With the Death of the Old Gods, there is a gap that needs to fill. And nature abhors a vacuum.
Since humans didn't understand how things really worked during the old days, their gods would be how they explained these things. "Why is there thunder?" "The God of Thunder is angry at someone." This applies to all sorts of phenomena, like life and death, the seasons, the sun, earthquakes, and many other examples you'd find on the Stock Gods page.
With Modern Gods on the other hand, writers like to use them for things that wouldn't have existed in those days, but are very much prevalent or hold cultural significance today. Things like The Internet, Video Games, gun-culture, cell-phones, combustion-engine vehicles, Casual Interstellar Travel, penicillin, Political Ideologies, Free-Market Capitalism, Nuclear Weapons, Anime-Hentai, etc. Deus est Machina are very popular in Modern God pantheons because of this, technological innovation having changed the way people live so fundamentally that it would make sense to liken it to something miraculous.
When there are Modern Gods, there naturally has to be Older Gods too. Whether the Old Gods are still around or if they were all wiped out can vary between examples, but the relationship between the two is almost always antagonistic, not unlike the conflict between generations. The Modern Gods wouldn't want the Old Gods getting any worship now that they are the ones on top. They might even see the old faith as an existential threat to their newly minted seat at the table, not wanting the Old Gods to gain enough of their old strength to challenge them.
The reverse is equally likely, the Old Gods seeing this new pantheon manifest as heralding their downfall just as their reign peaks and wishing to smother their cult while it's still in its infancy. Since a lot of the old mythologies have a lot of Self-Fulfilling Prophecies, it's very likely that the Old Gods would have seen these Modern Gods replacing them and, in their attempts at preventing their downfall, ensure the Modern Gods rise to power in the first place.
When Rule of Symbolism is in effect, expect them to collectively embody "Progress" and "The Future" in the same way that the Old Gods represent "Tradition" and "The Past", the puny mortals they are so desperately fighting over caught in the crossfire.
Sub-Trope of Fantasy Pantheon and Our Gods Are Different. Contrast The Old Gods. See also Changing of the Guard, Deity of Human Origin and Deity of Mortal Creation.
Not to be confused with Modernized God, where old gods of religion and mythology are rebranded for the times.
Examples
- "I Illustrated Modern Gods
" is an article posted by Katarina Makarova on the online-magazine Bored Panda showing illustrations of gods associated with computers and the internet illustrated in a Classical/Neoclassical style, including a God of WiFi, God of Headphones, a God of Games And Virtual Reality, God of GPS, God of Smartphones, God of Social Networks and the Antivir Guardian.
- The DCU:
- The Candlemaker from Doom Patrol is the god of the fear of WWIII and the nuclear bomb. He was brought into reality by Dorothy Spinner as part of a Deal with the Devil and created a body in which to manifest himself through the Chief's nanobots.
- The New Gods are a race of alien beings who came into existence after Ragnarök destroyed the old pantheon (and the original planet they inhabited). From the original homeworld resulted in the two planets they inhabit — the utopian New Genesis and dystopian Apokolips, collectively called "The Fourth World" — who have endured an on-again, off-again conflict with each other for ages. Whether they're literal gods embodying platonic concepts or just Sufficiently Advanced Aliens vary Depending on the Writer, and the existence of various mythological characters in other DC Comics series like Wonder Woman and The Sandman (1989) confirm that the "Old Gods" are different from the kind known on Earth.
There came a time when the Old Gods died! The brave died with the cunning! The noble perished, locked in battle with the unleashed evil! It was the last day for them! An ancient era was passing in fiery holocaust! The final moment came with the fatal release of the indescribable power — which tore the home of the Old Gods asunder — split it in great halves — and filled the universe with the blinding death-flash of its destruction! In the end there were two giant molten bodies, spinning slow and barren — clean of all that had gone before — adrift in the fading sounds of cosmic thunder... Silence closed upon what had happened — a long, deep silence — wrapped in massive darkness... it was this way for an age... THEN — THERE WAS NEW LIGHT!
- The Metal from Swamp Thing is a metaphysical "kingdom" that had appeared with the advent of artificial intelligence in the 21st-century, embodying all mechanical life on Earth much in the way the Green embodies plant-life and the Red embodies animal-life. They are represented by the Rithm (also known as Calculus), a parliament of machine lifeforms that represents the Metal that manifest as a series of faceless humanoid robots in tailored suits.
- The Invisibles features a postmodern reimagining of religion and spirituality, so some of these appear once or twice. John Lennon has become the God of Psychaedelia, who can be accessed through Ganesh and sacramental LSD, and Papa Ghede takes the shape of a rapper artist to interact with the earthly plane.
- Marvel Universe:
- Hercules (2015): The Uprising Storm are a trio of gods who appeared to embody the dark sides of modern culture. They consist of Cryptomnesia, a god of the internet's knowledge; Horrorscope, embodying toxic beauty standards; and Catastrophobia, a war god with tricks like a Kill Sat. They tried to kill all the old gods, but Hercules defeated them with his allies.
- Journey into Mystery (Gillen): The Manchester Gods are a race of mythical beings that spontaneously appear in Otherworld (a sort of Portal Crossroad World that exists within the collective minds of the British Isles) who embody the Industrial Revolution and urbanization. They are treated as an existential threat to the other inhabitants of Otherworld, though it's later revealed that the Manchester Gods were hoping to usurp Otherworld's governing body politically, viewing the likes of Camelot and the Celtic Gods as antiquated and backwards.
- While the Old Gods in American Gods were gods of old religions brought to America through their worshippers, they had long since been kicked off of the proverbial seat of power by the New Gods, gods who came into being to fill the "faith gap" with an increasingly secularized world. Such gods include Technical Boy (God of the Internet), Media (Goddess of Pop Culture), the Spookshow (The Men in Black who embody conspiracy theories and act as enforcers of the New Gods), and various unnamed gods associated with railways, the film industry, currency, weaponry, ufology, medical science and so on. The crux of the book is Mr. Wednesday — originally known as Odin Allfather from Norse Mythology — urging his fellow Old Gods to wage a war on the New Gods to establish control over America's collective faith.
- Arcia Chronicles: The Lightbringers were seven deities who conquered the Constructed World of Tarra, killed its entire original pantheon, and ruled it for seven thousand years. Unfortunately, they were still subordinate to an even greater deity, the Throne of Light, so when it called them back, they had to leave Tarra behind with no more gods to protect it from cosmic dangers.
- Good Omens: The Four Horsepeople of the Apocalypse consist of Death, Famine, War, and Pollution, their original lineup's Pestilence having retired around the time penicillin was invented. Pollution's manifestation appears much younger than his counterparts.
- Magika Swordsman and Summoner: Unlike the other Pantheons in the world, The American Justice of North America represents "patriotic spirit" and have names like Super One and Frontier Spirit.
- The main antagonist of the Shadow Police series is The Smiling Man, the new God of Evil for the city of London. Whilst some of the Gods are figures from mythology (such as Brutus the Trojan, who became first king of Britain and founded London), the vast majority are representations of abstract concepts that are part of the city (such as the Rat King being god of all things lost, unwanted, forgotten or discarded). The Smiling Man being the representation of modern-day evil, representing all the greed, corruption, unquenchable first for power and cruelty of the City since the Industrial Revolution. Shortly after forming he murdered Lucifer and took over Hell and secretly kidnapped the souls of everyone who ever lived in City back to its founding to throw into Hell, then broke the metaphysical laws of the world so that now all its souls were damned upon death. Still not satisfied, his overall goal is to create enough chaos that the whole city will be plunged into Hell, for him to rule over for eternity.
- Like in the book, the New Gods in American Gods (2017) are presented as a pantheon currently in power in America, if-not the entire world. They are an Oddly Small Organization, Mr. World, Media and Technical Boy being the only members who aren't Old Gods who've been "rebranded" and even then, the Series Finale reveals that Mr. World and Technical Boy are themselves Old Gods, just newer versions of them. While the book presented them as merely embodying the status quo and was morally neutral, here they are portrayed as overtly malevolent, having constructed the modern era to keep mankind complacent so that they could feed on their time and attention, with Season 3 implying that they were building a "virtual church of the mind" that would erase all of the Old Gods from existence and mind-control everyone into blindly worshipping them forever.
- Santoshi Mata (or Santoshi Maa) first began being worshipped in the 1960s, and rose to prominence in 1975 after the film Jai Santoshi Maa (EN: Victory to Santoshi Maa) made her a household name. Unlike other gods in Hindu Mythology like Ganesha or Vishnu, she has no scriptural precedent, and appears to have been created whole cloth by a cult in Northern India, before ascending to become part of the Pan-Indian Hindu Pantheon.
- Japanese Mythology: Tama, a cat who was made the stationmaster of Kishi Station in Kinokawa, was posthumously given the title of "Eternal Stationmaster" and as deified as the spirit goddess Tama Daimyojin.
- It's common in more esoteric religions, like Chaos Magick, to venerate gods of 21st century technology or spirituality, politics, companies...
- Scion has the premise that player characters are demigods living in the modern day. While most pantheons to pick from are those of real polytheisms from around the world, the game also provides the "national pantheons" — Anthropomorphic Personifications of Allied nations of the Second World War, apparently fuelled by patriotic feelings rather than the old-school mode of worship. Covering the Modern Gods vs. Old Gods angle, the war between mortals is reflected by a divine conflict of the new national pantheons against the old Germanic, Greco-Roman and Japanese gods.
- Fear & Hunger: The New Gods, particularly a group of four known as the Fellowship, are mortals who ascended who desire to spread their influence over the world and maintain their divine power in place of The Old Gods, despite their relative lack of strength compared to their predecessors.
- Genshin Impact: Due to a variety of causes, five sevenths of the current Archons died and were replaced roughly 500 years prior to the start of the game. This created a new era of leadership and marks a shift in their society following the change of power.
- Neon Abyss is about Hades making war on the New Gods, who represent modern obsessions like Mobile Videos, Guns and Fast Food.
- While the more traditional hell-born demons in the Hellaverse like the Seven Deadly Sins or the Ars Goetia have been running Hell since its founding, the Overlords in Hazbin Hotel are a different story. They were all sinners who manage to stake a claim for themselves and accumulate authority and supernatural power through economic enterprise and Faustian Bargains with other sinners. In practice, these abilities manifest to suit their domain: Alastor the Radio Demon has a radio-voice and a host of other abilities, Vox (who runs screen-media) can teleport through cameras, has hypnotic abilities and can spy through any screen, and so on.
