Afterlife of Service

A common belief among many ancient cultures is that the dead will need food, material goods, and servants in death as they did in life. These are often their actual servants who are Buried Alive with their master (willingly or not, although sometimes symbolic representations are used), or in some cases the people they've killed.

This can also apply to belongings like money and weapons (often a Wrecked Weapon, the logic being that the dead can't use "living" weapons) or pets. Naturally, the concentration of such wealth leads to Robbing the Dead.

Do not confuse with necromancy, where the (un)dead person and household are still part of the material world.

Compare Together in Death, Human Sacrifice, and Your Soul Is Mine!. Contrast All Are Equal in Death.

See also Duty That Transcends Death, Viking Funeral, and Coins for the Dead. Do not confuse with Ghost Butler or Can't Take Anything with You.

No Recent Examples, Please!

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Examples:

Comic Books

• Alix:
  • When a Gaul chieftain dies during a migration, his tribesmen spend time diverting a waterfall from its course to bury him there, with every man tossing a weapon into the waterfall once the dam is broken down.
  • Alix is gifted a magnificent horse by Caesar before heading on a mission. It's prophesied that he and the horse won't be together long, and at the end of the story, he defuses a diplomatic situation by agreeing to give up the horse to be killed for a dead chieftain's tomb.
• Arthur: At the funeral of king Emrys, many of his warriors fight to the death for the honor of accompanying him to the afterlife.
• Hellblazer: Lord Burnham makes a deal with the blood mage Mako to create a palatial soul cage so he can spend eternity in an Artificial Afterlife torturing and raping sex slaves (including children), who suffer every moment they aren't pleasuring him. Constantine instead traps Mako in the cage, frees the slaves' souls, and waits for Burnham to start his lethal injection before telling him the cage now contains only a very pissed-off Mako. The cage is then hidden in a nuclear facility expected to last forever.
• Seven Missionaries: Thorgild's wife Freyja intends to have the titular monks accompany her husband's corpse on his funeral ship. Due to a series of coincidences, misinterpreted gestures, and clashing personalities, the funeral ends with every Viking convinced that the monks have miraculous powers and convert to Christianity. Not that it stops them from raiding monasteries, which is why the missionaries were sent in the first place.

Fan Works

• The Mountain and the Wolf: The Wolf murders three dark elf women at the location of his dead friend Sigvatr's funeral pyre to brighten up his afterlife.
• Pagan Vengeance:
  • Juvage's men kill with abandon because their religion teaches that their victims will serve them in the afterlife.
  • When Rashid dies, Juvage and his men leave a pile of plunder and weapons in tribute to him almost as big as the one they leave for their god.
• The Judge Dee Fan Sequel "Un Chinois Ne Ment Jamais" has a rich old man announce that he's looking for a bride to accompany him to the afterlife, in exchange for a sizable bride-price to her family (ironically, he made his fortune selling terracotta figurines of wives for burials). He's aided in this by a Taoist priest and eventually settles on a charming young woman. On the day of the funeral, it's announced that the bride is to be spared because she's pregnant. The priest and the girl are all part of a con to inherit the old man's fortune.

Films — Animated

• Garfield: His 9 Lives: In "King Cat", Garfield starts worrying about the King's wellbeing when he learns that he, as the King's favoured cat, will be entombed with the King's funeral goods. The King dies, but Garfield is rescued from the tomb by Odie.
  Slave: When the King croaks, he takes all his worldly possessions with him... and you are a possession. Get the picture?

Films — Live-Action

• In Beetlejuice, Otho jokes that people who commit suicide have to become civil servants in the afterlife. This is implied through visual gags: every spirit working in the afterlife support office bears injuries that seem to be self-inflicted, with the receptionist noting that she wouldn't have had her "little accident" (while showing off her slit wrists) if she knew what she was in for on the other side.

Jokes

• A rich old miser on his deathbed asks that his entire fortune be turned to cash and placed in his casket so he can use it in the afterlife. On the day of the funeral, the casket seems to contain only his body, and the man's son talks with his mother afterwards:
  "Mother, did you actually bury Father with all his wealth?"
  "Of course I did! Only it wouldn't have fit, so I wrote him a check."
• A man was raised in a specific faith that teaches you show up in Heaven with whatever you were buried with. On his deathbed, he has his fortune converted into a massive gold brick that gets put in his coffin. After his death, he arrives before the Pearly Gates with his gold brick, where Saint Peter asks to look through the luggage he's bringing into Heaven. The man complies, and Saint Peter just looks at it for a while and finally says:
  You brought pavement?

Literature

• Around the World in 80 Days: While crossing India, the heroes encounter a sati ritual where a dead man's widow is burned alive to accompany him to the afterlife. They crash the funeral by impersonating the corpse to free the widow, after which she joins the main cast and marries Phineas Fogg.
• Atar Gull: Captain Brulart discovers that a dead slave woman's child is still alive, so he brings up another slave and orders her to feed the baby. She refuses, saying that it's a firstborn son, who must die with his mother to accompany her to the great kraal in the sky as "a firstborn must never leave his mother". Brulart throws the baby overboard and has the woman whipped for disobeying him.
• In the Diogenes Club story "Egyptian Avenue", it is discovered that an Egypt-obsessed Victorian businessman set up some of his servants to be entombed alive with him... and his even wealthier son is plotting to do the same with all of his employees with secret mechanisms that will hermetically seal his business's skyscraper headquarters.
• Discworld:
  • At the end of Men at Arms, the wreckage of the gonne is slipped into Cuddy's casket so he'll have a weapon with which to face the afterlife.
  • Pyramids: Ptraci is a dancing girl meant to be sacrificed to serve Teppic's father in the afterlife, but after Teppic convinces her not to take poison, she breaks out of the mindset and ends up ruling the country. His father's ghost is quite glad she wasn't sacrificed, because Ptraci is his daughter and her singing is such that the world seems a better place once she stops.
  • Inverted with Crusty Caretaker Albert (formerly Alberto Malich), once a powerful wizard, who hit on the idea of performing a Death-summoning rite backwards to keep Death away from him. Instead it summoned him directly to Death's domain, where he now lives forever as Death's manservant (with a few days off every now and then to buy necessities like soap).
  • In Mort, one of the souls Mort has to collect when Death goes missing is a handmaiden in a Tsortean pyramid who was poisoned so she could spend eternity serving the king. Ysabell tells her she doesn't have to, and she replies that she's been training for it.
  • Dwarves bury their dead with axes, for their road through the afterlife. They don't believe in demons... but this is just in case the demons don't know about it.
  • It's established in Reaper Man that destroying an object will briefly create a ghost of that object, which other ghosts can potentially use. Mrs Cake overhears an argument between One Man Bucket and a bunch of other ghosts, and tells him to "Catch," then smashes a vase, allowing him to seize the vase and break it over another ghost's head. Death attempts to create a ghostly scythe for his fight against the new Death, but it turns out that the smith couldn't bear to destroy such a fine piece of equipment, and left it intact, so Death is unable to touch or use it once his lifetimer runs out.
• Judge Dee:
  • "Necklace and Calabash": After acknowledging his plot's failure, the grand eunuch takes poison and gives the judge a list of all the conspirators, saying they'll be his slaves in the afterlife once they're executed.
  • "The Chinese Maze Murders'': A murdered general's son and the general's concubine commit suicide and are praised for showing such filial devotion to their father/husband. The son and concubine were lovers, with the son plotting his father's death. He failed (the general was killed by an unrelated revenge plot), but the judge makes it very clear to him that a rotten branch must be cut off to preserve a family tree, resulting in their deaths.
• Poetic Edda: When Helgi Hundingsbani (i.e. "Hunding's killer") is killed after a heroic career and goes to Valhall, Odin "asked him to rule over everything with him." Straightaway Helgi orders his old enemy Hunding (who, having been killed by Helgi, is already in Valhall) to serve the other warriors in Valhall and do menial work, like kindling the fire, watching the horses, and feeding the pigs ("Second Poem of Helgi Hundingsbani").
• Wulfrik:
  • After Sigvatr is murdered (by magic), Wulfrik butchers the two warriors who were meant to guard him before burning all three on a pyre.
    "I will not consign Sigvatr's body to the flames without dogs to lay at his feet. Even if they be cowards and curs!"
  • When it's mentioned that this might attract unwanted attention from goblins and Chaos dwarfs, Wulfrik threatens to add the complainer to the pyre.
• Zadig: Zadig encounters an Arabian custom where widows show their devotion by throwing themselves on their husband's funeral pyre. He brings it to a stop by convincing the tribal elders that they're more useful alive (by educating children, or making more children), and getting the woman to see it as nothing but vanity since she's doing it to show off than out of any affection towards her Asshole Victim of a husband. Thereafter, widows are required to spend an hour in conversation with a young man before they decide to kill themselves, and astoundingly enough, that's the last anyone hears of burning widows.

Live-Action TV

• Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries: The Serial Killer Murdoch Foyle believes himself to be a reincarnated Pharaoh and his victims to be the "goddesses" who will escort him to his true throne in the afterlife.
• Deconstructed in Norsemen, at the Lawsayer's funeral in season 2 Orm and Rufus who murdered the Lawsayer suggest sacrificing two of the village's three remaining slaves (due to Orm and Rufus forging a will freeing themselves), leaving Kark as their last slave and forcing him to bury his friends alive. However, their motive is less to honor the Lawsayer and more petty revenge on the slaves for shunning them when they were enslaved.
• The Sandman (2022), "Collectors": At a Serial Killer convention, the self-titled "Adonai" claims that he is a just God who gives his victims new life in a Heaven of his creation. This promptly sets off a theological argument with other religiously-motivated murderers.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons: Ghosts manifest with spiritual copies of their most important grave goods, like weapons and clothing. The copy disappears if the physical item is stolen, hence why they treat grave robbers with extreme prejudice.
• Exalted: If someone is sacrificed in the name of a deceased person, their spirit will be forced to serve them as a slave in the Underworld. The Varajtul cannibals of the North also have a rite by which they can bind their victims' souls to themselves by consuming their brains, forcing their victims' souls to serve them once their devourer goes to the Underworld.
• Pathfinder: Wealthy people who are worried about their fate in the afterlife sometimes create Shabti, Golem-like simulacra with copies of their memories, to suffer divine judgement in their place. Psychopomps try to get Shabti Rescued from the Underworld so they're not punished for their creators' misdeeds and can live out their own lives.
• Warhammer Fantasy: The souls of Khornate warriors are taken to their god's fortress, where they fight and die and are resurrected to fight again every day. But deserters, cowards, and sorcerers are instead chained for eternity to massive forges where they create weapons for his blessed champions to use.

Video Games

• This is the fate of sinners in the Disgaea multiverse. Their souls are sewn into penguin-like suits to make a being called a "Prinny" that then has to earn its way back to reincarnation. Those who committed less severe transgressions still go to Celestia, though they're the ones who do the Angels' scut work until the accrue enough hours to earn rebirth. The truly vile serve in the various Netherworlds, required to buy their absolution, and therefore subject to whatever abuse a demonic employer cares to heap on a captive workforce, be it grunt work, serving as Cannon Fodder, or even getting tossed at the enemy to exploit the cheap suit's explosive properties. Being that they're an endless supply of faceless mooks who intrinsically deserve it, both varieties end up being the franchise's collective Butt-Monkey.
• In The Elder Scrolls backstory, Mordrin Hanin was a revered figure in 1st Era Morrowind. After he was murdered by traitors, representatives from all over Morrowind gathered in northern Vvardenfell for nine days of mourning, during which many slaves and traitors are sacrificed. On the final day, a lethal concoction was passed to every guest and killed most of them, providing Hanin with companions in the afterlife. His body and treasures were sealed in a Daedric tomb, guarded by the ghosts of the traitors who murdered him, of which the location was lost. Come the 3rd Era, during the events of Morrowind, the tomb, its treasure trove of artifacts, and its ghostly guardians can be rediscovered.
• In the ending of Final Doom: The Plutonia Experiment, Doomguy makes a mental note to ask his grandchildren to put a rocket launcher in his coffin.
  "If you go to hell when you die, you'll need it for some final cleaning-up..."
• In Final Fantasy VI, while aboard the Phantom Train, Sabin orders a massive feast in the dining car much to the chagrin of Cyan who fears something might be wrong with food intended for the dead. Aside from the creepiness of being served by a Bedsheet Ghost, the food is apparently fine for both the living and dead as it fully restores the health of your living party members and any ghosts they've taken along.
• MediEvil 2: Kiya is an ancient Egyptian peasant girl who was chosen by Pharaoh Ramesses to be one of his many consorts. He died before being able to consummate their relationship, but left instructions she was to be put to death and mummified so she could serve him as a bride in the next world.
• In Valheim, there are burial chambers and sunken crypts are full of warrior undead, but there's no indication as to whether they were put there willingly.
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: During the Viking Funeral of King Bran of the Skellige Isles, one of the king's unnamed concubines offers herself to join the king's corpse on his funerary longship as it burns, so she can be with her king in death. The king's widow is treated with considerable contempt by some of the late king's conservative friends for not doing this herself, as is Skellige tradition, but she is unashamed of refusing to throw her life away for a pointless gesture. It later turns out that she is the villain of the arc, committing mass murder so she can replace Skellige's traditional elected monarchy with a hereditary one starting with her son, but most characters treat this as a completely separate issue.

Webcomics

• Extra Fabulous Comics: One strip has a ghost child haunting his parents, who tell him they can't bury him with his Beyblade collection. Cut to the other kids in the afterlife mocking him for it.
• Oglaf:
  • Hereafter has an emperor's tomb containing a golden barge (to carry him across the river), clay warriors (to fight off ghost crocodiles), and rubies (to bribe the guards of heaven). Those buried without these precautions are apparently eaten by the ghost crocodiles, which explains why the High Priest dumps the emperor's corpse outside the mausoleum, wraps himself in the burial shroud, and stabs himself, grinning all the while.
  • One possible origin for Sithrak is a king using the clay warriors he was buried to besiege heaven and defeat God (here depicted as a humanoid without a face), set his head on fire, and ram spikes where his eyes should be before kicking him down, resulting in the flaming-skull-headed nailed-eye-sockets Sithrak.
• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: One man asks that people burn themselves alive at his funeral to serve him instead of leaving flowers.
• Thistil Mistil Kistil: Hedda was a thrall in a Norse household who barely escaped death when the dying master chose her to accompany him to the afterlife. She's horrified not just because she wants to live, but because she's Christian (ironically, the people who rescue her include the actual Loki).
• Vápnthjófr saga: When the queen of the Aesir-worshiping faction holds a funeral for her late brother, two dead slaves are seen on the pyre along with weapons and a shield.
• Parodied in Terminal Lance. When Marines die, they have to stand post at the gates of heaven. In one strip, God catches one Marine asleep on duty and decides to punish his buddies on earth by making it rain on them during a field exercise.

Western Animation

• Futurama: In "A Pharaoh To Remember", the Planet Express crew is enslaved by the natives of an Ancient Egypt-cultured planet and forced to work on the current Pharaoh's tomb. When he passes away, his disciples throw a bunch of cats that they consider holy "for some reason" and the Elton John-esque singer who is still in the middle of singing his praises into the tomb. Bender then cons everyone into accepting him as Pharaoh, and everyone gets to work on building a massive Star Scraper of a monument to celebrate his reign. When Bender is unsatisfied with the absolute perfection of the build, he demands that it be torn down and built again. At this point, the locals decide to forcefully retire Bender from his position of Pharaoh and throw him into his tomb. On the way down, he asks about his afterlife servants, resulting in Fry and Leela being thrown down after him.
• The Simpsons: "The Simpsons S5 E18 "Burns' Heir"": Following a near-death experience as he has no children or living family members, Mr Burns begins to worry about who will inherit his wealth and carry on his legacy when he dies. Smithers suggests himself, only for Burns to reveal that he has made preparations for "a far greater reward"; upon his death, Smithers shall be Buried Alive with him (showing him a model revealing his corpse will use Smithers as a footstool) so that he may carry on serving him in the afterlife.
  Smithers: Oh... goodie.

Real Life

• Ushabti are small figurines found in Egyptian tombs representing servants and workers that were intended to serve the deceased in the afterlife. Other burial complexes found with human remains indicate it wasn't always a symbolic representation.
• The Terracotta Army is a vast collection of life-sized warriors intended to serve the first Qin emperor in death.
• One historical depiction of a Viking Funeral involves the dead man's slave girl raped and killed along with his horses and dogs so as to serve him in the hereafter.
• Sati was a Hindu practice of killing widows on their husbands' funeral pyres that was outlawed during the British occupation.
• Some forms of Celtic and Gaelic mythology assert that a great warrior, who has killed many times on the battlefield, can call on the souls of those he killed after death who are now bound to him for eternity and his loyal servants. This may be symbolically reflected in their practice of keeping the heads of those you slay as trophies.
• In Chinese tradition, Hell Money (aka joss paper) is paper printed to look like banknotes that is burned to provide the dead with cash in the afterlife. There are joss paper versions of more material wealth as well.
• During the times of American Slavery preachers were asked at times what would happen to enslaved black people who qualified to go to heaven. Among many answers some preachers argued that they would go to heaven and keep serving white people.
• According to the cipher messages that have been cracked, the Zodiac Killer believed that the murder victims would become his slaves in the afterlife.
• It is said that a Greek tyrant named Periander had once received a complaint from his dead wife that she is too cold, because he buried her best clothes alongside her, and a ghost of a person needs a ghost of a dress. Periander, in return, announced a festival for the women of the city, and once they came, ordered their clothing stripped away and burned up.

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