Badass Bystanders in Western Animation.
- DC Animated Universe:
- Batman: The Animated Series:
- In "Joker's Favor", Charlie Collins, an innocent office worker who had the misfortune of running into the Joker and being forced to do his bidding. He eventually gets fed up, and, having grabbed one of the Joker's bombs, reduces the Clown Prince of Crime to a terrified wreck screaming for Batman to come save him by threatening him with what he fears the most; Dying unremarkably, killed by a random civilian in a back alley. To top it off, the bomb was fake and Charlie was faking it, which even Batman lets out a laugh at. Charlie Collins managed to beat the Joker by first terrifying him into submission, then making Batman laugh, something the Joker never could accomplish.
- Subverted in "Make 'Em Laugh". When the Condiment King holds up a fancy restaurant, shooting patrons with his ketchup and mustard guns, one patron marches towards him, sternly saying "Now, see here..." However, Condiment King squirts a packet of hot sauce into his mouth, subduing him before Batman finally arrives.
- In "Chemistry", Poison Ivy's just revealed that she set up Gotham's wealthiest to fall for a bunch of plant people she created to get their attention, marry them, and kill them to get their fortunes. Ivy planned to kill all the respective millionaires during their honeymoon cruise, but gets momentarily distracted when she realizes Susan Wayne (the plant woman who married Bruce Wayne) hasn't joined them yet before the ship's destroyed. It's at this point a rich woman asks her compatriots why they're simply letting Ivy do this and incites them to fight back against Ivy's plants.
- Superman: The Animated Series: In "Apokolips... Now!", Lt. Dan Turpin of the Metropolis Police Department single-handedly turns the tide against Darkseid. With Superman captured and publicly humiliated in order to cow humanity into hopelessness, Turpin alone flips off the triumphant Darkseid and rallies the crowd behind him. Dan leads a counterattack, singlehandedly frees Superman, defeats several Parademons, and helps fend off the forces of Apokolips until the forces of New Genesis arrive to liberate the Earth. Now, while it's true that the viewers already knew Turpin was a tough cop, Darkseid had no clue who this guy was and thought he'd conquered the Earth by defeating its greatest champion. Unfortunately, this also counts as a Dying Moment of Awesome, as the fleeing Darkseid kills Turpin out of spite.
- Batman Beyond:
- In "Babel", a little old lady tries to tell someone he's about to be crushed by falling debris. Since she can't be understood due to the villain Shriek messing with everyone's ability to talk, the old lady rushes in and pulls the guy out of the way just before he's killed.
- In "The Call", Inque catches a bystander to use as a hostage, and Terry tries to talk her out of using innocent bystanders like that. Subverted as the bystander turns out to be a disguised Superman... unfortunately for Inque.
- Justice League:
- In "Patriot Act", after Eiling gives all the present Justice League members a sound thrashing, he gets into another "must protect the people from metahumans regardless of the cost" spiel. The crowd responds with angry stares, and then an old lady calls him out on his disregard of the cost and a little kid tells him he's the only one with superpowers around. This makes him realize that he's become what he hates. He leaves, but not before he says he will be right one of these days and that they need the likes of him to protect the people from the likes of the Justice League.
- In "Destroyer", Wonder Woman, Shining Knight, Vigilante, and Star Sapphire are having a difficult time fighting an army of Parademons when one of the Chinese bystanders stops running, says goodbye to his wife, and runs to help. Wonder Woman tries to talk the old man out of it, until he one-hit K.O.s not one, not two, but three parademons, turns into a dragon, and whups several more, much to the heroes' surprise. Subverted when the old man turns out to be J'onn J'onz, come back to help.
- Batman: The Animated Series:
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- In "Equestria Games", the pegasi from the stands who rushed in to help avert catastrophe via giant spiked ice-cloud that was falling upon the crowded stadium, at least from the perspective of the ponies sitting next to them, unable to do anything as an anti-magical spell is placed on every single alicorn and unicorn to prevent them from using magic to cheat in the games. Imagine you're at a sporting event and something horrible happens on the field/track and the guy next to you immediately runs down to help while you feel comparatively useless, then multiply that feeling by the Olympics.
- In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 1", during the montage of Tirek and Discord steamrolling over Equestria, quite a few background ponies are shown bravely trying to fight back. Noteworthy is the first to fire off a magical blast at them, while a mob of pegasi (including the Wonderbolts and Derpy) try to swarm them.
- The Powerpuff Girls:
- One day, the girls get tired of the townspeople always relying on them to help with every problem from invading monsters to fires to getting cats out trees and invoke this trope by spending the entire episode getting them to actually figure out HOW to destroy a monster. Granted, for quite some time they were total MORONS, having reasoned that soggy toast would fend off the monster, but finally figure out how to destroy it.
- There is also the sleepover episode, where Mojo Jojo takes away the girls' powers and starts taunting them. The girls' normal friends soon become angered as he makes fun of them for being "normal girls" and proceed to beat him up. With pillows.
- Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated: Cassidy and the Gang hang out by the Clam Cabin and discuss the newest monsters, robots programmed to terminate her. When one of them climbs out of the water and attacks them, the shop owner, Skipper Shelton, sneaks up behind it, and shoots it with a harpoon gun, disabling it. After cursing at it, he offers the kids free food for the inconvenience.
- Played for laughs in an episode of The Simpsons when a hired assassin tries to kill Grampa with a machine gun. When Grampa runs to the retirement home's nurse and begs her for help, she initially reacts by trying to double his medication, but when the assassin bursts in and continues firing the nurse pulls a shotgun out of nowhere and repeatedly blasts him, yelling "OUR RESIDENTS! ARE TRYING! TO NAP!" with each exclamation point being a shotgun blast.
- In one of the episodes involving the Lizard in The Spectacular Spider-Man, a little old lady saves Spider-Man's life by attacking the Lizard with her handbag.
- One episode of Static Shock begins with the Quirky Miniboss Squad of metahumans robbing mallgoers. One promptly gets a face full of pepper spray from an old lady.
