Variable Terminal Velocity - TV Tropes

"Bulma, how high would you have to fall from to hit terminal velocity?"

• In Blood+, Hagi jumps off a building and manifests his chiropteran powers (wings) in mid-fall to catch Saya.
• Used bizarrely in Fairy Tail when Natsu and Wendy are knocked out of the air on the same time and Natsu hits the ground early enough before Wendy that he was able to crawl across it and catch her.
• Great Teacher Onizuka:
  • Kanzaki once traps Onizuka into inadvertently pushing her off a rooftop. Being who he is, Onizuka then proceeds to run straight down the wall of said building, catch her in her fall and take the impact for her. He survives.
  • Similarly, he saves Noboru when he's Driven to Suicide — twice — by diving off into him, catching him in midair, then absorbing the full force of the impact himself.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Stardust Crusaders: When the group performs a High-Dive Escape from DIO's mansion, they spent several minutes discussing on what The World's ability could be while falling at a slow pace before landing on a lower level.
  • Stone Ocean: After Pucci's C-Moon causes the entire gravity to shift at Cape Canaveral, every person and object gets immediately blown away, while the vehicle Jolyne and the others are in is able to stay on the road as its falling long enough for them to climb out.
• Mezzo Forte: The first episode of DSA has a really egregious example. Mikura has to take a rope to escape from the top floor of a building, but she also has a little girl to protect and bad guys to fend off. Solution? She chucks the girl out the window, slides down the rope (slower than falling), and gets outside just in time to catch the girl.
• In My-Otome, Arika and Mashiro are stuck in a cave with lava that's only dangerous if you touch it. Judging by the height of the ceiling they fell from, there was simply not enough time for Mashiro to unlock Arika's powers and for Arika to say "Materialize".
• In one of the final episodes of Noein, Haruka leaps off an insanely tall pillar to rescue a falling Yuu. Her ability to make the rules of space/time sit down and shut up may have had an impact on her ability to catch up to him.
• In Patema Inverted, the heroes Patima and Age fall more than they move normally: after some strange physical experiments, the "inverted" and the people of Aiga are affected by opposed gravity. When Patima and Age hold each other, they weight effective their difference — but this doesn't explain why they fall with constant speed on the one hand but can jump ballistic on the other hand.
• In the climax of Ranma ½'s long-running "Ranma and Nodoka" story arc, Ranma's mother goes flying off a cliff overlooking the ocean when Genma, who was carrying her, crashes into a tree. Ranma immediately springboards off the top of his father's head after her —repeat, springboards off the top of Genma's head, adding height to his leap when Nodoka is already plunging down. Although the cliff is, at best, a hundred feet high (Genma comes down via rope a few instants later) Ranma has enough time to a) somehow catch up to Nodoka, b) cradle her very gently in his arms, c) grab her sword and toss it at the cliffside further down, creating a foothold, and d) touch down on the sword very lightly. All while side characters gasp and comment on his actions, more worried that the water will reveal Ranma's secret to his mother than about either of them splatting on the cliff OR the water.
• When Tsukiyo (magically doll-sized) falls off a building in The World God Only Knows, Keima immediately jumps off to save her. After catching up to her, they then have enough time for a romantic midair kiss before Elsie saves them.

• The DCU: In a graphic novel compilation of stories of "B-list" superheroes, there were four stories with Robin, Blue Devil, Geo-Force, and one other. Standard Charles Atlas Superpower here, no flight or super-strength or cool gadgets, he's just peak-fitness-plus-a-few. He's hunting an obvious Take That! of the '90s Anti-Hero formula, a vigilante with a shoulder-mounted smartgun that could give the Bat-computer a run for its money in facial recognition software. Unfortunately, one of his targets happens to have a twin brother.... When he mows down the wrong brother by accident just as the "real" hero enters and get caught in the barrage trying to intervene, he jumps out of the window but is caught by mister wonderful. This trope is almost averted by the fact that the hero does a handstand on the windowsill and throws himself downwards; almost, because he has to get up from being shot (after flexing his pecs until the bullets pop out) and then run across the room to get to the window, coupled with the fact that the apartment is between 10 and 20 stories up at the most.
• This happens in an Italian-made comic of The New Adventures of He-Man. A hallucinating boy jumps off the roof of his school, and Nocturna saves him by jumping off the roof after him. As he does that, he thinks: "I will reach him even though I jumped after him, because I am much heavier than him!" Nocturna then proceeds to grab the boy in mid-fall with one hand, grab a conveniently placed pole with the other hand and safely somersault to the ground.
• During Secret Wars II, the Beyonder, in the body of an ordinary human, blithely walks off the roof of the Heroes for Hire building. Luke Cage leaps off to catch him, reasoning that since he's heavier, he'll fall faster. He's unable to confirm this theory, as the Beyonder simply teleports away, leaving Luke to crash to the pavement alone.

• In the Lamput episode "Sleepwalking", Lamput, through swimming-like motions, is able to force himself down quickly enough to get to Skinny Doc when he's falling from the edge of a balcony, when in real life he would never be able to catch up.

• In one of the Appleseed movies, Deunan makes her dramatic exit by jumping out of a really tall building and apparently has her companions throw her 4m-tall Powered Armor after her. She spreads out her arms and legs and lets the open suit land on her, seals the front hatch, and fires the jetpack about 2m before hitting the water below her. For no apparent reason, there was no hurry at all. In another scene, she has her armor crash into an enemy in midair and saves herself by jumping out just before the impact. Breareos and Thereos still have some time to chat and make plans what they have to do and then decide who should catch her. It's not the least plausible part of the film.
• Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children:
  • Cloud and Sephiroth spend almost the entire final battle in midair. Apparently, terminal velocity can be reduced to almost nothing. Sephiroth can actually fly, and Cloud is always, somehow, lifted by the strength of Sephiroth's blows. Justified since Sephiroth has enough Super-Strength to "lift" Cloud.
  • A better example occurs earlier, when Rufus and Kadaj are on the top of a building. Rufus reveals that he had Jenova's head all along, and proceeds to throw the box containing it off the building. Kadaj tries to hit him with magic, but he dodges by jumping off the building. Kadaj jumps several moments after him and still manages to fall fast enough to go past Rufus and grab the box before hitting the ground. Somewhat justified by the fact that the building explodes about a second after Kadaj jumps, meaning the shockwave from the explosion could have conceivably accelerated him past Shinra.
• Happy Heroes: The Movie: Both times Happy S. has to dive after Careful S. to save him, he is able to fall fast enough to be able to catch up with him. Perhaps justified in that Happy S. gets an extra boost through his power, however.
• Averted in The Incredibles when Elastigirl and her kids drop out of the airplane. All three fall at the same rate.
• The "catching up with a falling person" happens in the finale of Sailor Moon SuperS: The Movie, but the distances involved (starting from a magically floating ruin that's gradually ascending into the upper atmosphere) make it somewhat plausible.
• In Turning Red, Mei takes about 10 seconds to fall from just above the 95m tall SkyDome to just above ground level instead of the less than 5 seconds it should have taken which gives her enough time to locate her friends and Air Dash toward them.

• In Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, an attack helicopter is set onto a flatbed truck with its rotors locked for transport. The truck crashes and the chopper falls off a dam. The three characters are able to dive off the dam, catch the helicopter, unlock the rotors, spin up the engine, and fly away before it hits the ground.
• In The Dark Knight, Rachel Dawes is dropped out a window by the Joker, and Batman jumps out several seconds later to catch her. While her fall is slowed by a slanted wall directly beneath the window, Batman slides along the same wall, so his fall should have been likewise slowed. Finally, he saves her by flipping her so that she lands on him, regardless of the fact that the momentum change would still be enough to break most of her bones.
• Averted in I, Robot when Sonny goes to save Dr. Calvin from falling to her death. He is clearly shown propelling himself downwards towards her by pushing off from a metal railing, which explains why he falls faster.
• James Bond:
  • In Moonraker, Bond is thrown out of a plane without a parachute and uses the tucked position in order to catch up with the pilot, who had bailed out earlier and was falling in the boxman position. Bond overpowers him and steals the parachute. Before he can equip it properly though, Jaws catches up with Bond and Bond only escapes being bitten by deploying his parachute in the nick of time, slowing him enough that Jaws plummets away. All of that is reasonably accurate, although they were falling for long enough that they must have started above 25,000 feet, which would require oxygen equipment. However, when Bond detaches the parachute from the pilot, the pilot starts falling faster than Bond for no apparent reason.
  • In the opening sequence of GoldenEye, Bond drives a motorcycle over a cliff and catches a falling airplane with enough time to right it before it hits the ground.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: Happens in the opening scene when Gandalf uses the "reduced air resistance" trick catches up to his sword (which had an inconsistent profile, tumbling as it was), and accelerates further to take on the balrog, which is a huge thing with lots of surface area and wings. On top of that, Gandalf is an incognito angelic being, and in a film series with rings that cause invisibility, ghosts, giant fiery eyes, fire demons and elves one would think that people wouldn't be overly concerned about a plot-driven reason to tweak the laws of gravity, but there you are.
• In the Brazilian comedy movie Simão, o Fantasma Trapalhão, a clumsy man lets a wristwatch falls off a balcony, goes down the stairs and catches the watch before it hits ground. His explanation? "The clock was 5 minutes late."
• Spider-Man Trilogy:
  • Spider-Man: Spidey is able to grab Mary Jane after the Green Goblin drops her and a tram car. Despite said Jane and car being dropped at least a couple seconds before he goes after them.
  • Spider-Man 3: Inverted when Spidey pursues a plummeting Gwen Stacy. The reason he is able to catch up to her is that his super-agility and wall-crawling powers allow him to land on various falling rubble and use them as jumping platforms to accelerate himself to reach her. Averted later on when he has the power of the Green Goblin's flier to accelerate him faster than gravity would.
• Done realistically in Star Trek (2009). Sulu falls off the Romulan drill with no chute, and Kirk jumps later and catches him. However, Sulu only has five seconds on Kirk, Kirk catches up by exploiting air resistance as he profiles his body and Sulu spreads himself out, and they're VERY high up (they fall for more than a minute all told). Of course, it's all for naught as Kirk's chute breaks immediately and they have to rely on a miracle beam-up by Chekov on the Enterprise.

• In Look to Windward, a character visiting an Airsphere (an air-filled force field in space about 300,000 km across!) drops his pen and jumps after it, trying at first to catch it by freefalling but giving up and using powered thrust to overtake it. His hat on the other hand that blew off on the way down he decides he can get it on the way back up.
• Mistborn: The Feruchemical power to store weight has an interesting relationship with this trope. While this probably isn't how the power actually works, the physics play out roughly as if the Feruchemist is changing his density. In Mistborn: The Original Trilogy, a Feruchemist can jump off a cliff, store most of his weight, and air resistance will slow him to a manageable speed, as if his body were made of Styrofoam. On the other hand, when Waxillium Ladrian taps a bunch of his weight while jumping, he doesn't fall much faster (air resistance was presumably negligible even with his natural weight), he just falls a lot harder.
• As their ability to fly fails in So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, Arthur Dent realizes that he can't catch his falling girlfriend, because gravity doesn't work that way. He then realizes, physics be damned, that he was just flying a moment ago, and he'll damn well fall faster to catch up to her.

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer really goes overboard with this one. An evil monster jumps into a hole to kill itself and trigger the end of the world; Buffy has time to run to her boyfriend, tell him her plan, grab a line from him, run back to the hole, and jump in, dragging her line over the cliff edge. Does she make it? Well, we're still here, aren't we?
• A very specific version of this trope was proved true by MythBusters. It is in fact possible for Skydiver A (In vertical "bullet" posture) to overtake Skydiver B (who is in "spread-eagle" posture and has a head start) due to the difference in wind resistance.
• Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue has Ryan catch Captain Mitchell this way. They try to justify it by showing him pushing off the cliff in a manner that would launch him faster, but that would only make sense if he did it virtually instantaneously, rather than a second or two later. The implication of the scene is still that he's accelerating much faster.
• In Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Ami triggers her first transformation into Sailor Mercury while falling from a third-floor balcony — but the invocation of the change takes several seconds longer than it realistically would have taken her to fall. (Not the change itself, which is presumed to be instantaneous given evidence elsewhere in the series, but the hand gestures and the spoken words that set it off.)
• One Red Dwarf episode has Ace Rimmer jump out of an exploding plane and air-surf a crocodile down to a baddie who had parachuted out before him. (What a guy!) Then, after Ace steals the parachute, floats to the ground, rescues the local princess, takes off on a flying motorcycle, and skywrites "Smoke Me A Kipper, I'll Be Back for Breakfast", two guards who have witnessed all that have time to add this exchange: "He got away! I can't believe he got away!" "That was Ace Rimmer! We are lucky to be alive!" before the crocodile finally hits the ground — landing on top of them, naturally.

• The idea behind the Tower of Terror ride at Disney's Hollywood (ne MGM) Studios is that you're stuck in a malfunctioning elevator that rises and drops however it pleases. The reality however, is much scarier: the elevator car has cables to pull it up, but also cables on the bottom that pull it downwards even faster than the normal acceleration it would experience in free-fall. Appropriately enough, many agree that this is one of Disney World's most intense thrill rides.

• ANNO: Mutationem: Prior to the start of the Ruthless Rooftops area of Noctis City, Ann makes a pursuit after Loki who just performed a Super Window Jump, jumping out of the same window and making it over several buildings at a nominal speed and landing on one that's close enough to his location after a Casual High Drop.
• Battlefield: Bad Company 2 has you jumping out of a hole in the side of a crashing aircraft after two other people who are fighting over a parachute, shooting one of them and then taking the parachute.
• The Borderlands games feature an interesting version of this: supposedly, the gravity on both Pandora (where the first and second games take place) and Elpis (where The Pre-Sequel! takes place) is low enough that terminal velocity is low enough that characters will take no damage from falling whatsoever. However, this only applies to the areas in the games where you're supposed to go: step off of the map, and you'll find yourself falling to your death from a distance that you should be able to drop down with no trouble whatsoever.
• Everything or Nothing features a level where James Bond has to save the love interest from a death fall off of a cliff by jumping after her, catching up to her, and using his belt-grapple hook to arrest their fall. Considering he manages to come to a near immediate stop without breaking in half and falls for a good 60 seconds, they probably weren't going for realism.
• Final Fantasy:
  • The characters in Dissidia Final Fantasy fall at different rates. Kuja can float lazily down from heights, but Kefka will drop like a rock. No falling damage, though.
  • Averted in Final Fantasy VI. The party fights while falling down a waterfall and several encounters worth of enemies keep popping up and sticking while they're falling (and fighting).
• Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony has a mission where you throw a blogger out of a helicopter in flight, then you drop after him and catch him with your parachute.
• Averted in early boss fights in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. Samus is fighting Ridley... while falling down a very long generator shaft. Ridley uses his wings and claws to speed up or slow down respectively, but outside of that, both characters are falling at the same speed.
• One of the missions in No One Lives Forever implies exactly running onto a mook with a parachute and taking it from him in the air.
• Saints Row: The Third: In the mission 'I'm Free - Free Falling', you catch up to a parachute-less Shaundi, catch her, then drop her, go through the plane again, and re-catch her. Shaundi is less than happy.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • In Sonic Advance 2's Golden Ending, Sonic has to pull this trope after a Reentry Scare causes the Egg Prison to shatter and launch Vanilla out.
  • Sonic Generations contains several sections whereby you fall down a vertical shaft dodging obstacles. Pressing the boost button here makes Sonic fall faster. This is essential in the sixth boss, where you not only have to dodge obstacles, but actually have to catch up with the boss itself while falling. It's not falling, it's fleeing via rocket propulsion. You still catch it. It's somewhat justified in that Sonic eagle-spreads his limbs or streamlines himself to alter his wind resistance. Supplemental material also reveals that while he can't use his quills to glide like Knuckles, he can also use them to slow his fall.
• Super Mario RPG: When you fight Bowser at the beginning of the game, he is on a chandelier being held by a Kinklink, and opposite him is another chandelier likewise held by a Kinklink, Mario standing on it. When Bowser's chandelier drops, it is followed shortly by Mario's, but it's able to catch up with his.
• Most of the characters in the Super Smash Bros. series have a variable terminal velocity and reach it almost instantly. Starting from Melee, these differences became more pronounced, especially the case of Fox, who for some odd reason falls twice as fast as most of the cast, which works both for and against him. A character's maximum falling speed also increases significantly if you're using a Metal Box.

• Happens in Red vs. Blue after the Director blows up the skyscraper in season 9. Tex kicks the Sarcophagus off the roof, then the others jump after it and end up catching up to it. However, it's done fairly realistically — the Sarcophagus isn't exactly streamlined, while the Freelancers chasing it have their limbs tucked in until they reach it, at which point they spread out to more like the "boxman" position to match its speed. York and Carolina getting "caught" by Maine in the Warthog is probably an example of this, though.

• Darkwing Duck: In one episode, Darkwing finds himself falling with a coconut-shaped bomb next to him, having involuntarily been ejected from his plane. He tries to throw it up and away, and it catches up. Twice, same result. When he isn't throwing it, it doesn't pass him either. Yet more ridiculously, when he throws it to the side, it returns; he just resigns himself to fate at that point.
• The Dragon Prince: In "The Final Battle", Callum manages to catch up to and rescue Rayla since he is falling headfirst through the air and later is able to execute a magically enhanced power dive which enables him to go much faster than any ordinary person could. What makes less sense is why Viren is falling so much faster than Rayla, given that they went off the cliff at the same time and his flowing robes ought to provide more air resistance than Rayla's skin-tight getup, if anything.
• Family Guy employs this with people, who tend to fall almost instantaneously while drunk or in some sort of humorous circumstance where a fall is imminent. Otherwise, physics is pretty normal.
• Subverted in the Futurama episode "Less Than Hero". The villain drops a precious gem from the top of a staircase, and Fry, who's up there with him, leaps to catch it; Leela shouts "No, Fry! You can't fall fast enough!" (Then Leela gets there in time to catch it by, ahem, running down the stairs... The commentary notes that this is not really possible. Note that this episode involves the use of a cream that gives Leela and Fry superpowers, one of these powers being Super-Speed.)
• Gargoyles has Goliath meeting Elisa by rescuing her from a fall off the top of Xanatos' skyscraper... which he somehow manages to do despite her having a good five-second head start. (The top level of Xanatos' skyscraper is actually above the cloud level, a necessary component of the spell to revive the titular Gargoyles, so it's possible that Goliath has enough time to catch up to her.) A later incident has Matt Bluestone falling, but he spreads his limbs out as wide as he can to create as much drag as possible to allow Goliath to catch him in a pursuing dive.
• Jackie Chan Adventures: In the first episode of season four, Jackie sneaks aboard the Dark Hand jet, only for the Enforces to simply strap themselves in and open the door in midair. A few seconds after he gets sucked out, Jade jumps after him with a parachute.
• The Perils of Penelope Pitstop: In "Cross Country Double Cross", the Hooded Claw cuts Penelope's parachute and notes cynically that it's falling faster than she is.
• Discussed in an episode of The Secret Saturdays. Drew's brother relates a story from his adventures that involves him leaping out of a plane to catch up to someone who'd jumped before him. Doc skeptically asks how he managed to do so after reaching terminal velocity. The answer? "I'll show you terminal velocity."
• Defied in the Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century episode "The Empty House": Sherlock realizes that Moriarty had staged his death when the two seemed to fall into an energy field. Both did fall at the same time, but Holmes managed to catch himself on a ledge and then threw a rock at the energy field. The fact that the impact on the field was simultaneous told him that Moriarty did the same thing.
• In Star Wars: The Clone Wars, during the Zygerian arc, Ahsoka saves a Togruta slavegirl who falls from the holding cell's Trap Door by jumping after her, arriving on top of the rescue ship before her, and catching her. Might be justified, as she probably used the Force to first speed herself up, then to protect themselves from landing too hard.
• Happens frequently in Teen Titans (2003) when Robin has to catch something or save someone.
• Averted in the very first scene of Thunderbirds Are Go. When saving a falling man in the opening of "Ring of Fire", Virgil doesn't even try to dive after him, and even Thunderbird 2 doesn't catch up just by falling — instead he gets back in and uses the ship's rockets to dive faster.
• This is a stock trope in the Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner cartoons. If the Coyote ends up going off a cliff at about the same time as a boulder, anvil, or other heavy object, he will hit the ground first, and then the other object will land on him.

• Truth in Television with skydiving. Some people actually do fall faster than the others — the terminal velocity is actually dependent on the body mass/body surface ratio, as the drag coefficient is dependent of the surface area. They are known as "fast descenders" When doing formation skydiving, other skydivers may need to take on lead weights to keep on with their free fall velocity.
  • Likewise, a skydiver can change his or her free fall speed by altering his/her surface area. When you pull your legs up or increase the body bend, you will fall faster, and when you bend your legs downwards, you will fall slower. It is also possible to move forward and backward while in free fall, and also bank.
  • A common variant involves somebody skydiving without a parachute, catching up with something that will save them (a parachute, an opponent with a parachute, an aircraft!) in the nick of time (sometimes even racing for it with someone else), and surviving.
  • Interestingly enough, this could actually work — someone falling with a parachute will tend to fall in the "boxman" position, spread-eagle with their belly towards the ground, and may remain that way for some time before deploying the chute. If someone else left the plane shortly after them and fell with their arms and legs tucked against their body, face towards the ground, then they would have a much higher terminal velocity, and could catch up with the would-be parachutist... though pity them if they miss their target and must now contend with falling towards the Earth with no means of slowing their descent.
  • Confirmed by the MythBusters when they took on the movie Point Break (1991),^note  though it was determined that both men would have to jump from a much greater altitude than they did in the movie in order to have enough time to make it work.
  • The "boxman" position is known also as stable position. It is indeed stable — the center of gravity is low so the skydiver will not tumble or roll in that position. This is critical for deploying the chute so that it will not get tangled.
  • This actually happened in the case of a particular skydiving incident — the first man struck his head while diving out and was rendered incapable of operating his parachute, so his companion jumped after him, caught up, and activated his parachute. This is explained because the first man was tumbling and providing significant air resistance, as explained above.
  • The terminal velocity is actually dependent of not only the gravitational acceleration, but also drag. Mathematically the terminal velocity is expressed as v = sqrt(2mg/ρAC) where m = mass, g = gravitational acceleration, ρ = air density, A = area of the free-falling body and C = drag coefficient. The terminal velocity of a human being on free fall in stable spread eagle position is 54 m/s (180 ft/s). A skydiver will attain that in twelve seconds.
  • It is perfectly possible for a skydiver to attain higher velocities by reducing one's area, such as in delta position or vertical dive. Performing the changes of speed and direction are actually part of the skydiving training program.
  • Something like this actually happened on a skydive near Peterborough, England in the 1990s. A skydiver's chute failed, and another, more experienced skydiver actually managed to catch up with them, trigger their reserve chute and then his own chute a few seconds later. The only thing wrong with the reserve chute was that the skydiver was too panicked.
• Near the end of the Apollo 15 mission, astronaut David Scott performed an experiment that involved dropping a heavy hammer and a feather (a falcon feather) from chest height on the surface of the moon. In the near-perfect vacuum of the lunar surface, both objects hit the ground simultaneously, leading Scott to comment that Galileo was right.

  Scott: [cheerfully] How 'bout that?