Misused (first Alt-Names crowner 21 Feb 2021): Crazy Awesome

• O ye who think you have seen true madness, listen well, for you know nothing of this til you have read the tale of the one, the only, Old Man Henderson, the patron saint of The Roleplayer everywhere, the living manifestation of sheer aggressive campaign derailment, and widely known as "The man who won at Trail of Cthulhu." When one thinks of what your usual Call of Cthulhu PC is like, one probably doesn't think "Hawaiian shirt-wearing dyslexic/schizophrenic Vietnam veteran who wears aviator sunglasses at all times, talks to the stuffed parrot on his shoulder in a nigh-incomprehensible Scottish accent, and is motivated for revenge against the cult because he thinks they stole his garden gnomes." And this is only scratching the surface of the sheer insanity that the character manifested. I think this can go to Crazy Is Cool. I'd need to fix the indentation though.
  • Group of enemy cultists holding a secret meeting in a heavily guarded building? Henderson steals a tanker trunk that's refueling a nearby gas station, drive it towards the building, jumps out just before the truck crashes and blows the cult (along with two other player characters) to kingdom come, landing safely because he installed Heelies in his combat boots.
  • GM is planning to kill you off via lethal sanity damage when you snatch a page of the Necronomicon? Henderson rolls the Necronomicon into a blunt and smokes it, incurring no sanity damage because he is already completely fucking insane.
  • There's a reason that 1d4chan has a scale to measure how any given action by a player has disrupted the GM's intended plot. That scale is also named after Henderson.
• Elsinore of That Guy Destroys Psionics may be the only PC in history to achieve a full two Hendersons worth of plot derailment. You can't get much more Off the Rails than a PC killing the Big Bad three times in a row using the GM's own house rules during the first session. Feels like a ZCE...or maybe Success Through Insanity? I mean, it's hard to tell tbh.
• We Are Our Avatars:
  • Katsuun's version of The Grinch in , after learning the true meaning of Christmas. One example? He wields a freaking Katana into battle against those who wish to harm Christmas. Crazy Is Cool? Maybe? Eh...
  • Estella Fury is apparently this trope, fighting an Eldritch Abomination, her eyes got horribly maimed by the mere sight of it, and acid burned up her eyes, which were eaten while she was being bathed in lava, she survived, and then not just shrugged off being Mind Raped, but ate Lava Zombies, and went to hunt Orc Mummies and rip out Cyclops intestines. Apparently? That doesn't inspire confidence in me. This just sounds like "character is super awesome guys".
• Destroy the Godmodder: A large number of the characters.
  • One of the more notable examples being TT2000, who happens to be the original creator, whose inherent effectiveness stems entirely from the total lack of effectiveness that his actions inherently possess. Sounds like Success Through Insanity.
  • Similarly, there's Tricky the clown. Tricky is the only character to repeatedly defy the curse of repetition, and the only listed reason: He's an insane psycho zombie clown. This one too.
  • Then you have leon and his fish of death. And nimble and his insanity tubas. And pretty much anything that involves Jon Danger in the TV Tropes session. ZCE
• The Ballad of Edgardo: Edgardo from the self-titled story. He wanders into a forum full of violent, edgy jerks playing an idealistic shonen anime brawler and, upon immediately arousing the anger of the rest of the players there, attacks them despite being massively under-level and stuck with cripplingly bad stats. Then when in the process of trying to take his revenge, he discovers that his supposedly useless ability is actually the strongest build in the entire forum and uses it to kill every high-powered magic user and godlike warlord who threatens him by punching them really hard in the face. To reiterate: Edgardo's player managed to turn a build that everyone thought was functionally useless into an unstoppably powerful attack that no one can resist — by accident. Just sort of sounds like more "this character is super awesome guys" misuse.
• In the League of Intergalactic Cosmic Champions Mr. Absurd, once when escaping through a portable hole he reached back through the hole, grabbed the edge & pulled the hole through the hole so they couldn't be followed. Okay, and?
• WALLE Forum Roleplay: Inferno Optic, Netcop of the Bong. Is she crazy? Yes. Is she awesome? Yes. Do the two intersect? Most definitely yes. Maybe this is Crazy Is Cool, but...low context is low.
• Shadowhunter Perils Veronica Marie Carter falls into this category easily, because she is able to act like a total lunatic yet hold her own in a fight against multiple enemies. She tends to border on the bipolar side occasionally, switching from maternal figure to warrior princess to abusive friend in a matter of moments. That, and the fact that she also blows shit up for absolutely no reason whatsoever. I'm not sure about this one.'

• Joshua Norton, AKA the "Emperor of these United States and Protector of Mexico" was celebrated in the mid-to-late 1800s as one of these by the people of San Francisco, and is generally considered the patron saint of lovable crazies everywhere. The residents of San Francisco treated "Norton I" as if he really were an Emperor, and some 30,000 people (at a time when San Francisco's population was less than 235,000) attended his funeral. Heck, we have even put him on the Moment of Awesome page! What's so crazy about him?
  • So crazy awesome is Emperor Norton that the Discordians (a religion more or less dedicated to becoming more Crazy Is Cool) had to create a special category for non-fictional homo-sapiens deserving sainthood ("Saint, Second Class") just so St. Norton could be canonized. Cool, but still doesn't give context.
  • A census taker in 1870 once tried to question him. He listed his occupation as "Emperor". It is one of the few official documents that have survived to this day - due to the 1906 Earthquake - that proved he existed. That's a little better, but it only explains the crazy part now.
  • He was once arrested in order to commit him to involuntary treatment for a mental disorder. The arrest outraged the citizens and sparked scathing editorials in the newspapers and the police chief eventually released him, reasoning that he may be a wackjob, but he wasn't dangerous, which was more than the chief could say for his peers. Norton granted an "official pardon" to the arresting officer. From that day until his death, the San Francisco police saluted him whenever he passed. Getting better...
    Mister Norton has shed no blood, robbed no one, and despoiled no country; which is more than can be said of his fellows in that line.
  • He successfully predicted, and ordered, the creation of a League of Nations, and explicitly forbade any conflict between religious groups based solely on their differing beliefs. this is cool, but unrelated to the trope.
  • Once, during an anti-Chinese riot he knelt on the street between a rioting mob and the Chinese ghetto, bowed his head and recited the Lord's Prayer until the rioters dispersed. Again, cool, but unrelated.
  • Additionally, he issued his own currency. Legitimate business accepted this currency! Cool, but I'm not sure if this is Success Through Insanity or just some fun trivia.
  • His memorable appearance in The Sandman where he gets the better of Desire of the Endless, essentially a god of mind control, through the clarity of his madness. This would be Success Through Insanity I think.
  • You know what else? He's a god in the Trope Pantheon now! Pointless gushing.
• Richard Garriott, the game designer behind the Ultima series. His house is a D&D style castle, he insists on being called 'Lord British', and he's been into space. Maybe this fits Crazy Is Cool? Or it's just pure Rule of Cool, because it doesn't feel too crazy.
  • The Other Wiki basically confirms this when you read the burglary section. Long story short? Burglar tries to break in. Garriot fires off warning shots from an UZI, while calling the police. Okay?
• Film director Werner Herzog once ate his own shoe as part of a bet to encourage Errol Morris to finish Gates of Heaven, a weird documentary on pet cemeteries. He stood down an actor who was shooting at the crew. He pulled Joaquin Phoenix out of a crashed car. His reaction to being shot at by a sniper with an air rifle while he was being interviewed? "It's not a significant bullet"! He also met a principal actor in Strozek while on a roadtrip to dig up Ed Gein's mother's grave. Also, he thinks chickens are the devil. Might be Crazy Is Cool.
  • He once walked from Munich to Paris in the middle of winter, on a whim because he was sure that he could save the life of movie critic Lotte Eisner by doing so. It worked. How did it work?
  • His relationship with Klaus Kinski is a mutual example. Herzog met Kinski as a child when Kinski stayed in his family's apartment for three months. Kinski made an impression on young Herzog by doing things like locking himself in the bathroom for two days and smashing all of the fixtures while screaming like a maniac. Years later Herzog hired Kinski to play the lead in Aguirre, the Wrath of God and despite the on-set insanity (at one point Kinski accidentally shot an extra's finger off) he went on to cast him in four more movies. Their intense disagreements and personality clashes resulted in the greatest performances of Kinski's career and Herzog's greatest films. This is cool trivia but doesn't seem to fit any trope.
  • One of his most famous movies is the epic Fitzcarraldo, itself about a Crazy Is Cool character who attempts to transport a 320-ton ship over a very steep hill, who was himself based on a real-life rubber baron who did something similar, although using a more sensible method (the ship was dismantled before being taken across), and essentially slave work, and with a smaller ship. They must have achieved it using special effects, right? Nope. Herzog and crew really did get the ship to the other side of the hill during filming. Again, cool trivia at best.
  • Catch him in one of his rare acting roles (like in Jack Reacher, where he describes chewing off his own fingers to prevent gangrene), his intensity and darkness will have you asking yourself, "Is that acting, or is it... autobiographical?" This is starting to feel a little nattery.
• Lt. Colonel Jack Churchill, who fought in WWII with a longbow and claymore, while carrying his bagpipes. When he was eventually captured, the Germans put him in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, which he later escaped from. After recapture, Churchill was transferred to another camp. He and the other prisoners were eventually released and Churchill walked something like 90 miles to Italy, where he met up with an American armored force. When the war was over, he simply expressed disappointment, citing that he could have kept going for 10 years. Jack Churchill is super cool and all but I wouldn't call him "crazy".
  • He once was on a mission where most of his team had been killed, and only he and six others were left, and an entire battalion of Germans were advancing. The Germans started hammering them with mortars, killing everyone but Churchill. Knowing he had no chance of fighting them and living (and how could he kill more Germans if he was dead?), he instead whipped out his bagpipes and started playing "Will Ye No Come Back Again?" Again, cool, but doesn't seem that crazy.
  • The reason why he wore his claymore (Basket hilt type, not the two handed Braveheart type one) to battle? An officer is out of uniform if he doesn't carry a sword. Okay?
  • He is also known for making the only recorded kill of World War II with a longbow. Cool trivia bro, but not this trope.
  • Just to give you an idea of how the man operated, when he returned home by train he was observed throwing his luggage out the window before the train arrived at the station. People had no earthly idea what would possess him to do that, and when pressed for an answer he revealed that he was actually throwing his luggage into his own back yard as he passed, on account of not wanting to carry the bag all the way home from the station. More cool trivia.
  • His other occupations include male model, actor, and surfer. Kay.
• On the same note, Walter Cowan, 1871-1956. British admiral who first served as a gunboat commander in Queen Victoria's time. He then commanded a battle cruiser in World War One. It is said that he spent his leave in the trenches and cried when the war ended. In WW2, he helped train the Commandos and was captured in Africa, attacking an Italian tank solely with his revolver. On being repatriated out of mercy, he rejoined and fought again in Italy in 1944. Cool, not crazy.
  • British officers in general are known to have a reputation for nonchalantly strolling through combat zones. In his memoir Mailed Fist, Foley describes watching an officer stroll up to their position while rounds being fired at him are landing around his feet. When asked about them, the officer replies, "Oh, never mind that; it's just got nuisance value." Natter, and doesn't seem to count.
  "Well, it's a pity you can't get across that mine field; it looks like we'll have to go on without you."
  "Balls," I said, and hastily added, "sir," because he was, after all, a major, even though it looked to me as though he would soon be a dead one.
• The Molasses Gang was a gang from New York during the 1870s. They would ask the owner of the shop to fill their hat with molasses (saying it was a bet to see how much would fit). When the hat was full the gangster would shove the hat onto the shop owner and take what they wanted with no resistance. Also Refuge in Audacity, they were able to do it for six years because nobody took them seriously. Maybe this is something, but I'm not sure what.
• Andrew Jackson was batshit insane, as any Native American will tell you, but some things he did put him directly into this trope's territory. Oh boy, here we go again...
  • At 13 years old, he served in the American militia during the American Revolution as a message carrier, which meant his job was to run, sometimes up to 30 miles, through mostly roadless wilderness patrolled by British officers, alone, and did so barefoot. That's cool I guess, but doesn't seem particularly crazy.
  • Just a few days after finding out his entire family had died of malaria while he was in captivity, he found out that a wealthy distant relative had died and left him what was at that time a fortune of 200,000 dollars. He travelled to Charleston and blew it all on drinking and prostitutes - in 5 days. Trivia.
  • After this, he moved out to the Tennessee frontier and became a lawyer, despite the fact that he had zero legal training. While there, he courted and then married a woman who was already married. They ran off to Spanish territory, but her husband chased them down. When he found them, Jackson talked him into agreeing to a divorce. This was, by the way, the very first divorce in Tennessee. More trivia.
  • After that scandal, he developed a lifelong hobby of challenging anyone who accused his wife of adultery to a duel. He took multiple bullets from these duels, and always refused to be operated on. It was reported that during one duel, he allowed his opponent to shoot before Jackson even took out his gun. The opponent shot, and Jackson then drew and shot him. It was later discovered that the opponent hit him in the side. At one point, he was shot in the stomach during a duel while he was president. The White House surgeon tried to remove the bullet, only to have Jackson wave him off - because he was worried he'd be late to his next duel later that day. Again, this is interesting trivia but I'm not sure if it counts as anything.
  • He was also infamous for beating people with his cane. Trivia...
  • The first and only time he held office before becoming president, he quit his term halfway through because he believed politics just wasn't a good fit for him. Trivia...
  • Andrew Jackson was the first U.S. President to have an attempt made on his life while in office. According to eyewitness accounts, the attacker pulled out a gun and shot at his head. The gun failed to go off. The attacker then pulled another gun from his coat and shot again - and the gun failed to go off. Jackson then reportedly grabbed the guy by his collar and beat him with his cane. Apparently, they later tested the attacker's guns. Both went off without a hitch. Trivia...
  • After bringing about a genocide upon the Creek Nation, he was sent to defend New Orleans from a massive invading British force. He marched to New Orleans and promptly took control of the city, forcing every able-bodied man in New Orleans to fight in his militia. This included wealthy slaveowners who were used to getting a pass from military service - and in fact, not only did he force them to fight, but he forced their slaves to fight, too. In addition to the volunteers, conscripted "soldiers," various Native Americans, and slaves who composed his army, he also had several thousand Frenchmen, a few mercenaries, and the crew of a pirate ship who liked to disrupt trade nearby. Trivia.
    • Jackson's first action during the battle was to have his men dig a trench all the way from the Mississippi River to a nearly impassable swamp several miles away. They did this overnight. The British commander waited five days observing the pattern of how long it took for the mist to burn off every morning. Calculating that it would take a few hours, he launched a surprise attack during what he thought would be misty morning to try and capture the Americans' artillery. Guess what day the pattern broke? Trivia.
  • He then marched back to Washington, celebrated as a war hero, the fame of which he rode into the Oval Office... despite the fact that when he won that battle, the war has been over for two weeks.^note The war was ended by the Treaty of Ghent, so named because it was drafted in Ghent, Belgium, considered a neutral place to hold negotiations. Before the transatlantic telegraph, any news from Europe had to be carried by ship, so none of the troops knew that the fighting was supposed to stop. Trivia.
  • During that same war, he had a reputation for executing militiamen for desertion - despite the fact that legally, militiamen were volunteers who could come and go as they pleased. Trivia. Also not very "cool" of him.
  • He was also famous for, after battles, restricting the use of horses to the wounded. All healthy soldiers, even officers, had to walk - including himself. This earned him the nickname "Old Hickory."
  • Jackson had such a reputation for being Crazy Awesome that when he spontaneously decided to invade Florida against the will of the government (it Makes Just as Much Sense in Context), and Spain complained, the President issued a statement explaining that while they didn't support this, they just couldn't control Andrew Jackson. Trivia, maybe it fits something but...eh...
  • He taught his parrot how to swear in both English and Spanish. At Jackson's funeral, the parrot launched into a multi-lingual Cluster F-Bomb and had to be removed from the parlor. Trivia
• Philippe Petit, tightrope walker. ZCE
  • When the documentary on him won an Oscar, he balanced the statue on his chin. A+ Cool story bro?
• Ned Kelly, Irish-Australian bushranger; he and his gang made a last stand against policemen wearing home-made body armor that protected their heads and chests. Kelly reportedly only went down when the policemen shot his unprotected legs, and had twenty-eight gunshot wounds. Again, cool but not particularly crazy.
  • He survived that gunfight, only to be sentenced to be hanged. After the judge delivered the sentence, Ned told the judge he'll be seeing him in hell. About 2 weeks after Ned Kelly was hanged the judge died. Trivia.
• Corporal Voytek (or Wojtek, depending on the translation) was a legendary soldier in the Polish army during World War II, serving as an ammo loader for his unit's artillery. Despite spending most of his days smoking, drinking, getting in (friendly) brawls with his squadmates, and considerably more lethal brawls with the Nazis, Voytek was beloved by his unit for being a sweet guy at heart despite his massive size. He was so strong that he frequently loaded massive artillery shells onto his squad's heavy guns single-handedly. The good corporal, by complete accident, once discovered an enemy spy hiding in the steam baths, and knocked the spy down with one blow. Clearly he was awesome, so where does the "crazy" come in? Well, probably because Corporal Voytek was a fucking bear . This is certainly awesome, but I'm not sure it's the sort of "crazy" we're looking for.
• If Top Gear is to be believed, Finnish drivers are bloody crazy! (Though, admittedly, crazy by necessity.) Yet that is exactly why they're such good racing drivers. Success Through Insanity at best.
  • The roads of Finland are covered with snow for 5 to 7 months, so you do the math... Natter.
• John "Doc" Holliday was once an ordinary dentist from Georgia. Then he contracted tuberculosis. He headed out west, believing the dry climate would be good for him and, no longer fearing death, became a card player and a gunfighter. Another cool story that isn't particularly crazy.
• Syd Barrett, the mad genius behind Pink Floyd's early years as a band and inspiration for their later work, after he went completely nuts and couldn't be with the band anymore. ZCE
• Andre Gregory from My Dinner With Andre. If he was not insane the movie would be just two guys having a meal. ZCE...also, is this misplaced, or...?
• According to Bill Murray, cinematographer Christopher Doyle. He refers to himself as Super Chris, or may be referred to as Sir Christopher. He wears platform shoes while working, and, while living in Hong Kong, he lived across from the world's longest escalator. He would strip naked for all of the escalator riders to see. By the time they got off, they would forget which building he was on. He is also an immensely talented cinematographer who has won awards for his work on numerous American and Hong Kong films. This might count as Crazy Is Cool.
  • He was the one who did the cinematography for Zhang Yimou's Hero and every film by Wong Kar-wai, so you now he's just THAT good. ZCE and natter
• Bill Murray himself definitely qualifies, if the stories are true. ZCE
• Quincy Jones, if this interview in Vulture is anything to go by. Apparently, he knows who killed JFK. And Pisces is a great sign, because he is one. ZCE
• Elon Musk. Sent a car into space for no reason. Also once suggested nuking Mars's polar cap to release the water. Sold flamethrowers because he promised to if the hats he was selling sold out. We're gushing about Musk now? Okay. Maybe this is Crazy Is Cool?
• Canadian Gilles Villenueve was the embodiment of this trope in racing driver form. Why? Look here & here and deny it. ZCE
• French climber Alain Robert climbs tall buildings as a hobby, including most of the world's tallest high rises. Without any safety whatsoever. He's regularly arrested as a result of his antics. The most incredible thing is that the man suffers from permanent vertigo. A condition he got as a teenager, by falling from a height of 15 meters and surviving. Twice in the same year. Crazy Is Cool
• Skippy, of Skippy's List: The 213 things Skippy is no longer allowed to do in the U.S. Army. I think this is all keepable as Crazy Is Cool, assuming it does actually qualify as a real-life example.

  48. I may not use public masturbation as a tool to demonstrate a flaw in a command decision.

  58. The following words and phrases may not be used in a cadence—Budding sexuality, necrophilia, I hate everyone in this formation and wish they were dead, sexual lubrication, black earth mother, all Marines are latent homosexuals, Tantric yoga, Gotterdammerung, Korean hooker, Eskimo Nell, we've all got jackboots now, slut puppy, or any references to squid.

  72. May not wear gimp mask while on duty.

  100. Claymore mines are not filled with yummy candy, and it is wrong to tell new soldiers that they are.

  • One of Skippy's friends gives this really important piece of advice.
  Never tell a military pilot “There’s not enough room to fly under that!“, unless you want him to try.
• The King of Bling! The Ayatollah of Rock 'n Rolla! The Man of 1004 Holds! Y2J! Chris Jericho!!! ZCE
  • For clarification on how crazy awesome the man is, go to his other Wiki page, and try to read the whole thing. You'll be exhausted before you finish the wrestling section, let alone his music, acting, writing, hosting, etc., etc., etc. Either he never sleeps or he's figured out a way to have 36 hours in a day. Cool, not particularly crazy. Maybe fits Renaissance Man.
• Nikola Tesla is the Mad Scientist. Works include: the Tesla Coil, the AC Polyphase Electric Motor, a frickin DEATH RAY! and being obsessed with pigeons. Crazy Is Cool for sure.
  • Mark Twain frequently volunteered to test his inventions and offered to help sell his Death Ray. Words can't describe how much awesomeness is contained in that pairing. Natter
• Kevin Johnson, Godzilla Theater ZCE
• Sir Ranulph Fiennes. Highlights of his life include his expulsion from the SAS because he blew up a dam in a Wiltshire village as a protest against 20th Century Fox, hacking off his own frostbitten fingers with a power tool, forgetting his own frostbitten toe and leaving it beside his bathtub when it came off, discovering the motherfucking lost city of Ubar, and reaching the peak of Everest in his sixties, but perhaps the best has to be running 7 marathons, in 7 days, on 7 continents, only a few months after a heart attack and bypass operation—and, with doctor's orders not to let his heart go over 130 beats per minute, he forgot his heart monitor. Maybeee Crazy Is Cool.
• Similarly to Sir Ranulph Fiennes is the incomparable BRIAN BLESSED!!!!!, a man so awesome that our site autocorrects his name to bold all caps. He is primarily known for being one of the largest of hams in all acting, and his acting career displayed a badass streak that few can dare to tame. During the filming of Prisoner of Honor, he was able to keep the infamously boozy Oliver Reed sober and calm by sheer virtue of being huge and intimidating. While filming the costume drama The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling, he accidentally knocked out Peter Capaldi with one punch. Sheer gushing, not particularly crazy.
  • He's also one hell of a badass in real life as well, to Testosterone Poisoning levels. He is currently training to be an astronaut at the ripe old age of 79. He once held the record for the highest Everest ascension without oxygen (having attempted three times to climb the mountain) and holds the record for the oldest person to reach the North Pole on foot. During said North Pole trip, he responded to a polar bear entering his tent by scaring it off with a punch to the face, and once defeated a silverback gorilla by literally grabbing the 500-pound animal by the testicles and wrestling it into submission. Cool trivia, but it also makes a better case for Crazy Is Cool.
  • When he was a young man, his frequently sparred in boxing matches against a friend of his whom he met through the shared love of the sport. That young man is now the Dalai Lama. Trivia.
• Quentin Tarantino. Wrote and directed Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown (adapted screenplay), Kill Bill, Death Proof, Inglourious Basterds, and Django Unchained, and he's completely insane. ZCE
• Wesley Willis. Was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, and wrote some truly inspired songs, such as "Birdman Kicked My Ass", "Kill That Jerk", and "Rock & Roll McDonalds". Success Through Insanity, or just coincidence.
• Larry Williams is either this or a Bunny-Ears Lawyer. He did things like pimp out prostitutes, deal drugs, and convince Little Richard to go into priesthood by waving a loaded handgun in his face, but he was one of the coolest Band Managers Ever. He died in the eighties, from "Suicide", but he is still revered as a legend. Feels like gushing, nothing here feels particularly cool or crazy.
• Lady Gaga's singing ability makes her the definitive Bunny-Ears Lawyer, but it's her fashion sensibilities and ridiculously campy performance style that moves her into full blown crazy awesome territory. Just straight up Bunny-Ears Lawyer. Gaga is awesome but I wouldn't call her particularly crazy, and not Crazy Is Cool anyway.
• Shigeru Miyamoto creates games that make the user ask "What Do You Mean, It Wasn't Made on Drugs?" It's made his employers billions of dollars / trillions of yen. ZCE
• French composer Erik Satie (d. 1925), whose works for piano include titles such as: Gnossiennes, Gymnopedies, Three Pear-shaped Pieces and Dressed As A Horse, and who collected umbrellas and pianos in his tiny, one-room apartment, where he never let anyone else in. Not sure about this one.
  • He also composed a piece called Vexations. Consisting of two bars of music with instruction to repeat it 840 times, it takes around 24 hours to perform. At least one pianist attempting a solo performance started panicking and hallucinating before quitting: Doesn't seem to fit here. Certainly crazy though.
    I would not play this piece again. I felt each repetition slowly wearing my mind away. I had to stop. If I hadn't stopped I'd be a very different person today... People who play it do so at their own great peril. ... [I] had to stop because [my] mind became full of evil thoughts, animals and "things" started peering out at [me] from the score.
    • A full performance was done with two pianists doing hour-shifts, seamlessly changing seats, while two bystanders painstakingly counted each repetition. It actually worked! This was done at the Norwegian Academy of Music in 1991. Cool trivia.
  • Evidently Satie was, constitutionally, an austere minimalist: More trivia.
  I eat only white foods: eggs, sugar, grated bones, the fat of dead animals; veal, salt, coconut, chicken cooked in white water; fruit mold, rice, turnips; camphorated sausage, dough, cheese (white), cotton salad, and certain fish (skinless).
• The legendary Unipiper, a Portland street performer who rides around on a unicycle wearing a kilt and a Darth Vader costume and playing "The Imperial March" on bagpipes that shoot fire. He's basically a real-life version of the Doof Warrior. Crazy Is Cool, or just Rule of Cool.
• Steve Irwin. He constantly got a bit too close to snakes, crocodiles, sharks and many other dangerous animals almost on a daily basis, and not only wasn't afraid about doing it, he was more excited than a five-year-old. He also demonstrated that even this trope has standards when he revealed that the scariest moment of his career involved hippos. Maybe Irwin is Crazy Is Cool. Maybe.
• Joe Davis. Part scientist, part avant-garde artist. To quote a Cracked article featuring him: "He has a map of the Milky Way broken down into a series of base DNA pairs, and is coding it into transgenic lab-mice. He insists on landing microbes like Marlin... because he considers it "only sporting". In protest of what he viewed as censorship, Davis beamed his own, female-friendly version of the famous Arecibo Message toward a distant star cluster. He stuck microphones inside the vaginas of the entire Boston Ballet, and shot the sound of them contracting into space." Just to give Carl Sagan the finger!!! He also is building "a memorial for hurricane victims that happens to be a 10-story tall tower in Mississippi that harnesses the excess electrical nitrogen in the air brought on by lightning storms and fires it back into the storm in the form of a giant laser." Guy seems cool, maybe he can be Crazy Is Cool too...
  • The laser does nothing, incidentally. He just wanted to shoot a laser at storms. Natter.
• The Chinese Cavalry of 1967. Shooting when riding horses is okay for any cowboy, but how about firing AK and RPD Machineguns? When charging a MUSHROOM CLOUD? Go watch the last minutes of Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie. It's filmed by those cavalrymen themselves. Sounds Crazy Is Cool enough to me.
• Admiral Hyman Rickover, father of the nuclear Navy. Well known for making candidates endure such crazy trials as conducting interviews in total darkness, trying to balance on a chair with one of its legs shortened, and berating them for anything short of an A in technical courses. Then, there was this one time when the Senate called him in to testify because they were concerned about the safety of Naval nuclear power, which he personally demonstrated by drinking a glass of a reactor's primary coolant on the floor of the US Senate. Not sure about this one. Seems crazy, not sure if it's Crazy Is Cool though.
  • One story is of him interviewing a potential Nuc officer by taking him to lunch, then telling him to leave about ten seconds after the food arrived. Why? Because the guy reached for the salt shaker before tasting his food to verify it need salt. Trivia.
  • To this day, Rickover remains the record-holder for longest time spent on active duty in the US military: over 60 years. And that "father of the nuclear Navy" bit? He did most of the work himself, while Obstructive Bureaucrat after Obstructive Bureaucrat stood in his way. As a boy, he quit his job in order to go talk to politicians and wound up going to the Naval Academy because of it, and thenceforth never let "rules" stand in his way. Trivia.
• Some guy in Florida caught a shark on a fishing line while surfing (why he had a fishing line while surfing is anyone's guess) and allowed it to pull him along for half a minute before the line snapped. Fun story, not sure if it fits anything.
• While at surfing, anyone who surfs in Sweden or Finland. The both countries are located near the Arctic Circle, and most the beaches in both countries are well beyond 57th latitude North, northernmost beaches being near Tornio (66th latitude North). The best season in Baltic is late Fall, just before the waters freeze. The Scandinavian surfers simply use diving wet suits and shoes and disregard the cold, freeze and wind. Too general.
• Clive Barker is a Nightmare Fetishist par excellence responsible for some of the most ingeniously depraved Body Horror literature and film of the past forty years (Does the name "Hellraiser" ring a bell?). He's also one hell of a Badass Bookworm in real life - Chuck Palahniuk related a story where a teenage fan of Clive's waited in line at a book signing, then when he reached the front of the line, immediately cried "Clive, this is for you!" and slashed his own wrists with a razor blade. Barker grabbed the kids' wrists and slammed them down against the books he'd left on the table, keeping the pressure on the wound long enough for paramedics to arrive and save the kid's life, then dutifully autographed the kid's books in the kid's own blood and delivered them to the kid in the hospital. Dude sounds cool, but I'm not sure where the crazy part comes in aside from the horror stuff.
• Chef Jose Andres, molecular gastronomist (think Mad Scientist/Mad Artist chef), known for Deconstruction food such as the "blasphemous" clam chowder (all the ingredients are more or less whole and separate, and the potato chowder is actually a foam). Crazy, not necessarily cool.
• Along those lines: Heston Blumenthal. His efforts include a bowl of fruit (where all the fruit is made of meat), Dormouse Lollipops and Frog Blancmange—to say nothing of the dessert pork pie (which looked exactly like a traditional English pork pie, but was made of ice cream, fruit, chocolate, etc.) he served to Terry Wogan (and which Terry raved about so much his listeners were drooling even though they couldn't even see it). And those aren't the weirdest ones... Cool, but doesn't fit.
  • No, that would probably be something like the Absinthe jelly powered by vibrators ZCE.
• Relating to the above clam chowder, Ivar Haglund, a Seattle businessman, was unquestionably out of his damn mind and very successful at it. He parlayed a third-rate aquarium into a wildly successful chain of restaurants, owned one of the local TV stations (and took advantage of that fact to give himself a show singing Norwegian folk songs for an hour each week), and bought the Smith Tower (at one point, the tallest building west of the Mississippi River). When the Seattle Building Department took issue with a salmon-shaped windsock he flew from the tower's flagpole, he sent them protest letters in the form of pun-loaded poetry. His publicity stunts were legendary; having a wrestling match between a retired boxer and an octopus, putting a baby harbor seal in a baby carriage and taking it to see Santa, taking advantage when a train car full of syrup sprung a leak in front of his restaurant by racing out with pancakes, encouraging his patrons to feed the seagulls, running for office and getting elected as a joke, and peppering his advertisements with a Hurricane of Puns. He died very wealthy, and the chain of restaurants bearing his name is still thriving. I think this is Crazy Is Cool.
• Charlie Wilson, of Charlie Wilson's War fame. The filmmakers intentionally left some of the craziest things he did out of the movie because audiences didn't believe it. ZCE
• Milton H. Erickson:
  • He told a woman who felt ill about her in-laws' visits to vomit in their presence. Okay?
  • He cured a man of his fear of elevators by instead making him scared of the operator girl kissing him: This is a cool story, but again, not particularly crazy.
    When the old gentleman asked if he could be helped for his fear of riding in an elevator, I told him I could probably scare the pants off him in another direction. He told me that nothing could be worse than his fear of an elevator.
    
    The elevators in that particular building were operated by young girls, and I made special arrangements with one in advance. She agreed to cooperate and thought it would be fun. I went with the gentleman to the elevator. He wasn't afraid of walking into an elevator, but when it started to move it became an unbearable experience. So I chose an unbusy time and I had him walk in and out of the elevator, back in and out. Then at a point when we walked in, I told the girl to close the door and said, "Let's go up."
    
    She went up one story and stopped in between floors. The gentleman started to yell, "What's wrong!" I said, "The elevator operator wants to kiss you." Shocked, the gentleman said, "But I'm a married man!" The girl said, "I don't mind that." She walked toward him, and he stepped back and said, "You start the elevator." So she started it. She went up to about the fourth floor and stopped it again between floors. She said, "I just have a craving for a kiss." He said, "You go about your business." He wanted that elevator moving, not standing still. She replied, "Well, let's go down and start all over again," and she began to take the elevator down. He said, "Not down, up!" since he didn't want to go through that all over again.
    
    She started up and then stopped the elevator between floors and said, "Do you promise you'll ride down in my elevator with me when you're through work?" He said, "I'll promise anything if you promise not to kiss me." He went up in the elevator, relieved and without fear - of the elevator - and could ride one from then on.
  • Then there's the part about where he survived polio because he overheard the doctors telling his mom he'd be dead by morning and inadvertently hypnotized himself into surviving by focusing on the sunset (what he at the time believed to be his last). That's cool and all, but...
• Neopagan Oberon Zell-Ravenheart (born Timothy Zell). The man made real life unicorns! Sort of. But not really. ZCE
• Phil Spector. While unquestionably a lunatic, as the many friends and prostitutes whom he shot at will attest to, he is rightfully a legend as a music producer and songwriter. Any Phil Spector story, from someone who knows, will be attached to a comment about how he changed music. ZCE- how was he crazy?
• Werner Forssman- A medical student who wanted to learn more about the heart, but decided the usual method, dissection of specimen from a corpse, wasn't enough. No, he decided he was going to study a living heart by jamming two feet of cable into a person's circulatory system. The Crazy Is Cool part? He used his own. Maybe this counts? Or maybe it's Success Through Insanity. (Also gotta love the wick change without really ensuring it fits the context...)
• 2nd Lt. Audie Murphy is the most decorated American soldier of WWII and the epitome of crazy awesome! Just read his Medal of Honor citation: Yeah, I think we can be kept, but the natter needs to go.
  2d Lt. Murphy commanded Company B, which was attacked by 6 tanks and waves of infantry. 2d Lt. Murphy ordered his men to withdraw to prepared positions in a woods, while he remained forward at his command post and continued to give fire directions to the artillery by telephone. Behind him, to his right, 1 of our tank destroyers received a direct hit and began to burn. Its crew withdrew to the woods. 2d Lt. Murphy continued to direct artillery fire which killed large numbers of the advancing enemy infantry. With the enemy tanks abreast of his position, 2d Lt. Murphy climbed on the burning tank destroyer, which was in danger of blowing up at any moment, and employed its .50 caliber machine gun against the enemy. He was alone and exposed to German fire from 3 sides, but his deadly fire killed dozens of Germans and caused their infantry attack to waver. The enemy tanks, losing infantry support, began to fall back. For an hour the Germans tried every available weapon to eliminate 2d Lt. Murphy, but he continued to hold his position and wiped out a squad which was trying to creep up unnoticed on his right flank. Germans reached as close as 10 yards, only to be mowed down by his fire. He received a leg wound, but ignored it and continued the single-handed fight until his ammunition was exhausted. He then made his way to his company, refused medical attention, and organized the company in a counterattack which forced the Germans to withdraw. His directing of artillery fire wiped out many of the enemy; he killed or wounded about 50. 2d Lt. Murphy's indomitable courage and his refusal to give an inch of ground saved his company from possible encirclement and destruction, and enabled it to hold the woods which had been the enemy's objective.
  • By the way he had malaria at the time. And that's not even all he did
  • When they went to make a movie about Audie Murphy, they cast... Audie Murphy. And they had to tone down how ludicrously awesome he was because he was afraid it would come off as too unbelievable.
• From the other side of WWII, there was Hans-Ulrich Rudel - the deadliest bomber pilot in history. Over the course of his career he destroyed the equivalent of an entire pre-war Soviet mechanized corps, and then some. Not content with being a mere ground ace, he also claimed eleven aerial victories, including one Hero of the Soviet Union, which made him a double ace. And then there's the time he destroyed the Soviet battleship Marat with a single bomb... That's cool, but not crazy.
• Troy Hurtubise: Inventor, Canadian, and lunatic. He invested two decades and tens of thousands of dollars developing the Trojan armor to protect coalition soldiers (such as his own brother) from I.E.D.s. The Trojan is based on armor he developed for fighting bears, with input in equal amounts from real-life soldiers and the HALO games. He bankrupted himself developing it, and has thus far failed to attract the interest of any government. Yet in live fire tests, the Trojan has been strapped to a lump of wet clay, taken multiple rounds at point-blank range from a 9mm pistol, a .357, and a 12-gauge shotgun, without so much as a dent in the clay underneath (which he then demonstrated was soft enough for his finger to gouge a fissure into). Just in case there's still doubt as to whether or not he's worthy of the Crazy Is Cool tag, it should be noted that the Trojan armor includes a solar-powered air-conditioned helmet. I guess?
  • In order to test another one of his inventions, the heat-resistant clay he calls "fire paste," Hurtubise smeared it on his own face, let it dry, and then aimed a blowtorch at it. For ten minutes. Trivia.
  • He claims to have developed a device which can make solid objects, like walls, stealth shielding, and HIS OWN HAND transparent. It also fries electronic devices and kills goldfish. Trivia.
• Melvyn Foster. He was a cabby that was accused of being the Green River Killer. However, he was trying to protect the prostitutes and runaways from people like Gary Ridgeway. He spent time in prison for other crimes and this lead to his conversion of him trying to protect those less fortunate than himself. He was sort of Jesus with a really bad temper. ZCE, doesn't explain how he's crazy or cool.
• Lieutenant General Henry "Gunfighter" Emerson was undoubtedly eccentric and his activities somewhat questionable by conventional thinking (he tried to make new sports out of basketball or soccer by fielding battalions or brigades instead of just a standard team, and this was just of many examples). But he was dedicated to the morale and welfare of his soldiers, and by all accounts he did an excellent (if eyebrow raising) job at making his soldiers feel like they could take on the world. Not sure. Doesn't seem particularly crazy or cool.
• Butch O'Hare. Granted, the guy was Irish, so it comes with the territory, but anyone who takes on eight enemy fighter planes single handed has got to be worth mentioning here. (Technically, he was supposed to have backup, but his wingman's guns jammed.) First US Navy Ace of WWII. And that airport in Chicago? Totally named after him. Maybe??? Or just general "cool".
• Eino Ilmari Juutilainen, the top-scoring (94 victories) Finnish WWII ace. He served originally as an airplane mechanic as conscript and only later went to flight school, so he knew well the properties of various planes both in theory and in practise. He said: If you can fly and know your stuff, it doesn't matter if there are one or two enemies after you. Most difficult is when they are five or six as you can't see them all at once. If there are one hundred enemies flying in formation, you can just dive in and shoot them at will. His best day was 30th June 1944, when he shot down six enemies in one flight. He was never shot down by enemy aircraft nor did he ever lose a wingman. Cool, not crazy.
  • Juutilainen was Warrant Officer. He repeatedly refused officer commission so he could fly and fight. Okay?
  • His last flight was in 1997, in an F-18D Hornet of the Finnish Air Force. Cool.
  • Even more so his elder brother Aarne Juutilainen, nicknamed The Terror of Morocco. A'ight.
  • Speaking of Finland, we have Aimo Koivunen. When he was separated from his troop in 1944, he was carrying the troop's entire supply of Pervitin, aka meth. Since he was too cold to pull out a single pill, he took the whole thing. In the following week, he skied 400 km, stepped on a landmine survived on pine buds and a single bird he killed and ate raw and, when recovered, had a heartbeat of 200 bpm, double the human average. This happened in Finnish winter, around -20 celcius. Unrelated natter, but maybe it counts as something?
• This◊ wedding cake. Quoth Cake Wrecks: Rule of Cool.
  Dragonflies, roses, lightning, and a viking helmet? Admit it: you wish you were invited to this reception.
• Joan of Arc managed to convince a group of dispirited French soldiers, and the king of France, that the visions she'd been receiving since 12 weren't something they burned you as a possessed person for in those days, but in fact were the real deal, and she proceeded to live up to the hype by kicking the English out of half of France, leading the final charge at Orleans with an arrow in the neck. And she did this while being a sworn pacifist. She carried the banner into battle instead, one of the most dangerous jobs on the field as you literally have a flag over your head screaming "shoot me please!" Even when captured she managed to stave off heresy accusations despite being an illiterate peasant faced with cutthroat clergy with enough trick questions to fill a test paper. She was eventually put on trial for political reasons. She was put to death for heresy, having worn men's clothes, despite numerous officials at the time agreeing that her reasons for doing so were valid. Joan might be Success Through Insanity, if we want to count her schizophrenia as that.
  • Not to mention her three brothers, Pierre, Jean and Jacquemin d'Arc. Every single of them earned the title of nobility on their own, and Pierre eventually ended up as commander of one of the King's Compagnies d'Ordonnance. The whole d'Arc family was a bullseye hit of the nature. Trivia.
• John Brown◊ the abolitionist. Favored a type of rifle known as the Bible, and split five slaveholders' heads open with a BROADSWORD. When he was caught and had to be put to death by the North, he quietly told his captors that all he wanted to do was help those who couldn't be helped and if he had to be put to death, then so be it. Okay...
• Frank Zappa. Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet Rodan, Diva. Watch Out Where The Huskies Go And Don't You Eat That Yellow Snow. Billy the Mountain. Magdalena. Poofter's Froth Wyoming Plans Ahead. We're Only in It for the Money. Frank Zappa And The Mothers Of Prevention. Ship Arriving Too Late To Save a Drowning Witch. Lumpy Gravy. Brown Shoes Don't Make It. Absolutely Free. And before anything else, he was noted for a phone conversation with Edgar Varese while still a teen, and serving ten days in jail (before he became famous) for producing an "obscene" audio recording—an experience for which he never forgave the Los Angeles Police Department. And yet, dying of cancer, he managed to come across as almost saintly. He is missed. God Almighty, he is missed. This just feels like a bunch of song references and nothing particularly cool or crazy.
  • He had a telepathic pet bug named after him in Spirit Of Redemption Trivia.
• From the memoir Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein, it mentions that one group of thieves in Japan used little stickers of smiley faces and Hello Kitty to cover up the holes they drilled in a wall when doing a job so no one would know anything was amiss. Not particularly anything.
  • Adelstein himself could be considered an example of this trope, since he's a Jewish-American journalist that resides in Tokyo, works for a Japanese newspaper, and wrote the biggest exposé in recent history on the Yakuza and is still very much alive! Okay?
• Adrian Carton de Wiart. Just... Adrian Carton de Wiart. If you read up on his involvement in the Boer War and both World Wars, you'd see how one man could define "crazy awesome". To put short and simple, this British soldier received many injuries in various battles, including a missing left eye (resulting in a badass eyepatch) and left arm. It was reported that he once bit one of his own finger off when doctors where unable to decide whether or not to amputate it. Even his capture by Italian soldiers during WWII shows some badassery, seeing how he swam a mile to the Italian shore after his plane was shot down one mile from shore, despite of being in his sixties and missing an arm. He even once stated that a battle during the Boer War (in which he lost his eye) was "exhilarating fun". And this is only scratching the surface of his crazy awesomeness. Crazy Is Cool works.
  • After fighting in three wars, losing half a dozen body parts, crashing airplanes in the ocean and charging trenches his entire life, the title of his autobiography? Happy Odyssey. Trivia.
• General Henry Knox, chief artillery officer for George Washington during the American Revolution. A rather overweight, out-of-shape, twenty five-year-old book-binder and -seller, he was an avid devotee of military history who had never, prior to joining the Colonial army in 1775, experienced a day in military service. A self-taught soldier, Knox rose to become one of Washington's right-hand men, and was considered by his enemies, the British, to be an outright genius when it came to the use of artillery. Fort Knox is named in his honor. Cool, but not crazy.
• For that matter, George Washington himself. ZCE
• Edward Teach, better known as the pirate Blackbeard. He put smoldering coals in his beard just to scare the living hell out of people. The man took 20 slashes, 4-6 gunshot wounds, and a decapitation to finally die, and when he did it's said his headless body started swimming circles around the ship. Maybe this is something but at this point I'm too burned to care much for it. It's just some factoids.
  • There's a story that says he once shot his first mate in the knee completely at random. When asked why, he said "If I don't kill a man every so often you forget who I am". Trivia.
• Joseph William Kittinger Jr.. A mess of weblinks.
• Timothy Dexter. Made a series of guaranteed-to-lose business deals (e.g shipping cold-weather gear to the Caribbean) and made a profit on all of them. Jealous rivals encouraged him to ship coals to Newcastle, a proverbially absurd trade, and he did - the coals arrived during a coal miners' strike and he made a substantial profit on the deal. On the strength of this, he wrote his memoirs, entitled a pickle For the Knowing ones: the original edition contained no punctuation whatsoever, and when some readers complained he published another edition that an entire page of punctuation marks and a note that readers should "peper and solt it as they plese."^note Dexter's spelling was rather more crazy than awesome. Maybe Crazy Is Cool?
• Lieutenant General Chesty Puller is one of, if not the, most decorated combat Marine in US Marine Corps history. He is the only Marine to be awarded five Navy Crosses (the second highest award for valor they give out, for extraordinary heroism in combat). Yes, that's right. In a military division already known for their badassitude, he managed to distinguish himself for valor five separate times. Cool, not crazy.
  • Upon being shown a flamethrower for the first time, he is reported to have asked where the bayonet was supposed to go. Okay?
  • Sources vary as to the exact quote, but at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, when he was informed that he was surrounded by 67,000 Chinese troops, he said some variation of "We're surrounded. That simplifies the problem." It takes a special brand of Crazy Is Cool to decide that being surrounded and outnumbered more than two-to-one is a good thing. It takes an even more rarified brand of crazy awesome to then win the battle. Okay...
  • On an inspection tour, he once demanded to be taken to the brig so that he could meet the "real Marines." More pointless trivia.
• English football player Terry Butcher got wounded during the World Championship qualifier in Sweden 1989. He got a nasty cut in the head, but stitches and bandages didn't stop him from keeping playing. He bled throughout the game until his white shirt turned red. Okay?
• Though it is accepted that this tale is apocryphal, it should be noted that it's generally agreed that it is the sort of thing that Patton might have done. The general went far out of his way to appear larger-than-life to inspire his troops. Why is the story in a second bullet? This page will be the death of me.
  • The Allies actually managed to weaponize this image in the prelude to Operation Overlord. Relying in part on Patton's trademark image and bluster—along with decoy trucks and tanks—to bluff the Axis into believing that the Allies were going to land at Calais rather than their actual target, Normandy. After all, a man like Patton would obviously be leading the cross-channel invasion, right? The Nazis certainly thought so. It helped that the Nazis were already predisposed to expect the invasion to occur at Calais, a major port on the narrowest part of the English Channel. Normandy also seemed like a batshit insane place to land an invasion force, since it had no natural harbour from which troops and (especially) vehicles and heavy equipment could be offloaded. Landing craft that could beach themselves to offload troops would only be able to provide an initial beachhead, not a large enough force to defeat the entire Nazi army. The Allies' solution to this problem was Crazy Is Cool in its own right: since Normandy lacked a suitable harbor for large ships, they would simply make one. In the middle of a battle. Wait, this isn't the story mentioned above, is it???? So then...this is just more natter. Dope.
• Hunter S. Thompson: Gonzo Journalism simply wouldn't have existed if not his willingness to do bizarre—even insane—things to himself and occasionally others. This mostly meant drugs, but it also meant things like going around in a bar waving a cattle prod and yelling at people to get out of his way. Crazy Is Cool?
  • Thompson's friend 'Oscar Zeta Acosta, who fought for Chicano civil rights and was a legitimate contender in the 1970 race for LA County Sheriff. He was also the basis for Raoul Duke's '300 pound Samoan attorney,' Dr. Gonzo in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, where one gets the impression that even Hunter thought he was out of his mind: ZCE, and starts troping the book instead.
  "There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die."
  • According to Thompson, Acosta was apparently a vicious bar fighter: Not particularly crazy.
  "Oscar was not into serious street-fighting, but he was hell on wheels in a bar brawl. Any combination of a 250 lb Mexican and LSD-25 is a potentially terminal menace for anything it can reach – but when the alleged Mexican is in fact a profoundly angry Chicano lawyer with no fear at all of anything that walks on less than three legs and a de facto suicidal conviction that he will die at the age of 33 – just like Jesus Christ – you have a serious piece of work on your hands. Especially if the bastard is already 33½ years old with a head full of Sandoz acid, a loaded .357 Magnum in his belt, a hatchet-wielding Chicano bodyguard on his elbow at all times, and a disconcerting habit of projectile vomiting geysers of pure blood off the front porch every 30 or 40 minutes, or whenever his malignant ulcer can't handle any more raw tequila."
• Italy's infamous Gabriele D'Annunzio. On the crazy side, he had his lower ribs removed to be able to use his mouth when having A Date With Rosie Palms (among his many antics). On the awesome side, his record during World War I: he charged at an Austro-Hungarian trench line while wearing a Badass Cape and with a revolver in each hand (yes, Italian military issue revolvers of the era were underpowered, but he remained the only one to actually do it) and a combat knife in his mouth, in the Bakar's Mockery he took three MAS (speedboats with torpedoes strapped on them) in the most well-defended harbor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, fired torpedoes at the moored ships (that survived only because the Austro-Hungarian admiralty had placed torpedo nets everywhere just in case) and left mocking messages in bottles (in the attempt to convince the ships into giving chase and be torpedoed by a waiting force as they left the bay of the port. The Austro-Hungarians didn't fall for it), and when the Austro-Hungarians carried a demonstrative bombing raid on Milan he personally led a raid on Vienna and dropped propaganda leaflets (a quarter with a poetic message written by D'Annunzio itself that was considered a war crime and so wasn't translated, and the others with a more understandable message that could be resumed in "You've lost the war, you're fighting against the whole world, surrender while you still can and before we change our minds and return with bombs") to prove that they could bomb the Austrian capital itself but were too civilized to actually do it. Oh, and he couldn't actually fly a plane, he was there merely because he had the idea. Crazy Is Cool works.
  • After the war, D'Annunzio became a potential political rival for Benito Mussolini, who wanted to keep him out of the way (especially because D'Annunzio was a fierce opponent of the alliance with Nazi Germany, and did his worst to get Adolf Hitler pissed off at Italy and cause a war when Italy could still win it), causing one of the most unbelievable instances of D'Annunzio's crazy awesomeness. The Crazy: he demanded they gave him the MAS he used at Bakar, the airplane he used to fly over Vienna and a warship (a large torpedo boat) to be given to him as decoration for his estate, the Vittoriale degli Italiani (Italian for "Shrine of Italian Victories), a property confiscated from a German art historian he later bought and expanded. The Awesome: he got them and they're still there, the torpedo boat with the bow pointing to the Adriatic Sea "ready to conquer the Dalmatian shores" (his dispositions). Natter, but still Crazy Is Cool.
    • Oh, and Mussolini later recognized he had been right about Hitler, but, as it was already 1944, he couldn't do anything about it. Natter.
• The Bersaglieri, the elite shock infantry of the Italian army. On the crazy part, they don't walk but run all the time, even when playing brass instruments (and their marching band includes only brass instruments), and were originally created to countercharge against enemy cavalry. On the awesome part, during the Battle of the Chernaya they did countercharge Russian cavalry, and routed it, something that the Zuaves (at the time considered the most badass infantry of the world) had just considered impossible (and prompting the Zuaves to admit the Bersaglieri were more awesome than themselves and gift them their fez as secondary headgear). Oh, and the Bersaglieri were tired because they had just feasted the previous day. Maybe Crazy Is Cool? Or just Rule of Cool.
  • Still on the awesomeness, Erwin Rommel has admitted that any German soldier was inferior to the Bersaglieri, and in Africa (where he commanded both Italian and German troops) had the habit of throwing them at positions he could not attack with the usual mix of tanks and infantry and then wait for the enemy to run away in holy terror. Natter.
• Admiral Charles "Swede" Momsen of the United States Navy was a decorated combat officer who commanded submarines and the battleship USS South Dakota with distinction during the Second World War. His contributions to science, medicine, and deep-sea rescue, however, made him Crazy Is Cool : The bullets seem to check out, though they get a little nattery at points.
  • While studying decompression sickness for the Navy, Momsen devised the first mixed-gas diving rigs (in this case, oxygen/helium) and through trial-and-error, developed the first protocols for safe mixed-gas diving. That's awesome enough, but the crazy part came from testing the mixtures on himself. He methodically and repeatedly gave himself the bends to research ways to avoid getting the bends.
  • In 1939, he rescued the survivors of a disabled submarine, the USS Squalus (SS-192). Rescuing 33 sailors trapped 70 meters below the surface is amazing enough, but that could have never happened without two critical pieces of equipment: the diving rescue bell, and the Submarine Escape Lung (an early rebreather); both of which Momsen, himself, invented.
    • He also, incidentally, recovered the submarine, itself; which was repaired, renamed Sailfish, and went on to fight in the Pacific during World War II.
  • In 1943, the Navy was having problems with the Mark 14 torpedo, which would often fail to explode when it impacted a ship's hull. The Navy turned to then-Admiral Swede Momsen to lead an investigation into the defective torpedoes. Momen did so by live-firing armed torpedoes at targets, and then he personally dove in to recover the unexploded ones so experts could take them apart and figure out where the problem was. This bears repeating: as a flag officer, Momsen dove into the water to recover torpedoes with armed, high-explosive warheads that he was fully aware were equipped with defective fuses.
• Jackie Chan does all his own stunts. This includes things like running down the side of a building^note Who Am I?, jumping from a building to a rope ladder hanging from a helicopter^note Police Story 3: Supercop, and a sideways roll over a spinning circular saw^note Mr. Nice Guy. There is a reason he has stated that no insurance company in the world will give him coverage. Chan is maybe Crazy Is Cool.
• Julie d'Aubigny, also known as Mademoiselle Maupin, was a 17th century noble-born bisexual fugitive swordswoman and opera singer. Married off to a much older man at an early age, she called it quits on that lifestyle by eloping with her fencing instructor after he killed a man in a duel and spent time on the roads with him singing opera and fighting duels in local villages. Her favorite activities as an adult were drinking, dueling, singing opera, and seducing every attractive man and woman she could get her hands on, frequently in that order. In a time when homosexuality was punishable by death in many places, she dealt with people who had a problem with her sexuality by either giving zero shits or challenging them to a duel, which she almost invariably won. She once accepted a duel from three different noblemen after they saw her kissing a girl they liked at a ball and beat all three of them at once. Works as Crazy Is Cool, I guess.
  • One time she was insulted by a young nobleman, Louis-Joseph d'Albert Luynes, for wearing men's clothing, they dueled, and she won after driving her blade through his shoulder. Later she found that said nobleman was the son of the Duke of Loynes, and when she felt bad about having beaten his ass so badly, she went over to his house to offer his apologies and seduced him. Although they inevitably split up, D'Aubigny and d'Albert remained lifelong friends. Trivia.
  • When her latest conquest, the daughter of rich nobles, was sent to a convent by her parents to keep her away from D'Aubigny, she responded by sneaking into the convent, rescuing her girlfriend, hiding the body of a dead nun in her girlfriend's bed to cover their escape, and set the convent on fire. Trivia, but certainly cool.
• Giuseppe Garibaldi once invaded the Kingdom of Two Sicilies (basically the southern half of Italy) with a thousand men to add it to the Kingdom of Sardinia and advance toward the unification of Italy. He succeeded. Okay?
  • Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, then prime minister of Sardinia, was just as crazy. Why? For starters, Garibaldi's stunt was his idea. Also, it was just part of the plan: Garibaldi would conquer the Two Sicilies, and then the Sardinian Army would advance from the north, conquering the various minor duchies and most of the Papal States in the process, ostensibly to stop him, and then they would take over the Two Sicilies too because king Francis II was obviously too inept to prevent a thousand brigands from just conquering his country. This part of the plan succeeded too. There's a reason he's known as the Italian Otto von Bismarck... Cool, but doesn't seem crazy.
    • He also had had a penchant for holding diplomatic negotiations in airless rooms with either no windows or ones that could not be opened. With the temperature always slightly too warm. After having eaten/while eating garlicky food (or sometimes just plain garlic). And he was physically quite intimidating. The result? He typically got what he wanted in these negotiations, and got it rather quickly. Natter and trivia.
• Henry Darger, in much the same vein as Wesley Willis and Emperor Joshua Norton. By all accounts, he lived a very tragic life, spending much of his childhood as a virtual slave in a horrible asylum, but escaped at age 16 and spent nearly the next sixty years of his life (most of it spent locked up in his room) working on his masterpiece, the 15,145 page In the Realms of the Unreal, which he wrote out by hand. He also produced many incredibly beautiful (and sometimes disturbing) portraits of children in gorgeous natural scenery that he also drew out by hand, and despite the occasionally violent scenes depicted therein, he was by all accounts a lovely neighbor and tenant and never harmed a living soul. Maybe this is something, but I can't decide what.
• Russell Brand. A comedian and actor known for his manic style, his insane clothing, he even more insane hair, and his love of helping his fellow man. He once spat on a cat to help his own cat win a fight. ZCE.
• As a general rule in the drag racing world, anybody who raced in the golden era ('60s-'70s) of the sport counted, but the guys who raced Fuel Altereds had to be certified nutters. Short wheelbases, sketchy chassis engineering, and massive supercharged, nitromethane burning engine combined to create cars (affectionately dubbed "Awful Awfuls"^note Derived from their class designation, "AA/FA.") that could blitz a quarter mile from a stop in seven seconds, assuming one could keep them pointed vaguely in the direction of the finish line. Even amongst this mad band of misfits, the antics of "Wild" Willie Borsch and the Winged Express stand out. Tales of Borsch crossing the line sideways, one-handed, at 200mph, immediately after having fallen asleep in the staging lane due to his narcolepsy abound. Too general, maybe the people mentioned count but need their own example.
• Any skydiver. Ever. Why would anyone jump off a perfectly good and functional airplane? General.
• Goaltenders in hockey can have shades of this. Considering their job description involves getting *in* the way of a fist-sized piece of vulcanized rubber that can go over 160 kph, it's not terribly surprising. General.
• A contender for the prize "Most Crazy Awesome Animal" is the snake Boiga irregularis. It single-handedly wiped out the bird population of Guam, even tried to eat a few human babies (it's definitely not large enough for that, but at least you make yourself a name at the local population) and to top it all, quoting the other Wiki, "this species will routinely crawl into power transformers, and, unfortunately for all involved, this typically results in both an electrocuted snake and substantial blackouts". Cool snake, but...
• Screaming Lord Sutch, founder of The Official Monster Raving Loony Party, an actual political party in the UK that has Cloud Cuckoo Lander candidates who run for elections to this day. Cool.
• Screaming Lord Sutch has nothing on Lord Buckethead, who runs for office in a mock Darth Vader costume and claims to be an intergalactic space lord. He's run against Margaret Thatcher, John Major, and Theresa May, and won a higher percentage of the vote each time. Maybe he counts as Crazy Is Cool.
  • His party platform includes:
    • Free bicycles to be provided to the general public.
    • Demolishing Birmingham to make room for a spaceport.
    • Nationalising Adele.
    • A firm commitment to rebuilding the UK's Trident weapons system followed by "an equally firm commitment, privately, not to build it. They're secret submarines, so no one will ever know. It's a win-win."
    • Legalizing the hunting of fox hunters.
    • The founding of new grammar schools on the principles of 1) better funding for teachers, 2) increased facilities for children, especially playing fields, and 3) having unruly children blasted into space, "with the parents provided with a lovely fruit basket, by way of consolation or celebration, depending on the child."
    • Having the racist TV presenter Katie Hopkins exiled to the Phantom Zone.
  • In 2017, his party, the Gremloids, actually beat The Official Monster Raving Loony Party in the general election against Theresa May, winning him enough votes to appear on stage with all the other candidates, including a visibly displeased May. Lord Buckethead celebrated by dabbing onstage. Trivia.
• Straddling the line between this and the film section, Viggo Mortensen gives every impression of being completely out of his gourd, and a lot of it went into his performance as Aragorn—starting with his agreeing to replace Stuart Townsend at the last second (in New Zealand for several months), continuing through his using his prop sword to deflect a (real) knife that a heavily prosthetic-ed actor accidentally actually threw at his face, on to staying in character during and after breaking his foot. Reviews of all three films consistently single out his performances as excellent within an already very well-received trilogy. Maybe this counts?
  • As stated above, to elaborate: that epic stunt in the climax of Fellowship where Aragorn uses his sword to parry a knife thrown at him by the Uruk-hai captain, Lurtz? Unscripted. The actor playing Lurtz could barely see Mortensen under the heavy prosthetics, and badly misjudged his throw of the knife, which was very real and sharp^note Aragorn was supposed to duck and the knife would hit the tree behind him, Lurtz' actor accidentally threw it directly at Mortensen's face. Mortensen managed to deflect the knife with his sword for real. Cool trivia.
• It takes a bit of a brave person to fly a $1500 light aircraft in the 1940's. It takes a bit of a brave and crazy person to fly a light aircraft for the military as a spotter. It takes a bit of a brave, crazy, and awesome person to have the sheer gall to strap a bunch of infantry bazookas to that tiny, fragile spotter plane and go out hunting Tiger tanks on his own and succeeding at it. All without taking a single hit. This summary cannot begin to do justice in regards to the actions of one Charles Carpenter, AKA "The Mad Major," "The Lucky Major," and "Bazooka Charlie," who only had this to say: Crazy Is Cool.
  "Word must be getting around to watch out for Cubs with bazookas on them. Every time I show up now they shoot with everything they have. They never used to bother Cubs. Bazookas must be bothering them a bit."
• The Italian front of World War I included a large stretch of mountainous terrain, with the tops of the mountains being effectively impenetrable fortresses. After a particularly painful failure at taking one such Austro-Hungarian position, the Italians decided to blow up a piece of the mountain. It worked so well that, between both sides, they did it 34 times (24 the Italians, 10 the Austro-Hungarians), only stopping when the Austro-Hungarians literally blew up the top of a mountain and both sides realized they were getting overboard-especially as the Italians were preparing an even bigger explosion. Not sure if an entire army counts here.
• On February 6, 2018, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket had its first successful launch. Its first mission? Launch a Tesla Roadster into orbit. Around Mars. It missed, but it's still projected to end up somewhere in the asteroid belt. Cool trivia.
  • The company's founder, Elon Musk, has a history of being this. Between the above shenanigans, selling mass-market flamethrowers and co-founding a coalition to avert the Robot War, Musk is indeed a top tier Mad Scientist in all the coolest ways. And we end on a duplicate natter bullet. Fitting for this mess of a subpage.

• Josh Norton: This seems more like Awesome Moments (or straight-up gushing) than anything really tropable. The only applicable context for any "crazy" trope was that they tried to have him committed for some unspecified illness (which in those days was little more than getting people out of the way). The entire entry seems to be that "this guy was a weirdo, but everyone liked him and went along with his gimmick."

• Richard Garriott: I guess you can say Rule of Cool, but to me it looks more like "guy with more money than sense."

• Werner Herzog: Herzog is weird but it seems like this entry is making him out to be a badass more than crazy. I say cut or Awesome Moments.

• Molasses Gang: Crazy Enough to Work, or cut.

• Alain Robert: Crazy Is Cool if anything at all.

Tesla: Crazy Is Cool if anything.

Wesley Willis: Maybe Success Through Insanity.

Lady Gaga: Cut or Bunny-Ears Lawyer.

Unipiper: Rule of Cool.

Chinese Calvary: Eh, Crazy Is Cool, why not at this point.

Ivar Haglund: Crazy Is Cool

Audie Murphy: Tremendous badass, but I don't think he fits any of these tropes.

A Cake: Rule of Cool.

Joan of Arc: I dunno, I guess Success Through Insanity although I'm sure implying that she wasn't actually led by God will make some people mad.

Carton de Wiart: Crazy Is Cool

H Unter S. Thompson: If anything, Crazy Is Cool.