Two or more characters battle or chase each other while jumping across locations (often other dimensions) or different times, trying to get rid of their opponents and also often fighting for the MacGuffin as well. This usually takes place in the final act.
This will often involve the characters using the features of the different settings to their advantage against one another other.
Must involve travel to more than one other location, otherwise it is just an ordinary use of teleportation in an action scene.
If the locations are from previous scenes or installments, the scene will act as a sort of Continuity Cavalcade. Subtrope of Weaponized Teleportation and an easy way to have multiple Fighting in All the Wrong Places settings. Often overlaps with Freefall Fight. Compare Multi-Stage Battle and Scooby-Dooby Doors. Not to be confused with Fighting Down Memory Lane or Space Battle.
Since this trope usually happens in the final act, spoilers will be unmarked.
Examples
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- The climactic fight in Dragon Ball Super: Broly has the fighters shifting dimensions from sheer power.
- In Naruto, the penultimate battle between Team 7 and Kaguya has them being transported through several dimensions using Sasuke and Kaguya's spacetime jutsu.
Comic Books
- In the Marvel and DC Universes, this tends to happen whenever cosmic beings clash with each other. Marvel examples include Molecule Man vs. the Beyonder, Odin vs. Forsung, Mad Jim Jaspers vs. The Fury, and Galactus vs. Mephisto. For DC, examples include Darkseid vs. Highfather, Superman vs. Dominus, Mxyzptlk vs. Bat-Mite, and Earth-1 Superman vs. Earth-2 Superman.
Fanfiction
- The final portion of Arc 7 for Conquest in the Name of Advancement! sees Commander Flame and Vivian trying jumping across universes to reach the Hub while Void throws everything she can to keep them from getting home. And as a sign of just how crazy this series can get, this is nowhere near the conclusion of the fanfic.
- The first part of the third arc's finale of Inky Future sees the fused Splatoon members chasing down Commander Tartar in Quint's body across various timelines including the Great Turf War, various points from the different Mega Man games, a brief stop at Splatoon 3 and later bouncing into Worlds Unite.
- Mischief (MHA): Izuku and Stange's duel inside the Mirror Dimension during chapter 62 jumps back and fourth across several locations from the Marvel Universe. They start at the Avengers facility, then to New York, Savage Land, The Raft, Atlantis, Joutunheim, the Sanctum Sanctorum, Latveria, a SHIELD Helicarrier and back to the Avengers base.
Film - Animation
- Monsters, Inc.: Toward the end, Mike and Sully are chased by Randall, who wants to take possession of the Cheerful Child, Boo. This takes place in the Portal Network door factory where every door leads to a different room on Earth, so they go through a number of different locations while trying to outrun Randall. It's also a Don't Look Down situation because the door factory production is very high up and the fall would be fatal. Randall eventually takes Boo from Mike and Sully but is bested when, while trying to Hand Stomp Sully off the door's edge, Boo sneak-attacks Randall from behind. Mike and Sully throw Randall into a door leading to a swamp house, where he is mistaken for an alligator and beaten with a shovel, and Mike and Sully shatter the door from the "outside." See the scene here
.
- Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension: To escape the Goozim and the 2nd-Dimension Doofenshmirtz's army of Norm Bots, Phineas uses the remote to teleport himself, Ferb, Candace, Perry, and 1st-Dimension Doofenshmirtz into another dimension. The Norm Bots who were able to follow them through the portal chase the group through a series of wacky alternate realities, and the scene is accompanied by an original song, "Brand New Reality".
- Teen Titans Go! vs. Teen Titans: The two teams of Titans steal the Worlogog (teleportation device) from Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus and use a vehicle made from the two Cyborgs to fly through a portal created by the Worlogog, but the Santas follow them through on their sled into the space between dimensions. The Santas chase the Titans through portals to various alternate Earths and we get to see several alternate dimensions and their versions of the Teen Titans. These versions are from other official DC media, past Teen Titans Go! episodes, and hypothetical alternate Earths theorized by Beast Boy and Cyborg earlier in the film.
Film - Live-Action
- Part of the final confrontation in Thor: The Dark World involves Thor and Malekith pummeling each other while teleporting between different realms (Earth, Svartalfheim, Jotunheim, and Vanaheim), with some cars teleporting along with them.
- Being John Malkovich: In the film's climax, Lotte decides that if she can't have Maxine, no one can. She follows Maxine into the portal to John Malkovich's mind and shoots at Maxine as the two tumble through Malkovich's subconscious, giving us a look at a number of traumatic moments from his life.
- Jumper: Towards the film's climax, Griffin plans to bomb David's apartment and kill Roland. David objects to this since his love interest Millie is in there. This results in a fight/chase sequence in which the two teleport to various locations across the world for possession of the detonator. It ends with David trapping Griffin with power lines in Chechnya.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (2020): In the climax where Sonic is being chased by Robotnik, Sonic uses his rings to teleport and run through multiple locations across the planet, starting from San Francisco and finally ending up back in Green Hills, Montana.
Literature
- Tends to be a staple of all the main novels of Beyond Reality, typically involving Sean and Sylvia traversing across the multiverse with their powers and fighting various enemies that want them dead.
- In The Bad Place, the final battle is basically Frank teleporting Candy all over alongside him (the heroes never actually see the other locations, only the result) until they are both Telefragged to death in a Body Horror scene.
- The Talisman: When he breaches the black hotel to find the Talisman, Jack Sawyer finds himself flipping through multiple alternate versions of it while fighting a knight in black armor. Later, in a confrontation with Sloat on the beach where Sloat is hiding in a snowstorm, Jack realizes his voice keeps fading in and out because Sloat is flipping back and forth from our world to the Territories, and is able to flip and catch him.
- Worm: During the battle between Eidolon and Scion, the former proves to be powerful enough to force the latter to flee to a parallel Earth. He proceeds to chase him through multiple (and increasingly inhospitable) universes, including one without air and one where Earth is covered in volcanoes. Eidolon's sheer determination ultimately forces Scion to come up with a new tactic: he reveals that Eidolon's need for worthy opponents was what brought the Endbringers to Eidolon's world. This news utterly breaks Eidolon, and he allows Scion to kill him.
Live-Action TV
- The Flash (2014): In "Dead or Alive", Cisco and Gypsy battle across a few different parallel worlds, traveling to Earth-2 from season 2, Earth-38 from Supergirl, and a volcanic setting on an unknown Earth.
- Defied in the Red Dwarf episode, "The Beginning". An angry, murderous android named Hogey shows up in the ship and challenges the crew to "a duel across time and space". They refuse on the grounds that they've done so many duels across time and space already—even if you only count the ones with Hogey specifically—that they're sick of them. Hogey responds that space is very boring, and he just wants something to do.
Video Games
- In BioShock Infinite, Booker and Elizabeth have to make their way through the floating city of Columbia through tears (rifts to alternate dimensions) that Elizabeth conjures. The game begins with Columbia being in relative peace, just with the authorities looking for Booker, a wanted felon, and Elizabeth, his kidnapping victim, as well as dealing with bandits in the form of the Vox Populi. Then they go into a tear with the Vox Populi fighting what looks like a losing war against the authorities, and the final tear they go into shows a reality where Columbia is going through a bloody race war, and Booker and Elizabeth have to dodge fire from both the authorities and the Vox Populi.
- Chrono Trigger: During the final battle with Lavos, the background sometimes shifts to a time period you visited, which indicates the attacks Lavos is going to use (physical for prehistory, magical for future, slow from Antiquity, half-HP from the Middle Ages, and random status effect from the present).
- The finale of the last story DLC for Dragon Age: Inquisition, Trespasser, sees the Inquisitor's party chase after the Arc Villain Viddasala by hopping through multiple Eluvians, which are effectively ancient Elven teleportation devices scattered throughout the remotest corners of the world.
- Injustice 2: The Flash's super move has him dragging his enemy through the past, first crashing them into an Egyptian sphinx, then a T. rex, then their past self from a moment prior.
- The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: The battle against Zant revisits several previously defeated boss arenas and plays a distorted version of the boss' theme. Each time, the same item used to defeat the previous boss (boomerang, Epic Flail, hookshot, etc.) is key to beating Zant.
- A number of boss battles in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart get momentarily interrupted by dimensional rifts opening beneath the combatants and taking them to another planet. During Dr. Nefarious' battle he intentionally opens them with the Dimensionator in order to spice things up.
- Sayonara Wild Hearts: The level "Parallel Universes" sees the Fool use the Strength to battle the Stereo Lovers twins while they keep teleporting her and themselves back and forth between two (three in the final stretch) similar but distinct universes. At the end of the level, the Fool learns to jump between universes herself, turning the tables on the twins.
- Super Paper Mario: When Mario and Luigi confront Dimentio in the innermost interiors of Castle Bleck, the wicked jester makes them go after him on a dimensional goose chase across every location the heroes have visited (including the destroyed Sammer's Kingdom) just to toy with them. After their chase ends back in Castle Bleck, Luigi becomes annoyed and furious at Dimentio because of his antics and offers to battle him alone, telling Mario to go on ahead without him and face Count Bleck.
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: In the last boss battle against Eredin, the king of the Wild Hunt, he throws Geralt into a different battlefield in another dimension: they start out on one of The Hunt's ships, then Eredin drags Geralt onto a snow-covered cliff through a portal, and then, after a sword duel, Eredin beckons Geralt to pass through another portal, which brings them back to the ship their fight started on for the last phase of the fight.
- This is the main premise of World Heroes series, where a scientist and time-traveler calls out famous Historical Domain Characters from different eras to fight against a big menace in different times, being reflected in their stages, when they can fight in diverse time periods, including Prehistory, Ice Age, the French Revolution and so on.
Web Animation
- DEATH BATTLE!: Doctor Strange VS Doctor Fate has the two sorcerers teleport to various dimensions as they clash against each other.
- In Red vs. Blue, the final episode of The Shisno Paradox has a fight between Donut and O'Malley, with the two using a Time Gun to repeatedly teleport each other through time throughout the fight; at one point, they're fighting on the roof and wings of a WWII bomber.
- Underverse: In episode 0.4, the final battle between Ink and XGaster, Nightmare and his gang, XChara, Error, and Sans and his allies, begins at Outertale, before Ink teleports them all to the Doodlesphere, and then they also take a brief detour to the Anti-Void. Eventually they ones who survive are left in a black space, which is unclear where it's supposed to be.
Web Comics
- The final duel between PM and Bec Noir in Homestuck is a sword fight that takes place as the two teleport throughout the universe, both of them having obtained rings that give them the powers of Physical Gods.
- Kill Six Billion Demons: After the Discordance of the Demiurges in Breaker of Infinities, Solomon David's final attempt at Jagganoth's life involves unsealing a Dangerous Forbidden Technique and physically punching Jagganoth through three universes, flying after him each time to keep him off his feet, before finally punching him into Throne and unsealing the Technique of Relief to blitz both of them into a prison outside the bounds of known Creation.
Western Animation
- Big Hero 6: The Series: In "Portal Enemy", Hiro is going after Sirque, a burglar using stolen technology to make portals. In the climax, he chases her as she uses her portals to go all over the city, including Fred's mansion while Heathcliff is cleaning.
- Miraculous Ladybug: In "Evolution", Monarch tries to use the powers of the Rabbit Miraculous to finally defeat Ladybug and Chat Noir. He is initially stopped by a future version of the time-travelling heroine Bunnyx, and while he manages to take her out of the fight relatively quickly, Ladybug and Chat Noir use Bunnyx' version of the Miraculous to chase him all the way across the past four seasons.
- Ninjago:
- As Lloyd and Morro fight for possession of the Realm Crystal in the season 5 finale, the two open more portals in an attempt to get rid of the other and they fall through the different realms seen in the series so far, as well as the setting of Legends of Chima, another LEGO show.
- In the mini-movie Golden Hour, Wu and the Time Twins are stationed on the Iron Doom, a large snake-like mech traveling through the time stream. Wu has been struck by energy from the Reversal Time Blade, which means that when he attacks one of the twins or is attacked, all three of them are transported somewhere else in time or back to the Iron Doom. This allows them to travel through various past moments from the TV series, with the twins wishing to interfere and alter the timeline before Wu stops them and they all teleport away again.
- Rick and Morty: In "Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind", Rick and Morty run from the Council of Ricks and manage to lose them after a chase through a number of different dimensions. Some of these dimensions form a running gag where humans, pizza, chairs, and phones keep switching roles with each other.
- Steven Universe: In "Steven and the Stevens", Steven and his various past selves become so fed up with each other that they try to erase each other from the timeline, which quickly escalates into them fighting each other while time hopping through the events of previous episodes and even the events of a future one.
- Time Warp Trio once foreshadowed that Joe is fated to meet Mad Jack in a battle across time, but whether there were plans to show it or not became moot when the show was cancelled.
- What If…? (2021): In "What If... Ultron Won?", Ultron and Uatu's fight spans across multiple worlds in the multiverse, to the point where each punch from Ultron takes them to a different world.
