History Main / MummiesAtTheDinnerTable

* Subverted in the earlier versions of ''SnowWhite''. The prince fell in love with Snow White even though he thought she was dead and then carried a cofin around until a bump dislodged the apple from Snow White and she woke up.

* Subverted in the earlier versions of ''SnowWhite''. The prince fell in love with Snow White even thought he thought she was dead and then carried a cofin around until a bump dislodged the apple from Snow White and she woke up.

* After the death of his right hand general and [[{{HeterosexualLifePartner}} best]] [[{{HoYay}} friend]], Hephaestion, Alexander the Great had a meltdown and apparently lay on top of Hephaestion's body sobbing for days.

-->-'''-TomLehrer''', ''I Hold Your Hand In Mine''

*** In fact, if Belkar wasn't potentially going to suffer a debilitating curse if [[spoiler:Roy's]] corpse wasn't within a mile of him, [[ItMakesSenseInContext she'd have dumped him into a Bag Of Holding.

*** In fact, if Belkar wasn't potentially going to suffer a debilitating curse]] if [[spoiler:Roy's]] corpse wasn't within a mile of him, [[ItMakesSenseInContext she'd have dumped him into a Bag Of Holding.

*** In fact, [[ItMakesSenseInContext if Belkar wasn't potentially going to suffer a debilitating curse if [[spoiler:Roy's]] corpse wasn't within a mile of him, she'd have dumped him into a Bag Of Holding]].

* ''GirlGenius'' features a rather complicated variant of this, involving an android and a life-support tank, in one story arc.

* On some holidays and customs built around remembering the dead, such as the Mexican Day of the Dead, celebrants will keep vigil all night at the graves of friends and family, sometimes even presenting offerings of food and song. On a more macabre note, certain older traditions involved literally bringing mummies or skulls home for dinner.

* Some holidays and customs built around remembering the dead, such as the Mexican Day of the Dead, some people will bring the food to the cementery and keep vigil all night.

* A soft-focus version takes place in ''RurouniKenshin''. When his [[YouShouldKnowThisAlready first wife Tomoe dies]], he takes her corpse to the house they shared, lays her in her bed, and apparently stays several days with her before burning the whole house as a funeral pyre of sorts.

* Used in the first ''ArtemisFowl'' book, where the mother refuses to leave her bedroom, and clumsily dresses a mannequin in her 'lost-at-sea' husband's groom outfit.

* ''{{Order of the Stick}}'' has Haley talking to [[spoiler:Roy Greenhilt]]'s dead body, though she's not crazy. Well, not AxCrazy, at any rate. She ''could've'' been talking to his spirit... but wasn't.
** She's just waiting until she has [[DeathIsCheap a chance to get him raised]], though. It's not because she likes having dead people around.
*** In fact, if Belkar wasn't potentially going to suffer a debilitating curse if [[spoiler:Roy's]] corpse wasn't within a mile of him, she'd have dumped him into a Bag Of Holding.

* In ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Revengers_Tragedy The Revenger's Tradegy]]'', written in 1609, Vindice carries the skull of his murdered wife, conversing with her regularly. He has been doing thing for ''nine years'', so long that when his morther and sister appear they treat his behavior and the presence of the skull as completely unremarkable.

The lover or "protector" of the corpse will frequently speak to them and imagine them speaking back, although this is not to be confused with a DeadPersonConversation, which is a conversation that ''may actually be taking place'' between a character and a spirit from the next world. No. In order for a situation to qualify as MummiesAtTheDinnerTable, one of the participants must be [[DeathTropes stone cold dead]] and the other must be [[MadnessTropes stone cold crazy]]. Needless to say, the living one will often come across as a bit creepy to other people, even those who know nothing about their cosy little private life. Sometimes, however, the obsessed mourner will appear to be absolutely normal and personable -- up until the PeekABooCorpse moment when the heroine accidentally walks into the room where their "beloved" is sitting. Then the mourner will go AxCrazy, and a classic horror chase will follow which may or may not end in the death of the hapless discoverer.

* [[http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=270 This]] ''VGCats'' guest comic. "You're that creepy guy... with dead cats."

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* Probably the most famous movie example comes from ''{{Psycho}}''; a shocking end-of-story twist which [[ItWasHisSled most people already know about]], thanks to PopculturalOsmosis.

* The former TropeNamer: The music video for Tom Petty's "Mary Jane's Last Dance" tells the story of a mortician who takes home the corpse of Kim Basinger (!), and has a relatively lovely romantic evening with her. The song's chorus features the line, "Last dance with Mary Jane."

The lover or "protector" of the corpse will frequently speak to them and imagine them speaking back, although this is not to be confused with a DeadPersonConversation, which is a conversation that ''may actually be taking place'' between a character and a spirit from the next world. No. In order for a situation to qualify as MummiesAtTheDinnerTable, one of the participants must be [[DeathTropes stone cold dead]] and the other must be [[MadnessTropes stone cold crazy]]. Needless to say, the living one will often come across as a bit creepy to other people, even those who know nothing about their cosy little private life. Sometimes, however, the obsessed mourner will appear to be absolutely normal and personable -- up until the PeekABooCorpse moment when the heroine accidentally walks into the room where their "beloved" is sitting. Then the mourner will go AxCrazy, and a classic horror chase will follow which may or may not end in the death of the hapless discoverer.

* FaustVIII of ''ShamanKing'' embodies this trope quite well. After his wife Eliza is shot and killed in a break in he spends all of his time trying to find a way to resurrect her but in the mean time he still carries around her whole skeleton around with him. He refers to her as his 'Dear Eliza' and even holds hands with her reanimated skeleton on occasion...Suggesting to him that she's dead forever is...[[AxCrazy Not a good idea to say the least]].

* ''LudwigRevolution'': Julius has no problems with talking to Ludwig's (supposedly) dead body or with making out with it. Also Ludwig's "hobby" at the beginning of the story...

* In ''FiftyTwo'': [[spoiler:Elongated Man's brief infatuation with [[NightmareFuel Straw Sue Dibny]]]].

* A funny "dead animal" example of this trope appears in the movie ''Start the Revolution Without Me''. One of the Corsican Brothers, Phillippe de Sisis (played by Gene Wilder), has a psychotic attraction to his stuffed falcon. He keeps it stuck on his arm all the time, and he loves it more than his wife. When said wife tries to point out that the bird is dead, Phillippe looks like he's about to go AxeCrazy, and his wife has to quickly backpedal and talk him down.

* The TerryGilliam film, ''{{Tideland}}'', features a Dell, a crazy woman who helps an orphaned girl perform taxidermy on her dead father, so they can dress it up and have it sit at the dinner table with them.

* The movie ''Dead Silence'' has this too when [[spoiler:you find out what Mary Shaw did with the missing boy's corpse in her hidden room at the theater.]]

* The deeply disturbing made for TV movie ''Cabin By The Lake'' is a perfect example of this trope. The serial killer in the movie [[spoiler: kidnaps teenage girls, puts them in a soundproof room, puts them in an elegant gown or dress, and THEN ductapes their feet to a concrete block, afterwards he proceeds to take them out into the middle of the lake, and then drop them to the bottom to sink. He also likes to scuba dive out to his "garden" and clean away any detritus accumulating around them, and makes sure to straighten up their clothes. The conditions of the bodies ranges from skeletal, to decomp, to recently dead. * shudder* ]]

* A sketch in KentuckyFriedMovie features Henry Gibson as spokesperson for the United Appeal for the Dead, a charity that helps families keep their dead relatives around. Scenes include a dead son floating in the pool and falling face-first into dinner.

* Nancy Etchemendy's ''Cat in Glass'' is a collection of short stories that range from inventive and appealing to downright macabre. In ''Lunch at Etienne's'', a woman [[spoiler:gets her toddler ready to go (he's mad and won't speak to her, and she has to carry him), gets annoyed by the quantities of dust on the coats in her wardrobe, can't get out the blocked front door (why ''hasn't'' the landlord fixed it yet?), walks down the street (are her neighbors ''still'' not speaking to her? and what's all this white stuff on the ground, it's too early for snow), enters her favorite restaurant, and meets her best friend for lunch (speechless). She catches a glimpse of the mirror, which reflects an old woman in rags sitting next to two corpses in the broken rubble of what used to be a restaurant. Stunned with horror, she shakes it off and goes back to talking with her best friend about how the service at this place is always ''horrible''.]]

* A story in John Varley's ''Blue Champagne'' collection includes a woman who's kept technically alive by medical machinery. Her daughter, marooned with only an AI for company, visits the breathing corpse regularly to talk about her day. It's really not as creepy as you might think.

* {{Edgar Allan Poe}} was famous for this, but the best example comes from [[http://www.romantic-lyrics.com/pa12.shtml Annabel Lee]].

* George R.R. Martin's short story ''Meathouse Man'' features a special kind of brothel designed for meat handlers (people who had been trained to manipulate braindead semi-corpses to do dangerous work) where the handler basically subconsciously controlled the body of the girl he was with. [[spoiler: The protagonist, after spending years looking for real love, finally settles on having his own personal mostly-dead-girl that he pretends is his true lady love, though given his disillusionment at the end, he doesn't actually think she has conscious thought. He just doesn't care.]]

* One of the kids in John Irving's ''Hotel New Hampshire'' totes the stuffed body of the family dog everywhere. The dog even [[spoiler:surfaces in the water after a plane crash that kills both the boy and his mother.]]

* In RobertAHeinlein's ''Glory Road'', Star mentions that it is normal on her planet to use {{Magitek}} to preserve the dead and then later send them off to another dimension. She found the idea of burying someone as rather strange. She did complain about an Aunt who kept all of her dead husbands in her drawing room, saying it was rather too much for guests and they needed dusting.

* In the RoaldDahl short story ''The Landlady,'' the main character discovers that the titular landlady's pet dog is actually stuffed, and she explains that "I stuff 'all' my little pets when they die." [[spoiler: She also stuffs all the guests at her bed-and-breakfast after she kills them with poisoned tea, and continues to visit them in their rooms.]]
* One short story tells the tale of a lonely funeral home director who has taken opportunities to steal bodies and create a family for himself. One day, the corpse of a young kidnap victim is mistakenly delivered to his door, and even though he knows it's risky, a little girl is the last body he needs, and he adds her to his family. Sure enough, the police are suspicous and promise to come back with a warrant. After the police leave, he calmly opens his gas valves, goes back into his "family room," sits down with his family, tells him he loves them and lights a match.

* J.D., from ''{{Scrubs}}'', does-slash-subverts this with his dead, stuffed dog, Rowdy. The other characters just think J.D. has a hard time letting go of a beloved childhood pet -- until Turk reveals that they got him from a garage sale when they were roommates in college. After that, pretty much every character spends some time playing with Rowdy, with Carla both thanking him for "finding" Turk's bandana and informing him he'll leave after she and Turk move in, at different occasions.

* In one episode of ''LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'', the detectives investigated the death of a college student who appeared to have been raped prior to her murder. It turned out that [[spoiler: her death had been a total accident and witnessed by the professor who was obsessed with her. He immediately proceeded to have sex with her corpse because it was his last chance.]]

* In Jimmy Cross' "I Want My Baby Back", which parodies "teen tragedy songs", that were popular in the '60s, the narrator digs up his girlfriend's grave, (who died in an accident) crawls into her coffin, and closes the lid. Complete with sound effects.

** And it happens ''again'' with Achilles, though less true to {{squick}}y trope form, since it's the willful retaining of a dead body, not the delusion that they're still alive and kicking. In TheIliad after Patroclus dies, Achilles spends an awful lot of mourning time with his arms wrapped around his [[HeterosexualLifePartners best friend's]] corpse. To lessen the squick a bit, Thetis later embalms the corpse so it won't spoil before Achilles gets a chance to avenge his death.

* Played with in Season 4 of ''VentureBros'', when [[spoiler:Number 21 is shown to have one-sided conversations with the skull of the deceased Number 24. We later see it from Number 21's perspective, and he is apparently talking to a ghost only he can see. In a subversion, 21 recently TookALevelInBadass, and we're shown that 24's ghost has been feeding 21 information (i.e. warning him if people nearby are carrying concealed weapons) to improve his reputation. This leads to a bit of a MindScrew when 24's ghost suggests he himself may be an imaginary MagicFeather, and that 21 really is awesome but hallucinates 24 due to an inferiority complex.]]

** She's just waiting until she has [[DeathIsCheap a chance to get him raised]], though. It's not because she likes having dead people around.

* The Peavey family of New Hampshire had a [[http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,297495,00.html mummified stillborn infant]] as a sort of heirloom for 90 years, until a child let the secret slip and the state ordered that the body be buried. Though the family engaged in some playful acts with the body, like giving it cards on holidays and a dried fish for a pet, they never fully enacted this trope. (Someone in the past might have, however, considering the body was left unburied so long).

* Animals occasionally do this with their dead infants. It's slightly less [[{{Squick}} squicky]] than when humans do it, for some reason.

* Jeremy Bentham, father of utilitarianism, was dissected after he died, and his skeleton was outfitted with a wax head and stuffed into his clothes filled out with hay. The 'body' is kept in public display at the University College London. It has been brought out to meetings of the College Council on at least two occasions, where Bentham was listed as being "present, but not voting."

* The Terry Gilliam film, ''Tideland'', features a crazy woman who helps an orphaned girl perform taxidermy on her dead father, so they can dress it up and have it sit at the dinner table with them.

* In Jane Yolen's ''The One-Armed Queen'', a prince has his brother assassinated for political-intrigue reasons, and shortly afterwards goes completely mad and starts carting the corpse around and acting as though it's still alive.