The Fun in Funeral

I'm the kind of guy who laughs at a funeral.
 Can't understand what I mean? You soon will.

—Barenaked Ladies, "One Week"

This trope summarizes all the wacky hijinks that can commonly occur at a Sitcom funeral. It's the comedic flipside of the serious Due to the Dead.

The protagonist will see something in the casket that belongs to them, and must retrieve it without being noticed by the mourners or violating the corpse. This many times will result in the person's watch, bracelet, or cuff link getting snagged on something in the casket (going as far as on the zipper of the deceased.)

Or, he is asked to deliver the eulogy, and struggles because he either barely knew the deceased or hated them intensely.

If the deceased is cremated, dust to dust, Ashes to Crashes. The ashes are just waiting to be spilled, worn, consumed, or disrespected in some way. If it's a particularly black comedy, expect the coffin to be knocked over at some point, and for extra Dead Baby Comedy points, the corpse to be abused in some fashion.

Then of course there's always the "missing corpse/casket" situation, which often has the guest of honor rolling out of control down a street, dodging cars, fruit carts, sheets of glass and other obstacles. And then there's the instance where a main character is declared "dead" to protect him from a bloodthirsty revenge seeker, with matters sometimes becoming complicated when the villain discovers that his supposedly dead enemy is still very much alive.

Expect plenty of Black Comedy to be involved.

Or maybe the characters will play an Of Corpse He's Alive. This is the generally the opposite of the heartwrenching Meaningful Funeral, but there can be some overlap. Compare And There Was Much Rejoicing or Speak Ill of the Dead, where the non-dead characters may indulge in this.

Examples of The Fun in Funeral include:

Anime

  • In the filler "Laughing Shino" arc of Naruto, the title character accompanies Shino to act as the representative for a man whose father has just died. If he / his representative laughs at the funeral, he loses his inheritance, and he knows his relatives will do everything in their power to make this happen. Shino is the obvious choice for a stand-in, but he's poisoned by a drug that causes him to laugh uncontrollably en route. Naruto has to take his place, and has a much harder time trying to ignore the antics of everyone else at the funeral. However, the funeral wasn't real, and the supposedly dead guy just wanted people to lighten up by making them make others laugh.


Comic Books

  • In one issue of X-Men, Mystique has to scatter the ashes of Destiny, her friend and implied romantic partner. While most of the issue is emotional and introspective, at the end, Mystique declares that Destiny and her powers of future sight will finally be out of her hair forever, and tosses the ashes off a ship at the time/place specified in Destiny's will -- at which point, the wind picks up and blows them right back into her face. She collapses in helpless laughter.
  • In a Hellblazer flashback scene where Constantine is presumed dead, the, er, unconventional clergyman Rick the Vic begins his eulogy with the biblical quote, "There is no...plan that can succeed against the Lord." He then casually tosses his Bible over his shoulder and says, "Tell that to John Constantine."
  • Occurs offscreen in an issue of Grant Morrison's JLA, where The Joker mentions that he rigged the coffins of some victims of the Injustice Gang to spring their contents into the air during the funeral. Luthor was not amused.
  • In the Deadpool issue Funeral for a Freak, Deadpool, who had died in the previous issue when he turned against the agency he had been working for, was able to attend his own funeral. What made this issue unique was that the entire issue was "Silent", with no dialogue. Deadpool plays various gags on the mourners as a ghost, such as getting a blind woman—Blind Al, for those familiar—to fall into his grave. He eventually crosses to the afterlife, where Death is waiting to seduce him, but is returned to life before anything occurs.
  • Alison Bechtel (of Dykes to Watch Out For) has one book which renames funeral home to "Fun Home" as the title.

Film

  • The Comedy Of Terrors embodies this trope. such instances include: Vincent Price and Peter Lorre secretly recycling their only coffin by dumping the body into the grave sped up and set to piano music, or Joyce Jameson caterwalling "he is not dead but sleepeth" (and the guest of honor isn't really dead), her singing so bad that even the cat turns away in disgust.
  • This trope is also seen in the movie Amazon Women on the Moon, in which a grieving widow watches her dead husband's funeral turn into a "celebrity roast", and she is ultimately compelled to give a classic roast-style speech (the deceased's "rebuttal") as her eulogy.
    • This funeral is so much fun that the last scene of the sketch shows the funeral home's sign, telling passers-by that the funeral has been held over several weeks.
  • Clerks had a similar sketch, though in the original movie it was unseen. It was later animated in the Clerks the Animated Series style, and rather hilarious.
  • In Scary Movie 3 George mistakenly believe "wake" to mean the deceased is alive again and takes her out of the coffin as such. Mahalik came in later to help his friend when people started attacking George for disturbing the body.

George: Why is there an open casket?
Cindy: George, it's a wake.
George: She's alive! Sue, your teacher's alive!
Cindy: No George, she's dead!
George: No Brenda! Don't die on me! (starts doing CPR)

  • In an opening scene of Mousehunt, the two protagonists drop their father's casket. It proceeds to slide down the church stairs and bounce their father's body into the air and down an open sewer hole.
  • The entirety of the film Death at a Funeral. As the name would imply.
    • Hijinks include: Alan Tudyk's character gets high on acid because he and his girlfriend thought it was Valium and eventually ends up wandering around naked on the roof, a dwarf crashes the funeral to blackmail the family because he was the closeted patriarch's lover (and characters freak out over the pictures), and a crabby, handicapped old man curses at every chance he gets.
      • And then said old man shits on his bathroom assistant's hand when he sat on it. And he meant to do it.
  • When the Dude and Walter go to scatter Donny's ashes in the ocean in The Big Lebowski, after a fairly-touching - although full of unnecessary references to The Vietnam War - speech from Walter, he scatters the ashes, but the wind is blowing the wrong way, and the Dude ends up covered. Also a subversion, in that immediately after the humorous moment the Dude explodes with rage, calls Walter out for turning the occasion into "a fuckin' travesty" and breaks down, thus turning a slapstick moment into a Tear Jerker almost instantly.
  • Blues Brothers 2000 involved Elwood trying to put the band back together, and finding Alan "Mr. Fabulous" Rubin working as an undertaker. Elwood and Mack prompt a chase through a graveyard as they disrupt a Russian Mafia funeral as part of their blackmailing Mr. Fabulous into rejoining the band. The graveyard is destroyed by the ensuing gunfire, when everyone at the funeral whips out AK-47s.
    • And by 'disrupt', you mean 'talk loud how they're going to rob the valuables off the corpse and sell his penis to med school as soon as the burial is over'.
  • In Revenge of The Pink Panther, most of the world believes that Chief Inspector Clouseau has been killed, including his old supervisor Dreyfus, who had been committed to an asylum because of his murderous hatred for Clouseau. He recovers his sanity and his position upon Clouseau's death, and is asked to eulogize him, to which he ineffectively protests. Dreyfus, holding back his tears, delivers a moving performance—struggling to suppress his laughter. Clouseau sneaks into the burial in disguise and reveals his face to Dreyfus, who falls stunned into the grave.
  • In Mel Brooks's film Life Stinks, Sailor ends up dying. His ashes are scattered ... but the wind blows it back at the mourners. They say goodbye as they dust the ashes off themselves.
    • According to Mel Brooks, this was actually based on true events. One of the film's writers was scattering the ashes of his deceased father and the wind blew the ashes back to the crowd. Despite the circumstances, it was felt that the event was too good not to include in the script and it ended up in the final film.
  • In Hot Shots, Dead Meat ends up dying. (Not a spoiler; they run him through any Death Trope that can apply.) At his funeral, Topper tries to offer some money to his widow... who just hit the lottery, and says she'll blow the cash on hats. Later, their C.O. mistakes the 21-gun salute for an enemy attack... and responds in kind.
I love a good funeral!
—Admiral "Tug" Benson [at said funeral, after throwing a hand grenade]
  • Premonition involves a corpse falling out of its coffin, but this is not supposed to be funny and is in fact used against the protagonist by concerned family members who think she's coming unhinged.
  • In Wedding Crashers, the protagonists' mentor (played by Will Ferrell) replaced "getting women at weddings" with "getting women in funerals". And he brings Owen Wilson along for a demonstration.
  • In Johnny English the titular character chases down a car that's holding a coffin which contains the crown of the British throne, but inadvertently chases down the wrong car after the original car shakes him off. The new car he's following is carrying a corpse to a graveyard for a funeral. Hijinx ensue when he questions the participants about the crown.
  • The cult film Harold and Maude features several darkly comedic funerals. In one notable scene, the procession exits the church just as a parade rounds the corner and marches cheerily by.
  • Entr'acte is an early filmic example made by a bunch of wacky Frenchmen, with a long chase after a runaway coffin and a corpse who ends up standing up and walking off.
  • In Last Action Hero, some dead mobster's body was filled with toxic gas, to kill the mob bosses attending the funeral. Not really funny per se, but the stuff they did to prevent the hit certainly counts.
  • Toys. Appropriately, the deceased (a saint-like toy mogul) seems to be in on the fun.
  • One of the advertisers for the station in UHF is one of these outfits.
  • French black comedy Louise Michel starts with such a funny funeral, in a scene apparently unrelated to the rest of the film (it's supposed to be the funeral of the last Communist, according to the filmmakers...) It's almost silent comedy: the undertaker struggles to get the coffin into the furnace while the family stare at him mournfully and The Internationale plays, he can't get the furnace to start and eventually has to ask the family for a light.
  • The western spoof Support Your Local Sheriff begins with a group of pioneers burying a man named Millard Frymore who joined their travelling party for two days before dropping dead of some unknown disease. Then someone notices gold in Millard's grave, leading to an all-out brawl.
  • Early in Adam Sandler's Mr. Deeds, the funeral for Deeds' wealthy relative (the inheritance from whom forms the movie's premise) takes place, and Deeds insists on making it an open-casket affair - unfortunately the lid of the casket is the only thing preventing the old man's frostbitten body from bending back into the awkward position he was found in...
  • Johnny's singing at his father's wake in Red Roses and Petrol.
  • The Victorian farce The Wrong Box culminates in a chase with a horse-drawn hearse carrying a trunk of ill-gotten money and another hearse with a not-at-all dead family member, which get tangled up with an actual funeral, the party of which holds another family member thought to be dead. Everyone ends up with the wrong hearse and they all converge at the funeral site. Hilarity Ensues.
  • In the Dracula parody Love at First Bite, Drac's coffin accidentally gets switched with that of a deceased black man. The resulting funeral is memorable.
  • In the rock-and-roll comedy Get Crazy, we're introduced to a B.B. King-style blues legend eulogizing a fellow blues man at his funeral in a way that makes the clergyman uncomfortable. Nearly everyone in attendance is a blind blues man, one of whom walks into an open grave.
  • In Man on the Moon, after Andy Kaufman (played by Jim Carrey) found a bit of Gallows Humor in a fake treatment for his cancer, it cuts to his funeral... where he'd, apparently, requested a sing-a-long be performed by those in attendance. A very weird mix of Tear Jerker and The Fun in Funeral ensue.
  • S.O.B. has the Viking funeral scene at the end. A very fitting send off to Felix.
  • Men with Brooms has a brief scene, less than thirty seconds long, of the private funeral service for Coach Foley, by way of introducing Gary Bucyk, a funeral director. What should be a simple cremation service goes awry when:
    • 1) The conveyer belt's motor shorts out, causing 2) the recording of Amazing Freaking Grace to play in reverse, along with 3) Causing the coffin to start moving away from the oven and towards the end of the belt. They try to keep the coffin from falling off the end, only for it to 4) Tip over onto its end, the lid popping open and 5) Coach Foley's body almost falling out, only to be caught by 6) Gary grabbing the Coach by the face and throwing him back in the coffin, only for 7) the belt to start moving the right direction, Gary's coat to get caught in the lid of the coffin when it slams shut, 8) Dragging him onto the conveyer belt with the casket and being dragged towards the oven, all while the grieving family sits and watches, horrified. All of this in a scene that again, lasts less than 30 seconds.
  • The ending of Big Money Hustlas had Big Baby Sweets shooting up a funeral
  • The funeral of the Breather's first victims includes an university band playing downtempo Ode to Joy, black balloons for decoration, cheerleaders with black pom-poms and a principal giving a rousing, optimistic speech with no relation to funeral whatsoever.
  • In Peter Jackson's Braindead, Lionel's mother has been turned into a zombie, forcing him to sneak into the back during the funeral and pump her full of tranquilizers. He succeeds just as they both crash through the door into the service, forcing him to pass it off as a deranged act of grief.
  • The Northern Irish short Crashing The Wake has a man get beer spilled all over his good trousers the night before the funeral so he robs the trousers off the man in the coffin. Once he's found out, he's made to walk to the funeral in his boxers.
  • The Final Destination series is usually serious about funeral, but 5 gets in some laughs when the speaker, the less-than-attentive company manager, is listing off names of the dead and accidentally names a survivor. The other two survivors next to him have some fun at the guy's expense.
  • The end of Thor shows Thor and the other Asgardians having a huge feast, and in The Avengers Thor tells an actually-very-much-alive Loki that they mourned him. At least one person outside the film tried to claim Thor was a Hypocrite because of this, but this was in fact how the Norse honored someone's death, making this a severe case of Did Not Do the Research (see below under Real Life).


Literature

  • In Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series, at least once per book on average, Stephanie's Grandma Mazur wreaks havoc at the local funeral home (she gets quite aggravated by closed caskets, and finds ways to get that lid open). In several instances, either Stephanie or Grandma obtains important information as a result of the funeral home hijinks. They've also burned the place down on one memorable occasion (sort-of accident: Grandma was trying to shoot the baddies, who were planning to kill her and Stephanie. Grandma was apparently not aware those crates stacked against the wall contained ammunition, explosives, etc.).
  • In the Discworld novel Men at Arms, members of the City Watch witness the funeral of a clown, that deteriorates to slapstick. Ritualistic, macabre slapstick devoid of any sense of humor or joy, the defining traits of Discworld clowns. Thoroughly subverts this trope, with a running gag no less.
    • Wizards and witches know when they're expected to die of natural causes, and like to hold "going-away" parties for those who are soon to kick the bucket (like Windle Poons in Reaper Man or Miss Treason in Wintersmith). Think of it as holding the wake a day early, so the deceased get to enjoy the fun too.
  • In Anansi Boys, Charlie gives an eulogy for his father and then realizes he's at the wrong funeral.
    • Anansi would have loved that.
      • Anansi was probably behind that.
  • Cold Sassy Tree: Rucker Blakeslee leaves a note in his will saying that he hates how solemn funerals are, and he wants a party "like them Irishmen have." Despite the objections of several family members, he gets his posthumous party (no doubt partially motivated by the fact that anyone who refuses to follow his wishes will be cut out of his will).
  • The Commissar by Sven Hassel. The funeral of Gregor's unnamed General Ripper superior, whom he served as batman, is more accurately described as "a battle course with all the trimmings." Highlights include the coffin being dropped while carried up a muddy hill in the rain and running down a load of Nazi bigwigs, and the pallbearers being assigned to the Russian front as a result. Gregor mentions that the event was only beaten by the time a bridge collapsed while the funeral party was crossing it, and the coffin went floating into the harbour where it was torpedoed by a U-Boat in the belief that the coffin was some sort of British secret weapon.
  • Fazil Iskander has a story called Old Crooked Arm, about a guy famous for his jokes. He had a friendly competition with his neighbor about who's the best horseman. So, on his deathbed he admitted the neighbor was better, and asked him to leap over his coffin on his horse three times before it's closed. The funeral showed everyone who was the best horseman... after the horse refused to jump.


Live Action TV

  • Murdock orchestrates Hannibal's fake funeral in The A-Team episode, "The Big Squeeze". He stops Face and B.A. at the door and demands to know if they are "friends of the bride, or the groom?" Then he gives a eulogy about how Hannibal (rather, the restaurant owner he was masquerading as) "graced our lives like an avocado salad." He then takes things Up to Eleven by playing a very melancholy version of Take Me Out to the Ballgame on the organ!
    • It's official. When I die, I want Murdock to be in charge of my funeral.
  • The Mary Tyler Moore Show: The classic "funeral" episode, and widely hailed as the funniest sitcom episode ever, is "Chuckles the Clown Bites the Dust." Aired early in the show's sixth season, Chuckles, the host of WJM-TV's children's show, is killed during a freak incident at a circus parade; an elephant goes wild and during the rampage, Chuckles—dressed as a peanut—is caught in the chaos, knocked down and trampled beneath the pachyderm's weight. When the death is announced, Mary had berated her fellow co-workers for taking Chuckles' death seriously and instead laughing at the silly circumstances of his death; "He was dressed as a peanut and the elephant tried to shell him," remarks one. Then, when the funeral takes place, Mary suddenly breaks out in uncontrollable hysterics ... and then the priest presiding tells her that, as a clown, Chuckles would want her to laugh, at which point she starts bawling uncontrollably instead..
  • Family Ties: The third season episode "Auntie Up" features Mallory's favorite aunt, Trudy Harris, dying of a heart attack in the living room. Mallory is deeply saddened, but the family is preoccupied with a garage sale at the house (for Alex's fraternity); a wake is held at the Keatons on the same day as the garage sale, and naturally hilarity ensues. Eventually, everyone is able to take Mallory seriously when she speaks up at the funeral and delivers an emotional eulogy.
  • The Tonight Show: During the early 1980s, Johnny Carson and the show's comedy troupe did a parody of the E.F. Hutton commercials (tagline: "When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen"). The parody ad was set at a funeral visitation, where a young stockbroker is talking with one of the deceased's brothers; as soon as the stockbroker says "E.F. Hutton," all conversation and mourning immediately stops and everyone turns their attention to the gent ... including the deceased guy (Carson), who sits up in his casket to hear what the guy has to say!
  • Happy Days: The fifth-season, two-part episode "Fonzie's Funeral" had the Cunninghams stage a fake funeral for Fonzie to put him into protection from a mob whose leader, The Candyman, is wanted for robbery, money laundering, extortion, and counterfeiting (after Fonzie had gone to the police with $100 bills found in a hearse he was repairing). At Fonzie's "funeral" visitation, series' regulars and memorable guests saying their "farewells," and "Fonzie's mother" (Fonzie in drag) comforts the survivors. (The "funeral" allows the Cunninghams time to hatch a plan to catch The Candyman and his goons.)
  • On 3rd Rock from the Sun Dick is asked to eulogize a hated professor. Oddly enough, because Dr. Hamlin knew everyone hated him, he asked Dick because he was the only one who would say it to his face. He didn't want a eulogy that wasn't about him. Inverted somewhat in that Dick's eulogy is actually very moving to the audience because he simply relates the bare facts.

Dick: "How can we honor the memory of a man like Leonard Hamlin. Well, {awkward pause} he was governed by the laws of physics."

    • While the humans present were astonished at Dick's beautiful prose, his fellow aliens mocked the triteness, asking why he didn't just phone it in.
  • On News Radio Dave eulogizes an obscure employee he knows nothing about. And who turns out to have been an asshole. And a Klan member. Bill McNeil's funeral episode falls under this as well, seeing as most of the episode is about Matthew talking nonsense about hidden messages about Raven's, wondering what the contents of Catherine's private message was, and general lighthearted treatment of it, save from a downer moment or two.
  • The title character of Frasier played the Reluctant Eulogist for his aunt whom he openly wishes is in Hell. Unable to think of one positive thing to say about her, he decides to stage a musical number instead. At one point in the episode, Niles spills her ashes all over himself attempting to get the urn open.
    • "She's such a groovy lady, she makes my heart go hide-y hade-y!"
  • Back To You had both the eulogy issues and a guy losing his cell in the coffin (he was trying to photograph the corpse).
  • In Curb Your Enthusiasm episode "The 5 Wood", Larry tries to retrieve his golf club from the casket. In the episode "The Special Section", he tries to have his mother moved to a Jewish cemetery despite her being refused a burial.
  • Dharma and Greg: Dharma climbs into Greg's grandmother's casket to get her ring.
  • An episode of Two and A Half Men featured virtually every sitcom-funeral trope imaginable, from the hilarious, angry, and hate-filled eulogy to Jake's gameboy getting left in the coffin to Charlie scoring with the widow.
    • Another had Charlie having an Imagine Spot of his funeral. It includes open bar, James Earl Jones reading his eulogy, and another (sarcastic) eulogy by Alan.
    • Charlie's actual funeral in the first episode of season 9. Alan's eulogy was interrupted by Charlie's ex-girlfriends insulting the deceased, and Evelyn used the occasion to remind everyone that Charlie's house is up for sale.
      • "I didn't come all this way to spit on a closed casket!"
  • On Monk's Pilot episode, Monk drops his keys into the casket from a balcony seat, and proceeds to attempt to fetch them by lowering a paper-clip on a string into the casket. The Fun in Funeral comes when he accidentally hooks the corpse's sleeve, causing it to "wave" to the mourners.
  • On Murphy Brown, Murphy must eulogize a rival with whom she exchanged pranks.
    • In a separate episode, she's asked to eulogize a crew member who apparently adored her, but whom she can't remember a thing about. (The crew member is later proven to be fictitious; the other characters were trying to make a point about her treating the crew as if they were invisible.)
    • In a third episode, she and Frank are flying somewhere when the aircraft almost crashes; they pass out (due to oxygen deprivation?) and dream of their own funerals. Murphy receives an awful eulogy and Frank's ashes are spilled and swept under a carpet.
      • "Now look at me. Dead! In a dickie!"
  • Family Matters Carl mistakenly throws out Harriet's aunt's ashes and replaces them with fireplace ashes.
    • Something similar happened on an episode of Married... with Children, with the ashes of Marcy's aunt being used in Al's grill.
  • On Seinfeld George has to get a copy of his girlfriend's father's death certificate to qualify for an airline fare discount. He fails to acquire this and tries to substitute a picture of him with the coffin, to no avail.
    • There's also "The Susie". The concept of having a funeral for a fictional person is funny enough, but made even more funny by the fact that J. Peterman somehow has the idea that he slept with Susie on the job and bring it up during the eulogy, AND that minor character Mike Moffit bursts into the funeral to say Susie didn't commit suicide, but was murdered by Jerry Seinfeld (long story).
  • On Desperate Housewives, the control-freak Bree changes her dead husband's tie in the middle of the service.
    • Also, during the aftermath of the tornado in the 4th season Gabrielle causes havoc in Carlos's accountant's wake while trying to find the right documents of her husband's foreign bank account.
  • One episode of Gene Wilder's short lived sitcom "Something Wilder" had him returning to a wake twice (for a total of three visits) due to something involving the tie of the deceased as well. I don't remember much about that show, and I was probably the only person who watched it.
  • In House, the titular character is forcibly taken to his father's funeral, and has to deliver the eulogy. (He hated his father and didn't want to go.) He uses this as a chance to get a piece of his father's skin to subject to a DNA test, which confirms his long-standing suspicion that the man was not his biological father. He also comments on his father's weak qualities in the eulogy, and says that 'if he was a better father, maybe I'd have been a better son'.
    • By the end of the speech, though, it's touched on touching. House says, essentially, that the person he is—good and bad—is because of his father.
    • Wilson also ups the wackiness factor by breaking a stained glass window at the funeral home, goaded by House, of course.

HOUSE: Still not boring.

  • On a later Wings, the brothers lose the body they were flying in for a funeral, so Joe takes its place in the coffin.
  • An episode of Sister, Sister has Lisa going to a funeral for a woman she didn't like. Just before she goes, she chips a tooth, goes to a slightly inattentive dentist, and enters the service doped up on laughing gas. Hilarity Ensues and the service ends with Lisa leading the guests in a round of an upbeat hymn while Ray cowers with embarrassment. (Note that this is technically not possible, as laughing gas's effect ends within minutes of ceasing intake.)
  • The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air did something right with this one; Will's yelling at his uncle's Jerkass political rival leads him to have a heart attack. When his funeral comes around, all the mourners turn out to hate him (for very good reasons, mind you: for example, one of them was a Mexican gardener whom the rival hired to tend his garden and when it was time to pay, called Immigration) and most of them have showed up to make sure he is actually dead. Will—wracked by guilt—yells at them all for it saying they should respect the dead but when they ask who he is, he answers "I'm the dude that killed him" to rapturous applause.
  • Ponce's funeral in his premiere episode of Clone High is played entirely for laughs, with his best friend JFK picking him up out of the coffin and punching him because he insists he's not really dead, and then jumping into the coffin next to him and closing the lid (only to pop out seconds later and state "I was in a coffin with a dead guy!" and run off screaming).
  • One episode of Night Court featured a case where a funeral director decided he would in his words "put the fun back in funeral" including a bumper sticker on the casket saying "I'd rather be breathing".
  • In Father Ted, the dim-witted Father Dougal volunteers to perform a funeral ceremony in Ted's absence. When Ted discovers this, he goes into a blind panic and yells at the person who really should have stopped him. Cut to the funeral, where ambulance sirens are blaring, most of the mourners are being treated at the scene, a burning hearse lies wedged in the grave and Dougal in the middle of it all going, "Sorry about that."
  • The IT Crowd has an episode of the main trio mucking up the funeral of their boss, Mr. Reynholm, including Moss relating the death to losing a pen, Roy feeling like a he suffered a heart attack and cursing loudly only to realize it was just his suped-up cell phone, and the deceased's long lost son barging in, knocking over the coffin and having a sissy slap fight with the priest.
    • Another episode explains that Richmond was moved from his executive office to the IT department's server room during the culmination of his transformation from Yuppie to Goth, at which point he showed up at the funeral of Denholm's father wearing a creepy goth outfit (Complete with face paint), and gave Denholm's grieving mother a Cradle of Filth CD.
  • In Coupling, the gang spend most of Jane's aunt's funeral reception desperately trying to stay clear of the Giggle Loop. This is Jeff's name for the situation in which someone trying not to laugh at an inappropriate moment finds the situation of trying not to laugh funny, so setting off said feedback loop. The concept is illustrated throughout by an increasingly precarious stack of pint glasses.
    • Additionally, while Jeff, Steve, and Patrick are all about to choke on their laughter, it was Jane who was the first to break.
  • Titus had a Christmas episode of all things that dealt with this. Titus goes to the funeral of an ex-girlfriend—not because he loved her and wanted to say goodbye, but to make sure the funeral wasn't an elaborate ruse for her to attack him for dumping her (As mentioned in the episode, "Dad is Dead" and on the comedy special, "Norman Rockwell is Bleeding," Titus's first girlfriend was a 5'1, 100 lb. Jewish girl who, like Titus's mom, was beautiful, sexy, very smart, and a bipolar wackjob who often abused him and used sex to manipulate him).
    • Another Fun In Funeral moment: after Juanita's suicide, Titus and Erin visit her lawyer for a will reading. According to the will, Titus and Erin have to eat apples for dinner should Juanita die. Not too bad, but Juanita was a homocidal, manic-depressive schizophrenic with touches of paranoia and multiple personalities. The "apples" that Erin and Titus have to eat is actually the name of the dog Juanita killed back in 1978 and kept in her freezer since then.
    • According to the comedy special "The 5th Annual End of the World Tour," Titus had to deal with his dad's funeral, who requested that he be put in a cardboard box [1] and peed on by everyone he angered in his life while Willie Nelson's "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" played. After the ceremony, Ken's body was to be cremated and Titus had to find a douche bottle and a hooker so Ken can be "run through one more time." Titus couldn't go through with that plan, so he spread his father's ashes all over some Victoria's Secret dressing rooms and at a Caesar's Palace casino in Lake Tahoe, Nevada while singing "Amazing Grace" with his brother, Dave, and his sister, Shannon.
  • Peep Show features an episode where Jez's religious uncle dies, but his atheist sister provides a secular funeral for him, prompting Jez to go on a long, Metaphorgotten rant about the musician Enya instead of giving a eulogy:

If I was dying and I wasn't particularly into Enya before, but that now I really really was into Enya and I thought Enya was great, and that Enya died for our sins, and I wanted an Enya-themed funeral with pictures of Enya and lots and lots of mentions of Enya, then I'd think it a bit bloody rich for my sister to ban all mentions of Enya, yeah?

  • Scrubs has J.D. attending the funeral of one of his patients and ending up having sex with the widow, prompting him to quip "there's a lot of ways to grieve, but last time I checked, wheelbarrow style wasn't one". In another episode, Turk attends the funeral of one of the patients, but forgets the man's name and accidentally mentions how bored he is too loudly. Another occasion has J.D imagine his own funeral during the funeral of a co-worker, in which he has had himself positioned upright in his own coffin with his arms wide open, with his last request being a final hug from his own co-workers. Upon receiving a hug from Dr. Cox, he reveals that he has in fact faked his own death solely to receive a hug from Cox. Cox ends up breaking his neck and actually killing him.
    • Dr. Murphy, already the cause of many death-related jokes, also appears as "the guy that is completely inappropriate" by telling the co-workers uncle that he did her autopsy. Later on, he wonders if he left his cellphone inside her.
  • Barney in How I Met Your Mother claims that his funeral is the only time he won't be wearing a suit because suits are happy garments...a suit is the sartorial equivalent of a baby's smile.

Barney: Open bar for the guys, open casket for the ladies!
Everyone: (on way out of room) That's disgusting...
Marshall: (last to leave room) Dude, that's awesome!

  • In an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street, Munch organises and attends the funeral of his ex-wife's much-hated mother, a literary critic. The only people who attend are Munch, his ex-wife, a shill who has been paid to sit in the front row and wail at the top of her lungs and the author Peter Maas, who has only turned up to make sure that she's dead owing to a bad review she gave of one of his works. Munch later ends up giving her a flattering, if tactfully-phrased, eulogy in front of his co-workers at a Christmas party later in the episode.
  • One episode of The Armando Ianucci Shows involved the mortuary owner solemnly informing the bereaved that "We like to do a rodeo theme." Therefore, the eulogy was delivered while riding on the coffin, like one of those mechanical bulls.
  • In the Australian comedy series, Mother And Son, Maggie, the somewhat senile titular mother, insists on buying a big bag of oranges on the way to a burial. During the burial the bag splits, showering the casket.
  • In My Family Ben had to deliver a eulogy for a patient who died in his office. The complication came when he learned that for years the patient had been claiming to be playing golf with Ben when he was actually visiting his mistress. And both the wife and the mistress were amongst the mourners.
  • One episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 had Joel and the 'bots lying in faux-coffins, discussing their ideal funerals after watching the boring one held in The Gunslinger. Servo can't decide between something educational that explains his embalming methods, or a circus-like extravaganza ("I want elephants, Joel, lots of them"). Crow on the other hand wants a beach-themed funeral, complete with kegger, "couples sneaking off to neck, prop me up so I can surf!"
  • Kevin and Wayne drop a twenty dollar bill they've been fighting over in the coffin on an episode of The Wonder Years. They're still fighting over how to retrieve it when Grandpa tells them they missed the coffin closing.
  • That 80's Show: When "Silverpants", a regular at the club, dies from, er, his excessive lifestyle, Corey is asked to hold an euology in the misassumption that they were best friends. Not only doesn't anyone know anything about him (other than him being a very dedicated partygoer) or even his name, but the regulars can only list his various bad habits and jerkish acts (such as copping feels and blaming others for it) for Corey to build the euology on. In the end, the euology lists every nasty detail he's dug up, but ambiguously worded to sound like positive qualities.
    • Dark Magical Girl Tuesday eventually saves him with a pre-made eulogy at the last minute.
  • A Season 5 episode of Corner Gas has Oscar and Wanda crash funerals together for different reasons (Wanda does it to skip work. Oscar does it because Emma gets a job and he doesn't want to have to make his own food). Wanda later puts out sandwiches stolen from the funeral at her kid's birthday party.
  • In a season 1 episode of Friends, Ross' and Monica's maternal grandmother dies of old age and of course, many things happen; Ross takes too many painkillers (after hurting himself falling in an open grave) and spends the funeral high as a kite, Chandler (whose main goal this episode is proving his heterosexuality) is mistaken for gay by a couple of cute girls after the high Ross says that it's okay if he's gay, and Joey is watching a football game on a portable TV and most of the males at the funeral ends up joining him, including Ross' and Monica's dad.
    • Then there's Phoebe's grandmother's funeral. "Welcome. Here are your 3D glasses..."
  • Following Oliver's death in Season 1 of Slings and Arrows, Geoffrey goes to view his body. As he lays his copy of Hamlet in the casket, Oliver opens his eyes and starts lecturing Geoffrey, who hisses "Shut up!" at him when someone else approaches. Later, at the memorial service, all goes well with people telling amusing stories about Oliver - until Geoffrey gets on. His initially touching speech eventually devolves into a rant about the New Burbage theatre festival. The memorial service ends when a fire-and-brimstone preacher delivers a sermon about how the theatre is Satan's trap for the unwary and gay people (like Oliver) are going to hell, at which point Anna pulls the fire alarm.
  • On The Wire, whenever a cop dies (usually because the actor playing him had himself died), they host the cop funeral at the local pub next to the station. "Tomorrow the family gets him, but tonight he drinks with the boys!" The departed is laid out on the pool table, with a beer in one hand and a cigar in the other, and after a hilarious, but heartfelt eulogy summing up their finest moments from Sgt. Landsman, they all sing "The Body of an American" by The Pogues. From the last such wake in the series finale, Albeit a symbolic one.

Sgt. Landsman: "If I was ever dead in some gutter, I'd want you to catch the case, Jimmy."
Bunk: "Jay, if you were lying dead in some gutter, it was probably Jimmy that done ya!

  • My Hero (TV) had an episode where Thermoman's Bizarre Alien Biology acting up led to his secret identity, George Sunday, being thought dead by everyone. The idea was that he'd sit up in the coffin during the ceremony before his cremation and make Dr. Piers Crispin look like an idiot (which isn't particularly difficult). Two things combined to put it under this trope: a sudden attack of that same BAB problem that caused all this in the first place, and a B-plot featuring Mrs. Raven fusing therapeutic and stage hypnosis. Hilarity Ensues:

Vicar: One...
Ella: Take me now my stallion Stanley, ravage me you raving beast! (Out of character as all hell)
...
Vicar: Two...
Stanley: That is my gift, that is my curse. Who am I? I'm Spider-Man!
...
Vicar: Three...
Piers: <chicken noises>
Mrs. Raven: Shame he won't get to four!
...
Vicar: These are the things we will remember this good man for.
Janet's Parents, Arnie, and Piers: (complete with the dance) YMCA...It's fun to stay at the YMCA
...
(Bizarre Alien Biology is acting up, so George hasn't sat up on schedule, and Janet is trying to stop the coffin from entering the furnace cremation...thing)
Priest: She's got the strength of ten!
The Same Four As Before: (Start doing the Chicken Dance. Mrs. Raven falls out of her seat laughing)

  • Monty Python's Flying Circus once features a hearse painted all black on one side and black with lots of flower decorations on the other. It also has a funeral where a priest gets shot with a large and very obvious cannon poking out of the grave.
  • Two Point Four Children had Ben struggling to organise the funeral of his Sitcom Arch Nemesis, Jake the Klingon. Under the terms of Jake's will, the funeral was a Star Trek costume event (Original Series only, much to Bill's annoyance: "There weren't any women in the original series!") It turns out Jake isn't dead, he set the whole thing up to humiliate Ben.
  • Bones had "The Double Death of the Dearly Departed" which involved Brennan stealing the body, Booth handcuffing the mortician to the coffin, Hodgins watching Brennan and Booth carrying (and dropping) the body whilst giving a speech to guests who are oblivious to everything happening outside, Cam placing her sunglasses on the corpse, and culminated in tricking the murderer into confessing.
    • And Booth singing! * It's epic and really weird. But... Mostly Epic.)
    • A somewhat more subdued funeral for Vincent Nigel-Murray in "Hole In the Heart" had Brennan lead the rest of the team in singing the deceased's favorite song, "The Lime in the Coconut".
  • In the pilot of Kindred: The Embraced, Sasha comes in late to her grandfather's funeral, follows Julian's eulogy with Sarcastic Clapping, then declares that she would've been tempted to have sex with the deceased if they hadn't been related. She settles for pulling the corpse out of the coffin and giving it a kiss in front of her horrified relatives.
  • The Golden Girls did this for when Dorothy's six foot, three hundred pound, cross dressing (but straight) brother Phil dies. His wife has him dressed in a teddy to be buried and Sophia gives the priest an exaggerated story of how smart and gifted Phil was. Dorothy tries to fix the problem Sophia makes by telling the priest. The priest responds with that he can just look at a person to know about them. Hilarity Ensues. Taken even further when four shapely, black-clad and veiled figures show up at the funeral; they weren't sluts, they were Phil's poker buddies.
    • Also done on another episode, in which despised neighbor Frieda Claxton dies of a sudden heart attack after Rose tells her to "drop dead!" Mrs. Claxton has no family to take care of the final arrangements, so to assuage Rose's guilt, the housemates undertake the matter. The only person who attends besides the four main characters is a woman who gives a beautiful eulogy...then realizes she's at the wrong funeral. When she finds out whose funeral it really is, she kicks the coffin. Then the funeral home cremates Mrs. Claxton by mistake.
  • Six Feet Under occasionally featured realistic versions of this. The biker funeral resembled a massive party while the funeral of a gay guy featured a small opera skit complete with stage and costumes.
    • In addition, one of the spoof funeral supply commercials in the Pilot had the product being advertised with the song "Shake Your Booty" playing, dancers dancing and the announcer saying that it "Puts the fun, back in the funeral". The actual product appears during Nathaniel Sr.'s funeral which is anything but fun. Except for Nathaniel Sr. himself maybe.
    • In "A Private Life," Nate goes to pick up a body in an abandoned building, and finds a candle-lit trail of photos with captions by the psychotic Billy, culminating in a covered body and leading Nate to assume he's committed suicide. Nate pulls back the cover, whereupon Billy jumps up and yells "Gotcha!" When Nate fails to see the humour in his prank, Billy says, "If you mix up the letters in 'funeral' you get 'real fun.'"
  • Geordi LaForge and Ro Laren get a nice bouncy wake when they are presumed dead in a Teleporter Accident (in reality, they have become "out of phase" due to a Romulan device) in a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, in the spirit of the New Orleans example at the end.
  • All in The Family had Archie's friend Stretch Cunningham die, with Archie chosen against his will to deliver the eulogy. It's only at the funeral that Archie discovers that Stretch was Jewish...Bunker-esque Hilarity Ensues with his improvised speech.
  • Northern Exposure: Maggie's most recent boyfriend was killed when a communications satellite landed on him. The satellite fused with the deceased, and the coffin had to be specially built to hold the whole thing.
  • The cast of Lexx spends an episode hiding from authorities in an Ohio funeral parlor. The director has them attend to a grieving family—unwisely, for as Xev puts it, "we're from a parallel universe, and people there are mostly put in the protein bank and fed to a giant insect."

Stan: Hey folks, come on in. The old lady's laid out over there in the box. She's all drained and preserved, just the way you wanted. Just come on over and do your boo hoo hoo thing to your heart's content. ...So how old was she when she finally blasted off? Looks like about a hundred standard years to me -- you know, that's a nice long run. You must have a lot of memories invested in the old skin sack.

  • When a cast member in Greg the Bunny died on stage, it turns out his will was to have his funeral be a cocktail party. Hilarity Ensues.
  • This Almost Live! sketch.
  • Only Fools and Horses featured an episode where Del Boy and Rodney buy a couple of urns from Trigger. One of them turns out to have the ashes of Trigger's grandfather, Arthur, in it. The entire episode centers on Del and Rodney trying ever more ridiculous ways to dispose of the ashes, while genuinely trying to be thoughtful. At one point, Rodney's grandfather sits up talking to the ashes, while Del responds, pretending to be Arthur. Eventually the ashes are accidentally sucked up by a street-cleaning machine; after some initial horror, Del and Rodney reflect that maybe Arthur would have wanted it that way, since he was a road sweeper. Then they find out that there are more ashes in the other urn; Trigger's grandmother married twice.
    • In part 2 of the 2001-3 Christmas trilogy, Del Boy and Rodney decide to give their beloved Uncle Albert a burial at sea, by scattering his ashes from the boat they were on (Albert was, before, during and after the war at separate points in the past in both the Merchant and Royal Navy). After doing so, they notice Rodney's wife Cassandra's contraceptive tablets at the bottom of the urn, where Del Boy's son Damien had hidden them as a joke, resulting in Cassandra getting pregnant while they were all dirt poor. As well as desecrating his great uncles ashes, Damien also used the urn as target practice for his toy NERF gun.
  • In Republic of Doyle, Jake catches the urn containing the ashes of a client's dead husband... and holds it upside down.
  • In an episode of My Name Is Earl, Earl tries to make up for accidentally kidnapping a guy. Problem is, the guy is dead (as a result of a mishap involving a Murphy Bed.) Earl decides to throw a funeral for him. Which is a noble thing to do, except he didn't really know the guy, and the deceased doesn't seem to have any friends or family. Earl invites all of Camden, who treat it as a party and not a funeral. (And Darnell is less than pleased to find that his favorite purple tux has been placed on the deceased.) It turns out that Josh did have friends, but they were all online. And they help Earl throw a proper funeral.
  • In My Family a patient of Ben's dies just after telling him he's been having an affair. It later emerges that for the years it had been going on, he was telling his wife that he was going golfing with Ben, leading her to believe they were much closer than they actually were and asking him to give the eulogy. Throughout the episode, Ben tries to keep what is going on from Susan, while both the wife and mistress keep visiting him to talk about the patient, leading Susan to become suspicious that he is having an affair. This culminates in her bursting into the funeral, Ben blurting out the truth, and then declarations of "He loved me!" from the man's wife, mistress... and boyfriend.
  • This is the entire premise of the british comedy series called Fun at the Funeral Parlour.
  • Mama's Family had several examples. At Aunt Fran's funeral at the beginning of Season 3, Vint slams the hearse door, causing the casket to slide out and roll down the interstate on-ramp, while Bubba eats all the food at the wake, thinking it was a coming-home party for him. In another episode, the family goes to Uncle Oscar's funeral and scatters his ashes on a lake, only to have a water-skier slalom through them. In yet another, Mama has a dream about her own funeral, where everyone gets bored and decides to leave to go bowling instead.
  • Saved by the Bell: The College Years had a professor die and at the funeral Dean McMahon accidentally drops her phone into the casket and her arm gets stuck in it just when she's forced to give a eulogy.
  • Charmed had a variation where the sisters had faked their deaths and were holding a wake for themselves. Annoyed that so few people were mourning her, Paige cast a spell on herself to look like Janice Dickinson and give a tearful speech on how Paige was Janice's only real friend. And Phoebe tried to pick up a guy who was mourning her.
  • Season Five, Ep2 of Doc Martin plays this to the hilt with Joan's funeral. The hearse is late, the guests are weird,[2] the pall-bearers drop the coffin, Martin turn's Joan's eulogy into a medical case history presentation-cum-public health lecture, the local police constable bemoans dealing with simple heart attacks and not something exciting, someone's mobile phone goes off playing "things can only get better" as a ring-tone. The usual for Portwenn really.
  • In the original Traffic Light, Itzko’s uncle, who was a clown, dies, and demands in his will that Itzko be his ‘funeral clown’. This is especially hillarious as he attends the wrong, serious funeral, only to see the right one, complete with clowns singing parodies about birthday songs, not far from there. However, this does get him started on a brief new career as a funeral clown.
  • In the late Irish comedian Dave Allen's sketch/stand-up show, he had a recurring sketch with apparently solemn funerals descending into farce, mostly ending in a race to the graveyard.
  • The Twilight Zone episode "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" tells what happens when the title character sits up in coffin, alive and hungry.


Music

  • In the music video for Helena by My Chemical Romance the titular woman's funeral includes dancing mourners, the lyrics to the song are the eulogy delivered by Gerard Way, there's a (the) band, and the deceased gets up and dances ballet amongst the praying mourners.
  • Ray Stevens has a song entitled Sitting Up with the Dead in which his late Uncle Fred is so horribly bent over due to arthritis that the morticians have to use a heavy chain to straighten him out. Somehow the chain snaps in the middle of the wake, causing Uncle Fred to sit up in his casket. Hilarity Ensues
    • Cultural Note: This was partly based on the until recent tradition of holding all the services and such at a private residence. "Sitting Up with the Dead" was the practice of somebody staying awake and with the casket during the night so that it was never left unattended. Now think about that poor sap.
  • A perfect example of this may well be the Great Big Sea song, The Night that Paddy Murphy Died.
    • Also, "Finnegan's Wake" (the song, not the James Joyce book). For context, it's about a bricklayer named Tim Finnegan, who was a drunkard. One day, he falls off his ladder and breaks his skull. During his viewing, a brawl starts up. Turns out Tim was Only Mostly Dead. Yeah, he woke right up when some whiskey accidentally landed on him.
  • Less about shenanigans and more about ritual celebration, The Saints Go Marching In is about the hope of going to heaven after death. It's one of the jauntiest tunes in existence.
  • The music video for Rammstein's Haifisch. Let's see, two women Till slept with get in a fight, the remaining band members discuss right there who to replace him with, said band members spend it fantasizing about how they would have killed Till (well, except Paul, he just fantasized about getting spanked by Till), they get into a fight, and to top it all off, Till had faked his death the entire time.
  • A Sage Francis song, "Andy Kaufman", has this almost exactly. "I put the fun back into funeral/My morbid humor'll kill ya"
  • Going Out In Style by The Dropkick Murphys is sung from the POV of someone who doesn't care what's done to his body after he goes as long as there's a huge, loud, well-lubricated traditional Irish wake.
  • The Pogues' (sensing an Irish theme yet?) "Body of an American", as excellently used in The Wire's cop funerals;

Fifteen minutes later we had our first taste of whiskey
 There was uncles givin' lectures on ancient Irish hist'ry
The men all started tellin' jokes and the women they got frisky
By five o'clock in the evenin' every bastard there was pisky!

New Media

  • In the chapter ...Consider Making New Friends of Conquering the Horizon, Mr. Mooshi's eulogy/sermon starts on a comedic note, to EP's indignation.

Professional Wrestling

  • The WWE feud between The Big Show and the Big Boss Man may just take the cake for this one. Boss Man interrupted Big Show's father's (outdoor) funeral by driving up in a former police car with a loudspeaker mounted on the top and cracking bad jokes about Show and his father over the speaker. Then, he chained Show's dad's coffin to his back bumper and dragged it off while Show desperately held onto the coffin (in what's often called "the coffin surfing incident" by fans). This was part of a longer feud, that also involved a "sympathy" poem by Boss Man that included the lines, "But if I had a son who was as stupid as you/I'd wish for cancer, so I could die too."
    • Said poem was followed by the beautiful sentiment "That's exactly how I feel about the Big Show's daddy being dead". The poem, coffin surfing and a summary of the whole feud can be seen here The poem is between 1:28 and 2:10. The funeral starts at 2:28. Beautiful!
      • Having just watched the video, that isn't just any ex-cop car, it's a copy of the Bluesmobile from The Blues Brothers.
        • McMahon's justification for this angle was that Big Show's father in real life had actually been dead for nearly a decade before this angle.
          • The ridiculousness of the angle was later lampshaded with Big Boss Man, in a stable including Kurt Angle, retells the story.


Theater

  • Pretty much the entirety of Grandma Sylvia's Funeral, starting before the audience even goes inside (this part may differ for different runs - in one version, the hearse arrived with the back door open and no casket - it showed up sticking out of the trunk of a taxi a few minutes later).
  • Old Dogs, an amateur dramatics play, turns this Up to Eleven with the accidental homicide of a pimp who chases a prostitute into an old folks' home. The body is initially hidden in the fridge, but when the person who accidentally killed him dies of a heart attack, the body is shlepped into the single coffin and buried with him. All this takes place at double quick speed to fool the warden, who has returned early from holiday to find that her home has been turned into a brothel and a naive young inspector is also missing.
  • Dearly Departed is this trope in spades. As the patriarch of a VERY southern family, Bud Sr., keels over at the breakfast table, his family attempts to cope with his loss and plan his funeral. Various shenanigans occur, including the Reverend having a bad case of food poisoning in the middle of a service, Bud being buried in ballet shoes do to rigor mortis, Junior and his wife reconciling after Junior's affair by passionately making out on the floor during the service, and ends with everybody bursting out into uncontrollable laughter at the ridiculousness of the funeral.
  • In the opening scene of Paint Your Wagon, Ben Rumson is in the middle of delivering a eulogy for his fallen friend Jim Newberry, when his daughter Jennifer runs her hands through the dirt around the grave and finds gold. Jennifer is anxious to tell, but Ben angrily silences her and continues. But just as the three miners accompanying him are about to leap in, Ben winds up his eulogy quickly: "I hope you'll make him happy up there... for-ever-and-ever-I-stake-this-claim--Amen!"


Video Games

Ratchet: "And he had a unique... "fashion sense"...


Web Animation


Web Comics

  • In a Sexy Losers strip, someone actually masturbates with an urn containing the ashes of a girl she raped to death... and it breaks inside her. She then doesn't have the heart to clean out the ashes.
  • Something*Positive:
    • An early strip shows Davan attending the funeral of his childhood friend, Scotty, who committed suicide. His grief quickly takes the form of rage towards Scotty, which he then takes out on the corpse. Literally, taking the corpse out of the coffin to shake it and yell at it. In the background, J. Grant, making a cameo, urges Davan to "let the legions of the dead know we living will no longer be oppressed by their cold clutches."
    • Another one features Davan laying out his plans for his own funeral, where he will be dressed in a smoking jacket and propped up in a chair so that people can have their photos taken with him. There will be attractive cocktail waitresses (to make sure Jason attends) and marshmallow roasting on his pyre, after which Aubrey will be given his skull to mount on her wall.
    • Yet another includes Faye referencing this trope in regards to Davan's paternal great-grandfather.
    • Another strip had Pee Jee sending a wreath to the funeral of a female supervisor who'd spent the last few weeks sexually harassing her (and was threatening to sue her when she was killed by a Canadian Trapdoor Alligator). Unfortunately, the floral service screws up the order... and a giant "You'll Always Be My Valentine!" wreath shows up instead.
    • Another reveals that when Aubrey and Peejee were passed out from alcohol, Jhim stripped them naked, posed them together in Davan's bed, and took pictures, which he then arranged to have on display at the reading of his will.
  • A Near-Death Experience in Least I Could Do gave the main character a vision of his own funeral, where he put the fun into it. This included arranging for his lawyers to deliver a knee to the groin of his Jerkass older brother, having a huge naked golden statue of himself standing over his grave (complete with erect penis, so young women could "pay their respects") and making his best friend deliver a eulogy as if he was a character in a Lord of the Rings-Star Wars crossover. It also featured a subversion at the end, however, as the last shot from the funeral was his five year old niece, a single tear forming in her eye, whispering "Unca?" her preferred nickname for him.
  • As one of the entries on the quotes page shows, in Schlock Mercenary, Xinchub's funeral, and the events leading up to it, is treated like this, because the main characters hate him. Then they get paid to steal his corpse and act as security for the funeral. Hilarity Ensues.

Flambe: Captain, I have studied more than a little bit of human culture. Nowhere have I found brightly colored, conical hats and inflatable noisemakers to be appropriate funeral attire.

  • As always, White Ninja shows us how it's done: with style.
  • In Homestuck, Aradia is eager to try a human "corpse party," since trolls don't have funerals and since she doesn't know that they're supposed to be somber affairs.

Web Original

  • In The Guild, we're told that Zaboo still managed to find wi-fi at his grandfather's funeral.
  • The popular Improv Everywhere group did an April Fool's video where they pretended they crashed a funeral as mourners. People who saw it on youtube the day it came out understood it was a joke, but afterwards they got a lot of flack from people who didn't understand it was put up on April Fools and were use to their more friendly ones like Frozen Grand Central or Pantless Subway Ride. Despite putting up warningins in the description and in annotations and the title - yes, the title - a few people still respond "outraged" many years later.
  • In Red vs. Blue, command sends Sister as a new recruit because Red Team's commander (actually Blue Team's commander; Sister is colorblind)) supposedly died. Sarge refuses to believe that command could be mistaken, so he has the rest of his team give him a funeral. Grif turns his eulogy into a stand-up routine, Sister just insults Sarge because "old people are gross", and Simmons briefly talks about how Sarge was a great leader before trying to steal his job.
    • There was also the Blue Team funeral for Church and Tex, made more awkward because Church was standing right there with them, and Tucker refuses to do the eulogy.

Church: "Tucker, I'm not going to eulogize myself."
Tucker: "Why not, dude? I eulogize myself all the time. Wait. I think I don't know what the word 'eulogize' means..."
Caboose: "I know how to do this! *ahem* Dearly Beloved: we are gathered here today to witness the joining together of Church and Tex in... togetherness... uh... speak now! Or forever rest in peace! With liberty and justice for all! The end!"

Souichiro: Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to pee on the grave of a man who died unloved and hated by everyone.
Matsuda: But Chief... isn't that the same thing?
Souichiro: Dammit Matsuda, stop ruining my eulogy! I will never forget the last time I saw him smile—it was the day he took away Matsuda's innocence. Oh how we laughed and Matsuda cried when L told Matsuda that cartoon animals were just people in costumes. Where was I? Oh, right, Watari! Come on everyone we're gonna go dance on his grave next!
The taskforce leaves
Light: Muwahahahaahahahaha hahahaha! (crawls on top of L's grave) You died over nothing! You died because you told Matsuda Mickey isn't real. HOW STUPID IS THAT! (*his eyes start glowing red*) I loved you L and you smashed my heart into a million pieces. I will never love again.
Ryuk: Light, uh... you're scaring me.
Light: Oh Ryuk, I haven't even begun to scare you yet!

Western Animation

  • In the Futurama episode "A Pharaoh to Remember", the gang stages a fake funeral for Bender, who listens in from his own casket. He's at first pleased, but grows more bitter ("LOUDER and SADDER!") before he erupts in anger.

Leela: We did our best!
Bender: Your best is an idiot!

  • South Park, "A Ladder to Heaven": Cartman drinks Kenny's ashes, mistaking them for chocolate milk mix.
    • At Cartman's grandmother's funeral, a crate is opened to release some doves... only to have them fall out, dead.
  • There's great fun to be had in the funeral scene in Drawn Together's 16th episode, Captain Girl. "We are burying Captain Girl as a Mormon. Not because she was one, but because she hated Mormons and it would make her happy to bury one."
  • As Told by Ginger, "Losing Nana Bishop" has Hoodsey eulogizing his late paternal grandmother.
  • The Simpsons: Several:
    • The most famous instance is "Homer's Enemy," which centered on the conflict between Homer and a new co-worker, Frank Grimes (a hard-working professional whose ethics conflict with Homer's gross inepitude and poor social graces). Eventually, Frank is killed after touching live electrical wires, and at the funeral, Homer falls asleep and mutters "Marge, change the channel!" The other funeral-goers and even Rev. Lovejoy to burst out laughing, and inspires Lenny to remark "That's our Homer!" The tombstone simply has "Grimey" written on it, Homer's nickname for Grimes which he himself despised; Lovejoy also referred to Grimes as "Grimey," as though he accepted the name with affection.
      • In a later episode, Homer is getting dressed for his wedding anniversary when he pulls out the program for Grimes' funeral ... and realizes he has completely forgotten who this guy is.
    • Maude's funeral in "Alone Again Naturadiddly" had a 21 T-shirt Salute, rather tasteless given that Maude was killed by a t-shirt shot at her with one of their bazookas. Also, a later episode reveals that, off-screen, Homer fell in Maude's grave. "I saw a gopher! What a day!"
    • After Krusty the Clown fakes his death in "Bart the Fink", the town turns out for his funeral, at which Bob Newhart is conscripted to provide the eulogy.
    • And there's always Homer's mom, who asked that her ashes be thrown away at a certain point at a certain time. Of course, this is so her ashes disrupt some evil machine or something.
    • The season four episode "Selma's Choice" (the one where Marge's Great-Aunt Gladys dies and Selma continues trying to have a baby before she hits menopause [which actually happened in a later episode]) actually had a funeral home sign that reads, "The Lucky Stiff Funeral Home -- We Put the Fun in 'Funeral'".
    • In one of the earliest episodes, "Bart the General," Bart—fearing a run-in with the feared bully, Nelson Muntz—imagines his funeral. As the parade of mourners pass by, Nelson grabs a cupcake Lisa had just left on her brother's forehead, oafishly punches Bart's corpse in the casket and remarks, "Hey, they've got food at this thing!"
    • During the Tracy Ullman "shorts" era, there was "The Funeral," where Bart is (well) himself at his elderly Uncle Hubert's funeral. (Presumably this is Abe's brother or cousin.) First, Bart clenches his hands in sadistic anticipation of viewing Hubert's corpse at the visitation, only to collapse when he actually sees Hubert's body. Later, he helps "direct" the pallbearers to the gravesite, in preparation for the casket being lowered into the ground; a disgusted Homer grabs Bart before he can pull any other hijinks.
    • At Bleeding Gums Murphy's funeral, Reverend Lovejoy refers to him as "Blood and Guts Murphy", mistakenly calls him a sousaphone player in the eulogy, and Homer uses the event to look for a hot dog vendor (who follows him everywhere, because Homer is apparently putting his kids through college). On a much sadder note, Lisa was the only mourner present (not counting her parents).
  • The Batman: The Animated Series episode "The Man Who Killed Batman" featured the Joker truly mourning Batman, placing a cape and cowl in a coffin, and then adding a "Kick Me" sign, causing Harley Quinn to observe "You know what's great about you, Puddin'? You really put the 'fun' in funeral." After an emotional eulogy, he sticks the no-name guy held responsible for Batsy's death in the coffin and rolls it into a pit of acid. while Harley plays "Amazing Grace" on a kazoo (one of the funniest moments of the entire series; reportedly, the kazoo solo was done all in one take, as everyone was cracking up, making it impossible to do it again). And then he wipes away and a tear and asks perkily, "Who's up for Chinese?"
  • In the Family Guy episode "Peter, Peter, Caviar Eater", Peter attends the funeral of one of Lois' relatives. When he learns she left her a vast inheritance, he starts dancing with the corpse.
    • The funniest part of this is when everybody stares in horror at what Peter's doing. His attempt at getting out of this is to drop the corpse and say "Oh my God. She's dead."
    • In one of the cutaway gags involving Quagmire (more specifically the one in the episode "Airport '07" that was a DVD-exclusive scene), there is a funeral of a woman who was implied in the eulogy to have died a virgin, only for Quagmire to pop out of the coffin and dance away in his underwear, heavily implying that he committed necrophilia (on a side note, the DVD commentary for this episode stated that the censors only objected to this scene because the woman who died was a virgin, not because of the heavily-implied necrophilia).
  • Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist features an episode called Mourning Person where Dr. Katz has to attend a funeral and give a eulogy. He confesses right away that he's not a "mourning person", and finds something about funerals highly amusing. There's an extended scene where both Dr. Katz and his son Ben try very hard (and sort of fail) to keep their giddy laughter in check during the funeral.
  • Animaniacs even had an example of one of these: In one Slappy Squirrel short, Slappy's nemesis, Walter Wolf, is dead, and Slappy has to deliver the eulogy at his funeral. The twist is that Walter isn't really dead, and he's set up a bunch of booby-traps at the funeral for Slappy. Slappy finds out about this, and hilarity naturally ensues.
  • In the Duckman episode "Pig Amock", the normally staid Cornfed, suffering from a familial genetic disease, suddenly becomes outrageously horny while giving a eulogy. This culminates in an attempt to sex up the widow upon hallucinating her scantily clad and wearing a "Pigs Welcome" sign. After he apologizes to everyone and runs off, Bernice fears there's something wrong with him, whereupon Duckman says, "Seemed perfectly normal to me."
    • In "Love! Anger! Kvetching!", the episode ends with the burial of Duckman's horrific uncle, featuring a balsawood coffin and a song specially composed for the occasion:

"My name is Moe and I was an old man/It took me hours to go to the can/Time made me deaf, made it harder to see/Enlarged my prostate so I couldn't pee/I was a mean and vindictive old guy/Nobody liked me, not hard to see why/But Heaven can take me, it really still can/if all of you girls will sleep with Duckman!"

  • The King of the Hill episode, " A Fire Fighting We Will Go", Hank and his friends, Dale, Bill, and Boomhauer, act as pallbearers for Chet Elderson, a former firefighter. While taking the casket to the grave, Hank's glasses fell off him so he tries to pick it up but end up falling in the grave with his friends with Boomhauer pantsing Chet Elderson.
  • In an episode of The Boondocks, Granddad Freeman is asked to read the eulogy, written by the deceased, at the funeral of a Jerkass war buddy. He gets about halfway through, his voice increasingly incredulous, until he eventually gives up, speaks his mind, and finds out that nobody else really liked the guy either. In the end, though, Granddad does show some affection, displaying his inheritance on the mantel even though it was really just one last prank.
  • An episode of The Venture Brothers opens with the Ventures crashing their jet into a cemetery where a funeral is taking place.
  • Robot Chicken
    • Benny Hill's funeral was exactly like one of the sketches from his show (with the coffin being hidden, transported to different places, used as a sled and there was even a mourner dressed in a Black Bra and Panties).
    • Another sketch had Diablo Cody delivering a long eulogy only for the deceased to come out of her coffin and question Diablo's presence and whether or not her mom even read the suicide note.
    • Yet another had Casper's cousin, Jasper the douchebag ghost, possessing the corpse at a funeral for some hijinks.
  • The Amazing World of Gumball has Gumball mistaking a pet funeral for a date with Penny, because she wanted some emotional support. He gives a very brief and uninterested eulogy and is later attacked by the supposed dead pet, ending up in the hospital.
  • My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic: During "Hearts and Hooves Day", Sweetie Belle jumps on the back of a priest, noogies him, calls him "too old" for Cheerilee, and jumps away. During a musical number. With a coffin visible on the side of the screen. One wonders what the mourners thought of a singing filly jumping into the funeral and giving the priest a noogie.


Real Life

  • In recent years, North American funerals and memorial services have become less about tradition—in the religious context, the reading of sacred texts, hymns sung by a vocalist, a sermon and prayers sanctifying and committing the dead—and more about celebrating the lives of the deceased loved one. Such services often take place at a site other than a funeral home or church, such as at a golf course, community hall, park, or a place where the decedant loved to spend time. Attendees often wear no more than business casual clothes, and often are asked just to come in clothing as informal as a T-shirt and shorts, or dressed specifically (for instance, a football uniform or other shirt signifying the deceased's favorite NFL team, or a Halloween costume). While there may be a brief prayer or sermon, the gathering is more for having fun and celebrating the life just passed rather than mourning for the dead.
    • Even at traditional funerals, a close family member giving a eulogy may include funny stories about the decedant, and sometimes a video may be played highlighting the humorous points of the loved one's life.
    • Interestingly, celebrating the deceased's life in a happy way is more in keeping with the north European version of a wake. Many people in Ireland and the UK have been sent off by their loved ones getting together, drinking heavily and remembering the good times. All while the body is present.
      • It's becoming more and more common for people to make their funerals more fun from the beyond (in the sense of, "My life wasn't dull and depressing, why start now?" They'll often enforce this, often stating that they request that the attendees not wear black (in funerals where the culture dictates black is traditional), and even request in their funeral plans that they play such songs as "Another One Bites The Dust" or "Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead."
  • The Funeral of Monty Python Member Graham Chapman. Of course, when your eulogy is written and delivered by John Cleese, this is to be expected. This also presents some rather rapid Mood Whiplash as you suddenly don't know whether you should laugh or cry.
    • The proper answer is laugh. He had a separate memorial, this one was held so they wouldn't ruin that one.
    • This definitely doubles as a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming... beautiful, in its own way.
  • The esteemed author Hunter S. Thompson had his ashes fired from a cannon topped by a double-thumbed fist.
  • For a long time, New Orleans had a lot of musicians but not a lot of cars. So funeral processions were always done on foot through town, and set to music, so it turned into a moving block party all the way to the cemetery.
    • Truth in Television: in the James Bond film Live and Let Die such funerals are seen twice, although the first one doesn't liven up until the secret agent is stabbed and then put into a casket ("Whose funeral is this?" "Yours."). To coin a Pun, he was late to his own funeral.
  • Gene Roddenberry and Majel Barrett both had their cremated remains launched into space.
  • The cast of The Goon Show were noted for their dark humour. Peter Sellers requested that the Glenn Miller song "In the Mood", which he hated, be played at his funeral. Spike Milligan claimed to hope that his fellow cast member Harry Secombe died before him, so that he couldn't sing at his funeral. Sure enough, Secombe died less than a year before Spike; nevertheless, a recording of Secombe singing was played at his funeral.
  • Puerto Rican comedian Jose Miguel Agrelot reportedly was asked by a friend to make jokes on his funeral if he died first. He did indeed die, and Agrelot showed up at the funeral, apologized for what he was going to do- and then launched into a tirade (mostly insulting his late friend!) so funny that even the grieving widow cracked up!
  • The stories go that old Irish funerals would have a variant of this, with the band playing a mournful dirge on the way to the grave...and a bouncy, happy tune on the way back, where people would get drunk. (The reason being, of course, that hey, another soul is in heaven. See also The Saints Go Marching In, above.)
  • A man was buried in his vintage car with all his guns in the front seat and $100 in his pocket.
  • Jim Henson stipulated in his will no one wear black at his funeral.
  • In Judaism, any books with God's name (in Hebrew) must be buried after they are of no use. Sometimes, people sneak their old books into a grave.

"What are you putting in Bob's grave?"
"Nothing, Alice."

  • A soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev was depicted as an advocate of Fun Funerals (or rather as a half-conscious clot) in this joke:

Brexhnev makes a speech: Comrades, this is unacceptable! Yesterday, at the funeral of our beloved comrade Suslov...by the way, where is he?.. when the music started, I was the only one who showed the courtesy of inviting the widow to a dance.

  • A Doctor Who fan who bore a strong resemblance to David Tennant was buried in a coffin painted to resemble a TARDIS.
  • Many traditional slave funerals in 18th and 19th century America were often times of joyous celebration due to death being seen by some slave cultures more as transcendence than as an end, due to strong animist spiritual traditions and the toil and suffering of slave life. There would be shouting, dancing, and loud music as the deceased was buried. These traditions live on in the form of the New Orleans jazz funerals mentioned above.
  • The people charged with escorting the coffin of Billy Mays were dressed in his iconic uniform.
  • The Vikings celebrated at the funerals of their chiefs, at least. They got drunk, had fights and stayed up all night sharing tales of heroism. This was because they believed that the deceased's ghost came to the party, and they would be haunted by him if he didn't enjoy it.
  • When medieval German Trickster / fool-using-Obfuscating Stupidity Till Eulenspiegel died, the guys who carried his coffin goofed up, and the coffin fell into to grave, standing upright instead of lying down. The priest decided this was OK: "He lived in a weird way, so he shall be buried in a weird way."
  • David Simon has requested a second line funeral after his experience making Treme...at his Jewish cemetery in Washington DC. It should be quite a show when it arrives.
  • GG Allin's funeral became a party.
  • The Concert for George, George Harrison 's memorial service held one year to the day after his death.
  • Christopher Titus described his father's exact wishes on how he wanted his funeral and how he wanted to be buried. He wanted to be put into a cardboard box, "open casket," a cover charge at the door (ladies get in free), and everyone would get a chance to pee on him (complete with Willie Nelsons "Blue-Eyes Crying in the Rain" playing). And that isn't even covering what he wanted done with his ashes...

"On my children... I did not write that, I am repeating it."

  • Joan Rivers' funeral in September 2014 played out exactly as she had requested in her 2012 book I Hate Everyone... Starting With Me:

I want my funeral to be a huge showbiz affair with lights, cameras, action. I want Craft services, I want paparazzi and I want publicists making a scene! I want it to be Hollywood all the way. ... I don’t want some rabbi rambling on; I want Meryl Streep crying, in five different accents. ... I want to look gorgeous, better dead than I do alive. I want to be buried in a Valentino gown and I want Harry Winston to make me a toe tag... And I want a wind machine so that even in the casket my hair is blowing like Beyoncé’s.

She got everything but the wind machine, plus hilarious and touching tributes that left the attendees laughing between their tears.
  1. ↑ Titus ended up putting his dad in a rental casket, with his brotehr, Dave, asking, "Who brought it back?"
  2. ↑ er than normal
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