, but He's causing all of these tragedies and catastrophes as a way to give humanity a wake-up call and that they all need to repent.
- "The LORD your God is good and righteous! How dare you accuse your creator of evil!"
- "God only looks evil because you humans are just looking for a convenient scapegoat for your miseries! Bet you do the same to Satan too."
- God learns to be good from the humans.
- God creates a human form which he uses to understand the plight of man.
- Discussed: "If absolute power corrupts absolutely than where does that leave God?" — George Deacon
- Conversed:
- "With all those Fundamentalist rants, who would want to worship a God like that?"
- "God or the Devil? They're probably the same thing anyways."
- Deconstructed:
- God created a perfect world for humans, but their ingratitude and disobedience made Him hate His own creation...
- God seems evil due to the fact that He has an entirely different view of morality.
- God has all the power that followers of monotheistic religions believe Him to have. There is nothing in the universe that can defeat Him because He controls all things in it, even those that seek to destroy Him. Furthermore, should God die, the universe will, too.
- Elysium the Creator behaves cruelly towards humanity so bad that they all decided to align themselves with Lucia, who's proven to be a pretty decent person unlike their creator. This angers Elysium to the point where She decides to cast humanity and Lucia into the Lake Of Fire for all of eternity, refusing to realize that it's Her cruelty that's driven humanity away from Her.
- Elysium the Creator's story is explained via a prequel: She was once a God of Good. Unfortunately, years of watching humanity suffer and being unable to do a thing, being exploited by loyal followers for money and power, and suffering from the other gods being jerks, Elysium descended into insanity. This is actually how free will was created: Her last attempt to give humanity a chance to kill her to save themselves.
- God's cruelty results in humans stop worshipping Him and go into Rage Against The Heaven.
- Under a theology of Divine Simplicity, God is all of his attributes, and is thus Made of Evil. A supremely evil being would be too selfish to create anything or anyone to begin with ... so nothing exists, and there is no story or setting to speak of.
- Reconstructed:
- ...And it's HIS fault for making humanity exist that way in the first place. Or, the fact He made us in his image all too well.
- ...But He is still evil by all human standards and His perspectives doesn't necessarily have precedence over our perspectives.
- It's revealed that He allowed free will to exist just so He can have excuses.
- It's revealed that He allowed free will to exist so that He can watch humanity torturing each other.
- It's revealed that free will and hope was an accident that He never bothered to fix.
- Mankind repents, but Elysium the Creator still torments them, this time even more sadistically.
- ...then, She creates another set of humans who are willing to worship Her and obey Her questionable laws, even if She enjoys tormenting them from time to time.
- If God is evil, then not worshipping Him is downright suicidal. Not only can He make your life in the Crapsack World He created even worse, with maybe a Bolt of Divine Retribution or ten, even death is no guarantee of release since God can continue to torment your immortal soul for all eternity.
- Who said selfishness was evil?
Thou shalt return to the main page, or I will send thee to Hell where ye will be tortured and punished FOREVER!
