Refuge in Audacity/Real Life: Difference between revisions

** Jack Churchill was this incarnate. He was captured (while playing said bagpipes) and sent to a prison. He just walked out. He was captured again. Once again he walked out and made it back to England.

*** And upon his arrival, he ''demanded'' to be [http://www.cracked.com/article_17019_5-real-life-soldiers-who-make-rambo-look-like-pussy.html put back on the front lines.] Unfortunately for him, the war was over by that point... which also explains how he was able to walk out of the prisons. He was in Yugoslavia fighting as a British liaison among partisans, and formed a thousand-man strong partisan army to raid an island in the Adriatic. He was the only man in his unit not to ultimately be killed, and the Germans found him playing a mournful tune on his bagpipes. Existing in the company of Partisans was a kill-on-sight offense for the Germans, but they thought he was of more use alive, and so interrogated him in Berlin before consigning him to Sachsenhausen. Sachsenhausen the ''concentration camp.'' Sachesenhausen, the ''infamous'' concentration camp. Sachsenhausen, the infamous concentration camp designed to be able to be effectively and securely guarded by ''one machine gun'' if necessary due to the camp's panopticon design. [[Cardboard Prison|He escaped]]. He was recaptured, and was transferred by the SS to the Tirol with 139 other high-value prisoners. There, a regular army unit, concerned that the SS would execute the prisoners out of hand, intervened to save their lives, and after the SS decided not to contest the issue, set the prisoners free. Churchill and a companion walked down German-occupied Northern Italy, finally being rescued by an American armored unit in the last days of the war. After recuperation, he was to be sent to Burma, but Hiroshima and Nagasaki intervened. His reaction? "If it wasn't for those damned Yanks, we could have kept the war going for another ten years." This man was certtainly a walking, talking breathing example of [[Refuge in Audacity]].

* While not as outrageous as Wallenberg, Oskar Schindler's similar work on behalf of the Jews deserves recognition here. Schindler's [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]] was successfully ''ordering'' Nazi soldiers to return a trainload of Jewish children en route to the death camps, through sheer force of personality, by declaring the children to be "essential workers" (a protected class of Jews with skills vital to Germany's war effort) in his munitions factory. A munitions factory that he operated for several years using (and protecting) many Jewish workers, while deliberately never producing a single working artillery shell. Yes, [[Captain Obvious|this is the same Schindler]] that [[Steven Spielberg]] [[Schindler's List|wrote a film]] about.

* [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1252/is_21_126/ai_58675361/ Giorgio Perlasca] is the incarnation of this trope: he was an Italian businessman who posed as the Spanish consul-general to Hungary when Spanish embassy was moved to Switzerland. Apparently him and Wallenberg were the ones going constantly saving people (Perlasca was in Budapest too). He saved thousands of people without any authority at all and menaged to fool the Nazis, the Hungarian government and everyone else. For ''three months''. His best [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]] was [[Heroic Bystander|naming himself Spanish consul]], but another memorable one was saving two children from ''Adolf Eichmann'', throwing them in his car and saying the car was ''Spanish jurisdiction and taking them would have caused a diplomatic incident between Spain and Germany''. Even Wallenberg was without words, and that means ''a lot''.

* Some of the escape attempts from various POW camps in [[World War II]] were utterly ludicrous yet (on occasion) successful. At Colditz alone one man almost escaped by crossdressing (being foiled alas by a fellow-POW's politeness), others nearly made it out via a tunnel exiting in high-ranking German's office and one man simply vaulted the wire acrobatically and legged it. And the glider built by a group on inmates including Douglas Bader (a man worthy of many a trope himself) near the end of the war.

** In fact, just go read The Colditz Story and The Wooden Horse (another escape book that really happened). The sheer audacity and cunning of the prisoners is worthy of any fictional character.

** So daring was the raid, along with countless incidents of [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]], five Victoria Crosses were awarded to the raiders, more than in any other operation.

** Operation Chariot aka The Saint Nazaire Raid is taught today at military academies (but otherwise virtually unknown) and is called [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgF0R4dhUqk The Greatest Raid of All Time]

* When the Nazis gained power and began cracking down on the German film industry, Jewish actor Peter Lorre and one of his friends drove out to an isolated area to destroy various documents that "incriminated" their friends as prime blacklist material (or worse). When a policeman caught them burning the documents, Lorre successfully convinced the cop that they were filming a scene for his next movie and asked for his help. The policeman happily helped them destroy all the documents and left with an autograph. The best part? ''The pair had no film equipment with them whatsoever.''

* Almost anything involving the phrase "World War II" and the word "destroyer." (Where did the "World War II destroyer captains" section of [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]] get off to, anyways?)

** So fiercely did the Americans fight that when a destroyer was finally sunk it was listed by the Japanese as a ''cruiser''.

* One group of German prisoners in an internment camp during [[WW 2]]. They weren't allowed to have radios, but wanting to know how the war was going, they built a radio into the seat of a chair. The camp commander suspected they had a radio and had their rooms searched repeatedly. Each time, the commander came along to see that the search was done properly. Each time, the prisoners offered him a chair - the one with the radio in it. Each time, the chair wasn't searched, because the commander was sitting on it. After the war, one of the ex-prisoners told the commander how it was done; the commander apparently thought it was pretty funny.

* Vaclav Havel, Czech President, famously prescribed his way of dealing with living under the insanity and irrationality of communist oppression in the '70s and '80s: he said that regardless of what the communists attempted to impose on him, he lived his life ''as if'' he were truly free.

* Michael O'Leary, CEO of Ryanair, and his outrageous list of suggestions for cutting costs on his airline. One of the best was the idea of increasing the number of passengers by replacing some of the seats with standing room. When this was mocked in the press as being utterly ridiculous a spokesman responded by saying it was just a joke, but one gets the impression that if it had been better received there would be people standing for their plane journeys right now.

* All of British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen's characters - Ali G (a white guy pretending to be black who does interviews in character with very important political figures), [[Borat]] (a clueless and, let's face it, ''tactless'' most-of-the-time news reporter from a fictional version of Kazakhstan), and [[Bruno]] (a [[Flamboyant Gay]] fashion reporter for Austrian Gay TV); most of the sketches focus on real people not in on the joke taking their outrageous statements at face value. Since no one living above ground is taken in anymore, Cohen no longer uses them in public.

** King Julien XIII

* This and [[Bavarian Fire Drill]] were [[Catch Me If You Can|Frank Abagnale's]] bread and butter. Exploits include taking charge of his school's French class on his first day, and bluffing the agent chasing him by, when asked for his identification, giving him a wallet filled with soda bottle labels and chatting with him as he walks right out the door. All when he was a teenager.

* Vassilis Paleokostas. Greek bank robber and kidnapper for ransom. Escaped from prison with a helicopter. TWICE.

** Special mention to the guy who used a ''power line'' as a zip-line.

*** And the two guys who escaped over a different wall out of Communist Eastern Europe, using home-made chairs that ran along high-voltage power lines (the kind you find up the tall steel towers). (The just had to climb up the last tower before the border, hook on the chairs, cross to the next tower, and climb down in a different country. The first half of the trip across was easy. Getting up the slope to the other tower, not so much.)

** Nope. That one is easily topped by the Pope and the Patriarch excommunicating ''each other'' after a spat, resulting in a rift between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches that has continued to the present day.

* Read Silvio Berlusconi's [http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Silvio_Berlusconi Wikiquote page and marvel at how he stayed in office] as Italian Prime minister for 17 years. And the [[You Answered Your Own Question|probable ties with the Mafia]] and multiple scandals. One gets the feeling that if he hadn't been voted out, a good number of his countrymen wouldn't really have minded too much if someone invaded them on a mission of liberation from the <s>man</s> trope.

{{quote| After the family of Eluana Englaro (who had been comatose for 17 years) succeeded in having her right to die recognised by the judges and getting doctors to start the process of allowing her to die in the way established by the court, Berlusconi issued a decree to stop the doctor from letting her die. Stating that, "This is murder. I would be failing to rescue her. I'm not a Pontius Pilate", '''Berlusconi went on to defend his decision by claiming that she was [[Dude, She's Like, in A Coma|"in the condition to have babies"]],[89] arguing that comatose women were still subject to menstruation'''.}}

** You forgot [[Sarcasm Mode|this gem]], said during the Sme trial.

** Although he was turned down, the fact that when, offered a position as a Major-General for the Union in 1861, he demanded total command of the US Army serves as a good example of his Modus Operandi.

* OJ Simpson's [[Sarcastic Confession]].

** She got fired, though.

* [[The Chaser]] managed to [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|get through the heavy security]] at the 2007 APEC summit using nothing but a Canadian flag, [[The Guards Must Be Crazy|fake passes which actually said "fake" and "it's pretty obvious this isn't a real pass"]], and a heavy helping of this trope.

** And deftly managed to convince NASA to name space equipment (namely the space station's new treadmill) after him. He almost got his name on a ''node'' of the Space Station, but failed. His sheer audacity is one of the things that make him an appealing performer.

** Tried running for President of the United States in 2008, pretending to be sponsored by ''Doritos'', in South Carolina ONLY.

*** It turned out that you had to be Hungarian and dead in order to qualify. Colbert had the Hungarian ambassador come on his show; he greeted him in Hungarian, and the Hungarian ambassador said that he'd passed the first criterion -- and if he'd care to come see the bridge, the ambassador was sure that the second could also be arranged!

** And was summoned by congress to speak about illegal immigrant workers on farm, citing him being a specialist on the topic for having worked ONE DAY like an illegal worker.

** [http://www.discord.org/~lippard/skeptic/03.3.jl-jj-scientology.html#blood The "Miss Blood" incident] is the most famous example of this.

* Happyology's Sea Org contract goes for a billion years, including future reincarnations. An [[Collegiate American Football|NCAA]] (all sports, not just football) contract for the use of a player's image lasts '''"forever and throughout the universe"'''. At least the college won't sue the player if they decide to leave...

** When asked where did his daughter disappear, [[Fridge Brilliance|he answered something like]]: "She had joined a (Satanic) cult". In front of [[Berserk Button|rural, devoted Catholics]]. Nobody asked any more questions after such an answer.

* [http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i3Ks-O5KRBNdsoFYisncgDeWIi7AD96HFAN80 Two people escape from maximum security prison in a helicopter]. That isn't what makes it an example, what makes it an example is that they were in prison awaiting trial for doing it BEFORE. The fact that you can get away with having a fan club for the two of them says a lot.

* ''[HitmanForHire.net]''. If it hadn't been for a terrified woman going to FBI after the "hitman" tried to blackmail her, they might have never realized the man behind it was soliciting actual offers.

* In his ''Dress to Kill'' show, [[Eddie Izzard]] points out that "[hitler] was a mass murdering fuckhead as many important historians have said. But there are other mass murderers who got away with it. Stalin killed many millions, died in his bed. Well done there. Pol Pot killed 1.7 million Cambodians, died under house arrest, age 72. Well done, indeed. And the reason we let them get away with it is because they killed their own people. And we're sort of fine with that. Oh, help yourself, you know we've been trying to kill you for ages, so you kill your own people... Seem to me Hitler killed people next door. Oh, stupid man. After a couple of years: well we won't stand for that, will we? Pol Pot killed 1.7 million people. We can't even deal with that. I think we think that if someone kills someone that's murder you go to prison. You kill ten people, you go to Texas they hit you with a brick, that's what they do. Twenty people, you go to a hospital and they look through a small window at you forever. And over that we can't deal with it. Y'know? Somebody's killed 100,000 people, we're almost going 'well done! You killed 100,000 people? You must get up very early in the morning.'"

** In Cambodia a man traverses shallow water in a small boat with his young son to gather hundreds of snakes to sell. When he gets home, his wife implores him to give some snakes to the girls to play with. The segment ends showing the girls wearing living snakes as bracelets and necklaces. <ref>This involves enough snakes to be [[Nightmare Fuel|nightmare fuel]] for people that aren’t scared of snakes. For those not staring in shocked horror, the little girls making jewelry out of small braided snakes is absurdly hilarious.</ref>

** A tribe in Indonesia that builds tree houses over 100 feet high. Once built they carry their dogs and pigs all the way up and let their toddlers wander freely because they "know the limits of how far they can go". The tree house is considered finished when they light a fire in it. <ref>The words ''sturdy, child-safe and fire-resistant'' do not describe this tree house. The flooring material is thin bark. The local safety standard is “I only know of one guy who fell out of one and died.”</ref>

** A man in the Himalayas wants to give his children a good education. This involves a seven day hike through frozen mountain passes and thawing rivers. When they reach the town with the school, the children are properly dressed in their school uniforms.<ref>This involves a dangerous trip more associated with taking the long way around to reach the final boss’s back door, than how kids get to school.</ref>

** Perhaps the most clear case of this is the Dorobo people in Kenya. An older man takes two younger men out to teach them an ancient method of getting meat. Said method turns out to be to find a pride of fifteen lions eating a wildebeest, walk up to them, cut off a leg, heft it over his shoulder and walk home. The lions apparently didn't believe it either. <ref>If the description didn’t do it, watch it, the Mike Rowe narrated version for Discovery is the best for this one. This is Refuge in Audacity applied to Man vs Nature instead of Man vs Society.</ref>

* Cracked.com has an article on [http://www.cracked.com/article_15892_the-5-ballsiest-con-artists-all-time.html the ballsiest con artists of all time.]

** And for a list of less selfish, but no less ballsy exploits, see [http://www.cracked.com/article_19089_the-7-most-heroic-con-artists-all-time.html?wa_user1=3&wa_user2=Weird+World&wa_user3=article&wa_user4=recommended here.]