The Fun in Funeral: Difference between revisions

Expect plenty of [[Black Comedy]] to be involved.

 

 

{{examples}}

* 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. [[The Stoic|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. {{spoiler|However, the funeral wasn't real, and the supposedly dead guy just wanted people to lighten up by making them make others laugh.}}

 

* In one issue of ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]]'', Mystique has to scatter the ashes of Destiny, her friend and [[Hide Your Lesbians|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 -- [http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?p=11721977 at which point, the wind picks up and blows them right back into her face. She collapses in helpless laughter.]

** Oddly enough, given the actual tenor of their relationship, [[It Makes Sense in Context|it's heartwarming in context]].

* Alison Bechtel (of ''[[Dykes to Watch Out For]]'') has one book which renames funeral home to "Fun Home" as the title.

 

* ''[[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 [[Funny Moments|caterwalling "he is not dead but sleepeth"]] (and the guest of honor {{spoiler|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.

* In an opening scene of ''[[Mousehunt (film)|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.

*** And then said old man {{spoiler|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 {{spoiler|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]] [[Mood Whiplash|almost instantly]].

* The end of ''[[Thor (film)|Thor]]'' shows Thor and the other Asgardians having a huge feast, and in ''[[The Avengers (film)|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]]).

 

* 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.

* In ''Anansi Boys'', Charlie gives an eulogy for his father and then realizes he's at the wrong funeral.

** Anansi would have loved 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.

 

* [[Cloudcuckoolander|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.

* 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.

** Another had Charlie having an [[Imagine Spot]] of [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxuhOS3UduY 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.

'''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 [[Failed a Spot Check|a large and very obvious cannon poking out of the grave]].

* ''[[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.)

* ''[[The Twilight Zone]]'' episode "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" tells what happens when the title character sits up in coffin, alive and hungry.

 

* 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.

** Also, [[wikipedia:Finnegan's Wake|"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. {{spoiler|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.

By five o'clock in the evenin' every bastard there was pisky!'' }}

 

 

** 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 [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GX0lbKxzCw&feature=related 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]]''.

***** The ridiculousness of the angle was later [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] with Big Boss Man, in a stable including [[Kurt Angle]], retells the story.

 

* 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 [[Hilarity Ensues|her home has been turned into a brothel and a naive young inspector is also missing]].

* In the opening scene of ''[[Paint Your Wagon (theatre)|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!"

 

* [[Fake Ultimate Hero|Captain Qwark]]'s memorial in ''[[Ratchet and Clank Up Your Arsenal]]'' features not only Ratchet (who knew damn well that Qwark was about as heroic as [[Buffy-Speak|something not very heroic]]) listing Qwark's "wonderful qualities" as including being really tall and having a chin with "kind of a butt shape", but also has Clank ( {{spoiler|actually [[Evil Twin|Klunk]]}}) responding to the Galactic President's heartfelt speech with "What a load of [[Curse Cut Short|bullsh-]]".

{{quote|'''Ratchet''': "And he had a unique... "fashion sense"...}}

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgXW-cKI1bw&feature=player_embedded# This infamous 2006 video] of a ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' funeral getting crashed by a guild of [[Troll|self-proclaimed assholes]] for laughs, especially considering that the player died of a terminal illness. [[Soundtrack Dissonance|The PvP carnage is set to]] "[[Scatman John|Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)]]" for extra funeral fun. For better or for worse, ''WoW'' players learned from this incident and now hold funerals in non-PvP zones so as to remove the fun from them. On the other hand, the deceased was a fairly hardcore [[PvP]] player, and the "crashing" players were merely paying their respects in their own, cross-faction way.

 

* Although we don't see [https://web.archive.org/web/20140422052735/http://www.weebls-stuff.com/wab/funeral/ Donkey's funeral] in [[Weebl and Bob]], the buildup is filled with [[Gallows Humor]] ("I guess it's time to put donkey... in the ass hole!") and an [[Stealth Pun|incredibly lazy joke about Donkey's father being]] [[Donkey Kong|a giant ape]].

** Bob actually mentions that Mr Teeth 'puts the fun in funeral'.

* On ''[[Homestar Runner]]'', the Strong Bad Email "[http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail168.html your funeral]" has Strong Bad describing what will happen when he dies; he'll be [[People Jars|preserved in a jar]] so that he can return for the zombie apocalypse, his funeral dirge will be death metal, he'll record his own eulogy (which will, of course, be accidentally recorded over), and at the end, he'll come back to life in order to prevent his brother from performing an interpretive dance.

 

* In a ''[[Sexy Losers]]'' strip, someone actually masturbates with an urn containing the ashes of a [[Black Comedy Rape|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.

** 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.

** "[http://leasticoulddo.com/comic/20060907 Well played, little sister, well played]."

* As one of the entries on the [[The Fun in Funeral/Quotes|quotes page]] shows, in ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'', {{spoiler|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]].

* 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.

 

* 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.

'''Light:''' Oh Ryuk, I haven't even ''begun'' to scare you yet! }}

 

* 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.

{{quote|'''Leela''': We did our best!

* ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|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.

 

* 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''.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsHk9WC7fnQ 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.

{{quote|''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.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Funeral Tropes]]

[[Category:Comedy Tropes]]

[[Category:Finagle's Law]]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fun in Funeral, The}}