Bruce Almighty/WMG

"God" is actually Loki, the Norse trickster God.

He thought it would be hilarious to give a mortal supernatural power. Bruce doesn't gain true omnisenscience, because Loki can't grant it, because he's not GOD, almighty creator of the universe. Loki made himself appear as the Judeo-Christian God, because this is the one Bruce is most familiar with. It also explains why "God" doesn't seem to care what damage Bruce causes with his new powers, it's all for the sake of a prank.

God, as played by Morgan Freeman, is not actually God.

If Bruce had actually been given all of God's powers, he would have had omniscience, which would have led to him knowing the consequences of his actions before they happen. Instead, he's portrayed as being able to grant prayers without any comprehension of what will happen as a result. Thus, Freeman's character isn't really God at all, but a dybbuk, a Jewish trickster-spirit somewhere along the lines of a djinn.

• Alternately, God has placed more limitations on Bruce's power than simple geographical restriction. Omniscience and true omnipotence may have broken Bruce's brain—as well as being dangerous for everyone else, considering that early on a power-mad Bruce crashes comets, moves the moon etc.
  • Bruce has the potential of omniscience, but has no idea how to access it. The closest he comes is "listening" to prayers, and that's as far as he can imagine so that's all he senses.

God, as played by Morgan Freeman, is not actually God.

Same title, different tack to the previous entry - since God is perfectly willing to let Bruce fuck with whatever he pleases, he is advocating it; if he weren't, he'd stop Bruce. As a result, this means that "God" is quite happy to let Bruce kill or ruin the lives of hundreds, maybe thousands of Malaysians as the result of his lunar shenanigans, and who knows what damage the comet did to the people of Buffalo? A prime tenet of Christianity is that God is all-loving, and a God that gives one man His powers and then allows that man to wreak havoc on the world cannot be all-loving. Hence God, as played by Morgan Freeman, cannot actually be God.

• Most of the mythos surrounding the two films is Christian, yes. There's repetition of the number 7 in the presence of "God", he can walk on water, the prayer software identifies itself as "Yahweh", he dropped hints about Noah in Evan Almighty, the Prayers that Bruce hears are all to "God" in general, except for a church congregation doing the ole "Hallowed be thy name" bit... he also says he's spoken to Gandhi, and seems to embrace all of humanity as a whole as his children rather than any few. So, if he is God then he's probably the Christian version of the God of Abraham.
• Admittedly, God already allows a wide variety of natural and man-made disasters. It's an important part of Christianity that he considers free will more important then saving humanity from themselves and each other, otherwise he'd have prevented the Holocaust. Also, mysterious ways.
• It's one thing to say something definitely exists, it's quite another to say that it exists and everything said about it is also truth. The God of this movie is simply the Supreme Being, and does not have adhere to everything said about him. If every single thing that was believed about God were true, then we would get contradictions.
• Bruce, being God, has the status of being unaccountable for his actions, because by definition, all the actions taken by God are perfect, even when they aren't. While Bruce is God, he's no longer being judged as a human being would.

God, as played by Morgan Freeman, is not actually God.

He's Morgan "Yahweh" Freeman, and the movie is a documentary of how he spends his daily life.

Morgan Freeman, as played by God, is not actually Morgan Freeman.

He's God. He just calls himself Morgan Freeman in order to walk among us undisturbed.

God, as played by Morgan Freeman, is not actually God.

He's the devil. That's why he doesn't care, etc, from previous entries.

• But wouldn't that imply that God is ok with his actions in allowing him to carry them out and doesn't care either about the consequences?
  • Only if you assume God is actually all-powerful.
    • Actually there's a biblical precedent for this exact theory. In the book of Job, it's not god testing Job, but satan, who has been given free reign by god to do pretty much whatever he wants to Job in order to get him to curse god's name. This could just be a similar test to prove that maybe Humans Are the Real Monsters after all, that backfired on satan.

Bruce is hallucinating while having a nervous breakdown

When Bruce was passed over for the big promotion and then got fired, it broke his brain. Most of the movie is him in a fantasy world, exacting vengeance on the people he believes wronged him and hearing "prayers" in his head. The events around him, like the tidal waves, actually do happen, but his brain makes him believe that he's responsible. The muggers ran away because they see him talking to an anal-dwelling Butt Monkey and thought he was Ax Crazy. His girlfriend breaks up with him because he was losing his mind. At the end, he stumbles out into the street and gets run over. He then spends some time in the hospital while the doctors prescribe him anti-psychotic medication. When he wakes up, he's back to normal and no longer "God".

• This is so surprisingly easy to believe that it may be possible that the film was deliberately made this way...

Bruce is, and always has been, a Reality Warper who created a "God" to give him an excuse to release his powers.

He subconsciously feared letting himself get corrupted by his power, so he made an impressive, yet kindly father figure who could give him "permission" to release a fraction of his vast power, yet place limitations on its use and would have the power to supposedly take it away. In reality all theses limits were self-imposed.

• Bruce is Kyon! Yes!

God, as played by Morgan Freeman, never transferred his powers to Bruce.

God simply gave to Bruce the illusion of being almighty, while he (God) was always the one behind anything Bruce did. For example, Bruce was never omniscient: he could never predict the consequences of his "miracles" (which he would have, had he actually known everything that can be known), and he needed a physical support to know people's prayers, instead of knowing them naturally because of omniscience. And there are situations where Bruce's powers don't work at all, which contradicts the very meaning of "almighty".

There could have been a simple test to confirm or falsify this wild guess: Bruce should have tried to banish God to Hell. If Bruce was really almighty (and God was powerless), he would have succeeded. If his condition was an illusion created by God, God would have cast Bruce to Hell for sacrilege instead.

• • While Bruce is God, his actions aren't accountable. His only limitations are the free-will part and not revealing that he is God to anyone. Other than that he is allowed to do as he pleases, including presumably sending the other former God to Hell if he were so presumptuous.
  • You're assuming that would be God's only possible reaction to such an act. There are many other possibilities: God could send himself to Hell for the duration, but being God he wouldn't be harmed and would patiently wait there for Bruce to forsake his powers. In fact, physically being in Hell wouldn't limit God at all.
  • As above, he only has the potential to know everything. He just lacks the imagination or initiative to use it properly.
  • This Troper assumed that God didn't lose his powers; he just gave Bruce enough power to teach him a lesson.

Bruce is Jesus

Bruce is the second coming of Jesus and is as powerful as Morgod. Bruce's powers are slowly opened up with a bit of playacting. Bruce then slowly goes mad with power, then just mad. Then he asks Morgod to shut down his powers and let him live out his life as Bruce. Morgod realizes Jesus isn't ready to come back and lets him do so. As a bonus, all this would explain why Bruce can violate the rule of 'You can't screw with people's free will'. After all, who -wants- a Rape Monkey up the butt? Sure, the mugger was evil but still had free will.

• Free will is your ability to make decisions and act on them. A monkey is still allowed to shove itself up your ass when you have free will. Bruce just couldn't make the guy like it.
  • What about the monkey's free will, huh?
  • God has control over animals (Noah's Ark anyone?)
  • Who says the monkey was an actual monkey and not just a construct given form?

Any disasters outside of Buffalo caused by Bruce's power misuse didn't actually happen.

The meteor's kinetic energy was dissipated with surprising efficiency and relatively little scenery damage. The moon would have caused more problems than some tide problems in Malasia were it pulled to 1/2 to 1/4 of its normal distance from the earth, and likely would have been pulled partway into the earth's shadow (I don't recall the time of night and don't know the NESW directions from the apartment). All of the news reports were fake, the people of Buffalo slowly had their memories clouded over, and the rest of the world didn't even know about any of the events. The "borrow God's power" gambit could be happening all the time. It could have happened last month... in your own town.

• Then Bruce probably wouldn't have had God's powers then, if they were so limited, and the premise of the movie would be that Bruce is now some limited demi-god trapped in a single city.
• Earth's shadow is only a thin sliver of dark in a big, BIG sphere of space. Unless the Moon were lined up just right, it would almost certainly not do so just because of a little change in distance.

God only granted Bruce a very small portion of his powers and was never on "vacation."

• The entire thing was a ruse to teach Bruce a lesson in humility and love for humanity. Why? Because Bruce with his charm and charisma has the potential to be a great Paragon thus helping people better understand the true nature of God. That, and it was fun to dick around with one egotistical jerk for two weeks.

God, as played by Morgan Freeman, is not actually God.

He's a construct of Bruce's mind, who's unaware of his godlike powers until it happens, in some Haruhiesque kind of plot. Bruce himself could even be Haruhi, in one of her Universe's rebuilds.

• Isn't this one already listed above? The Reality Warper WMG?

God, as played by Morgan Freeman, is not actually God.

He's an orisha that decided to teach Bruce a little lesson about how power can be bad.

God, as played by Morgan Freeman, is actually God.

Here because it clearly is not a given (see many of the WMGs above).

• But it is in the film, so it's not a WMG, it's the plot of the film.

God, as played by Morgan Freeman, is actually Morgan Freeman.

He looks just like him.

Morgan Freeman Is God.

Self-explanatory.

• This can't be a WMG, it's already common knowledge.

Morgan Freeman, as played by Morgan Freeman, is actually Morgan Freeman.

Self-explanatory

God, as played by Morgan Freeman, isn't actually God

He's the last guy that God gave some power to. The only way for him to return to being normal was to pass the powers to someone else. At the end of the movie the other guy sees how badly Bruce has handled the powers and took them back.

God never gave Bruce any "real" control over the world...

...Because the whole time, they were in a type of closed space.

• Mentioned above, but without the Haruhi reference.
  • Yes... However, this is giving it an explanation for why there's no "real control".
    • God, as played by Morgan Freeman, is omnipotent. Truly omnipotent, aside from a seemingly self-imposed limit of not wanting to mess with free will, not the cheapo nerfed omnipotence Bruce got. He could easily stop Bruce's machinations from affecting anywhere else simply because he's just that good (my intention), or he could have put Buffalo into an alternate dimension. Because you put this as a separate guess, rather than under the above guess as a possible explanation, and simply Pot Holed it instead of saying "like in Suzumiya Haruhi", I thought you were making an X and Y are Kyon and Haruhi guess.
    • Well... If it follows that Kyon is "really" the "God" as seen in WMG's on that side, then maybe he once thought about what it would be like if someone else was God. Of course, he was subconsiously not using his powers, so he created a new dimension when Morgan Freeman is God. Why? Because Morgan Freeman is just that awesome. XD

Jack Nicholson is Satan.

Rule of Cool. Don't forget The Bucket List, which had Morgan Freeman as well.

They better have him as Satan if they make another one.

Evan Baxter is a Woobie.

He was only a Jerkass in Bruce Almighty because the news station didn't want someone meek doing the news. They wanted someone outgoing and good humored. And, since he was a workaholic (who didn't want to lose his job), he went along with it, and hid his true personality, which wasn't revealed until the sequel.

God restored the Status Quo after getting his powers back from Bruce.

This is the only way I can accept the Esoteric Happy Ending.

• • Or he found a way to work into his plan.

Bruce didn't really come back in the end.

Bruce was asked by God (assuming that he really is God) if he learned anything, so to speak, from the whole events of the film. When he knew Bruce had learned to be a better person, Bruce was sent to heaven. Alternately, he died in the car crash way in the beginning, everything up until he was hit by the truck was purgatory, and then he went to heaven.

God, as played by Morgan Freeman, is actually George Burns.

Just with LOTS of make-up. (extra points if you get the reference)

God let Bruce keep some of the powers given to him.

There has been no explanation to whether or not Bruce kept the powers, had them taken away or got to keep some. It is implied by his girlfriend that his ability to pleasure her while not in the room with her is still there and after the homeless man revealed himself to be god in disguise, he seems to be keeping an extra eye on him. It is also never explained what happened to Bruce and Grace in the sequel as well so odds are he is probably still playing god in buffalo.

God is the actual maker of the movie; it was to tell people to stop trying to obtain godlike powers.

God gave some of his powers to Bruce, but not all of them. Bruce did not have omniscience because the human brain could not handle it. God knew what Bruce would do, and had already prepared for it. That is why the damage was not too bad.

• • Mind Screw: God made a movie to teach you a lesson by having you watch a guy leearn that lesson.
  • God chose Morgan Freeman to play him because Morgan Freeman is just awesome.