History Main / GodIsInept

* A commercial begins with the opening scene of ''Film/{{Armageddon}}'' where dozens of meteors are tearing through New York City. The camera pans up the skyline, through the clouds, up into heaven - and it turns out God was trying to squirt Tabasco sauce onto a hot dog and missing his plate.

* ''Manga/{{Doraemon}}'': [[TheMovie The feature film]] has a plot where Nobita plays God, as in there is a gadget that creates world starting from the big bang, which is intended for research. It turns out that Nobita is not very good in his God-job, and the human equivalent of his cosmos live distressing life. [[spoiler:Just as things are about to get out of hands, it's revealed that ''Nobita's'' own cosmos is [[RecursiveReality also a research project]] by a God-like entity, and the entity offer Nobita a win-win solution for everyone]]. [[CosmicHorrorStory The implications make for a sleepless night, or seven]].

* ''Anime/DragonBallSuper'' has it as a major plot point that the local gods of Universe 7 and others are inept at managing the universe, to the point where [[TopGod Zen'o, their boss]] actively disapproves of the low population, quality, and degree of advancement of their mortals, and wants to intervene. [[spoiler:By holding a Tournament of Power where the eight universes with the lowest mortal rankings must have some of their fighters compete in a battle royale in an arena of the World of the Void. Every universe that loses gets wiped from existence by Zeno, and the last universe gets to survive, and get a wish with the Super Dragon Balls. Which Android #17 uses to wish the erased universes back into existence]]. Shin, Universe 7's Supreme Kai, has an excuse- he got the job because [[YouAreInCommandNow he was the only higher Kai to survive Majin Buu]], despite being the youngest and IncompletelyTrained. Which was Beerus' fault in the first place since it was his job to make sure monsters like Buu never get as far as he did, [[TheGodsMustBeLazy but he overslept]] ([[TooDumbToLive and nearly got himself killed as well]] since the [[CantLiveWithoutYou lives of the Gods of Destruction and their respective Supreme Kais are linked]]).

* ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'': The first attempt to create a universe was so spoiled by the arguments of the gods that they ended up creating [[ContinuitySnarl the Snarl]], which killed the Greco-Roman pantheon before they managed to lock it down. The lock? The ''second'' attempt at the universe. Said universe is an AnachronismStew because, to avoid creating another Snarl, the gods decided to take turns unilaterally adding design elements. The idea is based off Rich Burlew's complaints about ''D&D'' cosmology. [[spoiler: And as it turns out, this isn't the ''second'' attempt to create the universe and contain the Snarl, it's not even the hundredth. Or the billionth. The Snarl keeps breaking out and destroying the universe time after time because the gods can't effectively work out a way to keep it from doing so]].

* One Polish indie comic book has a story about a race of omnipotent beings. One of them is teenage JerkassGod Yahwe, who creates his own world with free-willed creatures based on his image to impress his friends and teachers. Upon seeing his creation, other Gods are horrified with [[HumansAreBastards all terrible things humans do to each other]] and call Yahwe incompetent and lazy, ordering him to clean up his own mess by bringing up [[TheEndofTheWorldAsWeKnowIt Armageddon]].

* {{God}} in ''ComicStrip/TheFarSide''. One strip (which drew complaints) showed God as a child trying to make a chicken, with the experiment blowing up in his face. Another strip had God taking the Earth out of the oven realizing too late that it was only [[CrapsackWorld half-baked.]] Yet another one shows the rise of humanity as a total accident on God's part: he dropped a jar of humans on Earth and went [[OhCrap "Uh oh"]]. Another one portrayed as more of a JerkassGod instead; having finished cooking up Earth, he added a liberal seasoning of "Jerks" just to make it interesting.

** In ''Literature/TheLastHero'', Carrot meets the gods on Dunmanifestin and, asked if he fears them as mortals should, truthfully replies that what he's seen of them frightens the life out of him. (Truthfully, because they're ''clearly'' petty, incompetent [[JerkassGods jerks]]).

** Alternatively, perhaps God did know everything that would happen, and before heading down, gave strict instructions to Metatron to find The Last Scion and exercise dishonesty so that Bethany would succeed on the quest through her own merits and with no divine assistance, since She knew everything that would come to pass. That included ensuring she could meet Bethany and knock her up 'cause there's a big danger in the future her son/daughter would need to face, and he or she would have to be trained from the get-go, unlike their mother who had a crash course.

*** The fact that it's Metatron who says this already brings into question how much research was put into writing Dogma, since apocryphally, Metatron is Enoch, a ''descendant'' of Adam.

** A point is made that God is NotSoOmniscientAfterAll and this has caused a lot of problems for humans. When Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit, Eve asks how they were supposed to know that it was wrong to do it when they couldn't know what "wrong" even was before they are the fruit, only for God to deflect.

--> '''God''': I mean, I'll create an eyeball, but I won't stick around long enough to make sure it isn't diseased or near-sighted or whatever. Gotta keep the assembly line rollin'. Know what I mean?\\

* GodIsInept: A point is made that God is NotSoOmniscientAfterAll and this has caused a lot of problems for humans. When Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit, Eve asks how they were supposed to know that it was wrong to do it when they couldn't know what "wrong" even was before they are the fruit, only for God to deflect.

Compare GodIsFlawed (when a deity/God is imperfect, but still manages to do Their job), and LoserDeity. May lead to questioning via ReligiousRussianRoulette.

Compare GodIsFlawed and LoserDeity. May lead to questioning via ReligiousRussianRoulette.

* There are jokes about God being an inept engineer for [[UnusualEuphemism putting a sewage line through a recreational area]], and giving men nipples.

* ''Anime/DragonBallSuper'' has it as a major plot point that the local gods of Universe 7 and others are inept at managing the universe, to the point where [[TopGod Zen'o, their boss]] actively disapproves of the low population, quality, and degree of advancement of their mortals, and wants to intervene. [[spoiler:By holding a Tournament of Power where the eight universes with the lowest mortal rankings must have some of their fighters compete in a battle royale in an arena of the World of the Void. Every universe that loses gets wiped from existence by Zeno, and the last universe gets to survive, and get a wish with the Super Dragon Balls. Which Android #17 uses to wish the erased universes back into existence]]. Shin, Universe 7's Supreme Kai, has an excuse- he got the job because [[YouAreInCommandNow he was the only higher Kai to survive Majin Buu]], despite being the youngest and IncompletelyTrained.

* ''Anime/DragonBallSuper'' has it as a major plot point that the local gods of Universe 7 and others are inept at managing the universe, to the point where [[TopGod Zen'o, their boss]] actively disapproves of the low population, quality, and degree of advancement of their mortals, and wants to intervene. [[spoiler:By holding a Tournament of Power where the five universes with the lowest mortal rankings must have some of their fighters compete in a battle royale in an arena of the World of the Void. Every universe that loses gets wiped from existence by Zeno, and the last universe gets to survive, and get a wish with the Super Dragon Balls. Which Android #17 uses to wish the erased universes back into existence]]. Shin, Universe 7's Supreme Kai, has an excuse- he got the job because [[YouAreInCommandNow he was the only higher Kai to survive Majin Buu]], despite being the youngest and IncompletelyTrained.

But in retrospect, they botched a few things up in the original design, a few things just don't do what they were probably intended to do, and there's all these little bits of design that make people go "What the... ''I'' could have designed this better!" These aren't moral things; there is no refuge in claiming that GodIsEvil. It's just shoddy worksmanship.

** This is the opinion of most of the [[OurElvesAreBetter races of Mer (Elves)]], especially the Altmer, toward Lorkhan. Lorkhan is one of the et'Ada ("original spirits") who tricked/convinced some of the other et'Ada (who would become known as the [[OurGodsAreDifferent Aedra]]) into sacrificing large portions of their power to create Mundus, the mortal plane. The races of Mer generally see this as an act of malevolence which robbed the pre-creation spirits of their divinity and forced them to experience mortal loss and suffering. The Altmer think of him as a "limit", and by "tricking" the Aedra into sacrificing large portions of their power to create Mundus, he imposed a limit upon them as well.

*** The creator-god ''of'' the last continent, Fourecks, although possibly not ''quite'' as absent-minded as the one who created the rest of the Disc, is still inattentive enough to not notice that the Librarian had been messing with his bull-roarer. Which is no small thing, considering it condemned Fourecks to forty thousand years of drought.

God may later try to claim "IMeantToDoThat!", explaining the whole thing away as a GambitRoulette justified by their OmniscientMoralityLicense, and that ObfuscatingStupidity is all part of their [[InMysteriousWays master plan]]... but unless the ending explodes in a hail of [[ChekhovsGun Chekhov's gunfire]], especially if accompanied by a prearranged divine AssPull of divine might, that explanation just never seems very convincing. As a rule of thumb, if a person can, in retrospect, work out how the plan was set up in advance, and some previously arranged coincidences unravel into karmically appropriate boons before the end, it was probably a divine {{plan}}. Otherwise, it's probably just bumbling.

Essentially, applying the HanlonsRazor approach to GodIsEvil. In other words, GodIsGood but incompetent, possibly even a CluelessBoss.

* The ''VideoGame/{{Neptunia}}'' goddesses come off as this on their worst days. When they're on the clock, they're actually pretty good at their jobs, but most of the time, they seem content to let their staff handle it while they indulge in their hobbies. ''VideoGame/HyperdimensionNeptuniaVictory'' is kicked off by a group trying to get them fired for their shoddy performance.

Compare GodIsFlawed. May lead to questioning via ReligiousRussianRoulette.

** Sam Vimes has been described as wishing he could arrest the Creator for doing such a crummy job. However, when the Creator actually turns up in ''Discworld/{{Eric}}'', he turns out to be a quite nice (if EXTREMELY absent-minded, to the extent that he really did accidentally forget the Octavo) fellow who was just trying to build the thing to spec and on-budget for the initial set of Gods. He even complains about the lousy workmanship other Creators are doing, and the habit of sub-contracting to beings who never get the work done on time.
** The god the wizards encounter in ''Discworld/TheLastContinent'' is so inept he (a god of evolution) doesn't know creatures have to reproduce and keeps making only one of each.
** In ''Discworld/TheLastHero'', Carrot meets the gods on Dunmanifestin and, asked if he fears them as mortals should, truthfully replies that what he's seen of them frightens the life out of him. (Truthfully, because they're ''clearly'' petty, incompetent [[JerkassGods jerks]]).

* ''Anime/DragonBallSuper'' has it as a major plot point that the local gods of Universe 7 and others are inept at managing the universe, to the point where [[TopGod Zen'o, their boss]] actively disapproves of the low population, quality, and degree of advancement of their mortals, and wants to intervene. [[spoiler:By tossing out the shoddy workmanship that is the universe they've turned out to make more room for higher-quality universes staffed by actual competent deities]]. Shin, Universe 7's Supreme Kai, has an excuse- he got the job because [[YouAreInCommandNow he was the only higher Kai to survive Majin Buu]], despite being the youngest and IncompletelyTrained.

* ''Anime/DragonBallSuper'' has it as a major plot point that the local gods of Universe 7 and others are inept at managing the universe, to the point where [[TopGod Zen'o, their boss]] actively disapproves of the low population, quality, and degree of advancement of their mortals, and wants to intervene. [[spoiler:By tossing out the shoddy workmanship that is the universe they've turned out to make more room for higher-quality universes staffed by actual competent deities]]. Their Supreme Kai, at least, has an excuse- he got the job because [[YouAreInCommandNow he was the only higher Kai to survive Majin Buu]], despite being the youngest and IncompletelyTrained.

* ''Anime/DragonBallSuper'' has it as a major plot point that the local gods of Universe 7 and others are inept at managing the universe, to the point where [[TopGod Zen'o, their boss]] actively disapproves of the low population, quality, and degree of advancement of their mortals, and wants to intervene. [[spoiler:By tossing out the shoddy workmanship that is the universe they've turned out to make more room for higher-quality universes staffed by actual competent deities]]. Their Supreme Kai, at least, has an excuse- he only got the job because [[YouAreInCommandNow he was the only higher Kai to survive Majin Buu]], and is IncompletelyTrained.