Songfacts®:

• This dark love ballad finds Havok unleashing some inner angst as he proclaims to an ex-lover:
  
  I faced destruction and you just killed me and walked away
  I gave my heart to the cruel, now it will not beat again
  I hope you do
  I hope you suffer
  I hope you do
  Just like I suffered
  
  The song also contains a melodic breakdown in which Havok exorcises some demons.
• Guitarist Jade Puget came to Havok with the majority of the body of the song's music written. The vocalist recalled to Loudwire: "[H]e came and sat down with me and I read the top line to the verse and we just weren't happy with the chorus and we kept putting it aside and coming back to it and altering the chorus. Jade would go home sometimes and three weeks later he'd come back and be like, 'Oh, I worked on the chorus again' and there's almost this new part and we ended up where we were at but it took us awhile for us to realize that."
• The cinematic video was directed by the sibling duo of Brad and Brian Palmer for the Surround production company, and shot in black and white with gray tones. The clip took just one day to film, and was shot in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. It features Havok clad in a black leather jacket with metal studs on the back forming an upside-down cross. The singer also is wearing an inverted cross hanging from his neck.
• This song features a piano part, which is unusual for AFI, but not unique (the Sing The Sorrow track, "Silver And Cold" also includes some tinkling of the ivories). Guitarist Jade Puget explained to Noisecreep: "On the verse of that song[,] which is a big part of the song[,] there's no guitar at all, it's just piano and the sound in the background is actually a distorted brass, like a brass section. I was trying to create some layers that are a little different, left of center from what we're doing and take my guitar completely out it. It lends to spaciousness and really creates a bed for [Havok's] vocal to sit where it's not … [because] guitars can take up a lot of space, so he has a lot of space to do that dynamic vocal."
• "I Hope You Suffer" was the lead single from AFI's ninth album, Burials. The angry, angst-ridden song reflects the themes of the album, which, according to Davey Havok, include "betrayal, cruelty, weakness, anxiety, panic – deep and slow – despair, injury and loss."
  
  He added that the songs on Burials are "shamefully honest and resolutely unforgiving."