Grave Humor - Television Tropes & Idioms

Here lies the body of Johnathan Blake,
Stepped on the gas instead of the brake

So, you're playing a videogame, and you are in a graveyard. You click the on the tombstone and the character reads: "Paul E. Nate-A wonderful husband, father, and florist." That right there is Grave Humor. Usually in comedic shows, games etc., whenever a character enters a cemetery, they will read a tombstone that often has something humorous on it. Perhaps a pun, poem, or an ironic/strange death. Can be an example of Truth In Television. Related to, but not to be confused with, Black Comedy.

Examples:

Disney Theme Parks

The tombstones outside Disney's Haunted Mansion ride.
Six Flags over Atlanta's train ride in the late 70s had a tombstone hidden in the weeds, "I Tole You I Wuz Sick!"

Live Action TV

The Catherine Tate Show featured the extremely popular character of Lauren Cooper, a mouthy schoolgirl whose catchphrase is "Am I bovvered?" (bothered). In the 2007 Christmas special, she is kayaking and says this to a man who warns her to stay away from a particular stretch of water. She ignores his advice, and is killed when her boat goes over a waterfall. Her friends are then seen standing by her tombstone, which is inscribed with the words "I still ain't bovvered".
As always, there is an example from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When Buffy dies at the end of season 5, her tombstone reads Buffy Anne Summers, beloved sister, devoted friend. She saved the world. A lot.
In Greg The Bunny Count Blah (who has a Verbal Tic of saying "blah" after sentences) visited the grave of his wife, which reads, "Beloved Wife, Blah. R.I.P.B."
In the reunion movie The Wild Wild West Revisited, James West and Artemus Gordon are shown the grave of their arch-nemesis Migelito Loveless, as made by Migelito's son: A Rushmore-sized carving of the man's last name in the side of a mountain, with tiny little plots staked out for the two heroes in its shadow.

Real Life

Two examples from Snopes.com:
- This one is kind of charming.
- This one, not so much.
Comedian Spike Milligan's grave says, "I told you I was ill". However, the inscription is in Irish Gaelic, because the bishop wouldn't allow it in English.
Rodney Dangerfield's epitaph: There goes the neighborhood
In the Boothill graveyard near Tombstone, Arizona, there's a grave that reads:
"Here lies Lester Moore, four slugs from a .44, no Les, no more."
Comedian W.C. Fields used to say that he wanted his gravestone to read "On the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia". Sadly, it doesn't.
Older Than You Think: Ambrose Bierce has examples of humorous epitaphs in The Devil's Dictionary, such as "Sacred to the memory of Jeremiah Tree. Cut down May 9th, 1862, aged 27 yrs. 4 mos. and 12 ds. Indigenous."
- "Here lies the late Senator Vrooman
  Whose head was as hard as the heart of a woman
  Whose heart was as hard as the head of a hammer
  Dame Fortune inspired him to eminence, damn her!"
Robert Burns also wrote humorous epitaphs, like Epitaph on a Wag in Mauchline.

Video Games

Sam And Max in Night of The Raving Dead
The original Final Fantasy had a tombstone reading, "Here lies Erdrick," after the hero (well, hero's ancestor) of competing game company Enix's Dragon Warrior series.
- In the original Japanese version and the Dawn of Souls English translation, the tombstone read "here lies Link".
Arcanum had these in every graveyard in the game, with inscriptions like. "I told you I was sick!" "Here lies an atheist all dressed up and no place to go." "Quoeth thy Raven nevermore." "Hey who blew out the candle? Hello?" and "There was a light at the end of the tunnel, unfortunately that light was a train."
- There was also a hidden 'Fan Graveyard' as an Easter Egg, where forum members familiar to the devs were eulogized.
Conker's Bad Fur Day had some fun with raunchy Punny Names; R. Sole is an example.
Primal had Jen smash a tombstone that read 'RIP Laura Croft 2003' as a Take That to Tomb Raider. The game came out in 2003, obviously.
Can be found in Monkey Island 2: Lechuck's Revenge and Curse of Monkey Island.
Fallout 2 has a number of these, including the "four slugs from a .44" example above.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion had a whole graveyard of these in its expansion pack, with new tombstones added with each consecutive Plotline Death. This troper's personal favorite is "Hirrus Clutumnus never thought he'd fit in anywhere. He fits rather nicely in a coffin now."
- The Elder Scrolls Legends: Battlespire had another whole graveyard of these, and this graveyard was referenced to in The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard.
Neverwinter Nights has a tombstone that reads along the lines of "Here lies X, who scoffed at the warnings of lesser men and built this fine tower. He discovered his error a few weeks later. Beware of trolls."
The graveyard in Nashkel in the first Baldur's Gate game is full of these, including an Easter Egg that'll trigger a Bonus Boss fight if you click on it too many times.
- Baldur's Gate beats this one to death in one town. You get things like "Here lies X, who was killed by (long list of summonable creatures)" followed by the Latin for "do not call up what you cannot put down", implying that this was a hapless summoner who didn't know what he was getting into. There are WAY better ones, but this troper cannot recall them.
See also the Cartoon Network Web game Scooby Doo and the Hollywood Horror.
Used in Quest For Glory IV, with numerous "graveyard humor" jokes scattered beyond the tombstones.
- Not to mention Igor, who is a veritable walking fountain of graveyard humor.
- Also seen in King's Quest VII. Here's a video.
- And King's Quest IV.
- And Quest For Glory I, for that matter.
Dungeons and Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun.
The video game Fable has many of these. Most using the rhyming pun. The deceased tend to be people who worked on the game.
Betrayal at Krondor had a mix of ordinary and humorous quips on the gravestones, and you were also able to dig up the graves. Most graves had nothing special, some had hidden items hinted at by the eulogy (for example, a gravestone reading "Drank his milk every day" hid a few vials of milk), and some had "The fiend beneath this stone is trapped by dirt, not by death": Zombies!
Let's face it: who didn't play Oregon Trail as a kid and put "pepperoni and cheese" on their tombstone?
The PC game Sacred does this, including such epitaphs as "And he said, 'How long will the flying spell last?'" and the fourth-wall breaking "For the ultimate cheat of void, enter DOS, type 'format C:\' and enter".
NetHack. There are randomly generated graves with these. This troper's favorite is "We weren't sure who this was, but we buried him here anyway".
- "Og friend. Og good dude. Og died. Og now food."
- Plus loads more, and several places add more to the file (nethack.alt.org has a massive collection).
  - Link plz...
Ultima V-VII had a number of puns on grave stones.
In Veil of Darkness, the graveyard is filled with these, including one G. Threepwood and how woefully he was under for 11 minutes.
Going way back to the NES, there was a game called Star Tropics. Second game in the series placed you in a mining town for one of the chapters, which has a graveyard full of these. "Lucky Larry: Lucky all his life until that last landslide".
Sanitarium has plenty, mostly for developers. There's also the grave of Joseph Bruener, a character from War Wind II (a game which Sanitarium's developers had previously worked on).
- "This one says Travis W. Nice Goddamn Cat..." Granted, this was on a level that's basically a mangled bunch of all the previous levels, so randomness like this is expected.
MOTHER 3 has a hurricane of "grave" puns. Also, a "NO ZOMBIES ALLOWED" sign at the cemetery entrance.
Mortal Kombat 3 features tombstones of the game's developers, as well as one reading "Cage", presumably a reference to Johnny Cage, the character who died before the events of the game.
The city of Haven in Dragon Age: Origins has a graveyard filled with humorous tombstones, including some Shout Outs to others on the the page. ("Sensal Gaheris: 775-798, 798-801, 801-805, 805-807, 807-809 (VERIFIED), 'BEST TAX EVADER EVER' — CH")

Web Comics

In Homestar Runner, Strong Bad wanted this◊ on his grave.
Eugene Greenhilt's tombstone in The Order Of The Stick, in addition to listing his many dates of death and resurrection reads, "Master Wizard, Devoted Husband, Passable Father." (He was lucky to get that much.) Other visible tombstones display similar humor ("Bloodmak the Unholy: Not coming back as a vampire. Honest.")
A staple of the webcomic Unlife is Unfair, particularly the name puns like "Dustin Dewinn" and "Rick R. Mortis".
In Girl Genius, a visit to the Crypt of the Heterodynes reveals many amusing epitaphs. Perhaps most interesting is the tomb of Lazarus Heterodyne, with half a dozen dates crossed out.
- As well as Iscariot Heterodyne, "Every Man's Friend". The pile of skulls next to the crypt are labeled things like "Friend #115".
Happens frequently in The Comic Adventures of Left & Right. The grave usually reads something pertinent to the last thing a character was doing.

Western Animation

Hey Arnold did this with a Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion.
The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper did this in the credit sequence, with the tombstone reading "I'm with stupid" next to another tombstone reading, "I'm stupid".
The opening titles of several of The Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror" episodes.
- The last one to use them actually had a tombstone reading "Amusing Tombstones", signaling the retirement of the gag.
The Spongebob Squarepants episode where Mr. Krabs goes to a graveyard to dig up a million dollar hat. Squidward was mourning at a tombstone and when Mr. Krabs came to see who it was, he sees that the engraving reads "Here lie Squidwards hopes and dreams." In the same graveyard, there's "Diver Dan", whose tombstone has carved SCUBA gear on it, "Stupid" next to "I'm With Stupid", complete with pointing hand, and most importantly, the "#1" shaped tombstone of Smitty Warbenjaegarmanjetson, whose name extends off the name plaque.
Beavis and Butthead in their parody of Dickens' A Christmas Carol: 'Here lies Beavis, he never scored.'