History Main / CargoCult

* ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'': In "Club [=SpongeBob=]", Spongebob and Patrick have an almost-deific reverence for a Magic8Ball-like toy called the Magic Conch.

* ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'': In "Club Spongebob", Spongebob and Patrick have an almost-deific reverence for a Magic8Ball-like toy called the Magic Conch.

* ''WesternAnimation/CatDog'': When the titular conjoined duo get stranded on an island surrounded by constantly speeding cars that inexplicably keep racing in a circle around the island, Cat crafts a god out of an old tire and some planks of wood. He prays to be told what to do and begins to hallucinate. The face that appears is that of a demonic-looking panther with [[GlowingEyes glowing]] [[RedEyesTakeWarning red eyes]]. Its advice?:[[{{Autocannibalism}} "eat each other."]]

* ''Music/BlueOysterCult''. Although it's not mentioned in any song, the own name of the band and the cover of the album "Fire of Unknown Origin" imply on, well... a cult regarding a blue oyster.

* Implied by the title and album cover of MenAtWork album Overkill. Said cover depicts an airplane dropping a crate onto the beach of a tropical island littered with older cargo, including cookware hung as decoration and a totem pole fashioned from machinery.

* In ''Literature/CityOfNoEnd'', the peoples of [[Underground City the Depths]] have a shamanic religion based around praying to "pipe-spirits" that are believed to govern the City's life-support systems. The Diagnostic Manual for operating these systems is treated as a sacred text. The surface peoples are Ascensionists, who believe in salvation by BrainUploading into some kind of ancient computer system that will hopefully activate into an ArtificialAfterlife at some point in the future, but it's unclear exactly how much of a Cargo Cult this religion might be.

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'':

** ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' introduces the Children of Atom, a cult that worships the unexploded atomic bomb laying at the heart of the settlement of Megaton. The group is initially more of a pest than anything, since its preacher continuously rambles about Atom's holy Glow, but the ''Broken Steel'' add-on reveals a darker side to the group when a member starts tainting purified water with radiation in her efforts to bring Enlightenment to the rest of the Capital Wasteland. They get worse in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 4}}'', where most cult members are hostile enemies who attack anyone they see with Gamma Guns and Nuke Grenades, while one group even attempted to get into a pre-War missile silo to grab its warheads. The branch encountered in the ''Far Harbor'' DLC is so eager to experience the glory of Division that they're willing to commit mass suicide by detonating a nuclear missile in the sub pen they're based at. ''Fallout 3'' also has Sudden Death Overtime, a hockey-themed GangOfHats. They have a rather misguided idea of what ice hockey was actually like, and are convinced it was about "icegangs" like them [[HockeyFight duking it out]] in massive arenas.

** ''VideoGame/{{Fallout Tactics|BrotherhoodOfSteel}}'' also featured a cult of Ghouls worshiping a nuclear weapon as a God, which they named Plutonius.

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E127TheOldManInTheCave The Old Man in the Cave]]", Major French tells Mr. Goldsmith that there is a cult in what used to be UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}} that worships a statue made of fissionable lead as its god.
* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1985'': In "The Beacon", the people of Mellweather have worshipped a lighthouse called the Beacon for 200 years. They believe that it is controlled by the spirit of their collective ancestor Seth Janes.

The name comes from a documented effect that UsefulNotes/WorldWarII military forces had on natives of various South Pacific islands. Sixty years after the war, some tribes in Vanuatu are still building elaborate fake airfields and praying to idols shaped like DC-3 cargo planes.

** When [[SpoonyBard Elan]] visits an island filled with primitive orcs, they treat him like any other human... until he brings out Banjo, when they start bowing in supplication. That's right: the orcs thought that Elan's kooky hand-puppet was a god. Elan also thinks Banjo's a god. He's actually pretty stoked that someone else is acknowledging it, although he's not so happy that the orcs won't give Banjo back. Technically, Banjo probably ''is'' a god. Possibly [[http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0080.html the weakest god imaginable]], but, somehow, [[http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0137.html divine nonetheless]]. This is due to ''[=OotS=]'' using the GodsNeedPrayerBadly rules.

* Depending on [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman your interpretation of "object"]], the Ewoks bowing down to worship C-3PO in ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'' counts as this.

* The short story [[http://theopinionguy.com/OG25.pdf "Assumption" (scroll down)]] by Desmond Warzel features a ''literal'' Cargo Cult (in that they worship an actual piece of cargo), but eventually becomes a GodGuise -- a person becomes an object of religious awe because of her advanced technology (she descends from the sky).

* Played with in the science-fiction short story "Hinterlands" by Creator/WilliamGibson; this time, it's humanity who are on the receiving end, and by the end of the book [[spoiler:we're still no wiser as to how the whole thing works or why. The rule is that you must travel to a set point in space and release a radio-flare; if you do, you 'disappear' and come back after a lengthy period of time, either dead or insane, but carrying a random alien object that might be valuable]]. More than a little unsettling.

* A few are known to exist in the ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'' universe: one short story shows a group of people living on a Periphery planet who, after being stranded there long enough to lose written language and all metalworking ability and thus reverting to Stone Age technology level start a new religion after one of their members sees a pair of Battlemechs fighting. There's also the infamous novel Far Country, in which a jumpship malfunction strands the passengers on a distant planet where they discover a species of primitive, bird-like aliens who worship the wreck of an old, abandoned mech.

* The ''Tabletopgame/DungeonsAndDragons'' 3rd Edition ''[[TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting]]'' mentions a Cult of Entropy in the nation of Chessenta. This cult worshiped a giant, explicitly nonsentient ''sphere of annihilation'' (an artifact that disintegrates anything that touches it). A 4th edition issue of ''Magazine/{{Dragon}}'' magazine [[RetCon retconned]] this cult into worshiping a [[EldritchAbomination primordial embodiment of chaos]] that had been [[SealedEvilInACan trapped in the form of a]] ''[[SealedEvilInACan sphere of annihilation]]''.
* A variation occurs in ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}''; before the rise of the Guild, there were many people who worshiped the Order Conferring Trade Pattern (an ancient series of magical financial networks) based on the mistaken view that the Pattern functioned by directly converting prayer into fiscal prosperity. Most of those cults are long since defunct, having proven easy marks for [[MagnificentBastard Brem Marst]] when he needed the funds to start the Guild.

* The ''TabletopGame/MageTheAwakening'' {{Sourcebook}} "Summoners" has strange, otherworldly beings which resemble an UncannyValley version of planes and can be summoned to drop powerful items down on the summoners.
* In ''TabletopGame/RocketAge'' some of the natives of Io, a ruined wasteland of a moon, have taken to worshiping the detritus left behind by Earthling explorers, who looked very much like gods to them with their gleaming RetroRocket.
* ''TabletopGame/SufficientlyAdvanced'' includes Cargo Cults as one of the types of civilizations [=PCs=] can come from. Due to the hectic far flung nature of the diaspora, and the insanely advanced science of most of the cultures cargo cults are incredibly common, and the [=PCs=] can end up dealing with them fairly often.
** Interestingly, the original premise for the game was entirely based around cargo cults, until the creator had a better idea.
* In ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'', man's comprehension of technology has fallen so sharply that humans believe that all technological devices have spirits that have to be appeased through prayer and worship before they will work properly. Although this is something of a subversion, since it actually works. While parts of the rituals are implied to be unnecessary and can be skipped over in an emergency, they also include everything needed to actually build and maintain all of humanity's advanced technology. In the case of Titans and Land Raiders, which are at least partly sentient, even the worship can be necessary since it isn't a good idea to upset a [[GiantMecha 100 metre tall robot]] with enough firepower to wipe out entire armies.
** A non-Imperial example: the Orks of Bloodaxe Clan imitate Human uniforms and military paraphernalia, believing them to be extremely powerful magic charms. This includes Nobs sporting looted Commissar caps to increase their leadership skills, Stormboyz ordering [[AttackPatternAlpha attack patterns]] nobody but the Nob is actually familiar with (and [[AttackAttackAttack generally just boil down to "yell and charge" anyway]]), and any number of Orks adorning their guns with off-center targeting sights that [[ATeamFiring they don't actually use anyway]].

[[folder:Real Life]]
* As mentioned in the description, the John Frum cults. Frum himself is a sort of amalgamation of Uncle Sam, Santa Claus, and John the Baptist; the name is believed to be a corruption of "John from America", though another theory holds that it's based on a letter "from John". They believe he will return on a February 15th, celebrated each year as John Frum day. In some circles, John Frum is considered to be Prince Phillip's brother. A ''National Geographic'' reporter asked a John Frum cult leader how he could still keep a cargo cult going despite the modernizations that have come to his island. The leader replied "We've only been waiting for our prophet for 60 years. [[TakeThat You've been waiting for]] [[UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}} 2,000]]."
* There's a (thankfully small) cult in Russia that worships [[WesternAnimation/ChipNDaleRescueRangers Gadget Hackwrench]]. [[http://www.odditycentral.com/news/russian-cult-worships-female-cartoon-character.html Seriously.]] So the next time you encounter a bit of FanDumb, just think of this group and realize that it could be worse. Likewise, there's the [[http://churchofspongebob.tripod.com/ First Reformed Church of]] ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'', and the ''Literature/HarryPotter'' fandom infamously had the [[https://fanlore.org/wiki/Snapewives bizarre]] [[https://jezebel.com/consider-the-snapewife-1845247730 phenomenon]] of women claiming to be [[MarriedToAGod spiritually married]] to the character Severus Snape, whom they worshipped.
* In pagan, medieval and Early Modern Europe (and also in North America) 'thunderstones' were occasionally unearthed: peculiar looking stones that were thought to be fallen thunder. They were believed to have magical properties due to being associated with thunder gods, and were used in amulets and other magic. In Scandinavia they might even be worshipped as household gods. As it turns out, the people who found these stones were half right in believing there was no way the stones could look this way through nature; while some of them were likely fossils, many of these weird stones were indeed not natural: they were neolithic stone tools.
* Among the Waghi tribe of Papua New Guinea, warriors paint their shields with the symbols of animals whose traits they wish to emulate in battle. When they first made contact with Western civilization during World War II, some American soldiers introduced them to the stories of ComicStrip/ThePhantom. The jungle-dwelling, BadassNormal masked hero [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff became so popular]] among the Waghi that some warriors began painting the Phantom's face on their shields as a symbol of good luck.
* The Kastom people of Tanna, Vanuatu, had a myth about a deity who had traveled to a distant land and married a powerful woman. So, when Queen Elizabeth II visited with her husband Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, in tow, they took him to be that deity and to this day consider him to be a divine being.
* According to the Raelians Judaism and Christianity are this. Raelians believe that an alien race called the Elohim created life on earth, but over time, the species name was mistaken for the name of a deity, and assigned to the God of the Old Testament.
[[/folder]]

** ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'':
*** In the outskirts of New Vegas there's the Kings, a gang that discovered a school dedicated to training {{Elvis Impersonator}}s. They promptly decided that as he was called The King and he was someone who people were so devoted to that they could receive formal training to look, sound, and act just like him, he must have been some sort of saint. [[MetaphoricallyTrue Well, they're not precisely wrong...]]
*** In the Old World Blues DLC, the [[{{Mooks}} lobotomites]] of the Big Empty have created a shrine dedicated to toasters.

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{ToyStory}}'',the alien toys in the grab booth worship THE CLAW, believing those who are selected are ascending to heaven.