Combat Parkour

Forget him, you're standing on the side of a building!

This is where someone in a battle begins to jump around and perform gymnastics-heavy moves in order to dodge bullets or other physical attacks. They will do back handsprings, push off of walls, do twists in mid-air and find safety without getting a single scratch. This does not make them invincible, just very hard to hit.

Usually seen with characters that are smaller in size, more flexible, and, more often than not, they will also have either a martial arts or some type of military background.

In fight scenes, this can be used to get characters from a position where they are at a disadvantage (usually out in the open) to a place of safety (behind a wall) or closer to their opponent for an attack. In addition, this style of movement is visually appealing and is used to add a bit of flair to combat scenes.

Sometimes this is used when a new character is introduced and they need to stand apart from the rest by having a unique skill set. If this happens, they may make an appearance as the Sixth Ranger, using this trope to show that they have considerable skill and coordination in comparison to other characters. Similarly, if this is a common tactic of a younger character (especially one that is hotheaded), the purpose is to demonstrate their physical capabilities and establish that this is someone with potential.

As this trope thrives on Rule of Cool, it may also involve use of Wire Fu and Bullet Time effects in live action shows and movies, to showcase every angle, and so the audience can keep up with all of the action. It also pairs naturally with Flynning and Interesting Situation Duels to create dynamic fights even as the combatants do very little actual harm to each other.

Acrofatic characters and practitioners of She-Fu and Gun Fu are naturals at this trope. However, the character needn't be a martial artist to exemplify the trope, as the Gentleman Thief and Classy Catburglar are also prime candidates, when action-oriented. Characters who use Combat Parkour are quite likely to apply The Power of Acting to get an upper hand as well.

For an actual entry on Parkour, see the supertrope Le Parkour.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Maki of Air Master; in her past she was a world-class gymnast. Unlike most instances of this trope, however, at least once it definitely loses a fight for her — after an astonishing spinning, flipping thing which basically whips her martial artist father, she sticks the landing by reflex. He takes advantage of that moment to get her in a lock and take the victory.
• In Attack on Titan, the soldiers use 3-D Maneuver Gear to Building Swing and try to zip around and over the larger, deadlier, Titans whose only weak spot is a narrow area of the base of the neck. This trope with grappling hooks.
• Berserk:
  • Casca centers most of her offensive and defensive maneuvers around flipping about the enemy.
  • Serpico tends to utilize this, particularily when dueling Guts.
  • With the the berserker armor activated, Guts tends to leap all over the place and perform various acrobatic moves to maneuver and maximize his striking power.
• Rushuna Tendo of Grenadier uses this to dodge attacks with cartwheels and back flips.
• The fight scene in the first season opening of K has lots of this, particularly from Fushimi. The scene is contextualized in the second season, and there's a bit more of this sort of fighting later as well.
• Canaan in Canaan does this in addition to her gun fighting skills alongside her synesthesia powers, making her a formidable mercenary.
• Gunslinger Girl. Cyborg girl Rico backflips toward terrorist leader Dante while he shoots at her with an assault rifle during the Turin Nuclear Plant siege.
• Valmet and Karen Low of Jormungand, they both use this style of striking and dodging with fancy spins and flips.
• In Naruto, being ninjas, all the main characters relish in this trope when dodging or attacking. Every fight scene is laced with stylistic flips and twists in addition to the consistent use of the environment and the people around them to fight.
• In the anime Noir, Kirika is one of the two most lethal human beings on Earth. Her sheer ability to dodge bullets, and general use of acrobatics, enter her into this category.
• Kodachi Kunō of Ranma ½. Ranma Saotome uses this sort of fighting style in that he's prone to using a lot of flips, jumps, handstands, rolls and tumbles, all to either evade attack or beat on his opponent.
• Obi of Snow White with the Red Hair uses his parkour abilities in fights to help him dodge and avoid attacks, at one point managing to get out of sight and set up simple trick in order to ambush his target from behind. He also uses it to leave behind fights he has no reason to actually get into, to take his opponents by surprise, and to diffuse situations before they escalate into actual fights via intimidation.
• Death The Kid of Soul Eater is an expert at an Improbable Age, though being the Grim Reaper's son probably didn't hurt. He uses backflips to dodge attacks and create distance between him and his opponent.
• In the manga and film Tekkonkinkreet. The two boys, White and Black, have some incredible jumping skills when combat oriented.
• Rurouni Kenshin: At fast enough speeds, Soujirou Seta is capable of catching up to a horse-drawn carriage; when battling against Kenshin, Soujirou shows off by running across walls and ceilings.
• My Hero Academia has multiple examples.
  • Katsuki Bakugo whose Quirk is, Explosion, will often use varying levels of explosions to move around during fights to both avoid attacks and maneuver around his opponents.
  • Gran Torino has the Quirk, Jet, that allows him to expel the air that he breathes from the soles of his feet. His primary fighting style is to jump around the area, bouncing off walls, floors, and ceilings in order to disorientate his opponent and attack them when they're off balance. His Quirk also allows him to jump in mid-air allowing him to do this even in open spaces.
  • Izuku Midoriya adopted both of these styles when he created his Full Cowl technique that allows him to use the Super-Strength and Super-Speed power of One For All throughout his body. This actually becomes a plot point in two instances. First when Bakugo notices that Midoriya successfully copied him, which causes him to fall further into his Inferiority Superiority Complex. The Second is when Midoriya first meets Sir Nighteye, who notes how he copied Gran Torino and uses it to mock Midoriya on why he is an inferior successor to One For All.

Comic Books

• Batman:
  • Batman makes use of this. Especially in a confined space surrounded by thugs, at which time he is forced to twist, pounce, and perform somersaults and back handsprings to narrowly dodge attacks coming from multiple directions. Then once out of danger he makes a few attacks of his own to defeat them.
  • Nightwing is quite flexible and agile because of his circus background.
  • Robin Tim Drake may not be as acrobatic as his elder brother but Nightwing's influence on his training is regularly evident even if Tim's preferred style of fighting is based around the use of his bo staff.
• Daredevil: Daredevil excels in this ability, capitalizing on his omnidirectional senses.
• Hunter's Hellcats: Swinger is a cat burglar who incorporates a lot of acrobatics into his combat.
• Sin City gunfighters tend to have very standard action movie/crime noir moves except for Wallace. He tends to do a lot more hopping around and is probably the most skilled protagonist of the series.
• Spider-Man: This is Spider-Man's specialty. As a consequence of his powers, he fights reflexively. However he is extraordinarily limber and agile, so by reflex he jumps, twirls, twists, and contorts all over the place to dodge blows and missiles. ^note This doesn't really stop Spider-Man from taking severe blows. Indeed, almost every videogame starring him features a costume selection that is torn up and ravaged from all the damage he takes during the game. Because of his Spider-Sense, he's never really blind-sided, but his enemies just tend to be that fast and powerful. Often the Spider-Sense doesn't prevent him from getting hit, just from getting killed.
  • Spidey's so well known for this that many people (both in and out of universe, including Peter himself) sometimes forget that he's also got Super-Strength.
  • Black Cat also exhibits this, being able to keep up with Spider-Man even when she is a Badass Normal in terms of strength and agility. She's a bit slower when human but makes up for it in gracefulness, and when she has her bad-luck power, making her enemies trip up.
• X-Men:
  • Nightcrawler capitalizes on his circus training combined with his prehensile tail to achieve this.
  • This is one of Gambit's specialties, allowing him to take advantage of his slightly enhanced agility.
  • X-23's fighting style is much more acrobatic than her genetic father, Wolverine, and in many of her fight scenes, she can be seen using flips and handstands to bring her foot claws into play. Her father couldn't fight this way if he wanted to, because his adamantium skeleton adds over 100 pounds to his weight, while X-23 (who only has adamantium claws, as well as lacking his stocky build) is about 1/3 his weight.
• The Walking Dead: Jesus jumps and kicks a lot while engaging both zombies and humans in hand-to-hand combat, and he uses his quickness to dodge attacks and outflank opponents.

Fan Works

• In Amazing Fantasy, Peter teaches this Izuku as part of his training to become a Hero. By the end of their ten-month training session, Izuku is effortlessly moonsaulting, spinning, Wall Running, Wall Jumping, and soaring over each and every obstacle Peter can throw at him.
• Being a The Matrix crossover with Supernatural where all hunters are a subdivision of normal rebels this happens in Hunting Series. A particularly good example of this, in part 3 - Hunting and Saving when John Winchester uses 'focus' and does this while trying to win a fight against a nest of vampires...he succeeds.
• Harry develops in Child of the Storm, and by the sequel he is lethally competent at it.
• This is Yuzu's preferred fighting style in the Bleach fanfic Chasing the Moon (and its prequel and sequel). She isn't actually hard to defeat once she does get hit, and the few times she sustained serious injury ended the battle immediately, but she tends to make herself hard to hit. Being a Master of Illusion probably helps with that regard. This is in contrast to her twin, who is Made of Iron.
• Every superpowered character in Sailor Moon: Legends of Lightstorm. Sailor Jupiter was doing this even before she got her powers, but notes that her abilities make it easier to perform what she could already do.
  • Despite being effectively powerless, Jason still manages to do this against Negaverse drones, partly with help from his wrist-mounted grapple gauntlets.

Film — Animated

• In Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, the Dee-Dee twins often tag teamed Batman and used flips and high jumps to get away from his attacks or find a better position behind him from which they would attack.
• Dragons: Fire & Ice has Kyra using loads of flips and kicks during her duel with Dev, who just uses archaic and brutish forms of "swing the sword in that general direction until something dies".
• In Turning Red, Mei relies on this when fighting Ming at the concert, quickly switching between her red panda and human forms to give her an advantage in both speed and agility.

Film — Live-Action

• From Balls of Fury, Maggie uses combat parkour when she takes on a group of martial artists.
• In Batman Returns, some of the circus acrobats use this ineffectively to come in close to Batman for an attack.
• In Blade Runner, the android Pris ambushes Deckard and does a rapid series of somersaults to move in close to him in the fight.
• Chocolate: Zen, a small Thai autistic girl whose Disability Superpower is to absorb martial arts from movies and TV shows. The entire movie is her beating up hundreds of people larger than her with Muay Thai. The actress supposedly spent 2 years learning enough Muay Thai to make it look realistic. The film handled her smaller size well - she uses it to her advantage by taking the fight into narrow spaces where her opponents have trouble moving. She and her opponents also and Combat Parkour in places when evading kicks and bouncing around the scenes.
• Jen Yu from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, most memorably in the restaurant scene. She uses backflips and rebounds off pillars and walls to evade and strike her opponents.
• Get Smart: Though not technically combat, Agent 99 uses nimble backflips and other gymnastics moves to thread her way through a laser web.
• Kick-Ass: Hit-Girl uses this to cover ground between her and her opponents with complex flips and spins.
• Eggsy's rampage through the villain's lair in Kingsman: The Secret Service.
• Hanna: The eponymous heroine uses Le Parkour to confuse and separate her enemies, her agility to dodge their stronger blows and her Tyke Bomb Training from Hell to exploit any opening instinctively.
• Live Free or Die Hard features an enemy agent girl whose super-agile backflips and kicks almost manage to defeat John McClane. Rand is a straighter example, fighting McClane in the cooling tower of the NSA backup server by jumping around to prevent McClane from getting a clear shot and using the environment to block McClane's bullets.
  McClane: Goddamn hamster!
• In The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Kelly uses her gymnastic skills to kill one of the Velociraptors
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • While T'Challa (a.k.a. Black Panther) from Black Panther (2018) isn't excessively acrobatic, he's certainly bouncier than the majority of his foes, and generally has at least one airborne move per fight. Killmonger's fighting style is much the same, and he also fits this trope.
  • Steve Rogers (Captain America) and Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow) also have more instances of acrobatics in their fight scenes, particularly in Captain America: Civil War.
  • In Peter Parker/Spider-Man's combat scenes in both Captain America: Civil War and Spider-Man: Homecoming, he does almost nothing but acrobatics, both for offense and defense. Justified in that he has powers that give him a superior sense of agility and equilibrium, and that he's untrained in hand-to-hand combat.
  • Thor also has a few notable instances of acrobatics, though they tend to be few and far between; his style is similar to Captain America's in that respect.

• In Star Wars this technique is used mainly by Jedi when they duel, each dueler trying to gain the upper hand by attacking from a different angle or trying to throw off their opponent by leading or chasing them into a new battleground. It should be noted that they can draw on the Force to refresh themselves and enhance their natural strength and agility so that they can perform more acrobatics and for longer than most folks. For Yoda, all the jumping around is necessary for him to fight larger opponents (in other words, everybody else). There's even a name for this particular style: Form IV/Ataru.
• Alice (Milla Jovovich) in the Resident Evil Film Series takes this to ridiculous extremes, with even an unpowered Alice sending full-grown adults (and zombies) flying with moves straight out of The Matrix. She enjoys making use of Combat Parkour mainly to dodge and evade attacks (and even lasers) in Resident Evil: Extinction.
• Sucker Punch: The main character, nicknamed Babydoll, uses this technique mainly to dodge the knives and swords of her imaginary opponents.
• 3 Ninjas: The three main characters used this in their fights and, being ninjas, they were masters at using their environment to their advantage in a parkour style.
• Wendy Wu: Homecoming Warrior: This is used mainly to have cool fight scenes and has very little realistic value, but it is used a bit to dodge.
• In Pixels, Violet's combat style is full of back- and frontflips, as well as gymnastic stars.
• Since the fighters are freerunners, this is the standard of combat in Freerunner.
• In Warcraft (2016), Garona hops and spins a lot when fighting. She's a third of most of her enemies' size, so this is pretty much the only way she can hit them where it hurts.
• As with her comics incarnation, Laura practices this extensively in Logan, using the terrain, her own acrobatics skills, and even other mooks just to reach targets that are on average twice her size. Considering she's a tiny eleven year old girl and thus not able to sustain the same level of punishment as Logan, she also uses it to just plain not get hit, flipping, cartwheeling, and somersaulting through return fire. Her acrobatics also help her bring her foot claws into play, turning her into a whirling, adamantium-coated human blender.
• Boone, in Boone: The Bounty Hunter, utilizes a variety of showy flips and dodges in his combat style as well as several decidedly impractical spinning flips from a height. Then again, when the main character is played by John Morrison...

Literature

• In the Discworld, the Guild of Assassins and the Guild of Thieves both teach edificeering to their students. This combines parkour with a sort of urban mountaineering and is used both for speedy stealthy movement, and to get the height advantage if it comes to a fight.
• In Ender's Game all of the students playing in the games must bounce off walls and use the environment to beat the opposing team
• Matty Roh of The Heritage of Shannara has a strategy that relies on dancing around her opponents before going in for the kill. Makes things rather interesting when she teams up with the much more physically powerful Morgan Leah.
• Lisbeth Salander in the Millennium Series happens to be very good at avoiding getting hit, sneaking up on people, and incapacitating her opponents, whether it's with stones, golf clubs or nail guns.
• Nina from Reserved for the Cat; she's a trained ballerina, and knows that jumps, spins, and kicks can be useful both in dancing and fighting.

Live-Action TV

• Roy Harper in Arrow uses this in addition to his street-based hand-to-hand combat to give him an advantage over his adversaries.
• Jason from Atlantis is an Instant Expert at Le Parkour, but not at swordfighting. This leads to the logical conclusion.

• One of Chuck's adversaries was a former gymnast who used this trope to escape from the protagonists. His mistake: he stuck the landing, whereupon Sarah shot his kneecap out.
• The TV branch of the MCU contains a few:
  • In Agent Carter, Leviathan agent "Dottie Underwood" uses this in combination with her general Dance Battler demeanor. Makes sense, as she is implied to be a part of the Black Widow program, which specifically includes ballet as part of the combat training.
  • Daredevil (2015): Matt Murdock will never walk straight towards an enemy or use a simple, effective attack if he has the option to bounce off the walls or do flashy somersaults, flips, and spinning jump kicks instead.
• Doctor Who: In "The Doctor's Daughter", Jenny can backflip her way though a corridor of deadly laser beams.
• In High&Low, it's how the Rude Boys gang fights, and considering they're the only ones who know how to get through the slums they live in, it makes them a really hard target to hit.
• Star Trek: Picard: Elnor's Fantastic Fighting Style involves lots of jumping and acrobatics, which includes flipping in the air, leaping from the ceiling, bouncing off walls, etc., often combined with a Spin Attack with his sword, and as typical for this trope, he doesn't receive a single scratch from his foes.
• Wonder Woman: In "The Murderous Missile", Wonder Woman does a gymnastics routine using the bars in the ceiling of the barn before landing and knocking out the evil Sheriff. George then sprays knockout gas at her revealing that he's the real mastermind!
• Xena: Warrior Princess uses this occasionally, and yet she still takes plenty of punches. It is an established part of Xena canon, based on Word of God, that cartwheeling/backflipping across an area is faster than running the same distance, so this is largely justified in-series.

Professional Wrestling

• At the 2007 event Death Before Dishonor V, Matt Cross ran up a wall to deliver a somersault plancha.
• John Morrison. Which has been played up by the commentators a lot, check it out. It helps that the practice is actually part of his training. Said training did him a lot of favors at the Royal Rumble, where he proved to be about as hard to eliminate as Kofi Kingston, if not more so.
• After being thrown into a wall during EVOLVE 33's "Evolution's End" by Johnny Gargano, Rich Swann retaliated by running up that same wall and kicking him.
• Momono Mio's opening strategy tends to involve running and diving around the ring and the arena while blowing raspberries at her opponents, the idea being anyone foolish enough to chase her will either soon tire out, hurt themselves or otherwise become frustrated enough to make mistakes. Towering, muscular gaijin men have fallen to this in Pro Wrestling ZERO1.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons. In 2nd Edition, use of the Tumbling non-weapon proficiency improved the user's armor class by 4 (making them harder to hit) and gave them a plus 2 to their chance to hit in unarmed combat. In 3rd Edition the Tumble skill can be used to avoid attacks of opportunity when moving past (or through) an opponent. Pathfinder, as a spinoff of 3rd Edition, retains this option, though the skill is called Acrobatics and it's much harder to pull off.
• Champions. Using Acrobatics skill gave the user a +1 to +3 on their Offensive Combat Value by surprising an opponent and making it easier to hit them.
• DC Heroes. The Acrobatics skill allows the user to add his APs in the subskill Dodging to his OV when attempting to Dodge enemy attacks.
• GURPS 3rd Edition. The Acrobatics skill allows the user to make an Acrobatic Dodge, a jump or roll that avoids an attack in a flashy way.
  • This is made a skill on it's own in 4th edition and when added to martial arts or superpowers becomes this trope.

Video Games

• Bayonetta. Acrobatic backflips are her standard dodge, so expect to be doing this a lot since it triggers Witch Time. She can even do this in mid-air!
• Jade from Beyond Good & Evil has a fairly impressive talent for backflips (and front-flips) in battle.
• Alora, a Dark Jedi and The Dragon in Jedi Academy, moves very acrobatically the second time she's fought, even compared to the other Force users in the game, who can all or almost all do flips easily.
• Get To The Orange Door makes extensive use of this. Sliding and wall-running are key mechanics, and become vital to survival later as higher Threat levels will tend to see more and more enemies thrown at you.
• Ghostrunner features this as a key gameplay mechanic. The player must slice the enemies along the way while performing lots wallruning and jumping in order to avoid getting killed.
• Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance: Frost prefers to perform backflips. Several of the male characters (such as Shang Tsung and Hsu Hao) also use backflips to escape.
• Devil May Cry:
  • Devil May Cry 2: Dante and Lucia can roll, dodge enemy attacks or run along walls during battle. The game's style system is even based on dodging. Lucia's fighting style in particular focuses on acrobatic movements like flip kicks and spinning handstand kicks.
  • Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening takes it to the next level. On a Double Jump, you can flip upside down, spin and shoot, flip back up, flip upside down AGAIN, spin and shoot, and flip back up in time to land on your feet. Similar, if not even more extravagant, maneuvers are also possible in Devil May Cry 4.
• Persona 5 Joker's Fighting style involves stylish attacks with his knives and gun and shredding his enemies with nimble, curving movements.
• Tidus from Final Fantasy X, most notably with his Spiral Cut Overdrive. So is Noel Kriess from Final Fantasy XIII-2, who does a lot of backflips with his attacks.
• Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII, in that her fourth ATB attack is backflipping and firing a gun simultaneously.
• The Half-Life mod "The Specialists" featured this type of evasion which you can use to dodge, complete with Bullet Time.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Aqua in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. Her male friend Terra gets a long-distance forward dash, and her "little brother" Ven gets the series-standard "Dodge Roll" somersault. Not Aqua. She cartwheels away from enemies.
  • Larxene as well. Her gameplay and battle style are full of this, especially in Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days. Flips, cartwheels, mid-air spins and mid-air drilling, somersaults, etc.
  • Xemnas, the Big Bad of Kingdom Hearts II, fights this way, flipping and spinning like crazy in his boss battles. In the final battle, it'd be a Free-Fall Fight if you weren't able to Double Jump and swerve around in mid-air as if there was something to push off against.
• Ms. Marvel's fighting style in Marvel Ultimate Alliance involves lots of flips.
• This was one of the original concepts for Mirror's Edge, as seen in this concept art.◊ Even though, in the final game, it was replaced with more realistic free running it is still possible to do with a lot of practice.
  • This trope appears in Catalyst in the form of "Traversal Attacks". They do a lot of damage, but enemies have to be in position and just hitting them until they go down is generally faster.
• In a very bizarre example from Monster Hunter, Rathian's special attack is a draconic air-backflip.
• Mortal Kombat: Sonya Blade does this, despite having Kenpo and Tae Kwon Do as her fighting styles in previous games. Her signature move is doing a backflip, grabbing the opponent between her legs, and throwing them. She also uses this move to break Kano's neck in one of the movie versions, and in Mortal Kombat 4 she has a fatality where she does a handstand and tears the opponent in half with her legs.
  • There's also Li Mei.
  • Nitara's Unicorn Kick special is the deadliest cartwheel you'll ever see.
  • Unlike Sub-Zero, who slides around Iceman-style to escape from sticky situations
• In [PROTOTYPE 2] James Heller, a former Marine, is infected with a special strand of virus that gives him superhuman abilities. In the game he can run up walls and performs backflips which is meant for evasion or just really cool combat scenes.
• In Resident Evil 4, Player Character Leon S. Kennedy performs multiple evasive backflips and wall-jumps. Then again, Ada and Krauser manage to top it off with even more backflips. Then, Leon learns Le Parkour...
  • Sheva and later Jill perform lots of acrobatic somersaults and cartwheels for their physical attack follow-ups in Resident Evil 5.
• All three characters in Resonance of Fate practice this by running/jumping often in Bullet Time presentation while shooting their opponents
• Sakura Kasugano from Street Fighter uses a front flip to dodge or get behind opponents.
  • Street Fighter V introduces Rashid, a flashy acrobat of a fighter who — weirdly enough — has "Parkour" listed as his official fighting style.
• Lili from Tekken has stylish balletic moves, with liberal use of flips. And a move where she does an aerial somersault; if she lands on the opponent's head, she does a double snap kick in the air.
• Tomb Raider, in which you can draw an M-16 while flipping backward in the air and successfully target some mook on the balcony below you.
• Rubi's primary dodging style in WET is this trope, she uses flips and spins and cartwheels to dodge bullets and get from open positions to behind objects for protection.
• Titanfall and its sequel enable the player to wall run, slide, double jump, and use ziplines, with levels and maps being purpose-designed around this. You're fully expected to learn how to do this while keeping a bead on your enemy. Higher-level play rarely sees your feet on the actual ground for more than a few seconds.
• Total Overdose, a Robert Rodriguez homage, becomes progressively more Gun Fu oriented as maximum adrenaline increases. The whole acrobat range of stunts are unlocked from the beginning, and the majority of sidequests are intended to introduce and exercise the skills.
• Turbo Overkill is an FPS that grants you amazing parkour skills thanks to your cybernetic enhancements, alongside kicking ass. You can actually witness the carnage as you parkour your way along walls and above city buildings while taking down enemies along the way, and it's insane.
• A vital combat mechanic in Darksiders II. Instead of blocking like War could do in the first game, Death dodges instead, which is crucial in surviving all of his battles.
• The Asura race of Guild Wars 2 may be well-known for their intellectual and ego (and diminutive stature), but when push comes to shove they aren't above getting their knuckles bloody in melee combat. What reach they lack with their sword-arms, they make up for with incredible agility and acrobatics. Even their dodge animation shows them flipping through the air, whereas most other races just lunge and roll. In many ways, and perhaps on purpose, their melee combat style closely resembles Yoda from the Star Wars franchise.
• Sonic the Hedgehog takes full advantage of his speed and agility to flip and bound around badniks and Eggman's mechanical creations, expertly weaving between and around attacks before either striking them directly or kicking their missiles back at them. The parkour-like aspects of his fighting style are more apparent in cutscenes.
• Unreal Tournament 2003 was the first installment of the Unreal franchise with this. While even the first game had dodging (including the forward dodge being a somersault), 2003 went really wild with it, introducing moves like kicking off a wall into a sideways flip. Some maps even have spots that require a walldodge to traverse. And yes, the bots do use them.
• The Prince of Persia games have emphasised parkour since 2003, so naturally this is the Prince's fighting style.
• Genji from Overwatch has Cyber-Agility as a passive ability allowing him to climb walls and Double Jump, with a front flip as the animation for the latter. This makes him very difficult for enemy players to hit, especially since he's one of the smaller-framed offense heroes. (It can also make it difficult for the support players on his own team to hit him with healing abilities.)
  • Cassidy also has a Combat Roll ability that lets him somersault around enemies or obstacles, reloading his revolver in the process.
• Super Metroid: Highly skilled play typifies it strongly enough thanks to Samus' aerial and wall jumps to make this game the Trope Codifier for the 2D platformer genre.
• Time Crisis: In the third game, the second boss jumps around the place and tries to attack the player by using claws. In fact, he is more agile and difficult than his minions, clawmen. The player needs quick reflexes to defeat him.
• Killer Instinct: Orchid's fighting style makes heavy use of flips and handstands.

Web Animation

• Rooster Teeth sees this in their action animations:
  • Red vs. Blue in the later seasons. This trope was used mainly to dodge and evade using back handsprings and other gymnastic styles along with bouncing off walls with Bullet Time effects. Added mainly to create awesome fight scenes involving guns and hand-to-hand combat.
  • In RWBY this is Team RWBY's (and most other females) main shtick. They use their weapon's gun form's recoil to speed up their attacks and use their blade form's edge to hold on to obstacles or terrain to maneuver mid-flight to allow for high-speed attacks and movement. This is best shown during "Players and Pieces", where they have to survive a fall to a forest using only their weapons.
• Employing a lot of other combat styles, Madness Combat of course has this, but mostly in later installments when the protagonists are fighting from building to building. Hank eventually becomes well-versed in this.

Webcomics

• In Schlock Mercenary Parkata Urbatsu is a descendant of Parkour that focuses on pursuit and escape in an urban environment while looking so impressive that bystanders stop and watch. But as Lieutenant Shodan demonstrates it's best used with more combat-oriented martial arts.
• MAG ISA — Eman vs Kyle Round 1... FIGHT! This trope is used to dodge bullets with blurred backflips and somersaults.
• Sluggy Freelance:
  • Oasis and Kusari are "gymnastic" martial artists/assassins — or at least Oasis is called that, and Kusari is like her. They're flipping around all the time. Oasis in particular has shown that trying to use More Dakka on her is basically Shooting Superman.
  • Teresa (Slaughteresa) employes some similar moves, and she actually has an in-universe noted partial but suspiciously close physical resemblance to Oasis, though she's not superhuman like her.
  • Bun-bun the evil and badass mini-lop may not do a lot of flipping, but he's constantly bouncing when fighting and almost impossible to hit.
• In Leve L that's how Rain fights.
• Errant Story has a lot of this, mainly by Sarine and Sara, but some minor characters get to show their stuff too.

Web Original

• Chaka of the Whateley Universe specializes in this style of fighting. Justified in that her ki powers make it extraordinarily easy for her to do so. In her first superhero fight with a bunch of ninjas, she drives her opponent up the wall by dodging his attacks with a series of flips.
  • Given the school's heavy emphasis on survival skills and combat training, there is a lot of training given in the effective use of terrain in general, both for fighting and for evasion. Parkour-based evasion techniques are a core part of the Survival courses given to students who aren't inclined towards combat.
  • It is also the preferred fighting style of many Badass Normal superheroes and supervillains, such as the various individuals who have taken up the mantle of The Swashbuckler (the Swashbuckler active with the California Crusaders in 2006 is the fourth, while the second Swashbuckler, who was active from the mid-1950s to the late 1970s, is Walking the Earth looking for a worthy pupil to pass his skills on to).

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Suki demonstrates great Parkour skill by running over people's heads, climbing up walls, swinging over railings and sliding under people, almost entirely avoiding direct confrontation until she reaches the warden of Boiling Rock. Also, the main character, Aang, uses parkour to evade attacks. See the first and second episodes.
  • Ty Lee has no Bending ability, she carries no weapons, she's a skinny perky cutie ... and she can totally incapacitate you by hitting you in the pressure points while remaining impossible to hit because of her acrobatic and gymnastic skills.
• While The Legend of Korra generally moves away from its predecessor's flashy, bombastic martial arts to more practical and streamlined styles, this trope is present in several character's fighting styles. These include Korra (especially once she learns airbending), Tenzin and Zaheer (as demonstrated during their fight) and, amusingly enough, Bolin and Ghazan.
• Batman: The Animated Series: Robin actually had a fighting style like this. He was a trapeze artist in a circus before becoming Robin.
• Yumi from Code Lyoko frequently uses such moves when fighting in the virtual world, thanks to her increased agility and the low gravity of Lyoko. This allows her to use backflips frequently in combat.
• The heroine of Cyber Six uses flips and wall pushes to evade and come in for attacks. It also makes for very cool movement in the scenes.
• Glitch Techs: Zahra is shown to be quite adept at this, much to the amazement of both Five and Miko.
• Kim Possible lives by it. Got her on the cheerleading team, too. She uses this trope mainly to dodge when in combat, using a series of flips and twists to get out of the way.
• Princess Zelda in The Legend of Zelda (1989) usually fights like this. Sometimes, so does Link.
• Ace Bunny of the Loonatics Unleashed rarely remains a stationary target in combat situations. This was best demonstrated when he was trapped in a railway car with a dozen military-grade Mecha-Mooks armed with Slow Lasers, and survived unscathed. Ace's partner Lexi Bunny has the She-Fu variant developed from cheerleading routines.
• In Samurai Jack, Jack uses this to dodge, evade, and attack his opponents. He utilizes the surrounding environment to change his direction or slow down his opponents.
• All the heroes in Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! use this technique in dodging and attacking in order to add visual appeal to the fight scenes.
• In Teen Titans (2003), Robin uses this combat style to attack and dodge. His archenemy, Slade, is also quite deft at this, utilizing the technique mainly in dodging. Another enemy, Jinx, uses this to dodge and get more space between her and her opponent. Most commonly, she uses the back handspring to do this.
• All four turtles in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) use this to attack and dodge, utilizing their weapons and parts of their environment to block attacks and change their direction.
• In Transformers: Animated this is used by quite a few characters:
  • Hotshot (For the 50 seconds he is seen) does a back handspring to avoid getting hit by incoming laser fire
  • Prowl and Jazz both use this in dodging attacks and they both have similar martial arts backgrounds
  • Jetfire and Jetstorm are younger characters that use this mainly to dodge attacks, and in the first episode they are seen they continually bounce off of walls and sofas to avoid getting hit.
• In Transformers: Prime a large variety of characters use this:
  • Arcee and Smokescreen use this to dodge and attack, even in coordination with using their guns. The best example for Smokescreen is when we first see him and he does plenty of gymnastic moves to avoid getting hit by the Decepticon lasers.
  • Airachnid, being part spider, is consistently using the walls and ceiling around her to gain an advantage over her opponents, especially when they are larger than her.
  • Wheeljack uses this mainly in attacking
• TRON: Uprising: Beck fights a lot like Rinzler in TRON: Legacy (he seems to be wary of using his disc in tight quarters because of this).

Real Life

• Le Parkour's forerunners were the obstacle course training methods of the French Army during World War I and II. The modern practice of Le Parkour is basically a non-combative martial art, and some practitioners teach how to dodge attackers and avoid being caught by them while running obstacle courses.
• Capoeira naturally teaches practitioners to use acrobatics to avoid attacks.
• MMA champion and commentator Bas Rutten used to be bullied as a child, and he would run away from his bullies into the forest behind his house, climbing the trees and jumping between the branches to evade them.

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