I liked the depiction of Hell in the movie As Above, So Below (2014). In it, Hell is presented not as an expansive spectacle of suffering, but rather a desolate, claustrophobic, confusing, and lonely maze with no discernible beginning or end (it’s still based on Dante’s Inferno). Also enjoyed their depiction of Satan as just a silent figure in a robe, with the cherub-like face of angel but disfigured and corrupted.
Back in the 80’s, there was an anthology series called Heroes in Hell.
I don’t remember much, but some of the authors shared a storyline centered on Caesar, Hector, and other personalities from ancient civilizations trying to work together to take over Hell, but they could never really cooperate. They were all used to bossing thousands of bootlickers around and frequently betrayed each other.
Yuri Andropov had just died before the first book was published, so the intro story was him meeting the devil, who looked like JFK, the most egregious example of capitalism gone amuck. Satan otherwise didn’t figure into the stories that much, because Hell was beyond his control and he mainly served as a figurehead. Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington had to suffer each other’s existence, so they became sort-of friends for protection purposes.
I didn’t realize the series was revived in 2011, so I’ll have to check it out.
Minecraft Nether. Not for any sort of accuracy, but for the ironic utility, simplicity, peace and escape it sometimes gives.
Richard Matheson’s What Dreams May Come has a pretty good interpretation of Hell, although it’s not an actual hell but a state of being a person has imposed on herself. Don’t think the movie really captured the essence of it, book is better.
“Huis Clos” (“No Exit”) by Jean-Paul Sartre
“Hell is other people.”
What’s heaven? Heaven is where the police are British, the chefs are French, the mechanics are German, the lovers are Italian and the organizers are Swiss.
So then, what’s hell? Hell is where the police are German, the chefs are British, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss and the organizers are Italian.
Yes, the best.
Also Inferno by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
Just came across Steven L. Peck’s A Short Stay in Hell, where hell is the Library of Babel. In other words, a large combinatorics problem. Oh you can leave, but it may take some time.
The way I heard it takes a bit of explaining.
Workers in Soviet manufacturing companies were give a quota of “whatever product”, and it was checked at the end of each month. The company rarely had enough raw material on hand, so they would have to send the workers out to scrounge and expedite shipments. By the middle of the each month they would have enough and the workers would “storm” to turn the raw material into the finished product. (Quality absolutely suffered.) By the end of the month everyone was exhausted - and would take a week to recover. Then the cycle began over again.
So the story goes: “In capitalist hell the devil comes by every day and hammers a nail into your butt. In Soviet hell, you don’t seem him until the end of the month, when you get your quota all at once.”
Hell as depicted in The Good Place was pretty entertaining. Making a select group believe they were undeserving schmucks that somehow wound up in heaven is a great sit for a sitcom at any rate.
Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey: “We got totally lied to by our album covers, man.”
the movie of Hellzapoppin.
“That’s the first taxi driver ever went straight where I told him to.”
Hell in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman (and later, sort of, in the Lucifer TV series).
People are only in Hell because they want to be - because they think that’s what they deserve. Anybody can leave Hell at any time, but nobody ever has.
That’s very spoilery.
Off the top of my head, the remark by a defense attorney in Stephen King’s The Jaunt.
Agreed, and so spoiled.
Am I really the first one to mention Hieronymus Bosch?
At the beginning of Gladiator, are we seeing a depiction of Hell? A vast horde of screaming disorganized Germans is defeated by a smaller Italian force through superior organization and discipline.
“SPANIARD!!!”