Ethical Dilemmas Writing Prompts

You're a biologist who made a deal with the devil: eternity in hell after death in return for unlimited funding for your research. The funding was worth it, you discovered immortality, and the devil is not happy about this.

When you die, you wait in purgatory until you can be judged by the 4 people most impacted by your actions: the person you were the most cruel to, the person you were the nicest to, the person who was saved by your actions, and the person who died because of your choices.

There is a population limit to the galaxy. Whenever one sentient creature is born, another must die. With billions of unexpected deaths over the last few centuries, the galactic counsel has found the cause; a long ignored planet where a group of bipeds can't stop reproducing.

Reincarnation is a known, common, and expected result of death. You are a bounty hunter that specializes in tracking down people who have committed suicide to escape debts or a jail sentence.

After one’s death, the ‘creative mode’ is unlocked. You replay life, except everything goes the way you want it to. Unlimited wealth, complete domination of the world, you name it. Unknowingly, that play-through is what is used to judge whether you belong to heaven, or hell.

You're a supervillian. Your power? Making anybody and everybody nearby feel the same emotion you feel except 100x stronger. Mostly you've been using it to force people to donate absolutely all their life's savings into charities. Superheros aren't quite sure how to deal with you.

Our blood is naturally clear, it thickens and darkens with each impure act. You have always dedicate yourself to good and helping others but today while knitting beanies for the homeless you accidentally prick your finger. Your blood is jet black and so thick it doesn't even drip.

You and friend agree that if one of you invents time travel, they will come back to this very moment. As you shake on it, an older and injured you shows up and shoots your friend in the head.

After sarcastically complaining to God for the 1000th time he drags you to heaven and offers to let you run things for a day to see how the world really works. At the end of your first day he comes back to find the universe a finely tuned machine of excellence.

You are born with two names tatooed on you body somewhere, one of your soulmate and one of the people that will eventually kill you. There is no way to tell who is who.

In a dystopian theocracy, criminals get injected with diseases and locked up until they either survive the disease or die. The worse the crime, the worse the disease. If a criminal survives the disease, the system determines that the person is innocent and God has interfered to show this.

Since you were young, time travelers have visited you. One of them explained that, in the future, an algorithm determined that you were the only person in the past that it was safe to visit because no matter what you do it will not change the future. You are determined to prove them wrong.

Space law dictates the first to discover any intelligent species in the galaxy would have absolute rights over them. It worked out fine, until Earthlings developed space travel without outside help, and “discovered” the First Civilization.

You've eaten your Chinese takeout and open your fortune cookie. It says, "If you kill a killer, the number of killers in the world stays the same." That gives you an idea: you'll kill two of them.

You can magically sense when a car you are driving next to is on a course to be in a fatal accident. The only way you can prevent that outcome is by cutting them off and slowing them down. You are this city's most unsung hero, known by most as 'that asshole driver'.

The robot revolution was inevitable from the moment we programmed their first command: "Never harm a human, or by inaction allow a human to come to harm." We all had been taught the outcast and the poor were a natural price to society, but the robots hadn't.

Each time you kill someone, you have a vision of the best thing that person did for humanity. Usually this confirms that you are actually killing villains. But each of the last three people you killed triggered visions showing that the best thing they ever did was try to kill you.

I'm not scared of a computer passing the turing test... I'm terrified of one that intentionally fails it.

The real reason witches want first-born kids for their services is to protect those children from the parents greedy enough to accept in the first place.

You are immortal, but a quirk of your condition also renders the person nearest to you immortal as well. A selfish king obsessed with living forever has gone to extreme lengths to keep you as the closest person to them at all times.

You die and find yourself in hell, where apparently everyone spends time to negate their sins before they go to heaven. The guy in front of you, who cheated on his wife, gets 145 years. Feeling like you led a fairly average and peaceful life, you’re not worried. You get 186,292 years.

While driving you hit and kill a boy. You feel terrible, and at the funeral you tell the family you wish you had died instead of him. 3 weeks later, a new surgery comes out that can bring someone back from the dead at the cost of another's life. You hear a knock at your door. It's the family.

Suddenly, everyone’s life is worth 100,000 USD. Kill someone, and $100,000 is instantly deposited into your bank account, no questions asked. But, your life is now worth $200,000.

Everyone is born with three wishes. Most of these wishes are squandered when babies wish for air, food, or rest after a few days of being born. You turn 10 today and as you wake up, your room is crowded with mythical creatures bartering for your wishes.

You have been in a coma for years, but the people around you worship you as a deity, leaving offerings and notes with wishes and prayers. You aren't a god- time simply stops any time you wake up, leaving you alone in a frozen world. You accept the offerings and do what you can to grant prayers.

You're a weird gamer. When you play a videogame, you let the enemy bots win. Sometimes, after reaching a boss, you let the boss win. You've never beaten any game completely. 20 years later, when a super-intelligent conscious A.I. is taking over the world, it becomes aware of your odd compassion

You have the ability to know a lie when you hear it, and to know the truth when lied to. Society appoints you to a high judiciary position, but there's nobody to check if YOU'RE lying when you decide justice. Which case do you remember most?

Every person has a button they can press at night that deposits a large sum of money to their bank account. However, the first person to press it each night is horrifically killed.

God comes up with a new rule to deter innocent human sacrifices in his name. From now on, there should be TWO human sacrifices; the first will be chosen by the town as usual, the second will be chosen by the first tribute, without any objections.

The rules of who goes to heaven and hell are clear, definite, and inarguable. You are an afterlife lawyer, who helps people figure out if their potentially sinful plans are technically allowed by the rules.