Barely Missed Cushion

A common animated gag, based on subverting expectations.

A character is falling from a large height; this is going to hurt. Luckily, there's a soft object that will break his fall.

Unluckily, the character then falls right next to the object, onto something hard. Usually, the camera will initially show the cushion in the center of the screen and then pan to the side as soon as the unlucky person falls.

In a variant, there's another person waiting to catch the falling person, and the catcher misses.

Comic Books
"Narrator: Fortunately, there is a door. And fortunately, it is open. Next panel: Sled crashes to the right of the door, Iznogoud cushioning for the Caliph Narrator: Unfortunately, it's a little to the left."
 * In one Iznogoud story, the titular great vizier and the Caliph both wind up on a sled, descending a slope at high speed towards a building.

Film

 * In the Get Smart movie, when about to land after a big skydiving scene, Max tells Agent 99 to aim for the haystack because it's softer. She ignores him and they land on the ground next to it.

Live Action TV

 * Mac has a variation of this in one of his Project Badass clips in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. He actually does land on the mattress. He just bounces off and lands on the street a couple of feet below, still managing to hurt himself.
 * A trailer for a BBC sketch show showed a man falling off a roof, with a lorry below marked "Soft and Fluffy". Then it pulled away, and another one marked "Sharp Porcelain Objects Inc." took its place.

Web Original

 * Subverted in a Homestar Runner cartoon. Homestar is sledding down a ridiculously steep hill, and Strong Bad moves a mattress Homestar had placed to cushion his fall.

Western Animation

 * The Johnny Bravo episode "A Star is Bruised":. Johnny the stuntman falls right next to the big air-cushion (after it seemed like this would be the end of his series of painful accidents).
 * Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines, episode "A Plain Shortage of Planes": Seeing Dick Dastardly fall, Muttley quickly sets up a water-filled inflatable pool, then snickers as this trope happens to Dastardly.
 * Used as a Running Gag in The Fairly OddParents whenever Crocker (or Timmy) enters the "Crocker Cave". Each time he ends up missing the mattress he was supposed to land on and moves it over to where he was.
 * This happens to Yosemite Sam in the Looney Tunes short High Diving Hare. It's especially playing with expectations because throughout the skit he usually lands in the water.
 * There's at least one Goofy cartoon where he keeps trying to open his parachute as he falls, but it pops out after he's already hit the ground.
 * On The Simpsons, when sneaking out of work to go on the Duff Brewery tour, Homer perfectly hits the mattress attached to the top of his car...or at least he would have, if Barney hadn't driven forward about 8 feet to look at something he thought was Diana, Princess of Wales.
 * I remember a Simpsons episode where Barney is subject to a series of three or four nasty injuries based on an industry of soft items - e.g., falling onto the roof of a mattress company, then being run over by a truck carrying pillows, etc.
 * Played with in the Futurama episode "Bendin' in the Wind". As Bender is falling, he cries, "Somebody fat get in my way!" The camera is focused on a fat guy on the bottom, but Bender lands instead on the skinny woman next to him.
 * Sometimes on the Wile E Coyote and The Road Runner cartoons, Wile E. decides to be Crazy Prepared and put a trampoline at the bottom of a cliff so that he lands safely when he falls. Sometimes he misses. Sometimes he hits the trampoline but simply rips through the canvas and hits the ground, or the canvas wraps around him.
 * One Dexter's Laboratory episode begins with Dexter entering his lab by dropping in through a tube and landing next to a chair. He drags it into its proper place, muttering about Dee Dee moving it again.
 * in a episode of Johnny Test Susan and Mary Test redeem coupons that Johnny made to have him test their experiments as he's trying to make a dangerous skateboard run down Suicide Hill. A running gag in the episode is each time they have a mattress set up at the end for Johnny to hit or land on so he wont get hurt, but Mary's calculations are always off resulting in this trope. Subverted near the end of the episode when Johnny finally makes the run down Suicide hill, but the run goes horribly wrong. His sisters are there to save the day by setting up a waterslide, a ramp, and a mattress to save him. Nearly played straight as Mary realizes she did the math wrong and Johnny will hit the ground again, but they move the mattress just in time.