Hell, the Inferno, Hades, Tartarus, Gehenna, H-E-Double Hockey Sticks, "HFIL", the "Shadow Realm", whatever you want to call it, is where sinners eternally suffer after they die.

Maybe it's full of fire and brimstone. Or it's the pain of nonexistence. It might be an evil world where the forces of darkness rule everything. Or it's an evil world where the forces of darkness are held prisoner. Or it's the Outer Darkness, with wailing and gnashing of teeth. Or it could be a dusty wasteland inhabited by dreary, half-bird people. Hell's almost certainly the opposite of Heaven, and sometimes it's portrayed as being at war with Heaven, though the theological basis for this idea is a little shaky. Sometimes Hell is reserved only for the worst of the worst, but other times, it's ridiculously easy to wind up there. Whatever else it is, Hell's almost certainly brimming with ironic punishments for the damned.

Hell is many things for many religions and philosophies, but a few pop-cultural constants have emerged over time. The standard Hell has historically been a fiery subterranean realm ruled by a Big Red Devil with horns. While this interpretation lives on in cartoons and parodies, the trend for more recent treatments almost always involves placing Hell in Another Dimension. While the exact details of Hell's environment vary depending on the source, it's always a place of suffering, meant to be inhospitable to human standards of comfort. More often than not, fire and brimstone imagery at least plays a part in the setting, though the image of Hell as a ruined, twisted version of the real world has lately become popular as well. Often Dying Dream stories in the horror genre end with the revelation that the character's actually in an Ironic Hell.

The inhabitants of Hell are usually divided between human prisoners and their demonic captors, though occasionally the demons are simply high-profile prisoners themselves, and sometimes they're the only inhabitants: modern fantasy stories and video games in particular tend to use Hell as a form of Sealed Evil in a Can, while downplaying or outright rejecting the idea of it as a human afterlife. If there are human captives in Hell, they'll typically be functionally immortal, at least while they're in Hell: after all, eternal torment wouldn't be eternal if it could really kill you. Of course, if the people damned to Hell don't have any bodies, then this might not be an issue... and it might make escaping from Hell that much easier for them. But just as often, Hell is portrayed as single-occupant only, and the damned all have their own separate versions of Hell, disconnected from each other.

In modern horror and fantasy, Hell's often given portals that can send living people back and forth between the two worlds. A portal usually serves as the vehicle for a living hero to stage a rescue of a loved one from Hell, or for someone to break out on their own. The more recent idea of Hell as a parallel reality, though, gives such gateways a more mystical aspect: whereas classical ideas used famous caves as tunnels into the underworld, modern hellgates are usually invisible until opened by magic. Sometimes the magic itself is the gateway, and can be opened from anywhere, usually via a Tome of Eldritch Lore or an Artifact of Doom.

The theological roots of Hell, and the modern pop-cultural image of it, come from a variety of sources, from Christian beliefs to Greek and Egyptian mythology to medieval literature. In more recent times, Asian conceptions of the afterlife, particularly the Chinese and Japanese ideas of Hell, have attained some prominence in the West, particularly through video games and manga/anime. The idea of a moral dichotomy in the afterlife, with different fates reserved for the virtuous and the wicked, goes back to Egyptian Mythology. Making Heaven and Hell entirely separate places is a relatively recent idea from Judaism and Christianity. Many other ancient religions gave the same bland afterlife to everyone who died, save for those lucky few favored by the Powers That Be.

The current name comes from Hel the Norse goddess and ruler of her same-named Underworld, for the same confusing reasons that the English days of the week are a mix of Norse and Roman names. In Greek versions of the Christian Bible, the aforementioned Underworld is even referred to as Hades from Classical Mythology, with the Hebrew version being Sheol. As the joke goes, this is explained by some faiths having so many sinners that they've had to export them to other religions. Granted, Sheol/Hades is presented Biblically as a temporary state of Purgatory, and not synonymous with the eternal Lake of Fire known in Greek by the metaphor "Gehenna" (also called "Abaddon").

Trying to separate the reality of Hell from its theme park version is a hopeless cause. Not only is the reality of Hell debated, but what's realistic and what's not often depends on who's being asked. Many evangelical Christians believe that Hell is a literal, lake of fire filled with evil spirits. Theologians more in line with C. S. Lewis often take the position that Hell is the willful separation of the soul from the light of God, and that any suffering beyond that is self-inflicted. Perhaps for this reason, many serious stories about Hell that are set in the "real world" won't even try to directly depict Hell, and rely more on what the characters who've been there have to say about it. Sometimes this lack of an onscreen Hell is explained by saying that seeing it would drive a person mad.

Stories that don't necessarily want to deal with the religious angle, but still want to use the basic idea of Hell for dramatic purposes, might use a thinly disguised "dimension of pain and suffering" instead. If it's a story with some science fiction elements, this'll often take the form of Hyperspace Is a Scary Place.

What Hell is like differs between adaptations, often in wildly conflicting ways.

• Bloody Bowels of Hell: Hell looks like the inside of a living organism.
• Circles of Hell: Hell is separated into different provinces, usually depending on the severity of the damned's misdeeds.
• City of the Damned: Hell is a literal Urban Hellscape.
• Fire and Brimstone Hell: Hell is scary and really hot as you would expect it to be.
• Hellevator: The Gates of Hell is an elevator that only goes one way: down.
• Hellgate: A portal that leads to Hell.
• Ironic Hell: Eternal damnation is tailor-made for each soul.
• Karmic Reform Hell: Hell is for reforming flawed people instead of needlessly torturing them.
• Planet Heck: Hell as a standard Video Game Setting.
• Self-Inflicted Hell: The damned torture themselves. The demons just let them do it.
• This Isn't Heaven: Hell looks much like Heaven, except there's just one thing missing.

See also To Hell and Back and The Legions of Hell.

For Hells that aren't so bad, see A Hell of a Time. For ways out, see Deliverance from Damnation and Escaped from Hell. For gloomy and/or subterranean afterlives that have nothing to do with wickedness or eternal punishment, see The Underworld. Has nothing to do with the real life city of Hell, Michigan.

See also Heaven and Fluffy Cloud Heaven.

Examples: