Death Throws



"Mario: Wait, Wario... What was-a death like? Ghost of Wario: Well... You sorta jump up in the air and the music goes, "Do do do-do do do do do do-do.""

- Brawl in the Family, "A Mushroom Kingdom Carol, Part 2"

Upon death, character gets thrown off screen, often in some "sitting" spread-out contorted pose. This may happen to enemies as well.

This is mainly limited to 2-dimensional Platform Games.


 * Super Mario Bros is the Trope Codifier (Pictured above).
 * This is lampshaded in a live-action parody on YouTube (HERE) where the characters are in the real world and super-sized Mario is shot to death by a cop. He is thrown off-screen in the classic manner, leaving the cop wondering what the hell just happened.
 * Happens to the villains too, at least in the Super Mario Land and first Wario Land spinoff. In many cases, they actually plummet off screen head first with the comedy sound of someone falling off a cliff.
 * Happens to mooks (their sprites are flipped upside down) if they're hit by a fireball (except Super Mario World), vegetable, raccoon tail, starman, cape...
 * After a long while, this returns in New Super Mario Bros. and New Super Mario Bros Wii.
 * Also makes a return in Super Mario 3D Land, which is remarkable because it's the first 3D Mario game to apply this trope.
 * In the Yoshi's Island series games, while Yoshi would normally lose lives by having Baby Mario taken away from him, if he falls into a pit of spikes or lava he will die this way.
 * Commander Keen naturally does this since the prototype of his game's engine was a "Copyright Infringement" knockoff of Super Mario Bros. 3. He bounces off anything else that would kill him during the animation, so if there are a lot of enemies on screen he can bounce around for a while before finally falling off the screen.
 * There's a glitch where, in the later games, saving and reloading during the death throw causes the death flag to be reset but the throw state to be kept - you then fly in an uncontrolled fashion through walls and, if you touch the edge of the level, finish it instantly. This is used in speed runs.
 * Sonic the Hedgehog does this in all the 2D games, including the 2½D ones like Sonic Rush Series and the classic half of Sonic Generations.
 * Donkey Kong Country does this with the enemies. It only happens to the player characters if they've transformed into an animal buddy (normally they die by Circling Birdies).
 * Played straight in Donkey Kong Country Returns.
 * Kid Icarus: The instant Pit takes his last hit, he jumps off the stage, and the Game Over screen reads: "I'M FINISHED!"
 * Kirby does this whenever he dies, while spinning. King Dedede does too, but in a more flyaway manner.
 * In games where Meta Knight is playable, his mask just flies offscreen as his body disappears in an inexplicable manner. He dies the same way Kirby does in Return to Dream Land, however.
 * Surprisingly, this was averted in Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards; in that game he just spins around and collapses.
 * Parasol Stars and Bubble Bobble Part 2 (NES) while spinning out.
 * Rainbow Islands NES version (US and Japanese versions). In contrast, the arcade version has the character hitting the platform he was shot off of and fall backwards from the impact. Others just make him hit midair and fall backwards.
 * This only occurs with two kinds of death in Little Big Planet: falling onto Spikes of Doom (or a sword) and being crushed. Both result in Sackboy jumping forward one gameplay layer (if in the front layer, then out of the gameplay area) before falling out of reality. It gets even more ridiculous with the crushing animation, because he may leap right through the material that crushed him, and even fall right through the floor. Other kinds of death (electricity, Impact Explosives, etc.) have the expected means of death instead of this. (Electricity causes Sackboy to visibly pop in the PS3 game, and nothing is shown in the PSP game before the screen moves back.)
 * Prehistorik Man has this. Interestingly, the way drowning is handled changes late in the game: Initially the character is thrown when he hits the bottom (once you've hit the surface you can't swim or jump out anyway), but after being told water makes you drown, the death animation is changed to drowning.
 * Secret Agent leaps off the screen while waving his hands and eyes madly as if he had an epileptic fit.
 * This is how the deaths of the main character and enemies are handled in Eversion,.
 * This is Ogmo's only death animation in Jumper games, oddly accompanied by gunshot sound. Jumper Three replaces gunshot sound with dead Ogmo exploding shortly after death.
 * In Frogger 2: Swampy's Revenge (the sequel to Frogger 3D), the player character gets thrown and smacked against the screen when hit by an enemy whilst on its last life.
 * Happens in Braid to the One-Hit-Point Wonder protagonist; however, the twist is that just before he falls off the bottom of the screen, the action freezes and you're prompted to press Shift and rewind the action to a point before you died.
 * Inverted in two ways in Mischief Makers; the Player throws things to take out enemies and her throwing enemies is itself is usually fatal.
 * In The Caverns of Hammerfest the main character, a snowman, is knocked off to the bottom of the screen whenever he is hit by something.
 * In Legacy of the Wizard, every enemy except the Final Boss does this when defeated.
 * The Famicom version of Nuts & Milk did this with both player and enemies. This was one of those games where reaching the Level Goal killed all enemies, so every enemy would take a flying dive into the water at the bottom of the screen.
 * Alex Kidd and Wonder Boy starting with Monster Land float off the screen upon death.
 * In Crystal Castles, when Bentley runs into an enemy, he gives off a speech bubble saying "OH NO" or something similar and flies off the top of the screen.
 * Things get thrown offscreen in Home Alone 2 on the NES and SNES upon defeat.
 * On the Game Boy version, enemies drift offscreen when defeated.
 * Balloon Kid features this if Alice gets hit by a stronger enemy or certain objects (i.e. bears, walruses, spikes, fires, struck by falling stalactites, sparks, getting crushed, etc.) And she spins upon defeat.
 * Contra, including Bottomless Pit deaths.
 * In the arcade version of Donkey Kong Jr., if the title character died, his eyes would bug out and he would fall out of the stage. The latter detail was not preserved in the NES version.
 * In the Super Smash Bros. series games, if a character is down to his/her last health point and is hit, then he/she will be thrown off the arena.
 * Amagon does this turning towards the screen and throwing his hands up, Mario-style.
 * In Little Nemo the Dream Master, when Nemo loses the last segment of his life bar, he starts spinning around repeatedly and drops off the screen after a few seconds.