The sto­ries in the Bible have been told in many ways, not least through film. Among the many cin­e­mat­ic adap­ta­tions of Chris­tian­i­ty’s holy book, none comes to mind that ends with freeze-frame title cards explain­ing the lat­er fate of each char­ac­ter, in the man­ner of Ani­mal House, Amer­i­can Graf­fi­ti, or Good­fel­las. This is sur­pris­ing, since that device could do much to sat­is­fy our curios­i­ty about so many sec­ondary Bib­li­cal fig­ures. Take the twelve dis­ci­ples of Jesus Christ, whose lives Hochela­ga cre­ator Tom­mie Trelawny takes as his sub­ject in the new video above. Be warned: things did­n’t end par­tic­u­lar­ly well for most of them.

Peter, who “has to be one of the most stud­ied fig­ures in his­to­ry,” seems to have end­ed his days in Rome. Chris­tian­i­ty’s rapid spread there in the first cen­tu­ry AD, even­tu­al­ly brought about a crack­down by the rul­ing class. The emper­or Nero blamed the fire of 64 on Chris­tians, and Peter, now known as Saint Peter, was among the vic­tims of the result­ing per­se­cu­tion. Judas, the betray­er of Jesus, “remains the most con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure in all of Chris­tian­i­ty,” though ques­tions about his moti­va­tions have gone with­out defin­i­tive answers. We do know, how­ev­er, that remorse even­tu­al­ly over­took him, lead­ing him to take his own life in Akel­dama, or the “field of blood” — and if you believe Dante, he now resides in the ninth cir­cle of Hell.

Trelawny gives the title of most under­rat­ed to the one whose skep­ti­cism about Jesus’ return from death has guar­an­teed him his own eter­nal life through the expres­sion “doubt­ing Thomas.” (As with Peter and Judas, his iden­ti­ty was solid­i­fied by a Car­avag­gio paint­ing.) Accord­ing to cer­tain sto­ries, he also trav­eled the far­thest of any of the dis­ci­ples: far enough to fol­low exist­ing Roman spice routes and found the church of the Saint Thomas Chris­tians in Ker­ala, India. The not-quite-as-wide­ly known but nev­er­the­less high­ly impor­tant Andrew made trav­els of his own, going to Scythia, and from there to Greece. After his even­tu­al cap­ture and cru­ci­fix­ion, his holy relics were scat­tered far and wide: even to Scot­land, so the leg­end has it, home of the Uni­ver­si­ty of St. Andrews. The St. Andrews’ Cross appears as the main design ele­ment of Scot­land’s nation­al flag, as well as a part of the Union Jack.

In these and oth­er ways, the lega­cies of the dis­ci­ples con­tin­ue to man­i­fest in famil­iar ways through­out the West­ern (and, occa­sion­al­ly, non-west­ern) world. After telling the sto­ries of the remain­ing eight, from John to Bartholomew to Simon the Zealot, Trelawny con­sid­ers the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a mnemon­ic rhyme for their fates. Alas, he admits, “I’m still try­ing to think of what goes with ‘flayed alive by Arme­ni­ans.’ ” Being a dis­ci­ple of Jesus turns out, for the most part, to have been a call­ing with a very low sur­vival rate indeed. But then, in ear­ly Chris­tian­i­ty, mar­tyr­dom was a holy act, a demon­stra­tion of devo­tion in imi­ta­tion of the Mes­si­ah him­self — and an ele­ment sure to make most any dis­ci­ple biopic a grue­some view­ing expe­ri­ence.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Real Sto­ry of East­er: How We Got from the First East­er in the Bible to Bun­nies, Eggs & Choco­late

The Gnos­tic Gospels: An Intro­duc­tion to the For­bid­den Teach­ings of Jesus

Why Real Bib­li­cal Angels Are Creepy, Beast­ly, and Hard­ly Angel­ic

How Our Depic­tion of Jesus Changed Over 2,000 Years and What He May Have Actu­al­ly Looked Like

How Many Lives Does God Take in the Bible: An Inves­ti­ga­tion into a Sur­pris­ing­ly High Body Count

What Makes Caravaggio’s The Tak­ing of Christ a Time­less, Great Paint­ing?

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.