Our Souls Are Different - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Soul

This soul thing. . . can I get one by eating someone else's?

—Schlock Mercenary

One of the "big questions" everyone poses to himself at one time: what happens to your consciousness when you die? Now we know that what we call thinking goes on in our brains, which is something that dies and decomposes along with the rest of the body when it reaches the end of the life that was given to it, but this idea seems difficult to comprehend - not to mention unattractive - to us who are the ones in the pilot seat, so the loss of our mind is an event comparable to the end of the entire universe from a personal point of view. Hence the idea of souls - a part of you that is independent from your physical body but still serves a useful function in your existence. Before we learned the answers to most questions about our own biology a soul was an essential explanation to why life seems so different and far removed from non-life, or, where comes the intelligence that seems to separate us from the rest of life on the planet. However, as something that is by definition outside our normal perception (most of the time - realistically speaking anything that has the ability to affect our lives is measurable) there hasn't been much agreement on what it is that a soul actually does. Is it essential for life, or can a person live on without it? What exactly does it give you, life, or wisdom, or will, or morality? 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?

Authors of fiction 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.

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. Sometimes, a soul is a Piece Of God. See also Brain In A Jar, which presents a more scientific variation in which the brain either is the self (with no spiritual aspect) or somehow contains the soul.

The trope name is entirely self-explanatory. What? What are you laughing at?

Examples:

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Anime and Manga

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. The size of one's soul wavelength reflects their potential strength (physical and otherwise), and the leader of the good guys has a soul large enough to contain an entire city. Potentially, the souls of gods can cover the entire planet (which, if one in-universe god is Death, is actually quite appropriate).
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

Film

Literature

In the Nasuverse, the soul is an indestructible "concept" that is tied down to the material world via the body. Souls of the dead are returned to "The Root" (that is, the origin of everything - past, present, and future) and recycled to create new souls.
- Other concepts in The Verse, such as Magic Circuits and Origins, are also attached to the soul. It is also quite touchy, and easily damaged if messed with.
Harry Potter: Losing your soul robs you of all willpower and memory, you simply "exist" as an empty shell, conscious but unable to make choices or act, while breaking it apart makes you less human (and immortal). It appears that the mind is a semi-separate entity that remains with the largest piece of a split soul.
- Well, breaking it apart is a necessary step of one way of becoming immortal. Murder is described as always breaking a soul apart, and every murderer is certainly not immortal in the Potter-verse...
  - You don't become immortal by just killing people. You need to rip a bit of your soul and bind it to a physical anchor on earth (the Horcrux), and murder accomplishes only the 'ripping' part of the equation. The rest is 'something nauseating'. So, basically, even the worst murderers had shredded but otherwise integral souls, and were therefore able to enter JK Rowling's boring afterlife.
- In addition, ripping it apart and dying with your soul not in once piece will condemn you to eternity in agony, as the act is a "horribly crime against nature". Hermione implies that repentance can potentially put a torn soul back together, but it hurts a lot.
Peter F Hamilton loves the subject so much that he wrote a whole SF trilogy about possesion in the 2600s. The soul is basically sentience (that is, YOU), but in a form that retains cohesion after death, without physical support (like the brain). This is linked to a theory of strata-less computing, which says (correct me if I'm wrong) that computation (read 'thought') can be accomplished without energy consumption and support if there is no input or output. A dead guy loses his 'input' (senses), and, so Hamilton says, the Universe is wired so that sentience survives and is either transported to the 'beyond' (an input-less hell where souls pass the time by raping each other for memories), or is transported to the end of time, to contribute with its memories to the creation of a new universe. Also, for some reason, if a soul is given the chance to take over a living human body (after supressing the occupant), its remaining part which is still in the beyond dimension can serve as a massive source of energy for all sorts of evil powers.
In The Toxic Spell Dump children with apsychia are born without a soul and apparently simply stop existing after death—no afterlife, no nothing. It is seen as horrendously tragic.
The Bear at the Gate: Short story about a teddy bear who earns a soul through a good deed and gaining emotions, which results in it getting into heaven.
In Hans Christian Andersen's original version of The Little Mermaid, gaining a soul gives you access to the Christian afterlife; without one, you "dissolve like the sea foam".
Piers Anthony's Xanth: Characters without souls are less introspective and less capable of empathy than those with souls, but can earn souls through self-exploration and consciously trying to think of others more. Souls can be taken apart, and regenerate; babies' souls are grown from bits of the soul of their mother and father.
In Steven Brust's Dragaera novels, a person's soul can only be destroyed by a Morganti weapon. If they're killed any other way, they can reincarnate. It's implied that wizards keep their souls separate from their bodies, but otherwise they're treated inextricably linked.
In Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files, Bob describes "the soul" as equivalent to "life force" or "chi": "the part of you that is more than merely physical." In Small Favor, Harry uses "soulfire": magic formed around the energy of his soul in much the same way that rebar strengthens concrete. This is very powerful, and described as what archangels use, because all they are is souls.
- Using it does, however, damage the soul (Bob complains that humans get too upset over phrases like that, though too much damage could be fatal). The damaged soul will regenerate naturally over a week or so — faster if the person in question spends time doing something uplifting.
In Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld series, the soul is an artificial construct implanted by Applied Phlebotinum, recording one's life, memories, and existence to allow people to reincarnate on the eponymous Riverworld, eons later, and work their way to some kind of Redemption/Ascension/Crystal Dragon Nirvana.
In C. S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, it is implied that the souls of those in Hell are devoured by demons, and this is in fact the fate of all the damned, including the demons themselves minus whoever's last. (Theologically, this can be seen as a parody/inversion of the Christian belief in Heaven as eternal communion with God, where the Devil's version of that communion is an eternal domination and violation of all lesser souls.)
- This is correct but could be expanded. A close reading of Screwtape (although it's pretty obvious if you read Lewis's other works) shows that he had it both ways. The demons consumed humans, but this didn't end them. They kept going, and were both food and torture victims for the demons. Of course, the demons themselves were potential chow for each other, and even thereafter might be retrained and sent out to work again.
In Lewis's The Great Divorce, on the other hand, souls in Hell (which looks like an English industrial town on a perpetually cold and rainy evening), isolate themselves there out of refusal to give up some single vital facet of their self, becoming a twisted, damaged version of their former personality. Divorce plays with the idea that souls can leave Hell of their own will (in which case it will merely have been Purgatory), if they have not placed themselves beyond redemption — it can be difficult to tell if a person has crossed the line. (A "Solid Person" who has made it to heaven questions whether a woman whose fate is up for grabs is still a grumbler, or merely a grumble going on and on mechanically.)
Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials (crazy spoilers ahead). The whole trilogy has quite a lot to say about the nature of the soul, and may be considered a long meditation on the subject. In a child, losing the soul causes schizoid symptoms: catatonia, delusions that your soul is still there, etc. — presuming, of course, that the subject survived the process in the first place. One character who goes through this dies of apathy. Another gradually wastes away. Some characters, especially adults, who manage to survive that part are Stepford Smilers, the "nothing underneath" variation. On top of this, much of the series takes place in a world where the soul resides outside the body as a sentient, autonomous entity with its own (highly metaphorical) physical form.
- Of course, those are only the effects if your soul is cut away. If your soul is eaten away by a Specter, it leaves you a completely hollow body that does not react to any stimulus whatsoever, which is why there are apparently no adults in Cittàgazze.
  - The first book also has soldiers dying outright when their daemons are killed, though this could be from shock.
- His Dark Materials also holds that the mind and the soul are separate, though intrinsically connected, and that a person's mind (ghost) retains its composition upon death, while a soul (Dæmon) dissolves upon death. The mind feels incomplete however. On the bright side, a dead-but-still-intact ghost is the perfect fighter against the aforementioned soul-eating Specters.
  - This is linked to certain Christian ideas concerning the human trinity of body, soul and spirit. It's worth asking whether or not intelligent creatures without daemons, like the panserbjørne have ghosts, but I don't recall the books getting into that.
  - Iorek Byrnison mentions that his armor his is soul - bears make their own soul.
- Furthermore, if your Dæmon is injured or separated from you by a certain distance, it causes the both of you intense physical pain. Physical contact with another person's Dæmon is all but forbidden (except for certain circumstances If You Know What I Mean). And the final chapters of the third novel explain some of the ways around all of these handicaps.
- Daemons are also described as being made from Dust, as are angels, and in fact the product of the interference of the fallen angels (the result of the fruit of knowledge, or the wheel oil). While the panserbjørne's existence seems to prove this is not necessary for intelligent life, their attatchment to armor and a stricter culture could be seen as a suggestion that it helps, and lacking it a surrogate needs to be found. Then again, we only have the one example to go on.
Dante played with the idea of separating the soul from the body before death in the Inferno, where in Hell, he ran into one of the more notorious historical figures of his time who was in fact still alive while he was writing, the idea being his sin had been so bad he had fallen to Hell immediately, while a demon had come up to Earth to mind his body until it died, so this is Older Than Print.
- IIRC, there's reference to some souls having been liberated from Hell before Dante's visit—pre-Christian Jewish patriarchs personally "rescued" to heaven by Jesus, upon his own death. So it would appear that Dante's Hell did have linear time. That would also explain why there weren't any sinners from after Dante's real-world death in his report from Hell (smirk, wink). (Furthermore, the damned have a weak form of precognition but little or no awareness of present events, so there is time in Hell, even if it's a bit displaced from that experienced by the living.)
- This seems like a really elaborate justification of a TakeThat to someone he didn't like. There's more than one in the story, too.
In Nerhûn, as stated in the preface, 'Soul' is treated like a form of energy like heat or light, that can be transferred and controlled, and that is the basis for the series' magic system.
Handled interestingly in Oscar Wilde's The Fisherman And His Soul, where the titular Fisherman gives up his soul in order to be with the mermaid he loves. His soul is shown as being intellectually completely different from himself. In fact, his life only changes for the worse once his soul returns.
- Note that the spell the Fisherman performs to separate himself from his soul involves cutting his shadow free from his body, and that the soul, left on its own, is apparently Heartless.
Meredith Ann Pierce's The Darkangel Trilogy: when you die, your soul ascends to the sky ("deep heaven"). Once there, it is possible for it to return to earth temporarily to speak to living people, though this happens rarely. However, the soul can be removed from the body and stored in a vial. When this happens, the soul's owner become a wraith which retains the power of speech but very little memory. Souls can also be consumed by demons like darkangels and lorelei, in which case the owner's consciousness is completely obliterated. Soulless beings are always hideous to look at.
In "The Boy Who Couldn't Die", removing the soul from a living thing's body makes them immortal. The soul can only be retrieved from the recently deceased or dying, it requires some voodoo crap to pull out, and the proper container to keep it in. Damaging the soul is instant death.
In P.C. Hodgell's Chronicles Of The Kencyrath series, a person's soul is what casts a shadow (in many respects it IS the shadow) and thus someone whose soul is missing doesn't cast one. Members of the Kencyr races can give their soul to another who has the ability to accept it; this makes the giver very hard to kill, and makes it so that dishonorable acts that must be done do not stain the soul, since it isn't there. Souls may also be stolen or consumed, and heroine Jame and her mother are able to reap souls, drawing them from the body and taking them.
H. Beam Piper flip-flopped about souls. While one of his Paratime novels featured reincarnation as a scientific fact, which makes no sense without some kind of soul...there was also a story in Federation which revolved around the attempt to settle down a planet's main religion, who were convinced The Last Hot Time was coming and were going a bit psychotic with fire-frenzies. To pacify them, a Terran who was very friendly with their culture explained not only that Armageddon wasn't coming, but also that humans needed the main local product (biocrystals) to build themselves souls, following a curse (It Makes Sense In Context). When another member of the cast objects to this, a military man comes up with this gem:
-Foxx Travis: Can you prove that was a lie? Let's see yours. Draw-SOUL! Inspection-SOUL!
- Considering Piper committed suicide apparently as a result of a bad time and a belief in reincarnation...
Souls in The Hollows novels are a nebulous thing that is referenced often but ill-defined. The souls of living vampires are destroyed maybe when the die and reanimate and they seem to lose their conscience and the ability to feel emotion. Souls of living beings can be temporarily removed by demon magic without appreciable harm to the person though what change this makes in the person is never explored. Black Magic creates 'smut' on the soul that is visible to magical creatures. This is considered a bad thing though the negative consequences of having this smut is never explained. This smut can be transferred to another person's soul. Finally the existence of souls is an established fact and its loss and destruction can be detected by an unexplained process.
- To add more confusion a person's aura is linked yet separate from their soul in an unexplained manner.
In The Salvation War, people's souls become tangible (with all attendant sensation), immortal, and gain a Healing Factor upon the person's death. Unfortunately, that's the better to let demons abuse you forever, since everyone goes to Fire And Brimstone Hell when they die.
In JRR Tolkien's Middle-earth mythos, the precise nature of the soul (fëa, in Quenya), and its fate after death, varies depending on race: the souls of Elves are bound to this universe, and when they die they go to hang out in the Halls of Mandos, eventually to be reincarnated (unless they've committed acts of irredeemable evil in life) in a body identical to the old one. The souls of Men, on the other hand, are only meant to stay in this world for a limited time; after death they make a brief stop in the Halls of Mandos and then depart from the universe for an unknown destination. Disembodied Elvish souls are capable of refusing the summons to the Halls of Mandos, in which case they will drift around wherever they like — but such souls are then susceptible to being captured and controlled by black magic (remember how Sauron was sometimes called the "Necromancer"? Yeah...).
WayneBarlowe book series that takes place in Hell has a rather terrifying prospect for all human souls who go there. Apparently, the underworld does have a food chain, but humans are at the bottom of it. And that's not counting the fact that humans are the main building materials for demons, their livestock, vehicles, and war machines all made out of souls.
In Warbreaker, everyone has a single Breath, which is the equivalent of the soul, but can be transferred willingly to others and used to animate objects. Those who lose their Breath can function normally, but they and their clothes appear drained of color, and they are more irritable and angry.
- It's unclear if the "irritable and angry" part is even true. Its common superstition, but the only two Drabs (people without a Breath) ever met are a woman who gave hers up when she was ten years old and a girl who hid her Breath away when she became a beggar (since Breaths can be sensed by powerful individuals). Both are in positions where it would be natural to assume they would be "irritable and angry" on their own.
In a young adult novel, an adopted girl was contacted by the astral projection of her long lost twin sister who encouraged her to also astrally project. This evidently meant vacating your soul from your body as when she was back from flying among the stars her twin sister had snaffled her body. When her siblings threw an 'anti-bad-spirit' charm that touched the body, the twin sister was momentarily displaced and the original sister got snapped back into her body. Because the original sister did not seek out her twins' now-spare body but stayed with her family her sister was assumed to be dead and cremated. Her soul would continue to exist, gradually getting fainter and fainter. As long as she didn't astrally project again she was fine.
Michael Swanick wrote a short story in which dead souls fall up to the heavens to be absorbed into creation. However, power lines and cold iron would stop this (if for example you died in a building with reinforced concrete ceilings) so ghosts could avoid that undiscovered country and stay themselves while they navigated an upside down otherwise intangible world constantly holding on to iron or powerlines. There was also a soul eating monster.

Live Action TV

Vampires in the Buffyverse are typically soulless and Always Chaotic Evil, since the essence of one of the first demons comes in and parks in the vacated spot. Their vampiric personalities are generally twisted parodies of the original person, and never get any closer to goodness than a Noble Demon (and even Noble Demon vampires are very rare). A vampire can, through magic, actually regain a soul, and with it a completely human identity, morality and guilt over their former crimes. Non-human demons may or may not have their own versions of souls, and they can range all the way from Omnicidal Maniacs to Knight In Sour Armor heroes. There are also Half Human Hybrids, and the dialogue suggests that, whatever other metaphysics apply, they do have human souls. Having a soul, however, is no guarantee of morality: as a demon points out, the worst serial killers and tyrants in human history also had souls.
- There are also ghosts in the Buffyverse, and they seem to be disembodied human souls that haven't moved on to the afterlife (more than one episode's dealt with either helping a ghost pass on, or at least come to terms with their current status as a ghost). The recently ensouled vampire Spike also became something like a ghost for a while, but the story made it clear that, despite his intangibility, he wasn't really a ghost, and his condition was the result of magic designed to mimic the effect. Another vampire who indirectly gained a soul before she died, Darla, later appeared as a ghost although, since she was sent as a messenger for the Powers That Be, this was likely the human Darla's soul. For more speculation on the metaphysics of the Buffyverse, see here.
In Dead Like Me, a soul is attached to a body, even after death, and can only be removed by a reaper who usually does so right before their death to spare them the pain. A person without a soul will continue to act as they are programmed to, typically walking right in to whatever death fate had in store for them.
- This show also includes an unusual case, where if a person's fated death is avoided, their soul is imprisoned in their body and unable to affect anything. According to Rube, this causes the soul to "rot."
- George also screws up and decides to skip one of her appointments. She later finds the soul was trapped inside the body since she wasn't there — and had to sit through its own autopsy, unable to do anything.
Souls, as far as Engine Sentai Go-onger is concerned, are highly marketable. The team's mecha sidekicks need to have them placed into their bodies to return to their normal size, but only for ten minutes, as a side effect of being in the Human World. Even the human souls in the series work like this, as proven when Sousuke shoots his soul at his own body to reverse a Freaky Friday situation.
Star Trek The Next Generation. When the android Data has to stand in court to prove himself a sentient being (with the right to refuse to be dismantled by a less then entirely competent scientist) the judge's final verdict deals with something to this effect.
Phillipa: We've all been dancing around the basic issue... Does Data have a soul?
- The TNG novel Ghostship deals with the idea of whether Data has a soul. Your Mileage May Vary on it's success.

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.
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.
  - The scene was, Megatron was going to destroy the Earth and instructed his minions to collect the sparks afterward, which might be useful later. A minion (Starscream?) let him know that humans Do Not Work That Way. Megatron scoffed, saying that humans really were poorly designed. It seemed more like Megs simply being unaware that humans work differently.
- 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.
  - A similar concept in the Beast Wars series called the Matrix seems to exist, it being the place where the sparks of the departed commune. All these sparks being there is what makes the Matrix what it is, though, rather than it being an otherworldy place that may or may not exist and you'd have to die to find out. This concept is also called the Allspark until the movieverse made its Allspark a Mac Guffin - since then, it's been called the Well of All Sparks.
- Apropos of nothing, in the "Shattered Glass" Mirror Universe, Sparks have an opposite charge and are called "Embers," which 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.

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