Due To The Dead / Western Animation

Examples of Due to the Dead in Western Animation television series

Good

• Arcane: a serious case of Even Evil Has Standards.
  • One of the signs that Marcus isn't a complete Jerkass is him visiting the grave of Grayson and telling his daughter she was a good person. He's visibly still guilty about being partly responsible for her death.
  • Amazingly, Silco allowed a statue of Vander to be built in Zaun. He pours out part of his drink while commiserating about how in the end he's become just like Vander in that his love for his surrogate child has trumped his prior revolutionary zeal.
  • A guilt-ridden Viktor disposes of the remains of Sky after she's accidentally killed during an experiment he was running. He scatters her ashes in a place where they met as children but laments that he didn't know her well enough to know what she would have wanted done with her remains.
• Batman Beyond: It's revealed in the episode "Ace in the Hole" that every year, on the anniversary of his parents' murder, Bruce Wayne travels to Crime Alley, the site of said murder, and leaves a bouquet of flowers on the spot where they died. It was during one such visit that he met his loyal dog, Ace.
• In the Beast Wars episode "Code of Hero", after Dinobot sacrifices his life to save the proto-humans, the Maximals recycle his remains out of respect of his Predacon heritage.
• In the Family Guy episode "Road to Rhode Island", Brian goes to visit his mother, and he's shocked to see that not only she has died, but her stuffed body is used as a table. He ends up stealing her body and giving her a (more or less) proper burial.
• The second episode of Il Était Une Fois... L'homme, which focuses on Neanderthal man, features two instances of this trope: once with an unnamed hunter who got killed in a hunting accident, and once with Maestro following his Death by Newbery Medal. The above information confirms that this is Truth in Television among Neanderthals.
• In the Justice League episode "Hereafter", following the (apparent) death of Superman, a funeral is held for him in First Metropolis Cathedral, attended not only by his fellow League members, but a host of characters from Superman: The Animated Series and other heroes from the DCU such as Aquaman and his wife Mera. This is considered one of the sadder episodes in the series since the first half focuses on his death and the attempts of his teammates to come to terms with it, but it also makes for some touching scenes: Lex Luthor shows up to pay his respects as well, Martian Manhunter gives a touching eulogy about the example Superman set and how they should strive to pass it along to honour his memory and even Batman, who hitherto has refused to accept that Superman died, goes to his burial site to voice his respect for him.
• Mad Jack the Pirate: Mad Jack's Uncle Mortimer wished to be buried at the Island of Hanna-Barbarian. In fact, taking his corpse there was one of the conditions Mad Jack had to fulfill to be allowed to collect the inheritance Uncle Mortimer left him.
• In The Owl House:
  • In "Reaching Out", Luz is left off balance all day because it's the anniversary of her father's death, and the fact that she's stuck in the demon realm means that she's unable to complete her yearly ritual of leaving flowers at his grave with her mother. At the end of the episode, she and Amity send some flowers off into the horizon in an abomination balloon, so they can at least pretend that it will somehow reach him in the human realm.
  • In the Distant Finale of "Watching and Dreaming", the Hexsquad are all shown with red cardinal tattoos in tribute of Hunter's palisman Flapjack (who had been killed by Belos in "Thanks to Them"). Hunter and Willow also briefly visiting his grave before heading to Luz's party, with Willow using her magic to cover it in flowers.
• Samurai Jack: In Season 5, it is revealed that Jack's fall from grace was caused by him killing three baby goats that - due to his rage at not getting home combined with a brainwashing spell from Aku - he thought were Aku's demon minions. After Jack snaps out of it and sees what he's done, he's thoroughly ashamed of himself and is left to despair as the sword leaves him for having taken an innocent life. A return to the place where this happened shows three little graves at the top of the mountain, clearly done by Jack as a sort of atonement for his crime.
• Scooby-Doo! Shaggy's Showdown: The gang clear the name of Shaggy's ancestor Dapper Jack who was Good All Along
• Skull Island (2023): Kong personally buries his dear friend the Island Girl after she dies.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars:
  • "The Gungan General": After the shuttle is shot down, Jar Jar and the clone troopers bury the deceased Kharrus under a cairn and use his staff as a grave marker.
  • In "Victory and Death", the Grand Finale, Ahsoka, realizing that the Clone Troopers who tried to kill her did so through no fault of their own, takes the time to bury every one of them when they all die when their ship crashes and set up the helmets, that the clones painted in honor of her before Order 66, as a memorial to them.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): In the penultimate episode of Season 4, "Requiem," Splinter is killed by Shredder. The next episode, "Owari," begins with Splinter's funeral; he is buried on April's family farm in North Hampton, with the Turtles themselves and their allies, including the Mighty Mutanimals and April's father, in attendance.
• Thunder Cats 2011: After Thundera is ransacked and destroyed, Lion-O and his companions hold a small funeral for their king, Claudus, burning his body on a funeral pyre marked with the Thundercats’ symbol.
• Transformers: Cyberverse: The finale concludes at a wake for Soundwave who'd sacrificed himself to put an end to Tarn and his machinations. At the wake, the heroes speak fondly of his life, even the times he tried to kill them.
• Transformers: Prime:
  • The very first episode begins with, quite strikingly, the first hero casualty in this series, that being Cliffjumper. At the end of the episode, the remaining Autobots hold a private funeral for him at the top of their base. There, Arcee buries one of Cliffjumper’s horns, the horn being the only piece of her partner that she managed to recover.
  • “Masters And Students” ends with the ancient Decepticon Skyquake being killed by Bumblebee. Out of respect for him, Optimus and Bumblebee bury their fallen enemy in the spot where he died.

Evil

• Used tragically in Samurai Jack. When one of the Daughters of Aku is killed by Jack, the other Daughters drag her body outside the temple and... just leave it there to rot. "Death is failure." The fact that they don't care about each other is eventually proven to be their Fatal Flaw.
• The trope was also lampshaded and parodied in South Park: a shop owner suffering from an influx of evil pets explains how he selected the site of an Indian burial ground for his store, then dug up the bodies, pissed on them, and then reburied them the wrong way up. He was drunk at the time.
• In Transformers: Animated the montage of Starscream dying and reviving is capped off everytime with him being thrown in the river to rust where he lay. The first time they didn't even bother with that.
• Megatron and Starscream in Transformers: Prime have no qualms with using Dark Energon to reanimate the bodies of dead Cybertronians, be they Autobot or Decepticon, into zombie Terrorcons under their control.
  • In the episode "Alpha/Omega", Megatron breaks into the tomb of a dead Prime and chops an arm off the corpse to graft onto his own body, enabling him to use the Forge of Solus Prime to create the Dark Star Saber.

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