Everybody Hates Hades: Difference between revisions

[[File:rsz_hades_hate_2965rsz hades hate 2965.jpg|frame|'''Left''': Hades, from [[Classical Mythology]]. [[Licked by the Dog|Animal Lover.]]<br />'''Right''': Hades, from Disney's ''[[Hercules (Disney film)|Hercules]]''. [[Obviously Evil]].]]

Named after the [[Greek Mythology|Greek God of the Underworld, Hades]], who is often a victim of this in modern times.<ref>Probably the worst thing Hades did is kidnap his niece and maker her his wife. The tale of which is normally called "The Rape of Persephone". He did this with the approval of his brother Zeus, who among other things was the god of justice and a serial rapist. So while not a paragon of virtue by todays standards, if you use most other [[Jerkass Gods|greek gods]] as a baseline, he was a pretty nice dude.</ref>. In the original Hercules myth, Hera (Zeus's wife) was the antagonist, because Hercules was the product of Zeus's... um... "[[Anything That Moves|extra-marital activities]]". Poor Hades had nothing to do with the operation. [[Hercules (Disney film)|But that just wouldn't set well with Disney's lovely-lovely family image now, would it?]] Much easier to make the creepy death dude the bad guy.

* Both ''[[Mazinger Z]]'', ''[[Great Mazinger]]'' and ''[[Shin Mazinger Shougeki! Z-hen]]'' involve [[Greek Mythology]], and Hades is the villain. In ''Shin'', Mazinger Z [[Rocket Punch|Rocket Punches]]es him in the face. Zeus does like-wise with ''his severed arm''.

* Other Marvel characters subvert this. The Marvel universe contains the embodiment of Death, who is often depicted as [[True Neutral]] -- she—she takes ''all'' life, good or bad (as she told [[New Mutants|Danielle Moonstar the Valkyrie]], who said "you cause pain!" -- "and end it."), though has ordered the deaths of billions just to take back the balance. Hela (The Norse goddess of the Dead) is more or less neutral as well, though she leant towards evil back in the day, and selfishly punished Thor several times for perceived slights; however, its her fathr Loki who is the ''actual'' Asgardian [[God of Evil]], and they don't get along ''at all''. There are also other "reapers" in the MU that aren't really evil, like Doorman from the Great Lakes Avengers.

** Basically, Mandos is a fairly standard "grim, gloomy, fatalistic, but not that bad of a sort" death god, and is portrayed as being without mercy but also without malice. ''Morgoth'', Middle-earth's actual [[God of Evil]], is also associated with death, but he's more accurately the god of the ''fear of'' death (among other things), rather than death itself. Indeed, ''natural'' death is called the "Gift of Men" and is supposed to be a blessing--asblessing—as the Elves would tell you [[Who Wants to Live Forever?|immortality isn't all it's cracked up to be]].

* ''[[Charmed]]'' never used Hades (except for a rather dishonorable mention as the father of the demon Nikos in the novel), but Hecate, another underworld god(dess), came off particularly badly, being [http://charmed.wikia.com/wiki/Hecate turned into a demon]. (Way to go, [[Did Not Do the Research|have witches fight the matron of witches]].) Yama also got this treatment, becoming the totally amoral gatekeeper of Chinese hell who tried to snatch whatever spirits were not "properly buried" and drag them to hell, regardless of whether they were good or evil.<br /><br />The Angel of Death on the other hand, is portrayed more or less sympathetically, especially during his first appearance. He does his job in ensuring that everyone dies at the appropriate time. If somebody who ''must'' die does not, it will cause the natural flow of death to halt and put the entire world in chaos.

* ''[[Smallville]]'', on the other hand, did an episode where Lois got possessed by Isis and tried to bring Osiris back into the world -- whichworld—which, despite him being the just ruler of the dead, was treated as a very bad thing.

*** Some other common "demons", such as Baal, Dagon and Beelzebub, were demonizations of Semitic deities. Beelzebub and Ba'al were both corruptions of the same god, in fact! Dagon's demonization is a fair bit more recent, and comes from the pen of [[H.P. Lovecraft]], who made him into one of the [[Eldritch Abomination|Eldritch Abominations]]s of the [[Cthulhu Mythos]].

* Egyptian mythology presents two good examples in the form of Seth, god of the desert. The portrayal of Seth as a demonic figure was actually a political response to the unification of the Upper and Lower Kingdoms. As the Upper Kingdom, represented by Seth, resisted the union their patron's name was smeared and his darker aspects were emphasized in later myths; this is what inspired modern depictions. However, while Seth was jealous of his brother Horus' position and a harbinger of doom with no love for humans, he would help the other gods and play a key role in defeating Apophis, the actual devil-equivalent. This makes him one of the earliest mythological [[Anti-Hero|Anti-Heroes]]es.

* ''[[Scion]]'': Utterly averted -- Hadesaverted—Hades is presented as he is in the myths - probably [[Only Sane Man|the only level-headed person in the Dodekatheon]]. Aside from mild tendencies towards greed and [[Pluto Is Expendable|irritation at being a "dwarf planet"]], he's an all right guy. On the other hand, Miclantehcuhtli of the Atzlanti is portrayed as being evil in a spiteful, petty bureaucrat sort of way; Hel of the Norse Aesir is cold, cruel and unfeeling, and the Ragnarok supplement mocks players who want to make her happy through the power of true love (although it does leave open the possibility); and Izanami of the Amatsukami torments other gods and Scions for being unable to save her from her tortured and rotten state as ruler of the Japanese underworld. All of these are pretty close to their respective myths, no less. White Wolf likes to do the research.

** '''Aztec''': Predictably, the cultural [[Values Dissonance]] wreaks havoc. With the exception of Quetzalcoatl and his pal/sidekick Xolotl, the entire pantheon is made up of [[Complete Monster|Complete Monsters]]s and a few gods who feel they don't have a choice in following them. Mictlan, the lord of the dead (well, [[Did Not Do the Research|it's actually the name of the underworld]], but by this point, who cares, right?) deserves special mention, as it's the [[Eldritch Abomination]] co-ruler of Hades (the place, which is crawling with [[Our Demons Are Different|a bunch of demon races]]; Hades the god rules another chunk of it) with fellow abomination Modeus.

** '''Greek''': Ironically, Hades gets off the easiest, coming off mostly as a [[Jerkass]] [[Knight Templar]]; Ares is a bullying jerk, but that's pretty much the same as in actual myth. Hera is basically a [[Soap Opera]]-style Queen Bitch who's finally gone insane from Zeus' philandering, and is actively fomenting strife between Olympus and other pantheons, as well as thinking about [[Sealed Evil in a Can|freeing the Titans]]. The Titans themselves are either [[Eldritch Abomination|Eldritch]] or [[Humanoid Abomination|Humanoid Abominations]]s - Cronos is a black blob of eyes and tentacles who created the first olympian gods as edible power batteries, and Hecate, while more or less human in appearance, is a ruthless power-hungry pragmatist who's mercenary enough to deal with the Splugorth (a ''species'' of eldritch abominations whose [[Planet of Hats|hat]] is being [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]] imperialistic slave-traders).

** And then there's a bunch of pretenders and impostors passing themselves for existing legitimate gods, usually for less-than-virtuous reasons, many of whom are actually [[Eldritch Abomination|Eldritch Abominations]]s (notice another pattern?)

* The main antagonist of ''[[Once On This Island]]'' is Papa Ge, a Vodou Loa associated with death whom the actual lore seems to portray as [[wikipedia:Gu%C3%A9d%C3%A9Guédé|a pretty decent guy]] (at least as far as [[The Other Wiki]] can be trusted on the subject).

** And even then {{spoiler|s/he doesn't want to. S/he was content with sleeping away until a bunch of [[Death Seeker|Death Seekers]]s in the Kirijo Group wanted to end the world. Only the [[Heroic Sacrifice]] of Yukari's father and the Main Character buys enough time for humanity to get its shit together.}}

* ''[[Shin Megami Tensei]] [[Devil Survivor]]'' has Yama, Buddhist judge of the underworld, making a contract with one of the people inside the Tokyo Lockdown. He reveals himself to be a [[Hanging Judge]] to whom [[All Crimes Are Equal]] (and death being the only sentence). To be fair, though, we only see him interact with people guilty of crimes like murder, abuse of authority and similar -- hesimilar—he ignores the party, who are not guilty of anything, until you attack him.