I had a professor in college who gave us some information about some of the hells in some Buddhist teachings. The only one I remember is that there were various levels of cold hells, and the worst was the “so cold that you freeze until you explode” hell. Sadly, I didn’t have quite the nerve to ask more about it. What happens after you explode?
Accurate? Really and truly?
Or just most like some older book? 
I wanted to mention What Dreams May Come but a couple of people beat me to it. I absolutely loved that movie, especially the visuals.
I rather enjoyed reading a description of a huge boat posited by Tom Robbins in Jitterbug Perfume. Like a harbor cruise boat in some touristy marina, the kind that offers booze cruises or dinner cruises. This boat was filled to the gunwales with people engaging in any kind of party-time activity you could name; eating, drinking, playing cards, talking, arguing, sexing (well, probably no pinata-whacking), all while the boat wended its way back and forth across an enormous lake, occasionally stopping at a dock to take on more revelers.
The name of the boat was painted on the side (sort of). On one side, the word “Heaven.” On the other side, “Hell.”
I forgot one of my favorites, the pauintings of Hieronymous Bosch, especially the one entitled The Garden of Earthly Delights.
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/bosch/delight/
I have a full-scale replica of this painting at home. It’s in book form, in sections, but it lets you see it in all its detailed glory. As one critic said, if you go close to most paintings, you see technique. If you go close to Boschj, you see more detail. It’s almost fractal.
Although the title is usually given as “The Garden of Earthly Delights”, we don’t really know what the title is (the earliest one we have is, engimatically, “The Strawberry Plant” – but that’s probably not the title Bosch gave it, anymore that TGOED is). Exactly what it represents still isn’t clear, but there’s little doubt that the right-hand panel of the triptych is supposed to be Hell. I hyave an interpretation of this, but it’s different than most other interpretations.
Bosch painted other Heavens and Hells, but this is his most famous and mysterious.
I always liked the “Got Milk?” commercial:
An arrogant SOB is crossing a busy city street, talking on his cell phone, telling someone he/she is fired, then laughing gleefully about it. Suddenly he gets hit by a truck.
He wakes up in an all-white environment, surrounded by beautiful women. “Welcome to Heaven!” they tell him, and serve him plate after plate of delicious chocolate chip cookies. He’s having a great time, and they take him to a refigerator packed full of milk cartons. His mouth full of cookies, the guy grabs a carton, eager for a swig o’ cold, delicious milk.
The carton is empty.
He grabs another one. It’s empty, too.
In a panic, he goes through all the cartons like a madman. They are all empty. THERE IS NO MILK!
Finally he yells, “WHERE AM I???”
Cut to the “GOT MILK?” logo surrounded by flames.
I *love * that commercial!
Man, I don’t know if this is due to the translation or what, but these are great!
Court 1: Mirror of Retribution. Ruled by QIN-GUANG-WANG.
Court 2: The Pool of Filth and the Hell of Ice. Ruled by QU-JIANG-WANG.
These first two are kinda boring.
Court 3: Black Rope Hell and the Upside-Down Prison. Ruled by SONG-DI-WANG.
Getting better. Would be a good name for an album.
Court 4: The Lake of Blood and the terrible Bee Torture. Ruled by WU-GUAN-WANG.
Lake of blood? Pedestrian. Bee Torture? Now this I’ve got to see.
Court 5: Sixteen Departments of Heart Gouging. Ruled by YEN-LO-WANG.
How many ways can you really gouge a heart? And it sounds so bueracratic.
Court 6: Screaming Torture and Administrative Errors. Ruled by BIAN-CHENG-WANG.
This right here is my favorite. Screaming Torture is self-explanatory, but you never saw Dante coming up with the sheer hell that is administrative errors and bueracracy. Even better, now I can scream things like “Aagh! I’m trapped in Court 6!”
Court 7: Torture by Mincing Machine. Ruled by TAI-SHAN-WANG.
Meh.
Court 8: Hot Suffocation Hell. Ruled by DU-SHI-WANG.
Not all that great, but the way it’s stated is kinda funny.
Court 9: Iron Web and Office of Fair Trading. Ruled by PING-DENG-WANG.
What kind of fair trading do you do in hell?
Court 10: The Wheel of Rebirth. Ruled by ZHUANG-LUN-WANG.
Meh.
Is this the story where the protagonist goes to heaven, and finds out that in heaven everyone gets to choose what age they want to be. He chooses to be eighteen or so, and is quite distraught that his father has chosen to be nine. Every time he (the protagonist) tries to score with a chick his father comes running to him naked.
“Hell goes round and round. In shape it is circular and by nature it is interminable, repetitive and very nearly unbearable.”
--Flann O'Brien
To go into it in too much detail would be to give the game away, but Flann O’Brien’s novel The Third Policemen seems to be set in a Hell that could pass for Ireland’s little-known County Godot, punishing its denizens with absurd logic, atomic theory, scholarly footnotes, and bicycles that are nearly half people. The narrator is a nameless man with a soul named Joe.
My mom would always say she wanted heaven to be just like those Dairy Queen commercials from the 1980’s where the whole landscape was made of sweets. Ice cream mountains and trees, chocolate fudge rivers, candy forests, etc. 
If you want an interesting version of the secong coming, Electric Jesus Corpse might do the trick.
Definitely interesting.
Here’s another second for The Great Divorce.
Chinese heaven is quite boring, unfortunately. It’s a sprawling bureaucracy with offices for everything imaginable. The only redeeming (pun intended) factor is that they throw great parties with the Peaches, Wine, and Pills of Immortaility.
Wow, John Carmack is God! :eek:
Are you certain you have the title correct?
Just checked Amazon, & no go.
There’s a brief description of hell in Stephen King’s The Stand. Basically it’s an inversion of the traditional Western hell–it’s cold and white. So white you can’t see anything. Total sensory deprivation.
I don’t remember this bit. Where in the book is it?
It’s when Nadine plants the bomb in Nick’s closet and starts to have second thoughts. To make sure she goes through with it, Flagg takes control of her body.
Okay, maybe it’s not exactly hell. And there’s no mention of cold in the passage, but in the line right before there was
, referring to the dark man.
While not exactly a picture of Heaven, I always enjoy the imagery of the Angel of Death and the hapless souls being led to the afterlife in ***Bone, Thugs and Harmony’s ** * Crossroads video.