Disney Villain Death / Video Games

"Geese Howard. He's the big boss of South Town, and he's the rival of Terry Bogard. Falling off of buildings is his thing."

Villains falling to their doom in Video Games.

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Villain examples:

#-L

• Age of Empires III: The War Chiefs: Billy Holme falls to his doom after Chayton shoots him and he backs into a mine shaft. And he takes several barrels of TNT down with him.
• Age of Mythology: Kamos dies after being pushed off of a cliff.
• Another Code plays with this. The first game plays it straight with Bill falling into a large pit in a cavern, but the sequel subverts it by having Richard save Ryan from his suicide attempt.
• Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore: After Arzette roughs Cornrad, one of Daimur's cronies, up, Crowdee swoops in, picks him up and drops him off a nearby cliff.
• Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood: The fate of Cesare. After insisting to Ezio that no man could kill him, Ezio decides to drop him off a castle wall and "leave him in the hands of fate."
• Revas dies this way in Assault on Dark Athena, as she falls to her death in the elevator shaft of the Athena.
• At the end of Banjo-Kazooie, Gruntilda falls from a great height and a large rock falls on her. The extent to which this counts as a "death" is unclear, though. She immediately starts talking and trying unsuccessfully to move the rock, even being able to call for her henchman Klungo to come and try to move it, and she's back in action as a skeleton when it's removed in the sequel.
• Joker attempts to give himself a Disney Villain Death at the end of Batman: Vengeance. You, as Batman, must save him, or face a Non-Standard Game Over as the game informs you that death is not the same thing as justice.
• In Battlefield 3, during the "Comrades" level, a QTE fight ends with the enemy soldier getting thrown down a stairwell.
• Subverted in Breath of Fire II. After Deathevan forces Ryu to watch as he kills his friends, Ryu snaps, charges through a gauntlet of powerful explosive spells, and disembowels the would-be god in a single slash. Deathevan is stunned that a mortal could defeat him and falls into the abyss. Seconds later, he rises up from said abyss as an enormous demonic monstrosity.
• In The Caligula Effect, two of the Ostinato Musicians (Shadow Knife and Thorn) fall to their deaths after being defeated. Shadow Knife panics and backs away from the party… off of the roof of a 67-story building. Thorn, on the other hand, deliberately falls from the Grand Guignol after her defeat, in a way that mirrors Ichika's suicide.
• Call of Duty:
  • At the end of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Price gives Makarov a vicious No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, ties a steel cord around his neck, then breaks the glass roof, causing both Price and Makarov to fall. As Makarov falls, he is hanged and killed instantly by the cord.
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops has both a villainous and heroic example. At the end of "Payback", Woods throws both himself and Kravchenko out of a nearby window to save Mason from Kravchenko's explosive suicide play. All the player sees before the level ends is the resulting explosion. The sequel reveals that both of them survived this somehow.
  • In Call of Duty: Black Ops II, at the end of the Odysseus level, either Harper or the player character kick a stowaway mercenary out of their VTOL as it takes off from a battle on an aircraft carrier, depending on if Harper is still alive. If the player does it, you get to see them fall towards the deck below in first person, and, in true Disney Villain Death fashion, you look away before they hit the ground.
  • In Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Big Bad Jonathan Irons dangles from player-character Mitchell's prosthetic arm during the finale, the very arm he had engineered to get Mitchell back in the fight after his injury at the start of the game. Mitchell then cuts off the arm and lets Irons plunge to his doom.
  • In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019), Farah kills Barkov like this if he doesn't bleed out from stab wounds after fighting him on a helicopter.
• Occurs in Chaos Legion, but it was a willing leap from the villain, which then summons the Big Bad/Man Behind The Man.
• Clive Barker's Undying: Keisenger plunges into the abyss of the tower arena after you beat him.
• Clock Tower:
  • Clock Tower (1995):
    • In one ending, the villain dies a Karmic Death attempting to make you fall off a ladder when you shake free. This happens to Bobby in all of the good endings, and to his mother Mary in three of the good endings.
    • Subverted in the final area with one of the deathtraps, a door that leads to a sheer drop off a cliff because the entire room behind it has crumbled away over time. One possible way to escape Scissorman is to trick him into lunging at you and out the door, presumably falling to his death. However, this Scissorman is apparently unkillable, even able to shrug off being shot repeatedly at point-blank range, so he comes back again and all the fall does is get him off your case for a while.
  • In Clock Tower 3, Lord Darcy Burroughs was said to have fallen into the cogs of the clock tower. He vowed to plague the world with hate and terror so long as the clock tower remains. A couple generations later, his descendant, Dick Hamilton, allows his ancestor to possess his body. They merge, becoming the Dark Gentleman, has his daughter assassinated for defying him, and sends numerous Subordinates after Dick's granddaughter, Alyssa, all in an effort to carve out and devour her heart in order to become an Entity. For all the grief he caused her, it's only fitting that Dick falls into the cogs of the clock tower after Alyssa stabs him in the chest with a magic sword.
• Crysis 2: When you finally track down and face Lockhart, commander of the CELL mercenaries who's been out for your blood the entire game, the 'fight' with him is really a cutscene. Your character grabs him by the throat and tosses him out of a third-story window. Subverted when the fall doesn't instantly kill him; he spends a minute pathetically whimpering and trying to crawl across the ground. You can put him out of his misery... or enact Cruel Mercy and let him suffer for everything he's done to you and your allies.
• TK from Dead Rising 2 suffers this at the end of his boss fight.
• At the end of Def Jam: Fight For NY, the easiest way to defeat the Big Bad Crow is to slam him against his office windows until they shatter and he goes flying through them. You get a trophy for pulling it off. You also have to watch out because he'll try to do the same to you, and he's one of the fastest fighters in the game and often beats you to the punch.
• Averted and played straight in Dirge of Cerberus; Rosso the Crimson cuts away the chunk of masonry she's standing on and falls to her death rather than admit defeat, and Azul the Cerulean falls into an elevator shaft after having a double-barrelled cannon thrown through his stomach.
• During the final battle with Kaptain K. Rool in Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest, K. Rool is about to attack Diddy and/or Dixie after being knocked out by them a third time, when Donkey Kong breaks free from his ropes and delivers the final hit. He punches K. Rool out of his helicopter and sends him falling thousands of feet into the swamp below. Subverted in that if you're playing for the 102% ending, K. Rool is later revealed to have survived the fall and is back to duel the Kongs for the true final battle, which was even spoiled in the GBA remake.
• At the end of Double Dragon Neon, the Lee brothers knock Skullmageddon off a cliff, and he continues to fall while the credits roll. At the bottom, Marian delivers the coup de grace punch.
• The Dragon Age II expansion "Mark of the Assassin" ends with this — except the bad guy bounces rather painfully off a rock on his way down. It also plays out slightly differently depending on the Dialogue Tree — diplomatic Hawke tries to save him, but he takes a swing with a knife and loses his grip. Snarky Hawke listens to him make threats while hanging by his fingers, points out begging for mercy might have been a better idea, and just walks away (with a Quip to Black after the fall). Aggressive Hawke actively speeds things along by stamping on his fingers.
  Isabela: You see that? He bounced!
  Aveline: Well. I don't think he'll survive that.
  Carver: Drop a sword on him!
• Dragon's Crown:
  • Killing the Ancient Dragon will send him falling from the top of the structure you fight him on with, as the narrator puts it, "a ground-shaking thud that parts the clouds".
  • If you opt to have the Red Dragon boss chase you out of his treasure room and take too long in fighting him, your party will eventually reach a crumbling bridge that can't support the dragon's weight and send him plummeting to his uncertain doom. However, the boss dying in this manner won't count as your party beating him and you won't receive the Purple Talisman.
  • The fight against the gigantic Chimera boss at the higher floors of the Mage Tower involves the floorboards giving way from the strain of the battle, sending everyone falling until they reach the next stable floor. If the fight drags on long enough to break through the final stone floor, the Chimera will get dropped into one of the many Lava Pits that make up the cavern under the Mage Tower while your party safely lands on a ledge. However, the boss dying in this manner won't count as your party beating it and you won't receive the White Talisman.
• Fatal Fury:
  • Geese Howard gets his at the end of Real Bout, complete with a rejection of Terry's outstretched hand and evil laughter as he plummets toward the ground. Geese also gets this at the end of Fatal Fury… assuming that you beat him. Otherwise, he sends your character to a Disney Villain Death.
  • Funnily enough, this sort of became a running gag whenever Geese appears elsewhere. In Terry's reveal trailer for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, he again fell from his tower while trying to snag the Smash Bros envelope.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Inverted in Final Fantasy VI, as supposed Big Bad Emperor Gestahl is betrayed by his dragon Kefka, by being struck by lightning, before being kicked off a floating continent. This is given a Shout-Out in Final Fantasy IX, where Kuja kicks his creator Garland off the Very Definitely Final Dungeon to steal the position of Big Bad back to himself.
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • Played straight with Dyne. After Barret wins their duel, Dyne jumps off a cliff and mostly likely gets impaled on one of the large spikes in the background.
    • If you do the Wutai sidequest, Don Corneo will fall to his doom courtesy of Reno.
  • Ba'Gamnan in Final Fantasy XII. Ends up being subverted, though. Ba'Gamnan is alive and well in the sequel, Revenant Wings, and in that game, he also doesn't get anything worse than several bad beatings courtesy of the heroes.
  • Final Fantasy XIV: At the conclusion of the Lancer quest line, Foulques becomes frustrated at being unable to defeat the player character and begins swinging his polearm wildly until he accidentally steps backwards off the edge of a cliff and falls into the misty depths.
• Final Fight games have a tendency to end this way. In fact, the endboss' AI (at least in Final Fight II, and the first, probably in the third as well) is set so that when he is at critically low health, he suddenly jumps to and stubbornly insists on staying on the side of the screen with the obvious window (complete with a special otherwise-unseen form of ass kicking if you attempt to get behind him — you are not allowed to get between him and the window) specifically so that he can go flying through the window when you strike the final blow.
  • Final Fight 3's last boss stubbornly stands next to a power switch on the roof of city hall. He is electrocuted when you land the final blow, and your character escapes off the roof as it explodes. But he doesn't fall.
• Fire Emblem Fates:
  • Midway through Birthright, if you haven't racked up an A-support with Kaze, he takes a tumble off a mountaintop. (If you have, he spends less time angsting about his greatest failure and more time figuring out how to save both you and himself.)
  • Late in Conquest, Takumi decides it's Better to Die than Be Killed and jumps off a rampart. It's exaggerated when you actually go down to the bottom to find him and can't find any trace of a corpse, until he comes back wrong for one last showdown as the Final Boss.
• Fobia: St. Dinfna Hotel has the last battle against Aquiles, fought on an elevated ramp atop an acid pool. Upon defeat it automatically falls into the acid, off-screen.
• Ripburger in Full Throttle, who falls into a canyon after a massive car crash, and the license plate he was clinging from (complete with "CAN'T BEAT A CORLEY") snapping off. Despite being from LucasArts' beautifully cartoon-shaded era, there's nothing Disney-like about the tone of it.
• Ghost Squad (2004) also does this in the end of the second mission. Egregious since it is achieved by a headshot. This being a Sega game...
• The G.I. Joe arcade game by Konami has the boss fights against the Baroness and Cobra Commander both end with them falling to their doom.
• God of War II: Through an Action Command, Kratos rips the wings off Icarus midfall and uses them to fly to his destination. Icarus? Not so lucky…
• At the end of GBA RPG Golden Sun: The Lost Age, primary villain Alex meets his end when he falls into the crack in the earth that destroyed Mt. Aleph after The Wise One paralyzes him. However, because Alex absorbed most of the Golden Sun's power, he was able to survive and shows up 30 years later to, once again, pull some strings behind the scenes. The main villains from the first game met a similar fate when they fell into the well of the Venus Lighthouse, though unlike Alex, they don't survive.
• Grand Theft Auto:
  • In Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony, during the mission "High Dive", Ahmed falls off the spine of the Rotterdam Tower to his death after being cornered by Luis.
  • Grand Theft Auto V:
    • In the Kill Michael ending. Three guesses as to who takes the plunge.
    • In the Good Ending where everyone comes together, they push a car with Devin Weston, part of the Big Bad Ensemble, in the trunk off a cliff.
• Haunting Ground:
  • Riccardo, the third stalker, is thrown off a tower to his death, thanks to the combined efforts of Fiona and her Canine Companion Howie. Unfortunately, this provides Lorenzo, the Big Bad of the game, the opportunity to literally suck the Azoth from Riccardo's mangled corpse.
  • Speaking of Lorenzo: he's seemingly defeated after falling into a pit of lava, but he subverts it by climbing out as a fiery skeleton. He only truly dies when the flames finally take their toll on his body.
• This is two of the possible deaths for Scott Shelby in Heavy Rain.
• Henry Stickmin Series:
  • In Infiltrating the Airship, there's a fail that has Reginald Copperbottom fall to his death when Henry accidentally drops him.
  • In Fleeing the Complex, the ending "The Betrayed" has Henry himself fall to his death when Reginald drops him to reclaim his posision as the leader of the Toppat Clan. If this ending is chosen in the intro of Completing the Mission, Henry gets resurrected as a cyborg, only to be Killed Off for Real, this time not from a fall.
  • Speaking of Completing the Mission, the "Toppat Recruits" ending has Dmitri Petrov, the Big Bad of Fleeing the Complex, be thrown to his death by Henry after knocking out Ellie and trying to kill Henry, because the latter ruined his reputation by escaping The Wall.
• In the final level of Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, "Apocalypse", the Son takes one too many drugs and has an intense Mushroom Samba, culminating in him walking off the roof of his new headquarters under the assumption that the Bifrost, the rainbow bridge of Norse myth, is there. In an earlier level, you can see his body covered by a cloth and the police having finished their autopsy on him.
• In The House of the Dead 2, after the heroes stop Goldman's ultimate creature, The Emperor, Goldman, who's cornered by the duo, declares that "in time, a successor will come," and bids them farewell before dropping himself off the edge of his corporate headquarters, implying his death off-screen. The non-canon spinoff The Typing of the Dead plays this for laughs in two of the three endings, whether either he blows up upon hitting the ground to comical explosion effects, or he's strapped to a bungee cord, bounces back up, and burps.
• Downplayed in Hype: The Time Quest with the morbidly obese Mhasse, which is sent plummeting down the Monastery's belfry from an approximate height of a four or five-storey building. He crashed headfirst through the wooden floor, but survived (and is seen wiggling his feet helplessly afterwards).
• In Immortals Fenyx Rising, after Typhon's defeat, he loses his balance and grabs onto the edge of the area he and Fenyx were fighting in, and he eventually falls into the void of Tartarus, fading away like all other defeated enemies as he does so.
• In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle, the Dramatic Finish for Dio's Castle, DIO's Mansion, and Kennedy Space Center involve the defeated combatant falling to their demise. The former two are fairly straightforward except for DIO's Mansion if the loser is vampiric or Pillar Men, in which case, the light from the sun reduces them to ash. In the case of the Space Center, the fact that gravity is altered so the "floor" is the wall of a building means that the loser if forced to fall forever.
• In the AGD Interactive version of King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne, Hagatha is blinded by sun in her eyes and plunges out the crystal tower's window. However, Graham and Valanice never hear her land or see her corpse.
• Kirby's Return to Dream Land has this happen to the fourth boss of the game, Goriath, after he is defeated by Kirby and his party. Goriath attempts to strike a pose, but then looks down and realizes he's not on solid ground anymore thanks to Kirby and friends having knocked him off the platform, then he gets an Oh, Crap! and plummets to his doom below in a cartoony style, and as soon as he hits the ground, he explodes into many stars just like many other KRTDL bosses do after the end of their death animations.
  • This is subverted in Kirby: Triple Deluxe. When Taranza summons Queen Sectonia to protect him from Kirby, her response for him capturing King Dedede instead of him is to blast him off the balcony. It turns out that he managed to survive just in time to pull a Big Damn Heroes moment along with Dedede to help Kirby finish off Queen Sectonia.
• In Labyrinths of the World 11: The Wild Side Jagan falls into a crevasse when Simon blows a magic horn to stop him from ritually sacrificing Princess Manu.
• At the end of the short web Cyberpunk game The Last Night, your character's target gets shot and falls from a high-rise nightclub balcony to the city below.
• The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night:
  • Skabb staggers back after being defeated in the boss battle and falls over the side of the ship to his death.
  • When he's defeated for good, the Assassin falls from the side of Malefor's Mountain.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: Scervo meets its end this way. Averted with Dreadfuse, its equal from the final dungeon, as it explodes in midair during the fall.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: Master Kohga summons a giant ball to attack Link with. Before he can, it starts rolling towards him. He's got a bottomless pit behind him. He falls in, the ball still rolling after him. Tears of the Kingdom reveals he survived, and is now trapped in the Depths.
• Live A Live: Ode Iou plummets off the top of his own castle after being defeated.
• Lost In Time: The heroine's final confrontation with the Big Bad takes place on a log above a canyon. Do nothing, and he'll push you off. However, a profile you read much earlier in the game said that he was allergic to flowers, and there's one in your inventory. Use it on him and he'll start sneezing, lose his balance, and fall.

M-Z

• Manhunt: Piggsy's death; after defeating him, he retreats and steps on a heating vent that starts to collapse under his weight, dropping his chainsaw in the process. You take it from him and saw his arms off; he then falls from the staircase of the mansion and hits the pavement below.
• Mass Effect: Shows up from time to time.
  • In Mass Effect, defeating Saren involves him succumbing to his wounds (self-inflicted, if you pass certain speech checks) and falling through a window to his demise. Zig-Zagged when Sovereign assumes direct control of his corpse via his implants and makes him go One-Winged Angel.
  • Mass Effect 2:
    • An Eclipse mercenary can meet this fate on Thane's recruitment mission.
    • If Miranda Lawson is still alive, she does this to her father, Henry Lawson, after he releases her sister, Oriana, biotically throwing him through a glass window and down about two stories.
  • In the Citadel DLC, Shepard's clone meets this fate after a furious battle on board the Normandy itself.
• In McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure, after the battle with the Ringmaster Wolf, the train crashes into a set of buffers and he and Ronald both fall from a high bridge. Birdie catches Ronald to return the favor for saving her earlier, while the Ringmaster Wolf continues falling, until he lands in a pile of boxes.
• Sigma is defeated like this in Mega Man X7.
• At the end of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Raiden slices Solidus's spine with the katana, causing him to stumble for a bit (apparently his artificial muscles kicked in) before falling to the ground with a sickening crunch.
• In Metal Slug 6, after sustaining enough damage, the Venusian Queen falls to her death and goes off in a massive explosion.
• Ridley, in Metroid Prime, is pushed out of a balcony by statues with laser beams. Despite the shockwave of the explosion he creates when reaching the bottom, you know he will be back.
  • The whole fight against Meta-Ridley at the start of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is played entirely in free fall. As such, when you deliver the final blow, you're saved by a fellow bounty hunter, but Ridley isn't so lucky, plummeting to his death, though he eventually returns thanks to Phazon corruption.
• Mortal Kombat:
  • There are quite a few level-specific Fatalities which allow you to finish your opponent with one of these. Usually upon a whole mess of Spikes of Doom.
  • In Mortal Kombat 4 for Jax's ending, he drops Jarek to give him this fate. In the official continuity, Jarek manages to indeed survive the fall with injuries. In both his and Jarek’s ending, Jarek also sends Sonya falling off the cliff by tricking her into thinking he fell and grabbing her and pulling her over the edge, but that part is not considered canon.
• Happens twice in Mother 3, both times to Fassad. In Chapter 5, Fassad slips on his own banana peel and falls off Thunder Tower, but this is subverted as Fassad doesn't die, but gets reconstructed into a chimera. The second time, in Chapter 8, is played relatively straight, where he falls into the New Pork City sewers, never to be seen again (though given his backstory, he probably didn't die right away).
• Mystery Case Files:
  • In Madame Fate, this is the prophetized death of the acrobat twins Mao and Amber Tan, who would fall to their death during a performance according the Madame Fate's Crystal Ball. They however reappear as antagonists in Fate's Carnival... only to be actually seen plummeting to their doom from a tower courtesy of a flock of ravens.
  • In Broken Hour, the murderous Meredith Huxley gets blown through a Clock Tower dial and plummets down to her demise. We even get a slow-motion sequence of her fall.
• In the bad ending of OMORI, Sunny/Omori throws himself off a hospital rooftop, with the credits rolling as he plummets to his death.
• Tony Redwood does this in Policenauts, when he vows to Jonathan that no one will take him out, all while laughing as he falls to his death.
• This is how Huggy Wuggy goes out in Poppy Playtime. Huggy gets hit with a box and loses his balance before plummeting down into the depths of the factory.
• Done deliberately with Portal 2: The devs thought that killing Wheatley was too harsh, but letting him go would be anti-climatic. Spacing him, they explained, was the best compromise.
• In Prince of Persia, many of the Mooks can be forced off their platforms if you keep parrying their thrusts and advancing as they are knocked back. This will kill them if the drop at the platform's end is high enough or is over a spiked pit. It's even possible to kill the Final Boss in this manner (except in the SNES version, whose final stages are completely different).
• This is how Seth dies in Project × Zone. He falls off the platforms of the Lost Souls Nirvana to his death upon being defeated in Chapter 38 of the game.
  • In the sequel, M. Bison falls off Kamurucho's Millennium Tower after receiving a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown by Ryu, Ken, Kiryu, and Majima.
• Happens to several villains in the Quest for Glory series.
  • Ad Avis in Quest for Glory II dies this way, stumbling off a tower. A Thief player hits him with a thrown dagger, which makes him lose balance. A Wizard will bounce a force bolt off a pillar, hitting the brazier next to him, causing him to recoil from it (in the AGD Interactive Fan Remake, it ignites his robes) and fall to his death. A Fighter will do a slide and knock the brazier into him with his shield. The fall does kill him; however, as we learn in the fourth game, Ad Avis was the servant of a vampire who fed him some of her own blood. When the fall killed him, he turned into a vampire himself and fled. In that game, Ad Avis dies for good in a way that doesn't involve falling.
  • The Demon Sorcerer of Quest for Glory III is similarly thrown into the closing demon gate. This is after he was stabbed with the spear of death (if defeated by a fighter or paladin), a paladin's sword (Paladin hero), or a grapple hook (thief hero) — none of which kill him outright. If confronted by a wizard, he is first exploded (after stealing the Wizard hero's staff, which the wizard can detonate at will), and his (still living) head is kicked into the portal.
  • Minos of Quest for Glory V commits suicide that way when cornered by the Hero and his allies, carrying the tablet of the prophecy with him, as he knows his blood will constitute the final sacrifice that will release the dragon, who will then burn Silmaria down. If he can't rule it, no one will.
• In Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, Tachyon falls into a black hole after he is defeated in a boss battle.
  • Also, in Crack in Time, Cassiopeia is sent falling to her death after Ratchet defeats her in a Boss Battle.
• Averted with Dutch van der Linde in Red Dead Redemption. When you finally confront him, he gives a breaking speech to Marston and falls off a very large cliff. The next scene is Marston and Ross catching up with his corpse. Ross shoots him in the head — dispelling any notion that Dutch wasn't dead — and attributes it to John, saying "it looks better on paper".
• Resident Evil:
  • In Resident Evil 5, Albert Wesker had this during the flashback when Jill Valentine grabbed him when they jumped out of a window. However, Albert Wesker survives. And so does Jill Valentine, who then became the host for Wesker's new mind-control parasite.
  • In Resident Evil 6, Derek C. Simmons is killed when he falls and gets impaled on a large pole, his blood forming the Umbrella logo.
• Emilio Menendez in The Riddle of Master Lu, a grave robber and a murderer, falls to his death offscreen when trying to cross a dangerous improvised bridge while injured and carrying a cursed emerald.
• Kirk Dierker falls of the Eiffel tower after being shot by Sean in The Saboteur. The camera makes a point to show him hitting the first floor of the tower.
• Saints Row:
  • At the end of the Vice Kings story in the first game, Tanya Winters is defeated by Playa, Johnny, and Ben King, and she's hanging on for dear life from the window of her penthouse. Ben stomps on her hands, and she falls directly onto Ben's car... that he then gives Playa the keys to, saying he won't be needing them anymore.
  • At the end of Saints Row 2, Dane Vogel is shot in the mouth and falls out of the top story of Ultor's offices; you even see him hit an awning on the way down. If the gunshot didn't kill him, the fall definitely did.
• Subverted twice in Shin Megami Tensei II. Aleph gets thrown off two skyscrapers on two separate occasions without taking any damage.
• The Big Bad of the arcade game Shock Troopers as well as its sequel 2nd Squad go out this way.
• In Shuyan Saga, this initially seems to happen when Jade fights Shuyan and goes over the side of the mountain. However, it's quickly pointed out that for someone who can become effectively invulnerable at will, the fall was probably not fatal.
• Silent Scope 2 does this, in a way; the last boss is fought atop the Palace of Westminster's Clock Tower, with a hostage handcuffed to him. After managing to shoot the boss (and not his hostage) enough times, he drops off the side, with the hostage barely hanging on at the top. Your last bullet has to hit the handcuff chain, thus saving the hostage's life. If you manage the shot, the game goes eerily silent as the Big Bad drops... and the last thing you hear before credits roll is a dull thud, and the scattering of birds.
  • The Big Bad in Silent Scope: Bone Eater falls off the satellite to his death after being shot enough times, and he laughs as he falls the way down.
• Sonic the Hedgehog games:
  • At the end of Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball, Sonic and Dr. Robotnik both end up free-falling from the sky. Tails catches Sonic with his newly-repaired airplane, but Robotnik continues falling until he lands in his exploding volcano fortress. Being the series' main villain, he obviously survived.
  • This trope nearly happened to Rouge in Sonic Adventure 2. After a fight with Knuckles over the Master Emerald, she loses her footing and falls towards a pit of lava. Knuckles grabs her hand at the last minute, "saving her life", even though, as a bat, she could have just flown back up… She still could have used the updrafts to glide back up or glided to one of the girders. Most likely, she was exhausted from her fight with Knuckles.
  • Also in Sonic Adventure 2, Shadow himself falls to Earth and is presumed dead. It is revealed in Sonic Heroes, however, that he survived, and if the fight with Devil Doom in Shadow the Hedgehog goes on long enough, it's revealed that Eggman had one of his robots save him from the fall, although he lost his memory in the process.
  • In Sonic Lost World, this is subverted not once but twice with Eggman. The first, Zazz and Zomom send him, Orbot, and Cubot falling toward a lava pool miles below them, but the three later turn up, Eggman having faked his death and used a jet pack to survive. After his defeat, when Sonic takes a piece of his jet pack, Eggman falls off a cliff. Somehow he survives (presumably because he happened to land in a soft spot of dirt), but he loses half his mustache.
  • Also in Sonic Lost World, two of the main villains, Zor and the Zeti leader Zavok, actually do take a fall into lava, although Zavok's fall is considerably higher. Zor's final words suggest that Zeti are not immune to lava, thus Disney Villain Death is actually played straight this time.
  • At the end of Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal, Shadow pushes Lyric towards the escape hatch of his airship, which Sonic promptly opens, sending Lyric falling through it.
• In the video game of Spider-Man 3, Spider-Man and Venom have an aerial battle that ends after an Action Command sequence allows you to save yourself and allow Venom to plummet to the bottom of the construction site, getting impaled on at least twelve giant steel bars.
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed calls it "Long fall" and gives you extra forcepoints for throwing mooks into pits.
  • Rahm Kota gets this honour, but returns later on. Also, Starkiller throws Shaak Ti in the Sarlacc and thinks he is done, but she's back out very fast.
• Streets of Rage: The seventh stage is in an elevator, and you can (and will) throw one mook after another to their doom (It's harder not to do!) So it's very commonplace in Two-Player games to compete on "Which one can throw away the most mooks".
• The Wolf (AKA Duc Volpe) in the last mission of the first Stronghold game when you beat him. You stab him, and then you push him off his castle. Averted as he survives this and comes back for the third game, noting that you never found his body.
• Simon Greedwell, the first boss of the Shoot 'Em Up arcade classic Sunset Riders, falls from the second story of a building after taking a sufficient number of bullets, but even then, manages to deliver his last words before he croaks. This whole event has since received a... curious tribute.
• Suikoden: this happens to the antagonists after the final battle, where one antagonist decides to take the other antagonist along in a suicide as a form of redemption.
• Super Mario Bros. games:
  • The easiest way to defeat Bowser in Super Mario Bros. involves a bridge, a lake of lava, some carefully-timed jumps, and an axe on the other side of the bridge that you can grab to destroy the bridge and send him into the lava. Same for Super Mario Bros. 3, where you have to resort to avoiding his stomps and fireballs long enough to make him stomp a hole all the way through the floor without taking you with him.
  • Avoided in Super Mario 64: Trying to just push Bowser of the cliff makes him jump back up and create a shockwave in the process. You need to throw him into a bomb (or three, in the case of the final battle) to actually defeat him. You can't defeat King Bob-Omb by throwing him off the mountain, either, or he will react pretty similarly to Bowser.
  • The final level of the Donkey Kong Arcade uses this. Mario removes the rivets holding the platform Donkey Kong is on, causing him to fall down, and hit his head.
  • Its sequel, Donkey Kong Jr. has a similar set up. After freeing Donkey Kong, the floor disappears, both Donkey Kong and Mario end up falling, but the former is caught by Jr. In a subversion of the trope, Mario immediately recovers from the fall, and runs away.
  • Also subverted in the Donkey Kong '94, where DK falls off the tower after being defeated by Mario, only to return powered up as a giant for the definite final battle.
  • A similar thing happens in Mario vs. Donkey Kong, but DK ends up crashing onto a truck full of Mini-Marios. He survives and steals the Mini-Marios, again. "Here We Go Again!!"
  • Happens again with Bowser in Super Mario Galaxy 2, and par to the last few examples, he comes back up, eats the Grand Star, becomes massive, and starts the true final battle.
  • At the end of Super Mario 3D Land after defeating Bowser, in a pretty awesome cutscene, Bowser falls towards the pit of lava below in slow-motion. Then a rock hits him and Bowser falls to his doom at regular speed. He's back for the credits sequence.
  • Averted with Bowser in Mario & Luigi: Dream Team. Bowser jumps off a cliff, then reappears as Giant Bowser.
  • In Super Mario RPG, Boomer cuts the chandelier he is standing on and falls to his death after he is defeated.
  • Averted with Bowser Jr. and the Koopalings in New Super Mario Bros. Wii. All of them fall over the edge once defeated, but are shown to survive - right before being crushed by Bowser's falling castle.
  • Mario Party 6: This is the fate of the player character in the Thirsty Gulch single-player board if one manages to roll enough to walk past the Goal/Rare Mini-Game space that is the last space on the board. They'll step onto a rock platform that crumbles under their feet and drops them into a canyon river; the camera cuts off here.
  • After his defeat in Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, Rabbid Kong has the dubious idea of climbing on top of a highly unstable stack of blocks at the very top of an already high, teetering tower. In a really mean-spirited move, Rabbid Peach decides to make the stack of block collapse, sending Rabbid Kong plummeting down. At least it allows Rabbid Peach to make some really fun selfies. Averted as Rabbid Kong comes back for the DLC.
• Tales of Innocence: Oswald fan Kuruela fails to escape from the malfunctioning Gigantess Omega after his defeat and promptly plummets to his death from the top of the tower after the Mini-Mecha stops working.
• Tales of Vesperia can use this trope for Symbolism, depending on whether or not you're into viewing it that way. Whoever Yuri kills appears to have the symbolic fall from power...Ragou and Cumore were both politically powerful, and both fell off of a bridge after Yuri killed them and into a dry sandpit (respectively), Barbos had a powerful blastia under his control and fell off of the gear tower, and Zagi had a powerful blastia fused onto his body and fell off of a tower.
  • Alexei meanwhile...wasn't entirely killed by Yuri. (His ambitions technically crushed him.) And you'd assume that after four times, that Duke would fall to his death or be crushed by his ambitions, right? Well... you wouldn't be further from the truth. He actually saves the day.
• Shredder in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants In Manhattan and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist.
  • Played for Laughs with Wingnut in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge. The level following his defeat shows that he's half-buried and still twitching.
• At the end of the first Tekken game, Kazuya throws his father Heihachi off a cliff. Heihachi one-ups him in the sequel by throwing Kazuya into a volcano. Kazuya repays the favor in Tekken 7 by killing Heihachi, then throwing his corpse into the same volcano to ensure he's Deader than Dead.
  • Played for Laughs in the aforementioned Kazuya's reveal as a Guest Fighter in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, where he is shown throwing other members of the roster into a volcano. The Stinger has him attempt to toss Kirby away... only for Kirby to fly away while he's not looking.
• Temtem:
  • Rival Turned Evil Max is revealed to have been The Mole for the Belsoto Clan and is helping them with their attempt to Take Over the World. At the end of the Kisiwa arc he begins to see them for what they really are and attempts to desert, only to be Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves by their General Ripper and shoved off the edge of the World in the Sky, and presumed dead by the rest of the cast. However, once the player reaches Arbury he reveals himself to be still alive and intent on atoning for his crimes.
  • The Big Bad, Professor Konstantinos, suffers this fate as well when the Four Archtamers knock him off of his kaiju. Unlike Max, he doesn't come back.
• Ernesto Diaz from Time Crisis II and Randy Garrett from Time Crisis 3. Also Jake Hernandez in the Rescue Mission mode of the latter game. And in the fifth game, Robert Baxter is defeated like this when you finish him off in a quick-time event.
  • The Big Bad of the spinoff Crisis Zone (1999), Derrick Lynch, is killed when the STF forces open fire on him, causing him to fall to his death.
• True Crime: Streets of LA: General Kim throws himself off of a skyscraper in the bad ending. This can also happen to Nick Kang, if you lose to Kim.
• The first group of Imp minions meet this fate in Tsioque because a spider helps the titular princess by turning out the lights in a stairway and causing them to trip and fall into an abyss.
• The Dragon, Talbot, in Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception gets a subversion. Hanging off a cliff, Nate shoots him from below as he preparing to crush Sully's head with a rock. This mortally wounds him, and he stumbles over the edge and plunges to his death.
  • The fate of two big henchmen in the same game as well. One falls out the back of an airplane after Nate deploys a parachute crate that knocks them out the back. The second gets one of these when Nate fights them on the back of a truck and jumps off before it goes over a cliff, taking the mook with it.
  • Also, the Big Bad of Uncharted: Golden Abyss dies after Nate tricks him into stepping an unstable, rickety bridge. It promptly collapses under his weight and sends him falling into the gorge.
  • Not to mention that pushing/pulling people off of cliffs and buildings is a common mechanic through the Uncharted series.
• Subverted in Warriors of Fate: The Final Boss, Cao Cao, is a Time-Limit Boss with a small health bar and a weak bomb attack, but you must defeat and arrest him before the timer runs out. If you fail to capture him alive, Cao Cao then seemingly follows this trope by jumping off a waterfall... only for the final cutscene with him returning with a far bigger army, one you can't defeat, leading to the Bad Ending.
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: Several variations of this trope can be used while fighting enemies:
  • An straight example if the enemies are killed by either being thrown by the player off a tall place, or fall accidentally by jumping backwards.
  • An inversion if the player is the one that falls to their death.
  • Two subversions:
    • If the enemies survive the fall.
    • If the enemies are completely destroyed (ie: if they explode) during the fall.
  • A downplayed example if the enemies are killed by the player before falling, but they make it through the entire fall.
  • An aversion if the enemies explode right before they can fall.
• The Warriors:
  • Sanchez (a member of the East Harlem Hurricanes), cornered on the roof of a two-story building by several Warriors, is literally frightened over the edge by Ajax and on top of a car's windshield. Of course, it's unclear if he's actually dead, but one way or another he's getting taken out on a stretcher. And while Ajax didn't actually touch Sanchez, it's obvious he was intending exactly what happened.
  • Soon afterward, Birdie (the leader of the Turnbull A.C.'s skinhead gang) is hit in the head by a beer bottle and falls a lethal distance... from his wheelchair. That's right: in order to beat that level, you have to kill a handicapped man. Ajax, predictably, isn't too regretful.
    Ajax: [arriving to help the other Warriors] Heard you ladies need help wasting a cripple.
• In Xenoblade Chronicles 1, when Metal Face/Mumkhar falls to his death from Sword Valley, but not before being Impaled with Extreme Prejudice from a missed shot at Shulk and Dunban, causing a stone sword to fall on him. And then Subverted when you reach the Fallen Arm, and find the twisted wreckage down there, stone spire still jammed through the cockpit.

Hero/non-villain examples:

Hero/Non-Villain Examples

• Can be applied both ways in Baldur's Gate III: it is possible to use certain spells and attacks (including just pushing someone) to knock enemies off ledges to a painful, possibly deadly fall below — especially if the fall leads into a dark chasm. Your enemies, however, can also do the same to you if you're not careful!
• Corpse Party Sakutaro Morishige goes mad from realizing that he has accidentally been fetishizing Mayu's remains. He screams horribly then jumps out of the window. He is never seen again.
• In the bonus chapter of Cursery: The Crooked Man, this is a given since the villain of the chapter is Humpty Dumpty. He falls to his death from a windmill after being sprayed in the face with a noxious perfume when a cat appears out of nowhere and blinds him with its claws.
• Dragon Age: Origins: Riordan, an Orlesian Grey Warden rescued by the heroes late in the game, falls to his death after leaping from a tower onto the Archdemon's back to fight it in midair, then hanging onto nothing but his sword as he gouges its wing. It is, however, a Dying Moment of Awesome.
• Zig-zagged in Fire Emblem: Awakening. It appears that Gangrel attempts to invoke this, and in fact Emmeryn falls off the cliff. Subverted in that Emmeryn actually survived.
• People can be thrown out of Dio's hideouts and the Kennedy Space Center in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle as part of their Situation Finishes.
• Mass Effect 3:
  • This is how Tarquin Victus dies at the end of his mission.
  • Tali dies this way, too, if you fail to establish peace between the geth and quarians, and side with the geth in the resulting battle — the quarian fleet is wiped out and Tali commits suicide by throwing herself from a nearby cliff.
  • Grunt dies like this in a cutscene by charging an enemy and pushing them off the cliff in order to give Shepard and company time to escape. However, if his loyaly mission was completed in Mass Effect 2, he shows up alive when you get back to your shuttle, battered, bloody, and covered in alien guts.
• Persona 3 Reload: One of the party's associates is murdered by the villains, and this is covered up as him dying in a fall. If you talk to the Snobby Movie Critic, he will say "Usually it's the bad guys who tend to die by falling from high places, so ... Nah, that can't be right. I guess I've been watching too many movies."
• In Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time, Ratchet falls off a platform after being shot in the chest by Alistar.
• Aleph in Shin Megami Tensei II gets thrown off of the top of a high building, and survives... twice. He doesn't even take any damage.

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