Frozen Is Cool! Elsa the Snow Queen Rules!

How the Mighty Have Fallen

• The Evil Queen - The first villain from the first Disney animated feature film, the evil queen is the one who started this trope when she falls off a cliff to her death. After successfully poisoning Snow White with an apple, the dwarfs arrive home and see her. As it rains heavily, they pursue the queen until she becomes trapped at a dead end cliff on a rocky mountain. As she tries to roll an enormous boulder down the mountain to crush them, a sudden bolt of lightning strikes the ledge of the cliff and destroys the portion holding the queen, causing her to fall hundreds of feet below to her death. The boulder tumbles down after her, crushing her body and ensuring her demise.
• Ratigan - With an almost fifty-year gap between their respective films, Ratigan is the first Disney villain since the evil queen to die by falling from a great height. After crashing his blimp into Big Ben with Olivia and Basil in tow, Ratigan chases after them and engages in a fight with Basil, which takes place on the clock’s hands. When the bell rings upon the clock striking ten, the vibration knocks Ratigan off balance and off the hand. He catches onto and takes Basil and a piece of the blimp with him as he falls. However, while Basil manages to escape using the blimp piece, Ratigan plummets into the abyss below to his death.
• Percival C. McLeach - After falling into Crocodile Falls while trying to shoot the rope holding Cody (so he can fall into the river and be eaten by crocodiles), McLeach travels so far down the river that he ends up getting caught in the current, causing him to plummet over the waterfall to his death.
• Gaston - Upon seeing the Beast climb up the castle’s balcony to embrace Belle, Gaston follows and stabs him in the back with his knife while dangling from the balcony. Because he is so focused on having just stabbed the Beast while preparing to do it again to eliminate him once and for all, Gaston does not appear to realize the dangerous spot in which he has put himself. But when the Beast swings his arm backward at him in pain, Gaston’s attempt to dodge it makes him lose his balance and grip before he falls off the castle and down into the ravine below to his death.
• Claude Frollo - While trying to kill Quasimodo and Esmeralda inside Notre Dame, Frollo gets himself in a perfect position to kill the latter (as she is attempting to save the former) by standing on a gargoyle as he raises his sword. But before he delivers the killing strike, the gargoyle starts to break off, causing Frollo to lose his balance and drop his sword, though he manages to cling on to the gargoyle for dear life. In his last moments, the gargoyle comes to life and demonically roars at Frollo, terrifying the latter. The gargoyle then breaks off completely and sends Frollo falling to his fiery death into a vast lake of molten copper that had earlier been poured on to the street by Quasimodo and the gargoyles. This symbolically shows that Frollo has been condemned to Hell for his crimes.
• King Runeard - During the war he instigates between the Arendellians and the Northuldra after murdering the tribe leader in secret, Runeard becomes so wrapped up in fighting one Northuldran that he apparently does not even notice when their fighting leads to them approaching a cliff. But when the Northuldran attempts to dodge him, Runeard stumbles and loses his footing and balance, then he hits the man as he begins to fall over him, which pushes both of them over the cliff and plunges them down into the depths below to their deaths. Unlike his predecessors, Runeard dies very early in the movie, with the war and his death happening over 30 years before the events of the film takes place, and long before anyone (even the audience) knows that he is the true villain of the story.

• Queen Narissa - Narissa transforms into a dragon (per inspiration by Maleficent, who I mention below) and takes Robert captive while fighting Giselle on the spire of the Woolworth Building. When Pip, Giselle’s chipmunk friend, climbs on to Narissa’s head, his weight causes the spire to bend, making Narissa lose her grip and drop Robert (who is saved by Giselle). She falls on to another part of the building, but just as quickly loses her grip on it and continues to fall hundreds of feet below where she dies in a shining explosion upon hitting the ground, leaving nothing but her viscous, glowing remains.
• Charles Muntz - During the climax. Muntz confronts Carl and Kevin and they fight while Russell is left at the house surrounded by three dog-piloted planes that Muntz sent to take them down. Dug, Russell, and Kevin make their way to Carl's floating house with Muntz in pursuit, trying to bring down the house with a hunting rifle. He makes his way into the house and tries to shoot them with his rifle, but Carl lures Kevin out of the house with a bar of chocolate, knocking away the rifle, while Dug and Russell are on her back. When Muntz leaps out of the window after them to grab hold, his foot gets entangled in some balloon strings, and when they snap, they drag Muntz thousands of feet below to his death. Muntz’s death makes him the third Pixar villain to die, and the first one to fall to his death.

• Maleficent - In her dragon form, as Maleficent corners Phillip on a ledge during their battle, she blasts the Shield of Virtue out of his hand, leaving him defenseless. However, the three fairies then immediately empower the Sword of Truth and Phillip throws it into Maleficent’s heart, fatally wounding her. Weakened by the stabbing, Maleficent collapses on to the ledge, with her body’s weight causing it to crumble beneath her, and she dissolves into dark purple smoke. When Phillip looks down at the ground, all that remains of Maleficent is her shredded cloak, plus the Sword of Truth, still embedded in the cloak, turning black, having its enchantment worn off.
• Scar - While dueling with Simba on the top of Pride Rock, Scar strikes him down and leaps over to him to release the killing strike. However, Simba uses his hind legs to throw Scar over the ledge and down to the base of the formation. Scar survives the fall, but is immediately surrounded by the hyenas (following the main trio having overheard his betrayal and alerted the others), and they quickly advance on him and brutally maul him to death as flames surround them.
• Hades - Following Hercules’s successful rescue of Meg’s soul in the River Styx and becoming a god for it, Hades tries to smooth talk him into making another deal. In his rage, Hercules punches Hades off the precipice on which they are standing and into the river, where he is dragged into its depths by the souls trapped within. Hades presumably remains trapped in the river afterwards, though it cannot kill him due to his immortality.
• Clayton - While fighting Tarzan up in the trees, Clayton pulls out his machete after Tarzan takes and smashes his gun. Tarzan jumps back to escape Clayton's furious swipes, ensnaring Clayton in a mass of vines. As Clayton mindlessly slashes the vines, one of them slips and coils around his neck like a noose. When he inadvertently hacks the final vine holding him up, Clayton and Tarzan are sent plummeting towards the ground. Tarzan lands safely, but Clayton vainly struggles to free himself and is hanged by the vine, which snaps his neck and instantly kills him. A flash of lightning briefly illuminating the tree behind Tarzan displays the gruesome shadow of Clayton’s hanging, lifeless body. This makes his death scene one of the most graphic in Disney's animated history, even for villains. Due to this, it is often rewritten in printed media that Clayton merely fell to his death rather than being hanged.
• Gothel - Once Flynn cuts Rapunzel’s hair, the magic disappears and the hair turns from blonde to brown. Due to the loss of the magic that kept her young and alive for hundreds of years, Gothel’s true age quickly catches up to her and kills her. This all begins before Pascal trips her, causing her to fall out the tower’s window. By the time her cloak hits the ground, dust is all that remains of Gothel.