Staircase Tumble

"I WARNED YOU ABOUT STAIRS BRO!!!! I TOLD YOU DOG!" —Hella Jeff, Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff

Stairs can be dangerous if you misstep and fall down, even worse depending on how long it is. Still, it can be funny, especially in cartoons.

This is one of the common ways a Fright Deathtrap is used to kill someone. It can be caused by a case of Mind Your Step, but there are plenty of ways to misstep and fall without the stairs containing a trap or problem.

Anime and Manga

• Nobita from Doraemon has fallen down the stairs many times with comedic results.
• Played with horribly with Yukari Sakuragi in Another. She falls down her school's stairs which is bad enough, but what actually kills her is an Impromptu Tracheotomy "courtesy" of her umbrella
  • Stairs also have a "part" in Junta Nakao's demise. He falls off the stairs of his house and hits his head; he seems to be okay aside of some vomiting, but he actually has developed an aneurysm which bursts and kills him hours later
• Several people have either accidentally died or have been murdered like this in Detective Conan.
• Subverted in Mawaru Penguindrum - Masako pulls this on Kanba's ex girlfriend Asami, but she recovers well.
• The plot of Kiznaiver properly begins when Noriko Sonozaki, the one in charge of the Kizna System where people share their emotional AND physical pain, tells the protagonist Katsuhira Agata that he's a part of it -- and then pushes him down the nearby stairs. She later tells him that he only survived the fall because the physical damage sustained was "shared" by the other people in the system: his classmates Chidori, Honoka, Hajime, Nico, Tsuguhito and Yoshiharu.
• Private Actress: Early on, as Shiho Kobayakawa aka the titular Private Actress is working as a man named Ryutaro's fake fiancée to fend off some girls that are interested in him, one of them pushes Shiho down a local staircase. She falls off but manages to roll on the steps, which softens the blow.
  • Later in the story, the junior high student Fuyuka Sakuragi is found dead at the feet of some back stairs in her Boarding School. The death is ruled as an accident, but her grieving parents hire Shiho to infiltrate the school and gather info: they believe she was actually killed by a bunch of bullies. They're right: Fuyuka found out about the local Alpha Bitch's dirty deals so she and her friends first harassed her, then "silenced" her when she decided to denounce them anyway. Said Alpha Bitch, Kana Juumonji, would later get a makeover and change her name to Satoka Ryoudou, becoming the Big Bad of the series.
    • Additionally, it's not the first time Kana killed people like this. She killed her Drama Club sempai and potential rival Yuki Haneda via pushing her down the school stairs, which also caused a mirror hanging on the nearby wall to fall on Yuki and cut the poor girl's throat open with its shards. And for massive irony, these were the "dirty deals" Fuyuka found out about, which led her to be killed as well in a similar manner.
• In Kodomo no Jikan, one of Rin's worst Creepy Child moments has her seriously consider pulling this on her teacher Kyouko Houin, out of romantic jealousy. She thinks it over and decides not to.
• The Mobile Suit Gundam TV series implied that Amuro's father Tem Ray died like this during a battle. It's confirmed in the movies.
• The Prince of Tennis:
  • Right before the matches against Hyoutei, Oishi saved a heavily pregnant woman from this. As a huge downside he got a kinda serious arm injury that put him out of commision for the game, and Momoshiro (who had been bumped out of the regulars after losing to Inui) had to cover up for him in his and Eiji's doubles match against Oshitari and Gakuto.
  • The trope is quite the plot point in the Senbatsu anime-only arc. One of the boys (Kirihara) is found unconscious next to a flight of stairs, but while he's mostly unharmed, he refuses to explain what happened. So another boy that's known to have bad blood with him (Kamio) is believed to have pushed him down said stairs, and is in risk of being kicked out and blacklisted. . . It was one of the Cute Sports Club Managers, actually, who was very angry at Kirihara for harming her brother (and the captain of Kamio's team) in a match. She didn't intentionally push him downstairs, however: they had a verbal spat next to the stairs, she tried to slap him for talking too much, he dodged but lost his balance and fell off. . .
• In One Piece, Zoro's childhood friend Kuina died from slipping and falling down the storehouse steps.
• Kozue Kaoru subjects a perverted music teacher to this in Revolutionary Girl Utena when she spots him fondling her brother Miki. This is meant to display her unstable obsession with her brother, but the teacher is in no way treated as sympathetic.
• In the Bleach pilot story, Orihime was a Cute Ghost Girl who died after falling off the stairs leading to a shrine. Her shocked soul's even shown telling her corpse "Please Wake Up!" The culprit was the corrupted soul of her late father; he had died three years ago, then was turned into a Hollow and attacked her because he couldn't bear being separated from her. (Not unlike what happened in the canon show, between her and her older brother Sora's Hollowfied soul)
• A Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba manga omake and a scene from the fourth anime season have this happening to Yushiro.

Comic Books

• Pictured above: In what could be among the most evil and mean-spirited examples of this trope, in Ultimate X-Men, Dr. Nathaniel Essex alias Mr. Sinister introduces Professor Charles Xavier, who is in a wheelchair, to "his one enemy... stairs". The image of this quickly became meme-worthy.

Fan Works

• The Super Mario Bros. fic Vicissitude has Princess Peach die like this before the start of the story.

Film

• In the movie Surf Ninjas, during the final epic battle, an enemy Mooks gets knocked down a flight of stairs that runs up the entire mountainside. He manages to climb back up before the battle ends but gets knocked down a second time. By the time he gets back up again the battle's ended and when told "It's over. Your side lost." He shrugs and willingly throws himself down the stairs again.
• I'm Gonna Git You Sucka: as a Running Gag, each time Mr. Big's two Mooks Leonard and Willie get captured by the good guys or screw up a mission they're given the option of going out the window or down the stairs. They almost always choose the stairs, after which the camera cuts to a scene of them tumbling painfully down the stairs.
• Used as a recurring joke in Kung Fu Panda, in reference to actual stairs on ancient shrines, and how out of shape Po is.
• A non-malicious example: in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Sam pushes Flint down the bouncy stairs in the Jell-O Castle.
• Pinocchio did this on stage at the start of his number "I've Got No Strings." Not really injurious, but humiliating.
• In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indy and his dad escape through Castle Brunwald only to find themselves at a dead end. Indy tries looking for a secret exit; his dad ends up finding it when he sits down and leans back in a chair, revealing a hidden staircase. Unfortunately, Indy was standing right on top of it at the time...
• In Death Becomes Her, Madeleine is pushed down a very long flight of marble stairs, ending in a battered heap at the bottom with her head twisted around backwards.
• What Ever Happened to Baby Jane??
• This is the way Nomi claws her way to the top in Showgirls.
• Happens at the end of Hitchcock's remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much.
• In Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Frollo accidentally kills Quasimodo's Roma mother like this as he tries to take away what he believes to be stolen goods (in reality, the newborn Quasimodo), causes her to fall down a flight of stairs and fatally hit her head on her way down.

Literature

• The Book Of Margery Kempe has the husband of the titular character fall down the stairs and getting heavily wounded by it, and potentially mentally challenged. He dies.
• Used in several Agatha Christie books. Discussed by Hercule Poirot as a typical way of murdering rich, elderly relatives.
• In Gone with the Wind, Scarlett miscarries her fourth pregnancy (ironically, the only one she was actually pleased by) after falling down the stairs.
• In Dragondrums, Piemur takes a nasty spill while running up stone stairs, "courtesy" of some of his fellow apprentices "thinking" it would be funny to grease some of the steps (this bunch had earlier shown a taste for nasty pranks against him, such as "anointing" his belongings with bodily wastes while he was away).
• The Black Humor picture book "The Gashlycrumb Tinies: a very gorey alphabet book" by Edward Gorey begins with a picture of a short-haired little girl who plummets down a MASSIVE flight of stairs. The phrase underneath the picture says "A is for Amy who fell down the stairs", in a rather obvious allusion to the below mentioned Amy Robsart.

Live Action TV

• A Running Gag in My Wife and Kids is Claire falling down the steps.
• The Twilight Zone episode Uncle Simon contains a fatal staircase push.

Music

• Played for Laughs in Key of Awesome's parody of Kesha's "Tic-Toc" music video. The actress who played Kesha commented several times that the staircase scene was the hardest one she has ever done for the KOA.
• Happens to the narrator in Dead Kennedys' "Too Drunk to Fuck" as a consequence of his drinking.

Nursery Rhymes

• "Goosey Goosey Gander"

Real Life

• Tragic Truth in Television example: this is how the seiyuu Kaneto Shiozawa, the English folk singer Sandy Denny and the actor Gary Coleman died. More exactly: either of them died of brain haemorrhages after falling down a flight of stairs.
• Bill Bryson ponders the death toll from falls on stairs in his history of domesticity At Home
• British stage and television actor Robin Nedwell (best known for playing Dr. Duncan Waring in the Doctor series of LWT sitcoms in the 1970s) died of a heart attack several days after falling five feet off a ladder onto concrete; the heart attack was probably brought on by the injuries he sustained in the fall.
• British character actor Derek Nimmo was checking an external alarm at his house when he fell down a stone staircase into the basement; the resulting head injuries put him into a coma, in which he remained until his death two months later.
• In 1946, David Niven and his wife and fellow actress Primula Rollo were attending a party at Tyrone Power's house in Beverly Hills. During a game of hide and seek, Rollo opened what she believed was a closet door and ducked inside; unfortunately, the door led to Power's basement down a steep stone staircase, and Rollo died of a fractured skull and brain lacerations.
• British actor Michael Wilding (whose claims to fame include being Elizabeth Taylor's second husband) died from head injuries sustained after falling down a flight of stairs in his home while suffering an epileptic seizure.
• There are urban legends about some hotel's big staircases that are haunted by the ghosts of brides who wanted to use them to rehease their walk to the aisle, but tripped on their fabulous wedding dresses, and ended up dead as a consequence.
• The English noblewoman Lady Amy Dudley aka Amy Robsart, wife of Elizabeth I's favorite counselor Robert Dudley aka the Earl of Leicester, was found dead with a broken neck and two wounds on her head at the foot of her home's stairs in 1560. It's still discussed whether it was a genuine accident, or Amy was murdered to get her out of the way of a possible wedding between Dudley and Elizabeth.

Video Games

• In some Roguelikes attempting to use the stairs while confused or carrying to much weight can cause you to trip and fall down the stairs, causing you damage (and hence possibly killing you).
• This was a common way to die in old adventure games, especially Sierra games, which mocked the player for the various ways in which you could get yourself killed by performing ordinary tasks. The King's Quest series is a particularly bad offender.
• In Deardrops, Shinichi pushed his fellow violinist Johan down a flight of stairs on impulse, injuring him, due to stress.
• In the otome Visual Novel, (P)lanets, the main character gains her telepathic powers after tripping down a flight of stairs at her school.
• Mamoru Akasaka's wife Yukie dies like this in Higurashi no Naku Koro ni's arc Himatsubushi-hen.

Web Animation

• Used in Rejected as a Dead Baby Comedy.

Web Comics

• Van Von Hunter: a technoleech shows Asimov, a humanoid robot that can climb stairs, to the evil prince. The prince, offended, climbs the stair after yelling "I can do that!" but trips near the top and tumbles down the stairs, disproving himself once again.
• Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff: Come on, You already know how this one goes.
• Since Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff is Homestuck's comic within a comic and in-universe source of Memetic Mutation, callbacks to it occur any time a character falls down a flight of stairs. When Dave gets flung down some stairs, Hella Jeff pops up to declare his legendary warning on the subject. Tavros is warned against traversing any stairs until he gets more practice with his robot legs, and when he does fall (which happens repeatedly... keeps happening, you could say), it's accompanied by the Unsound Effect "HAPPEN". Later on, when Karkat is dragging Sollux to escape Gamzee, they fall down stairs simply from him not looking where he's going, and it's accompanied by "HAPPEN x2 COMBOB".
• Used in The Adventures of Dr. McNinja; he gets scared by some cobwebs, trips, and falls down the stairs.
• In Wapsi Square, both Monica and Tina have fallen victim to this.
• Xkcd: "The stampede lasted two hours and reached the bottom three times."
• Dave of College Roomies from Hell tried to commit suicide by falling down the stairs. The end results were much more entertaining.

Western Animation

• In the original cartoon, this trope is what necessitated Penny's uncle to be turned into the cyborg superhero Inspector Gadget (the whole "getting blown up by Doctor Claw" was an invention of the movie).
• In The Simpsons episode "My Sister, My Sitter," a major plot point is that Lisa accidentally causes Bart to tumble down the stairs in his house. The rest of the episode is about her trying to find medical help for Bart while everyone gets the wrong impression that she had beaten Bart.
  • In an early episode, Homer fell down the stairs tripping on Bart's skateboard angering at his son's hallway mess. He spent the first act laying on the couch due to his back pain.
  • A Running Gag in "Bart the Mother" is Homer falling down the basement stairs due to Bart's actions.
• A major subplot in Family Guy episode "Brian Griffin's House of Payne" when Chris and Meg's misbehavior pushed Stewie down the stairs causing a severe head wound.
  • One cutaway gag shows Bobby McFerrin falling down the stairs.
• In the Dexter's Laboratory episode "SDRAWKCAB", Dexter gets manipulated into running up and down a flight of stairs, causing his father standing next to him to get dizzy and come tumbling down.
• The episode "Girlfriendklok" in Metalocalypse has Nathan's girlfriend falling down several flights of stairs, placing her in a coma.
• Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy: in episode "Dear Ed"
• According to TF Wiki, Skywarp's favorite pastime is pushing people down the stairs.
• This happens in a season 1 episode of Jackie Chan Adventures. It becomes a bit of a Running Gag with Tohru.
• In Drawn Together, Princess Clara thinks she's pregnant and submits to a tumble or two down the stairs of the "M. C. Escher Room" in an attempt to force a Convenient Miscarriage.
• An early episode of Code Lyoko has Jim chasing Jéremie around in an attempt to find out what are he and his friends doing. Poor Jéremie ends up falling down a flight of stairs; he "only" sprains his ankle, but it IS a severe sprain and Jim is horrified at what could've happened.

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