Satan

Satan, Prince of Darkness and the notorious rival of God, is one of Christianity's most fascinating characters. Representing all sin and evil in the world, Satan tries to corrupt people down the Left Hand Path and ultimately away from God's grace. He is often the symbol or mascot for evil and wickedness in the Western world. Satan is most commonly described as residing in the deepest pits of Hell, punishing sinners to an eternity of damnation and pain.

According to Christianity, if you simply believe in Jesus, all of your sins are resolved, rendering Satan's work useless. Because of this, Satan is regarded as one of religion's biggest failures and crybabies.

According to Westboro Baptist Church minister Fred Phelps (who shits pure insanity), everyone not a part of his Church is going to Hell, especially Jews and homosexuals, who go to Super-Hell. It's hard to believe he's right, but it does prove that at least Satan's influence is being acknowledged. Let's take a look at some of Satan's biggest successes. Now guess which ones aren't considered evil any more?

Sorry, Satan. One out of four is an F. You've failed at being evil, the only thing you do.

Satan's backstory is that he was once an angel named Lucifer. However, he questioned God's authority, apparently missing the "Seriously, don't question God's authority, he doesn't fuck around" memo that had just made the rounds. Being an eye for an eye sort of guy, God sent him to spend eternity as Hell's landlord. The demotion was the first of Satan's many embarrassing failures.

Being the first and most gifted PR agent, Satan then spun his story into a cautionary tale that's basic message was, "Never question authority ever." Many people found this argument convincing, and use it to this day, despite some pretty strong evidence to the contrary.

However, even though Satan was a spectacular failure religiously, no other figure has captured the West's popular imagination to the degree that Satan has, besides Christopher Walken. Horror movies often revolve around him and his minions. Metal music frequently makes references to Satan through lyrical content, album covers and trying to achieve an "evil" sound through heavy guitars and throaty vocals. Satan is even a recurring character on South Park and inspired the entire concept of the CW show Reaper.

Influence on Film and TV

Satan trying unsuccessfully to tempt teenage boys to Hell.

Satan is one of TV's most popular characters. In South Park, he is depicted as being plump and very spoiled. He is in love with Saddam Hussein, but it is an abusive relationship and Satan later dumps him. He is perhaps best remembered on the show as being the world's best party-thrower. The TV series Reaper is based around the concept that Satan is a devilishly handsome man whose reign over Hell has seen some escaped souls. He makes deals with people in exchange for their souls and a lifetime of service trying to recover those who escaped. These people are called Reapers and probably have the coolest job ever. "Me, oh yeah I'm just a bounty hunter for Satan because he isn't badass enough to catch escaped souls."

Chugga chugga chugga chaaaaaaaang!

Satan is depicted as the ultimate guitar king in Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny and the famous horror movie The Omen revolves around Satan's son, Damien. Should've used protection Satan! You can't just let your fiery demoncock fornicate freely! Whenever you do, you seem to doom humanity a little more. The Adam Sandler vehicle Little Nicky also revolved around Satan because that film was Hell. The famous horror film The Exorcist depicts an incident in which the Devil posses the soul of a young girl named Regan and makes her do some fucked up shit. Widely regarded as the scariest film of all time, The Exorcist remains one of the most successful interpretations of Satan in movies, grossing over $400,000,000 worldwide, unadjusted for inflation.

Influence on Music Heavy Metal

Iced Earth's Burnt Offerings depicts the look on Satan's face when his new kitty arrived.

Satan's influence on heavy metal is perhaps his greatest infiltration of popular culture. Iron Maiden's seminal metal record The Number of the Beast made several references to 666 and nearly single-handedly gave metal the association with Satan. The entire genre of Black Metal is in debt to Satan as nearly all of their lyrical content is praising him or cursing at God. Even the trademarked "death growl" vocal delivery was developed in an attempt for the lead singer to sound like Satan. Dio's debut album Holy Diver featured Satan chaining up a priest and presumably drowning him. Iced Earth, a power-thrash metal band from Florida depicts Satan on the covers of their albums Iced Earth and Burnt Offerings. The latter album features a 16-minute metal opus titled "Dante's Inferno," named after the classic poem that first described the circles of Hell.

Satan as a playable character in Guitar Hero III. Noted for his badass sunglasses.

Influence on Other Stuff

Satan's most important contribution to logo design.

Besides film, TV and music, Satan has had little influence elsewhere, but influence nonetheless. His story of his fall from grace and turn to evil has been the subject of many books, most notably Dante's Divine Comedy. In 1971, Satan himself was actually sued by a man named Gerald Mayo who accused the Devil of sending demons to Earth to disrupt his life. Mayo lost the case (Fucking SATAN is the defendant) but the shocking part is why: The court upheld the existence of Satan but told Mayo that the probability of Satan being present in the geographic region of Washington, D.C. was very low.

An anthropomorphized version of the Devil was also chosen as the open-source operating system FreeBSD's official mascot. This gave consumers the impression that open-source software was Satanic and as a result, Microsoft Windows enjoys an 89 percent market share.

THANKS A FUCKING TON SATAN.

Satanism is a religion based around the worship of Satan or the acceptance of core human nature: carnage and sinful desires. Apart from Satan, much of the religion's philosophical basis comes from the work of occultists and philosophers like Aleister Crowley, Ayn Rand and Friedrich Nietzsche . Apparently, only really intelligent people can join the Church of Satan because the first Satanic Sin is stupidity. It's probably one of the most terrifying religions you can be a part of. Just look at the author of The Satanic Bible and creator of the Church of Satan:

How could he be anything else?

Follow the author of this topic on Twitter: @alexfurlin