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"I'd like [Iron Tager] to be able to cross the screen in 30 frames..."

Making use of a short burst of Super-Speed that in practice gets used more like teleportation. Sometimes rather than Super Speed, a Flash Step will use actual teleportation. A standard attack, especially in any show with Charles Atlas Superpower-level martial arts. A Flash Step will cause the user to suddenly appear either right behind the opponent (often making some sort of snarky comment about how the person is Too Slow) or a short distance past the person facing away from them. One of two things may then occur — the user attacks the opponent before they have time to register their presence, or it turns out to have been a Single-Stroke Battle and the user landed the fatal hit while moving, the opponent not realizing it until the coolest/funniest moment. Some other stories have different outcomes, like the user starting to talk about how s/he has the speed advantage instead of actually attacking, or the user becomes the victim of the opponent's own Flash Step. Occasionally both users keep using Flash Step instead of actually attacking for quite a while and just exchange insults until finally one of them loses the speed fight, or someone else steps in to disrupt them.

This often comes with a bit of Artistic License – Physics: Very rarely do you find someone who translates the momentum of their Flash Step into the punch/kick/noogie, something done because Newton's Laws still otherwise hold in most pieces of fiction, so it doesn't get the shattered bones on both sides of such an attack like one would expect.

Also, don't expect the air or other surrounding objects to behave as though someone dashed by them at half the speed of light, nor the ground to buckle from the force (unless they're also traveling vertically), nor their shoes to slip or in any other way refuse to provide the incredible traction necessary to accelerate that much, except of course when the terrain is obviously slippery. For that matter in the other direction, if you consider their speed based on the amount of distance they travel and the time it takes, it's often questionable why they disappear from sight at all.

Often combined with Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs when used in combat. May result in Speed Blitz, but beware if Inertia Is a Cruel Mistress. When two people do this repeatedly, see No, I Am Behind You. Also often used to avoid actually animating fight scenes, which with the flash step can be a slideshow of sword clangs and a woosh sound to indicate the characters are moving so fast you can't see them. Alternatively, what seems like a flash step in-universe can be represented to the audience by a character moving at "normal" speed in a Bullet Time sequence. Depending on the work it may be possible to do this in midair without any footing, resulting in Not Quite Flight. See also Offscreen Teleportation, Villain Teleportation and Doppelgänger Spin when the person is so fast they leave afterimages. A possible (but rarely used) explanation for the Stealth Hi/Bye.

Bonus points if the user sways from side to side at first, leaving mini-afterimages.

May cause a Snap to the Side moment.

This was originally invented as a budget-saving technique on early anime, especially Shōnen Demographic Fighting Series. It was easier to have a character just appear in a new location than to animate them moving. Over time, it became an accepted part of the genre, and continued to show up when technology advanced and animation became cheaper, or even showed up in places where animation simply wasn't an issue (such as manga or literature). It does, however, have mythological precedent in the shukuchi technique used by sennin and xian (with some of the Trope Codifiers explicitly learning the maneuver from a sennin Mentor).

Compare Ghostly Glide.


Examples:

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    Anime and Manga 
  • Tsutomu Nihei's Abara has modified characters capable of bursts of supersonic speed. While the perspective usually follows them as they move, to everybody else, it is an archetypal flash step. Notable because their surroundings actually buckle from the resulting stress and shockwaves. While speeding, all sound effects are represented by cheap, pixelated fonts since they are mostly a device to better express action. When things resume normal speed, all the actual noise catches up in a combined boom.
  • Koro-Sensei in Assassination Classroom has MACH 20. This creature can dodge bullets fired at him by twenty-six students while taking their attendance. He only gets more badass from there. After his transformation, "Reaper" one-ups Korosensei by moving at MACH 40.
  • In Azumanga Daioh, Sakaki does one of these when she hears about a kitten. She practically teleports in.
  • Battle Angel Alita:
    • Most characters only use flash step and attack just for fun or when they want to psych their opponent out. The more seasoned fighters instead mainly use attacks that are weak but come in large numbers and for the main characters, the faster the attack, the bigger windup it has. This is especially apparent in Alita's fight with Gavit of Gadokai where he effortlessly BLOCKS her when she fires off a supersonic punch noting that with a windup that she has for it, he can easily just absorb the kinetic force.
    • Caerula Sanguis, who while being much faster and stronger then a human, is physically inferior to the cyborgs of the setting, is easily able to defeat characters moving at superhuman speeds thanks to her ability to see "neural pulse flow", which effectively grants her a sort of limited precognition, letting her counter attacks before they even are thrown. Thus far the only fight she's lost is one she lost on purpose.
  • Guts a Lightning Bruiser in Berserk has a particularly messy Flash Step also speedy Apostles can does this against Guts. Other humans like Casca and Serpico can pull this off too.
  • Sephiria Arks of Black Cat briefly demonstrates this to avoid a bunch of rapidly fired arrows at point-blank range.
  • In Blast of Tempest, this is one of the powers of Kusaribe magic.
  • Bleach is the Trope Namer. Four different groups use four different forms of super-speed: Shunponote  (Shinigami), Sonìdo (Hollows), Hirenkyakunote  (Quincies), and Bringer Light (Fullbringers). Each of the forms function in very slightly different ways, producing different special effects. However, they all achieve the same result: brief bursts of high-speed movement. The idea is to literally be taking one step while moving forward at super-high speed.
    • Byakuya Kuchiki is fond of using it as an opening gambit in combat as it lets him look cool, aloof, efficient, and effortless. If he needs to, he can take it to the next level and even flash step out of his captain's haori to fool his opponent. Zommari, who claims to be the fastest of all Espada, is capable of leaving behind five illusory clones of himself, but that doesn't save him from Byakuya's superior speed.
    • Yoruichi is the acknowledged "Goddess of Flash", a title her student Soifon, also famous for her speed, tried and failed to take from her. A master of the form, Yoruichi also taught Byakuya everything he knows about speed and, despite her two students' great talents in speed, still remains superior to them both even after 100 years of inactivity.
    • Kyouraku is able to cover a phenomenal distance in a single step, removing his collapsed lieutenant from the front lines to a safe distance and returning in mere seconds. Yamamoto, himself a master of the technique, both acknowledges the mastery this feat reveals and indicates Kyouraku's ability is still increasing, as he hadn't realised Kyouraku's talent had reached such a level.
    • Ichigo is naturally faster than nearly everyone, but his Bankai further grants him the ability to perform hyperspeed combat; he creates speed-clones by accident whereas everyone else has to consciously create them. Ichigo has only ever performed hyperspeed combat once because the force of the power he needed to use to overcome Byakuya's tremendous speed almost broke his bones from sheer effort. When he develops Fullbring, he masters Bringer Light in an incredibly short space of time, much to the Fullbringers' amazement.
    • Along with Zommari, Starrk is considered to be one of the best Espada for speed, his sonidō being so effective it makes it seem to both Kenpachi and Ichigo as though he teleported from nowhere to kidnap Orihime, and is the only other Espada aside from Zommari shown to be capable of creating multiple afterimages of himself.
    • In an amusing installment of the Arrancar Encyclopedia omake, Byakuya and Zommari each try to prove the superiority of their Flash Step/Sonido by Flash Stepping behind one another. The contest backs them out of the room and across the plains of Hueco Mundo.
    • Uryuu has known excellence in the use of Hirenkyaku, and is able to blitz many of his opponents in battle as well as keep up with Ichigo's speed. He's persistent in his claim that Hirenkyaku is simply superior to Shunpou and Sonidou, but it appears to be his individual talent that makes him so fast, not the type of technique in use. Ironically, Mayuri of all people is the one who ends up proving the superiority of Hirenkyaku in some situations — he uses it to avoid Pernida's Touch of Death in the Royal Realm, where Shunpo doesn't work.
    • Shinigami messengers get their jobs by being extremely talented in Shunpou. Robert's Hirenkyaku is so good, he shoots one over his shoulder without looking despite being in the middle of battle with Kyouraku. Neither the messenger nor Kyouraku can react to that speed, and Kyouraku permanently loses an eye and part of his ear as a result. Robert's speed talent is so great his power actually manifests as bullets instead of arrows, darts, or spears.
  • In Blood+, Queens, Chevaliers, and the Shiff can all use a flash step-like ability which takes the appearance of bluish streaks.
  • Botan of Chronicles of the Going Home Club does this. When she was a child, everybody avoided her because of her murderous aura, so when gym class came around, she learned to do this so fast it appeared as if she was in two places at once, allowing her to pair up with herself!
  • Played for Laughs in Buso Renkin during Kazuki's first fight with Shisui, where the two try two one up each other by continually flash-stepping until they end up leaving not just the room, but *the entire building*. When Kazuki claims he was doing this on purpose to draw Shisui into an area where they could fight without as much collateral damage, Tokiko doesn't believe him one bit.
  • Claymore: This is "Phantom" Miria's signature move, the "Phantom Mirage". Frequently, it looks like her opponent's blade/talons have pierced her through... only to reveal that it was an afterimage, and she's already behind them hacking their limbs off. Another Claymore uses it more offensively: her afterimages show her Telefragging her opponent. Several other characters have also displayed this ability, which seems to be fairly standard, though no others appear to have mastered it to the extent of leaving afterimages.
  • Subverted in Code Geass R2. Rolo's Geass gives him the ability to stop people's perception of time, so to them, it appears that he's moving too fast to see, when he's really moving normally. This leads to a bit of Fridge Logic regarding the first few episodes when Rolo apparently uses his ability to escape an explosion.
  • Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba:
    • This is the main application of the Thunder Breathing style. While all demon slayers must be fast to move and quick to draw their blades, a Thunder Breathing user will go beyond that and be ridiculously fast to the point even demons will be surprised by their speed. Zenitsu is so adept at the only real Thunder Breathing technique he mastered that it makes him lightning fast to incapacitate and kill demons, making up for the lack of skill in the other Thunder Breathing forms.
    • The Mist Hashira, Muichiro Tokito, is able to move at speeds that make him appear to teleport, but will also often stagger his footwork to attack at much slower speeds than his movement would suggest. This is an important aspect of his Confusion Fu tactics, as it can make his opponents react at the wrong moment and leave themselves vulnerable.
  • The Dragon Ball franchise is the Trope Codifier. The franchise mostly uses the mid-air teleport-behind-the-opponent variety, used often in the Budokai video games. Slightly confusingly, the series has both super-speed and teleportation proper. The only difference between the two in practice is that teleportation lets you move over intergalactic distances (or even to other planes of existence; on a few occasions Goku uses it to teleport to the afterlife), which normal super-speed can't (with the possible exception of universal divinities that can survive in space like Champa and Vados in the "Super" manga).
    • It's also the Trope Maker, as this has been around since the beginning as "Zanzoken", also known as "bunshin". Zanzoken is a specific technique invented by Master Roshi used to leave an afterimage, whereas bunshin, invented by Goku, is just quick movement that minimally disturbs the air to mask location while being so fast it looks like a teleport, and nothing more ("regular" superspeed tends to cause a lot of noise, wind and flashes of light, especially if someone's Battle Aura is flaring, but bunshin even masks auras). As the series moves away from Earth it turns out bunshin is practically a universal technique, while the zanzoken common on Earth is relatively rare.
    • Bunshin is basically the maximum exertion of their super-speed (when it's used against people as fast or faster than themselves), and that minimal air disturbance apparently means they can't perceive their own movement until they slow down again. Like in the Mahou Sensei Negima example below, Goku ends up running smack into Mr. Popo's casually upraised fist when they first meet in the original Dragon Ball, due to the vast difference in their reflexes before Goku is trained under Popo and Kami-sama. Goku states at one point that he actually moves faster with his super-speed than by teleporting, at least for small distances. To teleport he has to concentrate on where he wants to go, whereas super-speed just requires him to move really fast in one direction.
    • One of Vegeta's rivals in the Freeza Force, Guldo, can appear to teleport by stopping the flow of time for everything in the universe other than himself. He can only keep it up for as long as he can hold his breath, limiting how far he can move during each use of the technique, but it allows him to dodge attacks and steal a Dragon Ball from Krillin, who proves to be far stronger than Guldo when they fight.
    • Some fights have sequences of shockwaves originating from seemingly random points in the sky as the fighters use their incredible speed to land superhuman blows to one another as they fly around the battleground. One of the most notable examples of this trope in Dragon Ball Z was Goku vs. Jeice and Burter, two members of the super-elite Ginyu Force. For most of the fight, Goku was dodging and moving fast enough that neither Jeice nor Burter (the latter being the physically fastest character known at the time) could follow him, though they could sense that he was moving around, including moving right next to them as they flew in for an attack. For most of the fight, Goku looked like he was simply standing still. A more traditional example appears when Goku first turns Super Saiyan against Frieza: Goku dodges Frieza's death beam attack, previously so fast no character even saw it being performed, by simply shifting to the left a few inches.
    • The technique known as Instant Transmission is not only literal teleportation (to somebody's location, specifically), it's also normally not used like this trope as it's usually used for long-distance travel (up to and including different planets and even the afterlife). This is because Instant Transmission requires locking onto a target and concentrating first before it can be used, which over short ranges is usually slower than just flash stepping. One memorable moment where it was used for a short distance was during the Cell Games, when Goku was in the air with a fully charged Kamehameha to hit Cell on the ground. Cell had his guard down because Goku's attack would destroy the planet, something he'd never do... then Goku teleports directly in front of Cell. This bypasses the usual weakness of attempting Instant Transmission in combat, because Goku was able to concentrate on Cell's location and charge up his Kamehameha at the same time, and since Cell thought he was bluffing he stood still to figure out what Goku was playing at.
    • Then there is a more advanced form of teleportation called Instantaneous Movement, which is mostly reserved for the gods. It lets them move anywhere they can see, and gods tend to have telescopic vision that allows them to see through walls, across galaxies and into other planes of reality.
    • Amazingly, Hercule/Mr. Satan is capable of bunshin. It's amazing, because he mixes Badass on Paper and Fake Ultimate Hero, his considerable martial arts skills arguably making him among he top 10 strongest humans in the verse, but he's still only human-level; the top 5 humans are considerable Super Weights in their own right, and pale in comparison to their less-human buddies. Hercule/Mr. Satan first uses a flash step to dodge a rocket fired at Buu, appearing to kick one of the attackers in the face (who were a sizable distance away) a few moments later. He then does it onscreen later when he's threatened by one of the gunmen. Unfortunately, the gunman panics, fires randomly, and manages to hit him anyway, but it still saves Hercule's life by turning a certainly fatal shot into one Majin Buu can heal him from.
    • The animated version of Dragon Ball Super shows the assassin Hit has another form known as Time-Skip. While Instant Transmission and Instantaneous Movement warp the user through both space and time, and Guldo actually freezes time, Time-Skip moves the user forward in time by 0.01 seconds, giving him such a speed boost it makes the entire universe appear to stand still to him for the duration. If Hit Time-Skips enough, he can use the time he's "skipped" to disappear into an area separated from the three-dimensional space everyone else in the universe inhabits while leaving behind several mirages of himself that all have his energy signature, giving Hit a more advanced version of the zanzoken.
    • The manga version Dragon Ball Super alters Hit's time skip to be less of Story-Breaker Power. It can only freeze a target in time, the exact duration depending on how strong the target is in relation to Hit. However it then gives Hit and even better version in the form of "Time Lag", which allows hit to cause time to flow at different speeds in different parts of the universe. Naturally he makes his own personal space have the faster time flow, leaving his opponents unable to follow his movements.
  • Fairy Tail:
    • Racer is capable of doing this. In his case, he's using Slowing Magic to slow down his opponent's perception and movement while he runs rings around them.
    • Wendy is able to do this in Dragon Force, only appearing physically long enough to throw a punch at her opponent.
  • In Fate/stay night [Unlimited Blade Works], when fighting seriously, Lancer is so fast that he seems to teleport behind Archer.
  • Fist of the North Star: When facing Kasumi Kenshiro of the Hokuto Shinken style, Zhāng Tàiyán reveals the Shadowless Kick, a technique learned from the nigh-invincible hermit Li San that allows him to move at incredible speeds and kick his opponent faster than he can see. He gains the upper hand... Up until Kenshiro replies with the Thunder Violent God Leg, a similar technique but more versatile (one can start the movement with their hands) and even faster, to the point the user leaves an imprint even in a steel surface - the technique previously used by Kasumi Tesshin, Kenshiro's master, to give Li San his only defeat.
  • In Freezing, this is an ability of some of the Pandora and is called Accel Turn. They can become even faster if they can use upgraded versions of this technique called Double Accel, Triple Accel, and Quadruple Accel.
  • In Gamaran, most warriors of the Ogame School can move and sprint so fast that their enemies can't even follow their movements. Also subverted with the special technique "Narugami" (Rumbling God): apparently the user moves so fast he vanishes in front of the enemy and slash him as he appears behind him. In reality, the user sidesteps out of the enemy's sight as said enemy is about to hit him.
  • Done with massive machines in Gundam. There's a few of examples throughout the franchise:
    • In Gundam F91, the title machine does it. It is caused by thin layers of armor ablating off the machine to shed heat, combined with an almost insane speed, creating the impression of an afterimage.
    • The 00 Raiser from Gundam 00 uses a different approach, while in Trans-am it is able to create a small wormhole that the machine is shunted through and then reappearing somewhere close by. The process also leaves some residual GN particles that causes a very brief afterimage.
    • Done by Lockon II and a heavily-damaged Cherudim in the final battle, using a half-second's worth of Trans-Am to get the jump on Revive Revival.
    • The Unicorn Gundam did this at least once in NT-D mode, although exactly how is never really explained. When NT-D is activated the Unicorn gains at least four more thrusters, so that could have something to do with it.
    • The Destiny Gundam is able to do this by activating its Voiture Lumiere for short bursts of extreme speed. Other mobile suits begin copying it in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Astray, such as the Turn Delta Astray and the Astray Red Frame Kai.
  • In Episode 4 of HappinessCharge Pretty Cure!, Hime is too scared to introduce herself to her class and tries to escape the school. Her teacher steps out of the room and brings her back in about 1.5 seconds.
  • Most of the combat-oriented members of Hunter × Hunter's Genei Ryodan seem to be able to do this.
  • Inuyasha: Sesshoumaru is the strongest and fastest youkai in the story. He is capable of moving so swiftly that he sometimes appears to teleport out of and into nothingness. He can even look like a streak of lightning moving through the sky (an effect the anime favors). He particularly employs it to appear as if from out of thin air in front of other characters.
  • The confrontation between Giorno Giovanna and Bruno Bucciarati at the beginning of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind's anime adaptation translates the reveal of Gold Experience's latent abilitynote  into this. With the influx of life energy supercharging Bruno's neural processes to the point where his perceptions become "disjointed" from reality.note  By the time he's darted around Gold Experience's punch and reached the other side of the train car, he realises that his physical body is still there, going through the motions he's just performed at a small fraction of what he sees as "normal" speed. In reality, his body can't respond fast enough to avoid the next punch, sending him crashing to the floor.
  • Lyrical Nanoha: Can be done by speedsters such as Fate and Signum, or with spells such as Sonic Move and Flash Move.
  • Macross Frontier has the Ghost V-9s in the final battle dodging and strafing like crazy. Justified in that they're unmanned craft so G-forces are a non-issue.
  • In the first episode of MegaMan NT Warrior (2002), MegaMan pulls one off complete with Too Slow to delete the original TorchMan.
  • My Hero Academia:
    • Tenya Iida while using his Reciproburst ability. Thanks to his Engine Quirk, he's naturally rather fast when he runs, but Reciproburst takes it to another level. In the fight against Hero Killer Stain, there's a moment when the paralysis from the villain's ability wears off. At this moment, Stain's sword is barely an inch from cutting Todoroki in half, while Iida is a good 50-100 feet away. When he activated Reciproburst, he crossed the distance quick enough to kick Stain's blade in half without him even reaching Todoroki.
    • All Might shows himself very capable of pulling this off, especially when enraged. Deku can't really pull it off due to breaking his body if he goes all out, though once he masters his power he will. He shows this when able to use 100% against Overhaul.
  • Naruto:
    • The "Body Flicker" technique. It's stated to simply be the user rushing in one direction and why this makes the user so much faster than he or she is otherwise isn't really explained. Except fairly early in the series, it's barely ever used in battle and Flash Stepping from then on is generally portrayed as a result of two characters having vastly different movement speeds in general.
    • Rock Lee, after removing sets of weights hidden underneath his leg warmers, is able to literally pinball Gaara by throwing tens of attacks in mere seconds, and then opens his chakra gates, increasing his Neo-esque destructive force.
    • Sasuke starts exhibiting this in Part 1 (having used a mixture between his Sharingan and a month's worth of training to obtain the same speed as Lee, though only in brief bursts) and in Part 2 he mocks his former allies' improvement over the Time Skip by using this to get the drop on them.
    • Naruto in Sage Mode can also do this—one second he is on top of Gamakichi's head, who is on top of Gamabunta's head, several hundred meters away, and the next he is slamming down a Rasengan on Asura Path's back just as it was about to kill a weakened Tsunade. He later uses his Nine-Tails Chakra Mode to punch a fleeing Kisame, and gets his foot stuck in a wall due to his inexperience with this kind of speed. Further on, he counters A's Lightning Armor and his speed is compared to his father's, who used a teleporation jutsu.
    • When using his Lightning Release Armor, A is able to use the technique to dodge Amaterasu, an attack that hits whatever the user is looking at; so fast that Sasuke can't even see him with the Super-Reflexes and Combat Clairvoyance the Sharingan gives him.
    • When he wasn't actually teleporting, Minato was very good at this too, being able to grab a newborn Naruto from right in front of Tobi's face before he could even move his arm slightly.
    • Naruto's speed reaches its highest point with the Tailed Beast Mode. He can move so fast he can deflect five incredibly dense and large Bijudamas (Tailed Beast Bombs) simultaneously with just sheer speed.
    • Shisui Uchiha's skill at it was so great, his title was "Shisui of Teleportation".
    • Guy manages to one-up even Naruto's speed with the Eighth Gate. In this mode, he can perform literal Flash Steps as a means of aerial movement. His final move is a flash step+kick that is so incredibly fast that it bends space-time around him.
  • Negima! Magister Negi Magi is a bit more sensible — once started, they cannot be stopped, and since they're just basically moving really fast, you can be interrupted mid-dash for a supercharged Face Fault. When first introduced, both starting point and target had to be on the ground, though stronger characters can do it whenever they like.
    • Eventually, a character finds a way to upgrade it, using a complicated lightning spell absorbed within his own body to move perform instant movement at about 150 kmps. However, it has the same weakness as the lesser version. Later in the same fight, he invents "perpetual lightning form," which speeds the mind as well as the body, eliminating that weakness (since he can now think fast enough to change direction).
    • Kaede is a respectable second. She performs a variation of this technique by kicking off the side of the building. Not only does she cover 750 meters in a second or two (a speed somewhere between Mach 1 and Mach 2, complete with sonic boom), the building she kicks off of explodes from the force.
  • One Piece:
    • There's the Soru(Shave) technique, part of the Rokushiki(Six Powers) martial arts primarily used by Cypher Pol no 9.
    • There's also Kuro, whose whole fighting style relies on his speed and whose Shakushi attack moves roughly at the same speed as Soru. The difference is that Kuro can't follow his own movements when going that fast, and as a result can only attack randomly with it. Soru users on the other hand have mastered it to the point that they can clearly see their surroundings while moving at insane speed.
    • Bartholomew Kuma uses his Devil Fruit power for short-distance teleportation in battle.
    • After witnessing Soru in action (and losing to its user), Luffy figures it out and incorporates the move into his own skillset when using Gear Second. The technique is to kick off at least ten times rapidly enough, if you're curious.
    • Sanji in both pre Time Skip and post can move at Soru-level speeds, with the crowning example being his rescue of Chiffon in Whole Cake to point where he seemed like he was telephoning.
    • Brook the skeleton is faster than both Luffy and Sanji according to Oda and his special fencing style swordplay is so quick opponents don't feel the sword stroke until a delayed period before dropping. Brook has even flashed stepped Big Mom. This even applies to the audience; one rarely sees him actually do the strikes and steps, only him either taking a slow walk afterwards or just being there already rather than even a blur of movement.
    • There's also Admiral Kizaru, whose Devil Fruit power allows him to move at the speed of light. Literally. The downside seems to be that he takes a while to become light and takes some time to return to his normal self.
    • Enel can move as quickly as lightning, but doesn't use it too often in his battle with Luffy (though he is too overconfident despite Luffy being immune to electricity).
    • When Shanks meets up with Whitebeard, Whitebeard throws an empty bottle of sake at him, and Shanks flash steps out of the way... while sitting down.
    • Charlotte Katakuri despite his stature effortlessly Flash Steps Gear Second Luffy.
  • Any distinctly powerful character in One-Punch Man can do this.
    • Saitama is unique in that he can actually move more quickly than the average flash step, being able to move in front of someone who's already using Super-Speed and catch them off-guard.
    • Exaggerated in the first fight between Saitama and Sonic: the latter spends about ten pages flash-stepping around the former.
  • Plunderer has the legendary "Flash Baron", a 300-year old soldier who can move so quickly he can't be seen. This is due to a super-human surgery he underwent.
  • Pokémon: The Series: A lot of Pokémon do this when using moves like Agility.
    • Falkner's Pidgeot, in the first Johto Gym Battle, does it to Charizard. While flying.
    • Certain no-miss moves like Aerial Ace and Feint Attack sometimes work like this in the anime. They start out as a regular charge at the opponent, until they get close, where they flash step directly to hitting the target, sometimes from different angles. However, the way these attacks work is effectively rewritten each time they show up, and sometimes the flash step part is forgotten.
  • You might not think an ostensibly real-world sports manga would use this, but The Prince of Tennis has several characters do flash-step techniques, most notably the entirety of Hiba's team.
  • One of the applications of Homura's power in Puella Magi Madoka Magica. She's actually stopping time and sprinting. Seen clearly in Episode 6 when she is chasing after a moving truck on the highway.
  • Occasionally used in Ranma ½ by particularly fast characters such as Ranma and Happosai. Sometimes in battle, like how Ranma did so to Tatewaki Kuno in one of their first fights, but also when messing with people such as to perform a Stealth Hi/Bye. Also Genma's Dangerous Forbidden Technique uses this, but it seems to rely on stealth as much as on speed if not more.
  • Tsuna from Reborn! (2004) can do this after he gets his X-Gloves, using the flames on the gloves to produce thrust.
  • Rosario + Vampire:
    • Ginei is the best example. He's a Lightning Bruiser, just a bit more lightning than bruiser. Then there are Tsukune and Moka, who are more bruiser than lightning, but still occasionally manage to pull this off.
    • Inner Moka has been shown to do this fast enough to leave an afterimage for her opponents to attack.
  • Rurouni Kenshin:
    • Kenshin flashes behind his opponent, who then calls him out on dishonorably preparing to attack from behind. This causes Kenshin to hesitate, giving the surprisingly swift guy the opportunity to eat his own words and flash behind him.
    • It's played straight more than not in the manga. Kenshin even defeats a hubris-addled opponent while not even drawing his sword by repeating this method: the enemy thinks he is only keeping up with Kenshin, not noticing their incrementally increasing speed. The enemy's knee gives out under their last accelerated turn, brought on by their size difference.
    • Stepford Smiler Seta Soujirou's power looks like a flash step... but at max speed, he just runs too fast for the human eye to process. (Crunching the numbers, it turns out Soujirou can sprint at the very limits of human foot power.)
    • Some effects from flash stepping do appear on the environment, though selectively and mostly for style. Kenshin once leaves a telltale stream of bent grass tracing his dash. His ultimate attack is essentially the ultimate flash step that leaves footsteps even in stone, affects the air, and bothers to transfer the momentum to attacks. While Soujiro himself cannot be seen by the naked eye, the effects of his footsteps can, resembling a volley of machine gun fire across floors and walls.
  • Minako Aino can do this in Sailor Moon, immediately followed by a kick in the face.
  • Shin Mazinger Z's Miss Okiku is a Cool Old Lady who uses her super speed to do this.
  • Soul Eater: Death the Kid demonstrates his speed by flash stepping behind Crona too fast for the swords... person to follow. He does the same to Black Star later on, using both times to attack at close range.
  • In Squid Girl, Chizuru has been shown performing a Flash Step on a number of occasions. This usually happens when she is fighting Ika but she has even been shown pulling the move while in a deep sleep.
  • In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Simon ends up inventing teleportation just to punch Rossiu in the face.
  • The Mars Roaches in TerraforMARS can all do this, but special mention goes to the ones augmented with water skater physiology, who can go from beyond scanner range to Neck Snap range before any of the Annex crew even realise they're there. Marcos can do this as well, using his huntsman spider surgery.
  • Tower of God:
    • The use of Shinsu Bost can result in this, and Mule Love's Blue Oar technique fits as well.
    • Khun can do this as well.
    • Edin Dan, too, and speedsters in general.
  • Subverted in Trigun where a villain who seemingly Flash Steps actually uses Hypnotic Eyes to create the illusion of teleporting. Vash figures this out and breaks this by causing pain to himself, which breaks the hypnosis long enough for him to counterattack.
  • Played for Laughs in The World God Only Knows (pictured above), where Keima pulls this on Ayumi. The Irony of the scene is that Ayumi is in the school's track team and is nicknamed Maijima's Human Missile.
  • The only main fighter of YuYu Hakusho who doesn't use this is Kuwabara, because he's too slow. Hiei, in particular, uses them a lot.
    • To be fair, Kuwabara is very capable of this; he proves this in the beginning of the Rescue Yukina arc. Problem is, when it appears that the heroes, most commonly Yusuke and Hiei, are using flash steps, it's usually only because they're just that much faster/stronger. When two opponents in the series are on the same tier of speed, flash steps almost never happen. Kuwabara just happens to be unlucky enough to only fight people on his level of speed or faster.
    • One exception to "almost never" is Yomi's fight with his son, where they are clearly flash stepping around in the forest while running.
    • Kuwabara actually does do a flash step in his fight against Rinku. Even though Rinku proves to be faster than he let on up to that point, he was clearly already moving too quickly for an ordinary person to track, and Kuwabara is faster than even that level.
    • Hiei's speed is much more impressive when you consider him cutting the enemy's arm so quickly and RETURNING to where he was standing that the enemy does not even know he moved at all. Flash stepping to your enemy's back? Beginners. Flash stepping to hurt your enemy and then flash stepping back? Expert.
    • Enemies do it too, of course. A non-battle example: after Younger Toguro finishes his I Am Not Left-Handed Intimidation Demonstration for Yusuke, he finishes it off by flash stepping behind Yusuke to tell him about the Dark Tournament and give him an ultimatum to join.
  • An early enemy Mamodo Kiyo and Zatch encounter in Zatch Bell! looks like he can teleport, but after noticing he is leaving skid marks on the floor when he stops, Kiyo deduces that it's this trope instead. He decides to cast a new spell against the opponent and it proves to be the perfect solution: magnetizing the opponent such that he was sent flying into a steel water tank and left helpless enough for Kiyo to destroy his spellbook and banish him.

    Asian Animation 
  • BoBoiBoy
    • BoBoiBoy Thunderstorm's first move onscreen is "Lightning Speed", which allows him to move between short distances at a speed which makes him seemingly disappear in a flash of lightning between two points.
    • BoBoiBoy Solar is even faster. His debut in BoBoiBoy Galaxy has him move from outside in space to the inside of a space station through a hole in the station's wall.
  • Agent Ali: An ability of Agent Djin, otherwise known as Uno. The MATA Academy agents discuss this when Ali thinks that Djin was able to vanish into smoke and reappear anywhere at will when he battled him in the first season finale, which Rudy objects as nonsense and states Djin appeared that way due to his speed. The smokescreens were used to mask his movements, and this is implied to be a technique taught to INVISO agents of MATA.
  • Careful S. of Happy Heroes often gets around by using something like this, where he teleports short distances between given points.

    Comic Books 
  • All Fall Down: The Modern Prometheus uses this to pin down and trap Siphon and the Pantheon between the 'G' and 'O' of the word "Gotcha". Simultaneously.
  • The Authority: Midnighter does this on occasion. A good example is in the second issue, when confronting a terrorist who is holding a child hostage. Midnighter casually informs him to drop the child, and that (among other things) he can "hit you without you even seeing me". Next thing you know there's a panel of the bad guy falling into a heap on the ground and Midnighter is holding the child saying "Told you so."
  • Batgirl: Batgirl III pulls this a few times, outrunning one of her own batarangs at least once, even though she's supposed to be physically an ordinary human. Batman is even able to pull this off. He's easily able to outrun hails of gunfire similar to Cassandra Cain.
  • Black Widow: Black Widow does the same thing immediately after DD does it, and then proceeds to punch a guy in the face while nearly out-running a bullet shot from a pistol. Though she crosses the distance nearly instantly, she isn't actually able to dodge the bullet itself, implying that although she is absurdly fast, her reflexes have limits.
  • Daredevil: Daredevil does this under writers who remember that he's supposed to be a bullet-timer. In one of the more memorable examples he feels a sniper's laser marker on his forehead and literally vanishes in thin air, while the sniper is staring down the scope straight at him.
  • ElfQuest: The title character in Elf Quest: Jink has this as her stock superpower. As well as moving very fast herself, it seems she can also use rapid movement to strip other people naked if she's feeling frisky.
  • The Flash: The Flash does this often, as does, of course, any other superhero whose primary power is teleportation or super-speed.
    • Barry Allen, the second Flash, takes this to its logical conclusion when as a bunch of soldiers fire their weapons at him he begins moving so quickly it appears from his perspective that time has stopped, giving him a enough time to casually walk up and examine his friend's face and have a long internal monologue while a volley of assault rifle fire is in mid-flight. And yet somehow he can be beaten by other characters when he shows up in a guest-starring position.
    • Owen Mercer, the second Captain Boomerang, got the Speed Force like his half-brothers Bart Allen and Thad Thawne, but only gets this ability.
  • The Incredible Hulk: The Hulk may be largest character who can pull off a Flash Step in comics.
  • Iron Man: Once Tony takes the Extrimis virus, he is able to do this.
  • The Mighty Thor: Thor is no stranger to this.
  • Planetary: Secret agent man John Stone has this ability due to a piece of Applied Phlebotinum called a "blitzen suit".
  • The Sentry: The Sentry once did this to The Punisher from miles away.
  • Spider-Man: Spider-Man can do this when he wants, bullets going 1,126 feet per second at point blank range is nothing to the Spider-Sense.
  • Superman has been doing this consistently ever since he first appeared.
  • Wonder Woman: Wonder Woman has been able to use this trick, and be fast enough to leave after images, since the Golden Age. Once in Sensation Comics she managed to convince Steve Trevor both Diana Prince and Wonder Woman were standing behind a panel with holes cut out for their faces at a fair just by using her speed to quickly run between the two portholes.
  • X-Men:
    • The mutant Selene can do this. She is capable of brief bursts of Super-Speed, which she combines with telepathic hypnosis to create the illusion that she can teleport short distances.
    • Wolverine, X-23 and Daken have done this many times.
    • Rogue, Nightcrawler, Beast and Gambit can Flash Step with the best of them.

    Fan Works 
  • In The AFR Universe story "Baby Sakamoto", Ann is so excited to see the newborn baby that she dashes up to the mother's bed so fast she knearly knocks Futaba to the ground and leaves the rest of the group wondering if anime flash stepping is a real phenomenon.
  • Used in A Growing Affection like in the Naruto canon, but notable because Naruto combines Body Flicker with Shadow Clones to create the 'Flash Split', allowing him to vanish from one place and reappear in three or four different ones.
  • In The Bridge, Rodan at full power can move so fast his already high speed allows him to do this. The typically mach level Shadowbolt revenants can't even see him, just a sudden sonic boom before they get shredded by the shockwave of him moving so fast.
  • In The Butcher Bird, much of the Nightmare crew gets training in Shave. While it's less effective than the version used by Cipher Pol, due to not training for nearly as long or being as strong, it's still rather quick.
  • In Child of the Storm, Harry gets fast enough to do this alarmingly often in the sequel, both in and out of combat. Since this and extensive stealth training allow him to pop up exactly where he isn't expected, it's generally (and intentionally) quite disturbing. However, this is mostly over short distances - he can boost his physical abilities with his Psychic Powers, but he's not naturally super-fast, meaning that he's relatively limited.
  • Equestria Girls: Friendship Souls: Fitting for a Bleach crossover, pretty much everyone can do one of these. Ditzy Doo, Daring Do, and Luna are all ranked among the fastest Soul Reapers capable of making speed clones via Shunpo, while Rainbow Dash gets so fast she can do this just with pure speed and not even relying on Bringer Light. Among the Espada, the Fourth Espada Lament's Sonido is so fast when he goes all-out he's described as flickering images capable of surpassing actual teleportation, while the actual fastest Catrina can not only make multiple tangible speed clones, but they can all physically attack their targets and take damage themselves without hurting Catrina herself.
  • Fate/Harem Antics: Servants are way faster than ordinary humans and do this a lot. For example, when Lancer attacks Shirou's home, Shirou tells Sakura to get behind him and prepares to defend her. Lancer suddenly disappears from their sight, then is behind them and grabs Sakura.
  • In Holo-Chronicles, this is a dedicated technique amongst talents known as the "Idol Step". Roboco can further amplify it with her own innate abilities, and Suisei pulls off similar feats (along with a neat little sonic boom) with what may just be pure speed. On the god side of things, Bae repeatedly disappears and reappears somewhere else, but whether it's this or simply teleportation is anyone's guess. She does perform a Flash Stand-Up at one point though, so there's that.
  • The Night Unfurls: Whenever the Good Hunter is "blurring into motion", as per the narration, he takes a step forward and, from his opponent's perspective, instantly appears either behind or in front of them in a blink of an eye. The mechanics and limits of this ability are unclearnote , but from the looks of it, it cannot be used repeatedly (otherwise, it would become a Story-Breaker Power).
  • In several Peggy Sue One Piece fics, such as Once Again and Second Wind, Luffy is able to use the Soru technique without resorting to Gear Second.
  • Nui moves like this in A Minor Miscalculation. Mako also gains the ability once she becomes an Empowered Badass Normal.
  • In Origin Story, during Alex Harris's fight with The Wrecking Crew, Alex takes down Bulldozer by slamming into him so quickly he never registers she is approaching, much less that she is slamming him head first into a cargo container.
  • In Risk It All, Ren rolls Flash Step following his first video, giving him the ability to quickly cross short distances, but only forward or backwards. This means he can't turn or go up or down stairs with this power.
  • In "Solaere ssiun Hnaifv'daenn" Morgan puts her D'deridex-class warbird into a singularity jump (a power from the Star Trek Online game, handwaved here as generating a short-lived, short-range wormhole) to get her to the opposite side of a flotilla of Nausicaan Space Pirates.
  • Someone to Watch Over Me includes an akuma, Blindside, who attacks faster than the eye can follow, to the point where Ladybug wonders if she's teleporting. Fortunately, Chat Noir's Super-Hearing is good enough for him to track her movements and knock her down.

    Films — Animated 
  • BoBoiBoy Movie 2: Shortly after trashing Retak'ka's cronies, Fang, alongside Yaya and Ying, threaten to beat him up as well if he doesn't stop hurting BoBoiBoy. Retak'ka scoffs and steps in a flash of light to the right side of BoBoiBoy's friends, catching them by surprise before attacking them.
  • Used by Loz to defeat Tifa in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. He uses it a couple other times too, and literally flashes when he does it. It's less useful on the other times, since he's doing it for shorter ranges and against a guy who can swing a giant sword fast enough to deflect bullets.
  • From The Incredibles, Dash has the superpower of speed and uses it to snatch super suits from his mom. He also put a tack on his teachers chair while sitting in his seat across the room. The real kicker is that the teacher filmed the prank to prove it was happening-and Dash was so fast that it barely showed him moving. His father was impressed, while his mother was definitely not.
  • In Kung Fu Panda, Shifu is standing in front of the Jade Palace, awaiting Tai Lung to confront him. There's a full shot of Shifu alone at the top of the stairs, then a brief close-up of Shifu, and when it cuts back to the full shot, Tai Lung is already standing there.
  • Sonic and Tails, along with Metal Sonic, are shown to be able to do this in Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie. The resulting fight scene between Sonic and Metal, in the air, is suitably awesome.
  • Superman again in Superman vs. the Elite when showing Manchester Black exactly what happens if he decides to go down the lethal takedown route.
  • Wreck-It Ralph: Vanellope's glitching, once she can control it, looks like either this or teleportation.
  • In Zootopia, Fru Fru is all alone as the giant donut is bearing down on her but Judy suddenly appears and stops it in the nick of time, later Judy is able to boot Nick's stroller while he was talking to her, and even later manages to burrow underneath a fence while Nick's climbing it. Also Nick distracts Judy by saying "I'm not the liar, he is." and then travels to the end of the city block by the time Judy next looks at him.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • DC Extended Universe:
    • In Man of Steel, Faora is notable for being the only character who fully masters super speed and uses flash steps. When Superman or another character uses super speed, they are still visible to the audience as a blur.
    • Barry Allen/Flash, naturally. He does one in the camera footage of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice to stop a mugger in a grocery store and get back to where he was an instant earlier. In Zack Snyder's Justice League, he uses one to crush a Parademon against a metal door.
  • Used by The Sadist in Everly, as close to trope as you can get in a mostly realistic live-action movie. Someone tries to shoot him, but he sidesteps off screen, then back on right in front of the character to disarm and punch her.
  • In the upcoming Russian superhero flick Guardians (2017), Khan frequently uses his Super-Speed as short-range teleportation, moving between Mooks in a blink of an eye before slicing them up with his scythe-like blades.
  • Used by Ramirez in Highlander to teach McLeod how Too Slow a 'Crude and slow clansman' is.
  • MCU Quicksliver can do this.
  • In Resident Evil: Afterlife, Albert Wesker uses this a few times in his fight against Chris and Claire Redfield.
  • Samara seems to do this in the end of The Ring to get up in her last victim's face, though it manifests more like the flickering of a TV image.
  • An early version in Superman II (1980), when both Superman and the three Kryptonian supervillains teleport around the room during their battle in the Fortress of Solitude.
  • In Terminator Genisys, the ability to do this is one of the major advantages the T-3000 has over the T-1000, due to being a swarm of nanites held together by magnetism rather than a pool of liquid metal. Although for some reason he only bothers to do it in the very final fight, even though it would have been pretty useful earlier.
  • In the Underworld (2003) films, well fed vampires can do this. Much to the horror of some cops, Selene demonstrates at the beginning of Underworld: Evolution. In Underworld: Blood Wars, thanks to a certain "Cocooning" ritual, Lena is so fast that even Selene only sees her as a blur when she moves. Selene goes through the ritual and gains this level of speed.
  • X-Men Film Series
    • Callisto in X-Men: The Last Stand.
    • Quicksilver uses this a lot in X-Men: Days of Future Past.
    • In X-Men: Apocalypse he takes it a step beyond. He's even able to flash-step while we're already seeing things in Bullet Time. As a huge explosion travels at a snails pace, he can still be a barely-perceptible blur who zips in and out of the scene while moving people from inches from the fireball all the way to edge of the property far beyond the blast radius.

    Literature 
Examples by author:
  • A short story by Timothy Zahn is about a young man who finds he can teleport, but over very short distances. He initially uses it to cheat at boxing matches to dodge blows and gets depressed over the whole affair, because he could never use it on camera without it being obvious and thus could never go professional. In the end he discovers this trope and uses it to save someone's life by getting to the right place in time.
Examples by title:
  • Finn does this to get in Timothy's face in Chapter 2 of Abominable.
  • Wayne in The Alloy of Law can create a bubble around himself where time moves much more quickly than it does for the rest of the world. He often uses it in combat to create a flash step effect in order to dodge bullets; he throws up a bubble as the opponent shoots, then just walks out of the path of the bullets. From an outside point of view, it looks like a flash step even though he's moving at perfectly ordinary speeds from his point of view.
  • A short story by Isaac Asimov titled "The Billiard Ball" has a field which allows anything which enters the field to immediately attain zero mass and hence move at the speed of light. The story has an interesting aversion to part of the physics problems — once the objects leave the light speed volume, they start to slow down but still have their full momentum and velocity. This makes them very deadly weapons.
  • Several characters in A Certain Magical Index, but especially Saints, have incredible speed to move in the blink of an eye. Touma Kamijou can't do this and has a very difficult time fighting these kinds of opponents.
  • Chrysalis (RinoZ): The Regulus Bestiae Saltus monster looks "thin as an anorexic stick on an Atkins diet" and is able to launch a devastating strike faster than the eye can follow, though it can't maintain that speed all the time, and its usual hunting style depends on making a Single-Stroke Battle. Fortunately, Anthony has enough enhanced reflexes himself that it can't easily hit a critical point (especially as his eyes are quite a small target), and his carapace blunts the effect of anything less.
  • The Cradle Series being a love letter to anime, it shouldn't be surprising that this shows up. Lindon has an Enforcement technique that allows him to make explosive bursts of movement, and it's not uncommon for him to seemingly just appear places. It's usually not obvious to readers, though, since the series is mostly from his perspective, but it's very common in the Mook Horror Show sequences.
  • This seems to be a generic Spirit power in Date A Live, though a rarely used one. Tohka describes it as "killing the distance in front of [her] eyes".
  • Discworld:
    • Jonathan Teatime does this a lot in Hogfather. Mostly it's Offscreen Teleportation, but on occasion he even moves when people are looking right at him.
    • In Carpe Jugulum, Vlad, a vampire, dares Agnes Nitt to cut his head off with an axe and reaches out from behind her to j the axe when she tries.
  • Flash stepping is the cornerstone of combat between ghosts in The Dresden Files, since all of them have an ability Harry dubs "vanishing", where they vanish and instantly appear anywhere within 300 feet of their original position.
  • Fate/Requiem: When Nzambi attacks Koharu, she disappears from sight and then is right in front of her.
  • In Heretics of Dune, Miles Teg gets super-speed powers that actually have consequences on him. He's moving so fast that he cuts himself deeply on a small plastic tube that he brushes lightly against, and he burns so many calories while doing it that he can only do it for short bursts before starving to death.
  • The Shrike of the Hyperion Cantos is able to move at such speed that it appears to be in several places at once. This is accomplished through some time-bending Applied Phlebotinum, though. Even better, at one point, Nemes uses his phase-shift ability to nearly stop time, and the Shrike still manages to flash step too quickly for her to follow.
  • Shizu of Kino's Journey can charge fast enough to, along with his other Implausible Fencing Powers, put up a serious challenge to normal gun users. The technique is deconstructed, though; even though the man can dodge bullets, he still relies on distractions like the flash of light from a firearm or his sword blade, and someone who is fast enough can still interrupt his attacks mid-Flash Step without disappearing themselves. Kino's Quick Draw ability could be seen as a modified version of the Flash Step, too, taking only a couple animation frames in the anime adaptation.
  • Drizzt in the The Legend of Drizzt novels has used this occasionally, though only over very short distances. He attempts to justify it by explaining that he's not really moving at teleportation speed, but people don't see him by taking advantage of an optical illusion caused by the swing of someone's sword to move without being seen. Which would require someone to be waving their sword in front of their face for some reason. Drizzt at least can move at superhuman speeds due to his magical anklets, but he's taught this move to other people as well.
  • In Paradise Lost, Abdiel's first strike is so fast that no one could see his sword be lifted up before Satan's helmet had already been struck with swiftness greater than thought.
  • In Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain, Penny invents armbands that give the wearer limited teleportation. Specifically, they (apparently) compress time so that you can cross extreme distances in the blink of an eye, with the caveat that it takes as much energy as if you had run it as quickly as you normally can. She intends them for her teammate Reviled, since he has the enhanced endurance to use them, but eventually keeps them for herself because she needs the enhanced mobility more than he does.
  • Vampires can do this in The Saga of Darren Shan — relative to humans, anyway. Their reflexes mean even half-blood/"incomplete" vampires can "jump" short distances faster than the eye can follow. Darren uses this to prove he's a vampire at least once, while his mentor likes using it to fake telekinesis.
  • Most ships in the Star Carrier series are limited in how they can use Faster-Than-Light Travel in that roughly a 40 AU radius around a star is a No Warping Zone. Not so the Slan, who can make tactical FTL jumps inside gravity wells to fulfill this trope.
  • In Sword Art Online, Kirito, thanks to Super-Reflexes, does this very often in the game world. He does one to Rosalia while apprehending her and her guild, as his level and therefore stats (including speed) are way above theirs.
  • The Testament of Sister New Devil: Being a Speed Type fighter, Basara Toujou can close most gaps near-instantly.
  • The main character of The Third: The Girl with the Blue Eye uses this periodically to dodge gunfire and destroy mecha with a single cut.
  • Racath Thanjel can do something similar with the assistance of Daragoian in SG Night's Three Acts of Penance. In what Daragoian calls "the Red Surge", Racath will blink forward at incredible speed, leaving trails of fire in his path. While third party observers see it as a near-instantaneous blink, Racath is able to react quickly enough to strike down an enemy mid-flight (making it something of a Dash Attack as well).
  • In The Vampire Chronicles, vampires are able to do this. Rationalized by the fact that they are basically animated by telekinesis and their powers increase with age. Essentially, they are telekinetically moving themselves from place to place with near instantaneous acceleration and deceleration.
  • In Way of Choices, these are called Yeshi Steps, and seem to be a basic technique — certainly the first one demonstrated by Chen.
  • In The Wheel of Time, combat between often works out this way within the World of Dreams, where an expert dreamer can teleport to any desired location instantly, while also summoning any weapon imaginable or even changing the environment as desired.
  • Worm: Black Kaze's power is this, combined with slashing her opponent a thousand times while passing them.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Buffyverse:
    • Angel can do this in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, though he does it much more often in his own show, usually when he wants to pull a Stealth Hi/Bye or intimidate someone by reminding them that for all that he's mostly a dorky Nice Guy who sticks to Thou Shalt Not Kill where humans are concerned, he is still a powerful Master Vampire. For instance, in "That Vision Thing", in which Lilah Morgan uses a psychic to give Cordelia killer visions in order to force Angel to do something for her, Angel does... then, after the exchange is made, he throws a piece of rebar at least forty feet, killing the psychic, and as Lilah turns to look, appears right behind her.
    • The demon goddess Dinza from the Angel episode "Ground State" can do this.
  • In Chinese Paladin, sufficiently powerful characters do this rather than do anything as undignified as walking.
  • Doctor Who:
    • In "The Five Doctors", the Raston Warrior Robot is described by the Doctor as "fast as lightning", and indeed it seems to teleport from spot to spot rather than moving.
    • The Weeping Angels have a variant of this; they turn into statues and can't move when they're being watched, but can move incredibly fast when they're not. In practice, this means that if anyone so much as blinks, or the lights flicker (which the Angels can cause), they can advance, and encounters with them usually take the form of the protagonists being forced slowly backward as the Angels Flash Step forward whenever there's a second of darkness.
    • "A Town Called Mercy" has a cyborg gunslinger who can teleport, and normally uses it to advance quickly without breaking his Ominous Walk.
  • In The Flash (1990), a villain does this after making himself an exoskeleton that allows him to move as fast as the Flash. All the problems of moving at this speed are ignored for this episode (although they are plot points in others), such as needing to process visual information fast enough or preventing your body from literally burning up from the friction.
  • Naturally, this happens in The Flash (2014) as well, although not as much, since Barry tends to leave a red trail with yellow discharges, especially when wearing his suit. Also, to maintain the Rule of Cool, we are frequently shown the events in Bullet Time. A memorable scene involves Barry (who loses his powers earlier in the episode) not only regaining his powers in order to save Wells from an angry meta-human, but also moving faster than he ever had before. The Bullet Time scene shows Barry lying on the floor with Cisco and Caitlin near him, then suddenly vanishing with only Caitlin's hair moving with the wind, while his two friends are still staring at the spot he was just in. That's right, he's flash-stepping while in Bullet Time. And since Farouq's blasts are still slowly traveling towards Wells, this means he's also traveling faster than lightning. The Man in the Yellow Suit (a.k.a. the Reverse-Flash) does this as well, even better, since he's much faster. One moment, Eddie is aiming his gun, the next, the Reverse-Flash has disarmed him and is staring him in the face from an inch away. Barry even uses this trick to take a selfie of himself with his friends from halfway across the room. Faster than the speed of the shutter. And Wells/Thawne is able to do this so quickly he can appear to be in two places at once. Wearing different outfits, no less. When Nora first discovers that she's a speedster, she confronts her mother and shows her the inhibitor that used to be implanted in her. When the mother doesn't say anything, Nora, who is slowly walking towards her from across the room, suddenly takes the next step two feet away from her with only yellow and purple lightning to indicate superspeed.
  • This is how "the weirding way of fighting" is depicted in Frank Herbert's Dune and Frank Herbert's Children of Dune.
  • Interview with the Vampire (2022): In "...After the Phantoms of Your Former Self", from the perspective of the tractor salesman, Lestat de Lioncourt appears to teleport from the living room to the front door, which blocks the salesman's path. He tries to punch Lestat, but his fist ends up hitting the door because Lestat has instantaneously moved to the staircase. Unbeknownst to the salesman, Lestat is a vampire with Super-Speed.
  • In Jekyll, Mr. Hyde does this a lot, mainly because he finds it funny to scare people. Presumably, it's a case of him moving too fast for the eye to follow rather than any actual teleportation powers.
  • In the pilot episode of Just Shoot Me!, Dennis asks an intern to let him know when the models arrive for their photo shoot. The intern says they're already here; in the next shot Dennis is gone, the papers he was holding fluttering up in the air.
  • Kamen Rider:
  • Darken Rahl of Legend of the Seeker can do this.
    • He's only shown doing this a total of 2 times. Once, when he's first facing Richard (although, he leaves a magical decoy to distract Richard), and once in an alternate timeline when he regains his senses and fights the Sisters of the Dark. No other magic user is shown doing this, though.
  • The character Ruadan from Merlin does one of these when his daughter approaches him from behind in the middle of a forest. He uses magic to make a torch flicker and then appears at her side.
  • Once Upon a Time: Red can apparently do this in human form, given that she was able to go about 50 yards from standing still in the time it took for Whale to step off the bridge so that she could catch him.
  • The Rise of Phoenixes: Nan Yi moves impossibly quickly so that he's right in front of Zhi Wei when she turns. She's suitably freaked out to come face-to-face with the guy who was behind her a minute ago.
  • Anybody with Super-Speed can do this in Smallville. Amazingly, Brainiac is able to get behind Clark and nearly snap his neck. Clark doesn't notice his approach at all, and since Clark can follow Impulse with his eyes, this means Brainiac is faster than the Flash!
    • Or, given that it's Brainiac, he just knows how to use it better (the current Flashes rarely use all of the capabilities of super speed).
    • One of the best examples ever: In Bizarro's debut episode, he chokeslams Clark so hard it leaves a crater. He looks into the hole, and then Clark attacks him from behind.
    • In one episode, Zod does this to Oliver, only to find that Oliver's crossbow bolt is tipped with kryptonite.
  • Hyperdrives have been put to use for this on two occasions in Stargate SG-1.
    • In "Fail Safe" Sam uses the hyperdrive on a Goa'uld cargo shuttle to jump a planet-killer asteroid through Earth.
    • In "Fallen" The Plan, which is agreed by all concerned to be "absolutely insane", calls for Sam and Jack to make a short-range tactical hyperjump to get the F-302 inside Anubis' flagship's Deflector Shield. Works like a charm.
  • Flash Stepping an entire starship is the genesis of the "Picard Maneuver" in Star Trek: The Next Generation. By applying a very short warp-speed jump, Picard's Stargazer outruns her own image, briefly appearing in two places at once to the enemy.
  • Supernatural:
    • The first season had the brothers going against a Wendigo. When they see it (on a video), they see its shadow cross the side of a tent in less than ten frames. It was only by scrubbing through in extreme slo-mo that they were able to see it at all.
    • Later in the series, other monsters are able to do it as well, namely demons and angels, both of whom are quite fond of the Stealth Hi/Bye technique. A notable occasion is when Castiel uses it in a He's Back! moment, appearing in front of a demon who's turned to flee from him. "I don't think running will save you."
  • Super Sentai/Power Rangers
  • Cole when he hyperspeeds in Tracker (2001).

    Mythology 

    Newspaper Comics 
  • Beetle Bailey has actually been shown to be able to go around Sarge so fast that he's on one side of him in one panel and on the other side in the next, before anything else has time to happen. There's no particular justification given, but it's clearly implied to be this fast.

    Tabletop RPG 
  • Assault Swordmages explicitly have this as an attack (or more specifically, a "counterattack") in Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition.
  • In earlier versions of Dungeons & Dragons:
    • The Dimension Door spell allowed magic-users/wizards to do this once.
    • The monk special ability Abundant Step (essentially acts as a casting of Dimension Door) seems to be specifically invoking this trope.
    • Blink Dogs had this as a standard ability, with a 75% chance of appearing behind (and facing) an opponent's back. Unicorns could Dimension Door once per day.
    • 3E had one tactical feat, Sun School, which grants a free melee attack after teleporting next to an enemy. In the Forgotten Realms, two prestige classes—the Teflammar Shadowlord and Crinti Shadow Marauder—gained the Shadow Pounce ability, which lets them make several attacks after teleporting next to an enemy. "Multipouncer" builds used a combination of different teleportation abilities to pounce up to three times per round.
      • Dragonmarked members of House Orien could do something similar by taking levels in the Blade of Orien Prestige Class.
    • In 3e, Swordsages could use Shadow Jaunt/Stride/Blink to teleport, but those abilities are non-magical and require line of effect, making them ambiguous.
    • The psychic warrior power Dimensional Slide from the Expanded Psionics Handbook is basically a Flash Step, though it is limited by your range of vision within its own range (Which, sadly, is at most a few hundred feet, requiring being a 40th level psionic character.) If you blow the power points, it manifests as a move action. Combined with a few feats, it could be done as an immediate action. But you can't take more than 20 lbs of living matter, so no taking anyone with you.
      • In Complete Psionics, the psychic warrior can have a much more powerful version of this: Inconstant Location, which, for its duration, grants the psychic warrior ability to perform Dimensional Slide as swift action each round, so they can jump then full-attack the enemies. Can also be considered as Teleport Spam.
      • The Conjurer Immediate Magic class feature from Player's Handbook 2 could interrupt their opponents turn to teleport 6 squares and do it a number of times equal to their intelligence modifier.
      • The alternate magic system Spheres of Power has this a the base ability of the Warp sphere, though you'd need the Quick Teleport talent in order to attack as part of the same action.
    • The 3.5 Shadowcaster class can gain access to the Flicker mystery, which while in effect once a round allows them to teleport as per Dimension Door (albeit with much shorter range) — the trick being that that the teleportation is an immediate action, meaning it can be done on anyone's turn, including those of enemies (though if you use it in response to an attack against you the attack still has a 50% chance to hit).
    • Misty Step is the earliest available teleportation spell in 5th edition. It only has a range of 30 feet, but can be cast relatively cheaply, costing only a second level spell slot and a bonus action, so it can be used in combat to either close distances or get away quickly.
    • The Horizon Walker Ranger Archetype in 5th Edition eventually allows the Ranger to teleport up to 10 feet before and between every weapon strike.
  • Exalted has a Celestial Martial Arts style- Crystal Chameleon Style- made up of equal parts flash-stepping, unexpected attacks, and stealth by psychedelic light-shows. There's a reason the style is often referred to as Disco Ninja Style by fans.
    • High-Essence Solars also have Godspeed Steps, which allows them to flash across anywhere up to a mile in an instant. It's explicitly called-out as not being teleportation though; if the Solar comes across a barrier partway, they have to stop.
  • Legend explicitly uses teleportation to emulate these—Rogues of various typing gain teleportation to represent Flash Stepping, and a feat (Shadow Blink) allows any character to gain the same ability. It's also the Signature Move of the Iron Magi track.

    Toys 
  • BIONICLE:
    • There have been several characters who could use Super-Speed or teleportation, but out of them only Pohatu ended up using his for flash-stepping, and even then mostly because his upgraded power could warp him through solid objects.
    • Kapura, a kinda sluggish Matoran from the online games, trained himself in the secret of "moving great distances by moving very slowly". At first he greets you atop a mountain when you flew there by bird and you might even have seen him at the bottom of it minutes ago. Later, he participates in a battle where it becomes very clear that he is actually using his ability as a Flash Step to dodge attacks.

    Video Games 
  • Absented Age: Squarebound: Satsuki has the skill, Foxtrot, which does damage based on her agility and moves her forward by a certain distance or until she hits an enemy. This is also her default action in ARPG Mode, allowing her to quickly close the distance on enemies.
  • Leonhardt Raglen does this in Agarest Senki 2. He never does it in the first game however.
  • Assassins in Aion get two of these abilities. The first is a dash to any target within 25 meters, followed by an attack, which is relatively weak but allows a stealthed assassin to seemingly come out of nowhere to initiate or join a battle. The other ability is a true teleportation right behind the target, attacking for a mild backstab that can also stun. The second one is a Stigma ability, meaning it costs money and a slot in which you could equip a different ability.
  • Alice: Madness Returns allows Alice to zip from one spot to another several yards away by turning into an ethereal swarm of butterflies during transition, known as dodging in the game.
  • Ancient Domains of Mystery:
    • Quicklings (and in theory anything else that has an enormously higher speed attribute than the Player Character) effectively do this because they can do several actions in one "round" as defined by the time in which the player can take one action. The faster ones can move next to the player character, attack, and move away again, all before the player gets a chance to act.
    • The greater white unicorn has the ability to teleport, but her description describes this as an instantaneous gallop.
  • Several characters in Asura's Wrath can do this, but Yasha is the the most proficient.
  • The Ura of Bastion specialize in speedy movement, using multiple quick steps to approach (or, in the case of the gunmen and archers, back away from) their targets.
  • In Batman: Arkham City, Nightwing's animations have the quirk of doing this.
  • Bayonetta: The Superboss, Father Rodin, starts doing similar movements to this when his health gets lower.
  • BlazBlue: Bang Shishigami can do this as part of his Drive's special property (hit A, B, or C during the invincibility frame) or as part of one of his throws. This is also how his basic movement works when using his Fu Rin Ka Zan.
  • Bleach:
  • Bloodborne has the Art of Quickening, wherein a Hunter moves so fast for a few seconds that the human eye cannot follow them, and they seemingly appear and disappear in a cloud of mist. The Art was invented by the First Hunters, but was lost overtime after the Church Hunters took charge of the Hunt. Gerhman and Maria, themselves members of the First Hunters make liberal use of it in their respective boss fights. The Player Character, notably, can't actually learn it themselves, but can replicate it by finding an Old Hunter Bone. Assuming you have a high enough Arcan score, the Bone gives you the ability to Quicken for a few seconds, basically as a super version of your normal Dodge ability.
  • Castlevania:
    • Castlevania: Symphony of the Night's Alucard Sword has a special attack that allows Alucard to teleport across the screen, turn around, slash twice, and return, all in about a second or less. There's also at least one katana that allows similar attacks.
    • Certain knives in Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow do the same thing, allowing Soma to open doors backwards by triggering buttons on the other side of them.
  • Cruz Brothers has the Delfim boxers doing this in with thunderbolt effect for most of their special attack.
  • A large number of robots in Custom Robo Arena have stealth-dash abilities that let them pull something functionally identical to this. It is really inconvenient when a Burning Beast that was in front of you suddenly appears to your side and opens fire.
  • In Cyberpunk 2077, the Sandevistan spinal implant allows its users to perform this. With it, V can move at approximately 560 mph for 0.8 seconds.
  • In Dauntless characters wielding Chain Blades use this for their dodge move in contrast to the Unnecessary Combat Roll wielders of other weapon types use to dodge.
  • In the Dead or Alive series, Kasumi and Hayate are the only characters that can perform these.
  • In Dead Space the Twitcher variant of Necromorph does this. It's explained that this is because they're Space Marines who have been infested by the virus, and their special combat stasis modules are malfunctioning.
  • Defense of the Ancients and Dota 2:
    • "Blink Strike" of Riki the Stealth Assassin's is medium-range super speed that brings him right behind his target and grants a damage bonus for a single attack. The Blink Dagger item gives this ability to anyone who buys it.
    • Weaver's "Shukuchi" is named after the precursor of this trope for a reason. It lets him move with the Haste effect (ie. at the movespeed cap of 550 and immune to any slows), lets him phase through units and deals a modicum of damage to enemies in a small radius around him, all while invisible. It lasts for 4 seconds out of a 6 second long cooldown, making him a very slippery target.
  • Desert Breaker grants you the ability to slide several meters to the side in any direction, which allows you to dodge projectile attacks or to target your enemies. You're granted a split-second of Mercy Invincibility while side-stepping for good measure.
  • Devil May Cry:
    • In 3 and 4, maxing out the Trickster style gives Dante the "Air Trick" ability (which, sadly, only lets him flash step right up to his target's face).
    • Vergil is a master of this, his usage approaching spamtacular levels on the higher difficulties. When playable, his range is limited, but he is capable of doing this up, down, and towards a targeted enemy.
    • Two types of enemies from 1 and 4 use Flash Stepping. Nelo Angelo has a technique which allows him to instantaneously teleport short distances, though he only ever uses it to gain distance for a different attack. The Frosts, strong ice demons appearing in both 1 and 4, have a similar ability whereby they disassemble their bodies at the molecular level, quickly move across the room using the moisture in the air as a medium and reform somewhere else.
    • Dante's Royalguard style grands a counter-move Just Release, which really looks like and acts as a Flash Punch, moving you through the opponent whose attack you just countered and damaging it (and other enemies close nearby) depending on how much damage you have blocked prior. Using it with an empty meter on enemy projectile attacks is the more traditional version of this trope, dubbed Running Man or Superman, depending on whether you do it whilst airborne.
    • Nero's (from 4) Table Hopper is a defensive move that replaces a regular side roll if you dodge right as an incoming attack lands. It lets Nero move fast enough to leave a streak/after-image and grants plenty of invincibility frames. When upgraded, you can chain two bonus dashes into any direction off the initial dodge, so for an example you can slide back to exactly where you were before performing the dodge, or dodge a ranged attack then close at least some of the gap by dashing towards an enemy. As a curiosity, with proper timing you can chain Table Hoppers and dodge the electrified floor from the Containment Cell "boss fight" from mission 6.
    • Furies from 5 are specialized in Flash Steps through their utter obsession with speed. Practically every attack they throw at you is performed from a Flash Step and so are their fakeout attacks. They pay for it by the way of a miniscule healthpool.
  • Played straight in Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, with the Assassin's Dragon Flight, which teleports to a target and kicks it. The Paladin's Charge attack is close, allowing a means to dance from place to place at (nearly) untrackable speed, even leaving the trail of afterimages. There's also an armor which allows any class to use the Sorceresses' teleport, which while not technically a flash step, does end up looking quite the same in duels...
  • Imperial Assassins in Disciples 2 attack by disappearing, appearing behind the target, striking, disappearing, and then re-appearing in the original location. All in the span of 2 seconds. It's no wonder why they're more effective than archers.
  • Dishonored has "Blink" as the first ability given to Corvo by The Outsider. It's primary use is to help the player traverse the stages with relative ease. While is appears to be a teleport at first glance, you will impact any objects in your path when blinking. The Whalers (Assassins) have a similar ability, but with longer range.
  • Doom Eternal has the Marauder, the antithesis to the Doom Slayer, who's able to dash around the stage as fast as he can, making the player have to play a game of hit and run. Too far and they fire Argent axe beams and send wolves at you. Too close and he shoots the slayer with his own Super Shotgun.
  • There are quite a few abilities that do this in the Dragon Age games, one of them being a rogue ability in Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening that allowed the rogue to target an area, then teleport behind every enemy in the area to deliver a Back Stab before returning to their starting location. Some enemy mages of Dragon Age II have a teleport ability that has been explained as actually being a 'burst of speed through the ground', since legitimate teleportation is impossible in the setting. In the third game, Dragon Age: Inquisition, controllable Mage characters in the party (incling, potentially, the Player Character, if a Mage class is selected) can do so through the "Fade Step" spell.
  • Dustforce: Once you've built up enough combo and activate your character's Limit Break, they'll jump to every enemy within range and strike them, clearing them instantly.
  • Elden Ring calls it the Bloodhound Step, and it's the signature technique of the Bloodhound Knights, who have been trained to attack like hunting dogs. The Tarnished can also use it via the Bloodhound's Step Ash of War.
  • In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the Whirlwind Sprint shout lets you do this. The Vampire Lords also have this ability, by turning into a cloud of bats.
  • EXTRAPOWER: Giant Fist: This is Coma's method for dodging, and can be used to access out of the way platforms.
  • The first two Fable games have a spell that works like this—Assassin's Rush in Fable, and the targeted version of Time Control in Fable II.
  • In Fallout 3, Feral Ghoul Reavers have an infamous glitch that sometimes causes them to flash-spaz, during which most shots pass through them without causing damage.
  • The Nightcrawler Elites in FEAR: Perseus Mandate, who have the same Bullet Time reflexes as you, are seen to do this.
  • Sephiroth is a master of this in everything he appears in aside from Final Fantasy VII, the original game and Crisis Core, the Prequel.
  • In Final Fantasy XIV many melee-oriented classes have weaponskills that allow them to, in most cases, close the distance between themselves and their enemies, or otherwise move to another location in an instant. Such abilities include (but are not limited to) the Monk's "Thunderclap", the Red Mage's "Corps-a-Corps", the Gunbreaker's "Rough Divide", and the Ninja's "Shukichi".
  • All over the place in Dissidia Final Fantasy, where characters can teleport when using certain attacks. This includes, but is not limited to, Onion Knight's Swordshower and Guiding Swipe, Zidane's Meo Twister, Golbez's Cosmic Ray, and of course, Sephiroth is there with Oblivion, Fervent Blow and Godspeed. The prequel Dissidia 012 returns all the previous examples and adds Tifa, whose entire gimmick is that she can cancel out attacks to teleport behind the opponent and attack again, and Vaan's Katana. The game also adds the Assist Chase mechanic, which let you teleport near the opponent and attack after certain Assist attacks. In both games in the series, while all characters have a jump command, Golbez doesn't physically jump. Instead, he instantaneously teleports himself to approximately a meter above his previous position.
  • Fire Emblem: in the GBA games, attack animations incorporate this trope for agile characters such as swordmasters and assassins.
    • In Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, certain special moves (critical hits for swordmasters and thieves and Occult attacks for those classes) are portrayed this way as well.
  • The Blink ability from Ghostrunner lets you teleport right behind an enemy you aim at and kill anyone between you and him. It is a classic samurai move justified in this cyberpunk setting by some Technobabble about your cybernetics.
  • Jitterskull, the ghoul from Ghouls vs. Humans that looks like a giant floating skull, moves this way: he doesn't float, he keeps teleporting several feet forward. Which makes it really annoying when you're playing as him.
  • In the Korean MMO Grand Chase, each character has their own movement speed. Any character that can run can take advantage of a glitch that the community called flash stepping. It involves dashing forward, jumping into the air, dashing in mid-air, dropping to the ground, and dashing again. It's pretty tricky to pull off in rapid succession, especially with characters that can double jump, but it can make all the difference in PVP.
  • Demons while assuming human forms in Devil's Hunt can side-step at rapid speed without moving their legs, even flash-stepping a circle around you. You gain this ability halfway into the game as well.
  • Guild Wars introduced the "shadow step" gameplay mechanic with the Assassin class. Several skills and stances allow the user to immediately teleport to an enemy or ally, either on command or after a trigger.
    • It's also one of the main tricks of the Thief class in the sequel.
  • Johnny from Guilty Gear features several of these moves in addition to his quick-draw sword attacks, one of which transports you across the screen, another which can be executed while holding your sword ready to strike at an indeterminable point, and one of which is a one-hit finishing move.
    • Chipp Zanuff's 236P attack (that's Down, Down Forward, Forward+Punch, for those of you who don't know fighting game lingo), the Alpha Blade, is this trope. The super version does this several times in rapid succession, and Ex Chipp can perform the Alpha Blade up to three consecutive times as part of a combo (normal Chipp can't).
  • Kessler in inFAMOUS frequently moves around using this method, as do the Reaper conduits.
  • Heroes of Newerth has a couple of heroes that do some variation of this. Magebane has Flash, which instantly teleports him to the target location. Chronos's Time Leap speeds up time for himself as he runs to the target location in an instant. Wretched Hag has Flash of Darkness which works the same as Magebane's Flash. Swiftblade's ultimate ability allows him to perform several attacks in rapid succession with such speed that it looks like he's teleporting from one target to another. Any hero can acquire a Portal Key which allows them to instantly teleport over a limited distance.
  • Hexen: The freaky faceless floating wizards known as Dark Bishops have an ability to go transparent and move very quickly in a straight line — as the manual puts it, they "phase in and out of existence as they travel from place to place." Since they're ranged attackers, they don't use it to attack as such.
  • Lu Tian-yuan from Hidden Dragon: Legend can obtain a sliding-step as his second power upgrade, for him to get out a pitch if he's cornered by multiple enemies. He even leaves behind glowing lines when flash-stepping.
    • An interesting interpretation of the flash-step was made in the Typing of the Dead game (which was essentially a creative port for House of the Dead 2, where Magician appears as the penultimate boss). Normally, Typing of the Dead has you fight zombies by typing words that appear in text boxes, and if you make a typo you get the "ping" sound and you can't type any more characters until you correctly type what you miss. Magician isn't like that. If you make a typo at all, he whacks you!
  • Jitsu Squad have a special sliding move that you can pull off to avoid obstacles, which is especially easier with smaller characters like Baby O'Hara or Hero Yamagiwa. Meanwhile, the Recurring Boss villain Dash Kobayashi repeatedly uses this ability to take potshots on you in all three of his boss battles, including the second one - a Lava Surfing stage where Dash's surfboard can inexplicably float to where he flash-steps.
  • This is known as "dashing" in Just Shapes & Beats, and is used to get a few seconds of invincibility long enough to get through walls and obstacles. Some levels even require it to get through.
  • Killer is Dead: Mondo's main defensive ability. If he times it right, dodging an enemy attack will make him go berserk for a few seconds and attack at the same speed that he flash steps.
  • Kingdom Hearts:
    • Several members of Organization XIII, especially in Chain of Memories.
    • Aqua and Ven (but not Terra, as he's too slow) have a preemptive counter ability that lets them flash behind their current attacker and slash from behind. Ven just dashes very quickly around them before they can react, but Aqua teleports in a flash of light. Aqua ups this to leaving after images all over the place when she powers up to Ghost Drive mode. The command 'Time Splicer' also does this, but it actually prevents non-boss enemies from moving at all until your character decides they're done. Enemies Master Xehanort and Vanitas are also fond of it.
    • Riku's been doing this since the beginning. In 3D, one of his Link Styles is a darker version of Aqua's Ghost Drive.
    • Kingdom Hearts also has Sephiroth again, opening his boss fight in the second game with the original version of the Oblivion attack mentioned above.
    • If you fail the reaction command during the deep dive sequence during the first fight with Xemnas, he'll warp behind Sora and deliver a killing blow before you have time to react to it.
    • And then there's Xigbar, he's the organization member with the power over space/dimension, he flash steps around to fire at you in various ways (Interestingly, he had this trick before he became a nobody, as Birth By Sleep reveals). Sora can use a Reaction Command to do the same to Xigbar.
    • Kingdom Hearts II: The Final Mix version adds an ability for Sora called Flash Step. It causes him to teleport to enemies when he attacks and they're not in the initial range of his swing while also giving him a brief window of invincibility.
    • By Kingdom Hearts III, Sora's got several ways of pulling this move of, some based on the above examples. For starters, using the Shotlock aiming mechanic, Sora can instead use the guard/dodge button to trigger a Flowmotion move called Airstepping, which allows him to bolt to a very distant point, sometimes jumping across different points in the process, or towards the last targeted enemy to safely close in the distance. Next, if his guard is broken by an attack, one of the Risk Dodges he can pull off as a counterattack is warping behind the target if they were far away. Lastly, as part of its All Your Powers Combined nature, Ultimate Form instantly warps to the target's location when initiating the attack.
    • Similarly, in the Re:Mind DLC scenario, in the lone battles they are each playable, Roxas and Kairi each can warp directly in a distant target's face with their first attack. Roxas literally just bolts from his position and cross-slashes the target, while Kairi's is more of a two-step method. She tosses her Keyblade, Strike Raid-style, at a distant enemy then, in a reverse of the usual Summon to Hand, warps to her Keyblade's location. If the target is REALLY far, she just repeats this again until she's in the target's face.
  • In Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, leveling up in sorcery causes your dodge roll to become this instead. Depending on what class tree you level up, your Blink can deal Poison (Finesse/Sorcery) or Ice damage (Pure Sorcery).
  • League of Legends replaced DOTA's Blink Dagger with the Flash summoner spell — a short flash step that regenerates every 5 and a half minutes, which is universally considered the most versatile spell of the game as it can be used for both defensive and offensive purposes. As for specific characters, Katarina has a flash step ability that is actually called 'Shunpo', and other champions like Talon (pre-rework), Ezreal, Ekko, Fiddlesticks and pre-2017 Warwick have similar abilities. However, some of these (like the summoner spell Flash, or Ezreal's Arcane Shift) are short-ranged teleportation rather than just fast movement.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
  • Zed from Lollipop Chainsaw uses this to dodge your attacks.
  • Lost Soul Aside: The 2016 trailer showed Ventas perform it during combat, and the 2017 gameplay demo demonstrated Kazer doing the same, while always leaving a purple afterglow behind.
  • Mass Effect:
    • Geth stalkers in Mass Effect can jump around incredibly quickly. To make things worse, they jam your sensors, so you can't reliably use that to track their movements.
    • Mass Effect 2: The Vanguard class has this ability, although it's more used for slamming into enemies than anything else. Essentially, a Vanguard knows how to turn themselves into a sub-light self-projecting mass relay.
    • In Mass Effect 3, asari husks called Banshees get this ability. They can also impale you for a one hit kill. It's exactly as bad as it sounds.
    • The asari characters in multiplayer use this as their dodge ability. It's faster to perform than other dodge moves and can move the character dramatically further. Unfortunately, it will also drain a small amount of your shields every time you do it (or delay your shield regeneration if your shields are already at zero).
    • The N7 Slayer and Fury (Vanguard and Adept respectively) classes from the Earth DLC do the asari one better and actually teleport as their dodge moves and heavy melee. Best part is, it can go through walls. Also the N7 Shadow ability "Shadow Strike" teleports the player behind an enemy to deliver a fatal sword strike.
    • The Cabal Vanguard takes that a step further by having the exact same dodging abilities than the Slayer and Fury, a different Charge ability that allows her to phase through walls (which means that, unlike the Slayer, she can also phase forward on a rather long distance), and a heavy melee that allows her to teleport in the back of the enemy on a short distance and tear him to shreds. Oh, and the Charge? A possible evolution allows her to use it twice in a row.
    • Mass Effect: Andromeda: Ryder and Cora have Charge as biotic powers.
  • Almost every boss from the Mega Man Battle Network series, due to the grid-based combat, is shown to instantly teleport from panel to panel. It's the bosses who don't do this who are the problem, as that usually implies some gimmicky form of movement that makes it harder to hit them. Bass is the most notable example of this. Invoked with the Step chips (Step Sword, Step Cross, Evil Cut), which cause the user to appear two squares ahead, slash and then return to the initial position. Seeing as it's just a programming action, it's probably just teleporting.
  • This is one of Nanaya Shiki's signature abilities in Melty Blood. As of Actress Again, Tohno Shiki is also able to pull this off. Arcueid can also do this during one of the EX Skills.
  • Metal Gear:
  • Metroid Dread: The Flash Shift is a short-distance dash powered by Aeion that can be done 3 times in a row. It can also be used in midair, handy for getting across gaps quickly or getting through pressure plate doors without triggering them.
  • Vampire mooks from Monster Hunter (PC) has the ability to side-step rapidly to dodge stake attacks, making them one of the most difficult Elite Mook-type enemies. Levels containing three or more vampires inevitably becomes That One Level for players.
  • Monster Hunter: Rise: Malzeno from the Sunbreak expansion is able to do this in its Super Mode, covering itself with its wings and leaving a cloud of red dust where it once was. While at first it appears to be teleportation, it is actually moving extremely fast.
  • The Naruto tie-in games emphasize this more than the original show. In at least one (Naruto: Clash of Ninja 3) it's a standard move, putting you right behind your opponent so you can get in a surprise counterattack. This tends to turn into No, I Am Behind You.
  • The King of Shadows in Neverwinter Nights 2 uses a flash step in the opening cinematic of the game in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid a magical bolt from his enemy. Being the deific abomination that he is, it really doesn't hurt him, however.
  • Ryu replaces his evasive rolls with these in Ninja Gaiden II, though he also used them in the previous game during essence attacks (to the point of Nightcrawler-esque spamming in some cases).
  • No More Heroes:
    • In the final boss battle, Jeane is capable of streaking around the battlefield in a decidedly Dragon Ball Z-esque manner. While this is likely utilized to show off just how patently nasty and tough the boss is in addition to disorienting the player, it's worth noting that you have no trouble keeping locked on to and tracking the boss's movements; Travis is capable of blocking every bullet fired from a full Uzi clip, after all.
    • Travis himself can do this by pressing a direction in the control stick right after guarding an attack. From his perspective, he just does a regular dodge in Bullet Time.
  • No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle:
    • Henry's Dash ability in his one playable level in the sequel.
    • Jasper Batt Jr. is capable of doing flash step punches in his second form, and when he's low on health he starts shooting tornados out of his fists as well. It's easily one of the most aggravating attacks in the game.
  • No More Heroes III: Various mooks can move with exceptional speed, such as those which use katanas. The bosses and minibosses use actual teleportation, however, because they're aliens capable of this power.
  • Tracer from Overwatch has this as her signature ability as a result of time-space distortion. This allows her to dodge bullets, escape firing lines, and get away from gravity wells and explosions. All done in real time. Talented Tracer players are very hard to hit.
  • In Palworld, Lucario expy Anubis is able to perform this with its "Guardian of the Desert" ability to dodge attacks, including bullets.
  • Perfect World: The Assassin class has two skills that do this: Shadow Jump (instantly teleport to the target's location) and Shadow Teleport (same as Shadow Jump, but also stuns the opponent for 3 seconds). They can also have this effect when they pop out of stealth right in front of you and hand a critical-hit Headhunt straight to your face.
  • Persona 5: Your Phantom Thief Protagonist can instantly jump from cover to cover at super speed during Dungeon Crawling, flying forward several feet in a flash of Speed Lines.
  • Some Photon Arts on Phantasy Star Online 2 cause the player character to flash step to their target. The Hero class has it as it's default dodge command and can attack with increased damage when coming out of a step turning Teleport Spam into a viable tactic. A few enemies are capable of it as well.
  • In practice, "Extreme Speed" and "Pursuit" in Pokémon behave like this.
    • The anime plays "Feint Attack" as more of a Look Behind You, but Fanon sometimes writes it as one of these. It depends entirely on Rule of Cool.
    • Ninjask in particular is mentioned in its Pokédex entry as "moving so fast that it cannot be seen." It is also said to be able to dodge any attack due to its speed, justified somewhat due to the fact it can learn Double Team.
  • In Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, the Dahaka has three types of movement; striding forward slowly and impressively, jumping enormous distances, or using this to cross small distances like the countless spike pits or narrow crevices. Basically, it's a way of letting it move quickly when it doesn't have room to leap without breaking the ominousness by actually running.
  • Kogoro, the male protagonist from Project × Zone, does this a lot in his attacks.
  • Resident Evil 4. Mendez and Verdugo do this, although not when the player is fighting them.
  • Wesker in Resident Evil 5 moves around the battlefield like this—apparently Capcom wanted to represent his speed and agility like this in earlier games, but the technology didn't make it look convincing.
    • Pleasingly, if he flash steps into melee you can initiate a small QTE where you smack him down before he launches his own attack.
    • This is also a huge part of the boss battles against him (especially the first); shooting him needs to be done from around corners or from behind so that he doesn't flash step out of the way.
    • Hell, Wesker's flash step is the basis of his whole moveset, and one of the reasons he is so top tier in Marvel vs. Capcom 3. As if his combos weren't already the easiest to execute in the whole game, his flash step (Phantom Move) practically allows him to move about with ease, and with the right assists, the opponent is about a millisecond away from eating a mixup from him.
  • Predictably the Ninja from Sengoku Basara, particularly Kotaro, are capable of doing this. Mitsunari, however, takes it to the next level, possessing ridiculous speed and being able to take down small armies in a couple of seconds while all the player sees is him disappearing and reappearing. Gameplay-wise, he's very similar to Vergil of Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening and he even has the ability to warp to his enemies after attacks.
  • Hotsuma from Shinobi (2002) has this as one of his abilities. It gets kicked up a notch when at the second battle Aomizuchi and at the battle against Ageha your opponent can do it as well. And even more so at the final battle where he can literally warp to you during a combo.
  • Tsumuji's special ability in Shounen Kininden Tsumuji is to quick dash anywhere.
  • Sonic Unleashed gives the titular hedgehog the "Quick Step", a move that lets him "warp" instantaneously a short distance to one side or the other, allowing him to dodge obstacles or pitfalls that would take too long to circumvent normally.
    • Sonic Colors feature a similar move, though its use is limited to designated areas in a given level.
    • During Soul Surge in Sonic and the Black Knight, when in front of an enemy, Shadow/Lancelot uses Chaos Control to teleport before delivering an attack. Sonic can do the same basic thing with his speed.
    • The Quick Step isn't so instant in Sonic Frontiers, but Sonic has a new technique that epitomizes this more than that technique ever did in Phantom Rush, where he combines this trope with Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs to attack so quickly he appears to be striking from multiple places at once, complete with afterimages.
  • In The Spectrum Retreat, this is how teleporters work - click it, and you will leap at high speed towards it, regardless of distance.
  • Various enemies in Spiral Knights employ this for various reasons. Gremlins and devilites will use it to dodge your attacks. Gremlins will also use it to get close to you between attacks. Wolvers will use this to get close to you in tier 2 (upgrading to flash-digging in tier 3). Oilers will also use this very frequently to get up close and spread their fire on to you, while their much larger cousins, the giant lichen colonies, enjoy comboing this maneuver with one of their various spike attacks. You get one of your own as the second attack of the rocket hammer's combo, however.
  • In Spirit of the North, one of the fox's powers is Spirit Dash, allowing it to teleport forward in the direction of the camera. Some puzzles require the use of it to get through timed doors and extend its jump distance.
  • Blink is also used in Starcraft II by the Protoss Stalker and Zeratul. The latter is a campaign-only special character while the former is available with the skill in either mode, but requires research to unlock in multiplayer. Both require a 10 second cooldown.
  • Almost all of the main protagonists in Star Ocean: The Last Hope are capable of this thanks to the Blindside game mechanic, that of which allows them to outflank the enemy by moving at incredible speeds (usually depicting their movements in slow motion from the player's perspective) and attack the enemy from behind. Characters like Arumat and Myuria use actual teleportation when performing their unique Blindsides. Some enemies(particularly bosses) are capable of this as well, and are even able react to (and counter) a hero's Blindside manuever with one of their own.
  • Star Trek Online: Romulan warbirds' warp shadow and singularity jump powers. The one teleports the player a short distance and leaves illusory copies of the ship behind, while the other teleports the player a short distance and leaves a short-lived gravity well behind. Elachi warships are also fond of short-range teleportation, which can make them rather annoying opponents.
  • In Star Wars: The Old Republic, several of the Jedi and Sith classes have an ability to quickly get into lightsaber range. Some have a Force-powered leap, while others use a burst of Force Speed fitting this trope. Special mention goes to the Jedi Shadow and Sith Assassin, who can get a perk to clear the ability's cooldown if the target dies fast enough, meaning it can be used to flit around the battlefield cleaning up weak foes.
  • Ibuki from the Street Fighter series has a minor version (though it is slowed down for balance purposes). Even so, it was kept in her SF4 transition to 3D. It allows her to swiftly hop "through" an opponent, leaving a wispy afterimage in the process. She performs a proper one in her comic.
    • Juni from Street Fighter Alpha 3 could do this as well.
    • In Street Fighter V, Nash's V-Trigger ability is this, working somewhat similarly to Vergil's Air Trick abilities from Devil May Cry 3, allowing him to instantly place himself near an opponent (in front, behind, or above). Likewise when Bison's V-Trigger I is active, his dash becomes like this.
    • Yang gained this as one of his new attacks during the Divergent Character Evolution that took place in Street Fighter III: Second Impact to separate him from his brother, Yun.
  • In Super Robot Wars, this trope turns into a unit ability, wherein any allied or enemy unit carrying the "Afterimage" or "Mirror Image" ability has a 50% chance of dodging any attack. This occasionally shows up in licensed series, usually in the form of an automatic miss for the attacker. For example, in Super Robot Wars Judgment, Brains who activate their "Vital Jump" also stop using energy while moving in the air.
  • Super Smash Bros.:
    • There are a lot of moves that work like this: Fox's Fox Illusion, Falco's Falco Phantasm, Pikachu's Quick Attack, and Lucario's Double Team (which is a counter) to name a few.
    • Rolling in general functions similar to flash steps, turning a character invincible and letting them move a short distance quickly (it's often useful to get behind an opponent). Faster characters' rolls start to emulate this trope.
    • As a ninja, Greninja uses this with its Shadow Sneak and Substitute special moves (the latter of which combines it with a Ninja Log). Its Final Smash uses several consecutive flash steps to slice up the opponent.
    • Mythra's Photon Edge combines this with Blade Spam as she makes a series of lightning-fast slash attacks.
  • In Syndicate (2012) Aspari Agent Tatsuo does this to Teleport Spam levels, moving between places so fast you can't see him move even with the Super-Reflexes granted by DART Overlay.
  • Tales Series:
    • In Tales of Vesperia, Yuri has an attack called "Ghost Wolf" that allows him to move lightning fast for a strike at his opponent. His ultimate attack takes this trope to ridiculous levels.
    • Shing Meteoryte's in Tales of Hearts takes it up to more ridiculous levels. By the end of the arte, he's leaving afterimages. That, or appearing for a slash before he's actually disappeared from the previous one.
    • Keroro's F.K.S. in Keroro RPG appears to be a fairly blatant homage to Shing's Shououjineizan.
    • In Tales of Xillia, if you're playing as Jude and dodge an enemy's attack by backstepping, you'll flash step behind them. It sort of makes sense if done at melee range, it looks like he circles around the enemy. It's less plausible when he does it by dodging a ranged attack, however.
    • In Tales of Xillia 2, Milla can gain the ability as well late in the game. Muzet also has a variation that simply lets her or her partner teleport right in front of an enemy or extremely far away. In this case, it's probably actual teleportation.
  • Tekken 6 Bloodline Rebellion:
    • Lars Alexandersson utilizes a lot of Flash Step in his attack arsenal as part of his Stance System. Dynamic Entry goes in high and Silent Entry goes in low, each allowing him to follow up with other attacks.
    • Yoshimitsu can be thought of as a Flash Spin/Sit, since a few of his attacks involve him spinning and vanishing without even a flash or sound. His Rage Art in 7 really gets a workout on this as he zips past his opponent several times.
    • Badass Black Ninja Raven also can do this, even having a move that allows him to backflip through the opponent if facing them from behind. One of his intro sequences also involves him slowly walking towards the person and vanishing, causing the character to spin around and find him standing with his arms crossed.
  • The protagonist in Teslagrad acquires boots that allow him to do this fairly early on.
  • This becomes a feature of Time Crisis 5 where the player can do it to move from cover to cover — the mooks in the opening cutscene are suitably confused at the sheer speed of your movement! Keith Martin employs this too in the battle against him.
  • In Titanfall 2, the Ronin's "Phase Dash" tactical ability allows it to phase into another plane of existence for a brief moment, allowing it to essentially teleport. Pilots can also use this ability on a smaller scale on themselves.
  • In Touhou Project, many of Youmu's spell cards invoke this; most notable is Hell Realm Sword "200 Yojana In 1 Slash".
  • In Transistor, one of the functions Red has access to is "Jaunt()", a quick dodge that can be used while her other abilities are recharging. Other functions can be used to enhance it (Jaunt(Spark()) leaves a trail of projectiles in its path, Jaunt(Ping()) is faster, but has shorter range, and so on).
  • While performing Out of Body, the Sadhus of Tree of Savior can use Prakriti to reunite body and soul at the soul's present location. This is done as a Flash Step rather than a teleport.
  • Trillion: God of Destruction has this as a potential skill your Overlords can obtain. It only allows you to travel up to three tiles, but it doesn't cancel out any passive skills that require you to stand still, thus giving you more flexibility in your fights.
  • ULTRAKILL: A favorite of the Prime soul Super Bosses, who will constantly step right up to you within the instant to pummel you into scrap. Minos Prime already leaves a trail of debris on the ground every time, while Sisyphus Prime moves so fast he doesn't even leave a trail of light behind him; he just shows up with only the rubble trail to show he moved at all
  • Cat from Wildcat Gun Machine have this ability, which turns out very useful when she's cornered in a Bullet Hell maze or needs to flee from large numbers of monsters.
  • Wild AR Ms 4: Jude has nanomachines in his body that allow him to 'accelerate', or in other words, to move so fast everything else slows down in comparison.
    • Exactly how this works becomes a plot point later on A certain boss does something that looks exactly the same, but he's not actually moving any faster, he's stopping time.
  • Sho Minamimoto from The World Ends with You can flash step past any zetta slowpoke, in Noise form and Taboo Noise form. Additionally, the pins that let Neku teleport have names that imply that this is what's going on.
  • World of Warcraft:
    • Rogues can, if specced a certain way, gain one of two abilities: Shadowstep, through which a Rogue can teleport directly behind a target in line-of-sight within a certain distance, and Killing Spree, which allows them to do five Shadowsteps in succession, but in a smaller area, with less control, and attacking twice each time. Mages have the Blink ability, which is a short-range teleport. Warlocks get a teleport as well, but it's tied to a beacon—the Warlock drops a green glowing point and can then teleport to that point from within 40 yards, regardless of line of sight.
    • While it may technically not be considered a Flash Step, Feral druids have an ability called Feral Charge that acts the same way. This ability causes you to leap behind an enemy and daze them for a few seconds. Even if used when not stealthed, the player will still have a moment to attack before the enemy realizes the player is behind them. As of Mists of Pandaria, all specializations of druid have access to a talent that blinks them forward and shifts them into cat form at the same time (an early version of the talent even allowed them to stealth.)
    • Much like a Warlock's ability to teleport to a beacon, Monks have the ability to leave a fraction of their spirit behind and swap places with it.
    • Warden heroes from Warcraft III can Blink as well. In fact, the highest level of said spell costs 10 mana and has a one second recharge time. Teleport Spam, anyone? Against weaker enemies, Blinking into the middle of the mob, casting Fan of Knives and Blinking back out can be quite devastating.
  • A feat only shown in a cutscene, the character Nagi of Xenoblade Chronicles X is shown using this.
  • If Yandere-chan enters SNAP mode in Yandere Simulator, she gains this ability to replace her running ability. YandereDev confirmed it was a homage to Screaming Mantis, mentioned above.
  • Chester Stoddart, a particularly annoying boss in Ys: The Oath in Felghana. The Flash Steps even came with an annoying sound effect too, and when down below half-health, he'd literally spam 2, 3, 4 of these in a row while throwing projectiles all over the screen...
  • Zone of the Enders brings us the Zero Shift, which is this at Humongous Mecha scale. There is some Techno Babble about using space compression powered by Metatron to move at near-lightspeed. In fact, the earlier part of The Second Runner involves Jehuty attempting to acquire this ability so that it can fight on equal footing with the already Zero Shift-capable Anubis.
  • Monster Hunter: Rise Sunbreak: Malzeno is able to do this in its Super Mode, covering itself with its wings and leaving a cloud of red dust where it once was. While at first it appears to be teleportation, it is actually moving extremely fast.

    Visual Novels 

    Web Animation 
  • Bunnykill 4's Snowball, when he goes into "White Avenger" mode during the final battle with Flint, demonstrates the ability to do this.
  • In Dead Fantasy:
    • Hayate appears to be teleporting and using forcefields to attack Tifa. In reality, he is actually just moving that quickly—observing the video frame-by-frame will show his movements and blows were all animated.
    • In Episode 2, Rikku pulls off a version of this, although nowhere near as fast as Hayate, when Tifa casts Hastega on Team Final Fantasy. She uses her enhanced speed to kick Ayame's ass up and down the tower.
  • The Leet World's Ahmad combines this technique with a shotgun when he boosts his speed using HAX.
  • RWBY: Well-trained Huntsmen, or talented individuals that have received Huntsman-level training, have extremely powerful Auras that can enhance their bodies for as long as Aura remains active. This can allow a talented warrior to appear to move so fast compared to their opponents that they seem to teleport from one location to another. Tyrian is an especially dangerous villain because of great talent for fighting and killing; when he first attacks Team RNJR in Volume 4, the teenagers can barely keep track of him, despite being exceptionally gifted students in their own right. Some Semblances can also temporarily give Huntsmen the ability — either directly, or as a side-effect of being powered up another way. When Nora's Super-Strength is powered by channelling lightning into her body, she is momentarily able to flash-step even Tyrian, forcing him to reveal the fact he's secretly a Faunus because he has to block her with his previously hidden scorpion tail.
  • In Flash animator Terkoiz's famous Shock Series, the two main characters (Mr. Red, and Mr. Green) both posses the ability to Flash Step and do so multiple times during the fight between the two. "Project Retribution", a tribute to the series, can essentially be described as numerous flash steps interspersed with occasional breaks.
  • The later battles of Super Mario Bros. Z feature a lot of this, but it's mostly Shadow and Mecha Sonic who pull it off, probably via Chaos Control.

    Webcomics 
  • In The Beast Legion, Ginta teaches Xeus to master the Flash step, refereed to as the lightning sprint, in Issue 05.
  • The Dreadful: Jeanne Noelle is capable of this through ordinary movement because she's just that fast.
  • In Errant Story, this is the Ensigerum's standard MO. They use time magic in conjunction with Training from Hell to pull it off.
  • Girl Genius:
    • Gilgamesh Wulfenbach seems capable of it, using it to taunt less threatening opponents (and in one case, leaving an empty coat in the hand of a Mecha-Mook that tried to grab him.
    • The Knights of Jove also practice this, utilizing a distraction tactic so they can sneak in, swap one thing for another, then go back to their original position with the item (or person!) in tow.
  • In Gunnerkrigg Court, Parley develops the etheric ability of exportation (aided and abetted by her boyfriend, who can distort probability). Several chapters later, when Parley is sparring with Robot, she specifically tells Robot to not hold back. Robot curb-stomps her. This leads to Parley having her own little "Eureka!" Moment, where she develops a sword fighting style that incorporates teleportation into it. Specifically, she uses a longsword, which is a slower and heavier weapon, teleports into a very close, and can essentially slash and barge from functionally every close-quarter position. This leads to Parley curb-stomping Robot.
  • Homestuck:
  • Magick Chicks: This is simply one (among many) of Faith's abilities and she's so good at it that her opponents have lost sight of her, even when they're looking right AT her!
  • Sluggy Freelance: The Satanic kittens in "KITTEN" are usually never seen moving, instead tearing a human into pieces in a gory flash and appearing or returning to sit there peacefully before you can blink. "mew."
  • In Star Impact, the special power of Phoebe's gloves, Moonlight Dream, is to perform a short-ranged teleport-dash that wreaths her lower legs with a teal glow.
  • Tower of God: In "Hell Train: Hoaqin", Ha Jinsung wants to prevent the main character's team from getting on the Hell Train. When they try to run from him, he more than once just appears in front of them, and the distances he moves in an instant are in the order of tens of metres. Considering that he's a High Ranker, it's not surprising, even taking into account he's not able to really use his powers.
  • Lord Aterra in True Villains is able to do this, likely because he is just dang powerful. And after Sebastian gets his aura fixed, he is able to do this as well in the fight against the Paladin.

    Web Original 
  • Codex Inversus: One of the techniques used by Hesizainak, orcish duelists who scribe spells mid-combat with their sword flourishes, is the "blinking footwork", which allows the duelist to "skip" a step and move across spaces longer than their natural stride should allow.
  • Destroy the Godmodder: Used by an ever-increasing number of players in the second game, culminating in piono using time-stepping, which combines this with time-slowing to allow the user to move effectively instantly.
  • Linkara could do this in Kickassia.
    [while talking to Chris Larios] For example, I'm not even in front of you. [appears behind Chris]
  • Shadowhunter Peril has Umbra Darkholme, who in his fight with Azazel uses flash steps to try and take the shifter down. Unfortunately for him, Azazel shifts into Umbra and copies his powers, so they are BOTH trying to flash step each other into submission and it ends up going nowhere until Azazel stops moving and tries to absorb Umbra. Umbra flicks him off and proceeds to vaporize him.
  • SCP-173 can only move when not in direct line of sight. And when he does, he moves 4 meters in the time it takes to blink. Blink once more, and *CRUNCH*
  • This is one theory as to how the Slender Man gets around in lieu of Offscreen Teleportation.
    • Entry #54 of Marble Hornets shows his leg for a split second as the lights go out, implying that he was rushing into the room as the darkness hit.
    • When Noah was attacked in his house, Slender Man was seen rushing down a hallway at an alarming rate of speed, yet not moving his legs as he went.
  • Whateley Universe:
    • There are teleporters who can do this, but the example that the writers have shown is Phase, who has density-changing powers. She does the flash step to some bullies by going intangible and running right through one of them, then going to her maximum density and hitting him. (She's taking it easy on the guy, too.)
    • Shuttl, has this as his primary power: he can do a move that is described as 'not quite teleportation' in which he moves instantaneously from one point to another, but since he actually passes through the intervening space, he can't go through solid objects such as walls or people.

    Western Animation 
  • Castlevania (2017): Alucard, in a gloriously faithful nod to the games, can do a Flash Step in conjunction with his swordplay as seen when fighting Trevor who could barely keep up with his own Super-Reflexes. Subverted later during the Final Battle as Alucard tries to Flash Step Chō, but she counters with her smoke powers, making his speed redundant.
  • Justice League:
  • The Bebe robots in Kim Possible move in short Super-Speed bursts.
  • The main character of The Kwicky Koala Show moves so fast that he simply disappears then reappears somewhere else, accompanied by a beep sound effect.
  • Korra's Enemy Without from The Legend of Korra, tenuously called "Evil Korra", moves like this exclusively. It's something no other bender in the entire series has been able to do.
  • Hunter from The Owl House has this as his Signature Move. While he can't cast magic without a staff or Palisman and thus relies much more on physical combat than his peers, his main use of magic is using Teleport Spam to rapid-fire attack his opponents, or pull his friends out of harm's way. After Flapjack merges with him in "Thanks to Them", Hunter becomes able to use his Flash Step without a staff.
  • She-Ra: Princess of Power: This is the secret to how Loo-Kee can move around so quickly. Oddly enough it seems a learned skill as none other in his species demonstrated the ability when they were imprisoned on Beast Island.
  • Superboy does this in one episode of the classic animated series to casually defeat a guy attacking him with a magic sword.
  • Superman: The Animated Series: In the Batman crossover episode "Knight Time", Superman uses these to emulate (and in some cases outdo) Batman's trademark disappearances.
    Mad Hatter: He's not human!
  • In Transformers: Animated, Prowl has this ability combined with incredible agility and balance as a result of his Ninja Training. In the early episodes of the show, Optimus Prime found it very annoying because of his tendency not to listen.
  • In one episode of X-Men: The Animated Series, Wolverine faces off against the Silver Samurai, whose mutant power is short-ranged flash stepping. The guy not only leaves a significant pause beneath flash appearance and attack, he is also highly uninventive with where he positions himself and the time during which he blinks out is quite long (even after you account for the fact that the show employs Talking Is a Free Action).
  • Young Justice (2010):
    • In the episode "Drop Zone", Kid Flash snatches Bane's detonator so fast, Bane doesn't realize it's gone until he tries to press it. Kid Flash needed a running start to do it, though.
    • In the episode "Bloodlines, the Flash and Impulse dodge Neutron's attacks by simply moving to the side at super speed.

    Real Life 
  • Bruce Lee could supposedly move so fast that special high-speed cameras were required to film some of his moves. One of his favorite party tricks was to have someone stand a few steps away from him holding a coin, and to have them close their hands around the coin before Lee could take it. When they tried to, he'd almost instantaneously jump forward and replace the coin with something else. Worth noting that unlike most fictional portrayals, Bruce Lee's training regimen was as much about strength as speed or agility and as a result, he was fantastically physically fit even by martial arts standards.
    Chuck Norris: Bruce Lee, pound for pound, might well have been the strongest man in the world, and was certainly one of the quickest.
  • Though there are no known examples of real-world teleportation, a number of martial arts teach skills which make it appear as if the opponent has suddenly appeared behind them.
    • Ba Gua uses intricate footwork to give the impression that the practitioner is closer or farther than he actually is.
    • Many schools of Japanese swordsmanship attack when the opponent is beginning to inhale and his attention wavers.
    • Some Silat practitioners make contact with the opponent and rely on a momentary impression of their position to move behind.
    • Others use sophisticated understanding of distance, timing and changes of level to cause the opponent to lose track of the user for a moment during which he moves behind the opponent.
    • Lunge in fencing. Deep lunge particularly, allows one to close a five-meter distance in a blink of an eye.
    • Grab & Strike techniques in many martial arts can produce a similar impression: A half-step or simple stance change gets one of the combatants in range for a grab (by the collar, shoulder, neck, head, hand, or anything else), whereas a jolt brings him into range for a punch (MCMAP, Krav Maga), elbow strike (Thai Boxing, Krav Maga) or a throw (BBJ, SAMBO or Judo, Krav Maga), never giving an opponent a chance to do any sort of counter.
  • Many small rodents, such as rats and squirrels, can dash a short distance and come to a complete stop within seconds.
  • Flies, spiders, and other creepy crawlies can easily move to another spot in the time it takes to blink.
    • Tiger beetles deserve special mention. The fastest species can speed across the ground at about 9km/h, or about 5.6 mph. This may not sound like much, but if you compare relative body length to a human? It travels 22 times more quickly than the fastest human sprinter. Putting it another way; if that human could move as quickly as a tiger beetle, (s)he would run at a top speed of 480 miles per hour. A Bugatti Veyron's top speed is a little over half that.
    • Even that pales in comparison to Paratarsotomus macropalpis, the fastest animal in the world relative to its body size. It's a mite only 0.7 millimeters long, but it can move at 322 body lengths per second. That's the equivalent of a human running at 1,300 miles per hour, almost twice the speed of sound.
  • So can hummingbirds. They expend an extreme amount of energy just to stay in one spot (their signature hovering in place). If they put that towards actually moving in a direction, they can cover small distances extremely quickly.
  • Certain fish, especially smaller ones, can do this, as well.
  • When filming fight scenes, directors often had to remind Wesley Snipes to slow down enough for the cameras to process his moves.
  • This story from Not Always Learning, where a chemistry teacher miraculously appears next to a student who's having trouble. When asked how it's possible, the teacher responds that one acquires the ability to teleport as a chemistry teacher.

 
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Djin's "Smoke Speed"

The academy agents discuss agent Djin's ability, which appears to be disappearing into smoke and reappearing. Rudy contests that it was due to his speed that he appeared that way, and smokescreens were used to cover him.

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