Due to the Dead: Difference between revisions

{{examples}}

== Good ==

* In ''[[Girls' Last Tour]]'' After realizing that Yuu scavenging junk constituted as grave robbing, Chii-chan insists they put the stuff back where they found it. Yuu, while not out to disrespect the dead, would rather not go through the inconvenience. It's possible Chii-chan would have been less charitable to the dead if she thought the scavenged stuff would help them survive.

* In ''[[Fruits Basket]]'', Tohru and her friends visit her mother's grave, and find that her grandfather had also come to pay his respects.

* [[Code Geass]] has {{spoiler|cyborg [[Ensemble Darkhorse|Jeremiah Gottwald]]}} actively deciding to respect a dead commander of {{spoiler|the Geass order}} because of the loyalty the man showed, which is the one trait {{spoiler|Jeremiah}} values above all others.

 

* In some variants of the [[Child Ballad]] ''The Famous Flower of Serving Men'', the heroine must dig her husband and child's grave. When the magical ending is used, a milk-white hind leads the king to the grave, where a [[Our Ghosts Are Different|bird]] laments how his love had become a serving man, and explains to the king how they had been murdered by the heroine's mother.

{{quote|''They left me nought to dig his grave but the bloody sword that slew my babe

''And will not let me sleep?"'' }}

 

* The [[Legion of Super-Heroes (comics)|Legion of Super-Heroes]] and [[Teen Titans (Comic Book)|Teen Titans]] have a hall of statues commemorating their dead.

* In ''[[Star Wars Legacy]]'', [[Evil Overlord]] Darth Krayt keeps the lightsaber of Jedi Master Kol Skywalker inside a case of transparisteel to pay respect to what he considers a [[Worthy Opponent]].

* The Destine family of ''[[ClanDestine]]'' have a private graveyard for the bodies of Adam Destine's parents and children. One issue starts with Adam and the twins visiting the grave of Florence, who was really Rory and Pandora's sister but posed as their grandmother (it's complicated). Special mention goes to the family Black Sheep, Vincent, who despite evil deeds of an unknown nature was still laid to rest in the family cemetery in the proper way (complete with an extremely weird statue as part of the grave marker, courtesy of his younger sister Samantha).

* [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|"To]] [[wikipedia:Mark Gruenwald|Gru]]. [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|We still miss you."]]

 

* In "[https://web.archive.org/web/20131104152714/http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/cinderella/stories/birch.html The Wonderful Birch]", after a [[Wicked Witch]] had [[Involuntary Transformation|turned the mother into a sheep]], [[Grand Theft Me|taken on her shape]], and gotten the father to agree to kill the sheep, the daughter tells the mother that, and the mother tells her not to eat any part of her, but to bury her bones. A birch tree grows from her grave and helps the daughter.

* In [[The Brothers Grimm (creator)|The Brothers Grimm]]'s "[https://web.archive.org/web/20130921113251/http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/grimms/47junipertree.html The Juniper Tree]" and [[Joseph Jacobs]]'s "[https://web.archive.org/web/20140401211439/http://surlalunefairytales.com/hanselgretel/stories/rosetree.html The Rose Tree]", when the stepmother kills the stepchild, the little half-sibling refused to eat the dish she makes of it, and buries the bones.

** More fairy tales of this type are found [http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0505.html here].

 

* In ''[[White Devil of the Moon]]'', during the heroines' expedition to the moon the present-day Sailor Mars builds a gigantic funeral pyre for the dead of the Moon Kingdom.

* ''[[Night of the Seance]]'', [[ABBA|Frida]] opted to have a private funeral for {{spoiler| Agnetha}} via, funeral pyre, which {{spoiler| would've been chosen anyways.}} It was out of respect for the other families, who also were grieving their losses. Frida was still struggling over the lost, but she didn't want to cause a scene for the others and honor the final requests.

* ''[https://www.wattpad.com/653474378-how-can-it-this-be How Can It This Be]'', {{Spoiler| [[Spice Girls]] }} were all buried together after a terrible bus accident claims all of the women, except for {{Spoiler|Victoria Beckham}}, who {{spoiler| killed in a road accident}} while [[Heroic Sacrifice| saving a random child]].

 

* The ''[[Star Wars]]'' films show us that Jedi respectfully burn the bodies of their dead. ''[[The Phantom Menace]]'' has Qui-Gon's funeral, and ''[[Return of the Jedi]]'' has Luke burn the body of Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker.

** In contrast, Vader is fond of strangling people, dumping them on the floor, and storming off in a rage.

* At one point in ''[[U-571]]'', the [[Hollywood History|US Marines who've boarded a U-Boat to recover the Enigma decoder]] are attempting to convince a German warship that they've been sunk, firing the body of one of their fallen comrades out of a torpedo tube along with whatever junk they can get hold of. The private assigned this task regards it as extremely [[Dirty Business]], and takes the time to recite the prayer used for burial at sea before doing so.

* In ''[[Taking Chance]]'', American military members who die while serving overseas are kept under a military escort for their entire trip back to their home town. The movie follows a Marine officer who volunteers to escort PFC Chance Phelps for the last few legs of the trip between Dover AFB and Chance's home town.

 

* In [[J. R. R. Tolkien]]'s Middle-earth, people generally try to give the dead as adequate a funeral as possible with the means at hand, be it a burial, a cairn, or something else, and bemoan the fact if the dead had to go unburied. In ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'', having no other options, they put {{spoiler|Boromir's}} body in a boat and send it down a waterfall, as the river would keep the orcs from it.

** In the Appendices, Tolkien recounts the story of a battle after which the dwarves had to cremate their dead, being too numerous to bury them in the traditional stone tombs, and earth burials being unacceptable. As a consequence, to say of one's father that "He was a burned dwarf" came to be a boast that he had fought and died in this battle.

** Earlier, his [[Rousing Speech]] said, "we may never be buried beneath Titan, so we will build our own memorial here."

* In Nick Kyme's ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' novel ''[[Salamanders|Salamander]]'', Tsu'gan fights fiercely to protect his dead captain's body; the next chapter features all his company attending his funeral.

** Later in the same book, he insists on {{spoiler|digging Dobby's grave by hand, rather than using magic.}}

** This is something even [[Big Bad|Voldemort]] respects allowing the schooll, besieged by his forces, time to mourn their dead.

For these dead birds sigh a prayer.'' }}

* ''[[Discworld]]''

** The Discworld's Silver Horde have a word for those who rob the graves of fallen warriors. That word is "Die!"

{{quote|"Shouldn't be like this. If you was a human, they'd put you in a big boat out on the tide and set fire to it, an' everyone'd see. Shouldn't just be you an' me down here in the cold."}}

* In ''[[Johnny Maxwell Trilogy|Johnny and the Dead]]'', the novel revolves about the plan to dig up a cemetary to replace it with a high-rise.

* One surviving work of the Roman poet [[Catullus]] records his journey from Rome to Anatolia to make sacrifices at his brother's grave. The description of how he feels at the tomb are heart-wrenching.

 

* The ''[[Star Trek]]'' franchise shows many different funerary customs for the various races.

** Spock's funeral has his body shot out of the torpedo tube, a sort of [[Space Is an Ocean|burial at sea.]]

* In the ''[[Chojin Sentai Jetman|Jetman]]'' tribute episode of ''[[Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger]]'', the Gokaiger visit Gai Yuuki's grave ([[Back from the Dead|to confirm that he's really gone]]) and find presents left behind by his teammates, including flowers, his favorite liquor, and [[Mythology Gag|an Ako-chan ramen cup]].

 

* ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' Space Marines go to great lengths to recover their dead brothers, and the individual chapters have additional and often elaborate practices to remember their dead. However, the body itself is not really important, the important things are the progenoid glands, that generate and store the geneseed necessary to create new Space Marines, and the expensive and in some cases outright irreplacable weapons and armor.

* Not a burial place, but the "San Angelo" setting for 4th edition ''[[Champions]]'' has the Liberty Square plaza. Memorials to several fallen heroes, including the WWII-era team the Liberty Corps, are placed here. Most supers in San Angelo, regardless of where they fall on the hero - villain scale, refuse to fight here out of respect to the dead.

* ''[[Exalted]]'' presents a strong incentive to give proper Due to the Dead, since failure to provide proper rites will usually anger the corpse's Hungry Ghost (one of the person's souls that remains behind to protect the body) and send it on a rampage. In certain areas, it's also possible to encounter a person's [[Our Ghosts Are Different|other ghost]], who will also likely be pissed off if they didn't receive a proper funeral.

 

* [[Sophocles]]:

** In ''[[Antigone]]'': before the beginning of the play's action, Eteocles and Polyneices, two brothers leading opposite sides in Thebes' civil war, died fighting each other for the throne. Creon, the new ruler of Thebes, has declared that Eteocles will be honored and Polyneices disgraced. The rebel brother's body will not be sanctified by holy rites, and will lie unburied on the battlefield, prey for carrion animals like worms and vultures, the harshest punishment at the time. Antigone and Ismene are the sisters of the dead Polyneices. In the opening of the play, Antigone brings Ismene outside the palace gates late at night for a secret meeting: Antigone wants to bury Polyneices' body, in defiance of Creon's edict. Ismene refuses to help her, fearing the death penalty, but she is unable to dissuade Antigone from going to bury her brother herself. Tragedy ensues.

* [[Euripides]]'s ''[[Alcestis]]'': When Admetus's wife Alcestis dies, and Hercules appears at his home, Admetus tries to hide that he is in mourning for his wife because they considered [[Sacred Hospitality|hospitality sacred]]. When Hercules learns of the death, he is really, really, really shocked to find that his host had hidden this from him and so his behavior has been really bad; he goes [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|to wrestle with]] [[Grim Reaper|Death]] [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|to reclaim her]].

 

* Used as [[Character Development]] in ''[[Assassin's Creed II]]''. When Ezio kills his first target after he completes his preliminary Assassin training (his first kill was before that training), he continues to shake the body over and over, shouting that it's not enough that he died (not least because he died unwilling to apologize or even explain his crimes). His uncle and mentor calmly explains that in death all things should be at peace, even those whose only purpose in life was evil. From then on, Ezio usually kills his target with a single stab of the Hidden Blade to their throat, followed by a parting line before almost lovingly saying, "''Requiescat in pace''" ("Rest in Peace"). At the end of the game, {{spoiler|he doesn't kill [[Complete Monster|Rodrigo Borgia]] ([[The Pope|Alexander VI]]), instead telling him that doing so won't bring his father and brothers back. Ezio's happy to leave him with the knowledge that he wasn't the Prophet and that his entire life's work was for naught.}}

** In ''Brotherhood'' {{spoiler|after Rodrigo is killed by his son Cesare}}, Ezio performs the rite once more with no malice, and for all of the Templar Agents (the single-player counterparts of the multiplayer characters). Only {{spoiler|Juan Borgia}} and {{spoiler|Octavian, Baron de Valois}} survive long enough to actually talk back to him though.

{{quote|'''Morgan:''' For some he was a pirate. A barbarian. A criminal. He was all of these things, but yet, he was so much more. To me, there's really only one word that fully captures who he was. Crag Hack was a ''hero''. And a father.}}

 

* ''[[The Order of the Stick]]'': Elan's lament over {{spoiler|Roy}}'s death.

** Not to mention the rather impressive gravestone he gave to {{spoiler|Therkla}}.

=== [[Western Animation]] ===

* In ''[[Beast Wars]]'' the Maximals "recycle" Dinobot's body, following the ''Predacon'' funeral traditions. In addition, Optimus, Cheetor, and Silverbolt fly overhead in the "missing man" formation.

 

* Elephants, cows, apes, monkeys, magpies, and other social animals are the only species other than humans to have been documented to mourn their dead.

 

== Evil ==

* The ''[[Berserk]]'' manga has Wyald establishing his [[Complete Monster|monster credentials]] in a big way by not only {{spoiler|raping and murdering a woman who helped the Hawks as well as the girls in her care}}, but also {{spoiler|[[Dead Guy on Display|carrying their naked, dismembered bodies into battle with the Hawks]]}}.

* From ''[[Mazinger Z]]'': In the episode where [[The Dragon| Baron Ashura]] is killed, [[Big Bad| Dr. Hell]] and his army hold a rather poignant memorial service, complete with a statue of Ashura.

 

=== Fairy Tales ===

* In [[Andre Norton]]'s ''The Time Traders'', the prehistoric tribe is set to cremate their chief with great honor. Too great: they intend to kill Ross Murdock on it as a sacrifice.

** In ''The Beast Master'' Hosteen Storm taunted a character he had realized was an alien: recounting all their funerary customs and how he won't get them, because no one will realize he died.

* In "Sonnet 68" [[William Shakespeare]] laments the decline from the [[Good Old Ways]]; they did not use to take hair from corpses for wigs.

* In Stephen Hunt's ''The Court of the Air'', steam men decry that humans loot their bodies. Silver Onestack is regarded as an abomination because humans cobbled him together from three steam men, whose souls are therefore held captive. King Steam and the steam men, while not willing to kill him, refuse to help him, and Silver Onestack thinks it's cowardice on his part not to free them by dying.

* As per history, Griboyedov's corpse is torn into pieces and mutilated in other fascinating ays while being paraded across Tehran by an angry mob in ''[[The Death of the Vazir Mukhtar]]''.

* In ''[[The Silence of the Lambs]]'', after shooting his captive prey Buffalo Bill skins (and in one case scalps) their corpses and dumps them in a river, where they wash up on the muddy shores bloated, rotting and nude. Hannibal Lecter, the novel's other serial killer, butchered, cooked and ate parts of some of his victims, but he also did other things with their bodies, often with an artistic element. {{spoiler|When he escapes he kills the two officers guarding him and uses a pocketknife to cut the face off one of them to use as a disguise to get himself carried out of the building.}} In the movie the other officer is partially skinned and strung up on the bars of Lecter's cage to resemble a butterfly. Not only is this a reference to two important elements of Buffalo Bill's M.O., it is also a reference to a Francis Bacon painting.

{{Quote|Colonel Weinleben they buried later, with a good deal more haste and less ceremony, in the wood. He was the illegitimate son of a cobbler from Mainz and greatly inferior to the dog, both in birth and breeding.}}

 

* In ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'', after killing Jenny Calendar, Angelus takes her body to Giles' apartment and places it in his bed before the latter arrives. Then, Angelus sets up his living room as if for "romantic evening" with champagne, roses, music and a note that says "upstairs." When Giles arrives he believes Jenny, with whom he has just reconciled, is expecting him.

* An episode of ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]'' had the crew get caught up in a conflict between two warring nations, at least one of whom brainwashes aliens to serve as grunt troops (in this case, Chakotay). During the brainwashing process, the "nemesis" desecrate fallen soldiers to enhance the brainwashing training.

* In the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' serial ''Battlefield'', Morgaine puts her invasion of the Earth on hold when she finds a war memorial. When [[The Brigadier]] finds them, they're in the middle of a ceremony to honour their enemy's dead; he agrees to a truce until the ceremony is over.

 

* In early episodes of ''[[Bloom County]]'', the ''Bloom Picayune'' would often engage in [[Malicious Slander]] against politicians. However:

'''Opus:''' Excuse me, sir, I thought you'd like to know that Councilman Hunzinker just kicked the bucket.

''([[Beat Panel]] as Milo crosses out what he typed.)''

 

=== Tabletop Games ===

* The typical reaction to the death of an ally or honored friend by [[Player Character|the players of any table top game?]] [[Sociopathic Hero|Strip the dead of anything and everything of any remote value. Even, and especially, if they were a fellow PC.]]

 

* [[Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (theatre)|Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street]]'s victims tend to end up as meat pies at Mrs. Lovett's pieshop.

* [[William Shakespeare]]'s ''[[Hamlet]]'': Queen Gertrude's quick remarriage did not take a proper period of mourning:

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Death Tropes]]

[[Category:Funeral Tropes]]

[[Category:Fairy Tale Tropes]]

[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]

[[Category:No Real Life Examples, Please]]

[[Category:Alliterative Trope Titles]]