Attending Your Own Funeral - Television Tropes & Idioms

Priestbot: "We are gathered here to mourn the death of Calculon; industrialist, private eye... friend."

Calculon: "Mind if I give the eulogy?"

Monique: "Calculon, you're alive!"

— Futurama

A character shows up alive to his or her own funeral, whether through faking it, resurrection, or Time Travel. The Not Quite Dead character may either reveal him/herself to be alive or attend the funeral in disguise and leave with no one the wiser. Or sometimes the character won't even know they've been presumed dead until they walk through the door...

Compare Whodunnit To Me. May cross over with Not Now, We're Too Busy Crying Over You.

As a Death Trope, all Spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.

Examples:

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Advertising

A recent commercial for whiskey tells the story of a man, John Jameson, who dived into the ocean to rescue one of his kegs and presumably died. The next scene shows his funeral with the narrator telling us "All of Ireland was in attendance, including... John Jameson." Jameson is then seen walking up the beach front holding the keg.
- An extended version of the commercial shows him being grabbed by a Giant Octopus while swimming for the keg, presumably putting him into Badass territory.

Anime and Manga

Yuusuke at the beginning of Yu Yu Hakusho. Unlike most of these examples, he really is dead, watching it as a ghost at the time. Seeing how much he's missed him gives him the resolve necessary to go through some difficult ordeals to get himself resurrected.
Speed Racer: Rex Racer fakes his own death to become Racer X. One scene at the end of the movie shows him attending his own funeral.
- Speed Racer himself actually does this in one episode of the original series.
At the end of part 2 in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Joseph shows up alive (and married) at his own funeral, without even knowing about said funeral.
Although it wasn't really real, Erza in Fairy Tail has a dream were she had really died when she merged with the Tower of Paradise in an effort to stop it from blowing up. She watches her friends in Fairy Tail mourn at her grave, and is visited by a bunch of officials, and Natsu as he attempts to crash the funeral proceedings, denying that Erza didn't die. Either way, really dramatic. Luckily, it was only a dream, and Natsu saved Erza before she could really die.
Pell of One Piece, after his supposed Heroic Sacrifice, turns up alive looking in shock at his own gravestone.
Tsuna from Katekyo Hitman Reborn! is transported into the future in time for his older self's secret funeral. Not surprisingly, he was pretty freaked out.
In Gintama, Butt Monkey Yamazaki ends up witnessing his own funeral, which is a pathetic little afterthought tacked onto the real show: the funeral services of Matsudaira's dog.
Sharon Vineyard aka Vermouth in Detective Conan. She even made herself pass as her own daughter and gave the eulogy!

Comic Books

In Hellblazer, Chas tells his drinking buddies of a time when everyone thought John Constantine dead, only for him to turn up alive and well at his funeral. (This wouldn't be the only time Constantine would be presumed dead.)
In Runaways, Gertrude Yorkes helps bury a future version of herself underneath the HOLLYWOOD sign.
In Whatever Happened to The Caped Crusader, Batman attends a funeral for multiple versions of himself, with eulogies telling how he was killed in each one.
In The Death of Groo, Groo The Wanderer goes to his own funeral, expecting there to be much sadness at his demise. There isn't. Everybody at that funeral had had endless trouble from him, and they were all delighted at his "death."
Deadpool did this in spirit form. He found that he was able to possess people and had no end of fun causing trouble, culminating in a giant brawl between Juggernaut, Wolverine, T-Ray, and pretty much every other minor character to appear in Deadpool's book up to that point.

Film

Happens in the movie Waking Ned Devine.
Jacques Bouvar does this in Thunderball.
'Painless' the dentist from the film MASH gets to do this. He's there because he's committing suicide, and waves goodbye from his casket. He is unaware that the cyanide capsules he's been given are fake, and he's about to get laid.
Revenge of the Pink Panther: Inspector Clouseau shows up at his own funeral, disguised as a priest. (Someone else died, but everyone thought it was Clouseau.) He only reveals himself to his former chief Dreyfus, and he faints right into the grave upon seeing him, believing it to be a ghost or hallucination.
Varyemez, a Turkish tragicomedy film has this when a rich industrialist (the protagonist) is believed to have been killed after being kidnapped and a barely-identifiable body is found. His family and business partners had deliberately not paid the ransom upon realising that they were better off without him. Unfortunately for them, he is very much alive and angry at his family's duplicity. As he plans his revenge on them, he attends his own memorial event, watching his wife and son shed crocodile tears and his business partner discussing how to divide up his business.
In Year of the Devil [Rok ďábla], a mockumentary by Petr Zelenka, one of the characters, Karel Plíhal, stages a "dress rehearsal" of his own funeral, with a coffin, a priest, and a funeral folk-band, and watches it out of hiding.
The title character of Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen does it, or at least he claims to have done it.
Anakin Skywalker in Return of the Jedi. And he brought company.
The ending of Capricorn One.
Convoy: Rubber Duck is one of the people riding the microbus in the convoy that serves as his funeral.
In the Czech film Trhák (mockumentary about filming of a musical) a character died, but his actor was filmed attending the funeral - forcing the scriptwriter to explain it away as the deceased man's brother ("look, he's even limping on the same leg").

Literature

Likely Trope Maker and Older Than Radio example: Mark Twain's novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The main character and his two friends watch their own funeral and then enter dramatically through the door.
Raffles did this, as part of a gambit to throw a too-persistent ex-girlfriend off his trail; it was the second time he'd been thought to be dead, but the first funeral. The other time, he'd jumped from a ship in the Mediterranean, and been mistakenly reported to have washed up dead on shore.
Rumpole of the Bailey lets it be thought that he is dead, partly to lure a solicitor that owes him a great deal of money out of hiding and let She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed pwn him good and gets to hear Judge Bullingham giving an eulogy for him, which he greatly enjoys hearing.
In the fourth book of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Percy shows up after spending two weeks on Calypso's island to find that everyone thought he was dead and were holding his funeral.
Prince Josua at the end of Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn.
Mr. Sellars at the end of Otherland, also by Tad Williams.
Aethelstane in Ivanhoe does this at his own funeral. Specifically, he throws open the door and appears wearing funeral garments and looking as if he had just been raised from the dead.
In Lady Slings the Booze, one of Spider Robinson's Callahan series, Nicola Tesla (actually alive and well, thanks to a certain time traveler) mentions attending his own funeral in disguise.
The novel Interview with the Vampire had Louis going to his funeral after his plantation burned down. His aged younger sister attended.
In Isaac Asimov's short story Obituary, a scientist who's embittered by lack of success and recognition finds a way to bring a duplicate of an object from about three days in the future; unfortunately, if the object is a living creature, the process kills the duplicate. He uses this to fake his own death and thereby get to read his obituaries. Needless to say, his greater plan to achieve lasting fame by this is one last failure.
Do the "Dear Abby" and "Ann Landers" columns count as literature? They used to run a piece called "Please, God, I'm only 17" that was a Public Service Announcement condemning reckless driving. It was told from the POV of a teenager who drove recklessly, died in an accident and was aware of being put in the morgue, being identified by his parents and his funeral. The last scene where he tries to protest being buried borders on Nightmare Fuel.
- I've read an Italian version of that, where the teen is a girl...
In The Hobbit, Bilbo returns from adventuring just in time to attend his own estate sale.
The Westing Game: Sam Westing, aka Sandy McSouthers, along with Attending Your Own Will Reading and Wake, complete with a fake body in the open casket to pull off the deception.
Aversion: In the novel Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen, Joey wants to attend her own funeral (in disguise) in order to interrogate her husband about why he tried to kill her. Her partner-in-crime convinces her to wait in the car.
In American Gods, Mad Sweeney the leprechaun attends his own wake, where he debates the interpretation of his life story provided by one of the other characters and tosses back a few glasses of whiskey. By the next morning, he seems to have shifted from Only Mostly Dead to Killed Off for Real.
Tom Holt's Paul Carpenter pulls this in book three...after faking a relapse of death. Considering that he died something like three times per book and usually recovered by the next chapter, this is hardly surprising.
G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown does it.
The final chapter of the fifth Clue book, "Mister Boddy's Funeral" has the guests all assembled having been invited to their host's funeral when he himself walks in, leading to confusion until it is revealed one of the guests arranged for the funeral with the intention of murdering Mr. Boddy on location, to make things convenient.
In Anne of Ingleside, one of the Gossipy Hens at the quilting bee mentions a story about a man who went out West and reportedly died. The body was sent home, but the funeral director advised them not to open the casket, so they didn't find out it was someone else's body until the supposedly dead man came home just in time to walk in on the funeral.
In Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol, Scrooge doesn't attend his own funeral per se but the ghost of Christmas future does show him his own grave.
In Privilege, the Spin-Off of the Private series, Ariana attends her own funeral. The body they cremated is actually that of Briana Leigh Covington, who she killed in order to access her money and assume her life.
Its not his funeral but Mackenzie Calhoun of Star Trek New Frontier shows up to the dedication of the new USS Excalibur which has a touching eulogy/speech about since he was presumed dead during the destruction of the last ship of the same name. Its both hilarious and touching.
Happens in the story of Amleth — the legend that was basis for Hamlet — as told in the 13th century Danish History by Saxo Grammaticus. Amleth has been sent to England by his uncle Feng to be killed with a Please Shoot the Messenger plot, and everyone think's he's dead; but (like in Shakespeare's play) he has escaped and returns to the royal palace just the day they are holding his memorial feast.— Shakespeare, however, alters the plot so that Hamlet arrives just in time to witness Ophelia's funeral.

Live Action TV

In the opening of The Incredible Hulk, David Banner is seen at his own grave.
Doctor Who: The Doctor has done this more than once.
Little House on the Prairie: In the first-season episode "If I Should Wake Before I Die," Charles helps a lonely, widowed mother stage her own funeral to draw her negligent, estranged (and now adult) children to her home for a long-coveted visit. In this case, it works and the children realize what they had been missing.
The Dukes of Hazzard: Played for Laughs in several episodes, including "The Ghost of the General Lee" (where a wake for Bo and Luke is held after it is merely assumed they had drowned after being run off the road by the crooks) and "Ding Dong, the Boss is Dead" (where Boss fakes his own death to escape suffering a crueler fate from a mob boss who went to prison on his testimony ... only the catch is the mobster is coming to Boss' visitation in Hazzard).
Geordi and Ensign Ro did this in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Next Phase" — they also appeared to "come back from the dead", although they weren't actually dead, in the middle of their own funeral. Ro was frustrated that she'd never get to hear what Riker, with whom she had Belligerent Sexual Tension, would say about her.
In an episode of The Golden Girls, Sophia decides to host her own funeral while she's still alive — that way not only will people be able to enjoy themselves and celebrate her life, but she'll be able to see it and celebrate with them. Rose handles the invitations... but forgets to tell everybody that it's just a pretend funeral. Everyone gets a nasty shock when Sophia shows up, ready to party.
In Bones, Booth takes advantage of an injury to fake his own death, attends his funeral as a member of the three-volley salute, and outs himself by apprehending a suspect. Said suspect told the FBI the next time they'd see him would be at Booth's funeral.
George goes to her own funeral in the first episode of Dead Like Me.
- It should be noted, however, that George was able to do this because she was going to be joining the ranks of the reapers. In another episode, Mason had to attempt to convince one recently deceased man that he couldn't attend his own funeral and that it was important to move on to the other side as soon as possible.
George Sr. is able to hear his own wake in Arrested Development.
In Mad About You, Paul gets an incorrect notice that he's dead, goes to the funeral of the other Paul Buchman, and suddenly finds himself a ghost, talking to his widow Jamie about their life together.
Reginald Perrin, after he fakes his death in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin.
On Friends, Chandler and Ross once got into a prank war concerning their college alumni page. Eventually Chandler posts that Ross has died. Ross decides to hold it anyway, just to see who shows up. Only two "mourners" arrive: a guy who's only there to hit on the recently "outted" Chandler, and a girl who had a crush on Ross. Ross jumps out and disgusts her for not being dead.
Played for Laughs when Dan Fielding attended his own funeral on Night Court. They had trouble coming up with nice things to say.
Rimmer attends his own funeral (twice! He was already dead the second time he died) in Red Dwarf. The first time, he produced a VHS tape of himself memorialising himself. Lister fast-forwarded to the good bits. The second time, a blow-up sex doll was introduced as his widow.
Max in Get Smart, faking his death for a mission, shows up to check out his funeral and complains to the Chief about the lack of mourners and the cheap flowers and headstone.
In Dollhouse Echo is imprinted with the memories of a recently dead client who wanted to attend her own funeral... and find out who killed her. The paranoia pays out, anyway.
In Heroes, Volume 4 ends with all the Heroes gathering together for the first time in the show, to witness the destruction of series Big Bad Sylar's body, whom they've finally managed to kill after 3 whole seasons. However, most of them are unaware that "Nathan" is really a shapeshifted Sylar brainwashed into believing that he's Nathan by Ma Petrelli and Matt Parkman, and the body being burned is merely a shapeshifter who died while assuming Sylar's appearance.
Alias: After the Covenant kidnaps Sydney and fakes her death, they force her to watch her own funeral while Bound and Gagged in a nearby van so that she knows no rescue attempts are coming.
A two-part Happy Days episode concludes with Fonzie doing this (disguised as an old lady) after Faking the Dead to throw some gangsters off his trail.
In one episode of The A-Team, Hannibal allows himself to be shot by a sniper (he was wearing a bulletproof vest, Lord knows how he expected the sniper to hit him there) and when the Smug Snake Loan Shark behind it comes to gloat and tries to spit in Hannibal's face at the wake. Hannibal "wakes up" and holds him at gunpoint. The team then put him inside the coffin and take him to a seaside dock to perform a Jack Bauer Interrogation.
There was a Japanese police drama in which a funeral is staged as a sting to draw out a scam artist who shows up at funerals, claims to have known the deceased and asks the family for payment of debts the deceased supposedly owes him. The "deceased", of course, attends the funeral.
In the Leverage episode "The Two Live Crew Job" Sophie (going by the name Katherine) poses in a coffin after someone sends her a bomb in a flower vase. She listens to the other members of the team eulogize her (including Parker, who almost blows the con). Nate closes the casket and taps on it, which is Sophie's cue to drop out through the false bottom. She even makes an appearance a minute later, wearing a veiled hat.
- And again in "The San Lorenzo Job". Nate even Lampshades it: "You are utterly unclear on how to be dead. This is the second time in two years that you've shown up at your own funeral."
In a long string of pranks, a bar owner rival of Cheers fakes his own death, funeral, and is even buried inside a coffin to prank Sam Malone. After Sam breaks down and accepts the death is not a hoax, the "dead" man pops out of the office and reveals it was just an elaborate prank.
Happens to Hobbes in The Invisible Man when the Chinese are after him. He is spying from afar on the funeral, but is kidnapped by the Chinese anyway, as they don't buy the hoax. Also, the only one of the Agency who wasn't told was Claire, as they needed real tears.
Ghost Whisperer: Jim attends his own funeral—but he's really dead and attends it as a ghost.
Deb in Drop Dead Diva does this after being resurrected in the body of Jane.
Variation on 30 Rock. After Jenna was misreported as dead, Jack saw it as a gimmick to sell her latest movie and set up a memorial for her on the Show Within a Show. Jenna watched this for awhile, but eventually came on stage to wreck it after realizing her real age would be mentioned.
Played straight in the pilot of The Cape when Vince peeps in on his own funeral after being presumed dead.
The Charmed Ones went to their own funeral and even had to keep Phoebe from hitting on a guy who was mourning her death. And when Paige saw how few people were mourning her, what does she do? Impersonate Janice Dickinson and mourn herself.
A suspect on Castle once got caught this way—he faked his death but couldn't resist coming to the funeral.
In 2009, a hoax arose on the Internet (and even spread as far as an Australian TV news show) which claimed Jeff Goldblum had died in an accident. Goldblum's response was to take this trope Up to Eleven by going on The Colbert Report and delivering his own eulogy.
Jeff Goldblum: No one will miss Jeff Goldblum more than me. He was not only a friend and a mentor, but he was also me.
Jam featured a sketch where a middle-aged man decides to be buried alive while he is in his prime - he believes that he already has everything he wants in life and doesn't like the idea of dying in his old age. He is seen sitting up in the coffin at his funeral, listening to his eulogy and joining in with the music, before being buried alive in front of the mourners.
In an episode of Being Human, George sees his dad's obituary in the paper, goes to the funeral secretly, and finds his dad also there. Being that sort of show, he assumes his dad is a ghost, and tries to help him determine what's keeping him on Earth. Turns out, no, he faked his death.
On an episode of Murphy Brown, Murphy and Frank are on a plane that is having mechanical troubles and the passengers are told to brace for impact. A moment later they cut to their own funeral, but no one there can hear or see them. Much panic and angst ensues, until the end of the episode when it's revealed to be All Just a Dream and the plane lands safely.
In an episode of Boston Legal a terminally ill cancer patient stages his own wake, while he is still strong enough to enjoy it. He has trouble understanding why his girlfriend isn't in a party mood while he personally has a great time.
Jimmy Mc Nulty in The Wire is given a wake at an irish pub like other fallen cops, he lies in a pool table as his career as a detective is dead. He otherwise is alive, talkative and can't stay still and the other cops complain about this.
John Cleese opened the International Comedy Festival in 2006 by announcing that he would be having himself killed at the end of the show due to the state of stand up comedy, before which he would deliver his own eulogy.
Cleese: I thought the only person worthy of eulogizing me is Steve Martin...then I thought no, he's not really good enough either.

Music

The narrator of "The Gunner's Dream", from the Pink Floyd album The Final Cut, imagines or hallucinates doing this thing.
The beginning of "Neptune City" by Nicole Atkins begins with a ghost tagging after his funeral procession.
At Five Iron Frenzy's final live show, the frontman Reese Roper referenced this trope to explain how he felt.
Reese Roper: This is really surreal... You know how in movies, people fake their death and then they go to their own funeral? Yeah...

New Media

There's a hideous glurge that periodically makes the rounds in email: it's a chronicle of child abuse and murder, told from the victim's point of view, and ends with the lines "My name is Sarah/And I am but three/And tonight my daddy/Murdered me." Multiple people have written to snopes asking whether this is a true story. (Their response: "As unlikely as it might be that a three-year-old could possess the language skills necessary to compose such a piece, it's even more unlikely that anyone could describe her own murder in the first person.")
- Note that the question is not quite so daft as it might seem; though a true murder victim could not write of it, there are many cases of people describing highly traumatic events in such terms.

Radio

A variant from BBC comedy The Burkiss Way: The reading of Lord Hackingbottmo's will is disrupted when someone points out that he's the one reading it. (Note that this only happens after the reading has already a) included a long list of people who haven't been left anything and b) turned into a spontaneous performance of Chattanooga Choo-choo.)
Lord Hackingbottmo: I know it better than anyone else!
Guest: But you're not dead!
Lord Hackingbottmo: ...I've got a gum boil.
Guest: That's not enough!
Ed Reardon's Week: A "Reading Your Own Obituary" variation; Reardon spends an episode trying to steal his obituary from his agent's files to see what his "friend" Jaz Milvane has written about him.

Table Top Games

One of the GURPS books has a short story told from the POV of a newly minted ghost. After attending his own funeral (and weeping over it) he decides to do some world travel. Tries to go to the moon, but doesn't quite get that far.

Video Games

More like "Attending Your Own Wake": In Tales Of Monkey Island Chapter 5: Rise of the Pirate God, when Guybrush (as a ghost) goes through a rip in the Crossroads to Club 41 before going to the Manatee Mating Grounds in order to find the Voodoo Lady's locket (via another rip), Bugeye tells him to be quiet when he and W.P. Grindstump are "in the middle of a pirate wake", and Guybrush is surprised to find his own body holding a dartboard and wearing a party hat. He can look around the club and talk to Grindstump to find out what happened after Guybrush died at the hands of LeChuck. Afterwards, he can exit his own wake and continue on in his quest to get back in his own body, as before.
Fire Emblem Elibe: Prince Zephiel had barely escaped from being poisoned to death by his own father King Desmond, and decides to pretend he's dead in order to have revenge. He then lies down in his own casket, a knife hidden among his funerary garments, and when Desmond orders to open it so he can see if Zephiel's truly dead...
Inverted in Hitman: Blood Money, wherein the end of the game is at the titular protagonist's funeral and he is actually the one on the altar; only he gets up and proceeds to kill all of the attendees.

Western Animation

Subverted in The Simpsons episode where Bart and Nelson play the roles of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. After a scene implies they've been hanged, they're shown hiding while their funeral is going on, grinning widely... only for it to be revealed that it's merely their corpses about to be lowered in the coffins (apparently there was a very good embalmer on hand or something, but probably Rule of Funny is a more apt explanation).
In Superman The Animated Series, in the episode "The Late Mr. Kent," Superman shows up at Clark Kent's funeral.
In the Futurama episode "A Pharaoh To Remember," the Planet Express crew stages a fake funeral for Bender to convince him that he will be remembered after he's gone.
Bender: Louder and sadder!
- There's also the end of Bender's Big Score where Fry, courtesy of time travel shenanigans, attends his own, non-faked, funeral. Well, technically the funeral of a time-travel duplicate, but still.
- Heavily parodied in the Show Within a Show All My Circuits by Calculon
Stroker and Hoop: Stroker faked his own death, as well as his son's and C.A.R.R.'s, in order to avoid a gang of ninjas, an then secretly attended his own funeral. Though Stroker later admits that bringing his son to his own funeral was a crappy idea.
In Huck And Tom's Mississippi Adventure, Huck pretended to drown, then watched his funeral by looking through the church window after climbing a tree.
In "Dead Duck", Darkwing Duck "was late for his own funeral" and regretted about this. He visited his grave, though, and was deeply disappointed.

Web Original

Though neither faking it nor technically needing to be resurrected, Red vs Blue has this happen to Sarge, complete with Grif performing a roast for him, and Simmons campaigning for the leadership position, instead of giving him a Eulogy.
Grif: "Sarge, is he campaigning for your job at your funeral? Classy."
- This likely happened offscreen for Church as well; he is shown loudly demanding that he be given one. 'My body fought long and hard for this war!' Later, his grave is shown.
- It happens again in season 9, to Simmons this time. At first he's excited at the prospect, but he becomes rather less so when the best things his teammates can come up with are "He talked a lot," and "He liked gum."
Simmons: I never thought my death could somehow be worse than my life, but here it is. Bitchin'.
There's a rather peculiar instance in an Everyday Weirdness story called "Procession."
The Leet World has one of sorts, where Player, having survived a grenade injury, makes the rest of the team hold a funeral for him, so he can see what it's like.
In A Very Potter Musical, Ginny says that this is what she would do if she had an invisibility cloak.

Real Life

A famous Swedish businessman did not quite attend his own funeral, but got to read his own obituary due to a newspaper error. His horror at his portrayal as "Alfred Nobel, merchant of death and destruction" led him to found the Nobel Prizes so he'd be remembered for something other than inventing explosives.
An episode of Ace Of Cakes involved making a funeral cake for an elderly man who always wanted to attend his own wake, so his wife set one up for him...
As a deliberately engineered example, in 2007, Amir Vehabovic from Bosnia faked his death, forged a death certificate and arranged for a funeral just to see who would show up to remember him. Only his mother attended the funeral.
Zac Pennington of Parenthetical Girls has held two funerals for himself in his adult life thus far.
Abraham Lincoln reportedly had a nightmare along these lines approximately two weeks prior to his assassination.

Randy: "Calculon's back!"