This commentary discusses the many facets of crisis management in anesthesia care. The authors describe a previously published crisis management algorithm, explain why providers can fail to respond to crises appropriately, and highlight how precompiled responses and algorithms serve as useful aids. They advocate increased team-oriented training, regular review of devised algorithms, and consideration of similar algorithms in other clinical areas to optimize management of crisis situations. This commentary is accompanied by a manual of 24 specific sub-algorithms in anesthesia crisis management.