History Main / TwentyPercentMoreAwesome

'''Shego:''' Or into the [[ExpressLaneLimit "ten items or less" line]] [[FelonyMisdemeanor with eleven items]], huh?!\\

* An Irish radio ad for a glazer boasts that their windows are 64% "better".

* One of Jeremy Clarkson's collections of car reviews described a car as "''exactly'' one million times better looking" than a rival model. We're not sure what units you use for this purpose (millizondas? Microjaguarcx16s?).

* Music/FlightOfTheConchords'': In one episode, Murray keeps a graph of the state of his various friendships. After Brett and Jemaine offend him a few times, it drops their friendship to "Strangers."

* Occurs on the Reel Big Fish live album, Our Live Album is better than Your Live Album, on the track "Suburban Rhythm." The RBF perform many versions of the song, one of which is a blues version. Before this version is played, the lead singer says they need to "bluesify it, by like 20%."

** In "Bender's Big Score", he has an instrument for measuring how "doomed" someone is. The unit is "milliDooms".

** According to a love letter sent by a secret admirer to Ms Krabappel, "A million poets working for a thousand years could not succeed at describing even three-eighths of your beauty.".

** According to a love letter sent by a secret admirer to Ms Krabappel, "A million poets could write for a million years and describe but 5/8 of your beauty".

* Advertisers have been doing this for years, such as [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesterfield_%28cigarette%29 Chesterfield cigarettes]] advertising that they had a "measurably smoother" smoke, as if smoothness was something that could be physically quantified and measured. The mathematician [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Seife Charles Seife]] discusses this in his book ''Proofiness: How You're Being Fooled by the Numbers'', along with several other such claims that went so far as to have specific numbers attached to them, a type of proofiness he refers to as "Potemkin numbers."

* In the ''WebAnimation/BravestWarriors'' episode "Butter Lettuce," Danny uses the Holojohn to load up a version of Beth with the request that she be "30% sexier than normal." He then follows this up with a version that is 40% sexier, which is then followed by a version that is ''[[ReadingsAreOffTheScale 9000%]]'' sexier. [[spoiler: The last one [[EldritchAbomination doesn't end well.]]]]

* [[http://www.funnyjunk.com/funny_pictures/2492884/Furry+Chart/ This funny chart]] is intended to measure the "[[SlidingScaleOfAnthropomorphism furriness]]" of something. It's a heavily abridged version of a less comical and lesser-known image that does much the same thing -- depicting what different "percentages" of cat traits look like, from fully human to fully cat. The full version has many more examples of different percentages.

* Wally on ''ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}}'' reports an increase in enthusiasm [http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1997-04-28/ as a percentage.]

* Wally on ''ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}}'' reports an increase in enthusiasm as a percentage. See here: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1997-04-28/

* ''ComicBook/TheHaloGraphicNovel'' story ''Second Sunrise Over New Mombasa'': Benjamin Giraud is a propaganda photographer for the military, but he has little respect for them because [[ExecutiveMeddling they act no different to him than "suits"]]. At one point, when editing a gruesome image of a dead marine, he's told to make it "more adventurous".

* ''ComicBook/TheHaloGraphicNovel''; "Second Sunrise Over New Mombasa": Benjamin Giraud is a propaganda photographer for the military, but he has little respect for them because [[ExecutiveMeddling they act no different to him than "suits"]]. At one point, when editing a gruesome image of a dead marine, he's told to make it "more adventurous".

Ah, statistics... The ally of mathematics, business and hard science. [[LiesDamnedLiesAndStatistics How infallible]]. There seems to be a problem here though... What instrument can you use to measure "awesome", for example? How do you calculate a 14% drop in sadness? And then there are the ''units'', often measured using an AbstractScale -- how many millisobs do you need to get one kilocry?[[note]]Assuming there are one thousand sobs in a cry, it would be one million times--"kilo" refers by definition to "thousands of" and "milli" refers by definition to "thousandths of."[[/note]]

* The [[AltText votey]] in [[http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1716#comic this]] SaturdayMorningBreakfastCereal illustrates the proper units of measure for anger, fear, and awkwardness.

Ah, statistics... The ally of mathematics, business and hard science. [[LiesDamnedLiesAndStatistics How infallible]]. There seems to be a problem here though... What instrument can you use to measure "awesome", for example? How do you calculate a 14% drop in sadness? And then there are the ''units'', often measured using an AbstractScale -- how many millisobs do you need to get one kilocry?[[note]]It would be one million times the conversion factor between sob and cry, because "kilo" refers by definition to "thousands of" and "milli" refers by definition to "thousandths of."[[/note]]

* Ads for the Nicoderm patch (which delivers a small amount of nicotine through the skin to help ease withdrawal for people quitting smoking) show people with a Suck-O-Meter, which shows how much "quitting sucks" from moment to moment. When the needle gets too high, they use Nicoderm and it goes back down.

** The (partial) TropeNamer[[note]]It would've been the TropeNamer outright, but "20% cooler" could refer to temperature, which CAN be measured, and didn't fit this trope[[/note]] is the episode "Suited for Success", where Rarity asks Rainbow Dash how to improve Dash's dress. Dash simply replies that it needs to be "cooler". When Rarity asks Dash to be more specific, Dash says "it needs to be about 20% cooler." Such maddening vagueness drives Rarity up the wall. [[MemeticMutation The phrase immediately went memetic.]]

-->'''Hypnotherapist:''' You are all very good players.\\

'''Entire Team: (''in monotonous unison'')''' That's impossible. No one can give more than 100%; by definition, that is the most one can give.

* ''WebAnimation/BobsBurgers'': When the Belchers put on a murder mystery dinner theater, they are asked to tone down on the gore. Their banner for the second show advertises "20% less gore".

** The Professor has a "Coolometer" which measures the popularity of the subject in units of [[HappyDays megafonzies]].

* The Zen Ball in ''{{Peggle}}'' is a ZigZagged example. While the word used ("zen") is immeasurable, what it's ''actually'' measuring is how much the score of the shot increased over the original, non-zen-assisted shot.

->''"Just make the whole thing, you know, cooler. ''(beat)'' It needs to be about [[Main/MemeticMutation 20% cooler]]."''