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Disney Villain Death / Live-Action Films

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"Happy trails, Hans!"
Villains plummeting to their doom in live-action movies.

Example subpages:

Individual examples:

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    # 
  • In 13 Frightened Girls, a villainous Soviet agent is defeated this way. Unlike in Disney, we do see him hit the ground, but from a distance so there's still no visible gore.
  • This is how the Persian messenger bites it in 300. It doesn't even have to be said.
    • Later on, the Spartans outdo themselves by not only pushing tons of Persian soldiers off the cliffs at Thermopylae en masse, but they shove a few flipping War Elephants off after them.

    A 
  • Air Force One:
    • Igor Nevsky (one of the Mooks) is killed when he gets blown out the back of the parachute ramp without a parachute.
    • Subverted with Big Bad Korshunov; his neck is broken by his parachute and he gets thrown off the plane... but he floats safely to earth.
  • The Alien Queen from Aliens is defeated by being Thrown Out the Airlock and falling through space.
  • Averted in the movie version of Angels & Demons. In Dan Brown's book, the Hassassin is thrown off a balcony in the Castel Sant'Angelo by being overpowered by non-combat scholar hero Robert Langdon and Yoga Fu empowered Vittoria Vetra. In the movie, the Hassassin (now "Mr. Gray") makes a "you're not armed, and I wasn't paid to kill you, but don't follow me" speech. Free to leave, he locates his getaway car and final payment and is promptly killed by a car bomb.
  • The Archer: Lauren ends up killing Michael by dropping him off a cliff while he was torturing her.
  • Bailey's fate in The Avengers (1998).

    B 
  • In Bad Boys for Life, Isabel dies this way after Rita shoots her several times, causing her to fall into the fiery remains of her helicopter.
  • Colonel Pryzer from Barb Wire is killed when Barb drops Pryzer along with his forklift to a fiery death.
  • Batman:
    • Batman (1989)
      • Happens to several of the Joker's goons during the battle in the top floor of Gotham Cathedral. With one of the Joker's goons, Batman bangs his head against a giant bell and sends him hurtling to his death down a shaft. Another accidentally kills himself when he lunges at Batman and Batman moves aside, causing the goon to crash through some rotten flooring... all the way to the bottom.
      • The Joker. He takes a fall from Gotham Cathedral to his death after being pulled off the ladder to his chopper by a stone gargoyle tied to his foot by Batman's grappling cable. We actually see his body on the ground, and there's even cracks around the corpse on the concrete and everything.
      • Per his usual Origin Story, Jack Napier also falls into a vat of chemicals in the first act to become the Joker. Everyone initially thinks the incident killed him, and he even alludes to the event as his "death" a couple of times.
        Joker: I've been dead once already. It's very liberating. You should think of it as... therapy.
    • In The Dark Knight, the Joker almost suffers this fate, but is saved by Batman. Unlike Napier in Batman, who screams in fear as he plummets, this Joker is laughing maniacally as he falls, believing he succeeded in making Batman break his one rule — and is very annoyed at Batman for saving him.
    • Two-Face has a similar demise in Batman Forever. As well as in The Dark Knight, but it's ambiguous enough that it appeared he might've survived. The following film, The Dark Knight Rises, ended up confirming his death.
    • This is a very popular move in the Batman films. In Burton's Batman, a mook got thrown over the side, while in Returns, Catwoman falls more than once, though she survives each fall (due to having nine lives). The Penguin also falls through a window during his final fight with Batman. In Forever, Edward Nygma throws his boss to his death. Finally, in Batman & Robin, all three villains jump off the Arkham tower, yet miraculously survive.
    • The entire climax of Burton's first Batman movie is a big homage to Metropolis, where Freder Frederson chases Dr. Rotwang up into the cathedral and knocks him off the roof.
  • Happens to Morris in Big Game after Oskari takes him out with a well-aimed shot to the chest.
  • Happens to the insane nun Sister Ruth at the end of Black Narcissus when she tries to push Sister Clodagh off the cliff. Martin Scorsese even calls it a "Disney Death" in his DVD commentary appreciation of the film.
  • The Black Room: Mad baron Gregor is knocked onto a knife being held by a the corpse of the brother he killed and stored in a pit.
  • The Bloody Man: A rare non-villainous example. In Sam's Bloody Man story, Charles kills his hostage by throwing her off of the second floor of the barn.
  • The Head Nazi and his Lieutenant from The Blues Brothers as they drive after the brothers they end up driving off an unfinished highway overpass causing them to plummet to several stories to their deaths on the street below.
  • Boa: In the climax, the snake manages to hitch a ride on the cargo plane boarded by the remaining survivors; they eventually manage to throw it out of the plane and send it plummeting to its doom, but not before dragging the last surviving inmate (a Russian terrorist) with it.
  • The Bride: Viktor breaks free from his shackles and flees by horse to Castle Frankenstein, where the Baron confronts him. A fight ensues, and Viktor is chased to the top of the laboratory, where he throws the Baron to his death.
  • In the 2010 film of Brighton Rock, Pinkie suffers death by gravity from the Seven Sisters cliffs. He stumbles over the edge after acid is splashed onto his face and eyes, causing horrific burns. All this is true to the book - although the entirely un-Disney-death-detail of a shot of his broken body and mutilated face lying in the wash at the bottom of the cliff is a new addition.
  • Munsey's death by Joe in Brute Force (1947); he's thrown from the top of the guard's tower by Joe to be finished off by the rest of the prisoners.

    C 
  • The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Cesare. Or did he?
  • The Candy Tangerine Man: The Baron knocks his two unnamed Rabid Cop nemeses' car off a cliff with them in it.
  • In The Case of the Bloody Iris, the killer plunges to their death down the centre of the stairwell from the top floor of the high-rise to the basement.
  • In Casper, the villain is killed by falling off a cliff. Although, this being a movie about ghosts, that's not the last we see of her. In a twisted (uh) twist, Kat's dad is also killed by falling down a manhole, and comes Back from the Dead in one of the most downright awkward ways imaginable immediately afterward.
  • The villainess in Catwoman (2004) not only falls (after a Take My Hand! exhortation from the heroine), but lands upon a lit-up sign for her company and is apparently, though not graphically, electrocuted as well.
  • Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle actually had three villains fall to their deaths, with two Dragons falling off a rooftop and the Big Bad suffering a fall into a fire (which she starts herself thanks to her falling through the floor and firing her guns up at the Angels while in the midst of a lot of escaping gas). If you listen closely, you can hear her scream even after she's hit the bottom.
  • Commando. When interrogating a major mook (named Sully), John Matrix holds him over a cliff. When he finishes, he just lets go.
    • Cindy: "What did you do with Sully?" Matrix: "I let him go!"
    • In the climax, Matrix kills Arius in a shootout and the latter falls off a balcony to his death.
  • Crank: Chev Chelios and Verona die after falling out of a helicopter. Subverted for both: Chev breaks Verona's neck while in freefall, and not to spoil whether Chev makes it or anything, but there is a Crank 2...
  • Subverted in The Crow when Eric fills Top Dollar's head with "Thirty hours of pain!", causing him to reel backwards and fall off the roof of the cathedral they were fighting on — only to be impaled on the huge curved horns of a gargoyle half-way down.
  • In Curse of the Crimson Altar, Morley perishes falling through the roof of the burning Craxted Lodge.

    D 
  • In The Dark Crystal, the Skeksis Scientist falls into a shaft leading into the center of the planet, and we see his opposite Mystic burn to death.
  • The Big Bad Strack in Darkman died the same way as Sully from Commando.
  • Subverted in Dead Silence. As screaming in the presence of Mary Shaw's ghost results in a painful, gruesome death, it isn't the fall that kills Detective James Lipton — just the fact that he can't help but scream on the way down, resulting in him dying before he hits the ground.
  • In Deewaar, Samant gets killed by being thrown out of a high-rise window by Vijay.
  • The Big Bad of Delta Force 2: The Colombian Connection, Ramon Cota, falls to his death when the rope of the helicopter carrying him snaps.
  • Dementia (1955): After the woman stabs the man, she pushes him off the balcony. He plunges to his death.
  • In Dick Tracy, Big Boy is thrown down an oddly deep pit in a drawbridge machine room.
  • Die Hard:
    • In Die Hard, Hans Gruber is shot in the chest and then falls out of a 30 story building..
      "Oh, I hope that's not a hostage..."
    • John took out a mook and The Dragon of Live Free or Die Hard while fighting them in an elevator shaft.
    • In A Good Day to Die Hard Jack kills Komorov by throwing him off a building, before getting sliced by a chopper rotor.
  • In the Dirty Harry film Sudden Impact, Mick gets shot several times by Harry with his .44 Auto Mag, causing the rapist to fall from the hill of a roller coaster into the glass roof of a merry-go-round, where he is impaled on a carved unicorn horn.
  • Disturbia: Kale stabs Turner with the pair of hedge clippers and pushes him into the space underneath his house. It's not a particularly long fall at all, but the impact is likely to have sped up the fatality of his injuries.
  • Happens to Dr. Caldicott in Disturbing Behavior, when Steve kicks him off a cliff.
  • In the 1981 thriller Diva, Le Curé and Saporta fall down an empty elevator shaft to their deaths.
  • In the 2012 Dredd, the villain suffers this from the top of a building taller than any that exist today (200 stories!). She, along with the audience, experiences this in slo-mo, due to Dredd dosing her with her own drug Slo-Mo just before sending her to take the long fall.

    E 
  • Downplayed in Edward Scissorhands: In the name of defending both himself and Kim, Edward stabs the murderous Jim in the gut and pushes him out a window of the mansion.
  • The Big Bad in Elektra was thrown down a well after getting impaled.
  • Subverted in Elysium. While Kruger falls to his death in his final fight with Max, it's not the fall that kills him; It's the grenade that he intended to blow up himself and Max with.
  • The Enforcer (1951): Rico, the Murder, Inc. team leader, falls to his death while trying to climb down a drainpipe to escape from an assassin.
  • The Equalizer 2: After Robert gouges York's eye out and stabs him in the throat, he throws him off the tower to his death.
  • The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein: Cagliostro loses control of his carriage and it plunges over a cliff into the sea (although the editing makes it really hard for the viewer to tell exactly what has happened). Vera says that he will return due to his Born-Again Immortality.

    F 
  • An interesting variant happens in Fast & Furious 6, where the SUV Big Bad Owen Shaw is in hits a barrier at the back of the cargo plane the final action scene takes place in as the aircraft is taking off. Since he doesn't have a seat-belt on, he goes flying through the front window and out the back of the plane, falling several hundred feet to his death.
    • Subverted in the fact that Furious 7 reveals he survived, but is either comatose and/or disabled as a result of falling out of the plane.
  • In Fear (1996), after a long struggle, David (played by Mark Wahlberg) is eventually pushed out a window by Nicole's father, causing him to fall from the balcony, where he lands on the rocks below and his spine shatters upon impact.
  • In First Blood, sadistic head deputy Art Galt, ignoring Chief Teasle's orders to capture Rambo alive, tried to shoot him from a helicopter. After being cornered in a cliff, Rambo threw a rock at it, causing the helicopter to pitch heavily and drop Galt to his death into the gorge. Unlike Disney, we are shown proof-positive that Galt ain't coming back when Rambo picks him up to steal his gear and sees his face smashed into bloody hamburger.
    • This also happens to the equally sadistic torturer Sergeant Yushin in Rambo: First Blood Part II. Rambo throws him out of a helicopter.
  • Pat Schiller from Fled after a fight with Piper (Lawrence Fishburne) on a gondola car cable, Piper is eventually able to overpower him after his partner Dodge distracts him, he then throws him off the gondola to his death.
  • Flowers in the Attic (1987) has the Grandmother fall to her death conveniently enough to absolve the kids of any responsibility over her death.
  • The two villains of The Forbidden Kingdom get taken out this way. Well, the Witch with White Hair does. The Jade Warlord gets stabbed in the heart with the jade dart (thus removing his immortality and causing him to begin aging very rapidly), then falls into a stony well. Full of lava.

    G 
  • Subverted in Garuda. The eponymous monster is seemingly finished when one of its wings is crippled and it is tricked to fall from the roof of a skyscraper, but soon it is shown climbing back up for a last stab at the protagonists.
  • The Getaway has Steve McQueen's Gordon "Doc" McCoy take out a Mook this way, shooting the elevator cables out so that the crash breaks every bone in his body when the elevator crashes to the bottom.
  • A particularly jarring example occurs in Michael Jackson's short film "Ghosts". A transcript of the film (which, sadly, has since evaporated along with Geocities) even called the mayor's demise a "presumably very messy Disney Villain Death".
  • In G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Storm Shadow is stabbed in the chest by Snake Eyes and falls off the weird, electrical tower thingy... well, he falls off a platform and into the frosty waters. Rumor has it, though, that the sequels have him returning.
  • Subverted in Gods of Egypt. Set falls from the top of his Evil Tower of Ominousness and hits the ground with meteoric force. He survives the impact, albeit barely, and tries to crawl away. Horus doesn't give him the chance.
  • In the Godzilla film Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, the titular monster King Ghidorah kills the assassin Malmess this way when one of his random gravity beams destroys a cliff, causing Malmess to fall to his death (while hilariously catching a rock before falling).
  • Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell: Dr. Momotake, a psychologist who enjoys putting people in stressful situations, gets in an argument with another survivor, during which he slips and falls off a cliff to his seeming death. He actually survives, only for the Gokemidoro to kill him.
  • In Gone in 60 Seconds (2000), Memphis knocks Calitri off a ledge, where he lands in his office and straight down to his own coffin.
  • Henry Evans from The Good Son. It's made chilling when you take into account that the character was a kid played by Macaulay Culkin of Home Alone fame. Additionally, his mother deliberately dropped him rather than just falling off. She could only keep hold of one of them, though (she was also holding onto his cousin with her other hand), and Henry honestly had it coming.
  • The Gore Gore Girls: The killer falls out a second-story window while trying to escape and gets her head run over by a car.
  • The Grand Budapest Hotel: Gustave is hanging off of a cliff face, with Jopling trying to kick him off, when Zero rushes up behind him and shoves him off the edge. While undoubtedly a Moment of Awesome for Zero, the suddenness of the incident also makes it a Funny Moment.
    Gustave: Holy shit, you got him!

    H 
  • The very last shot of Hardcore Henry is Henry closing the helicopter doors on Estelle, shredding her fingers and causing her to fall to her death as the movie ends.
  • Harry Potter:
  • In the beginning of the first Hellboy, Rasputin (Yes, THAT Rasputin) is sucked through a portal into another dimension (so a sideways version of this), the collapsing portal happens to be smaller than his body... Ouch.
  • The Hideous Sun Demon: The monster climbs all the way up a tower just to fall from it at the end.
    RiffTrax: 'Twas beauty killed the beast.
    RiffTrax: Nah, I think it was the asphalt.
  • In The Hitman's Bodyguard, Kincaid has Dukhovich cornered on a rooftop after chasing after him and forces him to sit up on a ledge. When Dukhovich begins to taunt Kincaid, Kincaid simply laughs at him and kicks him off the roof to his death, landing on a car below.
  • Hollywood Homicide: Joe Gavilan accidentally drops Antoine Sartain off the top of the building roof they're fighting on and he plummets several floors before landing straight into an empty dumpster with a loud thud against the metal. It's hard for pretty much anybody who watches that scene for the first time not to go "Ooo" right after it happens.
  • Hudson Hawk. The evil dog Bunny performed a Groin Attack on Eddie and went for Anna Baragli's throat. Eddie uses a tennis-ball-firing device to knock her out a window and she falls to her death.

    I 

    J 
  • In Jack the Giant Slayer, the giant with the helmet suffers this. Though we do get to see the result of the giant's fall.
  • Near the end of Judge Dredd, Dredd is hanging from an edge over a long fall with Rico about to kill him. Dredd turns the tables on Rico and throws him over the edge to his doom.
  • Bishop in Juice.
  • This happens to Balem in Jupiter Ascending when the platform he and Jupiter are on collapses.
  • The Final Battle of Jumanji: The Next Level ends with Spencer sending Jurgen the Brutal falling out of the observation deck of his airship.
  • In Jurassic World after Rexy and Blue have the Indominus Rex backed into the edge of the Mosasaurus tank, it leaps out to grab the Indominus by the neck and drag it underwater. We don't see what happens underwater, but in the sequel its skeleton is seen at the bottom of the Mosasaurus's tank.
  • The sequel to the above film, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, also contains an example. The Indoraptor falls through the roof of the Lockwood estate and is fatally impaled on the fossilized skull of a Triceratops.

    K 
  • In the Kamen Rider Kabuto movie God Speed Love, Kamen Riders Ketaros gets a rather spectacular one. During his fight with Kabuto on a space station, they both fall off. While Kabuto survives, Ketaros falls all the way to earth, dying on impact.
  • The Killer That Stalked New York: Matt dies by falling to his death after misjudging a jump while trying to escape the police by Roofhopping.
  • King Kong (1933): Well, Denham, the airplanes got him. Kong's fall from the top of the Empire State Building is probably the best-known example of this trope in live-action film, and likely the Trope Maker as well, since it predates the Disney examples.

    L 
  • Subverted in Legend (1985). After Blunder grabs the unicorn horn and challenges Darkness, a mummy (?) grabs him and drops them both into a pit. The last we hear is Blunder screaming "Aaaaaaah!" as he falls, presumably to his death. However, he later reappears unharmed as a prisoner in Darkness' dungeon.
  • Subverted by Axe-Crazy gangster Dancer (Eli Wallach) in the film version of The Lineup, who tries to jump a gap in a freeway and does fall through it, though not getting shot first. An earlier, straighter example is when Dancer is essentially told by his Evil Cripple boss, "Your Daysare Numbered", and Dancer flies off the handle and pushes him over a railing and onto an ice rink.
  • Little Evil: Satanic cultist Reverend Gospel is knocked into the Hell portal he tried to force a small child into.
  • The Lord of the Rings:
  • The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra. At the end of their fight, the mutant throws the Skeleton over a cliff. When it hits the ground, it breaks up into its component bones.
  • The Lost World (1998): After being bitten by an Eudimorphodon, Roxton falls out the mouth of the cave and plummets down the side of the plateau, being swallowed up by the mists below.
  • After being exposed as a German spy in The Love Light, Joseph the German spy winds up jumping off the sea cliff to his death, having been chased there by a Torches and Pitchforks mob.
  • In The Lovely Bones film, Harvey stumbles over a cliff to his death, possibly caused by the deceased protagonist.

    M 

    N 
  • The Naked Gun series:
    • At the end of the first movie, Dr. Vincent Ludwig is shot in the neck with a tranquilizer dart and he falls off a balcony into the pavement below, where he is run over by a steamroller, a truck, and a marching band.
    • The sequel has Quentin Hapsburg knocked out a window, and he falls off the balcony, but his fall is stopped by an awning; he gets up and brushes himself off, only to get killed by a random lion that escaped from the zoo.
  • The film adaptation of The Name of the Rose features an example of this; the Dominican monk and inquisitor Bernardo Gui is chased by a peasant mob while trying to burn a girl as a witch at the end of the film. Gui attempts to escape in a cart, gets stuck, and is pushed over the edge of a cliff by the mob. It's not clear why the producers felt the need to include the scene, particularly since the real historical Bernardo Gui lived quite happily to a ripe old age before dying of natural causes.
    • Also, a monk throws himself out of a high tower.
    • Gui was tossed cliffside and impaled on spikes the same reason the girl was spared: the producers believed an American audience couldn't handle a tragic ending.
  • Nash (Eric Roberts) from National Security after a fight with Detective Earl Montgomery his partner Hank Rafferty drops a crane on the concrete slab they were fighting on as Montgomery is hanging for his life after Nash pushed him off, this causes Nash to fly into the air over a cliff into the sea below.
  • At the ending of No Good Deed (2014), Big Bad Colin Evans, the psycho who enters the main character's home, is killed at the end after she shoots him and he falls out of a window to his death.
  • No Holds Barred, the 1989 movie starring Hulk Hogan that became better known for being parlayed into a "real-life" feud between Hogan (as a wrestler named Rip) and his co-star Tiny Lister, in character as his movie character, Zeus, a Wrestling Monster. In the movie's climatic scene, Rip and Zeus are brawling on a high balcony above the arena floor when Zeus shoves Rip down a stairwell, apparently defeating him. However, Rip recovers and finally wears down Zeus enough to knock him off the balcony; Zeus tumbles from the balcony, presumably falling to his death when he lands in the wrestling ring below with such force that the ring collapses.
  • At the end of Hitchcock's North By Northwest, this happens to Valerian, who rolls off Mount Rushmore to his death after attacking Thornhill. Leonard (Martin Landau) also has a dramatic downfall, although he technically gets shot first.

    O 
  • Oblivion (1994): Zack blasts a nightscorp off a cliff after it tries to eat Butou.
  • One Man's Justice: Dirty Cop Karl Savak is thrown off a several-story building and falls onto a piano.
  • Orphan: First Kill: Tricia, who covered up the murder of her own daughter and has been blackmailing Leena to keep up the cover up, falls to her death during her struggle with Leena.
  • Our Man Flint. While fighting two Galaxy security guards, Flint knocks them off a catwalk to their deaths on the ground below.

    P 
  • Zigzagged in Paddington (2014). Paddington tries to distract Millicent by sending a flock of birds to swarm her, and she loses her balance but did not fall. As she tries to approach Paddington, she is knocked off the roof by a door but manages to catch a flagpole.
  • Parker: The hitman is kicked off a balcony by Parker. A long shot shows him falling, but another building blocks any shot of him hitting the ground.
  • In Passenger 57, Rane is defeated when Cutter kicks him out of the plane to his death after a fistfight.
  • The Phantom of Crestwood: The killer jumps to their death from Lovers' Leap rather than face capture and certain disgrace.
  • One scene from The Plague Dogs shows a man attempting to gun down the titular dogs, but is then kicked off a cliff by a fox that was helping said dogs. The two dogs then proceed to eat the man's corpse.
  • Planet of the Apes:
    • In Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Koba is on the giving end of this trope when he kills Jacobs by casually pushing the helicopter that he's trapped inside off the side of the Golden Gate Bridge.
    • Koba dies this way via Caesar releasing his grip on a ledge above a collapsing tower in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.
  • Poor Albert & Little Annie: Violent misogynist and paedophile Albert falls out a several story window while trying to kill a child.

    R 

    S 
  • Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur uses this.
    "KAAAAAAAAANE!"
  • In The Scorpion King, the villain Memnon gets his Disney Villain Death only after getting shot in the chest with an arrow, falling backwards off a really high building, THEN getting engulfed in the flames of an explosion, and then finally crashing into the ground. Interesting to note that he's still alive and screaming up until he splats on the ground. Talk about overkill.
  • As the leader of Future Villain Band in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is choking Billy Shears, the latter's sweetheart Strawberry Fields manages to pull him off — resulting in the villain falling to his death from the multi-level stage. His body is seen on the ground. (Strawberry herself undergoes a Disney Death as a result of the struggle.)
  • At the end of Shaft (2019), Gordito meets his end this way, after having a knife thrown at his chest and taking multiple gunshots.
  • Shanghai Noon duology:
    • At the end of the first film, the villain, Lo Fong, is killed when a bell falls from a tower and its rope gets wrapped around his neck. The pulley effect drags Fong upward, in a sort of inverse hanging. The angle makes it look as though he's falling. Think Clayton's death in Tarzan.
    • Shanghai Knights:
      • Rathbone lures the heroes into Big Ben, where he and Chon Wang engage in a spectacular sword fight. Close to defeat, Wang cuts the support of a catwalk, sending both combatants hurling out of the clock tower window. Wang is saved by Roy, but Rathbone falls to his death, complete with a Wile E. Coyote puff of smoke when he hits the ground. Damn. He may have fallen into a fountain and that would make the puff of smoke a splash of water. Either way, doesn't mean he survived. Think Ratigan's death in The Great Mouse Detective.
      • Before that, Wu Chow is blasted upward into the air with a rocket and blows up. Think Shan Yu's death in Mulan.
  • Falling is the most common way for villains in Sherlock Holmes films to go out:
    • Moriarty himself fell three different times in the Rathbone-Bruce films (thrown off a tower, fell 60 feet into the sewers, and plummeted off a high rise after the pipe he was hanging on to broke).
    • Sherlock: Case of Evil: After being stabbed by Holmes during their final battle, Moriarty crashes through the clock face of Big Ben and plunges into the Thames River below.
    • In The Sign of Four: Sherlock Holmes' Greatest Case, the Big Bad Jonathan Small plunges to his death through the trapdoor in the warehouse into the river.
    • In 1985's Young Sherlock Holmes, Rathe falls into a frozen river only to survive, after which it was revealed that he was Moriarty the whole time.
    • Sherlock Holmes (2009) has the main villain, Lord Blackwood, start falling to his death via a piece of construction debris, before seemingly being saved by Sherlock, till another piece of debris knocks him off and into the chains where he is hung. It's like a mix between Gaston's death and Clayton's death.
    • At the end of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (the sequel to the 2009 film), Moriarty is about to kill Holmes, who realizes that he can't take Moriarty in a fist fight. So he grabs Moriarty and throws himself off a ledge overlooking the Reichenbach Falls, taking Moriarty with him. Holmes is revealed to be Faking the Dead; Moriarty isn't.
  • Shoot to Kill: The Big Bad throws all four of the other fishermen off a cliff to their deaths after his cover as an imposter is jeopardized.
  • Subverted with Botha in Skyscraper. Will kicks him over a ledge, but as he falls, he is blown up by a grenade he's holding.
  • The killer plunges through the floor into the blazing basement at the climax of Sorority Row.
  • Spider-Man Trilogy:
    • In Spider-Man, the carjacker who shot Uncle Ben trips and falls out of a 30-story window to his death.
    • In Spider-Man 2, Doc Ock sinks into the water as well, as part of a Heroic Sacrifice to save New York from his own creation.
  • In Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, the Klingon commander Kruge gets a Disney villain death when he is kicked off by Admiral Kirk, into the lava pits.
    • The Reman Viceroy gets a similar death when he is kicked by Commander Riker in Star Trek: Nemesis.
    • As does the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact, although in her case, she falls into a cloud of corrosive gas that dissolves her organic flesh.
      • Though this doesn't kill her; Picard snapping her spine afterward does.
    • Both Manas and Krall are killed like this in Star Trek Beyond, the former being pushed off a cliff by Jaylah, and the latter being kicked out of the airlock by Kirk.
  • Nero's dragon, Ayel, is shot and falls to his death in Star Trek (2009).
  • ''Star Wars has a some notable ones.
    • ''A New Hope has a Stormtrooper who ends up falling down a chasm after getting shot.
    • In The Empire Strikes Back when Luke tries to kill himself to refuse Vader's offer to join the Dark Side. This is subverted when Luke gets sucked in by a vent and thrown out onto a weather vane. He gets saved at the last minute by Leia, Chewie and Lando flying the Millennium Falcon.
  • Return of the Jedi has Darth Vader, now Anakin Skywalker, throw The Emperor down a a reactor shaft to save Luke.
  • In Strange Days, Max falls off a high-rise balcony to his death shortly before the turn of the millennium.
  • How Joshua Foss is defeated in Sudden Death. Darren McCord shoots the helicopter Foss is in, killing the pilot and causing the helicopter to fall into the hockey arena and explode, all while Foss lets out a LONG scream.
  • In Superman II, the Zod Gang gets this death. Superman throws General Zod into an icy abyss in a crevice, Lois punches Ursa into another crevice, and Non, while trying to fly, falls into another crevice, as the Zod Gang's powers have just been taken away. Although there is a deleted scene where they are arrested by Arctic police, it doesn't explain how they could have survived, so it could be taken as an alternate ending.
  • In Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, after Superman neutralises Nuclear Man's powers, he drops Nuclear Man, where he falls to his doom into the core of a power plant.
  • In the 2015 action film Survivor, Kate (played by Milla Jovovich) defeats the Watchmaker (played by Pierce Brosnan) by stomping on his hand and causing him to fall to his death in Times Square below trip in their final fight.
  • Subverted in Swordfish. Marco (Vinnie Jones) falls out of the bus when it is hanging vertically under the transport helicopter carrying it, along with a hostage. They fall to their deaths, but halfway down, the bomb that was strapped to the hostage suddenly explodes, killing them both before they can hit the ground.

    T 
  • The Angry Video Game Nerd commented on this when discussing Walker's death in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III:
    "Now, I gotta pause this because I gotta ask, how many times have you seen this shot in a movie? Way too fuckin' much. It was one of the biggest clichés of the time. What happened at the end of Batman? The Joker falls, same shot. What happens at the end of Dick Tracy? Big Boy falls, same thing."
  • Tenet: Kat kills Sator prematurely by shooting him in the sternum, then throws him off his yacht to his death where he drowns. She later hooks his corpse to her speedboat for good measure.
  • Terminator 2: Judgment Day has the T-1000. The Terminator blows up the T-1000 with a grenade, which causes the T-1000 to topple into the steel below. Although it's not that fall that kills it, as it slowly melts in what appears to be the closest thing to agony a robot can experience.
  • Seth Rogen, subverted, in his a-mock-alypse This Is the End, although other similar B-list stars like Rihanna and Aziz Ansari fail precipitously in the first reel. The very act of submitting to a Disney Villain Death is what saves him.
  • Thou Shalt Not Kill... Except: The cult leader is blasted off a cliff by Stryker, and falls straight onto the wreckage of a motorcycle.
  • In The Three Musketeers (2011), Milady de Winter seemingly jumps off an airship to her death upon realizing that Athos will not spare her life anyway. She's later revealed to be Not Quite Dead, as Buckingham's men rescued her before she drowned in the English Channel.
  • Top Secret!. Played for laughs when Chocolate Mousse throws a soldier off the top of a tower and he shatters like stone.
  • Total Recall (1990). While fighting Quaid, The Dragon Richter has his arms ripped off by an elevator and falls to his death. His fall might be considered a good thing, given your opinion on bleeding to death.
  • In Transformers: Age of Extinction, Savoy falls to his death out of a Hong Kong apartment building window after Cade throws a football at him.
  • Happens to Arkady Karasov in The Transporter Refueled, after he is shot to death by Anna during his final fight with Frank Martin above a cliff.
  • Tremors. Graboids are sensitive to loud noise and stampede away from them. Valentine detonates a bomb and sends the last Graboid over the edge of a cliff to its death.
  • In the 2010 remake of True Grit, Mattie shoots Tom Chaney off the mountain campsite.
  • Tumbleweed: During his final fight with Jim, Lam dies when he grabs a rock and attempts to smash it down on Jim's head, only to overbalance and fall off the cliff.

    U 

    V 
  • In Van Helsing, this occurs all over the place, and it varies between who it's most effective against. The final villain to fall is Igor, who also has the longest and most dramatic plummet.
  • The girl in Vertigo. Twice. Well... two different girls, actually. Shhhh!
  • A weird subversion occurs to the hero of Virtuosity. Russell Crowe's sadistic villain (who happens to be a video game villain who has come to life through the magic of Applied Phlebotinum) knocks Denzel Washington's hero off a roof. Denzel gets to have a very graphic Disney Villain Death and a Disney Death immediately afterward! Of course, both Russel and Denzel fall through a glass rooftop earlier. Russel gets to fall through a series of glass panels on the way down. The result is not pretty.

    W 
  • In Where Eagles Dare, one of the squad members turned traitors, Capt. Olaf Christiansen is dropped to his death this way. Col. Turner being a British Nazi kills himself this way.
  • Wild Wild West. Dr. Loveless falls to his doom at the bottom of a cliff.
  • Inverted in The Whisperer in Darkness when its not a villain, but little girl Hannah, who is yanked from a biplane and dropped screaming from the sky by the movies flying monsters, the Mi-Go. The camera shows the girl as she spirals into the abyss.

    X 

    Hero/Non-villain examples 
  • In Alice in Wonderland (1999), during his performance of "Aunty's Wooden Leg" the Mad Hatter trips on the table while dancing and appears to fall to his death in an unseen deep hole, only to pop his head up from under the table, unharmed.
  • Alicia is Driven to Suicide by this method in Batman (1989), but it takes place off-screen. note . On the other hand, when the Penguin's bats cause the Ice Princess to plunge from the roof in Batman Returns we get to see her scream all the way down and land. In a PG-13 movie.
  • Maggie, Chucky's first kill in Child's Play (1988), is hit in the face with a hammer causing her to stumble backwards and crash through the window of Andy's apartment and fall all the way down onto a Car Cushion.
  • Sarah, tragically at the beginning of Cliffhanger.
  • Attempted but ultimately Subverted in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019). During the climatic battle, King Ghidorah uses his heads to lift Godzilla several feet in the air and drop him. He even catches fire from atmospheric re-entry! It would've killed Godzilla too, had a dying Mothra not stepped in to give him a power boost.
  • Inverted in Snow White: A Tale of Terror. It's Claudia who sends one of the heroes falling to his death.
  • Happens a few times in The Towering Inferno, but rather brutally when an explosion in the building dislodges a scenic elevator which is carrying a load of people towards the bottom. The dislodging of the elevator sends the guest, Lisolette Mueller falling out the elevator to her death, but not before clipping the side of the building.
  • The Zombie Apocalypse in Apartment 14F: Bradly, trying to retrieve his drone after it gets caught in a net, climbs out his balcony to avoid the zombies he thinks might be outside his apartment. While answering his cellphone, he slips and falls fifteen stories onto the apartment building's power box, killing himself and knocking out the building's power.

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