Comforting the Widow

"Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral baked meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables."

— Hamlet, Hamlet, Act I, Scene II

Poor Alice. Her husband, Bob, has just died.

She's at the funeral, all weepy. Charlie, Bob's close friend, goes over to console her. They have a little discussion. They "comfort" each other.

Naturally, doing this with a woman whose husband isn't even cold in his grave yet is considered rather disrespectful and improper, to say the least. It suggests that:

1. Alice didn't really love Bob all that much
2. Charlie wasn't much of a friend

Occasionally it's given (or attempted to be given) a less negative spin: Overcome with mutual grief, they turn to each other and because of their loneliness and emotional vulnerability this emotional connection leads to something physical. But they'll still feel incredibly guilty about it, and other mourners who find out are going to be pretty disgusted. Another somewhat better way to give it a less negative spin concerning Charlie at least is by having him not even being a friend of Bob at all and not even pretending that he mourned him at all, or even going as far as having him be Bob's enemy.

As bad as this is, there are several sub-variants that make it even worse:

• Alice and Charlie murdered Bob together.
• Alice murdered Bob.
• Charlie murdered Bob.
• Bob isn't dead after all.

The first is a classic murder motive. The second is a way of punishing Charlie for betraying his friend (often he's the next target for the Black Widow). The third is a lesson to wives about the danger of a non-husband male friend offering comfort. While the last situation is the most common for the 3rd scenario listed above — expect a lot of angst and grief about having committed adultery without realizing it. Quite a few examples on this page are about characters merely attempting it rather than actually managing to go all the way with it.

Contrast Romancing the Widow, which is when an appropriate time of grieving has passed, and the widow is encouraged to move on with a new romance. See also Sex for Solace or On the Rebound.

See also Death of the Hypotenuse, where Charlie had feelings for Alice before Bob died. noreallife

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Isao Tsujimura tried this in Case Closed, with his friend Kenji Yamashiro and his wife Kimie. He also mixed it with The Uriah Gambit by using Yamashiro as a scapegoat for a big fraud, sending him to jail so he'd have a shot at Kimie, who was dangerously near to the Despair Event Horizon. Yamashiro died in prison, and Tsujimura and Kimie got married. It massively backfired years later, as Kimie learned the truth when Tsujimura's son Takayoshi brought a photo of his girlfriend Yukiko... Kimie and Yamashiro's long lost daughter (raised by her paternal family) and Tsujimura had a Freak Out; she forced him to confess... and later, she killed him.
• In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 2: Battle Tendency, Joseph teases his grandmother Erina and Speedwagon about the possibility of this. She smacks him with an umbrella for his trouble.
• In Saiyuki, Dokugakuji to his own mother. Squickily justified as it was to protect his younger half brother from being beaten to the point of death.
• In Soul Eater, it's Franken Stein (of all people!). Not so much comforting a widow but instead an Old Maid (sometimes Played for Laughs, but NOT in this instance), especially in the manga, as Marie Mjolnir loses her New Old Flame just before they reconcile their relationship again... Err...comforting in a platonic sense, by the way.
  • A significant moment for both for rather different reasons - Marie, because she's had feelings for Stein since they were in school and the BJ/madness thing complicated things somewhat, and Stein because it's the only example of him showing real empathy for another human being, aside from the odd nice gesture towards the students.
  • It more or less works out — by the end of the series, Marie is pregnant with Stein's kid.

Comic Books

• This is a major plot point in the Sin City story A Dame To Kill For. The dame in question turns out to be a Card-Carrying Villain who kills her husband (or more accurately, manipulates the Anti-Hero, Dwight McCarthy into doing it for her, convincing him that her husband is some kind of sick, twisted maniac who has plans to torture and kill her) for his money, then plays the distraught widow to seduce one of the policemen investigating the case, just for the sake of it.
• Happened in the backstory of the Yoko Tsuno book "The Prey And The Shadow". And then, William killed his sister-in-law and later wife, Mary.
• The National Lampoon did a brutal comic-book parody of Brian's Song — at Brian's funeral Gale glances at the now ex-Mrs. Piccolo, thinking "That fine lady's gonna need some comforting tonight" as she thinks "I'll ask Gale to comfort me tonight..."
• The porn comic Wendy Whitebread takes this to parodic levels — all of Wendy's friends show up to "comfort" her, and it becomes a free-for-all orgy. It probably helps that her husband was a sexist asshole and she doesn't miss him.
• Referenced in DC: The New Frontier; although not quite a widow (at least in this continuity), Lois Lane is understandably distraught when it looks like Superman, to whom she is definitely a Love Interest, has been killed by the Big Bad. Watching her flub a press report due to her grief, Rocky Davis of the Challengers of the Unknown smarmily comments to Jimmy Olsen that it looks a good time for "a little of the old sympathy tactic". Jimmy, understandably, is less than impressed.
  Jimmy: [Disgusted] Rocky Davis. Ladies man. What an ass. Don't you know anything about women? She loved him, you idiot. She loved him.
• When Rosemary Almond's husband Derek dies in V for Vendetta, she reluctantly starts a relationship with Roger Dascombe. When he dies, she's forced to work in burlesque shows. All this combined with the fact that Derek and Roger were government workers leads her to hate Norsefire so much she kills their leader.
• Ant-Man: Not a conventional widow (as they weren't married), but Veronica King and Chris Mc Carthy, S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and friends of Eric O'Grady, had been dating and were very close. When Chris dies (which is partially Eric's fault) during a mission, Eric goes to inform Veronica and becomes her emotional support over the following week as preparations are made for the funeral. At first, it's completely platonic because they both lost someone they cared about, but then right after the funeral service, as they are still on top of Chris' grave, they start to kiss and rip at each other's clothes. They stop before they get too far, though. Didn't stop Eric from trying again. Then he got her pregnant. And then he abandoned her.

Fan Works

• Played for Black Comedy in Sword Art Online Abridged, where Asuna hugs Kirito and assures him he won’t lose her like “that dumb bitch Sally.”
  Kirito: Sa-Sachi...
• In the Neon Genesis Evangelion fanfic Orders, Asuka tries to seduce Shinji after his girlfriend Rei seemingly disappears and is replaced by an amnesiac clone. Shinji is tempted, but refuses to accept Asuka’s advances until he knows for sure Rei is gone.

Film

• Bonchi: A rare gender flip. Kikuji's bitchy, domineering mother and grandma refuse to let him attend Ikuko's funeral, because she was a concubine and that isn't allowed. Cut to Kikuji, weeping with grief in Ofuku's second-floor apartment, which offers a view of the funeral possession. (Apparently, of all his women, Ikuko was the one he really loved.) Ofuku sees Kikuji's tears and says "Let me comfort you." Sex follows. Kikuji's grandmother set this all up in hopes of matching Kikuji up with Ofuku.
• Ghost (1990), with the guy who killed Swayze's character attempting it by putting the moves on his girlfriend. Though Molly (the girlfriend) doesn't appear to feel that way about the murderer, even when she doesn't know he's the murderer.
• Wedding Crashers had a character who went to random people's funerals precisely to do this. One of the leads, who had previously made picking up women at Weddings into an art form, is fairly disgusted. This doesn't stop him from doing it once, though.
• Tommy. In the original Rock Opera, Tommy's father returns from war years after going missing and kills his wife's lover. In The Movie, the lover kills the father.
• A slight variation in Pearl Harbor. Evelyn is in love with Rafe, who then goes off to fight the Nazis. She learns that his plane was shot down, so she immediately falls in love with his best friend, Danny. When Rafe returns it's, um, awkward. It doesn't help that she's pregnant (But it DOES help that Danny gets killed by Japanese troops after they crash in China!)
• Summer of '42 — but in that case, the widow (Dorothy) actually appears to need comforting, and as her husband was shot down over France, neither she nor Hermie can bear any complicity in his death.
  • Made squickier in the book by the suggestion that, in her troubled emotional state, she actually convinces herself that Hermie is her dead husband. He scolds himself afterward for having taken advantage of her, however inadvertently.
• The Five Heartbeats has Version #3: Big Red has Jimmy killed (for threatening to expose his corrupt business practices) and then attends his funeral; when he tells Jimmy's widow that she "shouldn't be alone", she slaps him in the face.
• In Casino Royale (1967), Deborah Kerr plays a SMERSH agent impersonating M's widow - at M's ancestral home she enters the bedroom of Sir James Bond (David Niven), demanding to be comforted (and ruin his Celibate Hero image). When he politely declines, she takes it as an insult to her honor.
• Spectre: James Bond kills Spectre assasin Marco Sciarra and seduces his widow Lucia on the same day as his funeral. This is justified as she absolutely despised her husband, and only grieves for her own sake due to being a loose end to be cleaned up by Spectre, before being rescued by Bond.
• Played with in the Ocean's Eleven remake.
  Danny: Phil Turrentine?
  Rusty: Dead.
  Danny: No shit, on the job?
  Rusty: Skin cancer.
  Danny: You send flowers?
  Rusty: Dated his wife for a while.
• Sergeant Twining from Uncle Sam enjoys informing women that their husbands died overseas so he can take advantage of them while they grieve.
• Subverted, then tragically deconstructed in The Stoning of Soraya M. when Soraya goes to help a widower and his mentally-challenged son with house chores. Nothing happens, but her husband uses this as an opportunity to build false testimony that lewd interactions had taken place.
• The 2006 miniseries Blackbeard has this exchange after the titular character's mutiny:
  Cpt. Hornigold: ...and I went to pay my respects to [Captain Kidd's] widow.
  Blackbeard: And how much respect did you pay her?
  Cpt. Hornigold: Enough to keep a lonely widow warm on a cold November night.
• Lord of Illusions: Private detective Harry D'Amour strikes up a romance with the late Philip Swann's wife Dorothea only a few days after Swann's death and while Dorothea is still mourning over her husband's casket. D'Amour shacking up with his wife majorly pisses Swann off when he's revealed to have faked his on-stage death, and he nearly kills D'Amour.
• Stoker: After meeting him at her husband's funeral, Evelyn strikes up a romance with her husband's brother, Charlie. Subverted, as Charlie is actually in love with Evelyn's daughter, India, and is only using Evelyn as an excuse to live in the same house as her.
• Elizabeth: The Golden Age erroneously depicts Sir Walter Raleigh having his affair with Bess Throckmorton, Queen Elizabeth's lady-in-waiting, shortly after Bess's cousin Francis Throckmorton is executed for plotting to assassinate Elizabeth. (In real life, their affair and secret marriage didn't happen until 1591, after the Spanish Armada)

Literature

• In A Brother's Price Jerin feels bad about his relief when he is told that the woman he loves is a widow — he doesn't want to be the one Comforting The Widow, rather he thinks he should feel sorry for her loss. He ends up comforting the widows ... though they need comfort not because they're sad their husband died — they aren't — but because their husband caused a lot of harm to the family.
• Deconstructed and defied in Harry Potter, when Snape tries to get Voldemort to spare Lily because he loves her while not pleading for the lives of her husband and barely year-old child, almost certainly^note (the record is a bit fragmentary, and he was having trouble forming complete sentences when questioned) in order to invoke the trope — he certainly does not deny it when accused. To add insult to injury, Dumbledore realizes this and he's so pissed off that he angrily chews him out about it, stating in tones of utter contempt, "You disgust me." But in the end, Snape agrees to become a double agent in order for Dumbledore to protect all of them, and to protect Harry after Lily is murdered.
• Gomez has sex with Claire in The Time Traveler's Wife after Henry dies. Still, she doesn't choose to be with him, and his own wife never finds out (though she's known for years about his unrequited feelings for Claire).
• The story of the Woman of Ephesus in the Roman novel The Satyricon might count as the oldest one in the book—the seemingly virtuous widow was at her husband's tomb ready to starve herself to death, but after some comforting words from a centurion ends up having sex with him and offering her husband's corpse to be crucified after one of the corpses the soldier is overseeing is stolen.
• From "The Notebooks of Lazarus Long" in Robert A. Heinlein's novel Time Enough for Love:
  "There is only one way to console a widow. But remember the risk."
• The Count of Monte Cristo. Fernand Mondego betrays his friend Edmond Dantes and has him sent to prison. The corrupt prosecutor tells Dantes's fiancee, Mercedes, that Edmond died attempting escape. Mercedes then marries Fernand and has a son. When Dantes escapes and assumes the identity of the Count, he is mad at Fernand for betraying him, the prosecutor for imprisoning him, and Mercedes for abandoning him.
• Done by Renton in the book of Trainspotting. Complicated by the fact that the young lady in question is about eight months pregnant at the time, which results in some truly disturbing speculation on Renton's part.
• This trope is invoked from three different angles involving the same widow in Lois McMaster Bujold's A Civil Campaign. After Tien Vorsoisson's death in an accident, every fellow that knows of Ekaterin Vorsoisson's existence drops by when she moves into her uncle's home. (Due to certain demographic quirks, Miles' generation is running over five men to four women among the upper social classes — any marriageable woman of Ekaterin's age without actual visible deformities is competed for hotly.) Miles Vorkosigan, who fell for her even before her husband's death in the last novel, tries to be subtle about it only to discover that covert ops tactics are not that readily applied to courtship. Then Miles ends up accused of having killed her husband so that he could court the widow — and due to certain events connected with Tien's death, fewer than twenty people in the entire Barrayaran Imperium have the security clearance to be allowed to even know that the evidence proving Miles' innocence exists, let alone be allowed to see it.
• Invoked in a Guy de Maupassant story generally translated as "The Graveyard Sisterhood" which features prostitutes dressed as widows so that they can be comforted by male mourners.
• In Tom Clancy's The Cardinal of the Kremlin, American physicist Alan Gregory is abducted by the KGB with the assistance of one of his colleagues, who hopes to be able to make a move on Gregory's fiancée once he's out of the way.
• Discussed and deliberately averted in the case of Wedge Antilles and Iella Wessiri of the X-Wing Series. Though he's around to console her when her husband dies (the two had known each other for years and been working together at the time, so it's hardly unusual), he's very careful not to put any romantic pressure on her despite the fact that he is interested. He confesses some years later that he felt it would be "morbid, crude, opportunistic [and] Janson-like" to have mentioned it at the time.
• The short story Absent From Felicity, from the collection Somewhere Beneath Those Waves features a gay version: Fortinbras comes onto a grieving Horatio at Hamlet's grave—and nearly shoves him onto the headstone in his ardor.
• The Mirrorworld Series: Valiant shamelessly states his intention to employ this strategy with Clara.
• One of Ambrose Bierce's "Fantastic Fables":
  A Widow weeping on her husband's grave was approached by an Engaging Gentleman who, in a respectful manner, assured her that he had long entertained for her the most tender feelings.
  "Wretch!" cried the Widow. "Leave me this instant! Is this a time to talk to me of love?"
  "I assure you, madam, that I had not intended to disclose my affection," the Engaging Gentleman humbly explained, "but the power of your beauty has overcome my discretion."
  "You should see me when I have not been crying," said the Widow.
• Worldwar: Sam Yeager is assigned to help escort the members of the Chicago Metallurgical Lab (a key part of the Manhattan Project) away from the front lines during the Race's invasion. A few months before that, Jens Larssen, a nuclear physicist working on the project, is sent on bicycle to deliver a message across enemy-occupied territory. With normal communications cut off and millions already dead, his wife Barbara assumes the worst. She and Sam become friends until they are nearly killed by a Race killercraft strafing their ship. They end up having Glad-to-Be-Alive Sex. After a few days, Barbara explains to Sam that she believes she's done grieving for Jens, and they start a romantic and sexual relationship. Sometime later, they get married, with Barbara getting pregnant on their wedding night. But then, surprise, Jens is alive and has been waiting at their destination, having just missed them in Chicago. Due to operational secrecy, he has been forbidden from attempting to send any messages to his wife, letting her know he was alive. Technically, Barbara's marriage to Sam is invalid, but with the war on, no one is about to go to court. She ends up choosing Sam, largely because of her pregnancy. This drives Jens over the edge, he (rightly) blames the military for ruining his marriage and ends up killing a soldier and trying to defect to the Race, being shot in the process. On the other hand, Jens is himself not innocent of adultery, as he ends up having a one-night stand with an attractive diner owner, catching the clap from her.
• The Pillars of the Earth: Ellen seduces Tom just after his wife, Agnes, dies in childbirth. He is mentally fried and thinks she's an apparition or an angel. Some of the worse aspects of this trope are downplayed, as Ellen has met Tom once before but isn't a friend of him or of Agnes, and she had nothing to do with Agnes's death. It's still not a great thing to do with him in such a mental state, though it works out.
  Ellen: I saw you. I wanted you. But I could see you loved your wife. I'm sorry she died, truly sorry... but now that she's gone, I want you for myself.
• Rubbernecker has a female example. Mr Deal isn't really a widower — his wife has been in a coma for almost a year — but the nurse Tracy Evans sets out to seduce him anyway. When Mr Deal is around, she plays up what a caring and attentive nurse she is for Mrs Deal, even though she's lazy and careless when no one is watching. After Tracy and Mr Deal start having sex, Tracy switches jobs and Mr Deal stops visiting his wife.
• Married Thrice To Salted Fish: A lot of eyebrows are raised when Lin Qingyu marries General Gu Fuzhou so soon after his first husband Lu Wancheng's death and even more eyebrows are raised when Lin Qingyu begins getting awfully close to the newly-crowned Emperor when his second husband Gu Fuzhou's corpse has barely had time to get cold and eventually marries him. The strange truth is that Lin Qingyu is actually marrying the same man each time, due to his husband's soul being sent into a different man's body every time he dies, but since only 1-2 people outside of the couple know about this, a lot of people end up thinking that Lin Qingyu is a Black Widow who only cares about marrying his way up the social ladder.

Live-Action TV

• Happens in Scrubs, where J.D. ends up having sex with his patient's widow, and comments "There are a lot of ways to grieve, but last time I checked, wheelbarrow style wasn't one". It borders on Romancing the Widow in this case, as the man had been in a coma for several years (after a car accident two weeks into their marriage). As "Tasty Coma Wife" puts it, she had already grieved over losing her husband, his actual death really just gave her some closure. This trope is more definitely in effect several episodes earlier when JD and the wife went on a date while the husband was actually still alive (but of course comatose). They have a good time together but JD backs out before anything physical happens because this trope makes him uncomfortable with the situation.
• This happened in a very odd episode of Boy Meets World where the cast was sent back into World War II thanks to Salem crossing over from Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
• The third variant has popped up multiple times on Law & Order.
  • In "The Dead Wives Club," a woman is murdered who turns out to be the wife of a 9/11 firefighter and the widow of another. After 9/11 some surviving firefighters were assigned to help out the widows of the ones who died, and this led to this particular guy falling in love with her, divorcing his wife, and marrying her. His ex-wife was so traumatized by this chain of events that she killed the woman.
  • Another episode Legacy involves a woman hiring a hitman to kill the man who married her son's widow because she was convinced that they'd been having an affair and schemed to Murder the Hypotenuse. As it turned out, the widow was a genuine case of this trope. The man, however, had been obsessed with her for some time beforehand and murdered her husband, his best friend, so that he could have her for himself. Not surprisingly, on learning this the widow was horrified to discover that, in the words of the prosecutors, she'd essentially "married her stalker" and divorced him.
• JAG: In "Pilot Error", Harm spends time with the deceased Lt. Luke Pendry's family, having known them when he was still alive.
• Played with in The Unit. As part of a Secret Test of Character during a flashback, Bob is told that the Unit widows can ask for what they want- including sex with the married Bob. He gets out of the situation without sex.
• CSI: NY: It's more technically "Comforting the Bereaved Mom", but in "Right Next Door" Danny Messer sleeps with his neighbor whose young son had recently been killed. He already has a girlfriend.
• The Last Enemy: By the deceased's brother, no less. Which becomes especially awkward when it turns out he was Faking the Dead.
• Murdoch Mysteries invokes this trope in one episode. As it happens, it was a case of Murder the Hypotenuse and the widow wasn't interested anyway.
• In Soap Burt was trying to seduce Mary while she was still married, when he accidentally murdered her husband (in self-defense) he continued his seduction - though he was in love with her the entire time and felt extremely guilty over the death of her husband; she felt it was the right thing to do as she didn't want to end up lonely and depressed, and knew Burt was a kind guy.
  • There's Detective Donohue's seduction of Jessica. He had been hired to find her missing husband, Chester, and when he was mistaken for dead Donohue kept visiting and wouldn't relent. Of course, when Chester returns he's insulted that Jessica would "jump" into another man's arms when the whole situation had troubled her a lot.
• In an episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, one of the "scenes from a hat" suggestions was something like "inappropriate times to hit on somebody." Wayne: "I'm terribly sorry about your loss, Mrs. Jenkins..."
• Rescue Me: Tommy sleeps with his dead brother's widow. And his dead cousin's widow.
• A variant occurs on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. After Glory drives Tara insane, she ends up having to spend a night in the hospital. Willow says that she doesn't think she can sleep without her. Anya's response:
  Anya: You can sleep with me! (pause) Okay, that sounded a lot less lesbian in my head.
• Criminal Minds:
  • The UnSub in "The Longest Night" explains to the little girl he's abducted that he has "a widow to comfort". Of course, she's a widow because he just shot her husband and by "comfort", he means "rape".
  • The episode "Hero Worship" features a victim who's married to his late best friend's wife. They explain the situation as all having been friends beforehand, with the grief of the first husband's death bringing them closer. While the current husband (Alan) is constantly in the shadow of the first husband (Grant), the dynamic doesn't fall into of the sub-variants. It just led Alan to try to be a hero like Grant by setting a bomb so that he could "save" someone and be a hero to get out of Grant's shadow. Too bad he planted it over a gas line.
• Discussed in the How I Met Your Mother episode "46 Minutes", when Ted, Robin, and Barney, after indulging in a long, drunken, terrible night full of mishaps due their depression over Marshall and Lily moving to Long Island, gloomily start predicting how Marshall and Lily might eventually stop seeing them altogether. Barney's imagination, of course, goes completely overboard:
  "Then the years pass and you find out Marshall’s dead. And you’re there for Lily emotionally at first, but then it becomes sexual and you feel guilty. But maybe that guilt just makes it dirtier and better!"
  • This causes Ted to snap out of his gloom and swear not to let their friendship with Marshall and Lily to dissolve, in order to prevent Barney's nightmare scenario from occurring (he was drunk at the time — it's the thought that counts).
  • Barney is explaining his made-up holiday, Desperation Day, which is the day before Valentine's Day, and takes advantage of women being bummed that they're single at the most romantic time of the year.
    Barney: There's only one thing you cannot do...
    Ted: Please say widows.
• Highlander had a variant of this where Richie killed the SO of an immortal friend of Duncan's right after Duncan lost Tessa. Mac later meets with the woman to argue with her over her wanting Richie dead, but alcohol comes into play and they end up sleeping together.
  • Later, it happened with Richie and another immortal's widow, at least until she found out Richie had killed her husband.
• In The Walking Dead, Shane kindled a romance with his best friend Rick's wife Lori when they thought Rick was killed in the early days of the Zombie Apocalypse. He also started to become a Parental Substitute to Rick's son Carl. Things get awkward when Rick shows up alive and well. Shane's frustration over losing his position as leader and his position in Lori and Carl's hearts simmers over the course of the series culminating in him trying to murder Rick in season 2. It doesn't end well for Shane.
• Homeland; at some point in the eight years Nicholas Brody was missing presumed dead, his friend Mike went from looking after his family to "comforting" his "widow". It's not clear how long it took, but they hadn't told the kids about it yet so it's presumably relatively recent.
• In Game of Thrones, Littlefinger tries this on Catelyn after her husband dies. She pulls a knife on him and tells him to get out, since he's the reason her husband is dead. To make it even more inappropriate, the reason he was meeting with her was to deliver her late husband's bones.
  • House of the Dragon: Otto Hightower tries to invoke this by sending his beautiful young daughter Alicent to go comfort the king on the very day of his late wife's funeral. Downplayed Trope in that he's not telling her to go have sex with him right now, but just to begin ingratiating herself with him.
    Otto: I thought you might go to him, offer him comfort.
    Alicent: In his chambers?
• The White Queen portrays the courtship of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville this way; in the midst of the Wars of the Roses, she petitions the king for her slain husband's lands to be restored to her and her sons. The two fall in Love at First Sight and when she resists the king's attempts to add her to his long list of mistresses, they get married in secret. The courtship of Richard of Gloucester and Lady Anne Neville applies as well, but not in the way portrayed by Shakespeare. After the defeat of Lancasters, Lady Anne Neville was a penniless ward of George of Clarence. Richard offered his help and his hand. They eloped and married in secret.
• Parodied in A Touch of Cloth. After Jack's wife died, he had sex with The Coroner Natasha... with his wife's body laying next to them.
• Supernatural. In "Party On, Garth" when Sam says he's going to interview the widow of the Victim of the Week, Dean gives him a funny look as if suspecting his motives.
• Taboo has a pretty extreme example where Zilpha not only personally kills her abusive husband Thorne (then covered up the death as a case of cholera, thus requiring an immediate burial), but also so she could be together with her own half-brother James (who arranged the aforementioned cover-up). They rip each other's clothes off immediately after the funeral.
• Frontier (2016): After Samuel Grant has Mr. Carruthers murdered, he sends one of his associates to visit Mrs. Carruthers at the funeral to offer to buy her company. When they meet in person he also offers marriage, since the time in general and fur trade, in particular, is male-dominated and would have no place for a woman to run a company alone. Elizabeth Carruthers points out that it shows particular effrontery to approach a widow actually at the funeral, let alone when you're the one who made her a widow. She rejects his offer and instead arranges a marriage to one of Grant's other victims to satisfy the period norms while retaining control over her company.
• Dead Man's Gun: In "Buryin' Sam", the unscrupulous eponymous Undertaker specializes in doing this.
• The Punisher (2017): In the first season, Frank Castle inadvertently finds himself in this situation with Sarah Lieberman, who makes a pass at this man who has been repeatedly turning up under various pretexts to offer help and sympathy. Unknown to Sarah, her husband David faked his death and Frank is helping him keep an eye on her. David witnesses her kissing Frank on hidden cameras and gets drunk — not because he blames either of them, but rather because it's a reminder of how he's failed his own husbandly duties. Frank has to make it clear that he has no interest in Sarah, because he's still mourning his own family and is unwilling to move on.
• Tidelands (Netflix): Laura Maney goes from thinking Augie murdered her husband to letting him eat her out literally within minutes. It seems she really needed comfort.
• Ghosts (UK): In "The Thomas Thorne Affair," one of the ghosts tells how he died in a duel for the honor of his intended (Isabelle Higham), on the grounds of her ancestral home. After the duel, Thomas's cousin, Francis Button, leads her away, saying that the opponent cheated Thomas, and offers his "comfort" to Isabelle. This is how the home was renamed "Button House."

Music

• The Decemberists describe a Comforting The Widow scenario in which a young party boy seduces the narrator's recently widowed mother and then wastes away her fortune before leaving her to die in The Mariner's Revenge Song.
• In the Scottish folksong Baron O' Brackley, thirty-plus raiders from a rival clan are outside stealing the Baron's cattle. His wife shames him into going out to face them alone. Cue Curb-Stomp Battle. In the next verse, his wife is happily preparing to host the enemy leader.
• Georges Brassens's song La fessée (The spanking) is about a man attending the funeral wake of one of his friends with the widow. They being by telling jokes to pass the time, then have lunch and drink, after which the tipsy widow comes onto the man, who decides to spank her to teach her a lesson, but the spanking quickly evolves into something else.

Mythology and Religion

• The Book of Mormon recounts that Amalickiah comforted and married the queen of the Lamanites, after he assassinated her husband. It's not clear whether she ever found out about that, but from his prior treatment of anyone in his way, it's pretty clear that she couldn't really refuse.
• This is basically what Penelope's suitors are trying to do in The Odyssey. Granted, some of them may have fooled themselves into thinking they were just Romancing the Widow initially, but not taking no for an answer even after ten years of courting and playing house guests all the time pushes it pretty firmly into this category. (Never mind that Odysseus turns out not to be dead after all...)

Theatre

• In one adaptation of Martin Guerre, Arnaud comes back from war to break the news to Martin's widow. The villagers somehow decide he's Martin (he was gone for seven years), and they have to play along with it so that she won't be forced to marry Guillaume. Over time, the expected course of events transpires. Trouble is, Martin's not dead.
• William Shakespeare does this a couple of times;
  • In Richard III, Lady Anne knows that Richard killed Edward, and he still manages to win her over. (Some productions play with this by suggesting Anne is as ruthless as Richard, and willingly married Richard because he was her best shot at getting a crown.)
  • Claudius and Gertrude in Hamlet, which involves the third (and possibly the second) sub-variants. The Mel Gibson and Kenneth Branagh film adaptations each offer additions to the Claudius/Gertrude dynamic, both hinting that they were, in fact, having an affair before the King's death (in particular, in Branagh's version, Hamlet looks much more like Claudius than he does his father).
• In Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Mrs. Lovett deliberately invokes this when she tells Sweeney that his wife is dead. The emotion is never there on his part, but she does get the "rumpled bedsheets" she was hoping for. Sweeney doesn't take it well when he finds out that she lied.
• In Giulio Cesare in Egitto, Cornelia can’t have a break from it, as three men want to invoke the trope.
  • Curius tries this with her minutes after her husband’s head is brought to her, and she is understandably furious (since Curius is a good guy and it’s a recitative, this scene is cut more often than not).
  • Achillas and Ptolemy both attempt it not long afterwards (the timeline is vague, as usual in a baroque opera, but it’s clear that little time has passed). In several productions, she somewhat warms to Achillas, but not enough to play the trope to full extent.

Video Games

• It's a bit more drawn-out in Baldur's Gate II, but if a male protagonist has a relationship with Jaheira, it still seems to occur far too quickly after the death of Khalid, Jaheira's husband. In Throne of Bhaal, a wraith pretending to be Khalid and using Jaheira's own doubts against her accuses Jaheira of wanting Khalid out of the way all along so she could hook up with the protagonist, citing the haste in which she entered the new relationship as evidence.
• A dark variation in City of Heroes: In one Praetoria story arc, one PPD cop comments to another about comforting a journalist's girlfriend. While said journalist lies dying at his feet. Guess who's responsible...
• The romance with Aribeth in Neverwinter Nights might count, due to Fenthick's Plotline Death at the end of the first chapter.
• In Snatcher, Gillian Seed (who is married, by the way) can try to persuade the 18-year-old (14 in the original Japanese version!) daughter of a dead teammate to let him try to comfort her. Metal Gear finds this very objectionable, and yells at Gillian to stop it. The daughter can get angry enough to throw Gillian out of the house, preventing him from returning for a while.
• Campbell says this was how he found his second wife in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots — her husband had disappeared and he 'comforted' her. It might have been the case in a very warped way, but the marriage was actually a sham intended to protect her and her son from the Patriots.

Webcomics

• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: Played for Black Comedy with a suicide hotline that talks down callers by making them imagine their grieving mothers getting seduced.
• Erfworld: After Prince Ansom is croaked, his former lover Jillian Zamussels and his best friend Vinny Doombats hook up. They end up in a grey area between Friends with Benefits and a formal relationship.
  Jillian: Get away.
  Vinny: Hey you're the only one grievin' right now, right? [crying] Right?! Izzat what you think?

Web Original

• Seinfeld - "The Twin Towers": George uses his alleged status as a 9/11 hero to manipulate Rachel, who lost her husband in the attacks, into sleeping with him.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time:
  • In one episode Jake must become sad to enter Magic Man's time bubble. Cue Jake's Imagine Spot where he dies and his girlfriend Lady Rainicorn is comforted by the buff Mr. Cupcake. This actually makes Jake angry, so he adjusts to thinking about Mr. Cupcake at Jake's grave, lamenting that they couldn't be friends.
  • Another episode has Starchy implying that he wooed Cherry Cream Soda either during or not long after Root Beer Guy's funeral since his grave digger job lets him know who is a "recent widow". He tells this to Cherry Cream as if it's flattering he chose her.
• The Family Guy episode "Perfect Castaway" has the family mistakenly believing that Peter has died at sea. Upon his return, he finds that Lois has married Brian. Subverted in that they never actually consummate the marriage before Peter's return (much to Brian's frustration who was okay with the whole idea).
• Futurama:
  • This is how Fry accidentally managed to survive a temporal paradox after he accidentally went back in time and accidentally killed the man he thought was his grandfather.
  Ooohhh, a lesson in not changing history from Mr. "I'm my own grandpa!"
  • Later repeated in the second movie with Zapp Branigan and Amy, after Kif is killed, thanks to Zapp's incompetence. Gets kinda awkward when he inevitably gets better.
• The Simpsons:
  • Subversion or related trope: when Maude dies, Moe confesses his undying love/lust for her to Ned, with somewhat predictable results. Moe also tries to do this to Marge whenever Homer appears to have died or disappeared.
  • This is merged with the Hamlet example above when The Simpsons do their own version of the play. I guess Moe just fits the "Claudius" role perfectly.
    • And done again on a "three short stories" episode, this time set on the voyage of the Mayflower.
    • And again when retelling The Count of Monte Cristo.

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