Character shows off a skill that doesn't seem like anything special to the layman but is unbelievably impressive to those who know the craft.

[u/SpookieSkelly]

1. Giotto of Florence from real life. The pope wanted to commission a painter and sent a messenger to collect works from a bunch of artists so that he may examine their skill. When the messenger got to Giotto, Giotto simply freehand drew a perfect circle on a sheet of paper in front of the messenger. The messenger was confused, but Giotto told him that it'll make sense once he tells the pope how he drew the circle. Sure enough, the pope recognised the skill it takes to draw a perfect circle freehand without a compass and gave Giotto the commission.
2. Johnny from The Devil Came Down to Georgia. While the Devil's solo sounds cooler on the surface, Johnny's solo is actually more difficult to play and showcases more advanced technical skill.

[u/AarEyePatchy]

With Johnny from the Devil Went Down to Georgia it’s not just that the solo is technically more difficult, it’s also that all the songs he’s said to play are recognisable folk classics that anyone in the know would be able to tell if he messed up, so he had no room for error but still nailed it anyhow.

[u/thesouthernbeard → u/AarEyePatchy]

The devil had a whole band to cover up his playing. Meanwhile Johnny actually played not only a great solo, but a bitching song. He should've won by default.

Edit for spelling

[u/BlatantConservative → u/thesouthernbeard]

It's pretty standard "deal with the devil" mythos, Johhny made sure that the terms were "I'm better than you" and not "my song is better than yours"

So the only thing that was compared was the devil's fiddling vs Johhny's.

[u/JustLookingForMayhem → u/BlatantConservative]

Really, the Devil went down to George borrows heavily from European folk lore in that the devil can't be beat by a master who doesn't love their art, but can be beat by a master who loves their art. The Devil was always a threat, it was just always made clear that the Devil's supernatural skill and lack of love for a craft could never beat a human master who loves their craft. So, while there was a lot of hubris that caused people to lose, there was a clear path to victory. The Devil has no passion or love for art, just mechanical perfection. Johnny did a set of popular pieces that linked together into something that was nice and told a story. The Devil had a disjointed piece played well, but it lacked passion and the human emotion.

[u/writebrainwronghand → u/JustLookingForMayhem]

there's an allegory in here for AI-generated imagery and human-made artwork, i think

[u/BowwwwBallll → u/writebrainwronghand]

“Hey, Claude, write me a story about a loving craftsman and the devil.”

[u/GryphonAyres → u/BowwwwBallll]

Absolutely - in this day and age a romance between a craftsman and the devil isn't just unique - it's unexpected. And that's beautiful!

/s

[u/Meowakin → u/writebrainwronghand]

AI-generated anything, really. A large part of what makes art enjoyable for me is knowing the effort that went into it and wondering why a thing was done the way it was

[u/just_aweso → u/BlatantConservative]

The demon code prevents him from declining a rock-off challenge...

[u/VictoryWeaver → u/BlatantConservative]

Johhny didn't make sure of anything, that was just the devil's offer. "I bet a fiddle of gold against your soul, 'cos I think I'm better than you."

[u/Theyul1us → u/thesouthernbeard]

He won, the devil himself admited it

[u/P0komon2 → u/Theyul1us]

That old devil layed the golden fiddle down at jonny's feet

[u/OverallGeneral7129 → u/P0komon2]

And Johnny said Devil just come on back if you ever wanna try again

[u/projectmars → u/OverallGeneral7129]

And the crazy thing is He did.

[u/Gloomy-Equipment3158 → u/OverallGeneral7129]

He told him once, that son of a bitch, he's the best there's ever been

[u/Theorist129 → u/AarEyePatchy]

Yeah, my understanding of the tale was that the Devil is the one with extreme technical skill, while the ace up Johnny's sleeve is the emotionality he can bring, the humanity. He can rip and shred that fiddle too, of course, but the key is in the soul he puts into his playing.

It was a parable for me as a jazz student, actually. To have really learned how to play a standard, you can't just have memorized the chord changes and scales to base your solos in, you gotta know the original lyrics and melody. 90% of standards from the 60s and before are reworked showtunes and pop hits, and the songwriters will have structured a dramatic arc to the tune, attempted to capture some feeling. Whether you're leaning into it, intentionally providing a counterfeel, dipping in and out, whatever, it's an extra dimension the tune has in its structure and cultural memory. It's subtle, but a listener can intuit when something about the vibes just aren't meshing.

[u/TheBumblingestBee → u/Theorist129]

Oh I love this. That's so freaking cool.

Back when I was taking piano lessons and being forced to perform at piano recitals (shudder), I wasn't great at technical stuff. Like, I could not memorize anything, I'd mess up fingering changes, etc. But by God the one thing I was good at was "expression" - playing with emotion. How you can make something sound like longing, or playfulness, or rage, or a dream, just by how you play the notes. How you stagger them, how you have the dramatic little pauses, how they suddenly burst loudly with joy or creep down to a dwindling whisper. Gah.

I love the idea of the added secret element of calling back to cultural knowledge, and the emotions already bound within the tune.

[u/25hourenergy → u/Theorist129]

So the Devil was AI all along

[u/CoyoteSufficient3090 → u/25hourenergy]

Devil was Jacob collier

[u/traevyn → u/CoyoteSufficient3090]

God I would fucking love to absolutely mute a video of Jacob Collier removing any recognizability of The Devil Went Down to Georgia by randomly changing tempo, pitch, structure, and doing his weird little fairy hum like it’s an instrument.

[u/GoingLimpInTheBrain]

There is a story about two ancient Greek painters, Zeuxis and Parrhasius, who had a contest to find out who was the greater artist. Zeuxis created a painting of grapes that looked so real that the birds tried to eat them. Parrhasius, in turn, was late with his painting and kept postponing the reveal. When curious Zeuxis stormed into his workshop and tried to pull aside the curtain, he found out that the curtain itself was a painted illusion. Zeuxis admitted defeat, saying, "I have only deceived the birds, but you managed to deceive Zeuxis."

[u/SmittyB128 → u/GoingLimpInTheBrain]

Parrhasius should have drawn a dark tunnel on the side of a cliff.

[u/GoingLimpInTheBrain → u/SmittyB128]

Zeuxis admitted defeat, while Parrhasius replied, "Meep meep"

[u/Bandit_237 → u/GoingLimpInTheBrain]

There was also a story of a 20 year old Michelangelo who sculpted a statue titled “Sleeping Cupid” and artificially aged it to make it look like an ancient Roman statue and sold it to a collector of antique Roman artworks

[u/Vark675 → u/Bandit_237]

fuckin Mikey lol

[u/cozyboijoao → u/Vark675]

applying modern situational shorthands to historical figures will never not be funny

[u/amazing_asstronaut → u/GoingLimpInTheBrain]

Eat shit Zeuxis lol

[u/hogtiedcantalope → u/amazing_asstronaut]

https://giphy.com/gifs/ZUwjT4TrkElu8

[u/alexia_not_alexa → u/GoingLimpInTheBrain]

I remember a Chinese story that’s similar. A painter said that he had surpassed his master and held his own exhibition, where his painting of flowers attracted butterflies and birds. He went to tap on his master’s shoulder to show off, only he tapped on a painting of his master, painted by his master, who expressed the same sentiment.

I hated that story as a kid though because no way Chinese paintings in that period could fool a person due to the style.

[u/DJMOONPICKLES69 → u/GoingLimpInTheBrain]

Zeuxis then pulls out the syllabus which reads “Late work will not be given credit unless previously granted an extension”

[u/virtualglassblowing]

This applies to pretty much all glass art.

And tbh the popular posts of viral glassblowers are usually waay less impressive than non viral glassblowers

Edit: this is insane, easily my top comment. Wish I had listed some of my favorite artists but I need to clock in at the restaurant.

For marble artists:

Richard hollingshead, Josh Sable, hefe glass, gateson recko

For pure glassblowers Peter hermansson is easily my favorite now, doing huuuge graal pieces, that entails layering glass, sandblasting an image, and then sleeving that in another layer of clear.

I'll try to think of some others to checkout today

[u/wonnie1e → u/virtualglassblowing]

I took glassblowing in college to supplement my major, neon fabrication. I quickly learned the simple things were incredibly hard to do right - like making a cup that wasn’t incredibly thick or heavy.

[u/xSTSxZerglingOne → u/wonnie1e]

Or horrendously lopsided, has an unintentional flat spot from setting it on a flat surface, or a bubble due to uneven heating.

There are a million ways to fail at glassblowing.

[u/Cosmonate → u/virtualglassblowing]

Glass art is one of those things that I can respect the time, effort and skill that goes into each piece, but I still think 99% of it is just ugly as sin.

[u/ShatnersChestHair → u/Cosmonate]

The thing is that what tends to test the mettle of glassblowers is adding bright colors, doing complicated patterns, etc. which usually looks a bit gaudy. I went to the Museo del Vetro in Murano (arguably the most famous glass museum in the world) and most pieces still fall in these categories, especially the millefiori style or these huge candelabra. However, that 1% that is incredibly delicate and a bit more understated (like filigree glass) is incredible to me.

[u/VeronicaTheHitman → u/virtualglassblowing]

id expect nobody else to be giving me this information lmao

[u/moonshrimp → u/virtualglassblowing]

Coming from a family of bacterial glass blowers I can confirm.

[u/Djerrid → u/moonshrimp]

I never knew that was a thing. Crazy impressive. https://www.lukejerram.com/glass/

[u/Educational_Ad_8916]

I once was at a conference where a bunch of professional magicians were hanging around chatting, and a young man approached to show them a trick. He held out a deck of cards, shuffled it one handed, drew a card, and put it back in the deck without using his other hand. Then he did it over and over.

The lay people, like me, were unimpressed.

The magicians LOST THEIR MINDS. Appearantly he had invented a novel technique.

[u/Due_Campaign1432 → u/Educational_Ad_8916]

I mean shuffling one handed is fairly impressive by itself

[u/blitzbom → u/Due_Campaign1432]

Just cutting a deck with one hand is difficult. Easier if you have long fingers though.

[u/res30stupid → u/Educational_Ad_8916]

This comes up a lot in magic, actually. Penn and Teller: Fool Us is a great example since it's just magicians geeking over their craft.

A great example was Kostya Kimlet. It wasn't just the fact he fooled them with the trick - it was the fact that they had performed the exact same trick earlier that week live on TV and Kimlet was flexing on them, since he designed the trick in the first place and was showing how a master does it.

[u/Educational_Ad_8916 → u/res30stupid]

Penn was one of the magicians in the group was blown away.

Loudly, of course.

[u/rikashiku → u/Educational_Ad_8916]

There's this anime I used to watch as a kid. GITS: Stand Alone Complex. In one of the episodes, a group of cops and agents are playing a game of cards. One of them effortlessly shuffles the deck one-handed and flicks out the cards with his thumb.

To me, that was the coolest thing I wanted to learn, and I got close to it. Now I am encouraged to try again.

[u/r3cktor]

The contest of the bow in the Odyssey.

Shooting a single arrow cleanly through the holes of twelve lined-up axe heads sounds impressive, but the contestants can't even try because they fail to string the bow. You need special skill and knowledge just to accomplish that seemingly simple task.

[u/KryptikVGCW → u/r3cktor]

And as RL archers note too, the shooting task in itself is incredibly harder than it already sounds too, because an arrow does not, in fact, fly straight upon leaving the bow, but oscillates. So firing through one small opening might be one proof of accuracy, but twelve would require either incredible precision or incredible draw strength to shoot an arrow with enough speed to overcome that oscillation.

[u/iwantdatpuss → u/KryptikVGCW]

Blumineck's attempts were some of the best at conveying just how small the room for error in that shot was if we were to take the historically accurate interpretation of the act. 

[u/ThrowAwayehay → u/iwantdatpuss]

And blumineck maybe not have set them up right either. We don't know the gaps between each axe.

[u/iwantdatpuss → u/ThrowAwayehay]

Yeah earlier in the video he noted that the axes might've been set up upright with a wider gap between them due to the mention of trenches. 

[u/Kaneda-Suekichi → u/iwantdatpuss]

I love how Bluminecl also pointed out you can't even see the arrow in flight so the suitors wouldn't even have been able to see if it really went through all 12 axes or beside them

[u/Lawsoffire → u/r3cktor]

The image might actually be more accurate to the “string the bow” part because its a recurve.

Recurves would’ve just been beginning to arrive in Greece at the time the Odyssey was written, and an unstrung recurve looks like it would be strung the other way around (even in the modern day a lot of people get this wrong, a notable example is a bow in the game Diablo is depicted the wrong way), and stringing a recurve warbow without special tools requires special technique and a lot of strength.

[u/NoSpawnConga → u/Lawsoffire]

Unstrung recurve warbow (high draw strength) doesn't just look "other way around", it's limbs bend to form almost a circle when it's unstrung. An many smaller ones fit for mounted archery even more so.

[u/No_Echidna5293 → u/NoSpawnConga]

That highly depends on the type of bow that's taken into consideration, as there was not a universal construction technique to make recurve bows; even in the image you posted you can see unstrung warbows that only go to a mild C shape rather than becoming a near circle. AFAIK the ones that do show that kind of curvature when unstrung are Korean warbows, but there probably are others I'm not aware of

[u/Thasauce7777 → u/NoSpawnConga]

I have never seen an unstrung bow curled up like that (I thought the bow would look more like a straight rod). So please forgive my ignorance with the following question.

When you go to string a recurve, the bow starts by being curled in on itself. To string it, do you have to uncurl the bow first until the shaft is straight, then continue pulling the tips of either side back it until it looks like it's curling the opposite direction you started with, then you're ready to put the string on?

[u/SgtExo → u/Thasauce7777]

Yup. One way is to brace it between your legs then bend one end until you can string the bow.

Compared to the longbow that I have, which is just a straight piece of wood when unstrung. That one I put a longer stringing cord on it, step on the middle of the cord, then pull the bow up to flex it and attach the bowstring.

The real challenge is when you get into heavy draw-weights, then it gets really hard.

[u/CrazyFanFicFan → u/r3cktor]

And a non-zero amount of them definitely stringed it up backwards.

[u/VulcanHullo]

IRL and a film trope: Flying slowly.

Planes, fixed wing types, need to be moving to fly. They like going fast. Flying a plane slowly takes skill because then gravity wants to claw it back. Flying a plane slowly with finess is impressive to pilots. I do sport model aircraft flying and in the jet scene there are some who think flying full throttle down low is neat, but the only skill there is not hitting the ground. A guy who can do a slow barrel roll smoothly is the way better pilot.

Films also like to show off an aircrafts performance by having it go super fast. Show me a pilot making a plane turn slowly without falling out of the air, then I'll believe them.

[u/SmittyB128 → u/VulcanHullo]

I haven't seen (or wanted to see) Quantum of Solace since it was in the cinema, but about the only thing I remember is a plane chase through a canyon and Bond takes advantage of this to slow right down and force the pursuers to stall and crash.

[u/VulcanHullo → u/SmittyB128]

It was supposedly an advantage of the British Swordfish bomber that it was so slow that enemy gunners couldn't target it properly as their training was based on faster targets, and enemy aircraft kept overshooting because slowing down on a target is a great way to get yourself shot

[u/thisusedyet → u/VulcanHullo]

Apparently the weather played a big role as well

https://kbismarck.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9250

There are some other curious sidelights to the Swordfish attack upon Bismarck. Apparently, on their run-in to torpedo launch point, they were flying into a gale force head wind blowing from 45deg to port. This, as was explained to me, reduced their speed over the ground to less than 60 knots and also introduced a pronounced lateral drift to starboard - which would have made any AA fire prediction efforts challenging indeed.

[u/BlatantConservative → u/VulcanHullo]

There are those bush pilot contests where they do the shortest landings and stuff. You get basically people flying little dust croppers that they engineer to basically fall vertically and it takes like three feet to land them. Insane.

[u/VulcanHullo → u/BlatantConservative]

Mother of power to weight ratios, and often reverse thrust props that can act as breaks.

[u/CvieYltidrekoof → u/VulcanHullo]

Isn’t the An-2’s stall speed so low it can glide to a landing if there’s an engine failure? 

[u/Mobhunter456]

Aang's marble trick from ATLA is treated as a simple trick and more impressive due to being Airbending its actually quite impressive since he's precisely moving multiple objects at once with just air in a consistent pattern and maintain it without moving his hands.

[u/HolyBanana818 → u/Mobhunter456]

Marbles are pretty dense too right? It's really impressive to do this with just air

[u/RedNoise413 → u/HolyBanana818]

And smooth.

[u/Bteatesthighlander1 → u/RedNoise413]

and as spheres they have the least possible surface area per volume; making them the worst possible aerofoils.

[u/TheWilburnness → u/Bteatesthighlander1]

Perhaps he’s using the Magnus Effect to assist with the lift and rotation of the marbles. Making the trick easier but still insanely hard to do.

Edit: Better yet, he’s shooting a jet of hot air out of one hand and cool air out of the other. Creating a small tornado effect between his hands making the marbles spin and keep them contained as well.

[u/Venti_the_snail → u/TheWilburnness]

Having that knowledge alone is sign of mastery. Knowing how the shape of certain objects would react to airbending forces via aerodynamics at only 12 years old is either savant level mathematical figuring done on the fly, or a true expert in the craft.

[u/ArmoredCroissant → u/[deleted]]

I know, man. That shit's coarse and rough. And it gets everywhere.

[u/swords_to_exile → u/Mobhunter456]

Aang's air scooter is more impressive, as he literally invented it. That's why he has his master tattoos at such a young age. Not because he's the Avatar, but because he literally invented a new Airbender technique.

[u/supremo92 → u/swords_to_exile]

That fact he can sustain it for a time without movements is crazy.

[u/SpezDemandsUsernames → u/Mobhunter456]

Also uncle iroh self-brewing Jasmine tea. Kids would have no way of knowing this but Jasmine tea brews best at a very precise steady temperature that's less-than-boiling, around 175 F for 4 minutes, or it turns bitter. Most teas are much more tolerant of boiled water. That Iroh can make a small flame and control it with that precision is a small, almost unnoticeable thing but really shows how skilled he is.

[u/Ithilwyn → u/SpezDemandsUsernames]

I could see that becoming a technique that firebenders learn to hone their precision. You get a lineup of different teas that require different steeping temperatures and times, and have to heat each of them properly.

[u/PracticeEfficient28 → u/Mobhunter456]

Which really adds to the tragedy, there’s no one left in the world to appreciate the skill it takes to do that.

[u/Mister-builder → u/Mobhunter456]

A feat so impressive that every adaptation misunderstands this scene. They think that airbending is levitation.

[u/ScarletSolari]

Kyoko Mogami from Skip Beat (Picture is the anime, but read the manga. And don't stop after chapter 1, like I almost did, this is a masterpiece.)

During an audition to become a Talento, basically a skilled person in the entertainment industry for revenge on her cheating ex, long story, Kyoko wielded a master chef's knife and carved a daikon radish into a rose to impress the judges.

Perfectly thin, continuously cut without stopping, and shaped into...well, she went for a rose but made it too big, and she declares it a lettuce at the end and is disappointed in herself.

Except anyone serious about cooking knows that what she did is one of the harshest tests of knifework on the planet, called katsuramuki. Cutting a daikon paper thin without nicking the sheet or making it too thick in areas to fold into a rose is nothing less than a godlike skill, that some chefs never master.

[u/thunderbird89 → u/ScarletSolari]

What does one judge say? That it's a skill only those with truly no life can master?

[u/ScarletSolari → u/thunderbird89]

Which, to be fair, was somewhat accurate to Kyoko's life before she went on an epic revenge quest lol

[u/TheREALProfPyro → u/ScarletSolari]

Skip Beat mentioned! You, good Redditor, have taste.

[u/kingftheeyesores → u/ScarletSolari]

I was trying to remember the name of this the other day! Thank you!

[u/Yadin__]

Ging from HxH can make funny shapes with his aura. It's a pretty useless ability and on first look wouldn't seem that difficult, but in reality it takes an unbelievable amount of skill and control to execute at the level he does it

[u/KatzOfficial → u/Yadin__]

In reality

How do I learn this skill?

[u/Sea_Basket_2468 → u/KatzOfficial]

meditate to open your aura nodes then practice

[u/stickdudeseven → u/Sea_Basket_2468]

Meditate? I'll just find someone with aura to punch me.

[u/Sea_Basket_2468 → u/stickdudeseven]

you're gonna be like those guys at heavens arena

[u/Hatarakumaou → u/Sea_Basket_2468]

I've found that it's easier to just eat someone who already has Nen.

[u/omar99HH → u/KatzOfficial]

not from a jedi obviously

[u/Sonikku4Ever → u/Yadin__]

That’s underselling it a bit— He also later makes the shapes:

• Move counter-clockwise across his hands
  
• Change sizes dynamically for each pip
  
• Change speed dynamically for each pip, including making some of them start moving clockwise while others stay counter-clockwise
  
• Change their shapes dynamically as well, for each pip separately

All while keeping track of each one AND playing it up for his audience of Nen masters aswell.

[u/random_BA → u/Sonikku4Ever]

The genius of the mangaka is that we immediately understand that this is insanely difficult on this world because we have a entire arc focused in nen aura control that show only focusing aura on arbitrary parts on the body on the demand is already master level

[u/teracoulomb_2]

William Shatner owned a ranch at the time of filming for Star Trek: Generations and all his horse riding was done by he himself, with some movements being very skilled work: https://youtu.be/VrJiU9BOEBI

[u/Right_Pen_3241 → u/teracoulomb_2]

Now that I pay attention to that... NO tightness on the reins AT ALL. Never realised that before, impressive!!!!
PS: even with sidesteps!

[u/FiveFingersandaNub → u/Right_Pen_3241]

The sidesteps were legit. That was super cool.

Thanks for pointing this out. I never even thought about it.

[u/Cool-Newspaper6789 → u/teracoulomb_2]

The only reason the meeting of two great captains happens on a dude ranch

[u/CaliburX4 → u/teracoulomb_2]

It feels like Shatner moves the horse in that scene the same way he would move if they were on their feet. You can really see this toward the end of the scene when he walks brings the horse in front of Stewart.

Dude's like a centaur with how much control he has over the horse.

[u/nom-d-pixel → u/teracoulomb_2]

If you watch the Jimmy Stewart westerns, you will notice something similar. He rides like he was born on a horse, but you can see the extras clinging for dear life.

[u/crapusername47 → u/teracoulomb_2]

At the time, and he may still, Shatner owned a company that trained horses for the screen. The horses in the film were his. 

[u/NEBanshee → u/teracoulomb_2]

Kevin Costner also has a *hella* good seat! He did a lot of his own stunts in "Silverado. Including that jump off a roof onto a horse move. "Dances with Wolves" as well, IIRC. I don't watch Yellowstone, but I'm sure he's still a skilled rider, even if not up for quite as much stuntwork

[u/AcadiaWorried1865 → u/teracoulomb_2]

The horses in the movie were Shatner's as well.

[u/periodicchemistrypun]

Literally any rapper talking about MF Doom.

He had the epithet ‘your favourite rapper’s favourite rapper’ because his stuff was so technically complex but most people just aren’t interested in hearing a guy rap about food.

Watch someone explain the levels of intertwining word play. It’s Shakespeare level but instead of being a hypocritical reflection on life it’s largely about food.

[u/RustledTacos → u/periodicchemistrypun]

"One for the money, two for the better green 3, 4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine Told the knock kneed, ghetto queen, get the head fiend Tell him it's from Medellín and use oxyacetylene..."

[u/confettibukkake → u/RustledTacos]

This is rad but can I get a breakdown

[u/The_Tyrannos → u/confettibukkake]

Breakdown for the first half.

[u/Misterfahrenheit120 → u/confettibukkake]

Breakdown for the second half

[u/periodicchemistrypun → u/RustledTacos]

Few people can even say a tongue twister like that to any rhythm.

[u/housealloyproduction → u/periodicchemistrypun]

I do Frankie Sinatra at karaoke all the time. The Danny brown verse is killer and so simple for me. When I do the mf doom verse I sound like an off time donkey.

[u/periodicchemistrypun → u/housealloyproduction]

I’ve had a lot of fun drunkenly trying rap verses on karaoke joints that don’t give you half way enough lyrics on screen to easily keep up.

Finding that limit where it’s all information overload is the goal.

MF Doom is like a comedian I saw once, Noah Frasier, when you got the joke he’d be wasting words waiting for you to catch up and laugh only MF Doom is expecting you to relisten.

[u/hospitalcottonswab → u/periodicchemistrypun]

"Catch a throatful

From the fire vocaled

Ash and molten glass like Eyjafjallajökull"

[u/WowIfOnly → u/periodicchemistrypun]

It's the same way with Eminem IMO. Functionally illiterate people with short attention spans who can't dissect lyrics without help just label him "White guy with annoying voice/accents who was the first really popular white rapper because shock value". They also get annoyed that he gets so much praise and credit over the "better rappers" they always fail to name in their complaints. Meanwhile, people who obsess over rap flows, wordplay, poetry, rhyming cadences, complex metaphors, double/triple/quadruple entendres, etc label Eminem as possibly the greatest rapper of all time, black/white/orange/doesn't matter. There's a reason nobody in the rap industry who matters has ever started shit with Eminem or called him out in a battle - it's because they know how good he truly is at rapping. Some rappers like to rap - while Eminem literally studies rap. Just look at what happened to MGK lol.

[u/Citizen_Kong]

Salieri being absolutely stunned in the movie "Amadeus" that Mozart is simply writing down his compositions from memory.

[u/NEBanshee → u/Citizen_Kong]

There was a languages professor at my uni who was a Mozart scholar. I asked him once if it were true that no sheet music of his has ever been found with a correction or change, and at that point, it was (prolly still is, barring the old "found this in the wall/attic/basement during reno" thing that happens). He speculated that it was because Mozart wrote and re-wrote everything in his head and didn't commit it to sheet until it was perfect. Possibly developed the habit because Mozart's dad was a kinda harsh disciplinarian around wee Wolfie's music when he was a kid; he likely learned to keep any mistakes out of his father's notice.

[u/fuckyourcanoes → u/NEBanshee]

Interestingly, this is how my husband designs electronic circuits. He works and reworks them in his head and when he commits them to the circuit testing software they're perfect 99% of the time.

He's designing audio gear, so not really basic stuff.

I'm incredibly envious of his ability to think things through. I have ADHD, and I'm a quick, intuitive thinker. But faced with complexity I completely fall apart. (Except in the kitchen. My brain understands food.)

But my husband is a very, very smart, impressive guy. Who also got suckered into Amway at one point and had a near miss with Scientology. Nobody's perfect.

[u/RavenCyarm]

Mirio in Hero Academia.

In a world where 80% of the population has a superpower, Mirio's quirk "Permeation" seems cool on the surface, but nothing crazy. His body is able to phase through things. But his power is incredibly difficult to control. When he makes his full body intangible, his eyes are unable to perceive light making him blind, soundwaves can't vibrate in his ears making him deaf, he's unable to breathe and his body will fall endlessly through the earth until he disables it, which propels him back to the surface automatically.

However, through intense practice he's learned to manipulate parts of his body to become intangible separately so he can fight while damage warps through him. He aims the force of being propelled from beneath the ground into making it seem like he's able to teleport through the floor to behind enemies and he's had to become a master of prediction and muscle memory to estimate where they will be when he reappears as he's unable to perceive anything while intangible.

He's still getting the hang of wearing clothes while intangible though and has often fought completely naked, which arguably makes him more scary.

In the hands of anyone else, this Quirk would be completely useless, but as Mirio is unbelievably driven, he's turned it into an incredibly effective power.

[u/Slateboard → u/RavenCyarm]

Wasn't he considered one of the kids with potential to be an All Might-tier hero in the future?

[u/Akvian → u/Slateboard]

He was a candidate to inherit One-For-All until Deku came along

[u/onlyusingonehand → u/Akvian]

Not just a candidate, but the candidate to inherit OfA before deku came along.

[u/iantruesnacks → u/onlyusingonehand]

No lie, like go deku and all that but I would have LOVED to see mirio using his quirk in tandem with the others in ofa.

[u/blitzbom → u/iantruesnacks]

The story would've been much shorter had they given OFA to Mirio (just like his life span)

[u/EamonBrennan → u/iantruesnacks]

While also really cool sounding, (semi-spoilers related to OfA as a whole) the human body can only handle 1 quirk. OfA's powers all count as OfA's quirk, so Deku and All Might only have 1 quirk. Mirio would have 2, and as shown by other holders of OfA, you age really quickly and die fast when you have 2 quirks and actively use them.

[u/Perfect-Dimension356 → u/Slateboard]

Not just that, but the final manga chapter shows that he is the top-ranked hero years after the end of the main narrative.

Deku, the protagonist and guy who defeated the final villain of the narrative thus saving the world (and admittedly then lost his powers and so had to find a new way to contribute) is ranked 4th.

[u/Niknakpaddywack17 → u/Perfect-Dimension356]

Tbf Bakugo kinda stopped trying that hard after Deku lost his powers

[u/Remote-Monk-8542 → u/Niknakpaddywack17]

Bakugo also loses a lot in the rankings because of his behavior issues.

[u/Maleficent_Thought_4 → u/Perfect-Dimension356]

To be fair Izuku is 4th after only like six months of hero work after being out of the game for 8 years, it’s pretty much guaranteed he’ll be number one soon.

[u/Wilsonrolandc → u/Perfect-Dimension356]

In Deku's defense, he shot up to 4th in an extremely short amount of time, and he was still ranked in the double digits while retired, if I remember correctly.

Wouldn't be shocked if he were to take number 1 at some point in his future.

[u/MicrocrystallineHiss → u/Slateboard]

He was considered the strongest of the Big Three, the strongest three students at UA.

[u/Brozy386 → u/Slateboard]

I believe Aizawa said that even among the pros Mirio has the most potential to be an All Might-tier hero

[u/Remote-Monk-8542 → u/Slateboard]

Not just kids, even among the pros.

[u/TheManzap → u/RavenCyarm]

"Permeating is nothing crazy"

The humble masked man:

https://giphy.com/gifs/CWOkM9jcoVnlm

[u/jshinab2]

Kvothe from The Wise Man's Fear, playing music in a tavern. Plays a very basic common song, and ornaments the shit out of it. Something like the itsy bitsy spider, as arranged by DragonForce. Then no-sells an incredibly difficult technical piece, acting like it's a casual jig.

[u/maybeknismo → u/jshinab2]

Kvothe is a medieval fantasy version of a rockstar that just so happens to have slight psychotic episodes here and there.

[u/badform49 → u/jshinab2]

Love that book

[u/darth_aardvark → u/badform49]

great sequels too, am i right????

please kill me already, patrick rothfuss has taken my soul but my body lives yet

[u/badform49 → u/darth_aardvark]

Yeah, that's frustrating, but my heart will always long worse for the ending of the Godslayer Chronicles from James Clemens. Same person as James Rollins, the multi-millionaire thriller writer.

The problem is that his thriller career is going so well that he hasn't written a fantasy novel in 20 years, leaving Godslayer one book shy of a trilogy for most of my life.

[u/dillanthumous → u/darth_aardvark]

The sequels got written in the non-Harambe timeline. They were excellent but the ending was a letdown as it turns out Kvothe had dozed off in the shower and dreamed the whole thing.

[u/erpietra01]

IRL: the Snow (Hey Oh!) riff, played by John Frusciante. To non-musicians it doesn’t sound as intricate as it is, but in reality it’s one of the hardest guitar riffs of the last 20 years, because it requires extreme speed and precision and also great stamina in order to play it well for the whole duration of the song.

Actually in music there’s a lot of instances where stamina is overlooked in favor of the complexity itself. Many Muse bass parts are like that, and for drums, the entirety of Favorite Worst Nightmare by Arctic Monkeys comes to mind. The bar itself may sound easy, but it becomes very prohibitive once you play for minutes straight.

[u/RainyRat → u/erpietra01]

The bass part for the "Finale" section in Tubular Bells is this as well; playing it is hard enough, but keeping it up for the full 8:30 is a hell of an endurance test.

[u/babe1981 → u/erpietra01]

I call this the Ringo Starr effect. Yeah, Ringo played a lot of basic beats that don't sound too impressive. His drums just sit in the background of the Beatles and provide a nice foundation for John and Paul to go wild over, but just try to do those beats perfectly for 3 minutes. It's exhausting. And Ringo never drops a beat. He doesn't stay in the pocket. Ringo is the fucking pocket. Then you learn that most of his tracks are single takes.

John once said that if Ringo and a clock had different timing, the clock was wrong. He was a machine, and it just sounds nice when you don't know drums.

[u/fuckyourcanoes → u/erpietra01]

There's so much of this in music. You get people in awe of someone like Yngwie Malmsteen or Steve Vai, and yes, they're highly accomplished technicians.

Now try to learn some Steely Dan songs.

I have been playing for 54 years. I can't even get close. I thought "With a Gun" sounded like an easy one to start with. FOURTEEN CHORDS in the rhythm part, one of which is physically impossible for me to play. And it turns out despite my personal style as a rhythm player being fast, complex chord changes, I couldn't hack it.

Now, I'm not a great player on my best day, I just have a very practised schtick, but holy shit. Everything Steely Dan does is just next-level talent. Mad respect.

[u/Nine-LifedEnchanter]

This is all of magic. The more proficient you are the simpler the tricks will seem. I love to show "magician tricks" for laymen because they are exclusively interesting for other magicians and have no intrinsic entertainment value besides being a display of immense skill or using knowledge and assumptions against magicians.

A friend of mine described it well when I met up some other magicians. "It's such bullshit. One of you hold a deck, flip the top card to reveal a card, flips it back, and then once more to show the exact same card and all of you react as if actual magic had happened."

I'd even argue that the "more" a trick seems the less skilled the magician is. All those tiktok magicians do these 17-step effects and it's like a child with a new magic box. It's endearing at best, until you learn that they've been doing this for a decade.

[u/st_stutter → u/Nine-LifedEnchanter]

Slightly related but Teller explaining a time someone did the cup and ball trick for him.

[u/TastefulPornAlt → u/Nine-LifedEnchanter]

I'm a juggler/do circus arts. I call some tricks "Muggle tricks" (balancing on a rola bola or a circus globe and juggling) because the audience will lose their Gods damned minds, but people in the know will shrug and wait for your next trick.

[u/Nine-LifedEnchanter → u/TastefulPornAlt]

Yeah, I have some effects that I know are crowd pleasers but it requires a fraction of my self-respect in cost to perform because it's the professional equivalent of doing that thumb trick that all uncles do.

Granted I have a thumb routine that I practice in front of all mirrors. But that's art.

[u/fallenKlNG → u/Nine-LifedEnchanter]

When I was a kid, I got a magic trick set as a gift for xmas or my birthday. There was one trick that I remembered over the years because it was simple, didn't require any of the magic kit items, and was honestly imo not too easy to figure out compared to the other ones.

It was this one with fruit & cups where you cover a fruit with a cup and when you lift the cups, the fruit magically teleports to the 2nd cup. TikTok spoiled it a few years back, so now everyone knows it

[u/Rasberrycello]

The gif search is failing me, but the Milt Kahl Head Swaggle. Anyone who's studied or done 2D animation can tell you what a fucking flex that is.

[u/RemnantsPast → u/Rasberrycello]

https://giphy.com/gifs/UXM7MB02TID4s

I was thinking the same tbh.

For those that don't fully get it, its not just he can animate a smooth head wiggle its he can do that whilst also having almost perfect limp sync to the voice acting.

It isn't something you really notice till its pointed out then you think about how its all hand drawn animation and never in a million years could most people execute.

[u/Callidonaut → u/Rasberrycello]

Richard Williams, who I think understudied Kahl, was no slouch either; have you seen his sadly unfinished masterpiece, The Thief And The Cobbler? A whole feature length film animated, I think, entirely in "ones" and "twos." I know just enough about animation to know that that's crazy; such an ambitious project that no other traditional animator ever attempted such a thing. It makes for some gorgeously smooth sequences, though, where every movement is just exquisitely fluid.

[u/BombOnABus]

Dick Dale, IRL - You may have heard the song Misirlou, the fast paced song used for Pulp Fiction's title sequence.

It's normally a slower paced Greek folk song. The famous fast surf rock version Dale played is not only at a much faster tempo, but he also could play the whole thing on a single guitar string.

The song sounds cool but just fast to the average listener, but it shows the incredible chops Dale had as a guitarist. He was a jaw dropping virtuoso on the guitar, who was so fast he could destroy guitars and amps.

Making a guitar that could withstand his fingers was considered the gold standard of quality.

[u/RetroRocker → u/BombOnABus]

Dick Dale live on Jools Holland, 1995. He was 58 at the time. One of my most favourite performances. RIP

Worth adding that not only did he play the guitar left handed, but played a left handed guitar strung right handed.

[u/idontgethejoke → u/BombOnABus]

This one is really cool, thanks for sharing

[u/mahrinazz → u/BombOnABus]

Leo Fender personally made many amps for him that still couldn’t stand up to it, Dick Dale left them smoking and/or broken.

Dude could shred.

One of many articles on the topic, lol.

[u/BombOnABus → u/mahrinazz]

Yup. His preference for playing loud, fast, and with heavy strings made him to some the Godfather of Heavy Metal.

[u/blackjackgabbiani]

Real life: 

Well ok, many examples, but I want to go with Evo Moment 37. 

https://youtu.be/kuSMEVhPvTY

This is THE moment for fighting game fans. To outsiders it looks like nothing. But Daigo, the player behind Ken here, had to have perfect timing to parry every one of Justin's strikes in order to avoid taking damage, and he had to hold out long enough to build up the meter necessary to strike back.

That means he had to know, down to the microsecond, the timing of every motion in Chun-Li's special move, including how many hits it has.

A later game included this short scene as a challenge mode and even very skilled and experienced players will struggle with it. Here's fighting game guru Maximilian Dood trying and failing to conquer that mode. It may give you a greater indication of the skill involved in the original, and this is WITH knowing what to expect. https://youtu.be/3lzpu6UF4uw

[u/MaclMac → u/blackjackgabbiani]

What makes it even more impressive is that Daigo did all that during a tournament setting, with hundreds of eyes on the screen. The pressure must have been immense.

The fact that even other skilled players struggle to recreate it in the comfort of their own homes while he was under that extra pressure is just crazy.

[u/JoaoMau-Tempo → u/blackjackgabbiani]

To add to this, usually people parry Chun-Li’s special by memorising the rhythm. Daigo couldn’t do that since he had people screaming and his opponent was mashing to screw up his flow. The last kick, the one in the air, isn’t necessary to parry; however, iirc, the combo Daigo performed is the only one with enough damage capable of finishing the match instantly, so he also had to realise that and execute it perfectly.

[u/Criie → u/blackjackgabbiani]

Ts is on the level of impressive to the laymen, and MORE impressive to the those who know the craft

[u/Testosteronomicon → u/blackjackgabbiani]

I'll add even more to this: the technical skill Daigo needed to block everything and strike back was already enormous. But at the same time that moment showcases one of the biggest fundamental of competition: reading your opponent well. Daigo not only knew that Justin would throw his super at that moment (had to, otherwise Daigo couldn't block the first hit), he was outright baiting him into throwing it by proper neutral play.

To the casual watcher, Daigo outskilled Justin. To fighting games fans, he also outsmarted him.

[u/EligibleUsername → u/blackjackgabbiani]

Shit like this is what makes me love fg even though I suck balls at them. Watching 2 skilled players fight is on par with watching an irl Dragon Ball fight. They may look like they're just trading jabs most of the time but on faster games like 3rd Strike or Darkstalker it takes an immense amount of skill and focus to win a trade, and that's when the impressive combos start happening.

[u/FatPanda0345 → u/blackjackgabbiani]

Iirc he also had to press forward for the first parry before the super-freeze, meaning he had to correctly predict in advance when the super was coming out

[u/Impossible_Way_3042]

Any musical instrument you see this a lot. Sometimes the most innocuous stuff is the actual difficult part of the song. Or a song that sounds easier might be insanely fucking difficult. A good example is Lindsey Buckingham. Because of how laid back Fleetwood Mac is and how much it focuses on the singing, you don't even notice what Lindsey is putting down. Most non musicians would think that ripping metal solos is the hardest thing you can do on a guitar but sometimes those are easier than the stuff he was doing with Fleetwood Mac. Never Going Back again is often considered one of the harder guitar parts to play. It's insane. Same is true for Snow by RHCP. Doesn't sound that bad but is really difficult. On the opposite end of this, Metallica is not insanely difficult to play, even the ripping solos. It's not easy, but I don't think it has anything on the other two songs I mentioned here.

[u/BeenEatinBeans]

When Trevor fights Alucard in Castlevania, we see him switch hands with his sword while he attacks. Doing this at all would require him to either be ambidextrous or just very talented with a sword, but doing it without ever letting up or missing a beat would be insanely difficult to pull off.

Not only that, you can also briefly see him push Alucard back despite him having supernatural strength by taking advantage of the fact that his opponent has a longer sword, and therefore longer weak, to push his weapon around.

[u/Gizogin → u/BeenEatinBeans]

You could extend this to his usual weapon of choice, the Vampire Killer whip (and later the Morning Star chain-whip). It’s easy to overlook compared to Sypha’s magic or Alucard’s superhuman strength and speed, but Trevor’s ability to consistently hit his target with a weapon as unpredictable as a whip is insanely impressive.

And let’s not forget the animators, who essentially invented a new martial art just for Trevor’s whip. Then did it again for the Morning Star, which has different physics. Again, easy to overlook next to the flashy effects and magic that other characters are using, but the most technically impressive part is both choreographing and animating an entirely unique fighting style, and making it believable.

[u/Yedrick → u/BeenEatinBeans]

His goofy ass demeanor belies the fact that Trevor is an absurdly skilled melee combatant. I doubt any non-supernatural enemy could have taken him in a fight without overwhelming numbers. In a one on one duel like the above, my money's on the Belmont. Assuming he's sober.

[u/jbeast33]

MyHouse.Wad is a real life example.

The game itself is a fun reference to House of Leaves with a little Backrooms mixed in. But the real shock is the technical expertise and tricks it plays on Doom modders and WAD enthusiasts.

• It plays on the idea of it being a house mod, as many first-time modders make their house for people to explore.
• It goes into the Underhalls immediately afterwards... Only to loop back to the house map afterwards.
• The first house map uses basic animations for the guns, doors, etc. But when you go back in after your first time leaving the house, the game almost seamlessly integrates custom animations, sprites, and enemies in. This is where the first time players get shocked, since that takes a lot of grease with the code to pull off.
• The game has a very intensive array of tricks to integrate stuff like dedicated Upstairs and Downstairs segments, maps within maps, and customized enemies on the outdated Doom engine.
• And that's without getting into the incredibly in-depth ARG and hidden means to actually progress through the game.

The entire map is a labor of love, and one that can only really be understood by people intimately familiar with Doom's engine. Even John Romero, one of the main programmers behind Doom, was shocked by the depth of mod when he did a blind playthrough.

[u/SelectionAlarming743]

James Jamerson - IRL

Legendary, albeit little known bass player for Motown. Arguably revolutionized the role and playstyle for the bass in popular music. His lines fit in absolutely effortlessly, it is almost like a duet between the vocals and the bass often times. And he played all of it using just his index finger on his right hand, because he came from the upright bass.
There is a story that when Marvin Gaye was recording What's going on, he absolutely wanted Jamerson to play the bass, so they went out searching for him and found him heavily drunk in a bar. They took him to the studio, but he was unable to stand upright. So he just laid down on the studio floor and nailed it.
There is a certain beauty in his bass lines I have yet to come across elsewhere. There is no showing off, not a moment that leads anyone to believe he thought "let me show you what I can do".

[u/hackeysack001 → u/SelectionAlarming743]

Any one interested in Motown should look up the documentary "Standing in the Shadows of Motown" about the Funk brothers who were the studio band for Motown in Detroit, of which Jamerson was a charter member. It's an absolute classic pop music documentary. And the theft and betrayal perpetrated against them was so heinous...The film is dedicated to the guitarist who improvised the guitar line every one knows from "My Girl" who died broke and uncredited for that. Never earned a cent of royalties. Tag line is 'more hits than Elvis, the Beatles and the Beach Boys commbined' and these musicians were not forgotten, but erased from publc knowledge for decades.

[u/chicksonfox]

Zoro’s teacher Koushirou in One Piece has the amazing ability to not cut a piece of paper. He explains that a master swordsman can communicate to his sword what he wishes to cut vs. what he wishes to protect, and therefore cutting through steel and not cutting a piece of paper are two sides of the same coin.

[u/ass_bongos → u/chicksonfox]

Was the one piece that paper the whole time??

[u/Individual-Spirit765 → u/ass_bongos]

The one piece was the friends we made along the way.

[u/TricoMex → u/chicksonfox]

It's a reading of what we consider "sharpness" as applied physics.

Theoretically, you can hold the sharpest realistic scalpel in the world, then push it relatively hard into your skin, and it will not cut.

The key here, is that what actually cuts is the lengthwise cutting motion we are familiar with, not necessarily just pushing the blade into whatever we are cutting. (There's a small exemption for the material you're cutting moving under the blade, which self-initiates the cutting motion) So to be able to swing a sword into a paper, and not cut it, shows an inhuman amount of control.

[u/ithinkther41am]

https://giphy.com/gifs/v3KDIko6YpPuiM0VnB
Sean Strickland (UFC)

Prior to him winning the belt, a lot of fans saw him as a boring jab merchant, and even with increased recognition, he is really not the most exciting guy to watch. That said, he’s phenomenal at making his opponents fight his game with his smooth boxing, relentless forward pressure, and immaculate defense.

[u/EligibleUsername → u/ithinkther41am]

A lot of good martial artists make their chosen style look quite boring since they've optimized all of the flair out of their movement. IIRC even the late Bruce Lee himself said modern martial arts contain too much unnecessary showy move, if you want to be an effective fighter you ignore those.

[u/BenchConscious1003]

That's a great story about Giotto and totally believable. He lived at a time when it was said that it took ten thousand hours to make an artist

Clip to the World Freehand Circle Drawing Champion drawing a perfect circle on a blackboard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAhfZUZiwSE.

[u/Pay-Next]

RL Example: Steveie Ray Vaughan. His guitar playing and always will be considering one of the greatest but if you ever watched videos of him he will bend strings like crazy to add color to his notes sometimes pulling them almost clean across the neck of the guitar. The reason this fits the trope is when you realize he famously also played with extremely heavy gauge strings and had built up the physical hand strength to make it look like nothing to bend those strings.

Bonus for SRV as well. There are several songs of his where it sounds like there is a lead guitar and a rhythm guitar playing and then you looking it up and realize that his backup band is only a drummer and a bassist. So he could effectively sell the illusion of playing lead and rhythm at the same time.

[u/medyas1]

irl: programmers before vibe coding made idiots think they're the real shit

there's a lot of background knowledge involved (most of the time) but to the layperson it's just nerds mashing the keyboard to make things happen

[u/TreeofNormal → u/medyas1]

50% of programming skill is searching docs effectively, the other 50% is figuring out what versionn to use.

its not easy.

[u/Doctuh → u/TreeofNormal]

Mastering the science of programming is easy, mastering the art of programming is a lifelong journey.

[u/Platyest]

Aang from Avatar the Last Air Bender on occasion will create a tiny windvortex in his hands while performing minimal motions. No one seems overly impressed by this in the show but it's been speculated that this is actually a very difficult feat, demonstrating mastery of air bending

[u/Able-Light-890]

[u/DrunkenErmac012]

Breaking Bad: Gale, with 96% pure meth, being amazed by Walter's 99,1% pure meth.

It may not seem much for the average guy, but if you know chemistry you'll know how much of a big deal these 3% are

[u/OmegaKarnov]

In From Russia With Love, when SPECTRE activates agent Kronsteen, he's in the middle of a chess game. Since he needs to leave right away, he simply checkmates his opponent.

[u/Comfortableliar24 → u/OmegaKarnov]

Would have been way more realistic to force his opponent into a 3-fold repetition, but way more boring.

[u/KaiserDuck03]

Tonio Trussardi is a Stand user. His Stand itself doesn’t make his food taste great it’s his own culinary skill. The Stand only targets ailments. This also means the water he serves at the restaurant is somehow just that good.

[u/AppealMammoth8950]

GenG - A Korean League of Legends pro team. Don't get me wrong, I find them entertaining but relative to their peers, their matches are 'boring' and a lot of people seem to dont appreciate just how much of a master they are at managing resources, lanes, and objective timers. They turtle up, wait for mistakes, punish them heavily, and manage lanes and objectives to win games. They rarely take 50/50 fights and always rely on numbers and getting ahead before risking a fight. They're a master at grinding down teams and disengaging at bad fights. Compare that to T1 (reigning two time Worlds champ) with their constant lane rotations, support roams, and ganks.

[u/Jozef667]

I don't know if this counts but ... running a marathon. These days you see so many facebook posts and newspaper articles about thousands of people running "Insert City" marathon, that it makes you think "oh no biggy". Until you start running yourself.

[u/10HungryGhosts]

/img/3um3to8ag3rh1.gif
The Milt Kahl head swaggle! Looks pretty innocuous but animators knew how difficult it was to draw heads simultaneously shaking and talking. Milt Kahl was really good at it and you can see it in quite a few of his animations

[u/dovah-meme]

Gojo’s Hollow Purple — Jujutsu Kaisen

Yes, Hollow Purple is a cool ass attack that is very obviously on a level of potency few other techniques in the series can match, but how difficult it is to actually pull off is pretty often glossed over.

Some sorcerers (and people online who like to design OC cursed techniques) use a circuit as a useful visual for how a cursed technique operates within the users body: without cursed energy input, it’s just a wire pathway, with cursed energy input, the energy flows from one end of the circuit to the other. Reversed cursed technique, and in turn any extensions of one’s own technique that can be used with it, require you to send that ‘current’ the opposite way to its default, requiring both an immense amount of energy input and fine control to get it right.

For Hollow Purple, Gojo performs both operations not only at the same time, but through the same ‘wire’: imagine a pipe carrying two separate streams that cannot under any circumstances mix, in opposite directions, all with enough continuous control and energy input to charge a blast with both. That’s what Gojo does every time he uses this move; and for almost anybody else on earth, the ability to use both the default and reversed output of one’s cursed technique at the same time is borderline impossible.

[u/USF4Diago]

https://i.imgur.com/3COMYQy.jpeg

The beast diago umehara, specifically when he lands multiple shoryukens on HIS opponents wake up in the fighting game ultra street fighter 4

I could go on all day about the insane hidden skill you can only appreciate once you try to get that skill yourself but diago landing shoryuken after shoryuken, all of which were heavy punch shoryus which means you can't cancel them to make them safe, all of which are incredible reads, but the exact timing needed to give your opponent that split second to twitch, the conditioning necessary to make your opponent twitch, the mind game of just fucking sending it, not once but over and over, you could make an hour long video on that short moment

[u/maizehaze1]

Doc Holliday in tombstone and his gun tricks. He perfectly mimics ringos gun flips in the bar, but by using a tea cup it just looks goofy. Then later in a stand off somebody mentions that he's so drunk doc is seeing double. Doc then pulls out two gun and spins them in opposite directions before telling the dude he has one gun for each of you.

[u/IngoVals]

Every baseball player. I'm european and have never played baseball and I saw a supposed impressive play by a short stop (he seemed average height to me though). It was just a guy cathcing a ball, looked like something out of shape me could even do.

I realize I am comparing it to a underhand throw or something and in reality it is crazy hard, but damn does it look easy on tv.

[u/terpsichore_andrhino → u/IngoVals]

One great example of this was Franklin Guttierez of the Seattle Mariners. He could made beautiful, ballet-like catches, but his greatest skill was that he knew where the ball was going to come down and he was there when it did. It made him seem like a solid but not brilliant player, but if you looked at the replay zoomed out you'd see his speed and how he rarely ran anything but a straight line right to where he needed to be. To the average fan he wasn't as entertaining as, say, Ichiro, who played in the outfield with him and was also a beyond-great outfielder but didn't make it look as easy and casual, but to those of us who paid attention he was maybe the best center fielder the Mariners ever had.

[u/Court_Jester13]

I remember watching an old comedy series with my dad when I was younger, it was either Jasper Carrot or The Two Ronnies.

But for one of the skits the guy was playing the piano. Except he was playing it off-key. My dad told me that it was actually more difficult to play through a song off-key than normally.

[u/JohnBrownEnthusiast]

Tribute

https://giphy.com/gifs/aZmD30dCFaPXG

[u/Shot_Clue9491]

IRL example: Drunken Bricklayer Style

Looks exactly like it sounds - like someone got drunk and started laying bricks completely randomly. In actuality, it's the bricklayer showing off. Laying bricks in a way that looks chaotic but is still structurally sound requires a level of artistry and precision that is usually only found in the most skilled and experienced brick masons.

[u/Kind_Of_A_Dick]

All these pale in comparison to Jack O’Neill hitting a golf ball light years away.

[u/Rough_Bread8329]

Danny Carey made a deal with the devil. No one knows what Danny got, but the devil got drum lessons.

[u/cjrmartin]

There is a scene that always stuck with me in a Penn and Teller show called Penn and Teller's Magic and Mystery Tour. They go to Egypt and are watching this magician do the cups and balls trick (for which Penn and Teller are famous in the USA) and the magician is asking Teller which cup he thinks the ball is under. Teller points to a cup and, sure enough, there is the ball. The magician looks a little disappointed but Teller is clapping with excitement. He thought he was playing the role of the sucker so pointed to the cups that he thought the ball was not under so the magician could have the reveal to the crowd that he had pulled off some magic. But actually it was a masterclass in magic that only a professional magician, who could follow all the moves (and be fooled by fake versions of the moves) would appreciate.

Watch here at around 19:30: https://youtu.be/8ARSoyel7tU?si=rnEqqfoJlHkHBVbK&t=1168