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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

"Do you fear death? Do you fear that dark abyss? All your deeds laid bare; all your sins punished? I can offer you... an escape."
Davy Jones, Pirates Of The Caribbean: the Dead Man's Chest

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:
  1. Ask devil for something he can't do or destroys him what makes entire deal pointless.
  2. Make Logic Bomb, Infinite Loop etc. For example if devil asks to give him your soul after death, you can wish for immortality.
  3. It may be possible to gain enough power to prevent evil from enforcing you to keep promise or just kill him.
  4. Use your new power to annoy underworld so much that your deal gets nullified.
  5. If wish is already wasted, then someone else is required to Fight Fire With Fire by engaging in to new contract and defeating devil.
  6. 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?
  7. 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
  • John Constantine, of The DCU and Vertigo Comics, has a reputation of usually being able to get the upper hand in Infernal Contracts, earning him the irritation of Heaven and Hell. Most notably, he sold his soul to all three archdemons, meaning he can't die until they've resolved who actually gets it. Being Archdemons, they aren't inclined to compromise, and the only alternative is open war between them - something they are very keen to avoid.
    • At some point, though, the First of the Fallen discovered that God had lied to him to keep a power balance in Hell, and he then destroyed his "brothers." However, he is later killed by Constantine's succubus buddy. Apparently, though, He got better
  • Literally the case of Ghost Rider of the Marvel Universe and Spawn. In the movie adaption of Ghost Rider, Mephistopheles plays a little hard and loose with the rules in order for the plot to portray Johnny Blaze more sympathetically. He pricks Johnny's finger while Johnny is just looking the contract over (and thus did not give clear, informed consent), and the splash of blood counts as a deal. He then cures Johnny's father's cancer, but kills said father the very same day via a motorcycle accident.
  • In The Sandman "Season of Mists" arc, Lucifer criticizes this trope:
    "They talk of me going like a fishwife come market day, never stopping to ask themselves why. I need no souls. And how can anyone own a soul? No. They belong to themselves... They just hate to have to face up to it."
  • Visual Novel Animamundi: Dark Alchemist has a nice variation on this, where the lead character sells his soul in exchange for his sister's life after she was attacked by a monster in the woods. Not only was Mephistopheles the one who attacked her in the first place, he did so because she had sold her soul to him a little while earlier in exchange for her brother's life. Naturally, Mephistopheles is quite pleased with himself for that one.
    • There is also a subverison in that game. Dr. Bruno Glening wants a deal with Mephistopheles, but Mephisto finds Bruno so repulsive that he rejects every attempt, and it has gotten to the point where he even refuses to answer the man's summons.
  • Subverted by Thanos in Marvel's The Infinity Crusade. Mephisto offers a key piece of information in subduing the Goddess in exchange for one of her cosmic containment units. When Mephisto later returns after the conflict has concluded to collect his payment, he decides to test his new toy against Thanos, only to realize that it is powerless. Thanos then clarifies that, while he had honored their agreement by providing Mephisto with a unit, it was never specified that he wanted one that functioned.
  • In The DCU Crisis Crossover Underworld Unleashed lots of villains (and a few Anti Heroes) sell their souls to the demon Neron in exchange for additional powers. (Well, most of them. The Joker did it for a box of Cuban cigars.) Many find that the gifts have nasty side effects. The demon's ultimate plan was to corrupt, and then buy, the soul of Captain Marvel. When Cap selflessly offers his uncorrupted soul in exchange for nothing but the safety of his friends, Neron has no choice but to accept the deal, even though Captain Marvel had offered exactly what Trickster had told him, and so was safe: Neron could not collect if there was nothing in the bargain for the other person.
    • In a later story, Kid Red Devil, a former C-List sidekick, is offered super powers by Neron so that he can join the Teen Titans. He is allowed to keep his soul as long as his trust in his hero, Blue Devil, isn't broken, otherwise he loses his soul to Neron when he turns twenty. Naturally, things don't work out; in a Call Back to Underworld Unleashed Neron immediately tells him that his aunt's death was the result of the deal between Neron and Blue Devil.
    • Later, the Trickster himself offers Neron a bargain to protect his ex-girlfriend's son and the rest of the Rogues' Gallery. He asked for nothing for himself, for the same protection. Fortunately, he only later did the arithmetic for the son's age.
  • A light-hearted parody. In the Hong Kong comic The World of Lily Wong the hero worked for a deeply immoral advertising agency named Faust Associates whose logo was a devil.
  • The recent Spider-Man arc 'One More Day' involves Spider-Man allowing Mephisto, the Marvel Universe's version of Satan to save his Aunt May's life in exchange for undoing his marriage to the woman he loves, thus wiping away the last twenty years of his life. For numerous reasons, many Spider-Man fans consider this particular entry to be a Wall Banger, and not a small one at that.
  • The main character of Jack of Fables has been selling his soul to a series of devils since he was in his twenties, gaining another hundred years of life every time he does it. Unfortunately for him, Fables are immortal anyway, so he wasn't gaining anything from it.
  • Subverted in an early story arc of James Robinson's Starman for DC where a demonic poster stole the souls of whoever looked at it. The demon offered to return the souls of all he had taken if Starman, the Shade and Matt O'Dare gave up theirs. They agreed and the people were freed but they kept their souls because the demon stated that part of the rules in such bargains was that he couldn't keep a soul offered in a purely selfless act.
  • The XXXenophile story "Demonstration of Affection".
  • Sistah Spooky's backstory in Empowered is a subversion. The deal she cut when she was her high school's Butt Monkey was only for beauty, but her caseworker screwed up the paperwork and she got Fearsome Arcane Might as a bonus.
  • A variant occurs in the Sleepwalker comics, where the demonic genie Mr. Jyn manifests on Earth by pretending to serve a human "master" and get back at those who wronged him, only to manipulate him into letting Mr. Jyn cause more and more mayhem until the demon is released in the process.
  • Subverted (twice) in the novel Superman: Miracle Monday:
    • After Lex Luthor accidentally releases a demon from Hell named Saturn on Earth, the demon offers him a bargain... except it turns out it was really Superman in disguise, tricking Luthor into revealing where the Hell portal was located.
    • Saturn tries to get get Superman to break his no-killing vow (to morally break him down) by possessing an innocent girl, then telling the hero the only way to stop him from further ruining the World would be to kill her. However, Superman refuses, even if it means the two would be locked in eternal combat. It turns out that by refusing, Superman actually won a wish from the demon (the rules governing demons demanded it) and Superman uses it to return everything to normal.
  • Subverted in the Spider-Man comics in the 1990s by the Jason Macendale Hobgoblin, a B-list villain who had been struggling to increase his powers. During a demonic invasion of New York, Macendale seeks out the demons' leader and offers to trade his soul for power. In a ghoulishly ironic twist, the demon openly laughs at the idea, considering Macendale's soul to be too pitiful to be worth taking, but goes ahead and gives Macendale the power of a demon anyway, just for making him laugh. Macendale's additional power made him a more formidable opponent, even coming close to killing Spider-Man on a couple of occasions, but it also ended up making him go Ax Crazy and turning him into a fanatical Knight Templar. Macendale wasn't exactly a Butt Monkey, but no matter what he tried to do to increase his powers, he just couldn't catch a break...
    • And then he got turned into a cyborg. And THEN he got killed by the original Hobgoblin... only for said orignal Hobgoblin to immediately retire and not do anything ever again.
  • Brilliantly subverted by the Black Panther, the Marvel Comics hero. The Black Panther pledged his soul to Mephisto (yes, that Mephisto) in exchange for Mephisto agreeing to depower an enemy of the Panther's that he had given great demonic power to. Mephisto lived up to his end of the bargain, and so did the Panther...but when Mephisto tried to claim the Panther's soul, Mephisto found that it was linked to the souls of the Panther God and every single previous Black Panther warrior in existence, whose sheer goodness threatened to destroy him. Mephisto requested that the Black Panther agree to release him from the pact, and the Panther agreed. This is probably one of the only cases where the Devil is the one who asks that the contract be voided.
  • Subverted by Mephisto again in Universe X, when he offers Captain America a device that can spirit him away to an extratemporal limbo any time he's in danger of dying. In fact, Mephisto is counting on Cap rejecting it; the real temptation is for the Captain to reject offers of help and depend on his own abilities to a fault. He dies shortly thereafter, nearly derailing Mar-Vell's plan to defeat Mephisto and Death (and when Cap bats the device away, it activates and sets another temporal Xanatos Gambit in motion). That Mephisto guy is getting Dangerously Genre Savvy about this sort of thing....
  • In The Sandman, Morpheus made a deal with Shakespeare: in return for bringing out Shakespeare's own latent creativity, Will would write two plays centering around dreams. The first of these is performed for The Fair Folk (A Midsummer Night's Dream) as something of a gift from Morpheus to Titania. At first glance it seems like a real bargain. However, the last panel of the story implies that the Fae queen Titania's interest in Shakespeare's son Hamnet lead to the boy's death soon after the play was performed for the Fae. The second play is The Tempest, written just before Shakespeare died, and is implied in the comic to be about Morpheus himself. After Shakespeare delivers the second play, Morpheus even tells Will what his life would have been like if he had never made the deal.
    Morpheus: You would have written a handful of other plays, in quality no better than, say, The Merrye Devil of Edmonton, and then you would have come home to Stratford. You would have taught school, saved a little money. You would have bought a house, let it out, and bought another. You would have made your money in bricks and mortar—enough for your family's coat of arms, enough to make them forget your father's setbacks. You would not have been satisfied with your life; and, from time to time, you would have bored your children with the tales of your years in London, your days on the stage.
    William: And my boy Hamnet. Would he have lived?...No. Do not tell me. I have already heard too much.
  • Dream and his sister Death also makes a deal with one Robert Gadling - Death will not touch him unless he truly desires it. However, the payment that Dream gets from it isn't anything more substantial than fulfilling his curiosity, and a standing appointment with a friend once every century.
  • In Hack Slash a wannabe rocker named Jeffrey Brevard ("Six Sixx") sells his soul and the souls of his band to an entity he thinks is the Devil (its not) in exchange for fame and fortune (and demonic powers). As apart of the deal he also has to supply his benefactor with virgins for... breeding purposes. Also, Elvis apparently got his talent from the same entity.
  • In The Warlord Deimos, who'd been reduced to a head on a hand by that point, makes a deal with The Evil One to restore his body, as payment the Evil One takes Deimos' magic skill, which Deimos needs to fight the Warlord.

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
  • Subverted in Persona 3; the contract the main character signs with Pharos in the opening sequence practically screams Deal With The Devil — but despite granting the main character the services of the slightly creepy Trickster Mentor Igor, the contract in itself has no negative repercussions (it turns out to be implicitly vital in saving the world, in fact).
  • In Mask of the Betrayer, the expansion pack to Neverwinter Nights 2, at one point you have to free a wizard who struck a deal with the devil and 'just signed it'. This troper remembers fondly how the resulting conversation and comment options while you comb the fine print of the contract and question both the devil and the wizard about it are close to being the most hilarious in the game.
    • Played straight in the Original NWN 2 campaign by Ammon Jerro, who made a deal with the devil Levistus, and by Oronock and Thael'ka, the soul-dealing merchants in Mask of the Betrayer. Subverted by Mephasm, who rejects buying your soul if you offer to sell it to him, and only seems interested in trading magical artifacts.
  • Used straight in Guitar Hero III, with your agent Lou.
    • In both forms. Not only does the small print state that "Your soul is mine", but you can attempt an ordeal to recover it. The song used for that final battle? The Devil Went Down To Georgia, of course (quoted up top).
  • After failing a Demonic Possession of the main character in Soul Nomad And The World Eaters, Gig, who is now fused to your soul, offers the main character a Deal With The Devil: He'll lend you some of his divine powers in return for limited control of your body, allowing you to create your army. During certain points in the story, he'll offer you better access, granting you incredible powers that will allow you to grind whoever you're facing into fine powder... But once you're done with said grinding, you get a Non Standard Game Over as Gig uses that access to boot your soul out of your body and takes it for himself.
  • Riku, from Kingdom Hearts. Also, Cloud Strife, with Hades.
    • Subverted with Auron, who is offered a deal to get out of Hell, and refuses, and then gets out anyways.
    Auron: "This is My story, and you're not part of it."
  • Subverted early on in Shadow Of Destiny: Eike assumes that the Homunculus is after his soul, but Homunculus isn't interested. One possible ending double subverts this, implying that the only reason Homunculus doesn't want Eike's soul is that he already owns it.
  • In Dark Cloud Seda makes a deal with a Robed man, by infusing the blood of witches in him, he would gain immense Magical power to aid him in winning the war he was in to protect his kingdom, however there was a price: When his hatred and sorrow peaked; the Dark Genie was born.
  • Lillet Blan ascends to Magnificent Bastardhood by making complete mockeries of Grim Grimoire's two Big Bads, both of which had only been sealed before since they were too powerful to defeat. She does this by abusing a very big loophole — on HER side — in a Deal With The Devil, a loophole which Hell's lawyers are probably going to need to add to the standard contract in the future...
    • In case you didn't know, she just conned one Big Bad into killing the other Big Bad, then sold her soul to the surviving Big Bad for one wish, in a contract that is only breakable if the demon volunteers to be sucked back to Hell and tortured for eternity. Her wish? She asks the demon to embrace God.
      Grimlet: (realizing to his horror that he'd just been suckered by a little girl) Mephistopheles... is this your doing?
      Advocat: No. But, I so wish that it was.
  • Kazuya Mishima in Tekken survives being thrown to a cliff because he literally made a Deal With The Devil to give him strength so he can take revenge on his dad Heihachi.
  • In The Neverhood, Klogg offers you Hoborg's crown. You probably shouldn't take it.
  • Kitami from Bible Black made a deal with Satan for more power after the brutal deaths of the witchcraft club summoned him. However, her soul will be sent to Hell after 13 years. She spends the next 13 years looking for a way out, and discovers that if her soul switches bodies with a virgin's on Walpurgis Night, then the unfortunate victim will go to Hell instead of her.
  • Richter Abend from Tales Of Symphonia Dawn Of The New World made a deal with demons for unholy power with which to avenge his best friend. The price? Avenging his best friend, as the killer is the seal that keeps the demons from invading.
  • In Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, Dr. Doom trades Nightcrawler and Jean Grey for a Plot Coupon as part of his Chain Of Deals to steal Odin's power. The players eventually reach Mephisto, but have to beat him up to proceed. No deals allowed.
  • In Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, mages sometimes entice spirits to enter their bodies, giving them great power... for a price, of course... Such mages are called Spirit Charmers, for obvious reasons. While the spirits themselves are not diabolical, the effects of charming one are. (Supposedly...)
  • Deliciously subverted in Planescape: Torment with Fjull Forked-Tongue, a devil who tried to tempt a fallen angel with a deal... Only to find that said angel was considerably defter at contract manipulation than he, with the end result being that he's forced to be good for as long as he and the angel remain alive (both are, naturally, immortal). It goes without saying that when you meet him, he's not having a happy existence.
    • Played straight in the same game should the Nameless One come across the Grimoire of Pestilential Thought. It offers rather cynical wisdom such as "There are two secrets for becoming truly powerful. The first is to never tell anyone everything you know." But, it can teach you powerful spells, at a price. It starts off just wanting a drop of your blood, but it then demands you sell one of your party members into slavery. Finally, in exchange for "Power Word: Kill", you must murder another one of your party members.
    • Also, Deionarra effectively sold her soul to the Nameless One, leaving her a ghost near the Fortress of Regret.
    • For that matter, the reason why the Nameless One is immortal to begin with is a gone-wrong deal with the night hag Ravel Puzzlewell.
  • Castlevania 64 offers a very interesting variation. In the Villa, the heroes encounter a demon salesman called Renon who offers his service for the hefty price. However he neglects to mention that spending more than 30000 gold in his shop equals to selling your soul to the devil, in which case Renon will be more than eager to claim his fee when the time comes.
  • In Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark, the Valsharess hasn't to her own mind even made a deal with the devil, but simply made him her servant (somehow). However, considering he is an archdevil literally called Mephistopheles, she should have known it was not going to end well. There are rules, whatever they may be, and eventually he uses the player character to manipulate her to break them enough that he can bend the bounds of her control and have her killed. Then, since he now happens to be in the material world, he sets out to conquer it. Later, he may simply talk the player's companions into joining him before the final encounter.
  • Shadow Hearts has as a major plot point in Covenant that mortals can make pacts with the three most powerful demons in that universe: Amon, Asmodeus, and Astaroth. Doing so will, of course, allow the demons to eventually hollow out your soul and take up residence... but Yuri Hyuga, who has the pact with Amon, is in no danger because he has beaten Amon into submission.
  • The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess starts with Link being recruited by a a wicked-looking Imp who will help you rescue your friends in return for retrieving three forbidden artifacts sealed away by Hyrule's light spirits. Subverted — the imp may look wicked, but she isn't. Well, not much
    • The game also has a variant on this in Zant, who sells his allegiance to Ganondorf in exchange for the latter's help in usurping the throne of the Twilight Realm. Zant, mistakenly believing Ganondorf to be a god, can't be killed as long as the immortal thief-lord lives, but in exchange for the Twilight throne, Ganondorf forces Zant to turn his people into monsters and invade Hyrule. (Zant didn't really need much persuasion on that matter, though.)
      • In the end, this deal backfires on Ganondorf when he tries to reach out to Zant for power to save him from dying, but a dissilussioned Zant opts to kill himself instead by snapping his own neck, taking Ganondorf with him.
  • Not sure how on earth this managed to get avoided being mentioned. In Godof War this was what the whole plot was based around. Kratos makes a deal with Ares to save his life. Then Ares does all bad things. Killing ensures.

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
  • Ghost Busters episode about chicken hater, where he asks for power to get rid of chickens. Then sends them all into hell making it looks more like chicken farm, what make so much problems for devils that they prefer to nullify the deal.
  • A literal example from the fourth season of Teen Titans, where Slade makes a deal with Trigon to help him make sure Raven fulfills the prophecy of the end of the world in exchange for Trigon giving him his flesh and blood back.
    • Sort of odd that Slade would even want his flesh and blood back, considering the world would literally be reduced to a ball of ash and lava. What's the point of living in a world that's completely inhospitable to life?
    • Well A)., undeath is usually considered to be quite an uncomfortable condition, and B). Slade probably intended to depose Trigon anyway, as its not in his nature to play second fiddle to anyone for long.
    Slade: For the record, I'm nobody's servant.
    • Trigon never ends up giving his flesh and blood back, so Slade sides with the Titans to undo everything Trigon's done.
  • In Kim Possible Monkey Fist makes a deal with a kung fu god called Yono in order to take Ron's baby. When he fails Yono has him turned to stone.
  • Spoofed on The Simpsons in "The Devil And Homer Simpson", where Homer sells his soul for a doughnut, but gets it back through The Power Of Love; when he married Marge, he promised to be hers, body and soul, forever.
    • Played straight in "Bart Sells His Soul", in which he sells his soul (a piece of paper with "Bart Simpson's Soul" written on it) to Milhouse for $5, so he can buy some growing dinosaur sponges. Over the course of the episode, however, he begins to have bad dreams and notice that the world around him seems to not recognize him, so he tries to get his soul back. Unfortunately, Milhouse sold Bart's soul to Comic Book Guy for Pogs, and he then sold it to someone "very interested in that soul." After giving up, Lisa surprises him by revealing that she bought it, and gives it to him. Bart then tears the paper into little pieces and eats them.
  • Sent up in the Futurama season 4 finale "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings":
    Bender: You may have to metaphorically make a deal with the devil. And by "devil", I mean the Robot Devil. And by "metaphorically" I mean get your coat.
    • Also milked for laughs in "Hell is Other Robots", when the Robot Devil challenges Leela to the classic fiddle contest. While he delivers a vicious performance (using two bows, no less), Leela lets off a few screeching notes, then bangs him over the head with the (golden) violin and escapes.
    • And once more with Bender in "The Beast with a Billion Backs" - [[spoiler:Bender wants a robot army to take over the world, and the Robot Devil will give it to him - in exchange for his firstborn son. We then cut to Bender picking up a child robot, taking it back to hell, and punting it into a smelter - the Robot Devil then says that that disgusted even him!
  • The Robert Johnson story is parodied on Metalocalypse; the band meets with the "Blues Devil" for the purpose of selling their souls in exchange for mastery of the blues, but through their expertise in contract negotiation bargain him down to a $5 Hot Topic gift card.
  • In Disney's version of the Hercules story, Herc makes a deal with Hades that actually has negative effects on him, although it does save one of his companions.
  • The Disney version of The Little Mermaid is a classic example; Ariel is given legs with which to try to win the love of a prince, but at the cost of her voice, which was actually the thing he found most attractive about her to begin with.
    • The original version of Wilde's comeback to this, The Fisherman and His Soul, features a character who wants to marry a mermaid but can't because he has a soul and she doesn't. Now who could relieve him of this unwanted soul?
    • While the voice-for-legs exchange did happen in the original Hans Christian Andersen story (albeit, a little more gruesomely. Ursula cut out her tongue), the Deal With The Devil significance was added by Disney. Andersen's original story was probably based on the myth of the Undine, a female water spirit who does not have a soul but can gain one by marrying a mortal man (and maybe bearing his child as well, depending onthe version). This makes the original story a reversal of the trope, in a way. The Little Mermaid gives up a 300-year life expectancy not just for a chance at love, but also the chance to gain an immortal soul.
  • In the My Little Pony episode "Bright Lights," Erebus offered to make Knight Shade famous, in exchanged for "a little cooperation" - letting Erebus and his underling steal the shadows of his audience.
  • Darkwing Duck's banned episode shows why the Devil can't "take the soul and run" — Beelzebub doesn't inform Gosalyn of the price of the "easy magic" he gives her (her father's soul), so the contract is invalid, and he loses his victim.
  • Spoofed on Family Guy when Peter says he'd sell his soul for the chance to take a tour of the Pawtucket Patriot Ale brewery. The Devil is eager for the opportunity, but then one of his assistants checks through Hell's computer archives and points out that Peter already sold his soul in the 1970s for Bee Gees tickets, and again in the 1980s for half a Malomar. An annoyed Devil wonders where he can get a lawyer, and half of Hell's population immediately volunteers for the job.
  • In the Pinky And The Brain Halloween episode, the devil offers Brain the world in exchange for his soul. Brain refuses because he's angry about being called a failure, but later finds out that the gullible Pinky has been persuaded to sign in his place, in exchange for a "radish rose watchamahoozit." However, the devil is forced to release Pinky when it turns out that he doesn't even know what one is.
  • Occurs twice in the second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. In the first, colonist C.F. Volpehart makes a deal with an eldritch horror-ish entity in order to obtain riches; while the terms are never specified—souls are never mentioned—the fact that Volpehart eventually regrets the decision and longs to kill the beast is evidence that he clearly lost something in the bargain. The second occurs to the original Oroku Saki, who agrees to bond with a dying demon in exchange for physical god status—a deal which, given everything, turned out quite well for Saki.
  • An episode of Batman The Brave and the Bold has Batman travelling back in time to Victorian England in an attempt to stop Gentleman Jim Craddock from releasing an imprisoned demon in exchange for immortality. Craddock succeeds in his attempt before Batman and his allies manage to reseal the demon, but Craddock realizes he's been betrayed when he's hanged for attempted murder and comes back as an undead ghost that can never pass into the afterlife. Now calling himself the Gentleman Ghost, the enraged and probably insane Craddock blames Batman for his plight (despite Batman warning him about what would happen if he went through with his deal with the demon), and swears revenge on him. Hence why the Ghost has been the lead villain in no less than three epsiodes so far, while Hawkman (his Arch Enemy who was originally involved with his origin in the comics) has yet to appear.
  • Class of 3000 had one in the form of Lil D signing a record contract to an obviously devil looking producer (the guys even had henchmen who look liked snakes). However all of Lil D gigs were nothing more then just being used to sell hams. Sunny, the producer's real target whom turned him down frequently, challenges the producer to a series of contests (which are suggested by Lil D's friends) which the producer manages win every single time. Eventually Sunny signs with the producer to bail Lil D out. However he manages to get out of it by purposely performing badly, forcing the producer to rip up the contract.

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."