Zombie Celebrities Making Big Bucks

2016 has been a rough year. It feels like we've lost a lot of notable celebrities this year. We just lost Prince in April; and Forbes crunched the numbers and over the last twelve months he's made $25 Million. Which seems kind of odd to have him on the list already. He hasn't been gone that long and the magazine is calculating how much he's earned over the last year.

Of the Top Five, Elvis has been dead the longest; and yet, his estate has been "TCB". That was his motto, "takin' care of business". Next year will mark the 40th anniversary of his passing and over the last year, he's posthumously banked $27 Million.

Okay, I call bogus on this list. Arnold Palmer, the first dearly departed celebrity in the Top Five to go by both his first and last name just passed away three weeks ago. Isn't there, like, some eligibility rule or something? Like a celebrity has to be dead at least a year or more to be added to this list? It seems like Forbes is shifting his active earnings into a passive category through a little finagling and fuzzy logic. Either way, Palmer banked $40 Million last year.

Peanuts forever! Minnesota's own Charles M. Schulz passed away shortly after the final strip appeared in newspapers in 2000. Charlie Brown and the gang have been working hard for his since. Including the recent movie, his estate made $48 Million last year.

As hard as it is to believe that Prince is gone, it is just as hard to believe that Michael Jackson is gone, too. Both were born in '58. Prince was 57 when he died last Spring. Jackson was just shy of his 51st birthday when he passed a few years ago, in 2009. In just the last year, he has made $825 Million. That's like almost more than all of the dead celebrities on Forbes' list - combined! Talk about "King of Pop"!