Oh Gods!!

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People in the Empire usually swear by the gods, or Mother Moon (who is apparently one of the more popular deities). Thor often swears "By Odin's beard!" Now he also uses it in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, the line has become more popular. And funnier. ("Buy Odin's beer!") It's more often "By the bristling beard of Odin!", though the shortened version does show up from time to time. He's also fond of "By the thousand threats of Ragnarok!" In The Wheel of Time series, the dominant religious belief is in the Creator and the Light, a never-seen force which is at war with the Dark One, leading to many familiar English idioms substituting "the Light" for God ("the Light bless you", "the Light preserve us", "thank the Light", "the Light willing", etc.). Second-Face Smoke: In Oh God! You Devil, the Devil does this to Bobby, before vanishing in the cloud of cigar smoke. By the surly beard of Mrifk" often triggers a pass-it-to-the-next-reader moment in the party-game version of The Eye of Argon.

Cars uses it a few times. "Sweet Chrysler", "Ford Almighty", "thank the Manufacturer", etc. The Ford one might just be a Shout-Out to Brave New World, see below. Or not.The Eldar are not shown enough for these to become commonplace, but they probably do swear by Khaine, or Asuryan, or Isha, or one of their many other deities. The Malazan Book of the Fallen series utilizes this trope, usually by invoking the name of a particular deity alongside a term that is incongruous with them. As an example, a common curse among Malazans is "Hood's breath", Hood being the King of High House Death and thus having no breath to speak of. Variations on "Hood's balls" is another common curse, eg. "Hood's balls on an anvil!" Other cultures swear by different deities, but the pattern tends to stay the same. Elaine Cunningham once wrote "One of my personal goals with the Waterdeep novel is come up with innovative curses that don't sound silly or stilted." in a discussion of language flavors supporting a setting or shattering Suspension of Disbelief. Slyly subverted in the comics featuring Borduria. There, the oath is "by the whiskers of Kûrvi-Tasch!", itself a parody of "Lenin's Beard!" Invisible to Normals: God cannot be seen, heard, or recorded by humans unless He allows it. This even extends to transcripts, such as a stenotype paper record of His testimony.

The Jamaillans, on the other hand, believe in Sa, a sort of all-encompassing, bi-gendered deity. This allows for fun expressions like "As sure as Sa's got tits and balls". The Twelve Tasks of Asterix movie cuts to the Olympian gods. Jupiter promptly ends a sentence with "By Me!" Because of this Sheppard wanted to highlight in the book is that “there is joy in being a teen girl”.It is then played straight in the third sequel " 3001: The Final Odyssey", when Frank Poole (Bowman's crewmate in the first novel) is recovered from space and revived (apparently having been cryogenically frozen by exposure to space), he is shown a recording of Bowman's last moments, with the audio strangled edited to say "By Deus! It's full of stars!". This is explained in the narrative by saying that since all religions are now united in the 31st century, all references to earlier gods have been overwritten with Deus, a single divine entity. (This is quite interesting in the translations of the novel to languages in which "Deus" is simply the word for "God". "By Theos, it is full of stars", is even weirder.) In Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series novels, characters exclaim "Great space!", "Galaxy!", or "He went space knows where." "Oh my space" is sadly absent. In The Fire's Stone, Aaron is from an area with a monotheistic religion, but Darvish and Chandra both follow ten numbered gods and swear by them. They also have skills and magic associated with each god—Chandra is a Wizard of the Ninth. Romulan "Elements!" Originally appeared in the Rihannsu novels, in reference to a Romulan animistic belief in the four elements dating to their schism from the Vulcans.