Stern Chase

Well, I've got to run to keep from hidin',
And I'm bound to keep on ridin'.
And I've got one more silver dollar,
But I'm not gonna let 'em catch me, no,
Not gonna let 'em catch the Midnight Rider.

— The Allman Brothers Band, "Midnight Rider"

The protagonist is being pursued and must stay in motion, usually moving to a different Adventure Town each episode. There will be ploys to delay the pursuit. Some will work, some won't. Frequently the protagonist must complete a hunt of their own, to bring the pursuit to an end.

The term "stern chase" comes from the navy cliche, "a stern chase is a long chase", which comes from the old days of sailing ships. When one ship chased another from behind (the stern), both ships had the same wind, could only use the few guns that could point forward or back to fire at each other, and since most ships were roughly the same speed, even if one would eventually overtake the other, it could take days, weeks or even months depending on how determined each side was. Thus, one catching (or escaping) the other depended entirely on shiphandling skill, a lucky shot or a change in the wind making it more favourable for one side to press an advantage.

A Stern Chase makes a good reason why those Walking the Earth choose not to just settle down. It is also commonly associated with Clear My Name plots. The pursuer is often the Implacable Man. If the pursuer is a well-intentioned, sympathetic character, he is an Inspector Javert or a Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist. Compare also Super-Persistent Predator, which is a generally unrealistic animal version of the pursuer.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Inverted in Inuyasha, where the protagonists are chasing the villain forever. That is, until the finale, where they finally kill him.

• Monster: Tenma hunts for Johan, and is chased by Lunge and the police.
• Scrapped Princess: Just about everybody and their mother wants Pacifica dead, thanks to a prophecy that states she will eventually destroy the world.
• The title unicorn of the Unico movies that traumatized many viewers in The '80s.
• Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force: After protagonist Tohma rescues love interest Lily, he finds himself being chased from one place to another by a large, inter-dimensional organization that wants to secure Lily. The name of the chasers? The Time-Space Administration Bureau, the protagonists of the previous seasons.
• The first season of Monster Rancher ends with one of this in "Melcarba", with the Searchers being pursued by the titular beast.
• Mobile Suit Gundam SEED follows the Archangel, a ship that is chased by ZAFT because it carries aboard the Strike, a prototype mecha that could change the course of the war in favour of the Earth Alliance if it were to go into production.
• One Piece: Smoker and Tashigi. In the first half of the story, they didn't get much screen time (mainly because Luffy couldn't hit Smoker and didn't stand a chance of beating him), but now that Luffy is stronger and can actually fight Smoker on even ground, they're bound to have their roles expanded.
• In the XY arc of Pokémon Adventures, Team Flare is after X's Mega Ring and is clearly willing to use lethal force against him and his friends. Adding to that is that they have plenty of members disguised as ordinary citizens, so the kids are especially wary of every stranger they meet and staying too long in any area. As such, despite the fact that Y is clearly loaded, the kids have been camping out at night in remote areas and subsisting on convenience food. Likewise, Korinna and her grandfather are also being chased by Team Flare for similar reasons. To protect the secrets of Mega Evolution, the two were forced to destroy the Tower of Mastery before making a run for it.
• Kagerou Project: Azami's backstory began as Walking the Earth to find out more about her origin, but became this when her first meeting with humans turned sour. Even after settling down in the middle of a dense forest, they couldn't just let her lie. She eventually creates a new world to live in and goes there alone, leaving her husband and daughter behind, deciding they're better off without her.
• The reason Lupin III is always moving is that if he stops Zenigata will arrest him, as nothing can stop him. Not even being in Israel when Lupin is in Egypt during the Arab–Israeli Conflict and getting mistaken for an enemy spy and arrested will stop Zenigata — not a day later, Zenigata is in Egypt and leading Cairo's police in the chase.
• In Enchanted Journey, chipmunks Glikko and Nono are trying to journey from the city to the forest where the wild chipmunks live free, and are pursued for the last leg of the adventure by an evil fox.
• One of the earlier battles in Legend of the Galactic Heroes, the battle of Astarte, turned into a mutual one of these where both fleets are left going in circles trying to shoot up each others tailpipes as all their weapons are forward facing.

Comic Books

• Roughly the first half of Knights of the Old Republic has Zayne Carrick pursued by his former masters, having been framed by them for the murder of his fellow Padawans. Along the way he tries to help out the Republic Navy, civilians, and his friends in the burgeoning war against the Mandalorians while he tries to clear his name.

Fan Works

• The Kingdom Hearts fanfic The Renegades is about the former residents of Castle Oblivion being chased through the worlds by the other members of the Organization.

Films — Live-Action

• The Enemy Below, a submarine-vs-destroyer duel.
• The Terminator film series involves a killer robot from the future relentlessly pursuing various targets in the present day.
• Master and Commander : The Far Side of the World centers its plot around a very long Stern Chase: it starts off the northeast coast of South America and ends somewhere westward of the Galapagos Islands.
• Apocalypto, once Jaguar Paw gets free from the Mayans.
• Carver chasing Gideon in Seraphim Falls.
• Midnight Run fits this, with a bounty hunter escorting a former mafia accountant from New York to Los Angeles while he is simultaneously being chased by another bounty hunter, the FBI and the mafia.
• Almost the entire film of Mad Max: Fury Road is a stern chase. Furiosa, later joined by Max, is liberating the "wives" of Immortan Joe, who takes his whole army and two of his allies' armies after her to get them back. The chase takes multiple days, each faction driving as hard as they can while still rationing the fuel they brought.
• Death Hunt: Albert Johson is a hunter/trapper in 1931 depression-era Yukon Territory who is falsely accused of murder, and is doggedly pursued by an Inspector Javert-type Canadian Mountie. In a reverse to the usual run-for-the-border scenario, Johnson's only hope is to survive long enough to escape to the United States, at the Alaska territory border.

• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: A significant portion of the second act is about Butch and Sundance on the run from a posse hired to kill them.
• The film Deadly Encounter is one long chase movie with helicopters. After a woman is abducted from a hospital by a drug dealer's Mooks in their helicopter, heroic pilot Sam (Larry Hagman) chases them in his own helicopter. The situation is reversed after Sam manages to save the woman and get her aboard his chopper, but now the drug dealers are chasing them.
• The similar film Birds of Prey by the same writer and director as Deadly Encounter (Robert Boris and William A. Graham), involves thieves taking a hostage and bringing her with them when they fly away in their getaway copter. A fearless news chopper pilot relentlessly pursues the villains in an effort to save their prisoner before she outlives her usefulness.
• Star Wars:
  • In The Empire Strikes Back, after the Rebels base on Hoth is discovered by Imperial forces, Han, Leia, Chewie and C-3PO spend half of the movie eluding Imperial Star Destroyers on board the Millennium Falcon while dealing with a malfunctioning hyperdrive, eventually reaching Cloud City on Bespin... only for Han to be frozen in carbonite and handed over to bounty hunter Boba Fett, which prompts Leia, Chewie, Lando and Threepio to rescue Luke and seek Han's whereabouts.
  • The Last Jedi: The First Order spends the majority of the film chasing the remaining rebels, who can't flee to hyperspace because the FO have hyperspace tracking. They know that the Rebels have limited fuel, and so are simply playing the waiting game for the rebel ships to run out of power and fall into range for them to destroy.
• Romper Stomper features a very long sequence in which an Australian gang of skinheads pick on a few Vietnamese factory workers, who quickly summon reinforcements. The factory's entire workforce empties out and attacks in a Zerg Rush, forcing the skinheads to flee across the city as their members get picked off one by one.
• The classic horror film Race with the Devil is about a pair of couples on vacation who witness a Satanic ritual and have to burn rubber in their RV as they find themselves on the run from evil cultists out to murder and silence them.
• Demon Knight picks up at the end of the stern chase between Frank Brayker and The Collector. The film ends with the key being passed on to Jeryline, who will now be pursued endlessly by yet another Collector.

Literature

• In Geoffrey Landis' Long Chase, two robotic starships crewed by uploaded human minds persue each other.
• Stephen King's The Dark Tower: "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." The gunslinger had been following the man in black for, at that time, at least twelve years, longer depending on which edition you're reading; the fact that time and space have become wonky means that it could have been centuries or longer.
• Stephen King's Firestarter opens In Medias Res with Andy and Charlie McGee fleeing the agents of The Shop, constantly moving from place to place, seldom stopping long enough to enroll Charlie in school or for Andy to take anything like a real job.
• The Running Man is about a man in a future dystopia running from bounty hunters as part of a Deadly Game Show.
• The Known Space short story "The Ethics of Madness" has Bussard-ramjet-powered starships in a literal Stern Chase into intergalactic space. They keep at it for quite a while.
• Frankenstein: After all of Victor's family and friends are killed, he ends up in a lengthy pursuit of his creation, eventually reaching the Arctic. This is where Walton finds him.
• Similar to the Niven example above, Alastair Reynolds has another literal Stern Chase in his novel Redemption Ark. It lasts several chapters of the book, with increasingly inventive attempts to kill the pursuing ship being deployed. In the next book in the series, it is revealed that the positions have reversed, although this time we come in at the point where the pursuer catches up, so the stern chase is only inferred rather than being shown.
• Also from Alastair Reynolds, in House of Suns there's a Stern Chase across 60,000 light-years; halfway across the Milky Way galaxy. And then a little further. Notably, this takes place in a setting with no FTL.
• A Stern Chase of the classical type occurs in the 5th Book in the Aubrey-Maturin series, Desolation Island. Aubrey and Maturin, in an old, outgunned 4th Rate Ship of the Line, are chased by a new Dutch 3rd Rate Ship of the Line, whilst on their way to Australia, with an implication the reason is that It's Personal for the Dutch Captain. Jack's master-gunner gets a lucky shot on the Dutch ship's line and rigging, it turns sideways, is hit by a giant wave, capsizes and sinks with the loss of all 600 crewmen within minutes. Damage sustained by Aubrey's ship drives the rest of the plot for the novel.
  • Stephen, who often requires nautical terms to be explained to him, mistakes the definition of "stern" and asks if it is "a very stern chase indeed."
  • It shows up in the movie as well, but it's far more dynamic with both ships being in several places the pursuer and the pursued, and the stern chases generally only last until one side manages to escape by use of trickery.
• Horatio Hornblower: And of course, it comes up a few times, most notably in the first published book, "The Happy Return", where Hornblower's ship, a smallish frigate named HMS Lydia, is forced to pursue and sink a much larger enemy ship, with the enemy ship's longer-ranged guns allowing them to plink at the pursuing British warship for several hours before they can fire back. To keep his wits about him, he passes the time playing cards with his junior officers. To keep the morale of his men up, he orders a dance contest even as the enemy's shots periodically hit the ship, wounding or killing crewmembers.
• Serge Storms: Serge and Coleman are on a never-ending road trip across Florida, helping out anyone they view as being deserving of their help and brutally killing anyone who made their new friends need that help (and almost anyone else who offends or antagonizes Serge). How actively pursued they are varies from book to book, but between the fact that they are wanted fugitives and enjoy traveling anyway, they rarely spend two consecutive books in the same town (and even when they do, it is usually because of a major event like COVID quarantine protocols).
• Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea has the main character, Ged, getting chased from island to island by a creature from the shadow realms.
• In Maximum Ride, Max and the rest of her Flock are on the run due to the threat of capture, experimentation, torture, being used as weapons or simply imminent death at the hands of anyone connected to the School, the Institute, Itexicon or Itex.
• Unsurprisingly given that it's basically Wooden Ships and Iron Men IN SPACE!, the Honor Harrington series features quite a few.
  • The best example is probably in the first book where Honor's light cruiser is chasing an escaping Havenite Q-Ship, she destroys it but her ship is pounded to scrap in the process.
  • In one of the spin-off books a character escaping through the air ducts reflects on the cliche about a stern chase being a long one.
• Louisa May Alcott's thriller novel A Long Fatal Love Chase.
• The second half of Jerry Pournelle & Larry Niven's The Gripping Hand consists of a series of trips in various directions by the protagonists, to escape being killed or to buy time until the cavalry can arrive.
  "If someone tells me that 'a stern chase is a long chase' one more time." Joyce said, "I'll scream."
• In Michael Flynn's The January Dancer, the chase after the Dancer. It is repeatedly called a stern chase. The Dancer may even be keeping moving before them by choice.
• Logan's Run is nothing but a novel-length chase, holding off not only pursuing Sandmen, but following the breadcrumbs left behind that hint at Sanctuary.
• Les Misérables features one spanning almost two decades between ex-convict Jean Valjean and Inspector Javert. Valjean manages to escape for years at a time, only to be discovered because he just can't ignore people in need and Javert is a dreadful combination of dedicated, persistent, and vengeful. It ends when Valjean saves Javert's life and finally gives himself up, only for Javert (baffled and appalled to realise his prey is a good man who doesn't deserve the harsh sentencing he'll receive) to leap off a bridge rather than have to choose between condemning his savior or violating the law he dedicated his life to upholding. Intensified in many adaptations, as the necessary compression makes it seem like Javert's a monomaniac who does nothing else with his life but hunt Valjean.
• Inverted in the third Beka Cooper book by Tamora Pierce. The whole novel has Beka and her group as the pursuers against the people who kidnapped four-year-old Prince Gareth.
• The first four volumes of The Lost Fleet are one long stern chase, with the titular fleet being trapped Behind Enemy Lines and having to battle their way through the other side's increasingly desperate attempts to wipe them out. And by the time they get home, they've inflicted so much damage on the way out that the enemy war effort is near total collapse. A rare case where a war was won by retreating.
• One short mystery/horror story deals with the protagonist (a blind man) being hired by a man to warn him of approaching footsteps after he reveals he's been on the run for years from a vengeful mummy/spirit from a tomb he'd violated. Unfortunately for him his latest place to stay, a hotel, is undergoing construction work making him unable to escape when it catches up again. It ends with the blind man hearing him jump from a window to his death but he can still hear the man running and the sound of pursuit from the spirit, endlessly trying to get away.
• The Witchlands: The second half of Truthwitch has Safi, Iseult, Merik, and Evrane racing to the port city of Lejna before their pursuers (Aeduan, who wants to bring Safi to the Raider King, and Vaness, who wants Safi's help to clean her Decadent Court of sycophants) catch up to them.

Live-Action TV

• Doctor Who:
  • The Doctor is always on the move anyway, but on a couple of occasions someone has been chasing him, the most prominent example being the Black Guardian.
  • The episode "Heaven Sent" has a Stern Chase within a single building. The Veil doesn't move fast, but it never stops coming after the Doctor. Even if he runs to the far end of the castle he is imprisoned in, the Veil always catches up with him within an hour or so.

• Parodied in Heat Vision and Jack, where Jack Austin is a former NASA astronaut with Super-Intelligence who's being pursued by Ron Silver.
• Though David's motivation to Walk the Earth is to find a cure for his condition so he can return from the presumed dead (he also doesn't want to develop ties to people that might end up getting hurt), The Incredible Hulk (1977) also involves the hero being "pursued by an investigative reporter" who wants to make his name with inflammatory tabloid coverage of "the creature".

• The Fugitive and its movie adaption are both classic examples, following the titular fugitive trying to clear his name by finding the one-armed man who killed his wife, while trying to elude the determined Lieutenant Gerard.
• Nowhere Man featured a hero constantly fleeing a conspiratorial organization that was out to get him. Every episode had him visit new locations, learn a little more about the conspiracy, and then flee his pursuers once again.
• The Pretender. Jarod, the protagonist, is a genius who was held captive and used by an evil organization as a child, until one day he escaped. Throughout the series he is constantly on the run from agents of the organization trying to recapture him.
• Run, Buddy, Run. A sitcom variant, about a man on the run from mobsters.
• In an episode of the TV series Run For Your Life, the title character, played by Ben Gazzara, is dying of a fatal disease and has only a few months to live. On his Walking the Earth quest to live as much as possible before he dies, in one town he is falsely accused of a serious crime. He is more-or-less held incommunicado in jail, but escapes in order to contact friends and his lawyer to help him. He knows he has to go back to face the charges, but before he can do so, one of the deputies from the town in the other state where he was being held, and without extradition papers, knocks him on the head and kidnaps him back to the town, ostensibly to stand trial.
• The Immortal (1969) involves a man who has a special type of blood that makes him resistant to disease and aging, and thus finds himself pursued by the henchman of an elderly billionaire who wants to capture him and make him his personal blood bank.
• Run, Joe, Run. Basically The Fugitive only with a dog as protagonist.

• "Runners" in Stargate Atlantis are humans that are implanted with a tracking chip, and then hunted by the Wraith for sport. Though they are exceedingly rare and most of them don't last very long.
• In Werewolf (1987) Eric Cord is pursued by a bounty hunter who packs silver bullets and thinks that Eric is a dangerous killer, not realizing that Eric is tracking and stopping other werewolves, most notably Janos Skorzeny, in the hopes of curing his own condition. Rogan and Eric are actually following the same clues, Eric just tends to get there enough ahead of Rogan to get the blame.
  Rogan: Seeing's believing with me…and I know what I've seen you turn into.
  Eric: And I'm trying to stop it!
  Rogan: But you don't know if you can stop it, and in the meantime you've left a trail of blood that led me straight to you. I know if I can stop you, I can stop it.
• Logan's Run. Logan and Jessica are pursued by Francis and the Sandmen, who seek to return them to the City of Domes for extermination.

Music

• Poets of the Fall:
  • Driving Song "Late Goodbye" has a couple chased endlessly by "the Devil" though its unclear whether its literal or metaphorical.
    The devil grins from ear to ear when he sees the hand he's dealt us
    Points at your flamin' hair, and then we're playin' hide and seek
    I can't breathe easy here, 'less our trail's gone cold behind us
    'Til in the john mirror you stare at yourself grown old and weak
  • Driving/Wanderlust Song "Daze" has the singer complaining "I Just Want to Have Friends" but being compelled to drift from place to place by a pursuer
    With constant companions, would that I could
    Further afield my nemesis on stilts is gaining on me
• The Stan Rogers song "Barrett's Privateers" includes a stern chase as part of the story arc; The titular group spots a large "Yankee" ship loaded down with gold, slowly making way with little haste; however, the privateers' ship, the Antelope, is so decrepit that it takes three days for their sloop to catch up to the larger ship, and when they finally do, it is rendered All for Nothing when the Yankee ship sinks them in a single retaliatory shot.

Theatre

• In Prometheus Bound, Io can not stop because she is being harassed by a gadfly. Prometheus consoles her as best he can, by telling her of her future travels and offering that, because of this, her future descendant will rescue him.

Video Games

• In the aptly named Rail Chase, the respective antagonists of a chapter chases the protagonist couple and act as a healthbar where taking hits slow down your cart, allowing the antagonist to catch up and finish you off. At the end of each chapter you have to fight them one by one though.
• Prince of Persia: Warrior Within has the prince running from a demonic entity bent on enforcing the Timeline, which says the Prince must die.
• Used in the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series twice. In Red/Blue Rescue Team, the hero and their partner must flee the other rescue teams out for their blood due to a critical logic failure; in Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky, the pair are trapped in the Bad Future and searching for a way back. Both sequences include an understandable difficulty bump, given the circumstances.
• Essentially inverted for the majority of disc 1 of Final Fantasy VII as the player's party pursues Sephiroth across continents and around the world even as he is hunting for the Black Materia.
• Anyone that's played sailing games like Sea Dogs or Pirates of the Caribbean (a.k.a. Sea Dogs II) will probably have experienced the literal version. Needless to say, they can get pretty boring.
• The ending of Dragon Age: Origins for a male character who romanced Morrigan has the player abandoning all of his political clout and hero-worship to chase after her.
• The first part of Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete has the party being tracked by Lord Leo and Althena's Guard.
• Battlefield 2142: Another example that echoes the original military scenario: a running battlewalker has the same speed as a tank moving in reverse. At a distance, the walker's rockets do not fly true, and the tank's shells can easily be dodged. Unless the tank driver gets stuck on an obstacle, the walker giving chase has a long fight ahead.
• In Fahrenheit, Lucas Kane is chased by the police for the majority of the game due to having commited a murder while possessed. The other protagonists, Carla Valenti and Tyler Miles, are the cops assigned to catch him.
• In Heavy Rain, Ethan Mars is on the run from the police after they start suspecting him of being the Origami Killer. One of the other protagonists, FBI agent Norman Jayden, is involved in the pursuit of Ethan but doesn't believe that he is the killer.
• Luigi's Mansion pulls this as you start the final section in the game: lightning strikes the mansion and causes a blackout, which naturally makes the ghosts pop up all over the place. In order to stop the infestation, Luigi must hunt down a ghost using a somewhat obscure hint from E. Gadd to get a key to open the previously-accessible basement and switch the power back on.
  • You play as the stern chaser in Donkey Kong '94, which could be playing the trope for laughs considering how far it goes.
    • In the same light, New Super Mario Bros., New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and New Super Mario Bros. 2 feature the protagonist as the stern chaser as well.
• About half of TRON 2.0 involves the protagonist running from system to system to escape pursuing security Programs who have mistaken him for a virus.
• After the prologue in inFAMOUS 2, where Cole Macgrath decides to run from the Beast instead of fight it, he has already escaped down the Eastern Seaboard to New Marais, but the Beast is slowly catching up to him, with the game giving updates as to how far the Beast is from the city.
• In the first Golden Sun game, your party is chasing after the people responsible for lighting the Elemental Lighthouse, who also kidnapped a childhood friend, her brother, and a sage, with every new location you enter telling you you juuuust missed them (in some locations, they move a lot faster than you or actively slow you down by causing landslides). In the second game, you play as the kidnapped people (minus the two who serve as the Final Boss) but due to a major earthquake and shifting landmasses, you can't reach your old party to explain the situation (especially the fact that the Lighthouses need to be rekindled). Both parties are eventually reunited with each other.
• Resident Evil features powerful enemies commonly labelled as "pursuers" constantly on the tail of the player characters.
  • Resident Evil 2 has Mr. X, who shows up as one of two Recurring Bosses alongside "G". The Resident Evil 2 (Remake) amplifies Mr. X's ability to stalk its targets by a large margin.
  • Resident Evil 3: Nemesis has the eponymous Super-Persistent Predator Nemesis, one of the most iconic monsters in the franchise. Like the upgraded Mr. X in the above remake, it can follow you anywhere, and while X can walk, Nemesis runs.
  • Resident Evil: Outbreak has the Leech Man in the first game's Hive Scenario. The second game has Titan (a zombified elephant) and the Axe Man in the Wild Things and Flashback scenarios, respectively.
  • Resident Evil 6 has Ustanak, said to be an Expy of Nemesis. This one shows up in only one of the four campaigns.
  • Resident Evil: Revelations has the mutated Rachel, a Red Shirt the players watch get killed infected a few minutes into the game. After defeating her as the second boss, she pulls a vanishing act and appears sporadically throughout the main campaign. It is actually mentioned she uses the Air-Vent Passageway on the ship to keep appearing and disappearing.
• This is pretty much the entirety of The Simpsons, as you play the titular family chasing down Mr. Smithers after he kidnaps Maggie.
• The Endless Running Game Subway Surfers has you playing as a graffiti artist running from the Inspector, a cop whose job it is to keep the train station clean. This guy will never give up until either he catches you or both of you get run down by a train.
• FTL: Faster Than Light is a Roguelike game where you manage the crew of a Cool Starship on the run from a rebellion to the safety of The Federation. Responding to each Random Event, and managing scarce resources, the player is tasked with regrouping with the last of the federation fleet to face down the rebel's flagship.
• In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge, you play as the stern chaser(s), as the turtles and their allies pursue various villains, to prevent them from reassembling Krang's android body with the parts that power various devices for the Foot Clan's latest scheme. This turns out to be pointless, as their actual objective is to remodel the Statue of Liberty into a new body for Krang.

Web Comics

• Next Town Over details the the pursuit of John Henry Hunter by Vane Black. On demonic/mechanical horses.
• Off-White: The humans are looking for the white spirit wolf.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender: The majority of Season 1 is concerned with the Gaang evading the Fire Nation and trying to get to the North Pole, where Aang can learn waterbending, usually with Zuko and/or Admiral Zhao on their heels.
• Here Comes the Grump. Princess Dawn, her Non-Human Sidekick Bip, and ordinary Earth teenager Terry Dexter are being chased by the villainous Grump and his klutzy Dragon. Each episode takes them to a new locale, where the heroes enlist the aid of the locals to try and get The Grump off their trail.
• The third season of The Secret Saturdays starts with this due to the Tomato in the Mirror reveal that Zak Saturday is Kur, who is believed to be the ultimate evil, which became known at the end of the previous season.
• The Zeta Project ran off of this. The government is chasing after Zeta because they believe he's turned against them and Zeta is chasing after his creator to find evidence to prove he's genuinely sentient and peaceful.
• Dogstar has the Clarkes chasing the Dogstar, and Bob Santino chasing the Clarkes.
• Gary and Mike The duo are unknowingly being pursued by Officer Dick, who's after Mike for sleeping with his daughter and costing him a promotion (she was suppose to marry the Police Chief Officer's son but called it off after sleeping with Mike). Gary's father later joins in on the chase after he finds out Gary had lost the SUV he had given him for the trip (Though that was more Mike's doing. Never pick up hitchhikers folks).
• G.I. Joe: Renegades has the Joes being pursued by both Cobra (here a MegaCorp that covers up their shady operations from the public), and by the US Army, more specifically Flint (as the Army believes the Joes went AWOL thinking they were doing illegal things). Throughout the show, all three factions often collide with each other, with the Joes simultaneously attempting to both clear their names and expose Cobra for the ruthless terrorist organization they really are.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy's Big Picture Show has the opening chase where the Eds try to escape Peach Creek in Eddy's Brother's car while the rest of the kids try to get at them over their scam Gone Horribly Wrong.
• Unlike most incarnations of the franchise, Carmen Sandiego uses this as its premise. Carmen is being pursued by two organizations: ACME, a crime-busting group who believes that she is an independent master criminal, and VILE, a criminal syndicate that's trying to eliminate her after she abandoned them. She works to dismantle VILE's plans in various locales across the world while finding any clues about her past.

Other

• Early humans carried out what is known as "persistence hunting" which essentially entails just following prospective prey until said prey exhausts itself into helplessness. This method of hunting even affected human evolution; humans might not be the fastest or the strongest on the block, but the human ability to stay on their feet and just keep walking is insanely high compared to quadrupeds, most of whom will eventually have to stop and lay down for an extended period. In fact, persistence hunting is theorized to be the origin of the indigenous peoples of the North and South American continents, as northern Asian hunter-gatherer tribes followed wooly mammoth packs across the frozen and exposed Bering Strait, only for said strait to thaw out and become submerged as global temperatures rose, leaving the tribes permanently where they were.

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