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Mundane Afterlife: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:soredemomachiwamawattei_8924.jpg|link=Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru
{{quote|'''Calvin''': I wonder where we go after we die.<br />
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* ''Inverted'' in ''[[Amakusa 1637]]''. At one point, the locals ask the time-traveling protagonists to describe the "Heaven" they believe they come from. When the protagonists comply, they are themselves shocked and moved when they realize the modern society they describe - one of electric light and heating, religious tolerance, rule of law, and ample food - ''is'', in fact, Heaven for the [[Crapsack World|medieval peasants]]. A paradise that they'd been taking for granted.
* ''[[Bleach]]''. Not only is the afterlife medieval Japan complete with social classes, but people are still born and die in it. Die in it in any manner that doesn't [[Deader Than Dead|destroy your soul]], and you [[Reincarnation|reincarnate]] back in the living world. Note that Hell is separate from this setup, and we don't quite know how it works. Especially since we've only seen it maybe once, waaaay back around Episode 5.
* In ''[[
* ''[[Haibane Renmei]]'' takes place in a mundane version of purgatory, where children and teenagers are purified from their sins before going to heaven.
* Japan's afterlife in ''[[Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru]]'' is strikingly similar to everyday life. The Egyptian afterlife is the classical one, though.
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* The depiction of Hell in ''Highway to Hell''. It included a diner and a strip club.
* ''[[Monty Pythons Meaning of Life]]'': Heaven is the cheesiest Vegas-style cabaret you could possibly imagine, complete with sub-Tony Bennett crooner and terrible dancers. And to make matters worse, it's always ''Christmas'' there.
* The film ''[[Wristcutters:
* In the Albert Brooks comedy ''[[Defending Your Life]],'' the "in-between" plane is an idealized resort setting where the dead dine in fine restaurants and generally enjoy themselves until it's time to be judged, after which time they will either be sent on to Heaven if they're deemed ready or reincarnated if the powers that be decide they still have more to learn on Earth. Their Judgment takes place in a courtroom setting, complete with lawyers and counselors. When it's time for the souls to go to wherever the powers have deemed they are to go, they travel there on trams like you'd see in Disney World.
* ''[[The Bothersome Man]]'' invokes this trope flawlessly, depicting afterlife as a consumerism urban life so ''normal'' it's devoid of all deep emotions and feelings (even the consumerist ones, including smell, taste and alcohol highs), complete with absolute contentment and indifference of all the people around (even if you've just cut off your finger on an office cutter). Needless to say it's vague about the city being Heaven, Hell or Purgatory.
* Heaven, or at least part of it in ''[[
** And if you kill yourself, you become a civil servant and must work there.
** They do briefly mention a possible next life, after a term served as ghosts is up.
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* In some ways, the afterlife featured in the ''J.W.Wells'' books by [[Tom Holt]] is not at all mundane, being an empty white expanse. However, considering the only activities that take place there are classes in basket weaving and intermediate Spanish, it probably counts.
* In ''[[Circle of Magic|Briar's Book]]'', {{spoiler|Briar follows Rosethorn into the afterlife and finds her facing a huge, badly overgrown and disorganized garden... the sort of challenging project both of them could happily work on forever, being plant mages.}}
* Discussed in Dostoevsky's ''[[
* The [[Discworld]] book ''<s>Faust</s> Eric'' involves a discussion of how, since most of the damned become numb to the physical torments of Hell, the demons have devised ways to inflict mental torments -- namely, incredible mind-destroying boredom. There's a lengthy discussion of how such a Hell would be like a cheap hotel room with nothing to read and only one TV channel (in Welsh) and the ice machines not working and the bars not open for several more hours. Although the actual Hell is a ''distilled'' version of that boredom, it's the same kind of idea. For instance the Sisyphus analog doesn't even get to try to push his rock up a hill. Instead he has to spend eternity memorising the endless and everchanging instructions on how to move objects safely.
* The Nac mac Feegle from the ''[[Discworld]]'' series believe that they're ''in'' the afterlife, and refer to dying as "going back to the Last World".
* ''Elsewhere'' is a novel centering on afterlife speculation. It has freshly-dead people go on a sort of boat together. Whatever killed them heals, and then they arrive in Elsewhere, where they are greeted by recently-dead relatives and friends. They [[Merlin Sickness|age backwards]] then, and as newborns are taken back on the boat to be reincarnated. There's a society not unlike what the living have, and people tend to go for different jobs - Marilyn Monroe became a psychiatrist, for example. It's possible to pay to look at the world of the living and communicate through water, but that's generally frowned upon.
* In Mitch Albom's ''The Five People You Meet In Heaven'', before you can truly get to heaven, you have to meet five people to learn the meaning of your life. Afterward, you choose your heaven. Usually it is some place you liked or missed out on in life. It may even have people you loved in it. For example, Eddie's wife Marguerite's heaven is a constant stream of happy weddings, because she loves the magic of them.
* In [[
** Though at the very end, the narrator is carefully cautioned that he is only dreaming it and he must make it clear that it is a dream, with the implication that it was [[A Form You Are Comfortable With]].
* In one of [[Mercedes Lackey]]'s ''Five Hundred Kingdoms'' books the protagonist visits a local afterlife which is basically total apathy. People freshly arrived will work out of habit, making nets and cleaning clothes, or they will wander seeking answers, but the work never goes anywhere - nets never get bigger, the clothes aren't cleaner - and bit by bit they forget everything, until they lie down and sleep. They can be roused, but not into interest, and if reminded that they are dead they will attack.
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* A rare musical one, from Billy Joel's "Blonde Over Blue": "In Hell there's a big hotel/ Where the bar just closed and the windows never open/ No phone so you can't call home and the TV works but the clicker is broken"
* The Eagles' "Hotel California" could be seen as a metaphor for addiction or for Hell.
* In [["Weird Al" Yankovic]]'s "Everything You Know Is Wrong," the singer ends up in Heaven, where St. Peter gives him "the room next to the noisy ice machine - for all eternity."
* The [[Rock Opera]] ''A Passion Play'' by [[Jethro Tull]] describes a Heaven so mundanely good that the dead main character is bored of it, wishes to live in Hell, than finds Hell equally mundanely evil. He decides neither are his cup of tea, and that he is better off on Earth, neither aspiring to be [[Blue and Orange Morality|entirely good nor evil]].
* "The Afterlife" by Paul Simon, encapsulated the refrain, "you've got to fill out a form first, and then you wait in the line"... until the last verse, when the narrator finally meets [[God]].
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