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A popular exit for the swashbuckling or Western hero: leap down off the roof, wall or balcony you're on -- or out of a window -- and land in the saddle of your waiting Cool Horse.
Can be spoofed by including one or more of the things that could go wrong: the horse is spooked, the horse is injured by the impact with the rider, the rider is injured by the impact with the horse (ouch), the rider misses the horse entirely, ...
An adventurer in a modern setting might attempt the same trick with a car. If he's really planning ahead, it will be a car without a roof.
A subtrope of No Escape but Down. Not to be confused with Falling Into the Cockpit.
Examples of Land in the Saddle include:
Comic Books
- Lucky Luke does this so often that his horse, Jolly Jumper, has been known to express surprise if Luke exits a building through the door. Jolly is sometimes seen complaining about how Luke gets to make merry in the saloon, and his horse must wait outside under the window. There are also occasional subversions to keep things interesting. In one instance, Luke throws himself out the wrong window, leading to his escaping while Jolly Jumper laughs at him. In another, he realizes the horse he's landed on is not Jolly Jumper, who explains that as he didn't know which window Luke would jump from, he put a horse under each window to be sure.
Film - Animated
- Tangled takes it up to eleven, with Flynn catapulted over a high wall and landing the saddle of the horse waiting on the other side. Thanks to Rule of Cool, nobody gets hurt.
Film - Live-Action
- In the Errol Flynn The Adventures of Robin Hood, Robin pulls off this jump with his hands tied behind his back. (Well, he's supposed to -- if you watch closely, the stunt guy's hands move in front of his body in one shot.)
- Played straight multiple times in Zorro's Fighting Legion; not just Zorro, but several of his Legion can pull this off.
- A running gag in the movie The Duchess And The Dirtwater Fox -- the Dirtwater Fox keeps trying it, and it keeps going wrong.
- A running gag in Zorro The Gay Blade. Z's horse was always in the wrong place.
- This is part of Peter's sidekick training in Rustlers Rhapsody.
- Indiana Jones tries this one in the prologue sequence of Indiana Jones And The Last Crusadee. The horse moves. The mooks chasing him repeat the process, but with a truck.
- Done early in The Three Musketeers 1993, as part of a chase scene. It also included the stock parody of one of the characters missing the horse.
- In Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Marian leaps from a balcony onto her horse. When her large lady-in-waiting attempts to do the same, her horse dodges.
- In Cutthroat Island Geena Davis (not her stunt double) races through a building on the 2nd story and somersaults out a window, landing in the passenger seat of a speeding horse drawn carriage.
- Antonio Banderas tried this trick in The Mask of Zorro, but the horse moved. On purpose.
- Austin Powers pulls this into his convertible via a forward flip. When he tries it into Felicity's car in the sequel, he lands on the gear shift.
- Anakin in Attack of the Clones does a Force Jump in the execution arena on Geonosis to land on the rhino-like creature sent to execute him.
Live-Action TV
- In the Doctor Who serial The Masque of Mandragora, the Doctor jumps from the execution platform onto one of the guards' horses, shoves that guard out of the saddle, and takes off galloping
- Knight Rider: Car version, of course. Michael calls to KITT, KITT comes, and often he leaps straight into or onto KITT. At least once, KITT elevated the driver's seat so Michael would have something to aim for and fall onto.
Video Games
- If you aim just right, you can land on your horse from a second story jump in Red Dead Redemption.
- The player can pull off this move in Assassin's Creed.
- Happens automatically in Final Fantasy VI when Edgar, Locke and Terra escape from Kefka.
Western Animation
- One Tex Avery cartoon has a cowboy try to jump into his horse repeatedly, only to miss every time. Eventually he moves the horse to the place where he keeps landing and tries again, only to land where the horse originally was.
- Spoofed on The Scarlet Pumpernickel, where Daffy Duck misses the horse, causing him to muse that "this never happens to Errol Flynn".
- Once an Episode (minimum) in Thundarr the Barbarian. In one early episode, he does it from the top floor of a ruined skyscraper without injury.