History Main / MundaneAfterlife

* In ''[[VideoGame/SamAndMaxFreelancePolice Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space: What's New, Beelzebub?]]'', Hell is a rather dull and drab office where it's always 4:59 p.m. on a Monday, the coffee is cold, and the refrigerator is room temperature.

* ''Literature/{{Elsewhere}}'' is a novel centering on afterlife speculation. It has freshly-dead people go on a sort of boat together. Whatever killed them heals, and then they arrive in Elsewhere, where they are greeted by recently-dead relatives and friends. They [[MerlinSickness age backwards]] then, and as newborns are taken back on the boat to be reincarnated. There's a society not unlike what the living have, and people tend to go for different jobs - Marilyn Monroe became a psychiatrist, for example. It's possible to pay to look at the world of the living and communicate through water, but that's generally frowned upon.

* ''Literature/AnotherNote'' hints that [[TheUnderworld the "Mu" afterlife]] spoken of in ''Manga/DeathNote'' may be this. Specifically, the narrator [[spoiler:Mello]] is writing a report on a long-since-closed case [[PosthumousNarration from beyond the grave.]] He gives up the clinical narration style in favor of one more like [[TheStoryteller a live storytelling]], on the chance that someone other than [[GreatDetective Near]] might read it. Note that the afterlife in ''Manga/DeathNote'' is actually [[spoiler:CessationOfExistence]], as per WordOfGod and the final chapter/episode. The novel was written by a different person than the manga, and thus is probably non-canon.

** In "The Misfortune Cookie", based on a 1970 short story of the same name by Charles Fritch, a food critic gave a bad review of a Chinese restaurant before he ever ate there. When he came back on request to give them another chance, he was inexplicably ravenous, to the point of ordering everything on the menu and still not being satisfied. When he got his fortune cookie, it said "You're dead", over and over again.
** In "Dead Run", the center of {{Hell}} is a dark, violent industrial complex. It is surrounded by the Outer Circles, which are indistinguishable from ordinary countryside.
** In "A Nice Place to Visit" from [[Series/TheTwilightZone1959 the original series]], the afterlife is indistinguishable from the living world except for the fact that everything goes the main character's way. He eventually grows bored with having everything he wants handed to him and tells his guide he'd prefer Hell over an eternity of boredom, [[spoiler:at which point he learns that he's already in Hell.]]

* ''Film/{{RIPD}}'': Heaven is a large, bustling police department... overseen by the [[JustForPun Bureau of Eternal Affairs]].

* In ''ComicBook/SecondComing'', Heaven is basically just like Earth but without death or disease. A subplot in the second volume involves a puritanical old man who spent his life avoiding anything fun in case it was sinful, who is outraged to find out how mundane Heaven is. On the other hand, there's no "Hell" in a pit-of-eternal-fire sense -- Hell is the area of Heaven near the dump, so the inhabitants have to deal with garbage smells and seagulls. (A sight gag reveals that Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin are living there in neighbouring apartments.)

** ''WebAnimation/HazbinHotel'': Pentagram City is more or less just a normal city, except [[DemonOfHumanOrigin the world's Sinners are turned into demons]] and can indulge in whatever sin they want, creating a barely tolerable UrbanHellscape. In fact, the Pride Ring is often so {{overpopulat|ioncrisis}}ed that Heaven annually sends specialised angels called Exorcists to purge the population.

* In ''ComicBook/TheSecondComing'', Heaven is basically just like Earth but without death or disease. A subplot in the second volume involves a puritanical old man who spent his life avoiding anything fun in case it was sinful, who is outraged to find out how mundane Heaven is. On the other hand, there's no "Hell" in a pit-of-eternal-fire sense -- Hell is the area of Heaven near the dump, so the inhabitants have to deal with garbage smells and seagulls. (A sight gag reveals that Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin are living there in neighbouring apartments.)

* Invoked in ''VideoGame/TheOuterWorlds.'' A few characters (mostly the Spacer's Choice cannery workers of Edgewater) beleive they'll have the same job in the afterlife as they do now, just "in the Sky." Vicar Max mentions that Scientism teaches of ''no'' aftetlife at all, however.

* ''WebAnimation/HazbinHotel'' and ''WebAnimation/HelluvaBoss'''s[[note]]The two of which share the same universe[[/note]] Hell is portrayed as many cities which function like the real world, except [[DemonOfHumanOrigin the condemned are turned into demons]] and can indulge in whatever sin they want, creating a barely tolerable CrapsackWorld. In fact, it's often so {{overpopulat|ioncrisis}}ed that Heaven annually sends Exterminators to purge the population. ''Helluva Boss'' expands a little on its layout, however, showing it to be structurally similar to Dante's interpretation of Hell in ''Literature/TheDivineComedy''; it's apparently organized by rings, with one for each [[SevenDeadlySins Deadly Sin]] which is themed after their respective sin, such as the Wrath Ring being a rural, yet hostile territory which holds annual "[[DeathCourse Pain Games]]" on every Harvest Moon, and the Lust Ring, which hosts what is best described as what would happen if Creator/WaltDisney and Music/JimiHendrix got together and opened a strip club.

* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'':
** The book ''Literature/{{Eric}}'' involves a discussion of how, since most of the damned become numb to the physical torments of Hell, the demons have devised ways to inflict mental torments -- namely, incredible mind-destroying boredom. There's a lengthy discussion of how such a Hell would be like a cheap hotel room with nothing to read and only one TV channel (in Welsh) and the ice machines not working and the bars not open for several more hours. Although the actual Hell is a ''distilled'' version of that boredom, it's the same kind of idea. For instance, the Sisyphus analog doesn't even get to try to push his rock up a hill. Instead he has to spend eternity memorizing the endless and ever-changing instructions on how to move objects safely.
** The Nac Mac Feegle believe that they're ''in'' the afterlife, and refer to dying as "going back to the Last World".

* ''LightNovel/AnotherNote'' hints that [[TheUnderworld the "Mu" afterlife]] spoken of in ''Manga/DeathNote'' may be this. Specifically, the narrator [[spoiler:Mello]] is writing a report on a long-since-closed case [[PosthumousNarration from beyond the grave.]] He gives up the clinical narration style in favor of one more like [[TheStoryteller a live storytelling]], on the chance that someone other than [[GreatDetective Near]] might read it. Note that the afterlife in ''Manga/DeathNote'' is actually [[spoiler:CessationOfExistence]], as per WordOfGod and the final chapter/episode. The novel was written by a different person than the manga, and thus is probably non-canon.