Squashed Flat

Ed and Eddy, literally Flat Characters!

"And if you have any idea what a guy looks like after two tons of metal land on him from eighty feet up... you keep your ideas to yourself."

— Porky, Quiet, Please (1947), "The Thing on the Fourble Board"

Cartoon characters can survive a lot of things. And if a character ever suffers from the dreaded Anvil on Head, one of several things can happen. They can become an Accordion Man, or this trope can occur.

Often, characters will be Squashed Flat by some heavy object landing on their head, or by going really fast into an immovable object such as a wall, or a big and heavy character will squash a smaller character and leave them stuck to their bodies like Butt Stickers. (Literally so, in the case Ass Kicks You where the victim is sat on). The resulting injury has the character flattened down to a paper-thin state. While in this state, the character becomes incredibly light and can be lifted, manipulated, rolled up, or folded by another character.

The use of this trope will often use a mixture of various perspective techniques to better show the loss of depth, such as leaving smoothed edges around the victim (making them look almost like a cardboard cutout), showing loose body parts as being pressed a certain way in the direction of impact (such as a steamrolled character having their hair ironed out symmetrically with their body, or the hands of a character who was squished under the weight of a heavy object still having them out upon being squished), or showing a flattened character "spread" out similar to dough rolled with a rolling pin depending on the amount of force.

Unlike in Real Life, these injuries are hardly ever fatal, and like most Amusing Injuries, are healed in just five seconds. Often, all it takes is another character flapping the flattened character around like a beach towel or inflating the character like a balloon to get him or her to return to his/her normal state.

Although this trope is mostly an Animation Trope, it sometimes creeps into Live-Action TV shows and films with a more 'cartoonish' feel. If portrayed realistically, it can lead to Cruel and Unusual Death.

Can be the result of Trampled Underfoot or a Crush Parade when this trope is exaggerated.

May sometimes be followed up by another Amusing Injury gag, like Accordion Man (if the crushed character quickly springs up), Be the Ball (usually if the character is crushed into a coin-like shape, with a short inflation sequence inbetween the two) and so on.

Sub-Trope of Forcibly Formed Physique. Overlaps with Paper People, which is either a natural state of the characters or the state that results from being Squashed Flat, and Construction Vehicle Rampage if done by a steamroller, which is a common way for invoking this. Not to Be Confused with Flat Character. Compare with Hammered into the Ground, Butt Sticker, and Sleep Squashing.

However, as this can be a Death Trope, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware.

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Examples:

Advertising

• In the Capri-Sun juice "Respect the Pouch" series of ads, a girl runs over her pouch with an RC car. The pouch gets revenge by squashing her flat. She is then appropriately dubbed "Pancake Peggy".
• In this Indian ad for Chlormint, a pretty young woman gets her wish to be on a poster after an elevator accident.
• In this Italian advert, an attractive woman discusses the DVD "Winter Collection" with another presenter. During this conversation, the woman is holding the collection's voucher. Suddenly, a dinosaur from one of the films belonging to the collection infiltrates their mansion and crushes the woman with its hand. Afterwards, the other presenter examines the woman's flattened, paper-thin body but he decides to pinch the voucher instead of helping her.
• In a series of commercials for Gogurt, kids who slurp their tubes of gogurt until it's completely empty will become completely flattened, and will usually be folded or messed with by the other kids.
• "Justin Timberlake" and "Peyton Manning" are made two dimensional when they remove their 3D glass in a Sony workshop.
• One ad for Wilkins Coffee has Wontkins, who hates the advertised product, vowing to drink a coffee that's not Wilkins. Suddenly, Wilkins the frog, who loves the advertised product, runs Wontkins over with a steamroller, flattening him out like paper-thin.
  Wilkins: Doesn't that coffee taste kind of flat?
• In an ad for Nike by Spumco the big bad wolf is on a date with a not-so-little red riding hood who gets squashed by a tree the three little pigs cut down. After dealing with the pigs with the help of some Nike shoes, he kicks the tree off of her and inflates her back to normal with a kiss.
• Happens to Chip the child crash test dummy in this Crash Dummies PSA.
  • In another ad, Vince and Larry crash their car into a road construction site. Both dummies fly out through the windshield and Vince is flattened out by a steamroller.
• Certs had a commercial where a giant roll of the mints rolls over Bobby Collins, flattening him to the floor.
• In a 2018 Yoplait Griego Toppings ad starring Zach King, Zach is walking on a street when the wind sends his cap flying. Zach notices that the handsome, smiling poster guy for Yoplait Griego Toppings is wearing a cap and magically removes it from the poster to wear it. Before walking away, however, Zach also tries to take the poster guy's Yoplait, which results in the poster guy gaining 3-dimensional form and stepping out of the poster to fight with Zach for the Yoplait. But Zach quickly fools the poster guy and pushes him back into the wall, and the poster guy is once again flattened inside the poster ad. Zach enjoys the delicious Yoplait in front of the poster ad, now showing the poster guy with his arms raised and his face frozen in a shocked expression, without his cap and yoplait.

Anime & Manga

• In Battle Tendency this is how Caesar Zeppeli dies. Justified Trope in that it was a slab of stone twice his size.
• In Osamu Tezuka's "Cleopatra (1970)", the slave Ionius is flattened by a warrior with a giant fly swatter during a gladiator fight.
• Decidedly not played for laughs in Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, where Rebecca is gruesomely stomped into an almost-literal paste by Adam Smasher during the final confrontation.
• From Cyborg 009, 007 gets crushed flat by a falling object (with lampshading and 007 saying "You said it"), but due to having Shapeshifting powers, he's practically unharmed.
• From Dragon Ball, in the episode entitled "Sgt Metalic" aka "Major Metallitron", Goku gets stomped flat by the title android and floats off like a piece of paper before "popping" back to normal.
• In the fourth episode of Getsumen to Heiki Mina, resident Chew Toy Mutsumune gets flattened when a giant alien stomps on her during a beach vollyball game.
• Happens to Masked Osodashi in 10th and 18th episodes of Jankenman.
• Sometimes occurs in Hoshi no Kirby! Mo-retsu Pupupu Hour!. One instance occurs in "Taranza and the Donut," where Taranza attempts to obtain a donut after Kirby steals the donut Taranza was just about to eat, only for his plans to backfire. The first attempt that backfires is when Taranza gets into a machine in hopes that he will flatten Kirby. Unfortunately, the machine has a slight delay... in which Taranza goes in front of the hand of the machine and bangs on it. When the machine finally goes, the machine's hand flattens Taranza, cracking the interface of the manga in the process. This causes Taranza to be in a paper-thin state. He only returns to normal after Kirby inflates him like a balloon, causing Amusing Injuries for Taranza.
• Kirby: Right Back at Ya!:
  • In episode 2, this happens to Kirby after getting jumped on several times by the Rock Monster Blocky. This example is slightly more realistic than most, as Kirby's flattened form is far wider than his normal state.
  • Kirby and Dedede are both flattened by a road roller during a weight-loss program in episode 61.
  • In one episode, Escargoon gets flattened as he is sent flying and hits a wall.
  • In episode 94, Kirby is briefly flattened by one of the spiked balls thrown by the Brainwashed and Crazy Phan Phan.
• This happens in Koi Koi 7, where four girls are trampled flat in the anime.
• Naruto gets flattened by a giant ball in the annual sports festival episode of Naruto.
• Occasionally happens to Kuromi and Baku in certain episodes of Onegai My Melody.
• During the climatic battle with the evil bears in Panda’s Great Adventure, Fifi the female panda rolls over two of them with a log, flattening them paper thin.
• Occasionally happens on Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, such as in Episode 3 after Panty and Stocking are pressed together into a ball, and in Episode 4 when fat Stocking rolls over a bunch of cars.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • The episode "Gluttonous Kabigon! Huge Panic!" (or "Snack Attack!" in the English dub), in which Snorlax would roll over and lay on some of the Pokemon trying to attack him. The sight of a flattened Victreebel trying to walk around while flat, and shrieking at the top of its lungs, is hysterical.
  • Happens to Pikachu in the Advanced Battle episode "Solid As A Solrock!" During a Gym Battle set in a planetarium, Pikachu charges Solrock with his Quick Attack, but Solrock moves out of the way, and Pikachu slams right into a model planet. Moments later, Pikachu's flattened form peels out of the crater and drifts to the ground.
  • Pikachu suffers this again in the Black and White episode "New Places, Familar Faces"; After James' Amoongus body slams him, he is left flattened in a small crater, and stunned long enough for Team Rocket to capture him.
  • In the Sun and Moon episode "Pulling Out The Pokemon Base Pepper!", a Snorlax uses its Z-Move, Pulverizing Pancake, on Team Rocket's Wobuffet, reducing it to, well... a pancake.
• Ransack and Crumplezone suffer this fate in the Transformers: Cybertron episodes "Race" and "Ambush" (after being dropped on by Dirt Boss in the former, and run over by Metroplex in the latter).
• In Unico in the Island of Magic when Melvin the cat tries to catch Unico while in the middle of the marching people turned into wooden featureless puppets, he gets stepped on twice leaving him flat.
• In episode 15 of Yakitate!! Japan, there is a somewhat surreal scene where Tsukino is put into a hydraulic press, rendering her completely flat. She is then reinflated with a foot pump and returns back to normal. This scene is used to describe Tsukino taking a comment about "going get crushed" literally.

Asian Animation

• Gaju Bhai: In "Tiku Thakela", Gaju's gang gets stuck on a hay cart rolling at high speed. Bhagat tries to stop the cart, only to be run over by it and flattened.
• In episode 37 of Happy Heroes, a news report depicts Happy S. being squashed flat by a group of robots he has freed running right onto him.
• Motu Patlu: In "Car Park", Motu and Patlu are flattened by Boxer's car running over them.
• Nana Moon: In episode 26, the gang are running through a secret hallway in Moon Haven's castle. Liz is caught in a trap involving a big hand on a spring that pushes her into the wall, flattening her. She's back to normal by the next shot where she's on-screen.
• In episode 55 of Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, Jonie sits down and squashes Wolffy flat. She and the others then worry that Wolffy is dead; it later turns out he was just faking it.
• Simple Samosa: In "Spa Wars", as Iddiyappam Appa is chasing Samosa, he is squashed flat by Samosa using his remote to control one of the pieces of spa equipment. Appa is paper-thin for a few seconds after this, and then he inflates himself back to normal.
• Yamucha's-Kung Fu Academy: In one of the original 2004 shorts, specifically the one spoofing Jurassic Park, the gang and a boar they meet are chased by a bunch of dinosaurs. Another dinosaur that had been chasing the gang is squashed flat by the group of dinosaurs running over it.
• Zelly Go: In "Rolling Ball", Gogo and Roro repeatedly get squashed flat by the jelly bean ball.

Comic Books

• There was a Donald Duck comic where Donald became a performance artist and one of his acts was getting squashed into a flat disc shape and being played on a gigantic gramophone.
• Léonard le Génie: When Basile operates a hydraulic press or similar tool, you can be 100% certain this will be the result.
• The Vault of Horror story "Graft in Concrete!" plays this lethally (though bloodlessly) straight.
• Plastic Man suffers this in JLA #65 (June 2002), when his son (who has inherited his powers) becomes a bouncing Triceratops and lands on him.
  Plastic Man: Kids. Give 'em half a chance, and they'll walk all over you...

Comic Strips

• One robber/rapist is crushed by a millstone in a story by Wilhelm Busch. Other than typical for this trope, he doesn't exactly revert.
• There's a Don Martin MAD cartoon where two guys discover a friend lying in the road, completely flat and stretched out. Naturally they conclude that he has been run over by a steamroller, and proceed to fold him up so they can take him to a hospital. Unfortunately due to a tragic misunderstanding involving a nearsighted strongman, he gets torn in half.
• This is an occasional outcome in Spy vs. Spy. Methods differ, including classics like the Anvil on Head, but a scenario involving quick-setting concrete and a steamroller has turned up before.
• The Club Nintendo Halloween special had a brief scene where Mario slams a door on Kirby, flattening him. Link remarks "Oh man, this happens at least once in every comic," and then retrieves the bicycle pump. The scene in question can be seen here.
• The Narrowegians in the Rufus Crustbuster comic strip of Jack and Jill magazine were living pancake creatures who turned the title character into one with a machine.
• In an early strip of U.S. Acres, Orson's brothers do this to him when they "play squash".
• Garfield
  • Happens to Garfield in one Sunday comic after he picks a fight with a larger cat. Jim Davis said he drew a rough sketch of Odie carrying home a flattened Garfield and thought it was so funny, he had to find a way to use it in an actual comic.
  • Nermal ends up flattened in one strip after Garfield accidentally sits on him.
  • Also a common fate for any spiders the fat ginger cat encounters.

Fan Works

• In No More Harry's accidental magic does it to him when he desperately wants to get out of his cupboard. He promptly proceeds to slide himself under the door.
• Played for Drama in The Secret Return of Alex Mack, when Alex is trapped in her silvery form under the rubble of a collapsed building — for half a day, immobile and in blackness, until she's rescued. She develops Claustrophobia from the experience.

Films — Animation

• This is what happens to the letter I in Pixar's production logo.
• Brave: Mor'du dies at the climax when Elinor pushes him into a stone pillar which collapses on him, killing him instantly and leaving only his paw poking out from beneath the ruin.
• Darla in Cats Don't Dance, who gets pressed into a table shape during the finale.
• In Flushed Away, in one of the times that Rita's house tilts, multiple rats all land on one another as they hit the wall, and all peel off afterwards.
• In Home (2015), Pig gets flattened against a car window.
• Dracula, during the credits sequence of Hotel Transylvania, is crushed into a heap after Frankenstein trips and falls on top of him.
• Ice Age:
  • In the first movie, Scrat gets stepped on by several large animals but doesn't exactly get flattened, per se.
  • Squint the pirate jackrabbit receives this in the fourth movie, upon being stepped on by Ellie the mammoth.
• Long Live Servatius: Happens to the tiger after Servatius runs him over with a tank. However, the tiger survives it and remains alive for several decades as a pelt.
• In Norm of the North, one of the lemmings gets flattened in one part. In another part, two lemmings get flattened into the sides of a third one, who is squished as well.
• In Turning Red, when Mei gets out of bed as a giant red panda, she squashes her bunny slippers flat.
• During the closing credits of the 2011 Winnie the Pooh film, the characters frolic around on the actual credits. At one point, Rabbit fails to jump off of a block of credits before it scrolls off the screen, and is comically flattened between the top line of credits and the top of the screen.

Films — Live-Action

• Happens rather cartoonishly in The Adventures of Pinocchio to a wooden marionette during a puppet show that gets stepped on by an evil Giant character.
• Happens to Chip Diller trying to stop a panicking throng in Animal House.
• Austin Powers, driving a slow-moving steamroller, runs over one of Dr. Evil's henchman, who stands motionless in front of it, screaming in terror, for an absurd amount of time. A deleted scene on home video cuts to his wife at home, rolling a pie crust flat before receiving the news.
• Beetlejuice: An employee in the afterlife bureaucracy died as human roadkill — he's even got tire treads across his chest. He asks newcomers Adam and Barbara how he looks; they diplomatically say "Fine!" He replies "Thanks, I've been feeling a little flat!" and laughs at his own joke.
• Dark Phoenix: When a bunch of D'Bari prove difficult to kill, Magneto crushes the train car they're in to flatten them.
• In Desktop Desperadoes, Mr. Collington uses the printer to flatten his receptionist and convince the detective his graphic companion Pointer really exists. Seconds later, he uses the "undo symbol" to reshape her as if nothing happened.
• Happens to the title character's head in Drop Dead Fred after getting caught in a refrigerator.
• In Ernest Goes to School Ernest is trampled flat by the football team during the opening credits.
• In Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, the Thing crushes Rubber Man Reed Richards into a wall.
• In A Fish Called Wanda, Ken, in an attempt to kill an old lady, keeps accidentally killing her Yorkies instead. One of them suffers this fate thanks to Ken's van.
  • Ken also runs over Otto with a steamroller, but Otto doesn't get flattened, he just gets smushed into wet concrete and survives.
• In Goldfinger, this was what happened to Mr. Solo's body: after Oddjob shoots and kills him in the car, said car is then taken to a junkyard and subsequently crushed. Yikes. This scene is hilariously spoofed in Top Secret! where Omar Sharif's character had it happen to him, and he survives.
• The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey: Hard to see it, but it happens to a couple goblins when the dwarves are rolling a boulder ahead of them during their escape.
• I've Got a Crush on You: This rather narmy short film from a Playboy video focuses on this. Of course, since this is Playboy, this is done to a female sunbather who is crushed by a man attempting suicide by jumping off a building. The man then carries the flattened topless woman around with him and even develops feelings for her. She never recovers. It has to be seen to be believed.
• In Jurassic World, several soldiers guarding the park are crushed to death by the colossal steps of the I.rex.
• The "Toe Crusher" attack in Kung Fu Hustle.
• In Leprechaun 4: In Space, a pan is thrown at a character's head with such force that it is flattened against the wall from the impact.
• In The Lost World: Jurassic Park, this is the fate of Carter under the crushing foot of the T.rex.
• Tiny Antony from Mafia! is accidentally crushed between a door, leaving him flat. It's done in a cartoonish manner, so he's fine.
• Happens in The Mask, after the masked Jim Carrey character jumps out the window of his apartment and lands on the street below.
  The Mask: Look, ma! I'm roadkill! Ha ha ha!
• In the horror film Monster Man, the protagonists avert Once is Not Enough when dispatching the title villain by running over him with his own truck all night, until they've literally ground him into a greasy great smear of gore on the road. Nightmarishly, he's still alive and conscious even at the end of all this. Also, the villain's backstory involves him accidentally killing his brother this way.
• Vincent Ludwig's death in The Naked Gun: he falls off the stadium after being shot with a dart gun, whereupon he's run over by a bus and a steam roller, and then trampled by a marching band.
  "My father went the same way!"
• In Pixels, this happens to Q*Bert when he's ran over by one of Donkey Kong's barrels. He manages to get back on his feet, though.
• In the CGI/live-action Rocky and Bullwinkle movie, Rocky and Bullwinkle end up like this when being run over.
  Bullwinkle: This movie's gettin' kind of-
  Rocky: Don't say it.
  Bullwinkle: Two-dimensional.
• Saw V: This is how Special Agent Peter Strahm dies. He ignores Detective Mark Hoffman's warning to enter a glass coffin in the middle of a room, and when Hoffman ambushes him, he locks Hoffman in the coffin instead. Bad move. And his death is shown in an excruciatingly painful detail.
• Sleeper: The Leader of the futuristic dictatorship — or what's left of him, his nose — ends up flattened under a steamroller.
• Slippery Jim, which of course looked realistic for its time it was made.
• Another cartoon-like example occurs in Space Jam, when Wayne Knight is crushed by all the Monstars.
• Happens twice in Voyage of the Rock Aliens. Once to one of the aliens when he explodes into pieces and the other aliens put him back together and to two unlucky deliverymen who get run over by a steamroller.
• In Tammy and the T-Rex, one if the villains henchmen is stomped on by the T-Rex, later he his discovered flattened by the villain where they attempt to roll him up, only to latter drag his flattened body away.
• The Terminator: The titular Killer Robot, or rather its upper body, is turned into scrap iron after Sarah Connor lures it into a hydraulic press.
• In "UHF" the main character played by "Weird Al" imagines himself as Indiana Jones in the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Arc. After he gets the idol (in this case Oscar) he is chased by the boulder which follows him around the world. He gets exhausted and collapses on the street and the boulder rolls over him.
• Happens to a lot of toons in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but especially Judge Doom, who is revealed to actually be a toon in the process. Eddie himself falls victim when riding in Droopy's express elevator.
• In The Wiz the Wicked Witch has the Tin Man's body squashed thin to the horror of Dorothy, who is Forced to Watch her friends getting tortured unless she gives up the slippers, but the Tin Man reassures her that it doesn't hurt him. Later he gets fixed by Evillene's minions after her defeat.
• A slideshow presentation at the beginning of The Witches (2020) depicts a kid being flattened beneath a witch's foot.
• X-Men: Apocalypse: Each of Apocalypse's Ancient Egypt horsemen die this way in the Distant Prologue.
• In the bizarre movie Metta Meta Gakido Koza after biting a woman the young boy is run over by a steamroller driven by his dad as punishment. He pops back into shape not long after.

Literature

• Flat Stanley, who is crushed by a falling bulletin board and carries on as a Paper Person.
• In one of the Geronimo Stilton books, a door is slammed on Geronimo, and he describes himself as peeling off the door, flat.
• In James and the Giant Peach Aunt Spiker and Aunt Sponge are both squashed like paper dolls when the peach rolls over them. It's impossible to feel bad for them, though.
• In the Stephen King novella "The Library Policemen", the main character attempts to invoke this in a commissioned poster for roadside safety, intended to be displayed in a library (and thus, theoretically intended for children). However, his client rejects the cartoony "kid + steamroller = cardboard standee of kid" design in favor of a more realistic "kid + steamroller = horrible red jam smeared down the road" design.
• The Toymaker's Apprentice: After the mouse queen bites Stefan, turning him into a wooden doll, Stefan falls over on top of her, crushing her to death in front of her son.

Live-Action TV

• In the "Lil' Bat" segment of The Aquabats! Super Show! episode "Eagleclaw!", a ghost squishes Lil' Bat into a pancake shape when hitting him with a mallet.
• In the 1960s Batman (1966) TV series, a villain uses a weapon that turns Batman, Robin, and Batgirl into...well, Flatman, Ribbon, and Flatgirl.
  • Averted in the crossover two-parter with the Green Hornet. Col. Gumm appeared to have turned the Green Hornet and Kato into life-size postage stamps. Batman knew it didn't really happen because Hornet was holding his Hornet Sting when he went into the machine, but his stamp form didn't have it when it came out.
• TV Special Blame it on the Blues: Figure skater Brian Orser had a special in the mid 90's. In one scene Brian and fellow skater Elvis Stojko were playing pool. Next thing they are on a giant pool table skating around. Brian pushes one of the giant billiard balls towards Elvis and he runs from it Indiana Jones style. It eventually catches him flattening him to the ice. Elvis pops back into 3D quickly after.
• The Brittas Empire: This happened to Gordon Brittas courtesy of a falling water tank. When he returns after several weeks of resultant surgery, the other characters express some surprise that he is three-dimensional again. It actually also killed him, but it didn't stick because he annoyed the residents of Heaven.
• In El Chavo del ocho, at the end of an episode Mr. Barriga gets angry because Don Ramón accidentally pinches him in the arm, so he punches him in the face, knocking him out and then for good measure, jumps on top of him, squashing him flat.
• The Steve Martin special Comedy is Not Pretty used this trope in the form of a public service message. Viewers were urged not to let party guests who have had too much to drink get behind the wheel of a steamroller. A kid runs out into the street after a ball with predictable results.
• Freaky episode "Cleaner", a kid scuffs the floor the janitor has just cleaned. The janitor then traps the kid in school at night and sends his killer floor buffs after him. It ends with the kid buffed to the gym floor while his friends play basketball on top of him.
• Good Eats: in the episode "Great Balls of Meat", a giant meatball chases a guy down an alley, running over him. Later in the same episode, the meatball comes back and runs over the host Alton Brown.
• An episode of TVB's Journey of the West 2 (adaptation of the novel of the same name, 1998) has Wukong being trapped in a set of magic cymbals, and can only be released by an enormous heavenly elephant's Giant Foot of Stomping. It works, but then Wukong exits looking totally flat...
• In Lizzie McGuire, the eponymous Lizzie occasionally voices her thoughts through a cartoon version of herself as an aside. Being a cartoon, this Animated!Lizzie often gets flattened as a gag, usually as a metaphor for the pressure Lizzie is under in real life.
• This happens to Finster in an episode of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, after a bunch of monsters stampede over him.
• Murphy Brown had a dream sequence where the title character was fat and trampled one of her coworkers leaving him flattened on the floor.
• Happens from time to time in Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, mostly to Cookie. Given how cartoony the show is, it's intentional.
• Punky Brewster had an episode where Punky competed in a pageant. One of the girls competing flattened the pageant's host in a magic trick.
• Roundhouse: In a couple of episodes, they do a skit where a guy tries to fight the monster truck Bigfoot and he always gets run over leaving a cutout of him on the floor. They later interview him flattened with the guys face in the cutout.
• Super Sentai:
  • Gosei Sentai Dairanger Zydos suffers this in episode 40. After the Heavy Armored Chi Palace drops down on him, his paper-thin body slides out from under it, screeching in agony as he vanishes.
  • Ninpuu Sentai Hurricaneger: Episode 12's Monster of the Week is revealed to have infused his very cells into the city's buildings, and is planning to absorb them into himself, which would make him five hundred times the size of the Hurricanegers' mecha, Senpujin. Upon hearing this, Hurricane Red has a brief Imagine Spot where the fully-grown monster stomps on the mecha, leaving it flattened in a foot-shaped crater.
  • Shuriken Sentai Ninninger: Shurikenjin becomes this in episode 36, when the Advanced Youkai Oboroguruma rolls right over it.
• Toast of London: The main character has a flashback about the last encounter with his ex-wife where she runs him over with a steamroller.
• The Two Ronnies. In a spoof of The Professionals, a gun-waving Doyle kicks open a door, searches an apartment and is surprised to find no-one there. As he closes the door behind him, a flattened villain (represented by a squashed rubber dummy) falls out from behind it.
• Ultraman Taro: One episode guest-starring Ultraman Jack have this happening to the latter, after poor Jack got his chest timer removed resulting in him deflating to a flat form. He goes back to normal at the end of the episode.
• On Whose Line Is It Anyway?, one session of Party Quirks involves Wayne Brady as "assorted celebrities being run over by a steamroller", sans cartoon effects of course. At one point he impersonates Gary Coleman, and gets squashed flat much quicker.

Manhua

• Old Master Q have this as a Running Gag as various Amusing Injuries the characters could get.
  • One of the strips sees Master Q and Big Potato discussing about Chin's new job, a circus elephant trainer, and decide to see how he's doing. Turns out Chin is a two-dimensional figure on the floor.
  • Another strip has Master Q being the elephant trainer instead, teaching the elephant to jump while holding the hoop right in front of him. The elephant jumps, and guess what happens next.

Multiple Media

• MonsterVerse:
  • Kong: Skull Island: Colonel Packard is Killed Mid-Sentence near the film's end when Kong crushes the General Ripper to the ground with his fist in retaliation for Packard's effort to kill him.
  • Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): During Ghidorah's Big Entrance awakening in Antarctica, one or two of the fleeing soldiers are visible being squashed by falling ice boulders when Ghidorah rips its wings free of the ice.
  • Skull Island (2023): Hiro is violently crushed to death by the Kraken's tentacle in the first episode. In front of his son no less.

Music Video

• Happens to Hall & Oates in the video for "Out Of Touch" after the two are run over by a giant drum rolling on its side.
• Happens to the girl in The Cars' video for "You Might Think" after singer/guitarist Ric Ocasek literally runs her over with a car during the line "You might think I'm delirious, the way I run you down".
• The music video for the D12 song "My Band" shows Swift being squashed flat after he wrestles the mic from Eminem and gets trampled by the audience.
• The Kid Laroi's music video "Thousand Miles" he gets run over by a steamroller driven by an evil version of himself.

Puppet Shows

• Between the Lions does this in the animated segment "Fun With Chicken Jane". Chicken Jane is flattened after a fat cat falls out of a tree and lands on her.
• The Muppet Show
  • Happened to, you guessed it, Beaker. Bunsen's invention of the week was a luggage compressor. (Ironically, it wasn't Bunsen's fault this time; the show was under a Gypsy Curse.)
  • Also happens to Beautiful Day Monster, in a sketch where Paul Williams is a travel agent. After BDM asks for progressively cheaper travel accommodations, Williams drops a giant weight on him to mail his squished form.

Radio

• In The Goon Show, Seagoon gets run over by a steamroller:
  Seagoon: The weight of the steamroller had made a lasting impression on me. I was now 2 inches thick and 24 feet wide. This was very awkward. People kept opening and shutting me.

Theater

• This has been done before many times on magic shows, mostly to women. Here's an example.
• The Pantomime take on Aladdin often features a scene at the Dame's laundry with the Butt-Monkey, getting caught in the wringer used to dry the clothes.

Theme Parks

• The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera at Universal Studios had this occur to Dick Dastardly and Muttley after they get crushed by an amusement park ride.

Video Games

• In Aladdin: Nasira's Revenge, Aladdin gets flattened when heavy things fall on him.
• In American McGee's Alice, the White Rabbit is stomped to death by the Mad Hatter while helping a shrunken Alice safely get to the Caterpillar.
• When Rook takes King by checkmate in Battle Chess. In one blow, the Rook turns the King into the dimensions of a piece of paper, picks him up, and lets his flattened carcass float to the ground.
• Happens in Battletoads if something heavy such as a boss lands on a toad.
• Happens to Bayonetta if she is squashed by a Golem's ball form, or by the ice balls from the final boss. However, this only applies to the first game. There is nothing round that can land on her in the second game, due to its more serious nature. In the third game, however, Jeanne can get like this if she is crushed by an elevator.
• Given that the player commonly rolls eggs around, enemies in Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg will always suffer this fate.
• Happens in one death scene in Brain Dead 13 when the giant Living Statue squashes Lance with its big hand and spreads his... paint mess... on its body. This will also happen if Lance doesn't dodge Moose's shoulder charge.
• Happens to Bug if he gets crushed by Smashing Hallway Traps of Doom, gets hit by a boulder, or if he falls off the terrain. If it was non-lethal, he stretches himself using a hand.
• Cel Damage, a game that runs entirely on cartoon physics, has this happens to anyone who gets hit with B.T. Bruno's sledgehammer, gets crushed by the 100-ton weight, or gets sucked through the vacuum.
• Happens to the enemies (Or your party) in Chrono Cross when the summon Golem is cast.
• Conker's Bad Fur Day puts a violent twist on this. If Conker is squished, he bleeds in addition to being flattened in cartoon fashion.
• Crash Bandicoot series:
  • In the first game, Crash gets flattened if he gets hit by a stone wheel in "Jungle Rollers" and "Rolling Stones", by a boulder in "Boulders" and "Boulder Dash", or the barrels in "Toxic Waste", then he pulls himself up for a few seconds before falling back down.
  • In the second and third games, he can get crushed by the falling stone mechanisms in the ice levels of the former and the stone blocks dropped by some of the Mooks in the Egyptian levels of the latter. If he doesn't have an Aku Aku on him, he'll walk around crushed into just his head and feet, but if he does he'll spring back into shape. He can also get crushed by the triceratops in the prehistoric levels, and in the Egyptian levels can get crushed by the mummies while they're in their sarcophagus and flattened vertically by the moving walls.
  • In Crash Team Racing, Crash Nitro Kart, and Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, a driver can be flattened by being run over by another driver using a Boost or Super Engine powerup or by track hazards like the toxic waste barrels on Sewer Speedway and the hammer-swinging statues on Thunder Struck.
  • In Crash Tag Team Racing, one of the Die-O-Ramas has Crash spinning into one of the two chicken news reporters who document the events of the game, who then punches him flat and kicks him offscreen.
• Happens to the assassin "Near-sighted" Jeego in Ghost Trick after Sissel drops a wrecking ball on him, his flattened form still visible on the ball as it rolls away. May also have happened to the other assassin, "One-step-ahead" Tengo, who gets a crate dropped on him, but here the aftermath is not shown.
• Go! Go! Hypergrind, another game that runs entirely on cartoon physics, has this happen to anyone who suffers a "Flatten" injury.
• In the Grow games:
  • One of the things used to wake the sleeping Onky in Grow Cannon is a giant foot that crush him flat. It doesn't have much effect.
  • In Grow Maze there is a wall with runes written on it. A kid will try to use magic on it and when nothing seems to happen the rune covered part of the wall will fall on him and he will go back to his cell all flattened.
• Kao gets flattened if he falls from a high enough spot in the Dreamcast version of Kao the Kangaroo.
• In Kids on Site, you run over a scatterbrained construction work who dances in from of the steamroller you are driving.
• Kingdom Hearts: The usual result of using the Gravity line of spells on an enemy.
  • Kingdom Hearts: During an early Traverse Town cutscene, Yuffie pushed open a door so hard that she unknowingly flattened Donald Duck between the opening door and the wall adjacent to it.
  • Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance]: This occurs if someone affected by the Minimum status ailment gets stepped on, or if you run them over with the Drill Sye or Cera Terror's link attack. It provides them with Mercy Invincibility, however.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: This happens to small enemies who get hit with the hammer.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures: The hammer can flatten your fellow players. If you launch from a cannon in a sidescrolling area on your GBA but hit a ceiling, you'll be squashed down even further and flutter like paper for a moment.
• Kirby:
  • Kirby can be squashed flat when a falling object or enemy lands on him from above, losing his Copy Ability in most games. He dies (loses a life) when a piece of terrain squishes him, though.
  • In Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Kirby can use his Mouthful ability on a big pipe and steamroll everything in his path, only stopped when he finally hits an unbreakable wall, against which he flattens himself.
• Mega Man Legends: In Rockman DASH: Adventure to Save the Planet, the player can be flattened between the moving walls in the Digout minigame.
• Mishap: An Accidental Haunting: This happened to part of Vinny's body when a car fell on him, with fatal results. In both this and the sequel, Mishap 2: An Intentional Haunting, his ghost form is depicted with a paper-thin torso sporting tire tracks.
• Mortal Kombat X: One of Ferra/Torr's Brutalities has Torr roll over the opponent, humorously flattening them this way.
• Pac-Man Party:
  • One minigame involves avoiding giant wooden blocks. If you get squished, this trope occurs and the character floats off.
  • In a chicken minigame, getting run over by a chicken will result in this.
• Pilgrim (RPG Maker): One way for Akemi to die in Storey 5 is, in a hallway full of shadows, for her to stand under one of them, at which point a giant red hand will fall down and squash her.
• Plants vs. Zombies:
  • This is what the Squash does to Zombies, by jumping on them and flattening them for a One-Hit Kill against non-gargantuars. Most zombies don't even get a death animation if killed this way.
  • The Gargantuar kills most plants in one hit (except Spikerocks) by instantly flattening them with whatever weapon it's holding, with the defeated plants even showing a "flattened" sprite for a short while.
• Pokémon:
  • When Jigglypuff is defeated in the 3D games, it deflates and flattens out.
  • Also happens to any Pokemon hit by Rollout in the 3D games.
  • Introduced in the 5th generation, the Bug-type move Steamroller flattens the opponent Pokémon's sprite while a big roller squashes it flat.
  • Pokémon X and Y: Many attacks, such as Body Slam or Smack Down, will do this to the opposing Pokémon.
• Power Stone: Players can get squished if hit with a mallet, or crushed by certain other objects.
• Rayman series:
  • Rayman 2: The Great Escape: Rayman will get squashed into a pancake shape if he falls from a large height or gets stomped by the robot gorilla enemy.
  • Rayman M: Characters can be squashed into pancake shapes from various obstacles, or from, again, falling from a large height.
  • Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc: Rayman can actually crawl around when he is flat, unlike in Rayman 2.
  • Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends: Rayman will squish when he is slammed into a wall, or slam-jumped on by co-op players. Also, Globox can use his body fat to compress himself when he wants to duck or crawl.
• Rumbleverse: Being Rumblers, all playable characters are subject to this, squashing down briefly when falling from a medium height, or almost entirely if from a great enough distance. Not for long though, as they quickly reinflate with a handy puff into their thumb.
• The Sega All-Stars Racing games do this in a wide variety of ways: By Billy Hatcher's special move and Amy's special move◊, rolling objects or steamrollers (in the sequel), landing on another racer, etc. It is always accompanied by a cartoonish *SPLORT* sound.
• Some of the deaths in the Sierra games have you end up being spread a little thin. In the cases of off-screen plummets, the narrators will often comment on your newfound height being akin to a manhole cover. Specific on-screen examples include:
  • King's Quest: Some falls in the earlier games will turn Graham into a pancake of a corpse.
  • Leisure Suit Larry 1: In the Land of the Lounge Lizards: Walking onto any street will have a car suddenly materialize and flatten Larry into the perfect pancake. Of course, he's dead.
  • Leisure Suit Larry 2: Looking for Love (in Several Wrong Places): Happens to Larry after Mama jumps on him, making him a pancake on his bed. This results in a game over.
  • Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge: If Roger gets run over by the floor waxer in Vohaul's fortress, he will be a pancake with a nice gloss. Yup, another game over.
• Can happen in Sim Farm if the animals encounter cars. The animals are fine, they just look like pancakes (or bloated, as the game is played from a bird's eye view.)
• Sonic the Hedgehog series:
  • Some characters in Sonic the Fighters have attacks that will flatten the opponent's head. And it's hilarious. You can even get smushed down to a small size (and on the XBLA/PSN versions, you get an achievement/trophy for doing so).
  • In Sonic Riders, players can get flattened. They will lose their board as they do so, however (but it reappears when they become 3D again).
  • Sonic Shuffle: In the mini-game "Gargantua", Eggman turns one character into a giant. The goal of the three other characters is to attack the giant with pop-guns while trying not to get crushed. Any player who is stepped on will appear flattened for the remainder of the mini-game.
    • This also happens to anyone run over by the Eggbot in the "Eggbot's Attack!" minigame.
  • Sonic and the Secret Rings has the Party Mode minigame "Hold it! Treasure Haul" where the players tries to nab coins under a sleeping blob. If the player wakes the blob up, it will squash the player, and they will float off flattened while losing half their coins.
• This is one of the standard Amusing Injuries for the Mummy in Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy. It allows him to fit through bars and tiny gaps.
• Spyro the Dragon
  • Happens to Spyro when certain enemies (and bosses) either crush him with their weapons, or run over or — in the case of Buzz from Year of the Dragon — roll over him.
  • Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!: This happens to three of the WaterWizards in the intro to Mystic Marsh when they're trampled by snailephants. This is omitted in the Reignited Trilogy version, where instead it's just one WaterWizard getting chased away by them.
• Used in the arcade game Sunset Riders when you drop barrels on enemies.
• Super Mario Bros. series:
  • In General:
    • The Wario Land and Mario & Luigi series have this as a required game mechanic, and you need to deliberately get characters smashed flat to get through narrow gaps.
    • Goombas become flat when they are jumped on.
    • In Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, there are 3D walls that can fall down on Yoshi. When the walls rise back up, Yoshi peels off in a paper-like state (which was very impressive for SNES standards). Later on in the game, Baby Bowser crushes Kamek by stomping on him repeatedly, then kicks the flattened Kamek away.
    • In Mario Kart there have always been ways for racers to squash their opponents flat for a limited amount of time, making them go slower. In the earlier games, you could shrink them with lightning and then squash them, and in Mario Kart Wii, there is an item that allows your own kart to grow, which will allow you to squash any opposing karts that you might run into.
    • In Luigi's Mansion, this happens to Luigi if he opens a fake door.
  • Many times in the Mario Party series:
    • Mario Party 5:
    • In the "Flatiator" minigame, any player trampled by the solo player's ball will have this trope occur.
    • The "Manic Mallets" minigame only squashes the losing team (or everyone if a draw occurs) in pancake shape. However, in the Mario Party: Top 100 reprise, it squashes the losing team(s) in the paper-thin form.
    • Mario Party 6 In the minigame, "Seer Terror", two of the possible outcomes, a golden Bowser statue and a Thwomp, do this to the player. There's also a microphone minigame contains this where you have to say a number to activate a trap. Saying the secret code "zero" will activate Thwomps, which will squash any character that does not escape them.
    • Mario Party Advance has the "Chicken!" minigame. Failure to escape the falling Thwomp will result in this trope. And in the "Forest Jump" minigame, this can also happen if you get hit by a log while ducking.
    • Mario Party DS:
    • In the minigame Whomp-a-thon, all players are in a sand pit that is surrounded by four Whomps. When the minigame starts, the Whomps will move sideways and one of them will eventually fall down, potentially crushing a character and leaving a hole in the sand with the shape of their body; the Whomp gets up and they all resume their motion until another one falls down, and so on during 30 seconds. The holes left by the crushed characters will obstruct the remaining ones, thus making the evasion of the Whomp crushes more difficult. The last player remaining wins, though it's possible for more than one to win if they survive for 30 seconds. Conversely, if the last remaining players get crushed at the same time, or two players survive in Duel mode, the minigame ends in a tie.
    • The objective of the minigame Toppling Terror for each team is to prevent this from happening to them. A Whomp is placed in the middle, while one team of playable characters is in front of it and the other is behind. In each team, two characters use funnels to blow at the Whomp in order to make it lose balance and fall onto the other team, squashing them as a result. The time to blow is five seconds, and whichever team blows the most will make the Whomp squash the other, winning the minigame.
    • Mario Party 9: Happens to characters who don't reach a safe spot in the "Smash Compactor" minigame.
    • Mario Party: Island Tour:
    • In the minigames "Hide and Go Splat" and "Squish You Were Here", failure to escape the Tox Boxes or closing walls will squash your character. In addition, the "Squish You Were Here" minigame squashes you vertically.
    • It doesn't only happen in minigames. The Perilous Palace Path board does this twice - once on the bridge challenge if you press the incorrect button, and second if you fail to destroy the Whomp at the end.
    • Mario Party 10 has "Bowser's Hammer Slammer" and "Bowser's High Dive", where if you run out of health, you will float off squashed flat.
• In Super Monkey Ball Adventure, your character's ball lets you temporarily flatten most NPCs if you collide into them while going fast enough.
• The third intermission sequence in Super Pac-Man features a giant Pac-Man falling on top of the four ghosts, causing them to be flattened like pancakes.
• Waffle Ryebread, the hero of Tail Concerto can be squashed paper-thin flat if he falls from a great height or gets crushed under something heavy, an instance of the former happening no matter what as a Scripted Event. Made all the more impressive by the fact that the huge mecha Waffle rides throughout the game gets crushed alongside him.
• In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time, the Turtles can be pancaked if heavy things go over them. Shredder's Revenge extends this courtesy to April O'Neil, Splinter and Casey Jones.
• Happens when certain enemies run over you in Toe Jam And Earl.
• Top Hunter: Roddy & Cathy, an old SNK platformer, can have this happening when one of your characters topples a wall on a mook. Any unfortunate enemy will actually float away like a sheet of paper in the aftermath. The player characters are also susceptible to this(complete with their portrait changing), although in their case they float to the ground before respawning.
• In Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, Megatron is temporarily killed this way after thinking he could take on Metroplex. Other than him, several Decepticon foot soldiers are squashed by Metroplex while desperately attempting to defend the remaining Decepticon bases.
• Twin Robots: The first thing to do in each level is save one of the robots from a trash compactor that they've found themselves stuck in. To do this, they'll need to push the Big Red Button in the level. Fail to do so, and you can guess what happens.
• The title character herself can get flattened in Umihara Kawase when she is between a ceiling and a moving platform.
• A trailer for the MMO Wakfu has this happen to three of the party members, and they die from it. (until they're revived)
• Appears as a One-Hit Kill in War of the Monsters if a particularly tall building falls atop of a monster.
• Happens in the obscure party game Whacked! Even Lucy's censor bars flatten with her.
• In the 1996 version of Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego, Rock Solid, one of the ACME Good Guides, will aid in your capture of a crook by log-rolling over his/her body, which flattens the crook. Rock then holds up the crook's flattened body to the camera, and the subsequent Spinning Paper that headlines the crook's arrest shows the crook's flattened form as the main picture.
• In Wii Fit Plus and Wii Fit U's Obstacle Course activity, your Mii will get flattened by the rolling logs if you do not jump over them. Upon being flattened, the Mii blinks a couple times before the game starts you back over at the beginning of the level.
• The titular superhero team of The Wonderful 101 can get flattened if enemies land on or drive over them. To avoid this, they must use the "Unite Guts" ability, which will transform them into gelatin and stun the enemy instead.
• Happens to the player in the game Zombies Ate My Neighbors.

Visual Novels

• Danganronpa:
  • Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc sees Makoto/Kyoko strapped to a desk on a conveyor belt on its way to a giant crusher. Makoto survives due to Alter-Ego's interference, while Kyoko isn't lucky. This is how Junko Enoshima goes out after a marathon of the previous executions.
  • Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony has Kokichi crushed underneath a hydraulic press in a scheme he and his killer, Kaito, devised to create an unsolvable murder.

Web Animation

• AstroLOLogy:
  • Aries at the end of "The Generous Donor", not from being flattened by a heavy object, but from donating so much of his blood that he looks like a deflated balloon.
  • Aquarius in "Slow and Steady" after his opponents in a race collectively trample him.
  • Gemini at the end of "Tom-Voo Doo-lery" from an angry Aquarius slamming two voodoo dolls of them together.
• In the short "Bad Luck Jack" (based on the Zoophobia webcomic), Zill pushes Jack out of the way of a wrecking ball, taking the hit himself. The wrecking ball slams into a nearby wall, leaving Zill flattened in the crater it leaves behind.
• Roy and Simon both get squashed flat several times during their cartoon battles in The Cartoon Man trilogy.
• In the Team Fortress 2 fan video Heavy in Shellnut, Scout flattens out each time he says the word "fat".
• Played for Drama in the second episode of Hanazuki: Full of Treasures, where the main character accidentally flattens Blue Hemka and needs to find a way to reinflate him when he doesn't reinflate on his own.
• Happy Tree Friends does a non-cartoonish example in the episode "Read 'em and Weep", Pop still thinking that his son is possessed by a demon, repeatedly slams a shovel on Cub's head (keep in mind that Cub is no longer possessed by the demon) until he is nothing but a bloody-crushed can, killing him.
• Kirby Guardian: Happens often to the Kirbies. The General and LostOne get stepped on by Adeliene in the first episode, and she accidentally drops a painting on all of them in the second. Despite the blood loss, the Kirbies get better in short time.
• Helluva Boss: In "C.H.E.R.U.B.", the advertisement for the eponymous group shows one of them lifting a giant boulder off someone, with the flattened person giving them a thumbs up.
• Ryan ToysReview:
  • In the episode "Arctic Adventures: Episode 1", Combo Panda is flattened by a boulder.
  • This also happens to Peck the Penguin in "Gus Vs. Robo-Combo" where he is stepped on by a metallic foot.
• In the Steve Cutts short Where Are They Now?, Roger Rabbit tragically dies when he accidentally knocks himself out with the TV remote and the morbidly obese Jessica Rabbit sits down and unknowingly crushes him. The film end with her getting up to reveal his decayed skeleton embedded in the couch.

Webcomics

• Girl Genius: One panel of Count Beausoleil's Death Montage shows one of his remote bodies being crushed flat by a large weight.
• Questionable Content: Played for Black Comedy when the AI Roko gets flattened under a falling robot. Her processors and memory cores weren't damaged, but she's still dismayed to have to buy a new body. And then there's the way the news is broken to her...
  Melon: It says in your file that you're a bread enthusiast. How do you feel about... pancakes? Or, um, crepes?

Web Videos

• Used for the Running Gag of Special Effect Failure in The Adventures of Captain Bucky and his Space Marshals, in Outer Space. The space marshalls are attacked by a terrifying Moon creature (actually a Chihuahua with slurpasaur add-ons). Cut to a giant prop monster paw coming down on a screaming marshall, then our heroes are shown clustered around a deflated blow-up doll wearing the marshall's spacesuit.
• "For today's extra content (on YouTube's Hydraulic Press Channel), we have this (clay animal). It is extremely dangerous and could attack at any time. We must deal with it." There's now a compilation video of his wife's clay animals experiencing a crushing defeat...
• Used in one of Just For Laughs more elaborate pranks here.

Western Animation

• 101 Dalmatians: The Series: Happens to every main character at least once throughout the series.
  • Cadpig has been flattened beneath Rolly's weight at least twice, in the episodes "You Slipped A Disk" and "Market Mayhem". In "Hog Tied", Lucky and Cadpig are both flattened by Rolly.
  • The pups are flattened multiple times in "He Followed Me Home" by the baby elephant they try to take care of. In the same episode, Cruella is flattened by a door.
• In The 7D, Grim and Hildy attempt to enter Jollywood Castle without disarming the security system, resulting in the door falling down and flattening them.
• The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo had Bogel and Weerd comically flattened like pancakes by the gestalt form of the 13 ghosts from the Chest of Demons after tricking Scooby and Shaggy into releasing them in the series' premiere episode "To All the Ghouls I've Loved Before".
• The Angry Beavers: In the episode "A Dam Too Far", Daggett comes floating down on Norbert while flat in one scene.
• Beast Wars inflicts this trope on the bots several times over its run. Dinobot slams into a tree, Waspinator gets slapped between Optimal Optimus' hands, and even Blackarachnia on one occasion gets a crate dropped on her.
• In one credits scene on Ben 10 (2016), Ben tries to cannonball into a pool as Cannonbolt, but bounces off a pool inflatable and accidentally slams Max into a wall, flattening him.
• Happens fairly regularly in Bonkers; The opening sequence even has a shot of Bonkers flying into a door and flattening himself.
• Bunnicula: In "Bunn Vs.", Bunnicula is flattened by a rock monster's fist. He actually uses this to his advantage, wrapping his flattened form around the monster's fist and giving it a paper cut.
• Happens to the eponymous characters in Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers in the episode "Out to Launch" after being subjected to a centrifuge at 12Gs. Also happens to Zipper after Dale falls on him in "Seer No Evil".
• Occasionally happened to Courage the Cowardly Dog.
• Sail Cat from Cow and Chicken, who got a whole song dedicated to his flattened destiny.
• Darkwing Duck knew how to use it to his advantage, like slipping under a door just after being squashed flat.
  • In another episode, he lampshades this effect, pointing out that if he were in a cartoon, he would say "aiee" or "ow" then return to normal, but is actually in excruciating pain.
• Dr. Dimensionpants: Elder Zoron suffers this in "Unicrone Penalty Box" when the eponymous box drops down right on top of him.
• Happened to Princess Candy in an episode of Dave the Barbarian.
• Happens all the time in Earthworm Jim when Jim, his enemies and others have heavy objects fall on them.
• Happens occasionally on Ed, Edd n Eddy, as pictured above.
  • Special mention goes to when Eddy is trying to get rid of Ed's loose tooth by painting a jawbreaker on a fence knowing that Ed would think it's real and run face-first into it. He does so while Double D is in the way, flattening the latter into a circle and him commenting "I've been violated."
  • Another incident occurs with Eddy, though only localized to his face: after a rubber band-powered jawbreaker-detecting satellite suffers a premature launch and careens out of control, smacking into Eddy during its flight of carnage. A dazed Eddy gets up, lamenting that just for once he'd like something to go as planned. The satellite promptly comes in for another pass, smashing into his face and smearing it to about three times his regular height.
    Eddy: Hello! [falls over again]
• The Emperor's New School used it twice in the first episode, when Kronk pulled the wrong lever, flattening Yzma, and when a boulder flattened one of the students running in the race.
• The Fairly OddParents! uses this trope some. One prime example is the episode "Freaks and Greeks" in which Timmy is trying to protect his mother's glass case from the gods of Mt. Olympus who use his living room as a place to party. "Don't ask." When the case is about to fall Timmy runs to it and tries to stop it from falling. It falls on him and when the case is removed Timmy is on the floor; very, very flat with a stunned expression.
• Family Guy: In "Stewie's First Word", Peter, following the advice of a Magic 8-Ball, decides to perform a "middle of the road puppet show" offscreen. Following a crashing sound, Peter returns, completely flattened (though he returns to normal during the theatre-style scene change).
• Happens often in The Flintstones. Two noteworthy times: Fred and Barney are glued to a bowling ball. They use two mastodons to pull them from the ball, but the glue is too strong, both beasts snap backwards into each other, squashing Fred, Barney and the bowling ball (still stuck) flat. In the other occasion, the two are being pursued by a jewel thief and his henchman when they got flattened by a stone tire. Recalling the thief's callous reaction to shooting another of his henchmen, Fred says "All I can say is 'tsk, tsk.'"
• In the Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends episode "Adoptcalypse Now", Mac is launching several imaginary friends through the window, each of which Bloo has to catch. One of the ones that is launched through is a gigantic, gorilla-like imaginary friend, who lands on top of Bloo when he tries to catch him. Afterwards, Bloo peels himself off the floor, groaning in pain.
• Futurama sees this happen to Bender in the episode "Raging Bender".
• Some episodes of The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy feature this, but the best example being in the Big Boogey Adventure, when the ship that the villains are on gets flattened vertically, and then falls over on its side.
• Also happens to the main characters, especially the eponymous girls, in Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi.
• Kiff:
  • In the episode "Hat", Kiff is trampled and briefly flattened by the classmates when they flock to see Barry and his hat.
  • Reggie also receives a similar kind of treatment to flattening in "Trevor's Rockin' Halloween Bash", where Scarm turns him into a poster on a wall.
• Krypto the Superdog:
  • Krypto gets flattened by an elephant in the episode "Talk to the Animals".
  • Streaky is flattened against a window while trying to hold up a collapsing building in "The Streaky Story".
• Happens to the main character in The Life and Times of Juniper Lee episode "It's The Great Pumpkin, Juniper Lee" when being crushed by a monster during the match.
• The Lion Guard: In "Eye of the Beholder", Janja's song "Outta The Way" features an Imagine Spot where a boulder rolls over four of the Lion Guard's members, flattening them.
• The Looney Tunes should get a special mention because of all the variations they would put on this trope. Sometimes characters would turn into puddles of goop with mouths, sometimes they would spring back up after being squashed into an accordion shape, or they might bend in certain ways depending on what hit them. They really had to mix it up, though, because some character getting hit with an Anvil on Head was pretty much a requirement for every other short.
  • Several other Warner Bros. cartoons use this as a Running Gag as well, such as Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, and Pinky and the Brain.
• Mega Man (Ruby-Spears): In "Robosaurus Park", Rush is stomped on by a robot dinosaur, reducing him to a metallic pancake.
• Alfred in the Mike, Lu & Og episode "Fathers and Pies".
• Motormouse and Autocat: In "The Paint That Ain't," Motormouse takes up painting with Autocat, naturally pursuing him. It climaaxes with Autocat getting flattened by a steamroller on top of a painting canvas, which Motormouse sells to a couple of mice...who plan to use it as a dartboard.
• This happened more than once to Mr. Bogus, considering the comedic nature of the show.
• Parodied in an episode of ¡Mucha Lucha! where Rikochet's rambunctious twin uncles appear to flatten him and his mother, then they come onscreen and the latter complains that the uncles stomped over their cardboard cutouts, with Rikochet adding that they can only get them in Tijuana.
• Happens to Applejack in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "Applebuck Season". She ends up face-planting several times while trying to jump off a tower and onto the other end of Rainbow Dash's catapult while severely exhausted, but she only flattens out the first time.
  • Happens twice in "Feeling Pinkie Keen" to Twilight Sparkle with a door.◊ (Sort of. Once she peels herself off, she retains her shape with no inflation, as if her body only went into the door.)
  • In "Luna Eclipsed", Fluttershy pancakes herself on the door of her house when Twilight closes it all of a sudden.
  • In "Fame and Misfortune", Twilight is once again flattened by a door, this time courtesy of a stressed-out Applejack.
• Buford is subjected to this in the Numb Chucks episode "Intelligence Not Included," after being run over by a steamroller.
• In Oggy and the Cockroaches, this is usually the fate of the cockroaches.
• The Owl House: The Greater Basilisk is ultimately defeated when Luz and the Troublemakers drop it several stories down through the dimensional doors from the Troublemakers' detention hideout back to the school stage and then dump several sandbags onto the top of it, popping the monster like a balloon and releasing its stolen magical energy.
• This happens to Woodstock in the Peanuts special "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" while attempting to play basketball with Snoopy.
• The Perils of Penelope Pitstop: The Hooded Claw gets flattened by a huge dough kneader in a fortune cookie factory at the conclusion of "Bad Fortune in a Chinese Fortune Cookie."
• In "Pluto's Judgement Day", one of the witnesses at Pluto's trial is a cat the dog chased under a steamroller, flattening him like a pancake. Even his balloon is flat!
• Implied then averted in the Popeye cartoon "Nurse To Meet Ya," where Popeye and Bluto are trying to deliberately injure themselves so they can be with nurse Olive at the hospital. Popeye lies in the middle of the street waiting for a steamroller ("Get the syrup, nursie...I'm gonna be flat as a pancake!") only to be scooped up at the last moment by a street cleaner.
• Buttercup becomes this in the The Powerpuff Girls (1998) episode "Down n' Dirty", and Bubbles and Buttercup are squished together in the episode "A Made Up Story".
• Razzberry Jazzberry Jam: In “Jazzberries Unplugged”, Buddy and Krupa are flattened after one of The Shock’s many, many gigantic amps falls on them. The Shock then scrapes them up, folds them into a paper airplane, and throws them (they were standing on the House Of Jam’s roof at the time; and hey, it does get them to the first floor faster than taking the stairs.) As to be expected from cartoon physics, they’re back to full three-dimensionality the next time we see them.
• In The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, this trope is Played for Horror. Although not shown, and for very good reason, a few scientists meet their end this way. It's obvious from Race's expression, and how soon he closes the door, that this was not a pretty way to go out.
• Done sometimes on The Ren & Stimpy Show: In fact, this occurs in the opening titles.
• Robot Chicken: In the segment "Mighty Tubby Power Rangers", Dipsy, Lala, and Tinky Winky get stepped on by a giant monster. It's fatal.
• Rocko's Modern Life: Rocko is flattened on a regular basis.
• Sonic the Hedgehog cartoons:
  • Happens many times in Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, usually to Scratch and Grounder. One such example occurs during the episode, "The Mystery of the Missing Hi-Tops", when Scratch and Grounder manage to flatten themselves with their own steamroller. Their flattened selves float into an envelope that Sonic holds, then drops into a mailbox, declaring it, "junk mail".
  • Happens to Sonic himself in "Robotnikland" when Robotnik has trapped him in a regular theme park that's been converted into an Amusement Park of Doom. He attempts to escape by burrowing through the ground, only to quickly find that the concrete flooring has been reinforced, flattening him into a circle.
  • In "Ro-Becca", one of the comedy-focused episodes of Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM), Sonic and Rotor knock down a door that Antoine was standing behind. As they leave, the door goes back up, and we find that Antoine got flattened.
• In the South Park episode "Fingerbang", Kenny dies by getting squashed by an elevator. His flat, bloody remains are then scraped off the bottom of it.
  • Kenny has been squashed dead several times, mostly by cars.
• This has happened a few times in SpongeBob SquarePants. One of the most notable instances being in the episode "Hall Monitor", when Patrick unknowingly lands on SpongeBob, flattening him.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): Michelangelo in "The Weird World of Wyrm," after the eponymous Reality Warper hits him with a hammer.
• Teen Titans Go! has this happen to Robin after getting body slammed by Mammoth in "Gorilla". Starfire and Raven also do it by themselves while Robin is shouting at them at the end of the episode. For some reason.
• Tex Avery naturally loved the trope. "The Early Bird Dood It" gets bonus points for Flat Cat doing an Euler disk.
• In one episode of Timon & Pumbaa, Timon is flattened after Pumbaa jumps on him.
  • Another episode has a large flying squirrel crash into Timon and smash into a tree, flattening him underneath her. There is even an indent in the tree where she landed. FYI, there was no part of Timon, save his arms, that wasn't between her and the tree. There is also a weird kissing sound effect for a few moments before she unpeels herself from the tree.
• In Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation, Fifi disguises herself as a star's manager to see him and annoys the actual manager. The woman, whose butt alone is bigger than Fifi is, responds by sitting on her.
• Tom and Jerry did this a lot, also putting variations on it.
• The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat: Felix suffers this in "Now Playing - Felix" when a hippo sits on him, his flattened form peeling off her backside.
• Happens to Dick Dastardly frequently on his two shows Wacky Races and Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines. He accentuates it in an episode of the latter after a gasoline barrel rolls right over him (using a play on words as opposed to his "Drat! And double drat!" catch phrase):
  Dastardly: Flat! Flat! And triple flat!
• Yogi Bear takes umbrage at a freeway built around his home tree (episode "Baffled Bear"). Finding himself in the middle of traffic, he plays possum. It seems to work as all the cars avoid hitting him. Not so effective when a steamroller approaches and flattens him like a tortilla.

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