The World Is Just Awesome

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Be sure to use appropriate music.
"Some kind of celestial event. No - no words. No words to describe it. Poetry! They should have sent a poet. So beautiful. So beautiful... I had no idea."
—Dr. Ellie Arroway, Contact

An event that's simply awesome for the cast and audience alike, usually showing just how amazing the world is. Examples usually, though not always, involve being in the air, as this allows for the whole world to be shown. Or, you know, large parts of it. The characters will all be in awe, and the music will be either super-upbeat, serene and full of reverb, or not there at all. Expect the art work to suddenly take itself more seriously than usual.

By looking at the character's expressions, you can tell that even they are impressed, so think how you should feel sitting there, watching/reading/playing this on your boring old earth. Expect comments like, "Amazing!" "Awesome!" "I can't believe it!" Also expect some lesser-awesome things to happen in the distance, like a sea serpent jumping out of the ocean, or a pack of dragon-wolves flying in the distance, or maybe a volcano erupting. In fact, all of the above will usually happen at the exact same time to make the world even more awesome. That, however, is mostly an introductory bonus, as the rest of the world will become "dull and boring" as the cast is Walking the Earth. All of these slightly-awesome happenings will happen only on and off at most and at specific moments.

This can happen at any point of the series, though usually at the beginning as a hook for the audience. If used at the beginning, it's usually done to show that the cast is moving away from their normal life. If used some where in the middle of the series, it's usually done to show how far they have come, in which case the characters will probably get a I Can See My House From Here moment. If used at the end, it might either be used for the previous example, or to show how the entire world has changed. Almost always, this will lead to the characters suddenly realizing that they're about to fall, thus ending the beautiful moment.

For Fantasy films with a romantic subplot, this is the moment when a boy takes a girl indifferent to him into a mindblower of an experience flying with the world's wonders in full view and realizing to her wonder what the boy can do. By the time they come in for a landing, the girl usually needs no more convincing that she is not letting this terrific guy go.

Sometimes, the camera is simply showing off the world ahead of you. This trope only works if the character would otherwise be amazed at the brave new world he has stepped into. If the character(s) is(are) otherwise not amazed, as the world would seem pretty boring to them, this trope doesn't work, though this usually happens at the very, very beginning since the setting has yet to be described.

Sometimes these moments happen during gameplay where you do something extra-awesome for the very first time. See also That's No Moon though that usually consists of fear, and Above the Ruins for when characters are looking down at something that's been destroyed. "They Should Have Sent a Poet" is an alternate trope namer. Not to be confused with thinking that Dio Brando's Stand is awesome.

See also Scenery Porn and Visual Effects of Awesome (may indeed be considered the cinematographer/animator/special effects crew's Moment of Awesome). Can make someone realize they have something Worth Living For.

Examples of The World Is Just Awesome include:

Advertising

  • Discovery Channel‍'‍s motto, as seen above, is like this. Their famous and often-parodied early-2000s advertisements to the tune of "Boom de Yada" makes this a variation, for this is our planet Earth, not a fictional universe, which makes it both a Crowning Moment of Awesome and a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming.
    • Of course, the MythBusters ended up ruining it a little by posting a blooper reel of Adam and Jamie trying to get their lines out for a similar commercial, eventually coming to a (joking) agreement that it was awesome "until (they) came along", and that it's now "going to Hell". Kinda fitting, actually, seeing as their part of the "Boom de Yada" commercial has Adam tied up and being boiled alive in a homemade hot tub by Jamie...
      • Or Adam lighting Jamie's sleeve on fire...
      • There was an earlier Discovery ad which had Jamie and Adam standing in a white room with the other planets of the solar system rolling by; Jamie explicitly states "I think the world is just awesome", noting how other planets are unsuitable for human life. Naturally, it ends with Adam wanting to blow something up.

Anime and Manga

  • Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann at the end of the first episode. The three main characters launch themselves through the earth's surface and high into the air, getting an overview of everything. Made more spectacular due to the drab colours being used up until that point.
    • Simon & Nia share one after Simon saves her from Guame.
    • There's a Call Back to that scene when one of Ms. Yomako's students climbs a really high tree.
    • And again a few episodes later, when Simon and the extras blast off into space. By this point, Simon is unimpressed with the view.
  • One Piece when the Going-Merry goes up Reverse Mountain.
    • And again, when they arrive at the halfway point of the Grand Line, about six years later (in real-world time.) The scene mirrors the previous Reverse Mountain sequence, and gives the characters a chance to reflect on how far they've come.
    • What about the Knock-Up Stream? That thing was pretty cool.
      • Most recently, the crew's dive down to Fishman Island shows the huge roots of the mangrove trees, with a pod of whales in the background. Then they come across a giant downward flowing current. Then a giant undersea chimney. Then Fishman Island itself, which is lit by the roots of a magical tree. Then the Sea Forest. One Piece takes Scenery Porn to an awesome extreme.
  • Kiki's Delivery Service, as Kiki swoops into the main setting.
  • Spirited Away, as the main character walks into the bath house.
  • Macross / Robotech: Arrival of the Zentraedi fleet.[context?]
  • In the Pokémon anime, a Pidgey dreams of flying into space. He does, and tells Meowth how beautiful the Earth is, before he can't fly any higher and descends.
  • Happens a lot in Rebuild of Evangelion. It's good to see that they're using all of the money from the franchise in a good way for a change.
  • Voices of a Distant Star: Several of these moments for Mikako: Seeing the Lysithea, the Jupiter/Io flux tube, the plains of Agartha (the last of which immediately preceeds an almighty Tear Jerker moment so be warned).
  • A much more down-to... well, earth example (but no less applicable) from Yotsuba&!: Yotsuba seeing the majority of her neighborhood from the top of a shrine.
  • Strike Witches has this in episode six of its second season. After scaling to astronomical heights to dispatch a Neuroi tower, Sanya and Eila use the moment to look at the Earth below, and also to make up after an earlier fight.
  • The Place Promised in Our Early Days borders between this and Scenery Porn, especially during the finale.
  • Appleseed's introduction to the city of Olympus after the dark and grey firefight that occurs beforehand simply screams of this trope. Basement Jaxx's 'Good Luck' is super upbeat as the camera pans over the awesome everyday lives of the citizens of Olympus city.
  • Chapter 4 of Silver Spoon pulls this off, notably, using only a few feet of elevation.
  • Used in the final chapter of Fullmetal Alchemist with Ed standing on top of his and Winry's house. Between this and the above example Hiromu Arakawa seems to be quite good at pulling these off using only using minimal height.

Comic Books

  • Pretty much every part of the Mars scene in Watchmen. Though it's more of "Mars Is Just Awesome But Earth Is Shit."
  • The comic 52 has a "the Multiverse is just awesome!" scene. "Welcome home."
  • A lot of the surrealism in The Sandman can be like this. A little girl becoming a bird, any scene where we are shown the castle of the Dreaming or in a dark version the palace of Lucifer, all the Gods visiting Morpheus in Season of Mists, Morpheus' hair and Delirium shaping little soap bubbles into a multitude of signs and figures in Brief Lives.
  • In a Star Wars: Empire comic, a number of Rebels land on a new world. A rather young Luke Skywalker has some time to kill [dead link], and he spends it running around exploring and looking at things [dead link] until he finds some graves [dead link].
  • Elf Quest somewhat subverts this: the character Skywise has spent his entire life obsessing over the stars, and finally gets a chance to fly a spaceship. He makes the walls of the ship translucent to show everyone the beauty of space, only to find that his best friend Cutter (the comic's main character, who suffers from fear of heights) just wants to close his eyes and get back to earth.

Film

  • When John Preston stops taking his meds in Equilibrium is this trope: his first look at the world outside is to see beauty for the first time, and we're carried along with it.
  • Contact. As well as the awe-inspiring sequence that contains the page quote - a staggering symphony of visual effects and music built around Jodie Foster's note-perfect performance - the movie opens with a amazing pullback that, starting from Earth orbit, proceeds to give you the faintest hint of just how INCREDIBLY HUGE the universe is, complete with a kind of audio time-travel, backwards through the history of broadcasting. Sadly, for hardcore geeks, the audio and video are not accurately synchronised, although for anyone else this surely counts as an Acceptable Break From Reality.
    • The same goes for the original pullback-into-the vastness-of-space short film Powers Of Ten, starting with a couple lying on a blanket in a park and pulling away until our entire galaxy is just a speck of light - then coming back, and zooming in to the atomic level.
  • Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Milo tears up a little as he looks down on the amazing underwater city of Atlantis from the top of a huge statue.
  • The Lion King, the very beginning.
  • In ET the Extraterrestrial, It's suggested ET finds Halloween this way.
    • Also when all the human characters get to see the aliens retrieve ET, who is still alive.
  • Close Encounters of the Third Kind
  • The starchild sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey
    • The first glimpse of The Monolith on the Moon.
  • The Matrix Revolutions has a scene near the end where a hovership breaks through the omnipresent cloud cover and into the sky. Up to this point, everything in the real world was under perpetual darkness (while everything in the Matrix had a sickly green hue). After two-and-a-half films worth of this visual oppressiveness, the sight of white clouds in a blue sky is shockingly beautiful, which Trinity notices.
    • Also, the nearly-full Moon, untouched and looking down on the troubled Earth as it always has.
  • Monty Python's The Meaning of Life shows us that the whole universe is awesome with the Galaxy Song.
  • WALL-E, once he boards the space craft. Or when he's viewing the universe. Wow indeed.
    • Especially when you remember an earlier scene; Wall-E may well have spent hundreds of years looking out at the empty sky. Being brought beyond the atmosphere means he gets to actually see what's out there for the first time.
  • Up
  • Toy Story, as Woody and Buzz fly through the sky.
  • Independence Day: Arrival of the City Destroyers.
    • And the ending in the desert as the main characters watch the flaming ruins of the invaders raining down. "Didn't I promise you fireworks", indeed.
  • Star Trek: V'ger, among others

Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Australia. New Guinea. Solomon Islands. Montana will be up soon, but you may want to hold your breath - it's a long way down!

  • Star Wars: The Death Star.
    • The double-sunset on Tatooine. Just... damn.
  • The film Home is all about this trope.
  • The 2008 movie of Journey to the Center of the Earth did this quite a bit with climbing the mountain and seeing the giant caverns, though the latter may be a little more ominous sometimes.
  • Disney's The Black Hole as seen here.
  • Titan A.E.. Overlooking the freshly made Planet Bob.
  • Avatar. It takes place on the moon of Pandora, where the life forms apparently evolved if only to be as spectacularly beautiful as possible, as the whole point of the film is they eye candy. There are plants like great sea anemones, telepathic trees and wafting creatures which glow.
  • The Lord of the Rings, which also counts as "New Zealand Is Just Awesome".
  • How to Train Your Dragon when Hiccup takes to the air with Toothless for the first time in a sustained flight, and then Astrid as she learns just how awesome the world is and what Hiccup and Toothless can do.
  • It's rare for films created for IMAX theaters not to invoke this trope.
  • The ending of Brainstorm.
  • During and after the song "A Whole New World" in Disney's "Aladdin".
  • Some scenes in Jurassic Park, where the theme music swells as the characters marvel at the dinosaurs.
  • The Sundance Festival film, Life In A Day. On July 24, 2010, people all around the world recorded their day, with the minds behind this experiment sending out 500 cameras to areas that wouldn't have the technology for this. What resulted was an entire day, summed up in less than two hours, covering issues such as the Afghanistan War, cancer, religion, slaughter houses, poverty, personal journeys, death, festivals, humor, birth, and sometimes? Just nothing important. And every minute was awesome.
  • The Pterodactyl flight sequence from Dinosaur.
  • Baraka
  • A weird variation in Soylent Green, which is set in Crapsack World future where the environment has been totally wrecked. Those members of society who have had enough and go in for voluntary euthanasia are treated to a video montage of what the world used to be like. So it's like The World Was Just Awesome before it got all fucked up.
  • In Apollo 13, the crew is forced to abort their moon landing after an accident, but to get home, they must orbit around the moon. During their orbit, they see their intended landing site, and flight commander Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks) imagines what it would've been like if they landed, walking, running his hands through the moon dust, and staring in awe at the distant Earth.
  • In Forrest Gump, near the end, when he is describing to Jenny what it was like to see the stars from a clear night in Vietnam, or to see the sun rise over a crystal lake while making his cross-country run through the desert.
  • The Tree of Life.
  • Subverted in A Serious Man. The youngest rabbi tries to get the main character to feel this way about life, opening the window and repeatedly telling him to "just look at that parking lot!"

Literature

  • The Giver at the end of the book. Jonas escapes his controlled world to discover a town celebrating, presumably, Christmas, as he sleds down a hill.
  • In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Arthur Dent is awed by the diversity of alien life, having lived on Earth all his life. The others don't fully appreciate his wonder.
    • There's a great little scene where Arthur is, naturally, awed by the sight of a double-sunset and goes on and on about how beautiful it was. And Marvin says: "I've seen it; it's rubbish."
    • Also: The Magratheans built luxury planets. In the film we see the earth being built FROM AN ELEVATOR IN SPACE!
      • The film also subverts this impulse with Slartibartfast's casual line, "Voila! Himalayas. Good, eh?" Arthur, meanwhile, is too overwhelmed to speak.
  • Around the World in Eighty Days.
  • The abandoned underground city of Moria in The Lord of the Rings.
    • Also Lothlorien and, according to Gimli and Legolas, the caves of Helm's Deep. JRR Tolkien really liked describing scenery.
  • In Alex Rider's sixth book, he's IN SPACE on a space station about to explode. He needs to get out quickly. He runs for the rocket but on the way he stops. Why? There's a window facing the Earth. He stops to stare at it. Let's face it, who would really want to waste an opportunity to do that?
  • In Animorphs, this is mentioned: when they're trapped on an alien ship, they look out the viewport and see the Earth, described as being beautiful.
    • Also, in in #7, the Ellimist shows the Animorphs scenery and calls them beautiful
  • In Deep Wizardry, when Nita and Kit bring Nita's parents to the Moon, and they look down at the Earth.
  • In the X Wing Series, Imperial City aka Coruscant under Imperial rule is seen from orbit a few times by people going to the surface. There's a little awe each time, especially since two of them had never seen it before. Loor thought he was going to be executed and couldn't keep himself from marveling at the immense scale of everything, and how many people must live there. Gavin was distracted by what looked like writing in some alien script.
    • In Rogue Squadron, Wedge and the Rogues lift of Novquizor on a mission, and Wedge takes a long look at the planet, promising himself that if he survives he'll walk around down there and soak up some of that peace.
  • In Robert A. Heinlein's Have Space Suit—Will Travel, Kip is awed seeing the three Galaxies from the intergalactic court station.
  • Most early Discworld books parody this, with the description of the approach of Great A'Tuin at the very beginning of the book.
    • Also played completely straight in descriptions of the spectacular Rimfall.
  • In Harry Potter, pretty much any time Harry goes to a new place in the wizarding world could count, especially in the first book. Special mention goes to the Great Hall, which he comments seems like it has no ceiling but just opens up into the heavens.
  • Frequently in certain parts of The Bible', especially the Psalms.
  • Explored in The Planck Dive, by Greg Egan. They did send a poet, and the mathematicians were thoroughly unimpressed by his complete inability to even comprehend what was going on, and adamant refusal to even make the attempt.
  • The Chalion books by Lois McMaster Bujold have this happen to people who've met the gods. They spend the rest of their lives trying to find a way to describe it, unsuccessfully.

"I need words mean more than they mean, words not just with height and width, but depth and weight and, and other dimensions that I cannot even name."

Live-Action TV

  • Anything to do with Planet Earth, but especially this music video/commercial.
  • Speaking of BBC nature documentaries:
  • Tell me you don't feel this when you watch the intro for Enterprise.
    • Heck, Star Trek opening sequences in general.
  • James May On The Edge Of Space!
  • Doctor Who does this all the time in the revived series, right from the get go.
    • The launch of the new series in 2005 was advertised with teasers of Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor promising new companion Rose - and the viewers - the "trip of a lifetime."
    • Most of the Doctor's companions are changed by their trips with the Doctor, making repeated references to not being the same. Most notably this applies to Sarah Jane Smith, Rose Tyler, Donna Noble and Amy Pond, but the rest of them as well.
    • Lampshaded by The Doctor a few times. In a DVD only scene with Amy Pond, he asks her if she knows "what he keeps in here", walking to the TARDIS doors. He opens them to say, "Absolutely everything.", whereupon he showed her that they were in deep space. He does this again in the Christmas Special, when, transporting a shark to the planet's clouds he responds to Abigail and young Kazran calling the TARDIS amazing.

The Doctor: No, this is just the transport. I keep amazing out here. (Opens TARDIS doors to reveal they're high above the planet in clouds full of schools of flying fish.)

  • Sarah Jane Smith continued the tradition in The Sarah Jane Adventures. In "The Warriors of Kudlak", she found herself looking at the Earth from a spaceship in orbit:

"I never thought I’d lay eyes on a sight like this again..."

  • Professor Brian Cox, so much so his style of delivery has been spoofed. (NSFW!) He could be talking about the end of the galaxy or our sun going supernova but by the time he's done talking, you'll be completely convinced that whatever he's talking about is the most heartbreakingly beautiful occurrence in existence.
  • The whole point of The Amazing Race. Racers tend to react like this when the race brings them in the presence of great natural beauty. Of course, there's also the subversion, usually brought on by bad interactions with locals, where racers declare that foreign cultures suck.

Music

Toys

He used his power to soar above the trees, taking in the majestic forest, beautiful rivers, rolling fields, and cybernetically enhanced giant reptiles.

    • Another subversion occurs in Bionicle Legends 4: Legacy of Evil, when the Piraka have just stumbled upon the island paradise of Mata Nui:

Incredibly bright and hot sunlight poured down on them from an impossibly blue sky. A salty sea breeze set tropical trees to swaying, while brakas monkeys chased sea birds that flew too close to the branches. The air was alive with the sounds of Rahi and the crash of distant surf against the rocks.
It was disgusting.

Video Games

  • X3 Terran Conflict- The opening scene features a quote from Neil Armstrong (see Real Life examples below).
  • Mother 3 has two, both dealing with traveling through the air. The first time, the party runs up a mountain, then sleds down it inside a fridge to fly through the air and back to their town. The second time, similarly, consists of the party traveling via a bird-powered... err, bird cage.
    • And in EarthBound, Jeff (or the whole party) will travel the world via the Flying Machine, swooping down over nearby places.
    • This trope is the very symbol of Mother series.
  • All of the 3D The Legend of Zelda games luxuriate in showing off their worlds. Upon entering an area for the first time. For Twilight Princess, they took things farther. They added specific areas that seem to serve no purpose other than to give the player a vantage point for looking at things. The top of the tower in the desert, at about the middle of the game, offers a great place to marvel at the sheer size and scope of the world itself.
  • This occurs when Max first sees the outside world in Dark Cloud 2.
  • The teleportation scene in Half-Life 2, which gave hint of just where the adventure was going to take as well.
    • Also the ride up the Citadel, which shows the whole of City 17 at sunset, with gunships flying out below you.
  • Morrowind does it with MGE and a higher view distance than normally possible in game is prone to shots like this.
  • The Civilization IV intro begins with Leonard Nimoy narrating "In the beginning, the earth was without form..." with some EPIC music playing.
    • This happens as far back as the original Civilization, albeit without the Nimoy voiceover.
    • The opening menu alone is built on this trope. It shows the Mediterrianian sea and surrounding land from orbit, with the sun slowly circling around it. Awesome Music (Christopher Tin's Baba Yetu, a setting of The Lord's Prayer in Swahili) reaches its high point, the planet's rotation carries the viewed area into night, and we see the lights of civilizations spring up one by one, boldly projecting the evidence of their existence into the cosmos.
  • Approaching Citadel for the first time in Mass Effect.
  • Final Fantasy loves this trope:
    • In Final Fantasy III, leaving the Floating Continent for the first time. In the original NES version, there are very few hints that the (massive) world map is only a floating part of a bigger earth. Leaving it, and realizing the entire earth below is drowned underneath a vast ocean, is one of the most beautiful moments without dialogue in Final Fantasy history.
    • The end of Final Fantasy VI is this to a T - with Kefka defeated and the world restored, the heroes fly around the world in their airship, joking around with each other as scenes play of the towns and villages of the world rebuilding and the citizens living their lives again.
    • Used as an in-game trope in Final Fantasy VII, when the characters are awed during Bugenhagen's lecture at the Observatory. The player will also have this reaction when first entering the World Map field, since the story has been confined to one big city for so long, then the whole world is revealed, showing that this is just the beginning.
    • All but two of the characters in Final Fantasy XIII spend most of the game believing the lower world of Pulse is literally Hell. Then they actually go there, and well, Pulse makes Pandora look like Detroit.
  • Treasure of the Rudra has many examples. The Observatory has an actual museum tour of the origin of space, entering the Floating Continent for the first time gives the characters a grand view of earth, and the cleansing sequences of the sky/earth/oceans are some of the game's best moments.
  • Every time Altair or Ezio finish climbing to a lookout point in Assassin's Creed 1 and 2.
  • A sunrise in Spore. Especially a binary sunrise.
    • And, if you're patient, a solar eclipse. Equally amazing on a planet or a gas giant's moon.
  • Used a few times in Phantasy Star 4. When you first get space travel ability, for instance, and see the world racing beneath the ship as you take off, and the planet you're heading to filling your field of vision in space... or during the scenes where Le Roof manifests as a gigantic illusion of the entire galaxy all around our heroes, accompanied by the Awesome Music, Age of Fables. And in almost note-perfect fashion, when Rika leaves the underground laboratory where she's spent her entire life, and sees blue sky and sunshine for the very first time.
  • Halo: Reach: Try flying around Forge World in a Hawk. You'll get this effect.
  • Shadow of the Colossus had a truly massive in-game world, and the story only involves about a tenth of it. The rest is just there to look amazing.
  • "Hey Cipher, you hear me? Just look at the view. There's not much difference between those countries from up here."
  • Fallout 3; the PC emerges from Vault 101 and is at first blinded by the sunlight after spending their entire life underground, but then their eyes gradually adjust and the Capital Wasteland comes into full view...
  • The random world generation in Minecraft can lead to strange but beautiful landscapes. Pretty much the first thing any player does when opening a new world is find the highest nearby point and just look at things. Even after you've played for a long time, taking a little exploration trip to a new part of the world can still awe you!
    • And someone has made a Minecraft version of the Discovery channel ad mentioned at the top of this page, bringing things back full circle.
  • Pokémon Black and White. The first time you cross the Skyarrow Bridge into Castelia City. It's absolutely beautiful.
  • A good portion of Okami, such as just running around in Shinsu field with the sound of wind rushing by. Or Hana Valley. Or Ryoshima Coast. Or...
  • Endless Ocean does this for, naturally, the world's oceans, playing like an interactive version of a wildlife documentary.
  • In The Lost Crown: A Ghost-Hunting Adventure, all scenes are all black-and-white (or green-and-white, for the night-vision camera), with occasional colored objects for contrast. Likewise, the weather is cloudy, drab and glum for the first few in-game days of play. At most, you might expect a little color if Nigel's walking past a flower garden ... and then, when you get to May Day morning, the sky clears up and it's suddenly a brilliant, rich blue.
  • While the world Red Dead Redemption takes place in is, from a mood perspective, a complete Crapsack World, the land itself is gorgeous, and the player can spend ages exploring the amazing looking canyons, mountains, forests, and rivers in the game.
  • Dark Souls's Lordran may be a ruined Crapsack World, but my can that Gorn be beautiful. There's a reason "Gorgeous view" is a possible statement to write down for other players.
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim throws in aurorae for extra effect.
  • Unreal. The game starts inside a confined shipwreck, and then you step outside to a beautiful landscape. Awe-inspiring in spite of the age of the technology (Unreal Engine 1 ca. 1998).
  • Happens in Beyond Good and Evil, when you first leave the planet. Jade, who has been in an understandable funk for a significant portion of the past gameplay time, suddenly brightens up when she sees all the stars.
  • Asura's Wrath: The First level. Enough said. With some awesome music.

Web Comics

Web Original

Western Animation

  • Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends does this for just about anyone who enters the house for the very first time; almost every imaginary friend and then some will come walking down the hallways to the amazement of the visitors. To be fair, the imaginary friends do want to be adopted, and not being awesome doesn't do much for them.
  • The extended "A Whole New World" scene in Aladdin, when the title character and Princess Jasmine were flying around on their Magic Carpet.
  • Fry in Futurama. One time they went to the moon (Faster than Fry could do a countdown for liftoff). Of course Fry loved it and Leela was thinking, 'it's just the moon, we travel to other planets all the time in the year 3000'. But by the end of the episode, Leela begins to understand how amazing the universe she lives in is to someone from the past.
  • In the Rankin Bass version of The Hobbit, Bilbo climbs the tree in gloomy Mirkwood to "have a look about." He emerges above the trees and all about him sees a profoundly beautiful wilderness with deep purple butterflies floating above. "There are moments that can change a person for all time. And I suddenly wondered if I would ever see my snug Hobbit-hole again. I wondered if I actually wanted to."
  • Played with in the Ren and Stimpy cartoon "Marooned." The main characters camp out on an alien planet and Stimpy notices an etheral light streaming into their tent. The soundtrack swells as Stimpy oohs and aahs over the sight, begging Ren to come out and see the beautiful moon (although the viewer doesn't see it yet.) Ren finally relents and exits the tent—only to smash his head into the moon, since it is only about ten feet across and floating a couple of feet above the planet's surface.
  • In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Aang's meditation on unlocking the Avatar State concludes with a vision of the Avatar Spirit–a giant, glowy version of himself–floating in an orbit overlooking the entire world. Cue a musical buildup and an awed smile on his face. Makes sense given that the Avatar Spirit is literally the spirit of the world itself.
  • The scene in Superman the Animated Series where Clark Kent discovers the ability to fly. This is done again in a much later episode when Kara/Supergirl is introduced and she flies.
  • In the episode The Cutie Mark Chronicles of My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, the Backstory of Fluttershy reveals that she had a moment like this when she fell into the forest from Cloudsdale.

Real Life

  • People who ride planes for the first time often awe at how the world looks from so high up.
  • Upon seeing the Earth from the surface of the moon, astronaut Alan Shepard bent down on his knees and wept.
    • Since he saw the same view, it's unsurprising that Buzz Aldrin PUNCH'd Bart Sibrel. Imagine seeing something so inspirational, then having some douchetard assert that you didn't. Bastard got off easy, if you ask me.
    • Neil Armstrong, similarly, said: "It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small."
      • Armstrong's own words, "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind", brought Walter Cronkite to tears of joy and wonder — and the rest of the world as well.
    • Yuri Gagarin, first man in space, had this comparatively more laconic transmission upon his first time.

"The flight continues well. The machine is functioning normally. Reception excellent. Am carrying out observations of the earth. Visibility good. I can see the clouds. I can see everything. It's beautiful!"

    • Tom Stafford's take on the experience:

The white twisted clouds and the endless shades of blue in the ocean make the hum of the spacecraft systems, the radio chatter, even your own breathing disappear. There is no cold or wind or smell to tell you that you are connected to Earth. You have an almost dispassionate platform - remote, Olympian and yet so moving that you can hardly believe how emotionally attached you are to those rough patterns shifting steadily below.

  • This is pretty much the point of the Disneyland attraction "Soarin' Over California" and its cousin in EPCOT, "Soarin'."
    • Epcot also has "Impressions de France", "Wonders of China", and "Oh Canada!" The first is a tour of France projected on five connected movie screens for a wrap-around effect, and the other two are full-on Circlevision 360, which is exactly what it sounds like.
    • The experience also includes Illuminations, which is one-third this, one-third Crowning Music of Awesome, and one-third Crowning Moment of Awesome for Disney World's practical effects crew.
  • The Blue Marble.
  • Get up to a high place and look around. Because you know what? It is.
  • The idea behind the blog 1000 Awesome Things.
  • Pale Blue Dot. Also counts as Tear Jerker, Crowning Moment of Awesome, and Crowning Moment of Heartwarming.
  • Monarch butterflies. If you ever see them migrating through the changing trees of an autumn forest, consider yourself lucky.
  • There is a ride that allows one to experience Niagara Falls. As in it uses a 360-degree screen surrounding a movable platform along with a variety of special effects including mist, wind, and temperature machines.
  • Some people are AWESOME too.
  • the Grand Canyon is one of those places for which photographs are simply insufficient.
  • Ever see a night sky just full of stars? Away from city lights, so that even the faintest stars and nebulae show up starkly against the jet-black backdrop? How about a large meteor shower? The different aurora lights that show up in the sky in certain parts of the world? All truly wondrous.
    • Now everyone can see it for themselves thanks to Mr.Terge Sorgjerd's masterpiece
    • Not easy to do this unless you're a sailor, but sit out on the deck of a ship in the middle of the ocean with all external lights blacked out. Wow. Just... wow.
  • Bill Hicks describes his experience of taking psilocybin mushrooms as being like this:

From 'Rant in E Minor': I lay in a field of green grass for four hours going "My god ...I love EVERYTHING!"

  • Anyone who has ever climbed a mountain will know exactly how amazing that the world can be. To think that millions of years of pressure have been pushing small, insignificant pieces of rock together, moving so slowly it can't even be seen, until one day, you look at it, and the result is a range of mountains that can cover entire expanses of countries, and literally pierce the clouds, makes a person really appreciate just how powerful and how magnificently old our planet is.
    • Likewise, going in the opposite direction, caves. In particular, Carlsbad Caverns. Drip by drip, over millions of years, the magnificent structures of this cave were built. In pictures, it's difficult to adequately show the scale and sheer majesty of the caves and its chambers. One of the most famous structures is the Rock of Ages, housed in the adequately named "Big Room," which is one of the largest cave chambers in the world, with a floor size of over 350,000 square feet.
  • Most everyone who's heard of Stone Henge has seen pictures of it. Those hardly do the monument justice, but you are unlikely to think more than "Hey, this is cool," when simply looking at it. That feeling comes from actually touching the stones. While it's now prohibited to touch the stones in the actual henge, there are a few of them across the road that are readily available for this purpose. While I'm unsure of how intense The World Is Just Awesome feeling is for people who merely lay their hands on the stone, I know from personal experience that giving it a hug lets you for a moment feel the power of the world around you. Words can't describe the feeling with any sort of accuracy.
  • One cannot fully appreciate the size and beauty of the California Redwood until they stand under one and look up.
  • Mount Rushmore. Seriously. The cartoons and comics, the photographs, even the Hitchcock movies do nothing to prepare you for a mountain carved into four human faces.
  • Lots of national parks actually have helicopter tours, such as the Rainbow natural Bridge or Hawaii's big island. Try taking one some time.
  • Earth Porn: And entire forum dedicated to posting pictures of earths magnificence.
  • Simply stop and take a look at the nature around you sometime. Even a few trees next to the sidewalk changing color for the fall can be awe-inspiring.
  • Virgin Galactic Branson's sub orbital taxi service isn't so much about going into space as it is about invoking the experience of piercing the heavens for paying customers. Book now!
  • Machu Picchu, the holy city of the Incas. A kingdom located on the roof of the world. People who don't consider themselves spiritual have claimed that they felt something while visiting the place.
  • Standing at the tip of a coastline and looking out to the open sea under the sun or in fog. One place you can do this is at the lighthouse point of Peggy's Cove in Nova Scotia, Canada.
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