See also Bring News Back, Meadow Run, Race for Your Love. Contrast with Team Power Walk. May be a part of a Stern Chase.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- Danganronpa 3 has Munakata dashing to try to save and apologize to Juzo when he starts shutting down the Power Room of the Deadly Game, the scene is incredibly touching and verges on Race for Your Love, due to Juzo's feelings. It turns out to be a tearjerker when he reaches the power room seconds too late and sees Juzo's body who had already bled out to death after turning off the game.
- In Fairy Tail, Natsu has to run to catch Lucy before she hits the ground after she falls off a very tall tower.
- In a famous sequence from Millennium Actress, Chiyoko runs after information on her beloved artist; the time period and Chiyoko's garb change several times along the way.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion: The three EVA units have to make a run to catch the angel Sahaquiel on its orbital drop.
- In Sword of the Stranger, Nanashi has to run cross-country to find and save Kotaro.
Comic Books
- In Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons, Hippolyta is ordered to leave an unwanted baby girl in the wilderness and after realizing she can't just leave the infant girl to die, Hippolyta dashes back to the river to find it and when she can't, she keeps running for what the narration says are months on end. All in a vein hope of being able to rescue the child. An entire double page spread being shown depicting the progress of the run.
Fan Works
- Happens during Chapter 22 of Daughter of the Sun (ShoutFinder), when Skypaw's trying to call reinforcements for ThunderClan when they're going to battle WindClan. She makes a Big Heroic Run to ThunderClan camp—although she's interrupted by Chasefire trying to fight her. Then, Skypaw's Clanmates find her and they all make a Big Heroic Run together to reach the ThunderClan-WindClan border.
Films — Animation
- Pocahontas pulls off one with lots of symbolism.
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse does this trope well with Miles Morales.
- In Turning Red, when Mei runs away from school after transforming to a red panda during math class, Ming follows in her car. When the street is blocked by damage done inadvertently by panda-Mei, Ming leaves her car, takes off her high-heeled shoes, slides across the hood of another stranded car, and runs barefoot the rest of the way home, zigzagging along streets and through side alleys, and running fast enough that she gets there only a minute or two after Mei (who took a more direct route across the rooftops) did.
Films — Live-Action
- 1917 features a big, climactic oner of an unarmed Lance Corporal Schofield blitzing through an active battlefield, with explosions going off around him and fellow soldiers rush perpendicularly to him, serving as his final push to reach the Colonel who can call their attack off.
- In Batman: The Movie, the caped crusader tries to get rid of a lit bomb, but cannot find a place to discard it that doesn't endanger someone, causing him to run throughout the city trying to find a safe detonation zone. Some days, you just can't get rid of a bomb.
- Benji:
- Happens in For the Love of Benji when Benji sees Cindy being held at gun point, complete with slow-motion effect.
- Briefly (without the slow motion) in Benji the Hunted when Benji rushes back to shield the cubs from an eagle attack.
- Also happens in Benji Off the Leash. Lizard Tongue (a stray dog Benji has befriended) is about to be shot,and freezes in terror, so Benji races over/straight into him and knocks him out the way.
- Captain America: The First Avenger What is the very first thing Steve Rogers does as the perfect human specimen? Chase down a speeding car, of course. While barefoot.
- Chariots of Fire: Naturally.
- Running is one of Forrest Gump's key abilities. This makes him a football hero and then a war hero.
- Gallipoli: During the assault at Nek, Frank is assigned to act as message runner for Major Barton. First he makes a dash under enemy fire to General Gardener's HQ to tell how the Australian forces are being cut down. The general tells Frank that he is reconsidering the attack. Frank sprints back to convey this news, but the phone lines are repaired and Colonel Robinson orders the attack to continue. Frank arrives seconds too late and lets out a scream of anguish and despair.
- The end of The Graduate involves a lot of running.
- In A Hard Day's Night, The Beatles do one when they have to rush to the police station and save Ringo before their concert starts. It's set to an epic reprise of "Can't Buy Me Love."
- Played straight and subverted in The Hunger Games. Katniss runs to save Rue when she's caught in the Career's net trap, and then runs to find Peeta later on when she hears the gong signalling a Tribute death (which wasn't his).
- Jason's Lyric: By the time his friend, Rat, informs him that his brother, Joshua, is going to kill his girlfriend, Lyric, and her brother, Alonzo, Jason immediately rushes to her house. After their car is stopped by an oncoming train, Jason decides to get off his car, runs across the speeding train and races up to save her. Despite Joshua (accidentally) shoots Lyric, thankfully she survives after Jason immediately takes her to the ambulance. Jason and Lyric eventually earn their ultimate wish: to be together after leaving their pasts behind.
- In the beginning of Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, all the Super Sentai teams of the past 35 years charge towards the invading Zangyack Empire. There are 182 heroes present in that run.
- This is often the prelude to the climax of Kamen Rider movies, like in Kamen Rider Den-O: Ore, Tanjou! and Final Countdown (5 and 7 Riders, respectively) and Kamen Rider Decade: All Riders vs. Great Shocker (24, since the title said All note Riders).
- In L: change the WorLd, L attempts one when he realizes Maki is gone, but is too late to reach her.
- The Lord of the Rings:
- When Boromir is attacked by the Uruk-Hai in The Fellowship of the Ring at Amon Hen, he runs from them and blows the Horn of Gondor, causing Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli to all run toward him.
- A better example is the heroic run that Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli do to try to rescue Pippin and Merry in The Two Towers. They run for days after the orcs, only to get intercepted by the exiled Rohirrim.
Gimli: Keep breathing, keep breathing...
- A particularly awesome example during the climax of Mission: Impossible III, when Ethan (Tom Cruise) needs to sprint about 16 blocks to save his wife. No stunts or SFX, just several straight minutes of Cruise flooring it at stunning speeds down busy streets and across rooftops on his own. Every Mission Impossible since has featured a scene of Cruise running at full speed somewhere.
- Run Lola Run: Lola has twenty minutes to retrieve a large amount of money that her boyfriend lost in the subway, under the threat of him getting killed by the mob boss he works for. So, she does spend a large amount of screen-time running around (with plenty of slow-motion shots) in order to save his bacon.
- See You Yesterday: Has this Bolivian Army Ending style when Claudette runs to try once again to save her brother from being murdered by cops.
- There was a Sin City one-shot in which Marv successfully runs after escaping mooks in a car and hops on. A roller-blade variation occurs in Family Values in which Miho skates after a speeding car.
- In Stardust, Tristan outright sprints all the way to the Wall when he finds out Yvaine will die if she crosses the wall.
- Star Trek (2009): Chekov is the only one who can operate the transporter well enough to save Kirk and Sulu when they fall off Nero's drill, so he runs through the Enterprise, shouting "I can do that!" at the top of his lungs.
- In Star Trek Into Darkness Kirk and Scotty run through the Enterprise's corridors to reach the warp core as the ship's gravity fluctuates and debris crashes around them.
- Serenity:
River: You take care of me, Simon. You've always taken care of me. My turn.
- The last few minutes of the WWII POW escape movie Von Ryan's Express has the eponymous 'von' Ryan (actually a discipline-minded U.S. Army Air Force officer) running along the train tracks as the train he and his fellow prisoners hijacked trundles towards Switzerland and safety. Ryan doesn't make it.
Literature
- In Afraid to Ride by C.W. Anderson, Judy gallops a horse cross-country, without a saddle, to bring help to an unconscious rider.
- Ryan Ellis has one of these in Big Fat Disaster by Beth Fehlbaum.
- In Anna Sewell's Black Beauty, the main character has two: one a round trip to fetch a doctor, and one a chase after a runaway horse.
- In Dragon Bones, Oreg and Ward run a long distance, from the harbor town to Hurog land, to warn the inhabitants of castle Hurog that the villain wants to invade the castle. Even more heroic because Ward has been wounded in a fight beforehand. He sleeps for days afterwards, but that might be due to the other events after the run.
- Terry White pursues a runaway horse on her own mount, Frosty, in Hobby Horse Hill by Lavinia R. Davis.
- The Horse and His Boy has one of these (albeit on horseback) as a major plot thread. The evil army is coming and the good guys must be warned in time.
- Becomes a literal run for Shasta near the end of the book as Aravis is injured and the Horses have used all their strength but they still haven't reached the good guys to warn them. Shasta isn't pleased, but runs the entire rest of the way and manages to save Archenland from the greatest danger it would ever face and reunite with his family in the bargain.
- The bear running to where his hat is at the end of I Want My Hat Back.
- Another horse, Little Vic, is galloped cross-country to warn campers of an oncoming flash flood in Little Vic, by Doris Gates.
- A horse, Torch Bearer, is galloped miles to fetch a doctor in The Look of Eagles by John Taintor Foote.
- A The Lord of the Rings example: Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli running after the orcs to save Merry and Pippin.
- In Number the Stars by Lois Lowry, Annemarie must run through the night to bring a vital package to refugees.
- Lucinda Wyman's epic skate across most of Manhattan to reach her uncle in Roller Skates by Ruth Sawyer.
Live-Action TV
- Battlestar Galactica: Starbuck runs from her Viper to the airlock to stop Apollo from killing the Final Four, who have found the way to Earth.
- Happens frequently in The Bionic Woman (always in slow motion), once while she wore a nun's habit.
- Used in the season 2 finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, when Buffy realizes that she's been chasing a Red Herring and takes off running at full clip... and the fact that she's still too late to save Kendra is underscored by the camera slamming into slow motion as she gets back to the school.
- CSI: NY: In the season 3 finale, "Snow Day," Sheldon races down the street with his game face on and carrying a high powered rifle to help rescue Danny and Adam who are being held hostage by an Irish drug lord and his crew intent on getting back their drug horde that was seized at the beginning of the episode.
- Doctor Who: Many examples. Starting from Three — but especially Four — the Doctor does an awful lot of running. It eventually gets lampshaded by the Companions who are forced to run along with him. "There's an awful lot of running involved."
- The Tenth Doctor runs all the way across the Library and down to the core of the world to save River Song.
- The Eleventh Doctor tries to run across Upper Leadworth in "Amy's Choice," but the Dream Lord makes him fall asleep.
- Subverted twice in the original Firefly pilot. Simon has just been told by Mal that Kaylee has died (meaning he's failed to save her after he let her get shot), and he takes off at a dead run to the infirmary. When he gets there, instead of a dead Kaylee, he finds her alive and giggling at something Book's just said. Simon angrily calls Mal "psychotic". Irony cut to Mal, Zoe, Jayne, and Wash on the bridge, laughing their asses off at the prank and Wash calling Mal "psychotic."
- In RedDwarf, the episode Out of Time ends with Lister, Cat and Kryten all killed by their own corrupted future selves. With only a minute left before Starbug breaks apart completely and only Kryten's last words ("There may be a...") to hold onto, Rimmer snatches up a bazookoid and charges into the rapidly disintegrating engine room, even taking a support beam landing on him, just so he can destroy the time machine that caused all this in some faint hope he can save everyone.
- Happens frequently in The Six Million Dollar Man, also always in slow motion.
- In Torchwood, there are two chase scenes in the same episode, between the prime witness in an investigation into a strange alien artifact and first Gwen then Owen. Gwen nearly gets him the first time, getting his hoodie and the artifact, and Owen corners him after a chase through several gardens. The second chase scene is on youtube.
- Wonder Woman: Lynda Carter could be credited with inventing the Baywatch run for some of her lingering slow-motion running shots, such as in "Amazon Hot Wax." In character, this was best shown in "Death in Disguise" when she ran over 700 mph to thwart the evil plan.
Music
- The music video for the Bon Jovi song "It's My Life" has Tommy running all the way through Los Angeles in order to make it to the Bon Jovi concert where his girlfriend Gina is.
- Combined with Le Parkour in Three Doors Down's video for "It's Not My Time", in which a man runs across half a city district to stop a mother and daughter from driving into an intersection, which would've put them in the path of an oncoming truck.
Video Games
- In the prologue part of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Richter Belmont runs to confront Dracula, accompanied by this song
.
- The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II has Rean, who is capable of finally controlling his Superpowered Evil Side, has him running all the way to the deck of the Pantagruel to escape while carrying Princess Alfin with him in a Bridal Carry, all to the tune of "Blue Destination".
- A recurring element in the Mass Effect series:
- Mass Effect has the escape from the buried Prothean tower after rescuing Liara T'Soni. Made epic by the fact that it is collapsing at the moment—due to an ongoing earthquake.
- Mass Effect 2 ends with Shepard and Co.'s escape from the Collector Base, whose epicness relies on multiple factors, from the Big Bad's monologue, though awesome soundtrack, to the fact that the whole damn place is about to go supernova.
- And subverted in Mass Effect 3. At the climax of the final battle on Earth, Shepard, their squad, and an army of Systems Alliance troops make a mad dash for the teleporter beam that will lead them to the Citadel, through the magnificently destroyed streets of London, under fire from Reaper capital ships. They're all slaughtered, except Shepard, who is "merely" Only Mostly Dead.
- Happens in Ōkami once in awhile, which is always accompanied by this song.
- The Sonic the Hedgehog series heavily features this trope. Unsurprising, given the title character's name and what that name implies. It could even be said that the series' gameplay is built on this...aside from some infamous exceptions.
- In the iPhone app Zombies, Run!, you - yes, you - have to do this. And we don't mean virtually, either; the app is a cross between a fitness app, a game, and a radio play so you have to run in Real Life to further the plot and complete your mission.
Web Comics
- The main cast of IronGate, in their quest to defend the world from supernatural evil, has charged in like this to protect people at least twice.
Western Animation
- In the As Told by Ginger episode "Of Lice and Friends", Ginger does one of these to prevent Dodie from revealing to the whole school that Courtney Gripling has lice.
- In the Justice League Unlimited season two finale, Wally West's run around the goddamn planet to build up enough momentum to punch through the merged Luthor-Brainiac being's armor. Bonus points for doing it multiple times and being nearly permanently sucked into the Speed Force as a result.
- For the math geeks: he runs around the planet 9 times (though he only delivers 8 hits) in 42 seconds, averaging at about 4.9 million km/h. That's about 3 million mph for Americans and around 46 times faster than Earth's orbital speed.
- The Venture Brothers has one after Brock watches Molotov Cocktease fall off a cliff and has to get back to the Venture compound before the family gets killed by her elite Blackhearts assassins.
- Batman does this in the intro to Batman: The Brave and the Bold. It must have been pretty heroic because when The Joker took over for an episode, he rode on a pogo stick during those parts.
- The Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous episode "The Long Run" is a whole episode of this, with champion runner Yasmina running across a dinosaur-infested island to get the antidote before Sammy succumbs to a dinosaur's venom.
Real Life
- The most famous Big Heroic Run is the original Marathon run. According to the story, after the Athenians defeated the Persians in the Battle of Marathon, one of the soldiers participating named Pheidippides ran all the way from Marathon to Athens to deliver the good news (thus the 42 kilometres distance) and he fell dead after delivering his message.
- Another, lesser known version of the story was that Pheidippides was tasked with the mission to gain Spartan help for the Battle of Marathon but failed, because the Spartans refused to help the Athenians in time. But he managed to get all the way to Sparta and back to Athens in time to warn the Athenians they'd get no help and to participate in the battle himself. Of course, in this version he also drops dead.
- Following the battle, the entire Athenian army made their own run back to Athens because part of the Persian navy had gone off and was sailing around Cape Sounion. They arrived back in the late afternoon, just in time to see the Persian ships turn away from Athens.
