History Main / TheNothingAfterDeath

*** Because even knowing you'll be reunited doesn't mean you won't still feel grief at another's passing. It seems to even be implied that death is more terrible for elves, who are not used to always living knowing they will die, as humans do, and so death is that much more bitter to them. And yet there also exist elves who ''envy'' men for their ability to die, because Elves are bound to the physical world, and all physical things will eventually pass away, and so eventually some Elves find the physical world quite frankly ''annoying,'' because they know that nothing will last. Even Elves that die are simply reincarnated back into the physical world. Humans, meanwhile, can "escape the circle," and move on. Who then, as one elf said, has cause to envy the other?

* Hell in [[CSLewis C.S. Lewis]]' ''The Great Divorce'' is a borderline version of this--a bleak "city" which has been [[YourMindMakesItReal created by the minds of the people there]], but which is not really substantial. Eventually "night" will fall on the city and even this existence will give way to something still less real. Hell is also "microscopic" compared to heaven--the visitors in heaven are shown to have emerged from a tiny crack in the ground, enlarging as they go.

* Jean-Paul Sartre's ''NoExit'' presents Hell as something rather like this, though not exactly: it's a big hotel, wherein you are locked in a room designed for you to find ''just barely'' distasteful and ''just barely'' intolerable, with a few other people intended to be intolerable, too, with the end result that you're miserable. For eternity.

* [[WorldOfWarcraft Arthas']] last words are thought to refer to this.
** In ''Cataclysm'', [[spoiler: Sylvanas]] gets killed after being ambushed in Silverpine. Once ressurected by her Val'kyr, she describes her afterlife as "nothing", citing it as the reason for why [[spoiler: The Forsaken]] need to avoid the UndeathAlwaysEnds trope.
*** The fact that both these characters were undead already may have a bearing on it though. Ghosts are abundant in the WorldOfWarcraft and have been shown to "move on" on occasions. And A'dal makes reference to a "paradise" after saving Crusader Brindenbrad.

*** This invokes a bit of FringeHorror, seeing as what we know about the vulcan death ritual of preserving their Katras, it suggests that the Vulcan Race actaully COUNTS on the afterlife being this instead of risking simply ceasing to exist.

** Ironically, in an earlier episode, Neelix was trying to make good humor with Tuvok by singing the most cheerful vulcan song he could find: "Oh starless night, of boundless black..."

* Amongst some branches of very old Shintoism, death is associated with the unclean and a general, barren land of the dead. It's not surprising that the ideals of Bhuddism were later woven into something of this, given their more optimistic depiction.

* ''DeathNote'' is not quite this ... there is no afterlife whatsoever, according to Ryuk, the EyeCatch Death Note rules, and WordOfGod. This puts a rather different spin on Ryuk's early warning that "No one who uses the Death Note can go to Heaven or to Hell". However, whether it's this trope or simple CessationOfExistence is undefined.
** The final Rule mentioned in the series does specifically refer to the Nothingness after death as a "place," (as opposed to a simple lack of existence) implying that this trope is in effect.
** Except that given WordOfGod, and the wording of the Japanese rule and the author's comments dealing with the topic, it looks more like a mistranslation than anything else.

This is ''not'' to be confused with the idea that there is literally ''nothing'' after death: no darkness, no featureless planes, no conscious awareness, simply a CessationOfExistence. Some people find that thought comforting, to others, it's [[NightmareFuelUnleaded even worse]]. This trope is when there ''is'' something after death, it's just so bleak that there might as well not be.

* [[LesMiserables]]: The last we see of Jean Valjean is this: The night was starless and very dark. [but] somewhere, he knew, the angel was waiting to embrace the soul.

*** Followed up on in the 5th season premiere "Night", in which Voyager is traveling through an area of space without any stars. the doctor diagnoses Neelix with "Nihiliphobia: the fear of nothingness. Or in layman's terms, the fear of...Nothingness. If it's any consolation, I can relate to it. I go into a void every time I'm deactivated. Emptiness, complete and utter oblivion. I'll admit, it was unsettling at first--the existential horror of it all..."

* In ''AmericanGods'', people who pass judgement are permitted to choose their destination. Some choose this.

* The various religious ideas of this make the trope OlderThanDirt

** The final Rule mentioned in the series does specifically refer to the Nothingness after death as a "place," (as opposed to a simple lack of existence) implying that this trope is in effect.

** That also may have been an effect of the resurrection gauntlet, since [[spoiler: Owen experienced the same thing ''after'' he was brought back, albeit with a different glove.]] But since the only person who ever comes back from death without the gauntlet is Jack, and his description of death is just that there's nothing, it's possible that normal death is literally nothing rather than a featureless plane.

*** And in Series 2, after Annie [[spoiler: has been dragged through the door against her will]], she complains of having to fill out forms.

* The IsaacAsimov short story "The Last Answer" has an atheist learn from God himself that the afterlife is like this -- for all the people chosen to receive one. [[spoiler: After being driven to RageAgainstTheHeavens, he realizes that this was part of a XanatosRoulette by [[GodIsEvil God]] to create other minds that might [[WhoWantsToLiveForever find a way to kill him, at long last]].]]