"Superhero landing! She's gonna do a superhero landing, wait for it!"
— Deadpool, Deadpool
A popular visual trope often associated with martial arts. After performing a particularly cool move, or dropping from a great height, the character lands on the ground, feet wide apart and supporting their weight with one hand on the floor while the other hand is outstretched away from their body, usually pointed diagonally upwards. Extra coolness points are added if the hand on the floor is a fist that actually causes damage to the ground you land on.
A common variation of this features a head snap, where the character will land looking downward and after a brief pause, suddenly look up just in time for something to blow up behind them, and/or sending a badass Death Glare to the enemy up front, or a Kubrick Stare for the camera.
Can also be a result not of landing, but being knocked back by an enemy (likely one possessing Super-Strength). In this case, you can expect some grooves in the ground from braking.
Very common in manga, anime, and video games, but can also be seen in movies — especially those with visual styles inspired by them. It has become especially popular in superhero movies (as noted in the page quote), owing to the fact that it's a pretty simple bit of special effects trickery that both demonstrates that someone is a badass and lets the filmmakers easily cover up the Stunt Double, especially in the version where the character is looking down upon landing before looking up at the camera (often with a cut in between).
In real life, when falling from a very short distance, it is better to do a simple "two point landing" by landing on your feet and then bending your knees slightly into a crouch. When falling a more dangerous distance, it's a good idea to land on your feet and fall on your side instead. This trope is therefore an example of Rule of Cool.
A play on "three-point landing", an aircraft landing in which both the main gear (the wheels further back on tricycle gear aircraft like airliners) and the tail/nosewheel touch down on the runway at the same time, which is not a good thing for tricycle-gear planes due to the nosewheel not being designed to take that sort of stressnote , though it’s usually not a big deal for taildraggers (and is actually preferred for some of them)note .
Examples:
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Animation
- GG Bond has a piece of stock artwork that depicts GG Bond in this pose.
- Lamput: In the episode "Martial Art", Lamput lands like this when he jumps to the back of the movie theater screen from a ceiling fan to go get his popcorn.
- Mechamato: Briefly after getting hit by an explosion in the middle of his transformation into Mechamato, the fully-transformed hero lands on his two legs and left hand as the smoke clears.
Anime & Manga
- Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense.: Maple does this when she lands from the sky to rescue Sally from the Holy Sword guild during the 4th event.
- In Change 123, when Hibiki (merged with Zero) chases Sora, at one point she does a spectacular three-point landing (presented on a double page spread, no less) after jumping off from a moving truck.
- In Eyeshield 21, Sena unintentionally pulled this off as he was thrown into the air and thus making his Big Entrance against the first game of the tournament against the Cyborgs.
- Played for Laughs and for Surprisingly Realistic Outcome in Goblin Slayer, when the agile, lithe High Elf Archer performs this move jumping down from a second-story... and looks visibly pained and wobbly as she is getting up.
- In Kurogane Pukapuka Tai, Commander Kuki lands like this after sliding down a rope to repel boarders, just before kicking ass overboard.
- Moriarty the Patriot: William jumps off a horse and lands on both feet and one hand to brace himself and engages in a fight.
- Negima! Magister Negi Magi uses this twice on one page in volume 3; when Asuna face-kicks Evangeline on the bridge, both of them execute a three-point landing. Asuna with rotation pivioting around her right foot, while Evangeline has to bleed off momentum. And this was a few pages before Asuna enters the probationary pacto with Negi.
- Juliet from Romeo X Juliet, after bursting through a prison skylight to free one of her friends.
- Subverted in Asuka's debut episode in Neon Genesis Evangelion. Unit 02 destroys an Angel while underwater (an environment the EVA is not designed to handle), launches itself into the air via the resulting explosion, does a perfect three-point landing onto an nearby aircraft carrier... and then collapses into a useless heap as its power supply runs out.
- Subverted in Slayers: Amelia tries to perform acrobatics, but accidentally lands head down, and it hurts.
- Kirito pulls this off in his Big Damn Heroes ascent to the entrance of the World Tree in Sword Art Online. Dressed in a black Badass Longcoat, it almost seems more of an homage to The Matrix. His sudden ground-shaking landing causes other players nearby to wonder if a special game event is in progress.
- Usagi-chan de Cue!!: Inaba leaps high into the air to attack Dekao, who has been rebuilt into a cybernetic centaur. He's out of missiles, so he can only watch as Inaba gains enough momentum from gravity to deliver a devastating kick to his head. She lands behind him in a three-point stance: right foot, left knee, left hand, with her right hand pulled away and behind. Dekao then shorts out and explodes, while Inaba, still in that stance, snarks that Dekao will need his brain repaired.
- Yu-Gi-Oh!: You're on a soon-to-explode artificial island, running for your life towards the blimp that is your only means of escape, but your Morality Pet kid sibling can't keep up. What do you do? If you're Seto Kaiba, the answer is: pick him up and throw him onto the blimp's ramp with one hand, then jump clean over him and land like so.
Comic Books
- Adventure Time Graphic Novels: Rock Princess does one after jumping from Princess Bubblegum's tower.
- Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith. Vader of all people does this just before rallying his troops on Mustafar to drive off an attacking army. Probably to show how from the point-of-view of his stormtroopers, he's a hero coming to their rescue.
- In Gotham City Garage, Big Barda leaps onto a truck's roof, landing on her two feet and right hand.
- Spider-Man does this frequently. It's pretty much an iconic pose for him.
- Supergirl:
- In the cover of Supergirl Volume 5 #12, Kara lands supporting her weight on her right knee, left foot and left hand, causing damage to the ground upon contact.
- Supergirl (Rebirth): In issue #3, Supergirl lands like this when she arrives on Argo.
- Last Daughter of Krypton: As surveying the desolate ruins of Argo City, Supergirl lands on one street touching the ground with one hand, one foot and one knee. Her landing's impact crushes the ground and causes a shockwave.
- X-Men: Nightcrawler too. As do almost all of the "animalistic" characters like Wolverine, Beast, Sabretooth, X-23 and so on...
- Youngblood (2017): Issue #2 has Suprema landing like this on a car, crushing it and using the shockwaves to knock Shaft backwards.
- Popularized, in the case of Iron Man, after the cover to Iron Man Vol. 3 #76 by Adi Granov, to the point it has become his signature pose.
Fan Works
- Child of the Storm:
- Thor's habit of doing this - often at extraordinary speed, resulting in large craters - is a mild Running Gag, with Dumbledore at one point remarking that it's a sign of his "flair for drama."
- Wanda sometimes does it as well, and in the sequel, complains about how it makes her knees hurt — pointing out to a slightly puzzled Thor, that unlike him, she's human (mostly), and less resilient.
- Doing It Right This Time: When Shinji and Asuka meet Rei, she is perched on her Humongous Mecha's shoulder. In order to talk with them, she leaps from the giant robot and lands on the catwalk in this position.
- Harry does one of these in Harry Tano, basically just to show off.
- In Venom fanfic: Manage Me I'm a Mess
Eddie does this once or twice. It just about liquefies his joints, and hurts a lot. Since he can heal, that isn't stopping him.
- In Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!, a four-year-old Izuku attempts this while trying to stop Katsuki from bullying someone. But he's too young to have the coordination necessary to pull it off, so he ends up falling flat on his face. His only saving grace is his Nigh-Invulnerability.
Films — Animation
- The Animatrix uses this, in particular Final Flight of the Osiris.
- Baymax does this in Big Hero 6 after rescuing Hiro during the final battle. Presumably, this is one of the things Hiro programmed into him as part of his fighting package.
- Miguel strikes one in Coco after breaking into the tomb of De la Cruz.
- Tifa does it against a wall (she got thrown at it) in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children.
- Major Kusanagi does this when she's pursuing a guy in Ghost in the Shell (1995). She lands on a metal roof tile that buckles under the impact.
- During the big fight in Leroy & Stitch, Angel does this in front of two Leroy clones before putting their heads together to defend Stitch.
- At the beginning of Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Meet the Pegasus, Wolffy appears and lands on the ground in this way after the goats point out that the group of wolves confronting them does not include Wolffy.
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse:
- Miles sticks one instinctively after getting hit by a taxi, to the bystanders' applause. It's the final straw that makes him acknowledge all the weirdness as powers, not puberty.
- Peni Parker makes her grand entrance atop SP//dr in this iconic pose... while the Mini-Mecha is doing the same! (Just with the pose inverted.)
- Miles assumes the pose before and during his Final Battle against the Kingpin.
- Superman: Red Son. Played straight with Superman, but when Superior Man flies over to Moscow to challenge him he blasts a crater in the ground when doing this trope, showing he's Unskilled, but Strong.
- Jim from Treasure Planet does this when the ship sets sail into space. There's a few seconds where he and the rest of the crew start to float in the air, before Captain Amelia has the gravity turned on and everyone gets a quick drop to the ground. Jim's the only one who does it, while most everyone else just lands on their feet, unfazed (and Dr. Doppler lands on his head with a loud crash, because of the clunky space suit he was wearing)
- In Turning Red, Auntie Ping does this along with a Ground Punch when she emerges from the top of the pink smoke caused by her and the other aunties unleashing their pandas.
Films — Live-Action
- Assassin's Creed: Aguilar performs such a landing at one point, and Callum reproduces it in the Animus. Later, when Aguilar perform a Leap of Faith, Callum achieves such perfect synchronization that it breaks the Animus, and lands like this when the arm releases him as a consequence.
- Blade Trilogy:
- Blade summersaults into a thunderous one against a giant stone platform to kick off the climax of Blade (1998).
- In Blade: Trinity, while escaping an FBI building with Abigal and Hannibal, Blade briefly heads off on a detour. Once they're outside, he leaps out an office window and does a three-point landing in front of them.
Blade: Forgot my sword.
- Short film Code 8 features a pair of police robots that drop from a drone and land like this — with perfect syncronization for added wow factor. It's cool enough that the full-length version shows dual robot landings several times, and the poster of one of the robots.
- Deadpool (2016):
- Deadpool enthusiastically calls this a "superhero landing" and gets all excited to see one of his opponents about to do it, though he does note that it's hard on the knees and totally impractical. Said opponent, Angel Dust, does the "land looking down, then look up at the camera" version; she's Super Tough enough that the "hard landing" is not an issue.
- In Deadpool 2, Deadpool actually performs the superhero landing himself and promptly hurts his knees, grumbling about it.
- Deadpool enthusiastically calls this a "superhero landing"
- In Flora and Ulysses Ulysses the squirrel does a superhero landing during his diner-destroying leap which convinces the Buckmans of his superheroic status.
- Jet Li does it a lot, but hell he and Vicent Zhao (who also does it) have a whole fight scene almost entirely crouching in Fong Sai Yuk.
- In I, Robot, when Sonny escapes from the lab by jumping a dozen stories to the lobby, he performs a textbook three-point landing, breaking the stone floor. Helps that he's a robot.
- The Matrix:
- Trinity does this a few times, most notably when she spectacularly makes this landing in front of a small building, having just backflipped off a motorcycle moving at an extreme speed through the air. As she lands, the motorcycle smashes into the building and explodes.
- Agent Brown, at the very beginning of the first Matrix movie, jumps over a city street while chasing Trinity over rooftops. He lands perfectly in the pose, complete with Desert Eagle in his free hand.
- Neo, himself, does this at least once, from flight, landing atop a building in search of the Oracle.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- While Iron Man doesn't feature Iron Man performing a three-point landing, prominent concept art◊ and promotional artwork◊ did. Both images were based on the cover to Iron Man Vol. 3 #76 by Adi Granov (with the concept art being drawn by Granov himself). Though far from the first superhero to perform such landings, this particular trend-setter that would become ubiquitous with current superheroes ironically "came from Japanese mech, where anime and manga characters do such poses." However, he does take the pose from getting punched by Iron Monger after taking off his glove, just like the Winter Soldier does in his eponymous movie.
- In Iron Man 2, Iron Man performs a three-point landing in two different instances of landing on the Stark Expo main stage, here and here◊. Black Widow also performs one, as seen in the page image, but it's not a landing; she's actually getting up from a slide along the ground.
- Featured in one of Iron Man 3's posters, a promo art◊. Then during the Mark 42's testing, then while escaping from Mandarin's goons in Miami, and a scene◊. The Creative Closing Credits feature a montage of shots of three-point landings from throughout the series.
- The Avengers (2012) has Tony performing a three-point landing when he makes an appearance in Germany to capture Loki.
- Captain America: The Winter Soldier:
- The titular Soldier does it after flying off a braking car. Sparks are flying when he brakes with his metal arm.
- Cap himself does a version of it after taking down and jumping off a Quinjet except he uses his shield instead of his hand when landing.
- Avengers: Age of Ultron:
- Iron Man performs a three-point landing during the assault on HYDRA's Sokovia base.
- Ultron also does one as Vision blasts him out of the church in the climax, holding one hand in front of him as he struggles against a combination attack by Vision, Thor and Iron Man.
- Ant-Man: When he shrinks down, Scott/Ant-Man ends up falling to the ground and doing a three-pointer. Later, he jumps and lands on the miniature Thomas the Tank Engine during the climactic fight scene with Yellowjacket.
- Captain America: Civil War:
- Falcon strikes this pose after taking out two of Crossbones's men with a spinning, jetpack-powered kick in the opening battle.
Cap: I make seven hostiles.
Falcon: [swoops in and kicks ass] I make five. - Spider-Man does one when Iron Man brings him out, after flipping up and over the fighting teams, stealing Cap's shield, binding his wrists together and landing with the shield secured on his arm.
Spider-Man: Hey, everyone.
- Spider-Man makes another of his typical crouching landing when the two teams assemble before the face-off.
- Falcon strikes this pose after taking out two of Crossbones's men with a spinning, jetpack-powered kick in the opening battle.
- Avengers: Infinity War: Iron Man naturally does his iconic landing as his one-on-one fight with Thanos himself begins.
- Three take place in Avengers: Endgame:
- Rhodey does this in front of Scott Lang to troll him for his previous encounter with him.
Rhodey: What's up, regular-sized man?
- Pepper Potts enters the final battle in her Rescue armor doing this.
- Tony himself lands in front of Doctor Strange during the final battle this way to inquire about the one in 14,000,605 chance of winning.
- Rhodey does this in front of Scott Lang to troll him for his previous encounter with him.
- Spidey does this again in the climax of Spider-Man: Far From Home, while fighting Mysterio's drones.
- Unavoidable in Spider-Man: No Way Home, of course. Most notably for the big money shot of all three heroes stopping together each in an iconic Spider-Man pose, with MCU Peter doing the three-point landing.
- Lampshaded in Black Widow (2021). Yelena mocks Natasha for doing these so often, calling it a "fighting pose" (and Natasha, by extension, a "total poser") and adding that, with the ensuing Hair Flip, she thinks Natasha really wants to show off. And then Yelena herself does this while leaving an air vent hideout, which causes her to shudder and remark "that was disgusting". (Florence Pugh revealed this was added by the writers overhearing her comments, which even had a stuntman agreeing "Well, yeah. If she actually landed like that, she would have broken her spine.")
- While Iron Man doesn't feature Iron Man performing a three-point landing, prominent concept art
- The Man from Nowhere features a three-point landing onto the hood of a fleeing car.
- Pacific Rim: Gipsy Danger pulls this off after killing Otachi. Notable as this is done by a Humongous Mecha and from fifty thousand feet in the air.
- In Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, both Scott and Matthew Patel do it during their fight.
- Spider-Man 2: Peter spider-senses a getaway car coming up behind him while he's on his bike. He leaps straight off the bike and over the car, three-point landing in the middle of the street — all in plain view of two stunned boys.
Kid: How'd you do that?
Peter: Uh... work out, plenty of rest, y'know, eat your green vegetables.
Other Kid: That's what my mom is always saying! I just never actually believed her!
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- Whenever the girls from Sucker Punch land from leaping out of their transport during the dream sequences. Also, after Baby Doll kills off a samurai.
- The Suicide Squad: Bloodsport executes a "superhero landing" to his surprise and relief... right before the floor caves in under him, forcing him to ride the scree of destroyed floors down to the ground floor.
- Terminator: Dark Fate: A time-travel bubble forms in mid-air, and when it bursts a Naked on Arrival Rev-9 falls to the ground but lands in a three-point crouch, in contrast to his human opponent whose impact is not so smooth.
- Over the run of TRON: Legacy, this is seen being performed by Quorra, Sam, and Rinzler. This seems to be carried over to TRON: Uprising.
Literature
- Conan the Barbarian does this from time to time since he'd rather hit the ground a bit harder than be disarmed.
- Lara and her sisters from The Dresden Files does this on one occasion in Turn Coat, from a helicopter and without descent lines. It was flying above treetops before it reach the drop zone.
- Magic 2.0: In Scott Meyer's Spell or High Water, Martin has been practicing his "Iron Man landing" to have an effect on his opponents. His version also has him keeping the hand with the Magic Staff stretched out behind him with the staff parallel to the ground. Unfortunately for him, very few people get to witness the landing. When chasing down an attempted assassin, he lands thus on a tower from where the assassin supposedly fired the arrow, only for the tower to be already empty.
- In Warhammer 40,000 novel Seventh Retribution, scout Orfos lands this way in front of a group of Imperial Assassins after jumping out of Thunderhawk. Assassins being who they are, no-one particularly cares and Orfos doesn't dwell on it before jumping into the fray.
- Kaladin is striking this pose on the cover of Words of Radiance, and does the same in the story when he flies in to save Dalinar from Szeth
Live-Action TV
- Arrow:
- The Dynamic Entry of the Black Canary involves her crashing through the skylight, landing with this trope amid a shower of glass to rescue The Arrow from being arrested by a SWAT team.
- It's not emphasized, but when Thea Queen does her Dynamic Entry as a costumed vigilante in "My Name is Oliver Queen", you can see she does this trope when dropping to ground level, presumably as foreshadowing for her becoming the superhero Speedy next season.
- Played for laughs in "Leap of Faith" when Future Team Arrow enters the Deathstroke base. Connor, Mia, and Zoe each make a perfect Three-Point Landing. William faceplants on the ground.
William: I think I got dust in my mouth...
- Homelander from The Boys (2019) likes to do this when he wants to make an entrance, though he's just as likely to have his hands at his hips when he lands. Given his media savvy, it's likely deliberate. Stormfront, meanwhile, normally averts this, preferring instead to land more slowly on a bed of lightning.
- Stephen Colbert does this (with an American Flag!) in the opening sequence of The Colbert Report.
- In the pilot episode of Dark Matter (2015) the spaceship has to dodge a couple of missiles, so does an emergency maneuver that overloads the ability of the Artificial Gravity and Inertial Dampening to compensate. Cue everyone floating into the air, then getting slammed into the deck, except Two, the woman who ordered the maneuver who manages a cool-looking Three-Point Landing because she knew it was coming.
- The dragon Drogon does one of these behind Daenerys in the Game of Thrones episode, "Battle of the Bastards".
- Marvel Cinematic Universe shows:
- WandaVision:
- Monica Rambeau does one in episode 7 when Wanda pushes her into the pavement, to demonstrate that she now has powers as a result of re-entering the Hex.
- Wanda does one when her Hex Vision tackles White Vision off of her.
- The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: In the finale "One World, One People", upon falling into the construction pit, Bucky makes a superhero landing with his vibranium arm absorbing most of the impact.
- Hawkeye:
- Kate tries to do it in episode 2, but she's a novice so she falls flat on her face.
- Yelena performs one during her fight with Clint. It seems that she's changed her mind about them.
- Moon Knight: In the second episode, Steven Grant is thrown out of a window and, as he's falling, he summons the Mr. Knight suit which allows him to hit the ground in this position. After a few seconds of posing, Steven collapses onto his side in pain from landing on his knees that way.
- Ms. Marvel: In the first episode, Kamala does an impressive one after jumping out of her bedroom window and swinging on a tree branch, but only in her Imagine Spot. When she attempts the move for real, it ends with the tree branch breaking off and landing on her. She pulls off a shaky but otherwise successful one in the second episode after saving a kid's life. Unfortunately she fails to wait until she's done saving him to start posing, and doing so causes her powers to fail and almost drop the kid onto a car.
- Secret Invasion: In the climax, G'iah does one as she prepares to charge at a superpowered Gravik.
- WandaVision:
- Smallville:
- In "Salvation", Zod does one when he lands with great force in front of Clark.
- In "Luthor", Clark Luthor does this. Comes with a Shockwave Stomp.
- Burnham pulls one off in Star Trek: Discovery's third episode when dropping into a shuttlecraft through the roof hatch. The landing is seen in the assorted promos for the series due to the coolness factor.
- Supergirl (2015)
- Kara Danvers has mastered this landing pose, having practiced it since she was a teenager◊.
- Kara does it when revealing to Winn that she has superpowers, only to have to adjust her glasses which she was wearing at the time.
- Kara Danvers has mastered this landing pose, having practiced it since she was a teenager
Pro Wrestling
- ACH tends to land this way during his entrances.
- The Chikara Young Lion turned Open The Brave Gate holder Ricochet does this pose a lot, mainly as a means of taunting opponents who thought he was going to do some fancy form of offense or just to highlight how much more athletic he is(or thinks he is). And during their matches against one another, Ricochet and Will Ospreay have been known to duel with their three-point landings.
- Will Ospreay does this regularly as part of a Bait-and-Switch. He will send his opponent out of the ring, and then back up and run towards them as if performing a suicide dive. He'll instead bounce off the ropes and flip backwards, ending in this trope.
Theatre
- Sera Myu:
- In the new stage musicals, Tuxedo Mask is fond of this. There are no high jumps or heroic feats right beforehand, but Yuuga Yamato manages to look majestic swishing Tux's cape as he fights all over the stage before striking the landing pose.
- In "Un Nouveau Voyage", Sailor Moon breaks it out as well before she attempts a Heroic Sacrifice by divebombing Pharaoh 90.
- Spring Awakening: Hanschen does this, at least in the Tony Awards performance, during The Bitch of Living.
Toys
- Some toy review sites, like Collection DX, use the "Iron Man pose test" to judge a toy's articulation.
Video Games
- Assassin's Creed has multiple examples.
- The animated trailer of Assassin's Creed II has the protagonist Ezio Auditore land in the middle of a street in Venice in front of a target, before shooting them with his hidden gun.
- The second opening cutscene of Assassin's Creed: Revelations has Ezio freefall from several stories up only to land like this with no negative physical effects.
- Starting from Assassin's Creed III you can manually execute these by jumping of a high place and holding the high-profile button, making your character stay in that position until you release the button.
- Asura's Wrath had a slight variation in Episode 22, when Asura performs a special move on a downed Chakravartin. Asura jumps up high, summons his mantra halo, starts barraging him with Mantra, lands facing away from him with a four-point landing, and looks up as Chakravartin explodes behind him.
- "The Shock Trooper" taunt of Caldarius from Battleborn ends in a three-point landing.
- Crisis Core:
- Zack does this twice in the intro train cutscene — once when he jumps out of a helicopter onto the roof of a speeding train, and once when he dismounts from the train after it stops.
- Sephiroth also finishes his Octaslash attack with this.
- Crysis:
- In Crysis 2, whenever someone falls for a long but not quite fatal distance they do this, especially while in Armor Mode.
- This is expanded on with the Air Stomp ability in Crysis 2 and 3. After falling from a set height, you can bring your fist down to create an ground-shattering shockwave, dealing lethal damage to all enemies unfortunate enough to be nearby your landing point.
- Dark Souls II: In the Ivory King DLC, you round up knights and bring them to a boss fight that requires falling down a deep hole. While you don't land like this, the four knights do.
- Player Characters in DC Universe Online do this after drops from great heights, including a proper spray of dust and debris.
- Dead Space 2: Isaac Clarke manges this after being fired from a rocket ejector seat, flying though space, crashing though a vent and firing his rocket boots to slow his descent. Watch it here or here for context.
- Adam Jensen of Deus Ex: Human Revolution falls into this stance every time he uses the Icarus Landing System.
- Devil May Cry:
- Dante does this at the beginning of Devil May Cry 2 after he jumps off from a tower, then he looks at the camera as he's about to stand up.
- In Devil May Cry 4 and Devil May Cry 5, Dante and Nero land this way every time an enemy knocks them off their feet.
- Vincent does this a few times in the cutscenes from Dirge of Cerberus.
- The Doom Slayer from DOOM (2016) lands in this pose after particularly long falls, which gives a nice impression of how this stunt would look like from a first-person perspective.
- In Dragon Age: Inquisition, the Inquisitor does this after jumping out of a rift at the end of the Adamant mission.
- Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout:
- One of the celebration emotes in the game, namely "Super Guy", has your Fall Guy character dropping from high up and landing on the plinth in this way, before quickly shaking their arm in pain.
- In the Season 5 cinematic trailer, a Fall Guy dressed up as Robin Hood does this when entering the temple.
- If you fall from a great height while wearing power armour in Fallout 4, when you finally reach the ground your character will perform a superhero landing.
- Fate/Extella Link: Charlie is trying to think of an awesome entrance for himself as part of his obsession with being cool when Astolfo suggests he try the superhero landing. Charlie points out that in real life, such a landing would likely result in him injuring himself, but Astolfo says it would be cool. Charlie starts jumping off buildings to practice, prompting Astolfo to mutter that he didn't think Charlie would actually do it.
- Final Fantasy:
- Sephiroth starts this habit back in Final Fantasy VII, although blocky polygons make it hard to see. He floats down and lands this way behind Tseng or in front of Cloud several times during the Temple of the Ancients sequence.
- Tifa makes a habit of doing this in both Dissidia Final Fantasy (2015) and the Final Fantasy VII Remake. In the latter she will even do it multiple times in a single attack.
- Guild Wars 2: If you're running a Mechanist (the End of Dragons elite specialization for Engineer), whenever you summon your jade mech it will arrive this way.
- Iron Man does this when landing at high speed in the 2008 Game of the Movie.
- Kingdom Hearts II:
- While fighting the Storm Rider in Mulan's world, one can perform an reaction command which will stun the Storm Rider. Afterwards, Sora lands in the described way. It can be seen in this video.
- That game also features Sora's Anti Form, which relegates itself to a feral stance. As a result, any landing ends up like this, since it's his default pose.
- While fighting the Storm Rider in Mulan's world, one can perform an reaction command which will stun the Storm Rider. Afterwards, Sora lands in the described way. It can be seen in this video
- The Legend of Zelda:
- Link does this from long falls in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, like going to the ground from the sky, or entering Skyloft.
- Sidon does this in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild when he jumps from a tower at Inogo Bridge when you first meet him.
- Lost Soul Aside: Kazer does one at the start of the 2017 gameplay demo.
- Vivio's Full Drive Burst in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Gears of Destiny begins with one, before she dashes in for a melee combo that ends with a point-blank Sacred Blazer.
- Kasumi from Mass Effect 2 lands with one of these after disabling Donovan Hock's Mantis gunship's shields. Funnily enough, this is less impressive than the moves she pulled to get onto the gunship just before.
- Snake, Raiden, Drebin, and just about everyone from the Metal Gear games do this all the time.
- Samus Aran from Metroid does this several times, usually after a spinning jump in the air. Kind of the only way for her to land, given that one of her suit's hands is an Arm Cannon and therefore lacks a hand.
- Ryu, the player character of Ninja Gaiden, can be seen in this position frequently.
- One Step From Eden: When Saffron lands after immediately changing her outfit in the character selection screen, or when starting a battle, she lands with both legs and her right arm, before flinging her jacket up and wearing it as the sleeves fall right over her arms.
- Oni's Konoko lands like this after jumping from an airplane to infiltrate the Big Bad's base. Without a parachute. Bonus points for ground shatter.
- Overwatch:
- Genji, being the Cyber Ninja, averts this — barely. He lands on two points, with his fingers merely centimeters from the floor.
- Played straight in the comic "Going Legit", performed by Junkrat from high ground as he and Roadhog infiltrate a warehouse from a roof opening, with him only commenting that his artificial leg "didn't break this time" after doing so.
- Pharah performs a legit three-point landing in her "Touchdown" highlight intro.
- In most Battle Royale games, players skydive onto the map before using parachutes to slow their descent. However, Paladins' spinoff game, Realm Royale, ditches the parachutes and lets players fall at terminal velocity right onto the map, pulling off three-point landings and leaving craters.
- In Persona 4 Golden, after an ill-fated attempt at a crowd surf, Yosuke and Kanji land flat on their faces while the Protagonist performs one of these.
- The Pokémon Frogadier and its evolution Greninja have this as their standard pose. Diggersby also makes use of this in its entrance animation, with one of its ears substituting for the hand.
- The Prince from Prince of Persia (2008) lands like this after finishing a mid-air combo.
- The characters of Section 8 will do this if, while dropping in from low orbit in nothing but your Power Armor, you think "You know what? I don't need airbrakes." As awesome as it looks, it does leave you immobile for a second while your character and his armour recovers from the landing, which isn't always a good thing in a multiplayer shooter.
- Sonic and friends like to do that in newer Sonic The Hedgehog games sometimes.
- Sonic lands this way whenever he power stomps in Unleashed, Colors, or Generations.
- It's been a Running Gag since Sonic Adventure for Sonic avert it about once per game and land on his face.
- Chip subverts this multiple times at first in Sonic Unleashed, but finally manages a perfect landing just before the final level.
- Sonic Boom:
- During the video game trailer, Amy lands like this, whereas the boys hit the ground in less dignified manners.*
- Metal Sonic does this as well in The Stinger of the Gamescom trailer.
- Spider-Man:
- Spidey does the punch variant in Spider-Man 3, complete with a cracked floor and sound effect.
- All over the place in Spider-Man (PS4). As noted in Comics above, it's very much an iconic pose for him.
- Star Wars:
- Mace Windu's jump attack in Star Wars: Battlefront 2 looks like this, except that the hand in question is holding a lightsaber. And it does area damage.
- Satele Shan from Star Wars: The Old Republic performs one, complete with area of effect damage, during her big damn heroes moment in the Return cinematic.
- Super Mario Bros.:
- In Mario Strikers Charged, several characters make their home entrances in this manner.
- Mario and Luigi almost do this in Super Mario Galaxy and its sequel when falling from a great height. While the pose certainly gives this vibe, their hands don't quite touch the ground.
- Captain Falcon in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Heck, most athletic characters in the game do this, but Falcon tends to be a more obvious example.
- In Mario Strikers Charged, several characters make their home entrances
- In the Team Fortress 2 supplemental comic "Blood In The Water", the Acrofatic Heavy Weapons Guy pulls this off, after jumping down a level inside Ayers Rock.
- Warframe: If a warframe falls from a sufficient height, they will land like this. It's a minor case of Awesome, but Impractical, since it pauses the otherwise lightning-fast ninja warriors for a second as the animation completes. One of the first things new players learn is how to prevent the animation from triggering, in order to keep speed up.
- Every start of mission, Wonder-Red from The Wonderful 101 arrives at stage jumping of from Virgin Victory and landing on this pose... wonderfully.
- Blood Elves in World of Warcraft do this after jumping.
- Xenoblade Chronicles:
- Xenoblade Chronicles X: Jump from great enough a height, and your character will stick the landing like that.
- In Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Rex will do one of these on the way back from a salvage operation if you did well on the Quick Time Event when the operation started. Doing less well leads to him stumbling, instead.
Web Animation
- In the Happy Tree Friends episode "Flippin' Burgers", Flippy does this after his burger joint massacre.
- Red vs. Blue Freelancers often like this landing. Tex gets an album cover for the Revelation season's soundtrack from one, complete with explosions in the background.
- RWBY:
- Done by Ruby in episode 5 of season 1, complete with head snapping up showing her determined face. Pyrhha later does it in an almost picture-perfect copy maneuver shared with Red vs. Blue's Carolina; another red-haired, green-eyed action girl voiced by Jen Brown.
- Done in the open for Season 2, where the Huntsmen/Huntresses are seen plunging from Absurd Altitude into the City of Vale and sticking their Ground-Shattering Landing.
- Come Volume 7, and Ironwood also gets in on the act. After luring Watts into the arena of the incomplete Amity Communications Tower by claiming that it's complete and that security assigned to defending it are being diverted to help Mantle, then locking both of them inside, Ironwood leaps from the commentator's box into the arena in this pose to confront Watts.
- Toon Sandwich: In "Super-Showdown-Bowl!", instead of using the Tractor Beam, Oscar just jumps down from the sphere and naturally does a typical superhero landing since he's copying the powers of a whole bunch of movie superheroes.
- Weebl & Bob: Stephen Fry jumps down the loft.
Webcomics
- Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures: Dan, here, although the wings probably helped.
- Tiren, of Dubious Company, jumps off the airship, does several flips and lands this way between a cornered Sal and advancing Izor. Too bad the acrobatics gives her motion sickness and ruins the moment.
- Elliot of El Goonish Shive performs one of these while sneaking into PTTAPUTASF.
- Girl Genius: When chasing Zola, right after a set of stairs lampshade Zeetha and Higg's status as heroes, Zeetha jumps through a hole and lands in a wide crouch with her hands in front of her, at least one stabilizing her landing on the rubble.
- Goblins:
- Minmax landing on top of the tower in the Maze of Many's final room.
- Tempts Fate lands like this after blowing up several demons in "Tempts Fate 11".
- In Godslave, Edith lands this way after freeing herself from Turner's hand-blade, marking her Let's Get Dangerous! moment.
- Grrl Power: In a superheroes comic? What are the chances?
- For example, Maxima defying For Whom the Death Tolls.
- Ren lands this way before Vehemence after Maxima kicks him down the quarry to jumpstart his adrenaline powers.
- Maxima doing a Dynamic Entry to a supervillain lair wouldn't be complete without the superhero landing.
- For example, Maxima defying For Whom the Death Tolls.
- Pato of M9 Girls! falls in style after defeating a giant robot in this page.
- In Moon Crest 24, Derek does this when he's first seen by the girls up close.
- Kareem of Project 0. Ciro opts out.
- Sandra on the Rocks: When Zoé parachutes in to have words with her ex-husband and business partner Domenico about dragging Sandra away from her regular work, she discards the 'chute and drops the last few feet to arrive for maximum effect. Being the comic's resident badass, she executes a pretty good three-point landing — and as it's on soft sand, it even has a little of the quality of a Ground-Shattering Landing, while the frame is drawn with a Dutch Angle.
- In this Schlock Mercenary strip, after being knocked through a wall by LCDR Foxworthy and falling several floor's worth of distance, Captain Tagon manages a perfect three-point landing, the soldier boosts letting him walk away from it without any problems.
Web Original
- In Worm, Victoria/Glory Girl starts her interlude with one. The narration then comments that she'd been practicing it for weeks.
Web Videos
- Watch the SuperCut version!
- YouTube channel Because Science has an episode about the three-point landing. The conclusion? "Never Do a Superhero Landing" — unless you're a superhero, off course. Because the shortened time of impact means it's perfect for breaking bones.
- In the Epic Rap Battles of History episode featuring famous filmmakers, Michael Bay does this at the end as he starts his verse, reflecting the modern bombast of his movies.
- Joueur du Grenier:
- In the video for the 11-year anniversary, at the start of the advertising insert, Fred as "Captain NordVPN" (a Superman Captain Ersatz) lands with a textbook superhero landing.
- Done again in the video for the '80s series video (special Glen A. Larson), but this time, if Captain NordVPN is still a Superman Captain Ersatz, it's of the Man of Steel dark and brooding version.
- In the video for the 11-year anniversary,
- The Key of Awesome's Space Girl does this while playing Portal, looking cool for a second before having an accidental discharge with her portal gun and falling through the floor.
- The Nostalgia Critic: At the beginning of the Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice crossover review, Angry Joe arrives through flying and naturally lands this way.
- Super Power Beat Down, "Spider-Man vs. Darth Maul": After throwing Spidey through a window with his Force powers, Darth Maul follows suit and lands this way.
Western Animation
- Avatar: The Last Airbender:
- Aang sometimes lands this way.
- Korra gets in on this as well and combines it with a Ground-Shattering Landing.
- Blaze and the Monster Machines: In the "Robot Riders" miniseries of Season 4, Blaze and his friends do this whenever they land after falling or jumping off a high place in robot form.
- Code Lyoko:
- Yumi can end up in this pose after some acrobatics, or when just virtualized (which always leave her a few meters above ground).
- The others sometimes do it but it's rarer for them; Ulrich usually does it after he attacks a monster in mid-air.
- The first part of the DuckTales short "The World's Longest Deathtrap" plays with this trope. Dewey falls from a great height and lands like this perfectly... then collapses and complains about how inefficient this technique is.
- True to the comic, film, and video game examples, Iron Man pulls this off fairly often in Iron Man: Armored Adventures, too.
- In the Metalocalypse episode "The Revengencers", when the band manager Charles is thrown out of a third story window, he lands in a perfect three-point landing.
- Ladybug almost always lands like this in Miraculous Ladybug, as does Cat Noir. Not surprising since a lot of the former's moves are inspired by Spider-Man.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- Spitfire does a three-point landing early in the episode "Newbie Dash". Of course, she has four legs to begin with, so she actually has to raise one of her forelegs.
- Ember, the new Dragon Lord, eventually treats us to two superhero landings in episode "Triple Threat".
- At the beginning of "Uprooted", after some acrobatics with Rainbow Dash, Silverstream makes a typical superhero landing, even cracking the ground. That's in a Dream Sequence, though.
- Phineas and Ferb: Perry the Platypus is quite fond of this pose.
Doofenshmirtz: Oh, hey, nice landing pose. See, that would kill my knees.
- Shimmer and Shine: In "Dragon Tales", Zeta's flashback of how she and Nazboo first met features her performing this landing upon arriving at Mantikar. It turns out to be just one of the lies she made up to inflate her ego. She crash-landed there.
- Spider-Man:
- Ultimate Spider-Man is utterly in love with these. Every opportunity for any character to land this way is gleefully taken.
- In Marvel's Spider-Man, it's not an Iron Man guest appearance without a few uses of the Iron Man pose! Interestingly, in one scene Spider-Man does it when Iron Man doesn't, though later we get a scene that's practically an animated recreation of his Big Entrance at the beginning of Iron Man 2, landing in his iconic pose, then standing and raising his arms. Later, when the villain has hijacked all electronics, it's an unarmored Tony who leaped out of his hijacked suit and touched down in the pose (palm out instead of a fist this time).
- Two memorable examples occur in seasons 1 and 5 of Steven Universe:
- In "Serious Steven", the Crystal Gems fall out through a ceiling at the end of a tunnel, all landing gracefully except for Steven, who falls flat on his face.
- In "Change Your Mind", a similar situation occurs with the shot completely recreated, but with Steven sticking the landing to show his Character Development.
- Storm Hawks:
- Aerrow does one in the opening when he lands in front of his team.
- In "Tranquility Now", after crashing through the window, Aerrow jumps off his bike and lands in this pose in front of his team.
- Robin pulls this off in the opening theme for Teen Titans (2003).
- Toad does this during the theme song of X-Men: Evolution.
Real Life
- This guy does it a lot in his presentations and competitions.
- It exists in real Wushu and could be a variation of the "ZUO PAN BU" stance.
- Quest Crew did this at the end of this performance.
- If you have forward momentum, jump down as little as six or seven feet, you'll put at least one hand out to help slow your landing. Try it by running and then jumping down about a dozen stairs — though for safety's sake, try it with smaller numbers of stairs first so when you land badly and fall, you won't break yourself.
- If you have a lot of forward momentum, then you might be forced into a roll on landing, in which case having one hand out on landing would be more or less necessary to stop you from just splaying out instead. You probably don't want to try this at home.
- Averted on skydiving, as countering your landing with your hand may easily break your wrist. You are advised either to land on your feet, or make the parachute landing roll.
- Subverted by squirrels. Although there are several pictures of squirrels on the internet apparently doing the superhero landing, the photos are actually of squirrels scratching themselves.
