idk, I figure if the engine is automatically playing a "falling into a hole" sound effect when enemies fall into a hole, it doesn't seem too specialized to automatically play an accompanying animation-- and as for specificity, the engine requires sound effects for things like "cane", "boomerang", "hookshot", which I'd argue are even more specific.
But point taken, and I agree, it's not a very complicated script. But not at the top of my priority list either, so I just thought I'd check to see if it was a built-in function : )
Thanks for the info!