History Main / BuryMeNotOnTheLonePrairie

** In "Get Me Out of Here!", Danny tells Lindsay he wants his ashes scattered over the Mets' field. She says she'll flush them out of the lavatory of her new husband's private jet on their way to Paris.
** In "Misconceptions," Flack discovers a letter from his father expressing his wishes to have his ashes scattered on the diamond at Yankee Stadium. He spends the rest of the episode persuading his sister to help him do this.

* In ''Literature/ABrothersPrice'', they find a man who ''was'' buried on the lone prairie, together with his kidnappers, who were apparently killed by their employers. The man's corpse is dug up and sent to be buried with his family, the bandits are just left where they are.

'''As a DeathTrope, all Spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.'''

* ''Literature/WagonsWest'': Sam Brentwood requests being buried in an unmarked grave along the Oregon Trail.

* Invoked in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' in a quest called "Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie". The quest sees players return the body of Noraxia, a sylph emissary to the Scions of the Seventh Dawn that was killed by the empire, to her people rather than being buried with the Scions killed in the same attack.

* In ''Literature/ChainLetter'', Tony has two final requests to fulfill for his friend, Neil. The first is to give a prized piece of jewelry to a person they admire. The second is to ensure his friend's body is buried in a specific area. The latter leads to him finding that the body of the man they hit is no longer where they left him, and that Tony may not actually be dead.

* In, ''Literature/ChainLetter'', Tony has two final requests to fulfill for his friend, Neil. The first is to give a prized piece of jewelry to a person they admire. The second is to ensure his friend's body is buried in a specific area. The latter leads to him finding that the body of the man they hit is no longer where they left him, and that Tony may not actually be dead.

* Averted, played straight and just generally messed with in Music/ViolentFemmes' "I Hear The Rain".

* Big And Rich, "Deadwood Mountain"
-->''You can bury me on Deadwood Mountain\\
By my brother wild Bill and sister calamity Jane\\
Don't bring me no flowers\\
Just a six gun smokin'\\
Put me eight feet down\\
When you bury me\\
And cover me a little extra deep\\
Cause that's the only way I'm gonna rest in peace''
* C.A. Quintet, "Bury Me in a Marijuana Field":
--> ''Bury me in a marijuana field\\
That's where I really long to be\\
Then I can go out in a blaze of glory\\
When you roll a joint up out of me''

* "The Cremation of Sam [=McGee=]" by Robert Service: The titular Sam is a Yukon [[{{Prospector}} gold miner]] from Tennessee who constantly complains of the cold. One particularly hard night, he feels he's done for, and so asks the narrator to cremate him as he can't stand the thought of spending eternity in a frozen grave. The narrator lugs the corpse around until he finds an icebound steamship, in which he fires up the furnace to the extreme temperature needed and puts the body in. However, he gets curious about how things are going and checks on his friend. Sam tells him to shut the door, as he's letting the heat out: "Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time that I've been warm."

* ''TabletopGame/Space1889'' There is an adventure about it in Challenge 38 called A Journey to Oblivion.

* In one episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', Homer's mother dies, and she wants her ashes to be thrown at a specific place at a specific time. It turned out it was all to disrupt one of Mr. Burns' anti-environmental plans as one last middle finger to him. Ultimately getting the last laugh on Burns and their age old rivalry.

* In ''ComicBook/VForVendetta'', the dying V tells Evey, "The Victoria line is blocked... twixt Whitehall and St. James... Give me a Viking funeral..." Eventually, Evey recalls the ornately-decorated subway train in which he'd had her place gelignite. She checks the London Underground map and finds that there's indeed rubble blocking the line there. She places his body in a glass coffin within the explosive-filled train and sends it speeding toward the blockage, which is right under Downing Street, site of the Fate computer through which the Norsefire regime had run the country. V's "Viking funeral" is thus the capstone to his dismantling of the fascist government.

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]

* This is the entire plot of the ''Film/TheThreeBurialsOfMelquiadesEstrada'', in which the protagonist steals his friend's corpse and sneaks into Mexico to bury him in his hometown.

* This is also the plot of the German movie ''Die Oma Ist Tot''. Grandma wants to be buried next to her husband in Poland, but dies on a family visit in Germany. As the transport costs are too high, the family tries to smuggle her across the border... in a surfboard box.

* In ''Film/EdgeOfDarkness2010'', Mel Gibson's character Tom Craven scatters his daughter's ashes on a beach where he'd taken her for outings when she was little.
* At the end of ''Film/FamilyBusiness'', Jesse has a rooftop wake where Adam and Vito mend fences. They scatter Jesse's cremains on the edge of the building's parapet to let the wind take them where it may, while the rest of Jesse's old friends from the neighborhood call, "So long!" and "See you on the other side, Jesse!"
* This is Erik aka Killmonger's request in ''Film/{{Black Panther|2018}}'' after T'Challa mortally wounds him and allows him to see the sunset of Wakanda. T'Challa offers to save him but he refuses knowing he'd be imprisoned for his crime, instead asking to be buried at sea just as slaves of old would do when escaping from slave ships.
* Bit of a plot point in ''Film/CountYorga'' in which Donna's mother had actually requested to be cremated in the event of death. However oddly enough she was buried and rather hastily according to Donna at Yorga's request. It soon becomes obvious when it's revealed that Yorga is a vampire. He had stolen away her body not long after the funeral and brought her to his manor so she could become his second vampire bride.
* The main plot of ''Film/MenWithBrooms'' kicks off when a dead coach has his ashes placed inside a curling rock and makes a LastRequest to his old team to win a curling tournament by placing said rock on the button(the center of the scoring area in curling).

* Creator/MichaelCaine's character in ''Film/AroundTheBend'' uses this trope as a plot to get his son, grandson and great-grandson to bond on a roadtrip across the Southwest after he's gone.
* In ''Film/TheOverTheHillGangRidesAgain'', the Baltimore Kid's last request is to be buried as a Texas Ranger with some of his old company in attendance. He asks Amos to send a letter to Sgt. Nash Crawford as he will be able to arrange this. The letter brings Nash, 'Gentleman' George, and Jason to town, only to discover that the Kid has already been buried. And then they discover that the Kid isn't actually dead...
* In ''Film/GreatWhite'', Michelle is travelling to remote Hell's Reef so she can disperse her grandfather's ashes there: his last wish being to be laid to rest with his shipmates who did not survive the shipwreck there.
* The plot of ''Film/TheLastRitesOfRansomPride'' is driven by Juliette promising Ransom that if he dies, she will take his body to Glory, Texas and bury him beside his mother. However, after his death, the Bruja seizes his body and the only way to redeem Ransom's corpse is for Juliette to give her Ransom's brother in exchange.

* Before the beginning of ''[[Literature/RevelationSpaceSeries Redemption Ark]]'' by Creator/AlastairReynolds, Antoinette Bax's father had said he wanted to have his ashes scattered in the atmosphere of a gas giant. At the time that he dies, all the gas giants in the system where she lives are in the middle of a war zone. This doesn't stop her from personally dropping his body off in the atmosphere of a gas giant while it's still in the contested volume.
** Later, in "Galactic North", a character requests "burial at C"--that is, to accelerate the ship as close to the speed of light as it will reasonably go, then fire her coffin ahead of it. She notes that it's only a pun in a language almost no one remembers.
* Creator/TonyHillerman novel ''The Fallen Man'' features a climber who wants his ashes spread over Shiprock, his favorite place to climb. Seeing that the ashes of a person is called "corpse dust" in Navajo tradition, and is considered the worst kind of black magic used by skinwalkers, this is seen with a very negative light by the local indigenous people.
* ''The Mary Gloster'' by Creator/RudyardKipling is a poem entirely consisting of the narrator's instructions to his son as to how he is to be buried (at sea, and it's going to be a BIG chore).

* In Creator/RobertAHeinlein's ''Literature/TimeEnoughForLove'', Lazarus Long tries to give Libby the cremation he requested, by letting him burn up de-orbiting into Earth. Problem is, he dies on the other side of the galaxy, but thankfully corpses keep well in space. Long sets up the body in an orbit around the planet where Libby died, knowing he can always come back later when it's possible to get to Earth and retrieve the body. Oddly enough someone steals it before he can come back, and even odder it turns out to be Lazarus himself. (TimeTravel is fun like that). However, in ''Literature/TheNumberOfTheBeast'' readers discover that he steals Libby's corpse a ''second'' time so they can recapture his DNA and memories and ''clone'' him, this time [[OppositeSexClone as a woman]].
* In ''Literature/LonesomeDove'' Woodrow Call brings Gus [=MacCrae=]'s body across the country so he can be buried in his favourite orchard that he shared with the woman he loved.
* In Polidori's ''Literature/TheVampyre'', Lord Ruthven invokes this trope to ensure his corpse will be exposed to moonlight, which he knows [[OurVampiresAreDifferent will revive him in undeath]].
* Early on in ''Literature/TheWarriorsApprentice'', Sergeant Bothari tells Miles that if he dies he doesn't want to be buried in space, but to be returned to Barrayar, where he has been promised a place in the Vorkosigan family cemetery, at the feet of the place reserved for Miles' mother. Needless to say, this turns out to be foreshadowing, or maybe [[ChekhovsGun Chekhov's dying wish]].
* Played with in Creator/AmyTan's ''Saving Fish from Drowning''. [[PosthumousNarration Narrator Bibi Chen]] laments that her joke about wanting to be buried in a particular antique Chinese coffin (she was an art dealer) was taken seriously by her friends. She goes on to say that her actual wish was to be cremated, her ashes put into several valuable containers, and each container given to a different friend, the idea being that the friends would take her ashes somewhere interesting and scatter them, then keep the boxes as a memento.

* A theme in Creator/GeorgeRRMartin's ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire''. In the backstory, Ned Stark supposedly fulfilled a final request of his sister Lyanna's by carrying her body 3000 miles across Westeros from Dorne to Winterfell in the North. However, as noted by TheResenter Barbrey Dustin in ''Literature/ADanceWithDragons'' he did not extend the same courtesy to other TrueCompanions who died in his skirmish with the Kingsguard at the Tower of Joy.
** In ''Literature/TalesOfDunkAndEgg'', Dunk has no choice but to bury his former master, Ser Arlan of Pennytree on the lone prairie. The reasons for this is practical. Dunk has no idea where Pennytree is and Ser Arlan has no known next of kin to turn to. So he buries him on a hillside facing west, as Ser Arlan had always liked watching the sunset.

* [[BilingualBonus Hanfkopf]], one of the scholars mentioned in the footnotes from Creator/RobertAntonWilson's ''The Widow's Son'' [[note]] Which has a lot of footnotes, most of them completely unrelated to the plot and concerned with the controversy surrounding the philosopher De Selby. It's an homage to Miles na Gopaleen's "The Third Policeman"[[/note]] requests that his ashes be ''thrown into the face'' of a rival expert. Sadly, his executors don't got through with it.
* Literature/JohnCarterOfMars: After faking his death (he actually astral projected back to Barsoom, leaving his body on Earth behind in a comatose state), John Carter requests for his nephew Creator/EdgarRiceBurroughs to bury his body in a mausoleum of his own design. The mausoleum is well ventilated and can only be opened from the inside to make sure that John's body on Earth will not be disturbed while he is living on Barsoom.
* In Jack Schaefer's ''The Canyon'', a Cheyenne goes on a dangerous journey deep into enemy country to retrieve the bones of his intended's father, which he plans to present to her brother instead of the traditional bride price.
* In ''Literature/ABrothersPrice'', they find a man who ''was'' buried on the lone prairie, together with his kidnappers, who were apparently killed by their employers. The man's corpse is dug up and sent to be buried with his family, the bandits are just left where they are.
* Towards the end of ''Literature/TheDragonKnight'', Sir Giles dies and requests that he be buried at sea (Because as a selkie, he can come back from the dead if this happens). Unfortunately, before any effort can be made to do this, the nobles in command of the armies whose fighting caused his death agreed that to seal the truce, everyone who died on that battlefield must be buried in a communal grave.

* In, ''Literature/ChainLetter'', Tony has two final requests to fulfill for his friend, Neil. The first is to give a prized piece of jewelry to a person they admire. The second is to ensure his friend's body is buried in a specific area. The latter leads to him finding that the body of the man they hit is no longer where they left him, and that Tony may not actually be dead.

* In ''Series/SlingsAndArrows'', Oliver wants his skull to be removed and used in all future productions of ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}''. Nobody wants anything to do with it except Geoffrey, who has to carry Oliver's head around in a cooler until he can find a sufficiently disreputable taxidermist.
* Frequently used on ''Series/SixFeetUnder''.
** Season 4 starts with Nate fooling his dead wife's parents so that he can steal her body and bury it in nature, as per her wishes.
** Or the gay set-designer who wanted to turn the funeral parlour into the set of his dead lover's favorite opera, therefore paying three times the usual fare. Ah, the crazy shit people do out of love.
* The ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' episode "The Message" looks as though it's going to be of this form, until the corpse in question [[FauxDeath wakes up]]... And in the end, they double-subvert it after shooting him a few times because he spends most of his time holding Kaylee hostage and shooting a gun at people and generally not listening. He does get his body taken home to his family like he wanted, though.
* An episode of ''Series/NorthernExposure'' revolves around Maurice and Holling trying to do this for a deceased hunting buddy of theirs.

* Averted on ''Series/DrQuinnMedicineWoman''. Miss Olive's will specifically states that her body actually be buried on the lone prairie rather than carted hither and yon.
* In the ''Series/{{QI}}'' episode "Gothic", certain Ghanaian funeral customs involving customized coffins are discussed in these terms.

* One episode of ''Series/TheDrewCareyShow'' centres around Drew's great-uncle Alfred dying and his last wish to be buried in Drew's backyard.
* On ''Series/{{Cougartown}}'', Bobby's father requested that his ashes be scattered on a roller-coaster. Problem is, Bobby's [[WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes afraid of roller-coasters]]. He finally goes through with it by having his friends ride with him for support. Unfortunately for them, Bobby sits on the ''front'' of the car.
* ''Series/{{CSINY}}'':
** In "Get Me Out of Here!", Danny tells Lindsay he wants his ashes scattered over the Mets' field. She says she'll flush them out of the lavatory of her new husband's private jet on their way to Paris.
** In "Misconceptions," Flack discovers a letter from his father expressing his wishes to have his ashes scattered on the diamond at Yankee Stadium. He spends the rest of the episode persuading his sister to help him do this.
* Invoked in the ''Series/{{Hustle}}'' episode "The Fall of Railton FC." Needing some footage of a fake football game, Emma pretends that her grandfather's last wish was to have his ashes scattered on the turf of his beloved football club, and cons the caretaker into letting her and the rest of the crew on to the pitch to do so. She then has to keep the caretaker distracted while the boys run around the pitch in football strip to get the footage they need.
* In at least one episode of ''Series/{{Bones}}'', Dr. Temperence Brennan describes her wish to undergo a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_burial sky burial]] to a clearly {{Squick}}ed-out Booth. Played with in that the difficulty laying in Booth's clear disgust at the idea and [[ValuesDissonance much more traditionalist outlook]] on how bodies are dealt with, rather than any logistical issues like wealth or location.

* "Where The Rose Is Sown" by Big Country:
-->''If I die in a combat zone\\
Box me up and ship me home.\\
If I die and still come home\\
Lay me where the rose is sown''
* The plot of the video to "Kingdom of Rust" by Doves is a man driving to Blackpool to scatter his father's ashes on the beach.
* Averted, played straight and just generally messed with in Violent Femmes' "I Hear The Rain".
* "If I Die Young," by The Band Perry. WebVideo/ToddInTheShadows had a lot of fun trying to figure out the logistics of this funeral arrangement.
-->''If I die young, bury me in satin\\
Lay me down on a bed of roses\\
Sink me in the river at dawn\\
Send me away with the words of a love song''

* In "Birthday Song," 2 Chainz wants to be buried in SIX places when he dies. (Like his fellow Website/ChannelAwesome reviewer on The Band Perry's song, WebVideo/TheRapCritic has fun considering the funeral arrangements.)
-->''When I die, bury me inside the Gucci store\\
When I die, bury me inside the Louie store\\
When I die, bury me inside the jewelry store\\
When I die, bury me inside the Truey store\\
When I die, bury me next to two bitches\\
When I die, bury me inside the booty club''

* UsefulNotes/FrederickTheGreat of UsefulNotes/{{Prussia}} stipulated that he be buried in a simple grave at Sanssouci palace, next to his dogs. His nephew and successor, Frederick William II, decided that this was not on and had him buried in the vault of the Garnisonkirche in Potsdam. At the end of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, the coffin was taken to Hohenzollern castle in Baden-Württemberg. He was finally buried where he wanted after the reunification of Germany in 1991.

* Taras Shevchenko, who is considered to be the founder of Ukrainian literature, famously wrote a poem called ''Testament'' (''Zapovit''), where he stipulates what to do with his body. Slightly subverted in that he died almost 16 years after writing the poem. However, his friends still followed the poem's instructions as if it was his last will and testament. Translated first part of the poem:

* ''Series/{{CSINY}}'': In "Misconceptions," Flack discovers a letter from his father expressing his wishes to have his ashes scattered on the diamond at Yankee Stadium. He spends most of the episode persuading his sister to help him do this.

* In his will, the Creator/MarquisDeSade requested that he be buried in an unmarked grave and that acorns be sowed above him, so that trees would hide his resting place and the world would forget him. This request was not honored, sad to say: his skull was later removed from his grave so the [[ScienceMarchesOn phrenologists]] could have a good look at it, and the world has not exactly forgotten him either.

* "The Cremation of Sam [=McGee=]" by Robert Service: The titular Sam is a Yukon gold miner from Tennessee who constantly complains of the cold. One particularly hard night, he feels he's done for, and so asks the narrator to cremate him as he can't stand the thought of spending eternity in a frozen grave. The narrator lugs the corpse around until he finds an icebound steamship, in which he fires up the furnace to the extreme temperature needed and puts the body in. However, he gets curious about how things are going and checks on his friend. Sam tells him to shut the door, as he's letting the heat out: "Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time that I've been warm."

* In one of his stand-up comedy books, George Carlin muses over how far this Trope falls legally, and how much of a pain in the ass you're allowed to be to your loved ones post-mortem. Such as if your request for the disposal of your body is to have it dropped out of an airplane and left to rot wherever it falls.

* UsefulNotes/GenghisKhan is claimed to have requested he be buried in secrecy in an unmarked grave, which has never been found. Many legends exist of how he was buried. ''Literature/TheTravelsOfMarcoPolo'' suggests all Mongolian khans were buried on a mountain called Altaï, while other legends claim a river was diverted over his grave like Alaric I and King Gilgamesh, that horses trampled his grave to make it unidentifiable, that trees were planted on the site, that permafrost was somehow involved, while some even claim an empty coffin was transported to Mongolia. One legend claims a young camel was buried with him, and the camel's mother was seen weeping at the grave. Another, more fanciful legend purportedly told to Marco Polo, but not appearing in any contemporary source, is that 2,000 slaves attended to his funeral and were killed by the soldiers guarding them, and those soldiers were killed by another group of soldiers, who went on to kill anyone in their path to LeaveNoWitnesses, then commit suicide at their destination (which raises [[UndeadAuthor some questions]]). Modern research suggests he may have been buried in the Burkhan Khaldun mountain, also known as Ikh Khorig or The Great Taboo, a sacred mountain where Genghis Khan prayed to Tengri before uniting the Mongol tribes.

* After the ''ComicBook/XMen'' adversary [[BlindSeer Destiny]] died, she left her leman Mystique detailed instructions on where and when she wanted her ashes scattered into the sea. Precognition + Sense of Humor = [[TheFunInFuneral Win]]. "I'll make you laugh if it's the last thing I do" indeed...

* Another poetic example: ''The Cremation of Sam [=McGee=]'', where a Tennessee miner who hates the cold asks his friend to cremate him. Except he sort of gets better (the narrator peeks in the door to see him sitting happily amidst the flames; Sam asks him to close the door to keep out the cold).

* "The Cremation of Sam [=McGee=]": The titular Sam is a Yukon gold miner from Tennessee who constantly complains of the cold. One particularly cold night, he feels he's done for, and so asks the narrator to cremate him, dying the next day. The narrator pushes on with the corpse until he finds an icebound steamship.
-->Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;\\
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;\\
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared — such a blaze you seldom see;\\
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam [=McGee=].\\
Then I made a hike, for I didn't like to hear him sizzle so;\\
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.\\
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don't know why;\\
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.\\
I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;\\
But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;\\
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: "I'll just take a peep inside.\\
I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked;" . . . then the door I opened wide.\\
And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;\\
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: "Please close that door.\\
It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm —\\
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm."

* Creator/HunterSThompson, [[TropeOverdosed whose life contains about every trope in existence]], had the best funeral in history. His ashes were shot out of a ''cannon shaped like a giant sword, the hilt of which was shaped like the Gonzo logo.'' The man in charge of getting all of this (and the frankly ''amazing'' party) together? Creator/JohnnyDepp. The best part? His ashes were mixed into fireworks. Yeah.