A common belief among many ancient cultures is that the dead will need food, material goods, and servants in death as they did in life. These are often their actual servants who are Buried Alive with their master (willingly or not, although sometimes symbolic representations are used), or in some cases the people they've killed.
This can also apply to belongings like money and weapons (often a Wrecked Weapon, the logic being that the dead can't use "living" weapons) or pets. Naturally, the concentration of such wealth leads to Robbing the Dead.
Do not confuse with necromancy, where the (un)dead person and household are still part of the material world.
Compare Together in Death, Human Sacrifice, and Your Soul Is Mine!. Contrast All Are Equal in Death. A Viking Funeral may sometimes include a living slave or captive being sacrificed for this purpose.
See also Duty That Transcends Death, for characters so dedicated to a duty that they find a way to fulfill it in spite of death; Undead Servant, for when the deceased continue to serve on the physical plane; Post-Mortem Possessions, for when people carry over material goods into the afterlife; and Coins for the Dead, for the sending of coinage with the deceased in particular. Do not confuse with Ghost Butler or Can't Take Anything with You.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- Detective Conan: The Night Before the Wedding Locked Room Case features the butler Akio Shigematsu murdered by the culprit. Shigematsu's employer, Mikio Morizono, wants to bury Shigematsu next to Morizono's late wife. Subverted, though, since he doesn't want to bury Shigematsu to invoke this trope, but because he knew that his wife and Shigematsu were in love with each other, but their Arranged Marriage made that love impossible. Burying his loyal butler and friend to his dead wife is the least he can do to amend for being in their love's way.
Comic Books
- Alix: Alix is gifted a magnificent horse by Caesar before heading on a mission. It's prophesied that he and the horse won't be together long, and at the end of the story, he defuses a diplomatic situation by agreeing to give up the horse to be killed for a dead chieftain's tomb.
- Arthur: At the funeral of King Emrys, many of his warriors fight to the death for the honor of accompanying him to the afterlife.
- Hellblazer: Lord Burnham makes a deal with the blood mage Mako to create a palatial soul cage so he can spend eternity in an Artificial Afterlife torturing and raping sex slaves (including children), who suffer every moment they aren't pleasuring him. Constantine instead traps Mako in the cage, frees the slaves' souls, and waits for Burnham to start his lethal injection before telling him the cage now contains only a very pissed-off Mako. The cage is then hidden in a nuclear facility expected to last forever.
- Seven Missionaries: Thorgild's wife Freyja intends to have the titular monks accompany her husband's corpse on his funeral ship. Due to a series of coincidences, misinterpreted gestures, and clashing personalities, the funeral ends with every Viking convinced that the monks have miraculous powers and convert to Christianity. Not that it stops them from raiding monasteries, which is why the missionaries were sent in the first place.
Fan Works
- "Un Chinois Ne Ment Jamais" (Judge Dee): A rich old man announces that he's looking for a bride to accompany him to the afterlife, in exchange for a sizable bride-price to her family (ironically, he made his fortune selling terracotta figurines of wives for burials). He's aided in this by a Taoist priest and eventually settles on a charming young woman. On the day of the funeral, it's announced that the bride is to be spared because she's pregnant. The priest and the girl are all part of a con to inherit the old man's fortune.
- The Mountain and the Wolf: The titular character murders three dark elf women at the location of his dead friend Sigvatr's funeral pyre to brighten up his afterlife.
- Pagan Vengeance: Juvage's men kill with abandon because their religion teaches that their victims will serve them in the afterlife.
Films — Animated
- Garfield: His 9 Lives: In "King Cat", Garfield starts worrying about the King's wellbeing when he learns that he, as the King's favoured cat, will be entombed with the King's funeral goods. The King dies, but Garfield is rescued from the tomb by Odie.
Slave: When the King croaks, he takes all his worldly possessions with him... and you are a possession. Get the picture?
Films — Live-Action
- Beetlejuice: Otho jokes that people who commit suicide have to become civil servants in the afterlife. This is implied through visual gags: every spirit working in the afterlife support office bears injuries that seem to be self-inflicted, with the receptionist noting that she wouldn't have had her "little accident" (while showing off her slit wrists) if she knew what she was in for on the other side.
Literature
- Around the World in 80 Days: While crossing India, the heroes encounter a sati👁 Image
ritual where a dead man's widow is burned alive to accompany him to the afterlife. They crash the funeral by impersonating the corpse to free the widow, after which she joins the main cast and marries Phineas Fogg. - Atar Gull: Captain Brulart discovers that a dead slave woman's child is still alive, so he brings up another slave and orders her to feed the baby. She refuses, saying that it's a firstborn son, who must die with his mother to accompany her to the great kraal in the sky as "a firstborn must never leave his mother". Brulart throws the baby overboard and has the woman whipped for disobeying him.
- Cradle Series: When Lindon dies, he is greeted by Suriel, an ascendant being. He thinks that having a chance to serve such an exalted entity would be better than what he currently has, so he actually starts to look forward to it. Suriel resurrects him instead (by turning back time so that the disaster didn't happen), and there's no sign that people who die for good go to any afterlife that Suriel's people have access to. It seems Lindon's culture conflated the afterlife with the concept of ascending from the world.
- Diogenes Club: In "Egyptian Avenue", it is discovered that an Egypt-obsessed Victorian businessman set up some of his servants to be entombed alive with him... and his even wealthier son is plotting to do the same with all of his employees with secret mechanisms that will hermetically seal his business's skyscraper headquarters.
- Discworld:
- Pyramids: Ptraci is a dancing girl meant to be sacrificed to serve Teppic's father in the afterlife, but after Teppic convinces her not to take poison, she breaks out of the mindset and ends up ruling the country. His father's ghost is quite glad she wasn't sacrificed, because Ptraci is his daughter and her singing is such that the world seems a better place once she stops.
- Inverted with Crusty Caretaker Albert (formerly Alberto Malich), once a powerful wizard, who hit on the idea of performing a Death-summoning rite backwards to keep Death away from him. Instead it summoned him directly to Death's domain, where he now lives forever as Death's manservant (with a few days off every now and then to buy necessities like soap).
- Mort: One of the souls that Mort has to collect when Death goes missing is a handmaiden in a Tsortean pyramid who was poisoned so she could spend eternity serving the king. Ysabell tells her she doesn't have to, and she replies that she's been training for it.
- The Final Reflection: While discussing the afterlife, Vrenn asks Tirian, Admiral Kethas' transporteer, whether he'll also serve the admiral in the Black Fleet. Tirian reminds Vrenn that he serves Kethas willingly while he lives, apparently implying that he intends to defy the trope.
- Isles of the Emberdark: There are legends of dragons buying people's souls to serve them in death. Worse, the young dragon Starling muses that the worst of her people might actually do such a thing, given that dragons love Magically Binding Contracts and do have ways to turn humans into ghosts.
- Judge Dee:
- "Necklace and Calabash": After acknowledging his plot's failure, the grand eunuch takes poison and gives the judge a list of all the conspirators, saying they'll be his slaves in the afterlife once they're executed.
- "The Chinese Maze Murders'': A murdered general's son and the general's concubine commit suicide and are praised for showing such filial devotion to their father/husband. The son and concubine were lovers, with the son plotting his father's death. He failed (the general was killed by an unrelated revenge plot), but the judge makes it very clear to him that a rotten branch must be cut off to preserve a family tree, resulting in their deaths.
- The Last Unicorn: The Skull was one of King Haggard's men-at-arms in life. Haggard cut his head off for some reason or another, then put him right back to work as a guard.
- Poetic Edda: When Helgi Hundingsbani (i.e. "Hunding's killer") is killed after a heroic career and goes to Valhall, Odin "asked him to rule over everything with him." Straightaway Helgi orders his old enemy Hunding (who, having been killed by Helgi, is already in Valhall) to serve the other warriors in Valhall and do menial work, like kindling the fire, watching the horses, and feeding the pigs ("Second Poem of Helgi Hundingsbani").
- Wulfrik: After Sigvatr is murdered (by magic), Wulfrik butchers the two warriors who were meant to guard him before burning all three on a pyre. When it's mentioned that this might attract unwanted attention from goblins and Chaos dwarfs, Wulfrik threatens to add the complainer to the pyre.
"I will not consign Sigvatr's body to the flames without dogs to lay at his feet. Even if they be cowards and curs!"
- Zadig: Zadig encounters an Arabian custom where widows show their devotion by throwing themselves on their husband's funeral pyre. He brings it to a stop by convincing the tribal elders that they're more useful alive (by educating children, or making more children), and getting the woman to see it as nothing but vanity since she's doing it to show off than out of any affection towards her Asshole Victim of a husband. Thereafter, widows are required to spend an hour in conversation with a young man before they decide to kill themselves, and astoundingly enough, that's the last anyone hears of burning widows.
Live-Action TV
- Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries: The Serial Killer Murdoch Foyle believes himself to be a reincarnated Pharaoh and his victims to be the "goddesses" who will escort him to his true throne in the afterlife.
- Norsemen: Deconstructed. At the Lawsayer's funeral in Season 2, Orm and Rufus who murdered the Lawsayer suggest sacrificing two of the village's three remaining slaves (due to Orm and Rufus forging a will freeing themselves), leaving Kark as their last slave and forcing him to bury his friends alive. However, their motive is less to honor the Lawsayer and more petty revenge on the slaves for shunning them when they were enslaved.
- The Sandman (2022), "Collectors": At a Serial Killer convention, the self-titled "Adonai" claims that he is a just God who gives his victims new life in a Heaven of his creation. This promptly sets off a theological argument with other religiously-motivated murderers.
- The Discovery episode "Terra Firma Part One" implies that the Terrans of the Mirror Universe believe in something like this as Georgiou keeps talking about wanting to die in battle and mentions that anyone she kills will be her servant in the afterlife.
Tabletop Games
- Exalted: If someone is sacrificed in the name of a deceased person, their spirit will be forced to serve them as a slave in the Underworld. The Varajtul cannibals of the North also have a rite by which they can bind their victims' souls to themselves by consuming their brains, forcing their victims' souls to serve them once their devourer goes to the Underworld.
- Pathfinder: Wealthy people who are worried about their fate in the afterlife sometimes create Shabti, Golem-like simulacra with copies of their memories, to suffer divine judgement in their place. Psychopomps try to get Shabti Rescued from the Underworld so they're not punished for their creators' misdeeds and can live out their own lives.
- Warhammer Fantasy Battle:
- The souls of Khornate warriors are taken to their god's fortress, where they fight and die and are resurrected to fight again every day. But deserters, cowards, and sorcerers are instead chained for eternity to massive forges where they create weapons for his blessed champions to use.
- The nobility of Nehekhara were buried alongside countless servants and even their favoured military regiments, in the expectation that they would continue to serve in the glorious afterlife. This proved ironic when they, and the Tomb Kings, were revived as hideous undead in a later age. While the upper class consists of intelligent mummies, the lower classes are largely made up of non-mummified skeleton automatons, bound to the will of their kings and priests.
Video Games
- Disgaea: This is the fate of sinners. Their souls are sewn into penguin-like suits to make a being called a "Prinny" that then has to earn its way back to reincarnation. Those who committed less severe transgressions still go to Celestia, although they're the ones who do the Angels' scut work until the accrue enough hours to earn rebirth. The truly vile serve in the various Netherworlds, required to buy their absolution, and therefore subject to whatever abuse a demonic employer cares to heap on a captive workforce, be it grunt work, serving as Cannon Fodder, or even getting tossed at the enemy to exploit the cheap suit's explosive properties. Being that they're an endless supply of faceless mooks who intrinsically deserve it, both varieties end up being the franchise's collective Butt Monkeys.
- The Elder Scrolls: In the backstory, Mordrin Hanin was a revered figure in 1st Era Morrowind. After he was murdered by traitors, representatives from all over Morrowind gathered in northern Vvardenfell for nine days of mourning, during which many slaves and traitors are sacrificed. On the final day, a lethal concoction was passed to every guest and killed most of them, providing Hanin with companions in the afterlife. His body and treasures were sealed in a Daedric tomb, guarded by the ghosts of the traitors who murdered him, of which the location was lost. Come the 3rd Era, during the events of Morrowind, the tomb, its treasure trove of artifacts, and its ghostly guardians can be rediscovered.
- MediEvil 2: Kiya is an ancient Egyptian peasant girl who was chosen by Pharaoh Ramesses to be one of his many consorts. He died before being able to consummate their relationship, but left instructions she was to be put to death and mummified so she could serve him as a bride in the next world.
- Valheim: There are burial chambers and sunken crypts are full of warrior undead, but there's no indication as to whether they were put there willingly.
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: During the Viking Funeral of King Bran of the Skellige Isles, one of the king's unnamed concubines offers herself to join the king's corpse on his funerary longship as it burns, so that she can be with her king in death. The king's widow is treated with considerable contempt by some of the late king's conservative friends for not doing this herself, as is Skellige tradition, but she is unashamed of refusing to throw her life away for a pointless gesture. It later turns out that she is the villain of the arc, committing mass murder so that she can replace Skellige's traditional elected monarchy with a hereditary one starting with her son, but most characters treat this as a completely separate issue.
Webcomics
- Oglaf:
- Hereafter👁 Image
has an emperor's tomb containing a golden barge (to carry him across the river), clay warriors (to fight off ghost crocodiles), and rubies (to bribe the guards of heaven). Those buried without these precautions are apparently eaten by the ghost crocodiles, which explains why the High Priest dumps the emperor's corpse outside the mausoleum, wraps himself in the burial shroud, and stabs himself, grinning all the while. - One possible origin for Sithrak👁 Image
is a king using the clay warriors he was buried to besiege heaven and defeat God (here depicted as a humanoid without a face), set his head on fire, and ram spikes where his eyes should be before kicking him down, resulting in the flaming-skull-headed nailed-eye-sockets Sithrak.
- Hereafter👁 Image
- Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: One man👁 Image
asks that people burn themselves alive at his funeral to serve him instead of leaving flowers. - Terminal Lance: Parodied. When Marines die, they have to stand post at the gates of Heaven. In one strip, God catches one Marine asleep on duty and decides to punish his buddies on Earth by making it rain on them during a field exercise.
- Thistil Mistil Kistil: Hedda was a thrall in a Norse household who barely escaped death when the dying master chose her to accompany him to the afterlife. She's horrified not just because she wants to live, but because she's Christian (ironically, the people who rescue her include the actual Loki).
- Vápnthjófr saga: When the queen of the Aesir-worshiping faction holds a funeral for her late brother, two dead slaves are seen on the pyre👁 Image
along with weapons and a shield.
Web Video
- Critical Role Campaign Four: In a perversion of House Tachonis' original role as Psychopomp priests, they now use Necromancy to bind their agents' souls, forcing them to serve the House in The Underworld upon death.
Western Animation
- Futurama: In "A Pharaoh To Remember", the Planet Express crew is enslaved by the natives of an Ancient Egypt-cultured planet and forced to work on the current Pharaoh's tomb. When he passes away, his disciples throw a bunch of cats that they consider holy "for some reason" and the Elton John-esque singer who is still in the middle of singing his praises into the tomb. Bender then cons everyone into accepting him as Pharaoh, and everyone gets to work on building a massive Star Scraper of a monument to celebrate his reign. When Bender is unsatisfied with the absolute perfection of the build, he demands that it be torn down and built again. At this point, the locals decide to forcefully retire Bender from his position of Pharaoh and throw him into his tomb. On the way down, he asks about his afterlife servants, resulting in Fry and Leela being thrown down after him.
Leela: You jerk! Why did you take us with you!
Bender: I wanted to watch you remember me. - The Simpsons: "Burns' Heir": Following a near-death experience as he has no children or living family members, Mr Burns begins to worry about who will inherit his wealth and carry on his legacy when he dies. Smithers suggests himself, only for Burns to reveal that he has made preparations for "a far greater reward"; upon his death, Smithers shall be Buried Alive with him (showing him a model revealing his corpse will use Smithers as a footstool) so that he may carry on serving him in the afterlife.
Smithers: Oh... goodie.
Real Life
- Ushabti👁 Image
are small figurines found in Egyptian tombs representing servants and workers that were intended to serve the deceased in the afterlife. Other burial complexes found with human remains indicate it wasn't always a symbolic representation. - The Terracotta Army👁 Image
is a vast collection of life-sized warriors intended to serve the first Qin emperor in death. - One historical depiction👁 Image
of a Viking Funeral involves the dead man's slave girl raped and killed along with his horses and dogs so as to serve him in the hereafter. - Sati👁 Image
was a Hindu practice of killing widows on their husbands' funeral pyres that was outlawed during the British occupation. - Some forms of Celtic and Gaelic mythology assert that a great warrior, who has killed many times on the battlefield, can call on the souls of those he killed after death who are now bound to him for eternity and his loyal servants. This may be symbolically reflected in their practice of keeping the heads of those you slay as trophies.
- In some folkloric traditions in Asia, it is believed that a person who has been killed and eaten by a tiger will become a ghost, such as the Chinese chang or Korean changgwi, bound to serve the beast that killed them, with their one escape clause being the ability to exchange their service for bringing a new victim to take their place.
- During the times of American slavery preachers were asked at times what would happen to enslaved black people who qualified to go to Heaven. Among many answers👁 Image
some preachers argued that they would go to Heaven and keep serving white people. - According to the cipher messages that have been cracked, the Zodiac Killer👁 Image
believed that the murder victims would become his slaves in the afterlife.