Awesome / Heavy Rain

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As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

• Any of his trials is an awesome:
  • The Bear has him picking up a car and using it in an absolutely nail-biting chase sequence, dodging oncoming traffic, construction workers, and even cops near the end. He can potentially complete the trial without hitting any other vehicles, even in a notably difficult moment when a police car gets dangerously close to hitting him. You even earn a trophy for it.
  • The Butterfly requires him to crawl through a narrow tunnel lined with broken glass and then navigate a maze of electrical condensers while they're still live. Depending on how well you do, Ethan can show himself to be surprisingly nimble, and it's possible for him to make it though the entire maze without touching a single wire. And even if you do poorly and fail the trial, he's still able to drive himself back to the motel while possibly nursing severe burn wounds. The position Madison finds him in later suggests that he was preparing to deal with his injuries himself, but collapsed before he could make it to the bed.
  • Special shoutout goes to the Lizard, which has him cutting off part of his finger, SCREAMING. This does not stop him.
  • In the Shark trial, he's forced to kill a drug dealer. Said drug dealer brandishes a shotgun when Ethan holds him up. What follows is a tense chase sequence through the apartment, which ends when Ethan is cornered in a bedroom belonging to the dealer's daughters. From here, Ethan can choose to complete the trial and kill the man, or refuse. If he chooses the latter, he pistol whips him.
  • In the final trial, the Rat, Ethan is subjected to the ultimate test: drink a vial of poison that will kill him in one hour, giving him enough time to find his son and say goodbye, or be left without the last clues he needs to find Shaun. If he chooses to drink it, he doesn't waste a second before rushing out of the room to find his son. What's more awesome? He survives after the hour is up. Either the poison was a fake, didn't work as intended on Ethan due to outside factors^note Weight, metabolism, and overall health are just some of the factors that affect how a person is affected by poisons or he's just that awesome.
  • Take a moment to consider how injured Ethan becomes over the course of the game. Broken ribs from the first trial, a fever, deep cuts all over his body and potentially severe electrical burns from the second, and a missing section of his finger from the third (or being shot while escaping the cops if he didn't cut off his finger). None of it slows him down, since he can still evade the police twice over no matter how hurt he is. He can also go from one of the most physically demanding trials straight to running from the cops, since "Fugitive" takes place right after "The Lizard".
• When the police are raiding the motel, Ethan is trapped in his room. What does he do? He escapes to the balcony, jumps across to the next room, then makes a mad dash to the motel's roof. Provided the player doesn't fail too many quick-time events, he easily outruns the officers sent to arrest him, culminating in him either giving up once cornered on the roof... or jumping three floors to the street below and carjacking a cab not a minute later, all to Blake's shocked "Holy fuck!" One wonders if Ethan used to do parkour in his youth.
  • If Ethan misses one of the inputs while climbing onto the roof, he kicks an officer in the face.
  • The start of the chase is altered slightly if Madison doesn't warn Ethan, or if she was killed prior to this chapter. Ethan makes his escape by throwing a chair at the officers while they're attempting to pat him down for a weapon.
• If the player doesn't complete all of the trials, Ethan is given an incomplete address for the warehouse. However, he can still make it by using what letters he does have to narrow down the possibilities, leaving the player to decide which address to go to. He can also use the recorded videos of Shaun on the phone from the shoebox.
• "The Old Warehouse" and its variations give him a few awesome moments:
  • If he's alone, he's presented with the choice to kill the Origami Killer or spare him after a brief confrontation. If he kills him, Ethan just watches him die with a bitter, solemn expression. If he spares him, he gives him a Badass Boast and the killer leaves.
    Ethan: You manipulated me, but now it's over. I have my son. You have no power over me anymore. You're going to have to face up to your nightmares on your own now.
  • The fact Ethan is able to pull off an effective Break Them by Talking in so few words and with no knowledge of the killer's past is nothing short of impressive. Compare this to Madison, who can attempt the same thing in her own scenario but is forced to fight the killer anyway.
  • It's also worth noting that Ethan is the only protagonist that can kill the Origami Killer in their "alone" scenario without having to fight him first.
  • If he reaches the warehouse with Madison, Ethan gets shot in a brief struggle with the killer, forcing Madison to fight the killer on her own. Provided she survives for a certain amount of time, a wounded Ethan appears just as she's cornered and shoots the killer to save her. Despite having no marksmanship training (unlike Jayden, who saves Madison instead if he is the one with her) he's a pretty good shot, able to shoot the killer twice from a distance without missing.
  • Both of the above scenarios show Ethan using the same gun he was given for the Shark trial. He forcefully takes the handle apart if he completes the trial, but it's intact when he brings it with him to the warehouse. Since he's a wanted fugitive by this point, he can't have walked into a gun shop to get it repaired, which means that he repaired the handle by himself offscreen. During the aforementioned trial, he admits to having no experience with guns.

Madison Paige

• In the Taxidermist DLC, set before the main game, one of the options for Madison to escape from the titular taxidermist is to kill him. How does she do this? She castrates him. With a chainsaw.
  • Alternatively, one of the other endings has Madison escape from Leland without alerting him to her presence.
• Her dream fight sequence in "Sleepless Night" involves masked men breaking into her apartment and attempting to kill her. While fending them off, she can bite one of them on the ear.
• In "Fugitive", she can help an injured Ethan escape from the police, despite not even knowing why they're after him.
  • The fact that Madison and Ethan made it back to the motel without being stopped by the police at the next subway stop suggests that they boarded the train without being seen by Jayden or Blake.
  • Later chapters show that Madison and Ethan still have their respective vehicles later on, despite having abandoned them when they escaped. How they managed to pull this off is unexplained, especially if they were taken as evidence by the cops.
• If she's captured by Adrian Baker and Strapped to an Operating Table, she can escape her binds using the drill he leaves behind. When he returns, she fights him using his own tools, and can potentially avoid injury altogether if the player completes all of the QTEs. If she survives long enough, she fakes being knocked out even as he gropes her body, and jabs the drill directly into his heart. She follows this up by kicking his dead body to the floor.
• "Sexy Girl" gives Madison a few.
  • The entire chapter is her exploiting the Distracted by the Sexy trope, getting Paco's attention by altering her clothes to make herself look sexier and dancing close to him.
  • When she gets to his office and is threatened into doing a striptease for him, she hits him with a lamp and ties him to a chair.
  • She has the option to vocalize an orgasm to throw off Paco's bodyguard and keep him from entering the private room while she's threatening Paco at gunpoint. Crosses over into a Funny Moment.
  • To get the information she wants out of Paco, she grabs him by the balls and squeezes them hard enough to cause him pain.
  • The entire affair ends with Madison strolling out of the private room and leaving Paco tied up.
    Madison: I really enjoyed this romantic moment, but I gotta dash. See you next time, lover boy.
• In "The Old Warehouse," in the outcome where she, Ethan and Jayden all make it to the warehouse, she passes the police blockade via her motorcycle to warn Ethan about the police waiting for him. She almost runs over several cops, including Blake.
• If she is the only one in the final chapter, she can hit the Origami Killer upside the head with a metal pipe while they're talking.
  • In the same outcome, she can push the killer backwards and impale him on the same metal pipe he was trying to kill her with while they fought.
• There is something particularly epic about Madison and/or Norman taking the Origami Killer down. While it does involve Ethan having to fail his trials horribly and/or get locked up, it's so satisfying to deny the Origami Killer the satisfaction of seeing Ethan arrive.

Norman Jayden

• Jayden may just be a profiler, but that doesn't mean he doesn't know how to throw down! His fight scenes are some of the longest, action packed, and most intense fights in the game:
  • In "Covered Market," he can corner Korda in the meat locker and potentially subdue him by himself. Blake doesn't verbally congratulate Jayden when he arrives, but you can tell he's at least a little impressed.
  • "Mad Jack" is full of awesome moments.
    • If Jayden fails the QTE to grab his gun during the first fight sequence, he pistol-whips Mad Jack and throws him into the gasoline barrels.
    • He can get Mad Jack to confess by threatening to blow up the garage and Make It Look Like an Accident, then shooting the barrels.
    • When his Triptocaine withdrawals hit in the middle of trying to arrest Mad Jack, Jayden can complete a (difficult) QTE to ingest the drug. If he succeeds, the chapter ends with a successful arrest.
    • Alternatively, if he fails to take the Triptocaine and is knocked out, what follows is another, longer fight sequence that ends with either Jayden or Jack caught in the treads of the latter's own excavator.
  • Jayden demonstrates he's Made of Iron almost as often as Ethan. In his first fight with the Origami Killer in "Fish Tank", he can potentially survive being slashed up to three times with a katana and getting thrown into a fish tank hard enough to shatter the glass. Their rematch, if Jayden survives up to "The Old Warehouse" and finds the address, can have him tank getting hit in the face with a sledgehammer.
  • The second fight with the killer is just awesome in general, since it involves them duking it out on a moving conveyor belt and beating the hell out of each other with various pieces of junk, in the middle of a thunderstorm.
• Combining with Heartwarming, in "Under Arrest," Jayden genuinely doesn't believe that Ethan could be the killer, and even though some of his thoughts have him cast doubt on it, once the opportunity comes up he risks his badge just to help him escape on nothing more than a hunch. Even Ethan is shocked.
• Pretty much every time he calls out Lieutenant Blake:
  • Resolving the standoff with Nathaniel without killing him manages to briefly impress Blake.
  • In the opening to "Covered Market," provided that Nathaniel survived the encounter, Blake gives Jayden a hard time for not shooting him. Jayden can choose to say he didn't think Blake scared that easily, or impatiently remind Blake that things went well his way, adding a firm "don't start busting my balls with your post-mortems, okay?" While the first response has Blake tell Jayden to fuck off, he goes silent if Jayden picks the more aggressive option.
  • If Ethan is arrested and interrogated, Jayden can punch Blake in the face and give him a nosebleed once Blake starts beating Ethan up.
  • The opening to "Solving the Puzzle" gives us this gem.
    Jayden: Blake, you are an unbalanced, psychopathic asshole!
  • If Jayden survives the game and Ethan was shot by the police, the ending news report will state that Blake and Perry were both suspended.
• When Paco's bodyguard smugly tells him he doesn't "speak cop", Norman grabs him by the neck and promptly reminds him that Good Is Not Soft.
  Jayden: Watch my lips, asshole, because I've got no time to translate. Did Paco know the guy, yes or no?
• Jayden manages to figure out the location to where the Origami Killer is simply by replaying footage from his previous fight in "Fish Tank" and spotting that the killer has a very distinctive watch! When he spots this, if you looked around the police waiting room before your meeting Jayden gets a massive clue as to the killer's identity. Specifically all officers when promoted to lieutenant get that watch! He then goes off of that and reviews places where cops and former cops own properties. This pretty much leads him to Scott Shelby's doorstep with just some circumstancial evidence and a hunch!
• Jayden gets a few Big Damn Heroes moments at the warehouse.
  • If he and Ethan make it, Jayden tackles the killer right before he can shoot Ethan In the Back.
  • If he and Madison make it without Ethan and Madison survives being chased by the killer long enough, Jayden shoots him to rescue Madison.
• Has an awesome moment from beyond the grave in the "Uploaded" epilogue. Blake has (somehow) gotten possession of Jayden's ARI glasses and decides to try them on. He marvels at the scenery for a few moments before what's implied to be Jayden's digital ghost appears before him, smirking.

Scott Shelby

• His first scene, if the player chooses to intervene, involves beating the crap out of a scumbag who threatens Lauren, the Hooker with a Heart of Gold.
• Calming down a robber and telling him to leave. Alternatively, knocking the robber out cold with one solid punch to the face.
• His fight with Gordi Kramer's bodyguards.
• His Roaring Rampage of Revenge in "Face to Face" where he guns down Kramer's men before getting to Kramer himself. In particular, near the beginning he pauses, rubs his neck, and proceeds to shoot a guard without even looking at him.

Others

• Hassan, the store owner Scott questions, refuses to give up the money in his register to an armed robber.
• Blake has a Big Damn Heroes moment in "Covered Market" if the player fails to subdue Korda. He arrives and puts Korda down right after Jayden is down.
• If Scott agrees to use Lauren as a diversion in "Kramer's Party", she distracts the two bodyguards at the stairs by pretending to have an overdose.
• The "A Mother's Revenge" epilogue has Lauren corner the Origami Killer in the street and reveal she knows his identity, then gun him down after reminding him of the promise she made to the son he murdered. This ending can be achieved regardless of whether the news report names the killer's identity or even if any other protagonists survived, meaning Lauren made that discovery all on her own.