My little brother was playing in Ultima Online. He helped a PK (a murderer) from one of the Order Faction (a policeman.. sorta) because it was his friend. The PK ran away, but then the order dude got to paralyze him and started to insult him for aiding the murderer. Then the order dude a friend, a mage polymorphed into a dragon. Both of them were about to destroy him. My brother (in real life) went to my room calling for help. I logged my character who was a Grandmaster in everything related to a warrior. I was far, but not that much and on a horse. As I ran to where my brother was I noticed that the order dude was a friend of mine. He said "Go away, this is none of your bussiness, Troper". Of course it was, it was my brother's so I dispelled the paralyze spell and me and my brother fought against my friend and the dragon. I dont need to say how we were going to be destroyed but then I saw someone coming to us. It was another PK, friend of mine, polymorphed also in a dragon. Guess who won the battle after that?

So... the latest carrier in the U.S. Navy goes out for sea trials, and due to a known design glitch in combination with specific circumstances that make it a problem, some very important turbine-driven pumps trip out. Since the ship is moving quite fast at the time, this means that the propulsion plant leaders have to cut the ship's power source to avoid wrecking equipment... except they don't have to, because this guy got those pumps back up and running mere moments before the point of shutting down. Doesn't sound very impressive unless you know that turbine driven pumps take more to start up than just flipping a switch.

... That.... That's completely awesome.

In a Battlefield 2 match, this troper and his squad (consisting of two Special Forces guys, two anti-tank guys, and a support guy) saw that a control point was about to be overrun. We quickly screamed over in two FAV's and a plane (whom actually took out an enemy plane in addition) and arrived just in time to slaughter the enemy and recapture the point. Along with backup from spawning players, we held the point for the remaining five minutes of the game to carry the day and win. Our clan named an award after our bravery, "The Big Damn Heroes Award" and my squad was the first recipient.

I was planning a BigDamnHeroes for the neighborhood by slaying a rabid dog that was chasing everyone and trying to rip people apart...until my sister stopped me, claiming that I would make the owner mad. Within minutes, I had heard whose dog it was really...my neighbor and ex-sweetheart.

If it was rabid and attacking people, anyone who'd be mad that you stopped it would be an idiot.

This troper was once struggling against a badguy in FinalFantasyX. All but two characters were KO'd, and both were low on health. As a last ditch attempt at salvaging the game, one of the remaining characters (Tidus or Yuna, I believe) was switched out for Auron. Auron happened to have his Overdrive gauge full, and as soon as he entered the battle, the troper performed Dragon Blade and killed the pesky enemy. Auron topped it all off by adding "That's how it's done!" as the battle ended. This is also on the CrowningMomentOfAwesome page because throughout most of the game, This Troper played Auron as a coward who flees from hard battles at the first chance.

Auron... coward...? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU MAN? Auron DEFINES BigDamnHeroes from his first appearance onwards!

Me and my friend play Team Fortress 2 at times, we're each at the least quite good at the game on our own merits, but when we team up on arena we become very lethal, mostly comprising us playing medic+attack class until we both die, then we swap medic duty, one round our whole team gets killed without killing a single enemy, save for my friend who kills every single one of them, and this isn't a case of playing defensively, at the start of the round he charged directly at the enemy base whether I was following him or not, he was about to run into a room that I knew had a good number of enemies in, I tell him over voice chat not to charge in, but he ignores me and I abandon him, he proceeds to walk out the other end of the building, just as I was passing it hunting for another team mate, with little health lost, and with five kill notices all attributed to him, no first kills crits either, they had already gone to someone on the enemy team, after that he hunted them the rest down, proceeded to win the round for our team too, hunting down the remaining four enemies in this 9v9.

@/PentiumMMX2 had his moment when playing Phantasy Star Online one time. My party was in the middle of a battle against Dark Falz, and one of the party members (Who was only about level 12 during this fight) was killed in a single blow from the boss during the 2nd phase of the battle (The move in question covers the entire field with powerful lasers. ''Really'' powerful lasers). With only a sliver of HP left, I stopped attacking the boss and rushed over to use a healing item on my fallen ally. Just as I pressed the button to use the item, the boss was defeated, and for a second, I though I was too late...until the cut-scenes ended and it went back to the game, in which I saw that I had managed to revive him in time. Damn I felt good after that...

This unknown troper once played ''SuperSmashBros Brawl'' with a friend. It was a free-for-all on the Temple stage with items turned on and two level 9 computers. The computers randomly decided to gang up on my friend while I hid far enough away from the fight to mostly avoid getting hit, but close enough to take occasional potshots at them. Eventually, the computers overwhelmed my friend and he was about to be knocked off the stage when I threw a Bob-omb at one computer, [=KOing=] it, and leaping down to take down the second in an epic moment. Granted, I ruined that when I decided I was the only one allowed to defeat him and threw him off the stage as well.

@/BladeTiger was arriving at a hotel for an anime convention, when he recieved a call from his friend. Said friend had mistakenly believed he'd already paid for the room, and he had no room on his credit card. He called me in desperation, asking how soon I'd be there. At the time, I was walking through the parking lot of the hotel towards the front doors, carrying a credit card with plenty of room. Being the massive nerds that we both are, the trope was lampshaded verbatim: #QUOTE# This troper: Does this make me a ... ''big damn hero''? #QUOTE# Friend: ''Ain't you just''.

This troper has an indirect (and sadly imaginary) one: My five-year-old cousin was describing a nightmare he'd had, in which he was chased by a TyrannosaurusRex. Then I showed and started beating up the [=TRex=]. With a hammer. Damn if I didn't feel strangely elated for the rest of the day...

That sounds like a CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming to me. Or a CrowningMomentOfAwesome.

At a certain, recent LAN party held by friends of this Troper, we had acquired old copies of ''AgeOfEmpiresII: the Conquerors'', and had fired up a four-versus-three against computer opponents (since none of us had touched the game in a long time). In a generalized Crowning Game of Awesome, this Troper played the got the Big Damn Hero part, as he managed to...

singlehandedly overwhelm a CPU opponent on a one-on-one Dark-and-Feudal-ages scrap, since both had started out on the same island and no one could get reinforcements there on time (this cemented our numerical advantage);

load up an an army of the remaining Longswordsmen and Spanish Conquistadors onto transports, when I received a call for help en route and proceeded to decimate an enemy expeditionary force which had been threatening one of my allies; and finally

reloaded the army onto their transport and offloaded them to help HoldTheLine for ''another'' ally, whose tower-based defenses were under attack. I like to think that my allies' economic booms and subsequent victories were thanks in no small part to my contribution. Oh, and this vital expeditionary force? It ''never exceeded 16 units at any one time''.

During the Battle of Bai Di Castle in Dynasty Warriors 5, I was playing as Xing Cai and was on Hard difficulty. Here's the setup, there are four entrances to the castle where my commander is, the AI officers were guarding three, and I was guarding the other one. I managed to push back the enemies on my side and break through into the heart of the enemy unit... and then all of the AI officer's on my team died within a minute of each other, except my commander; but I figured things would be ok and moved on. I fought and beat Huang Gai and was in the middle of a fight with Zhou Tai when my commander begin screaming that he was in danger. So I turned around, ran all the way back to my commander which was about 3/4 of the map away from me and finally arrived at the castle to see my commander swarmed with enemies. I charged in and managed to fight off all of the enemies without my commander dying and slowly killed every other enemy on the map before finally finishing the level. I dread to think what happens on musou mode...

For this Troper, his fondest memory of gaming is a BigDamnHeroes moment. I was playing Halo 3: ODST with my brother, Firefight mode, in the Lost Platoon map. We tend to make a decent {{Bash Brothers}} duo, so we usually have each other's backs. At one point, far into the match, I was forcibly holed up in a room. Had no ammo, no grenades, and low health... and there were a dozen Grunts, Jackals and Brutes right outside, constantly firing at my position. Yeah. {{Oh Crap}}. Then, next thing I know, my brother rides in on the Warthog and delivers some epic Car Fu, ramming and swerving into the Covenant squad. He gets off the 'Hog, and fires at the remaining horde who were previously bombarding me, and yells, "Get in, dammit!" As he's providing cover fire, I run for the turret... and deliver Gatling Good vengeance on those bastards. It takes thirty minutes later for us to lose the match. And need I mention, while I was under fire, we were playing our playlists for songs made for asskicking? The song that was playing during the hole up and the rescue? "Ace of Spades," by Motorhead. You gotta admit, it's badass.

One of my Guild's arena teams was overwhelmed in Goldshire by about 20 Horde. So I started summoning guild mates to gather at Stormwind's bridge. Several minutes later we rode in with me and 59 other members of my guild, with me blasting Pastor Troy. We came swooping in G-Unit style and proceeded to lay waste to every Horde in sight.

Nice.

Real life example here: last Summer, this troper went on a pioneer recreation hike- aka, about 100 teenagers, dressed in 1840's clothing, hiking through the Sierra Nevada's pulling giant handcarts. for fun. crazy, right? right. so this Troper is having a hard time, mostly because she's not very strong, when everyone stops, and all the boys leave, because it's time for the Women's Pull. well, the other three girls pulling our cart man up, and we start pulling, and we get our cart up this huge hill. and then, as we're about to keel over, we realize that we aren't done, there's still another hill- and this one is STEEP. so we start walking. and suddenly, my foot slips and then the girl next to me falls, and the cart starts ROLLING backwards, down the hill, dragging us with it, and were's about to slam into the cart behind us, and start a domino chain that is going to end up with broken bones, when ALL of the boys show up, grabbing our cart, bracing those of us who have very badly hurt legs and continuing up the mountain.

my D&D character just had the biggest damn hero moment in the entire game, first off she's a bard that had not been specced to fight, during fights she's pure support, what's more she's an odd mix of races (half dragon half nixie) so she's a small category with the appearance and personality of a young child, well long story short her half brother (a full blooded black dragon who had been artificially aged to great wyrmm) decided that that before his artificial aging kills him he will die with honor on the battlefield....in a one on one fight to the death with my character, she unfortunately lost the fight (and in a way that she can never be resurrected or reincarnated) but not before she reduced him to 5 HP. let that sink in, a bard that is not made to fight and is the size of a halfling child, fought a great wyrmm black dragon to a standstill! at the end of the game our DM pretty much stated that the gods had no choice but create a new afterlife specificly for her because that level of big damn heroes was unheard of

I've had one real life example of a small incident. Standing in line at Disney World, a kid was ogling and trying to touch my sister. This obviously didn't sit too well with me, so I tried to stay in between him and her. Well, one time he really tried hard to get past me and to her, so I grabbed him by the collar, threw him back to his place in line, and then said: "Listen, you little Hispanic rat! Get close to my sister one more time, and you'll be going home with two fewer balls and one nonworking arm. Got it?" When he just smiled like an idiot, I made it simpler. "BACK. OFF." He didn't bother us anymore, and one girl behind us thanked me because he had been harassing her, too.

Well thank goodness you tinged your heroism with some nice casual racism...

To be fair in such a situation it's mostly used to shock the recipient of the verbal beatdown. It's no different to calling someone a fat bastard or a scrawny little gobshite. It's all about using terminology that will offend them on a personal level to jar them, making them less likely to escalate matters. It's like headbutting someone in a sword fight.

This Troper's mom has saved his life several times before. There was one time when he was about three, we live right outside Boston and regularly went down to the public gardens, and was running a little too close to the edge of the duck pond. (this doesn't sound good). Then he fell in, got lots of water up his nose, and screamed for help. Then His mom jumped in and rescued him.

But wait! Their's more, there was also a random guy, with a nice suit and everything, who also jumped in and helped this Troper's mom save his life!

I can barely remember what happened since it was in elementary school, but apparently I was a Big Damn Hero. There were a bunch of bullies picking on an autistic boy, but I rushed in to get rid of them. I didn't have the strength to fight them off, but I did tell them to leave the boy alone. This action got recognition from the teachers, so it was epic for a five-year-old.

This troper pulled one just this morning, while I was outside a stray cat that I had encountered several times before and had made friends with somewhat was being chased by another cat which I had not seen before, seconds later they other cat had her on her back and seemed intent on killing her I proceeded to kick the attacking cat away from her giving her time to run and hide.