Slow Motion Drop

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

A character receives some shocking news while holding a (usually breakable) object. The news causes them to drop the object, and we follow it in close up with the camera overcranked all the way to the floor.

For extra credit, finish the shot with a slow-motion shot of the object shattering, with synchronized slow motion sound effects. For extra extra credit, throw in a Big No while all of this is happening. To absolutely ace the test, use a Slow No instead of a Big No.

Compare with Slow Motion Fall, Dramatic Shattering.

Examples of Slow Motion Drop include:


Anime and Manga

  • Bleach does it with Renji's sweat before his fight with Byakuya
  • Death Note: L's spoon.
  • Parodied in Duel Masters. When Shobu's mother dropped a cup in slow motion she noted the effect and its implications.
  • Fushigi Yuugi also has a tear-jerking example, when Tamahome visits his house, only to see that his entire family had been brutally murdered. He drops the ball he had bought for his little sister Yuiren, who is shown to be barely alive when the ball bounces to her fingers.
  • Nana, with a lighter.
  • Played with in the ninth episode of Naruto: Shippuuden by an old lady with a fishing rod. She was just playing dead for fun, and no doubt that the slow mo "made it seem so real."
  • Kasumi in Ranma ½ asks Akane "Did you accept his proposal?". Akane drops the plate she was washing and it shatters dramatically.
  • The anime adaptation of Rurouni Kenshin does a variant slo-mo drop for a bead of sweat during the Kenshin vs. Soujirou battle: the camera follows a drop of cold sweat roll off Yumi's face, and by the time it splashes on the floor, the two combatants have already traded an insane amount of blows.
  • At the end of the final battle between D and Meier Link in Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, Leila takes Charlotte's ring and tosses it at the floor. The camera follows it as it slowly, slooowly comes down, leaving a trail of after-images, interspersed with flashes of D and Meier Link fighting. When the ring bounces off the floor, the camera follows it up and down again. And it continues to follow as it rolls on its side and D picks it up on the edge of his sword.

Comic Books

  • Played tear jerkingly straight in an issue of the Teen Titans comic series, where one page was devoted to Tim Drake/Robin answering a phone message, then dropping the phone to the ground and following suit. The page is textless and the reader doesn't actually hear why he's dropping the phone, but anybody reading comics at that time knew exactly the reason without needing an explanation: The Rogues had just killed his second best friend (the first, Superboy, having died in Infinite Crisis) Bart Allen/Flash.

Film

  • Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me: Two Austins bang into each other while each is trying to catch his mojo. Cue the Slow Motion Mojo Drop.
  • Run Lola Run:
    • It appeared to be initially subverted when Manni flings a red bag of stolen money into the air just before a twitchy poltzei shoots Lola in the chest. The bag isn't seen again throughout the dying scene. After a flashback and Lola's epiphany, then the bag is shown falling in slow motion, match cut with the falling of Lola's red telephone at the beginning.
    • This is played a little straighter later, when Lola drops a green bag of robbery money on witnessing Manni's shocking death, but again, the bag isn't actually seen hitting the ground. After another flashback and Manni's epiphany, the bag is seen falling from beneath before cutting to the telephone again.
    • The initial shot of the red phone spinning through the air in slow motion is the straight example. The camera cuts between its flight and Lola's face before dropping neatly into its cradle at the point that Lola comes to a decision.
  • Parodied in the French Canadian show Le Coeur A Ses Raisons. After receving "shocking" news from Becky ("Your sister is mean"), Brett drops a "precious" silver object of art on the floor. However, the object is really made out of plastic. Brett tries to break it twice before just throwing it offscreen.
  • Frequency had this, with both a glass at a bar mirroring his father sliding out to the ocean with the kid he was rescuing.
    • The two people falling into the Hudson River are actually Slow Motion Fall. However, the fire helmet bouncing on the pavement is an example of this trope.
  • The 2008 Speed Racer live action film has an occasion. Mom drops her glass to shatter on the floor upon hearing oldest son Rex was killed in a crash.
  • Agent Kujan from The Usual Suspects drops his coffee mug when understanding of The Reveal begins trickling in, complete with multiple shots of the cup breaking and spraying coffee in slow motion.
    • The first Scary Movie parodied the coffee cup from The Usual Suspects; after it hit the ground, a goldfish was seen flopping about in the remnants.
    • Also parodied in Wrongfully Accused, where multiple objects were dropped along with the coffee cup.
  • Ratatouille, with a pen.
  • Done in Inception: in an odd mix of this trope and Slow Motion Fall, the van in Dream Level One falls off a bridge in slow motion, along with the entire band of characters and their target Robert Fischer, who are all dreaming in the van at that moment. The same fall echoes through the rest of the dream levels as well.
  • In Selena, the ring dropping from her fingers as she dies.
  • In The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Aragorn has a dream about Arwen dying and him dropping the Evenstar (which seems to represent Arwen's immortality), which breaks. In a much later scene in the Extended Edition, Aragorn looks into the Palantir to face Sauron, and he shows him the same scene of Arwen dying, to which he freaks out and steps back, dropping the Evenstar just as he had seen in the dream.

Video Games

Western Animation

  • In an episode of The Simpsons, Marge buys a $400 bag to show off with and plans to return it as soon as possible. When Homer takes her to a expensive restaurant, he bites into a sauce-covered shrimp and a tiny speck of the sauce splashes onto Marge's bag, much to her horror.

Chief Wiggum: Boy, I bet that looked great in super-slow motion. Too bad we only saw it in regular motion.

  • An episode of Futurama where Fry's head was attached to Amy's shoulder following a car crash (No, ). Amy (with Fry's head attached) and a man she's on a date with have the following exchange;

Date: "Do you want to go back to my house for coffee?"
Amy: "I don't really like coffee."
Date: "Neither do I..."
Amy: "I feel a little tipsy."
Date: "Let me...pick up the cheque."
This trope is then played as the date's credit card falls.

    • Another episode has Fry's girlfriend from the past drop a coffee cup. It breaks, but then fixes itself. Being afraid of the future as it is, this just freaks her out more.
  • This is one of many tropes frequently played up for melodrama on Clone High. In one example, Abe falls asleep during a standardized test, dropping his #2 pencil slowly to the floor, where it shatters (?) into four pieces.

Live Action TV

  • Babylon 5, with a snow globe.
  • Heroes.
    • Averted at the end of Season 2. The vial with strain 138 A is telekinetically caught by Peter right before it falls to the ground. This happens only because the writers' strike caused the devs to end the season prematurely; in the original version, the vial crashes to the floor in a spectacular display of this trope.
    • Played straight to the point of parody in season 1, when Sylar attempts to telekinetically carve open Peter Petrelli's skull, and his Peek-a-Bangs fall to the ground with a disproportionately loud boom.
  • The last shot of the pilot episode of Sliders showed Quinn's wine glass falling and shattering in slow motion.
  • In the first episode of series two of Supernatural, Sam drops his paper coffee cup upon seeing his father's corpse.
  • The West Wing has this when Zoey is kidnapped. For added pathos (or Narm), the news is delivered while the Bartlets have family friends visiting and just after Zoey graduated from college; the President of the United States is looking through a collection of baby photos of Zoey as he's told about it, and they're what he drops.
    • Immediately followed by a Dramatic Shattering as the drink he was holding in his other hand smashes, in fast motion, on top of the stack of pictures, as he looks around at Abbey with a stricken look on his face. It may also be worth noting that the drop and shatter are how we know that he's learned the news, since there's no sound in this part of the scene.
  • When Kevin Spacey hosted Saturday Night Live a second time, he did a skit parodying his movie The Usual Suspects. In it Andy Samburg tells Kevin an elaborate story about why he couldn't make it to a rehearsal. Kevin believes but after Andy leaves, Kevin drops his mug in slo-mo just like Chazz Palmenteri did in the movie and he notices that everything in his dressing room was a part of Samburg's story.
  • The pilot of Leverage has Eliot beat the everloving crap out of four armed goons in less time than it takes Hardison to drop a duffel bag, in slo-mo, to the floor.

Web Original

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