Promethean Punishment

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"[...] ...as for Imhotep, he was condemned to endure the Hom Dai, the worst of all ancient curses. One so horrible had never been done before. He was to remain sealed inside his sarcophagus, The Undead for all eternity. The Medjai would never allow him to be released. For he would arise a walking disease, a plague upon mankind, an unholy flesh-eater with the strength of the ages, power over the sands, and the glory of invincibility!"

—Exposition for The Mummy (1999)

The Promethean Punishment is a counterintuitive plot device that sees some frequent use, though it is prone to almost-instant Fridge Logic. Why? Well, let us know if the following rings a bell:

A long time ago, someone committed a terrible crime, and it was decided that the only way to truly make them pay for their deeds is a torture of the darkest supernatural sort - one designed to make the victim suffer as much as possible. And what better to ensure they learn their lesson than a heaping helping of immortality? While we're at it, better give them some form of regeneration: can't have them escape justice by dying, now can we? A potential side effect of most common methods involves "empowering" the victim with an aspect of darkness, or else life and/or death.

Now, you and the audience are probably wondering "Wait... they're giving them magic powers and immortality as a punishment?!" Yes. Yes, they are. Even the most overblown instances of Cursed with Awesome on paper still mess with the "lucky" recipient's life quite a bit - but conversely, the most justifiable instances still pale in comparison to these punishments in a majority of cases: No amount of cool powers will compensate for the multiple lifetimes of pain you'll be made to go through, never mind that you'll be too isolated to enjoy them. And you will be isolated.

Considering what someone has to do to even warrant a Promethean Punishment - barring Disproportionate Retribution of the highest order, which is entirely possible - the ones passing judgement usually aren't just gonna let you walk free after everything's said and done. That, kids, is how many a Sealed Evil in A Can is made: if it seems like whoever hands out these punishments just doesn't care what kind of threat their victim would become if free, it's because as far as they can tell, the punished won't be getting free. But one way or another, through circumstances beyond either their or their judges' control, they are finally freed, and therein lies the problem - with the judges no longer being around, they have to let loose that powder keg of fury on something, and it's usually humanity that bears the brunt of this subsequent reign of terror and death (Rage Against the Heavens optional). If we're lucky enough, though, there will be an Achilles' Heel that can bring them down and possibly even end the punishment for good.

Now, was it intended for humanity to be punished by proxy through the creation of such an incredibly pissed-off being? Typically, no. Not every such punishment will be entirely unjustified, if at all - sometimes someone, somewhere within the process, just Didn't Think This Through. Does this make it any more bearable for the people who have to deal with the cracked-open can, once it's done traveling downroad? Also no. With that in mind, don't be surprised if you discover Neglectful Precursors at the root of the worse cases. Conversely, some other precursors or deity might take issue and step in on humanity's behalf.

The trope is named for the titan Prometheus of Classical Mythology, whose crime was defying the will of Zeus and the gods by stealing the fire they hid and bringing it to humanity - his punishment was to be bound in chains and have his liver eaten by an eagle every day, which then grew back every night. Prometheus himself wasn't a particularly vengeful sort like most examples, though, and it may help that Zeus gave Heracles permission to kill the eagle and free him.

Compare:

  • Unishment, where the intended "punishment" is actually something the character enjoys or wanted all along, and thus can overlap with:
  • Cursed with Awesome, where the affliction is something that most would consider a boon, though not without
  • Who Wants to Live Forever?, when immortality doesn't work out in the afflicted party's favor.
  • Phlebotinum Rebel, when it's the "evil faction" that creates their own nemesis.
  • Rage Against the Heavens, which is occasionally a response to some form of divinely-disproportionate retribution.

Contrast:

  • Evil Makes You Monstrous, where the character gets "superpowers" or something resembling them because they were super-evil.
Examples of Promethean Punishment include:

Anime and Manga

  • A sort-of example from Beat Angel Escalayer and its Spiritual Successor Beat Blades Haruka: When Escalayer, Haruka, Narika, or Subaru are defeated in battle, they're raped by their enemies, but this gives them a boost to their vital stats.
  • In the series Hell Girl, Enma Ai is cursed for taking violent revenge on the townspeople who killed her. Her punishment: to become the Hell Girl, bringer of revenge. She offers a service for people with bitter grudges they can't do anything about, and it's implied that her employer is the Devil. She'll take the hated target to hell immediately; in exchange, the contractor will also go to hell upon dying. This way, Ai's "punishment" is a much greater punishment to mankind—her service keeps the vengeance and bitterness flowing. Ai can also only use her powers to avenge others; if she tries to send someone to hell without making a deal with someone else (like when she figured out that annoying reporter and his daughter were descendants of her cousin), she is sent to hell instead.

Comic Books

  • DC Comics:
    • In the DCAU comics, Jason Blood's binding to Etrigan was punishment for betraying King Arthur and letting Camelot fall. Said 'punishment' consists of becoming immortal and getting a Super-Powered Evil Side. Of course, you may say that being eternally bonded to a demon (even a noble one) that hates your guts is a form of punishment too, especially since Jason appears to be seeking redemption for his acts but is aware he will never get it.
    • At the end of Superman-Prime's first storyline as antagonist, he was imprisoned within the main Green Lantern battery by the Guardians Of Oa, themselves. Not only does he escape in short order, but his method of escape (absorbing enough of the battery's energy to break free) temporarily left him with supercharged power levels - strong enough to fly between dimensions, destroy planets on a whim and slap around Mr. Mxyzptlk.
  • The curse of The Buzzard, from The Goon, falls somewhere under this. The Zombie Priest, a powerful necromancer and implied demonic entity, cursed a Wild West sheriff to become an "Anti Zombie", an immortal being compelled to feast on the flesh of corpses and the undead, while still remaining alive and thus effectively beyond his control. He performed the magic to transform him into a zombie, but in a panic because The Buzzard was about to shoot him he messed it up. In doing so created his own worst enemy: a zombie-fighter who will never age, never die, can't become one of the undead, and eats both the zombies he kills and the corpses that the Zombie Priest needs to make replacement zombies.
  • Marvel Universe:
    • The Wendigo, itself based on Native American myths, is a form of this according to the folklore; those who resorted to cannibalism in times of famine would be transformed into giants with hearts made of ice and an insatiable desire for human flesh.
    • In Generation X, Penance was an example of a Promethean Punishment. {{spoiler|[[Disproportionate Retribution|For teasing him, Emplate}} used black magic to trap his sister Monet in the body of the red, spiny-haired, long-clawed, hard-as-diamond, erratic-moving Penance. The form also made it almost impossible to speak, and the skin and claws made it hard to interact with anything. She was locked away and periodically fed on by Emplate, the idea being that if she ever escaped, she'd find no love from the world as long as she was in the Penance body. Pretty slick - too bad that Monet broke out and got love from Generation X.
      • Also different from some examples in that Monet was arguably more powerful before being punished, and managed to pass the punishment off on someone else who escaped it, leaving the Penance body hollowed out but still stalking around somewhere...
    • Speedball, a Fun Personified character you've probably seen elsewhere on All The Tropes, caused a major accident resulting in multiple deaths, and inflicts this upon himself, calling himself Penance instead (no, not the one we just discussed). No one really got it, and he's since taken up the Speedball name again, though the survivor's guilt that fueled his Penance persona is still there.
  • Chakan: The Forever Man (which inspired an obscure Sega Genesis game) is about the eponymous Chakan, a master swordsman who defeats Death in a swordfight in order to gain immortality. Death grants Chakan his immortality, but for his arrogance also curses him with a zombie-like visage and "eyes that burn with hellfire", and Chakan is constantly tormented by nightmares where "pain is real and unforgiving". If he can destroy some Eldritch Abominations, though, Death will finally let him rest forever.

Film

  • Although he's not shown to be suffering, the Big Bad of Wrath of the Dragon God tells us that he's suffering the pain of undeath until he finds the orb which lets him control the title dragon in the opening sequence, with his search laying the ground for the causing the rest of the story to happen. Even as a great wizard that he is shown to be doesn't cancel out the pain.
    • When the main character's wife falls under the same curse, it is seen as painful, along with the implication that when she first begins to turn all of the mages she's working with will turn against her.
  • The Oathbreakers from The Lord of the Rings are an example of a Promethean Punishment done wisely -- they get undead immortality as part of the curse for betraying Isildur, but become bound to serve his descendants if they ever need to call on them, and the only real power they get is the ability to inspire unnatural terror (shared by all Middle-earth undead). This is also a true punishment, as in Middle-earth the mortal soul wants to leave the world after the span of a lifetime and is left in agony if it cannot.
  • The Mummy Trilogy: The eponymous mummy. Particularly bad Fridge Logic too, because the people who cursed him in the first place had to spend the rest of their lives guarding him, as well as pass that on to all their future generations. Meanwhile, the title character attains immortality, has enough power to bring about The End of the World as We Know It, and can essentially try as many times as he wants to bring his former lover back from the dead. The film does provide something of a justification that the curse was feared by those who might use it since the mummy's resurrection would allow him to use incredible power, but it would cause the cursed one to experience horrific torment in the afterlife.
    • That's not to say the filmmakers haven't Shown Their Work: The Ancient Egyptians believed that you went to the afterlife with the same body you were buried in, hence their predilection towards mummification rituals. However, Imhotep's body was eaten alive by beetles, which caused him to initially Come Back Wrong and force him to spend time reconstructing his body before he could unleash his revenge proper. Consider the fact that the curse his resurrection afflicts starts off with being mummified and sealed alive in a casket with flesh eating insects, with the implication that it gets worse from there - playing the human form of a god for a chump and then murdering him when he finds out is probably well worth the toil of a hundred generations of servants to make sure the villain got what was coming.
  • Captain Barbossa & his crew from Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl stole cursed gold and were turned into a literal "skeleton crew" because of it. They ended up being far more formidable foes, as they couldn't be killed, but it's heavily implied that they get hungrier and thirstier with each passing moment—in other words, they are starving as if they haven't eaten in decades, but they can't die. Besides, by the time the gold was cursed, the Aztecs were dead. The gods probably didn't care what happened to the rest of the world. Jack actually catches on to this and gets himself cursed just long enough to survive the fight against Barbossa.
    • Davy Jones and his crew from the second Pirates film suffer under similar circumstances, but in their case (his, at least) it's out of choice. It's also explained that over time they lose their identity, and as a result the crew are little more than puppets of their corrupt captain's malignant will.

Literature

  • In Dresden Files book Fool Moon, there is a character who is under a hereditary curse that turns him into a massive, Chaotic Evil, unstoppable, and berserk super-werewolf during the full moon. He doesn't enjoy it but it's a lot worse for everybody else. To put this in perspective, the character is arrested and thrown into a holding cell hours before a full moon at one point. The result is a level of devastation that makes the rampage in the police station scene from The Terminator look positively tame by comparison.
  • A common punishment in Perdido Street Station is to replace parts of a person with mechanical or biological parts, which are always at least inconvenient, but more often completely dehumanizing, crippling and horrible. Since they tend to also be assigned to hard labor, some are given mechanical strength enhancements in order to make them more useful, which also has possibly unfortunate side effects if they get free. On the other hand, as with Jack Half-A-Prayer for example, they provide an advantage that the judges who imposed the sentence never thought of, making the "reMade" a more dangerous criminal - to say nothing of the freed ones (or "FreeMade") that team up with La Résistance and other fighting the status quo in New Crobuzon.
  • The origin of Dracula in some versions of his story, most notably Bram Stoker's Dracula.
  • The Mark of Cain that Cain received as the first murderer (in The Bible and the Torah) is sometimes interpreted as turning him into a terrible monster (the question of why God would punish a murderer by making him several times better at murdering is never addressed).
  • The Death Knight Lord Soth from the Dragonlance books. He was given a holy quest to stop The Cataclysm, but turned away from it to confront his wife, whom he suspected of cheating on him, and then refused to save her when she died in The Cataclysm. For this, he was cursed... with immortality, nigh-invulnerability, and incredible magic power, and the 13 knights that served him were likewise transformed into undead creatures under his control. And yet, this moment of failure made the unlife of Soth a mockery of all he stood for: he gained power, but never would he know peace.
    • This is later inverted in the Ravenloft novels, where Soth is pulled into Ravenloft and unable to escape due to his wickedness. There's dispute about that, though: The Word of God says that he got immortality and eternal agony from the gods of good that would remain until he would beg for forgiveness, but the awesome magical powers came from Takhisis, the Queen of Darkness, who wanted to use his hatred for her own purposes. He refused to listen to both parties, and was instead content to sit in his castle and think of his past mistakes until Kitiara came along and showed enough bravery to intrigue him.
    • Later in the series, we see scenes from the perspective of other undead characters such as Palin and Dalamar, who are in agony because they can eternally see paradise but never reach it. In the very likely possibility that Soth suffers something similar, his incredible powers probably just seem like a bad joke compared to what's perpetually being dangled just out of reach. Soth may be an aversion in the very end, depending on who you believe. According to Dragon Magazine in its list of top D&D villains, Soth was indeed transferred to Ravenloft, and ruled his own dimension for a time... and eventually, the torment of that plane (and possibly interaction with a magic mirror of some sort?) got to him, and pushed him into an epiphany. When Takhisis came calling again, Soth rejected her; she slew him, and he finally found peace.
    • It's worth noting that, while the 'Punishment' was a rousing success with Soth, various Dragonlance gods try it later in the series. It does not work. At all. Specifically, Soth in life greatly valued his identity as a Knight in Shining Armor, so being turned into an undead parody of one was legitimately hellish for him. However, when Ausric Krell (a thuggish, backstabbing Smug Snake) is punished in the same way, he quickly decides that being an immortal Magic Knight more than makes up for the drawbacks of undeath in his book.
  • Prince Gaynor the Damned from Michael Moorcock's multiverse. It was less Cursed with Awesome than many of the examples, since he was obviously consumed by despair and misery. He did get the "control over the forces of darkness" bit, but doesn't seem to take much consolation in it.

Live-Action TV

  • Buffy backstory: For over 100 years, the vampire Angelus was a heartless killing machine. When he finally chose the wrong victim, a young gypsy girl, her tribe took swift revenge: they cursed him with a soul that felt the torment and guilt of all his sins. That much was a good idea. To twist the knife a bit more, the curse was designed to end if the newly moral Angel felt a moment of pure happiness. That wasn't a bad idea either, as it meant that if having a soul ever became a good thing for him, he'd lose it. No, the bad idea was not telling Angel that! Unaware of the "escape clause", Angel had that happy moment, and Angelus was unleashed on the world again.
    • Of course, if they'd told him, he'd probably have sought that out. By the time he was with Buffy, he wanted to keep his soul, but he spent quite awhile trying to make it work with Darla despite his soul. And of course Darla, Drusilla and Spike killed them all almost immediately after they cursed him. They only had a brief period to get the information across, and the man who did it seemed to be busy gloating.
  • In one episode of Tales from the Cryptkeeper, an evil knight and his heroic squire set out to kill a vampire. After the knight abandons the squire to save the day alone he gets his comeuppance by being transformed into a vampire himself. This is clearly shown as a terrible punishment: despite the implications of a vain, cruel, greedy man being given powerful mind control abilities and Nigh Invulnerability, the punishment itself comes from the fact that he's too much of an idiot to actually use the abilities he's given, and can no longer check out his own reflection in the mirror he carries around.
  • Stargate SG-1 backstory: To punish Anubis for tricking Oma Desala into ascending him, the Ancients partially descended him, allowing him to keep the Ancient knowledge - but he could only use the knowledge if he would have had access to it without ascending. The Ancients punished the latter party by tasking her with cleaning up her own mess by taking on Anubis - while harsh-but-fair after a fashion, this still meant sacrificing her life to fight Anubis for a few hundred years, which can certainly take a toll on someone.
  • This is one of the central plot mechanics of Reaper. When a soul in Hell is tortured with an elemental force of nature for even as little as two years, if that soul then escapes from Hell, then it will have total command of that element on Earth - and, being a bad enough dude to be sent to Hell and a bad enough dude to be able to escape it, will employ that elemental control with great sociopathic intent.
  • This was also the mechanic of Brimstone, a series that did the Hell's bounty hunter thing years before Reaper. The longer a soul spends in Hell, the more Hell becomes a part of them; the more Hell becomes a part of them, the more unholy power they're able to unleash when they break free. Things get pretty bad when someone escapes who had been in hell for several thousand years.

New Media

  • Venomstripe from Warrior Cats RPG was punished for her evil acts by being granted telepathy...very painful, semi-uncontrollable telepathy, but telepathy all the same.

Oral Tradition, Folklore, Myths and Legends

  • Older Than Feudalism thanks to Greek and Classical Mythology:
    • As mentioned in the description, the Trope Namer Prometheus stole fire from Zeus and the gods to bring to humanity, and was bound in chains while having his liver eaten by an eagle daily, which then grew back every night. As also mentioned above, Zeus eventually gave Heracles permission to kill the eagle and free Prometheus.
    • Some versions of the Medusa myth say she was originally a beautiful nymph. Her monstrous form, complete with killing everybody who looked at her, was the result of a curse put on her by Athena for the offense of sexually defiling her temple. This comes across as unfair, considering some tellings of the story say she was raped - true as this is, this pantheon is also the defining example of Jerkass Gods for a reason.
  • The ancient Indian epic Ramayana features a semi-godly woman who has been punished by being transformed into a demon, which gives her the power to turn the land around her into a burning desert. Her sons meet the same fate, but they already had supernatural powers before their punishment.
  • The Mexican folk tale of La Llorona. She was a woman who drowned her two children for varying reasons (to get a husband, to spite her ex, because she didn't want them-always a petty and/or spiteful reason). After she died, for some reason God cursed her to wander eternally looking for her children instead of just sending her to Hell. She now wanders the riverbanks looking for her children, and drowns any children she finds to try and replace them. Nice job breaking it, God.

Tabletop Games

  • In Vampire: The Masquerade, God punished Caine for killing Abel by turning him into a vampire and cursing him. Now, humanity is plagued by legions of the literally damned undead, which have magic powers, eat people, and secretly pull the strings of many political and financial institutions. Great. This is somewhat ameliorated in the Time of Judgment book "Gehenna". In the first scenario, God decides humanity's carried this burden on their own long enough and takes direct action against all vampires.
  • The Ravenloft D&D campaign setting runs on, lives, breathes, and eats this trope. An ethereal demiplane dedicated to the punishment of the wicked, its darklords simultaneously are granted great power over their domains and subjects, but are denied their greatest desire. Examples include:
    • Strahd von Zarovich. In life, he was a warrior who spent over 20 years fighting to free his homeland from foreign invaders. Suffering over a youth spent in battle, he eventually fell in love with his younger brother's fiance, Tatyana. On the eve of their wedding, Strahd makes a pact with a Cosmic Horror to gain everlasting life and Tatyana's love. He is transformed into a vampire and murders his brother to have her. At the same time, a Xanatos Roulette by a rival lord kills off most of Strahd's retainers. During the ensuing battle, Tatyana leaps over the castle ramparts in despair over her dead love. Since then, Strahd has enjoyed everlasting life and absolute control over his homeland - but every generation, Tatyana is reborn among the populace, where she inevitably attracts Strahd's attention, is courted for a brief period, and is killed in some gruesome fashion without fail.
    • Azalin Rex. A wizard king from the Greyhawk setting, he ruled his land with an iron fist. He fathered one son, who spent his childhood having the kindness beaten out of him so that he could become Azalin's ideal successor. This failed, and Azalin executed his own son when he tried to smuggle refugees beyond his father's reach. Azalin made a similar pact as Strahd to become a lich, seeking immortality to rule his land forevermore. Decades later, he learned of a scroll containing a spell to resurrect his dead son, but at the same time was cursed with an inability to learn new magic - leaving him with the means to correct his greatest "failure", but no way of using it. Even worse, his new castle in his new domain has a room that would let him circumvent his curse, but every instant in the room causes him agonizing pain, as his undead body is brought back to life, cell by cell, basically decaying in reverse.
    • Lord Soth, described above, had the chance to prevent a world-shattering cataclysm but did not do so out of pride and jealousy. Since then, he had spent the next three hundred years listening to his banshee servants sing the songs of his failures. Eventually, he was transported into Ravenloft and given an exact copy of his former castle, perfect in every detail... Except the architecture keeps changing, which drives Soth - accustomed to rigid military order - crazy. It's interesting to note, though, that out of all Dark Lords, Soth's Punishment in "Ravenloft" was barely worse than what he already suffered in his native setting of "Dragonlance". That's probably why he was sent back to Krynn (the world of "Dragonlance"), from both an in-story perspective (his torment probably wasn't satisfying enough for the Mists) and from a meta perspective (he really wasn't that interesting as a Dark Lord).
    • Vlad Drakov, a Canon Immigrant from the Dragonlance setting, spent his free time as a mercenary general who won many wars but was constantly looked down upon by his clients as he yearned for a country to call his own. Ravenloft provided in its own unique fashion. Drakov was delighted at first, until he discovered that his new country was a backwater tract of mud surrounded on all sides by more advanced and prosperous domains. Which he tried to invade. Over and over and over again, each defeat replacing more of his reputation as a ruthless if successful general with one as a bumbling idiot.
    • Vecna, a demigod from the Greyhawk setting, was trapped by the Dark Powers due to tying too much of his power into his avatar. Being a god and all, there isn't really much the Dark Powers can do to curse him other than hold him in place and tie him into a physical form. Which doesn't really last all that long once Vecna gets into full Xanatos Roulette mode.
    • How about Jacqueline Renier, a wererat who clawed her way into power? She suffers from intense monophobia, which makes her prefer to keep her family (who hate her) around rather than spend even a moment alone... but she is doomed to transform whenever she is in the presence of someone she loves, robbing her of the love and companionship she wants more than anything else.
    • Or Dominic D'Honaire. He was an exceptionally manipulative child, who frequently stirred up trouble among the adults around him for his own entertainment, yet always managed to evade suspicion. He was doted on intensely by the women in his life, in large part because his mother died giving birth to him. As a darklord, he now has the power to control the minds of anyone, making anyone like him... Except for women whom he is attracted to, who are immune to his control and start seeing him as progressively more repellent.
    • Pharaoh Anhktepot, Ravenloft's token mummy darklord, suffered a Promethean Punishment twice. First, Ra punished him for his hubris by making his touch lethal, so he started killing his own subjects until the survivors murdered him. Then the Dark Powers got wind of his misdeeds, and confined this once-mighty king in a tiny domain with just a few hundred inhabitants; now undead, Anhktepot can become alive for a day by sacrificing one of its residents, but he knows that doing so too often means he'll run out of subjects and be alone forever.
    • There was also Ravenloft's version of Bluebeard, who was married several times and kept demanding complete, utter and unquestioning loyalty from his wives; when they inevitably failed, he brutally murdered them. Now as a Darklord he keeps falling in love, again and again... but every time he does so, he sees his new lady love as one of his dead wives. Rotting flesh, dripping maggots and all.
  • Elsewhere in Dungeons and Dragons:
    • 4th Edition continuity states that the reason many genies are bound to lamps, rings, and the like and forced to serve mortals is a punishment for siding with the Primordials in the Dawn War. Even genies who are released from this servitude only have a fraction of their former powers.
    • If you're a drow and Lolth gets annoyed at you, she's liable to turn you into a drider. 1st edition had this as part of a test for drow reaching the 6th level; Lolth believes in constantly testing the drow for hardiness and ruthlessness, with the losers being eaten. Those who passed were allowed to continue to rise in power, while those who failed got turned into driders - and their advancement was frozen because of it. In other words, those drow who would be more useful at a higher level were allowed to get to that high level, and those who weren't got Cursed with Awesome. Win-win for Lolth: Their transformation is a punishment for failure, but it's a spider because they've become an instrument for Lolth's will.
      • Before the 4th edition release, the games designers took a long look at the powers the drider gained (more innate spells, increased toughness, better combat ability), their similarity to the spider (a holy creature in drow society and by Lolth's religious tenets), and the fact that the drider form is generally based off of one of Lolth's own avatars, and asked themselves: "Why is this supposed to be a punishment, again?" Being a drider is now a blessing, instead of a curse.
  • Magic: The Gathering has a few cards that feature this, mostly in black and red. Crovax comes to mind - for killing his guardian angel, he became the extremely powerful Phyrexian vampire overlord of an entire plane.

Theatre

Video Games

  • Some origins for Shang Tsung of Mortal Kombat have his soul-sucking be part of an Elder God curse, as a way of staving off rapid aging and premature death. Considering the track record of the Elder Gods, this probably wasn't a good idea...
  • Every enemy in Silent Hill seems to be under some forced punishment from the town. Especially the second game. Monsters in straight jackets of their own flesh, monsters built into rusty cages... While these are mostly various characters' nightmares given physical form, the film version decided they were the actual townspeople twisted into monsters as part of Alessa's revenge.
  • Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer: For the crime of betraying his god in an attempt to save his lover's soul from eternal torment, Akachi was turned into an immortal body-surfing soul-devouring manifestation of hunger by a particularly capricious god of death. This god may well have wanted to punish the country that created him, as he's never left it since becoming cursed. Of course, this was actually a Batman Gambit by said god to cheat death by ensuring that he wouldn't be forgotten, and thus his consciousness would be preserved; and the player has an option to punish the god in turn, in a truly ironic manner, by giving him a final death using the very "curse" he once unleashed.
    • Earlier, you encounter a plain, ordinary woodsman who was turned into a Shape of Fire, an epic incorporeal undead creature, as a punishment for guiding one of your predecessors (a spirit-eating psychopath) to where he could consume the spirit of Ashenwood.
  • The Big Bad of the Mega Man Zero series, Dr. Weil, had been placed in an immortal, indestructible human-reploid hybrid body so he could suffer forever in his lonely banishment from Earth. Unfortunately, they neglected to make his new body incapable of, say, speaking and building things, so when he comes back, he resumes the world domination and genocide thing where he left off and is almost impossible to stop. Though ost of Dr. Weil's antics in the Mega Man Zero series are "merely" facilitated by the fact that his is immortal - i.e., he is still around after 100 years of bitter punishment, and eventually proves very difficult to kill - at the very end of the series It Gets Worse. He figures out a way to use the technology that made him immortal - more commonly known to the players as Biometal - to become superpowered, channel the powers of his deceased minions, harness the raw energy powering his Kill Sat, and generally kick ass. Zero manages to kill him in this form, but that only solves the problem temporarily: due to the Awesome he was Cursed with, he eventually resurfaces in the Mega Man ZX series as something akin to Sauron.
    • Apparently prior to certain changes necessitated to resolve Plot Holes, he was a teenage prodigy similar to Ciel (this is slightly more evident in the third game, where his speech pattern seems less like an old man's and more like a slightly immature teenager, particularly in his use of colloquialisms - can you see any evil doctor without an excuse referring to their nemesis as a "fun guy," non-threat or otherwise?). Considering that the suit also prevents him from aging, this would have just added another reason for Weil to go nuts and try to destroy everything, making this a case where inflicting a Promethean Punishment on someone is an excessively bad idea.
  • The Garradors (burly mutants with huge wrist blades) in Resident Evil 4 might be an example of this, though it's never made clear in the story. It's just that the first one you meet is kept chained up in a dungeon with its eyes sewn shut, while another version wears a suit of armour that completely seals off its head. It seems from the few times you encounter them in the game that they're completely mad and out of control.
  • Ignus in Planescape: Torment was a pyromaniac sorcerer who got brought down by the cooperation of basically every magic user in the Hive. They decided to punish him by turning his body into a portal to the elemental plane of fire, basically making him a Man On Fire on a permanent basis.
    • The only reason it worked at all was because it made him so happy that he just hovered there in contentment, even as a bar was built on the spot with him as the centerpiece.
    • The Nameless One himself could be seen as a self-inflicted form of a Promethean Punishment. He wanted to extend his life so as to have more time to atone for his crime, but messed up in that every time he cheats death someone else dies in his place and he loses his memories, keeping him from being able to fulfill his original intent and breaking the spell.
  • In Baldur's Gate 2, Jon Irenicus is under a terrible curse for past crimes. While the curse does NOT grant him any special ability, it did not remove the powers he already had... and Irenicus is an insanely high-level wizard. His attempts at removing his curse result in many deaths and a lot of suffering for the PC (and his/her sister). Unusually, the people at the origin of the curse actually see their utter lack of foresight come back to bite them in the butt.
    • Of course, that's because they're elves. If they weren't so long-lived, they probably would have escaped punishment.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor, Cain. For the sin of being the first murderer, God cursed him to be eternally reborn with a new body each time he dies, with all his previous memories intact. What does he do with this curse? Why, become an immortal chessmaster, of course, and spends eternity biding his time for the day he is able to take down God. In a subversion, it is revealed that God's intention was not to punish Cain but to give him eternal life so that he he would eventually come around to reflect on his mistake and try to atone for it: The 'punishment' aspect is more due to Cain's eternal bitterness and inability to see that he has the hope of atonement than anything else.
  • Raziel from Legacy of Kain was cast into the abyss, and after an eternity-long Painful Transformation he came back as a Noble Demon. In his first game he was also bound to the Elder God who (allegedly) resurrected him, and thus could not die.

Web Comics

  • Maoh from Char Cole, assuming All Myths Are True, has been cursed with immortality for the last 2000 years. For attempted petty theft.
  • The Sins in Jack, due to their actions in life, are cursed with powers that seem awesome, but come with conditions attached due to the webcomic's heavy use of Ironic Hell.


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