History Main / FallOfTheHouseOfCards

[[folder:Film -- Animated]]

* ''WesternAnimation/TheAngryBeavers'' episode "Chariots of Fur" has Daggett and Norbert at one point visit a water show featuring "Jupi the well organized Seal", Daggett and Norbert getting caught in a jet ski stack causes the nearly finished house of cards Jupi was working on to collapse.

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* In the final season of ''LightNovel/{{Durarara}}'', while preparing for his final fight with Shizuo, Izaya takes a bunch of tarot cards to make a card house. It actually goes really well and he finishes it in around a minute. Unsurprisingly, Izaya himself is the one to destroy the structure by purposely flicking a pawn into it. He then lights all the cards on fire for good measure.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Arcane}}''. [[DirtyCop Marcus]] is shocked to come home and find Silco--the undercity boss he's taking bribes from--in his house, helping his daughter built a house of cards. At the end of their subsequent conversation, Silco knocks over the cards, pointing out that [[ShameIfSomethingHappened accidents happen.]]

* Subverted in an episode of ''Series/{{MASH}}'': After receiving a disturbingly large number of tongue depressors for their unit, Hawkeye uses the excess depressors to build a memorial tower to all the patients who have passed through the 4077th. When Stars and Stripes gets wind of this, they decide to do a story in the project, only for Army Recruitment to decide to use the tower as a shot in the arm for enlistment efforts. Hawkeye is less than thrilled at this prospect and opts to instead blow the tower up on camera.
---> '''Hawkeye:'' Senseless destruction. That's what it's all about babe.

* ''WesternAnimation/WallaceAndGromit in WesternAnimation/AGrandDayOut''.

* Subverted in an episode of ''Series/{{MASH}}'': propaganda photographers want to make a fragile amateur sculpture into a symbol of the war, but the artists are trying to destroy their own creation.

* ''Series/TheBradyBunch'', episode "[[Recap/TheBradyBunchS1E15FiftyFourFortyAndFight 54-40 and Fight]]": The boys and the girls face off in a house-of-cards building contest to settle an argument.

* In ''Disney/{{Aladdin}}'', the sultan is stacking some tiny statuettes when Jafar slams open the door and they fall down.
* ''Disney/MickeysChristmasCarol'' has Scrooge counting his money, piling the coins into tall thin stacks as he basically dumps Belle. She storms out, toppling the piles in mid-count.

Like EndangeredSouffle, [[{{Dissimile}} only not with souffle]], and comes with the same two standard variations: In one, the rambunctious behavior around the house of cards is quieted down with no ill effects, only to have a relatively-distant disturbance (slamming door, car backfire) collapse the structure after it is "safe". The other works much the same, except that it is the builder him- or herself who triggers the collapse.

-->"Now, add all the dead weight of students like you..."\\
''(Student adds haphazard pile of cards to the top of a very large tower, which quickly collapses.)''\\
"So as you can see, children, our whole society is nothing more than a perilous house of cards, doomed to collapse ''under its own weight''."

-->'''Butch:''' My counselor was right. All I needed to curb my anger was a hobby.
-->''(Reaches up to place a stick on the very top only to have the lights turn off, followed by a crashing sound)''
-->'''Butch:''' Okay, NOW I'M MAD!

* ''Franchise/WallaceAndGromit in WesternAnimation/AGrandDayOut''.

[[folder:Film]]

[[folder:Film]]
* A RunningGag in ''Film/TheToy'' is U.S.'s elaborate domino maze getting knocked over accidentally.

* Bigweld's domino layout in ''WesternAnimation/{{Robots}}''.

* ''Disney/MickeysChristmasCarol'' has Scrooge counting his money, piling the coins into tall thin stacks as he basically dumps Belle. She storms out, toppling the piles in mid-count.

* In ''Disney/{{Aladdin}}'', the sultan is stacking some tiny statuettes when Jafar slams open the door and they fall down.