Grave Humor/Quotes

Fallout 2 appears to have taken and incorporated a list of amusing gravestone inscriptions which has been circulating, unattributed, online for at least a decade and a half and likely longer. It is unclear whether all of these inscriptions are real, or whether these lists were created as a jokebook-style compilation, but they've clearly been around far longer than the video game:

"Here lies the body of our Anna Done to death by a banana. It wasn't the fruit that laid her low, But the skin of the thing that made her go."

- epitaph of Anna Hopewell, Enosburg Falls, Vermont

"The children of Israel wanted bread And the Lord sent them manna. Old clerk Wallace wanted a wife, And the Devil sent him Anna."

- epitaph of Anna Wallace in Ribbesford, England

"Here lies Ann Mann, Who lived an old maid But died an old Mann."

- epitaph of Ann Mann - Dec. 8, 1767

"Here underneath this little stone Lies Robert Earl of Huntington No archer were as he so good and people called him Robin Hood A skillful man, above all men this world will never see again"

- epitaph on a lone grave in a New England forest

"Molly though pleasant in her day Was suddenly seized and sent away How soon she's ripe, how soon she's rott'n Sent to her grave and soon forgott'n"

- epitaph of Mary "Molly" Fowler, Milford Cemetery, Connecticut

"Sacred to the memory of my husband John Barnes who died January 3, 1803 His comely young widow, aged 23, has many qualifications of a good wife, and yearns to be comforted."

- epitaph of a widow in Vermont

"Beneath these stones do lie, Back to back my wife and I! When the last trumpet the air shall fill If she gets up, I'll just lie still."

- epitaph on a Sargentville, Maine grave

"Underneath this pile of stones Lies all that's left of Sally Jones. Her name was Lord, it was not Jones, But Jones was used to rhyme with stones."

- epitaph on a tombstone in Skaneateles, New York

"Sir John Strange Here lies an honest lawyer, And that is Strange. It's no business Of yours."

- epitaph on a lawyer's grave in England

"Reader if cash thou art In want of any Dig 4 feet deep And thou wilt find a Penny."

- epitaph of John Penny's in Wimborne, England

"She always said her feet were killing her but nobody believed her."

- epitaph on Margaret Daniels' grave at Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, Virginia

"On the 22nd of June - Jonathan Fiddle - Went out of tune."

- epitaph in a cemetery in Hartscombe, England

"In Memory of Beza Wood Departed this life Nov. 2, 1837 Aged 45 yrs. Here lies one Wood Enclosed in wood One Wood Within another. The outer wood Is very good: We cannot praise The other."

- an epitaph in Winslow, Maine

"Under the sod and under the trees Lies the body of Jonathan Pease. He is not here, there's only the pod: Pease shelled out and went to God."

- epitaph from the 1880's in Nantucket, Massachusetts

"Ellen Shannon, Who was fatally burned March 21, 1870 by the explosion of a lamp filled with "R.E. Danforth's Non-Explosive Burning Fluid.""

- epitaph in Girard, Pennsylvania

"Born 1903--Died 1942 Looked up the elevator shaft to see if the car was on the way down. It was."

- epitaph of Harry Edsel Smith of Albany, New York

"She lived with her husband fifty years And died in the confident hope of a better life."

- gravestone in Burlington, Vermont

"Here lies my wife: Here let her lie! Now she's at rest And so am I."

- unknown

"Here lies an Atheist All dressed up And no place to go."

- epitaph in a Thurmont, Maryland cemetery


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