Ah, The Omnipotent. The ultimate Story-Breaker Power. A Reality Warper able to do whatever they please or imagine despite physical or natural laws. A character in this class of power is nearly impossible to challenge.
Until they meet THIS guy.
This is a special type of No-Sell made especially for when two god-like beings collide. If two unique characters are "omnipotent", then there have to exist limits to their power. So in a contest of reality warpers, the one who will win is whoever can No-Sell the most and/or overcome the other's ability to do so. In such a scenario, if Omnipotent Being #1 is usually able to turn anyone to salt with just a thought, Omnipotent Being #2 is either immune, or can prevent or reverse that power with their own effort.
Sometimes, the entity in question simply encompasses a larger sphere of power: a Genius Loci, Odd Job God or Anthropomorphic Personification of a defined place will typically lose to a Cosmic Being, a Dimension Lord, a Multiversal Conqueror, or capital-G God. Being the God of Horses is fine, but it doesn't help you much against the Spirit of All Living Things.
At other times, each deity is a Principles Zealot and can be undone by a Logic Bomb or a bit of Rules Lawyering. In these cases, it doesn't matter how much power the opposition actually has, because the victim's own limits defeat them. These rules, or whoever imposes them, are what's Even More Omnipotent than either god.
So in order for this trope to be in play:
- Both characters must be a Reality Warper (or, alternately possess some sort of Imagination-Based Power or Semantic Super Power which bends the physical universe to their whims).
- One character nullifies, prevents, or No Sells the other. Alternatively, one character can pass through the other's omnipotence and affect them when they normally can't be affected by anything else.
A Sub-Trope is More Than Infinite, which is when a plot suddenly breaks an omnipotent mechanic to resolve a conflict. See My Kung Fu Is Stronger when it involves martial arts.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind ends with this. Giorno decides that enough is enough and pierces himself with the Stand Arrow, enhancing his Stand to the point that it could very easily nullify Diavolo's Stand power to effectively destroy the chronological cause-and-effect. Giorno's Stand then not only counters Diavolo's power, but also locks Diavolo into an endless cycle of near-death.
- The goal of the three goddesses in Tenchi Muyo! is to find a being who is above them to the degree that they are above mortals. Turns out Tenchi is the God in Human Form that they're looking for.
Comic Books
- Marvel Comics:
- The Infinity Gauntlet:
- In Infinity Trilogy, the eponymous artifact grants the wielder omnipotence when worn. More omnipotence than even, say, the Anthropomorphic Personification of the universe itself or all of the other Cosmic Beings of the setting combined. This becomes a plot point, because Thanos, the wielder of the gauntlet, is tricked into thinking that the only way to effectively dominate the universe is turn himself into the universe. But the second he does, someone else takes the gauntlet from his now-abandoned body and becomes the new big kahuna.
- An even better example comes at the end of the saga. The sole being not affected by Reality Warping, the Living Tribunal, simply snaps its fingers and resets the entire universe back to normal.
- Tends to happen whenever the Silver Surfer rebels against his creator, Galactus. Or when any being he bequeathed with the Power Cosmic tries the same, for that matter. Galactus is able to take back their powers at will or override any actions they attempt to take.
- The Ultimates (2015): When Galactus uses his powers to prevent the Ultimates from discovering These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know, Eternity (the embodiment of the universe itself) appears and tells Galactus that he's meddling in things not meant for him to know, either.
- The Mighty Thor:
- Thor's hammer, Mjölnir, was crafted by his father Odin with the specific caveat that no-one can lift it unless they be worthy. (Specifically, worthy by Odin's standards. This means possessing traits such as honor, courage, humility, and the heart of a warrior-born. Odin can also rescind this rule temporarily at his leisure.) Mjölnir will always go through any impediments (even a planet) to return to Thor's hand, and it (usually) can't be destroyed by a force which exerts less than Odin's own power. However, the first way to know that a new villain is serious business is if they destroy, restrain or lift the hammer by sheer force.
- This becomes a plot point in Thor (2014), as the hammer grows beyond its enchantment and gains the ability to choose its own wielder, rejecting both Thor Odinson and Odin in favor of the new Thor, Jane Foster. This hints that Mjölnir has grown far more powerful than anyone could have ever imagined.
- During the Fantastic Four quest to find the Beyonders, the team ran across the Beyonder from Secret Wars (a much lesser entity), who proved to be an incomplete Cosmic Cube, with the rest of his power residing in Molecule Man. Two beings who metamorphosed from complete Cosmic Cubes, the Shaper of Worlds and Kubik, say of Beyonder and Molecule Man both: "They can do anything. We can do more."
- The Infinity Gauntlet:
- DC Comics:
- Neil Gaiman's The Sandman (1989) has this in various places.
- Perhaps the most satisfying is during Season of Mists, the Key to Hell arc. The demon Azazel taunts Morpheus with having his former lover inside of his body (basically Alien Geometries), and threatens that he can kill her before Morpheus can attack him unless he hands over the key. Morpheus then calmly puts him in a jar and stuffs him in a box for a few centuries to stew in his juices. He reveals that since Azazel was inside of Morpheus' domain, and his former lover also benefited from the Sacred Hospitality he offered to all guests his own RealityWarping spectacularly trumped Azazel's
.
- Justice League of America villain Dr. Destiny has nigh-omnipotent power over peoples' dreams. In the first book of The Sandman, he also has the Dreamstone, which gives him enough Mind Control to make an entire diner full of people mutilate, rape, and eat each other over the course of a single night. When Morpheus, the creator of the stone and Anthropomorphic Personification of dreams shows up to reclaim it, its powers, of course, do nothing to him.
- Perhaps the most satisfying is during Season of Mists, the Key to Hell arc. The demon Azazel taunts Morpheus with having his former lover inside of his body (basically Alien Geometries), and threatens that he can kill her before Morpheus can attack him unless he hands over the key. Morpheus then calmly puts him in a jar and stuffs him in a box for a few centuries to stew in his juices. He reveals that since Azazel was inside of Morpheus' domain, and his former lover also benefited from the Sacred Hospitality he offered to all guests his own RealityWarping spectacularly trumped Azazel's
- Specifically the Vertigo imprint, this describes the power of the Biblical figures.
- Lucifer, aka the Devil, is completely omnipotent and able to warp reality to any whim he desires—except for anything vetoed by Michael.
- Likewise, Archangel Michael is the most omnipotent character in the DC Universe—but his power is nothing in comparison to God.
- Neil Gaiman's The Sandman (1989) has this in various places.
Fan Works
- Izuku the Reincarnated Chef: The System, Izuku's sponsor for his restaurant, proves more powerful than any other deity Izuku encounters. Lucoa gets a headache trying to divine their identity, Whis is unable to ascertain its identity with his staff due to not having clearance, it overrides the choices of the god and goddess in the original fantasy world, and it can revive the people sent to Nifleheim, which should be literally impossible.
Film
- Bruce Almighty: God is completely omnipotent, and He makes Bruce nearly omnipotent, with only 2 rules. Plus, Bruce can still die, but God sets that right.
Literature
- In The Unexplored Summon://Blood-Sign, the White Queen sits at the apex of the Unexplored-Class, a category of beings explicitly beyond the gods. She can, without any effort, destroy the entire universe. The seventh volume introduces the Colorless Little Girl, an artificial creation designed solely to counter the Queen. The Girl completely and utterly No Sells every last one of the Queen's attacks, including an attempt at destroying the universe. She finishes by removing the Queen's influence over the universe, and killing her for good. Except that it turns out that the Queen wanted this to happen. She deliberately let the Girl defeat her (surviving through unknown means) so that the Girl would be transformed into an even greater being.
- This is the main premise of Suggsverse, as most of its beings are Omnipotent and beyond, yet they still fail to scratch beings even more beyond Omnipotent than themselves.
- Animorphs: The Ellimist and Crayak are two vastly powerful beings who already tried to do battle in the physical realm, which resulted in massive destruction . Then it turned out neither of them were a match for a black hole, but the Ellimist (thanks to having a consciousness spread out over hundreds of ships) managed to both go in and stay out of the hole, which allowed him to manipulate space-time. Both agreed that their newfound powers (Time Travel, Time Stands Still, and screwing conservation of mass, among other things) would result in certain Mutually Assured Destruction if they kept it up, so they agreed to become Chessmasters, one promoting life throughout the galaxy, the other extinguishing it, both fighting through native agents who may or may not be aware of their existence.
- Crayak himself is an exile from another galaxy, having been ejected by something flat-out more powerful than him and the Ellimist both, even in their current godlike states.
Live Action TV
- In the Doctor Who season finale, "The End of Time", the Master has turned the entire human race into copies of himself, and leaves a cliffhanger open where a new player is introduced in the form of the Time Lords. The next episode, their leader shows up, snaps his fingers, and changes humanity back to normal, it all being part of his agenda to destroy all of Time to move on to something greater.
- Kamen Rider:
- Kamen Rider Gaim: The wielder of the Golden Fruit gains godlike powers including control of time, space, and life itself. DJ Sagara, the avatar of the Helheim Forest that bears the Fruit, is even more omnipotent than that, as he's able to tag along on the Fruit-wielder's time-travelling without suffering the restrictions on changing the past that they have, and the idea of using the Fruit to defeat him is never even suggested.
- Kamen Rider Zi-O: By the end of the series, the villain has stolen half of the powers of Kamen Rider Decade and combined them with his own time-manipulating powers, enabling him to summon versions of every other Kamen Rider villain from What If? timelines where they were strong enough to win against their heroic opponents. The title character proves to be so much more omnipotent upon receiving the powers of Oma Zi-O, the power of all Riders past, present, and future, that defeating all of these enhanced villains takes him twenty seconds. The real Decade fares no better in a post-series movie where he and Oma Zi-O fight: both of them have all of the powers of every Rider, but Zi-O has better access to the powers, and easily defeats Decade.
- Kamen Rider Saber: The evil Kamen Rider Solomon manages to get the powers of most of the pieces of the Great Big Book of Everything, making him omnipotent enough to rewrite the world to his liking. Saber gets the powers of the Holy Swords meant to serve as the pen that writes the Book, making him omnipotent enough to undo Solomon's efforts with a few sweeps of his sword. Finally, Storious gets the powers of all of the pieces of the Great Book, and this makes him omnipotent enough that when he decides to end the world, the only thing Saber can do is use the pen to write a sequel.
- Satan in Reaper seems to be able to do anything with a few exceptions like not being able to hear anything said inside a of circle and ice cream will disappear if he tries to touch it. The latter is a punishment given by God who's completely omnipotent.
- In Star Trek, the different members of the Q-continuum can sometimes nullify each others' powers. It appears to work based on hierarchy and strength in numbers. (At some point Q insists that his species is not omnipotent, but they sure seem that way to humans.)
- In the The Twilight Zone (1985) episode "Crazy As A Soup Sandwich", the demon Volkerps is defeated by the "master of demons"', who turns out the be Nino, the mob boss.
- The The Twilight Zone (2002) episode "It's Still A Good Life" features the Reality Warper Anthony Fremont (first introduced in the original series) and his daughter Audrey. They have most of the same powers, but Audrey can restore things she or her father have willed out of existence, which he cannot do, and she can prevent her father from reading her mind while being fully able to read his.
Video Games
- This trope is the axis of both the plot and the gameplay of Eternal Darkness, in the form of an Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors. In short, three Eldritch Abominations are fighting each other, only balanced by the fact that each is weak to one of their counterparts and strong against the other. Most of the gameplay relies upon you choosing the correct alignment to dispel, combat, and summon magic to fight whichever of the three you chose as the main antagonist. This is capped off at the end by summoning the opposing Ancient to curb stomp the one who crosses into the real world. Which of course leads to this trope EVEN FURTHER in the game's secret ending. The Ancient which had been imprisoned by the Three, Mantorok, combines the three timelines, resulting in a Time Paradox not unlike a fish swallowing it's own tail, where all three Ancients simultaneously killed each other. Just as Planned.
- Xenoblade Chronicles 1: The main villain, Zanza, is described as a god who controls fate itself, and is spoken of as though omnipotent. Several demonstrations of his power do indeed seem to suggest this at first glance as well. However, Alvis points out to Shulk the obvious question: "If everything is predestined to lead to Zanza's victory... why is it that he seeks to destroy you?" In the end, it turns out that Zanza is not as omnipotent as he thinks he is, and the one with the real power is in fact his supposed servant, Alvis, who has engineered events to bring about his downfall without him having the slightest suspicion.
Visual Novels
- This trope was the case when eight thousand years before the main story of Kajiri Kamui Kagura the four Hadou Gods faced Hajun during the battle for the throne. The four Hadou Gods were all extremely strong, being able to affect the entire multiverse with their power. Mercurius, the former owner of the throne and mastermind behind everything during the prequel, Reinhard Heydrich, who commanded an army consisting of billions of skeletons and possessed a giant amount of storybreaker powers and weapons, Ren Fuji/Tenma Yato, the main character of the prequel who wielded the series' strongest defense and Marie/Tasogare, the fifth owner of the Throne, a hyperdimensional artefact capable of manipulating all of reality. Yet despite their impressive powers combined, the battle ended up as a massive defeat for the four, with only Yato barely surviving. The reason for this was that Hajun due to his tumor constantly stoking his rage was locked in an ever increasing cycle of growth, thus quickly increasing his strength in an attempt to rid himself of said tumor yet being unable to properly locate it as it was part of his being. As the remaining Gods were relatively stagnant in power after their ascension they ended up quickly surpassed in raw power by Hajun as his growth rate approached towards infinity.
Web Animation
- DEATH BATTLE!
- "Thanos vs. Darkseid": Thanos, with the Infinifite Gauntlet that gives him power over the entire universe against Darkseid, a god from another universe. Darkseid is "even more". Though the Infinity Stones would protect Thanos against one of Darkseid's godlike powers, the Anti-Life Equation, nothing stops Darkseid from using another attack like the Omega Sanction to win whenever he likes. Also, fighting Darkseid outside his home universe is Fighting a Shadow, and the Infinity Gauntlet is powerless in Darkseid's own universe.
- "Deadpool vs. Mask": Though their numerical feats are also considered, the most powerful abilities for each are Deadpool's Continuity Gem, which allows him to rewrite what happens and has happened, and the Mask's use of Toon Force, which enables him to do basically anything. The comparison of these powers never comes up in the final analysis — it almost looks like the Continuity Gem isn't really being considered — but the animated battle is essentially resolved when Deadpool brandishes the Continuity Gem, only to find the Mask is also holding one, explaining that he's wearing one, ie. it can't do anything his mask can't. With Deadpool admitting defeat (though he goes down fighting), this presumably implies the Mask's power to alter reality is greater. (It gets weird if you consider it might have been a tie, because even though Deadpool no longer uses the Continuity Gem after that, the ensuing final physical fight still has the Mask win through his Toon Force powers, since that's what he uses all the time.)
Webcomics
- Homestuck features characters called First Guardians who are explicitly omnipotent immortals that can teleport anywhere in the universe and give off unlimited radioactive energy. They are nowhere near the most powerful characters in the setting and handily end up being defeated by the Author Avatar, a character who gets the best possible roll of magical dice, a character who embodies pure Hope, and the extra-immortal, ghost-killing, and omniomnipotent Lord English. In Lord English's case, this is because certain circumstances have granted him the powers of a First Guardian in addition to the incredible powers he already possessed.
- Tom The Dancing Bug: In one of the God-Man series of parody comics, God-Man is rescued from a paradox by God-God-Man — who can lift a stone so heavy even God-Man can't lift it — and the end of the comic implies there is a neverending chain of such superheroes.
- Tower of God
- In the backstory, the floor Administrators of the Tower are originally thought to be absolutely unchallengeable; they can control the very physics on their respective floors, even the God-Emperor only rules by their permission, and anyone violating the rules of the Tower too much could be destroyed by the local Administrator, no matter how powerful they were. Then the Irregular Enryu appears on the 43rd floor and starts making trouble. The Administrator attacks him, but unlike everyone else before him, he's just so powerful that he fights the Administrator and kills it.note
- Word of God also reveals that another infamous Irregular, Phantaminum, has Author Powers and is completely undefeatable to anyone who doesn't have the same. Thus, while the inhabitants of the Tower speculate about who would win in a fight between him and Enryu, this implies Phantaminum is above him (and the Administrators) and the most omnipotent character in the series.
Western Animation
- Adventure Time: Implied. Prismo the Wishmaster is already an entity that has near-complete control over the Time Room and can create whole universes on a whim, yet he has a boss. And when he brings him up in the context of multiversal screw-ups, he feels it necessary to reiterate: Yes, he has a boss, who isn't going to be happy about what's about to happen.
- Ben 10: Omniverse: As the creators of the universe, the 5th-dimensional Contumelia could be seen as gods. They have an extradimensional barrier around the Annihilargh that they claim is impossible to breach. Ben is able to slice through the barrier with a sword made from the DNA of Alien X, a Reality Warper from beyond the universe who has already shown the power to No-Sell the destruction of the universe caused by another Annihilargh and recreate it with just a thought. The Contumelia find this "interesting".
