Expressing (or referencing) godhood and divinity by making a character have several simultaneous faces. These characters may or may not be explicit Gods, but multiple faces are being used as an aesthetic connection to godhood.
Bonus points if all the faces are attached to the same neck, which usually takes direct inspiration from the Hindu Brahma (rendering this trope Older Than Feudalism). If they want to take that particular inspiration further, expect the being in question to also be Multi-Armed and Dangerous.
Sometimes this is used to suggest that the entity has many aspects to themselves which they are attempting to represent simultaneously. There might also be an implication of omniscience by seeing in all directions.
Masks are a common motif that can be used instead of literal faces, with Floating Mask and having a "collection" of masks being 2 specific variations that show up.
Compare Two-Faced (which doesn't always represent divine inspiration) and Multiple Head Case (if each face has a different personality). Possibly a justification for Voice of the Legion.
Common in Angelic Abominations in reference to the four-faced entities seen in Ezekiel's Vision of the Chariot.
See also Our Hydras Are Different and Cerberus.
Note: this is for entities with literal multiple faces. For a god with multiple aspects, see Divided Deity.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- Naruto: The Dark Messiah Pain can have his Asura Path shapeshift into a multi-faced, multi-armed form.
Comic Books
- Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Search: The Mother of Faces (pictured above) is naturally a spirit with many faces, all attached to the same neck. She also can create new faces that take the form of masks.
- Black Moon Chronicles: The Oracle is a many-faced God who lives inside a temple on Earth, in order to emphasize that the Oracle is all-knowing. Subverted when she sheds her Eldritch Abomination form and is revealed to be a Hot Goddess with a single head.
- Marvel Universe:
- The Living Tribunal, the supreme arbiter of the multiverse, has three hooded faces: one bare-faced, one with its hood covering its eyes, and one fully veiled.
- After Lord Chaos and Master Order forcibly fused themselves with the In-Betweener, they became Logos, resembling a three-faced head floating within a ring of arms and wings. Logos usurped the Tribunal's position as the law of the universe, but was eventually defeated by the Ultimates and separated into his components once more.
Literature
- Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Several Classical Mythology gods reprise their multi-faced appearance here, particularly Janus.
- A Song of Ice and Fire: The Many-Faced God's name invokes this, although it's more a reference to the fact that their followers believe every death god in every culture is an aspect of the one being. The cult of the god also literally use many faces as masks to shift their identity.
Live-Action TV
- Krypton: The Voice of Rao (Krypton's equivalent of the pope) wore a mask at all times in public. The mask had multiple faces going around the wearer's head, suggesting that Kryptonians believe this is what Rao looks like.
- Supernatural: Although angels' multi-dimensional truest forms are never shown to the audience, partly on account of the show working around its budget constraints, the angel Zachariah comments at one point that his true form has four faces including a lion's face.
Myths & Religion
- Aztec Mythology: Coatlicue is a goddess with 2 snakes for her head.
- Book of Ezekiel: In Ezekiel's vision of Heaven, he sees four "living creatures", each with four faces — man in front, lion to the right, ox to the left, and eagle on the back, to represent the four orders of higher creatures (humankind, wild beasts, domestic beasts, and birds).
- Classical Mythology: There are several cases of polycephaly. Most notably Hecate, the three-headed godess of magic, and Janus, the Two-Faced Roman god of gateways.
- Egyptian Mythology: A rare depiction of the god 'Ash with many faces' has three heads: a lion, a snake and a vulture. He can be seen at Brighton Museum
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- Hindu Mythology: Possibly the Trope Codifier. Most popular depictions of the creator deity Brahma have many faces, as well as several other deity. The Hindu Asura also have quite a cultural legacy, although their multiface form comes from depictions in Buddhism.
Video Games
- Destiny 2: The Witness, Big Bad of the Light and Dark Saga, has a head terminating in a pillar of smoke in which other faces continuously arise and dissolve. Combined with the afterimages that trail its movements, giving it the appearance of multiple limbs (which becomes real when it goes One-Winged Angel), the end result is evocative of a sort of postmodern Vedic deity. It is a Reality Warper of godlike power who seeks to become truly omnipotent, although they specifically signify it being a Mind Hive created by an entire civilization performing a Merger of Souls.
- Final Fantasy IV: The Asura summon is directly inspired by Asura demons from Hinduism, albeit with an added Multiple Head Case which each give different abilities.
- Hades: Chaos is depicted with several horrific faces growing from their writhing body.
- Hollow Knight: Played with. The Dreamers are depicted as three masks fused together above the temple of the Black Egg. However, the Dreamers themselves are not divine (or even a unified creature). The symbolism actually represents that what they are sealing is divine.
- Honkai: Star Rail:
- Xipe, the Aeon of Harmony is represented as triple-faced, all connected on the same neck.
- Aha is represented as a frenetic mess of theater masks, each with a different expression.
- Inscryption: Downplayed. Leshy's final boss fight has his ritualistic masks float and cycle around his body magically to represent his godlike power as the dungeon master.
- The Mooseman: Voipel is a god with 3 faces, each one with a different role. One is glittering rage, one is a story, and one is The Old North Wind.
Visual Novels
- Slay the Princess: This is the true form of the princess' 'goddess', a hive mind of alternate versions of the princess and the avatar of Change and Death. She also has thousands of other princess-shaped bodies surrounding her lower torso, which are technically a part of her. If you accidentally mutate the Princess in the Stranger route, she'll also turn multi-headed; they piece together that they are technically a demigod since they are loosely connected to the goddess.
Web Animation
- Helluva Boss: Asmodeus is the Anthropomorphic Personification of lust, and has a primary head with two secondary faces on either side.
Webcomics
- Kill Six Billion Demons: The creator god Yisun draws inspiration from Vedic imagery of deities having many faces and exaggerates it by having entire alternate bodies radiating out from their center. This is to signify that Yisun was an infinite being who contained all possibilities (and impossibilities) within themself.
- Nixvir: Nekkit, the World Oak's version of Hecate, is depicted as having three heads, each of a different animal.
Western Animation
- Adventure Time:
- Grob Gob Glob Grod was a guardian deity on Mars, with four faces on a floating head, each one a different entity. These four faces are later revealed to be individual sphere-shaped entities that simply control a shared body.
- Life is depicted with 2 serpent faces who speak in unison.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: Koh the face-stealer from "The Siege of the North, Part 2" is a variation — he swaps between the different faces he's stolen while being one of the most ancient spirits around.
- Ben 10: Alien Force: The omnipotent Alien X has three aspects within himself, with two of the aspects represented as floating masks.
- Steven Universe: The Crystal Temple depicts the form of Obsidian, who in addition to Brahma-like multiple arms has multiple faces.