Awesome (other)

We haven't forgotten about anything else, have we? Nope...not anymore. Extreme coolness even extends outside the realms of television and film, as discussed below.


 * Bionicle
 * Chess
 * Magic the Gathering

CCGs Storyline

 * Legend of the Five Rings, being an Asian heroic fantasy setting, with over ten years of a continuous storyline, is of course chock-full of them, with most factions within the game having gotten several. Among the characters that have gotten the most:
 * Hida Kisada, Magnificent Bastard and Heroic Sociopath, has had many of them, starting with the flavor text of his original version: "Your knowledge cannot save you. Your magic cannot save you. Nothing can save you."
 * But the greatest of them was perhaps outside the storyline itself: when Kisada died, he became the subject of an 80-person wake. On top of his achievements within the story, when's the last time you saw a wake for a CCG character?
 * What can you say when the writer creates what was supposed to be his original death (by being skewered by one of the most powerful Imperial artifacts), and had a hard time not writing "Is that all you fucking got?!?"
 * Yoritomo had several of those as well.
 * On the day of the Final Battle between humanity and Darkness, when, after routing the forces of darkness' reinforcements, he threatened to attack the forces of Good unless the leaders of the storyline's seven great clans acknowledged his own (until then) minor clan as an equal. The gambit was successful.
 * When the Dragon of Water, a divine being, approached him to seek his battered clan's twenty strongest samurai to take them into the land of darkness on what was almost certain to be a suicide mission: "I am my twenty strongest samurai." (To which his adopted son, whose loyalties had been questioned until then, added, "And I am twenty-one.")
 * Which was echoed several years later when Yoritomo's daughter found herself facing her Arch Enemy 's six strongest warriors alone. "Fool. Don't you know? Your men are outnumbered, twenty to six."
 * Bayushi Kwanchai, an unkillable badass whose divine gift is luck that rivals the gods, had his crowning moment of awesome when, after dispatching a dozen flesh eating demons, takes his dead uncle and cradles his lifeless body. Not awesome because of the drama, but awesome because the head of the Imperial Families is watching and ignoring Kwanchai basically hugging a dead body, which is a crime punishable by death in Rokugan, because he's afraid for his life if he tells Kwanchai to stop.
 * Kwanchai topped himself recently when he returned to the site of his uncle's death, opened the portal to the realm of the flesh-eating demons, and stepped inside so as to close the portal, condemning himself to an eternity of suffering.
 * And then there was Winter Court, a canon play-by-post RPG set up by AEG, in which two characters discussed throwing paper shurikens at Kwanchai, and not wondering how he would react, but quote 'how many survivors would there be?".
 * Kwanchai's luck was inherited from his master, Bayushi Tangen, who saw his inability to die as a massive failure. This trait also carries over to anyone who studies under their school. They are seen as suicidally insane and entire armies start getting scared when a single Bitter Lies swordsman starts running towards them.
 * While on the topic of Winter Court, one cannot help but note that it was Bayushi Kaukatsu's (Kwanchai's aforementioned uncle) three-months-long Crowning Moment of Awesome, where nobody even breathed without his written say-so. Made all the more awesome when it was revealed he had conned the entire Court into ridiculously overestimating his faction's actual influence.
 * Even then-Dragon Daigotsu has had his Crowning Moment of Awesome, when he launched an attack against the realm of the Dead, then allowed the very incarnation of Death to skewer him with his spear...so that he could get close enough to stick a cursed artifact on the incarnation's face, to force it to release Daigotsu's dark God Fu Leng, from the prison his soul had been trapped in.
 * Moto Chagatai. Just...Moto Chagatai.
 * Also, we recently found out the answer to the question: who could possibly kill Moto Chagatai? The answer turned out to be that the only thing that could kill the Khan...IS the Khan.
 * This troper can't remember the details exactly but there was this one time Moto Chagatai went into death's realm with a friend to rescue his grandfather's soul. On their way back, they were confronted by the ten Gods of Death and their minions. His reaction? "You take the ten thousand on the left, you take the ten thousand on the right. I'll take the gods."
 * Although to be fair this, more than almost anything else, is a serious YMMV. Even more than Hida Kisada, Daigotsu's insane plots that somehow always work out or the entirety of any other plot device used, Moto Chagatai's Karma Houdini there, as well as the lack of real caring displayed by the Empire at large to his roaring rampage that resulted in the death of the entire Toturi family line (in usual AEG hamfisted manner) and the Emperor's wife, is quite ridiculous. Even if you're a Unicorn player!
 * To be fair, L5R is far from the only CCG with awesome characters. However, if all you have to go by are the art and snippets of flavor on the cards themselves (rather than being able to also draw upon extensive secondary sources), then deciding what is or isn't a proper CMOA isn't always easy. That said, I'm reasonably sure that this little guy is having one right there...

CCGs

 * This troper considers his near-standstill Yu-Gi-Oh! duel against an Envoy/Yata Lock deck, the ultimate Game Breaker deck in the entire game, with a lame and incomplete feline-themed bounce deck a personal Crowning Moment of Awesome.
 * This troper has a similar story, in which a rookie duelist puts together a large, incoherent deck, is toyed with by an opponent who wants to reduce his life points exactly to zero, and wins by decking said opponent with a Cyber Jar. Somehow, that one duel is what turned him from a hopeless rookie into a player with actual skill and a fondness for the Crab Turtle. (Sadly, his reign came to an end when all his rare cards got stolen, but that's neither here nor there.)
 * About a month or so before the bans were instituted, this troper pulled off his first ever one turn win, against a discard deck. One turn wins were common in the day, but this was special as it involved Exodia...
 * This troper once reached the semi-finals of a 32 player Yu-Gi-Oh! tournament at the age of ten, using a fresh-from-the-box structure deck and no knowledge of the metagame.
 * I have had but 1 CMoA, with my Samurai deck against my brother's Zombies, and it was the very first turn.I had gotten excited when i saw The Six Samurai - Zanji in my hand, then Grandmaster of the Six Samurai.I Smiled as I drew Great Shogun Shien.I Summoned Zanji.Thanks to the effect of my Grandmaster, i got to bring him into the mix.Then that set off my Shogun.It's such a pity my opponent surrendered on my first turn.I could have had some real fun.
 * I haven't played Yu-Gi-Oh! in years, but while at high school it was insanely popular for about two full years, during which time there was one duelist no one could beat. He had the deck, he had the experience, he had everything. In the middle of an unofficial tournament I ended up facing him in an early duel, and my opening hand was 'Lord of D, Flute of Summoning Dragon, and two of my Blue Eyes. I held off from the combo for one turn, during which he set out what was clearly supposed to be his ultimate combo breaker. People actually cheered when I pulled out Lord of D, Flute of Summoning Dragon, Blue Eyes, Blue Eyes, Hyozonru (The card I picked up for my second turn). Life points gone, master duelist out of tournament. Sure, I lost the next duel to someone who had a deck specifically tailored to defeat dragons, but for those short moments I was the acknowledged best duelist in school.
 * This troper recalls being in the first sponsored sealed deck tourney for the street fighter/Soul Caliber TCG at my local store, and due to the vagaries of chance getting the single worst starting character in the game. He then proceeded to use psychology and acting to convince his various opponents that he had all but given up while managing to eke out a victory and eventually take the first prize.
 * Technically not a CCG, but; we're playing Steve Jackson Games' Munchkin. This one depends on the a house rule--we created separate Monster cards for each of our three boys in the house. The youngest one has a 1st level card named after him: Darth Philip. (Losing a fight against Darth Philip and "the other players mock you mercilessly for 15 seconds--you can't beat a five-year-old???") So, anyway, I'm playing with his big brother Paul, who opens a door and pulls the Darth Philip card. I (Dad) throw down the "...and Mom" enhancer card, making him a level 11. Paul then throws down the "Monster is Busy" card, which of course shows a picture of monsters playing a board game. Of course, in the next room, the real Philip was playing a game.
 * With Mom.

Eastern European Animation

 * Swans of Nepryadva is an animated commemoration of one of the most famous and glorious battles in the Russian history - The Battle of Kulikovo, which took place in the late XIV century and played a vital role in the liberation of Russia from the Mongolian reign. The movie is charged with badass awesomeness fuelled by magnificent music, but THE moment is the intervention of The Cavalry (literal) near the end. "Now it's time! Go forth, brothers!" Damn, I still can't watch the scene with a quiet heart.
 * Mowgli: unlike in most versions, in Soviet Russia Mowgli actually grows into a badass jungle warrior and the leader of the wolf pack. How badass? Well, he rips Sher-Khan's maw open with his bare hands, that's how.

Poker

 * In the 2004 World Series of Poker, during a side event, 23-year-old Scott Fischman faced Joe Awada heads up for the championship. Fischman was all-in (if he lost the hand, Awada would win), and only one of the two 7s left in the deck would save him. Sure enough, a 7 came on the river (the last card dealt in the hand), giving Fischman the chip lead. On the very next hand, he's dealt a pair of aces, puts Awada all-in, and wins the hand and the bracelet. One week later, he wins another bracelet, becoming the youngest player ever to win two World Series of Poker events.
 * This troper, playing online against three opponents, had suited Jack and 10. The flop was suited King, Queen, Ace, giving me the Royal Flush. This causes a moment of panic as I wonder how to get the most out of the other players without being obvious about it. Best part? The other players had, respectively, a pair of kings (so three total), another had king-ace (two top pair), and the third had a pair of queens, giving him three of a kind. Turn was another ace, giving one of them a full house, kings over aces, the second aces over kings, and the third queens over aces. River was the last queen, giving four of a kind to the man holding the ladies. With everyone holding ridiculously strong hands, everyone was all in at the end. And then, because of the way we happened to be seated, it was literally showing the K-A full house, beaten by the A-K full house, beaten by the 4 queens, and then showing the royal flush for the win. The comment from one of the players at the end saying "Holy shit" was highly appropriate.
 * You win. The 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event saw one player beaten like this, quad aces beaten by a royal flush. You managed to beat three people with some of the best hands in poker.
 * The most awesome finish to the WSOP Main Event has to be the way it ended in 1998. On the final hand, a full house came out on the board, eights over nines. Scotty Nguyen raised his opponent Kevin McBride all-in, then gave the memorable quote, "You call, gonna be all over, baby!" McBride called, playing the board, and Scotty revealed the nine in his hand, giving him a better full house, nines over eights.
 * Jack Ury, the oldest person to ever play in the main event at age 96, is pretty much a living, breathing CMoA just for having played in the last three Main Events without fail at his age. But it's this hand where he proves that he is, in-fact, the Badass Great-Grandpa of the WSOP.
 * Let's see how long Doyle Brunson lives (and plays), he might still beat him...

Web Animation
""Where's my cottage? TROGDOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOR!"
 * In Homestar Runner, Strong Bad has one, seemingly for the sole purpose of annoying his fans: In the chair, he receives an email asking him to remove his mask, while sitting in a high-backed chair that obscures most of the screen. After reminding the viewers that his mask is his face, he proceeds to rip off his face and hold it above the top of the chair, while screaming in pain.
 * And then shows them a picture o his parents.
 * The trailer for the Peasant's Quest movie is made mostly out these.
 * Actually, this describes pretty much any trailer ever made.

""We have coexisted with The Burninator in these lands for centuries. I can't have you heading up there in your short pants upsetting the balance!"
 * And who could forget this exchange?

"I'll upset YOUR balance, my lord!

"Rather Dashing, you will not sass back at this council.""

""And the Trogdor comes... in the night!"
 * And the whole thing finishes off with:

"Not tonight, he doesn't! ...come. In the night. Trogdor.""


 * Sbemail 200.
 * Not to mention
 * TV Tome Adventures. Season 2 finale. Yes.

Interactive Fiction

 * For most of the course of Spider and Web, the player character is imprisoned in a chair. The manner in which he (or she) finally escapes is definitely awesome.

Parades

 * Somewhere between Crowning Moments of Awesome and Funny: Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends RickRolling the 2008 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade with the man himself. Especially for the sheer "Holy What the F___?!?" factor.
 * More a protest than a parade. The Westboro Baptist Church is again trying to "spread their message". They get gatecrashed by the local LGBT community.

Web Communities
"In the Harry Potter books and movies, Luna "Loony" Lovegood is considered by some to be moe, even causing Anonymous to have the unusual reaction of "I want to date her and meet her parents" rather than "I want to have violent, squicky sex with her, then kill her""
 * As a result of a huge flame war on a particular Yu-Gi-Oh! forum (which he didn't start, but was accused of starting, regardless), this troper ended up getting an unfair perma-banning, unfair in the fact that not only was his actions not warranting of such a harsh punishment, but that the other guys involved in the war were let off without even a slap on the wrist. So he fought, and cursed, and ranted out the administrators, until they finally gave the incident another look (and put whether or not to lift the ban to a vote); not only was he able to beat the ban down to a lesser sentence, not only was he able to get the other people involved their just dues, not only did he exonerate himself from being vilified as a flame-happy Troll, but he actually got the administration to reevaluate the piss-poor policing system of the entire forum. When you force the administration to admit they're wrong and that something needs to be done to ensure they don't screw up again, that's something to be proud of, people.
 * I'd say it's more a CMOA for the admins, considering the fact that 95% of web communities have admins who would never admit they are wrong. Hell, there's more than enough unfair permabans on a certain gaming webcomic's (Ctrl+Alt+Del) forum alone where if each person banned there could convince somebody to change their ways the world would probably be perfect.
 * Was that forum The Yu-Gi-Oh! Card Maker Forum? If it was, I see you, Draco.
 * It is, but it's all objective really. One one side, there were the people who believed Draco was a second Jesus who would bring down the evil mods for once and for all. On the other hand, he was an insufferable jerk who wouldn't stay down. (Anyways, this longtime YCM member does believe Draco forgot to mention that he was banned really-permanently a short time after the ban was lifted. Both sides of the story, right?)
 * A few years ago the Sluggy Freelance fan forum got hacked by a script kiddy who went and started to cause chaos. Once the situation became apparent almost the entire collective forum proceeded to mock him. We mocked his piss poor planning, his bad grammar, and his power tripping in general. It was a glorious few hours.
 * The College Roomies from Hell forum had a similar event minus the hacking when a troll posted a thread entitles "I just have to say..." with the text of the first post reading "...that I have no respect for anybody with any authority on this forum". After one of the regulars pointed out just how much of a lame trolling this was, this rapidly turned into dozens of pages of the locals having fun throwing lame insults at each other.
 * The Card Master Conflict forums have a habit of doing this too, as the mods seem to take an almost sadistic pleasure in picking apart trolls and spammers. For the forum regulars, it's become an event not unlike a random barbecue: everyone gathers to either watch or actively join in, and a good time is had by all!
 * Something like this just happened on Court Records Forums. Someone calling himself "Cock Mongler" decided to try his hand at trolling. The problem? His trolling sucked. Seriously it was hilariously bad. The Doctor's showdowns with him were hilarious.
 * This troper was on a forum several years back where a troll showed up and started mocking everyone mercilessly. When threatened with an IP ban, he just bragged that he was doing this from his school and would continue the harassment as soon as he got home. Some time after this, the admin showed to to make a post informing the troll that he had just gotten off the phone with the troll's principal, who was very happy to hear what he was doing on school time with school equipment. By that point, the troll had already been dragged off the computer by school officials, but we all had a good laugh anyway.
 * On a 40k ork themed forum this troper is a long time member of, a certain member applied for a name change, for an orkier name. It was accepted. Some time later, the forum undergoes rapid growth and this member decided he didn't like his new name. So he had a poll to decide what he should do (keep his new orky name, or go back to his less orky, but more outstanding name). The admin had their own poll, letting this boards members choose this members name. End result - penelope the pony. :biggrin:
 * HL2.net's Stern Ascension - a guy called Cpt Stern had almost 30000 posts, and for his 29999th post, he made a countdown thread, with everyone Wild Mass Guessing what the next member title is. Then a lot of regulars changed their avatars to the one Stern uses, or a variation (the French Ninja one comes to mind). Stern didn't post for a few days, so needless to say, the forumites got a bit bored and crazy, so Sulkdodds, a 'super mod' and possibly the most active member of staff on the forum went on a rampage, duplicating, merging and creating threads, with such jems as 'Stern's Countdown To Concealed Weapons In Poland' emerging. By time Stern posted, his post cound was reset, his member title was changed to 'sockmonkey' (without capitalization) and Sulkdodds had his mod powers taken away, albeit temporarily - everyone treated him as a martyr, and made requests for him to get his powers back. And so, the status quo was restored, barring a few Continuity Nods, such as Stern's new member title and the community blaming strange happening on 'the Ascension'.
 * This troper was a part of an online roleplay with a friend on a forum. During the RP, my character and my friend's character were being attacked by a swarm of Thought Beings several thousand members strong. My character was terrified, because she had no magical powers to speak of and couldn't fight them, really. But when my friend's character urged her on, her Crowning Moment of Awesome came when she dove into the heart of the swarm, found the core controlling them all, lunged at it, and proceeded to slaughter the core and obliterate the swarm... by driving the pointed end of a frickin' GARDEN TOOL imbued with The Power of Friendship into its heart. Now that is one Badass Normal!
 * Another online roleplay example, based of several Mega Man series, there was a short mishap involving a character basically splitting in two and getting a female body. This didn't stop said character's girlfriend, Ashe (whom this troper was playing as) from having lesbian hijinks with her. But that wasn't the awesome. The CMOA came when Neon Tiger smashed down the door, with a camera, screaming "SURPRISE, CARPET MUNCHERS!" While the two were in the middle of having sex. Hilarity Ensues. By the time the incident was over, Neon had been kicked out of the room twice, a porn video was uploaded to the net that somehow grossed into the eight digit numbers in practically half an hour (according to Neon, anyway), and this troper was practically laughing his head off and gaping in disbelief at the shenanigans that had occurred.
 * Said RP has had numerous CMOAs. Other examples include Ashe dressing up as Dante and fighting Vile (complete with a Devil Trigger transformation!), G.E.M., AKA, the Pink Devil, climaxing in the middle of battle... And there was even one OOC, with the guy playing Cyber Kujacker suggesting an alternate universe case where the events of everything in the entire Mega Man series was a massive Xanatos Roulette by Willy, just to make him literally the last man alive, just so he could get laid. As completely ridiculous as that sounds (including the annual lesbian orgies in celebration of him), it just seems so incredibly awesome.
 * Another online roleplaying one: When playing a character halfway between a knight and a very powerful medium, this troper had to save a small dragon girl from being sacrificed to a Cosmic Horror (in all fairness, one implied not to exist) and had only himself and a wounded knight to work with, versus twenty reasonably powerful sorcerers and a warrior who had defeated him before. The warrior switches sides, but pulls a Heroic Sacrifice soon after and dies. This troper stops the girl from becoming an offering by ricocheting the dead man's sword off the wall and into the elder mage's neck - and jumps over the altar, kicking the elder mage's body in time to use his arterial spray as blinding powder. It defied all the laws of physics, but then this troper has always played by Rule of Cool.
 * This troper has had three distinct Crowning Moments Of Awesome in online roleplaying:
 * 1) Fighting off ghost pirates with an improvised slingshot and loose change, bubblegum, and marbles.
 * 2) Saving the whole group from neo-Nazis by kicking up a huge cloud of dusty sand.
 * 3) Distracting a Big Bad so that an ally could knock them out, then using a time machine to send said mastermind to the site of The Tunguska Event moments before impact and spontaneously quiping "Only one person knows what really caused it, and he'll never be able to tell us."
 * Game FAQs' Board 8 had one of these a few years back: the head administator posted a sticky on the top of the board about the details of the current character battle, and then immediately closed it. To everyone's surprise, someone actually managed to get a post into the topic in the four seconds it was open!
 * and you can find the post here.
 * Game FAQs' Current Events board also had one a few years ago on Cinco de Mayo when the same administrator made a topic titled that said something along the lines of special announcement for this board. Earlier in the day, someone made an account suicide with a porn video that managed to max out its posts with 500. Soon after someone else posted the same video and also got 500 posts. A third attempt at the same only managed a couple of hundred posts. This, along with the similarity to the topic that announced that another board was being locked to newcomers, made it seem like bad news. The content of the posts was "500-topic Go Go Now." (Doubtfully verbatim). Later that night, the board broke the website record for fastest 500 topic. Less than a minute and a half.
 * A few years ago, when he was but a noob, User:Moogi was once involved in a message board discussion that was going nowhere. The conversation got boring quickly, so in order to make things interesting, I - in the course of a single post- turned the entire thread into a space opera war epic RP. The battle went on for over a week, dividing the board into warring factions amid much hilarity. Sadly, shortly after the battle ended, the entire forum completely lost its sense of humour, and within a month or so, I never went there again.
 * Roleplaying a game of Paranoia on IRC. The character in question had the secret mutant ability to melt objects he touched. Thanks to the good-natured douchebaggery of the DM playing Friend Computer, the character was saddled with the annoying rank of "Team Groomer", having to make sure his teammates were properly hygienic. After one of his fellow teammates got close to murdering the head of the underground rebellion group he was secretly apart of, he used his title of Team Groomer to help the teammate by fixing his ruffled hair - And then pressed his hand onto his head and melted his brain.
 * This troper's first, and so far only, game of Paranoia ended with Friend Computer self destructing and taking all of Alpha Complex with it, due to being given about six different and mutually exclusive instruction disks at roughly the same time. Then there was the fun with the 'mutant detector' device at the beginning...If someone gives you a black box with a single button do not press it unless you wish to get shot.
 * once stumbled upon a post by John Byrne on his forum Byrne Robotics about what is wrong with modern comics (possibly targeted at a specific writer, the details are lost to history), which I responded to on the Super Dickery.com forums, point by point, pointing out how each one was either asinine or, in most cases, hypocritical, as he's infamous in the comic book industry for doing them himself. I accidentally started a war between Super Dickery and Byrne Robotics, where several other people on the board went onto the forum under fake names and posted various insulting things, often the post I had originally made itself. The best part? Everybody on Super Dickery hated me for various reasons; at this point there was an ongoing debate as to whether it was more appropriate to rape me before or after they killed me. But damn it, they followed me into battle.
 * was witness to this, and the follow up attacks. Basically Byrne made his forum tightly controlled, and IIRC, made it impossible to post a new topic unless you had a certain amount of posts. My memory is a bit foggy, but I believe we had several sleepers, until Byrne went to a con one weekend and was away from his mod-station. We unleashed several new threads, in a surprise attack. Also, they did stop hating ROBRAM eventually. By hating me instead.
 * If you're going to write legal threats to The Pirate Bay, don't use the same form letter twice.
 * On the Customer Service Forums of World of Warcraft,  Batta had a crowning moment by delivering this smackdown. After somebody complained about getting banned for "discussing an in-game item," Batta told him that "There is still a distinction, however, between discussing the item as it pertains to the game, and commenting in the World Trade channel about said item in one's face while drunk at a frat party."
 * This troper goes to a Catholic school with a rather intricate intranet system involving a rather large forum. Last year a freshman made a topic about a Nostradamus special on the History channel for discussions. He and another freshman began to write things that are clearly against Catholic Dogma such as literal interpretations of the Book of the Revelation to John and serious talk about the rapture and the 2012 apocalypse theory. Some juniors came in and began to debate against these statements. The freshmen, especially the one who started, began going on caps lock rants. The juniors revealed themselves to be atheists and it devolved into a Flame War. Then, It managed to regenerate back into a legitimate debate, degrade back down to a flame war, and regenerate back into a discussion that eventually prompted the topic's archiving. 300 pages in Microsoft Word, 30 pages of 15 posts per page, full of essay-length posts, all in a Catholic school with a rigorous academic program.
 * Wasn't sure where to place this, move if needed. This Troper started a roleplay on Gaia Online, based of the game Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Essentially, it is a continuation. The plot can be summed up as this: The seven sages of Hyrule are losing their powers because of the Big Bad ( who is actually the Light Sage, Rauru ). Zelda accompanies Link and Sheik ( who has been rendered as separate from Zelda, obviously )to what is basically an alternate Hyrule, much like our world, to retrieve the seven sages incarnated there. The group returns to Hyrule in the time of Twilight Princess, where everything has gone to Hell, because the Hero and Princess went missing for hundreds of years. The new group consists of: Action Girl Aadrian, White Prince Arthmeal, Shrinking Violet Pan, Nice Guy Kyo, The Nondescript James ( the last two had gone missing early on ). Upon reaching the temple of time, Aadrian, the action girl, encounters the image of the one person she's terrified of, and is saved by the usually cowardly Arthmeal. This, however, is NOT the Crowning Moment. The crowning moment occurs when Kyo, who had been cursed by the rouge Sage Rauru, sees his Love Interest ( Sheik ) in danger. Up until this point, Kyo had essentially been complete Nice Guy. He was somewhat shy, laid-back, and bit of a Papa Bear to his friends. Cue giant monster about to axe his boyfriend, during which he promptly turns around, unlocks his Sage powers, breaks the monsters axe in half with his bare hands and drives the monsters out of the temple.
 * Found this in our entry on Moe Moe:


 * Yes, something actually elicited a shred of humanity from 4chan. The four horsemen should be arriving any moment now.
 * Similarly, 4chan loves Yotsuba&! in the same way the rest of us do, by really liking her. Not the usual version of love for which 4chan is known. If 4chan goes out of their way to protect you, that is something. It definitely helps that she is ridiculously cute and pretty awesome herself.
 * On a multiverse-themed MUSH, this troper's most recent character was Bandora from Zyuranger. How was she introduced? A battle for Candyland between Dora Boogaranan (also known as Terror Toad from Power Rangers) and Guy Shishioh. During which Boogaranan ate DrillGao II, in the middle of Final Fusion. And then ate GaoFar. Fortunately for the forces of good, the Genesic Machines then showed up to save the day. It was a battle that showcased the best of mecha Anime and Tokusatsu.
 * This Troper, who is a shameless nerd, was part of a collaborative fan-fiction in which a bad guy powered himself up to insane levels with a pocket gamma generator and pretty much conquered the world. The fan-fic died before she could actually complete her storyline, but it involved a small group of engineers, only one of whom was superpowered, human-rating a capsule that had only undergone two uncrewed tests, and secretly launching themselves into space to rendezvous with the (long since abandoned in this continuity) space station, recover a magnetic shield experiment, return to Earth without being intercepted and modify the shield to cut the villain off from his power source so the actual superheroes could beat the stuffing out of him.
 * When a fourth game was released on a social networking/gaming site this troper frequents, everyone went into a mad frenzy, with the join button being mashed for about 10 minutes by everyone. Fast forward to 36 hours later. The game, a version of Survivor, involved group and personal water and food levels that were essential to survive. Everyone by this point was starting to die of thirst, with some tribes already running out of water with no storm clouds on the horizon, to the glee of their respective opposing tribes. One such tribe had no rainy weather approaching, but had a good storage of water and food. They were also facing Tribal Council, and straight after the individual immunity challenge, one member of the tribe informs the other that they were probably going home, since everyone unanimously voted for them. Their response? They drink all of the water and eat all of the food, singlehandedly destroying any chance of the whole tribe surviving, and saving the opposing tribe from oblivion. 30 minutes and several Crowning Moments of Funny later, the rest of the tribe resolve to keep their former target because she was now unbelievably strong and therefore would do very well in the challenges. All this because she scored a 0. Once.
 * On the little-known Halo Versus Star Wars RPG forum, this Troper saw an amazing CMOA. This Troper was playing an online Role Playing game based on Halo and Star Wars. One of the players decided to bring Warhammer 40K into the mix, so the resident Administrator set up a separate topic for the battle with the Warp. After about eight pages of battling, the Administrator decided that enough was enough and the site needed to get back to its original purpose. He pulled out an amazing game-ender and Crowning Moment of Awesome involving his main character (who is a Blank) and an ancient piece of technology that amplified the Blank field (not canon, I know.) The character suped up the amplifier so much that the machine went into a state of hyperactivity. It unleashed the pent-up "Blank energy" in the middle of the Eye of Terror like a cosmic bomb, destroying the Four Gods and the Warp itself. (What follows is the actual quote, remove if too long.)
 * "The shields dropped. The weapons died out. The hull plates began to shift and slide around, reconfiguring themselves into an eight-pointed star. At the center sat a glowing red orb, with a yellow-tan figure floating in the middle of it. The Eye of Horus. The star began to spin, slowly, but quickly gaining speed. Different points split off and rotated in different directions around the center. All the while, the glowing red orb became brighter and brighter, until it looked like a true star. Beams of light gyrated around it as the spinning points of the Star of Chaos rotated at immense speeds. A subsonic thrum could be heard, even through the emptiness of the Eye of Terror. Then, it stopped. Instantly, without slowing, stopped dead. The center glowed even fiercer, bright white streaked with reds, blues, and oranges. The eight points of the star glowed an iridescent green, then disappeared into the central orb. The tips of the points disappeared, and the orb collapsed in on itself, shrinking until it became the glowing outline of the armored figure within. He looked up at the enemy fortress bearing down upon him, and spat a curse that was heard throughout the Warp. Then he exploded. There was no blinding flash, no searing flame, no scream of superheated gasses. There was only an all-pervading squeal, heard from within by every psyker, every daemon, every Warp-spawned terror. The Four Gods themselves felt its agony. Anyone and anything connected to the Warp was cut off from it in an instant. Ethereal beings vanished, Psykers were blinded, Daemons were obliterated. The last, desperate act of Church Tucker Daniels was to unleash his full negative energy ability. Waves of it swept over the Warp, causing turmoil and agony to the Immaterium itself. And then, it quieted. Daniels was gone. No trace remained that he had ever been there, save for the widespread destruction throughout thousands of galaxies. Even through the Rift, the Warp was struck at by this one major blow."
 * One happened recently in the R 41 NBOW RUMPUS P 4 RTY TOWN memo in Pesterchum 4.13, a fan-made chat client designed to look like the one used in Homestuck - it consisted of this troper as Dante, another person as Doom Rider (who, for those who don't know, is a coked-up Ghost Rider Expy), Bowser and Mario in a Mario Kart-esque race around the memo where the winner got to kidnap the "Princess" (also known as Roxy Lalonde), Bowser won, but dante, who was on foot and devil triggered, came in second with Doom Rider in 3rd and Mario as a DNF. during the race there was wailing guitars, blue shells, bullet bills and the speed of light being breached. see the full log here (warning: it is quite long)

Machinima

 * In the works of Oxhorn, from this alone, any and all of the musical numbers.

ARGs

 * Just what the hell was eon8? Nothing. But for a few weeks, the whole internet was wondering. And that was the point. Apparently, putting up a mysterious web page with a target-dotted map of the world and veiled references to various plans (and codebooks!) can freak out thousands of people quite easily if you cover your tracks well enough.
 * The March 1, 2010 update for Portal was a big Crowning Moment for both the run-of-the-mill internet user and Valve alike. For the users, Valve first mysteriously released an unannounced update, the first in a long while. This update added an achievement, green lights to the radios, and a static affect when a radio is taken to a certain location. Working together, the users of both Steam User's Forums and Facepunch found the meaning to the code in some of the sound files, ran the other static files through a program that made pictures out of sound, solved the mystery of the photos, connected to a BBS connection, and worked until the official announcement of Portal 2. For Valve, they put together the puzzle, knowing that those of the Internet would solve it so they could safely announce the game. Truly a memorable moment for all those involved, solving and spectating.

"Dad's Home!"

 * The titular Dad of Dad's Home is so badass he deserves his own category. Among the many things he does:
 * Puts out a fire that spontaneously ignited on the top of his head using the family cat.
 * Jams a television set through the door of a fridge.
 * Lassos a keg of beer from a moving truck and punches through the top, then kicks the keg clear across the street into someone else's house
 * Pulls a broadsword out of his mouth, then smushes a fly with the flat side and throws it so it impales the neighbour's mailbox
 * Snaps his fingers to disappear in an explosion and teleport to the front door with his head again on fire (before again using the cat to put it out
 * Shoots Frickin' Laser Beams out of his eyes
 * Pulls the old "whisk a sheet from under a table of plates and glasses without knocking them over" trick while balanced on one leg, then kicks the table over
 * When the police finally arrive, he calls down a bolt of lightning to hit him and give him a totally bitching electric guitar, then creates a stage and massive speakers out of the ground and finishes by rocking out to a guitar arrangement of the F-Zero theme.
 * Really, this is all summed up by the end - "And so, Dad was able to avoid having to face the consequences for his inexplicable acts of random violence... by rocking out really hard."
 * "Also, his head caught fire again. What's up with that?"
 * And the moments get added onto in "Dad's at Work." For starters, nearly every sudden movement he makes explodes, if not sounds like a gunshot.
 * And then in the newly released Dadgame, you take control of this unbelievably badass fellow and ruin your boss' shit as a starting level in story mode (he deserves it). He then goes on to:
 * Block a ninja's attacks with his briefcase.
 * Fight the police force single handedly.
 * Defeat a slew of robots.
 * Defeat the creator of the game himself.
 * And completely obliterate the town's mall.
 * And at the end they had a barbeque. It was nice.
 * And at the end they had a barbeque. It was nice.

Youtube Poop

 * WalrusGuy's last poop.
 * Not really a YTP...but it kind of is...but it isn't. No matter how you look at it, though, this video is awesome!
 * The beginning of "MEET THE SPECTATOR": The Engineer playing "Smoke on the Water." Also a Crowning Moment of Funny.

Wargaming

 * In The Battle of Brunei, a 1998 MBX using the Harpoon and Tac Ops systems as a ruleset, a player on the US side received from the GM an intercepted weapons purchase order between Iran and Malaysia. He spotted the word "Kockums" and did some internet research. Then he got a blurred pic of a submarine from the GM and figured out it was one of two sub types- much faster than the GM expected. The later US anti-submarine effort that resulted probably saved a couple of US ships.
 * After reading the transcript of that epic campaign, this troper is more inclined to declare the whole game a meta-CMOA for all involved!
 * This troper's Daemon Prince (the model used was a white-painted assemblage of Green Stuff that does a good job of looking like the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog) once shredded its way through twenty Space Marines, five Terminators, and a Dreadnaught without taking a single wound.
 * In Surge Into The Barents (transcript on the eighth post. The forum is full of spam) a forum-based game of Harpoon, two of the NATO subs this troper's side had to hunt down and destroy launched three Harpoon missiles at the ASW group. Fully expecting the ships to take damage, he was hugely surprised when all three sea-skimmers were shot down by eight SA-N-4s, a ratio of 2 1/3 to 1, well above expected results (the SA-N-3s couldn't do anything). Then, the Ka-25 "Hormone" flying from the "Kresta" successfully located one of the submarines, got a firing solution on it, then dropped its torpedo, followed by the "Kresta" launching a stand-off weapon of its own. Both hit, sinking the submarine.
 * In 1981, a computer scientist from Stanford University named Doug Lenat entered the Traveller Trillion Credit Squadron tournament, in San Mateo, California.
 * In a 25 mm-scale Napoleonic minatures game, one player was noted for having the entire Grand Armee - 600,000 beautifully painted figures. We didn't know just how complete the army was until a counter representing the "Fog of War" was replaced by what appeared to be a regiment of Imperial Guard cavalry...but which, on closer inspection, was revealed to be the Imperial Guard's BAND. And, as 18th and 19th Century regiments vied to make their bands as flashy as possible, the figures were things of utter beauty. It was simultaneously a CMOA and a Crowning Moment of Funny.
 * Along the dame lines, someone was demoing a system for wargaming those plastic army men (called War P.I.G.'s (for Plastic Infantry Guys)). Pretty standard teams - we had more guys, they had a tank. Naturally, our first priority was to shoot the tank. In fact, whenever anyone started saying "Maybe..." the other people would interrupt "Shoot the tank!" As it happened, my squad was a bunch of riflemen, with one kick-ass sniper. The designer/referee/gamemaster ruled that I could shoot AT the tank, but it would take three sixes (the game used three six-sided dice, all rolled at once, to determine results) to take it out (yes, I know the odds were one in a million, not the one in 216 this implied, but hey, I wasn't going to object, and the other side didn't). Naturally, I managed to roll the one-in-216 that would explode the tank on the next roll. (We reached a negotiated settlement that the lucky hit didn't destroy the tank, just did lots of damage to the crew.)

The Talmud

 * Undoubtedly the most hilariously awesome moment in the Talmud is in Bava Metzia 59b. Rabbi Eliezer insists that his interpretation of the law is correct, despite being in a minority of one, and God himself speaks from Heaven to say "Uh, guys, he's right about this one." And then Rabbi Joshua tells God to butt out. And CITES SCRIPTURE for that request (Deuteronomy 30:12). And God backs off.
 * Before that, R. Joshua had already gotten the walls of the building they were in to stop caving in just by saying, "HEY! We're studying Torah in here! You stay out of this!"

Stand-Up Comedy

 * In Bill Cosby's show "49," he mentions arguments during the early years of marriage, which his wife would always win simply by sucking her teeth and rolling her eyes, which infuriated Bill. But after fifteen years, he discovers revenge by ignoring his wife when she calls him from another room, causing her to walk in furious, and Bill pretends that he did not hear her. And he ends this bit with: "She knows I heard her, but she can't prove it!"

NaNoWriMo

 * Admit it, when you get down to it, actually finishing the novel is a CMoA all by itself.
 * Just getting to 50k words certainly feels more like a Crowning Moment of Awesome, especially for first timers.
 * Definitely.
 * Plenty of people have had their NaNoWriMo novels published. Presumably, they spent the other 11 months editing.