Moments pages are Spoilers Off. Proceed at your own risk.
The flashback showing a very young Jack defeating Salazar with a brilliantly clever maneuver. He's just been given command of The Wicked Wench by the dying captain. What does he do? He sees the Devil's Triangle and his mind begins to work, taunts the pirate butcher to follow him. He orders his crew to throw the rigging around a rocky outcrop which allows the Wench to safely bypass the Triangle, while the Silent Mary is too far in its course to do maneuver around it and is headed for a straight on collision clash. The look on Salazar's face is priceless when he realizes he's been outsmarted by this upstart.
And this was back before he owned the Black Pearl.
And Jack's crew? They pay tribute to him giving him amongst other things his iconic hat and hair beads. He earned his role as captain. The best part he's completely flabbergasted by all of this. A far cry from the drunken washout we see at the beginning.
I don't think we can understate this enough. Jack the Sparrow, at the start of his career as a pirate captain, on the very afternoon he became captain, managed to outwit and indirectly end the most ruthless, feared and probably greatest pirate hunter in the whole of the West Indies, if not the world. Everyone else who claims greater deeds as their first act as captain can sod off.
Elizabeth kinda gets a more indirect moment. Jack has been, through out the series, built up as an irresistible charmer. In the scene where Henry meets him for the first time, Jack reveals that he's harbors feelings for her still, considers Will unworthy of her and assumes she must, like all women, secretly long for him. But Henry, Elizabeth's son to Will, tells him to his face that she's never even bothered to mention him. She wasn't even there and she got him.
Along with being a Funny Moment, Carina's escape from prison counts as this. While she was confessing to the bishop, she picked the lock in the span of her confession. And she doesn't hesitate to make a run for it.
The way Salazar's crew is first introduced is both this and nightmare fuel.
Although a blunder, Jack and his crew's attempt to rob a bank is undeniably one epic blunder. In attempting to run away with a safe, they steal the whole goddamn building and drag it through town!
Carina is a role model, not just for being smart and brave, but because she's living proof that children don't have to turn out exactly like their parents. Her father was Barbossa, a pirate who only gave her the ruby and journal to earn herself a small fortune. But she didn't know that. Under the assumption he was a scientist who left her the journal as a dying wish, Carina followed her own path and went on to be highly educated (despite others accusing her as a "witch" for it).
It says something that, even at rock bottom, Captain Jack Sparrow can get what we wants (namely, Carina's promise to point them in the right direction) with a little misdirection and a few well-placed words, and bring no serious injury to his allies. He and his crew gag Henry, explain exactly what keelhauling entails and what sort of things can happen to a man put to it, and throw the poor Turner off the deck. Carina becomes terrified of what might be happening to him and agrees to do as they say... whereupon they reveal that they've tied a rowboat to drag behind the Dying Gull, and that's where Henry landed. Turns out a little sleight of hand can be just as potent as a pistol with a single shot meant for someone else.
A young Henry being able to determine where his father was. This show us that even at a young age, his studies of ocean myths have worked for him.
When advised by the witch to stay on land, safe from Salazar and his ghostly crew, Barbossa decides he'd rather risk it all than spend his days safely retired on dry land.
The return of the Black Pearl. Nuff said.
Upon boarding the Black Pearl in the midst of a battle with Salazar's men, Mr. Gibbs and the remainder of Jack's crew bravely decide that after losing the Pearl once, they'll gladly fight for it again!
Additionally, Gibbs is shown to have Took a Level in Jerkass in this movie in abandoning Jack and his treatment of the crew, yet when the Black Pearl returns, he's back to his more noble ways, willing to lay down his life for the Pearl and his friends.
In the climax, Henry and Carina combine forces to destroy the Trident.
Before then, Jack taunting Salazar the same way he did all those years ago, claiming that he'll "let" him live if he surrenders. And this is just after Salazar demonstrated the multiple ways he can use Poseidon's Trident to throw Jack around like a helpless ragdoll. It's so refreshing to see Jack's roguish courage resurface again.
And once again, Jack tricks Salazar! As Salazar seemingly stabs Jack with the trident, it turns out the latter had Carina's journal placed right over his heart.
This may be what ultimately gets Jack out of his crisis where he tries to relive the past by having his crew pay tribute as they once did. By reliving what earned him tribute in the first place.
One-upped by what he does next: Committing himself to do a Heroic Sacrifice, especially once you consider how far he's come from being the cruel-hearted Big Bad in the first movie. Character Development indeed.
Plus how Barbossa finishes off Salazar: By stabbing him with a sword as he falls from the anchor.
The post-credits scene, which features the return of Davy Jones.
