Self-Inflicted Hell

Horror and doubt distract his troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir the Hell within him, for within him Hell he brings, and round about him, nor from Hell one step, no more then from himself, can fly by change of place.
—John Milton, Paradise Lost
"The gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that's where they believe, in their deepest heart, that they deserve to go. Which they won't do if they don't know about it. This explains why it is so important to shoot missionaries on sight."
—Terry Pratchett, Eric.

Every religion has its own take on what happens when you die, but what if they were all right? An increasingly popular trope in fantasy novels is the idea that whatever you expect to happen when you die is pretty much what you get - effectively, Your Mind Makes It Real.

So if you believe that your Soul will remain chained to the karmic wheel and you'll be reincarnated as a cow, then that's what will happen. If you believe you'll sit at the right hand of God and sing hosannahs, that's what will happen. If you believe there is nothing after death, then all you'll find is nothing. If you believe that you'll become nothing after death, then that's just what you'll do or not do rather. If you believe in Fire and Brimstone Hell, but don't see yourself as worthy of escaping it, then down you go. Of course, it means generally good but unduly guilt-ridden people will go to Hell, while people that spend their lives picketing funerals will go to Heaven, but nobody said it was fair.

Also, in some fiction and also actually in some religions, is the idea that while God (or other supernatural judge) does send souls who have rejected him to a place far away from him, the only inherent punishment in this place is its complete and total separation from God and the rest of the universe. No fire, no brimstone, no demons with pitchforks, no Ironic Hell hilarity is actually ordained by the powers that be. However, one's own remorse or spite inevitably makes the place into something similar to what we usually think of as Hell.

This can be done as a way to explain away the conflict between a loving God and Hell existing, as Hell is nothing more than what a person inflicts upon themselves, which God can't stop without taking away their Free Will.

A literal version of this trope can result from Reality Warping Is Not a Toy, when a Reality Warper consciously or subconsciously creates their own hell.

Examples of Self-Inflicted Hell include:

Anime

  • The movie Night on the Galactic Railroad deals with a vision of the afterlife which seems at least partly based on where people believe they should go. One of the protagonists has a ticket to "the one True Heaven" (which isn't reached until the very end of the film). However, earlier in the film, a bunch of Christian Titanic victims arrive on the train, which lets them off at "the Southern Cross", a pious - and apparently ersatz - "Christian" version of heaven filled with robed figures making their way towards a giant, glowing cross.
  • Almost everyone in Revolutionary Girl Utena for being too involved in their own troubles to do the one thing which can actually save them, but especially Anthy until the end of the series.
  • The ultimate fate of Younger Toguro, Noble Demon villain in Yu Yu Hakusho, is practically a Tear Jerker due to this: As his crimes were the result of extenuating circumstances, Koenma tells him he's eligible for a less severe punishment. Toguro, however, has far too heavy a conscience to accept, and instead demands to be sent to a specific part of Hell - one that he knows will be ten thousand years of unspeakable pain, followed by Cessation of Existence. The last time he's ever seen in the series, he's walking through the door leading to it.

Comic Books

  • In his comic book Swamp Thing, Alan Moore explained (decreed?) that the afterlife of the DC universe depends entirely on what the dead expect will happen, be it Heaven, Hell or reincarnation. It is also possible to trap an innocent in Hell by convincing them that you have the power to do so. This concept has been used in other DC and Vertigo comics, such as Hellblazer, Lucifer and The Sandman. However, it's also been ignored on occasion due to story requirements or editorial lapses.
    • Phil Foglio's '90s Revival of Stanley and His Monster plays with this when Stanley is forced to storm the gates of hell to rescue his friend, the Monster of the title. Stanley is an innocent little kid whose knowledge of Hell comes entirely from Saturday morning cartoons and the Monster's wildly inaccurate stories—so as soon as Stanley enters, Hell becomes cute, brightly-colored and harmless, with the demons forced to behave as if they were stupid and easily-outwitted. John Constantine clone Ambrose Bierce explains this trope (but not to Stanley, since it only works because Stanley doesn't know any better).
    • This idea was thrown out for Constantine, the (very loose) film adaptation of Hellblazer, and replaced with a more conventional system based on Catholicism.
  • This is the hell shown in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman and its spinoff, Lucifer (though not everyone goes to Lucifer's particular hell, so not everyone chooses their own damnation).
    • In Death: At Death's Door, several damned souls are people who definitely don't deserve to be in Hell, but are because they sincerely believe they deserve it. For example: one was a little boy who was beaten by his mother. While he was alive, during beatings, his mother said she hated him for being born because the pregnancy ruined her figure, so he naively thinks suffering in Hell will make her love him.
    • When Lucifer closes Hell and its inhabitants wander the Earth, a boy who encounters them notices that they seem to have brought their own hells with them. He even manages to convince one of them to give it up and come with him.
    • Also, while Lucifer is closing Hell he finds unique trouble in the last occupant, a guy who staked himself to a wall, refusing to leave because he needed to pay penance for the men, women, and children he slaughtered in life. Lucifer gets him to leave by saying no one remembers what he did four thousand years ago, and kicks him out.

Lucifer: "Did you not hear my proclamation, mortal? You are free."
Breschau of Livonia: "I am Breschau of Livonia. I ripped out the tongues of those who spoke against me, and cut the unborn babes from the wombs of my enemies women, that they would not become warriors to rise against me. I took my mother by force, and I strangled my sister when she would not consent to my advances. Soon my name was whispered in the night by mothers to terrify their babes into obedience, I am Breschau, who bathed in the blood of children. I am Breschau, who forced the true prophets of the lord to dance upon plates of hot iron, under which fires were burning, and I laughed as they danced. I am Breschau, and when my mistress was unfaithful to me, I cut the nose from her face and wore it about my neck. As for the woman, I had her sewn to her lover, and, skin to skin, I left them in the desert to be eaten by ravens, and I laughed as I heard them scream. I am Breschau, and this is my punishment.
Lucifer: "I don't care who you are. You have to leave."
Breschau: "No. I am Breschau of Livonia. I..."
Lucifer: "Yes, yes... you killed a lot of people who would have been long-dead anyway had you not killed them and were no doubt a truly horrible person. Breschau, no one in the mortal world remembers your name, and there is not one mortal soul in ten thousand who can even point to where Livonia used to be on a map. Now go!"

  • When the hero of The Savage Dragon meets God, He claims that whatever one believes is what happens:

Dragon: You mean - if I firmly believed that I'd spend the rest of eternity making mad, passionate love to a bevy of leggy super-models - I'd get that?
God: Yes.

  • The DC Universe Purgatory is shown as a place of crushing ennui; ironically several inhabitants earned their way upwards by kicking the ass of Purgatory's guards in a slightly misguided attempt to do good.
    • There is also a minor form of DC Purgatory in Ragman. The evil men Ragman kill get to work off their sins by literally lending their strength to the hero and absorbing his injuries. A broken knee goes away by having some of the souls get injured knees. You work hard enough helping Ragman out/taking his owies, you get to go to Heaven.
  • It should be noted that most Vertigo stories are not considered canonical for the DC Universe; the recent miniseries Reign In Hell shows a version of Hell different from the above stories.
    • Since Sandman, Hellblazer, and to a lesser extent Swamp Thing, are firmly in the territory of All Myths Are True and Gods Need Prayer Badly as well as Self-Inflicted Hell, their look at the afterlife tends to be more fluid, and thus difficult to contradict.
    • More ironically, Reign in Hell plays this rather straight in some parts. It turns out, Purgatory's actually a subsection of Hell as a whole. But... either you work out your debt and head upstairs to Heaven, or you can take Door Number Two... Hell. You can renounce to salvation, leave Purgatory and go to Hell. This is actually part of a much larger question that is answered at the end, answering, exactly, what is the (rather chilling) Unspoken Principle of Purgatory:

Unspoken Principle: You can leave whenever you want.

      • sadly the above line applies actually to HELL it's written on the gates as you come in. it's a reference to the religious belief that people not god send themselves to hell.
  • The Chronicles of Wormwood has a system that largely revolves around this, but some adjustments are made on a case-by-case basis. For instance, suicide bombers go to Heaven and get 72 virgins, but all 72 are babies that they have to care for for eternity. Also, the road to hell is literally paved with mimes, who go to hell regardless.
  • Roberta Gregory's Winging It shows the main character, Lupe, confronting a horrifically wounded Jesus on a crucifix, who later turns into Satan. Meanwhile, a small child is running toward a beatific "Deezus!" and a Latina woman is being embraced by the Virgin Mary.
  • In classic Strontium Dog, Hell includes a desert of the dead, overseen by the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Those who walk through it can see the city of Hate in the distance, but never get any closer. As they fall into despair, they gradually turn into Skeletons and simply kneel down, facing the city they will never reach, with nothing but their thoughts for all eternity.

Fan Works

Film

  • What Dreams May Come revolves around this. Interestingly, so is Heaven.
  • In the backstory of Dogma, shown in a deleted scene, Hell was originally created as a simple prison for fallen angels, but when human souls started to arrive, their guilt-ridden demands for punishment made it much, much worse.
  • A subversion of this trope (involving a Posthumous Character) is the framing device of Heaven Can Wait.
  • This is the explanation for his predicament given to the protagonist of Open Your Eyes.
  • Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey has a sequence where the titular pair are sent to a corridor full of doors, each of which leads to various "own personal Hells". Such torments include Bill having to deal with his creepy grandmother, Ted being berated by the Easter Bunny for stealing some of his brother's candy as a child, and both being subjected to doing infinity push-ups by the Army colonel who wants to recruit them.
    • What makes it especially a case of this trope is that each of these punishments is behind a door, and the doors are unlocked. Aparently you can flee your punishment at any time. Of course Satan demands that they choose one, so I guess the idea is to just accept your fate a pick a hell.

Literature

  • The Night's Dawn Trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton.
  • The Discworld books exploit and subvert this concept in all kinds of ways, including (in Interesting Times) a part-time barbarian qualifying for a Valhalla equivalent because he sort of half-believed in his colleagues' beliefs, and a man who did not believe in ghosts being pursued through the afterlife by his victims because they believe in him.
    • Many who hit the afterlife are confronted with a long desert to cross; their eternal reward is on the other side. This mentally stuns a few; they end up sitting in the sand, tormented. Unless they're golems, in which case they may consider standing around in the desert with no more duties to perform to be Heaven; when a golem is blown to pieces in Going Postal, having an absence of tasks was eternal reward enough.
    • In Small Gods Brutha the Prophet is the only one who sees the way out of this. When he dies and Death tells him judgment awaits him on the end of the desert, he says "Which end?" In response, Death grins.
    • Discworld is actually almost a subversion of this trope. Since you only go to Hell if you really, deeply believe you deserve you go to Hell, Hell is mostly populated by rather nice people—because nobody who is genuinely, unapologetically evil would believe that he deserves to be punished for all eternity. Although thankfully the torments of Hell are pretty harmless a lot of the time, because people don't actually have to feel pain unless they're really trying to. Also the demons are mostly Affably Evil.
    • On the other hand, nihilists (some of which can be genuinely evil) suffer greatly after death in Discworld. If you don't believe anything, then you don't know where you belong, so you have to wait until you figure it out... and if you don't figure it out, then you'll be waiting a very long time...
    • And The Discworld Companion clarifies that the soul goes where it thinks it belongs "shorn of all self-deception".[1]
    • Death himself seems often bound to deliver people to the afterlife they believe in... but either he or the cosmic rules are not above giving their own interpetation in case of a Complete Monster thinking this gives him a Get out of jail-free card. See for example the fate of Mr Pin.
  • Stephen King's short story "That Feeling You Can Only Say What It Is In French" implies that the main character is in Purgatory because she has refused to acknowledge, let alone resolve, the guilt she feels over aborting her only child.
  • In the SF novel Waiting For The Galactic Bus, aliens accidentally cause the evolution of humanity and then have to deal with their spirits when they die. One opens up Heaven, AKA "Topside", and the other runs Hell, "Below Stairs". Everyone who turns up Below Stairs seems to expect torture, so he provides it, but the EXIT signs are brightly lit and the rest of the place is a pretty decent place to live.
    • Ironically, this also pops up in Topside: A Palestinian soldier killed by Israeli snipers turned up demanding his 72 virgins. He gets them[2]... ends up bored after about an hour and breaks down in tears of despair.
  • In The Master and Margarita, the theory that everyone gets what they believe is listed by Woland (Satan) among possible afterlife theories. It is unclear from the novel if this theory is always true; it is shown, however, that the afterlife does exist, but Woland ensures that one atheistic character gets exactly what he believed in: nothing.
    • Looks like the outcome is based on deeds. It is explicitly stated that Margarita gets her eternal peaceful being with Master away from everything for her love. Neither Master nor Margarita believed in that outcome, called not deserving the Light, but deserving the peace. One can argue, though, that the lack of belief on their part was an important part of not deserving the Light. Behemoth the Cat also had the afterlife fate that he didn't expect.
  • Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality book On a Pale Horse (about the incarnation of Death) features this for atheists. The main character (essentially the Grim Reaper) meets an blind atheist who has committed suicide and is slowly dying. Despite Death explaining that his job is to take souls to heaven or hell (and suicide is a big sin...), the atheist doesn't believe in an afterlife. When he dies, Death tries to take his soul, but it disintegrates.
    • Similarly, it's implied that the people who believe in one of the non-Abrahamic religions (such as Hinduism) end up in their religion's afterlife (or equivalent); only people who believe that Hell exists can end up there, but what you believe you deserve has little or no effect on your afterlife.
    • Later, in For Love of Evil it's revealed that Satan (the Incarnation of Evil)'s primary power is a sham: he can't really obliterate demons or confine souls to a particular part of hell, unless they believe he can. Only a handful of people, most of them former Incarnations, know the secret (which he has to learn to keep the job), largely because revealing the deception would create chaos.
  • Robert A. Heinlein's Job: A Comedy of Justice has a variant, in that whatever belief structure you believe in is the one you get to experience the afterlife for. So if you're Christian, you'll get heaven/hell/purgatory, if you're Hindu you'll get reincarnated. The Christian main character finds this out the hard way when he dies and goes to heaven but his wife is not there. So he assumes she's in hell, and only when he's trapped in hell does anyone explain this to him. She's in Valhalla, and since he didn't believe in Valhalla, he can't get there.
    • Heinlein did this before, in the short story Elsewhen in which he flatly stated that no human being has the capacity to believe in their own death, so when a person dies, they get whatever afterlife they expect they will find. If they were very religious, they go to a form of heaven where they subsist with God, etc. But nobody ever ceases to exist because it's impossible to believe in annihilation.
      • Technically, it wasn't his wife. His actual wife meets him in St Peter's presence and goes off saying she was waiting to get to heaven so she didn't have to be married to him any more. The woman he loves is Valhalla, and he does eventually get there with the help of the Devil. Odin said she fought well during Ragnarok so he was fine with her leaving.
  • In C. S. Lewis' novel The Great Divorce, Hell is just a drab city separated from God. It's not just miserable, it's boring. Interestingly, the damned are permitted to leave Hell and enter Heaven at any time, but unless they give up the sins for which they were damned they find Heaven just as miserable - specifically, the chief "problem" of Heaven for the Hell dwellers is that without being remade they are insufficiently "real", and real grass and trees and rocks go right through you in a very painful way - and eventually choose to go back to Hell.

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell choose it.

  • In Kelley Armstrong's novel Haunted, Eve meets Lizzie Borden (long story) in a literal self-inflicted hell. Lizzie punishes herself by murdering illusions of her parents over and over for eternity.

Her cheek twitched, eyes filling with genuine guilt and remorse, the kind Amanda Sullivan couldn't imagine, much less feel.
"So this is your punishment, then," I said, my voice softer.
"Punishment?" A confused glance my way. "This is what I deserve."
"A hell of her own making," Kristof murmured. I looked up at him. "I think this is her own doing," he said. "She's created her own hell, and trapped herself in it. No need for anyone to punish her. She does it herself."

  • Though the rest of the Inferno delights in Ironic Hell, Dante demonstrates how Satan, at the center of hell and in its deepest circle, is in the worst self-inflicted Hell of all: his six wings flap constantly, freezing the lake around him and leaving him stuck fast in the ice. Why does he keep flapping his wings? Because he wants to return to Heaven.
    • Also, where did the water the frozen lake is made of come from, you ask? They are Satan's tears, as he is weeping; wishing he could undo his betrayal.
  • The short story Other People by Neil Gaiman had a twist on this - his torment was literally self-inflicted, the fluid nature of time in Hell meaning he was tortured into the demon who tortured him. Additionally the worst part of the torture was being given full understanding of what he had done in his life.
  • Isaac Asimov's short story "The Last Trump" has everyone resurrected on Earth while everything else—buildings, clothing, machinery, possessions—crumbles and all the landscape flattens out, to leave the damned with nothing but each other and their own thoughts for eternity.
  • Arguably, Harry Potters Voldemort, as J. K. Rowling indicates that he's stuck as a mutilated, dismembered soul (because of the way he used murder to split his soul) in a sort of limbo. He has, in effect, created his own hell. His only recourse to leave and heal himself is to show genuine remorse, suggesting this is not a permanent state.
  • In Ted Chiang's "Hell is the Absence of God", Hell is Exactly What It Says on the Tin—it doesn't contain any torments; it's just an eternity of being cut off from God's attention. For non-religious people who don't really care about God, it's a bigger deal that they don't get to spend eternity with any of their loved ones who went to Heaven.
  • At the start of And Another Thing, Arthur, Ford, Trillian, and Random have, from their own perspectives, spent several decades in a personal Heaven courtesy of the Guide Mk II. Arthur relaxes on a beach with all the tea he wants. Ford spends time at a resort where he has all the parties, gargle blasters, and sex he wants while his health and chin steadily improve. Random unites Earth and is elected President of the Galaxy. Trillian gets to become the most respected journalist in the galaxy, but it ends up being Hell for her.
  • As the quote at the top of the page suggests, Satan in Paradise Lost is suffering from one of these. While Hell is described as an actual location, eternally immersed in fire, Satan shrugs this off, proclaiming "'Tis better to reign in hell than serve in Heaven!" However, people apparently didn't realize that Satan was only trying to fool himself. The self inflicted part comes later when he sees the Earth, and how beautiful it is, and wishes he could undo his rebellion, because he sees that he has been deluding himself. However, his immense pride remains his fatal flaw, as he is too proud to admit that he was wrong, and decides that if he must suffer Hell for his pride, then so should others.
  • An unusually literal (though non-religious) variant occurs in Greg Egan's Permutation City, where many people have been uploaded into a sort of "virtual afterlife" which they can design to their own liking. One character is shown to have quite deliberately created a hell that consists of forcing himself to endlessly relive the event for which he's punishing himself.
  • The metaphysical "Seth" books by Jane Roberts purport to have been dictated by a spiritual being. They state that for some people, the Afterlife BEGINS with an indistinguishable-from-reality ILLUSION. A soul may experience what they BELIEVE they will experience, whether some form of Heaven, Hell, or whatever. Eventually, the individual will find their way, or be led by others, to the TRUE Afterlife.
  • In the world of the Coldfire Trilogy, belief shapes reality. Hell only exists because the priests told their followers that it did. That is the precise reason why the founder of the religion deliberately did not have any mention of Hell in his original writings: To make it not exist. When the religion he created turned against him, he made a Deal with the Devil (which involved sacrificing his wife, two of his children, and his humanity) to escape the hell his former followers created for him.
  • In L. Jagi Lamplighter's Prospero Regained, Hell is this.

Live Action TV

  • Star Trek: Voyager. When B'Elanna Torres wakes up on the Barge of the Dead she says that Klingon hell is a myth. The ferryman replies that if she truly believed that, she wouldn't be here.
  • A version of this is implied in Supernatural. So far, the only people we know of ending up in Hell are people who choose to go there by making a Deal with the Devil. And, while they do face horrendous torments at the hands of demons, all (or at least most) demons were originally damned souls as well, who were psychologically broken by the constant torture until they agreed to become torturers as well. The true torment of Hell doesn't seem to be the place itself, but rather the people you're forced to spend eternity with.
    • Having been in Hell himself for 40 years 10 of those as one of the torturers, you'd think Dean would know how people end up there, and he tells two people in different episodes that they're going to Hell (a woman who's killed someone and an armed robber) - neither of them had made deals.
  • This idea gives the title for a Farscape episode, though the implication seems to be that these afterlives are more positive than hellish.

Nurse: If... we die, will I be with my daughter?
Stark: Different beliefs, different destinations...I cannot tell before the end.

  • In The Collector, a robotocist tries to evade death and eternal damnation by putting her mind in an immortal robot body. But the robot malfunctions and is incapable of movement, but is still fully conscious. The devil pays the electricity bills for the next millennium and congratulates her for being his first client to literally devise their own personal hell.
  • Xena and Gabrielle were sent to their own version of hell, a land called Illusia. It even featured Gabrielle being sacrificed and Xena being crucified (two things that happened in canon). The episode has a lot of Christian iconography as well, and not just the cross.
  • Twilight Zone had several of these: "The Masks", "Nick of Time", "A Nice Place to Visit" and possibly "Time Enough at Last"... come to think of it, practically the entire series would fall under this one.

Tabletop Games

  • In the Old World of Darkness game Demon: The Fallen, Hell only serves as a prison for the angels who rebelled against God (human souls have their own misfortunes, chronicled in Wraith: The Oblivion). Hell has no tortures; it is, in fact, sensationless. The fallen angels, however, were so driven by rage and pain that they turned and lashed out, both at each other and any human souls that drifted too near; thus they provided their own punishments.
    • As for Wraith, there are several "hells," based on the beliefs of their inhabitants, but the only people there are those who think they deserve to be there or made deals with dark spirits. They mostly serve as macabre tourist attractions for more savvy wraiths and other supernaturals. Note that the heavens aren't much better and are run like cults. Most people who die—and wraiths who finish their business without being Obliviated—will Transcend instead. What that entails is entirely unknown.
    • In the New World of Darkness, Mage: The Awakening' features the Supernal Realm of Pandaemonium, associated with the Arcana of Mind and Space and appearing very much like a Fire and Brimstone Hell. Why? Well, Space bends at the limits of the Realm, meaning that the inhabitants are stuck within and without much besides their own thoughts. Which inevitably turn towards the more negative impulses... and take solid form.
  • Ravenloft tends to feature a mix between this and Ironic Hell, as it is often the very personality of the Darklord that makes their situation insufferable.
  • In the world of In Nomine, by Steve Jackson Games, a mortal only goes to Hell if they achieve their Fate, the darkest, most selfish possibility for their existence. And it truly has to be self-inflicted—if a demon (or an angel!) pushes them too hard in that direction, it doesn't count and the soul escapes.

Video Games

  • Afterlife was basically a Simulation Game where you built the afterlife (both Heaven and Hell) and had to maintain it; whether or not people came there was dependent on what they believed, which you could tweak by, for example, inspiring prophets in the mortal world. A tip: Your income rate depends on the death rate depends on the population. Go rack up some lust.
  • Although not technically Hell, the town of Silent Hill works on this principle; if its victims can free themselves of their guilt, they can leave unharmed. Otherwise, they are stranded in the nightmarish town.
    • In Silent Hill 2, it's made clear that the baddies are only visible to certain people visiting there, and take on forms that represent their hidden guilts. This is seemingly inconsistent with the other games, however; in the original, for example, it's clearly Alessa's vision of Silent Hill that's imposed on everyone else there, while in 3, the effect spreads beyond the original town, the source of the effect being Claudia. Except for Silent Hill 2, though, the other games all take place during occult summoning rituals, so the town's state in the second game could be interpreted as the way the town usually works during a "down time" of no demonic summonings.
      • According to the "Book of Lost Memories", an information book for the series, the appearance of the otherworld in the first game caused the power of the town to increase, which is when it started calling to those who had darkness in their hearts.
      • People get pulled into each other's dark worlds. In the first Harry is pulled into Alessa's dark world and while the majority of Silent Hill 2 takes place in James' we also get to see a glimpse of what Angela's is like and one of the monsters in the game (Abstract Daddy/Doormen) is Angela's creation while the rest of them are James'.
  • City of Villains features this in one story arc: you're tasked with rescuing the soul of a singer who made a Deal with the Devil for his success. His soul turns out to have been within him all along, tortured by his knowledge of his undeserving nature - in the form of demonic hecklers. As he croons light jazz of his plight for all eternity.
  • Also applies to players of video games as well. For instance, someone who uses only the most powerful weapons and tactics throughout the game might complain about how the game is too repetitive. Or a Stop Having Fun Guy who uses every glitch and exploit ever discovered in the game to beat the 20-hour campaign in under 5 minutes might complain about how the game was too easy and/or short.

Webcomics

  • In Order of the Stick, it is eventually revealed that Roy's father is stuck on the lowest plane of the Lawful Good afterlife, on account of his vow to not rest until Xykon was wiped out once and for all. He's trapped there because he did virtually nothing to further that goal, and instead shuffled it on to his son - who, because he did everything he could to fulfill that vow, is admitted to the higher planes of heaven in spite of his failure - and will be forced to remain there until Xykon is destroyed.

Roy's Father: "That's not fair!"
Solar: "Yes it is. And that's why you're upset."

    • In other words, "Its The Thought That Counts" - but the fact that Roy fully intends to walk right out the revolving door and get back to fighting Xykon probably scores him some points.
  • In David Hopkins' Jack, Hell punishes sinnners with this and Ironic Hell. The titular Jack in particular cannot truly repent for his sins (and earn forgiveness) as he cannot remember them; he asked for it before he died.
  • It's a point of contention in Pictures for Sad Children. Jeremy thinks Hell tries to serve up ironic punishments, but is really bad at it. On the other hand, Paul thinks that the folks in Hell are already punishing themselves. [dead link]

Jeremy: I gotta download every album that came out this year. What if I need to make like a top ten list.
Paul: That's a waste of time.
Jeremy: But I should enjoy this while I can, right? Soon Hell will figure out how to punish me and take the internet away.
Paul: How is that enjoying, that is gonna be a month of terrible music. [[[Beat Panel]]] And they don't have to figure out how to punish us. They just let us keep doing what we were doing.

Web Originals

Western Animation

  • In the Gargoyles episode "Shadows of the Past," Goliath, Angela, Elisa, and Bronx return to the site of Castle Wyvern, where the massacre of Goliath's clan took place. Throughout the episode, Goliath is hearing the voices of the Captain and Hakon, and thinks he may be going crazy. Eventually, we realize that the ghosts of Hakon and the Captain were trapped there because of their hatred for Goliath (combined with some magic phlebotinum). In the end, though, the Captain realizes that he was really hating himself for betraying Goliath, saves his life, and is freed from his prison. Hakon, meanwhile, is trapped with "no one left to hate."

Other

  • The 18th century philosopher, theologian, and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg claimed to have made several spirit journeys to heaven. While everyone eventually goes to haven, he said to also have seen caves where people who were truly unwilling to accept their beliefs in life were wrong, spend all eternity in frustration. This makes this trope Older Than Radio.
  • There's a joke where a man, for some reason or another, dies and goes to Hell. He's given the grand tour by Lucifer, and much to his surprise finds it to be a rather pleasant place. Then as the tour wraps up, they come upon a fire-and-brimstone lake where demons prod naked souls with pitchforks. "What is that?" the man asks. "Don't worry about it," Lucifer replies. "We built that for the Catholics/Fundamentalists/Christians/denomination of choice. They insisted on it!"
  • There is an "inspirational story" about the idea of a self inflicted hell. It goes as thus -

A man spoke with the Lord about heaven and hell. The Lord said to the man, "Come, I will show you hell."
They entered a room where a group of people sat around a huge pot of stew. Everyone was famished, desperate and starving. Each had a spoon strapped to their arm that reached the pot, but each spoon had a handle so much longer than their own arm that it could not be used to get the stew into their own mouths. The suffering was terrible.
"Come, now I will show you heaven," the Lord said after a while. They entered another room, identical to the first -- the pot of stew, the group of people, the same long-handled spoons. But there everyone was happy and well-nourished. "I don't understand," said the man. "Why are they happy here when they were miserable in the other room and everything was the same?"
The Lord smiled, "Ah, it is simple," he said. "Here they have learned to feed each other."

    • There's also a version with chopsticks. Both the people in heaven and the people in hell are granted one chopstick. Those in hell are not charitable and do not trust those around them and so spend all their time trying to figure out how to eat with one and failing. Those in heaven are willing to share.
  • A whole subgenre of jokes among modern-day Pagans, where a Pagan dies and finds himself before Saint Peter, who promptly sends them along to the Summer Lands (the Neo-Pagan version of Heaven); along the way the Pagan meets Fundamentalists in some combination of this and Ironic Hell.
    • There's another similar joke where a man dies, and finds himself at the Pearly Gates. St. Peter asks him, "What religion are you?" and the man answers. He is directed to a room, but told to be quiet when passing by a particular other room. Several more people go through this. Finally, one person asks why they have to be quiet when passing by that particular room. St. Peter explains that, "Well, you see, that's where (insert Acceptable Religious Targets here) are, and they think they're the only ones here. We wouldn't want to spoil that for them, now would we?"
  • One piece of internet fiction had a variation: a mobster is killed and wakes up in a replica of his city, complete with people and finds himself in a Groundhog Day Loop situation. His guide, a beautiful woman, informs him he has the freedom to to anything because the next day it resets. After hundreds of days of killing his rivals in assorted bloody ways, casual murder, rape, assault, and other assorted mayhem (including raping and torturing his guide), he realizes he's in a personal hell and wishes to escape. And finds out the only way he can do it is to repeat the day as someone else in the city, including each of his victims each time he affected them. And then he has the realization that the only person left is his guide, who thanks him for allowing him/her to redeem him/herself, and disappears as s/he prepares to receive himself arriving.
    • Link please!
  1. ↑ When you die the first thing you lose is your life. The second is your illusions -- Pyramids
  2. ↑ Well, one - an ex-prostitute who volunteered for the task.
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