Barely Missed Cushion

Pillows? Closed Dumpster.

"Too bad he missed the pool."

— The Prince, Prince of Persia 3D

A common animated gag, based on subverting expectations.

A character is falling from a large height; this is going to hurt. Luckily, there's a soft object that will break his fall.

Unluckily, the character then falls right next to the object, onto something hard. Usually, the camera will initially show the cushion in the center of the screen and then pan to the side as soon as the unlucky person falls.

In a variant, there's another person waiting to catch the falling person, and the catcher misses.

See also The Not Catch for another way a falling character can narrowly avoid a safe landing.

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Examples:

Comic Books

• Iznogoud: In "Good Sports in the Caliphate", Iznogoud and the Caliph both wind up on a sled, descending a slope at high speed towards a building.
  Narrator: Fortunately, there is a door. And fortunately, it is open.
  [next panel: sled crashes to the right of the door, Iznogoud cushioning for the Caliph]
  Narrator: Unfortunately, it's a little to the left.

Film — Animated

• UglyDolls has Wedgehead introduced to Uglyville by being launched out of her conveyor belt place (due to being a misfit doll), where a target has a mattress about to be set up for her. Unfortunately for her, the mattress is being moved by Willard, a slow-moving tortoise Uglydoll, causing her to land on the ground before it gets there for her, head-first. This also ends up giving her her trademark wedge-shaped head (her original head was shaped like a duck's tail, as she was a wrongly-assembled duck doll).
• In WALL•E, the robot GO-4 is kicked out of a window. The scene then pans to the pool below, showing a prominently-placed diving board, only for the robot to land on the hard ground right next to it.

Film — Live-Action

• In 13 Sins, Elliot jumps out of the window of the police station, attempting to make a Trash Landing in a dumpster in the alley. However, he misses the open half of the dumpster, and bounces off the lid on the closed side.
• In Freaked, Stewie Gluck falls out an airplane and smacks into the ground a few feet from a giant hay pile.
• In the Get Smart movie, when about to land after a big skydiving scene, Max tells Agent 99 to aim for the haystack because it's softer. She ignores him and they land on the ground next to it.
• The Great Race:
  • Professor Fate flees a high-up boardroom by arranging for his flunky Max to be waiting below in a car with a trampoline fixed to it. He lands perfectly, but bounces high, Max takes off at that point, and...
  • Baron Von Stuppe's attempted Villain: Exit, Stage Left combines this with an implied example of Soft Water. He gets defeated in his sword duel with Leslie and jumps out a window into a lake where he has a boat waiting. Unfortunately, rather than landing in the water, he hits the boat instead, smashing and sinking it.
• In Hardcore Henry, a mook cuts a line that Henry was trying to climb onto a helicopter. It looks like Henry is about to land in a pond, but he lands right in a tree next to it.
• In Kiss Kiss Bang Bang Harry and Perry have to discretely dispose of a corpse. They eventually end up throwing the corpse off the roof the hotel so they don't have to drag it through the building. The corpse goes sailing through the air and the scene snaps to a dumpster, clearly where the body is going to land, right? Nope, bounces off the side with a loud pang and falls in the alley.
• In The Prestige Robert Angier (aka The Great Danton) performs a trick in which he falls through the stage floor and is supposed to fall onto a cushioned bag, except in his latest performance, the bag had been pushed to the side and Danton hits the concrete floor instead.

Literature

• The Captain Underpants book Big, Bad Battle of the Bionic Booger Boy, Part 2: The Revenge of the Ridiculous Robo-Boogers had the titular hero lose his superpowers without realizing it until he tries to fly out the window. He falls three stories and misses a haystack, a trampoline, and a truck full of soft pillows, before landing on his head.

Live-Action TV

• Burn Notice had an episode where Michael and Larry are trying to save some guy. They're in a high-up hotel room and throw a mattress into the pool to help break their fall. The guy they're helping misses the mattress and hits the bottom of the pool, breaking his ankle.
• Get Smart: A KAOS agent falls victim of this trope at the end of a Courtroom Episode when he jumps off a window after his plan to discredit key witness Maxwell Smart is foiled. Notably this is the first time Max used his "missed it by that much" catchphrase.
• The Goodies. In "Invasion of the Moon Creatures", Graham realises the Apollo capsule holding Bill and Tim will land on solid ground instead of the ocean. Cue him getting a couple of soldiers to run back and forth holding a bathtub to catch them. Naturally the capsule misses the tub and lands on Graham instead.
• Mac has a variation of this in one of his Project Badass clips in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. He actually does land on the mattress. He just bounces off and lands on the street a couple of feet below, still managing to hurt himself.
• Stevie from Malcolm in the Middle hits a massive ramp and gets launched into the air. Quick cut to a man raking a huge pile of leaves in his yard, and then Stevie crashes into a tree trunk in the background.
• Accidentally invoked on Opposite Worlds due to No OSHA Compliance. The first contestant eliminated from the show was thrown past a narrow ring of protective cushions surrounding the platform for the first challenge and hit the floor after a 10-foot fall. He broke a leg and left the show in an ambulance.
• A trailer for a BBC sketch show showed a man falling off a roof, with a lorry below marked "Soft and Fluffy". Then it pulled away, and another one marked "Sharp Porcelain Objects Inc." took its place.

Theme Parks

• In a scene from The Simpsons Ride at Universal Studios, a clip of Sideshow Bob's prison escape shows him about to jump into a truck full of pillows, but when he jumps the truck drives away and he instead lands in a truck filled with barbed wire.

Video Games

• In Bastion, a Running Gag has the Kid dropped from the sky onto objects that really shouldn't be used to break a fall. When the Sundown Path opens on a bale of hay, he lands off to the side of it.
• In Prince of Persia 3D, the prince reaches a guard standing on a high platform above a pool of water. The guard turns around and, frightened, falls off. He hits the ground right next to the pool, and the prince provides the page quote.
• Early on in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, you can find the corpse of a guy dressed up like an Assassin from Assassin's Creed right next to a pile of hay.

Webcomics

• In Sluggy Freelance: 4U City Red, Riff and alt-Rammer fall onto a dumpster of pillows. A closed dumpster. With a metal lid. Alt-Torg later lampshades this trope.

Web Original

• Subverted in the Homestar Runner cartoon "A Death-Defying Decemberween." Homestar declares he's going to sled down the Steep Deep, not so much a hill as a vertical cliff face, but Strong Bad catches him burying a mattress at the foot of it, apparently to cushion his fall. Strong Bad naturally removes the mattress in the hopes of Homestar getting hilariously maimed on impact, but to everyone's amazement - Homestar's included - he makes it to the bottom without a scratch. As it turns out, the mattress was filled with "hammers, broken glass, and candy canes sucked down 'til they're all pointy," and Homestar was banking on getting hilariously maimed so he wouldn't have to spend Decemberween visiting Marzipan's parents.

Western Animation

• In Animalympics, an official has to move the landing pad for the high jump when the contestant goes up too high. He still lands short of the pad.
• In Bugs Bunny Rides Again, after tricking Yosemite Sam into falling off a cliff, Bugs Bunny gets out a mattress, saying, "Eh, sometimes, me conscience bothers me", before pulling it away and saying, "But not dis time!"
• In the Chip 'n' Dale: Park Life episode "The Jungle", this happens to the duo three times in a row.
• Classic Disney Shorts: There's at least one Goofy cartoon where he keeps trying to open his parachute as he falls, but it pops out after he's already hit the ground.
• Dan Vs.: When Hal's helicopter gets shot out of the sky in Traffic, the scene cuts to "Bed Bug Mattresses," only for the helicopter to land on the nearby pavement.
• Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines:
  • "A Plain Shortage of Planes": Seeing Dick Dastardly fall, Muttley quickly sets up a water-filled inflatable pool, then snickers as this trope happens to Dastardly.
  • In "Operation Anvil," Muttley rushes to catch a plummeting Dastardly with a bed mattress but he's a tad late—Dick bounces off the ground and lands on the mattress after. This negates the promised medal for Muttley, so he yanks the mattress from under Dastardly (who responds with a patented Dope Slap).
• One Dexter's Laboratory episode begins with Dexter entering his lab by dropping in through a tube and landing next to a chair. He drags it into its proper place, muttering about Dee Dee moving it again.
• Droopy: One short features the Wolf chasing Droopy into a saloon. In order to escape, Droopy jumps from the second floor and lands on his donkey. The Wolf tries something similar with his horse and misses. He goes back to saloon for a second attempt and misses again. He then moves his horse to the spot where he landed and makes a third attempt, this time landing where the horse originally was. He gives up and calls a cab.
• Used as a Running Gag in The Fairly OddParents! whenever Crocker (or Timmy) enters the "Crocker Cave." Each time he ends up missing the mattress he was supposed to land on and moves it over to where he was.
• The Johnny Bravo episode "A Star is Bruised". Johnny the stuntman falls right next to the big air cushion (after it seemed like this would be the end of his series of painful accidents).
• Played with in the Futurama episode "Bendin' in the Wind". As Bender is falling, he cries, "Someone fat get in my way!" The camera is focused on a fat guy on the bottom, but Bender lands instead on the skinny woman next to him.
• From The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, Pud'n is free-falling from terminal height, and the mayor of the town is introducing a new tourist attraction: the world's largest pillow. It looks exactly what Pud'n needs to land on... before the mayor points out said pillow will be on display next to the cactus farm. Guess where he lands?
• In the first episode of Kuu Kuu Harajuku, the girls try to escape an annoying song, go up an elevator and hear an equally annoying song, then run through a window falling down several stories. They miss a pile of mattresses below and fall into a Dumpster.
• Looney Tunes:
  • This happens to Yosemite Sam in High Diving Hare. It's especially playing with expectations because throughout the skit he usually lands in the water.
  • In one of the Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner cartoons, Wile E. decides to be Crazy-Prepared and put a trampoline at the bottom of a cliff so that he lands safely when he falls. Sometimes he misses. Sometimes he hits the trampoline but simply rips through the canvas and hits the ground. Sometimes the canvas separates from the frame and wraps around him. Once, the trampoline worked perfectly, only for him to hit his head on an overhang, fall on the ground next to the trampoline, then get hit again when the dislodged overhang fell on him.
• Played with in the Rocko's Modern Life episode "The Good, the Bad, and the Wallaby". After getting thrown from his horse, Rocko flies over such hazards as a patch of cacti, a utensil graveyard full of forks and knives ("Pointy End Up"), and a toxic waste dump, only to land in a mattress junkyard. As he comments "What an unbelievable stroke of luck," a spring pops out of the mattress Rocko landed on and catapults him onto a cactus.
• The Simpsons:
  • When sneaking out of work to go on the Duff Brewery tour, Homer perfectly hits the mattress attached to the top of his car... or at least he would have, if Barney hadn't driven forward about 8 feet to look at something he thought was Diana, Princess of Wales.
  • In "Deep Space Homer", Barney ends stealing a jetpack while drunk. It runs out of gas and he falls unto the roof of a pillow factory until he lands unto the street, being immediately ran over by a truck of marshmallows.
  • When Krusty fakes his death to escape the Intimidating Revenue Service, he jumps off a plane to fall on a net. He hits one of the rocks the net is tied to before hitting the net.
  • Played with in "Homer the Heretic" with Ned, trying to help the unconscious Homer out of his burning house, tosses his mattress out the window so he can throw the man down to the ground safely. Homer does hit the mattress, only to have it spring him back up and through the ground-floor window of the still-burning house.

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