Zeus takes down his old man, Cronus
Linda: God and his ex, having a fight to the death? Sounds kind of bad for, you know, humanity.
Lucifer: [dismissively] Oh, you'll probably be fine.
Lucifer: [dismissively] Oh, you'll probably be fine.
When there are multiple gods in a universe, they often come into conflict with one another, just like humans tend to do in real life. This kind of conflict usually plays out between two gods, with lesser gods or other entities like angels or demons functioning as their armies.
In some cases, the conflict plays out long before the time of humans. In a Creation Myth, the winning faction is the one that rules over the world today, and often they are the one that is worshipped by the people. Depending on who wins, this could bring about or end The Dark Times.
In other cases, the conflict is neverending. The two factions or two gods don't ever stop fighting, or when they do, it will be at the end of time. This scenario is often used to justify the Balance Between Good and Evil, especially when the two factions are led by a God of Good and God of Evil.
If the conflict escalates enough, it can lead to a Götterdämmerung. Compare Cosmic Chess Game, Arrogant God vs. Raging Monster, as well as Rage Against the Heavens when mortals fight the gods instead. See also Titanomachy, Round Two for a specific form of Divine Conflict in Classical Mythology.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- One occurred in the backstory of The Death Mage Who Doesn't Want a Fourth Time between Alda, the God of Light and Law and Vida the Goddess of Life and Love. The main reason was that Alda believed the new races birthed by Vida with Evil Gods (who had defected from the Demon King's army) were a threat to the balance of the world. Alda and his faction won, Vida was sealed and the gods in her faction were sealed or forced into hiding. Our protagonist discovers he was chosen as Vida's champion and decides to remedy the situation for Vida and her races, which greatly concerns Alda.
- Dragon Ball Super:
- A lighter and softer version in the Champa Saga. The entire conflict started because Champa wants to show up Beerus by challenging him to a tournament, the winner getting control of the Super Dragon Balls. However, since it is forbidden for the two gods to fight each other, otherwise they would destroy both of their universes, they have mortals do the fighting for them.
- The Future Trunks Saga, however, shows a much serious version of this when Zamasu rebels against the gods because of their inaction against the evil known as mortals. To bring forward the 'gods' justice', he steals Goku's body to become Goku Black, teams up with his future counterpart, and murdered all the gods in the multiverse, leaving him alone as the supreme god. Or so he planned....
- One Piece: While they're not actually gods, the climactic fight between Luffy and Kaido could be said to have become this by its end. After all, Kaido has been revered by Orochi loyalists as the protector deity of Wano Country for 20 years, which his ability to transform into an Azure Dragon likely contributed to; Luffy, on the other hand, ate the Hito Hito no Mi, Model: Nika, granting him the powers of the eponymous Sun God and Warrior of Liberation upon awakening.
- It turns out that most conflicts in the Saint Seiya mythos are between gods.
- The first story arc has Athena almost assassinated by a Gemini saint. While the original manga has no other gods involved, Saint Seiya: Episode.G shows he was assisted by Kronos.
- The Anime-only season 2 Athena has to fight Hilda (Odin's representative on Earth), who was brainwashed by Poseidon.
- In the 2nd story arc/season 3 she faces Poseidon directly.
- In the original manga's 3rd and final story arc (And in prequel Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas) she fights Hades directly.
- In the various Non Serial Movies, she fights the Sun God Abel (an Ur-god son of Zeus and stand-in for Apollo), Eris, Lucifer, Artemis, and Apollo (the real one this time).
- In Saint Seiya Omega she fights Mars, who though a god was indirectly brainwashed by Abzu, an Ur god of elemental evil.
- In season 2 of Omega she fights not one but two gods, Pallas and Saturn.
- In Slayers, it is explained that countless millenia ago, the universe was nearly destroyed in a war between the forces of Flare Dragon Cifeed and Lord Shabranigdo. Cifeed just barely managed to defeat Shabranigdo and save what was left of the universe in the process.
- Star★Twinkle Pretty Cure has this as the backdrop to the season's plot, since the conflict started when Ophiuchus decided to respond with a hostile takeover of the Star Princesses' palace due to a disagreement over whether or not to give humans the gift of imagination, with the former strongly believing that Humans Are Bastards and are not worthy of any divine gifts.
Art
- Alexandre Cabanel's The Fallen Angel shows the fallout of Lucifer's clash against the Christian God. The former now lies defeated and resentful atop a mountain on the land of the mortals. By contrast, the latter has his loyal angels worshipping him even if he is nowhere to be seen.
Comic Books
- The good, freedom-loving New Gods of New Genesis led by Highfather Izaya, and evil, oppressive New Gods of Apokolips led by Darkseid are locked in an eternal conflict with each other. It was settled through truce for a time with an exchange of Highfather's son Scott Free and Darkseid's son Orion, but when Scott escaped, Darkseid used that as a justification to restart the conflict.
- Wonder Woman:
- Foe Ares is often either instigating these against the likes of Zeus or Athena. Or is at least heavily involved in them like when he allied with Athena for her coup against Zeus in Wonder Woman (1987) in order to usurp Hades so that he can kill off humanity in Wonder Woman (2006) without fading away like the Olympians. Back in Wonder Woman (1942) his fights were against Aphrodite and carried out by proxy since they and Artemis were the only Olympians still around and he and Aphrodite had a hate/love thing going on.
- Another DC storyline, "War of the Gods," had all the different pantheons going to war with each other due to the machinations of Wonder Woman foe Circe.
- Wonder Woman (Rebirth): Ares and Aphrodite's fear godling sons Deimos and Phobos are trying to steal their father's power in order to be on more even footing before starting their fight against the other Olympians in earnest. They misstep when they cross Veronica Cale who manages to hire Circe to trap them in the bodies of dogs and subjugate them to Cale's will.
- The entire premise of the series God Is Dead. Gods from all the various pantheons (mostly focusing on characters from Greek, Norse, Hindu, Aztec and Egyptian mythology) suddenly show up physically on Earth and go about claiming the world for themselves. At first the different pantheons have a truce among themselves and simply go about beating human resistance into submission and purging any heretics who try to advocate for things like science, free speech, equal rights, justice, tolerance, etc., but it doesn't take long for that truce to go to hell and for them all to fight among themselves.
- Arawn: The demon created from the Cauldron of Blood eventually devours so many souls that its powers are on equal footing with the gods. Then he kills and absorbs the goddess of war, which angers the rest of the divine pantheon enough to make them join their forces and fight him. They are actually on the losing end until Owen destroys the Cauldron itself.
Fan Works
- Legionnaire features the Khans, who have a very large and very politically influential faction of religious nuts who see everything like this. This makes them very fond of trolling to start suicidal holy wars. The events of the story are all about disarming one such effort before a truly cataclysmic war erupts.
- Son of the Western Sea has the premise that All Myths Are True... and the different Pantheons are generally not fond of the others. It is mostly inter-Pantheon politics, however it implied in the past that after World War 2 the gods of Asia (including the Hindu gods, Shinto kami and Celestial Bureaucracy) pushed the Olympians out of their countries after the European colonies gained independence. Then Percy Jackson wanders into the whole mess. In Chapter 4 Ares and Athena confirm that Zeus's casual threat to the Shinto Pantheon at the end of Chapter 2 about offering Percy godhood almost triggered a new conflict between the West and the Asian Pantheons that would have resulted in World War III and would have dwarfed the future war with Gaia.
- The Vicious Gods Wrath
: In chapter 23, Beerus steps up to fight the recently Deified Freeza, as he proves too dangerous for the universe, in a battle spanning across the solar system. While they are close in strength and Freeza is capable of bruising Beerus, Beerus ultimately defeat and eradicated him.
- With This Ring: When Zeus' behaviour finally becomes too much for Paul to just ignore — specifically, sending Wonder Woman on an assignment to Tartarus indefinitely, as a punishment for refusing to marry him — Paul hits on the idea of empowering a more moral and reasonable god to hold Zeus accountable. And as it happens, there's a suitable power source lying around in the form of the emerging, not yet fully formed god/titan of technology, which a sufficiently skilled magician can tap into. Cue "Hephaestian" Challenging the Chief.
Zeus: It seems that I'll have to throw you off this mountain again, Hephaestus. This time you'll land on your head.
Hephaestian: We'll see.
Film — Animation
- The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part: For all intents and purposes, the entire film is one, as the conflict between the Apocalypseburgers and the Systarians is caused by the gods of their respective worlds (Finn and Bianca respectively) being unable to get along and getting into fights.
Film — Live-Action
- DC Extended Universe:
- According to the backstory in Justice League, the New Gods of Apokolips invaded Earth in the distant past, where the Olympian Gods fought against them alongside their Amazon champions, Atlanteans, humans and even a Green Lantern.
- Wonder Woman (2017): The Olympians themselves were destroyed in one such war where the God of War Ares tried to slaughter humanity, but his fellow gods stood in his way and he killed them all. Ares ends up being killed by his sister Wonder Woman, who is the God-Killer, a goddess created specifically to kill him.
- Suicide Squad (2016): El Diablo is heavily implied to be a God in Human Form and fights against Incubus (a South-American extradimensional deity) during the final battle.
- Gods of Egypt: Throughout much of it, Set is waging a war against the gods who oppose his reign, after he took over the kingdom.
Literature
- The high spirits in the Astral Dawn series, many of whom are deities, fight against each other during what is called the Astral War.
- Lots of Brandon Sanderson books set in the The Cosmere have this at their core. An original God, called Adonalsium, was broken into 16 Shards, each representing part of its purpose. 16 people picked up the Shards, becoming the effective Gods of the universe. Unsurprisingly, they find themselves at odds quite often. In Mistborn: The Original Trilogy the two local Shards, Ruin and Preservation, are in conflict after they created the planet together, but Preservation betrayed Ruin. In Wax and Wayne, the Sequel Series, there's an implied conflict between Harmony and another Shard referred to as Trell. In The Stormlight Archive, Odium has killed Honor, who is worshipped as the Almighty, and it is implied that Cultivation is still actively opposing Odium indirectly. In the world of Elantris Odium has killed the two Shards of that world in the backstory.
- Happens several times in The Camp Half-Blood Series:
- In The Lightning Thief (first book of Percy Jackson and the Olympians) the titular "Lightning Thief" Luke Castellan tried to start one of these between the Olympian gods by stealing Zeus' thunder bolt. Didn't work.
- The rest of Percy Jackson and the Olympians is spent fighting a real one of these, the "Second Titan War", in which the Titans led by Kronos attempt to overthrow the Olympians.
- The Heroes of Olympus has another war, the "Second Giant War". The goddess Gaia and her Gigantes children wage war on the Olympians.
- The Heroes of Olympus also has an interesting example when the Greek gods start fighting with the Roman gods in that they're the same being, their Greek half and their Roman half, and the greater the difference between them, the more conflict they find themselves in. Frank, for example, has Mars and Ares constantly yelling, trying to outshout each other in his head. The few that avoid this are the ones whose Greek and Roman aspects are virtually indistinguishable from each other.
- The Trials of Apollo has a strange one in the form of the "Imperial War" - a group of deified Roman Emperors called Triumverate Holdings try to become powerful gods in their own right.
- In the early Discworld novels, the gods of Cori Celesti are engaged in an aeons-long feud with the Ice Giants, who play their radio too loud and have refused to return the lawnmower.
- Pyramids sees the unfortunate consequences of a four-or-five millennia-old civilization (an Expy of Ancient Egypt) getting all its Gods awakening. At once. The complication is that over several thousand years, Gods change. Old Gods fade and new gods take their place. But when you end up with at least five different Sun Gods representing five different theological perspectives of why the Sun rises and sets - and only one Sun - you are going to get conflict as to whose sun it is. Same with one River and at least three different River Gods...
- Michael Moorcock's "Eternal Champion" stories often feature an endless war between Law and Chaos, as personified by the deity-level Lords of Law and Lords of Chaos. The war includes conflicts between lesser creatures of Law and Chaos as well.
- Lucifer's divine conflict with God reaches its dramatic conclusion in the Left Behind series, as the penultimate Battle of Armageddon in Glorious Appearing and the Final Battle between God and Satan's forces in Kingdom Come end up being one-sided Curb Stomp Battles, with the last one being very anti-climactic as God just incinerates Satan's forces in seconds.
- The Fictional Video Game in which Noob is set has a quite complicated one between the Sources, the game world's gods:
- The current rulers of the world are Lys and Ark'hen, who forbid mortals from using magic from any Source besides themselves. If mortals break that rule, they are turned into undead known as Soulless. One of the player factions has Undying Loyalty towards them.
- Dortös is Olydri's former ruling Source and got sealed away when Lys and Ark'hen took over. He's the "other Source" that Lys and Ark'hen don't want mortals to tamper with. Soulles eventually get high enough numbers to band together and start working on setting him free. His plans consist of destroying all of Lys and Ark'hen creations, including the universes' equivalent of the human race. His side of the conflict is exclusively Non-Player Character-populated.
- Sin is siding with a player faction that has a Rage Against the Heavens against Lys and Ark'hen, but is fighting against Dortös as well since his protectorate is human.
- Fargöth, The Maker who has been reduced to a shadow of his former self, has a mortal servant who's tasked with figuring out how to end the conflict and whose solution may end up being bad news for at least one of the other sides.
- Ravelling Wrath: The main plot comes from an ancient conflict between the Blood God and the Waiting God. Each year, each god chooses a human to represent the god in the Ravelling – and the Blood God always makes its representative try to kill the Waiting God's representative, even if they don't want to.
- Much of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion concerns the Valar (Physical Gods, though subservient to Eru Iluvatar) and their fight against Melkor/Morgoth (Satan, for all intents and purposes), as well as the Maiar (lesser gods) whom he's drawn to his side. The Pyrrhic Victory of this "War of Wrath" is so severe that the entire continent of Beleriand sinks under the ocean and the Valar pledge never to fight directly again. Meanwhile, some of Morgoth's cronies—including one of his Co-Dragons, Sauron—remain to cause trouble in the future.
- Followers of R'hllorianism in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, which is based on Zoroastrianism, believe that their god, the lord of light, is locked in eternal conflict with The Great Other, the lord of cold darkness, in a battle that determines the fate of the world.
- Star Trek Expanded Universe:
- I, Q gives us the Q Continuum's counterpart the M (both sides being Sufficiently Advanced Aliens that screw with the universe for their own amusement, or so it would appear). Neither side has any particular reason for being at war with the other (the initial reason was, quote, "Because there's something about you that really pisses us off"), but apparently one of the M invoking Your Mom was reason enough, even though nobody could figure out exactly whose mother had been insulted and nobody in the Q Continuum had a mother in the first place. And really, that's as much sense as the whole thing ever makes.
- Greg Cox's The Q Continuum trilogy has 0, a similarly powerful being whom, where Q loves screwing with mortals but rarely actually hurts anybody, 0 does it For the Evulz and was personally responsible for the destruction of the ancient Tkon Empire via Star Killing. The barrier around the Milky Way galaxy was erected by the Q Continuum to keep 0 out after they defeated and banished him. With 0 was another omnipotent being known as The One, who apparently invented monotheism. He was reduced to an Oracular Head by the combined power of the Q Continuum and was imprisoned behind the other barrier at the center of the galaxy, where He stayed until Kirk and the Enterprise-A encountered Him.
- The Star Trek: Millennium reveals that there are actually two groups of Pah-Wraiths: one group who fought to try to get back into the Celestial Temple and were cast down to Bajor by the Prophets, and a larger group that built their own temple. They don't get along very well.
- Star Wars Legends: Mandalorian ancient history depicted their afterlife as an eternal war between the God of Order and the God of Chaos to see who controls the galaxy, with each side eager to recruit the fallen warriors who passed through their gates. As a culture, they've mostly Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions, but vestiges of it show up in their proverbs and beliefs about death. A true Mandalorian is never truly dead, just "marching far away".
- Tortall Universe: The reason the plot of the Trickster's Duet happens. The 'verse's Jerkass Gods frequently use mortals as proxies in their power struggles; two hundred years ago the God of War and Great Mother Goddess defeated their brother, Kyprioth, and subjected his worshippers, the raka of the Copper Isles, to conquest and brutal oppression from other humans — part of Aly's job is to help the raka rebels defeat the conquerors, which will give Kyprioth and the lesser tricksters the clout to drive out their siblings. The battle between gods takes place in the sky while the humans duke it out in the Final Battle.
- In Dark Shores the sea goddess Madoria and air god Gespurn get at one point into a physical fight over Teriana's ship. Also, the Six gods of the West are in constant conflict with the Seventh one, the Corruptor — but they mostly fight by proxy, through their chosen people.
- Cradle Series: Among those who have ascended their worlds, there are two factions: The Abidan, who maintain order and promote life throughout the Way, and the Vroshir, the criminals who kill and steal entire worlds. While the Vroshir aren't anywhere near as unified or uniform as the Abidan sometimes pretend, the Mad King is the most powerful of them all, and has dedicated himself to tearing down the Abidan. Fights between him and Abidan Judges can destroy entire worlds just by proximity.
Live-Action TV
- Hercules: Rather than being a very dysfunctional couple, Zeus and Hera are believed by their own followers to be at war with each other and using them as proxies.
- Lucifer: After Lucifer's mother tries to recruit him to storm Heaven and overthrow God, Lucifer explains to his therapist that he plans to actually lock the Pearly Gates behind them and help neither side. His therapist Linda, being a normal human, is not crazy about any part of the conflict.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The Prophets, Sufficiently Advanced Aliens that the Bajorans view as gods, have Evil Counterparts in the Pah-wraiths. According to legend, the Prophets cast the Pah-wraiths out of the Celestial Temple (the wormhole) thousands of years ago, and they make repeated efforts to return during the series and battle the Prophets' representatives in the process. Implications are also made that the Prophets and Pah-wraiths are subtly influencing the course of the Dominion War in favor of the Federation Alliance or the Dominion, respectively.
- Star Trek: Voyager once dealt with a civil war within the Q Continuum whose effects were being felt in normal space as supernovae.
Mythology and Religion
- In Classical Mythology, the gods of Olympus, led by Zeus, deposed the Titans (who were their parents and uncles) to become the new gods of the world.
- The Babylonian creation myth Enûma Eliš is likely the Ur-Example. It deals with the conflict between the primordial divine couple Apsu and Tiamat, and their descendants the Annunaki.
- Egyptian Mythology:
- Set was often in conflict with the other gods, up to killing Osiris and driving Isis and Horus into exile. Horus would eventually return to drive Set off and reclaim Osiris' throne.
- Every night Ra had to pass through the underworld and battle the serpent-god Apep (a.k.a. Apophis). Sometimes Apep would eat Ra alive, causing bad weather. If Apep went after Ra during the day, we got a solar eclipse.
- Abrahamic religions: Satan's Rebellion against God/Yahweh. Though the reasons vary, whether because of hubris and/or refusing to honor human beings as God's greatest creation as ordered, regardless it resulted in Satan and his loyalists being cast out of heaven.
- In The Bible, God has a conflict against every single false deity and their idolaters throughout the world, it usually results in a Curb-Stomp Battle because those idols are mere imitators made of woods and metals, they have no actual power compared to the creator of the universe.
- Celtic Mythology: The conflict between the Tuatha De Danann and the Fomorians over the ownership and right to settle the island of Ireland from Irish Legends.
- Norse Mythology: The War between the Æsir and Vanir, which ended with the two fighting to a stalemate and deciding to unite into one pantheon. Some historians believe the war reflects a historical migration/invasion of a warlike Æsir-worshiping culture into the lands of a Vanir-worshiping fertility cult.
- Zoroastrianism: The conflict between Ahura-Mazda (Good) and Ahriman (Evil).
Tabletop Games
- Forgotten Realms: In general, the many groupings of gods in the setting are interminably at war with each other and/or with the denizens of the fiendish planes. These fights normally take place through mortal proxies but direct confrontations do happen every once in a while.
- The gods of knowledge battle the gods of destruction, the gods of justice battle the gods of tyranny and corruption, everybody hates the orcish pantheon, etc.
- The conflict between Selune, goddess of the moon, and Shar, goddess of darkness, goes all the way back to the creation of Toril. Among other things, it resulted in the creation of Mystryl, the original goddess of magic.
- The Classical Elements Ensemble of deities representing fire, water, wind, and earth are each locked in battle with the one representing their opposite element.
- 1358 DR, the Year of Shadows, is best known as the year of the Time of Troubles or the Godswar. After Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul stole the Tablets of Fate from Ao the Overgod, Ao banished every god in the whole pantheon to the surface of Toril until the Tablets were recovered. The various avatars continued to battle each other both in person and through intermediaries, and several were killed.
- Tempus, the god of war, and his proteges Valkur and the Red Knight are all arrayed against Garagos, the six-armed incarnation of savage bloodlust (and former god of war in the Netherese pantheon before he was displaced by Tempus and went really crazy with the bloodlust). This one's interesting because Tempus, being one of the most powerful deities in the Realms, could explicitly stomp Garagos flat fairly easily if he wanted to, but for a War God, he's a fairly decent guy and isn't interested in absorbing bloodlust into his portfolio (he only views war as worthwhile when there is peace to contrast it with).
- The Seldarine, the elven pantheon, all battle the Dark Seldarine, the drow pantheon. Being Chaotic Evil, the Dark Seldarine also fight and try to undermine each other, culminating in R.A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen where the drow Top Goddess Lolth kills or arranges the deaths of most of the others (except for Ghaunadaur, who turns out to be an Eldritch Abomination and leaves the pantheon to become a greater deity in his own right).
- In the Dungeons & Dragons Birthright setting's Back Story the Good deities fought the Evil deity Azrai. They finally sacrificed themselves, destroying both themselves and Azrai.
- Warhammer 40,000:
- The God-Emperor of Mankind is locked in endless warfare with the four Chaos Gods. The Chaos Gods are also at war with each other, and in Tzeentch's case with himself (as the god of conspiracies, he has at least two mutually contradictory plans in motion at any given time). The same conflict takes place in Warhammer, minus the God-Emperor part.
- The God-Emperor of Mankind also punched out the Necron star god Mag'ladroth, an eldritch dragon-vampire with mastery over all technology. It helps that Mag'ladroth is a purely material being, unlike the Chaos Gods.
- The Chaos Gods are also in conflict with other pantheons. Slaanesh in particular, once it was born, massacred much of the Eldar pantheon, such that there are only three Eldar Gods left, one of whom is a slave for Nurgle.
- Oh, last but not least, the Chaos Gods are locked in eternal conflict with each other. Khorne and Slaanesh hate each others guts, as do Nurgle and Tzeentch. In fact, the main reason why they don't get too involved in mortal affairs is because they are too busy bashing each others heads in.
- Risk: Godstorm pits the pantheons of the Egyptians, Greeks, Norse, Babylonians, and Celtics against each other in a fight for control of the ancient world.
- The basic concept of Scion - primarily between the pantheons and the Titans, but also within and between the pantheons as well.
- Lucifer's rebellion against God is often a key event in celestial-focused RPGs, such as In Nomine Satanis / Magna Veritas, its English version In Nomine, and Demon: The Fallen.
- In Planescape, the Lady once slew the greater god Aoskar, God of Portals, for unknown reasons (some say it was because Fell, one of the Lady's Dabuses, had become a priest of his; others because Aoskar had begun the construction of a grand temple and was preparing to make Sigil his own). One day, Sigil simply awoke to Aoskar's temple in Sigil having been razed to the ground, his disciples (save Fell) Flayed Alive, and Aoskar himself floating dead in the Astral Sea, his corpse torn apart by unknown means. The Lady, as is typical of her, said nothing. The gods of the multiverse stay far, far away from Sigil.
- Magic: The Gathering: On Kaldheim 'god' is more a state of being than a race. The current gods, the Skoti, were humans who overthrew the elven Einir and took their place.
- Pathfinder has the usual rivalries and proxy wars between the gods.
- In mythic times, the rampages of Rovagug, god of destruction, led every other deity in the entire pantheon to gang up on him, lest he succeed in destroying the multiverse. They finally imprisoned him in Golarion's core, with each deity contributing something to his prison: Asmodeus forged his chains, and Sarenrae stuck a piece of the Sun in his prison to burn him for all eternity.
- Shelyn is a notable inversion: as goddess of love and beauty, even the evil gods have trouble hating her for long (Rovagug excepted). Of particular note, she and Zon-Kuthon are half-siblings, and one of her long-term priorities is to redeem him. He forbids his followers from harming her clergy, while hers traditionally turn a blind eye to his followers' activities unless they're actively putting innocents at risk or defacing art.
Theme Parks
- The original version of Poseidon's Fury at Universal's Islands of Adventure was focused around Zeus and Poseidon engaging in a huge battle with each other. In the current version, it's the now-heroic Poseidon fighting against the semi-god, Lord Darkenon.
Video Games
- In Black & White, A God Is You, and divine conflict is a major story element:
- The Big Bad of the first game is a god who wants to be the only deity in the world. You face his agent in Land 2 and 3, save Land 4 from his influence, and defeat him for good in Land 5.
- The villain of the Battle of the Gods expansion to the sequel game is an undead god who wants to wipe out all life on the planet. You take the fight back to his capital and destroy him.
- In the Diablo series:
- The Creation Myth is how the ultimate good Anu and the Prime Evil Tathamet battled each other for millennia, their remains eventually becoming the High Heavens and the Burning Hells respectively.
- In Diablo III, the archangels Tyrael and Imperius come to blows over Tyrael's involvement with the mortal realm, leading Tyrael to renounce his angelic position.
- In Dissidia Final Fantasy, the God of Discord, Chaos, and the Goddess of Harmony, Cosmos, continually war against each other in an endless fight. They do this by summoning characters from the FF series to fight for them.
- The Dominions games have a variant of this. You're one of a number of pretender gods, all warring against one another to become the one true god.
- The backstory of Fairy Fencer F starts with a battle between the Goddess and the Vile God.
- The Steam fighting game Fight Of Gods runs on this concept. You can play as various deities from different mythologies and religions and then clash with each other.
- Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn comes to a showdown between Ashera, the Goddess of Order, and Yune, the Goddess of Chaos, both of whom are aspects of the same being, Ashunera, who split herself into two halves.
- Being based on Classical Mythology, the games in the God of War series have several conflicts between immortals. There was the war between the Gods and the Titans, the conflict between the primordial beings, and the demigod Kratos' own battles between pretty much any divine being who dares stand in his way.
- As of the 2018 game, this also extends to Norse Mythology.
- The backstory of Grandia II is based on a war between the Big Good, Granas, and the Big Bad, Valmar. It's ultimately a deconstruction, because life under Granas was so perfect, with everyone's needs met, that it caused massive social stagnation, and it turns out Valmar actually killed Granas.
- Hades revolves around the Prince of the Underworld, Zagreus, attempting to escape despite what his father Hades throws at him. Attempting to avoid a war between the House of Hades and the Olympian Gods is a major part of why Hades is determined to stop him.
- Kid Icarus: Uprising starts out as a war with Medusa then Hades and the forces of the Underworld, but partway through, Viridi, the Goddess of Nature, decides she's had enough of destructive humans and tries to eradicate them. Pit and Palutena then have to fight her off as well.
- The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword's intro shows that one day, demons rose from Beneath the Earth, led by their king, Demise, slaughtering every living thing in search of the Triforce. The goddess Hylia, protector of the surface, sent the last remaining human city into the sky while she battled and sealed away Demise. Their conflict eventually becomes never-ending as for the rest of the The Legend of Zelda series, as Hylia's reincarnations (the princesses named Zelda) are forever cursed to be in conflict with the Demon King Demise's reincarnation (Ganondorf).
- The Neptunia series mostly focuses on the goddesses of Gamindustri, who fight one another almost as often as they do the enemies.
- Persona: All the events in the Persona series happen because god-like beings Philemon and Nyarlathotep have a bet going on over whether or not Humans Are Bastards. Philemon believes humans can overcome their limitations, and gives them the power to use personas to fight for good, and save the human race from doom. Nyarlathotep is a God of Evil who thinks humans are destined to destroy themselves and sends Demons, and in later games Eldritch Abominations called shadows, to run amok, hurt people and exploit the flaws of humanity.
- Pillars of Eternity takes place in the aftermath of the Saint's War, a crusade led by a man claiming to be the avatar of Eothas, god of renewal, that ended when priests of Magran, goddess of war, blew him up, which is believed to have possibly killed Eothas himself. This turns out to have also wrecked the cycle of reincarnation in the game, causing children to be born soulless.
- Divine conflicts form a disturbingly large part of the lore of RuneScape.
- The Third Age spanned around 4,500 years, and the gods of Gielinor and their armies did nothing but fight each other during that time. This period was appropriately dubbed the God Wars. The conflict only came to an end after Guthix awakened from his slumber and banished all the gods from Gielinor.
- Then again, Gielinor had divine conflicts as early as the Second Age, where the Zarosian Empire dominated most of the continent until Zaros was usurped by Zamorak, who disappeared for 20 years and went on to start the God Wars upon his return as a fully realized god.
- In fact, gods have been fighting each other since long before Gielinor was settled by mortal life. A prime example of this is Guthix's homeworld of Naragun, where at least three gods duked it out for dominance (including Saradomin) until all life in Naragun was wiped out. Guthix, in his rage over losing his daughter, grabbed a sword wielded by a god named Skargaroth and stabbed him, upon which his divinity was transferred to Guthix and turned him into a god.
- After Guthix's death at the hands of Sliske, the gods are free to return to Gielinor. The first thing Saradomin and Zamorak do upon returning is fight each other for ten weeks, with Saradomin defeating Zamorak by a narrow margin.
- Sliske essentially coerces the gods into starting a second God Wars by offering the Stone of Jas to whoever kills the most gods upon the next solar eclipse. The first gods to take him up on his offer are Armadyl and Bandos, who gather energy to power their superweapons for six weeks until Armadyl fires his first and kills Bandos.
- When Tuska makes her way to Gielinor in order to destroy it in her blind hunger, the forces of Saradomin, Zamorak, Armadyl and the Godless form a truce and join forces to take her out before she can reach the planet. The trope is surprisingly subverted when it's the Godless who kill Tuska through Vorago acting as their temporary agent.
- Come the aforementioned solar eclipse, the most powerful gods (plus a few assorted participants such as Death and Kerapac) gather at the Heart of Gielinor, where Sliske has erected a maze: the first participant to reach the end of the maze gets to claim the Stone of Jas for themselves. No matter the outcome, everyone quickly agrees that whoever wins the Stone will have to fight everyone else to keep it as soon as they leave the maze, and that no one can reasonably be expected to keep it for long. Then it is revealed that this is exactly what Sliske wants: for the gods to fight each other over the Stone of Jas until Gielinor is destroyed in the conflict, forcing the gods to spread their war throughout the rest of the universe since there will no longer be a "perfect world" to focus on. When called out on how crazy he sounds, Sliske retorts that he's the only one who's sane, considering it's not him but rather the gods (who in the end are just empowered mortals, and therefore just as flawed and creatively sterile as the rest of the mortals that they reign over) who perpetuate stagnation throughout the universe with their petty conflicts. In his own words, this apocalyptic scenario is the only way to "make the universe interesting".
- After the actions of Zaros force Azzanadra to cross the Godzilla Threshold and steal the eggs of the Elder Gods to prevent them from hatching, the Elder Gods muster armies of their own to reclaim the eggs by force, forcing virtually every faction on Gielinor to pool their own forces together to defend the eggs. And by every faction we mean everyone: Seren, Saradomin, Zamorak, Armadyl, the Guthixians, Zarosians, Bandosians...
- In the Shin Megami Tensei series (which also includes the Devil Summoner series), the protagonists get involved in conflicts between either gods and demons or gods against the human race. This is usually due to Humans Are Bastards or Gaia's Vengeance.
- The MOBA game Smite is a Crossover Cosmology game all about this. It involves gods from various pantheons, such as Zeus, Loki, Sobek, Sun Wukong, and others, fighting one another.
- The backstory of Xenoblade Chronicles 1 involves the war between the organic god Bionis and the mechanical god Mechonis. Their bodies eventually form their eponymous worlds, but their souls live on as Zanza and Meyneth respectively, and they are still in conflict.
Webcomics
- In Holystone, there was a war between several factions of gods roughly 2000 years before the "modern" parts of the story. Since Gods Need Prayer Badly, and a weak god can be subjected to power assimilation, it resulted in a lot of human casualties. Enough to propel Death to the station of Top God—a post usually held by the God of Life.
- The Universal War in the backstory of Kill Six Billion Demons. Demiurges are technically members of a god-created race empowered by one or more of God's 777,777 names, but due to said empowering they are all but divine. The Universal War raged for centuries, was immensely destructive, and cut the number of Demiurges from millions in number down to only seven, each of whom currently rules a seventh of Creation.
- The Creation Myth of the Kill Six Billion Demons universe also mentions that the gods would frequently war with each other during the age of gods, but on the other hand, said Creation Myth is outright said to be a lie by the creator god YISUN.
Web Original
- In The Gamer's Alliance, the gods follow and represent different ideas, so they are bound to oppose each other by their very nature. The biggest conflicts exist between Cardia the God of Order and Mardük the God of Chaos, and Hephaestus the God of Smithing and Nergal the God of War. However, there are times when some of the rival gods may end up temporarily teaming up with one another out of necessity or they might just as well not work together despite it being beneficial because they can't get over grudges.
Hephaestus: By our very natures, we must oppose each other. I exist to create, to build, to aid prosperity. He exists to destroy, to wage war, to spread strife wherever he goes. I can no sooner alter my nature than a fish could choose to live on land. It is the same for Nergal.
Axikasha: Maybe mortals don't have it so bad after all. At least we're free to choose what cause we serve. What good are the powers of a god if you can't even control your own destiny?
Hephaestus: I cannot control my nature, nor would there be any point in denying who—or what—I am. That does not mean I cannot control my actions. I do the best with what I have been given, and the choices I make are my own.
Western Animation
- The Legend of Korra: In the two-parter "Beginnings", we learn about the light and darkness spirits Raava and Vaatu and their conflict with each other. If either of them wins against the other on the day of harmonic convergence, there will be a 10,000 year age of light or darkness. However, if either of them gets contained, then there won't be another battle and either light or darkness will endure indefinitely until they are freed.
- In Samurai Jack, Aku's backstory is that he was once a part of an Eldritch Abomination that was fought against by the combined might of Ra, Odin, and Rama.
