Creator Worship

"The teacher comes to point the way and the students end up worshiping the pointer."

— An old saying, often attributed to Buddha ^note If he actually said it, that's all the more fitting, considering that many worship the Buddha as a god, while his teachings never suggest that he was divine.

Isn't it interesting that the defining additional information coming from the creator of a medium is called the Word of God?

Sometimes, a fandom seems to be dedicated to not only the specifics of the show, but to every word or comment that is issued from the creator's mouth. Often anything the creators say, even when not related to the fandom, will be adopted into their vocabulary and mindset. If the creator decides to drop an anvil, it will always be an anvil in dire need of dropping according to the fans. If they decide to suddenly insert a long diatribe that otherwise has nothing to do with the rest of the story or force-feed their opinions about politics or other touchy subjects down the viewers' throats, hey, it's their book/comic/show/whatever, they can voice their opinions if they want, and they should because their opinions are right and should be respected! If the creator seems to be getting more and more full of themselves, well they're entitled to it because they're just that awesome! These reactions can vary from mild to extreme, but basically the object of Creator Worship will always have fans ready to make some kind of excuse for whatever they do.

The creators themselves may become aware of the power they hold. Some will use it conservatively, to promote unity and not impose their opinions to the masses. Others will wield it like a weapon, boldly stating their position on subjects and obviously hoping their followers will... follow.

Obviously anyone who rises to some type of popularity will have fans, but this is not about a fan going "I really like this one guy..." This trope is about the fans worshipping these mere mortals, and not just the stuff they make.

Such worship may come to resemble established religions, with vicious attitudes towards non-fans.

Compare Sacred Cow, where it's the work that receives the worship. When it goes wrong, or when the inverse happens, see Misblamed and Fallen Creator. Also note that the devotion implied by this trope need not be permanent to count.

Be wary that this is not a place for Gushing About Creators You Like. This is for documenting a fanbase who holds the creators in high regard.

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Examples

Anime and Manga

• Osamu Tezuka, the God of Manga, the man who opened the door.
• Some anime studios get this kind of worship, including Production I.G, Studio Gainax (until the 4th episode of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, which was so bad to Gainax's fan base that they left for Kyoto Animation, that and one of the founders of Gainax left the studio becuse of it, though the rest of the show plus Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt still give them quite the fanbase), Kyoto Animation (until the "Endless Eight" arc of Haruhi, which the moe-hating part of KyoAni's fan base - which was most of it, if not nearly all of it, as the rest of it just merge with the rest of the moe fan base - left for Studio Shaft), Studio Bones, Studio Shaft, Sunrise, Studio Ghibli, Studio TRIGGER (aka Gainax's Spiritual Successor), ufotable and Madhouse.
• Akira Toriyama, creator of Dr. Slump and Dragon Ball, is often mocked by fans for his forgetfulness and lack of planning, but it's safe to say that they love him all the same and are highly skeptical whenever Dragon Ball lacks his involvement. The worship has only increased greatly after his passing in March 2024. Everyone and everything paid tribute to him, to the point where El Salvador made a declaration of nationwide mourning for him. This shows how much Toriyama's work has impacted the world.
• Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli enjoy this in spades. Nearly every film they make is considered a masterpiece by the world at large, to say nothing of their serious fans, and if you say anything negative about any one of his films, you must prefer tentacle porn to True Art.
  • For an example, some of the aforementioned serious fans became very hostile towards Pokémon when it debuted a movie on the same day as Ponyo debuted, blaming its lukewarm reception on Pokémon: Giratina and the Sky Warrior.
• Go Nagai, the creator of Cutey Honey, Devilman and Mazinger Z, the manga that arguably started the Humongous Mecha genre.
• Hideaki Anno, until the ending of Neon Genesis Evangelion (and the End of Evangelion for that matter) where he became somewhat of an anti-Christ for all of anime, even to the point where his e-mail was clogged with death threats.
  • He's still worshiped by Eva diehards, though not unlike Alan Moore (see the Comics section), it is generally acknowledged that he's eccentric.
  • Rebuild of Evangelion is getting him some of his former acclaim back.
• Kazuki Takahashi due to a healthy dose of Only the Creator Does It Right regarding Yu-Gi-Oh!. This only intensified after he drowned in 2022 saving the life of a stranded family.
• Similar to Anno, Kunihiko Ikuhara enjoys this. Like Anno, he used Mind Screw to deconstruct his genre. Unlike Anno, he did so fabulously.
• Tite Kubo, the ordinary manga artist (with a good sense of humour) who wrote Bleach.
  • At least for a segment of fandom that worships him like a god. The other half seems to hate him.
• If you've ever read anything by Hitoshi Ashinano, you probably worship him on at least some level.
• A common meme in One Piece fandom is that Akira Toriyama is the God of shonen manga, and Eiichirō Oda, creator of the aforementioned series, is like Jesus Christ.
  • One group has taken it so far as to dedicate an FC to this.
• Half jokingly, fans of Macross call Shoji Kawamori "The Holy Floating Head".
• CLAMP, creators of Cardcaptor Sakura, Tokyo Babylon, Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- and Xxx HO Li C just to name a few, are almost single-handedly responsible for taking the shojo genre beyond just kittens and sparkles and making it about a deeper story and the characters themselves. They're also known for Ho Yay, tearing out characters' eyes at a moment's notice, and convoluted plans that you need charts and graphs to even attempt to comprehend. Hardcore CLAMP fans tend to joke that the main writer for the group, Nanase Ohkawa, is actually running the universe and no one's caught on yet.
• Satoshi Kon enjoys this to a certain degree, partially due to his untimely death.
• Yoshiyuki Tomino, creator of the Gundam franchise. His fandom is actually divided between fans of "Dark Tomino" (Zeta Gundam, Space Runaway Ideon) and "Happy Tomino" (Xabungle, Overman King Gainer), and like Anno he's recognized as very eccentric.
• It's more than likely that fans of his brainchild worship Hidekaz Himaruya for being just plain awesome. Especially since he's a troll-king alpaca that is always late for everything.
• The Magica Quartet (Iwakami, Shinbo, Urobuchi, Ume-tentei) is quickly becoming this.
• Hiromu Arakawa of Fullmetal Alchemist.
• Masashi Kishimoto gets a bit of this, but in particular gets a lot of it from the video game company CyberConnect2, who makes a lot of good licensed games based on the Naruto series that even Kishimoto himself loves and approves of.
• Recorded, granted, and factual: up to this day, in the eve of the 25th birthday of his most popular and critically acclaimed work, there hasn't anyone that knows who Hirohiko Araki is and doesn't hold him in any regard lower than this (the fact he doesn't age might help a lot with the immortality part that comes with the "god" statement though).
• If you spend time among animation circles, you'll likely hear the name of one animator spoken of in the highest possible regard: Yutaka Nakamura. He's animated many, many memorable scenes in series such as Cowboy Bebop, Soul Eater, and My Hero Academia. If there is an action scene in those series that really stands out for the quality of its animation, there's a reasonably good chance he animated it. Whenever a new scene animated by him appears, you can be guaranteed there will be comments gushing over him. Canipa Effect did a whole video on his work.
• Junji Ito sits comfortably with a reputation as one of the greatest and most well-known horror mangakas in history, achieving consistent critical acclaim for his distinct and unsettling artwork and creatively terrifying stories. He also enjoys a massive online cult fandom due to his surprisingly down-to-earth presence and gentle sense of humor, with many a meme being made about the massive dissonance between the extremely disturbing art and its unassuming and warm artist.

• Naoki Urasawa is one of the most acclaimed mangaka of all time due to creating the beloved masterpiece that is Monster, praised for its extremely well-written storyline and psychological themes. In general, he is highly respect amongst the manga community and other writers due to writing complex and well-rounded stories with multi-layered characters. Fans were overjoyed when his manga series Pluto, a dark take on the story of Astro Boy, was adapted into an anime on Netflix.

Art

• Michelangelo Buonarroti is seen as the most complete artist. He set the standard in painting and sculpting for many centuries. It's prevalent enough that most discussions of the Sistine Chapel end up involving more praise for Michelangelo than the Creator the Chapel was made to worship.
• Rembrandt van Rijn is admired by many graphic artists, not only for his almost photo realistic paintings, but also for his humanity. Compared to other technically perfect painters he still manages to make the viewers feel warmth and attachement to the people on his paintings, almost as if they are alive.
• Vincent van Gogh has this reputation among many graphic artists, because everyone can relate to a struggling genius unable to make a living, while his work is so ahead of its time that nobody recognizes it.
• Pablo Picasso is the most influential artist of the 20th century and thus worshipped by many modern artists or people who like modern art.
• Auguste Rodin has a divine reputation among sculptors, comparable to Vincent van Gogh in the sense that it was disliked at the time, but is now been seen as genius.

Comic Books

• Alan Moore, creator of such comics as Watchmen, V for Vendetta and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
• Grant Morrison is essentially Alan Moore with a lot less hair.
• Frank Miller, creator of 300, Sin City, The Dark Knight Returns, and a ton of other stuff. His popularity tapered off in later years, however, thanks to a combination of less well-received works and his increasingly radical political views.
• Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy.
• Will Eisner, creator of The Spirit and coiner of the term "graphic novel", and rightly so. The man was one of the first comickers to take the medium seriously, yet totally unpretentiously. An Eisner Award in comics is the equivalent of an Oscar for movies, or an Emmy for TV shows.
• As noted below, Neil Gaiman fans tend to be rather, uh, enthusiastic.
• For similar reasons, Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics and its sequels (and also Zot!) and the first person to take comics seriously enough to do literary criticism to them. As any good god seems to be, highly controversial.
• Jack Kirby. A bit of the esteem "the King" is held in (aside from being nicknamed "the King") can be seen in the DC Comics boast that they paid Jack more for creating Darkseid than Marvel did for creating their whole universe. Mark Waid actually portrayed the Marvel Universe God as Jack Kirby in the pages of Fantastic Four.
• Stan Lee, the man responsible for Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four, and pretty much every Marvel icon that isn't Captain America (on whom he left his mark nonetheless). What makes this somewhat odd is that because he's become so iconic as the "father of Marvel" (an image that he certainly cultivates with his cool name and Cool Old Guy persona) he even gets worshipped for things that came after him. For instance, yes, he did create the original X-Men, but it didn't become truly iconic until the Chris Claremont era.
• Steve Ditko, co-creator of the Marvel Universe, especially Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, where his vision is the definitive one. Justice League gave his later DC and Charlton Comics creations their due.
• Warren Ellis. Writer of many comic books including Transmetropolitan, Global Frequency, Nextwave, Fell, FreakAngels and Doktor Sleepless. Known to his fans as Dear Leader, the Internet Jesus or the Love Swami, among other similar monikers. Once commanded a Holy Slut Army of fans. This has likely dissipated a bit after Ellis was accused of sexual harassment by multiple women in June 2020.
• Garth Ennis is some sort of comics deity...
• Alex Ross. Can anyone hear the name "Superman" without instantly thinking of that awesome, square-jawed, blue-eyed titan he paints?
• Jhonen Vasquez, creator of famously disturbing comics such as Johnny the Homicidal Maniac as well as the cult animated series Invader Zim. According to fans of the latter, absolutely everything good about the show was his personal idea, and everything bad was due to the Nickelodeon executives, the demons to Vasquez's godhood.
• Carl Barks. The creator of the Donald Duck comics worked anonymous for his entire career, but was worshipped even then. He was just known to the public as the Good Duck Artist. His work had an enormous influence on fellow Disney cartoonists, but also on the Underground Comics movement. Especially in Northern Europe, namely the Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia, people see his work as literature! His paintings of scenes from the duck stories have been sold to collectors for enormous prizes. His popularity was so big that he figured he'd take pension when he was roughly 130 years old.
• Chris Claremont has some of this, especially from X-Men fans. To most fans, he is known as the Father of X-Men and is the author of the most acclaimed X-Men story arc, The Dark Phoenix Saga, as well as many popular X-Men characters.
• Geoff Johns. The man who always has an epic story and a larger plan for the DCU. And to think that he was merely a fan who managed to get his dream job when he first started.
• Jeff Smith, pretty much the most acclaimed and successful independent comic book artist and author out there; Anything he writes becomes immediately awesome. Anything. RASL? Awesome. Shazam!: The Monster Society of Evil? Awesome, even to people that hate superheroes, or The Silver Age of Comic Books. Bone? So friggin' awesome it's won 10 Eisner Awards, 11 Harvey Awards, has been listed on Time's 10 Best English Graphic Novels of All Time list, and is included in Scholastic's "required reading" section... oh, and it's an engrossing Door Stopper to boot.
• Scott Snyder is starting to get this, despite how new he is, with his Eisner award winning series, American Vampire, and his widely acclaimed run on Batman so far, with the praised story arcs The Black Mirror (in Detective Comics), Night of the Owls and Death of the Family.
• Jonathan Hickman has been getting this to one extent or another since his seminal run on Fantastic Four, which was only bolstered by his run on The Avengers, which led into Secret Wars (2015), and his current run on X-Men (which has its own page). His compelling characterisation, appreciation for continuity while busting the status quo, intricate and patient plotting, along with the kind of thoughtfulness, themes, and willingness to really flex the premise of the characters that's usually characteristic of award-winning Speculative Fiction, and maintaining a Myth Arc across the first two series (and to an extent, the third), have earned him near-universal adulation.
• Gail Simone, due to how well she writes female characters, specifically the Birds of Prey and Batgirl, and how she humanizes characters, such as with Secret Six.
• Kelly Sue DeConnick, thanks to bringing Carol Danvers from the B-List to the A-List as the new Captain Marvel, and creating a medium-sized but enthusiastic fanbase called The Carol Corps.
• Brian K. Vaughan, creator of Y: The Last Man, Runaways, and Saga. His run on Runaways was so beloved that not even Joss Whedon could top it.
• Hergé. The creator of Tintin is worshipped worldwide, especially in Europe where literally all comic strip artists are in some way influenced by him. Many books, documentaries, ... have been devoted to him and his work. When Tintin became its own magazine after the war all artists that wanted to work for him had to adapt his style of detailed documentation and pitch perfect realistic drawing style.
• Al Ewing. Writer behind Mighty Avengers Vol. 3, Loki Agentof Asgard, and New Avengers Vol. 4, who's been consistently praised for writing stories that embrace continuity, lesser known heroes and characters, and a more balanced tone that embraces how fun and wacky comics can be without sacrificing plot or depth.
• From 2014 to 2016, Tom King, writer of Grayson, Omega Men, The Vision (2015) and Sheriff of Babylon, got a much bigger profile and fanbase. Readers love how he writes interesting stories with no hand-holding, his quirky-but-still-coherent dialogue, his incredibly human portrayal of terrorists and other morally grey groups, and his use of Ret-Gone'd continuity in shaping current stories. It all came to a head in 2016, when, by the end of the year, it was impossible to read a "top comics of 2016" list and not find at least one of his works on it. He would also win a Harvey Award for Best New Talent that same year. Tellingly, when he was announced as a co-writer for Grayson, some Dick Grayson fans were upset due to the assumption that he'd have Dick use guns, since King himself was a counter-terrorist officer in the CIA. By the time Grayson ended, he was considered the blatantly obvious choice to succeed Scott Snyder (see above) as the new Batman writer; which he was. After 2018 however, his Batman run growing contested due to several controversial decisions and feelings of Arc Fatigue (to the point that sales were declining enough that DC announced he would later be replaced on the main title) as well as his writing the notorious Heroes in Crisis limited series has tarnished much of the previous goodwill, turning him into a source of mockery from many former fans.
• Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, creators of Superman. Hence, the guys responsible for the entire super-hero genre. Superman fans also worship other creators who contributed to expand the mythos: Mort Weisinger and Julius Schwartz (who edited the books during from the Golden Age to the Post-Crisis Era and are responsible for most of trappings people associates Superman with), Otto Binder (creator of Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes, among others), Elliot S! Maggin, Curt Swan, Dan Jurgens, Geoff Johns...
• René Goscinny is praised for the witty and punny humor found in Asterix, Lucky Luke and Iznogoud, and plenty of the elements and dialogues of these comics have reached pop culture status ^note At least, if you're European. The fact that the quality of these works dropped significantly after his death - as the writers who succeeded him proved inferior - only helps him to elevate him even more in the eyes of his fans.

Comic Strips

• Charles Schulz, of Peanuts fame, is credited with bringing a greater degree of substance to the world of cartooning, with his characters boasting complex, three-dimensional personalities and suffering the same insecurities as real people, as well as providing thoughtful insights on the topics of human nature and, in some cases, spirituality. Small wonder, then, that so many contemporary cartoonists cite him as one of their influences, and that the saga of Charlie Brown and Co. continues to endure, even over 20 years after Schulz's passing.
• Likewise, Bill Watterson himself has acquired a reputation that has extended decades past when the publication of his seminal Calvin and Hobbes ceased. Watterson is rightly legendary for taking the newspaper strip to artistic heights unknown since the days of Pogo or Krazy Kat, both of which he has cited as inspirations. Alongside the beautiful, technically exemplary landscape and character art (the constantly-updated-with-the-latest-science T. rex being a particular standout,) Watterson uses the central characters to explore everything from economic theory to philosphy to the simple joy of a summer's day. What arguably cements his reputation, however, are his firm artistic beliefs and his legendarily Reclusive Artist behavior, to the point an entire documentary film was dedicated to discussing his legacy and (fruitlessly) trying to contact him.

Fan Works

• LittleKuriboh, for Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series.
• Durandall, a.k.a. Brian Randall, author of Kyon: Big Damn Hero. Such was fan devotion to him that when he went on hiatus due to the actions of a jackass reviewer, the forums on this very wiki went wild with anger and disappointment, directed entirely at said reviewer and not at Randall. When he resumed updating, there was much rejoicing. Moreover, before the tenth volume of Haruhi Suzumiya Jossed the Fanon he had created for the fic, many fans adopted it to their own headcanons wholesale. Naturally, the work page became a memorial to him after his tragic and untimely death.

Film

• Charlie Chaplin: Probably the oldest example in film. His work is not only worshipped by fellow comedians (comic actors, mimes, clowns,...), but also by film directors for being able to make comedies with strong narratives that made you actually care about the characters. He pioneered many gags, techniques and storylines that have been copied by all comedians that came behind him. Thus he is still seen as the greatest clown of all time.
• Laurel and Hardy: They pioneered comedy based on the contrast between two characters and thus paved the way for all comedy duos, trios and so on. While some comedians or people may find Chaplin to be overrated all of them, without exception, have a fond appreciation for Stan and Ollie.
• The Marx Brothers: The brothers are not only adored by people who like good comedy, but they are especially popular among people who prefer more sarcastic, energetic and absurd humor. They are one of the few of the that time period, along with W. C. Fields, whose comedy hasn't dated one bit. Intellectuals also adore them for their more clever verbal style.
• Buster Keaton was Overshadowed by Awesome in his lifetime compared to the above mentioned comedians but from The '50s onwards he came to be admired and loved for his technical brilliance and his deadpan style of comedy came to prefigure the gags of later artists.
• Alfred Hitchcock was and is still considered the master of suspense. He coined terms like MacGuffin, and gave a number of interviews describing his tactics in constructing good stories. Many aspiring film directors learn about his techniques in film school. His work has been analyzed by many scholars and he is seen as a genuine artist. However, he has become a somewhat polarizing director in recent years, particularly in feminist circles, for the abuse he inflicted on Tippi Hedren during the filming of The Birds.
• George Lucas. The godfather of modern entertainment. It has been said that the original Star Wars trilogy didn't invent movie marketing—just perfected it. His popularity has decreased somewhat since the prequel trilogy came out, with George Lucas bashing being popular now. But his name and image should not be taken lightly. Amusingly, this is nowadays played straight and even overlaps with Only the Creator Does It Right as some fans see Disney-era Star Wars movies as pale imitation due to Lucas' lack of involvement.
• Peter Jackson has his followers for his take on The Lord of the Rings. Although he also has his serious detractors among hard-core fans of the original books, as well as from fans of the original King Kong (1933) and the book of The Lovely Bones. Additionally, a number of people took umbrage with his compliance in extending The Hobbit into three features. Not unlike George Lucas, actually. However, his mishandling of The Hobbit trilogy wasn't entirely his fault as some of the more divisive elements like a forced love triangle (and the fact that is was a trilogy) were mandated by studio executives. But even what happened with The Hobbit trilogy didn't stop people from wanting him to be involved somehow in Amazon's new Lotr series, even since the announcement of the show years ago. And when he announced that he actually got contacted to be involved in the show only to be left down, led to a lot of bitterness in the Lotr fanbase.
• Steven Spielberg, much like George Lucas, is well-known and revered as a godfather of modern entertainment for his many blockbuster films such as Jaws, Indiana Jones (Shared in conjunction with George Lucas), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and many more.
• Kevin Smith of The View Askewniverse. The personality cult surrounding him has become so great that he now seems to spend more time doing podcasts than making films.
• Tim Burton, for many, many, many films.
• Pixar. All of Pixar. (except Cars, which is widely considered a lesser if profitable franchise; Cars 2 is their only not-Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, with 35% of critical approval, and Cars 3 is their second-worst rating with 69%)
  • Pixar was originally spun off from George Lucas's Industrial Light & Magic, and until recently was helmed by Steve Jobs. Stranger and stranger?
• Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, who did Spaced, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.
• Brad Bird, who helmed The Iron Giant. You should've heard the response when he teamed with Pixar for The Incredibles.
  • Fans lined up for Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol simply because Bird was directing it.
• Quentin Tarantino was considered the new voice of film in The '90s. Just about anything both violent and comic will be compared to his works. He is also the only film director whose fame and popularity have reached rock star levels, with many being familiar with his characters, quotes and soundtracks.
• Judd Apatow, who pretty much changed the face of comedy films in the early-21st century. Nowadays, he's become polarizing thanks to how much his style of comedy has bled over into other comedy films, for better and worse.
• Spike Lee became known as the artistic authority on the African-American experience. In an interview, Lee even complained that whenever a controversy involved black people, his office would inevitably get a call asking for comment.
• Christopher Nolan is seen as a creative giant for his work on The Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception, Interstellar and Oppenheimer, garnering a wide amount of praise for creating blockbusters that appeal to casual audiences and more sophisticated film critics.
• Denis Villeneuve, who many consider to be the Canadian (from Quebec) counterpart to Nolan, with his highly cerebral sci-fi and thriller films like Sicario, Prisoners, and Arrival, that mix suspense, intelligent plotlines, and strong acting. Especially after the release of Blade Runner 2049, when a sequel to the original Blade Runner was widely considered to be a terrible idea, the complete critical and fan adoration that 2049 received has only added to his reputation as a cinematic Midas. His Dune diptych has only solidified this.
• The Coen Brothers, who are widely praised in regards to their varying films and their masterful usage of dark humor.
• Stanley Kubrick: He is seen as a giant among fellow film directors with artistic reputations. He is admired for being an independent director with a very strong artistic and personal vision whose work was so ahead of its time that all of his films polarized people when they first came out but have been Vindicated by History as masterpieces of cinema ever since. He is also the ultimate intellectuals' darling. Apart from Charlie Chaplin and Alfred Hitchcock is probably the most analyzed film director of all time, with countless books, documentaries, blogs, analysis works, exhibitions devoted to his oeuvre. However, similar to Hitchcock, he has drawn criticism for his treatment of Shelley Duvall on the set of The Shining.
• Martin Scorsese: Some directors are admired, others are worshipped and some are beloved. Scorsese is all three. Whether it's his phenomenal consistency, his technical brilliance, his dark angsty movies, his use of rock music, his camera and editing techniques (Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull) or his amazing cinephilia has introduced fans to films from around the world.
• David Fincher, who gets praise for his highly complex and bizarre filmography.
• Wes Anderson, who was described by Martin Scorsese as being his own successor and is well-known for his unique filmmaking style and the quirky films he makes.
• Sam Raimi for the Evil Dead and Spider-Man trilogies.
• Guillermo del Toro gets much praise for his often fantastical films such as The Shape of Water and Pan's Labyrinth that combine fantasy with very human characters and subject matter.
• In the field of acting Marlon Brando is worshipped as one of the very best, most charismatic and most realistic actors of all time. Even the fact that he spent more time rebelling against the movies he appeared in to the point of sabotage and after The Godfather mostly did bit parts that were borderline self parody hasn't changed the awe his fans and other actors still feel towards him. However, revelations that he quasi-raped his female costar in Last Tango in Paris knocked him off his pedestal.
• Clark Gable: Even during his lifetime he was called "The King of Hollywood". His elegance and class made him stand apart among all other actors, especially by being the main actor in the biggest Hollywood blockbuster of the golden age of Hollywood: Gone with the Wind
• Bette Davis is beloved among feminists for being a self-confident actress who had the audacity to complain against the Hollywood studios if she felt their scripts were bad.
• Three of the most popular actresses of The '50s (Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, and Elizabeth Taylor) serve as a triad in regards to how celebrities can develop and maintain Creator Worship. Initially known for their beauty and acting skills, they would expand upon their careers for more noble cause. While Monroe died untimely at 36 and became a legend, the other two were able to establish charities: Hepburn was an active spokeswoman for UNICEF to get food and supplies into improvised nations , and Taylor established her AIDS Foundation in the 1980's to research and combat the disease.
• Bruce Lee is still seen as the most exciting actor in martial arts movies ever. He may even be the most popular action hero across the world, when considering his enormous popularity in South East Asia, among minorities (Afro-American culture) and to people in the rest of the world too. He popularized martial arts like no other and his swiftness and superhuman strength still make the awe for his legend unparallelled.
• Humphrey Bogart was the object of a cult for a decade following his death, first in Boston, then New York, and ultimately, and most intensely, in France.
• Kevin Feige, head of Marvel Studios has become a geek icon for producing the MCU. Fans celebrate him for his comics-faithful approach to adapting Marvel character and story-lines, embracing the colorful aesthetics, out-there plots and lighthearted tone of classic Marvel comics and creating a Shared Universe where characters can freely appear in each others' series and occasionally come together for full-blown event team-ups.
• James Gunn himself is generally respected by many for directing Guardians of the Galaxy films. His MCU movies are generally praised their bathos-flavored style and irreverent humor that successfully elevated an obscure Z-list comic property into mainstream popularity. Gunn became so beloved among the MCU fandom that fan outrage over his abrupt 2018 dismissal lead to Disney rehiring him and offering an apology.
• In stark contrast to how they view Michael Bay, Transformers fans practically worship his successor, Travis Knight, even though he’s only done one movie so far. Mainly because he’s the opposite of Bay in every way and that one movie was an incredibly faithful and acclaimed adaptation that defied nearly every single problem fans had with Bay’s films. It also helps that prior to Bumblebee, he had already directed the critically acclaimed Kubo and the Two Strings.
• Keanu Reeves has received this treatment due to his tragic past and for being an all-around Nice Guy.
• While his movies tend to be divisive (especially those he made in the DC Extended Universe), there's no denying that Zack Snyder has a sizeable and devoted fanbase. He has interacted a lot with his fans since 2017, specially in the lead-up to the release of his version of Justice League, which wouldn't have been made possible if not for their sheer tenacity and dedication.
• Cinematographer Roger Deakins gets this from both devoted film fans and people within the industry ( Ryan Gosling admitted that Deakins' involvement in Blade Runner 2049 played a major role in his decision to do the film) for his consistent creation of some of the best instances of Scenery Porn in modern cinema, and for being, as with Keanu Reeves, a Nice Guy and Cool Old Guy. Consequently, his multiple Oscar losses were widely lamented, until he finally won his first Oscar on his 14th nomination, receiving a standing ovation in the process.
• Despite having only directed two James Bond films, Martin Campbell gets this from fans due to both of those films being generally regarded as among the series' best instalments and credited with successfully revitalizing/reviving the series.
• This trope is probably why Johnny Depp had the most supporters in his trial against ex-wife Amber Heard.

Literature

• Homer: The ancient Greeks didn't have any "holy texts", but they often spoke of The Iliad and The Odyssey as if they were. Homer is still admired as the first iconic writer/poet of all time and his legacy survived many centuries.
• Miguel de Cervantes: Don Quixote is the first modern novel and was praised by novelists (Laurence Sterne, Gustave Flaubert, Fyodor Dostoevsky) and a whole hoet of literary scholars as the single most important, meaningful and best classic novel of all time. A Tough Act to Follow for all novels that came afterwards.
• Charles Dickens: After Shakespeare he is probably the most popular, influential and still widely read author of all time. Many writers have learned from his ability to write suspenseful and engaging stories with many colorful characters people still remember and like, socially conscious messages and the power to actually capture the spirit of his own lifetime.
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is considered the genius of German letters, and virtually the one major writer admired during The Enlightenment and Romanticism, influential on more philosophers, poets, scientists and intellectuals than you can shake a fist at. His fan club includes such wildly different individuals as Napoléon Bonaparte, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud and many, many others.
• J. K. Rowling, creator of Harry Potter, was once a frequent example of this trope. However, she developed a large degree of backlash in The New '10s and The New '20s, owing to the middling reception of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and more infamously her support for gender-critical activism.
• Jane Austen of Sense and Sensibility and five other novels. The Austen cult has been criticised by some, who wonder whether it is healthy for modern independent women to wistfully dream of life in 1815, but then, Austen's books were mildly progressive for her time.
• Chuck Palahniuk (author of Fight Club).
• Douglas Adams (author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) became incredibly popular as an author, humorist, essayist and atheist. The second week after the date of his untimely death (25th of May) is celebrated as Towel Day, in recognition of his best known life lesson: always know where your towel is.
• Robert A. Heinlein has a particularly obsessive and cultish fanbase who pore over his fictional and non-fictional writings to glean pearls of wisdom.
  • Hubbard and Heinlein are actually involved in a pretty interesting anecdote involving this trope being played straight-up. As the story goes, Heinlein challenged his contemporary and rival Hubbard to see who can come up with the most ludicrous-sounding religion while still convincing people that's it's legit. Heinlein pulled out of the competition when he decided that people were all too willing to latch onto it and take it seriously... of course, Hubbard didn't....
  • The religion spawned by Heinlein's work, The Church Of All Worlds, survived for years though. It's still around, having evolved into a pagan/Wiccan faith.
• Ayn Rand wrote several popular novels, including Atlas Shrugged, which formed the basis for the philosophy of Objectivism. She remains its figurehead to this day. "The Collective" the closeknit group of followers that coalesced around her East 36th Street apartment in New York, became so culty that author and journalist Jeff Walker has described it as an actual cult.
• Terry Pratchett of Discworld fame. His fans celebrate his birthday (April 28th) as the "Creator's Birthday".
  • This started as a joke in the Discworld Diary (another being that Fandom VIP Stephen Briggs's birthday is Patrician Day), but it is certainly the case that any statement he made on alt.fan.pratchett (which rarely discusses the actual books) will be treated as a bit more significant than if J. Random Poster said it. Half of them would still disagree with it, because they're a bloody-minded bunch (again, taking on his mindset!) but they'd do it in a more measured way.
  • His French translator, Patrick Couton, Grand Master of Woolseyism, has been referred to as Metatron, as in "Voice of God".
  • Even outside of people who don't read his books, he is universally considered to be the most respected and beloved fantasy author outside of Tolkien himself.
• J. R. R. Tolkien, of The Lord of the Rings, god of the fantasy genre as we know it. His son Christopher presides over veneration and interpretation of the holy texts.
  • The fans call him "The Professor" and hold toasts each year on his birthday. Really.
    • Tolkien himself was aware of this veneration, and was not happy about it; he once referred to his fanbase as "my deplorable cultus".
• George R. R. Martin of A Song of Ice and Fire is known to have a pretty close relationship with his fans, and often attends parties they throw at various sci-fi/fantasy conventions. This is all in spite of the internet Hatedom directed at him by readers who complain about his slipping release schedules. To them, it's more like GRRM is their own personal Satan
• Neil Gaiman, despite the fact that he always looks faintly bemused at discovering hundreds of fans waiting for him at book signings and the like. (That or he's just stoned, hard to say really.)
  • It's Neil Gaiman, meaning the answer is almost certainly both.
  • And now he's got a whole bunch of new fans who are coming to him because of his wife, who are a bit rowdier than his older fans.
• Robert Jordan is widely beloved for being the author the The Wheel of Time series and praised for writing such an epic and engaging story arc with fantastic prose. His death was a devastating loss to the fantasy community, who still continue to hold him in high regard.
  • His successor, Brandon Sanderson, is near universally beloved amongst fantasy fans for not only finishing the last three books in the series and pulling off the feat of giving the series a satisfying and acclaimed ending (something considered nigh impossible among fantasy novels), but also for establishing his own identity and fandom from writing Mistborn: The Original Trilogy and The Stormlight Archive. His fanbase loves him for being a prolific writer who delivers mutlitple Doorstopper books in a short span of time with simple prose, but well-written characters and stories. Many of his fanbase even joke how he finishes writing books before they can even finish reading them. Others even joke about him being the one to call when a series needs to be finished.
• Terry Goodkind, much like George RR Martin, is either the Devil Incarnate or the Only Real Writer Writing Today, depending on whether or not you're a member of his cult. There is some middle ground, but some ardent fans of Goodkind have defended him mostly by accusing people who didn't like his books of preferring "typical fantasy" and objecting to anything that challenges them, or of being "death chosers" whose lives were filled with "loathing and indifference" or pointing to his sales figures as though they are objective proof of his brilliance.
• C. S. Lewis. To his credit, he did as much as he could to downplay it during his lifetime in favor of recommending other fantasy authors and Christian apologists.
• To a comparatively minor extent, Timothy Zahn among fans of the Star Wars Expanded Universe. The Thrawn Trilogy basically kicked off all Star Wars novels - yes, there had been a few before, focusing on young-ish Han Solo and Lando Calrissian, but this trilogy picked a point years after the movies and built a galaxy around it, and introduced both Mara Jade and Thrawn. It was the first - and this is hotly contested - the best Expanded Universe epic. Zahn-bashing is a bit more popular these days, though less so than for Lucas.
  • It helps that, when talking to fans, he comes off as composed and very civil and respectful, not overtly defensive or snippy.
• Neil Gaiman himself was an adolescent fanboy of Michael Moorcock who was very much worshipped some twenty-odd years ago, perhaps before most tropers' time.
• H. P. Lovecraft. Creator of Cthulhu. Even during his lifetime, there were fans of his who believed that his universe was real and his works were merely channelling the message of the Old Ones. His cult actually contained a number of young acolytes who would go on to greatness of their own, notably Robert Bloch, author of Psycho and Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan the Barbarian. There is even speculation that his cult may have indirectly inspired Erich von Daniken, and thus may have been responsible for the creation of some actual religions.
• Isaac Asimov, while not having created a religion, has a devout following of people hailing him as the A in "The ABC of Science-Fiction". He also has a throne◊. Though his reputation as a role model, like so many others on this list, has been greatly strained by the revelation that he was a serial groper of women, fans still admire the support for science and progressive values evident in his fiction and nonfiction alike.
• Many Catholic fans of G. K. Chesterton, like Dale Ahlquist and the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton. They are known for championing his works and hold him in so high a regard that they are attempting to launch a Cause for his canonization.
• Brian Jacques, author of Redwall. Unlike many of these examples, Jacques came off as composed, civil and respectful and often did events for the younger fans of the books.
• Takashi Yanase, author of Ringing Bell (Chirin no Suzu), The Kindly Lion/The Gentle Lion (Yasashii Lion), and creator of the Anpanman franchise. In Japan, he is very respected for the amount of children's books◊ and artwork made during his lifetime. With his most beloved work Chirin no Suzu (known as Ringing Bell in the West) becoming a pop culture icon in that country. Meanwhile the Anpanman series has been a childhood icon with Japanese audiences who don't take it well if you make fun of anything related to the series. His children's book Yasashii Lion has also become a beloved story with older generations in Japan including the 1970 animated short by Mushi Productions. After Yanase's passing in 2014, a special museum was opened in Kōchi Prefecture, Japan in his memory called "Kami City Takashi Yanase Memorial Hall & Anpanman Museum" which was entirely dedicated to him and his works. He shares the same amount of respect in Japan as Osamu Tezuka.

Live-Action TV

• Joss Whedon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly and Dollhouse.
  • Interestingly, Joss is also considered to be evil by these very same fans for the angst he puts his characters through, bordering on misanthropic. If the Cult of Joss were an actual religion, it would be a Religion of Evil.
  • This Creator Worship is in no small part responsible for Dollhouse getting a second season. It's a safe bet that had Dollhouse been made by someone else, there's no way it would've gotten that far, if only because of the inboxes full on hate-mail his fans could unleash like no other.
  • This very wiki was founded by Whedonites and so, even by internet standards, was a holy site for them.
  • After so many years of pure worship, he finally suffered some backlash from fans in 2015 for the Banner/Romanoff relationship in Avengers: Age of Ultron and for insinuating that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was not relevant to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (his statements were taken out of context). His reputation was further tarnished in 2017 when his ex-wife revealed that he openly cheated on her; a leaked version of his original 2006 screenplay for Wonder Woman was criticized as sexist for giving more screentime to her love interest Steve Trevor and focusing more on her appearance rather than personality; and the mixed-to-negative reception to his role as additional writer and replacement director for Justice League (2017).
  • Further revelations in 2020/21, including by the casts of Justice League, Buffy and Angel about what he was like on set (including the rather troubling comment from Michelle Trachtenberg, in her mid-teens when she worked on Buffy, that he wasn't allowed to be alone in a room with her) have pretty much put a dent on his reputation, although some people still tend to hold him in high regard similar to other controversial greats like Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock (see Film).
• JMS, aka J. Michael Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5. There was once a website called the Church of Joe, where his more obsessive fans could sign up to be clergy in a religion worshipping the Great Maker, Joe Straczynski himself.
  • "The Great Maker" was a mostly tongue-in-cheek Fan Nickname before that, taken from the in-universe Centauri deity.
  • After teaming up with The Wachowskis to make Sense8, he's being revered by an even wider audience.
• Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, is sometimes called The Great Bird of the Galaxy by his fans, after a Romulan god. The way a lot of longterm fans speak of him, it's easy to believe they literally worship him, as they use words and phrases usually reserved for the great prophets of bygone ages. To these fans, and even some of the less radicalized ones, it's practically Fandom Heresy to say anything against him. While Trek fans certainly do owe him some credit for creating the franchise, he also essentially abandoned TOS by the end of the second season (Season finale as a Poorly Disguised Pilot, anyone?), and his meddling in the TOS film era eventually led to him getting Kicked Upstairs. This is to say nothing of some of his questionable backstage behavior, well hidden from the public until both he and his last wife, Majel Barrett, had passed on. These same fans tend to vilify Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, who, while making some questionable choices later in their term of presiding over the Trek series, helped to rescue TNG from the ruins of its first season, which had the most Roddenberry influence, and make it the classic it is today.
• Ron Moore himself has varied from being considered a saint for reviving Battlestar Galactica and doing it so well, or the Antichrist for changing it so much.
• There was a big to-do concerning a personal appearance of Rockne S. O'Bannon, the brains behind Alien Nation, SeaQuest DSV, and of course Farscape, his biggest cult hit. There was an interview around the same time that said he was creating a new sci-fi show called Cult which would focus on loony fans of a show within a show series.
  • Farscape screenwriter Justin Monjo also achieved God status among John/Aeryn shippers for specific shippy episodes he penned. They called themselves Monjonians and even had a prayer: Hail Monj, full of 'Scape, Rockne is with thee... When told about this, several of the show's actors agreed he was a God and were declared to be honorary Monjonians. I am not making any of this up...
• Eric Kripke, the creator of Supernatural, is either hailed as a God or as a Lying Liar That Lies Anti-Christ.
  • His other Fan Nickname is the "Kripkeeper."
• Bill Lawrence, creator of Spin City and Scrubs, has been hailed for his type of comedy seen nowhere else on television.
• J. J. Abrams, creator of Alias, Lost, and Fringe.
  • And while Abrams may have created Lost, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse perfected it. Fans have even given them a Portmanteau Couple Name of "Darlton".
    • He also did so well with Mission: Impossible III that Tom Cruise realized he was going to need him for a fourth to be made.
  • And now Star Trek (2009) as well. While some of the pre-existing Fan Dumb will vilify him, the newer fans who were lured in by this movie will defend him to the last.
  • His reputation has become polarizing amongst the Star Wars fandom due to the mixed reception of the sequel trilogy, especially after The Rise of Skywalker.
• Tim Kring, creator of Heroes. Of course, given the Sophomore Slump of season 2, bashing him has also become a bit of fun.
  • Though given how the show panned out, the bashing seems to have far overtaken the worship, with Bryan Fuller now getting more praise for what went right with Heroes.
• David Simon of The Wire. The fact that this is mostly justified—he and everyone else who worked on The Wire pay far more attention to detail, characterization, and plot than nearly anyone else working in television—makes fandom all the more frustrating for the unlucky few who do take issue with some aspects of his work.
  • Reinforcing the appearance of deity is that if you criticize him online, there's a non-zero chance that he'll actually see it and respond (usually witheringly).
  • Also reinforcing Simon's imposing presence is his tendency to be quite outspoken on how he "intended" the show to be viewed (as a vehicle for his political opinions). Thus it is expected that fans not only love the show, but also Simon's personal views and the singular "correct" reading of his work.
  • Simon also wrote the book that gave rise to Homicide: Life on the Street, so he's been at least a demiurge for some time.
• Jon Stewart. Among the reasons cited by fans:
  • He reports on important issues glossed over by other sources
  • Regular viewers of The Daily Show end up being more knowledgeable about news than audiences of "serious" news sources
  • Stewart actually reads his guests' books
  • Targets of his satire may be on the right or the left. It's a merit-based system.
  • The humor may range from crude to cerebral, but he gets his facts straight, and his arguments are thoughtful and reasoned.
  • He is always respectful when interviewing someone with whom he disagrees with and isn't full of crap.
  • He brings the funny.
• Stephen Colbert, for many of the same reasons.
  • Also, he ran for President. In character. And it was awesome.
  • And Colbert won the popular vote in the Marvel Universe! Obama is still pres, however.
• Aaron Sorkin, creator/writer of Sports Night, The West Wing, and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.
  • That last one lost him a bit of standing. However, he did then write the screenplay for Charlie Wilson's War, which was well-received and stuffed to the gills with all the Sorkin tropes we know and love.
  • The Social Network has been so overwhelmingly well-received that any damage Studio 60 might've done to his standing is utterly irrelevant.
  • The Newsroom didn't pan out as well, marring his reputation a bit, but it still stands that any project Sorkin is attached to is worthy of some excitement.
• Although not strictly the creator, Russell T Davies gets a fair amount of worship for bringing back Doctor Who.
  • However, Steven Moffat, titled the Grand Moff, is more revered due to making some of the best Who episodes. His tenure as the executive producer and head writer received much praise from his followers.
  • There's no single person who can be called the creator of Doctor Who, but one of the most important creators was the original producer, Verity Lambert. She is held in such high esteem by the fans that, when Doctor Who Magazine held an open "single contribution" category in its 50th anniversary poll, she was the clear winner some 48 years after she stepped down from the role.
  • Terrance Dicks was known as the face of the show for years, in no small part due to his work in novelising the stories. Barry Letts as well.
  • Robert Holmes and Philip Hinchcliffe are widely considered as the show's very best creative team, overseeing what many consider the show's Golden Age.
  • Late-eighties script editor Andrew Cartmel for helping the show regain its mojo in its last years.
• Jim Henson, the undisputed greatest puppeteer of the 20th century for his Muppets.
  • To a lesser extent the other original Muppeteers, such as Frank Oz and Jerry Nelson. Also Jerry Juhl, who wasn't a puppeteer, but in the words of Tough Pigs "has essentially become a saint to Muppet fans on account of everything that he ever wrote was really really good, and he never wrote anything bad that we ever heard of. We all love Jerry so much that we don’t even blame him for Muppets from Space. (I heard it got messed up in the editing.)"
• David Shore. He's seen as kind of a douchebag but, then again, he did write "Three Stories" (which is seen as the best episode of House ever by most people) so I guess it evens out.
• Chris Morris, creator and writer of seminal shows such as On The Hour, The Day Today and Brass Eye. When not taking scathing pot-shots at the Media and generally baiting the outrage brigade, occasionally emerges from his lair to lambast public figures such as Martin Amis for talking out of their colons. And that's not even taking into account the pranks he was responsible for back when he was a humble DJ for Radio One.
• Armando Iannucci, not only helped to create The Day Today, but also co-wrote I'm Alan Partridge and created The Thick of It.
• Sherlock creators, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss are revered as gods, very evil gods to be precise, by the fandom. The fans fondly call them Mofftiss when referring to both, and Godtiss and The Moff when referring to one or the other. They are both loved and hated for their genius... and knack of leaving their fans on mindbending cliffhangers for agonising months on end.
• Ryan Murphy of Glee, especially amongst the LGBT crowds. Murphy actually seems to have no middle ground; he is either evil incarnate, or the deity of all things holy on television.
• Donald P. Bellisario in the 80's and 90's for his various TV-series (Magnum, P.I., Quantum Leap). Even joked at in JAG when scfi-nut Bud sees Bellisario's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame:
  Hey, it's the Quantum Leap guy!
• The more devoted fans of Call the Midwife bow at the feet of series creator and showrunner Heidi Thomas, especially on Tumblr, where she is essentially considered able to do no wrong. They're not the only ones, however, as even the critics are gushing.
• As many fans and people who grew up with Mister Rogers' Neighborhood tell it, Fred Rogers was essentially a saint among men. Considering he built his entire career around being a Friend to All Children and behaving on and off screen like an All-Loving Hero, this is really quite understandable. A common sentiment in profiles of Mr. Rogers is, "If Protestants had saints, Fred Rogers would have already been canonized." You can buy fan-made artwork that depicts Mr. Rogers as a religious icon, and a large fan group on Reddit calls itself "The Church of Rogers." Meanwhile, an Episcopal church Fred Rogers sometimes attended in Massachusetts actually does display a painting depicting him as a saint, complete with halo.
• Jack Webb. His three biggest shows, Dragnet, Adam-12 and Emergency! still have devoted followings 40 to 60 (for "Dragnet") years later and Joe Friday is still an iconic character today.
• Vince Gilligan, for Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. With these two shows being some of the highest-rated ever due to his mastery of writing, dialogue and symbolism, it's become standard for people to pick apart every single aspect of every episode and attribute it to Vince's god-tier writing ability and genius. This is where the "BRAVO VINCE/BRAVO BINCE" meme originated from, with fans jokingly creating Faux Symbolism and claiming Vince put it in the show deliberately. The fandom also likes to pretend that Peter Gould, the other screenwriter for the shows, doesn't exist because he merely exists in Vince's shadow.
• Dan Harmon is a genius and his hardcore fans will die protecting his vision.
  • Interestingly, many of these fans seem to overlook the fact that the above paraphrased line, which was taken as a fandom rallying cry after Harmon was fired from Community, in context is spoken by a young woman driven to the brink of insanity by the unreasonable demands and preening tantrums of someone in control of a creative project who has let his perfectionist tendencies spiral completely out of control... something which Harmon himself admits is not a million miles off from how the set of Community would function while he was the show-runner.
• Monty Python: Together with The Marx Brothers they are probably the most popular universal comedy team of all time. Even though their comedy may be to weird, intellectual or complex for most of the general public their fans absolutely adore their series, films and TV series, even sketches that are extremely anti-comedy. To some people they are even The Beatles of comedy.
  • Within Monty Python, John Cleese has gotten this as he is still seen as a god in modern day British comedy, because, thanks to his work with Monty Python and having Fawlty Towers on his track record, his status is literally untouchable, despite whatever lesser comedy he sometimes made afterwards. The British public still sees him as "The Funniest Man On Television", thanks to the many repeats of Fawlty Towers.
• Spike Milligan is considered to be the godfather of anti-comedy. He is even admired by Monty Python.
• Rod Serling is admired for being the first TV screenwriter and presenter to actually try and do something artistic with the medium. The Twilight Zone introduced suspenseful, scary and meaningful narratives working with limited budgets and within the boundaries of commercial television, but he showed it was possible.
• Lucille Ball is still a lighting example for all TV scriptwriters and especially female comedians. I Love Lucy pioneered and perfected the modern day TV sitcom as we know it today.
• In the largely secular UK, wildlife presenter Sir David Attenborough is held in the kind of esteem that more pious nations ascribe to religious leaders. The fact that he hasn't aged in thirty years has done a lot to cement his position as a living god.
• Judd Lynn of the Power Rangers franchise. In general, him being in charge of a season is automatically considered cause for celebration, to the point some people decide to watch a season because he's in charge of it. This is likely because the seasons he's headed are generally considered some of the best in the franchise and the ones generally considered the best (Power Rangers in Space and Power Rangers Time Force) were both produced by him with Power Rangers in Space is credited with saving the franchise.
• Fans of the Canadian cult show Schitt's Creek tend to hang on the words of Dan Levy and the fan events he organized with the rest of the cast often sell out.
• Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau have been praised by Star Wars fans as "saviors of the franchise" and people claim they've "restored their childhoods" for their work on The Mandalorian. Filoni is already known for his work on the Star Wars animated shows—see his entry below—but Favreau is usually included in any praise for The Mandalorian both for his excellent work and because lots of people aren't familiar with The Clone Wars and Rebels because of the Animation Age Ghetto. Many feel that the first two seasons suggested a return to form in live action after the controversial reception of the sequel movies. However, Favreau and Filoni gradually lost some worshippers after The Book of Boba Fett, the first Mandalorian Spin-Off, and Mando Season 3 both proved too unfocused and inconsistent for several viewers; it doesn't help Favreau's case that he went from only writing 12 of the 16 chapters that comprise The Mandalorian Seasons 1-2, to writing every episode of Boba Fett and Mando Season 3.
• Jonathan Nolan, the younger brother of Christopher Nolan, is not only praised for his screenplays for his brother's movies but also for his own works, Person of Interest and Westworld. The same goes for his wife, Lisa Joy, who is also co-showrunner of Westworld. In fact, many Westworld fans say that the best episodes are the ones directed and/or written by the Nolan couple.
• Andor fans hail creator Tony Gilroy as the then-latest savior of Star Wars and the standard that all of the franchise's showrunners should aspire to.

Music

• Johann Sebastian Bach: Without any doubt, the oldest example in music of someone whose work is seen as so perfect that nobody would dare contest it. And even today, centuries later, many music fans, especially in Classical Music, see him as a genius. William F. Buckley once famously said: "If Bach is not in heaven, I am not going." The Voyager Golden Record sent into space to make contact with extraterrestrial aliens has more music by Bach than any other musician. Carl Sagan famously said: "I'd send just Bach... but that would be boasting." Even Frank Zappa, notoriously dismissive of all composers before the 20th century said: "Bach is interesting. To me that's the most tolerable music to listen from that era."
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Another example of someone who is literally regarded among both general public and music fans as a genius of divine levels. It helps that popular culture presents him as some kind of demi-god.
• Ludwig van Beethoven: The third example of a musician seen as a genius. Beethoven has one advantage over Bach and Mozart that he actually did more his own thing, becoming the first example of a troubled artist and a musician able to express a strong personal vision. And the fact that he was deaf also helped to illuminate his awesomeness.
• Richard Wagner: Wagner's music and cult of personality earned him devotees the world over in his day, ranging from a young Friedrich Nietzsche (though they later had a massive falling-out) to George Bernard Shaw (though Shaw had his criticisms). Today, many fans of his will travel to the Bayreuth festival in Germany each summer as a kind of pilgrimage. These festivals feature up to five of his operas, oftentimes including a full 16-hour production of The Ring of the Nibelung. Wagner appreciation societies abound internationally, and even the Merriam-Webster dictionary acknowledges his popularity, defining "Wagnerian" as "an admirer of the German composer Richard Wagner and his music."
• Perhaps the most direct example of this in classical music is Franz Liszt, who was, for all intents and purposes, a rock star before the word was invented. For starters, he looked like this◊, and his piano playing was so intoxicating it would send women into fits of the vapours. Literally. There was even a word coined for it: "Lisztomania", as women were sent into states akin to religious ecstasy, and then fought each other for bits of his clothing. One woman even picked up one of his discarded cigars, had it encased in gold and diamonds, and monogrammed with his initials.
• Louis Armstrong: All jazz musicians look up to him as the man who made the genre popular. The general public and music fans outside the jazz field also regard him as an artistic genius.
• Benny Goodman, the King of Swing. Some claim he was responsible for touching off the Swing era, and he was almost certainly one of the biggest players in bringing Jazz into the mainstream with his '38 Carnegie Hall concert. It probably doesn't hurt that his ensembles have included- and in many, if not most, cases given a start to- Lionel Hampton, Gene Krupa, Harry James, Teddy Wilson, and even Billie Holiday.
• Taken literally by St. John Coltrane African Orthodox Church.
• Gene Krupa is not only admired among jazz drummers as the greatest talent a pair of drumsticks ever created, but also among any drummer ever. Go ahead, speak ill of him in a large gathering of drummers. Just be ready to run.
• Billie Holiday: Everyone who adores troubled artists, especially singers, admires her. There is a reason why she is still the most iconic jazz singer of all time.
• Miles Davis: Has reached similar levels of fan worship. His iconoclastic approach and Insufferable Genius status made him a similar godlike being.
• Frank Sinatra: In the 1940s he was just worshipped by women and hated by men. From the 1950s on he reinvented himself as a self-made man who is confident, but not afraid to show his inner emotions about feeling lonely. This won him his legions of new fans, even among men or people who didn't think popular music could have such depth. He became so identifiable that people just refer to him as "The Voice", as if no other great singing voices ever existed.
• Burl Ives: While he's done some movie and television roles during his lifetime. Burl Ives was a very beloved musician and is forever associated with the 1964 Christmas special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer by Rankin/Bass where he voiced Sam the Snowman. Every Christmas season, he would put up a Sam the Snowman decoration outside of his house for fans of the special and his work (alongside inviting families and fans into his home). Ives alongside Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Gene Autry, and Nat King Cole has became heavily associated with Christmas by the public. Due to their songs still playing on numerous radio stations around the holiday season in American and Canadian culture.
• Elvis Presley: The first rock superstar. Elvis has been crowned the "King" and shook up the life of many young people in the 1950s, breaking them out of the constraints of their boring every day life. His popularity increased thanks to Colonel Parker's excessive marketing of Elvis and even bringing in older people too when the singer made Hollywood movies and sang more general pop tunes. At a certain point he was literally one the most famous persons on the planet. After his death the Elvis cult became even more excessive, with more people buying his records than during his own lifetime. His house in Graceland, Tennessee is visited as some kind of shrine. Many fans refuse to believe he took drugs or that he is dead. There is even an actual religious cult based around him in the USA. This is parodied by the Mojo Nixon song, "Elvis is Everywhere," which sounds like an over-the-top Baptist sermon that replaces each instance of "Jesus" with "Elvis" before claiming Elvis is the source behind many conspiracy theories (the pyramids, Stonehenge, the Bermuda Triangle, etc.)
• The Beatles are still the most famous, recognizable, popular, most covered and influential band of all time, far above any other band before or after them. They are a timeless and universally beloved musical act, adored by people of all ages and from all kinds of layers of society. Both pop fans as well as rock fans love them, not to mention fans of Alternative Rock. Every rock and pop artist looks up to them and hopes to achieve the same kind of success or artistic appreciation. Within the Beatles John Lennon has reached similar levels of worship. During his lifetime he was seen as a voice of rebellion and the "smart and cool one" of the Beatles. His murder actually increased his status and nowadays he is seen as according to many, a symbol of pacifism and intellectualism, the coolest Beatle to like and, to many, he most important musician of the 20th century. It got to the point that he is the only musician within the '100 Greatest Britons' election in 2002 to enter the top 10.
• Bob Dylan's status is so huge that his fans see him as a prophet. During The '60s he was considered to be the "spokesman of his generation" and his legend still hasn't diminished after almost half a century. Along with Elvis Presley and the Beatles he is the most influential musician in rock music, a leading inspiration to all songwriters.
• Mick Jagger is the face of the band within The Rolling Stones and, apart from being a sex symbol to adoring female fans, he is also admired for his cocksure delivery and rebellious image. Old age and the band going on for a bit too long has diminished this stature a bit, but he remains one of rock's most iconic performers. For those who feel that Jagger is overexposed in comes Keith Richards who is admired for his biology-defying-drug-intake, his long life and his phenomenal skill as a guitar player.
• The Kinks are admired for their literary and heartbreaking songwriting, their overall underdog image and the fact that they are a sixties gang that escaped being overexposed and commercialized.
• Jimi Hendrix: A famous quote goes: "There are two kinds of guitarists. People who say they are inspired by Hendrix and liars." Anytime a poll is held about the greatest guitarists of all time Hendrix is in the number one spot. If not, thousands of angry letters and comments will come in.
• Pink Floyd got a lot after The Dark Side of the Moon, ultimately culminating in Roger Waters (and the audience) seeing himself as a godlike figure above and separate from the audience. This culminated in him spitting in the face of a fan at the final concert of the "In The Flesh" tour. That incident, along with a case of Artist Disillusionment, led directly to The Wall.
• Frank Zappa: Even though Zappa is still a cult musician he is still subject of the most passionate and fanatical devotion on this planet. You are either a hardcore fan or a more moderate admirer, but in both cases people are convinced this man was a genius to which all other music just pales in terms of exciting innovation and Genre Roulette.
• Bob Marley: All Reggae fans like him or at least discovered the genre thanks to him. Worldwide, and especially in the developing world, he is the biggest superstar of all time. From Asia, Latin America and Oceania to Africa, people listen to his messages. In his native Jamaica, he is literally seen as a Messianic Archetype among the Rastafarian movement.
• Sex Pistols: Existed for only 14 months, managed to popularize Punk Rock, create a revolution and, in the words of Johnny Rotten: "... pissed off everybody we were fed up with." Naturally Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious quickly became the heroes of Punk Rock and an entire generation. Even though Vicious couldn't play an instrument and Lydon spent most of the rest of his career sarcastically attacking bigger stars than him in a Magnificent Bastard way many people still see them as the embodiment of punk.
• Michael Jackson: Almost raised to literal inhuman superstar levels during his lifetime, he was able to become the best-selling artist of all time thanks the success of his music videos, Thriller and the amazingness of the Moonwalk Dance. Even when his eccentric lifestyle and accusations of child abuse damaged his reputation among the general public he still remained the most famous person on the planet and maintained his otherwordly legendary aura. His hardcore fans never gave up their adoration, despite what bad press appeared about him. Someone released doves when he was pronounced not guilty at his child molestation trial, and since his death he's been elevated even higher.
• Kurt Cobain: At the height of the popularity of Nevermind, Nirvana was seen as a breath of fresh air after the dominance of Hair Metal and Synthpop for almost a decade. Grunge was declared to be the biggest revolution in rock since the arrival of Punk Rock, and the band became a voice for disgruntled youth everywhere. After his death Cobain even rose to higher levels, with some treating him as the ultimate example of a troubled rock musician too cool to ever be assimilated as being a poseur. Unfortunately, this has had the side effect of Kurt's legacy reaching near-religious status (up to, and including, his hometown of Aberdeen, Washington literally changing it's town motto to "Come as you are" and dedicating the bridge he spent a lot of time under in his youth as a monument), with a Vocal Minority of uncharitable Grunge fans often declaring how other genres (for example, the aforementioned Hair Metal) pale in comparision to Grunge, and being so overly laudatory towards the genre that some found it hard to take it seriously anymore, especially in the wake of Post-Grunge, the numerous outlandish conspiracy theories blaming Courtney Love for his death, and all the jokes about Kurt's singing being hard to understand.
• David Bowie: One need only refer to the collective meltdown that occurred across social media at the announcement of his passing to gauge the devotion of his fan base.
• Richey Edwards of Manic Street Preachers, despite barely being able to play an instrument and never once singing on a studio track - not to mention having vanished in 1995 after possibly drowning himself in the Severn. A certain section of fans were and are known as the "Cult of Richey". Guitarist and vocalist James Dean Bradfield once remarked that even after his disappearance Cult of Richey types would stand in front of Richey's traditional but now-vacant position onstage, staring at where he usually was and nowhere else for the entire gig.
• "Weird Al" Yankovic, current high priest of comedy, has a surprisingly obsessive fanbase.
• Tupac Shakur. Apparently the undisputed greatest rapper of all time. So prolific was his career that he literally wrote thousands of songs, much of which released posthumously, and like Elvis above for this reason, many fans believe he's still alive somewhere.
• For many aficionados of musical theatre, Stephen Sondheim is unassailably the greatest composer and lyricist that the medium has ever seen.
• Vic Firth, a legendary percussionist and pretty much the face of concert percussion. It helps that his brand of equipment is the most popular (and for some, reliable) brand on the market. Also helps that he taught a blind hockey player to play the marimba. With four mallets.
• Just go on Twitter. The amount of "stans" worshipping pop divas and teen idols are astounding.
• It was a fan catchphrase in the 60s that "Clapton is God", supposedly inspired by a famous piece of graffiti in Islington.
  • Another rock master to receive that same adulation is Neil Young. You can get t-shirts and pins with "Clapton is God" and "Neil Young is God", and probably others as well.
• Those who have interest in film music will know and love John Williams.
• My Chemical Romance has a few fans who claim the band is their religion. Some fans even refer to singer Gerard Way as "Geesus" and the other band members as his disciples.
  • Similarly, Fall Out Boy has a very avid fanbase that treats them with such deep devotion that anybody who dares to say anything bad about the band is going to get shot down by the fans.
• Sound Horizon fans do not worship Revo—they crown him king and show their love to him by singing the Sound Horizon Kingdom's (inter)national anthem after every concert.
• This tendency was one of the main reasons why Metallica had such an enormous fan backlash during The '90s.
• Even though he died way back in 1973, Gram Parsons is the unquestionable patron saint of Alternative Country.
• Yoko Kanno, best known for being the composer of anime soundtracks such as Cowboy Bebop, Wolf's Rain, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Macross Frontier and many more, has been called a god of music.
• Tosin Abasi is the modern day guitar virtuoso of the modern day, and don't you forget it! ^note Seriously, don't. His fans are rather hostile.
• Armin Van Buuren is quite possibly one of, if not the most respected DJ in the world and is especially known for his very dedicated band of loyal and adoring fans (he didn't win the title of "Number One DJ in the World" a record number of five times for nothing). His energetic stage presence, genuine passion for his craft, and humble, down-to-Earth personality off-stage certainly help out.
• The late Quorthon of Bathory is considered to be one of the most prestigious and important members in the metal community for kickstarting the Black Metal genre and gave it its unique style in both riffing and Harsh Vocals. The fact that he went on to create viking metal on a whim only helps.
• The entire genre of K-Pop is infamous for this. Many K-pop idols are worshipped as gods by "stans" and spam fancams all over Twitter, even going as far as to create the "[X celebrity] Is Over Party" hashtag just for fancams. This unfortunately has lead to backlash from non-fans who are tired of this behavior.
• Nicholas "Razzle" Dingley, the long-deceased drummer of Finnish Hair Metal band Hanoi Rocks. This is especially among Mötley Crüe detractors as Vince Neil was the driver of the car that was involved in the crash that killed Razzle. Many Mötley Crüe detractors will comment "RIP Razzle" in YouTube comments sections when bashing the group, even if they've never heard a single Hanoi Rocks track.
• Nick Cave. His fans are convinced that he's the only person on Earth qualified to critique other artists who they believe aren't worthy of praise or love.
• Elvis Costello is often considered one of the patron saints of Alternative Rock and New Wave Music, being celebrated as one of the people who brought American New Wave music to the mainstream.
• Ween have earned themselves a massively devoted fanbase over the years, who are highly devoted to their music as well as ironically 'worshipping' their demon god mascot, The Boognish. Made even more impressive is that this manic fandom continues to grow to this day despite there not being any new material since 2007!
• This, along with the Gallaghers' infamous feuding, was one of the main reasons why Oasis suffered Hype Backlash by the late-90s.
• Amongst New Romantic/New Wave fans, Midge Ure gets a ton of this for basically kickstarting the genres. Being a good-looking Nice Guy doesn't hurt.
• Gregg Alexander and the New Radicals have earned themselves a massively devoted fanbase over the years, despite the fact they only recorded one album and ended up a One-Hit Wonder for their Signature Song "You Get What You Give".
• Among indie rock fans, Radiohead and Arcade Fire get a ton of this due to being two of the most well-known "indie" bands.
• Eminem, who invented the term "Stan" to describe his overly invested fandom, was the artist who broke hip-hop fully into the world of mainstream pop and was therefore treated initially like he invented the entire genre and as a great poet - much like another handsome, moral-panic-bait white artist who popularised Black music in the white mainstream whose name begins with E. He tends to cultivate fans with an extreme parasocial relationship with him, due to the confessional and Escapist Character nature of his work, meaning many credit his music with guiding them through tough times or saving their lives. He still has a legion of fans who call him "the Rap God", and while nobody with a serious opinion would dispute that he's among the greatest MCs, some of the more disproportionate praise still carries certain Unfortunate Implications that Eminem himself has not had kind words for. And, considering the extremely silly and offensive nature of most of his work, results in Hype Backlash when the uncoverted check out his 'life-changing' and 'GOATed' music and find out just how much of it is novelty songs insulting critics and low-hanging target celebrities.
• Phil Collins as a solo artist and frontman of Genesis is certainly divisive. As a drummer meanwhile? You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who disparages him on that front.

Mythology, Ideology and Religion

• This is the very true of religion or any kind of ideology. All the gods, prophets, gurus, saints, ideological and/or religious leaders will be worshipped, trusted, believed and obeyed by their followers. Naturally with the predictable result that people of opposing viewpoints will get angry or violent and start fighting each other.
  • Interestingly, somewhat downplayed with modern Hinduism. The three gods of the Trimurti, the supreme Divinty, are Brahma, the creator, Vishnu, the preserver, and Shiva, the destroyer. Although Brahma is worshipped, he he has far fewer followers than either Vishnu or Shiva.
  • Also downplayed in Judaism. While ancestors and prophets are held up as great role models, their flaws are also presented clearly, so no one actually worships or prays to them.

Philosophy and Ideology

• Virtually all philosophers are admired by intellectuals.
• Aristotle was so greatly admired by Islamic and Christian writers that he was referred to simply as "The Philosopher" during the Middle Ages, which is how the Philosopher's Stone got its name. It could be argued that this veneration actually held Europe back for some time, since questioning his ideas was seen as contrarian at best and heretical at worst. His work Poetics was so admired in Continental Europe (France, Germany and Italy) that his dictates of three-act structure and dramatic unities (which he merely observed rather than prescribed) was imposed as doctrine in drama there.
• Socrates via Plato is called the father of philosophy and is admired by many people for his belief in free education, his ability to be The Gadfly and his defiant acceptance of death.
• Not "worship", but St. Augustine of Hippo and St. Thomas Aquinas are highly admired within the Catholic Church for their contributions to the development and exposition of Christian doctrine, and respected by lay writers for being as insightful as secular philosophers.
• Niccolò Machiavelli was perhaps worshipped too much by aspiring Machiavellians like Henry VIII, Napoléon Bonaparte or indeed, Tupac Shakur, but he was regarded as the father of political science and Realpolitik by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the American Founding Fathers and Isaiah Berlin. Machiavelli in the 21st Century, with all the former misconceptions cleared in popular memory is increasingly invoked as a Big Good.
• Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau were highly admired in their time for challenging censorship, social conventions and criticizing authority. Both of them were worshipped during The French Revolution by literally being installed in the Pantheon.
• Friedrich Nietzsche is perhaps one of the most popular philosophers of all time and his work is one of the few that can be read for the pleasure of his writing style. Edgy modernists, anarchists and sadly, the stray fascist who misread his books, regarded for making the aphorism (aka the snarky cutting putdown) into an artform. Indeed Nietzsche was so beloved in France, that French writers in The '30s published articles to prevent the Nazis from appropriating him and clarifying that Nietzsche was an anti-racist and critical of anti-semitism in his own time.
• Karl Marx was admired by Communists and Socialists and is still admired by philosophers, writers and social scientists for the scope, style and wit of his writings. Contrary to what politicians made of his ideas afterwards he has the advantage that he was just a writer, so his legacy survived the fall of Communism unscathed. As Thomas Piketty, a self-identified anti-communist admitted, Marx could write very well.
• Jean-Paul Sartre was the most respected and influential French philosopher of the 20th Century, admired not in France, but also in Algeria, the Middle East, Japan, England, Latin America and the United States for his writings on Existentialism, his rejection of the Nobel Prize and his political courage. Over 50,000 people attended his funeral, all for a public intellectual who lived modestly and was such a constant Workaholic that he took amphetamines.
• In a massive case of Irony, just about any atheist activist/blogger/YouTuber gets this: Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, and The Amazing Atheist are just among them. It's enough that an atheist movement figurehead with fanatical followers that endlessly parrot their criticism of religion and creationism is not just a stereotype, nor the fabrication of Christian fundamentalists, but a given. Deconvertees will proudly cite influence from atheist movement leaders, just like how certain born-again Christians do the same for priests and televangelists. God help you (no humor intended) if you speak about religion favorably, admit to being religious or (worst of all) mention the positive things religious people have done for society around them.

Politics

• Every political party worships its founders and the politicians who benefitted the party the most by actual getting elected into office. Naming them all would take us to far and create intense flame wars between editors, so let's leave it at that.
• Every country worships the founder of their nation and some statesmen that have been beneficial for an internationally positive image of the country as well as achieving breakthroughs that were beneficial for people in the country itself.
  • France has Joan of Arc, Louis XIV, Napoléon Bonaparte,^note There are still Bonapartists in France to this day! and Charles de Gaulle.
  • Germany admires Otto von Bismarck for founding Germany as a nation. Chancellor Konrad Adenauer is respected for helping Germany to rise from the ashes of World War Two and becoming a strong, confident nation again in a matter of a decade, while giving it a more pacifist image internationally. In the election of "The Greatest German" (2003) ^note  "Unsere Besten" Adenauer came in first place. Chancellor Willy Brandt, admired for his peacemaking policies and publically acknowledging and apologizing for Germany's contribution to the Holocaust, came in fifth.
  • Greece admires Alexander the Great. In the election of "Great Greeks" in 2009 he came in first place. Other significant politicians that Greeks hold in high esteem are Eleftherios Venizelos, Ioannis Kappodistrias, Pericles and to a lesser extent, Andreas Papandreou. In the aforementioned 2009 election, all four of these figures landed at the Top 10.
  • India has such a reverence for Mahatma Gandhi, who made the country independent from the English, that he is practically considered divine over there. When the Greatest Indian (2012) election was organized he had to be excluded from the competition because otherwise he would have won heads down, which wouldn't have made the election that interesting. So he was place at #0, above all other candidates.
  • Italy admires Julius Caesar for his military and political accomplishments to the Roman Republic, but is even in more awe for Giuseppe Garibaldi, who united all the city states into one nation.
  • The Netherlands have William of Orange, aka "William the Silent".
  • South Africa has elevated Nelson Mandela to an almost divine status. Not only for his efforts in abolishing apartheid, but also for helping the nation to make the political and sociological change to a multicultural nation without resorting to civil war.
  • The UK admires Winston Churchill, but only for keeping the spirits of the nation high during World War II. Even his admirers admit that before 1940 most of what he said and did wasn't remarkable at all. The most admired English monarchs are William The Conqueror for being the first official king of England and Elizabeth I, for being a more moderate ruler who was tolerant in the field of religion and only engaged in wars out of self defense. In One Hundred Greatest Britons she was the highest ranked monarch at place #7.
  • The USA have the Founding Fathers, especially George Washington who was their first president. Abraham Lincoln is admired even more for keeping the nation together during its worst national crisis, The American Civil War, and making the anti-slavery laws a reality. Franklin D. Roosevelt is worshipped for helping the country get through The Great Depression and fighting the Axis during World War II, but has lost a lot of his admiration due to having been behind the unconstitutional internment of Japanese-Americans during that same war's time period. John F. Kennedy is the most recent US President who has achieved both national and international admiration of legendary stature.
• Che Guevara: While people like Stalin, Mao and Castro have lost a lot of their admiration due to having being revealed to be genocidical dictators Guevara is still untarnished as the perfect Communist icon to admire. His guerrilla's managed to be succesful in Cuba and nobody doubts that his passion for Communism came from the heart. His early death also made him a martyr. The unfortunate side effect is that Ché is perhaps the single most perfect example of Misaimed Fandom, with many young people just buying T-shirts and posters with his image just because he looks "cool" on it.

Professional Wrestling

• Vince McMahon is held in a very unique place of worship among professional wrestling fans: he's often hailed as the father, protector, and some arguing the creator of modern professional wrestling in launching the WWE, even in spite of his career being fraught with controversy and dissent, both as the heel-ish "Mr. McMahon" character and as a real-world businessman and public figure. Even his harshest critics tend to hold some level of reverence for him, since for better and for worse, his movements have helped push and define the entire medium of pro wrestling into becoming a global phenomenon.
• As Vince has gotten older, Triple H has become the the "force for good" to many fans due to both his impressive history in the ring and especially because of his creative work in developing NXT, one of the most acclaimed bastions of the WWE since its launch in 2010. The general trend is that if an episode of RAW or a pay-per-view drastically exceeds expectations, Trips receives almost all the credit while when the opposite is true, Vince is automatically blamed, even if actual proof of it is scant. Following Vince's retirement from being CEO and President of WWE in 2022 and Trips' subsequent promotion to Creative Content Officer and Executive VP of Talent Development and Relations, he's frequently credited as the major source of positive change in the company — from booking to rebuilding bridges with previously-released talent — following a long slump in quality under the previous reign.
• Smart Marks (especially the Internet Wrestling Community) worship Dave Meltzer. Ric Flair, in his autobiography, compared Meltzer's The Wrestling Observer Newsletter to The Bible.
• Fans of the original ECW often give Paul Heyman the full-on treatment. There's a reason why the word "Kool-Aid" seems to come up a lot while discussing ECW and its mutants?
• Gabe Sapolsky received a lot of creator worship after Ring of Honor's recovery from the RF Video Scandal was attributed to his booking. However, many people lost the faith after Dragon Gate pulled out of the USA branch he was booking and EVOLVE regressed from a fairly distinct promotion to DG USA without the pretension of still having anything to do with Dragon Gate, which was again attributed to his booking.
  • Since DG USA's folding into EVOLVE in 2014, however, EVOLVE has regained its place as an excellent promotion and Gabe has recovered his own reputation with the usage of fresh talent (Matt Riddle, Tracy Williams, Fred Yehi) and strong stories. Developing an official relationship with WWE hasn't hurt, either.
• Chavo Guerrero Jr. is one of the producers on Lucha Underground, where he also plays one of the slimiest, dirtiest, most despicable heels on the roster and consequently gets the expected amount of heel heat. However, whenever Kayfabe is allowed to slip (such as when Chavo came out and announced the Season 4 premiere date during the Lucha Underground vs IMPACT Wrestling crossover show) he gets riotously cheered, similar to Triple H on NXT.
• Ron "R-Truth" Killings remains one of the most beloved personalities on the WWE roster despite being almost always treated as a joke, largely because he's remained a very funny one. It's rare for any wrestler to be described as having some of his best work in his 40's to 50's, and the fact he's remained such a consistent source of laughs — most famously with his work with the 24/7 Championship — has won over many a fan and critic, with the common rhetoric being "R-Truth is a national treasure who must be protected."

Science

• Aristotle: For centuries, his scientific theories were considered dogma in Western civilization. He was seen as one of the biggest geniuses of the ancient world. Unfortunately, this also had a bad effect, because nobody dared to contest whether his theories were actually true. Aristotle had theorized a lot of stuff purely on observation, rather than testing it. This has diminished his stature quite a bit since The Enlightenment, but he is still seen as an important historical figure.
• Nicolas Copernicus: He is admired for daring to take a stance against church dogma about astronomical theory. Copernicus suggested that the sun was the center of the universe — or rather, our solar system — and not Earth, as many people thought. In both Poland and Germany ^note  Copernicus lived in regions that are nowadays part of both modern Germany and modern Poland he is still seen as a national hero.
• Leonardo da Vinci: He is seen as the most versatile genius the planet ever knew, being an expert in both painting and sculpting as well as making many breakthroughs in anatomy by dissecting human bodies and writing down his conclusions. He also showed great insight in physics, astrodynamics and how machinery works by writing down theories on many inventions that would only become reality centuries later. Only in the 20th century have people realized how ahead of his time this man actually was.
• Galileo Galilei: Galilei continued Copernicus' theories and contested Aristotle's theories, by testing them and discovering that heavy objects fall at the same speed as light ones, the Sun is indeed the center of the Solar System and making many astronomical breakthroughs. He is so revered by astronomers that his name has been used for space projects.
• Antoni Van Leeuwenhoek: This Dutch biologist did a lot of microscopical research that helped people's understanding of how the human body works and how illnesses operate. Humanity owes a lot to his man in the fields of medicine.
• Isaac Newton: His discovery and understanding of gravity, among many other scientific breakthroughs, have made him both a hero in physics, math and astronomy. He came in sixth place in One Hundred Greatest Britons.
• Edward Jenner: Inventor of the smallpox vaccine and pioneer of vaccination, a major medical breakthrough for which he is still revered to this day.
• Louis Pasteur: His discoveries of the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation and pasteurization helped creating vaccines for rabies and anthrax, among other maladies, and stopped bacterial contamination of milk and wine, which saved the lives of millions of people.
• Marie Curie: She is not only admired for her studies in chemistry and physics and pioneering research on radioactivity, but also for being one of the few female scientists who managed to devote her life to her work and overcame sexism in the scientific world. She was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize and even win it twice, as well as the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris.
• Albert Einstein: The most iconic scientist of all time, whose theories are often used as Word of God in physics, nuclear physics, astronomy, math, rocket science,... He is the most recognizable scientist to the general public and often used on posters and in advertising. He is also admired for his political stances (critical of racism, capitalism and the nuclear bomb).
• Alexander Fleming: His discovery of penicillin could be the most amazing medical breakthrough of all time, saving countless of lives. Therefore, he is seen as one of the most important scientists of the 20th century.
• Jonas Salk: Invented the polio vaccine, which won him many admirers in the field of medicine, and made him a hero to many people who benefited from being cured. But... he is also admired for his kindness, as he refused to take a patent on his vaccine, because he felt it should be accessible to everyone on the planet. It could have made him a millionaire, but human health was more important to him.
• Stephen Hawking: The most recognizable scientist of the last 60 years (as of 2021). Admired for both continuing his scientific research despite his medical condition, and for his enormous breakthroughs in the fields of physics, math, and astronomy. He is even a hero to the nerd community. The fact that he was permanently seated in his own hi-tech throne certainly contributes to his iconic status.
• Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of Pluto, was (and indeed still is) held in saintly regard among planetary scientists; this veneration is largely personal, since he was, by all accounts, a super nice guy.
• Jane Goodall. Her studies of chimpanzees in the wild helped to better our understanding of our fellow Earthlings, and she is one of the greatest champions of the environmental movement and the crusade for world peace. As such, she's a heroine to social activists, conservationists, ethologists, and laypeople everywhere.

Sports

• Simply every champion or winning team has crowds of worshiping fans. Some will even start hooliganism if their team loses a game or meets rival supporters. This is as old as spectator sport itself. Roman gladiators endorsed products and were cheered on by legions of fans, and women would collect their sweat to use in makeup. In the declining years of the Roman Empire, chariot team supporters clubs because so powerful that they could wield influence over the military, politics and even religion.
• A number of famous football (soccer) players and coaches have achieved near-godlike status in the eyes of their fans, and in the case of the very greatest, in the eyes of all fans.
  • Brazilian striker Pelé is still widely seen as the first and foremost authority in soccer and deemed the greatest striker, if not the greatest player, in history, having won The World Cup three times (1958, 1962, and 1970) before he turned 30.
  • Soccer player Sir Stanley Matthews, described by the BBC's obituary as 'the First Knight of English football', was renowned for his gentlemanly behaviour and discipline, never receiving even a yellow card in all thirty three years of his playing career. The aforementioned Pelé stated that Matthews was "the man who taught us the way football should be played". His training regime was ahead of its time, allowing him a remarkable longevity as a top level professional. Most modern players retire between the ages of 35 and 38, usually dropping down to less challenging leagues in the final years of their careers. The best goalkeepers sometimes extend this to 40. By contrast, when Matthews was 38, he singlehandedly inspired his Blackpool team to come back from 3-1 down in the 1953 FA Cup final against Bolton Wanderers, winning 4-3, in a match that is still widely known as 'the Matthews Final'. He continued playing for over a decade, remaining the only 50 year old ever to play in the top division of English football, and the oldest player ever to play for England, at the age of 42.
  • Soccer player Diego Maradona has a church. No, really.
  • Bill 'Shanks' Shankly, legendary former Liverpool FC manager, famous for taking the club to the summit of the English game, a position it would occupy for the best part of the 70s and 80s, stamped his image on the club and nearly forty years after his death is still nearly worshipped by fans.
  • During the 21st century Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo became basically the central focus of the football world.
• While not a creator San Francisco 49ers fans practically worship former owner Eddie Debartolo Jr, even chanting his first name during games.
  • Al Davis could count too for Raiders fans, though in later years fans became increasingly frustrated with him.
• Within boxing and among black people Muhammad Ali is such a huge internationally famous and respected icon that everyone agrees that he effectively is "the greatest".
• Babe Ruth is still the most iconic and revered baseball player of all time, untouched in excellence and admiration and one of American's biggest sport heroes.
• Eddy Merckx is still considered unsurpassed as the most successful cyclist of all time, with a track record that a single individual will probably never be able to match. In his homeland Belgium he is considered to be a national hero, one of the few both Flemish and Walloon people can agree on, especially since he is literally bi-lingual. In Italy, Fausto Coppi, Gino Bartali and Marco Pantani are seen in a similar light too.
• For motorsport, there are few people that fall in this category: Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost, Michael Schumacher, Mike Hawthorn, Niki Lauda, Juan Manuel Fangio, and Stirling Moss are some of the most prominent examples, especially Senna and Schumacher. The former even got a documentary dedicated to him released in cinemas!
  • Meanwhile, in the world of motorcycle racing, it's pretty much widely agreed upon that Valentino Rossi is the greatest moto racer of all time. In fact, when he lost the 2015 MotoGP title to rival Marc Marquez amidst controversies, many people felt Rossi was snubbed of the title. Kenny Roberts Sr., Giacomo Agostini, Antonio Cairoli, Joey Dunlop and Angel Nieto also enjoy widespread popularity.
• Cricket champion Don Bradman is still the best and most successful batsman the game ever had. A national hero in Australia.
• Michael Jordan remains an American hero and the man who popularized basketball internationally.
• Tiger Woods is the most successful golf player of all time at this point, though his heroic status has suffered a bit thanks to his adultery scandal.
• Wayne Gretzky is revered by ice hockey fans and across Canada as The Great One as he broke numerous records in ice hockey. His jersey number of 99 is retired throughout the entire National Hockey League.
• Professional League of Legends player Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok is one of the most celebrated and successful players of the esport, leading his team T1 into ten regional titles in the Korean league, as well as being the only player to have won four World Championships, and runner-up in two more.

Tabletop Games

• Look no further than Richard Garfield, PhD. Literally, if his own card is anything to go by. It's not every creator that gets to be depicted as a Biblical saint.
• Gary Gygax for Dungeons & Dragons (at least up until 3rd edition). His recent death has all but granted him full apotheosis.
  • Greg Stolze, another author of Tabletop Games, gets the same treatment nowadays.
• In the Exalted community:
  • Michael Goodwin, also known as Nephilpal, has become synonymous with everything good there is about Exalted, and his presence on a controversial project make the fandom happy. While he was an Ink Monkey for a time, he's now gone from the core team.
  • Holden Shearer (also a freelancer) was His Prophet, until he became an assistant to the developer.
  • Then there's the actual creator, Geoffrey C. Grabowski, whose return to the writing team for third edition produced waves of fan joy that knocked the roof off at least one building.

Theater

• William Shakespeare. He is considered to be the most genius writer and playwright who ever existed. Not only because his stories are engaging dramas, but also because he wrote characters that actually feel like real human beings. Which is an amazing feat considering this middle aged man wrote both vivid and believable parts for women, people in old age and men from different parts of society. Every actor in the world adds class to his CV by appearing in a Shakespeare adaptation. You can literally spend your entire career playing roles in nothing but Shakespeare plays, because they are so versatile in content, rich in clever language (both monologues and dialogues) and because there are roles for actors in all age brackets that can show off your own progress and veteranship as an actor. Shakespeare is also admired by linguists because he introduced many new words, or sometimes just popularized them, to the English language, a feat that most other writers have never surpassed in that quantitude. For centuries children in the UK have been taught Shakespeare as a mandatory school topic. There was a time in history when "Bardolatry" (as it was called by George Bernard Shaw) was the primary attitude. The modern critic is more likely to regard Shakespeare's collection of plays as just that: a collection of plays, written as entertainment for an Elizabethan audience, rather than "a map of life". Nonetheless, Bardolatry is very much alive. In One Hundred Greatest Britons (2002) Shakespeare was the only writer/playwright to enter the Top ten.
• Molière enjoys the same status as Shakespeare in the French speaking world, though he has the extra bonus of having a talent for comedy.
• Henrik Ibsen of Norway was so worshipped in his lifetime that even a Caustic Critic like George Bernard Shaw gushed over him. James Joyce admired his work so much that he learnt Norwegian just tor write his hero fan letters. Arthur Miller also admired him greatly and in Norway and other parts of the world he's seen as the father of modern theatre.
• August Strindberg: In Sweden Strindberg is seen as their most talented playwright of all time.
• Bertolt Brecht: Perhaps more widely admired outside of Germany than at home. His plays are admired and widely performed by actors and playwrights across the world and his music has been pillaged by every avant-garde songwriter and musician of The '60s.
• Luigi Pirandello: Italy's greatest playwright, so revered that he was elected at #7 in "The Greatest Italian" as the only writer to enter the Top 10.
• Samuel Beckett: In the second half of the 20th century Beckett is considered to be the most daring and experimental playwright and therefore hugely influential on modern plays.
• Stephen Sondheim may be the biggest musical theatre example, to the point where the most recent Broadway tribute to him (for his 80th birthday) actually had a song called "God."
• Jonathan Larson, the creator of RENT, gets this largely thanks to the circumstances of his death, in which he passed away before his show even premiered.
• Lin-Manuel Miranda, the actor/rapper/playwright behind In the Heights and Hamilton, is credited with bringing Broadway back to the mainstream with the explosive popularity of Hamilton during the mid-2010s.

Toys

• The founder of American Girl, Pleasant Rowland, named the doll and book company after herself (Pleasant Company) and was the head until selling it to Mattel in 1998. She nowadays doesn't do many interviews about the brand—she did some small ones for the 35th anniversary in 2021—but she still gets lauded as the ultimate founder with nothing but noble goals for the brand to educate young girls and give them historical heirlooms to treasure.^note This is in part due to the widespread dissemination of a story of her finding an old, well-loved doll in an attic in a storage trunk and being inspired to continue with the project, which was often posted on the back of catalogs. The story is embellished; the doll exists, but was actually a mint condition museum piece donated by the owner she had posed next to an older trunk. A lot of older fans (often older millennials and Gen Xs) who discovered the brand in the 1990-2000s, in a mix of Fan Myopia and Nostalgia Goggles while complaining about how things have changed since the Mattel purchase, say that things wouldn't be "terrible" if she was still in charge of the brand and could make the line focus on important eras of history instead of "flashy" new lines and times.
• LEGO comic, magazine and book scribe Greg Farshtey is this for BIONICLE. While not one of the line's original creators, he wrote over 90% of its fiction, interacted with fans and approved Official Fan-Submitted Content for a decade after the franchise ended. A segment of fans though think his writing drifted away from the franchise's original "spirit" and he developed a mixed reputation. Post-2010, more fans gravitated toward franchise co-creator, concept artist and creative manager Christian Faber. He also began to fall from grace in the 2020s due to his cryptic internet activity and for promoting NFTs, though many fans began supporting him once he explained the reasons for his secrecy.^note  He was in talks with LEGO, waiting for their approval to share his behind-the-scenes concept art. The fandom's love-hate relationship with them remains a topic of debate, but it's mostly the target of jokes. Co-creators Alastair Swinnerton and Bob Thompson are also well liked, but not as famous as Farshtey and Faber because they've had less online presence. The only people who have gotten constant praise but little to no name recognition are the Templar Studios game developers and animators, who made many of the franchise's fan-favorite early media. Strangely, none of the actual toy designers became worshiped, as they mostly avoided interacting with fans online.

Video Games

• Nintendo. Having revitalized the industry after the Video Game Crash Of 1983 and still remaining a strong contender in the hardware and software departments after many companies have come and gone, it's easy to see why they have loyal fans to their name. In addition, many people and sub-companies who work for them get their own individual worship.
  • Shigeru Miyamoto, he who created Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Pikmin, and had a hand in the creation a whole lot of other franchises people love. (He also acted as the producer for installments in series he didn't make himself, such as the Wii Punch-Out!! game and the Metroid Prime games^note with said games not being developed by the Nintendo EAD division Miyamoto typically works with, and also developed in North America instead of Miyamoto's home country of Japan.)
  • Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of Kirby and Super Smash Bros., is known and loved for his awesome games, and Even the Guys Want Him for his gentle mannerisms and boyish good looks. As Brawl managed to create such a Broken Base, in-fighting over his credibility has become quite common in the fandom of the latter, but the former's base still fully respects him big time. Kid Icarus: Uprising seems to have significantly bridged the gap between the dissenters.
  • Shigesato Itoi, acclaimed Japanese personality and creator of the Mother series.
  • Retro Studios has gotten some worship as of late, as they have revived the Metroid series into an enjoyable mix of FPS and Metroidvania action. And after that, they revived the Donkey Kong Country series in the leave of Rare.
  • Reginald "Reggie" "The Regginator" Fils-Aime and the late Satoru Iwata. The former is president of Nintendo of America, the latter ran the whole company. Fans often round them out as forming a Triforce with Shigeru Miyamoto. After Iwata's too-early death, a ''rainbow'' appeared over Nintendo's Kyoto headquarters◊, leading some to conclude that he had rode a "rainbow road" to Heaven.
  • Nintendo even has a remarkably saintly corporate financial policy: The company maintains unbelievable cash reserves (on the order of $5-10 billion) to guard against unexpected reverses. This means they could operate at a loss for decades if necessary without declaring bankruptcy, selling their intellectual properties, or laying off employees.
• Bungie Studios back when they still owned the Halo series. The sheer amount of fan input they allowed made the studio very popular.
  • Not only did Bungie get worshiped, but some employees got worshiped. A few of the highest worshiped were Shishka, Lukems, Urk, Marty, and, back when he worked for Bungie, Frankie. Frankie is now over at 343 Industries (the current studio in charge of Halo), which he runs.
  • To add to that, the old forum mods got worshiped. The most famous were Foman, Duardo, Recon Number 54, and a few others.
• Sony for their line of PlayStation consoles. After cementing optical discs as the new main form of game distribution, as well as for bringing 3D graphics mainstream and their open-door approach to developers, it’s not hard to see why many gamers are loyal to the company.
• Square Enix (Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, etc.)
  • As a side note, both Square and Enix had this going on before they merged (with some crossover between the two camps, but also some tension).
    • More specifically, Hironobu Sakaguchi (who left Square after the merger and is worshiped by old-school Final Fantasy fans) and Yuji Horii (who's still there and is worshiped by Dragon Quest fans) are the greatest subjects of creator worship. Other current or former Square Enix employees who have earned their own fanatical followings include Yasumi Matsuno (by fans of the Ogre Battle and Ivalice games), Nobuo Uematsu (By fans of Final Fantasy), Tetsuya Takahashi (by Xeno-fans), Masato Kato (by Chrono Trigger/Cross fans), Tetsuya Nomura (by Final Fantasy VII and Kingdom Hearts fans), Taro Yoko (by Drakengard and NieR fans), and Naoki Yoshida (a.k.a. Yoshi-P, by fans of Final Fantasy XIV)
• BioWare (makers of Baldur's Gate, Jade Empire, Knights of the Old Republic, Neverwinter Nights, Mass Effect, etc.).
  • Except for when a new game is announced.
• Sid Meier, as in Sid Meier's Civilization, Sid Meier's Pirates!, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri and Alien Crossfire, Railroad Tycoon, etc.
• Brian Reynolds, Sid Meier's long-time partner, also enjoys a bit of this status, as the mastermind behind Alpha Centauri and Rise of Nations.
• Rockstar Games, despite some criticism for their online practices, have gained a massive amount of respect from fans for their incredible work on the Grand Theft Auto series.
• Valve Software, for masterpieces such as the Half-Life series, Portal, Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike (although Counter-Strike was originally a Half-Life mod taken over by Valve, and Portal was originally a student project that had its team hired to perfect it using Valve's own development methodology). But Steam is pretty cool or extremely uncool depending on who you speak to, of course.
  • They're nearly as good as Pixar, actually - according to Metacritic, their lowest-rated game is Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, an expansion pack with 65%! Add on Metacritic's tendency to swing towards the middle, and the fact that all their full games are much, much higher (the lowest full game, Day of Defeat, has 78, and that nine out of thirteen scored games have 85 or more), and you have a beautiful average.
  • It's really telling that they're able to almost completely disregard release schedules and still have the fans remain on their side: yeah, they delay so much it's a Running Gag, but the game that comes out in the end is usually so good that the fans are willing to forgive the wait.
  • The head of Valve, Gabe Newell, has a cult of his own; when he spoke his email address online ([e-mail]) it led to fans employing "Gaben" in a similar fashion to "Amen".
• The guys at Rocksteady Studios earned a lot of well-deserved respect from Batman fans (and video game fans in general) for their work on the Batman: Arkham Series.
• Will Wright, the man who either created or was tangentially involved in all "Sim" games by Maxis. The best-selling game designer ever (With The Sims, its sequels and expansions, and all the numbered SimCity games).
• Richard Garriot, AKA Lord British, creator of RPGs as we know them in the form of the fanatically loved Ultima series.
• Warren Spector, creator of Ultima Underworld, System Shock, Thief and Deus Ex, which is a strong contender for the position of "best game ever," according to critics.
• John Carmack, one of the main men responsible for the Doom and Quake series and one of the first wildly successful game designers. Though his stock has dipped somewhat since Doom 3's lukewarm reception, "The Carmack" still commands attention when he speaks about game technology, especially 3D graphics engines, his specialty. The other members of id's founding pantheon (John Romero, Tom Hall, and American McGee) also attract their share of sycophants and loathers.
• Michael Kirkbride, who wrote much of the background religious lore for The Elder Scrolls series, had a hand in the spin-off game Redguard and the main quest of Morrowind, and still does some freelance work for the series on occassion. Going on the Imperial Library forum or the Lore subsection of the official Bethesda forum and saying anything even a little negative about any of his work, or even claiming one of his characters can be wrong about things (not all that hard to believe, considering all of the series lore is presented through in-character opinions multiple authors) will get you flamed, then firebombed, then regular flamed again.
• Telltale Games (formerly the beloved adventure game division of LucasArts) are on exactly the same wavelength as their fanbase, and most of the employees are moderators on the Telltale forums. They did lose this some of this status after allegations of mistreatment behind-the-scenes.
  • And speaking of former LucasArts employees, Tim Schafer also has a devoted following.
• CD Projekt RED not only created The Witcher game series with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt still regarded as one of the greatest games of all time, but fans also love how the company prioritizes consumer satisfaction over pure profit, using Expansion Pack-like DLCs as monetization while soundly rejecting Microtransactions/Loot Boxes. However, their reputation took a blow with the botched release of Cyberpunk 2077, which felt unfinished and was a straight-up Porting Disaster on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 (still no predatory monetization, however), as well as when they announced that Devotion would be available on GOG.com only to backpedal on that decision mere hours later in response to Chinese gamers still being angry at Red Candle Games for allowing a talisman insulting President Xi Jinping to bypass testing despite the insult being patched out (Devotion has since become available on RCG's new e-shop). CD Projekt have since been making an honest effort at making amends with their playerbase with their announcement that they'll start marketing their games closer to release, but only time will tell if they can regain most of their good reputation from before Cyberpunk 2077's launch.
• Hideo Kojima, best known for the Metal Gear series, Death Stranding, and Snatcher. In fact, one of the big reasons why Konami came under fire at the 2015's forward was because one of the targets of their mistreatments was Kojima and his franchise (signs of mistreatment has been quite visible before, but it's only after Kojima became a target that it erupted like wildfire).
  • "Kojima is God. Kojima is God."
• The various diaspora of Interplay Entertainment's RPG division (Black Isle Studios, Troika Games, Obsidian Entertainment) draw a merciless but fiercely devoted fanbase. A lot of Black Isle's creative team works at Obsidian now, so there is some justification for lumping them together.
• Infinity Ward. Don't even think about suggesting that any Call of Duty titles other than 1, 2, and the Modern Warfare games exist. And lord help you if you so much as suggest that Treyarch exists or that World at War was anything less than a travesty, despite insistence that it's a copy of 4 with World War II paint.
  • Which has backlashed with the release of Black Ops, with more people feeling that Modern Warfare 2 was far from great and the single-player a disjointed mess.
  • And now it seems Treyarch is being held up as the "only thing holding up the Call of Duty series".
• Seafood metaphors aside, Nasu Kinoko can do no wrong.
• Michel Ancel, creator of Rayman and Beyond Good & Evil gets this - to the extent that the above-mentioned Peter Jackson approached him to handle the game version of his King Kong (2005) remake.
• Goichi Suda and his studio, Grasshopper Manufacture, draw this, especially from art-game enthusiasts.
• Team Silent, the vaguely-defined group of individuals responsible for the first four Silent Hill games, are considered gods among men (especially now that they're split up) by many of the series' Unpleasable Fanbase.
• Even some video game composers get this - Koji Kondo, Nobuo Uematsu and Akira Yamaoka, to name just a few, are as beloved and worshiped as many game creators.
  • Jesper Kyd and Jeremy Soule
• Ryukishi07 gets this sort of treatment from When They Cry fans a good amount of the time. And it's a very masochistic kind of Creator Worship too, so the funniest thing is watching right after a new release as the When They Cry message boards erupt into flames of fans screaming "Oh my god! What does he take us for!" while paradoxically loving every second of it.
• Brian Fargo, the man behind Interplay Entertainment up until the... unpleasantness. Now running inXile Entertainment. Go on, laugh.
• ZUN, the "father" of the Touhou Project series, for being a Drunken Master who helped make a moe-filled Bullet Hell series via Success Through Insanity, which is extremely memetically popular and has a fanon almost as big as Vocaloid's. Any time he's announced as a guest of honor at a convention in the West, fans will travel far and wide to see him, making jokes about him popping into the local bar to try out some American booze. Apparently, ZUN can beat his own games while shitfaced, which probably doesn't sound too far off the truth given that he's admitted to being drunk for a good portion of his games' development times.
• Notch, Creator of Minecraft is revered as a physical god, to the point of having temples built in-game to him. However, this reverence has strongly fallen away in recent years, after he left the development team and started spouting some... controversial comments on Twitter. In response, memes popped up suggesting Hatsune Miku made Minecraft, or that the game came from outer space (which became an Ascended Meme when the possible tagline "It came from space" was added in 2019).
• PlatinumGames and Clover Studio (where many of its developers worked before) get this a lot, as when at Capcom, many of the games they made were considered to be some of Capcom's best, especially Ōkami. Same with how they are as PlatinumGames when a game they make is published by Sega.
  • More specifically, Hideki Kamiya gets this, easily being the most recognizable name from Platinum. As big as his ego is, this actually annoys him, as fans assume he's behind every great project from Platinum, and he has to constantly clarify that no, he's not the director of Bayonetta 2 and he had nothing to do with Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance nor NieR: Automata, and then he states the proper names fans should give credit to. Even prior to these, he also clarified that he had no hand in any of the Devil May Cry games past the first one. Not every fan hears these though.
• Daisuke Ishiwatari, for the Guilty Gear series. Because Guilty Gear started becoming a huge Cult Classic in the fighting game community around the release of XX, it became semi-common to start depicting Daisuke as Jesus and claiming he was an immortal savior of the fighting game genre who could do no wrong. This sentiment only got louder with the release of -STRIVE-, which caused a MASSIVE Newbie Boom for the series and brought it into the mainstream, getting a lot more people in on the joke. Daisuke himself has leaned into this a little bit, such as when clarifying Testament's gender in -STRIVE- he said "They have transcended human existence, just like me".
• Pre-Sonic '06 Sonic Team is worshipped by Sega fans for the Sonic the Hedgehog series as well as other masterpieces like Samba De Amigo, NiGHTS into Dreams…, and Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg. Yuji Naka in particular seems to be the most venerated, even though he has left. Naka's reputation took a big dive however, following the release of the critically panned Balan Wonderworld, where he then left the company due to its failure. His arrest over insider trading involvement within Square Enix has also seen similar mockery.
• Team ICO for their awesome games that usually get placed high on many "Best Games" lists.
• Keiji Inafune, the "creator" of Mega Man (he handled the art and graphics, but the creator is actually one Akira Kitamura. Inafune handled directing starting with the second game). It gets to the point where fans claim Fanon Discontinuity on any Mega Man game he didn't create. However, this reputation has faltered somewhat following the release of the ill-received Mighty No. 9 and the hectic events surrounding its development. With the success of the Inti Creates' Azure Striker Gunvolt series, many consider them the "better" Mega Man developers, despite the fact Inafune was also an executive producer of its main entries and had input on its development.
• Overkill Software gets a lot of praise from the more hardcore fans in regards to PAYDAY: The Heist and PAYDAY 2, mainly because the developers not only take input from the fans and communicate with them, but they also make the game genuinely difficult and don't have forced hand holding that a lot of games like to do.
• FromSoftware, creators of the Dark Souls franchise, widely considered one of the best franchises of the 2010's, with the first game topping many a "greatest games of all time" lists. On top of that trilogy, Demon's Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Elden Ring each being hailed as classics, with the latter being one of the highest rated games of all time. Within the company, president Hidetaka Miyazaki is often hailed as a genius and pretty much revered as a god by the (very passionate) fanbase, who often dismiss any criticism of his games as coming from "casuals" who just hate hard games because they're bad at them.
• Amongst Multiplayer Online Battle Arena games, the one most praised is IceFrog, for keeping up the updates to Dota 2 and doing it consistently to his and the old Dota visions, and doing it honestly that they don't mind him being an enigma (not interacting much with the fanbase). Most players of that genre have respect on the icy amphibian, even from rival game League of Legends.
• Toby Fox, the guy who brought to us Undertale and later its Spin-Off Deltarune.
• To Overwatch fans, former Overwatch director and Blizzard Entertainment VP Jeff Kaplan is lauded for his down-to-earth relationship with his audience, his regular discussion over major to minor community feedback, and being consistently open with communicating Blizzard's decisions and his personal opinions on them. He's also one of the most revered personalities of Blizzard in general, and even among it and Overwatch's harshest critics, he's noted for being one of the last members of Blizzard's "old guard" following its merge with Activision, often seen as retaining an awareness for player experience and satisfaction that the company has become increasingly divisive in their handling of. When his departure from Blizzard was announced in 2021, one of the biggest concerns was whether or not his successor — longtime co-director Aaron Keller — would be a worthy follow-up not just as director, but as the beloved face of Overwatch's dev team.
• Daisuke Amaya, a.k.a. Studio Pixel of Cave Story fame. He spent five years creating the freeware game as a labour of love, for no profit, and (unintentionally) opened the door for many indie developers to step in and fill the void of gameplay styles that the triple-A publishers had left behind, resulting in acclaimed games like Braid, Super Meat Boy, Limbo, etc.. He's also been put on a further pedestal following his and Cave Story's tumultuous relationship with Nicalis and their handling of his IP, with fans eager to remind newcomers to support him and his future projects beyond Nicalis' ports.
• CAVE is hailed as the Shoot 'Em Up genre's collective Jesus, being the company that codified Bullet Hell and which would produce many iconic shmups, like DoDonPachi and Mushihime-sama, including its infamous True Final Boss. Despite not having produced a new original shmup since Gothic wa Mahou Otome in 2015 and a new such game for arcades since DoDonPachi True Death in 2012, many shmup fans are convinced that the shmup genre will crumble when they close their doors.
• M2 is held in high regard by retro game enthusiasts and especially shmup fans for their top-notch video game ports that not only flawlessly emulate games but also add a wide variety of Anti-Frustration Features and even Arrange Modes, with their M2 ShotTriggers series being regarded as the pinnacle of shmup ports.
• Scott Cawthon's Nice Guy personality, friendly attitude towards the fans and releasing a new FNAF game each year has made him very well-liked by the Five Nights at Freddy's fanbase. As a result, many were upset about his retirement in 2021.

Webcomics

• For Andrew Hussie this verges on the terrifying. There's been some scattered reports (nothing officially commented on by Andrew) that he and his girlfriend have actually been stalked by fans. His girlfriend has however commented that people have tried to stalk them, but the extent is unknown.

Web Original

• The Nostalgia Critic. He is so adored that people are literally attacked in forums for merely suggesting that his videos aren't always that good or as good as they used to be. However, a Broken Base emerged after a series of reports gathered in an online document detailed accusations of negligence and abuses suffered by contributing producers at Channel Awesome from Doug Walker and the management. When the Critic's current fandom clashes with those of the former Channel Awesome members, it isn't pretty.
• Filthy Frank's Music/Joji is a very beloved example.
• The Nostalgia Chick. When her Fan Dumb clashes with the Critic's the results aren't pretty.
• Atop the Fourth Wall. Lewis was revered as one of the nicest members of Channel Awesome all the way until he left.
• Eliezer Yudkowsky of Less Wrong.
• I'm a Marvel... And I'm a DC has in-universe cases: Green Goblin and Deadpool are fans of their actors (the former gets a Heroic Second Wind once Willem Dafoe is insulted, the latter has a grudge on Green Lantern given Ryan Reynolds played him too), and the directors occasionally get praised as well (Wolverine has a grudge on Superman "stealing our director").
• The Mysterious Mr. Enter was one of the biggest examples of this. His fanbase had an extremely bad habit of parroting what he says about cartoons, defending him, and treating him like some sort of god, to the point where if you beg to differ, they'll hunt you down like a pack of wolves. It's especially obvious on YouTube, DeviantArt, and even this very website. He commented on the matter, saying that he appreciates people standing up for him, but thinks that some go way too far, arguing that he isn't special and should only get such treatment when he really needs it. As an example for people who went too far, he actually has a cyberstalker who continued to pursue him, even after he threatened to tell her family. His reputation began to falter due to backlash from his detractors tired of his fanbase's antics, and began to crumble after he posted several political rants in 2020, specifically journals and videos pushing back against mandatory mask-wearing during the COVID-19 Pandemic, declaring that healthcare isn't a human right, and saying that humanity will destroy itself by trying to save itself. The backlash was so severe that he wiped his DeviantArt account (he claimed it was because of him disliking DA's "Eclipse" layout), and he lost the support of former colleagues such as his former editor Crimson Mayhem.
• PewDiePie. When you're the largest independent creator on YouTube, this is bound to happen.
• Todd in the Shadows. His fans have a bad habit of parroting what he says about songs, albums and artists, but compared to other online reviewers' fans, will rarely beat someone up over having a differing opinion. It's especially obvious on this very website, where a number of page quotes on music-related pages are lines from his reviews.

Web Animation

• Edd Gould for Eddsworld.
  • Tom and Tord themselves are worshipped themselves for early episodes they worked on.
• The RWBY FNDM with Monty Oum, with some fans considering him the sole creator who could do little wrong, and his unfortunate passing is when they accuse the show of entering Seasonal Rot. This group dislikes criticism of Monty, objecting both to anyone who dislikes Monty's fight animation or prefers the fights of later volumes. Any faults within the show that they do acknowledge are blamed on the shows writers, Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross, who they accuse of ruining Monty's vision.
• Vivienne Medrano, for both Hazbin Hotel and the incredibly successful Helluva Boss, since they are both seen as breathing new life into a very stale and bloated genre that has been producing Family Guy clones for years with their dynamic animation style and heavy focus on dark and compelling plots, as well as how they have somehow managed to game the Youtube algorithm and amass tens of millions of views despite being chock full of heavy profanity and adult content, the sort of thing which is normally sent to the Youtube Shadow Realm never to be seen by anyone. She's also hugely beloved by LGBT people because both shows portay queer characters as complex and multifaceted as real people, while also making them really hot.
• Ben 'Yahtzee' Croshaw. Pick a review. Any review. The first fifty comments will be something along the lines of "Yathzee, you're a genius! I haven't played the game, but if you say it's bad, I'm not going to try it because I am such a loyal follower and not a gullible sheep!" (This leaves them looking dumb if he praises the game.) If Croshaw reviews a Japanese game, said comments will also invariably feature some manner of anti-Japanese sentiment. Despite his reputation, Croshaw himself has stated his displeasure with the notion that Reviews Are the Gospel - but a large portion of his fandom seems to have missed that bit.
• Gooseworx has heavily started to grow in popularity with the release of the pilot The Amazing Digital Circus, which has amassed over 100 million views in four weeks and has been praised as the best animated indie pilot since Hazbin Hotel. While she already had a fanbase before for her comedic animations of Newgrounds and previously working on Hazbin herself, the release of TADC has not only increased her following, but also the following for GLITCH Productions on YouTube. She has taken notice of this and resultedly expressed shock and bewilderment on social media.

Western Animation

• Ralph Bakshi, mentioned directly above, is notable for being one of the first animators who tried to show that animation wasn't just for children.
• Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park.
  • If you don't consider them to be gods, you are no fan of South Park.
  • There's yaoi of them. Quite a bit of it, too.
  • If you don't find this scene of BASEketball to be 'teh sex', you aren't a worthy fan of their works.
• Matt Groening of The Simpsons and Futurama. Groening's popularity has drastically fallen off as the quality of The Simpsons fell, even though he has hardly anything to do with the show anymore and doesn't even own the rights to it. Fox does. Showrunner and writer James L. Brooks, on the other hand, is nigh untouchable to fans.
• Bruce Timm and Paul Dini for Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series, and Justice League (called by some the Diniverse or the Timmverse).
  • Made even more frustrating by the fact that Alan Burnett was Bruce Timm's partner and Paul Dini's boss, and Alan Burnett ran story while Timm ran the art side of things, and Alan Burnett gets no recognition whatsoever. Greg Weisman spoke out about this more than once.
  • Paul Dini's following is probably notable for being extremely forgiving and reliable no matter what. Any infractions that would shove any normal writer off their pedestal (such as being a writer on Countdown to Final Crisis or making a live-action series for Cartoon Network) have apparently been swept under the rug as far Diniism goes.
  • Bruce Timm finally lost some of his luster with Batman: The Killing Joke, particularly in regards to how the film controversially portrayed Batgirl as emotionally needy and the sex scene between her and Batman.
• Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, AKA Bryke of Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra fame. Modern responses to them tend to be more critical due to the divisive reception of the The Legend of Korra and the sequel comics. Avatar: The Last Airbender being put on Netflix in 2020 also reignited discussion about the problematic aspects of representation in the series such as the portrayal of South Asians, and how the crew behind the series was overwhelmingly white and male (such as Bryke themselves) despite being focused on an Asiatic-inspired world.
• Mike Judge, the man (and lead voice) behind Beavis And Butthead and King of the Hill.
• Seth MacFarlane of Family Guy, American Dad! and The Cleveland Show. Ever since Family Guy was Un-Cancelled, however, a steadily increasing percentage of his fans have grown to hate him. Not helped that American Dad, which is better received than Family Guy, began undergoing a bit of Seasonal Rot and The Cleveland Show having more mediocre reception. However, his work on The Orville has helped win back some former detractors.
• Walt Disney, the patron saint of Western Animation and admired or envied by literally every cartoonist, animator and comic strip artist on Earth. His death is usually marked as the definitive end of the animation Golden Age.
  • So revered, he is the American version of King in the Mountain, rather than a politician.
  • Disney Animators, such as Ward Kimball get this as well.
• This was also the case for John Lasseter. In addition to becoming the Chief Creative Officer for Pixar (see Film) he's also taken the job for Disney's main branch as well, being viewed as a key figure for the studio getting out of its slump during the 2000s and regaining its title as animation juggernaut in the 2010s. Unfortunately, he became another high profile case in the late 2010's wave of sexual harassment claims across the entertainment landscape and was given a 6-month paid leave of absence as a result. This culminated in him being demoted to a creative consultant for the remainder of 2018 before being fired from the company.
• The creators of Kim Possible, Bob Schooley and Mark Mccorkle, along with frequent director Steve Loter.
• Greg Weisman, Disney writer and creator of Gargoyles, The Spectacular Spider-Man, and Young Justice (2010).
• Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, Mel Blanc, and the rest of the Looney Tunes gang.
• Dave Filoni, who has worked on not one, not two, but three widely beloved cartoons, with a fourth on the way. Some people have even gone so far as to say that Filoni is now the true heir to George Lucas in terms of being the man who still knows how to bring that irreplaceable Star Wars magic. The depth of this worship came to the forefront following the fallout The Last Jedi caused within the fandom, and especially the way some Lucasfilm associates handled it, led to a lot of fans dissatisfied with the direction of the sequel trilogy (including promient YouTube reviewers like Kristan Harloff from Schmoes Know and Collider), voicing opinions that Filoni should be put in charge of at least the creative department of the studio, if not the production side of it.
  • This eventually happened in 2020, when he was officially promoted to executive producer and executive creative director over all Star Wars films and TV shows!
• William Hanna and Joe Barbera, especially their work on Tom and Jerry.
• Don Bluth has some very rabid fans, though few will venture to defend the movies made during his post-All Dogs Go to Heaven pre-Anastasia years. They will however point to the heavy Executive Meddling behind the scenes though, whether that really excuses the movies or not.
• Jennifer Pertsch and Tom McGillis for Total Drama, who many fans see as "The King and Queen of Canadian Entertainment". Considering how diverse Total Dramas cast is and the new season has a gay couple and an amputee, one can see why.
• Lauren Faust for My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, who is (pretty justifiably) seen as the Team Mom to bronies and pegasisters everywhere.
  • It is widely regarded that Lauren Faust's Author Avatar (as seen here) is THE Third Alicorn of Equestria. Since Alicorns in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic tend to be goddesses, making OCs, particularly author avatars of them is usually considered as blatantly OP, unless you're Lauren Faust.
  • A few others of the show's staff get their own recognition by the fanbase. Daniel Ingram is loved for composing the show's Awesome Music, for example, and the writers of single episodes can get worshipped should their episodes get sufficiently popular.
  • Similarly, M.A. Larson and Meghan McCarthy are beloved by a good chunk of the fans for their habit of playing along with the Bronies and teasing them. It definitely helps that they're rather protective of their fanbase: Larson was rather incensed at how mean-spirited "Fame and Misfortune" was and, after being accused of having written it, the guy who normally takes glee in being blamed for such things made it very clear it wasn't him this time^note Apparently he wrote a very early version of the script that was allegedly more positive and much less aggressive to their fans, which then got manhandled by Executive Meddling against his, and apparently a lot of the show staff's, wishes. Notably the contentious episode "Bats!" was praised when it was accidecanlly credited to McCarthy, only to be condemned once the actual writer was revealed.
  • So is Tara Strong, the voice actress for Twilight Sparkle and the self-appointed queen of bronies.
  • In a similar vein John de Lancie, in comparisen to Lauren Faust being the mom and Tara Strong being the queen of the fanbase, was lovingly declared by one fan to be "that one really cool uncle who comes to visit from time to time and always gives you something cool so long as you don't tell your parents." People were very quick to agree.
  • While not as well known, Bonnie Zacherle the creator of the entire original My Little Pony is given similar treatment including her own motherly alicorn avatar designed entirely for her by fans. Responses range from "who is that" to praise, and woe be to anyone who bad-mouths her.
• Lauren Faust's husband, Craig McCracken, also has this, for The Powerpuff Girls, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends and Wander over Yonder.
• Stephen Hillenburg, creator of SpongeBob SquarePants, is so worshipped to the point that a lot of people considered SpongeBob to be going downhill once he left. The worship has only increased greatly after his untimely passing in November 2018.
• Daron Nefcy of Star vs. the Forces of Evil fame has been starting to get this, especially after the end of season 2. Unfortunately, this has gone down a bit after the fourth and final season's extremely controversial finale.
• Pen Ward gets a lot of this.
• Genndy Tartakovsky, creator of Dexter's Laboratory, Samurai Jack and Symbionic Titan.
• Dan Povenmire and Jeff "Swampy" Marsh, the creators of Phineas and Ferb, also called Dan and Swampy.
• Ben Bocquelet and a few more of the show's writers, namely Jon Foster and James Lamont, are beloved by fans of The Amazing World of Gumball.
  • However, they have lost a bit of popularity during seasons 3 and 5... for some fans, at least.
• Alex Hirsch, for Gravity Falls. He gained even more popularity among his fans after the second season.
  • In SDCC 2015, He stated that he has a fan group dedicated to making fan art of himself.
• Rebecca Sugar for Steven Universe and her previous work on Adventure Time.
• Richard Williams has had this for so long that he eventually started to believe it.
• Transformers has a lot of this:
  • The voice cast of the the original cartoon are almost universally beloved for how they managed to give every character a unique, distinctive voice and personality. Peter Cullen, Frank Welker, and Corey Burton get it the most, to the point that they regularly return to reprise their roles in later entries. Victor Caroli is also widely considered the narrator of the franchise; if anything Transformers related has a narrator, it’s almost always either Caroli himself or a soundalike of him.
  • The entire cast and crew of Beast Wars tends to get this, due to how well-loved that series is. Bob Forward and Larry DiTillo are praised for their writing of the series, while the voice cast receive endless love for the same reason as the G1 cast. Scott McNeil tends to get the most voice actor worship, mainly because he voiced SIX different characters on the show and still managed to make almost every one sound completely different.
  • Derrick J. Wyatt and Marty Isenberg are often credited with making Transformers: Animated great and worshipped accordingly. The fact that the former is a Promoted Fanboy really helps.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: ND Stevenson's fans are, shall we say, intense.
• You'd be hard-pressed to find a fan of The Owl House who doesn't call Dana Terrace a "queen". Considering her tireless efforts to include groundbreaking queer content and fearlessness in the face of Disney (her own employers and practically gods in the entertainment industry) whenever they do something she opposes, one can see why.
• The Backyardigans fans young and old revere the creator of the show, Janice Burgess. Apart from creating this beloved nostalgia classic, she was also the executive in charge of production for Nick Jr., overseeing the development of shows like Gullah Gullah Island, Blue's Clues, and Little Bill. It's safe to say that without her, Nick Jr as we know it wouldn't the same. She also set a positive example by being a black woman in animation, since black (especially black woman) showrunners are still very rare. Many tears were shed when it was announced that she died in March 2024.

Other

• Steve Jobs who during his time was said to "radiate a dazzling aura of RDF (Reality Distortion Field)" which enraptured those around him. Even after his death, his name is still invoked but mainly with "Apple is doomed without" preceding it.
• Fred Rogers of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood is so revered he is a Great God of the TV Tropes Pantheon and a minor god in Dungeons & Dragons. Do not make any mention of him being anything less than the perfect mortal human being if you want to remain alive on the Internet. Or pretty much anywhere else, for that matter. This man is a patron saint to thirty years of children. It's gotten to the point 4chan (yes, THE 4chan) bans anyone who even dares to speak negatively against him.
• Legendary bicycle mechanic and writer Sheldon Brown. Ask a question about bike repair and you'll invariably be sent a link to his site. The articles on his website are considered Word of God for anything bicycle related, although most people don't realize new writers have been updating the site since Brown died in 2008. He is also credited as a major contributor to the fixie craze.
• Media reviewers (e.g. Roger Ebert, Leonard Maltin, Robert Christgau, etc.), both in print and online (mostly those of the Caustic Critic type), tend to get this. Their admirers have an extremely bad habit of parroting their opinions and treating them like gods, to the point where when the creator of a panned work tries to one-up negative reviews, they'll mercilessly mock them to no end.

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