Basic Trope: The Devil is real, but the jury's out on God.
- Straight: Despite the Devil being real, and taking part in world events, God is never seen and rarely mentioned.
- Exaggerated:
- The Devil has total control over Earth while God is MIA.
- Satan, not God, created the universe.
- Downplayed:
- While the Devil's influence is felt more strongly, God is still in full control of creation.
- Only the Devil shows up in person, but God's involvement is still evident.
- Justified:
- God's total committment to free will and non-intervention in human lives allows the Devil plenty of leeway.
- God has no jurisdiction over the earth-like layer of hell where the story takes place.
- Inverted: God is real, the Devil isn't.
- Subverted:
- It seems as if God is absent, until it's revealed Satan is only a tempter meant to work sinners into the people God wishes them to be, revealing that God is in fact in control of the entire argument between good and evil.
- There is one malevolent supernatural presence. But it's actually just an evil god.
- Double Subverted: But then it turns out that Satan was pretending to be God to get people on his side. Meanwhile, God is still nowhere to be seen.
- Parodied: "There ain't no devil, that's just God when he's drunk."
- Zig Zagged: God and the Devil take turns in revealing and concealing themselves from observation based on their needs.
- Averted: Neither God nor the Devil are mentioned.
- Enforced: Most lives—and stories—would be pretty dull if the Devil didn't take at least some interest.
- Lampshaded: Have you felt the Presence today?
- Invoked: The Devil can remain at the forefront of life so long as sinners keep sinning.
- Exploited: The Devil uses God's seeming absence to sap the Church's strength and make more sinners.
- Defied: Both God and the Devil exist and take active roles in temporal affairs.
- Discussed: "If there's a God in Heaven, what's He waiting for?"
- Conversed: "There's no God, but there's a Devil? I mean, I get the nihilistic idea of "There is no God", but you can't just have a big force of evil without a force of good to balance it out!"
- Implied: While plenty of devils, demons, succubi and other hellish effluvia have been documented, there are absolutely no accounts of angels.
- Deconstructed:
- The existence of evil without a counterbalancing good says some pretty nasty things about the nature of the universe.
- If God does exist, his silence and indifference put Him in the same league as his counterpart.
- Reconstructed:
- God may be absent physically, but His spirit is omnipresent and, in a sense, invincible.
- Satan has free reign in the physical world, but lives on borrowed time and will inevitably face God's judgement. God essentially Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing and acts through subtle means.
"Come in, Father Morning. Enter, knight. This time you're going to lose."
