The Juggler of Worlds, Aurelien Police
Ego: What madness do you mouth? You are but a single being, and I a world entire!
Galactus: The words you speak are true! In all of space I stand alone... but I have no need for an ally, for I am Galactus! The be-all and the end all am I!
Galactus: The words you speak are true! In all of space I stand alone... but I have no need for an ally, for I am Galactus! The be-all and the end all am I!
A cosmic entity is any being so great it can inherently affect entire planets, stars, galaxies, and possibly even the entire universe (or in some cases, entire multiverses.) If there is more than one such entity in a setting, there will usually be different levels of power between them, and often specific responsibilities as well, forming a kind of Fantasy Pantheon.
Cosmic Beings tend to not care much about "lesser beings" (anybody who isn't "cosmic") and any harm (or good) they cause is often unintentional. Because of their level of power, when they cause trouble the heroes are often forced to try to reason with them, use a Cosmic Keystone, or ask another Cosmic Entity for help (very rarely can they punch them out.)
A cosmic entity could be any of the following:
- Abstract Eater
- All-Powerful Bystander
- Author Avatar (depends on how it's written)
- Barrier Maiden
- Beast of the Apocalypse
- Born of Heaven and Hell
- Celestial Body
- Cosmic Flaw
- Cosmic Keystone
- Dimension Lord
- Energy Beings (depends on how it's written.)
- Galactic Conqueror
- Genius Loci
- God
- Great Gazoo
- Guardian of the Multiverse
- Imagination Destroyer
- Mythical Creatures (interpreted most liberally or literally)
- Angels (depends on how it's written, although it’s usually archangels.)
- Anthropomorphic Personification
- Genies (depends on how it's written.)
- Demons (depends on how it's written.)
- Dragon Tropes (depends on how it's written.)
- Gods (depending on how it's written.)
- Psychopomp
- Multiversal Conqueror
- The Omnipotent
- The Omniscient
- The Omnipresent
- Powers That Be
- Reality Warper
- Sentient Cosmic Force
- Spacetime Eater
- Spirits (depending on how it's written.)
- Sufficiently Advanced Alien (depends on how it's written.)
- Superpower Lottery
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Ah! My Goddess has the gods and demons. They are hyper-dimensional entities that only manifest in the physical world through projections from Ygg-drasill, the world computer. When they release their limiters, they are capable of cracking dimensions and shatter planets with zero effort.
- In Berserk, the Godhand and the Idea of Evil are the ones responsible for the Crapsack World Berserk universe is through manipulating Causality.
- In Saint Seiya, all the gods are this, being Dimension Lords of their own domains.
- Dragon Ball is an odd case where most of the cosmic entities are better known for their special tricks and job titles rather than their strength, many being weaker than some of the comparatively mundane martial artists, mutants and cyborgs(because this is a setting where an out of shape old man can destroy the moon if he is sufficiently skilled in martial arts). With that said, the main ones are the dragons called by said balls which can be traced back to the reality warping Zalama. Then there are the Kaioshin, gods of creation who in turn rule over lesser kai that watch over galaxies, who in turn rule over appointed gods of individual planets. Then there is Emma Dao/King Yemma and his oni/ogres, which rule the afterlife and run the reincarnation process(Dragon Ball Z: Revival of F and Dragon Ball Super imply there are multiple Oni/Ogre lords working as intermediaries between appointed gods and kai). Then, in compliment to the Kaioshin is Beerus, god of destruction, whose job is to recycle material for the Kaioshin by destroying old planets. He operates independently of them, however, once destroying an entire galaxy cluster to make the point clear. There are also angels of several kinds, whose jobs range from keeping populations planetary gods oversee from becoming too technologically advanced, to soothing souls sentenced to endure the tortures of hell, to reigning in gods who abuse their positions. Beerus was the star of a movie which touched on how a few saiyans created their own cosmic being independent of the rest. Most of the Kaioshin were killed off by another outside of the known order; a primordial entity that took on a shape known as Majin Buu by absorbing the evil of humans for eons before being dumped on the Kaioshin home worlds by an ambitious wizard.
- YuYu Hakusho has any and all S-class beings. Even the weakest of them can bust planets and the strongest of them can handle legions of lesser S-classes while closing their eyes.
- In Bleach, Soul King creates, watches, and sustains all of reality.
- Fullmetal Alchemist has the Truth, who watches over every alchemy process in the universe.
- Future Diary plays with the trope. Characters are holding a competition to see who will become the new God of the universe, with the previous God, called Deus Ex Machina, are supervising the game.
- Lyrical Nanoha has the Book of Darkness. Well, considering it blows up planets on regular basis it goes without saying.
- In Neon Genesis Evangelion, Adam and Lilith are two of these. Humans messing with Adam led to most of the problems in the Backstory(Adam apparently refused to actively defend itself from human exploitation but the backlash from injuring it was still a near extinction level event). The "angels" turn out to have no issue with humanity. They are just pilgrims trying to reach his remains. The one angel capable of communicating with humans isn't too happy to hear completing said pilgrimage(touching said remains) might wipe humans off the Earth, but the angels were tricked anyway by switching Adam's remains with Lilith's (angels apparently can't tell the difference at a distance).
- One-Punch Man: Saitama. So insanely powerful to the point running faster than the speed of light is his equivalent of Nonchalant Dodge and destroys a planet-busting laser beam with..well, one punch. The more powerful villains, such as Boros and Garou, while nowhere as powerful as Saitama, are capable of becoming Galactic Conquerors relatively easily, and are so strong no one except Saitama can defeat them. None of them necessarily started out as cosmic functions either but gradually slid that way, to their mild displeasure.
- By the end of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, the titular character has shades of this. She rewrites all of reality so that witches are no more and magical girls don't turn into them. When your powers bend reality to make it Lighter and Softer, you know you are this.
- At the end of Rebellion, Homura Akemi qualifies too. She can break the aforementioned example into pieces, take "her mortal aspect" of her, and create an entire universe to lock said pieces for herself. Her paradise is arguably even better than Madoka's.
- In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, pretty much the entire Spiral race, i.e. us has the capacity to build these. As do the Anti-Spirals.
- Tenchi Muyo! has the Choushin: Hyper-dimensional entities far beyond any dimensional space, who created all of existence as an experiment, and are so far beyond the requirements for omnipotence and infinite power that "God" or "D3" is the lowest of their servants, ruling the 3-dimensional reality for them. And then there is the title character, who is as omnipotent compared to them as they are compared to regular humans.
- Anybody who is capable of wielding lighthawk wings also qualify as cosmic entities, including Z, the Zinv, Ryoko, Ryo-Ohki, and Jurai Royal Tree ships. Being able to invert or create black holes at will, and possessing enough energy to fill a universe.
- Toward the Terra has the Type Blue Mu(s), although their great powers can be easily nullified using Power Nullifiers.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! has too many to properly list here. Concerning the card game, it's similar to Dragon Ball in that many don't have impressive stats, due to competitive balance dictating that if they could hit hard on top of their often catastrophic abilities they would be too central to the game. Concerning the world the players of the game live in, they are lucky such things usually keep to themselves and usually just want to play the card game when they do visit civilization.
Comic Books
- Marvel Comics may be the "king" of this trope, as it has introduced dozens of entities over the years, with highly shifting or conflicting definitions and relationships to each other. The only constants are that The One Above All and the Living Tribunal are at the top of the hierarchy (and not surprisingly, they do the least). This has recurrently lead to fanon categorization dedication, selective favorism, and speculation. Many of these beings are Anthropomorphic Personifications of natural forces, or granted Omniscient Morality License for narrative purposes. These include, but are definitely not limited to:
- "The One Above All", an entity that has very rarely been shown to exist, but is the absolute Supreme Being of Marvel Comics.
- The introduction of the All-New, All-Different Marvel universe brought an attempt to change the scale around and establish a clear hierarchy, starting with the reveal of an entity known simply as the The First Firmament. It not only predates all of the cosmic entities in the marvel verse, but was in fact the very first iteration of the Marvel Omniverse itself and is actually responsible for the existence of all of the Celestials and all the known abstracts, including Eternity himself. Some may have been more indirect than others, as it is suggested The Celestials introduced Death to the multiverse in an attempt to get rid of their creator. The First Firmament's creations have not functioned as intended, and it would gladly destroy the reality it is responsible for if it could ensure the plan would not fail again.
- The Living Tribunal, who in theory is supposed to act as the One Above All's Guardian of the Multiverse enforcer and highest judge of law, but generally stands by even in times of multiversal genocide and according to She-Hulk, herself a lawyer, is gladly willing to wipe out entire universes in favour of ones that it simply likes better. It also enforces the nightmarish, Disproportionate Retribution, Easy Road to Hell afterlife system.
- The Infinites, which are higher-dimensional entities far beyond Eternity, who don't really notice anything that goes on in the lower multiverse except through accident, but aren't malevolent as such.
- "The embodiment of the universe" Eternity and his female counterpart Infinity; and their opposites, Death and Oblivion.
- Master Order and Lord Chaos, who, in an unusual variation of the trope, usually work together. It's their balancing agent The In-Betweener, who tends to rebel or cause trouble.
- The Friendless: Entropy, Eulogy, Epiphany, Empathy, Enmity, Expediency, and Eon, as well as Origin, Anomaly, and Unbeing, and Love and Hate. Also, Eon's daughter Epoch, who was delivered by Quasar.
- The Fountainhead (Dreams/Creativity), Nightmare, King Coma, Madness, D'Spayre, and the Dweller-In-Darkness.
- Abraxas, refered to as embodiments of destruction and an antithesis of Eternity; and Mikaboshi, as chaos, void, and nothingness, and also an antithesis of Eternity. Although technically those positions were already taken by Death, Entropy, Chaos, and Oblivion.
- The Celestials, a whole race of trans-universal scale entities who guide evolution as a means to produce more Celestials, serve the Fulcrum to balance the universe, or something else. One of the Celestials calls itself the one of above all, but it has no relation to the entity described further up the page. Others include Ashema and The Judge.
- The Horde, Insectoid Aliens so powerful the discovery of them caused The Celestials to alter their modifying and creating routine in an effort to appease them, both parties going to yet another cosmic entity known as The Fulcrum to act as their arbiter. The Horde are responsible for the god vs Celestial conflict, by way of a god organizing a force of modified mortals in an effort to restrain a Horde infested Celestial.
- The Cosmic Cubes (The Beyonder/Kosmos/The Maker, Kubik, The Shaper Of Worlds) who are created by entities outside the normal universe (The Beyonders) as a way to understand our reality.
- The Phoenix Force, Depending on the Writer alternately the embodiment of life and rebirth, the potential psionic energy of all living beings, or both.
- Galactus, a Sufficiently Advanced Alien who is the balancing function between Eternity and Death, which somehow involves a regular high-proteine diet of sentient civilisations, and who only occasionally considers that non-sentient stars and cosmic power sources have a much higher energy content.
- Depending on the Writer Galactus can or cannot feed off of stars or other energy sources. Some stories he can, others he cannot, others those sources work temporarily and sooner or later he needs to feed on a planet. Galactus was later revealed to be the seal on Abraxas. He was appointed as such by The Phoenix Force while researching the end of the previous universe, and his diet of planetary civilizations helps keep Abraxas from simply killing everything everywhere all at once. The rest were just excuses he came up with to make himself feel better about the whole thing.
- The Stranger, a former aspect of the Tribunal, which it removed to be able to interact with existence, and who has acted as an outsider and cosmic schemer ever since.
- Kronos, who was formerly the leader of the Eternals, due to an explosion caused by an experiment gone wrong he lost his physical form and became one with the universe and time, allowing him to manipulate it.
- The higher forms of extradimensional divinities, such as the Vishanti, who spend most of their time thwarting the rest.
- The Faltine, pseudo energy beings of multidimensional origins. Dormammu and Umar were banished to the main setting for the crime of murdering their father, where they were invoked by foolish magicians and conquered many universes.
- The Many Angled Ones (Shuma Gorath being the most well known of them) are a race of ancient & seemingly immortal alien monsters who have fed on the fear of younger species, turned whole planets into killing fields for amusement, sought to eliminate death and left life continue on in a cancerous state and such.
- The Watchers, a race of Sufficiently Advanced Aliens who can manipulate cosmic energies on par with Galactus but have sworn never to interfere. Somehow they have a rivalry with the Celestials, though Uatu (the Watcher normally assigned to Earth and one of the few to qualify as an actual character) specially says that the reasons for and nature of this rivalry would be impossible for humans to comprehend.
- Numerous pantheons of largely Jerk Ass Gods. Most of whom are "only" natural parts of the universe, other "dimensions" or "planes" who got a kick out interfering with the development of life. They got kicked out by The Celestials, who felt only they should do that. This explanation mostly exists to differentiate them from The Eternals, mortals modified by Celestials and given godly names, after it was decided to bring eternals into the main continuity. How exactly turning away something like that works and how they differ from Abstracts was wishy washy, but gods usually range above Eternals, who aside from Kronos are rarely out and out cosmic, but below Abstracts. Still there are exceptions, as most Abstracts run and hide if they suspect Shinto's God of Evil Amatsu Mikaboshi or the alien death god Walker are around.
- Power Pack encountered an Affectionate Parody of Guinan calling herself Numinus. She is the enemy of depression, ally of scientific curiousity, averter of disaster and inspirer of spirituality. Her "kharmic mircacles" range from causing crooks to slip on banana peels, to preventing The Fantastic Four and Spider-Man from dying of radiation poisoning, even to reviving interstellar civilizations on the brink of collapse. In the pages of Groot it is revealed that Numinus herself is losing a battle with depression since the universe remains a terrible place to live no matter what she does. Groot cheers her up though.
- Quasar once met Anthropomorpho, the living incarnation of the idea of having living incarnations of abstract concepts. Seriously.
- The Demiurge, a passive guardian that provides emergent biospheres with protective measures until they have developed enough to defend themselves. It's most famous creations, The Elder Gods, are also its greatest failures. It eventually throws its hands up and creates a "Utopian Parallel" divorced from the universe's time and space, where everyone can enjoy enviornmentally sustainable technology, superpowers and love without restriction. The Time-Keepers say that the Demiurge will be born when Scarlet Witch bears a child, apparently unaware Demiurge already exists.
- The Elder Gods, who are not the same as the previously described pantheons. They grew from seeds planted by the sentient part of Earth's biosphere to protect the emerging life. Most of them became corrupt and were destroyed by the Demogorge, the only one who remains near Earth, sleeping the in sun. The other known survivors, Set, Gaea, Oshtur, and Chthon, hide away in their own personal dimensions. There are also Elder Gods from other planets like Knull, who attempted to kill all other gods of all types to the point it did nothing to stop the bioshphere it was supposed to be protecting from being eaten by Galactus.
- Demon lords from a wide variety of origins, though only a select few are actually powerful enough to qualify for this trope. Splinter Realm lords such as Mephisto, Santanish, Plotka, Marduk Curios and The One Below All are among those who do under the right circumstances.
- A few angels, of whom little is known as they usually only show up when absolutely necessary. The Arch Angel Uriel and The Dark Angel Of Death are among the more commonly sighted, and the smarter Splinter Realm lords usually do all they can to keep them passive when they are visible. Another semi common sight, Lazaer, claims to be the dreaded death angel Azrael/Azriel, but is best known for being humiliated by Venus and Wolverine.
- Angela: Asgard's Assassin revolves around "the return" of another group of angels independent of all others previously witnessed. They were so bad Odin severed their realm from The World Tree. To put it in perspective, not even the Fire Giants, who once burnt an entire galaxy, could get him to go that far.
- The Elders Of The Universe, life forms from the start of The Universe who can manipulate energies from The Big Bang and live until they lose the will to. They eventually let anyone join their club if they managed to outlive the rest of their species and their native galaxy, so not every member is this trope: The Grand Master, Runner, Champion and Collector are. Ego The Living Planet was allowed in, claiming to be a Single Specimen Species and then blowing out every star in his galaxy himself.
- Korvac is one as is the Sentry/The Void at his most powerful.
- The web spinners, who operate in the center of existence, spinning the fabric of the universe, which connects everyone to everything, writing all of reality, every emotion, thought, word, and deed into the "cosmic web of life". Also "The Great Weaver", which does the same thing while empowering spider totems. Also "The Master Weaver", whose relationship with The Great Weaver is not quite clear. The Master is particularly wimpy. Someone as lowly and non cosmic as Doc Oc can undo his weaving, but messing with The Master Weaver's work does have catostrophic consequences on a multi universal scale.
- Occasionally, a few of the most powerful "Omega Level" mutants mutate into this trope, such as Nate Grey, who was genetically engineered to become one and Franklin Richards, who has a scale of power on par with the Celestials, can warp reality and create "pocket dimensions". In one alternate future, the son of that universe's Franklin Richards and Phoenix Force host Rachel Summers, Jonathan Richards aka Hyperstorm, ended up as a mutant with complete control over Hyperspace, which also gave him power on par with the Celestials. The Fantastic Four eventually beat him by feeding him to Galactus. Then there is Legion, who has thousands of Omega-level powers, including one that lets him rewrite reality and wipe out hordes of Elder Gods.
- Wanda Maximoff, AKA The Scarlet Witch is a Nexus Being who can rewrite reality on a universal scale, and cause multiversal levels of destruction if she’s not careful. At first, she was belived to be a mutant, but it was revealed that not only is she and her brother (Pietro Maximoff/Quicksilver) are not mutants, they’re not even Magneto’s Children. The true source of her mystical powers come from one of the Elders Gods, Chthon.
- Time-Keepers, entities originating from the far edge of time, born from the Time Variance Authority's misguided attempts to prevent old mistakes from recurring in new universes, produce clean renewable energy and give TVA employees retirement benefits. Time-Keepers are generally well meaning, if arrogant enough to ignore the judgments of the Living Tribunal and tell Watchers what they can and cannot watch, but think nothing of say, destroying a populated planet in a certain period of time as a byproduct of anything they do so long as it continues to exists at some other date. They once even destroyed most of the multiverse under the assumption it was mostly "unnecessary".
- The Time-Twisters originate from an edge off a split in the timeline that resulted in the Time-Keepers, and are even worse than they are. Time-Twisters primarily seek to gain knowledge and ensure their own continued existence, regularly erasing entire eras and or setting off chain reactions that result in the end of universes. Sometimes Time-Twisters pose as Time-Keepers, to take advantage of Time-Keepers' slightly better reputation.
- The Scrier, a temporal and causality manipulating entity predating the TVA who is responsible for building and maintaining the history and fate of populated planets(apparently independent of the Web Spinners), Earth being a favorite of his. He has the authority to take heralds away from Galactus and is one of the few beings who can do anything about The Other.
- The Other are the Marvel Comics' take on The Greys. They are a mental projection of one or more entities alien to the universe itself whom not even most abstracts, let alone Puny Earthlings, can hope to grasp the true form of. They have psychic powers potent enough to subdue Galactus, only failing in that they couldn't completely remove his memory of them, and can infect their enemies with "viruses of the soul" that wipe out entire planetary biospheres unless someone like Scrier steps in. And even he needed to manipulate the nexus of all realities just to temporarily get rid of them.
- The Divine Creator is a being that exists apart from the nexus of all realities, who brings more realities into the nexus every time it dreams. The Marvel Comics setting is one of its dreams perpetuated by a relative few who have interacted with The Divine Creator directly, and should the dream ever end so will Marvel. It is responsible for "the concept of love" coming into existence, and its very revelation clashed with everything established about Marvel cosmology introduced prior, plus most that came since. Much suggests it is the only thing on this list that could rival The One Above All... but it has no interest in such a thing.
- The Fallen Stars, would be students of The Divine Creator that had been hanging around the general area before Marvel Comics as we know it became established. They can negate Oblivion and appear where needed when the nexus of all realities suffers damage. Their number include Adam K'ad-Mon, Original Man and guardian of the Primal Matrix, which is in turn the focal point of Marvel's Multiverse, Sorrow, who usually appears as a perpetually weeping mute woman who fills all around her with hope, Cleito, who favors the appearance of the god Poseidon's mortal lover but also sometimes appears as a rosebush or a hybrid of the two, and Amodeus Q. Termineus, finality made flesh who impersonates an Atlantian god. Each of them has read and come to embody a thought of The Divine Creator, specifically to keep its dreams of Marvel alive, except for Terminus, who is looking for a way to permanently destroy all reality. Also The Men Of Lineage, who live solely to keep The Divine Creator dreaming out of fear it will fall into a dreamless sleep and stunt the development of new realities. They are not perpetual like The Fallen Stars but pass right, power and responsibility from generation to generation.
- DC Comics also have their share:
- The Over Monitor, a form of "life" so removed from our own it doesn't really qualify as a character. Nonetheless, it is "alive" in some sense of the word and the entire DC multiverse/hypertime/whathaveyou is akin to a bacterium in/on it. Beings from beyond the fifth dimension built a machine the protagonists call "Thought Robot" or "The Cosmic Armor Superman" for the purpose of traversing and studying it. Several more defined characters have taken on the title of Overmontior or been mistakenly given it by the ignorant.
- The Writer, who adds to, subtracts from and changes the Over Monitor at will, and may or may not be responsible for putting the DC Comics setting(s) on/in it.
- The Monitor, a being of much less significance than The Overmonitor, whose job is to keep the DC Comics multiverse running smoothly. The Monitor has an antimatter counterpart in the Anti Monitor, who often seeks to consume the positive matter multiverse.
- The Presence, and the Source, which may be it's servant or another manifestationnote .
- Gods of various degrees of oldness and newness. To what degree they qualify, if at all, largely depends on the story you're reading and which continuity it takes place in.
- The higher-dimensional imps, such as Mr. Mxyzptlk, Qwsp, or Bat-Mite; and Mandrakk, the Ultimate Monitor.
- The Archangels, including Michael, and The Wrath of God, currently better known as The Spectre. Some demons like Choronzon, while not quite as powerful, still qualify. Lucifer's original Vertigo incarnation was capable of fully comprehending The Overmoniter, giving him matter and energy manipulation of which the regular Monitor can only dream of, and The Source("servant" of The Presence in this interpretation) is often beneath his notice. Still even Lucifer was a gnat compared to his brother Michael, who was less than that to the Presence.
- The Endless: Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Desire, Despair and Delirium; The White Light Entity, embodiment of Life; Nekron, embodiment of the unliving void and absence of sentience; and the Time-Trapper, either the embodiment of entropy or a sentient unlikely timeline attempting to assert its own existence.
- Krona, the Anti-Monitor, and Imperiex. Ultimator claims to be the highest of these, and the living embodiment of the tenth dimension.
- Kismet, the sentience of the universe, or "simply" a Lord of Order. Sometimes has a "mortal" avatar known as "The Strange Visitor".
- The Light Entities embodying emotions/motivations and their associated colors, gradually introduced in Green Lantern beginning with Rebirth and through Blackest Night: The Butcher (Red Rage), Ophidian (Orange Greed), Parallax (Yellow Fear), Ion (Green Will), Adara (Blue Hope), Proselyte (Indigo Compassion), the Predator (Violet Love), Black Hand (Black Death), and simply "the Entity" (White Life).
- The Phantom Stranger, or "The Gray Walker", former near-Archangel, and exile of Heaven and Hell alike. Maybe.
- The Lords of Order and Chaos, including Doctor Fate, Mordru and the wizard Shazam! who are fundamental forces of the DC universe though this has since been retconned as of New 52 and after.
- Superman becomes one in DC One Million. Ages ago in our far future, Superman had traveled the edges of the universe and earned vast powers on top of his already vast powers and is known as Superman Prime. Eventually retiring into the Sun and growing ever more powerful, he first creates a lineage of Supermen to defend the universe and powers our solar system by his presence in the Sun. Another version of Superman who becomes one is the "Strange Visitor"(no relation to Kismet), which is basically what happens when a story teller starts with The Silver Age version of Superman and takes his New Powers as the Plot Demands to their logical conclusion. He becomes more powerful than fifth dimensional imp Mxyzptlk basically because Mxyzptlk made the mistake of appearing in his story.
- The New 52 introduces the World Forger, who creates universes until a Crisis occurs and he let's the old ones die out to make room for no ones. He created a dragon(bat) like creature to assist in devouring failed realities, but it shirked its duties and turned against him. He's later stated to be the brother of the previously mentioned Monitor (created to regulate the multiverse) and Anti Monitor (created to safeguard the multiverse from outside threats, rendered redundant by the Source Wall and upset about it), who are all creations of their mother Perpetua. She is a being responsible for creating whole multiverses, who herself answers to higher powers that will evaluate her creations' right to exist on the standards of whether they follow Justice or Doom. Rather than accept the possibility of failing said evaluation, she instead elected to engineer creations powerful enough to defend her with force and conquer her superiors.
- Outside of the Big Two, there was an IDW Publishing mini-series called The Bigger Bang. Humans have advanced far enough in a short period of time, to do a manned mission to analyze the Sun. That'd be the last thing we ever do, because our entire universe gets destroyed in a new Big Bang event. The only thing to emerge from this cataclysm is a new empty universe and the being known as Cosmos, who appears entirely human except for how ridiculously muscular he is. Imagine a Bronze Age Superman given the powers of the Silver Surfer and you get Cosmos. For billions of years, Cosmos wanders the universe until he gets sucked through a wormhole and enters a new dimension where he accidentally terrifies almost all of the inhabitants with his godly powers and his reputation (these aliens knew his birth was responsible for the death of an entire ancient universe).
Films — Live-Action
- The Marvel Cinematic Universe follows its comic roots by introducing plenty of these over time:
- Doctor Strange (2016) has Dormammu, the lord and ruler of the Dark Dimension. Dormammu can stop time, fundamentally alter people and worlds, and move worlds from our dimensions to his.
- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: A Celestial named Ego has cosmic powers which he used to create his own moon-sized world.
- Eternals: The eponymous protagonists are creations and servants of the Celestials, immense cosmic beings that create entire galaxies and wield colossal power. One of them, Arishem the Judge, is a major figure in the story.
- Thor: Love and Thunder: During the movie's climax, Gorr the God Butcher attempts to reach Eternity, an Anthropomorphic Personification of the universe, and use his power to wipe out all gods.
Literature
- Some of the "Outer Gods" from H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos qualify. Most notably Azathoth, the Blind Idiot God, who is mindless but said to rule over all time and space.
- The Xeelee, the rulers of the Baryonic universe in the Xeelee Sequence. They have existed since seconds after the Big Bang, and used time travel to retroactively speed their own development. They are capable of using entire galaxies as construction material.
- The Ellimist and Crayak from Animorphs. Both of them started out as mortals but ascended due to a really weird event. The Elimist is largely good, but mysterious, and Crayak his moral opposite. A full out war between them destroyed a fair amount of The Milky Way, so these eons they stick to long games of manipulation and proxies. The entire Animorphs series is just a small blip in the game.
- The Ellimist Chronicles shows the process of their ascensions, they actually ravaged the galaxy while still material, if insanely powerful, entities. After they both fell into black holes they realized that continuing the fight as spacetime entities would unravel the very universe.
- A Certain Magical Index has a lot of examples, since the entire series has Fantasy Kitchen Sink and All Myths Are True as part of its setting, any being that qualifies as this in myths and religions qualifies here as well. This setting makes it perfectly possible for magicians to become beings stronger than God. The title La Persona Superiore a Dio and Majin (lit. "The one who stands above God" and "Magic Lord") are given to mages who achieves such level of power.
- The Old High Ones of the Discworld universe, so far above the gods they consider the gods about the same as mortals. They seem to be in charge of the whole universe, and once intervened on the Discworld to alter the way the world worked to stop the reality-tearing Mage Wars. There are eight, but the only one known by name is Azrael, the Death of Universes, who keeps a clock that time follows rather than the other way around.
- In The Elric Saga and other stories from Michael Moorcock, the Eternal Champion at its mightiest form the "Four in One" (achieved by doing a Fusion Dance between its avatars), is capable of destroying entire multiverses and is only brought into play when truly alien hostile forces invade the cosmos and threatens it. Otherwise the role of the Eternal Champion is to preserve the balance between Law and Chaos, by forcibly preventing one side from getting so much of an upper hand that it destroys the world. The Eternal Champion doesn't initiate, its actually the agent of another entity known as the Cosmic Balance that weighs the sides of Law and Chaos and this Balance may or may not be sentient. That said, it's very rare for the Cosmic Balance to need so much power from the Eternal Champion and so usually a single avatar is sent and the avatar is often just a warrior and/or sorcerer of above average ability.
- Haruhi Suzumiya:
- The titular character, who is basically God with no idea of what she is and what powers she had, entirely convinced that she is just a normal, if highly capable and a bit weird, high-school student. Her subconscious wishes warp reality, and since she wants for all supernatural and paranormal beings to come at her school club, it happens.
- Among the supernatural beings who came to Haruhi's club, there is also one of these. Yuki Nagato, one of the Humanoid Interfaces of reality itself, is a Reality Warper fully capable of rewriting reality as easily as a programmer writing her own game. Her only limitations are that she couldn't affect Haruhi (which is understandable) unless she wills it.
- Honestly, High School Dx D has tons of these, most of which are Dimension Lords.
- Kyouran Kazoku Nikki has Gouyokuou and Gekka. Both are alien beings of insane powers with the former capable of pulverizing Earth by accident and the latter having cosmic-scale Psychic Powers.
- Life and Death in Reaper (Ivan Navi) qualify. It is stated that they are the literal concepts and not just embodiments and exist in every part of the Universe at the same instant keeping everything going. Life even boasted how he was the first thing born in the Universe and will be around to watch the Universe end.
- Bhelliom and Klæl of The Elenium are a pair of spirits who create new worlds and then fight for which of them decides its future path. It took all of the Elder Gods of Styric working together to banish Klæl in the distant past, and even then their spell left an opening he could use to return. Bhelliom is limited due to being trapped in his gem form but still possesses enough power to rewrite reality and create Sparhawk, a man the gods cannot control.
- In The Sun Eater, the Quiet is a powerful entity that exists in the future, one that experiences time in reverse. It can rewrite reality by alternate time streams and grafting it onto the current one as well as project its consciousness across vast eons into the past. It also spans different points throughout space and has been able to contact its current agent Hadrian Marlowe on other planets because of this. The Quiet is dedicated to preserving the existence of the future and therefore itself, so it's battled the Mechanical Abomination known as the Mericanii A.I. which had reduced almost all of humanity into cancer blobs and were soon to evolve into CosmicEntities in their own right. The Quiet is currently taking action against the Eldritch Abomination known as the Watchers, an ancient race of life-devouring tentacled horrors that threaten the entire universe.
Live-Action TV
- The universe of Doctor Who has a few. In no particular order:
- The Time Lords themselves, who have an inherent mastery of the Time Vortex.
- The Eternals, who would count as full-blown gods were it not for their Creative Sterility, and are to Time Lords what Time Lords are to Puny Humans.
- The White and Black Guardians, transcendental beings who appear to be Anthropomorphic Personifications of Order and Chaos respectively. There are some indications that they are to Eternals what the Eternals are to Time Lords.
- The Beast and Abaddon, and any other members of... whatever the Hell they are - the Beast claims to be the Devil-figure from every religion at once, and they were at least dangerous enough to require imprisonment since before the universe began.
- The Disciples of the Light, who imprisoned the Beast and (presumably) Abaddon before time began... and don't appear to have ever done anything else, so far as we know.
- Fenric (who may or may not be Hastur) and its unnamed opposite, implied to be effectively a God of Evil and God of Good who have existed since the dawn of time.
- The Gods of Ragnarok who, despite their impressive name, actually seem to be one of the least powerful things on this list.
- The Celestial Toymaker, who steals people away from the space-time continuum to his own realm so he can play games with them.
- The Pantheon of Discord, a group of Reality-Warping entities from which The Trickster comes.
- The Great Intelligence (who may or may not be Yog-Sothoth), an extradimensional Eldritch Abomination with mind-control and limited reality-warping powers.
- The Chronovores, implied to be beings of the Time Vortex, one of whom (Kronos) is at least powerful enough to use a TARDIS as a plaything.
- The Bad Wolf entity, formed when Rose Tyler sort-of-kinda merged with the TARDIS and/or the Time Vortex, which could eliminate an entire race from the universe with a thought.
- The Anthropomorphic Personification of Time itself, which takes on the form of its chosen audience, and wishes to be free of the restraints imposed upon Time by the Time Lords' black ops group, the Division.
- The Ancient Lights, more beings from before the beginning of the universe, for whom magic and astrology worked like science does to everyone else.
- The Blessing, a benevolent Eldritch Abomination within the Earth with seeming absolute power over life and death within the planet's atmosphere.
- Various Sufficiently Advanced Aliens such as Sutekh may also count.
- In the Doctor Who Expanded Universe it is claimed there are Six Guardians including the Black and White Guardians; the Celestial Toymaker is the Crystal Guardian of Dream and Fantasy, and there is also a Red Guardian of Justice and Truth, Azure Guardian of Equilibrium and Balance, and Gold Guardian of Life and Death.
- Star Trek
- The Q Continuum are this, having such powers as near-total control of matter, energy, space, time, and fundamental forces.
- Guinan claims to be an extremely long lived individual, by human standards, whose species was wiped out by The Borg. When Q sees her he immediately freaks out and tells Captain Picard she is a liar. It is heavily implied at the very least she has ways of countering a Q's powers.
- In the Ultra Series, the titular Ultra race are this as a whole. Particularly the strongest ones such as Ultraman King, Ultraman Noa and Ultraman Legend.
- The most powerful beings in Supernatural all fall into this category.
- God. He created the entire universe, the angels, and humanity after all.
- Death is either as old as God or older. According to him, neither of them can remember anymore. He holds absolute power of his sphere and can kill anything, even, apparently, God.
- The four archangels, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Lucifer are a step below God and Death, but are still more powerful than just about everyone else. A showdown between Michael and Lucifer would result in half of the world being destroyed before it was over.
- The Darkness existed before God created the universe and required the combined effort of God and the archangels to seal away. She's also God's sister.
- The nameless... thing that rules over the Empty, the void where angels and demons go after they die. Whatever it is, it's power within the Empty is absolute. Not even God and the Darkness have more power than it on it's home turf.
- Lucifer's nephilim son, Jack, even though he's still growing into his powers. So far, he's displayed the power to instantly age himself into an adult almost immediately after birth, overpower high-ranking angels, and punch holes into other universes. Thankfully for all of existence, he's nothing like his father.
Professional Wrestling
- In Stampede Wrestling, Jason The Terrible and his manager The Zodiak worshipped The Almighty Luke. The Zodiak would insist that Jason must destroy their enemies because "LUKE IS ANGRY!"
Tabletop Games
- In Chaos, you play as one. At the lower levels of play, you are "merely" a fairly powerful Reality Warper. But as you start to hit your epic levels, yeah, you're this.
- The Primordials and older gods in Dungeons & Dragons, who literally created The Multiverse out of chaos.
- The Primordials/Yozis of Exalted.
- The God-Machine from Demon: The Descent is less a being and more a sapient ecosystem that pervades the entirety of the Chronicles of Darkness, an occult supercomputer with unrivalled mastery of physics and an inscrutable agenda.
Toys
- Transformers most famously has Primus, who has a body in every Transformers continuity and while he does not serve the same purpose in every story(he's been everything from the last of the light gods to the sentient will of the universe), these bodies all exist at the same time. Then there is Unicron, who almost always is out to destroy whatever continuity he is in and automatically incarnates in a new one every time he is defeated. Unsurprisingly, this background for them came from Marvel Comics.
- Less famously, Transformers also has The Hytherion, which looks like a combination of smelting smoke and fish in its default form but is in fact a time traveling Eldritch Abomination that feeds on the origins of planets and sometimes even entire "universes", utterly destroying them should it eat too much. To keep it in check, robots from the Cybertrons of multiple different universal streams pulled their resources together and became The Alternity, which are basically robots made out of metal that remains stable beyond 3D space that they use to build composite bodies of as many different counterparts of a single being in as many different alternate timelines and regions of space as possible.
- The Micronauts Micronauts tie in comic had the Unipower, which in addition to being part of a group that keeps the atomic and subatomic universes separate from each other, is essentially a game keeper that preserves ecosystems by forming symbiotic bonds with specific creatures in them, to give them a chance to save themselves from disasters, invasions and such they would otherwise have no way to deal with. When it bonded with a human being, he was dubbed "Captain Universe" and treated like a superhero, which makes sense, since this is yet another one created by Marvel Comics.
Video Games
- Final Fantasy has more than enough of these.
- Cosmos and Chaos, gods of harmony and discord.
- Dark Emperor of Pandaemonium.
- Cloud of Darkness, the Anthropomorphic Personification of darkness and void.
- The Creator, some kind of a weird thing that controls evolution.
- The Warring Triad and Kefka, the gods of magic.
- Jenova, An alien virus that has existed for a long time spreading across the universe.
- Minerva, the Anthropomorphic Personification of The Lifestream that sends the Weapons to protect the Planet.
- Ultimecia, the Time Mage.
- Necron, Darkness of Eternity and he who comes the very final minute of the game and refuses to tell what exactly is he.
- The Summons, especially Bahamut-ZERO, Eden and Ark.
- Super Smash Bros.
- The plot and setting are modified for every entry in the series, but the recurring premise is that dolls, figurines or trophies are brought to "life", their table tops, shelves or playsets transformed into interactive arenas, obstacle courses or even active worlds with their own cosmos through...holographic augmented reality...magic...simple imagination? Whatever the case, Master Hand and Crazy Hand are exceptionally powerful, as they are the gloves worn by whoever is laying it all out. Despite being able to set everything in motion and turn it all off with a mere finger snap, Master Hand and Crazy Hand are sporting enough to keep themselves at a level relative to the fighters, though even then they play by their own rules and are consistently final bosses.
- Tabuu from Super Smash Bros. Brawl is a powerful, supernatural entity that rules Subspace and the Subspace Army. The catch is that subspace is a lower dimesion, so he couldn't interact with the three dimensional world where trophies fight until he discovered Mr. Game & Watch, a two dimensional being who could function in a three dimensional world. Once Tabuu finds this "bridge" though he proves to be much more powerful than Mr. Game & Watch. From Mr. Game & Watch's body he can endlessly extract the materials necessary to build the subspace army, who overrun the world where trophies fight and drag it into Subspace piece by piece. He effortlessly defeats and controls Master Hand, the creator of Super Smash Bros, and takes down nearly the entire cast in a single shot while taking no damage from their attacks. He only becomes weak enough to beat because a few fighters were hidden while the majority faced him head on, and were able to hit Tabuu with a sneak attack which removed his shields and reduced his offensive power. Even then he's strong enough to reduce any fighter to a trophy with a single shot, his attacks were merely reduced to dodgeable.
- Galeem from Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is not as powerful as Tabuu is in Subspace but it naturally exists on a three-four dimensional level, so it can set about taking out nearly the entire cast and destroying most of the world where tropies fight right away without need for delegation. What makes Galeem beatable is that it is in perpetual conflict with Dharkon, a being of similar power and hostility towards the world where tropies fight but hates Galeem just as much. To truly put an end to their threat the fighters have to strike while the two are battling each other, and if the player takes too long it's an automatic Game Over.
- Chakravartin from Asura's Wrath is a cosmic being that can manipulate the forces of the universe and destroy and recreate worlds over and over. He has complete control over his own hellish existence, where most living things go when they die, but reincarnation and or sheer determination on the part of demigods means he will eventually lose these souls and he needs a mortal vessel to interact with anything beyond his own place.When he gets a warm body he starts drawing in galaxies by his own gravitational pull, while still warming up!
Western Animation
- Ben 10: Celestialsapiens, who were born in "The Forge Of Creation" and can each individually alter the entire universe in whatever manner they please. Their only check seems to be that there is more than one of them.
- Star Trek: Lower Decks: In "Moist Vessel", when Lieutenant O'Connor undergoes the ascension process, he sees a vortex with a glowing, smiling koala at its center, and he tells Ensign Tendi that the universe is balanced on the back of a giant koala. This becomes a Running Gag, with a few other characters alluding to a koala after a Near-Death Experience.
