Piano Drop

An umbrella won't save you now!

"Just like a Toon to drop a safe on a guy's head."

— Lt. Santino, Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Pianos are among the largest, and heaviest musical instruments ever created. Typically constructed of wood, they operate by using hammers actuated by the keys to strike metal strings of various thickness and length to produce various notes. A hallmark of classical music, every great composer from Beethoven to Mozart has made use of them...and, inexplicably, in modern slapstick they end up aloft and plunging towards some poor jackass on the ground.

Basically, in the old days, a piano in your high-rise apartment was a sign of prestige, since not only did the owner have to pay for the piano, but also the equipment and crew to get it into said high-rise apartment, which could be upwards of hundreds of feet off the street level. Naturally, the best (and back then, only) way to get a whole piano up there was hoisting it aloft with a crane, but this presented the danger of a careless crane operator or faulty sling harness causing the piano to come loose and begin a final plummet to the street below—and anyone between it and said street were flat out of luck if they didn't get out of the way.

Slapstick gags of this nature often feature the piano being lifted via pulley or otherwise perched at a precariously high spot, invariably taking a plunge, almost always on someone/something, often with a resounding "BONG" as it smashes on the ground, sometimes accompanied by a Screen Shake. Hilarity usually ensues, thanks to Amusing Injuries. A common gag more often seen in cartoons includes the character rising up from within the wreckage with a mouthful of piano keys-like teeth. Bonus points if they start playing by themselves.

Here is a compilation with a lot of examples.

Anvil on Head is a similar gag using an anvil.

Not to Be Confused with Colony Drop, Organ Drops, or Odd Organ Up Top. Closely related to Precision Crash.

Examples:

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Advertising

This late-'90s/early-'00s bumper for Cartoon Network has a piano falling on the word "NEXT", which then ascends into heaven and reveals what's coming up next.
There's a wonderful commercial for Clarica investment company (now merged with Sun Life) in which a woman is sitting at a bus stop. Suddenly, a man at the bus stop across the street looks hectically up at the sky, then madly starts gesticulating, pointing, and yelling, but she can't hear him. Finally, someone else comes along, sees what the man's so freaked out about, pulls out a piece of cardboard and a marker draws a big up arrow, and shows it to the woman. She looks up, then dives out of the way an instant before a falling piano crushes the bus stop. The tagline: "There's a lot to be said for clarity."
A mid-2000s commercial for Chuck E. Cheese features a piano falling out of the sky with Chuck E. on it and a mother and daughter unsuccessfully try to stop the fall.
Chuck E.: Does a quarter have the power to stop a falling piano? (CRASH) ...Guess not.
At the end of an "ifidie" ad of Facebook, the piano drops... on Death himself.
In a commercial for Glad garbage bags, a piano breaks loose from the rope used to pull it up to a third-story window. Two workers use a Glad bag to make a fireman's trampoline. The piano completely misses, breaks into a hundred pieces, and the workers use the trash bag to deliver the pieces to the piano's owner. "Where do you want the piano?"
That Nespresso advertisement with George Clooney uses this premise. Mocked in this German counter-ad.
A 1970s print campaign for New England Life Insurance featured a series of cartoons in which one character, unaware that he was about to suffer some spectacularly calamitous injury, would tell another, "My insurance company? New England Life, of course. Why?" One of these featured a falling piano,◊ naturally. Other variants included falling trees, rocks, coconuts, etc.
More advertising, this time featuring a piano being pushed upstairs. Part of the PG Tips "Chimps" campaign, and possibly the most famous ad in Britain.

Anime & Manga

The Roachmon brothers, the Digimon that antagonize the Digi-destined in an episode of Digimon Adventure 02, has an attack, Yard Sale Bomb, that involves summoning heavy objects from the sky to crush their opponents. It starts with a piano, though it lands on the ground without crushing anyone.
Yolei: Uh... no, thanks. I don't play.

Audio Plays

In one story of the Dutch audio series Ome Henk, taking place on April Fool's, Koos Korswagen thinks dropping a piano from his balcony on the titular character's head is the height of hilarity. Henk disagrees.

Comic Books

In a running gag in Górsky & Butch someone is trying to kill the protagonists with a piano. At one point the attack is shown from the killer's perspective, with a crosshair on the heroes and the number of remaining pianos displayed on the killer's HUD.
This cover from The Adventures of Superman #483, which depicts a scene that occurs in the story.

Comic Strips

A common gag in The Far Side comics:
- One, captioned "God's computer", shows God watching some poor schmoe walking under a suspended piano, while His finger hovers over the "Smite" button on the keyboard.
- Another had an in-flight vulture clutching a piano in his claws, about to drop it on a crawling desert wayfarer to keep the guy from reaching a waterhole.
- A third has another luckless soul puzzling at a piano stool lying smashed on the sidewalk next to him, while of course, the accompanying piano plunges down on him.
One Garfield comic (later adapted for the first animated series, as detailed below) has Garfield hiding out in a gigantic, wide-open field to protect himself from the misfortunes that Mondays always bring. Just as he's declared that there's no possible way for Monday to get him, a piano tumbles from the sky.

Fan Works

In Harry Crow Hermione recalls once wishing that this would happen to Dudley Dursley and his gang. (She was six and a big fan of Tom And Jerry at the time.)
In It Gets Worse, Coil despairingly wonders what would have happened to him if he hadn't taken the warning from Taylor's power in the form of nine anvils falling in a circle around him. The news reveals the art exhibition they came from also had some antique pianos. One of those pianos later takes out Jack Slash when he tries to take Taylor hostage.
In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic The Twilight Child:
- Weaponised when the main character and Trixie get into a duel, which very quickly ends Justice League style. For Trixie.
- Happens again much, much later on in the fic when a bored Discord makes it start raining pianos all over Canterlot.

Films — Animation

Possibly alluded to in Bolt, when Bolt remarks "That's a weird place to put a piano," to distract Mittens so that he can pin her down.
In A Goofy Movie Goofy and Max meet a mime who is pretending to haul on a rope; Goofy joins in, miming a pair of shears with which he cuts the rope. A rope-bedecked piano immediately falls onto the mime. Max and Goofy just walk away whistling as if nothing happened.
Averted in Oliver & Company during the "Why Should I Worry" sequence in which a piano is being lifted seven stories into the air and does not fall, yet Dodger somehow manages to jump off. Dodger also plays the piano with his tail while wearing shades, as an Actor Allusion to Billy Joel.

Films — Live-Action

Subverted and then played for laughs in A Fish Called Wanda in which wannabe hitman (and animal lover) Ken has been on a mission to kill an old woman, but has thus far only succeeded in accidentally killing two of her three innocent little Yorkshire terriers instead. In his third effort, he attempts to shoot the pulley system holding a block of stone masonry aloft above a sidewalk, hoping it will crush his intended target: instead, the load predictably misses the old woman and crushes her last dog. Ken is distraught as he attempts to surreptitiously leave the scene but falls into apoplectic laughter when he gets on to the street and learns that the old woman has died of a heart attack after witnessing the death of the last of her pooches.
In The Last Circus the protagonist is subjected to this gag as part of the clown act we only see the aftermath of.
Marvel Cinematic Universe: Iron Man 3 has not so much a piano drop, as a repulsor-backed piano throw.
The classic Laurel and Hardy short The Music Box — except that a pulley is only used briefly, and most of the business revolves around an incredibly long flight of stairs. It is also the Trope Codifier of this trope.
Scary Movie has a variant, the piano push (which Ghostface evades, but not the poor grandma down the stairs).
A deleted scene from Undercover Brother shows a black man trying to hail a cab. "The Man" (through The Dragon Mr. Feather) prevents this by having an agent shoot out the cab's tire, sending it careening into a storefront. Then for added measure, a piano drops on the cab.
In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Eddie Valiant's brother and partner was murdered by a rogue Toon who dropped a piano on his head. One of the movie's many "barely inconvenient for Toons, lethal for humans" reminders. Unlike most examples, this is not remotely played for laughs. The killer turns out to be none other than Judge Doom, who gave the same treatment to the guy Roger was accused of murdering.
In Zathura, a Zorgon is crouched on the stairs about to kill Walter and Danny, and then Lisa sends the piano sliding down the stairs to crush it.
In Zombieland, the "Zombie Kill of the Week" goes to a little old lady who sets up a Piano with a pulley on purpose to fall on a zombie.

Jokes

What do you get when you drop a piano down a mine shaft? A flat miner.

Literature

This is part of the villain's backstory in the first Alex Rider. Impoverished Lebanese boy Herod Sayle saved two wealthy men from being crushed under a piano. Out of gratitude, they paid for him to be educated in Britain - too bad Kids Are Cruel.
In The Coincidence Engine by Sam Leith it's not a piano from a crane, but a snooker table from a transport heli. (Not much of a difference for the poor sod it landed on.)
Actually done to save the series' main character in Pirate King, a 2011 Mary Russell novel by Laurie R. King. Another character pushes a piano (that had been brought to a rooftop to keep up morale for some kidnapped women) from a somewhat higher roof to a lower one, killing a character who is either the titular Pirate King or his brother. (It's rather unclear which was really in charge.)
In Once Bitten Twice Shy by Jennifer Rardin, this is the peak of a Humiliation Conga against an unlucky dude who angered a witches' coven.
Toon-Up: The last thing that happens to Ajay on his way home is having a piano fall on him from the top of somebody's high-rise apartment. He emerges from the rubble with a mouth full of piano keys like teeth. The keys then play themselves.

Live-Action TV

In an episode of The Avengers, John Steed gets pinned under the contents of a piano, after the piano itself is Reduced to Dust by the fleeing villains' secret weapon.
In an episode of Brainiac: Science Abuse, a piano was dropped from a crane, and the sound of the impact was measured at 111dB, comparable to a baby crying. "Rather more satisfying to watch, though," observed presenter Richard Hammond.
The pilot for Dead Like Me. Witnessing a Graveling commit one of these acts even lets George correctly predict a later fatal accident with a Banana Peel.
George: I saw them drop a piano on some chick's head. I don't think they're looking to score points on originality.
Doctor Who: In "Human Nature", one of the signs that there's still some of the Doctor in John Smith is when he sees a piano about to fall on a Baby Carriage. He grabs a kid's cricket ball and sets off a chain reaction that stops the mother seconds before the piano falls. "Lucky." Poetically, the conversation Smith is having with Joan Redfern at the time is about how ordinary people in ordinary situations might act with honour and valour.
In an episode of Drake & Josh, one of the unflattering drawings in Drake's notebook of his teacher Mrs. Hayfer is of her holding an umbrella as a piano is about to fall on her.
A Piano Drop is the inciting incident in the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode "Hero or Hate Crime?" Mac is trying to pick up a lottery ticket from the pavement when a piano suspended by a moving company snaps, sending it hurtling toward him. A panicked Frank shouts "LOOK OUT, FAGGOT!" to draw Mac's attention, and Charlie displays some surprising athleticism to kick him to safety just in time. The rest of the episode is the Gang in arbitration over the lottery ticket and debating the titular question: is Frank a Heroic Bystander for alerting everyone of the danger, or a Politically Incorrect Villain by using a slur to do it?
Happened in one episode of London's Burning, putting an abrupt end to George's side job with his brother-in-law's delivery business.
It's more of a piano toss, but the final episode of Misfits has Finn throw one across the room at an enemy via telekinesis.
An episode of MythBusters tested whether a piano dropped in this manner would crash through a roof. A normal piano would breach the roof but would not fall through the supports holding it up (i.e. Busted). The hosts had to fill an upright piano with sand before it would punch all the way through.
Happened offscreen on Night Court and killed Dan's assistant Phil. Oddly, his life insurance was set to pay more if he died in this manner.
Done to Dean in Supernatural in the course of the "Groundhog Day" Loop episode. Considering the nature and tone of the series, the piano killing Dean was... unexpected. But still hilarious.
Whenever a Morris Marina shows up on Top Gear, it will have a piano dropped on it. Even if they've already attached a piano to the roof to try and avert this fate.
- The exception being the first one they destroyed, in the "Did the Communists ever make a good car?" segment. That one got set on fire and used as a brazier.
- Another exception occurs in "The Worst Car in the History of the World". Instead of dropping a piano, they drop a Marina at James' Fiat Panda.
- Jeremy Clarkson's home video "The Most Outrageous Jeremy Clarkson Film In The World... Ever!" features a piano getting dropped on a Porsche 911, a car that Jeremy hates. The piano barely dented the car.
  Clarkson: So, let's have a look at the scoreline here. 400-weight piano - nil, Porsche 911 - one.
The Grand Finale of Two and a Half Men ends with two in succession, killing off both the main character and the show's creator. Why? Well, why not?
Bam Margera and his crew used a crane to drop a piano that needed disposing on an episode of Viva La Bam once. Pretty much for the heck of it.

Music

The Lovin' Spoonful's song "Pow!" (featured prominently in What's Up, Tiger Lily?) includes the line, "When they're droppin' a piano from the forty-seventh floor, I'm the guy underneath 'em lookin' up..."
Inverted in the song "Right, Said Fred", where Fred and his mates can't shift a piano. Fred tries to remove the ceiling to lift it out and ends up buried in rubble. The song never actually specifies what they're trying to move — it's generally assumed to be a piano, but it's left deliberately ambiguous. The Claymation music video explicitly shows a piano.
"Romance Novel" by Ninja Sex Party ends with Dan screaming "No, don't throw the piano!" at an incensed Brian. Then we hear the piano crashing onto him.
"Can't Complain" (from his solo album "Mosquitoes") by Stan Ridgway. The protagonist complains all the time over relative trifles. Until a Steinway flattens him.
"Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" by The White Stripes has the line "If you can hear a piano fall you can hear me coming down the hall", meaning that the lover in the song has no excuse for not answering her door for the narrator.

Music Videos

Happens in the video for Green Day's "Walking Contradiction". One of the guys walks past a mover hoisting a piano with a winch and pulley and finds a mirror. He picks it up, uses it to check his face, and shines a beam of sunlight into the mover's eyes. The mover lets go of the rope and the piano crashes to the sidewalk, narrowly missing one of the other band members.
The Lonely Island's "YOLO" advises you to wear a suit of armour in case someone drops a piano on you. Later in the music video, one is dropped on an unfortunate victim:
"And if you think your mailman is a spy, then DESTROY HIM!"

Puppet Shows

The Muppet Show:
- In the Jaye P. Morgan episode, the nameless Newsman reports that a charter flight carrying the London Symphony Orchestra was forced to jettison some of the musical instruments — including, apparently, a piano that falls down on his desk immediately thereafter. Most of his other news reports had similar results.
- In the Kris Kristofferson & Rita Coolidge episode, Gonzo attempts to balance a piano over his head and stand in a hammock while reciting the seven times table. After Gonzo messes up by saying "Seven times two is seventeen", he counts on his fingers, letting go of the piano and causing it to fall on him.
  Waldorf: Well, that act certainly suited Gonzo.
  Statler: It did?
  Waldorf: Yep. Suited him right down to the ground!
  (Statler and Waldorf laugh)
A piano is dropped on Clifford in the Gary Cahuenga episode of Muppets Tonight. He comes back up wearing pieces of the broken grand piano.
Sesame Street:
- In the song "Danger's No Stranger" (the video for which parodies the Music Video trend of The '80s of a rock band playing in a dark alley), someone is dropped like this to go with the lyrics, "And don't walk under a fallin' piano."
- An earlier song about danger, performed by Little Jerry and the Monotones, also features the band just dodging a falling piano.

Radio

From The Burkiss Way:
"At last! Relief for Muggeridge sufferers, with new Burkiss Grand Pianos! Simply haul it up to a fourth-story window, wait for Malcolm Muggeridge to come along..."
In The Goon Show episode "The Case of the Missing CD Plates" Neddie is struck down by a falling piano. Its owners then try to trick him into screwing a Corps Diplomatique plate onto the piano, in order to give it diplomatic immunity against prosecution.
That Mitchell and Webb Sound: One sketch has a man crushed by a falling piano, who then learns he agreed (while on a drunk stag-do) to leave his body to evil, and the man's come to collect.

Theme Parks

A scene in The Cat in the Hat ride at Universal's Islands of Adventure gives off the illusion of Thing 1 and Thing 2 tipping a piano onto the riders.

Video Games

One of the possible deaths in Ann. In the Piano Department, one of the rooms contains a piece of bloodstained sheet music. Interacting with it leads to a piano dropping on the player.
In the TRS-80 Text Adventure game Asylum, if you ever look up, a piano immediately falls on your head and kills you.
Works as a Kaizo Trap near the very end of Brain Dead 13, but it can be avoided if you wait until the last possible moment... which is the right moment to press any button and escape.
One of the heavier weapons in Crash Tag Team Racing involves throwing a piano on the track, causing an explosion of wood, ebony, and ivory that obliterates all who cross it. The Die-O-Rama clip "Tickle the Ivories" also has Crash getting flattened by one.
One of the more notable objects in Crazy Climber that the player has to dodge is a falling piano.
Hedgewars has it as one of the top tier weapons, sacrificing a hog to play it as it falls, bouncing several times, and carving a hole into the landscape by way of several explosions.
This is one possible assassination method in the Hitman: Blood Money mission "The Murder of Crows", as demonstrated here.
In the kart-style racing game Looney Tunes Space Race, one of the objects you can inflict on your fellow racers is a piano. It's one of the worst, as not only are you hit by it, you're also stuck under it when a bust of a generic classical music composer falls on it, too.
Added in one of the updates to My Talking Tom, occasionally by tapping Tom's face three times in quick succession, you will see Tom get hit with a skyborne piano. The animation differs depending on Tom's age.
Tom: Why did I tell you about that? Now you're gonna try it for yourself!!
In Sid & Al's Incredible Toons, a piano will smash if it falls from even a very small height.
Sine Mora has the ??? "powerup", which drops a piano on your ship for an instant game over.
Peacock in Skullgirls can drop a piano on you, and roughly 20 other items of varying sizes as well.
In Toontown Online, the Level 6 Drop gag (attack) was a grand piano that the Toon player could drop on an enemy Cog.

Web Animation

asdfmovie:
- Seen in #4, as part of "The Science Show": "Whose idea was this?!"
- Inverted in #5, where a guy falls down a flight of stairs ("Hey Bobby! Play that one about falling down the stairs!") and lands on a piano.
DC Super Hero Girls: On the character showcase episode, "Hero of the Month: Wonder Woman", Wonder Woman saves an old lady from a falling piano, but rather than gently lay the piano down, negligently throws it away... and it lands on Cheetah. Cheetah, seeing stars, emerges from the rubble speaking nonsense before losing consciousness.
Flippy of Happy Tree Friends does this to himself thanks to his Superpowered Evil Side Split Personality.
Helluva Boss has this as what finally does Lyle Lipton in in "C.H.E.R.U.B.".
Homestar Runner: In the Strong Bad Email "environment", Strong Bad tries to drop a "65 mile-per-gallon hybrid piano" on Marzipan and Strong Sad.
Seen twice in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind But Really Really Fast. After being on the receiving end of Giorno's 7-page Muda, Cioccolata gets flung towards a garbage truck and is crushed by a piano. And then another piano. And then several piano keys, all of them playing an off-key version of Giorno's "Il Vento d'Oro" theme song. Later, the Passione boss also gets crushed by a piano, along with several cars.
The final sketch of The Lazer Collection 7 has three of these happen within seconds of each other.
Dr. Octogonapus: I'm sorry! I'm new and I don't have hands!
Neopets: In the game "Igloo Garage Sale", among the items tossed to the ground occasionally includes a grand piano; having a piano dropped on you will cause an instant Game Over.
The has happened occasionally in Super Mario Glitchy 4, for example at the beginning of Stupid Mario Galaxy.

Webcomics

In The Cartoon Chronicles Of Conroy Cat, having a piano dropped on your head and playing the keys right, is part of his training to become a toon star.
Freddy Fox: In Showtime 2, Cathy the cat ends up getting a piano dropped onto her (which, according to the narrator, is more likely than getting set on fire, water damage, or electrocution) as a consequence for not closing a bottle of toxic fluids.
Ozy and Millie: When Stephan tries to ask Stephanie on a date, her answer causes him to have an Imagine Spot-ish thing in which he is crushed by a piano bearing the words "I just want to be friends."
One Wondermark strip explores what happens when you eat those desiccant silica packets found in many packaged snack food. The man in the strip eats the packet in defiance of instructions, and a piano falls on his head.
Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic: One plot arc involves a murder investigation where the victim was killed by a falling harpsichord. Or so it seems; it's eventually revealed the victim had been covertly stabbed in the eye and poisoned before the instrument fell on her.

Western Animation

Animaniacs: In "O Silly Mio", the Warners confront a snooty opera singer for constantly shattering their stained glass windows with her high notes, and she tosses them out of the building and drops a grand piano on them.
Yakko: Of course you know, this means Warners!
A piano is among the many, many, many things dropped on the abusive bulldog in the Tex Avery cartoon "Bad Luck Blackie."
Courage the Cowardly Dog:
- This is how The Whip gets defeated in the episode "Cowboy Courage".
- Courage also has a piano dropped on him during the episode "Ball of Revenge".
The Critic: When Jay decides to audition to be Siskel's and Ebert's replacement (they had split up), he sings "Nothing's gonna stop me now!" So an anvil falls on his head. Then a piano. Then a whale.
In one episode of Gerry Anderson's stop-motion animated show Dick Spanner, a mobster offers the titular PI "a grand" to drop his current case. The grand in question is a grand piano, which misses Spanner by an inch or so. The piano player who was dropped first is not so lucky.
"Needing tuning; It was flat. So was the piano player. He played that ten-finger rag all the way down. I guess some guys never learn."
In the Ed, Edd n Eddy episode "Don't Rain on My Ed", on the way to the candy store to get free jawbreakers (which has already been a massive Humiliation Conga for the Eds), Eddy miraculously escapes Jimmy's hanging garden falling on him without so much as a scratch... only for Kevin to drop a piano on him.
Kevin: That's for gobbing all over my bike, dork!
Family Guy:
- In the episode "Untitled Griffin Family History", there's a montage of silent Slapstick shorts starring Peter's ancestor, Black-Eye Griffin, all of which involve him getting a black eye from various objects, including a falling piano.
- This happens to Peter himself in "Tales of a Third Grade Nothing", as predicted by a fortune cookie he got. He emerges out of the piano with key-teeth and says, "Next time you get a fortune cookie, don't open it", and leaves as an Accordion Man.
A piano falling on him is one of the curses Lenny suffers from Fanboy fooling around with the Staff of Chumnubis in the Fanboy and Chum Chum episode "Frosty Mart Dream Vacation".
Garfield and Friends:
- Episode 73, "Rainy Day Robot": A robot, advertised as being able to bring about any weather on command, never actually causes rain to fall from the sky (unless it's on the salesman's command), although a number of other things do... including 27 pianos. Though the pianos were invoked by Roy (and Orson's confused brothers parroting him) to get rid of the latter.
- In the episode "Monday Misery" this happens to Garfield, just when he was convinced that he was wrong and Monday wasn't out to get him. In "Curse of Klopman" a man who buys the cursed Klopman Diamond from Garfield has this happen to him.
- In "Lights, Camera, Garfield!", Garfield is cast as the stunt double for Fluffy, a little girl's cat in a movie where bad things happen to him. One of the things that happens to Garfield is a piano falling on him, and he emerges from it with piano keys for teeth.
The indicatively named I Am Weasel short "I Am Cliched" has right after an Anvil on Head on Weasel, this happen to Baboon, complete with the "keys as teeth" follow-up. Weasel is quick to snark, "oh, now that's original!".
In the short cartoon Jinxy Jenkins & Lucky Lou, the eponymous couple goes careening down the streets of San Francisco in an out-of-control ice cream cart, and pass under a bunch of pianos that are dangling from ropes for no apparent reason. Thanks to Jenkins' extreme bad luck, the pianos immediately start falling. Thanks to Lou's extreme good luck, they not only avoid getting squashed but briefly use the falling pianos as Stepping Stones in the Sky.
In Justice League, Zatanna telekinetically batters Circe with the entire contents of a fancy restaurant, finishing with the grand piano. She reacts with rising indignation to each piece of furniture. Except the piano.
Circe: Oh no.
Kaeloo: Invoked in one episode, where Stumpy tries to prove that he's the show's comic relief by dropping a piano on his own head.
Looney Tunes:
- Wile E. Coyote tried dropping one of these on the Road Runner once, with predictable results.
- In "Hare Trimmed", Bugs, in old lady drag, playfully leads suitor Yosemite Sam on a chase through the house, up the steps...where he shoves a piano down into Sam's path.
- The Sheriff from "Bunny and Claude (We Rob Carrot Patches)" runs for it to avoid getting hit by a falling piano. He runs all the way out into the desert and still gets hit.
- A mouse does this to Sylvester in "Canned Feud", and Sylvester smiles with his key-teeth.
Making Fiends: In "Marvin the Middle Manager", Marvin and Charlotte set up a Rube Goldberg Hates Your Guts device that would drop a piano on Charlotte while she pretends to be a butterfly, as part of Marvin's task to kill her given to him by Vendetta. Even though the plan initially goes well, it ends up failing when Vendetta shows up to the scene, much to her dismay. Of course, she doesn't blame herself for it, as she has a batch of fiends take Marvin away.
This is the only sure way to kill a Sintillian in Men in Black: The Series.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has Twilight Sparkle failing to heed Pinkie Pie's Pinkie Sense about falling things in "Feeling Pinkie Keen". Cue a flower pot falling on her head, followed by an anvil, followed by a hay wagon, and finally, a piano. Pan up to reveal that they fell out of a moving van crewed by pegasi, including (thanks to a last-minute edit) Derpy Hooves.
The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: In "Sorry, Wrong Slusher", Christopher Robin, Pooh, Piglet and Tigger think they're being attacked by a "slusher" after seeing a slasher movie on television, so they decide to set a trap for the "slusher" by suspending a piano in the air by a rope. The trap goes off on Eeyore.
Near the end of the Oggy and the Cockroaches episode "Face Off", the cockroaches drop a grand piano on Jack as he and Oggy leave the hospital, forcing him to go through the same plastic surgery his cousin endured throughout the episode.
One of these is set up by Dr. Doofenshmirtz to catch Perry the Platypus in Phineas and Ferb, revealed with dramatic music — played by someone sitting at the piano. Perry walks in the back door and avoids the trap entirely.
Doofenshmirtz: Oh, I told Nancy to keep the back door locked! (Pulls out a tape recorder) Note to self: My evil deed for tomorrow? Fire the maid.
- In "Lost in Danville" when Phineas and Ferb come across a capsule that fell from the sky, their every attempt to open it fails. Phineas resorts to continuously drop pianos on it which doesn't affect it in the slightest.
  Phineas: I think I'm actually running out of ideas here.
  Isabella: And pianos.
  Baljeet: Should I go get a pipe organ?
The Pink Panther:
- A short where the Panther makes several attempts to cross a busy street ends with him succeeding by dressing up as a mother cat with kittens, only to end up being crushed by a piano on the other side.
- Another Panther cartoon has Big Nose (as a bank robber) getting hit by a player piano after numerous attempts to get rid of a horseshoe which is bringing him bad luck instead of good.
Presto (2008) from 2008 by Pixar, climaxes with the magician Presto falling from a great height toward a hardwood stage below, followed by some prop stars and crescent moon, and one grand piano. If the impact after his fall doesn't kill him, that piano surely will. He is spared this fate by a quick-thinking but truculent rabbit named Alec Azam.
Rocko's Modern Life:
- The episode "Teed Off" features various things that launch grand pianos, up to and including a Kill Sat.
- Before that episode, this also happens in "Rocko's Happy Vermin" where Flecko causes a piano to fall directly onto Ed Bighead during a chase.
- The anthropomorphic food processor attempts this on Spunky in "Fatal Contraption".
- In "Turkey Time", when the citizens of O-Town find out that Rocko has been hiding every turkey in his house, they gather them around and prepare to drop a piano on them, but when Mr. Bighead lets go, the others don't because of the turkeys' Puppy-Dog Eyes. Mr. Bighead loses his mind at this and unintentionally makes the turkeys fly away, and tells them to drop the rope, which they do, and the piano drops on him.
Kenny from South Park has died in pretty much every way imaginable, so naturally this was one of them.
SpongeBob SquarePants:
- In "Fear of a Krabby Patty", SpongeBob crushes Plankton, who was disguised as a psychiatrist, with a piano during a panic attack. Later, he builds a piano with cards representing various ingredients, and it topples on Plankton as well.
- In "The Slumber Party", Pearl and her friends drop a piano on SpongeBob when he tries to infiltrate her slumber party by pretending to be a piano repairman.
- In "Lame and Fortune", one of the Bikini Bottomites gets a fortune saying "You will soon injure your legs". Almost instantly, a grand piano falls from nowhere onto his legs. Turns out he is quite happy about it since it gives him an excuse to skip jury duty.
In the TaleSpin episode "In Search of Ancient Blunders", Adventurer Archaeologist Myra does this to Dumptruck of the Air Pirates to stop him from clobbering Baloo. Since Dumptruck is Made of Iron, he's just stunned.
In Thumb Wrestling Federation, the character Evil Ira, then a heroic Dextera, used a piano to drop on the head of Evil Sinistra opponent N Fuego, before dropping one on the referee (a finger with googly eyes) "for luck". After this stunt outraged the 'commentators', Ira did a Face–Heel Turn to the side of evil for the next match, to compensate for the insufficient number of evil characters in the semi-finals.
Tiny Toon Adventures:
- During the "Furrball's unlucky" lyric of the Expository Theme Tune, Furrball is minding his own business sniffing a flower and suddenly gets hit by a piano from nowhere. Said piano also happens to break part of the ground when it lands on him.
- While not exactly a drop, in the cartoon, "Rear Window Pain" from the episode, "Psychic Fun-omenon Day", Granny is teaching Elmyra how to play the piano, and tosses it at Plucky when she and Elmyra find out he is spying on them.
- The cartoon, "C Flat or B Sharp?" from the episode, "Son of Looniversity Daze" involves Buster, Plucky, and Hamton delivering a piano from the Acme Looniversity clock tower to the music hall. The piano falls on Yosemite Sam at the end of the cartoon.
- In "Hero Hamton", a piano falls on Hamton during Porky's Prop Class.
In the Tom And Jerry short "Heavenly Puss", Tom is pulling on a stair rug to try to catch Jerry. He ends up pulling an upright piano down the stairs, which flattens him against the wall. Notably, this actually kills him... only for the whole thing to turn out to be just a dream.
The Esther episode of VeggieTales involved a piano drop as part of a plot to assassinate the king.
Fudêncio e Seus Amigos: The theme song has a piano instrumental that plays showing an upset Conrado walking across the screen, until a piano played by Baltazar Barata falls on him, and then five clones of Fudêncio pop out from inside the piano to finish the song. This piano drop is also a random punchline in two episodes: "Safeno Bizarro", when Conrado commemorates nothing bad happened to him during the episode due to him being Out of Focus for most of its duration, and in "Cudi Copo", when Conrado is walking around the street and is suddenly killed by the piano, while making fun of a false prophecy an Ouija board did, saying he would be the first to die among his friends.

Real Life

Every spring since 1972, students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology drop an old, irreparable piano from the roof of a dormitory six stories high to celebrate Drop Date, the last date one can drop classes at MIT. The resulting noise has spawned a unit of sound volume, known as the Bruno. A photo of the inaugural piano drop at MIT in 1972 appears on the cover of ambient musician Tim Hecker's 2011 album Ravedeath, 1972.
Arne Nordheim, honored contemporary composer of the experimental variety, was assigned an "honorary compartment" by the state of Norway for his achievement. This meant he had to move his costly Steinway grand piano from his flat on the fifth floor — out of the window with a cable and a lift. The cable broke, and the grand piano crashed to the ground. The man behind the wheel was baffled when the composer showed up in the window with this comment: "Did you hear that sound?"

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