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The devil went down to Georgia
He was looking for a soul to steal
And he was in a bind
'Cause he was way behind
And was willin' to make a deal.
—The Charlie Daniels Band
You know how it works. Want to be a millionaire, or to get back at that obnoxious boss? Mr. S will guarantee your wildest dreams, if you just sign on the dotted line with your own blood. This trope is really old, not even requiring the Abrahamic devil; any trickster or evil deity roughly equivalent to Satan can be used. It reached its current version in the 16th-century legend of Faust selling his soul to Mephistopheles (who technically isn't quite exactly Satan or Lucifer, but a high-ranking demon), making this trope Older Than Dirt.
This trope includes both literal soul-for-gift deals with a literal devil, and crooked deals between any corrupt character (the Mephistopheles role) and a desperate sucker (the Faust role). The corrupter can be offering anything from some shiny new Applied Phlebotinum to making a high school nerd popular. Occasionally it has no practical value whatsoever. He then asks for something — often apparently innocent at first — that means the total ruin of the Faust if delivered: soul, first born, voice, horseshoe nail...
Note that literal devils always follow through with their end, even if their end is a sinister bastardization of the terms. We never see Mephistopheles take the soul and run; he gave his word and Magically Binding Contract.
As icing on the cake, the Mephistopheles sometimes makes sure that the Faust's gift is totally useless - especially if there's a chance at irony, where lacking their "soul", the element they gave up as payment, is the only thing that makes the gift worthless.
An alternate form is a deal where the Mephistopheles offers the Faust exactly what he wants, if not more, but to get it, he has to undergo an Impossible Task Mephistopheles obviously does not think the Faust can complete, with Faust's soul as the penalty if he fails. Alternately, the deal truly has no strings attached, as it's part of a Xanatos Gambit where the Faust's good fortune or success will deliver the soul of another to Mephistopheles.
Whether God or the equivalent would be interested in a soul that someone has gambled is the Elephant In The Living Room.
Deal With The Devil plots can overlap with What An Idiot. Some writers try to defend the Faust by having the Mephistopheles make the offer when the victim has no time to think (i.e, offering to save him from the Death Trap in return for something nasty).
If you should find yourself suckered into a Deal With The Devil, The Power Of Love may be your best bet at defeating the infernal contract. Or you can try your luck (literally) with a Jury Of The Damned. Some clever heroes can pull off a Pound Of Flesh Twist.
Common solutions are:
- Ask devil for something he can't do or destroys him what makes entire deal pointless.
- Make Logic Bomb, Infinite Loop etc. For example if devil asks to give him your soul after death, you can wish for immortality.
- It may be possible to gain enough power to prevent evil from enforcing you to keep promise or just kill him.
- Use your new power to annoy underworld so much that your deal gets nullified.
- If wish is already wasted, then someone else is required to Fight Fire With Fire by engaging in to new contract and defeating devil.
- In comical versions, if devil is female, usually some apprentice demon who always fail, of course she is insanely sexy (according to Evil Is Cool rule), why not ask her to become your girlfriend or wife?
- Seem a little too anxious to sell your soul.(See Frank Zappa example below)
Cheating devil stories are especially popular in folklore.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- Satomi Yajima's deal with Damian in Variable Geo.
- This is the whole premise of the fourth season of Yu-Gi-Oh and the second season of Yu-Gi-Oh GX, the "deal" being gain unstoppable dueling skill, power, and strength in exchange for your free will/soul and vow of service to the leader of the cult. In fact, GX developed quite a fondness for this trope with...
- Manjyome, with Saiou. (Who trusts a guy who approaches you in the forest in the dead of night, knows way too much about you, and makes it clear that he has inhuman powers?)
- Kaiser, with Saruyama.
- Professor Cobra, with demonic Judai-obsessed Duel Monster Yubel in Season 3.
- Borderline lampshaded in a Season 2 Filler episode, where the "devil" is the actual "Grim Reaper".
- The anime Jigoku Shojo (Hell Girl) revolves around a demonic young girl who offers people the chance to instantly send one of their enemies to Hell — although the price for this "service" is that the sender's own soul will also be sent to Hell after their death.
- The creation of the flame man in Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch turned out to be from such a deal. He was originally a human that had fallen in love with a weak Panthalassa that had managed to escape the seal. Fuku-chan offered him a way to save his daughter, who had inherited the weakness in body after her mother died. Michal became Michel's mana battery, and her father became the flame pillar, the apparent authority actually ruled by Fuku.
- In Naruto, Sasuke makes a deal with Orochimaru — in exchange for giving him the power to defeat his brother, Sasuke will allow Orochimaru to possess his body. However, he merely learns all Orochimaru has to teach him, at which point Sasuke kills him. Only, not really, as Orochimaru comes back as The Virus.
- Witsarnemitea in the anime/Visual Novel Utawarerumono loves to grant 'wishes', particularly in the mysterious backstory. For instance, DO YOU WANT A STRONGER BODY? DO YOU WANT TO LIVE FOREVER? ENJOY BEING TURNED INTO A RED JELLY, ASSHOLE. DO YOU WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT ME, PHILOSOPHER? HOW ABOUT I TAKE COMPLETE CONTROL OVER YOUR BODY FOR THE REST OF ETERNITY, LOL. Sometimes you have to swear your entire being away in a contract in order to get help, though.
- Rather subverted though, as Eruru makes the 'ALL YOUR BEING IS MINE' pledge in order to save her sister, but is never really held to it aside from being his companion. For a cosmic thing that offers wishes in exchange for their being, it's like he just uses that as an excuse to have friends. He even completely nullifies her debt to him once he figures out his identity, with no payment or repercussions. His other side, on the other hand...
- This is a major part of how Yuko does her work in XXXholic. She plays the Mephisto totally straight, where she grants people any wish they desire as long as they can pay something of equal value to the wish. For example, when a woman wanted to have a cursed picture that showed her murdering her friend locked away, Yuko's price was that the woman could never have her picture taken or recorded again. Also, in keeping with the CLAMP mantra that the dead cannot be revived, Yuko cannot bring the dead back to life because no payment exists to make such a wish "fair".
- Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle has a more typical example- Syaoran made a deal with Yuko's evil counterpart, Fei Wong Reed, to reverse time in order to save someone, for the low, low price of allowing Ass-chin to clone him. Oh, and borking up the entire space-time continuum.
- The pacts between humans and Shinigami on Death Note work in this manner, as Death Note users gain the power to kill anyone using the book if they know their name and face, and in exchange, the shinigami takes the user's own lifeforce at the time of their death. The shinigami can also offer a second deal, exchanging half of the user's remaining natural lifespan in exchange for Shinigami eyes, allowing the user to know the true name of whomever they look upon.
- Um... not quite. The deal is "If a human finds the shinigami's book, the shinigami is stuck with them until that human dies. The human gets to use the book as much as they want, and can make the "half my life for the eyes" deal. In return, the shinigami gets... nothing. But the price is that when the human dies, their spirit is anulled." Which is why all the shinigami think Ryuk screwed up Big-time for losing his book. In relation to life-draining and such, the rule is: Shinigami use their books to kill people, since they don't particularly want to die, and they gain all the remaining time alive the person they kill would have had. IE, the person would have had 50 years, the shinigami gets 50 years.
- The shinigami will eventually write the death note user's name in their own death note, so the payoff is getting the user's remaining lifespan when the shinigami gets fed up of hanging around with them. Of course, it could just have killed the human without giving them a death note in the first place, but Ryuk was bored.
- In the Full Metal Alchemist manga, Ling agrees to let Greed possess him, effectively making him into a humonculus, if it means he'll be that much closer to obtaining a Philospher's Stone and thus the secret to immortality.
- The Behelits from Berserk are a means to summon the Godhand, four evil demonic gods who offer their bearers the chance to become demonic Apostles (or in the case of those bearing a Crimson Behelit such as Griffith, a new member of the Godhand) in exchange for the sacrifice of those closest to them, who are transported to hell along with the one presented with the deal and marked with the Godhand's Brand of Sacrifice if the bearer should accept, at which point the monsters come out of the woodwork to eat them alive. They're particularly insidious because they are activated by their bearer reaching their lowest emotional point, making the bearer particularly receptive to the Godhand's offer.
- In Chrono Crusade, demons need a type of spiritual energy called astral energy to use their powers and survive. Typically they use their horns to siphon the energy from their surroundings, but when a demon's horns are broken or for some other reason they need to augment their intake, demons can make a contract with a human. The demon serves the human they make the contract with, in exchange for the demon being able to drain their soul in place of astral energy, shortening the human's lifespan drastically. Most of the demons who make contracts in the series follow the typical archetype of being tricksters, but the title character subverts this. He makes a contract with Rosette, a nun, so that he is able to use his powers to help her save his brother, both of whom had befriended him. Throughout the series Chrono questions his decision to make the contract, causing quite a lot of his angstier moments.
- Ciel Phantomhive from Kuroshitsuji has a literal deal with demon butler Sebastian; he'll help him in all his endeavors, and when Ciel's goals are accomplished, his soul belongs to Sebastian. While Sebastian has a slightly morbid sense of humor that he only shows to his enemies and Ciel; he has been rather honorable and faithful to even the spirit of his side of the bargain.
- Lelouch Lamperouge from Code Geass accepts a contract with Mysterious Waif C.C., by which he gains a power to give absolute orders and, in a long run, to change the world in exchange for an unspecified service for her. It turns out, this "unspecified service" is to be Cursed With Awesome/Blessed With Suck by taking C.C.'s place as an undying Geass dispenser. Lelouch even lampshades it towards the end of the first season.
- In D.Gray-Man, the Earl of the Millenium promises his victims to bring back to life the person they have lost. He creates a metal skeleton and makes the victim call the name of the one he wants to come back. Then, the skeleton kills the victim and wears his skin, creating a monster, an "akuma".
- In Mahou Sensei Negima, Big Bad Fate Averruncus offers Negi a deal, but manages to word it in a way thay if Negi had accepted it, Negi would have been magically bound to keep his end of the bargain while Fate would not.
- Impmon in Digimon Tamers. Ironically, he becomes a warrior for one of the Digimon gods.
- In at least the anime of The Slayers, Lina Inverse was offered this during the Gaav/Phibrizo story arc.
- This is essentially The Reveal explaining the plot in Baccano!: the elixir of immortality and the recipe for creating it were given to Maiza by a "demon" he called up. Unusually for the trope, the demon doesn't really make a specific demand in return; his payoff is watching all the chaos that results from the deal; and an infinite amount of intelligence, experiences and 'wisdom' - Recieved from any immortal who comes to him to die, if they don't want to live any longer, since the method of killing an immortal also gives their memories and information to the killer. Ronnie, the 'demon', is in fact a two-thousand year old homonculus clone of a former self who was also considerably old. Because of this, he is very knowledgeable and relatively omniscient. .
- In Yami No Matsuei, the Shinigami have to go to the rescue of a boy receives a cornea transplant that results in him taking on the burden of the previous owner's deal with a demon.
- In Umineko No Naku Koro Ni, a deal with the Eternal Witch, Beatrice, sets a large portion of the plot into motion. Or Did It?
- In one Urusei Yatsura episode, Ataru Moroboshi manages to fulfill all the complicated conditions to make a pact with a demon COMPLETELY BY ACCIDENT!
- This is the subject of one of the fairy tales in Monster.
Comics
Fairy Tales
- In The Maiden Without Hands
 , a miller makes a deal with the devil for "what is standing behind thy mill". He thought it was an apple tree; it was his daughter. She kept herself too pure for the devil to carry off, though, even when the devil orders the miller to cut off her hands. So the miller ended up with the money; but as soon as that happened, the daughter left to seek her fortune. Ironically enough, this may be a Bowdlerised plot; the rest of the plot is commonly found in tales where the heroine lost her hands and left because her father or brother tried to force her to marry him.
- In Bearskin, a soldier makes a Deal With The Devil, who will give him an ever-filled purse, but he must not pray, wash, cut his hair or nails, or change from a bearskin for seven years. He goes about distributing money to the poor, asking them to pray for him. One man he rescues from financial distress promises that he may marry one of his daughters. Only the youngest is willing. He succeeds in fulfilling the devil's terms and cleans up nicely, and the older sisters, reduced to envy, commit suicide. The Devil, pleased, informs the soldier that he got two souls, not one.
- Another fairytale variant: Rumpelstiltskin. Though considering the number of escape clauses in that deal, Rumpelstiltskin made a less-than-competent Mephistopheles.
Film
- Spawn movie is about bargain with devil, which ends in nearly total devastation of former, when protagonist successfully uses newly acquired powers against the one who gave them.
- The Star Wars prequels have this with Anakin and Palpatine. Anakin's desire for Padme's-life-spared-at-any-cost might not have been spelled out and Palpatine himself might not be the devil, but otherwise the trope is played to the hilt.
- There's also Lando Calrissian's deal with Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back. Lando really had no choice about it - the Dark Lord of the Sith showed up and would have destroyed Cloud City if he'd been refused. The Falcon and her crew would be betrayed and captured to draw in Luke Skywalker; Han Solo would be frozen in carbonite and handed off to Boba Fett, the rest of the crew would never leave Cloud City, and then The Empire would leave and ignore Lando's operation. Of course, Vader altered the deal, and eventually Lando did too.
- And of course Return of the Jedi lampshades ("Strike me down. Then your journey to The Dark Side will be complete.") and subverts it. There's even an Alternative Character Interpretation where Luke and Vader planned how it would play out before they ever met Ol' Sid, so Vader made a deal with Luke. But it's Star Wars; it plays with every mythology trope ever.
- The Coen Brothers film O Brother Where Art Thou pays homage to the Tommy Johnson legend by including him as a character.
- Tenacious D's movie has Kage and Jables cutting a deal with Satan: if they win a rock off against him, he has to go back to Hell and pay their rent. If Satan wins, Kage has to go back to Hell with Satan and be his sex slave. They wind up beating him through a technicality: if Satan is ever "incomplete" (i.e. missing a part of himself, like a tooth or horn), a spell can be used to send him back automatically.
- Both versions of the film Bedazzled — the original and the remake — concern a deal with the Devil in exchange for seven wishes. In the remake, the main character is eventually freed from the contract by making an unselfish wish.
- The Devil could never collect the soul in the first place, since they belong to God. She was just mindscrewing the character.
- Which makes no damned sense, since it invalidates the entire premise of the story, not to mention the point of the Devil existing at all.
- In the theatre/film musical Damn Yankees, an aging Washington Senators fan declares that he'd sell his soul to get his team to defeat the New York Yankees. Suddenly, a mysterious gentleman named Applegate appears to make him the living embodiment of his wish.
- Interestingly, it's the devil himself who voids the deal, in a last-ditch attempt to keep the Senators from winning the pennant.
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest features Davy Jones, a sort of Devil of the Sea. He makes deals with dead or dying sailors, offering them a 100 year postponement of death in return for serving on his crew. He also made a deal with Jack Sparrow, making him Captain of the Black Pearl for 13 years in return for his promise to serve. Sparrow, of course, manages to almost weasel his way out. "Not even Jack Sparrow can best the Devil!" Although, as the writers' commentary points out, Davy Jones doesn't exactly win by the end, either.
- Also, he is a rare example of a Devil who doesn't uphold his end of the usual deal: Instead of getting a chance for a "better" judgment, his sailors just lose their humanity and are absorbed into the ship. They never last the required hundred years.
- Little Shop of Horrors had Audrey II, who made a deal with Seymour to make him rich and famous in exchange for a steady supply of human blood.
- "Some day, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me. Until that day accept this justice as a gift on my daughter's wedding day."
- Towards the end of Phantom of the Paradise, we learn that Swan made a deal with the devil to stay youthful forever and to be a super-successful record producer. Swan's end of the deal is that he must record every day of his life on film and rewatch every reel every day. If the film is destroyed, then Swan will die. When the phantom learns this, he promptly sets all of the film on fire.
- In Crossroads young guitar virtuoso Eugene has to help old Robert Johnson sideman Willie escape his contract with the Devil, leading to an epic axe-off with Steve Vai.
- The Wishmaster films are all about this trope. Not only does the Djinn take your soul in exchange for a wish (a condition he apparently is not obliged to disclose to you in advance) but he will always grant the wish in a "Monkey's Paw" form. What's more, he can close the deal if you merely speak a wish out loud in his presence.
- Hell, the guy can pretty interpret anything you say as a wish. In the second movie a cop yells "Freeze!" at him. Guess what happens.
- In The Devil and Daniel Webster, a good but rather dumb and weak man makes a deal with the devil. He gets the money he needs for his farm (and way more,) and in seven years the devil will claim his soul. The man agrees after the devil assures him that "souls are not important." After seven years he's had a son (and neglected him), got a servant that acted as his mistress, hired his former friends and taken advantage of them, and become a Jerkass while still being the dumbest man on earth. Later, Daniel Webster comes and manages to let him weasel out of the deal. The king of the Wall Banger.
- Freddy began his horror career with one of these according to Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, offered his powers and immortality by a trio of "dream demons" who choose a human villain as their Psycho For Hire every thousand years. If they had any plan to betray him, it must've been scheduled for after he'd already brought about The End Of The World As We Know It: as it is, the price he seems to have paid for his deal is that whatever shred of goodness he had as a human went completely out the window.
- While not a literal example, the plot to Danny Boyle's Shallow Grave has been described thus.
Folklore
- It is sometimes said that legendary blues guitarist Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his mastery of the instrument. The location where the meeting supposedly took place, the crossroads of US 49 and US 61 in Clarksdale, MS, is a Mecca of sorts to blues aficionados. The tale is something of a subtrope in its own right, and is referenced in several of these examples.
- Older Than They Think, because Robert got the idea from Tommy Johnson.
- Mozart and Paganini were rumored to have done the same for their musical skills. Paganini's hair colour probably didn't help.
- And don't forget Tartini and the tale about the Devil's Trill sonata.
- A Chuck Norris Fact states that Chuck sold his soul for rugged good looks and unmatchable martial arts prowess. Upon completion of said deal, Chuck kicked the devil's ass who took it in stride because he should have seen it coming. They now play cards together.
- Witches were said to gain magical powers by making a deal with Satan.
Literature
- If you see any story in any medium begin with "The Devil and...", it's almost certainly this trope. The originator of this convention is The Devil and Daniel Webster by Stephen Vincent Benet, the story that first gave us the Jury Of The Damned.
- For example, a short story titled "The Devil and Simon Flagg" inverts the "ordeal" version by having the title character, a mathematician, challenge the devil to an ordeal: he must either prove or disprove Fermat's Last Theorem. The Devil doesn't make it, despite asking the best mathematicians in the universe. And despite the fact that humans found the solution meanwhile.
- And Benet's story was inspired by an earlier short story called The Devil and Tom Walker by Washington Irving.
- The Robert Bloch Hugo-winning short story "That Hell-Bound Train" is a wonderful example of this trope, complete with a double-twist-ending.
- Its title (and the song alluded to in the story) comes from an old and anonymous American folk-song, called "The Hell-Bound Train". This troper was beyond pleasantly surprised to discover this in a poetry-anthology, as the Bloch story was a key one in his childhood.
- The Larry Niven short story "Convergent Series" deconstructs the Deal With The Devil by not only giving a purported reason why demon-summoning rarely works (and why you wouldn't hear about the successful cases), but also by ruling out each of the usual ways out of the deal one by one. The solution the protagonist chooses is unconventional, but successful: the demon had to re-appear wherever the pentagram he was bound in was drawn. The protagonist chose as his wish to stop time, and then redrew the pentagram on the demon's belly while time was frozen, causing the demon to keep endlessly re-appearing in a fruitless effort to appear inside the pentagram.
- Every single book in Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series involves one (or more) of these.
- In the erotic story Demon Deals, Jon meets a girl whose previous boyfriend had made a deal with the devil, though it had backfired on him because the devil exploited a loophole in his contract and killed him. Jon decides to do the same, since he's a lawyer and knows how to write good contracts. He creates an airtight contract that protects him from the devil while he's alive, but the devil won't accept, it's too unfair to him. Jon then points out that since the devil can't return to hell until he destroys the pentagram, the devil is stuck on earth in one spot until Jon decides to release him... so he brings a TV over and leaves it on the local televangelist channel.
- Are you kidding me? Not even God could put up with those assholes for more than ten minutes without attempting suicide.
- Now there's a theological quandary.
- Wouldn't they be out of a job?
- The Nathaniel Hawthorne story Young Goodman Brown concerns a Puritan man who sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for the power to see the evil in men's hearts, thus allowing him to extort money and power from them. The Devil holds up his end of the deal... but Brown never enjoys life again because he no longer trusts anyone around him. (It's left up to the reader's imagination, however, whether or not the meeting was All Just A Dream.)
- In the version that this editor read, this is totally not what happens.
- This troper also was prompted to read the story based on this entry, and his impression is that Brown was attempting to make a Deal With The Devil but not for that power, and the irony is that he saw his act as aberrant for a Puritan, but the story indicates that pretty much everyone in the town as well as Brown's ancestors had done so. Not so clear though if he was successful, although his experience does stop him from trusting anyone.
- This is Older Than Feudalism, if you recall the three temptations of Jesus by the devil. Being Jesus of course he doesn't fall for any of Satan's tricks and tells him to get lost.
- Timm Thaler sells his laughter to baron Lefuet (which is backwards for Teufel, German for devil) in exchange for winning any bet. Later he gets his laughter back - with a bet.
- Beautifully deconstructed in the Tanith Lee's short story "Sold." A woman with serious medical and financial problems calls on the devil, asking if he would really give her health, wealth, beauty, and long life in exchange for her soul. When he replies in the affirmative, she calls off the deal: all she really wanted was proof that she had a soul and that it was worth something.
- The Faust comes out the winner in one short story, in which an astronomer sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for one favor to be granted after he dies. When he dies, the Devil comes to grant the favor. (and then take him to Hell) The Devil is dismayed to find out that his wish is for the Devil to take him to the nearest star, where he will thoroughly observe and study it... and then do the same thing for every other star in the universe.
- Not quite. It was a Reverse faust - the demon had summoned a living human to Hell, because a living person in a spiritual realm could do things a spiritual being couldn't, like acquire an Artifact Of Doom. In exchange, the mortal got one wish. The mortal's soul was never in danger - but the demon was screwed because he couldn't use his new Phenomonal Cosmic Power until the astronomer had his wish fulfilled. In other words, as the story put it, "Heaven leered."
- Played with in one of the ''Khaavren'' books. A young Morrolan agrees to serve the "Demon Goddess" Vera (although demon doesn't mean the same thing as it usually does) in both this life and the next in exchange for her favoritism. The played-with part is that he does this without a second thought, having no problem at all offering his soul for the future. Granted, this wouldn't mean eternal torment in the afterlife, but rather its implied something more like Valhalla, in which he will form part of an army of champions.
- People, especially The Forsaken, from Wheel Of Time sell their Soul to Shai'tan, in exchange for immortality if Shai'tan would win. The bad thing is that Darkfriends are hunted by the good guys and the bad guys, while Shai'tan is said to actually destroy the entire world if he is set free, so Darkfriends are really screwed...
- In Paradise Lost Satan actually makes a Deal with the Devil (not himself) in order to succeed in his goals when he petitions Chaos to direct him towards Earth by promising that he will cause the world to return to Chaos after he is done.
- Does anyone remember the title/author of this very short story? The main character is about to flunk out of college, so he summons a demon to help him pass his Geometry final. But because he's bad at Geometry, he puts the wrong number of points on the pentagram and the demon simply steps out of it and carts him off to Hell. Sometimes Satan has it easy.
- That would be the short story "Naturally" by Fredric Brown.
- In HP Lovecraft's "Dreams in the Witch House", Nyarlathotep appears to the protagnists, offering him complete control over the ability to travel outside the angled space (effectively being able make a personal wormhole between any two locations) in exchange for signing the book of Azathoth with his blood. The protagonist refuses, but judging from what kind of beings we're dealing with, it's probably better not to know what would've happened had he accepted the deal.
- Invoked in GK Chesterton's Father Brown story "The Dagger with Wings," a man cites the legend of Dundee, who had sold his soul to the Devil and so could be shot only with a Silver Bullet.
- Isaac Asimov helped edit two collections of fantasy/science-fiction "short short" stories that included a few examples of this trope:
- A Complete Monster makes a deal to be reincarnated, and is brought back as his own horrifically-abused daughter. ("Give Her Hell" by Donald Wollheim)
- A man makes a deal with what he thinks is a devil. ("Your Soul Comes C.O.D." by Mack Reynolds)
- A story which squeezes into five pages every conceivable pun based on the phrase "pact with the devil." ("If At First You Don't Succeed, To Hell With It!" by Charles Fritch)
- A poet comes to not regret selling his soul for wealth and fame, but the rest of civilized society does... ("The Devil Finds Work" by Reynolds again.)
- Subverted in the Ogden Nash poem "The Miraculous Countdown", a story about Dr. Faustus Foster, described in the poem as "a truly incompetent scientist", who in desparation after all of his efforts at a major scientific breakthough failed spectacularly, swore that he would sell his soul to succeed. A red-robed figure popped in and made him a deal for his soul. Once accepted, Dr. Foster became a heralded and respected scientist whose discoveries were put to use for the good of mankind. The switch comes in the final stanzas;
Faustus, clumsiest of men,
Had buttefingered the job again.
I told you his head was far from level,
He thought he had sold his soul to the devil
When he really sold it, for Heaven's sake,
To his guardian angel by mistake!
When geniuses of every nation
Hasten us towards obliteration
Perhaps it will take the dolts and the geese
To drag us backwards into peace.
Live Action TV
- Star Trek The Next Generation, "Hide and Q."
- Almost every Very Special Episode about drugs is the Faust legend updated; either the drug dealer or the kid who turns Our Hero on to drugs is Mephistopheles. (For instance, the Ghostwriter episode "What's Up With Alex?")
- Too many episodes of The Twilight Zone to count, sometimes involving a literal pact with Satan and sometimes not. Because the show was an anthology, this was one of the few shows where the Faust doesn't escape at the last minute due to Contractual Immortality. (To be fair, some 16th-century Faust stories have Faust avoid Hell.)
- In one episode, "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville", the standard trope is averted: The Devil (female, in this instance) offers to send an aging, bored, predatory business tycoon back in time with his memories intact so he can use his knowledge to get even richer. But not in exchange for his soul — the balance of that passed into Satan's hands some time ago; instead, she wants the bulk of his fortune.
- There is an interesting subversion in the episode "Still Valley", in which a group of Confederate soldiers in the American Civil War get a hold of a spellbook which would allow them to win the war easily at the price of renouncing God. Surprisingly, they make the right decision (for once) and burn the book rather than sell their souls, even though they know their side in the war (and maybe their lives) will be over as a result.
- On Degrassi The Next Generation, Jay's sole function is to corrupt the other characters.
- Degrassi subverted this plot beautifully in "Moonlight Desires". It's the climax of a Story Arc where Jay lures his latest Faust into committing worse and worse crimes — until the Faust spontaneously decides to do something that scares Jay.
- Degrassi also subverted it badly in "Queen of Hearts," where the Mephisto keeps her promise. This was supposed to be a moral about trust, undermined by the fact that only a total idiot would have believed the promise in the first place. (See Family Unfriendly Aesop for description.)
- The entire premise of the series Good Versus Evil: our heroes try to persuade victims into exercising the escape clauses of aptly-named "Standard Faustian Contracts" to save their souls.
- The short-lived 1977 series A Year At The Top was an allegedly comic look at a two-man garage band (played by Greg Evigan and David Letterman band leader Paul Shaffer) who sold their souls to the son of the Devil for a year of super-success as rock stars.
- The premise of Friday The 13th The Series is based on a character's pact with the Devil.
- The entire series Brimstone was about a dead cop who was offered a chance by the Devil to go to Heaven if he would locate and dispatch 113 Monsters Of the Week that had escaped from Hell.
- Somewhat subverted, however, as the cop was already IN Hell and therefore had absolutely nothing to lose.
- The TV series The Collector involves nothing but deals with the Devil; every episode, the title character goes to another person who's made a deal with Satan, and tries to get the person to earn redemption. Sometimes, he succeeds.
- The Supernatural episode "Crossroad Blues" concerns the main characters trying to save several people who have made deals with the Devil. Notably, the only one they succeed in saving is the one who made a deal to benefit someone else (to save the life of his terminally-ill wife), whereas all the characters who made wishes for success or talent end up being taken down to Hell as planned. Robert Johnson (mentioned above) even puts in an appearance.
- It tends to run in the family in Supernatural, Mary gave permission for the YED to poison Sam with demon blood (in 1983, the year that she died) in exchange for John to be alive again, John makes a deal with the YED in the first episode of season two: his soul and a mystical gun made by Samuel Colt for Dean's life. When Sam dies in All Hell Breaks Loose, Dean summons a crossroads demon and trades his soul in order for Sam to live again and while he failed, Sam still tried to make any deal he could in order to save Dean from hell. God, that family is screwed up.
- Another surprisingly depressing example occurs for Bela in the most recent episode. She was fourteen, it's implied her father was abusing her sexually, the Crossroads Demon (in form of a child) killed them for her and the ending is her hearing the hellhounds coming to get her.
- In Angel The Series, Angel accepts a deal from the demonic law firm Wolfram and Hart: They'll give his son Connor amnesia and set the boy up in a good life, and Angel and his team will take over the running of one branch of his law firm. While this move fits the trope itself, and has wide-ranging effects on the characters (even, it appears, destroying Angel's own conscience), it leads to a further Deal With The Devil with a heart-wrenching ending:
- Gunn, dissatisfied with his role as the muscle for the group, accepts a deal to make him into a superhumanly competent lawyer schooled in all areas of law (even demonic law). Later on, it appears that the upgrade wasn't permanent: He's losing his knowledge, and fast. When he desperately tries to bargain a more permanent solution, they're all too happy to grant his request — if he'll do them the petty favor of signing a form to bring an artifact through customs. The artifact ends up implanting his beloved teammate Fred with the soul of a tyrant god, who eventually takes the body over completely, in the process destroying Fred's soul.
- Years ago, Gunn had also traded his soul to a demon for a truck, not expecting to live long enough for the demon to collect. Angel managed to convince all the other people who owed something to the demon to gang up and kill him.
- In Reaper, the protagonists' parents' Deal With The Devil before he was born forces him to work for Satan as the title character. Of course, Mr. S. regularly tries to make the title character's job easier by offering various forms of assistance. The main character has sagely declined thus far.
- Tends to come up from time to time on Ugly Betty with Wilhelmina in the Mephistopheles role and either Betty or Christina in the Faust role.
- In Babylon 5 this trope is played out with anyone who chooses to do dealings with the Shadows, especially Londo Mollari. "What do you want?", indeed.
- Deliciously subverted by Vir Cotto, whose answer to the question "What do you want?" amounts to a big "Screw you!". Naturally, he doesn't get it. He lives quite a bit longer than that.
- An arc in Dharma & Greg had Greg quit his well-paying job as a lawyer to "find himself", leaving both of them with no money. Greg's mother, Kitty, graciously agrees to lend them money and take Dharma out to dinner. Of course, it turns out that Kitty is plotting to have Greg take a high-powered job at a prestigious law firm. Kitty even distracts Dharma by taking her to the opera which is, of course, performing Faust. Dharma soon realizes the scheme and tries to stop Greg just as he's signing an employment contract... with red ink.
- In a WKRP in Cincinnati episode, the frustrated employees try to form a labor union. Carlson's mother, who owns the station (and only bought it for the tax writeoff), threatens to shut it down or sell it rather than negotiate. Station manager Andy Travis laments at one point, "I would make a deal with the Devil to keep this station open!" Finally everything is resolved, and we learn Travis has made a secret deal — with Mrs. Carlson.
- There are far too many of these to list in American Gothic, but one of the earliest and most representative is Carter's deal with Buck in the episode "Damned If You Don't" (which could almost be an alternate title for this trope).
- Lost's Michael makes a deal with the devil (in this case, the Others) to secure freedom for his son. He agrees to free "Henry" (which entails killing Ana-Lucia) and betray four of his friends. Eventually his guilt leads him to attempt suicide.
- On Saturday Night Live a hair-dresser who sold her soul takes Satan (Jon Lovitz) to The Peoples Court for breach of contract, and the Prince of Darkness tries to defend himself by pointing out the obvious.
Satan: It's more or less customary for me to cheat mortals in this way. By observing only the letter of the agreement. For example, I'll give someone eternal youth, then have them sentenced to life imprisonment. That sort of thing. It's pretty standard. I'm the Devil!
- In a later episode, an aspiring musician considers selling his soul for a guaranteed hit, but decides against it when it becomes apparent that all the Devil's songs suck.
- In yet another sketch, a recently deceased man in Heaven is delighted to find out that his instincts about Bruce Willis and Sugar Ray Leonard having made deals with the devil are true.
- One episode of Married With Children has Al Bundy selling his soul to the Devil for the opportunity to take the Chicago Bears to the Super Bowl. Al is drafted by the Bears and has a spectacular season, but when the Bears finally get to the Super Bowl, the Devil tells Al that it's time to hand over his soul. When Al protests, the Devil points out that he only agreed to let Al take the Bears to the Super Bowl, not actually play in the Super Bowl.
Al But that's not fair!
Lucifer: Duh! I'm THE DEVIL!
- Played for laughs in the Alice Cooper episode of the Muppet Show, Cooper acts as an agent for the devil, offering a contract that will give the muppet who signs it anything they want. Gonzo is ecstatic, but can't find a pen. ("I'll sell my soul for a pen! No, I have other plans for that.") Ms. Piggy goes through with the deal for great beauty, but is turned off by what Cooper considers beautiful. After giving Piggy a refund, Cooper radios the devil to report...
Cooper: Hello, boss... No, no, I didn't make a sale... Listen, Do I get any commission on hourly rentals?
(Radio spews flames)
Cooper: Touchy.
- A variation of this occurs in Kamen Rider Dragon Knight. When speaking to prospective Kamen Riders, Big Bad General Xaviax claims that accepting his deal and following his instructions will allow them to satisfy their desires—a former rich kid will get a million bucks for each Rider beaten; a street fighter will become the strongest man in two worlds; a framed man will get the evidence he needs to be cleared; a disabled soldier will get to protect his country. Given that all of the people we've seen accepting these deals have either been eliminated or end up defecting before being able to collect, it has not been confirmed whether Xaviax would have kept his side of the bargain.
Music
- A Deal With The Devil was made by the bass player of the virtual band Gorillaz, Murdoc Niccals, but with no lethal consequence. He changed his middle name to Faust, and got Satan's bass guitar, El Diablo in return. (It's worth noting that he was pretty much marked as a Satanist from the day he was born — his birthdate is 6 June 1966, which made his 40th birthday 06/06/06.)
- Recent media has shown that there was quite a price to pay. Turns out the devil came back to pick up his payment, but wasn't too particular about who he took to Hell, snatching guitarist Noodle in lieu of Murdoc.
- But not even Beezelbub is allowed to jeopardize the fame and fortune the band brings to Murdoc, so he went down to Hell and tracked Noodle down and rescued her. It also doesn't hurt to mention that she's his Morality Pet.
- The Trans-Siberian Orchestra Rock Opera Beethoven's Last Night is based on a variation/inversion of this trope, as Mephistopheles offers to return a dying Ludwig van Beethoven's soul — in exchange for which, all of Beethoven's works would be forever erased from history, and his name would never be known to future generations. Of course, the soul wasn't Mephistopheles' to begin with...
- In Jerry Springer: The Opera, angels try to rescue Jerry from Hell, but the demons fight them off, shouting "He made a choice!"
- The Devil Went Down To Georgia, as mentioned above (both on the top of this page and the entry for Guitar Hero III). The song could be considered an inversion of the trope as the "main character" (or as far as a song can have one) actually comes off better after a deal with the Devil and wins a Golden Fiddle in a fiddle contest.
- Though what one would want with a Golden Fiddle is beyond me. I mean, you can't play it, it's too heavy to hold, and his hick parents would probably hock it for cash anyway.
- And that the Devil challenged ''him'', because ''he'' was the one in need. (He was behind schedule.)
- Marc O'Connor hooked up with Charlie Daniels to record a sequel, "The Devil Comes Back to Georgia" in which the Devil challenges Johnny to a rematch. The track featured vocals by Travis Tritt(as the Devil), Marty Stuart(as Johnny) and Johnny Cash(narrating in full preacher-mode). Final score; Johnny, 2, Satan, 0.
- And also Beelzeboss by Tenacious D, the song in earlier mentioned Tenacious D movie, which is arguably a parody of The Devil went Down To Georgia.
- Until the Guitar Hero version, which was so ridiculously Nintendo Hard that the Devil winds up winning most of the time. It actually upset the band because it undermined the message of the song.
- This is the theme of Weber's opera Der Freischütz, in which the Devil sells magic bullets. It was later adapted by Tom Waits into a rock opera, The Black Rider:
Why be a fool when you can chase away
Your blind and your gloom
I have blessed each one of these bullets
And they shine just like a spoon
To have sixty silver wishes
Is a small price to pay
They'll be your private little fishes
And they'll never swim away
- Rapper DMX has the Damien series: a series of songs spanning multiple albums about his Deal With The Devil to get into the hip hop industry, and the increasing demands of the devil for DMX to meet his end of the bargain.
- Snoop Dogg's "Murder Was Tha Case" opens with him being shot and dying in the hospital, only to make a deal with a rhyming devil to get his hood rich lifestyle back. Naturally, he's then arrested and ends the song in prison.
- Kamelot's albums, Epica and The Black Halo are two halves of a Rock Opera based on Goethe's Faust.
- "Red Right Hand", by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, is about this.
You don't have no money, he'll get you some
You don't have no car, he'll get you one
You don't have no self-respect, you feel like an insect
Well, don't you worry, buddy, 'cause here he comes
- Brilliantly subverted by Frank Zappa in his song "Titties And Beer", about a biker who calls the devil's bluff. Apparently, you're not supposed to want to sell your soul.
Tabletop Games
- Used in Dungeons And Dragons, where demons and devils can be summoned, and make pacts with mortals. Notable in that they CAN, in fact, grab your soul and run if you mess up the pentagram, and if you forget 'Promise not to kill me when you're done' in the contract, you are in trouble.
- There's also a demon named Pazuzu who gives a wish in exchange for going one step closer to Chaotic Evil on the alignment chart.
- The book "Fiendish Codex 2: Lords of the Nine Hells" actually deals alot with how devils do those Faustian deals. Devils have rules they must follow for contracts (they can't directly force someone into making a deal, for example) and hell even has it's own appeal court run by a pit fiend for souls who believe their contracts was not fulfilled lawfully. And yes, while very hard assed (You better know infernal law real well to win there) said court actually works, meaning that if you are right and can plead better than the devil who made a deal with you, you can win your soul back. Because devils get your soul if you are Lawful Evil when you die, not all contracts require your soul as payment, quite a few contracts will simply require the mortal to do a series of actions that will eventually make him Lawful Evil. This method has the advantage of not giving the mortal a chance to go to court for his soul once in hell (since he's there not because of the deal, but because of his alignment).
- Fourth Edition brings us the warlock class, who make pacts with extradimensional entities for magical knowledge. One of the possible pacts they can enter into is with a demon. Strangely, this does not automatically mean that they're evil.
- A variation occurs in Mage: the Awakening, with the beings known as the acamoth. The acamoth make deals with mages (and possibly other mortals) whereby they consent to allow the acamoth to enter their souls and Mind Rape them. If the mage survives with their sanity reasonably intact, the acamoth are obliged to grant them powers. The acamoth are noted to not have much interest in souls which are already corrupt, and are generally concerned with inscrutable, long-term goals (ie, conquering reality), which means they will rarely take a soul outright (a comparison is made to financial investment).
- Also toyed with in Changeling The Lost. A Changeling or True Fae can bind a human to a Pledge, offering money, power, or other benefits in exchange for various favors - but most Changelings, due to the importance of contracts and pledges among the fae, are geniuses at twisting the meanings behind the words of their pledges. Not only that, but an agreement with the True Fae has a better-than-average chance of ending in the human kidnapped and subjected to Mind Rape in the True Fae's Arcadian realm. Best case scenario: he escapes as a Changeling. Worst case? you don't want to know.
- Basically anyone that turns to chaos in Warhammer 40000: Khorne can bestow martial prowess, Tzeentch can make a person a lot more cunning (not to mention the sorcery!), Slaanesh makes a person more desirable, interesting and charismatic, and Nurgle's followers have their lifespans increased by a significant amount. Now, occasionally, these pacts work out, with the people becoming immortal and all powerful daemon princes, but usually each of the gods will screw them over in their own way: Khorne's followers end up becoming mindless killers, and he doesn't even care if they die, so long as someone does. Tzeentch's followers will end up power-hungry and paranoid, and he will usually betray them as part of his ongoing Xanatos Roulette. Slaanesh's followers become addicted to pain and drugs, eventually turning into mindless monsters (although this can happen to followers of any god i.e. chaos spawn,) and Nurgle's followers end up with constant, horrible pain because of the diseases he bestows upon them.
- Can also be done in the WH 40 K RPG, although it may be hard to keep concealed from teammates...
- Works in Warhammer Fantasy just the same way. (They are the same gods after all, so no surprise here.) A noteworthy example of a really bad Faust comes from the Mortheim game. Nicodemus asked a Changer of Ways (Greater Deamon of Tzeentch) to become the greatest wizard of the Old World. Guess what he got. He discovered an antidote though but he is already quite tall and has to make the antidote regularly. The main ingridient being warpstone, solidified Chaos energy and quite rare.
- Mutants And Master Minds has one in the form of Mr. Infamy, who looking to make this kind of deal. It doesn't matter if it's a normal Joe, a superhero or a supervillain.
Theater
Video Games
Web Comics
- Subverted / inverted in a storyline of Fans!: The villain, who had sold his soul to Satan for power and the chance to become a hero to humanity, manipulated Rikk into traveling to an otherworldly realm and also selling his soul to protect his friends and thus get Rikk under his power. However, the villain's plan was flawed in that he had not considered that (a) each individual person encountered the realm — and the entity within that realm — in a different way depending on who they were, and that (b) Satan was not the only celestial being interested in doing deals for souls; Rikk, being a genuinely selfless person interested only in protecting his loved ones, actually sold his soul to The Big Guy Upstairs, thus enabling him to defeat the villain.
- See this Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal strip
- According to Something Positive Alan Moore gained his writing abilities from the Devil. The deal was Moore stopping beating the Devil up during school.
- Ray Smuckles of Achewood gains his musical talent (and, arguably, a heap of his subsequent successes) through one of these, but the consequences don't come about until over a year later.
- The To Hell And Back sequence there also references the Robert Johnson folk-tale. Also, Ray falls ass backwards into money like a pig into mud, it ain't even a thing.
- Used, abused, and put away wet on Sluggy Freelance.
- One of the earliest strips has Riff and Torg making a deal with the devil for beer and pocket change. Luckily, the devil is short on coins.
- Gwen, oh, Gwen, where do we even begin?
- Riff's deal with Hereti Corp fits.
- Spoofed during the Vampires arc when Torg suggests the vampires should stop sneaking around and just openly sell vampirism.
Lysinda: "Foolish Mortal... do you really think humanity would give up its immortal soul forever just to look good?" Thinks about it Lysinda: "Sylvia..." Sylvia: "Informercials, next quarter, check."
- Most of Chapter 56 falls into this pretty perfectly...
- Clare's backstory in No Rest For The Wicked. She can tell the people feel guilty about their children because they look like her parents did after her father accidentally sold her to the devil — and never tried to give back the money.
- Xkcd was all over this as a way to make fun of End-User License Agreements. [1]
- Vaarsuvius of Order of the Stick fame tries to get one of these deals to get enough power to save his/her family. Subverted in that the powerful beings that show up to discuss the deal don't actually want V's soul's eternal damnation and act in a shocked way when V suggests that. "Oh no no no no! How would THAT be fair?" Instead, they want control of V's soul for a sharply limited time at a later point - and, not stated outright but presumed, while V's still alive. Which is arguably even worse, given the potential ramifications of having a high-level wizard directly controlled by paragons of Evil in a crucial moment. And to them, V's just a bonus. The real payoff is proving that the factions of evil can cooperate, so that they may storm the upper planes and end the war of Good vs. Evil once and for all.
- "I...I must succeed".
- Keep in mind that these fiends ARE trying to get V's soul; a few comics later they point out that all the evil acts that V is racking up are by V's own choice, and they are making V more "evil-aligned", away from the original true neutral. (See, you can talk about an unknown gender person without inventing pronouns.)
- Sinfest begins with this...
- Parodied here in Sandra And Who.
- College Roomies From Hell has the devil as a main antagonist. There are two student satanists (Steve and Waldo); it is unclear what they "sold" to obtain it, but they gain certain magical powers (or perhaps hallucinations thereof) from the devil. Eventually, Mike makes a deal with the devil to protect his loved ones at the cost of being controlled by the devil for ten minutes at an unspecified later time. Much later, this leads directly to him cheating on his fiancee to allegedly conceive the antichrist, the disintegration of his entire circle of friends, and his fatal stabbing. Although He Got Better.
Western Animation
Other
- Spoofed in the Chilean folk tale "El roto que engañó al diablo (The poor man who tricked the Devil)", where a young Unlucky Everydude seals one of these deals but, as a proof, he writes it down with his blood on a small paper... writing it such a tricky manner that, every time the Devil came to get him, the "tecnhicalities" wouldn't let him ensnare the man's soul and had to give up.
- Yes, this (American) troper remembers a bit of the story. One technicality was a dice game, the devil scored higher, but the mortal is able to roll the dice into a cross (two threes), and prevents the devil from taking his soul (it's been over a decade, correct my if I'm wrong).
- A similar Irish story, An Cearrbhach Mac Cába ("Mc Cabe the Gambler") features the same type of trickery, e.g. he asks to live until a candle burns down... and then blows out the candle so it never goes down. He asks to be allowed live to say a prayer ... and then delays making the prayer indefinitely. (The villain is Death, not the Devil, but behaves as the stereotypical Devil does.)
- The first page quote spoofs the fact that end-user licence agreements do make you click "I Agree" to a lot of legal Techno Babble that most people don't bother reading and most who try don't understand. Subverted in that, for this exact reason, there's doubt over whether they're actually legally binding.
Real Life
- There has been a few attempts of people selling their souls on eBay. Known examples include electronic musican Moby, who put his up as a Take That to critics who felt he "sold out".
- eBay has, perhaps unsurprisingly, banned this practice, prohibiting the sale of items whose existence cannot be verified and deleting such listings as soon as they're discovered.
"If the soul does not exist, eBay could not allow the auctioning of the soul because there would be nothing to sell. However, if the soul does exist then, in accordance with eBay's policy on human parts and remains, we would not allow the auctioning of human souls."
- In Latvia, a country hard hit by the 2007-9 economic crisis, the Kontora loan office is lending people money at high interest rates if they agree to use their souls as collateral. So far, about 200 people have taken Viktor Mirosiichenko up on his offer. They don't employ any debt collectors either...
Mirosiichenko: "If they don't give [the money] back, what can you do? They won't have a soul, that's all."
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