The Omnipotent

A character that is all-powerful. Either literally omnipotent, or are simply so powerful that they're virtually omnipotent within the context of the story. In fact, there's a sliding scale of sorts to measure how powerful a being can be.

It can go one of five ways, at least in fiction.

  • The character has absolute omnipotence. As in, nothing can challenge them, and they can literally do anything and everything, logic and causality be damned.
  • The character is omnipotent. They can break logic and causality to achieve anything, but there are others who can do this as well. What happens if they go against each other can be a massive Mind Screw.
  • The character can do just about anything that's logically possible (i.e. virtual omnipotence), or at least appear to, thus making sure Magic A Is Magic A in the process. This type of omnipotence is also more frequent than the above type to have multiple characters that operate at this level. The term nigh-omnipotent is often thrown about at this level.
  • The character is omnipotent within a field or concept. Specialized omnipotence, if you will. Anthropomorphic Personifications are almost guaranteed to display this with the concept they embody.
  • The character is "merely" an almighty being, whose power is far beyond any other in the setting. For practical purposes though, they're basically omnipotent.

The most powerful Reality Warpers tend to exhibit this. Combine this with a strong Ego, and you get A God Am I (which may or not be completely true). Combine it with Cloudcuckoolander tendencies, and you may have a Great Gazoo, or worse, a Mad God.

Compare The Omniscient, who often, but not always, overlaps with The Omnipotent. Cosmic Beings are often Omnipotent as well. If they don't actually do anything, they're an All Powerful Bystander. Nigh Invulnerable is a step lower than this.

Examples of The Omnipotent include:

Anime and Manga

  • Dragon Ball has the dragon Shenron, who can grant nearly any wish. The dragon of planet Namek is apparently even more powerful. The few restrictions seem to be put in place by the creators of the dragon balls as safeguards. Dragon Ball GT has the black star Shenron, who has no limits.
    • Subverted in that Shenron was destroyed, and not by one of the end-of-series villains either.
  • Lain (probably), in Serial Experiments Lain.
  • Jack Rakan of Mahou Sensei Negima fits to an extent, seeing as how he can do things that fly right in the face of logic and magical theory.
  • Jungle wa Itsumo Hale Nochi Guu - why of course, Chet and Addie. (Not really.)
  • Haruhi Suzumiya is speculated to be the God of Her verse, both by the characters and the fandom. Which makes sense, considering her abilities.
    • The Data Overmind appears to be this as well.
  • From Kara no Kyoukai:, Ryougi Shiki's Third Personality is an Anthropomorphic Personification of the Root of Creation, and, much like Haruhi, is capable of destroying the universe and replacing it with a new one on a whim.
  • In Tenchi Muyo! we have the Choushin: Tsunami, Tokimi, Washuu, and Misaki as type 2, and Tenchi himself as type 1, though not manifested as such yet. Z and Ryoko at full power are arguably type 3. The Zinv and current Tenchi are type 5, as are the most powerful Jurai trees.
  • In Medaka Box, Najimi Ajimu is type 2.

Comic Books

  • The Beyonder from Marvel Superheroes Secret Wars and Secret Wars II. The living embodiment of an entire universe, can do or make anything it wants - but it doesn't understand the concept of "wanting."
  • Watchmen's Dr. Manhattan was once a human being who got zapped by some Applied Phlebotinum that turned him into an entity akin to a god.
  • The Spectre and Captain Atom, as they are vastly powerful, much more so than even Silver Age Superman.
    • Only some of the times, both characters yo-yo up and the down the power scale. For example the Captain Atom/Wildstorm miniseries showed that Captain Atom isn't so much omnipotent (travelling back in time to an event only recently past was such a drain on Atom that he could only do it once a week) as his enemies were dropping idiot balls like mad (Wildstorm's most powerful person Jenny Quantum, rather than warp reality or shoot him with a quantum beam, she reached out to grab Captain Atom who's beginning to go into meltdown and got fried for her "effort")
  • Trigon from Teen Titans claims to be this, as well as omniscient.
    • Which is BS. DC's true omnipotent is God aka The Presence.
  • In Marvel, a supposed characteristic of the One Above All, who is also hinted to be the capital-G God. The most powerful entity stated that appears, the Living Tribunal, seems like this compared to the protagonists but it can't act without all three of its heads in agreement. So it usually does nothing.
  • A pair of supposed omnipotent entities in the Marvel Universe once got into a debate over this when they ran into the the Celestials. One of them didn't understand why the other was so intimidated by the Celestials because they were both omnipotent and nothing should be able to threaten them; the other told her that yes, they were omnipotent, but there are "levels of omnipotence" and the Celestials are on a much higher level than either of them.
  • Man of Miracles or M.O.M. for short in the Image Universe,or at least in Spawn,s/he is also Kali and Jesus Christ,and God of the Old Testament is just his/hers son.

Literature

  • Tomas and Pug by the later books in Raymond E. Feist's The Riftwar Cycle.
  • The Ellimist and Crayak from Animorphs both have basically unlimited power, and regularly cause the creation or destruction of entire species. While they agreed to no direct interference as part of their "game," neither of them fit the All Powerful Bystander trope - they both are skilled enough at manipulation to still cause massive changes in the history of the galaxy.
  • Anthony Fremont of the short story It's a Good Life.
  • Happens at the very end of Brain Jack by Brian Falkner. Sam ends up merging with the A.I. Ursula and gaining the ability to control everything and know almost everything as well, because in this future, Everything Is Online.

Live-Action TV

  • Q of Star Trek: The Next Generation hails from a race of omnipotent beings known as... well, the Q. Subverted in that in an episode of Voyager, another Q insists that they are merely very Sufficiently Advanced Aliens, just as Starfleet would appear to an Iron Age society.
    • Of course, nobody in Starfleet possesses Complete Immortality, apparent omniscience, or the ability to warp reality with a click of their fingers, so that's being a little overly modest. Unlike Starfleet, their powers are inherent to themselves, not dependant almost solely on technology. The only known limit to their powers is the rest of the Continuum, who can collectively impose punishments like removing their powers (though they still know almost everything), imprison them or make them mortal. That and a Patrick Stewart Speech.

Mythology, Religion, and Folklore

  • God is often attributed Omnipotence in monotheistic religions, but there's debate on what type. (There's also a different and slightly less technical analysis of the options on the Analysis page here.)
    • Should be noted that in The Bible, St Paul claims that God can do anything that is logically possible (while still possessing absolute supernatural power), but cannot do things that are mutually exclusive, like making a stone so big even He can't lift it. How far St Paul is an authority on the nature of God, or is just stating what he believes to be true (or just trying to pre-empt/diffuse these kind of arguments), is up in the air.
      • It's common to say that, yes, God can make a stone that's too heavy even for Him to lift. Then He would lift it anyway. He's God, it doesn't have to make sense.
    • This is generally the position taken by some Christian theologians and philosophers such as St Augustine or St Thomas Aquinas- God can do anything, except that which makes God "not God", so He cannot do something that removes or defies His omnipotence, including simply making himself not omnipotent (since one paradox is that an omnipotent being can make himself powerless, but still be omnipotent, since he is omnipotent- these philosophers say that He can't, thus removing the paradox). For Augustine, this is because God is perfectly rational, and is also perfect, and being perfect would not act contrary to His nature, which is to be rational, and since such paradoxes are irrational He can't do them.
    • On the flip side, other Christian philosophers like Rene Descartes say that God can do absolutely anything, reasoning that He existed a priori to logic and is the one who tells logic what it is. The only reason such paradoxes exist is because logic acts a certain way from a human perspective, but the level of God is one humans cannot comprehend and what are apparent logical paradoxes to us are not so to God. This is called Absolute Omnipotence.
  • Genies. Most mythologies/folk tales about them indicate the only restriction is that they are bound to their lamp/jar/whatever, and must obey the one who frees them (and even this gets subverted sometimes). Some works add rules for plot convenience like Aladdin, but generally a genie = Phenomenal cosmic power, itty bitty living space.
    • In folk tales and other fiction, they seem to be omnipotent. In mythology, however, they're supposed to be able to do many things humans can't, but also unable to do many things humans can, and often aren't bound to lamps or anything else.
  • Averted by most Polytheistic pantheons, since even the Gods are subject to fate.

Video Games

  • Asura's Wrath plays around with this: Chakravartin is referred to as the Omnipotent Ruler of Gaea. However, he's eventually defeated by Asura.

Web Comics

  • Minus is about a seemingly omnipotent child, who mostly uses her power as a toy.
  • All of the Author characters in Bob and George have god like powers. Seeing as how The Author is the creator of the comic universe he basically IS a god there. The Helmeted Author is apparently an Author of a different universe and the Shadowy Author claims to be one at first and ultimately turns out to be a future version of the actual Author.
  • In Homestuck, every First Guardian is omnipotent, and can also be omniscient as well depending on what they were made with. Other characters are not First Guardians but gain their powers for themselves. Abilities shown so far:
    • Becquerel: teleportation, firing a giant laser (after becoming Becsprite)
    • Doc Scratch: teleportation, omniscience
    • Jack Noir: teleportation, explosions
    • Jadesprite: teleportation
    • God-Tier Jade: teleportation, size manipulation (the latter may come from her powers as the Witch of Space, but on the other hand Becquerel was briefly shown using that ability as well.)
    • PM: None yet, but presumably at least teleportation.
    • Lord English: teleportation, Time Travel
    • God Cat: teleportation

Web Original

  • One of the terms coined by the Spacebattles.com forums is "ROB," or Random Omnipotent Being. A ROB is used to justify ridiculous scenarios, or create events for people to talk about. A ROB is usually used as a Deus Ex Machina for a random event to set the plot moving in a quest.

Western Animation

  • In a dream sequence of a Halloween episode of The Simpsons, Bart is basically an omnipotent boy who freely changes things about him for his own amusement. Bart eventually wakes up with a scream when, in the dream, he actually reconciles with Homer.
  • Amazo after his/its return in Justice League Unlimited has learned or copied the superpowers of pretty much every entity in the universe. The only power he lacks is imagination to find a purpose for all his powers. That's why he is coming after Lex Luthor, his surrogate father-figure, next.
  • Discord of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic appears to have a number of incomprehensible abilities; particularly being able to create utter chaos throughout Ponyville, including interchangeable days and nights, chocolate rain and soapy sidewalks. Basically the only rule seems to be that he can do whatever he wills.
    • Fitting, as he's voiced by John DeLancie, who plays Q in Star Trek (as noted above). He even snaps his fingers to work his magic, and with the same sound effect when things do happen.
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