Basic Trope: The afterlife is just like life on Earth, only eternal.
- Straight: Joe Schmo dies. He gets to Heaven, and finds a steady job working in a cubicle, just as he did on Earth.
- Exaggerated:
- There is very much an Adminisphere, office politics, etc.
- Due to the Celestial Bureaucracy, there really isn't much chance of advancement. In other words, once an Office Drone, always an Office Drone.
- The afterlife is so ordinary that most people don't even realize they died when they find themselves there.
- Downplayed: Joe's Heaven office job is much more pleasant than his Earth office job, as his Bad Boss went to Hell.
- Justified: Heaven wants to give its eternal guests a sense of purpose, by giving them something to do...plus, it gets all that cosmic busywork done.
- Inverted: Angelica goes to Earth, and she pretty much lives as a Perpetual Tourist, on a permanent vacation, and has "Friends" Rent Control and an Improbable Food Budget.
- Subverted: Joe gets to take as many coffee breaks as he wants, there's a rec room to play in, and every day is Casual Friday! It's hardly like coming to work at all!
- Double Subverted: But he still has mountains of paperwork that the Celestial Bureaucracy expects him to do.
- Parodied: A Work Com that takes place in Hell
- Zig Zagged: Some people do mundane things in the afterlife, and some don't; it depends on how they lived or what they believed in.
- Averted:
- Heaven is more of a vacation resort and Hell is a torture chamber; souls of the deceased do not do any work; only angels and demons have jobs to do.
- There is no afterlife in this setting; just Cessation of Existence.
- Enforced: It's an Imagine Spot in a regular Work Com, and the producer requires reusing the same sets to save on the budget, so the writers go for as mundane an afterlife as possible.
- Lampshaded: "Shouldn't I be interviewed by an angel for this?"
- Invoked: The gods decide to make the afterlife mundane because they don't feel comfortable with real punishment but everyone can't go to heaven.
- Exploited: Satan exposes the tedium of heaven in order to get people to renounce God.
- Defied: ???
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Played For Drama: No Such Thing as H.R., No OSHA Compliance, etc. causes problems.
- Implied: Joe comes back to life. When asked what happens next, he says, "More of the same, really".
- Deconstructed: No one likes this heaven very much.
- Reconstructed: It's still much better than Hell, and better than life on earth.
- Intended Audience Reaction: Joe dies and goes to Heaven, and is initially disappointed. His life on earth sucks, and so being consigned to an eternity of more of it naturally bothers him quite a bit. He goes about his usual, soul-crushing routine, and is one of the few souls in Heaven who seems to be incurably miserable. When one of the angels reaches out to him and asks him how he likes it here, he gives an honest answer. The angel then walks him through how to actually start enjoying life up here, giving him advice that, thanks to Heaven's relative mundanity, wouldn't be out of place on earth, either. Joe tries it, finds himself loving life, and... Wakes up. He's still better off and can be seen keeping some of his heavenly habits as he sets about his next real day. This feeds into an Aesop about being appreciative of what you have and taking care of yourself.
Back to Mundane Afterlife
