Speak Ill of the Dead

Sometimes, not even death will curtail disrespect for one's enemies. In fact, it provides free rein to voice disapproval and disdain!

The opposite of Never Speak Ill of the Dead. When this is played for laughs (especially if the person on n question was a jerk), it's probably putting The Fun in Funeral.

No Real Life Examples, Please

As a Death Trope, all Spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.

Examples of Speak Ill of the Dead include:

Anime and Manga

• In Fafner in the Azure: Dead Agressor, Shouko's death resulted in some of the islanders desecrating her grave to the horror of her friends who saw her make a Heroic Sacrifice for them.

Film

• In The Good Son, Mark states that his aunt Susan is now his mother, figuratively speaking. Henry remarks that his biological mother (who is deceased) is maggot food. Presumably, he would talk this way about Connie if he successfully killed her, and says nasty things about his brother Richard (whom he killed).
• In the film version of James and the Giant Peach, but not the book, Aunt Spiker and Aunt Sponge decide to speak ill of James' deceased parents, who were devoured by a rhino. Small wonder James eventually decides to stand up to them for their horrible behavior towards him.
• In Batman: Gotham by Gaslight, Jack the Ripper refers to one of his victims as a slut. Batman is less than pleased.

Literature

• From A Christmas Carol - when Scrooge is visited by the Ghost of Christmas Future, he sees many people stealing from a dead man, laughing at how much better things are without him, and telling nasty stories. He's horrified to find that person was him, and that no one genuinely misses him. Presumably Jacob Marley suffered a similar fate.
• Break of Dark: When they shoot down the German pilot in Blackham's Wimpy, Blackham and his crew not only spend the next 20-30 minutes exulting and mocking him as he burns to death, but carry on their celebrations when they get back to base. Strongly implied that this is why he comes back to haunt them.

Live Action TV

• Victor Lewis-Smith's Honest Obituaries series of sketches about UK Celebrities (all of whom were alive at the time the series was written) on the short-running UK comedy series TV Offal.

Theater

• In Ajax, Agamemnon and Menelaus have good reason to hate Ajax after his attempted slaughter of their army, but veer a little too close to religious blasphemy in denying Ajax burial rights after he has committed suicide. Odysseus in comparison gives up his grudge and persuades them not to violate sacred rites.
• Subverted in Julius Caesar. Anthony's speech sounds like it's going to be this ("I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him") but by clever twisting of his words he turns the assembled people against Caesar's killers.

Video Games

• In World of Warcraft, Varian gets upset when Anduin says the recently deceased Magni convinced himself that Moira was brainwashed to avoid having to admit that his desire for a male heir drove her to the Dark Iron Dwarves. Anduin, unlike most of the characters on this page, respects Magni, but believes that "You can be an honorable man and still make mistakes."
• After one of your True Companions from SEES dies in Persona 3, the school holds a memorial service. During this, you overhear some of the students talking bad about the recently deceased, and can choose to confront them.
• In Saints Row 2, Shogo attacks Aisha's funeral as Johnny Gat wants a moment to bury her in peace so he can personally fight with him. Shogo disregards that and gets buried alive for his trouble.
• The Walking Dead:
  • Clementine can tell tells Violet in season 4 episode 2 that Lilly's father, Larry, was a racist asshole (due to his mistreatment of Lee) and that Lilly defended everything he did. She can later tell Lilly in episode 3 that she always hated Larry ever since she first met him or that Lilly is an asshole just like he was.
  • Lilly doesn't think much Lee and tries to use his death against Clementine (she is kind of right as Clem indirectly caused Lee's death). She even claims that he was too soft and trusting (if Lee decided to keep her after she killed Carley/Doug) and that he would still be alive if he didn't take care of Clem.
• In Professor Layton and the Last Specter, Barde was so unpopular in Misthallery that people spoke ill about him after his death, greatly upsetting his children.
• In Ace Attorney Investigations, Manfred Von Karma calls Byrne Faraday incompetent as a prosecutor before and after finding out that he's been murdered. In the sequel, Manosuke Naito insults his dead fellow bodyguard Gai Tojiro in the first case, and everyone else is horrified. Naito also turns out to be Tojiro's murderer.
• Wardwell House: After Jacob Wardwell murdered his entire family, he refers to his father, Hollister Wardwell, as weak.