Discussion Main / StartsWithTheirFuneral

• Kind of played with in The Big Chill, where Alex's funeral preparations start the movie. The story is somewhat about who he was, but more about what he and his friends became. Would have played it straight had the scenes with Alex not been cut out.
• Blitz
• The First Wives Club
• Variant done with the film adaptation of Ace Attorney, which opens with Misty Fey channeling the recently-murdered spirit of Gregory Edgeworth.

• A Columbo episode started with the funeral of Mrs. Columbo.
• The first episode of Emmerdale (then Emmerdale Farm) in 1972 revolved around the funeral of Jacob Sugden, the owner of the farm then at the centre of the programme. The episode featuring the funeral of Jacob's son, Jack, in 2009 was played out mirroring this.

• The South Park episode "Cartmanland" starts with Cartman and his family attending his grandmother's funeral.

Taken these off the list because it's not clear that they're really examples of the trope. If you want to re-add one, please make sure to revise the description to make that clear.

In particular, remember that the trope is not "the story starts with a funeral", it's "the story starts with a funeral (or a death), then shows the events that led up to it". A story that starts with a funeral then only shows events that come after it is not an example of this trope.

• Subverted in the Luxe books by Anna Godbersen. The first book opens on Elizabeth's funeral. Guess how the first book ends?
  • ...how? Not with Elizabeth's funeral if the trope was Subverted.

1. This is why you shouldn't end an example with a rhetorical question.

2. The reader is reading your example because they want to know why it's an example. Making them guess the answer, and then not telling them if they're right, is not cool.

Could somebody who knows the books please replace this with a proper example that explains how it's an example?