History Main / TheLegionsOfHell

** Don't forget the actual [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Legion of the Damned]], who are the ghosts of dead space marines, that show up on the battlefield to aid fellow Marines when the need is great. They sport armor emblazoned with flames and scorched bones, and they are described as being like smoky shadows in appearance, flickering like a flame in the wind as they plod across the battlefield.

** Don't forget the NeutralEvil Daemons, although the developers of the new edition seem to have done so.

* Somewhat subverted in ''TheSalvationWar'', where [[spoiler:the demons are apparently genetic offshoots from human ancestors -- and are completely mortal. Superhuman strength, speed (on foot at least), some with wings, and not a few with powers, but all killable (AND HOW!). They only managed to successfully invade mostly empty desert before being pushed back into Hell and then being invaded by HUMANS. Heck, a human kills Asmodeus with multiple sniper rifle bullets to the head, and there's nothing showing that ''Satan'' isn't mortal too. In fact, he really only survives a recent attempt by the humans to assassinate him by bombing his palace by sheer luck; he just happened to be out of the city at the time. The angels appear to be slightly tougher, and much faster, but by no means immortal themselves.]]

** The game does feature actual demons as well, which are evil spirits from the Fade that possess the living or dead bodies of human beings, usually a mage due to their ability to go to the Fade in the first place, and feed upon the psychic energies of living beings. There are [[SortingAlgorithmOfEvil five known ranks of demons]]; Rage, Hunger, Sloth, Desire and Pride, in order both of strength and intelligence of the complexity of the emotion they are feeding on. Destroying the host only sends the demon [[FightingAShadow back to whence it came unharmed]], and though some demons are able to manifest in the physical world alone, killing them seems to have the same effect. Their hosts usually mutate when possessed into a HumanoidAbomination of varying degrees of BodyHorror. Demons are rarer than Darkspawn, but are broadly smarter, stronger and more dangerous.

* Demons swarmed out of the Darkwood in SimonRGreen's ''BlueMoonRising''. In ''Beyond the Blue Moon'', it turned out that [[spoiler: the demons were really humans transformed into murderous monsters, subverting this trope]].

'''Bender:''' Then a [[ExactWords damned army]] ''we shall have!''

* The ''JonShannow'' book ''Wolf in Shadow'' by DavidGemmell has the Hellborn. Even though they are humans, they are Satan-worshippers and explicitly model themselves after this trope.

* The "Hidden Fun Stuff" that you come across if you [[DugTooDeep dig too deep]] in ''[[spoiler:VideoGame/DwarfFortress]]''.

* The DiC dub of ''Manga/SailorMoon'' lumped all of the show's villains and monsters from the first two seasons into a single evil force called the "Negaverse".
** In the original manga, they were all forms of the GodOfEvil Chaos.

* In ''Comicbook/{{Lucifer}}'' a damned but repentent human soul, Christopher Rudd becomes TheMessiah of Hell, and leads the demons and the damned together against the Lilim attempting to conquer the Silver City...and conquer it themselves as revenge for the injustice of allowing Hell to exist.

* In ''TabletopGame/{{Deadlands}}'', the manitou[[note]]a Native American name; Native Americans are generally prominent in the setting[[/note]] are responsible for creating... well, technically every single ghoulie and monster in the setting. They also fuel the spells of Hucksters, are the ultimate cause behind the ScienceRelatedMemeticDisorder of the Mad Scientist "class", and [[spoiler: are the secret source behind the SuperFuel that drives the CattlePunk of the setting]]. The manitou's efforts occasionally bite them on the ass; most prominently, while many corpses possessed by a manitou rise up as [[OurZombiesAreDifferent Walkin' Dead]], a rare few instead become the Harrowed, which are intelligent zombies, with the manitou constantly struggling with the original personality for control over the body, who can and often do use their supernatural powers to battle the manitou's purpose.

*** A new gameline, so far known as ''Demon:the ???'' is scheduled to come out late 2013. Presumably it will be related to Hell somehow.
*** [[spoiler: It's not.]]

* ''{{Exalted}}'' has a really bizarre hell. It's ruled over by the [[EldritchAbomination Yozis]] (who created the world and ruled over it until the Exalted deposed them), and the [[SealedEvilInACan Can keeping them Sealed]] is the inside-out body of the mightiest of their number. Each Yozi has a large number of [[OurSoulsAreDifferent souls]], which are the immensely powerful Third Circle Demons. ''Those'' have souls which are the Second Circle Demons, and all of the above created the hordes of {{Mook}}s that are First Circle Demons.
** Exalted also has the Underworld, the inverted shadow of Creation created when the Exalted armies killed some of the Primordials, the beings that created the universe. Killing beings who could not die caused so much chaos that the Exalted decided to seal the rest of the Primordials away instead of killing them, turning them into the Yozis. Because the Primordials were outside the limits of death and time, however, they didn't actually die but instead became creatures now known as the [[EldritchAbomination Neverborn]], intent on ending their existence by sending their own legions of the dead to take the rest of Creation down with them.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Infernum}}'' is a third-party setting that uses the 3.5 rules for DungeonsAndDragons and, as the name suggests, this trope is all over it. In fact, the default assumption is that the party members ''are'' demons. It has heavy roots in Christian beliefs, mainly Dante's Inferno, but is twisted and changed into its own unique setting. For a start, the demons are the result of vile crossbreeding experiments conducted between rebellious angels and "spawn" (prototypes of earthly lifeforms) in an effort to breed warrior-slaves... only for the demons to decide they didn't like the idea of being cannon fodder and promptly devour every last one of their "fathers" that didn't run for their life clean out of reality. Many demons at least profess not to believe in Heaven, and almost none believe that it's anything like the humans think it is (the Fallen Angels can't comment, having forgotten everything down to the reason why they Fell in the first place). There's also vague hints of even stranger forces in the multiverse; Benandanti are humans "touched" by nature spirits, whose souls travel to Hell in the guise of werewolves to steal souls to restore the vitality of nature, while Brokenlanders are the ghostly remnants of Quilipoth, another universe so ancient there's nothing left but a single ringworld orbiting the last dying cinder of a star.

* ''DungeonsAndDragons'' draws a distinction between Devils, who are LawfulEvil and [[AlwaysChaoticEvil Demons]], who are ChaoticEvil. The former are a race of [[TheChessmaster Chessmasters]] who seek to conquer the universe, where as the later are out to destroy all of creation. Each has their own home plane: The Nine Hells of Baator for the devils, and The infinite Layers of the Abyss for the demons. Both races have armies of astronomical size, but fortunately for the rest of creation, they occupy most of their time fighting each other in an eternal conflict called the Blood War.

* ''{{Infernum}}'' is a third-party setting that uses the 3.5 rules for DungeonsAndDragons and, as the name suggests, this trope is all over it. In fact, the default assumption is that the party members ''are'' demons. It has heavy roots in Christian beliefs, mainly Dante's Inferno, but is twisted and changed into its own unique setting. For a start, the demons are the result of vile crossbreeding experiments conducted between rebellious angels and "spawn" (prototypes of earthly lifeforms) in an effort to breed warrior-slaves... only for the demons to decide they didn't like the idea of being cannon fodder and promptly devour every last one of their "fathers" that didn't run for their life clean out of reality. Many demons at least profess not to believe in Heaven, and almost none believe that it's anything like the humans think it is (the Fallen Angels can't comment, having forgotten everything down to the reason why they Fell in the first place). There's also vague hints of even stranger forces in the multiverse; Benandanti are humans "touched" by nature spirits, whose souls travel to Hell in the guise of werewolves to steal souls to restore the vitality of nature, while Brokenlanders are the ghostly remnants of Quilipoth, another universe so ancient there's nothing left but a single ringworld orbiting the last dying cinder of a star.

* The current story in ''{{Rifts}}'' is the "Minion War", a war between two separate Legions of Hell: The Demon of Hades, and the Deevils of Dyval. It's beginning to spill over into other dimensions.
* ''MagicTheGathering'' has a variety of demons and similar events. The best known ''legions'' scenario was in the Invasion block, which had the biomechanical horrors of Phyrexia invading the plane of Dominaria.
* In ''{{Deadlands}}'', the manitou[[note]]a Native American name; Native Americans are generally prominent in the setting[[/note]] are responsible for creating... well, technically every single ghoulie and monster in the setting. They also fuel the spells of Hucksters, are the ultimate cause behind the ScienceRelatedMemeticDisorder of the Mad Scientist "class", and [[spoiler: are the secret source behind the SuperFuel that drives the CattlePunk of the setting]]. The manitou's efforts occasionally bite them on the ass; most prominently, while many corpses possessed by a manitou rise up as [[OurZombiesAreDifferent Walkin' Dead]], a rare few instead become the Harrowed, which are intelligent zombies, with the manitou constantly struggling with the original personality for control over the body, who can and often do use their supernatural powers to battle the manitou's purpose.

-->--''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}, "The Beast with a Billion Backs."

* In the Creator/CliveBarker novella "The Hellbound Heart", the FilmOfTheBook ''Film/{{Hellraiser}}'' and an ExpandedUniverse based on the latter, the Legions of Hell are the Cenobites (a word originally meaning simply monks in monastic orders, as distinct from "eremites" or hermit monks). Hell is not a place for punishment of sins as such: souls are lured there simply by the temptation of solving puzzles.

* In the CliveBarker novella "The Hellbound Heart", the FilmOfTheBook ''Film/{{Hellraiser}}'' and an ExpandedUniverse based on the latter, the Legions of Hell are the Cenobites (a word originally meaning simply monks in monastic orders, as distinct from "eremites" or hermit monks). Hell is not a place for punishment of sins as such: souls are lured there simply by the temptation of solving puzzles.

** The worst part? [[spoiler:The Idea of Evil only exists because humanity subconsciously ''[[ClapYourHandIfYouBelieve wants]]'' it to exist. Apparently having demons to blame for your suffering is preferable to accepting that your pain is [[NeverMyFault your fault]] or worse, [[InherentInTheSystem no one's fault at all.]]]]

[[caption-width-right:250:[[OhCrap Oh. My. Gods.]]]]

Sometimes {{Mooks}} of {{Satan}} or a GodOfEvil (who - depending on the setting and/or the author's worldview - may or may not be the same person/thing), and residing in FireAndBrimstoneHell (or [[{{Hell}} the real deal]]). There may or may not be [[{{Heaven}} heavenly]] [[GoodCounterpart equivalents]], and either one can be treated in a CrystalDragonJesus manner. Heck, if they're in a {{Hentai}} work, they may even have tentacles.

* In ''{{Deadlands}}'', the manitou[[hottip:*:a Native American name; Native Americans are generally prominent in the setting]] are responsible for creating... well, technically every single ghoulie and monster in the setting. They also fuel the spells of Hucksters, are the ultimate cause behind the ScienceRelatedMemeticDisorder of the Mad Scientist "class", and [[spoiler: are the secret source behind the SuperFuel that drives the CattlePunk of the setting]]. The manitou's efforts occasionally bite them on the ass; most prominently, while many corpses possessed by a manitou rise up as [[OurZombiesAreDifferent Walkin' Dead]], a rare few instead become the Harrowed, which are intelligent zombies, with the manitou constantly struggling with the original personality for control over the body, who can and often do use their supernatural powers to battle the manitou's purpose.

See also: BonusLevelOfHell, for guys slightly higher on the infernal totem-pole see DemonLordsAndArchdevils. For the non-demonic version: AlienInvasion.

*** A new gameline, so far known as ''Demon:the ???'' is scheduled to come out late 2013. Presumably it will be related to Hell somehow.

* TheHeartless of ''KingdomHearts'' are, as that trope describes, TheVirus made from the 'darkness' in human hearts. The sequel adds gray-bodied Nobodies.

* The Darkspawn of ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins'' are a kind of [[OurOrcsAreDifferent plague Orcs]]. The Chantry's version of the Darkspawn taint's origin makes the Darkspawn seem demonic.
** The game does feature actual demons as well, which are evil spirits from the Fade that possess the living or dead bodies of human beings, usually a mage due to their ability to go to the Fade in the first place, and feed upon the psychic energies of living beings. There are [[SortingAlgorithmOfEvil five ranks of demons]]; Rage, Hunger, Sloth, Desire and Pride, in order both of strength and intelligence of the complexity of the emotion they are feeding on. Destroying the host only sends the demon [[FightingAShadow back to whence it came unharmed]], and though some demons are able to manifest in the physical world alone, killing them seems to have the same effect. Their hosts usually mutate when possessed into a HumanoidAbomination of varying degrees of BodyHorror. Demons are rarer than Darkspawn, but are broadly smarter, stronger and more dangerous.

* In ''BujingaiSwordmaster'' the earth is overrun with demons of various kind. It's implied that their mooks (seen as golem-like warriors with seals and swords) were once humans turned into monsters by a strange radiation.

* ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' and ''Series/Angel'' explained that there were a countless number of hells. Both Buffy and Angel have been to a few. At least twice on both shows, Hell is said to be [[CrapsackWorld Earth itself.]]

* The dead villains from ''Manga/DragonBall'' were shown in hell from time to time. Due to censorship issues at the time, any time in the dub the word "HELL" was on a uniform or on the wall, it was edited to "HFIL" or "Home For Infinite Losers." This is the subject of amusement and/or eyerolling among fans.