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I agree that this doesn't quite fit the definition of the trope.
Asking differently, is there anybody who thinks that the pothole is relevant?
Let's just say and leave it at that.
This is, IMO, relevant. Deleting it is splitting hairs.
It's not relevant because the definition of Inertia Is a Cruel Mistress is that a character is able to move very fast (usually due to Super-Speed or teleportation) but has trouble with deceleration, resulting in a crash.
You could say that technically, falling off a tall place does make you move fast, in a purely vertical sense, and that not being able to slow yourself down while free-falling will cause you problems, but it feels like a very different scenario.
The definition doesn't say Super-Speed though, just "starts a set of movements". It's really broad and falling could easily fall under that.
I feel like the trope is mainly for when starting the movement is voluntary, and it's only the stopping part that's a problem.
I mean, it doesn't really say that...
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I agree with Lord Gro, it's a sinkhole.
For what it's worth, I'll go ahead and remove the sinkhole.
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Some time ago, I deleted
a pothole to Inertia Is a Cruel Mistress linked behind the first sentence of Not the Fall That Kills You… ("It's the landing.")
Recently Kadorhal restored
the same pothole with an edit reason that argued that a falling object hitting the ground takes damage because of the law of inertia.
While this may be scientifically correct, the fact remains that Inertia Is a Cruel Mistress is defined as "a character [who] enters teleportation, or starts a set of movements, [..] cannot change destination or direction of movement at all", or as laconic wiki defines it slightly more narrow, "Conserved momentum can really be a pain for SuperSpeed situations where some control would come in handy". To my mind, neither of these slightly different definitions covers characters taking fall damage, because falling down is not an action a character chooses to do (like a "set of movements" is), nor is it some kind of power (like Super-Speed).
For this reason, I still think the pothole is irrelevant and therefore a Sinkhole. I don't want to Edit War though, so I'm passing this on to the hivemind.
Edited by LordGro