The painting depicts people of different social backgrounds – from peasants and soldiers to nobles as well as a king and a cardinal – being taken by death indiscriminately.

[4] A skeleton parodies human happiness by playing a hurdy-gurdy, while the wheels of his cart crush a man as if his life is of no importance.

Nearby, another woman in the path of the cart holds in her hand a spindle and distaff, classical symbols of the fragility of human life—another Bruegel interpretation of Clotho and Lachesis.

The backgammon board and the playing cards have been scattered, while a skeleton thinly disguised with a mask (possibly the face of a corpse) empties away the wine flasks.

Of the menu of the interrupted meal, all that can be seen are a few pallid rolls of bread and an appetiser apparently consisting of a pared human skull.

The woman on the right is horrified with the realisation of mortality when a skeleton in a hooded robe mockingly seems to bring another dish, also consisting of human bones, to the table.

[6] The Triumph of Death appears as a background image for the text intro of the second part of the Monty Python sketch The Spanish Inquisition.

[7] In Underworld, a 1996 novel by Don DeLillo, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover becomes utterly intrigued by the painting after seeing it reproduced in torn pages of Life magazine and eventually obtains a print of it.

The painting plays a pivotal role in The Rich Man's House, 2019, the final novel by Australian writer Andrew McGahan, with its theme of inevitable mortality.

The rich man of the title (called Richman) has acquired the painting from the Museo del Prado and it hangs in pride of place in his mountaintop house.