The Fun In Funeral / Live-Action TV

The "Fun" in "Funeral" in Live-Action TV.

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• In the late Irish comedian Dave Allen's sketch/stand-up show, he had a recurring sketch with apparently solemn funerals descending into farce, mostly ending in a race to the graveyard.
• All in the Family had Archie's friend Stretch Cunningham die, with Archie chosen against his will to deliver the eulogy. It's only at the funeral that Archie discovers that Stretch was Jewish...Bunker-esque Hilarity Ensues with his improvised speech. However, by the end, it becomes a genuinely heartwarming moment as Archie wishes Stretch well with a sincere "Shalom."
• One episode of The Armando Iannucci Shows involved the mortuary owner solemnly informing the bereaved that "We like to do a rodeo theme." Therefore, the eulogy was delivered while riding on the coffin, like one of those mechanical bulls.
• Murdock orchestrates Hannibal's fake funeral in The A-Team episode, "The Big Squeeze". He stops Face and B.A. at the door and demands to know if they are "friends of the bride, or the groom?" Then he gives a eulogy about how Hannibal (rather, the restaurant owner he was masquerading as) "graced our lives like an avocado salad." He then plays a very melancholy version of Take Me Out to the Ballgame on the organ!
• Avenue 5: In the second episode, the crew and passengers have a funeral for Joe by placing him in a coffin and ejecting it into space... but the coffin's weight means it doesn't get enough momentum and is stuck in orbit around the ship, leaving everyone to watch as it constantly circles them. Later, they have another funeral for some passengers who died from wounds sustained in the original accident, and try to solve the problem they had with Joe by using lightweight coffins and bursts of compressed air to push them past the ship's gravity well. But the gravity gets reset just as they're launched, robbing them of that momentum and leaving them also orbiting the ship.
• In Awkward., Ricky Schwartz's funeral (or more accurately, his shiva) shows several of Ricky's heretofore unknown paintings, including a self-portrait of himself as a pimp with several scantily clad women around him and several paintings of women with huge breasts, apparently inspired by his busty female family members, and the fact that he was breastfed until he was 8. Jenna also eats some of the apparently awful-tasting food, which led to her spitting it into a nicely decorated vase...that turned out to by Ricky's urn. His candlelight vigil turns into a drunken Wild Teen Party, but not before several girls (and some guys) reveal that Ricky broke their hearts and they hated him.
• Back To You had both the eulogy issues and a guy losing his cell in the coffin (he was trying to photograph the corpse).
• Best Funeral Ever was a short-lived Reality TV series on TLC that focused on providing over-the-top and extravagant funerals for the families of the recently deceased as an incredibly silly yet earnest celebration of their lives. One episode was dedicated to Olympic gold-medalist Ronnie Ray Smith, where in honor of his win at the 4x100m relay in the 1968 Summer Olympics, his casket "ran" a 100yd race (being pushed on a trolley down a track among other competitors) and received another gold medal in a mock Olympic-style funeral.
• Birds of a Feather had two examples of this. The first example is in Series 7 episode "Nearest and Dearest", when Sharon pretends to be attending a funeral in order to get away from a day out planned by Dorien. Eventually, Dorien invites herself to attend the funeral with Sharon at a hippy gathering where neither of them know anyone there. Second example is in Series 12 episode "Knocking On Heaven's Door", when Darryl dies and, just before the funeral, Dorien has sex with a man at the back of the hearse, with the horse running away.
• Bones:
  • "The Double Death of the Dearly Departed" involves Brennan stealing the body, Booth handcuffing the mortician to the coffin, Hodgins watching Brennan and Booth carrying (and dropping) the body whilst giving a speech to guests who are oblivious to everything happening outside, Cam placing her sunglasses on the corpse, and Booth singing! (It's epic and really weird. But... Mostly Epic.) It all culminates in tricking the murderer into confessing.
  • A somewhat more subdued funeral for Vincent Nigel-Murray in "Hole In the Heart" had Brennan lead the rest of the team in singing the deceased's favorite song, "The Lime in the Coconut". The same thing (and song) happens for Dr. Lance Sweets when they’re scattering his ashes as that was also his favorite song.
• The Brittas Empire has Gavin's (apparent) funeral, which has a burst water pipe sending his coffin shooting out of the grave and revealing that it was actually Winston (the Brittas' family dog) which was buried in the coffin.
• Brooklyn Nine-Nine':
  • In "The Funeral" after the death of Captain Dozerman (who nobody liked) very little respect is paid to him at his funeral by the squad, as they are more focused on other various shenanigans like Charles trying to hook up with another member of the congregation, Jake and Amy trying to find a way around the Vulture's attempt to force them to break up, and Terry getting very drunk as he's got such a low alcohol tolerance after reducing his drinking after the birth of his children. From Jake and Amy accidentally upsetting the widow^note when she realises they were the ones who indirectly caused Dozerman's heart attack in the previous episode when he was shocked to find them making out in the evidence locker (who also reveals the uptight Dozerman used to cheat on her with prostitutes), Charles being disgusted that his hook up is a vegan - when he's a foodie, and Terry using the post service bar eulogy to go on about how he misses a discontinued yoghurt flavour, nothing goes well.
  • In "Ding Dong" when Commissioner Madeline Wuntch dies. Before her death she arranged to have Raymond Holt - who was her biggest rival and hates her - lead her memorial as both she and he realises he can't bring himself to lie but that if he says what he truly thinks about her in front of other cops at her funeral he'll get himself fired. At the service he meets another rival of hers, Adam, and initially he's jealous but then they warm up to each other... until it's revealed that this is a ruse Adam was Wuntch's nephew and he recorded Ray's practice speech and showed it to the congregation. Then it turns out Holt had figured the ruse out and had actually enlisted a bunch of local improv groups to pretend to be mourners at a fake service. At the real service Ray finds a way to both be honest and respectful when he realises he misses the battle of wits between himself and Wuntch.
    Raymond Holt: As many of you know, Madeline and I were bitter rivals, but I've come to realize she held a special place in my life. No one challenged me like she did or made me feel as alive. Our relationship was like an epic chess match. And it's hard to believe that... She'll never make another move.
• Charmed had a variation where the sisters had faked their deaths and were holding a wake for themselves. Annoyed that so few people were mourning her, Paige cast a spell on herself to look like Janice Dickinson and give a tearful speech on how Paige was Janice's only real friend. And Phoebe tried to pick up a guy who was mourning her.
• The Closer had Flynn and Provenza in "Saving Face" dropping a casket, revealing a half naked woman and Flynn and Provenza decided to send the casket on to the burial. During the burial, Brenda showed up and interrupted the burial to get the casket and the body as evidence.
• Community had the episode "G.I. Jeff", where Jeff has a fever dream where he and the Study Group are a part of G.I. Joe. Jeff, as Wingman, in his attempt to stop Destro from escaping, shoots at Destro's parachute, destroying it and sending Destro to his death. At Destro's funeral, naturally as a deconstruction of the cartoon, things go off the rails with Cobra Commander trying to deliver a eulogy, before devolving into the Commander lamenting he's never had to do it before and ranting about the death after years of A-Team Firing, getting interrupted by Vice Cobra Assistant Commander (Dean Pelton dressed as a version of Cobra Commander) calling, a now pissed-off Commander admitting to loving Destro, and Zartan muttering "Called it!" under his breath after said admission.
• A Season 5 episode of Corner Gas has Oscar and Wanda crash funerals together for different reasons (Wanda does it to skip work. Oscar does it because Emma gets a job and he doesn't want to have to make his own food). Wanda later puts out sandwiches stolen from the funeral at her kid's birthday party.
• The Cosby Show: One of their most iconic episodes, "Goodbye Mr. Fish", centered around Cliff giving Rudy a funeral in the bathroom for her goldfish, Lamont. Hijinks of the event included forcing the older children to attend after they mocked his death and made them dress up formally, Vanessa wearing a ballet leotard on a part of having no other black clothing, Denise attending in some very questionable fashion due to being on her way to a date, Rudy deciding midway through the funeral that she was bored and wanted to watch cartoons, Cliff berating them for not taking it seriously and Rudy eventually causing it to end due to having to go to the bathroom right after Lamont was flushed.
• In Coupling, the gang spend most of Jane's aunt's funeral reception desperately trying to stay clear of the Giggle Loop. This is Jeff's name for the situation in which someone trying not to laugh at an inappropriate moment finds the situation of trying not to laugh funny, so setting off said feedback loop. The concept is illustrated throughout by an increasingly precarious stack of pint glasses.
  • Additionally, while Jeff, Steve, and Patrick are all about to choke on their laughter, it was Jane who was the first to break^note This was unexpected, since only the boys had discussed the Giggle Loop.
• In Curb Your Enthusiasm episode "The 5 Wood", Larry tries to retrieve his golf club from the casket. In the episode "The Special Section", he tries to have his mother moved to a Jewish cemetery despite her being refused a burial.
• Desperate Housewives:
  • The control-freak Bree changes her dead husband's tie in the middle of the service.
  • During the aftermath of the tornado in the 4th season Gabrielle causes havoc in Carlos's accountant's wake while trying to find the right documents of her husband's foreign bank account.
• Dharma & Greg: Dharma climbs into Greg's grandmother's casket to get her ring.
• Season Five, Episode 2 of Doc Martin plays this to the hilt with Joan's funeral. The hearse is late, the guests are weird^note er than normal, the pall-bearers drop the coffin, Martin turn's Joan's eulogy into a medical case history presentation-cum-public health lecture, the local police constable bemoans dealing with simple heart attacks and not something exciting, someone's mobile phone goes off playing "things can only get better" as a ring-tone. The usual for Portwenn really.
• The Dukes of Hazzard: During the Coy and Vance era, there was "Ding Dong, the Boss is Dead," where the Dukes orchestrate a fake funeral for Boss Hogg when they learn a paroled mobster, sent to prison on Boss' testimony, is out for murderous revenge. Things become complicated when the mobster — who had continually called Boss to remind him he was coming for him — shows up at Boss' wake to "pay his last respects."
• Family Matters: Carl mistakenly throws out Harriet's aunt's ashes and replaces them with fireplace ashes.
• Family Ties: The third season episode "Auntie Up" features Mallory's favorite aunt, Trudy Harris, dying of a heart attack in the living room. Mallory is deeply saddened, but the family is preoccupied with a garage sale at the house (for Alex's fraternity); a wake is held at the Keatons on the same day as the garage sale, and naturally hilarity ensues. Eventually, everyone is able to take Mallory seriously when she speaks up at the funeral and delivers an emotional eulogy.
• In Father Ted, the dim-witted Father Dougal volunteers to perform a funeral ceremony in Ted's absence. When Ted discovers this, he goes into a blind panic and yells at Mrs. Doyle who really should have stopped him. Cut to the funeral, where ambulance sirens are blaring, most of the mourners are being treated at the scene, a burning hearse lies wedged in the grave and Dougal in the middle of it all going, "Sorry about that." And then the hearse explodes.
  Ted: DOUGAL'S DOING A FUNERAL?! YOU LET DOUGAL DO A FUNERAL?!
• In one episode of Fraggle Rock, Junior Gorg is tricked into believing he's dead and keels over, blocking the hole to Fraggle Rock and leaving Gobo, Red and Boober trapped outside. Feeling bad for Junior, Boober begins to recite a funeral dirge, but Junior requests to "Pick up the tempo, will ya? I want a funeral dirge you can dance to!" Gobo and Red quickly improvise a fast-paced number that gets Junior dancing, much to Boober's frustration. "You're losing the sad, maudlin quality!"
• On Franks Place, an old guy dies, and two of his friends take the body from the funeral parlor for a last night out together...then forget where they left it.
• The title character of Frasier played the Reluctant Eulogist for his aunt whom he openly wishes is in Hell, and he's unable to think of one positive thing to say about her. The episode's B-plot has Martin admitting that he harbors secret dreams of being a songwriter for Frank Sinatra, with Frasier, Niles, and Daphne helping him transcribe the tune in his head and finishing the lyrics (which include "She's such a groovy lady, she makes my heart go hide-y hade-y!"). As the Cranes travel to the funeral, Martin reveals that he sent the finished song to the Sinatra estate and had it rejected, feeling like a failure. Frasier realizes that the solution to eulogy problem is at hand and turns the speech into a reminder to always strive for your goals, even if they don't work out—and proves it by having a choir perform Martin's song as a musical number, both honoring his aunt and celebrating Martin's art. At one point in the episode, Niles spills the aunt's ashes all over himself attempting to get the urn open.
• The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air did something right with this one; Will's yelling at his uncle's Jerkass political rival leads him to have a heart attack. When his funeral comes around, all the mourners turn out to hate him (for very good reasons, mind you: for example, one of them was a Mexican gardener whom the rival hired to tend his garden and when it was time to pay, called Immigration) and most of them have showed up to make sure he is actually dead. Will — wracked by guilt — yells at them all for it, saying they should respect the dead, but when they ask who he is, he answers "I'm the dude that killed him" and receives rapturous applause. "Tough room."
• Friends:
  • In a season 1 episode, Ross' and Monica's maternal grandmother dies of old age and of course, many things happen; Ross takes too many painkillers after hurting himself falling in an open grave and spends the funeral high as a kite, Chandler (whose main goal this episode is proving his heterosexuality) is mistaken for gay by a couple of cute girls after the high Ross says that it's okay if he's gay, and Joey is watching a football game on a portable TV and most of the males at the funeral ends up joining him, including Ross' and Monica's dad.
  • Then there's Phoebe's grandmother's funeral. "Welcome. Here are your 3D glasses. Reverend Pong will tell you when to put them on."
• The Golden Girls:
  • When Dorothy's six-foot, three hundred pound, cross dressing (but straight) brother Phil dies, his wife has him dressed in a teddy to be buried and Sophia gives the priest an exaggerated story of how smart and gifted Phil was. Dorothy tries to fix the problem Sophia makes by telling the priest. The priest responds with that he can just look at a person to know about them. Hilarity Ensues. Taken even further when four shapely, black-clad and veiled figures show up at the funeral; they weren't sluts, they were Phil's poker buddies.
  • Despised neighbor Frieda Claxton dies of a sudden heart attack after Rose tells her to "drop dead!" Mrs. Claxton has no family to take care of the final arrangements, so to assuage Rose's guilt, the housemates undertake the matter. The only person who attends besides the four main characters is a woman who gives a beautiful eulogy...then realizes she's at the wrong funeral. When she finds out whose funeral it really is, she kicks the coffin. Then the funeral home cremates Mrs. Claxton by mistake.
  • Sophia tries to invoke this by deciding to stage a wake for herself while she's still alive, as she wants to hear what her friends and loved ones have to say about her. Rose makes all of the arrangements, including the food, programs, and flowers...but she forgets one little detail: the fact that Sophia isn't dead. All of the mourners show up genuinely sad, and when Sophia happily reveals herself, they proceed to yell at her for wasting their time and storm out in anger.
• When a cast member in Greg the Bunny died on stage, it turns out his will was to have his funeral be a cocktail party. Hilarity Ensues.
• Happy Days: The fifth-season, two-part episode "Fonzie's Funeral" had the Cunninghams stage a fake funeral for Fonzie to put him into protection from a mob whose leader, The Candyman, is wanted for robbery, money laundering, extortion, and counterfeiting (after Fonzie had gone to the police with $100 bills found in a hearse he was repairing). At Fonzie's "funeral" visitation, series' regulars and memorable guests saying their "farewells," and "Fonzie's mother" (Fonzie in drag) comforts the survivors. (The "funeral" allows the Cunninghams time to hatch a plan to catch The Candyman and his goons.)
• In Home Improvement, when Al's mom dies in the final season, Tim ends up delivering the eulogy, which of course means that it includes a Hurricane of Puns regarding her weight (she was Tool Time's biggest fan, etc). But the last laugh comes indirectly from Wilson, when he starts calling the list of pall bearers. It was awfully long because he'd reached about ten names and was still going at fade-out.
• In an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street, Munch organises and attends the funeral of his ex-wife's much-hated mother, a literary critic. The only people who attend are Munch, his ex-wife, a shill who has been paid to sit in the front row and wail at the top of her lungs and the author Peter Maas, who has only turned up to make sure that she's dead owing to a bad review she gave of one of his works. Munch later ends up giving her a flattering, if tactfully-phrased, eulogy in front of his co-workers at a Christmas party later in the episode.
• An episode of Hot in Cleveland features the gals crashing a funeral in order to obtain a rare copy of "Soap Opera Digest" which featured Victoria. Such things as climbing into the coffin, losing a ring, and believed the deceased was in fact murdered all occur.
• House:
  • The titular character is forcibly taken to his father's funeral, and has to deliver the eulogy. (He hated his father and didn't want to go.) He uses this as a chance to get a piece of his father's skin to subject to a DNA test, which confirms his long-standing suspicion that the man was not his biological father. He also comments on his father's weak qualities in the eulogy, and says that 'if he was a better father, maybe I'd have been a better son'. By the end of the speech, though, it's touched on touching. House says, essentially, that the person he is — good and bad — is because of his father. Wilson also ups the wackiness factor by breaking a stained glass window at the funeral home, goaded by House, of course.
    House: Still not boring.
  • In the series finale, at House's own funeral, most of the mourners stand up and say something nice about House. Wilson tries, but eventually breaks down and admits that House was an ass, and his death proves it: he selfishly died in a narcotics-induced haze, leaving everyone else to pick up the pieces. At this point a cell phone starts ringing, and Wilson goes on a tirade about that... before discovering it's his cell phone, with a text message "SHUT UP YOU IDIOT". It's from House, who actually isn't dead.
• Barney in How I Met Your Mother claims that his funeral is the only time he won't be wearing a suit because suits are happy garments ... he wants his corpse to be naked.
  Barney: Open bar for the guys, open casket for the ladies!
  Everyone: [on their way out of room] That's disgusting...
  Marshall: [last to leave room] Dude, that's awesome! [high-fives Barney]
• The IT Crowd:
  • One episode of the main trio mucking up the funeral of their boss, Mr. Reynholm, including Moss relating the death to losing a pen, Roy feeling like a he suffered a heart attack and cursing loudly only to realize it was just his souped-up cell phone, and the deceased's long lost son Douglas barging in, screaming FAAAAATHEEEEEERRRRRRR!!! atop of his lungs, knocking over the coffin and having a sissy slap fight with the priest.
  • Another episode explains that Richmond was moved from his executive office to the IT department's server room during the culmination of his transformation from Yuppie to Goth, at which point he showed up at the funeral of Denholm's father wearing a creepy goth outfit (Complete with face paint), and gave Denholm's grieving mother a Cradle of Filth CD.
• In The Jeffersons episode "Not So Dearly Beloved," George is railroaded into giving the eulogy for an employee he despised, and as he delivers a euphemism-laden eulogy, voiceovers reveal the attendees' thoughts, leading to a silent "roast" of sorts as everyone remembers the way the deceased screwed them over. The funeral reaches a climax as George bobbles the urn and nearly spills it all over the attendees.
• In the pilot of Kindred: The Embraced, Sasha comes in late to her grandfather's funeral, follows Julian's eulogy with Sarcastic Clapping, then declares that she would've been tempted to have sex with the deceased if they hadn't been related. She settles for pulling the corpse out of the coffin and giving it a kiss in front of her horrified relatives.
• In the L.A. Law episode "Izzy Ackerman or Is He Not," a pallbearer at the titular character's funeral can't handle the casket, and it falls. The body tumbles out, and the videotape of the proceedings reveals that the body isn't Izzy's — turns out the funeral home accidentally switched bodies, and sent Izzy off to be dissected. Leland manages to get the pieces of Izzy's body back from the various medical schools and research labs to which they were sent. It culminates in Izzy's head being shipped from a Florida med school and delivered to McKenzie-Brackman's offices. Two of Izzy's friends peer into the foam cooler to verify that the head is indeed Izzy's, resulting in this exchange:
  "He looks good."
  "Why shouldn't he look good? He just came back from Florida!"
• The cast of Lexx spends an episode hiding from authorities in an Ohio funeral parlor. The director has them attend to a grieving family — unwisely, for as Xev puts it, "we're from a parallel universe, and people there are mostly put in the protein bank and fed to a giant insect."
  Stan: Hey folks, come on in. The old lady's laid out over there in the box. She's all drained and preserved, just the way you wanted. Just come on over and do your boo hoo hoo thing to your heart's content. ...So how old was she when she finally blasted off? Looks like about a hundred standard years to me — you know, that's a nice long run. You must have a lot of memories invested in the old skin sack.
• In Life in Pieces, John decides that having a funeral-themed party for his 70th birthday party would be fun way to hear the sort of things his family and friends would say at his actual funeral. Greg rips of
• In a rather meta skit from Limmy's Show, Limmy is seen in a writer's room pitching various characters. All of his characters play with Fee Fi Faux Pas and Sitcom, but there is a trend of unoriginality as he can't quite situate them in specific scenes. With each idea, he says the character could turn up somewhere inappropriate like a funeral. The punchline of the joke is a scene set at a funeral combining all his characters.
  Drunk Woman: [[Tripping over the coffin] ARghHAHAHAahzzzz!!
  Soaking Man: Oh my god!
  Drunk Woman: [[Rocking the coffin] Knock knock! Who's there?
  Man With An Overbite: What's the problem?
  Waiter: Do you want this mushroom?
• Mad Men: The funeral for Roger Sterling's mother in the season 6 premiere. There's food getting unexpectedly sent over by Bob Benson in an attempt to impress Roger, Harry perving over Roger's daughter, Don getting so drunk that he vomits during a touching speech given by one of Roger's mother's friends (forcing Pete, Harry, and Ken to get him out), and eventually Roger kicking everyone out when he realises that the man accompanying his ex-wife Mona is her new husband.
• Mama's Family had several examples.
  • At Aunt Fran's funeral at the beginning of Season 3, Vint slams the hearse door, causing the casket to slide out and roll down the interstate on-ramp, while Bubba eats all the food at the wake, thinking it was a coming-home party for him.
  • In another episode, the family goes to Uncle Oscar's funeral and scatters his ashes on a lake, only to have a water-skier slalom through them.
  • In yet another, Mama has a dream about her own funeral, where everyone gets bored and decides to leave to go bowling instead.
• Married... with Children: The ashes of Marcy's aunt end up being used in Al's grill.
• The Mary Tyler Moore Show: The classic "funeral" episode, and widely hailed as the funniest sitcom episode ever, is "Chuckles the Clown Bites the Dust". Aired early in the show's sixth season, Chuckles, the host of WJM-TV's children's show, is killed during a freak incident at a circus parade; an elephant goes wild and during the rampage, Chuckles — dressed as a peanut — is caught in the chaos, knocked down and trampled beneath the pachyderm's weight. When the death is announced, Mary had berated her fellow co-workers for not taking Chuckles' death seriously and instead laughing at the silly circumstances of his death; "He was dressed as a peanut and the elephant tried to shell him", remarks one. Then, when the funeral takes place, Mary suddenly breaks out in uncontrollable hysterics ... and then the priest presiding tells her that, as a clown, Chuckles would want her to laugh, at which point she starts bawling uncontrollably instead.
• On Monk's pilot episode, Monk drops his keys into the casket from a balcony seat, and proceeds to attempt to fetch them by lowering a paper-clip on a string into the casket. He accidentally hooks the corpse's sleeve, causing it to "wave" to the mourners.
• Monty Python's Flying Circus once features a hearse painted all black on one side and black with lots of flower decorations on the other. It also has a funeral where a priest gets shot with a large and very obvious cannon poking out of the grave. And a third where the hearse crashed on the way to the funeral, so the pallbearers had to carry the coffin the rest of the way. Which caused them to eventually collapse by exhaustion one by one, upon which the other pallbearers would stuff them in the coffin and keep going, ultimately culminating in the last pallbearer placing himself in the coffin, and the coffin travelling the rest of the distance under its own power.
• In the Mother & Son episode "The Funeral", Maggie stops the funeral procession to buy a large bag of oranges from a roadside fruit stall, which end up spilling into the grave after the bag gets ripped open.
• Murphy Brown:
  • In one episode, Murphy must eulogize a rival with whom she exchanged pranks.
  • In another episode, she's asked to eulogize a crew member who apparently adored her, but whom she can't remember a thing about. (The crew member is later proven to be fictitious; the other characters were trying to make a point about her treating the crew as if they were invisible.)
  • In a third episode, she and Frank are flying somewhere when the aircraft almost crashes; they pass out (due to oxygen deprivation?) and dream of their own funerals. Murphy receives an awful eulogy and Frank's ashes are spilled and swept under a carpet.
    • "Now look at me. Dead! In a dickie!"
• In The Musketeers, only Aramis, Porthos, D'Artagnan and Treville knew that Athos wasn't really dead but had to fake it for their plan to catch Milady and Cardinal Richelieu to work. While Treville attempted to be solemn as he delivered the eulogy, Aramis and Porthos were snarking behind him.
• In My Family, a patient of Ben's dies just after telling him he's been having an affair. It later emerges that for the years it had been going on, he was telling his wife that he was going golfing with Ben, leading her to believe they were much closer than they actually were and asking him to give the eulogy. Throughout the episode, Ben tries to keep what is going on from Susan, while both the wife and mistress keep visiting him to talk about the patient, leading Susan to become suspicious that he is having an affair. This culminates in her bursting into the funeral, Ben blurting out the truth, and then declarations of "He loved me!" from the man's wife, mistress... and boyfriend.
• My Hero (2000) had an episode where Thermoman's Bizarre Alien Biology acting up led to his secret identity, George Sunday, being thought dead by everyone. The idea was that he'd sit up in the coffin during the ceremony before his cremation and make Dr. Piers Crispin look like an idiot (which isn't particularly difficult). Two things combined to put it under this trope: a sudden attack of that same BAB problem that caused all this in the first place, and a B-plot featuring Mrs. Raven fusing therapeutic and stage hypnosis. Hilarity Ensues:
  Vicar: One...
  Ella: Take me now my stallion Stanley, ravage me you raving beast! (Out of character as all hell)
  ...
  Vicar: Two...
  Stanley: That is my gift, that is my curse. Who am I? I'm Spider-Man!
  ...
  Vicar: Three...
  Piers: <chicken noises>
  Mrs. Raven: Shame he won't get to four!
  ...
  Vicar: These are the things we will remember this good man for.
  Janet's Parents, Arnie, and Piers: (complete with the dance) YMCA...It's fun to stay at the YMCA
  ...
  (Bizarre Alien Biology is acting up, so George hasn't sat up on schedule, and Janet is trying to stop the coffin from entering the furnace cremation...thing)
  Priest: She's got the strength of ten!
  The Same Four As Before: (Start doing the Chicken Dance. Mrs. Raven falls out of her seat laughing)
• My Name Is Earl,:
  • In an episode Earl tries to make up for accidentally kidnapping a guy. Problem is, the guy is dead (as a result of a mishap involving a Murphy Bed.) Earl decides to throw a funeral for him. Which is a noble thing to do, except he didn't really know the guy, and the deceased doesn't seem to have any friends or family. Earl invites all of Camden, who treat it as a party and not a funeral. (And Darnell is less than pleased to find that his favorite purple tux has been placed on the deceased.) It turns out that Josh did have friends, but they were all online. And they help Earl throw a proper funeral.
  • Another episode involved Earl's ex-girlfriend Faking the Dead to get back at Earl for doing likewise to her.
  • Another episode explains why Catalina quit dancing at Club Chubby's, even though she really liked it and the money was good. During one of her performances, an old man was so turned on by her breast bounce that he ended up dying of a heart attack, with a big smile on his face. The expression was frozen onto him at his open-casket funeral.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000:
  • One episode had Joel and the 'bots lying in faux-coffins, discussing their ideal funerals after watching the boring one held in The Gunslinger. Servo can't decide between something educational that explains his embalming methods, or a circus-like extravaganza ("I want elephants, Joel, lots of them"). Crow on the other hand wants a beach-themed funeral, complete with kegger, "couples sneaking off to neck, prop me up so I can surf!"
  • In the final episode of the revival season, for the Invention Exchange Max presents the Rip Taylor Urn Cannon, which fires ashes like confetti, designed to make funerals more interesting.
• In The Neighbors, everyone in the neighborhood attended their gardeners funeral, and most of the aliens haven't attended a funeral or know about death so they made several weird acts like a stand-up comedy, or lighting fireworks.
• After Nick's Dad dies in New Girl, his mother enlists him to organise the funeral service. His father always wanted an Elvis Presley themed funeral. Nick struggles to coordinate the event and drunkenly arrives at the funeral with a barfly dressed as Elvis. Nick's mother is about to end the service prematurely when Jess steps in to save the day. Dressed in the Elvis costume, she saunters down the aisle singing 'In The Ghetto.' She manages to lift the spirits of everyone attending and they all join in to sing, even Nick's mother.
• On NewsRadio Dave eulogizes an obscure employee he knows nothing about. And who turns out to have been an asshole. And a Klan member. Bill McNeil's funeral episode falls under this as well, seeing as most of the episode is about Matthew talking nonsense about hidden messages about Raven's, wondering what the contents of Catherine's private message was, and general lighthearted treatment of it, save from a downer moment or two.
• Night Court:
  • One episode featured a case where a funeral director decided he would in his words "put the fun back in funeral" including a bumper sticker on the casket saying "I'd rather be breathing".
  • Another episode ("Baby Talk") featured the ashes of the late Herb being kept by Harry. Problem was that Art mistook the label for herbal tea and used it to test the coffeemaker, leading to the hilarious line, "Art, this wasn't herb tea! This was Herb!", followed immediately by them both turning to Dan, at the coffeemaker, with the mug to his lips.
• Nip/Tuck: Gina's funeral in season 5 has several of her lovers show up, and we get a eulogy montage, with all of them mentioning how amazing she was in the sack, which is played for Black Comedy since that's the only thing people remember her by.
• Northern Exposure: Maggie's most recent boyfriend was killed when a communications satellite landed on him. The satellite fused with the deceased, and the coffin had to be specially built to hold the whole thing.
• One Life to Live. As she lay dying, beloved heroine Megan Gordon insisted that everyone come to her funeral dressed in brightly colored clothing and that the music be upbeat. To that end, at the service, one of her doctors led the attendees in a rendition of "Dancing In The Street", which had been her favorite song.
• Only Fools and Horses featured an episode where Del Boy and Rodney buy a couple of urns from Trigger. One of them turns out to have the ashes of Trigger's grandfather, Arthur, in it. The entire episode centers on Del and Rodney trying ever more ridiculous ways to dispose of the ashes, while genuinely trying to be thoughtful. At one point, Rodney's grandfather sits up talking to the ashes, while Del responds, pretending to be Arthur. Eventually the ashes are accidentally sucked up by a street-cleaning machine; after some initial horror, Del and Rodney reflect that maybe Arthur would have wanted it that way, since he was a road sweeper. Then they find out that there are more ashes in the other urn; Trigger's grandmother married twice.
  • A more good-natured case in "Strained Relations", which featured Grandad's funeral to coincide with his actor Lennard Pearce's passing. While the episode is fittingly poignant and respectful, it is characteristically laden with a few light-hearted gags and hiccups. In particular, one moving scene has Del Boy put what is supposedly Grandad's trademark hat inside his grave to be buried with him, only for the priest to later ask where his hat has gone.
  • In part 2 of the 2001-3 Christmas trilogy, Del Boy and Rodney decide to give their beloved Uncle Albert a burial at sea, by scattering his ashes from the boat they were on (Albert was, before, during and after the war at separate points in the past in both the Merchant and Royal Navy). After doing so, they notice Rodney's wife Cassandra's contraceptive tablets at the bottom of the urn, where Del Boy's son Damien had hidden them as a joke, resulting in Cassandra getting pregnant while they were all dirt poor. As well as desecrating his great uncles ashes, Damien also used the urn as target practice for his toy NERF gun.
• Peep Show features an episode where Jez's religious uncle dies, but his atheist sister provides a secular funeral for him, prompting Jez to go on a long, Metaphorgotten rant about the musician Enya instead of giving a eulogy:
  If I was dying and I wasn't particularly into Enya before, but that now I really really was into Enya and I thought Enya was great, and that Enya died for our sins, and I wanted an Enya-themed funeral with pictures of Enya and lots and lots of mentions of Enya, then I'd think it a bit bloody rich for my sister to ban all mentions of Enya, yeah?
• In Republic of Doyle, Jake catches the urn containing the ashes of a client's dead husband... and holds it upside down.
• Sabrina the Teenage Witch casts a spell to visit her own funeral in the future. Her boss Annie can be seen texting and looking bored, Morgan muses that the coroner wasn't wearing a wedding ring and Sabrina asks Amanda (who came with her) to make sure to not bury her with her bra straps showing.
• Saved by the Bell: The College Years had a professor die and at the funeral Dean McMahon accidentally drops her phone into the casket and her arm gets stuck in it just when she's forced to give a eulogy.
  • Zack actually interrupts the funeral - telling everyone that the professor wouldn't have wanted them to sit around and be sad, but instead to live life to the fullest. He even suggests they all go outside and play a game. After Zack promises to honor his professor by enjoying life before rushing off, McMahon criticizes his lack of respect... just as her phone - still in the casket - rings.
• Schitt's Creek:
  • The first season episode "Carl's Funeral" in which Johnny Rose is invited to give the eulogy for a townie he did not know. This leads to a comic monologue by Eugene Levy that devolves into Johnny melting down and describing what a hell the Roses's lives have become since moving to the town. Moira, who had told Johnny about a similar experience she had had at the funeral of a former co-worker and how she had sung her way out of it, breaks into "Danny Boy" to save Johnny.
  • In the sixth season, Johnny, Roland and Stevie think they are going to view a motel they are interested in purchasing but arrive at the former owner's open casket funeral. Initially, Roland starts lying to save face, but Johnny shows Character Development by telling the truth to the owner's widow and apologizing. Turns out she and her husband knew Stevie's aunt and she invites them in to pay their respects.
• Scrubs has J.D. attending the funeral of one of his patients and ending up having sex with the widow, prompting him to quip "there's a lot of ways to grieve, but last time I checked, wheelbarrow style wasn't one". In another episode, Turk attends the funeral of one of the patients, but forgets the man's name(his wife tries to jog his memory by moving her head like a Bobblehead, but he doesn't get it) and accidentally mentions how bored he is too loudly. Another occasion has J.D imagine his own funeral during the funeral of a co-worker, in which he has had the choir singing "Party All The Time" and himself positioned upright in his own coffin with his arms wide open; his last request being a final hug from his own co-workers. Upon receiving a hug from Dr. Cox, he reveals that he has in fact faked his own death solely to receive a hug from Cox. Cox ends up breaking his neck and actually killing him. "Then we'd have my real funeral."
  • Dr. Murphy, already the cause of many death-related jokes, also appears as "the guy that is completely inappropriate" by telling the co-workers uncle that he did her autopsy. Later on, he wonders if he left his cellphone inside her.
  • During the same episode, J.D. is singing "It's A Beautiful Morning" before Carla reminds him where they are.
• Seinfeld:
  • George has to get a copy of his girlfriend's father's death certificate to qualify for an airline fare discount. He fails to acquire this and tries to substitute a picture of him with the coffin, to no avail.
  • There's also "The Susie". The concept of having a funeral for a fictional person is funny enough, but made even more funny by the fact that J. Peterman somehow has the idea that he slept with Susie on the job and bring it up during the eulogy, AND that minor character Mike Moffit bursts into the funeral to say Susie didn't commit suicide, but was murdered by Jerry Seinfeld (long story).
• An episode of Sister, Sister has Lisa going to a funeral for a woman she didn't like. Just before she goes, she chips a tooth, goes to a slightly inattentive dentist, and enters the service doped up on laughing gas. Hilarity Ensues and the service ends with Lisa leading the guests in a round of an upbeat hymn while Ray cowers with embarrassment. (Note that this is technically not possible, as laughing gas's effect ends within minutes of ceasing intake.)
• Six Feet Under occasionally featured realistic versions of this. The biker funeral resembled a massive party while the funeral of a gay guy featured a small opera skit complete with stage and costumes.
  • In addition, one of the spoof funeral supply commercials in the Pilot had the product being advertised with the song "Shake Your Booty" playing, dancers dancing and the announcer saying that it "Puts the fun, back in the funeral". The actual product appears during Nathaniel Sr.'s funeral which is anything but fun. Except for Nathaniel Sr. himself maybe.
  • In "A Private Life," Nate goes to pick up a body in an abandoned building, and finds a candle-lit trail of photos with captions by the psychotic Billy, culminating in a covered body and leading Nate to assume he's committed suicide. Nate pulls back the cover, whereupon Billy jumps up and yells "Gotcha!" When Nate fails to see the humour in his prank, Billy says, "If you mix up the letters in 'funeral' you get 'real fun.'"
• Following Oliver's death in Season 1 of Slings & Arrows, Geoffrey goes to view his body. As he lays his copy of Hamlet in the casket, Oliver opens his eyes and starts lecturing Geoffrey, who hisses "Shut up!" at him when someone else approaches. Later, at the memorial service, all goes well with people telling amusing stories about Oliver - until Geoffrey gets on. His initially touching speech eventually devolves into a rant about the New Burbage theatre festival. The memorial service ends when a fire-and-brimstone preacher delivers a sermon about how the theatre is Satan's trap for the unwary and gay people (like Oliver) are going to hell, at which point Anna pulls the fire alarm.
• One episode of Gene Wilder's short lived sitcom Something Wilder had him returning to a wake twice (for a total of three visits) due to something involving the tie of the deceased as well.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "The Next Phase", Geordi LaForge and Ro Laren are presumed dead in a Teleporter Accident (in reality, they have become "out of phase" due to a Romulan device). Data is put in charge of planning the funeral. After discussing the Bajoran death chant - which is over two hours long - Worf tells him that in Klingon culture, when a friend like Geordi has died, and earned a place among the honored dead, it is a time to celebrate. So, in the spirit of the New Orleans example below, Data throws a bouncy, jazzy wake. When they show up, Ro is shocked and Geordi is amused. Of course, when the pair are rescued from that state right at the shindig, they tell the gang to keep going considering they really have something to celebrate now.
• Studio C:
  • In "Dead Wedding", this trope is at play when a guy who wants to plan for his wedding accidentally meets a funeral planner expecting to help someone plan his grandmother's funeral.
  • In "Brain Freeze Funeral", a funeral-goer stopped for takeout on the way and ends up guzzling his large-size slushie when the other attendees try to take the food away out of respect for the deceased. He's forced to disguise his screams of agony from the resulting brain freeze as mournful wails despite not knowing the deceased.
  • In "A Friend's Dying Secrets", two men at a friend's wake discover their stolen possessions (which escalate in silliness) on his body.
  • In "What Not to do at a Funeral", two couples visiting graves attempt to out-mourn each other, disturbing a nearby burial.
  • In "Awkward Eulogy", Jeremy delivers a strange eulogy rich in Non Sequiturs, until someone steps in to tell him that this is in fact a bar mitzvah, not a funeral.
• On the Season 11 finale of Supernatural, before Dean heads off to commit a Heroic Sacrifice, he tells everyone he wants his funeral to have an open bar, a Black Sabbath cover band, and Gary Busey giving the eulogy.
• In the Ted Lasso episode appropriately titled "No Weddings and a Funeral", Rebecca's eulogy becomes a Rickroll.
• That 80's Show: When "Silverpants", a regular at the club, dies from, er, his excessive lifestyle, Corey is asked to hold an euology in the misassumption that they were best friends. Not only doesn't anyone know anything about him (other than him being a very dedicated partygoer) or even his name, but the regulars can only list his various bad habits and jerkish acts (such as copping feels and blaming others for it) for Corey to build the euology on. In the end, the euology lists every nasty detail he's dug up, but ambiguously worded to sound like positive qualities.
  • Dark Magical Girl Tuesday eventually saves him with a pre-made eulogy at the last minute.
• On 3rd Rock from the Sun Dick is asked to eulogize a hated professor. Oddly enough, because Dr. Hamlin knew everyone hated him, he asked Dick because he was the only one who would say it to his face. He didn't want a eulogy that wasn't about him. Inverted somewhat in that Dick's eulogy is actually very moving to the audience because he simply relates the bare facts.
  Dick: How can we honor the memory of a man like Leonard Hamlin. Well, {awkward pause} he was governed by the laws of physics.
  • While the humans present were astonished at Dick's beautiful prose, his fellow aliens mocked the triteness, asking why he didn't just phone it in.
• In the Three's Company episode "Dying to Meet You," Jack is being harassed and threatened by the jealous boyfriend of a girl he likes. So he and Larry concoct a plan to make the boyfriend think he's dead, complete with a fake funeral and viewing. Hilarity Ensues.
• Titus:
  • There's a Christmas episode of all things that dealt with this. Titus goes to the funeral of an ex-girlfriend — not because he loved her and wanted to say goodbye, but to make sure the funeral wasn't an elaborate ruse for her to attack him for dumping her (As mentioned in the episode, "Dad is Dead" and on the comedy special, "Norman Rockwell is Bleeding," Titus's first girlfriend was a 5'1, 100 lb. Jewish girl who, like Titus's mom, was beautiful, sexy, very smart, and a bipolar whack job who often abused him and used sex to manipulate him).
  • Another Fun In Funeral moment: after Juanita's suicide, Titus and Erin visit her lawyer for a will reading. According to the will, Titus and Erin have to eat apples for dinner should Juanita die. Not too bad, but Juanita was a homicidal, manic-depressive schizophrenic with touches of paranoia and multiple personalities. The "apples" that Erin and Titus have to eat is actually the name of the dog Juanita killed back in 1978 and kept in her freezer since then.
  • According to the comedy special "The 5th Annual End of the World Tour," Titus had to deal with his dad's funeral, who requested that he be put in a cardboard box ^note  Titus ended up putting his dad in a rental casket, with his brother, Dave, asking, "Who brought it back?" and peed on by everyone he angered in his life while Willie Nelson's "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" played. After the ceremony, Ken's body was to be cremated and Titus had to find a douche bottle and a hooker so Ken can be "run through one more time." Titus couldn't go through with that plan, so he spread his father's ashes all over some Victoria's Secret dressing rooms and at a Caesar's Palace casino in Lake Tahoe, Nevada while singing "Amazing Grace" with his brother, Dave, and his sister, Shannon.
• The Tonight Show: During the early 1980s, Johnny Carson and the show's comedy troupe did a parody of the E.F. Hutton commercials (tagline: "When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen"). The parody ad was set at a funeral visitation, where a young stockbroker is talking with one of the deceased's brothers; as soon as the stockbroker says "E.F. Hutton," all conversation and mourning immediately stops and everyone turns their attention to the gent ... including the deceased guy (Carson), who sits up in his casket to hear what the guy has to say!
• In the original Traffic Light, Itzkoï's (Mikeï's) uncle, who was a clown, dies, and demands in his will that Itzko be his "funeral clown". This is especially hillarious as he attends the wrong, serious funeral, only to see the right one, complete with clowns singing parodies about birthday songs, not far from there. However, this does get him started on a brief new career as a funeral clown.
• The Twilight Zone (1959) episode "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" tells what happens when the title character sits up in coffin, alive and hungry.
• Laura Palmer's funeral in Twin Peaks. A solemn funeral interrupted by Bobby's "AAAAAAMEEEN!" is a bit of Narm Charm. Bobby and James coming to blows the second they spot each other and Leland jumping on Laura's casket and hugging it, causing a malfunction on the lowering device Crosses the Line Twice. Leland's reaction is even lampshaded later in Meals on Wheels, where some patrons make fun of the broken lowering device.
• Two and a Half Men:
  • An episode featured virtually every sitcom-funeral trope imaginable, from the hilarious, angry, and hate-filled eulogy to Jake's Gameboy getting left in the coffin to Charlie scoring with the widow.
  • Another had Charlie having an Imagine Spot of his funeral. It includes open bar, James Earl Jones reading his eulogy, and another (sarcastic) eulogy by Alan.
  • Charlie's actual funeral in the first episode of season 9. Alan's eulogy was interrupted by Charlie's ex-girlfriends insulting the deceased, and Evelyn used the occasion to remind everyone that Charlie's house is up for sale.
    • "I didn't come all this way to spit on a closed casket!"
• 2point4 Children had Ben struggling to organise the funeral of his Sitcom Arch-Nemesis, Jake the Klingon. Under the terms of Jake's will, the funeral was a Star Trek costume event (Original Series only, much to Bill's annoyance: "There weren't any women in the original series!") It turns out Jake isn't dead, he set the whole thing up to humiliate Ben.
• On a later Wings, the brothers lose the body they were flying in for a funeral, so Joe takes its place in the coffin.
• One of the games from Whose Line Is It Anyway? is called "Funeral". The premise involves a host and two mourners (three in the UK version) who pay their respects to a someone who died in a freak accident involving a hobby. The game wraps up with an elegy which all performers sing in unison. On both occasions when Drew Carey announced the name of the game, Greg Proops broke down in laughter.
• The Wire: Baltimore Police Department cops who die on the job before their retirement date are honored with Irish wakes at Kavanaugh's Pub. To quote McNulty, "It's tradition. Tomorrow he goes to the funeral home for family, but tonight he drinks with the boys!" The departed is laid out on the pool table, posed with a bottle of Jameson's in one hand and a cigar in the other, and after Jay Landsman delivers a hilarious, but heartfelt eulogy summing up their finest moments, they all sing "The Body of an American" by The Pogues. This serves as a means of explaining the departure of cop characters whose actors had died. Season 3 gives us one for Ray Cole, due to the death of his actor Robert F. Colesberry. Season 4 gives us one for Raymond Foerster, due to the death of Richard De Angelis. They even do it for cops who just resign too, as shown in season 5, when a mock wake is held for the still very much alive Jimmy McNulty.
  Jay Landsman: If I was ever dead in some gutter, I'd want you to catch the case, Jimmy.
  Bunk Moreland: Jay, if you were lying dead in some gutter, it was probably Jimmy that done ya!
• Kevin and Wayne drop a twenty dollar bill they've been fighting over in the coffin on an episode of The Wonder Years. They're still fighting over how to retrieve it when Grandpa tells them they missed the coffin closing.
• Given a unique twist in Yes, Prime Minister. While Prime Minister Hacker is overjoyed by the death of his predecessor (the man was in the process of writing his memoirs and died just before he started work on a chapter on events that would be particularly embarrassing to Hacker personally) and doesn't expect that many of the other mourners will be too upset either, none of the usual hijinks occur. The laughs instead come from the fact that apparently state funerals are treated as unofficial business meetings and summits by world leaders, who use them to knock together all sorts of arrangements out of the public eye.
• In the Israeli sitcom Zanzuri, the eponymous character, whose sixth months left to live with his heart condition are just about to end, arranges his own funeral, in which some Hilarity Ensues. He ends up counting down from ten with the crowd until his death from a heart attack, during which his wife tells him she�s pregnant.

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