Speed Demon

The dark side of the "gotta go fast" lifestyle.

"I live my life a quarter-mile at a time. Nothing else matters, not the mortgage, not the store, not my teammates and all their bullshit. For those ten seconds or less, I'm free."

— Dominic Toretto, The Fast and the Furious (2001)

A Speed Demon is a character defined by their preference for going fast. This can come in any of the three categories:

• A person who gets a thrill out of moving fast, whether they are running at high speeds or operating a very fast vehicle. They are likely to be a Challenge Seeker or Spirited Competitor who participates in races for the excitement that comes from going fast.

• A Jerk Jock or Smug Super who is extremely prideful of their speed/driving skills and mocks other characters for being Too Slow. They are likely to think of themselves as the Fastest Thing Alive and some might be fast enough to back up that claim.

• Someone who prefers to do even the most mundane of tasks at a quick pace (eating breakfast, doing homework, cleaning the house).

It's also very common for Speed Demons to have little care for traffic rules. They may be a Last-Second Showoff. In settings with superpowers, a Speed Demon is very likely to have Super-Speed and may even be The Speedster.

See also Ace Pilot, Badass Driver and Badass Biker. See also Personality Powers for other cases of speed-themed characters being portrayed as brash or cocky.

Note: If a character is an arrogant speedster or racer, their speed/driving skills must explicitly be the source of their arrogance. Simply being fast and arrogant with no connection does not count as this trope. Also, a character who simply charges into fights or dangerous situations does not qualify for this trope.

---

Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Digimon Adventure: (2020): Episode 45 features Machmon, a motorcycle Digimon who has built his entire identity around racing. Even after the race track he dominated was abandoned, he still continued racing as if he were still in competitions because he knew nothing else. The same episode also develops Gabumon's love of running which is what motivates him to challenge Machmon to a race.
• Dragon Ball:
  • Dragon Ball Z:
    • Burter of the Ginyu Force believes himself to be the fastest in the universe. Goku proving faster than him is a huge blow to Burter's ego.
    • 17 year old Gohan falls into this, after he finds that using the Flying Nimbus was too slow in getting to school each day, and after finding a way to hide his identity from his classmates decided to use his superior speed to fly to school himself.
    • Gotenks demonstrates this after his first successful fusion and challenges Piccolo to a race to showcase his power, proceeding to lap the Earth several times in the time it took Piccolo to descend to the ground.
  • Dragon Ball Super: Dyspo is exceptionally fast in a series filled with characters who possess Super-Speed. He even boasts about being the fastest being in the multiverse.
• Fairy Tail: The aptly named Racer of the Oracion Seis fits this trope to a T. He dresses in a racing suit, can summon motorcycles and wheels out of nothing and his magic mainly revolves around speed — or rather, other people's perception of his speed. Racer is extremely fond of speed to the point of mentioning the topic in casual conversation and his catchphrase is "Speed is Good!". His obsession with speed is revealed to be because as a slave he could never outrun his tormentors or their beasts on his own, hence his desire to be the fastest manifesting in his magic.
• Mars (1996): Rei is an exceptionally skilled speed bike racer who constantly pushes himself to go faster whenever he is on the track. In the final race of the story in which he and Kyoko have to switch off, he manages to not only catch up, but make a bid for the lead, despite starting well behind the pack. He and Kyoko are ultimately disqualified since Rei drove far longer than he should (Kyoko had injured herself earlier), but his impressive rally was noticed by a recruiter.
• Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt features the eponymously named Speed Demon, the second ghost in the series. He's so obsessed with going faster and faster that he still doesn't think he's going fast enough when he possesses a bullet train.
• s-CRY-ed: Straight Cougar whose alter Radical Good Speed lets him achieve dangerously fast speeds from any vehicle (even boots) — often at the detriment of the vehicle falling apart due to stress when he no longer exerts his powers. He also Drives Like Crazy and will insist on taking anything resembling a ramp even if it's out of the way of his path.
• Strike Witches: Shirley is a speed-loving thrill-seeker whose goal is to break the sound barrier. Before the war, she had broken multiple land speed records. Shirley joined the Witches just so that she could go even faster than she has gone before and even modified her Striker Unit so that it specifically increases her speed instead of her other physical attributes. Shirley also Drives Like Crazy whenever she has a chance to cut loose on the road.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds:
  • The show features Turbo Duels which are Duel Monsters card games played while riding motorcycles. While riding shotgun with Yusei during his Turbo Duel against Sherry, Akiza finds herself experiencing a new thrill that comes with this high-paced form of dueling and decides to start turbo dueling herself to chase this feeling. This would imply that the entire reason Turbo Duels exist is for duelists who are also Speed Demons.
  • The English dub's theme song is about being a Speed Demon.
    "Going fast makes me feel alive.
    My heart beats when in hyperdrive".
• Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: Jaden does this twice throughout Season 4. Not only that he is able to drive a boat without a license, but he can also drive a motorcycle after dueling Sartorius.

Comic Books

• The DCU:
  • Batman: The minor supervillain Roxy Rocket is a former stuntwoman who is addicted to going as fast as possible. Originally created for Batman: The Animated Series (see the entry in Western Animation), she was brought into comics years later. Roxy's crimes are all about speed, and she's a Badass Normal to boot — Batman has even acknowledged their similarities in the past, remarking that he too has a desire for constant motion.
  • The Flash:
    • The Flash family and other speedsters are known for living life at hyperspeed. They perform a day's worth of tasks in moments and sometimes tend to run ahead, leaving others behind in the dust. Among themselves, they can also talk at high speeds which sounds like gibberish to others.
    • Impulse, the grandson of Barry Allen, is characterized by his Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny! tendencies. He has no patience for anything, and cannot focus or sit still for the life of him, often resulting in him rushing into things with no regard for his own safety. Impulse is also known to do everything at super speed, including mundane tasks such as reading or buying donuts, and was originally introduced as aging at a speed that would have killed him if the Flash hadn't intervened.
• Marvel Universe:
  • While not strictly a speedster, the Human Torch is the fastest of the Fantastic Four. He loves flying fast through the air using his fiery powers and tends to leave others behind.
  • Ghost Rider is a literal speed demon, who rides around on a supernatural motorcycle capable of reaching faster than light speeds.
  • Quicksilver is one of the fastest in the Marvel Universe and he is very annoyed by everyone around him. He explains this once, saying that to him everyone else is moving very slowly, including their thought processes. Picture having to wait in a slow-moving line for hours for something mundane, that's what every single second is like for him.
  • Spider-Man foe Speed Demon is proud of how he's fast enough to overwhelm the likes of Spidey. However, the moment someone can come close to touching him, he high-tails it.
  • Tommy Shepherd a.k.a. Speed of the Young Avengers, who is a mouthy, immature Jerk with a Heart of Gold with Super-Speed. He wizens up a bit over the course of the series.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW): In Bad Guys issue #3, Rough is given a Power Core which grants him Super-Speed. He finds himself enjoying the feeling of moving at super-speed and understands why Sonic is always so cocky.

Fan Works

• Dragon Ball Z Abridged: Burter is a deconstruction. The reason he puts so much pride in his speed is because he thinks he has nothing else going for him. He reacts very poorly when Jeice points out that Guldo is technically faster than him due to his Time Master abilities.
• Harry and the Shipgirls has Shimakaze, as per KanColle canon, as well as Rapid Rabbit, the Anthropomorphic Personification of the SR-71 Blackbird of the same name, who immediately proceeded to buzz a pair of naval bases in her debut, even calling the second base to ask for a speed check.
• Junior Officers: Reese from "Blythe and the Risso's Dolphin" is an energetic dolphin who likes to jump and swim quickly, much to Blythe's dismay. He even says, "I love going fast!"
• Limpet AU: To Piett's despair and disgust, Vader and Luke are both like this, with Vader's lamentable tendency to treat every space-going vehicle like it's a TIE Fighter. He also chooses to cannibalize Piett's shuttle and rewire while he's away into something that he will supposedly find much better — which, in Vader's mind, means something that flies faster.
  Piett: I will find it much faster, you mean, sir.
  Vader: That is what I said.
• Rise of the Save-Ums: Jackson loves to drive the Zoomer super fast.

Films — Animated

• Angry Birds: Chuck is a speedster who is used to living life at high speeds, often blitzing away and completing several tasks while everyone else around him has even moved. He's also gotten several speeding tickets.
• Cars: Lightning McQueen is initially characterized this way: he is impulsive, cocky, and is even first heard repeating the mantra "Speed. I am speed". Much of his character arc is about him slowly turning into a more humble person from his experiences at Radiator Springs, and learning that winning and fame aren't everything.
• The Incredibles: Dash has Super-Speed which he often uses in the first film for childish pranks and feels stifled at not being allowed to use his powers. When his mom gives him permission to "go as fast he can", he is thrilled.
• Kung Fu Panda: In the Secrets of the Furious Five short, Po tells the story about how Mantis used to be cocky, impatient and brash because of his speed and agility. Getting captured by enemies and being forced to wait for the right time to escape taught him a very important lesson in patience and humility.
• Titan A.E.:
  • Korso is able to deduce that Akida is piloting a ship they picked up on radar when Stith describes it as "recklessly fast".
  • Cale also displays this trait when Korso lets him fly his ship for fun.
• Treasure Planet: Jim has a love of high-speed solar surfing, which gets him into trouble with the cops earlier in the movie. A later scene shows him having fun while chasing a star while flying fast.
• Turbo: The titular character is a garden snail who loves racing. His obsession with speed makes him something of an outcast among other snails who prefer to live life at a slower pace.
• Zootopia: The closing scene has Officers Hopps and Wilde pull over a maniac clocking at 115 through the downtown streets. The perp is revealed to be Flash the sloth from the DMV, complete with a custom plate "FST NML".

Films — Live-Action

• The Fast and the Furious:
  • Dominic Toretto is a street racer and recognized as the best of Los Angeles' street racing scene. Later, while having a heart-to-heart with Brian, he admits that racing is the only thing that allows him to forget his troubles for a while.
  • Brian O'Connor also qualifies which is what allows him and Dom to bond as friends and rivals. 2 Fast 2 Furious shows him joining the Miami street racing scene and he still tries to one up Dom in Fast & Furious and Fast Five. Furious 7 shows Brian misses the action of street racing and is even worried he might get to used to driving cars at an acceptable speed limit.
• Fat Man and Little Boy: A blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment has a group of scientists tinkering with a convertible; it's Oppenheimer's wife who feels the need for speed.
  Male Scientist: Robert, must we go so fast?
  Kitty Oppenheimer: Yes! YES!
• Firebird 2015 A.D.: After the United States Government outlawed the automobile, a new breed of resistance rose: the "Burners", people who drive cars indiscriminately in defiance to the law. And they love to drive fast.
• The Island (2005): Tom Lincoln, the progenitor of Lincoln Six-Echo, describes himself as such, which is why he got into the business of designing cars and motorbikes. Lincoln himself is implied to have inherited this trait from Tom given his reaction to seeing a motorbike in motion for the first time.
  Jordan: What was that?
  Lincoln: I don't know. But I want one.
• The Italian Job (2003): Stella loves driving her red Mini-Cooper very fast.
• Men in Black II: One scene has an alien in a post office sorting out the mail very quickly while "Speed Demon" by Keel plays in the background.
• Speed Racer: Speed has had a love of racing and as a kid often daydreamed about being a racer just like his brother Rex. Speed even goes as far as saying that racing is a religion in his family.
• Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby: Ricky-Bobby loves going fast. Usually this wasn't an issue for his racing career until he ended up crashing a car due to driving too fast when he didn't need to. The rest of the movie is about him regaining his love for racing.
• Top Gun: Maverick is an aerial daredevil with a knack for ego-stroking stunts and an intolerance for orders. He even states he has a "need for speed". In the following film he accidentally wrecks an experimental recon plane (which already was going Mach 10 and officially made him the fastest man on the planet) by trying to push it past that (the plane made Mach 10.2 before it fell apart). His ground control Hondo even reminded him to stick to Mach 10, to not even think of going past Mach 10, and he did a quiet "dammit, Maverick" when he saw the telemetry suddenly register Mach 10.1.
• Torque: Cary Ford is basically Dominic Toretto with a preference for bikes over cars due to the former being smaller and easier to maneuver.
• X-Men Film Series: Quicksilver is used to living life accelerated and can never stay in one place. He's used to going so fast that Time Stands Still and goes ahead completing a long list of tasks while everyone is frozen, usually Played for Laughs. Such instances include him beating up a room full of guards and redirecting bullets midflight, along with rescuing all the students and staff from X-Mansion in the seconds before an explosion consumed it.

Folklore

• The Tortoise and the Hare: The hare is so cocksure that his speed guarantees his triumph that he takes a nap while the race is still going on. His overconfidence allows the tortoise to win.

Literature

• And Then There Were None: Anthony Marsten loves to drive fast and doesn't give a crap about what gets in his way, which is why he's on the killer's list.
• Chrysalis (RinoZ): Vibrant is thoroughly addicted to speed. Every part of her ant body is customised for going fast, from the Advanced Dash skill, to her Accelerated Legs, to her multiple glands for releasing bursts of energy, to Required Secondary Powers like sensitive antennae for high-speed navigation. She's a major target for the torpor enforcers, since she can't stand to sleep more than 30 minutes every few days, but they have a tremendously difficult time catching her.
• Gone: Brianna has Super-Speed and is very proud and smug about it, enjoying her ability to play the superhero and defeat others in fights with her speed.
• Lord Peter Wimsey: Wimsey has a habit of driving fast, something that is an occasional joke in the stories. In Gaudy Night, he tells Harriet Vane how "three counties and as many driving summonses later" he got important information for their case. His nephew Gerald ("Pickled Gherkins") takes after his uncle, having even learned to fly a plane in the interwar years. Sayers wrote a series of letters between the various Wimsey family members which indicate young Gerald joined the RAF when World War II started. Jill Paton Walsh, who continued the adventures of Wimsey and his kin, also mentions young Gerald's propensity to drive fast, and he is noted to have died in the service during the war.
• Mr. Men:
  • Mr. Rush is always in such a rush that he never does anything properly. He runs down the stairs taking them three at a time, has a slapdash breakfast (untoasted bread and water), and only brushes one tooth.
  • Similarly, Little Miss Quick is always in such a hurry that she doesn't even have the time to properly tie the ribbon into her hair.
• In Running from the Deity by Alan Dean Foster, the aliens humans call Lopers spend most of their waking hours running across the "world-girdling plains" that form most of the planet Dakokraine's surface. To the Lopers, running is "not merely a means of locomotion"; running is "their reason for being, their religion, and their gestalt", and to not run is to not be truly alive.
• Survivor Dogs: Lightning is the fastest of all dogs. He loves racing and is so cocky that he routinely teases the Earth-Dog about his ability to outrun her.
• Sword Art Online: Leafa is dubbed a "Speedaholic" because of her obsession with flying at high speeds in Alfheim Online, as well as being the fastest flyer for a long period of time.
• Warrior Cats: The cats of WindClan pride themselves on being the fastest cats in the forest and occasionally mock the other Clans for being slow.
• The Wind in the Willows: Mister Toad develops a passion for driving motor cars after one nearly runs him and his friends over. This gets deconstructed throughout the story as Toad's frequent car accidents and rows with the police not only cost him money and damage his reputation but also gets the other animals a bad name. Toad's Speed Demon tendencies ultimately land him in jail when he steals a motor car. Even when he escapes from prison and happens upon a couple driving the very same car he stole, he can't resist the urge to drive it again.

Live-Action TV

• The Flash (2014):
  • Barry likes using his speed to perform mundane everyday tasks in a flash and becomes very impatient when made to sit idle as others complete things at normal speed. Losing his speed becomes disheartening to him as he is so used to doing things at a fast pace.
  • Wally West was this even before he became a speedster, being obsessed with high-speed cars and partaking in street racing.
• Power Rangers:
  • Power Rangers Lost Galaxy: "Mean Wheels Mantis" has Motor Mantis who is obsessed with speed to the point of his dialogue is filled with numerous references to racing. Believing he has "the fastest wheels in the galaxy", Motor Mantis turns the female Rangers into trophies and then challenges the male Rangers to a race for their freedom.
  • Power Rangers Time Force:
    • Lucas the Blue Ranger loves three things above all else: his looks, beautiful women and fast cars. He was a race car driver in the year 3000 and still has a need for speed.
    • The Monster of the Week in "The Last Race" is Dash, a Friendly Rival of Lucas who was a dark take on this trope, being obsessed with racing to the point of total recklessness and disregard for people's lives. Lucas is able to show him the error of his ways and promises to race him again some time in the future.
  • Power Rangers Operation Overdrive: Ronny Robinson the Yellow Ranger. Not only does she have Super-Speed but she is a professional race-car driver and loves going fast. She is the main pilot of the SHARC (Special Hydro Aero Recon Craft) and is the most excited when it comes to driving any new vehicle the Rangers are given. Ironically, Ronny's zord is a bulldozer, which isn't a very fast vehicle and the Black Ranger Will pilots a zord based on a car which is called "the Speed Driver".
• Smallville: The episode "Velocity" has Pete getting involved in street racing, largely because he feels it is the only thing he is truly good at.

Music

• Jim Croce has two Speed Demon-themed songs: "Rapid Roy (That Stock-Car Boy)", which is about a stock car racer who made a name for himself outrunning police to smuggle alcohol into dry counties, and "Speedball Tucker", about a long-haul trucker who drives too fast.
  Well, he looked me in the eye as he was writin' me up and said, "Driver, you've been flyin'
  And ninety-five was the route you were on, it was not the speed limit sign."
• The Jet Black Stare song "Ready to Roll" (which some might recognize as Film Brain's original theme song) invokes this trope:
  Fast lane through a hurricane
  Open road and I'm ready to roll
  Put the pedal down right away
  Redline and I'm givin' it more
  City lights are burning bright behind me
  Top down, I push it to the floor
  Whoa, whoa
  Street signs and the center lines spinning
  Whoa, whoa
  Burning hot, I feel like I'm ready to roll
• Rush's "Red Barchetta" is a song about driving fast in a dystopian future.
  Drive like the wind
  Straining the limits of machine and man...
• The Michael Jackson song "Speed Demon" refers to this trope, both in the title and the lyrics.
  Speedin' on the freeway gotta get a lead way
  (Speed demon)
  Doin' it on the highway gotta have it my way
  (Speed demon)
  Mind is like a compass, I'm stoppin' at nothin'
  (Speed demon)
  He say, "pull over boy and get your ticket right"
• Heavy metal band Keel has a song dubbed "Speed Demon" that likewise addresses the trope archetype, most famously used in Men in Black II.
  As I hit one hundred
  I find out just how good
  The road can feel
  It's all I need
  To get to where I'm going fast
  Speed demon!
  I can hear the highway scream
  Speed demon
  Can you feel the thrill of my machine?

Multiple Media

• My Little Pony:
  • Firefly from G1 is a pegasus who desires to be the fastest of all ponies.
  • My Little Pony 'n Friends: Whizzer is the fastest of the pegasi, does everything at a rapid page, and dislikes things happening slowly.
  • For most of My Little Pony (G3), Rainbow Dash was characterized in the toys and comics by her love of racing, especially on rainbows.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Rainbow Dash is one of the fastest fliers in the world (if not the fastest), so much so that speed is what got her her cutie mark. She isn't modest about this in the slightest.
    Rainbow Dash: There's no need to go struttin' around and showin' off like that.
    Trixie: Oh?
    Rainbow Dash: That's my job!
• Transformers:
  • Transformers: Generation 1: Blurr is the fastest Autobot on Cybertron, and likes to remind people of it.
  • Beast Wars: Cheetor chose a cheetah as his alt mode partly because it was the fastest animal the scanners detected.
  • Transformers: Robots in Disguise: When the Autobot Skid-Z arrived on Earth, he scanned a race car belonging to deceased driver Auggie Cahnay. It was believed that the car had absorbed Cahnay's personality and when Skid-Z scanned it for his Earth vehicle mode, he developed an obsession with participating in any race he saw.
  • Transformers: Cybertron: Velocitron is an entire planet of speed freaks with a culture centered around racing. Hot Shot also becomes this trope during the series, and it is on Velocitron where he unlocks his cyber key power.
  • Transformers: Animated:
    • This show's incarnation of Bumblebee takes inspiration from Cheetor and Hot Shot in being a speed freak to the extent of secretly competing in illegal street racing.
    • Blurr does everything at an extremely fast pace and expects others to keep up.

Tabletop Games

• Call of Cthulhu: Rupert Putney, the main NPC in the adventure "Furious Driving" from the supplement Fearful Passages, drives like a maniac at incredibly high speeds (for the 1920's, anyway).
• Champions: One of the NPC villains in the adventure The Great Super Villain Contest is a speedster called The Dash. He became a villain for fun, not to gain money or power. His greatest joy in life is sneaking up on a hero and smashing into him at full speed from behind.
• Dungeons & Dragons: Quicklings are a type of fey that race though time at an accelerated speed and are ruled by a constant need to move and run. To other beings, a racing quickling appears as nothing more than sudden blur and a linger echo of mocking laughter as the creature zips by; even their speech is accelerated into a rapid, shrill squeal. They only become perceptible when they deliberately slow themselves down to the same time rate as other beings, something they prefer to do as little as they can manage.
• In Nomine: Ofanim are angels of motion. They are stereotypically known for driving like maniacs and being constantly in motion.
• Paranoia: Fiber-O, the NPC who takes the PCs to their first assignment in the adventure "Vapors Don't Shoot Back'', drives his autocar at dangerous levels to his passengers.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • The Orks love driving battle vehicles as fast as possible and with reckless abandon, especially those in the Evil Sunz klan. The Orks in Da Kult of Speed, in particular, have become addicted to the thrill that comes with speed. Regardless of whether they're in a calm environment or the middle of a warzone, they push their vehicles to frightening speeds, performing stunts and maneuvers that leave even other Orks thinking they're insane.
  • The Tzeentchian daemon known as the Changeling once infiltrated an ork Waaagh! and started making up a story about their gods competing to see who was the fastest. Driven to recreate this feat, the orks piled into their vehicles and wound up driving off a cliff, thanks to the Changeling's misdirection.

Video Games

• Card City Nights 2: The Fast One, a hologram of a whale on wheels, is obsessed with speeding, taking pride in being the fastest programmed, and is ironically focused on speed, as an immovable hologram.
• Grim Fandango: Glottis is a mechanic who works on cars, but you quickly learn he likes driving them especially when they move fast. Basically, a speed demon Stealth Pun.
• Kantai Collection: Shimakaze fancies herself as the fastest ship girl in the fleet and as such is pretty hyper and cocky.
• Pokémon Diamond and Pearl: Barry, the player character's rival, has a hasty and impatient personality. He's always in a hurry, never walking but running to anywhere he needs to go. Everything has to be done fast or he'll threaten to give a fine for being late. He dreams of becoming a Pokémon League Champion, especially if it can be done in the shortest time possible.
• Smite: Mercury frequently boasts about his speed.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • The titular character is a young hedgehog with Super-Speed and an attitude to match. Dubbed "The Fastest Thing Alive", Sonic is as carefree as the wind and prefers being in constant motion rather than sit still and stay in one place. His advice to Elise in Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) is "If you have time to worry, then run". Sonic is rather boastful of his speed but is nonetheless a heroic character to his core.
  • Sonic Riders: The game introduces the Babylon Rogues, a trio of thieving birds led by Jet the Hawk. Jet is a master of Extreme Gear and is egotistical and arrogant about his skills in a much more mean-spirited way than Sonic. He believes that it is he, not Sonic, who is the Fastest Thing Alive and frequently challenges the blue hedgehog to prove it.
  • The lyrics to "Free", the theme song of Sonic Free Riders, reference the joy of racing:
    I'm falling free in the wind, in the wind
    Free to be me in the wind, in the wind
    What would it feel like to be speed of light
    And rule the night and day
    Watch as it passes by, the masses try you
    But they just can't keep up
    Into the free, into the me
    Into the ever knowin'
    Felt so refrained,
    Felt so constrained
    But now I'm breaking out and
    I'm falling free in the wind, in the wind,
    Free to be me in the wind, in the wind
• Suikoden: Stallion is an elf who often boasts of his Super-Speed and is one of the fastest characters that can be recruited in the games he appears in.
• Transistor: Preston Moyle "shattered speed records with aplomb for four years straight", and a personal quote is:
  I want to go fast and go far.
• Twisted Metal: Amanda Watts aka Twister, is obsessed with going as fast as possible. She wishes her car to be as fast as light itself, which ends up moving her so quickly that she travels back in time. Unfortunately for her, she neglects the fact that her car runs on fuel and can run out. She soon finds herself trapped in prehistory, upon which she's unceremoniously offed by a dinosaur. Her fossilized remains are later found by scientists millions of years later, who are baffled by the modern equipment left nearby.

Visual Novels

• Fate/hollow ataraxia: Rider loves going fast to a degree bordering on addiction. Unfortunately, The Masquerade and her restricted mana pool post-War means that she can't summon her beloved Pegasus anymore. She goes as far as seducing someone just to get access to his sports bike.

Web Animation

• If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device: The series makes fun of the White Scars' obsession with going fast, which they inherited from their Primarch, Jaghatai Khan. The Emperor admits that he thought Jaghatai went missing to become "One with the Speed Force", and is proud to hear that he managed to stand still for more than twenty seconds — albeit on top of a Razorback going over 200 mph.
• Something About: Mario is incapable of going through a level or world without wanting to Speedrun it, often using Dungeon Bypass as a favoured tactic. His speed-running obsession and reality-breaking powers are the result of him getting possessed by a literal Speed Demon.

Webcomics

• Awful Hospital: The Broken Skull "wants to go fast"... which, for it, is somewhat slower than a snail's pace. Being carried by a sprinting human is almost a religious experience.
• One-Punch Man: Speed-o'-Sound Sonic has great pride in his superhuman speed and assassin skills, which are indeed miles above the average human. Unfortunately for him, Saitama is more than capable of keeping up with him.

Web Originals

• SCP Foundation: SCP-3836 is an animate gorilla corpse with extraordinary mechanical skills, which it uses to modify vehicles so that they reach absurd speeds. Its intended goal, according to interviews, is to "Go fast".

Western Animation

• Archer: Sterling Archer is a cocky, impatient Jerkass who will often interrupt people and finish their sentences. Archer has been seen driving recklessly fast, damaging the car. It's mentioned after that that Archer did something similar to his first car. Archer also over-revved the engine on a rented airboat, burning out the cylinder heads, and stranding himself and Lana in the Louisiana bayou.
• The Batman: Gearhead is a Cyborg with the ability to control cars using Nanomachines and a love of racing.
• Batman: The Animated Series: The episode "The Ultimate Thrill" gives us Roxy Rocket, who mixes this trope with Thrill Seeker. She began life as a stuntwoman, but her constant desire to go faster and do increasingly dangerous tricks got her fired, as no one was willing to insure her movies. She thus turns to speed-based crimes to fuel her addiction to the rush of acceleration. Roxy later became a Canon Immigrant to the comics, where she continued her speedy lifestyle.
• Ben 10:
  • XLR8 isn't just fast, but obsessed with doing everything at high speeds. Ben uses him whenever he needs to complete a task very quickly. This seems to apply to Kinecelereans in general, which is to be expected given that they are a whole species of speedster aliens. On their planet, days are compressed into minutes, and lifetimes are spread over weeks.
  • Kevin Levin has shades of this from Ben 10: Alien Force onwards, as he is obsessed with his Cool Car which he modifies with alien tech to make it one of the fastest cars on the planet. "The Transmogrification of Eunice" opens with him and Ben racing.
• Disney Fairies: Vidia is a fast-flying fairy, a fact she is very proud of.
• Kick Buttowski: Suburban Daredevil: The main character is an amateur daredevil who is always on the lookout for ways to go faster.
• The Life and Times of Juniper Lee: There is a race of creatures called Speed Demons who can move at superfast speeds. They are normally harmless but are dangerous when they freak out.
• The Lion Guard: Fuli is very prideful of her exceptional speed (which far exceeds the capabilities of real cheetahs, by the way), and can get impatient when things go too slowly for her liking. She even has a song about it.
• Looney Tunes:
  • Speedy Gonzales often boasts about his speed but is otherwise a good-natured guy.
  • Loonatics Unleashed: Rev Runner is the team speedster and is nicknamed "The Speed Demon of Acmetropolis". Before gaining his powers, Rev was a delivery boy whose slow deliveries often cost him his pay. The episode "The Comet Cometh" briefly explores how much more confident Rev's super-speed has made him feel as a person.
  • The Looney Tunes Show: This gets used against Speedy in "Daffy Duck, Esquire" in which Yosemite Sam sues Speedy for serving pizza that was too hot. Daffy, acting as Sam's legal counsel, argues that if not for Speedy's habit of doing things in a rush, he could have given the pizza some time to cool down before serving it to Sam. Speedy simply gets the case dismissed by revealing that Daffy isn't a real lawyer.
• Mummies Alive!: Nefer-Tina is the biker among the heroes and has a real need for speed. She was a chariot racing champion as a human and retains her love for racing in the present day. She is the most enthusiastic when driving the team's Thememobiles.
• Samurai Jack: "Jack's Sandals" has Jack's sandals destroyed by a trio of bikers whose love of reckless driving leaves no small amount of destruction in their wake.
• The Save-Ums!: Whenever Custard pilots the Zoomer, he always drive it very quickly, something that Jazzi often makes note of.
  Jazzi: You drive too fast, Custard!
• Steven Universe: Kevin loves racing his fancy sports car and gloats when he wins. He is so egocentric that he falls apart when Steven and Connie stop caring about losing a race to him since he can't comprehend them not caring what he thinks of them.
• Superman: The Animated Series: In the appropriately titled episode "Speed Demons", Superman and the Flash compete in a race to see which of them is the fastest man alive. The race gets derailed when the Weather Wizard starts wreaking havoc by starting storms throughout the world.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): The Monster of the Week in "Race with the Demon" is a mutant car who is named Speed Demon. He is obsessed with speed, constantly Drives Like Crazy, and likes to ram into other drivers. It came into being after the original driver rode through a pool of mutagen, mutating the car itself into a speed-obsessed mutant that turns anyone who drives it into a violent, speed-obsessed monster.
• X-Men: Evolution: Quicksilver is very cocky because of his speed.
• Young Justice (2010): While Kid Flash is the first speedster of the main cast, his successor Impulse fits the trope better. Impulse is not only fast but as his name suggests has a case of hyperactive impulsiveness, finding it difficult to wait around for his slower friends to catch up.

Real Life

• Eric Liddel, as quoted in Chariots of Fire:
  I believe God made me for a purpose, but He also made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure.
• hide was both this and a "speed freak", from running around on stage like he did to singing rapid-fire breakdowns to Scat Singing in songs that are nearly impossible to replicate (try "Dice" or "Doubt" as a couple of examples), and was rumored to be a methamphetamine addict.
• Speed Runners dedicate months, if not years, of their lives to finding ways to complete specific video games as quickly as possible.

---