Finishing Stomp

FATALITY!

"I'll stomp a mudhole in your ass and walk it dry!"

— "Stone Cold" Steve Austin

One good way to show that something is over is one person stomping on someone or something.

Sub-Trope of Coup de Grâce, although it isn't necessarily the actual killing blow — it can be more for dramatic effect than necessity, but it can be the only blow. Sister Trope to Kick Them While They Are Down, as it's specifically about stomping, and about the dramatic impact of that movement. The Finishing Move to a definitive (and literal) Curb-Stomp Battle. Also a Sub-Trope of Cruelty by Feet, if the character is not heroic (usually). Might be followed by Victory Pose On Person where the foot remains on the one stomped on as part of a Victory Pose.

See also Weapon Stomp, that can also end a fight, Giant Foot of Stomping and Goomba Stomp.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Used a few times in Attack on Titan:
  • The Rogue Titan kills a number of Titan in this fashion, by repeatedly stepping on what used to be the back of the latter's neck. This savviness of a Titan's weak spot shows the humans that the Rogue is not just a rebelling abnormal.
  • This is how the Female Titan kills many of the Survey Corps scouts. Petra is perhaps the best known example, as she's crushed between the Female Titan's foot and a tree.
• In the last battle of Ayakashi Triangle, Suzu and Matsuri's attack critically injures the Gogyosen. As they rant about the absurdity of their defeat, Shirogane crushes them under his paw, showing Suzu had also restored his true form and power.
• In Bleach, Bazz-B casually walked up to an injured and groggy Soul Reaper and then crushed his skull under his boot.
• Done hilariously in Digimon Fusion. Neo Myotismon is a walking homage to the Myotismon of the original series, and is every bit as murderous. However, one hallmark of the original was being unkillable, returning repeatedly and proving to have set in motion some events he wasn't there for. So when Neo Myotismon gets stronger and stronger and is only defeated by a fusion of two Golden Super Modes, and we find his head floating in a cloud of data particles, vowing to restore himself and take revenge, longtime viewers said "Uh-oh! He's going to rebuild himself and come back even worse and bedevil them over and over just like the original!" But you only said that for about five seconds, because that's when Beelzemon's boot comes down and finishes the job.
• This is how Cell finishes off what's left of Android 16 in Dragon Ball Z, which proves to be the final straw that sends Gohan into Super Saiyan 2.
• This is how Luffy defeats Arlong in One Piece, although he stretches his leg up though through the ceiling first before stomping him through the floor and several other floors straight down.
  Luffy: Gomu Gomu no... ONO!!!
  • Doflamingo attempts this on Law, but is intercepted by Luffy.
• Rebuild World: After the relic thief Zelmo comes back to get Resurrection Revenge on Akira, and Akira cutting him into Half the Man He Used to Be isn’t enough due to him being a Cyborg, Akira uses the strength of his Powered Armor boots to stomp the halves of his head to mush.
• In Soul Eater, this is how Death the Kid finishes his second match with Black Star. This being Kid his stomp leaves the would-be assassin in a crater.
• Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs: In the Marie Route Alternate Timeline, Leon, after Throwing the Fight in their duel and then being double crossed by Julius, asks for a rematch and ends up obliterating Chris’ mech like this after breaking his sword.
• Rinne's No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to the three girls that had been bullying her in ViVid Strike! ended this way (for one of the girls anyway, she had already smashed the other two's faces into the lockers).

Comic Books

• Pictured is Jesse Custer finishing off Jody in Preacher. He follows it up by choking him to death.
• In Marvel Zombies, after the Red Skull kills Colonel America for good, he's decapitated and his head stomped on.

Fan Works

• All For Luz:
  • In chapter 10, Darwin kills Theodore with this with Head Crushing results. Darlene also gives one to Julia as she's bleeding out from the stab wounds she gave her.
  • In chapter 12, Jacob gets killed by having his head crushed in by Luz's Super-Strength enhanced stomping, after getting his Quirk stolen.
  • In chapter 21, this is how Jonah Smith meets his end to Luz in their fight, thanks to her strength enhanced stomp to his head, crushing his skull and scattering his gray-matter over the rooftop.
• Dungeon Keeper Ami: From "Allies?", a Born of Magic animated dust bunny is killed with just one stomp.
  "Looks like an animated dust bunny to me," the dark general said and stepped on the tiny nuisance, squishing it. A puff of grey dust escaped from underneath his soles.
• In the 14th chapter of Heart of Ashes, Smaug (in his human form at the time) kills the captain of the soldiers attacking him by crushing his skull under his bare heel.

Film — Animation

• The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie Boogie is unraveled and all the bugs inside him spill out into a pit of boiling oil. One escapes, but is stepped on by Santa Claus.

Film — Live-Action

• In Enter the Dragon, Lee (Bruce Lee) finishes off O'Hara (Robert Wall) with a leaping, two foot stomp.
• In American History X. Derek Vineyard's murderous finis to a scuffle with three would-be car thieves, involving Derek forcing one of them to bite the curb and then stomping down hard on his head with horrifying and fatal results.
• Kung Fu Hustle: when Sing stomps on the soccer ball and destroys it. This is actually directed at himself, as he was played by the director, Stephen Chow, who's other famous film was Shaolin Soccer.
  Sing: NO MORE SOCCER!
• Parodied in Undercover Brother. After taking out some Mooks, UB viciously stomps down on the head of one of them (off camera) with a "crunching" sound. We then see that UB actually squashed a bag of potato chips that were lying next to the guy's head.
  Mook: I just bought those!
  UB: Sorry.
• Tank Girl: after the Rippers finish off the Water & Power troopers at the subgate, Tank Girl stomps down on the locator device on Kesslee's wrist.
• The opening fight (if you can call it such) of Mortal Kombat: The Movie, between Liu Kang's brother Chan and Big Bad Shang Tsung, ends with Shang Tsung, in true Kick the Dog fashion, planting a vicious one of these into Chan's back.
  • Later, Liu Kang finishes off Reptile's lizard form with a stomp as well after destroying his supernatural ninja form.
• Done three times by the titular character in Ip Man during his fight with ten karateka. First one was answering a flying kick with a grab and throw on the ground followed by a stomp on his face. Second one is grab someone's straight kick and stomp on his thigh, dislocating the poor guy's leg entirely. Finally he countered a high kick to his face by another grab on the leg, threw the guy off balance, and then proceed to stomp his back, followed by punch on his back and elbow on the guy's shoulder.
• In Destroy All Monsters, King Ghidorah is killed when Godzilla, Anguirus, and Gorosaurus work together and stomp on all three of his heads to crush them.
  • The titular battle in Godzilla vs. Kong ends with Godzilla stomping on Kong's chest, establishing him as the definitive victor.
• In Death Line, Alex ends his fight with the cannibal by stomping on his head.

Literature

• In the third Girl Genius novel, Agatha H and the Voice of the Castle, Captain Vole, an ex-Jäger, uses one of these to finish off a would-be assassin when he first shows up to give his report to Gilgamesh. The assassin, whose arm had just been ripped off by Vole, got his throat crushed.

Live-Action TV

• In Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Deathlok uses this as a finishing move in "End of the Beginning" and "Beginning of the End". Both targets end up comatose.
• Interview with the Vampire (2022): In the Season 1 finale, after Claudia pins Antoinette to the floor with a fire poker, she then stomps on the older woman's head, which renders Antoinette unconscious. That's why the latter's face is bloodied and mutilated as she's being burned alive in the incinerator.
• Wednesday: The titular character finishes off Miss Thornhill in this manner.

Magazines

• In the 1956 MAD article on the fictional sport of Dog Kicking, the climax of the Kick is the la Stompa, the Hour of Truth for the Brave Dogs. The Schlobbero leaps into the air and lands on the Brave Dog in the la Stompa Natural (in which the feet impact the dog) or la Stompa Ayudado (in which the hips impact the dog). It does cost honor points, however, for a Schlobbero to execute a la Stompa on a sitting Dog, and if a Schlobbero fails to execute one within the time limit of four hours he himself is subjected to one.

Professional Wrestling

• Not to the same degree, but exceptionally arrogant wrestlers will pin a defeated opponent by stepping on their chest for a three count. This almost never works.
• The finishing move of Ron Garvin, was a series of moves, a series of stomps to every part of the opponent his foot could reach till they did not get back up.
• Perro Aguayo's La Lanza finisher, and Jr did it like the People's Elbow.
• Spike Dudley sometimes finished people with a diving double stomp. It was nowhere near as reliable as his Acid Drop/Dudley Dog though. Many other wrestlers use the move too, but it is rarely a finisher unless it has a Name of Power.
• Low Ki uses a finishing move called the Warrior's Way, which is not merely a fancy name for a double stomp from the top rope but is done with the addition of his legs fully tucked in before bringing them down. There are very few wrestlers capable of doing this variant responsibly (Low Ki's rival Fergal Devitt one of the others who can). Low Ki is also known for combining The Warriors Way, in this case known as the Ghetto Stomp, with Homicide's Cop Killa.
• Another variation of the double stomp is to combine it with the tree of woe or some other hanging predicament, with World Wonder Ring STARDOM's Kairi Hojo often being held up as the best user of the variant. "Portugal's Perfect Athlete" Shanna added a nasty twist to it by first stomping on the groin and then pushing off to face/torso stomp. JT Dunn of CZW\WSU's Juicy Product did it with the guardrail.
• The Curbstomp, a favored method of finishing beat downs started by the likes of Cheerleader Melissa and Paul Burchill. Rarely finish matches though. Melissa has been known to combine the curbstomp with a top rope double stomp from Mercedes Martinez, which does generally bring things to an end.
• Sonjay Dutt does a moonsault double stomp.
• AAA's Súper Fly uses a 360 diving double stomp for a finishing move. Mia Yim has used this move on occasion and almost pulled off a 720 once.
• Seth Rollins, before adopting the Pedigree from Triple H and later a ripcord knee, used a running stomp to the back of the head/neck area he called "Peace of Mind/Blackout/Curbstomp". It was banned by the WWE as too dangerous, but in early 2018, Rollins officially brought the Curb Stomp back.
• Finn Bálor (or, if you prefer, Fergal Devitt) uses a diving double foot stomp off the top rope that has been dubbed the Coup de Grâce. The height he gets is insane.
• Shayna Baszler sometimes finishes opponents by stomping on their arms to kayfabe break them.

Tabletop Games

• Warhammer has a stomp mechanic used by monsters at the end of each combat round. It usually doesn't end the combat and even less often the whole battle but one could see it as an end marker of the combat round.
• This is what you do to downed players in Blood Bowl if you want to make (more) sure they'll stay down. Note that doing this may incur the wrath of the referee however.
• In BattleTech, kicking/stomping an downed enemy BattleMech is one of the most effective ways to finish them off before they can get back up - especially because the kick has a chance to crush the cockpit. If a pilot bails out from a doomed mech, the enemy mech can chase the fleshy human down and crush them. In the BattleTech Expanded Universe, Davis McCall is killed when his Highlnder's cockpit is kicked in by a pair of Skye Rebel 'Mechs.

Video Games

• The ending of Abobo's Big Adventure includes, in a direct homage to American History X, Abobo himself stomping on Samus Aran's head, and Aboboy likewise doing so to Scrooge McDuck.
• In Blazblue Centralfiction, one of Nine the Phantom's Victory Poses is her stomping on her opponent while they are on the ground, then putting her foot onto them and crossing her arms.
• The titular protagonist of Max Payne 3 uses this to get the last word on Victor Branco. After stopping Victor's airplane from taking off, Max holds him at gunpoint. He laughs, saying that he'll walk because of his connections, and Max responds by stomping on his leg so hard that the bone pierces through his skin.
  Max: You'll walk... with a LIMP!
• After hitting an enemy with the Shrinker in Duke Nukem 3D, you finish them off with a stomp. This is a One-Hit Kill (or two rather) to every non-boss enemy in the entire game.
• Silent Hill was one of the first games to make this more-or-less mandatory, and it found its way into most of the sequels. Creatures that are down but not out will get back up, and you don't want to take the chance as many of them can kill you quite quickly. Enemies could be finished off with gunfire as well, but stomping on them allowed you to conserve precious ammunition.
• Killer7: Dan Smith's down attack.
• In the Resident Evil series, this is usually how the male characters will deal with a knocked-over, but still mobile, zombie that latches onto their legs. In earlier installments, this totally crushed their skulls. The women of the series got by with a kick, which typically knocked the head across the room. A melee attack in Resident Evil 5 (used exclusively by Chris) and Resident Evil 6 (all characters) against a downed enemy revisit this, and in the latter, the counter for the Bloodshot's pounce ends in one. Mr. X from 2 can finish you off this way too, complete with a "mash the cigarette" animation for added effect.
• One of Isaac Clarke's signature moves in Dead Space. Quite cathartic and effective against weakened enemies. When the developers noticed a tendency for playtesters to use this as a panic button or as a way to make really, really sure that there isn't something Not Quite Dead at the bottom of the the pile of ten necromorphs that just ambushed you^note which happens now and then, because it's dead space and the goal is to make you scream like a little girl, they ran with it: when the stomp is used repeatedly in rapid succession, Isaac launches into full blown boot-drenching Extreme Mêlée Revenge, complete with context sensitive Sanity Slippage, Freak Outs, or enraged screaming depending on Issac's current status and situation. Truly one of the best uses of the line "Why Won't You Die?" in recent gaming history.
• The game over screen of the oldie Jet Set Willy
• The Gears of War series has crushing a downed enemy's head with your boot as one of the options to finish them off.
• In Umineko: When They Cry, Gaap does this to George while wearing stiletto heels. Let's just say the result was similar to a gunshot wound.
• Alex Mercer of [PROTOTYPE] does this as one of his consume animations, knocking the target down and stomping their face. This is one of the least gruesome consume animations he has in the game.
• In Sly 2: Band of Thieves, Carmelita Fox destroys the Big Bad once and for all (who had already been literally smashed to pieces) by crushing the mechanical owl's main processor chip under her boot.
• The Grand Theft Auto games love this trope. Once an opponent is on the ground, the hand-to-hand combat animation becomes a "stomp".
• The opening of Half-Life 2: Episode Two has Alyx Vance receiving a nasty one of these at the hands of a Hunter after a Game Breaking Stabbing, putting her into a near-fatal coma.
• Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine: Finishing Moves are the only way to regain lost health in this game, and several of them include this. Given how violent this game is, this is actually one of the least brutal ways to kill enemies.
• God Hand has stomping as an Action Command and "God Stomp" as a Limit Break move.
• Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood: One of Ezio's assassination moves involves throwing a mook to the ground and stomping his face.
  • In Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, Eivor can likewise deliver this. It comes in two flavors, one as a stun finisher, where Eivor drives the victim to their knees, kicks away their weapon, then stomps their head into the ground. The other happens if the victim gets knocked to the ground during combat and is just a leaping stomp to the victim.
• Modern Warfare 2: General Shepherd does this to Soap. Fortunately it doesn't take.
• Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe gives this to The Joker, not as a Fatality, but for additional effect whenever he finishes off an enemy and doesn't perform a Fatality. Also overlaps with Groin Attack.
  • However, in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, Jax gets this as his Fatality, crushing the victim's head.
• In Mass Effect 3 multiplayer the player characters will still be alive for some time after having their health drained, during which an ally can revive them. However, an enemy can get near and stomp on the downed character to kill them before the timer runs down.
  • In addition, if you let a husk get too close in single or multiplayer, you have to Press X to Not Die to free yourself from it. Your character then lifts the husk by the neck, throws it to the ground, and crushes its head with his or her boot.
• Eternal Darkness gave you a secondary benefit to performing a Finishing Stomp: it would refill some of your Sanity Meter. Presumably because doing this means that you know the thing isn't getting back up.
• Darkstalkers has the pursuit attack (Down, Down + Any attack), which can end up this way if it's the final blow of the round.
• Power Rangers Fighting Edition has this, though obviously it only applies to characters who stomp; the Ninja Megazord, for example, throws a fireball instead.
• Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Hitting Down twice + Heavy as Super-Skrull uses "Worm Squash" and he stomps the opponent. It does little damage, can't be cancelled into any other attacks, and only hits grounded opponents, but it's a fun way to end a combo that you know will knock out the other character.
• Asura's Wrath: The title character Asura does a spectacular and cathartic one of these to Sergei while he's in an extreme rage, crushing the latter's head into a fine paste.
• Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage gives Souther this as part of his move set, specifically throws. He grabs an enemy, throws them to the ground, and starts stomping the living daylights out of them. He then proceeds to either grind them into the dirt with his heel, or kick them into the air, then bury his knee in their back and his victim back into the ground. Souther's a bit of a dick that way.
• Kazuma Kiryu does this as a finishing move in every Like a Dragon game. In Yakuza 2, he does this as a finisher to the face with his foot when he's holding a weapon and can't punch.
• Guild Wars 2: In any form of Player Versus Player, you can trigger a finishing move against a downed opponent to defeat them. Given the animation of this move, these finishers are commonly referred to as stomps in game.
• Subject Delta from BioShock 2 manages to combine this with a Dynamic Entry in the opening scene. Hearing his Little Sister scream, Delta charges towards the sound and proceeds to vault off a balcony, stomping on a splicer as he lands.
• In one of Rayne's finishers in BloodRayne 2 she shoves an enemy to the ground from behind, then backflips overhead to stomp both stiletto-heeled feet into the skull with a deliciously juicy crunch.
• A few characters in Tekken have this as a move which can only be used when their enemy is down, to inflict extra damage.
• Dracula does this to the second Acolyte in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2. Also combines with Your Head Asplode.
• Neo in The Matrix: Path of Neo can do a variant of this. It involves grabbing an enemy, doing an inverted Meteor Move and then flipping him over to chest stomp on him as a, typically, finishing move. Though you can use it at any point after it's learned.
• Just one of the many ways to finish off your enemies in Brutal Doom, which gets canonised in Doom (2016) with some of the Glory Kills, especially the Death from Above ones where the Doomslayer jumps down on a staggered human-sized enemy to knock it to the ground before crushing its skull to a pulp under his boot.
• This is one of the most brutal of the killmoves available to the Dragonborn in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, performed by shoving your hapless enemy to the ground and then walking up and slamming your (usually armored) foot down hard into his or her face. Also, this is a very, very satisfying way to finish off a Chaurus Hunter in Dawnguard.
• God of War: Ascension: Kratos finishes off Pollux by stomping on his head and crushing it.
• Red Dead Redemption II: If Arthur Morgan loses to Micah Bell while struggling on the ground during their final battle, Micah will finish him off with a stomp on the head.
• In Leaden Sky, You can stomp downed enemies to finish them. Although nothing stops you from brutally stomping already dead enemies.
• Super Mario Odyssey: At the beginning of the story, Mario and Bowser fight on the latter's airship above Peach's Castle, with the Koopa King coming out on top by throwing his lat like a boomerang and landing a hit on the plumber, sending him flying and causing him to lose his hat in the process. It lands in front of Bowser's feet, who stomps on it before gloating about his impending marriage to Peach and letting it glide away to be shredded to bits by the ship's propellers as he flies off to make his preparations.
• Blood (1997): After defeating Shial the spider queen at the end of Episode 2: Even Death May Die, the followup cinematic begins with Caleb finishing her, by squashing her under his boot.
• Let It Die: You can stomp on downed enemies. By the end of the first section, stomping becomes ineffective against human enemies, but your go-to method of capturing beasts.
• Fights in Tight Spaces:
  • The Stomp card deals high damage to a foe, but requires you to knock them down on the same turn with a throw card. When successful, the damage dealt by the throw and stomp together will be enough to kill most lesser enemies; However, throws cannot be used against Heavy enemies, meaning that Stomp cards will be completely unusable against them.
  • The Spiked Stamp card is a variant of Stomp, dealing no direct damage normally but instead inflicting a high Bleed value to the foe; While it takes 3 turns before it overtakes Stomp in damage, it ultimately deals more and will ignore an enemy's block value.
• Midnight Fight Express: Some kill animations include this. There's a single-leg head stomp, or a jump into a head stomp with both feet.

Web Animation

• DEATH BATTLE!: "Black Adam vs. Apocalypse'' ends with the latter pulverizing the former's head under his foot, with enough force to crack the screen.
• In the Bowser vs. Mecha Sonic episode of 1 Minute Melee, this is how the victor finishes off their opponent, flat out killing them in the process.^{Click/tap here to find out who won}Bowser is the victor.

Web Comics

• Purposely used and narrowly missed by Costa on Dogfight against an assassin she defeated. It should be noted that Costa is a horse and her hoof is as large as her defeated opponent's head, making this trope more of an Intimidation Demonstration than an attempt to end his life. He wisely decides to give up.
• In El Goonish Shive, after the giant slime is defeated, the remaining 'core' part gets stepped on by Ellen.
• Chapter 18 of Furry Fight Chronicles shows Nyarai's foot stomping on Adelgund's face to give a victory pose despite the fact that Nyarai knocked Adelgund unconscious and broke her jaw at the end of the previous chapter.
• Sleipnir: Equine Invader from Jupiter: Upon discovering that General Kincaid has killed her beloved horse Jericho, an enraged Jessica delivers a brutal stomp to his head while he struggles to break free from the ropes binding him. She's stopped from killing him, but she does knock out several teeth.
• In Sluggy Freelance, this is how the War of the Bug Squishers got its name.
• Both times someone has attempted this in Spacetrawler, the would-be stomper gets attacked by someone else before they can actually kill their intended victim.
• In Stand Still, Stay Silent, Sigrun makes sure the small troll from Chapter 9 is dead by stepping on its head

Western Animation

• Sponge Bob Squarepants episode "Sleepy Time", SpongeBob enters Plankton's dream of being a giant stomping all over Bikini Bottom. After SpongeBob brings him down to normal, one citizen raises his foot to squash Plankton, over cries of "No, no, not the face!"
• Transformers: Prime: Soundwave delivers one of these to Airachnid, after an utter Curb-Stomp Battle, when she tries to assume control of the Decepticons.
• In Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness Master Junjie, a fox, performs one on giant panda Po. Junjie's tiny foot barely dents Po's giant muzzle, yet Po is both pinned and visibly straining under Junjie's applied force.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998): In "Nano of the North", the girls are shrunk down to square off against microscopic nanobots. Near the end of the battle, the nanobots merge together to form a microbot. However, since it's big enough to be seen, the Professor defeats it by simply stepping on it.

Real Life

• Believe it or not, this was quite legal during the PRIDE Fighting Championship's heyday. Shogun Rua and Wanderlei Silva in particular had some really impressive (and brutal) ones.
• This is how the Secretary Bird in Africa hunts and kills snakes, using its impressively long legs to kick the snake into unconsciousness before going in for the kill.

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