The "Fun" in "Funeral"

...Then the casket was accidentally dropped, causing twenty dead clowns to roll out.

Vienna Central Cemetery: Half the size of the City of Zurich, but at least twice as fun.

— Austrian saying

Even at a funeral, hilarity ensues. 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 Black 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, Last Disrespects, or Speak Ill of the Dead, where the non-dead characters may indulge in this.

Or, finally, the heartwarming version that we get a bit in real life. The deceased was a comic (or even a Sad Clown) and would abhor the idea of people wasting a day and a gathering moping about their passing. This is the basis of a Cheerful Funeral: ultimately full of good spirits as everyone shares their fondest memories of the passed and honors their memory with a smile or two.

See also Death as Comedy, when the character's demise itself was amusing.

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Advertising

An ad for Aiwa has a hearse driver playing "Another One Bites the Dust" in his hearse's CD player.
One ad for Spotify has DNCE noticing that one user has their songs on a playlist called "Play This At My Funeral." Joe Jonas notes "That's a pretty messed up funeral." Cue Imagine Spot of pall bearers carrying a casket while simultaneously crying and dancing to one of their songs.
Tagline: "Play this at my funeral." She would have wanted you to listen to it.

Anime & Manga

In Carole & Tuesday, one of Carole's part-time jobs involves fake-crying at a dead guy's funeral to give the impression there are plenty of people missing him. This being Carole, she sees a butterfly land on the priest's head and bursts out laughing like a madwoman.
In Gintama, episode 231 has Gintoki and company attending a funeral for the owner of a restaurant they were regulars at, which the foreword states will be a solemn, dignified affair. It goes well up until Kagura gets involved, then takes a nosedive from there after she completely messes up at paying her respects properly, which provokes the owner's ghost into trying to ensure the processions go smoothly by force. It ends up having the opposite effect due to how horrified Gintoki and Hijikata are of him (Made worse by the fact that only they can see him), which leads to them making even more mistakes, wrecking his coffin and launching his corpse into a delivery truck among other things.
- Part of a later story arc has everyone attending a funeral for a not-quite dead Kagura, which after a series of mishaps, leads to them all thinking that the proper way to pay their respects is to crush the coffin with a giant boulder...
In Episode 5 of Martian Successor Nadesico, due to the contract Yurika is forced to carry out funerary ceremonies for the members of the Nadesico's crew and residents of the space colony which had been recently destroyed by the Jovians' attacks. She isn't very thrilled about it, especially when she has to dress up accordingly for Catholic, Muslim and many other different religions' ceremonies to carry them out properly, while being dragged around by Jun.
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 it 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, it's later revealed that the father was still alive and the entire situation was an elaborate ruse; when his children were children, they were a pretty poor family, but were happy and laughed. However, when they discovered the valuable medical properties of the herbs around, they got greedy and forgot what was important, leading him to do this. Shino ends up pointing out the flukes in his plan before helping him pull it off.
An episode of Pokémon the Series involved Team Rocket having a fake funeral for a rice ball that fell into a lake.
- An earlier episode involved James' parents faking their death to get him to marry Jessiebelle. It quickly stops being funny when it's revealed what kind of people his parents and Jessiebelle ARE.
Scott Pilgrim Takes Off: From Envy breaking into a concert performance mid-service to the casket holding the coins that he left behind in the fight, Scott's funeral is completely played for comedy.
In Summer Wars, the family gathers to celebrate Grandma Sakae's 90th birthday, but she dies a few days shy of it. In the final scenes we get her funeral, where most of her family sings Happy Birthday to You! while wearing party hats and carrying silly props.
YuYu Hakusho: Zig Zagging. Yusuke attends his own funeral as a ghost. To his disgust, he finds that some of his classmates are laughing and smiling, causing him to think that they only came just to get extra credit. Then he sees Keiko crying over his death, and Kuwabara mourning over his death and commenting that he was supposed to be there for him. Then he notices Iwamoto and Akashi, who seem to be rather glad that he was already dead. But Mr. Takanaka confronts the two, and proceeds inside their house. He follows him, and seems to be a little bit surprised to see the teacher mourn over his death. He also sees his mother, also doing the same. The kid whom he saved is also there with his mother, and as they leave the kid tells his mother that he was really a nice guy even though some people there were angry at him. Seeing how much he's missed by his childhood friend Keiko, his mother, his rival Kuwabara, and his homeroom teacher gives him the resolve necessary to go through some difficult ordeals to get himself resurrected.

Comic Books

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.
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."
Nick Fury's famous funeral in The Incredible Hulk Issue #434. The entire story is mostly grim but then there's the Howling Commandos who are making jokes and laughing the whole time, sure that Nick is Faking the Dead. And they were right.
Dino Manelli: So... so what's his angle this time? LMD? Clone? Clones are BIG these days.
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. Lex Luthor was not amused.
The last issue of New Avengers (2015) opens with the team holding a funeral for Sunspot. The only person who really takes it seriously is Songbird (who’s eulogy quickly turns melodramatic), with most of the other guests cracking jokes or engaging in Seinfeldian Conversation. The only attendees are the team themselves (not even all of them), the New Mutants, some AIM mooks, and an alcohol-serving robot butler. It’s also fake, and part of a sting operation to bust the Scientist Supreme. Sunspot busts out of his coffin to beat up the bad guy in question.
Pierre Tombal: In this comic book the dead are apparently living skeletons who spent eternity in the cemetery of Pierre Tombal, the local gravedigger, where they are treated as residents.
The Superior Foes of Spider-Man has a memorable scene where the team tries to give a funeral to a guy who isn’t dead. They’re planning on burying him alive. When he interrupts Speed Demon’s (melodramatic and nonsensical) eulogy to beg for mercy, they get on his case for being rude.
One time, the Teen Titans were holding a funeral for some fallen comrades when Ravager (Rose Wilson) suddenly declares that she's bored and walks over to the nearby swimming pool to go Skinny Dipping.
The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye:
- Because the Scavengers didn’t know him that well (and didn’t even really like him), Flywheels’s “funeral” (for lack of a better term), ends up consisting of Misfire insulting the deceased before the group robs his corpse. They don’t even bother to bury him before leaving.
- One story arc involves the Lost Light crew being invited to Thunderclash’s funeral... which isn’t really a funeral because Thunderclash isn’t dead yet. It’s more of “preemptive wake” than anything, and mostly consists of a dance party. Also, despite everyone insisting that they loved Thunderclash and will remember him dearly, nobody actually seems all that sad to see him go. And this all happens before the monsters show up...
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 and starts singing "Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da". Oddly enough, given the actual tenor of their relationship, it's heartwarming in context. In one of the recollections in that story, before the ash-in-face scene, Mystique remembers Destiny saying, "I'll make you laugh even if it's the last thing I do."

Comic Strips

After Opus was lost at sea and presumed eaten by a squid, the cast of Bloom County held a wake for him. This was followed by the reading of his will, which mostly consisted of the various characters greedily demanding to know what they were left, or bitching about what he bequeathed them.
- Later, when Steve was presumed dead (actually, he was abducted by aliens and returned later), the rest of the gang held a wake in his memory. They couldn't come up with any real compliments for him (besides "he could spit forty feet"), Portnoy got drunk on a bottle of Old Spice, and they mistook his Trojans for water balloons, throwing them at one Mrs. Paula Pegwhistle, who retaliated by chasing them with a shotgun.
Becomes somewhat inevitable in the Swedish comic strip Himlens Änglar given that it runs on Death as Comedy and loves to poke fun at various Afterlife Tropes.
In an early story arc from Pearls Before Swine, Pig got a job as a funeral director. One strip involved a eulogy about how Fred was a good husband and a good man. Except his name was Bob. Another strip involved the casket falling into the grave and breaking...followed by the "corpse" yelling "Ow!" Another strip has Pig mention a parade where the cars had stickers reading "fun something or other" in their windows, and Rat informs him that they actually read "funeral", and then Pig says "Now I feel bad for waving and honking."

Fan Works

In Beneath Boundless Skies George plays a prank during Fred's funeral that turns the hair of every non-redheaded participant Weasley red. This is soon followed by enough fireworks to outdo Guy Fawkes' Day.
In Rainbow Dash Presents: Bittersweet, only the rest of the Mane Six attend Pinkie's funeral, and when asked to speak about her, Rarity gloats that she totally called it that Pinkie would commit suicide, Twilight expresses disbelief about her cause of death (short version: the diabetic Pinkie ate herself to death by eating tons of ice cream) in this day and age, Applejack has nothing to say and concluded that Pinkie died out of spite, Fluttershy is drowned out by dubstep as per Pinkie's last will and testament, and Rainbow Dash makes it about herself and her feelings of guilt for not doing enough to save Pinkie.
In Carry That Weight (A Long Time) George sets off fireworks during Fred's funeral.
In A Dreary Tale of Katelyn Potter McGonagall mentions that during her husband's funeral, her brother Robert was about to give a reading when her other brother Malcolm unleashed some killer flatulence.
In Elementum Consensio Harry is attending Fred's funeral when he receives a Howler which, instead of yelling at Harry, proclaims the sender's undying love for him and describes various sexual acts in great detail. George treats the incident as a sort of tribute, stating that it's just the kind of thing Fred would've done if he could've managed it.
In Happiest Day of His Life Harry shows up at his uncle's funeral and proceeds to insult the deceased, reveal a tasteless personalized T-shirt and announce that due to a court-ordered claim on the estate, nobody but him is going to be receiving a single penny.
In Mors et Tempus Slughorn mentions the time his friend Samwell Haggins took a sip of Elixir to Induce Euphoria during his wife's funeral and ended up interrupting the professional singers by doing a very slow rendition of "Danny Boy".
Rest in Chaos from the Borderworld is the will of Discord. This is the same character who canonically made cotten candy clouds rain chocolate as the introduction to his attempted takeover, defines himself as the Spirit of Chaos, and regularly warps reality for the sake of a gag. While the fic isn't technically a funeral fic, it does very deliberately set up the Fun in Funeral situation:
Specifically, you should remove my heart and throw that into the volcano. Be warned that my heart doesn't look like a heart and is also not located where you'd think it should be. It moves around a lot. You'll know it when you see it, because it'll be giving out an ominous red glow, and gazing upon it causes auditory hallucinations. Then I want the rest of my body preserved. I want it stuffed in a pose that makes it look like I'm pointing and laughing at the rest of you, and I want it mounted on the wall above Celestia's throne.
- That's only the FOURTH paragraph.
The pro wrestling story, The Return-Remixed has one. After Beth Phoenix steps down as Divas Champion due to a severe concussion she suffered at the hands of DEAR, the members of DEAR throw a mock-funeral for her, featuring Trish Stratus dressed in Widow's Weeds, Lita delivering a scathing eulogy, Mickie James leading a parody of "Amazing Grace" for the hymn and Victoria lying in a coffin as "the late Beth Phoenix".
In The Seven Misfortunes of Lady Fortune, Marinette seems to be the only one actually sad at Gabriel's funeral. Considering he tried to kill her seven years ago, that's saying something.
In Those Who Stand for Nothing Fall for Anything there's Matt's funeral because pretty much everyone hated him, even his widow. Light, who really hated him, has to give his eulogy and L and Light uh... make use of his ashes.
A food fight broke out at the funeral of Elly Patterson in Who Silenced Elly Patterson, started when Connie confronted Elly's husband about bringing his fiancee to the funeral. All of the Patterson dirty laundry got aired that day, and preserved for posterity thanks to family friend Josef Weeder being a photographer.

Gamebooks

The Fighting Fantasy adventure Battleblade Warrior has a really funny part, where the player hero must infiltrate an orc's funeral by dressing up as an orc himself. To his horror, he then discovers the funeral rites include taking a bite from the deceased, at which point he ends up bailing the funeral by slicing and slashing his way through the mourners.

Literature

In Anansi Boys, Charlie gives an eulogy for his father and then realizes he's at the wrong funeral. Anansi would have loved that; heck, Anansi was probably behind that.
In the Australian children's book Barebum Billy, a funeral is mentioned as one of the inappropriate places Billy chose to run around naked.
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.
Dear America:
- The plot of Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie is set in motion by the "missing corpse" variant: the coffin of narrator Hattie's uncle falls into the Missouri River in the path of a steamboat, and the body is lost. Feeling responsible, the boat's captain offers Hattie's family free steamboat tickets, which allow them to start a journey to Oregon.
In Color Me Dark, Nellie Lee Love's family runs a funeral home out of their house. Nellie and her sister are often told to stay upstairs and not move during funerals ever since they started running around upstairs and made the family of the deceased think it was a ghost.
How to Sell a Haunted House: The funeral for Louis and Mark's parents is quite goofy. Their mother was a puppeteer so the mourners are all the city's puppeteers with their puppets and Mark even gives her a kazoo song as a final tribute she would have wanted.
Attempted unsuccessfully in Men at Arms. The funeral of Beano the Clown involves things such as a trombonist clocking a musician in the row ahead of him during the funeral dirge, then getting punched in turn and knocked into the bass drum, starting a brawl, and Beano's ashes going down someone's pants. But since the whole thing is choreographed and performed by rote, like all other routines done by the Ankh-Morpork Guild of Fools, it's explicitly noted to not be the least bit funny to the non-clown witnesses.
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... once the horse refuses to jump.
Patty Sanders's eulogy for her grandmother is loving but far from traditional in Racing Tom Turkey by Abby Adams.
Starter Villain (2023) begins with Charlie being asked to officiate at his estranged uncle Jake's funeral. The funeral director askes him what to do with all of the floral arrangements that celebrate Jake's being dead in various obscene ways. Then Charlie learns that everyone else at the funeral is just there to make sure Jake really is dead - including by trying to stab the body.
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 opening of John R. Powers' novel The Unoriginal Sinner And The Ice Cream God, the narrator, Tim Conroy, is sitting in the neighborhood funeral parlor, remembering two incidents that occurred there: When he was thirteen, his uncontrollable laughter at his Great Uncle Elmer's funeral in response to a funeral director's comment, "Will everyone please come up and take a last look at Mr. Elmer Keegan and then pass out." The second, just before he started college, involved him accidentally tripping over a woman on her knees praying, when he wasn't watching where he was going.

Music

A Sage Francis song, "Andy Kaufman", has this almost exactly. "I put the fun back into funeral/My morbid humor'll kill ya"
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!
The music video for the Red Hot Chili Peppers single "Brendan's Death Song" features a parade in New Orleans, albeit with a morbid theme.
"Finnegan's Wake" (the song, not the James Joyce book named for it). 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.^note
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. Includes jokes about "the stiff" finally getting to score with all the girls he loved...
The music video for Rammstein's "Haifisch". Let's see, two women Till slept with get into a cat 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), and then they get into a fight, and to top it all off, it turns out that Till had faked his death the entire time and ran off to live on a tropical island.
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.
A perfect example of this may well be the Newfoundland folk song, The Night that Paddy Murphy Died.
That's how they showed their respect for Paddy Murphy
That's how they showed their honour and their pride
They said it was a sinnin' shame and they winked at one another
And every drink in the place was full the night Pat Murphy died.
This trope pops up in the Barenaked Ladies' "One Week" as an instance of the narrator's inappropriate behaviour.
How can I help it if I think you're funny when you're mad?
Trying hard not to smile, though I feel bad
I'm the kind of guy who laughs at a funeral
Can't understand what I mean? Well, you soon will!
In "Only If for a Night" by Florence + the Machine, there are the lines:
And the grass was so green against my new clothes
And I did cartwheels in your honor, dancing on tiptoes
My own secret ceremonials before the service began
In the graveyard, doing handstands
The Irish folk song "Rosin the Beau" Invokes this trope, with the eponymous character specifically requesting that his funeral be filled with drinking and merrymaking in his memory.
When I'm dead and laid out on the counter
A voice you will hear from below
Crying, “Send down a hogshead of whisky
To drink to old Rosin the Beau!"
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.
Ray Stevens:
- In oone song entitled "Sitting Up with the Dead", Ray's 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 overnight wake, causing Uncle Fred to sit up in his casket. Coupled with a thunderstorm and power outage, everyone instantly thinks "haunting," and it instantly leads to mass panic.^note
- More funeral fun from Ray comes in "Family Funeral Fight". When the criminal son of the deceased arrives, the whole affair devolves into an hours long family brawl.
"Weird Al" Yankovic's "Tacky" has the following lines.
I would live-tweet a funeral
Take selfies with the deceased
Sammy J's "There'll Be Someone at My Funeral Who Doesn't Want to Be There" describes the unusual collection of individuals he expects to be attending his funeral, and there disparate reasons for being there. Also quiche.
The Tragically Hip's song "World Container" (off the album of the same name) discusses this trope, probably as a Shout-Out to the Barenaked Ladies.
Laugh at a funeral or two
Laugh and laugh 'til all the chameleons turn black
Laugh and laugh 'til you're told
Please don't come back

Print Media

MAD #393 had an article titled "Practical Joke Items Guaranteed to Put the 'Fun' Back in Funerals."
- In another issue is a piece entitled "What NOT to Do at a Funeral." Samples include: "DON'T try to amuse the guests with a hand puppet of the deceased," and "If you work at Disneyland, DON'T go to the funeral directly from work," with a panel drawn by Paul Coker showing a man in a Goofy costume sitting in the front row of the viewing.

Professional Wrestling

The WWE feud between Big Show and the Big Bossman 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 cruel 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.
  - The police vehicle driven by Big Bossman in the funeral scenes is a replica 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. ^note
In the last year of WCW, they were fond of having heels throw funerals for faces who lost retirement/get fired matches, complete with coffin and backhanded eulogies.
At least one insignificant TNA wrestler got this kind of sendoff when his "Feast or Fired" case (all the other cases hold title shots) revealed "Fired". A brief montage ended with the words, "We hardly knew you," which was probably delivered in all honesty.

Radio

The Believe It episode "Party" ends with Richard Wilson attending the funeral of an actor he despised for networking purposes. He manages to give a decent eulogy by simply and bare-facedly lying, but then subtly ends it with "Is there anyone here who can give me a job?"

Theater

Dearly Departed is this trope in spades. After the patriarch of a dysfunctional southern family, Bud Turpin Sr., keels over at the breakfast table, his family attempts to cope with their loss and plan his funeral. Various shenanigans occur, including the Reverend having a bad case of food poisoning in the middle of the service, Bud being buried in ballet shoes due 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 it all.
The musical adaptation of Fun Home highlights this in "Come To the Fun Home", an upbeat, colorful commercial for the Bechdel Funeral Home where Alison and her brothers sing praises of all there is to do at their funerals, including one of the brothers playing with an aneurysm hook like a sword.
Pretty much the entirety of Grandma Sylvias 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, has 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.
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

On your first visit to the Athkatla Graveyard in Baldur's Gate II, you'll encounter a panicked man called Nevin, who explains how his hated, tyrannical, stingy uncle Lester has just risen from his new grave as a zombie, killed every funeral-goer who couldn't escape, and is now after him. Lester promptly lurches onto the scene and angrily explains he rose from the dead through sheer indignation at the funeral he got: Nevin had a closed-casket ceremony to cover for the fact he'd buried Lester naked after pawning all of his uncle's clothes, bribed a drunken Talosian cleric with a few coppers to slur some drunken profanity over the casket in lieu of a eulogy, and the flowers laid out on the casket were freshly picked by Nevin from the local swamp that morning. Nevin angrily spits back that he had little choice, given that Lester's will had given all of his money and everything else of value that he had to Lester's favorite Calimshite whore. The player can either intervene, cutting the zombie down whereupon his nephew curses the fact he's going to have to rebury the mangled corpse, or just leave them be, whereupon Lester will kill Nevin and then shamble off in search of his mistress for "one last quickie".^note
One of the stages in the Flipping the Table arcade game Cho Chabudai Gaeshi Sono 2 involves the ghost of a guy who's frustrated by the lackluster funeral he's getting from the cheap-ass priest his family hired, and who proceeds to pound on his own lifeless corpse and flip the casket across the room.
In Grandia an NPC in New Parm is all set to celebrate his own funeral. He sincerely believes you should be able to have fun at your own funeral.
Captain Qwark's memorial in Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal features not only Ratchet (who knew damn well that Qwark was about as heroic as 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 (actually Klunk) responding to the Galactic President's heartfelt speech with "What a load of bullsh-".
Ratchet: And he had a unique... "fashion sense"...
This infamous 2006 video of a World of Warcraft funeral getting crashed by a guild of self-proclaimed assholes for laughs, especially considering that the player died of a terminal illness. The PvP carnage is set to "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.
- Subverted in a similar rumored incident in Star Trek Online. Following the death of Leonard Nimoy, STO devs set up a memorial on the Vulcan Map (still there) and players held vigil there. One of the troll fleets showed up and began spamming the local chat and deployed several items that would break emotes or create lag for less dedicated computers when enmass. Unfortunately, their timing was off as the game developers (who had been accused of ignoring player complaints about such actions) were showing executives at CBS the fan outpouring on line. While the devs maintained to players that the above antics were legitimate game play, the devs recognized it for what it was and promptly tolled the devs, who cracked down on such fleets.

Web Animation

Homestar Runner: The Strong Bad Email "your funeral" has Strong Bad describing what will happen when he dies; he'll be 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 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!"
- While hunting for O'Malley in Season 3, Sarge and Caboose come across a dead Blue. Sarge is happy about this, but decides that he should at least give some respect to the dead:
  Rest in peace... dirtbag.
- In Season 17, after Agent Washington becoming mentally unstable due to a Reality-Breaking Paradox and filthy rich because Dr. Grey used that to perform some Insurance Fraud, Grey gave him this gem of an idea:
GREY: On my suggestion he's funding a giant. Walking. Cannon. For funerals! Blasts you straight into the ground. Or space. Or the ocean if you've got a foot fetish. (brief silence) So folks at the beach paddle in you forever. After death care is a pet interest of mine and by extension, Wash.
Although we don't see Donkey's funeral in Weebl & Bob, the buildup is filled with Gallows Humor ("I guess it's time to put donkey... in the ass hole!") and an incredibly lazy joke about Donkey's father being a giant ape.
- Bob actually mentions that Mr Teeth 'puts the fun in funeral'.

Webcomics

Concession: During Mariam Jansen's funeral, Roland complains about the boring food: "The old lady may be dead, but my taste buds aren't!" When a guest says she wants to say to her, "ey, c'mon now... Just get up already..." Angie shouts, "That's what SHE said!" Roland high-fives her, and Thonnen is visibly angered. Things take a turn for the dark later as that night Roland's clothes get stolen somehow, leaving him naked outside, while Thonnen is raped to continue the family line.
Ennui GO!: The aptly-named strip "FUNeral" sees resident Non-Ironic Clown Sarah get hired to perform at a funeral and wake up the corpse with her joy buzzer.
An accidental hilarious variant occurs in Forestdale: At a funeral Dallas and his mom Christi are attending, she tells him to tell their skunk family friend Alex, "Sorry for your loss." Despite rehearsing it behind his mom's back, he accidentally tells her, "Make sure you floss." Luckily, the two women find it amusing, while Dallas just face palms, regretting what he said.
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.
- After finding the dead body of Jade's dreamself, Grandpa Harley is seen mourning, with Jade preserved and stuffed in a silly pose in the background.
- Roxy held a funeral for Rose, all by herself. It was actually a rather sombre and serious event, until Jaspersprite dug up the body and turned it into another sprite not long afterwards.
Least I Could Do: A Near-Death Experience gives the main character a vision of his own funeral, where he puts the fun into it. This includes 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 The 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.
Schlock Mercenary: Xinchub's funeral, and the events leading up to it, is treated like this, on account of the multiple times he blackmailed and attempted to kill the main characters. 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.
Sexy Losers: In one 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.
Shortpacked!: Mike attends Blaine O'Malley's funeral in a Hawaiian shirt and paper hat, with a noisemaker and confetti to boot. Amber is introduced to Faz's girlfriend Wen, who is exactly as deranged and creepy as Faz. And after Amber berates her father's corpse, Mike flips him off while delivering this line:
Mike: Later, jerkhole. I'm fuckin' your daughter.
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 Peejee 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.
- After the passing of the well-despised Avagadro Pompey, one of the many enemies he left behind hopes that his funeral ends up a "miserable little circus". Cue Kharisma walking by in her funeral dress made of measuring tape, as Davan comments that a good circus needs a clown. Sanderson also managed to leave a final gift behind in the casket.
As always, White Ninja shows us how it's done: with style.

Web Original

The Coffin Dance Meme shows the Dancing Pallbearers dancing with a coffin after a person makes an epic fail which brought that person according to the meme in the coffin.
From Season 2 Episode 6 of Kpts4tv, mac_sly56, and Arkonid's Death Note Abridged series:
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 smileï¿½it 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: Muwahahahaa hahahaha 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!
The Dream SMP hosted a funeral for Jschlatt after his death in the L'Manburg Civil War, which was one massive Funny Moment for the series. Nobody except BadBoyHalo took it seriously, resulting in Schlatt's pictures being shot off the walls or defaced with penises, people stealing his body parts (renamed items placed in a chest, as Minecraft corpses disappear upon death), Tommy and Tubbo playing with his bones, and to cap it all off, Quackity singing a horribly autotuned song about how Schlatt is burning in hell, after eating his heart.
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 Fools' Day 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 flak from people who didn't understand it was put up on April Fool's and were use to their more friendly ones like Frozen Grand Central or Pantless Subway Ride. Despite putting up warnings in the description and in annotations and the title — yes, the title — a few people still respond "outraged" many years later.
Jacksfilms' YIAY #572 is entirely dedicated to how users would want their funeral. Answers include firing their corpse out of a cannon and burying them where they land, playing the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme when their casket is being lowered, and having everyone in Garfield fursuits kiss the corpse (which is in a Boss Baby themed casket) on the lips before having a dance party with the corpse tied to the ceiling fan.
Evelyn from Less is Morgue is extremely proud of the fact that Chad Kroeger from Nickelback performed at her funeral.
Million Dollars, But: introduces the curse of doing the Mary Poppins dance every time you hear music. And then hypnotizing everyone else into dancing along with you, no matter what they're doing. Including at a funeral. All for the low, low, price of negative one million pounds! Want to buy it?
In Monster Factory's Sweeps Week series, Greg Montgomery gets deleted. Dharma Finklestein plans a "memorial rager" in an empty field that reads "GREG" in the dirt, setting up a bonfire pit, grill, and hot tub, and inviting Will Smith, Geoffrey, Jazz, and Carol Seaver. The wake features people setting themselves on fire, sleeping in the deceased's coffin, and Jazz going on a camping trip with the widow, all culminating in Greg climbing out of his coffin, the field now reading "GREG RULES".
Justin: Greg would hate every second of this, though.
The SCP Foundation story Funerals are Fun is a Black Comedy version of this. Told from the victim's perspective, it shows a funeral that is targeted by the horrific SCP "Cousin Johnny," with all the usual depravity he brings. However, the events suddenly become even stranger, resulting in Johnny's plan being completely derailed by "LAUGH IS FUN," a morbid candid-camera show hijacking the funeral. Despite how gruesome it is, what makes it funny is how annoyed Cousin Johnny gets at being upstaged.
In Suburban Knights, Ma-Ti's funeral alternates between serious and funny (on his overall heartwarming eulogy, The Nostalgia Critic has to explain why he was cremated — You Don't Want to Know how — and put in a can of Quaker Oats, and describes him as the most "hearty" person he's ever met; the "show your arms" by the Channel Awesome crew has The Nostalgia Chick pulling her wig instead of a weapon; Paw Dugan plays Amazing Freaking Grace on a kazoo — which still sounds like a bagpipe orchestra!)
'This Way Up'. A British short animation filled with Black Humor. Just about guaranteed to make you cringe at some point in the film.
Vinesauce: Joel holds a "funeral" for his bootlegged, red, PlayStation 2 controller. Yes, seriously. He writes the "engraving" in Comic Sans, sings a very funny parody of "My Heart Will Go On" using a crappy MIDI as background music, makes a joke about Danny DeVito, and proceeds to buy a new controller. It can be found here.

Real Life

Andrew Jackson, 7th U.S President, was such a Sir Swears-a-Lot that his pet African grey parrot Poll had to be removed from the congregation after cursing up a storm in three separate languages at his funeral.
When medieval German trickster/fool-using-Obfuscating Stupidity Till Eulenspiegel died, the guys who carried his coffin goofed up, and the coffin fell into the 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."
William the Conqueror was too large to fit into his stone sarcophagus. He was forced into it, which caused his bowels to evacuate in the church. The ceremony was hastily concluded.
The funeral for controversial musician GG Allin didn't take long to turn into one giant party in honor of him. The bottle of Jim Beam he asked to be buried with was drank near dry by the time he was lowered into the grave.
The Cynical Brit had, for a number of years, funded a Starcraft Esports team. Said team won a championship and got a trophy. When he died in 2018, his last will was for the trophy to be used as his urn.
Billy Mays's pallbearers wore his iconic OxiClean blue shirt/khaki pants outfit.
In Taiwan and some parts of China, the next of kin sometimes hire entertainers, especially strippers, to perform at funerals. Notably, the funeral procession of Tung Hsiang, a Taiwanese politician, included fifty pole dancers. Part of the logic is that having lots of mourners at your funeral is a mark of prestige, and naked ladies are a good way to bring people in.
The funeral of KFC founder Colonel Sanders had him dressed in his signature white suit, black tie, and glasses.
Graham Chapman's death led to the Cheerful Funeral one would expect from Monty Python, with John Cleese doing a very informal eulogy that started with a recollection of the Dead Parrot sketch and at times bordered on The Roast, along with including a Precision F-Strike, and Eric Idle starting a singalong of "Always Look On the Bright Side of Life".
According to John Wayne's daughter Aissa her father had told the family on a number of occasions to have a party instead of a traditional funeral. However, she went on to say that Wayne had not made provision for a party in his will, and his family held a more traditional Catholic funeral when he died in 1979.
At the funeral service for Terry-Thomas, the musical selections included the jaunty title theme for one of his films, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines.
The tone of Irish wakes varies, but it's not uncommon for them to have a tenor that's more social than sombre. In particular, if the deceased lived a long, full life, then a rowdy wake with music, stories, and drinking is seen as a sign of how beloved they were in the community.
Rodney Dangerfield's headstone reads "There goes the neighborhood!"

The "Fun" in "Funeral"

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Other examples:

Video Example(s):

Michael Jordan

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