Hoid Break a Man in Pieces and Put Together Again Adonalsium

"The fact that nosotros exist is proof that God is motivated to act in some way. And since but the claiming of self-destruction could interest an almighty God, it stands to reason that we... are God'south debris."

Is there a God? What happens afterwards we die? Why does energy fuel everything? Is there such a thing every bit a soul, and how does it fit into things?

Real Life poses these and other heavy, unanswerable questions, and philosophy sets out to respond them. One trope that attempts to respond all four questions is the idea that everyone and everything has a soul, and each is a piece of God. God is Dead (simply not expressionless plenty), or consciousness/physics is only God attempting to reform Itself into one coherent mass again.

Which raises the question, why is God in pieces? The answer might never be revealed. If it is, it ordinarily has to do with God wanting to imbue a piece of Itself (in these stories, God is unlikely to exist described with a gender) in creation. God sacrifices Its Omnipotence to imbue a divine free energy that allows for intelligence in all beings. By sacrificing Its individual self, God becomes a Prometheus bringing life to all. Another possibility is that God wants to use a wheel of Reincarnation and afterlives to "level up" by gaining the accumulated wisdom of humanity, and in the process make the soul-fragments wiser and kinder. Finally, it may exist that God finer became then bored of being all-knowing and all-powerful that It committed a Seen-It-All Suicide (in which case, assembling God anew may or may not be a good idea).

Of course, God might not have intended this at all. If in that location is a God of Evil, it may have "slain" God while weak subsequently making cosmos, and/or imprisoned It in Plot Coupons and Catholic Keystones. Reuniting these fragments may unleash the Sealed Good in a Can and gear up any flaws Inherent in the Organization. Only if God Is Evil, it may crusade very bad things to happen.

This cosmic ready can become very morally gray if God intends Universal Reconciliation with all of Itself, ending all individuality. The protagonists won't know if it will cause everyone to turn into a Hive Mind, or cease all individual weaknesses and suffering.

In Real Life theology, this system of belief is referred to as Pantheism or Pandeism.

Here exist spoilers.

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Examples:

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    Anime & Manga

• In three×3 Eyes, Big Bad Shiva, aka Kaiyanwang, the emperor of the Triclops and God of Destruction, reveals to Yakumo and Amara that all Sanzhiyan like himself conduct a piece of the "Corking Light" (which he directly compare to God) which, at ane point in time, decided to split and inhabit Earth and its parallel globe, the Sacred Identify, forming the Triclops. Nonetheless, the Triclops who underwent the Humanization Ritual went to Earth and mated with the local humanoid primates, giving birth to humans and passing down the Great Light to them. Every bit a result, he felt that the light has been tainted by the human flaws and corruption and now wants to go back at being one unmarried volition and roam the cosmos. To this terminate, Kaiyanwang intend to harvest the Light from the humans, using the Spell of Destruction (which turns them into grotesque, inanimated only technically still living husks) to accept back the calorie-free and afterwards merge with it, causing The Terminate of the World as We Know It. Unusually a few of the proficient guys genuinely enquire themselves if this is really a bad thing.
• The Arm Of Kannon series revolves around the pieces of a godlike being that ended upwardly on World and the various people that desire to exploit them or seal them abroad.
• In the Thousand Year Blood War for Bleach, we have Yhwach, who is the major enemy, and the original Quincy. The reason all other Quincies exist is because he shared pieces of his soul with them. These soul fragments become their Quincy powers. And this soul fragment is technically now a part of the Quincy, so any offspring inherit the Quincy power as well. Yhwach is associated by many Quincies with the Christian God, partly because of this. Yet, when a Quincy actually dies, they lose that slice of soul, which goes back to Yhwach. Also, if Yhwach feels the need to, he can forcibly remove his soul fragment, with the side effect of killing the Quincy. He has caused at least two massacres by removing Quincy powers en masse.
  • The same thing happens with the Soul King as information technology'southward revealed. Multiple characters - from Ukitake to Matsumoto to even several antagonists (like Pernida and Gerard Valkyrie) are pieces of the Soul King.
• In Encarmine Cantankerous, God's Inheritences are artifacts that comprise pieces/fragments of God's power, and various "God candidates" are trying to gather them so they can use that power to become the next God.
• In Lawmaking Geass, God is the collective unconscious of all humans from the past, present, and time to come. In season ii, Emperor Charles reveals that his ultimate goal is to kill God, essentially merging all of humanity'southward minds and souls into one eternal being, which would permit him to never take to deal with losing a loved one. Withal, Lelouch objects to his haughty ideals, assertive that if such a affair were to occur, humanity would lose its individuality and sense of self, instead using his Geass to brand God resist Charles' attempt to slay it, and information technology in turn destroys Charles and Marianne for their hubris.
• In the Fullmetal Alchemist-poetry, information technology's revealed that humans concur a slice of the Gate of Truth as part of their soul, with Alchemists' being particularly potent and allowing them admission to Alchemy. Ed uses this to his benefit in the climax when he willingly gives upward his piece of the Gate (and thus his power to perform Abracadabra) in return for Alphonse, which Truth accepts as Equivalent Commutation.
  • The 2003 anime version'south Gecko Ending also uses this explanation, in some different ways. Among other things, it explains why their homonculi, existence The Soulless, cannot perform Abracadabra. Wrath is an exception because he's using Edward'southward arm.
• In Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure Steel Ball Run, the seventh function of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, the plot heavily centers around collecting the parts of a corpse that, when merged with someone, grants them a Stand; collecting the whole corpse will grant an ultimate power to the wielder. It's never specified who the corpse belongs to; though they are described as belonging to "a saint," information technology's heavily implied that they actually vest to Jesus Christ himself .
• Naruto: All chakra used by humans originated from the God-Tree and was stolen when Kaguya Otsutsuki ate its Forbidden Fruit. She passed the stolen power to her children, the Sage of Six Paths and his brother, who then shared it with humanity. Kaguya became greedy and merged with the God-Tree to have back the stolen chakra, becoming a mindless brute called the Juubi. The Sage of Half-dozen Paths along with his brother subjugated information technology, sealing its chakra into his own body and creating the moon to act every bit a tomb for its torso. The Sage subsequently separate the Juubi's chakra and used it to create the nine Bijuu while the Sage'due south brother took their clan to guard the moon. Madara'due south finish game relies on collecting the bijuu, restoring the Juubi, and using its power to his own ends.
• Out of all things, this is how Fragments works in NEEDLESS: each Fragment is a piece of power of a person named "Christ 2d". There are two ^annotation Add Saten in the anime adaptation characters whose Fragment, whose goal in life is Ability Copying all the Fragments, and each of them has certain degree of A God Am I. Dissimilar most other examples in this page (which are DEEP or at to the lowest degree trying to pose themselves as and so), this is generally Played for Laughs (and not the Blackness Humor kind).
• Neon Genesis Evangelion, where all life on World started out as the leaked blood of an Eldritch Abomination that Seele calls Lilith, which became a primordial soup that developed multiple personalities and thus separate into multiple entities. Also, according to Seele's Secret Dead Ocean Scrolls, Lilith and Adam (creator of the Angels) were dissever creations of a mysterious "First Ancestral Race" (which they consider to exist God), each given 1 half of their abilities (the Fruit of Life for the Angels, and the Fruit of Noesis for Humanity) and never intended to come in contact with each other. Virtually of the factions in the series are attempting Assimilation Plots which involve combining humans, Angels, and/or their progenitors into a godlike being under their command.
• In The Rising of the Shield Hero spider web novel continuity it's revealed that gods have the ability to create fragments of their souls which tin can then incarnate as mortals and live a life before returning to their creator. The main example of this is Medea, the spider web novel's Big Bag. She has seeded multiple worlds with her fragments, such as Princess Malty, to sow discord and anarchy while she prepares the worlds for devastation.
• R.O.D the Television set has The absurdly powerful British Library which is lead by The Gentleman, a Reality Warper of considerable ability. Even he ages, though, and in desperation to keep him alive, they transfer his essence into multiple books (which get scattered) until they can notice a host body capable of containing his mind.
• Slayers has the world's equivalent of Satan, Cherry-red-Middle Shabranigdo, divide into seven pieces and sealed away into human souls; one is sealed in a Grim Up N, and some other was destroyed during the series past Lina and her allies twice. A third slice was destroyed in the final book of the original lite novel series every bit well. The God equivalent Ceifeed is allegedly gone for good, but fragments of him occasionally are born in others, branding them his knights, including Lina'due south sis Luna. How this works is unknown. Of one lesser god, Ragradia, two fragments survived: ane looks similar a trivial female Yoda, and the other resides in an immortal human being known as the Eternal Queen of Zephilia.
  • Additionally, the very textile of each universe in the Slayers Multiverse is a part of the body of the story's ultimate God, the Lord of Nightmares. Why she gave up her body to brand this is unknown, merely giving her body back by destroying the "axis" holding the universes is the ultimate goal of all demons.

    Comic Books

• The DC Universe (well, multiverse) is the same manner; originally one universe that got split due to a very sick-advised experiment to notice cosmos.
• In one The Defenders story, Eternity, a Cosmic Entity who embodies the universe, decided to send pieces of itself to Earth, in human being forms and with no memories, to "experience" humanity. Afterward he returned their memories and about of them re-merged with him, thus giving him humanity by proxy. However, three of the pieces were missing, and he had the Defenders find out who had stolen them. The heroes find out that nobody had stolen them — they were hiding because they loved being human too much and didn't want to merge with Eternity again. However, the Defender Nighthawk called them on how selfish they were being, since an incomplete Eternity would cause chaos on Earth eventually, pregnant they hadn't actually learned to care after all. Realizing their error, the fragments then rejoined Eternity.
• Something vaguely analogous happens in Earth X, where the various alternate universes are fragments of the ane original creation. The Elders of the Universe are trying to re-merge them back into a single universe, ignoring the fact that the inhabitants of the existing universes will lose their individuality in the process. Yet, in that location were clearly many different beings in the original universe besides.
• In Justice League: Heaven's Ladder, godlike aliens who accept no religious beliefs of their own send "sleeper agents" to diverse planets -including Earth- and so they can larn virtually Religion; then they collect them and use their collective beliefs to... ''create their own afterlife!''
• The Infinity Gems in the Marvel Universe are the remnants of a god that committed suicide from loneliness afterward creating the universe. There is a seventh precious stone that contains its Ego.
• In New X-Men, Jean Greyness uses Cerebra to take a dying Charles Xavier's consciousness and put a fragment of information technology into the mind of every mutant on Earth. Then he's able to retake his own trunk when Cassandra Nova uses Cerebra to achieve out to every mutant at one time, in an try to Kill 'Em All. He's not a god, though.
• Promethea brings near The Finish of the World as We Know It and causes every human to merge their divine soul. The outcome? People are withal individuals, but the spiritual reunification brings everyone to change their perspectives and brand the world a ameliorate place.
• The graphic symbol Murphy in PS238 is the largest remaining fragment of some manner of god of dreams and visions (read: a Captain Ersatz of Morpheus) who was shattered by some manner of powerful foe. As a fragment he possesses a human-level intellect and some small powers of prophecy and clairvoyance. He is currently attention PS238 while waiting for other fragments to find him or vice versa.
• In the last arc of X-Man, it's revealed that several of the characters in the arc encountered past Nate were, in fact, one person from the Brilliant City who'd escaped her enemy - the arc's villain - by splintering herself across the Multiverse. Nate, being possibly the about powerful Telepath in Marvel's multiverse at this betoken, put her dorsum together.

    Fan Works

• Antipodes: One of the story'southward driving points is that the aboriginal cataclysm that ended Equestria shattered its two goddesses, Celestia and Luna, into three "pieces" each — or, more properly, into three clusters of magic and soul. These concluded upwards scattered across the globe, some advisedly hidden away while others were found and used as ways to power and protect surviving holdouts of civilization. After Jigsaw finds and accidentally absorbs ane of these fragments, the characters prepare out to runway them all downward and bring them together so that the ancient goddesses can be whole over again.
• The Bridge: It turns out that Harmony divided her power upwardly while keeping almost xxx-forty percent of her full ability. The Elements, Rainbow Powers, Celestia, and Luna are all those pieces she carve up off. According to Word of God, she's capable of recalling them whenever she wants to, just given at least two of those things are sapient beings, that is obviously something she doesn't want to exercise.
• Child of the Storm: It transpires that the Phoenix imbues fragments of Herself into chosen hosts — and, furthermore, that there are more than fragments lying around, in various forms, than there are hosts. One is hinted to be Laevateinn a.grand.a. the phoenix plume Odin gave Harry. Another, nevertheless, is later confirmed to be Lily'southward protection on Harry, while yet another was stolen by the offset Dark Phoenix, Surtur. Information technology's the latter ii that cause problems.
• There Was Once an Avenger from Krypton: Pollen explains at one point that the Kwamis were all function of a singular being, and that they've always felt a pull, similar that entity would similar to become i again. Part of why the Miraculous were made, and the Kwamis bound to follow the orders of those who wield them, was so they'd exist unable to undergo that reunification without the prompting of their Holders, but it just passed that pull onto them. The official Kryptonverse timeline reveals that this beingness was a Celestial.
• The Weaver Option: Slaanesh was created by a ritual that fused six essences into a single deity. They're killed when Cegorach severs the essences from one some other; four are stolen by Anarchy Gods while Cegorach claims the other two, ensuring that the so-divided deity can never be reborn. Cegorach plans to apply the two essences he claimed to nascence new Eldar gods.

    Films — Alive-Activeness

• In Avatar, this overlaps with the concept of Gaia: Everyone is connected to the web of life. Cheers to Phlebotinum and ponytail nerve clusters!

  "All life on Pandora is tied together via nerve-like connections, making the entire ecosystem one giant living entity... or god, if you lot like. "

• TRON universe: the closest nosotros get to an explanation of the computer world'south resemblance to the human one is when Encom founder Walter Gibbs rants at Dillinger. An odd example, as humans are the Gods in question.

  Gibbs: You can remove men like Alan and me from the system, but we helped create it, and our spirit remains in every program nosotros blueprint!

    Literature

• In the book Cats Have No Lord, the creator split into the gods of all aspects of the globe to create the world, and planned to reunite (destroying the world in doing so) but the God of Cats is missing, and thus the earth continues to exist. One of the heroes is sworn to serve and rescue the Cat God, and is being manipulated by a cult that believes they are obligated to allow God'due south programme to continue, even at the cost of the cease of all beingness. In the end, the heroes Have a Third Selection by replacing the Cat God in his exile with the Wolf God (who was trying to kill them).
• In the Corum books by Michael Moorcock, it'southward Lampshaded. Corum uses the Mitt of Kwll (which has been grafted to his own mortal wrist) to pick of the Middle of Arioch, and muses, "The world seems full of fragments of Gods."
• The Cosmere:
  • There are effectively 16 Gods, called Shards, which are pieces of something called Adonalsium. Who or what exactly Adonalsium was is unclear, merely it was Shattered millennia ago. The Shards are humans who have taken a piece of this ability, each one representing a particular aspect of Adonalsium, referred to as an Intent. Given time, the original man personality is lost and the Shard acts only in accordance with their Intent.
  • These Shards can too be separate, either by the holder putting pieces of their power into things, or by existence "Splintered", commonly by human action of other Shards, meaning that the holder of a shard is killed and the power is broken apart. The power isn't destroyed regardless of what happens, just a Splintered shard is significantly less effective without witting direction.
  • In Mistborn trilogy, the Shards Ruin and Preservation are combined together into a single deity, indicating that is (at least theoretically) possible to gather and recombined the shards.
  • The Returned of Warbreaker are empowered by Splinters of power from a Shard called Endowment. They are also worshiped as gods in Hallandren, meaning they're gods who are actually pieces of a god that is actually a slice of a god.
  • The Seons and the Skaze from Elantris are also Splinters (or something very close) of two Shards chosen Devotion and Rule (one time held by Aona and Skai, respectively). The two Shards were splintered, simply their power is yet present on the planet, known collectively as the Dor. All varieties of magic in Elantris involving tapping into this power source in a variety of means. They were splintered when Odium, another Shard, came to the planet they were on and defeated them somehow.
  • The spren from The Stormlight Annal are pieces of three other Shards, Honour, Odium and Cultivation. The Stormfather in particular is the largest piece of the dead God Honor.
• A non-supernatural case in the Eldraeverse; the Eldraeic Transcend is a Deus Est Machina which runs a tiny Hive Mind fragment of itself inside each of its members - thus enabling it to know exactly what each of them desires, fears, needs, etc.
• Though it's never quite stated explicitly, Unity in the Galactic Milieu Trilogy is rather deific- a sort of gestalt conciousness formed of all the metapsychics in existence, which they can commune with.
• The appropriately named God's Debris
• His Dark Materials uses this. The Authority is really not the creator simply the first manifestation of Grit which turns out to exist the source of all consciousness.
• The Hitchhiker'due south Guide to the Galaxy mentioned a race that believes that the universe is the outcome of the Great Green Arkleseizure sneezing and lives in fearfulness of the time they call the Coming of the Corking White Handkerchief.
• In Keys to the Kingdom, the Will of the Architect is broken up into seven pieces that take the forms of sentient animals. When they meet up, they recombine, the original animal'south personality being subsumed in the procedure. When all seven animals are reunited, the Will turns out to exist the Architect of all cosmos.
• Edgar Allan Poe wrote this in a philosophical slice called "Mesmeric Revelation". Unusually, Poe proposed that the reunification of God would exist a bad thing—since creation is good, and reunification would render it a wasted effort.
• Bruce Coville's My Teacher Is an Conflicting series has a variation on this. Apparently humans aren't pieces of God, exactly, but they are pieces of a Hive Mind planetwide intelligence. Humans were poised to get the smartest, more often than not greatest race in the known universe until the telepathic din became unbearable and early humans unconsciously lobotomized themselves to shut each other out.
• Harlan Ellison'due south The Region Between proposes that we all subconsciously know that nosotros were once part of God, and then we all lust after power and control as a means of trying to recreate the feeling of omnipotence. God himself is notwithstanding present in crippled class, but he's hopelessly insane, and ends it all in a Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum.
• Adherents of the Circle in The Shattered World believe that mortals' souls are fragments of a single Oversoul, which carve up apart much like the planet itself. Unlike most examples, this isn't actually implied to be true, just a theological notion based on how the globe was cleaved up.
• In Star Wars Legends, the Mandalorians believe that all who follow the manner of their civilisation are part of the manda or oversoul. To turn i'south back on the Mandalorian culture is to lose contact with this greater, shared bail and is considered less than nothing. To an extent, the Force could also be considered this, with every living being existence office of the Strength (the jury'due south out on whether the Vong were actually an exception).
• Sufficiently Advanced Magic (2017): Corin'southward country teaches that the Visages are all shadows of the unmarried divine goddess. Other countries believe that they are a family of bottom gods, or that they are mortals who reached the tops of the towers and gained incredible power.
• In The Sundering, the universe is the broken body of the primordial deity.
• In H. P. Lovecraft's story "Through the Gates of the Silver Primal", Randolph Carter learns that all conscious beings are actually tiny aspects of Eldritch Abominations outside fourth dimension and space, granted the illusion of individuality past their limited perception of the universe. Facing the Great Old Ane Yog-Sothoth, he realizes that he and it are the same being.
• White Apples by Jonathan Carroll is a perfect example of this trope, the gist beingness that God Asplode to make the universe, and when we dice we become part of "the mosaic" which is God, who then promptly asplode once again when the mosaic is complete.

    Live-Action TV

• In Babylon 5, Delenn said something similar, paraphrasing a argument fabricated by Carl Sagan in Creation: A Personal Voyage.

  Delenn: Then I volition tell y'all a groovy hole-and-corner, Helm. Perhaps the greatest of all time. The molecules of your body are the aforementioned molecules that make upwards this station and the nebula outside, that burn inside the stars themselves. We are starstuff, we are the universe fabricated manifest, trying to figure itself out. Every bit we have both learned, sometimes the universe requires a change of perspective.

• Past virtue of making the franchise tradition of the Combining Mecha into the series' equivalent of God, the Guardian Beasts of Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger are an instance of this. Commonly, information technology's but the core five, whose combined grade, Daizyujin, is the sort of default form of this deity. Later in the show, two more pieces are revealed and create iii more combinations, the last involving all seven to create the god'south true form, Ultimate Daizyujin.
• Lost has the Island, the primordial source of all life energy. Since the show is most the inherent subjectivity of existence, information technology's kept intentionally vague, but it tin be interpreted as many different philosophies like Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, Jungian psychology, and more than (simply accept a peek at the Philosophy & Faith folder).
• Ane possible Object Origin in The Lost Room.

    Myths & Religion

• The Adam Kadmon theory literally says we are Pieces of God.
• Carl Jung's idea of a "commonage unconscious". Basically, the collective unconscious is an Akashic Record-like entity which takes the form of a Freudian Unconscious on a catholic, impersonal, universal scale. It brings forth our conscious psychic feel through trope-like archetypes. Although your mileage may vary, if you consider the collective unconscious as "God", since it'due south after all a Listen Screw to fully explain here on This Very Wiki. Jung, though, was very interested in explaining it away every bit quantum physics, entanglement theory, et cetera, and actually discussed the bailiwick with pantheist Albert Einstein.
• Sufism, a co-operative of Islam that incorporated concepts from Bharat, maintains that the entire physical universe is a part of God.
• Other religions take things like God is a giant bird who laid the universe as an egg.
• In Chinese mythology, everything between the sky and world is parts of the body of the first god, Pangu, who was formed from primordial chaos, and in turn split the heaven and globe from each other over thousands of years.
• Pantheism, monism are the ground of many mainstream philosophies.
• Deism sometimes believes in God as a metaphor for the nature of the universe. Pandeism is a subset of both Deism and Pantheism which explicitly believes this.
• Stoicism (non necessarily that one) maintained that everyone in the world had a spark of Divine Burn in them, which subsequently death went back to rejoin the omnipotent World Soul.
• Quakers believe that God, Jesus, or the Light is in everyone, and so they preach nonviolence (would you kill God?), equality (well, if God's in everyone...), and integrity (would you lie to God?).
• Some believe that Jesus Christ himself was a piece of God,considering Jesus'southward quotes stating that he is lesser than God,just simultaneously IS Him.
• Loosely in Norse Mythology and it'due south modernistic reconstruction; the world tree Yggdrasil and the 7 worlds (two worlds are not part of Yggdrasil) originate from the behemothic Ymer whose trunk was cut into pieces by Odin and his brothers to make the universe.
• The thought behind Paramatman in Hindu idea is that there is sort of a Universe Soul, and Atman are private souls.
• The Body of Christ, in Christianity, is a possible candidate for this. Each person is viewed as a distinct part of Christ, with a distinct purpose.
• Like in Hinduism, New Age describes God as condign everything and everyone to further explore and feel consciousness.
• Gnosticism believes that the Monads are tiny parts of the Accented, the God of pure light that predates past far the Universe and that is not really the Creator, the Creator is an evil (or at least stupid) being known as the Demiurge who is the grandson of the God of Low-cal (son of the Goddess Sophia, daughter of the God of Light) who fabricated the universe out of ego (and aye, this Demiurge is the biblical Yaveh) simply equally is incapable of creating life on his own, he took these tiny pieces of God and trapped them into flesh bodies thus creating humans. The ultimate goal of Gnosticism is to release the Monad from the mankind prision and re-bring together the God of Calorie-free.

    Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • In the iii.5 sourcebook Frostburn, the rimefire eidolons are the living manifestations of the ancient winter deity Hleid, who landed in the polar seas after she was struck down ages agone by her nemesis Iborighu.
  • The crystalline shardminds of quaternary edition are a variant of this. While it's not articulate that the Living Gate from whose destruction during the cataclysmic Dawn War they sprung was necessarily a god, it did have the important cosmic office of keeping the eldritch abominations of the Far Realm out of the known multiverse. The shardminds themselves are still dedicated to the Living Gate'south original purpose and trying to rebuild information technology, just don't all agree on how to best go nigh that, which leads to conflict (specially with the Shard Slayer faction, whose favored method is killing as many shardminds as possible to release their animative life forces in hopes that they'll return to the Gate'southward original location). They're a player character race.
  • In 5th Edition, the dragon god Sardior was cleaved into countless fragments during the struggle between the draconic and humanoid gods. His pieces were scattered beyond the creation when the First Earth shattered into the worlds of the Textile Plane, and became the outset gem dragons. The gem dragons are thus considered to be the surviving form of Sardior's consciousness, and some of their number believe that they should try to bring Sardior together into a single whole again.
  • Forgotten Realms: At the height of the sarrukh empires, the World Ophidian fragmented into a host of reptilian deities in order to better address the myriad, contradictory demands of its worshipers. It is believed that the dragon god Io, the naga goddess Shekinester, and the couatl god Jazirian each represent the theme of the multiplicity of beingness, of which the Earth Ophidian was the archetype. Other known aspects include the lizardfolk gods Essylliss and Semuanya, M'daess, whose task was to purify the souls of unclean sacrifices and make them equivalent to sarrukh, the yuan-ti gods Merrshaulk and Sss'thasine'ss, and Ssharstrune, the naga god who embodied the principles of curiosity, devastation, and possessiveness that had precipitated the World Serpent'due south fragmentation. Additionally, the demiplane in which the Earth Serpent Inn is located is similarly believed to be a somnolent deity and fragment of the Earth Serpent whose dreams manifest in the class of intermittent portals to worlds to which its consciousness is drifting, only the truth of such theorize is unknown.
• The Earth of Darkness:
  • Mage: The Ascension: This is function of the Backstory. All human beings have a tiny spark of the divine in them (called the Avatar). Those who are Awakened are called Mages and can apply it to manipulate reality.
    • Fascinating in that a Soul is not in itself divine. Mages can brand souls, but these lack the divine aspect even the lowliest Muggle's soul carries. Of grade, all this means is they can never Awaken and become Mages. Except when they practice. Information technology is explicitly stated in the Technocracy books that Human Constructs (essentially clones or organic Ridiculously Human Robots) can go Awakened.
    • That same spark of the divine makes humans valuable to demons — humans accept Faith, which demons need to fuel their powers. Organized religion can be shared or taken, the demon's choice. The Karma Meter would prefer they have it shared.
  • Mage: The Enkindling has it that many mages believe that souls are fragments of the Supernal World that descended to the Material World and that return to the Supernal upon death, bringing their experiences back with them. Speculated reasons for this include the universe trying to understand itself, a punishment levied by mad or cruel gods, or a kind of self-imposed challenge. In terms of this model, the Awakening is merely the soul recalling its divine origin. The status of this cycle post-obit the Autumn is a subject of concern for some mages.
  • Mummy: The Curse used this likewise. Osiris has been scattered effectually the globe, and at that place's a bunch of Amenti trying to put him back together.
  • Vampire: The Masquerade: Ii of the Antediluvians (the grandchilder of Caine, extremely powerful and ancient vampires with almost godlike powers) are said to be "separate" and living in their Clans' members: Haqim, also called Assam, who lives in the blood of Assamites, and Malkav, who lives in the mind of Malkavians. This is by and large a Malkavian theory, and Malkavians are crazy, so this may or may not be really true.
• Warhammer forty,000:
  • The Eldar state of war god Khaine is literally in pieces — he was shattered by Khorne during the Fall of the Eldar, and his fragments reside in the modern Craftworlds as the Avatars of Khaine.
  • In some style, this also applies to the Immortal Emperor. There are implications — and in i The Inquisition War novels information technology was explicitly though unreliably stated — that this is what's happened to his conscious remnant, having split into dozens if not hundreds of personalities and fragments. There's the part that feeds the Astronomican, the fragments which influence the Emperor's Tarot, the parts that speak and give visions to his people, the tiny portions which are imbued within Astropaths during the Soul Binding, not to mention the vast amounts of effort needed to fight the Warp equally a whole, and in the broken Webway gate, with the Golden Throne itself serving as a psychic barrier. If the Emperor'southward body were to fully die, information technology'southward believed he may be reborn as the Star Child, a new god of the Warp loyal to Mankind... We hope. Or, he may be reincarnated. Or there might be a psychic apocalypse which destroys all life in the galaxy. Or perhaps the gibbering madness and incomparable evil of the Anarchy gods might be able to flow freely into the material globe, creating a new galaxy-sized Hell. Understandably, there is rather considerable in-universe controversy over whether the Emperor'southward decease would be a good matter..
  • The C'tan, the oldest known beings in the universe, got their asses handed to them past the Necrons and were shattered into dozens of Shards. The Shards are autonomous, acting every bit what are basically demigods, and the Necrons are trying to capture and tame them. Transcendant C'tan are what happens if as well many Shards merge together — if enough of them unite, they reform into the original C'tan. This is manifestly something the Necrons try to prevent at all costs.
  • Following his most-decease at the easily of Leman Russ, Magnus the Cerise shattered into dozens of Shards, each of which embodies a dissimilar aspect of his character and believes itself to be the existent Magnus. Ahriman spent a expert clamper of the Horus Heresy hunting down these Shards in order to put Magnus back together, but several of them could not exist found and so Magnus remained incomplete. In Ahriman: Unchanged, it'due south revealed that one of the Shards has been hiding inside Ahriman'due south listen for centuries without him knowing. Another Shard, representing Magnus'southward wrath, wants to complete the process and make itself the dominant aspect…

Warhammer: Historic period of Sigmar: Grimnir, the dwarven battle-god, picked a fight with a god-dragon named Vulkatrix, that ended with the two literally shattering each other into pieces. Their claret mixed to create the metal ur-gilt, and the explosion scattered said gold beyond all 8 Mortal Realms. The Fyreslayers, descendants of Grimnir's followers, accept learned to release Grimnir's essence from runes of ur-aureate, and channel it into powerful abilities, hoping that if they release all of it, they'll somewhen pb to Grimnir'southward ressurection. To that end, they've organized themselves into mercenary armies across the Realms, willing to fight for anyone who can pay them in ur-gold, or against anyone who tries to hoard it.

    Toys

• In BIONICLE, the robot torso of the Slap-up Spirit Mata Nui was a universe in itself, with many unlike races living on the continents within, unwittingly maintaining him — keeping him live. In render, he kept the bones forces of nature under check, and made their environment inhabitable, thus they (well, well-nigh of them) revered him as a god. Word of God compared information technology to a homo and his internal organs, all part of the same being. Withal to his creators, the Nifty Beings, Mata Nui was simply an instrument in their plans, and the beings inside him were only meant to keep him functioning as nanotech, not have conscience and build up a faith around him.
• Manifestly this is the true form of the Transformers' god Primus in some continuities. Each Transformer houses a tiny fragment of him known as a "spark" that returns to the collective known as the "All Spark" upon death to share knowledge and experience as role of his incomprehensibly circuitous program to bargain with his Evil Counterpart Unicron.

  And so there are the Alternity, Autobots and Maximals who have evolved to a bespeak where not only are they powerful and transcendent, they're actually connected to every other alternate version of themselves or something. Fifty-fifty more, they can actually induct said alternating selves into a semi-Instrumentality, retaining their individuality while becoming an avatar for their Alternity.

  • Nexus Prime, ane of the original xiii Transformers who fought to defeat Unicron in antiquity, is notable for existence the combined course of five separate, sentient Cybertronians with no cognition of their combined form. Sadly, they were forced to retake that course, sacrificing their private personalities and consciousnesses so Nexus Prime could return (basically, the good Mirror Universe Megatron had been killed and needed to be resurrected for plot reasons. I of the Thirteen tin do that; somehow, fifty-fifty the combined might of the guys who used to exist i of the Xiii can't.)
    • In some versions, each of the Thirteen is the offset Transformer of its kind, the antecedent of them all. For combiners, it's Nexus Prime.

    Video Games

• The lore of BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Tempest is filled to the brim with this. The internet's "First Presence," unsaid to be some kind of cyber-deity, had mixed feelings about humanity using its realm, so it split itself apart to try and settle the outcome. The two halves, Virtua and Legion, fought each other and concluded upward getting shattered themselves. Virtua (the practiced half) was split up into four pieces – iii of them became known as the internet'south goddesses, while the last and smallest piece became our Amnesiac Heroine Catie. Meanwhile, Legion'southward many fragments became the trickster race of Bearding. It'southward eventually revealed that all of these pieces are subconsciously trying to reunite and go whole again, and the True Ending path deals with the ramifications of that happening.
• According to the Creation Myth in Brütal Legend, everything in the Age of Metallic consists of four elements: Blood, Fire, Noise, and Metal. And those four are the remains of Ormagöden, an Eldritch Abomination-slash-Creator Deity: namely, his blood, spirit, roar, and mankind (all very tangible things in a world of Heavy Metal). In other words, pretty much everything you see in the game (including Eddie) is a piece of Ormagoden.
• Both played straight and somewhat played with in Dark Souls. Word of God states that Humanity are really pieces of the Dark Soul, the soul found by the Furtive Pygmy, the very commencement human. Played with in that humans have a soul in add-on to humanity.
  • Dark Souls II takes the concept nightmarishly further with Queen Nashandra. She's the smallest piece of Hand (who is itself implied to be the Pygmy post-Superpower Meltdown). Her goal is to reassemble herself and become whole again... and all the events of the game are the event of her attempts to do so. The question remains, nevertheless: Where are the other pieces?
  • It's implied the Darklurker is another such piece, every bit are Elana, the Squalid Queen from the Crown of the Sunken Male monarch DLC and Nadalia, the Bride of Ash from Crown of the Iron Rex DLC. Alsanna, the Silent Oracle, from the Crown of the Ivory Male monarch DLC is said to be the apotheosis of Mitt' fear, more or less on par with Nashandra, merely, remarkably, acting as her Good Counterpart, doing what she can to seal off the ruins of Lost Izalith and Former Chaos.
    • Karla, from Dark Souls III is likewise a fragment of Manus, but she's content to be a merchant, if not quite a good counterpart.
• Ghosts in Destiny are this in a more literal sense than well-nigh uses of this trope; during the Collapse the Traveler used the last bit of its fading forcefulness to expel thousands upon thousands of Ghosts to carry pieces of its Light and intelligence so that they could create the Guardians that would protect the Last City. Each Ghost is an entity unto itself, but they all are aligned with the Traveler and aid humanity in to struggle against The Darkness.
• After beating Dragon Quest IX, the almighty god Zenus is nowhere to exist found, just ten of the twelve postgame grotto bosses either country or imply that they are fragments of him.
• The Elder Scrolls
  • The Aedra and the Daedra tin can be viewed every bit this, with their spirits having emerged from the "spilled claret" of the God of Gods Anu and The Anti-God, his "twin brother", Padomay. Anu and Padomay are the anthropomorphized primordial forces of "stasis/order/calorie-free" and "alter/chaos/darkness", respectively. Their interplay in the great "void" of pre-creation led to creation itself. Cosmos, sometimes anthropomorphized as the female person entity "Nir", favored Anu, which angered Padomay. Padomay killed Nir and shattered the twelve worlds she gave nativity to. Anu then wounded Padomay, presuming him expressionless. Anu salvaged the pieces of the twelve worlds to create i world: Nirn. Padomay returned and wounded Anu, seeking to destroy Nirn. Anu then pulled Padomay and himself outside of time, catastrophe Padomay's threat to creation "forever". From the intermingling of their spilled blood came the "et'Ada", or "original spirits", who would go along to become either the Aedra or the Daedra depending on their actions during the cosmos of Mundus, the mortal plane. (Some myths land that the Aedra come from the mixed blood of Anu and Padomay, while the Daedra come purely from the blood of Padomay).
  • A highly plausible fan theory (with supporting prove in the serial' lore) for Skyrim is that the souls of all dragons, Alduin and the Dragonborn included, are fragments of the soul of Akatosh, the Aedric God of fourth dimension whose typical form in mythology is a dragon. When the Dragonborn (or any other dragon) absorbs the soul of another, it's really fragments of the Akatosh over-soul recombining.
• Last Fantasy VII had Sephiroth, named subsequently a concept from the Kabbalah (see higher up), directing his "clones" ( really just humans injected with Jenova cells) to render to him so he tin can reform himself as a god.
• In Final Fantasy 14, the dark god Zodiark was split into fourteen pieces by the light goddess Hydaelyn at the dawn of time. This also divide the earth into fourteen parallel universes, the Source and its thirteen Reflections, each of which holds a fragment of Zodiark. Zodiark'due south worshippers, the Ascians, have been trying to put their god back together past forcing these Reflections to merge with the Source in apocalyptic events called Rejoinings.
• In Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, information technology is revealed that Ashera, the goddess of Tellius, and Yune, the "dark god," are two halves of 1 goddess, Ashunera. When she lost control of her emotions from the fighting between the Beorc and the Laguz, she inadvertently started the Bang-up Flood. Later on that, she discarded her emotions to prevent another disaster similar that, creating Yune, with her beat becoming Ashera.
• In Grandia Ii, Valmar (the resident God of Evil) was long ago split into multiple parts, who as of the time of the game are taking human being hosts in an try to reunite and revive him.
• In Gyossait, Oyeatia tore the eponymous goddess to pieces in a fit of rage when she destroyed humanity. Pieces of Gyossait are powerful plenty to turn mortal men into pseudo-gods - as evidenced by Uzaza when he found the Heart of Gyossait.
• In Lusternia, this is how most of the many mortal races were created. The Elder Gods faced a Hopeless War against The Soulless Ones, and some chose to fragment their consciousness, creating "children" which retained qualities of their parent god. (Some Gods chose to flee into the Void rather than suffer this, however.) Though mortals can arise to become Demigods themselves, information technology's made articulate that their progenitors are for all intents and purposes expressionless, and can never be remade by reuniting their fragments. On the other mitt, since mortals can reproduce endlessly, and can all (potentially) become Demigods, they're collectively stronger than their "progenitor" God could be.
• The Last Sovereign: It's theorized in-game that the Shards that give the Incubus Kings their powers are pieces of a larger whole, whether these Shards are in fact fragments of the soul of the Divine Lustlord which the succubi worship is an even bigger question.
• All the realms in Mortal Kombat are created from the shattered consciousness (and maybe body) of the One Being, and if allowed to merge back into him, will consequence in The End of the World as We Know It. And then, why was he separate, and why is he trying to get himself back together? Turns out, he and the Elder Gods were the only creatures to exist before the starting time of the multiverse, and the Elder Gods were getting tired of the One Being feasting on their energies. Splitting him up, transforming his consciousness/body into the multiple realms, and assigning a protector god for each is all to ensure he can't harm them anymore.
• While Emil isn't a god, he's the oldest and one of the strongest beings in NieR: Automata, and prior to the formation of YoRHa, he ended up creating multiple clones of himself to help fight off the conflicting invasion, a process that fractured his psyche to the point that the original Emil at present thinks he's merely ane of his many clones, and his clones have since gone insane from the process as well equally living for thousands of years.
• Persona:
  • Persona iii used this trope in the form of the twelve Full Moon Shadows. Each of the twelve is a fragment of a thirteenth shadow, Expiry, which was sealed inside the Protagonist and takes the grade of Pharos, and later Ryoji. Defeating the others allows them to reintegrate, which is a very bad thing equally a completed Death has no choice but to trigger The Autumn and summon Nyx to wipe out all life on earth, whether he wants to or non.
    • Supplemental materials besides reveal that all Shadows are actually fragments of Nyx which concious minds on earth have a addiction of locking inside themselves. Personas are the consequence of a stiff-willed person controlling their personal Shadow, which makes them fragments of Nyx also.
  • One of the large reveals in Persona 4 is that the Sagiri enemies, Kunino-Sagiri and Ameno-Sagiri, who appeared to be behind the events of the game are in fact pieces of Izanami, the truthful mastermind. In Golden, so is Marie.
  • Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth: Role of The Reveal is that Zen is a fragment of Chronos, and that the reason the Persona iii and Persona 4 casts were summoned to the labyrinths was considering the main torso of Chronos wanted him back.
• RuneScape has Seren, Goddess of the Elves. When the edicts were enacted that demanded all the gods go out Gielinor, Seren elected to commit suicide and shatter herself into pieces rather than get out the elves. The current final quest in the serial is putting her back together.
• Shin Megami Tensei:
  • In Shin Megami Tensei 2, it is revealed that Zayin, a fellow member of the Temple Knights, is a fragmented half of Satan, God's estimate of all life on Earth. He and, alongside, Seth fused together to get Satan again.
  • In the ii NG+ missions for Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey the Angel Metatron reveals that both him and the Demiurge are pieces of God. Who was broken into pieces by the Female parent Goddesses of Sometime after losing his love for humans and humanity losing faith in him. Depending on your choice you can let him be sealed again or let him go. But don't let him be costless unless you're law aligned.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei Four, Minako'due south collecting several demon souls - Astaroth's, Mother Harlot's, and Asherah'southward. The common point? They were all born from the now-dead mother goddess Ishtar, and by consuming their souls and a Red Pill, sacrificing her body, mind and soul, she hopes to revive and summon Ishtar to grant new fertility to Tokyo. She succeeds, and the resurrected Ishtar even implies there's yet a piece of Minako within.
  • Like II, Shin Megami Tensei 4: Apocalypse reveals that both Lucifer and Merkabah, and to an extent, the Archangels, are ii halves of Satan, who instigated the war between Law and Chaos under God's orders. When invading YHVH's Universe, the spirit of Walter and Jonathan, the 2 former's man vessel, merged to become Satan one time more than.
• The True Runes in the Suikoden series. The series' mythology holds that in ancient times, the universe was created by accident from a battle between god-like entities known every bit the Sword and the Shield. They destroyed each other in the process, and their fragments became the 27 True Runes.
• In the Warlords and Warlords Battlecry series, Lord Sartek, god of the minotaurs, was betrayed, murdered, and dismembered into hundreds of little pieces by beau Horseman Lord Blight. Minotaurs similar to collect bits of Sartek with the eventual goal of putting him back together again. In WBC2 and 3, the Skull of Sartek is the minotaur titan. In the WBC3 campaign, collecting the five fingers of the Hand of Sartek earns you the allegiance of the minotaurs and a bonus to your hero's combat power. And finally, in Puzzle Quest, they put him back together, and his first deed is to render the favor to Bane and give each chunk to a different civilization.
• Xenogears technically does this twice; in one case in a profoundly dark and twisted way. First of all, Deus, the 'God' in this game is really just a huge Biological Weapon that created Humans as parts to repair his body and basically manipulates them to live then die just so they can be pieces of him, all while under the guise in legends and religious texts to literally be God. The 2nd incarnation is far, far lighter every bit information technology turns out that the real God, a higher being known only as "the Wave Existence", has been trapped inside physical constructs. Different Deus, allowing this affair to get back together isn't bad at all - as all it wants to do is get dwelling and leave humanity to its own devices.

    Web Animation

• Dingo Doodles has the artifical god Xanu whose soul is contained in a gem that one time rested in the middle of his physical form'due south brow. When the Foreclaimer portal he was trying to enter collapsed with him within, his body was destroyed and the precious stone shattered into multiple pieces. Over the following centuries the magic of the shards has seen them used as weapons and tools, leading to them beingness scattered across the region. Xanu himself drifted in and out of awareness, seeing only glimpses through the shards, until Quinn-Ora fused a big number of them and implanted them in Sips'south caput.
• If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Spoken language Device has the Emperor of Mankind (who claims he isn't a god but has all the ability and [[Pride arrogance]] of one). Afterwards the Horus Heresy, his soul was shattered and while the fundamental ego (and what an ego it is) of the "Throne Emperor" exists fragments act independent of it, such as the i held by Tzeentch. Each of the fragments are strong enough to exist and do some things (like futilely warn the Throne Emperor of Mangus plotting once again subsequently beingness let back into the Imperium) but not enough to bully Tzeentch into giving him what he wants, of which Throne Emperor is.

    Webcomics

• Aurora (2019): Soul Energy is formed from the mingled essence of all the Primordials, which makes elementally manipulating a living body hard. The Collector's endgoal is to unravel every soul in the world to completely gratis Life from what she believes is constant torture.
• In Atrocious Hospital, long before annihilation else fifty-fifty existed, in that location was only ane living being, the Former Flesh. Without warning, information technology suddenly became very sick, and its torso slowly began to break downwardly into reality equally we know information technology. Outraged and helpless, it died. Merely the largest and virtually intact surviving fragments of what was one time its body, the Parliament, developed sapience. Feeling cleaved, they now scheme an Assimilation Plot to destroy the multiverse and reassemble it into the original being. What the Parliament doesn't remember is the fact that the get-go thing was the Anthropomorphic Personification of Decease, existing only to dice and become the fertilizer that gives birth to new things. Even if the Parliament to succeed in their plot, it would merely die all over once more, substantially resetting the multiverse into a new form.
• In Godslave, Anpu has had his soul splintered into nine pieces - ba - which his fellow gods hid separately. In fact, what Edith finds is just one of the ba, and it tasks her with finding the rest to reassemble him.
• In Kill Half dozen Billion Demons, YISUN is the everything, the ultimate existence that is perfect and embodies all things. Finding an being where at that place is nothing new to be boring and deciding ignorance, violence and lies to be virtues, YISUN committed suicide to go the white and black gods YIS and UN and from there the entire interesting, imperfect multiverse. At the current age fifty-fifty the gods (YISUN'south grandchildren) are long dead, and all that are left are the voices they used to speak The Multiverse into being. These voices are superpowers in and by themselves, each capable of unlocking and controlling a Universe on its own, and The Seven currently hold all 777,777 of them. Allison, meanwhile, holds the chief key, YISUN's singular vocalization, but she lacks the preparation or experience to utilise it for anything.
• Part of the ongoing mystery in Paranatural concerns a "cleaved god". Information technology's unknown how many pieces it's in, only we know for certain one of them is possessing Max and that that one isn't the sense of humor.

    Web Original

• Division by Nothing: The multiverse is a directly result of the All Creator existence torn apart in a war between two factions it created out of loneliness: the Divine Prescript, who believed the All Creator is anointed and gratuitous to practice whatever it wants, and the Voluntary Decision, who believed the All Creator should have a constantly evolving consciousness, die as they die, live as they alive. Unable to come to an agreement, the two cosmic factions fought until the All Creator was caught in the crossfire, its pieces creating the multiverse. Collecting what was left of itself later the nativity of the multiverse, the All Creator fled to the planet Spectra, its incomplete self becoming the planet'south core. Eons later, the Commander used Spectra'southward planetary cadre to create the Summoners, universe-destroying catholic weapons with God flowing through their veins. God manifests inside them in a diversity of magical specializations (i.e. the Summoner of Fourth dimension, the Summoner of Alter, the Summoner of Power, then on).

• SCP Foundation: A Group of Interest called "the Church building of the Broken God" believes that several mechanical SCPs are fragments of their deity Mekhane. And if the Church ever succeeded in reuniting all the pieces of their "God"... Well, you'd have to be on the Moon to avoid the resulting apocalypse, and fifty-fifty that might not be far enough. As Label Marches On, nevertheless, it seems that the Foundation might accept judged the CotBG besides quickly — while still seen as fanatical extremists, later discoveries are raising the possibility that the these particular extremists might not be and so crazy after all. The apocalypse the prophecies refer to might non be caused past the reassembly of the god auto... and the flesh they believe must be destroyed may be something far worse than human vice and frailty.
• Serina: The fisher daydreamers believe that the earth was shaped by a single creator deity who then splintered itself into three essences — a flight creature, a terrestrial one and an aquatic 1, each of which and then separate apart into myriad smaller copies of itself — to ameliorate experience all the realms of the world. They believe themselves to exist the far-scattered fragments of the marine essence, and that one twenty-four hour period they will observe and reunite with the fragments of the other 2 and, having learned all that the globe has to offer, reform into the creator.

    Western Animation

• Belatedly into Samurai Jack is an Origins Episode, which reveals that the Aku that Jack has been fighting, who has terrorized the whole planet for centuries, is actually only a fragment of a big black amorphous cloud or hulk. This amorphous mass, the existent Aku, has been nether assail by the gods of diverse religions for the entire time, and the Aku on Earth is a chunk they hacked off and didn't discover fell to a planet with intelligent life until it was likewise late.

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Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PiecesOfGod

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