Ominous Walk

Did you really think you could defeat me? With that little peashooter? This farce ends here!

This is where a Villain, or Anti-Hero, will have an enemy at their mercy and instead of immediately shooting them, they'll slowly walk towards them. This is for no other reason other than to impress into the would be victim that they are completely at their mercy. So much so that there is no reason to hurry since there is nothing their victim can do that would so much as hinder them. Another reason a Villain or Anti-Hero will engage in this behavior is to savor the moment as long as they can. This is intended to increase their scare factor or evilness. Very rarely will the question of Why Don't You Just Shoot Him? cause this to backfire as this is intended to develop their character and establish them as a villain or anti-hero. It can also be combined with Smoke Shield or Out of the Inferno for maximum impact, if they've been hit with something explosive.

A common characteristic of Westerns and generally used to show who has the upper hand in a gun fight.

If this trope is invoked (or worse, Unflinching Walk) it is very likely you have an Implacable Man on your hands. Compare to The Slow Walk and Perfect Play AI, which is a specific variant used for video game Boss Battles.

Examples of Ominous Walk include:

Anime & Manga

• Hellsing has this in spades but Alucard and Anderson love this trope in particular.
• DragonBallZ: Cell usually walks calmly towards whoever his target is, safe in the knowledge that their fear will cause them to trap themselves, though he also occasionally suddenly breaks out of the walk to do a surprise rush at his opponents.
  • Frieza was a big fan of this as well, which explains why Cell also did this
• Berserk Eva01 does this to the 14th angel after casually regrowing its arm.

Comics

• Happens at the end of Sin City: Family Values. An Old Town girl ominously walks into a mabster's mansion and mows down the entire family with twin uzis.
• Hyperion of Supreme Power did this to a government base. He could have simply flown up to the building right away, but instead he just strolled to the building while getting fired at by soldiers and missiles.
  • The soldiers were hurt or killed by only the bullets that bounced off of Hyperion.

Film

• Halloween is notorious in that Michael Myers NEVER runs, only walks, very ominously, towards his victim at a steady pace.
  • he will, however, occasionally pursue his prey with a vehicle.
• Inglourious Basterds: The Bear Jew does this as he approaches a Nazi officer. As he's walking out of the tunnel he hits the bat against the wall as he oh-so-slowly makes his way towards the Nazi officer where he proceeds to bludgeon him to death. Justified as he's trying to scare their prisoners into talking.
• Rorshach from Watchmen uses this to great effect.
• The A Nightmare on Elm Street movies are just one long love note to this trope.
• Terminator 2: Several times in the foundry the T-1000 slowly walks toward John and Sarah Connor even though he should be running toward them in order to kill them as quickly as possible.
  • Might be justified by the fact that they're both heavily damaged by that point. still meant to have that effect though.
  • Really, most Terminators are prone to this.
• The Tall Man in the movie Phantasm, complete with loud, echoing footsteps.
• No Country for Old Men: Anton Chigurh does this quite a bit.
  • With a limp that shows off just how determined he really is.
• District 9 has the jerkass-sadist-total-douche walk in slow motion toward Wikus just before he is torn limb from limb and eaten by the Prawns he hates so much. Jolly good!
• Darth Vader, right from his introduction.
• D-FENS hangs up the phone, turns around, and oh so slowly walks over to the crashed car of a group of gangbangers who attempted to kill him in a drive-by, but failed.

"You missed."

Live Action TV

• The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Cameron. Especially after she picks up that limp at the beginning of the second season.
• Angelus often pursues his victims this way in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.

Video Games

• World of Warcraft: The Black Knight at the end of the Trial of the Champion plays this trope. He flies in on a griffon, kills the arena herald with a flick of his wrist, and walks towards the players. He even says, "This farce ends, here!"
  • Even more so, the Lich King in the Halls of Reflection, who easily kills anyone who gets too close, and the only way you survive is via a an Airship doing a Gunship Rescue, blowing the cave exit up in his face
• Resident Evil 4: Oddly enough enemies will run at you until they get within a certain distance then they will start ominously walking towards you for no reason.
  • However, the Regenerators/Iron Maidens play this trope totally straight.
  • The earlier games in the series have Tyrants (Super Soldiers and Implacable Men). They love to slowly walk toward you while you shoot at them. And then they sprint.
• FEAR: Alma just fucking loves this trope. In the first game she takes this trope to eleven as you find yourself in a hallway and Alma comes out of fucking nowhere and invokes this trope while setting the room ON FIRE! And pretty much every other time you see her throughout the series she invokes this trope only towards the end does she start averting it. With very good reason.
• Wet: At the end of the game Rubi uses this trope. Taken to eleven since Pelham shoots her twice and she deflects both bullets with her sword.
• On the first level of The Force Unleashed, you can't run. To emphasize that you're playing Darth Fricking Vader, you're limited to an Ominous Walk.
• Mannimarco in the Mannimarco Revisited mod for The Elder Scrolls: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. (In the unmodified game, his introduction is much less dramatic.)
• Silent Hill 2's Pyramid Head, unarguably. The laboured walk caused by his huge, metal helmet (and sometimes Great Knife) makes him infinitely scarier, because what does it matter how slow or fast he goes? You're dead either way.
• In World of Tanks, heavy tanks do this when they corner you, at which point, you no longer have any chance of survival. Since you don't have anywhere to run, they'll move slowly to retain accuracy. Heavy T Ds also like doing this.
• In Skies of Arcadia, during Vyse and Aika's first introduction to Galcian. As your party rushes to the end of the train to save Fina, Galcian calmly follows you. Despite the slowness of his pace, Aika urges them to hurry, saying she just feels like "they can't take this guy".
• Imran Zakhaev in the final mission of the first Modern Warfare. It's a little justified, as most of the Bravo Team gunning for him had either been killed or critically wounded by an exploding oil tanker.

Web Comics

• Gamzee Makara from Homestuck does this when he's advancing toward Equius after shooting him in the leg with an arrow. It's absolutely terrifying.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender: At one point during Season 2, Azula pummels Aang into near-unconsciousness on top of The Drill and then ominously marches towards him while she readies a fire attack to presumably finish him off.
  • Similarly, in the finale, Ozai confidently strolls towards Aang after breaking through the protective shell he had created, only to discover that he has accidentally unblocked Aang's Seventh Chakra, allowing him to enter the Avatar State. Asskicking ensues.
• A favored tactic of The Phantasm. Damn, but it works.
• In ReBoot, Megabyte does some of these during a fight with Matrix.
• In Tom and Jerry there is an episode where Tom mixes up a concoction in order to stop Jerry from drinking his milk, but the drink instead makes Jerry huge and strong, and of course Jerry does this trope to great effect along with some sweet music.