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How the Mighty Have Fallen

While there have been a number of main antagonists from the Disney animated canon who die, only six of them have fallen to their deaths. Two fall-to-deaths occur for two Disney villains outside of WDAS, that being Queen Narissa from the live action/animation hybrid Enchanted, and Charles Muntz from the Pixar film Up.

Again, my dear buddy and little soul sis @minerva-warner came up with this title, and I see it as fitting since the Disney villains who die by falling from great heights perceive themselves as mighty people, with three of them being ruthless, cunning, murderous hunters/poachers, and the other five being cruel, ruthless, sadistic, murderous tyrants.

Thanks again, sis! I love you, and enjoy this new analysis! 😁😊❤️

WDAS Villains

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.

Outside WDAS

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.

Exceptions

In the animated canon, there are a few Disney villains who fall down and die, but the fall is not what causes their deaths. Rather, they fall and meet their demise through some other means shortly afterwards.

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.

hafanforever

Pride Comes Before the Fall

Even though his appearance in Frozen II is extremely short, and his treachery is revealed only in snow figure form years after his demise, the revelation of Runeard’s true personality and how it drove him to his death reminds me SO much of those of Gaston from Beauty and the Beast.

In his life, Runeard presented himself as a noble, kind, peaceful, generous, benevolent king and was truly believed to be as such by his people and staff. When he and his kingdom made peace with the Northuldra tribe of the Enchanted Forest, he had a dam constructed in the forest, gifting it as a peace offering between both groups of people with a purpose of bringing prosperity to the Northuldra’s land. What no one knew was that this image that Runeard presented to outsiders was a complete facade. He was secretly and truly a cruel, arrogant, ruthless, obsessive, selfish, egotistical, prejudiced, sadistic, murderous tyrant who cared for nothing and no one other than himself and his position as a monarch. Runeard hated and feared magic because he viewed it as a threat to his monarchal power; therefore, he actually distrusted the Northuldra SOLELY due to their relationships with the forest’s magical elemental spirits. All of these feelings consumed him so much that he wrongly believed that their magical ties made them believe that they were too entitled and far more powerful than a monarch like Runeard himself, which made him perceive them as a very great threat to his kingly rank and legacy. Determined not to give the Northuldra a chance to ruin him using the spirits’ magic, Runeard secretly plotted to eradicate them. He carried out his plan by building the dam, which would actually weaken the forest and limit its resources, forcing the people to turn to him in their desperation, then instigated a full-out war between the tribe and the Arendellians.

Likewise, Gaston is the most admired, popular, and respected man in his village, primarily because of his handsome, muscular appearance and incredible strength. But at the same time, the villagers are completely unaware and ignorant (or perhaps just too narrow/small-minded that they are totally unable to see anything wrong with him, or they just don’t care) of his true nature, which (unlike Runeard) he doesn’t even hide very well, if he’s even trying to hide it at all. Gaston is extremely arrogant, prejudiced, egotistical, conceited, narcissistic, rude, and superior, then later becomes very sadistic and ruthless. From the very beginning, Belle is the ONLY person in the village who sees Gaston for who he truly is. She does not like what she sees in him; therefore, she knows right away that he is not the right man for her. Though ironically, she is the one and only woman Gaston is obsessively fixated on marrying. Even after Belle flat-out rejects his advances and his marriage proposal, he remains relentlessly bound and determined to make her his wife. When Belle reveals that the Beast’s existence to the town and her friendship with him, Gaston becomes consumed with jealousy upon realizing that Belle is in love with a monstrous-looking creature rather than a handsome man like himself. He becomes totally intolerant and angered at the fact that this “monster” is his competitor, the one who poses a threat to him in vying for Belle’s heart. Further enraged, and offended, after Belle calls him the true monster, Gaston plots to eliminate the Beast in order to make Belle his once and for all.

So as I just described above, Runeard and Gaston are very alike with how proud, arrogant, superior, ruthless, prejudiced, and obsessive they are, especially when it comes to their respective goals and their persistence in attempting to achieve them. In Gaston’s case, he is set on marrying Belle and refuses to lose her to the Beast, so he conspires to kill the Beast to get him out of his way. In Runeard’s case, he is set on making sure the Northuldra don’t have a chance to challenge, threaten, or ruin his position as a monarch with their magic, so he conspires to eliminate them to get them out of his way.

In the end, however, it is Gaston and Runeard’s pride, arrogance, and prejudice that ultimately proved to be their downfalls. This is because they each start a fight with the innocent individuals they see as a threat and being in their way of what they don’t want to lose. Just before their deaths, both men are so caught up in and focused on trying to kill their enemy that they aren’t paying attention to their surroundings. They don’t stop and take a moment to notice the dangerous situations in which their battles have put them…until it’s too late.

Upon seeing the Beast climb up the castle’s balcony to embrace Belle, Gaston becomes more jealous than ever and fiercely determined to kill the Beast once and for all. He follows and stabs the Beast in the back with his knife while dangling from the balcony without any kind of protection or support. Being so focused on having just stabbed the Beast while also preparing to do it again, Gaston apparently does not even realize the dangerous spot he is in…until the Beast swings his arm backward at him in pain, causing Gaston to lose his balance when trying to dodge it, fall off the castle, and plunge into the ravine below to his death.

After he murders the Northuldra leader, Runeard tries to cover his tracks by instigating a battle between the rest of the tribe and his own people. He gets so caught up in fighting with one Northuldran that he apparently does not even notice when their fighting leads to them approaching a cliff…until the Northuldran manages to dodge him, leading Runeard to stumble and lose his balance, then hitting the man as he begins to fall over him, which pushes both of them over the cliff, causing them to fall down into the depths below to their deaths.

All in all, Gaston and Runeard learned the hard way, and in quite a literal sense (just as my title says), that pride truly comes before the fall. 😉😆