History Main / ImmortalityImmorality

* In ''Film/AvatarTheWayOfWater'' RDA has started hunting Pandora's whale-analogue tulkun for an anti-aging serum in their brains-- despite the biologist on their whaling ship acknowledging that tulkun are even ''more'' intelligent than humans.
* In ''Film/BeforeIHang'', a physician on death row for a mercy killing is allowed to experiment on a cure for aging using a criminals' blood, but secretly tests it on himself. He gets a pardon, but finds out he's become a Jekyll-&-Hyde murderer.
* In the 1992 ''Film/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' movie: "We're immortal...We can do whatever we want."

* ''[[Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000 MST3K]]'' alumnus BMovie ''Film/TheLeechWoman'' features a woman who retains her youth by using an African pollen... and the brainstem juice of the men she's murdered.

* ''Film/MrNobody'', in which society has achieved biological immortality by 2092, and the title character is going to be the last human to die of old age. Pop culture, at least, doesn't come off too well...

** Blackbeard in ''Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbeanOnStrangerTides'' is even more so. His quest for eternal life has more to do with a prophecy that he will die soon. Even then, he's perfectly willing to [[spoiler:trade his daughter's life]] so he can live.
--->'''Blackbeard:''' I'm a bad man.
*** Averted with the Spanish in the same film. For most of the movie, it's implied that the Spanish king wants the secret of immortality for himself. In fact, [[spoiler:the Spaniards have orders to ''destroy'' the Fountain of Youth. Why? Because only God can grant one true immortality in Heaven]].
* In ''Film/{{Selfless}}'', shedding is introduced as a revolutionary way to keep the most important and influential people in the world alive and healthy [[spoiler:but is ultimately revealed to come at a pretty horrible cost -- the healthy bodies being used used to be living people who were coerced into selling themselves. Not only that, but learning this leaves the client in a very difficult position, as the medication used to keep them anchored to the body is slowly erasing the body's former inhabitant.]] The ending shows [[spoiler:Damien willingly dying so Mark can come back to life]] as being a result of him becoming a better person.

* ''Film/StarTrekGenerations''. Soran is so determined to get back to the Nexus (a place of eternal bliss) that he willingly destroys several populated star systems to do so.
* ''Film/StarTrekInsurrection'' takes place on a planet with radiation that makes people living on it eternally young. But the villains are so old they may die before the radiation takes full effect, so they want to collect the radiation and concentrate it, destroying the planet in the process.
* Palpatine's conversations with Anakin in ''Franchise/StarWars: Film/RevengeOfTheSith'' imply that [[AlwaysChaoticEvil the Sith]] are this trope, able to resist or even halt death using techniques and knowledge that the Jedi would consider to be abominable. It's most probably a big pack of lies though (considering he's a ManipulativeBastard attempting to convert Anakin to TheDarkSide), and while the Franchise/StarWarsLegends feature numerous Sith that seek immortality at any cost and a few that come close, none are successful.
** In fact, after Anakin's final turn to the dark side, Palpatine coyly admits that he doesn't actually know the secret to immortality and that he and Anakin will have to discover it together.
*** Palpatine's primary goal is to rule the galaxy for eternity. In ''Franchise/StarWars: Film/TheRiseOfSkywalker'', it's revealed that Palpatine discovered a method of cheating death that involved transferring his spirit into a host body. He survived his death at the end of ''Franchise/StarWars: Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'' by inhabiting the body of a clone, and seeks Rey as a new vessel.

* Another movie featured on ''[=MST3K=]'', ''Film/TheUnearthly'', involves a scientist performing tests on human subjects to activate "the seventeenth gland" and achieve immortality. His experiments have a bad habit of turning his victims into semi-catatonic zombies.
* The evil Alchemist from the film ''Film/{{Vidocq}}'' needs the blood of virgins to make a special type of glass for his mirror mask. Said mask grants him immortality and eternal youth by storing and slowly draining the souls of people who died staring into his mask. So there's a lot of death involved.
* In ''Film/TheWolverine'', [[spoiler: Ichirō Yashida wants to gain immortality by stealing it from someone else. That should be the first clue that he's not a good person. On the other hand, Wolverine's own immorality (or something close to it) isn't presented as anything immoral. But Logan was born that way, rather than gaining it by killing somebody else.]]

* Integral to the main plot of ''VideoGame/Cyberpunk2077.'' The Arasaka Corporation has been working on a solution to human mortality for more than 50 years. Johnny Silverhand was one of many people to have their personalities copied to programs called Engrams, and stored in a virtual prison called Mikoshi. After a heist of a prototype Arasaka biochip goes wrong in the game's first act, [[PlayerCharacter V]] discovers that their personality is being overwritten by the Engram of Johnny that was stored on the chip in their head [[spoiler: when Dexter Deshawn shot them in the head to tie up loose ends]]. It's eventually revealed that the whole point of the experimental Relic chip that V and Jackie tried to steal was to allow an engram of big boss Saburo Arasaka to overwrite another person, destroying that person but giving him a fresh new body. As if that wasn't immoral enough, Johnny makes it clear that 60 years of prototyping and research on the Soul Killer/Relic platform have come at atrocious human cost.

* Discussed in ''Webcomic/OrderOfTheStick'' when Vaarsuvius, [[spoiler:who has the souls of three of the strongest arcane mages in the Lower Planes binded to them,]] picks a fight with Xykon. The lich [[https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0652.html doesn't find this very impressive]] because all the great evil magic-types know they're going to a bad afterlife and there are many options in their world to avoid death altogether.

* In ''Literature/EmpireOfTheVampire'', The older the vampire gets, the more distant their memory of the human experience becomes, until the only thing which still holds value to them is their own unholy existence. As such, by the time vampires reach mediae status, they are essentially completely hollowed out and dedicated only to their own survival. No sin is too heavy, no atrocity too great, if it means the vampire can live to see another night. In the words of Law the Fourth: