You Are Worth Hell

"I'm willing to follow you to Hell!"

— Stocking, Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt

The Hero's Love Interest is doomed to some terrible fate. Neither escape nor rescue is possible. The only way the couple can stay together is if The Hero joins this fate.

The specifics aren't important; it's the sentiment that counts. True love and loyalty in its purest form, where the only actual "Fate Worse than Death" is being separated from the ones you care about, and everything else is worth it as long as they are there with you.

It could be Hell, Purgatory, The Nothing After Death, And I Must Scream, or just a Siberian prison—if it's a choice between enduring such a fate with them or being alone and free, you will choose the terrible fate every time. To sum up, somehow or another two or more people will also join facing what is quite likely the end of everything, thus expressing the message that You Are Not Alone.

Although sometimes it isn't actually a choice — it's a Downer Ending where everyone is doomed anyway, and they are simply affirming their acceptance and love for each other by agreeing that even oblivion is not such a terrible thing, so long as they're together.

Done well, this can be a Tear Jerker of epic proportions. The biggest difference between this trope and Together in Death is that the characters in question don't necessarily have to be dead for this. At least not yet, and perhaps they won't ever die at all — just spend eternity trapped someplace together. If their fortunes change, expect them to be Rescued from the Underworld. If someone's planned that from the beginning, it's To Hell and Back.

See also A Hell of a Time, where Hell is worth itself. Compare and contrast with I'm Going to Hell for This. Also contrast See You in Hell, which is usually about people you don't like. The Hell Seeker just plain wants to go to Hell, never mind about love.

Compare and contrast (but mostly contrast) Converting for Love, when a person accepts a new religion for the sake of their partner.

Do not confuse this trope with Refusing Paradise. That trope is where someone rejects a good end instead of embracing a bad one.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• In Episode 1 of A Certain Magical Index, Index asks Touma if he would follow her all the way to Hell, but he refuses. In Episode 2, as Index is dying, Touma declares that he's not going to follow her to Hell, he's going to pull her out, and saves her.
• Kallen of Code Geass is so devoted to Lelouch, that when the rest of the Black Knights turn on him, she refuses to leave his side, even with dozens of soldiers ready to unceremoniously open fire on him. He has to fool her into thinking he used her all along in order to get her to switch sides and survive. Exactly What It Says on the Tin in regard to Kallen's Character Poem in which she admitted if Lelouch had ever told her that he loved her in return, even if it was a lie, she would have sided with him during Zero Requiem and "followed him to Hell" afterward.
• This is close to Arc Words in Count Cain, though it doesn't actually happen within the course of the series. Unless you count their Together in Death panel. Cain repeatedly tells Riff that he's damned and to get out while he can (though he goes back and forth on this, at other times threatening to kill himself if Riff ever leaves him), and each time Riff replies that he'll willingly follow him into Hell.
• Multiple times in Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Despite how Demons harmed and killed people, one way to remind the viewers/readers is that some of them were once humans as well who were unable to deal with pain and loss and thus decided to act on their misguided anger by harming innocents. But with enough soul-searching and hearing a few kind words, they will repent and regain remnants of their humanity and learn that they are not alone in the form of their loved ones who are waiting for them to walk into Hell together, rejecting Heaven and immediate reincarnation in the process.
  • After dying remorsefully and learning how he horribly misunderstood his parents' intentions, Rui is reunited with his parents, as they accompany him into hell and flames engulf them.
  • Upper Rank 6 Daki and Gyutaro get theirs too. Originally, only Gyutaro will go to hell, since Daki was too young to be sentenced there. Daki doesn't care, though, and follows her older brother there.
  • Upper Rank 3 Akaza and his loved ones. His master and father at first outright tell him that they cannot bring him to heaven, while his lover Koyuki holds him as hellfire consumes both of them. But in a Freeze-Frame Bonus moment, you can actually see the silhouette of the master and father standing with the couple, too, signifying that all four will go to hell. It's heavily implied that Koyuki is waiting for Akaza/Hakuji all along to realize the error of his ways until he finally does.
• The manga version of Destiny of the Shrine Maiden has Himeko joining Chikane in the shrine on the moon where the latter was supposed to be imprisoned in alone.
• Devilman has this moment at the very beginning when Akira agrees, with full foreknowledge, to join with a devil purely because his best friend asks him to. He pretty much name checks the trope.
• Taken literally with Vegeta during the Buu arc of Dragon Ball Z. He blew himself up in order to ensure the safety of his wife and son, fully aware that he would be sent to hell afterwards for all the horrible crimes he had committed in his life.
• In Fullmetal Alchemist, when Mustang asks Hawkeye to be his bodyguard/conscience, meaning to both watch his back and to shoot him in it if he deviates from what they've agreed is the righteous path, he asks if she's willing to follow him. She tells him that she'll follow him into Hell itself if that's what he asked of her. Throughout the course of the story, they proceed to prove it repeatedly. In both directions.
• High School D×D: After being rescued from an Arranged Marriage via Engagement Challenge, Rias is horrified to learn Issei sacrificed an arm for the power to rescue her. She asks what he plans to do in the future, since she's still a powerful political prize.
  Issei: Well I've got the other arm, my legs, maybe an eye...
  Rias: [Kisses him mid-sentence]
• Honoo no Alpen Rose: Count Georges de Gourmant takes a fancy to little Jeudi and decides to make her his wife, having his men kidnap her and take her to his castle. Luckily, she's rescued by Lundi. When they return to their home in the Alps, they find out that they both have Wanted Posters and the Count is offering good money as a reward. Juedi tells Lundi to leave her because the Count will take out his anger on him too. Lundi refuses, and tells her loves her and will never leave her.
• Inuyasha: Sango refuses to leave a poisoned Miroku and save herself from Youkai chasing them inside Mount Hakurei. Near the end of the manga, when it seems that Miroku's curse will finally kill him, Sango asks him to take her with him.
• Isabelle of Paris: Geneviève, who's from a Bourgieoisie background, falls in love with her piano teacher, Jules, who's from a...not Bourgieoisie background. Their romance is forbidden because of this, made even further complicated by the fact that her parents have already picked out a man for her to marry, Captain Victor Langlois. Even though Jules loves Geneviève, he tells her to marry Victor so that she can live a life full of ease, only for her to get incensed and tell him that he is the one who she wants to be with more than anything. Eventually, Geneviève tells her parents the truth, not caring when they disown her. When the Prussians invade the country and the wealthy French begin fleeing en masse, Jules stays back so he can rally the commoners to fight for Paris. Geneviève once again refuses to abandon him and joins his efforts.
• In Lupin III: The Secret of Twilight Gemini, Lara gets stuck in quicksand whilst searching for water in the desert. After Lupin's attempts to save her fail, she pleads with him to keep searching for the Gelts without her. He refuses, and instead chooses to join her. Before they are completely dragged under, Lupin reveals to her that he's also looking for the Geltic treasure, but says he's perfectly happy with sinking into the quicksand because at least he'll be with her.
• Naruto:
  • When Sasuke is leaving Konoha to defect to Orochimaru, Sakura begs him to take her with after failing to convince him not to leave, even though that would make her a wanted traitor as well. He refuses and knocks her out to prevent her from following him.
  • When Tsunade gives Rock Lee a life-threatening operation, Guy promises to join Lee in death should the operation fail. Fortunately, Lee pulls through, so Guy doesn't have to carry out on his promise.
• A reoccurring theme in One Piece. The Straw Hats refuse to move on unless all their friends are well and happy:
  • In the Enies Lobby arc, Robin trades her life to let the rest of the crew continue on their adventure, keeping a promise she had made. This strains the crew, but they all pull together and finally call out to her, right to the point of declaring war on the World Government (basically the entire world) for her sake.
  • In the Impel Down arc, Luffy finds out that Ace has been captured by the Marines, and is about to be executed. He goes through every level of the hell-like prison, fighting opponents that put him to the brink of death, and barely slips past dying at the cost of many years of his life — just to barely miss Ace as he's sent to Marineford. After causing a huge break out in the prison and losing valuable allies who sacrificed themselves, Luffy winds up in the middle of the war between Whitebeard and the Marines.
  • In the Marineford arc, a full scale war breaks out with the Whitebeard pirates, and Luffy and their allies on one side; and the full strength of the Marines on the other. When Ace questions why everyone has gone to these lengths, risking their lives simply for his, he gets the similar answers from both Whitebeard and Luffy: "Because you are our son/brother and we love you". Ultimately, Ace sacrifices himself to save Luffy.
  • Similar to what happened with Robin, once Trafalgar Law makes an alliance with Luffy and the Straw Hats, the latter will not abandon him to what would've likely been a suicidal Roaring Rampage of Revenge against Warlord Donquixote Doflamingo. Even when it's clear that Doffy is willing to pull out his last trump card and destroy the entire country of Dressrosa and everyone in it, Luffy refuses to listen to Law's desperate pleas for him to leave and instead takes on Doflamingo himself, whipping out Gear Fourth and absolutely pulverizing Doffy into a bloody pile that literally splits the island in half.
• During the Magic World arc of Negima! Magister Negi Magi, Asuna enthusiastically tells Negi "I'd go to the depths of hell to drag you out."
• As seen in the quote at the top of the page, in Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, Stocking tells the ghost she fell in love with that she will give up heaven for him. Which makes it even more of a Tear Jerker when he passes on to Heaven and has to leave her behind.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica:
  • For Homura, Madoka is worth going through an endless recursion of time in order to save her from her fate. At the end of one of the loops, she declares "Let's just become monsters together... that would be an ok ending, too."
  • Kyouko is quite willing to do so for Sayaka once she becomes Oktavia.
  • Deconstructed in Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion. Homura becomes a witch for Madoka's sake. That's not the deconstruction. No, that's when Homura tops that and becomes the devil itself to create a world where Madoka can be happy...even if it means she has to imprison Madoka in it. As it's a Whole-Plot Reference to Paradise Lost, it's suggested that Homura has willingly put herself into a Self-Inflicted Hell...but for Madoka's sake she would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven.
• In Record of Ragnarok, Eve (yes, that Eve) is placed in a Kangaroo Court by a snake god whose advances she (rightfully) rejected, being accused of eating an apple from the tree of the garden of Eden (spoiler: She didn't). Seeing as they are, you know...gods, they have no problem blaming Eve simply because its one of their own's word against a human's. However, in marches Adam, who not only manages to beat up a guard whilst carrying two baskets of the forbidden fruit, but immediately starts eating them in front of the gods, killing Eve's molester and getting banished as well, just so that his wife wouldn't be alone.
• At the end of the Rurouni Kenshin Kyoto arc, the Big Bad arrives in hell — along with his mistress and his majordomo (the latter two being loyal enough to take their own lives). And decide that, hey, since they're all there, they might as well take over the joint!
• Sailor Moon: Sailors Neptune and Uranus risk damnation in the last season, as long as they're together. Then there's Neptune's line about the world not being worth saving if Uranus isn't in it...
• Special A: almost said word for word from Kei to Hikari in the helicopter as he remembers a film in which the character say the same thing.
• In Sword Art Online, before heading off to fight what would be the most dangerous and costly boss battle in the game to that point, Kirito proposes to Asuna that they just stay in SAO and live out their lives in their virtual prison that would kill them in the event of a Game Over. Asuna declines, though, since every day trapped in SAO was another day their physical bodies wasted away, as well as her desire to meet Kirito and be with him in the real world.
• Platonic example in Tomica Hyper Rescue Drive Head Kidou Kyuukyuu Keisatsu. In the last episode, Karigari expects he won't survive the battle against Ark, and hopes for Akira and Yusuke to stay out of it. The two express that they're completely willing to go to hell with him.
• Esther Blanchett in Trinity Blood is more than willing to go wherever her friend Shahrazad does. Even if it includes rebelling to the bitter end against her former Vatican allies, willingly trying to escape with Shahrazad, leaving the Vatican if she must and be uncaring if she's judged as a witch and burnt at the stake by the Inquisition. Any option is preferable rather than hurt even a strand of her hair.. Of course, Shahrazad spares her.
• Uzumaki ends with Kirie grasping Shuichi's hand and ending up entangled with him, presumably until something happens to the spiral ruins or the sun expands to melt the Earth (whichever comes first). Given that the story is told as a flashback, the people frozen in the ruins are apparently alive and conscious.
• This is pretty much the plot of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds Episode 58. Carly (transformed into a Dark Signer) tries to convince Jack this would be a great future for them if it's the one they're destined for. Jack disagrees. Then he tries to use a card that would reduce both their life points to zero so he would also lose the duel and go to hell alongside her. It doesn't work; Carly manages to break the Immortal's control long enough to counter his card, so that only she loses.
• In Yuki Yuna is a Hero, after Togo claims that the Heroes' existence is a living hell, Yuna responds by saying that even if they're doomed to keep destroying their bodies, it's not a hell because they have each other.
• In YuYu Hakusho, the ending for Sensui and his lover. Also the younger Toguro by personal choice (he considered himself worth Hell).

Comic Books

• In ElfQuest, when Rayek makes himself into a living prison for Winnowill's soul, Savah immediately follows him so that they can Walk the Earth together for all eternity. Rayek is moved, but tells her she has no place in his new life. His mentor Ekuar follows him instead. It's also somewhat implied that Rayek trapping Winnowill inside him is not just to save the world, but also because he doesn't want to live without her — even as her living prison, he loves her, and would rather suffer a living hell for all eternity than be without her.
• Played straight in Hellblazer. The First of the Fallen tells a virtuous soul she can escape Hell for free, but points out that her husband's just committed suicide after killing her in the first place. The First freely admits that she, too, will be tortured for eternity if she stays. She does. Although he's not actually worth it, being a complete shit. She's just too self-sacrificing a person to refuse the offer to take half his punishment.
• Inverted in Huntress: Year One, which sees Helena Bertinelli declare that going to hell for killing Mandragora was Worth It.
• In Infinite Crisis, Wally West a.k.a. The Flash is about to be pulled into the Speed Force. He is able to hold on just long enough to pay one last visit to his wife Linda and their twin babies to say good-bye. Linda refuses to let this be the end, saying that wherever Wally's going, his family is coming with him. The entire West family enters the Speed Force.
• Played quite literally in The Sandman (1989), where Remiel, who initially attempted to defy God's command to take control of Hell after Lucifer quits, accepts because his companion Duma did.
  Morpheus: Remiel. What will you do?
  Remiel: What can I do? I cannot allow my fellow to drink from the cup that I have refused. I will go with Duma. I will go to Hell.
• One The Simpsons comic, which gave us "Springfield In Hell" (in which everyone in Springfield ends up in hell) plays this for laughs.
  Marge: Oh, Homey, even though we're stuck forever in the worst of all possible places, being with you makes it all worthwhile.
  Homer: Everything but the groin beetles.
• The original Sin City story The Hard Goodbye, the Catholic priest whom Marv just interrogated asks him whether or not revenge for Goldie is worth dying for (put in less than respectful terms towards Goldie). Marv comes back with:
  "Worth killing for." Blam! "Worth dying for." Blam! "Worth going to Hell for." Blam! "Amen."
• In Spider-Man: One More Day, Mephisto laments on how he will often have someone sell their soul to him for a righteous cause, only for them to spend eternity in Hell, suffering nobly because the result of their bargain gives them strength enough to persevere.
• Subverted in the Superman storyline The Great Phantom Peril. At the end of the story, Kryptonian criminal Faora Hu-Ul is sent back into the Phantom Zone. Unfortunately, a widower called Jackson Porter, whom she had telepathically imprinted the idea that she was his wife's ghost in order to manipulate him, has become permanently deluded into thinking Faora is his deceased spouse. So he requests to be sent into the Zone in order to be with his "wife" forever.
• Played with by Kid Devil in Teen Titans. He made a Deal with the Devil Neron in order to get superpowers, and at the time thought that he would keep his soul, as long as he trusted Blue Devil. When he lost that trust, he was devastated since now he would lose his soul when he turned twenty. However, after losing his powers, Eddie almost made the same deal again with the demoness Blaze, this time with no strings attached. Kid Devil was willing to damn his soul to Hell to be a superhero. The soul of his dead Aunt Marla managed to convince him otherwise.

Fan Works

• Better Bones AU:
  • Cloudberry and Ryewhisker choose to go to the Dark Forest after their death out of protest against StarClan for approving of the law that made their relationship forbidden.
  • Fenneldust also chooses to go to the Dark Forest to be with her friend Batear.
• A Boy, a Girl and a Dog: The Leithian Script: Luthien made very clear many times that any Paradise with no Beren was Hell as far as she was concerned.
• In this Death Note fanfic, Misa basically tells Beyond this.
  Misa: Listen. You being a killer doesn't bother me. I know that sounds horrible of me, but I honestly don't care about that. I want to get to know you, Beyond, and I can't do that if you won't let me.
• In this Death Note fanfic fanfic Misa proves this literally to Beyond by having the Shinigami King resurrect him at the cost of his memories of her, letting him attempt to kill her with no negative feelings later on, letting him hide out at her apartment to get away from the police, and even handcuffing the two cops chasing them to a pole for him. And why? She's in love with him.
• Thousand Shinji: During a conversation in chapter 10, Asuka tells Shinji that she is afraid of becoming attached to him and losing him. He promises her that she'll never lose him and he'll always return to her, even if he has to find his way back from Hell. When she asks him "What if you end up in Heaven?" he replies:
  Shinji: "No matter the surface trappings, any heaven would be a hell without you."
• In this Naruto story, Deidara dies and is headed into hell, but Naruto refuses to let his big brother go, at first trying to drag him free but eventually deciding to go with him so he won't be alone.
• MANY fixfics have been written about One More Day and feature the plot of either Peter or MJ fighting Mephisto to save the other. You'd think Marvel would take the hint...
• In this rather depressing Buffy the Vampire Slayer fic, after he loses all the girls he loved, Xander actively tries to damn himself so that Anya, who killed without remorse for a thousand years, will not be alone in Hell.
• Several Supernatural fanfics have Sam taking on the role of Boy King of Hell because he cannot bear to be parted from his brother and because he wants to make Dean's experience less horrific.
• In this crossover, Kenshin doesn't quite go to hell, but he forgoes heaven in order to follow Kaoru's spirit. He describes it almost word-for-word: the only hell is being separated from the one you love, and knowing she's fighting and dying without you there to protect her.
• In the Cardcaptor Sakura fic Shadow of the Dragon, Sakura and Syaoran both explicitly state on more than one occasion that without the other, life is meaningless.
• In Gensokyo 20XXI, after Yukari's attempts to Shoo the Dog, Ran (with babies in her arms) refuses to flee without her, electing to stay. As to be expected, she was imprisoned right along with her. In that vein, it is subtly implied to be the case as to why Yukari simply wanted to allow herself to be captured, seeing as Reimu was mentioned to have been the first one they managed to grab.
• In Kill la Kill AU, comic 41, after finding out Ryuuko wished to be sick one instead of her, Satsuki makes a wish to be sick one right along with her so the former won't be alone.
• The Sanctuary Telepath: Janine would rather lie to her closest friends, have no real home and let herself to be tortured by an energy elemental than abandon her brother to his fate.
• This Trope is Deconstructed in Yu-Gi-Oh! The Thousand Year Door. Lyrius is all-too willing to make this sacrifice for Iris should it ever happen. However, after Graz'zt claims her soul as part of the infernal bargain she made, St. Cuthbert brings Lyrius back to cold, hard reality, stating Graz'zt would only ensure that they'd both suffer even more. The currently in-progress sequel has revealed that Lyrius has achieved a far better option since then.
• RWBY: Epic of Remnant: Hassan of the Cursed Arm tells himself that he'll endure any Hell, including the one he's in right now, for Gudako. The other Servants likely feel the same way.
• In the Good Omens fanfic Its Own Place, while not explicitly stated, it's heavily implied that the reason the angel Aziraphale ended up in Hell instead of Heaven After the End was that he subconsciously preferred to be in Hell with his demon friend/love Crowley than in Heaven without him. He also admits to Crowley that even when he was given the chance to escape to a "Purgatory" that was identical to the Earth he dearly missed, he would still rather have stayed in Hell with Crowley if Crowley couldn't be in Purgatory with him too.
• In Obito-Sensei: Naruto and Sasuke, upon learning that Sakura has been tasked with being The Mole inside Amegakure, immediately rush after her. Obito initally assumed they're going to try to talk her out of it, but is surprised to learn that they're going to join her in her defection. Even though it means everyone in Konoha will think that they've betrayed the village and joined its enemies, protecting their teammate is more important to them.
• In Episode 3 of Dragon ShortZ, the postscript follow-up to Dragon Ball Z Abridged, Android 18 makes clear that everything she went through in her conversion to becoming an enhanced human was worth it because it led to her meeting Krillin, who at that point had become the love of her life.
• In Dragon Ball Z: Dynasty, Gine was literally the only Saiyan out of the entire race who was qualified to go to Heaven after Frieza blew up Planet Vegeta. But she made it quite clear to King Yemma that if her husband Bardock was going to the HFIL, she refused to be separated from him.
• Dragon's Dance: When Wataru is exiled (seemingly for life) from his village, his dratini Toku chooses to come with him despite knowing how small their chance of being able to return home is. Even after she evolves into a dragonite and would thus be welcomed back and honored by the village, she refuses to return without Wataru and stays on his exile with him.

Films — Animation

• Disney's Hercules ends with Hercules being accepted into Olympus with all the gods, then- realizing that he couldn't be with Meg that way — opting to remain mortal instead of ascending to godhood. Of course, isn't surprising, considering the reason he became a god was because he decided to sacrifice himself for Meg in the first place.
• Inverted in Disney's The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, when Frollo tries to force Esmeralda to choose between being with him or burning in Hell by having her burned at the stake. She spits in his face, making it abundantly clear that she would rather suffer an eternity in the blazes than a lifetime of sexual slavery.
• In Disney's Pocahontas, "I would rather die tomorrow, than live a hundred years without knowing you."
• In Sausage Party, when Brenda is asked by Frank why she jumped out of the cart after him instead of continuing into "The Great Beyond", she answers that for her there was no "Great Beyond" without him.

Films — Live Action

• A variation in Apocalypto. One of the captured villagers loves his wife so much, that he'll embrace Hell with a smile as long as she's not there to share such a fate.
• Bram Stoker's Dracula: After some Didn't Think This Through words from a Suicide is Shameful-invoking priest, Dracula decides that he'd rather follow his suicidal wife into Hell than spent eternity without her in Heaven. And if they're going to be damned like that — even after all their years of service toward God — then he might as well get his money's worth and become a vampire! Subverted in the end, though; it's implied that she ends up in Heaven after all, and he ends up getting to join her anyway via Redemption Equals Death.
• Dark Angel: The Ascent: If a demoness and her love are separated he promises that he would do something so terrible that judgment will have no choice but to let them be together in hell.
• The 1993 film Daybreak has Moira Kelly's character follow her lover into quarantine, even though she isn't infected herself.
• In the 1985 comedy The Heavenly Kid, greaser-turned-guardian-angel Bobby learns that his still-living charge Lenny is about to die in the same way he did. And he offers to forfeit his trip to "uptown" (heaven) in order to save Lenny's life.
• Hellboy series.
  • Occurred creepily with the villains at the end of the first movie. Ilsa tells her lover Rasputin that even hell itself will hold no surprises for them moments before they're crushed into oblivion. (The scariest thing is, you believe her).
  • HellBoy II: The Golden Army does something similar, when the fallen angel insists that Hellboy will bring about The End of the World as We Know It, and Liz, his girlfriend, decides to resurrect him anyway. Not sure if it qualifies, though. The angel did warn that she will the suffer the most for her decision.
  • Hellboy himself inverts this in the first film, warning the afterlife that if they don't release his girl from death, he'll cross over with her ... and then kick ass on everyone there until they regret ''not'' letting her return to him.
    Hellboy: Hey, you on the other side... let her go. Because for her, I'll cross over... and then, you'll be sorry.
• The Hunger Games: Katniss Everdeen, regarding Prim and later Peeta.
• In the Kingdom of Heaven director's cut^note the theatrical release cut the arc in question, Sibylla learns that her young son has leprosy, just weeks after her brother succumbed to the same illness. Having witnessed firsthand the horrible suffering her brother endured as the disease ravaged him, she's willing to do anything to spare her son that fate — even if the only alternative involves committing a mortal sin and spending eternity in hell as a result.
  Sibylla: No kingdom is worth my son's life in hell. I will go to hell instead.
• A familial example in Maleficent, where Aurora's Parental Substitutes, the titular Maleficent and her Dragon Diaval — not the three fairies — are quite willing to walk into King Stefan's death trap of a castle if it means the slightest chance of saving her.
• At the end of the 1988 movie Miracle Mile, as Harry and Julie sink into the tar pits amid a nuclear holocaust he might have escaped if he hadn't gone back to save her, she suggests that maybe they'll be "metamorphosized" (sic) into diamonds by the heat and pressure. "Diamonds...You and me, Harry." To which he responds (the last line of the film), "You and me. Diamonds."
• Of course in Muppet Treasure Island, Kermit and Miss Piggy sing "Love Led Us Here" as they are hanging off a cliff and about to fall to their death.
  We followed a star, and here we are
  Now heaven seems so near
  Love led us here...
• The Mummy Returns: Done very poignantly in the end. Imhotep and Rick are hanging over a ledge above a yawning abyss into Hell in the collapsing temple as Evy and Anck-su-namun look on. Rick selflessly pleads Evy to just get out and save herself, but she braves the falling debris to run over and pull him up. Meanwhile Imhotep pleads to Anck-su-namun to come save him... and she bolts, leaving him to his fate. Realizing that his three thousand year quest was All for Nothing and that his mortal enemies shared the bond of True Love that he so coveted, he shoots Rick and Evy a last jealous (and perhaps even genuinely admiring) look before letting go of the ledge.
• At the end of Rodan, the military manages to kill the first Rodan by triggering a volcanic eruption. Unable to live without its mate, the second flies into the volcano and dies along with it.
• The 1934 film We Live Again is based on Leo Tolstoy's Resurrection. A young nobleman seduces a maid, who becomes a prostitute and is sentenced to four years in Siberia after being wrongfully convicted of murder. In the book, a young political prisoner marries her and plans to follow her into Siberia. In the film, the nobleman himself casts off everything, gives his wealth to the poor, and joins the woman in exile.
• This effect happens towards the end of What Dreams May Come, when Chris finds the spirit of his dead wife locked in her own personal hell. Unable to coax her out of it, he decides to stay with her for eternity because he loves her that much.And the sight of him sacrificing himself rouses his wife out of her fugue state sufficiently to free him in return.

Literature

• In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck believes that if he helps his friend Jim escape from slavery, he will be committing an act of theft, something he knows is a sin. He debates between being damned to hell for theft, or doing what feels right and freeing his friend and declares, "All right, I'll go to Hell, then!"
• Ultimately, Evelyn would rather have Tobias around as her son than to exact revenge on her husband and controlling the city. Even if that means swallowing her pride and having to face her abusive husband and possibly be put at risk herself in Allegiant.
• In Dean Koontz's The Bad Place, Clint shoots himself on the bed where he laid his now-deceased wife, right in front of Candy, who killed her. Candy, naturally, doesn't get why he did that.
• In Beijing Comrades, Chen Handong prays to be reunited with Lan Yu in either Heaven or Hell and says that if it's the latter, they will brave it together.
• Martha's motivation for becoming a Thrall (essentially an immortal slave) in Clocks that Don't Tick. Whereas most of her peers had an overwhelming fear of death, Martha wished to become reunited with her former lover, who had previously become a Thrall himself. Her plan might have worked, had the Bosses not intentionally kept them apart.
• Played straight and inverted in William Blake's The Clod and the Pebble.
  "Love seeketh not itself to please,
  "Nor for itself hath any care,
  "But for another gives its ease,
  "And builds a heaven in hell's despair.
  So sung a little Clod of Clay,
  Trodden with the cattle's feet,
  But a Pebble of the brook
  Warbled out these metres meet:
  "Love seeketh only Self to please,
  "To bind another to its delight,
  "Joys in another's loss of ease,
  "And builds a hell in heaven's despite."
• At the end of Count and Countess, when Elizabeth Bathory has been arrested on murder charges and sentenced to death, Vlad Dracula surrenders himself to the Holy Roman Emperor of his time period in a Suicide by Cop move. He states outright that he is following her into Hell. And he spent the entirety of the preceding novel being a fierce, God-fearing Christian.
• At the end of Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov is sentenced to eight years in Siberia, and Sonya goes with him.
• In the final book of the Croak trilogy, Lex makes a Heroic Sacrifice to close the final gate, and Driggs decides to go to The Nothing After Death with her. Though she could have just used another death to close the gate, like Norwood, who was trying to Damn them.
• The fifth Aubrey-Maturin novel, Desolation Island featured among other convicts being shipped to Australia, one Salubrity Boswell, whose husband had been sent there already, so she decided to follow him, first by getting his brother to get her pregnant so she wouldn't be hung, then by assaulting the judge who sentenced him. Stephen Maturin calls her "a female worthier of a nobler age."
• Discussed in Dinner at Deviant's Palace. The protagonist goes to rescue the woman he loved and lost and never got over from the grasp of a predatory cult. A singer-songwriter by profession, at one point he starts thinking about how he'd tell the story if he were writing a song about it, and observes that it would be suitably dramatic to end it with the would-be rescuer failing to rescue his lost love and submitting to the cult himself just to be with her. He never seriously considers actually taking that path himself, if only because it would require giving up and deciding there's nothing more he can do, which he refuses. He does successfully rescue her in the end.
• Divergent: In the first book, when Edward is stabbed in the eye and forced to become factionless, his girlfriend, Myra, decides to follow him out rather than continue living in Dauntless without him. However, the second book reveals that it's all in vain, since the two are mentioned to have broken up.
• Subverted in Dante's Inferno, in which souls punished for sins of lust are bound forever to their Star-Crossed Lovers, yet this only adds to their torment by serving as a perpetual reminder of their sins.
• In Dracula, vampirism is considered inevitably a Fate Worse than Death and quite some time was dedicated to how the kind, sweet Lucy became a baby-eating monster after she was turned. Mina Harker, a recent Vampire Refugee, dreads turning and asks the other characters to Mercy Kill her if she can't be saved, preferring to die as herself. The only one of them who doesn't promise is her husband Jonathan. Despite his own traumatic past experience with Dracula, Jonathan resolves that, no matter what, she will not meet that fate alone.
  "To one thing I have made up my mind; if we find out that Mina must be a vampire in the end, then she shall not go into that unknown and terrible land alone. I suppose that it is thus that in old times one vampire meant many; just as their hideous bodies could only rest in sacred earth, so the holiest love was the recruiting sergeant for their ghastly ranks."
• In The Dresden Files novel Cold Days, Karrin Murphy says this to Harry, after they shared The Big Damn Kiss earlier in the book. She is, however, extremely reluctant to have a relationship with Harry because of Harry's new job and what it has done to him. But, she says:
  We passed just friends a long time ago. Never forget I will be here for you. If you are going on a highway to hell, I will be there with you, right beside you, all the way.
• Robert A. Heinlein:
  • In Job: A Comedy of Justice the hero is a devout Christian in love with a pagan. He vows to join her in Hell should they be separated after death. Heinlein wonderfully deconstructs this, as hell turns out not to be such a bad place at all. It just has bad PR. Not to mention the fact that it turns out she's not even there. Her own devotion to her gods pegged her for the paradise of Valhalla.
  • In I Will Fear No Evil the spirits of two main characters desperately cling to the mind of a third, still living, person. At the end, with the death of the final person, all three spirits willfully cross over together.
• The Heroes of Olympus: Near the end of the third book, Annabeth is being pulled into Tartarus, the Greek equivalent of hell. How does Percy respond? By pulling her into a hug and falling in with her.
• In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Frollo feels this way about Esmeralda, willing to forsake his reputation, salvation, immortality and eternity, "this life and the other" for the sake of his obsession with her.
  Frollo: If thou comest from hell, I go thither with thee. I have done everything to that end. The hell where thou art will be my paradise; the sight of thee is more entrancing than that of God.
• In Catching Fire Peeta volunteers to go back into the arena with Katniss, even though he's still traumatized from the horrors of their first arena, and convinced that there's no way they can both make it out alive this time. He wants to die doing everything he can to keep her safe, rather than sit on the sidelines (like she wants him to).
• Incarnations of Immortality:
  • In For Love of Evil, when Parry is summoned to appear before Lucifer, and finds Lilith is bound to remain in Hell, he offers to stay there with her. She sadly replies he won't be able to. Parry thinks this is because Lucifer obviously will not allow Parry to remain with her. But, then, Lucifer says, in effect: "A mortal can love and be in other ways unchanged, but a demon loves totally. When the object of that love dies, the individual is destroyed. So, she has thrown away her entire existence for a song." She then replies "I have thrown my existence away for a man." So, in effect, she takes this trope up a step by making it "You are worth oblivion."
  • In Wielding a Red Sword, Satan has a Batman Gambit that relies on the Incarnation of War feeling this way about a princess trapped in Hell to keep him in Hell while Satan takes actions on Earth. Otherwise, the Incarnation of War could simply leave Hell immediately.
• Outlander's time-travelling heroine narrowly escapes being burnt as a witch. When she tells her eighteenth-century Catholic husband that by his standards, she probably is one, he replies that in that case he'd go to hell with her.
• Paradise Lost: Played with. Adam recognizes that Eve damned herself by eating from the forbidden fruit, but he feels so connected to her that he eats the fruit and falls so that he can continue to be with "the flesh of his flesh", showing a difference between Eve's being deceived into eating by the lie that she would gain greater power, compared with Adam's love for Eve causing him to deliberately sin against God in full understanding of what he's doing. Quickly subverted as the logical consequences of this trope follows when the evil and selfishness Adam accepts by falling turn him against Eve, who he now sees as an inhuman devil who is entirely to blame for his fall. Later played straight after they reconcile and resolve to face their intimidating new life together, confirmed completely with the final line of the poem referring to them walking "hand in hand" into the wilderness.
• In The Princess Bride, there's a scene in the novel that didn't go into the movie because it deals in Buttercup's internal monologue. She's essentially praying, mentally begging Westley to come and claim her rather than having her marry the Prince (she's unaware that Westley is dead at the moment. Well, mostly dead...)
  Buttercup: My preference would be to spend eternity at his side on a cloud, but Hell would also be a lark if Westley were there.
• Sword at Sunset, a possibly platonic example:
  Bedwyr (Lancelot): You fool, Artos! Don't you know that if you were deservedly frying in your Christian's Hell for every sin from broken faith to sodomy, you could count on my buckler to shield your face from the flames?
  Artos: I believe I could. You are almost as great a fool as I.
• The Shadowhunter Chronicles:
  • Shadowhunters are not allowed to form romantic relationships with mundanes. If they insist on doing so, either the Shadowhunters must strip their Marks to become mundanes, or the mundanes undergo the Ascension ritual to become Shadowhunters. Both are very painful procedures (the Ascension ritual can be outright lethal and is essentially a Russian roulette). Still, some choose to do so. The first example mentioned is Maryse Lightwood's brother, Max Trueblood, who fell in love with a mundane girl and chose to become a mundane so he could be with her. The second is Edmund Herondale who had his Marks stripped after falling in love with Linette Owens, a mundane heiress from Wales, though their children were all born Shadowhunter, and two decided to rejoin the Shadow World. The third example happens at the end of The Infernal Devices, where mundane Sophie Collins undergoes the Ascension ritual so she can marry Gideon Lightwood.
  • Near the end of The Mortal Instruments, Helen Blackthorn is exiled to Wrangel Island because she's half-fey. Her girlfriend, Aline Penhallow, decides to follow her and ends up marrying her there.
• Tolkien's Legendarium:
  • After giving birth to Fëanor, Míriel was left so exhausted that she died and went to the Halls of Mandos. Although elves normally reincarnate, she always refused to do so, having become weary of the world. When her husband, Finwë, was killed by Morgoth, he decided to remain with Míriel in the Halls rather than reincarnating back to the world.
  • The elf Aegnor died and left behind a mortal lover, Andreth, who lived for some more time before she died and left the world for good. When the time came for Aegnor to reincarnate, he refused, because he didn't want to return to a world without Andreth in it, seeing the Halls as the closest he could go near her.
  • In the Middle-Earth universe, Elves are destined to remain in the world, whereas Men are fated to leave it forever after dying. Nobody knows where their souls go, although Morgoth tried to spread the belief that there's nothing beyond death. Half-elves are given a special dispensation in that they can choose which afterlife to go, which leads to several examples of this trope:
    • In Beren and Lúthien, Lúthien chose becoming mortal to remain with Beren, even though it meant that she would get sick, she would get old and pass away, and remain apart from her kin forever.
    • Lúthien's fate is repeated with her great-granddaughter Arwen. At the end of The Lord of the Rings, she chooses to become a mortal out of love for Aragorn.
    • While the notable examples of star-crossed lovers involve the immortal bidding their immortality away to be with their mortal lover, there's one exception: Elrond's parents, Eärendil and Elwing. Both are half-elves and could choose their fates. Eärendil was inclined to mortality, but he chose immortality so he could be with Elwing, who felt closer to her elven kind. For her part, Elwing patiently waits for Eärendil whenever he comes close to the land during his daily journey (after the War of Wrath, he was tasked by the Valar to carry a Silmaril across the sky until the end of time).
• Tristan and Iseult: Isolde commits adultery, accepting eternal damnation in exchange for even temporary enjoyment of her love for Tristan. This story and the idea of love being able to overcome even eternal torment is credited by many as being possibly the origin of the concept of romantic love in the Western world.
• Referenced twice in the The Twilight Saga, once in a chapter that didn't quite make it in: Emmet says that he believed he was in Hell while transforming into a vampire, but Rosalie—his angel—meant it wasn't so bad. The second did; Edward thinks he's dead and either in heaven, since Bella's there, or hell, since she smells the same. Upon thinking it's hell, but she's still there?
  Edward: I'll take it.
• This trope is a pivotal plot point in Unsong. Any virtuous soul would want to destroy Hell, but Hell isn't physically accessible to virtuous souls, and especially to souls of those who are actually able to wield divine powers necessary to do something about it. And sinfully, selfishly willing to follow the loved one becomes the only way to access it for the resident messiah.

Live-Action TV

• Brimstone. The female half of an Outlaw Couple kills herself when she finds the protagonist sent her partner back to Hell, as it's the only way she can be with him.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Spike certainly thought Buffy was, and was nearly killed in the process of earning his soul back.
  • Conversely, Angel turned down a chance to become human again rather than risk her dying on his watch (though this is debatable, since he doesn't even move back to Sunnydale afterwards and she ends up dying, anyway).
• Doctor Who:
  • "Doomsday": Rose is willing to brave being thrown into the Void Between the Worlds, considered Hell by some people, to stay with the Doctor.
  • The Twelfth Doctor does this literally and figuratively for Clara Oswald in the Series 9 episodes "Heaven Sent" and "Hell Bent" when he endures billions of years in a mental torture chamber just for the chance of seeing Clara again and hopefully rescuing her from her fate.
• Good Omens (2019): In the second season, the Archangel Gabriel is revealed to have gotten sick of Heavenly politics and has realized Armageddon wouldn't be worth it. This led to him developing a friendship and later a courtship with Beelzebub, a Lord of Hell. In the end, Gabriel makes it very clear he'd rather be in Hell with Beelzebub than in Heaven without them, and the two decide to ditch the afterlife altogether and enjoy their existences elsewhere, together at last.
• A variation occurs as The Good Place comes to a close with Heaven rather than Hell: as it turns out paradise gets mind-numbingly boring when stretched to eternity. Fortunately, the main cast solves the problem by offering all inhabitants a new feature: once they believe that they have truly fulfilled themselves and have nothing left to experience, they may choose to step through a portal that will peacefully end their existence. In the final episode, Chidi reveals to Eleanor that he actually reached his moment of fulfillment some time ago, but he is willing to stay in paradise for her sake, so that she will stay happy. As a result of Eleanor's Character Development, however, she cannot in good conscience ask him to stay.
• Lucifer (2016)
  • As her home is the actual place/plane/dimension, Maze considers Earth a hell she is willing to brave for Lucifer even if she is looking for a way to get him to willingly go back.
  • A strange variation at the end of Season 4: Lucifer reluctantly returns to Hell out of love for Chloe, but not because she's stuck there and he's joining her; she's still on Earth, fully wanting to be with him, but while Hell lacks a ruler fearsome enough to keep the demons in check, they will keep trying to invade Earth and put her (and others) at risk. Lucifer's return to Hell thus comes somewhere between this trope and I Want My Beloved to Be Happy.
  • Again in the series finale. In the final minutes of the episode, Chloe peacefully passes away from old age, and is met by Amenadiel in a white limbo. Rather than taking her to Heaven, he instead takes her "home" to Hell in order to be with Lucifer for eternity and help redeem damned souls looking to ascend into Heaven, just as she wished.
• In Supernatural Dean sells his soul to a crossroads demon, condemning himself to an eternity in hell to bring his brother back to life, because he couldn't live with him dead. A few seasons later, Sam makes the ultimate sacrifice and throws himself into the Cage with Lucifer to save Dean (and the world). And finally, two years later, Sam chooses to remember his time in the Cage (almost two centuries of being tortured by Lucifer) and risks serious psychic damage so as not to leave his brother alone. He nearly dies from the psychological fallout.
• The Twilight Zone (1959): In "The Hunt", a hunter approaches the gate of heaven, only to be told his dog can't come in with him. He walks away from the gate and up the road rather than abandon his dog. Further up the road, he finds an angel sent to guide him to heaven; the gate he had passed before and refused out of love for his dog was actually the gate to hell. Apparently, dogs aren't allowed inside the gates of hell because they can see past the illusions.

Music

• The chorus to "A Walk Through Hell" by Say Anything invokes this trope quite literally:
  I'd walk through hell for you, let it burn right through my shoes;
  these soles are useless without you.
  Through hell for you, let the torturing ensue;
  my soul is useless without you.
• Chxrlotte's "Come With Me" has a variant where the lovers defy both Heaven and Hell to be together. It is also strongly implied that they are an angel and demon respectively.
  And after 6000 years, if the world disappears
  I'd fight angels and demons to find you my dear
  
  Let's go together, now we're free
  the world ends eventually
  so come with me
• The song, "I Will Follow You Into The Dark," by Death Cab for Cutie can be interpreted as dealing with something like this:
  The time for sleep is now
  It's nothing to cry about
  'cause we'll hold each other soon
  In the blackest of rooms
• "Inside the Fire" by Disturbed. Fire in question is Hell, and Satan tries to persuade a man grieving over his lover, who recently killed herself, to kill himself as well, so they can spend eternity together "inside the fire."
  Give your soul to me
  For eternity
  Release your life
  To begin another time with her
  End your grief with me
  There's another way
  Release your life
  Take your place inside the fire with her
• "Deathaura" by Sonata Arctica is about a girl who is accused of witchcraft and is burnt at the stake. The boy finally names himself (you know why) as being the one who is really responsible for the misfortunes that she had supposedly brought upon the village.
  "I remember how you told me,
  Your kin's different, on that sunny day?"
  "You made me smile,
  'cause I was just about to say the same thing..."
  So deeply entwined, love of a lifetime...
  But they paid someone to say their torment has a name
  And after all these years we get to be together for all eternity...
• "Two Women" by Angels Of Light from their album How I Loved You (2001) is a particularly harrowing reading of this trope. Thankfully, it ends on a an "up" note.
• "Gay Pirates" by Cosmo Jarvis, a cute sad little song about two pirates in love.
  The Captain found out 'bout us
  and ordered them to throw
  us both over board tonight
  together we will go
  but I'm yours you know,
  and I'll love you still in hell.
• This is the basic premise of the song "Angels and Dæmons" by Aviators.
• Implied with The Cab's "Angel with a Shotgun"
  I'm an angel with a shotgun,
  fighting 'til the war's won,
  I don't care if heaven won't take me back.
  I'll throw away my faith, babe, just to keep you safe.
  Don't you know you're everything I have?
• Tom Waits in "Never Let Go" from Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards
  I've only got one leg to stand
  you can send me to hell
  but I'll never let go of your hand.
• Lea Michele in "Burn With You" from her album Louder
  I don't wanna go to heaven
  If you're going to hell
  I will burn with you
  I will burn with you.
• Rachel Platten's "Stand By You".
  Even if we can't find heaven, I'll walk through Hell with you
  Love, you're not alone, 'cause I'm gonna stand by you
  Even if we can't find heaven, I'm gonna stand by you
• "Follow You" by Bring Me the Horizon.
  So you can drag me through Hell
  If it meant I could hold your hand
  I will follow you
  'Cause I'm under your spell
  And you could throw me to the flames
  I will follow you
  I will follow you
• "Bat Out of Hell" by Jim Steinman and performed by Meat Loaf
  And I know that I'm damned if I never get out,
  And maybe I'm damned if I do,
  But with every other beat I've got left in my heart,
  You know I'd rather be damned with you.
  Well, if I gotta be damned you know I wanna be damned
  Dancing through the night with you.
• Loki and Sigyn's fate in "Ragnarok V: End of The Line" by The Mechanisms. The Ratatosk Express has touched the Outer Gods and nothing can be done to prevent the coming apocalypse, but Sigyn and Loki delay it for *80 entire years* by keeping the altar running with Loki's heartsblood. It's a cosmically hopeless situation, but Loki's broken memory is restored and the two are finally together
  There's been so little time to share
  We've always had our loads to bear
  I won't forget
  I won't leave you, this time
  ...
  Goodbye, my love, yet shed no tears
  The lives we shared have brought us here
  I will stay by your side
  I'll hold on through, this time
• Starset has a lot of songs about this level of dedication such as "Halo" and "Satellite". Their most obvious, "Die For You", uses this trope as an example (though the wording is different):
  One day the earth will open wide and I'll follow you inside
  'Cause the only Hell I know is without you
• "Alone Down There" by Modest Mouse is a particularly depressing example of this trope:
  Well I don't want you to be alone down there
  To be alone down there, to be alone
  Well the Devil's apprentice he gave me some credit
  He fed me a line and I'll probably regret it
  I don't want you to be alone down there
  To be alone down there, to be alone
• "Walk With Me In Hell" by Lamb of God is this, though with the twist that hell is existence itself.
• Alessia Cara's "Outlaws" has a variation: the narrator promises her partner in crime will never face a judge alone. The whole song is more of a metaphor for a forbidden relationship though.
  You'll never face a judge without me
  You'll never battle the gavel alone
  And if they lock us away
  Then I'll be still here
  Proudly waiting to kill more time, with you
• Hozier's "Francesca" is a song about a pair of lovers from The Divine Comedy, punished in Hell for the sin of lust. His interpretation of them is triumphant.
  If someone asked me at the end
  I'd tell them, "Put me back in it"
  Darlin', I would do it again
  If I could hold you for a minute
  Darlin', I'd go through it again
  I would not change it each time
  Heaven is not fit to house a love like you and I
• The Twist Ending of Radiohead's "Fake Plastic Trees". Most of the song is a dirge on the melancholic inauthenticity of modern life, calling out the life of a plastic surgeon, the town he lives in, and even the "love" the narrator shares with a girl as being superficially pleasing, but ultimately hopelessly artificial and exhausting. However, with the song's final lines, the narrator strongly implies that he ultimately still craves true love and intimacy from the "fake" girl in question, and is willing to make sacrifices to "be who [she] wanted" just to be with her, strongly implying that one way or another, he too will become "fake" just for a chance at happiness.
• From Nickelback's "Far Away":
  'Cause with you I'd withstand
  All off Hell to hold your hand

Mythology and Religion

• In the Mahabharata, after a long series of tests, Yudishthira is admitted to heaven to find that his enemies are there, while his brothers and friends are suffering in hell. He declines heaven, deciding that it is better to remain with his companions, even in hell. This turns out to be a Secret Test of Character, and everyone receives heaven. The possibility that his "friends" could have been evil spirits trying to tempt him away from goodness is apparently not addressed.
  • Hindu demons have nothing to gain by trying to trick a virtuous soul into going to Hell. They don't run it. The just and righteous god Yama does. While Yama might be willing to admit someone who, for whatever reason, comes to Hell willingly, he would surely refuse to accept someone there on false pretenses.
• In Greek Mythology, twin brothers Castor and Pollux believe themselves to be half-god, half-human...until they die, and one goes to Mount Olympus, and the other to Hades. Turns out only Pollux was the child of Zeus, while Castor was completely mortal, thanks to complications involving shape-shifting and infidelity. (And Ancient Greek beliefs about twins, though theoretically it's perfectly possible for this to happen to fraternal twins). With Zeus's help, Pollux donates half of his godhood to Castor so that the two can be together, even though they'll have to spend half their time in Hades. Hades isn't so bad, though, if you're virtuous. The Elysian Fields are there, as well as a possibility of reincarnation.
• In Norse Mythology, we have the bright god Baldur, son of Odin and Frigg, husband of Nanna, father of Forseti. Most everyone knows the story of Baldur's death (Loki tricks blind god Hod into launching mistletoe at Baldur, killing him instantly, giving him a one-way ticket to Helheim). Not many people realize, however, that in certain versions of the story, Nanna joins her husband, after dying from a broken heart. It's okay, though; after Ragnarok, they get better.
  • Loki's wife Sigyn also spends the entire time from Loki's imprisonment to his escape at Ragnarok in his prison with him where he's bound with his sons' entrails, catching the venom meant to fall in his eyes in a bowl, except when she has to go dump it out. He is not at all gracious about it. She stays by him the whole while.
• There's a tale of a Celtic chieftain who had his people converted to Christianity. He however remained unbaptised; if all his ancestors had gone to Hell, he felt it was only right that he should join them.
• In some readings of Christianity, Christ's incarnation was this. In the words of C. S. Lewis:
  The Eternal Being, who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man but (before that) a baby, and before that a foetus inside a woman’s body. If you want to get the hang of it, think how you would like to become a slug or a crab.

Roleplay

• Deconstructed: Jasper Saxon on NoPixel uses this as an excuse for his serial killing, telling himself that when he finally dies, he'd be reunited with his dead older sister in Hell. When he's finally killed, however, he briefly hears his sister's voice in the afterlife, telling him that not only is she not in Hell, but that she knows he wasn't really doing it for her — he was hurting people because he enjoyed it.

Theatre

• Mark Twain's quip about choosing "Heaven for the climate, and Hell for the society" could perhaps fit as a page quote.
• Although technically Together in Death, Verdi's opera, Aida invokes elements of this trope. Instead of escaping slavery and returning to her homeland, Aida chooses to be entombed alive with her lover Radames (without his knowledge until it's too late). The staging is very suggestive of heaven and hell, with the lower portion of the stage representing the vault, and the upper portion representing an above-ground temple.
• In Richard Wagner's opera Die Walküre, Siegmund rejects eternal glory in Valhalla rather than be separated from wife/sister Sieglinde.
• In Fiddler on the Roof, when Hodel hears that her fiancé Perchik has been arrested and sent to Siberia, she goes there to be with him.
• Hamlet:
  • This is actually one interpretation of Hamlet's actions during the last act of the play. Up until then he had been obsessed with whether The Ghost he had seen was actually his father's spirit or a demon trying to lead him to damnation. So he goes to absurd lengths to prove Claudius guilty and stops himself from killing Claudius after he had gone to confession since killing him then would send his soul to heaven and damn him to hell. Then Ophelia drowns herself, something that under Catholic dogma was a one-way ticket to hell, and Hamlet throws caution to the wind in an almost Suicide by Cop-level, the theory being that he is now able to avenge his father without having any pesky "right or wrong" considerations standing in the way, and once he dies he can reunite with Ophelia in hell.
  • Hamlet almost ends up with no survivors at all, when Horatio attempts to poison himself and die with Hamlet. It's only Hamlet's intervention that stops it. Horatio's attempted suicide is actually him trying to follow Hamlet to hell, as it was believed that suicide would damn someone to there.
• In Shakespeare's King Lear, when Lear and Cordelia are imprisoned, Lear (who admittedly was losing his mind by this point) is happy enough about the idea of prison because it means he and his daughter will be together: "let's away to prison ; We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage"
• In stage productions of Little Shop of Horrors this trope is slightly used along with the traditional Together in Death. In the musical number at the finale, the four main characters' faces appear in pods on the side of the plant; still alive. They don't seem to mind it all that much, singing a one-line reprise of the Cut Song We'll Have Tomorrow.
• Inverted in Sartre's No Exit: "Hell" consists simply of eternity in a room with three incompatible people. Anytime two of them start to get along, the odd one out will sabotage it. "Hell is other people."
• In Thrill Me, Nathan is offered "a few years easy time" instead of risking the death penalty or life in prison. All he has to do is rat on Richard. The point of "Keep Your Deal with Me" is Richard invoking this trope so he doesn't. Nathan finds it perfectly likely they'll be hanged, but agrees to refuse the deal anyway.

Video Games

• Baldur's Gate III: One potential ending for Karlach has her return to the Hells to prevent her dying from the malfunctioning Infernal Engine that replaced her heart but either fellow companion Wyll or the PC or both can join her to keep her from being alone this time.
• BioShock 2: Mark Meltzer, an investigator, is exploring Rapture in the search for his daughter Cindy who has been captured. After being caught and left with the choice to either simply die or being turned into a Big Daddy, meaning he will lose all free will and memory of himself, being turned into a permanent bodyguard for his daughter who is now a Little Sister (which are in a similar state as Big Daddies). He choose the latter as it will allow him to be alongside his daughter, protecting her.
• Catherine: Played for Laughs in Catherine's True Ending, where Vincent happily joins his love in the Netherworld... only to find it's not so bad. Probably due to taking over the place soon after arriving.
• In the normal ending of Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, Laharl willingly sacrifices his own life (an act which he knows will condemn him to Prinnydom) in order to bring back Flonne.
• At the end of the Witch Hunt DLC for Dragon Age: Origins, the Warden can respond to Morrigan's insistence that he shouldn't follow her without knowing anything about where she's going that he doesn't care where they end up, so long as they're together.
• Fatal Frame
  • Fatal Frame: Mafuyu chose to remain with Kirie at the hellgate and willing to leave his sister behind because he wanted Kirie to never be alone again.
  • Fatal Frame II: Mio goes through the ghost village and fights off spirits to find Mayu and ensure that both leave the village again unharmed. The Wii remake made this clearer in the new Shadow Tag ending, when Mio arrives at the Abyss and sees that it's too late to stop the Repentance. She sits down next to Mayu and the two hold hands, with the implication that they died and remain in Minakami Village as ghosts together.
  • Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water: Despite being terrified of the ghosts that her sixth sense allows her to see, Yuri braves the hostile spirits of Mt. Hikami to find and bring Hisoka back home. Likewise, Hisoka chose to become a pillar, a state where one is perpetually between life and death, to prevent Yuri from becoming one herself.
• Final Fantasy X-2. has this in the backstory of Lenne and Shuyin. they die together in front of Vegnagun. However it's not until the end of the game that the two spirits are reunited. This parallels Yuna and Tidus' own separation.
• Final Fantasy XIII
  • This happens to Fang and Vanille, becoming crystals holding up Cocoon.
  • A better example, Snow was willing to do anything for Serah including begging the fal'Cie who branded her to Take Me Instead.
• Discussed, though not actually done in Fire Emblem Fates. If you choose the Conquest path, then in the Avatar's supports with Azura, she swears to always stay with them and support them-even if that means going to Hell.
  Azura: When you're too tired to dirty your hands with blood, I'll dirty mine. ...If your sins damn you to Hell, I'll damn myself right alongside you.
• Kingdom Hearts II: After kicking the final boss's ass, Sora and a wounded Riku are left alone on a beach in the World of Darkness. They accept their fate, willing to be the dark side of the world's coin to protect the light from any further threats. They come back, though.
• In Knights of the Old Republic, if the player character is Dark Side female, Carth meets her at the final dungeon (a space factory under heavy Republic bombardment) in a last-chance effort to redeem her. She slaughters him. But there was another option that was Dummied Out where she can renounce the Dark Side and remain with him in the doomed station.
• Legend of Mana takes a turn this direction with the culmination of Irwin and Matilda's story. However, when she greets him in the underworld, he simply leaves her alone without a word, averting it at the last moment.
• The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: In the very long and optional Kafei and Anju side-quest, actually completing the quest will lead to reuniting the lovers during the last two hours of the third day. They choose to stay together, in the middle of an abandoned town with the moon less than two hours from impact, fully aware they will probably not live to see the morning. However, after the game ends, they do manage to live to see the morning, and their wedding begins.
• The last episode of Life Is Strange reveals that the storm is actually a result of Max using her powers to prevent Chloe's death at the beginning of the game, and the only way to save Arcadia Bay is to use Chloe's butterfly photo to undo her first rewind, and let Chloe die. Max has the choice to tear up the photo, dooming the town but allowing her to stay with Chloe forever.
• Mass Effect 2:
  • This trope is played to its full potential with Thane's romance, since his dossier in Shadow Broker database includes a letter that is meant to be delivered to Shepard after his death. In it he proclaims that he'll rather die a slow and painful death from his disease, even if that dooms him to spend his last years connected to machines, than continue his Death Seeker ways if that means he can be longer together with the woman he loves.
  • After Kasumi's mission, she is asked to destroy her lover's memories, by her lover's memories. She can choose to keep them although she will be relentlessly hunted for it, since the memories include data that could get the Alliance in major trouble if the Council finds out about it.
• Most notable in the DLC package, Genroku Legends, for Muramasa Rebirth. Considering all six stories, main and add on, involve both an unusual pairing (sometimes romantic) and a protagonist approaching their day of death, this was bound to happen. At least two interspecies romances occur, with either a Goddess or Demoness, and one case of a farmer's wife coming back from the dead to relieve him of his suffering, but who only agrees to die once he convinces the Shogunate to stop their oppression. That particular arc ends with the farmer, his wife, and their friends being so demanding of Hell's torture that Enma sends them back into the real world. Not a bad way to end the arc best planted in tense realism.
• This is, basically, the "Normal" ending of Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer. If you failed to collect the Mask of the Betrayer, you can choose to bind the Soul Eater to yourself... And in return be forced to remain within the Fugue Plane forever. If you completed the Romance Sidequest your beloved will stay with you.
• Odin Sphere: While all the main characters enter and exit the Netherworld at some point (whether to escape and/or find someone/something there), Gwendolyn is the only one who goes down there fully ready and willing to fight everything and anything in her path up to killing the Queen of Death herself (although she did ask nicely at first) to save her husband Oswald.
• Used partly in the finale of Planescape: Torment:
  • Having regained his mortality the main hero must face the consequences of his actions he'd been avoiding for so long and join the never-ending Blood War raging in Hell. His Love Interest Fall-From-Grace promises to find him there. As a succubus, going to Hell is a trivial task, though being a reformed succubus it wouldn't be pleasant for her.
  • Subverted with Deionarra, who was seduced by the Practical Incarnation because her second sight was useful to him — and more, he let her die thinking she was dying to save him or be with him, only to be bound as a ghost by her love for him so he had an undying oracle he could exploit for eternity. Even in her rage Deionarra still loves the hero and is willing to go through her personal hell for him, and her last words to him are always, "I shall wait for you in death's halls, my love."
• A major sidequest in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team has Latias getting stranded in a dangerous and inescapable forest, causing her older brother Latios to steal Technical Machines to power himself up before he tries to meet up with her. When asked about the possibility that he won't be able to escape once he goes in there, Latios shrugs it off saying that at least he'll be with Latias. Alakazam chews him out on this, saying that Latias wouldn't want him to give up his freedom and well being while changing nothing about her fate. Fortunately with the help of the protagonists, Latias gets rescued and is reunited with her brother.
• Radiata Stories inverted it. The Ancient Elf King fell in love with a human woman and had a child with her. As a result, he died a Fate Worse than Death because of the Algandars. This fate was spending eternity trapped in a cocoon and despite knowing this, he never regretted loving his queen.
• In the Saints Row series, the Player/Boss is a borderline-villainous Heroic Comedic Sociopath who commits felonies for shits and giggles, yet they are willing to go to any lengths to protect their friends. The trope, itself, is mentioned in Saints Row IV before the Boss goes to save their oldest and closest surviving friend, Johnny Gat.
• Given something of a dark twist in Soul Nomad & the World Eaters: In one of the endings, the main villain manages to conquer most of the world, and nearly destroys it. Danette and the main character are both killed and their souls are imprisoned together in the Onyx Blade for all eternity, with the implication that this means that things won't be that bad for them. As for the twist... The ending in question is the good ending of the Demon Path, and said villain, who killed Danette, was you. After your defeat, the victorious heroes who opposed you seal your soul inside of the Onyx Blade as punishment for your misdeeds. Danette, who still cares for you in spite of all you've done, volunteers to have her disembodied soul imprisoned inside the blade with you, so you won't have to be all alone in there and possibly get better. Awwwww...
• Done twice, both times in an unconventional fashion, in a single episode in Star Trek Online in a mission where the player character and allies go on a spiritual quest into Gre'thor, the Klingon equivalent of Hell:
  • The quest itself is kicked off due to the realization that the soul of L'rell herself is in Gre'thor. Upon finally arriving and finding her, she explains that she was originally allowed into Sto-vo-kor but when she learned that her beloved's soul was sent to Gre'thor due to him dying in captivity (which for a Klingon is a dishonorable death) she offered to trade places with him and the offer was accepted — thus, while she will not be with her beloved, she still believed that getting him out of Hell was worth going there herself.
  • Continuing the above, as the player's objective is to get that character out of Gre'thor (so that she can return to a cloned body) eventually Gowron of all Klingons, who had been consigned to a sort of limbo due to his grandfather's dishonor, shows up and offers to stay in her stead, explaining that being in Hell with other Klingons is preferable to being alone.
• Transistor: Red kills herself with the Transistor in the ending to be with her love. She knew it was a one way trip into the Transistor since her love couldn't leave it. Though from what we've seen the inside of the Transistor isn't all that bad.
• Used in Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption: Protagonist Christof, once a Crusader for the Church, has imbued in him the mindset that being a vampire as being forever cut off from the possibility of salvation. In the "good" ending, he laments to his love interest, Anezka, that he can offer her no salvation for the many terrible things that she did out of necessity for the greater good, only damnation. She happily declares that damnation with him would be "sweet as salvation", and he Embraces her.

Visual Novels

• In Aoi Shiro Syouko can follow Yasumi who is taking the <<Sword>> to the bottom of the ocean and into the eponymous Blue Castle, a place where there is a chaos so powerful it's enough to unravel souls.

Webcomics

• I'm the Grim Reaper features an especially cruel subversion in the case of Liam, a young man who believes that it's his fate to be together with his childhood friend, Ana. After Ana is killed by Scarlet and sentenced to Hell for murdering her son, Liam attempts to join her by committing murder himself, then forcing Scarlet to claim his soul. Unfortunately for Liam, his random act of violence against a stranger isn't considered as serious as Ana's filicide, meaning that the two are separated eternally and tortured alone in distinct Circles of Hell.
• At the end of The Order of the Stick prequel Start of Darkness, the wizard Dorukan attacks Xykon for imprisoning the soul of his lover Lirian within a magic stone. Of course, Xykon ends up kicking his ass and imprisoning him within the very same stone, where Dorukan's soul meets up with Lirian's. Interestingly, this is probably the nicest thing Xykon has ever done, and he didn't even mean it to be.
  Lirian: Dory? Dory, is that you?
  Dorukan: Yes, my love. I've failed. It looks as if I am to share your prison forever now...
  Lirian: No, no... not a prison anymore. [they embrace]
• Darkly twisted in the Puppy Wish strip of The Perry Bible Fellowship.
• Taken literally in Sandra and Woo where Larisa sold her soul to the devil to save her best friend's life (though the devil wanted to put her talents to use as a succubus rather than torment her for eternity).
• Sinfest does this as literally as is possible. And lampshaded. And confided to Fuchsia in an After-Action Patch-Up.

Web Original

• Critical Role: In the final arc of the second campaign, the Mighty Nein discover that Mollymauk, who died months ago, was revived as Arc Villain Lucien. After meeting up with Lucien, they discover that Molly was a fragment of Lucien's soul that stayed behind in his body while the rest was shattered across the Astral Sea, and that when Molly died, Lucien was free to return. The Nein set out to save their friend, as well as foil Lucien's plan to bring the city of Cognouza to the Material Plane. When they do finally manage to kill Lucien after a grueling "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight, Caleb starts to prepare a resurrection ritual, even after Essek correctly points out that there's a good chance the person they bring back won't be Molly.
  Caleb: Once you're a member of the Mighty Nein, you're in. You should know that by now.
• Played for Laughs on The Frollo Show. Gaston and Frollo are Heterosexual Life-Partners, but Gaston ends up dying in an incident where he's strangled by Lefou. When Frollo finds out that they're replacing his best friend with Ashton Kutcher, Frollo simply responds "Fuck this shit!" and cheerfully throws himself off the ramparts of Notre Dame and plummets to his death. He's reunited with Gaston (and Lefou, who committed suicide in prison) and they celebrate living together in Hell. That is, until they run afoul of Hades and Scanty and Kneesocks.
• Guy Collins' Kaizo Trap has a girl and her lover get sucked into a video game, and she has to fight her way through an absurdly Nintendo Hard world to retrieve him. And boy, is it hard— she's died thousands of times in every stage and her attempts are immortalized in bloodstains everywhere she's ever expired. When given the chance to go home and forget this ever happened (after she gets a Game Over to a shadow version of her lover), she hesitates before going right back to the start and finishing the game properly, with her man in tow this time.

Western Animation

• Galaxy Rangers: The plotline of "Psychocrypt". Zach knows it's a suicide mission. He knows the result will likely be joining Eliza in the Fate Worse than Death. The alternative is letting himself and his wife endure Mind Rape on a nightly basis until she's dead. The fact his True Companions are willing to destroy their careers (and, in Shane's case, throw away his life) to help him on this.
• In an episode of Aladdin: The Series, Mirage tricks Jasmine into using a lotion that gradually transforms her into a venomous naga, so the party goes on a quest to cure her. They make it through all of the traps and hazards and are about to get the cure when Mirage, being a sore loser, causes the tree with the cure to wither. Jasmine goes into a tailspin of despair, is lamenting her fate and telling her friends to leave her. Aladdin uses the same lotion on himself, more than willing to be a monster if it means he can be with Jasmine. Fasir sees this as more than enough reason to foil Mirage's petty victory and restores the cure for them.
• Animaniacs had a seriocomic take on this in "Meatballs or Consequences." Wakko dies after eating too many meatballs, so Death comes to whisk him away to some non-sectarian Underworld. Yakko and Dot demand to come with him, so Death gives them the opportunity to win their brother back in a game of checkers. The Warners win, but Death takes their stated wish to "stay together" a different way than they had imagined, and declares all three of them dead. Realizing that they're going to be trapped in the Underworld forever, Yakko, Wakko, and Dot accept Death as their new father and annoy him so relentlessly with their demands that he play with them that Death agrees to let the Warners return to life for the time being. Once they're back on earth, Yakko informs his brother that even if Death hadn't let them go, it would still be preferable for the siblings to remain together than for two of them to be alive and one of them dead.
• In the climax of Castlevania's third season, a portal to the deepest level of Hell is opened. Not surprisingly, Dracula is on the other side of it. But so is his wife Lisa.
• Spider-Man: The Animated Series had Dr. Ohnn's lover, the scientist who had worked with him (a plant by the Kingpin but made a Heel–Face Turn), choose to join him when he was forced to close the portal that was threatening New York from within, being trapped forever.
• The Transformers franchise has a few of these.
  • In Transformers: Energon, Galvatron attempts to kill himself and Unicron by diving into the sun. Mirage loyally dives in after him.
  • In Transformers: Cybertron, Soundwave chooses to let himself be blasted into another dimension alongside Sideways, even though he has the chance to flee.

Real Life

• The trope appears in The Aquariums of Pyongyang, the autobiography of a North Korean defector who spent his childhood in a gulag. His paternal grandfather was denounced and the entire father's side of the family got taken down with them. The author's mother was the daughter of a national hero and was pardoned to spare her father embarrassment. The author would much later learn that his mother had repeatedly asked the authorities to sentence her to hard labor so she could join her husband and children. They never did.
• Decembrists' wives. The Decembrists were an early 19th century rebellious movement in Russia, they tried to fight tsarism, abolish serfdom, and (some of them) even to make Russia a democracy. They were all arrested and sent to ''katorga''. Many of their wives followed them voluntarily, some even abandoning nobility. This is particularly notable as any women who followed their men to Siberia were thus just as banished as the men they went for. They weren't allowed back to civilization.
  • The Russians themselves did this to the Polish nobility. The Tsar sent one of his cousins to "count trees" because she refused to let her husband go without her.
• One of Joan of Arc's lieutenants, La Hire, once stated that he would have been prepared to follow her to the gates of Hell if she asked it of him.
• Reportedly the Frisian king Redbad was about to get baptized, with one foot in his baptismal font, when he asked whether his family would be in heaven too. The priest replied that they were in Hell for not believing in Christ, so Redbad refused to go through with the baptism, preferring to go to Hell with his family than go to Heaven without them.
• During the sinking of RMS Titanic, the rule "women and children first'' was applied, so many women boarded the lifeboats with their kids while their husbands stayed behind. There were some exceptions, like Ida Strauss, wife of Isador Stauss, the founder of Macy's, or Sarah Elizabeth Chapman, a second-class passenger. These women refused to board the boats when they realized their husbands wouldn't survive, and went down with the ship together.

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