Awesome / America's Got Talent

• In Season 2, with acts that didn't make it far performing "We are the Champions" and in Season 5 when Studio One Young Beast Society, Michael Grasso, Anna and Patryk, Michael Lipari and Ashleigh Dejon, Haspop, and Harmonica Pierre performed all at once.
• In Season 5, an Elvis impersonator in clownface (really) was buzzed, and he made a joke about Sharon getting a "contact high" from living with Ozzie. Sharon's response: "Nobody disrespects my husband. Fuck off." They then moved on insult Howie Mandel's career... causing Howie to repeat what Sharon had said.
  • Recent evidence suggests the guy is actually the lead singer of a band who came on the show specifically to troll the judges, though. Doesn't make it any less awesome.
• Season 5 also brought us Prince Poppycock. He auditioned with "Largo al Factotum", an aria from The Barber of Seville. It's widely known as one of the most difficult songs for men to sing in all of opera. He nailed it and did it in full 17th Century dandy costume. His over the top personality and genuine talent won over the crowd (for a standing ovation) and got the judges (especially Sharon) on his side.
• Season 6, the Kinetic King's Epic Fail where his trick didn't work at all, and he was eliminated from the competition. Then the week came where twelve eliminated acts came back for another chance, and he came back. He noted before it aired that he was so concerned with what happened last time that he spent a lot of time making sure nothing could go wrong—in the accompanying montage he was shown looking up weather patterns. The research paid off though, because his trick went brilliantly and he received mass applause and a spot in the Semi-Finals.
• Season 7, William Close and his freaking huge "Earth Harp". essentially a giant violin that uses over 3000 feet of string, and uses the theater it's used in as the setting. In other words, he turns the theater itself into an instrument, Not only does he make instruments, he plays them so damn well that it's incredible to watch. His performance during the quarterfinals playing "Love, Reign o'er Me" by The Who with his harp, a group of people performing with him and spinning drums was just nothing short of amazing.
• Tom Cotter managing to finish in second place overall in season 7. The awesome part about that? He is the first pure stand-up comic to even make it to the finals, with the only earlier one (Terry Fator, season 2's winner), arguably being more of a singer than a comedian.
  • Taylor Williamson, who was actually on Last Comic Standing before, also surprisingly finished as the runner-up for his season. His hilarious post-routine banter with the judges, especially involving Heidi Klum, certainly helped him win over fans.
• In Season 8, Brad Byers, who lost a previous season, returned with an act that in an of itself deserves an entry here. He swallows nine swords, then twists them. He even uses an X-ray machine to prove it's real. It was so amazing, a judge that admitted she would've no, said yes.
• Also in Season 8, Kenichi Ebina and his wickedly creative, unbelievable popping-style dance moves. His quarterfinals performance was especially top-notch, where he plays the role of every character in a fictional video game. The real him (in front of a projected screen) fights a bunch of characters (on said screen) that whittle down his health until it becomes Game Over for our dancing protagonist. Then, the "game" rewinds including Kenichi himself. When the rewind stops, he grabs a sword, and defeats the final boss to win. Even with this description, words cannot describe how amazing this is, other than that Howie is 100% right on saying that Kenichi has to win this season. And he does!
  Howie Mandel: I’ve never done this before in four years on this show, but I’m begging you, Kenichi has to win the million dollars… It’s the best act I’ve ever seen.
  • Kenichi tops himself in the semifinals: he basically gets into a dance contest with a mirror version of himself (via the projected screen thing mentioned above), and it ends with him getting trapped in the mirror while his mirror self escapes.
    • It should be noted that Kenichi isn't the first act to attempt this kind of miming to prerecorded video act; there have been a few others, but all of them fall flat on syncing themselves up to the video. Kenichi is spot on when it comes to syncing himself up with the video.
  • Kenichi tops himself again at his first performance at the finals, a touching story of himself dying and ascending to heaven, where he, through the use of stroboscopic lights to freeze his moves, managed to give the impression of flying through the stage.
• Season 9: Mat Franco becomes the first Stage Magician to ever win the show. Considering how many excellent magicians we've had over the years, that's saying a lot.
  • His audition performance was especially awesome, telling a clever story using innocent word play with a genuinely shuffled deck of cards.
• Nick Cannon pulling an epic prank on the judges, the audience, and the viewers at home. Disguised as a contestant named "Larry the Mime", he puts on an intentionally awful performance to get a negative response from the crowd and the judges, prompting him to have a serious "meltdown" onstage. The entire room's reaction to when he reveals his true identity is the icing on the cake.
• At the start of season 9, the judges saw a rather cheesy karate comedy duo (flubbing their own acts and such). Howard gave them a yes while both Heidi and Mel B said no. However, Howard stood up and began leaving his seat, much to everyone's confusion. While the crowd chanted "PUT THEM THROUGH!", Howard unveiled, and used, the golden buzzer, which sends an act straight through to the live shows automatically.
• Howie then reused the buzzer to save a hip hop comedy duo that Howard greatly disliked.
• For his top 6 first-round performance in season 8, Taylor Williamson made a set that was just rehashes of old jokes, but with a twist that involved a man in a kangaroo-seahorse suit, a choir, and pyrotechnics. It is glorious.
• At the start of season 8, a man that goes by his stage name Special Head goes up and starts "channeling his chi" and making monotone noises, which gains the mass disapproval of the crowd as well as an X from Howard. Then he starts levitating, taking everyone by surprise. Hell, Howard even performs a first for his run on the show and takes back his X.
• While they were eliminated in the Semi-Finals, Siro-A takes dancing to prerecorded video up a notch. By making full use of positioning and clever timing, they seamlessly trick the viewers into thinking that they've seemingly teleported across the stage/performed impossible stunts. It's hard to believe that there's more than just 5 (or 6, depending on which performance one refers to) performers on stage.
• Paul Zerdin's semi-final act in 2015 was his most outstanding act as a ventriloquist. He turns Howie into a living dummy through a moving mouthpiece on his face, and makes him "talk" through ventriloquism. The most awesome part was when he made Howie "say" "I want to be an act, I insist that you sit on my judge's seat" — which he does, after which he then proceeds to hilariously humiliate Howie by saying that he wants to show the audience his "twerking". Turning the tables like that undeniably makes you a boss. Was it any surprise then that he won the entire thing?
• Season 11's winner, Grace VanderWaal, is incredibly impressive on two accounts. First, there's the fact that she was only 12 years old at the time. But more impressively is the fact that she played nothing but original songs throughout the show! In a format where a show usually has its contestants sing only cover versions, this is almost unheard of!
• The Clairvoyants, the runner-ups of season 11, were also phenomenal. In every performance, they managed to pull off tricks that freaked out everybody: guessing the service provider on someone's phone, to guessing the serial number on Simon Cowell's dollar, guessing the flavor of jelly bean the judges were eating (and the flavor of jelly bean Howie Mandel wanted), guessing the first name of someone Mel B kissed, guessing the last 4 numbers on Simon Cowell's credit card, knowing the birthday and name of a man selected from the audience, and guessing a flavor of jelly bean Mel B picked (and it wasn't even a possible flavor). They were so impressive, the margin between them and Grace Vanderwaal was less than 1%.
• Viktor Kee, one of the finalists for Season 11, also deserves a mention here. Not only did he manage to turn over Simon Cowell's opinion on jugglers, but he consistently pulled off amazing performances. And then there's his final performance, where, in the first minute, he juggles blindfolded!
  • He was a lead performer on Cirque du Soleil. Is it any wonder he's that good?
• Season 12 gives us professional escape artist Demian Aditya, whose first act consists of him being constrained by the neck, hands, and ankles in a large box. He has two minutes to escape the chains before the box is filled with sand, potentially burying him alive. As he makes it halfway through the restraints, the sand suddenly falls and buries him, much to the shock of the crowd. When two of his assistants immediately run onstage to break him out, they shatter the glass box and find that Demian has disappeared. Then one of them turns around... and reveals that's he's Demian!
• Ladies and gentleman, Puddles the Clown with the Golden Voice.
• Darci Lynne Farmer, a 12-year-old girl who, despite having only done ventriloquism for two years, managed to leave all the judges and Tyra shocked with her audition consisting of a puppet belting "Summertime", leading to her receiving Mel B's golden buzzer. She later ended up winning the season.
  • Special note must be given to her Finals performance, where she used two puppets at the same time to perform "With a Little Help from My Friends", effortlessly switching between the two different voices throughout.
  • Her final performance also deserves special mention. Performing a duet with her idol Terry Fator, she flubbed the first line. Even many adult performers would be completely thrown to make such a mistake in front of millions of people on live television, but instead Darci kept her cool and simply stopped singing, trusting that Fator would sing his own part when the music caught up to it and they could get right back into it.
  • Her other idol, Jeff Dunham, also lobbied for people to vote for her, and even came to her dressing room with Walter to give her a pep talk.
    • When she returns as the Wild Card for America's Got Talent: The Champions, she has to sing opera and prior to that, she has to imitate her puppet's voice echoing across the auditorium.
• Mandy Harvey, a 29-year-old singer who lost her hearing a decade previous due to illness, giving a pitch-perfect performance thanks to muscle memory and feeling the tempo of the song through the stage floor. When she's done, Simon doesn't hesitate to give her the golden buzzer. Oh, and did we mention it was an original song?
• Season 12's Light Balance dance crew having to resort to dress rehearsal footage after a technical malfunction. Not only is it still awesome, it sent them to the semifinals.
• Also in Season 12 is Colin Cloud, a mentalist who markets himself as a real-life Sherlock Holmes. For his semifinal performance, he sent out a tweet asking people to respond with a random celebrity, city, and object. But the awesome part doesn't come when he shows a video of himself a week prior predicting the combination that the judges would choose ("Ellen", "Rome", "Cheese"). No, it came when he revealed he had went undercover, for a week, and left hints to the judges that they would pick "Ellen", "Rome", and "Cheese". It has to be seen to be believed
• The Singing Trump in Season 12. It takes a lot of courage to walk up on stage dressed up as such a Base-Breaking Character, but the impersonation, especially voice and mouth, were spot-on, and the performance easily won the audience over.
• Daniel Emmet in Season 13. In the middle of his (original) song, Simon interrupts him and provides his criticism and advice, telling him that despite his talented voice, it isn't just having the voice, but also connecting to the song itself, which he felt lacked. Simon decides to give him another chance by having him perform a song he hasn't heard about at all, needing to learn the whole song in such short time. Daniel returns an hour later, and nails it.
• Courtney Hadwin, a shy, gawky 13 year old girl who suddenly appears to be possessed by the likes of Otis Redding and James Brown once the music starts. It's honestly kind of scary. After giving her the Golden Buzzer, Howie went so far as to say she may well be the reincarnation of Janis Joplin.
• International superstar Hans bringing the house down with his extra flamboyant take on "Spice Up Your Life".
• Shin Lim's finale performance has to be seen to be believed.
  • In addition, Shin Lim is the first winner since the addition of the Golden Buzzer to never have had one pressed for him.
• After the announcement of his victory in Season 13, Shin Lim was lifted in the air by runner-up acrobatic dance group Zurcaroh in celebration.
• Shin went on to win again at the Champions season, even while going up directly against Darci Lynne (widely suspected to be pushed by the network after she was brought back as a wild card) in the final two.
• Season 14 has V.Unbeatable. While the first routine was outstanding on its own, the Judge Pick one blew it out of the water with them using chairs for props and have their tossed dancers flip then kick them as they pass and the finale has the youngest member being flung from behind the judges and then caught on stage before he's backflipped onto a chair being carried by a tower of other dancers and flashing a V sign!
• The Grand Finals of Season 2 of Champions had the finalists pull out all the stops to get the win.
  • Duo Transcend, the trapeze act couple from Season 13, did their finals performance from start to finish blindfolded.
  • For the singers, Marcelito Pomoy sang an amazing rendition of Beauty and the Beast, dual voices and all, while Angelina Jordan sang a beautiful version of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.
  • Sandou Trio Russian Bar kept on increasing the level of difficulty of their performance all-throughout this one. First, the bar was lifted over a bed of 160 nails. Then the board of nails was lit on fire. Then the last jump was done blindfolded, while the outer sides of the bar were also on fire. And yet the whole thing went off without a hitch, all the while commanding the stage with grace and confidence.
  • V.Unbeatable had the group using bicycles as their props for their finals performance that blew everyone away, finishing it off with one of their members being tossed to the bicycle on top of their tower, landing on the seat perfectly. Howie, as the one who gave them the Golden Buzzer, couldn't be more proud of them. Is it any wonder this act won them the championship.
• Season 16 has an unbelievable Tae Kwon Do act ^note for those wondering, they're World Taekwondo's Demonstration Team that far surpasses what you would see in Cobra Kai. They alternated between breaking multiple boards 20 feet in the air while doing flips and jumps without missing a single beat and executing group pumsaes with flawless precision and synchronity, wowing everyone present. Terry Crews was wowed enough at their skills to give them his Golden Buzzer.
  • What's more, one of their members stated prior to their performance that they had been invited to perform at the Olympics, but were forced to miss out due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. She clearly wasn't exaggerating.
• Léa Kyle (girlfriend of previous season's Florian Savant) is a quick-change artist who permanently raised the bar of fashion wizardry for the entire show. Among her stunts:
  • Dresses falling off her body to reveal other dresses.
  • Changing in the time it takes to swipe a prop across her dress.
  • Dresses flying off the hangar and onto her body.
  • Turning a dress into two large flowers.
  • Dresses (on dummies, not on her body) burning away to reveal others.
  • Stealing colors off a prop dress and the background to change her outfit's colors.
  • Always ending by showing off a long dress.
  • Also worth noting is that Léa made all of her clothes herself and competed in the first place to impress her idol, Heidi. After her jaw-dropping audition, Heidi pressed the Golden Buzzer for her, much to Léa's obvious delight.
• Ehlrich performs with two glowing sticks and acrobatics. Nothing special until he drops one in mid-air and it starts spinning. He then starts throwing the staffs and later a hoop into the air as if they were levitating.
• Victory Brinker age 9 singing opera. Hitting a high C on two octaves. Her performance was so amazing that Simon surprised her and everyone with all four judges and Terry giving her a Golden Buzzer.
• UniCircle Flow is dancer/unicyclist group (founded by Season 8's winner, Kenichi Ebina) whose performance is just mesmerizing. Their incredible balance, smooth choreography, and choice of music, costume and setpieces are just delightful to watch, presenting the grace and elegance of figure skaters without the ice.
• Nightbirde. Her singing ability is already impressive, but her doing it while dying of cancer is on a whole other level.
• America's Got Talent: Extreme is made of this, with the contestants doing death-defying stunts that could potentially cripple, if not kill, the performers if it's not executed right.
  • Special mention goes to Erika Lemay, an aerial silk artist who performs while being suspended 90-feet above ground by balloons, demonstrating that extremely dangerous act can also be beautiful and elegant. The judges were so impressed that by the end of the show, the judges and Terry unanimously agree that her performance was Golden Buzzer worthy, and even though they've all used up their Golden Buzzers, the four pressed the Golden Buzzer for her.
• Season 17's The Mayyas, the dance group from Lebanon, and champions from Arab's Got Talent. With their mesmerizing movements and awe-inspiring synchronicity, they absolutely killed it every round of the season, with their semifinals performance being praised as one of the best acts the judges had ever seen, and their finals performance ending with the crowd chanting the group's name in support. They were pegged as a favorite to win the season from the start and delivered, never faltering in their performances and becoming the first all-female group to win AGT.
• Season 18 has Adrian Stoica and Hurricane, which Howie describes as "a dog bringing a man-act". Most previous dog acts, while impressive, still makes it clear that the dogs are just following their handler's cues. Not so with Hurricane, who participates in Adrian's skits so seamlessly, that oftentimes it really does seem like Adrian is the one who's following his dog's directions, rather than the other way around. The end of their audition shows Adrian walking off the stage only for Hurricane to continue finish the skit all by herself without any cues! Is it any wonder that this duo won the season?