Mundane Made Awesome / Other Media

aka: Other

Art

• Many paintings of everyday people, objects, nature, city life that were made in past centuries depict things most people wouldn't really bother to watch in real life. But the fact that many painters, like Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Rembrandt van Rijn, Johannes Vermeer, etc. managed to portray them so realistically and only with paint and a brush is amazing! They also give historians a glimpse into the life of everyday people at a time when photography hadn't been invented yet.

Asian Animation

• BoBoiBoy:
  • In episode 5, Tok Aba/Granddad gives his superpowered grandsons an ear-pulling to stop them from fighting each other. He even calls his attacks similarly as they were about to land their blows.
    BoBoiBoy Earth: Feel the power of my rock fists!
    BoBoiBoy Wind: Well you can eat my tornado attack!
    Tok Aba: Prepare for my ear twist attack! [grabs them by the ears]
  • In the third episode of the second season, BoBoiBoy and Fang have an egg-and-spoon race which is set to the music usually used for a fight and is treated just like one.

Audio Play

• In "The Further Adventures of Nick Danger", Rocky Roccoco's dramatically proffered... pickle.

Comic Strips

• The Wizard of Id once had trumpets, drums, and an official presentation for Sir Rodney...taking out the garbage.
  Sir Rodney: Must everything be done with such fanfare?

Fan Works

• The Gatemaster would be an otherwise fairly typical Sonic the Hedgehog self-insertion fic if it wasn't for a massive dose of this trope, along with an insane length.
• ToyHammer has completely unnecessary use of Generation Kill-style callsigns and radio protocol used by the local nerd and the mini forces under his jurisdiction.
• Anything described with Purple Prose in Shinji And Warhammer 40 K.
  • For example, Shinji decides to clean the apartment: "Demons of untidiness! Fear me! I have come, with the mop of justice and the sponge of truth! I shall cleanse you from this home! Let it be sanctified with the sweet scent of the Emperor's soap!"
  • Lampshaded in chapter 20 part 1 when a couple of guys see Hikari, Kensuke and Toji walk to school:
  "What the hell...?" said one of the boys to his best friend. "Your nose is bleeding...?"
  For once, it wasn't out of perverted thoughts. "It should be illegal to be that awesome out of just -walking-."
• The author of Deserving doesn't like using characters' names or the word "said", producing this effect when a discussion of interior design is peppered with phrases like "proclaimed the Chosen One". The unnaturally overdramatic diction employed by every character in every situation doesn't help matters either. Actual example: '"LUBE! Always lube. Don’t make me repeat it," came the menacing voice.' One glorious scene in which Harry Potter milks the giant cow and casts fireworks with his wand to make a point about someone's birthday party.
  • In general, domestic fic in which the characters talk about their mundane business with just as much portentousness as The End of the World as We Know It is very common, and invariably lands in this trope.
• Brendan Namron: Ace Attorney , being based partially off of the Ace Attorney series, uses this trope from time to time, especially in the courtroom.
• This video, spoofing the incredibly mundane opening lines of The Last War in which Hermione Granger is fretting over a pot of stew, plays this trope to the hilt by reading the account of Hermione's stew-making adventures in an exaggerated bombastic voice with added reverb and setting it to O Fortuna. And includes the actual phrase (and former trope name) "what do you mean it's not awesome" in the tags.
  • The creator of that video has taken to referring to the specific form of Mundane Made Awesome where narration is too epic for what it's describing as "O Fortuna moments", likening the effect to watching someone doing the housework with that backing track.
• In A Match Made In Hell, Cloud and Sephiroth are forced to resort to a thumb war due to a spell that prevents actual fighting. Notable in that it's presented EXACTLY as dire and significant as a life-or-death fight would be. Cloud loses, and cries in despair... before challenging Sephiroth to best-two-out-of-three. Roxas (who in this case is a voice in Sora's head) comments that "You have such weird friends."
• Becoming Female has several examples, such as this one:
  "Yeah, I'm fine," I explained epically.
• Neon Knights has a fantastic example in the second chapter. Mari Illustrious Makinami takes on a fourth-grade math test. With Purple Prose and Shout-Outs to Mobile Fighter G Gundam, GaoGaiGar, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, and Warhammer 40,000. Even the line break separating this scene from the one before it is a massive example of this. And it all works.
  GIIIIIGAAAAA! SCEEEEENNNNNE! BREEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAK!
• In Magnetism, Rainbow Dash reacts to successfully making cereal the way Link reacts to finding a major piece of treasure in The Legend of Zelda. Then again, seeing as her previous attempts at making cereal ended up with it catching on fire, you could say her reaction is completely justified.
• Turnabout Storm has good doses of this during courtroom episodes, mostly thanks to one side of the crossover being the very overblown Ace Attorney series. Outside the court things tend to stay more under control, though not enough to stop a muffin delivery from ditching the usual "evidence found" jingle in favor of Super Metroid's Item Get! fanfare.
• For a given measure of "awesome", My Brave Pony: Starfleet Magic features The Grand Ruler playing hopscotch to a disco remix of "Pop Goes the Weasel".
• The Final Battle between Awng and Big Bad M. Night Shyamalan in Bring Me All Your Elderly!; it plays out almost exactly like the fight between Aang and Ozai, except it takes place in a small office with the two throwing staples and other office supplies at each other.
• "Proximity to Balance" is a set of Mobile Suit Gundam Wing one-shots that depict the five Gundam Pilots, now Preventers, as they deal with life after war. The fourth entry, "Normalcy", has them plotting out and treating even simple errands like grocery or department store shopping as missions as a means of acclimating. IE:
  "Zero One to Zero Four."
  "Zero Four receiving."
  "Mission parameters specify black, but the only supplies matching other specs are white. Is white acceptable?"
  "White is acceptable, Zero One."
  "Confirmed. Mission parameters adjusted to include white. Zero One out."
• In Vapors Hinata Hyuuga suffers a Trauma Conga Line by losing to Gaara in the Chunin Exams, being potentially crippled from her injuries, staying in the hospital for a month with no visitors from her family, being almost kidnapped during the invasion, and then branded with the Caged Bird seal and relegated to the Branch Family. She responds by moving out, filling out paperwork to abandon her family name, and at the very public trial to finalize this she calmly agrees to the requirements her father lists when attempting to frighten her into giving up. Then when asked if she had any other comments, she answers: "Fuck you. Thank you for your time, Hyuuga-san." It is debated whether the profanity or the Hyuuga-san (calling her father by his last name with insufficient respect in public) is more insulting. It gets her laughter and applause in-universe.
• In Wonderful (Mazinja), Taylor tinkered with a mop and turned it into a very destructive weapon.
• Ponies and Dragons has this in spades, most explicitly with a game of Go played by two titanic dragons (using huge boulders as game pieces, natch). Their casual game and friendly trash-talk draws an enraptured crowd of smaller dragons, who treat it as an intense battle/standoff.
  • The very premise itself. Who knew the cast of a My Little Pony show playing board games could be so entertaining?
• In An Open Secret, Jabba hires Asajj Ventress' crew and Cad Bane for a difficult mission "right to the center of the Republic capital world itself! Right to the heart of the Jedi Temple! [...] You will deliver this to the Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker and the Senator Padme Amidala! They are expecting their first child, and you will impress upon them how the Magnificent Jabba has gone to immense lenghts to show his appreciation and gratitude to them!" The fact this is perfectly normal Jabba behaviour, or that it's perfectly normal for him that the gift is in a large platinum crate engrave with ancient Huttese script, only adds to the scene.
• In Bat Brats, Blackfire explains she used to dogsit Krypto the Superdog. Netted her a billion dollars, as Krypto can be quite dangerous◊.
• In Sonic and the Death Cheese, somehow, Robotnik's giant cheese is a major threat to Sonic and the entire world with its cheesy aura and roboti-cheese-ifying weapons.
• In Wilhuff Tarkin, Hero of the Rebellion, Jabba the Hutt makes the act of gifting someone a bottle of wine by mentioning its origin:
  Tarkin stopped for a moment as he realized what the droid had just said: this wine was tribute. The Desert Wine, actual Desert Wine from Tatooine and not the Coruscant-made imitation, was a sacred beverage the Tusken Raiders distilled during their prayer nights, and for the most part quickly drank. While coming too close to the Tusken Raiders was dangerous for everyone, trying to take their Desert Wine meant they would get messy... And they gave it to Jabba as tribute. He didn't know how the Hutt pulled it off, but he understood exactly what it meant: "I now know why you're called the Mighty Jabba."
• The Beacon Civil War is a Battle-of-the-Sexes war game held within Beacon. The boys treat it as a brutal conflict where they are La Résistance to the girls' tyrannical Evil Empire, and Jaune getting the boys to band together evolves into a cult that worships Jaune as a god (much to his chagrin).

Magazines

• "My Name is Joe Biden and I'll be Your Server", a September 24, 2012 humor article by Bill Barol published in the "Shouts & Murmurs" section of The New Yorker. Vice President Joe Biden is depicted as a waiter who's extoling the virtues of his restaurant's dishes to his customers, doing it in the style of a passionate campaign speech which also makes fun of his characteristic speaking style, blue-collar anecdotes, and tendency to ramble.
  I get...I get emotional talking about José. [...] José gets here at ten in the morning. Every morning, rain or shine. [...] Jose walks in, hangs his coat on a hook, big smile on his face, says hello to everybody—Sal the dishwasher, Angie the sous-chef, Frank, Donna, Pat...And then do you know what he does? Do you know what José does? I'll tell you what he does, and folks, folks, this is the point I want to make. With his own hands, he sprinkles fresh house-grown rosemary on those potatoes [raises voice to a thundering crescendo] AND THEY ARE GOLDEN BROWN ON THE OUTSIDE AND SOFT ON THE INSIDE AND THEY ARE DELICIOUS! They are delicious! They are delicious!

Professional Wrestling

• Any feud summary used in Professional Wrestling marketing of upcoming events. It's often less interesting to actually watch pay-per-view extravaganzas than it is the promotional videos explaining them. Extra points to TNA's promos for their annual Lockdown pay-per-view, which do a pretty convincing job of making a six-sided cyclone-fence cage look like it should be banned by the Geneva Convention.
• Back in the old Florida territory in the 1980s, they were a minute short of material for the TV show, so King Curtis Iaukea counted down from 60, producing the highest-rated segment of the entire show.
• So you're the little brother of a legendary heavyweight (Cien Caras). How do you escape from his shadow. If you're Máscara Año Dos Mil, you try finishing your opponents off with a small package!
• A lot of the more old-school Finishing Moves fall into this, particularly Hulk Hogan's Five Moves of Doom, where a leg-drop is treated as devastating.
• WrestleMania itself is predicated on this even in-universe, the prime example of this being The Undertaker's streak. Being booked to defeat Undertaker cleanly and/or decisively in an actual match was already treated as a big deal for anyone, but for this to happen at WrestleMania was considered to be unthinkable because of how high the Streak has been raised up in wrestling lore. When Brock Lesnar – a former UFC Heavyweight Champion over twelve years younger – pinned Undertaker for the three-count on April 6, 2014, the reaction was more akin to witnessing a terrorist attack than the conclusion of a wrestling match.
• Homicide and American Dragon's best of five series in Ring of Honor. Submission match, taped fist match, falls count anywhere, lumber jack match, steel cage! What ends this? An airplane spin longer than any ever recorded in the history of pro wrestling at 100 rotations!
• In a shoot interview, The Bushwhackers said that the secret to The Bolsheviks (Nikolai Volkoff and Boris Zhukov) was that they were Jobbers, but all they had to do was raise the flag and sing the anthem and they had their heat back.
• ECW's 911 was a big guy who Chokeslammed people. That's it, and the fans loved him for it.
• Any time "Sweet N Sour" Larry Sweeney challenged someone to a strut-off, either in CHIKARA or wherever the mood struck him.
• How popular was Brutus Beefcake as "The Barber?" Watch this match against Dino Bravo from the May 22, 1987 WWF Superstars and see the reaction he gets off of a simple clothesline.
• Hulk Hogan had to lose his famous mustache for a movie role in October 1995. The Dungeon of Doom attacked him and shaved it. However, they didn't say that they shaved his mustache because that would have been too ordinary for them. They said that they "plucked the whiskers of the rare white Bengal tiger!"
• Orange Cassidy has a style that evokes this from time to time, by simply... doing the logical thing to avoid getting hit, flashiness be damned. An opponent running at him after bouncing off the ropes, arm outstretched for a clotheline? He just ducks underneath it. He's on the ground in the center of the ring, his opponent climbing to the top rope? He simply rolls out of the way. The audience tends to go nuts when this happens, both for the inherent comedy of it as well as for his opponents' visible frustration, because that's not how wrestling is supposed to work.
• Adam Cole and MJF's tag team finisher? DOUBLE CLOTHESLINE! First demonstrated in gratuitous slo-mo against an unlucky waiter at a fancy Chinese restaurant, and it's the move that allowed them to win the ROH Tag Team Titles at All In 2023!

Radio

• Parodied many times in The Goon Show, as in the following example:
  Neddie Seagoon: (Portentously) Then... suddenly...
  Orchestra: LONG DRAMATIC STING
  Neddie Seagoon: (Feebly) ...Nothing happened. (Normally) But it happened suddenly, mark you!
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978) had a moment like this in episode 20, when Arthur comes back home and finds a mysterious present: a fishbowl engraved with these words: "So long, and thanks for all the fish." The musical score gives one the impression of some legendary item.
  • He later discovers an interesting message when he holds it up to his ear and taps it.
• Italian radio comedy show "610" (in Italian, spelling each digit of the title results in an insult) has a sketch based on this trope, involving "Pier Maria Carletti", a character 100 times dumber and weaker than an average man. When he ate his own vegetables after they got corrupted by an alien fuel, he gained a superpower: his strength, as well as his brain, got enhanced. But becoming 100 times stronger than he was, ironically Pier Maria Carletti becomes - therefore - like any other average guy. This didn't stop him from making a superhero costume however, resulting in the "super hero" Normalman. Also, as a twist on your usual Clark Kenting (despite both Pier Maria and Normalman wearing glasses), he has to obfuscate stupidity!
• On I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, there's a few rounds where the studio audience have to know the name of a work. What do they do? Announce that they're going to display the title of the work on the megabyte magic of their liquid-crystal satellite-linked all-purpose laser display board...which is just the producer coming on stage with a cue card. This also serves to confuse the listeners at home, who wonder why the studio audience start laughing when the title is shown.
  • Also, this is mixed with Lyrical Dissonance in the round One Song To The Tune Of Another. The panellists have often sung the words of something mundane or humorous to the tune of something extravagant and melodramatic — like The Marrow Song to the tune of There'll Always Be An England.
• John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme: "The Incredibly Boring Leaving Do of 2017", a lengthy song about how some people, as the song suggests, had to go to a really boring leaving party.
  Gather 'round folks, and we'll sing you a song.
  That's incredibly sad and incredibly long.
  It tells of a leaving do we held for Beth.
  And how four poor souls were bored almost t' death...

Stand-up Comedy

• Brian Regan has a bit about military inventions and how they all have awesome names. Then along came a device that allowed soldiers to communicate effectively over long distances. It was called the walkie-talkie.
• From George Carlin's book Napalm and Silly Putty:
  "Do you ever open the dictionary right to the page you want? Doesn't that feel good?"

Tabletop Games

• The Glorious Reascent of Yelm describes a terrible blue dragon that thrashed across the earth, drowning people. Even armies couldn't fight it, but Murharzarm invented "the Imperial Tools [...] the sacred Shovel and Bucket" and directed mortals to dig irrigation canals into the "dragon" (the Oslira River) so that her flow was moderated and good for crops. Like many Rune Quest myths, Murharzarm's story is true and possesses all the glory and magical elements described in it, but it is also an educational metaphor that helps laymen to solve real problems in their lives (such as flood prevention).

Theatre

• Compared to Greek drama, very little of Japanese Noh drama plays contained actual drama. Much of it featured characters going about everyday tasks and situations, with the actors' extremely slow recitation of lines and expressive mannerisms making for the drama portion.
• The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee:
  • "Second". Who knew two prepubescent kids taking turns spelling words like "zoonosis" and "astrobleme" could be so epic?
  • An earlier scene has Barfee spell "weevil" in slow motion.
• The Greek Chorus in the musical Allegro breathlessly anticipates a child's first steps and glorifies his learning to walk with the heroic marching song "One Foot, Other Foot."
• You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown has a complex, metaphor-laden quartet, crossing multiple musical styles, and has at one point four main characters singing four different melodies with four different texts, reaching an intense musical climax and showing off the vocal talents of the soprano lead. The subject of the song? A 100-word book report on "Peter Rabbit".
• In Twice Charmed, "All Because of a Shoe" takes this to new extremes.
  Lady Tremaine: Who could've imagined my entire life would be ruined?
  Cast: All because of a shoe!
• Hamilton portrays Revolutionary and early American politics with pop and hip-stylings.
  • Near the end of Act I, the new Constitution is about to be ratified but needs rhetorical support in order for the public to buy into it (the Federalist Papers). Aaron Burr says it best by saying it plain — it's the only line in the musical that is spoken rather than sung:
  Burr: The plan was to write a total of twenty-five essays, the work divided evenly among the three men. In the end, they wrote eighty-five essays in the span of six months. John Jay got sick after writing five. James Madison wrote twenty-nine. Hamilton wrote THE OTHER FIFTY-ONE!
  • Cabinet Battles #1 and #2. Jefferson and Hamilton debate the merits of Hamilton's financial plan and aiding post-Revolutionary France... rendered as rap battles!
  • Thomas Jefferson is portrayed as a pop star modeled after Prince. In one closed-door meeting, his outrageous mannerisms have him gyrating and leaping into the air exclaiming, "Let's show these Federalists what they're up against: Southern motherfucking Democratic-Republicans!"
• Jesus Christ Superstar. Jesus getting flogged is horrifying but take it out of context and it becomes funny because it's about a man counting to the tune of a heavy guitar riff.
• In Chess, even by the standards of the musical, "The Arbiter" makes it sound like the title singer has about the coolest, most badass job in the world. He's (in his own words) a referee.
• Seventeen Seventy Six: John Adams attempts to make a room full of squabbling lawyers write and sign a document declaring American independence, the musical.