History Main / DefaceOfTheMoon

* A picture in the third installment in the ''VideoGame/BeingOne'' flash game series, shows Earth surrounded by an asteroid belt left over from the "Moon impact of 2027", complete with the Moon having huge chunks blown out around the edges.

* In UsefulNotes/{{the Silver Age|OfComicBooks}} Comicbook/{{Superman}} story "The Last Days of Superman", Superman believed he was dying from a Kryptonian virus, and among the preparations he made for his death was using his heat vision to write "Do good to others and any man can be a Superman. [signed] Superman (Clark Kent)" on the surface of the moon. When it turned out (surprise surprise) that he wasn't going to die after all, Supergirl and Krypto removed his secret identity from the message; the rest of it, however, was apparently there to stay.

* In ''BaloonVendor'', a 1970-era psychedelic underground comic, inventor Cecil Quill develops a high-powered laser which he uses to project Creator/LaurelAndHardy movies on the new moon.

* Todd Ingram of ''Comicbook/ScottPilgrim'' uses his amazing Vegan powers to punch a gigantic new crater into the moon for his then-girlfriend Ramona. He repeats this later with Envy Adams; apparently, it's the most flattering thing he can do. It comes back to bite him in the ass though, [[spoiler:as Envy puts two-and-two together and realizes it means he cheated on her with Ramona]].

* In ''{{TabletopGame/Numenera}}'', the moon appears smaller thanks to a wider orbit, and sports a bright green band around its equator at frequent intervals.

** In the post-reboot ''ComicBook/ArchieComicsSonicTheHedgehog'' series, the moon is still damaged.
* In the [[{{Doujinshi}} Dojin-soft]] game ''Videogame/{{Touhou}} Soccer'', one of Youmu's attacks has her ''engrave her technique's name on the moon with her [[AbsurdlySharpBlade swords]]'', before ''cleaving'' it and [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill using the momentum to hit the ball]].

* ''{{VideoGame/Stellaris}}'': One of the anomalies your science ships can discover while surveying star systems is a large body of writing carved into the surface of a celestial body with a mining laser. Once translated, it turns out to be a short story about an alien mercenary.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* ''Webcomic/{{Overcompensating}}'' [[http://overcompensating.com/posts/20060206.html 2006/06/02]].

* TruthInTelevision, sort of, for the Moon. Very early on its history it was covered by a magma ocean that solidified and formed the lunar crust, just to be pockmarked by the craters formed by the countless impacts of asteroids and comets suffered by the Moon. Hundreds of millions of years later, lavas would emerge from the lunar interior and solidify forming the lunar seas giving the Moon the aspect it has from Earth, that unless [[DefaceOfTheMoon we, or someone else, mess with it]] will very likely keep as long as it exists.

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* An old 7 Up commercial had Creator/OrlandoJones about to write "7 Up" on the surface of the Moon with a [[FrickinLaserBeams big laser]]. He fires it, and the Moon blows up with an EarthShatteringKaboom, prompting him to angrily ask "Who's been messing with my laser?!"

* In one of the early ''Webcomic/ExploitationNow'' strips, cute teenage supergenius supervillainess (and slum landlord) Jordan Kennedy uses a gigantic [[FrickinLaserBeams laser]] DeathRay to write "Hillary Clinton is a big fat hairy bulldyke!" on the Moon. (In the strip, the official response from Senator Clinton's office was "[[ITakeOffenseToThatLastOne She is NOT fat!]]")

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* A picture in the third installment in the ''Being One'' flash game series, shows Earth surrounded by an asteroid belt left over from the "Moon impact of 2027", complete with the Moon having huge chunks blown out around the edges.

* Inverted in the Creator/GarthEnnis comic ''ComicBook/{{Preacher}}'', where Jesse Custer meets a man who was kicked out of NASAafter he'd faked the paperwork to be selected for astronaut training despite being two or three heads shorter than the others and devoted the rest of his life to blasting the words 'fuck you' into the Arizona desert in letters large enough to be seen from space.

* In ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd'', the entire face of the Moon is regularly used for ''advertising'' by extremely powerful projectors. Aficionados of romantic moonlit walks need to finish by 9 PM or risk severe MmentKilling.

* at the climax of the first season of ''Anime/SenkiZesshouSymphogear'', [[spoilers:a chunk of the moon is blown off, then destroyed by the heroes shortly after, leaving the moon with a colossal crater about the size of the Gulf of Mexico, and a ring system made up of the debris.]]

* ''Anime/LittleWitchAcademia'': Shiny Chariot's last performance before disappearing involved her [[spoiler:firing a magic arrow so powerful that it impacted the moon and left it marked with a giant 4-pointed star.]]

* Old joke: "President, the Communists have finished painting the moon red!" "OK, get some white paint and go paint 'COCA-COLA' on it." (Used to be 'Marlboro'. The Soviets then painted the warning about smoking underneath.)

* ''[[Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse The Han Solo Trilogy]]'' tells how one of Han's former classmates once tried to wipe an Imperial logo off a small moon's face. He underestimated the power of the resulting explosion and [[EarthShatteringKaboom the whole moon went boom]].

* In the ''WesternAnimation/GIJoe'' episode "Lasers in the Night", Cobra Commander attempted to carve his likeness into the Moon (specifically, his battle mask, as opposed to his hooded head or his actual face). In that episode however, Destro is outraged that the Commander wasted his organization's resources for "cosmic graffiti".

[[caption-width-right:350:[- Chairface Chippendale's plan to write his name on the moon, though foiled by the heroes, was doomed by the start by his own poor font-spacing.-] ]]

* Inverted in the Garth Ennis comic ''ComicBook/{{Preacher}}'', where Jesse Custer meets a man who was kicked out of NASA and devoted the rest of his life to blasting the words 'fuck you' into the Arizona desert in letters large enough to be seen from space.

* In ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd'', the entire face of the Moon is regularly used for ''advertising''.

* In the ''Manga/{{Akira}}'' manga, Tetsuo impresses his subordinates by flying up and blowing a hole in the moon.
deconstructed in that the massive chunk he took out of the moon severely screws up the tides and [[TheGreatFlood washes away half the city]], and that the effort he took to do this gives him a full-blown SuperpowerMeltdown. As per usual, the whole event is demonstrative of Tetsuo's tendency to pull out grand compulsive demonstrations of his power without considering the long-term consequences.

[[folder:Webcomics]]

* In the ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'' epiloque, Carapatians decide to use a big laser to "scape" the moon into a permanent crescent form. This is probably a reference back to ''Webcomic/ProblemSleuth'' when Pickle Inspector accidentally shot the hole out of the crescent.

[[caption-width-right:350:[- [[FridgeLogic One has to wonder, considering how large he wrote the first three letters, how Chairface Chippendale expected to fit his entire name on the Moon's surface.]]-] ]]

* Old joke: "President, the Communists have finished painting the moon red!" "OK, get some white paint and go paint 'COCA-COLA' on it."
** Used to be 'Marlboro'. The Soviets then painted the warning about smoking underneath.

* One proposal for searching for extraterrestrial intelligence involves looking for suspiciously artificial arrangements of celestial bodies. Such an arrangement would be advantageous because of their visibility over vast distances and time spans.
** This is why the supposed "Canals of Mars" and "Face on Mars" garnered so much excitement.
** Sometimes attributed to Carl Friedrich Gauss, one [[OlderThanRadio early proposal]] to send a message to Mars involved growing enormous fields of wheat and lines made of pine trees in the Siberian tundra to demonstrate the Pythagorean Theorem.
* After the Sputnik debacle, the US was desperately searching for ways to one-up the Soviets in the space race, and a proposal was made that an atomic bomb be detonated on the Moon! Fortunately, they decided to send astronauts instead. As cracked.com puts it, "they realized the difference between legitimate science and {{cartoonish supervillainy}}".
** As Cracked also mentioned, this [[MemeticBadass makes Neil Armstrong a suitable substitute for a nuke]]. As ''VideoGame/{{Touhou}}'' fans know, this is correct.

** Somewhat deconstructed in that the massive chunk he took out of the moon severely screws up the tides and [[TheGreatFlood washes away half the city]], and that the effort he took to do this gives him a full-blown SuperpowerMeltdown. As per usual, the whole event is demonstrative of Tetsuo's tendency to pull out grand compulsive demonstrations of his power without considering the long-term consequences.
* The protagonists of ''Anime/EurekaSeven'' give the moon a small touch-up job reminding the now-saved world about the power of love.
** Gets taken UpToEleven in ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWarsZ'', [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtaXu28O8bs&feature=related where the Nirvash Spec 3 has a dynamic kill animation doing this.]] [[InferredHolocaust Note that there are people and important installations on the moon.]] [[FridgeLogic How does the]] [[Anime/AfterWarGundamX sattelite cannon]] [[FridgeLogic still work, after that?]]
** Doesn't help that [[Anime/GenesisOfAquarion Aquarion's]] Mugen Punch keep slamming enemies into the moon and making more craters.
*** The ''Super Robot Wars Z'' manga [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] this with a picture of [[Anime/TurnAGundam Queen Dianna Soreil]] yelling at the Nirvash and Aquarion as they flee from a defaced moon.
** Despite appearing at the end of the series, the altered moon is such an iconic image that it actually makes a cameo in the AlternateUniverse movie [[spoiler: where it's seen at the end of a dimensional tunnel]]. The moon is notably ''not'' defaced in the SequelSeries, ''Anime/EurekaSevenAo'' [[spoiler: because the setting is actually in the distant past]], but it is seen defaced in [[spoiler: Elena Peoples MindScrew visions, hinting at her connection to the original series's time period]].

** At the end of the fourth issue of ''ComicBook/AllStarSuperman'', Jimmy (as acting head of P.R.O.J.E.C.T.) orders a "cosmetic, short-term alteration of the moon's surface". It's a note saying "I Love Lucy" - which he uses as a backdrop when he asks his girlfriend (Lucy Lane) on a date. You better ''believe'' she appreciated it.

* ''Film/{{Hancock}}'' put Ray's heart logo on the surface of the moon! No attempt is made to explain ''how'' he made it ''pink''. Or how it had not made world news yet. [[WildMassGuessing The world's supply of reddish shades of spray paint perhaps?]]
** The eventual media storm this will cause, does however get lampshaded by Ray;

* Just in time (2019) to 50 years of the moon landing, a joke from the space race aera. "Mr. President, the damn Communists have painted the moon red!" "So there. Fetch some white paint and write Coca-Cola on it!"