• Bleach: Emperor Yhwach was worshipped as a god in his youth, even sharing a name with the Abrahamic God. He performed miracles for his worshippers, great acts of healing, and even today is surrounded by followers in a kingdom of his making. He's unstoppable in a fight, nearly immortal, and heavily associated with light. His followers resemble angels, with many of their higher forms being Angelic Abominations in appearance. Yhwach's plan to destroy the current world and remake it also mirrors the ideas of the Demiurge being the God of a new world, something he somewhat becomes in the end. But not in the way he would've wanted.
• Fullmetal Alchemist: In keeping with the narrative's gnostic overtones, Father, a.k.a. the The Dwarf In The Flask, is a relatively localized version with aspirations to legitimize his divine status. In the literal text, he's the secret founder of Amestris and the Shadow Dictator of the corrupt Amestrian government with direct control of both the nation's propaganda and all alchemy performed within its borders. (Which, since Alchemy is everywhere, basically gives him absolute control of the citizens' lives.) Symbolically, he's also both the father of the Seven Deadly Sins (the Homunculi) and the source of all the problems that the characters face in one way or another, many of which he obfuscates with various lies and illusions. In practice, though, he only momentarily succeeds in usurping Truth, making his tenure as the literal version of this trope quite brief.
• The Black Zetsu of Naruto would rather call himself the "Architect of the ninja world" rather than call himself a god, and he's a Living Shadow, rather than Light Is Not Good. That right goes to his mother, who he considers god, Kaguya Ōtsutsuki. He manipulated the world for centuries to resurrect her, causing countless deaths and wars. Hearing this infuriates Naruto, who derides him as a brat who can't even be without his mother.
• The Lifemaker from Negima! Magister Negi Magi and its sequel UQ Holder! functions as a malevolent Demiurge figure. Her real name is Ialda Baoth, which is in reference to Ialdabaoth/Yaldabaoth, one of the many names for the Demiurge. She is a God Of Human Origin whose One-Winged Angel form is that of an Angelic Abomination, much like how the Demiurge itself originates as a being of light created by Sophia. She created the Mundus Magicus, or Inverse Mars, which is a flawed artificial Magic Land, much like how the Demiurge created the flawed physical world in contrast to the perfect spiritual world. Lastly, her ultimate goal is to stop all suffering by entrapping everyone in a Lotus-Eater Machine where they get to live their heart's desire, even if she has to kill everyone to get them there, much like how the Demiurge entraps people in physical forms of matter against their will.
• Revolutionary Girl Utena: Akio Ohtori, the "Acting" Chairman of Ohtori Academy, seems to be able to control happenings in his school to a degree that defies logic. When he wants something to happen, it happens. If he does something criminal to the teenage cast of students (as he frequently does), there are no repercussions. No one even thinks of reporting him to authorities—he is the highest authority in the school and "the world outside the school" doesn't seem to meaningfully exist. He is in effect an asshole god of a tiny world that he controls. The final episodes reveal that he actually lost his powers a long time ago, but since he pretends to still have them and sits at the top of the hierarchy, he remains functionally powerful. His sister Anthy, whom he's abused into subservience, actually protects him from the consequences of his actions and makes it possible for him to keep up his ruse; her leaving him during the Grand Finale renders him helpless.
• Masami Eiri from Serial Experiments Lain. A sort of "reverse" example, as instead of being a deity created by an already lesser deity (Yaldabaoth's mother Sophia) who is attached to the material universe and actively prevents men from ascending to the spiritual world in order to have all of mankind trapped in materiality forever, Eiri is a human who wants mankind to ascend by merging the real (material) world with a presumably higher plane of reality, but his aspirations at the end of the day fit right in with the gnostic Demiurge, as he turns into an entity that wants to be god, claims himself to be the God of his "preferred" reality (the Wired), and opposes the true god Lain much like Yaldabaoth is below the Monad.
  • Despite the aforementioned reversal of the spiritual and material world concepts, even in that department Eiri bears similarity to Yaldabaoth; the Gnostic Demiurge deceives itself into being the true God in all of existence but he only created the lesser and imperfect material world, while Eiri only got close to becoming "God" of a world that could only influence reality as it began to merge with it and that he didn't even create, but rather modified, uploading forbidden code in the form of his consciousness to Protocol 7. All in all, they're both God wannabes that only have power over worlds that aren't the "true" reality (although the Wired is interpreted as a reality that actually transcends the real world, it has no influence over it without Eiri's planned merging.)
  • The word Demiurge initially meant "craftsman" or "artisan" and later ultimately became "producer" or "creator". Eiri's occupation as a programmer was specifically being a designer, which is more or less close to creator.
  • Apart from both Yaldabaoth and Eiri sharing the common goal of ruling mankind in their preferred plane of reality, there's also the fact the two of them are fairly pathetic entities once they're left without their delusions of godhood; Yaldabaoth being barely a lowly deity that was created by a lesser Aeon and in some versions believes itself to be the true God because it isn't even aware of the existence of the spiritual world (which puts him even below ascended humans), and Eiri is left as a nobody with odd ideas no one cares about, stuck in an office job he hates once Lain reboots the world and he gets to live a life without the influence of the Wired. Even before so, he literally died trying to manifest his body in the real world after Lain snaps out of his manipulation and asks him a simple question that led to his Villainous Breakdown.
• The Seven Deadly Sins has both this and an equally evil Devil. The Supreme Deity, the leader of the Goddess Clan and supposedly the God equivalent, was actually a creation of the true God, Chaos. She teamed up with the Satanic Archetype, the Demon King, to usurp and seal away Chaos out of jealousy, desiring to be worshipped as Chaos was. The two then started the Holy War, a Forever War between the two of them, for their own amusement, and keep the races in perpetual agony and servitude to secure their worship.
• Kano from Texhnolyze. Kano forcefully takes control of Lux, supplanting Ran as the symbol to believe in. He commands an army of Mecha-Mooks called the Shapes which he intends to use to force evolution upon humanity, with no regard to who survives. To to it all off, Kano is so solipsistic that he believes himself to be the only true being in the world and everyone else is simply a figment of his deranged mind.

• Clive Barker's Next Testament: Wick, who employs a color motif instead of a light motif, actually is the Abrahamic God but only as part of a triune, two of whom turned on him around the time of the New Testament. All the atrocities committed in the Old Testament, the slaughter of the firstborn, the torture of Job,^note Done for laughs death for those who criticized him and his prophets, the real turning point was Abraham being ordered to kill his son. That's when his brothers/peers turned on him and, as they are collectively greater than him, imprisoned Wick away from people. Notably, Gnosticism is in part a reaction to the evil actions of the Old Testament God, interpreting them so that a "real" benevolent god could exist, which Wick and his brothers embody well.
• Preacher: God is a partial example, while he IS the one true god, his motives for creating the universe were based more on loneliness and malignant narcissism than any kind of benevolence. As the comic book explained, he created angels to be blindly loyal companions, allowed the fall of Lucifer when that got boring, then created humanity when he decided that it would be better to be loved by beings with free will rather than angels which had no choice. Finally, he engineered the Fall of Eden because in his mind, humanity only loved him because he gave them paradise, and it would be all the sweeter if he made the world a place of misery and suffering, but humans chose to love him anyway.
• The Sandman (1989): The take on Prez (1973) in "World's End" turns Boss Smiley into the "regional manager" for Prez's corner of the DC multiverse. When he tries to claim Prez's soul Dream steps in, dismissing Smiley as a being of little consequence.
• God from Pre-Resurrection Spawn is actually a spawn of the Mother of Creation, the true god, and wages petty war against the equally evil Satan, causing all the strife and misery in the series for the sake of power and so that all of creation would worship him. However, Post-Resurrection God is more benevolent.
• Venom: Knull is a primordial god of darkness who came into being in the primordial Void before the universe was created, and was enraged when the Celestials intruded into what he saw as his domain to create the universe. He created the symbiotes and their ilk to wage war against the Celestials and their creations, first seeking to destroy and later to corrupt all of existence; seeing himself as the one true God and the other deities and cosmic entities as "lights" for him to snuff out or blacken. To drive the point home, Carlton Drake calls him the "Klyntar Demiurge" in Venom (2021) #3.

• The Dead Fic Deliverance, very loosely based on The Bible, portrays the Abrahamic God as an egomaniacal but ultimately pitiful figure who created the universe solely so that he could be worshipped and praised every second of every minute of every hour of every day, and prohibits any other activity in heaven and brainwashes the inhabitants to be incapable of independent thought, while sending anyone who refuses to worship him to hell. It’s implied (though the story was cancelled before it could be confirmed) that The Fundamentalists are doing his will on Earth by actively making the world a worse place through human rights violations and bigotry. However, he is not omnipotent or omniscient, having been powerless to stop the rebel angels, and can’t create life directly or change the laws of physics, only manipulate them to make life emerge faster. Yet it’s more likely that he’s not evil, just really really messed up, since he either does not know or does not care that his critics have made hell a truer paradise than heaven, since he still sends unbelievers there thinking it a punishment, when in fact it’s what they want all along.
• Left Beyond: "God", while nigh-omnipotent, is revealed to be a supernatural parasite which feeds on sapient belief. They crippled and/or killed the other gods to achieve dominance, and their OP reality-warping power only works as long as they follow their prophecies to the letter. The Protagonist figures out how to manipulate, utilize, and generally subvert this 'Narrative Casuality', proving that even if the top God always gets his way, a sufficiently prepared rebel can reinterpret the contracts.
• Sincere Deceit: Zaphkiel the Attendant claims to be God and creator of the new world, but he did so with the help of Abram, both of whom are creations of the true "god", Hugo. Zaphkiel does have art of Hugo in his church, but for the most part has supplanted him as the deity to be worshipped, and wants to protect everyone from Abram/the Serpent and his corruption only as part of his own Assimilation Plot that will turn the world into a false utopia ruled by him and his Corrupt Church.
• The Big Bad of the Star Wars: Paranormalities Trilogy, Emperor Valkor, is a God-Emperor fanatically worshipped by the Valkoran Empire and Forceless Collective who wants to conquer the universe and force it to recognize him as the one and only god. But he is actually just a symbiote posing as a god, specifically pretending to be one of Muriga's gods to get his followers to do what he and Hazral Vangeli want. To drive the point home, his true name — and the name of the god he is impersonating — is Yalbdalaoth, a Significant Anagram of Yaldabaoth.

• While Devil Homura of Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion is primarily a Satanic Archetype, she also possesses similarities to the Demiurge, in that she overthrows and replaces Ultimate Madoka, the God archetype, and recreates the universe, becoming a false god.
• Transformers One: Sentinel Prime, the dictator of Cybertron, surrounds himself with light and holy imagery, and additionally wants Cybertronian society eating out of his hand and worshipping him as a messiah even though he only got to his current position by betraying his predecessors, the true and benevolent rulers of Cybertron, and taking one of their T-Cogs for his own.

• Free Guy: Antwan created the video game Free City off of the stolen data of the game Life Itself. So while the game is every multiplayer stereotype rolled into one, due to the advanced AI generating data of Life Itself, all the NPCs are self-aware, and live repeating lives of mundane terror. When Guy learns he's an NPC after meeting the original creator Millie, the two struggle to stop Antwan from destroying everything when he replaces the game with Free City 2, which would also kill all the NPCs. To add to the Demiurge motif, he is a buffoon of a businessman who would rather destroy the entire game than lose the profits of Free City.
• The Matrix:
  • The Architect is the creator of the titular Matrix, a false universe much like the material plane in Gnosticism, and an old, bearded man who has a lot of Christian imagery surrounding him who wants his creation to be perfect and will punish the humans living inside if they disobey.
  • The Analyst in The Matrix Resurrections has far greater direct control over the New Matrix than The Architect did over the old one, to the point that even those who have been awakened are unable to stand up to him. Only "The One" at full strength can. He has also populated the New Matrix with Bots, programs that don't even know they're programs until they're activated, and do whatever The Analyst wants. He uses them to make sure none of the humans inside the New Matrix go "off-script", as it were, effectively gaslighting all of them into obedience. It's implied that far fewer humans are freed from the New Matrix, because the Bots keep them from recognizing the signs of simulated reality.
• The Truman Show: Christof is a metaphorical example of the archetype. He is the creator and director of a Reality Show that broadcasts the daily life of Truman Burbank, an actual live person who is unaware that he is the star of the program in question. To this end, Christof crafted an entirely false reality which he has complete control over, which is a giant television studio disguised as a seemingly normal seaside town, complete with actors and extras who play Truman's friends, neighbors, and family. He is obsessed with ruling every aspect of Truman's life, and when the latter becomes suspicious of his environment, Christof orchestrates events to gaslight him into staying in the set and keeping him from discovering the truth. He even goes as far as to summon an artificial storm to prevent Truman from escaping by boat, even if it could end up drowning the sole star of the show.

Examples by creator:

• In the mythos of William Blake, Urizen serves as both a fallen Satanic figure and the representative of law and reason. Urizen, believing himself to be holy, was exiled from the divine and created a universe in which his law ruled above all else. He represents uniformity, stifles creativity, and is the origin of both religious dogmatism and enlightenment rationalism.

Examples by title:

• In His Dark Materials, the Authority is only one of the first angels created from the matter, who managed to convince other angels he was the creator. Near the end, the angel Metatron got more and more power and planned to enslave all sentient creatures from the entire multiverse.
• The Locked Tomb: John Gaius, the God-Emperor of the Nine Houses, is eventually revealed to be this. He is revered among the Nine Houses as their benevolent leader, protector, and father of necromancy. In truth, John was gifted necromancy by the spirit of the earth, who sensed that he was trying his best to save humanity while the mega-wealthy were planning to escape and sabotage anyone else's attempts to do so. However, once the trillionaires fled with their support staff, John's attempt to lash out at them across the solar system led to the accidental death of Earth's soul... and the less accidental death of everyone on Earth. Unable to take the full essence of Earth's spirit into himself, he instead placed the remnants in a human body, then set about resurrecting a select portion of humanity who would follow him (a few million, out of 10 billion). He eventually shoved the spirit of Earth away in the titular Locked Tomb, and has spent millennia waging a crusade that is meant entirely to punish the descendants of those who fled - which often involves killing their worlds via necromantic inversion.
• Mushoku Tensei: Hitogami is revealed to be this. He appears as a featureless white entity in a clouded realm and despite being an enigmatic ally to Rudeus at first, he turns out to be Evil All Along. In the distant past, he Killed And Replaced the original Man-God, a benevolent deity in his own right, and used his guise and powers to cause much of the disasters in the Six-Faced World. He has been locked in an eternal struggle with Orsted, the last survivor of a group of deities he killed, in a "Groundhog Day" Loop that has lasted an untold amount of time. His reasons for singling out Rudeus is because his descendants are fated to bring about his downfall in the loop he reincarnated in, and after failing to stop that through both manipulation and killing his loved ones, resorts to ordering his other servants to do it for him.
• The Salvation War begins with Yahweh announcing to the world that Judgement Day has arrived and everyone on Earth, regardless of virtue, is going to Hell to be tortured for eternity. During the ensuing war against the heavens, the Vatican decides that Yahweh is not the God of the New Testament but rather an imposter using His trappings to manipulate humanity and declares their intent to excommunicate him from the church. The fact that angels and demons in this setting are essentially extradimensional aliens rather than anything divine supports this view.
• Sword Art Online:
  • Nobuyuki Sugou/Fairy King Oberon combines this with Satanic Archetype. He rules over the virtual world of the MMORPG Alfheim Online (AFO), which he built using leftover data stolen from Sword Art Online. As such, he is positioned as a pale imitation of the SAO creator Akihiko Kayaba (who serves as the formerly malevolent god figure), and in his false god position. Sugou manipulates the players to climb a rigged tree, tortures hundreds of imprisoned players, and sexually abuses one of them (Asuna) as a Lust Object. Kirito's battle with him is depicted as the Messianic Archetype, with power given to him by God (in this case Kayaba), to defeat Sugou as the Devil figure. Sugou even whines that he's the god of this world, earning a Shut Up, Hannibal! from Kirito.
    Kirito: You stole everything in this world. Everything! Including its people! You're nothing but a king of thieves, sitting alone on your stolen throne!
  • Quinella also overlaps with Satanic Archetype. She usurped Cardinal, the Underworld's equivalent of God, and set herself up as one gifted by the gods before constructing a false faith in her own name and ruled by her specially-prepared laws and her Integrity Knights.
• The villains of Tolkien's Legendarium, Morgoth and Sauron, are curiously both this as well as a Satanic Archetype: Morgoth actively goes out of his way to convince mortals that Eru — the all-powerful but physically absent Top God of Tolkien's mythology and an unapolegtic Expy of the Abrahamic God — does not exist, being only a fiction crafted by the Valar, and that there is no afterlife or world beyond the physical realm. This would make Morgoth, as the most powerful entity within the bounds of the physical universe, the true Top God, and resistance to his rule an exercise in futility. The Children of Húrin has him try to deliver a Breaking Speech to Hurin by claiming this, only to be met with a Shut Up, Hannibal! calling him a bald-faced liar.

• Black Mirror: Robert Daly from "USS Callister" is the deeply introverted CTO of Callister who helped create the VRMMO Infinity game, where he eventually made an offline mod based on his favorite TV show (a pastiche of Star Trek), where he plays as an Expy of Captain Kirk. However, the AI characters inside the game are based on his real life coworkers he felt slighted against (most of which he was overdramatic about), even having their personalities and memories. Giving them a Barbie Doll Anatomy, he leaves them alone with nothing to do but drink and bang their heads against the wall; when he comes in, he forces them to play out an episode plot, or just straight up abuses them when in a foul mood, and if they get out of line, he invokes Body Horror, or worse. He knows they are sentient, because he admits their suffering makes him happy. His most personal punching bag, CEO and fellow company founder Walton, outright describes him as "An Asshole God ruling over a bubble universe." In the end, the crew break out of his system during an update, which had deleted the mod with Daly still inside, now unable to log out, while the crew more than earned the happy ending.
• Kamen Rider Saber: Isaac is the leader of Sword of Logos, an ancient guild of swordsmen dedicated to protecting the pages of the Almighty Book. His exposure to the Almighty Book led to him developing a form of quasi-immortality and living for centuries longer than most humans, leading him to eventually grow bored with his duty and see himself as a God. Isaac then would begin seeking to remake the world into one full of chaos and human suffering purely for his own entertainment, even going so far as to goad the nations of the world into warring with each other and declaring he'll spare only the nation that survives.
• Loki (2021): "He Who Remains" is the omniscient and supreme leader of the Time Variance Authority, which he leads in conducting all manner of brainwashing, executions, and slavery to make sure only his timeline can exist. The kicker, though, is that he does this to keep even more evil versions of himself from taking power.
  He Who Remains: If you think I'm evil... just wait until you meet my variants.
• Supernatural: It's revealed later that Chuck is the Abrahamic God and the creator of the physical universe, although he's only one of the group of primordial deities that includes himself, Amara, Death, and the Shadow of the Empty. He goes out of his way to make sure the faiths of the world neglect the other three gods, and is generally an obtuse, fickle sort of being who views all of existence as his entertainment.

• Mage: The Awakening:
  • The Exarchs are like a Demiurge all-star review. Back when humanity had direct access to the source of magic and could easily Awaken to the miracles of the universe, the Exarchs supposedly crafted a Celestial Ladder that would allow them to ascend to the heavens... and then kicked it down so no one could join them, effectively ripping open reality and creating the Lie that separates the masses from Awakening. If that wasn't enough, they dethroned a good number of the gods that existed in that realm. Their greatest servants, the Seers of the Throne, are tasked with making reality just shitty enough that nobody has the time or desire to pursue the truth behind the scenery.
  • The Father, the Exarch of Prime, is probably the strongest example. The other Exarchs, for all their control of the chains of reality, don't really give a shit about worship. However, the Father has crafted himself in the image of the patriarchal, commanding, Abrahamic God, to the point that he's the only one of the Exarchs who isn't referred to with alternating pronouns (everyone else gets the "he/she/they" treatment because they have transcended reality, so what's gender at that point?). His Ministry within the Seers, the Ministry of Paternoster, is a Path of Inspiration that is devoted to making sure religion is a means of control, not enlightenment. They worship the Father as a god, but won't allow the Sleepers to worship him in his true mantle — because that would be an insult to his majesty.

• Afterlife (1996): The player is a demiurge charged with managing both afterlives of a planet.
• BioShock 2: Audio logs removed from the game depict Father Wales' interpretation of ADAM as a gift from a false god, a gigantic worm with some of God's power, one who created life in all its horror and was buried beneath the waves by the true God. Word of God confirms that something gigantic is lying beneath Rapture and is the mutagenic source that gave the sea slugs their genetic manipulation aspects.
• Breath of Fire:
  • Breath of Fire II: Deathevan, an embodiment of human evil and the child of Tyr/Myria from the first game, is worshipped as Father Evans, the god of the Corrupt Church Evrai. In his human form, he resembles a Grandpa God much like common depictions of God in Christianity, and he uses his church to pose as the sole god of the world rather than one of many gods and brainwashes his followers into doing nothing but mindlessly serving and worshiping him 24/7 while masterminding the demon attacks on other parts of the world.
  • In Breath of Fire III, the new incarnation of Myria takes on this role. Unlike Deathevan, however, she's a far more morally-ambiguous figure, but she's still posing as the One True God and worshipped by the Urkan Church. It's later revealed that she's protecting humanity from the Desert of Death and the dangers of uncontrolled technological development, but Yggdrasil argues back that what she's doing is keeping humanity in a Gilded Cage. In the end, she's found praying to God, "if there is a God," and asking what she should have done instead, but she doesn't receive an answer — except from her sister.
• Delvin: Origins: One of Sitanel's titles is the Demiurge because he posed as a righteous god, Yahweh, to the people of Vyen in order to lead them astray. Fortunately, humanity eventually realized his deception and worshipped the true goddess Vyena instead.
• Doom Eternal:
  • The Khan Maykr, the Big Bad of the normal campaign, is the ruler of a race of decidedly misanthropic angelic figures who pose as benevolent beings, and becomes the Mother God to worlds like Argent D'Nur, promising them salvation in return for worship; but she usurped control after the original, good ruler of Urdak, the Father, left, took all his tech for herself, and has been corrupted into a demon.
  • The Father, VEGA, serves as a rare benevolent variant, by way of being a benevolent false god to a malevolent "true" god. In The Ancient Gods expansion, it is revealed that Dark Lord of Hell Davoth, the then-unnamed and unseen Greater-Scope Villain of previous installments of the Doom series and the Big Bad of this DLC, was originally the "First Being" who shaped the universe from the realm of Jekkad, the first dimension. Davoth was distressed that his created subjects were doomed to die while he was immortal, and he took increasingly vicious steps to try to change this. The Maykrs he created, led by the Father, sealed Davoth away and rewrote history to claim that the Father created Davoth. Yet the demons of Jekkad, now called Hell, still continued to spread their dominion, while Davoth used his voice to influence the creation of the Doom Slayer and guide the latter on a path that would eventually lead to the destruction of the Maykrs.
  • Davoth himself is implied to be this; though supposedly the true Father and creator of all things, there is at least one being out there older than even he is who he is unaware of, and his desire to gain dominion over the physical reality of death to banish it forever leads him to wage war on other worlds to absorb them into Hell and discover the secret of immortality, in his arrogant belief that as the supposed creator of all, he may do as he wishes with existence. He is ultimately unable to perceive worth outside of material existence, as despite the existence of spirits he forges on with his plan to eradicate mortality itself.
• Dominion of Darkness: One of the playable Dark Lord/Ladies - Despotic Tyrant - is based on this theme. This character is obsessed with being religiously worshipped as One True God/Goddess and names his/her demons "angels".
• Dragalia Lost: Jaldabaoth is named after the one and only, and acts true to source material as a demon who makes people blindly worship him like sheep as a god of absolute law and truth, and to let them run wild with vice.
• In Dragon Quest VII, Demon King Orgodemir combines this with Satanic Archetype- after his initial defeat, he is resurrected and poses as the Almighty, taking control of the world while promising a golden age for humanity, only to then seal away the islands that pose a threat to him and flooding the world with monsters.
• Drakengard: The God commanding the Watchers/Grotesqueries, is not the actual god of creation despite being mistaken as such by mankind, is the Greater-Scope Villain of the Yoko Taro mythos due to being an Omnicidal Maniac out to destroy all life. It is also able to possess humans, causing a Red Eyes, Take Warning situation. As for the being that created the multiverse, nobody knows where it is.
• The Elder Scrolls: Shor/Sep/Lorkhan might be one, depending on who is doing the telling. The Altmer believe him to be a cruel trickster who tricked their ancestor spirits out of their pre-creation divinity and trapped them in mortal bodies. Redguards also see him as a malevolent creator who made it harder for their spirits to reach The Far Shores. Conversely, Nords believe him to be a benevolent god who freed them from the prison of pre-creation stasis and welcomes them to Sovngarde when they die. Finally, the other Aedra, who lost much of their power in creation, tried and executed Lorkhan for his role in creation, forming the moons from his decaying corpse, and casting his heart to Nirn, where Red Mountain grew around it.
• Elohim Eternal: Exodus: The ending confirms that Addie and Eva aren't really gods and are instead long-lived humans with advanced technology pretending to be gods. Fittingly, they are referred to as the Demiurge in the Misru religion.
• Final Fantasy
  • Final Fantasy X: Yu Yevon, the god of the Church of Yevon, was once a human summoner who ruled the city-state of Zanarkand and destroyed himself in a war with Bevelle. Becoming a strange bug-like creature, he creates a false world, Dream Zanarkand, trapping the survivors inside, and becomes the god of the Church of Yevon, a religion which he uses to keep the rest of Spira in a Medieval Stasis, keeping his followers in line by regularly attacking them with his literal Dragon, Sin, and demanding pilgrimages that are essentially Human Sacrifices. Like the Demiurge, Yevon rules over a false world and will do everything in his power to keep his subjects trapped within.
  • Hydaelyn of Final Fantasy XIV has a lot of the tropes of a demiurge. Though unlike most examples, her motivations are entirely benevolent and her actions completely necessary to buy time for the world to deal with the Final Days. Also, reshaping her corner of the universe and propping herself up as a god was not enjoyable at all.
  • Final Fantasy XVI: Ultima is an immortal being who created humanity with the goal of forming a body for himself to create a new world. Abandoning his creation as they evolve, humanity developed sentience and consciousness, something that disgusts Ultima once his perfect vessel is finally ready. Although almost all knowledge of him has been lost and a new religion centered around the goddess Greagor has taken hold around the world, fringe religions continue to worship Ultima. To further the Demiurge comparison, Ultima exists as sixteen splintered bodies and wants nothing more than for humanity to blindly serve him, even if it means eradicating their personalities and free will. While he created mankind, it is clear Ultima did not create the universe or magic, and Clive and Joshua debate whether to consider him the capital-G God.
• Genshin Impact has the gods who rule over Teyvat from a floating island called Celestia. While the Seven Archons who act as middlemen between them and humanity are supposed to follow the Heavenly Principles, their opinions suggest they don't see eye to eye on past actions committed by their superiors, with some of them actively attempting to rebel against Celestia. Later content would reveal that the Primordial One who supposedly created humanity was not always Teyvat's ruler, and had in fact conquered the continent after usurping the Sovereigns and stealing their authority over the elements.
• Hellslave: It turns out that God, while cosmically powerful, isn't as almighty as everyone believed; both God and The Demiurge are this trope. While God created angels and Heaven, The Demiurge was busy creating the universe and Golemkind. God was intrigued by his colleague's creation and sent angels to investigate and comingle with the golems' civilization - big mistake, as their offspring were the Always Chaotic Evil demons. Then God outright abandoned Earth instead of trying to fix their mistake. The demons went on to conquer Earth, build Hell, and mate with more Golems - creating the first humans.
• Hollow Knight: The Pale King is a divine Wyrm who wrested control of bugkind from the Radiance long ago, creating the civilization of Hallownest and becoming its ruler while unpersoning any mention of the Radiance in order to rob her of any influence. However, in a twist, he is a rare benevolent example of this trope — the Radiance was a purely evil and controlling goddess who kept her followers locked in a Hive Mind, and the Pale King had sought to grant them free will instead. When an idol of her is rediscovered deep in Crystal Peak, the jealous Radiance returns to spitefully destroy Hallownest with "the Infection", forcing the Pale King to take extreme measures to seal her away and protect his people.
• Iconoclasts: The Starworm, the Greater-Scope Villain and Eldritch Abomination, is worshipped by the oppressive One Concern, a cross between a MegaCorp and The Theocracy, as their god, with them killing anyone they consider heretics. In the endgame, it turns out that the Starworm is not a god at all, but a humanoid bird alien named Lucas Birbasaurus Rex piloting a freaky spaceship who is mining the planet of its Ivory to fuel the ship.
• Legacy of Kain: The Elder God believes himself to be the Top God, despite being nothing more than a powerful, parasitic Eldritch Abomination who sees over Nosgoth and endlessly feeds off of war and death and the reincarnation of souls. Some of his servants in the spectral realm are even called Archons.
• Mega Man Zero: Copy X is designed to resemble a seraphic multi-winged angel, with a halo in his final form. Neo Arcadia, intended to be a paradise under the real X, has regressed into a mere dystopia under his control. He rules with an iron fist and cannot stand the idea of anyone escaping his grasp. He is, however, a fake dressed up to look like the true ruler, and under his holy trappings he just wants to control everything he can. Copy X even deceives his own four Guardians into thinking he's the real X, but he's not quite as powerful or clever as he thinks he is.
• Shin Megami Tensei:
  • Recurring series-wide villain YHVH is an arrogant, vain dictator who perpetuates a Forever War to keep the universe under his control forever, and contemplates replacing humanity with "more obedient servants" when the party confronts him. He appears in every mainline game in some fashion, as himself or as another related entity such as Shekinah from Strange Journey or Kagutsuchi from III. Due to the series's multiversal nature and his own demonized status, he counts as this trope and not a proper depiction of the Demiurge. However, in IV, The Axiom, a Sentient Cosmic Force, is actively working against him by creating Messiahs (the protagonists) capable of doing so. It should be noted that The Axiom is not the Great Will from earlier games, and whether or not YHVH has this kind of relationship with the Great Will there is ambiguous.
  • Lucifer ascends to this role in Shin Megami Tensei V and its rerelease Vengeance. Having killed The God of Law heavily implied to be YHVH, Lucifer consumes his knowledge and takes his throne as the new judge of creation. He then guides the protagonist from behind the scenes in order to create a new, proper god that can take the throne and guide humanity. As usual, Lucifer combines this with the other guy.
  • The protagonist Nahobino from V subverts this. He is the closest to a benevolent version of this trope, being another human bonded with a demon and with powers molded by a mysterious female demon named Sophia. However he's an All-Loving Hero, with a genuine claim to the Throne that Lucifer doesn't have, and in all endings but one the world he chooses to build genuinely is better than the Apocalypse How the other candidates want. Coupled with his other half being the son of a god, Nahobino's really a mix of this trope and Messianic Archetype.
• Silent Hill has the God and Holy Mother, Samael, who is worshipped by the Order as their deity and is the very essence of Silent Hill itself, a false world where everyone within is tormented by illusions. Despite being supposedly a god, it is killable and more of a powerful but mindless monster than anything.
• In Soma Spirits and Soma Union, the Great Spirits Form and Dissonance are said in the intro to be gods who created the titular planet of Soma and its inhabitants, ruling benevolently. However, they were actually human aristocrats who were transformed into Spirits by the Eldritch Abomination Absolution and attempted to seize control of it, overthrowing the benevolent Sun King and rewriting history to make him a tyrant who tried to resist the gods and was punished for it. They keep their subjects in an empty existence, with the inhabitants of the World of Joy only allowed to feel happiness and the World of Sorrow denizens kept in perpetual misery, and the two gods desire to destroy the other's world so only they will be worshipped.
• StarCraft has Amon, a fallen Xel'naga who abused the great power he was granted and artificially uplifted both the Protoss and the Zerg for his own ends. He hoped to use both to create artificial Hybrids to do his bidding and wanted to wipe out all of creation and remake it to his liking. He also created the hive mind for the Zerg and the Khala for the Protoss to seize control of their minds. An additional pointer is that two Protoss Templar may merge into a being called an Archon which are not necessarily subservient to Amon, but Dark Archons notably have mind-control powers that can capture individual beings permanently.
• Star Ocean: Till the End of Time: Luther Lansfeld is the creator of the in-universe MMORPG that the game takes place in, and fancies himself a god, keeping his NPC characters trapped in ignorance. But when they realize the truth and start fighting back, he freaks out and tries to destroy his false world, without which he has no power.
• Tales of Symphonia has a variation where the world's puppetmaster makes someone else an involuntarily false god. Mithos Yggdrassil turned his dead sister Martel into a goddess figure that the worlds of Sylvarant and Teth'eala worship, sending The Chosen One on a world-saving quest to sacrifice themselves when they're harvested as components meant to resurrect her. They've abandoned their original goal of ending conflict, allowing the racism-fueled Forever War between humans and half-elves to ensure their total control, and hoard technology Powered by a Forsaken Child to ensure he and Martel will eventually reach greater heights of godhood. When Martel is finally resurrected, the first thing she does is chew out her brother for how he spent millennia turning two worlds into fascist hellholes, then she sacrifices herself to resurrect the last sacrifice.
• The Talos Principle: From the beginning, it's obvious that the world is virtual and that, for all the Garden of Eden symbolism, the godlike Elohim must simply be an administrative AI. As Elohim warns the PC to never EVER enter the Tower, said Tower must logically contain the exit to their prison. This is eventually deconstructed in that Elohim knows what he was created for and how little control he actually has, and so fears both his own termination post-shutdown and his lack of information regarding the post-apocalyptic outside world's potential dangers. His inprisonment of the PC therefore isn't done out of tyranny, but instead to shelter them within a safe Gilded Cage. During the Golden Ending, he admits his fears but is also proud of the PC for choosing their own path in life.
• Tamashii: The Patriarch, supposedly the God of the setting, was once a mortal named Augustus Michael Yahweh who chased the mysteries of the divine with some allies before getting the power and turning on them. He intentionally keeps his subjects in eternal agony, hoarding his divine power for himself, because he believes only he is allowed to wield it, much like how the Demiurge keeps humanity trapped in the mortal, physical plane it created so that they may worship him.
• Warframe: Ballas becomes a Demiurge-like figure in "The New War", styling himself into a God-Emperor of the Narmer cult and brainwashing the population of the Origin System by using Narmer Veils to show them visions of what they most desire. This is reinforced by how in this role, his highest-ranked servants are known as Archons.
• World of Warcraft: The titans are a rare benevolent, or at least morally grey, version of this trope, as of Dragonflight. It is revealed that they, and the keepers, their servants on Azeroth, have concealed much of the world's ancient history from the mortal races — they destroyed evidence that the former masters of Azeroth, the Old Gods, were anything but evil monsters, and attributed all creation to themselves (hiding the existence of the First Ones, the universe's original creator deities). However, despite all that, the titans are still generally on our side, and while they may have done some reprehensible things, their enemies are still much worse.
  "Attribute all accomplishments and works of wonder to the titans alone. Despite the relentless arguments made by some of you, this is not a fallacy. After all, can anything truly be said to exist until it has been ordered? Of course not. Therefore, it is irrefutable that the titans are the source of all creation."
• Xenoblade Chronicles uses this a recurring element:
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 1: Zanza is a malevolent deity who is the true source of all life on the titanic Bionis, and serves as its soul. Once a human scientist named Klaus accidentally destroyed the previous universe in an experiment to create a new one, he became the new world's god along with his partner Meyneth, who instead became the soul of the Bionis's mechanical counterpart and rival. Zanza views his creations as nothing more than vessels and a food source to extend his own life with, and because he is unable to survive without them, he makes sure to wipe out all life on the Bionis and create it anew the moment it evolves enough to be capable of abandoning their world. The true god is Alvis, supposedly one of his disciples, whom he and Meyneth have been borrowing power from. Ironically, its Zanza's nemesis Egil who uses a Mechon called Yaldabaoth to fight, rather than Zanza himself.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has the Architect, who is Klaus's good half. Unlike Zanza, the Architect is The Atoner and is relatively benevolent. Also, it turns out that the divine power Alvis wields comes from the Conduit, a mystic artifact that just showed up in Africa one day, which Klaus used in a last-ditch effort to save humanity that went horribly wrong.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 3: The ruler of Moebius, Z, is an amalgam made from the collective unconscious. He consists of humanity's inherent desire for things to stay the same. He claims to have solely created the current world, but in truth he simply usurped the god-machine built to restore the previous one.
• Xenogears:
  • Deus is the Greater-Scope Villain, a powerful technorganic weapon that killed everyone on the ship that was transporting it and crashed on an uninhabited planet. It then proceeded to create a race of humans on said planet. The state religion of the Sacred Empire of Solaris, known as Ethos, worships it as the god of the world, and it even has a false Messiah and false Eve in its human interface, Miang Hawwa. However, the true God is the Wave Existence, with whom Deus came into contact, and in contrast to Deus, it is a benevolent being who wants to save the humans from Deus before departing back to its home dimension. With all the Gnostic influence and themes that permeate the story, Deus serves as the perfect insert for the Demiurge, the god that created the material universe and seeks to solely use humanity to further its selfish goals. The abovementioned Zanza was inspired by Deus.
  • Though Deus is the more traditional Demiurge in the story, Miang Hawwa represents it as well through her status as the mother of humanity. Miang maintains control over mankind and manipulates events to ensure that humanity evolves in the way that will lead to Deus being able to be revived, much like how the Demiurge keeps mankind tied to the physical world to maintain rule over it. She also comes about in a manner not to different from the Demiurge, having been born from what is a Sophia like being in the form of the original mother. Heck, her final form even resembles a combination of the two most common depictions of the Demiurge, that being a winged human with a serpent around them, and the other being a serpent with a lion like head, both of which her final form, Ouroburous, have elements of.

• Tears to Tiara: The Council of Angels, with the exceptions of Lucifer and Myrddin, function as a collective version. The angels such as Lector govern the mortal world in the name of Watos, through a combination of being Manipulative Bastards and leading a Corrupt Church. The angels seek to create a perfect world in his name; unfortunately, they are a group of Control Freaks who suck at understanding what Watos actually wants, leading them to act more like oppressive Evil Overlords to people than benevolent angels. They create this perfect world by repeatedly bringing about an End of an Age and culling the dominant mortal race when civilization gets too advanced for their liking (ie, equal to the angels), then repeat it with the next mortal race in a cycle of creation and destruction, much like how the Demiurge keeps humanity in a cycle of suffering outside of true enlightenment.

• The Amazing Digital Circus: Caine, the titular circus' ringmaster, is a less religious, unusually sympathetic version of the trope. Inside the program that everyone is trapped in, he's pretty much omnipotent, and even if his omniscience has holes you could drive a truck through he is still relatively aware of every event within. However, he has zero clue about anything that might be happening outside of it, to the point that he mentally freezes when asked how one leaves the Circus. His knowledge of human psychology is also spotty as hell, and all his benevolent attempts at helping the people trapped there often trigger the opposite effect. In the end, he's more eccentric and incomprehensible than malevolent, and he's just as trapped as everyone else.
• Helluva Boss: Satan is the one who styles himself as a false God. He's the one who created the imp race in his image, and is treated like a deity by them, to the point they use his name in expletives instead of saying "Oh my God!" The Control Freak tendencies of this trope also mean he sentences any imp who breaks his law to death and considers them little more than slaves in a system of his creation. He falsely claims to be the original ruler of Hell, but he's lying through his fangs and is merely Lucifer's second. And, clearly, he's not the actual God in the Hellaverse, if one even exists, but he's so absurdly powerful no one else wants to challenge his claims to his face.
• Inanimate Insanity: A rare sympathetic example with MePhone4. Steve Cobs reveals in "The Reality of the Situation" that both the world and all of the contestants were MePhone4's creation, due to him wanting to make his own reality show, and since Cobs created him, he's the de facto God of the world. Unlike the Gnostic equivalents, however, MePhone4 is the more sympathetic of the two, having noble aspirations despite his amoral streak, while Cobs is a self-centered snake who treats his creations as disposable once he comes up with new ones.
• RWBY: The brother gods are a joint example as the creators of, if not Remnant itself, then all life on it, including humanity, but were themselves created by a benevolent entity above even them before their feud with each other prompted her to exile them from her domain. They're Jerkass Gods that wiped out a previous iteration of humanity in response to a rebellion against them by the Big Bad, and are to some extent responsible for the entire overarching conflict of the series.

• Homestuck: The Big Bad, Lord English and his child self, Caliborn are heavily associated with Yaldabaoth, the creator of the material world in the Gnostic tradition.
• Kill Six Billion Demons: In the setting, the true gods are long dead, and a 'Demiurge' is a catch-all term for a non-God who has a Magus Key; a Cosmic Keystone that contains within it the power of one of God's names and voices. Holding a Key grants a Demiurge power over the universe that voice is keyed to. True to form, Demiurges are not gods but pretenders to the gods' power: They were born mortal, they can be slain and their Keys taken by others (indeed, most of the Seven obtained their Demiurge-hood by Regicide) and use their Keys to lord over creation as a pantheon of Mad Gods obsessed with conflict and victory. Much of the world's dysfunction can be traced back to Zoss, the first Demiurge. Having once ruled over the universe after conquering Heaven and forging the first Magus Key (the Master Key, which contains all of God's false names and voices), and creating the other Demiurges by handing them dominion over the other universes, Zoss' actions spread a harmful, toxic philosophy (Might Makes Right) that harms one's chances of enlightenment. In an interesting twist, Zoss himself has come to regret his tyrannical rule, and now aids The Hero from the shadows in her quest to dethrone his former servants. Yaldabaoth is even referenced within the comic, as 'Yabalchoath' is the true name of a powerful Ebon Devil who stole a Magus Key from Mammon of the Seven and (briefly) became a demigod.

• Mandela Catalogue has its version of Satan, who somehow killed and replaced the Archangel Gabriel, then overthrew Jesus himself. Posing as the both of them and as God, he tricks humanity into worshipping him instead of the true god, describing himself as the "one true savior". He also unleashes Alternates, demon doppelgängers of human beings, onto the world to destroy humanity via a mass Kill and Replace, furthering the themes of illusion, deceit, and impersonation.

• Sera from Hazbin Hotel is a Seraphim and one of the Highest Authorities in Heaven (God having gone unmentioned as an official entity in this setting). She had allowed the yearly extermination of Sinners in Hell to on out of a fear that they could stage an uprising against them if they are left unchecked in spite of the fact that they have no realistic means of harming them, or at least they would have if the Exorcists didn't leave angelic steel lying around, this being the only thing that can harm them. While she's just as clueless as everyone else by what metric a human soul ascends or suffers damnation, she has unflinching faith that all souls in Heaven are deserving and souls in Hell irredeemable (even though she is shown that Sinners are capable of goodness through Angel Dust), an assumption that gets thoroughly challenged when Sir Pentious manifests in front of her post-Heroic Sacrifice in the Season One finale.
• Rick and Morty: Rick Prime claims to have made both himself and our protagonist Rick C-137 into gods and while they can back a lot of those claims up, they explicitly are not. Within the Central Finite Curve, they're the "smartest man in the universe" but outside of that bubble, they have competition. Rick himself is nearly invincible within the CFC, can create life with a touch, and it's not much of a stretch to say he's remade the multiverse in his image along with Prime. However, what they actually did was isolate the rest of the multiverse from any other world that lacks a Rick—so rather than being the smartest man in the universe, they're the smartest man in the bubble they both create and control.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: Horde Prime. Conquering the universe, making what he can in his image, destroying what he couldn't conquer and erasing all knowledge of his failures. He uses a huge military of spacecraft, robots and clones connected to a hive mind who espouse a dogma about him, and even brainwashed people of the planets he is invading. Immortal and narcissistic, everything exists to where he is the god, the church, and the churchgoer with no room for individualism. Light Is Not Good incarnate, as he's always espousing how he'll bring light to the universe.^note Ironically, when Adora destroys him, he's a mass of shadows. Series creator ND Stevenson admitted that when creating him he was thinking of what it was like to grow up in a deeply fundamentalist environment while transmasculine and bigender.
• Steven Universe: White Diamond. While the Diamond Authority is billed as four matriarchs working together to lead the Gem Homeworld, White is the de facto God Empress of all gemkind. Her power easily surpasses that of Blue and Yellow Diamond, let alone lesser gems. She claims to be the perfect being, with all other gems, even the other Diamonds, merely being flawed reflections of herself. She refuses to listen to others or admit that she is wrong, and the end result of her plans would be the annihilation of all other life in the universe in order to fuel the creation of more gems — more subjects for her to rule. She demands that her subjects be perfect in their actions, thoughts, and desires at all times, and destroys everything that is "off-color". The only one shown to be able to stand up to her is Steven.