Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
alt title(s): Soul
One of the big unanswerable questions: whether we have souls. Does it have weight? What happens if it's stolen or sold? Is it Life Energy, or an Energy Being? Does it taste like strawberries or chocolate?
Unable to answer these ominous and delicious questions, authors use fiction to explore some possibilities on how the nature of a soul, and its absence, affects a person. Be warned, just as with a Timey Wimey Ball, a poorly handled soul ecology can quickly degenerate into a lot of Wall Banging.
See also Brain In A Jar, which presents a scientific variation in which the brain either is the self (with no spiritual aspect) or somehow contains the soul.
Here are some common side effects of losing your soul:
- You die.
- You go into a coma.
- You become evil.
- You become emotionless and uncreative, maybe even sterile.
- You become one of The Heartless.
- You become one of The Soulless.
- You act lobotomized.
- You can be easily mind controlled.
- You become an easy target for Demonic Possession.
- You become a Stepford Smiler.
- You become an Empty Shell.
- You lose your reflection. More rarely you may lose external signs of breathing (can't fog up glass, can't blow out a candle, etc.), which is a reference to the Latin word for "breath" (spiritus) and the Hebrew words that mean both "soul" and "breath" (nefesh or ruakh).
- Any of the above, with the additional addendum; "you" are your soul, so your consciousness goes wherever your soul is. (and whether that's a ghost or glowing ball of light is a whole different story.) Meanwhile your body/shell may show the previous symptoms.
- Nothing happens immediately, but you go to Hell when you die.
- Nothing happens immediately, but you go "nowhere" when you die, or worse, cease to exist.
Other aspects of this:
- Whether or not souls can be destroyed.
- Whether the mind and the soul are separate and whether they can be forcibly separated and even divided.
- More generally, whether a soul has distinct component parts.
- Whether robots and such have souls, or can earn them.
- Whether a ghost of a person is their soul or some other aspect of them.
- Whether more than one soul can inhabit a body (and which controls it).
- Whether a soul can eat another one (common with various soul eating demons and villains).
- Whether a soul can be "sold" for power, and who would benefit from this.
- What happens to the soul of characters who are resurrected? Frequently, it Comes Back Wrong.
See also Heart Trauma, where one's literal heart is synonymous with one's soul. If there's more than a soul inside of a person, there's likely a Dream Mirror.
The trope name is entirely self-explanatory. What? What are you laughing at?
Examples:
open/close all folders
- Serial Experiments Lain: Soul, mind, data, it's all the same. We Are All Connected...
- The central premise of Ghost In The Shell, and its sequels, is the exploration of the true nature of souls and minds.
- Bleach has a lot of this; die in the real world, your spirit goes to Soul Society, or you become a Hollow. Get killed after you go to Soul Society or the Hollow world, you're reincarnated back in the real world. Screw up way too badly in life, and you leave the loop - you go to Hell.
- However, given that it's supposed to be of critical importance to maintain a proper balance of souls between Earth and Soul Society (to the point that Soul Society's leaders will go to the lengths of exterminating a clan of basically good humans whose efforts to save the living end up destroying souls of the dead to maintain it), it seems that Hell in Bleach is actually more akin to Purgatory: thoroughly evil souls are sent there to be purified and "recycled" into new souls.
- Or it is more likely since we know Shinigami have noble house and thus can breed if you give birth in soul society you create an new soul to replenish the hell bound and hollow victims.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion has significant plot points that a revolve around the nature of the human soul, which is apparently a required component to make some of the important technology work. And it is apparently possible for a human mind and body to function temporarily without a soul, or a fragment of a soul, but not very well, and not for long. Artificial souls for mech pilots can be used, but they're evil.
- Shaman King: Souls, at first sight, appear to be destroyable, but then it's discovered that every soul is able to be recovered from the Elemental Spirits, since they are fragments of the Greater One, so, the Spirit of Fire doesn't technically burn souls to oblivion, or even eat them, only absorbs these to become stronger.
- In one arc of Yu Yu Hakusho the protagonists encountered a character who had the power to capture a person's soul if the person spoke a certain taboo word. Characters whose souls were taken were frozen in place and glowed with something resembling electricity until the only character who didn't break the taboo won their souls back.
- The Virus in Venus Versus Virus preys on civilians, eating their souls.
- While not literally showing souls, drills in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann are apparently supposed to represent them.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! is terrible with this. Souls can jump/be sucked in and out bodies, millennium items, the Shadow Realm, Virtual Reality games, cards and other lifeless objects; they can float in mid-air, possess other bodies (both with and without the original owner still present, and with or without his permission/knowledge), or even split up into different parts, which can be diametral opposites or identical copies, depending on the situation. The only rule that stands is " 'you' go where your soul is", but (because of the split-ups) some can be in several places at the same time. Bodies without a soul usually go into a coma, unless some other soul comes along for a ride.
- Soul Eater, obviously enough. Weapons are designed to eat souls, but there's a moral code that only the souls of those about to become Kishin are allowed. Eating human souls is a very bad thing. Also, if Weapon and Technician have their souls in sync - Soul Resonance - massive fighting power can be unlocked.
- In the Fullmetal Alchemist anime, souls are what power alchemy. In turn, people actually have a smaller version of the Gate of Alchemy within their own souls, which pulls souls of the dead from a parallel world (read: our real world, circa WW 1) to power alchemy. The Philosopher's Stone is in turn made from condensing a metric ton of souls into one object. This is also why attempts at human transmutation fail and produce Homunculi: equivalent exchange can account for the physical elements that make up a body, but not for the soul. Homunculi are thus soulless abominations, though it's shown that what truly makes them a Homunculus in the end (and gives them their overall life and power) is eating Red Stones, which are lower-power versions of Philosopher's Stones. In the manga, Philosopher's Stones are still made of condensed masses of human souls, but alchemy is powered by other means as the real world does not exist in the manga's universe. Red stones also do not exist in the manga, and the Homunculi are created not by failed human transmutations but with special Philosopher's Stones extracted from the body of Father (who is basically a living Philosopher's Stone).
- It is also established that the act of removing one's soul and attaching it to another person corrodes the soul and renders it incapable of sustaining a body, as Hohenheim reveals to Dante towards the end of the series.
- This carries into the manga as well. Barry the Chopper's original body is revealed to actually still be around. However, an animal's soul is inside it, causing it to decay, though 'his' current body is okay. Alphonse realizes the same is happening to his own suit of armor, different in that it causes him to black out occasionally and will lead to a violent explosion at an unpredictable point in time. Seems that souls are indeed paired up with one body and one mind in this series.
- A story in Mu Shi Shi features a Mushishi who had his soul replaced with a Mushi (essentially making him "the can") because he couldn't see mushi, which would have made him useless in protecting another "can". Most of the time he's merely The Stoic, but occasionally the Mushi-soul leaves and he becomes The Spock.
- The rule in Mahou Sensei Negima is apparently that if you think you have a soul, you do. Details on this are fuzzy, but it appears to only be necessary for certain aspects of magic such as forming pactios and dark magic. Plus the whole 'Am I a real person and not just a robot?' thing. Chachamaru's sisters presumably do not have one while she herself does.
- In Sailor Moon, souls are represented by starseeds, which can be readily stolen by Sailor Galaxia and her minions. When a normal human loses their starseed, they become a phage, when a Sailor Soldier loses theirs, they die.
Comic Books
- Hector Hall in Infinity, Inc., later used in The Sandman, is a weird case. He was born without a soul. The major effect of this was that it let him be taken over by Hath-Set later, and was eventually reincarnated as a version of Dr. Fate. The idea of someone without a soul being reincarnated, when reincarnation by definition involves a soul, was never explained.
- Spawn had soul-negating demons, who could cause angels and demons to become Deader Than Dead. It was later revealed that the title character had several thousand souls in his body.
- In Lucifer, demons don't have souls. Lucifer demonstrates his power by creating a soul for one just so he can sentence it to eternal suffering.
- Sebastian Faust, the son of Evil Sorcerer Felix Faust from the DC Universe, doesn't have a soul. He doesn't have one because his father sold his infant son's soul to a demon in exchange for power (as his Meaningful Name would suggest, Faust has a penchant for making Faustian bargains). The silver lining in this whole mess was that the demon screwed over Faust for the hell of it and gave Sebastian the power instead. Unusually, lacking a soul hasn't had any obvious negative effect on Sebastian; he more or less makes do without one.
- Short Circuit — Robot number 5 gets struck by lightning, there is a glitch in the programming and he becomes a Person. He is not number 5, he is Johnny 5. In the sequel, he foils the bad guys, is legally recognized as a person and swears the oath of citizenship.
- An interesting variation occurs in Ghost Rider, where Johnny Blaze seems to lose his free will as a consequence of selling his soul to Mephisto, as he is unable to refuse to become the Ghost Rider, or even to get off his bike when Mephisto doesn't want him to. Once his big mission is complete and his soul restored, though, Blaze has no trouble refusing the Devil's offer to free him of the Rider or in using the powers of the Rider against Mephisto's plans on Earth
- In the world of Cold Souls, extracting your soul is as common as, say, wiping away bad memories. Creative Sterility happens to Paul Giamatti (as himself) when his "chickpea-sized" soul is removed to prevent anxiety, and he later gets involved in Russian soul-smuggling.
Live Action TV
Video Games
- In The Elder Scrolls, a Daedric soul, or "Essence", is referred to as The Animus. Unlike a mortal soul, which can theoretically be permanently destroyed, a Daedric Animus is both everlasting and protean. As a result, "killing" a Daedra's mortal shell is possible, but it's soul will just take a metaphysical swim through the cosmic sewers and be spat back out again... Eventually.
- Kingdom Hearts: All beings have a separate heart and soul. If the heart separates from the body it becomes one of The Heartless, while the body and soul either die or become Nobodies. You read that right, "The Heartless" are in fact made from hearts and the Nobodies are actually "heartless". Here, the heart contains all your emotions and memories, while the soul is merely the spark that animates the body.
- The Legend of Zelda, Twilight Princess has Jovani, who lost his soul (and his mobility) to greed. To restore it, you must collect sixty Poe Souls. Sixty. Poe. Souls. The exchange rate is... interesting, to say the least. Also, Poe Souls are dark purple pseudo-spheres.
- If I remember correctly, it was stated somewhere that Jovani's soul was split into sixty parts, and each poe was given a piece.
- The Legend of Zelda, Majora's Mask features the ability to extract the last regrets and thoughts of a dying soul into a mask... which you can promptly don and gain whatever wicked cool abilities the deceased may have possessed.
- It is also implied that the masks allow the soul to possess the wearer - and according to certain Epileptic Trees, even preserve the soul for resurrection at the end of the game.
- Continuing the above trend is The Legend Of Zelda Spirit Tracks, where the Big Bad removes Zelda's soul so he can use her body for his own purposes. Her soul then possesses a suit of armor. Yes, really.
- The Legacy Of Kain series largely revolves around the various effects of souls and the corruption thereof. Losing your soul will kill you, while returning a soul into it's dead body will apparently create a vampire. A corruption of the soul leads to a creeping physical corruption - Kain's vampire lieutenants grew into increasingly inhuman monsters instead of just stronger. Also very importantly, souls are food for various beings, almost all them tied into the biggest soul-devourer of them all, the Elder God. A purified soul, on the other hand, will enable a being to see said god.. There's a lot more, but these are the most noteworthy points.
- Souls are an important part of Mortal Kombat, as the battle for them throughout the tournaments makes up the premise of the series. Several characters (such as Shang Tsung, Quan Chi and Shao Kahn) have the ability to take other people's souls as their own, and this primarily results in the demise of the victim and the granting of more strength to the victor. The only way to live without a soul in the Mortal Kombat universe, other than having it return to your body or being reanimated as a zombie by a sorcerer, is to get turned into a cyborg by the Lin Kuei.
- In Final Fantasy X, when a person dies, their soul must be sent on to the Farplane by a summoner's Sending. If not one of two things will happen: Either the soul will form with other souls and become a Fiend, which is the major source of monsters all game, or a strong willed soul will give itself a physical form by pulling together supernatural creatures called pyreflies, becoming an Unsent. Several major characters are Unsent (including Auron). An Unsent can voluntarily leave for the Farplane (as happens to Belgemine in X and Maechen in X-2) or be Sent against their will.
- Every episode of Sam And Max Season 2 involves souls in some way, and it appears that the "You are your soul" theory seems to be in use here. Your soul has two forms: a gloopy blob and a transparent version of your body. Zombies are created by Jurgen with his Soul Sucker, which separates the soul from the body and causes both soul and body to retain personality, effectively causing two copies of the same person, soul and zombie. Not the the same personality though; Sam and Max's souls are fed up with Sam and Max's mindless violence and poor moral compass, and refuse to go back to their bodies. Jurgen then sends the souls off to T.H.E.M to be crushed by depressed Moai heads, and then finally the grim reaper takes them to the Soul Train on the River Styx which sends them to Hell.
- It turns out that if you're the child of a god, you can keep going without your soul in Baldur's Gate 2. And it has some other interesting effects.
- Darwinians in Darwinia have digital souls. When darwinian dies, its soul floats off to soul repository in the middle of Darwinia. Soon it'll float back and its intelligence is processed after being sent to spawning grounds to be reborn again. However, soul destroyers and in Multiwinia, dark forest can destroy their souls.
- In Chzo Mythos the soul is one of a person's three aspects, the other two is the body and the mind. The soul is described as the entity that dreams and hopes, and are therefore regarded as a symbol of the future. A soul can feel pain if someone or something very dear to the person it belongs to is killed and/or destroyed, but since this permanently cripples the soul, it can only be done once. A soul can be completely destroyed if it is bound to an object and that object is destroyed. Furthermore: A mind separated from it's soul will go insane and lose it's perception of reality, an effect that increases the futher away the soul is.
- In Sa Ga Frontier 2, the ability to use magic, or 'Anima', is considered the physical manifestation of one's soul. The stronger your Anima, the stronger your soul. Occasionally, someone is born without the ability to use Anima; these few are scorned and looked down upon, and even rumored to be 'soulless'. Naturally, one of the main characters, Gustave XIII, can't use Anima and has to cope with this prejudice and hatred on top of all his other problems.
- Played with in Afterlife and its SOU Ls (Stuff Of Unending Life).
Tabletop Games
- Dead Inside is based almost entirely around the loss, gain, and expenditure of souls and soul energies. In most games, new characters start off as someone who's had his/her innate spiritual "shell" cracked open, and their soul scooped out, leaving nothing but the last few dregs of soul power to them. The overarching objective for anyone in such a position is to either grow (through doing good deeds or engaging in character building) or steal a new soul. Soul energy powers magic, is the basis of trade, and is the basis of self-improvement: you perform rituals at various stages to "lock" your soul energy into a fully-developed soul. Once you have your soul back, you become known as a Sensitive, and if you cull another soul's worth of energy and perform the proper ritual, you become a Mage. The more developed your soul, the easier magic is to perform, and what happens to you when you die is different depending on whether you're Dead Inside, Sensitive, or Mage.
- Dungeons And Dragons has a pretty simple notion of a soul that seems to represent one's mind and sentience but is also a metaphysical-magical entity that can leave the body. Soul-trapping spells leave the body comatose, and the soul is what departs to various afterlives after death.
- Exalted has a complex but fairly well defined soul-ecology. Normal people have two souls, the lower and higher, whereas celestial Exalts have a third soul that grants them their powers. On death, each faces a separate fate. The lower ghost becomes a bestial grave guardian until the body rots away; it then is simply a mindless beast that hunts in the underworld. The higher usually has its memories destroyed and then goes on to be reincarnated, but "lucky" souls that cling to life can become ghosts, and very unlucky ones can be consumed by oblivion. Solar shards first go back to Lytec, the God of Exaltations, who prunes some of their memories, and then sends them to a almost always adult person who is somehow worthy in the eyes of the Unconquered Sun, thereby exalting them. Lunars' face much the same process, although Luna's standards are different then the Unconquered Sun's. Abyssals' have to slink back to the underworld and their deathlord, carefully, because sunlight hurts the shards. Infernals' are pulled back inside a brutally tortured little girl until the Yozi feel like making another Infernal. Sidereal shards are fated to Exalt someone at a specific time, shortly after a specific Sidereal dies. Fate itself thus prepares them for their life as a Exalt as they grow up. The problem is that both Sidereals and Sidereals-to-be can be killed ahead of schedule by beings capable of defying fate, in which case the Sidereal shard Exalts someone completely unexpected and unprepared, which throws the whole system out of whack. Thing is, there are a lot of creatures that exist outside of fate running around Creation these days...
- It is possible to lose your soul in In Nomine by having all your Celestial Forces destroyed; on top of various mental disadvantages you cease to exist when you die. Undead in the same setting are not strictly soulless, but the trade off for physical immortality means that they too cease to exist when or if they die.
- Sorcerer leaves it up to the individual gaming group to decide what a sorcerer's Humanity attribute (which can be damaged by too much consorting with demons) represents in concrete terms; one possible option is that Humanity measures how much of the sorcerer's soul still remains intact.
- In the New World Of Darkness, the soul is a concrete spiritual presence, capable of being affected by powerful magic. Should it be separated from the body, the person thus deprived slowly undergoes a horrific spiritual withering, eventually becoming a shriveled mockery of their original self that can be easily possessed by ghosts and spirits. The soul is completely separate from the mind, and apparently interchangeable with all others; attaching any soul to a victim of soul-theft will restore them to normal in due time. Each supplement deals with souls in various ways:
- Mages must have their souls to work magic. Some Mages, more properly known as Tremere Liches, learn to prolong their existence by consuming the souls of others. These mages are sometimes known by an apt description: "sociopaths".
- Werewolves are not entirely human, and their "souls" are likewise not entirely like human souls. It's implied they are half spirit, which is borne out since as they go down the Karma Meter they act more spirit like with strange behaviours, weaknesses, and bans.
- Changelings may or may not have one, and whatever they have isn't affected by soul-targeting magic (and they worry a great deal about the connotations).
- Prometheans seek To Become Human so that they can earn one.
- Vampires seem to keep their souls after being Embraced, but now the soul is trapped in an animated dead body with a hungry demon-thing (The "Beast") that occasionally takes control. As if that weren't bad enough, the soul can now be eaten by other vampires in an act called Diablerie; doing so risks damaging the eater's soul, addicting them to devouring souls, and stains their aura with black veins for decades, but in the process they absorb a measure of their victim's own power.
- Whether or not there is an afterlife is unknown, so what happens to souls after death is an open question.
- There may be another release of Demon—if so, that's not good for a soul, as it's a case of Have You Seen My God?
- Ghosts don't seem to be a person's soul, but a few Mage and Thaumaturge powers can create ghosts by removing a persons soul and anchoring it to an object in a means similar to the above mentioned soul-theft which is similarly reversible.
- In Warhammer and Warhammer 40000, the soul is the core of sentience and emotions and also the foundation of magic and psychic ability; this also makes it the primary fare of the universe's Eldritch Abominations. Losing one's soul while still alive essentially renders one an inert lump of meat.
- Pariahs are literally soulless, and have no existence in the spiritual reality called "the Warp". This is hugely disconcerting to all around them, although those so offended rarely know why. This is especially dangerous to those with powers drawn from that realm, but is no protection from their powers. Those ultra-rare individuals who passively block or diminish supernatural powers are referred to as 'blanks' or 'untouchables', and with the exception of Warp users reacting badly to them there is no indication that they are anything but fully souled. This confusion is not helped by Games Workshop being extremely vague on the manner, often using the terms interchangeably between different media. The current consensus on their differences and exact capabilities, and if they indeed are the same thing, appears highly diffuse.
- The Liber Chaotica and Liber Necris sourcebooks go into deep detail on Warhammer souls, eventually concluding that they must comprise at least seven divisible parts.
- Both Necrons and Tau also lack a Warp presense, meaning they probably lack souls. In the case of the Necrons this is because their Eldritch Abomination masters stole theirs and they are mostly mindless and entirely emotionless killing machines. The Tau never seem to have had any, which is odd, given that they are a vibrant, emotional and (given the state of the universe) relativly compassionate species.
- This might explain a few things...
- Could be because the Tau's compassion isn't as attractive as abstract hate, and perhaps their souls simply aren't as powerful as others- some humans have more noticable warp precenses, so perhaps it's more "strength" than "possesion".
Web Comics
- In Last Resort, souls are a form of 'creative energy' that naturally occurs in living beings, often in a set amount known as a 'Sterling'. Being born with more or less energy (or having it altered later on, in the case of the Dead Inside) leads to remarkable powers.
- At the end of Zebra Girl's "The Magi-Net" arc, after the wizards lose their souls, most of them die, and the few that are left lose their magical talents and become permanently insane.
- In Dominic Deegan, destroying a soul causes a huge explosion. Now that's metaphysics!
- You knew we had to get in an El Goonish Shive example, right? According to Nioi, people created by the Dewitchery Diamond have completely new souls, rather than being reincarnations. Because she believed that being a new soul in an older body could lead to madness, she cast a spell on Kaoli and Ellen which made them have dreams in which they re-lived the lives of Alternate Universe versions of themselves up past their current age.
- If you are a host for The Sins in Sins then your soul is destroyed, no matter what you do or have done. Just picking up their Soul Jar is enough. This doesn't seem to impact daily life, but Word Of God states that when you die, it is nought but oblivion for you. Which sucks.
- Misfile doesn't say where your soul goes when you die, but wherever it is, you go there naked.
- Richard from LFG has partially settled the final question of the first paragraph of this entry. Monk souls taste like chocolate, other souls apparently do not.
- In Msf High all that is known is that souls are immutable. No magic can influence a soul. Period, end of story.
- Gilbert of A Modest Destiny had his soul stolen as an infant. He says that he can't feel emotions and that when he dies he will cease to exist because of this.
- Also, it makes it so that after Deo Deo temporarily inhabits his body, he can't get it back. Ironically, Gilbert was only working for Deo Deo so he'd be immortal and wouldn't have to cease to exist. Deo Deo "forgot" to tell him the problem.
- In Sluggy Freelance a person's consciousness and personality go where their soul goes. If their soul is sold or stolen, their body is left in a coma. It is apparently possible to "kill" a soul/spirit, but whether this leaves them Deader Than Dead or just sends them somewhere else is unknown. Souls also take on the same appearance as the body they used to inhabit (with a few ghostly attributes added); the exception being Aylee, who, due to being a Shape Shifter, has a far more amorphous soul.
- Soul "bodies" are also material if they enter a spirit world. Ghosts seem to be souls left behind in the normal material dimension, where their bodies are incorporeal. (Yes, incorporeal bodies. This kind of thing is why notions of a soul can be so confusing.)
- The principle characters of DDG are all disembodied souls, this leads to a certain amount of both voluntary and involuntary shapeshifting
Western Animation
- The Simpsons: Bart loses his soul (or just thinks he does, depending) and loses his sense of humor, his breath can't fog glass, and animals fear him (not to mention that he doesn't activate automatic door openers). He and Milhouse seem to believe that a soul is essentially a get-into-the-afterlife-free ticket.
- He also grows fangs, reflective eyes and can vanish into mist-banks, apparently. :)
- And just in case you forgot the robot souls thing, Transformers offers sparks
.
- Note that only transformers have sparks. Humans do not. And at least in Transformers Animated it is possible for a Transformer to still live and function without their personal spark.
- Prowl went all Heroic Sacrifice and used his spark to fill in the gaps when he couldn't reassemble the Allspark in the series finale, so it seems the Allspark is as related to regular sparks as the name implies. After all, a shard reanimated Starscream, and he Died For Real when it was removed
- In Transformers: Energon, humans are said to have sparks as well, but they are "fragile" and can't reincarnate (reinmetalate?), though it's not clear that this is meant literally.
- I think it's meant to mean that we can't even transfer our sparks into another fully functional body.
- In Transformers Animated they even seem to have an afterlife, the Well of All Sparks. Whether it actually exists or not has never been determined.
- Apropos of nothing, in the "Shattered Glass" Mirror Universe, Sparks have an opposite charge and are called "Embers," which This Troper thought was sorta cool.
- Only Transformers have sparks, meaning their souls can be transfered into a different functional body, by dint of being manifest. But by the same token, they can also be directly attacked, while a human's spirit cannot by dint of being an intangible force. See, a Transformer's Spark is a combination of soul and heart. If a Transformer's spark is extinguished, then without divine or Mac Guffin intervention they're doomed.
|
|