Not the Fall That Kills You: Difference between revisions

 

Subtropes of this include [[Soft Water]] and [[Giant Robot Hands Save Lives]], among all the other tropes [[Pothole|potholed]] in that second paragraph. See also [[I Fell for Hours]] for incredibly long falls. See also [[Inertial Dampening]], which can justify it in worlds where it exists.

 

== Anime & Manga ==

* Kinda subverted in ''[[Kaleido Star]]'': while in the trapeze, Leon drops May off, lets her fall a bit and then catches her by the hand, but the pull dislocates her shoulder. Later he does the same thing to Sora, but this time she's not injured because she was expecting it, and used her own strength to help Leon lift her.

* Mokuba tries to rappel his way down a tower using [[Bedsheet Ladder|rope tied together from old bedsheets]] in ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh]]''. The rope isn't nearly long enough and comes loose, and he falls a ''long distance'' down... into some bushes, which saves him.

* An early episode of ''[[Macross]]'' averts this. Our hero saves the female lead from a high altitude fall not by catching her in the opened cockpit of his fighter, but by matching her descent before sort of scooping her up. Still pretty crazy, but it ''had'' been established that he was a skilled stunt pilot before going military.

* This pops up all the time in ''[[Immortal Rain]]'': when the only way out of trouble is a long way down, Rain scoops up Machika, tucks her under his arm, and jumps. In one scene they escape bounty hunters by {{spoiler|jumping out of an upper storey of a skyscraper to the city street below}}; in another, {{spoiler|a train bridge has been destroyed and they jump from the falling train to the canyon floor}}. The implication is that since Rain is [[Immortality|perfectly]] [[Nigh Invulnerable|capable]] of surviving that fall, anyone cradled in his arms would be safe as well.

* In ''[[Axis Powers Hetalia (Manga)|Axis Powers Hetalia]]'', Russia jumps out of a freaking plane WITHOUT A PARACHUTE because there is snow. Snow will save him. Granted, he does break his arm (in the manga he breaks ''all of his bones'').

* The speedster version is explicitly mentioned in ''[[Cyborg 009]]''. The 00 cyborgs can survive being transported by 009's acceleration mode because they are cyborgs, who have been enhanced to be more durable than regular humans. Any normal human who comes into contact with 009 while he's in acceleration mode would be killed instantly.

** In one episode of the anime, Akane gets knocked off the side of a cliff. Ranma runs down the side, gets to the bottom before she does, then catches her in his arms. She's perfectly fine afterwards. This is [[Ranma One Half]] after all.

* In episode 22 of ''[[Fairy Tail]]'', Lucy jumps out of a jail cell that is at least a skyscraper in height off the ground and Natsu catches her. Amusingly, Lucy (who is a normal human besides her [[Summon Magic]]) is unharmed, while Natsu (who has [[Super Strength]] and is [[Made of Iron]]) is briefly knocked silly.

* Used scientifically in ''[[Gamble Fish]]'', Tomu was able to survive the fall by making sure he hit the branches to slow down and the fact that there was a large amount of fresh snow at the bottom to land on. However he did ad the fact this only gave him a 1/10 chances of actually surviving the fall compared to the slim chance if he didn't. He is a gambler after all.

* Kagura in ''[[Okusama wa Mahou Shoujo (Anime)|Okusama wa Mahou Shoujo]]'' manages to catch Ureshiko when she falls from the sky. He hurts his leg a little when he lands (no one catches ''him''), but that's taken care of by [[Magical Girl|Ureshiko's magic]].

 

== Comic Books ==

* ''[[Superman]]'' regularly [[Catch a Falling Star|snatches Lois Lane out of the sky]]. He'll sometimes justify it by thinking something to the effect of "I've got to time this right: match my velocity to hers and then gradually slow us," but that doesn't work when they were only seconds from hitting the ground.

** Not surprisingly, most [[Superhero|superheroes]] with [[Flight]] will do the same at one time or another. Realistically, they would have the additional concern of taking injury ''themselves'' from colliding with a falling object, which at least [[Flying Brick|the invulnerable]] Superman has no concerns about.

** In one issue of the [[Justice League of America]], he saves the population of an entire North Korean town from a nuclear meltdown in about 12 seconds. The speeds he would have needed to achieve this should have turned everyone he touched, carried, or simply ''ran past'' into chunky red jello.

** Subverted in the Marvel Comics Eternals, where their Speeder, even when trying his hardest not to kill terrorists while disarming them, and moving at half the speed of light, still breaks their arms.

* In the new ''[[Star Trek (Film)|Star Trek]]'' movie, this also happens when Chekov manages to beam Kirk and Sulu back onto the Enterprise while they were falling towards the planet's surface; he manages to catch them ''just'' before they hit the ground. This is completely in keeping with how a transporter would have to work, since by re-materializing the person the forces applied to the object/person before dematerialization no longer exist, while a new set of forces are applied (consistent with the space-ship's current movement through space-time) on rematerialization.

** The same problem exists when the Enterprise herself is attacked or grabbed by the [[Negative Space Wedgie|explosion or monster of the week]], causing it to decelerate quickly enough to overcome the artificial gravity and throw people around the room. These people look like they are reacting to a change in velocity of a few feet per second, when just unexpectedly dropping out of Warp 1 to sub-light speed involves deceleration on the order of [[Sci Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale|hundreds of thousands of feet per second in a very few seconds]]. Even if the artificial gravity takes away 99% of the problem, you still end up with strawberry jam on the bulkheads, if the entire ship doesn't fall apart concurrently. They have [http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Inertial_damper inertial dampers] for whenever a starship transits from warp to sub-light speeds. Otherwise the ship itself wouldn't survive.

* While not a fall, the physics-defying properties of this trope are subverted in the ''[[Blade (Film)|Blade]]'' movies, where the titular super-human grabs a hold of the back of a speeding train and painfully dislocates his shoulder. If he hadn't already being superman, otherwise he would have simply ''lost'' his shoulder.

** Dracula throws a baby at him, and he catches it like it's a football or something. [[Infant Immortality|The baby is implied to be unharmed.]]

* Averted in ''[[Matthew Reilly|Area 7]]'', when Scarecrow does the 'Sydney Harbour Bridge' (two Maghooks connecting in midair) with Gant, thus stopping his fall. IIRC, it's described as 'one hell of a jolt' and it hurts him a lot.

** This trope (and the stock phase) is the syllabus of ''The Five Greatest Warriors''. {{spoiler|Jack's falling into a bottomless pit, and stops his fall with a Maghook. It still hurts, but not as much as it should after falling over 1000 meters.}}

* Averted nicely in ''[[Dragonriders of Pern|Dragonquest.]]'' {{spoiler|F'nor and Canth}} are dropping from a great height at what's explicitly stated as terminal velocity. The other dragonriders don't just stop them short- they form a ''ramp'' to slow them down gradually.

* ''[[The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy]]'': In the Brontital/Shoe Event Horizon arc, Arthur Dent survives a fall of 15 miles by landing on the back of an enormous bird, failing to take into account the fact that the impact with the bird would be as violent as the impact with the ground would have been. The bird and Arthur have an argument about getting safely down to the ground below, which ends when Arthur apologizes for impinging on the birds' time and resumes his fall. {{spoiler|The bird is sufficiently guilt-tripped to dive after Arthur and rescue him by grabbing him by the shoulders, resulting in both a second example of this trope and of [[Variable Terminal Velocity]] as the bird should not have been able to catch up, and even if he could he would have torn Arthur asunder in his attempt to arrest his fall}}.

** Rincewind himself abides by a variation of the trope. He claims he is not afraid of heights but of ''grounds'': rightly recognizing that the ground is the actual instrument of death in a fatal fall. Also, his own life experience (and the fact that he's a just-barely-Wizard) show him multiple times that he can survive falls...provided someone or something intervenes on his behalf.

* ''Rapunzel: The One With All The Hair'' Prince Benjamin falls from Rapunzel's tower and has his fall "broken" when he lands on his horse, unharmed.

* In the last of the ''[[Lensman]]'' books, Kim Kinnison's daughter Constance is described as having formed a close friendship with Worsel, the flying dragon Lensman, to the point where she ''rides him like a horse'' (and has done so since she was big enough to climb on). One of her sisters describes how he "pretty nearly split her in two with an eleven-gee pull-up", for which she kicked him. Smith, who cranked so much up to eleven for so long, was known for getting little things like this right.

* At least some works of [[Robert Heinlein]] avert this.

** In ''Brotherhood'', Ezio can acquire Parachutes (after {{spoiler|completing all four of the War Machine missions}}; he's granted five to start and can buy more from tailors, carrying up to fifteen at once) which can be triggered during a fall to avert fall damage.

** The series also features Leaps of Faith, including some [[Rule of Cool|ridiculously cool]] jumps from the tallest towers in each game. The character will survive these leaps just fine, because the landing is softened by a haystack, a pile of leaves or in the latest installment, a ''bush of flowers''.

* In the first ''[[Ratchet and Clank]]'' game {{spoiler|Ratchet and Clank wind up falling from the platform where they fight and defeat Chairman Drek. Ratchet even looks down and you literally can't see the ground from how high up they are. And yet, Clank, changing to his Thruster Pack mode, and propelling himself against Ratchet literally seconds before hitting the ground is enough for the pair to just skid against the ground a bit. The only injury sustained by either of them is Clank's broken servos in his arm, which were from the force of holding up Ratchet's weight BEFORE they fell.}}

* In ''[[Minecraft]]'' falling into water more than two blocks deep will prevent any fall damage. The same applies when catching a ladder.

* In ''[[In Famous (Video Game)|In Famous]]'', Cole can leap off the tallest building in the game, and suffer no damage at all. Unless he [[Super Drowning Skills|falls into water.]] Also, anything he lands on (unless he's using the Thunder Drop) will also be perfectly fine. Turns out he uses his Kinetic Shockwave to dampen his fall (notice the dust spreading from his impact point).

* In the ''Spider-Man 2'' game, it's possible to save yourself from a long fall by shooting off a web zip-line, which Spidey uses to sharply pull himself horizontally. It's quite possible to jump off the Empire State Building and then suddenly jerk to the side inches from the ground.

* One of the patches to ''[[Unreal Tournament 2004 (Video Game)|Unreal Tournament 2003]]'' added falling damage when you perform a wall jump (i.e. you could no longer jump down a tower and wall-jump at the last second). As a concession, the shield gun now protects against falling damage.

* At the end of the manor house level in ''[[Medal of Honor]]: Frontline'', you and Geritt escape by jumping off a several story high balcony into a hay wagon. He hits the ground and survives, but you die if you miss the wagon.

* ''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja (Webcomic)|The Adventures of Dr. McNinja]]'' -- apparently Doc can land safely from [http://drmcninja.com/page.php?pageNum=41&issue=3 any height] as long as he has [http://drmcninja.com/page.php?pageNum=42&issue=3 the cord of his grappling hook] [http://drmcninja.com/page.php?pageNum=38&issue=8 in his hands].

** Even his Honda can stick a [http://drmcninja.com/page.php?pageNum=39&issue=8 pretty deft landing].

** In another strip this is averted when the main characters are falling at a fast speed from hundreds of feet in the air. Even though they are teleported to the ground, that doesn't stop the acceleration from the fall. Bloody mess.

** And in [http://www.nuklearpower.com/2009/09/08/episode-1170-happy-landings/ yet another strip], well...

* Happens in the ''[[Bamse]]'' TV series, in the episode with the volcano. Bamse falls off the volcano, but Skalman manages to grab hold of his belt from the helicopter moments before Bamse would have hit the ground. Instead of going from terminal velocity to zero, he's going from terminal velocity downwards to a not insignificant speed upwards. Yeah.

* Parodied in an episode of ''[[The Simpsons (Animation)|The Simpsons]]'', where Bart is thrown off a dam and saved by a [[Heel Face Turn]]'d Sideshow Bob swinging by on a rope. When the rope is cut, they fall for several seconds (long enough that they have to take a breath between screams)...and then Bob lands [[Groin Attack|groin-first]] on a pipe that's sticking out. As he sits frozen in pain, Bart climbs onto a nearby ledge, then pulls Bob up too.

** This happens again in Secret of My Excess; Spike and Rarity fall for around 30 seconds before Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy save them using only a piece of cloth.

* In a 2-part ''[[King of the Hill]]'' episode, Hank and Peggy go skydiving, but Peggy's parachute ([[Failsafe Failure|and emergency chute]]) fail to deploy. Everyone fears her dead, and it's [[Lampshaded]] just how miraculous a survival from that height is. She ends up in a [[Bandage Mummy|full body cast]], goes through a psychological roller coaster, and for a few episodes is still going through physical therapy just to walk again.

* In the [[Five Episode Pilot]] of ''[[Gargoyles (Animation)|Gargoyles]]'', Goliath falls off a skyscraper and tries to grab a flagpole. It snaps immediately, in what the creators have referred to as a "This-ain't-[[Batman]]" moment.

* Speaking of which, this was lampshaded in an episode of ''[[Batman Beyond (Animation)|Batman Beyond]]'' when Terry was forced to use Bruce's old-school gear. He comments that the [[Grappling Hook Pistol]] isn't so bad - right before he wrenches his shoulder using it.

{{quote| Remember, its not the ''fall'', [[Disney Villain Death|its the sudden ''stop!'']].}}

* Happens quite sometime in [[Star Wars the Clone Wars]], most egregiously in the Season2 episode Landing at Point Rain. After Anakin and Ahsoka jumped down from the top of a ten-stories high droid fortress, they used the Force to slow themselves down about a meter from the groud, then they catch Rex -whom Anakin threw several meters high into the air before he himself jumped- about fives inches above ground.