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A Wronski Feint is a maneuver where a pursued character feints at an obstacle in order to get their pursuer to follow. They pull up at the very last second, and the split second of confusion, or their enemy's inferior piloting skills, causes the enemy to crash into the obstacle.

This trope allows the work to show off what a skilled pilot the hero is - he can take out the enemy with only his piloting skills. It also shows the audience his level of fearlessness and ability to keep cool under pressure.

Note that while the obstacle is usually a cliff, the ground, or a similar immobile object, it's not unheard of to pull this off with missiles, other vehicles, or other mobile targets.

Named after the Quidditch technique where one team's Seeker will pretend to see the Snitch near the ground and go into a dive to attempt to lure the opposing Seeker into crashing into the ground. The Wronski Feint is first mentioned in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and again in Quidditch Through the Ages by Kennilworthy Whisp, wherein it was revealed to have been named after famed Polish Seeker Josef Wronski.

Sometimes peppers and ends a longer Try And Follow sequence or Aerial Canyon Chase.

Subtrope of Try And Follow. Compare Dodge By Braking, Deadly Dodging.

Examples

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Anime & Manga

Gundam Evolve 7, a computer-generated short based on Gundam Wing, has Heero use the colony cannon he's attempting to destroy for a Wronski Feint.
Early in Zeta Gundam, Quattro and his team take advantage of their Rick Dias suits' superior manoeuvrability to pull the basic 'fly at the ground and swerve away at the last minute' version on a squadron of pursuing GMs. Made rather more plausible by the fact that the Federation GM II, to be blunt, steers like a cow.
Tails tries the missile maneuver with one of Eggman's missiles in the last episode of the second Sonic X season. It doesn't work.
Eggman: This isn't your typical anime weapon!
Fiendishly Inverted by the Anti-Spiral termination forces in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. The machines attempt to fake out their opponents with sluggish movement and feeble attacks, tricking them into thinking they have the upper hand. Said opponent might let up on the attackers just long enough to realize he's in the middle of a sudden Zerg Rush, or mount a counterstrike and charge forward- racing toward their doom. As soon as the enemy falls for the bait-and-switch tactic by dropping their guard, the mecha equally drop the charade and IMMEDIATELY go for the kill- with very deadly results.
In Tiger & Bunny, Kotetsu actually manages this against Barnaby without flight — his opponent didn't take in account his Grappling-Hook Pistol when following him off a skyscraper.

Comic Books

In The Desert Peach, Rosen does this to a pursuing British pilot. Rosen's in a Stuka—-a dive bomber that's made to deal with the G-forces and stresses of pulling up out of a very steep dive—-and the British pursuer isn't. Truth in Television; see Real Life below.
In the "Wrecking Havoc" story in The Transformers, a human fighter pilot actually manages to pull this off on Cyclonus.
This is essentially done a few times in Sin City in which a character lures one or more cop cars into Old Town where cops are not allowed. This ends with the cops turning and leaving... usually. The cop cars unfortunate enough to land in the neighborhood get blasted apart.

Film

In the first Fantastic Four movie, the Human Torch uses the Wronski Feint to dispose of a missile, when his attempt to lure it with flares proved ineffective.
Galaxy Quest uses magnetic Space Mines in a Wronski Feint to destroy the Big Bad alien's flagship.
The Lightcycles in TRON use a unique variant, creating their own walls for their pursuers to crash into. They use the standard version when there's a wall already in place.
In the movie Blue Thunder, the hero (flying the titular Black Helicopter) dodges two heat seeking missiles fired at him by military F-16s by luring them into, respectively, the heat from a Japanese barbecue shop and the sun reflecting off a skyscraper. Under the circumstances, he had no real choice, but the film rather jarringly avoids dealing with the consequences.
In The Incredibles, Elastigirl tries this move to cause pursuing missiles to hit the ocean. It doesn't work.
Appears in the movie of How to Train Your Dragon. It helps that the Red Death's wings were shot full of holes so it can't pull up.
In Independence Day, Steven Hiller uses the canyon ploy to escape from the alien dogfighters. He then uses the actual Wronski Feint on his last pursuer, ejecting and deploying his chute, causing both plane and alien fighter to crash. Mostly justified since the chute obscures the alien's sight, and by the time it slides off the alien craft, it's too close to the canyon wall to pull up in time.
In the first movie of the Harry Potter series, Harry actually does this when he and the Slytherin Seeker are both going for the Snitch. A subversion in that the Snitch actually is in sight and the Slytherin player gets skittish and cautiously pulls up well before he would collide with the ground, leaving Harry alone to finish the maneuver and snatch the orb.
In a variation without canyon walls, the heroes of Pearl Harbor do this by flying their planes directly at each other, and then swerving at the last minute, causing their pursuers to crash into each other.
Terrestrial variant: Batman Forever shows the Batmobile accelerating into a brick wall before using a combination of rocket boosters and a grappling hook to drive up the wall. The pursuers drive right into it.
The Incredible Mr Limpet. The Nazis develop a torpedo that can follow Henry Limpet's "thrum" sound. He uses this to lure the torpedoes into following him. He moves in front of the U-boats that fired the torpedoes, makes the "thrum" sound and moves away before the torpedoes hits the subs.
This was the entire point of Han Solo flying the Millennium Falcon into an Asteroid Thicket in The Empire Strikes Back. All four TIE fighters pursing him get smashed by asteroids.
- Also done in A New Hope when Luke is being pursued by a TIE fighter. He pulls to the side suddenly, allowing Wedge Antilles to come at it from the front and blow it away.
In Finding Nemo, Nigel the pelican pulls this to get away from a swarm of seagulls that are after Marlin and Dory (who are riding in Nigel's mouth) by flying through the space between the mast and sail of one of the many sailboats in the harbor. The entire flock of seagulls fall for it and get their beaks stuck in the sails.
Captain Ramius in The Hunt for Red October pulled this when a torpedo locks on to the sub while it is in its canyon run - he purposefully delayed a turn by several seconds, then turned very hard (for a sub, anyway), causing the torpedo to impact into a canyon wall.
- Repeated by Captain Mancuso late in the movie, with one difference: the torpedo hit the Alfa sub that originally fired it.
Mancuso: The hard part about playing chicken is knowing when to flinch.

Literature

As mentioned above, it was demonstrated quite effectively in the Quidditch World Cup by Viktor Krum in the book Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. And several Harry Potter Fanfics have Harry himself performing it, as in the book he thought after seeing it that he couldn't wait to try it. Unfortunately, later events (the Quidditch cup being called off due to The Triwizard Tournament in his fourth year, getting banned from Quidditch by Umbridge in his fifth year, getting weekly detentions for the end of the season in his sixth year, and skipping his seventh year) conspire to prevent him from ever trying it.
- Not really. He did what was basically the Wronsky Feint to Cho Chang on the third book, before he knew this was a move with a name, and his tactic against the dragon in Goblet of Fire was similar as well.
Skandranon, the hero of the Mercedes Lackey & Larry Dixon novel The Black Gryphon does this in the first chapter of the book, when he's being pursued by enemy fliers. It's subverted by the fact that he promptly runs straight into a tree himself shortly thereafter. Of course, it was a tree on his team's side of the warzone, which is what he was really worrying about.
- Lackey refers to the Feint again in One Good Knight. One of the creatures native to Arcadia is the Kyryxes, a bloodsucking insect the size of a bird, and with barely enough brainpower to tell which potential meal is closer.
  More than one hero of the Wars had turned the tide by leading a swarm of the wretched creatures into the enemy's side of a battle.
In the X-Wing Series, Corran Horn uses this trope. A wing of Y-Wing bombers can't get close enough to a Lancer-class frigate to get a missile lock without getting blown away. So Corran, in his much more agile X-wing, tells the bombers to have the proton torpedoes lock on to him, with the express intent of using a Wronski Feint to deliver the ordnance to target. It works.
- Well, except the Y-Wings get the kill.
During Galaxy of Fear Tash once takes a tiny Starfly ship into an Asteroid Thicket and is pursued by a Star Destroyer. Unlike in The Empire Strikes Back, it's not concerned by the asteroids and can shoot the big ones and take the smaller ones on its shields, which makes the entity controlling it more confident in its inevitable victory. But it can't take the two giant space slugs she leads it to and buzzes.
Done by a capital ship in The Privateer by S.M. Sterling and James Doohan. The light carrier Invincible jumps into a barely explored system that happens to have a pulsar dangerously close to the jump point. Since they're expecting it, they're able to slingshot around the pulsar at high speed and back to the jump point. The enemy flotilla pursuing them is not expecting the pulsar and ends up smearing itself across its surface.

Live Action Television

In the Stingray 1964 episode "The Man from the Navy", the titular super-sub is being used as the target vessel for a new underwater homing missile. In all previous tests, Stingray hasn't been able to shake off the missile, so an annoyed and frustrated Troy Tempest charges at a large rock formation on the ocean floor, only veering off at the last second. The missile can't follow the insane turn and crashes into the rocks. Just as well, because while the other missiles have been inert test rounds, this one has a live warhead courtesy of Titan's agent X20.
Subverted in the Firefly episode "The Message". Wash tries to lead the pursing Alliance gunship on an Aerial Canyon Chase. The gunship doesn't take the bait; instead it simply flies over the canyon and bombards them from afar with missiles and bombs.
Wash: I didn't think of that.

Machinima

Occurs unintentionally in Red vs. Blue Reconstruction. The reds are fleeing from a pair of soldiers in a car chase. Grif races towards a cliff, believing he can make the jump over the river, but changes his mind at the last second and brakes just in time. The soldiers are not so lucky and go flying off the edge. Simmons shoots them with the car's turret as they go down for good measure.
- Tex combines this with teleporters to shake a locked-on rocket.

Newspaper Comics

Dude Hennick pulls one against a Japanese fighter in Terry and the Pirates when the heroes are escaping from Temple Rock prison, causing the fighter to crash into a lake.
One Garfield comic strip had the titular feline chasing a bird at ground-level, at full speed, only to have the bird pull up sharply (90� angle!) at the base of a tree. Garfield did not dodge.

Video Games

In Star Fox 64 Team Starwolf would tail you unmercifully. You COULD pull an Immelmann Turn and shoot whoever was following you that way - but it's waaay more fun to fly almost right into a pillar, then pull an Immelmann, and have Wolf die an instantaneous death. Cue Evil Laugh.
- However, due to technical limitations this would only work if you had the victim in your sight.
In Mass Effect 2, during the Suicide Mission, Joker will pull one of these to deal with several Oculus drones engaging the Normandy by flying into the wreckage of thousands of other ships that entered the Omega-4 relay. How it plays out depends on whether or not you bought Tali's shield upgrade. If you did the Normandy makes it through needing a new coat of paint, but otherwise intact. If you didn't however, the Normandy's drive core overloads and vents into the engineering compartment, killing a squadmate, possibly Tali herself.
Tribes: Ascend allows nimbler classes to escape the Shrike aircraft's attacks this way. Especially common since a lot of pilots will aim to ram the infantry.
In the intro for Wing Commander Privateer, the player character lures a pirate's missiles around an asteroid, and then sends them back at the firing craft. How he did that in a ship that can't outrun or outturn the missiles is an exercise best left for those who forget the MST3K Mantra.
In Forza Motorsport this is a popular method to get rid of AI cars tailgating you; if they only start to overtake you right before a turn, they'll go flying through the turn from breaking too late, often slamming into a wall. This also happens frequently in multiplayer when dealing with rammers - if you see someone aiming to smash into you at a tight turn, just go wide at a turn and smash on the brakes, and the rammer will go flying through the turn and smash into the walls of the track.
In the Grand Theft Auto and Saints Row games, the best way to lose a cop pursuit it to switch into the opposite lane wait for them to follow you and switch out just before you hit another car.
An infamous trick in Ace Combat Assault Horizon's multiplayer, known as "ground pounding", is essentially this.

Western Animation

At least one example of the missile version happens in Star Wars: Clone Wars: Anakin, pursued by a large numbers of enemy fighters, orders his squadron of clone pilots to fire their missiles across the bow of a capital ship and then lures the enemy fighters into the path of the missiles, and even carries over some of the missiles to one of the enemy carriers.
- He also pulls this in the new series. In "Cat and Mouse", Admiral Trench fires a few missiles from his dreadnought at Anakin's stealth ship, who then led the missiles right back to Trench's command bridge when it was unshielded.
The finale of Justice League Unlimited had Batman do this with the Omega Effect (self-guided Eye Beams of Ret Gone); he throws down a Mook he passes trying to elude it so said Mook bounces into the Effect's path at just the right moment.
The Gargoyles use this trick against the Steel Clan a couple of times. Late in the second season, one of them even lampshades it: "It's amazing how many times that works"
The good guys fall for this in ReBoot. Two web creatures on a collision course going around the Principal office, each followed by half a dozen CPU's. Web creatures escape, all CPU's crash and explode.
In X-Men Evolution, a more unusual form of this is done to evade missiles and fighter pursuit. Instead of bothering to pull out of the dive, Kitty Pryde phases the entire jet through a mountainside. The missiles crash harmlessly into the rock and the pilots who were in pursuit (not knowing about mutants) swear never to speak of it again.
In the Wing Commander Academy episode "The Lords of the Sky", Grunt uses the bottom of a canyon to scrape off some Kilrathi fighters chasing him, by diving down at it and then pulling out at the last moment.
Baloo, in TaleSpin, is a master of this, getting the air pirates to crash their fighters when they can't follow his cargo seaplane!
"If you can't fly, don't mess with the eagles!"

Real Life

Occurred in Real Life, as seen on History Channel's Dogfights show. In the episode, "Desert Aces", the to-be Israeli jet ace Geora Epstein is chasing a MiG-21, which tries to shake him off by doing a Split-S maneuver at dangerously low altitude - a Suicidal Gotcha. At first Epstein thought he had crashed and died... but then, the MiG began rising out of the swirling storm of sand kicked up by his jet afterburners. The feat was Awesome, but Impractical, and Epstein used common sense, casually flying up to the struggling MiG and scragging it with his cannon.
At least one Real Life instance of the Wronski Feint have been reported to be used by pilots of No. 303 Polish Fighter Squadron during WWII.
- And a variant was used regularly: the Poles were used to underpowered, underarmed Polish and French fighters, and found that the only way to make any impression on German formations was to dive head-on at them and open fire at point-blank range. When they tried this in Merlin-engined, 8-gun Hurricanes, the tactic proved to be awesomely effective, causing more than one German raid to abort entirely as the pilots tried desperately to get away from these madmen...
- This may be why J.K. Rowling made the inventor of the trope-naming manoeuvre Polish.
- Also (sometimes) averted during the WWII Polish Campaign: German Bf 110 pilots understood their large and heavy fighters would become hapless victims of the Wronski Feint if they attempted to dogfight small and nimble PZL fighters, so they used superior engine power to fight only in the vertical plane, by zoom-climbing towards the Poles, guns blazing, and repeat the shoot-out during the afterwards dive.
At least until the end of WW 2, this also gave the Swiss the edge when flying substantially inferior aircraft against combatants who had entered their (neutral) airspace - they knew the mountains like the back of their hand and the intruders did not.
- This was pretty much the only edge that the infamous Stuka dive-bomber had if it was engaged by enemy fighters; it could withstand dives that would rip the wings clean off a Spitfire, but at the cost of a dismal turn-rate and mediocre top speed.
  - Dive bombers such as the Stuka and SBD Dauntless had remarkable turn rates when not carrying ordnance (their wing area is very generous, to provide the lift to carry bombs, so when the payload is gone, their wing-loading numbers approach or exceed contemporary fighters). The US Navy used SB Ds as fighters during the early days of WWII when its supply of Wildcats was limited. One of the episodes of Dogfight focused on a Dauntless pilot holding off a whole passel of Zero fighters, and shooting down a couple.
Captain Jim Denton and Brent Brandon, USAF, manage to pull one of these in an EF-111 Raven radar jammer against an Iraqi Dassault Mirage F1. Though the kill was credited to a nearby fighter pilot who was in the process of locking the Mirage, Denton and Brandon were both awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for their role in causing the Mirage to plow into the ground at full speed. This is the only time that a kill of a jet has been credited to an unarmed aircraft.
This tactic is used by the crew of Philippine Coast Guard MCS-3000 to escape the chase from eight Chinese vessels (namely, CMS and FLEC) during the Scarborough Shoal Incident.