Otherworldly and Sexually Ambiguous

Ray: It's a girl.
Egon: It's Gozer.
Winston: I thought Gozer was a man.
Egon: It's whatever it wants to be.

— Ghostbusters (1984)

Whenever you see a demon, god, or someone or something else otherworldly you'd expect it to be easy to tell if it is a man or a woman. But when they have qualities of both? Or lacks qualities of either? Or can change from one to another with neither being the confirmed default? They are Otherworldly and Sexually Ambiguous.

There might be reasons why or how the demon, spirit, etc., is a hermaphrodite, can change sex, etc., be it either magical corruption, or the creators didn't want to give the character a definitive sex, so they made them ambiguous. Sometimes it's just a striking detail that reminds the audience that this individual isn't a mundane creature, and that the shape they're in now might just be A Form You Are Comfortable With.

Much as Discount Lesbians and Female Angel, Male Demon, non-binary audiences often accuse this trope of having Unfortunate Implications, due to implying that the "non-male-non-female-ness" of these characters is due to their lack of humanity.

See also No Biological Sex, Hermaphrodite, Voluntary Shapeshifting, Non-Human Non-Binary, Non-Humans Lack Attributes, and Ambiguous Gender. May cross over with Shapeshifters Do It for a Change. Subtrope to Speculative Fiction LGBT.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The angel that appears in the anime of Black Butler (2008) is capable of changing sex. So what appears to be two separate characters Angela and Ash are actually the same angel's male and female forms. The angel also is against the concept of beings being divided into separate genders, and goes so far as to fuse Ciel's parents together as some manner of constructed being for this purpose.
• In Devilman, Satan is shown to be a hermaphrodite, having both male genitals and female breasts. In DEVILMAN crybaby, Satan also has a more androgynous-sounding voice courtesy of Ayumu Murase.
• Envy the shapeshifting homunculus from Fullmetal Alchemist is androgynous to the point where they are always posed in ways that make it essentially impossible to tell if they have breasts. Their true form is a tiny slug thing, so they appear to be truly genderless. Truth is similarly often humanoid but a featureless version of the person talking to it, so its gender is impossible to discern.
• Crimvael, better known as Crim to everyone, of Interspecies Reviewers is a hermaphrodite angel whose body is so androgynous that he has to present as male to keep his Loveable Sex Maniac friends off of him.
• Both Shin and the god who created them in Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid have what can best be described as "Schrodinger's gender". Neither of them appears to have a specific gender identity and their physical sex changes every time they try to check.
• Apos from Mnemosyne, the Guardian of Yggdrasil, is an intersexed man (that is to say, identifies as male), and it's suggested that he has both functioning sets of genitalia, given that he qualifies as both male and female according to the laws of magic in that world.
• Ashura, the god of war from RG Veda, is stated to have No Biological Sex. This is justified as it's the result of a curse that will keep the Ashura clan from continuing, and they're actually treated as both male and female in the series. The English dub of the OVA series completely glossed over this and just called Ashura "Princess" leading to confusion in the west for a long time until the rest of the manga was translated.
• The goddess Kanzeon Bosatsu from Saiyuki is a female-presenting hermaphrodite, as noted by the author in a between-chapters illustration.
• Yubel from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX is a dragon spirit who has a body divided into a masculine half (with pronounced muscles, a flat chest, and a taloned foot) and a feminine half (breast tissue and a foot with what looks like a natural stiletto heel). They also alternate between a high-pitched feminine voice and a deeper masculine voice before settling on one that fits androgynously in the middle. (The dub ignored this and made them completely female - probably so that their romance with the main character wouldn't come off as gay.)

Comic Books

• Defenders (2021): The personification of the fourth multiverse was, in their prior mention in The Ultimates, said to be male, but on making an appearance in the flesh (figuratively speaking) the fourth Eternity looks feminine, much like how Cloud of the Defenders starts identifying as genderfluid.
• The Mighty Thor: The third Loki (God of Mischief, Chaos and Stories) can change their apparent gender at will. Their shapeshifting powers (unlike the first Loki's) are limited to aspects of their own personality, the very fact that they can do these forms shows that they're genderqueer. They also have the tendency to flirt indiscriminately.
• In Miracleman, the alien Warpsmiths are multi-dimensional, and ultimately genderless beings, who have sex in ways that defy anything resembling biology on Earth.
• Desire from The Sandman (1989) is the personification of lust, and so they can be a man, woman, or both, depending on whom the viewer finds the most attractive.
• The Presence from Supergirl: Wings is always referred to as "Hair" pronouns.

Films — Animation

• The Prince of Egypt portrays God as the burning bush with a primarily male voice (who's played by Val Kilmer, the same actor as Moses, possibly symbolizing how God is speaking through him rather than to him) with a whispery female voice layered into it to invoke this. The creators also intended to have a child's voice in there as well until it got nixed in production for sounding way more demonic than they intended.

Films — Live-Action

• Gozer the Gozerian, the Sumerian god from Ghostbusters (1984), in the final confrontation. The boys are surprised that it's a "girl", but clearly it is both.
  Ray: It's a girl.
  Egon: It's Gozer.
  Winston: I thought Gozer was a man.
  Egon: It's whatever it wants to be.
  Peter: Well, whatever it is, it's gotta get by us.
  Ray: Right!
• Audrey Jr./Audrey II from The Little Shop of Horrors and its musical remake is an alien plant with a woman's name and a masculine voice.
• Satan in The Passion of the Christ is portrayed by a woman with a shaved head and a voice altered to sound more masculine in post-production.
• Dr Frank N. Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a male alien who likes to wear women's lingerie and sleeps with many partners regardless of gender. Being "a sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania" doesn't narrow it down much.

Literature

• Aleister Crowley of A Certain Magical Index is a Historical Domain Character famous for being an occultist, a ceremonial magician and the founder of the Thelema religion, who in real life looked like this,◊ but in the series looks like this,◊ complete with a visible bustline. The novels describe him as androgynous, so much so that he cannot be described as conclusively male or female, at least based on his looks.
• The Ghost of Christmas Past from A Christmas Carol. In most adaptations, it's made either a woman or a small child (of either gender), but the book never establishes what it is, in any sense of the word. Indeed, it shifts and flickers in appearance constantly in the book, not just in terms of gender but also growing and losing body parts at random.
• In The Dark Tower, the demon who had sex with Roland in the first book and raped Susannah in the third book could change sexes.
• In Dragon Bones the god Aetherveon is called "he", but when he talks to the protagonist by taking over the body one of them, he speaks with a "voice that could belong to a woman, man, or child", and later changes voices, so it is likely that the gender is just assigned by mortals who don't have gender-neutral pronouns.
• The Dresden Files:
  • In Turn Coat, after losing a Curb-Stomp Battle to a skinwalker and wondering whether he should use "he" when talking about it, Harry asks Bob for the correct pronoun. Bob tells him that the question is irrelevant since the shapeshifter has no definitive gender, and afterwards Harry uses "it". Despite the genderless pronoun being justified "It" Is Dehumanizing is still in effect because the skinwalker is lacking in any sort of humanity or redeeming qualities.
  • There is also some question about the correct pronouns to use concerning the Corpsetaker, who exists pretty much only as a body-jumping mind. Since the Corpsetaker seems to prefer taking female bodies, consensus has come down on female. It is also heavily implied that the being that would become the Corpsetaker started existence as a female Native American witch, given that this is the appearance of their ghost when they are seen sans a body.
• Forest Kingdom: At one point in the Hawk & Fisher spinoff series book 3 (The God Killer), Hawk and Fisher come face to face with an androgynous demon called up by decadent young nobles. Unfortunately for its summoners, it started draining their lifeforce to sustain itself, until the title characters deactivated the spell and sent it back to where it came from.
• In Good Omens, it is stated that angels and demons are normally sexless, unless they really want not to be. Both otherworldly protagonists take the form of human males, though.
• Flinx is perplexed by the (lack of) gender or familial relationships among the furcots in Mid-Flinx of Humanx Commonwealth, as Teal insists that they're not male, not female, and the young ones aren't offspring of the adult. In this case, it's because furcots are asexual Planimals "born" by budding from They-Who-Keep trees, as revealed in the previous novel Midworld.
• Mallory from Jacob's Ladder Trilogy exhibits physical traits of both men and women and the narration goes to great lengths to avoid gendered pronouns. This is possibly due to Mallory having a whole bunch of dead people rattling around inside the brain.
• In Konosuba, Vanir makes the claim that demons are genderless beings. At least in Vanir's case he's a spirit tethered to a mask, and he's able to shapeshift his projected body at will. He also shows no hang ups with possessing the bodies of female adventurers if it suits his purposes. In one amusing incident he transforms into the form of a succubus, and participates in a beauty contest. The men in the crowd are understandably disturbed when he reveals his true identity to them.
• Larry Niven's The Magic Goes Away. Roze-Kattee, the God of Love and Madness, is a hermaphrodite with a hideous appearance: a humanoid covered with shaggy, coarse hair, blazing yellow-white eyes brighter than daylight and pointed ears.
• In Neverwhere the angels are genderless, and are referred to as "it". "It" Is Dehumanizing is averted, however, as the pronoun is applied to one angel by another angel, who uses it in a perfectly matter-of-fact way. Neil Gaiman said in the commentary of the TV series that they wanted an androgynous looking actor or actress to play Islington but they couldn't find one and ended up settling for Peter Capaldi. The BBC Radio adaptation also gave up and went with Benedict Cumberbatch, whose deep voice could never be anything but male. Despite this, characters still refer to Islington as "it".
• Nightside: One book features a self-fertilizing artificial Humanoid Abomination created by Dr. Frankenstein.
• No Game No Life has Tet, the god of games (and, being the only surviving god, the de facto ruler of Disboard), who appears in the form of a pink-haired, pink-clothed, ambiguously-gendered child.
• In Operation Chaos, succubi (female demons that seduce men) and incubi (male demons that seduce women) are actually a single kind of demon that changes its form according to whom it is attempting to seduce.
• The Reynard Cycle: In Carcosa, the robotic Lotos seller's voice is described as being neither male nor female.
• Secret Histories: Features the omnisexualized Lady Faire, also created by Dr. Frankenstein, who had a serious kinky streak in the Greenverse.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire, one of the faces of the Faith of the Seven, called The Stranger, is neither male nor female and signifies death.
• The Space Trilogy: The final book, That Hideous Strength, has spirits in it that have genders, but do not have sexes in the biological sense. A quote about the Oyarsa of Jupiter and the Oyarsa of Saturn:
  The three gods who had already met in the Blue Room were less unlike humanity than the two whom they still awaited. In [Mercury] and Venus and [Mars] were represented those two of the Seven Genders which bear a certain analogy to the biological sexes and can therefore be in some measure understood by men. It would not be so with those who were now preparing to descend. These also doubtless had their genders, but we have no clue to them.
• Tales from Netheredge has Jewel, a sun god who lives pleasurably in the Harem as a High Class Sex Worker and presents as a sexually ambiguous person as part of his^note he doesn't have a preference for specific pronouns, but most characters settle on "he/him" appeal.
• Referenced in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol novel, The Shield of Time. Time Patrol agent Manse Everard masquerades as an angel to warn a Medieval knight against a choice that would cause a Bad Future. The knight suspects something fishy is up. As was common in those days, the knight believes angels are sexless beings, so he proves Manse isn't an angel by grabbing his groin.

Live-Action TV

• On Babylon 5, the Centauri deity of sex was a fusion of male ("tentacles") and female ("receptors") parts.
• Some of the demons in the Buffyverse are of ambiguous gender, though most of them are not. One episode of Angel has the gang meet Lorne's family and mistakenly assume his mother is a male, as she has a deep voice and full beard (and is played by a man).
• Doctor Who:
  • The Sufficiently Advanced Alien Kronos in "The Time Monster" is referred to by male pronouns, as was his counterpart in Greek Mythology, and depicted in a masculine paper bird costume... er, humanoid bird form. At the end of the story, she appears as a sort of massive shining woman and explains to Jo that she is whatever she wants to be.
  • Subverted in "The Hand of Fear", when the Kastrian Eldrad regenerates from a severed hand into a glittering, androgynous female alien with a queenly bearing and claims of god-level scientific achievements, leading the audience (and even the Doctor) to read her as this sort of character. After the Doctor goes out of his way to take her in the TARDIS back to her own planet, we find out that he merely took on a tough feminine form because his regeneration was modelled after Sarah Jane, the first human he saw - when he is injured and regenerates into the male body which is apparently normal for Kastrians, he becomes a dull, thuggish, hollering idiot that the Doctor easily outwits. Sarah even tells the Doctor, "I quite liked her, but I couldn't stand him."
• Game of Thrones: The Seven Gods consist of a male trinity (Father, Warrior, Smith), a female trinity (Mother, Maiden, Crone), and the Stranger (Death) who is neither.
• In Good Omens (2019), as in the book, all supernatural characters are technically sexless, though most appear to present with a specific gender. Beelzebub and Pollution are explicitly non-binary, while Crowley seems to regularly flip between male and female presentation across time periods (including the disguise as "Nanny Ashtoreth"), and God is voiced by Frances McDormand.
• In The Sandman (2022) features Desire and Lucifer. Desire is non-binary character played by a non-binary actor. Lucifer, a traditionally male character, is played by a female actor, but dressed in a stylized but androgynous outfit and hairstyle.
• The Metrons in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Arena" have an androgynous appearance and wear a shimmering dress-like garment.
• The angels in Supernatural are genderless, and while they take human vessels, the gender of the vessel seems unimportant to most angels.

Music

• Many David Bowie characters, particularly during his Glam Rock period. Ziggy Stardust and The Man Who Fell to Earth are the most famous, being beautiful, androgynous bisexual aliens with Messianic Archetype associations.
• According to Word of God, Vocaloid's MEIKA Hime and Mikoto are intended to be spirits rather than actual humans and do not have any gender, as such.
• Strive, the blue-skinned protagonist of the music video for "Starlight Brigade" has androgynous but generally feminine features, but is canonically biologically male.

Myths & Religion

• Wagyl from Noongar mythology is an intersex being to emphasise their role as a Fertility God. Consequently the nightmarish mess of an umbrella term that is the "rainbow serpent" often is cited as intersex despite this notion coming from this specific god (others like Yingarna from Gunwinggu mythology are explicitly female or male in the case of her son Ngalyod).
• Satan in Tarot Motifs is often depicted as being a hermaphrodite.
• Although the Judeo-Christian God is usually referred to by male personal pronouns, this is more convention than canon. Several Biblical verses show God identifying with roles which western culture would generally consider feminine. Most languages (English included) do not have any gender-neutral personal pronouns and God was referred to as "He" because most societies in which the Bible was written were patriarchal. It's not impossible to find instances of medieval Christianity where people have visions of Jesus breastfeeding them, or other things that seem bizarre by most modern standards.
• Inari Okami, the Shinto God of fertility, rice, agriculture, foxes, industry and worldly success, is generally considered to be neither male nor female, though like YHWH, masculine or feminine aspects are often emphasized depending on the context and the region. This is true for many other Kami as well.
• Angels and demons in Christianity are sometimes considered to be sexless because they don't reproduce in Heaven or Hell and so would not need to be male or female. The Bible always refers to them as male, but at least for angels, this is considered to be for similar reasons as God, as mentioned above. "The sons of god," who are often but not always interpreted to be angels^note The other common interpretation is that it's referring to Seth's lineage, sired the Nephilim, which some say is evidence that at least some of them are actually male, or were at the time capable of "shapeshifting" the necessary equipment when taking human form. It's generally not considered a important issue in Christianity, but is still debated. Androgynous depictions of angels were also popular in medieval art, a phenomenon sometimes attributed to an association between angels and court eunuchs in Byzantine culture (in an inversion of Eunuchs Are Evil—though the straight version of that trope also existed alongside the more angelic and pure perceptions of eunuchs).
• Egyptian Mythology:
  • The Egyptian god Hapi is generally considered male (including having one or more wives), but is also pictured with breasts to represent his ability to nurture and feed people (he's a god of the Nile).
  • In general the vast majority of the gods have both male and female forms (even gods seen as "masculine" in the modern lenses like Horus and Ra), a short hand sign for their vastness and multi-facted nature (and, more pragmatically, tying local gods to state favoured ones).
  • Even with that in mind, the Aten, Akhenaten's infamous favourite, is almost completely referred to in gender neutral language, fully emphasising its all-encompassing nature and distance from humanity.
• The Hittite sun goddess is usualy conceptualised as female; however she is also "the mother and father of the gods" and the sun is thought to be male during the day in Hittite theology. She was syncretised with several ostensibly male solar deities across Anatolia.
• Medieval legends had devils called succubi who raped men in their sleep, causing Nocturnal Emission, and incubi who raped women, which could result in pregnancy. However, under a belief that demons could not create life, later versions suggested that the two demons were actually the same thing — succubi had sex with men, collecting their semen, then changed sex to become incubi, using that human semen when they had sex with women. Sometimes the semen was even altered by demonic contact, so that offspring from encounters between women and incubi would be demonic too.
• Jewish Lore: As a divine being, God is viewed as transcending physical form, and therefore has no gender, but due to the structure of the Hebrew language, is often addressed in the male (or occasionally the female) second person during prayer (depending on the liturgy).
• In the original telling of Inanna's Descent to the Netherworld, two androgynous creatures are used to rescue Inanna from her sister Ereshkigal, the goddess of death, (who is angry with her for killing her first husband^note Why he wouldn't be down in The Underworld with his wife, and therefore what the problem is, is never explained.). In the Babylonian version (where she is known as Ishtar), the two creatures are merged into one Hermaphrodite being, which Ereshkigal cannot comprehend.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Demogorgon, a.k.a. the Prince of Demons, is a hermaphrodite. He also looks like a two-headed monkey with tentacles for arms.
  • Malcanthet, a.k.a. the Succubus Queen. Malcanthet uses illusion, pheromones, etc., to make herself attractive to beings of all species and sexes, but some know her true nature and seek her out for that.
  • Elven deities
    • Corellon Larethian is the leader of the elvish pantheon. He is known to appear in both male and female forms.
    • Hanali Celanil normally appears as a female, but has appeared as a male on rare occasions.
    • Labelas Enoreth can appear as male, female, both or neither.
  • The gnome deity Urdlen appears as a huge mole that is neuter and sexless.
  • The Book of Erotic Fantasy, an Open Game License splat adding rules for sex to Dungeons & Dragons, has the deity of passion and lust as a hermaphrodite.
  • Dragon magazine #24 "Choir Practice at the First Church of Lawful Evil (Orthodox): The ramifications of alignment". Several deities fit this trope: Cyrullia, who appears as a beautiful hemaphrodite, Slarsken Obel who appears as a man most of the time but as a woman in matriarchal societies, and Demyuritas, who appears as a stunningly beautiful youth who can be either male or female.
  • 1st Edition Dragon Lance Adventures supplement. The section "Gender and the Gods" says that it's not entirely clear which gender each of the deities is because legends speak of them appearing as either gender at different times. For example, Takhisis is said to appear as the female Dark Temptress or the male Dark Warrior.
  • Role Aids supplement Witches. The Powers worshipped by Faerie witches can appear as either male or female. In their true form they are neither.
  • Eberron: The Traveler is said to be a shapeshifting Trickster God with no specific default gender.
  • Planescape: In the supplement Faces of Evil: The Fiends, it's revealed that Yugoloths/Daemons, the Neutral Evil fiends, are universally hermaphrodites regardless of their appearance. Meanwhile, the Chaotic Evil Tanar'ri/Demons can change sex at will but most simply choose male or female and stick with it rather than changing regularly.
• Exalted: Luna, the main God of the Moon. Female pronouns are used to refer to her, but given that she is the patron of Voluntary Shapeshifting and of tricksters, she appears as male and female equally often (sometimes with aspects of both — she has appeared before as a heavily pregnant young man).
• Godforsaken: Demons are often genderless or capable of changing their gender at their whim, and typically use whatever gendered terms or titles strike their fancy.
• In Nomine:
  • Celestials predate the existence of biological life by a fair margin and do not typically reproduce the way animals or humans do. Consequently, with some exceptions, angels and demons treat gender more as a personal affectation than anything else, useful for dealing with mortals or if you like the aesthetic but of little intrinsic personal importance. It's common for celestials to casually change gender presentation over time — Gabriel, for instance, used to mostly prefer male vessels but now mainly appears as a woman — and most never bother to pick a specific gender at all.
    The sex of a newborn angel is entirely up to that angel. An angel's sex is a reflection of outlook and personality, with no biological importance. Many angels don't bother to have one at all.
  • This is averted by ethereal spirits, who typically strongly lean towards mortal genders. The reason is that, unlike the primordial and often inhuman celestials, ethereals are the living manifestations of human thoughts and beliefs. As a result, even generic ethereals are strongly influenced by human thought patterns, while specific ones — such as the pagan gods — by definition manifest with the traits, including sex and gender, given to them in the stories that they originate from.
• Mage: The Awakening: Having ascended to godlike archetypes of tyranny and domination, the Exarchs no longer have genders, and are referred to with alternating pronouns. The one exception is the Father, who presents himself as the ultimate patriarch.
• Magic: The Gathering: Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver is a Planeswalker and Humanoid Abomination who specializes in bringing people's worst nightmares to life. Ashiok is confirmed by Word of God to be of Ambiguous Gender.
• Pathfinder:
  • Gozreh is an ancient, primal deity of the elements and fury of nature, and has no set gender — he is as likely to appear as a sky goddess as she is to appear as a sea god.
  • Arshea the Empyreal Lord of freedom, physical beauty and sexuality, has a form that "suggests the best traits of both the masculine and the feminine" and who the text refuses to give any pronouns at all, referring to Arshea by name or title only.
• RuneQuest: One deity is either male (Rashoran) or female (Rashorana), depending on the myth.
• Scion: In the second edition, Loki is referred to with they/them pronouns. While they were born biologically male, they are comfortable with either gender.
• Unknown Armies. The Mystic Hermaphrodite archetype is the embodiment of magick. It represents not just men and women, but other dualities as well: love and hate, war and peace, and killing and mercy. It grants its Avatars the ability to switch genders at will at a high enough level (though if they suffer a Critical Failure on the roll, they become a hermaphrodite and can't change back — unless they were born intersexed). Its Godwalker, the Freak, is referred to as "they" because they never stay the same gender for very long.
• Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, and Warhammer: Age of Sigmar. The Chaos God Slaanesh has a nasty habit of sending hermaphroditic daemons at people. Not to mention being one itself. By default, Humans speak of it as a god, Eldar speak of it as a goddess ("She who thirsts").
  • Technically all of the Chaos Gods are genderless, being abstract concepts and all. It's just that most of them are referred to in male terms and don't have female characteristics to suggest otherwise.

Theater

• Elisabeth:
  • In the original German/Austrian production, Death, per the likes of Uwe Kröger and Máté Kamarás, is this trope coupled with Mystical White Hair.
    • Casting directors seem to have given up after Mark Seibert was chosen for the role. Death's entire look had to be changed to Hell-Bent for Leather in order to accommodate Seibert - his understudies and replacements follow suit. In their defense, they did try to stuff him into the earlier Death costume. It wasn't exactly flattering. The Mystical White Hair got downgraded to the actors' natural light blond hair, though the lighting makes it look white.
  • In the Takarazuka Revue productions, all characters - including Death - are played by actresses. Asaka Manato's Death costume is also Hell-Bent for Leather, probably inspired by the aforementioned change.

Video Games

• Eden in The Binding of Isaac, an alter-ego of the eponymous Isaac who gets randomly generated stats each time, and represents purity and possibility. While most of Isaac's alter-egos have a gender (some male, some female), Eden is explicitly stated to be genderless.
• Zariel in Brawlhalla is an angel from Elysium who outright states on their bio "Mortal or angel, male or female – I am above such primitive distinctions.” And they look the part with an androgynous look that remains even in their alternate skins.
• Catherine: The Updated Re Release introduces Rin or Qatherine, who looks like a cute girl, but is revealed to actually be a crossdressing boy, much to Vincent's shock (though he can get over this). Except that's still only half-true. Rin actually belongs to an alien species that humans consider angels and has only shapeshifted into human form to help save those trapped in nightmares.
• Control, with its plot revolving around The Men in Black running an Artifact Collection Agency, naturally features a good number of cosmic horrors from beyond our reality, including some friendly ones; and some of these cosmic horrors, like The Board and FORMER, explicitly or implicitly exist outside the concept of sex and gender simply because of how incomprehensible they are. Interestingly, some other eldritch presences in the game are aversions; for example, another of them - Polaris - is always referred to as female.
• The Ultarians from Cthulhu Saves the World are green-furred felinoid aliens who are described by Paws, one of their members, as each having their own gender. Paws also tells Cthulhu's party that, for convenience, they can refer to him in particular as, well, "he".
• The Despair Embodied in Devil May Cry 2 is able to freely shapeshift between a male and female form, depending on its weapon of choice; the male uses a Flaming Sword, while the female brandishes a whip.
• Diablo:
  • According to Word of God, demons are genderless. Diablo's description in Heroes of the Storm outright says his gender is malleable. Within the games, Diablo's physiology is based partly on that of its mortal host.
  • Whereas the angels are always clearly male or female, as signified by their armor (and voices), demons are as likely to resemble a mass of spikey tentacles as any recognizable creature, and so applying gender to them is somewhat futile. Nevertheless, some are distinctly female (Andariel, Lilith, Cydaea, all succubi), which helps to explain how they were able to found a race of mortals by "comingling" with angels without requiring large amounts of Brain Bleach for the audience. What good these traits served before humans existed is another question.
• Spirits and demons in Dragon Age don't really have genders. In particular, Desire Demons take on a distinctly feminine form, but this is only to appeal to potential victims, and two such demons are referred to with male pronouns.
• In The Elder Scrolls series, this is technically true of most of the series' various deities, who are essentially genderless spirits. Most will take A Form You Are Comfortable With when dealing with mortals, however, and most stick to presenting as just one sex. A few exceptions to note:
  • Among the Daedric Princes, the et'Ada ("original spirits") who did not participate in the creation of Mundus, the mortal realm, several are known to change gender in different appearances. Boethiah, the Daedric Prince of Plots, has appeared variously as male or female. Even Boethiah's followers will sometimes refer to them with different pronouns in the same sentence. Mephala, a Daedric Prince whose sphere is obscured to mortals but is associated with manipulation and lies, is said to be a hermaphrodite, but is typically referred to as female. Hermaeus Mora, the Daedric Prince of Knowledge (specializing in eldritch knowledge), doesn't even try to resemble anything with a gender (although generally speaks with a deep male voice).
  • Y'ffre, the Bosmeri "God of the Forest" and the "Spirit of the Now", was one of the strongest of the et'Ada and is said to be the first to transform into the Ehlnofey, the "Earth Bones", which allowed for the laws of physics, nature, and life on Nirn. Different stories refer to Y'ffre as variously male or female.
• Fate/Grand Order:
  • The gender of Romulus=Quirinus is simply marked as "-" due to the fact that now that Romulus has been conceptualized as the ultimate being, characteristics that would apply to living beings or positions on Earth no longer apply to them. That being said, since they are still Romulus, they are treated with more of a masculine leaning.
  • Sorcerer Amakusa calls Beast VII "him" as he thinks it's Satan, but it later appears as the female Olga Marie, whose connection to it remains ambiguous. Since it didn't have a proper body until Olympus and it intended to use a Tree as its body, it's likely gender doesn't apply to the Foreign God.
• Final Fantasy:
  • The Cloud of Darkness from Final Fantasy III takes on an unmistakably feminine form, but "she" refers to "herself" using the Royal "We", and as an undying personification of the Void likely has no actual gender or sex. More prominent in her Dissidia Final Fantasy appearance, where in the sequel game exclusively calls the Cloud "it".
  • Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII was originally scripted to appear with feminine curves when his naked body is seen, to allude to his resemblance to his mother Jenova. This was eventually cut due to a desire to make Sephiroth conventionally attractive.
  • Adel in Final Fantasy VIII, a powerful sorceress imprisoned in space, is female but has a masculine body.
  • The pixies of Shadowbringers in Final Fantasy XIV are androgynous in appearance, and all use they/them pronouns. Feo Ul, the first of the fae that the Player Character meets, is referred to only in this manner for the entire game. This even extends to Titania, King of the Fairies. Despite wearing a long flowery dress and being distinctly more feminine in appearance, Titania is also referred to only with they/them pronouns.
  • Final Fantasy XVI's antagonist, Ultima certainly qualifies. Though voiced by a male actor across all languages, the character is referred to with neutral pronouns (they/them or even "it") and has a physical appearance with both masculine and feminine traits.
• In Hades, most of the Greek gods identify as either male or female, but Chaos is the notable exception. Chaos has a bizarre and androgynous appearance, speaks with a masculine and feminine voice simultaneously, and is referred to using they/them pronouns. Nyx calls them both her mother and her father.
• Minogame from Hellsinker is a sort of artificial god and his gender ambiguousness is constantly brought up as well as being a hermaphrodite. He is as a result always referred to as a male for convenience sake.
• In Mother 3, the Magypsies, whose only "life goal" is protecting the Seven Needles and who die when the Needle they must protect is pulled off, are described in-game as neither men nor women.
• The titular character in Ori and the Blind Forest is never referred to using singular pronouns, only ever plural pronouns when referring to Ori and their Exposition Fairy Sein. Ori's kind don't sexually reproduce, but they are usually referred to using gendered pronouns, making Ori a unique case in universe.
• In Pokémon, extraterrestrial Pokémon Deoxys, Jirachi, Solrock, Lunatone, Staryu and Starmie are genderless.
• Shin Megami Tensei:
  • Satan in the art used until Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse has clearly visible breasts, despite otherwise being masculine.
  • Persona 3: The Nyx Avatar. It is a Cosmic Entity who is referred as female and 'mother' multiple times in the game, but both of its human incarnation, Pharos and Ryoji, were male. When it shows up as the final boss, it's a quite androgynous being, with Ryoji's head and chest attached to a feminine looking body and outfit.
• Raven in Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind is of variable gender, and the Yanadling raven shaman Retva is both man and woman, something that your shamans consider evidence of powerful magic. Meanwhile, traditional Hyaloring shamans dress very androgynously by Hyaloring standards, in part because dealing with spirits is easier that way.
• Xaku from Warframe is the first warframe released to fall outside of gender binary, described by Lotus in their profile video using they/them pronouns and their codex description (until Update 33) having even began with "neither he nor she". They are also the most otherworldly, being assembled from multiple other warframes lost to the Void and possessing an array of abilities themed around the Void itself (complete with ominously sounding names), including one that reveals what they have underneath their skin — a skeleton flowing with Void energy.
• Xenoblade Chronicles: A series-wide example is the various incarnations of Ontos, one of the three cores in the Trinity Processor. Whereas the Logos core is masculine and manifests himself as Malos, and the Pneuma core is feminine and manifests herself as Pyra/Mythra, the Ontos core is the gender-neutral core. This is best demonstrated in how they manifest throughout the series: their first incarnation is Alvis, an androgynous male with effeminate mannerisms and a high voice for a male; Alpha, who has the same appearance and pronouns as Alvis, but is perfectly fine possessing a humanoid female for his ends; and A, who has a slightly more feminine appearance compared to the former, uses more masculine mannerisms, speaks in a husky voice, and is never refered to by any pronouns.

Visual Novels

• Oyashiro-sama from Higurashi: When They Cry. In the anime it's referred to as male. In the sound novels, as female since they're talking about Hanyuu, who is female. Its statue is very gender neutral too, in a religious way.

Webcomics

• In A-gnosis' comics on Classical Mythology, the god Dionysos has a non-binary gender identity and alternates between masculine and feminine clothing. A man in Anthesteria unwittingly calls Dionysos a Creepy Crossdresser and gets a hard lesson in why one doesn't insult gods.
• Ghouls in Bloody Urban have physical sexes but a much looser concept of gender than humans, and Word of God says they also have reproductive organs similar to those of the spotted hyena. Shaz, the only ghoul who has appeared in the comics so far, is extremely androgynous and alternates between male and female pronouns.
• Uryuoms in El Goonish Shive are naturally gender-neutral, being shapeshifters who reproduce by Bizarre Alien Biology, though those living on Earth often adopt (temporarily or permanently) the gender of their choice. Seyonolu (Uryuom hybrids) which are part human, such as Grace, can have a certain amount of gender-fluidity as well, especially if they can change sex.
• Kill Six Billion Demons:
  • While most lesser deities are associated with a specific gender, Top God Yisun is identified interchangeably with any, all, and no gender. Presumably, comprising the totality of everything that exists, everything that does not exist, and everything else puts one beyond such concerns.
  • Angels are completely inhuman and genderless in their true forms in the void, but interacting with mortals often cause them to develop a preference for a gender, which will in turn change their void form to reflect that. The more traditionalist angels consider this unnatural and profane, and encourage their kind to remain genderless. This is rather loaded with hypocricy and misoginy, however, as the issue of gender only seem to come up when an angel identifies as female; Even the most traditionalist angel 2 Michael refers to himself by male pronouns, and refers to the angels as a "brotherhood".
• Phantomarine: While Cheth is primarily referred to as male, he rarely restricts himself to a single gender and will wear any soul he pleases.
• Word of God confirms that Grimm, the cat-spirit that possesses Catharine in Sister Claire only has a gender when it is possessing someone and should be called "Them" rather than "It" when by themselves. Also makes sense with later revelations that show that Grimm is an amalgamation of Shards that were once abused children, so Grimm really is a "them."
• True Villains: The Gods are genderless, but it's common practice to refer to a god using the speaker's own gender, as it's "more personal".
• The spirits of Widdershins are manifestations of emotions, so gender is one of those curious human quirks that they don't quite get. Most obvious with Pride, who is referred to as "they", and Lust, who uses Humanshifting to assume both male and female bodies and whose true form is a vague, unfinished sketched-out humanoid figure.

Web Original

• The Noedolekcin Archives: Kirk Odd is an extraterrestrial being and is confirmed by Word of Gay to be genderfluid and aromantic.invoked

Western Animation

• Red Guy from Cow and Chicken and I Am Weasel is a jack-of-all-trades who can pull any kind of role of either gender... and not only that, whenever he plays a female, he clearly has a bust.
• Disenchantment: God is voiced by Phil LaMarr, but refuses to identify by any particular pronoun, only mentioning they created the pronoun "they" before "he" or "she".
• Yivo the interdimensional abomination from Futurama. Shkle uses shkler own neopronouns.
• The Owl House has The Collector, a Humanoid Abomination who looks like an androgynous child and uses both masculine and gender-neutral pronouns.
• Stevonnie from Steven Universe: Being a combination of a male human/Gem Steven and a human female Connie, Stevonnie is extremely attractive to both male and female characters. As Garnet states, Stevonnie is not "one person" or "two people", but "an experience", preserving the ambiguity of Stevonnie's gender.

Real Life

• The medieval Templar order of knights was disbanded and its leaders burnt for heresy due to allegations they really worshiped such a demon, one Baphomet, whose statues and representations conveniently turned up for the trial depicting a horned demon with beard, breasts and an erection that would have pleased erection-fanciers everywhere. Allegedly Baphomet, or the qualities he/she/it symbolizes is popular among the 19th and 20th Century occult.
• The Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten ci-devant Amenhotep IV, most famous for trying to change the nation to Atenism, is depicted in art with an unusually feminine figure, including wide hips; nearly every other Pharaoh is shown as a young, physically fit man, no matter what they looked like in reality. Some scholars believe Akhenaten was trying to invoke this trope as part of his religious reforms, while others think he just actually looked like this and didn't care if the artists showed it.

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