"They're gonna bury what's left of ya in a soup can!"
— The Demoman, Team Fortress 2
A character has just died, and for one reason or another was cremated (Perhaps it was their will? Or their friends decided to have them incinerated?). There's just the small problem that the funeral urn sold by the crematorium is extremely expensive, well above the main characters' budget, or the main characters are too cheap to shell out the cash for a "proper urn".
The solution? Just pick any receptacle.
It doesn't matter if it's a coffee tin from the nearest grocery store or a Mason jar from the pantry. If it can hold something, there's no reason it can't hold funeral ashes (or more accurately, cremains), right?
Almost always Played for Laughs due to the sheer violation of the usual respect towards the dead. This is also often used as a satire of the funeral industry. See also Ashes to Crashes, where something unfortunate happens to the ashes (such as being dropped to the floor). Be careful not to put the ashes in a coffee or hot chocolate powder tin, because there's a risk someone might drink it unwittingly!
Examples:
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Films — Live-Action
- A major Running Gag of Due Date is that Ethan keeps the ashes of his father in a coffee can, much to Peter's dismay. They even end up drinking it by accident.
- In The Big Lebowski, the protagonists refuse to shell out $180 for an urn (the most modestly-priced receptacle offered by the crematorium) for the ashes of their friend Donny. They end up going to the nearest Ralphs to buy a tin of Folgers coffee to contain the ashes.
- Asteroid City: After Augie finally breaks down and tells his children that their mother succumbed to her illness four weeks ago, he reveals she was cremated, and shows them the ashes — which are being kept in a Tupperware bowl with a sealed lid.
Literature
- Played for Drama in Evidence of Things Not Seen. Russ Simmons is found murdered, after which his family learns that he had a side business as a drug dealer and was murdered by a seventeen-year-old prostitute he was having an affair with. Urns at the funeral home start at $100, so his wife, who hates his memory and didn't want the ashes to begin with, takes them home in a beat-up cardboard box.
Live-Action TV
- Chalk: Young Eric teases his domineering mother by waving a small vase at her. When he is grown up, the vase is revealed to be storing her ashes. She is not actually dead: just wishful thinking on Eric's part.
- Eli Stone decides to scatter his father's ashes in Tibet, but the urn they're stored in is too heavy and bulky to carry that far. Eli transfers the ashes to an empty coffee can for the journey and then has to explain to customs why he's carrying an empty can back to the USA with him.
- Haven: When the Chief explodes on a beach due to the pressure of having to keep up The Masquerade that the Troubles aren't back, Nathan ends up having to put the pieces in the nearest available receptacle...a cooler in the back of his truck. He and Audrey are immediately called to the next catastrophe caused by the Troubles, so it hangs out there in the truck for a few days. Nathan asks Audrey to bury it if things go south, and Audrey refuses, scolding him that it's a waste of a good cooler. Later in the season, when the Chief's ghost comes back to haunt Nathan, he immediately asks what happened after he exploded. Nathan explains, and the Chief is upset Nathan wasted a good cooler.
- Taskmaster:
- In "Another Spoon," the prize task is "best defunct object," and David Baddiel's offering is the ashes of his pet cat — which he apparently keeps in a plastic screw-lid jar that originally contained laundry powder.
- For the "most shocking thing when turned around" prize task in "Always Forks and Marbles," Julian Clary brings in his friend's funeral urn: a yellow, spotted vase that turns out to have the word "shit" written on it. He explains that he had bought it, by coincidence, a week before the friend had died, and that "shit" was the friend's favourite word. Julian brought the urn and ashes in as a prize so that the friend, who had been a huge fan of ''Taskmaster'', could be on the show.
- An episode of Wings has the group try to help Fay scatter the ashes of her late husband George. As they're flying to the drop-off point in the plane, Brian breaks the urn and they have to vacuum up the ashes with a Dustbuster. They end up using that to scatter the ashes.
Radio
- In the Quebec radio sketches Les 2 Minutes du Peuple, the guy phoning the crematorium to have his dead grandfather-in-law incinerated is informed the cheapest urn would be 725$. He immediately asks his girlfriend if they still have Mason jars.
Funeral House Manager: Sir, with all due respect to the dead...
Guy Who Phoned: Are you implying we don't respect our jams?
Webcomics
- In Trailer Park Warlock
, Jake keeps his grandma's ashes in a mayo jar. When her ghost finds out she's a little annoyed at the indignity.
Web Videos
- Suburban Knights: Ma-Ti's ashes are placed in a container of Quakers Oats.
Western Animation
- This was the twist of an episode of Freaky Stories. A family in a Ruritanian village monthly received a package from a successful relative in the United States. One month they received a jar with some powder, but a goat ate the letter it came with. They guessed it was some kind of spice and cooked with it all the time. They ran out of the powder, but next month they received a new package which was an urn where said relative wanted his ashes put in...ashes which had been contained in the jar.
Real Life
- When Carrie Fisher and her mother Debbie Reynolds were laid to rest, the former's ashes were placed in an urn shaped like a giant Prozac pill. Fisher had bought it years earlier, and her brother and daughter felt it was appropriate.
- You can get your very own KISS urn. Of course this one isn't cheap.
