The Fun In Funeral / Western Animation

The "Fun" in "Funeral" in Western Animation.

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• The Amazing World of Gumball has Gumball mistaking a pet funeral for a date with Penny, because she wanted some emotional support. He gives a very brief and uninterested eulogy and is later attacked by the supposed dead pet, ending up in the hospital.

  Gumball: "Mr. Cuddles was Penny's pet. Even though I never met him, Penny's pretty hot. So I'm sure he was pretty hot too."

• Animaniacs even had an example of one of these: In one Slappy Squirrel short, Slappy's nemesis, Walter Wolf, is dead, and Slappy has to deliver the eulogy at his funeral. The twist is that Walter isn't really dead, and he's set up a bunch of booby-traps at the funeral for Slappy. Slappy finds out about this, and hilarity naturally ensues.
• As Told by Ginger, "Losing Nana Bishop" has Hoodsey eulogizing his late paternal grandmother. He happens to be wearing an iron mask that he and Carl got, but they lost the key. Also, the service is being held on a boat and the casket's cart is accidentally knocked loose, causing it to sway back-and-forth during an otherwise appropriate eulogy.
• The Batman: The Animated Series episode "The Man Who Killed Batman" featured the Joker truly mourning Batman, placing a cape and cowl in a coffin, and then adding a "Kick Me" sign, causing Harley Quinn to observe "You know what's great about you, Puddin'? You really put the 'fun' in funeral." After an emotional eulogy, he sticks the low-level guy held responsible for Batsy's death in the coffin and rolls it into a pit of acid. while Harley plays "Amazing Grace" on a kazoo (one of the funniest moments of the entire series; reportedly, the kazoo solo was done all in one take, as everyone was cracking up, making it impossible to do it again). And then he wipes away a tear and then perkily discusses dinner choices.
  Joker: Well, that was fun. Who's for Chinese?
• In BoJack Horseman, some of the highlights of Herb's funeral include:
  • The actual way he died: Not from cancer, but from a car accident right after his cancer went into remission. He was tweeting while driving (about how good it is to be cancer free) and he slammed into a truck. It was not the crash that killed him, mind you, but the fact that the truck was full of peanuts and he was deadly allergic.
  • The stars of the show he wrote ditching the wake to go on a convoluted treasure hunt... Which suddenly turns into the investigation of a murder. Although it turns out the murder part was just a huge misunderstanding.
  • A whole bunch of people just coming in to mooch up to celebrities and network shamelessly. But when Herb's beloved friend, Henry Winkler (who never misses an opportunity to mention his most beloved role on tv... That one episode of Law & Order) expresses disgust at this, Princess Carolyn, who never actually knew Herb, goes on to make up all sorts of over the top stories about her doing charity work with him well into the night.
  • The great reveal: Herb's gold was actually the manuscript for his novel, which he hopes will become his legacy after he dies. It's terrible, and what looked like an odd mix of murder and plagiarism was actually a perfectly well intentioned attempt to stop the manuscript from being published and humiliating Herb.
    BoJack:(reading out loud) "The carpenter's boy was a hungry boy, hungry for crumpets, but also hungry, dot dot dot, for life" (Beat) ... He literally wrote out "dot dot dot".
  • And the fun does not stop there!
    • After Princess Carolyn convinces everyone she was very close to Herb, she gets to keep his urn with his ashes (which has the same plaid pattern he had on his shirt). The urn shows up again several times throughout the series... And most of those times, it falls and breaks.
    • Eventually, BoJack has an orphanage named after him... but he sends them an email with a typo and the orphanage is named... "Jerb Kazzaz Orpahange". Todd points out that Herb would have found it hilarious that BoJack could not even get that right.
• In The Boondocks episode "Wingmen", Robert Freeman is asked to read the eulogy, written by the deceased, at the funeral of a jerkass war buddy named Moe. He gets about halfway through, his voice increasingly incredulous, until he eventually gives up, speaks his mind, and finds out that nobody else really liked the guy either. In the end, though, Granddad does show some affection, displaying his inheritance on the mantel even though it was really just one last prank.
  Granddad: (Reading) "I'm not gay, but Moe Jackson was a very... sexy man...?" (Increasingly confused) "We used to call him 'Moe Bitches'"?? "I once saw Moe in his underwear..."??? "...And it changed my life..."!? "Everybody should have a father like Moe Jackson... Moe Jackson paid my rent ''over fifty times"?!! OKAY, THIS IS BULLSHIT!
• The Cleveland Show: In "Gone With the Wind" during Loretta's funeral, it was already silly enough as it was, but with Reverend Jenkins giving her a very hilarious eulogy, and there's a eulogy montage for Loretta that only really showed off more of her unlikable traits (namely her constant nagging and her cheating on Cleveland).
• Ponce's funeral in his premiere episode of Clone High is played entirely for laughs, with his best friend JFK picking him up out of the coffin and punching him because he insists he's not really dead, and then jumping into the coffin next to him and closing the lid (only to pop out seconds later and state "I was in a coffin with a dead guy!" and run off screaming).
• There's great fun to be had in the funeral scene in Drawn Together's 16th episode, Captain Girl. "We are burying Captain Girl as a Mormon. Not because she was one, but because she hated Mormons and it would make her happy to bury one."
• Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist features an episode called Mourning Person where Dr. Katz has to attend a funeral and give a eulogy. He confesses right away that he's not a "mourning person", and finds something about funerals highly amusing. There's an extended scene where both Dr. Katz and his son Ben try very hard (and sort of fail) to keep their giddy laughter in check during the funeral.
• Duckman:
  • In the episode "Pig Amock", the normally staid Cornfed, suffering from a familial genetic disease, suddenly becomes outrageously horny while giving a eulogy. This culminates in an attempt to sex up the widow upon hallucinating her scantily clad and wearing a "Pigs Welcome" sign. After he apologizes to everyone and runs off, Bernice fears there's something wrong with him, whereupon Duckman says, "Seemed perfectly normal to me."
  • In "Love! Anger! Kvetching!", the episode ends with the burial of Duckman's horrific uncle, featuring a balsawood coffin and a song specially composed for the occasion:
    "My name is Moe and I was an old man/It took me hours to go to the can/Time made me deaf, made it harder to see/Enlarged my prostate so I couldn't pee/I was a mean and vindictive old guy/Nobody liked me, not hard to see why/But Heaven can take me, it really still can/if all of you girls will sleep with Duckman!"
• In the DuckTales (2017) episode "The 87 Cent Solution!", Scrooge's (fake) funeral is an appropriately somber affair...until Glomgold crashes the event wearing a white sequined suit with dollar-sign-shaped shades, blasting DJ Khaled's "All I Do Is Win", throwing money around like he's at a strip club, and twerking at the corpse. He then attempts to climb on to Scrooge's casket to dance on it, but is stopped by his thoroughly-embarrased assistant.
• Family Guy:
  • In the episode "Peter, Peter, Caviar Eater", Peter attends the funeral of one of Lois' relatives. When he learns she left her a vast inheritance, he starts dancing with the corpse. The funniest part of this is when everybody stares in horror at what Peter's doing. His attempt at getting out of this is to drop the corpse and say "Oh my God. She's dead."
  • In one of the cutaway gags involving Quagmire (more specifically the one in the episode "Airport '07" that was a DVD-exclusive scene), there is a funeral of a woman who was implied in the eulogy to have died a virgin, only for Quagmire to pop out of the coffin and dance away in his underwear, heavily implying that he committed necrophilia (on a side note, the DVD commentary for this episode stated that the censors only objected to this scene because the woman who died was a virgin, not because of the heavily-implied necrophilia).
  • In "Save the Clam" during Horace's funeral, Peter's brief eulogy focuses on The Munsters, while Quagmire runs off crying (which Joe insults him for). Then there's the DUI montage.
    • Meg using Chris as a stand-in corpse for someone's funeral and having to scratch his testicles.
  • During a near-death experience in "#JOLO", Peter pictures his own funeral — fat hula dancers flank his coffin, while three monkeys in bellhop costumes sing "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer". Meanwhile, all the mourners are eating soft pretzels, and a midget clown riding a dog throws a pie in Meg's face.
  Lois: I don't know either, kids. But this was your father's wish, so we're going to honor it.
• In the Mickey Mouse (2013) short "A Flower for Minnie", one of the areas where Mickey tries to take a flower with the intent to give it to Minnie is from a coffin at a funeral. He realizes what he is doing when he sees the shocked faces of the people attending the funeral and then sheepishly puts the flower back and says "He was a great man" to try and save face.
• 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.
  Leela: We did our best!
  Bender: Your best is an idiot!
  • In the same episode, Bender admires an alien culture that devotes masses of slaves to things that glorify their leaders, and when his death comes around, there are some exaggerated ancient Egyptian-derived ceremonies (including a dump truck full of personal possessions from his garage), an Elton John-esque singer filking "Benny and the Jets" who is also thrown in, and, before all of that:
    High Priest: We commend the body of Hermenthotip to the abode of the damned... The damned good-looking! [pause] Pharaoh commanded me to tell that joke at his funeral.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy had this happen in "Billy and Mandy's Jacked-Up Halloween", where a flashback showed the episode's villain Jack O'Lantern slipping a whoopie cushion into an open grave before the casket is lowered in. As soon as the coffin releases a flatulent noise after being lowered into the grave, the mourners are seen struggling to refrain from laughing.
• The Justice League episode "Hereafter" has Superman apparently disintegrated. After a solemn memorial service, the rest of the League holding a wake on the Watchtower, sharing reminiscences including a funny story about Supes containing a grenade explosion in his bare hands. Then Lobo shows up....
• King of the Hill:
  • In "Death of a Propane Salesman" during Buckley's funeral, Dale throws up into his coffin after seeing his remains, Luanne raves about starving Irish kids by showing a picture of Bobby in his underwear, and Kahn gives eulogy about how much Buckley annoyed Hank, and tells a completely unrelated Buddhist story afterward.
  • In "A Fire Fighting We Will Go", Hank and his friends, Dale, Bill, and Boomhauer, act as pallbearers for Chet Elderson, a former firefighter. While taking the casket to the grave, Hank's glasses fell off him so he tries to pick them up. He trips and falls into the grave along with his friends, while Boomhauer tries to grab onto Chet Elderson's legs and accidentally ends up pantsing the poor guy's corpse.
  • In "Hank's Unmentionable Problem" when Peggy fears of Hank's constipation. She dreams of Hank's funeral which includes the Surgeon General to collect their algebra homework and Cotton flushing the casket like a toilet.
• 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.
• Robot Chicken:
  • Benny Hill's funeral was exactly like one of the sketches from his show (with the coffin being hidden, transported to different places, used as a sled and there was even a mourner dressed in a Black Bra and Panties).
  • Another sketch had Diablo Cody delivering a long, pun-filled eulogy, only for the deceased to burst out of her coffin and angrily question Diablo's presence, wondering if her mom even read the suicide note.
  • Yet another had Casper's brother, Jasper the Douchebag Ghost, possessing an old woman's corpse at a funeral for some hijinks.
  • In the first DC Comics special, Superman, Batman, and Green Lantern attend the funeral of Captain Carrot of the Zoo Crew, and Green Lantern is trying his best not to laugh when he sees that the members of the Zoo Crew are all cartoon animals. Batman also lets out a snicker when he finds out that one member is a mouse named Little Cheese.
  • The second DC Comics special sees Batman stop his eulogy for Green Arrow, much to the horror on those attending, and rant about how Death Is Cheap in the DC Universe, noting that Green Arrow will probably be back in some fashion considering everyone attending the funeral have themselves died and came back at some point. Not only do those in attendance applaud to this fact, but sure enough, one of the people attending Green Arrow's funeral is Oliver Queen himself, proving Bruce's point.
• One episode of Rocko's Modern Life features Ed Bighead having a mid-life crisis. Rocko eventually snaps him out of it by holding a fake funeral for him, complete with trash-can as a coffin and almost getting him buried in the Bigheads' back yard with cement.
  Rocko: Ashes to ashes, dust to dust
  We stick Ed Bighead in the Earth's crust.
• The Simpsons: Several:
  • The most famous instance is "Homer's Enemy" which centered on the conflict between Homer and a new co-worker, Frank Grimes (a hard-working professional whose ethics conflict with Homer's gross inepitude and poor social graces). Eventually, Frank is killed after touching live electrical wires, and at the funeral, Homer falls asleep and mutters "Change the channel, Marge." The other funeral-goers and even Rev. Lovejoy burst out laughing, and it inspires Lenny to remark "That's our Homer!" The tombstone simply has "Grimey" written on it, Homer's nickname for Grimes which he himself despised; Lovejoy also referred to Grimes as "Grimey", as if he accepted the name with affection.
    • In a later episode, Homer is getting dressed for his wedding anniversary when he pulls out the program for Grimes' funeral ... and realizes he has completely forgotten who this guy is.
  • Maude's funeral in "Alone Again, Natura-Diddily" had a 21 T-shirt Salute, rather tasteless given that Maude was killed by a t-shirt shot at her with one of their bazookas. Also, a later episode reveals that, off-screen, Homer fell in Maude's grave. "I saw a gopher! What a day!"
  • After Krusty the Clown fakes his death in "Bart the Fink", the town turns out for his funeral, at which Bob Newhart is conscripted to provide the eulogy.
  • And there's always Homer's mom, who asked that her ashes be thrown away at a certain point at a certain time. Of course, this was really part of her plan to stop Mr Burns from polluting the Amazon.
  • The season four episode "Selma's Choice" (the one where Marge's Great-Aunt Gladys dies and Selma continues trying to have a baby before she hits menopause [which actually happened in a later episode]) actually had a funeral home sign that reads, "The Lucky Stiff Funeral Home — We Put the 'Fun' in Funeral". Bart also scares Lisa into thinking the corpse is still talking.
  • In one of the earliest episodes, "Bart the General", Bart — fearing a run-in with the feared bully, Nelson Muntz — imagines his funeral. As the parade of mourners pass by, Nelson spots the cupcake that Lisa had just left on her brother's forehead, cheerfully remarks, "Hey, they've got food at this thing!" before grabbing it for himself, and then declares "Here's one for the road, dude!" before starting to thuggishly punch Bart's corpse. Milhouse and Homer also thank Bart for dying, because it got them out of school and work, respectively.
  • During The Tracey Ullman Show "shorts" era, there was "The Funeral," where Bart is (well) himself at his elderly Uncle Hubert's funeral. (Presumably this is Abe's brother or cousin.) First, Bart clenches his hands in sadistic anticipation of viewing Hubert's corpse at the visitation, only to collapse when he actually sees Hubert's body. Later, he helps "direct" the pallbearers to the gravesite, in preparation for the casket being lowered into the ground; a disgusted Homer grabs Bart before he can pull any other hijinks.
  • At Bleeding Gums Murphy's funeral in "'Round Springfield", Reverend Lovejoy refers to him as "Blood and Guts Murphy", mistakenly calls him a sousaphone player in the eulogy, and Homer uses the event to look for a hot dog vendor (who follows him everywhere, because Homer is apparently putting his kids through college). On a much sadder note, Lisa was the only mourner present (not counting her parents).
  • "The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace", Homer had an Imagine Spot about what his own funeral would be like if his life didn't amount to anything. While his friends are all successes (Lenny is President of the United States, Barney has multiple Oscars and Flanders is a Cardinal), his own body is placed in the back of a dump truck then thrown into the ground haphazardly. If that wasn't the worst part, his own family weren't in attendance, they were among the only mourners there, along with the robot from "Lost in Space" and Heckle and Jeckle, his feet are left sticking out of his grave, the two birds mock him, calling him a sack of crap and then two dogs come by and start biting his feet.
• South Park
  • "A Ladder to Heaven": Cartman drinks Kenny's ashes, mistaking them for chocolate milk mix.
  • "Cartmanland": At Cartman's grandmother's funeral, a crate is opened to release some doves... only to have them fall out, dead.
• The Venture Brothers:
  • In "Past Tense", the Ventures crash their jet into a cemetery where a funeral is taking place, piercing the casket and dismembering the deceased. This is followed by plenty of humorous banter in the midst of the other funeral they're attending.
  • In "Bot Seeks Bot", villains attend the funeral of Boggles The Clue Clown, an Expy of The Riddler. He left one final riddle for his nemesis Captain Sunshine, about a "type of jack". When Sunshine can't unravel it, the answer is given by The Clue Clown's spring-loaded corpse erupting from the casket, with "a jack in the box" scrawled on a note pinned to his chest. Also, his burial is accompanied by a performance of "Funeral March"... played on a calliope.
    Dragoon: Too soon!
  • Following his death, J.J. requests that the Crash Test Dummies' "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" be played at his funeral, which is performed by the Pirate Captain on accordion while H.E.L.P.er assists by beatboxing. By the second chorus, almost everyone in attendance is smiling and humming along.
• X-Men: Evolution implies this offscreen. Nightcrawler is in bed with a cold and he accidentally teleports himself and Shadowcat somewhere every time he sneezes. He wakes up at the end to find a disheveled and enraged Kitty listing all the places he teleported her to - including a funeral.

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