Referenced By / The Divine Comedy

The references across media to Dante Alighieri's classic epic The Divine Comedy, many of which relate to the famous line "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here".

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Anime & Manga

• Black Clover: Dante's name comes from the Dante of Divine Comedy who journeys through hell.
• Cesare - Il Creatore che ha distrutto: 16-year-old Cesare Borgia develops his political philosophy based, in large part, on Dante's ideas, particularly his involvement with the Holy Roman Emperor Heinrich VII. Volume 7 starts with Cesare staring at Heinrich's tomb in the Pisa Cathedral, and almost the entire book consists of flashbacks to conversations with one of his professors about Dante. And that has nothing on The Musical adaptation (see "Theatre" below).
• Devilman: In volume 1, Ryo Asuka explains to Akira Fudo that demons used to rule Earth before the ice age wiped them out and humans evolved. He mentions Divine Comedy depicts devils to be frozen in ice in the lowest levels of Hell, they theorize that Dante Alighieri, the author, somehow might have seen the demons trapped in ice due to the ice age.
• Mazinger Z: Dr. Hell's final Humongous Mecha is named Great King of Hell and it has three faces, right like Satan did in the Divine Comedy. Go Nagai loved that book (albeit he apparently did miss that there are two parts after Inferno), and not only he included references in many of his series but also he drew a manga adaptation.
• Soul Eater: The Book of Eibon and Noah's conscience are divided into the Seven Deadly Sins. You could even argue that the Book is partially based in some visions of Hell, like the one in Dante's Divine Comedy.

Fan Works

• Rocketship Voyager. Captain Janeway is a Fan of the Past who salvages antique books from post-WWIII Europe, including a damaged copy of Divina Commedia (Inferno is "appropriately charred"). As in the VOY episode "Shattered", the first canto is quoted during a discussion with Chakotay.

Films — Animated

• Coco: Miguel's street dog friend is named Dante, after someone else who journeyed to the afterlife.
• Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs: When Manny and the others decide to go on the underground world of dinosaurs without him, Buck tells them "Abandon all hope, he who enters there."

Films — Live-Action

• Beetlejuice: The whorehouse is called "Dante's Inferno Room".
• Friend of the World: The film's opening includes a quote from Dante, referencing The Divine Comedy.
• Se7en. The Divine Comedy is one of the books inspiring the Serial Killer, and there are symbolic and actual references made to it throughout the film.
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The stage where the battle with the Katayanagi Twins takes place is called Ninth Circle, referencing the final level of Hell in Divine Comedy.
• John Wick:
  • In John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, Ernest quotes Dante to John Wick when they meet in a library. "Consider your origins. You were not made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge". This doesn't stop him from trying to brutally murder John moments later.
  • In John Wick: Chapter 4, The Bowery King opens the movie quoting him as he walks his way to John Wick punching a makiwara:
    Bowery King: I am the way into the city of woe. I am the way into eternal pain. I am the way to go among the lost. Before me there were no created things but those that last forever— AS! DO! I! Abandon all hope, you who are about to enter here...you are now in the presence of the MOTHERFUCKING KING!
• In Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Jack Sparrow says of two former crewmates that "The deepest circle of Hell is reserved for betrayers and mutineers."
• A Trip To Mars: When she and her dad watch her brother Avanti travel to Mars, Corona mentions according to Divine Comedy the planet belongs to those who dare risk their lives for their faith.

Literature

• American Psycho: The story begins with Bateman reading graffiti sprayed in red. The story ends with him reading a bar sign in red flanked by red curtains. As well as allusions to Hell: the book begins with a quote from Dante's Inferno and the quote in the summary, "This is not an exit," is probably a reference to Sartre's play No Exit.
• Bridge of Birds: The trip through Hell is essentially a Chinese version of Dante's Inferno.
• In The Descent an entrance into the sub-planet inspired Dante in his depiction of Hell.
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a sonnet cycle, Divina Commedia, as he translated the Divine Comedy, bearing witness to the epic poem's influence on Italy and beyond.
• Haugtussa: Gislaug is not the first literary figure to walk through heaven and hell. Of course, Odysseus, Aeneas and Dante have all done the journey before her, but she is quite possibly the first girl to make the trip.
• The Philosophical Strangler features a trip to local netherworld in (deliberately bad) verse, with a guide who is a snotty little jerk gloating over the residents who were mildly unpleasant to him when alive.
• In Win, Lose or Die, James Bond is up against the Brotherhood of Anarchy and Secret Terror, i.e. BAST, a name that is claimed to be shared by an ancient Egyptian demon. In response, MI6 uses the names of demons from The Divine Comedy as codenames for their operatives.

Live-Action TV

• Angel. After Wesley is thrown out of Team Angel, Lilah Morgan tries to recruit him for Wolfram & Hart. When Wesley curtly refuses the offer, she brings him a gift—a 16th century edition of Inferno in the original Tuscan, pointing out that in the innermost circle of Hell is Judas Iscariot.
  Lilah: The worst spot in Hell is reserved for those who betray. So, don't pretend you're too good to work for us.
• In Arrow Season 7, the high ups of the Ninth Circle (except Emiko) are all named after characters from Divine Comedy: Dante, Virgil and, in the final episode, Beatrice.
• Cowboy Bebop (2021). In "Supernova Symphony", Spike and Jet are captured by Vicious and taken to an abandoned church. When Jet wants to know where they are, Spike replies, "The ninth circle of Hell". The ninth circle was reserved for betrayers, including the biblical Cain who killed his brother Abel. In the episode both Vicious and Jet accuse Spike of having betrayed them, despite regarding him as a surrogate brother.
• Interview with the Vampire (2022): While contemplating suicide in "Like Angels Put in Hell by God", Louis de Pointe du Lac brings up "Dante's Wood of the Self-Murdered."
• Lucifer (2016): The name Beatrice originates from the poems.
• Once Upon a Time in Wonderland: Just before the Dark Forest there is the "Abandon all hope" from Divine Comedy. In the poems in hell, suicides turn into sentient trees.
• Star Trek: Voyager. In "Shattered", Chakotay encounters Captain Janeway from a point in the timeline before they became Fire-Forged Friends. Knowing she is a fan of Dante, he gives a quote appropriate to Voyager's situation: "In the middle of the journey of our life, I found myself astray in a dark wood, where the straight road had been lost."
• Supernatural: In "Swan Song" Lucifer freezes a window with his breath, and states "Sorry if it's a bit chilly. Most people think I burn hot. It's actually quite the opposite." This seems a Shout-Out to Dante's Inferno, which rather famously features a frozen Hell that gets colder the closer one gets to Lucifer at the center.
• The X-Files: Virgil Incanto's name comes from the first part of Divine Comedy divided into three long sections called 'cantos', where Roman poet Virgil is Dante's guide through the first two books Dante's Inferno and Purgatorio.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons the Nine Hells Of Baator (the [Invoked] Lawful Evil plane) is obviously based off Dante's Hell. Curiously, Mount Celestia (the Lawful Good plane, which is one of the Upper Planes,) is based off Dante's Purgatory instead of his Heaven, being a mountain with seven tiers.

Theater

• Abandon All Hope's title comes from the original epic, and the characters start out by being sent to hell.
• Cesare - Il Creatore che ha distrutto takes place about 170 years after Dante's death, but it features him as a character on stage. The students are reading the Divine Comedy in class, and sing a song about it, complete with Deathly Dies Irae and the Boléro Effect. Dante appears on stage mid-way through the song, and sings excerpts from the work. Then, a vision-like scene of his interactions with the Holy Roman Emperor Heinrich VII, and the relevant scenes in Paradiso, is shown. Cesare's philosophy builds largely on this (see notes on the source manga above). In the end, Dante appears to Cesare again, and at the climax of the story, they sing a debate duet over what kind of temporal power the church should hold. It ends with Dante commanding Cesare to become not a holy demon, but an emperor. Dante kneels, and tells Cesare that there could be a seat for him in Paradise, just like Heinrich VII. Yes, a duet between Dante and Cesare Borgia.

Video Games

• Azur Lane: The "Empyrean Tragicomedy" event features stage names based on locations from Dante's Divine Comedy. Stage A-1/C-1 is named Vestibule of Hell, stage A-2/C-2 is named Purgatorio, and stage A-3/C-3 is named Cocytus.
• Baldur's Gate: In Throne of Bhaal, Haer'Dalis asks Sarevok to discuss his torture in Hell fo him to use as the narrative for a new work. He intends to calls it... Dalis' Inferno.
• Bayonetta: The names of the in-game worlds, Paradiso, Purgatorio, and Inferno are a reference to Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy.
• BlazBlue: The description of the Sacrifice stage in Central Fiction features the famous line "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here".
• Castlevania: Cagnazzo, Scarmiglione/Skull Millione, and Rubicante/Lubicant in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow are members of the Malebranche from the Inferno, as are Barbariccia, Draghignazzo, and Malacoda in Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. It's possible that Dawn's final area is also intended to be an Inferno reference, especially given that it has multiple segments with different themes, one of which is frozen.
• Criminal Case: In World Edition Case 5: When Shadows Fall one of the killer's traits is knowing Dante's Inferno.
• Dante's Inferno is a brutal Hack-And-Slash action game based on the first book. The titular Dante serves as the game's player character, as he shreds through demonic forces in the circles Hell to redeem himself and save Beatrice, the love of his life.
• Daria spin-off Daria's Inferno is all about the title character sitting in a classroom lecture about the book and, falling asleep, dreaming that she's been sucked into the story. The circles of Hell are replaced by iconic locations from Lawndale.
• Devil May Cry: Most of the important characters of the series have names based on Divine Comedy — Dante, Vergil, Trish (shortened from Beatrice), Lucia and Mary ("Lady").
• Disgaea: While the name "Lucifer" might be a general allusion, it gets more specific when you notice you only get the Lucifer Dyne weapon from defeating the Overlord of a Netherworld called Ice Hell Cocytus.
• Fate/Grand Order: The Prison Tower event is essentially Dante's Inferno, where Dantes plays the Vergil to the protagonist's Dante.
• The four elemental fiends in Final Fantasy IV were originally named for demons from Dante's Inferno — Scarmiglione, Cagnazzo, Barbariccia, and Rubicante. Character Name Limits caused their names to get changed in the English translation, to Milon, Kainazzo, Valvalis, and Rubicant, respectively. All four are also corrected in the official GBA re-release.
  • The ROM hack Final Fantasy IV Unprecedented Crisis has four new fiends that are also named for the Maelbranche.
• Final Fantasy VI's final boss fight against Kefka is an allegory to the Divine Comedy, with Tier 1 representing Hell, Tier 2 Purgatory, Tier 3 Heaven, and Tier 4 with Kefka as God.
  • The ROM Hack Brave New World has Kefka say "lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate" as the party enters Kefka's Tower for the first time.
• Girls' Frontline: The subtitle for Chapter 10-Purgatory "There is no greater agony than reminiscing about happy times while suffering." is a fairly obscure excerpt from Dante Alighieri's Inferno^note This line is more commonly translated as "There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery.".
• Granblue Fantasy: The primal beast Cocytus is a direct homage to Divine Comedy, with all of his attacks taken from the poem.
• Limbus Company: The game starts with the main character Dante being attacked by several fixers codenamed Lion, Wolf, and Panther, before being rescued by a man known as Vergilius, who works to guide him and the Sinners throughout the City aboard a bus driven by a girl named Charon.
  Vergilius: We're setting off for the Inferno.
• The Secret World: Killing ten thousand Hellsoldiers nets the final award of "Divine Comedy."
• Stellaris: The achievement "Then Virgil, Now Beatrice" (restore a long-dead species to life)
• Super Robot Wars Alpha: Levi Tolar's "Judecca" refers to Judas Iscariot, the disciple of Jesus Christ who betrayed him, while each of the Judecca's attacks ("Caina", "Antenora", "Ptolomea" and "Judecca") corresponds to a section of the ninth and lowest circle of hell in Divine Comedy.
• ULTRAKILL is inspired by Dante's Inferno. The game's levels take place in the Circles of Hell, and King Minos' corpse serves as the end boss of the Second Circle, Lust. The famous words "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here", are engraved on the doorway to Hell, guarded by none other than Cerberus. In fact, three Cerberuses show up in Gluttony together as a Mini-Boss, a reference to the poem's version of Cerberus, who also guards the Third Circle.
• Umineko: When They Cry has a Beatrice, Virgilia, and Clair Vaux of Bernard.
• Unreal: DM-Inferno explicitly references Divine Comedy.
• Wild ARMs 2: It drew inspiration from Divine Comedy, as the terrorist organization the party fights through the first arc is named "Cocytus" (the ninth and lowest circle of Hell), with its four main generals named after the concentric zones within: Caina, Antenora, Judecca, and Ptolomea.
• Ys IX: Monstrum Nox: One of the translated graffiti in Balduq reads "Abandon all hopes and dreams, ye who know what's good for you."

Web Original

• Grindhouse and Watercolors, "Patchwork Horrorshow": "Canto XXII - Phlegethon" itself is a reference to Canto XXII from the Italian epic poem Dante's Inferno from Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. In Dante's Inferno, the Phlegethon was a lake featured in the seventh circle of Hell. There, those who were violent against others in life are boiled in a river of blood. This makes sense seeing as how the only tears being shed in the piece are that of Psychopomp and Prinna Domma, who have been shown enacting acts of violence in one way or another in other works in the portfolio.
• Roommates: The choice of Paradiso and Purgatorio rather than Paradise and Purgatory is an allusion to the epic.
• SCP Foundation: SCP-261's experiment log contains (or contained): "Dante's". 750g package of biscuits with nine distinct circular, concentric layers. Packaging claims that contents "Taste like Hell!"

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender: The gate to the Serpent's Pass tells people to "abandon hope" as do the gates of Hell in Dante's Inferno.
• Doug: When Doug, Skeeter and Roger visit Bloodstone Manor, notices can be seen that says "Abandon all beverages, ye who enter."
• The Fairly OddParents!: "Shelf Life" directly plays with several classic works of literature: Moby Duck, Frankenstein's Monster Truck, Tarzan Lord of the Drapes, The Three Mouseketeers, and The Rat in Spats. Not to mention starring villain Tom Sawyer and the various novels used as frisbees or bowling pins in a montage...
• Over the Garden Wall: The series is about the protagonists taking a journey through the forest that resembles Dante's journey through Hell, but in a much Lighter and Softer tone.

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