I guess a decent analogy would be like if you were a salmon swimming in a river that is increasing its flow rate as you move down. Eventually the water starts flowing so fast that you can't out swim it and you can't make it back where you started. If you were swimming next to a salmon friend that friend wouldn't suddenly get launched to oblivion when they hit the no-swimming-back point, you could watch them appear to swim normally next to you but neither of you can make it back up river. Your only option at that point is to keep moving in the direction the water is flowing. In the black hole case, just replace the water with space-time and its the same scenario.

This is a good point, a human could actually fall through an event horizon without knowing. Gravity doesn't increase linearly with distance. So at some point when you get close enough to the singularity gravity experienced by your head and feet could be immensely different, but I can't imagine anyone falling that deep could survive long enough to get to that point.