History Main / DeityIdentityConfusion

* ''Franchise/AssassinsCreed'':
** The Isu, a race of AbusivePrecursors who have long since died out, had influenced religions across the world, with many of them eventually being upheld by humanity as gods.
** Minerva was known as Mera, the Etruscan goddess Merva and the Greek goddess Athena. However, she was also additionally known as Saraswati to the Hindus, Sulis to the Celts, and Vor to the Norse.

** Minamoto-no-Raikou is the [[HistoricalGenderFlip daughter]] of the Japanese Buddhist deity Gozu-Tennou. ''Fate'' syncretizes him with the Vedic Indra (technically the Buddhist equivalent, Shakra/Shakudai-kan'in), and the game takes the connection all the way, giving her access to Indra's vajra and treating [[Literature/{{Mahabharata}} Arjuna]] as her half-brother. This is apparently original to ''Fate'': in the real world, Gozu-Tennou is syncretized with Susanoo, a Japanese god of Shinto. You can still argue an Indian connection (although no academics seem to have pushed this comparison directly): Gozu-Tennou is believed to be an import to Japan from the Southeast Asian mainland, and Susanoo and Indra are both storm gods who participate in a ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/*Trito#Serpent-slaying_myth Chaoskampf]]'' myth. It all certainly ties into ''Fate''[='s=] discourse on the mytheme in ''[[Literature/LordElMelloiIICaseFiles The Adventures of Lord El-Melloi II]]'', where it's specifically defined as "bull versus serpent".

** Astarte/Astoreth was sometimes identified with the lioness warrior goddess Sekhmet, but was also seemingly more often conflated, at least in part, with Isis to judge from the many images found of Astarte suckling a small child.

** In Japanese myth, the deity Gozu-Tenno, the father of Minamoto-no-Raikou, is often considered an incarnation of Hindu god Indra. This allows Raikou to get Indra's weapon, the Vajra (aka Kongousho) by praying to her father. This gets lampshaded by Arjuna (Indra's actual son).

*** Thanks to the [[EternalRecurrence Ragnarok Cycle]], which saw the constant destruction and revival of the gods in a variety of forms and names, [[ComicBook/TheEnchantress Amora the Enchantress]] has been known as both Freya and Idunn in past lives. In the current universe, both of those goddesses exist as separate entities, but she still poses as them or fulfills their divine functions at times.

* In ''ComicBook/The Sandman1989'', when [[AnthropomorphicPersonification Dream]] visits [[UsefulNotes/{{Augustus}} Emperor Augustus]] in, well, a dream, Augustus initially believes Dream to be the god [[Myth/ClassicalMythology Apollo]]. Dream notes that there is some overlap between him and certain of Apollo's functions, (Apollo being a god of music, art, and poetry, and in the Sandman verse creativity comes in large part from Dream's domain) so they've been mistaken for each before. [[AboveTheGods Dream is a whole other level of being]], however. It's also quite common for Dream to be called "Morpheus", after a Greco-Roman god associated with dreams. Another story establishes Dream as the father of Orpheus by Calliope. In myth, Orpheus's father is sometimes said to be Apollo.

* In ''ComicBook/{{The Sandman1989}}'', when [[AnthropomorphicPersonification Dream]] visits [[UsefulNotes/{{Augustus}} Emperor Augustus]] in, well, a dream, Augustus initially believes Dream to be the god [[Myth/ClassicalMythology Apollo]]. Dream notes that there is some overlap between him and certain of Apollo's functions, (Apollo being a god of music, art, and poetry, and in the Sandman verse creativity comes in large part from Dream's domain) so they've been mistaken for each before. [[AboveTheGods Dream is a whole other level of being]], however. It's also quite common for Dream to be called "Morpheus", after a Greco-Roman god associated with dreams. Another story establishes Dream as the father of Orpheus by Calliope. In myth, Orpheus's father is sometimes said to be Apollo.

Gods are typically expected to have defined roles, characteristics and relations to one another. However, various circumstances can result in some of them being [[CompositeCharacter combined into one]], perhaps even with a deity from [[CrossoverCosmology a different pantheon]].

* One sect of a religion gains prominence over the others and elevate their god or gods over the others, often fusing their TopGod with the previous one.

Related to AllMythsAreTrue, HijackedByJesus and OneMythToExplainThemAll. See also AmalgamatedIndividual.

** Heretic Gods are born from human myths and as a result will transition into new forms as their worship and myth is changed by humans. However they can still draw on the powers from older myths which are no longer part of their modern character. Discerning the origin of a god's myth is both important for identifying weaknesses and for empowering Godou's Warrior Authority, which is only effective when he understands the origin of an enemy's Authority.

** ''ComicBook/WonderWoman'': In general the Erotes never number more than two and their portfolios cover the whole range of love, lust, seduction and romance which was split among the various members in the original mythology. Hermaphroditus however does remain intersex and Eros keeps his arrows of love, sometimes modified into other projectiles to fit the time period.
** In ''ComicBook/WonderWomanRebirth'', Atlantiades/Hermaphroditus keeps both his names despite Aphrodite being made his TrulySingleParent even though both of his names refer to his father. The confusion seems to come from Hermes' mother being a daughter of Atlas (hence his intersex offspring's name "Atlantiades"); while Aphrodite's mother Dione is ''not'' a daughter of Atlas, she shares a name with one and was thereby conflated with her.
** In-universe, the Greek gods were also worshipped by the Romans under different names, and used avatars to keep an eye on Rome, resulting in DivergentCharacterEvolution. During the ''War of the Gods'' crossover, Roman Olympus tries to conquer Greek Olympus, and following the ''Genesis'' crossover, Zeus and Jupiter are remerged, and expect the other gods to do likewise.
* In ''ComicBook/{{The Sandman1989}}'', when [[AnthropomorphicPersonification Dream]] visits [[UsefulNotes/{{Augustus}} Emperor Augustus]] in, well, a dream, Augustus initially believes Dream to be the god [[Myth/ClassicalMythology Apollo]]. Dream notes that there is some overlap between him and certain of Apollo's functions, (Apollo being a god of music, art and poetry, and in the Sandman verse creativity comes in large part from Dream's domain) so they've been mistaken for each before. [[AboveTheGods Dream is a whole other level of being]], however. It's also quite common for Dream to be called "Morpheus", after a Greco-Roman god associated with dreams. Another story establishes Dream as the father of Orpheus by Calliope. In myth, Orpheus's father is sometimes said to be Apollo.

** The First Doctor was once mistaken for Zeus posing as an old man by the Greek warrior Achilles in circa 1200 BCE. He went along with it, until the unconvinced Agamemnon spoiled the Doctor's ruse.

** Nodens, god of healing, the sea, hunting and dogs, was equated with the Roman gods Mars, Neptune and Silvanus.

** One explanation for Zeus' legendary ReallyGetsAround tendencies (including his own sisters, descendants and sometimes mother) is that he's actually an amalgamation of multiple similar gods with completely different origins, so what was once an unrelated thunder god and a {{fertility god}}dess' daughter became Zeus siring Persephone on his sister Demeter.

*** The Orphic Dionysus, sometimes referred to with the alternate name Zagreus or the "first Dionysus", was the son of Zeus (or Hades) and Persephone, and was dismembered by the Titans. However, Athena managed to save his heart and, with Zeus' help, put it into a drink which he gave to Semele, resulting Dionysus' [[BornAgainImmortality rebirth]] into the younger Dionysus.
*** The younger Dionysus was also identified with Iacchus, a minor deity from the tradition of the Eleusinian mysteries. Iacchus was variously identified as the son or husband of Demeter, a son of Persephone (like Zagreus) or a son of Dionysus, rather than being Dionysus himself.
*** The philosopher Heraclitus, unifying opposites, declared that Hades and Dionysus, the very essence of indestructible life (''zoe''), are the same god. Among other evidence Karl Kerenyi notes that the grieving goddess Demeter refused to drink wine, which is the gift of Dionysus, after Persephone's abduction, because of this association, and suggests that Hades may in fact have been a "cover name" for the underworld Dionysus. He suggests that this dual identity may have been familiar to those who came into contact with the Mysteries. Ironically one of the epithets of Dionysus was "Chthonios", meaning "the subterranean".

*** Herodotus was one of the earliest authors to engage in this form of interpretation. In his observations regarding the Egyptians, he establishes Greco-Egyptian equivalents that endured into the Hellenistic era, including equating Amon with Zeus, Osiris with Dionysus and Ptah with Hephaestus. In his observations regarding the Scythians, he equates their queen of the gods, Tabiti, to Hestia, Papaios and Api to Zeus and Gaia respectively, and Argimpasa to Aphrodite Urania, whilst also claiming that the Scythians worshipped equivalents to Herakles and Ares, but whom he doesn't name. He says that Aphrodite is worshipped by the Assyrians, Arabians and Persians under other names -- strangely, the Persian name he gives is Mitra, a ''male'' god.

** The identity of the [[TheMaker creator god]] was heavily [[DependingOnTheWriter subject to revision]] and location. In Hermopolis, the creation of the world was attributed to a set of eight gods, called the Ogdoad. In Heliopolis, the creation was attributed to Atum, who was said to have initially existed in the waters of Nu as an inert potential being. The Memphite version of creation centered on Ptah, who was the patron god of craftsmen. As such, he represented the craftsman's ability to envision a finished product, and shape raw materials to create that product. Theban theology claimed that Amun was not merely a member of the Ogdoad, but the hidden force behind all things. There was a conflation of all notions of creation into the personality of Amun, a synthesis which emphasized how Amun transcended all other deities in his being "beyond the sky and deeper than the underworld". Khnum was worshipped as a creator god primarily in two principal riverside sites, Elephantine and Esna. By the Fifth Dynasty in the 25th and 24th centuries BCE, Ra had become one of the most important gods in ancient Egyptian religion, identified primarily with the noon sun and regarded as the creator of all things.

** The goddess Raet or Raet-Tawy was regarded as a female aspect of Ra. However, in some myths she was considered to be either Ra's wife or his daughter.

** The Canaanite religion originally recognized the god El as the creator god and the ruler of the gods, with the goddess Asherah as his consort. The god Baal, who was one of their sons and had his home on Mount Zaphon, became the dominant Canaanite deity over time, so that El became the executive power and Baal the military power in the cosmos. The god Yahweh was intially worshipped by the Israelites as a storm-and-warrior god alongside the other gods. However, when the Israelites became the dominant people of Canaan, El and Yahweh became conflated, El-linked epithets such as El Shaddai came to be applied to Yahweh alone and other gods and goddesses such as Baal and Asherah were absorbed into the Yahwistic religion.

** In the ''Baal Cycle'' of Ugarit, Asherah/Athirat, the consort of the god El, plays a role. She is clearly distinguished from Astarte/Ashtart in the Ugaritic documents, although in non-Ugaritic sources from later periods the distinction between the two goddesses can be blurred, either as a result of scribal error or through possible syncretism.

** The Sumerian goddesss Nammu/Namma was considered to be the counterpart to the Babylonian goddess Tiamat as they both function as primeval goddesses of the sea in their respective mythologies.
** By the first millennium BCE, the gods Marduk, Enlil and Dumuzid/Tammuz were syncretized into a single deity named Bel, meaning "lord". Bel held all the cultic titles of Enlil and his status in the Babylonian religion was largely the same.
** Inanna/Ishtar, goddess of love, was somtimes conflated with the Hindu goddess Durga.

** Minerva was known as Mera, the Etruscan goddess Merva and the Greek goddess Athena. However, she was also additionally known as Saraswati to the Hindus, Sulis to the Celts and Vor to the Norse.

** {{Downplayed|Trope}} with Freyr. His backstory of his torture at the hands of the Aesir, which subsequently sparked the Aesir-Vanir War, is directly based on the mythological Gullveig, albeit without her multiple rebirths. However, Gullveig herself also appears [[spoiler:as a RevenantZombie]], although her backstory isn't touched upon.

* Most spirits in ''WebAnimation/NoEvil'' are {{Composite Character}}s of figures from various North American myths and folktales, for instance Calamity is both the Aztec goddess Chalchiuhtlicue and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calamity_Jane Calamity Jane]].

*** Freyja's relation to Freyr has also received [[AdaptationRelationshipOverhaul quite an overhaul]]. In Norse Mythology, they are the children of Njord. However, in the comics, Freyr is instead Freyja's father and his sister is Idunn, who is [[RelatedInTheAdaptation unrelated to them in the myths]] and is instead said to be the youngest daughter of the Elf Ivaldi's eldest set of children, and is thus of Elfin kin. Similarly, Freyja instead has a sister, Gullveig, who is also never specified in the myths to be related to her, aside from also being a Vanir. However, this could be seen as a MythologyGag, as some scholars have proposed that the mythological Freya and Gullveig might be the same person.

** Røskva [[spoiler: is revealed to be the same as the titular völva of Völuspa]].

* ''Proto-Indo-European Mythology'': The TropeCodifier. The earliest known Eurasian myths covered a broad number of gods and goddesses with overlapping functions. For example, Dyaus Pahter (literally Sky Father) is the earliest known progenitor of all sky-based deities. However, exactly where he came from (whether he was created from the corpse of an original creator god, or he WAS the original creator god) is unknown. Likewise, his station overlapped quite a bit with the storm god Perkwunos, who was a weather god. The blurred lines between the two are evident within deities such as Ba'al Hadad, Zeus, and Jupiter. There are also some accounts that attest to some kind of god of the waters and PrimordialChaos, with that god also having functions in providing rain as well as providing over oceans, thus being an early antecedent of Poseidon and Neptune.
* ''Myth/CelticMythology'':

** Lugh has been conflated with the Welsh deity Lleu Llaw Gyffes, who serves a similar role as a heroic god in the Mabinogi.

* ''Myth/ClassicalMythology'':
** One explanation for Zeus' legendary AnythingThatMoves tendencies (including his own sisters, descendants and sometimes mother) is that he's actually an amalgamation of multiple similar gods with completely different origins, so what was once an unrelated thunder god and a {{fertility god}}dess' daughter became Zeus siring Persephone on his sister Demeter.
** Euripides' play "''Alkestis''" states fairly clearly that Thanatos and Hades were one and the same deity, and gives an interesting description of him as dark-cloaked and winged; moreover, Hades was also referred to as "Hesperos Theos" ("God of Death and Darkness").

*** The philosopher Heraclitus, unifying opposites, declared that Hades and Dionysus, the very essence of indestructible life (zoe), are the same god. Among other evidence Karl Kerenyi notes that the grieving goddess Demeter refused to drink wine, which is the gift of Dionysus, after Persephone's abduction, because of this association, and suggests that Hades may in fact have been a "cover name" for the underworld Dionysus. He suggests that this dual identity may have been familiar to those who came into contact with the Mysteries. Ironically one of the epithets of Dionysus was "Chthonios", meaning "the subterranean".
** The Ancient Greeks had a discourse known as ''Interpretatio Graeca'' (meaning "Greek translation"), which was used to interpret or attempt to understand the mythology and religion of other cultures.
*** Herodotus was one of the earliest authors to engage in this form of interpretation. In his observations regarding the Egyptians, he establishes Greco-Egyptian equivalents that endured into the Hellenistic era, including equating Amon with Zeus, Osiris with Dionysus and Ptah with Hephaestus. In his observations regarding the Scythians, he equates their queen of the gods, Tabiti, to Hestia, Papaios and Api to Zeus and Gaia respectively, and Argimpasa to Aphrodite Urania, whilst also claiming that the Scythians worshipped equivalents to Herakles and Ares, but which he doesn't name.

** The Germanic peoples also had a discourse called ''Interpretatio Germanica'' to identify Roman gods with the names of Germanic deities. According to Rudolf Simek, this occurred around the 1st century CE, when both cultures came into closer contact. Some evidence for interpretatio germanica exists in the Germanic translations of the Roman names for the days of the week:

* ''Myth/EgyptianMythology'':

* ''Myth/HebrewMythology'':

* ''Myth/MesopotamianMythology'':

* ''Myth/NorseMythology'':
** There is [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frigg_and_Freyja_common_origin_hypothesis a real-life scholarly debate]] based on linguistics over if Freya and Frigg could just be the same deity distorted over time and retellings of the stories. The fact that Odin seems to have mutual relationships with both Frigg and Freya (married to one of them and sharing the Einherjar with the other), as well as obvious etymological similarities, lead to some speculations on this possibility - that Freya and Frigga were the same mother goddess, split into two entities. "Freya" is less a proper name than it is Old Norse for "the lady" (cf. modern German "''Frau''"), and note the similarity between Freya's husband Odr and Frigg's husband Odin. There are also direct analogues to Frigg in other Germanic and Proto-Indo-European-descended pantheons, while Freya only exists in Scandinavia.

* ''Videogame/FateGrandOrder''

* In ''Webcomic/TheGodsOfArrKelaan'' some of the old gods of Earth are shown to have been pulling double-duty, with the Greek and Norse pantheons specifically combined into one superpantheon and Odin and Zeus being different aspects of the same god. [[spoiler: And the Christian angels are actually a conspiracy of gods from different pantheons who created a fake God to pool worship while also imprisoning and stealing power from gods not in the conspiracy.]]

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

* In ''ComicBook/TheSandman1989'', when [[AnthropomorphicPersonification Dream]] visits [[UsefulNotes/{{Augustus}} Emperor Augustus]] in, well, a dream, Augustus initially believes Dream to be the god [[Myth/ClassicalMythology Apollo]]. Dream notes that there is some overlap between him and certain of Apollo's functions, (Apollo being a god of music, art and poetry, and in the Sandman verse creativity comes in large part from Dream's domain) so they've been mistaken for each before. [[AboveTheGods Dream is a whole other level of being]], however. It's also quite common for Dream to be called "Morpheus", after a Greco-Roman god associated with dreams. Another story establishes Dream as the father of Orpheus by Calliope. In myth, Orpheus's father is sometimes said to be Apollo .

[[folder:Fanfic]]

** They gave Balder Mjolnir and Heimdell's beard, and he's known as "The Smith".

---> ''"I hate good wizards in fairy tales. They all turn out to be ''him''."''
*** The First Doctor was once mistaken for Zeus posing as an old man by the Greek warrior Achilles in circa 1200 BCE. He went along with it, until the unconvinced Agamemnon spoiled the Doctor's ruse.
*** The Seventh Doctor and his companian Ace were similarly mistaken for the Mesopotamian deities Ea, god of wisdom, and Aya, goddess of the dawn, by Gilgamesh, they decided to go along with it.

---> '''The Doctor''': ''"Serve you, Sutekh? Your name is abominated in every civilised world, whether that name be [[FamousFamousFictional Set, Satan, Sodos.]]"''
** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E8TheImpossiblePlanet The Impossible Planet]]" and "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E9TheSatanPit The Satan Pit]]" have the Doctor go up against the Beast, aka the Devil. Not something that just ''looks'' like the Devil or just ''calls'' itself the Devil, ''the actual Devil''. The Doctor takes it in stride when the Beast introduces itself and points out that virtually every religion has such a being in it and, to know what he's up against, asks "Which devil are you?" The Beast's response is "All of them."

[[AC:Mythology and Religion]]

** The identity of the [[TheMaker creator god]] was heavily [[DependingOnTheWriter subject to revision]] and location. In Hermopolis, the creation of the world was attributed to a set of eight gods, called the Ogdoad. In Heliopolis, the creation was attributed to Atum, who was said to have initially existed in the waters of Nu as an inert potential being. The Memphite version of creation centred on Ptah, who was the patron god of craftsmen. As such, he represented the craftsman's ability to envision a finished product, and shape raw materials to create that product. Theban theology claimed that Amun was not merely a member of the Ogdoad, but the hidden force behind all things. There was a conflation of all notions of creation into the personality of Amun, a synthesis which emphasized how Amun transcended all other deities in his being "beyond the sky and deeper than the underworld". Khnum was worshipped as a creator god primarily in two principal riverside sites, Elephantine and Esna. By the Fifth Dynasty in the 25th and 24th centuries BCE, Ra had become one of the most important gods in ancient Egyptian religion, identified primarily with the noon sun and regarded as the creator of all things.

*** Hercules has this trope applied to his own name: He's associated with the Greek pantheon, but his name is from the Roman mythology. His corresponding name from the Greek mythology is Herakles (or [[SpellMyNameWithAnS Heracles]], depending on the transliteration). He gave an InUniverse explanation that his name was originally the Greek one, which is etymologically related to Hera. After his stepmother became his enemy, he adopted the Roman variant to cut the etymological ties.

* ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'': Because ''Elder Scrolls'' lore is [[UnreliableCanon extremely nebulous and unclear]], its large assembly of gods can appear in multiple pantheons as various different names [[note]]such as Lorkhan aka Shor aka Shezzar aka Sep aka Lorkhaj)[[/note]], and there can be confusion over whether or not two gods are actually the same or different aspects of each other or related by some other means [[note]]Such as Auri-El, Akatosh and Alduin[[/note]], and there can be confusion about how a mortal (or [[MergerOfSouls several different mortals]]) [[DeityOfHumanOrigin transcended into godhood]] [[note]]Such as with Tiber Septim becoming the god Talos, or the Hero of Kvatch becoming Sheogorath[[/note]]. Part of the mystique of the series is trying to piece together which of these stories are true, or even how they could [[MetaphoricallyTrue ALL be true at the same time]].

* a God who chose to incarnate as human via a virgin mother, born on the shortest day of the year in midwinter, who in life performed miracles, who was killed, laid to rest, and was born again on the third day... when we've finished talking about Mithras, we might consider Jesus. Mithraism was a genuine contender to Christianity and it is possible that some of the qualities attributed to Jesus were lifted wholesale from the rival religion, one that Christianity put down ferociously after it gained the upper hand in the early centuries AD.

* ''LightNovel/{{Campione}}'':

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rco001_1469483207.jpg]]

->"Hahaha, Zag, I heard you got to Orpheus. He's got this whole entire ballad now about how you're really me-- or maybe it's the other way around? I've no idea, haha!"

** ''Franchise/WonderWoman'': In general the Erotes never number more than two and their portfolios cover the whole range of love, lust, seduction and romance which was split among the various members in the original mythology. Hermaphroditus however does remain intersex and Eros keeps his arrows of love, sometimes modified into other projectiles to fit the time period.

* In ''ComicBook/TheSandman'', when [[AnthropomorphicPersonification Dream]] visits [[UsefulNotes/{{Augustus}} Emperor Augustus]] in, well, a dream, Augustus initially believes Dream to be the god [[Myth/ClassicalMythology Apollo]]. Dream notes that there is some overlap between him and certain of Apollo's functions, (Apollo being a god of music, art and poetry, and in the Sandman verse creativity comes in large part from Dream's domain) so they've been mistaken for each before. [[AboveTheGods Dream is a whole other level of being]], however. It's also quite common for Dream to be called "Morpheus", after a Greco-Roman god associated with dreams. Another story establishes Dream as the father of Orpheus by Calliope. In myth, Orpheus's father is sometimes said to be Apollo .