I gave you “Askia’s Law.” I now give you… death by gravity!! (ellipses and double exclamation points included)
DEFINITION. Usually the resolution of an action-adventure thriller in television, movies, literature or comics where the hero or villain dies after falling from a terrific height.
Examples.
(Movies) King Kong
(Television) The One Armed Man, from The Fugitive
(Comics) Gwen Stacy
(Literature) The Giant of the Beanstalk
Your picks?
“Gravity is a harsh mistress.” --The Tick.
(Luckily, in his case, it was not terminal.)
Emperor in Return of the Jedi: Death by either self-gravitating space station, or artificial gravity. Either way, not too shabby.
Moriaty: Psych!
If movies and TV have taught us anything, though, it’s that if you’re really going to fall in style, though, you want to land on a car, triggering the car alarm.
In Disney’s The Black Hole…weeeelllll… gravity well, that is.
Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), Die Hard.
Frank Nitti (Billy Drago), The Untouchables.
I read the title as “Death by Gravy”. This is not quite as interesting.
How about pretty much any Disney film? Hunchback of Notre Dame, Beauty and the Beast, etc.
Probably ought to be a SPOILER warning in the thread title…
To the list let’s add Nurse Diesel from High Anxiety and her inspiration, Judy Barton from Vertigo.
Let’s see…
Moleram - Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (death confirmed by crocodiles).
The Joker - (Tim Burton’s Batman).
The bad guy in Sabotuer(Falls of the statue of Liberty).
Steven Seagel in Executive Decision(Falls out of an airplane near the beginning of the movie).
Kirk in Star Trek: Generations.
Conan O’Brien and Saddam Hussien(Kinda. He went straight back to hell) in South Park:BLU.
King Jong Ill(Again, kinda) in Team America: World Police. And techincally, it was death by a Imperial German Army Helmet.
Ludger Brink in The Dig(Computer Game).
The Evil Doctor in Outlaws(Computer Game).
Maila Gedde in Gaberial Knight: Sins of the Fathers.
Gollum in LOTR(I can’t believe nobody mentioned this). Possibly the Balrog and Gandalf also.
The T-1000 in Terminator 2.
Peee-yew. Generally when my thread titles are THAT wordy, I make an effort to make them alliterative, amusing, provokative… something.
It’s… death by gravity!!, btw. NEVER leave out the ellipses.
Okay, I’m not sure if the T-1000 really counts, but the rest of them probably do.
And I felt I’d mention it anyway, being one of my favorite examples because it’s so funny.
The unnamed HARM parachutist in No one Lives Forever, falling towards a barn “Please be full of Hay! Please be full of Hay!”
I guess Wile E. Coyote would be the counterexample.
As would Jason Bourne in “The Bourne Identity”. He takes a, what, four-story fall onto a marble terrazzo floor with nothing to cushion his fall but the body of a man he just shot – and he survives with not even so much as a busted kneecap or a compressed vertebra? Gimme a break…
Other folks that didn’t die:
James bond, after he skied off the cliff.
006 survived the fall.
Michael Douglas in The Game.
Jesse Custer in Preacher
Yeah, if only the OP had thought of that… Oh, wait.
Or did a mod sneak that in after the fact?
L.A. Law had what I think may be the first example of someone dying by falling down an elevator shaft when Diana Muldaur’s character Rosalyn Shays is killed of the show.
Nah: Gollum was death by lava; Gandalf and the Balrog both survived the fall to fight all the way back up the mountain - they’re Maiar, not wimpish men or elves.
He got lowered into molten metal.
Well if it hadn’t been for gravity they would not have fallen into the lava, they would merely hover above it.
1.) I Think Gollum would have died from the fall even if the lava wouldn’t have been there.
2.) The T-1000 fell into the metal. The T-800 was lowered.
I already said that the T-1000 probably doesn’t count, because he would have probably surived without the lava, but I don’t see why Gollum doesn’t count, just because he fell into lava.
Ricardo Montalbans character in The Naked Gun. ::sniff:: My father went the same way…
Martin Landau in North by Northwest (off Mt. Rushmore, although shot first)
Tommy Lee Jones (Two-Face) in Batman Forever