Meeting Influential People in The Afterlife

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

It’s a sad reality check, there’s no current technology for immortality... even if you’re a celebrity, athlete, musician, inventor, or political leader. While going into the Afterlife may seem like it's the end of a game, at least, one is given an opportunity to reunite with deceased loved ones like a family member or partner. Just image meeting a well-known personality in the afterlife? Well, celebrities are people too and can fall victim to what can deadly for an avenge person. So, having a celebrity in the afterlife makes a lot of sense, but it often depends on what did they do in life… as they’re subjected to judgment like everyone else.

This is often common in Dead to Begin With. If this is described in a poem or song, this would result in a Celebrity Elegy.

Obviously, in cases where the person in question was alive in Real Life at the time, this trope still would meet the qualifications. It could be either being impersonated by an entertainer or the person playing themselves. As a result, this kind of trope is fairly common in many works, especially in Real Person Fic. This is because those in the public, such as celebrities and political figures, are often the main theme. For this reason, this trope is limited to the Influential People who had made a name in the public spotlight. When it comes to fictional celebrities, i.e. In-Universe, this trope also is all right due to the influence of the world in the work towards the characters.

Compare with Dead Person Conversation, in which only one of the people having the conversation is dead.

Examples of Meeting Influential People in The Afterlife include:

Fan Works

Film

  • A variation of this is made in the 2020 Pixar/Disney film Soul where influential deceased people mentor young souls in The Great Before during the You Seminar. The deuteragonist of the film, 22, has been "mentored" by such illustrious souls like Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Marie Antoinette, Abraham Lincoln, Copernicus, and Sigmund Freud among hundreds of others, only for them to end detesting the rude trolling young soul.

Literature

Live-Action TV

  • A short-lived 1987 show called Second Chance, St. Peter is in his office in the Afterlife Antechamber, where he has recently people stand up their final judgment just after their deaths. After allowing a deceased beauty queen into Heaven, Peter deals with Colonel Gaddafi, before sending him to hell for what he had done. Those who were found to be neither good nor bad for either place are allowed to come Back From the Dead being given their second chance, which happened to a motorist who arrived shortly after being in an automobile collision.

Professional Wrestling

  • In his eulogy to "Mean" Gene Okerlund on Monday Night Raw, Hulk Hogan describes Okerlund having the angels entertained by setting up a tag-team wrestling match in Heaven. The team of The Macho Man and the Ultimate Warrior against Roddy Piper and Mr. Perfect, with Andre the Giant as the special referee. Bobby Heenan and Gorilla Monsoon would be calling the match as usual.

Video Games

  • In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Sovngarde is essentially Valhalla to the Nords, and inhabited by heroes who have proven their mettle in life and have an eternity of feasting and fighting to look forward to. When the player visits Sovngarde for the final showdown with Alduin, you get to meet all kinds of ancient Nordic heroes: Greybeard founder Jurgen Windcaller, the Companions' founder Ysgramor, former Whiterun Jarl Olaf One Eye, and the original three heroes that banished Alduin in the past. Depending on your actions in the storyline, you can also run into famous people you've interacted with, such as Kodlak Whitemane of the Companions, or rebel leader Ulfric Stormcloak.


Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Meeting_Influential_People_in_The_Afterlife?oldid=1881301"