39,327
edits
Everybody Hates Hades: Difference between revisions
m
Mass update links
m (remove unneccessary quote box template) |
m (Mass update links) |
||
Line 18:
Many religions throughout history have produced deities who rule over and/or represent some aspect of death and are not portrayed as being malicious. They're not evil, they're just doing their job. Those dead souls won't collect themselves.
Of course, that doesn't stop some modern writers from looking upon these otherwise benign beings and seeing nothing but an easy villain for their mythology based opus. After all, who cares about accuracy? [[Viewers
It's also quite possible that they simply [[Did Not Do the Research]]. Or were limited by time constraints and had to do something with what they had on the fly... or [[They Just Didn't Care]].
Line 28:
Named after the [[Greek Mythology|Greek God of the Underworld, Hades]], who is often a victim of this in modern times. 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)|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.
{{examples
== Anime and Manga ==
Line 34:
* Both ''[[Mazinger Z]]'', ''[[Great Mazinger]]'' and ''[[Shin Mazinger]]'' involve [[Greek Mythology]], and Hades is the villain. In ''Shin'', Mazinger Z [[Rocket Punch|Rocket Punches]] him in the face. Zeus does like-wise with ''his severed arm''.
* Hades is a major antagonist in the ''[[Saint Seiya]]'' anime/manga series. His "evil" is apparently off the charts.
* '[[Astro Boy (Manga)|Astro Boy]]'': [[Anti
* ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh]]'': Anubis got the [[Generic Doomsday Villain]] treatment in the movie. Of course, the film was written by the 4KidsEntertainment adapters; knowing them, they probably missed how in the original material, Shadi's fealty was to Anubis. Granted that Shadi can easily signify [[Good Is Not Nice]], but he's still not a creature of malice, so his divine liege probably isn't either. Instead, the writers should have considered Set (the closest thing the Kemetians had to an evil god, at least after the Hykso invasion).
** Technically though, the Anubis of the movie was an ancient Egyptian [[Evil Sorcerer]] who fashioned his title after the god.
* ''[[Dragonball Z]]'': [[Inverted Trope|Inverted]] by Mr. Satan ("Hercule" in the English dub.) The creators seem to have thought that Satan was a good name for a goofy [[Anti
** Fun fact: Hercule was a name originally given to Mr. Satan by the french anime translation ([[Captain Obvious|Hercule is Hercules in french]], amusingly enough), but it wasn't due to [[Bowdlerisation]]; rather, the name Satan was already taken, as they'd given it to Piccolo from his [[Big Bad]] days (when he was known as the "Great Demon King").
Line 88:
* Averted by [[Piers Anthony]] in ''On A Pale Horse'', in which Death/Thanatos is not only a human being tapped to fulfill a necessary duty, but is actually the protagonist and one of the nicest characters in the [[Incarnations of Immortality|Incarnations]] series.
* ''[[The Silmarillion]]'': [[Zig Zagging Trope|Played around with]] with Mandos. While he's completely in line with the will of Eru Iluvatar (like the rest of the Valar), he tends to be a little harsh regarding the interpretation, something of a "devil's advocate".
** 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--as the Elves would tell you [[Who Wants to Live Forever?|immortality isn't all it's cracked up to be]].
* In ''[[Discworld (Literature)/Mort|Mort]]'' when Death is testing out the pleasures of being human, he allows himself to get drunk at which point he starts drunkenly moping about how everyone hates him and he has no friends. Death is portrayed as being incredibly lonely.
** Discworld's Death in general is a pretty nice guy, likes humanity, and is [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Discworld/Hogfather usually on the hero's side] or [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Discworld/ReaperMan one of the main heroes himself.] [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Discworld/ThiefOfTime He even convinced the other Horsemen to ride out for humanity instead of against it once.]
Line 125:
** Hell, Disney didn't exactly start making him outright evil - you can really blame [[The Dung Ages|Medieval Christians]] for their common practice of demonizing pagan deities. Hades had his name lent to Hell, while aspects of Pan were put into [[Satan|the Devil himself]].
*** 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 [[HP Lovecraft]], who made him into one of the [[Eldritch Abomination|Eldritch Abominations]] 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
** Anubis, god of the afterlife, has also gotten the [[Villain Ball]] more often in the recent years. Considering his position as a neutral entity interested only in ensuring proper administration of the deceased, this is completely out of character.
** Some mythologists actually theorize that Loki, the default [[Big Bad]] of [[Norse Mythology]], got hit with this as soon as Vikings started embracing Christianity - unfortunately, this was around the same time the Vikings started ''writing down their mythology.''
Line 169:
** The subversion is undone in the PSP title Ghost Of Sparta, where Thanatos, [[Eldritch Abomination|a death god whose existence is said to preempt that of Olympus,]] is a right bastard, who goes to significant lengths to keep Kratos from {{spoiler|finding his brother}}, and when that fails {{spoiler|kills Deimos, and constantly mocks Kratos the entire boss fight.}} This implies that Hades is not so much the god of death as he is of the afterlife (which was pretty much his actual role in [[Greek Mythology]]).
* In ''Immortal Throne'', the expansion to ''[[Titan Quest]]'', Hades is cast as the villain. {{spoiler|The reason being that after the connection between the godly realms and earth was severed in the first game and Typhon was destroyed, Zeus decided that the Olympian gods would take this as an opportunity to depart from the world and leave humans to their own affairs as they had proven themselves capable of such. Hades went rogue, formed a demon army, and started to assault the overworld, and it was the lot of the player to put an end to Hades, of whom Zeus had predicted his actions and actually set the player on the right path to deal with him.}}
* While Hades can be considered the main antagonist of the myth of Orpheus, it was largely because dead people aren't supposed to come back to life. However, in ''[[The Battle of Olympus]]'', he had Orpheus's love interest killed so that he could marry her, justifying [[Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?|the subsequent beating]] administered by the player.
* ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'', being based of [[Disney Animated Canon]], also cast Hades as a villain. Oddly enough, he and [[Peter Pan|Captain Hook]] were the only Disney villains to ''not'' fall into darkness. It's worth noting that this version of Hades is more of a [[Jerkass]] than anything, his only real reason for joining Maleficent's entourage is to get rid of Hercules.
* In the city-building game ''Zeus,'' this trope is ''averted.'' Basically any Greek God can be built a temple to (sometimes you have to do so just to keep away another one that's pissed off at you), and that includes Hades. In-game he can defeat any god that attacks your city save Zeus and Poseidon, and the game recognizes Hades is more than just the lord of the dead; he's also the god in charge of everything within the earth itself, including ''mineral wealth'', an often-overlooked aspect in modern times. In this game, he rewards you with infinite silver veins that spawn around his temple and occasionally grants you the blessing of additional cash. He also lets his pet Cerberus guard your city as a bonus.
Line 212:
* ''[[Mighty Max]]'' had an episode where a snake monster is trying to summon Kali, but she's only evil under his mind control. Once Max snaps her out of it (using {{spoiler|an idol of Shiva, another [[Dark Is Not Evil]] god}}, she deals with the snake monster for them and leaves.
** Another episode, "The Mummy's Hand," does this to the ''entire Egyptian pantheon.''
*** Not really; the plot involves Isis trying to resurrect Osiris, [[Well
* In the movie ''Hercules'', Hades was the [[Big Bad]], despite Hera being the one who tried to kill Hercules in the original myths. Unrelatedly, all of the characters except Hercules [[Ancient Grome|are referred to by their original Greek names]]... except "Bacchus" and "Cupid" if you count the Animated Series but that's neither here nor there.
** They made Hera into Hercules' mother, so she wouldn't have reason to persecute him as an illegitimate child. [[Futurama|Which only raises more questions.]]
Line 219:
* Subverted in the TV series ''[[Class of the Titans]]''. While Hades is kind of...swishy, he still is a pretty decent guy who is in a loving relationship with Persephone.
** Thanatos (who is basically, the greek god of death), Hades's subordinate, is sometimes used as a villain, but on these occasions he usually turns out to be mind-controlled by Kronos. He is otherwise a kindly bespectacled old man - who can transform into a boney horror with wings. He is pretty neutral towards the heroes, but does seem to enjoy his job too much...
* Averted in ''[[Gargoyles]]'' with Anubis (voiced by [[Tony Jay]]), who turns out to not be a bad guy. He just is there to maintain balance in the world. The episode "Grief" deals with [[Well
{{quote| '''Anubis:''' [[True Neutral|Death is the ultimate fairness. Young or old, rich or poor, all are equal in Death]].}}
* Averted in the Sunbow ''[[G.I. Joe]]'' episode "The Gods Below". Osiris, the Egyptian God of Death, and the other Egyptian gods that appear, for the most part, are portrayed as good or at least neutral. The only exception is Set who's kind of already an evil god in Egyptian mythology, [[Depending On the Writer|depending on which period of Egyptian history any given myth comes from.]]
Line 233:
[[Category:Sadly Mythtaken]]
[[Category:Everybody Hates Hades]]
[[Category:Trope]][[Category:Pages with comment tags]]
| |||