Composite Character are often created between Mythology & Religion and their various adaptations, as a result of both time constraints and general mixing of the stories.
- You know the "Rainbow Serpent" that you picture when people tell you about Aboriginal Australian Myths? Well, it is an unholy cultural appropriation composite born from mish-mashing all deities even midly associated with snakes from the numerous Aboriginal cultures. To given an example, under this logic the Lord of the Ocean Ngalyod (Gunwinggu tradition), the generic water monster Garriya (Gamilaraay Dreaming), the intersex Fertility God Wagyl (Noongar mythology, and only barely connected to snakes) and the Life-Force Sentient Cosmic Force Wungurr (from the Western Australian cultural complex aptly named "Wandjina-Wungurr") are all the same person... because they are connected to snakes.
- Arthurian Legend:
- The role of the mother of Mordred (who may or may not be Arthur's son) is frequently given to Morgan Le Fay; the original mother (Morgause) is either absent or given a different role.
- Morgan is also often mixed with Nimue. Also Elaine of Carbonek (lover of Lancelot who was the mother of Galahad) can be combined with Elaine of Astolat (unrequited lover of Lancelot who pined away).
- Even inanimate objects can get this treatment: see Excalibur in the Stone.
- In the Robin Hood legends and ballads, there's about a half dozen Merry Men all named "Will;" most adaptations boil them down to one.
- The American Santa Claus is a composite of several European myths and folk lore. Examples include the historical Saint Nicholas of Myra, the Norse god Odin, and the Roman Titan Saturn (AKA Cronus).
- The Bible:
- In Christian traditions going back at least to the Middle Ages, Mary Magdelene was identified both with the nameless prostitute who anointed Jesus' feet in Luke 6, as well as Mary of Bethany, who also anoints Jesus' feet at one point. There are various reasons for the former connection: the story of the prostitute is followed by a discussion of Mary, and she is described as having "devils" exorcised from her. She was the traditional symbol of a repentant sinner, but the Catholic Church has dropped this association in recent years.
- Combined with Adapted Out, almost every film version of Book of Exodus removes Aaron
completely and gives all his meetings with Pharaoh and the miracles performed by him to Moses. - The popular conception of The Antichrist is a merger of three prophetic figures in The Bible, none of whom are referred to by that name. The three are the "Little Horn" in the Book of Daniel, the "Man of Sin" in the Epistle to the Thessalonians, who proclaims himself as God and defiles the Temple of Jerusalem, and "The Beast" in the Book of Revelation. While many Christians, especially Evangelicals, believe all of these figures refer to the same person or being, a demonically-backed dictator who will appear at the end of the world, some scholars believe they each referred to a different historical ruler: the Little Horn was Antiochus IV, a Greek king known for his brutal persecutions of Jews around the time Daniel was written; the Man of Sin was Emperor Caligula, who attempted to erect a statue of himself in the Temple; and the Beast was Emperor Nero, as the Beast's famous number, 666 corresponds in Jewish numerology to "Neron Kaisar," the Greek form of his name.
- In the Song of Songs, the Shulamite is believed by certain Bible students to be the amalgamation of all the women King Solomon had loved and married to be part of his harem. This seems to fit well with the idea that the book itself is a religious metaphor for God's love for Israel (in Judaism) and/or Jesus Christ's love for the church (in Christianity).
- Medieval legends about saints occasionally mixed up saints bearing the same name, e. g. Dionysius (Dénis), martyred bishop of Paris (3rd century), with the Dionyisius the Areopagite (converted by St. Paul).
- In Norse Mythology the trickster god Loki and the fire giant Logi are often thought of as the same character, such as in the Wagner's Ring Cycle where they are merged into Loge.
- In The Qur'an's story about the Virgin Mary, named "Maryam" in Arabic, she has a brother named Harun ("Aaron") and a father named Imram ("Amram")... just like the Old Testament's Miriam, who would also be called "Maryam" in Arabic. A Muslim would argue that this is a coincidence or the case of purposefully naming one's kids after revered historical figures, while non-Muslims generally argue that Muhammad heard the stories of both "Maryams," mistakenly thought they were the same person and then re-separated the stories later when he realized his error.
- In folklore and demonology, Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, and such are all originally separate demons. They are however often combined into the same being with the various different names becoming simply aliases.
- Old Man Winter, the personification of Winter, could be seen as a Composite Character of Jack Frost/Morozko and the North Wind's anthropomorphic depictions in that he's a personification of ice and snow like the former while also usually being portrayed as a sometimes-malicious bearded elder who blows cold gusts of wind out his mouth like the latter.
- To what extent people of different religions understand others to be worshipping the same god can vary. Inclusive forms of monotheism tend to understand there to be only one "God", who all monotheists worship under different monikers and with different sets of (mis)conceptions. Especially inclusive forms may understand polytheistic gods as aspects or emanations of that God. Less inclusive forms might restrict this to deities where there is good reason to equate them (Jehovah/Yahweh in the Bible and Allah in the Quran are both identified as the God of prophets such as Abraham/Ibrahim, for instance). Uninclusive views might only consider shared scripture, such as the Hebrew Bible, and/or a shared statement of doctrine, such as the Nicene Creed, as defining the same God. At the far end of the spectrum, any two different religions might be called "different Gods" (even if they are, say, Catholicism versus Protestantism) by those who believe in gods as egregores of their followers rather than metaphysical entities.
- Classical Mythology:
- Roman and Greek gods are often considered to be the same group of deities, just known by different names. This is symptomatic of Romans seeing the similarities between their Indo-European gods, and beginning to ascribe Greek legends to their own gods. ''Interpretatio romana'' refers to the deliberate practice of identifying foreign deities with classical gods and often assimilating their distinct characteristics into mainstream practice.
- Some of the Roman gods finished up being best known by epithets transferred from their Greek counterparts, for example Pluto/Plouton (Roman Dis or Greek Hades) or Bacchus/Bakkhos (Roman Liber or Greek Dionysus).
- Occasionally subverted in that a few never weren't the same god ("Jupiter" is cognate with "Zeus Pater", from the original proto-Indo-European Dyḗus Pħtḗr).
- Some of the equivalences result in gods with very different characterisation being merged (Mars might sometimes be worthy of admiration, Ares less so).
- This applied to non-Greco-Roman panthea as well. For example, Sulis, the goddess of the hot springs in the town of Bath (Aquae Sulis), was equated with Minerva. Days of the week in Germanic versus Romance languages preserve a few attempted correspondances between the Roman and Germanic panthea (e.g. Mars with Tiw/Tue/Tyr, Jupiter with Thor).
- Hermes/Mercury is a particularly complex one. Mercury was added to the Roman pantheon during the assimilation of the Greek pantheon, so never had an "original" Roman form distinct from Hermes, but just got given another name. Hermes/Mercury was, however, equated both with the Egyptian Thoth (in the form of Hermes Trismegistus) and (perhaps surprisingly) the Germanic Woden/Odin. Hermes Trismegistus is also sometimes equated with with the Abrahamic Enoch, since Enoch and Thoth are both traditionally considered the inventor of writing (in legend, although this has no basis in the canonical Bible); Enoch is in turn sometimes called Idris, a name used in some vague passages in the Quran which are traditionally thought to refer to Enoch, or Metatron, an angel which Enoch is sometimes considered to have been transfigured into.
- Aphrodite in particular is considered to be the product of smashing together variants of Inanna and Ishtar, particularly Astoreth, who are in turn possibly syncreticisms between unrelated deities. Ironically, she's also somewhat of a Decomposite Character, losing veneration as a war god except in very particular cults, like that in Sparta— before regaining it again (at least as a common epithet) in Gallo-Roman veneration as Venus. This also affected her lover Adonis, who was drawn from methods of venerating the god Dumuzid, Adonis's own name drawn from a common Canaanite title for deities, adon, usually translated as "lord." This -title, more famously, became applied to the Biblical Yahweh.
- Roman and Greek gods are often considered to be the same group of deities, just known by different names. This is symptomatic of Romans seeing the similarities between their Indo-European gods, and beginning to ascribe Greek legends to their own gods. ''Interpretatio romana''
- Father Time, the Renaissance-era Anthropomorphic Personification of time, is a conflation of Chronos (the Greek god of time) and Cronus (the Titan of agriculture). This is why the personification of time inexplicably wields a sickle, because it's supposed to represent harvesting. Over time, the sickle morphed into a scythe, and time came to be seen as mortality, giving rise to the scythe-wielding Grim Reaper.
