r/TopCharacterTropes • u/DiveSideways • Aug 30 '26

Lore [Rare Trope] A story element that popularized a concept is actually the polar opposite of that concept

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Some franchises start off a bit specialized and evolve into something else later. Some stories get warped by pop culture and burdened with misconceptions. Some stories just don't make sense, or send the wrong message on accident.

Not these!

No, these examples are very clear (and not retconned) and yet pop culture has done a complete 180-degree turn on understanding them.

  1. Romeo and Juliet routinely gets alluded to as though it's a classic love story. In fact it is an intensely melodramatic tragedy all the way through, everyone is shallow and exploitative and desperate--and they die for it. Even the opening of the play self-indulgently advertises how dire the whole situation is.

  2. The One Ring from The Lord of The Rings isn't exactly meant to be a cursed item that corrupts the greedy or weak-minded. Geeky discourse loves to offer up examples of characters "strong enough" or "pure enough" to resist it, but The One Ring turns that trope on its head. The One Ring is an amplifier for power but lesser beings can't make full use of it. Being strong and noble and pure makes you more corruptible, you can bear a heavier load of its dark essence.

  3. Keyzer Soze from The Usual Suspects is one of the most famous examples of a villain who fooled everyone and got away with his plotting scot-free. However, the whole huge convoluted mess of a scheme was intended to kill off the last living enemy capable of ID'ing him. Not only did Soze accidentally leave a new witness alive who then cooperated with the police and their sketch artist, he also got himself closely inspected by a whole police station (who now know his true identity.) Yes, it was a good twist and yes, Soze escaped police custody, but his efforts to tie off one loose end resulted in high-quality images of his real face for the FBI Most Wanted list. In most ways this was truly an epic failure for him.

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u/--PhoenixFire-- Aug 30 '26

Dante's Inferno is often thought to be the poem that popularized the "fire and brimstone" depiction of Hell you often see in media. However, Hell as depicted in the poem actually has pretty diverse geography, and indeed, the final, worst circle of Hell where Satan himself resides is actually depicted as being completely frozen over.

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u/arrimainvester Aug 30 '26

I learned this bit from a priest back in grade school when I was asking him about hell. He said hell would be a cold place because it was furthest from the warmth of gods love. Makes a kind of sense if you believe in all that

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u/Quantum_redneck Aug 30 '26

Some theologians have speculated that the enlivening fire of God's glory in heaven, the purifying fire of purgatory, and the painful punishing fire of hell are in fact all the same undiluted fire of God's being - the difference being in the soul's disposition towards it. 

However, this is pure theological speculation, and not established doctrine. There's very little we can say with much precision about the matter, because there's not much that's been revealed to us. And given that, at least until the final judgement, these are non-corporeal realities, our minds at present have a great deal of trouble imagining what it might really be like.

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u/arrimainvester Aug 30 '26

"Theological speculation". Those most in need of the flame are the ones most likely to be burned by it. Great comment Internet stranger

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u/SethCyclone Aug 31 '26

the difference being in the soul's disposition towards it.   

The only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won't let go of life, your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away. But they're not punishing you, he said. They're freeing your soul. So the way he sees it, if you're frightened of dying and... and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth.

Jacob's Ladder 

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u/Gullible_Play8718 Aug 31 '26

Nothing burns in Hell, because it doesn't exist.

And I mean that in the Biblical sense.

If you remove all the layers of translation and interpretation from the Bible, there is no mention of Hell whatsoever.

It mentions Sheol, Hades, Tartarus, and Gehenna. None of those are Hell, and the first two are basically the same place: an underground cave where all of the dead are sent to wait. Tartarus is the prison of the Titans, and Gehenna is a valley near Jerusalem.

There is no Hell.

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u/5AlarmFirefly Aug 31 '26

Pope John Paul II made a declaration to this effect in the late 90s/early 00s. That there are no afterlife versions of heaven and hell, only living inside and outside of God's love. That was in the news for one cycle and never heard about again. 

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u/Quantum_redneck Aug 31 '26

Could I get a souce on that? That would contradict the Catechism, which he also promulgated. 

https://www.vatican.va/content/catechism/en/part_one/section_two/chapter_three/article_12/iv_hell.index.html

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u/SethCyclone Aug 31 '26

Abubububleh

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u/Quantum_redneck Aug 31 '26

Some have proposed that, but it contradicts what Christ himself says about the matter. 

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u/Gullible_Play8718 Aug 31 '26

Correction: it contradicts what others claim Jesus said.

Unless the Book of Jesus was added to the Bible then none of it is his actual word.

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u/orchidorious Aug 31 '26

Despite what Jesus said, Christianity really works best as a figurative model for socialization

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u/morpheousmorty Aug 31 '26

My favorite thing is that most of what we think of when we think of hell is non cannon. The rest comes mainly from the book of revelations which is a fan fic which was canonized.

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u/Jamie7Keller Aug 31 '26

Reminds me of The Great Divorce where purgatory and hell are the same place, depending on whether a person chooses to stay or chooses to leave (which they are free to do at any time)

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u/jacqrosee Aug 31 '26

and this is part of how we got “a song of ice and fire” ladies and gentlemen

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u/RevengerRedeemed Aug 31 '26

Not established doctrine, but very cool

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u/RealEmperorofMankind Aug 30 '26

It's definitely a complicated subject. The most we can say, definitively, is that fire possibly has something to it - unquenched fires and undying worms.

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u/arrimainvester Aug 31 '26

Elaborate on the undying worms ?

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u/RealEmperorofMankind Aug 31 '26

Mark 9:48.

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u/arrimainvester Aug 31 '26

Mark 9:48: "where 'their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.'"

I don't do the whole "god" thing, but worms themselves are one of the main reasons we have soil on earth that can grow plants. I was just reading a book series about giant worms

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u/RealEmperorofMankind Aug 31 '26

Ah yeah. In this case this refers to worms eating on corpses.

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u/arrimainvester Aug 31 '26

I figured as much; that's just what worms do though

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u/Draco137WasTaken Aug 31 '26

I believe it's in the Parable of the Talents that Jesus uses the term "outer darkness" for hell. Dark places do tend to be quite cold.

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u/byteminer Aug 31 '26

I really enjoy the Hellaverse depiction from Hellvua Boss and Hazbin Hotel. Hell is pretty much just modern earth, except with less laws and the people there look weird. They are free to be as shitty as they ever could have dreamt of on Earth. The Hell of its, so is everyone else, and there is nothing to restrain them. Oh and no matter how much you suffer, or how destroyed your body, unless you are struck down by an angelic weapon, you don't end, you just suffer your grievous wounds for however long it would take for them to heal normally, if they didn't kill you, for all eternity.

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u/HollyBananas Aug 31 '26

Hell is Niflheim, got it.

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u/CelticSnakes Aug 31 '26

“Hell ain’t hot. It’s colder than a butcher’s icebox.”

Got that from a Sgt. Rock comic book.

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u/Mello1182 Sep 01 '26

Not only it is the furthest from God's warmth and light, it is also constantly swept by the gusts of wind generated by Lucifer's wings flapping

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u/overgrw Aug 30 '26 edited Aug 30 '26

Another over-simplification I see a lot is that the Inferno was largely expressing some personal grudges.

Although there are definitely a lot of political/social statements made about who went to Hell, he also shows significant empathy to those in Hell.

He puts his beloved mentor in Hell (Brunetto Latini) with quite a bit of lamenting about the whole situation—and iirc, some questioning about whether Dante really deserves all this grace for his earthly sins. He also revisits the memory of the forbidden lovers in the Second Ring with some grief.

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u/dobar_dan_ Aug 31 '26 edited 25d ago

The original post content no longer exists here. The author used Redact to remove it, exercising their right to control their data & privacy.

Memorize public selective manganese shelter rock paltry fly

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u/runningforpresident Aug 31 '26

I loved reading about the circle of Lust. In life their whirlwind romance whisked them away from their duties to their spouses, and they only focused on each other. In hell, the whirlwind is now a hurricane, and the physical pleasure of their touch is replaced with beatings of wind and debris as they are violently spun through the air. They can see each other and hear each other's screams, but they can never touch.

What I took away from that section is that the tragedy is that they died in the midst of their affair, and therefore had no chance to repent. This was set early on to help show that the sin is what matters here, since in that moment of sinning they turned away from their godly virtues.

It's also one of the few sins that occurs before they enter into the City of Dis where the angel has to let them in. Showing that, like gluttony and wrath, the sin of Lust is a human one, and one that humanity can work to will themselves out of. Stop being so greedy/lustful/wrathful, etc and you can get right with God. After this point, they enter the really bad sins, where you need the help of Heaven to be able to cleanse yourself. These sins usually carry the weight of consequence. It's not enough to just be angry, you may have actually killed someone. Your lies led to the fall of a good man. Your treachery killed a friend or brother. The sins after Dis follow you around long after your act.

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u/Molten_Plastic_ Aug 31 '26

The story of Paolo and Francesca was clearly a well known "true crime" sort of event at the time. Everyone had heard about the double murder, and Dante shows much humanity in his depiction of them - even saying that among all the souls flapping around in the whirlwind of this circle of Hell, they're the two that seem apparently unbothered by it. He also faints after recalling their fate.
(And Virgil points out their murderer is going to suffer much worse).

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u/bauul Aug 30 '26

Hmm, I'm not convinced by this. Granted I read it a while ago, but the thing that stuck out to me more than anything were the repeated random guys from Florence that Dante had beef with. It felt so personally petty compared to the large scale Christian ideology stuff.

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u/overgrw Aug 30 '26 edited Aug 30 '26

Although some of the folks called out are people Dante had beef with (or his patrons had beef with), for sure, most of them are historical (contemporary history to his time). So it would be more like a modern Italian writer putting Mussolini in hell. Ideologically driven, yeah, but impersonal in 2026. He also included people he admired or felt pity for in Hell—people he met and people who held ideological significance.

By Dante’s writing it would appear that 90% of the afterlife is populated with people from Florence, I will say lmao. I have no idea how much of that was driven by…those are the people he, like, knew of…

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u/Molten_Plastic_ Aug 31 '26

Well, the in-poem justification for that is that Virgil is specifically leading him to meet those people that he either knew personally, or were in some way relevant to Florence at the time. It is a “guided tour” after all

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u/ShatnersChestHair Aug 31 '26

It should also be pointed out that Florence was the political and economical powerhouse of Western Europe at the time. There's a reason why one of the most common currencies in the late Middle Ages was called the florin. So, yeah, 90% of Dante's afterlife is Florentine, but if a modern author was writing something similar it would t be super surprising if 90% of the characters came from NYC.

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u/whatthewhythehow Aug 31 '26

It was linking them to the large scale Christianity stuff. Dante was criticizing the system of which he was a part.

It is important to note that Dante’s family likely made its money as bankers. The Florentine economy was and would continue to be strongly supported by banking and usury. Dante was on exile, but his history and his position and wealth relied on a sin that he places solidly in the middle of Hell.

A lot of criticism of money-lending had been and would be antisemitic. It is notable that Dante’s is not. This had to do with context, of course, but also with how Dante saw sin and the world in which he lived. Florence was beloved to him, but it was flawed. His family and his self were flawed as well. Both the Florentine and Papal state perpetuated states of sin that harmed the sinner.

And Hell wasn’t the only poem he wrote. He wrote Purgatory and Heaven as well. Purgatory is incredibly important and too-often forgotten. The point is made in Hell, but easier to see in Purgatory. Sin is not a permanent state. It is not something inherent or unavoidable. Nor is virtue. Virtue is learned and it is practiced.

Dante wants a more virtuous society.

Tbh, imo Dante did not put people in Hell bc he thought they were in Hell (or were damned to end up in Hell). He put them there because his audience would be familiar with them, and because this work was allegorical and they provided the best stories for the allegory.

What qualifies them for Hell inside the allegory is the behaviour they currently display or the behaviour for which they are famous — behaviour that demonstrates the lack of a will to change. But it’s impossible to know their true will.

And the accusations are specific because they are meant to keep people from assuming their own innocence, and even from assuming Dante’s innocence (in a way… this is complicated lmao). You are not exempted. Sin is all around you. If you do not acknowledge and understand your flaws, then you become them.

Dante is not the only writer to provide a vision of hell, or to portray specific people im ways that imply their damnation. TDC is as important as it is because of the way Dante layers the earthly and the divine to create an allegory that bridges the two. But he had an audience in mind when he did that, and we aren’t that audience. So we need to translate the poetic intent.

Which isn’t to say that Dante is never petty, never personal, never any of that.

But he was a skilled writer, philosopher and theologian. He was obsessive and thorough. He’s not as petty as he seems from our vantage point, and what instincts are petty he transforms into profound insights into human nature. It’s still funny when you can spot the pettiness. But it’s short-sighted to think that’s all that’s there.

I will always maintain that TDC is s horrible trap for an autodidact. A lot of classics are. They can’t be properly translated without copious footnotes that contain both context and possible variations on word choice. It’s part of what makes them interesting and important — to understand our history we have to understand those who lived it, and how they are different — but it also makes them hard to learn about and easy to misinterpret.

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u/The_Autarch Aug 31 '26

that and Satan isn't the lord of hell or whatever, he's just another prisoner. (albeit a very large one with multiple heads.)

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u/larsVonTrier92 Aug 30 '26

Does that means Smiling Friends got that part where hell is frozen from the poem?

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u/ARKNORI Aug 31 '26

I immediatly thought of that, since the area right before Satan's icy gooncave was frozen over.

Though I'm not quite sure if the areas we see in the montage right before this fit Dante's version of hell.

Also worth noting: hell in Smiling Friend's is said to have completely frozen over due to Satan's neglectfulness, so even if that could mean "the parts that weren't frozen over are also frozen over now", it could also mean Smiling Friends did go for the fully fiery hell and then it just froze over because Satan wasn't doing his job.

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u/theStaircaseProject Aug 31 '26

> Satan’s icy gooncave

Sentences I never anticipated to read as an adult

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u/Legomaniac91 Aug 31 '26

In addition; the different levels based on the Seven Deadly Sins are not locations in Hell. Rather, they're the levels of Purgatory.

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u/theStaircaseProject Aug 31 '26

In Dante’s works? He has three in that series: levels of Hell, levels of Purgatory, and levels of Heaven. I’ve read the English versions of all three and Purgatorio and Inferno are quite distinct.

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u/HappyVlane Aug 31 '26 edited Sep 01 '26

What is meant is that the seven deadly sins are not the circles of inferno, but the terraces in purgatory in the Divine Comedy. Obviously parts of the sins are also in inferno, but the seven terraces of purgatory are literally the seven deadly sins.

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u/theStaircaseProject Aug 31 '26

Ah, I understand now, thank you!

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u/Phantom-Finger Aug 30 '26

Fantastic game though.

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u/GeophysicalYear57 Aug 30 '26

Tbf, I’d expect a fiery hell from Dante’s Inferno, ya know?

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u/Quantum_redneck Aug 30 '26

IIRC, the Latin word just means "the lower parts". Because the word was used to refer to hell, and because Christ speaks in the Gospels about hell being a "lake of fire", it took on the fiery connotation later. 

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u/ForensicPathology Aug 31 '26 edited Aug 31 '26

That's proving the comment's point, since that meaning of "fiery" comes from the idea that hell is hot.

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u/TreeeToPlay Aug 31 '26

My anorganic chemistry professor argued that heaven was hotter than hell because heaven is as bright as seven times seven days worth of light (i dont remember the exact wording) which can be calculated into a temperature that ends up being higher than hell (temperature of burning brimstone)

Except this is wrong too because it misinterprets the wording for how bright heaven actually is

There is an article out there somewhere that details all that, it even won some award for best scientific nonsense

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u/ClumsyFleshMannequin Aug 31 '26

Im not an expert on this. But it was also a political piece at the time that was not-so-subtley calling out prominant figures of the region.

Its interesting that it became as pervasive culturally as it has. Or has had the influence on religious belief that it has, when its a text that is only tangential and was never intended to actually be a divine text at all.

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u/Wuz314159 Aug 31 '26

I always enjoyed the Twilight Zone episode.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5yES0Ulvxw

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u/buckleycork Aug 31 '26

The inferno is also inspired by the Vision of Tundale which was set in Cork, Ireland

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u/Edward_Durr Aug 31 '26

Piggybacking off of this to talk about another misunderstood poem, Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken is not a story of how you should take the road less traveled, but rather a send up of the idea. The two roads that the traveler comes across are “just as fair”, yet the traveler spends half of the poem trying to convince himself that one is more overgrown than the other, before picking one and resolving to just tell people that he “took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”

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u/Puta_Poderosa Aug 31 '26

As someone who runs cold I really identified with the center of hell being nonstop chilly

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u/magicmulder Aug 31 '26

Plus people keep forgetting that Satan/Lucifer isn't ruling in hell, he's a prisoner like everybody else, and not really a villain who got his rightful comeuppance but a rebel tormented by being cut off from God's presence.

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u/Aurelyan Aug 31 '26

I can't even see why it did tbh considering the whole opus.

Dante uses the Comedy to talk about literally whatever; be it politics or philosophy, cosmology, theology, the sense of loss of self, love, grief, anything that comes to his mind as an author. The religious setting, for as relevant as religion might be to the author himself, is exactly that...it's only just a setting, a mean to an end, to speak about something while masking it as something else via allegory.

The Inferno itself is extremely various in its circles, ranging from places where it always rains, to eerie forests, to places where the wind blows so strongly souls struggle not to be blown away. Almost never does the reader see fire be mentioned.

The Church itself will go on to ban the Comedy and forbid people to read it because Dante is no member or the clergy; heck, he speaks ill of the pope within the book, he talks about how he himself journeyed across hell, purgatory and heaven...it's absolutely blasphemous. And yet the book will keep on being too popular nonetheless, the people will keep on reading it, transcribing it, diffusing it to the point we still know of it to this day, still read and talk about it to this day, still sympathize with or criticize or meme about its author.

It's a marvelous piece of literature.

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u/peteroh9 Aug 31 '26

Wasn't it really Paradise Lost that popularized the common depiction of Hell?

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u/StarSword-C Aug 31 '26

Also, Satan isn't the ruler of Hell at all, he's just another prisoner. He doesn't even get to be the shot-caller on the cellblock.

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u/adrauglikeyou Aug 31 '26

Only like 1 or 2 layers of hell was actually on fire I believe. The vast majority of them are just ironic ways for sinners to be tortured