Cliffs of doom spells death than pools of vast depths.

I can't count how many pool of vast deaths who survived and in the same vein, I can't count how many cliffs that died. You could literally be on the brink of death with a thousand sword slashes and survival is sure for you as long as you fall into the pool of vast depth.

Pools of death - Queen Seondeok. I generally don't fear pools of death.

Cliff of death
- Sa Illa in Iron Empress. This cliff actually stands out. It was clear there was no way out. It was either death by the hands of Goryeo or the cliff. She chose the cliff, but of course not before taking the lifes of the soldiers lined in front of her(how they never learn to stay clear when she becomes brings out her boomerang amused me).

- Moonshine. How he survived surpasses me. I think this was a topic for discussion. To think he survived two cliff landings of death.
-And the number of Sagueks goes on and on.

Lots of them come to mind, oh, the good old days before trucks, but somehow now I am reminded of Tale of the Nine Tailed, although it's neither a sageuk nor a cliff on episode 4. But it was indeed a fall of doom.

I am so glad that you raised this as a topic:

The cliff of doom has multiple uses either as the place for a fake death so people can adopt a new identity and no one looks for them as there is no way they could survive a fall. The scene of a murder where person is being chased so they have no option but to jump or are pushed to their death. Did Mr Queen have the king supposedly fall off a cliff?

I think My love from the star and Descendants of the sun are the two that added hanging vehicles to the cliff edge and where the person was saved.

Most vehicles and cliffs are not good for either all the occupants of the vehicle or only one will survive and they then take on a new identity due to amnesia or as it was a murder situation they need to start a new life in a village in the middle of no where. I remember car accidents where cars go over the side of a road and explode into a ball of fire when they hit the ground or go into water. Can’t remember the names of the dramas but I am sure a child survived in one of these scenarios.

There was one where the car was found years later with the two skeletons in the seat pulled from the river. I am sure it was a mum who had abandoned her children and run off with another man so their dad raised them. Can’t remember the drama though.

In suicide situations it can be similar one person dies and one lives a new life like in Pinocchio.

Pool of vast depths
How deep is the water in the lakes and sea scenes when someone ends up in the water? It is always perfectly clear one person is sinking slowly to the bottom and a strong swimmer with the ability to hold their breath and keep their eyes open in salty water will come to their rescue. At the point when they would need to get air they are struggling to bring a heavy body to the surface. I have seen this multiple times but can’t name one incident off the top of my head.

I don’t watch enough sageuks to be familiar with this trope. But all I can say is good on Jang Uk to be brave enough to fall of a cliff. I have a massive fear of heights and would have patiently waited until the spell was broken - Mudeok be damned
I would have also chosen to starve or die of thirst. Either way is preferable than falling of a cliff imo

The King's Affection cliff jump. IIRC Ga-on was running away with a ledger and somehow jumping into the water that should've washed away the ink was the only alternative 🤦‍♀️.

I did get a kick out of someone sharing THE cliff of doom in the comments - https://koreandramaland.com/listings/buyongdae-cliff/

Cliff and Pool are both much less lethal than Truck, and are used differently.

Pool's non-fatal flaw is that almost always someone will rescue the person, although this is not guaranteed in the case of attempted suicide. Actual accidental drownings in kdramaland are rarer than identical twins who grow up together and don't have birth secrets.

Cliff's well-known flaw is its habit of hanging around with the River of Resurrection and the Water of Forgetful Healing. These three work as a get out of jail free card and as a substitute for ambulances and hospitals. While Truck usually kills, Cliff & Friends usually rescue.

The actual sageuk stand-in for Truck is Assassin in Alley.

No one can beat the Empress Ki Cliff of Doom,a just born baby fell of it and yet was perfectly fine...

The Cliff of Doom has a more positive result then the Truck of Doom. Surprisly, even they happened in a long time ago without the same means in medecine, pretty much every character survived it. Truck of Doom is so lethal.

I admire the actors for the under water scenes after the fall. They suffer so much to film it with their clothes in cold water. In the river, the depth of the water can pass, but it's so funny in pond in a Palace.

1. Unnamed illness of coughing blood - I don't remember anybody dying from it but almost every sageuk has at-least once instance of it.
2. Child-birth and palace infighting -to make royal protagonist sympathetic
3. Bite from super model vampire in royal robe
4. Bite from sageuk zombies
5. Unmentioned illness of other kind - mortality rate 100% , a person supposed to die will definitely die from it.

@reply1988 's description reminded me of a 2011 drama called Glory Jane / Man of Honor.
In this show, it turned out our candy Park Min-young was actually a chaebol's long lost daughter with amnesia and our ML's long lost first love! All of this was conveniently set up by her falling out, mid-air, of a spinning car that swerved off a mini cliff of doom, and fell so far away that nobody could find her, but her only injuries were that she forgot her memories and was sent to an orphanage!
But wait! This was only the second cliff of doom in the same episode! In the first, PMY's father and his corrupt best friend are arguing on the same road over the latter's corrupt practices when a Truck of Doom rear ends them off the Cliff of Doom into the Pool of Vast Depths. Submerged, the corrupt best friend grabs a body and manages them on shore, but realizes that he saved the chauffeur and in the moment of truth decides to take over his friend's company instead, thus setting us up for the rest of the drama.

Dunno.. The most recent Cliff of Doom that comes to mind is The Last Empress'. 😆

Cliff of Doom. I forget the saeguk, anyways, the guy was riddled with arrows and fell from the cliff. He landed in a river and was carried away.

He not only survives, he is practically reborn, sunrise scene and all that. Wait, this sounds like a entry for “Name That Drama”.

Jackpot was the first time I met a cliff or non-doom, the desert of survival, the swords of non-deaths. That character was steeped in legend anyway and it was my first sageuk, so I thought nothing of it. I’ve seen several since and probably the most well-used was in The King Loves, when Rin (spoiler) fakes his death falling from one—of course we all knew he would be fine and back as was revealed a couple scenes later.

A modern Cliff of Doom was used in Eve, where the ML went over the cliff with his Evil Wife in order to sacrifice himself for his One True Love. Interestingly, he died, but Evil Wife survived.

There's one big difference between truck of doom and olden cliffs and pools of (surprisingly variable) vast depths; trucks of dooms are used to kill and cliffs and pools are used to save lives (most of the time).
Let me add one more trope that might get inspired by true events in the near future. "The aircraft of death that crashed because the design engineer decided to take a quick peek at DB and got sidetracked into a pool of vast drama-tropey depths)

I thought we called it The Cliff of Non-Doom because people allllways survive the fall 😉

My favorite Pool of Vast Depths is non-sageuk, though. In an early episode of Jekyll, Hyde, Hyun Bin leaps off a fairly tall building into a typical business-building-complex reflecting pool but of course it’s deeper than the deep end of an Olympic diving pool 🤦🏼‍♀️

There was a cliff of death (but averted by an Alien hero) in My love from the stars. It was the first time the alien saves the child widow.

Does King 2 Hearts cliff/edge scene count? No one fell off the cliff, but the cliff served as a backdrop to impending doom.

me who asked for this chat:
also me: doesn't comment on it properly...
mian~

Ones that should've actually been Cliffs of Doom with the real Doom: TCC
Ones I remember to this day (that I believe did have the doom in the Cliff of Doom): Arang and the Magistrate somehow pffft

For me it has never been a real cliff of doom since the characters always, somehow, come back alive. More like cliff of "pretending the main lead is dead so they can come back a few moments later (maybe minutes or episodes for us, but weeks or years in the show) and show their enemies their an improved version of them selves **insert training sequence** 🤣

Well, that's my experience with sageuks; in other dramas the cliff of doom does the job well (unfortunately): The Guest (possessed people love their cliffs), Missing Nine...