Gods Need Prayer Badly/Playing With

Basic Trope: In a fantasy work, a god's power is proportional to the number of believers he or she has, and how strongly they believe in him or her.

• Straight: Odin gets stronger the more believers he has, but weaker the fewer he has.
• Exaggerated:
  • One person's belief gives Odin omnipotence.
  • The gods created by and gaining power through worship create their own gods who gain power through their worship
• Justified:
  • In the fantasy setting, belief is shown to influence reality enough to allow this to happen.
  • Gods are essentially ideas. If no-one thinks about them, they can't exist.
  • The believers are all Reality Warpers who make him exist when they believe in him.
• Inverted: Odin actually gets weaker the more people believe in him.
• Subverted: Odin doesn't lose power when his followers are massacred.
• Double Subverted:
  • Until Ra mocks him for having no followers, at which point Odin vanishes in a Puff of Logic.
  • Odin is lying, so no-one gets any bright ideas.
• Parodied: Belief and manifestation are so strongly intertwined that a follower of Odin changes their own beliefs just to get to see Odin wearing a tutu.
• Deconstructed: Odin becomes so powerful that he now has power over the rest of humanity, and begins smiting people who aren't his believers because they cannot resist him.
• Reconstructed: Odin turns out to be a merciful god, or is taught humility by a brief spell with fewer believers fuelling his powers.
• Zig Zagged: The authors seem inconsistent over whether Odin needs believers or not to fuel his power - one moment a single believer has total control over Odin, and the next moment a whole congregation's collective belief has no effect on him.
• Averted: Odin exists whether or not people believe in him.
• Enforced:
  • Executive Meddling and/or the authors: "The god is too powerful, he's a Game Breaker, but I don't want to tone him down too much. How about Gods Need Prayer Badly? It'd make a nice allegory for belief, too."
  • The writer is trying to justify why God cares about worship so much, without it making Him seem egotistical
• Lampshaded: A Genre Savvy Character says; "I don't get how believing it makes it true. How do they do that?"
• Invoked: A Genre Savvy Character tells everyone to believe in Odin so that he can grow powerful and smite their enemies.
• Exploited: A Genre Savvy Character sabotages belief in Odin and then coerces him into working for him or her in exchange for a revival in belief.
• Defied: "You think telling people to Clap Your Hands If You Believe will change anything? I'm a GOD, you fool. Cower, brief mortals!"
• Discussed: "We're losing the war because no-one properly believes in Odn any more. If they did, he'd be a powerful ally, but as it is he can't help us"
• Conversed: A character who reads fantasy books points out an author who wrote about this effect and compares it with Odin's case.

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