Diabolical pacts in fiction
In print
* The Malleus Maleficarum has plenty of allusions to these pacts, especially concerning women. It was considered that all witches and warlocks had made a pact with some demon, especially with Satan.
* In many variants of the Aarne-Thompson type 361, of which Bearskin is an instance, the hero escapes, but the devil still comes off the better: the heroine's sisters have killed themselves, and he has gained two souls instead of one.
* The story of Theophilus of Adana, a saint who made a deal with the devil, predates the Faust legend and is a likely partial inspiration.
* The compact between human hubris and diabolical intelligence raises the old tale to its cultural peak in Goethe's Faust.
* Johnny Blaze made a deal with Mephisto, a demon in the Marvel Universe who is often mistaken for Satan. In exchange for his soul, Mephisto promised to save his adopted father. This led to Blaze becoming Ghost Rider.
Other works depicting deals with the Devil include:
* The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe.
* Faust, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
* Faust, opera by Charles Gounod.
* Mefistofele, opera by Arrigo Boito.
* Mephisto, novel by Klaus Mann
* The Master and Margarita, novel by Mikhail Bulgakov
* "The Devil and Tom Walker", a short story by Washington Irving
* "The Devil and Daniel Webster", short story based on the Washington Irving story; by Steven Vincent Benét.
* "Pan Twardowski", poem by Adam Mickiewicz
* "Gimmicks Three", by Isaac Asimov
* "That Hell-Bound Train", by Robert Bloch
* Rosemary's Baby, novel by Ira Levin
* Jack Faust, novel by Michael Swanwick
* Damn Yankees, musical theatre production and film by George Abbott and Stanley Donen
* "The Bet", by Anton Chekhov
* The Lost Kings, by Andrew Reimann
* Memnoch the Devil, by Anne Rice
* Young Goodman Brown, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
* The Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde A man makes a pact with the devil. His portrait shall grow older, but he shall not.
In film
* The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941)
* Doctor Faustus (1967): a film based on Christopher Marlowe's The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, starring Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor and Andreas Teuber.
* Bedazzled (1967)
* Rosemary's Baby (1968): Guy Woodhouse offers his son to the devil for wealth and success.
* Phantom of the Paradise (1974)
* Crossroads (1986)
* Angel Heart (1987)
* The Little Mermaid (1989): Ariel, the little mermaid, trades her voice to Ursula, the sea witch, for a chance to interact with humans.
* The Day of the Beast (1995):
* The Devil's Advocate (1997): A Florida attorney begins working for a law firm that is run by the Devil.
* H-E Double Hockey Sticks (1999): A devil-in-training convinces a rising hockey star to sell him his soul for the Stanley Cup.
* Bedazzled (2000)
* O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
* Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005): Anakin Skywalker turns to the Dark Side to prevent his wife's death in childbirth.
* Tenacious D in: The Pick of Destiny (2006)
* Ghost Rider (2007): A young stunt rider sells his soul to the demon Mephisto to cure his father's cancer.
* Faust (1926) Faust makes a pact with the devil to save the town from plague, with disastrous results. Directed by F.W. Murnau, starring Gösta Ekman and Camilla Horn.
In music
* "Devil Went Down to Georgia" by The Charlie Daniels Band, a song about a fiddle contest between the Devil and boy named Johnny from Georgia.
* "Titties and Beer" by Frank Zappa
* "Friend of the Devil" by The Grateful Dead
* "Brother Jacob" by Head East
* "Deal with the Devil" by Godless Wicked Creeps
* "Deal with the Devil" by Mötley Crüe
* "In the Presence of Enemies" by Dream Theater
* "Cross Road Blues" by Robert Johnson
* "Deal with the Devil" by Judas Priest
* Tribute and Beezleboss By Tenacious D have the band make a deal with the devil to a rock off.
* "Pace with Lucifer" by Coven
* "Witch of Berkeley" by Inkubus Sukkubus based on an older legend
* "The Small Print" by Muse, previously called "Action Faust"
* "Spanish Train" by Chris de Burgh.
In television
* The Collector, about a former monk who sold his soul to the Devil in the 1300s.
* Multiple episodes of The Twilight Zone involved sales of character's souls to the devil or to demons.
* In Star Trek: Voyager, there is one episode where the Borg are fighting a war against a species of a different dimension. Janeway realizes she must make an alliance with the Borg, and in her own words she 'makes a deal with the devil'.
* In The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror IV", Homer makes a pact with the devil for a donut. He ends up keeping his soul as he had given it to Marge in a love letter.
* The TV series G vs E featured several people who made deals with the forces of evil. These people were known collectively as "Faustians".
* In Supernatural episode "All Hell Breaks Loose, Part 2", Dean makes a pact with the red-eyed Demon to resuscitate his brother.
* In Supernatural episode "In My Time Of Dying", John Winchester makes a pact with the Yellow-Eyed Demon (Azazel) to bring his son, Dean out of a coma which he has no hope of recovering from.
* In Metalocalypse episode "Bluesklok", the band is told to make a deal with the devil to get blues-playing skill.
* In Reaper, about a young man, Sam Oliver, whose parents sold his soul to the Devil to save the father from a serious illness. He must work as Satan's bounty hunter, or his mother's soul is forfeit.
* In the third season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the primary villain was the mayor of Sunnydale, who had ascended to power as the mayor in preparation for either ascending to immortal demonic status himself or losing his power and soul, after founding the town 100 years previously as a place for demons to feed.
* In the Futurama episode "The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings", Fry makes a deal with the Robot Devil so that Fry can play the holophonor. The Robot devil asks for nothing in return, apparently just hoping to use the deal as an excuse to torment an innocent robot. When his penchant for random torment (and, ironically, his penchant for irony) leads to his own hands being given to Fry, the Robot Devil makes a deal with Bender that causes him to deafen Leela, then a deal with Leela to give back her hearing in exchange for her hand in marriage, all in a ploy to get his own hands back. Bender infamously remarks in this episode that "you may have to make a metaphorical deal with the devil, and by devil, I mean Robot Devil, and by metaphorical, I mean get your coat."
* In The Monkees episode, The Devil and Peter Tork Peter finds himself inadvertently trading his soul with a pawn shop proprietor, who's really Mr. S. Zero who has come to purchase another soul, for the ability to play the harp. The other Monkees had to engage in a court battle to save Peter's soul and convince Zero that Peter doesn't need Zero's magic to play the harp. To prove this, Zero took his magic away from Peter and made the harp appear. With the urging of his bandmates, Peter went to the harp and played "I Wanna Be Free" to save his soul and send Zero back to Hell empty-handed.
In print
* The Malleus Maleficarum has plenty of allusions to these pacts, especially concerning women. It was considered that all witches and warlocks had made a pact with some demon, especially with Satan.
* In many variants of the Aarne-Thompson type 361, of which Bearskin is an instance, the hero escapes, but the devil still comes off the better: the heroine's sisters have killed themselves, and he has gained two souls instead of one.
* The story of Theophilus of Adana, a saint who made a deal with the devil, predates the Faust legend and is a likely partial inspiration.
* The compact between human hubris and diabolical intelligence raises the old tale to its cultural peak in Goethe's Faust.
* Johnny Blaze made a deal with Mephisto, a demon in the Marvel Universe who is often mistaken for Satan. In exchange for his soul, Mephisto promised to save his adopted father. This led to Blaze becoming Ghost Rider.
Other works depicting deals with the Devil include:
* The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe.
* Faust, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
* Faust, opera by Charles Gounod.
* Mefistofele, opera by Arrigo Boito.
* Mephisto, novel by Klaus Mann
* The Master and Margarita, novel by Mikhail Bulgakov
* "The Devil and Tom Walker", a short story by Washington Irving
* "The Devil and Daniel Webster", short story based on the Washington Irving story; by Steven Vincent Benét.
* "Pan Twardowski", poem by Adam Mickiewicz
* "Gimmicks Three", by Isaac Asimov
* "That Hell-Bound Train", by Robert Bloch
* Rosemary's Baby, novel by Ira Levin
* Jack Faust, novel by Michael Swanwick
* Damn Yankees, musical theatre production and film by George Abbott and Stanley Donen
* "The Bet", by Anton Chekhov
* The Lost Kings, by Andrew Reimann
* Memnoch the Devil, by Anne Rice
* Young Goodman Brown, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
* The Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde A man makes a pact with the devil. His portrait shall grow older, but he shall not.
In film
* The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941)
* Doctor Faustus (1967): a film based on Christopher Marlowe's The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, starring Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor and Andreas Teuber.
* Bedazzled (1967)
* Rosemary's Baby (1968): Guy Woodhouse offers his son to the devil for wealth and success.
* Phantom of the Paradise (1974)
* Crossroads (1986)
* Angel Heart (1987)
* The Little Mermaid (1989): Ariel, the little mermaid, trades her voice to Ursula, the sea witch, for a chance to interact with humans.
* The Day of the Beast (1995):
* The Devil's Advocate (1997): A Florida attorney begins working for a law firm that is run by the Devil.
* H-E Double Hockey Sticks (1999): A devil-in-training convinces a rising hockey star to sell him his soul for the Stanley Cup.
* Bedazzled (2000)
* O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
* Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005): Anakin Skywalker turns to the Dark Side to prevent his wife's death in childbirth.
* Tenacious D in: The Pick of Destiny (2006)
* Ghost Rider (2007): A young stunt rider sells his soul to the demon Mephisto to cure his father's cancer.
* Faust (1926) Faust makes a pact with the devil to save the town from plague, with disastrous results. Directed by F.W. Murnau, starring Gösta Ekman and Camilla Horn.
In music
* "Devil Went Down to Georgia" by The Charlie Daniels Band, a song about a fiddle contest between the Devil and boy named Johnny from Georgia.
* "Titties and Beer" by Frank Zappa
* "Friend of the Devil" by The Grateful Dead
* "Brother Jacob" by Head East
* "Deal with the Devil" by Godless Wicked Creeps
* "Deal with the Devil" by Mötley Crüe
* "In the Presence of Enemies" by Dream Theater
* "Cross Road Blues" by Robert Johnson
* "Deal with the Devil" by Judas Priest
* Tribute and Beezleboss By Tenacious D have the band make a deal with the devil to a rock off.
* "Pace with Lucifer" by Coven
* "Witch of Berkeley" by Inkubus Sukkubus based on an older legend
* "The Small Print" by Muse, previously called "Action Faust"
* "Spanish Train" by Chris de Burgh.
In television
* The Collector, about a former monk who sold his soul to the Devil in the 1300s.
* Multiple episodes of The Twilight Zone involved sales of character's souls to the devil or to demons.
* In Star Trek: Voyager, there is one episode where the Borg are fighting a war against a species of a different dimension. Janeway realizes she must make an alliance with the Borg, and in her own words she 'makes a deal with the devil'.
* In The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror IV", Homer makes a pact with the devil for a donut. He ends up keeping his soul as he had given it to Marge in a love letter.
* The TV series G vs E featured several people who made deals with the forces of evil. These people were known collectively as "Faustians".
* In Supernatural episode "All Hell Breaks Loose, Part 2", Dean makes a pact with the red-eyed Demon to resuscitate his brother.
* In Supernatural episode "In My Time Of Dying", John Winchester makes a pact with the Yellow-Eyed Demon (Azazel) to bring his son, Dean out of a coma which he has no hope of recovering from.
* In Metalocalypse episode "Bluesklok", the band is told to make a deal with the devil to get blues-playing skill.
* In Reaper, about a young man, Sam Oliver, whose parents sold his soul to the Devil to save the father from a serious illness. He must work as Satan's bounty hunter, or his mother's soul is forfeit.
* In the third season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the primary villain was the mayor of Sunnydale, who had ascended to power as the mayor in preparation for either ascending to immortal demonic status himself or losing his power and soul, after founding the town 100 years previously as a place for demons to feed.
* In the Futurama episode "The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings", Fry makes a deal with the Robot Devil so that Fry can play the holophonor. The Robot devil asks for nothing in return, apparently just hoping to use the deal as an excuse to torment an innocent robot. When his penchant for random torment (and, ironically, his penchant for irony) leads to his own hands being given to Fry, the Robot Devil makes a deal with Bender that causes him to deafen Leela, then a deal with Leela to give back her hearing in exchange for her hand in marriage, all in a ploy to get his own hands back. Bender infamously remarks in this episode that "you may have to make a metaphorical deal with the devil, and by devil, I mean Robot Devil, and by metaphorical, I mean get your coat."
* In The Monkees episode, The Devil and Peter Tork Peter finds himself inadvertently trading his soul with a pawn shop proprietor, who's really Mr. S. Zero who has come to purchase another soul, for the ability to play the harp. The other Monkees had to engage in a court battle to save Peter's soul and convince Zero that Peter doesn't need Zero's magic to play the harp. To prove this, Zero took his magic away from Peter and made the harp appear. With the urging of his bandmates, Peter went to the harp and played "I Wanna Be Free" to save his soul and send Zero back to Hell empty-handed.
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