Troperville
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Gluttons can't eat or drink in Hell because they ate and drank so much in life. And they are trapped in putrid soil because they produced nothing but garbage in life. And they are being torn apart constantly by Cerberus's three sets of bloody teeth, because Dante is one sick motherfucker.
Black Mage: (Upon dying and going to hell) Wait, if I did evil, and you guys are evil, then shouldn't you be showering me with rewards and concubines?
The Devil: This is hell. We're big on irony here.
But such a talent is worthless in Hell where time doesn't exist. Hell gave me everything I wanted and then changed the rules so that it didn't matter.
Most depictions of Hell involve some form of eternal punishment for the damned souls who are sent there. In Ironic Hell, they get a more personal service. Each sinner gets a punishment that is an ironic reminder of the sins of which he or she is guilty. A glutton might be force-fed something unpleasant for eternity, or might be prevented from eating ever again.
Many examples of Ironic Hell are references to Dante's Inferno (Book 1 of the Divine Comedy), which depicts Hell in this way. It was published in 1314; however, the basic idea goes back even further, to Greek legends of Tartarus.
It may be worth noting that, despite Dante's work being mainly a sociopolitical statement and not supposed to be taken as a literal journey through the afterlife, people still presumed that he knew what he was talking about and have used his often sanctimonious depictions of Hell, what acts are sinful, and how sinful they are, taken directly from his writings.
Your Lit professor would probably call this "Contrapasso" which means "the punishment fits the crime." Translated literally it means "counter-suffering."
Often coupled with Self Inflicted Hell.
Examples
Anime
- In Basilisk, that's what happens to Lady Ofuku in the end. After manipulating Oboro and the Iga Tsubagakure (as the leader of the Takechiyo faction they defended) in a good part of their trials, she was struck REAL hard when Oboro chose to kill herself - half to spare Gennosuke, half to get back at Ofuku and completely destroying her plans. She has a huge Villainous Breakdown after that, and when Hanzou Hattori the Third finds out that Gennosuke has staged the rest to make sure Oboro is proclaimed as the winner before joining her in death, he decides to NOT tell Ofuku for a while, as punishment for her manipulations.
- Basilisk is pretty big on irony. The fat guy is killed when a man jumps down his throat, the attempted rapist is killed when his victim pulls his blood out through his pores, everyone caught by Gennosuke's Dojutsu turns their own violence on themselves, sometimes in impossible ways.
- In Vampire Princess Miyu, the spiritualist Himiko Se believes the aforementioned Dark Magical Girl preys on all of humankind, so she vows to hunt her down. However, at the end of the 4th OAV, Himiko is shocked to discover that she herself is at least part vampire, since she and Miyu exchanged blood when Himiko was a little girl and Miyu had just been appointed as The Guardian. Yikes, Himiko definitely Didnt See That Coming.
- In One Piece, the main heroes are forcibly split up and thrown to different parts of the world. Sanji, the iconic womanizing chef of the crew? Stuck in Kamabakka Kingdom...'Full of Transvestites' Kingdom. Sure, he's not dead, but he's definitely in his own personal hell.
- Dragon Ball Z: When Goku returned to the land of the dead, he asked King Yemma if Dabura (aka King of Demon Realms) had shown up. King Yemma smugly told Goku that since Dabura was a demon, he'd fit well in hell; thus Dabura was sent to eternally suffer in peaceful paradise heaven!
- The Yu-Gi-Oh manga uses this heavily in the first volume, from a greedy bully cursed to see nonexistent money to a corrupt media mogul who twisted the truth having his vision censored with a mosaic. They're not dead, but their punishments are highly ironic and twisted, and to some extent self-inflicted. The anime largely abandoned this though.
Fan Fiction
- In the Good Omens fanfic Its Own Place
 , the angel Aziraphale's personal Hell turns out to be Heaven. The real kicker is that he doesn't even realize he's actually on Hell's torture roster because its version of Heaven is exactly as he remembers it, and he expected to be lonely and miserable there After The End (because Crowley isn't there Heaven is mind-numbingly boring compared to Earth), which makes this overlap with Self Inflicted Hell.
- The short Evangelion story The Case of Lorenz Kihl starts off from the last moments before Instrumentality where Kihl finds himself facing a metaphorical inquest of sorts where he justifies his plans to force human evolution the way he did and thus he only has to head towards the city which represents the final goal he has longed for. The twist is that the very qualities he has in such rich quantities prevent him from ever being able to enter Instrumentality, leaving him alone forever. He took the ironic situation quite well.
- Hilariously done to the Mary Sue in My Immortal by a hacker who got into the author's account.
Film
- One example of a combined Ironic Hell and Self Inflicted Hell is in What Dreams May Come, clearly based on Dante. The protagonist's wife committed suicide, and reflecting the selfish nature of the act, she is essentially trapped in a state of depression, unable to connect with others.
- One of (at least) two possible explanations for the events of Jacob's Ladder is that "If you're frightened of dying, and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. If you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the Earth."
- The film Between Two Worlds posits that everyone goes to the same place when they die, and whether it's hell or heaven depends on whether they're the kind of person that would be happy living a pleasant, wholesome existence. Except for people who commited suicide, who are doomed to staff the cruise ship that carries the rest.
- An unnecessary extra scene in the 1970 musical "Scrooge" which is certainly not taken from the book (and is, in fact, inconsistent with it) depicts Scrooge apparently temporarily going to a hell where he is doomed to play Bob Cratchitt to an as yet unseen Satan in an office as cold as his heart. Oddly enough, this scene is played for *laughs*.
Literature
- A humorous example from the Discworld books is the punishment given to the villain Mr. Pin near the end of The Truth. When he and his (somewhat more sympathetic) partner, Mr. Tulip, are trapped in a burning cellar, he kills Mr. Tulip to use his body as a stepping-stone to escape — "I wasn't born to fry!" — and for good measure steals the potato that Mr. Tulip wears as a talisman, believing it will guarantee him reincarnation instead of eternal punishment. When he meets his own death, Mr. Pin is reincarnated — as a potato, of a variety noted as being good for frying. (Meanwhile, the antique-loving Mr. Tulip is also reincarnated, despite his potatolessness, as a woodworm, living an idyllic life in an antique desk.)
- Eric also played with this one. Hell has recently come under new management, so the traditional punishments get scrapped in favor of mind-numbing eternal boredom. The Sisyphus stand-in has to read a book on the correct manner of rolling rocks up hills, for example. A book consisting of at least 10,000 tomes. Even the demon carrying out the punishment feels sorry for him; in fact, the majority of demons eventually conspire to have the current ruler of Hell Kicked Upstairs into a powerless job because they're sick of inflicting the new punishments.
- Ironically, the lost souls couldn't feel any pain in hell as they had no bodies, leading to a friendly rapport being developed with the demons.
- In Maskerade, a rat catcher is killed, and discovers that he is due to be reincarnated — as a rat. He doesn't even believe in reincarnation, but it's made clear that reincarnation believes in him.
- An example found in poetry that refers to a real-life person, the first verse of Vachel Lindsay's The Congo: A Study of the Negro Race (it's exactly what it sounds like) contains the line, "Listen to the yell of Leopold's ghost, / Burning in hell for his hand-maimed host. / Hear how the demons cackle and yell / Cutting his hands off down in hell." Leopold II, King of Belgium, was the colonizer of the Congo whose occupation and forced labor amounted to a massacre of the natives of that area. Among his laws was that his soldiers had to present a [black] human hand for every bullet they fired as proof of an "enemy" killed. Because it can take more than one bullet to kill a man, somehow it evolved that chopping off a bystander's hand to save one's own skin was preferable to wasting a bullet.
- Tom Holt's Only Human showed us someone who ended up in hell as a result of being a jerk to authors (complaining that their newer stuff wasn't as good as their old stuff, to every author) being forced to read a book that may well be The Colour Of Magic over and over again for the rest of eternity. No matter how good Terry Pratchett is, that's gotta suck.
Live Action TV
- The Twilight Zone episode "A Nice Place to Visit" used this trope. Rocky, an armed robber, is shot and killed by a policeman; upon recovering awareness, he is accompanied by a "guardian angel," Pip, who gives him anything he asks for. Money, women, success at gambling are all his for the taking. After a while, Rocky grows bored of perfection and the lack of any challenge in his afterlife, and asks to be sent to "the other place," whereby Pip responds that "this is the other place."
- Which is parodied in a Futurama episode.
Man: A slot machine? I won! This must be heaven!
plays again and win
Man: I always win. This is boring, I must be in hell!
- Another Twilight Zone example from The Misfortune Cookie features a food critic who revels in the cruelty of his reviews. He makes short work of a Chinese restaurant. They invite him back for another meal to hopefully change his mind. Once he starts eating, he finds himself insatiable. At which point he is presented a fortune cookie which reads: You Are In Hell, and he realizes that perpetual starvation and being served Chinese food only is his damnation punishment.
- Night Gallery did a short skit where a hippie-type (memorably played by John Astin) arrives in Hell, eager to experience the flames. The devil instead seals him in a room which is sort of a horrific cross between a 50's malt shop and a backwoods country store circa 1910. As he departs, the devil idly comments that there is a room just like it up in Heaven.
Mythology
- Tantalus, who fed the gods his own chopped-up son for dinner, was chained to a rock and cursed with unending hunger and thirst; a bunch of grapes hung just above his head, and he stood in waist-deep water, but whenever he tried to reach for these, they would move out of his grasp. (From this, we get the word "tantalizing".)
- Sisyphus was the trickiest Greek, so much so that several times he managed to trick the incarnation of death and/or the gods of the Underworld to avoid dying. When finally taken off to the Underworld for good, he was given a task he couldn't trick or think his way out of: to roll a heavy boulder uphill every day. And at the end of every single day, when he'd finally managed to do it, the boulder would roll back downhill and he'd have to start all over again. The gods might as well have just said "Okay smart guy, try thinking your way out of this one!" (In case you're wondering why Sisyphus doesn't just stop trying to do the impossible, it's stated that his hubris prevents him from admitting defeat.)
- After the events of 9/11 it became well known that Osama bin Laden promised paradise to the martyrs and that one of their rewards would be 40 eternal virgins. This immediately gets picked up as an ironic form of hell (perhaps a result of the salaciousness of the images as opposed to the non-specific Judeo-Christian heaven), since there would be forty extremely beautiful women tantalizing you and yet you couldn't have sex with them lest they lose their virginity (Though the servile implications of the translated word, houri makes this justification dodgy at best).
- There is also the school of thought that says that word is in fact huri which translates as "raisins"... As in a garden of lush fruit... which is nice, but no 72 virgins
- And then the other school of thought that shows suicide bombers surrounded by dozens of40 year old male Trekkies and D & D fans for all eternity. Or male fundamentalists.
- And there's the Robin Williams joke where a suicide bomber gets to Paradise, only to be gang-beaten by George Washington and the Continental Congress. "What's going on?" "Seventy-two Virginians, asshole."
- The Garth Ennis comic 'Wormwood', The protagonists make a visit to heaven. They meet an Islamic martyr who had gone to heaven, and actually received his 72 virgins. So for eternity, he now must feed and clean up 72 babies left in his charge!
- Stand-up comedian/ventriloquist Jeff Dunham pointed this out in a conversation with one of his puppets, the aply-named Achmed the Dead Terrorist. When Achmed talks about getting 72 virgins, Jeff asks if he knows whether they'll be female virgins, and Achmed responds with a shocked exclaimation of "Holy crap! ...On the bright side, I might get Clay Aiken."
Achmed: Out there in the audience is a bunch of ugly-ass guys!
- Walter also has something to say about this: "Seventy virgins? How about 72 slutty broads who know what the hell they are doing?"
- Another comedian (Dennis Miller, I think) also pointed out the "virgins=inexperience=awkward sex" issue. "Eventually, wouldn't you want a woman who knows when to use her teeth?"
- The satirical Dutch newspaper comic Fokke & Sukke pointed out that 72 virgins also means ... 72 mothers-in-law!!
- A religious parable of unknown origin has the protagonist shown a vision of Hell in which everyone is eternally seated at a table filled with delicious-smelling food. However, none of them can eat a bite because they can't bend their elbows (or, in another version, their forks are far too long to reach their mouths). The protagonist then sees a vision of Heaven where the same banquet and same anatomical (or cutlery) restrictions apply, but everyone is feasting happily. Why? Because unlike the people in Hell who think only of themselves, the people in Heaven feed each other. (Depending on your sensibilities, this is either a Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming or a Tastes Like Diabetes Golden Moment.)
Radio
- The radio series Old Harrys Game loves this trope, ranging from the Estate Agents Pit ("well, not so much a pit as a bijou basement property with unrealised potential") to the Enclosure of Eternally Pregnant Popes. Satan considers his own position to be an Ironic Punishment, and a particularly unfair one at that.
Table Top Games
- The Ravenloft Campaign Setting takes place largely inside a series of Ironic Hells (called "domains" with the condemned being a "darklord"); the Powers That Be of the setting seem to take delight in this. For instance, a bloodthirsty conqueror is trapped in a world where he finds every attempt to expand thwarted. A wizard-king who committed unspeakable crimes in order to live forever so he could master all magic did indeed achieve lichdom... but can't learn any new spells. A wererat who murdered her grandfather and intensely distrusts her family also suffers from monophobia: Preferring to keep even enemies around rather than being alone, etc. etc.
Video Games
- A particularly undeserved example of this happens in Disgaea when it is revealed that Laharl's mother committed suicide to save his life. Instead of being rewarded for her sacrifice, the Powers That Be saw fit that she should serve several hundred years as a slave to the very boy she tried to save, who became emotionally stunted and violent after her death. Truly she is Blessed With Suck.
- Then you have Kurtis... basically scientist turned Mad Scientist after The Hero failed to stop the bomb that killed his family. After helping try to kill said hero, brainwashing his sidekick and assist in an invasion of another world he "atones" by reversing said brainwashing at the cost of his life. Thinking that he'll finally see his loved ones in heaven. Guess who later joins your party and is around for a few more games?
- In Afterlife, Hell has structures which condemn people for their most usual of the Seven Deadly Sins. Most are ironic - for example, the Luxury ones remove any sex from the lives of the damned, and the Gluttony ones punish them with eating, from Taco Inferno (even the beverage is hot) to Bahb's All-U-Must-Eat (eat until you explode). The Fluffy Cloud Heaven equivalents reward them for the virtues (i.e. the Humble become famous).
- In the Overlord expansion pack Raising Hell, you encounter some of the Fallen Heroes and their minions you defeated in the course of the regular game in the Abyss levels, suffering appropriate punishments. For example, the gluttonous and greedy halflings are trapped in a world where the pumpkins fight back and sheep explode, while their leader Melvin Underbelly is forced to repeatedly stuff himself until he bursts; the slothful Oberon is forced to watch a mocking, dreadful play detailing the fall of the elves; the perverted, womanizing Sir William is trapped in Lady Land; and the greedy dwarf Goldo is trapped in a gold statue while still conscious.
- Every Malefactor in the original The Suffering that's a specific, discernible figure from Carnate's history is going through an undead Ironic Hell — the soldiers who executed innocent men under the dubious suspicion that they were spies are now a Body Horror-riffic living Firing Squad; the slave traders who ran their ship aground and left their "cargo" to drown or be eaten by rats are now bloated, drowned corpses filled with exploding rats; the girls who levied false accusations of witchcraft that got people burned at the stake are now eternally burning charred corpses. This continues into the second game as well — the Gorgers appear to either be the Depression-era Reverend who fed his followers human flesh when the food ran out, or the soup kitchen attendees so desperate for food they didn't question where it came from until it was too late. Either way, they're now ravenous beasts, capable only of devouring anything — or anyone — they come across.
Webcomics
- The furry webcomic Jack, which is set in both heaven and hell (along with the living world), features this trope prominently. In its Hell, the people who end there are given punishments reminiscent of the way they lived or died, and are often denied memories from their past, making their ironic punishments even more cruel. The titular character is, at the same time, The Grim Reaper and the Anthropomorphic Personification of Rage with Laser Guided Amnesia, whose job, tag and amnesia are all punishment for his former sins from when he was alive. In fact, all the malevolent Anthropomorphic Personifications became that way as a result of their acts and are punished in a way symbolic of the sin(s) they personify; save for the protagonist, they all prefer to see The Punishment as more like a Cursed With Awesome, even if it obviously does not work that way.
- Dresden Codak has a two-part piece in which it is revealed that there is a "secular Heaven", which as its name states is a secular humanist idyll populated by people who refuse to believe in the anthropomorphic deity running the place. Meanwhile, "religious Hell" is populated primarily by fundamentalists of all faiths; when a character notes it makes no sense, the comment is made that God is powered by irony.
- Much like the Dragon Ball Z example above, when Casey And Andy die yet again, Andy is forced to go to Heaven because he is dating Satan and would therefore find Hell no punishment. This is ignoring another death scenario where Satan puts Andy through torture anyway, but...
- In Eight Bit Theater, Thief is killed by Berserker at one point though we later learn that he wasn't actually dead, just very grievously injured and probably only hallucinating. He ends up in his own personal Hell... which possesses every last bit of money, gold, and whatnot in the entire world. Thief is at first elated to be in this predicament, until a Trickster God that had been commissioned to revive him points out the one downside to Thief's situation: He owns everything, so now there's nothing left to STEAL. Thief immediately starts begging the god to get him out of there.
- In Pictures For Sad Children, when Paul finally ends up in Hell, he is continually frustrated at its failure to provide tailored ironic punishments. The closest it comes is that Hell's version of Wikipedia just lists things that you meant to look up, and when you click on them, it says "This information is unavailable and a waste of time." (You can just Google it, though.)
Western Animation
- In the fourth Halloween special of The Simpsons, Homer spends a day in Hell. In the Ironic Punishment Department, Homer is force-fed "all the doughnuts in the world", but much to the annoyance and confusion of the demon torturing him, Homer enjoys the experience.
- The donut sequence is a reference to the early Looney Toons short Pigs Is Pigs, where a young pig who steals a slice of pie dreams he's force-fed to the point of explosion.
- In another episode, Disco Stu gets a vision of Heaven, which is essentially Studio 54 on Earth. Frank Sinatra is there, much to Stu's disbelief, where he says, "For me, this is Hell!"
- Futurama's famous "Robot Hell" musical sequence from the episode "Hell is Other Robots" featured Bender going through several instances of this trope for the various sins he'd committed. For example:
Robot Devil: (singing) Cigars are evil, you won't miss 'em.
We'll find ways to simulate that smell;
What a sorry fella,
Rolled up and smoked like a panatella,
Here on Level One of Robot Hell!
- However, the singing itself is what tortures Bender, not the actual torture.
Comics
- Subverted in Hack/Slash, specifically the crossover with Chucky the Killer Doll. Strawman Religious Laura Lochs puts Chris, Lisa and Skottie Young in her own Hell House, though the punishments just seem randomly chosen and have nothing to do with the characters.
Recording: You shall not lie with a man as with a woman. It is an abomination! If a man lies with a man as a woman, both have committed an abomination, and both shall be put to death.
Skottie Young: (while getting whipped) Ow! Godammit! I'm not even fucking gay!
- Shortly afterwards done much straighter with Six Sixx's fate after failing the Neflords.
Misc
- There's a joke: Joe lived a wild life, so he wasn't surprised to die and go to hell. He finds hinself in a nightclub with no exit. The music is lousy, but he notices all the other patrons have a bottle of booze and a blond gal for company. He comments on how great this looks, and the guy at the nex table says 'Don't be so happy; the bottle has a hole in it; and the blond doesn't!'
- Another one has Bill Gates asked to choose between Fluffy Cloud Heaven and A Hell Of A Time. He takes the latter, but two weeks later he's in Fire And Brimstone Hell. "That was Hell 1.0. This is Hell 95." (Or: "This is the real Hell. That was just the demo version.")
- Or "the screen saver". Bill Gates really attracts this kind of thing.
- Another variant featured George Bush, with the initial form being campaigning, and the actual hell being the results of the vote.
- The oldest version seems to be tourism vs immigration.
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