Bonus Level of Heaven

"It's time you all learned that Heaven can be a Hell of a place!"
—Benjamin Franklin, The Simpsons Game

A bonus level or dungeon where the characters get to slaughter their way through Heaven, and possibly culminating in punching out God.

Not to be confused with Fluffy Cloud Heaven, which only sometimes overlaps with this.

Compare and contrast Planet Heck.

Examples of Bonus Level of Heaven include:

Action Games

  • Bomberman 64 had the secret final level called Rainbow Palace that fit the Fluffy Cloud Heaven motif, and had relaxing music that severely clashed with how unforgiving some of the puzzles were.
  • In Bayonetta, beating the 21 Alfheim challenges (which are located in heaven) rewards you with… a massive Alfheim challenge where you have to go through 50 waves of enemies, many of them really brutal, with a progressively increasing difficulty setting (from Normal at the beginnig to Harder Than Hard at the end) and one Bonus Boss. The soft and dreamy music that plays between the waves does little to reassure the player. Oh, and you can't use healing items. Good luck.

Fighting Games

Platform Games

  • In the arcade version of The New Zealand Story, when you lose your last life in the later stages of the game, Tiki will reappear in the stage Heaven. There are different layout Heavens based on when you died, but they're all rather difficult stages. If you make your way all to the right, you meet up with the Goddess and pass on to the afterlife in a sort of The Many Deaths of You fashion epilogue (I think...).
    • "Tiki has met the Goddess and now went into a long sleep in the warm sunlight. But the Heavens had got an exit to the underworld."
      • What's awesome is that there is a secret route in each Heaven leading back to the game proper: you can escape Heaven and shrug off death itself through sheer force of will! That's how awesome little Tiki is!
  • The Simpsons Game had the family traveling to Heaven to talk to God about why everyone and everything wants to destroy Springfield, beating up Shakespeare and Benjamin Franklin along the way. They then play a DDR-style game where you coordinate heavenly versions of baddies from previous levels to the beat of "Rock You Like A Hurricane". Also, God is a giant video game nerd who spends all his time playing the super-immersive Planet Earth videogame.
  • Gimmick!
  • The underrated CD-i title The Apprentice sort of plays it straight in the form of a dream taking place in Fluffy Cloud Heaven, which you get to play every time you clear a tower and defeat its respective boss. It's a time attack stage where you must race your way to the very top of heaven by jumping on springs, all the while collecting all the letters that spell "MAGIC" to receive a buttload of extra bonus points.
  • The coin heaven areas in the Super Mario Bros. series.
  • In Sonic Robo Blast 2, this area is a literal bonus level. It's also a Marathon Level, being a combination of four levels with the same theme from a popular Game Mod.

Roguelike

Role-Playing Games

  • There's an indie game series called Legion Saga, at the end of which the main villain turns out to be God himself, so the heroes and their army have to invade heaven.
  • Persona 4 had one as a later level, based on Nanako's mindset. Although the level is required for the story, afterward in a second playthrough, the top floor (and you'll have to walk back up there normally) holds the resident Bonus Boss on the last day: Margaret, assuming certain... conditions are met.
  • The Game Boy Advance port of Final Fantasy II lets you take on heaven with the characters who had died in the main story after you beat the game. They end up meeting the Emperor, who explains that the guy who took over Hell is actually the evil half of his soul. Then it turns out that his "better half" is still evil, and you have to stop him from taking over Heaven as well.
  • The PlayStation 2 game Champions of Norrath: Return to Arms has you hack your way through heaven and hell. Apparently, the difference between the two is largely cosmetic.
  • In the first Final Fantasy Legend your characters have to fight the Creator in his own heaven. The second game also has this to a lesser extent: Odin's world looks like the white puffy version of heaven before he forces you to kill him in it.
  • Super Paper Mario features the Over There, where an evil force once held prisoner has taken over.
    • Not quite this trope, due to not being a Bonus Level. It's still a Level of Heaven, though.
  • Not a Bonus Dungeon, but in Tales of Symphonia you do end up getting taken to heaven. And you have to escape. And it's part of the game's Crowning Level of Awesome.
  • Valkyrie Profile has the Seraphic Gate, a bonus dungeon you can complete only after going through Hard mode to find eight special items. The most powerful bosses await there, including Gabriel Celeste and Iseria Queen.
  • The Final Dungeon to Digital Devil Saga can be interpreted this way.
  • Not a bonus level, and definitely a weird looking heaven, but the Great Crystal in Final Fantasy XII sort of qualifies, especially since it has a huge, next to impossible light based boss at the top.
    • The boss is an angel too.
  • Not quite a bonus level either, but Final Fantasy VIII had the Island Closest to Heaven. It doesn't actually seem to involve proximity to heaven, except by way of being crammed from shore to shore with the most dangerous monsters of the game.
    • For most people (those without GFs and massive Junction bonuses), if they're standing on that island they probably will be seeing the afterlife very soon...
      • There's also an island closest to hell. Exact same thing. There is a bonus to being here, though. All the best spells in the game (except Apocalypse) are here.
  • Players of Shin Megami Tensei II who go for the Neutral or Chaos path will get to sneak into the new Garden of Eden in disguise, then slaughter their way through ranks of archangels and the spiritual manifestations of aspects of the most Holy One. At the end of the line, you fight The Lord Himself. Needless to say, it's a VERY tough fight. The scenery is devoid of fluffy clouds, though - most is sterile white walls, and the last area is a platform in a featureless void.
    • Of course, since this is the heaven of a god who has pretty much gone insane and is no better than the devil himself by this point, and when the player confronts him, says that he will kill the player and torture him in hell forever, that may go a long ways in explain why everything seems so cold and empty...

Sports Games

  • Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2 actually features a level called Skate Heaven, which is a gigantic level with only one real hazard, and even begins with a booming voice proclaiming "Skate on, my son."

Tabletop Games

  • There's a fan-made Heaven sourcebook for the tabletop RPG Kult. Given that God is missing and His replacement is evil, this makes sense.
  • In the Time of Judgment sourcebook for the Old World of Darkness that detailed the Apocalypse How of The End of the World as We Know It for each game line, none of the Demon: The Fallen endings specifically included the angels of heaven returning to Earth to redeem or destroy the demons, but it literally had bonus rules for making and running angels as allies or (more likely) antagonists for player characters if a Storyteller wished to do so.
  • Depending on how the campaign goes (and whose side they're on), it is perfectly reasonable for high-Essence characters in Exalted to slaughter their way through Yu-Shan, culminating in an epic battle with the Unconquered Sun himself.

Turn-Based Strategy

  • Disgaea: Hour of Darkness. Makes sense, considering the main characters are mostly demons. Notably, it's not actually a bonus level, but rather the finale. Earth, on the other hand, does show up as a bonus level.
  • You can have a Bonus ending of heaven in Yggdra Union, as the whole killing God is implied when Yggdra kills Marietta.
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