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[[caption-width-right:350:Welcome to {{Hell}}. [[AndIMustScream Enjoy your stay]].[[note]]9th bay at the Chapelle Notre-Dame de Kergoat of Kergoat in Quemeneven[[/note]]]]
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'''WARNING:''' Spoilers are unmarked.
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!!General:
* '''''[[FateWorseThanDeath EVERYTHING]]. [[PunctuatedForEmphasis ABOUT]]. {{HELL}}.''''' There's a reason why it's highly popular when it comes to imaging a DeathWorld. There are plenty of theories about what hell is like - and pretty much all of them are ''utterly horrifying'' to think about.
** Let's start with the view of hell as physical torture. You're conscious, but as [[BodyHorror an immobile and rotting corpse]], blind and helpless in [[TheNothingAfterDeath the empty darkness of a void deeper than space]]. [[NothingIsScarier You can't hear anything; you can't see anything]]. You're all alone. All you can do is cry weakly from hunger, thirst, pain, and loneliness. Worms burrow through your flesh; you can sense them chewing at your bones, gnawing them down incrementally. All the while your blind eyes and nostrils are burning with fire and sulfuric acid. It goes on ''[[AndIMustScream FOREVER]]''. Jesus said even the TooKinkyToTorture wouldn't be able to handle it.
*** This snippet of text affected FanFic writer and {{Troll}} Creator/MonicaGilbeyBieber so badly that he [[http://monicagilbey-bieber.deviantart.com/journal/I-Realized-WARNING-HI-OCTANE-NIGHTMARE-FUEL-370604759 wrote a journal]] detailing his reaction to this, and compares it to '''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaphism scaphism]]''', [[CruelAndUnusualDeath an execution method]] [[NauseaFuel which in itself is]] NightmareFuel.
** The thing that is truly terrifying about Hell is that its prisoners are tortured physically and verbally; you'll be reminded of your sins and that you had time to repent in your life but didn't. And '''no matter what you do you can't get out'''. Numerous depictions of Christianity state that even the demons are being subjected to the terrors of Hell. Why do you think Satan is out in the world (such as being in the desert with Jesus) tempting people instead of working from Hell? Because not even the dragon capable of flinging a third of the stars with its tail wants to be in Hell.
** And some saints hint that being in Hell is actually ''a mercy'' for unrepentant sinners. Being with God could have been ''much worse'' in their state.
** One interpretation is that Hell is just a state of shame and separation from God. Though, eternal boredom wouldn't be much fun (who wants to live forever?), even that interpretation lends itself to some less-than-appealing psychological trauma. Shame and guilt can be very damaging to people, so imagine what an eternity of it can do to you. Or that you are confronted with Heaven and God and perfect love and happiness are real and knowing that you're never, ever, EVER going to experience it and '''it's your own fault'''. In this interpretation, the "weeping and gnashing of teeth" describes the anguish of those who realize they've screwed themselves over. ''Forever''.
** There's even a somewhat popular interpretation of Hell as a place where you're completely alone, cut off from everyone and everything. This might be one of the worst possible versions of Hell. Just think about that seriously: You'd be completely isolated from the rest of the universe...
** Orthodox Christianity states that Hell is both a place and a state of person. And the fire? It's ''God's love''. It gives the absolved the eternal happiness and brings the eternal torment to the damned. (Repentant Orthodox Christians can still be saved even if they committed mortal sins, the others' fate is at best unknown.) You should have freed your soul from sins and passions (inborn sins and sins that became habits).
** How terrible is Hell? A story goes that an angel came to an Orthodox Christian saint, who suffered greatly because of illness and prayed to the Lord for release. An angel came and told him that in order to be saved, he should endure another year in humility... or to suffer three hours in hell. It took '''one hour''' for this person to want to get out, as it was like a very long time. He chose to suffer the rest of his life on Earth.
** The understanding of {{Hell}} as a place that is, simply put, REALLY AWAY from God, the source of Life, [[KarmicDeath for those who always refused to come to Him]]. Worse than all loneliness, sadness, fear, shame, guilt, despair, hunger, thirst, etc., ever experienced by anyone in their lives, because even now we still have the gift of life and enjoy the universal blessings from God. (Reading Hell this way is mostly based on the Biblical time culture being an agonistic honor-shame setting, meaning sin is understood as an honor offense against God that must be repaid by shame, either Christ's or man's). The fact that it is described as fire, suffering, etc. here and there, would add to the gravity of such a state. We usually don't understand it because we fear pain more than we fear being forsaken by God, but remember Christ's words at the Cross: being forsaken by God was THE worst part of the Crucifixion (and the atonement part). It's serious.
*** All of those passages that describe everything good coming from God (e.g. James 1:17) seem less pleasant to think about - to be cut off from God is to be cut off from ''every good thing imaginable'', forever.
** One particularly terrifying interpretation of hell is that it currently doesn't exist, but that it won't exist until [[AfterTheEnd the universe is destroyed after the Final Judgment]] and that hell will be located where the universe once was.
* {{God}} Himself. {{Hollywood Atheist}}s say, "How can we believe in something we can't see?" Anyone who's read the Bible will tell you that merely [[HolyIsNotSafe looking upon God in our current mortal state is an instant death spell]]. That's actually a bit comforting, in retrospect, that we can't see God 'cause, otherwise, we'd constantly be blowing up.
** God used to walk freely with Adam and Eve, but as sin corrupted man, man can no longer do that because God's presence kills sin. The implication? His mere existence [[MindRape forces your mind to be incapable of sin]].
* {{Satan}}, an incredibly evil being who hates ''everybody and everything'' and wants nothing but to see you suffer and he appears... as the most beautiful of all angels, so wonderful-looking you could be '''effortlessly''' tricked into worshiping him if you saw him. FauxAffablyEvil at its best/worst.
** Unless you're accepting an AlternativeCharacterInterpretation, it's pretty obvious that Satan is evil. However, ''why'' he's evil is rather terrifying when you think about it. To oversimplify, humans are evil because of external temptation (i.e., Satan and original sin) and [[ItsAllAboutMe selfishness]]. Satan predates external temptation, and he must know that it's not in his self-interest to oppose God. He is, quite possibly, the only creature to choose evil against his self-interest independently of any external factor. Satan is a creature that hates good so much that he would do absolutely anything to distance himself from goodness. It is a very horrifying notion. And why does he hate everybody? He simply can't stand anything that reminds him of God or His creations. All his animosity is derived from nothing but [[EvilIsPetty spite]] and {{pride}}.
** There is a story in Orthodox Sacred Tradition that tells that, one day, a demon came to a saint to ask if God could forgive demons. The saint prayed to God and an angel appeared. The angel rebuked the saint for asking him, as the demon was simply tempting him. Then it said that even Satan could be forgiven if they would repent... but they wouldn't. But in order to show God's mercy, God told the saint the means how the demon could save itself: If the demon repented, it would be saved. And what next? The demon ''laughed'' and mocked the saint for this advice on how to save it, as it considered itself too high and mighty to repent. In short, God gave His enemies a way out... and they refused.
** One woman once asked John Chrysostom how many angels became demons along with Satan. He responded that ''all of humanity'', from Adam and Eve to the last man, is just ''1%''. There are trillions of evil {{Eldritch Abomination}}s here, hating all of us simply because we are made in God's image and constantly tempting us to sin. The only being that prevents them from killing us is God.
*** [[NightmareRetardant But the good thing is that there are twice as many good beings that are on God's side.]]
* Let us not get started on what the [[OurAngelsAreDifferent angels]] [[AngelicAbomination look like]]. There is a reason why "be not afraid" is their [[CharacterCatchphrase catchphrase]]. Even the prophet Daniel nearly faints when [[ArchangelGabriel Gabriel]] appears before him!
** The idea that angels in the Bible always look like {{Eldritch Abomination}}s is mostly just a meme, but they do show up at parts. Some classes of angels have multiple heads (usually four, three resembling an animal and one resembling a human), four or six wings (some of which have hands under the wings), and eyes which cover '''[[EyesDoNotBelongThere everywhere on their body]]''' even in the spaces between the eyes.
** Angels can be [[ParanoiaFuel invisible unless they want to be seen]]. In one story, [[EvilSorcerer Balaam]] is riding down a road where an angel is waiting invisibly to kill him. The only reason he survived is because his donkey could see the angel and stopped (prompting him to start [[BadPeopleAbuseAnimals beating it]]), and God decided to let him see the angel and give him a chance to repent. Oh, and demons can do this to.
* The Wolverton Bible - [[http://artblogbybob.blogspot.com/2009/04/mad-prophet.html Famous ''Mad'' magazine illustrator faithfully recreates scenes from The Old Testament]]. Wolverton paid great care to the scenes from Revelation. Pleasant dreams.
* Behemoth and Leviathan deserve a mention, especially since a common denominator for all three of these [[EldritchAbomination things]] is that they're monstrously enormous. [[GiantFlyer Ziz]], although never mentioned in the Bible, may be the worst of the trio, since it's reputed to have wings large enough to ''blot out the sun''.

!!Old Testament:
* The Great Flood, anyone? Once you get past all of the animals that Noah saved, '''EVERYBODY AND EVERYTHING ON EARTH DIED'''. All of the animals that weren't in the Ark drowned. Everyone that Noah knew (save his immediate family) drowned. After they got off the Ark, they were ENTIRELY ALONE IN THE WORLD.
** Even if you believe that the flood was just a regional event (a surprisingly common position), it's still terrifying to talk about - "regional" in this context would mean the '''ENTIRE ANCIENT NEAR EAST''', which while not the whole world, was still home to ''a LOT of people''.
** The smell. Forty days and forty nights (maybe more, considering how long it might have dissipated) of every living thing rotting in the ocean.
** The creation of the rainbow deserves mention as well. After having wiped out the overwhelming majority of the human and animal population, God places the rainbow in the sky every time it rains--a covenant, in a sense, that He will never do such a thing again, but also a reminder that ''He is perfectly capable of destroying the world and He's done it before''. Even better if you take the interpretation by a certain gospel song: "God sent Noah the rainbow sign: / No more water--the fire next time!"
** How about the Antediluvian world? Genesis says that, before the flood, with the exception of Noah and his family, ''[[CrapsackWorld every inclination of human thought was evil]]''. One can only imagine what it was like to warrant an apocalypse.
* [[Literature/BookOfGenesis Genesis 4]], the first murder:
-->Cain said to his brother Abel "Come, let us go out into the field." and when they were in the field, Cain set upon his brother Abel and killed him.\\
The LORD said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?"\\
And he said, "I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper?"\\
Then He said, "What have you done? Hark, '''your brother's blood cries out to Me from the ground!'''"
** When Cain repented, God said whoever killed him would get seven times his punishment.
* Sodom and Gomorrah. Theories about why they attracted God's wrath run the spectrum from "failure to show proper hospitality to strangers" to "attempted violent assault and gang-rape of strangers," but either way, it got [[NukeEm nuked]]. With fire and brimstone. The only survivors were Lot and his daughters; his wife dared to look back and got turned into a pillar of salt for it. There are other times God smote His enemies, but this one wins out for sheer ''obliteration''.
** The two angels come to the city to see how good people were, and all the guys lusted after them. The angels then went to the Lot's house where, because of aforementioned lust for the angels, they asked for them so that they could have fun. Lot refuses and instead offers them his ''virgin daughters''. Worse, people back then had children when the females were young due to [[DeathByChildbirth common birth complications]], the poor girls couldn't have been older than young teens being ''offered by their own father like slabs of meat''. Mercifully, the angel guests saved them, but still.
** Worse still is when they escape and later live in a cave in the mountains that Lot's daughters get him drunk and have sex with him. Repeat: Lot is {{date rape}}d ''[[ParentalIncest by his own daughters]]''. Although, this was not long after Earth was created and there weren't a lot of people on Earth to mate with. Cain, for instance, had to have had a sister with whom he had relations with as the Bible says he did indeed have a son and there were no humans on Earth aside from him and his siblings and parents. So such a disturbing case wouldn't have been nearly as forbidden or taboo back then as it is now. Still, it gives you a better feeling about living in today's era, what with all the madness going on in Biblical times that isn't repeated today.
** The worst part is, as we see from other cultures in this period, it was ''common'' for men of a region to go to conquered people (or just people in the area) and rape them, just to prove that they could overpower them. In fact, this specific instance is where we get the term ‘Sodomy’ from.
* The Plagues of Egypt. River of blood replacing the Nile. Swarms of insects filling the air (multiple times!). Rain of hail-fire crushing the land. Pure and ''tangible'' darkness blinding the whole country. All topped by the death of the Egyptian firstborn; all these Egyptian children are completely ''innocent'' for the plight of the Jewish slaves, yet they are all killed by the Angel of Death (which deserves a mention itself).
%%** The way God hardened the Pharaoh's heart (so he wouldn't free the slaves) is a point of contention: Many scholars believe it should be translated as "The Thought of God hardened his heart." Still scary.
* According to a study on Leviticus 18:21, the demonic deity Molech was worshiped by heating a metal idol of him to extreme temperatures and then placing ''[[WouldHurtAChild a living infant]] on its outstretched hands'', while the poor child's screams were drowned out by drumming until [[KillItWithFire it burned to death]]. '''Yikes'''.
%%* All the messed-up crap on Literature/BooksOfKings makes ''Series/GameOfThrones'' look like a picnic.
* The death of Jezebel also deserves a special mention for sheer graphic description and {{squick}}-iness. First, thrown out a window, then run over by a chariot, and then eaten by dogs. Yikes. (This is, however, a KarmicDeath. Jezebel was responsible for the introduction of that particular wave of Baal worship into Israel. Although there are a few quibbles about whether they are the same, Baal was sometimes called "Molech," and a part of the worship of Molech may have involved the sacrifice of children by burning them alive.)
** [[http://www.amazon.com/Jezebel-Untold-Story-Bibles-Harlot/dp/0385516150/ref=tmm_pap_title_0 One author]] believes that the details of Jezebel's death prove the story's authenticity as she would have worn lead makeup on her face and henna on her hands and feet which would have tasted bitter and been left behind by the wild dogs.
%%* The seven brothers and their mom mentioned in the Maccabeus book. FamilyUnfriendlyDeath doesn't even begin to describe it.
* The story of [[Literature/BookOfJob Job]]. Sure he gets back almost everything he lost in the end, but to simply prove a point to Satan, God essentially allowed Job's life to be destroyed. Those children who died? Unique people who you can't simply replace. The worst part is that God simply could have said "no" to Satan. Being an omniscient being, God already knew how that story was gonna play out yet He let it happen anyway...
** This becomes a subversion if one believes in the afterlife. God doubles every property and wealth Job once had, except Job still gets 10 children instead of 20, so perhaps one day, [[DiedHappilyEverAfter they may reunite]].
* The ''Literature/BookOfEcclesiastes'', the Teacher, once a knowledgeable person who had everything, has to accept the [[AwfulTruth futility of life]] and how meaningless it is, and is tormented by the very wisdom he has. He's been DesperatelyLookingForAPurposeInLife, but he can't. Everything he has will one day fade away, everything he knows will become meaningless. [[StatusQuoIsGod And there's nothing new under the sun.]] And in the end, no one can tell what happens after death, or to comprehend the status of being [[CessationOfExistence non-existent after death]]. King Solomon really poured out his despair in this book.
* [[Literature/BookOfJeremiah Jeremiah 20:17]]: "Because he did not kill me before birth, So that my mother would have been my grave, And her womb ever pregnant." It's even more horrifying in context.

!!New Testament:
* According to the New Testament, Satan does not rule Hell, but one day, he will be imprisoned there forever and ever. Right now, he is here on Earth... ''walking amongst us''.
-->Stay alert! For your great enemy prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for whom he may devour.
* The life of the Gerasene Demoniac, the TropeNamer of VoiceOfTheLegion, must have been a walking nightmare before he was exorcised. This poor guy was possessed not by one demon, but by an ''entire legion of them'', so many that, when they were driven out of him, they possessed a herd of pigs and fled over a cliff. He was tormented day and night while possessed, engaging in self-harm and begging to be put out of his misery. When Jesus finally came to him, he was so psychologically (and probably physically too) messed up that he was almost beyond saving.
* The sheer torture that Jesus had to undergo before dying can make anyone shudder.
** The real NightmareFuel is that crucifixion wasn't something they made up just for him; it was a common execution method for criminals back then, especially rebels and slaves. In fact, this is where we get the word ‘excruciating’ from. Though they did not generally make the criminals carry their crosses to the execution place.
** What makes it worse? He ''knew'' not everyone would believe him, or that he existed at all. So, unless Inclusivism or Universalism are true....
** The "Agony in the Garden" incident that happened before it makes the crucifixion even worse. It would be alright if Jesus was portrayed as an invulnerable divine superhuman (as some Gnostic sects do, having him switch himself out with a fake image of himself and laughing at his executioners), but this scene shows that, whatever his godly status, Jesus is a fully human man who knows exactly what's about to happen to him and is ''terrified'' of the agony he'll have to go through for people who largely despise him. He all but begs God to find some way around the plan set for him.
* The Literature/BookOfRevelation deserves its own entry. What it contains includes, but is not limited to: the Four {{Horsemen of the Apocalypse}} (all but the first one is tasked with bringing death upon mankind, and the fourth one ''is'' Death itself), oceans turning to blood, a meteor (shooting star) falling on the rivers of the earth making the water poisonous, unworldly locusts with scorpion stingers capable of inflicting pain so much that makes ''anybody'' ineffectually suicidal for five months, an army of 200 million [[MixAndMatchCritter mix-and-match creatures]] and riders that wipes out a third of mankind, etc. Angels are as creepy as they ever be and even Jesus is described as a both someone who can produce a sword from his mouth ''and'' [[DarkIsNotEvil lamb that has a slit throat and multiple eyes]].
** The horrifying image of the moon being covered with blood. Sure, it could just be a reference to a lunar eclipse, which makes the moon appear blood red. However, when there's a lot of smoke in the air (as in a forest fire) the moon and sun also turn dark red. In other words this image could also refer to a terrible war; as a city burns, the air is full of smoke.
*** Even if it does refer to a lunar eclipse, it's happening at the same time that the sun is going dark. A solar and lunar eclipse happening at the same time. Which, if you know your astronomy, [[OhCrap you realize is impossible]]. At that point, you're lucky if it's just the backstory to ''WesternAnimation/ThundarrTheBarbarian''.
** Satan's form during this time will be a ''dragon large enough to sweep one-third of the stars from the sky with a flick of his tail''.
* The second coming of Christ ''itself'' for a lot of entities. It starts with the Earth shattering so violently the mountains and islands ''vanish'', along with the sun turning dark and the moon turning red, with stars falling from the sky and landing on Earth (sounds like asteroids), along with supernatural fire hot enough to incinerate ''this whole dimension'' aka heavens and earth, after the 1000 years of world peace. The world's two most evil people, who make ''Hitler'' seem ''mild'', are put into the lake of fire, a [[AndIMustScream realm no one wants to go to...]] and the majority of the planet's humans are slain and the birds ''feed'' on it.
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