I'm writing a story where this guy, Simon, is the Grim Reaper. He's not an evil villain or anything, he's just basically the CEO of the underworld. Near the beginning of the story, he gets kicked out and sent to Earth. He then was to find his way back, because the guy who replaced him is an evil villain. He's releasing the dead back onto Earth and all kinds of crazy stupid stuff like that. My problem is, I have no idea how to get him kicked out. He's the leader down there, so I don't know who would kick him out or why. I can't find other things that are similar to go off of, either. In all the stories of gods becoming mortals, they aren't the king god. The king god usually kicks them out (Marvel's Thor movies, Rick Riordan's Trials of Apollo). Any ideas?
Seems pretty simple - Evil Villain engineered a coup because he was power hungry and thought Simon wasn't doing a good enough job as CEO. You'll always find people willing to follow someone like EV because they're power hungry but weak, because they can't say no, because they're afraid, because they're trouble makers, because they like seeing drama without being at the centre of it... the reasons go on and on. I don't know about the actual mechanics of how EV gets Simon out of the Underworld, because it depends on the rules you've made up for your world. I'm sure you can work something out.
Grim Reapers, they have to go and grimly reap. While hooded skellybob and scythe is up top collecting souls, the evil scoundrel below seizes opportunity to sit in the empowering magic CEO chair. Sheriff Nottingham/Prince John stylee.
Meet Joe Black, but when he got back after his vacation (yeah, I know Joe's vacation only took a fraction of his attention, but run with it) he discovered that his second in command had engineered a hostile takeover of Hades. Just need a bit of Bill Parrish and a bit of Joe, and you're golden.
And this is why my death put in place a warden of hell, LOL. Got to avoid those hostile takeovers. How about the devil tries to replace death so that he could come to Earth with his minion! So you can have like a shadow villain in the story, one that's behind the scenes controlling the strings of the visible villain!
For a comparative novel, I might suggest Sten Nadolny's The God of Impertinence. https://books.google.ca/books/about/The_God_of_Impertinence.html?id=4YjgAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y&hl=en "Apollo channel surfing, Hermes discovering french fries and the trickster god taming the gods of war" (The New York Times Book Review)The ancient gods are still among us! After 2,187 years in chains, Hermes -- the fun-loving god of stolen kisses, erotic freedom, turmoil, and thievery -- is freed. He soon sets out to resurrect the long-forgotten virtues of curiosity, imagination, humor...and mischief.Finding the modern age strange and confusing, Hermes catches up with the cultural changes of the last two millenniums by tapping the minds of everyone from graffiti artists to brain specialists. He soon learns that disempowered Zeus has retired to play golf in Missouri and that Hephaestus, the neurotic and cranky god of volcanoes, is plotting the demise of gods and mankind alike. Hermes needs all the impertinence and roguery he can muster for the game of divine poker that will decide the fate of the world, in this swift and amusing fable for the end of the millennium." If you rpremise is that he's the CEo of the underworld... even a CEO is answerable to shareholders. Basically, he's the chief driving force, but if his actions disrupt, or are seen to endanger, the business of underworlding, he can be removed. This can be engineered by his competitors, or just be the result of his vision for the company continuing to skew farther from the perceived best direction that the board feels the underworld must take.
