History Determinator / RealLife

* Say what you will about ThoseWackyNazis, but they may have been some of the biggest Determinators in history. Nazi Germany was [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_by_country#/media/File:Map_of_participants_in_World_War_II.png grossly outnumbered in WWII ]], plus they were the only true superpower of the Axis, while the Allies had the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and America. During their series of battles with the Soviet Union, the Germans soldiers were often outnumbered four to one. But despite all that, they refused to give up until Berlin was completely surrounded and all hope was truly lost.

** He was diagnosed with asthma at the age of two, survived the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan in 2011 (having to flee his collapsing home rink with his skates on), skated his free program at the 2014 Cup of China visibly disoriented and bandaged around the head after a terrifying collision during warmups, fell five times, ''nearly won the gold anyway'', and won his second consecutive Olympic gold medal in 2018 while on painkillers for his injured ankle in November 2017. Even after his injury, he is still hellbent on being the first person to land the quadruple axel in competition (a feat not yet accomplished as of June 2021).

** Boar spears, the weapon of choice for killing such animals prior to the invention of firearms, are long, sturdy, and have an equally sturdy cross-guard a short distance behind the point. This is because boars tend to be willing and able to charge up the spear after being stabbed, impaling themselves further in the process, [[TakingYouWithMe in order to get at the human on the other end.]]

--> “As soon as we treated him, he regained consciousness. He was alert and awake talking to us after the event and quickly transported to the hospital. At this point, I was able to talk to him in the back of the ambulance, and he was able to tell me where he was and he actually wanted to get back in the game.”

* Creator/SteveJobs during the 1990s could be seen as a case, given that after being fired from Apple he went on to create other companies, one of which would eventually become the [[JustForPun NeXT]] Apple.

* The men and ships of United States Navy group Taffy 3 would be immortalized for their dogged determination and unflinching bravery at [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_off_Samar the Battle off Samar]]. Facing an obscenely one-sided battle, six small escort carriers, three destroyers, and four destroyer escorts would face ''twenty-three'' Japanese warships, including the largest ship on earth, IJN ''Yamato'', which outweighed the entire US group by itself. Some captains might have ordered their small, fast destroyers to save themselves, or perhaps surrendered to the incoming force to spare the impending CurbStompBattle. Not so the men of Taffy 3, who in the face of certain defeat and death, spit in the eye of the Japanese navy, including no less a figure than Admiral Kurita himself aboard the ''Yamato'', and ''counteratttacked''. Tiny vessels often described as "tin cans" charged into the teeth of the Japanese 2nd Fleet, and proceeded to ''kick those teeth in'' with a mixture of brash torpedo attacks and point-blank gunfire. The men of USS ''Hoel'', ''Johnston'', ''Samuel B. Roberts'', ''St. Lo'', and ''Gambier Bay'' would sell their lives dearly, and while these five Taffy 3 vessels were lost, their cover for the retreat meant that the remaining eight vessels would manage to escape the bulk of the Japanese 2nd Fleet and sound the alarm. To destroy these five small vessels, Japan lost three heavy cruisers, a severe blow that the resource-starved nation could not afford. This mean that the LastStand of Taffy 3 was instead a HeroicSacrifice, such that the ones who were routed with the ''Japanese'' as the sheer tenacity of the Taffy 3 vessels (and the significant damage done) led a rattled Admiral Kurita to assume this had been in interception group of fleet carriers and cruisers, and he was in no mood to sacrifice any more ships. The largest battleship in the world had stared down tiny vessels barely larger than corvettes... and the ''battleship'' had flinched.

* The men and ships of United States Navy group Taffy 3 would be immortalized for their dogged determination and unflinching bravery at [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_off_Samar the Battle off Samar]]. Facing an obscenely one-sided battle, six small escort carriers, three destroyers, and four destroyer escorts would face ''twenty-three'' Japanese warships, including the largest ship on earth, IJN ''Yamato'', which outweighed the entire US group by itself. Some captains might have ordered their small, fast destroyers to save themselves, or perhaps surrendered to the incoming force to spare the impending CurbStompBattle. Not so the men of Taffy 3, who in the face of certain defeat and death, spit in the eye of the Japanese navy, including no less a figure Admiral Kurita himself aboard the ''Yamato'', and ''counteratttacked''. Tiny vessels often described as "tin cans" charged into the teeth of the Japanese 2nd Fleet, and proceeded to ''kick those teeth in'' with a mixture of brash torpedo attacks and point-blank gunfire. The men of USS ''Hoel'', ''Johnston'', ''Samuel B. Roberts'', ''St. Lo'', and ''Gambier Bay'' would sell their livss dearly, and while these five Taffy 3 vessels were lost, their cover for the retreat meant that the remaining eight vesels would manage to escape the bulk of the Japanese 2nd Fleet and sound the alarm. To destroy thse five small vessels, Japan lost three heavy cruisers, a severe blow that the resource-starved nation could not afford. This mean that the LastStand of Taffy 3 was instead a HeroicSacrifice, such that the ones who were routed with the ''Japanese'' as the sheer tenacity of the Taffy 3 vessels (and the significant damage done) led a rattled Admiral Kurita to assume this had been in interception group of fleet carriers and cruisers, and he was in no mood to sacrifice any more ships. The largest battleship in the world had stared down tiny vessels barely larger than corvettes... and the ''battleship'' had flinched.

* [[UsefulNotes/ThomasEdison Thomas Alva Edison]] would well be one of the TropeCodifier s. His theoretical understanding of sciences was next to nil, so he simply applied the trial and error method (also known as "brute force method") until he got something working. His famous maxim ''Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration'' implies just that - when you don't have the faintest theoretical idea on how to get things to work, just try, try again until it works - and never give up.

* Creator/MichaelJFox did the first ''Film/BackToTheFuture'' film while simultaneously working full-time on ''Series/FamilyTies'', effectively carrying the show himself as costar Meredith Baxter was out because of her pregnancy. Fox recalls getting just a couple hours of sleep on most days. To say nothing about his battle with Parkinson's disease; originally told he'd get at most 10 years before the disease took over, yet more than 20 years later, has still been working.

*** Then there's the infamous Rudolf Hess flight. Hess, knowing that there was no realistic way Nazi Germany could beat the odds against them, flew on a solo peace mission (that Hitler may or may not have known about) to Great Britain to try to end the war. Considering Churchill repeatedly turned down Hitler's peace offers, it was pretty much a suicide mission. But Hess figured if there was a one percent chance of it working, he had to try.

** Amy Chow was known among gymnastics fans for her incredible difficulty, throwing tricks that had many of the world's best staring in awe. Unfortunately, at the time of the Olympic trials, she had been struggling badly with severe back spasms. As a result, in the week before Trials, she drastically limited her training; some of her most difficult skills, she threw only once. That ''week''. On the second day of competition, her first acro series on the balance beam went badly wrong; she missed her foot and crashed, bashing her eye against the side of the beam as she fell. With her Olympic dream riding on completing that routine and dealing with an injury that would have sent most running for an ice pack if not the ER, Amy got back up on the beam, threw every trick in her arsenal, and landed them all. With one eye swelling shut. ''Having practiced most of those tricks only once that week.'' (''Then'' she went and got the ice pack -- just in time to learn that she had, in fact, made the Olympic squad.)
** Perhaps the most famous of all from that team, though, is Kerri Strug. She tore her abdominal muscle, healed from that, and came back. Then she fractured her spine -- and came back from ''that''. During the Olympics, she was the last gymnast up on vault of the final rotation of the competition. It was up to her to clinch the gold. She vaulted, fell and tore two ligaments in her ankle. Ordinarily, that renders a person unable to walk. But Kerri, apparently no longer on speaking terms with the laws of physics, calmly limped back to the start, sprinted full speed down the runway, launched herself over the vault, flipped and twisted a couple of times, and stuck the landing. Without even a bobble. ''On one foot.'' The Georgia Dome (and the rest of the United States) went batshit insane, Team USA won its first team gold ''ever'', the Eastern Bloc's decades-long stranglehold on women's team gold was broken at last, and Kerri Strug went down in the history books.

* Daniel "Film/{{Rudy}}" Ruettiger.

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgDa_cpgHWs This video]] shows a squirrel hanging on to a rapidly spinning bird feeder for a solid 2 minutes, stubbornly clinging on with all four paws and then with one paw, before finally being flung off. At 1:04, whoever's filming the video can be heard saying, "It can't be worth it!"

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgDa_cpgHWs This video]] shows a squirrel hanging on to a spinning bird feeder for a solid 2 minutes before finally being flung off. At 1:04, whoever's filming the video can be heard saying, "It can't be worth it!"

* [[https://www.taegukwarriors.com/korea-at-the-world-cup-1954/ Fresh off the]] Usefulnotes/KoreanWar, South Korea's national team hadn't played in the previous three years, and the battered economy meant they struggled to even convince the president to finance their travel to rival Japan seeking their spot in the 1954 World Cup. Yet the team of former troopers went and won two games under inclement weather (one under snow, the other raining). Without flights to host country Switzerland, the team had to get the help from the US Army, flying for ''46 hours'' and arriving only 11 hours before the initial match - and between the travel fatigue, jet lag, and facing one of the greatest teams ever in the "Magical Magyars" of Hungary, the Koreans not only lost [[CurbStompBattle 9-0]] but four players were so exhausted they had to leave before the game was over (and since substitutions didn't exist yet, Korea finished with the bare minimum of 7). Even if the second and final game was an equally lopsided loss, 7-0 to Turkey, all it demonstrated was that Korea just being there to play the games was a miracle.

* Andy Murray ended 2016 as the number-1 tennis player in the world, having spent the majority of his career in the shadows of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic. [[YankTheDogsChain Then in 2017, he began suffering from a recurring hip injury that curtailed his career]] until just before the 2019 Australian Open, he called a tearful press conference in which he described the chronic pain his injury was causing him - he struggled to even ''get dressed'' - and admitted the Australian Open might be his last tournament. He was knocked out in the first round of that tournament... in a five-set match that lasted ''four hours''. Instead of retiring, Murray had an operation to resurface his hip, and not only did he become the first player ''ever'' to have such an operation and carry on playing professionally, he proceeded to win the European Open just months after making his singles comeback and despite losing the first set of the final 6-3.