It's Raining Men

When the red light goes green, you jump. Follow the man in front of you. Don't stop. Don't think.

"We are droppin' into hell, troopers! Time to grow a pair!"

— Eddie Buck, Halo 3: ODST

(clap) Hallelujah, it's raining men! Amen!

Simply put, people falling from the sky, or at least a great height, then landing safely, at least for them. This is accomplished in Real Life via parachutes or gliders, but in Speculative Fiction it can be done through Powered Armor, Jet Packs, special pods, or Applied Phlebotinum. Usually an airplane is involved, but balloons, cliffs, a Standard Sci-Fi Fleet, a tall building, or even a magic castle will do.

This trope is only very marginally related to the song by The Weather Girls from which it takes its name. (In the music video, several guys are shown parachuting in on the two singers... using umbrellas.)

A Super-Trope to Drop Pod, where the soldiers are dropped from orbit inside a disposable casing to survive atmospheric reentry.

Compare Fast-Roping, Drop Ship. Less-than-successful examples may result in a Parachute in a Tree. Contrast Death Flight.

Contrast Rocketless Reentry.

---

Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Aldnoah.Zero: Happens in epic fashion in the first season finale when Mustang Platoon does a HALO jump from the lower atmosphere to assault Castle Saazbaum.
• Armored Trooper VOTOMS: Seen at the end of the first arc when the Melkian army makes their move and deploys an entire airborne AT battalion to lay siege to the corrupt Woodo police department. Happens again in the second arc (complete with Stock Footage) when the Melkian army formally decides to back the Kummen government against the Veela rebels.
• Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within: One scene involves soldiers jumping from a plane, but instead of using parachutes, they deploy "High Density Gas", a slug of gel-like compressed gas that starts rapidly evaporating upon impact, forming a cushion into which the soldier falls as if into water. Within a couple of seconds, the entire slug dissipates into the atmosphere without a trace.
• Ghost in the Shell: The Major is fond of doing this. Being a badass Hollywood Cyborg, she usually doesn't even need a parachute.
• Gundam:
  • Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team does this in one episode.
  • Gundam SEED and Gundam SEED Destiny have orbital drop operations, carried out using ship-launched Drop Pods.
  • Gundam Wing also have orbital entry ships, especially prominent in The Movie.
• Hellsing: the Dawn:
  • Walter jumps out of a plane without a parachute while carrying Alucard and his coffin. He lands perfectly unharmed.
  • Seen again when Millenium begins its invasion of London. The troops, being veteran Nazi soldier vampires, don't need to bother with parachutes.
• Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple: At the conclusion of the Ragnarok arc, the Elder airdrops Kenichi into the final battle.
• Lyrical Nanoha:
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha: Nanoha enters the scene via high-altitude teleport when she goes to rescue Fate from the hurricane that she caused (complete with mid-air transformation). Nanoha and Fate would both repeat this in the movie adaptation of the second season after their Intelligent Devices received the Belkan Cartridge upgrade.
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS: The Forwards frequently perform this without the aid of parachutes. Air Mages have Flight capabilities. Ground Mages have to settle for hard drops, with their Barrier Jackets likely cushioning the impact.
• Mega Man X: Maverick Hunter X: In the unlockable OVA included, "The Day of Sigma," X is deployed in trying to stop a maverick outbreak by being airdropped at the area the attack is going to occur at, eventually when at close range he fires an immense charge shot at the maverick, knocking it down temporarily.
• The last segment of Momotaro's Divine Sea Warriors is Momotaro and his men successfully conducting an airborne paratroop invasion of a British-held island.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi: The opening of the Spring OVA had Negi's entire class skydiving from Ayaka's private plane to reach the beach resort. Why? Why not? Although in this case, it's less "raining men" and more "raining girls and a Welsh shota".
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: The titular robots (including the ones mass-produced by SEELE) do hard drops once in a while.
• Used by the Sky Clan in episode 8 of The Pilot's Love Song. Fortunately for the main characters, they ultimately repel the landing attempts, although not before suffering some extensive damage to their island.
• The Vision of Escaflowne: In the movie, the soldiers of the Black Dragon Clan are dropped to a city about to be occupied from airships in capsules that have the aerodynamic properties of a brick, and absolutely no padding inside. This doesn't prevent them from walking out in perfect formations.

Art

• René Magritte's painting "Golconda" depicts dozens of his trademark bowler-hatted men in a geometrical formation above rows of houses. They might be falling, but the general Mind Screw nature of Magritte's work means they might just as easily be rising, or moving sideways, or just hanging there.

Comic Books

• Captain America seems to do this a fair amount. Here's one instance, where he actually lets go of the parachute because "I better get down there faster!"
  • On another occasion he was dropped out of a plane, in a tank. He landed it on top of the Hulk.
  • In the Ultimate Marvel universe, he was a member of the 101st Airborne Division during WWII, but curiously enough, he didn't wear a parachute because they were for girls.
• In Y: The Last Man every man on Earth (except one) has been killed by a mysterious plague, but the protagonists encounter a Russian woman who claims that two surviving male astronauts from the International Space Station will be landing in Kansas. Later in Kansas Dr Mann, who's been skeptical about the whole idea, looks up to see the re-entry vessel falling on the end of its parachutes.
  Dr Mann: "I don't believe it. It's raining men."
  Agent 355: "Hallelujah!"
• Runaways: "It's Raining Xavins!" during the Skrull Invasion.
• The first issue of the original Metal Men series focused on the team dealing with The Rain of the Missile Men!
• In The Punisher MAX, when Frank and a Delta Force operative need to sneak into Siberia. They do so by HALO jumping out of a commercial plane. Later on they up the ante by HALO jumping out of a nuclear missile.
  Frank: If the thought of it seems crazy. You weren't crazy enough to begin with.
• The titular character of PVT Murphy's Law is a paratrooper.
• GIs in Rogue Trooper are intended to be dropped in capsules from space to quickly overrun enemy positions.
• Wolverine was a paratrooper during World War II, and all of Team X (Wolverine, Sabretooth, Maverick, and assorted others) were this for the CIA SAD/SOG during the Cold War.

Fan Works

• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): In Chapter 13, Rodan airlifts Monster X to Yonaguni... and then he drops them mid-flight into the ocean next to the island.
• And If That Don't Work? uses hard drops regularly, far more than canon. Such as the Ramiel battle. Unlike the canon this time the pilots regularly sing paratrooper songs. It's that kind of fic.
• In Origins, a Mass Effect/Star Wars/Borderlands/Halo Massive Multiplayer Crossover, this happens often due to advanced Power Armor that makes spacejumping from orbit both practical and safe. Samantha Shepard had to demonstrate mastery of it in order to earn her N7, though the suits then were far less sophisticated since Cortana didn't design them.
• Rise of the Minisukas: Shiki injures Matarael by jumping out of a hot air balloon, landing on its body and embedding her lance into its head.
• Star Wars vs Warhammer 40K: How the Clone Army launched their counter-invasion of Axum. Originally, the Imperials expected a frontal assault from the invading Republic forces. Instead, the Clone Army launched an aerial insertion of drop ships and jetpack troopers, and dropped on top of the unsuspecting Imperials. To say the Imperial Guard was unprepared for this would be understating the situation.

Film

• The films Drop Zone and Terminal Velocity (1994), were about skydiving along with an Extreme Sports Plot.
• A practice jump is the first scene of Act of Valor, and a HALO drop is later used.
• Battle of the Bulge (1965) depicts Operation Greif, with English-speaking Germans parachuting behind Allied lines to perform sabotage and disinformation missions.
• A Bridge Too Far most likely has the record for the most real paratroopers dropped for a fictional film, as the producers managed to get 11 Douglas C-47 Skytrain (or Dakota) WWII aircraft along with a number of more modern planes which were not shown on film, but all had NATO troops with the old fashioned parachutes jumping out of them for the film.
• Ernest Goes to Camp used this with turtles to attack the miners.
• In the Get Smart movie, 99 has to save Max as he falls without a parachute and a baddie jumps after them.
• The opening of the original GIJoe movie has Cobra attacking the Statue of Liberty with paratroopers, as well as hordes of Firebats and Trubble Bubbles to provide air support.
• Godzilla (2014): The trailers and film rather impressively show a group of soldiers HALO jumping into San Francisco in order to find the nuclear warhead that the MUTOs have taken in order to disarm it. The scene features them jumping through the clouds into the unknown of the destroyed city to the tune of György Ligeti's Requiem, better known as the Stargate music from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
• At the climax of Honeymoon in Vegas, Nicholas Cage parachutes onto the Vegas strip dressed as Elvis.
• Iron Man 3 has a rare example of people landing without parachutes, given Iron Man's flight abilities allow him to rearrange the falling people akin to "Barrel of Monkeys". (Fun fact: the filmed people are really falling, given they're professional skydivers.)
• There are several examples from the James Bond franchise.
  • A similar scene to the Point Break example happens in Moonraker, where Bond catches up with the guy with the parachute and steals it. In the same scene, recurring villain Jaws manages one better, surviving the fall without a parachute.
  • Another Bond film, The World Is Not Enough, has it rain snowmobile paragliders (aka parahawks).
  • Another Bond example in The Spy Who Loved Me, where James Bond skis off the edge of a cliff to avoid Soviet troops and pops a parachute with the British flag on it.
  • Tomorrow Never Dies features a HALO jump, officially the most badass aerial insertion method to be used in Real Life.
  • Thunderball features an airborne turned SCUBA assault, as the US Coast Guard drops divers into the water to attack Largo's men. Both sides are armed with spear guns.
• A scene in Point Break (1991), which the Mythbusters proved was impossible, save for one part. While it is possible to catch someone else while skydiving in terms of speed, the flight time was too long and you could never have a conversation while skydiving.
• Kingsman: The Secret Service has a training mission where the Kingsman candidates (which include a woman) jump off a plane when told that one might be missing a parachute.
• The Longest Day, about the D-Day invasion of Nazi-held Europe, prominently features paratroopers, including showing what happened when paratroopers were dropped right on the heavily defended town they were supposed to take, namely getting slaughtered by the Germans defenders.
• Operation: Dumbo Drop, a Very Loosely Based on a True Story movie that ends with an elephant being parachuted into the drop zone.
• Overlord (2018) opens with American paratroopers landing behind German lines in the build-up to D-Day.
• Red Dawn (1984) opens with Soviet paratroopers landing on the school oval. The teacher naturally assumes they're US military on exercise who've landed in the wrong area, and when he goes out to talk to them gets shot by the Dirty Communists in a Kick the Dog moment.
  • Likewise the 2012 Remake Red Dawn (2012) takes this trope very literally.
• Saving Private Ryan: Ryan is a paratrooper, though his drop wound up missing the target (the aforementioned D-Day invasion) and he drifted further into mainland. The film also features glider troops, as the paratroopers' heavy gear is transported by gliders.
• Played for laughs in Shoot 'Em Up.
• In Spies Like Us, Austin Milbarge and Emmett Fitz-Hume are forced to make a parachute jump without any training as part of a test of their abilities.
• Star Trek:
  • In a scene cut from Star Trek: Generations, Kirk is shown freefall space-diving.
  • Star Trek (2009): Kirk, Sulu, and a Red Shirt (who opens his chute too late so he can show off) skydiving from the stratosphere to sabotage the drill with which Nemo is attacking Vulcan.
• Transformers Film Series:
  • Once again, Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen ups the ante for all of us, with Optimus Prime being dropped into battle! Repeated near the end of the film with his corpse.
  • The Decepticon protoforms at the end of RotF don't so much fall, as crash into the desert. The commonly held belief is that Soundwave is slinging them.
  • In Dark of the Moon a squad of NEST soldiers do this in wing-suits, similar in design to a flying squirrel.
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit
  [Eddie is falling; Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny, both wearing parachutes, join him]
  Bugs Bunny: Eh, what's up, Doc? Jumping without a parachute? Kinda dangerous, ain't it?
  Mickey Mouse: Yeah. You could get killed. Heh, heh.
• The Wild Geese. The mercenaries parachute from a commercial Hercules cargo plane, which then continues on its route as normal, returning to land and pick them up later. At least, that's the plan...
• In the 1982 satire Wrong is Right, suicide bombers have been blowing themselves up as a political protest. Their leader announces that a demonstration will take place in Washington D.C. The city is locked down, only for a stolen police helicopter to turn up and three women to parachute out and blow themselves up in mid-air. The movie ends with the US invading the country the terrorists came from, with the Intrepid Reporter parachuting in with the General Ripper.
  Hale: But before you take the oil wells remember...we're taking a three-minute commercial break!
• Dad's Army (1971): Three Nazis are forced to bail out of their aircraft via parachute after it is shot down, resulting in the trio landing in Walmington-on-Sea and taking over the church hall.

Literature

• Cordwainer Smith's short story, "When the People Fell". The first step in the Chinese colonisation of Venus is a parachute landing by several million people.
• The Mobile Infantry in Starship Troopers drops from orbit and used parachutes and/or jets during part of the re-entry. They also refurbished an old paratrooper joke about Napoleon's tomb.
• The SF novel Footfall had a mass paratroop drop by invading aliens who looked like small two-trunked elephants.
• The Shadow of Saganami makes a big plot point out of a massed drop of power-armored Royal Manticoran Marine Corps heavy company on a suspected terrorist hideout. They've dropped from the shuttle, though, not from the orbit, and used tethered countergravs, so it was actually very close to Real Life paradrop.
• In the Dragonlance Chronicles, Draconians would drop off of the Flying Citadels and would glide down to land wherever they were supposed to attack.
• John Ringo's Ghost had a SEAL team dropped in to rescue the titular (anti)hero from a specially configured B-2 "Spirit".
• Halo: First Strike has Spartans landing from space ... WITHOUT vehicles (granted, it was an emergency jump that resulted in four killed on impact, six more too badly injured to fight effectively, and everyone else in various states of injury that would've left a regular soldier near-helpless). It's been established that the Spartans' MJOLNIR armor has Inertial Dampening and can "lock down" during an orbital fall, which comes in handy for the Master Chief in the later Halo games.
• John Scalzi's Old Man's War has the elite "Ghost Brigades" landing on an occupied planet through an orbital skydive. Scalzi described how their nanotech works to keep the heat from re-entry from reaching the cocooned trooper.
• The Yuuzhan Vong drop troops on Coruscant in this manner in the middle of the New Jedi Order series. A couple of books later, some commandoes, including Luke Skywalker, infiltrate Coruscant from orbit using special pods that appear to be re-entering debris from the battle.
• Several occasions in Sergey Lukyanenko's Line of Delirium series:
  • The protagonist bodyguard and his charge are dropped to a planet in an outdated emergency landing pod. Said pod is described as "useful to deliver some non-fragile goods or passengers suffering from excessive optimism". They land safely and actually manage to leave the planet with the still intact pod in the next book.
    • The big problem here is not the fact that they used an outdated pod, it's that they end up landing in a "sump" area and nearly freeze to death (as part of the terraforming process to turn the planet into a paradise, a number of these "sump" areas are used to help cool down the planet).
  • As the books are set in the Master of Orion universe, various operations from space are mentioned or described, including orbital drop raids on Alkari planets (the bird-like Alkari are superior in space combat, but their planetside settlements are vulnerable) and never landing on Bulrathi worlds (the bear-like Bulrathi are feared close combat fighters, but their ships aren't particularly remarkable in space combat).
  • On the Gral' world the protagonists witness 9 rings of shooting stars and one single shooting star in the middle until one remarks the "fireworks" are the Empire's regular orbital drop procedure — 9 groups of 111 men each and the commander of the unit dropped last. The actual rings are due to the part of the planet being "Evil Ground", where only some chosen humans and those bound to the chosen by friendship or insane hate may walk. The marines are dropped around "Evil Ground", their commander is the first of the chosen and lands spot-on to confront the protagonists.
• In the Warrior Cats series, one battle tactic that SkyClan developed and later ThunderClan used involves the attackers hiding in trees above the battlefield, and then dropping down all at once onto the enemy. This often works, seeing as it has quite the element of surprise, and of course it can't feel nice to have someone land on you from many times above your head height, but if the opponent is expecting it and dodges, this can result in nasty injuries for the falling cats.
• The Four Horsemen Universe: CASPers, the distinctive Mini-Mecha used by human mercenaries, are equipped with Jump Jet Packs that allow them to make paratrooper insertions without needing actual parachutes. Asbaran Solutions shows the White Company executing such an attack in the stereotypical "jumping from a plane one by one" manner.
• Guard of Honor: This goes badly wrong. A parachute drop done as part of a military parade at the air base (this being 1943 Florida) goes wrong when a mechanical difficulty with the rigging inside the plane delays the jump. So instead of jumping in a sandy field, the men jump too late. Seven of them land in a lake and drown.
• In the Jack Higgins novel In the Hour Before Midnight, a team of mercenaries rescuing a woman kidnapped by a Sicilian bandit parachute in because he'd be tipped off if they went in overland. It's also a tactic the bandits wouldn't be familiar with.
• In the Dr. Watson At War series by Robert Ryan, for plot-related reasons Watson has to parachute out of a Gotha bomber sent to bomb England. Watson already hates flying and the thought of using what at the time was a highly dangerous technique (he's told the fatality rate is one in three, through that's from aircraft that are already spinning out of control or in flames) doesn't make him feel any better. As the bomber crew are also at risk from Allied aircraft and anti-aircraft guns the lower they fly, Watson ends up playing chess with the pilot with the stakes being what height he'll bail out from—Watson wins, he bails out from a thousand feet where the Gotha will be a sitting duck. Watson loses, he bails out from three thousand feet where the Gotha can easily regain cloud cover but Watson will be falling for a long time.

Live-Action TV

• Band of Brothers follows a company in the 101st Airborne Infantry, and shows the airborne landings during operations Overlord and Market Garden while Varsity is mentioned.
• Arrow
  • In "The Undertaking", Walter Steele is being held prisoner in a guarded building, but there's only one guard on the roof. As there's no building close enough from which Oliver Queen can shoot a zipline attached to an arrow (his usual trick) he jumps from an aircraft using a steerable parachute.
  • In "The Promise", Slade Wilson and Sara Lance get on board the villain's ship by tandem-jumping off a nearby cliff using a steerable parachute they found in a crashed airplane.
    Sara: You've done this before, right?
    Slade: NO-ONE'S done this before!
• In the Top Chef Masters Season 5 Premier, the chefs skydive and then serve a meal to the Skyhawks (The Canadian Armed Forces demonstration paratroopers), who true to form Skydive with pinpoint accuracy to the judges' table with Canadian Flag parachutes.
• An over-the-top example is featured in the Red Dwarf episode "Stoke Me A Clipper", as a parody of the style seen in over-the-top examples like the James Bond movie Moonraker. Ace Rimmer goes one step further and rides a crocodile down through the air and then steals the parachute. What a guy!
• SAS: Rogue Heroes
  • In the first episode David Stirling and Jock Lewes attempt a parachute drop in the desert, despite the fact that no-one has been crazy enough to try it before. The pilot's view of their sanity is not helped by the fact that neither man has ever parachuted from an aircraft, the parachutes and plane have been stolen, plus the latter hasn't been outfitted for parachute drops so there's nothing to attach the parachute's static line to so they have to tie them around the seats. As a result Stirling's parachute snags and tears on the plane, causing a hard landing. The episode ends with him lying on the desert sand saying I Can't Feel My Legs!
  • Their first mission goes even worse when Stirling insists on dropping in the middle of a sandstorm causing the death of almost half his unit. After that he decides to drop the parachute idea altogether and have the Long Range Desert Group transport them to their targets.
• Star Trek: Discovery: When Jett Reno is asked to recount how the crew of Discovery rescued her, she describes it as Commander Burnham falling from the sky then Captain Pike. Then she summarizes it as "It was raining Starfleet Officers!"
• In the Star Wars series The Mandalorian, Cara Dune was a "Drop Trooper" for the Rebel Alliance which is basically a paratrooper that drops from space. They're considered commando-grade troopers in skill, and Cara is no exception.

Music

• As stated in the description, the music video for "It's Raining Men" by The Weather Girls has the singers and a bunch of men parachuting in via umbrella.
• Paratrooper Squaddie songs, such as Blood on the Risers and Abgeschmiert aus 100 Metern.

Pinball

• AC/DC: Hitting the spinner in the left orbit while "War Machine" is playing will show a brief video of paratroopers jumping out of an airplane before awarding you a bonus.
• In Zen Studios' The Avengers Digital Pinball Table, starting "Quinjet Multiball" will cause the Quinjet to fly over the playfield and drop pinballs into the action.
• At various times in Gottlieb's Gladiators, the player must drop off a swaying "crane" with proper timing to land in the Abyss saucer below.
• The main toy in Rescue 911 is a helicopter that flies over the playfield and can be used to airdrop the pinball on strategic targets.
• In Ruiner Pinball, hitting certain targets will cause paratroopers to fall from the sky onto the playfield.

Tabletop Games

• Various races in Warhammer 40,000 have troops equipped with jump packs dropped off by aircraft to descend on a battlefield, as well as drop pods — armored pods fired straight at a planet from orbit — used for extremely rapid troop deployment. There's even a special term for it: "Deep Strike".
  • The Space Marines in particular love using this, likely to enforce their imagery of elite troops, as rapid and precise deployment is a common characteristic of elite troops in Real Life. Another reason is that it enforces their imagery of the "Emperor's Angels descending in a ball of righteous fury". The Codex Astartes calls this maneuver Stehl Rehn.
    • How endemic is this? One of the Soul Drinkers novels gave us a drop assault Zombie Apocalypse.
    • Blood Angels like fast tanks so much that they airdrop their Land Raiders since it's the only way they can keep up with the faster tanks.
    • Then the Primaris Marines brings the Inceptors who jump out of transport ships from low orbit which made them harder to detect when entering alongside falling debris.
  • Imperial Guard regiments use grav-chutes (essentially less powerful jump packs that work like parachutes) whenever they deploy troops or light vehicles from the air. Specialist regiments like the Harakoni Warhawks and Elysian Drop Troops employ this trope in a very literal sense by being able to drop entire formations consisting of thousands of men from the skies.
  • Although all troops who enter battle via It's Raining Men are Deep Strikers, not all Deep Strikers rain down into the battlefield—some of them teleport or burrow instead.
  • One of the Space Ork special characters actually had his feet replaced with Power Klaws so that he could be more effective when dropped straight into close combat.
  • Eldar Swooping Hawks and Dark Eldar Scourges do this by use of actual wings (mechanical in the former, bio-engineered in the latter).
    • Eldar Autarchs, many of whom having mastered the Swooping Hawk Aspect, use the same mechanical wings to enter battle, even using them to leave battle for a short while and return after dropping a number of grenades.
  • Tau Battlesuits equipped with jet packs can Deep Strike, which in the fluff is usually depicted as them jumping into battle from an Orca or Manta Missile Destroyer. The king of this trope in the Tau arsenal is the Retaliation Cadre, a special formation of Battlesuits deployed from a low-flying Manta to deliver a swift and brutal alpha strike.
• Similarly, BattleTech occasionally makes use of paradropped-from-orbit Humongous Mecha. The preferred method is still to let the DropShip touch down properly or at least get down far enough to let jump-capable 'Mechs make a low altitude drop onto the battlefield, but special reentry cocoons that break away at the proper altitude and free them to ride down the rest of the way using jump jets or packs make orbital drops feasible, if risky.
• The Airborne Elites in the tabletop war game Hero Scape are paratroopers who have a habit of dropping out of nowhere and throwing grenades all over the place. Flavor text on the Heroscape website states that they are dropped in by Valkyries.
• Paranoia
  • Missions to Outside occasionally involve replacement clones being delivered by missile. There isn't a 5% chance that the door will be stuck, causing the replacement clone to suffocate before they can get out, and there certainly isn't a 10% chance that the missile will hit one of the other Troubleshooters.
  • In the adventure Vapors Don't Shoot Back the Troubleshooters got to make a parachute jump. Pity they weren't given adequate instructions on how to actually use their parachutes, which results in an approximately 2/3 chance of being killed.
• Classic Traveller. The Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society #19 article "Parachutes" has complete rules for using parachutes in the game, including the results of failure.

Video Games

• 7554: Glorious Memories Revived has the Co My Village stage where you defend your base from an onslaught of French paratroopers. Parachuting enemies are completely defenseless during the drop, and you can snipe them before they hit the ground (with a handy visual indicator where slain enemies will instantly drop all the way down).
• Brothers in Arms has you commanding an entire squad of paratroopers dropping from both C-47s and Gliders (for Hell's Highway). All three games take place in Normandy and Holland, respectively.
• In the classic video game Sabotage (a.k.a. Paratrooper or Ack-Ack Attack!, among other titles), this is what the bad guys do in wave after wave. This is a subversion in a sense, as your job (playing as the anti-aircraft gun turret on the ground) is to prevent the men from landing safely.
• MICHAEL! Wilson does this in Metal Wolf Chaos directly FROM SPACE and does a hard landing into a tank.
  • It seems to be his preferred method of entrance for most missions, actually.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Not men, but Goombas in Super Mario World can parachute down, sometimes over half a dozen coming down at once.
  • In Super Mario Bros. 3, some flying Paragoombas would rain swarms of Minigoombas down on the plumber's head.
  • Another recurring enemy are Lakitus, who throw Spinies down at Mario while Flying on a Cloud.
  • In Mario Strikers Charged, Team Captains enter the arena via skydiving, and landing in a badass pose. Well, except for Wario...
• One of the special powers gained from the Airfield in Command & Conquer: Red Alert and sequels is "Paratroopers", which drops a bunch of infantrymen at the designated spot. Not particularly useful most of the time, but it allows for some interesting possibilities in the right tactical environments, not to mention the fact that you're getting around a dozen soldiers for free every couple of minutes. When you can garrison these guys inside a structure and expect them to take down even an Apocalypse Tank in a straight fight as a result, that becomes extremely useful on urbanized maps.
  • This was intensely more useful for the Allies in Red Alert 2, as the Allied GI was significantly better than their counterparts, the Soviet Conscripts, and a half dozen of them could put up a significant fight, especially when deployed in defensive positions. The USA subfaction also had an additional paratrooper ability, Airborne, gained by building an Airforce Command (rather than having to capture an Airfield), which gave the player eight GIs (instead of the Airfield's six). Since the perks were cumulative, a USA player holding both an Airforce Command and an Airfield could therefore conceivably drop fourteen GIs (pretty formidable), anywhere on the map, for free, every few minutes. This makes it possible to build up a formidable force of basic infantry without using your Barracks, which could then be devoted to producing other, more specialized infantry.
  • In Tiberian Sun, there's also the elite Orbital Drop Soldiers—veteran soldiers who arrive in drop-pods equipped with machine guns, clearing the drop-zone the hard way. More like hailing men, really. A cutscene shows them being deployed from the Philadelphia Space Station.
  • Tiberium Wars allows for the rapid orbital deployment of Zone Troopers, which gets you three squads of Troopers anywhere on the map for only a few thousand credits, actually saving you a bit of cash and putting a dozen railguns into a position where they can inflict a lot of agony.
  • Generals:
    • The game gives this ability to the USA faction, allowing them to deploy up to 24 Rangers via paradrop. The transport helicopter lets them drop infantry into garrisoned buildings via Fast-Roping to clear them out.
    • In the Zero Hour Expansion Pack, this is also available to the Chinese Infantry General. The Chinese Tank General does it with tanks.
    • The GLA does have a make-infantry-appear ability, but it doesn't involve planes.
  • Red Alert 3:
    • The Allies have the Century Bomber, which can load a group of infantry and then drop them at a selected location; the Soviets have the Bullfrog, which launches infantry (or bears) via a machine called the "man-cannon". While the latter can be used to circumvent defenses, it should not be used anywhere remotely near Anti-Air.
    • The Allied campaign also features the paradrop power on some maps, but it's removed in skirmish games.
    • The Soviets use Badger Bombers to deliver toxic gas, one-hit-kill bombs, or to drop troops in cutscenes. Most notably in the first Soviet campaign, which features an absolutely massive infantry paradrop over the Imperial palace grounds... of which the only survivors are a conscript and a war bear.
• Ace Combat series:
  • Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War has a mission in which you protect dropping paratroopers and their transports from being shot by enemy gun placements. The whole game is a re-envisioning of World War II in the Ace Combat world, so the comparison is apt.
  • Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War has a mission where the enemy starts paradropping tanks to try to occupy an allied mass driver, though they're vulnerable while in the air and can't fight back until they land. The last mission of the game also has friendly paratroopers taking objectives on the ground. It also put a Shout-Out to the US 101st Airborne (before a typo made it the 122nd).
• In Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, units with the Drop Pods special ability can do airdrops within a certain radius of any base or airbase. Or "Orbital Insertions" anywhere on Planet, once you have a specific technology or have built the Space Elevator. A good strategy against the AI (which inevitably neglects its air defenses) is to run an air-based blitzkrieg, using well-armed 'copter units to clear bases of defenders and then drop high-armor paratroops in to capture and defend your conquest. You do need to be either geographically close to the faction you're fighting for this to work, or at least capture a base or two to serve as a beachhead (or, after you research Nanometallurgy, use carriers); not only is there a limited range for Drop Pods, the 'copters need to refuel every turn or else suffer damage.
• Similarly, in most incarnations of Civilization, there is at least one Paratrooper unit that can make airdrops; since Civilization III, these play animations of the unit paradropping when you use that functionality. Civilization V has the XCOM Squad unit, which is an upgrade of the Paratrooper unit. Their animation has them being deployed by a Skyranger.
• In World in Conflict, it rains men when you order paratroopers through the tactical aid menu. Other infantry are delivered by helicopters, but unlike in Real Life, it also rains heavy tanks and artillery—they are always delivered by paradrop. Also, there is a prop in the map editor (used on some official urban maps) that allows you to literally rain men on some area, preferably, off map, since they don't affect the gameplay at all.
  • The trailers for the game put a special emphasis on this trope, with one showing U.S. forces getting into position for battle in a nighttime suburb as Soviet paratroopers drop down in front of them. Another shows said Soviet paratroopers jumping out of a plane revealing massive anti-aircraft fire, with raining planes to go along with those raining men.
    • The trailer for Soviet Assault has the Soviets pull this with a main battle tank, dropping it into a car dealership to back up some outnumbered soldiers. Complete with its red parachute landing on the skylight, tinting everything red, and Polyushka Polye kicking back in.
  • Also, let's not forget that in the first mission featuring the invasion of Seattle, it's raining men everywhere in the background. And the intro for the next mission shows a little girl getting off her bike watching the Soviets drop down from the sky while a panicked man who calls into a local radio show can be heard screaming in the background "They're here! They're coming from the skies man! ... Look up in the skies man we're being invaded!" Seriously, how could you not notice that?
• EndWar averts this trope in terms of the standard methods of deployment. Riflemen can be deployed behind enemy lines using an ability called Deep Strike, which has those riflemen rappelling out of a helicopter. Other troops and vehicles can also be deployed by helicopter outside of their standard landing zones, averting the unrealism of airdropping them (though having multiple vehicles that don't look as if they would fit in that one helicopter drive out of it...).
• Halo:
  • The ODSTs (Orbital Drop Shock Troopers) use SOEIVs (Single-Occupant Exoatmospheric Insertion Vehicles; also called HEVs or Human Entry Vehicles), despite the fact that the drag chutes and braking rockets sometimes malfunction... or the pod hits the water and they drown... or they smash into cliff faces... This makes them the second most hardcore soldiers on the human side, next to the Spartans. Don't mention that last part to their face.
    • The opening cutscene of Halo 3: ODST gives the player a first-person view of an orbital drop.
    • The ODSTs of the 105th Shock Troops Division are even known as "Helljumpers", due to the fact that as the SOEIV's protective ceramic skin burns away during atmospheric re-entry, the interior of the pod becomes really hot.
  • The Master Chief is notorious for pulling this kind of stunt (it helps that his armor has Inertial Dampening and can "lock down" during a fall), something Sergeant Johnson lampshades at the beginning of Halo 3:
    Johnson: Crazy fool. Why do you always jump? One of these days you're gonna land on somethin' as stubborn as you are, and I don't do bits and pieces.
  • The Covenant are also fond of this tactic, both the orbital and suborbital varieties:
    • Elites have their own version of an HEV pod, as first seen in Halo 2. Additionally, the Covenant have multi-occupant drop pods, the biggest of which can contain entire squads.
    • Even Covenant dropships frequently rain down their troops from above when they don't have a proper space to land on.
  • The opening scene to Halo 5: Guardians shows Fireteam Osiris deploying to a planet from a low orbit using their MJOLNIR armor's thrusters to slow down their fall just before making contact with the ground. All in the middle of a pitched Mêlée à Trois between the UNSC, the Covenant Remnant, and the Prometheans.
• Section 8 is an FPS which utilizes this constantly — your character will 'burn in' instead of respawning, which means they get shot out fast enough to hit the ground in ten seconds from a dropship at 15000 feet, allowing you to drop anywhere on the game map. Naturally, there is the possibility of enemy interference while burning in (from AA guns). There are also no parachutes, though you may brake and slow your descent anyway. If you don't, you won't have control over your Player Character, so they'll just go straight downward from the chosen burn-in point until they hit the ground, and take an extra second to ready themselves from hitting the ground at 500 feet a second by hitting the ground on impact with both hands and getting up. They wear particularly cool Powered Armor, if you were wondering how one could survive that (Ok, Variable Terminal Velocity still sounds like it's in effect).
  • Since multiplayer involves Section 8 fighting the virtually identical Arc soldiers, their power armor can do all the same stuff.
• Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri uses the powered armour with jump-jets variety.
• Being a Warhammer 40,000 RTS, Dawn of War allows various factions to use Deep Strikes too.
  • Multiple, SIHMULTANEOUS, devastating defensive deep strikes.
    • How Thaddeus makes his entrance.
• One level of No One Lives Forever takes place during a free fall, as you must shoot enemy paratroopers while falling to catch another one and steal his parachute, in an homage to the scene from Moonraker above. Once you do so, what follows is one of the most hilarious moments in the game:
  Helpless Mook: (Falling towards a barn) "Please be full of hay! Please be full of hay! Please be full of..." (CRASH!)
• In Battlefield 2142, one of the fastest ways to get from point A to B safely on a Titan map is in a drop-pod launched from the Titan. You (used to) get the added bonus of taking down any aircraft, troops, or light vehicles that you meet on the way down. If you're in a squad, and the squad leader deploys a spawn beacon, you can be pod-dropped (from really high up rather than just titan height) at the beacon's location.
• In Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, you get to ride a Basilisk war droid down to the surface, then continue your spree of badassery on the ground. This was set up in the original, where Canderous Ordo could relate a tale of his first raid, and you could gush "I want one of those droids!" You don't play the same character in the sequel, but you still get to enjoy it vicariously.
• Hearts of Iron, naturally. The AI doesn't handle it very well, though.
• The initial wave of the human invasion of Stroggos in Quake II was to basically fire an entire army down onto the surface in individual drop pods. It (mostly) failed.
  • It seems the main causes of death in the Quake games are drop pod issues, Marine stupidity, and enemy fire. In that order.
  • In Quake IV, the Marines seemed to have wised up and use Drop Ships instead, which still get blasted apart like flies. Then, towards the Very Definitely Final Dungeon, they break out the pods again. The results aren't much better than they were in the first game, either.
• Medal of Honor:
  • Medal of Honor: Vanguard focuses on the American Paratroopers from the 82nd and 17th Division and allows the player to control the parachute during the drop, allowing the player to decide what position to start in. Medal of Honor: Airborne has largely the same focus, and also allows for the player to choose where they land.
  • One of the expansions for Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, Spearhead, has the first few levels centered around American and British Paratroopers during the initial hours of the D-Day invasion.
  • This is in fact what the series protagonist Jimmy Patterson was recruited from before the start of the first game, as he was the pilot of C-47 (the plane the American paratroopers typically jumped out of).
• In Army Men, a pickup in the PC games let you radio for reinforcements via paratroopers.
• Mega Man X: X does this in the in-game OVA of the Continuity Reboot Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X. He jumps off a chopper thousands of feet up above the sky. Coupled with Moment of Awesome because he shoots at a mechaniloid (a non-sentient robot, basically mooks in gameplay) while in mid-air, and it hits.
• Metal Gear:
  • Solid Snake starts the original Metal Gear by parachuting into enemy territory in the NES version. The MSX2 version is closer to an underwater insertion. The canonical sequel Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake does have Solid Snake doing a HAHO jump into Zanzibar Land before climbing up a cliff, although this was only revealed in the backstory/mission log supplied in the manual.
  • In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Naked Snake drops into Russia twice — once via HALO jump, then again via a modified form of the D-21 drone.
  • In Metal Gear: Ghost Babel, Solid Snake does a HALO jump as well.
• Syphon Filter 2 opened with an FMV cutscene showing the hero on a transport plane. The plane is shot down, and the hero makes a freefall jump from the exploding wreckage. The player gains control of the hero while the parachute is still in the air, which the first time it happens comes as something of a shock. Shortly after, it starts raining mooks.
• In Corncob 3D, a 1992 Flight Simulator, parachutes were implemented in a fairly realistic (for the times) manner. Open them too early and you'll spend hours drifting to goodness only knows where. Wait too long to open them and you start blacking out due to terminal velocity. While none of the missions force you to paradrop, one scenario did require you to bail out of your plane before it crashed into the alien power generator and then fight your way back across the battlefield.
• In the Earthsiege/Starsiege games, the Cybrids were big fans of HERC pods, drop pods containing one mecha each. Of course, considering the fact that you can only play as a Cybrid in Starsiege, they are mostly just used in the first two games as a way to put enemies on the map from out of nowhere.
• In MDK, every level started with an orbital drop in which you dodge incoming AA fire on the way to the mine crawler you were looking to wreck.
• All the WWII methods of airborne insertion are used in Company of Heroes. US Paratroopers are some of the best infantry in the game, with an optional antitank weapon and a default ability to build field defenses. They can reinforce lost squad members anywhere, and given the extreme flexibility awarded to infantry in this game, are basically all you need on the campaign missions where they are used. Some of the Support Powers offered in the Airborne Company include paying a premium to drop a paratroop squad anywhere, dropping an anti-tank gun (and its crew), and dropping a nice heavy supply load containing heavy weapons.
  • The British with Royal Commandos Support absolutely one up their American brothers-in-arms. They think parachutes are stupid, so they do it with friggin' kamekazeing gliders instead, and holy hell is it a sight. Also, unlike the Americans, they can airdrop light tanks called Tetrarchs — they're no match for the heavy German juggernauts, but they're fast, punchy, and can wreak havoc in territory that your opponent thought was absolutely safe and totally throw his game off.
• America's Army lets you train your character to take part in para missions.
• The WWII MMOFPS WWII Online now features paratroopers. Players can coordinate and fly their own para missions.
• It certainly looks like this when you deploy units in Makai Kingdom. Given the setting, this would not be a surprise.
• In Planetside you could enter into battle via orbital drop. In the early days, the shuttle that took you up to orbit only left every fifteen minutes.
  • Let's not forget the Galaxy transport that can drop a dozen men from midair rapidly and safely. Well, depending on the landing zone, anyway. This effect can be multiplied many times depending on how many pilots and troopers you have.
• In the Advance Wars series, Sensei's CO powers paradrop 9HP footsoldiers onto every city he owns. Given that Infantry and Mechs are the game's Goddamned Bats, this can be very useful — and very annoying for your opponent.
• In Power Dolls it rains girls ... in armored power loaders. See in the trailer. Also, delivery via missile launched from a submarine. At least in the first game not only player manually drops units from their planes, but sometimes one lands badly and get its chassis crippled.
• In Final Fantasy XIII, both the heroes and villains use devices called Manadrives which manipulate gravity to perform epic HALO drops, stopping themselves literally inches from the ground (which is highly reminiscent of the HDG in The Spirits Within).
  • Final Fantasy VIII had this occur several times during the Battle of the Gardens. Galbadia Garden first uses launchers to send troops on motorcycles to land in Balamb Garden and then sends troops over using flying mechanical battle suits.
• Final Fantasy VII had the playable characters do this. When they return to Midgar at the end of the 2nd disc, the party parachutes down to the city from the Highwind.
• In [PROTOTYPE], Alex Mercer enjoys doing this from the tops of skyscrapers.
• You don't actually get to paradrop in Modern Warfare 2, but the "Wolverines!" mission features Soviet paratroopers blanketing the skies in a direct homage to Red Dawn (1984). Every once in while you catch glimpses of a parachute and its associated corpse draped over a power line, thus demonstrating the downside of this trope when it's applied in a suburban environment...
  • The very first Call of Duty had you play as a pathfinder in the 101st Airborne for the American section of the campaign, with the British section of the campaign having you play as a member of the 6th Airborne Division instead. The United Offensive expansion also has you as a (different) paratrooper in the 101st Airborne for the American section of the campaign.
  • In Call of Duty: Black Ops II, the final mission begins with JSOC troops (with or without support from the Chinese) diving with jetwings into Menendez's broadcasting facility, where he's controlling the drones he hijacked from the U.S. Military on the U.S.S. Barack Obama.
• Using some sort of airborne vehicles to drop units is a staple of both TBS and RTS genres. This can be done both for actual ground conquest and for suicide missions.
  • Advanced Strategic Command has paratroopers and the Weasel — a weak paradroppable buggy carrying one infantry unit, which allows transport planes to deliver anything from mines to mortars to anti-air missiles to the battlefield.
• Starcraft II, mercenary units (the ground ones at least) are deployed this way, but only right at the base of the Merc Compound. A possible upgrade allows you to do this for any ground unit at any location. You can also do this with Supply Depot^s.
  • The Zerg have their own version, a fleshy torpedo that hits the ground releasing a few Zerglings and creating a Creep tumor.
• Sonic the Hedgehog seems to love doing this a lot after blowing up whatever space station Eggman is situated on, but usually, he'll be caught by Tails in the Tornado airplane.
  • In Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic breaks out of a plane, tears off part of the wing, and falls out of the sky into a very San Francisco-ish city...and then slides down the hills using that wing piece.
  • He had a less successful fall in Sonic Unleashed after being turned into a Werehog...and dropping out of space to plummet to Earth.
  • Shadow does the exact same thing in Sonic Adventure 2, except people believed that it had killed him.
  • Sonic does it (again) in Sonic and the Black Knight when he falls from the skies of Camelot after being summoned there by Merlina.
  • And even before that, Shadow does it again on the opening level of Shadow the Hedgehog, when you fall from the sky, through a skyscraper, and then onto the streets.
• Occurs in the Dam level in Goldeneye Wii, which swaps out the original's bungee cord for a parachute. Bond jumps off the dam without the parachute, and uses the water flowing out of the dam to break his fall instead.
• Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance]'s one and only trailer features a scene like this, giving birth to the quickly-growing-memetic term, "It's raining Soras!"
  • In the game itself, the visual is used to illustrate about how many times, and in how many ways, Sora's visited Traverse Town.
• In Just Cause 2 enemy reinforcements may parachute in. Also, Rico's parachute allows him to rain One-Man Army.
• Adam Jensen of Deus Ex: Human Revolution can safely fall from great heights using the Icarus Landing System. Later, many heavily armed soldiers drop in to the Alice garden pod area.
• Some levels of Return to Castle Wolfenstein have Paratrooper squads drop in.
• Airborne drops with wanzers happen from time to time in the Front Mission series. Notably, several missions in Front Mission 5 allow the choice of paradrop insertion or surface assault, and the Cavalry arrive for the last battle via HALO.
• Similarly, Armored Core units in V and Verdict Day is usually dropped in via specialized armored helicopter dropships called Storks. In fact, Stork pilots are considered mercenaries of their own alongside more traditional AC pilot mercs, and are usually called Storkers. Said large dropships are also heavily armed and are often a match against ACs, especially when employed as fire support role.
• The Demoman and Soldier of Team Fortress 2 can perform something that resembles this using sticky bombs and rockets, respectively. It can be a useful tactic for getting around a strong enemy defense, or to get very close to an enemy for a melee attack while minimizing the foe's chance of landing an attack of their own.
• Mass Effect:
  • In Mass Effect, Shepard and company typically deploy by dropping their Awesome Personnel Carrier, the Mako, straight out of the Normandy's underbelly several hundred feet above the ground, trusting in its mass effect fields to land it safely.
  • By Mass Effect 3, the Mako has been abandoned in favour of shuttles and now it's the enemies who do air-drop deployments; entire missions can resemble a meteor bombardment, except that Cannibals come out of the craters, while Cerberus troops even have jet boots to help them land safely.
• Happens offscreen in Chapter 11 of Valkyria Chronicles 4, when Squad E paradrops from a hot air balloon in a thick fog to attack an Imperial Sea Fortress and clear the way for the Centurion to cross a strategic waterway. In Chapter 10 this is reversed, with Imperial troops and para-bombs being dropped down to the Centurion stuck in ice crevice. Interestingly enough, this trope is noted in-game to be done from lighter-than-air crafts like balloons and airships because heavier-than-air flight doesn't exist apart from Isara's prototype in the first game.
• Empire Earth:
  • In the first game's expansion, a Radio Man can summon 8 marines up to three times this way but has no way to regenerate energy. A campaign mission also allows you to use paratrooper drops.
  • The second game has a paratrooper plane that drops infantry at the targeted location. Western powers can also relocate the occupants of a single fortress via parachute (without needing a plane) to any location they can see.
• Ink Battlers in Splatoon 3 arrive at the battleground in flying spawn pods, into which they tuck themselves before they are shot onto the battlefield. While there is a maximum distance at which they can be shot into battle, where exactly they spawn in is indeterminate until they arrive. There is a brief invulnerability period upon landing as well; both measures are meant to mitigate or outright prevent spawn camping.

Webcomics

• A Miracle of Science: "Is this a common thing for Martians, re-entering without a spacecraft?" "Actually, it's never been done before."
• The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: The Alt Text in this strip.
  • Doc also once reenters the earth's atmosphere while surfing on the back of a rocket-propelled robot Dracula
• A Beginner's Guide to the End of the Universe has a bunch of people descend while using the protagonist itself, who is wearing gravity-defying armor, as a parachute. In here (spoilerriffic link warning).
• Erfworld had a bit of fun with this one, as it was the title of part two of Book 2, and it was a central plot point.
• The first chapter of Hero Oh Hero is called "The Man Who Fell From The Sky". Burk is introduced when he does just that. Then he improvises a parachute out of his cape.
  Burk: Falling from the sky thing-- fixed.

Web Original

• Skippy's List has examples:
  35. Not allowed to sing "High Speed Dirt" by Megadeth during airborne operations. ("See the earth below/Soon to make a crater/Blue sky, black death, I’m off to meet my maker")
• Sarge from Red vs. Blue was implied to have been an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper before washing out. It's part of the reason he's got a fear of heights.
• Happens on a smaller scale in Shock Troopers, when one of the protagonists gets boosted over a small hill to rain some Death from Above onto an enemy soldier... with a defibrillator.
• Huntsmen and Huntresses in RWBY are expected to be able to do this, although how they do it (Recoil Boost, Blade Brake, Stepping Stones in the Sky) is left up to them. The "Landing Strategy" is such a basic skill that Professor Ozpin feels comfortable catapulting his students off a cliff on their second day of Huntsman school.

Western Animation

• In a rare example of a bad guy pulling this on a hero, in Curious George: Follow That Monkey, security jerk Danna Wolf leaps out of an airplane to chase George and the Man in the Yellow Hat. Seeing that they had a parachute and he did not, he caught up with them and saved himself by hanging on the Man's boots.
• It's raining hamsters and mice: The Danger Mouse episode "Cat-astrophe" has DM and Penfold parachuting from the Mk. III and into a castle where Colonel K is being held prisoner by a robotic cat.
• An early episode of Exo Squad had members of Able Company doing an orbital insertion on occupied Earth in pyramid-shaped entry capsules.
• Played with in the Futurama episode "Tip of the Zoidberg" during a flashback sequence where a young Zoidberg and (relatively) young Farnsworth scream in terror as they are tossed out of a plane until their parachutes open, where they immediately switch to a casual conversation. Their landing, along with the rest of their peers, isn't quite so casual.
  Zoidberg: We'll be safe as long as we stay out of the methane swamps! [lands in swamp, sniffs] What smells like methane?
• In the Gravity Falls finale a (sort of) elite rescue squad stages an airborne assault on the Fearamid to rescue Ford and the townspeople while the Shacktron distracts Bill Cipher. For bonus points, they're using parachutes made out of Mable's sweaters.
• Jonny Quest episode "The Fraudulent Volcano". Dr. Quest and Race Bannon must bail out and parachute down when the plane they're in is shot down by an invisible beam.
• Justice League uses this in the Grand Finale "Starcrossed" with the Thanagar army descending from the sky. Considering they are all Winged Humanoids, it produces a surprisingly biblical image.
  • And inverted in JLU with Cadmus sending missiles at the watchtower filled with clone Tyke Bombs.
• The Perils of Penelope Pitstop. In "Jungle Jeopardy" Penelope used her scarf as a parachute after jumping from a plane.
• Planes: Fire & Rescue features ground-based vehicle characters jumping out of a cargo plane character as smoke jumpers.
  "We're not (jumping out of perfectly good airplanes). We're jumping out of you!"
• One episode of The Ren & Stimpy Show had them joining the army to become full-fledged tank paratroopers. (That is, they were put into tanks that had parachutes strapped to them that were then dropped from planes. Seeing as how the tanks were on fire and falling like stones in spite of the parachutes, one can only assume they were on a suicide mission.)
• Parodied in the South Park episode "Grey Dawn" with senior citizens attacking the town. Their parachutes even have the AARP logo boldly printed on them.
• Supa Strikas In "Cool Joe Loses His Groove" Iron Tank decide to arrive at the ground by parachuting into it for some reason.
• Total Drama:
  • In the opening credits for Season 3 (Total Drama World Tour), the contestants form a human pyramid on the plane's fuselage, only to fall when the pilot (Chef Hatchet) shakes them off. The contestants have parachutes, so they land safely ... except for Ezekiel.
  • Also in Season 3, one of the plane's doors blows out (with an assist from Chef) in the Japan episode, and the contestants are blown out. They plummet to earth without parachutes, singing all the way down, but land safely in a giant bowl of rice.
  • In Season 5.1 (Total Drama All-Stars), the contestants arrive on the island via jumping or being thrown out of the plane. They have no parachutes but land safely in water.
  • In Season 5.2 (Total Drama Pahkitew Island), the contestant must jump out of the plane to get to the island. All have parachute packs, but only half of those contain actual parachutes, which is the season's team selection method. With or without parachutes, the contestants land safely in water.
• 1942 cartoon "Tulips Shall Grow" has the Screwballs, obvious Nazi analogues, dropping tanks into Holland with parachutes.
• X-Men: Evolution has one episode where Captain America and Wolverine perform this in World War II. Since their mission requires quickness, they do it without parachutes. Justified in that both have a healing factor and the plane nearly lands to accomplish this.

Real Life

• World War II was the absolute hey-day of this tactic:
  • The first time paratroopers were used was during the German invasion of Denmark on April 9, 1940, where they captured the Storstrømsbroen bridge. Whilst certainly critical to the invasion, more conventional methods may have worked just as well since the fortress guarding the northern end of the bridge was manned by only three Danish soldiers.
  • Operation Market Garden (September 17, 1944-September 25, 1944) was an Allied military operation in World War II in the Netherlands and Germany. It was the largest airborne operation in history, delivering over 34,600 men of the American 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions, the British 1st Airborne Division, and the Polish Brigade. 14,589 troops were landed by glider and 20,011 by parachute. Gliders also brought in 1,736 vehicles and 263 artillery pieces. 3,342 tons of ammunition and other supplies were brought in by glider and parachute drop.
    • And it was a failure. The troops were scattered, and the 1st Airborne were dropped far away from their target (the critical bridge over the Rhine at Arnhem, the whole reason for the operation). There were more German troops nearby than expected, namely two Waffen-SS Panzer Divisions resting up (intelligence from local resistance forces on German troop concentrations was received by the Allies, but was ignored); the Allied intelligence thought the only troops at the area would be just secondary quality, such as Volksgrenadiers. The 1st Airborne managed to take the bridge anyway, but they were eventually overwhelmed and forced to surrender before the Allied relief forces could arrive.^note The plan called for the 1st Airborne to hold the Arnhem bridge for 4 days until the tanks of XXX Corps arrived, which was by itself a tall order for lightly-equipped paratroopers. They held it for ten days against far stronger opposition than expected. Unfortunately, they would've needed to at least eleven days for the operation to succeed. Despite the taking of several other bridges leading to Arnhem by the rest of the Allied airborne units, the primary objective of the operation, capturing a bridge over the Rhine in order to bring an end to the war in Europe in 1944, was not achieved. Estimated Allied losses are between 15,000 and 17,000 people.
    • The operation was not a complete failure, though. It led to final liberation of Belgium and Luxemburg, and capture of important ports at Rhine estuary, greatly aiding the Allied logistics. The Allied forces had over-stretched their supply lines since Normandy; after Market Garden, they were able to ship supplies directly from UK to Belgian ports.
  • One of the largest air drops in history was on the eve of D-Day, where Allied airborne units landed to take strategic locations in preparation for the amphibious landing. Due to mistakes in recon, some paratroopers ended up being dropped in waterlogged fields with some of them ending up drowning in water that was maybe 1-2 feet deep, due to their heavy equipment. This drop is covered in various media, such as the The Longest Day, Band of Brothers, Brothers in Arms, and Medal of Honor: Airborne.
  • Operation Varsity, an airborne drop intended to aid the crossing of the Rhine towards the end of WWII, is the largest single-day drop at 16,000 men.
  • German Fallschirmjäger were used in the invasions of Norway, France, Crete and Greece, and in Operation Stösser during the Battle of the Bulge.
    • The assault on the Belgian fort of Eben Emael, which was crucial for the Blitzkrieg campaign in the West 1940. The Eben Emael strike was performed by glider infantry.
    • Operation Greif during the Battle of the Bulge had English-speaking German soldiers paradropping behind Allied lines to perform sabotage missions. (It failed).
  • The upshot of all these paratroop drops is that paratroopers can be useful when sent to accomplish small, targeted objectives, but large-scale paratroop drops were generally not very effective. The troopers tended to get pretty wildly scattered, like at D-day, where there was no such thing as unit cohesion. Even if a unit did manage to stay together after a drop, paratroopers faced an obvious problem in that they could not carry heavy weaponry. The bravest of men carrying nothing but rifles and grenades will struggle against an enemy with artillery and tanks, as the British paratroopers at Arnhem discovered. The German paratroop drops at Crete helped take the island, but at such a high casualty rate that the Nazis never tried an airborne drop again.^note Though, ironically, the Battle of Crete was what convinced the British and Americans to start building up their own airborne divisions.
  • While the Americans, British and Germans had the most famous paratrooper forces during the Second World War, the Japanese had their own. The Rikusentai and the Teishin Shudan were the paratoopers of the Imperial Japanese Navy and Army respectively. They participated in numerous campaigns during the early parts of the Pacific theater.
    • The Rikusentai were the Japanese marines, organizationally part of the navy. However, they had their own paratroops, specifically 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Rikusentai Units (roughly oversized battalions, although usually translated as "regiments" or called SNLF's in English) home-based at Yokosuka.
  • The Red Army's paratroops probably had the worst time of it and the lowest survival rate of any airborne troops during WW2. Prior to the war, Russia had raised paratroop divisions and they were a proud part of pre-war propaganda movies — thousands of parachutes raining men is always impressive in any propaganda movie. However, in the confusion and chaos surrounding the initial German invasion in 1941, hundreds of transport planes were destroyed on the ground. Paratroop units were caught a long way away from the stores that held their parachutes. In desperation, the Red Army command brought together the men and as many planes as were still left. The paratroops were ordered to climb onto the wings, lie flat and hold on tight. From slow-moving transport planes flying low, they were ordered to let go over the drop zone and try to land in deep snowdrifts, so as to cushion their fall. The results of dropping men without parachutes, even from suicidally low altitudes, was predictable. Incredibly, some men survived a flight on the outside of a plane in sub-zero temperatures, and dropping from fifty to a hundred feet, and did what they could. An unintended consequence of wasting their paratroops this way was that surviving men who had not only lived but evaded German capture became the trained nucleus of partisan units operating behind German lines, bringing hope, expertise, and weapons to the resistance movement. The Russians learnt from this and future paratroop drops were largely better organised and small-scale, used to insert trained men to raise partisan units. But partisan survival chances were notoriously low ...
  • Subverted by Soviets during WWII on the Finnish front. The Soviets did not perform massed paradrops, but they dropped singular agents, saboteurs, spies, and infiltrators to Finland. Their training and performance was notoriously poor, and vast majority were caught almost immediately. If they wore civilian clothes, they were shot as spies; if they had military uniforms, they were taken as prisoners of war. The Russian word for parachutist, desantnik, gave the Finnish language a new word, desantti, for an airborne infiltrator.
• Finland formed her own paratroops in 1961. They are not intended for massed paradrops, but rather to work on squad to company level behind the enemy lines as long rangers, commandos, and guerrillas. Their main tasks are long-range reconnaissance and commando strikes. They are assumed to fight their way back to own lines once they have completed their mission. While the Finnish forces are based on conscription, the paratroopers are select volunteers, and everyone receives at least non-commissioned officer-level training. A minimum of 3000 m in the Cooper test is one of their selection qualifications.
• Pretty much any paratrooper formation, from the famous and badass United States Army Airborne divisions, likewise famous and badass Russian VDVs to the less famous but no less badass 2e Régiment Étranger de Parachutistes of the French Foreign Legion. Although largely supplanted by helicopters since World War II, paratroops are still maintained and occasionally employed by the few militaries with the resources and skills to support their use. For example, High Altitude Low Opening (HALO) deployments, which are designed to get recon troops inside enemy territory undetected.
  • America is in love with this trope. Rangers, Green Berets, and by proxy Delta Force all require you to have gone through Airborne school. The Air Force's equivalent to the Rangers, Green Berets and Delta Force? USAF Pararescue. And Marines are training to do this.◊
    • Not just that. Skippy of Skippy's List fame was in a PSYOP unit. His job was to make propaganda illustrations. Those units also require soldiers to have completed Airborne School for some reason. US Navy SWCC's are boat operators who are required to go to Airborne School. One of the requirements for US Army parachute riggers (the guys who pack parachutes) is that they not only go to Airborne School but regularly jump with a parachute that they packed (giving some motivation to pack properly, one supposes). The Air Force even has special operations weather forecasters who do this.
    • PSYOP soldiers do this because one of their tasks is airdropping propaganda leaflets out of planes behind enemy lines. Have to be able to jump if the plane gets shot down.
• Old Joke: The commander went to the assembled men and laid out the mission: "We need to precisely insert a team of commandos deep behind enemy lines. To avoid German radar we'll have to fly low and fast, no more than 200 feet off the deck. It will be dangerous and some of you may not survive the jump, so we need 20 men. Anyone who wishes to volunteer, take one step forward." A slim handful stepped forward, all Green Berets. The commander was disheartened until a grizzled sergeant whispered to him. "Parachutes will be provided!" he announced, and the rest stepped forward.
  • Variation on the above: Commanding officer in the Gurkha regiment is called in to see the top brass. TB say "Now look here, we need to insert your squad behind enemy lines. In order to do so, you'll be deployed from aircraft flying at 200 feet to avoid radar. Can you do it?". Gurkha CO shakes his head. "The planes must fly at 100 feet." Top brass look baffled. "If they fly at 100 feet your parachutes won't have time to open." Gurkha officer perks up. "Oh, we get parachutes?"
• PJs. Quite possibly the most awesome medical professionals in real life.
  • And in an awesome example of compensating, they come from the Air Force.
    • This is great compensation because the Air Force is viewed as a sort of cushy Wesley in the armed forces. Its status as The Scrappy is second only to the Coast Guard.
  • Another unusual example from the Air Force can be found within some RED HORSE^note Rapid Engineer Deployable Heavy Operations Repair Squadron Engineers airmen being trained to jump with Army paratrooper units to seize airfields. The Air Force engineering troops, who specialize in rapid airfield repairs, would work to get the airfield operational so follow-up forces can land directly by plane.
• Non-military examples:
  • Smoke Jumpers, the most hardcore firefighters of all.
  • Formation skydiving. A group of skydivers (sometimes several plane loads) jump together and form formations mid-air.
• Despite many prognostications that the helicopter would mean the end of large-scale parachute operations, militaries around the world continue to deploy hundreds, and sometimes even thousands, of paratroopers on irregular operations well into the 21st century. A list of some of the more notable major paradrops is here.
• Operation Dragon Rouge in 1964 saw the Belgian Régiment Para-Commando air-drop hundreds of troops from American planes over the city of Stanleyville to rescue hostages that had been taken by the communist Simba rebels.
• The Tangail Airdrop during the 1971 Indo-Pakistan War on December 11, 1971, was India's biggest paratrooper operation, involving over 1,000 troops seizing a bridge over the Jamuna River and cutting off an entire Pakistani brigade's escape route.
• The aforementioned VDV have recently been demonstrating how not to do this with several disastrous drops in Ukraine during the Russo-Ukrainian War. Word of warning: do not drop unsupported airborne forces over an area that is an active combat zone in broad daylight while the enemy still has active air defence systems. It did not help that two of the Il-76 transport planes carrying over 100 paratroops got shot down.

---

Hallelujah!

---