History Main / AfterlifeAngst

* Emily, the titular ''WesternAnimation/CorpseBride'', becomes depressed when she learns that her unwitting groom Victor never intended to marry her and already had a living fiancée, Victoria. The song "Tears to Shed" is about how she feels inferior to Victoria due to being deceased and laments that Victor could never love her back because of that.

* Emily, the titular ''WesternAnimation/CorpseBride'', becomes depressed when she learns that Victor has a living fiancée. The song "Tears to Shed" is about how she feels rejected by him due to her deceased status.

In fiction, it sometimes turns out they have angst issues as well. One of the more common reasons for such a reaction is MortalityPhobia: being in the afterlife means that they have faced their worst fears. This occurs most commonly when [[DeadAllAlong the characters think they're still alive]]: once they realize the truth, it can be a shock to them to realize that their life on Earth is gone. Some of them may even be in denial about it, living in illusionary worlds which resemble their old life; this usually results in plot twists when said illusions break down. Afterlife angst can be stronger if the afterlife is boring, the character in question ends up in {{Hell}}, or [[TheNothingAfterDeath there isn't any afterlife at all]]. If the angst is that bad, it could lead to GhostAmnesia. Can also lead to a HellOfAHeaven.

* ''Literature/{{Elsewhere}}'' is about a fifteen-year-old girl, Liz, who dies after being hit by a car and gets sent to the afterlife, Elsewhere. In Elsewhere you can watch back on earth through binoculars, so for the first few months, Liz becomes obsessed with watching her family. She later realizes she can't spend the rest of her time there doing this and things start to improve after she gets a job and meets a guy named Owen(Who's physically 17 at the time Liz meets him) but after [[spoiler: Owen's wife Emily dies herself and comes to Elsewhere it causes Owen and Liz's romantic relationship to fall apart. Liz hits her DespairEventHorizon and volunteers to go back to Earth, even though it would mean she lost all her memories of what she was before and was reincarnated. She regrets this at the last second and manages to swim back to Elsewhere, where she then continues to live a much happier afterlife having worked through her issues about her early death.]]

* In ''Fanfic/ResonanceDays'', not only is learning that you're dead and will never see your friends and family again traumatic, but most of the dead also have to deal with the revelation that the Magical Girl system they dedicated their lives to was a complete sham, and there's an element of dysmorphia in realizing that your "body" is basically just a thin shell around your soul simulating the functions of a living body. Attempting suicide or serious self-harm is pretty much an expectation within the first few days of arrival, with worse cases struggling with their situation for months, years, or even never getting over it. Not that it will work, since you can't die a second time.

* In ''Fanfic/ResonanceDays'', not only is learning that you're dead and will never see your friends and family again traumatic, but most of the dead also have to deal with the revelation that the Magical Girl system they dedicated their lives to was a complete sham, and there's an element of dysmorphia in realizing that your "body" is basically just a thin shell around your soul simulating the functions of a living body. Attempting suicide or serious self-harm is pretty much an expectation within the first few days of arrival, with worse cases struggling with their situation for months, years, or even never getting over it.

Contrast UnfinishedBusiness, where the angst stems from something that still needs to be done on Earth, and DiedHappilyEverAfter.

* ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'': In "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS4E11MortalCoil Mortal Coil]]", Neelix is killed in an accident, but Seven is able to bring him back to life about 16 hours later with Borg technology. The problem for Neelix is, he expected to meet his dead family in the afterlife, but instead he experienced [[TheNothingAfterDeath nothing]]. This nearly [[DrivenToSuicide drives him to suicide]].

* In ''Film/TheHauntedMansion'', Master Gracey's distress and sorrow over the suicide of his fiancée Elizabeth create a curse on the titular mansion, binding 999 souls to it--they can't move on until ''he'' does, and they're all miserable for it. When the Evers family--including Sarah, who's a [[StealthPun dead ringer]] for Elizabeth--shows up, Gracey thinks that she's been reincarnated to finally join him at the altar, which will lift the spell. It's eventually revealed that [[TheButlerDidIt Ramsley the butler]] is the true source of the curse: he murdered Elizabeth, who was Black and impoverished, because he felt that Gracey was abandoning his heritage (and betraying his race) by marrying her. When Ramsley is defeated, the real Elizabeth manifests, thanks the Evers family for revealing the truth, and reunites with Gracey, which breaks the spell and allows all of the ghosts to finally ascend to Heaven.

* ''Fanfic/LightingCandles'': In this ''WesternAnimation/RiseOfTheGuardians''/''WesternAnimation/BigHero6'' crossover, Tadashi, like Jack Frost, becomes a magical spirit after his canon death. He slowly realizes not only that he died, but that he is invisible to those who don't believe in him - including his younger brother and friends. This causes him a ''lot'' more angst than it did for Jack, since he still remembers his living loved ones and watches them grieve him (not helped by the fact that he got [[PlayingWithFire fire powers]], triggering memories of the fire that killed him).

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Coco}}'': While averted by most of the Land of the Dead, Hector regrets dying before he could make it back to his wife and daughter, especially since, due to the manner he left them and his wife's resulting bitterness, he cannot visit the living on Dia de los Muertos and is slowly being forgotten (which, in the Land of the Dead, means [[TheAfterafterlife disappearing from existence]]). This gets even ''worse'' when he discovers that his death wasn't an accident, as he'd thought, but a murder by someone he thought was a friend. It's resolved when Miguel helps Hector's daughter remember him and pass that memory onto others, ensuring that Hector is remembered long enough to reunite with Coco after her death.

*** In ''Literature/GoingPostal'' a Golem ends up in "the desert". When 'he' asks Death if there were any more orders (with the golems being a fantasy version of Asimov's robots), and receiving a "No" for an answer, he then decides to stay for awhile instead of moving on, since it was finally a chance to '''rest'''.

* ''Series/AmericanHorrorStoryMurderHouse'': Because the Murder House keeps the spirits of anyone who died on its grounds BarredFromTheAfterlife, there's quite a bit of this. In particular, Violet attempts to kill herself by overdose, but appears to survive the attempt, with Tate forcing her to throw up the drugs. Episodes later, Violet finds while trying to run from Tate that she keeps ending up back in the house. To explain, Tate shows Violet her rotting body, hidden in a crawl space - while she threw up some of the drugs, she had taken too many for it to help. This caused Violet to break down crying.

** In the Season 1 finale, Melinda discovers that a plane crash is about to occur through the ghosts of the already-dead crew. When her friend Andrea finds out the plane took off from where her brother was supposed leave that day, Andrea rushes to see if he already made it home. After the plane crashes in town, Melinda tries to tell Andrea something and Andrea, dreading that it's news of her brother's ghost, refuses to hear it. Her brother finally shows up, alive... and walks straight past Andrea to hug Melinda. While her brother had taken a later flight, Andrea's car was in the path of the crash and ''she'' died. The shock was so great that, for a split second, Andrea wished she was alive in place of her brother.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' episode "Dead Celebrities", Ike [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin begins seeing the ghosts of dead celebrities]]. It turns out it's because the celebrities have been in Purgatory for months since Music/MichaelJackson refuses to believe he's dead. After Jacksons ghost possesses Ike, the boys are forced to help him move on by giving him what he wanted in life; having a childhood, being white, and being a girl. They accomplish this by enrolling him in a [[TakeThat child beauty pageant.]] After Ike wins, Jackson is able to move on properly.

* ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'': In one episode, Neelix is killed in an accident, but Seven is able to bring him back to life about 16 hours later with Borg technology. The problem for Neelix is, he expected to meet his dead family in the afterlife, but instead he experienced [[TheNothingAfterDeath nothing]]. This nearly [[DrivenToSuicide drives him to suicide]].

* This is a major theme in ''Film/{{Ghost}}''. After main character Sam Wheat is killed in a mugging, he has the opportunity to move on to the next world, but can't bring himself to leave his beloved girlfriend Molly. Later, Sam meets another spirit on the subway ([[NoNameGiven known only as]] "The Subway Ghost") who also chose to remain on Earth--but his anger and self-loathing have left him a miserable monster incapable of finding peace. At the end of the film, Sam ensures Molly's safety, comes to terms with his death, and finally passes into Heaven.

* Inverted in ''Theatre/JasperInDeadland'' - the corpses in Deadland are fine with the fact that they're dead, and openly celebrate having nothing to lose. By comparison, ''life'' is portrayed as a horrible ordeal, with so many awful people that [[spoiler:Jasper and Agnes need encouragement not to give up and stay dead forever]].

* ''Series/{{Ghosts}}'': We get to see Julian's reaction to his death during flashbacks in the episode "A Lot to Take In" and it's not pretty. Basically, he initially doesn't accept the fact that he's dead and attempts to leave the mansion at least ''a hundred times'' despite the fact that he can no longer leave. He eventually accepts it at the end of the flashbacks.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' episode "Dead Celebrities", Ike [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin begins seeing the ghosts of dead celebrities]]. It turns out it's because the celebrities have been in Purgatory for months since Music/MichaelJackson refuses to believe he's dead.