Oh, no! Someone just died! The life drains out of him, his Winged Soul Flies Off At Death, his body falls to the floor... and is replaced with a gravestone?

This trope is where a death creates a gravestone on the spot; that is, the very fact of death creates a gravestone. No-one builds it, and there is no time lapse. Usually, no explanation is given besides Rule Of Funny and/or Gameplay And Story Segregation. Or it happens in the type of game/show with Acceptable Breaks From Reality. Often involves Grave Humour, but not always.

Purposes behind the use of the trope vary. Sometimes it's just Rule Of Funny / Have A Nice Death. Sometimes the gravestone is used to indicate to players that somebody died. Sometimes it serves a gameplay purpose, like containing loot. Often used for similar light-hearted symbolism as the aforementioned Winged Soul Flies Off At Death.

This is not where a gravestone is used for symbolism, such as if a "game over" screen is a gravestone, or a gravestone indicates a dead character in the interface. The gravestone must appear in the world.

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Examples:

Video Games

• In Rune Scape, Instant Gravestones (usually) protect your items when you die. Bigger and fancier ones can be purchased which hold your items for longer.
• In Realm Of The Mad God, all players get Instant Gravestones; stronger characters get bigger, more impressive gravestones. Due to the game's use of Final Death, players will often pay respects to a particularly strong character.
• Oregon Trail contains this, including player-defined inscriptions. People tend to try to invoke Grave Humor with Bottom Of The Barrel Jokes, as future players can read the gravestones.
• All of The Sims games use this, specifically it will be an urn if it's indoors and a tombstone outdoors, and it will change if the player moves the grave marker. If a sim's grave is on a lot, that sim's ghost may show up at night.
• Worms games have dead worms blowing themselves up with a dynamite plunger and instantly being replaced with a gravestone.
• Dying in Terraria will spawn a tombstone stating your cause of death. You can then dig it up if you like.
• The Multiplayer game Glitch has this. When you die a gravestone appears on the spot. Other players can visit the gravestone to mourn or celebrate. The stone disappears after you respawn.
• The RPG crossfire does this. Gravestones can even be collected by someone.
• In the Warrior Cats fan-made game Warrior Cats Untold Tales, killing a cat will make a tombstone appear.
• In the Kid Icarus Uprising Multiplayer, when a player dies, a tombstone will appear where they died. If it gets hit enough, it will explode, hurting everyone within range.
• The 1976 Exidy Arcade Game Death Race may be the Ur Example. Running over people turned them into grave markers that couldn't be driven over.
• In Warcraft3, units with the Reincarnation ability leave a large cross/ankh-shaped marker on death. Played With, as the unit comes back to life a few seconds later.
• In Maniac Mansion, whenever one of your characters dies, a gravestone appears on the front garden of the mansion.
• In the Chinese version of World Of Warcraft, tombstones appear instead of skeletons when a player character dies.
• In Red Dead Redemption, you can watch a Show Within A Show where a salesman sells some concoction to an old man, causing him to dig his own grave, complete with headstone.
• Later Grand Theft Auto games (third game onwards) have a variation. Bodies will eventually fade away and be replaced by a chalk outline (irrespective of whether the police have arrived at the scene or not).
• In Castlevania Harmony Of Despair's multiplayer, dying creates a tombstone which spawns a skeleton.
• In Crash Bandicoot 2, being killed by a sledge hammer produces a grave stone with Crash's face on it.
• When a player's character dies in Maple Story a tombstone appears.

Non-Game Examples

• There's a gag in the Looney Tunes short Baseball Bugs where a player tries to catch a fly ball ("I got it! I got it!"), gets plowed into the ground by it, and a gravestone pops up where he stops (reading: "He got it").
• This Raid commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRwlYLS_0fk