Follow TV Tropes

Following

Karmic Reform Hell

Go To

"When [God] said Hell no longer needs a keeper, it doesn't. It needs a healer."
Lucifer Morningstar, Lucifer (2016) episode "Partners 'Til the End"

"Fire and Brimstone" is the common aesthetic people give for Hell; a place where those who are forsaken the grace of God after judgement are cast into, damned for all of eternity for it. Of course, what would become of this idea if Satan realized that the souls in his care aren't beyond redemption? What if the Rulers of Perdition realized that all these people needed was a little therapy and a shoulder to cry on? What if Satan himself decided to retire and his replacement wanted to take things in a new direction? What if Hell was never a place of pointless torment and it's all just bad publicity?

In works that take a critical view on the purpose of Hell, the Humans Are Flawed route tends to be the overall conclusion that's made. An appeal is made to whoever has the authority to make such decisions to remake it from a prison for hopelessly broken sinners, and more as an asylum for the theologically insane. Some of the demons sharing a pit with them might take a shine to this paradigm shift. Others would have preferred the Bad Ole' days of penis flatteners and bees with teeth. Either way, it's happening, baby!

One reason a person finds themself in this version of Hell is due to Afterlife Angst, where a character has trouble moving on from their life and their entire stay there is them learning to do just that. Whether the end result means that they can leave Hell for a better afterlife, be reincarnated so they can try again or some other fate is a whole other conversation to be had.

Most examples try to take the Ironic Hell trope and flip it on its head — manifesting a person's worst fears and insecurities not to cause them harm, but to help them confront these problems and move beyond them.

Compare Hell of a Time for when Hell is generally not so bad. Also compare Purgatory and Limbo, which operates like this but isn't actually hell.


Examples

    open/close all folders 

    Anime and Manga 
  • In Dragon Ball Z: Fusion Reborn, Hell has a soul-cleansing machine that prepares souls for reincarnation.
  • Happy Science movies depict an In-Universe unintentional version of this, combined with Self-Inflicted Hell. According to the cult, Hell is a horrible, dark place reserved for humans who die neglecting their spiritual heritage and indulging in worldly pleasures while rejecting the notion of an afterlife. However, the movies also show that souls already in that place can escape by repenting and acknowledging their spiritual heritage as "children of Buddha."
    • The Laws of Eternity: When Yuko meets Helen Keller, Florence Nightingale, and Mother Theresa (who are angels according to Happy Science) in the seventh tier of Heaven, the Bodhisattva Realm, the latter of the three remarks that as angels, they're willing to descend into Hell to take the suffering, repentant souls out of that place. When Yuko asks why, the three women reply that it's in their nature.
    • The Rebirth of Buddha: After finding out that Tousaku Arai kidnapped Sayako in response to ruining his reputation, Taiyou Sorano comments that all of Arai's wrongdoings were the product of a demon possessing him, as they're scared of the real Buddha's message becoming widespread, purifying people's minds and rendering them impervious to possession. Moreover, it's implied this would extend to souls already in that place, taking them up in Heaven and rendering Hell's existence obsolete.

    Comic Books 
  • In The Sandman (1989), Lucifer eventually gets tired of running Hell and shuts it down, and thanks to circumstances, Dream finds himself forced into the role of deciding who gets the key to Hell. Ultimately, the key is handed over to two angels, Remiel and Duma, who vow to refurbish Hell into a place of more gentle correction. This ends up being a subverted example because between Remiel's bitterness at what he views as an undeserved demotion and Duma's apathy towards his new job, Hell ultimately ends up being the same as it ever was, just with a more cynical mission statement.

    Fan Works 
  • In the Pony POV Series, souls that end up in Hell can only ascend to Heaven if they sincerely seek redemption for their actions in life. Unfortunately, most of them tend to refuse to even admit that they did anything wrong in the first place, condemning them to continued torture.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In Jacob's Ladder, the chiropractor Louis refers to 14th-century Christian mystic Meister Eckhart in reference to the nightmarish things that Jacob had been seeing throughout the movie, claiming that the demons that await them in Hell are actually there to help souls leave their lives behind them. With the reveal that he had never made it back to Vietnam and that the entire film was a Dying Dream, the many horrifying things he sees are him coming to terms with the Awful Truth so that he can move on to a more peaceful afterlife.
    Louis: Eckhart saw Hell too. He said: "The only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won't let go of life, your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away. But they're not punishing you", he said. "They're freeing your soul. So, if you're frightened of dying and... you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth."

    Literature 
  • Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's Inferno (and its sequel Escape from Hell) has its protagonist grapple with the purpose of Hell and how a perfect, loving god would allow a place of eternal suffering for what he views as petty reasons, "we're in the hands of infinite power and infinite sadism" being a recurring phrase in the book. While these questions are left open, the fact that there is a level of irony to the soul's punishments and that escape is possible lean into the idea that Hell was designed as a place where souls can learn to work through their sins, even if it takes all of eternity for the soul to be worthy of Heaven.
  • In the Tarot Trilogy by Piers Anthony, this is indeed the rationale of Hell and Satan: Satan goes through what is - apparently - Brother Paul's post-mortem CV during what might otherwise be a job interview in a pleasantly airy office. He then picks out points in Paul's life where he did not behave well or with the best of motives and uses these as the basis for analyzing his character failings. Remedial education - in the form of a "reincarnation" into one of the nastiest periods of Earth history - quickly follows.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The Good Place: Near the end of the series, Michael, Janet, and the rest of Team Cockroach manage to convince Gen the Judge that Humans Are Flawed and are undeserving of eternal torture in the Bad Place, Chidi managing to design a brand-new afterlife that takes this into account. Instead of a person's time on Earth determining where they spend eternity (people who earn enough good points going to the Good Place, everyone else to the Bad Place), humans are sent to the Medium Place where they are put through tests where they learn, grow and change incrementally until they become worthy of entering the Good Place. Instead of the Bad Place being a realm of endless torture, the Demons that inhabit it are used to design and construct the trials, turning them from Lawful Evil monsters into Trickster Mentors.
  • Hell in Lucifer (2016) is normally presented as an Ironic Hell — a place where those weighed down by their guilt are tormented by their insecurities and forced to experience their worst moments in an endless loop, with the only means of escaping to Heaven (which rarely ever happens) being if they were to work through their guilt. In the series finale, Lucifer comes to realize that the two damned souls that made it to Heaven — Lee Garner and Dan Espinoza — were only able to do so with his help. It is here that he realizes his true purpose in life is to help damned souls work through their issues and enter Heaven, his Character Development helping him empathize enough to accomplish this. The last we see of Lucifer, he is giving therapy sessions to Reese Getty and Vincent Le Mec in a recreation of Linda Martin's office.

    Religion and Mythology 
  • In Jainism, Naraka (Hell) is not a permanent punishment for sin but a temporary place where karma is repaid. They stay in Naraka until their karma has reached its full result - which often takes billions of years.
  • Buddhism is similar with several Hells known as Narakas. The dead can spend billions of years in one of these before being reincarnated on a mortal world.
  • Christian Universalism is the idea that a benevolent God wouldn't punish people forever and that everyone is destined for Heaven eventually. Universalists believe that Hell either doesn't exist or is temporary before the souls moves on to Heaven.
  • Zig-Zagged/Subverted in Catholicism. Purgatory is a place of torment where sinners are reformed, but it isn't the same thing as hell. While it's a whole different place, certain Catholic strains of thought hold it's just as painful (even though it's temporary).
  • Gehennanote  in Jewish theology is often depicted as transitory, where the souls of the wicked are punished but the duration maxes out at one year. Some acts get you permanently banished there, but even then it's just until you repent for said sins, depending on the interpretation.

    Tabletop Games 
  • In Nomine: Downplayed. In theory, Heaven and Hell are both forever; blessed souls cannot be damned, nor can damned souls be saved. Beyond that, the people who end up in Hell to begin with are generally far too selfish to ever consider genuinely atoning for the bad things they did. However, there is a rumor among demons — one only ever whispered when none of their superiors are around — that if a damned soul can muster up the humility necessary to objectively look back on their life, sincerely comprehend and repent for every sin and harmful thing they ever did, and beg forgiveness with no expectation that it should be granted, they will simply disappear from Hell and be taken directly into the Upper Heavens.

    Video Games 
  • Criminal Girls and its sequel revolves around the protagonist leading a group of seven girls through Hell, taking the trials that allow them to confront their sins and reform them so they'll be given a second chance at life.
  • Part of the Last Second Choice Ending of Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell includes Johnny Gat replacing Satan as king of Hell. Johnny is not interested in demonic torture or other atrocities, and just plans on making his new building presentable for the rest of the Saints as soon as they arrive there. It does help that the Saint's Row version of God is good, and created Hell initially as a time-out place for Satan, who turned it into a place of nightmarish torture instead. Johnny, for all his unpleasant qualities, would be a Redeeming Replacement.
  • Silent Hill 2 shows Silent Hill in this light as we discover that the main characters, James, Angela, and Eddie, are carrying hidden backstories that made the town take interest in the trio. James's side of the journey is learning about these hidden backstories and the "best" ending shows James leaving with new-found peace. However, the forces behind Silent Hill ultimately subvert this, as they are in fact quite malevolent, and exploit the negative thoughts and feelings of those trapped within (guilt, shame, self-hatred, etc.) with the aim of tormenting them, not out of helping them to find redemption. If James does so anyway and is able to leave the town, it's only because him coming to terms and making peace with what happened left Silent Hill without any means to torture him further. This gets emphasized in Silent Hill 3 where a mysterious voice over a loud speaker unambiguously tells Heather how "We don't want you to leave." as she flees an Advancing Wall of Doom.

    Web Animation 
  • The eponymous Home for Infinite Losers is one, being a cul-de-sac meant to help the "morally-compromised malefactors" with high power levels of TFS' Dragon Ball Z Abridged rehabilitate after Raditz broke the soul scrubber. So far the only known graduates are Cui and King Cold, of all people, and he was actually offered a job supervising other HFILS (although some context clues suggest he's stringing them along in a ploy to get everyone out of HFIL), and his time in HFIL does seem to have had an effect on Nappa, as he's nicer (relatively speaking) post-revival.

    Web Comics 
  • In Jack the protagonists eventually figure out that it's possible for a damned soul to leave Hell and be reincarnated, but only after they've acknowledged why they're down there, and Hell tries to keep souls from realizing that.

    Western Animation 
  • While the Hell presented in Hazbin Hotel is a place of endless vice and debauchery, the general consensus is that Hell is meant to be a dumping ground for the souls of the wicked and that once they are there, there is no possibility (or point) in redeeming them. Once in a while, Heaven sends angelic warriors down to purge the demons, as Heaven believes that the demons simply aren't worth the effort to try and reform. The Hero Charlie believes that not only is it possible that the demons are capable of redemption, but that said redemption will allow their souls to ascend to Heaven, thus curing Hell's overpopulation problem without the yearly purging.

Top