Cessation Of Existence / Live-Action TV

• American Gods: Laura believed this happened when you died, but is proven dead wrong when she's met by Anubis. The punishment for believing this is apparently being sent into "nothing" and "darkness". She escapes though.
• Discussed in the episode "Shady Acres" of Another Period. Beatrice has an existential crisis after realizing that everyone dies. In her apathy, she goes on and on about how doing anything is useless because everyone'll die either way and how there's nothing after death. Beatrice gets over her depression when her brother tells her that a life's savings can actually keep you from dying.
• Head Six claims that this is what happens to those who die on Kobol in Battlestar Galactica (2003).
• Being Human (US):
  • Donna stays alive through devouring souls, destroying them in the process with no afterlife. It's also revealed that bringing someone back without zombification requires sacrificing a soul to do this, also destroying it.
  • This is the fate of vampires that are slain. No door, no afterlife, just oblivion.
• Black Mirror:
  • In "San Junipero", Kelly believes this happens when you die. It serves as one of the reasons why she was reluctant to become a permanent resident of the eponymous Artificial Afterlife, since she was certain she'd never see her daughter and husband (who refused to be uploaded because their daughter never got their opportunity and to whom Kelly promised she'd die naturally as well) again. However, at the end, Kelly decides to go into San Junipero to be with Yorkie, her Second Love.
  • In "USS Callister", this is the crew's goal, to escape the living hell of the game Daly created as his own personal power fantasy, and going into a wormhole which represents the update patch will do it. However, since Daly can just copy them again, they blackmail the original Nanette into stealing his DNA samples too. Ultimately subverted - they are uploaded into the actual online game, free to explore the universe.
• In Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, this doesn't appear to be the standard death experience (the only reliable witness of the afterlife died under very unusual circumstances).
  • Apparently this is may have what happened to Fred. When Illyria takes over her body, it completely devoured her soul, quite explicitly ruling out any possibility that Fred could come Back from the Dead. Considering that Fred was meant to return in Season Six by her and Illyria splitting in two (had the show not been cancelled), this may not have actually have been what happened, and the person who claimed this may be wrong. In the 'After the Fall' comics, it seemed as though Fred HAD returned, occasionally taking over the body inhabited by Illyria - however, it was later revealed that Illyria was faking it, as she apparently wanted Fred to be back.
  • In the Season Nine comics, Illyria sacrifices herself to restore magic to the world, and somehow this results in Fred being brought back to life in Season Ten. And even stranger, Illyria is still inside Fred, even though Fred's body is fully human.
  • In Buffy's case, she knew there was something beyond because there was "no pain, no fear, no doubt, until they pulled me out..." She is even trying to sketch what is was she saw during the beginning of "Once More With Feeling." However, just like Spock, she can't readily describe what she experienced in human terms and is sketching a white light in a field of black.
• Cleverman: Anybody who is struck by the Cleverman's Energy Ball is stripped of their essence, and will simply cease to exist when they eventually die. Gives way to Fridge Horror, as we learn this after Koen inadvertently hit Auntie Linda with it while fighting off Mungo's attackers.
• Conviction (2016): Hayes says this happens when you die, telling one death row prisoner he will be "worm food". She regrets this after he's executed, although she had wished he would go to heaven like he wanted beforehand.
• Doctor Who: This, along with Ret-Gone, is the fate of anyone who falls into the cracks in time running rampant in Series 5.
• Evil (2019): Discussed by David and Kristen. David says he can barely fathom the idea, and that if it's true life has no point. In-Universe though it's made clear there's some kind of afterlife, and it likely fits with Catholic teaching.
• In The Fallen mini-series, a mortally-wounded Fallen Angel reveals that if a fallen angel dies before being redeemed, he or she simply ceases to exist (prompting Aaron to redeem him). Given what they know about the afterlife, this fate is horrifying to them. Presumably, any of the Powers who are killed are simply returned to Heaven, although Archangel Michael implies that the Powers are also being punished by the Creator.
• Farscape:
  • In season 1 John and Aeryn are stranded in a damaged transport pod which is venting atmosphere, and at one point Crichton begins discussing the concept of the afterlife. After Crichton mentions the belief of some humans in the existence of heaven, Aeryn retorts that Peacekeepers believe there's nothing after death. As part of a gambit to repair their pod, Aeryn is forced to administer a "kill shot" that will stop John's biological functions long enough to complete the repairs. When she revives him again she asks if he saw all the things he mentioned to her in their earlier discussion, but John confesses he saw nothing. He does offer the suggestion that maybe he didn't because it simply wasn't his time.
  • As a Stykera, Stark is strongly connected to the spirits of the dead, making it very clear that an afterlife of sorts does exist in the universe; he's able to be manipulated by and communicate with the spirits of the dead, and the strain of crossing the dying over has largely contributed to his instability. He once even brings a message back from Zhaan to comfort Rygel.
• A French Village: Discussed by Marcel and Philippe in prison. The former believes in this, while the latter insists there must be something more.
• Game of Thrones: Upon her meeting with the Brotherhood Without Banners, Melisandre learns that her fellow Red Priest Thoros of Myr has brought Beric Dondarrion back from the dead no less than six times. When her curiosity overcomes her shock, she asks him what is on "the other side". He replies "There is no other side. I have been to the darkness, my lady." She is visibly perturbed on hearing this. After she resurrects Jon Snow, he gives more or less the same answer to the question.
• Good Omens (2019): What happens if a demon touches holy water, or when an angel touches hellfire. This is apparently the only way to truly kill them, since killing them on Earth only amounts to "discorporation". Heaven and Hell try to execute Aziraphale and Crowley this way, but "fail" as the two had switched places, so each side was trying to execute the wrong person with the wrong method.
• The Good Place: Averted, as the explicit existence of an afterlife is this series' whole premise, so the trope is only brought up to be discussed in some way. But in the end...
  • Michael is an immortal who cannot die under normal circumstances, although it's a possible punishment for a sufficiently disastrous screw-up. In the aptly titled episode "Existential Crisis", he completely freaks out at the idea he might cease to exist someday, reducing him to a near-catatonia at first and then having a Hollywood Midlife Crisis over it, having never feared the supernatural equivalent to death before.
  • Simone, being a neurologist and presumably an atheist, seems to believe this is what happens to people when they die. When she dies and is chosen as one of the test subjects for the Good Place experiment, she refuses to believe she's in the afterlife and thinks everything and everyone she's seeing is just an intense Dying Dream. Michael mentions having seen a few people that seemed to believe this as well; they usually began to realize the truth of their situation after a good few torture routines.
  • In "The Funeral to End All Funerals", the threat of this hangs over all of humanity, living and dead alike, when the Judge decides to reboot all of existence because the world and humans in general have become too complex for the points system to judge effectively rather than find some way to fix the system itself.
  • In "Patty", Eleanor says that, while most people go through life a bit afraid of death, it gives them an incentive to care about things and make use of the time which they have, contrasting this finality with how eternal pleasure has turned the Good Place residents into mindless hedonists over time. The solution to that problem is to give the inhabitants of the Good Place a way to leave when they're content to do so. In the Series Finale, the process is shown to end the person's conscious identity, but the way their soul scatters implies something closer to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence mixed with The Lifestream.
• Higher Ground: Daisy says there's no afterlife when Isaac dies, and states people can't accept it because that makes them sad.
• House is utterly convinced that there is nothing after death. At one point, he is told that there is no way he can know for sure that that's true. He then induces clinical death on himself and does not have a near-death experience. That's all the proof he needs that he was right all along. Well, maybe. Or maybe that's just House's hereafter.
• Into the Dark: In All That We Destroy Victoria tells one of the Ashley clones that when someone dies, that's it-everything that they were disappears. Though she states her belief that life is precious and every death a tragedy because of this, it didn't stop her letting her son repeatedly murder the clones.
• Lucifer: People who are killed by Azrael's Blade don't go to Heaven or Hell, but simply cease to exist. Demons, who don't have souls, also suffer this if they die by any means.
• Orange Is the New Black:
  • Taystee asserts that when you're dead that's it and ghosts aren't real as Suzanne tries to call up Poussey's spirit in a séance.
  • Possibly averted in the final episode when after Pennsatucky dies from a heroin overdose, we see her ghost standing outside the prison before turning around, waving goodbye, and disappearing into the horizon. Whether this was literal or just simply representational is anyone's guess though.
• Outlander: Discussed by Roger and Ian after the first stops the latter's attempted suicide. Since he had nearly died by hanging, Ian asks Roger what he saw. Roger says he saw his wife, which Ian interprets as there being an afterlife. He is disappointed, stating that he'd hoped it would be over (it turns out his attempt was due to losing a woman).
• Red Dwarf features most electronic lifeforms believing in Silicon Heaven, an afterlife for such items ('Where the iron lies down with the lamp.'). They themselves think of humans' heaven as foolishness. "The Last Day" has Kryten use this as a Logic Bomb against the monster of the week, a mad mechanoid.
  "Then where do all the calculators go?"
  "They just die."
• The Rising: Discussed by Daniel and Tom. When the latter asks what he believes happens after people die, Daniel says this is it. He says valuing life now is what matters. Tom however has just found out this isn't true, since his daughter Neve has become a ghost after death.
• Discussed in Rome between Marc Antony and Lucius Vorenus as the former prepares himself for his own suicide after his historic defeat against Caesar Augustus. They get drunk and start waxing philosophical about the prospects of life after death, or whether this life is really all there is and they'll just vanish after death.
• Star Trek:
  • In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Return to Tomorrow", Sargon says "Thalassa and I must now also depart into oblivion" before he dies. "Departing into oblivion" wouldn't necessarily mean "ceasing to be," though it could. It could just refer to leaving behind the known and entering the unknown.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation:
    • Discussed in "Where Silence Has Lease" by Picard when Data asks him what happens when you die. Picard rejects both this view and Heaven, stating he thinks the afterlife is beyond our comprehension.
    • When Q spends some (involuntary) time as a human in "Déjà Q", he seems particularly concerned about dying, convinced that he would simply wink out of existence. This suggests that either there is no afterlife in the Star Trek universe, or that the afterlife is so mysterious even the sufficiently advanced Q don't know about it. It's implied (and sometimes even outright stated) in the Expanded Universe that there are beings far more powerful than the Q. If there is an afterlife in the Star Trek universe, then it can be assumed the Q in general fear that something may lurk there that is far more advanced than they are. Otherwise, they may simply just fear that, despite all their god-like powers, they too may face the same fate as any other being in the universe, death without anything beyond that.
  • Star Trek: Voyager:
    • Discussed in "Emanations", in which it's revealed a species' dead do not physically resurrect in the "next emanation" as they believe, but simply decay on asteroids they're transported to. Naturally, they're horrified to learn about this. Janeway posits their "neural energy" becomes part of the planet's atmosphere and they continue existing that way, but the episode ends without it being made clear either way.
    • "Coda" sees Janeway die on a random planet, leaving her walking around the ship basically as a ghost. Her father comes to her and leads her to a tunnel of white light, however she realizes this is not her father but a non-corporeal alien who says that this is how his race feeds, they lead the dead into their matrix and feed on their psychic energy. Before she is revived, the alien tells her it doesn't matter because she will die someday, and when she does, they will then have her. When Janeway is revived, she speculates that perhaps there is no afterlife, just these aliens who feed on the psychic energy of the dead.
    • "Mortal Coil" has Neelix discover, much to his horror, that there is nothing after death. However, he was clinically dead but successfully resuscitated with medical intervention; the question is whether or not that counts as "dead enough" that he should have seen the afterlife, and Chakotay at least encourages him to consider that death is still a mystery.
    • This trope is actually subverted at several points throughout the shows, the most notable subversion being the Voyager episode "Barge of the Dead", in which B'Elanna is nearly killed in a shuttle accident (similar to how Neelix temporarily dies) and in her near death experience, she learns that her mother is on the road to Klingon Hell, so she re-creates the conditions of the accident to go back to the "barge of the dead" and tries to get her mother into Klingon Heaven. She succeeds. This subversion initially seems to be subverted at the end, when her mother reveals that she's not really dead, if her words that they'll meet when B'Elanna "returns home" can be taken at face value. However, a future episode indicates that she really is dead, and thus the entire experience was probably real.
• Supernatural:
  • Discussed in "Of Grave Importance". Bobby and Annie believe this is what happens to ghosts whose bodies are burned. As it turns out in later seasons, under normal circumstances, Cessation of Existence is not really possible. Human souls ascend to Heaven or descend to Hell and ghosts are no exception; monster souls go to Purgatory, and even angels and demons (who do not have souls) wind up in the Empty. That being said, it is never established where monster souls who are "killed" in Purgatory go (if they "go" anywhere or just get taken out for that moment), and the afterlives of fairies and deities are never revealed. Interestingly, Eve, an entity native to Purgatory, is reborn there after being killed on Earth.
  • It's implied Cessation of Existence would've happened for everything self-aware in the universe if Chuck or Amara died, as the death of one of them would cause the whole of existence (including the surviving twin) to disappear into nothing.
  • In the season 15 episode "Atomic Monsters", Chuck snaps Becky and her family out of existence, and in "Despair", he ends up doing this to everyone sans Dean, Sam, and Jack. It takes Jack absorbing Chuck's power and becoming the new God for him to be able to bring everyone back.
    Chuck: Oh, they're not dead. Just... "away".
• Switched at Birth: Discussed by Regina and John. He believes there's some afterlife where you can meet your loved ones again, but Regina doesn't, unfortunate as she finds that.
• Torchwood:
  • A subplot in the first series has the unwillingly-immortal Captain Jack Harkness questioning people temporarily revived from the dead if they experienced any kind of afterlife. So far, the answer has been "No." Moreover, they only learn they died from these temporary revivals, followed by the realization that they're seconds away from dying again. All this while Torchwood staff is asking them what or who killed them.
  • She's probably not the most reliable witness but in "They Keep Killing Suzie", the eponymous character posits a different afterlife.
    Gwen: So when you die, it's just—
    Suzie: Darkness.
    Gwen: And you're all alone, there's no one else?
    Suzie: I didn't say that.
    Gwen: What d'you mean?
    Suzie: Why do you think I'm so desperate to come back? There's something out there... in the dark. And it's moving.
  • If the creature that came back with Owen is any indication, there's a reason to fear what's beyond.
  • Surprisingly, however, "Random Shoes" has a (slightly) kinder take on this trope (or maybe not — it's the Whoniverse, just go with it). After the main character for that episode completes his unfinished business, the audience is given the image of an incredibly fast zoom-out from the Earth, with us suddenly hearing the main character's speech falter and we see nothing but silent nothingness (he did swallow an alien artifact, so that may have something to do with it).
• Watchmen (2019): Angela's husband Cal tells their daughters this happens when they argue over whether Judd is in heaven or not. She doesn't appear to be entirely happy with this, but he says it's just the truth.
• Young Sheldon: Sheldon Cooper, being an atheist and all, holds this view of death. When discussing this with Missy, who's a Christian but her faith has waivered, Missy asks him if he's afraid of going to Hell. Sheldon responds that there is no Heaven or Hell, and that people merely cease to exist after they die.

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