http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HighSpeedMissileDodge

Mike Kopack, Gulf Mission "Training for SAM launches up to this point had been more or less book learning, recommending a pull to an orthogonal flight path 4 seconds prior to missile impact to overshoot the missile and create sufficient miss distance to negate the effects of the detonating warhead. Well, it works. The hard part though, is to see the missile early enough to make all the mental calculations. "

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This is quite similar to Cutscene Power to the Max in that it showcases a character's sheer skill, or the abilities of their Cool Vehicle.

A swarm of seeking projectiles is flying right at a character, and they're almost certain to be rendered into a fine paste by the attack ... but through an extreme display of evasive maneuvers, the character escapes without the slightest scratch. Sometimes the dodging is merely swerving from side to side or taking sharp turns, sometimes it's done like in Macross, where the pilot puts his Valkyrie through aerial acrobatics that would logically cause unbearable G-forces. At other times, the pilot maneuvers so as to cause the missiles to hit each other and explode, or supplements his evasive maneuvers with the use of some weapon to actually shoot down the missiles instead of being Point Defenseless (but merely being able to shoot down missiles doesn't make for a High Speed Missile Dodge).

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Although High Speed Missile Dodging can and does happen in Real Life, real-world anti-aircraft missiles are designed to not actually hit the target, but instead explode in close proximity to it and fill the entire vicinity with high-velocity shrapnel. Thanks to the Rule of Perception, though, most anti-aircraft missiles in fiction only damage targets if they hit directly.

Aircraft pilots in Real Life have two basic tactics for dodging missiles; the most common method, as described in the opening quote, is to maneuver the aircraft in such a way that the missile overshoots—so that when its warhead explodes, the shrapnel from the blast won't actually impact the intended target. There are several methods for accomplishing this, depending on the situation and the kind of aircraft involved. Even the massive B-52s are capable of using this tactic to defeat missiles.

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The other tactic is pure speed; some aircraft are (or were) capable of successfully outrunning air-to-air missiles, such as the MiG-25 and the SR-71 Blackbird , whose official missile evasion procedure was "just go faster, duh" (lightly paraphrased). In this case, it's less about the pilot's skills and more about the abilities of the aircraft itself.

May not work against a Super-Persistent Missile. Compare the Wronski Feint, which uses the local landscape as an accessory. The same skills used in dodging missiles are also handy for dodging lasers. See also Smoke Shield, where it's sometimes implied that although the missiles exploded, the character dodged while obscured from the camera. See also Misguided Missile, where the missiles are led back to their launcher or into each other. On a smaller scale there's Dodge the Bullet, which is about, well ... dodging bullets.

Examples:

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Anime & Manga

Comic Books

In Buck Danny the titular hero, being an ace pilote performs this a lot. Even the admiral in one of the book realize it's buck flying, due to the unknow plane dodging two missiles in a row.

In a Deadpool comic, Deadpool is driving a pickup when Bullseye shoots at him with a rocket launcher. Deadpool does a 90-degree brake turn, opens the windows, and watches the missile sail harmlessly through the cabin. Even Bullseye, who usually gets very upset if he misses, is impressed. Bullseye: Okay, yeah, I admit it. That was ***in' awesome.

Tintin. In The Red Sea Sharks the Big Bad orders his Submarine Pirates to sink one of his own freighter that's been appropriated by our heroes, killing the meddlesome Tintin and destroying all the evidence against him. Haddock has to keep turning the ship to avoid the torpedoes being fired at them, only to have an Oh, Crap! moment when the handle of the engine order telegraph breaks off in his hand.

Fan Works

Justified in An Entry with a Bang!: the armour on Battletech aerospace fighters means the blast fragmentation shrapnel and continuous rods from normal air-to-air missiles are much less effective. Contact-detonated shaped charges are mounted in replacement, so it's possible to evade the blasts. It is noted that the g-forces involved aren't healthy, though... and you can dodge one missile, maybe two, but not a whole swarm of them.

In Episode 7 of Super Mario Bros. Z, Sonic is busy dodging bullets from Mecha Sonic's machine gun (rather easily) when Mecha decides to send 2 missiles his way. In a slo-mo encounter, Sonic rebounds off a wall, and leapfrogs one of the missiles in mid-air. The move's coolness is detracted from when the missiles hit the wall and the explosion sends Sonic flying.

Wings To Fly has pilots employing countermeasures and the classic missile-avoidance maneuvers used by real pilots, and their own missiles, to deal with incoming missiles. In the last case it's demonstrated that this can also be done for missiles aimed at others.

A cycle of tales in the Discworld of A.A. Pessimal deals with the Air Service of Ankh-Morpork. Initially a division of the City Watch staffed by Witch Police Constables, it evolves over the course of the tales (spanning two decades) into something like an efficient and combat-ready Air Force. Its test as an Air Force is in the fighting between Witches and Elves, which happens in the canonical novel The Shepherd's Crown. The Air War sees the whole of the Air Watch taking a "grandmother's funeral". All at once, to fight in Lancre. Vetinari permits this, and Sam Vimes has no choice other than to accept it. During the air fighting, one Witch, pursuded by an overwhelming number of Elves and dodging arrows and missiles being fired at her, has an epiphany born out of desperation: her Feegle air crewman, normally a navigator, craw-steps her briefly into "Feegle Space" note a parellel dimension used by the NacMacFeegle when "craw-stepping", ie taking their Witch out of this dimension and re-entering our world in a different place, which could be thousands of miles away by the direct route . The Feegle counts to "tetra" and brings her back in exactly the same place - except for the fact all the Elves have overshot and are now in front of her. Where she can fire back and get them from behind with a combination of crossbow bolts and air-to-air fireballs. This becomes a standard Air Service fighting tactic.

Films — Animation

Despicable Me: Gru does this when Vector launches a Macross Missile Massacre at him. The missiles redirect and blow up Vector's house. And then he punches a shark.

Films — Live-Action

Literature

Explained by the narrator in Flight of the Intruder: For the A-6 Intruder, the preferred strategy was to dive towards the missile while ejecting decoys and attempting to jam the enemy's radar. The trickiest parts were of course spotting the incoming missiles early enough to know which way to dive, and running out of enemy missiles before you ran out of altitude.

Halo: The Fall of Reach: Part of the famed "Keyes Loop" maneuver involves dodging homing plasma torpedos and having them hit an enemy ship instead. The book emphasizes that Keyes came up with the maneuver out of desperation against a vastly superior force, and Keyes himself notes that he would have failed any student who suggested the idea to him in his starship tactics class. The Master Chief does this on foot when when testing the new MJOLNIR Mark V armor, by slapping the missile aside just before it hit him. No, his armor and physical augmentations don't give him reflexes that ridiculous: his AI Cortana handled the timing. He wasn't completely undamaged by the missile's explosion, though.

Attempted by a Pinnace pilot in Honor Harrington: Flag in Exile. Unfortunately, they still took a glancing blow from the missile, cutting the ship in half rather than simply disintegrating it. The pinnace crash-lands and most aboard and several people on the ground are killed. The Made of Iron Honor survives.

Done with cannonballs in Sharpe. Truth in Television, in that cannonballs travel slow enough that someone far enough away can realistically be able to get out of the way. Also subverted in that, whenever characters just dodge cannonballs, it inevitably ends with a concussion or unconsciousness from the wind of the cannonball's passing.

A variation in the Star Carrier series. Missiles are actually pretty darn hard to shake (they're flown by A.I. and have a huge array of sensors to beat any ECM), so a dodge by itself doesn't work. Instead, you use the dodge to lead the missile to where you want it, then dump "sand" note granules of gravitically compressed lead and let the missile fly into it.

and let the missile fly into it. A fairly common feature in the RCN novels. The matter/antimatter-fueled kinetic impact missiles used in the series are guided until the point of burnout and extremely lethal when they hit: even the missiles from a corvette like Princess Cecile can do serious damage to large capital ships. Evading incoming fire is easier at long range than short since the missile cannot change course after burnout, but thanks to Einsteinian physics missiles are conversely more damaging after burnout (about .6c, assuming a straight-line course) than at closer range. The main purpose of plasma cannon is to either deflect or destroy incoming missiles that cannot be outright dodged.

Live-Action TV

Ultraman Max is very fond of this trope, although it's usually the DASH planes that do it.

Subverted in the pilot miniseries for the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica—though Boomer's Raptor and Apollo's Viper manage to avoid being directly hit by Cylon missiles, the subsequent explosions take both their ships offline, if not destroying them. Adama does seem to comment it's possible in his speech to Starbuck after she's injured and working out to get back in shape. He grounds her when she can't simulate holding the high-gee turn long enough.

In Primeval series 5, Matt, Abby, Connor and the sole surviving/conscious naval officer pull one of these off in a sub with next to no warning, after the sub had been damaged travelling twice through an anomaly and essentially had to be jump started. Extra levels of awesome for doing this in reverse and firing off a jury rigged anomaly locking torpedo that went through the anomaly before the nuke!torpedo that was fired at them did.

and firing off a jury rigged anomaly locking torpedo that went through the anomaly before the nuke!torpedo that was fired at them did. Averted in seaQuest DSV, despite it being a show all about submarines and featuring a number of sub combat scenes (especially in the third season). The titular sub preferred to simply shoot down the torpedoes with countermeasures.

Tabletop Games

According to the rules of the official Robotech RPG by Palladium, it is possible to dodge volleys of up to three missiles, but never more than four, allegedly because no one did it in the show; however, Max dodges a twenty-plus swarm from Miryia's FPA at least once in the actual show (of course, Max is the best pilot living to the point where it's explained as him being just that good). To be fair, that is the same chart used in every Palladium game with missiles. It was more a matter that Palladium didn't do their research.



Video Games

Web Animation

Episode 10 of Red vs. Blue Season 8 brings forth the return of Tex, who then delivers a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to the Reds and Tucker. Simmons fires a heat-seaking missile to Tex, who outruns it and goes through a portal and runs right back to the "heroes", missile in tow. She clotheslines Sarge, Simmons and Tucker who were conveniently standing in single-file at the time... for some reason... and she slides under Grif. She then leads the missile into a bunch of exploding barrels.

Western Animation

The SWAT Kats do this sometimes. They didn't make it once, but they recovered somehow.

Real Life