Memetic Badass / Real Life

Speak softly and carry a big stick.

Examples of Memetic Badass from real life.

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• These people have perfected a form of mind control that destroys ones ability to perceive fiction and reality the same way anymore, and any mind exposed to it or will ever be exposed to it is forever altered.
• According to hbi2k, Rex Griswold is our true overlord.
• In Cardiff University, graffiti started appearing on the desks a few years ago bearing the name Dan Towers. Who he was we had no idea, but the fact he had so much graffiti in several different people handwriting lead us to add our own such as "Dan Towers stole my sandwich", "Dan Towers got me pregnant just by looking at me", "Dan Towers is watching Big Brother watching you", and "Dan Towers is the Stig." In the end they had to re-furnish the lecture theater to kill the meme.
• At UMaine Farmington, there is a simple, unassuming Political Science teacher named Louis Sell. Louis Sell is a retired U.S. Diplomat who single handedly outed over 100 alleged Soviet spies (the Soviets maintain it was to neuter their basketball team). Louis Sell drove around the remains of the Soviet Union, granting political recognition to all of the successor states. Louis Sell has spent most of his life in countries that don't exist anymore. Louis Sell was once challenged to a drinking match with a member of the KGB, and won. Everything about him is larger than life. If you can think of something, Louis Sell has done it twice, in a different language.
• Cockroaches have the reputation for surviving even the most hostile conditions. A longstanding joke is that they would be the only survivors of a nuclear holocaust. In reality, cockroaches are tropical insects that need warmth. That's why they want to get into your house so badly. After a nuclear holocaust, urban cockroaches would freeze.
• Wendy's has recently been◊ getting this reputation.
• The only reason Waterbears haven't achieved Memetic Badass status is because there is nothing they can't survive. They're also just too cute to really be considered "badass". D'Awww, whoozha cute wittle indestructible microscopic animal phylum? You are! Yes you are!
  • Unless you are TierZoo, who notes that while they're resistant to almost any form of death, they can't actually do much in any environment but the ones that they're intended to be in, are cannibalistic and thus constantly killing each other, and most importantly, lack a resistance to the most pressing threat around them: predators. Of which there are countless of, extending even to jokes like snails.
• Bikecat, Emperor of Japan!
• Bob Ross can paint anything as "happy and little", not just trees. Bob Ross can paint Universe. in the smallest frame.
• John Cena. He can overcome any odds. EVER. Thanks to his particular fighting style, it can truly be said the only thing he sells is merchandise. Also, thanks to memes from his theme song, you can't see him.
• Michael Angelo Batio. He plays a double guitar like it's nothing and not happy with that he lifts it over his head while playing both sides with one hand in each guitar neck. He's still way faster than your regular guitar player while doing that?
• Mantis shrimp, they can see your soul, then punch it to death...
• And, from the United States Military, Staff Sergeant Max Fightmaster.
• Although he hasn't ascended to fame, BIONICLE's Mantax has his facts topic.
• Pecos Bill, the classic tall tale hero.
• Baron Munchausen, star of books, movies, and real life. How strong was he? He could lift himself three feet in the air by his hair. He was attacked by a bear and escaped by throwing one flint down its throat and one up its ass, and when the two connected, the bear EXPLODED. He accidentally threw his axe onto the moon, went to get it, and climbed home using a rope made of moon straw. What happened when it didn't reach? He cut the top part down and tied it to the bottom. He rode his horse across the bottom of the ocean, and only came out because he found the lack of air "inconvenient."
• Brian Perkins, the Godfather of Radio 4. At least according to Dead Ringers.
  "The News Quiz will not be on next week. Simon Hoggart wanted me to read one funny cutting too many, and I blew the mother away."
• When Helen Boaden became controller of Radio 4 in 2000, her official statement of what she planned to do featured Culshaw's Perkins declaring that he controlled Radio 4, and she was his bitch.
• Nokia phones. There is little they won't survive intact.
• Anything made of Nintendium.
• Jon Skeet as seen on Stack Overflow can divide by zero. When his code fails to compile the compiler apologizes. He can can recite π. Backwards. And a whole bunch of other things that he has probably one-upped by the time this was written. Only Jon Skeet knows how awesome Jon Skeet is.
• Falcomaster3000 is a masked gamer who participated in a Super Smash Bros. Melee Tournament in Edmonton, Alberta. He spent the entire time with his mask on without speaking, and a few hours later, he won the damn thing. When the audience bellowed for him to "take it off", he merely gave a thumbs up before leaving. Someone even created an anime opening in his honor.
• LEGO bricks, the dual-purpose building block and foot breaker.
• The frontiersman and lawyer Daniel Webster gets some of this too. While he has quite a bit of mythology accumulated about him, The Devil and Daniel Webster, he has wandered through multiple media. (The "original" story itself, is based on an older Faustian story, "captured" by the Webster mythos.)
• JAM Project can do music for anything on the planet, and regardless how boring it might be, their music will make it HOTBLOODED AND EPIC!
• John Petrucci, a time-traveling guitar player, overlord, God who plays guitar so fast that if you go to a Dream Theater concert and come back alive and with your face intact, then you're probably on this list too.
• Bruce Lee. Thanks to his on-screen martial arts action hero persona and stunts, plus various anecdotes from people who knew him such as the time he incapacitated a wannabe challenger with one kick, he became one of the most prominent symbols of masculinity in cinema. This has been taken to extremes when some claim he was actually the greatest martial artists ever, completely sincerely. Note that while he was a legitimate martial artist and undoubtedly could beat up 99.9% of the population, he was still primarily an actor and never competed professionally. Lee himself admitted that actual high level fighters (like Muhammad Ali), who tended to be much bigger, would have no trouble beating him.
• Depending on which you like more, Garry Kasparov or Bobby Fischer.
  • Bobby Fischer once won a professional game without moving any piece apart from his pawns.
  • Paul Morphy. In the words of his contemporary, Adolf Anderssen:
    I consider Mr. Morphy the finest chess player who ever existed. He is far superior to any now living, and would doubtless have beaten Labourdonnais himself. In all his games with me, he has not only played, in every instance, the exact move, but the most exact. He never makes a mistake; but, if his adversary commits the slightest error, he is lost.
    • Morphy was not only an accomplished chessplayer, but also an extremely talented attorney who reportedly had the entire Louisiana civil code committed to memory. He actually regretted that his chessplaying was interfering with his law practice and gave up the game for that reason. Bobby Fischer contended that Paul Morphy probably would have beat him in a head-to-head match.
  • There's also Mikhail Tal, about whom fellow grandmaster Viacheslav Ragozin once said "Tal doesn't move the pieces by hand; he uses a magic wand."
  • Of course, they're all patzers compared to Gioachino Greco, the only chess player to win 100% of his games. ^note  He lived hundreds of years ago and only recorded games that he won. But it's fun to pretend that he was literally unbeatable.
• Commander Badass himself worships Marlon Brando. Quite literally.
• The Internet has concluded some time ago that David Bowie's crotch (officially titled "The Area") has replaced Azathoth as the Center of The Universe, and encompasses all of reality. It is also the primary source of Bowie's mindblowing powers of awesome.
  • It has a religion.
• At fan conventions, there's often a man on the staff known as a "troubleshooter". This job amounts to running around the entire convention all weekend, attending to every single crazy problem that pops up. Those that do this often become Memetic Badasses in their local area/city/state/etc, and rightfully so.
• John Paul Jones has not yet begun to fight.
• Norio Wakamoto. Adding him into any production practically guarantees its success, as well as making any character he plays instantly awesome/badass who will chew the scenery up. Even a freaking cat.
• Akio Otsuka, merely the voice actor for the Japanese Metal Gear Solid series. And Black Jack. And Batou. And Anavel GAAAAAAATOOOOOOOO. And dozens of dubbed movies. Look, it'd be easier just to list the voice roles he hasn't done.
• George Washington. The father of America, an officer in two wars, and led the colonial army against the strongest military force in the world at the time and won. He also Cannot Tell a Lie and is always A Father to His Men. Immortal on the battlefield (he had multiple horses shot out from under him in both wars, and was a sole survivor at least once), and to this day holds higher rank in the US Army (General of the Armies of the United States; six stars) by federal law no less, than any other Army officer. Period.
  • How awesome was he? He wanted to retire after one term as president, but Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson both convinced him to stay on. It was the only time that Hamilton and Jefferson ever agreed on ANYTHING.
  • He had a pocket full of horses, fucked the shit out of bears, threw a knife into heaven and could kill with a stare
  • This video has the most accurate explanation of George Washington's badassery.
  • John Adams proved that the concept of memetic badassery is Older than You Think by laying out how both Washington and his fellow revolutionary Benjamin Franklin were likely to be remembered.
    "The history of our Revolution will be one continued lie from one end to the other. The essence of the whole will be that Dr. Franklin's electrical rod smote the Earth and out sprung General Washington. That Franklin electrified him with his rod, and thence forward these two conducted all the policy, negotiations, legislatures and war."
• Rahm Emanuel, former Obama administration chief-of-staff, American political operative of legendary action and even more legendary language, former mayor of Chicago, whom the news media, every other political operative in Washington, and Obama himself are incapable of not telling Chuck Norris-style jokes about. The man was nicknamed "The Enforcer" when he worked for Bill Clinton, and once sent Illinois governor Bruce Rauner a dead fish in the mail during a feud between the two. Obama publicly joked that the surviving the amputation of a middle finger after a teenage meat slicer accident rendered Rahm practically mute. They don't call him "Rahmbo" for nothing.
• Among people on the left, President Barack Obama himself is considered a Memetic Badass. Just LOOK at all the pictures and gifs of him on Tumblr—singing, dancing, doing the Vulcan salute with Nichelle Nichols, the man can do it all.
  • There is now a fledgling Facebook Page devoted to his badassery.
• Theodore Roosevelt. A colleague said of him, "Death had to take him in his sleep, for if he was awake there'd have been a fight," and he meant it in all seriousness.
  • One thing worth noting about Roosevelt right off the bat - the guy physically divided two continents by buying the Panama Canal. The truth can be more badass than fiction.
    • Colombia, which at that time controlled the land, failed to approve the treaty allowing construction. Roosevelt helped Panama gain independence within three months just so he could build the canal.
  • Never mind the military record or the big game hunting... this is a man who got shot in the chest by a would-be assassin and proceeded to give his scheduled speech anyway, occasionally waving his bloody hand around for emphasis.
    • His speech was TWO HOURS long, and its folded pages are what almost stopped the bullet!
    • Not to mention, since the bullet and blood ruined his papers, he then proceeded to give the entire speech from memory.
  • Before that particular assassination attempt, Roosevelt was a rancher, and caught wind of someone who was planning to kill him and steal his cattle. Roosevelt strode right up to him to confront him over this, causing the man to quickly back down.
  • Teddy Roosevelt once had a presidential aide who was suffering from the dread disease tuberculosis. TR organized a staring contest and STARED THE TB RIGHT OUT OF HIM.
  • How can you compare to the only president ever to get in a knife fight with a cougar? Where the cougar got the knife, no one knows...
  • And, to top of the badassery, this man who would fight anyone and anything for the sheer hell of it won a Nobel Peace Prize! And, after his death, they awarded him the Medal of Honor for his actions in the Spanish-American War, the only man to win both.
    • And yet, ironically (given his war-loving nature), he was one of the few Presidents of the early 20th century to not have a major armed conflict during his terms in office (barring the Philippine-American War, which was finished under him but started under his predecessor).
  • This article at Cracked would like to imagine that fellow president George Washington was a bulletproof Incredible Hulk, and that Andrew Jackson invented Gun Kata. And in regards to Roosevelt:
    Did we mention he had asthma growing up? He did, and after he beat asthma to death, he ate asthma's raw flesh and ran 100 straight miles off the energy it gave him.
    • Later, he went blind in one eye from boxing, so he decided to do something less dangerous and learned JUDO instead.
    • While Commander and Chief, Teddy got a letter from some of the military officers complaining about how exhausting the mandatory 2 hours a day of riding training was. His response? The next day, at sunrise, he hopped on a horse and rode from sun up till sun down, thus revoking the rights of anyone to ever complain about anything ever again.
• Andrew Jackson. If Teddy Roosevelt is the Chaotic Good badass among Presidents, Jackson is the Lawful Get-The-Hell-Out-Of-My-Way badass.
  • To quote Cracked's article on the five most badass American presidents: "A man named Richard Lawrence approached Jackson with two pistols both of which, for some reason, misfired...Jackson proceeded to beat Lawrence near death with his cane until Jackson's aides pulled him off the assassin. The guns were inspected afterwards and it was discovered that they were in perfect working order ... we're pretty sure that the bullets, like everyone else, were simply scared of Jackson."
    • Andrew Jackson was also shot during a duel and the bullet was unable to be removed. A few years later, during a cabinet meeting that must have been boring, Jackson dug it out of his arm himself with a knife. He then mailed the bullet back to his opponent saying something along the lines of "I believe this belongs to you."
    • Jackson fought over a dozen duels, but the most badass one was when he fought Charles Dickinson, the only man Jackson ever killed in a duel. Apparently, Dickinson not only owed Jackson money for a horse racing debt, but he pushed Jackson's Berserk Button by insulting his wife. Jackson knew he was outclassed as a shot by Dickenson, so when the time came he allowed Dickenson to shoot first; in the process catching a bullet in the chest, which was so close to his heart that doctors just left it there. Meanwhile, Jackson took careful aim while Dickenson was busy trying to reload and proved that it's not necessarily the fastest shot, it's the most accurate one that wins the day.
    • When Andrew Jackson was elected president, he held a party at the White House. In the morning everybody was passed out drunk on the broken furniture while the maids attempted to clean up the broken windows.
    • When slavery was restricted in the early 1800s, Southern politicians attempted to implement the legal concepts of 'interposition' and 'nullification' as a way to circumvent Congress. Jackson immediately started rallying troops and declared that he would personally kill the people responsible. The fear people had of Jackson was so intense that the Southerners backed down and the Civil War was delayed by 40 years, by which time the North far outmatched the South economically.
    • After Jackson's death one of his servants was asked if they thought Jackson had gone to Heaven. Reportedly, the response was along the lines on "If he wants in, who's gonna stop him?"
• President Abraham Lincoln:
  "My experience with Abraham Lincoln is that he is unstoppable".

  Red Mage, Twinkin' Out With Red Mage
  • Gave a speech so awesome the shorthand reporters put down their pencils and forgot to write it down.
  • On his deathbed it was said his wound would have killed him in an hour if it weren't for his marvelous musculature.
  • Defeated the most popular union general (who was offered a crown by his troops) in the 1864 election by taking 70% of the soldier vote.
  • Won his first Presidential election by a landslide, despite not even appearing on the ballot paper in numerous Southern states.
  • He's also gone Super Saiyan.
    • As well as the Explosion God.
  • Then there is Lincoln as the central◊ cause◊ of the Apocalypse.
  • He is a religious figure by the time of Adventure Time.
  • Lincoln invented the choke-slam. Your life is now worthless compared to his.
  • Lincoln isn't proud of the quality of present day presidential candidates.
  • He was also so manly that he was the first president to grow a beard. He even used said beard to defeat the Confederate South, apparently! (Legend has it that he grew said beard as a favor to a young admirer around the time he was elected.)
  • Hyperbole and jokes aside, Lincoln was physically quite strong. There are eyewitness accounts of him as a young man carrying over 600 pounds, and lifting boxes of stones weighing between 1000 and 1200 pounds.
    • There was actually one that was more subtle, but impressive nonetheless. Apparently he could hold the end of an axe at the top of its handle completely horizantal with just his fingers.
• James Mattis, a retired Marine Corps General who became the 26th Secretary of Defense for the United States, is popular among the Corps for his intelligence and candor to the point of◊ this◊ trope◊.
• Mattis' Canadian equivalent, Harjit Sajjan, is no slouch either, as Buzzfeed attests.
  • As a Sikh, he wears a full beard, which renders gas masks useless. Sajjan invented his own.
• The Red Baron. He has a similar problem meeting the trope definition, as his exploits do not need to be exaggerated to appear legendary. But he does have a class of Badass Nicknames named after him!
• Erwin Rommel, the "Desert Fox". He also put himself at the beck and call of the 'Valkyrie' conspirators in case they succeeded.
• Lawrence of Arabia. In Real Life. Originator of the expression "Don't you know I can only be killed with a golden bullet?!"
  • Lawrence personified this trope throughout the remainder of his life, being hounded by exaggerated tales of his exploits and turning down offers to star in movies dramatizing his tale.
  • Lawrence, an enlisted British officer fresh from the war front, insisted on being received by George V, King of the United Kingdom and Emperor of India, in flowing white Arab robes with dagger and headdress. The King, a notorious stuck-up when it came to protocol and dress, deigned not to say anything.
  • He personally orchestrated a Middle East Peace Deal over tea between the future leader of Israel and the Prince of Mecca. It fell apart due to the government's meddling, but the terms of the resulting napkin agreement are still being fought over as Canon in the Middle East peace process.
  • In general, T. E. Lawrence is one of the few men who managed to gain this sort of status by wishing it upon himself. He lived his life convinced he was nothing less than a hero like the ones in the classical epics he had read and loved in his youth, and other people were so spellbound by his charisma and self-assuredness that they just sort of rolled with it.
• Speaking of which, in To Hellholes And Back, gonzo travel writer Chuck Thompson has this to say about Richard Burton:
  In 1879, at the age of fifty-eight, African explorer and scholar Sir Richard Burton — easily among the top twenty stallions ever to trod the earth — was set upon by thugs in Alexandria. Biographer Edward Rice wrote of the incident: "In the old days Burton would have knocked his assailants' heads together, or even better, killed them... Getting rolled by scofflaws was a disheartening turning point in Burton's career. The valiant participant in unspeakable sexual rituals of the African jungle; the mighty linguist who'd written dictionaries and translated ancient poetry; the first Englishman to pierce the secret world of Mecca... being denied promotion by pissant bureaucrats back in Old Blighty and spending his golden years with a harpy Victorian wife bent on payback for years of neglect certainly didn't do anything to salvage the old wolf's pride.
• Simo Häyhä is generally considered the greatest killing machine in the history of the human race. The scary part is that this is entirely justified. He's estimated to have killed over an average of seven Russian soldiers every day for almost one hundred days, with almost 750 confirmed kills to his name. The Russians eventually gave him the nickname "The White Death." He was shot in the face by a high-powered rifle with an explosive round meant to kill a tank in the last week of the war. Simo Häyhä survived because he's Simo Häyhä, killed the guy who shot him, and walked to a field hospital before passing out. And made a full recovery, living to the age of 96. Oh, and he was about 5'3''. He's become something of a folk hero in his home country of Finland, in the same vein as Davy Crockett in the United States. One could say he's the freakin' courier, but that would imply the latter is cooler, so it's the other way around instead.
  • Heavy metal band Sabaton made a song in his honor, appropriately titled "White Death".
  • At one point they tried carpet-bombing his location. It didn't work.
  • As Badass of the Week said, peace was declared the day he woke up from being shot in the face, clearly causing the Russians to just give up and call it off.
    • Please note: As unbelievable and as "Chuck Norris Facts" as these things sound, they actually happened^note Except for "the war ended because Hayha woke up." Russia didn't exactly "just give up," as the peace treaty also granted them 30% of Finland's territory. The Russians sent counter-snipers against him. He sniped them. The Russians used artillery strikes against him, he just kept sniping. The Russians tried carpet-bombing him and basically marching so many men forward he couldn't kill them all. He killed them all.
    • One must also take note that, during the first days, he was using an older rifle without using a telescopic sight (so he couldn't be counter-sniped), heading into the woods with little food and ammo, dressed in what was basically a white bedsheet. He also stuffed snow in his mouth so his breath couldn't be seen, which would sound stupid except for the fact that it worked.
    • No fictional sniper has ever done anything as impressive as the things Hayha pulled off in real life.
    • To a lesser extent, whenever the "Winter War" gets brought up, there's 99 out of 100 chances of someone making a joke where Finland curbstomps the Soviet Union's troops while hiding in the snow (bonus points if it involves Simo Häyhä himself) while the latter gets portrayed as a Memetic Loser. While the USSR did won the war and earned eleven per cent of the Finnish territory, but it came at a very high price due to the amount of casualties.
• Related: Field Marshal Carl Gustav Mannerheim, the commander-in-chief of Finland's military and the Finnish George Washington. He started with a long and highly-successful career in the Russian Army. At the very beginning of Finland's independence, he was its regent during the period when they weren't sure whether to be a monarchy or democracy, and some people actually wanted to make him king. Between the wars, he hunted man-eating tigers in India, and refused an offer to make him dictator of Finland. He fought three wars in six years — two against the USSR, one against Germany. And then he became President, and talked the Soviets out of taking over Finland even though Finland had just lost the war. Finland's flag day is his birthday, and its highest medal is the Mannerheim Cross.
  • To be fair, though, Finnish army had fought the Soviets to a standstill, and Mannerheim used this fact in the negotiations to his advantage, pointing out that an attempt to actually occupy Finland would be more trouble than it's worth.
• During the 2012 Finnish presidential campaign, supporters of Pekka Haavisto created a meme of his Facts, including...
  • Pekka Haavisto does not use a comb. He negotiates the tangles out of his hair.
  • Pekka Haavisto finds a reasonably priced cafe in Helsinki.
  • Pekka Haavisto does not shovel snow. He opens the door and smiles warmly in the desired direction.
  • Pekka Haavisto hit a roadside bomb in Irak. Today the bomb is working as an alarm clock in Iisalmi.
  • Pekka Haavisto bit a vampire. In the morning the vampire got up, bought a Prius, put on a suit and tie, and experienced a desire to donate blood.
  • Pekka Haavisto knows how to be funny in German.
• Also on the WW2 front, Otto Skorzeny, due less to his real life accomplishments, standard military badass though they may be, and more to embellishments using comic book and movie portrayals as being equally historically accurate, on Norris-y themed history threads. The scars certainly didn't hurt the manliness factor none. On the strategic side, Manstein and Patton also receive this treatment, while Russians are depicted as wishing to be this, but also fearing Stalin's reputed paranoia and deciding costly Pyrrhic Victory and near-failure is a better option than being assassinated for appearing more competent than the Iron Man of Russia.
  • Georgi Zhukov would definitely qualify on the Soviet side. Stalin had to be content with exiling him because killing him would have prompted an army mutiny he couldn't contain. The threat of a Zhukov personality cult would haunt every Soviet premier up to Brezhnev (who tried to insert himself into Zhukov's autobiography in hopes that Zhukov's badassery would rub off on be credited to him!)
• Strangely, America's chief badass Audie Murphy gets little recognition in these sorts of contests, likely because he had nothing particular to promote, had no ego, and felt no moral obligation to uphold his achievements like Lindbergh, preferring to fade away once the requisite movie was over and done with. According to That Other Wiki: "Murphy had always wanted to be a soldier, and after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he tried to enlist, but the Army, Navy and Marine Corps all turned him down for being underweight and underage." That's right. He's basically Captain America, if he was younger and didn't become a Super-Soldier.
  • He's not well known as a badass because he was so much of a badass that you can't make jokes about him, because anything you could think of as a joke, he really did. And then he'd punch you in the nuts with a burning tank. Seriously, just go read his entry on The Other Wiki, the guy is a real-life Wolverine.
  • Hollywood made a biopic of Murphy after his time served, in which he played himself. Some of the events had to be taken out or toned down in the movie at his own request, because he thought nobody would believe it really happened that way. Then it became the most profitable movie until Jaws came out.
  • What gets me is his method of dealing with drug addiction; during the 60's, he used Placidyl to deal with his PTSD. When he realized he'd become addicted to the pills, he didn't go to rehab, he didn't use more, he locked himself in a motel room and went cold turkey for a week.
  • Audie Murphy is also responsible for there being any PTSD funding by the federal government. Congress thought most of the folks testifying were either just trying to get funding for their own programs or to justify their cowardice, until the biggest hero of the war made it OK to talk about the nightmares and removed the stigma of PTSD in one speech.
• Samuel L. MOTHERFUCKING Jackson. See MemeticBadass.Film.
• The Soldier may be a Cloud Cuckoo Lander, but his respect for Sun Tzu is justified. One of these days, actually go ahead and read The Art of War. Then, look into what's known about Sun Tzu's life and history (both proven and rumoured). Trust me... The Soldier is probably not that far off...
• In a World… .... where movie studios .... spend hundreds of millions on special effects .... but forty-five cents on a script .... one man .... must generate hype .... and keep the viewers coming back .... He was.... Don LaFontaine . AKA Mr. Voice.
• Duct tape. Yeah, duct tape. What can it not do?! If duct tape didn't exist, the world would have fallen apart already. It has a light side, and a dark side, and it binds the universe together.
  • Don't forget duct tape's greatest advocate: Red Green. It's the handyman's secret weapon.
  • Let us not forget the yang to duct tape's yin: WD-40. All things can be fixed with either duct tape or WD-40; if it moves and it shouldn't, duct tape; if it doesn't move and it should, WD-40.
    • "When in doubt, duck it".
  • In answer to the rhetorical question, the one thing duct tape can't do is fix ducts.
    • You're just not using enough duct tape.
  • One of the most frightening human beings (?) in the Dresdenverse, Kincaid, uses duct tape for bandages.
    • Kincaid isn't a human being, he's a HELLHOUND.
    • For the record, that's known as a "Boy Scout Bandaid." Always prepared indeed.
    • Also useful because when you get a cut while doing something, you dont have time to sit around, and a normal bandaid wont stay on when you're moving. so you duct tape it on.
  • Duct tape is fine and all, but there is one thing place where duct tape must bow to its superior: theatre. In a theatre, gaff tape reigns supreme. It can be used to fix costumes, hold set pieces together, bundle cables, hold gels to instruments without catching them on fire, etc. The list goes on and on. And all while coming in a stylish black color that goes with everything.
• Should World War 3 happen, and the world be engulfed in nuclear fire, only two living things would remain in the aftermath: cockroaches, and Keith Richards.
  • Then again, he survived the meteors, the Ice Age, the Black Death...
  • No Cher?
• Indians are the very incarnations of awesomeness.
• A normal, everyday pilot and aviation safety expert is so cool under pressure, he lands an Airbus A320 with 155 passengers aboard in the Hudson River in such a manner that emergency teams were able to save every single person on the plane. The Internet, unfortunately, has yet to give Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III a list of Chuck Norris-esque facts. He's receiving plenty of attention in national media, though, and has plenty of Facebook fan clubs. It's only a matter of time.
  • The Internet bows its head in shame; nothing we can ever make up will be as awesome as what he already did.
    • Well, he can always decide to be an astronaut...
• Oscar Wilde, at least on Uncyclopedia.
  • Uncyclopedia also reports that Steve Ballmer wants to FUCKING KILL nearly everything. He is now the leading cause of death in the United States.
• Henrik Wergeland - already considered the most badass poet to ever live in Norway. Producing 30 volumes of text over a rather short life span (abt 17 years of mature production), while constantly travelling Norway, helping the poor, running errands for them, and on top of it all, getting into exhausting court cases, while he even managed to have a steady job! He must have been a badass writer, or the fastest producer of text Norway has ever known. To this, add his iron health, his agility and his temper. The memetic mutation began shortly after his early death: he has ridden his horse up a stairway inside a house, to greet his host in the ballroom while still on horseback - he is said to have had sex with a girl in public - while riding his horse, and later, to have ridden on the rainbow across Norway`s greatest lake. Memetic Badass indeed.
• By all accounts, Charles Lindbergh suffered through the 1920s version of this after his 1927 solo flight from New York to Paris. Facing cheering crowds and nosy reporters wherever he went, Lindbergh became more and more withdrawn, despite using his fame to promote commercial aviation.
  • What he did to keep himself awake on that flight (33 hours 30 and a half minutes) earns him this trope in and of itself. Lindbergh brought two sandwiches and a thermos of coffee for the entirety of the flight, and when he ran out of coffee proceeded to punch himself in the face until he woke up. He also realized fairly early in the flight (about 4 hours in) that he was getting tired, so he descended to ten feet above the sea and flew there for a while to keep himself alert, and later, when he was flying higher (and ice was forming on the wings), considered closing the windows to keep himself warm but decided the cold was helping keep him awake, so he left them open.
• US Congressman and Frontiersman David "Davy" Crockett in his own time as well as today. Famed for doing any number of things, including catching, killing and skinning a bear at the age of three.
  • And going to space.
  • It probably wasn't an accident his name was used for one of the most destructive man-powered devices ever developed - a tactical nuclear recoilless gun.
• Ernest Hemingway is the greatest explorer that ever lived.
• Gackt; he does not feel the fiyah. The fiyah feels Gackt. No, seriously. This is a man who has, at most 10% body fat, although its usually closer to 7%. He runs on two to three hours of sleep a night, trains several hours a day, and can pull his legs apart more than 180 degrees. Has a dojo in his house, has played the most badass warlord ever (Uesugi Kenshin), is the inspiration for countless anime and manga characters, and his image or name is found in at least six games. He is actually a vampire, who can walk around in the daytime because the Sun is scared shitless of him. Oh, and he survived a second almost-drowning incident in the Okinawa Sea when he remembered at the edge of death that he hadn't gotten laid in a month, proceeded to snap out of it, and swam like a madman through dangerous waters back to shore. One assumes that as soon as he regained consciousness the next day he got laid immediately.
  • Gackt vs Demon Kogure. Will the universe survive to see the winner, or will it be Superboy Prime all over again?
  • Not to mention the number of instruments he plays, the sheer variety of genres he writes music in (or creates), and being a singer, songwriter, actor, writer, and fashion designer.
• Yoshiki More musical talent than Gackt, plays any instrument known to man (including once being able to hit over 800bpm on drums), programs music, has survived the deaths of family members and friends alike, has played through major illness and injury, is coming back to the stage after having had surgery on his neck.... and still looks good in a wedding dress. Oh and he's bigger there too.
• Velociraptors were small, probably somewhat intelligent carnivorous dinosaurs from Mongolia that would seem unremarkable compared to their larger cousins. However, largely due to Jurassic Park labeling its oversized, hyperintelligent killing machines "Velociraptor" due to a naming mistake (and the Ruleof Cool) and to a lesser extent, a Running Gag in xkcd, has firmly established them on the same level as the Zombie Apocalypse in terms of things to be feared. Also, when your garden-variety fascist enforcer can't find a T-rex to ride, they'll default to these bad boys, as opposed to heroic characters who favour large jungle cats (He-Man, the Norsemen with Japanese samurai voices in Thundercats, Siegfried and Roy, to name a few). Its intelligence might also be inflated to further the association with the Jurassic Park beasts. There is evidence to suggest that it was more intelligent than most dinosaurs, but probably no more so than most mammals. Notably, these same works sometimes portray the T. rex as Dumb Muscle, even though its brain size relative to body size would suggest that it too was one of the most intelligent dinosaurs. If the reason for this portrayal is based on Jurassic Park, then the downplaying of T. rex is particularly odd given that even with the massive Historical Badass Upgrade that the movie gives the raptors, Rexie still crushes them easily.
  • Utahraptors: Bigger than a JP 'Raptor, lived in packs, was very smart. And it's standing right behind you.
    • Yeah, like I'm going to fall for tha-ARGHLBLARGLAGHALARK
  • The fact that the "Velociraptors" in Jurassic Park were actually named for Deinonychus has led to Deinonychus becoming something of one as well. You will often find claims that Deinonychus was the most badass dinosaur to have ever lived and would have killed all of humanity had it survived; in reality, it wasn't all that different from the Velociraptor, just bigger (but still not quite as big as the raptors in the movie, and still smaller than an adult human). Expect those making these claims to treat theories about Deinonychus and other raptors hunting in packs (which is plausible, given their size relative to that of their prey, but still very much in debate among palaeontologists, as no modern-day birds or crocodilians are known to hunt in packs, and the evidence of them feeding on much larger animals may be corpses that it scavenged rather than animals it hunted and killed) as proven fact.
• In academic circles, Slavoj Žižek. He lives on a giant whiteboard in the centre of time and space.
• In lay circles, the late Stephen Hawking. There were even rumors swirling around him being some sort of sex god when he dumped his caregiver. What's more, he was the only person with his variant of Lou Gehrig's disease known to have lived as long as he did. For reference, when he was first diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's, he was only given two years to live; he was 21 then. He lived to be 76 years old; needless to say, even when he did die, people were still shocked he managed to hold out for so long. He even had a memetic voice-box!
• Dan Green's voice.
  • For that matter, George Zimmer's 50-pack-a-day voice and confident look inspired a whole series of paragraphs written in the first person (usually in all caps) mostly emphasizing his... uh... virility. Every single one of them, like his ads, end in the phrase "I guarantee it."
• The General Motors EMD F40PH locomotive has reached this status. Originally, it gained the status after furry bashers began pushing it as a "furry killer", but then actual railfans (some of which were furries) took the meme and ran with it.
• Morgan Freeman has reached the status of Memetic Father Figure via his soothing voice and frequent casting as God. The latter has also sparked people simply referring to him as God.
  • Not even Kratos can kill him
  • This video gives all the true facts about him. For example, the Sun only rises because Morgan Freeman narrated it in his dreams.
  • Ben Affleck once did an imitation of Morgan Freeman at his request. After seeing it, Morgan Freemon told Afleck he would kill him if he ever did it again. Yes, Morgan Freeman threatened Batman.
• Marc Summers. He played host to Double Dare, one of the messiest game shows to ever air on TV. He also has Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, meaning that he is obsessed with cleanliness and order. It's so amazing that he stuck through his job for seven years.
  • If it's any indication, Nostalgia Critic gave him the "Dude, You've Got Balls" award!
• Sgt. Alvin York: They had the whole thing with clucking like a turkey in Sergeant York because people wouldn't have even believed the real version. The man stood up in the middle of the forest while a machine gunners nest was shooting at him and tearing up EVERYTHING BUT HIM. He ultimately captured over 80 Germans almost single highhandedly.
• Nikola Tesla. He invented the alternating-current distribution system that powers the world today, along with the fluorescent lightbulb, the first radio-controlled vehicle, the first large-scale hydroelectric power station (he was so confident it would work, he didn't even show up when they started it) and had some crazy ideas rattling around his head. He's since become a stock figure for producing insanely advanced mad science in period pieces.
  • It has been said that Nikola Tesla was either a time traveller sent from the future to give primitive man the gift of electricity, or an angelic being from the planet Venus sent to Earth to reveal scientific knowledge to humanity.
  • Did you know that Tesla actually came up with a device that could generate earthquakes? One day, the entire city block that his apartment was on became the epicenter of an earthquake that showed no signs of letting up. The police rushed up to his room, where they found him smashing his device to bits with a sledgehammer. His explanation for the whole debacle? "The switch got stuck."
  • In his display at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, he shot lightning from his fingertips and lit up bulbs just by touching them.
  • He was played in a movie by David Bowie. Enough said.
• Ladies and Gentlemen, Aron Ralston. The man spent five days with his arm crushed under a boulder, which he spent slowly using up his water and eventually resorted to drinking his own urine. But just when he was ready to die, Ralston in his brilliantly delirious mind decided to sever his own arm to escape from the boulder... using a dull knife... that came free with a flashlight he bought. You don't want to hear the details of the process, but eventually Ralston separated from his already dead arm and then had to rappel down a 65-foot sheer wall, then hike out of the canyon in the unbearably hot sun. Since then he has become known as such a badass that Stanford University invented the "The Aron Ralston MAN GAME."
  • And to top it off, he went back to mountain climbing after he had his missing hand replaced with a fucking climbing axe.
  • Avalanches fear him.
• Billy Mays was truly a hero. His blue collared work shirt became legend. He cleaned shirts. Like, cleaned them so good, you couldn't tell they were stained. And he gave us amazing glue and hooks and other sort of cleaning supplies. You may think badass is about the kung fu and kicking of asses, but sometimes it's about having an awesome, clean, functional house. Betcha you can't hang a bowling ball from your coat rack. Billy Mays could have.
  • But I'm not done yet! You can also watch this Youtube video absolutely free!
  • Plus he gets an extra 100 bonus points... multiplied by 2 and then squared for selling stuff that actually worked. And if it didn't, you'd still buy it BECAUSE THAT SCREAMING VOICE MIGHT AS WELL BE ORDERS FROM GOD HIMSELF.
  • Speaking of, his voice could be heard over a vuvuzela. That's pretty badass.
  • To quote nigahiga, "He didn't just want to make me buy Oxyclean. He made me want to BUY OXYCLEAN! So I did."
• Courtesy of Weird Al: Charles Nelson Reilly won the Tour De France with two flat tires and a missin' chain...
  • Giddyup, Gene!
  • The man's unhinge his jaw and swallow a Volkswagen whole.
  • According to that video he's apparently even defeated Chuck Norris and took his head.
  • Notice that the song almost seemingly goes out of its way to avoid bringing up Brett Somers. She was his Kryptonite.
  • There's another verse to the song that isn't in the video, but is on the album:
    "Charles Nelson Reilly sold his toenail clippings as a potent aphrodisiac.
    He ran a four-minute mile blindfolded, with an engine block strapped to his back.
    He can eat more frozen waffles than any other man I know.
    Once he fell off the Chrysler Building and he barely even stubbed his toe."
• Guan Yu, from China's Three Kingdoms period, known for such feats of awesomeness that he was deified as the God of War and Brotherhood, and worshiped to this day.
  • And he had one hell of a beard!
  • And he invented the guan dao, one of the most awesome weapons in history. It's a massive, curved blade on a pole which can slice the legs out from under a horse.
  • The Three Kingdoms period is chocked full of memetic badasses! Special mention should go to Lü Bu, among whose accomplishments includes killing over 1,000 men in a single battle! Or Xiahou Dun, who was shot in the eye with an arrow only to pull it out with eye attached and ate it to strike fear into the hearts of his enemies! Some stories say he then ATE IT. Their deeds are so legendary they have their own video game!
  • Zhuge Liang, who is better than everyone at everything.
    • Zhuge Liang was outmaneuvered once. He commanded his men to hide, opened the gates of his fortress, and sat up on the walls playing music. The enemy commander chose to retreat, because Zhuge Liang never bluffs.
• Jonathan Coulton's song "Kenesaw Mountain Landis" is about the man who saved baseball. According to Coulton, he was 17 feet tall and had 150 wives. He also shot a cheating player's finger off with a rifle from a blimp.
  • The player should have kept his bird to himself.
• Thanks to his "performance" at the VMA, Kanye West has become a Memetic Interrupter.
• For connoisseurs of late '70s and 1980s Hong Kong action cinema, Hwang Jang Lee is held in almost universal fear and awe. The fact that he killed a challenger with one kick during his days in the South Korean army may have something to do with it. (That Hwang acted in pure self defense, and killed the man unintentionally, does absolutely nothing to diminish this.)
  • It being unintentional makes it even better. One can only imagine what would have happened if it was intentional.
• The U.S. Navy SEALs.
  • Do you have what it takes?◊
  • No. You don't.
  • Jon Stewart gives us a computer simulation of the Navy's recent rescue of the hostages, and the SEALs precision deployment of triple-simultaneous DEATH onto some pirate skulls.
• The British Army's Special Air Service, better known as the SAS. The original Special Forces, so efficient and secretive that their very existence wasn't revealed for forty years, when they ended the Iran Embassy Siege in broad daylight and a lot of embarrassing questions were asked about the guys in black. Entry requires a minimum of three years good service in another regiment, and then passing the legendary 'Selection' process, which involves a 'Hill Phase'. Those 'hills' are the Brecon Beacons, a mountain range in South Wales. This has been known to kill applicants. They are the inspiration and model for the U.S. Army's Delta Force, as well as more or less every other group of Special Forces.
  • Their founder, Major David Stirling, was nicknamed 'The Phantom Major' by the Axis, and refused to believe it was him when they captured him on the grounds that the real 'Phantom Major' was taller. Stirling was 6 foot 6. So, yeah. The SAS were basically founded by Batman.
  • Adding to the badassery, their naval counterpart, the SBS (Special Boat Service) has one very special fictional member: Commander James Bond RNR
• General Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck. Quoting The Other Wiki: German colonial officer, East Africa. Remained undefeated right through the Great War, while being outmanned, outgunned, and cut off from Germany and resupply. Appointed black officers. Has been referred to as leading the single greatest guerrilla operation in modern history. Was offered an ambassadorship to Great Britain by Hitler, but refused (seemingly out of a dislike of Hitler). Impressed his Great War foes enough that he got sent food packages by some of them after WW2.
• Kathy Bates. Her reputation for being "difficult" is legendary, but it somehow hasn't hurt her film career.
• According to Nico Nico Douga, Ichiro Suzuki accidentally destroyed the Earth during one match.
• John Smeaton, Glasgow airport baggage handler, who, when the airport was attacked by Muslim terrorists, kicked one of them in the groin so hard that he sprained his own foot. Even better, he didn't allow the fact that the man was, at the time, ON FIRE slow him down. When asked by TV news if he had a message for the terrorists, he said "This is Glasgow; we'll set aboot ye."
  • Apparently there are ways around the law that "ninjas can't get you when you're on fire".
    • Smeaton's no a ninja, he's a fookin' Scot! They practice the ancient, mystical Scottish martial art of Fuk Ye!
  • Adam Hills used this to sum up why Scotland in general should never be a terrorist target: "How tough do you have to be to watch a car plough into the side of a building, on fire, a guy gets out in flames and runs across the terminal - and you go "Fuckin' watch this!"
    • And Frankie Boyle (himself a Scot) used it as an example of what Scots are like: Scotland is the only place in the world where a flaming man would be punched to the ground instead of being given medical attention.
  • Alex McIlveen, who gave us this inspired headline◊.
  • Scots and Scotland, period!
• At least amongst their own little cult, Playful Hackers phoenix and silveromega have recieved this treatment. Whenever a major incident in computer security happened, a common response amongst ex-Unionists is to say "It was The Silv, for shits and giggles." Phoenix, the more charismatic "white hat", is normally thought of to be a combination of people; whenever someone does something sufficiently awesome (in computer programming), one common explanation is "He's secretly phoenix" or "She's secretly phoenix".
  • The new Unionist leader zzmcbtz and his/her Lancer, c7dba65169f7ad1460ec53034e1bc883, get a bit of both. (As for the Genius Bonus: c7dba's username is an MD5 hash)
• Hiroshi Fujioka is in his 60's, still in top physical form, was Kamen Rider 1, Segata Sanshiro, and is head of the UFDA. He has many times stated that he'd gladly be any of these people again. He also has an asteroid named after him. What truly badasses it is that he puts a comma at the end of his name to remind himself that he could still do more.
• U.S. Marines-Over 260 U.S. Marines have received the medal of honor for crazy shit like throwing themselves on top of grenades to save their buddies or charging a machine gun nest with bayonets...and winning before dying.
  • Two of them (Daniel Daly), (Smedley Butler) received it twice and survived both times. The Marines also impressed the Germans in WWI to the point the German Army considered them Elite Grade Storm Troopers.
  • The most bad Marine of all time is Chesty Puller. When the Marines were surrounded in Chosin Reservoir, he was glad they had found the enemy and were surrounded. It made it easier for him to get them. He also led the most bad ass division of the Marine Corps, the 1st Marine Division. Chesty Puller is considered the Memetic Badass among US Marines.
    • Chesty Puller was a commissioned Lieutenant around the end of World War I, but was put into the inactive list thanks to the military being scaled back down after the war. He then left and reapplied as a Private, fought in Haiti for five years and left as a Commissioned Lieutenant again. Yes, he demoted himself all the way back to private so he could fight, and then fought all the way back up to Lieutenant.
• Sgt. 1st Class Ernest R. Kouma, United States Army. During the Second Battle of Naktong Bulge in the Korean Conflict, he single-handedly killed approximately 250 North Korean soldiers with his machine gun. That's more enemies than Audie Murphy killed in his entire career in a single action. Despite being wounded and ordered to evacuate, he twice requested to return to the front lines. After that, winning the Medal of Honor was a formality.
• The (now retired) Reconnaissance Marine Brad "Iceman" Colbert of Generation Kill fame is a living legend in the Marine Corps. Known for his unshakable calmness in battle, professionalism and competency, as well as his feats of sheer willpower and determination (such as scaling the last 1000 meters of Mt. Shasta with a broken ankle), he is one of the most recognizable modern badasses of the Corps. Numerous young Marines describe being completely star-struck when they met him, and he himself mentioned that several of them told him he was their impetus for joining the Corps.
• You cannot defeat or tie the IDF. You can only hope they're in a merciful mood.
• Not to start a Flame War over which is better, but the AK-47 has gained a reputation for being nigh indestructible. One could leave it in mud, pull it out and start firing. Too bad the creator lives in relative poverty, on a Russian army pension.
  • The Soviet service rifle predecessor, the Mosin-Nagant (especially the most common variant, the 91/30), has achieved this reputation among civilian shooters to a degree unmatched by virtually any rifle. It's even simpler and tougher than the AK (being a bolt-action rifle), fires a cartridge that breaks cinderblocks in half, comes with a foot-long spike bayonet that could skewer a bear, and is extremely inexpensive and easy to acquire due to the Soviets storing millions of them in preparation for World War III, which they promptly sold off after they lost the Cold War. The heavy weight (about 10 pounds loaded and with the bayonet and sling attached), powerful cartridge, large size (it's taller than many girls with the bayonet attached), and steel buttplate on a thick wooden stock lead to the opinion that it's designed purely for a Husky Russkie. It's not uncommon for users to begin speaking in terrible Fake Russian accents and spearing everything around with the attached bayonet (it always comes with the bayonet) as soon as they get their hands on it.
• The Toyota Hilux. It was advertised as unbreakable and the Top Gear (UK) guys put it through a variety or tortures including leaving it tied to a wharf during a few tide cycles and leaving it on the roof of an apartment block mid-demolition - it still ran and was driven into the studio! Toyota has since released a model named "Invincible".
• Epic Beard Man. He is a motherfucker. That is all.
  • Bring some ambalamps!
• Michael Phelps doesn't swim - he beats the shit out of the water until it takes him where he wants to go.
• R. Lee Ermey will unscrew your head and shit down your neck!
• Kilroy was here. According to one tale, the original Kilroy was the inspector of a shipyard that built American supply ships. On each part he inspected, he would write "Kilroy Was Here". When the ships were put together, this graffiti would end up in bizarre places that appear unreachable. When the enemy captured these ships and saw "Kilroy Was Here" in such bizarre places and in such huge numbers, they began to think Kilroy was some sort of American superspy.
  • Another version is that he was a riveter, and he marked the end of his rivets for the day with his iconic graffiti so that the next guy couldn't erase his mark and move it back a few rivets to get paid more.
  • The 'American Superspy' bit comes from rumours of Hitler and Stalin both finding a 'Kilroy was here' message (Hitler on some captured equipment, and Stalin in the VIP bathroom at the Potsdam Conference).
• Narwals! They can beat a polar bear in a fight, they're the Jedi of the sea, and invented the Shish-Kebab!
  • Just don't let them touch your balls.
• Freddie Mercury. AIDS didn't kill him, epic power just engulfed his body.
• Throughout the 2010 NHL Playoffs, Blackhawks rookie goalie Antti Niemi quickly earned a reputation as unstopple force of nature. With the Hawks now winning the Stanley Cup, it won't be long until everyone in the world knows that when you try and score on him, NIEMI SAYS NO!
• Nintendo of America President and COO Reggie "The Regginator" Fils-Aime is about kicking ass and taking names!
  • "My name is Reggie. I'm about kickin' ass, I'm about takin' names, and we're about makin' games."
  • "Don't make me do it. I'll take your name."
  • "My body, my body is ready."
  • As Nintendo Power once put it, "He could rip out your heart, show it to you, and then race through the original Super Mario Bros. before you died."
• SHARKS, FUCK YEAH.
  • Sharks? You mean Orca Food? It isn't for no reason Orcas have the single largest entry in Awesome on This Very Wiki.
  • Did Orcas eat L Jackson?
  • Menace of the deep my squishy orange tentacles.
• Both Isaiah Mustafa and Terry Crews for their Old Spice commercials. Bonus points for displaying an example of a two-person trope even though they've never appeared in the same commercial. That's how badass they are.
• Dario Wünsch, is StarCraft II pro-player. Known as The Little One or "TLO" for short, during screencasts does things that are daring and/or ridiculous and can get away with it "because he's TLO"
• Baron Karl Friedrich Hieronymus, Freiherr von Munchausen saw many books published during his lifetime that exaggerated his exploits to an extraordinary degree, making him quite possibly the Ur-Example of this trope. He's the namessake for the trope The Münchausen, and has several movies highlightng the absurdity of his exploits, not the least of which being Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. It's also worth noting that the real Baron Munchausen that these storys were attributed to, hated these stories because they made him look like a braggart at best and a lunatic at worst.
• Ninjas.
  • Also, Pirates.
  • Psh, Vikings
• Zoë Bell can give a man multiple orgasms by roundhouse kicking him.
• The British tendency towards the Stiff Upper Lip has reached this, though you could argue its justified with the number of examples recorded.
• Civil War admiral David Farragut. You know him for coining the phrase "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!"
• Corsette (formerly sugarhugs) on livejournal is defintely one. To the extent that another user made a list of scientifically proven things that she has done and is capable of!
  • What? Only 134 friends? Maybe badass, but not memetic at all.
• Stephen Fry: not been listed yet?
  • "Thou shalt not question Stephen Fry."
• Fortunately for him, Mr. Schneider, Roger Ebert can put two thumbs down through six inches of steel plate. And your movie sucks.
• Noam Chomsky's been quoted more than anyone
• A Very Potter Musical has made Zac Efron a Memetic Badass on a smaller scale. Ask any AVPM fan, even ones who hated him before they watched AVPM, and they'll tell you all about what a charismatic humanitarian he is.
  • Fans of Team Starkid find A.J. Holmes a Memetic Badass. There's proof.
• The Governator rode this trope to high office. 'Nuff said.
  • He was destined to bear the jeweled crown of Kahlefonia upon a troubled brow. Anyone who says otherwise is a girly-man!
  • He threatened to make California's legislature watch Jingle All the Way if he did not get the budget on time.
• Do NOT mess with the Jimmer.
  • For BYU students who don't care about sports, Jimmer-mania makes you want to punch a baby.
• Pythagoras counts: Guys like Aristotle had really strange ideas about what could Pythagoras do. For example, they would say that Pythagoras could travel through time, talk to animals, write in the moon and other things...
• Ronald McDonald in Japanese culture has a capacity of beating other badasses, taking down a jerk, and causing random explosions
  • And may or may not be an Eldritch Abomination.
• Charlie Sheen, ever since it was revealed that he is a warlock with tiger blood and Adonis DNA. Also he was later photographed on a rooftop with a machete.
• Though a superhero, Bruce Schneier disdains the use of a mask or secret identity as 'security through obscurity'.
• Ladies and gentlemen, Casey the Punisher.
• China's city ordinance managers, police in charge of busting up illegal peddlers, have developed a reputation for extreme zealousness. This in turn led them to be branded as China's secret weapon by netizens who want them deployed everywhere from foreign wars to malfunctioning Japanese nuclear reactors.
• Carl Friedrich Gauss, oddly enough. Well, it's not that odd—mathematicians are pretty cool.
  • How many other mathematicians have an entire class of weapons named after them?
• Among many of his fans, Christopher Lee was thought of like this. Want evidence? Go and read the comments of this YouTube video. He seemed to be older and more cultured version of Chuck Norris. The fact that he really was amazingly talented in a lot of different areas (as shown on his page) just backs it up.
  • Do you know what sound a man makes when he's stabbed in the back with a dagger, for real? Christopher Lee did.
  • When most people turn 90, they start shopping for caskets. Christopher Lee makes a heavy metal album.
  • Christopher Lee played Scaramanga in The Man with the Golden Gun. In real life, he was one of the people the character of James Bond was based on, as part of the SOE, British Intelligence agents during WWII, who were otherwise known as 'the Baker Street Irregulars' and 'the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare'. Oh, and did we mention that he was a prolific Nazi hunter?
  • The man was still filming action scenes at the age of 80-plus.
• Pippa Middleton, that is to say, Kate Middleton's sister. When an ass trends on Twitter, you know it is unquestionably a bad ass.
• Michelle Rodriguez once had a choice of going to prison or doing community service. She chose prison, because it was less of a pain in the ass! <sup>note</sup>  Marginally less badass given prison was so overcrowded, she was released the same day she went in.
• What do Avatar and Avengers: Endgame have in common, aside from both films being the box office topper? Zoe Saldaña in a starring Action Girl role. Apparently, the key to even hoping to get to the top of the box office is to cast Zoe in the film.
• Yam Ah Mee, the man who announced the results for the Singapore General Elections, is fast turning into one with the netizens of Singapore because of his deadpan delivery.
• Jack Palance gained newfound fame thanks to his role in City Slickers playing a badass with one-liners that probably inspired the Chuck Norris meme. He earned an Academy Award for the part, and celebrated by doing push-ups on stage...at age 73. The following year Crystal came on stage to host the show on a giant Oscar statue that Palance was pulling by his teeth.
  Jack Palance: Billy Crystal... I crap bigger than him.
• Sean Bean gets stabbed in a bar fight and what does he do? He refuses medical attention and orders another drink. And that's not even all there is to the story.
• Plains Indians tend to fall into this trope. So do the Apaches. Just look at the list of American Indian protagonists in comics: Inevitably Sioux, Cheyenne, or Apache.
• You know why you never want to wage a land war in Asia? Genghis Khan is why.
  • Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes are why there's that Great Wall of China. Which is a memetic badass STRUCTURE (e.g. "It's the only man-made thing that can be seen from space."). China was so afraid of the Mongols that it built a HUGE FUCKING WALL to keep them out. That's how badass Genghis Khan and the Mongols were.
    • Actually, the Great Wall was built in 200-something BC. And it was built against Hunnic Turks, not Mongols. Unless Genghis Khan was a time traveller, of course.
    • It was originally built in the 2nd century BCE. It was rebuilt, strengthened, and enlarged to keep out the Mongols. And it didn't work. It can't really be seen from space (by the naked eye), either — but several other manmade things can.
    • And if anyone Khan, Genghis Khan.
    • When Crash Course discussed history, they noted when empires bit off more than they could chew, and how they should know that nobody could pull off these achievements. Unless you're, wait for it... the Mongols.
• Similar example to the one above: In 117 CE, the Roman Empire, possessing huge amounts of land and the most powerful military in the history of mankind, sent the Ninth Legion into Caledonia to spearhead an invasion. Not a single one of the Ninth Legion were ever seen or heard from again. The Romans constructed Hadrian's Wall not long after. Where is Caledonia? Scotland.
• Honey Badger don't give a shit.
• Kazimierz Piechowski, a Polish soldier during World War II. Along with three other men, he escaped from Auschwitz. Yes, that Auschwitz. How they did it? They stole uniforms and a car (belonging to Rudolf Hess himself!) and drove out. The best part? They were unlucky and a guard post was standing on their way. Piechowski, fluent in German, proceeded to flip the fuck out in German on the guardsmen and they let them through. BAD. ASS.
  • It's also speculated that his spectacular escape inspired the Nazis to tattoo the prisoners.
• Frank Sinatra has chunks of guys like you in his stool.
• Gary Busey, the Chuck Norris of Crazy. Once survived an epic motorcycle crash while riding without a helmet. And he knows where you live. How? We don't know.
• Horatio Nelson doesn't need an arm or an eye to smash the Spanish and French. At the same time.
• Miyamoto Musashi. Founder of a style of swordsmanship, undefeated samurai warrior, widely considered Kensei, author of a book of philosophy and tactics that is still read and, according to legend, killed a man in a duel with a bokken he carved himself from an oar he carried to the island. Yeah.
• Chicago Blackhawks rookie Andrew Shaw reached this status within DAYS of getting called up from the AHL after a fight 2 seconds into his first shift and 5 goals in his first 9 games. #ShawFacts quickly ascended and now Chuck Norris wears Andrew Shaw pajamas.
• Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard.
• The entire ancient Greek city-state of Sparta, even before 300 came out. There is a reason we now call intense military training from a young age The Spartan Way.
• Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch IN SPACE!!
• If Mike Tyson starts losing a match he'll eat the ear of his opponent to win!
• King St. Ladislaus of Hungary. Probably the only Christian saint who's been attributed "miracles" like splitting a mountain in half (the hagiographys insist it was through prayer though), or coming back from the dead as a giant animated statue to fight Mongols.
• And... why has it taken this long for Liam Neeson's Beard to get mentioned? Liam Neeson's Beard isn't made of hair. Liam Neeson's Beard is pure adamantium. Seriously. Not even Darth Maul's Lightsaber could cut through Liam Neeson's Beard. <sup>note</sup>  The joke arises from a deleted scene (which for some reason is not on YouTube yet) of a scene from The Phantom Menace where Neeson, when practicing choreography with MacGregor and Park, didn't quite duck out of the way in time from an oncoming blow from Park's metal pole, which would later be edited to become his lightsaber, and it passed through the beard he had grown for the movie. The studio added the visual and audio effects anyway, and a video was created of a red lightsaber passing through Liam Neeson's Beard without it being harmed.
  • It is a shame though that Darth Maul didn't aim for his beard.
• Giuseppe Garibaldi. The saint patron of ragtag misfits, he was able to take unexperienced young man and turn them in an army. His exploits include (but are in no way limited to): defending the city of Montevideo from a siege (after the Uruguayan army had been crushed) with an army formed only by immigrants and recently freed-slaves... for nine years! And winning, causing the fall of two dictators; invading and conquering a country (Kingdom of Two Sicilies) with little more than a thousand men, and ending the campaign with an army of thirty thousands (he recruited most of the troops sent against him); escaping from his island, where he was being watched by nine ships, and then crossing Sardegna on a horse in a night and a day without stopping from resting... at sixty.
• Newark Mayor Cory Booker will shovel your driveway personally if you can't. And if you get caught in a burning building, he will run through a wall of fire to get you out.[1]
• Alton Brown prepares his fugu blindfolded, with one chopstick and a plastic spork. Alton Brown ain't afraid of no chump neurotoxin.. His oven is a Hotternell, and Gordon Ramsay calls him "Sir". You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs. But Alton Brown can.
• Frank Welker, an iconic voice actor. Some of his claims to fame include just how long he's been at it—his first acting job was as Fred in the original Scooby-Doo cartoon, and he's still playing that same role 50 years later, as well as having taken over the role of Scooby himself in 2002. What he's best known for is probably his uncanny ability to flawlessly imitate any animal sound. For several years, this skill-set had Welker at number one on a ranking of the highest box-office returns of any actor, on the technicality that his vocal effects have appeared in nearly every movie ever made. Such is Welker's reputation that many sources, such as the IMDB or This Very Wiki, will attribute him as the voice of just about any character who makes non-human noises, and even some that don't make any noise at all. Rule of thumb, if he's not actually in the credits, he probably didn't do it, but it doesn't help that he occasionally gets credited for doing vocal effects that were actually done by real animals. A lot of people, even those who put credits together, simply refuse to believe that animal and monster sounds can come from anywhere else but Frank Welker's pipes.
  • The only animal/monster vocal effects which aren't erroneously credited to Frank Welker are those that are confirmed to be done by Dee Bradley Baker, who has the same uncanny skillset. If the creature effects, on par with Welker's, haven't made Baker a memetic badass, the faces he pulls while doing them certainly have.
• Another voice actor example: Brad Swaile. Playing Light Yagami will do that.
• Everyone is afraid of Alan Moore. Yes, everyone.
  • Similarly, Grant Morrison might not only be the messiah of the Apocalypse but is also a wizard who can casually summon a new girlfriend for themself or be worthy to be abducted by aliens from a higher plane of reality.
• Mantis shrimp. And coconut crabs, too.
• Katie Taylor. Liam Neeson is afraid of her, she punched out Batman and Chuck Norris wears Katie Taylor pyjamas.
• Peruvian sociologist and political analyst Julio Cotler due not only to his accuracy and intelligence but also to his uncanny [http://elblogdecayo.blogspot.com/2008/09/cotler-was-right.html resemblance] to Magneto, with the phrase "Cotler Was Right" becoming a popular Internet Meme among peruvian college students, bloggers and journalists.
• If Australia can kill Steve Irwin, what chance do YOU have?
• Nate Silver, the statistician who accurately predicted the results of the 2008 and 2012 US Presidential elections. When he is sober, his mind can predict the outcome of the US elections and crunch more numbers than a Cray 2000. When he's drunk...
• Is it possible for a phone to be a Memetic Badass? Apparently so; the Nokia 3310 is rumored to be Nigh-Invulnerable, so much so that when the host of Will It Blend? attempted to blend it and succeeded, a heavy majority of the people who commented on the video accused it of being fake.
• North Korean Propaganda has made their political leaders appear god-like due to the intensity of the personality-cult.
  • Kim Jong Il is described to have scored 5 points in an 18 hole golf game, being born under a double-rainbow on the most sacred mountain-top in Korea, inventing the hamburger and not needing to use the toilet.
  • When The Onion declared Kim Jong Un as the 'sexiest man alive', the North Korean News Agencies celebrated this. What they didn't know is that The Onion is a comedic yellow journalist news agency.
• Jack Churchill. When WW2 started, he joined the SAS. He is the only soldier to have killed an enemy with a longbow in WW2. That's right, a longbow, in WW2. While the soldiers under his commander were carrying rifles and SMGs, he went into battle with a longbow, a claymore, and bagpipes. On more than one occasion he was the last survivor of his unit. After one mission went south, and all his soldiers were killed, and he used all his arrows, and he was cornered by the Germans, they found him sitting there calmly, waiting for them, playing his bagpipes. They sent him to a POW camp, but he got bored and left.
• The Canadian Corps, in WW1, and their commander, General Arthur Currie. The Canadians were the most organized and cohesive unit in the Allied side, and were used as the first shock troops. The Germans were aware of this, and started preparing for an attack whenever sentries spotted Canadians on the front lines. On multiple occasions it would be let slip that a unit of the Canadian Corps were heading to a location, so that the Germans would focus their troops there, and leave another location more vulnerable attack.
  • The German term "stormtrooper", later used to describe elite units in both Allied and Axis armies in WW2, was coined as a nickname for the Canadian Corps.
  • The Hundred Days Offensive, the biggest successful drive made by the Allies during WW1, is generally called Canada`s Hundred Days, because during this time, the 4 divisions of the Canadian Corps, roughly 100 000 men, defeated 47 divisions of the German army, more than a million soldiers.
  • There was a legend during the war that Canadians were immune to chlorine gas. This is because, during the Battle of Ypres, the first use of chlorine, a chemistry student was in the Canadian line, and recognized the scent. He shouted at everyone to piss on their handkerchiefs and hold them over their faces, because urine neutralizes chlorine. The English and French retreated, and the Canadians held the line until the gas dissipated and reinforcements arrived.
  • Vimy Ridge was considered untakeable because when the French and English tried to storm it, they had all failed. To win, General Currie had his men practice the maneuvers necessary to take the ridge for a week beforehand. Soldiers were given maps and told of objectives, a move previously nonexistent due to the fear of spies. In the first battle that the Canadian Corps fought all four units together as a force, they took the untakeable. The victory is largely credited as the day Canada became a nation of Canadians, rather than a ragtag group of Quebecois and English colonials. There is now a big honking memorial on the site.
    • The memorial was built between the world wars. When the Germans took France during WWII, Hitler personally ordered that soldiers be placed around it to protect it from vandalism.
• Joss Whedon. Made a Shakespeare movie in his down time so that he could focus better on the most successful superhero movie of all time when he stopped procrastinating.
• Daniel Boone, even within his lifetime, was this. He himself once remarked:
  Many heroic actions and chivalrous adventures are related of me which exist only in the regions of fancy. With me the world has taken great liberties, and yet I have been but a common man.
• Fred Rogers is an interesting example, being such an icon of Incorruptible Pure Pureness and basically one of the nicest people who ever lived that people either tried to dig up any kind of dirt on him that they could (the worst thing they could find was him flipping the double bird...which was taken out of context) or made up Memetic Badass rumors about him, like how he was a sniper in Vietnam. Then of course, there's the fact that he's the winner of the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny.
  • A comment on this video:
    If Genghis Khan, Stalin, and Hitler existed in this modern day... They would have wept like babies and surrendered to Mr. Rogers. And before they were taken away in chains to answer for their horrendous crimes, Mr. Rogers would ask them what was bothering them and they would honestly tell him. The biggest badass in the history of America wore a bitchin' sweater. Rest in peace.
    • Mr. Rogers may be the only recorded example in history of a Memetic Goodass.
  • He once testified before Congress when they wanted to cut their grant to public broadcasting. They doubled it.
• Jens Voigt. Grand old man in cycling, complete badass.
• Jeffrey R. Holland, member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. His propensity for "singeing eyebrows" during his talks has become legendary, even outside the Church. He was even awarded his own Manhood award.
• The comedian Gil Brother is LEGENDARY among brazilian fans of an old show called Hermes & Renato.
• Legendary boxer Roberto Duran. The facts would be enough: Duran boxed professionally for 33 years, from 1968 to 2001, and only stopped fighting because he suffered injuries in a car accident. He began as a skinny kid weighing less than 120 pounds, he would later become a near consensus choice as the greatest lightweight of all time, would win titles as high as middleweight, (virtually no one else has been able to successfully win titles from lightweight to middleweight) he fought guys that would later fight as heavyweights and win at heavyweight by KO, and never went down while taking their shots. In his long career he was KO'd once, by Tommy Hearns, one of the hardest punchers in boxing history. Mike Tyson hero worships Duran. And then the stories start getting crazy: the time that he was at a fair of some kind and somebody bet him that there was someone there Duran couldn't KO with one punch. Duran accepted the bet without seeing who this person was, and the other guy brought out a horse as the person Duran couldn't KO. According to legend, Duran promptly knocked the horse out with a single punch. (Boxing fans, due to this longtime legend, have also joked that Duran invented the giraffe when he hit a horse with an uppercut.) There are the legendary tales of how much booze he drank, how much drugs he did, how many women he slept with, how many times he handed armed muggers in his native Panama their asses without any weapons. How he end bar fights and riots with a Death Glare. How he crashed an airplane into the ocean and swam 2 miles back to Panama. How he had a pet lion named Walla that he would wrestle with like it was a kitten. (That last one is definitely true.)
• Bryan Cranston can go from a lovable dorky father to a badass, evil drug kingpin to a CIA agent to Lyndon B. Johnson, all without breaking a sweat. Oh, and most of the time, he's usually in his underwear.
• The Count of Cavour. Why? Well, do you remember how Garibaldi invaded a country with a thousand men and ended the conquest with thirty thousands? It was part of Cavour's plan to get the Kingdom of Sardinia to conquer almost all of Italy: Garibaldi would conquer the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, and then the Sardinian Army would march south to stop him and conquer every single other Italian state still independent in the process (they only left out part of the Papal States due to diplomacy, and they would conquer it later). When you are the only reason Italy exists as a unified country and a Memetic Badass is the guy you sic on someone to have an excuse to conquer someone else, you are this.
• In Italy, Luigi Rizzo. Why? Well, in World War I this guy was returning home after a patrol at sea with his trusty speedboat when he stumbled on an Austro-Hungarian flotilla centered on two battleships, sank one (with a speedboat) and, for added insult, had the crew of the other battleship record two films the sinking (one film wasn't enough, apparently). After that, the Austro-Hungarian fleet was too scared to try and sortie again before the end of the war, and Italy's Navy Day is June 10 in memory of the day Rizzo sank a battleship because, literally, it was there.
• The Italian Bersaglieri infantry are known to run all the time (their regulations forbid them to walk), with their band doing that while playing trumpets, and to trample anything they charge at. Among the victims of a charge of the Bersaglieri we have Russian cavalry (they were charged on the flank, forced to retreat to regroup, and then they ran like hell when they saw the Bersaglieri were still charging and about to make contact again. After seeing that, the French Zuavi, then considered the best infantry in the world, admitted they had just been Overshadowed by Awesome) and US Army tank destroyers (the Americans had just repelled Rommel's panzer grenadiers when the Desert Fox sicked on them the Bersaglieri attached to an Italian armoured division he had there. Not the whole division, only the Bersaglieri. The Bersaglieri overran the American positions).
  • The Italian War Cemetery at El Alamein has a plaque with this quote from Rommel: "The German soldier has impressed the world, however the Italian Bersagliere soldier has impressed the German soldier". Given that, in World War I, he took part to the Battle of Caporetto (the worst defeat ever suffered by an Italian army in history, still felt after about one hundred years), he knows what he's talking about.
  • Benito Mussolini's obsession for the physical fitness of the Italians originates from a simple fact: his time as a Bersagliere had convinced him that it was the best way to go. Also, differently from other similar dictators, he did his best to incarnate said ideal: he had a decent amount of Stout Strength, could swim for miles in the Strait of Messina, where tidal currents are so strong that myth attributed them to a sea monster, and his middle name means "manly". The kicker? His physical prowess was average for the Bersaglieri! Let that sink for a moment, and you'll realize why the Bersaglieri are on this list.
• St. John Paul II is often likened to James Bond without the sex. Of course, this was a man who lived under and opposed both Nazi occupation and a Soviet puppet government, and is credited with playing an active role in ending Communism in Europe by none other than Mikhail Gorbachev himself.
• John Brown. A Bible-spouting, broadsword-wielding abolitionist who raised so much hell in 1850's Kansas that his name was a swear word in the South into the middle 20th Century. Though he was more than a little bit Ax-Crazy...
• Skanderbeg, the Albanian Hero, earned numerous badass rumors about him within his own lifetime, told by his own soldiers. Among them, he was said to have killed 3,000 Ottomans by himself, he never slept more than five hours at night and could cut two men asunder with a single stroke of his scimitar, cut through iron helmets, kill a wild boar with a single stroke, and cleave the head off a buffalo with another.
• Kevin Vickers, Sergeant-at-Arms of the Canadian House of Commons, is quickly gaining a reputation as a mace-swinging, terrorist-killing badass, thanks to his swift dispatch of murderer Michael Zebaf-Bibeau.
• Let's give a shout out to Vlad Tepes, aka Vlad the Impaler. Everybody knows the (possibly apocryphal) story about the dinner guests, sure. But a certain Ottoman general sent an advance force of about 20,000 men to capture a Wallachian town Vlad was defending. When he arrived at the head of his main force, he found an empty town with about 20,000 impaled Ottoman corpses ranged around it. Being a man of the world, the general looked around at the grisly forest, looked around at the apparently empty hills surrounding him, and decided he had pressing business back in Constantinople.
• The Portuguese have two especially notable Badasses to look up to: Viriathus and Luís de Camões.
  • Viriathus was a Lusitanian shepherd who, when the Romans invaded, rallied up some local men^note  None of whom were soldiers, by the way. and not only halted the Romans but also BEAT THEM BACK! He also remains undefeated to this day, having been killed in his camp while asleep. Also of note, it took three traitors to do him in.
  • Meanwhile, Luís de Camões was a poet who composed an Epic counting the deeds and accomplishments of the Portuguese people. All while being blinded in one eye. He also wrote much of it on his way to India to basically brag to the local king. When his ship sank, he swam to help with the unfinished book in one hand to prevent it from getting wet.
    • In fact, Portugal Day is also known as Day of Camões.
• Montague Street Bridge in Melbourne, Australia, bane of all road vehicles. Yes, Australia is awesome enough that an inanimate structure is a badass.
• German goalkeeper Manuel Neuer is widely acknowledged to be the best goalkeeper of his time. If a goal is scored anywhere it's a common saying among German football fans to say "Neuer would have kept it".
  • After his ridiculously artistic save from the line in the 2016 Euro match against Ukrainia, defender Jérôme Boateng gets a similar treatment.
  • To Americans, Tim Howard has this reputation (Everton fans think otherwise). David De Gea is also treated this way by Manchester United fans (and many Spanish fans). Generally, any goalkeeper who makes impossible or breathtaking saves will be considered a Memetic Badass by his team's fans.
• ZLATAN. IBRAHIMOVIC. Any Football forum or comments section will have at least one post dedicated to the (fictional) Chuck Norris-esque feats of everyone's favorite Swedish Egomaniac Footballer. Then again, his real-life quotes are pretty outrageous as well. One of his more recent ones had him encourage people to get the Covid vaccine after having caught Covid himself.
  "The virus challenged me and I won," he said. "But you are not Zlatan, don't challenge the virus. Use your head, respect the rules: distance and mask, always. We'll win!"
  • And now he has his own Search Engine.
• Similar to Zlatan, "World's Strongest Player" Adebayo Akinfenwa has this reputation. Though this is mostly credited to his monstrous frame rather than his footballing ability.
  • Romelu Lukaku and Emmanuel Emenike have the "strong man"/"tank" reputation among FIFA players. Bonus points for them being skilled in Real Life.
• Brian Scalabrine was humorously seen as the best player in the NBA, despite the fact that he rode the bench throughout his career. That hasn't stopped people from considering him "The White Mamba" (a reference to Kobe Bryant's "Black Mamba" nickname) and "the G.O.A.T.".
  • Funnily enough, Scalabrine has a player card in NBA 2K and NBA Live Mobile, both rated in the 90's.
  • A similar thing has happened to footballing benchwarmer/Arsenal flop Nicklas Bendtner a.k.a. "Lord Bendtner".
  • The Filipino version of Brian Scalabrine is Jerwin Gaco.
• Many New Zealand Rugby Union players, but Jonah Lomu is easily among the most famous simple for effectively being unstoppable, something that Film/Invictus noted. It reached the point where a player that he steamrolled has basically become most well-known for getting run down by Jonah Lomu.
• In a very dark comedy way due to its controversies, Harambe becomes Memetic Badass in Messianic Archetype kind of way.
• The blue whale. It's the largest animal on Earth right now and probably ever (Argentinosaurus was a good deal longer, but due to the differences in sauropod and whale anatomy, probably wasn't as heavy), and people have come up with some rather Chuck Norris Facts-esque tall tales about exactly how big it is, most famously the line about blue whales reaching lengths of over 100 feet which, again, is probably true but not typical. Per That Other Wiki, other badass memes about the blue whale include that a human can swim through its arteries, that its heartbeat can be heard 19 miles away, and that it has a 16-foot penis. Admit it, until just now you thought all those things were actually true.
• Jeb Bush is regarded as both this and a Memetic Loser. After running and failing to win the Republican primaries in 2016, most memes generated are more about his Memetic Loser status, but a few memes are of him somehow winning elections by an enormous landslide. Even in other countries like Britain or France.
• FBI has been subjected to controversies regarding violations of American citizens right to privacy. As a result, they are often referenced in memes about spying on internet users, raiding their homes and arresting them for illegal online activity such as alleged cyber-terrorism, conspiracy, hacking, pedophile, or having unpopular opinions. For example...◊ FBI, STOP TYPING!!
• Liberal millennial American women have two patron saints of badassery: Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
  • Tiny 85 year old Jewish Grandmother Justice Ginsburg is known on the internet as the "Notorious RBG" ,a play on The Notorious B.I.G.. It comes from a title of book about her that has spawned much merchandise,the most famous being her wearing a crown like Biggie.[2]◊ [3]◊. RBG is known to find this funny and buys her interns and clerks the shirts as thank you gifts when they leave her office.
    • Even after her recent passing, she's still seen as a badass from beyond the grave!
  • Mrs Pelosi didn't really become such a memetic badass until around the time she retook the speakership in January 2019 after she started having Donald Trump as a foe. A picture of her coming out of a meeting in the oval office with Trump smirking and wearing a beautiful red coat [4]◊ (the color being called "the blood of my enemies” by one Twitter user) went memetic in December 2018. It was so popular that the designer reissued the coat she was wearing. She went viral again in February 2019 for Sarcastic Clapping at Trump during his state of the union address. [5]◊
• American conservative pundit Ben Shapiro had become subject to this among his followers; exagerrating his debating skills to comical effect. Thus the creation of the meme "Ben Shapiro DESTROYING X using FACTS and LOGIC" happened. During its time, the meme was also used sarcastically by his detractors.
• An Australian teenage boy named Will Connolly^note Not to be confused with an unrelated American musical artist who has the same name, nicknamed "Egg Boy", has been praised by many people for throwing egg at the Senator for Queensland Fraser Anning in March 2019 after the senator made insensitive comments about the Western Terrorists attack on Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, which was done by an Australian who acted like a White Supremacist. The boy was temporarily arrested by the local police before being released without charges.
• Italian Coast Guard officer Gregorio de Falco has become this in the wake of the Costa Concordia sinking, for the epic ass-chewing he gave Captain Francesco Schettino for not Going Down with the Ship and running away while disregarding orders to get the hell back on board (or, in Italian, "Vada a bordo, cazzo!"). Pretty much every commentator watching this clip agrees on how awesome he is.
  De Falco: Look, Schettino, you may have saved yourself from the sea, but I will really hurt you. I will cause you a boatload of trouble. Get back on board, for fuck's sake!
• Among fans of paleontology, Lystrosaurus has a reputation as an unkillable badass for not just surviving the "Big Die" (the Permian-Triassic Mass Extinction, which was the deadliest cataclysm in earth's history), but surviving so well that at one point it made up around 90% of all land vertebrates.
• Florida Man. News reports constantly report the Crazy Is Cool antics of something that could happen Only in Florida, usually involving some Trevor Phillips like carnage, generally while on meth.
• 0.01% of germs◊. Hand sanitizer ain't got nothing on them.
• In the midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic, U.S. NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci has garnered a lot of fans and merchandise, from bobbleheads to prayer candles to socks to T-shirts to an action figure and more.
• Paddy Losty, also known as Pintman. Losty was well known for being able to drink over thirty pints of stout in a day and claimed to be capable of more.
• GQ magazine's YouTube channel has featured retired US Navy SEAL Jocko Willink in a few videos breaking down combat scenes in films depicting the US military. His general visage (buzzcut, muscles, square jaw) and demeanor scream "career soldier", and you can bet that the comments on any video where he appears have latched onto this.
  "Jocko is the most tactical looking human being I've ever seen."
  "Jocko wasn't born, he was tactically deployed."
  "When Jocko went on his first date, his girlfriend's dad asked him for permission."
  "When Jocko gets pulled over, he asks for the officer's license and registration."
  "Jocko had a staring competition with the sun. The sun blinked."
  "When Jocko was born, the doctor said, 'It's a man.'"
• Eugene Goodman, the black police officer who stood up to an angry mob preparing to shed blood during the riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. His name means "Well-born Good Man" and he lives up to it.
• Grady Judd of Polk County, Florida. When he found out that a man in Colorado was selling a book titled The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure, he had an undercover detective buy a copy, then sent two officers over 1,800 miles to arrest the author for distribution of obscenity. Once, when asked why his men shot 110 rounds at one suspect, hitting him 68 times, Judd replied, "Because that's all the bullets we had."
  • The suspect in question was an armed cop killer who had shot a police officer six times, before shooting him twice in the back of the head killing the officer. And had just pointed the stolen officer's sidearm at the SWAT team.
• Jordi Hurtado, Spanish TV presenter and host of Spain's most veteran TV show, Saber y Ganar, which has been running for 24 years. Due to how he has not seemed to age at all in that time, he's the subject of multiple jokes about his apparent immortality.
• Video game composer Tim Follin has gained a reputation among VGM and chiptune enthusiasts as a certified badass for his absurdly impressive compositions that absolutely blow any other works from his contemporaries out of the water for their sheer complexity and raw power, especially based on the limitations of whatever hardware he happened to be working with. Adding onto this are three key factors: 1) Tim had almost no formal music education and was entirely self-trained from a young age, drawing on his love for prog rock bands like Yes and Genesis as his primary education instead. 2) The games that Tim composed music for, regardless of whatever merits they may have or lack, are mostly considered to be undeserving of their soundtracks and seem in some cases wildly out of place, both for their tone and for how hard they go. And 3) Tim was known to almost completely disregard whatever game he happened to be composing for and focus instead on simply maxing out the capabilities of the soundchip he was working with to make it his proverbial bitch. In essence, every Tim Follin soundtrack is him flexing his skills like an absolute boss and leaving everything else about the game in the dust.
• Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy became this after his outright defiance of the Russian army trying to invade Kyiv, and his refusal to personally evacuate. Very much helped by him famously saying "I need ammunition, not a ride." This is a man who started out as a lawyer, then switched over to acting and stand-up comedy, before becoming President of Ukraine.
  • Ukrainians in general are strong contenders. Grandparent-aged people think nothing of cursing Russian soldiers, wheelchair-bound seniors gather to make Molotov Cocktails while socializing, farmers steal Russian tanks with their tractors...
• General William Tecumseh Sherman, the Union general during the American Civil War known for his March to the Sea in which he razed Georgia and gave absolute hell to all the Confederacy supporters living in the state, as well as his Victory by Endurance tactics in which he and his soldiers inflicted absolute cruelty on the opposing Confederate Army. His tactics during the war remained the one thing he was unapologetic for during the rest of his life. He's the Trope Namer for War Is Hell, and weaponized it against the Confederacy.
  "I would make this war as severe as possible, and show no symptoms of tiring till the South begs for mercy."
• In the late 1500s, Admiral Yi Sun-sin of Korea earned the nickname "The Martial Lord of Loyalty" from his countrymen due to his achievements against the incredibly powerful Japanese navy of the time and naval innovations he himself pioneered. Yi eventually died during the final battle to a stray bullet, but gave instructions to not inform his crew of his death until the fighting was over. Yi also ordered his nephew to wear his uncle's armor and continue beating the war drums, which the nephew did to keep morale up. When Admiral Togo Heihachiro was compared to both Admiral Nelson and Admiral Yi roughly 300 years later, he had this to say.
  Togo: It may be proper to compare me with Nelson, but not with Korea’s Yi Sun-sin, for he has no equal.
• Formula One:
  • Red Bull's Sergio "Checo" Perez earns the fame as the Mexican Minister of Defense that helped his teammate, Max Verstappen to earn his first World Driver's Championship. UFC octagon announcer Bruce Buffer gives him the loudest introduction in the 2023 Las Vegas Grand Prix.
  • And speaking of Max Verstappen, the dude had a very dominant run during the 2022 and 2023 season so much so that he barely does any overtakes, let alone backmarkers, whenever after he secures pole position. You can tell he's worshipped by fans because he has not one, but three songs dedicated to him: "Super Max!" and "Super Max! Yo He! Yo Ho!"^note Made before Max's official championship victory in the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. by Pitstop Boys and "33 Max Verstappen" by Carte Blanq and Max Power. And oh, he is even the (un)official host of his own eponymous podcast.^note Since the 2023 season, all the Cooldown Room scenes involving Verstappen after a race win are often called the "Max Verstappen Podcast".
  • Kimi Raikkonen asks you to leave him alone because he knows what he's doing.
  • Michael Schumacher. The first ever seven-time world champion. His championship rivals Damon Hill, Jacques Villeneuve, and Mika Hakkinen acknowledge him as this. The time he surpassed the late Ayrton Senna's record of 41 race victories after winning his 42nd Grand Prix in the 2000 Italian Grand Prix, cue the Manly Tears from Schumi. It's now wonder Schumacher's legacy impacted Mercedes' success as an F1 team, with Lewis Hamilton now sharing the same records of seven world championships while driving for the said team from 2013 to 2024.
• Up until her death in 2022, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was this due to her long reign on the throne, prompting many to joke about her being immortal, and suggesting she's as old as the universe itself.
• Gayle King received some memetic badass treatment in 2019 for remaining calm, collected, and unflustered during her interview with singer R. Kelly when Kelly broke down into a hysterical, hyperbolic rant.
• Joe Biden was originally "Diamond Joe" Biden, a combination of The Casanova, The Stoner, The Prankster and a Butt-Monkey. Then he was elected President and became a mixture of this and a Memetic Psychopath after the anti-Biden phrase "Let's Go, Brandon" was turned around into Dark Brandon, a silver-haired man in a sharp suit with Glowing Eyes who is going to eat ice cream and put an end to all your malarkey.
• Archive of Our Own Fanfic Writers. On Twitter, they've become memetically known for being unstoppable in their drive to write after some posts showcasing Author's notes in several fanfics where they write their fics even through surgeries, weddings, funerals, and natural disasters. Here's a thread on it.
• One of the more memetic individuals to come out of the US's involvement in Afghanistan's internal conflicts was an Afghan National Army team leader simply known as "Jamsheed", who became a meme among internet military discussion communities around the world, after a US team he was operating alongside, filmed the man calmly displaying his world class RPG-7 rocket launcher skills by nonchalantly destroying a distant machinegun nest with a single shot. Ever since, the man become something akin to a "patron saint" for the weapon's usage.
• Conservative Americans tend to place Donald Trump on a high pedestal, jokingly or not, due to his accomplishments as POTUS (such as brokering peace between the Koreas) and his hold-nothing-back attitude. A common meme is to put his head on top of artwork of the God-Emperor of Mankind's body. A Twitter account called Trump History has been made for nothing but this by using AI art to create images of Trump accomplishing great feats throughout all of history, from being one of the first people to step on the moon to helping the Greeks at Thermopylae.
• The Walt Disney Company, after buying out increasingly major companies like Marvel Comics, Lucasfilm, and 20th Century Studios (which they renamed from 20th Century Fox), eventually gained a reputation for being able to acquire anything with their greens.
• Rule 34 artists have a reputation of being able to defy physics and churn out porn faster than the speed of light.
• Waffle House has the reputation of being staffed with some of the strongest fighters in the fast food business. Not cooks or chefs, people who will actually kick your ass if you start anything. The restaurants in general have such a reputation about this that a common joke is how one can determine how severe weather conditions are based on whether or not Waffle House is still open. If they're still kicking, then you can absolutely hold out. If they're closed, then things are truly dire.
  @the_unknown1222: Could an Ultramarine Company break into and capture a Waffle House?
  @VoicesByZane: Depends on what shift it is. Day shift? They can take it with massive casualties. Night shift? Bloodbath. Absolute carnage. The inquisition would have to call down an exterminatus to hide how one sided of a loss it was.
• You can run Doom on absolutely everything: this goes from the usual PC and console ports to the ZX Spectrum, the TI-83 Plus Graphing Calculator, a Canon printer, inside of Windows' CPU Utilization tab in Task Manager, and even a pregnancy test.
  • This is due to the Genius Programming of id Software's lead programmer, John Carmack. Outside of being of being a computer wizard, he also has pretty badass anecdotes, notably the time he created a thermite mixture to attempt to steal computers from a school when he was 14. He is a martial artist, a rocket scientist, and even created the Metaverse.
• Morbius (2022) was a total failure with critics and general audiences, with it being seen as a boring and shallow attempt by Sony to try and create their own Marvel movie universe without using Spider-Man. However, this lambasting led to people joking online that it is in fact the greatest movie of all time, with a critics' score and box office that goes way beyond what is possible, to the point where a new number, Morbillion, allegedly had to be invented to describe how much money it made.
• r/BatmanArkham is the Reddit sub for Batman: Arkham Series, which went insane due to eight years without content. The sub is now nigh-unrecognizable, having devolved into a never-ending spiral of absurd running jokes about "Man", "Jonkler", "Is he stupid?", "Is there a lore reason?", and "Officer Balls". It would simply be seen as quirky amusement, if it weren't for the fact that the jokes there began spreading to other subs and even non-Reddit sites like wildfire, leading to a new meme in the community: that the sub, or "Aslume", is in fact an indomitable entity that shall conquer the entire Internet.

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