In many scenarios, fierce lifetime conflicts between figures end once one side happens to die. In these scenarios, the hated side may pass on into an afterlife far off from the mortal coil. Perhaps the one carrying a grudge chooses to carry the grudge onto their target's successors a la Sins of the Father instead as a Revenge by Proxy. Perhaps one may attempt to make their hated fixation an Unperson to wipe their memory from history. Whatever the case, their hated grudge has passed on to some great hereafter and is above such squabbles.
Not in this case!
This trope involves the circumstance where a character explicitly still chooses to pursue conflicts against whatever's left of their hated target long after they've passed. No Unfinished Business left to linger and a sharp aversion to the idea of No Animosity in the Afterlife. This trope specifically involves a case where one character must die to pass on to the next life, with their hated avenger, alive or dead, on their tail ready to pick up where they left off!
Often the The Power of Hate comes into play where a character's hatred has made them an unstoppable Determinator ready to rip the Pearly Gates or the Doors of Hell from their hinges just to get to their prey. At times this trope may involve a Taking Over Heaven or Hell Has New Management scenario if the avenger feels it necessary to fulfill their grudge. Often a case where a character tells their target "See You in Hell" as a promise more than a simple insult.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- In the Buu Saga of Dragon Ball Z, Majin Buu now as Kid Buu decides to hunt after Goku and Vegeta after they escaped Buu's annihilation of Earth. After destroying a series of planets, Buu decides to go to Otherworld to find the Saiyan duo. There, Buu encounters Yamcha and Krillin, who he previously killed beforehand when they antagonized him as Super Buu, and proceeds to beat them to a pulp before almost destroying the Otherworld.
- In The Seven Deadly Sins, Guila tracks down the Sins to a small village said to be the gateway to the Capital of the Dead which they happened to enter to find King without actually dying. Once there, and after seeing Meliodas and the others enter the place she interrogates Ellen and her brother for information on how to do the same but is told vague answers. Uncertain but determined to hunt the sins even to the realm of the dead, she decides killing herself to be the quickest means of reaching the Capital of the Dead and, without hesitation, pierces her own heart to follow after them.
- In Yu-Gi-Oh!, Seto Kaiba has a long-established deep rivalry against Yugi Moto's alter-ego Pharaoh Atem to prove himself as the best duelist to ever exist throughout time. This rivalry is so intense that in Duel Monsters Kaiba manages to create technology that allows him to actually travel to the afterlife itself and duel against the Pharaoh to prove his supremacy.
Comic Books
- In Generations II, the elderly Joker is haunted by the ghost of Batman II (Dick Grayson), whom he had murdered in Generations I. The ghost of Alfred finally persuades Dick to move on.
Films - Animation
- In Kung Fu Panda 3, Kai, after being defeated and sent to the Spirit World by his former ally Master Oogway, decides to hunt down Oogway 500 years later after Oogway has passed on to the Spirit World himself. After hunting all the masters of martial arts in the realm, Kai hunts down and defeats Oogway before stealing his chi to make his way to the mortal realm.
Films — Live-Action
- In Seven Psychopaths, Billy Bickle recounts a story about the Quaker Psychopath, who relentlessly hounds the killer of his daughter from a vehicular hit-and-run with a hateful stare and grants him no peace, before and after the killer goes to prison and undergoes a Faith–Heel Turn. To escape the Quaker's constant Death Glare and constant guilt, the killer is Driven to Suicide. However, before he dies, the killer sees the Quaker drawing a razor and slitting his own throat, non-verbally swearing to hound the killer into whatever afterlife he ends up in. Turns out the story is all a lie and an embellished tale of Hans' own life story.
Literature
- In Moby-Dick, Captain Ahab makes it clear throughout the book that he'll pursue Moby Dick to, into, through, and out of Hell, and even then he still won't be satisfied until the whale suffers forever for its slight against him.
Ahab: From Hell's heart I stab at thee; for Hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Ye damned whale.
- In Tim Powers' book Down and Out in Purgatory, the protagonist absolutely refuses to have his Vengeance Denied when the man who murdered his fiancée dies of natural causes before he can face justice, and thus pursues the killer into the afterlife.
- The Divine Comedy:
- Master Adam is still so furious at Guido and Alessandro for getting him damned that he intends to travel an inch every century to find them and attack them.
- Count Ugolino spends eternity biting the skull of the man who starved him and his kids to death.
Live-Action TV
- In the Protect and Serve episode of The Twilight Zone (2002), An idealistic cop tries to save a prostitute from her abusive pimp that the cop previously killed, who came back from the afterlife as a hateful ghost to haunt and kill the prostitute and the cop. After the pimp manages to kill the prostitute and continues to torment her soul in the hereafter, the cop commits suicide, but returns as a ghost on the same limbo plane, ready to stand fast and protect the prostitute from the pimp's ghost for all eternity.
- A predecessor example to the Twilight Zone is found in the You'll Always Be Mine episode of Ghost Stories. In the episode, a dangerous stalker falls to his death while being pursued across rooftops by police. Unperturbed by his death, he continues to stalk the object of his affection from the afterlife, eventually causing her death and stalking her spirit. Terrified, the woman turns to a devoted police detective who will do anything to ensure her safety. After being driven insane with guilt after constantly receiving calls from the woman begging for help, the cop commits vehicular suicide, but returns as a spirit on the same plane as the stalker, ready to protect the woman for all eternity.
- Torchwood: Miracle Day: Oswald Danes is a man who was on death row for the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl before The Miracle happened. At the climax of the story, he helps the heroes blow up the mechanism causing the Miracle to happen by strapping himself to a bomb and throwing himself into the Blessing. His last moments are spent bragging about how he will chase his victim in hell.
Video Games
- Divinity: Original Sin II: Downplayed in that they remain in the physical world, but the spirit of a Wise Tree asks the living player character to find and destroy the spirit of the sawmill operator who felled it.
Log: But his spirit... his spirit... his spirit remains. Find him. Take from him what he takes from me.
- In Final Fantasy II, Emperor Mateus managed to conquer Heaven AND Hell after splitting his soul into its purest and darkest halves and defeating the respective rulers of both realms. This achievement had effectively made him ruler of the afterlife itself. Realizing things won't improve unless he's wiped out for good, the heroes who died and the ones left alive split up to destroy the Emperor's respective Hell and Heaven aspects to make him Deader than Dead.
- Played for Laughs in the darkest way in the first God of War where Kratos ends up leaving a Ship Captain to be eaten by the Hydra and the Captain ends up in the Underworld. Once Kratos dies, he falls to the Underworld and encounters the Captain again, before stabbing the Captain and kicking him into the River Styx out of spite.
- Happens in the good end of Chapter 4 of Spirit Hunter: NG. After Killer Peach learns that the man who masterminded her murder, Noboru Ishimaru, is already dead, she vows to follow him to the afterlife and exact her revenge on him.
- In Rise of the Argonauts, Jason and his allies go through this trope against the Blacktongues when they arrive in Tartarus, aka the Greek equivalent of Hell. The Blacktongues worship the Goddess Hecate, see her realm Tartarus as their Heaven, and have stored the Golden Fleece there, which Jason needs to resurrect his murdered wife. This ends with Jason having to slay the Blacktongue bosses he killed during the events of the game once again in their own afterlives.
Webcomics
- In Jack, Lita kills herself with the express purpose of going to Hell and killing her father, the notorious serial killer and rapist Drip who raped her mother, a second time. Unaware that: a) Drip has become the Anthropomorphic Personification of Lust, b) you can't die permanently in Hell, and c) that Jack has already reduced Drip to a severed head who then tricks Lita into restoring his body.
Western Animation
- In the Adventure Time episode "Ghost Fly", Finn and Jake run afoul with the murderous ghost of a fly that Jake killed for eating his soup. Unable to reach the fly since it exists inside a Dead World after it possesses Finn, Jake has BMO temporarily kill him to fight the fly on an even playing field.
- Occurs once again in Adventure Time: Distant Lands - "Together Again", where Finn is at this point long dead, passed into the Dead Worlds, and ends up in conflict with the Lich, who possesses the new Death and is dead set on exterminating all life by destroying the afterlife and destroying Finn's spirit.
