Sandbox / Above the Gods

While gods are usually the most powerful forces/ entities in a given setting, this isn't always the case- sometimes there are beings out there that are so powerful, they are considered to be even greater than the gods. They may represent Big-G God in comparison to a Fantasy Pantheon of little-g gods, be Anthropomorphic Personifications of eternal concepts, or even abstractions of forces far too powerful for mortals to wrap their heads around. In other cases, they're even Eldritch Abominations. These sorts of beings usually don't interact much with our level of reality, though there are exceptions. Compare and contrast The Old Gods, the forerunners to the gods, however they don't necessarily have to be stronger than the gods and can still be classified as gods. The "God Of Gods" archetype of Top God might count assuming they aren't an official deity themselves

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Examples

Anime and Manga

• Dragon Ball
  • Kami is supposed to be god, Kaio-king is suposed to be Kami's god, and even he has his superiors... all of which are eventually overshadowed in power by Goku and the enemies he faces
  • Beerus, God of Destruction, is the strongest god of Universe 7. However even he is still far weaker than his attendant and martial arts trainer Whis, who is eventually revealed to be an angel. The Tournament of Power arc from Dragonball Super reveals the existence of Jiren, a mortal who's claim to fame is that he's stronger than his god of destruction.

Audio Plays

• The audioplay ''Spock vs. Q: The Sequel'' has Spock and Q trading powers and personality traits. Q has no idea how this could happen without his knowledge, given that he's supposed to be omnipotent. Eventually it's revealed to be the work of "Petunia", who reveals some cosmic truth to Q. Spock is interested, but Q can only say that "P" comes before "Q". Beings more powerful than members of the Q Continuum aren't exactly common.

Comic Books

• Marvel Comics is a Crossover Cosmology with gods from countless human and alien pantheons, with phenomenal cosmic power. However they are still lower in rank to the cosmic entities, who are the very forces of nature and cosmic powers that govern the universe. And even they answer to the Living Tribunal, the second-in-command to The One Above All itself.
• New Gods: The titular New Gods are a race of deities, with Darkseid and Highfather being the Top God of Apokolips and New Genesis respectively. However they're still inferior in power and stature to the Source, a cosmic force which created the New Gods and the universe in the first place, which lies beyond the impassible Source Wall.
• In The Sandman you're dealing with a Fantasy Kitchen Sink scenario, so there's gods to spare, including the monotheistic 'Christian' God. None of them can stack up to The Endless within their given purview, however, and most of them step rather carefully around them. Most of this comes from the fact that the gods are NOT, in fact, immortal - they can be destroyed, by various means. The Endless, meanwhile, are... ENDLESS - even if killed, which can only happen with the cooperation of one of their numbers, they are simply reborn with a new body within the hour. Mind, the gods tend to have much broader powers than the highly-specialized Endless, so the respect often goes both ways.

Literature

• The Arcia Chronicles have the Lightbringers, a group of seven deities who invaded Tarra over nine thousand years ago and killed off its Old Gods, placing them firmly among the divinity. That said, all seven serve an even more powerful entity known only as "the Light", which has called them back after seven millenia, leaving Tarra without any divine protection.
• In Brandon Sanderson's multiverse, several works feature powerful physical beings worshipped as divine, but the Shards of Adonalsium are more powerful than any of them.
• David Eddings really likes this one:
  • In The Belgariad, UL and the two opposing Destinies are much more powerful than the gods (the Destinies are exactly equal in power; how they stack up to UL isn't elaborated on).
  • In The Elenium, there's Bhelliom (bound in the form of the local MacGuffin for most of the books) and its opposite number Klael.
  • The Dreamers has the original male and female creative powers embodied as the peasant couple Ara and Omago.
• Played with in The Death Gate Cycle. The Sartan and Patryn races aren't technically gods, but consider themselves to be such- and get a nasty shock when they learn that there are things more powerful than them out there.
• In Discworld, there are occasional references to entities known as "The Old High Ones". First mentioned in The Colour of Magic, they intervened in the first Mage War, forcing the Disc Gods to acknowledge an authority higher than themselves and rewriting the laws of magic so as to limit the power of human wizards and prevent them from destroying the Disc. The only Old High One ever named or given any characterisation is Azrael "the Death of Universes"; it is said that entire nebulae of galaxies are but a glint in Azrael's eyes, that all manifestations of Death are merely his reflections, and that he is the keeper of the Universal Clock, which is the logical opposite of a clock in that it tells Time what it is and not the other way around.
• The Faerie Queens in The Dresden Files are as good as gods, but the Faerie Mothers (formally, the Queens Who Were) are an order of magnitude stronger, though they seem to be pretty restricted in how they can use their power, and don't do much during their one appearance other than offer some cryptic advice.
• In H. P. Lovecraft's Dream Quest to Unknown Kadath the Outer Gods and their messenger Nyarlathotep are far more powerful than the gods of Dreamland (Nyarlathotep can instantly summon all the gods back to their proper place on mount Kadath with the snap of his fingers). The Outer Gods also appear in the Cthulhu Mythos and are also far more powerful than the Great Old Ones (the Old Ones aren't technically gods, but are worshipped as such by numerous cults). Cthulhu may be able to drive mankind to insanity and death when he wakes up, but the Outer Gods include beings that can create and unmake entire universes or exist in every point in space and time at once.
• Literature/Everworld: Ka Anor is an alien god that can eat other gods, making him The Dreaded among the gods of Everworld.
• N. K. Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy: The Primordial Chaos of the Maelstrom created the three Top Gods, who in turn created the universe and all the lesser godlings. Not even the Three can get close to the Maelstrom without being reabsorbed, so it's unknown whether it's even sentient. The godling Kahl attempts to evoke the Maelstrom in his bid to become a God.
• In the Mithgar books, the Fates are said to be above the gods, and the Great Creator is above them. Whether or not any of these exist as discreet entities or just abstractions is left ambiguous.
• In Percy Jackson and the Olympians, the gods are feared by mortals for their ability to vaporize them with so much as a fingersnap. The gods fear their ancestors, the Protogenoi, the primordial entities that created the Earth and the rest of the universe. They're particularly on edge around Gaia, the embodiment of Earth itself, who has been plotting to overthrow them for millennia and are only spared by the fact that she's asleep and not at full power. The protagonists' job is to make sure she stays asleep, lest she begin The End of the World as We Know It.
• In The Silmarillion, the Valar are a pantheon of immensely powerful entities that can be considered gods, but Eru Iluvatar, Arda's true monotheistic deity, is far more powerful than them (and created them in the first place). Melkor's inability to accept that causes him to become the Satanic Archetype of the story. Ungoliant might also be a manifestation of a higher dark power, or just a particularly unpleasant demon- Tolkien never really elaborated much on her origin.

Mythology and Religion

• Classical Mythology: The Ancient Greeks believed that You Can't Fight Fate. This didn't just apply to mortals, but even the gods were subject to fate's will. And whenever a god attempts to Screw Destiny it'll only lead to it anyway, such as Titan Cronus devouring his children to avoid his own father's warning they'll overthrow him, only for that to lead them to do just that.
• Norse Mythology: Similar to the Greek gods, the Norse gods are subject to the will of fate. Odin is concerned with defying fate to avoid Ragnarok, only for it to inevitably come despite his best efforts.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons: Basic D&D Immortals rules. The Immortals are the BD&D equivalent of deities. The Old Ones are a group of extremely powerful beings who as to the Immortals as the Immortals are to mortals. If someone becomes an Immortal and reaches the highest level of Immortality twice, they can join the Old Ones.

Video Games

• Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star: Around 14,000 years ago (from modern Earth time), gods existed as physical beings that walked the Earth. Then an extraterrestrial being called "Sefar" came, killed many of those gods and caused major devastation before it's defeated. It results in the first decline of the "Age of Gods".
• In Mortal Kombat, the Elder Gods existed along an entity known as the One Being, who constantly fed off of their essence in order to sustain itself. In order to save themselves, the Elder Gods cooperated to weaken its omnipotence and divided the One Being into the realms (and by proxy, the six Kamidogu as seen in Mortal Kombat: Deception). Merging all of the known realms together will eventually reawaken the One Being and it's hinted in later games that the likes of Shao Kahn and Onaga are being influenced by it in their conquest of the realms.
• Touhou Project: While there are a few gods, messiahs and divine-descended people running around of immense power running around (belonging to Shinto, Buddhist, Taoist and even Greek pantheons), it's accepted that the Dragon who created Gensokyo (and has never been seen) outstrips them all by far.

Webcomics

• The Snarl, resident Eldritch Abomination from The Order Of The Stick, is so much more powerful than the gods that it wiped out an entire pantheon in minutes. The remaining gods were able to beat it, but only because it's completely brainless in spite of its power.