History Main / CelestialBureaucracy

* The web novel ''A Trickster's Tale'' featured a "Department of Classifications" in [[http://www.lycanon.org/trickster/tricksterstail14.htm Part 14]]. The protagonist, realizing this appears to be the processing hub for the afterlife, asks the clerk why it's so empty.'

-->Arthur shut his eyes for a moment. He couldn’t believe he was being told about an accounting problem in the epicentre of the universe, in the House on which the entirety of creation depended for its continuing existence.

* ''VideoGame/{{Touhou}}'' loves this trope. At one point, hell's budget is dangerously in the red, and so it ''opens up stands in the world of the living in an attempt to balance the books''.
** Hell itself has the rather amusing title of "The Ministry of Right and Wrong" and they publish guidebooks.

* In ''Literature/InfernoLarryNivenAndJerryPournelle'' by Creator/LarryNiven & Jerry Pournelle, which is a modern re-imagining of Dante's ''[[Literature/TheDivineComedy Inferno]]'', Hell is one big, strange bureaucracy whose motives the protagonist puzzles out during the course of the story.

* Creator/RobertAHeinlein's ''Literature/JOBAComedyOfJustice'' plays with this concept.

* In ''VideoGame/DeathAndTaxes'' the player character is a GrimReaper charged with maintaining the balance of life and death for a small town, through paperwork.

** King Yemma is in charge of judging the souls of the dead, determining whether they go to heaven or hell. He's actually a real figure from asian mythology, but what makes him this trope is that his role is portrayed as a ''literal'' desk-job, with paperwork and pen-pushing and everything. Whether he judges ''all'' the dead or if he's just in charge of Earth's afterlife in particular is unclear, however the Buu Arc implies that he indeed does judge the dead across the ''entire'' universe.
** Each world has a Kami, meaning "god", although the Creator/{{FUNimation}} dubs make Kami their given name and their title changed to [[{{Bowdlerise}} Guardian of Earth]]. They answer to the Kaio (Kaio; "Lord of Realms") of their quadrant, who answers to the Grand Kai. Above the Grand Kai are one or more Supreme Kais (Kaioshin; "Divine Lord of Realms"), who watch over the universe as a whole. The number of Supreme Kais to a universe appears to be variable; most universes appear to just have two (generally an elder and an apprentice), but Universe 7 had ''five'' at one point before a monster attack left them with a single IncompletelyTrained one.
** It is later revealed that the various Kais are the 'Gods of Creation' and balanced by a 'God of Destruction,' who destroys old worlds and such so new ones can formed. They are technically equal in "rank" to the Supreme Kai, but given that they are in general much more powerful than the Supreme Kai, in practice the Kai will usually defer to the God of Destruction. The God of Destruction is attended by an Angel, whose job it is to take care of them and train them. Angels also happen to be far more powerful than the Gods of Destruction, generally making them the single most powerful beings in a given universe. In the DBZ universe, (said to be the 7th Universe), the God of Destruction is Beerus, and his Angel is known as Whis.

** The whole problem of the game started when the Brothers Sun defeated and imprisoned the deity in charge of rain...[[FantasticAesop who also was in charge of escorting the dead to their rest.]] Yes, it saved the Empire in the short term. In the long term? Nice job breaking it.

* In ''Literature/{{Inferno}}'' by Creator/LarryNiven & Jerry Pournelle, which is a modern re-imagining of Dante's ''[[Literature/TheDivineComedy Inferno]]'', Hell is one big, strange bureaucracy whose motives the protagonist puzzles out during the course of the story.

* The original pitch of ''WesternAnimation/JimmyTwoShoes'' stated the reason why Jimmy was in Miseryville in the first place was because an administrative error got him sent there. Whether or not this is still the case is currently unknown.

* Creator/EoinColfer's ''Literature/TheWishList'' features Saint Peter griping about how computer programmers never get past the Pearly Gates, so he has to do all of his records manually. The staff of Hell dread being reassigned to somewhere even worse than they already are.

** The Nine Hells of Baator has an Infernal Bureaucracy centered around the damnation of mortal souls, which requires a good deal of paperwork and a special breed of devilish bureaucrats. Mortal souls that arrive in Baator are marked based on which devil managed to tip their alignment to LawfulEvil, and shuttled off to the plane's different layers depending on which [[DemonLordsAndArchdevils archdevil]] will ultimately take credit for their damnation, where they will be tortured for spiritual energy and transformed into a new devil at the bottom of the infernal pecking order. There's a court system where mortals who signed a DealWithTheDevil can try to argue their cases and get out of an infernal contract, and though the devils will provide free legal counsel, they'll also do their best to prove that a mortal's other actions in life damned them for unrelated reasons. Devils compete viciously with each other to fill their damnation quotas and earn promotion to a more powerful form of Baatezu - demotion is feared more than oblivion, because at least oblivion is painless, while demotion to a lesser devil is humiliating and agonizingly painful. Combined with "soul futures" trading, spiritual loan sharks trading a few souls now to a desperate devil for the promise of more souls later, devils competing with each other for rights to the most productive soul harvesting territory on the material plane, "lateral demotions" of dangerous underlings to a form of devil ill-suited for soul collection and thus further promotion, and archdevils trying to poach talent from each other, and the whole thing comes across as a dark satire of corporate politics.

* ''Series/TheGoodPlace'': Every single action in your life is given a score managed by accountants. Even trivial things like buying a trashy magazine (bad) or eating a healthy sandwich (good). When you die you need a very high positive score in order to get into the titular Good Place while everyone else goes to the Bad Place. The scoring system however is infamously convoluted and at times nonsensical with a mention in season 3 that only the accountants have full knowledge on how the system works. Outside the neighborhoods, everything (at least on one side) is run like a company complete with board meetings, climbing the corporate ladder, approaching work like a day at the office and coffee breaks, while another side is run by a committee so hidebound that it's going to take them 1,400 years just to form the committee to investigate a complaint.

* ''Film/{{Beetlejuice}}''. Staffed by the ghosts of people who committed suicide.

** Each world has a Kami, meaning "god", although the Creator/{{FUNimation}} dubs make Kami their given name and their title changed to [[{{Bowlderise}} Guardian of Earth]]. They answer to the Kaio (Kaio; "Lord of Realms") of their quadrant, who answers to the Grand Kai. Above the Grand Kai are one or more Supreme Kais (Kaioshin; "Divine Lord of Realms"), who watch over the universe as a whole. The number of Supreme Kais to a universe appears to be variable; most universes appear to just have two (generally an elder and an apprentice), but Universe 7 had ''five'' at one point before a monster attack left them with a single IncompletelyTrained one.

** King Yemma is in charge of judging the souls of the dead, determining whether they go to heaven or hell. He's actually a real figure from asian mythology, but what makes him this trope is that his role is portrayed as a literal desk-job, with paperwork and everything. Whether he judges ''all'' the dead or if he's just in charge of Earth's afterlife in particular is unclear.
** Each world has a Kami, meaning "god", although the Creator/{{FUNimation}} dubs make Kami their given name and their title changed to [[Bowlderize Guardian of Earth]]. They answer to the Kaio (Kaio; "Lord of Realms") of their quadrant, who answers to the Grand Kai. Above the Grand Kai are one or more Supreme Kais (Kaioshin; "Divine Lord of Realms"), who watch over the universe as a whole. The number of Supreme Kais to a universe appears to be variable; most universes appear to just have two (generally an elder and an apprentice), but Universe 7 had ''five'' at one point before a monster attack left them with a single IncompletelyTrained one.

* ''Anime/DragonBallZ'':
** King Yemma is in charge of judging the souls of the dead, determining whether they go to heaven or hell. Whether he judges ''all'' the dead or if he's just in charge of Earth's afterlife in particular is unclear.
** Each world has a Guardian (Kami, or "God" in Japanese). The Guardians answer to the Kai (Kaio; "Lord of Realms") of their quadrant, who answers to the Grand Kai. Above the Grand Kai are one or more Supreme Kais (Kaioshin; "Divine Lord of Realms"), who watch over the universe as a whole. The number of Supreme Kais to a universe appears to be variable; most universes appear to just have two (generally an elder and an apprentice), but Universe 7 had ''five'' at one point before a monster attack left them with a single IncompletelyTrained one.

* Hotori dies and finds the Japanese Heaven is like this in ''Manga/SoredemoMachiWaMawatteiru''.