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Disney Villain Death / Disney

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https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/disneydeath_tropenamer.png
And then along came Zeus! He hurled his thunderbolts!

Yes, since Disney's the Trope Namer of Disney Villain Death and its largest user, it needs to have a trope subpage for itself.

In each folder, the examples are listed in rough chronological order.

As a Death Trope, all spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware!

    open/close all folders 

Original Disney media:

    Films — Animated 
  • The Evil Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs officially begins the storied tradition: the cliff she's standing on is struck by lightning, causing it to collapse, and the huge boulder she was trying to push onto the dwarfs falls down after her. As the dwarfs look down on the scene in shock, the vultures that have been following her descend to have first pick at her unseen remains.
  • Subverted in Bambi, where Ronno makes a bouncing descent down a hill to land in a river (and gets up) when defeated by Bambi.
  • Fun and Fancy Free:
    • In "Bongo", it's zig-zagged: Bongo and Lockjaw both dive down a waterfall during their duel. Lockjaw survives the fall, but gets stuck in rapids, and the log they were fighting on conks him over the head several times. But Bongo survives due to Chekhov's Skill.
    • In "Mickey and the Beanstalk", Willie the Giant falls to his death, just like in the original story. Subverted in its theatrical release as part of Fun and Fancy Free and at least one television rebroadcast: Willie is shown to have survived... and made it to Los Angeles somehow!
  • A strange thing happens in Cinderella. Lady Tremaine and Cinderella's step sisters don't really get punished at all note  But their Right-Hand Cat Lucifer, who is mean even by Disney cat standards, terrorizing the mice and committing petty evil when Lady Tremaine isn't watching, falls from the window of Cinderella's tower. (The comics and sequels, however, show him still alive, minus one life). It's best to take the sequel's word for it. Cats (a) can right themselves in midair, and (b) go limp upon reaching terminal velocity, at which point their legs splay out and their skin stretches into a makeshift parachute, meaning that their odds of survival are better from a very long fall than a somewhat shorter one (that's still long enough to be life-threatening).
  • Subverted at the end of Lambert the Sheepish Lion; the wolf actually ends up being bumped off a cliff by the titular lion. However, it's then revealed that the wolf actually survived the fall since he immediately grabbed onto a nearby branch with berries growing on it.
  • Subverted in Peter Pan; Captain Hook does fall, directly into the jaws of a crocodile, but he bursts out and runs away yelling. He makes it into the sequel, too. Played straight with one of his henchmen, however, after he messes up Hook's song at one point.
  • Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty pulls her One-Winged Angel act, is killed by Prince Philip with a thrown sword (but it's okay because she's a dragon), and falls off a cliff into blazing brambles. The brambles were Maleficent's own creation and rather clearly set ablaze by her dragonfire.
  • 101 Dalmatians: Cruella de Vil crashes her Cool Car into her goons' truck, sending them both plummeting off the cliff they were on. Oddly, despite the fact that the cars are totaled at the bottom of the ravine, all three are alive and Cruella is in good enough shape to throw a hissy-fit. She survives in the book as well.
  • The Horned King in The Black Cauldron is violently sucked into the very same evil Soul Jar cauldron that he intended to use to conquer the world. Probably the most brutal death in the entire Disney canon. Whereas in the book, he was a depraved unstoppable warrior who melted after hearing his real name spoken aloud.
  • The Great Mouse Detective:
    • Ratigan — oh, Ratigan. He gets taken out after his sanity slipping Villainous Breakdown by Big Ben's bells ringing, causing him and Basil to fall from the clock tower. Of course, considering Ratigan's direct inspiration, Professor Moriarty, also got taken out by a fall, it's not much of a surprise.
      • Basil falling with him is a definite Shout-Out to the Sherlock Holmes story "The Final Problem". The difference is that Sherlock's fate was left ambiguous as to whether or not he survivednote ; Basil definitely does thanks to Chekhov's Gun.
    • Also happens to his sidekick Fidget, who is ironically a bat (with a crippled wing), although he gets thrown into the River Thames. That didn't stop Disney Adventures from doing a comic story where he had apparently survived and also did a Heel–Face Turn, though.
  • Exceptions to this trope in Disney movies tend to still be very extreme by Disney standards. Within the same year, we got the Family Unfriendly Deaths of Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (dissolved by his own Dip that is the only thing that can kill Toons) and Bill Sykes in Oliver & Company (saying he was run over by a subway train doesn't even begin to cover it) along with Sykes' henchdogs Roscoe and DeSoto get electrocuted on the subway's third rail.
  • Averted in The Little Mermaid (1989). It's played straight in the sequel, though — Ursula's sister freezes in a block of ice and sinks into a watery abyss.
  • Percival McLeach in The Rescuers Down Under escapes a group of crocodiles, only to prove no match for the Inevitable Waterfall that is the death of him. This is followed immediately by a fakeout when the heroes face the exact same chain of events. (It helps to have a whacking great eagle on your side.)
    • Interestingly, McLeach actually falls twice. First, he falls into the water as a result of losing his balance due to his pet jumping on him in pursuit of Bernard, who then uses his finger to push them off the cliff (avoiding the Self-Disposing Villain aspect of this trope as he deliberately pushes McLeach into the croc-infested water). His second fall, however, proves to be the end of him, as he's unable to escape the strong currents.
  • Beauty and the Beast:
  • Aladdin:
  • The Lion King:
    • The Lion King (1994):
      • Subverted with Scar, who survives his fall off Pride Rock. He meets Shenzi's hyena pack down there, and they're none too happy about being blamed for all his wrongdoings. Let's just say that Scar would probably have preferred the falling death... He ends up getting eaten alive by them in a Mook–Face Turn.
      • This is also Scar's fate in the photorealistic remake.
    • In The Lion King II: Simba's Pride:
      • Zira commits suicide by falling off a cliff into rapids, where she ends up drowning. Note that, in the original Darker and Edgier ending, she was intended to be seen letting go (some argue that this is still the case in the release — it's a bit ambiguous), and laughing on the way down.
      • Her son Nuka suffers a similar death, but it's not just the fall that kills him: the logs that fall after him are definitely a factor as well.
    • In the Season 3 premiere of Midquel/Sequel Series The Lion Guard, villainous cobra Ushari dies by falling into an active volcano (technically, he was pushed when Bunga tackled him to stop him from attacking Kion).
  • Since he's one of the most downright evil Disney villains of all (although he wasn't too bad in the original novel), Judge Claude Frollo's demise in The Hunchback of Notre Dame is particularly spectacular. He stands atop a gargoyle and is about to kill Quasimodo and Esmeralda — but the gargoyle's head cracks, causing him to lose his balance. As he grabs onto the gargoyle for dear life, it starts glowing and snarling at him, as if Satan himself was saying he deserved it. Realizing what's about to happen, an alarmed Frollo has only enough time to scream, "NO!!!", before the gargoyle finally breaks off and he plummets to his doom, landing in molten lead (note that in the original book, Quasimodo threw him off; see the novel's example in the "Literature" folder of the trope's main page for further information). This one is among the few examples where we actually see the impact: although it's still from extremely high up, you can clearly see a splash in the lake of lava below a few seconds later. Mere seconds before the gargoyle cracked, as he was about to slay Esmeralda and Quasimodo, Frollo gave some dramatic last words:
    Frollo: And He shall smite the wicked and plunge them into the fiery pit!note 
  • Hades' defeat in Hercules, sort of. As a god, he can't die, but he was defeated by being punched into the river Styx, where the souls of the dead dogpiled him. He couldn't fall to his death, so he fell into something that would trample him. Even though, some viewers still confused it as a death.
    Panic: He's not gonna be happy when he gets outta there...
    Pain: You mean "if" he gets outta there.
    Panic: "If". (grins) "If" is good.
  • In Mulan, the writers wrote Shan Yu's death via being launched with a giant firework into a large store of even more fireworks (in a kid-friendly way) specifically because they didn't want to have another falling death in a Disney movie, though some could say that it's more of a sideway-directed version. In a further subversion of the norm, the villain's demise was in no way an accident; protagonist Mulan and sidekick Mushu deliberately planned to kill him that way.
  • Clayton, Big Bad of Tarzan may have the most violent of all Disney Villain Deaths; after getting tangled in vines by Tarzan, he starts swinging wildly with his machete to cut himself free, not realizing that one of them looped around his neck. After inadvertently cutting the last one he was supporting himself with, Clayton plummets toward the ground, frantically trying to pull the vine off. The audience is then treated to seeing the vine go taut and an audible snap sound. Shortly after, a lightning strike illuminates a tree behind Tarzan where we briefly see the shadow of the dangling corpse, just to make it unambiguously clear he's dead.
    • A What Could Have Been ending averts the trope. In this ending, Tarzan confronts Clayton on Clayton's boat. A small fire breaks out when Tarzan frees all the gorillas that the hunter had captured. Tarzan then pins Clayton's shirt sleeve to an oil barrel with a knife (after choosing not to simply cut out his heart) and leaves him there as the oil from the barrel seeps towards the flames. The last shot is of the ship exploding. This ending was cut because the filmmakers felt that it went against Tarzan's message to Clayton: "Not a man like YOU!".
  • 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.
  • Dinosaur has Aladar ram one of the Carnotaurs off a cliff. Under circumstances that are very similar to those in The Land Before Time (detailed in the "Films — Animated" folder at the main page).
  • Subverted and parodied in The Emperor's New Groove; Yzma falls off the palace at the climax of the film — but there's a hilarious twist to that...
    Guard: For the last time, we did not order a giant trampoline!
    Delivery Man: You know, pal, you could have told me that before I set it up!
    *BOING!*
  • Atlantis: The Lost Empire: Rourke's death is surprisingly fall-free, especially given that the final struggle takes place on an airship. This is not to say that it's gentle. He crystallizes and EXPLODES. It's played straight with Helga, although unlike most examples, we actually see her afterwards, and she lives long enough to deliver the coup de grace shot on the airship. It's also heavily implied that, since Helga lay at the bottom of the chimney when the airship blew up, she would have been crushed by the flaming debris whether she had survived the fall or not.
    Whitmore: What happened to Helga?
    Cookie: Weeeeeell, we lost her after a flamin' zeppelin come down on her— (Packard whacks him with her umbrella) Uh, missin'.
    Whitmore: And Rourke?
    Dr. Sweet: Nervous breakdown. You could say he went all to pieces.
    Cookie: In fact, you could say he was trans-a-morgified, and then busted into a zillion— (Packard threatens him with her umbrella again) Uh, he's missin' too.
  • A neat variation occurs in Treasure Planet:
    • The truly nasty Scroop dies by falling upward when the ship's Artificial Gravity gets turned off. This is obvious payoff for his murdering the kindly-though-gruff First Mate Mr. Arrow (one of the few heroes who dies by falling — into a black hole, no less) through similar means.
    • A bunch of other unnamed pirate mooks die by falling as well, a number when Doppler breaks the catwalk they're on and they fall to the planet below. More when the planet's core is being sliced up by jets of plasma during its self-destruct and some pirates fall into one of the fiery chasms.
  • Inverted in Brother Bear, as Sitka makes an Heroic Sacrifice by cracking the ice in an attempt to save his brothers from a bear attack, causing him to fall to his death.
    • A subversion also appears when Denahi falls off a cliff into a river, but survives by holding to a log.
  • At the end of The Jungle Book 2, Shere Khan falls into a volcanic crack below the entrance to an ancient temple, but lands on a small island. Then a giant stone tiger head falls directly on him, subverting this trope. Seemingly subverting, that is. The stone head was hollow. And then the vultures show up to mock the inevitability of his doom (the rock was melting under his feet). Had the planned second sequel been made, he would have escaped that too.
  • Averted in The Princess and the Frog. Dr. Facilier is very creepily dragged by the ankle of his shadow into the open mouth of a giant mask before it is closed to reveal his screaming and terrified face sealed up in a tombstone.
  • Tangled gently plays with this trope. While Mother Gothel did fall from the tower, she was already dying from Rapid Aging and had become nothing but dust by the time she hit the ground; the fact she stopped screaming on the way down suggests she may have died before reaching the ground. Also, she was intentionally tripped by Pascal.
  • Averted in Wreck-It Ralph when King Candy/Turbo and the Cy-Bugs are killed by flying into a geyser of boiling hot Diet Cola.
    • Ralph himself is subject to this trope, being flung off a building's roof at the end of each level of the game he's a villain in (and nearly playing this trope dead straight as a Heroic Sacrifice).
  • In Frozen (2013), we have a subversion, an aversion, and a downplayed example: Hans' battle with Marshmallow ultimately sends the latter plummeting to its apparent death, but later it turns out to be still alive and it reappears in later media. And in the same battle, Hans himself nearly falls off of the icy staircase as well, but his soldiers rescue him before he actually falls. Finally, near the end of the movie, Anna punches Hans hard enough to knock him overboard from the ship they’re on, but she wasn't trying to kill him and he doesn't die.
    • In Frozen II, King Runeard dies being thrown over the cliffs by the dam. Interestingly, we don't know he is the villain until far later.
  • Averted with later Disney films after this. Big Hero 6 has Yokai get arrested after his defeat, as does Bellwether in Zootopia. And none of the villains in Moana suffer this fate either- the Kakamora are all beaten in a fight, Tamatoa is left stranded on his shell after being flipped over by a geyser, and Te Ka is purified back into Te Fiti upon being reunited with her Heart. Afterwards, all the films start using No Antagonist, until…
  • Wish (2023), which also subverts this- Magnifico’s final fate is being sealed in his own staff instead of falling to his doom.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Although this has been debated, Barnaby in Babes in Toyland (the 1961 film) is stabbed by Tom during their swordfight, sending him falling over the edge of a stack of boxes (acting as a cliff) and into an empty toybox below, from which he never emerges and is presumed dead. The only reason this was even debated was because publicity stills show him being forced into and imprisoned in a birdcage at the fight's end in place of the stabbing, which really is an alternate ending and therefore means nothing to the plot of the film itself.
  • Benji the Hunted, as the only Disney-produced Benji movie, naturally features this trope, as Benji tricks the wolf pursuing him and the cougar kits into tossing itself off a cliff.
  • In The Three Musketeers (1993), we see three examples of this trope. D'Artagnan fights one of the Cardinal's men on top of some ruins, and knocks him off to his death. Milady De Winter, the femme fatale, chooses to fling herself off a cliff rather than suffer a beheading. Later in the film, D'Artagnan surprises the King's assassin on the palace roof, and the fight ends with the assassin getting a crossbow bolt to the heart and falling to the ground below.
    • Averted with Rochefort's death; he is clearly stabbed and dies in full view of the audience.
    • Cardinal Richelieu is only a partial example, as he could conceivably have survived falling into the waterway (and, indeed, must have if both history and the original story is taken into account).
  • Tom and Huck, the live-action version of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, changes Injun Joe's death from starving to falling down a seemingly bottomless pit.
  • In The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (from Disney's Hollywood Pictures), evil revenge-obsessed babysitter Peyton is shoved out of the attic window by Claire, and lands on the house's picket fence which Solomon had built earlier.
  • A variation occurs in the live-action movie The Rocketeer: Neville Sinclair, a Nazi agent, voluntarily flies out of the zeppelin with the rocket pack, but its fuel leak causes it to burst into a massive fireball in which he becomes engulfed, causing Neville to crash into the Hollywoodland sign and explode spectacularly.
  • Downplayed in Hocus Pocus, as, while Winnifred Sanderson does not die when she falls off her broom, the fall does prove to be vital for her death, as landing on holy ground causes her to become stone right before she can suck out Max's life, causing her to disintegrate. Averted with Sarah and Mary, who explode while in the air when the sun comes up moments later.
  • Befalls Tabaqui in the live-action version of The Jungle Book, when he attempts to crush Mowgli with a rock, but loses his balance and falls off a huge cliff near a waterfall.
  • 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... into a purple dragon. She explodes into glitter on impact.
  • Sympathetic villain Davy Jones dies after his heart is stabbed, and he falls into the Maelstrom in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. The final scene of the fifth movie, however, implies that he's revived somehow.
    • Averted with Cutler Beckett, who is blown up with his ship, and has his remains on the water.
  • Played with in the case of Captain Armando Salazar in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. He does fall to his death, into the ocean, but what most likely killed him was Barbossa slashing him In the Back with a sword, and him landing face-first on an anchor on the way down. Played straight with Barbossa himself, who falls directly into the sea after jumping off an anchor chain, and as a one-legged man, has no chance of swimming back to the Black Pearl.
  • Averted in TRON: Legacy. Clu 2 does not lose his grip and fall to his deresolution. Rather, his creator Kevin Flynn reabsorbs his program and blows up as Sam and 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.
  • King Stefan in Maleficent. Unusually, we do see him post-impact.
  • In Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, Gerda falls off the church balcony to her death after being attacked by Knotgrass and Thistlewit to avenge their sister's Heroic Sacrifice.
  • In The Lone Ranger, Tonto leaves Latham Cole to fall to his death along with all the silver his plan revolved around mining.
  • In National Treasure, Shaw gets the distinction of being the only character to die in the entire movie by plummeting through an ancient staircase.
  • In The Jungle Book (2016), there's both an inversion and a straight example:
    • First, Shere Khan throws Akela off a cliff to his death in order to lure Mowgli back to the pack and kill him.
    • Later, at the film's climax, this is how Shere Khan meets his fate after jumping on a dead branch while attempting to kill Mowgli. Also combined with Kill It with Fire, as he falls into a huge patch of wildfire on the jungle floor (indeed, it would have to be the fire that actually killed him, as he can be seen twisting his body in order to land on his feet, much like a real cat would, while he plummets).
  • A non-villainous example in Cruella, which features the Baroness invoking this by siccing her dalmatians on Estella's mother, knocking her off a high cliff into the ocean below — she then successfully passes it off as an accident. After learning the truth about how her mother died, Estella/Cruella sets up a Batman Gambit to trick the Baroness into pushing her off the cliff as well — in full view of a crowd of onlookers, exposing the Baroness for who she is. Having planned the whole thing, Cruella naturally escapes death with a hidden glider.
  • In Long John Silver, Israel Hands falls to his death from the cliff while attempting to stab Jim.

    Live-Action TV 

    Comic Books 
  • Here's an obscure early one. An old Sunday comic serial had a giant and his vulture get a version of this!
  • In the 1948 Carl Barks Donald Duck comic "The Golden Christmas Tree", Donald and the nephews encounter an evil, shape-shifting witch. Donald manages to trap her in the form of a gas can, and later kicks the witch/can off a cliff during one of his trademark tantrums. It's a pretty bizarre story.
  • 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."

    Video Games 
  • This is the fate of some bosses in the Donald Duck video game Donald Duck: Goin' Qu@ckers, depending on the version.
    • Bernadette the Bird falls to her doom after being defeated in the remake for PlayStation 2 and GameCube.
    • All console versions have the Beagle Boy/Beagle Boys fall to his/their doom after Donald defeats him/them.
    • In the Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, PlayStation, and PC versions, Magica De Spell falls from her broomstick after she is beaten.
    • The Big Bad of the game, Merlock, who somehow survived his Disney Villain Death in the DuckTales movie, dies this way in the PlayStation version, with other versions of the game giving him a different fate (he does a Villain: Exit, Stage Left in the Nintendo 64, Sega Dreamcast, and PC versions, he becomes a child in the remake for PlayStation 2 and GameCube, and the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance versions leave his fate ambiguous).
  • In a case of Adaptational Karma, the video game version of Pinocchio has Pinocchio knock the Coachman out from a cliff in this level.
  • Happens to Hades again in Disney's Hades Challenge, where, at the end of the game, Hades backs away from the player, doesn’t see where he's going, and falls into the River Styx.
  • The online game Toontown Online had a boss fight that ended with the Cog VP being pushed off the roof of his HQ building.
  • The first two Epic Mickey games both get their chance to indulge in this in some surprisingly disturbing examples for Mickey Mouse games; the first game has the villain, the Blot, implode from the inside after having fireworks shot at him from the towers of a castle, while the second game's Mad Doctor is dragged to his death in a pit of acid by a load of green spirits after his evil robot vehicle topples over the edge of a platform. Then all this causes a huge acid geyser to blast everyone out of the cave and into the sky, where the robot promptly explodes, taking the Doc with it (while Mickey and Oswald casually glide to safety, no less). Also ventures into Tear Jerker territory in that Oswald actually tries to save him (despite the fact that he'd been playing them all for suckers and tried to kill them) but ultimately fails. The Blot's death can be seen here: [1], and the Mad Doctor's here: [2].
    • The Mad Doctor's death is optional; there is an alternate version of the ending where Oswald actually does save the Doctor and he makes a genuine Heel–Face Turn.
  • In the Kingdom Hearts series, while there are a few falling villains (which Captain Hook subverts by being thrown off into the ocean with the crocodile chasing him... only to survive the ordeal and return in the interquel 358/2 Days), most Disney Villain Deaths are replaced with "Beaten to death with a giant key". Amusingly, of all the Disney villains in the series, the three who did not fall off something in their source material (and they still don't in the games) technically originate from outside of the Disney Animated Canon: Oogie Boogie (gets his skin ripped off and crumbles in the movie, beaten to death and crumbles in Kingdom Hearts), Barbossa (shot as his curse of immortality is lifted), and the MCP (he's an AI represented as a giant red cylinder with a face in Cyberspace. Go figure). This might be telling you something.
    • Series original villain Xigbar does pull one of these in Kingdom Hearts III after his defeat at the hands of Sora, Riku, and King Mickey, specifically so he can show back up alive and well later.

    Western Animation 
  • Played straight in DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp with Merlock as a result of him losing his talisman... while in low earth orbit. Though he did wish to live forever and he would have hit the ground long before the genie was freed and all his wishes were undone, meaning that in theory, he would've received the most gruesome death because he would've hit the ground and not died, and been in a painful mess of blood and broken bones.
  • A former version of the page "Drinking Game/Gargoyles" instructed players to take a shot for every trope common to Gargoyles (e.g. every time Xanatos admits to the failure of his plan being part of the plan or every time Elisa's Cool Car is seen). Disney Villain Death was not included because its sheer frequency in the series would cause people to succumb to alcohol poisoning if played in the normal alcoholic version. Some specific examples, for the curious, include:
    • The Captain and Hakon, in the Middle Ages part of "Awakening".
    • Demona, at the end of "Awakening", though she turned out to have survived.
      • And the modern Hunters' vendetta against Demona specifically? A fight between their father and the Gargoyle led to the Hunter falling off Notre Dame cathedral to his death.
    • The Archmage, in "Long Way to Morning", who also later turned out to be alive because David Warner is just that awesome.
    • Subverted in "The Journey" with John Castaway, who had a helicopter ready.
    • In the "City of Stone" arc: In part one, a villain killed the hero's father by causing him to fall off a castle. In part two, the villain himself was killed by falling off the same castle. That could be justified as poetic justice, but the creators didn't want to have to do it again in part three for the other villain. So, Macbeth gets a magical ball of... something that causes the villain to be electrocuted. And after he's burned through, his body... falls off a cliff. Oh, well.
  • Averted repeatedly by Don Karnage in Talespin. Notably, he has survived being hit by a cargo plane while in a hot air balloon, and once rescued Baloo from an inversion of the trope.
  • Variant in Bonkers: After the Collector defeats himself by falling into a box of creepy laughing Toon faces, Bonkers makes a comment that Lucky interprets as implying Collector has died. Bonkers responds with "They won't really hurt him."
  • Subverted in Kim Possible: So the Drama, where Kim kicks Shego into a building, in which she gets electrically shocked and the entire thing falls on top of her. She survives, and is perfectly fine, though.
  • The Legend of Tarzan:
    • In the episode "Tarzan and the Lost Cub", Tarzan manages to defeat a leopard that was attacking him by throwing it off a cliff.
    • Subverted in the episode "Tarzan and Tublat's Revenge", where Tarzan manges to throw a banished ape named Tublat to a river, only for The Tag to reveal that he survived.
  • Subverted in The Proud Family Movie. Dr. Carver's clone falls off a blimp, but gets turned back into a peanut mid-fall.
  • An early episode of Phineas and Ferb actually has this happen with Dr. Doofenshmirtz. Of course, since he's the main villain, he subverts it by landing on a mattress (which then folds up).
  • Gravity Falls:
    • The wax statue of Sherlock Holmes from "Headhunters". sort of dies this way. He's tricked by Dipper into following him to the roof of the Mystery Shack during sunrise, causimg him to quickly melt. As this happens to him, his remains fall off the roof while mocking Dipper, only to be destroyed upon impact
    • Subverted in "The Land Before Swine", as Stan punches a pterodactyl into unconsciousness while flying, seemingly causing her to fall to her death... only to reappear moments later.
    • Played with in "Gideon Rises", as Gideon falls off a cliff inside his giant robot (in which Dipper and Mabbel also are), which explodes upon impact. During the short sequence showing the aftermath of the explosion and the following scene showing Dipper and Mabbel alive, there are no signs of Gideon, but the following scene shows he survived as well, with little to no injuries.
  • Motorcity: "Red" has one of these after refusing to be rescued by Mike Chilton. Subverted in that he survives.
    • Mike himself has this happen in the finale when he's dropped off KaneCo Tower, though he survives as well.
  • DuckTales (2017):
    • Subverted twice in the season one episode "The Infernal Internship of Mark Beaks!", when Falcon Graves is tricked into opening a briefcase full of money, he is sent over the edge of the roof he was in, while Mark Beaks ends up falling of the same edge when Huey and Dewey throw his phone off. But, like in The Emperor's New Grove, a trampoline saves both of them.
    • In the season 1 episode "From the Confidential Casefiles of Agent 22!", F.O.W.L. spy Black Heron is implied to have fallen to her death after a mid-air scuffle with Webby Vanderquack, after which all that was seen of her was her de-attached arm holding to the top of her secret base. However, the season 2 finale "Moonvasion!" revealed that she survived.
    • Scrooge Mcduck's rival, Flintheart Glomgold, subverted this twice:
      • First, in the season one finale "The Shadow War!", he is last seen falling to the ocean while cursing at his now-living shadow, which dragged him there in the first place. In the season 2 episode "The Ballad of Duke Balooney!", he is revealed to have survived, albeit with amnesia.
      • Later, in the season two episode "Glomtales!", after Scrooge's other rivals confront him over being tricked by Scrooge' young nephew, Louie, Glomgold ends up cornered and chooses to jump off a cliff to the ocean, but survives.
    • Downplayed in the season 3 episode "Astro B.O.Y.D!", Lil' Bulb throws the evil Dr. Akita off his platform through a punch, causing him to fall into a trash can, but he survives and is later arrested.
    • A variation appears in the season 3 episode "The Forbidden Fountain of the Foreverglades!", as both Scrooge and Ponce De Leon fall to a pool full of the titular fountain's water, briefly causing Leon to drain Scrooge's newfound youth. Scrooge ends up being rescued by Goldie O'Gilt, Leon's own youth is soon drained until turning into a pile of dust.
    • Played straight in the episode "The First Adventure!", where Scrooge throws the head of Captain Yellow Beak's skeleton down his ship and into an abyss.
    • Bradford Buzzard plays a villain-to-villain example in the series final, "The Last Adventure!", by throwing both Buford Buzzard, Bentley Buzzard and Black Heron to their deaths in a void, erasing them from existence.
  • Amphibia:
    • Downplayed in the episode "Civil Wart", where Hop Pop makes Toadie fall off a flagpole when he attempted to stop Hop Pop from taking Polly's team's flag, but he survives.
    • In the season one finale "Reunion", it is both played (ambigously) straight and subverted, as many Toad soldiers (incluiding their evil captain, Grime) are seen falling from the crumbling Toad Tower. While Grime did survived his fall and is last seen with a group of soldiers, it is unknown how many soldiers survived given their large number. Shortly after that, Grime's human commander Sasha purposefully lets herself fall out of guilt due to her actions against her former best friend Anne and the latter's frog friends. However, Grime manages to catch her mid-fall before departing.
    • Complexly subverted in the season 2 episode "Toadcatcher", where Grime pushes Newtopia general Yunnan off a cliff to a river, a fall that she survives. The reason it is a complex subversion is because, while Sasha and Grime are the series' main villains, Yunnan herself is not exactly a morally correct character, not to mention that Newtopia was the reason the toads were oppressing Wartwood in the first place, leaving unknown which side is more evil.
  • Somewhat subverted in the Big City Greens episode "Wishing Well", where, while fighting in Cricket Green's mind over his next course of actions, Cricket's Bad Angel manages to burn his Good Angel's wings and puts him holding to dear "life" at the edge of Cricket's mind, but the Good Cricket holds on to Bad Cricket's trident, to which both fall off Cricket's mind. However, as the two are nothing but manifestations of Cricket's conscience, they return at the end of the episode perfectly fine.

Subsidiaries:

    Pixar 
  • Played with in A Bug's Life. When Hopper confronts Flik towards the end of the film, threatening that he'll be back to collect more food next time, he is unaware that he has been lured into a bird's nest. Hopper, after seeing the bird, is convinced that it's another one of the ants' tricks... that is, until the bird hoists him up the air with its beak and gets ready to drop him to its hungry children, which has the horrifying implication that Hopper's going to get ripped to shreds in order for the three babies to share their impending meal. So technically, Hopper did fall to his death.
  • Subverted in Toy Story 2. Emperor Zurg falls down an elevator shaft, apparently to his doom, yet somehow survives to play catch with his son. It's a long story...
  • Monsters, Inc. does this with the door Randall Boggs gets locked inside by Sulley, Mike, and Boo leading to the trailer home after he is defeated, which they then push off a balcony, and causing it to shatter upon impact several stories below.
  • Syndrome of The Incredibles subverts this by getting sucked into a jet engine. Note that Mr. Incredible meant to kill him, as it was a result of chucking a car at him... just not in that particular way. This is actually made somewhat humorous when one remembers earlier in the movie when Edna Mode was giving her reasons for refusing to give Mr. Incredible's new outfit a cape — one super died by getting her cape caught in a jet engine.
    • Subverted again in the Immediate Sequel Incredibles 2. As Screenslaver falls out of her plane, Elastigirl goes out of her way to rescue her using her parachute ability, leading to Screenslaver's arrest by the police.
  • In WALL•E, GO-4 gets a messy one (for a machine) when Captain McCrea kicks him out the window while fighting AUTO.
  • Charles Muntz gets this in Up. Those balloons tangled to his feet don't seem to have helped him any. Word of God is that they wanted to try and avoid this trope, but it was the only satisfying ending they could come up with, especially given that that the final fight takes place on a blimp. An alternate ending would have seen him become trapped in a labyrinth and starving to death.
  • 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. Of course, this is not one of the two Co-Dragons Grem.
  • Brave averts this; Mor'du gets crushed to death by one of the monoliths.
  • Coco features a subverted inversion as well as an aversion.
    • The subverted inversion ends up happening to Miguel, who is tossed off of a high building by Ernesto, only to be saved by Pepita before he hits the ground.
    • The aversion happens to Ernesto, who, ignoring the fact that he's already dead, checks out of the movie by being hurled into a bell (again by Pepita) before having said bell fall on him and crush him. Just like his actual death as shown near the start of the movie.

    Marvel Entertainment 
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe:
    • Iron Man: Double Subverted with Obadiah Stane/Iron Monger. He seemingly falls to his death after flying so high that his suit freezes up due to the low temperatures. We find out shortly afterward that he survived the fall, leading to the true Final Battle with Tony Stark/Iron Man near the Arc Reactor. The climax of the battle has Stane taken out for good after he's shocked by a powerful release of energy; this causes him to fall directly into the aforementioned reactor, which then explodes on impact.
    • Thor: At the end of the film after Odin disapproves of his actions with a Little "No", Loki seemingly commits suicide by letting go off Gungnir and allowing himself to fall into a wormhole. Subverted, because he survives it to become the Big Bad of The Avengers.
    • Guardians of the Galaxy: Subverted. The fight between Gamora and her villainous adopted sister Nebula ends with Nebula hanging out of a spaceship by her cybernetic arm. Gamora tries a Take My Hand!, but Nebula deliberately chops off her artificial hand and falls... to land on another passing spaceship and make her escape.
      • Played straight in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, where Baby Groot attacks Ravager Retch for abusing him before throwing him off the catwalk they were on to his death.
    • Avengers: Age of Ultron: Ultron briefly posseses one of his Sentries to deliver a speech to Captain America... but Rogers throws his shield to the sentry mid-speech, before attracting his shield back to himself, causing the Sentry to fall off the flying city. This does not kill Ultron however, as his main conscience was still in his body.
    • Thor: Ragnarok: Fenris the wolf falls off of Asgard's waterfalls into outer space at the end of her fight with the Hulk.
    • Luke Cage: Cottonmouth killed Tone by throwing him off the roof of Harlem's Paradise to Harlem's streets out of anger for killing Pop, who was a dear friend of his.
  • X-Men:
    • Sabertooth fell off the Statue of Liberty, though he may or may not have survived.
    • Toad was electrocuted and then fell into the ocean.
  • The Wolverine:
    • Ichirō, Somewhat. Logan throws him off the building and he crashes below, but he was probably already dead even before hitting the ground.
    • Wolverine also tried doing this to Noburo, but luckily for him, there was a swimming pool beneath the window Wolverine threw him out of.
  • In Daredevil, Bullseye is thrown out of the church window, although the ending credits show that he survived; he instead ended up getting a full body cast.
  • In Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Doctor Doom is thrown into a water deposit, where he ends up sinking.
  • In the Defenders of the Earth episode "Terror in Time", the Defenders are sent back to the days of King Arthur and join forces with Prince Valiant, whose wife is being held prisoner by an evil sorcerer named Warlock, who lives in a castle at the top of an enormous cliff. During the final confrontation, Mandrake (who has spent much of the episode with an amorphous mutant life-form developed by Ming attached to his arm) gains possession of a magic orb called the Eternity Stone, at which point the mutant detaches itself from Mandrake's arm and attaches itself to Warlock's face. Warlock, blinded, then falls out the window and off the cliff, never to be seen again.

    Lucasfilm, Ltd. 

    20th Century Studios 
  • Several cases of this trope have been depicted in The Simpsons:
  • Family Guy:
    • In the episode "North by North Quahog", Mel Gibson suffers this fate after being tricked into walking off of George Washington's nose on Mount Rushmore, because according to Peter, Christians don't believe in gravity.
    • In "The Courtship of Stewie’s Father", Michael Eisner is thrown to his death, parodying Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
    • In "Hannah Banana", an android version of Miley Cyrus is taken out in the same manner as King Kong (1933).
    • Diane Simmons in "And Then There Were Fewer". Just as Lois is about to be shot, Diane is shot herself as she kneels, at first glance about to fall to the ground, but then falls off the cliff and screams, splashing into the waters below. Turns out out Stewie had been watching them the whole time from the top of the manor house, armed with a sniper rifle.
  • Subverted in Titan A.E., when Korso seems to plunge to his deathnote , only to survive, have a last minute change of heart, and then nobly sacrifice himself to save the heroes he was just trying to kill ten minutes earlier.
  • Ice Age has a non-villainous, non-conflict related variation. One of the animals is asking where Fred (presumably a member of their herd) is, to which another states that he isn't coming along as he had an "evolutionary breakthrough." It then shows an animal of the same species (implied to be Fred) running full steam towards a cliff and he starts yelling "I'm FLYING!!" as he's falling before he lands and is implied to be killed, to which one of the herd says "Some breakthrough." Aditionally, several Dodos, who serve as minor antagonists in the film, die by falling either to a crater (where they are burned to death) or off a cliff.
    • In Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Rudy is shoved off a cliff by Momma. Rudy survives to see the end credits, however.
    • This is played with in Ice Age: Continental Drift: At the end of their final battle, Manny launches Captain Gutt far away. But the fall doesn't kill the pirate ape — instead, he winds up in an area with siren-like lungfish who lure him into a clamshell and devour him.
  • Tsu'tey fell to his death in Avatar. His death is confirmed in the extended edition.

Misc.

     Hero/Non-villain examples 

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