History Literature / AmericanGods

** [[TheMenInBlack The Spookshow agents]] are not authorized by the US Government, but acting like they are to play on GovernmentConspiracy fears is enough to convince the local authorities to cooperate without showing any credentials whatsoever. The other side pulls it by pretending to be ''them''.

* GovernmentConspiracy: Subverted. The Spookshow is not part of the US Government. They just act like they are because it intimidates people.

** While on the plan, Shadow notices that Wednesday has a tiepin in the shape of a tree. With the knowledge that Wednesday is an incarnation of Odin, one realizes that it's meant to be a reference to Yggdrasil, where Odin hung himself for nine days to learn his charms.

** Wednesday tells Shadow that he reminds him of [[spoiler:Thor, who is a son of Odin. [[LukeIAmYOurFather Guess who Shadow's father is]]? Additionally there are many associations of Shadow with thunder and lightning]].

* AluminumChristmasTrees:
** The House on the Rock is a real place in southern Wisconsin and is, if anything, even weirder than described in the book.
** Rock City. The easiest way to shock a British reader of the book is to inform them that the place actually exists, kitschy barnside signs and all.
* AmbiguouslyBrown: Shadow is asked on several occasions what his ethnicity is, with other characters guessing him to be Hispanic, Native American, or part African American. Shadow himself has very little knowledge of his heritage, but his mother suffered from sickle-cell anemia and is described as dark, so she is almost certainly African-American; his father is [[spoiler:a Norse god]]. His skin colour is finally described as [[StarbucksSkinScale 'coffee and cream']] some 450 pages into the novel. Neil Gaiman [[ComicBookFantasyCasting sees him as]] Wrestling/TheRock.
** Double Subverted by the case of Jacquel and Ibis, two ancient Egyptians who used to be able to pass for either white or black...until the Civil War, whereafter they were always seen as black (they themselves don't see themselves as black though).

** Mr. Wednesday robs a bank (or, rather the people who are trying to make deposits at the bank). His con was based on a RealLife con that [[Film/CatchMeIfYouCan Frank Abagnale Jr.]] claimed to have once pulled off. [[LifeImitatesArt Some people attempted to pull off the same trick after reading the book]].

* BewareTheNiceOnes: Shadow is normally gentle and friendly, but he is a [[RunningGag very big man]]. It is not a good idea to piss him off. The aftermath of his rage is one of the reasons he was sent to prison. [[spoiler:In "Monarch of the Glen" he nearly beats Grendel to a pulp under Mr. Alice's orders and exposes Oliver as a murderer in "Black Dog".]]

* DoubleStandardRapeDivineOnMortal: Wednesday uses magic to charm girls into having sex with him. This ''does'' make Shadow uncomfortable (especially when he finds out [[spoiler:that he is the ChildByRape of one such girl]]), and Wednesday ''is'' eventually [[spoiler:regarded as an out-and-out villain]], but it's not treated as any kind of MoralEventHorizon in the way you'd usually expect more mundane forms of sexual assault to be. Also, see below about Bast.

* GoodOldWays: Subverted. The New Gods represent different facets of America's modern, technologically advanced culture, and for most of the novel Shadow sympathizes more with the primitive -- and seemingly more benevolent -- Old Gods. But, over the course of the story, the point is hammered in over and over that quite a few of the old gods were [[AssholeVictim violent, bloodthirsty monsters in their day]], and many of the new gods are [[DesignatedVillain just terrified of becoming as obsolete as the current crop of old ones]]. At the end of the day, Shadow eventually realizes, old or new, gods are just like the people that spawn them, and that, just as for better or worse people aren't going to change, so too the gods are going to be the same mixture of okay people and assholes.

-->'''Laura:''' "You must really want to know what happened to those friends of yours? Woody and Stone. Do you?"

* SpiritualSuccessor: A non-comedy successor to Creator/DouglasAdams' ''Literature/TheLongDarkTeatimeOfTheSoul''.

* VaguenessIsComing: Several characters warn about a coming storm or similar, without elaborating. The first of these, oddly, is an in-mate in prison with Shadow with the unlikely name of Sam Fetisher, who never gets mentioned again. [[EpilepticTrees There is probably some sort of significance to this]].

--> '''Shadow''': You tried to destroy so much for power. You would have sacrificed so much for yourself. You did that."\\
'''Odin''': "I did not do that."\\
'''Shadow''': "Wednesday did. He was you."\\
'''Odin''':"He was me, yes. But I am not him."

** Odin uses the name "Mr Wednesday".[[note]]The day Wednesday was named after Wodan, which was an old name for Odin[[/note]]

** Anubis calls himself Mr. Jacquel, being an anthropomorphic jackal in Egyptian mythology.
** Thoth is called Mr. Ibis.[[note]]Thoth had the head of an Ibis bird in Egyptian mythology [[/note]]

Shadow's own story is continued in two novellas: ''The Monarch of the Glen'' (collected in ''Fragile Things'') and ''Black Dog'' (published in ''Trigger Warning''). Gaiman has said there is at least one more novella in Shadow's future and that if he "survives that" he'll make a [[SequelHook return to America]]…

* LouisCypher: Low-Key Lyesmith = [[spoiler:Loki Lie-Smith]]. The man even mocks Shadow for taking so long to figure it out.

* TwoAliasesOneCharacter: [[spoiler:Low-Key and Mr. World for Loki.]]

* OfferingsToTheGods: Material offerings, like a saucer of cream, a freshly-killed chicken, or a human heart, provide more "juice" than simple prayers. What is actually offered doesn't matter so much as the cost to the worshipper.

* HumanSacrifice: Old and new, there's always a god or two that's a fan. Chernobog in particular charges up during the trip by visiting a field where people were brained to death with rocks in his name, and the car gods are mentioned as receiving it "on a scale unheard of since the Aztecs."

* UnholyGround: Holy ground to the (nominally) god of evil, Chernabog, consecrated with blood sacrifices to him by his followers. The influence and power of those sacrifices is still strong enough centuries later it allows him to turn his greyed mustache and some of his hair back to black.

* ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve: It is the fact that people believed in the gods that gave them purchase in America, and now that the belief is lessening they are fading away.

* AllMythsAreTrue: No, seriously, ''all'' of them (except Myth/PaulBunyan and similar manufactured legends). This includes cultural heroes based on real people; Johnny Appleseed is hanging around in one scene, but he isn't the same person as John Chapman. According to Wednesday, all of those legends about different groups visiting or settling in America before Erikson's voyage are also true.

* FantasyKitchenSink: Inevitable since AllMythsAreTrue.

* TwoTimingWithTheBestie: Shadow is release from prison early, due to his wife Laura's sudden death. At her funeral, he learns that she had been having an affair with his best friend [[AbsenceMakesTheHeartGoYonder during his incarceration.]] The car crash was from her [[AutoErotica pleasuring him in the passenger seat.]]

* AttackingThroughYourself: When Mr World comes up behind Laura, trying to talk her out of throwing his stick/spear down the hill, Laura stabs the stick through herself and into him. Although she dies, her magical coin turns her back into a zombie.
-->''The boundary between sensation and pain had diffused since she had died. She felt the spear head penetrate her chest, felt it push out through her back. A moment's resistance - she pushed harder - and the spear pushed into Mr World.''

* CrossoverCosmology: Most Gods and Goddesses are there, with figures hailing from most continents and the majority of known religions. Jesus is mentioned, but is not a character encountered in the story. In the Author's Preferred Text, a man appears in a scene cut from wide release (prior to the 10th Anniversary Edition) that has Shadow talking with a man in a villa mentioned to have something like Moorish or Moroccan influences; he wears a baseball cap, a suit, jokes about turning water into wine, and is indubitably American Jesus.

* DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnMale: It's very strongly implied that the goddess Bast had sex with Shadow while he was ''asleep'' (and clawed him up a bunch in the process, because she's part cat). The fact that performing sex acts on a sleeping person is illegal is never brought up, Bast is not treated as a villain, and even when he works out what happened Shadow doesn't seem to particularly mind having been molested by a cat while unconscious. The whole thing is treated as far less of a problem than Wednesday's male-on-female equivalent crimes. It isn't completely cut and dried however; they simultaneously had fully consensual sex in his dreamscape, which is a very real mystical dimension the gods can access and that he is fully conscious inside of (he was not aware of this at the time). Shadow himself notes the scratches as little more than proof that their one night stand really happened. (It's also possible that the physical Bast was just sleeping on the bed next to him, especially as at no other point is it indicated she can assume human form in the "real" world, and the scratches are magically psychosomatic, but it's ambiguous.)

* {{Leprechaun}}: Mad Sweeney. [[note]]Though, it should be noted, Mad Sweeny is nearly seven foot tall, and built like a construction worker. He's still a drunk (Irish stereotypes ahoy) a trickster, and has an obsession with gold coins.[[/note]]

* BeingGoodSucks: Shadow sometimes hates that doing the right thing has its price. [[spoiler:Trying to serve Mr. Wednesday and then realizing Wednesday had used him leads to him having to break up the battle. He then reveals a mass murderer god in the town of Lakeside, which will in turn destroy its idyllic nature, and talk the god's murderer out of committing suicide.]] Then in "Black Dog" [[spoiler:he finds himself no longer welcome in town after he exposes Oliver as the one who killed Cassie]].

%%** To a much more sinister extent, [[spoiler:Hinzelmann]].

%%* BigBadFriend:
%%** [[spoiler:Low-Key Lyesmith is Mr. World/Loki.]]
%%** [[spoiler:Hinzelmann]] to a lesser extent.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Shadow manages to avert the war between the Old and New Gods, foiling Wednesday and Loki's con, but Laura is dead for real and little has changed for the Old Gods; it's implied many of them will continue to waste and die in the coming years as their worship dribbles away. Shadow himself is left with his last ties to his old life severed and decides to go WalkingTheEarth, using his divine powers to solve problems as he comes upon them. Despite the isolation, it's suggested that this is first time he's been truly happy for a long while.]]

* ChekhovsGun: [[spoiler:The apparently throwaway line about a few hitchhikers and kids going missing and never coming back in regards to the small town Shadow stays in. As well as the ''Notes from Lakeside City Council'' book that Shadow buys at a Library sale. And the klunker, mentioned many times before it comes apparent what it's function to the story is.]]

* DivineParentage: [[spoiler:Shadow]].

* GodsNeedPrayerBadly: The reason why the old Gods are dying, and the new Gods have arisen. Wednesday is very disdainful of Neo-Pagans in general considering them pretenders, strongly implying their worship is inadequate. It hit Easter hard when Wednesday showed her a self-proclaimed Pagan that did not even know Easter was originally a Pagan holiday, labeling it as "Christian" instead. In their world, Pagans without traditional rituals and well-defined gods and goddesses might as well be Atheist or Agnostic.

* GoodOldWays: Subverted. The New Gods represent different facets of America's modern, technologically advanced culture, and for most of the novel Shadow sympathizes more with the primitive -- and seemingly more benevolent -- old gods. But, over the course of the story, the point is hammered in over and over that quite a few of the old gods were [[AssholeVictim violent, bloodthirsty monsters in their day]], and many of the new gods are [[DesignatedVillain just terrified of becoming as obsolete as the current crop of old ones]]. At the end of the day, Shadow eventually realizes, old or new, gods are just like the people that spawn them, and that, just as for better or worse people aren't going to change, so too the gods are going to be the same mixture of okay people and assholes.

%%* GranolaGirl
* TheHeartless: Many of the gods

* HigherUnderstandingThroughDrugs: Atsula the priestess of Nunyunnini picks up some magical mushrooms, then eats them and, after a pretty abstract sort of a high, pees in a cup. After freezing part of the water out, she and the tribe elders drink the concentrated urine to talk with their god.

%%* IAmWho

* IHaveBoobsYouMustObey: Attempted by Media to convince Shadow to switch sides. It's an offer Shadow finds easy to ignore, since the boobs in question belong to Creator/LucilleBall (actually, [[Series/ILoveLucy Lucy Ricardo]])

* ItsPersonal: Wednesday recruits a good number of Old Gods, but many others mistrust him or don't believe things are as dire as he says and refuse to join. [[spoiler:Until Wednesday is gunned down at a parley with the New Gods--who broadcast the assassinaton live. After that, ''everyone'' is roaring for blood. Which is just as Wendesday planned it.]]
* JediMindTrick: Wednesday claims to know a couple charms that work like this, he mostly uses them to [[ThePornomancer get laid]]. While helping with one of Wednesday's cons Shadow actually wills a police officer into believing his story. [[spoiler:And in the epilogue Shadow not only talks down a suicidal man, but alters his memories as well.]]

%%* JerkassGods: Considering the god's resemblances to humans in this book, it can be expected.

* OrWasItADream: Shadow has a wet dream involving Bast, while staying with Jaquel and Ibis. At least, he's pretty sure it was a dream, but he wakes to see Jaquel and Ibis's (female) cat slip out his door, which puzzles him, as he's sure he closed the door firmly before he went to bed. Also, most of the cuts and and bruises he had are gone or at least much better than they were, except for the deep scratches on his back, which he hadn't had yesterday.

%%* MagicRealism: The novel is set in contemporary America, and there are gods doing weird things.

** Hinzelmann [[spoiler:his name right out tells you he's a kobold from an actual legend.]]

* MessianicArchetype: Shadow. He is TheChosenOne, even if for all the wrong reasons. Then there is the crucifixion scene complete with resurrection. [[spoiler:Then it is revealed that he is actually the son of Odin, and his real name is Baldur Moon.]]

%%* MyDeathIsJustTheBeginning: [[spoiler:Mr. Wednesday.]]
* NearVillainVictory: The villains manage to [[spoiler:begin their war and dedicate the battle to Odin/Mr. Wednesday]], but Shadow manages to thwart them soon after by [[spoiler:telling all of the assorted old and new gods what the plan actually was and convince them to just go home. While Mr. Wednesday manages to return as a ghost, Loki appears to die due to the injuries inflicted upon him, and neither of them manage to achieve the obscene amounts of power that they were aiming for with their KansasCityShuffle as a result]].

* NerdInEvilsHelmet: The "technology kid" acts tough, but other characters see it as rehearsed and kind of pitiful. The book narration describes him as somebody trying too hard and performing actions that ''should'' be threatening, but fall short because of his execution.

%%* NewWeird

* NoNameGiven: Shadow is known only by his various nicknames (Laura calls him 'puppy' most of the time) at least until the quasi-sequel "The Monarch of the Glen", where we learn his birth name is [[spoiler:Balder]].

* NotActuallyTheUltimateQuestion: Early in the novel, after Shadow is released from prison and about to fly home, he remembers an interaction with a previous cell-mate, which the cellmate asserted had the moral of not pissing off people who work in airports. During a previous parole, the cellmate had planned to fly home to see his sister, but after losing his temper when being informed that his driver's license had expired, ended up (in that order) going on a drunken bender, robbing a gas station to get booze money, being arrested for public urination, and ultimately winding up back in prison with extra time for armed robbery. Shadow, who [[ObfuscatingStupidity is very intelligent despite pretending to be dumb muscle]] questioned whether the moral of the story was that "The kind of behavior that works in a specialized environment, such as prison, can fail to work and in fact become harmful when used outside such an environment", but his cellmate insisted the moral was to not piss off people who work in airports.

* TheNothingAfterDeath: People who pass judgment are permitted to choose their destination. Some [[spoiler:including Shadow]] choose this. [[spoiler: More accurately, Shadow chooses CessationOfExistence, but gets this for a brief time before being brought BackFromTheDead.]]

* NowWhat: After [[spoiler:stopping the war between the gods and exposing Hinzellman as a murderer]], Shadow doesn't know what to do with himself. [[spoiler:He decides to travel, starting with a trip to Iceland.]]

* OminousTelevision: Shadow grows to distrust televisions after his first encounter Media, having become ProperlyParanoid that he is being watched by them.

* PlayingBothSides: [[spoiler:Wednesday and Loki are manipulating both the old and new Gods so they can draw power from the resulting battle.]]

-->'''Laura:'''"You must really want to know what happened to those friends of yours? Woody and Stone. Do you?"

%%* ResurrectedRomance
* RegularlyScheduledEvil: In Lakeside, Shadow discovers that the disappearance of teenagers over the course of several years are actually [[spoiler:sacrifices to Heinzelmann, one of the old gods.]] Not even the people in the town know about [[TownWithADarkSecret the dark secret]].

* SchmuckBait: Loki does this to Technical boy, mostly to amuse himself. Paraphrased: "I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you." "Ha, okay, I get the point." "Hey, do you really want to know?"

* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: An Ifrit working as a cab driver swaps his cover identity with a down on his luck Arab salesman for tickets home. He (unknowingly) gets out at the last minute too, as the new cab driver is assassinated in his place shortly after.

** When Shadow needs to fall asleep, he reads the most boring thing he can find: a pile of old Readers Digests. He reads an article called "[[Literature/FightClub I Am John's Pancreas]]"
** Two of the towns Shadow passes through on the way to Cairo are Normal Ohio[[note]]the eponymous setting of a short-lived sitcom starring John Goodman[[/note]] and [[WesternAnimation/{{Daria}} Lawndale]][[note]]this last may or may not count, though. There really is a place called Lawndale in Ohio, but it's just a suburb of Akron. Also, WordOfGod says the one in ''Daria'' is supposed to be in Maryland, but this was in an interview that came out after the book was written.[[/note]]

** When the word kobold is mentioned, Shadow wonders what a kobold is. Many people will be familiar with the term through its use in ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'', an rpg originally created by Creator/{{TSR}} who were based in Lake Geneva in Wisconsin. [[spoiler:Hinzelmann is a kobold who lives near a lake in Wisconsin.]]

** Sitting by mother's bed in the hospital Shadow is reading ''Literature/GravitysRainbow''.
** After crossing the DespairEventHorizon, Mad Sweeny states that in America "[[CrapsackWorld opiates are the religion of the masses]]", an inversion of the famous quote by Creator/KarlMarx.

* TooDumbToLive: Laura on the night of her death, decided to give Robbie a blowjob ''while he was driving'', causing her to knock the gearshift with her shoulder, which caused the accident. Not helped by the fact she was drunk: both she and Shadow know it was stupid of her to do.

%%* TreacherousAdvisor: [[spoiler:Wednesday]].

* TwoAliasesOneCharacter: [[spoiler:Low Key/Loki and Mr. World]]

%%* UrbanFantasy

* ViolinScam: Commented upon by Wednesday.

* PretenderDiss: Wednesday speaks with particular disgust of a waitress who serves him and Shadow; he quizzes her about her religion, and she claims to be pagan, but when further quizzed about the particular flavor of paganism, she spits out some pseudo-mystical bullshit and acts offended when Wednesday brings up some of the more hedonistic aspects. Wednesday says she "doesn't have the faith and won't have the fun," with the implication that he could at least respect her if she enjoyed herself. He goes on to name her sins, which, from the petty to the actively criminal, show a similar propensity for half-measures and lack of commitment, with further implication that for this she is worse than the actively evil. The line about "does not have the faith and will not have the fun" is taken from a poem by G. K. Chesterton, about how dreary modern unbelievers are compared to ancient pagans. Wednesday has another reason to criticize her as well; since her version of Paganism doesn't have any specific gods, from his perspective she's an Atheist trying to appropriate the trappings of 'real' religion.

* TheWorldTree: The Norse version, more or less.

* ALoadOfBull: As well as several briefly-mentioned minotaurs, we have "the buffalo man," who seems to be an AnthropomorphicPersonification of "the land" -- meaning he's the spirit of Earth, and probably the closest thing the setting has to a TopGod.

* SpitefulSpit At [[LastDisrespects Laura's funeral]], one of her friends spits on her face in full view of Laura's husband, then flatly tells him that Laura was [[AbsenceMakesTheHeartGoYonder having an affair]] with her own husband and was giving him oral sex before her deadly car accident.

* ResurrectionGambit: [[spoiler: This is Mr. Wednesday/Odin's plan. He arranges his own assassination by the New Gods, thus setting up a conflict between them and the Old Gods. The intention is to have Loki dedicate their battle to Odin, thus feeding him the energy of the resulting mayhem and reviving him with greater power than ever before. Shadow discovers this just in time to explain the situation, allowing the two sides to make a truce and leave peacefully.]]

** A true example: Shadow keeps hold of a coin he got from Sweeney, and tosses it into Laura's grave for no discernible reason. It turns out that's the key to her partial resurrection, but Shadow had absolutely no way of knowing that. And without Laura, of course, [[spoiler: Mr. Town could have aquired the tree branch unhampered.]]

* IDontPayYouToThink: Mr. Wednesday's answer to Shadow's questions about what's going on.
* IgnoranceIsBliss: A major plot point.

* IronicEcho:
** "This must look so undignified."
** "Rigged games are the easiest ones to beat."

* JekyllAndHyde: [[spoiler:Czernobog and Bielebog.]]
* JerkassGods: Considering the god's resemblances to humans in this book, it can be expected.

* TheLostLenore: Laura. But it's complicated.

* MagicRealism: The novel is set in contemporary America, and there are gods doing weird things.

* NoSuchThingAsWizardJesus: PlaWith, Jesus is apparently subject to the same rules as all the other {{Anthropomorphic Personification}}s, but he has enough believers that he doesn't need to get involved in the events of the plot, although Gaiman toyed with the idea of introducing him as a NoCelebritiesWereHarmed version of Creator/StevenSpielberg living in a gigantic mansion in Hollywood. But since [[spoiler: each country has its own ''instance'' of every god ever worshiped there]], this isn't always the case. There is one anecdote of another character encountering Jesus [[spoiler: as a poor hitch-hiker in Afghanistan, where he has virtually no worshipers and is thus left in roughly the same boat as most of the more obscure American gods]].