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{{trope}}
{{quote|''Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral baked meats
''Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.''
|'''Hamlet''', ''[[Hamlet]]'', Act I, Scene II}}
Poor Alice. Her husband Bob has just died.
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* Bob isn't dead after all.
The first is a classic murder motive. The second is a way of [[Can't Get Away
Contrast [[Romancing the Widow]], which is when an appropriate time of grieving has passed, and the widow is encouraged to move on with a new romance. See also [[Death of the Hypotenuse]], where Charlie had feelings for Alice before Bob died.
{{noreallife|this is All The Tropes, not Tropes After Dark.}}
{{examples}}
== [[Advertising]] ==
* Invoked in an ad for a sex hookup site featuring a woman that claims her husband died and she doesn't want love, just sex. The absurd nature of the ad has spawned parodies.
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* In ''[[Soul Eater]]'', it's [[Mad Scientist|Franken Stein]] (of all people!). Not so much comforting a widow but instead a [[Christmas Cake]] (sometimes [[Played for Laughs]], but
** A significant moment for both for rather different reasons - Marie, because she's had feelings for Stein since they were in school and the BJ/madness thing complicated things somewhat, and Stein because it's the ''only'' example of him showing real empathy for another human being, aside from the odd nice gesture towards the students.
* In ''[[Saiyuki]]'', Dokugakuji ''[[Parental Incest|to his own mother]]''. [[Squick
* {{spoiler|Isao Tsujimura}} tried this in ''[[Detective Conan]]'', with his friend {{spoiler|Kenji Yamashiro}} and his wife {{spoiler|Kimie}}. He also mixed it with {{spoiler|[[The Uriah Gambit]] by using Yamashiro as a scapegoat for a big fraud, sending him to jail so he'd have a shot at Kimie, who was dangerously near to the [[Despair Event Horizon]]. Yamashiro died in prison, and Tsujimura and Kimie got married.}} However, {{spoiler|it ''massively'' backfired years later, as Kimie learned the truth when Tsujimura's son Takayoshi brought a photo of his girlfriend Yukiko... Kimie and Yamashiro's long lost daughter (raised by her paternal family); she forced him confess... and later, she killed him.}}
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* ''Ghost'', with the guy who killed Swayze's character putting the moves on his girlfriend.
** Though Molly(the girlfriend) doesn't appear to feel that way about the murderer, even when she doesn't know he's the murderer.
* ''[[
* ''Tommy''. In the original [[Rock Opera]], Tommy's father returns from war years after going missing and kills his wife's lover. In [[The Musical]], the lover kills the father.
* A slight variation in ''Pearl Harbor''. Evelyn is in love with Rafe, who then goes off to fight the Nazis. She learns that his plane was shot down, so she immediately falls in love with his best friend, Danny. When Rafe returns it's, um, awkward.
** It doesn't help that she's pregnant.
*** [[Sarcasm Mode|But it DOES help that Danny gets killed by japanese troops after they crash in China!]]
* ''Summer of '42''
** Made [[
* ''The Five Heartbeats'' has Version #3: Big Red has Jimmy killed (for threatening to expose his corrupt business practices) and then attends his funeral; when he tells Jimmy's widow that she "shouldn't be alone", she slaps him in the face.
* In ''[[Casino Royale 1967]]'', Deborah Kerr plays a SMERSH agent impersonating M's widow - at M's ancestral home she enters the bedroom of Sir James Bond (David Niven), demanding to be comforted (and ruin his [[Celibate Hero]] image). When he politely declines, she takes it as an insult to her honor.
* Played with in the ''[[
{{quote|
'''Rusty:''' Dead.
'''Danny:''' No shit, on the job?
'''Rusty:''' Skin cancer.
'''Danny:''' You send flowers?
'''Rusty:''' Dated his wife for a while. }}
* Sergeant Twining from ''[[
* Subverted, then tragically deconstructed in ''The Stoning of Soraya M.'' when Soraya {{spoiler|goes to help a widower and his mentally-challenged son with house chores. Nothing happens, but her [[Genre Savvy]] husband uses this as an opportunity to build false testimony that lewd interactions had taken place.}}
== [[Literature]] ==
* [[Deconstructed]] in ''[[Harry Potter]]'', when Snape tries to get Voldemort to
** To add insult to injury, Dumbledore [[Genre Savvy|realizes]] that Snape is trying to invoke it, and he's so pissed off that he angrily [[What the Hell, Hero?|chews him out about it]].
*
* The story of the Woman of Ephesus in the Roman novel ''The Satyricon'' might count as the oldest one in the book- the seemingly virtuous widow was at her husband's tomb ready to starve herself to death, but after some comforting words from a centurion ends up having sex with him and offering her husband's corpse to be crucified after one of the corpses the soldier is overseeing is stolen.
* From "The Notebooks of Lazarus Long" in [[Robert A. Heinlein]]'s novel ''[[Time Enough for Love]]'':
{{quote|
* ''[[The Count of Monte Cristo (
** [[The Count of Monte Cristo (
* Done by Renton in the book of ''[[Trainspotting]]''. Complicated by the fact that the young lady in question is about eight months pregnant at the time, which results in some truly disturbing speculation on Renton's part.
* This trope is invoked from three different angles involving the same widow in [[Lois McMaster Bujold|Bujold's]] ''[[Vorkosigan Saga|A Civil Campaign]]''. After Tien Vorsoisson's death in an accident, every fellow that knows of Ekaterin Vorsoisson's existence drops by when she moves into her uncle's home. (Due to certain demographic quirks, Miles' generation is running over five men to four women among the upper social classes - ''any'' marriageable woman of Ekaterin's age without actual visible deformities is competed for hotly.) Miles Vorkosigan, who fell for her even before her husband's death in the last novel, tries to be subtle about it only to discover that covert ops tactics are not that readily applied to courtship. Then Miles ends up ''accused'' of having killed her husband so that he could court the widow - and due to certain events connected with Tien's death, less than twenty people in the entire Barrayaran Imperium have the security clearance to be allowed to even know that the evidence proving Miles' innocence ''exists'', let alone be allowed to see it.
* ''[[
* Both inverted and subverted in a Guy de Maupassant story generally translated as "The Graveyard Sisterhood" which features prostitutes dressed as widows so that they can "comfort" and be comforted by male mourners.
* In [[Tom Clancy]]'s ''The Cardinal of the Kremlin'', American physicist Alan Gregory is abducted by the KGB with the assistance of one of his colleagues, who hopes to be able to make a move on Gregory's fiancée once he's out of the way.
== [[Live
* Happens in ''[[Scrubs]]'', where J.D. ends up having sex with his patient's widow, and comments "There are a lot of ways to grieve, but last time I checked, wheelbarrow style wasn't one".
** Borders on [[Romancing the Widow]] in this case, as the man had been in a coma for several years (after a car accident two weeks into their marriage). As "Tasty Coma Wife" puts it, she had already grieved over losing her husband, his actual death really just gave her some closure.
*** The trope is more definitely in effect several episodes earlier when JD and the wife went on a date while the husband was actually still alive (but of course comatose). They have a good time together but JD backs out before anything physical happens because this trope makes him uncomfortable with the situation.
* This happened in a very odd episode of ''[[Boy Meets World]]'' where the cast was sent back into World War II thanks to Salem crossing over from ''[[Sabrina the Teenage Witch (TV series)|Sabrina the Teenage Witch]]''.
* The third variant has popped up multiple times on ''[[Law
* Played with in ''[[
* It's more technically "Comforting the Bereaved Mom", but Danny Messer does this in ''[[CSI New York]]''. He already ''has'' a girlfriend.
* ''[[
* In an episode of ''[[Whose Line Is It Anyway?
* [[Rescue Me]]: Tommy sleeps with his dead brother's widow. And his dead cousin's widow.
* A variant occurs on ''[[
{{quote|
* The UnSub in "The Longest Night" of ''[[
* Discussed in the ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]'' episode "46 Minutes", when Ted, Robin, and Barney, after indulging in a long, drunken, terrible night full of mishaps due their depression over Marshall and Lily moving to Long Island, gloomily start predicting how Marshall and Lily might eventually stop seeing them altogether. Barney's imagination, of course, goes completely overboard:
{{quote|
** This causes Ted to snap out of his gloom and swear not to let their friendship with Marshall and Lily to dissolve, in order to prevent Barney's nightmare scenario from occurring (he was drunk at the
* '*[[Highlander (TV series)|Highlander]]'' had a variant of this where Richie killed the SO of an immortal friend of Duncan's right after Duncan lost Tessa. Mac later meets with the woman to argue with her over her wanting Richie dead, but alcohol comes into play and they end up sleeping together.
** Later, it happened with Richie and another immortal's widow, at least until she found out Richie had killed her husband.
* In ''[[The Walking Dead]]'', Shane kindled a romance with his best friend Rick's wife Lori when they thought Rick was killed in the early days of the [[Zombie Apocalypse]]. He also started to become a [[Parental Substitute]] to Rick's son Carl. Things get awkward when Rick shows up alive and well. Shane's frustration over losing his position as leader and his position in Lori and Carl's hearts simmers over the course of the series {{spoiler|culminating in him trying to [[Murder the Hypotenuse|murder Rick]] in season 2. It doesn't end well for Shane.}}
* ''[[Homeland]]''; at some point in the eight years Nicholas Brody was missing presumed dead, his friend Mike went from looking after his family to "comforting" his "widow". It's not clear how long it took, but they hadn't told the kids about it yet so it's presumably relatively recent.
== [[Music]] ==
* [[The Decemberists]] describe a
== [[Porn]] ==
* Judging how many image search results for "喪服" (''mofuku''), mourning wear, are porn with this theme, it seems
== [[Theater]] ==
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** Not to mention Claudius and Gertrude in ''[[Hamlet]]'', which involves the third (and questionably fourth) sub-variants.
*** The Mel Gibson and Kenneth Branagh film versions of ''Hamlet'' each offer additions to the Claudius/Gertrude dynamic, both hinting that they were in fact having an affair before the King's death (in particular, in Branagh's version, Hamlet looks much more like Claudius than he does his father).
* In ''[[Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (
* In the most recent adaptation of ''[[Martin Guerre]]'', Arnaud comes back from war to break the news to Martin's widow. The villagers somehow decide he's Martin (he was gone for seven years), and they have to play along with it so that she won't be forced to marry [[Stalker
== [[Video Games]] ==
* It's a bit more drawn-out in ''[[
* The romance with Aribeth in [[Neverwinter Nights]] might count, due to Fenthick's [[Plotline Death]] at the end of the first chapter.
* In ''Snatcher'', Gillian Seed (who is by the way married) can try to persuade the 18 (14 in the original Japanese version!) year old daughter of a dead teammate to let him try to comfort her. [[Robot Buddy|Metal Gear]] finds this very objectionable, and ''yells'' at Gillian to stop it. The daughter can get angry enough to throw Gillian out of the house, preventing him from returning for a while.
* Campbell says this was how he found his second wife in ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 4'' - her husband had disappeared and he 'comforted' her. {{spoiler|It might have been the case in a very warped way, but the marriage was actually a sham intended to protect her and her son from the Patriots.}}
* A dark variation in ''[[City of Heroes]]'': In one [[Mirror Universe|Praetoria]] story arc, one PPD cop comments to another about comforting a journalist's girlfriend. While said journalist lies dying at his feet.
== [[Web Comics]] ==
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** This is merged with the Hamlet example above when ''The Simpsons'' do their own version of the play. I guess Moe just fits the "Claudius" role perfectly.
*** And done ''again'' on a "three short stories" episode, this time set on the voyage of the ''Mayflower''.
*** And ''again'' when retelling ''[[The Count of Monte Cristo (
* This is how Fry accidentally managed to survive a temporal paradox after he accidentally went back in time and accidentally killed the man he thought was his grandfather in ''[[Futurama]]''.
** Ooohhh, a lesson in not changing history from Mr. "I'm my own grandpa!"
** Later repeated in the second movie with Zapp Branigan and Amy, after {{spoiler|Kiff goes splat}}. Gets kinda awkward when he inevitably gets better.
* The ''[[Family Guy]]'' episode "Perfect Castaway" has the family mistakenly believing that Peter has died at sea. Upon his return, he finds that Lois has married Brian. Subverted in that they never actually consummate the marriage before Peter's return (much to Brian's frustration).
▲* A dark variation in [[City of Heroes]]: In one [[Mirror Universe|Praetoria]] story arc, one PPD cop comments to another about comforting a journalist's girlfriend. While said journalist lies dying at his feet. {{spoiler|Guess who's responsible...}}
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Sex Tropes]]
[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]
[[Category:
[[Category:
[[Category:Alice and Bob]]
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