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Several times throughout the movie "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" step-siblings Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and Nebula (Karen Gillan) exclaim "Oh my God!" (capitalization from BluRay close captioning), usually when something explodes or collapses around them.

I don't know the Guardians of the Galaxy mythos outside the two movies. I understand if Peter Quill said that (maybe he even did, can't recall), since he does come from Earth and could have been raised if not in then at least around some Christian religion, but which God do they believe in in the Andromeda galaxy?

Or is it just the movie writer's oversight?

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    Why is it an 'oversight' to not explain what God they might be referring to?
    – iandotkelly ♦
    Commented Sep 28, 2017 at 21:12
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    @iandotkelly Maybe I used a wrong word, but I didn't want to straight accuse the writers of laziness. I meant that the writer while writing these exclamations in the script might have not stopped to think what God are they actually referring to.
    – mzywiol
    Commented Sep 28, 2017 at 21:26
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    @mzywiol That would be not so much being lazy, but not being extremely (probably excessively) vigilant. Big gap between those two.
    – doppelgreener
    Commented Sep 28, 2017 at 21:39
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    @mzywiol ... I wasn't thinking necessarily you were accusing them of lazyness, but the point I was making was that a script that explains every single piece of backstory for every piece of dialog is likely to be bloated and boring.
    – iandotkelly ♦
    Commented Sep 28, 2017 at 23:42
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    @iandotkelly of course I wouldn't expect it to be explained in the script (and, therefore, the movie) if it didn't bring value to the plot :) It's not that I expected Gamora or Nebula to shout "Oh my God!" and then look straight into camera and added "By the way, it's the Andromedan deity Rwhakkash that I referred to just now." ;) I asked this question because I was curious if somewhere in the comics or some other side materials there is some information about what deity they could refer to.
    – mzywiol
    Commented Sep 29, 2017 at 11:25

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It's just an idiom; it doesn't necessarily mean they believe in an actual God.

Indeed, we have no real reason to assume they are speaking English in the first place. We know for a fact that the Kree have their own language (as see in Agents of SHIELD S02E11), yet the Kree in the movie speak English. As seen in this related question, the alien races in the movies have a universal translator. (You can see an implant for this on Peter Quill's "rap sheet" in the first movie).

So, when we hear "On my God!", that's just the universal translator translating whatever idiomatic expression they used in their own language, into it's equivalent in English.

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    Whoa, I was just about to ask a separate question about how they're all speaking English in Andromeda! Thank you for that!
    – mzywiol
    Commented Sep 28, 2017 at 23:08
  • Eh, it could have just as easily been "Oh Gods!"
    – Wildcard
    Commented Sep 30, 2017 at 5:04
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    @mzywiol Oh, but that has nothing to do with the movie. Most aliens speak English.
    – Mast
    Commented Sep 30, 2017 at 17:56
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If they do believe, that's undetermined, but it doesn't have to imply any belief, at all.

"Oh my God" has evolved into a fairly common epithet in modern American English use. When used that way, it does not denote any specific god, or a belief in any god, at all.

Atheists and agnostics will use that phrase, or "Jesus Christ," or "Holy cow," or even more obscure ones ("Odin's beard!" "Wurrukatte's prostate!" ... okay, I made that last one up - though not the name). In the same way, a non-believer can use the word "Damn!" without believing in a nasty place in the afterlife where people go. It's so reflexively polite, people with no belief at all with say "Bless you!" if someone sneezes.

It's merely a way to express, in the strong terms, "Darn" or "Wow". The capitalization use is merely because people who do believe in their own god/God get very offended if it isn't capitalized.

Its common use has, to a certain degree, stripped away the exclusive religious connotation it might have once had.

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References to God of this kind reflect a story told in a post-Christian culture, as per these reflections by the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity.

At minimum, reference to God in the singular merely means the being or spirit that is worshiped and is believed to have created the universe. It does not imply a particular religion beyond a sort of implicit monotheism, and need not imply faith in or practice of any form of religion.

In Guardians of the Galaxy 3, the High Evolutionary is implored by his subordinate Vim to desist from his actions:

VIM: “For God’s sake, ...”

HIGH EVOLUTIONARY: “There is no God! That’s why I had to step in!”

So references to 'God' in this general sense are still commonplace and meaningful around the cultures of the MCU.

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  • Well, Odin, Loki and Thor exist in the MCU, and they're Gods.
    – Johnny Bones
    Commented May 23, 2023 at 20:13

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