I accidentally discovered inductive kickback when i was a teen. I was holding the wires on a relay, wired it up so that the coil was in series with the normally closed part of itself. (Tired to make it like a buzzer) Hooked it to the battery and got little shocks. Sometimes I've also seen a 0.1uF capacitor in parallel with the coil and diode. I often see the capacitor in parallel of small motors, such as in toy RC cars. The capacitor helps smooth out the inductive kickback because (i hope i got this right) a diode can take a small fraction of a second to work. I've even seen the caps on a bridge rectifier, although I'm not sure if it's for the same reason.
