My Personal Top-5 Most Life-Changing Media Moments

For those of you who like things with profound meaning!

Jul 14, 2025

I wanted to take a break from all the heavy stuff I’ve been writing about lately to talk about something that’s ideally a bit less heartbreaking or depressing than my last few posts.

I would like to list today five of the most memorable and also meaningful scenes that I’ve seen in film and game media. Now, I said I was trying to be less heartbreaking, but if I’m honest, most of these scenes are pretty heavy, so keep that in mind.

No long intros this time. Let’s just go!

Blade Runner: Tears in Rain

Low-key generic choice, right? But here’s the thing, and I will die on this horse:

Roy Baty was the hero of that story.

He is an escaped slave trying to find peace and a life for his people, while Rick Deckard is the police goon trying to hunt him down with no more reason to do so than he has corporate backing and was told to under duress.

And to me, that makes this scene and the moments leading up to it all the more poignant.

How often in life is the hero framed as the bad guy? How often do people who see beauty get stomped out and squashed for no reason? How often do we choose to oppress those we fear rather than embracing them? This scene hits so friggin’ hard!

8 Mile: Rabbit’s Final Rap Battle

I love to drop this one because of how much it rocks the boat of anyone who’s ever known me. Having me claim a scene from an Eminem movie about rapping as one of the most profound things I’ve ever seen? I wouldn’t be surprised if people thought I was joking.

However, this scene is a big deal and I love, especially, how this one throws people in online discourse. I once read a comment that was really dismissive of this ending, because he “wins by dissing his friends.” And I can see why you might miss the beauty of this scene because that framing is valid. He does win by dissing his friends, in a manner of speaking.

But here’s the thing… this scene is the culmination of a moment of reckoning that’s been building up this entire time. It’s the moment Rabbit realizes that if he owns everything about himself, no one can use it as ammo against him.

This is one of the most profound lessons I’ve ever learned, personally, which is why this scene is so meaningful to me. It was a slow-burn realization that began in high school and erupted when a relationship with a close friend imploded. I had to face a lot of accusations and ask myself, was this person’s assessment of me fair?

A lot of the time, our bruised egos don’t allow us to examine that too closely. We prefer to feel wronged and justified. But I trained myself to move past that. If I was the problem, I wanted to know, and I was going to be objective about it.

I learned that if I know myself, truly and honestly, no one can hurt me by saying things I don’t want to hear about myself.

In the moments before this final battle, Rabbit’s friend asks him if he’s afraid of all the stuff his nemesis is going to say about him. You can watch the realization wash over his face. Rabbit realizes that he doesn’t need stronger nukes to win this war, he simply needs to take away his opponent’s ammo.

So he goes in with brutal honesty. He mocks himself and yeah, he does take his friends down with him, but… everything he says is true. It’s brutally honest and not flattering, but it’s all true. And he owns it. His message is, “these are my people, fucked up as we are.”

I’ll take that kind of honest friendship that loves beyond flaws over surface-level patting one another on the back any day.

God of War - Ragnarok: The Culmination of Love Is Grief

We’re stepping into a video game that, funnily enough (especially considering it’s me we’re talking about), I haven’t actually played. But I know enough of the context of the God of War lore to know everything I need for this scene to be a dagger into the soul. Kratos’ story is, ultimately, about his struggle with grief.

Now here’s the personal note. When I was grieving and processing the loss of my adoptive son, I chose to embrace it. I stared it straight in the eye and said, “gimme all you got, fucker,” because, to me? This grief was a direct mirror of the amount of love I felt for my cub. And since I loved him with the fire of infinite suns, I knew that my grief would shred me.

So I let it.

And as much as it hurts? I love it, in a twisted, masochistic sort of way. Because all of that pain is, really, just love with nowhere to go. I learned all of this before I realized that similar ideas drift around the internet. A friend of mine literally quoted me back at myself once as, “someone once told me,” and I had to say, “yeah, that was me,” which amused me to no end.

My words were “grief is a direct reflection of love, so I don’t mind the pain.” The line from the game is “the culmination of love is grief.” Obviously that hits home.

And when Faye’s spirit lays down her line, “open your heart to the world as you have opened it to me, and you will find every reason to keep living in it”? You know that Kratos is going to keep going, to honor their love. That moment is everything.

Doctor Who: The Zygon Speech

Okay, funnily enough, I’ve actually never seen an episode of Doctor Who either. A friend of mine — one who struggles to accept the terrible way humans treat one another — sent this to me once and it floored me. If this plotline had been more than a 2-episode arc, I would have watched the whole season right then and there. Ultimately, I couldn’t believe that 2 episodes alone would do it justice, so I left the rest of the story for the playground of my subconscious.

War, injustice, oppression. All of these things are way too common in the year 2025. And yet, we so rarely choose to put down our weapons and choose peace instead.

This one’s actually self-explanatory. Just watch it, you’ll see what I mean.

And, the #1 most meaningful scene in anything ever…

Battlestar Galactica: Lee Adama’s Defense of Gaius Baltar

This one actually requires some context:

Gaius Baltar, former President of the Twelve Colonies (a mobile group of spaceships fleeing genocide from the Cylons, bio-engineered artificial life forms), is on trial for treason and crimes against humanity. The charges stem from his collaboration with the Cylons during their occupation of New Caprica — a period marked by oppression, torture, executions, and so on.

This scene is… everything I wish I could ever say about anything.

Just follow this magnificent flow: he starts by speaking flat legal truths. He then goes on to discuss the situation and ask what anyone else would have done in Baltar’s situation, when the options were lose-lose-lose. He then mentions a presidential pardon that applied to everyone but Baltar. He goes on to call out several people who did appalling things, ending this list with himself, saying he was the worst of the bunch. After this, he shifts to talking about how their justice system doesn’t work anymore because they are no longer a civilization, but “a gang… on the run” that needs to improvise to survive. He then calls out the remains of humanity for wanting to pin their problems on one man in order to flush away their guilt and sorrow and grief, and above all else, shame. He ends by insisting that it won’t work and this is not justice.

This scene is nothing more or less than Lee Adama calling out the entirety of what remains of human civilization for their fear-mongering decision-making and it’s so frank, so honest, so fucking on-the-nose… I’m running out of words to praise it.

This is truly one of the most brilliant scenes, if not the most brilliant scene I’ve seen in anything, period.

I hope you enjoyed my list of favorites!

Thanks for reading and checking this out! If you have any thoughts on these moments, let me know, or if you have any scenes or shows that you think I should check out, hit me up in the comments!

Stay balanced, my friends! ❤️🐻

Bear's Book of Balance

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