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->''"[[ExaggeratedTrope A fate WORSE than a fate worse than death]]? That's pretty bad."''
-->-- '''Edmund Blackadder''' from ''Series/{{Blackadder}}''
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%% One quote is sufficient, put any extra quotes on the quotes tab.

Think death is the cruelest fate? Think again. There are several things much worse: [[ColdBloodedTorture torture]], [[TheThreeCertaintiesInLife taxes]], [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and tofu]], to name but a few. And more often than not, some unlucky soul will experience it. Originally, this phrase meant [[SexualHarassmentAndRapeTropes rape]]; that's still one possible meaning. [[MindRape And now there's]] [[AndIMustScream even worse than that]].

This phrase is usually used in a JustBetweenYouAndMe moment by the EvilOverlord as he boasts about the agony-inducing DeathTrap that awaits the hero for [[DisproportionateRetribution delaying his plans]]. It's also fairly commonly used as a warning to the hero [[YouAreNotReady against seeking forbidden power or knowledge]], and consequently to foreshadow the particular KarmicDeath the villain will suffer because of meddling with the universe's CosmicKeystone.

If the victim is immortal, this fate may even ''[[WhoWantsToLiveForever replace]]'' death, which might suck royally. See AndIMustScream.

{{Mercy Kill}}ings are common when heroes find anyone in this state. It is rare for them to accept it. If the character can beg for help, ICannotSelfTerminate occurs; if they can act on their own, they are often DrivenToSuicide. Indeed, since all involve choosing death over a given fate, all logically entail that ''that'' fate is worse than death. Contrast CruelAndUnusualDeath, for when the victim instead gets a gruesome death that sucks beyond telling.

See also: CruelMercy, EmptyShell, ToThePain, ThePunishment and, very often, CoolAndUnusualPunishment. {{Tailor Made Prison}}s may be this by nature or design in order to torture its prisoner. Not to be confused with AFeteWorseThanDeath, though the two can occasionally overlap.

[[noreallife]]

----
!!Examples

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
* In ''Anime/AngelBeats'' starvation/dehydration is seen as a Fate Worse Than Death, since they can't really die. [[spoiler: More so is becoming an NPC since they have no soul.]]
* Another ironic punishment: the greedy, thoroughly evil and immortal Gemma from ''NinjaScroll'' gets encased in gold and sunk to the bottom of the pacific ocean -- where he'll presumably remain, conscious and immobile forever.
* The ultimate fate of [[spoiler:Father]] in ''Manga/FullMetalAlchemist'' is heavily implied to be this. [[spoiler:Having been defeated and Truth freed, he is dragged into the Gate of Truth, begging that he not be sent back in there]]. He is last seen screaming in terror.
** Worse still may be the fate of those [[spoiler:trapped in the philosopher's stones. The stones can only be made by trapping the souls of murdered people inside to be consumed as energy. The victims spend centuries trapped, tortured, and steadily driven mad in their less-than-being state.]] Ed's extremely reluctant to harm them during his fight with Envy, despite the fact that they are in fact ''begging'' him to kill them.
*** Well, in fact, Ed did not use a philosopher's stone. A philosopher's stone is made of [[spoiler:souls]], while [[spoiler: Envy]] is made of the [[spoiler:bodies and minds of the dead people of Xerxes]]. The body is material, the mind acts like a bridge between the soul and the body, so the body and the mind technically cannot suffer. What we see is just the remains of the minds, but those are not actual people, at least in the universe.
* In ''Manga/YuYuHakusho'', [[spoiler:Toguro the Elder]] suffers such a fate. It's dealt by Kurama, who [[spoiler:plants a parasitic tree on him that uses hallucinations to catch and trap prey until it has drained all of their life energy and killed them, at which point it discards the corpse.]] Since technically [[spoiler:Toguro the Elder]] can't die, he is doomed to eternal frustration in the form of trying to kill an illusory Kurama, who not only won't die no matter what [[spoiler:Toguro]] does to him, but doesn't fight back, or even show signs of feeling pain, and tops it off by ''smiling'' when injured. Kurama lampshades the trope by saying afterward that death was too good for him anyway.
** What King Yomi did to the demon who [[EyeScream blinded him]], can we? [[spoiler:Yomi ''nailed'' the guy to a ''wall'' for five hundred years, then finally killed him in one hit by ''stomping on his face'' so hard that ''his head exploded''.]]
** Being a koorime (ice demon) and living on their floating ice mountain. No, seriously. [[spoiler:Hiei was thrown off the mountain the day he was born for the crime of being male. Having found the mountain again, he doesn't carry out the plan to slaughter them all that has become one of his life goals... because he considers their pathetic lives a crueler punishment for their crimes.]]
** In the first episode/manga, [[spoiler:Yuusuke says he doesn't want to be resurrected; he doesn't believe anyone will miss him so he doesn't have anything worth living for. That changed after he saw the wake.]]
** Hiei's "birthday gift" to a depressed [[spoiler: Mukuro]] near the end of the manga. [[spoiler:He finds the evil slave dealer who owned and brutalized her as a child, and fuses the guy to a parasitic plant that will keep him alive and heal all injuries unless his brain is destroyed. Hiei demonstrates this by sticking his sword into the slave dealer's fat thigh.]]
* ''LightNovel/{{Baccano}}'' tells the tale of a group of immortals that cannot die and will quickly regenerate any lost body part. They can, however, feel pain. This is taken full advantage of by the writers, who seem to have [[ImmortalLifeIsCheap no problem]] subjecting these poor souls to some rather... unfortunate experiments, including [[spoiler:[[EyeScream poking out eyes with a hot poker]], daily mutilation, tossing people through grinders, and giving someone CementShoes and leaving them at the bottom of a river to perpetually drown. For a year.]] [[WhoWantsToLiveForever Makes you think twice about wanting immortality]].
* In ''Anime/{{Naruto}}'', Shikamaru faces off against Hidan, an immortal ninja [[spoiler:who had killed Shikamaru's teacher, Asuma. He easily defeats Hidan, and in vengeance, cuts off Hidan's (still living) head and buries it in a hole where nobody would ever find him.]]
** Databook 3 partially negates this by stating that the "secret Jashinist experiment" that grants Hidan his immortality only makes him immortal as long as he continues to kill people. So [[spoiler:Hidan's head will eventually die, though it's not certain how long it takes for his immortality to wear off.]]
*** [[FlipFlopOfGod Kishimoto changed his mind]]. According to the new Fanbook, he's still stuck down there though it hardly makes anything better for him. Regardless of how you view it, that guy probably wishes to Jashin he was dead.
** Earlier in the series the Third Hokage removes Orochimaru's ability to perform jutsus; in the ''Naruto''-verse [[MagicAIsMagicA local magic]], this leaves Orochimaru's arms paralyzed for normal use as well... [[spoiler:for about three months]]. Even then he never fully recovers, and has momentary moments of complete agony. Not like he didn't deserve it...
** Even worse than all this is the fate of the first four Hokage, all of whom are stuck in the stomach of the {{Shinigami}} where they will suffer for all eternity. Or so we're told; how anybody can actually ''know'' the final results of that technique is unexplained. To make matters worse, they're stuck in the stomach of the shinigami with [[MemeticMolester Orochimaru's]] arms. Forever. [[spoiler: Until Orochimaru comes back yet again and *cuts open the Reaper's stomach*.]]
** Throughout most of the series, Itachi's [[spoiler:and later Sasuke]]'s Tsukiyomi illusion. When first revealed, it was used on Kakashi to trap him in a dreamworld where he was stabbed repeatedly for 72 hours. and apparently [[MindRape all in his head]].
** It was later revealed that Itachi had an ever worse Fate Worse Than Death-rendering equipment. His totsuka sword supposedly put Orochimaru in a world of dreams for eternity.
** What happened recently to [[spoiler: Anko Mitarashi]]. Imagine if you have something in your body that [[spoiler: Kabuto Yakushi]] wants and can't take from you if you die [[spoiler: (the remains of Orochimaru's chakra, more exactly)]] [[http://mangastream.com/read/naruto/49041835/7 What will he do to you?]] [[spoiler: Beating the shit outta you, then keeping you alive and carrying you around with one of his snakes wrapped around you, slowly draining said chakra from your almost lifeless body to absorb it better.]] [[EvenEvilHasStandards Not even MADARA liked that!]]
* In ''ShakuganNoShana'' demons known as Tomogara have to eat the existences of human beings. Flame Hazes such as Shana then "fill" these empty space with "Torches" which act and feel like real people, but are in fact just empty shells of the people who died (not that all torches are willing to believe this, and the responses to discovering they're just shells which will soon fade away range from denial to suicide). These torches will eventually burn out and the person will cease to have ever existed. And don't expect any sympathy from Shana, either. After all, Torches are merely "shells" and not real people.
** This is worse than it sounds as, once the torch dies, the world forgets the person ever existed.
* In the ''{{Narutaru}}'' manga, [[spoiler:Komori is killed and his Shadow Dragon Push Dagger attempts to absorb him into its body to turn the guy into an Otohime so they can reach their most powerful evolution. However, they're found by government agents... and the next time they're seen is when Sudo shows Akira that their still half-merged bodies are hooked up to a machine that slows down the process, effectively keeping Komori from either fully dying or being "reborn"]]. Urgh.
* In ''FutariWaPrettyCureSplashStar'', [[spoiler:[[DarkMagicalGirl Michiru and Kaoru Kiryuu]]]] are condemned to this by [[spoiler:Lord Akudaikhan]], who [[spoiler:paralyzes them and places their still-sentient bodies at the bottom of a lake. They get better after half a season.]]
* [[spoiler:Rue]] almost gets trapped in one of these fates by [[spoiler:her "father", the Raven]] in ''Anime/PrincessTutu''. [[spoiler:After her HeroicSacrifice for Mytho, The Raven locks Rue into a LotusEaterMachine inside of his body, where she's put in a trance and forced to dance non-stop until she falls dead as he saps her out of her life energy. She gets better once Mytho comes for her, though.]]
* In ''Anime/CowboyBebop'', a group of crazy eco-terrorists are trapped when the authorities close the hyperspace gates with them inside. Their fate is to drift around the universe in a half-phased state, unable to interact with the physical world.
** Though they would reasonably run out of air eventually and suffocate. So it's worse than death, but only for a while.
** In addition, a vial of the virus they were about to unleash crashed to the floor as this was happening, ready to turn them into de-evolved ape things.
* Katejina Loos, in ''[[Anime/MobileSuitVictoryGundam Victory Gundam]]'', ends the series as [[spoiler:a blind, amnesiac cripple who has nothing to do in life but be an empty shell of a person]]. However, since Katejina crossed the MoralEventHorizon more than once, that can be considered her just punishment.
** ''Film/Gundam00AWakeningOfTheTrailblazer'' gives us [[BodyHorror assimilation]]. Your body is slowly converted into an alien crystalline substance starting with your limbs and ending with your still-alive head... which you can feel happening around you as your nerve receptors are still registering your muscles and tissue changing form. Worse still this happens from the inside out, as you can see the blood-covered crystals making their way through the skin. Not even Katejina deserves that end.
*** Subverted in the end, [[spoiler: as it turns out that this was only because the ELS had no real idea how to properly assimilate a human body. By the end of the movie they've got it right, and even the victims from earlier are shown to be fine.]]
** The end of ''Anime/TurnAGundam'' has Gym Ghingnham [[spoiler:trapped inside the Moonlight Butterfly cocoon created by the Turn units]]. What makes it worse is that since the nanobots [[spoiler:in said cocoon]] can maintain and regenerate anything and ''anyone,'' [[spoiler:[[AndIMustScream Gym's going to be alive for a VERY long time]].]]
* The short story ''Manga/TheEnigmaOfAmigaraFault'' is about people who [[spoiler:after walking through a hole in a wall, slide through the mountain for 3 months while their limbs are stretched into ribbons, eventually to become a formless mass. And they are alive during the entire punishment.]] [[MemeticMutation Drr...Drr...Drr...]]
** Made even worse by the fact that the punishment is for being [[spoiler:a SchmuckBait]].
* ''Anime/CodeGeass'': After Mao gives a BreakingSpeech to Suzaku, Lelouch activates his Geass and tells him to "never speak again." The result? Mao tries to speak, but chokes on his own saliva and makes all manner of groans and gurgles and other disgusting noises. Scared shitless, he runs out of the church he and Lelouch are in, and finds C.C. waiting for him, who comforts him... [[DeathByIrony and then shoots him in the head with a silenced pistol]].
** Lelouch calls upon the when he tells C.C. that rather than abandoning Mao [[spoiler:when he couldn't bring himself to kill her and [[WhoWantsToLiveForever take on her immortality]]]].
** Arguably, [[spoiler:Suzaku Kururugi]]'s final fate. [[spoiler:While his tombstone praises him as a loyal defender of Emperor Lelouch, given that Lelouch will (by his own design) be remembered as the worst tyrant ever, it is likely that Suzaku will go down in history as TheQuisling where Japanese people (except for Kallen, and ''maybe'' Todou and Kaguya) are concerned, and as TheDragon to a deeply evil ruler for everyone else. Also, throughout the series, he always argues for change within the system rather than through revolution- while he gets to change the system from within, it is through becoming Zero who will be celebrated as a hero for working outside of the system. And to make matters worse, ''he will never be able to be anything but Zero for the rest of his life'', as only [[SecretKeeper a small handful of people know who's under the mask]], and they aren't stupid enough to spill the beans and ruin the plan]].
*** Adding even more irony to it [[spoiler:Zero was the one thing he hated and fought against all this time, and he had just become it.]]
*** ''And'' [[spoiler:Suzaku]] is now known to the world as the man who [[spoiler:killed the woman Suzaku loved]]. On the other hand, having to spend the rest of his life as the ''most beloved and admired person in the history of mankind'', kinda takes the edge off. In fact, since [[spoiler:Suzaku]] has always hated himself anyway, being reborn as someone else is almost a gift really, especially considering who he gets to be.
** And to another extent, Schneizel el Brittania, whose final fate is becoming geassed by Lelouch rather than dying an honorable death. As Lelouch steals THE "honorable" death for himself later, it is clear that Schneizel is destined to remain mind-controlled by Zero forever.
* [[spoiler:Diavolo]] gets this punishment in ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure'' after being killed by [[spoiler:Giorno's Golden Experience Requiem.]] He is killed repeatedly in various ways for eternity, each time not knowing how he's going to die. The last time we see him, he's screaming at a little girl to get away from him, having grown insanely paranoid.
** This fate also befalls [[spoiler:Kars]] in Part 2. Having turned himself into a boulder to avoid the effects of a volcanic blast, he's launched into space, unable to change his trajectory. The solitude eventually causes him to stop thinking completely.
*** [[spoiler:Kars' SBR universe expy]] Magenta Magenta in Part 7 suffers a similar fate, as his stand 20th Century Boy protects him from all attacks and even death so long as he remains motionless, and ends up being thrown into a river so deep he cannot swim out of it. He hopes for salvation in the form of Diego Brando, but he eventually stops waiting and stops thinking completely.
* A more humorous example would be Russia's kolkolkol chant in ''Manga/AxisPowersHetalia'' which he uses to threaten his fellow nations, most notably [[ChewToy Lithuania]].
** [[MotherRussiaMakesYouStrong "Eventually everyone will become one with mother Russia, da?"]]
* This happens a lot in the manga ''FrankenFran'', because (as WebVideo/YRulerOfTime put it) to her, there '''is''' no fate worse than death. In one chapter, [[spoiler:Fran catches several people attempting to break into her lab and steal her medical research. At the same time, she had been pondering a question proposed to her by a friend, and so decides to test it by surgically altering the men into dog beasts, grotesque mockeries of canines which look rather like the Egyptian Ammet. She then uses them to point out the lady who hired them (who happened to be her friend's secretary), and then drags her off screaming and surgically alters her into another dog beast.]] It is unknown what their final fate is, but it is certainly worse than death.
** And it happens again in a later chapter, [[spoiler:when Fran's "little sister" blows up a nearby family gathering, thinking they are going to attack the lab. The only way Fran could "save" them is to merge all of their bodies together into a living human latticework. This prompts the response from Fran's little sister "shouldn't you just let them die?" It should also be mentioned that Fran's little sister was built to be a living arsenal and an assassin with no remorse, and this gives her {{squick}}.]]
** Another one: Fran saves a wealthy young businesswoman after her entire body is burned by using artificial skin made of cockroach shells. Guess which insect the OCD businesswoman ''utterly loathes''? Ironically, she looks perfectly normal, but the concept of being skinned with cockroaches completely [[BreakTheCutie breaks her mind]] and it's implied that she started tearing off the skin on her face. A short omake in volume 2 showed that she takes the operation again, gets over the creepy feeling, and admits to Fran that she overreacted. Then, when she removes the bandages, it turned out that the genes fused weirdly during this operation and cockroach legs are now growing out of her face, breaking her mind again.
** Possibly the worst of them is the woman who wanted immortality (and wanted it all to herself, so she had the scientists who helped her towards it murdered); she steals Fran's research and has Fran's throat cut, but that's not enough to kill Fran, who manages to sew her own head back on. But the murderous woman get's the immortality she wanted -- in the form of a gigantic conscious but immobile tumorous mass.
* The anime version of Jadeite from ''Manga/SailorMoon'' who was frozen in crystal for his many failures to get energy for Queen Beryl.
** In the S Season, Mimete uses a machine to turn her into energy and transmitted herself on giant televisions. Then Telulu came along and pulled the plug. If said machine is unplugged while the user is still transmuted, they're trapped inside forever. Mimete was turned into ''energy'', and energy can't be destroyed. So, she's [[AndIMustScream trapped in an empty black void forever, alone and unable to die]].
* ''VisualNovel/HigurashiNoNakuKoroNi'': [[spoiler:[[DeliberatelyCuteChild Rika Furude]] has been stuck in a GroundhogDayLoop for somewhere between a century and a millennium. In most iterations, one of her friends will [[HatePlague go insane and kill a bunch of people]]. In every iteration, Rika is murdered, usually disemboweled while she's still alive, and most or all of her friends die within a few days. Then she's resurrected in the past, and goes through it all over again, and she's the only one who remembers what's happening, but enough important details keep changing that she can't manage to stop it. This GroundhogDayLoop is actually propagated by a deeply sympathetic character who wants Rika to find a way to solve the mystery and stop the killings, but the BigBad's conspiracy goes deeper than anyone imagined, and the situation causes unimaginable despair for Rika due to the pain of repeatedly losing loved ones, the feelings of isolation from not knowing who to trust and not having anyone who would believe her story, and the feelings of hopelessness brought on by failure after failure]].
** ''Higurashi'''s [[VisualNovel/UminekoNoNakuKoroNi sequel]] inflicts a similar but even worse fate on Battler, since the loop is much shorter and between "games" Beato spends her time having the Stakes reduce him to a pulp over and over. ...Which is ''nothing'' compared to [=EP6=], where [[spoiler:he gets trapped in a closed room/horrific logic error and spends years trying to escape. A lot worse than it sounds.]]
* In the same vein, in the Endless Eight of ''[[Literature/HaruhiSuzumiya Suzumiya Haruhi]]'', Yuki Nagato remembers everything, so more or less she's been going through everything for about 596 years.
** So she gains emotions, and proceeds to {{Retcon}} reality so that Kyon can decide whether a world without Haruhi is better. [[spoiler:He decides against it. Her boss isn't happy, and starts deciding whether to kill her. Kyon threatens to annihilate them using Haruhi with his [[TrustPassword "I am John Smith."]] line. They decide not to kill her. Instead, they use a fate worse than death. They elect her to be the ambassador to the Sky Canopy Domain; exposing her existence and sanity to something which is as alien to her as the Data Overmind is to humans.]] A lesser being would GoMadFromTheRevelation.
* A certain AlternateCharacterInterpretation of Sebastian from ''Manga/BlackButler'' has this as the ultimate fate for Ciel -- [[WhoWantsToLiveForever making him a fledgling demon and granting him eternal life]]. Which will ultimately make Ciel watch all those he cares about pass away. Given that Sebastian is AffablyEvil and has quite a bit of affection for his young master (not that way... maybe), we might indeed get this instead of Sebastian's eating his soul, especially given the GeckoEnding of the anime.
** [[spoiler:[[IKnewIt And look what happens in]] ''[[Manga/BlackButler II]]''!]] Not quite the same, though - [[spoiler:Hannah turns Ciel into a demon so Sebastian can no longer eat his soul. Ciel doesn't seem to mind too much, though; he has no qualms about leaving anyone behind. The catch is that because of an order he gave in an earlier episode, Sebastian can't stop being his butler until he eats him, making him Ciel's servant for all eternity. So, really, it's a Fate Worse Than Death for poor Sebby, if anybody.]]
* Done humorously in ''KamenNoMaidGuy''. Anyone who uses a camera to spy on Naeka will get frozen in place for half an hour, unable to close their eyes, and their video feed is replaced by a video of [[{{Squick}} the fish salesman taking a bath.]]
* Even ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'' has done this. At the end of the Team Galactic arc, [[spoiler:Cyrus creates a new universe... and walks into it. The portal closes behind him and is then destroyed.]] Fans argue if he can survive, but the nature of the series and some past canon indicate that he can. However, this means [[spoiler:that he's going to drift in empty space for the rest of his life, unable to do anything but watch his creation, and unable to stop himself from aging. Bear in mind that he's not even thirty. He could live for another century in what amounts to a void, all alone and powerless]]. A world with no emotion is what he wanted, so it could be paradise for him.
* What happens to [[spoiler:Princess Ixquic]] in ''{{Cyborg 009}}''. [[spoiler:She can't die since she's a RobotGirl with a [[GoodThingYouCanHeal huge healing factor.]] She can't interact with the outer world unless some conditions are met. And after said conditions are broken in such a way that they won't ever be met again, she's stranded in time and space... forever.]]
* Many of the {{serial killer}}s in ''MPDPsycho'' specialize in this. Just a couple of examples include a lunatic who cuts off his victims arms and legs, while raping her during the process, before [[StuffedInTheFridge stuffing her in an ice chest]] and mailing what's left of her to her boyfriend, the series protagonist. Then there is the killer who cuts open their victims skulls to plant flowers that take root in their brains. Both of these killers go through their entire process while ''keeping their victims alive''.
* ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'' had the TropeNamer for MindRape. Yes, it does count because of who was the recipient. If TheFightingNarcissist FieryRedhead {{Tsundere}} gets reduced to a sobbing wreck in a minute, exposing her tragic FreudianExcuse, something's seriously messed up. Granted, to some she might have had it coming but still! Her CruelAndUnusualDeath in ''End of Evangelion'' doesn't help things either.
** And then Anno goes and does it '''again''' in ''RebuildOfEvangelion'': Asuka gets to be [[BodyHorror the test pilot of the Angel-infested Unit 03]]...
* ''Anime/YuGiOh'''s Shadow Realm. In the Shadow Realm, your worst fears (Examples: [[spoiler:Kaiba and defeat, Mai and isolation]]) play out ''over and over in front of your eyes for eternity.'' This became more prominent in the 4Kids dub, when being sent to the Shadow Realm was the [[NeverSayDie substitute for death.]] [[SarcasmMode Oh yes, it's much less frightening to be tormented eternally than to be killed!]]
* Arguably done with the MagicalGirl anime ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'' where [[spoiler:becoming a magical girl is a DealWithTheDevil. Every time a magical girl uses magic or suffers negative emotions, her Soul Gem becomes more and more corrupted. The only way to keep the corruption at bay is by killing witches, horrible {{Eldritch Abomination}}s that can and will kill you horribly if you make even the slightest mistake, and using their Grief Seeds to cleanse the corruption from the gem. But this is a stopgap measure at best, because sooner or later, no matter what the magical girl does, the gem will darken completely and become a Grief Seed itself, and [[AndThenJohnWasAZombie she will become the very thing that she is fighting]].]]
* The second ''MacrossFrontier'' movie does this to [[spoiler: [[BigBadWannabe Grace]], and (possibly) [[BreakTheCutie Sheryl]]. The former, a cyborg, is reduced to a sentient torso and interrogated for a '''long''' time. The latter gets cured from her [[IllGirl illness]], but by then she is in coma after watching her LoveInterest disappear. It is then stated that she will wake up only when(if) said LoveInterest comes back, and the chances for that are zero, so she is [[FridgeHorror condemned to spend the rest of her life in coma]]. Ouch.]]
** The last part was actually averted from WordofGod or if you paid attention to the end credits.
* In ''Manga/OnePiece'', protagonist Luffy may be nice to friends, but he's a complete ''ass'' to enemies. With villains, he doesn't kill them, but leaves them alive to watch their hopes and dreams crumble around them (though how they manage to keep breathing after Luffy's thrashing is absurd). This is a terrible punishment, because this series is ''all about'' being able to live your dream. When he's not around, half the crew just does things the quick and easy old-fashioned way (though if the character has a name, odds are he or she will still NeverSayDie).
* All this way and nothing about ''{{Slayers}}'', how sad. The Raugnut Rushavna curse is a VERY horrible curse, as it makes the victim immortal until the one who cast the curse is killed. It doesn't sound so bad until the horror of the curse sets in.
---> Lina: "I was staring at an enormous lump of flesh. It was writhing---the arrangement of its internal organs and the pulsing of its veins fully visible."
---> "As we watched, a snaked sprang forth from the top of the lump. The snake, borne of the hideous meatball, grew into an arch half the size of the clump. It swallowed the mound of flesh, essentially consuming itself, and then sunk back into its fleshy mass."
--->"Those that fall victim to this ritual are cursed to die over and over until the demon that cast the curse is destroyed."
* Happens to [[spoiler:Piedmon]] in ''Anime/DigimonAdventure''. Most Digimon villains are KilledOffForReal (though Digimon are normally reborn, so its possible, but some lose their memories in the process), he's not so lucky. [[spoiler:Piedmon is thrown into [=MagnaAngemon's=] Gate of Destiny. While the series doesn't explain what this does to him, its said elsewhere that the Gate of Destiny leads to subspace, a dimension from which there is no escape. Digimon are effectively immortal barring being killed outright, so this means he'll spend eternity there.]] Naturally, he's one of the few Digimon villains deserving of such a fate.
* The now immortal Garlic Jr. from ''The Dead Zone/Anime/DragonBallZ: Return My Gohan!!'' gets trapped and escapes the eponymous Dead Zone only to be trapped there again FOREVER in the anime's Garlic Jr saga.
** Technically, he could be freed if someone wished it with the Dragon Balls, but the odds of that are nonexistent.
* In the anime version of ''PitaTen'' failure to pass the angel exam or devil exam (for people from Heaven or Hell respectively) results in the otherwise immortal person to be deleted from existence and all memories of their existence expunged.
* In {{TsubasaReservoirChronicle}} it could be argued that this is [[spoiler: what happens to Yuui and Fai. Being imprisoned without food, water or any means of sheltering themselves, being separated from each other (and thereby from the only person who ever loved them) but still having to witness their twin suffering. And on top of this being utterly unable to die because their magic keeps them alive. All in all, pretty damn grim. And considering it results in Fai eventually chanting "I want to die" over and over to himself, we can safely say that at least HE thought it was a fate worse than death.]]
* PlayedForLaughs in the FilmNoir world of AbenobashiMahouShoutengai, where getting shot doesn't kill you, but instead transforms you into a [[SuperDeformed chibified]] comic relief character that no one can take seriously.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comic Books]]
* In one of the issues of ''Comicbook/TheWalkingDead'' [[spoiler: Michonne goes through this at the hands of the insane, sadistic "Governor" of a small human settlement, who keeps her tied spread-eagle in a warehouse and routinely rapes/beats/tortures her for days before she is freed.]] However, [[spoiler: she gets her own back after she tracks him to his apartment, breaks in, tortures the ever-loving hell out of him (including spoon-raping and amputating some of his limbs) and leaves him for dead (he survives).]]
* Episode #66 of ''DylanDog'' ends with [[spoiler: Harvey Burton being condemned to spend the whole eternity in a void limbo because he cheated the Grim Reaper]].
* One storyline in ''ComicBook/{{Hellblazer}}'' discussed the possibility of a "Third Place" that souls could go to which was neither Heaven nor Hell. The Third Place was a blank, neutral landscape that numbed the soul and removed all emotion. The characters believed that an eternity of empty nothingness was too horrible to contemplate. In the end, [[spoiler:a human takes the place of the realm's supernatural resident for all eternity,]] thereby suffering a fate worse than death.
* ''ComicBook/TheSandman'' by NeilGaiman: After the first Despair was killed (in a vain attempt to remove despair and suffering from the world), the man responsible was put into a state of perpetual suffering from which he could not die -- he would suffer for all eternity until time ended. In the first issue, Dream of the Endless punishes the ''son'' of the magician who sealed him away for seventy years (the magician having already died by that time) by trapping him in an endless DreamWithinADream -- while he might eventually die, he will suffer for an eternity in his head first. (Although [[spoiler:after Morpheus' death on the hands of the three "Kindly Ones", his successor, the new Dream, shows mercy and lifts the curse. So, the man "only" had to spend six years or so in a coma, hallucinating the most torturous horrors his mind could devise.]])
** In a later arc, Morpheus a.k.a. Dream and his "younger" sister Delirium have a run in with a Traffic Cop after she's driven erratically; Delirium (in a "normal" fit of randomness) curses the officer to forever feel bugs crawling all over his body. Dream points out this is a rather [[DisproportionateRetribution harsh punishment for a very minor inconvenience]], but Delirium tellingly counters that it's still better than ''many'' of the things Dream has inflicted on others.
*** ...such as Morpheus condemning Nada, a former African queen, to Hell in a fit of anger after she refused to stay with him and become his queen in the Dreaming, because, as she said, "It is not for mortals to love the Endless". It took the Dream King several thousand years to forgive her and seek her forgiveness after he finally freed her from her torment.
** Delirium inflicts the most {{Mind Screw}}ing one of these ever when she is briefly detained by a semi-recurring deformed demoness with a crush on Lucifer, and proclaims "If you don't let me in, I will turn you into a demon half-face waitress night-club lady with a crush on her boss, and I'll make it so you've been that from the beginning of time to now and you'll never ever know if you were anything else and it will itch inside your head worse than little bugses!" Debate still rages about whether Delirium could have actually done that, or just knew the demon's nature and mocked it. Or whether she ''did'' do it and they're in a StableTimeLoop or... oh God I've gone crosseyed.
* {{Thanos}} of Titan was, for a very long time ([[ComicBookTime as comic books go]]), transformed into immobile stone, unable either to die or to truly live. As Thanos was ''in love with'' the personification of [[GrimReaper Death]], he found this an especially horrible fate, since he expected never to see her. He eventually recovered.
** And then, she sent him back to the world of the living, now equipped with an ''immortal body'' to destroy a neighboring universe where Death itself had been killed. He was not happy, to say the least; while Thanos is usually horrifically placid, now he spent about half his time roaring with fury and grief. He succeeded in his mission, and the universe collapsed in on itself... with him at its center. Quite possibly still unable to die.
* During yet another of his bids for total control of the entire DCU, {{Darkseid}} traveled to the Wall at the edge of the universe, behind which is The Source (presumably that which allows the superheroes to make balloon animals out of the laws of physics). Various carvings on the Wall are described as being the imprisoned forms of gods, would-be conquerors, and others who wished to control the Source. Naturally, Darkseid's face becomes the newest addition to the collection, but presumably this story was either a one-shot story or he managed to escape.
** He's imprisoned in the Source Wall [[spoiler: by ''{{Superman}}'' of all people]], [[spoiler: for trying to capture and corrupt {{Supergirl}}]]. He gets out [[spoiler:because Superman rescues him after making a deal to save the universe with an alternate future version of Darkseid himself]].
* An issue of the ''{{Hellraiser}}'' graphic novels (based on the films, in turn based on Clive Barker's short story "The Hellbound Heart") has a pretty horrific example of this trope: when a man visits a clinic offering completely immersive VR experiences (such as sex with a movie star where the correct nerve endings are manipulated by the machine to simulate the sensations being experienced) and finds that the head of the project is [[spoiler:keeping a test subject alive and indefinitely hooked up to a faulty machine that, while the subject was "surfing" in water during one test, experienced a glitch that turned the water into boiling lava]]. This is made doubly horrible by the fact that a fail-safe was installed ensuring that people hooked up to the machines [[spoiler:cannot die in the VR simulation no matter what they are subjected to.]] This leaves the [[spoiler:aforementioned test subject surfing/swimming in lava overnight before anyone realizes what has happened, effective shattering his mind]]. And just in case you don't think that's grotesque enough, the head of the project decides to [[spoiler: keep the man hooked to the machine and test a variety of tortures on him, such as being slowly eaten alive by insects, having his testicles ripped apart, and worse for the sake of his own amusement... oh, and the test subject may be a shell of a human being now, but he can STILL feel pain.]] Come the end of the story, however, it is implied the [[spoiler:test subject will finally be able to die when he is forcefully disconnected from the machine at the very end... thank god.]]
* In the ''JudgeDredd'' story "Judgement Day", the zombie-controlling villain Sabbat was rendered immortal (even to the point of being able to survive a bullet in the head) by a large magical crystal. Dredd [[spoiler:punished him for causing the deaths of millions of people by decapitating him and sticking his head on top of the crystal, remarking that the sentence was "life - no remission."]]
* Wally West, also known as TheFlash, returned from hiatus in an alternate dimension to find that the supervillain Inertia had murdered his cousin, Bart Allen, who had been serving as the Flash in Wally's absence. This, naturally, made Wally ''mad as hell'': his response was to hunt Inertia down and use his powers to rob the villain of all his speed, rendering him an immobile (but fully conscious and completely aware) statue... which he then placed in the Flash Museum, to stare at a statue of the man he killed for all eternity (his situation has since been reversed). Which leads one to wonder: why do so many superheroes with ThouShaltNotKill policies have no problem giving their enemies fates ''worse'' than death?
** Some of them have the ThouShaltNotKill policies mostly to stay in line with other heroes. {{Batman}} and BlackCanary have both threatened other heroes who have killed, though both of them are double standardizing. Wally thought several times about killing Inertia, including contemplating leaving him to burn in the Flash museum.
* Speaking of comic worse-than-death fates, a rather bizarre one happened between {{Spider-Man}}'s villain Carnage and [[spoiler:the Silver Surfer]] several years ago. After trying to possess the latter, the Carnage Symbiote is tossed back onto the original host and [[spoiler:is then encased in an unbreakable shell of energy much like the Surfer's own shell of silver.]] It's stated he's stuck like that for all eternity, but he apparently got better [[spoiler:just in time for Venom to devour the Carnage symbiote. He got better from that too. He was later ripped in half by The Sentry.]]
** He got better again.
* The SilverSurfer also encountered, at one point, a hideous mutation run rampant on Earth. It began to absorb all the living matter it could find (including people), growing larger and more repulsive at a constant rate until the Surfer flew it to a desolate moon where it could be properly destroyed. Unfortunately, at the last instant before he would have disintegrated the abomination, a coherent facet emerged and explained that at its core it was a thinking human being who had become the victim of an experiment gone awry. Though he begged him to end his suffering, the Surfer refused, since to kill a sentient being was anathema to his moral code. Thus, the Surfer regretfully left the creature to its interminable fate, isolated and alone. Bet the poor guy wishes he had just kept his mouth shut.
* In the ''StarWars'' series ''DarkEmpire'', Darth Sidious and Jedi Empatojayos Brand [[spoiler:end up bound to each other for all eternity. But it was a HeroicSacrifice on Brand's part.]]
* In other sources from the ExpandedUniverse, Palpatine has his too-valuable-to-kill engineer Bevel Lemelisk (who designed the Death Star with that airshaft) killed in some Horrible way, then brings him back as a clone. This happened seven times, including flesh-eating beetles, being blown out an airlock, and being lowered inch by inch into a vat of molten copper ("It was what the smelter was making that day"), before the New Republic finally executes him for good.
-->'''Lemelisk''': Just make sure you do it right this time.
* The final fate of [[spoiler:Batman]] in ''FinalCrisis'' as Darkseid's Omega Sanction didn't kill him; it left him stranded lost in time and cursed with multiple lives, each one worse than the previous one.
** Darkseid did the same thing to Mister Miracle in ''SevenSoldiers'' (which was, ultimately, a setup for FC). The same thing (though not caused by Darkseid) also happened to [[WonderGirl Donna Troy]].
* In ''Comicbook/{{Fables}}'', where a character's PopularityPower determined how difficult they are to kill, ''Literature/{{Goldilocks}}'' gets one of these. She's attempting to murder two of the other characters when she gets an axe buried in the side of her head, takes a tumble down a cliff-face, gets hit full-on by a speeding semi-truck and then hurled into a river. And because her injuries were so severe she couldn't reach the surface or the shore, she describes it as "always drowning, never dying" after getting pulled out weeks later.
* In ''Comicbook/{{Catwoman}}'', the villain Black Mask decided to "improve himself" not by killing Catwoman, but by torturing and killing everyone close to her, leaving her alive to suffer through it. Catwoman, obviously not a fan of this trope, shot him in the head.
** He recovered, and tried to finish the job. Cue Poison Ivy getting hold of his undead, unkillable (but not uninjurable) butt. Solution? [[ManEatingPlant Giant pitcher plant]].
* The Magazine/DoctorWhoMagazine story ''Hotel Historia'', an otherwise light-hearted and frothy tale is ended with the Tenth Doctor sealing the race of marauding aliens into a nebulous state where they can neither touch nor interact in any way with anything. Ever.
-->'''Evil Alien''': Have mercy!
-->'''Doctor''': This '''is''' mercy. Don't make me regret it.
* Narrowly averted in book 3 of ''Comicbook/{{Empowered}}'', where the squad of {{ninja}} that decided to claim the bounty on returning one [[RebelliousPrincess Kaburagi Kozue]] ([=AKA=] [[HighlyVisibleNinja Ninjette]]) to her clan [[McNinja in New Jersey]] (or rather the two that were not dead or mortally wounded in the fight to bring her down) decide to facilitate her return and prevent future escapes by ''amputating her arms and legs''. It is not as if she would need them to bear heirs for the Kaburagi Clan, right? Fortunately, she's rescued just in time.
** Played straight in book 6, which introduces the concept that [[spoiler:a sizeable minority of superheroes are left undead after being killed, as a result of Faustian Bargains they made to gain their powers. Besides being forced into hiding and having to deal with their mutilated bodies, many of them also end up getting buried alive while fully conscious.]] It then gets made ''even worse'' when it is revealed that a certain villain [[spoiler:likes to kidnap the SuperDead and super-science them into zombie slaves, still fully conscious but incapable of controlling their bodies... and those are the lucky ones.]]
* In ''Mutopia X'', two of Kaufman's henchmen are walking inside a warehouse belonging to one of Kaufman's deposed drug lord rival Frankie Zapruder. One of the henchmen is talking about Zapruder. The other henchman says "What a terrible way to end your life." To which the other henchman replies "Who said anything about him being dead?", [[spoiler:to which Zapruder is being suspended on top of the warehouse by chains, the poor victim later gets horrific revenge on Kaufman in a method that is left to the reader's imagination]].
* Zera, the formerly drop-dead angel from David Hine's ''{{Spawn}}'', was so loved by God that she could never die. She is later reduced to a floating head in a jar and later devoured by vicious dogs.
* In the alternate Marvel Universe ''Ruins'', the Gamma Bomb that turned Bruce Banner into the Hulk instead [[spoiler:turned him into a huge mass of gigantic tumors with horrific maiming all over the body, and Rick Jones claims that he is still being kept alive in a CIA facility]].
* In a ''Comicbook/GhostRider'' annual written by Warren Ellis, the Scarecrow (not the Batman villain) creates a haunted house sewn together with live human beings. Upon defeating the Scarecrow, [[spoiler:Ghost Rider breaks every bone in the Scarecrow's body. Ghost Rider then twists every bone in the Scarecrow's body so the bones will not heal properly, thus leaving the Scarecrow as a permanently paralyzed and disjointed mess.]] The Scarecrow later got better.
* In the ''InfinityGauntlet'' mini-series, Thanos turns Nebula, his alleged granddaughter, into a floating corpse who is an intermediate between life and death, not being allowed the luxury of death.
* The Jim Corrigan [[TheSpectre Spectre]] saved his original flame from death, but in the process made it that she could never die. Said ex attempted suicide on numerous occasions and was left a comatose, burned wreck. In the end, Corrigan finally let her go.
* In the Comicbook/GreenLantern series ''SinestroCorpsWar'' we learn that Hank Henshaw loathes his own [[WhoWantsToLiveForever seeming immortality]] and wants nothing more than to finally die, demanding his own death as payment for aiding the Sinestro Corps. At the war's conclusion he is horrified to discover that he has, once again, survived what should have been complete destruction.
* In ''ArkhamAsylumASeriousHouseOnSeriousEarth'' it is said that Dr. Destiny's reality-warping abilities are so powerful that all he need do is ''look'' at you and you cease to be real.
* In Judge Dredd Megazine 272, villain Dr. Vallenti was collecting the brains of psychics to create an immortal psionic form. One of the psychics ended up as the crotch of Dr. Vallenti's psionic form. [[spoiler: Dr. Vallenti was defeated by the judges and all the psychics were able to escape the psionic body.]]
* The graphic novel ''AHistoryOfViolence'' (which the movie resembles in name only) features a particularly horrific version of this. Tom, the protagonist, was involved in a [[spoiler: retaliatory strike against the local mafia when he was a teenager, along with his best friend. They killed a number of {{mooks}}, as well as the crime lord for that family, and stole a large amount of cash from them. Unfortunately, Tom's friend couldn't keep his mouth shut, and terrible off-screen things involving an axe happened to him.]] Tom, meanwhile, had to flee and disappear into obscurity. The kicker? Twenty years later, Tom finds out that [[spoiler: his friend is ''still alive''. And when you see what's been done to him over the last twenty years by the vengeful son of the dead crime lord, you'll understand what a fate worse than death means]].
* The final fate of {{Batman}} villain Doctor Hurt. [[spoiler: He breaks his neck after slipping on a ''banana peel'', gets dosed with Joker Venom, and thrown into a coffin and buried alive by SelfDemonstrating/TheJoker]]. [[spoiler: Since Doctor Hurt is apparently ''immortal''...]]
* Invoked by name by Batman in ''[[GrantMorrisonsBatman Batman, Inc]]'' #2, upon defeating the villain Lord Death Man, who has the ability to keep coming BackFromTheDead. Batman throws him off a building and has Catwoman lock him inside a very cramped safe [[note]]possibly after running him over with a truck; the art is unclear on this[[/note]] which is later launched into orbit.
* ''ComicBook/TheSandman'' makes Loki's punishment mentioned in the Mythology folder below ''even worse'' by breaking his neck and ''[[EyeScream ripping out his eyes]]''.
* ''NemesisTheWarlock'' does this twice. Firstly the completely evil Torquemada is briefly trapped in a time-loop where he is burnt at the stake again and again and again. He gets better. The saga concludes with [[spoiler: Nemesis forcibly merging with his enemy to prevent a planet exploding. They become a sort of living ship that can do nothing but travel on an infinite loop around the planet. Nemesis doesn't seem to mind, but Torquemada is heard saying ''When does it end??'' (To which the reply is ''Never!''). The very last panel shows the 'ship' alone in space with the caption ''A million years later...'']]
* Mr. Immortal. It turns out that since he is immortal, he will be the last being in the universe and watch our sun go out.
* From ''Website/{{Cracked}}'', we have a list of [[http://www.cracked.com/article_19736_6-psychotic-punishments-doled-out-by-famous-superheroes.html 6 Psychotic Punishments Doled Out by Famous Superheroes]].
* In the ComicBook/{{Warrior}} comic book, the titular character (former WWE wrestler the Ultimate Warrior, real life name The Warrior) vows to deliver "a pain that not even death will end" to those who seek to get in his way of obtaining the philosophical virtue known as destrucity.
* In the commentary section of the Warrior comic book, the author talks about how the system in real life "it's like when the shit starts to dribble into your mouth for all eternity, like quicksand it gives you stable footing, no quick kills"
* The Phantom Zone from {{Superman}}. Trapped for all eternity in a featureless white void, never aging, never dying, unable to touch and feel. In ''ComicBook/ActionComics'' #13 we see the reaction of Xa-Du. the first prisoner in the Phantom Zone. It's pretty much AndIMustScream:
-->''Xa-Du'': What's happening? Why can't I see?! I can't hear! Why can't I feel anything? Isn't anyone there? Won't someone talk to me? Please.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Fan Works]]
* [[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7294036/10/People-in-Glass-Houses People in Glass Houses]]: A {{Warehouse 13}} fanfic in which a run in with an artifact (antique snow globe) ends with Myka trapped in a giant glass ball for three days, and at the end of the third day she stiffens into a statue unable to move or see (she closed her eyes right before she lost control) in center of said ball complete with water and glitter but fully aware and able to hear everything around her for ELEVEN days before she is finally freed.
* ''FanFic/{{Pattycakes}}'': Some readers have commented that they'd rather be [[FanFic/{{Cupcakes}} cupcaked]] - i.e. ''killed and eaten'' - than [[MindRape end up like Dash]].
* [[http://www.mediaminer.org/fanfic/view_ch.php?id=19769&cid=49552&submit=View The Legend of Link: Lucky Number 13]] throws a fair amount of AndIMustScream around, but there are a few instances where it [[SarcasmMode merely]] settles for this trope instead:
** Link is captured [[spoiler:by the exiled pirate queen of Great Bay]], chained figure-eight style in a well, and tortured for four years while his HealingFactor keeps him alive.
** After Link defeats [[spoiler:his father]], he opts to strip him of his power and immortality and describes it as "worse than killing him." ''Immediately'' subverted:
-->--'''Link''': "Hey. [[PreMortemOneLiner I never said how long the rest of your life was.]]"
** The Originals robbed Hadrian of his ability to ''kill'', and otherwise left him unharmed. Considering he's a WarGod BloodKnight, this could be seen as the ultimate insult. Worse yet, since damage dealt by the Originals is impossible to heal, even by the strongest gods, he's stuck this way forever.
** Varia and Takara are captured and held for eight months as test subjects for human experimentation. They are starved, tormented, emaciated... and, due to their {{Immortality}}, unable to die.
* In Shining Armor's side story of the ''FanFic/PonyPOVSeries'', the arc's BigBad [[GeneralRipper Makarov]] has one of these planned for Shining (as revenge for Shining's dishonorable insult of [[DisproportionateRetribution not knowing who he was]]), which he goes into [[ToThePain great detail]] about. To sum up: he intends to remove Shining's horn and install a mind-control device in his brain that will take away his ability to talk or control his body and send him to a slave mine, where his genitals and all other excess body mass will be removed (and fed to the Diamond Dogs running the mine), before being condemned to labor in the mine for the rest of his life, all with him [[AndIMustScream still conscious and unable to do anything]]. Fortunately, Makarov is defeated before he's able to do any of this.
* In ''Fanfic/AllYouNeedIsLove'' [[ActionMom Naomi]] gets angry when [[spoiler: [[DistressedDude Raye]] goes missing]] and [[TheThingThatWouldNotLeave Light]] and [[EnfantTerrible Duck]] aren't concerned. She issues the following threats to get them motivated:
-->'''Naomi''' (to Light): ...when I kick you out that's where you're going! Roommates with [[{{Yandere}} Misa]] and [[MonsterRoommate Ryuk]]!
-->'''Duck:''' Why haven't we done this before?
-->'''Naomi:''' Shut up I'm not done with you either, if you don't procure his body [[CoolAndUnusualPunishment you'll be forced into elementary school years before your time]] and I'll make you [[spoiler: bring [[LawOfInversePaternity Light Yagami to parent-day]] [[AntagonisticOffspring so you can profess what a wonderful relationship you have.]]]]
* In the ''Manga/DeathNote'' and [[Music/{{Vocaloid}} Vocoloid's Dark Woods Circus]] FusionFic [[http://azeira.deviantart.com/art/A-Madman-s-Circus-Part-1-314368512 A Madman's Circus]] anyone who is unlucky enough to attend [[LightNovel/AnotherNote Beyond Birthday]]'s CircusOfFear [[spoiler: are doomed to become part of the Cirucs. [[JerkassWoobie Poor, poor Light Yagami]]...]]
* In a ''Literature/HarryPotter'' fanfiction called Sisyphus, Harry is forced into a redo of his life. Over. And over. And over. Every time he dies, he wakes up again, eleven years old. He is not pleased.
* ''FanFic/YouGotHaruhiRolled'' suggests that Kuyou routinely brainwashes Fujiwara [[DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnMale into having sex with her]]. After the deed is done, she gives him LaserGuidedAmnesia so that he doesn't suspect a thing.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Films -- Animated]]
* One of the best lines from the ''Disney/{{Aladdin}}'' sequel is the Genie Jafar's response to being reminded of his inability to kill: "You'd be surprised what you can live through."
** The times it's used optimistically (following a [[NotQuiteDead revival]], for example) just makes Jafar's use of it as a threat that much creepier.
** Jafar also uses this trope's title, saying "There are things so much worse than death." (He intended for Aladdin to not only die, but die on the orders of Princess Jasmine. Which isn't really a fate worse ''than'' death so much as it is just a ''worse death''. Except for Jasmine.
** Iago literally survives being blasted and nearly roasted alive in magma instead of having a convenient Disney-heroic death. Which makes you wonder if genies ''[[FridgeLogic literally]]'' [[FridgeLogic cannot kill anyone]] -and the [[FridgeHorror implications]].
* For toys in ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory'', it is a terrible fate to be forgotten by children, left alone and abandoned without no one to love them. Even getting shelved, like what happened to Woody and Wheezer in ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory2'', is almost as bad.
** {{Pixar}} seem to be aware of this trope as well, and are rectifying it in the next movie. Plus, considering they are "abandoned" with all of their good friends, they're hardly alone with no-one to love them.
** Even worse is to be tossed into the garbage, and, as [[KelseyGrammer Stinky Pete]] says, "spending eternity rotting in some landfill." Conscious the entire time, until finally all your plastic parts degrade into a puddle of goo...
** In ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory3'', [[spoiler:The murderous Lotso, after leaving Andy's toys to die in the incinerator (they survive) winds up tied to the front of a garbage truck by a truck driver who had a Lotso-Hugging-Bear as a kid, with other, decayed toys strapped to the truck to show Lotso what's ultimately in store for him.]] Previous {{Big Bad}}s, Sid and Stinky Pete, received [[HumiliationConga crushing defeats]] but ultimately wound up better off, but this guy was so extra evil that he was given this fate instead.
*** The worst fate worse than death was, thankfully, avoided, but brought up on the FridgeHorror page. If the toys hadn't been saved, then they would have been almost instantaneously incinerated ... except for one. Mrs Potato Head was still missing her eye, remember? That eye, that single fragment of toy, would have survived. Mrs Potato Head, would have known what happened not only to her body, but to her friends. She would also be trapped in that little piece of plastic. [[AndIMustScream ''Forever'']]. Eventually, yes, she would have been found. Then what? Several thousand years at the bottom of a landfill? Probably.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
* Anakin Skywalker of ''StarWars'' is, according to WordOfGod, a man who made a DealWithTheDevil... and lost. After the events of ''RevengeOfTheSith'', where he becomes Darth Vader, he is condemned to a life of constant emotional and physical pain, until the very end of ''ReturnOfTheJedi''.
** Any creature misfortunate enough to stumble into the path of the Sarlacc on Tatooine- as if it's razor sharp rows of teeth weren't bad enough, it's victims lifespans are prolonged by the Sarlacc's internal fluids while they are [[CruelAndUnusualDeath painfully digested over the course of 1000 years]]. Boba Fett is lucky enough to escape this fate in the expanded universe.
* Budd from ''KillBill'' decided that only a Fate Worse Than Death was a fitting punishment for the Bride after she broke his brother Bill's heart. So he shoots her with rock salt, ties her up, puts her in a coffin, and [[BuriedAlive buries her alive]]. [[spoiler:She still escapes]].
** Also Elle Driver when The Bride snatches out her remaining eye after finding out she killed her master and left Elle yelling and thrashing in Bud's trailer completely blind rather then killing her. Granted there was a Black Mamba snake in the trailer too. But even if Elle was to avoid it, she's now left stranded in the middle of a desert without her eyesight.
* In ''Film/{{Beetlejuice}}'', Limbo is described as "[[DeaderThanDead Death for the dead]]." It happens to ghosts who are exorcised by the living. And considering how messed-up regular dead people looked already...
* Parodied in the kung-fu movie segment of ''TheKentuckyFriedMovie'', where the Fate Worse Than Death turns out to be... [[TakeThat Detroit]].
* In ''Film/JeepersCreepers'', the guy Derry found still alive in the basement.
* In ''Film/TheBeastmaster'' the Big Bad turned his political enemies into mindless zombies. Also, the lizardguys that ate people.
* ''Film/ParanormalActivity'', a haunted house story about a young couple, ends with [[spoiler:Katie becoming fully possessed by a demon and killing her boyfriend. The police found Micah's body, but Katie's whereabouts are unknown.]]
* ''Film/{{Contact}}''. Jodie Foster's character is given a CyanidePill before entering the FasterThanLightTravel machine, not only in case she's marooned light years from home, but also in case of a fate that they can't possibly predict.
-->"There are a thousand reasons we can think of why you should have this thing with you, but mostly it's for the reasons we can't think of."
* In ''Film/{{Downfall}}'', Hitler orders General Weidling's execution because he is thought to have moved his command post to the West. After his attempt to solve the misunderstanding, Hitler was impressed and appointed Weidling as the commander of the defense of Berlin.
-->'''Weidling:''' "I'd have preferred to be shot!"
* From the movie ''Film/{{Se7en}}'', this was what the sin of Sloth receives, in the estimation of every officer on the scene.
** The victim is also a [[AssholeVictim drug dealing child molester]]; the only way most people wouldn't sympathize with the killer is since his fate was so horrific that we can't possibly call it justified.
* In ''Film/TheHumanCentipede'', [[spoiler:A deranged doctor kidnaps three people and decides to connect them all together via their gastric systems, (three people connected ass to mouth).]]
** And the ending is even worse! [[spoiler:The guy in front kills himself out of shame, the woman in back dies of septic poisoning, leaving the woman in the middle surgically attached to two corpses.]]
* At the end of the 2010 version of ''Film/AliceInWonderland'', the Knave of Hearts is sent into exile along with the Queen of Hearts. Rather than be exiled with the most hated woman in the world, he tries to kill her but fails. He then begs the protagonists to kill him before being taken away.
* ''Film/MontyPythonsLifeOfBrian'' [[ParodiedTrope pokes fun]] at this trope:
-->'''Prisoner''': Oh, you'll probably get away with crucifixion.
-->'''Brian''': Crucifixion?!
* In ''Film/{{Inception}}'', while dying in a dream simply wakes you up, dying while dreaming ''and'' being heavily sedated puts you in a limbo, where you think you are in reality and you are trapped there for years and years and ''you cannot wake up at all''.
* Any Germans who survive attacks from the Bastards in the Quentin Tarantino movie ''InglouriousBasterds'' (in other words, are let go) are heavily implied to receive this sort of fate. The only way to survive an attack from the Bastards means giving up your fellow German's locations and plans, and also renounce ties to the Nazis, even declaring to burn the uniform. Even then, Aldo Raine, the Bastards' leader, will carve a swastika on the survivors' foreheads as it is the only thing they ''can't take off''. In other words, they are going to be identified as a Nazi and disgraced for the rest of their lives. On the other hand, that's nothing that a good skin transplantation couldn't solve, even in 1940.
** Or even just further scars to obscure what was already there, if you were truly desperate.
* In ''TheDuellists'', suffered by [[spoiler: General Feraud.]]
* Made for TV movies ''Buried Alive'' did this to the spouses who tried to killed off husband/wife by burying them alive. In the first movie, the husband tricks his treacherous wife into going into a crawl space where the body of her accomplice is and surrounded by the money she tried to get from his death. He then nails her in as buries ''her'' completely with now way out. The second movie, the spouse that was nearly murdered gets revenge on her former husband and his accomplice by trapping them in a boat and scuttling it with them still inside. The ending showing they're still alive as the boat lies at the bottom of the ocean.
* Played with in the movie ''Film/{{Clue}}'':
-->'''Professor Plum:''' What are you afraid of, a fate worse than death?
-->'''Mrs. Peacock:''' No, just death, isn't that enough?
* What the creatures in ''Film/DeepRising'' do to their "food". Their victims are swallowed up, have their liquids effectively drained and whatever's left of the body being spit back out. Oh, and did we mention that you're still alive when you get spit out? Dying afterwards is a mercy.
* By the end of ''[[{{Cube}} Cube Zero]]'', staying in or around the cube becomes this to Wynn. He actually tries to get himself executed by making it clear that he chooses death over the cube, but he doesn't get a choice in the matter - he already waived this right a long time ago, which he simply doesn't remember. He's lobotomized by the villains and thrown back in.
* The Phantom Zone in ''Film/{{Superman}}'' and ''Film/SupermanII'' where General Zod, Ursa, and Non are imprisoned. In both films it is stated that the intention is that they remain trapped in it for eternity. Oddly the Kryptonian view is that this is somehow ''more humane'' than just executing them!
-->'''Kryptonian Elder (to Jor-El):''' Imprisonment in the Phantom Zone, an eternal living death.
* Famously invoked in ''Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan''. When another of Khan's attempts of kill Kirk backfires, he decides to simply takes the Genesis device and leave Kirk to rot in the center of a planet while he finishes off the Enterprise, leaving Kirk helpless to do anything.
--> '''Kirk:''' Khan. Khan, you've got Genesis. But you don't have me! You were going to kill me, Khan. You're going to have to come down here. You're going to ''have to come down here''!
--> '''Khan:''' I've done far worse than kill you... I've ''hurt'' you. And I wish to go on... ''hurting'' you. I shall leave you as you left me, as you left ''her''... marooned for all eternity in the center of a dead planet... ''buried alive''... ''buried alive''...
--> '''Kirk:''' '''''KHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAANNNN!!!'''''
* [[InvokedTrope Invoked]] in ''Film/TheDarkKnightRises''.
-->'''Batman:''' Why didn't you just... kill me?
-->'''Bane:''' You don't fear death. You welcome it. Your punishment must be more ''severe''.
** This refers to being thrown into Bane's prison, but it is hard to understand why it is so horrible. The conditions don't seem worse than in most real life prisons, and the guys Bruce Wayne meets there are rather friendly and helpful people.
*** Except that while he is in jail, Bruce watches Bane destroy the city he gave his bodily health to protect and kill/terrorize everyone he had ever loved. Bane also probably thought that Bruce was permanently paralysed, as with most people who break their backs, and figured that Batman would be immobile, physically incapable of walking, and forced to watch Bane destroy Gotham.
* The entire film: WhateverHappenedToBabyJane, is all about this [[spoiler: for both sisters. One sister does finally die from her torment, while the other sister enters a darker version of it by losing the last bit of her sanity.]]
* ''Film/DungeonsAndDragons'':
-->'''Damodar:''' Do not let them escape or you will suffer a fate far worse than that which hath been inflicted upon me.
* Technically, "A Fate Worse than Getting Your Dick Chopped Off and then Being Killed", in ''Film/DjangoUnchained'' Stephen explains Django's punishment in this way. Instead of just castrating him and then torturing him to death, Stephen suggests that they sell him to the [=LeQuint=] Dickey Mining Company where he will do backbreaking mining work until his back gives out at which point they'll hit him in the head with a sledgehammer and throw his body down a hole.
* In ''Film/GIJoeTheRiseOfCobra'' after the Paris incident, Breaker [[spoiler:is exiled from French soil for as long as he lives]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* In Tom Deitz' "David Sullivan" Series, the Sidhe are vulnerable to iron, which contains "the fires of the world's first making". The "Death of Iron" that the Sidhe suffer is said to leave a permanent mark on the soul of the weaker willed, causing the spirit, and any replacement body the Sidhe might build, to constantly burn and reheal for eternity, without any hope of recovery.
** In the second book of this series, Fireshaper's Doom, we are introduced to the Horn of Annwyn, a weapon which summons otherworldly hounds, which consume not only the body but the soul. In addition to being incredibly painful, this death not only prevents the Sidhe from returning to life, but also denies mortals an afterlife. [[spoiler: The Horn brings about the Karmic Death of Fionna, Ailill's twin sister when she tries to use it to avenge Ailill's humiliation at the hands of the protagonist (which took place at the end of the first book]].
* In Stephen R. Donaldson's ''[[TheMirrorOfHerDreams Mordant's Need]]'' series, the protagonists come upon an empty town, then find a huge pile of people and horses that were burned to death. Geraden ponders if they're the ones who didn't escape. Terisa wonders if they're the ones who ''did'' escape. Turns out Terisa [[FridgeHorror was right]].
* The Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse features some. In TheTruceAtBakura, one such example comes from the Ssi-ruuk, a species that powers its technology by ripping out one's life force and implanting it in a machine. These souls are in constant agony for the remainder of their short existence.
* The final fate of [[spoiler:David, the SixthRangerTraitor]] in ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}''. Instead of killing him, the Animorphs trap him permanently in rat morph and abandon him on a [[SealedRoomInTheMiddleOfNowhere barren island]]. Keep in mind that rats [[FridgeHorror only have a lifespan of two to three years]].
** Being [[BodyHorror taken by the Yeerks]] and having one of them [[PuppeteerParasite controlling your body]] was also suggested to be worse than death.
** [[spoiler:Visser Three/One's]] fate at the end of the series is to spend the rest of his life [[spoiler:without a host.]]
* Breaking the [[TruceZone truce]] of the Floating Market in NeilGaiman's ''{{Neverwhere}}'' will leave you wishing you were on the other side of your own sword.
* In ''TheMalazanBookOfTheFallen'', getting stuck in Anomander Rake's sword is the definition of this Trope. You spend eternity pulling a giant wagon while being pursued by a storm of pure chaos. No breaks, no mercy. Insanity is for the lucky. Until it gets broken, screwing with everything. That's how many people were trapped in it, some for more than 300 000 years.
* Dementors in ''Literature/HarryPotter'' have the power to steal a person's soul (via a sort-of KissOfDeath) without killing them, turning them into an empty shell forever. WordOfGod has it that they're an allegorical monster representing clinical depression.
** Hermione Granger in ''[[HarryPotter/HarryPotterAndThePhilosophersStone Philosopher's Stone]]'':
--->"I hope you're pleased with yourselves. We could all have been killed — or worse, expelled."
:: Considering that those expelled from Hogwarts have their wands broken and are forbidden to use magic in a world where magic-users rule and those without it (Squibs/Muggles) are treated as second-class ''at best'', and the best possible outcome is re-integrating into Muggle Society all the while *knowing* that there's a magic world that you can never access again...Hermione likely has the right of it.
** Aside from [[ColdBloodedTorture agonizing pain]], overuse of the Cruciatus curse can lead to ''severe'' psychological trauma. The Aurors Frank and Alice Longbottom, Neville's parents, were driven permanently and irretrievably insane by prolonged exposure to Cruciatus.
** Though he doesn't experience this trope directly, it's eventually learned that Voldemort's greatest weakness is that he cannot conceive of a worse fate than death, meaning his obsession with becoming immortal renders him vulnerable to other, equally or more unpleasant fates; [[spoiler:see the "King's Cross" chapter of ''Deathly Hallows'' for the one that he fell prey to after his death.]] At the end of the fifth book, Dumbledore fires a very powerful spell. It is blocked, and we never see what it does, but when Voldemort mocks Dumbledore for not seeking to kill him, Dumbledore merely responds, "We both know there are other ways of destroying a man, [[FirstNameBasis Tom]]." This is [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] by Harry Potter himself... [[WiseBeyondTheirYears in the first book.]] "If you're going to be cursed forever, death's better, isn't it?"
* Lady Lilith of ''Discworld/WitchesAbroad'' is condemned to [[spoiler:run on and on, endlessly, through the mirror world, until she finds the one reflection that's real.]] This is a fitting fate because it reflects the mirror magic that Lilith used to make so many people miserable, and because it is easily escapable if only she knew herself thoroughly -- Granny gets the same fate but escapes it immediately.
* ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'': When Jaime thinks a prisoner is lying to him, he mentions, "We have oubliettes beneath the Casterly Rock that fit a man as tight as a suit of armor. You can’t turn in them, or sit, or reach down to your feet when the rats start gnawing at your toes. Would you care to reconsider that answer?”
** What's become of [[spoiler: Theon Greyjoy]] in ''ADanceWithDragons.'' Could also be a case of BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor for the fans: how many of them wanted to [[spoiler: see Theon suffer horribly after he sacked Winterfell and murdered two children to trick Westeros into thinking he's killed Bran and Rickon Stark.]]
* The Total Perspective Vortex in ''Franchise/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'', which gives anyone who has to go into it a momentary view of the entire universe, and themselves in relation to it, resulting in insanity through loss of all sense of self-worth. When Zaphod Beeblebrox goes into it, [[spoiler:it doesn't work, because the universe he's in is actually a simulated universe, created specifically for Zaphod. This makes him the most important thing in the universe - as he always thought to be - so he is immune to the Vortex's effects.]]
** Also:
--->'''Ford:''' If we're lucky, it's just the Vogons come to throw us in to space.
--->'''Arthur:''' And if we're unlucky?
--->'''Ford:''' If we're unlucky, the captain might be serious in his threat that [[CoolAndUnusualPunishment he's going to read us some of his poetry first...]]
* {{Room 101}} in ''[[Literature/NineteenEightyFour 1984]]'', where prisoners are tortured with their greatest fear and psychologically broken.
* In ''Dearly Devoted Series/{{Dexter}}'', the main villain does things so disgusting to his victims. [[spoiler:"Yodeling potato".]]
** The worst part of that example is it's partly real. [[SchmuckBait Don't read this next part]]. [[spoiler:The sequence of removing a subject's limbs was practiced on those prisoners of Japanese Army Medical Unit 731 who were selected for biological and chemical weapons testing. Since they would need to be kept in reasonable health until death, it was deemed easier to provide for subjects with less body mass and therefore needed less nutrients. That said there was as with many if not all WWII medical experiments, an element of simple sadism involved in this calculation.]]
* In the same vein as ''Dexter'', SerialKiller Patrick Bateman from ''AmericanPsycho'' commits some of the most sadistic and gruesome tortures ever conceived by the imagination. In fact, Bateman actually keeps his victims alive intentionally longer, just so they can experience more agony.
* So do some characters in MichaelMoorcock's ''[[TheElricSaga Elric of Melniboné]]'' saga and the ''DorianHawkmoon'' saga.
** Prince Gaynor the Damned is subjected to [[ThePunishment a horrible eternal punishment]] after he, the former Champion of the Balance, falls from grace and is forced to serve the Lords of Chaos.
* In Samuel Taylor Coleridge's ''Literature/RimeOfTheAncientMariner'', Death and Life-in-Death gamble for the Mariner. Life-in-Death wins, to the Mariner's sorrow.
* The Creator/StephenKing short story "That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French," which depicts a despairing woman caught in a time loop that ends in a horrid plane crash. Evidently she is [[spoiler:dead and in Hell, and Hell is repetition.]]
** Another Stephen King short story (turned [[TheMovie movie]]) is ''Literature/FourteenOhEight''. The protagonist is tortured by a "fucking evil [hotel] room" (think the hotel from ''Literature/TheShining'' but concentrated) before [[spoiler:''setting himself on fire'', escaping, and possibly [[KillItWithFire destroying the room to boot]]. However, ''no one'' escapes 1408, not even survivors: he's still haunted by his experiences - he feels uneasy in his own house, he has to find something else to write about now that he can't handle "haunted houses", and he has to cover the windows during sunset, which reminds him of the fire - and it's fairly certain he's going to be like this for the rest of his life.]]
** In TheMovie, here's how the room works: [[spoiler:Nobody has survived more than one hour in the room. During that hour, the room will physically and emotionally torture you. And if you somehow manage to survive and not commit suicide, it will begin all over again until you decide to do it. "You can choose to repeat this hour over and over again, or you can take advantage of our express checkout system".]]
** King's ''TheStand'' gets brought up a lot with this. This quote is a good one, in the crucifixion scene of one of the Vegas characters. "There were worse things than death. There were teeth."
* The novelette ''[[http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm A Colder War]]'' (Go now! Don't read the spoilers, read the story! It's free!) by CharlesStross details an alternate-history ColdWar where the Soviets have retrieved the sleeping Cthulhu and entombed in it in a silo as the ultimate weapon of Mutually Assured Destruction. Things get out of hand. [[spoiler:Cthulhu is deployed and the United States' entire [[http://www.merkle.com/pluto/pluto.html XK-PLUTO]] arsenal fails to stop it. The protagonist, a few politicians and a small military force are all who manage to escape, through an [[ImportedAlienPhlebotinum eldritch stargate]], to a dead, frozen world. The story ends with the tiny shellshocked population, going through the motions in a domed compound under an alien sky, unable to do anything. The protagonist is unable to bring himself to commit suicide. And it is implied that he [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness may never have escaped at all.]]]]
** And they are the lucky ones. [[spoiler:Those who were left behind at Earth were swallowed up by Yog-Sothoth, and exist for eternity as a part of its being, conscious but unable to do anything.]]
* The LaundryFiles novels by CharlesStross are filled with various fates worse than death. Apart from the countless characters who end up with their souls destroy ed and their bodies possessed by demons, creative ones include :
** Being brought in another dimension, turned into an undead, impaled on a stake, and left forever conscious and unable to do anything except staring at a pyramid containing a sleeping EldritchAbomination.
** Having his soul eaten by, well, the Eater of Souls.
** Having a wicked apocalyptic cult [[spoiler:injure your spinal cord to make you paralyzed and then use your womb as a living tool to breed true believers]].
** Being subjected to one of the various [[spoiler:nazi-designed]] torture machines designed to fuel black magic rituals that use pain as a power source.
** Having his bones subjected to a horribly painful occult treatment and then used as components to build a [[spoiler:magical violin which acts as a]] powerful occult weapon. (The last step is lethal but the others must be performed when the subject is still alive).
** Living with the terrible "medusa curse", a genetic mutation which makes you (unwillingly) kill living beings you look at by turning them into stone statues.
* Obviously, the book ''A Fate Totally Worse Than Death'' (which was later filmed as ''Bad Girls from Valley High''), in which three murderous teenage girls known as "the Huns of Cliffside High" begin to to age rapidly, and believe themselves to be cursed by the ghost of the girl whose death they caused the year before.
* Lester Del Rey wrote a story in 1940 or 1941, before the US joined WWII, detailing Hitler's fate. A scientist (implied to be Jewish in the story) invents a time machine that, instead of moving a person through time, brought future versions of himself to the present and gives him [[MindControl full control]] over the "clones." The scientist uses his machine to summon hundreds upon hundreds of Hitler "clones." Nearly a day after the machine is first used, the oldest of the Hitler "clones" confronts Hitler and the scientist and spouts off nonsensical gibberish about things like trying to run away only to be brought back again. Hitler shoots him dead. The scientist then reveals that, [[ThePlan as was his intention all along]], Hitler is now condemned to [[GroundhogDayLoop relive the same 24-hour period over and over again]] from a different point of view until he finally finds himself staring down the barrel of his own gun in his final moments.
* There was a short story in one of the ''Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction'' anthologies of the 1980s about a protagonist (and everyone around him) being trapped in a GroundhogDayLoop that got steadily shorter, from hours to minutes and then mere seconds, until he couldn't even get to the end of a thought. The sequence always started over exactly the same, with him being trapped on a traffic island, and the drivers of the cars around him likewise going in circles forever and ever... the protagonist speculates that Earth may have fallen into a travelling singularity or that Time has actually ended because the universe was imploding, but essentially they are trapped in hell, going insane, and [[AndIMustScream no hope even for death to deliver them]].
* CordwainerSmith's ''A Planet Called Shayol'' centers around a prison planet where people are [[spoiler:infected with a healing symbiont that works so well that not only does it make infectees immortal, but it also causes them to grow extra organs and limbs, which are subsequently harvested for transplants.]]
* In ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'' losing the ability to channel is considered a fate worse than death, as channeling is shown to be quite pleasurable and addictive. One character who temporarily loses the ability to channel compares it to losing the sun. The general rule is that the person will lose the will to live, and die. One character was famed, as having brought a country to his knees, and the next book has him guarded by one girl, whose job is to prevent him from committing suicide. Lady Colavaere hangs herself rather than live the rest of her life on a farm, powerless. Tuon, after returning from being kidnapped and [[spoiler:marrying her kidnapper]], sentences Suroth, who tried to order her death, to become a Da'Covale (a slave that wears see through fabric), Suroth's only thought is of the knife in her bedroom that she now can't use to cut herself. Semirhage specialized in this; getting sexual pleasure out of torture, some captives were known to use their teeth to open the veins in their wrist to escape Semirhage's tortures since she would occasionally keep them alive.
** And now, [[spoiler:Mesaana]] has found herself in this condition. She tried to use the reality-shaping properties of the World of Dreams to reshape [[spoiler:Egwene]] into a slave and wound up trying too hard, snapping her own mind and leaving herself the permanent mental equivalent of an infant. Interestingly, this fate is FAR worse than death for her specifically, since the Dark One might have been able to revive her if she'd just died.
* The newest novel of the ''Literature/InheritanceCycle'' has two examples of this:
** On the one hand, Eragon's punishment for [[spoiler:Sloan is to be consigned almost to a FlyingDutchman curse: forced "To Walk the Land Alone", driven by a constant compulsion to seek out the land of the elves, there to remain 'even unto your dying day', living with the knowledge that he can never see, touch, or talk to his daughter Katrina ever again, and that she is with Roran and happy, without him--even though Eragon ''explicitly says'' he knows Katrina is more important to Sloan than anything else. Granted, Sloan did turn against Carvahall which caused death for one of its citizens, and Eragon has promised that if Sloan truly repents of his misdeeds and becomes a better person, the elves will restore his sight and he will be released from his oath due to his True Name being changed.]]
** The fate of the dragons belonging to the Forsworn is even worse: [[spoiler:in the Banishing of the Names, they were stripped of any means of identifying themselves--given names, nicknames, true names, titles, until they could not even make 'I' statements since these named themselves. Nor could they be called dragons. Reduced to little more than animals, the spell obliterated everything that defined them as thinking creatures, until they descended into complete ignorance. No one can remember their names, utter them, or even read them anymore.]] As Arya herself says, "The experience was so disturbing, at least five of the thirteen, and several of the Forsworn, went mad as a result." [[spoiler: Those dragons turned against the Dragons and the Riders and willingly aided in the slaughter of both parties, to the point where the Riders were whittled down to Eragon, Brom, and a severely-weakened Oromis. The Dragons, meanwhile, numbered five at the beginning of the series: Shruikan, Galbatorix's enslaved dragon, Glaedr, Oromis' also-crippled dragon, and three eggs. So one could say that this Fate Worse Than Death was actually too ''lenient'']].
* In ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'', Winter Knight Lloyd Slate suffers a particularly gruesome example of this at the hands of Mab - he's entombed in ice, crucified on a tree of the same, until he's almost dead from frostbite and exhaustion... at which point Mab takes him out, feeds him, heals him, and takes him to bed with her, only to return him to his torture when we wakes up. Mab has stated that the only way from him to be freed, and subsequently die, is to have Harry take over his position as Winter Knight. And Mab wonders why Harry doesn't want the job.
** [[spoiler:Well... Lea did mention the possibility that if Dresden continues to refuse the title long enough, Mab might kill Slate when he's completely and utterly broken... that is, when he's gone so completely insane that he starts to look forward to his crucifixion with joy because of the kindness Mab shows him after she takes him down.]]
* In Creator/DanAbnett's ''Literature/GauntsGhosts'' novels, [[spoiler:Soric]] is handed over to the Black Ships. Hark finds him several books later, [[ManlyTears cries]] (which all the deaths have not drawn from him), and [[ICannotSelfTerminate at his request, kills him]].
* DavidEddings gives us two; the fates of [[spoiler:Zedar, sealed in rock forever,]] in the ''{{Belgariad}}'' and [[spoiler:Zalasta and Baron Parok, burning in frozen time forever,]] in the ''{{Tamuli}}''.
* The ''StarTrekExpandedUniverse'' has quite a few:
** In Peter David's ''Vendetta'', a throwaway character achieves Warp 10 (the Star Trek term for infinite speed, meaning you occupy all all points in the universe at once). She ends up trapped into thinking she's almost at Warp 10 forever.
** In "The Brave and the Bold", the villain Malkus was trapped [[SealedEvilInACan for 10,000 years]] in the instruments of his handiwork. After the events in the novels, he's trapped [[AndIMustScream for considerably longer]].
* In Jeffrey Sackett's ''Mark of the Werewolf'', Janos Kaldy [[OurWerewolvesAreDifferent becomes the eponymous werewolf]] [[InvoluntaryShapeshifting every full moon]], whose only purpose is to [[AxCrazy dismember]] and [[ImAHumanitarian eat]] people, [[spoiler:and [[ViralTransformation turn self-serving priests into werewolves]] themselves]]. He spends ''three thousand years'' attempting suicide, which is hampered by being immortal and NighInvulnerable no matter which form he's in. [[spoiler:He and Claudia get better. Neville doesn't.]]
* "The Boy Who Couldn't Die". The main character gets one of these for not doing enough research.
* In ''Literature/TheEdgeChronicles'', anyone who wanders into the Twilight Woods is immortal as long as they stay there. However, the woods also make any unsuspecting travelers go insane, and despite the immortality, you can be very much hurt, more or less rotting away while unable to die or even go comatose, and also completely insane and lost. In the series, this fate is indeed actually inflicted on some characters, with no evidence as to if they ever escape, [[spoiler:except Tem Barkwater, who makes it out due to Shrykes capturing him.]]
** Also there's the prisoners in the Tower of Night. They are imprisoned on ledges inside the Tower, waiting for a trial that will probably never come. Many seem to have lost their sanity. Rook is told by one prisoner to shove the door open, when he does the prisoner falls of the ledge and thanks him, saying he lacked the courage to jump.
* Carrie Vaughn's ''[[KittyNorville Kitty Raises Hell]]'' deals out such fates to three of the villains (which for two of them is [[KarmicDeath deliciously karmic]]): [[spoiler:the ifrit, the vampire priestess, and Nick, [[SmugSnake the smug]] [[CatsAreMean weretiger]], are tricked (in the case of the first two) and outright thrown into Grant's magical cabinet. The priestess, at the time, ''is on fire''...and all of them are presumably doomed to be trapped in this world's version of [[EldritchLocation Cthulhuverse]], imprisoned, tortured, or [[GoMadFromTheRevelation otherwise driven mad]], ''forever'']].
** But like the above poster said, it's only karmic for two of them. Those are [[spoiler:the priestess and Nick, not the ifrit. Even though the ifrit was the killer, he was just enslaved and forced to kill all those people throughout the book by the other two. His last words before imprisonment were ''begging to see his wife and children again'']]. Talk about a DownerEnding.
* In one of Simon R. Green's ''{{Nightside}}'' novels, John and Suzie confront some demons. In an attempt to intimidate them, the demons show them their lunch: a young woman, half consumed, yet still conscious and suffering. Recognizing this trope when she sees it, [[MercyKill Suzie immediately shoots the woman in the head]], then proclaims there are some things she won't stand for.
* In Gav Thorpe's ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' novel ''Angels of Darkness'', one of the Fallen, captured by the Dark Angels, tells his torturer his full story (as he claims to be true). He is told that he will not be killed. He will be carefully tended and kept alive, imprisoned and able to listen the scream of Luther, who is also alive and imprisoned forever. By the end of the novel, his torturer is convinced that he is right, and when sending off his final message, asks that someone tell the prisoner that he was not wrong -- but he also knows that they will not deliver such a message.
* Creator/HPLovecraft's ''Through the Gates of Silver Key''; Randolph Carter ends up [[spoiler:trapped inside the body of a monstrous creature, that lives on a planet full of creatures like it, and worse. He tries to take control and get free, but seconds before success the monster takes control completely, and ruins everything.]]
** Also used in ''The Colour Out Of Space'', in which the MercyKilling takes place off-camera. The narrative explicitly states that ''leaving the victim alive'' under the circumstances would've been a damning offense.
* Being separated from your [[OurSoulsAreDifferent daemon]] in ''HisDarkMaterials''.
** also having your mind and soul eaten by a Spectre.
* In Creator/EdgarRiceBurroughs's ''[[JohnCarterOfMars A Princess of Mars]]'', when John Carter saved Dejah Thoris from AttemptedRape, and they try to escape, she tells him:
-->"If we make it, my chieftain, the debt of Helium will be a mighty one; greater than she can ever pay you; and should we not make it," she continued, "the debt is no less, though Helium will never know, for you have saved the last of our line from worse than death."
** In ''The Synthetic Men of Mars'' heroine Janai tells the narrator, Vor Daj of Helium, that he is fortunate to be a man, all he has to fear is death. As it happens she's [[GrandTheftMe dead wrong]].
* The fate of children caught by the [[spoiler:Other Mother]] in ''Literature/{{Coraline}}'' seem to be this, given they '''thank''' Coraline after she rescues them even though they are still dead.
* In ''Literature/ThePrincessBride'', Westley threatens Humperdinck with this in his ToThePain speech.
* In ''DeltoraQuest'', this happened to [[spoiler:Doran]] many years ago. Namely, [[spoiler:he became the Guardian of one of the very thing he sets out to destroy in the first place, a Sister]].
* In ''Literature/TheSilmarillion'', Maedhros is hung from a cliff by his right hand. For years.
** Morgoth also inflicts this on Hurin, by cursing his children and forcing him to watch as the curse destroys their lives.
* Jean-Paul Satre's ''NoExit'' sticks three unrelated individuals in a room without [[TitleDrop any means of escape.]] They are [[spoiler:not only dead, but each has a personality that psychologically leaves another feeling tortured while being capable of torturing another his/herself. Hence, they will drive each other mad for all eternity.]]
* In the ''{{Dragonlance}}'' novel 'Dragons of Spring Dawning' after DarkActionGirl Kitiara finally captures her romantic rival, Laurana, she decides to [[spoiler:torture Laurana to death and then have her soul given to the [[BlackKnight Death Knight]], Lord Soth, so the innocent Laurana will suffer in undeath for all eternity]].
** And lets not forget about Raistlin, who [[spoiler: after [[AGodAmI becoming a dark God]] and killing all other Gods and destroying the world, will be unable to create anything new, and since he is immortal thereby will continue existing [[AndIMustScream alone in the void forever]]. Thank mercy for time-travelling twins that can warn you beforehand.]]
* In ''RainbowSix'', Clark orders the survivors to remove all of their clothes and walk into the forest without any of civilization's aids, then leaves them behind, telling them that if they want to commune with nature so much, they should go commune. As Chavez wryly points out, even he himself-- with all his equipment and training (Ranger School, among others)-- would have a tough time surviving in such an environment. Let's see these sheltered folks enjoy the deadly jungle.
* Dematerialisation (the process of having your physical body destroyed while within the Twilight, either as a consequence of being killed within it or spending too long in it so that it drains all of your energy) in the ''Literature/NightWatch'' series is implied to be worse than regular death. Whereas the Others are unsure of what becomes of regular humans after death, they do know that dematerilised Others are forced to linger in the Twilight as impotent and possibly mindless shades, and meeting such a shade is traditionally accompanied by wishing that they may eventually find peace. The "worse than death" part comes from the fact that a sentence of being hanged is considered preferable to dematerialisation, implying that Others killed through regular means don't linger in the Twilight, and that this is considered better. And since it appears that all Others can live practically forever without succumbing to age or disease, and are virtually immune to natural weapons, that the ultimate fate of all of them is to dematerialise.
* Harlan Coben novel ''Gone For Good'' features an ex-pimp named Louis Castman; when hearing that one of his girls is going to run away and elope with a client she has fallen in love with, he brutally disfigures her (and as repeatedly mentioned, [[{{Squick}} not just her face]]) so that her fiance won't want to be with her anymore. It works, but before the guy sees the poor girl he shoots Castman in the spine, rendering him unable to move anything below his neck. The girl, now broken and miserable, keeps Castman alive for as long as possible in a room sealed with cork, with nothing to do ''at all'', just stare at pictures of her when she was pretty. He comes to wait longingly for ex-girls of his to come over and humiliate him, because it's better than lying immobilized in a cot and soiling yourself, with no one to hear you scream.
* Creator/JonathanSwift's ''Literature/GulliversTravels'' provides the "best" example of a fate worse than death-- [[AgeWithoutYouth eternal life without eternal youth.]]
* E.E. Smith's ''Literature/{{Lensman}}: Grey Lensman'' - The Eich and the Overlord who have [[spoiler: Kinnison]] captured debate how to deal with him-- kill him immediately, or infect his limbs and his eyes with a fungous growth that will demand their removal, and then suck his life-force almost dry:
--> "Which is worse: to find and bury with full military honours a corpse, however mutilated, or to find and have to take care of, for a full human lifetime, a something which has not enough functioning intelligence to swallow food placed in its mouth."
* Glen Duncan's ''ILucifer'' has [[spoiler:Lucifer faced with the prospect of being left ''alone'' in the infinite void once God destroys existence in armageddon. For all eternity. Unless he finally repents]].
* In ''Literature/{{Neuropath}}'', a device is implanted in [[spoiler:Frankie]]'s head that stimulates the part of his brain that causes fear, meaning that he is in permanent agony which ''nothing'' can stop.
* In ''The Berkut'' by Joseph Heywood, [[spoiler:Hitler is captured alive by the Soviet Union]] at the end of the Second World War. [[spoiler:Stalin]] has him imprisoned, naked, in a hanging cage deep in a sub-basement of the [[spoiler:Kremlin]]. The cage is too small for [[spoiler:Hitler]] to stand or lie or even extend his limbs fully. He is thus unable to sleep for more than a short time before the pain from his joints wakes him. He is never allowed to leave the cage, even to urinate or defecate, and is not allowed to wash, so he is forced to live in his own filth. One leg and the other foot become infected and later have to be amputated to keep him alive. Over many years he degenerates into a senile bestial creature. And [[spoiler:Stalin]] visits him every week to gloat.
* QuantumGravity: In ''Chasing the Dragon'', [[spoiler:Tath]] is attacked by angels in his domain, so they can't kill him. This does not stop them from trying.
-->'''Malachi:''' But how did you best them?
-->'''[[spoiler:Tath]]:''' I am not sure I did. They left me here when it was clear I couldn't be killed. I healed too fast. ''[voice breaks, turns away]'' Better to die in those circumstances, Malachi.
* Quaid, the antagonist of the Clive Barker short story ''Film/{{Dread}}'', discovers, in his pursuit of a relief for his phobia, a fate worse than death. In his efforts to understand dread and find a cure for his own, he breaks the mind of someone whose trust he had earned, and then casually tosses the poor kid aside. This young man then returns to pay Quaid back, unintentionally personifying Quaid's [[MonsterClown deepest fear]]. He then proceeds to slowly carve the villain up with a fireaxe, aiming his strikes so that his victim doesn't die quickly.
-->''Quaid knew, meeting the clown's vacant stare through an air turned bloody, that there was worse in the world than dread. Worse than death itself. There was pain without hope of healing. There was life that refused to end, long after the mind had begged the body to cease.''
* In Creator/RobertEHoward's ConanTheBarbarian story "The Devil In Iron" Octavia doesn't get specific, but fears this.
-->''"He told me what he was going to do to me!" she panted. "Kill me! Kill me with your sword before he bursts the door!"''
** In "A Witch Shall Be Born", Valerius declares this, though in actually he goes for LaResistance.
-->''Oh, Ishtar, why was I not slain? Better die than live to see our queen turn traitor and harlot!''
* The ''Literature/LandOfOz'' books by Frank Baum reveal later on that the Wicked Witch of the West was subjected to this when Dorothy melted her. No less fitting a fate for the Witch, of course.
* Matron Baenre has a fate worse than death in store for Drizzt Do'Urden in ''[[LegacyOfTheDrowSeries Starless Night]]'', having him tortured almost to death, then magically healed, and then tortured almost to death again, ad infinitum, for ''centuries''. Made more horrifying when it's mentioned that the same fate has befallen others, who aren't lucky enough to get rescued as Drizzt finally is. Then there's what happened to Dinin: being turned into a drider, a repulsive creature whose very existence is torment.
* In ''Literature/TheHungerGames'', all Katniss wants to do is to get out of the arena alive with Peeta. [[spoiler: After she tricks the Gamemakers into letting them both live, Haymitch warns her that she has upset the Capitol. This leads to her realizing "It's so much worse than being hunted in the arena. There, I could only die. End of story. But out here Prim, my mother, Gale, the people of District 12, everyone I care about back home could be punished..."]]
** There's also the consistent theme of former Victors living horrible lives of drunkenness, substance abuse, or being driven mad by the trauma of what happened in the arena. Oh, and some of them [[spoiler: get forced into prostitution, like Finnick]].
* ''KushielsLegacy'' gives us, in the third book and through the second trilogy, the Mahrkagir who inflicts all manner of sexual tortures on his harem. A lot of his harem kill or starve themselves to death, with an added psychological component for Phedre, who is cursed to feel all that pain from someone she hates as pleasure.
* In ''Literature/{{Everfound}}'', [[spoiler: Squirrel]] gets this. He [[spoiler: is touched by a scar wraith which erases him from the universe, no afterlife, nothing.]] It's a bit odd since most of the characters are already dead.
* Or rather 'undeath' in TheWitchWatch's case. An abomination could have there head cut off and buried underground and you 'could dig his head up today and still find him screaming for release.'
** Also the people who crossed Lord Mordaunt were also threatened with a fate worse than death.
* In ''[[Literature/VorkosiganSaga Captain Vorpatril's Alliance]]'', Tej intends to jump off of a twentieth-story balcony to avoid a fate worse than death (namely, being captured by her family's enemies). Ivan comes up with an alternative plan ([[spoiler:that she marry him, thus becoming a Barrayaran Vor and thereby gaining [=ImpSec=]'s protection]]) and is a little irritated that she apparently has to ''think'' about whether his plan is actually better than jumping off a balcony.
-->'''Ivan:''' I am ''not'' a fate worse than death, dammit!
* "Inconstant Moon", a short story by Larry Niven, has the protagonist and his girlfriend resigned to their inevitable deaths as the sun goes supernova. Then they realize that the sun isn't going to explode. It's "just" a solar flare, an extremely destructive but feasibly survivable disaster. They struggle to obtain food and supplies to weather the storm. At the end of the story, the protagonist surveys the destruction left behind by the flare. In a moment of cynicism, he actually wishes the world had been destroyed by a supernova. Life had been so simple when he thought he was doomed. The story ultimately ends on a hopeful note, as the protagonist wonders whether their descendants will rebuild civilization someday.
* Being an oar-slave (or a harem member) in ''Literature/TheSeaHawk''.
* The entirety of "MogWorld", has Jim trying to kill himself as he has become an immortal zombie.
** Everyone has also become immortal and a lot of people aren't too happy about it.
* In Dan Simmons' "Literature/HyperionCantos", a symbiote called the cruciform makes his bearer immortal (you don't age and you resurrect in case of violent death) but gradually affects his body and mind, ultimately turning him into an asexual and retarded moron. It also causes excruciating pain if you try to remove it or to run away from the remote village (populated only by immortal, asexual morons) where it comes from.
** In the first book, it is revealed that [[spoiler: one of the main characters, Father Hoyt, wears ''two'' cruciforms, his own and his former master Duré's, enduring twice the pain, which is considerable since he left not only the village but the planet itself and travelled to a world several light years away.]]
** Worse, in his tale, [[spoiler: Hoyt explains that after receiving his cruciform, Duré crucified himself to a Tesla tree (a local lifeform generating electrostatic discharges powerful enough to cause thunderstorms) in an attempt to die. He spent ''years'' tied to the tree, being constantly electrocuted, killed and resurrected by the cruciform, as well as tortured by the symbiote itself for trying to get away. He finally manages to die...]]
** but in The Fall of Hyperion, [[spoiler: years later, he finally resurrects when father Hoyt dies.]]
* In ''Literature/DivineComedy'', the punishment for betrayal of hosts/guests is regarded as this, because your body is still alive, but possessed by a demon while your soul is cast into a frozen hell, lying on your back and almost completely buried in ice (your face is the only part not in the ice).
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Live Action TV]]
* In ''Series/{{Smallville}}'', Moira Sullivan [[spoiler:slowly slips back into a permanent catatonic state]] in front of Clark and Chloe. [[spoiler:[[{{TearJerker/Smallville}} She barely have any time to get to know Chloe, her daughter.]]]]
* The ''premise'' of ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000''.
-->'''Crow:''' ''(despairing)'' To be dead, to be nothing... to watch ''[[InvasionOfTheNeptuneMen Neptune Men]]'' no more...
* In an episode of ''Series/{{CSI}}'' ("Ellie") a drugs-mule starts to feel ill and comments that he is going to die. Brass responds "it's worse, you're going to live".
* ''Series/{{Angel}}'': Wolfram & Hart's holding facility for their troublesome employees; on surface it's a banally normal suburb, but every inhabitant must every day go in the cellar of their homes to have their hearts cut out by a demon, only to forget it ever happened, except for impending sense of dread. ''Every day''. Illyria rescues [[spoiler:Charles Gunn]] from the place, and learning that somebody must always take the place of the departed, both disturbingly and awesomely forces the torturer demon himself to be that somebody. The final scene from the place shows the demon strapping himself to the table, and putting knife to his own chest.
** Another episode has Fred, who had been stuck in a hell dimension for five years where humans were treated like cattle, find out who sent her there. She plans to send that person to a hell dimension to suffer as revenge, rather them killing him.
** In "Hell Bound", the gang is plagued by a sadistic ghost named Pavayne who feeds other dead souls to hell in exchange for not going there himself; they stop him by making him corporeal again. Since they can't kill him, Angel has him [[TailorMadePrison locked in a box]] [[AndIMustScream in the basement]] of Wolfram & Hart.
* On the Joss Whedon trend, the Reavers from ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' are probably something like this.
-->'''Zoe''': If they catch us, they'll rape us to death, eat our flesh, and sew our skin on to their clothing. And if we're very, very lucky, they'll do it InThatOrder.
** In some cases, they take one victim and let them live while forcing them to watch the atrocities they inflict on the rest. In the end, after they've witnessed such evil, they have no choice but to become it. That's how new Reavers are made.
** In "Objects in Space," this is Jubal Early's specialty. He threatens to rape Kaylee (as well as implying that he'd do the same to River if he caught her) and forces Simon to help him try to capture River by, ironically, exploiting Simon's need to protect her.
** Also, in ''Film/{{Serenity}}'', River asks Simon to [[ICannotSelfTerminate kill her]], partially to protect the crew, but also because she ''does not'' want to be taken back to [[SchoolForScheming the Academy]].
** And then there's how the very first Reavers were created: [[spoiler:they were the very, very small percentage of the people of the planet Miranda who had the opposite reaction to the Pax, the experimental chemical that the Alliance seeded the planet with which ended up causing nearly the entire planet to simply lay down and die]].
* In ''Series/{{Blackadder}} Goes Forth'', Blackadder is captured by the Germans, and is visited in his cell by a German commander who threatens him with a fate worse than death... unless he attempts to escape, in which case he'll suffer a fate ''worse'' than a fate worse than death. Although Blackadder immediately thinks of the term's origin, the fate worse than death turns out to be [[spoiler:teaching home economics at a girls school in Heidelberg. Designed to strike at the very soul of a man of honour, it doesn't have the expected effect on Blackadder]].
-->'''von Richthoven:''' For you, as a man of honour, the hu-mil-i-ation will be unbearable.
* In the ''Series/DoctorWho'' episode "Flesh and Stone", Amy is forced to make her way through a forest full of Weeping Angels, with her eyes closed, to escape a crack in the universe. When she protests, the Doctor’s reply is: "The Angels can only kill you." [[spoiler:If she is caught by the crack, it will erase her entire existence.]]
** The Master's life could be seen as this--having drums inside your head for a thousand years would drive anyone mad!
** Donna's initial fate: [[spoiler: Because a human mind cannot handle Time Lord knowledge, she was in danger of dying. To save her, the Doctor had to erase all her memories of her travels with him, erasing all her CharacterDevelopment, ''just'' as she realized she was important (and right as she saved the universe).]] Things get better for her, but this is probably one of the sadder fates for a companion ever.
** In "A Good Man Goes to War", it's revealed that the Sontarans punish the worst crimes against their race by forcing the perpetrators to serve as [[CombatMedic medics on the battlefield]]. Because the Sontarans are a {{Proud Warrior Race|Guy}}, being forced to serve the weak and injured is deemed the ultimate humiliation.
** "The Five Doctors" revolves around a Time Lord seeking the secrets of Rassilon to obtain true immortality, as opposed to the "mere" extremely long life of a Time Lord. [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor He gets his wish]], as an immobile stone statue. ''Forever''.
** In "The Family of Blood", all four of the eponymous family are inflicted with a custom-made version of this trope, in the process learning why you never, ever, ''ever'' [[BewareTheNiceOnes make the Doctor mad]].
** "Planet of the Ood" has a ruthless CEO personally market the peaceful, squid-like Ood as slaves worldwide. The CEO's fate? [[spoiler:He [[KarmicTransformation gets turned into]] one of the very creatures he's been mistreating]].
** Not to mention the Cybermen. Their goal is to "upgrade" every human being on Earth into copies of themselves. This entails surgically ripping out the human's brain and central nervous system and implanting it into a mechanical body- in a very rapid, completely automated process with no anasthesia. Converted humans are equipped with emotional inhibitors to wipe out feelings, gender, independent thought, etc. Cybermen are very strong, impossible to dissuade from their goal, and neigh-invulnerable as far as ordinary humans are concerned. Pleasant dreams...
*** That's the NEW series ones. The original ones turned to cybernetics for survival - rotting meat threaded with electronics and held together in perpetual agony...
** At the beginning of 'The Ribos Operation', the Doctor asks the White Guardian what will happen to him if he refuses the commission being offered:
---> '''White Guardian''': Nothing.
---> '''The Doctor''': Nothing? You mean nothing will happen to me?
---> '''White Guardian''': Nothing. ''Ever.''
* In the ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'' episode ''Children of Earth'', Jack got [[spoiler:trapped in cement]] until his boy toy came to the rescue. Then the show proceeds to painfully remind us why [[WhoWantsToLiveForever being immortal sucks]]. Like [[spoiler:watching your love die in his arms, knowing he himself can never die permanently]]. Really, this show has worked hard to assure viewers that Jack's brand of immortality would be utterly ''agonizing''.
** Before his [[spoiler:entombment]], Jack underwent the prolonged and (judging from the screams) extremely painful process of [[spoiler:regrowing his body]] after being [[spoiler:blown up by a bomb implanted in his lower torso]]. [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] when a witness to this resurrection comments that he'd have been better off staying dead.
** "Adrift", where [[spoiler:they introduce Flat Holm, a place for people who had been taken by the Rift and returned. They suffered horrors and can never see their families again. Then you have Jonah, who had been trapped on a burning planet, saw the destruction of a solar system, and looked into a Dark Star. Which drove him insane. Now he screams for Twenty. Hours. A. Day.]]
** ''[[Series/TorchwoodMiracleDay Miracle Day]]'' turns WhoWantsToLiveForever UpToEleven. Nobody, no matter how badly injured, can die. This leads to a particularly disturbing scene wherein a suicide bomber's "remains" are being examined by a medical team. His body has been largely blown apart and what little is left is burned, but the guy is still alive and appears to be conscious. [[AndIMustScream Even when they sever the remaining tissue connecting his head to the rest of him]].
* Ascertained and subsequently often subverted in ''Series/{{Highlander}}''. Many Immortals suffer from a Fate Worse Than Death. Others (like Duncan) want to be mortal so they can die, but continue to fight to keep their heads.
* On ''Series/StargateSG1'' the system lord Ba'al once had the captured Jack O'Neill tortured to death repeatedly and then revived in the sarcophagus, only to start again the next day.
** Apophis was tortured the same way (possibly worse, since it was not to draw information) by Sokar.
** Anubis ends up [[SisyphusVsRock locked in an eternal battle]] with Oma Desala, leaving him no ability to do anything except fight to survive. And his egotistical nature would never allow him to just give up and let Oma kill him. The same probably applies to Adria in her struggle with Ganos Lal (aka Morgan Le Fey), as the effect of Morgan taking Adria away looked the same as Oma doing the same to Anubis. The true victims of a Fate Worse Than Death are Oma and Morgan, locked in eternal combat with {{Evil Overlord}}s. Now ''that'' is a HeroicSacrifice.
** The experience of being used as a host by a Goa'uld for thousands of years, a meat puppet with no control of their body whatsoever, forced to endure both the atrocities the Goa'uld commit ''and'' their GeneticMemory (filled with innumerable other atrocities), will drive humans insane. Despite this, [[spoiler:Ba'al]]'s host seems to be okay after being separated from the symbiote. Technically both the host and the symbiote [[spoiler:were clones of the original Ba'al and his host, and only a couple of years old. But the clone host would still (due to the GeneticMemory of the Goa'uld and the fact that freed hosts retain their symbiotes' memories) ''remember'' being a host for thousands of years. However, Ba'al is implied to be an AntiVillain. Vala Mal Doran seems to be doing alright as well.]]
** In the Season Two episode "The Gamekeeper", SG-1 is imprisoned in a virtual reality realm and forced to live the worst moments of their lives over and over again. They eventually escape.
** ''Stargate Atlantis''' Wraith are capable of sending people to the very brink of dying by old age... then return them to normal... then take them back to the brink... again, and again, and again.
* One episode of ''TheTwilightZone'' had a Nazi war criminal be tortured by the angry spirit of a Holocaust victim by experiencing the pain his victims felt before they died. He was eventually driven insane before being found by authorities, and the spirit warned that it would continue to haunt him for the rest of his life.
** The end of the infamous "Time Enough at Last" always seemed like this trope. (Spoilers just in case) [[spoiler:Imagine this: you're the last person alive, with enough food to last you a lifetime and all the books you could ever want to read and no one will make fun of you for it. You pick up the first book... and your reading glasses fall off and break. No more ability to read.]]
** The IronicHell episodes also count. You love gambling? Great. You'll ''always'' win.
* In the ''Franchise/StarTrek'' franchise, being assimilated by the Borg and converted into one of their drones is considered this. Captain Picard explicitly says in ''Film/StarTrekFirstContact'' that the Enterprise crew will be doing their assimilated colleagues a favor by killing them.
** In the original series, there was the ending of "The Alternative Factor", which left the matter and anti-matter Lazaruses trapped between universes, at each other's throats for eternity. It's compounded by FridgeLogic when you realize they really just had to imprison the insane Lazarus and destroy his ship to protect the two universes.
* Vic Mackey of ''TheShield'' ... Oh, dear, Vic Mackey. Specifically: He cuts a deal with the feds - specifically, I.C.E. - that he helps bring in a major drug lord in exchange for immunity for past crimes (And Vic has A LOT of them) just as Claudette and the LAPD were about to close in on him. Looks like he's pulled a KarmaHoudini and is about to start his dream job with Homeland Security. [[spoiler:But then, best-friend turned fugitive Shane kills himself and his family, and leaves a suicide note blaming everything on Vic. Claudette reads the letter to the dumb-struck Vic. Then, while he's still reeling from that, arrests the last remaining Strike Team member, Ronnie, for all the stuff Vic had already copped to. Vic had lied to him about including him in the deal with the Feds. Ronnie proceeds to let the entire Barn know exactly what kind of bastard Vic was. And he screwed over Ronnie for nothing. Part of the deal was protection for Vic's estranged wife, Corrine. But she'd cut a deal with Claudette to try and snare Vic. So she was never in danger. AND she's put an order of protection out against Vic and took the kids into Witness Protection. With his reputation in shreds, Vic goes back to ICE headquarters to settle into his new life... only to be informed that he'll be spending the entirety of his ICE tenure as a paper pusher, assigned to fill out ''daily ten-page reports'' and if he quits or doesn't live up to expectation, his deal is voided and all the stuff he confessed to - up to and including murdering a fellow cop - comes into play. Worse than prison for a CowboyCop like Vic. Family gone, friends dead or betrayed, and career in tatters, the last scene of the show shows Vic seriously contemplating eating his gun, but deciding to soldier on.]]
* ''{{Kings}}'': Silas decides to spare [[spoiler:his gay son Jack]] because he's already found a better punishment for him. As Thomasina explains [[spoiler:when she brings Jack's wife to his room: "Your father wants for you a living death. To brick you into a wall with someone who loves you, who you can't stand the sight of... until you produce an heir whom Silas will take and raise right this time."]] When [[spoiler:Jack]] begs her for mercy, she twists the knife: [[spoiler:it's not so bad, all he has to do is close his eyes and think of his dead lover]].
* ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'''s version of Hell. You're tortured, daily, in unimaginable ways, for decades on end, unless you agree to do the same to others. [[spoiler:Main character Dean is able to hold out for thirty years before giving in.]] Although [[spoiler: his dad, John, held out for one hundred years, and never gave any sign of giving in]]. "Stuff legends are made of," indeed. [[spoiler:John ''might'' have had the benefit of knowing the purpose of his incarceration. Once he or Dean were to give in, the first seal is broken on Lucifer being able to walk free.]]
** To take it up a notch, the end of season five had [[spoiler:Sam throw himself into hell's solitary confinement with vengeful archangels FallenAngel [[ArchangelLucifer Lucifer]] and [[ArchangelMichael Michael]] to lock them away so they didn't [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt raze the world]]. He thought they'd get to spend eternity torturing him creatively for this, but lucked out and was freed after ''only a hundred and eighty years or so''.]]
* An episode of ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' begins with an encounter with a Q who had been condemned to be trapped in an asteroid for all eternity, and therefore sought asylum from Captain Janeway so that he could commit suicide. Court trial and MoralDilemma ensue.
* ''Series/BabylonFive'':
** People who die while in the middle jump of entering either hyperspace or realspace well be trapped that way, forever dying at that one moment. Made even worse by the indications that the people this happens to might be ''conscious'' of what's happening to them.
** Being made to be the pilot of a Shadow vessel. BodyHorror aside, the experience fundamentally changes you. You're no longer the same person you were before, despite having all the same memories. [[spoiler: This is revealed to be the explicit fate of Anna Sheridan.]]
*** It is implied that the actual integration with the Shadow vessel essentially kills the personality of the person integrated. Simply being prepared (by the use of implants that radically alter brain function) drives the person violently insane. [[spoiler: And being integrated is strongly implied to be in a state of incomprehensible agony, leading to the way Shadow vessels scream constantly.]]
* ''Series/{{Lost}}'': In "Across The Sea", Jacob provides [[NoNameGiven his brother]] with one of these when [[spoiler:after his brother kills their Mother, Jacob shoves him into the light of the world that the brothers are tasks to protect and creates the Smoke Monster. Having your soul separated from your body and chained to the Island as a pillar of black smoke strikes me is the ultimate fate worse than death.]]
* ''TalesFromTheCrypt'': "Let the Punishment Fit the Crime" features an AmoralAttorney who gets tried in a nightmarish KangarooCourt. She is eventually sentenced to death, but her public defender talks the judge into giving her public service. [[spoiler: She is led into a room with the electric chair, which alarms her...until the defender steps forward and straps himself in. He reveals that he was once an attorney like her, until he ended up in the court. But now he's free thanks to her. After he is killed, the woman is suddenly wearing his outfit, now stuck working in the courts forever]].
** "Loved to Death" has essentially a StalkerWithACrush pining away for a neighbor. A LovePotion gets her interest and he's happy at first, but she becomes increasingly obsessive and clingy. [[spoiler: It gets to the point where poisoning a drink becomes an option. However, he winds up drinking the poison and dies. In the afterlife, he thinks he's going to get some peace, but then the girl shows up. She says she couldn't live without him, so she killed herself by jumping out a window, which disfigured her. She happily announces they'll be together forever - a sentiment he clearly doesn't share.]]
** "Abra Cadaver": As revenge for a prank gone wrong, a doctor induces a heart attack in a younger jerk of a brother and injects him with an experimental drug meant to keep his brain alive. Clinically dead and unable to move, the younger brother is put through the process of being a cadaver for a medical school. [[spoiler:Turns out to just be an elaborate prank in itself with no harm meant, as well as to show that the older brother's drug does work. However, the younger brother suffers a second heart attack and seemingly dies, but not before another injection. The younger brother's brain is still alive, as his autopsy begins. ''And he can feel everything!'']]
* Being a [[OurZombiesAreDifferent zombie]] in the ''Series/BeingHuman'' universe is implied to suck big time. Zombies are created under very rare circumstances; when a person dies but something blocks their transition to the afterlife, their soul will sometimes remain within their corpse. They can think and feel pain as though they were still alive, but they can 'survive' serious injuries such as having internal organs removed. [[spoiler:When humans first encounter them, they are subjected to medical experiments, and later incinerated as a biohazard; because undeath makes them immune to anesthetics, they are fully conscious throughout the procedure.]] Their souls are denied passage into the afterlife until their bodies decay beyond the point of being able to sustain them, during which time they can [[{{Squick}} feel their own bodies decomposing from within]].
* Barnabas Collins from the soap opera ''Series/DarkShadows'' was turned into a vampire, which made him '''un'''dead, then he had to watch his beloved little sister discover what he was and run away into a storm, which led to an illness, which led to her death; then the love of his life [[spoiler:committed suicide in front of him so that he could not turn '''her''' into a vampire]], then his father found out about his condition and stowed him in his coffin in a room of the family mansion, hoping to find a cure. Then Barnabas' mother promptly discovered the whole thing and [[spoiler:committed suicide with poison]], again, right in front of Barnabas. At the last, Barnabas begged his father to kill him, but the old man couldn't bear to do it, so instead, he just chained Barnabas inside a coffin in a hidden part of the family mausoleum, where Barnabas remained '''for almost 200 years.'''
* In season 5, of ''Series/{{House}}'', Wilson confronts House over the potential effects of his self-treatment for [[spoiler:hallucinations]], yielding the former page quote:
--> '''Wilson''': Heart attack, stroke, seizure, death, or worse.
--> '''House''': [[DeadpanSnarker Worse? Double death?]]
--> '''Wilson''': You live, but you damage the only thing you care about: Your rational mind.
*** Unlike most examples of the trope, this example is very specific to the character in question.
** According to Cameron, "it's easier to die than to watch someone die".
** In the Season 4 finale, House wants to [[spoiler:stay on the Limbo-bus with Amber]] instead of waking up.
** In Season 5, House offers to teach a patient with locked-in syndrome to spell "KILL ME" by blinking.
** In Season 8, [[spoiler:Wilson thinks wasting away from cancer in a hospital or dying in an ambulance]] would be this.
* On ''TheVampireDiaries'', vampires mummify when deprived of blood for an extended period of time, but until that happens they are in an extreme state of hunger and agony.
* In ''Series/TheRiver; Jonas is subjected to this after filming a native death ritual. Specifically, he is cursed to forever be hanged by the forest's vines, experiencing pain but never death.
* On ''TheMentalist'', the SerialKiller Red John punishes self-proclaimed [[ISeeDeadPeople psychic medium]] Kristina Frye for trying to "read" him on live TV by abducting her and brainwashing her to believe that she's dead. She remains in a completely catatonic state unless someone performs a seance ritual to "contact" her "spirit."
* ''Series/OnceUponATime'': Gold specifically says this when talking to Regina about [[spoiler: what she did to Belle]]. He says that [[spoiler: Regina keeping her alive so that she could be killed when it best suited Regina is a Fate Worse Than Death.]] He then [[spoiler: tries to get revenge by giving her one right back.]]
* ''Series/SixHundredSixtySixParkAvenue'': When Gavin realizes that one of his associates has betrayed him, he traps him an endless hallway with no way out until he cracks and confesses. And then the trope is subverted when Gavin just plain kills him.
* In ''Series/MythQuest'', Alex become Váli, son of Loki. He tries to release Loki from being chained to a rock underneath a venomous snake.
* On ''Series/{{NCIS}}'', Ziva regards captivity, along with the torture and abuse it entails, as a fate worse than death. In Season 3, after recounting an incident in which one of her friends from Mossad was taken hostage and beheaded by Hamas, she tells Tony that she had decided that she would "never be taken alive". She eventually is a little over three years later.
* In ''ChoujinSentaiJetman'', Radiguet finally got his revenge by mentally damaging Tranza's mind. End result? Tranza stuck as a human, in a mental hospital, getting mental attacks from time to time, with Tranza shouting "No! Forgive me!" at the end of the episode.
--> '''Radiguet''': I won't kill you. You will fear my name your whole life, while living among the humans!
* ''Series/BlackMirror'' has the episode ''White Bear'' [[spoiler: about a woman who watched (and recorder) her boyfriend burning a kidnapped child to death. Her punishment is to relive a single day of being chased around by manics while be recorded by 100's of onlookers who stand around and do nothing to help. Then at the end of the day her mind is wiped and she gets to do it [[AmnesiaLoop again, and again]]. Apparently the last thing she says every day is that she wants to be killed.]]
* On ''Series/BreakingBad'', [[spoiler:Gus subjects Hector Salamanca to one of these. As he systematically wipes out the Juarez cartel, he pays frequent visits to Tio to fill him in on the deaths of his family members, and to threaten to kill him. It gets so bad that Hector agrees to [[EnemyMine team up with Walt]] to suicide-bomb Gus.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Music]]
* A song called "Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye", tells about a soldier (named Johnny), who came home alive from a war, but is so horribly disfigured and crippled that even his family could not recognize him. Since he can no longer walk or use his arms and hands, they decided to have him beg on the streets (Ye're an armless, boneless, chickenless egg Ye'll have to put with a bowl out to beg;). The lyrics said very pleasing things about his loss of legs and arms (Where are your legs that used to run, hurro, hurro; Ye haven't an arm, ye haven't a leg, hurroo, hurroo), him being overly skinny (So low in flesh, so high in bone;). (This is the original form of the US Civil War song, "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." The Yanks prettied it up.)
* The song "One" by Music/{{Metallica}} details the life of a soldier, after he loses all his limbs, his sight, his speech, and his hearing due to a landmine. He has machines that breathe for him, and so he's unable to die. His mind functions perfectly, leaving him a prisoner in his own body.
-->Darkness, imprisoning me! All I see, absolute horror! I cannot live, I cannot die! Trapped in myself, body my holding cell!
** In fact, the song is based upon the book ''JohnnyGotHisGun'' by Dalton Trumbo (in fact, the only changed detail is that the landmine in "One" was originally a grenade); in the book, the protagonist (who is actually named Joe) at one point attempts to signal "KILL ME" in Morse code by tapping his head against his pillow. That's in the song too. The drumbeat during the guitar solo is the Morse code.
* In ''[[{{Vocaloid}} Hitobashira Alice (Alice Human Sacrifice)]]'', the Third Alice is condemned to live forever seeing herself as a decaying body, as a punishment for fooling and using people to become a queen. Whether it was an illusion or if she was constantly decaying until she rotted completely is debatable; either way, both punishments are valid for this trope.
* [[{{Vocaloid}} Len's]] fate in the song Re_Birthday (which is very possibly a continuation of the [[{{Mothy}} Evil Series]]). He is doomed to spend eternity in an empty room with his hands bound in red handcuffs (representing blood shed) and his ankles bound in blue shackles (representing tears spilled), all while reliving the sins he committed in his life. It's made a little more jarring in that [[GodSaveUsfromtheQueen Rin]], who ordered him to commit all of those atrocities to begin with, [[KarmaHoudini gets off essentially scot-free]]. [[spoiler:In the end, it's her [[MagicMusic lullaby]] that ends up saving him, and [[EarnyourHappyEnding they both get to be reincarnated as twins, just as they had wished for]].]]
* Depending on how you look at it, the fate of the doctor's wife (and possibly the doctor himself) from a song of the same name by The Clockwork Quartet. The lyrics are written as entries in the doctor's journal, detailing his beloved wife's slow death by an incurable disease. He becomes more and more obsessive in his attempts to save her, until he has sacrificed his business and his entire life in order to keep her alive...to no avail. By the last stanza she has died, but the doctor replaced her heart with a mechanical device that keeps her other organs alive. The doctor is completely maddened by his tragic inability to let her go, and his wife is kept in a permanent state between life and death, unable to simply pass away because he won't let her.
* "And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda" by EricBogle (and later covered by ThePogues), about a young Australian rover sent off to the [[WorldWarOne Battle of Gallipoli]]:
-->''Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over tit, \\
And when I woke up in my hospital bed \\
[[AnArmAndALeg And saw what it had done]], I wished I was dead—\\
Never knew there were worse things than dying.''
* Mentioned in "Keep Quiet" by Music/TheProtomen. 'They say, this city, she's been dead for years now, so death is not something that scares me. There's worse things than death here.'
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Mythology and Religion]]
* {{Hell}}. Without even getting into the specifics of Hell itself, a simple logical deduction demonstrates that it is far, ''far'' worse than a CessationOfExistence.
** Some atheists have suggested that any afterlife would eventually become worse then CessationOfExistence via boredom. Unless your mind was re-wired, which is also kind of terrifying in itself.
* Mark of Cain. In some interpretations/translations of the Book of Genesis, Cain is made immortal by God, forces to live forever, because he caused the first death.
* This is OlderThanFeudalism: Prometheus was chained to a rock to forever have his ever-regrowing liver eaten by an eagle. Since he was a god, he could not die. Fortunately, he was later freed by Heracles, who took pity on his plight.
* NorseMythology has a similar fate for Loki (chained to a rock with the entrails of his slaughtered sons, and tormented by a snake perpetually dripping poisonous saliva into his eyes) although, being a {{Trickster}}, he escapes after a while... just in time to take part in TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt.
* GreekMythology is full of these, Prometheus simply the most famous. Tantalus, for example, killed his son Pelops and tried to feed him to the gods when they came over for dinner. In response, the gods killed Tantalus and sentenced him to forever be cursed in the underworld. He was placed in a pool with water up to his chin and delicious fruit dangling above his head, but whenever he tried to bend down and drink the water or reach up and grab the fruit, the water would drain away and the fruit would be blown just out of reach by a gust of wind (hence the word "tantalise" entered into the vocabulary). Sisyphus, punished for cheating death, was [[SealedEvilInADuel forced to roll an incredibly heavy boulder up a steep slope]]. When he was about to reach the top, the rock would slip out of his hands (or he would run out of energy and the boulder would roll overtop of him) and tumble back down the slope, forcing him to start over. The Danaeids were also punished with a fate worse than death for murdering their husbands, as they were forced to try and fill a water trough using jars with no bottoms.
** The only relief that the three mentioned above got was when Orpheus arrived. The song that he played asking for Eurydice's soul back not only melted Hades' heart, but quenched Tantalus' thirst, halted Sisyphus' boulder, and kept the water inside the jars... [[SnapBack until he left]].
** And then there's Atlas, who has to hold the Earth (or the sky, according to TheOtherWiki) on his shoulders from the beginning of the world until a few thousand years ago, when the Greek hero Heracles, better known by what the Romans called him (Hercules), builds "the pillars of Heracles" to carry Atlas's burden.
** The personification of Dawn asked Zeus for eternal life for her lover Tithonus... and forgot to ask for [[RequiredSecondaryPowers eternal youth for him]]. Consequently, he got so old and feeble that eventually he turned into a ''grasshopper.''
** Pirithous and Theseus won the idiot award by trying to carry off Persephone, wife of Hades. Hades invited them to a feast and tried to dissuade them, and when they refused to give up the plan, the bench fused to them. Heracles was able to save Theseus (who was only there to help Pirithous), but Pirithous was trapped there for eternity for his impiety and unquestionable stupidity.
** Ixion was trapped to a flaming wheel in Tantarus for eternity, in a horrible cross between a stretching rack and being on fire. His crime? Kinslaying, severe violations of [[SacredHospitality host-guest obligations]], and ''trying to [[WhatAnIdiot rape Hera while a guest of Zeus]]''.
* In the Fourth Branch of ''Pedeir Keinc y Mabinogi'' (Middle Welsh tale, probably 11th century), Gwydion (the AntiHero) tells Blodeuedd (a FemmeFatale) "I won't kill you, I'll do that which is worse to you" before turning her into an owl (he was serially turned into animals as a punishment earlier in the tale, so presumably knows what he's talking about).
** This gets referenced in ''The Owl Service'' by Creator/AlanGarner, which provides an AlternativeCharacterInterpretation for [[spoiler:Blodeuedd]]. Blodeuedd was a woman who was made of flowers by Gwydion so [[ArrangedMarriage his nephew could have a wife]], and she was turned into an owl because of [[PerfectlyArrangedMarriage a certain trope being heavily averted]]. This actually is a plot point, and to break the curse afflicting the main characters [[spoiler:Blodeuedd must be freed of this curse.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' has almost everyone who serves Chaos, eventually mutating into a mindless beast. But a particularly notable instance is Count Mordrek the Damned. As he's a chaos warrior, "the Damned" would usually be redundant. He constantly and violently mutates within his unremovable armor suit, and every time he dies the chaos gods bring him back to life. And unlike most people they do things like this to, he still appears to be sane and thinking, and remorseful over what they make him do.
* In ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'', this happens to ''everyone'', one way or another, who runs afoul of [[TheCorruption Chaos]], whether it's being consumed by its [[TheHeartless endless hordes of daemons]], a "mishap" while [[HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace traveling though the Warp]] or going anywhere near one of its {{Negative Space Wedgie}}s. (Unless you're an Ork, in which case it's the best afterlife ''[[WarriorHeaven ever]]''.) Even its servants don't avoid it, as their final fate is either dying (and then a daemon or five comes to collect on [[DealWithTheDevil its contracts]]), transforming into a mindless, deformed Chaos Spawn, or achieving immortality as a [[OneWingedAngel Daemon Prince]], only to spend the rest of eternity fighting the Endless Game between the Chaos Gods.
** This is inevitable for all Eldar, as if they die and their soulstones are destroyed their souls are immediately consumed and tormented for the remainder of eternity by the Chaos God Slaanesh.
** This is the [[PlanetOfHats Hat]] of the Dark Eldar. Their souls are constantly being sucked away by Slaanesh, and to stay alive they must feed on the pain and agony of others. So they've become very good at causing incomprehensible pain, while at the same time keeping the victim alive. (One novel describes the victim of a Homunculus' attentions as [[BodyHorror a collection of skin and organs hanging individually from the ceiling on metal hooks]]... and the poor guy was ''still alive''.) The torture may go on for millennia before the victim is finally given the mercy of death. There's a reason why the blurb on the back of their codex reads "Pray that they do not take you alive".
** Isha, one of the few surviving Eldar gods, was spared from death by Slaanesh because he/she/it wanted to "claim" her. Her fate got better ''ever so slightly'', for she was rescued by Nurgle who's smitten with her. However, Nurgle keeps her in a cage and loves to give her "presents", and since this is Nurgle, all of his "presents" are horrible mutations and diseases. (Nurgle's servants don't count because they ''[[NightmareFetishist enjoy]]'' this sort of thing.)
** One of the novels has a variation on this. A Chaos Marine, feeling remorseful about abandoning his loyalty to the Emperor, decides to kill the leader of the warband he is in. However, the attempted assassination is botched and the traitor is knocked unconscious and captured. He awakes in total darkness, unable to move or speak. He awaits his coming torture and interrogation, but it never arrives. The story ends as he realises he has been placed inside a [[MiniMecha Dreadnaught]] coffin, effectively granting him immortality but sealing him off from the world forever.
** Getting captured by Necrons. One ''BattlefleetGothic'' entry describes guardsmen finding a single boy from a colony, the other inhabitants having been taken by Necrons. The boy died several hours after they found him. The Necrons had very carefully cut out no less than 30 of the boy's glands and left him there. The fate of the other colonists is best left unsaid...
** The GodEmperor has been entombed on the golden throne for the last 10 millennia, fully conscious, and fully aware of the collapse of his vision of humanity into a barbarous, mindlessly fanatical totalitarian nightmare.
** Arco-Flagellation, a punishment [[StateSec The Inquisition]] inflicts on certain heretic and blasphemers. The condemned have both their hands lopped off, and replaced with some nasty weaponry. Followed by getting a back full of combat drug dispensers, and a healthy dose of MindRape. The result is a wasted, wiry cyborg who wears a hood displaying calming religious images, but with the right command word the visor retracts, the stim-packs activate, and the former heretic goes berserk.
* Several spells and abilities in ''DungeonsAndDragons''. For example, one spell in the Sandstorm book can turn a victim into a voiceless gust of wind or trap them as sand in the desert until released. An Epic spell, "Damnation", teleports the target to Hell, and screws with their thoughts to the point where they believe they deserve the punishment. This says nothing at all yet about some truly unpleasant spells found in the 3.5 edition Spell Compendium.
** Avasculate, a spell that does not kill you- it reduces you to half your current hit points rounded down (0 is not death)... by causing you to purge any and all sorts of bodily fluid through your skin.
** Avascular Mass takes this one step further- you purge your blood vessels themselves through your skin, complete with blood in.... and then creates a 'web' effect out of those very veins, trapping you and anyone in 20 feet in a mass of ANIMATE blood vessels that are trying to grab you all. Talk about a horrifying experience...
** There are spells like Cast in Stone and Flesh to Stone that can, depending on how you understand it, leave someone a conscious statue for all eternity, even if they're eroded away to a pebble or shattered.
** In the beginning, this was considered to be the case for Drow transformed into {{Drider}}s (a dark elf centaur, only replace "horse" with "giant spider"), and the transformation was a punishment by Lloth. Driders are much stronger and tougher then ordinary dark elves, have more spell-like abilities, and these abilities are more potent then the ones that ordinary drow have. Additionally, Lolth has had various drider-like forms (when she was first introduced to the game, she resembled a huge spider whose head had been replaced with that of a female drow). If you're thinking this doesn't make sense, you aren't the only one; since 4th edition, becoming a Drider is now a blessing from Lolth, and they are respected and admired by Drow instead of being chased out of the city. It's reserved for those who fail a loyalty test. And sort of brings them closer to her. For extra fun, Lolth "copyrighted" this shape (if a drow is polymorphed into a drider without her handmaiden's authorization, the spell is soon reverted, presumably attracting her attention in process).
** There is a sword in ''Book of Vile Darkness'' that on a critical hit or killing blow rips the soul from the victims body and tortures it until it is released. And in terms of spells, it's hard to beat "Eternity of Torture," which is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin.
** There is a spell used against vampires called Sunfire Tomb. It makes them feel as if constantly being burned by the light of the sun, without dying.
** A deity in ''Dungeons & Dragons'', Torog, was cursed by a primordial with eternal imprisonment in the Underdark and grievous wounds that will never heal. Despite his still vast powers many consider his existence to be a Fate Worse Than Death.
* In ''MutantChronicles'', the [[DemonicInvaders Dark Legion]] has a metric crapload of different kinds of Fate Worse Than Death. Having your motor functions shut down while you can still see and hear everything, being driven to madness, tortured, [[PeoplePuppets possessed]], turned into a zombie grunt...
* Vajra Enterprises has a whole game named ''[[http://www.fatesworsethandeath.com/!FWTD/FWTDoverview.htm Fates Worse Than Death]]''. The setting [[WorldHalfEmpty isn't the prettiest place imaginable]], as you perhaps [[CaptainObvious already guessed]]. Then again, {{sourcebook}}s get funny names: ''"Fates Worse Than Death: Cheerleader"''.
* ''TabletopGame/WraithTheOblivion'': As all inhabitants of the underworld have all already died, one might think that the worst has already happened. Unfortunately, [[TabletopGame/OldWorldofDarkness given the setting]], that's just the beginning. Common fates include being torn apart by angry, eternally damned spectres, trapped in an endless maze full of angry, eternally damned spectres, becoming an angry, eternally damned spectre, and being boiled alive in molten ore to be forged into weapons and or objects. Which doesn't end your existence. And you still might end up being used by an angry, eternally damned spectre.
** ''TabletopGame/GeistTheSinEaters'' depicts something similarly to what becomes of the dead in the Underworld, especially with the depiction of some of the Dead Dominions. One of the worst is the Ocean of Fragments, a place where all memory and identity is gradually washed away. [[FridgeBrilliance ...Except that isn't so bad at all]]. The Ocean actually washes away ''identifiers'', the memories that define who you are as a person. Thus, a mechanic who had his memories of being a mechanic would still know engineering, he just wouldn't have the memories of ever having used them. Thus, it can easily wash away "I was horribly abused as a child" and "I am a sociopath". This, combined with the ultimate goal of washing away the ego itself-and with it, the ability to feel pain, as you are no longer a person to hurt-means that, in a way, the Ocean is actually one of the few things that can truly improve a ghost's lot.
* In ''TabletopGame/ChangelingTheLost'', Changelings who get recaptured and taken back to Arcadia are never seen again. Considering the insanity and torture they escaped from to begin with, a swift death rather than life under one of the [[EldritchAbomination True Fae]] is probably the best outcome they can hope for.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}'' has more than a few of these. From the Monstrances of Celestial Portion, to the Organ of Agonies, to the horrific MindRape certain social Charms can allow, the villains of the setting can do a ''lot'' worse than merely kill you.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]
* ''GhostTrick'': So you have a ghost who has [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness outlived his usefulness]], and you really, ''really'' don't want him coming after you after the fact. What do you do? Why, leave him in a flooding submarine at the bottom of the sea, completely alone, launch the room containing his body as far away as possible in a random direction, allow said room to collapse due to the water pressure, mangling the body beyond repair and all but ensuring TimeTravel doesn't come into play, blow up the submarine with a torpedo, and make sure no possible path of escape remains. And since he's already dead...
* The disembodied head of the [[Videogame/TeamFortress2 BLU Spy]] suffers this in the [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36lSzUMBJnc "Meet the Medic"]] [[SupplementalMaterial/TeamFortress2 video]], having recently been [[PlayedForLaughs a living table vise]] for the RED Medic while he tinkered with his Medigun. Spy seems rather calm about it though, especially compared to [[LosingYourHead his initial reaction]].
** [[WordOfGod According to]] [[http://www.tf2.com/post.php?id=5816 the outtakes]], BLU Spy's severed head got somehow permanently Übercharged, and now spends [[BlessedWithSuck his invulnerable days]] mostly [[VisualPun having a smoke break and chillin']] [[FridgeHorror in RED Medic's fridge]].
** He takes it rather well, so while the general situation fits this trope, it may not be so bad for the Spy. Though he does ask the Medic to kill him every time the Medic opens the fridge.
* In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'', a [[BlessedWithSuck l'Cie]] who fails to complete their [[MissionFromGod Focus]] is doomed to become a Cie'th; a crystalline monster that wanders the world in sorrow, until it eventually fossilizes into a Cie'th Stone [[AndIMustScream while still alive, awake, and suffering sorrow and regret, forever]]. The fate for those who complete their Focus isn't much better..becoming an immortal servant of the fal'Cie. And spending most of the time [[TakenForGranite as a crystal statue,]] except when they want you for something. The fal'Cie are [[JerkassGods jerks.]]
* [[StarCraft Zerg]] [[TheVirus infestation]] usually alters your mind into conformity with the collective will of the [[HordeOfAlienLocusts Swarm]] and its [[HiveMind Overmind]]. However, ''VideoGame/StarcraftII'' shows that this is not always the case. Some infestees end up ''fully aware'' of their miserable condition, and only have enough control over their bodies to ''beg'' other people to kill them.
* In the {{Infocom}} game ''VideoGame/{{Sorcerer}}'', dallying in the prologue area will result in a NonStandardGameOver where the game's villain condemns the protagonist to an eternity in the Chamber of Living Death, wherein victims are perpetually (and painfully) eaten alive by plagues of parasites.
** Also, dallying too long in the final room without acting will get the protagonist sent to the Hall of Eternal Pain, where they will spend eternity as a powerless disembodied mentality, being tormented telepathically.
** And in the ''next''-to-last room, there are three doors. Two of them lead to the Chamber of Living Death and the Hall of Eternal Pain. Try to find which one is the third one. Try ''hard''.
** And failure to obtain (or, for that matter, use) the correct spell before the final confrontation results in a demon possessing the protagonist and using this new body to enslave the entire world. (In the demon's own words, "Now begins an epoch of evil transcending even your worst nightmares; a reign of terror that will last a thousand thousand years!") The kicker? He keeps the protagonist's mind [[AndIMustScream alive and aware]], so the protagonist is ForcedToWatch helplessly as his controlled body sacrifices babies, forces slaves to build massive idols - with his face - and generally creates a literal Hell on Earth.
* {{Infocom}} was at it again in ''VideoGame/TheLurkingHorror''. Don't kill the final monster fast enough and one of its formerly human slaves grabs you and throws you into it, which by this point you know is how it makes humans into former humans. [[NonstandardGameOver Instead of the standard]] "You have died" message, you see the far more chilling "You have changed", followed by "Sometimes, during your future existence, you remember your old life. At these times, you wish you had died instead."
* In ''{{Drakengard}}'', the AntiHero defeats the CreepyChild BigBad. [[ICannotSelfTerminate She begs him to kill her]], but he decides that instead [[spoiler:he's going to drag her around the world, forcing her to see the devastation she has caused]]. This doesn't sound too bad until you consider the BigBad had the world [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt balanced on the edge of ruin.]] Killing her would be too easy, no; [[spoiler:he's going to make her take responsibility for everything, a child's nightmare]].
** This turns out to have been an effective punishment, or at least truly a Fate Worse Than Death. The BigBad of the first game is a playable character in the second, and she has repressed all the memories of her being the BigBad and the punishment the protagonist of the first game inflicted on her. This becomes obvious when the AntiHero of the first game shows up as an AntiVillain in the second, and the mere sight of him makes her [[FreakOut go crazy.]] [[JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind She gets better]].
* Played for laughs in ''{{Persona 3}}'': the boys "accidentally" spend too long in the hot spring, until after it switches from boys-only to girls-only. When Mitsuru and the rest of the girls enter, Akihiko freaks out and with good reason: if Mitsuru detects the boys in the ensuing minigame, she "executes" them; a fate [[NoodleIncident not seen]] but referred to as "hell on earth".
** The manga adaptation indicates that she ''[[ColdBloodedTorture freezes]] [[AndIMustScream them alive.]]'' If that's not horrific enough, read Dante's ''DivineComedy'' about the very last circle of Hell, and ''imagine experiencing that, while ALIVE''. Another theory asks you to look at what Mitsuru does to enemies when she scores a critical hit in battle. And with ''high heels''.
** A more serious example in the [[FridgeHorror underlying implications]] of [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt The Fall]]: with the coming of [[spoiler:Nyx, the [[EveryoneHatesHades incarnation of Death itself]]]], every single living thing will be consumed from the inside out by its own desire for destruction. Thus everything, everywhere, will lose all sense of self and become a mindless, soulless shell that can only moan and whimper, completely unaware of its own death. Should the protagonists choose to challenge this fate, [[spoiler:the Appraiser/Nyx Avatar]] warns them that they will suffer more than they could possibly imagine, ''then'' die.
** It'll be even worse for Aigis, who's a robot, and thus most likely won't be affected by the Fall. Instead, she'll get to watch her friends turn into shambling shells of their former selves, and then spent the rest of her life in a lifeless wasteland until her body mercifully breaks down.
* In ''PlanescapeTorment'', when you explain to the Mercykiller Vhailor how your immortality works, he moves to punish you [[spoiler:as each time you die and regenerate, someone else dies in your place]]... but you can get him to back off by explaining the ''downside''. Vhailor, thought of even by other Mercykillers as a fanatic who'll scrag someone without evidence, decides that you are suffering punishment enough.
* In the add-on to ''DungeonSiege II'' called ''Broken World'', anyone caught by the Familiar Surgeons is horribly mutilated, fused with parts of other bodies or weapons, and transformed into an insane "bound creature". Fortunately, this cannot happen to player characters.
* In the backstory of ''{{Utawarerumono}}'', Witsarnemitea [[spoiler:reduced the scientists who studied him to immortal slimes]] not unlike the ''I Have No Mouth'' example above.
* ''LostKingdoms'' has the Runestones. In the first gave, they weren't alluded to much, but when the second game came around, you find out that [[spoiler:a Runestone is a soul that one of the three gods ''sucked out of a living person'' and turned into one]].
* In ''VideoGame/{{Warcraft}} 3'', one of the Scourge's {{Evil Plan}}s is to spread the plagued grains in Stratholme, so people who ate from that will turn into zombies, and their souls will be taken by Mal'Ganis and transferred to the Lich King. Arthas, having learned this, makes a drastic decision to purge the entire city, thinking that such fates are something worse than death. Poor chap didn't know (at the time) that it's not the Stratholme citizens the Lich King is after. It's his soul.
** Most of what the Scourge does is this. For instance, one of their Bosses in WoW is Thaddius, a Frankenstein-lookalike who's Described as: "..built from the flesh of women and children, it is said that their souls are fused together - eternally bound within that foul prison of flesh." Add that some of his [[VoiceOfTheLegion voice]] sounds like a child..
* Upon completing the original ''{{Half-Life}}'', Gordon Freeman is made to choose between being frozen in time or "A battle you have no chance of winning." The latter choice essentially ends the game with your unarmed character presumably killed by the enemies, though the former (and canon) choice forces your character to become a pawn for the G-Man. Not a particularly ''horrifying'' fate, though it does indeed suck. Though since the series is still ongoing, whether or not Gordon will eventually break free of this remains to be see.
** [[PersonalSpaceInvader Headcrabs]] are small (about the size of a domesticated cat), aggressive aliens that attach themselves to a viable host and [[PuppeteerParasite commandeer its nervous system]], creating what are cheerfully named Headcrab Zombies. Said host is ''still alive'' and ''[[AndIMustScream still aware]]'' even as its body rots, it ''tears off all of its skin'' (Fast Zombies) and/or is injected with so much neurotoxin it bloats to about twice its width (Poison Zombies). And as of ''Half-Life 2: Episode Two'' there are ''hundreds upon hundreds'' of these things roaming in and around [[spoiler:the ruins of]] City 17. It's become an infamous fact that when you reverse a Headcrab Zombie's cry, you can hear the human screaming for mercy...
** ''Half-Life 2'' also has the less commonly seen Stalkers - humans surgically altered by the Combine and forced into slavery. They more or less look like emaciated humans with [[BodyHorror most of their internal organs, muscle, and fat removed, and their limbs replaced with metal stumps]]. What makes this even worse is that not only are they forced to into slavery, they're also dependant on the Combine to survive, living on some sort of provided saline solution.
* Reaching the end of the [[BonusLevelOfHell Fourth Kalpa]] in ''ShinMegamiTenseiNocturne'' reveals that [[spoiler:Hijiri]] has been condemned to an eternity of life, death and rebirth without hope of reincarnation. He will be forced to witness the Conception and the creation of the new world over and over again until the end of time, but will never be allowed to influence its outcome himself. He received this punishment from {{God}} for committing "the ultimate sin" in a previous life; because of this, many suspect that he is a reincarnation of [[spoiler:Aleph from ''ShinMegamiTenseiII'', who committed ''deicide'' at the end of the game by killing {{God}}. That's right, {{God}}]].
* ''Plundered Hearts'', another {{Infocom}} title, uses this to get around having to state upfront that people want to rape or have raped the main character. This makes more sense when you realize that the game is [[InteractiveFiction an interactive version]] of a cheesy RomanceNovel.
* In ''ZorkGrandInquisitor'', [[AllCrimesAreEqual all crimes]] under the rule of Inquisitor Yannick are punishable by being "totemized", having your body painfully transfigured into an immobile totem for all eternity. {{Justified|Trope}} in that this is part of Yannick's plot to eliminate magic from the land of Zork: if a person is totemized instead of killed, their body's natural supplies of magical energy aren't released and the overall level of magic in the world drops slightly.
* ''BaldursGate'' (and the [[TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons source world]]) has the "Imprisonment" Spell, in which the victim is instantly trapped deep within the earth, and magically kept alive forever, unable to escape until someone casts "Freedom" at where the Imprisonment is held. In ''Shadows of Amn'', the main character is threatened with this by [[KnightTemplar a particularly hard-lined Harper]], and could optionally fight against a high-powered wizard that was driven ''insane'' by the experience.
* Both Tal Rasha and the player-character from the first ''VideoGame/{{Diablo}}'' game make the unwise decision to insert a soulstone with a demon into their bodies. The results for both of them are not pretty.
** In ''VideoGame/DiabloIII'', [[spoiler:Adria, in the cruelest betrayal of the series, does this to her own daughter Leah, using the Black Soulstone to turn her into the vessel for Diablo to be reborn as the Prime Evil]].
* The ''{{Quake}}'' series, with the exception of the first game, feature a cybernetic alien race called the Strogg, who build their ranks by capturing their enemies and putting them through a horrific process, referred to by the human soldiers in [[VideoGame/QuakeIV the fourth game]] as "Stroggification". This process not only involves having several body parts sliced off and crudely replaced with cybernetic parts (without '''any''' anesthetic whatsoever), but also involves having a chip implanted into the brain of the unfortunate victim, which is then activated by a machine, so that the victim can be controlled by the Nexus, a giant brain that has control over all other Strogg soldiers (it is unknown if there are any original, pureblood Strogg who possess free will). Watch it [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3clVvh5gbGE here]]! Worst of all, is that the victims still retain their humanity for a short while after the chip activation but they are unable to control their actions. [[spoiler:This is seen in the fourth game, when Scott Voss is transformed into a huge, hulking cyborg, and yells at Matthew Kane to run away and that "I can't control it!", shortly before going beserk and attacking Kane.]] Sometimes, the process fails, resulting in the victims becoming shambling, zombie-like creatures (the "Failed transfers" and Slimy transfers") who are then transported to a dumping ground.
* Since nearly every major character in ''GrimFandango'' is [[DeadToBeginWith already dead]] by virtue of the setting, these are the only things that are real threats. Examples include being made into a dam by demon beavers, and being "sprouted" -- having plants grow from your body until you become a patch of flowery meadow.
* The good end to the "Tranquility Lane" quest in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' has you [[spoiler:condemning Braun to spend the rest of eternity trapped in his vault with no possible way to leave or interact with the outside world. Rather fitting him.]]
** Considering the state of the [[spoiler:bodies of Braun and the other vault dwellers when you arrive, it seems the machines can't sustain them forever, and his real body will eventually starve. It will be a loooong time until that happens, though.]]
** From the same game, there's [[spoiler:Harold. When you find him, he's been turned into a tree and cannot grow or die. He, naturally, [[MercyKill begs you to kill him]].]]
** On a more humorous note, Liberty Prime believes that "death is a preferable alternative to communism".
* ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' gives you the option of doing this to [[spoiler:Mr House, if you release him from his life-support unit. Even though exposing him to the outside world ensures his eventual death, his longevity treatments will keep him alive for, he estimates, about a year. If you put him back in the life support unit, he gets to spend that time without any contact with, or influence over the outside world...]]
** The Marked Men from the ''Lonesome Road'' DLC, who were created by the nuclear explosions that destroyed the Divide. Sandstorms have torn the skin from their bodies, and the radiation from the nukes has mutated them into ghouls, making them immortal. Ulysses tells you that if there's no way to save them (there probably isn't), then it's [[MercyKill "mercy, not murder"]] to kill them.
** Also, [[spoiler: [[ColdSniper Craig Boone]] views what would have happened to his wife at the hand of the legion as this. [[NoWomansLand He may not be that far off]]. So he [[MercyKill took the shot]]]].
** Joshua "Burned Man" Graham, former Legate to Caesar, [[NoOneCouldSurviveThat was set on fire and thrown into the Grand Canyon]], but unfortunately survived, is in constant pain exacerbated by the daily changing of his bandages, and {{immune to drugs}}.
* ''VideoGame/ChronoCross'' gives us the Abyss Beyond Time. [[spoiler:Whenever a world's timeline is changed, the world, and everyone in it, are instantly transported to a dark, empty void to make room for the new, altered world. Let me repeat that: ''TimeTravel causes billions of innocent people to become trapped in an endless void for all eternity everytime its used.'' Kinda gives a darker light to the events of [[VideoGame/ChronoTrigger the last game.]]]]
* Being turned into a Nobody in ''KingdomHearts'' could qualify. Firstly, your heart is either stolen or corrupted, turning you into [[TheHeartless a mindless heart-collecting creature]]. Then ''what's left behind of you'' starts to move around on its own will and - if you're lucky - it'll still look human. If you're not so lucky, you'll look like some [[BodyHorror vaguely-human twisted-like thing]]. It gets worse because not only will you technically ''not exist'', you'll also have no emotions, and when you eventually get done in with [[ImprobableWeaponUser a giant key]], you'll [[EverythingFades leave nothing behind to show that you ever existed]]. Thanks Disney!
** There is also a few times when they talk about being turned into a [[CannonFodder Dusk]] as a punishment. Only once is death ever threatened, and that was more implying that it hurt the talker more than the victim.
** You think being turned into a Nobody and disappearing as such is bad? Try [[spoiler:discovering that you're an imperfect replica of the wielder of said giant key and go insane from being brainwashed by the BigBad in order to become a true clone of the wielder of said giant key, only to end up being killed by the ''Nobody'' of [[OverlyLongGag the wielder of said giant key]]. And then try to handle the reality that upon dying, no one will remember you, not even your two best friends. You die, but people do not mourn. In essence, you will be the only person who knew you ever existed.]] Please pass the tissues...
** All three protagonists of ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsBirthBySleep'' get their own tailor-made Fate Worse Than Death in the DownerEnding. [[spoiler: Aqua is trapped in the Realm of Darkness for more than a decade, not knowing if she succeeded, failed, or anything about what was happening to her friends- only knowing that she had failed to return to help Ventus. Ventus is comatose, his body dormant and deep within mazelike Castle Oblivion, accessible only by the trapped-far-away Aqua, while his heart rests deep within Sora, sleeping, but possibly dimly aware and unable to interact at all with even Sora. Terra is trapped in a BattleInTheCenterOfTheMind, and has been for over a decade, as his on-autopilot-body is amnesiac and acting more like the body's invader than him, its rightful owner, causing all the problems of the rest of the series as he's too caught up not fighting to not cease to be entirely to do anything about it]]. Not for nothing does the ending drive ''MickeyMouse'' into a HeroicBSOD for his failure to save them.
* From ''VideoGame/DevilSurvivor'', Naoya [[spoiler:AKA Cain, as in the biblical CainAndAbel, has been cursed to remember every single memory from all of his previous reincarnations, including the first one where he murdered his brother, resulting in him living non-stop for thousands of years constantly tormented by far too much information for one brain, never being allowed to forget his greatest sin. He can still die, but since he then reincarnates almost immediately with all memories intact, this just makes things ''worse''. What makes it so sad is that he could get out of this; God didn't 'curse' him, this was a genuine attempt to give him time to reflect on his sin and repent. All he has to do to be forgiven is to admit he was wrong and sincerely apologize for the fratricide... but by this point, he's ''far'' too bitter to even consider that.]]
* [[spoiler:Lezard]] from ''VideoGame/ValkyrieProfile2Silmeria'' threatens your party with this if you die against him (the only way you can actually get a Game Over in the game):
-->"I will not slay you. From now and forever, no matter how much you entreat me, how pitifully you lament, you shall not die!"
-->"I grant you the rights accorded to an enemy of the gods: You will live from now and forever, in an endless cycle of rebirth, condemned in each life to be hated, feared, scorned, punished and obliterated!"
-->"Live always with the screech of insects buzzing within your skull, ants gnawing at your eyeballs forever and ever!"
* In ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'' universe, dying whilst under the effects of a soul trap spell will condemn the being's soul to spend eternity in the Soul Cairn. The Soul Cairn is a desolate place; lightning strikes are common, odd, somewhat frightening rock formations dot the landscape and the Cairn's overlords feed on wandering souls via large crystals. Souls of sentient beings in the Cairn often remark on how they have spent countless years wandering the Soul Cairn, wishing for a proper death that will never be theirs.
** [[BigBad Mankar Camoran's]] followers are subjected to one of these if killed: His followers are made immortal and condemned to slavery for eternity, working under Daedra. The new inductees in Paradise are dipped into lava.
* In ''MassEffect'', the BigBad possesses the ability to brainwash sentient beings so they will follows its orders without hesitation. The downside is that too much use of this ability turns them into mindless husks, incapable of doing anything without an order from their controller. The player character eventually encounters some people that have reached this end-stage, and has the option of performing a MercyKill.
** It can be even worse to people with strong mind and psychic talents. [[spoiler:Matriarch Benezia, who qualifies for both requirements, sealed a part of her consciousness away out of sense of duty to use her free will in some critical moment, was effectively trapped in her body in the meantime, unable to prevent herself from committing heinous acts under the Sovereign's control.]]
** Also, in the second game, we find out [[spoiler:that this fate was inflicted upon a species. The Protheans were transformed into the Collectors - the Reapers had mutated them beyond recognition, and reduced them to withered, mindless slaves. They're little more than empty vessels to be possessed by Harbinger. So, not only are they forced to serve the beings that destroyed their civilisation, but they are little more than disposable hosts that can be taken over at any time against their will, if they even have a will to speak of...]]
* Somewhat based on the relevant mythology, ''VideoGame/GodOfWar II'' features Prometheus in his liver-consuming fate. Instead of being freed by Hercules, however, he is freed by being dropped into the Fires of Olympus by Kratos. Kratos is then awarded with Rage of the Titans.
* ''VideoGame/{{Runescape}}'' has this in form of the [[EldritchAbomination Spirit Beast]], who locks a group of ghosts into its own plane of existence, where it slowly feeds on their souls. Erik Bonde, one of the unfortunate fellows to have this fate, said that for the first twenty days, they couldn't do anything but scream.
** Even worse, at the beginning of the second quest it is revealed it's trying to enter the REAL world, which means that EVERYONE would share this fate.
* The Darkspawn Blood Taint in ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins''. Essentially, drinking darkspawn blood (sometimes even coming into contact with it) will usually kill you very ''very'' painfully, if you are ''lucky''. Otherwise, you will slowly turn into one of them. And that is still better than the treatment they have for the ''women'': [[spoiler:they are implied to be raped (''everywhere'') before being forced into devouring their own [[IAmAHumanitarian kin]] and slowly turned into immobile betentacled Broodmothers, the purpose of which is to give birth to more Darkspawn]].
** The Grey Wardens have learned how to weaponize this taint: by drinking the blood in a special mixture, they transform only partially, and end up able to hear the Darkspawn [[HiveMind collective thought]] without actually having to obey. It also cuts their life down to a maximum of thirty or so years. ''If'' they survive the initiation.
** It turns out that the most important part of the Grey Warden taint is not the advantages that it gives in fighting regular Darkspawn troops, but rather that it allows them to permanently kill an Archdemon. [[spoiler: Normally when an Archdemon's physical body is destroyed its soul jumps into the nearest still-living Darkspawn and continues controlling the Blight. If a Grey Warden is the nearest creature - presumably due to having [[HeroicSacrifice delivered the deathblow]] - the Archdemon's soul jumps into him instead. But since he's not actually a Darkspawn, it can't use the Grey Warden as a proper host. Both the Grey Warden's soul and the Archdemon's are destroyed in the process and the Grey Warden's body dies.]]
** Also in ''Dragon Age'', mages are prone to demonic possession. The exact effects vary but it generally seems to be pretty bad. As a way to "protect" vulnerable mages from possession, Templars sometimes perform a process that severs their connection to magic - and also destroys their ability to feel emotion or dream. These "Tranquil" mages don't seem to mind, at least not after the fact... [[spoiler: There was one case of a tranquil mage being temporarily cured by direct exposure to a Fade spirit. He begged his friend to kill him rather than be allowed to become tranquil again.]]
** The most insidious part of the Darkspawn Taint is that it's ''not'' a Fate Worse Than Death once you cross the line to full ghouldom. Ghouls and Darkspawn hear the Call of the Old Gods as beautiful music, so beautiful that they will devote themselves completely to seeking out the Old Gods. Once you're a full Ghoul, you won't ''want'' to be free of the Taint.
** In ''Awakening'', some of the "Awakened" Darkspawn consider their "freedom" to be this. Bereft of the Call of the Old Gods, they find the silence unbearable. All of the Mother's actions are driven by her desire for revenge against the Architect who cut her off from the music. In the FinalBattle, she actually looks forward to dying in battle, hoping to hear the Song again in death.
* How ''VideoGame/PokemonMysteryDungeon'' got the ''Explorer'' games to have an E rating, the world will never know. In the BadFuture, time never passes, meaning that if you die, you will be stuck in that dying state forever. To make matters worse, shortly after arriving there, [[spoiler:you and your partner are to be executed by Sableye, by means of their razor-sharp claws. Imagine an eternity of being cut to shreds...]]
* ''VideoGame/PokemonBlackAndWhite'' does this too. There's Yamask, who is a spirit - a human spirit - who retains the memory of his life. To make things worse, he carries a mask of his former face too. And, he is a pokémon, so he can be captured and spend the rest of eternity in a pokéball, or can be used in battles by trainers.
** And there's also Chandelure, who can burns a ''spirit'' while leaving the body behind. So yes, almost like a Dementor. Who will obey orders from whatever trainer captures it.
* [[spoiler:Grissom]] in ''VagrantStory''. Having been killed by Ashley, his soul seeks out a new vessel, and winds up bound to his old corpse.
* ''VideoGame/MOTHER3'' provides an incredibly literal example: [[spoiler:[[BigBad Porky Minch]]]] hides inside the Absolutely Safe Capsule when things start falling apart for him. [[spoiler:Dr. Andonuts]] tells the heroes that it's "absolutely safe" in an incredible literal way: [[spoiler:Porky can't be harmed at all in it nor can it be destroyed, so it's "absolutely safe" for him, but since he's permanently locked inside with no escape at all, everyone else is also "absolutely safe" ''from'' him (the worst he can do is stick his tongue out at people from inside it). This means that one will have to wait until time does the killing and he dies of old age... except Porky can't die of old age, as his time travel abuse made him immortal. Therefore Porky, a frail and decrepit old man (if with a child's mind) is condemned to living forever locked inside the tiny Absolutely Safe Capsule; this means that he survived the apocalypse which happened immediately thereafter completely unscathed, and that he will still be alive even after the sun experiences heat death. He will survive all that and more for eternity, in absolute safety. His fate worse than death? '''''Life.''''']]
* Given you have multiple lives in many games, there is much scope for a fate worse than death... For example, in ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'', if you are arrested, you multiplier is halved. Given the choice you might prefer just to die and lose a life rather than get arrested, since having a high multiplier is important for completing the stage... Though arguably, losing one of many lives isn't really ''death'' as such.
** In that same vein, in ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIV'', the penalty for being caught by the police (losing all your weapons) is often more expensive than the hospital bills that you pay for dying. Many players choose to die rather than have to buy all their weapons again.
** A more serious example comes in GTA 4 when you finally find the man who betrayed Niko years ago. When you find him, he has a heavy drug addiction and is ridden with guilt, and begs you to kill him. Here you are given the option of killing him or letting him live with the guilt. [[spoiler: Niko finds more satisfaction in letting him live.]]
* Raziel from the ''LegacyOfKain'' series doesn't have one of these. He has ''three''. At the start of ''[=LoK=]: Soul Reaver'' on seeing his new misshapen body he claims "Death would be a release from this travesty" and "I would choose oblivion over this existence". At the end of ''Soul Reaver 2'' he learns his fate is to have [[spoiler:his soul imprisoned in a sword where he would be reduced to a mindless hunger devouring the souls of those the sword is used on. He would remain trapped for thousands of years.]] Finally at the end of Defiance he is left trapped in a room with no way for him to escape and the only thing to look at is a mural showing not only is he [[spoiler:not TheChosenOne, but that he killed the real Chosen One shortly before getting trapped.]] Said [[spoiler:Chosen One]] turns out to be NotQuiteDead, and (accidentally) allows Raziel to escape the room - at which point Raziel finally ends up [[spoiler:imprisoned in the sword.]] Poor Raziel.
** The Hylden race also collectively suffers one of these as their war with the Ancients ends with [[spoiler:their banishment in the demon dimension, which keeps them immortal, but deforms their bodies and drives them insane.]] The Ancients themselves suffer similarly when the Hylden [[spoiler:retaliate by cursing them with vampirism, which ends up severing their connection to their god.]] Most chose to kill themselves rather than live on like that.
** Also happens with Janos Audron, the last living Ancient, when [[spoiler:the Hylden [[BodySurf hijack his body]] and imprison him for 400 years to feed their machinery.]] At the end of ''Blood Omen 2'' he [[spoiler:even ends up trapped in the demon dimension with the Hylden.]] There's good reason why he's widely regarded as TheWoobie.
* What happens to Galen, your character, in the DarkSide ending of ''TheForceUnleashed''. He's nearly crushed to death by a spaceship, reconstructed by the Emperor (Galen is conscious the whole time) to barely be human anymore and then he's forced to live out the rest of his life as the Emperor's pawn. So the [[PlotParallel mirror-image of Darth Vader]].
* Dr. Weil, from the ''MegaManZero'' series was given this before the series even started (approximately 100 years prior, give or take). As a result of his war crimes and instigating the Elf Wars, everyone in Neo Arcadia decided to get revenge on Weil or inflict justice (depending on how you view it) by killing his body, turning his memories and psyche into program data, and placing it in a carbon-mechanical cyborg body that prevents him from dying ever, and then he is exiled from Neo Arcadia into the wastelands of the world that he was responsible for ruining.
* This trope is almost mundane in the ''SilentHill'' series, as although it only occurs ''after'' death the victims tend not to ''stay'' dead, the [[GeniusLoci eponymous town]] consuming and imprisoning them. This definitely happened to [[spoiler:Lisa, Kaufman, Walter and his victims, and Alex in one of the endings]], and probably happened to [[spoiler:Dahlia, James in one of the endings, and Claudia]].
* This is what happens to [[spoiler:Kirie and Mafuyu]] in ''FatalFrame's'' canon ending. They're going to be spending the ''rest of eternity'' at the Hell Gate deep underground, with [[spoiler:Kirie]] making sure that the gate stays closed, and [[spoiler:Mafuyu]] staying with her so that she won't have to suffer all alone.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXI'': Oh dear Altana, have mercy of your children...
** Raogrimm [[spoiler:a.k.a the Shadowlord]] is forced to watch over Dynamis until hatred no longer exists. Hopefully, [[YouAreNotAlone he's not alone]].
** [[spoiler:Lilisette]] has no other choice but to [[spoiler:leave her world behind, and replace her EvilCounterpart in her own world in order to close Atomos's maws and allow the two futures to survive. And her actions during the Crystal War are RetGone, which means that only you remember her.]]
* ''VisualNovel/FateStayNight''. Fate Route. What happened to the other survivors of the fire ten years ago. On a [[BlatantLies completely unrelated note]] [[SchmuckBait I wonder what's]] [[BodyHorror under the]] [[AndIMustScream church]]... Makes it worse that you HAVE to visit it unless you want [[HaveANiceDeath to get storyline killed.]]
* ''VideoGame/MortalKombatArmageddon''. Mileena's ending. [[spoiler: in Mileena's ending, Mileena, the half deformed [[EvilKnockoff clone]] of the Stripperrific [[HelloNurse sexy princess]] Kitana, manages to swap her body with her original, thus ridding herself of her grossly disfigured face and ascending to the throne of Edenia in her name. While the ending doesn't expand much about Mileena's rule, it's fairly explcit in stating that Kitana, [[OlderThanTheyLook the former ageless princess of her kingdom, still considered a young girl at the tender age 10.000 years]], is now trapped in Mileena's private dungeon, [[BodyHorror with two rows of misshapen, exposed, razorsharp teeth instead of a mouth]], kept in a dark, isolated cell. Owing to Mileena letting her know that no one is going to search for her, and to her impressively long Edenian lifespan (at the end of Armageddon, Kitana looked no older than a girl in her early twenties-late teens), there's no wonder if the poor girl went insane in no time]].
* Chimera in ''VideoGame/{{Resistance}}''. The first game even has a level titled "Fates Worse than Death."
* One of the antagonists of ''NineHoursNinePersonsNineDoors'', despite being (likely) the worst character in the game survives, while the ones that weren't as bad as [[spoiler: him]] were brutally killed. It turns out that [[spoiler: Akane's plan was to have him be exposed publicly for his crimes, something that he, Ace, deems A Fate Worse Than Death.]]
* [[BigBad Malefor]] gives the Apes one of these in ''TheLegendOfSpyro: Dawn Of The Dragon''. He turns them into skeletons that are forever cursed to remain in the shadows, hungry for the energy of others but never able to be full. This fate is so terrible that Spyro and Cynder are visibly horrified by it.
* Implied in ''VideoGame/{{Portal}}'', you never want to disappoint [=GLaDOS=].
** A worse example exists in ''VideoGame/{{Portal 2}}'':
-->'''[=GLaDOS=]''': You know the biggest lesson I learned from what you did? I discovered I have a sort of black box quicksave feature; in the event of a catastrophic failure, the last two minutes of my life are preserved forever for analysis. I was able - well, forced really - ''to relive you killing me again and again''. '''''Forever.'''''
** Made explicit in the Portal 2 co-op trailer.
-->'''[=GLaDOS=]''': Don't disappoint me...or I'll make you ''wish'' you could die.
** At one point GLaDOS says that death is too good for Wheatley, and she muses about all the things she could do to them. One of them includes locking him away for a hundred years where "all the robots scream at you".
* In ''JakIIRenegade'', [[EvilOverlord Baron Praxis]] can occasionally be heard addressing [[PhlebotinumRebel Jak]] over speakers normally reserved for spewing propaganda. The Baron promises a quick and painless death if Jak turns himself in, because the [[TheCorruption Dark Eco]] inside him will eventually do much, much worse. And if he ''doesn't'' turn himself in and Praxis finds him instead, he promises Jak he'll wish he died in prison.
* ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'' has a ''lot'' of this. Most of the enemies are tragic monsters. There is horrible BodyHorror, being imprisoned while effectively immortal, becoming a [[EmptyShell hollow]] and [[spoiler: Linking the Flame leaves you burning alive, forever until someone puts you out of your misery.]]
* In ''[[HeroesOfMightAndMagic Might and Magic: Heroes VI]]'', TheNecrocracy of Heresh punishes its worst criminals by transforming them into [[OurGhoulsAreDifferent ghouls]]. Because most citizens of Heresh are devout worshippers of Asha who are fully aware of the reincarnation cycle that governs the world, the threat of being permanently removed from that cycle by becoming a non-sentient undead is a horrifying prospect.
* Comes up in ''VideoGame/{{Dishonored}}'', if you're attempting a PacifistRun. Need a couple of slavers "gone"? Have them disfigured and sent to be worked to death in their own mines. Need a member of the aristocracy taken out of the picture? [[spoiler: Knock her unconcious and give her to a creepy admirer, who assures you she won't die but will "never be heard from again."]]
* Saiki and Ash Crimson at the end of TheKingOfFighters XIII, as the two are erased from existence due to a time paradox.
-->'''Saiki''': Do you realize what you have just done? You have condemned us both to a fate worse than death!
* In ''VideoGame/TalesOfSymphonia'', [[spoiler:Alicia]] is trapped in an Exsphere upon her death. After explaining how [[spoiler:Regal]] was forced to kill her after the Exsphere turned her into a monster, she pleads with the party to kill her because being existing in the Exsphere for eternity would be "true hell". [[spoiler:Regal and Presea agree, and Lloyd shatters the Exsphere.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Comics]]
* Spoofed in ''Webcomic/IrregularWebcomic'' [[http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/671.html strip #671]], where Death of Insanely Overpowered Fireballs is demoted into the Fate department, as A Fate Worse Than Death. He has no idea on how to go about it.
** Also, in [[http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/1954.html strip #1954]], "a pirate curse can be a thousand times worse than death".
* ''Webcomic/DominicDeegan: Oracle for Hire'': Karnak falls into Hell and becomes a demon lord, even though he was just trying to save the world. Later, he decides to pull [[spoiler:Siegfried]] down with him, after the latter's death. Celesto Morgan and the Infernomancer suffer a different Fate Worse Than Death: exile to an alternate plane of pure horror. [[spoiler:Although they've recently escaped...]]
** [[spoiler: Siggy]] got into Hell on his own merits, apparently. It's the behaving-like-a-psychopath and casual murder thing. Karnak just brainwashed him into following orders, apparently as vengeance on House Damaske.
** [[spoiler:The Infernomancer]] suffers this again, this time for good, after dying and going to Hell. [[spoiler:Immediately after he wakes up in Hell, naked and powerless, he is wrapped up in chains by his former master whom he betrayed, Karnak. And Karnak is [[SlasherSmile grinning]] like a kid in a candy store.]]
* In ''Webcomic/{{Erfworld}}'', if the ruler of a faction dies while having no heir, all of their cites go "neutral". It is not pleasant at all: neutrals are frozen in time until someone attacks the city, and if they repel the attack, they presumably get frozen again until they are attacked again. It has not been specified whether or not [[AndIMustScream the neutral units are conscious during the time they are frozen or not]].
** It has been specified that time can pass at different speeds in different hexes, so time probably just stops for them.
* ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'': BigBad Xykon does this in StartOfDarkness to [[spoiler:Dorukan and Lirian]] by binding their souls into a black gem he still carries with him, keeping them from the Afterlife. But it sort of backfires, since though they're not in the afterlife, they ''are'' [[CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming together.]] The spell Xykon uses (appropriately called Soul Bind, by the way) is an actual ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' spell, so you can pull this one off yourself if you're feeling particularly evil.
** The Snarl also falls into this trope, as it obliterates the souls of its victims, also erasing their chances of an afterlife. ''Even gods.''
** Also PlayedForLaughs when Belkar describes what he plans to use his captive Eye of Fear and Flame for [[http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0469.html in this strip]].
* Riane in ''AlienDice'' considers being a captured Dice to be a Fate Worse Than Death. In this case, though, it's used in the same way it originally meant, as the dialogue implies she was raped during captivity. [[spoiler:In Legacy, she actually confirms this, though she uses politer, albeit sarcastic, terminology.]] No wonder she [[MercyKill gleefully encouraged Lexx to kill her]].
* Being possessed by a slaver wasp in ''Webcomic/GirlGenius''. At least, [[http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20040324 according to]] [[http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20040326 Mr. Rovainen]].
* Characters that get to live in dream world in ''OneOverZero'' says that it's this trope.
* [[http://www.zebragirl.net/?date=2005-05-02 Jack's speech]] in ''ZebraGirl'': "Somewhere, there's a man. He doesn't want to be where he is... but he's there and he'll stay there until he thinks of a place he'd rather be less".
* Parodied in ''AnsemRetort''. Jesus (yes, [[Literature/TheBible Jesus]]) concludes that trying to train the cast of [[ShowWithinAShow Ansem Retort]] was worse than being crucified on the cross.
* Parodied in the ''[[Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick Order of the Stick]]'' Fancomic ''Webcomic/MurphysLaw'', where taking a level in Dragon Disciple and Monk are ''horrible.''
* The [[AmazonBrigade hyenas]] in ''Webcomic/{{Digger}}'' have such a punishment. They call it having one's name 'eaten' and it means that the accused will be ostracized from their society and treated as a pariah and a nonentity. Said person has to live far away from the tribe, scrounging up an existence like an animal, and will be henceforth addressed as "it".
* ''BobAndGeorge'': [[http://www.bobandgeorge.com/archives/031207c For George]], it's been a DistressedDude in Unwilling Suspension. (Given that he had spent ''months'' in this situation before...)
* ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance'' gives us [[http://www.sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/100610 this delightful little fate]] for [[spoiler: Zoe]]. ([[DeathIsCheap maybe]])
** Alt-Rammer: "And she'd be dead now if not for the machines keeping her breathing ... She cannot be fixed. She cannot survive off of those machines. Too fragile for morphine. Her few conscious hours are spent screaming from the pain of the nerves that will never heal." [[CerebusSyndrome Damn.]]
* ''TheInexplicableAdventuresOfBob--'' For Fructose Riboflavin, a fate worse than death is [[http://bobadventures.comicgenesis.com/d/20110201.html having his terrifying reputation destroyed because the world has learned his tragic origin story]]--now people feel ''sorry'' for him. He responds with a big ol' screaming BigNo.
* In ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'', The Ψiioniic, for his crime of assisting in the Sufferer's rebellion, [[spoiler: was forced to use his psychic powers to pilot Her Imperial Condescencion's flagship, kept alive by the Empress's powers.]]
** In Act 6 Act 5, [[spoiler: going Trickster Mode gives you powerful RealityWarper powers, but at [[{{Brainwashed}}the cost of all your negative emotions and inhibitions]], as well as a [[TheVirus compulsion to hunt down and convert your friends]].]]
* In Dave Hopkins' ''Webcomic/{{Jack}}'', fates worse than death are commonplace, if not standard - not surprising, since the main character is the Grim Reaper and the setting is usually Hell. A few specific examples include:
** Silverblue, a girl who has to relive the same rotten day in Hell - during which she gets tentacle raped, eviscerated, eaten alive, watches her only friend get torn to pieces and finally cuts her own wrists - over and over and over again for what is apparently over 150 years, merely because she committed suicide.
** Drip, who usually metes out fates worse than death, at one point gets reduced to... well, his face; death in Hell usually only results in immediate respawning, but in this case Jack made sure he would survive indefinitely as a chunk of immobile flesh.
** A particularly interesting example is Todd, who was a soldier in an equivalent of World War I; when his commanding officer ordered him to machine gun the children of a village so they would not grow up into enemies, he obediently complied. Home on bereavement leave, he discovers his wife has hanged herself, and commits suicide to be with her. In Hell, he doesn't miss an opportunity to claim it was all out of his hands; all is down to fate, he is responsible for nothing. And sure enough, he ends up as a character in a comic book written by the Devil hirself...
* In ''TheNonAdventuresOfWonderella'', when Santa Claus comes back to life to seek revenge on Wonderella for (accidentally) killing him, Wonderella gives him one of these: [[spoiler: Santa becomes the intellectual property of Disney. And they NEVER give back.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Web Original]]
* ''Literature/{{ARCHON}}'' implies this for undead. Overlaps with AndIMustScream.
* Oran's speech to the defeated scumbag Mars in Chapter 19 Act 3: "I have seen you scum--staked to the ground at night--belly and manhood split wide, wailing as jagged beaks tear and peck--as a million insect jaws carve the pulp. And when morning comes, I am standing over your seeping husk. You cannot turn from the horror. You cannot stop the rising sun that burns you into blindness. You cannot close your eyes... '''''for I am feasting on their lids.'''''
** The best part is that Raimi immediately chimes in afterward, saying that would be too kind. What does ''he'' have to say to Mars? See the ''BrokenSaints'' entry in PrisonRape.
* In the web-novel ''[[http://www.fictionpress.com/secure/story/story_preview.php?storyid=2718227&chapter=1 Fragile]]'', Severin's insanity is portrayed as such. During the course of the story, Page even says that he would have rather seen him die than experience it.
* The Wiki/SCPFoundation uses this quite a lot. For example: [[http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-145 SCP-145]].
** [[http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-231 SCP-231-7]] is ''legendary'' for its use of this trope, not only for the victim herself but for those ''forced to keep her alive'', as allowing her to die would probably lead to TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt.
* ''SuburbanKnights'' BigBad Malachite. The end looked like he was destroyed by Ma-Ti, but an additional video revealed a worst fate... working in a Wisconsin coffee shop. Any attempts at villainy are met with a DopeSlap from his boss and escape is impossible.
* At the end of his ''DeathBattle'', Starscream's [[OurSoulsAreDifferent spark]] was last seen interred within Rainbow Dash's belly. In an Q&A, it was stated he was still alive, but the only machinery in Equestria is a sewing machine. Boomstick even lampshades this trope afterwards.
** This actually shouldn't be possible; Starscream's spark should be the same size as Rainbow and thus too big for her to eat. Don't worry, Rainbow only got a bit of indigestion.
* {{Literature/Worm}}'s Bonesaw has this as her MO to the horror of many.
* The ''mal'' in ''Literature/TheSickLand''.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* ''FamilyGuy'': Being forced to date Meg Griffin is often considered this (since she is so ugly), to the point where several of her classmates go to great, perhaps severe lengths to avoid dating her.
* Subverted in the very first episode of ''WesternAnimation/EarthwormJim'':
-->'''Psycrow''': If Earthworm Jim doesn't cough up his Super Suit in the next 20 minutes, you will face a fate worse than death!\\
'''Princess What's-Her-Name''': Uh-huh. Such as?\\
'''Psycrow''': ''(not expecting the question)'' Huh? Oh, I don't... you know... something really awful, with pointy... and it'll chafe and stuff.\\
'''Princess What's-Her-Name''': Fate worse than death. Uh, big talker.
* Parodied in ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}''; when the characters are being rapidly de-aged, Farnsworth explains that if this keeps up, "we'll keep getting younger until we suffer a fate worse than death: pre-life! Then death."
** Played straight at the start of the re-relaunch of the series.
--->'''Fry:''' Are they dead?
--->'''Prof. Farnsworth:''' No no no, much worse than that.
* Megabyte plays with this to Bob in ''{{Reboot}}'', when Bob announces his plan to reprogram the virus rather than delete him saying that he doesn't believe in deletion and that it isn't Megabyte's fault as he was just programmed to be this way. Megabyte's response?:
-->'''Megabyte''': So I won't be a virus?\\
'''Bob''': That's the plan.\\
'''Megabyte''': Ah, a fate worse than deletion and they call ''me'' a monster.
* From ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'':
-->'''Prince Zuko''': If the Earth Kingdom catches us, we'll be killed.
-->'''General Iroh''': But if the Fire Nation catches us, we'll be turned over to Azula.
-->({{beat}})
-->'''Prince Zuko''': Earth Kingdom it is.
** This is what happens to [[TheBlank victims]] of Koh the FaceStealer.
** Many fans believe that taking Ozai's firebending can't be called mercy, as it was shown that benders are extremely emotionally and spiritually attached to their element.
** The first time Zhao captures Aang, he has him chained up so that he can barely move, and he says that he can't kill him because he would just be reincarnated again, so he's going to keep him barely alive.
* In ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheBraveAndTheBold'', Gentleman Ghost almost gives Batman one of these, conjuring the spirits of criminals and making them drag him down to, presumably, Hell. Deadman saves him, though.
** It's later revealed that Gentleman Ghost was doing this as revenge for [[spoiler:his own fate worse than death. Even though Batman actually tried to ''save'' him from his own self-destructive actions which truly caused it. Due to TimeTravel, Batman knew exactly how the whole thing would turn out, but the soon-to-be Ghost refused to listen to him.]]
* [[EvilCounterPart Dark Danny]] of ''WesternAnimation/DannyPhantom'' may have survived outside of his now non-existent time period, but he is forever trapped in that Fenton Thermos. The last shots are of him struggling to get out. He would have, too, if not for ExecutiveMeddling, but he's stuck there for the rest of his afterlife.
* ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague Unlimited''. "The Once and Future Thing". Chronos' final fate. [[spoiler:Doomed to live through the same moments of being harangued by his wife that prompted him to start the whole shebang to begin with, after Batman and Green Lantern messed with his time belt.]]
** In "Kids' Stuff" Mordred ends up as the most powerful magical being on Earth, and ends up using his newfound powers to [[WhatAnIdiot break the spell of Eternal Youth cast on himself]]. The result of this leaves Mordred [[spoiler:with only Eternal Life, causing him to degrade rapidly to his true age of a man of several hundred years. Thus he is doomed to spend the rest of eternity as a decrepit vegetable in the care of his obsessively dotting mother.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries''
** [[MonsterClown the Joker]] couldn't kill people like his comic book counterpart and still make it past [[MediaWatchdog network censors]], so his patented Joker Venom simply reduces victims to smiling, mindless vegetables. In the DVDCommentary of the episode "Harlequinaide", the series creators speculate that this probably disturbed viewers more than outright deaths would.
** One sociopathic millionaire has Mr. Freeze construct a duplicate cyrogenic suit for him in order to obtain immortality. At the end of the episode [[spoiler:the sociopathic millionaire is immobilized towards the bottom of the ocean, condemned there for eternity]].
** Mr. Freeze, then known as Victor Fries, was trying to commence an experiment involving cryogenetics to cure his dying wife, but then his boss, [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Ferris Boyle]] shut down the project without even caring if shutting it down would also kill his wife. Disaster ensues, and Fries' body is altered to become incapable of surviving outside of a sub-zero environment, forcing him to don a protective cryogenic suit. Much later in life, it was later revealed that the very same accident also resulted in most of his body deteriorating to the point that his head was the only part of his human self that remained intact, meaning he can't even live a normal life with Nora Fries, his wife, who was revived and cured. [[spoiler:Even worse, the technology to cure him (by cloning him) is invented ''50 years later'', meaning that his wife is an old woman if not already dead and thus robbing him of the only reason he really wanted to be cured. When they finally use it on the poor guy, it works and he begins to live a normal life - for about a week, after which it starts failing, condemning him to the same fate as before. Since there's nothing that can be done, Derek Powers's company, who performed the cloning, ''tries to kill him''. Understandably he gets angry and tries to kill Powers, and finally blows himself up to both spare himself the emotional agony of a ''second'' AndIMustScream scenario and to prevent himself from hurting anyone else.]]
** The episode about Baby Doll. A child actress that kidnaps and plans to kill her shows old case members for helping blackball her out of television. Granted she was an [[BitchInSheepsClothing egotistical bitch]], who thought no one could replace her. [[spoiler: However, her tortured mine is revealed at the end, when Baby Doll looks at the fun house mirror and sees what could have been if she grew up properly into an adult woman, instead of permanently being stuck with the body of a child due to a disease. You realize then, that she's living a fate worst than death. In the end, Batman even felt sorry for her.]]
** In the Comic Book sequel to ''WesternAnimation/BatmanMaskOfThePhantasm'', it was later revealed that the Joker's poisoning of Arthur Reeves in the film ultimately did leave him in a fate far worse than death, as it turned him into a grinning monster who was completely insane and wanted to murder Batman, Phantasm, and Joker.
* Ian Peek in ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond''. The guy gets a device that lets him vibrate through solid objects like TheFlash can, and he finds out who Batman really is, and by the end of the episode, he's lost control of the power and sinks straight to the center of the Earth.
* In the final episode of ''WesternAnimation/KongTheAnimatedSeries'' (though a few episodes that take place before it are listed after), the main antagonist, Ramon De La Porta, [[spoiler:has his life force sucked out of him by Harpy as part of a ceremony to free Chiros (the second main antagonist) from his prison. After Chiros is reimprisoned and destroyed, De La Porta's life force is returned to him, but has nonetheless been broken by the ceremony, leaving him in a state of shock, which is presumed to be permanent, as it is later mentioned that he was admitted to a special hospital and the doctors weren't sure he'd ever come out of this state.]]
* In ''ComicStrip/TheBoondocks'', the place of torment greater than death itself (or its afterlife equivalent) would be Jail. In Colonel Stinkmeaners' own words: "I may be in Hell but at least I ain't in jail!"
** Judging by his absolute terror at the prospect of going there which shaped most of his major life decisions, Tom Dubois would agree!
* [[BigBad Venger]], of the ''WesternAnimation/DungeonsAndDragons'' cartoon, deals with this more or less as his stock in trade. The Gnome Wizard Dekion opposes Venger's efforts to unlock the secret of the Dragon's Heart and thusly expand his influence to TheMultiverse? Venger transforms him into a groaning, giant... ''thing'' made of slime and moss and who knows what (possibly an animated adaptation of the Shambling Heap). The EvilSorcerer Kalak, Venger's renegade apprentice, seeks to overthrow Venger? Venger subjects him to an Imprisonment spell (see the BaldursGate example above). Just tick Venger off, but not so much that he wants to kill you? He'll have you thrown into a cramped, filthy prison suspended by giant chains above a boiling lake of lava, which is itself tended to by the reluctant Lukion, a literal GentleGiant who must obey Venger or his homeland will be destroyed and his people slaughtered.
** Venger himself may also the the victim of this. According to the unproduced series finale, Venger's 'good' elements were somehow [[SealedGoodInACan separated and sealed away]], leaving him the familiar, twisted monster.
* The Psychocrypt in ''WesternAnimation/AdventuresOfTheGalaxyRangers''. After having the victim has their soul torn out ''painfully,'' those tossed in the device are fully aware of what's happened. Their LifeEnergy is used to make a construct the Queen (the person who put them there) can see and hear through, forced to do her bidding.
* In the ''SamuraiJack'' episode "Jack and the Lava Monster," Aku destroyed a Viking warrior's village and family and instead of killing him, imprisoned him in an unbreakable crystal and plunged him still alive into the heart of a mountain. Unable to fall in battle to reach Valhalla, this was a far greater punishment than simple death.
* Implied by the ending of ''WesternAnimation/ScoobyDooAndTheWitchsGhost''. The main antagonist of the movie (who was actually fairly likable up to TheReveal that he was actually masterminding the whole shebang) is sealed inside the wicked book of his witch ancestor to spend an eternity being mercilessly haunted and pursued by Sarah Ravencroft. Being dragged screaming into the book is probably a good indication that he knew what he was in for.
* In ''WesternAnimation/TransformersAnimated'', a weapon which [[TakenForGranite freezes any machines]] will doom robots to "a fate even worse than going offline".
** The bad guy behind it all winds up suffering that fate, permanently frozen (and by 'permanently,' we mean 'until next season,' when he's accidentally freed and resumes his old tricks.)
* Parodied [[DeconstructiveParody (what else?)]] in ''WesternAnimation/MegasXLR'' with the final fate of Grrkek [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin the planet killer]] who ends up imprisoned in [[UltraSuperHappyCuteBabyFestFarmer3000 a video game that looks like a cross between Smurfs and Care Bears]].
--> '''Grrkek:''' "I demand you return me to my [[AndIMustScream maximum security prison!]]"
* ''WesternAnimation/BuzzLightyearOfStarCommand'' has this trope parodied when Zurg tried to hit Buzz with a hyper death ray to give Buzz a fate "worse than death: hyper-death".
* [[VileVillainSaccharineShow Discord]] of ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'', as punishment for TheDarkTimes he inflicted on Equestria, was turned into [[TakenForGranite an immobile stone statue]] for more than one thousand years. [[AngstWhatAngst He didn't seem to mind much]], but it is ''very'' telling that two of the literal handful of times he loses his cool was insulting Celestia for her part in his imprisonment ("It's quite lonely being imprisoned in stone, but you wouldn't know that, would you, because ''[[EvenEvilHasStandards I don't turn ponies into stone]]''."), and then later [[spoiler:when he's turned back into stone and his facial expression is one of unrestrained horror.]]
* Baxter Stockman of ''[[TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]'' was suffering this trope every time [[YouHaveFailedMe he failed the Shredder]]. He would lose a piece of his body until all that was left of him was his head, brain and left eye. In one episode he tries to repair himself by cloning his old body, which ends up failing after a few months and he eventually suffers a VillainousBreakdown.
* ''WesternAnimation/TotalDramaIsland'' [[spoiler: In the final episode of Revenge Of The Island it's shown that Fang had a little too much fun with Scott and left him crippled with the only way for him to comunacate with anyone is by flashing a red or green light. Just to rub it in everyone other then Brick and Cameron then laughs at him in his crippled state, causing him to shead a single tear.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Gargoyles}}'': Most of the Scottish Clan was smashed by Vikings. Two thousand years later, some of the pieces were gathered into a cyborg-Gargoyle. Then the programming to interact with the outside world got erased. "Pieces of three Gargoyles were used to construct Coldstone. Now we are all trapped inside."
* ''WesternAnimation/AdventuresOfTheGummiBears.'' Seen in Season 6's episode Thornberry To The Rescue. [[spoiler: An evil spider The Spinster escapes from her underground prison. She kidnaps gummi bears but they are rescued by Sir Thornberry and Cavin. To make sure that The Spinster never bothers them again, they leave her tied up in an underground cave, which entrance is later boarded up by Gruffi. It is also implied in the episode that the Spinster might be immortal as she was imprisoned first time by the ancient Great Gummis, which makes her fate even worse.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'': Butters chooses being shot to death over being grounded in "Hell on Earth 2006".
** In "Roger Ebert Should Lay Off the Fatty Foods," Officer Barbrady is hypnotized into thinking that he's really ElvisPresley. When he is cured, he explicitly calls it a FateWorseThanDeath.
* A short in ''WesternAnimation/TinyToonAdventures'' has Hampton trying to cook a live lobster. In typical cartoon fashion, the lobster gets the better of him at every turn. Hampton eventually gives up and decides to give the lobster to [[AndCallHimGeorge Elmyra]] instead - at which point the lobster decides that being cooked isn't such a bad thing after all.
[[/folder]]

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