If I had to guess this was cultural diffusion from anime into western action movies, especially since most of the samples are from the last 15 years... but that could be a side effect of the special effects needed to pull it off nicely in non-animated contexts.
Amazing how artful editing can give emotional weight to very short clips of low-resolution sprites. It also makes me wonder what would have happened had video games developed in a culture with R-to-L writing.