History Main / DeathByFallingOver

*** This case hinges upon proving that the prosecution's claim that he managed to identify his killer in spite of the broken neck is stupid. This is much harder than it should be.

* The first death of a villain in DieHard uses this trope, when John [=McClane=] gets in a brawl with one of the terrorists, before both of them tumble down a flight of stairs. Of course, John, being John [=McClane=], survives, but the terrorist doesn't.
* The husband in DeathBecomesHer pushes his wife down the stairs. Of course, since she just took an immortality potion, breaking her neck in the fall doesn't kill her, it just causes her neck to twist around 180 degrees, making it hard for her to see where she's going.

* Sorta used in NadiaTheSecretOfBlueWater, when the BigBad foces Nadia, Jean and others to stand up on top of ''very'' tall pillars. At some point, said BigBad activates a remote control and moves the pillar Jean is standing on; he plummets to the ground and dies. The spirits of the Atlanteans that are trapped in Nadia's Blue Water rebel, and use their remaining powers to revive Jean.

[[AC:{{Mythology}} And {{Religion}}]]
* This one even shows up in TheBible. In Chapter 4 of the First Book of Samuel, when the Hebrew judge Eli learned the Philistines had stolen the Ark of the Covenant, he fell over out of shock and broke his neck.
** {{Justified}}, as Eli was on top of a wall at the moment, 70-80 years old, and blind.
*** Top of the wall is enough.
* People who actually read the New Testament will note that there's, in fact, two conflicting notes on how Judas died. The first, in the Gospel of Matthew, depicts him as committing suicide after betraying Jesus. The other, in the Acts of the Apostles, said he used the bribe to buy a farm, but fell down and, to quote, ''Burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out.'' Yeah, there's a reason everyone goes with the first one...
** The most fun explanation is that he hung himself, then the priests used the money to bury him in the potter's field, and dropped him when they got there. Dead people's structural integrity isn't so good.
** Another theory was that he buys the farm, hangs himself there, ''then'' the rope snaps and he falls.
** Is that where the phrase "bought the farm" comes from?

[[AC:WesternAnimation]]
* Maude Flanders in ''TheSimpsons''.
** Although she did fall off the back of sports stadium.
* {{Chaotic}} had one of the most [[{{Narm}} Narmtatic ones of all]]. No one actually died since it was a drone match, but in one of the battles after a Tom's opponent super sized himself Tom beat him by making him fall on his back from a standing position. Made even worst since Tom used the super size power in the previous episode to survive a hundred foot plunge.
* This is how ''AeonFlux'' dies in one of her episodes.

* BillBryson ponders the death toll from falls on stairs in his history of domesticity ''At Home''

* Bobby Leach, who rode in a barrel over Niagara Falls, died this way when he slipped on an orange peel in the street.

* In ''[[{{Discworld/GuardsGuards}} Guards! Guards!]]'', the villain is confronted by the Night Watch and Captain Vimes tells new recruit Carrot to "throw the book at him." Carrot, having been raised by dwarfs and thus being not quite used to metaphor, does exactly that, and the villain falls down a big hole in the floor:
-->"What a way to go. Killed by a wossname. A metaphor."\\
"I don't know, looked like the ground to me."
** No, that's a disney villain death

* Subverted in SakuraGari. Souma's servant and lover Terashima ''is'' pushed down a flight of stairs by Souma's half-sister Sakurako, but that's not what kills him. ''[[ManOnFire Catching fire]]'', however...

* In SakuraGari, Sakurako killed Souma's servant and lover Terashima by pushing the kid down the stairs, then burning him to death.

* Eli, High Priest of Israel in the Old Testament dies this way, by collapsing from his throne and smacking his head when told that the Ark of the Covenant had been captured and taken by the Phillistines.

* This one even shows up in TheBible. In Chapter 4 of the First Book of Samuel, when the Hebrew judge Eli learned the Philistines had stolen the Ark of the Covenant, he fell over out of shock and broke his neck.
** {{Justified}}, as Eli was on top of a wall at the moment, 70-80 years old, and blind.

--> The most dangerous part of the house – in fact, one of the most hazardous environments anywhere – is the stairs. No one knows exactly how dangerous the stairs are because records are curiously deficient. In Britain, fairly scrupulous stair-fall figures were kept until 2002, but then the Department for Trade and Industry decided that keeping track of these things was an extravagance it could no longer afford. The last set of figures indicated that a rather whopping 306,166 Britons were injured seriously enough in stair falls to require medical attention, so it is clearly more than a trifling matter. Even on the most conservative calculations, however, stairs rank as the second most common cause of accidental death, well behind car accidents but far ahead of drownings, burns and other similarly grim misfortunes.