Flinching

Flinching is an animation in the  series and Fraymakers made when a character's current action is interrupted by an attack. The interrupted action is replaced with a short animation of being hit. The amount of hitstun dealt affects how strong the flinch is, with higher hitstun leading to longer flinching times, and the character undergoes hitlag before being launched. Attacks that deal strong knockback cause the flinching character to transition to tumbling, and attacks that do not cause any knockback will not cause flinching.

As flinching is directly related to knockback, hitstun, and hitlag received, the amount of flinching received can be affected in various ways, such as reducing or removing it altogether by using a move with knockback resistance. Flinching while charging an attack will cause the charge to be lost, regardless of whether any charge had been saved previously.

Like with hitstun, flinching can make characters vulnerable to combos and punishes, preventing them from acting out of an opponent's attacks. It can also be useful for edgeguarding, as causing a character to flinch during their midair jumping animation may cost them the height they would normally gain from it.

In the original Super Smash Flash, each character has a single flinching animation that plays whenever they are attacked. In Super Smash Flash 2, characters have multiple randomly chosen flinching animations, as well as a unique animation when hit by an electric attack. In Fraymakers, characters have three types of flinching animations depending on the strength of the knockback, with weak knockback having three different animations based on the height of the character's hurt box hit.