When characters die and a formal funeral, or returning the body home, is not possible, their companions will often bury them and erect some kind of marker as a form of Due to the Dead. And, if the character wore some kind of trademark headgear, their friends may hang the hat atop the marker.
For warriors, this is usually combined with Weapon Tombstone: placing the warrior's helmet atop the weapon. However, it can be done for characters who are not warriors or in situations were the others do not wish to leave the warrior's weapon behind.
As a Death Trope, there may be unmarked spoilers ahead. Beware.
Examples:
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Advertising
- Used in this
1944 advertisement for US War Bonds. It depicts a US Army combat helmet by a white cross in a graveyard full of crosses, asking "...does it matter whether he was Protestant, Catholic or Jew? He fought American. He died American. He was American."
Comic Books
- The cover of 52 #1 shows Batman's cowl perched atop Wonder Woman's sword thrust through Superman's cape: signifying their symbolic deaths. This bookended by the cover of #52 which depicts The Question's iconic fedora perched on top of a gravestone (with Elongated Man's orange costume wrapped round the stone): representing their actal deaths.
- Garth Ennis' The Boys has a variation on this in a Vietnam War flashback. After wiping out American troops armed with a crappy new rifle supplied by Vought-American, the VC leave the dead GI's weapons stuck in the ground with their helmets on top. However, the helmets aren't empty....
- At the end of Combat Kelly and his Deadly Dozen #4, the Dozen leave a rifle with his helmet atop it stuck into the ground besides the body of Captain Conner. However, as a mark of their Last Disrespects, they do not bother to bury the body.
- In Fables #140, Puss in Boots is thought dead. Briar Rose marks his cairn by placing his rapier in the pile of stones and hanging his musketeer hat on it.
- Kanan: Stance's headstone is his rifle with his helmet perched atop it.
- In the Sgt. Rock comics, the graves of fallen members of Easy Company were usually marked with their rifle and helmet. This was featured the cover of the Between Hell and a Hard Place GN, and in the story itself Wildman instructs some new privates to do this for a fallen comrade.
- In Tomahawk #106, the Rangers think Tomahawk is killed in an avalanche. They mark his resting place with his tomahawk and coonskin cap.
- In one Wolverine story, a trio of generic bad guys hunt him down with dogs. First he runs from them. Then, when an Innocent Bystander is killed in the crossfire, he slaughters them. He then takes a while to dig graves before he moves on... and is shown placing the two dogs' collars and the bystander's hat on the three graves, and leaving the dead men for the scavengers. note
Comic Strips
- When Milton Caniff, creator of Steve Canyon, died, the last Steve Canyon strip to run was a tribute including a panel by Bill Mauldin. This showed Mauldin's World War II soldier Willie sticking a rifle-sized pen into the ground while Steve, in flight suit, set a pilot's helmet atop the pen. (The rest of the tribute was the signatures of twenty or thirty other cartoonists.)
Film — Animated
- Mulan: When the general—who also happens to be Shang's father—is killed by Shan Yu and his army, Chien-po, who found the body, brings back the general's helmet. Having no time for a burial, Shang erects a memorial by driving his sword into the ground and placing his father's helmet on it. Mulan also places an abandoned dollnote she found in the village's ruins next to the sword.
- A dark version occurs in Up, combined with a grim Trophy Room, as Charles Muntz has killed other explorers and, apparently, kept their aviator helmets on stands as a way of keeping track.
Film — Live Action
- Firehouse Dog: The canine actor Rexxx goes missing, and is eventually considered dead by his owner. In the absence of a body, Rexxx's toupee is placed on top of the grave.
- In The Land That Time Forgot, the sailors killed by the dinosaurs, whether British or German, each have their grave marked with a pole driven into the ground with their sailor's cap hung from the top of it.
- Both the original and the 1995 remake of Sahara ends with shots of the graves of the fallen Allied soldiers, with variety of their head gear being put on the service rifles fixed as headstones. The difference is in tone of the scene: the original is upbeat, "we made it through sacrifice to victory" (being a war-time propaganda movie, after all), while the remake is a somber scene of War Is Hell.
- Saving Private Ryan : After the paratroopers killed near the radar station are buried, Capt. Miller marks their graves with their helmets and M1 rifles. He removes the trigger group from each weapon so they can't be used by the Germans.
Video Games
- Completing the Mission: In the "Valiant Hero" ending, chopper pilot Charles Calvin loses his life in an explosion. The game ends with his friend Henry Stickmin coming to visit his gravestone, which has his iconic headset placed on top.
- In Ghost of Tsushima, the basket-like Tengai hat can be found during Act 3, in the northwestern part of the lake by Jogaku Temple. This lake is positioned just a bit south of the temple, an important settlement in Ghost of Tsushima's third map - Kamiagata. Once you're in this corner of the lake, go towards the forest, pass over a small grass patch, and you'll spot two graves. There is a stick next to the western one. You'll find the hat on top of this stick.
- The live-action trailer for Halo 3: ODST features the 'Helmet, boots, rifle' field burial with the equipment updated appropriately.
- The Game Over screen in Medal of Honor: Allied Assault is a field of M1 Garand rifles planted barrel-first on the ground with helmets perched on them.
Web Animation
- DEATH BATTLE!: At the end of "Shredder vs Silver Samurai", after defeating the Silver Samurai, Shredder plants his sword in the ground and hangs his helmet on the hilt.
- The end of TOME includes a small shot of Kirbopher's gravestone, marked with his sword and hat, despite Christopher being alive by the end of the story. Perhaps it's meant to say that the persona itself is dead, either due to Kajet's attacks corrupting the game model, or because his secret identity had been revealed.
Western Animation
- Demonstrated in the "Odie-sey" episode of Class of the Titans. The nymph Calypso helps the heroes and her new beloved Odie escape her island with a boat in her possession, since she is forbidden from leaving the island. When asked how she got a boat, she reveals she Really Gets Around and got the boat from one of her now-deceased ex-boyfriends, consisting of various men who wash up on her island every hundred years or so that she takes as lovers. Cue a graveyard full of time-relevant helmets showing the burial places.
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The very last episode "Victory and Death" ends with the Venator-class star destroyer crash-landing on the surface of a moon. Ahsoka and Captain Rex are the only ones to escape in time, but none of the other Clone Troopers survive. To honour the dead clones, they place their helmets before they leave. When Darth Vader arrives several years later, the helmets are almost entirely covered in snow.
Real Life
- The "Field Cross," as it's known in the US Military, consists of a personal weapon (usually a rifle with the bayonet fixed, but not always) stuck muzzle-down into the ground, with the fallen serviceman's boots placed on either side for support, his helmet hung over the butt, and one of his dog tags looped through the trigger guard or otherwise secured to the weapon (the other tag is taken for records and next-of-kin notification). The weapon will generally have the bolt or some other critical component removed to render it inoperable to an enemy who might steal it. Since the wars the US has fought since 1973 have been either very short or low-intensity, most bodies have been removed from the field and sent home for burial, so Field Crosses are usually symbolically erected at funeral services and memorials.
- Funerary Helmets are a more formal version of this tradition, where a knight's helmet is placed on display over their memorial.
