Final Fantasy VIII/Awesome

• Squall delivering The Oath, followed by the entire Garden charging into battle despite their wounds and exhaustion.
  • Made even more awesome by the fact that he had to literally go against his nature to deliver that speech, and that it started as unsure before building up to a really inspirational speech. And then he goes and kicks everyone's ass from Hell to breakfast!
    • And then, Squall has a fistfight to the death with an enemy paratrooper while riding a giant flying jetpack screaming out of control through the air over a massive, full-scale melee battle between the SeeD and Galbadian armies. And then swoops down to rescue Rinoa off the edge of a cliff.
    • During a cutscene with members of the Garden in a large pitched battle, a Red Shirt clotheslines a Mook off of his motorcycle with the flat of his sword. Easily ranks in the top 10 Red Shirt CMOA's.
  • We can't leave out Squall's act of insane heroic desperation on the Lunar Station. Rinoa is drifting away into space, running out of oxygen, with no hope left, and Squall, without the slightest hesitation, throws on a space suit and leaps out after her. He has next to no chance of getting to her, he's not even sure if he can help her even if he reaches her, but he still doesn't even pause for an instant. He is going to save her or die trying. That is the definition of love and heroism.
    • Another example of this in action: the only way into Esthar, which is Squall's only hope of saving Rinoa, is to cross the Horizon Bridge to get to Esthar on foot. The Horizon Bridge spans an ocean, and the trains that run on it are not working. So what does Squall do? He parks Garden at Fisherman's Horizon, waits until no one is looking, and then picks up Rinoa and carries her, on his back, on foot, across the entire bridge. Let's repeat that to get the point across: he crossed an ocean on foot on an off-chance he might be able to save her. That's a Determinator in action, right there.
  • Also, Seifer slicing Odin in half by pointing his weapon at him. If that's not Badass....
    • ...then what Gilgamesh does to him when he makes his big entrance toting Odin's sword is.
• Quistis gets her moment during the escape from Dollet, where she blasts the hell out of the giant spider robot with a mounted 30mm autocannon.
  • The very definition of Hot for Teacher.
• If you're lucky enough to get it (hint: get as many Pinions as you can), being saved from utter annihilation by Phoenix during the Omega Weapon battle is a Crowning Moment of Awesome.
• Selphie gets hers when she comes up with a very simple solution to Timber's occupation issues: simply blow up the President's train car with a rocket launcher. Easy and practical!
• The Lunatic Pandora storming. How do they get into the nigh-impregnable monstrosity? By charging at it, spamming machine fire, ramming its shields to get the front end of a BFG in, blast a massive hole in the side of the damned thing, then having the impractical landing gear claws grasp onto the side to make a landing. And then the party strolls on out without any mention of how insane it was.
• "I'm not a SeeD, but... I can do this... This isn't some kind of game..." Sure, she proceeds to make a pretty rash and foolish move, but this moment is a great showing of Rinoa's determination.
• Now, usually when you miss the shot and fail the assassination, you call the mission off. That's not what they teach them in Garden, however. Squall jumps down from the clock tower they fired the shot from, slicing a mook in the process, steals a car and drives through the street filled with panicking crowd and soldiers to the target to take care of business in the old fashioned way. Granted, it fails, but I like to think that the reason none of soldiers who are at max 50 yards away ever intervene during the several minutes Squall fights against Edea and Seifer is that they are too damn scared to go anywhere near the guy.
• How about Squall saving Zell during the prison escape? A rather shortsighted plan ended up stranding Zell near the top floor of the prison with the rest of the team at the very bottom floor. The team hears some action over the radio and realize they left Zell stranded, all alone, in the middle off a monster and armed guard infested prison that's out to kill them. Zell tries to flee but is caught and seconds away from getting shot point blank in the head when in swoops Squall, cutting the man with the gun to Zell's head down in one shot after running up about a dozen monster infested floors and leaving Quistis and Selphie in his dust. Never threaten one of Squall's friends, he will go to any legnth to save them.
• Not quite as obvious an example at first glance, but the entire first couple of hours of the game are one for Squall and, by extension, SeeD. Squall gets up in the morning, duels his own personal rival before the sun even comes over the hills, and suffers a disfiguring facial scar that also ends with him being knocked unconscious. Then he wakes up and goes to beat the hell out of a local demigod. Then he turns around, goes home, and without even stopping to rest, he hats up and takes part in an amphibious beach assault on a nation that's being invaded, followed by intense urban combat, then dukes it out with a freakish monster-abomination on top of a mountain, and then gets chased down said mountain by an unkillable spider-bot. Then, when he gets back, gets his pips and props, takes part in a huge dance ball, has two women fling themselves at him in their own respective ways, and saves another from another godless abomination of a monster, almost as an afterthought. And this is in one freaking day! Squall pulls off more awesome crap in a single day than most superheroes do in entire movies, and its just another day at the office for him... most of it while he's still a trainee.
  • Not to mention Quistis with the BFG. She sees the giant robot... and completely destroys it by riddling it with bullets. Complete with epic music.
• Laguna. He's off fighting a war and then decides to drive back to his nation's capital, drink it up with his friends and hit on that women he's been eyeing for so long.
  • Later, in Lunatic Pandora, the Laguna team fights off a huge swarm of Esthar soldiers. In between fights he complains about it taking so long it's making him hungry.
• Some of the Guardian Force animations, like Diablos, Alexander, and Eden.
• The scene where Balamb Garden transforms. Cid said that the place used to be a bomb shelter... who the hell was expecting THAT?
• Three teenagers walk into a Galbadian military base with nothing but stolen uniforms and a lot of determination, and proceed to - just as Selphie promised - break everything they can get their hands on, kick the asses of any soldiers who get in their way, cripple a massive ironclad into nonfunctionality, and end by blowing the whole thing sky-high. It's especially awesome if you manage to play it cool and avoid detection until the end, in which case Selphie and her team manage to actively infiltrate the Galbadian chain of command and play everyone but the base commander for a bunch of suckers.
• The first time Fujin utters more than a word in a row is to give her friend Seifer a "The Reason You Suck" Speech. An awesome "The Reason You Suck" Speech.