History Main / TheGodsMustBeLazy

** The Ostrander/Mandrake ongoing Spectre series cleared up many facts about the Spectre-force: while it is the literal embodiment of God's wrath, it is not allowed to roam free, but must be bound to a mortal soul, who in turn decides how to use its power. But most of this seems to have been forgotten in recent years; for example during the InfiniteCrisis miniseries the Spectre, now without a host, caused a lot of destruction (being an unwitting pawn of some villains) and God only stopped it after it caused the end of the 9th Age of Magic (by killing off the Lords of Order and Chaos.)

* Most of ''DragonballZ'''s gods and deities are weaker than even the villains of the second story arc, with this trope really coming into play during the Buu Saga, where Majin Buu terrorizes the heavenly realms and devours some of the Dragonball universe's most powerful gods with relative impunity.
** Not to mention they did nothing when Freiza was conquering worlds (the Supreme Kai even states any of them could easily kill Freiza) or in Trunks' timeline when the androids destroyed everything. Presumably, this happened because they did not threaten the existance of the whole universe, which is only when they can intervene.

[[AC:{{Folklore}}]]
* Apparently there's an old Chinese tale about how the lesser gods demanded some human be punished for an outrageous act of blasphemy. The Boss God points out that if he interferes in this case, he'll be expected to interfere in others or everyone will think he's losing his grip. But when something bad happens to the human (as it does to everyone eventually) people will say "Well the gods might take their time about it, but they always get their revenge!"
* The whole point of Deism. Basically, an almighty figure made the universe and all. Then he did nothing afterwards.

** As mentioned in the page description, one of the PowersThatBe did come to help (Jasmine) and all Angel & Co could do was bitch about it, because she didn't do things the way they thought was appropriate. After that, you can't really fault the Powers for doing things a certain way, now could you?
*** "Either we do nothing whatsoever, or we destroy free will and also eat increasing numbers of you" is one heck of a false choice setup.

* In ''{{The Wheel Of Time}}'', The Dark One mostly is a Jerkass who encourages in-fighting between his top followers over who gets to be his right-hand minion. But he does occasionally have their back, such as [[spoiler: resurrecting some of his followers from the dead, though when it comes to Balthamel's [[ManIFeelLikeAWoman resurrection]], he's still a jerkass]]. The Creator(a.k.a God), on the other hand, is completely absent.

* ''TheRedemptionOfAlthalus'' subverts this. Althalus' live-in goddess Emmy [[spoiler:and lover]] might not be busting out the orbital smite-rays on his enemies, but she does provide him with immortality, powerful magic, team mates, and resources (such as a house that can open doors to anywhere) to defeat any enemy. Oh, and she even lets him keep armies in the house, marching around so they can be deployed at a moment's notice. Meanwhile, the god supporting the bad guys prefers to just terrify them and be a jerk.

** One particularly painful example of this from the original trilogy: At one point, Paladine, arguably the most prominent god of good in the setting, who has in fact been quietly helping the protagonists along in disguise, shows up to sternly lecture a silver dragon for...well...basically trying to do much the same thing. Never mind that the oath she broke in the process was made by the good dragons (a) under duress (b) to the forces of evil who (c) had just stolen all their ''eggs'' to blackmail them into staying out of the fight and (d) never actually bothered to ''return'' said eggs afterwards. (Which, as we find out not too long after, was because (e) [[spoiler:they were too busy using those eggs to breed new minion monsters for their own armies]]...) Thus, this probably also makes a fine example of LawfulStupid behavior on Paladine's part.

** Actually, the mere presence of the aforementioned Paladine subverts this trope '''heavily'''. He helped the good guys escape in Pax Tharkas, he saved the life of some key figures that would end up being decisive in the battle against evil... heck, he even led them to the recovery of the titular ''Dragonlances''... which basically won the good guys the war.

* In nearly all of [[StephenKing Stephen King's]] novels that have supernatural elements, "The White"/"Purpose"/God has a strong DIY ethic when it comes to fighting evil. It will assist the human protagonists, occasionally giving them special power in the process, but does not appear to have any equivalents to [[spoiler: Randall Flagg, The Crimson King, It, Dandelo, etc]] who actually ''do'' anything to fight evil directly. For example,
** ''IT'': [[spoiler: the Turtle is implied to be stronger than It, but openly says he'll take no part.]]
** ''Insomnia'': [[spoiler: One of the Bald Men actually says that "Purpose" prefers to have people deal with the problems instead of taking care of them itself.]]
** ''TheStand'': [[spoiler: This trope comes and goes. There is someone who looks a little like the counterpart to Flagg, but in the end she seems to be condemned for the sin of pride, whilst Flagg is preparing to attack the good guys. Then in a literal DeusExMachina, the nuke Trashcanman returns to Flagg is detonated by some sort of divine manifestation, when Flagg uses his powers in serious reality violating ways]].

* Averted in [[TheDresdenFiles The Dresden Files]]. Harry [[RageAgainstTheHeavens rants in a chapel]] at the end of ''Small Favor'' but is told by no less than [[spoiler:the Archangel Uriel in the form of a janitor]] that the good guys act in subtler ways. The White God also acts through proxies, namely the Knights of the Cross, and the Knights are nothing if not... [[{{Understatement}} impressive]].

* ''BuffyTheVampireSlayer''.

** It seems like the 'good' gods are just more subtle; even character in the setting have noted that ridiculously powerful heroes are always born at exactly the right time to be around to barely beat Chaos again. The Chaos Gods are supposedly at the brink of winning, but they have been for THOUSANDS of years. They aren't exactly shirking, either.

** Of course, given how the whole long history of the soulstones tends towards NiceJobBreakingItHero, the other angels may have a point.

* Inverted in {{Bayonetta}}. The forces of Paradisio (Heaven) are actually more active than the forces of Inferno, to the point where the only demon-characters we see have to be painstakingly summoned by our heroine.

** However, given the convenient way in which many elements (including the angel/homunculus herself) fell into place to ruin not just one, but ''two'' {{Big Bad}}s in only five days, perhaps {{God}} was actively working behind the scenes afterall.

** Okami is pretty much the antithesis of this trope, since not only does Amaterasu personally fix everything wrong in the world, from demon infestation to a woman not having a clothesline, but the only reason she took a break in the first place was being killed in the line of duty and taking a while to reincarnate. You really can't get much more active than that.

** Arguably Ormazd was working through Elika's magic powers.

* Beyond Zork featured the Implementors, obvious [[AuthorAvatar Author Avatars]] for the game's creators, who created the world but now spend all their time having lunch on the Ethereal Plane of Atrii.

*** Not counting that the Aedras (read: 8 of the 9 divines), have lost alot of power when Lorkhan tricked them into creating Mundus, they are not able to act as directly as the Daedras (who are essentially the same kind of being, only they never were involved in the creation of Mundus). This requires the Aedras to act more though mortal agents, such as the various Heroes of the Elder Scrolls (ie: The Eternal Champion, the Nerevarine, the Champion of Cyrodill, Martin Septim, the Hero of Battlespire).

** In the very first version (''The Book of Lost Tales'') this was intended to be seen as a failing of the Valar. As the Silmarillion evolved and the Valar became less like morally ambiguous Greek gods and more like archangels, this was changed. In the final version, their first wars with Morgoth did so much damage (shattering continents, lifting up mountain ranges) that they could not release their full powers against him without causing an EndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt , which would have been rather counterproductive. They had to wait till he squandered his powers sufficiently that he could be defeated with less extreme means. (Even so, that battle - the War of Wrath - * still* sank Beleriand, which is not an insignificant area -- the maps seem to suggest something the size of France or Spain.)

*** Then there's Radaghast the Brown who does help Gandalf indirectly when he's imprisoned in Orthanc but mostly has become a D&D druid and plays with bunnies.

** The last ongoing Spectre series cleared up many facts about the Spectre-force: while it is the literal embodiment of God's wrath, it is not allowed to roam free, but must be bound to a mortal soul, who in turn decides how to use its power. But most of this seems to have been forgotten in recent years; for example during the InfiniteCrisis miniseries the Spectre, now without a host, caused a lot of destruction (being an unwitting pawn of some villains) and God only stopped it after it caused the end of the 9th Age of Magic (by killing off the Lords of Order and Chaos.)

** Lucifer left Hell because he felt like it, a far cry from his imprisonment back in Dante Alghieri's day. In "Sandman", all God does about this is damn two more angels to look after the place.

* Happens a lot in StephenKing's novels. Particularly irritating is God's insistence that humanity do the work, apparently just because He says so.

'''God:''' [[SarcasmMode Ooooh,]] '''[[SarcasmMode sorreeee]]'''! [[SarcasmModeI only created]] '''[[SarcasmMode the universe]]'''! [[SarcasmMode You're right, I should be out running]] '''[[SarcasmMode laps]]'''.

'''God:''' [[SarcasmMode Ooooh,]] '''[[SarcasmMode sorreeee]]'''! [[SarcasmModeI only created]] '''[[SarcasmModethe universe]]'''! [[SarcasmMode You're right, I should be out running]] '''[[SarcasmMode laps]]'''.

'''God:''' Ooooh, '''sorreeee'''! I only created '''the universe'''! You're right, I should be out running '''laps'''.

-> ''"If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. The worst you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever."''
-->--WoodyAllen

* ''{{Touhou}}'' has Yukari Yakumo, effective ruler of Gensokyo with [[RealityWarper enough power to qualify as a god]], who takes this trope to an artform. Not only does she tend to sleep for twelve hours a day, only awakening at night, but she's also known to sleep through the entirety of winter (her subordinates even say she's "hibernating"). And when she ''is'' awake she much prefers to use the local {{miko}} to do things for her while annoying/flirting with her.

* ''Exalted'' averts, subverts and plays this trope straight. Creation and Heaven are populated by numerous, constantly busy deities of varied levels of power, all of which are interested in both protecting their portfolio and defending their worshippers, which is part of their jobs. However, they are constrained by the rules of the Heavenly Bureaucracy as well as the agendas and actions of other deities. And then you have the Incarnae, the Lords of Heaven and the Mightiest of Deities, who are so engrossed with the Games of Divinity they can no longer be bothered to do anything else, leaving their most basic tasks to their own avatars.

The trope-name comes from the film ''TheGodsMustBeCrazy''.