History Series / AmericanGods2017

** Both the Old Gods and the New Gods get a lot more time to show off their powers in this series than the books. For example, Technical Boy was just a fat kid in a limousine in the novels. In the series, his limousine is a pocket dimension he can force others into, can spawn the faceless "children" to work as his {{Mooks}} out of virtually nothing, can freeze time, and can erase others from existence.

* AdaptationExplanationExtrication: In the book, Shadow is walking back to the hotel from Laura's burial by himself, because he was dropped off by Wednesday, then rode to the burial with Laura's mother in a limousine. In the show, however, he took Wednesday's Cadillac to the funeral, and there's no scene in the limo, so one assumes he took that car to the burial as well. The reason, however, that it's important that Shadow walks back to the hotel is that it's on the road that he has his first run-in with The Technical Boy.

** Laura Moon has, compared to the book, almost switched personalities with Shadow. In the book he was amiable, quiet, and almost "not there" in how he could fade into the background, whereas Laura was bright, full of life and had a sparkling personality that would make friends immediately with almost anyone. In the show the situation is practically reversed - Shadow is sociable, outgoing and proactive, whereas Laura is world weary and bored of life to the point of dallying with self-harming and nearly committing suicide, just to feel something.

** Laura Moon has an entire episode dedicated to her life before her death, something that is only told in the book.

* BadassBoast: From the least likely of characters
->You think you can ghost in my machine? I am mankind's greatest achievement. I am the compass rose. I am fucking binary. Without me, shit don't spin.
--> '''Technical Boy'''
* BatmanGambit: Season 3 reveals that Wednesday has been running one of these on Shadow. He has been feeding Shadow's ego hoping that when the time comes Shadow's pride and hubris will override his common sense and sense of preservation. Sure enough, [[spoiler: with Wednesday dead Shadow has himself bound to Yggdrasil hoping to ascend to godhood. Instead, he dies giving Wednesday the blood sacrifice needed to resurrect and come back stronger than ever.]]
* BigBad: Mr World, the leader of the New Gods. Though as Mad Sweeney keeps warning people, Wednesday shouldn't be trusted either.

* BotanicalAbomination: Mr. Wood was originally an Old God worshiped by humanity when it began, having been a god associated with trees. When animistic belief dwindled and industrialization took hold, Mr. Wood foresaw that he would eventually cease to exist when he would be forgotten and, rather than dying, sacrificed his own trees and joined [[BigBadEnsemble the New Gods]]. While only seen briefly disguised as a wooden desk at the police office with the knot opening to reveal a human-eye. It soon comes to life and attacks Shadow, becoming a monstrous tree that implants a growing, parasitic plant into Shadow as a means of tracking him, only for Mr. Wednesday to remove it when they escape.

** Episode 5, ''Lemon-scented You'', features an appearance by Tracie Thoms, who played Mahandra on ''Series/{{Wonderfalls}}''. She is one of the detectives who pick up Wednesday and Shadow for robbing a bank earlier; [[DeathByCameo unfortunately for her]], this turns out to be a trap set by Mr. World and the New Gods, whose arrival leads to the death of all personnel at the police station.

** 12,000-year-old pagan fertility goddess Ostara of the Dawn who in the present Day is a StepfordSmiler who is secretly furious over the fact that Christianity has co-opted her name and Day of worship as Easter, is played by devout Christian Creator/KristinChenoweth.

** Vulcan adapted his war-mongering Forge God skills and title to modern times and grew in-power through the distribution of bullets, gun violence and the unsafe working conditions of his factory. Having grown comfortable with his new influx of faith, he secretly alerts the New Gods of Mr. Wednesday's involvement in his town.
* CessationOfExistence: Laura believed this happened when you died, but is proven dead wrong when she's met by [[Myth/EgyptianMythology Anubis]]. The punishment for believing this is apparently being sent into [[TheNothingAfterDeath "nothing" and "darkness"]]. [[spoiler: She escapes before this, though.]]

** [[spoiler:Laura]] kills one of the Technical Boy's minions with a kick in the nuts so strong it bisects him lengthwise and rips his bloody spine including some ribs out of what's left of his torso.

*** "Treasure of the Sun" is another one for Mad Sweeny, covering his origins and [[spoiler:his wife and child]].

%%Please see the Discussion page before uncommenting. * DecompositeCharacter: In the book, Mr. World is [[spoiler: Loki in disguise]]. Here, he's apparently an entirely separate being.

* FacelessGoons: Literally - the New Gods' creepy goons look human in body but lack even the hint of a face. Media's have blank skin covering the area instead, the Technical Boy's are encrusted in glittery gems of sorts. They can apparently be summoned at will out of thin air and they consist of flesh and blood, but it's never made clear how they perceive their surroundings and what exactly they are.

** Almost every single sex scene featuring Laura can be counted as this since she always appears deeply unhappy when they happen.

** In the final Season One episode, when Mad Sweeney is reluctant to answer her questions, she grabs him by the nuts, lifts him up and pins him to a wall ''one-handed''. Not bad for a petite woman more than a head shorter than the FightingIrish leprechaun although, granted, she does have some unusual advantages when it happens.

** In every scene he is in Czernobog is seen smoking a cigarette. When he finishes a cigarette, he immediately lights up another one and continues with it. He is even offered a large box of cigarettes from Wednesday to bribe his hospitality.

** Anansi tells the slaves on the ship that even hundreds of years from then, the only possible future for a black man in America is to suffer and die and the only thing to do to make their life worth anything is to just kill all the slavers and themselves as sacrifices to Anansi. He even shoots down the suggestion that they kill the slavers and ''steal'' the ship.

** According to Wednesday, this is one of his main issues with the New Gods; namely they are “all take and no give” in regards to their followers. The Old Gods might just be as cruel and uncaring of humanity but at least ''they'' actually gave blessings and gifts for the worship they received.
* JesusWasWayCool: The many forms of Jesus are depicted as nice, laid back, selfless, all around good guys. A stark contrast to most of the other divine beings. One Jesus feels terrible when Wednesday states that Christianity basically stole Easter from its Pagan roots.

* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: Episodes usually start with a "Coming to America" vignette focusing on an old god, written by Mr Ibis, but "A Prayer for Mad Sweeney" opens with Ibis and Jacquel having an unrelated conversation until Jacquel comments that Ibis has a story to tell.
* {{Leprechaun}}: Mad Sweeney claims to be one despite being several inches taller than Shadow, who himself is a large man. He's got a lot of the traits in common including red hair and doing tricks with gold coins. He's also got the stereotypical Irish traits including drinking, loving to fight, and has a hell of a temper.

* MaleFrontalNudity: The series doesn't shy away from the penis:

** The jinn which has sex with Salim is shown full frontal, apparently to prove that BiggerIsBetterInBed, as the sex seems to literally transcend realms.

* MessyMaggots: As a zombie, Laura keeps coughing up big wet chunks of white stuff that turns out to be maggots.

** Argus Panoptes was a many-eyed giant that served Olympus. In America, he had since become the god of SinisterSurveillance.

** The norse god Tyr, whose main tale is about putting his hand between the fangs of the wolf's maw, now earns his life as a dentist

** Wednesday is introduced pretending to be a senile old man to guilt trip an airline into upgrading him to first class.

* AnOfferYouCantRefuse: Variant. Mister World (representing the New Gods), offers Mister Wednesday (representing the Old Gods) a deal: In exchange for giving Wednesday a massive HumanSacrifice in the form of a military satellite named after him nuking North Korea, Wednesday will stop his plan to gain power in America. When Wednesday refuses the deal, the New Gods agree to leave peacefully, with the unspoken implication that they will then begin to prepare for war in earnest. Technical Boy demands to know [[StatingTheSimpleSolution why they don't just kill Wednesday now, while he's in their power]]. Mister World insists that Wednesday is old enough and has enough knowledge and wisdom that he deserves the respect of an honest deal instead of a LeonineContract.

* OrgyOfEvidence: Shadow and Wednesday are arrested for a robbery they committed in a previous episode. The police detective has them dead to rights but is worried because the evidence is primarily satellite photos of the crime in progress. The technology used is state-of-the-art and is what governments use to track terrorist masterminds. She wants to know why someone with access to top secret surveillance satellites would use it to track two small-time crooks. She is right to be worried since the source of the evidence was [[spoiler: Mr. World, who had Wednesday arrested so he could offer him a deal that would prevent the coming war between the Old Gods and the New Gods. All the cops are massacred by Mr. Wood so there are no witnesses to the meeting.]]

** The gods are numerous and extremely diverse in nature, and they are all creations of the human imagination and their health and status are subject to this. No god is powerful because of their basic nature; nor does their age give them an advantage besides wisdom gained. All of them [[GodsNeedPrayerBadly derive power from worship]] and HumanSacrifice. A god can also continue to live while powerless so long as they are at least remembered by somebody, if not worshiped.

** Shadow's mother had ''eighty six'' sexual partners in her life, according to Mr. World.

** The first scene at the Vulcan factory opens with "Come on Get Happy" by the Partridge Family. It starts out as appropriate enough, but one faulty railing at the forge makes it dissonant ''very'' quickly.

** As Laura tells Shadow when they first meet, robbing a casino will get him prosecuted-casinos take theft very seriously, they have a ''lot'' of cameras and people watching, and it's really not worth trying it.
** When Shadow and Wednesday first arrive in the town of Vulcan, they find themselves at the end of a funeral parade in honor of a resident and employee who'd recently died. The parade ends with everyone in it repeatedly firing shots into the air, so once they're done, Wednesday tells Shadow to get back in the car before the inevitable rain of bullets-after all, what goes up has to come down.

* TakeThat: The [[RightWingMilitiaFanatic self-appointed border patrol thugs]] murder several devoutly Christian Mexican migrants... along with ''Mexican Jesus''. Which obviously symbolizes that their hate of illegal immigrants is far stronger than their supposed Christian values.
* TheresNoKillLikeOverkill: The "Coming to America" prologue shows, among other things, the vikings' first contact with American Natives. It begins and ends with one of the vikings being peppered with arrows. ''Many'' arrows. When he finally drops dead, there's not a square inch on his silhouette without at least one arrow embedded in it. To top it off: [[ImprobableAimingSkills not a single shot missed]]. The vikings are suitably freaked out by their comrade's gruesome fate and wisely decide to steer clear of the forest where the murderous bombardment came from.

* TrainJob: Occurs in "The Beguiling Man" when Laura and Sweeny rescue Shadow Moon from the Black Briar forces.
* {{Tulpa}}: All gods, mythical creatures and supernatural beings are created by belief and imagination of humanity. They need belief, worship, sacrifice and prayer in order to maintain and restore their powers, strength, health and vitality.

*** The coin Mad Sweeney gave Shadow and he in turn leaves on Laura's grave shines with an eerie light before being swallowed into the earth.

* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: As Laura tells Shadow when they first meet, robbing a casino will get him prosecuted- casinos take theft very seriously, they have a ''lot'' of cameras and people watching, and it's really not worth trying it.
** When Shadow and Wednesday first arrive in the town of Vulcan, they find themselves at the end of a funeral parade in honor of a resident and employee who'd recently died. The parade ends with everyone in it repeatedly firing shots into the air, so once they're done, Wednesday tells Shadow to get back in the car before the inevitable rain of bullets- after all, what goes up has to come down.

** She was giving Robbie a blowjob seconds before the car accident. The resulting impact was enough to send them both flying through the windscreen, and whether from the force of the collision or brain damage, [[RealityEnsues Laura unintentionally bites off Robbie's penis.]] This in turn reveals to Audrey and Shadow that their spouses were having an affair.

* RealityEnsues: As Laura tells Shadow when they first meet, robbing a casino will get him prosecuted- casinos take theft very seriously, they have a ''lot'' of cameras and people watching, and it's really not worth trying it.
** When Shadow and Wednesday first arrive in the town of Vulcan, they find themselves at the end of a funeral parade in honour of a resident and employee who'd recently died. The parade ends with everyone in it repeatedly firing shots into the air, so once they're done, Wednesday tells Shadow to get back in the car before the inevitable rain of bullets- after all, what goes up has to come down.

* AStormIsComing: The trope is mentioned several times in reference to the developing hostilities between the Old and New Gods; it's also used as a visual motif, with most external shots featuring massive stormclouds waiting to break over the land.

* PlayingBothSides: It is revealed that [[spoiler:Bliquis]] was doing this, until [[spoiler:the death of Zorya Vechernyaya pushes her]] to join Wednesday's side.

** In the Season 1 episode [[Recap/AmericanGodsS1E8ComeToJesus "Come to Jesus"]],When Ostara makes her speech to her guests about the importance of Easter.

* AstonishinglyAppropriateInterruption: When Ostara makes her speech to her guests about the importance of Easter.
-->'''Ostara:''' I think it's important for us all to remember what this day is really truly about, which is...\\

The show was canceled after Season 3 (which ends on a cliffhanger), but the producers are negotiating to produce a TV movie that would conclude the series.

** The (admittedly big) novel will receive this, with a planned three or four seasons based on it, and maybe more if the sequel comes out.

The show was canceled after Season 3 (which ends on a cliffhanger), but the producers are negociating to produce a TV movie that would conclude the series.

Bryan Fuller and Michael Green exited the show after the first season due to arguing with Starz about the budget. Their replacement for Season 2 was Jesse Alexander. Charles “Chic” Eglee will be the show runner for Season Three.