History Main / MachineWorship

* "VideoGame/Warhammer40000Mechanicus", see the Tabletop Games section of this article.

** ''New Phyrexia'' has the white Phyrexian faction led by Elesh Norn and called the Machine Orthodoxy. New Phyrexia btw used to be Mirrodin -- the flawless zombie cyborgs won. They even tried (and failed) to make Karn their new Father of Machines.

* Inverted in the 2015-onwards ''Franchise/{{Wolfenstein}}'' games. The Da'at Yichud don't worship technology, they worship God ''through'' their technology; namely by invention and engineering as a form of meditation.

*** As weird and scary as the Mechanicus and their worship of the Omnissiah and the Machine Spirit is, there are disturbing indications that [[TheCuckooLanderWasRight they're totally right]] to worship their machines. The "machine spirits" aren't ''just'' some religious nonsense; every piece of Imperium technology has fragments of artificial intelligence in them (a relic of an ancient RobotWar), and [[AIIsACrapshoot failing to placate these unstable AI systems can genuinely cause them to go haywire]]. That, or due to the psychic nature of the Warp [[ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve altering reality if people believe in a collevtive though enough]], the Machine Spirits may exist only because the are being worshipped.

* A few of the Pacific Island John Frum cults have transitioned from [[CargoCult cargo cults]] to this trope instead. They understand what technology is, but still consider it, and its advancement, to be sacred.
* In Asia, animistic beliefs that objects have spirits sometimes persisted after introduction of major religions & modern technology which results in several gems like praying in front of servers to ensure it runs smoothly & performing rituals during GachaGames so that the RandomNumberGod gives them luck to give what they want.
* Although not exactly machine worship per se, some Christian clergy of Eastern Europe are famous for providing blessings, attaching holy icons, & [[Main/OddJobGods assigning patron saints to high-tech objects]] from cars, servers, hospital equipment, spacecraft, to military hardware like rifles, tanks, fighter jets, & even [[BreadEggsMilkSquick nuclear missiles]]. This practice has been commonly lampooned in memes due to its similarity to the Adeptus Mechanicus from ''Warhammer 40.000''.

--->''Will we next create false gods to rule over us? How proud we have become, and how blind.''

-->'''Pinthi''': But then [the Mowlings'] god showed up.\\
'''Captain''': That's how you know you really screwed up.\\
'''Pinthi''': Not literal god. Advanced artifical intelligence. [[DeusEstMachina But in practice there is little difference.]]

* The ''{{VideoGame/After The End|APostApocalypticAmerica}}'' mod for ''VideoGame/CrusaderKingsII'' has the Rust Cult, whose faith involves reverence of the technology of pre-Deluge America. Everyone can stumble upon a piece of technology that miraculously still works, but only Rust Cultists can make pilgrimages to search for artefacts of before the End.

* ''VideoGame/HorizonZeroDawn'' is set in a world where most of the animal life is robotic, [[spoiler: and the world itself was terraformed by the hand of a godlike AI]], so it's not surprising that many of the tribes have an element of machine worship in their religion. The Banuk explicitly worship what they refer to as "machine spirits", and seek to implement their "blue light" into their own bodies. The Nora don't worship a machine as such, but what they believe to be the voice of their goddess All-Mother is in fact an automated door message ([[spoiler: and their idea of an All-Mother very closely matches to what GAIA is, anyway]]). The Carja cult known as the Eclipse worship the Buried Shadow, which turns out to be [[spoiler: a homicidal AI named HADES who takes the facade to manipulate them]].
** [[VideoGame/HorizonForbiddenWest The sequel]] adds three new tribes, two of which qualify.

* The Cybernetic Consciousness faction of ''VideoGame/SidMeiersAlphaCentauri'' seeks to use cybernetics to purge themselves of irrationality and humanity frailty. More a case of Ego Machina, though, since the faction consists of formerly human beings literally possessed by artificial intelligences, who don't get human stuff like procreation by nature.
** Sister Mary Godwinson, leader of the fanatically fundamentalist Protestant Lord's Believers, worries about this in the quote for the "Self-Aware Colony" Secret Project but the project only allows for the cities to act as an extra worker and police.
--->''Will we next create false gods to rule over us? How proud we have become, and how blind.'' — Sister Miriam Godwinson, "We Must Dissent"

* Karras from ''VideoGame/ThiefIITheMetalAge'' runs a Hammerite sect known as the Mechanists, who idolize machines as "[[CrystalDragonJesus The Builder's]] Children". Karras himself is even more radical than his followers, as he [[OmnicidalManiac hates all organic life]] and believes that only metal (and himself) is perfect and loved by the Builder.

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* In ''WebOriginal/OrionsArm'' many archailects, intelligences that have transcended multiple times, are the focus of this trope. Most of them do not consider themselves to be gods, but they've long since given up trying to convince the lesser intelligences that they are not, and have instead decided to present themselves as (mostly) benevolent deities when interacting with lower intelligences (which they don't do very often... not directly anyway).

* ''Fanfic/AMothToAFlame'': As part of her MoreThanMindControl by Andrias and the Core, Marcy revers [[MechanicalAbomination the latter]] like a deity.

* The Corpore Metal secret society in ''TabletopGame/{{Paranoia}}'' thinks that robots and cyborgs should rule, while the [=FCCCP=] (First Church of Christ Computer Programmer) not-quite-secret society worships Alpha Complex's current ruler The Computer as an aspect of God. (The Computer finds this confusing, but preferable to most other secret societies. Meanwhile, the various factions of the FCCCP spend most of their effort [[WeAreStrugglingTogether trying to stamp each other out as heretics]].)

* In the novel of ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'', the Builders of the Monolith went through a phase where they uploaded their consciousness to starships, before evolving into pure energy.

* In ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'' the Freakshow villain group is pretty much this trope embodied in a group of street thug drug addicts. They don't worship technology, but do they ever abuse it.

* One of the {{Wacky Wayside Tribe}}s in ''VideoGame/GoldenSun: The Lost Age'' is a tribal pseudo-African village whose chief deity is a gigantic {{Magitek}} entity... which is broken, causing some trouble for the student priest trying to earn its favor. Once repaired, it is sentient, and even offers Felix [[TomeOfEldritchLore some of its power]] as thanks for fixing it (to the ire of the new priest).

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* Doctor Trintignant from Creator/AlastairReynolds's novella ''Literature/DiamondDogs'', set in his ''Literature/RevelationSpace'' verse.

* PlayedForLaughs in the ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' episode "[[Recap/FuturamaS3E1AmazonWomenInTheMood Amazon Women in the Mood]]": the Amazonians worship a supercomputer [[spoiler: actually a fembot controlling the thing ''[[Film/TheWizardOfOz Wizard of Oz]]''-style]] that refers to itself as "Femputer", which had appeared shortly after the males of their species mysteriously all died out. Unlike most examples, the only thing that changed about their tribal culture is that Femputer and the hardware necessary for it to work and communicate with others were installed in a huge temple. Amusingly, the Amazonians' response to the question of why they'd make a computer their god is pretty much "seemed like a good idea." Also rather amusingly, [[spoiler:the fembot was not the first one to pull it off-she says that she originates from a male-centric society ruled by a "Manputer" who was actually a manbot]].

* ''Anime/CowboyBebop'' has an episode which revolves around a cult obsessed with [[BrainUploading uploading your mind into the internet]]. The cult leader was [[spoiler: hospitalized and totally immobile, and a StrawNihilist to boot. The whole thing turned out to be a scam, and those who thought they were getting uploaded were just dead.]]

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* PlayedForLaughs in ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'': the Amazonians worship a supercomputer [[spoiler: actually a fembot controlling the thing ''[[Film/TheWizardOfOz Wizard of Oz]]''-style]] that refers to itself as "Femputer", which had appeared shortly after the males of their species mysteriously all died out. Unlike most examples, the only thing that changed about their tribal culture is that Femputer and the hardware necessary for it to work and communicate with others were installed in a huge temple.
** Amusingly, the Amazonians' response to the question of why they'd make a computer their god is pretty much "seemed like a good idea."
** Also rather amusingly, [[spoiler: the fembot was not the first one to pull it off-she says that she originates from a male-centric society ruled by a "Manputer" who was actually a manbot.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans'':

* The War Boys from ''Film/MadMaxFuryRoad'' have the Cult of the V8. They have a V8 hand sign, they spray chrome paint onto their teeth when they go berserk and try to [[SuicideAttack hitch a ride to Valhalla]], and many of them, including Nux, carve pictograms of engines into their skin. WordOfGod says that because the average War Boy is sickly with radiation poisoning, and they cannot heal themselves, they try to make themselves more like the machines, which they can repair, believing that some of its power will be transferred to them.

* The War Boys from ''Film/MadMaxFuryRoad'' have the Cult of the V8. They have a V8 hand sign, they spray chrome paint onto their teeth when they go berserker and try to [[SuicideAttack hitch a ride to Valhalla]], and many of them, including Nux, carve pictograms of engines into their skin. WordOfGod says that because most of them are sick, and they cannot heal themselves, they try to make themselves more like the machines, which they can repair.