Mundane Made Awesome/Western Animation

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • You would think that after having done that countless times Gargoyles would stop taking dramatic poses before petrifying at sunrise. Nope.
    • If you were going to pose for a statue that potentially hundreds of people would see for the next 12 hours, wouldn't you strike the most impressive pose possible? And if you could get a do-over every 24 hours, why not do it better?
    • Plus, they have an interest in maintaining their camouflage, and preserving a threatening image.
  • According to director Brad Bird, The Incredibles was built to be a combination of "the mundane and the fantastic". It indeed did its job well.
  • Various characters in Invader Zim made frequent use of the trope, in conjunction with stylized expressions and loud vocalizations. The very first instance would have to be:

Professor Membrane: Quiet, son! I'm making (large field of electricity crackles)... toast!

    • Also the episode title (rendered in foot-high solid lettering, one word at a time, while spinning through space) -- "ZIM EATS WAFFLES"
    • And also the episode "Germs", where Zim embarks on the vital and life-threatening mission of... cleaning his house.
    • The one episode where Dib gets powers, and showed off how awesome it was by sliding from the 2nd floor to the first, outside of his house, threw toast, butter, and orange juice in the air, all forming to make breakfast, which he also ate in the air.
    • Another Zim example, this one from a crossover: this scene in Nicktoons: Globs of Doom has him bragging about mundane tools as if they were killer weapons of destruction (complete with fanfare):

Zim: Eh, this squeaky toy will do you no good. You need the plunger OF DOOOOOOOOMMMMMM!!!!

    • 5 words: "A room...with a moose!"
    • FBI Warning of Doom. Zim tries to return a movie, while a crazed mall cop tries to stop him. (Because it was after hours.) The whole ordeal ends with the cop trying to stop Zim with a zombie army. However, it can all be summed up with this one line:

Video Clerk: If that movie isn't in our drop box by the time we open tomorrow, you're gonna have to paaaaaaayyyyy..... late fees!

    • There was one episode where GIR threw a sandwich at Dib's head. He threw it so hard that it sent Dib flying through the air and crashing through the wall of the nearest building.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants
    • "Procrastination". As the name implies, SpongeBob grapples with his denial for hesitation in writing a 800-word essay. In one of his many time-wasting gimmicks, he spends an implied ludicrous amount of time and effort writing the "The" at the start of the paper, so the sequence ends up just looking "awesome" instead of being the Hard Work Montage it initially appears to be.
    • The opening scene of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie features a dramatic scene based around the "crisis" of a customer being given a Krabby Patty without cheese, complete with a slow-motion sequence of SpongeBob putting some cheese into the patty. It's a Dream Sequence, but still...
    • Any time the Krabby Patty is brought to the audience’s attention by SpongeBob, or at least when it focuses on him making krabby patties.
    • When a customer gets a Patty with jellyfish jelly added, he's so enthused that he bursts into an impromptu musical number: "LISTEN to me, everybody! I just had a sand-wich! It's no ordinary sand-wich!"
    • In one of the "Legends of Bikini Bottom" episodes, SpongeBob is unconscious due to his Krabby Patty meter being empty. Mr. Krabs gets him to eat one. He then blasts up, explodes into pieces, then regenerates after all of them land together, and then...

"OHHHHHHHHH, YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!"

  • South Park episode "Good Times With Weapons". The boys playing around with weapons is turned awesome with an Art Shift and the use of Shōnen manga fighting anime tropes, complete with an upbeat makeshift J-pop song in the background.
    • The episode "D-Yikes!," a parody of Three Hundred 300, features Mrs. Garrison making coffee.
      • In that same episode, an unknown lesbian character takes a potato chip... and eats it.
    • Lice Capades is worth a mention. "KEL-LAY!" And cutting to the lice being blown away and horribly dying -- while the kid who got the lice is taking a shower and washing his hair.
    • There's also the Cartoon Wars episodes. In one example, after Stan learns that an Islamic terrorist attack may result from a portrayal of Mohammed in Family Guy and suggests they wait and see what happens, he follows it up by saying, "If we're still alive in the morning, (Dramatic Closeup) then we'll know we're not dead."
    • "It'll be the end of the world! ... of Warcraft."
      • In fact, the entirety "Make Love, Not Warcraft" fits this trope by somehow making the quest to kill one high-level World of Warcraft Griefer completely epic. Semi-justifiable, since this one player has somehow broken WoW's PvP rules, can kill Admins, and seems to be determined to kill every player in the game so many times that they get extremely frustrated and never want to play again.

(holding up a thumb drive) "Behold... the Sword of a Thousand Truths!"

  • Doctor Orpheus, in The Venture Brothers, has the ability to make his speech sound awesome (complete with dramatic music) -- regardless of what he's saying. ("Do not be too hasty in entering that room -- I had Taco Bell for lunch!")
    • "Greetings, Pumpkin, I am at Mr. Venture's lab to right that which is wrong and to repair the torn curtain of time itself! There are four puddings in the fridge. You may enjoy the contents of one of them. Dinner at six"
    • Monarch henchmen 21 and 24 manage to make putting on their uniforms and getting into a car awesome by singing "Mars, Bringer Of War."
      • Granted, doing that in perfect synch with each other while being out of earshot is pretty awesome.
  • Done occasionally in Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends, normally to emphasize or Lampshade how low-key the goings-on are for a show where fantastic beings spring to life on a whim.
  • In Perfect Hair Forever, anything Astonomicat does other than sitting around is accompanied by dramatic music -- even performing a background check on a computer.
  • Rocket Power replaces such things as Ominous Latin Chanting with embarassingly exaggerated attempts at being cool, especially in regard to extreme sports (being the premise of the show). Or, as the show puts it sick!!
  • Mildly spoofed in Avatar: The Last Airbender:

Sokka: I do believe it's my turn. I'm going to spend my vacation... IN THE LIBRARY!!!

Azula: We have defeated you for all time! You will never rise from the ashes of your shame and humiliation! ... [cheerfully] Well, that was fun!
Azula: That's a sharp outfit, Chan. Careful; you might puncture the hull of an empire-class Fire Nation battleship, leaving thousands to drown at sea! ... Because... it's so sharp.

    • "The Ember Island Players" was a recap of the series as a play, and they represented bending with streamers. It actually looks cooler than you'd think (choreography and special effects were about all they had going). There's also the fact that most scenes parodied are accompanied by the appropriate music (ex. the recreation of Aang getting hit by Azula's lightning has the same dramatic music playing despite how completely undramatic their performance was).
    • There's also when they were invading the Earth Kingdom palace and Sokka tried to kick down a big fancy door. He gives it a flying kick with a Stock Footage-esque background... and the door doesn't budge an inch.
    • Sokka's Haiku Battle (which the background music made it seem more like a Rap Battle.)
  • The duel over dumplings between Shifu and Po in Kung Fu Panda which ends the panda's training, starts out as this but by the end of the fight, when Po proves his mastery (and lack of upset) by claiming he's no longer hungry, it has crossed over to become a full-fledged Crowning Moment of Awesome, as evidenced by the spontaneous applause when this editor saw the movie on opening day.
  • WALL-E somehow manages to make the act of a fat guy standing up look unbelievably awesome. Complete with Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra (AKA "That really epic monolith music from the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey"). But considering the fact that it was probably the first time in his entire life that he managed to stand under his own power, and he was probably the only person in his or several previous generations to stand up, and he summoned the resolve to do so because the fate of humanity depended upon it, this was awesome.
  • Ratatouille turns SOUP-MAKING into the coolest freaking' thing ever!
    • Ratatouille in general could be considered the personification of this trope. As Pixar themselves said, it stars a rat (an animal liked by few and outright hated by many) who spends his time cooking (a subject that is not well known for its excitment), and is set in France. It was one of the best reviewed films of its year.
  • PIXAR enjoys this trick. Check out Carl's very precise morning routine in Up, with epic music contrasted with his resigned/bored old man expression. (The music is "Habanera" from the opera Carmen.)
  • Ninja Handyman, from Planet Sketch, solves mundane problems and, being a ninja, has to behave as if he had saved the day, big time.
  • Most Transformers' Kibbles and Bits (the bits of alt-mode that don't have a purpose in robot mode) just hang off their bodies uselessly. Bulkhead of Transformers Animated, however, can transform his kibble into a chair. This is considered by the fandom to be pretty awesome, especially since one of his toys can actually do this.
  • In an episode of Samurai Jack after the Scotsman has rescued Jack from a bunch of sirens they have a series of contests to decide who would be the one to row back. The contests culminated in a thumbwrestling match, complete with close-ups on their thumbs and faces all while in slow motion.
  • The Tick (animation)'s speeches.
    • Especially, "Arthur! I'm doing laundry!" which may very well be one of the defining moments for this trope.
  • Danny Phantom, mainly in the episode "Identity Crisis." Super Danny seems to permanently have a breeze around him, even when he's standing still.
    • "This looks like a job for...the vacuum cleaner!" (Followed by him cleaning the room by riding the vacuum cleaner.)
    • "I'm more than alright! I'm DANNY FENTON!" (Cue dramatic lighting.)
    • Speaking of which, the aforementioned Zim Globs of Doom scene takes place in, yes, Amity Park.
  • In The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, a huge monstrous ogre-type tries to defeat Captain K'nuckles in a poker game with, as he puts it: "Pair of... TWOOOOOOOOOOSS!!" (He loses, naturally).
    • With a pair of threes no less.
  • Fillmore! was built on this trope. Middle school is Serious Business!
  • Phineas and Ferb practically runs on this trope. For example, the episode "Tip of the Day" ended with a crowd song about aglets (you know, those plastic things on the ends of a shoelace (their true purpose is sinister)).
    • "Raging Bully": After accidentally causing Buford to drop Ice Cream on himself, Phineas is challenged to a duel, and the entire episode has them set up a boxing ring, going through a Rocky-style training montage... all for a thumb war! THE MOST EPIC THUMB WAR EVER, even with an overly excited commentator!
    • One episode features dramatic zooming and music whenever a character announces something they're going to do; one time there's nothing to actually zoom in on but a random patch of sky, forcing Ferb to jump in at the last moment.
    • From the movie we have a song about how everything, including blinking, breathing and sitting on a chair, is better with Perry. Although this becomes a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming after the movie is over.
  • John Redcorn on King of the Hill is frequently introduced with blowing leaves and a signature musical leitmotif in the style of a Magical Native American, but he's usually just going about his mundane business.
    • There is the episode where Hank is constipated. Probably the only episode of any show that can make pooping a dramatic and climactic event that ends the episode on a ridiculously positive note. The climax: when Hank flushes, Beethoven's 9th starts playing.
  • Family Guy had that episode where Peter and friends became The A-Team. They fixed a chair complete with heroic music playing.
    • The one where a disinfection work turns into a major, dramatic action scene, with every trope played straight for maximum hilarity.
  • In The Simpsons episode "Rome-Old and Juli-Eh," Bart and Lisa wage an epic war with the American Shipping Service, directly referencing key battle scenes from The Lord of the Rings, over the right to use complimentary shipping boxes to build a play-fort.
  • In Justice League: The New Frontier, after giving a bonafide rousing speech uniting superhumans and uniformed military for the first time since the Cold War started, Superman finishes with this:

"I'm going to fly out now and recon this thing. When I get back, we'll work out a strategy. Are you with me?

[Cue assembled multitudes of hard-bitten warriors, cheering loudly for the idea of sitting around for a while, and then figuring out what they're going to do later on that afternoon]

Pidge (playing air guitar): GRISTLE DEFENSE SYSTEM! GRISTLE DEFENSE! GRISTLE DEFENSE! (Hunk joins.) BWAH BWAH!

Dr. Weird: Gentlemen! Behold! The thermo... stat! *epic zoom in*
Steve: That's been there.
Dr. Weird: Observe... as I... adjust the heat! *maniacal laughter*

  • beat*

Steve: Is it on?
Dr. Weird: You... tell me! *maniacal laughter* Oh, oh, WAIT! *bursts into flame*

  • The Looney Tunes Show features Daffy Duck: The Wizard, a Heavy Mithril Power Ballad about Daffy doing incredibly mundane things like blowing up a hot dog in a microwave or crossing the street juxtaposed with the kind of stuff you'd expect from a Power Metal music video.
  • In How the Grinch Stole Christmas, a waiter arrives, bringing a covered dish, in which there's a smaller waiter with a smaller covered dish, and so on and so on, until the smallest opens his dish to reveal...an apple.
  • Adventure Time's use of this trope is par for the course, but special mention must be made of SUPER ULTIMATE HIGH-FIVE GO!!! Finn and Jake decide that, as cool as their high-fives get, they can make them even better, and this eventually culminates in the two of them catapulting hands-first across a good chunk of the world. They're flying for most of the episode, and they finally connect, entirely by coincidence, over a talent competition which they promptly win because the stunt was just that cool.
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