Stealth Hi Bye / Live-Action Films

Startling appearances and disappearances in live-action movies.

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• Alien. While Ripley is inside the computer room talking to Mother, Ash suddenly appears behind her inside the room with no explanation. Note that the door makes a standard "whooshing'' sound, so he couldn't have gotten in that way.
• Flint does it twice in Assassination Games, albeit both times where the person he's escaping front is convinced they're still being held at gunpoint, and are babbling for their lives.
• The Avengers (1998). Sir August starts a fight with Steed in a hedge maze. After he knocks Steed's umbrella up in the air, he disappears while Steed is looking up at the umbrella.
• Baby proves surprisingly adept at this in Baby Driver; disappearing while people's heads are turned outside the nursing home, outside the diner, and in the parking garage.
• The Bourne Series: Jason Bourne is so good at it, he does it subconsciously. The Professor, from the first film, also uses it when he comes to Nikki to pick up the assignment to kill Bourne.
• Kronos of Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter has this ability.
• In Congo, a pair of Mizumu appear at the edge of the camp, and Munro tells Peter not to look at them, as they believe their magic keeps them from being seen before revealing themselves. He goes on to say that there are probably twenty more hiding around the camp, truly out of sight.
• Cool Runnings: Derice and Sanka hold a meeting for potential recruits for their bobsled team. The lights go down so that Irv can show a video on the sport, which happens to focus on the potential for serious injury/death; when the lights come back on, everyone has left.
• Mick and all of his Aboriginal friends can do this in the "Crocodile" Dundee films, but only while they're in the bush. It's used most extensively in the second movie.
• In The Crow (1994), Eric Draven does this in almost every scene he has with Officer Albrecht. Eventually, they both tire of it:
  Albrecht: Are you gonna disappear into thin air again?
  Eric: ... I thought I'd use your front door.
• The Dark Knight Trilogy as you'd expect from Batman.
  • In Batman Begins, Batman's initial attempt to pull his signature vanishing act on Gordon is an Epic Fail, with the detective chasing him onto the roof where Batman injures himself leaping onto a nearby fire escape and nearly falling to his death. After this he has Lucius Fox develop his Batsuit so he can glide away with a bit more dignity.
  • By The Dark Knight, Gordon has become used to it; when Batman disappears in the middle of a rooftop conference with Harvey Dent, Gordon says only, "He does that."
  • In The Dark Knight Rises, Catwoman pulls the same trick on Batman, causing him to muse, "So that's what that feels like."
• DC Extended Universe:
  • In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Batsy pulls this on Lex Luthor in prison near the end. The guards tell Luthor the warden wants to see him... then the lights start flickering, and they're suddenly gone while Batman is feet from him. Batman then leaves just as stealthily, despite the only visible exit being a long corridor.
  • Justice League pushes this even further, as poor Gordon gets this treatment from the entire team... except Flash.
    Flash: Oh, wow, they just — they really just vanished! Huh? Oh... that's rude. (speeds off)
• D.E.B.S.. Lucy Diamond does it twice: first when she takes off after meeting Amy for the first time, and again when she appears in Amy's bedroom.
• Most slasher movie characters are fond of stealthily saying both Hi and Bye in their special way. Jason Voorhees seemed pretty good at this in the Friday the 13th series, and by the eight film it eventually evolved into the Offscreen Teleportation we know and love.
• In Girl House, Loverboy suddenly appears in front of (or behind) his victims totally silently multiple times.
• Godzilla of all things pulls this off in Godzilla (2014), usually when underwater, though occasionally he uses smoke and debris clouds.
• The Golden Child. While Chandler Jarrell is confronting an old beggar/medallion-seller, the man kicks him in the leg and throws some money in the air. Chandler looks up at the money, and when he looks down again the old man has vanished.
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. What characters "see" is often dictated by the edges of the frame rather than anything realistic: for instance, at one point Tuco sneaks up on Blondie in an entirely flat landscape, getting close enough to hold a gun to his head before he notices.
• Michael Myers of Halloween (1978) is horror's reigning king of this. At one point in that film he manages to pull this with a car. He and the car straight-up disappear without any engine noises being heard between Laurie looking up once and again less than 30 seconds later. In another scene, he vanishes even as Laurie is still staring at him, the implication being that she's seeing things and starting to lose it.
• Hermione pulls the "Hi" part in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban due to the fact that she's using a Time-Turner to get to her other classes. Ron lampshades by asking "How did you come in? Did you see her come in?" Near the end of the film, both she and Harry walk back into the hospital wing, causing Ron to nearly have a meltdown.
• A variation in Interview with the Vampire, when Louis turns on the light and sits down next to the interviewer in an instant, without the interviewer seeing any movement.
• James Bond:
  • In On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Bond, Tracy, and Draco are at a party. When Tracy abruptly leaves in a huff, Draco takes his eyes off Bond to make a comment to someone next to him but, as he tries to resume the conversation, he discovers that Bond left to follow Tracy.
    Draco: She always was a headstrong child. I'm sorry, uh... Where's he gone?
  • Bond does one of these to a Russian soldier in the iconic opening sequence of GoldenEye, complete with Bond One-Liner. This is the first time in the movie the audience sees Bond's face, as played by newcomer Pierce Brosnan.
  • And again in Casino Royale (2006), introducing Daniel Craig, Bond is sent to kill corrupt section head Dryden in his office. When Dryden walks in, Bond is already there sitting in a chair in the shadows.
  Bond: M really doesn't mind you earning a little money on the side, Dryden. She'd just prefer if it wasn't selling secrets.
  • Unlike other examples, however, Dryden is unimpressed.
  Dryden: If the theatrics are supposed to scare me, you have the wrong man, Bond.
  • Spectre: M does this after the SPECTRE mooks ram his and Bond's car and abduct Bond. An especially good one considering that there's absolutely no way he could have escaped undetected (their backs are turned to him very briefly, and he travels much too far a distance). The sheer impossibility of this is pointed out in CinemaSins takedown of the film. Then, in an Homage to Casino Royale, M pulls this on the nefarious C, lurking in his office just like Bond did to Dryden.
• Johnny Mnemonic: J-Bone vanishes while Johnny has his back turned, observing Heaven, along with the dead body of a Lo-Tek Redshirt, which J-Bone (presumably?) must have carried with him.
• In John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, Zero and his lackeys frequently demonstrate the ability to do this to John, who in turn shows that he's just as, if not more, capable of pulling this off.
• Jonah Hex (2010): Jonah pulls this on the Union officers. He suggests they try talking to the body themselves. They do so and when they turn around, Jonah (and his horse) have vanished.
• The Hospitaller does this to Balian in Kingdom of Heaven. According to Ridley Scott, this is one of several intentional hints that the Hospitaller is not human.
• The dark-robed, whispering, creepy-looking, angelic, alien-like men in Knowing do this.
• The Landlord and Landlady do an excellent version of this in the film Kung Fu Hustle.
• In Lizzie Borden's Revenge, Vanessa has a habit of appearing silently behind characters, and later vanishing when their backs are turned.
• In The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Gandalf uses this several times in Bag-End, startling Bilbo Baggins. True to the book, "He comes and goes as he pleases."
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Captain America: The Winter Soldier has the titular character pull one on Cap, who has been chasing him. They're on top of a roof. The Soldier steps off it. Cap runs to the edge and there's no sign of his quarry, despite there being nowhere he could possibly have gone to get out of sight.
  • The Soldier pulls a Stealth Hi on his boss, Alexander Pierce when he shows up in his living room, waiting to be briefed on his next mission.
  • Continues into Civil War, where he appears out of thin air behind Cap, who's just found the apartment he's been using as a hideout. Exaggerated when we learn that this area is also surrounded by UN forces trying to arrest him.
  • Justified in Captain Marvel, where Faster-Than-Light Travel is one of the titular heroine's many powers. In The Stinger, she appears out of nowhere at the Avengers headquarters, spooking Captain America, Black Widow, Bruce Banner, and War Machine.
• Done in the 90s version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Puck, when summoned by Oberon, always appears just off-screen or otherwise hidden. His teleportations are accompanied by tinkling chimes and Oberon's awareness. Of course, none of this comes as a surprise to anyone, what with faeries and all.
• In The Mountie, Grayling shows himself to be very adept at this. At one point, he vanishes during the middle of a firefight.
• Emelio, the butler of the Mr. Deeds remake, is another master of this. In addition to his ability to be standing in front of an elevator's doors both as they close, and as they open on another floor, he can also instantly move from a stage balcony to the podium to deliver a badass line. One should not underestimate the sneakiness.
• At the end of The Mummy (1999), a bandaged hand grabs Jonathan and he freaks out, thinking it's a mummy, but instead, Ardeth has managed to sneak up on them. On a camel.
• This trope is used by the titular nanny in Nanny McPhee, mostly on poor old Mr. Brown, pretty much daily. Apparently, however, it's a genetic thing to the Brown family, as Simon, the oldest son, walks into Nanny McPhee's empty bedroom, walks by a barren alcove, turns to find her staff resting against a wall, and bangs it, attempting to use the powers Nanny McPhee has been using the entire movie. The moment we hear the staff hit the floor, Nanny McPhee calls out, the camera spins, and Nanny McPhee is seated in a plush chair, with a cup of tea and a book in the empty alcove, with some décor around her. Actually justified in that she's a borderline Reality Warper.
• Nemesis Game: After she is attacked by Dennis, Jeff is planning to take her home. However, he turns his head for a few seconds to speak to his partner Tom and when he turns back, Sara has vanished.
• In Now You See Me, Dylan somehow manages to soundlessly bypass a set of prison bars. However, we don't see how he did it because the view is blocked by another character.
• In Pandorum, Gallo does this to Peyton several times. Justified, as Gallo is a halluncination of "Peyton"'s younger self.
• There's a nice example in the Mel Gibson film The Patriot (2000). Eldest son, Gabriel, is watching a disastrous Continental Army defeat from the upper window of an abandoned house when suddenly there's his badass French and Indian War veteran Dad standing calmly beside him leaning on his long rifle. On the other hand, he's mostly focused on watching the battle, which is fairly loud as well as visually distracting.
• Played repeatedly and for all it's worth by the film adaptation of Dean Koontz's Phantoms, once involving an entire town's population appearing in the street. Probably rates as an invoked example, given that the Ancient Enemy probably learned how to scare the crap out of humans from its victims' memories of horror movies!
• Captain Jack's own father pulls this on him in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides at the end of their meeting.
• Prom Wars: Francis is very stealthy during the paintball contest and is able to appear behind Lancaster students when they'd just been chasing him in the opposite direction.
• In Queen of the Damned, Marius pulls this on David Talbot after taunting him with the usual person-pass-in-front-for-a-second trick. Could be justified with Marius being a vampire and thus a Super Speedster, except that all vampires can usually be still seen as a fast-moving shape. Then again, this could be a tribute to him being so old (he's Roman). Mael also pulls this on Jesse.
• An entire tribe of Australian Aborigines pulls this off in Quigley Down Under. Quigley is suitably impressed.
• Rags: When Shawn and Charlie first meet, Shawn tells Charlie he better become as famous as Kadee, whose image is on a bus behind Charlie. By the time Charlie looks back at Shawn, he's disappeared without a trace.
• Red Hill: Jimmy is a master at this, appearing behind his targets absolutely silently and multiple points in the movie.
• In Rovdyr, the hunters are experts are suddenly appearing silently behind the protagonists.
• Subverted and parodied in the first Scary Movie. Cindy sees the killer through the window, looks away for a moment, and sees that the killer is gone when she looks back. The audience, however, sees the killer quickly but awkwardly hide behind a tree the moment Cindy looks away.
• In Serenity, River pulls this off at the beginning of the movie; Simon tries to wake her up, steps way from her to look out a door, turns around, and River is there in his face, without warning. Making this really impressive is that Simon only looks away from River for an instant, during which time she apparently wakes up, climbs out of the chair she's in, and runs all the way across the room. It's apparently genetic; Simon pulls one of these on Mal a few minutes later in the film, jumping him as he comes out of the engine room.
• Sleepers: Carol and Michael's behind-the-back conversation on the train ends with Carol talking only to turn around and see he's no longer there.
• Elijah Cohen, the mysterious servant of God, pulls this in Six: The Mark Unleashed.
• In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), while on the road, Sonic asks to stop at a tourist trap for the world's largest rubber band ball. As he's being told that they're not going to stop, Sonic's already gone. He returns with an armful of rubber band balls, a monogrammed baseball cap on his head and a paddle ball a moment later, admitting it was "lame".
  Sonic: The gift shop was cool, though! [bounces the paddle ball rapidly as Tom stares in disbelief]
• Spice World: The tabloid paparazzo Damien appears and disappears from nowhere.
• Spider-Man Trilogy:
  • Spider-Man does it a few times in the first movie. Most notably was when he somehow leapt from the ceiling, out the window and ended up on the underside of the balcony in mere seconds, all without alerting the attention of Norman Osborn, who was in the room at the time and suspected Spider-Man of being there.
  • He also does it when bringing the body of Osborn back home. Harry looks away for about a second to grab a gun from a drawer, and Spidey is gone when he looks up.
  • In Spider-Man 2, Doctor Octopus appears to do this after completing a deal with Harry Osborn, taking a sphere full of tritium with him. Though initially surprised, Harry does manage to catch a glimpse of Doc Ock on his way out, moving at a normal (and noisy) pace. Somehow, he managed to move about twenty feet in the span of two seconds without managing to make a sound, before deciding to slow down a bit.
  • In the third film, MJ walks into her tiny apartment, and walks toward the answering machine, which is near an open window through which light is coming. Then Harry ambushes her, grabs her by the throat, and pushes her up against the wall. Given that James Franco is a shade under six feet, and the character is riding a large hoverboard with glowy bits, one wonders how MJ failed to notice him.
  • Again, when Harry has "admitted" Mary-Jane has fallen for him again. Peter, from outside the bar, sees Harry smile menacingly before a waitress obscures Peter's view for less than a second. Harry has managed to disappear in that time.
  • Played with later before Harry and Peter's fight. The camera follows Harry as he fixes himself a drink, pans down to show him add olives, and pans back up to show Peter standing on the balcony. If you listen closely, you can hear the distinctive sound of Peter shooting a web line, and Harry, with his Goblin serum-enhanced senses, likely heard it too.
  Harry (not even bothering to turn around): Would you like a drink?
• Spies Like Us. While Emmett is being held by the Tadzhik highway patrol officers, the two KGB Special Branch agents he met earlier suddenly appear inside a room and begin interrogating him.
• In Shredder Orpheus, when Orpheus navigates the Underworld parking garage, Hades is seen at a distance lighting a cigarette. As Orpheus approaches, Hades appears beside him as he passes a pillar, all without the camera cutting away.
• Happens in every Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. Really, these might just be the only guys who are better at this than Batman.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990): As the Turtles prepare for round two against the Shredder:
  Casey Jones: Well, looks like your boys are gonna need— (turns to regard Splinter, whom has vanished from the crowd) ...where'd he go?
  • In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014), Raphael manages to slip into Vernon's van without Vernon noticing until he revealed himself. Vernon is visibly confused and wondering just how the hell that happened before Raph snaps him out of it.
• D'Artagnan plays it straight in the 90s version of The Three Musketeers. Complete with open window.
• Val Kilmer in Thunderheart is an FBI agent chosen to investigate a crime on a reservation because his father was Sioux and so the higher-ups think the locals will respect him. A few of the locals pull this trope on him as an insult, implying that a real Sioux wouldn't fall for it. That implication is never tested.
• Maverick repeatedly does this during the Training Montage in Top Gun: Maverick, trolling the younger pilots with sudden high-speed flybys. The most straightforward case is when he just casually emerges from underneath Rooster without either Rooster or Hangman who's flying right next to Rooster ever having seen him approach. Even the formerly cocky and arrogant Hangman is struck speechless.
  Rooster: Where the hell is he...?
  Maverick: Been here the whole time. (aileron-rolls up between the other two)
  Hangman: ...holy shit.
  Maverick: (comes to a halt upside-down above Rooster's canopy) You see me now?
• All over the place in V for Vendetta, but the most ridiculous one has to be when a team of Fingermen search the area where they're supposed to meet V and declare it clear, only for V to suddenly appear smack dab in the middle of the group.
• Weekend at Bernie's produced perhaps the best line of the entire two-film series. Bernie's hitman friend Paulie walks into Bernie's house unannounced, and when Bernie turns around and sees him, they have this exchange:
  Bernie: OH! Oh, I didn't hear you come in...
  Paulie: Yup... I'm REAL good at that.
• Wind River: When Pete is fleeing through the snow, he stops to look around him, turning a full circle. As he gets back to where he started, he finds Cory standing there.

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