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Alas, even with extensive warning about the staircase...
"I WARNED YOU ABOUT STAIRS BRO!!!! I TOLD YOU DOG!"
Stairs can be dangerous if you misstep and fall down, even worse depending on how long it is. Still, it can be funny, especially in cartoons.
This is one of the common ways a Fright Deathtrap is used to kill someone. It can be caused by a case of Mind Your Step, but there are plenty of ways to misstep and fall without the stairs containing a trap or problem.
See also Death By Falling Over.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- Nobita from Doraemon has fallen down the stairs many times with comedic results.
- Played with horribly with Yukari in Another. She falls down the stairs which is bad enough, but what kills her is getting Impaled with Extreme Prejudice through the neck... on the metal tip of her umbrella.
- Zoro's rival Kuina died by falling down a flight of stairs in One Piece ... offscreen.
- In Mobile Suit Gundam, Amuro's father Tem Ray falls down a flight of stairs in his exuberance at seeing the Gundam that he designed and his son pilots defeating Zeon forces in a battle near Side 6. Although his fate is left ambiguous in the TV series, the Compilation Movie later confirmed he did indeed die from falling down the stairs.
- Kouichi Kimura from Digimon Frontier was mortally injured after falling down a flight of stairs in the subway, while chasing after his missing twin brother Kouji as he was about to take his spot in the "road trip" to the Digital World. There's also a subversion: after the last battle against Lucemon, Kouji and his True Companions find themselves back home few minutes after Kouichi's fatal fall and manage to find him — as he lays dying on the operation table. With The Power of Friendship, they save him.
- In the Bleach pilot, Orihime died by falling down the stairs of her house. She gets better. (Note that this is due to the creator having to scrap the pilot and settle for a different version of events due to Executive Meddling.)
- In a Detective Conan filler case, the Office Lady Sanae Kouda tried to ask a rich man named Watanuki to not withdraw his economic support to the company she worked on, and he accidentally killed her like this when attempting to push her away from him when they were both standing on his house's stairs; as Sanae was shoe-less at the moment, she slipped up and broke her neck upon stumbling down and hitting the wall. Watanuki buried poor Sanae's body in a space in between a construction site and his backyard to try hiding his crime, but he didn't count on both the Detective Boys (who snuck in to play and saw odd things) nor on the girl's Knight Templar Big Brother Masao (who became a thief, robbed a nearby bank and hid his loot in Watanuki's yard to force the police dig in and find his beloved little sister's corpse).
- Subverted in Sakura Gari. The boarding student Terashima is pushed down a flight of stairs by Souma's half-sister Sakurako for being one of Souma's lovers, but that's not what kills him. Catching fire, however...
- Averted in Mawaru-Penguindrum. Asami Kuho gets pushed down some elevator stairs by Kanba's Clingy Jealous Girl Masako, but aside of minor injuries she lives to tell.
- This trope became a plot point in the anime-only Senbatsu are of The Prince of Tennis. Akaya Kirihara from Rikkaidai was at some point found lying injured next to a flight of stairs, and it's believed that someone pushed him down because of his bad in.court reputation; it's thought that the culprit is Akira Kamio from Fudomine, who has a huge and rather understandable beef with the victim since he severely injured the Fudomine captain, Kippei Tachibana, during a match. Meanwhile the rumors come and go, Kamio is about to be kicked out, and Kirihara refuses to talk about the incident... The culprit? It wasn't Kamio... but Captain Tachibana's sister An, who's working there as a Cute Sports Club Manager. She didn't intentionally push Kirihara, but they were arguing over what he did to the older Tachibana and Kirihara plummeted down the stairs when she lost it in the middle of their fight and tried to slap him, which caused him to lose his balance. The deal is cleared when Ryoma finds one of An's hairpins next to the stairs and confronts the three people involved.
Comic Books
- In what could be the most evil and mean-spirited example of this trope, in Ultimate X-Men, Mr. Sinister introduces Professor Xavier to "his one enemy... stairs". (If you're not an X-Men fan, Xavier is wheelchair-bound.) The image of this quickly became meme-worthy.
Fan Works
- This happening to Chris is a running gag in Sonic Movie Madness.
Film
- Used (in)famously in Robocop, where the ED-209 falls down the stairs, unable to pursue Murphy. That's right, the lethal, dangerous, high-caliber robot that can damage Robocop's armor, fire missiles, and is easily the most dangerous opponent in the movie is stopped by a flight of stairs.
- In the movie Surf Ninjas, during the final epic battle, an enemy mook gets knocked down a flight of stairs that runs up the entire mountainside. He manages to climb back up before the battle ends but gets knocked down a second time. By the time he gets back up again the battle's ended and when told "It's over. Your side lost." He shrugs and willingly throws himself down the stairs again.
- I'm Gonna Git You Sucka: as a Running Gag, each time Mr. Big's two mooks Leonard and Willie get captured by the good guys or screw up a mission they're given the option of going out The Window or the Stairs. They almost always choose the stairs, after which the camera cuts to a scene of them being thrown down them.
- Used as a recurring joke in Kung Fu Panda, in reference to actual stairs on ancient shrines, and how out of shape Po is.
- A non-malicious example: in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Sam pushes Flint down the bouncy stairs in the Jell-O Castle.
- Pinocchio did this on stage at the start of his number "I've Got No Strings." Not really injurious, but humiliating.
- In the Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Knight Templar Frollo forcefully takes a bundle from a Gypsy woman thinking it's stolen property (it's actually the infant Quasimodo, and the woman is his mother), kicking her away, and she falls and hits her head (and likely broke her neck as well) on the steps of Notre Dame, which kills her.
- In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indy and his dad escape through Castle Brunwald only to find themselves at a dead end. Indy tries looking for a secret exit; his dad ends up finding it when he sits down and leans back in a chair, revealing a hidden staircase. Unfortunately, Indy was standing right on top of it at the time...
- In Death Becomes Her, Madeleine is pushed down a very long flight of marble stairs, ending in a battered heap at the bottom with her head twisted around backwards.
- Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?
- This is the way Nomi claws her way to the top in Showgirls.
- Happens at the end of Hitchcock's remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much.
- Done offscreen (but still hilariously) by Priscilla Presley in The Naked Gun.
- In Repossessed, the vengeful voice of Satan shocks Father Majaii into falling down an incredibly long staircase.
Literature
- The Book Of Margery Kempe has the husband of the titular character fall down the stairs and getting heavily wounded by it, and potentially mentally challenged. He dies.
- Used in several Agatha Christie books. Discussed by Hercule Poirot as a typical way of murdering rich, elderly relatives.
- In Gone with the Wind, Scarlett miscarries her fourth pregnancy (ironically, the only one she was actually pleased by) after falling down the stairs.
- In Dragondrums, Piemur takes a nasty spill while running up stone stairs, "courtesy" of some of his fellow apprentices "thinking" it would be funny to grease some of the steps (this bunch had earlier shown a taste for nasty pranks against him, such as "anointing" his belongings with bodily wastes while he was away).
Live-Action TV
Music
- Played for Laughs in Key of Awesome's parody of Ke$ha's "Tic-Toc" music video. The actress who played Kesha commented several times that the staircase scene was the hardest one she has ever done for the KOA.
- Happens to the narrator in Dead Kennedys' "Too Drunk to Fuck" as a consequence of his drinking.
Nursery Rhymes
- "Goosey Goosey Gander
 ":
There I met an old man
Who wouldn't say his prayers,
So I took him by his left leg
And threw him down the stairs.
Real Life
- Tragic Truth in Television example: this is how Kaneto Shiozawa died.
- Bill Bryson ponders the death toll from falls on stairs in his history of domesticity At Homer
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 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.
- English folk singer Sandy Denny died of a brain haemorrhage after falling down a flight of stairs.
- In 1946, British actor David Niven and his wife Primula Rollo were attending a party at actor Tyrone Power's house in Beverly Hills. During a game of hide and seek, Rollo opened what she believed was a closet door and ducked inside; unfortunately, the door led to Power's basement down a steep stone staircase, and Rollo died of a fractured skull and brain lacerations.
- British actor Michael Wilding (whose claims to fame include being Elizabeth Taylor's second husband) died from head injuries sustained after falling down a flight of stairs in his home while suffering an epileptic seizure.
- Izumi Sakai female vocalist from the japanese band Zard died on 27 May 2007 when she fell from the landing of an emergency-exit slope at Keio University Hospital. She was undergoing treatment for a lung cancer that had spread from a previously treated cervical cancer.
- British stage and television actor Robin Nedwell (best known for playing Dr. Duncan Waring in the Doctor series of LWT sitcoms in the 1970s) died of a heart attack several days after falling five feet off a ladder onto concrete; the heart attack was probably brought on by the injuries he sustained in the fall.
- British character actor Derek Nimmo was checking an external alarm at his house when he fell down a stone staircase into the basement; the resulting head injuries put him into a coma, in which he remained until his death two months later.
Video Games
- In some Roguelikes attempting to use the stairs while confused or carrying to much weight can cause you to trip and fall down the stairs, causing you damage (and hence possibly killing you). A particularly infamous form of staircase related death in Nethack occurs when one falls down the stairs when wielding a cockatrice corpse, which will result in being stoned.
- Probably as a tribute to its Roguelike ancestors, earlier versions of Dwarf Fortress had a small possibility of this happening to your dwarves, leading to spiral staircases being depreciated; once one of them started falling, they'd carry on 'til they reached the bottom, picking up speed all the way, and Ludicrous Gibs on impact were not unheard of. This feature seems to have been removed at some point, however.
- This was a common way to die in old adventure games, especially Sierra games, which mocked the player for the various ways in which you could get yourself killed by performing ordinary tasks. The Kings Quest series is a particularly bad offender.
- In Deardrops, Shinichi pushed his fellow violinist Johan down a flight of stairs on impulse, injuring him, due to stress.
- In the otome Visual Novel, (P)lanets, the main character gains her telepathic powers after tripping down a flight of stairs at her school.
- In Suika, Sayo almost dies when her sister Itsuki pushes her down the stairs, but falls in a coma. Their dad snaps on Itsuki and beats her to death. The Itsuki you see? She was Dead All Along.
Web Animation
Web Comics
- Van Von Hunter: a technoleech shows Asimov, a humanoid robot that can climb stairs, to the evil prince. The prince, offended, climbs the stair after yelling "I can do that!" but trips near the top and tumbles down the stairs, disproving himself once again.
- Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff: Come on, You already know how this one goes.
Sweet Bro: "FUCK IM FALLING DOWN ALL THESE STAIRS ..................."
Hella Jeff: "I WARNED YOU ABOUT STAIRS BRO!!!! I TOLD YOU DOG!"
Sweet Bro: "IT KEEPS HAPPENING"
Hella Jeff: "I TOLD YOU MAN"
Hella Jeff: "I TOLD YOU ABOUT STAIRS!"
- Since Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff is Homestuck's comic within a comic and in-universe source of Memetic Mutation, callbacks to it occur any time a character falls down a flight of stairs. When Dave gets flung down some stairs, Hella Jeff pops up to declare his legendary warning on the subject. Tavros is warned against traversing any stairs until he gets more practice with his robot legs, and when he does fall (which happens repeatedly... keeps happening, you could say), it's accompanied by the Unsound Effect "HAPPEN". Later on, when Karkat is dragging Sollux to escape a murderous sober Gamzee, they fall down stairs simply from him not looking where he's going, and it's accompanied by "HAPPEN 2x... COMBOB". And later still, Rose falls down stairs while drunk, accompanied by "DRUNK HAPPEN X ROSE...... COMBOBOB"
- Used in The Adventures of Dr. McNinja; he gets scared by some cobwebs, trips, and falls down the stairs.
- In Wapsi Square, both Monica and Tina have fallen victim to this.
- xkcd: "The stampede lasted two hours and reached the bottom three times."
- Dave of College Roomies from Hell!!! tried to commit suicide by falling down the stairs. The end results were much more entertaining.
Web Original
Western Animation
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