God of Chaos

Pure chaos personified.

"Make sense? Oh, what fun is there in making sense?"

— Discord, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

This character is a deity, Cosmic Entity or Anthropomorphic Personification in the setting that represents chaos in some form. What that chaos is meant to represent varies; randomness, entropy, destruction and being unpredictable are common traits of the god of chaos. Discord and anarchy are common attributes as well.

Their morality varies. Many gods of chaos are outright evil, and fall under the God of Evil label. Maybe they have a morality incomprehensible to mortal beings, assuming they aren't just insane or completely mindless, that is. They are usually an Eldritch Abomination as well, who are often associated with chaos and disorder anyway. Sometimes they are a more neutral Trickster God or Great Gazoo, though few can be called outright good. If they have a goal outside of amusement or promoting chaos, it's either opposing order or trying to bring about a World of Chaos via Bizarro Apocalypse. If Religion is Magic, those who worship the God of Chaos would use Entropy and Chaos Magic. Don't expect anyone to mention that having a god to manage chaos makes it less chaotic.

Usually depicted either in opposition to the other gods or The Friend Nobody Likes. If there's a Top God, the God of Chaos is often either The Anti-God or the setting's Satanic Archetype. If the Primordial Chaos appears, the god of chaos might represent or be it. For these entities' opposite numbers, see God of Order.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL: Don Thousand serves as the God of the Barian World which represents chaos, which is in opposition to the Astral World's order and its god Eliphas. While Don Thousand is evil and wants to merge Earth and the Barian World together, chaos in itself isn't inherently evil and is the force that powers life and emotion.

Comic Books

• Marvel Comics has a number of chaos gods, most of them being malevolent.
  • Lord Chaos is the Cosmic Entity that embodies chaos while his brother Master Order embodies order. Unusually for this trope the embodiments of order and chaos work together instead of opposing each other, and created the In-Betweener to represent dichotomies and balance in nature.
  • Amatsu-Mikaboshi, the Chaos King, is the primal god of chaos from Shinto legend that serves as the Big Bad in Chaos War. Predating reality, its motivation is to destroy the multiverse so as to return to the peaceful state of nothing it once came from. The Chaos King is later revealed to be just a tiny aspect of Oblivion, the Cosmic Entity representing nothingness and non-existence. Oddly enough, he speaks entirely in Haiku, which is a form of poetry with rigid rules, but what do you expect from a God of Chaos — consistency?
  • Various Doctor Strange characters like Shuma-Gorath and Chthon are said to be Lords of Chaos, though outside of having a Chaotic Evil alignment do not really represent chaos as an ideology. Chthon is the source of Chaos Magic, which is so dangerous that magic users suppressed any knowledge of its existence.
• The DCU:
  • The Lords of Chaos embody chaos, as opposed to the Lords of Order embodying order. While initially treated as evil with Doctor Fate's Arch-Enemy Mordru being a Lord of Chaos, later stories have portrayed chaos in a more sympathetic light.
  • Wonder Woman: Dionysus is the god of drunkenness, theater, and madness, and he operates on an even more alien morality than the rest of the Olympians. He'll turn humans he considers friends into animals on a whim and see's no harm in leaving them that way. Due to his nature he is entirely unpredictable and dangerous, though not malevolent.
• Mortal Kombat (Malibu Comics) has Zaggot, the God of Chaos, an Anthropomorphic Personification who looks like a hobo version of Gandalf who reigns in chaos and wants to get the world summed in chaos. He first appeared in the Goro: Prince of Pain miniseries as the one who takes him off the first game to be his champion.
• Lady Death: The Lords of Chaos are a recurring element in the Chaos and Boundless continuities:
  • The Chaos Lord Genocide is the Big Bad of "The Crucible" arc and is the first Chaos Lord Lady Death fights. He was one of the original Chaos Lords who brought about the creation of the universe and sought to undo that mistake.
  • The Chaos Lords are the villains during the "Alive" arc and act through their minion The Dark One who corrupts souls for them to feed on.
  • The Chaos Lords are featured in Medieval Lady Death. They speak to Lady Death's biological father Tvarus while he is imprisoned and are responsible for his corruption.
• The Mask is about the eponymous mask made by magical African Indians (in The Movie was made by the god Loki) who converts its wearer into "Big Head", a unstoppable agent of chaos capable of blowing up an entire city to ashes, depending of the user of course.
• Vampirella: The Harris age of the series introduced the evil god Chaos as a recurring villain, who rules Hell and opposes the forces of Order (including Vampirella) either directly or through his many acolytes. He is pretty much just a stand-in for the Devil, right up to looking like your standard scary big red demon, but his chaotic nature is reflected in his disordered mindset.

Fan Works

• Antipodes: Tantalus came into being as the primordial embodiment of chaos, and seeks to cause all existence to collapse into the formlessness that gave it birth.
• Sol in the Better Bones AU is one, and his role in the rewritten Power of Three is playing a game with the Clans, trying to cause as much chaos and destruction as possible while prevented due to his deal with Midnight from using direct force.
• The Big Bad of Jackie Chan Adventures: Olympian Journey is Eris, the Greek goddess of chaos, who is presented as a Cloudcuckoolander whose random reality-changing acts are done partially to Take Over the World and restore divine rule over humanity, but are mostly just to entertain herself.
• The Last Draconequus: While not actual deities, this is effectively the role of the Avatars of Chaos — they embody and represent the concept of Chaos manifested as a living creature.

Literature

• Cthulhu Mythos: Azathoth, depicted in the page image, is a being of pure chaos who created reality by pure accident and will be equally oblivious when it destroys it. It's been referred to as "the Nuclear Chaos", and is the eventual source of all the other bizarre gods and monsters in the mythos... and of everything else, for that matter. The Outer Gods' herald Nyarlathotep also represents chaos as the Crawling Chaos but is more about causing discord and panic on a human level than vast cosmic upheaval.
• Gorgoz from Divine Misfortune identifies as a God of Chaos and Death, but less in the "Primordial Chaos predating order" kind and more like "Chaos Is Evil, therefor he's a God of Evil" way.
• In Conquest Born: Braxi, the Proud Warrior Race planet, is a bit hung up on its chaos goddess, Ar. Braxins talk about Ar more than any of their other gods, especially considering that they believe their gods abandoned them. Large-scale social engineering sometime way back in their history built Ar into a symbol of, and internal justification for, the pervasive misogyny in Braxin society. A woman who commands men is a shem'Ar — a servant of Chaos — that cannot be tolerated. The shem'Ar threatens Braxi's social order simply by existing. Yet, the shem'Ar is also the greatest possible allure for a truely powerful man.
• Inheritance Trilogy: Nahadoth, first of the three Gods who created the universe, embodies Chaos, change, and darkness. He is not evil per se, but does not align with human morality most of the time. It does not help that he has endured 2000 years of Sanity Slippage from being trapped in human form or that he is shaped by the belief of mortals around him, most of whom see him as a terrifying monster.
• Tortall Universe: Realm of the Gods has a goddess of chaos fighting the other gods. At the end of the book Daine fights her directly in a Shapeshifter Showdown.
• Everybody Loves Large Chests has one of these. The book makes it a point to never describe him (her? it?) the same way twice. He even proves his identity by asking the characters to say his name three times. They say three completely different names. This is because, just like his appearance, his name, and even his title, is in constant flux. Except mortal brains can't comprehend it, so to them, it's a continual Retcon, even in the same sentence. Michael's name has always been Greg, right? And John was always the god of chance. Her appearance makes perfect sense for a goddess of chaos - a Victorian dandy with a top hat. Just look at how Jim waves his tentacles. Apparently, he is responsible for accidentally creating all demons.
• Kane Series has the Seven Nameless, old gods that exist in a dimension beyond good and evil, filled by timeless chaos. While they have their disciples, they do not usually interfere in the world.

Live-Action TV

• Doctor Who has the Black Guardian, who doubles as a God of Evil and serves as The Anti-God to the White Guardian's God of Order and God of Good.
• In Nowhere Boys the feature film "The Book of Shadows" featured Tegan as the Big Bad who is revealed to be the personification of Chaos having taken human form. She is the polar opposite to her brother, "Bear", who is the personification of Order.
• Great Gazoo Q from Star Trek: The Next Generation is explicitly referred to as "next-of-kin to chaos". In some EU media, he is even called a god of chaos (among other similar epithets).

Mythology and Religion

• Classical Mythology:
  • Greek mythology has Chaos, which represents the Classical view of chaos being a void of unorganized nothing that predates existence. It is where the earliest generation of gods came from, though it's ambiguous whether Chaos is sentient or not.
  • Eris represents the more modern idea of chaos, being in the goddess of strife and discord. This usually involves her sparking conflict mainly for fun. Her daughter Dysnomia represents chaos in the form of lawlessness.
• Egyptian Mythology: In Ancient Egyptian mythology, the world is divided into forces of order against chaos. The ultimate chaos god is Apophis, a monstrous serpent and God of Evil who wants nothing more than to destroy the universe. Set was originally a positive god of chaos, deserts and storms, but was later demonized into a God of Evil. Despite this, he still hated and opposed Apophis.
• Zoroastrianism has Angra Mainyu (also known as Ahriman), who equally serves as the God of Evil and Evil Twin in direct opposition to Ahura Mazda, the God of Good and order. Unlike Judeo-Christian views of the Devil being weaker than God, Angra Mainyu is the equal of Ahura Mazda. However, he will lose in the end anyway, due to self-defeating nature of chaos and evil.
• Japanese Mythology has two opposing "forces" which make up all of creation, including man, spirits, nature and kami: the nigi-mitama and ara-mitama. While not considered "sentient" gods or forces in their own right, they are nonetheless all-encompassing. Nigi-mitama is the force that creates harmony while the ara-mitama is the force that invokes anger, violence, conflict and chaos. Though its effects are considered "negative", it's not considered a "bad" thing; the ara-mitama appears when a being faces an existential threat (a danger to one's life, a denial of one's ambitions, or a perversion of one's values).
• Though our existing records of Norse Mythology don't name a designated position for Loki, this is the closest he has to an official role, being The Trickster and all.
• Some forms of theistic Satanism believe Satan to be this, but in a positive way as the true liberator of the chains of the Cosmic reality created by God. Others believe there were seven gods of Chaos who existed before Yaweh, sometimes called Leviathans (based on a part of Psalms that says that God fought the Leviathan in order to create the Universe, and another part of Genesis were it says that the waters existed before God created Earth). For this groups God just made the material Universe whilst the primordial Darkness of Chaos rule by this Gods encroach it and would eventually took over. And yet others believe that the number of god-like beings living in this primordial Chaos (often called the acausal realm) is incontable as everyone who breaks with the Cosmic reality goes there.

Stand Up Comedy

• In her Circle DVD, Suzy Eddie Izzard states that she prefers the idea of a flawed God of Chaos to an all-powerful God as portrayed in the Abrahamic faiths. In her version of the creation story, Chaos lives in a caravan in deep space and accidentally created the universe when his oven exploded while he was trying to bake a flan.

Tabletop Games

• Pathfinder has several gods with Chaos in their profile, including the classic Cthulhu Mythos deities, who are just as evil as you'd expect. Just as threatening is Rovagug, born from the chaos at the beginning of the universe, he won't stop until eats everything and brings about The End of the World as We Know It. In addition, there's the Chaotic Evil Lamashtu, goddess of Body Horror who seeks to tear apart all rules and what is deemed 'civilization' so that her twisted and monstrous children can rule. On the less evil, though still anarchic, side is Calistra, the elven goddess of Lust and Revenge. She generally promotes living life to the fullest, which includes having as much sex as one wants and partaking in sweet vengeance against anyone who wronged her followers.
• Ponyfinder: The Unspoken is a god of chaos, change, and whimsy. He favors and fosters all forms of disorder, ranging from revelry and humor to the destruction of civilization and its works, and is chiefly worshipped by comedians, anarchists, and some artists and poets.
• Glorantha, setting of Runequest among other games, has a whole pantheon of Chaos gods. In the setting's Backstory they came very close to destroying the world.
• Warhammer (as well as Warhammer: Age of Sigmar and the sci-fi themed Warhammer 40,000) has the Chaos Gods, who collectively represent chaos, corruption and the extremes of various emotions and concepts. While arguably the largest overarching threat, who'd want nothing more than the physical universe to fall into chaos, they aren't evil so much as they are the extremes of what they embody like anger or trickery. It's just due to the dark setting and the fact they embody all sentient feelings and thoughts their negative traits come out more often.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: Many of the more powerful members of the Chaos archetype qualify as this to varying degrees. As "Chaos" in this context represents the combination of light and dark (and duality in general), their names and abilities all imply them to be the embodiments of powerful abstract forces such as light, darkness, beginnings, endings, inexistence and The End of the World as We Know It.

Video Games

• Bayonetta: All of creation is split into three different realms: Paradiso (representing the Light), Inferno (representing the Darkness) and Purgatorio and the mortal realm (the Chaos in-between). Each of these realms have a god that shaped them into what they are and is the creator of their inhabitants, with Aesir as the creator of the Chaos.
• The Elder Scrolls: The Daedric Princes are generally considered Chaos Gods in comparison to the more ordered Aedric deities (with the notable exception of Jyggalag, who claims Order as his sphere of influence despite being a Daedra). The Daedra who most strongly embody Chaos include Mehrunes Dagon Prince of Destruction, Revolution, and Change, Sheogorath Prince of Madness and Creativity, and Boethiah Prince of Deceit, Conspiracy, Treachery, and Sedition. Lorkhan straddles a fine line between this and a God of Order, for example according to some he is a son of Sithis, the essence of Chaos, begotten for the express purpose to spread Sithis. However, it's not clear where he falls on the Order vs. Chaos scale.
• Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn: Yune, the Goddess of Chaos is sealed inside Lehran's Medallion, this game's Fire Emblem. Despite this, she is not the evil "Dark God" that history has made her out to be and hates being called that. Notable for being one of the rare examples of this trope that is completely and unambiguously the Big Good; she is benevolent and genuinely loves humanity in spite of its flaws, and it is only through her support that Ike and Micaiah stand a chance against Ashera, Yune's other half who has decided to purge humanity for its flaws. As Yune herself explains, Order and Chaos are entirely separate from good and evil and have both positive and negative aspects. Yune held onto the positive aspects of Chaos because she spent her slumber surrounded by the songs of the heron clan, preserving her connection to mortals, while Ashera succumbed to the negative aspects of order because she spent her sleep in in complete isolation and forgot her connection to mortals.
• For the King: Omus the God of Chaos is the Greater-Scope Villain of the main campaign, the unseen master of the Big Bad and his Apocalypse Cult, and the ultimate source of the Chaos energy corrupting the world.
• Hades: Chaos. They are, well, the Primordial Chaos of Classical Mythology personified; in their case, rather than disorder or destruction they instead embody the Greek definition of "Chaos" as the vast, infinite void. True of the trope, they are mostly Above Good and Evil and operate entirely on It Amused Me, helping Player Character Zagreus mostly because he is causing a lot of chaos.
• Heroes of Might and Magic Ashan has Urgash, God of Chaos and brother of Asha the Goddess of Order. He warred with Asha when she claimed the right to create the world, and spawned the first demons in a mockery of the races she populated her world with, shaping them after the traits of chaos he saw within himself (madness, hunger, proliferation, pain, destruction and hatred).
• Kirby Star Allies: Void Termina's true nature is one of these. As the so-called "progenitor of origination", he is said to exist in every dimension, and in the Japanese version, he's said to the origin of all "chaos and possibilities" and the source of all forms of matter, dreams, soul, darkness, and heart across all of existence. Void Soul's Boss Subtitles even call him the "Essence of Chaos". Interestingly, this gives him just as much potential for evil as it does for good.
• Majesty and Warlock: Master of the Arcane: Fervus is the god of chaos and opposes his brother Dauros, the God of Order. He is mainly associated with the wilderness and the creatures that dwell within it, in contrast to Dauros' association with civilization.
• Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer, if he is not presented as a Fallen Angel, he is this: the incarnation of Chaos itself, a primal force of revolution and change to counterbalance YHVH, who represents dogmatic order.
• Thief : The Trickster is a powerful Nature Spirit who embodies the chaotic aspects of the natural world and dreams of the collapse of human civilisation. Pagans worship him as the god of Chaos, Nature and Magic, while The Hammerites, who worship the concepts of Order, Technology and Civilisation, despise him as a Satanic Archetype.

Web Animation

• Hakos Baelz, one of the streamers employed by hololive, goes a step beyond this by being the concept of Chaos itself... and it shows, as she frequently tweets in upside-down letters, has an age that is determined by rolling a die of any number of sides and whatever number comes up is how old she is at that moment, and has an ever-shifting accent that's nigh-impossible to definitively pin down.

Webcomics

• A-gnosis' comics on Greek myth include Eris, goddess of chaos, as a Gadfly whose idea of livening up a family party is to engineer the exposure of a couple's Secret Relationship right in front of their mothers. Needless to say, Zeus had not invited her to the party.
• Slightly Damned: Father Syndel, the lord of demonkind and co-creator of Medius, is sometimes referred to as the god of chaos and his creations all have wildly varied appearances to reflect this.
• Reapertale has Chara, the Big Bad, become a Goddess of Entropy after Sans fails to reap her. This failure would later come back to haunt everyone.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time:
  • GOLB, the mysterious red entity briefly seen in "Puhoy", is revealed to be a Cosmic Entity that represents discord and chaos. It shows up to be an Almighty Idiot who mutates things into monstrosities with its breath, and was the reason Magic Man turned into a jerk by eating his girlfriend Margles. The Lich claims to be "the last scholar of GOLB", and it's implied that GOLB created it with its spit along with its power possibly leading to the Great Mushroom War.
  • Marceline's father Hunson Abadeer is a devil of chaos, as the Nightosphere explicitly thrives on chaos and disorder. He achieves this with an evil amulet that turns him into an Eldritch Abomination, acting as an Obstructive Bureaucrat that dishes out pointless rules and cruel tricks on apathetic and confused demons.
• Aladdin: The Series: Chaos is an entity in the form of a blue winged-cat who prefers a bit more chaos in everyday life, and does not like things that are predictable or a regular occurrence. He also does not like being manipulated, so when Mirage tries to use him to destroy Agrabah, Chaos sets things up that Mirage would end up saving the day. He is not all powerful however, as he can't go against Fate.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: Like in Greek mythology, Eris acts as the goddess of chaos who screws over mortals for fun. She has a relationship with supernatural hunter Hoss Delgado, which at a point distracted her that she could not fulfill her duties which led to the natural order being thrown out of whack.
• The Legend of Korra has Vaatu is the spirit of Chaos and Darkness, a God of Evil eternally opposed to Raava who's the spirit of Order and Light.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Discord is the spirit of chaos, disharmony and, well, discord. A Reality Warper who ruled over a dark time in Equestria, he brings about a World of Chaos until the main characters turn him back to stone through The Power of Friendship. He later undergoes a Heel–Face Turn, but remains a spirit of chaos and very fond of both reality-warping magic and general trickery.
• Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas has Eris, the Goddess of Discord, making things chaotic and dangerous for our hero, because chaos is what she does best.

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