A God Am I / Live-Action TV

"'I am God!, and my ambitions..... are IMMORTAL!'"

— Kuroto Dan, Kamen Rider Ex-Aid

Live-Action TV lives and breathes on Serial Escalation, so sooner or later the bad guys (and the occasional good guy) are going to have to start calling themselves gods.

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• The 4400: In "The Wrath of Graham", Graham Holt, a 16-year-old junior at Adlai Stevenson High School in Seattle, gains the ability to make people worship him after injecting himself with promicin. Considering that he was an outcast, he revels in the experience. Graham is initially content to exercise his power over the student body, all of whom begin to wear black hoodies to emulate their new Messiah. A popular girl named Amber, on whom he has a crush but who wouldn't give him the time of day beforehand, offers herself to him and they have sex. Other students tear down the statue of Adlai Stevenson outside of the school and replace it with an effigy of Graham. When the school principal Mr. Meyer alerts NTAC, Tom and Garrity attempt to bring him in to be tested for promicin but the students prevent them from doing so. After this, Graham becomes more ambitious and extends his control to the adult population. He has them create a blockade around the school so that NTAC can't reach him. Eventually gaining control over large parts of the city, Graham converts several police stations and has the cops arrest the NTAC agents and bring them to him. He even appears on television in an attempt to attract new followers. Graham is finally defeated when Jordan Collier uses his ability to remove the promicin from his system.
• Ace Lightning: Kilobyte the Freaky Tentacles Guy (yeah, Squick please)... though since he's a videogame character, he was kinda trippin...
• American Horror Story: Freak Show: Serial killer in-training Dandy Mott proclaims himself to be this at several different points, most notably to his maid (and first victim)'s daughter Regina.
• Andromeda: In "To Loose the Fateful Lightning", after Rommie uses gravity control to pin down the people taking over the ship, she declares, "Dylan may not be a god, but on this ship, I am."
• Angel:
  • Cordelia's ascension in the last season.
  • Illyria also did this... she is a powerful Old One, but not really a god like Glory. She states it almost word for word, though. "I am a god!" At one point she claims she was once "god to a god" and thus might be more godlike and powerful than Glory. It's hard to tell though since both of them were stuck in human forms and their powers were extremely diminished (Illyria has far better feats and range of powers, enough that it was killing her, but that might just be the differences in how they ended up in their respective positions).
• Babylon 5:
  • Jason Ironheart in the episode "Mind War". Unlike most of this trope, he conducts himself with responsibility, humility, and some amount of restraint (he kills someone while escaping, arguably to save more lives).
  • Emperor Cartagia, who was convinced (if he needed any convincing) by the Shadows that he was a god and Centauri Prime should be sacrificed to him. It was accepted in Centauri religion that Centauri Emperors become gods after they die. Cartagia's peculiarity was in believing that he was a god while he was alive.
  • Played with by the Vorlons and possibly the other First Ones. Shown best by a quote from the movie Thirdspace.
    Vorlon Race Memories: [...] We appeared to them as beings of light. They saw us as emissaries of the universe. They saw us as gods. And we, in our pride, begin to believe them. We believed that we were superior to the universe that gave us birth. [...] in terms you can understand, we resolved to storm the gates of heaven itself. [...] We would touch the face of God and in so doing become gods ourselves.
• Battlestar Galactica (2003) ("Razor"). The old man hybrid states that his Centurian guardians believe him to be a god, and he doesn't dispute the claim. He certainly seems to be all-knowing, but as the protagonist proves, not immortal. Provided that all this doesn't happen again, and again, and again, and again...
• In the episode "JMM" of Better Call Saul, Jimmy goes on an angry rant at Howard for offering him a "small job", while also proclaiming that he is beyond Howard's comprehension.
  Jimmy: Walk away, that's right, Howard. You know why I didn't take the job? 'Cause it's too small! (Beat) I don't care about it! It's nothing to me, it's a bacterium! I travel in worlds you can't even imagine! You can't conceive of what I'm capable of! I'm so far beyond you! I'm like a god in human clothing! Lightning bolts shoot from my fingertips!
• Bonanza: The Season 4 episode "Thunder Man" has that episode's villain, munitions expert William Poole -– he had raped and killed several women, including the girlfriend of one the show's main protagonists, Little Joe Cartwright -– threaten to use a vial of a new, highly-explosive and destructive substance called nitroglycerin to kill Joe (after Joe was able to finger Poole as a killer, rather than the seemingly amiable man he presented himself as). Poole dares Joe to take him into custody but then, revealing the power he holds in his hands, declares he is invincible and effectively declaring himself God: "I'm a Thunder Man, and not a force in Heaven and Earth can even begin to move me!" A split second before Poole throws the vial's contents at Joe, Joe is able to retrieve a gun he discarded and shoot Poole, killing him after the nitro spills onto him and explodes.
• Blade: The Series: One episode has Blade go up against a serial killer vampire who calls himself the White Prince and considers himself an angel.

• Bottom: Parodied. Richard Richard is every so often given to convincing himself that he's the Second Coming (or on one notable occasion the Mother of God, which in his tiny mind amounted to the same thing), citing his own virginity as the reason that he's been kept 'pure', because he's 'better than everyone else in the world'. The more likely explanation behind said virginity is that he's merely a repugnant, violent, pathetic, sweaty pervert with ludicrously pretentious delusions of grandeur, among them his tendency to convince himself he's the Son of God.
• The Boys: In Season 2, Homelander outright says this of himself and his son. Season 3 has Homelander explicitly declare that there's no God up there in the sky, only him.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Willow, Giles, and Xander combine their essences with Buffy through a magical ritual, giving her the power to defeat Adam in the penultimate episode of Season 4.
  • Willow becomes this trope several times through the series, in a good way in Season 5, in a bad way in Season 6, and good again in the final episode of Season 7.
  • The First Evil, posing as Warren, convinces Andrew that they will all live as gods (complete with Andrew dreaming of them all dancing about in a field of flowers, wearing togas, and playing a lyre, while singing "We are as gods!") All Andrew has to do to bring this about is kill his only friend, Jonathan.
  • Dark Willow in Quor'toth in Season 9.
• Caprica: Given her godlike powers in V-World, Zoe proclaims herself God when confronting Clarice Willow in the Apotheosis simulation in the series finale.
• Cold Case: George Marks, who justifies his string of murders by claiming to be God. When Lilly tears his claim to shreds by saying he's nothing more than a scared little boy, he flat out loses it.
• Community:
  • Parodied. The 'Clip Show' "Paradigms of Human Memory" reveals that Pierce at one point apparently thought he'd ascend to Godhood by... taking more than one flu shot.
  • Abed thought he was the Second Coming of Jesus in another episode, despite being a Muslim.
  • Another episode had an unnamed hitchhiker who claimed to be "Our Lord and Savior."
• Coupling: In the episode "Faithless", Jane learns that James, who she's attracted to, hosts a religion program. In the course of Digging Herself Deeper, she comes out with:
  Jane: You see, I find religion very relevant to my work. When you spend your days in a helicopter dicing with actual death, sometimes you look down at the ground so far below you, and you find yourself thinking, "I'm a bit like God."
  James: Okay.
  Jane: Only without the omnipotence and the X-ray vision.
  James I... don't think God's the one with the X-ray vision.
• Criminal Minds:
  • Benjamin Cyrus in "Minimal Loss" saw himself more as God's messenger as opposed to actually seeing himself as God, but some of his actions made one think he actually was God. Furthermore, when he took over the cult from its old leader, Leo Kane, Cyrus told Kane that God said that Cyrus was going to take over the cult, and when Kane asked him when God was going to make the change, Cyrus pointed a gun to his head and said "He just did."
  • Billy Flynn in "The Longest Night" told his kidnapping victim, Ellie Spicer, that his serial killing prowess made him "like God."
  • Randy Slade, the school shooter from "Painless" had a serious god complex. He burst into the school cafeteria with a gun and a bomb and challenged his fellow students to "look God in the eye" and shot them if they didn't make eye contact with him.
  Shooter: I am God. Now who is brave enough to look God in the eye?
• CSI: NY:
  • Season 4's Cabbie Killer believes himself to be the Greek god Charon, aka The Ferryman, thus it is his duty to transport the deceased across the River Styx.
  Cabbie Killer: The newly dead who have coins to pay for the ride must be taken across the river, or they'll wander the banks for a hundred years.
  • The vampire cult leader in "Sanguine Love" declares, "I am the only god there is" during each new member's initiation ceremony.
• Doctor Who:
  • In "The Aztecs", Barbara is mistaken for a god incarnation of a dead Aztec priest, Yetaxa. The Doctor encourages her at first to use her sudden power to give him and the other companions free reign to explore and have a good time. Barbara has other ideas and decides to start manipulating Aztec politics to abolish Human Sacrifice, getting increasingly power-crazy all the time. She claims that she might as well be a god as she knows what will happen to the Aztecs, and once, when the Doctor gives her a lecture about the dangers of trying to change history, shoots him down by announcing "not Barbara — Yetaxa".
  • Omega in "The Three Doctors", whose world of anti-matter created through his sheer force of will and untold years of isolation have left him quite mad and prone to making such speeches.
  • In "Genesis of the Daleks", Davros is asked, if he had in his possession a virus that would wipe out all life, would he release it? His response:
  "Yes... yes. To hold in my hand a capsule that contained such power... to know that life and death on such a scale was my choice. To know that the tiny pressure on my thumb, enough to break the glass, would end everything. Yes — I would do it. That power would set me up above the gods! And through the Daleks, I shall have that power!"
  • Played with in "The Armageddon Factor", when the Doctor, possessing the full power of the Key To Time, starts making an A God Am I speech, much to Romana's alarm. He's just kidding/making a point about how dangerous the power is, in anyone's hands.
  • "Four to Doomsday" focuses on an alien who not only believes himself to be a god but, in fact, destroyed his home planet in an attempt to travel back in time to the creation of the universe to see how he had created it.
  • "The Parting of the Ways":
    • The Dalek Emperor had a pretty high opinion of itself. So much so that insulting it would trigger the now-famous line, "THOSE WORDS ARE BLASPHEMY!" and a chorus of "DO NOT BLASPHEME! DO NOT BLASPHEME!" from his subordinate Daleks.
      Dalek Emperor: I REACHED INTO THE DIRT AND MADE NEW LIFE. I AM THE GOD OF ALL DALEKS!
    • Rose Tyler absorbs the heart of the TARDIS and is turned into a godlike hybrid called Bad Wolf, who disproves the Dalek Emperor's "I am God" hypothesis by disintegrating him.
      The Doctor: This is wrong. You can't control life and death!
      Rose: But I can.
  • "New Earth" averts it: despite the fact that Lady Cassandra's servant Chip explicitly worships her, she doesn't think of herself as a god.
  • "Voyage of the Damned": When the Doctor tries to restore Astrid from the teleport backup, he shouts "I can do anything!" Then he has to confront the fact that he doesn't possess godlike power, and in this instance can't do anything other than let her go.
  • "The Fires of Pompeii" inverts the trope: at the end, the new "household gods" of Caecilius' family are the Doctor, Donna and the TARDIS, none of whom believe themselves to be gods (at least, the Doctor doesn't when he's in a sane state of mind, at any rate).
  • In "The Waters of Mars", the Doctor snaps after being pushed to the limit and declares himself to be, in essence, a god. And he is not under any sort of mind control — nor can he be said to be having delusions of grandeur, since his claim to godlike power is entirely accurate. Rather, he's giving us a glimpse of what the last of the Time Lords could become without the restraint that his Companions give him. Having said that, he is promptly snapped back after Adelaide Brooke commits suicide rather than muck around with her destiny, so it worked out in the end. Sort of. (In the episode, the Doctor declares himself to be "The Time Lord Victorious", which has since been invoked by fandom to refer to rare other occasions in which the Doctor begins to slip towards applying this trope to himself, such as...
  • In "Hell Bent", due to a Sanity Slippage brought on by billions of years of torture and his mounting frustration at being unable to undo the death of his beloved companion, Clara, the Doctor makes one last attempt at saving her by piloting his TARDIS to the very end of time itself, at which point, when challenged by Clara to let her die, he delivers this outburst:
    The Doctor: The universe is over it doesn't have a say anymore! We're standing on the last ember ... as of this moment, I am answerable to no one!
  • "The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos": Tim Shaw was mistaken by the Ux as their creator god when he wound up on their planet, so they began worshipping him. He has developed a severe case of delusions of godhood as a result, making him even more unpleasant than in his first appearance. Ironically, the humble, pious Ux are actually the ones with godlike powers.
• Dollhouse: In the Season 1 finale, Alpha proclaims that he has "ascended" because he contains multiple personalities and gives this "gift" to Echo who rejects it.
• The Flash (2014):
  • Criminal Clyde Mardon gains Weather Manipulation abilities and declares he's God. When Detective Joe West mocks him for using his supposedly God-like powers for something as petty as robbing banks, Clyde says he's right and decides to think bigger, namely destroying the city with a hurricane. He almost succeeds before The Flash defeats him.
  • Savitar boasts that he's the God of Speed, demands everyone bow down and worship him, and sees all other speedsters as insults and pretenders (given how far he outclasses every other speedster, he has a point). According to folklore, he's the first human in the multiverse to ever gain Super-Speed, and he seemingly hasn't aged since ancient times.Though it turns out that's a lie and that he's a future evil version of Barry Allen instead.
  • Godspeed declares he's the real God of Speed, even saying that's why he uses his code name. In his final battle, he declares, "You can't kill a god!"
• Game of Thrones: Euron Greyjoy proclaims himself to be the Drowned God.
• Heroes:
  • A number of characters, most emphatically Adam Monroe. Meanwhile Peter Petrelli, who has a claim to godlike powers since he absorbs the powers of everyone he encounters, has yet to fall victim to this.
  • If we can assume that Maury Parkman's illusion of Linderman accurately portrays the actual character's personality, then we can infer that Linderman thought of himself as either a god or very close to one. In one Season 3 episode, he implied that he spoke the word of God. However, he may have been simply trying to convince Nathan, who had recently gone through a bit of a religious awakening, that he was God in order to manipulate him into doing what his father wanted him to do.
• Highlander: The Villain of the Week for the episode "Little Tin God" was Gavriel Larca, an Immortal who likes to fool people into worshiping him as a deity. The episode makes it clear that he's crazy, egotistical, and believes his own hype, in utter disbelief when Duncan defeats him.
• Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (the TV series): An episode sets up the alternate form, with the newly divine daughter setting out to ascend to a higher plane and become one with the universe. But in a last second subversion, because Status Quo Is God, Wayne applies Reverse Polarity on the Green Rocks and pulls her back to Earth.
• House: Referenced in "Larger than Life", wherein Arlene Cuddy (Lisa's mother) calls Gregory House out for his behavior.
  Arlene: In the clinic, you were a complete schmendrick. But once you knew I was Lisa's mother, you held your tongue. That's because you love her. I still think you're a pain in the ass with a God complex, and I'll kill you if you hurt her, but I'm glad she has you.
• House of Anubis — While Rufus Zeno first was just a ruthless Immortality Seeker, he later became more ambitious and attempted to make himself into a God by using the Mask of Anubis. It didn't exactly go as planned. Senkhara also seemed to want to become a Goddess, specifically wanting to live in the "field of golden rushes" and be admired as she believed she deserved.
• I, Claudius
  • There's a variant mirroring real life when Caligula declares himself to be a god; however, in Caligula's case there were no Green Rocks or Vorlons — his declaration is caused solely because he is, at that point, absolutely barking mad. Some Roman emperors were deified after death — the last words of Vespasian were, "Alas, I am becoming a god" — so Caligula was jumping the gun a bit. (Deification even after death was in real life somewhat rare: among others, Tiberius and Nero were not deified after death - and neither was Caligula. His pre-death self-deification was also quietly shelved in Claudius's time.) "And his sister's become a goddess. Any questions?"
  • Herod declares himself the foretold messiah of the Jews, effectively challenging Roman rule of the Eastern provinces. Emperor Claudius doesn't have to do anything about it however...
  • Claudius is declared a God (in fact part of the series is based on the novel Claudius the God) but this is being done entirely for political reasons as it's arranged by one of his underlings in Britannia without even consulting the emperor beforehand.
• Interview with the Vampire (2022): Although Lestat de Lioncourt is a steadfast atheist, he regards vampires —- who are immortal beings with superpowers — as god-like. He attempts to impart this belief to his fledgling Louis de Pointe du Lac in "...After the Phantoms of Your Former Self".
  Lestat: If you'd listen to me, if you finally submit to your nature, you will be filled, Louis, with all the life you can hold. You will see death in all its beauty, life as it is only known at the very point of the death. You alone, of all creatures, can see death with that impunity. You alone, under the rising moon... can strike like the hand of God.
• Many Kamen Rider villains tends to show signs of a god complex. Specific examples are:
  • The king of this trope for the franchise is The Great Leader of Shocker who wants to transform the entire of humanity into kaijin who would serve under him and has tried numerous times to Take Over the World to achieve it. He is even tried to exterminate all of humanity if they don't bow down to him.
  • Kamen Rider Blade: Hiroshi Tennoji's ultimate goal is to win the Battle Fight and gain the power to reshape the world in his own twisted image with him in control.
  • Kamen Rider Gaim: Ryoma Sengoku/Kamen Rider Duke's ultimate motive is the achievement of godhood and fulfillment of his desire to become a being that surpasses humanity. Somewhat unusually, he doesn't strictly mind if someone else becomes a god instead, but only as long as they do it using his technology and in the way he intends it. When two of the main characters actually succeed in achieving godhood but by other methods, Ryoma goes berserk.
  • Kamen Rider Drive: Tenjuro Banno wants to digitize all of humanity and will only give robot bodies to those who bow down to him.
  • Kamen Rider Ex-Aid provides the page quote via Kuroto Dan, who decides that he's become a god after successfully creating the cure for death. Even after his Heel–Face Turn, this belief never wavers for the rest of the series. His father Masamune Dan has similar beliefs after hijacking Kuroto's invention for himself, frequently declaring himself to be the one who sets the rules of the world.
  • Kamen Rider Saber: Isaac intends to become a god by obtaining the Almighty Book and using its powers to remake the world. Once he gets his hands on a portion of it in the Omni Force book and its Reality Warper powers, he's quick to make a global announcement declaring himself God and threatening to destroy every country unless they fight each other for his amusement.
  • Kamen Rider Outsiders: The AI Zein is even described as such by Horobi in episode 2 as a "perfect" being, in that this trope applies to Zein. Zein is a self-proclaimed Benevolent A.I., but the more it shows its brutal and despotic nature, and viewing itself as morally superior to humans ultimately lead to it coming off as a sanctimonious hypocrite whose narrative of good intentions are all but an empty excuse to play god, making humanity fight amongst each other, and sacrificing innocent people for the sake of a utopia based on "eternal benevolence".
• Key & Peele's East-West College Bowl sketches consist of a string of college football players introducing themselves; they start with good old-fashioned Ghetto Names and proceed to downright insane. The second sketch had a homeschooled student who introduces himself as God.
• Law & Order: A jerkass doctor is investigated and he says in a meeting "God doesn't make babies, I do."
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: A religious cult leader is on the run with one of the children from his cult, a 12-year-old girl who is pregnant with his baby. Olivia has her gun on him, and the girl has a gun on Olivia, when the leader starts telling the girl that the police want to destroy him because "They know that I am greater than man, I am greater than God!" The girl promptly shoots him, and sobs to Olivia that she did it because "He said he was greater than God... but nobody is."
• Lois & Clark: Jaxon Xavier is this in his VR world. Also invoked by Lord Nor and Mr. Mxyzptlk.
• Messiah: Al-Masih's statement to the President that he's "speaking with God now" possibly means he's claiming divinity but (like a lot of what he says) could also be interpreted as him merely saying he's God's prophet (as would fit more with Jewish/Muslim belief than Mormon/Christian).
• Misfits: A Catholic priest who gains superpowers starts proclaiming himself to be the Second Coming of Jesus. He uses his new-found powers to rape and pillage his way through the local population.
• Mouse (2021): As a child Jae-hoon tells a crucifix that God has no right to be a deity so Jae-hoon is replacing him. As an adult he writes "I am the Almighty" at the scene of Mu-won's murder.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000: In the "Catalina Caper" episode, Joel tries to encourage Crow and Servo to include the Mads in their bedtime prayers. Dr. Forrester chimes in with "I don't want you to pray for us, I want you to pray to us!"
• Played for laughs in an episode of Night Court, where two obviously mentally ill suspects are brought in for causing a disturbance; Fielding explains that the first one claims to be God:
  Second Suspect: You got a lot of nerve claiming to be God!
  Judge Stone: Who's this?
  Second Suspect: I'm God!
  First Suspect: How'd you like a lightning bolt where the sun don't shine?
• The Outer Limits (1963): "The Sixth Finger", combines both versions. An illiterate miner is put through a process that quickly evolves him, resulting in increased intelligence and psychokinetic power, which he unleashes on the pathetic lesser beings around him; but then he evolves even further and rises above such petty emotions, realizing the true nobility of existence.
• The Outer Limits (1995): "The New Breed" has a variation. A scientist has a press conference where he presents his medical nanobots, which he claims will cure any cell-related ills, including cancer. While most reporters are excited, one suspiciously points out that the scientist is "playing God". The scientist smirks and says, "Let's just say God created a flawed man. I think I can do better."
• In The Second Coming, Russell T Davies had Steven Baxter, an ordinary Manchester lad played by Christopher Eccleston, suddenly realise that he was the son of God.
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World: There was an episode where the character Challenger gains omnipotence. He quickly demands that everyone worship him, acts bored when confronted with his friends' problems, and generally acts like a Jerkass. He changes his tune with two of his friends get killed, and finds that he can't bring the dead back to life, crying and screaming that he's sorry and that he will give up anything to have them back. It was All Just a Dream.
• Stargate:
  • Stargate Atlantis: Played with. The Wraith do not openly claim to be gods, but they happily allow themselves to be worshipped as deity-like beings by their brainwashed human followers.
  • Stargate SG-1:
    • The Goa'uld not only fit this trope perfectly, but are also really extreme cases. Although they are just highly advanced aliens, they do pose as gods in front of their primitive slaves. Many — like Ra, Cronus, and Apophis — seem to buy into their own propaganda and think they really are gods, though Ba'al is aware he is just a parasitic snake with a host and Yu never proclaimed himself a god, instead setting himself up as a legendary emperor. Both Ba'al and Yu have disdain for those who buy into their delusions (although Yu grows generally delusional at a certain point on account of his senility), and Ba'al manages to outlive all the others and obtain the greatest degree of power. Anubis is... ambiguous, though out of all the Goa'uld, he has the best case for calling himself one — being that unlike other Goa'uld, he Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence, and, despite being rejected by the other Ascended beings, remained a half-Ascended Energy Being. The Goa'uld in general border on a deconstruction, as this hubris quite frequently leads to their doom.
    • The Ori take this far enough that it becomes ridiculous when people insist that they're not gods, since, well, everything a god can do the Ori can do. (Including Virgin Birth.) If that's not a god, one has to wonder what people would accept as a god. Teal'c later suggests that acts, rather than power, make gods. Or at least, that being a god is not the same as being worthy of worship. They couldn't stop the team from killing them. Adria explicitly states in Stargate: The Ark of Truth that the Ark can only make people believe what is true, which is why she can't use it. Since the Ark makes the Priors believe that the Ori are not gods, clearly the Ori are actually not gods. Although she fully believes she could use it if it weren't for the existence of Ancients undermining her by being just as high up in the grand scheme.
• Star Trek: The Original Series:
  • Gary Mitchell in "Where No Man Has Gone Before".
  • In the episode "Return to Tomorrow", Sargon explains that his civilization destroyed itself when it became so advanced and arrogant that "we dared think of ourselves as gods".
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Sufficiently Advanced Alien Q plays with this in "Tapestry". Picard dies and enters the "afterlife", where he finds Q awaiting him, who informs him that he's dead and that Q himself is God. Picard rejects this, because he doesn't think that "the Universe is so badly designed". Q just snarks that Picard is lucky Q doesn't smite him for his blasphemy.
• In Star Trek: Picard, Q basically calls himself a god by saying, "Even gods have favorites, Jean-Luc, and you've always been one of mine." Of course, this is also the series where Q dies, undermining his own claim.
• Supernatural:
  • Castiel as of the Season 6 finale, wherein he absorbs all the souls of Purgatory into himself. He proceeds to do to Raphael exactly what Lucifer once did to him, shrug off a Back Stab with an angel-killing dagger, and declare himself the new Lord.
    "I'm not an angel anymore. I'm your new God. A better one. So you will bow down and profess your love unto me, your Lord... or I shall destroy you."
  • When the brothers first meet Chuck, and prove to him that they are indeed the characters he has been writing about, his immediate reaction is this trope. The brothers didn't believe him, and he turns out to be a Prophet. At the end of the following season, it's implied that he actually IS God.
    Chuck: Well, there's only one explanation. Obviously I'm a god.
    Sam: You're not a god.
    Chuck: How else do you explain it? I write things and then they come to life? Yeah, no, I'm definitely a god. A cruel, cruel, capricious god. The things I've put you through... Eric Kripke, the creator of Supernatural, and Rob Benedict, the actor who portrayed Chuck, have confirmed that Chuck is indeed God.
  • Lucifer is worshipped as a god by the demons since he is, after all, technically their Creator. In "Hell's Angel," he makes the case to the angels that God Is Evil and suggests that if they want, they can start calling him God. In Season 13, he desires to reunite with his Nephilim son Jack so, in his words, they can be better gods than his own Father. When Jack refuses his offer of We Can Rule Together, he takes Jack's angel grace and plans to reshape the universe in his image.
• Many Super Sentai villains think there above humanity or that there a god, with some examples being:
  • Great Professor Bias of Choujuu Sentai Liveman clearly has something akin to this mindset. His end goal is to mass hypnotize the world into chanting his name and bowing before him as their savior. He gets even worse after Yusuke thwarts his plan and causes him to de-age himself to a child, at which point he decides to become a god by destroying everything.
  • This is the end goal of Vulgyre, Zone's true leader, in Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman. He seeks to destroy 1000 planets in a ritual that will make himself immortal, after which he declares he'll become the "God of the Milky Way Galaxy".
  • Count Radiguet of Choujin Sentai Jetman has this attitude about himself. He claims on the first day of his arrival that he's a God for the Earthlings and frequently makes reference to himself as having "holy blood." He even goes as far as claiming his "holy body was invincible" after he merges with the Vylock.
  • Long the Infernal Dragon of Juken Sentai Gekiranger believes that since he's an ancient being and immortal that he has the right to use humans and treat every other living being as his playthings. Going so far as being responsible for centuries of human strife and war just to alleviate his boredom.

• The Twilight Zone (1959):
  • In "The Little People", a pair of space-farers found themselves stranded on an apparently desolate planet. One of these men found a civilization of microscopic people, and quickly set himself up as their god. Though his fellow tried to talk him out of it, the newly deified pilot decided to stay as the god of these tiny people. This being the Twilight Zone, things went south quickly for him. Craig's boast, "I'M THE GOD! I'M THE GOD!" became a catchphrase on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
  • In "He's Alive", after Volmer kills his childhood neighbor Ernst, his mentor a.k.a. Adolf Hitler asks him how it felt:
    Volmer: It felt like I was immortal.
    Hitler: Mr. Volmer, we are immortal!
  • In "On Thursday We Leave for Home", Captain William Benteen, a man who has become the leader of a group of previously stranded settlers on V9-Gamma, is very protective of his position, and Colonel Sloane, who comes to rescue them, accuses him of thinking himself a god.
• Vikings: Ivar the Boneless becomes convinced that he is the son of Odin and therefore one of the Aesir. He commands his subjects in Kattegut to worship him as a god, which has a mixed reception.
• Waco: As he did in real life, Koresh believes himself a messiah, put on this earth to spread the truth about the seven seals.
• One episode of Wilfred has Wilfred go through this, but Played for Laughs.
  Ryan: You've lost your mind! It's like you have some sort of God complex!
  Wilfred: I'll let you in on a little secret, Ryan. I don't have a God complex. I AM GOD! THUNDER!
  (thunder strikes)
  Ryan: HOW DID YOU DO THAT?!
  Wilfred: LUCKY COINCIDENCE!
• Xena: Warrior Princess: Callisto consumes ambrosia, the food of the gods, to become a god during a battle with a vengeful Amazon that had also consumed ambrosia solely so that she could kill Gabrielle. Uniquely, in later episodes she regrets her godhood and tries to find ways of undoing it, culminating in her begging Xena to find a way to kill her. She changes her mind after witnessing Gabrielle make a Heroic Sacrifice — unfortunately for her, Xena had already found a way to kill her, and didn't particularly appreciate her gloating about this.

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