History Main / CessationOfExistence

-->'''Bart:''' But what if after we die, that's it? We're just gone?
-->''[Everyone Gasps]''
-->'''Wiggum:''' So just poof? Really? Poof, and then just super nothing?
-->'''Bart:''' ''[Shrug]''
-->'''Wiggum:''' Well, it's clean, I'll give you that.

-->'''[=BoJack=]:''' See you on the other side.
-->'''Herb:''' Oh [=BoJack=], no. There is no other side. This is it.

* Invoked in ''ComicBook/{DCeased}'', by [[spoiler: Constantine, who knew that when he died he'd go straight to Hell and face a number of demons very eager for revenge. As such, he made sure his HeroicSacrifice didn't just destroy his body but his soul, avoiding eternal torture and giving one last fuck-you to the Infernal Host.]]

** In the Final War Arc, [[Characters/MyHeroAcademiaAllForOne All for One]] suffers this fate. After using a copy of Rewind to return to a previous age, this came at the cost of drawing on his lifespan meaning that he had to hurry to get to Shigaraki to complete the merge. However, because All For One ends up prioritizing fighting All Might among other things, he eventually gets reverted to his infant state before becoming a fetus and then an egg before vanishing for good.

* In ''Film/WhoFramedRogerRabbit'', it's implied this is what happens to Toons who have been [[KilledOffforReal killed]] using the [[DeaderThanDead dip]], since the weasels who laugh themselves to death become angels, while the one who falls into the dip does not.

** [[spoiler:Tartarus absorbs Hyperion and Krios' essences in ''The House of Hades'', resulting in their ceasing to exist.]]
* ''Literature/TheKaneChronicles'': Being based on Myth/EgyptianMythology, good people go to Heaven and bad people get their souls eaten and stop existing. It's also specified that people who don't believe in an afterlife just stop existing when they die.

* ''WesternAnimation/BoJackHorseman'': Implied in the penultimate episode of the series where [=BoJack=] has a NearDeathExperience, which takes the form of a sendoff dinner with the characters who had died during the shows run (as well as before it took place); Herb Kazzaz, Sarah Lynn, Corderoy Jackson, Creator/ZachBraff, his mother Beatrice, uncle [=CrackerJack=], as well as a composite of his father Butterscotch and his childhood hero Secretariat, all of whom go through a door to a black void throughout the episode. Herb implies this is what is about to happen.

* ''WebAnimation/LoveOfTheSn'': The quote by Alan Watts in the OpeningMonologue discusses this, but in the end there really is an afterlife: the S*n.

!!Example subpages:

* CessationOfExistence/VideoGames

!!Other examples:

* ''Franchise/DragonBall'':

* ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'':
** There is a wheel of reincarnation at work in this story. Souls born into the World of the Living die and pass into the Soul Society. They live there for a period of time, then die again and are finally reincarnated back into the World of the Living as a new lifeform. There are some souls born into Soul Society. When those souls die, they also move on through the reincarnation cycle. Even if a soul is interrupted in this cycle by becoming a hollow, the hollow can still be cleansed to return to the cycle and pass on to Soul Society peacefully. Then there are Quincies. Their power does not cleanse hollows. It destroys them. The soul is not only destroyed but will never return to the reincarnation cycle and therefore vanishes for good. In other words, the Quincies don't just destroy the current life of the soul, they're destroying all the soul's future lives as well. The story has stated that Quincies are unique in being the only ones capable of destroying the soul. Their reason to do it is because the Hollows can destroy their souls by merely infecting them. [[spoiler: It's later revealed that the truth is actually an aversion. All Quincies and anything killed by a Quincy are infected with a portion of their king [[BigBad Yhwach's]] power, which [[TheAssimilator inevitably returns to him along with the infected soul upon death]].]]
** Supposedly, anyone who dies a second time in Soul Society reincarnates back into the living world. But how do they know? It makes you wonder if it's not just a belief, and they don't really know what happens. In the case of souls destroyed by Quincy, normally a Hollow destroyed by a Shinigami goes to Soul Society, while those destroyed by Quincy don't. The idea of the soul being destroyed seems to be an assumption.
** People killed in the living world go to Soul Society, and those who die in Soul Society reincarnate in the living world without any memory. However, souls of Humans who commited sins are sent to Hell, and tormented forever. Doesn't this means eventually everyone will go to Hell? Existence is endless test, those who succeed will be tested again, and those who fail don't get a second chance.
** Left unclear in all of this is what happens to souls that are consumed by Hollows. When a Hollow consumes enough souls to [[EvolutionaryLevels evolve into a Menos]], the souls will fight for dominance. But nothing has ever been said about what happens when one of them wins out. Are the rest still in there as distinct souls, or is their individuality completely wiped away forever? Since we've never seen a Hollow's soul(s) arriving in Soul Society after being purified, there's no way to know. This may be one of the many things that ''Bleach'' borrows from Myth/JapaneseMythology and folklore; for example, it was common in Shinto practices to believe that most "common" spirits or ghosts are absorbed into larger ones, such as unimportant ancestors or branch family members losing any individuality and becoming [[MergerOfSouls part of the family spirit as a whole]].
* In ''Manga/FairyTail'', this is [[OurDemonsAreDifferent Mard Geer's]] plan to kill Zeref. Since he's essentially immortal and thus incapable of dying, the best way to deal with him is to remove the very concept of life and death entirely and erase him from the fabric of existence altogether. He even developed a technique specifically to do this.
* In ''Literature/{{Durarara}}'', this is what Izaya fears above all else. This is why he plans to initiate Ragnarok. His hope is to create a war only he can win, thus earning a place in Valhalla, but he'll take an eternity of torment in Hell so long as it means still existing.
* Although souls in ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist'' [[OurSoulsAreDifferent demonstrably exist]], they do not appear to be immortal, and instead disintegrate after death just as a person's body decomposes. They can remain [[FateWorseThanDeath "in tact"]] by being [[PoweredByAForsakenChild jammed into]] a PhilosophersStone, but eventually reach the same end state when its power is exhausted. Granted, the assessment of where souls go after death comes from people of the largely areligious country of Amestris. The Ishvallan religion appears to believe in some other afterlife, and the way alchemy treats and views souls may be part of why they forbid it. [[spoiler: However, the manga ends with a sequence showing Trisha and Hohenheim observing the epilogue from the afterlife.]]
* In "Long Dream" from the ''Manga/JunjiItoKyoufuMangaCollection'', the terminally ill girl Mami is terrified of this imminently happening to her. She is ultimately saved from this fate by being "treated" with the crystals from Mukoda's corpse, possibly allowing her to enter a state of eternal existence in dreams.
* ''Manga/VinlandSaga'' takes place in the Viking Age and many viking warriors believe they will be taken to the afterlife by the Valkyries if they died in combat. There is big battle in the last third of the story. A {{Mook}} is mortally wounded, already having lost his sight, hearing and the feeling of his body. As he lies dying, we are shown his last thoughts. At first he's calmly waiting for the Valkyries in the silent darkness, but after a while he gets nervous and later panics, having realized there are no Valkyries and no afterlife. As he slowly fades away, he wants to warn his comrades of this and his very last thought is that he doesn't want to die. Then he is gone.

* In ''WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}'' the Jabberwalker inflicts this on those it eat. While normally Afterans would AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence after death, the Jabberwalker kills them permanently. Neo copies this ability after killing and assimilating the Jabberwalker.

[[folder:Webcomics]]

** Conditionalists include some evangelical Christians, as well as certain denominations (sometimes called sects or cults by other Christians) such as the Seventh-Day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses. They reason from these and other scriptures that there is no Hell or afterlife. They believe that when you die, you cease to exist until you are resurrected. Those who died saved will be resurrected soon after the second coming, while those who were lost when they died come back to life in the Second Resurrection where they face probation for their sins; if they fail, they die again, but without hope of further resurrection. They argue that the idea of God imposing eternal torture without parole for a [[EasyRoadToHell little doubt]] means that GodIsEvil, and that the idea of the permanent and immortal soul is [[WordOfDante Platonic and influenced by paganism]], not Biblical in origin.
** For more information on the different views within and variations of Conditionalism, helpful sites would include [[http://rethinkinghell.com/ Rethinking Hell]] and [[http://www.hell-know.net/ Hell Know]].

* ''Manga/VinlandSaga'' takes place in the Viking Age and many viking warriors believe they will be taken to the afterlife by the Valkyries if they died in combat. There is big battle in the last third of the story. A {{Mook}} is mortally wounded, already having lost his sight, hearing and the feeling of his body. As he lies dying, we are shown his last thoughts. At first he's calmly waiting for the Valkyries in the silent darkness, but after while he get's nervous and later panics, having realized there a no Valkyries and no afterlife. As he slowly fades away, he wants to warn his comrades of this and his very last thought is that he doesn't want to die. Then he is gone.
* In Creator/WilliamSBurroughs' ''The Western Lands'', he claims that the US Guvernment knows that souls exist, and that to reduce soul overpopulation - 'alleviate an escalating soul glut' - they, under false pretenses, developed the only thing on Earth capable of destroying a soul: the atomic bomb. There were hiccups - some very badly injured, very angry ghosts from Hiroshima sought revenge, so 100% efficient soul-killer nukes were developed after some trial-and-error (a major installation had to be nuked after a nasty incident with the incandescent ghost of a purple-assed babboon).

* ''Literature/{{Momo}}'': The Grey Men are parasitic soulless beings which only exist by stealing time from humans. When their stolen time is taken away from them, they simply fade out of existence forever.

** There is a wheel of reincarnation at work in this story. Souls born into the World of the Living die and pass into the Soul Society. They live there for a period of time, then die again and are finally reincarnated back into the World of the Living as a new lifeform. There are some souls born into Soul Society. When those souls die, they also move on through the reincarnation cycle. Even if a soul is interrupted in this cycle by becoming a hollow, the hollow can still be cleansed to return to the cycle and pass on to Soul Society peacefully. Then there are Quincies. Their power does not cleanse hollows. It destroys them. The soul is not only destroyed but will never return to the reincarnation and therefore vanishes for good. In other words, the Quincies don't just destroy the current life of the soul, they're destroying all the soul's future lives as well. The story has stated that Quincies are unique in being the only ones capable of destroying the soul. Their reason to do it is because the Hollows can destroy their souls by merely infecting them. [[spoiler: It's later revealed that the truth is actually an aversion. All Quincies and anything killed by a Quincy are infected with a portion of their king [[BigBad Yhwach's]] power, which [[TheAssimilator inevitably returns to him along with the infected soul upon death]].]]

* Debated in-universe in ''Franchise/TolkiensLegendarium''. Elves are immortal; they will never die of old age or sickness, but having physical bodies they can be killed. Yet even if they are killed, after a period of time they are reincarnated in new bodies. Humans are mortal; if they are not killed by violence, sickness or age claim them quickly. But rather than being reincarnated, their spirits depart elsewhere - where exactly, neither the Elves nor the gods (the Valar) know. Humans experience a lot of angst over this. Morgoth, the Dark Lord, told humans that death means cessation of existence, leading many to worship him out of fear. The key thing is this: Elves are "immortal," but their immortality is bound to the life of the World itself - its life is theirs, and Elves know the World must end one day. When the World ends, the Elves aren't sure that they won't cease to exist with it. Meanwhile humans can "escape" and leave the World, and what has become a source of fear in fact is a source of hope. Both, therefore, are unsure of their ultimate fate. It is said that human's ability to truly die and leave the world is a gift that one day even the Valar will envy.

* Debated in-universe in ''Franchise/TolkiensLegendarium''. Elves are immortal; they will never die of old age or sickness, but having physical bodies they can be killed. Yet even if they are killed, after a period of time they are reincarnated in new bodies. Humans are mortal; if they are not killed by violence, sickness or age claim them quickly. But rather than being reincarnated, their spirits depart elsewhere - where exactly, neither the Elves nor the gods (the Valar) know. Humans experience a lot of angst over this. Morgoth, the Dark Lord, told humans that death means cessation of existence, leading many to worship him out of fear. The key thing is this: Elves are "immortal," but their immortality is bound to the life of the World itself - its life is theirs, and Elves know the World must end one day. Therefore when the World ends, the Elves aren't sure that they won't cease to exist with it. Meanwhile humans can "escape" and leave the World, and what has become a source of fear in fact is a source of hope. Both, therefore, are unsure of their ultimate fate. It is said that human's ability to truly die and leave the world is a gift that one day even the Valar will envy.

* Debated in-universe in ''Franchise/TolkiensLegendarium''. Elves are immortal; they will never die of old age or sickness, but having physical bodies they can be killed. Yet even if they are killed, after a period of time they are reincarnated in new bodies. Humans are mortal; if they are not killed by violence, sickness or age claim them quickly. But rather than being reincarnated, their spirits depart elsewhere - where exactly, neither the Elves nor the gods (the Valar) know. Humans experience a lot of angst over this. Morgoth, the Dark Lord, told humans that death means cessation of existence, leading many to worship him out of fear. The key thing is this: Elves are "immortal," but their immortality is bound to the life of the World itself - its life is theirs, and Elves know the World must end one day. Therefore when the World ends, the Elves aren't sure that they won't cease to exist with it. Meanwhile humans can "escape" and leave the World, and what has become a source of fear in fact is a source of hope. It is said that human's ability to truly die and leave the world is a gift that one day even the Valar will envy.

* Debated in-universe in ''Franchise/TolkiensLegendarium''. Elves are immortal; they will never die of old age or sickness, but having physical bodies they can be killed. Yet even if they are killed, after a period of time they are reincarnated in new bodies. Humans are mortal; if they are not killed by violence, sickness or age claim them quickly. But rather than being reincarnated, their spirits depart elsewhere - where exactly, neither the Elves nor the gods (the Valar) know. Humans experience a lot of angst over this. Morgoth, the Dark Lord, told humans that death means cessation of existence, leading many to worship him out of fear. The key thing is this: Elves are "immortal," but their immortality is bound to the life of the World itself - its life is theirs, and Elves know the World must end one day. Therefore when the World ends, the Elves aren't sure that they won't perish with it. Meanwhile humans can "escape" and leave the World, and what has become a source of fear in fact is a source of hope. It is said that human's ability to truly die and leave the world is a gift that one day even the Valar will envy.

* Debated in-universe in ''Franchise/TolkiensLegendarium''. Elves are immortal; they will never die of old age or sickness, but having physical bodies they can be killed. Yet even if they are killed, after a period of time they are reincarnated in new bodies. Humans are mortal; if they are not killed by violence, sickness or age claim them quickly. But rather than being reincarnated, their spirits depart elsewhere - where exactly, neither the Elves nor the Valar themselves know. Humans experience a lot of angst over this. Morgoth, the Dark Lord, told humans that death means cessation of existence, leading many to worship him out of fear. The key thing is this: Elves are "immortal," but their immortality is bound to the life of the World itself - its life is theirs, and Elves know the World must end one day. Therefore when the World ends, the Elves aren't sure that they won't perish with it. Meanwhile humans can "escape" and leave the World, and what has become a source of fear in fact is a source of hope. It is said that human's ability to truly die and leave the world is a gift that one day even the gods will envy.

* This might be the fate of humans in the ''Franchise/TolkiensLegendarium'', even the Valar don't know. Eru's great gift to humans was mortality. Elves have BiologicalImmortality, but if their physical body dies by other means their spirit is forced to wait in a sort of limbo at the edge of the world, only finally able to move on when the world has come to an end. Humans don't end up in this same limbo when they die, and only Eru knows if they end up anywhere or simply cease to exist. That said, the canonicity-arguable short story "Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth" in [[Literature/TheHistoryOfMiddleEarth Morgoth's Ring]] has the elf Finrod positing the opposite: that human souls definitely go somewhere beyond the world after death, while Elves are bound to the world (which includes the aforementioned limbo) and will actually cease to exist completely in body and soul when the world ends.

* In Creator/WilliamSBurroughs' ''The Western Lands'', he claims that the US Guvernment nkows that souls exist, and that to reduce soul overpopulation - 'alleviate an escalating soul glut' - they, under false pretenses, developed the only thing on Earth capable of destroying a soul: the atomic bomb. There were hiccups - some very badly injured, very angry ghosts from Hiroshima sought revenge, so 100% efficient soul-killer nukes were developed after some trial-and-error (a major installation had to be nuked after a nasty incident with the incandescent ghost of a purple-assed babboon).

* In Creator/WilliamSBurroughs ''The Western Lands'', he claims that the US Guvernment nkows that souls exist, and that to reduce soul overpopulation - 'alleviate an escalating soul glut' - they, under false pretenses, developed the only thing on Earth capable of destroying a soul: the atomic bomb. There were hiccups - some very badly injured, very angry ghosts from Hiroshima sought revenge, so 100% efficient soul-killer nukes were developed after some trial-and-error (a major installation had to be nuked after a nasty incident with the incandescent ghost of a purple-assed babboon).

* While the majority of Christians believe that you go to either {{Heaven}} or {{Hell}} (and occasionally Purgatory), some Christians believe in Conditional Immortality, also called Conditionalism or Annihilationism. Conditionalists hold that everlasting life is a gift from God, and therefore the final punishment of the unrighteous will be death. Literature/TheBible distinguishes between two states of death: Sheol or Hades, the common grave of mankind, and Gehenna, a "second death" from which there is no hope of [[BackFromTheDead coming back]], though some translations conflate both concepts as "hell". The Bible repeatedly mentions how the consequences of sin is death (Romans 6:23), humans will naturally return to dust (Genesis 3:19)(which most likely refers to the physical body), God can destroy both body and soul in Gehenna (Matthew 10:28), and everlasting life is God's gift to the righteous through his son Jesus (John 3:16). Conditionalists also tend to note Genesis in how we were banned from everlasting life as a result of sin (with Genesis 2:17 interpreted as spiritual, not physical death), but God offered it back (He never offered FluffyCloudHeaven) through Jesus, so, if we were immortal in the first place there would never be a necessity for such an elaborate scheme to reacquire everlasting life. The idea of conditional immortality is also helpful in Christian apologetics, since so many are repulsed by the DisproportionateRetribution inherent in the Eternal Conscious Torment view of Hell.