Disney Villain Death: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

{{quote|"VILLAIN JOB: [[Take Over the World|Crave control of universe]], keep nose in air, be either [[Villainous Glutton|huge]] or [[Lean and Mean|emaciated]], collect mortal souls, perish by falling."|[http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,281838,00.html "Sum of Their Parts"], a fun little analysis of [[Disney Animated Canon]] character tropes.}}

Keep in mind that this can also apply to characters ''other than'' villains, although it's fair to say that most heroes [[Soft Water|have ways]] [[Disney Death|to survive falls]].

 

 

There is also the non-villainous, non-conflict related variation of the trope, where a character decides to jump off a high ledge due to some stupid idea they have (eg, thinking they'd fly).

* '''BOING!'''* }}

* The Evil Jack-In-The-Box from the "Steadfast Tin Soldier" segment of ''[[Fantasia 2000]]'' is a half-example. He charges the soldier, and is flipped over by him off the table falling into a hot stove.

{{quote|'''Whitmore:''' What happened to Helga?

'''Cookie:''' Weeeeeell, we lost her after a flamin' zeppelin come down on her - * WHACK* Uh, missin'. }}

* A neat variation occurs in ''[[Treasure Planet]]'': the truly nasty Scroop dies by falling ''[[Gravity Sucks|upward]]'' when the ship's [[Artificial Gravity]] gets turned off. This is obvious [[Karmic Death|payoff]] for his murdering the [[Jerk with a Heart of Gold|kindly-though-gruff]] First Mate Mr. Arrow (one of the few ''heroes'' who dies by falling -- [[Dropped a Bridge on Him|into a black hole]], no less) through similar means.

* Subverted in ''[[Kim Possible]]: [[The Movie|So The Drama]]'', where Kim kicks Shego into a building, where she gets electrically shocked and the entire thing falls on top of her. She survives, and is perfectly fine, though.

* And fitting an [[Affectionate Parody]] of other Disney movies. In ''[[Enchanted]]'', Queen Narissa falls off New York City's Woolworth Building... after, yes, going [[One-Winged Angel]]. She explodes into glitter on impact.

* GO-4 gets a messy one (for a machine) in ''[[WALL-E]]''.

* Charles Muntz in ''[[Up (animation)|Up]]''. Those balloons tangled to his feet don't seem to have helped him any.

* ''[[Tangled]]'' gently plays with this trope. While Mother Gothel did fall from the tower, she was already dead and turned to dust by the time she (or rather, her cloak) hit the ground. She suffered death by [[Rapid Aging]] rather than death by falling. Also, she didn't just cause her own fall, she was actually intentionally tripped by ''[[Team Pet|Pascal]]'' of all things.

* Averted in ''[[Tron: Legacy]]''. [[Big Bad|Clu 2]] does not lose grip and fall to his deresolution. Rather, his creator Kevin Flynn reabsorbs his program and [[Heroic Sacrifice|blows up]] as [[The Hero|Sam]] and [[Action Girl|Quorra]] make it to Flynn's Arcade in the real world. A tragic inversion with Tron himself who falls into the abyss after remembering who he is and his purpose. His [[Heroic Sacrifice]] only managed to buy the party a little extra time.

* In one album of the Italian ''[[Paperinik New Adventures]]'' comic series, Ethan dies this way by falling from the top of a dam. The man who is the closest thing he had to a father tries to extend his hand to him, but Ethan declines and says "Sorry pa, not this time."

* A blink-and-you'll-miss-it example actually happens during the first fight scene between Finn McMissile and the Lemons at the very beginning of ''[[Cars 2]]'': As McMissile is attempting to escape the Lemons' oil rig, a Gremlin can be seen being thrown off a balcony and into the ocean beneath.

 

== Non-Disney Examples ==

* ''[[Gundam Wing]]'' featured an awesome variant in an early episode when Lady Une [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrahCm7UIa4dumps dumps a failed underling out from the bottom of an airborne transport plane], then ''[[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|shoots him while he's falling]].''

* In ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'', Presea Testarossa falls off a crumbling floor into the extradimensional void. It's left ambiguous whether she survived and managed to teleport somewhere else with the Jewel Seeds that fell with her.

 

 

* The first volume of ''[[The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen]]'' ends with this happening to the [[Big Bad]] Moriarty, who it had already happened to before. Hmmm. Like the ''Treasure Planet'' example, he fell ''up''. In addition, after the book proper is over, there's a small splash page featuring the silhouette of his corpse continually floating, presumably in space.

** In the ''Minions of the Moon'' text story in ''Century: 1910'', during a trip trough space Mina comes across his corpse, still clutching the cavorite.

 

 

* ''No Holds Barred'', the 1989 movie starring [[Hulk Hogan]] that became better known for being parlayed into a "[[Kayfabe|real-life]]" feud between Hogan (as a wrestler named Rip) and his co-star Tiny Lister, in character as his movie character, Zeus, an [[Unstoppable Monster]]. In the movie's climatic scene, Rip and Zeus are brawling on a high balcony above the arena floor when Zeus shoves Rip down a stairwell, apparently defeating him. However, Rip recovers and finally wears down Zeus enough to knock him off the balcony; Zeus tumbles from the balcony, presumably falling to his death when he lands in the wrestling ring below with such force that the ring collapses.

* A particularly jarring example occurs in [[Michael Jackson]]'s short film "Ghosts". A transcript of the film (which, sadly, has since evaporated along with Geocities) even called the mayor's demise a "presumably very messy Disney Villain Death".

* An assassin in ''Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol'' is kicked through a window of the Burj Khalifa. For those not in the know, [[No One Could Survive That|that's the tallest known building in the entire world.]]

* Inverted in ''[[Snow White: A Tale of Terror]]''. It's Claudia who sends one of the heroes falling to his death.

 

* In ''[[The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle]]'', {{spoiler|Captain Jaggery falls to his death off of the bowsprit after cornering Charlotte up there in an attempt to kill her.}}

* Gollum falls to his death in ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]''. Justified because it is ''the'' essential part of the eucatastrophe, as this accident also takes the One Ring into the Cracks of Doom, destroying it.

* In ''[[Groosham Grange]]'', a school inspector is tortured by Miss Windergast's black voodoo magic (namely a [[Voodoo Doll]]) in an attempt to [[These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know|prevent him from discovering the truth about the school]] and he ultimately falls off a cliff to his death. This example of the trope is a subvert as the school inspector was '''not''' a villain.

* ''[[Discworld]]'' examples:

* In ''[[The Wheel of Time]]'' Mat Cauthon kills off {{spoiler|the ''gholam''}} using a Skimming gateway and this tactic. Bonus points for the fact that the emptiness inside a Skimming gateway is believed to be infinite. The victim should starve to death, assuming it ''can'' starve to death.

** Since it ''has'' to feed on {{spoiler|the blood of its victim}}, we could assume it can starve to death

* In ''[[Chronicles of Amber]]'' {{spoiler|Brand}} falls into the Abyss. In the second series, several members of Chaos royalty also "fall" off the edge.

 

* ''[[The Dukes of Hazzard]]'': Averted several times:

** "Goodbye, General Lee": It almost is for the show's signature (and heroic) car, when Boss Hogg, tired of the Duke boys constantly foiling his schemes (and perceiving the General Lee's "sheer power" in always playing a key role), picks up on Luke's off-handed remark that the General Lee isn't what it used to be. At one point, the trope kicks into effect when Rosco – having earlier locked up the Dukes on a minor traffic charge, and having impounded the General Lee – has the car driven out to the country, places the car's transmission in neutral, and pushes it down the hill ... toward a cliff. Of course, Cooter is conveniently nearby, sees what's going on, and manages to stop the General Lee (by using his tow truck as a "brake") – but then Cooter has his own hands full when he has trouble stopping the truck. (Not to worry, Cooter got his tow truck to stop just at the very edge of the cliff!)

** Hell, technically, Buffy ''herself'' gets this treatment at the end of the episode, as her [[Disney Death]] doesn't take place until the following season.

* Also from [[Joss Whedon]], the torturer from the ''[[Firefly]]'' episode ''War Stories'' falls into the abyss after being shot to death.

** In the [[Series Finale]], {{spoiler|this is how The Man in Black goes out, when he is shot by Kate and kicked off the cliff by Jack.}}

** You know, we can't bring up ''Lost'' without mentioning [[Destination Defenestration|what Locke's father did to him]] can we? Although it doesn't qualify as "Death", it broke his spine.

* In the season 2 finale of ''[[Nikita (TV series)|Nikita]]'', {{spoiler|this is how Nikita and [[Big Bad|Percy's]] final confrontation ends. As Percy's about to make his grand escape, he attempts to kill Nikita, and in their struggle he falls over the edge of Division's missile silo. Nikita grabs him, but ultimately lets him drop. Ironically, when he hits the bottom he crashes into the glass prison cell he spent the first half of the season locked up in.}}

 

* A tragic non-villain example happened to [[Owen Hart]], who during his entrance when he rappeled in from the rafters, fell 78 feet to his death. It was only by luck that this didn't happen on national television, who saw only a backstage promo instead.

 

* The ''[[Trace Memory]]'' series plays with this. The first game plays it straight with Bill falling into a large pit in a cavern, but the sequel subverts it by having Richard save Ryan from his suicide attempt.

* Disney's own [[Toontown Online]] has a boss fight that ends with the Cog VP being pushed off the roof of his HQ building.

** Alexei meanwhile...wasn't entirely killed by Yuri. ([[Faux Symbolism|His ambitions technically crushed him]]) And you'd assume that after ''four times'', that Duke would fall to his death or be crushed by his ambitions, right? Well...you wouldn't be further from the truth. He actually ''saves the day''.

* Averted and played straight in ''Dirge of Cerberus: [[Final Fantasy VII]]''; Rosso the Crimson cuts away the chunk of masonry she's standing on and falls to her death rather than admit defeat and Azul the Cerulean falls into an elevator shaft after having a double-barrelled cannon thrown through his stomach.

* Ridley, in ''[[Metroid Prime]]'', is pushed out of a balcony by statues with laser beams. Despite the shockwave of the explosion he creates when reaching the bottom, you know he will be back.

** The whole fight against Meta-Ridley at the start of Metroid Prime 3 is played entirely in free fall. As such, when you deliver the final blow, you're saved by a fellow bounty hunter, but Ridley isn't so lucky, plummeting to his death, though he eventually returns thanks to Phazon corruption.

* In ''[[Narbonic]]'', Helen Narbon ([[Cloning Blues|the original]]) winds up falling off a ledge into a [http://www.webcomicsnation.com/shaenongarrity/narbonic_plus/series.php?view=archive&chapter=50391 thousand-foot waterfall.] {{spoiler|Of course, she's not really dead - the other cast members [[Never Found the Body|never saw the body.]] }}

 

* In ''[[Homestar Runner]]'''s action movie parody ''Dangeresque'', the title character entertains this idea but fails to follow through on it. What happens to Perducci is actually kind of [[What Happened to the Mouse?|unclear]], but he survives to menace Dangeresque again in ''Dangeresque 3: The Criminal Projective''.

{{quote|'''Dangeresque:''' Once we get to the top of this high-scraper, we'll hopefully be able to throw some people off. Maybe even Perducci.}}

* Like in the original film, Gaston met his end in this manner in the Kingdom Hearts fangame. Unlike the original film, however, the fangame also makes it especially clear that he's dead by Sora, in a manner very similar to Darth Maul in ''[[The Phantom Menace]]'', [[Half the Man He Used To Be|cutting him in half]] before he fell.

 

* [[Don Bluth]] is fond of these. This isn't surprising, actually, given that he worked for Disney for a while and that classic Disney films had a ''huge'' influence on him:

** Jenner has a surprisingly violent one in ''[[The Secret of NIMH]]''.

 

=== Real Life ===

* Cesare Borgia died this way during his siege on Viana. This was depicted in ''[[Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood]]''.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Death Tropes]]

[[Category:Evil Tropes]]

[[Category:Climbing the Cliffs of Insanity]]

[[Category:Older Than Television]]

[[Category:Falling, Dropping, and Plummeting]]