"You are aware that your insurance does not cover this, yes?"
"Shut it, Jarvis."
"Shut it, Jarvis."
"He swan dives from 20 floors, lands right on it! What, do I have a bull's-eye on there? He couldn't move over two feet?! Land on the sidewalk, that's city property!"
— George Costanza, Seinfeld
The higher you are falling from, the more likely it is that a car will be there when you land. Typically it is a parked car, but often it will have a driver inside. Oddly enough and given the same height, a car with a driver in it will suffer less damage than an empty one. The car probably allows the landing to be shown while keeping the TV parental guideline or MPAA rating relatively down. Possibly influenced by the famous "Most Beautiful Suicide"
image. Sometimes the horn may be triggered, or even a hapless alarm. In the more trope-loving media, the car may even turn out to be a Pinto.
Despite the trope name, the victim is unlikely to survive; only The Hero is almost guaranteed to survive.
May or may not overlap with That Poor Car. The Precious, Precious Car is particularly likely to be a victim.
Compare Living Crashpad and Trash Landing. Contrast Pedestrian Crushes Car, which usually ends with the car's destruction without harming the other side of the collision.
As a Death Trope, all Spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- In Bremen, Romio does this purposely. While being slowly crushed by a giant anaconda, he staggers to the window and throws himself out, landing on a car below. The snake cushioned the fall as much as the car did, and died on impact, while Romio suffered some bruises and a minor concussion.
- Great Teacher Onizuka falls maybe three or four stories onto a parked car, and walks away, leaving the car totaled. In this case it's more Rule of Funny that saves him though. In particular, the wrecked car is always the same car, belonging to the same person, who hates him. That car is the guy's prized possession, which gets repaired...only to be wrecked again.
- Umineko: When They Cry has Ange Ushiromiya purposely jump down from the third floor onto one, and end up almost breaking her back, but escaping.
Comic Books
- In Black Widow #2, the Widow dives off a skyscraper in Shanghai to avoid an assassin. After attempting to slow her fall, it eventually ends with her landing atop a car.
- Gotham Central: It happens in issue #4 to Firebug. It's only a second story fall, though, so he survives with a few broken bones.
- Kick-Ass opens with a monologue about why no one's tried to be a superhero before and a guy wearing a strange outfit standing on a skyscraper. He unveils his wings and jumps, sure that he will be the first flying superhero. His dreams end badly, as does the only car nearby on the ground level.
- An issue of New Avengers has Spider-Man throwing Wolverine out a window for bad-mouthing his wife. Being Wolverine, he survives. He's next seen with a steering wheel around his neck, grumbling about how some people have no sense of humor.
- In The Punisher MAX, Barracuda throws the Punisher out of a window when the latter goes into berserker rage and nearly tears him apart. The Punisher doesn't just land on a car below, he lands on a cop car.
- Queen and Country: When the spy protagonist leaps out a (second floor) window to escape a room full of confused hostiles.
- Superman:
- Adventures of Supergirl: During their first fight, Rampage sends Supergirl flying with a punch. Fortunately, Kara's landing is cushioned by a car which was parked near the stadium where they were duking it out.
- In H'el on Earth, Superman sends H'el flying with a punch when he threatens to snap Superboy's neck. He ends up landing right on a car that a father just bought for his daughter. Since H'el's nigh invulnerable, he survives.
Film — Animated
- The Incredibles: Frozone lands on one during the killer robot battle.
- South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut: Conan O'Brien jumps off a building and lands on a car after regretting giving Terrance & Phillip away to Sheila's mob. All the car's owner does is turn off the alarm.
- Superman: Doomsday: This is how Superman's clone kills Toyman.
Film — Live-Action
- In the Apocalypse film series movie Tribulation, the Psychic-Assisted Suicide victim lands on top of a parked car.
- This is how Buddy meets his end in Baby Driver. Buddy is shot in the knee by Baby, causing him to fall several stories onto a burning police car. And then it explodes for good measure.
- In the 80's sex comedy Bachelor Party the evil blond preppie falls, like, 20 stories and winds up butt-first in the sunroof of a car. Neither he, the passengers nor the car suffer any kind of damage, but the passengers end up kissing the guy's butt when they lean in to kiss each other.
- Batman (1989):
- One of the Joker's falling henchmen lands through a TV camera van, causing a massive spark explosion for no reason. Otherwise, the trope tends to be averted by Tim Burton: Both the Joker himself and Selina Kyle fall directly on the pavement. Though Joker doesn't survive, Selina gets better (due mainly to falling through several awnings before being revived by the neighborhood cats led by Miss Kitty).
- Selina takes another fall later in the movie after her first battle with Batman as Catwoman. She lands in a dump truck filled with sand. ("Saved by kitty litter...")
- In both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, both times where Batman can be said to "fall out" a window, he lands on a parked car. In the beginning of The Dark Knight, he even uses a leap onto an escaping van as a means of stopping it.
- Bet Your Life: Falling off the gantry on the lift bridge, Sonny and Joseph land on the bonnet of the truck they blew up earlier.
- Bullet Train: Near the start of the film, Ladybug recounts how he once had a suicidal bellboy land on top of his parked car, which he takes as proof that he was Born Unlucky. Maria, however, claims that it was actually a good thing because the bellboy survived, allowing Ladybug to drive him to the hospital.
- In The Car: Road to Revenge, the gang throws Craddock out of his office window and he lands of top his brand new Lazarus luxury sedan. Somehow, this allows his soul to enter the car and control it.
- In the 2022 South Korean action movie Carter, the title character shoves several Yakuza mooks through the window. One unfortunate mook falls screaming onto a moving car and rebounds into the air where he slams into the still-falling Anti-Hero (cushioning his impact) then falls onto a Fruit Cart and still has enough energy to grab a knife before he's shot dead by a third party.
- In City Heat, Swift is killed during a struggle with Pitt. A thug opens the suitcase, but it is empty. He picks up Swift's body and throws it out the window, where it lands on the roof of Speer's parked car (occupied by the horrified Addy, who waits while Speer goes to investigate in the apartment).
- In Collateral, this is how Jamie Foxx's character is introduced to the fact that Tom Cruise's character is a hitman. One of the targets has the bad grace to fall out of the window and onto the hood of his taxi.
- In Con Air, Pinball gets caught in the landing gear during takeoff and they have to shove him out to get it to close. He lands on General Hammond's car. And he just got it washed.
- The Crank finale does this, too, where the character falls from a ridiculous height and bounces a dozen meters back up from the car on which he initially lands.
- Daredevil (2003). After defeating Bullseye, Daredevil throws him through the church's stained-glass window onto the hood of reporter Ben Urich's car. On seeing where he landed Daredevil quips, "Bullseye!"
- In Darklight, Lilith is thrown away and falls on a parked car, which promptly explodes.
- In Darkman, guess what Pauly falls on after being defenestrated?
- The Dark Tower (2017): At one point during Roland's assault on Walter's base, a Mook tackles him out a window, leading them both to crash into a passing bus.
- In Detention, the killer throws the body of Taylor Fisher out of her bedroom window, where it crashes through the windscreen of her mother's car (with her mother still inside the car).
- Averted in The Departed. When Queenan is thrown from the roof by a group of thugs, he lands right on the pavement in front of Billy Costigan.
- Die Hard:
- Justified in Die Hard. While it's true that one of the Mooks is thrown from the top of a building and lands right in the windshield of a cop car, he was already dead, and McClane aimed him at Powell's car to get his attention.
- By the time of Live Free or Die Hard, however, nobody can fall from any height ever without damaging a poor sod's car (on several instances the one driven by McClane's).
- Edge of Tomorrow: Both the male and female lead land side-by-side on top of the same car after falling into a crater at the Louvre.
- In End of Days, Jericho throws Satan out of a window and he lands on a parked car. Of course, seeing as how he's Satan, he copes with it.
- Eraser. Arnie lands in a car wrecking yard after barely getting his parachute open.
Black kid: Oh man, did that hurt? It had to hurt; I saw it!Ahnold: Where is this?Kid's sister: Earth. Welcome!
- In The Fifth Element, Leeloo jumps from a building and falls into Korben Dallas' taxi. There are huge amounts of cars flying on several levels, so she was pretty much bound to hit one eventually, before she could get hurt.
- Final Destination 5: Olivia fell on a car and was instantly killed.
- The first freerunner to die in Freerunner is knocked off a building and lands on the roof of a car.
- Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter: Jason pulls Tina through a second-story window and throws her into a car on the ground.
- In Furious 7, Hobbs and Elena are blown out of a window by an explosion and land together on a car roof. Hobbs deliberately takes the brunt of it and is later seen in hospital, but still gets off pretty lightly. Good thing he happens to be the Rock.
- Garfield: Double Subversion in the live action Garfield movie. Garfield falls about 20 stories onto a large truck, but is so heavy he crashes straight through the ceiling. Into lasagna.
- The Grand Budapest Hotel: When Zero and Agatha fall of the balcony of the hotel, they crash through the canvas roof of Mendel's delivery van, landing in a pile of pastry boxes.
- In The Great Race, Professor Fate jumps out of a tall building, his henchman Max waiting below in a car with a trampoline mounted on top - which Fate bounces off of just as Max takes off.
- In the Chuck Norris thriller Hellbound, the demonic villain kills a prostitute who became an unwitting witness to another murder by throwing her out a window, whereupon she lands on the hood of Norris's parked car.
- In the beginning of Hellboy II: The Golden Army, the title character is thrown out a window by an explosion and lands on a car. Nothing he couldn't handle, though due to the sudden exposure to all the pedestrians, it does break the masquerade. Which was, of course, his goal.
- In The Hitman's Bodyguard, this is how Kincaid kills Dukhovich during the climax, kicking him off the roof where he'd just tried to escape by helicopter and sending him falling to crash into a parked car on the street below.
- In Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Kevin tricks Harry and Marv into getting onto a makeshift see-saw, launching Harry into the air and onto a car.
- Subversion in the beginning of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: The car is their means of escape.
- Used quite successfully in the movie Inside Moves, a bunch of friends with various handicaps (one is blind, another has a leg problem, another's an old pensioner, another is a guy who has serious back problems, etc.) sit around in a bar and talk with each other. You find out the guy with back problems is that way because he decided to kill himself because life had lost meaning, went up to the top of a building, threw himself off, but landed on a car, which caused his injuries. He was perfectly normal before the accident!
"I tried to kill myself and I landed on a fuckin' Pontiac!"
(kidding) "You stupid asshole, first you get injured, then you kill yourself!" - Kick-Ass, the movie version, opens with the same scene as in the comic book.
- The Last Boy Scout. Jimmy being thrown off a viaduct. You do the math.
- Double Subverted in the third Left Behind movie World At War. The Antichrist throws the President out of a skyscraper, and he crashes onto a car below. Nicolae looks down and sees the President's seemingly lifeless body... only for the poor guy to get up and start hobbling away. Nicolae muses "Such a thing is not humanely possible...", then glances upward at the most likely culprit.
- Lethal Weapon opens with a young woman on a high-rise balcony throwing flowerpots (and then herself) at the parked cars below.
- The Loft opens with a body falling off a balcony and landing on a car parked in the street below.
- In the 1981 film Looker, one of the commercial actresses falls to her death on top of a parked car from her apartment balcony.
- In The Loved Ones, Lola and her father force Brent out of a tree by throwing rocks at him. He loses his grip on the branch, falls out of the tree, and lands painfully on the bonnet of the Kingswood ute, before bouncing off.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- In Iron Man, this happens when Tony crash-lands the Mark II after its test flight. In fact, he crashes through his roof, then a piano, followed by the floor, and only then does he land on his car and stop. Unfortunately, it's one of his vintage sports cars. The DVD with a program on the making of the movie reveals that this really was a very expensive car destroyed for the shot; the director bemoaned its loss before cuing its destruction. Said car likely was a 1965 Shelby Cobra, of which extremely few remain, making this a definitely tearjerker for car buffs.
- In The Avengers (2012), Cap is thrown out a window by the force of an explosion, and lands on a taxi outside.
- In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the titular Soldier intentionally jumps from an overpass onto a car. Being a Super-Soldier, he's unharmed and continues his march.
- In Avengers: Age of Ultron, when Cap battles Ultron on top of the semi truck, he gets flung not once, but twice onto the windshield of the car behind them. Later, he gets knocked into a car by a drone.
- Played with in Ant-Man. Scott lands on a taxi at the end of his first outing with the Ant-Man suit, but since he's miniaturized at the time it only causes a small dent. And then he returns to normal size, puzzling the driver.
- The Matrix Reloaded features this trope multiple times.
- The movie starts with Neo dreaming of Trinity leaping out of a skyscraper while fighting an agent, then landing on a parked car.
- The car chase has two:
- After pulling off the freeway and driving onto an overpass, Trinity and the Keymaker try to escape by leaping off the overpass and landing on a big rig hauling motorcycles. Justified because Trinity deliberately tried to jump onto the truck.
- Once the Agents see where the Keymaker is, an agent leaps from a freeway overpass onto Morpheus's trailer. Justified because the Agent's jump was also deliberately performed.
- Finally, at the end of the film, Neo saves Trinity when she leaps out of the skyscraper by catching her before she hits the car - the agent chasing her falls onto the car instead.
- An unusual example occurs in Men in Black when J fires the Noisy Cricket and ends up flying butt-first into a car windshield.
- Mercenaries: After being shot by Ulrika, Clay falls backwards off the roof of the Citadel and lands on top of a truck.
- In New Town Killers, Sean attempts to escape by leaping off the ledge outside Sam's flat on to the roof of an ambulance passing by underneath. He mistimes the jump, bounces off the roof and crashes to the street; knocking himself out. the ambulance takes him to hospital, which temporarily gets him away from Alistair and Jamie.
- A young college girl in the Korean movie Nightmare commits suicide via diving off a building (and onto a car), though in truth she did not commit suicide—her fall was a coverup for her accidental death. Cue typical ghost revenge movie.
- The Movie of Oldboy (2003) starts with the hero preventing a stranger from jumping off a building roof. He proceeds to fill the man in on his life's story, then wanders off when the stranger tries to do the same. The trope comes into play just as the hero is leaving the building. You never do find out what that guy's story was, or why he felt he had to take his pooch with him.
- Justified in The Old Guard when Nile Freeman tackles the Big Bad out the window of his penthouse and onto a car several dozen stories below. The fall kills her and severely mangles her body, but she has Healing Factor unlike the man she was holding on to...
- In Quantum of Solace, this happens to some poor goon. He survives it. Then the occupants of the car kill him.
- In The Rage: Carrie 2 (which actually isn't as bad as one would expect), the protagonist's friend commits suicide by jumping off of the school roof. She lands on an unfortunate student's car.
- Rush Hour 2: Ricky Tan dies by falling onto a taxi. Joked about in the Hilarious Outtakes: "Damn! He ain't gon be in Rush Hour 3!"
- The Lorry hit in The Saint (1997) was the escape for Val Kilmer.
- The Hong Kong action movie Sha Po Lang, known in some places as Kill Zone has the heroic Inspector Ma thrown out of a window and onto a car to his death by Big Bad and Anti-Villain Wong Po. This turns especially tragic when it's revealed that the car that Ma landed on was the same one that the Big Bad's wife and little girl were waiting in. Ouch.
- The 19th century version appears in Sherlock Holmes (2009), when the American ambassador leaps out of a window while on fire, landing in the horse-drawn carriage below.
- Takers: After killing Hatch, Jesse escapes by running along a ledge on the outside of the Monroe Building. He leaps from the ledge onto the rooftop car park of the lower building next door: landing on a car to break his fall.
- In Thirst (2009), the vampiric priest attempts suicide by jumping out of the hospital window after discovering his new condition. With only three cars parked against the hospital, of course he lands on one of them.
- In Truth or Dare (2018), Penelope falls off the roof of the house and lands on top of Olivia's car. Markie and Brad are able to throw a mattress under her before she hits. She survives. For now.
- Frank Nitti after being thrown off the roof by Eliot Ness in The Untouchables (1987).
Stone: Where's Nitti?
Ness: He's in the car. - The vicious battle in Unleashed between the protagonist and the martial arts expert ends with the other being kicked out of a window and falling onto a car. A car that had just pulled into the alleyway.
- Vice (2015): While escaping from the sweeper team sent to pick her up, Kelly jumps off a parking garage and lands on the roof of a station wagon parked in the street. Being an android, she just picks herself up and keeps on running.
- In the Thai horror movie The Victim, actress May is attacked by the angry spirit of the murder victim that she's playing. It pulls her off of her balcony and she plummets to her death atop a car. It was only a dream, though.
- What's New Pussycat? - very soon after Peter O'Toole vows to give up womanizing for his impending marriage, skydiver Ursula Andress lands next to him in his open roadster.
- In Wonder Woman 1984, Diana drops the thieves she captured in the mall on top of a police cruiser with enough force to stave the roof in.
- Deconstructed in The World's End when Gary tries this to escape from a rooftop and is injured, though not seriously.
- In X-Men, Sabretooth has a variation of this. Granted, it's a boat, not a car, but still, closest they could've done at Liberty Island. Sabertooth's healing factor lets him walk away uninjured.
Literature
- In the third Pendragon book, The Never War, a gangster is scared by Saint Dane into leaping out a hotel window and lands on a car far below.
- Played with in Harry Harrison's short story "Portrait of the Artist", in which a comic book artist, who has just lost his job to a machine, creates a suicide note in comic-book form that ends with a depiction of him jumping off his publisher's office building and landing on a car. After he commits suicide in the manner depicted, his ex-boss's only reaction is remark that he landed on the wrong car.
Live-Action Television
- In the Angel episode "Salvage", Faith breaks out of jail by grabbing Wesley and jumping out a window, landing on a conveniently parked car a few floors beneath. The car cushions her fall, and she cushions his fall. Lack of injury is justified in that Faith, who has superpowers, is shown to take most of the hit and Wesley is still in noticeable pain afterwards.
- Arrow: The first Count Vertigo takes three arrows to the chest, falls out a window, and lands several stories below on a parked car. We're pretty sure he's dead.
- The Cape has The Cape surviving a jump from several stories up by using his cape to slow down his fall, and then landing on a car. He conveniently lands on Orwell's car, which is barely dented, and both drive away in it.
- CSI: In "The Happy Place," the Victim of the Week swan-dives off her balcony onto the roof of a bus; landing with enough force to shatter its windows.
- CSI: Cyber: In "Ghost in the Machine," a fleeing suspect leaps off a balcony, crashes through a carport roof and smashes into the roof of a car.
- CSI: Miami: "Miami, We Have a Problem" opens with a carjacking that is foiled when a dead body falls out of the sky and impacts on top of the car.
- CSI: NY: A few.
- In "Dancing with the Fishes", a couple are driving underneath a tramway when the body of a young lady falls onto their windshield.
- In "Past Imperfect", Clay Dobson falls (or did he jump... hmmm?) from a rooftop and lands on a squad car.
- Downplayed in "Happily Never After" when a dead woman slides off the top of a schoolbus that came to a sudden stop in traffic. Turns out her killer had thrown her out a window onto it the night before, and the guy who had "borrowed" the bus to attend a party didn't realize she was there when he returned it to the lot.
- In "Nine Thirteen", the victim lands on a parked cab after falling off the 10th floor balcony of the episode's eponymous building.
- The Defenders (2017): Elektra uses a car to cushion her fall when she makes her getaway after killing Stick, overpowering Matt, Luke and Jessica, and kidnapping Danny.
- Endeavour: In "Trove," the Victim of the Week is coshed and tossed off a building to come to rest on top of a car in an attempt to make it look like a suicide. Naturally, several aspects of the 'suicide' don't add up to Morse.
- The Flash (2014): Episode 1x22, "Rogue Air", features a fight between the title character, Arrow and Firestorm against the Reverse-Flash. It ends when Firestorm pushes Reverse-Flash off S.T.A.R Labs rooftop with a fire blast, crashing on a parked car down below, only to be knocked out by an arrow loaded with nanites when he's just getting back up.
- On Fringe, a man whose mental state can infect people around him leads several people up onto the roof of a building, where they are all standing poised to jump. Olivia goes up to try to talk him down. At one point she makes a threatening move towards him and one of the followers jumps. The woman's body comes crashing down on a car near where Walter and Peter are waiting, presumably dying.
- In an episode of Grey's Anatomy, there's a possibly suicidal man who disappears from the ER. George and Alex are out in the parking lot looking for him (and fighting about Izzie) when he breaks through a high floor window with a fire extinguisher and jumps, crashing right on top of a parked car. Surprisingly he survives, giving George an opportunity to impress Hunt by taking command of the situation.
- Harrow: At the opening of "Audere Est Facere" ("To Dare Is to Do"), a car owner is wiping bird droppings off the windscreen when a BASE jumper crashes fatally onto the roof. A second later, the jumper's partner hits the ground next to the car.
- Heroes: Viewers knew in advance that Peter was going to fall on a taxi. They just didn't know that it would involve Claude throwing him off the building. Or that he would have Claire's regeneration to live through it.
- In the Highlander episode "Free Fall", a disturbed woman strips off all her clothes except her lingerie in an elevator after being complimented on a dress, and walks off the roof - and lands right on a car. Being that she's one of the immortals, she survives.
- In the TV series of House of Cards (UK), Mattie Storin falls off a roof onto a car and dies.
- In the Kolchak: The Night Stalker episode "The Trevi Collection," a would-be thief is tossed out of a window to land (fatally) on a car.
- Law & Order:
- An episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit ended with a dramatic scene of a woman threatening suicide via jumping, and actually pulling someone down with her as she went off the roof... and yes, they both land on a car.
- A similar scene happened at least once in the original Law & Order.
- Law & Order: Criminal Intent: In "Boots on the Ground," the Victim of the Week is thrown off the roof of a building and lands on a cab that has stopped underneath.
- Luke Cage (2016): As punishment for killing Pop, Cottonmouth throws Tone off the roof of Harlem's Paradise. Tone falls, landing on a car parked on the street below, and is killed instantly.
- In the MacGyver (1985) episode "Passages," MacGyver falls two or three stories onto the roof of a car, putting him into a coma. He fell out of a car park, meaning that there wasn't a lot of sidewalk for him to hit. Since he's the hero, he gets better.
- Motive: The Victim of the Week in "A Problem Like Maria" is thrown through a 7th story window, coming to rest on/in a car that is parked in the street below.
- Used at least twice on Nash Bridges:
- The first time was a suicide, but the impact occurs off camera. Later, you see the car the jumper landed on. It's Nash's '71 Hemi'Cuda.
- The second time was a murder with the victim landing on one of the SIU's surveillance vans. The impact was shown from inside.
- The NCIS episode "Hung Out to Dry" had the victim crash through the roof of a parked SUV after both his parachutes failed during a training drop. He interrupted a date rape though, so it wasn't all bad.
- Seinfeld: George brags about getting a great parking spot right in front of the hospital, only for a suicidal mental patient to later jump off the hospital roof and land on top of his car. George tries to get the hospital to pay for the damages, but the hospital administrator calls him a heartless and greedy monster for doing so and tells him to get lost (even though, as the Hollywood Law page points out, George is 100% correct and the hospital is liable to pay for the damages).
- In one episode of Monk, the murderer killed the victim in a clock tower and left her body on the minute hand of the clock. He then parked his car below the tower. He knew that when the minute hand had moved far enough, her body would fall on his car and set off the alarm, making it look like a suicide, and he made sure to have witnesses proving he was elsewhere when the alarm went off.
- In the Person of Interest episode "Allegiance" Reese tackles a mook clean through a window, whereupon they fall four stories and land on a parked car, with Reese on top. Shaw and Fusco just stand at the window, completely speechless. Then Reese, who is clearly Made of Iron, gets up off poor schmuck he landed on.
Fusco: I hope that guy had health insurance.
- In Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Sarah dumps Cameron (who has been temporarily rendered "unconscious" due to electric shock) out of a window. She lands (very gracefully) on a parked (or possibly abandoned) car.
- In the Supernatural episode "The Third Man," Castiel tackles a fellow angel out of a window several stories up, landing directly atop (and thoroughly wrecking) Sam's shiny new car.
- Titans (2018). Dick Grayson goes to investigate the residence of the man who was seen on CCTV stealing Jason Todd's body from the morgue. The moment Dick pulls up in his car, the man in question gets thrown from the rooftop onto Dick's windscreen just For the Evulz.
- Vera: In "Shadows in the Sky," the Victim of the Week is pushed off the top of a multi-story carpark and lands on a car parked on the ground; the only car in an otherwise deserted row.
- In The Walking Dead (2010), in the episode "Consumed" several walkers fall from an overpass onto a van that had just fallen off said overpass. The accompanying Talking Dead episode referred to the first one, in its "In Memoriam" section, as "wait-for-it walker", as there were several seconds' delay between the van's landing and that of the walker.
Music
- The above-mentioned Most Beautiful Suicide image was recreated for the cover of Machines of Loving Grace's third album, Gilt.
- It's also recreated by the members of [[Music/Radiohead]] for the music video of ''Street Spirit (Fade Out)''.
- Referenced for dark humor in Barclay James Harvest's "Suicide?" The narrator steps out onto a ledge and hears someone cry out from the street below: "For God's sake let me move my car!"
Newspaper Comics
- In a rare case of a villain doing this and surviving, Joe Period does this while fleeing from the police in Dick Tracy. He leaps from three stories from the window of an apartment on to the top of a parked car, crushing the roof of the car but surviving to limp away.
Theme Parks
- At the "Lights, Motors, Action!" stunt show at Disney's Hollywood Studios (and the original French show "Moteurs...Action!", a stuntman in the third sequence is shot by the hero and falls about four or five stories onto an air bag. In the fake "finished film" sequence shown at the end, the stuntman is shown falling onto a car, the roof of which essentially disintegrates like it was made of sugar glass.
Video Games
- The Battlefield games are well-known for this kind of stunt being done online, where people will fall, unharmed, into the cockpits of aircraft, which they then proceed to fly.
- Ethan Thomas gets thrown from a window and lands on a car at the end of the first chapter of Condemned: Criminal Origins. You get to watch it all happen in first-person. How does he go from hood ornament to the sofa in his apartment, completely unharmed?
- After being captured by her Arch-Enemy and suspended off a bridge, Petra from Emerald City Confidential slips her binds and conveniently falls straight into a Gump Taxi that passes by.
- In the PS3 content for the video game The Godfather, throwing mob boss Patrick O'Donnell off a roof causes this to happen. Complete with Wilhelm Scream.
- In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Madd Dogg is threatening to jump off of a roof because his career is over. To help him, CJ has to get a pickup truck full of cardboard boxes and park it under him so he'll land in the boxes when he jumps. This is subject to a notorious Game-Breaking Bug - Madd Dogg will frequently jump within seconds of the mission starting, making it Unwinnable.
- In an earlier mission, CJ has to stow aboard a plane filled with The Men in Black, kill each one of them mid-flight, then parachute safely out of the plane. Jumping out of the plane without a 'chute will result in a cutscene of CJ smashing on top of the roof of a car and dying.
- In the Killer Instinct rooftop stage, there's a fatality to knock the opponent off the edge. Yes, they land on a parked car.
- Also may be inverted, as one of Jago's finishing moves is to cause a car to fall on his opponent.
- In one of the side mission "Street Crimes" of L.A. Noire, a scuffle occurs on the roof of a building, ending with one of the perps being knocked off. With only one vehicle nearby, he somehow manages to land perfectly in the bed of a pickup truck.
- In the DLC "The Naked City", a high-end therapist loses the woman he loved and his freedom and profession due to his part in a robbery ring. As the main characters are about to put handcuffs on him, he throws himself out of an open window and, wouldn't you know it, lands on the only car in sight. Detective Earle remarks, "Didn't see that coming."
- In [PROTOTYPE], the first appearance of the Hunters in the main storyline starts with Alex being thrown from a very tall building. He hits the ground. The Hunters following him, however, crush to hapless APCs parked nearby.
- In Saints Row, this is how Tanya Winters gets killed off.
- In Preacher's ending in Twisted Metal Black, he jumps off a roof because he can't live with the knowledge that he's schizophrenic, not possessed. The screen cuts to black after he jumps - followed by a thud and multiple car alarms.
- In the first act of The Wolf Among Us, Bigby lands on Mr. Toad's car after he throws himself and the Woodsman out of a window. This time it actually makes sense for him to be mostly uninjured, as Fables are almost completely immortal, save tearing their heads off or throwing them down the Witching Well.
- The city streets stage of X-Men: Next Dimension has 3 ways to get knocked off a skyscraper. Directly off; down to another level and then off; or getting blown across to an electric billboard across the street, getting electrocuted, falling off it and onto a taxi on the street, then rolling off it limp.
Webcomics
- In El Goonish Shive, during the first battle with a fire summon, it gets knocked on to a car.
- Marvel's T.E.S.T. Kitchen series starts with Iron Man falling from the sky, bouncing between two tall buildings, then flattening protagonist Anna's food truck when he hits ground level.
- After getting punted into the air for an entire scene, the protagonist of the webcomic Zukahnaut returns to Earth with nothing worse for the wear except for the truck he lands on.
Web Original
- In the first Phase novel of the Whateley Universe, Phase gets blasted onto the top of a car by a supervillainess. Since Phase has density-changing powers, he's just fine. The car? Not so much.
- At the end of his Grakour skit, Salvatore Ganacci plummets from a rooftop while performing the titular extreme sport (Parkour + graffiti) and crashes into a car, apparently dying.
Western Animation
- Archer: Katya Kazanova is killed by falling out of Archer's balcony and landing on Dr. Krieger's van parked below. Her death brings Archer to tears while Krieger cries over his van getting wrecked.
- Batman: The Brave and the Bold: In "The Mask of Matches Malone!", Catwoman throws 'Matches' Malone (a.k.a. Batman) of the roof of a building and he smashes through the roof a car.
- Vlad does this to Danny in Danny Phantom. Then he proceeds to further damage the car when Danny dodges his punch.
- Scarecrow bashes Batgirl over the head with a pipe in The New Batman Adventures, causing her to plummet over the edge of a skyscraper and crash through the windshield of the police car her father is riding in. Her father launches into a vendetta against Batman for endangering her. Except at the end of the episode, it turns out to be a nightmare induced by the Scarecrow's fear gas.
Real Life
- A woman fell from the 23rd floor of her hotel and landed on a parked taxi below. She survived.
- A similar event occurred in San Francisco in November 2014 involving a window-washer falling 11 stories onto a moving vehicle.
- Another one happened in Vienna in December 2017 when a young woman tried to take a selfie and ended up falling six stories onto a parked van. She survived with comparatively minor injuries.
- A similar event
- The "Most Beautiful Suicide," mentioned in the trope description. In 1947, a young woman leapt to her death from the Empire State Building and landed on a car. The buckled metal concealed her injuries, making her appear to lie in a state of peaceful repose.
- Compared to a sidewalk or roadway, a car is soft. If you're falling from a height, aim for a car, or better yet, an RV.
