God of Evil

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    Elevating Evil to a century spanning art form.


    "I am called a villain, but mine is a doctrine reflected in the unspoken truths behind all other philosophies. Recognize that truth, my child: Strife is the single element most essential to meaning and existence. Without conflict, without struggle, all of creation might as well be so many unmoving, unfeeling stones. Without me to hate, who would have cause to call themselves holy or just?"
    —The Book of Charnel, Sacrifice

    In a polytheistic religion each God and Goddess serves a specific role and fills a certain niche: love, life, war, death, and everything in between; be it Aardvarks or Zebras. One such incredibly vital purpose, believe it or not, is Evil.

    Please allow us to play as (uncomfortably) literal Devil's Advocates. On the one hand, the Balance Between Good and Evil must per force have Evil to balance Good, lest the latter become an intolerant conformist theocracy. Likewise, it also serves as a definition of what not to do for worshipers of all the Good and Neutral gods. Most importantly for purposes of this Wiki, it also serves as an excellent plot enabler and antagonist for the heroes and forces of good to fight against.

    Being the absolute apex of the Sliding Scale of Villain Threat, The Chosen One can spend an entire series fighting their way up from the Religion of Evil, the Black Pope, its Dark Messiah, and then fight the God Of Evil itself... or at least enable a good god to do so.

    This God(dess) Of Evil can take any shape or form... not just as a master tempter and deceiver, but because evil includes a heady and large portfolio. As Characters they can have as varying a range of personalities as any normal villains.

    Here are a few popular variants: Standard Gods Of Evil can take after Satan, being rebels from The Light and tempting peasant and king alike. Kind of a non-denominational counterpart of Crystal Dragon Jesus. However, most aren't futile rebels; they are very real and threats often motivated by goals other than rebellion for its own sake. The Grim Reaper is at times represented as a God Of Evil, wanting nothing but the death of every living thing, and the protagonist in particular. War too may be shown this way, desiring to bring about a world where Asskicking Equals Authority and the weak are killed just for being weak... which does raise the question of whether or not it's ironic for heroes to vanquish them by fighting. If they have any philosophy, ethos, or commandment, it's usually that Might Makes Right, that ethics and morality are mere shackles for The Fettered masses of Muggles, and that Evil represents the path to power.

    Not surprisingly, they tend to be cruel, dominating and treacherous. If there is more than one God Of Evil in a setting, they usually engage in Eviler Than Thou, betraying each other before any lasting headway against the forces of good can be made. Their metaphysical home, where worshipers and non-worshiping sinners end up, is usually akin to Hell. Given the above, why would anyone worship them? Well, they usually offer worshipers power in life via a Deal with the Devil, fine print and afterlife be damned (literally). Plus, just because they'll go to hell if/when they die, doesn't mean they'll be tortured souls... they might become the torturers. Provided they don't fail their dark lord first, that is. And of course, most gods of evil are worshipped out of fear of what would happen if they stopped worshipping. Is it any surprise their pawns in the Divine Chessboard are usually unwitting or unwilling?

    Their followers include Cults, the Religion of Evil and Path of Inspiration. Necromancers and Infernalists usually get their powers by worshipping them. Expect them to forge many an Artifact of Doom as a source/repository of their power. When they or their agents are actively recruiting, expect them to be The Corrupter. Sometimes the God Of Evil is also literally Evil. Likely candidate for Ultimate Evil and As Long as There Is Evil. A theocracy to one of these is probably The Empire. May be creator of an Exclusively Evil race. May have a court of Demon Lords and Archdevils, or if they exist at all these may be upstarts or otherwise in opposition. Gods of evil may have the Legions of Hell at their command.

    Contrast Eldritch Abomination, which, as horrifying as it may be and act, is completely amoral and not malicious. Compare God Is Evil and Everybody Hates Hades. If a God of Evil exists in a setting where the Big Bad who actually drives the plot is a mortal, they'll be the Bigger Bad. May overlap or also be a Mad God.

    The Good Counterpart to this trope is the God of Good.

    To avoid Flame Bait and Edit Wars, note that this trope isn't about gods who simply are evil, it's about gods of evil. Jerkass Gods that are petty, vain, or prone to Disproportionate Retribution do not qualify. If the god in question has, on at least one occasion, shown mercy or helped a mortal for ostensibly benevolent and non-Evil Plan related reasons, they don't qualify.

    Examples of God of Evil include:

    Anime & Manga


    Comic Books

    • For DC Comics:
      • Darkseid, the Big Bad of Jack Kirby's New Gods, has been called the God of Evil by many people in the DCU. And in Final Crisis he comes close to being a full blown Eldritch Abomination -- his very existence is causing reality to die. Just to bring this point home, here's what Boss Dark Side says: "There was a war in Heaven. I won." He is the poster boy for Dystopia Justifies the Means- his goal is to turn the entire universe into an even more hellish version of Apokolips, a world of perpetual enslavement and burning fire pits where the only purpose you are told to have is to endlessly worship Darkseid.
      • Ares, God of War, is the Arch Enemy of Wonder Woman.
      • Trigon the Terrible isn't just referred to as a god, but the Literal Manifestation of ALL Evil that has ever existed. Think Dormmamu, but in the DC Universe instead of Marvel.
    • And for the Marvel Universe:
      • The Elder Gods, powerful magical entities native to Earth, born billions of years ago shortly after the planet was created. While they did not originate as evil, they began cannibalizing each other once they found out that they could gain more power that way, eventually degenerating into extremely powerful demons. Only Gaea and Oshtur did not join their brethren; the latter fled to another dimension and eventually became one of the Vishanti, while the former birthed the entity Atum which proceeded to hunt down and eat the Elder Gods themselves. A handful escaped into other dimensions and Gaea and Atum set up numerous magical barriers to hamper their returning, while Atum degenerated himself into the evil creature the Demogorge due to the demons he consumed; he expelled this from himself and it became The Legions of Hell- demons such as Thog and Mephisto-, while he retired to live in the sun. The Elder Gods include:
        • Set, a multi-headed serpent who was the first to cannibalise, and the demon partly responsible for the death of the dinosaurs; he managed to bypass the barriers and started feasting on the life energies of the dinos, but after learning Gaea planned on making them extinct and starting over with mammals, used mind control to send them to kill all mammilian creatures. Gaea responded by waking up Atum and the battle between the two, apart from costing Set his original head (two more kept replacing them when Atum cut them off, until he had seven), ended up causing the extinction event itself and left Set so weakened he had to flee again. He later returned as a major recurring villain during Marvels take on Conan the Barbarian.
        • Chthon, the writer of the Darkhold, an evil magical tome responsible for, amongst other things, the creation of vampires; the god of Chaos, and more specifically chaos magic. He is the source of the power of the Scarlet Witch, with the long term plan of using her as a host, and is currently sealed away in Mount Wundagore (or at least, part of him is), which became the magical (and irradiated) source of clay for Fantastic Four villain the Puppet Master. He is basically the Evil Sorceror of the group.
      • Aside from the Elders, the regular gods are divided into pantheons, each of which has their own bad guys:
        • Loki, foster brother and Arch Enemy of The Mighty Thor, is the God of Mischief and Evil in Marvel's Norse pantheon, a powerful magician and Manipulative Bastard extraordinaire who seeks to conquer Asgard and kill his heroic sibling. He is technically not a god, but a very small, god-sized Frost Giant, adopted by Odin as a babe as penance after Odin slew his father in battle. Loki bares no real grudge for that (in the comics, anyway), but instead grew resentful because he thought Thor was treated as the favourite, especially by other Asgardians. As boys, he often tricked Thor into getting into dangerous situations hoping he would die in the process, and as full grown gods got him banished from Asgard on several occasions. Accidentally caused the formation of The Avengers when he pitted Thor against the Incredible Hulk, and remains one of their most persistent and powerful adversaries, often by giving common thugs superpowers and sending them into battle against them, or using his magic to cause all sorts of trouble. He is the father of various evil creatures as well as Hela, Goddess of Death, who borders on an Everybody Hates Hades evil god herself.
        • Amatsu-Mikaboshi, for the Shinto pantheon, a demonic creature and a malevolent Death God (not their only death god, just their bad one) that serves as the God of Evil for those gods, and their most primal enemy. He/ she/ it is the Anthropomorphic Personification of the primordial darkness that once ruled the Earth after the defeat of the Elder Gods; prior to that, it once ruled the Marvel Universe and prior to that, it ruled the universe preceding that universe, and originally was the nothingness before existence. Over time it had to constantly descend as it dealt with the various new creatures and gods that peppered the planet It regained some of its old stature by slaughtering, eating and enslaving hundreds of gods and demons (notably Zeus and Nightmare) to become the Chaos King, where it (re)joined the cosmic pantheon alongside Eternity and Death, seeking to destroy the multiverse and return it all to primordial darkness. At full power it just falls short of being some kind of Anti-God, though it might be more accurate to say it is anti-Creation, preferring to exist in and rule over a chaotic nothingness.
        • Set, not the Elder God but the God of Evil for the Heliopolitan (ie. Egyptian) pantheon, based on the mythological Set but, in-universe, taking the name of the Elder God for its badass connotations. Like Set and Loki, he uses magic and soul-stealing to enhance his powers, to the point he now rivals Odin, arguably the most powerful god in any pantheon.
        • Everybody Hates Hades and, as Pluto, this Death God of the Greek pantheon serves as their resident bad guy, and enemy of Marvels' Hercules. In DC he is portrayed more faithfully as a more neutral figure. Aside from him there is Ares, God of War, though in recent years Ares has become an Ascended Extra and morphed into an Anti-Hero, albeit a very dark and violent one.
      • Eldritch Abominations like Shuma-Gorath and Dormammu are worshiped as gods in the dimensions they rule over, and numerous others, and wield nigh-omnipotent power arguably above every other god previously mentioned, at least at full strength and in their own worlds. In the case of Dormammu at least, worship also serves as a source of power, though Shuma-Gorath used to command regular human sacrifices as well. Both seek to conquer the Earth- Shuma-Gorath has actually already done this, twice, in ancient times- and can be guaranteed to torture and kill everything on the planet/ universe if they ever succeed. Hell Lords like Mephisto wield godlike power within their dimensions, but are not treated as gods per say, or seemingly worshiped in any way except by the odd gullible mortal.
      • Some other Marvel supervillains are sometimes worshiped as gods themselves, most notably Apocalypse who was, as it happens, also mistaken for Set and various other gods throughout his immortal lifespan, and would use this influence to force civilizations to fight to the death until only the strongest survived. In the Legacy novel series Magneto was worshiped as God on Genosha, while Doctor Doom has successfully stolen godlike power numerous times from cosmic beings, though on such occasions he prefers to be actively worshiped as a King or Emperor rather than a deity. Selene, another X-Men villain, is a 17,000 year old vampiric mutant sorceress named after and sometimes worshiped as a goddess, the attainment of which is her ultimate goal. The Green Goblin once thought he was one of these, but he was actually just driven mad(der) by an Artifact of Doom.
      • The Big Bad of Fear Itself the Serpent is the Asgardian god of fear and Odin's brother Cul Borson.
    • Anathos from Les Légendaires is basically this trope incarnated; he was part of the Gods who created Alysia, but turned against them because he wanted to become a "Mastergod", destroyed the original Alysia, was sealed away by them after his defeat and came back in order to attempt The End of the World as We Know It. He even stated to have created this universe's version of Hell.


    Gamebooks


    Literature

    • Set is the most evil of gods in the Conan the Barbarian world.
    • Morgoth in The Lord of the Rings. Sauron tries to ascend to this level, but is more of a demigod of evil.
    • The Dark One from The Wheel of Time is one of the quintessential examples of this trope.
    • One of the most horrifyingly monstrous versions of this is Lord Foul the Despiser. He was imprisoned with Time by his opposite, the Creator, for planting various sources of evil magic into the universe shortly following the creation, and he's been trying to get out ever since- and because he's super-intelligent and unrepentantly horrible, this generally means misery for everyone else unlucky enough to be stuck in the Land with him.
    • Ruin from Mistborn is something of a subversion- he's definitely a god and as far as humans are concerned he's pretty clearly evil, but he doesn't think of himself as such and isn't interested in either ruling people or corrupting them. He does use mortal pawns, but some of those include the heroes doing heroic things that happen to speed along the destruction of the world. He does have some unequivocally evil tendencies (namely a fondness for Evil Gloating and Hannibal Lectures), but these seem to have been picked up from mortals rather than the reverse.
    • There's an entire third of the Dragonlance pantheon called the Gods of Darkness, and they're, well, Exactly What It Says on the Tin. In something of a subversion, they're considered nasty but necessary parts of the cosmos, though every so often one of them (usually Takhisis or her consort Sargonnas) gets a bit too ambitious and needs to be put back in their place.
    • Kushiel's Avatar by Jacqueline Carey involves Angra Mainyu, taken from real life Zoroastrianism. (See the Real Life section below for more details.)
    • In Animorphs, Crayak is basically this.
    • David Eddings likes this one. In his Belgariad-verse, Big Bad Torak is one of these and losely follows the Satan model, as does the mentioned but never directly confronted King of Hell. In The Elenium, Azash is an elder evil that verges on Eldritch Abomination if he didn't manipulate human desires so often, while Cyrgon is a straight example and Klael is basically the god of Gods of Evil. To round the roster out, The Redemption of Althalus has Daeva, a god of destruction who morphed into this when he promoted himself from "takes out the cosmic trash" to "Omnicidal Maniac".
    • The Crimson King from Stephen King's The Dark Tower series definitely qualifies. Before he got nerfed he was depicted as an invincible anti-God that had always existed, but was trapped on a balcony near the top of the Dark Tower. Even trapped his avatar "The Court of the Crimson King" was so powerful that almost no force in King's multiverse could stand against it. Supposedly if his physical body was free he would become utterly infallible, and so he planned to bring the Tower (and by proxy all of existence) crashing down. Later King retconned him into a senile half-god that was not nearly so imposing.
    • The Incarnations of Immortality series has this as one of its offices. However, the particular office holder in the series averts this; he's less interested in being a relentless evil and more interested in simply being a fair evil - that is, separating good and evil people through temptation so that they can go to Heaven or Hell rather than stuck in Purgatory.
    • In L. Jagi Lamplighter's Prospero Lost, Theo recounts how the Orbis Suleimani eradicated knowledge of the supernatural. This was to prevent people from trying to solve problems by appealing to supernatural beings, many of which demanded worship and some of which were evil. Success resulted in the Industrial Revolution.
    • Tash is described this way in The Last Battle, the final book of The Chronicles of Narnia, with Crystal Dragon Jesus Aslan outright stating that Tash is his antithesis. Interestingly, while Tash is very much a Card-Carrying Villain, his own religion is not a Religion of Evil, given that it apparently includes a number of sincere followers who believe Tash to be a just and righteous god.
      • Unfortunate Implications are entirely intentional, here—the Calormenes are straight out of the Arabian Nights, and Tash (who looks like a particularly frenetic Hindu statue) is Lewis' idea of Allah. Emeth is his concession to Muslims not being Exclusively Evil.
      • It gets better - Tash is so evil that you literally cannot commit a good act in his name - they automatically are assumed as your service to Aslan. The opposite is also true - if you do something terrible in the name of Aslan, you're really serving Tash.

    Aslan: No service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him.

    • Gyphon from Mithgar is both the overarching Big Bad of the series and its primary God of Evil. Specifically, he represents tyranny, since he holds to the belief that the strong should use their powers to control the weak and in fact opposed giving mortals (and non-divine immortals) free will in the first place. Other, lesser Gods of Evil who follow him are namedropped occasionally, but none of them ever do anything directly and very little is ever revealed about them.
    • Thasaidon from Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique stories is an interesting case. His underground Hell is, at least in some parts, full of (corrupted) greenery reminiscent of the Garden of Eden, he actively tries to prevent evil humans from killing each other, at least on a large scale, and he is fine with letting the souls he owns reincarnate.

    Live-Action TV

    • Dahak from Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess is described as being the source of all hate, and even the worst of the Jerkass Gods won't hesitate to stop it from achieving the power it desires.
    • The First Evil from Buffy the Vampire Slayer exists As Long as There Is Evil, and is ultimately responsible for every evil being and act in the series.
    • Charmed had The Source of All Evil (usually just referred to as The Source), who was the ruler of the underworld and the Bigger Bad for the first half of the series' run. It was later revealed that "The Source" was actually a primordial force that lived inside whatever demon was currently leader of the underworld at the time.


    Mythology & Religion

    • Some more dualistic forms of Zoroastrianism claim Angra Mainyu (better known by the Persian name Ahriman) as the Evil Counterpart to Ahura Mazda. In other words, he is essentially the anti-God, or God of evil.
    • Egyptian Mythology has Apep (or Apophis), the monstrous serpent that tried to eat Ra every night and wasn't so much worshipped as worshipped against, straddling the line between God of Evil and Eldritch Abomination.
      • Set is portrayed as this to a degree in later versions of Egyptian Mythology, though contrary to popular opinion he wasn't a snake god, and was actually a good guy in earlier myths; Set lost ground as the Horus cult gained it in later centuries, and became more identified with foreigners and the desert, even becoming identified sometimes with the chaos-serpent he had used to fight. By the time Petrarch recorded the most familiar-to-moderns versions of the Egyptian gods, he was bidding fair for this role.
    • Satan is often portrayed this way in Western media, as a direct Evil Counterpart of God. This is the result of Word of Dante however and in contrast to most Christian doctrine, where Satan is recognized as being a far lesser power than God and has no chance of succeeding in his cosmic takeover bid. Satan is never described in The Bible as being a representation of evil, merely an evil angel, however while angels are nothing compared to YHWH that's because He's an omnipotent Eldritch Abomination beyond all space-time, and angels still have god-like power (in the lesser sense). A comparison would be that Zoroastrianism portrays Ahriman as an Evil Overlord of a hostile empire, while Christianity portrays Satan as a terrorist.
    • In Shinto Ama-no-Kagaseo is the Anthropomorphic Personification of Amatsu-Mikaboshi, which is essentially The Dark Side. So, basically, it is the personification of Evil, or at least discord, destruction and chaos, and destructive impulses.
    • Lakota tradition features Unk, the goddess of water and disease, who creates a number of eldritch monstrosities. Oddly, it was the earth goddess's jealousy that got her expelled, even before she did anything evil.
    • As Ragnarok starts draw closer, Loki eventually starts to no longer be the God of Mischeif/Lies and then becomes the God of Evil and the one who leades the Forces of Chaos into the Last Battle.
    • Any religion that has conquered another religion often turns the old gods into demons. This is the origin of the word "demonize". And now you know.


    Tabletop Games

    • Dungeons & Dragons usually has at least one (but usually three) in each setting. In addition to gods who aren't gods of evil as such, but happen to be evil and run their portfolio accordingly.
      • Dragonlance, being almost entirely about the Balance Between Good and Evil, divides all its gods into gods of good, gods of evil, and gods of neutrality. Obviously, each of them does have the own unique spheres of influence above and beyond their alignment.
      • Forgotten Realms had the trio of ascended evil adventurers - Neutral Evil Myrkul (death), Chaotic Evil Bhaal (murder, assassination) and Lawful Evil Bane (tyranny, strife). Until they were killed off in the Godswar (Time of Troubles).
        • The Godswar had all three replaced with Cyric. Who immediately got understandably megalomaniacal, and soon drove himself utterly insane and fell down to delusional, but still disporoportionately dangerous minor deity as the "Prince of Lies". He's really the God of Lies, Trickery, Deceit, etc, but he's still most certainly Chaotic Evil. Along with his pets Kezef (a giant dog capable of devouring gods, he even bit off Tyr's, the God of Justice, hand) and the Night Serpent (who will devour the sun while she feeds on the dreams and souls of the dead).
          • Oh, and in 4e Cyric murdered good, pure-hearted goddess Mystra (though with the aid of another) out of pure bitterness and jealousy. He is currently imprisoned, but that doesn't stop him from doing evil. Not to mention, he's a god of trickery. Who knows if that is the real Cyric that Tyr imprisioned? Or how long until he somehow tricks Malik (his extremely cowardly - and quite devious when scared - Chosen) into getting him out? His destiny is also to destroy the world in a battle-to-the-death with Torm (new Chief of the Gods since Tyr's death) where they kill each other and destroy the world. Somehow the Tormish (Torm-worshippers) think this is a good thing and will lead to a new world of goodness and renewal.
        • Iyachtu Xvim - son of Bane formerly known as a conqueror (and king for about 20 years) of Westgate, who broke out of his imprisonment during the Godswar and tried to take the place of his father and as such became Cyric's rival. As the new god of tyranny and hatred.
        • Bane, even defeated, managed to eventually pick his pieces together and return, taking back a lot of Xvimites and Cyricists. As the god of Tyranny, he falls somewhere between "the biggest and baddest Evil Overlord of them all" and "downright Villain Sue". He has demonstrated ability for show-off, planning, head-on fight, sneaky subterfuge or audacious gambling as needed.
      • Planescape: Special mention should go to Asmodeus, ruler of Hell and supreme archdevil now become the god of sin.
      • And in the Eberron setting, you've got the Dark Six, a whole pantheon of these (though they can have positive effects, they do have plenty of non-evil worshippers in certain parts of the world, and it's likely they were originally the gods of the goblin empire before humans moved in). There are also the Rakshasa Rajahs, ancient demonic beings who once ruled the world, each corresponding to a different kind of evil. The other main dark powers in the setting (the Dreaming Dark and the Daelkyr) are, however, closer to Eldritch Abominations.
      • Izrador of the Midnight setting is fairly standard as dark gods go. The other gods tried to banish him from heaven, but did not expect the unforeseen side effect that it would not only send him to the world of mortals, but also severed all connection between heaven and earth. Think of Sauron if he got his ring back, only worse.
      • Pathfinder features six in the basic manual: Asmodeus, former Archdevil and Lawful Evil god of tyranny, contracts, slavery and Pride; Lamashtu, former Demon Lord and the Chaotic Evil goddess of madness, monsters, and nightmares; Norgorber, Neutral Evil god of poison, secrets, greed, and murder; Urgathoa, Neutral Evil goddess of disease, undeath, and gluttony; Zon-Kuthon, Lawful Evil god of pain, envy, darkness, and loss; and Rovagug, Chaotic Evil Eldritch Abomination of wrath, disasters, destruction, and Nietzsche Wannabes. There's also the Four Horsemen and the Oinidaemon who rule the Neutral Evil, nihilistic daemons and may well be powerful enough to count.
    • The Chaos Gods of Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Warhammer 40,000 straddle the line between this trope and Eldritch Abomination. They are closer to gods of, well, Chaos rather than Evil, being conglomerations of every mortal emotion, however the relentless Crapsack World means they aren't fed with many good emotions, and those emotions are taken to such extremes anyway that they and their followers inevitably embrace madness, destruction and mayhem.
      • The C'tan in 40K have no ambition other than sealing off the warp (which would be bad news for anything with a soul), killing most forms of life in the universe and feasting on the survivors. Or at least they did, before the Necrons rebelled and shattered them into pieces.
      • There are, however, some fairly unambiguously evil gods in Warhammer Fantasy Battle, although there is generally some argument (in-universe and out) as to whether they are gods in their own right, or aspects of another (and occasionally, as to which other god they are an aspect of). Khaine (God of Murder, Assassins and Poisoners) is a case in point, with some claiming he is an aspect of Khorne as worshipped by the elves,[1] while some say he's an aspect of Morr (God of Death, Dreams and Omens), and those who say Khaine is a god in his own right are split as to whether he's Morr's younger brother, or one of the children of Asuryan and Eldanesh.[2] Stromfels (God of Storms, Pirates, Sharks and Wreckers) is in a similar, though less extreme position.[3] The Horned Rat, though, is pretty a pretty straightforward evil god, complete with his own species of evil anthropomorphic rats to worship him.
      • Khaine in 40K is more of a Type V Anti-Hero. He was the elven pantheon's God of Evil, but when Slaanesh killed the rest of the gods, only Khaine was able to stand up to him. While he lost the battle with Slaanesh and could not prevent the Chaos god's ascension, he remains alive and the Eldar still pray to him on the basis that he's a monster and a villain, but he's still their monster and villain. Ultimately, while Khaine is war-like, arrogant and relishes in killing, he remains an Eldar god and doesn't want to see the Eldar die out.
    • Exalted has the Forbidden Gods, deities whose areas of influence are so thoroughly depraved by any moral standard that they've been cut off from the support of the Celestial Bureaucracy and are forbidden to be worshipped.
      • If the definition of "god" is expanded a bit beyond the setting's use of the term, the Yozis, the Neverborn, and some behemoths all qualify.
      • The Ebon Dragon invented the concept of betrayal, and had a significant hand in creating both fate and free will because the potential suffering caused by the contradiction between the two amuses him; this was before he became a Yozi. However, the Ebon Dragon is more accurately the God of Shadow Archetypes, the Primal Nemesis. He defines himself as the Nemesis of Light, so he's Darkness. He defines himself as the Nemesis of Trust, so he's Betrayal. He defined himself as the Nemesis of the Four Virtures of Compassion, Conviction, Temperance, and Valor, so he's Cruel, Pragmatic, Unfettered, and Spineless. In fact, he's stated to not truly exist in metaphysical terms-without other beings to state what his evil is, he's nothing at all.
    • Magic: The Gathering has the God of Phyrexia, Yawgmoth, known in several cultures of Dominaria as the Dark Lord, the Hidden One, and the Lord of Wastes. It took a massive effort and the lives of countless people, including several Planeswalkers, to stop him when he attempted to take over Dominaria and spread dominion over The Multiverse. While he is believed to be dead, nothing is ever certain with Yawgmoth, and rumors linger that he is still alive, biding his time as he recovers his strength.
    • Two flavours in The Dark Eye: Demons want to destroy creation, the strongest are dark shadows of the major gods. The Nameless God is a renegade god who wants to rule creation and doesn't shirk from anything imaginable (and unimaginable) to achieve that goal.
    • The World of Darkness has a field day with this trope.

    Videogames

    • The God of Death Oswald Leingold from Fantasia - Realm of Thanos, who much prefers to be called the Demon Lord.
    • Charnel from Sacrifice is a Card-Carrying Villain God of Evil who is Genre Savvy about how important his place is in the pantheon. Amusingly, Charnel is publicly the most fervent opponent of the game's Final Boss, Omnicidal Maniac Marduk, as he doesn't like competitors. It remains ambiguous just how much he knows about who's really responsible for summoning Marduk and whether his lines of reasoning for siccing you on the other gods are genuine or simply him using you to settle his old grudges.
    • Silent Hill is unhelpful as to whether the power of the eponymous town and the deity its cult attempts to summon is a God Of Evil or an Eldritch Abomination. It could even very well be entirely neutral, with characters projecting their own evil onto it.
    • In Fire Emblem Tellius, the Goddess of Evil is also a Sealed Evil in a Can which will awaken when enough violence and fighting takes place. Until it turns out that she's really just the Goddess of Chaos, counterpart of the "good" Goddess of Order, and mankind cannot exist properly without both of them in balance.
    • Technically, Yami from Okami is the God of Darkness (and Machines), but he could easily be described as this as well. He rules over all the previous villains of the game and is only defeated due to all the people of the world praying for the protagonist to win.
    • Kri from Rise of the Kasai. Neither it nor its followers make any attempt to hide or justify it.
    • The Old Gods of World of Warcraft. Yogg-Saron is all over this one: "BOW DOWN BEFORE THE GOD OF DEATH!!!"
    • Shinnok of Mortal Kombat is a definite God of Evil.
    • Falerin of Adventure Quest is an interesting subversion; he is the God of Evil, but he is not malevolent and bloodthirsty. He's quite gentlemanly and passive; in fact, he helps the protagonists indirectly against the actual Big Bad.
    • Fain of Lusternia. He's not an Anthropomorphic Personification, and eviller "Gods" exist, but given the way he tempts and manipulates mortals and other Gods, he's the closest (sentient) thing to it in the game.
    • The final bosses of Dragon Quests 3, 5, 6, 7, and 8.
    • Persona's Nyarlathotep, an Eldritch Abomination created by Humanity's collective evil.
    • The Daedric Princes of The Elder Scrolls are generally regarded as such by human society. Most of them are just very morally flexible with how they, and their followers accomplish their goals—no Prince's domain is straightforward "evil". However, Mehrunes Dagon is the Prince of chaos and destruction, Molag Bal is the Prince of dominion and rape, and Vaermina is the Prince of fear and nightmares, so they more or less fit the trope to a T.
      • And within that set, Molag Bal is the closest there is to an actual God of Evil. While Mehrunes Dagon and Vaermina simply have domains with negative connotations, Molag Bal is also the god of corruption - he gets his power by making mortals do evil deeds. Essentially, he's the Elder Scrolls equivalent of Satan, particularly the older depictions of Satan when he was more of a corrupter of mankind than a general embodiment of evil.
    • Medusa in Kid Icarus is the goddess of darkness in a world were Dark Is Evil. Her sister is the goddess of light.
    • Return to Krondor has Narlor, the Dark God. A god that had to be sealed away. A god that if released, could prove to be an Eldritch Abomination for Midkemia.
    • Deconstructed horrifically in Arc Rise Fantasia. Prince Weiss basically accuses the god Eesa of being one of these. The other gods, Real and Imaginal are an Omnicidal Maniac and a racist jerkass, so the party doesn't really have any other frame of reference... until it's revealed that Eesa is actually an emotionally-broken Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds. How she became one is pure Tear Jerker material.
    • Dragon Quest VII gave us the Dark Lord Orgodemir, the Big Bad of the game. He actually poses as God at one point!
    • Septerra Core. Gemma.
    • In The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword, Demise is the Demon King that tried to get the Triforce with his hordes of monsters long before the events of the game. He was sealed away by the goddess Hylia in a form called The Imprisoned. Ghirahim, his sword, seeks to free him from this state, which he eventually succeeds in doing. He is stated to be the father of monsters, and when Link defeats him at the end, he curses the descendants of Link and Zelda to face an incarnation of his hatred -- that being all of the games' final bosses, but especially the being who becomes known as Ganon.
    • The Lufia series has the Sinistrals.
    • The Elder God in Legacy of Kain is eventually revealed to be this in Deception, following truckloads of Foreshadowing in Soul Reaver 2.
    • Tathamet, the Prime Evil and God of Chaos in the Diablo verse. When Tathamet suffered a Mutual Kill with Anu the God of Order, his body became Hell and his seven heads became the seven Prime Evils, including series Big Bad Diablo. In Diablo III, it's revealed that Diablo's scheme all along was to reunite the Prime Evils into Tathamet reborn (with Diablo at the helm of course) to end the war between Heaven and Hell once and for all.
    • The Demon Sovereign from the rebooted Might and Magic series (Heroes of Might and Magic V and VI as well as Dark Messiah of Might and Magic) is the setting's Crystal Dragon Satan equivalent. HOMM 6 shows that he was a regular demon lord who ascended to the position through politics and conquest.
    • The Guardian essentially took this role in the later Ultima games.
    • The Painkiller series started out with Satan in the role (Of Course!), but he was killed in the first game, and a veritable conga line of successors would pop up in the expansion packs one after the other to claim the title (first Alastor, then Eve, then Samael).


    Visual Novels

    • Played with in Fate Stay Night. Angra Mainyu is the god of evil in Zoroastianism and actually exists in this setting. The Einzberns summoned Angra Mainyu. The problem? They didn't get the god, they got some villager from thousands of years ago called Angra Mainyu.


    Webcomics


    Western Animation

    1. ↑ even to the point of claiming he's an elven blend of Khorne and Slaanesh, and the reason for the emnity of those two deities
    2. ↑ Morr being a human god, while the others are part of the elven pantheon
    3. ↑ being either an aspect of, or rebellious younger brother to Manann, God of the Sea
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