Soft Water

"Chief, you don't have to worry about sharks if our plane crashes at sea; because you think water's soft, since you can swim in it or drink it. But it's funny, when you hit that water from way up there, ssssa-MACK! It's just like hittin' concrete!"
—Pruitt, CPO Sharkey

Soft Water comes into play when a fall from any height at all can be rendered harmless or merely incapacitating if, at the end of the fall, the character meets a body of deep water (and sometimes, not even all that deep).

In the real world, falls into water from even moderate heights can be injurious if not done correctly, as anyone who's belly-flopped or back-smackered off a diving board can attest to. Falls from a sufficient height into water will be fatal regardless of whether or not it's done "correctly". A fall at eighty miles per hour into water is lethal; meanwhile the average human body falls at roughly 120 miles per hour, in as little as 10 seconds (from 200 feet).

In real life, a person who falls into very deep water and enters it in a dive may fare better than hitting ground because they are making a gradual rather than a sudden stop. However, there will still be a lot of force exerted on the person's body, given that water is about 800 times as dense as air. So if you've ever been hit by 120 mph (55 m/s) wind, just imagine if the air was 800 times as thick to get an idea of hitting water at that speed. To make matters worse, entering a diving posture in preparation for entering the water will increase a person's terminal velocity, meaning they will be going even faster when they enter the water.

There's also the issue of one's swimming ability—many people who are fortunate enough to survive the fall itself will often drown because of poor swimming ability or injuries will make them unable to keep their head above the water (particularly if knocked unconscious). Then there's the issue of exhaustion, as even the fittest and most skilled swimmers simply cannot tread water forever. Or, if the water is sufficiently cold, often they will just succumb to hypothermia and drown before help can reach them. Not to mention the possibility of being knocked out by the impact...

In short, a fall into the drink from 200 feet or more will pretty much always be fatal—whereas a fall even onto "solid" ground may not!

But in TV-world, after a moment or two of dramatic silence (and perhaps tears of shock and mourning from onlookers), the hero or heroine will emerge from the lake/ocean/pool none the worse for the wear, except being a bit wet. Which can be kinda cool.

Falls into water from high cliffs are a great way for writers to provide a Disney Villain Death for a character (or a relatively blood-free Karmic Death in the case of villains) while at the same time leaving open a possible future return because everybody's absolutely certain that No One Could Survive That, and they probably never find a body.

Of course, this all depends on the falling character not having Super Drowning Skills.

In some cases Hollywood water can be justified because in particular places water really does become softer. Kayakkers have paddled off waterfalls over 180 foot high and survived because the water coming off the falls breaks the surface of the river below and introduces a lot of air into it, which comes up as bubbles. They're not actually landing in water, but in a water/air mixture with a lower density than just water. This off course does introduce a completely new set of problems because it means the falling person will end up diving to a greater depth than they would have done in normal water and thereby increasing their chances of hitting the riverbed, especially when not using a kayak or another device with several hundreds of liters of air inside to help one avoid such a fate (such as the barrels used for going down the Niagara falls).

This trope has resulted in a rather interesting side effect: Usually, in order to show that a given potential fall into water would be dangerous, they'll show the water as being turbulent with jagged rocks. Because that's somehow more fatal.

This goes in both directions. A character or a building hit by a wave crashing over them often won't get as much damage as they would in real life, despite the fact that one cubic yard of water weighs nearly a ton. (A cubic meter of water weighs a metric ton.)

Note: "Soft water" also won't stop bullets, which visibly penetrate water quite deep with prominent "bullet-streaks" and fatal strikes. However, MythBusters demonstrated that no supersonic bullet can penetrate more than 14 inches (35 cm) of water. Subsonic pistol rounds do better, penetrating a few feet. And any other bullet's trajectory will be thrown off in a large body of water. A target is unlikely to be hit anyway, since light-diffraction from the water makes their location appear slightly off, disrupting a gunner's aim and the impact of the bullet at the water's surface will likely change the bullet's trajectory to some degree.

MythBusters also demonstrated that even at very high velocities, water is significantly softer than concrete—falls that would be fatal on land become survivable in water. (Assuming the impact doesn't make you breathe in water, that you can swim to the surface, or pass out as your brain whiplashes in your skull from the sudden change in velocity, etc.)

No relation to the stuff that comes out of a household water softener—which isn't any gentler to land on from a great height than hard water.

Examples of Soft Water include:

Played straight

Advertising

A NSFW commercial by Fleggaard shows nearly-naked female skydivers, one of which fails to open her parachute and lands in a pool from a height of several hundred meters. She climbs out completely unscathed and her biggest problem is that she is now completely naked among several visitors of a nearby party.

Anime & Manga

In the end of Ouran High School Host Club, Tamaki and Haruhi take a tumble off a bridge -- from a moving car and a moving horse-drawn carriage, respectively -- into deep water. They come out of this completely unharmed, and not even emotionally shaken.
- In another, earlier episode, Haruhi is pushed off of a cliff, into the water. Now, it looks like this trope will not be in effect, as Haruhi is noticably unconscious and appears to be drowning. So what does Tamaki do? He jumps in after her, in a diving position, hits the water, grabs Haruhi, and pulls them both out of the water, more or less completely safe.
In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Fate's last battle against the title character ended with her unconscious form falling from a great height into the sea without any (additional) injury. Of course, later seasons have shown that a mage's Barrier Jacket allow them to get smashed through several floors worth of building and perform hard drops from helicopters, so that ended up looking pretty tame in comparison.
The title protagonists from Michiko to Hatchin fall into the sea from a balloon that is flying at a considerable height. They get wet.
Played straight in Black Cat, where Train jumps from a skyscraper into a lake below, but first shoots the water to break the water and make it appropriately soft.
- MythBusters busted that one, too. The recoil does slow you down a bit, but not nearly enough.
Used in Sonic X, where Sonic makes an incredibly large leap... only to start falling—and then land in a pool! Subverted in the next moment though, because this being Sonic, he sinks to the bottom and has to be fished out.
Ranma ½
- Near the beginning, Ranma takes his fight with Kunô outdoors—by jumping out the third floor window. Even though there's a pool below, Kunô is horrified; Ranma panics only because the water will trigger his change and possibly reveal it to the school at large. True enough: when they hit, Ranma is perfectly fine and tries to swim away. Kunô, however, is knocked out, and only wakes up while she is dragging him to safety.
- And near the end, Ranma has to dive over a cliff after his mother, saving her from falling into the raging waters below. Since they all fall into the water a few scenes later, from a much lower height, it's made clear that the danger didn't come from the rocks at the foot of the cliff, but from hitting the water from the top of the cliff.
- The anime version is somewhat inconsistent: the example with Kunô mentioned above merely stuns him for a few moments, and he grapples with Ranma while still in the pool. Also, in the first movie, after being tossed overboard from Kirin's flying boat, several hundred feet in the air, the whole cast (sans Ranma, Lychee, Happôsai, and the elephant Jasmine) splashes harmlessly into the water below.
- Averted in the Cursed Doll storyline: a possessed Akane pulls Ranma down with her off a cliff overlooking the water; Ranma immediately pushes her around so he hits the water first, shielding her from a direct impact. It's this action that convinces the doll's spirit that she had wrongfully blamed Ranma, and peacefully changes places with the real Akane again.
In the Angel Blade: Punish! OAV 2, Highly Visible Hottie Ninja Ayame jumps from a diving board on a 99-meter-tall tower. Naturally, she dives in the pool unharmed... except that she loses her two-piece bathing suit in the water, to the great delight of the men around. Why a 99-meter-tall diving tower was built in the first place isn't addressed.
MAR
- Ginta is standing on a pillar to confront Alviss, landing in the pool created by a waterfall. He has enough momentum that he injures himself on the pool's bottom and complains as he climbs out.
- In an example that crosses over between this and Giant Robot Hands Save Lives, Snow saves herself from a fall which the watching characters clearly expect her to go splat from, she saves herself by calling on her giant snowman and landing safely in it's hand.
In Yu-Gi-Oh, a cornered Seto Kaiba jumps out a window of a house on a large cliff with a body of water at the bottom. Filled with jagged rocks. He is later shown coming out of said body of water uninjured. And climbing up the cliff. With one hand. With the other hand lifting a very heavy briefcase.
One Piece
- Luffy and a contingent of pirates of mostly Devil Fruit users (who are thus incapable of swimming) free their ship from being stuck at the top of a giant-sized frozen solid tidal wave, by breaking their ship out. What they weren't aware of is that they would fall into an equally frozen warzone. Fortunately, they happen to land in a hole in the ice made when a giant-sized iceberg was torn out of the sea to be used as a projectile. All this landing on the water from a height of "so high it wasn't even in vision" did not hurt any of them in the slightest, aside from momentary unconsciousness from Super Drowning Skills. Luffy is at least justified—he's virtually immune to blunt impact—and a few of the other characters have similar excuses, but at least half of them should have died. On the other hand, most of them are still Made of Iron when not directly Made of Diamond. We're still talking about former Impel Down prisoners, who endured ghastly tortures for a long period of time.
- Sadly Averted earlier though, the hard landing from the group leaving Skypeia worsened the hull damage Belamy's crew caused to the Going Merry, this damage made it irrepairibly trashed, which led to them having to give it a burial at sea when it's not longer fit for sailing.
In the "Night Baron Virus" case from Detective Conan, the title character sneaks into a hotel room to search for clues. When he gets near to the balcony, someone enters and pushes him off it. Did we mention that this room was several stores up the building? Conan is just waaaaay too "lucky" that said room was right above the hotel pool, where he lands without much injury. And it becomes a Chekhov's Gun, since he deduces that the victim of the week was thrown from the same balcony, but under different circumstances -- by the same person who almost killed him.
In the Axis Powers Hetalia movie Paint It White, everyone jumps out of the alien mothership (while it was in flight) and fall very, VERY far into the ocean below. Other than being knocked unconscious on impact, none of the characters show anything worse than minor scrapes and bruises when they reconvene on the island below. Possibly justified in that the countries are generally very difficult to hurt (like Britain having a missile sticking out of his head), but falling from above the cloud layer should not be survivable ever.

Comic Books

Played totally straight in an issue of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic. Buffy and Willow are facing a fall onto solid concrete from the top of a skyscraper. In order to avert their inevitable demise, Willow magically changes the sidewalk into water. They climb out with nothing more than wet clothes.
- Well, it makes as much sense as being able to transmorgify conrete into water in the first place.
Scrooge McDuck
- Scrooge McDuck discovers his trademark ability to swim through cash like it was water when he's thrown off a cliff onto a moving train full of cash below. Naturally, he uses it as Soft Water to save his life. If it's paper-money then this is understandable—but not if it's coins, obviously.
- In one comic, Scrooge McDuck actually defeats the Beagle Boys this way, right after the Boys have succeeded in legally stealing Scrooge's entire fortune. Scrooge asks them for one last "swim," which the Boys magnanimously grant, though with the suspicion that their victory has left Scrooge so despondent that he plans to break his neck on his lost fortune. On seeing Scrooge dive into a pile of metal coins and surface not only completely unharmed, but swimming and jumping in and out of the money like a dolphin, they decide it looks so fun that they try it themselves... only to knock themselves cold on the hard surface from a much shorter dive. Scrooge's confused nephews ask Scrooge how he manages to swim through money like he does, but Scrooge only reveals that "there's a trick to it." The Boys are left in a coma for months, during which time Scrooge undoes all the legal maneuvering they performed to steal the McDuck fortune.
In the thankfully short-lived Norwegian comic Dido, the eponymous hero (yeah, his parents actually called him that) dives into a lake from what looks like about 100 feet. The Bad Guy turns impatiently away declaring that no-one could have survived that fall, but moments later the kid emerges from the lake still in one piece with no explanation whatsoever and no complaints other than "Ouch, that really hurt!" And that was only the last in a row of unlikely escapes...
In an early issue of Firestorm, Firestorm transmutes the pavement into water to save Hyena from a fall of several dozen stories. She lands unharmed.

Comic Strips

Dilbert, of all things, features a variation on this. Elbonian air travel, which works by being shot out of giant sling shots at high speeds and sometimes intercontinental distances, doesn't kill or seriously injure the "passengers" because the entire country is made of mud.

Fan Works

In Metal Gear Solid: Fight of Metal Gears, Jake Snake survives jumping out of his plane without his parachute opening by landing in water.

Films -- Animation

Disney's Pocahontas. The title character dives off what looks to be a 500-foot cliff into the lake below. To no ill effect whatsoever. And she's such a good diver she enters the water without even making a splash. The Mary Sue.

Films -- Live-Action

In the film version of The Lord of the Rings:
- Gandalf and the Balrog fall for a particularly long time, but are saved simply by landing in an underground lake. But then again, one is an angel and the other is a semi-legendary monster from the First Age. Gandalf and the Balrog, in the book, were both stated to be capable of falling to their deaths; however in the movie, they fell miles to the water, but still were none the worse for wear when they hit bottom.
- Aragorn also survived a fall off a cliff with a Warg into the river. Aragorn fell only a relatively short distance—but was still knocked unconscious, and was severely weakened afterward; he was only rescued by a super-intelligent horse of Rohan.
Ironically used in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, where Obi-wan is believed dead after falling from a cliff into deep water from about 60 feet: in response, the clones say "he couldn't have survived that fall", despite knowing full-well that Jedi are capable of falling safely from extreme heights—and likewise knowing that Jedi carry compact SCUBA equipment (both of which Obi-wan in fact uses to escape).
- In the novelisation, the clone commander insists that Obi-Wan isn't dead until they find the body. Naturally, Obi-Wan escapes.
Used by the protagonist to escape arrest and pointed out by the antagonist in National Treasure:

Ian: You all right, Ben? No broken bones? A jump like that could kill a man.
Ben: No, it was cool. You should try it some time.

Justified by the previous mention that Ben studied wreckage diving at the Naval Academy -- he would likely have learned how to dive from heights "correctly" to avoid worse injury. They even showed him diving the correct way: feet first with arms crossed.

Played to the hilt in True Lies. After a shootout in a mall, the main villain rides a motorcycle to the roof of a hotel, then drives it off the edge and splashes down in the pool on the roof of a building across the street. Considering his parabolic arc, the drop must have been at least a hundred feet, but he's uninjured and impaired only by a sopping wet trenchcoat. The horse that ~~Arnold~~ Harry Tasker rides in this chase makes this "you've GOT to be kidding me" look when Harry tries to make him follow and stops just short of the edge, pitching Harry out of his seat and causing him to dangle precariously.
The ultimate example is shown in Commando, where Matrix jumps from the landing-gear of an airliner just after take-off—only to be saved by landing in about 18 inches of water (it even has reeds and cat-tails in it!). Even if the falling-distance itself wasn't far enough to be harmful, the velocity of the plane at take-off (175 knots plus) would cause him to be moving faster than terminal velocity, being certainly fatal. Likewise, the lateral motion from the plane would cause him to skip like a stone across the surface of the water, causing a certain fatality. But in the movie, he just falls in as if he had stepped off of a 5-foot platform.
The eponymous protagonist himself in The Bourne Identity is shot, falls of a boat, and ends up injured further with his plot-driving amnesia. In The Bourne Ultimatum, he jumps off a building into water and survives. Never mind that he gets shot while in mid-jump. However, it could be one of the reasons it took him so long to move after hitting, the wound and avoiding surfacing to be spotted also viable arguments. Meaning that he was even able to take a deep breath of air before impact! Even James Bond would be amazed.
In XXX: State of the Union (xXx 2: The Next Level) the protagonist shoots a grenade into the water he's about to fall into, thus heavily aerating the water and actually making it Soft Water. Granted, he'd probably still die, but they tried.
- MythBusters tested ye ole drop-something-in-first trick. Didn't do squat. They blew up part of the water first. That one, the impact into the water wouldn't kill you. The EXPLOSION would.
Used at the climax of Death Becomes Her—Ernest Menville falls off an enormous mansion, smashes through a stained-glass skylight, and lands in an indoor pool, with only a nasty-looking (but utterly unthreatening) cut on his arm and a wet tuxedo for it. Cheap but forgivable on its own, until one considers the entire movie has been focusing on ways in which a body can be horribly mangled and playing them for laughs. Unless the mansion was over 100 feet high, then this is easily do-able; and the skylight would actually slow his fall; glass can't cut you if you hit it sideways. Finally, the water could protect him from the falling glass, as long as he was under it when it hit.
Lampshaded and played straight in Face Off where the main character is on a prison oil rig with information that if you should attempt to swim away the fall with kill you. He jumps anyway, in shackles, and not only manages to survive the fall but somehow get back to mainland without too much of a problem.
Somewhat subverted in Club Dread: Before jumping off a cliff into water, Juan tells the others to close their legs, or else they'll die from the fall. However, what he says will happen isn't exactly accurate.
Done by Riggs in the original Lethal Weapon movie when he falls out of a window and lands in a pool. To make matters worse, he gets mad at his partner for not following him out the window. Again, distance is important. 10 stories is plausible: 20 isn't.
Happens in House, starring William Katt. In a scene where Katt is going down a rope into nothing but darkness, the rope is cut and Katt falls for several seconds, landing in water. He is not harmed by the landing.
In Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man, the two title characters jump from the roof of a tall building into a swimming pool below without any injuries.
The Fugitive. "The guy did a Peter Pan right off this dam, right here!" The fall in question is a special case, however, as it's not straight down into a pool of water. Kimble drops into water that is flowing down the outside of the dam, which curves outwards. Provided he could hold his breath for long enough, and the initial contact was at a sufficiently shallow angle, he could have used the dam as a slide. Some may be familiar with the now-vanished funfair / amusement park rides that used the same principle, only with polished plywood rather than water down concrete.
Happens to Plenty O'Toole in the James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever.
Resident Evil: Afterlife has some people in an elevator. The solution to not having a working motor? Cut the cable and drop the elevator in the water below.
Pirates of the Caribbean
- Elizabeth Swann faints from her corset being too tight, and falls off a cliff into some Soft Water. She is in danger of dying, but it's from drowning; the impact seems to have not hurt her at all.
- In On Stranger Tides, Blackbeard makes Jack Sparrow jump off a high cliff into a river to retrieve a MacGuffin, though this time it's actually acknowledged that the fall could kill him (Hence Blackbeard sending Sparrow instead of one of his more trustworthy crewmen). Blackbeard's Quartermaster "solves" this by throwing a Voodoo Doll of Jack into the river. Since the doll was undamaged, Sparrow himself was also able to make the jump unharmed. Or maybe he just got lucky.
At the end of the first Ghostbusters movie, the EPA officer has a huge amount of melted marshmallow fall on him. It doesn't crush him to death, despite the fact that it is probably thicker than water and fell over 20 stories before hitting him.
12 Rounds: Two people fall out of a helicopter into a swimming pool and survive with no obvious injuries.
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
- Mary Watson is thrown from a moving train into water with little injury.
- Near the end of the film, inspired by The Adventures of The Final Problem, Holmes falls down a waterfall with Prof. Moriarty and is presumed dead until the last scene.
Played straight naturally in ((Batman & Robin)). Freeze demolishes a wall by freezing it with water (What, You expected Them to follow other laws of physics?), only to reveal an absolutely massive drop to water. They jump without any hesitation, only commenting about being able to swim.

Literature

Unlike the movie version of The Lord of the Rings, it's uncertain in the book whether Gandalf and the Balrog fell into Soft Water, or the fall was simply a shorter distance than it looked. While Gandalf and the Balrog aren't ordinary humans, the story elsewhere made clear that both Gandalf and Balrogs could be killed by falling—earlier, for example Gandalf had been imprisoned on top of Orthanc solely by the 500' drop, while in The Hobbit Gandalf almost jumped from the top of a fir-tree, and Tolkien said "that would have been the end of him." Likewise, in The Silmarillion a Balrog fell to its death. In crafting the Lord of the Rings, Tolkien wrote in his notes that since Gandalf had to survive the fall, then "The gulf was not deep (only a kind of moat and was full of silent water)"; however this may or may not have been used, since in the story Gandalf later says "little had I guessed the abyss that was spanned by Durin's bridge." Gimli said that no plummet had ever found the bottom; however stone plummets sink into water, and so the water could have been miles deep, but only 100 feet below the surface. While Gandalf said "long time I fell," seven seconds can seem a long time while falling. Likewise, Gandalf also said "his (the balrog's) fire was all about me, I was burned;" however again, Gandalf wasn't burned too badly to fight (and kill) the balrog after chasing it for days through tunnels and up miles of stairs, so its fire couldn't have been "all about him" for more than a few seconds.
- The danger for Gandalf in the hobbit was more due to the spears and weapons of the goblins than the fall, and he would have used more of his natural power fighting the balrog allowing him to survive the fall in moria, he also stepped into famirirs pyre to lift him out in the book, showing he has a resistance to fire, allowing him the battle the balrog for some time while falling.
- Actually, my take from the book was that Gandalf died. He was just brought back to life by the good forces as Gandalf the White in order to continue the fight against evil. And, of course, Gandalf is a semi-human wizard as well.
Percy Jackson and The Olympians
- In Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief, Percy explicitly thinks of the falsity of this trope, that water would be no different from concrete, before risking it because he's Poseidon's son. Which does prove enough to help him. In The Last Olympian, he pulls off another such jump—but he knows the demigod with him died, because not being Poseidon's children, he was not immune to the reality.
- Beckendorf's death in The Last Olympian has less to do with Soft Water not applying and more to do with the fact that he was still on the ship when it exploded. Luke/Kronos did survive both the explosion and the fall, but only because he was invulnerable. The book was very unclear on how exactly Ethan survived, but it's indicated that the other demigods onboard were killed.
- Percy warns Ethan and the other demigods to get off the ship. Percy is immune to any harm from water—he can breathe it, see through it, not be crushed by the pressure of it, not be injured falling into it... hell, he doesn't even get wet unless he wants to.
- Further averted in the same series: Percy and Thalia have an argument. Thalia hits Percy with a bolt of electricity, so he lifts up the entire river to hurl at her. Chiron shouts at him to stop what he was doing, implying he would have killed Thalia. He is distracted by the Oracle before he can throw the water.
In The Magic School Bus Inside a Hurricane, Arnold (along with the talking radio) survives a fall from an airplane into the ocean, and is rescued by a fishing boat. The "letters" page after the story includes a note from the Coast Guard explaining that it would not have gone that way in real life.
Fang in Maximum Ride describes diving into the ocean from 500 feet up as equivalent to God punching his face. He survives, though, completely unharmed and swimming back to shore in a matter of minutes.
In The Count of Monte Cristo, Edmond Dantes escapes the island fortress Chateau d'If by being thrown off a cliff into the sea. He emits a shout as he hits the water, but it's the sudden cold that causes it, rather than dropping just shy of a hundred feet. He swims away and is completely fine afterward.
In Angels & Demons, Langdon survives a fall from the helicopter into the Tiber river thanks to a tip he learned from a Chekhov's Classroom. It's noted by the emergency personnel who save him that he didn't break his bones.
- Averted in The Movie, where Langdon was never on the helicopter in the first place; only the Camerlengo, who in both versions used a parachute and landed near St. Peter's Square.
Despite having not only been thrown into a deep-water-covered bog at high speed but also hit by a dragon's tail, Simon Heap in Flyte survives the fall. (One notes that he can breathe underwater so drowning, at least, was not a danger.)
In Michael Flynn's The January Dancer, even gas is not soft—a man observes that at the rate a ship is going, hitting a star would be like hitting a brick wall, even though it's all gas.

Live-Action TV

In the Lexx episode "The Beach", Stanley Tweedle and Kai fall from the upper atmosphere of Water into the ocean below. Kai, being dead, merely sinks to the bottom (he can't float) but Stanley of course is perfectly fine. Making this even more stupid? Stanley later gets exhausted and drowns. (He got better, though.)
Followed to a T in the Hornblower TV movie Retribution, when Hornblower, Kennedy and Bush decide to jump from a cliff to get back on their ship. We even get the choice quote: "It's only water! You won't break anything!"
- And then we get a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid shoutout with Lt. Bush screaming that he can't swim.
On Alias, Sidney dives from a balcony into a pool from a height with dubious survivability.
Done twice in the Alice mini-series.
In an episode of MythBusters, Adam and Jamie investigated a viral video showing a man making a 115-foot long waterslide jump into a kiddy pool. Oddly the team didn't take up whether the foot-deep pool would actually make the landing survivable, testing only distance and accuracy. In addition, MythBusters have tested the saying that, at a certain speed, hitting water is like hitting concrete (a myth previously perpetuated on this very page). They found that water is always softer than concrete, even at terminal velocity. Obviously at a certain point hitting water doesn't help as it is still lethal, but the damage is less and thus the saying is busted.
In Heroes, the Petrelli brothers were flying at some hundred miles an hour, when Nathan suddenly loses his power. No problem, they fall into a lake.
Invoked in the Batman live-action series, when Catwoman takes a huge fall and then lands into a river, but Batman specifically says that she could have not made it because hitting the water from such a height would've caused enough killing harm. Subverted, she actually did survive, but it's not clear if it was due to this trope being played straight or if she managed to avoid falling in the first place.
Doctor Who has River Song fall several stories down a building and land in the TARDIS swimming pool, apparently unharmed. Though it was the TARDIS swimming pool. The TARDIS is known for being psychic, and having the ability to alter its own shape, rooms, and properties. It has also been known to help people stay alive.
House once jumped off a hotel balcony several stories up into the pool below and suffered no visible injuries.

Tabletop Games

In 7th Sea, falling player characters suffer no damage at all if they land in water or anything else "soft" such as a haycart or awning. This is because the game's swashbuckling genre simulation rules explicitly enforce Not the Fall That Kills You to encourage players to perform ridiculous stunts.

Video Games

In Minecraft even if you build a tower to the top of the world, and have a hole at the bottom of the world, if there is water that is at least two blocks high—you'll survive.
Particularly flagrant in Half-Life and the mods and sequels thereof, in which a drop from fatal heights could be stopped by landing in any fluid, including but not limited to radioactive waste and spilled coffee, as long as it was two "units" (roughly 1 to 1½ inches, depending on the game's scale) or deeper, in which case all damage is negated (not counting any damage from the liquid itself, if it happens to be radioactive waste).
- Some maps in Half-Life and its mods even incorporate the "fall into a puddle of spilled coffee" game mechanic into their level design. For example, the Counter-Strike map Aztec has a slightly flooded canal flowing below a bridge—players can jump off the bridge and aim for the ankle-deep water to make a strategic shortcut if necessary. Most levels in HL2 with significantly high falls into water avoid this trope by placing an instant-death trigger at the water level (most notably in the bridge level).
- There are at least two instances, one in HL1 and one in HL2: Episode Two, where in order to proceed the player is required to fall an absurd amount of distance into a pool of water.
- The objective of Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2 "surf" maps is to obtain a high velocity through manipulation of flaws in the physics engine. Making 2-inch deep puddles of water is a perfectly logical and simple way for map designers to mitigate all damage to players upon landing.
Justified in Halo. The Master Chief is equipped with a suit of Powered Armour that allowed a user to survive falling two kilometers, into a forest, with practically no injuries. Falling a few hundred meters into engine coolant isn't hard to believe at all. In most in-game situations, however, falling more than about 10 meters is always fatal, even if there is water below. And some bodies of water are programmed to give MC Super Drowning Skills.
Battlefield 1942 and Vietnam treated this realistically, where any fall that would kill if you hit the ground killed if you hit the water, but it reached new heights in absurdity when they took this mechanic out in Battlefield 2 and you could jump out of a jet at 1500 feet and be perfectly fine if you only landed in a body of water.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. You can get into a jet, go over a body of water at full screaming-engine speed and drop without a parachute and all you'll get will be wet clothes. Of course, previous games in the series lacked a swimming mechanic, and so treated any body of water greater than waist-deep as a pool of instant death.
Tomb Raider
- In one of the games, Lara is dropped down a shaft into the longest drop in the game—her death-scream, an indicator she will die if she hits the bottom, loops several times—and she is saved by a pool of water, just like in every other jump into water in the games.
- Similarly, the beginning of the Aldwych level in Tomb Raider III, where you drop down from the bell tower into the sewers. The death scream doesn't loop here, though.
World of Warcraft
- A notable quest drops you 300 feet in the air over a lake in the Plaguelands. The player lives. It may not be unrealistic for that universe, since characters can survive around 65 foot drops onto solid ground as well. On the other hand, the water does need a certain depth to save you. If it's too shallow, you'll smack into the bottom and die.
- At the monthly Darkmoon Fair event, players can get launched from a cannon and, with a slow-fall buff that must be cancelled at the right time, try to land in a lake half the zone away. The operator advises you to either aim well, or hope you have life insurance.
- Shamans used to have the power to avert this (and have a good laugh at their friends' expense) by casting the Water Walking spell on the falling person, which would cause them to smack into the water surface as though it was solid ground.
- In the new expansion, Death Knights have been given a similar skill, allowing them to run on water by freezing a path of ice. To add insult to injury, this spell is cancelled by damage, so that jumping into a lake with it on leads to 1) taking a massive amount of damage, and 2) plunging into the water anyway, probably by smashing your bones through a thick sheet of ice.
- At least two Northrend dungeons (Utgarde Keep and Azjol-Nerub) have some fun with this. In order to exit Utgarde Keep, a giant keep, you have to either A) walk out, or B) jump down into a cavern behind the boss. It's a really big fall... but there is water below you, so it's OK. Azjol-Nerub just has you jumping off a platform, into an even bigger fall, to land in an underwater lake in order to get to the final boss.
- Done again with the Trial of the Crusader, when Arthas breaks the ground beneath you and drops you to the last boss. You survive by landing in a conveniently-placed pool of water.
- One of the worst examples is the entrance to the mostly-hidden area "Naz'anak: The Forgotten Depths". It's an insanely long and totally vertical shaft, which takes maybe twenty seconds to fall down and a little more to fly, but as long as you land in the middle of the small pond at the bottom, you will be completely unharmed.
- One optional boss in Zul'Gurub, Gahz'rahka, tosses players into the air, and they must land in the water to avoid taking falling damage.
The Elder Scrolls
- An interesting bug in Morrowind: you can fall into water from any height and survive—until the instant you touch land, at which point you go splat. If you have a spell granting water-walking active, water behaves exactly like land.
- Used and averted in Oblivion; in most cases water will save you, but landing in the shallows still applies fall damage. One ruin has you falling for a good ten seconds and being saved by 10 feet of water, despite a similar-length fall onto land killing you instantly.
- Also quite glaringly obvious in Skyrim. Players who want to give this a a good looking at, head to the College of Winterhold. There's a fairly decent bit of overhanging rock at the northernmost point. What's it hanging over? A good few seconds of free-falling and a lake. Or the ground, if you're unlucky... This has even become a meme in the form of Extreme Fishing.
Assassin's Creed
- Altair has Super Drowning Skills but fortunately, the holy land is full of soft haystacks for all your 100-foot-plummeting needs. Which, as anyone who's worked on a farm knows, is total bull—hay is hard. A pile of it would soften the fall, but would quite possibly stab the faller to death. (There's a reason it's supposed to be difficult to find a needle in a haystack.) Lampshaded in Lucy Stillman's notes where she states that she programmed the haystacks into the animus to make navigation easier. Also lampshaded at the start of the first game, when you and two other assassins do Leaps Of Faith into hay bales. Two of you do it fine, but the third does it wrong and breaks his leg.
- And in Assassin's Creed II this trope is used in its entirety as water works just as great as previously mentioned haystacks.
The Legend of Zelda
- Taken to extremes in The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess. To access the last dungeon, you need to shoot yourself into the sky with a cannon. Sure enough, you land in a small pool of water, but at least then you wouldn't be travelling that fast since you slow down when you came up. The real problem is, to get back on earth, you need to use another cannon that shoots you up even higher, with Lake Hylia being the Soft Water.
- Also done in Ocarina of Time, requisite-style. Like the Great Deku Tree, or the waterfalls at the Gerudo Valley and Zora's Domain that are even higher.
  - Worth noting that Link takes those dives head first.
- Twilight Princess does it again with the introduction to Lake Hylia. Wolf Link and Midna cross a bridge over it when some Mooks light the oil on the bridge on fire. Wolf Link climbs over the guard rail and jumps off the bridge, managing to fall into the remains of the lake, which is very little water.
Deus Ex plays this trope very straight as well; there's one section that requires you to take a huge plummet into water, but you're fine once you do so. The character is a cyborg of sorts, though.
Uncharted
- Played completely straight twice in Uncharted 2; Drake throws a guard into water a long way below after saying he doesn't want to kill anyone, leading to seeming Moral Dissonance, but if you watch the water it turns out they are completely unharmed. Later, Drake and an ally jump into a river far down a large cliff and end up seemingly unharmed.
- In the first game, Drake and Elena drive a jeep backwards off a cliff to escape the bad guys, and fall over a hundred feet to the water below. They don't even get bruised.
Oddly enough, I Wanna Be the Guy parodies it like no other, as a pool of water that The Kid lands in after jumping from a great height not only cushions his fall, but also keeps him from burning up from the flames caused by his meteoric fall. This pool is one of the only things in IWBTG that doesn't instantly kill you; in fact, it's like the only thing in the game that saved The Kid?
Water in Shadow of the Colossus will break your fall perfectly. There is, however, one particularly tall cliff with water below it that the player may be tempted to jump into, as a Colossus is nearby, but it turns out the water is only a few feet deep, and jumping in it is the same as jumping a thousand feet to solid ground that only LOOKS like a nice, deep lake.
The classic SNES survival game SOS. You can fall any distance, and as long as you land in water, you'll survive, even if the screen has already gone black before you cannonball. My brother was playing the game many years back when the ship turned from upside-down to pretty much perfectly vertical. He fell almost the entire length of the ship, managing to plummet right through at least a dozen doors between rooms, before the screen turned to black, the game apparently assuming along with us that he was dead. Seconds later, it came back on, with his character standing, unharmed, in a pool of water up to his knees at the far end of the ship.
In Alone in the Dark, shortly before the dark maze and final boss room, there is a large room with a maze of catwalks over a pool of water. Although it's only about a 10–20 foot drop, falling in the water causes instant death, no matter what your health. At least until you destroy Pregzt, after which it strangely becomes Soft Water. Definitely not toxic water, either, since going in the water in other parts of the caverns (which connect to this room) doesn't kill you.
Far Cry. The water has to be deep enough to trigger the swimming animation in order not to take any damage. However, if this condition is met, you won't take any damage, whether you've fallen ten feet or a thousand feet.
The Metal Gear Solid series has this. Each installment has Solid Snake (or Big Boss) avoiding death by aiming at water. Sometimes even villains. The most blatant must be in MGS3, when future Big Boss gets shot, after being tortured, is pretty much near death and falls about 300 feet in a waterfall into a mostly knee deep river, fights The Sorrow and survives. Would be impressive, if it had the slimmest sense.
- Lampshaded, as with many things, in The Last Days of Foxhound when Big Boss' ghost is called on the ridiculous drop, he responds with something like "I'm Big Boss and I'll do what the hell I feel like." Given that this is man who lost his eye by having it shot out one can feel a little sympathy with his not dying ever.
Super Paper Mario
- In Super Mario 64, falling into water from high places will not harm Mario. As an added bonus, the water will heal you of ALL damage once you rise back up for air, since your Oxygen Meter and HP use the same display.
- Said physics remain in Super Mario Sunshine, but the healing is gone since Oxygen and HP are separated (if they remained together, the game would be much easier considering the amount of water in Sunshine).
- Fridge Logic: in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, Luigi knocks Fawful over the edge of the castle, falling a great distance down. However, Partners in Time reveals that he survived. The only exlanation is that he fell in water, which is likely given where Bowser's Castle falls once it's blown up.
Played straight in Duke Nukem 3D, with several places requiring a fall to finish a level. Works with lava and toxic waste, too, although you'll still take damage from the goo itself unless you're wearing protective boots. The same mechanics apply in Shadow Warrior and Redneck Rampage that run on the same engine. Possible lampshading, given the tongue in cheek nature of the game: in one level, you jump into a pit, fall a great distance, and land in a pool of ankle deep water, with solid rock underneath, unharmed!
Partly averted in fellow Build engine game Blood. Although the water surface won't ever hurt you, if the pool isn't deep enough to slow you down you take damage on hitting the bottom.
Daikatana did the same as Blood, but most pools you had to fall into weren't actually deep enough to slow your fall.
Metroid deserves a special mention here due to the MythBusters subversion—despite Samus not taking damage from any fall, water or otherwise, short of a Bottomless Pit. Samus can only shoot out of water in the Prime games, not into it. If you need to bag an underwater enemy, you better hop in first.
Unreal uses this a little too often, including one story drop that is neutralized by any water deep enough to swim in.
A later level in Jurassic Park Trespasser begins with an impressive view at the edge of a fifty metre high cliff, and a fifty metre jump into a small pond to continue. Hope you lined it up right!
In Crackdown, falling damage can seriously injure your character (for a while, anyway) unless you aim for a river or the ocean. In fact, the fastest way to end the "High Flier" achievement (climbing to the top of the Agency Tower) is to leap off and splash into the tiny pond explicitly placed there to catch you—there's even a second achievement ("Base Jumper") for doing exactly that.
In Mercenaries a long fall will almost kill your character (usually dropping you to 2% health) -- unless you fall into water, in which case you take no damage. Very useful to know when your helicopter is about to explode.
There are several places in Banjo-Tooie where you can do a high dive into water and suffer no falling damage, the most obvious being the "Dive of Death" in Witchyworld.
Played straight in The Saboteur. You can jump from the spire of the Eiffel Tower, fall 300 metres and land in a 2 metre deep pond and survive. You even get an achievement for it. He should've been dead long before that since he jumped from a burning zeppelin into water and was only knocked out for a short time.
Near the end of Kingdom Hearts II, after leaving that mysterious island encountered after defeating Xemnas, Sora and Riku are shot headfirst into a body of water from pretty high up in the sky. Not even their hair is damaged. This specific method of travel is common for those traversing the worlds without a ship—in fact, Kairi first arrived on the world you find her on in this exact fashion.
One Quake II level featuring a room 200 foot high with small puddles of water at the bottom, barely deep enough to get your feet wet. You could jump from the top and as long as you landed on the wet patch, you were fine.
Monster Hunter Tri treats water in this fashion when transferring from one zone to another; you're never knocked into the air enough to actually go into water. Even if a Rathian knocks you off a cliff, you have time in the zone change to adjust your trajectory so you don't break your back. Also, regardless of the height you fell from, if you fall into water while carrying a wyvern egg, you always get the "egg sinks to the bottom" animation you get when you lose an egg by entering water, not the "egg shatters" animation you get from falling from a height.
Justified in Portal 2 as in that game you can fall at any speed from any height and land anywhere and be perfectly fine. However, there is one point where you are dropped down a shaft and fall for several minutes before finally landing in shallow water, completely unharmed. Given that you were dropped down said shaft deliberately by Wheatley, it's entirely possible that it was supposed to kill you. Unexplained, however, is how GLaDOS survives the fall alongside you, given she is undergoing a stint as a potato. Given a lack of leg braces or boots to mitigate the impact, she should've been a potato pancake.
- It's even lampshaded before being played straight. GLaDOS asks to be put in one of Chell's boots during the fall, in order to survive the landing, and advises Chell to try land on the other foot.
In Xenoblade, any fall that would normally kill you can be survived so long as you fall into a deep enough body of water. You even get an achievement (and some bonus experience points) for taking a dive from 200 meters or higher. Good thing your heroes can swim...
In Subnautica you can dive into the water from practically any height with no ill effects. Given the "terrain" of the game, though, you need to build yourself something to leap off of if you want to test this for heights above a few dozen meters.

Visual Novels

In the fifth case of Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations, Phoenix falls dozens of feet into a powerful river after trying to run across a burning bridge to rescue Maya. Again. He's not completely unharmed though—he gets a cold. It's also mentioned that his back was badly bruised.
- Dahlia Hawthorne intentionally jumped into that same river in the fourth case's backstory and came out alive, though we don't know whether or not Dahlia got injured at all.
In Yume Miru Kusuri, during a series of events so bizarre it seems like it should have been all just a dream, the protagonist manages to fall from a great height into a swimming pool (while having sex with and strangling the crazy drugged-up girlfriend who is begging him to kill her. It's even weirder than it sounds. Also, they didn't know the pool was there and fully expected to die.) and is perfectly fine afterwards.

Web Comics

An escape in The Dreamland Chronicles hinges on this. The fact that it's a three-hundred foot drop is briefly brought up, but ultimately, the impact is ignored, leaving drowning as the only apparent danger.
Darths and Droids #567 notes the use of this trope in The Rant, as it's riffing on the scene in Revenge of the Sith where Obi-Wan, on Utapau, falls from a great height into the water.

Web Original

The Nostalgia Chick points out how Pocahontas diving off an epic cliff and jumping into the water really isn't possible.

Western Animation

Batman: The Animated Series abuses this trope a lot.
- On one occasion, a character fell out of a moving aircraft to what should have been certain death. He instead landed unharmed in a rooftop penthouse's swimming pool. If the soft water didn't kill him, the speed he would have hit the water at should have ensured that upon hitting the bottom of the pool, he'd have broken both his legs.
- Also averted in one episode. The DCAU version of Count Vertigo dies by falling out of a castle window and into the moat.
- This series uses every trope in the book to avoid the cartoon violence of a person being killed or injured, despite often falling from high places; they'd just fall harmlessly into a bush, a tree, a canopy, etc. And if anyone did die, it would turn out to be simply a robotic impersonator.
- Another scene involves a character being tossed off the Statue of Liberty and landing unharmed in the water below. However the original writer probably wanted the drop to be fatal, but was required to show the victim survive as censorship. Only a few seconds later a similar event occurs when the assassins responsible, as opposed to committing suicide, spray themselves with a mindwiping gas. Instead of dying from the drop, said character was in a coma and never appeared for the rest of the series.
- Averted when Clayface fell about 30 feet off a cliff and promptly disintegrated when he landed in Gotham River. This is a special case, though, because of his condition.
Avatar: The Last Airbender has an army of soft-waterbenders. Given the amount of water some waterbending attacks take, they should be incredibly painful if not fatal, but are often brushed off. In the second season finale Katara attacks Zuko and Azula's men with a huge wave of water that should have been fatal if only because of the sheer weight of the water and not the concussive force. They get all up with no injuries.
- Interestingly, they avert it in the series finale where after falling from a great height, Aang specifically bends water upwards to catch him and it flows downwards as it returns to sea level meaning he deliberately softened the water to make the landing safe.
In the first episode of the second season of Winx Club, Lord Darkar threw Layla (who was at the time unable to transform into her fairy form) off his castle, declaring that no can survive a fall from that height. Layla survives because she landed in a river, although she did spend four days in a coma after the ordeal. A few episodes later, while on a mission to rescue the pixies, both Stella and Brandon fall of a cliff and survive by landing in the same river.
In the Static Shock episode "The New Kid", Static is being pursued by Specs and Trapper's kill-bot, and uses Edwin Alva, who has been funding the pair's research, to get them to stop shooting at him. When Daisy causes a power outage that disables the robot, Static drops Alva into his penthouse swimming pool below. Not only does Alva land headfirst into the water from very high up and emerge unharmed, the kill-bot had landed in the pool before him, and was visibly sparking before Static dropped him. And still, he's perfectly fine when he surfaces.
In Happy Feet, we see Mumble in free fall for at least two seconds after jumping off a cliff, ultimately hitting the water unharmed.

Real Life

It's rather difficult to determine the exact diving height from which lethality is guaranteed, but surviving from around 200 feet (60 metres) isn't unheard of. The current world record is 177 feet (without injury) by Oliver Favre, and suicide attempts from San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge (220 feet) have been survived (over 90% aren't, however).
- 220 feet is only the average clearance above the water; this can vary with heavy rains etc. Likewise, a strong wind can slow a person's descent considerably by creating a "gliding" effect.
When a train stopped on a bridge at night in Quimperlé, France, two passengers mistakenly thought they'd reached the station and stepped out. The one who landed in the field below died, but the one who landed in the river, a few feet further, survived (although seriously wounded).
Cliff diving from places like La Quebrada, Veracruz, Mexico runs on this, though, of course, divers must calculate the right moment to jump to catch an incoming wave and avoid serious injury or death.

Aversions & Subversions