Demons are often associated with sinful or illicit behavior in at least some capacity, but some go beyond simply trying to goad mortals into doing whatever will earn them damnation. Some fiction goes further and associates specific demons, species or individuals, with specific sins — thus, you might end up with demons of lust, demons of greed, demons of wrath, and other similarly specific purviews.
These figures can have a number of causal relationships with their associated misbehaviors. Some may "feed" on them, gaining strength and sustenance from the act of making mortals play out certain behaviors. Others may be born from them instead — a Demon of Human Origin born from, for instance, a wrathful soul may become a demon whose powers and appearance are themed around anger and violence.
The Seven Deadly Sins are the most common sources of inspiration for these figures, but almost any kind of vice and moral flaw will serve in a pinch. Some may be tied to extremely specific things — say, demons of being rude to waiters or demons of artistic plagiarism.
Subtropes include:
- Asmodeus: A demonic figure associated with lust.
- Beelzebub: A demonic figure associated with gluttony.
- Leviathan: A biblical Sea Monster sometimes associated with envy.
- Mammon: A demonic figure associated with greed.
- Satan: The ruler of Hell associated with either pride or wrath.note
- Succubi and Incubi: Succubi, incubi, and other demons that represent sexual lusts.
Compare Anthropomorphic Vice, for when anthropomorphic versions of alcohol, cigarettes, poker paraphernalia, and the like are used to represent their associate vices. Subtrope of Our Demons Are Different. Often a subtrope of Biblical Bad Guy. See also Anthropomorphic Personification. Compare Embodiment of Vice, when a character has one of the sins as their defining trait. If committing sins attracts demons, see Sin Invites Possession.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Make the Exorcist Fall in Love: the seven Demon Lords are the most powerful demons, each one representing a specific sin, and all biblically-accurate but adapted to the 21st century.
- Seven Mortal Sins: The titular antagonists (alongside Lucifer and Leviathan) all represent the sin they want humanity to fall to (e.g., Lust for Asmodeus, Greed for Mammon, etc.)
Comic Books
- Daredevil (2023): The first major storyline of this run deals with this as, when Matt Murdock was resurrected at the end of the last run, he was joined by seven demons based on the seven sins. They end up possessing Elektra (Sloth), Ben Ulrich (Envy), She-Hulk (Gluttony), Wolverine (Lust), Wilson Fisk (Greed), Foggy Nelson (Pride) and the orphan Jason (Wrath) and Matt has to exorcise them. Interestingly, one does not possess them the way one would think: Matt initially thinks that Wolverine is possessed by Wrath, but it turns out he's possessed by Lust — bloodlust, not the sexual kind.
- Grimm Fairy Tales: The spin-off miniseries "Demons" revolves around Japanese exorcist Masumi on a quest to neutralize the demons embodying the seven sins. Unbeknownst to her, an eighth demon exists, the sin of despair, sealed within Masumi's sword all along.
Film — Live-Action
- SHAZAM! (2019): Big Bad Dr. Sivana releases the embodiments of the Seven Deadly Sins and becomes their champion. Their physical appearances are monstrous and demonic, and reflects the sin they represent: Greed has four arms, Gluttony has a large belly that is an extension of its mouth, Envy looks like an unintimidating goblin, Wrath has large muscular arms and spikes, Sloth has tentacled arms that look like roots, Lust has a long, tentacle-like tongue (Billy even says that he expected something hotter), and Pride has both large horns and wings.
Literature
- Wear Your Soul Round Your Neck: Malforms are hideous jumbles of flesh having little in common besides being born from perfect humans' discarded flaws. Removed diseases plague the malform, removed vices rule the malform's heart. However, despite their wretched origins and unstable personalities, malforms are often kind, reasonable people.
Live-Action TV
- Supernatural: The Season 3 opener "The Magnificent Seven" features a unique Quirky Miniboss Squad of demons themed on the seven deadly sins who can compel people to enact the sin associated with them (for instance, Gluttony compels a hunter to down a bottle of bleach). However, they're ultimately just minor antagonists that serve to be fodder to introduce Ruby and the knife that's capable of permanently killing Demons.
Music
- Evillious Chronicles: The Demons of Sin are demons of human origin who embody the seven deadly sins — Gilles Derais represents Lust, Vlad Tuberci represents Gluttony, Marie Annette represents Pride, Rahab Barisol represents Envy, Salem Dunbar represents Greed, and Seth Twiright represents Wrath. The only exception is Sloth, which doesn't have a proper demon. Eve Moonlit, the first sinner, stands in for the absent Sloth demon instead.
Mythology & Religion
- Multiple
theologians and occultists have attempted to associate demons with sins.
- The Lanterne of Light published in 1409, possibly by John Wycliffe, lists seven princes of Hell each affiliated with one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Lucifer has Pride, Beelzebub has Envy, Satan has Wrath, Abaddon has Sloth, Mammon has Greed, Belphegor has Gluttony, and Asmodeus has Lust.
- Peter Binsfeld's 1589 Confessions by Evildoers and Witches similarly lists seven princes of Hell classified by sin. Lucifer is Pride, Mammon Greed, Asmodeus Lust, Leviathan Envy, Beelzebub Gluttony, Satan Wrath, and Belphegor Sloth.
- The 4th century monk Evagrius Ponticus who came up with eight logismoi that would eventually become the Seven Deadly Sins (see that page for further info) believed that demons would base their temptations on the logismoi and gave several examples of how. This trope is not only Older Than Print but was effectively around from the very beginning of the concept of deadly sins.
Tabletop Games
- Chronicles of Darkness: Demons of the Inferno are each bound to a manifestation of one or more of the Seven Deadly Sins, like fires caused in Wrath — the stronger the demon, the broader the scope. This theme determines the kind of gifts they can bestow and the sort of ritual offering they demand in payment; possessed characters actually use those sins as Skill Scores to wield demonic powers.
- Demon: The Fallen: Angels were organized into seven Houses based on their roles in Creation and the Fallen Angels who became the Demons are still organized as such, but their former roles have been warped into weaknesses oriented around one of the Sins. For instance, the Namaru, or "devils", were the heralds of God and now they cannot tolerate an insult to their Pride.
- Games Workshop: A common theme in Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, and Warhammer: Age of Sigmar is the presence and influence of the four major Chaos gods and their daemons, which are basically smaller aspects of the god that spawned them. Khorne's Bloodletters and Bloodthirsters represent rage and wrath, Slaanesh's Daemonettes and Keepers of Secrets represent obsession and gluttonous excess, Nurgle's Nurglings and Great Unclean Ones represent despair (and/or love) and slothful stagnation, and Tzeentch's Horrors and Lords of Change represent hope (as in the desire for things to change, which is why Tzeentch is the god of magic and traitors) and hubristic scheming.
- In Nomine: Demons exist in the service of Princes who embody a specific infernal Word. Some of these are universal constants of various sorts, such as Death, Fate, and Fire, but many others are sins and vices of various sorts, such as Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Theft, Drugs, and Cruelty. On Earth, demons are expected to promote their masters' interests and Word, to ensure both the general ruination of humanity and a steady stream of damned souls for their master's Principality.
- Pathfinder: Demons are created from the souls of Chaotic Evil mortals reshaped by their sins.
- The basic Bestiaries focus on the seven deadly sins. Succubi represent Lust, both in the physical sense and as lust for power, knowledge, and so on. The soul-devouring nabasus are Gluttony. The pig-like nalfeshnees embody Greed. The hopelessly pathetic dretches associate with Sloth. The sadistic, violent vrocks personify Wrath. The incorporeal shadow demons, who possess others to take everything from them, are born of Envy. The contemptuous, arrogant mariliths are tied to Pride. Demons are so closely tied to the mortal failings that spawned them that their opposed virtues actively harm them; vrocks, for instance, suffer when forcefully calmed and pacified, succubi are harmed by mortals resisting their temptations, and so on.
- In addition to the basic seven, demons exist as manifestations of almost every moral failing and transgression imaginable. Serial killers become babaus, demons of murder, arsonists become pyrokinetic brimoraks, wanton polluters become spider-like, acid-spitting miastrileks, and so on. Sometimes this can result in overlapping "claims" over sinful souls. Mysoginists, for instance, become a type of demon called an andrazku — unless their prejudice manifested as active violence, in which case they will become incubi or babaus, or even just bullying, which will produce yaenits, leaving only the dregs of society for the ranks of the misogyny demons.
- The relationship between sinner and demon isn't generally one-to-one — hundreds of weak demons might be spawned by a single soul, while a hundred souls may need to collect together to produce a powerful one. A few sinners, however, manage to reincarnate fully as a single demon — the Hell's Rebels adventure path includes a side issue with a notorious serial killer who was "reborn" as a babau and came back to pick up where he left off, for instance.
- Seven Demon Lords also place one of the sins under their areas of concern: Socothbenoth for Pride, Orcus for Wrath, Shax for Envy, Jubilex for Sloth, Areshkegal for Greed, Xoveron for Gluttony, and Nocticula for Lust (at least before she ditched her old portfolio when she ceased to be a demon, anyway).
- Starfinder:
- Pluprexes are demons that spawn when a sinful mortal soul who glorified wielding dangerous radiation as a weapon dies. Pluprexes take their powers from this dangerous radiation, biting their prey to disfigure it, irradiating corpses to make the undead creatures they become more dangerous, and emitting a dangerous radiation aura out to a certain distance.
- Flashfire demons are based on the threat and chaos that occurs when a constructed environment that should protect life in a dangerous area fails, which has the potential to cause mass deaths, and their abilities are themed around Acts of Sabotage, such as compelling a creature to covertly commit sabotage.
Video Games
- Diablo: Within the Burning Hells, demonkind is ruled over by seven Great Evils who often are associated with a negative emotion or attribute. The most powerful of these Evils are the Primes: Mephisto who represents and elicits Hatred, Baal who is Destruction incarnate, and Diablo who embodies Terror. The demons below them in rank are the Lesser Evils: Andariel and Duriel represent pain in their own way (mental and physical respectively), Belial stands as the Lord of Lies, and Azmodan represents the vices of Sin.
- Digimon: The Seven Great Demon Lords are Angel-type Digimon who fell from grace after rebelling against "God". These seven were transformed into the sins they embody: Lucemon: Falldown Mode (Pride), Leviamon (Envy), Demon (Wrath), Belphemon: Rage Mode (Sloth), Barbamon (Greed), Beezelbumon (Gluttony) and Lilithmon (Lust). While the group only shows up together in video games, only five of them play major roles in the various anime series one way or another.
- Dragon Age: Spirits naturally tend to fixate on one quality of mortal beings and come to wholly embody it; "demons" is used to refer to spirits who chose a negative quality, or who have been corrupted from their previous quality for various reasons, like rage, fear, sloth, envy, despair, or pride. For example, rage demons are fiery, indiscriminately violent beings, despair demons are drawn to slums and prisons and leave trails of misery and suicides, and pride demons are skillful manipulators who lead mortals into overreach and ruin.
- League of Legends: Demons in Runeterra are born from corrupted feelings of sapient beings that feed on emotions by forcibly eliciting it out from victims. This allows multiple demons based on the same emotion to coexist, with lesser demons like azakana made to be small-scale feelings, while greater ones like the demon kings embody primal emotions. Demons based on positive emotions represent the perverse form of them, such as delirium for happiness.
- Might & Magic: Heroes VI: Of the fourteen species of demons present in the ranks of the Inferno Faction, twelve are stated to represent one of the 6 traits of Chaos defined by their creator, Urgash — the other two, Succubi and Lilims, are once-human women who have pledged their lives to serve the Inferno's cause. Maniacs and Dementeds represent Madness, Hell Hounds and Cerberi represent Hunger, Breeders and Breeder Mothers represent Proliferation, Tormentors and Lacerators represent Pain, Juggernauts and Ravagers represent Destruction, and Pit Fiends and Pit Lords represent Hatred.
- Ruphand: An Apothecary's Adventure: Fiends, beings of evil incarnate that come from the Shadow, are made of the wickedness of humanity and embody specific flaws such as Avarice, which they foster in humans to sustain themselves.
- World of Warcraft: The Sha are negative emotions made manifest on Pandaria, created by the lingering essence of the slain Old God Y'Shaarj. Whenever anger, despair, doubt, fear, hatred, pride, or violence are felt in great amounts on the continent, the emotions come alive and take the form of shadowy demons.
Web Animation
- Hellaverse: The Seven Deadly Sins are a class of demons that each embody and are modeled after the demon princes of Peter Binsfield. They consist of Lucifer (pride), Satan (wrath), Beelzebub (gluttony), Mammon (greed), Asmodeus (lust), Leviathan (envy), and Belphegor (sloth). While the individual demon species each Sin reigns over are not embodiments themselves, they are expected to act out their respective sin in deference. Also, unlike most versions of the sins, Lilith is not depicted as sin-based, instead being Lucifer's Queen and co-ruler of the Pride Ring.
Web Comics
- Sins puts the embodiments of the Seven Deadly Sins front and center.
Web Original
- Mortasheen: Devilbirds, the demon equivalents of the setting, are avian monsters that each embody a negative emotion, and feed by inducing said emotions in other people. They're broadly divided into three "tiers":
- Common Devilbirds embody the Seven Deadly Sins. The Devilbird of Gluttony, for example, feeds by inducing a hunger so fierce in a bystander that they will eat anything in sight and are then compelled to go back to the Devilbird's nest and vomit up what they've eaten in said Devilbird's mouth, while the Devilbird of Pride is a misshapen horror that psychically forces others to worship and adore it. The Devilbird of Sloth... is so overcome with its negative emotion that it doesn't do anything — harming and exploiting others or even hatching from its egg are far too much work for a creature that is completely slothful.
- Greater Devilbirds embody more abstruse moral and emotional issues, like the Devilbird of Ignorance, which causes people to forget information that they dislike (starting with the devil's own existence), or the Devilbird of Despair, which spreads dread and depression and can instill suicidal urges if it focuses on a single person. If Devilbird reproduction is "corrupted" by positive emotions, it will produce a bird that feeds on positive emotions... by spreading an extremely addictive hallucinogenic dust.
- The Ultimate Devilbirds are three rare and very powerful varieties — the Devilbird of Lies, a being of unknown origin that mentally dominates its puppets into believing anything it tells them; the Devilbird of Death, produced when all seven basic kinds reproduce together and induces traumatizing visions of one's own death to feed on its victims' fear; and the Devilbird of Knowledge, another kind of unknown origin that increases the intelligence of others while inducing intense cynicism and nihilism.
- Whateley Universe: Sara Waite is initially theorized to be half human, half demon of Lust. Demons of other Sins are never mentioned, and it's never made clear whether Sins are exclusively associated with fallen angels, given that "demon" tends to be a blanket term for the servants of Satan and the children of Yog-Sothoth, Shub-Niggurath (who turns out to be Sara's grandmother), and Azathoth (who is a very, very distant ancestor of Sara's on her mother's side).
