Divine Punishment

"Zeus, I was a sinner. I've never tried to deny it. But I didn't sin every day. Why then do you punish me every day?"

— Phineas, Jason and the Argonauts

Many religions claim that their god will punish wrongdoers. In fiction, this can get a little more direct.

This can manifest in a variety of ways. A literal Bolt of Divine Retribution is the classic example, but various ironic curses are common, as is the simple act of turning away from their followers. They might enact The Punishment, or send The Scourge of God. They might remove any powers they granted, or destroy the world outright. Or maybe it's not clear what they did at all (or if the god exists in the first place), but bad things are happening to sinners, and it seems likely to be a part of a divine plan.

This tends to be a backstory element, at least in the grander cases. Classical Mythology used it as the origin for most monsters, and many fantasy stories use it to explain whatever ancient cataclysm shaped the world. Sometimes this happens in the story itself; in fact, the entire story might be about fighting back against an unjust punishment.

On a less serious level, it's a common gag for a character to lie, cuss, or commit some other infraction, only to hear Dramatic Thunder or Lightning immediately afterwards and make a hasty prayer of repentance.

It's also not uncommon for various false gods to do this over every little thing. May be the logical conclusion of Do Not Taunt Cthulhu. If the God in question is a Trickster God, it can be a Prank Punishment.

If the deity's followers try to invoke this on someone else, it's a Prayer of Malice. If they're daring the deity to try it on them, it's Smite Me, O Mighty Smiter.

See also Bolt of Divine Retribution, Curse, and God Is Displeased. Compare Deus ex Machina and Divine Intervention. Contrast Say Your Prayers, when someone else is about to give the punishment. Related to Gaia's Vengeance, where the deity is less personalized. Sister Trope to I'm Going to Hell for This.

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Fairy Tail: The Black Magic of Ankhselam, otherwise known as the curse of contradiction, is a divine curse that the god Ankhselam inflicts on anyone who defies the laws of life and death, which this god presides over: not only can the cursed individual never die, but they become a Walking Wasteland who steals life whenever they value it most, and can only control this power by forgetting the value of life altogether. There are two who suffer this curse: Zeref, the Big Bad, who was trying to bring his baby brother, Natsu, Back from the Dead; and Mavis, the Big Good, as punishment for using Law, a forbidden spell that puts the laws of life and death into the caster's own hands.

Fan Works

• Gaz's Horrible Halloween of Doom: After Gaz destroys a sacrificial offering that Dib was going to make to Samhain, the angry god curses her with bad luck on Halloween. She ends up having to wear a girly fairy princess costume, gets kidnapped by a lunatic paranormal investigator, has to walk home in the rain, gets splashed with mud by a passing truck, and then when she finally gets home and prepares to enjoy her candy, several cavities spontaneously appear in her mouth when she bites down on a single piece.
• Karma Circle: Judgement: Purgatory, the Avatar of Karma, has his apprentice Daan Yel appear to Gaz in a dream to confront her about her habit of using violence against people she doesn't like or who annoy her. When she shows no remorse for doing so, he throws her into a nightmare where everyone she's victimized — her classmates, teacher, brother, and father — gets a chance to either beat her up the same way she did to them or tell her what they really think about her.

Films — Live-Action

• Clash of the Titans (1981)
  • King Acrisius of the city of Argos tries to kill his daughter Danaë and her baby son (who was sired by the god Zeus) by having them put to sea in a wooden chest. Zeus punishes Acrisius by killing him and having Argos destroyed by the Kraken.
  • Calibos, the son of the goddess Thetis, killed all of the god Zeus's herd of flying horses except Pegasus. As punishment, Zeus changes him into a warped, ugly humanoid monster who is forced to live in a swamp.
  • Queen Cassiopeia of Joppa, Andromeda's mother, says that her daughter is more beautiful than the goddess Thetis. Thetis punishes her by ordering that Andromeda be sacrificed to the Kraken. If not, the city of Joppa will be destroyed.
• Dracula 2000: When a vampire escapes from his coffin and goes into a bloodlust, The Hero aims to track him down. In his research, Van Helsing learns that Dracula is really Judas Iscariot, punished by God for his betrayal with immortality and an unquenchable thirst for blood. Dracula will be forever hated, hounded, and hunted by men, and can only get respite by being buried alive.

Literature

• The Chronicles of Narnia: In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the eccentric magician Coriakin turned the Duffers (a kind of dwarves he was assigned to govern) into funny one-legged creatures called Monopods as a Prank Punishment for disobeying him and doing stupid things like planting boiled potatoes (so they wouldn't have to be cooked after) and washing dishes before the meal. Eventually they found advantage in their new form, such as using their giant foot as a boat. The relationship between Coriakin and the Dufflepuds is a metaphor for God's relationship with humanity, and possibly also Self-Deprecation on the author's part (he was born with only one functional joint in each of his thumbs, which impeded his physical activity, and he resorted to writing - which led to him becoming a great writer, something that would likely have never happened if he wasn't "cursed by God" and had normal thumbs).
• Heaven Official’s Blessing: Tian Guan Ci Fu: In a rare case of gods being punished by other gods, Xie Lan, upon ascending to godhood for the third time, and inadvertently destroying a heavenly palace in the process, is cast back to the mortal realm by the other gods. Again.
• "My Dinner with Ares": Fury Central is a Celestial Bureaucracy ran and operated by gods who's job is to reap divine justice on souls guilty of some great sin or violating some sacred law. Because of sheer workload, they will often commission gods who's domain falls under their business model in order to keep their quota.
• Watership Down: In lapine mythology, Frith the sun made the world, and all the creatures on it. At first, all were herbivores and lived in harmony. But the prince of rabbits sired so many bunnies that they grazed the earth bare. Frith commanded the prince to control his people, but the prince would not heed Frith. Thereupon, Frith remade some of the creatures into carnivores and predators that would hunt and slay rabbits. The prince saw the carnage and despaired, so Frith advised him, "Be quick, and full of tricks, and your people will never be destroyed."

Live-Action TV

• House of Anubis: As the show is centered on Egyptian Mythology, there are a few moments where characters get punished directly by one of the Egyptian gods.
  • In season 1, the Anubis students are putting on a play that was written about Victor and Sarah's backstory. In the play, the Frobisher-Smythes were both given the Curse of the Pharaoh directly from Anubis, who also goes ahead and claims the life of Victor's father, instead of awarding him with eternal life as promised.
  • In the Touchstone of Ra, Sophia plans to use the touchstone to make it rain gold, however the plan requires a sacrifice. Because the chosen sacrifice is rescued before the ceremony can be completed, Ra doesn't provide gold as promised and instead rains down on the students with lightning and turns Sophia to stone. He only stops when Eddie makes a Heroic Sacrifice, but Sophia remains a statue.
• Moon Knight (2022):
  • Invoked by Arthur Harrow and his disciples, who follow the deity Ammit and punish anyone who they deem guilty by killing them. They plan to release Ammit in order for her to punish anyone whose scales are considered unbalanced — regardless of whether or not they have actually done anything worth punishing yet.
  • Khonshu is directly referred to as the "God of Vengeance", and delivers justice in particularly violent ways. However, unlike Ammit, he only punishes people for crimes they actually have committed, rather than crimes they only may potentially commit.
• Supernatural: The fifteenth and final season has Chuck (God) pretty much coming up with new and inventive ways to punish Sam and Dean for refusing to go along with him. He gets cruel, to the point where he vanishes every living thing on the planet, animals and people, in order to force Sam and Dean to be alone in an empty world. Then he brings back a dog for them to find, then vanishes it from existence once more while Dean is excitedly petting it.
• Super Sentai and Power Rangers
  • Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger: In this show, the Humongous Mecha, Daizyujin, is implied to be God himself. When a tribe of primitive humans ate an apple from a forbidden tree, Daizyujin cursed them with monkey tails. He also gave them the task of protecting the last two remaining dinosaur eggs. If the tribe should fail at that, Daizyujin would fully turn them into monkeys.
  • Gaogod/Animus from Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger/Power Rangers Wild Force is angry at humanity for polluting the planet. To punish humanity, he took away the ranger's Humongous Mecha, so humanity is powerless against the villains.
  • The final villains from Mahou Sentai Magiranger are the Infershia Pantheon; a group of ten gods in service of the Big Bad Nma. Each of them gets a turn to destroy humanity within a set of rules they set for themselves. They call this ritual the Divine Punishment. Power Rangers Mystic Force averts this trope, as the counterparts to the Infershia Pantheon aren't gods.

Myth & Religion

• Classical Mythology: Most stories involve the gods punishing someone for something. The most common suspect is hubris, defined as the sort of pride that makes a mortal think themselves better than the gods.
  • Actaeon was punished for some transgression (most commonly seeing Artemis bathing; Artemis is a virgin goddess, so a man seeing her naked is sacreligious) by being eaten by his own hounds.
  • Ovid gives Medusa a backstory where Neptune rapes her in Minerva's temple, and Minerva turns Medusa into a monster for being involved in her temple being defiled, since Minerva isn't powerful enough to do anything to Poseidon.
  • Cassandra was cursed to never have her prophecies believed after she turned down Apollo, or cheated on him, or broke a vow of chastity- what she did varies, but the punishment is always the same.
  • Eristhchton chops down Demeter's sacred grove, including killing a nymph Demeter was fond of. She retaliated by cursing him with eternal hunger, which eventually drove him to eat himself after he ran out of all sources of food.
  • Narcissus was cursed by Nemesis to fall in love with his own reflection after his cruel rejections of his suitors ended up killing one- either the suitor is Echo and she suffers a Death by Despair, or it's Amenias and Narcissus gives him a Suicide Dare.
  • Hippolytus was punished by Aphrodite for rejecting love by having his stepmother Phaedra fall in love with him. Phaedra then reacted to Hippolytus understandably rejecting her by killing herself and accusing Hippolytus of raping her, which in turn prompts Hippolytus's father Theseus to call in a favor from Poseidon to have Hippolytus killed.
  • Prometheus was punished by Zeus for giving fire to humanity by being chained to a rock and having his liver pecked out by an eagle each day. This punishment would continue until Prometheus was freed by Heracles.
  • King Sisyphus of Corinth made his city prosperous by lying, murdering innocents, deceiving others and in almost every way, violating xenia (i.e. Sacred Hospitality). Zeus, as the divine protector of the sacred laws (including xenia), took offense to Sisyphus's violation, and after a series of whacky hijinks involving Sisyphus outsmarting the death gods sent to punish him (trapping Thanatos and manipulating Persephone into allowing him back into the land of the living), Sisyphus eventually died and was condemned to roll a giant rock up a hill for all eternity.

Tabletop Games

• Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition supplement Deities and Demigods Cyclopedia. If a cleric (priest) of a deity doesn't follow their deity's rules, they may be punished by the deity. Possible punishments include being required to atone for the transgression (e.g. by fasting, suffering physical pain or having to make a major sacrifice), being denied the use of clerical spells, being publicly humiliated or forced to go on a dangerous quest, being excommunicated or suffering divine punishment, up to and including death.
• Eberron: Some sects of the Blood of Vol claim that mortality is a curse by the gods. Everyone has the spark of the divine in them and can ascend to godhood if given enough time, so jealous gods cursed the world to make sure no one could live long enough to challenge them. This isn't a mainstream belief, though (and the Blood of Vol not a mainstream religion).
• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay:
  • A priest who was granted magic and later violates their god's commandments seriously enough can suffer divine punishment. If they're lucky, they might just lose their magic or their worldly goods; if not, they could get a one-way summons to face judgement in person.
  • Codified in Norscan law: there's no penalty for killing a Seer or Vitki because they're directly protected by the Chaos Gods and only the Gods can punish such an offense.

Video Games

• Afterimage: The aftermath of "The Razing" is implied to be a punishment from God, as mentioned in some texts or dialogue lines such as when Ripe suggests Renee to travel to the Teardrop.
  Ripe: We still cannot divine the reason for such a calamity even today. Mayhaps it is God's punishment meant for humans...
• Dragon Age: The Chantry teaches that the Maker initially turned away from humanity out of disappointment, and then when the magisters broke into the Golden City, corrupting it, he shunned them even harder. He cast the magisters down and turned them into the first darkspawn, leading to the cycle of Blights that ravage the land every few hundred years. A surviving magister claims that the city was already black when they arrived, and they found the throne empty. Oh, and not to mention that the Archdemons leading the Blights are actually the Old Gods who the magisters worshiped, leading to quite a few additional theological questions.
• Dwarf Fortress: Characters can find themselves cursed with vampirism or lycanthropy for disturbing graves, toppling idols, or abusing oracles.
• Elden Ring: This is the name of the Final Boss's grab attack, where it crucifies you on a Rune Arc and impales you with exploding spears of light. Interestingly enough, this pulls double duty as a punishment by a god and a punishment for a god, as the Elden Beast is heavily implied to have done the same thing to Marika after she shattered the Elden Ring.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • In the earliest days of existence, the Daedric Princes (pre-creation immortal spirits who did not participate in the act of creation of itself who are primarily the "Chaos" to the creating Aedra's "Order") came together to curse one of their own, Jyggalag, the Prince of Order in the "Control Freak" and "Awesomeness by Analysis", sense due to his growing power. They cursed into becoming the worst possible thing for a being of order — the Mad God Sheogorath. The plot of Oblivion's Shivering Isles DLC sees the Player Character helping to free Jyggalag while taking on the mantle of Sheogorath themself.
  • According to "Obscure Text" writings by former series dev Michael Kirkbride, resident Daedric Prince of Destruction Mehrunes Dagon was once a kindly demon who helped to preserve parts of the world from being "eaten" by Beast of the Apocalypse Alduin. When Alduin found out about this, he cursed Dagon into his current state until he could destroy all that which he preserved from previous worlds. His attempts to do so can be seen in Arena, Battlespire, and Oblivion.
  • Azura, Daedric Prince of Dusk and Dawn, is generally seen as one of the most benevolent of the Princes and is one of the few to genuinely care about her followers. When the Chimer, Precursors to the modern Dunmer (Dark Elves), went against her wishes, murdered her champion, and saw their leaders become the Physical God Tribunal, she cursed the formerly gold-skinned raced with ashen gray skin and blood red eyes. After helping the Nerevarine cast down the "false gods" in Morrowind, she further abandons the Dunmer by warning only a few of her followers ahead of the Red Year and Argonian Invasion, leaving the rest to suffer.
  • Malacath is the Daedric Prince of the Spurned, the Ostracized, and of Pariahs. He is also associated with curses and exile, but unlike the other Princes, tends to bring the cursed under his protection rather than dish out curses. His most famous followers are the Orcs (Orsimer), who are themselves the victim of a curse relating to Malacath's origins. Once the Aldmeri "ancestor spirit" Trinimac, he was a War God whose followers rivaled even those of Auriel (the Aldmeri Top God). Seeking to steal his worshippers, three Daedric Princes (Azura, Boethiah, and Mephala) came together to trick Trinimac. While weakened, he was "eaten" by Boethiah who "spoke with his voice" to convince many of his followers to leave, becoming the Chimer (and later Dunmer) people. Trinimac was "excreted" and the remains became Malacath, with his remaining followers becoming the Orcs, the "cursed folk". (Malacath himself confirms the story, but calls it "too literal-minded".)
  • Nocturnal is the Daedric Prince of Darkness, patron of thieves, and is associated with luck. While more "hands off" than most other Princes with their followers, she is quick to punish those who offend her with a couple of notable instances seen in the series:
    • In the Thieves' Guild questline of Oblivion, a master thief stole her Gray Cowl several centuries in the past. She cursed it to magically Unperson the wearer, striking their identity from the universe and leaving them known only as the "Gray Fox". As part of the questline, the current Gray Fox and the Player Character work together to steal an Elder Scroll and use its power to break the curse.
    • In the Thieves' Guild questline of Skyrim, the current guild leader has shirked his duty and stolen the Skeleton Key (noticing a pattern?). She has withdrawn her favor from the guild, leaving them to suffer a long string of bad luck and care close to collapsing completely. Once again, the Player Character can team up with a couple of other members to steal back the key, replace it, lift the curse, and restore her favor.
• EverQuest: A large part of Norrath's backstory was the first Rallosian War. Rallos Zek, the God of War, rallied his armies and stormed across both Norrath and the elemental planes. Conquering Norrath wasn't heinous enough, but they then invaded the Plane of Earth, captured all twelve members of the Rathe Council (the Gods of Earth), and then executed them in Norrath. This resulted in the entire Rathe Mountains springing up under each of their execution sites in the southern part of Tunaria. The other deities decided this was a step too far, and enacted their punishment upon Rallos Zek's own creations.
  • The Ogres — Rallos Zek's most prized creation — were stricken with a curse that resulted in future generations seeing a massive drop in intelligence and cognitive abilities, as well as their physical appearance degrading despite a notable gain in muscle mass and girth. They quickly changed from a highly intelligence war mongering race of Lightning Bruisers into hideously ugly Dumb Muscle.
  • The Orcs were cursed to never record their own history. Very little exists of what they ever accomplished in history. The curse also makes it difficult for the various tribes to band together into something much larger, but the tribes still pose local threats to the populace.
  • Not much is known about what the Ankhexfen used to be, but their punishment was that they were rendered completely extinct. It would be Brell Serilis' ne're-do-well brother Bolgin that would later create the deranged Goblin races from the idea of what the Ankhexfen were.
  • The Giants were scattered across Norrath as they tried to flee from natural disasters. Their homelands in the northern region of Tunaria were turned into a snowy tundra. The Giants that remained there while it happened were cursed to be transformed into the Ice Giants, who soon found themselves unable to live outside of the cold environment. The Giants tried to exodus to Kunark, but were met with a savage storm that sank the good majority of their fleet (and their population with it). The surviving giants scattered to the forests and mountains of Kunark, but are unable to organize into a new civilization.
• In The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, The Great Flood happens as a result of the Golden Goddesses directly intervening to stop Ganondorf when Link wasn't around to do it (thanks to Zelda).
• Hades: Certain rooms will have a Trial of the Gods, in which you can get a boon from two different Olympian gods, but you have to choose which god's boon you want first. The god you don't pick views it as a sign of unwarranted disrespect and unleashes their wrath on you: you now have to clear the room of all enemies while the god is also trying to kill you. Should you manage to clear the room, the god forgives you and allows you to have a boon from them, too.
• NetHack: Praying to your god when he is displeased with you, and too frequently, will first strike you by lighting, and if that doesn't work, a wide-angle disintegration beam.
• A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky: Ivy's Divine Punishment skill:
  Pierces foes with a holy blade.

Web Animation

• RWBY:
  • The heroes learn in Volume 5 that a man who was trying to stop an Ancient Evil was punished for his failure to constantly reincarnate until he finally succeeds. Ozpin initially tells Team RNJR that this is why he is Sharing a Body with Oscar, who will become the next Oz in the fight against Salem. However, Volume 6 reveals that humanity was punished when Salem turned them against the gods and the God of Light reincarnated Oz to give humanity a single chance at redemption. Should he fail to unite humanity in peace, the planet itself will be destroyed.
  • In Volume 6, the heroes learn that Remnant has a secret history. Humanity is now a fraction of its former glory because it turned against the gods, who withdrew their blessing from the race and will not restore them to their full ability until they have redeemed themselves. Salem was Barred from the Afterlife by the gods when she tried to trick them into resurrecting her dead lover; ordered to learn the value of life and death, she instead turned humanity against the gods, resulting in the God of Darkness wiping them out. Although humanity returned in a lesser form, it was without the blessing of the gods. The God of Light reincarnated Salem's dead lover, Oz, to guide humanity to redemption and the restoration of their full potential. This has left the two former lovers pitted against each other in a Forever War for the fate of humanity. Both of them regard their immortality as a curse.

Webcomics

• Oglaf: A commander notes that the enemy army has their god on their side—but he's been reading their holy book, and he's pretty sure their god is nuts. The god promptly smites his own army for blasphemy.
  Commander: Honestly, this was probably inevitable.
• The Order of the Stick: When Miko violates her paladin oath by executing her liege lord for imagined crimes, the Twelve Gods personally appear in the sky to strip her of her powers. At first she blames Roy for "making" her do it, then she becomes convinced that it's all some secret test for her.

Web Video

• Pop Cross Studios: In ''What if CUPHEAD BOSSES Were FOLKLORE CREATURES?!'', this version of Cala Maria started out as a human woman well known for being extremely flirtatious and riling up most of the men who lusted after her, but only ever wanting one man, who happened to be married and faithful until Maria finally succeeded in seducing him away from his wife. Upon discovering this, the furious wife prayed to Athena herself to curse Maria in a similar way to how she cursed the original Medusa, and shortly afterwards, Maria turned into a gorgon and accidentally turned the man she'd just seduced to stone. In addition to this punishment, Maria was hunted and chased out of her village, and, desperate to escape being hunted on land by warriors, Maria made a Deal with the Devil to give her the ability to live in the sea and control sea life, just as her curser called upon the help of a goddess to punish her.

Western Animation

• A Thousand and One... Americas: In the eighth episode, a friendly priest Chris and his pet dog Lon meet in the Antilles protect them from a chief who wants to harm them for having been waken up. The priest tells the chief that the presence of a red-haired boy and a yellow-fur dog spell good luck, and harming them would infuriate the gods. When Chris and Lon sits on the chief's chair, they're once again endangered by the angry man, and the priest reiterates him the same warning, but by that point it's too late: A severe tropical storm begins ravaging the coast and flooding the huts, and the local villagers (who are all fleeing to a safer place) think it's because of this trope.

---