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Hijacked by Jesus

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Odin hanging from Yggdrassil for 9 days, in the darkness, with his side stabbed by a spear, and with no help from other gods. He died, and was reborn wiser. Hmm, haven't we heard that story elsewhere?
Edward: Hear how they talk to us? [laughs] The Gods. Listen pal, back in the day we were worshipped by millions.
Dean: Times have changed.
Edward: Tell me about it. All of a sudden this Jesus character is the hot new thing in town. All of a sudden our altars are burned down and we are being hunted down like common monsters.

Whenever a fictional story involves non-Christian themes, a western adaptation will emphasize the elements most familiar to followers of Abrahamic religions, most usually Christianity. At times, they will be totally rewritten to turn all of the members of the religion into direct analogues of Christian figures.

In mythologies without a "God of Evil", the least likable deity (usually the one in charge of death, fire, or occasionally winter) will be Flanderized into such a figure who is a direct analogue of Satan. Any depiction of the afterlife will be transformed into either Heaven or Hell. The chief male deity will always be a stand-in for God, with a long beard and omnibenevolent qualities for bonus points. Servants of the chief male deity may be turned into angelic beings, or other gods will seem so subservient they may as well be angels, despite them being at each other's throats in most mythologies. For their part, demigods and heroes, who in mythology were usually busy solving their own troubles and killing minor monsters, might receive here the unenviable task to save the whole humanity, especially from their own sins. A Crucified Hero Shot can be optional.

That is, it takes a real-life religion and turns it into Crystal Dragon Jesus. May either be a form of Viewers Are Morons or bad research, depending on how much the writers understood the original religion.

It should be noted that this has happened a number of times historically, as it was both a useful resource and an inevitable point of view. As proselytizing sects spread into new regions, they often incorporate existing beliefs into their canon in order to make the new religion more palatable to others. For example, the medieval story of the hermit Josaphat (not to be mistaken with the King Jehoshaphat of Judea, or the 17th-century martyr St. Josaphat) was a Christianized version of the life of Gautama Buddha (with "Bodhisattva" mutating into "Josaphat"). On the opposite end, polytheistic cultures "converted" to Christianity simply transferred the worship of individual gods to the saints that most resembled them (in some cases, the old pagan gods were remade into saints). The Catholic church in particular got a lot of mileage out of this, and seeing some processions for some saints (in e.g. Latin America), it's not hard at all to imagine what the religious customs prior to Christianity may have looked like.

See also Anime Catholicism, Everybody Hates Hades, Satanic Archetype, Nuns Are Mikos, Faux Symbolism, The Theme Park Version, Sadly Mythtaken, Crystal Dragon Jesus, Messianic Archetype. Contrast Not Using the "Z" Word and Church of Saint Genericus. This will often include a Mythology Upgrade.


Examples:

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    Anime and Manga 
  • Saint Seiya and its spin-offs suffer a little with this, since Hades is portrayed as a currently malevolent deity, and the Underworld he governs has little to do with the Greek underworld (sans Cerberus, Elysium, and the rivers); it's instead a rather faithful manga version of Dante's Inferno, which in turn was meant to represent the Christian hell. It is however mentioned that Hades used to have a friendly relationship with humanity, but lost his faith in humanity due to their constant sins, and disrespect towards the gods. His favor to Orpheus is mentioned in the series.

    Comic Books 
  • The Marvel Universe version of the Norse gods follow suit, with Thor = Jesus, Odin = God, Loki = Lucifer, and Surtur = Satan.
    • Surtur's portrayal is severely contrary to mythology, where he merely fulfills a cosmic role and barely has any personality; in the comics, he actively tries to bring about Ragnarok instead of waiting. The whole devil look and feud with Odin are exclusive to the comics.
    • When Marvel got the rights to Angela, a Judeo-Christian angel from Spawn, they reinvented her as a Thor character and added angels to their version of Norse mythology. Though in this case the Christian aspects are only surface-deep; Marvel keeps the words "Angel" and "Heaven" (as "Heven") and the Gold and White Are Divine look, but beyond that these angels are nothing like the Biblical version (they're completely mercenary and only value material goods, and they hate Odin and Asgardians in general).
  • Kyknos, Ares's son, who wanted to build a temple out of skulls for his father and was killed by Hercules, is depicted as a traditional Satan-figure in the Marvel mini series Dark Avengers: Ares and later, Herc's miniseries. He has yellow-red skin, hooves, and very obvious, big horns on his head. In the traditional texts, he isn't described that way (which makes sense, because big horns would indicate a God of Woods and Animals or similar).
  • In American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang, Journey to the West is hijacked by Jesus up the wazoo. Apparently, the Monkey King and the monk's entourage were the Three Wise Men bringing gifts to the baby Jesus. Also, the numerous Heavenly Hosts who populate the story are angels or demons or such, and are all ruled by Tze-Yo-Tzun, aka He Who Is, one of the names of God. This is specifically footnoted. This was completely deliberate on the author's part: the blending of religions reflects the blending of cultures that produces Jin, and that he needs to accept in himself. The story is a very Asian-American story, and the author blended elements of Asian culture and American culture (including his own religion — Christianity).
  • Hellboy sort of does this with Hecate - while in the Classical world she was a goddess of various things including witches, here, following in the footsteps of the early Christians, she's all witches all the time (also one vampire) and in Hellboy's world all witches are evil and servants of Hell. She's also very invested in tempting Hellboy to bring about the apocalypse. Later on, though, she self-defines as a more Lovecraftian amoral goddess who just wants to bring about the apocalypse because it's her nature to do so - less Satanic, but still far more malevolent than the mythological Hecate.
  • In Golden Lad, the titular lad draws his power from a pendant that is supposedly powered by "the blood of a thousand martyred Aztecs". Martyrdom is a Christian concept.
  • This has happened to Superman across the decades and throughout various interceptions. Originally created by the Jewish Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Superman very much startled off as a Moses archetype as he was sent away by his family to save him, and upon reaching a new land he grows up to become a savior. However, ever since Richard Donner's Superman, a far more Christian reading has gradually overtaken it's source inspiration. As Jor-EL (Read: God) sends his son Kal-El (Read: Jesus) to Earth where he's raised by a version of Jonathan and Martha Kent who commonly cannot have their own children (Read: Joseph and Mary) with a mission to safeguard and protect humanity. One of his most popular villains Darkseid is a blatant Satanic Archetype and expect plenty of Jesus imagery whenever Superman sacrifices/martyrs himself to save the day.
  • Wonder Woman (2011): The Greek gods traditionally didn't much resemble their mythological versions in the Wonder Woman mythos but the New 52 merrily strapped a bunch of Christian terms and iconography to them. For a few examples Hades—both the realm and the god—is referred to as Hell, despite the term originating in Norse mythology before being borrowed by Christians, Olympus is called Heaven unironically despite being far from any kind of paradise no matter who is currently on the throne (though generally in non-Christian religions Heaven is just another name for "that place above Earth where the gods live"), and the First Born wears a crown of cruel thorns and is treated as a kind of Anti-Christ figure.
  • One WildStorm Halloween special featured Team7, Gen13, and Wetworks battling the followers of the Aztec god Camazotz, who is depicted as a zombie vampire god.

    Films — Animated 
  • Disney's adaptation of Hercules, featuring Hades as Satan, Zeus as God, Hercules as Jesus, and the other Olympians as angels. To protect family values, Zeus's rampant womanizing is ignored and Hercules is made his son with Hera, who was poisoned by Hades with mortality. Hera is made a loving mother and wife to follow suit, as opposed to the Arch-Enemy she was to Hercules in the myths (the movie does nothing to rectify Hera's status as Zeus's sister, however, outside of just not mentioning it). Hades' characterization is the most obvious shift away from mythology, as he was one of the few gods who merely did his job and hardly messed with anyone (his abduction of Persephone not withstanding). However, his unpopularity with the other gods does have truth to it—the Greeks did respect Hades, but greatly feared him for what he represented and hated to even speak his name.
    • Early on in the film, Hercules decides to try to ask for guidance from Zeus. He does so by going to a statue of Zeus and kneeling in prayer, in a very Christian manner. Though such things might have been part of Greek religious ceremonies, it's very unlikely a worshipper would have done only that and expected anything to come out of it—instead, they would have brought something to sacrifice to the gods, typically food or a live animal.
  • This isn't the first time Hades' image was hijacked. Disney's The Goddess of Spring, a precursor to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, made the merger between Satan and Hades even more blatant.
  • Disney did it again in Aladdin. Although this is all taking place in a Ancient Middle Eastern setting, in Aladdin and the King of Thieves, the wedding of Aladdin and Jasmine is suspiciously Catholic-looking. (Although it's worth noting that the Genie organized the wedding...)
  • Chernabog from Fantasia sort of zig-zags this trope; he is technically an example, as, in spite of being named for and based on a Slavic god, he resembles a black-skinned Big Red Devil to a T and commands over a flaming hell that his mythological counterpart never had the barest hint of. The kicker is that it's no coincidence that he was at least once referenced as Satan by Walt Disney: the entire film was made and released with the intent that he was the Devil, and he was later retconned into being Chernabog as a form of bowdlerization.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Constantine (2005) removes all non-Christian (and for the most part non-Catholic) mythical elements that were present in Hellblazer. In the comics' canon, John does have a certain "relationship" with Heaven and Hell, namely that they both get up his arse, and all kinds of other mythical entities exist.
  • Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is based on films from the 1930s, which commonly reduced various foreign cultures into caricature. In the film, the complex and sophisticated religion of Hinduism is reduced to nice people worshiping Shiva and murderous Thuggee cultists worshiping Kali. The film portrays Thuggee almost as a kind of Hollywood Satanism. The real Thugs, those who practiced Thuggee, did worship Kali, but no more so than the Ku Klux Klan worshiped Jesus. While they did tend to ritually murder people, it was by strangulation via a yellow scarf, not ripping hearts out of someone's chest. It wasn't just the British who worked on eradicating them. And, incidentally, Kali herself is Shiva's wife. Not the estranged kind, either.note 
  • Most mummy movies, including those of The Mummy Trilogy, portray gods such as Anubis and Seth as Expys of Satan. In reality, Anubis was a protector and judge of the dead and all round cool guy when compared to some of his sibling gods, while Seth was originally god of the deserts of lower Egypt-the legends of his scheming and murder of Osiris is a later myth. In fact, the statues found next to Tutankhamun, called Shabts, would be more appropriate. Of course, while it's true that Anubis was considered a kindly protector whose main concern was making sure souls made it safely to the afterlife, he's also the guy who checked if your soul was worthy of the next life and tossed it to Ammut as a snack if it wasn't... In this way, he is more like the Christian God than Satan, as on Judgement Day, he is supposed to throw all sinners into the Lake of Fire.
  • In the movie version of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Hades is, once again, a villain though not the Big Bad. Who is apparently portrayed as a fiery devil-creature, though that's just his favored form. The Hades from the book version seems to be this trope at first, but Ares is the real villain. The sequel film pulls this again by turning Kronos into a Satan expy made of lava and hellfire.
  • Clash of the Titans (2010): Hades is the bad guy. However, at least the writers tried to provide some form of justification in that in this version of events, he was tricked into taking control of the underworld by Zeus. The blow is further softened by virtue of the fact that the rest of the gods are generally portrayed as all around dicks, particularly since the story of Medusa's origin is told as the "Poseidon raped her and Athena punished her for it" variant. On the other hand, it then turns Zeus into Jesus by having him bring Io back from the dead, despite the fact that only Hades can raise the dead. To make matters worse, it essentially makes Zeus an Expy of the Abrahamic God by having him be the creator of mankind, when in reality — or mythology, really — it was a Titan called Prometheus who created man from clay. This is where the subtitle of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein comes from.
  • Though not totally hijacked, the live-action film The Last Airbender incorporates Christian themes into places the TV show did not, notably, the use of crosses. Aang, an Airbender whose culture is based on Tibetan Buddhism, has his trademark arrow tattoo changed to resemble a cross.
  • In Gunga Din, the villains are worshipers of Kali, who is described as "The Goddess of Blood," who smiles at warfare, torture, and human sacrifice. Her cult is a Religion of Evil that murders indiscriminately, as many as thirty thousand people per year! To rub in the salt, the movie is prefaced with a line saying that the depiction of her and her worship is "based on historical fact." While Kali does have a terrifying aspect (a necklace of skulls and hands full of weapons, granted, is pretty alarming), she is just another aspect of a greater feminine deity, and her realm is time and natural change as much as righteous destruction.
  • In The Legend of Hercules, Hercules is not conceived through Zeus having sex with his mother Alcmene while disguised as her husband. Hera herself appears to Alcmene to tell her that she can become the mother of Zeus's son who will deliver the land from evil. Alcmene allows it, Zeus wills her to be pregnant and Hera names the son Hercules.
  • Some reviewers have stated that the 1978 movie Superman is laden with Christ-like and Biblical themes from the story of Moses to a white-haired God-like father. The main villain even resides beneath the city in his underground lair.
    • The whole "Superman as Jesus" trend really began when Jor-El, a mysterious spirit-father from the "heavens," claims that he's sending his son to Earth to show them the right way to live. Which really doesn't make any sense, since he's actually sending him to Earth to escape Krypton's destruction.
  • The DC Extended Universe:
    • In Man of Steel, Superman is presented as a Christ-like figure, complete with a Crucified Hero Shot for Clark Kent and Superman.
    • In Wonder Woman, Queen Hippolyta tells a young Diana the story of how Zeus created the humans, but that his son, Ares, was jealous and set out to destroy them by seducing them to the dark side of war. And later how Ares rebelled against the other gods and was cast out. Meanwhile, the Amazons were made as a counterpoint to Ares' evil. As this Tumblr post points out, it's basically a weirdly feminist retelling of Genesis where Adam was seduced by the serpent before God even bothered to create Eve.
  • In X-Men: Apocalypse, Apocalypse, like in the comics, is an ancient Egyptian who commands the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The movie takes it further, with the horsemen possibly being the inspiration for the Biblical horsemen. Apocalypse accuses modern society of idolatry, one of the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament, and Apocalypse ends up saying "All is revealed," as in the definition of an apocalyptic work. An ancient Egyptian would be familiar with a very different set of religious beliefs. Moreover, Apocalypse is asleep during time periods when these Biblical beliefs would have been active in areas outside of ancient Egypt, so it's odd that he is such a huge fan of both the Old Testament and New Testament, as if he were a modern Biblical reader.
  • In The Replacement Killers, John berates the temple's Buddha statue for bringing unfair punishment on his family, likely because the scriptwriter was under the impression that all religions work just like Christianity and their respective icon of worship must be the culprit and target of any Rage Against the Heavens. In reality, Buddha is not the equivalent of God and isn't supposed to have any kind of control over the things that happen in the world, either good or bad, which instead obey (most of them, the rest happen basically because) to an impersonal principle of the universe named karma. While some Buddhist denominations do have deities that punish evildoers, those beings aren't the Buddha himself and don't follow his orders either.
  • The Force "Star Wars" in the original trilogy was heavily inspired by of a combination of Buddhism and Taoism; as the force is described as an energy source that exists within the natural world and all individual life, while also exhibiting a duel nature of both light and dark forces, akin to Yin and Yang, that exists in a state of conflict striving to find equilibrium. Granted, one key difference is that Taoism held that both forces are equally important and must be held in balance if one is to thrive; while Star Wars largely portrayed only the light side in a heroic fashion while the dark side was almost exclusively a villainous and corrupting force. While Star Wars never fully abandoned this definition, the introduction of Anakin Skywalker in Phantom Menace as a prophesized savior born to Shimi with no father, in a desert landscape akin to Bethlehem of Palestine no less, destined to defeat the Sith and bring balance to the Force by ridding it of the Dark Side made Anakin one of the most blatant Jesus archetypes in fiction.

    Literature 
  • Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain novels, set in a fantastic version of Wales, used Arawn, the king of the Otherworld in the Mabinogion, as an evil force similar to Tolkien's Sauron. The existence of an ultimate force of good, on the other hand, isn't really mentioned (unless you count the Sons of Don; you could make a pretty good parallel between Gwydion and Jesus in The Book of Three). He also, at least, acknowledges in the author's note that Arawn is "considerably more villainous" in his version, so at least he's aware of the situation.
  • In Wielding a Red Sword by Piers Anthony, the Hindu protagonist equates Satan with Shiva... who is supposed to be a highly positive force of rebirth and renewal. Ironically, later books in the series show that Satan is indeed something of a positive force.
  • Michael Chabon's novel Summerland is a real doozy. It takes place largely in a world that cheerily mashes together Native American and Norse Mythology. This leads to the reveal, utterly brain-breaking if you know your mythology, that Coyote Changer is also Loki AND the Devil. Seriously. (And for its next trick, the rules of the Universe are based on those of baseball.)
  • Believe it or not, the Cthulhu Mythos fell prey to this very early on, as August Derleth, who arguably rescued H. P. Lovecraft from total obscurity, attempted to shape the Mythos into a coherent Shared Universe, in an essay, framed it as a struggle between a good and evil pantheon, the former represented by Nodens, an actual minor deity from real life mythology, who had a cameo in one of Lovecraft's stories. This did not catch on.
    • Note, however, that there are still writers who like Derleth's idea of having two factions of gods fight each other, even if they reject the idea of painting those two factions as good and evil.
  • In Lord of Light, besides the fairly accurate Hindu gods, there is also an obvious Jesus metaphor among the cast of deities. However, the hint that he's supposed to be playing Jesus is "well — there's an evil necromancer to the West".
  • Inverted in Jericho Moon, in which the Hebrews' Yahweh is suggested to be the Canaanite pagan god El on a monomaniacal ego trip. Yahweh's angels, when their forms are revealed, turn out to be indistinguishable from the amorphous demons of Egyptian paganism seen in the previous novel.
  • The Camp Half-Blood Series:
    • Subverted in The Lightning Thief, the first novel of Percy Jackson and the Olympians. When Zeus' master lightning bolt is stolen, the first suspect is Hades. Hades is believed to have stolen the master bolt in order to start a rebellion. As it turns out, the thief was actually the lead character's camp counselor, Luke.
    • Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard features a pretty damn gutsy version of this for a children's book by mentioning Thor having a vendetta against Jesus ever since he didn't show up for a fight and taking his honor from him.
  • In John Milton's Paradise Lost, he informs us that the devils are future pagan gods.
    • Egyptian:
      After these appear'd
      A crew who under Names of old Renown,
      OSIRIS, ISIS, ORUS and their Train
      With monstrous shapes and sorceries abus'd
      Fanatic EGYPT and her Priests, to seek
      Thir wandring Gods disguis'd in brutish forms
      Rather then human.
    • Greek:
      The rest were long to tell, though far renown'd,
      Th' IONIAN Gods, of JAVANS Issue held
      Gods, yet confest later then Heav'n and Earth
      Thir boasted Parents; TITAN Heav'ns first born
      With his enormous brood, and birthright seis'd
      By younger SATURN, he from mightier JOVE
      His own and RHEA'S Son like measure found;
      So JOVE usurping reign'd: these first in CREET
      And IDA known, thence on the Snowy top
      Of cold OLYMPUS rul'd the middle Air
      Thir highest Heav'n; or on the DELPHIAN Cliff,
      Or in DODONA, and through all the bounds
      Of DORIC Land; or who with SATURN old
      Fled over ADRIA to th' HESPERIAN Fields,
      And ore the CELTIC roam'd the utmost Isles.
    • This was a common Christian explanation of pagan gods — that they were really demons in disguise.
  • Part of the final plan in Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus involves influencing the pre-existing Mesoamerican religion in order to 1) eliminate the practice of human sacrifice, and 2) prevent religious conflict when they come into contact with Renaissance Christianity. The basic gist of how they pull it off is to introduce a new prophet that tells the natives to look for a people across the sea who have discovered a divine figure whose blood-sacrifice permanently sates the requirement for human sacrifice.
  • When dealing with Ancient Greece in The Knight's Tale, Chaucer is mostly accommodating of the fact that they were pre-Christian, but does have some small slips like having them observe Sundays.
  • The titular Julian, trying to revive Hellenistic paganism, realizes that this is his biggest problem. The Christians have brought in the masses by incorporating their holidays.
  • Beowulf scholars believe that the 8th century poem is an adaptation of a Pagan epic from at least the century before, and that several elements in the story were introduced to make it resonate better with contemporary Christian audiences. These include Beowulf invoking God, Grendel and his mother being descendants of Cain and unable to hurt Hrothgar in his throne (because Christians believed that kings were protected by God) and Grendel's Mother's lair being protected by snakes (associated with Pagans and the Devil in Christianity). The final act with an elderly Beowulf fighting a dragon may have been entirely lifted from a Christian story (Saint George or similar) and tacked after (or over) the original Pagan's end.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Although most of the gods being jerks was inherent in the premise, the universe of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess was strange about this depending on the situation, especially Ares, who tends to waver between being a Jerkass and being pure evil depending on the needs of the plot. Hades was usually treated as just a dark but very overworked and unappreciated ruler of the Underworld. Eventually, the producers of Xena seemed intent on making up for lost time; in the last two seasons, the prophet Eli was an exceedingly thinly disguised Crystal Dragon Jesus and Xena was put on a quest to kill all the Pagan gods.
    • A darker metaphor occurred with Dahak. Early appearances and descriptions to his cult sound like an analogue of early Christians, before we found out he was an unrelated evil god. Ironically, the references are kept and added to afterward to deliberately creep out the audience. Dahak derives from Azhi Dahaka, of course.
  • The Doctor Who story Pyramids of Mars portrayed the Egyptian god Set/Sutekh as a Satan-type — and a Sufficiently Advanced Alien to boot, though a Physical God capable of destroying planets. However, the Doctor implied that Sutekh's people might not strictly count as good guys, either.
  • The depiction of Hecate in Charmed. "The Wedding from Hell" pretty much reduces an In Name Only use of Hecate's name without ever using enough of the mythology that it was ever a "depiction of Hecate". Which still makes it a Hijacked By Jesus, since Hecate is certainly not this kind of generic evil goddess.
  • Stargate SG-1 at various points:
    • An arc theme in the series is the slow discovery of the Jaffa that their masters the Goa'uld are not gods, but tyrants posing as gods. All well and good, but a big part of it is usually the discovery that the Goa'uld are not omnipotent or omniscient (for example, when Teal'c disobeys Apophis behind his back and finds Aphophis does not know about it) — even though those traits were never associated with the pagan gods the Goa'uld play the roles of.
      • Possibly justified, in that the Goa'uld were arrogant enough to have added those traits to their claims on godhood after adopting the names and personas of pagan figures.
    • In one episode, SG-1 come upon a small population of people who had developed from ancient Norsemen (Vikings, if you will) into what was basically a 17th century society. Instead of retaining their original pantheon, they had developed a cult centering solely on Freyr who, in reality, was of course the Sufficiently Advanced Alien responsible for bringing them there in the first place. Notable features of this cult included gathering in a suspiciously church-like building at regular intervals, branding Freyr their "savior", and the complete and total resignation to the will of their deity. All in all, it reads more like an attempt by the writers to use an "uncooperative, xenophobic, holier-than-thou, super-religious rural Christian" stereotype without running the risk of offending any Christians.
      • Interestingly, the people of the previous Norse planet worshiped only Thor.
    • In another episode, the team found a transplanted medieval Christian village, where Sokar was posing as Satan. And it wasn't the only time parallels were drawn in universe between the two, who had even less in common than Hades and Lucifer.
  • The History Channel apparently once had a series called "Clash of the Gods." The episode about Hades was pretty accurate until about halfway through this part. It may be based on some beliefs (Hades was of course not depicted as a god, but as a servitor of Ol' Scratch) that became very popular, as seen in The Divine Comedy.
    • The series in general tends to draw a lot of analogies between pagan myths and Biblical stories, whether or not there's any actual historical connection between them.
    • The show has also inverted this on occasion; the episode on Zeus draws parallels between Zeus being seen as the highest, most powerful god and the rise of monotheism, basically saying that Zeus was the source of most people's idea of the Abrahamic God.
  • An interesting variation took place in a Christmas Episode of Northern Exposure, where the town of Cicily combined Christmas traditions with the local tribe's "Raven Festival", based on the story of Raven and the Sun-Holder's Daughter. While this is a traditional Raven story among some tribes and the depiction in the show is fairly accurate, it does make Raven seem like a Crystal Dragon Jesus. In one of the few points where Joel's receptionist Marilyn Whirlwind spoke more than a few words at a time, she told the story to Joel:
    "A long time ago, the Raven looked down from the sky and saw that the people of the world were living in darkness. The ball of light was kept hidden by a selfish old chief. So the Raven turned itself into a spruce needle and floated on the river where the chief's daughter came for water. She drank the spruce needle. She became pregnant and gave birth to a boy which was the Raven in disguise. The baby cried and cried until the chief gave him the ball of light to play with. As soon as he had the light, the Raven turned back into himself and carried the light into the sky. From then on, we no longer lived in darkness."
  • Discussed in Vikings. The Christian priest Athelstan is kidnapped from his church in Britain, and forced to live alongside the vikings. Although he stays loyal to his religion, he couldn't help but notice the similarities between the crucifixion of Jesus and the story of Odin hanging from Yggdrassil. He becomes troubled by those notions, and eventually accepts both religions. And even then he stays troubled, because a true Christian may not worship any other god.

    Music 
  • Therion's "Birth of Venus Illegitima" discusses an event from Classical Mythology using a terminology of sin, forbidden sexuality, paradise and Hell that's far more Christian than Greek. note 

    Mythology and Religion 
  • Origins of various words meaning God in different languages predate Christianity. Theos, Deus, Dievas, God, etc.
  • The Bible actually has a position on this, equating pagan gods into actual devils. In other words, all pagan religion to Christianity is an actual work of demons rebelling against God, whether or not the religion predated Christianity (as God, if He exists, existed before Christianity):
    • 1 Corinthians 10:20 "But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils." note 
    • This, by the way, contradicts the stance that the Old Testament/Toraic writings take on the issue though. The stories of early Jews straying from the worship of God indicate that in the view of these earlier writers other deities did exist and have real power and they were threats to Judaism. "You shall have no other gods before me."
    • In other places, the gods worshipped by other peoples are called simply "idols": that is, pictures which had no real power. For example, in the story of Moses and the Golden Calf, no real power is attributed to the statue of the calf. It's less a story about people being led astray by false gods and more about people having become acculturated to idol-worship because of their time in Egypt forgetting their real traditions.
  • In Acts of the Apostles, Paul says outright "Here, you have an altar saying 'To an unknown god'note ; well, this is the god I come to talk about".
  • Christianity, itself, was derived originally from Judaism.
    • Reform Judaism, which was developed mainly during the 19th century, dropped many of the ritual aspects of Jewish worship, adding prayers and sermons in the native language of the country, organs and other aspects that were similar to the practices of surrounding churches. Some of those changes, like having the Sabbath on Sunday, didn't wind up sticking.
  • There is a debate about the pagan origin of Christmas, the most popular being that it derives from the Roman celebration of "Dies Natalis Sol Invictus", dedicated to a solar god associated with Alexander Magnus. However, other arguments suggest that the Romans created it to counteract the pre-existing Christmas, solidified by the fact that Sol Invictus was celebrated only once in Rome.
  • Jesuit missionaries tried to use pre-existing Chinese concepts when they began arriving in China in the 16th century to explain Christianity to the natives. Among other things, they equated the Chinese concept of the "Heaven," (or Tian, 天) an abstract, all-encompassing supreme entity in the universe, to the Christian notion of God. This still manifests itself in the difference in the reference to "God" in Chinese and Chinese-influenced languages (e.g. Korean) by Catholics and Protestants. For Catholics, God is "the Lord of Heaven," (or Tianzhu, 天主), while Protestants use different terms in different countries, depending on circumstances.
  • In some sense, a large chunk of Islam is this to Christianity. Indeed, Jesus is himself a great prophet of Islam and the Gospels (called Injil in Islam) are considered an Islamic Holy Book (which is, incidentally, why it would not make sense for a good Muslim to burn a Bible in response to a fanatical Christian burning the Koran). The Islamic interpretation is that Christianity is based on misinterpretation of Jesus' teachings, who was really preaching about (to oversimplify) another, greater prophet to come (in the person of Mohammed). Among others, Islamic eschatology holds that, in end times, it will specifically be Jesus who will be returning to judge the living and the dead!
    • Christianity in Southeast Asia uses some Islamic terms for Christian concepts. More specifically, when the locals were converted to Islam centuries ago, the predominant religious vocabulary all became Arabic, because Islam considers only a Quran written in Arabic to be a "real" Quran. Therefore, even if local languages had their own word for "god," Southeast Asian Muslims refer to God as Allah (which is simply the Arabic word for "God"). This would be rather like if Catholics the world-over referred to God as "Deus" instead of translating the word into their own languages. The point is, in Malaysia and Indonesia, some Christians, particularly Catholics, also refer to God as "Allah", even though for them this is a foreign Arabic term imported from Islam and not their native word for "god" or "a deity." This has become controversial in Malaysia at various times when the government sought to restrict use of the word "Allah" to Muslims only.
  • Classical Mythology: Many elements of Greco-Roman polytheism ended up melding with Christianity once the latter over took the former as the predominant Roman religion:
    • There's some speculation that the cults of Orphic Dionysus and Mithras both competed with early Christianity and may have influenced it. There are a few parallels: both involve a being who's partially man and partially god, who is born through miraculous circumstances and who dies only to return to life.note 
    • The Emperor of Rome was considered semi-divine and infallible in the Roman Empire. Parallels could be drawn with the Catholic conception of the Pope.
    • The Roman Empire's practice of bringing foreign gods into the pantheon and matching them with their own would later be used by the Christian Church when demoting the deities of converted pagan peoples to patron saints: the most prominent example of this is the Celtic Goddess Brigid, who, following the Christianization of the Celts in The Low Middle Ages, became known as Saint Brigid, or Bridget.
    • The concept of the Holy Trinity, which is almost universally recognized by all Christian denominations, has no explicit Biblical basis; in fact, the idea of God having three natures may have descended from the tendency of the ancient Semites, Greeks and Romans to organize their gods into distinct groups of three. Perhaps the most iconic of these "Triads" is the Roman grouping of the gods Jupiter (Zeus), Juno (Hera), and Minerva (Athena), considered to be the three most important of the Imperial Roman deities.
    • The idea of there being exactly Twelve Apostles of Jesus may be taken from the Dii Consentes, or Twelve Olympians, of the Greco-Roman Pantheon.
  • Older Than Print: Norse Mythology has been influenced by Christianity in several ways, which is often taken even further in works that draws from the myths.
    • It's often believed in the scholarship of Norse Mythology that Loki was the pretty standard Trickster God found in about half the tales, not the sudden betrayer of the gods/Satan analog that shows up partway through Snorri Sturluson's writing. Loki may have even been an aspect of Odin. On the other hand, the Lokasenna, in the Poetic Edda, is generally considered to preserve largely pre-Christian sources, and depicts the precise same betrayal.
    • Since the ancient Norse never wrote their myths down, the earliest written documents were attempts to Christianize the heathens, by turning the Norse gods into a Christian pantheon, by making the gods out to be demonic, or simply by calling them clever mortals. The portrayal of the gods in Gesta Danorum is a transparent example of the latter.
      • Odin's self-sacrifice to gain knowledge (by hanging himself on the World Tree for nine days) bears a striking resemblance to the Crucifixion. In particular, note that Odin sacrificed himself to himself — and since conventional Christianity interprets Jesus as an incarnation of God, the Crucifixion thus entailed the Christian God likewise sacrificing himself to himself. However, there are no reported Viking activities in the area of Israel at the time, and all reported versions of that myth are from after Christianity became a thing in Europe, so it may also be a case of the Vikings trying to hijack Christian stories, instead of the other way. It may also be just a coincidence, as deaths by hanging were a common punishment in real life, same as crucifixion, but the part of the god having his side torn by a pike seems too specific and suggests an influence in either way. Although, that could again just be coincidence - using a spear to prod the side of a hanged / crucified person was used as a way to check they were dead before they were cut down: if they reacted, they were still alive and would be left up there longer.note 
    • The goddess Hel probably held the domain of famine. Her tableware was named "Hunger" and her silverware named "Famine". This wasn't just poetic, a bad harvest would mean enduring a subarctic winter without enough to eat, possibly staring at your empty cookware. Hel's domain was death by natural causes, and starvation was a natural cause of death. Christianity personified fear of famine in the Third Horseman of the Apocalypse.
      • In general, Helheim as popularly depicted (a Fire and Brimstone Hell for those who didn't get to Valhalla) likely wasn't how the Norse originally envisioned it, and was (literally) demonized by Christians. While Valhalla was the place that Norse men preferred to go after dying, and in myth doing acts like trick Hel so that they would get brought into Valhalla instead, Helheim likely wasn't meant to be a terrible afterlife at all.
    • The end of Völuspá is probably the most blatant example of this. It mentions a "mighty one" who is the actual creator and far above the Aesir and also we can't know His name, but he is called Fimbultyr, "Mighty God". Most scholars agree that this was probably an attempt at retrofitting Christianity into the Norse myths.
  • It has been claimed that the story of the Holy Grail and The Spear of Destiny are likely Christianized versions of older myths. For example, the Fisher King is Brân the Blessed. In one theory (but by far not the most popular one, not that there is a most popular one), King Arthur was originally a Celtic hero-king which doomed the old "England" because he first got the power of the holy vessel (more likely a cooking pot, later grail) and dug up the head of Lug in Lugdunum — that way, he broke the spell protecting his country.
  • One of the less-known stories in the Finnish national epic The Kalevala is the story of Marjatta, a virgin who is impregnated by a lingonberry (no, not that way, she eats it). She gives birth in a stable to a son who becomes the king of Karelia. Seeing that all the stories in The Kalevala were collected in early 1800s, this just can't be coincidental. It's likely that it was made up by Elias Lönnrot who collected folktales and songs into a unified national epic, and cut out the most contradictory bits, and added things here and there to tie events together better. It was supposed to symbolize Christianity overtaking the pagan beliefs, as the god-hero Väinämöinen is forced to leave the lands after first trying to condemn the child to death. Interestingly, though, Väinämöinen vows to return when people once again have need for him.
    • Parodied in Finnish comic artist Petri Hiltunen's Return of Väinämöinen newspaper strips, where he reveals in embarrassment that he decided to leave when people started to look more closely to the whole "lingonberry"-bit.
  • The god Endovelicus from the Lusitanian Mythology, originally a quite well-loved god of health and light and eventually incorporated into the Roman Pantheon, became identified as Lucifer once Christianity settled in. This is quite weird, considering most people back then had the Light Is Good trope taken very seriously, and yet the opposite was what was implied, as both Lucifer and Endovelicus were firmly light aligned (Lucifer means "light wielder"). Note that the god Neto from the same pantheon followed Light Is Not Good more closely, though.
  • The Iroqouis. Their creation story had Sky Woman falling to the Earth, with the animal spirits making Turtle Island for her to live on. She gives birth to Lynx, who in turn has the twin boys Sapling and Flint, all of whom shape the world. Then it got hijacked, putting Sapling as God and Flint as Satan.
  • Celtic Mythology was not written down until after most Celts had converted to Christianity — as a result, gods were converted to kings and heroes, and millennia-long curses are broken by priests. It's all pretty muddy.
    • Saint Bridget, a female saint who is suspiciously like the Celtic goddess, Brigid.
    • The Fair Folk went from unfathomable beings who were all right if you didn't offend them, to evil spirits who, aside from that, couldn't stand church bells/crosses/a priest.
    • King Conchobhar, of the Ulster Cycle and the Exile of the Sons of Usna, finds the petrified brain of Mesgegra, king of Leinster, embedded in his head after a battle. The healers are not able to remove it but sew up the wound and tell him that he'll survive as long as he doesn't become excited or over-exert himself. Seven reasonably peaceful years later, "Conchobar is told of the death of Christ, and becomes so angry that the brain bursts from his head, and he dies. The blood from the wound baptizes him as a Christian, and his soul goes to heaven". Conchobhar is also supposedly the exact same age as Jesus, never mind that the story takes place several centuries before St. Patrick even arrived in Ireland. None of this adds up based on what is known about Gaelic Ireland; he'd have to be at least 18 years of age to marry, in which case he would have gone through several wives by the time of Deirdre's birth, and she'd have to be 15 to marry, thus making him at least 35 when she reached that age and at least 40 when he took her hostage. And he lived to fight at least one or two major wars. There is no way that he could have done all of this within the lifetime of Christ, who was supposed to be 33 to 37 when he died. And that his blood "baptizes him" does not excuse the fact that he committed many atrocities in his life, often for his own selfish reasons.
  • The myth that St. Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland is dodgy as history, as Ireland has never had native snakes. However, an old Celtic God of death and afterlife was Cromm-Cruach, usually described as serpentine. The legend is probably a dramatisation of Christianity's victory over the old religion, symbolised by the serpent-god who is defeated and banished by the Blessed Patrick.
  • Syncretism in general is a fairly common phenomenon, specially when a new religion tries to expand in a new area and portrays itself as not really rupturist with but some "improved" or "accurate" version of whatever religions existed there previously. The Ancient Greeks and Romans immediately drew parallelisms between their gods and those of the peoples they conquered, and it's been pointed out that part of the iconography of the Virgin Mary in the Mediterranean area is drawn from classical fertility godesses, mostly Isis. In Mexico, the Spanish missionaries drew deliberate paralellisms between Jesus and Quetzalcoatl, the "good god" of the Mesoamerican pantheon who abhorred human sacrifice (while obviously preaching against those who were all for it).
  • Many Christian converts were originally named after pagan gods, especially in the early church and in newly-Christianized lands—Acts of the Apostles records Christian converts named Apollos and Dionysius (known to Westerners as "Saint Denis"), and there are also saints named for the Greek goddess Demeter (St. Demetrius) and the Celtic Brighid (St. Brigid). Naturally, this was useful for converting those regions, as people could go by easy stages from "worshiping Apollo" to "venerating St. Apollos".
  • The Christian humor blog "Stuff Christians Like" lampooned a phenomenon the author terms "The Jesus Juke": shoehorning references to Jesus or religion into any conversation where He isn't really expected.
    I once tweeted about going to see Conan O'Brien live and how big the crowd was. Someone wrote back, “If we held a concert for Jesus and gave away free tickets, no one would come.” Whaaa, waaaa.
  • It is sometimes claimed (unsurprisingly, most often by those with a bone to pick with Christianity) that almost every aspect of Jesus' story in the Gospel Accounts was lifted wholesale from the god Mithras (born of a virgin, birth attended by shepherds and Magi, twelve disciples, last supper, death and resurrection, etc.). In fact, most of the comparisons between Mithraism and Christianity (including the above) are at best a stretch, at worst simply made-up. (For instance, Mithras was sometimes depicted surrounded by the twelve signs of the Zodiac. It strains credibility to interpret this as, "He had twelve disciples." Another example is that Mithras was "born of a virgin." Actually, in most myths he was born from a rock or boulder.) Today, the "Christianity is a carbon-copy of Mithraism," thesis isn't taken seriously by any credible scholars.
  • When Africans were enslaved, sold to the Europeans and taken to the Americas, many of them brought their gods with them. This was frowned upon by some of their owners, who tried to foist Christianity on everyone. In some places the slaves responded by denoting a Christian saint for each god, so they could worship without getting in trouble for it. In Brazil, for example, these gods are still around, and worshipped to various degrees across the country.
    • In Brazil, however, many (if not all) slaves had at some point in history struggled for the right to be Christians, with and without the help of Jesuits and former slaves, for their masters saw Christianity and any religion as a risk to them. And through religious syncretism most practitioners consider themselves Catholics (or at least Christians) anyway. One proof of this is that giving up your religion for another Christian religion such as Neo-Pentecostalism or becoming an atheist is much more common, while becoming pagan is something rare and condemned by practitioners of these religions.
    • A similar phenomenon led to the creation of Vodou and Voodoo in New Orleans and the Caribbean. Here, West African deities from several cultures are worshipped alongside Christian saints and even some folk heroes: all often described as "loa"-a Yoruban word, or simply as spirits. Their names tended to get changed: for example the spider deity of the Ashanti, Anansi became Mr. Nancy. Rituals like channeling and magical potion making were also imported. Santéria, and other similar practices.
  • The Epic Of Sundiata: In this case, hijacked by Muhammad is more accurate. Over time the mythos was reconfigured to fit in with Islamic cosmology, after Mali and its ruling dynasty became Muslim. Sundiata came to be seen as champion of Allah over paganism, despite being quite unrepentantly pagan in actual history. His benefactor is changed from Faro to Allah (or at least Mangala) in some tellings.
  • Fossils. The church had two main attitudes toward them in the Middle Ages. The first one is that these are the remnants of dragons defeated by some local saint. One monastery had such bones stolen, so it obtained a swordfish'es nose and displayed it as a dragon's tongue. Also, the above legend of Saint Patrick destroying the snakes in Ireland was being supporting by ammonite shells, which do somewhat resemble a curled up snake. The second was that these are bones of ancient people, who were yet to shrivel fully under the weight of their sins. As such, it was being demonstrated how important it is for people to follow Christianity so that they won't shrink to a gnat's size (Gulliver's Travels mocks it at one point when the Brobdingnagians turn out to have similar beliefs).

    Radio 
  • Parodied in a John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme skit about the Labours of Hercules, when King Eurystheus asks Hercules to go to Hell and get Satan's dog. When Hercules questions this, Eurystheus replies "Well, whatever we call him. You know who I mean: Hell boss. The big bad."

    Tabletop Games 
  • Dungeons & Dragons publishes a "Deities and Demigods" supplement with most editions. While some of the entries are original pantheons made up from scratch by the company, there are also sections on Egyptian, Greek, and Norse mythology.
  • In Warhammer 40,000, the Imperium tends to work that way when implanting the Imperial Cult on the planets it incorporates. As one can imagine, it causes a lot of diversity, although there is a surprising amount of tolerance on the matter.
  • Scion Companion features an organization that are doing this in-world; they find young, inexperienced Scions, and convince them that their powers come from the Abrahamic God instead of one of those nasty pagan ones. Their goal is to drag all of the other gods into the Abrahamic mold, creating a "one true God". The book states they've already done this to a couple of pantheons (the Yoruba are specified). Given the closest we've seen to their ideal is one of the Titan avatars, their possible success is not portrayed as a good thing.
    • Demigod also has Pan show up... and turn out to be masquerading as Satan. It's explained away as Pan's debauchery going up a notch and deciding to play to this idea of a horned and hooved wicked being For the Evulz.
  • Part of the Sovereign Host's success in spreading in Eberron is noted to be their ability to pull off Hijacked By The Host and integrate the traditions of minor religions into their own ("Oh, your ways are fine. By the way, we call Deity X of your pantheon Dol Dorn...").
  • Of all things, Planescape had very subtle hints of this. The setting incorporated both fictional and real-world mythologies, including the deities of Hinduism and Buddhism (but not the Abrahamic religions). However, at least some of the factions were open to the possibility that all these 'gods' were fake, just powerful beings, and a single real god (or more) might exist above them.
    • The series also favored the terms 'powers', 'celestials' and 'fiends' over 'gods', 'angels' and 'demons'. Given that this only occurred in 2nd Edition D&D, it may have been a response to moral panic about the role-playing game by Christian Fundamentalists in the 80's. Considering some of the other ideas Planescape brought in, however, it probably didn't help much.
  • Tarot, interestingly enough, underwent an inversion of this trope, as it became increasingly associated with occultism in the 19th and 20th century. The most obvious aspect of this was the Popess and Pope (trumps II and IV) coming to be known as the High Priestess and Hierophant, while the suits of Coins and Batons (which were already established in Italian and Spanish playing cards) were renamed Pentacles and Wands, respectively.

    Theater 
  • In-Universe example: The King and I has the Show Within a Show The Small House of Uncle Thomas, in which Buddha is a very obvious stand-in for Jesus. This is part of the joke.
  • William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale nominally takes place in pagan countries, where they consult oracles. The veil is thin enough that at one point they have a discussion of the doctrine of original sin.
    • Shakespeare usually avoided this, though — especially as it allowed him to present suicide as honorable, so long as it took place in a non-Christian culture.

    Toys 
  • Originally, the Transformers had no backstory other than "Aliens from a distant planet fight each other". Then we were introduced to the Quintessons, and the backstory became "All transformers were originally built for slave labor, but rebelled against their creators". Nowadays Hasbro's official backstory is "Primus and Unicron are the personafication of Good and Evil, Primus created the transformers while Unicron wants to destroy everything. There also were 13 primes, 1 of them is a traitor". It's also never been explictly said, but Optimus Prime, who dies and comes back at least once in every series and is considered the most heroic character in the series, is implied to be one of the original Primes.

    Video Games 
  • Dragon Age: In-universe. Shartan was an elven rebel leader who fought beside Andraste just to free his people from the Imperium. However, The Chantry teachings downplay the "fought to free his people" part to focus on the "fought for Andraste" part, and depict him as a true believer and disciple who fought for the Bride of their Maker in order to serve their Maker. When they don't deny he ever existed.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics seems to do this with the suspiciously-Catholic-like church in Glabados concerned with the worship of Saint Ajora. As the plot progresses, however, the idea becomes the target of Deconstruction, starting with Cu Culainn as a Sinister Minister, and is ultimately subverted at the end of the game, when the nature of St. Ajora herself is revealed. Then it becomes either a Path of Inspiration or a Corrupt Church, depending on the individual closeness to the Secret Circle of Secrets of any given member of the church. It should be noted that this is not a Western work, but also that the Glabados church -is- the only game in town, so their brand of monotheism appears to be the norm.
  • The main series of Shin Megami Tensei takes this very literally. When the Earth was young, according to Echidna and Mem Aleph, it was ruled by all sorts of pantheons with their own adepts and followers. At one point, though, the Abrahamic God grew in power and overthrew all others, casting them down into lower astral planes (Atziluth in the original stories, Makai in current continuity) and turning them (and their cults) into demons. For example, Astaroth is literally a corrupted and demonized form of Ishtar... while more "acceptable" pagan gods like Thor have thrown their lot in with YHVH, choosing to become mere lackeys in order to prevent their own destruction or similar literal demonization. Only when a breach opens between our world and the lower planes (the Demon Summoning Program, the Conception, the Schwarzwelt) do the "demons" get the chance to fight back to regain their old power.
  • The Valkyrie Profile series is based on Norse myth, featuring Odin, the titular Valkyries, and the rest of the Aesir, but also feature very Christian-looking chapels, crosses, and other such artifacts.
  • Kid Icarus: Uprising: Does a similar adaptation of the Greek Myths as Disney's Hercules which isn't surprising considering the series is set in Angel Land. Hades is depicted as a satanic figure with no redeeming qualities, and the Underworld is depicted as Hell run by Always Chaotic Evil Grim Reaper figures. That said, the Big Good Palutena isn't quite the saint some would make her out to be, though she's still the most benevolent god out there, and Viridi would happily murder the entire human race, though not unjustifiably so, if she didn't have Pit keeping an eye on her.
  • Age of Empires II: Just like most military units tend to look Western European, despite civilizations coming from all over Eurasia (and also America and Africa in the expansions), religion in the game is superficially Christian and in particular, Catholic:
    • The religious building is called a "Monastery" and the units it produces are "monks", even in Muslim and pre-Columbian American cultures.
    • Excluding the Americans, all monks wear priestly robes, have tonsure, and carry a crossier and a big, Western-style book clearly intended to be a Bible. They also make a Gregorian-like chant when they convert enemy units to your side and its icon is two hands placed together.
    • Several religious technologies have Christian-themed names and icons such as "Sanctity" (golden chalice), "Redemption" (light coming down from heaven), "Atonement" (kneeling man with his hands together), "Illumination" (sunlight over an open book), "Theocracy" (rosary over an open book), and "Faith" (a Medieval icon... of Jesus himself).
  • In Ultima IX, the Guardian is revealed as the dark side of the Avatar, due to the Avatar's continually righteous actions, paralleling Satan and Jesus, while older games establish the Guardian is a multiversal conqueror, and depending on one's play style, the Avatar is certainly not Jesus.
  • In The Elder Scrolls series, this happens In-Universe with the religion of the Eight (later Nine) Divines absorbing and replacing other pantheons. Elements of those deities tend to be absorbed by their most-similar Divine equivalent, which leads to to some of the bizarrely conflicting traits and spheres of influence present in the Divines. For example, Kynareth, the Divines' Goddess of the Air with a Friend to All Living Things slant, absorbed the Valkyrie/Psychopomp role of her Nord and Khajiit equivalents in Kyne and Khenarthi. One rare exception comes with regards to Akatosh (the chief deity of the Divines Pantheon and "Dragon God of Time") and Ruptga (the "Tall Papa" chief deity of the Yokudan/Redguard pantheon). While some sources associate the two, they are typically treated as separate entities. The biggest difference seems to be that Akatosh participated in Lorkhan's plan to create Mundus (the mortal plane), while Ruptga did not "participate or approve" of Sep's (Lorkhan's Yokudan counterpart) plan. The act of creating Mundus severely weakened the Divines, so not participating would leave Ruptga at full divine power with Complete Immortality, closer to the Daedric Princes.
  • Inverted in After the End: A Post-Apocalyptic America. After the End, in post-apocalyptic America, Norse paganism has seen a revival. With some confusion. The new faith integrates several Christian traditions, however, including Yule celebrations, in which animals and humans are sacrificed before "Odin in his jolly Yule garb".
  • Inverted in Cultist Simulator: The universe is governed by the Hours, and the in-universe text "The Gospel of Zacchaeus" suggests that Jesus was a cultist in service to one such Hour, the Mother of Ants (which, in turn, is conflated with St. Agnes by Christian cultists). It also suggests that the Passion was Jesus's method of attaining immortality in its service, and that Christianity is a cult founded by Jesus that endured and expanded after his "death".

    Web Original 
  • SCP Foundation: Inverted and played for cosmic and religious horror by SCP-3004 ("Imago"). SCP-3004 is an Irish cicada god once worshipped by a particularly large and gruesome druidic cult. When the followers were converted to Christianity in the late 1700s, the resulting turn of faith and metaphysical confusion scrambled the deity's mind and now it is convinced that it is the Judeo-Christian God. In fact it may have eaten and usurped Him. It warps Christian practices into a Religion of Evil which involves Animalistic Abominations and ritual self-mutilation, it is completely insane and unaware of concepts like metaphors and mortality, and worst of all it is trying to break through into our reality. In that event the Foundation's contingency is to completely erase Christianity from the historical record in an attempt to starve it.

    Western Animation 
  • Class of the Titans can both avert and succumb to this. While Hades isn't presented as completely evil, his realm still looks like hell. Also, he seems a bit of a... girlish man. It's the voice. The other Gods may have their problems, they do some nasty things to mortals, but they're all still mostly good and Zeus' apparent, um, fooling around with others is never mentioned and his relationship with Hera seems healthy and strong. Kronos, the big bad of the series, is a close allegory to Satan, though, as he pretty much wants to bring about the apocalypse. Other myths and legends are shifted around and can either be really inaccurate or pretty damn close enough. Of course one must keep in mind, this is a kid's show.
  • Hades in Hercules: The Animated Series is more of a Satan stand in than a faithful adaptation of Hades from Greek myth and is a supervillain
  • Book 2 of The Legend of Korra features the light spirit Raava opposing the dark spirit Vaatu, with the latter being a Satanic Archetype. Normally, this would be a standard Western fantasy setup, but the design of the two spirits evoke Taoism's iconic yin-yang symbol, and this fundamentally goes against Taoist philosophy, in which light and dark are complementary and the goal is achieve balance between them to find inner peace.
  • Hades (and occasionally Ares) in the Justice League cartoon was also painted as Satan, or a reasonable facsimile.
    • Even more explicitly, Justice League Unlimited showed Tartarus as an analogy to Hell to the point that it actually had demons that shirked in fear from Hawkgirl when they mistook her for an angel. Hawkgirl muddies the waters a bit when, a moment later, she hopes they don't run into any smart denizens of Tartarus.
      Shayera: That's right, I'm an angel! You can mess with me if you want to, but I don't think you don't want to mess with the boss! (points up)
  • In The Simpsons, Lisa eventually becomes disillusioned with the Protestant Christian denomination she was raised in and embraces Buddhism as an alternative path to God, but it's a Running Gag that she doesn't really treat it differently, praying to "Lord Buddha" as a Christian would pray to God, referring to Namuche as "the Buddhist Satan," and so on.


 
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The Book of Invasions

Red from Overly Sarcastic Productions, talks about how due to interference and censorship by Christianity, a lot of the original context and origins of the Celtic and other mythologies have been vastly altered and changed to suit the needs of the Church. In particular the Tuatha Dé Dannan and other deities were changed into kings, fairies and demons.

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