Destination Defenestration

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
(Redirected from Thrown Through a Window)
There goes Chad from Accounting...
It's not the first time I've been thrown out a window, and it won't be the last! What can I say, I'm a rebel.
—Old Man, The Emperor's New Groove

The sad fate of many a Mook...mostly because it looks really cool. A sufficiently Badass characters punches, throws, or in any other way applies the force necessary in order to toss someone else through a window. A loud clangy window with shards rippling everywhere.

How we see this trope typically depends on who is doing it. If a heroic character does it, we actually see them throw someone out the window, but typically not the very messy landing. With villains it's the other way around- to emphasize the cruelty. An ambiguously portrayed character may perform this feat, but you'll have to Take Our Word for It, since showing this trope usually inspires some sort of positive or negative feeling with whoever is doing it.

When someone does this with an object that's Appliance Defenestration. See Super Window Jump for when someone does this to themselves. Compare Railing Kill. Might overlap with Disney Villain Death. This is one answer to The Window or the Stairs.

See here for a full 7 and a half minutes of compiled Defenestrations and Window Jumps.

Examples of Destination Defenestration include:

Anime and Manga

  • A small (almost human sized) titan is kicked out a window in episode 4 of season 2 of Attack on Titan.
  • In Beelzebub, Oga is told to do this to a Mook by one of the school's gang leaders. Oga punches the gang leader through the window instead.
  • In The Cat Returns, just.. don't irritate the Cat King, whether you're performing for him or breaking out in hysterical laughter from another act. (Both victims are tossed through high windows with no glass, but naturally, as cats, they're okay, and show up sitting against the wall in a later scene)
  • Cowboy Bebop has a very memorable scene where Spike is thrown out of the window by Vicious. He then falls in slow motion with the glass raining down alongside him, as soft music plays and fragmented flashbacks reveals their past together.
    • ... And he casually flips a grenade through the window as he falls, ensuring a world of hurt for his tormentor.
  • Bellamy, on his first appearance in One Piece, does this to some powerful pirate after he "cheated" in a game of poker.
    • Also, Elder Nyon gets kicked out of a window by Hancock. Good thing Nyon is very Made of Iron, so she doesn't really get hurt.
  • In New Grappler Baki, an escaped villain who wants to fight Baki kidnaps his girlfriend at Yujiro's behest (way to go dad) to induce him to fight at his fiercest, but comes to regret being in a room so high up. He's only saved by some previously established improbable climbing skills.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's, during their duel Divine uses one of his monsters to pin Carly Nagisa to a large glass window, hurting her badly with electrical attacks before actually sending her through the glass. The impact kills her instantly. Although she recovers... Well, not entirely.
  • Played for Laughs in Hetalia, when Austria freaks out when young Italy sneaks into his bed and ends up kicking him off a window. It's supposed to be an allusion to one of the Defenestrations of Prague mentioned below.
  • Conan from Detective Conan gets thrown off a burning house's window in the Moonlight Sonata arc. Good thing it's a first floor window so the kid isn't that badly hurt. Bad thing? The one who threw him out, Seiji Asou aka Narumi Asai aka the Sympathetic Murderer, did that to save Conan from dying with him. Last thing we know, he burns to death alongside his old home, playing the Moonlight Sonata in his dad's old piano, as Conan and Ran can only sadly watch.
    • Also, several murders have the victims being thrown off windows and balconies, or put in circumstances that will make them fall off. In fact, during the Night Baron case, Conan gets thrown off again by a killer of the week: this time it's a very high hotel balcony, but he lands in the pool of the place. Later, the victim of the week is then killed in a similar way... plus being Impaled with Extreme Prejudice.
    • Subverted in a case where it looked that a talented illustrator had commited suicide by jumping off her balcony... but it was a rouse from her killer who staged a complex scenario to trick the police into believing she has killed herself. Conan saw through his act soon, obviously.
  • Rin Souma from Fruits Basket. She actually survives, though she is seriously wounded. It helps that she was thrown from a "mere" second floor.
  • In the opening sequence of the Akira movie, little guy Kaisuke knocks a rival gang member right through a window, reminding us that being Ambiguously Gay doesn't mean you can't kick major ass.
  • In one early chapter of Chrono Crusade, Chrono deals with Rosette's not waking up no matter how had Azmaria tries by picking her up and tossing her out the window. Rosette wakes up when she hits the pond, climbs back through the window, and spits a fish out onto the floor.

Comic Books

  • The DC Universe has Defenestrator, a loony superhero armed with a window frame. He throws criminals through it.
  • Bane does this to hilarious effect in Secret Six #9: He gets a hold of a mook and is about to execute his Signature Move when the mook pleads with him "Don't crack my spine!" Bane, out of respect "for the man this city belonged to" - Batman - chucks him out the high-rise window instead.
  • In one issue of The Punisher, a Corrupt Corporate Executive presses Frank's Berserk Button by dealing in slave trade. When he confronts her in her office he tries to throw her out the window but it turns out to be reinforced glass. So he slams her repeatedly against it until the window frame breaks.
  • The events of Watchmen are set off by somebody throwing The Comedian out a window. The rest of the plot follows up on the "why".
  • Spider-Man does this a lot. In a famous scene [dead link], he does it to Wolverine. Being Wolvie, he just stands up and walks back up...
  • In an issue of Transmetropolitan, Spider Jerusalem threatens to have his bodyguard defenestrate someone. "And you wouldn't want anything to happen to your fenestrates, would you?"
  • In the 2010 relaunch of Birds of Prey, White Canary has just finished her Evil Gloating and is starting to leave when this happens:

Black Canary: Hey Eggwhite. Guess... guess what I just noticed? Both your hands are occupied. [Canary Cries her through a window]

  • Two instances occur in Sin City: Dwight is thrown out of a window by Manute in A Dame To Kill For. Manute is likewise tossed out of a window by Wallace in Hell And Back.
  • Happens in Sandman: World's End when the corrupt Carnifex of Aurelia gets thrown throught the window of an attic crypt by his undead predeccessor into his Karmic Death.
  • In Power Girl, villain Satanna goes to Dr. Sivanna to get a weapon to revenge herself on Power Girl and gives him her body as payment. Afterwards he attempts some minor small-talk and she, because she and he are villains, does not feel it is necessary to disguise the fact that she felt this was a heartily disgusting event which she did solely as part of a business exchange. He agrees with her, then points out that since they are bad guys he no longer cares about her desires since she gave him what he wanted, and throws her out the window.
  • Superman has had to rescue people that have had this happen to them on multiple occasions.


Fan Works


Film - Animated

  • Early on in The Emperor's New Groove, this is the fate of an elderly man who accidentally interrupts Emperor Kuzco's dance routine. Other Rule of Funny Anachronism Stew notwithstanding, this takes place before glass windows were invented, so there was no glass to break, and the old guy lands and gets tangled up in some banners. At the end of the film, when Kuzco (now much less of a jerk) apologizes, the old man responds with the page-quote above.
  • During the climax of WALL-E, just right before Captain McCrea finally shuts down AUTO for good, he actually punches GO-4 out of the cockpit window, causing him to get smashed to pieces upon hitting the floor just below it.
  • Stitch actually throws Jumba out of a window near the end of Lilo and Stitch just right before hitting him with a VW Beetle.


Film - Live-Action

  • In Beverly Hills Cop, a group of Victor Maitland's thugs throw Axel Foley through a window in the ground floor of a building. It shatters spectacularly.
  • Die Hard: Just ask John McClane what he did to Hans Gruber, or better yet, ask his brother.
    • You could even say that he inverted this trope with himself, using a fire hose as a rappelling rope, using his gun to weaken the glass first and then nearly has the non-inverted trope happen to himself when he forgets that a falling hose reel plus hose is quite heavy.
  • Not shown, but there was much talk in Pulp Fiction about Marcellus Wallace throwing "Tony Rocky Horror" out of a fifth storey window - supposedly for giving his wife a foot massage, though Mia denied it.
  • Hilariously performed in The Shadow. Except in this case, the Shadow actually tries to save the Mongol warrior he's interrogating, but the Mongol throws himself off "to serve his Khan." Cut to Moe, the cab driver, reading a book called "Improving Your Psychic Abilities." He says, "I sense someone's coming" just as the Mongol lands right beside his cab!
  • In Sha Po Lang, this happens to The Hero.
  • The Mystery Science Theater 3000 movie Soultaker features this trope complete with Slow Motion. Unfortunately, this makes the fall looks more comical than a threatening show of force, and is riffed mercilessly as the guy slowly falls down.
    • Not to mention Danger! Death Ray, where a mook attempts to take out the hero by - wait for it - leaping at him as he stands in front of a window. The hero merely performs a Nonchalant Dodge, then says "What a shame." The guys, of course, have a field day with the leap, then express disappointment at the lack of a Bond One-Liner.
    • In Puma Man, both the Big Bad and the sidekick start the movie by tracking down and defenestrating people who matched the biological profile of Puma Man (because his cat-like powers would allow him to survive the fall). The only difference is, the villain is the one who expresses something like remorse, saying that he hopes they've found the right one for the sake of the innocent men yet to be "tested".
  • In The Terminator, this is what the Terminator does to nearly everyone he fights. Sometimes he picks someone up and looks around for a window to toss them through.
    • Mocked in Terminator 2, where he attempts to throw someone through an unbreakable window in the asylum.
    • Also in Terminator 2, the T-800 is pitched through a plate glass store window by the T-1000. It doesn't slow him for long.
  • This happens a lot in RoboCop, to bad guys and Robo alike, the most famous example being Dick Jones. Another memorable one is when Robo tosses Clarence Boddicker through several glass windows while Mirandizing him.
  • In Dirty Work, parodied when Mitch is thrown through a bar window, then, as if unfazed by this, immediately pulls out his tape recorder, and says, "Note to self; learn to fight!"
  • Max Shreck of Batman Returns pushes his assistant Selina Kyle out a window in an attempt to murder her. It doesn't take, mainly due to Selina being revived by her cat Miss Kitty and her feline friends. . .
  • In Blade Runner, Zhora is dramatically defenestrated, though she was probably 'retired' by the preceding gunshots.
  • Done with the Prince Edward's lover in Braveheart.
  • In Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith Palpatine uses his Force Lightning to shoot Mace Windu out the window (and it's a rare case where the glass had already been broken).
    • And in The Empire Strikes Back, during their light saber duel in Cloud City Darth Vader sends Luke out through a window using heavy pieces of equipment shoved at him with the Force.
  • The death of Wong in Infernal Affairs.
  • This happens to Franklin Bean in Cadence. Humorously, if you watch closely, as the cameras change the POV, Franklin falls out the window facing one way, but ends up landing facing the opposite direction.
  • In Foxes, one of the main characters rides his skateboard by a bully, and pushes him (explosively) into the plate glass window of a supermarket so the kid he's picking on can escape.
  • Father Malius gets harpooned through a window in Happy Hell Night.
  • In Hancock, the titular character does this to several mooks who are attacking him in a hospital.
  • Also in Ransom, by the most awesome Scottish person ever, Mel Gibson, Mel throws the bad guy trough a window pane. Subversion here is, it actually buggers him up!
  • Kick-Ass: Big Bad shot out the window. And then exploded. WITH A ROCKET-PROPELLED GRENADE.
  • The fourth |Mission Impossible has an assassin being killed that way. Bonus Points for happening at the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world! Also justified by the fact that the window was removed from the room.
  • At the end of the forgettable Charles Bronson movie Assassination the Big Bad behind the attempted murder of the First Lady gets thrown through a window. We then hear a radio report saying he "died of a heart attack" despite the fact that any number of people must have seen the incident, and the injuries would be more consistent with a suicide or accidental fall.


Literature

  • Happens to a Yuuzhan Vong Mook in Rebel Stand, courtesy of Kell Tainer. Except the panel doesn't shatter - it pops free of the structure and falls with him.
  • David Eddings enjoys playing with this trope in his works. In The Belgariad, this is the fate of Silk's nemesis Brill, after a short but ugly battle atop Rak Cthol (well, technically he was thrown over a parapet). Made into a combined CMOA and CMOF by Silk's nonchalant response when questioned about it by Belgarath.

Garion: "It was Brill."
Belgarath: "Again?! What was he doing?"
Silk: "The last I saw of him, he was trying to learn how to fly."
Belgarath: (looking puzzled) "Maybe it'll come to him in time."
Silk: "He doesn't really have all that long." (sound of crashing from far below) "Does bouncing count?"

    • Later, in The Malloreon, the sorcerer Senji relates to the protagonists how the Melcene University, upon learning that he appeared to be immortal, decided to test it by hiring someone to throw him out a window. This turned out very poorly for the defenestrator.
    • Also played with in The Tamuli. When a character is asked what she did with a mook, she replies that she defenestrated him. The character who asked looks ill until she explains that she threw him out the window.
  • Brazilian writer Luis Fernando Verissimo likes writing about weird-sounding words. One of his texts was about "defenestration", and he tries imagining how the word might actually be used in the everyday life (brutally injured man in the sidewalk points up: "I was defenestrated...", and a bystander: "Poor man! And then they threw him out the window!").
  • Jon Spiro wishes he could still do this, but if you throw an employee out a window these days, he'll phone his lawyer on the way down.
  • The historical backstory of the Vorkosigan Saga includes Mad Emperor Yuri's Defenestration of the Privy Council. (Referred to by various characters but never actually portrayed or described in detail.)
  • In Max Barry's Machine Man, this happens to Better Future's Corrupt Corporate Executive Manager when he jokes about Lola's EMP Heart Trauma.
  • Discworld:
    • In Men at Arms, Detritus throws Cuddy out a window to go find help when they're both locked in a freezing-cold ground floor room.
    • In Jingo, Vimes throws a Klatchian woman out a window to save her when the embassy is on fire. Detritus catches her.
  • This is what ultimately happens to Lysa Arryn in A Song of Ice and Fire. Made more ironic by how she threatened to do this to Sansa when she believed she was trying to seduce her second husband, Sansa's "tutor" Littlefinger. Who's the one who pushed Lysa to her death.
    • Made even more ironic because Littlefinger was the one trying to seduce Sansa.
    • And then there's what Jaime Lannister does to that kid at the tower due to him stumbling upon his affair with his sister Cersei. "The things I do for love," indeed.
  • Arthur C. Clarke's short story "The Defenestration of Ermintrude Inch". Collected in Tales from the White Hart, which are framed as tales heard but-not-quite-believed by an Expy of Clarke himself and told by the irascible and enigmatic Harry Purvis at The White Hart, a fictional pub near Fleet Street at which scientists, engineers, science writers, and science-fiction writers would congregate. "The Defenestration of Ermintrude Inch" is story of a couple in 1950s Britain, in which the husband, Osbert, accuses his wife Ermintrude of talking too much—specifically 100 times as much as he does. Being a sound engineer for the BBC, Osbert sets up a word-counter, which works at first, but his wife figures out a way to make it so that Osbert has the higher count, which infuriates him, particularly after he figures out that she'd surreptitiously recorded his speech and had him playing on a loop while he was not at home. Ermintrude falls out a window shortly afterward, although it isn't clear if she's pushed. Shortly after the tale wraps up, a woman comes into the pub and chews Harry Purvis out--to which he replies meekly, "Yes, Ermintrude."
  • In the second book of Ranger's Apprentice, Alyss and Halt go on a diplomatic mission at a local baron's castle- who turns out to be an arrogant, sexist pig. When the baron in question makes the massive folly of insulting Alyss by ripping up her credentials, Halt throws him out the window into the moat. A pair of workers emptying privies into the moat don't even flinch.


Live-Action TV

  • Pictured atop this image is Lost, when John Locke is spectacularly thrown out a window by his own father and becomes paralyzed as a result.
  • In Firefly, Malcolm Reynolds gets thrown out of a bar window at the beginning of "The Train Job". Subverted that the "window" is actually a hologram, not glass, and doesn't shatter.
  • In The Young Ones episode "Nasty", Vyvyan threatens to put the next person who asks if they have a video through the window. When Neil asks, Vyvyan subverts this trope by ripping the window off the wall, and smashing it over Neil's head.
  • In a recent Saturday Night Live sketch, President Barack Obama, when antagonized by his Republican rivals and egged on by Rahm Emanuel, "hulks out" and turns into "The Rock" Obama, and throws his enemies out the Oval Office window—though, as John McCain is assured, "Relax, it's only the first floor."
  • In the "I Was Made to Love You" episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Spike gets thrown out the window of a college house party by a robot looking for the man she is programmed to love. It's seen as funny in this case, since Spike is, at that point, a character that the audience loves to hate, and of course vampires generally can't be killed by glass unless they get a really bad cut around the neck region.
  • In Heroes, Peter Petrelli gets telekinetically thrown out of a window. That counts, right?
    • Matt Parkman is tossed through a window by Jessica.
  • Angel shoves a vamp out the window in the pilot episode. He bursts in to flames, of course. No cleanup required!
    • What about the poor chair? It was a good chair. Never did no harm to nobody...
    • Happened to Angel himself in the fifth season. Illyria easily tossed him out of the window.
    • And then she stops time, grabs her minion, and walks out of the building before he even hits the ground—they actually pass him, suspended in midair, while they're leaving.
    • Spike gets tossed out of a fifth-floor window by a Slayer. At this point, he's almost jaded.

Spike: Just thought I'd see what it was like to bounce off the pavement. Pretty much what I expected.

  • In Jekyll, Bejamin Lennox and Christopher Browning find out the hard way that annoying Hyde is a very bad idea:

Hyde: I'm wondering about that wee window up there and if you'd fit through it at speed.
(Christopher stands to attention.)
Benjamin: This is Christopher... and in the event of you attempting any violence on my person, Mr Hyde, Christopher's going to take an attitude, and believe me when I tell you when you don't wanna be there when Christopher takes an attitude. [...] Now, there's two things we can do, here: I can tell you what the hell I'm talkin' about, or you can try an throw Christopher out that itty-bitty window. I don't think Christopher'll fit.
(Gilligan Cut to Christopher, bloody and covered in bits of glass, hauling himself off the pavement.)

  • The Dark Angel episode, "Art Attack" features this as a major plot point. It happens, it's threatened, and it's mentioned by name.
  • In the MacGyver episode "Phoenix Under Siege", the villain of the week happens to be a martial arts expert and makes a jump-kick at our hero in a high-rise building, but misses and ends up crashing through the window instead.
  • Happens in reverse (yes, reverse) in Red Dwarf when the crew end up on an alternate Earth where everything goes backwards. Lister is propelled into a broken window, restoring the glass, and is caught by the thugs he's fighting.
  • In a Super Sentai teamup special, Tetsu is undercover and really, really doesn't need Eiji revealing that he's SPD. So Tetsu pretends that Eiji is an enemy, and pitches him out of a window to shut him up. It's even more hilarious than it sounds.
  • In the WKRP in Cincinnati episode "Hoodlum Rock," the polite and well-dressed but evil rock group Scum Of The Earth throw a bellboy out of the window of the hotel they're staying at. But...

Blood: What floor is this on?
Johnny Fever: The ground floor.
Blood: Pity.

  • In Sherlock after a mook hurt Mrs. Hudson, Sherlock captures him. Then he calls the police to report him, requests an ambulance an details injuries the guy doesn't have (yet), then states that the man fell out the window. He then proceeds to throw the mook out the window.

Lestrade: And exactly how many times did he fall out the window?
Sherlock: Oh, it's all a bit of a blur.

Professional Wrestling

  • This played a part in one of the most famous tag team breakups in wrestling history, when Shawn Michaels threw his Rockers teammate Marty Jannetty through the glass window of Brutus Beefcake's Barbershop.
  • There's an infamous series of spots (including a couple of nasty looking botches) from a WWE(then F) match between Kurt Angle and Shane McMahon at the King of the Ring in 2001—Shane ended up being thrown through three glass windows that made up part of the set, when the glass didn't break they simply repeated the spot (almost always a big no-no in wrestling) making the whole sequence that more brutal and deranged.
    • It's usually a big no-no because it makes it look scripted (which it more-or-less is) rather than free-flowing (which is how it's supposed to look.) They got away with it because Kurt Angle had quite obviously been trying to do just this, rather than a spur-of-the-moment thing. Adding to the brutality, he was throwing Shane with a belly-to-belly suplex, which is done by flinging someone upside-down over your head. So when Shane bounced off the plexiglass, he landed on the back of his head and neck, twice, before the glass broke. Then got sent through two more panes.


Sports

  • Happens from time to time in ice hockey. More likely in smaller arenas that use cheaper glass but even specially-designed NHL-quality glass can shatter with a hard enough hit.


Video Games

  • In Metroid Prime 3 the Berserker Lord tosses a Federation soldier through the window in order to herald the boss's entrance.
    • It's also worth considering that the "window" was an external panoramic viewport overlooking the docking bay of a starship. An external docking bay. This implies that it was very thick tempered glass capable of holding an atmosphere, and the Lord throws the poor Red Shirt through it so hard that it shatters into a bajillion tiny pieces.
  • The video game adaptation of Minority Report allowed the player to do this. It was such a fun highlight of an otherwise lousy game that Nintendo Power named it best Guilty Pleasure of 2002.
  • In No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, It's possible for the final boss in his second form to instantly kill Travis by punching him out the window.
    • That form of the boss also meets his end that way, before going One-Winged Angel.
  • Mass Effect 2 invokes this trope, while also proving that QTEs can be fun.

Eclipse Trooper: I've got nothing more to say to you. If you-
*TROPE'D*
Shepard: How 'bout "goodbye."

  • The first Crash Bandicoot pulls one of these off during its minimal backstory.
  • In The Force Unleashed, Starkiller gets stabbed, thrown across the room a few times, then thrown out the window INTO SPACE all by someone he thought was on his side.
  • In Floor 13, you direct a secret organization whose only purpose is to keep the Government in power. Fail either in the goal or in being secretive enough, and a certain Mr. Garcia shows up to throw you out the window... from the aforementioned thirteenth floor.
  • How Belger is dispatched in the original Final Fight game.
  • The final boss fight of Def Jam Fight For New York takes place in an office with three large windows. Chances are quite good that one of the fighters will go through and plunge to their death. This is, in fact, the easiest way to kill Crow.
  • At one point in God Hand, Gene boots a mook out a window. He then helps a second mook line up with the window before doing the same to him.
  • MadWorld: Succubus Elise is SPANKED out a cathedral window.

Holmes: Out the window with her wings clipped! Now that's a classy kill... DID YOU SEE THAT?! THAT WAS AWESOME!!!
Creely: Oh yeah! Jack did a great job!

  • Oni has a pretty hilarious take on this in the third level. Konoko is at the top of a tower in a factory complex. A squad of TCTF troops is outside, being pinned down by fire from Syndicate goons in the main lobby. Konoko radios to say she'll be right down to help them when a previously-defeated Syndicate goon stands back up.

Demo Trooper: "Fool! I've just triggered my detonation harness! In five seconds this entire tower will be vaporised!"
Konoko looks at the trooper, out the window, and back to him. Cut to an exterior shot of the tower, where the trooper smashes out the window, falls through the skylight of the lobby, and detonates.
TCTF Officer: "Uh, roger that. Foyer secured."


Web Comics

  • Gilgamesh of Girl Genius does this to Othar Tryggvassen, Gentleman Adventurer! with a swinging battering ram, smashing him through a window while fighting him in Castle Wulfenbach.

Othar: "FOUL!"

    • Gilgamesh even told Agatha "Trust me. When you get to know him better, you'll want to throw him out a window yourself". Not 40 pages later...
    • Strinbeck clearly looks like ballast dragging the ship down here.
    • And another cretin bites the clouds. Well, he called for a "show of power" himself. Say what you want about Tweedle, but yes, he knows the beast.
  • Order of the Stick #355: Roy is fighting Sabine when all her magical enhancements wear off. She surrenders and attempts to seduce him instead, telling him he can do anything he wants with her now, so he cheerfully uses the privilege to toss her out of the warehouse to the street below.
    • In the prequel book, Start Of Darkness, Xykon is strangling Right-Eye, but after Redcloak stands up to him, he merely throws him into Redcloak, who is standing in front of a window. They fall out, covered in cuts from the window.
    • Haley gets knocked out of a window by Tarquin in this comic... and later apologizes for her defenstration in this one.
  • In Goblins, Minmax defenstrates Dellyn Goblinslayer after he finds out that he rapes his yuan-ti slave nightly.
  • The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: "Now tell me where Ronald is before I super-size your pain for only thirty-nine cents more!"
  • Nova from Overlord Academy reacts to people hitting her Berserk Button by doing this.
  • Two of the Time Travellers get defenestrated in the last panel of this Dresden Codak strip. The Tokamak twins demonstrated why they wear lightning bolts on their shirts.
  • Hark! A Vagrant's Strong Female Characters give us...post-coital defenestration!
  • In El Goonish Shive, {{{1}}} were both blown out what was partly window. Both survived this and falling one story down to the ground after, both being tougher than normal humans.
  • In chapter 33 of Drowtales, Shodun, an agent of the Nidraa'chal, does this to Sandaur.
  • Hejibits: [1]

Web Original

Western Animation

  • Roddy MacStew is thrown out by Gutierrez in the origins episode of Freakazoid!. He survives, but leaves a him-shaped hole in the snow (it was Christmas eve).
  • In the pilot episode of The Boondocks, 8 year-old Riley fires a shotgun at Ed Wuncler the Third, knocking him through a window onto the lawn in the middle of a garden party. The twist? He asks Riley to shoot him, to prove how strong his kevlar vest is. Apparently it helps him survive a two-story fall in a pile of broken glass, too.
    • A vest that is strong enough to stop a bullet, it can stop shards of glass, and a two story fall is quite survivable if you don't hit your head.
  • The Spectacular Spider-Man has this happen a lot, one episode even starts with it.

Spider-Man: "The dictionary defines defenestration as the act of throwing a person or thing out a window... Really not my favorite word."

  • Happens to Doctor Feelbad (an ambulance monster truck wrestler) in the Pixar animated short "Monster Truck Mater."

Doctor Feelbad: Your next stop is the hospital!(Tormentor (Mater's monster truck alter ego) pulls him onto the ropes from behind the ring)
Tormentor: Don't worry, I'll git ya some flowers. (he lets go, and as a result Doctor Feelbad is thrown out of the arena and into a hospital, where the referee then counts to three)

  • In the Swat Kats episode "The Metallikats", the titular villains do this to Deputy Mayor Callie Briggs because she was the one who denied their parole. Fortunately for Callie, the SWAT Kats show up just in time for one of their Big Damn Heroes moments.
  • Happens occasionally in Superman the Animated Series, giving Superman somebody to rescue. At least once Clark Kent is thrown out of a high window, and it takes a well-placed open manhole and quick costume change for him to preserve his secret identity.
  • In the My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic episode "Putting Your Hoof Down", Angel Bunny does this to Fluttershy because she wasn't able to make the salad just so. What the hell, smeerp? What the hell?


Real Life

  • It's common enough that someone came up with a word for it. There are at least two notable Defenestrations in Prague, the second of which is the Trope Namer since the word "defenestration" itself was coined to describe the event. (This particular defenestration started the Thirty Years' War.) There's at least one more (when the Dirty Commies showed up); apparently, Czechs don't believe that it's a revolution until somebody gets thrown out a window.
    • More specifically, at the beginning of the Thirty Years War a Hapsburg official was tossed out a window but survived. The Catholics said Mary saved him, the Protestants said it was a heap of garbage. Now that one thinks of it one supposes both could be true for all we know.
    • There was also one (rarely mentioned, though rather bloody and significant) between two mentioned, in 1483, and some also call death of Jan Masaryk "fourth defenestration of Prague". Its kind of national sport.
  • There was also the defenestration of Queen Dowager Jezebel sometime around 850 BCE (although it wasn't called "defenestration" at the time). Still, makes it older that, well, a lot of things.
    • It's also a stunningly powerful aversion of the hero/villain dichotomy with regard to how horrifically it's described. She hits the ground, falls apart like Judas and gets eaten by dogs.
  • During the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping's son, Deng Pufang was tortured by the Red Guards before being thrown out of a third floor window at the Beijing University; he survived, but was left a paraplegic. While neither openly denounced the revolutionaries, nor Mao for that matter, there are rumors that Deng Xiaoping always held a grudge towards Mao over the incident.
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