Can be spoofed by including one or more of the things that could go wrong: the rider lands facing the wrong way, the horse is spooked, the horse is injured by the impact with the rider, the rider is injured by the impact with the horse (ouch), the rider misses the horse entirely, ...
An adventurer in a modern setting might attempt the same trick with a car. If he's really planning ahead, it will be a car without a roof.
A subtrope of No Escape but Down. Not to be confused with Falling into the Cockpit or Born in the Saddle.
Definitely not Truth in Television. Doing this in real life will either cause you or the horse serious injury, and doing it from high enough can kill the horse outright by breaking its back and collapsing its lungs.
Examples
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Comic Books
- Lucky Luke has Lucky leaping onto his horse so often that Jolly Jumper has expressed surprise if Luke exits a building through the door. Jolly is sometimes seen complaining about how Luke gets to make merry in the saloon, and his horse must wait outside under the window.
- There are also occasional subversions to keep things interesting. In one instance, Luke throws himself out the wrong window, leading to his escaping while Jolly Jumper laughs at him. In another, he realizes the horse he's landed on is not Jolly Jumper, who explains that as he didn't know which window Luke would jump from, he put a horse under each window to be sure.
Film - Animated
- Tangled takes it up to eleven, with Flynn catapulted over a high wall and landing the saddle of the horse waiting on the other side. Thanks to Rule of Cool, nobody gets hurt.
Flynn: "Knees apart?"
- During the Action Prologue in Toy Story 3, Woody falls off the train but conveniently lands on Jessie's horse Bulls-Eye, so he and Jessie can continue chasing after the train.
Film - Live-Action
- In the Errol Flynn film, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Robin leaps onto a saddled horse with his hands tied behind his back. (Well, he's supposed to — if you watch closely, the stunt guy's hands move in front of his body in one shot.)
- Attack of the Clones. Anakin does a Force Jump in the execution arena on Geonosis to land on the rhino-like creature sent to execute him. Then Padme joins him, an impact that someone calculated was the equivilent of 14,432 Newtons
.
- In Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Austin leaps into his convertible via a forward flip. When he tries it into Felicity's car in the sequel, he lands on the gear shift.
- In 1959's Le Bossu, Lagardère is firt introduced kissing a (probably married) lady, then jumps on his horse from her balcony just as his future sidekick Passepoil (Bourvil) was about to steal it.
- In Le Capitan, François de Capestang escape from Concini's trap by jumping from a window onto his horse, with his sidekick Cogolin (Bourvil again) waiting outside with it.
- In Cutthroat Island Geena Davis (not her stunt double) races through a building on the 2nd story and somersaults out a window, landing in the passenger seat of a speeding horse drawn carriage.
- A Running Gag in the movie The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox — the Dirtwater Fox keeps trying it, and it keeps going wrong.
- In their first scene together in Hot Shots!, Topper and Ramada show off to each other in stunt riding (Ramada, on her horse) and driving (Topper, on his motorcycle). Ramada wins when she jumps off her horse into an overhead tree, does a full uneven bar gymnastics routine, and then dismounts back into the saddle.
- In the Action Prologue of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana Jones tries to leap into the saddle of his horse. The horse moves. The mooks chasing him repeat the process, but with a truck.
- Kamen Rider Den-O: Final Countdown: the Big Bad and Momotaros manage to pull it off, but The Hero doesn't.
- In The Lone Ranger, when Rebecca is pushed off the roof of the train by Cavendish, she lands in the saddle of Silver who is galloping along beside the train.
- The Man from Kangaroo: When John and Muriel escape from the station house, John jumps of the verandah and lands in the saddle of his horse, taking off at a gallop.
- Antonio Banderas tried to mount from the second story in The Mask of Zorro, but the horse moved. On purpose. This is also a throwback to an earlier scene where the previous Zorro did it without a hitch.
- In Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Marian leaps from a balcony onto her horse. When her large lady-in-waiting attempts to do the same, her horse dodges. Given that her impact cracks the pavement, it was wise to do so.
- This is part of Peter's sidekick training in Rustlers' Rhapsody.
- Shanghai Noon: Roy and Chon Wang attempt to do this to escape a bordello. Roy, a more experienced horseman, pulls the move off flawlessly. Chon, who's terrible with horses and also incredibly drunk, lands facing backwards...and then his horse falls over because it's drunk too after stealing booze from the bar. The marshall and his men immediately surround them and take them prisoner.
Roy: A Roy O'Bannon special. We jump off, land on the back of the horse, yell "yee-haw", and ride off.
- The modern version occurs in Shoot 'Em Up. Mr Smith leaps off an overpass above a parked car, firing into its sunroof in mid-air, crashes through the broken glass, lands in the driver's seat and drives off without pause or injury. That should tell you something about this movie.
- Done early in The Three Musketeers (1993), as part of a chase scene. It also included the stock parody of one of the characters missing the horse.
- Water (1985). Billy Connolly's character and his sidekick try to escape a mob by jumping from a hotel balcony onto a couple of bicycles, only to be captured easily as they hold their groins in agony.
- Played straight multiple times in Zorros Fighting Legion; not just Zorro, but several of his Legion can pull this off.
- A Running Gag in Zorro, the Gay Blade is that Zorro's horse is always in the wrong place for him to land in the saddle.
Literature
- Reconstructed in Wax and Wayne. New lawman Wax suggests doing this to escape from a gang, but the more experienced Lessie shoots him down by asking how a full-grown man could expect to jump on top of a horse and not break its back. Wax can pull this off because of his Metalborn powers; he could either use his Skimmer abilities to reduce his weight and drop with little impact, or his Steelpushing power on the horseshoes. Since Wax's telekinetic Pushes move him away from metal if it weighs more than him (or is anchored to something that does), he could gently land by Pushing against gravity, without hurting the horse, by sending his weight into the ground through the horseshoes. Alas, the horse already ran off at first sign of gunfire.
Live-Action TV
- Early in Casanova, Casanova completely misses the waiting horse while escaping from a disgruntled husband.
- In the Doctor Who serial "The Masque of Mandragora", the Doctor jumps from the execution platform onto one of the guards' horses, shoves that guard out of the saddle, and takes off galloping.
- The Goodies: In "Animals", Graeme leaps out of the window of the farmhouse and lands in the saddle of his horse, who is actually a man (It Makes Sense in Context), before galloping off.
- Knight Rider: Car version, of course. Michael calls to KITT, KITT comes, and often he leaps straight into or onto KITT. At least once, KITT elevated the driver's seat so Michael would have something to aim for and fall onto.
Video Games
- The player can pull off this move in Assassin's Creed.
- Desperados requires the team to pull this off while breaking Sanchez out of jail.
- In Final Fantasy VI, when Edgar, Locke and Terra escape from Kefka, there's a cutscene where they ride away.
- Hanzo's trait in Heroes of the Storm allows him to jump over terrain and land on the far side. Selecting his Mounted Archery talent will summon his mount beneath him when he lands.
- If you aim just right, you can land on your horse from a second story jump in Red Dead Redemption.
- Likewise, it's possible to jump from a high platform in Star Wars: Battlefront and land directly in the seat of a speeder bike. You of course take no damage.
Western Animation
- The Legend of Zelda (1989): In the episode, "The White Knight", Link jumps down from his tower window and bounces/backflips off a tent canopy below before landing in his horse's saddle. The horse is startled and tries to throw him off, but he stays on and calms her down.
- Looney Tunes:
- Spoofed in The Scarlet Pumpernickel, where Daffy Duck misses the horse, causing him to muse that "this never happens to Errol Flynn". In fact, he misses twice and on the third try parachutes down: "Here's a wrinkle Errol never thought of!"
- In Tex Avery's Drag-A-Long Droopy, the cowboy Wolf chasing Droopy tries to jump onto his horse and misses. He runs back up to the balcony he jumped from, tries again— and misses. Eventually he moves the horse to the place where he keeps landing and tries again, only to land where the horse originally was. So he gives up and hails a taxi instead.
- Once an Episode (minimum) in Thundarr the Barbarian. In one early episode, he does it from the top floor of a ruined skyscraper without injury.
- In Total Drama Action the first western themed challenge was a hundred foot drop from a diving board while trying to land on a horse, which somehow doesn't seriously injure the contestant or horse.
