Talk:The Doom, part 4/@comment-1087109-20190202194635

Interesting points. I went back and forth between part 4 and part 3 to understand the cannon physics. Here are my observations:

The cannon is pointed at a slight angle towards the porthole/window. The fired cannoball clips the right side of the frame, goes through the middle of the left one and takes out a chunk of hull behind it.

The cannon stand is tilted 45 degrees in part 3 and is completely tipped over by the tentacle when it fires. This does not appear to change the direction the cannon's pointing.

The blast pushes the cannon stand back by about 1 meter. The cannon itself detaches from the stand and goes another 1 meter backwards.

The cannon is pressed against Wolff's left shoulder, aimed right at his heart. A tentacle is gripping him around the waist. The blast takes out his shoulder and head.

Shirley is pulling at the tentacle with his right hand and is pushing with his left arm against the window frame for leverage. His backwards-leaning posture indicates he's exerting a lot of force. If he lost his grip, he would indeed tumble backwards and over the window frame. However, the window frame is as thick as his whole body, just that wouldn't be enough. Also, it is not known what his final posture is at the moment of blast, since in part 3 there are still a few seconds of fuse left.

Wolff's posture at the moment of death is him flying through the air upside-down, slightly to the left of the cannonball's path, with shoulder and head missing. There's a large cluster of blood flying at the wall faster than he is, and the cannonball is already gone. There are 'streaks' coming off of his legs and hands in a straight line, intersecting where the cannon muzzle used to be. I am however not able to determine if this is a clue to his body's trajectory. Figuring out how his body got into this position might reveal what happened.

The audio clip features a cannon blast, followed by a fading scream. Since the cannon instantly blew off Wollf's head, he couldn't have been the one screaming, so it must have been Shirley.

One of Shirley's acceptable fates is "drowned by a terrible beast". This confirms that he indeed fell out the window. However, "shot with a cannon by a terrible beast" is also accepted, meaning he also got fatally injured by the cannonball.

My theory: As the cannon fires, it flies back. The tentacle, still gripping it, flies back too, but its tip lets go of Wolff (unsure about the physics here, but it clearly didn't keep holding onto his lower body). The blast impacts Wolff's upper body, pushing him backwards, possibly bumping into the tentacle behind his waist and starting his backwards flip. On the way, he collides with Shirley who is already being flung backwards from both his own pulling force, and the cannonball plowing through him. The collision makes Shirley go right and out the window, while making Wolff go a bit to the left and boosting his flip to a full 180°.