History Main / DoesNotKnowHisOwnStrength

* Derek Souza in ''{{Darkest Powers}}'' is a werewolf with an incredible protective streak over the people he cares about, which leads him to do such things as throwing another boy into a wall and breaking his back, nearly tossing Chloe across a room while merely trying to keep her from stomping off, and breaking Liam�s neck, killing him - and all of this completely on accident.
** Granted, nearly all of the main characters with the exception of Simon could probably fit under this trope, as their DNA has been tweaked, thus making their individual abilities much, much, ''much'' stronger than usual and leading to random outbursts of power. Most notably Chloe�s accidentally raising the dead ''in her sleep'', Derek�s already mentioned feats, and Liz�s telekinetic tantrum [[spoiler: right before she is taken away and murdered because she cannot control her powers]].

* In ''FiftyTwo'', being a god-empowered superbeing stopped being fun for Osiris after he killed his sister Isis' attacker the Persuader by flying into him too hard.

* Kyon from ''[[{{Fanfic/Ptitle0028gzjm}} Kyon: Big Damn Hero]]''. Because of the nature of his training he knows martial arts but he doesn't remember any experience with them, including the specific effects of his attacks on opponents. After the fight on chapter 12, Iyouji was surprised when he had to ask how bad were the injuries he made on the Mooks.

* Used in Richard Scarry's books. Hilda, an anthropomorphic hippo child, accidentally rips a door off its hinges when she is told to open the door so the students can go out to play. Later, when the door is fixed, she ''rips out the door along with part of the wall'' when she attempts the same thing.

->''Hulk want hug kitties\\
But they so easy to squish!\\
Hulk live in cruel world''
-->--''MarvelUltimateAlliance 2'' "[[Comicbook/TheIncredibleHulk Hulk]]-Ku" haikus

** Bella gets this in the [[DisContinuity fourth book]] because brand new vampires are [[BeyondTheImpossible so damn strong]]. She hugs Edward and actually hurts him, something nearly impossible to do to Twilight vampires. Emmett, widely regarded as by far the strongest Cullen, is completely overpowered in the weeks immediately after Bella's transformation. {{Or So I Heard}}.

** In ''Superman Annual #8'', Pounder, one of a far-future League of Supermen in who have each been genetically engineered to have ''one'' of Superman's powers, has support staff who have to do ''everything'' for him, becauyse it's not safe for him to touch things. (The whole League is BlessedWithSuck, in fact.)

* In [[TooGoodToLast short-lived]] [=UPN=] super-spy show ''{{Jake 2.0}}'', the main character mostly dodged this because his powers were mostly by activation; nevertheless, there was at least one occasion where his little brother pissed him off, resulting in him accidentally breaking off the handle to his car door.

*** Which actually isn't because someone with super strengh was doing chest compressions, but a very real accident that can happen while giving CPR.

** Played with later in the fourth season in "A New Man", where Giles awakens one morning as a large and powerful demon after being cursed by Ethan Rayne. He walks through his home, and accidentally tears the banister off of his stairs, smashes a phone when he tries to call for help, and rips through his favorite shirt. The irony of course is that Giles is normally a weak, mild-mannered British librarian.

* Many, many times in various Superman comics would other people gain Superman's strength. This trope almost always applies.

* Ryōga from ''[=~Ranma �~=]''. Whenever his emotions get too much, or his mind wanders, everything he touches tends to crumble around him. Combine this with the fact he gained the ability to shatter inanimate matter with a finger jab early in the series, and you've got a man who has as much trouble ''not'' destroying Tokyo as he does [[NoSenseOfDirection navigating it]].

** During a mid-manga story, Ranma is weakened by a vengeful Happōsai. The cure involves a painful-looking [[PressurePoints moxibustion technique]] applied on his back -- out of reflex, he tries to swat Cologne off his back, only to find himself smashing a ''solid concrete roller'' (the kind used to flatten sports fields) purely by accident.

* ''TheIncredibles''. Mr. Incredible got very stressed out the day he was fired and broke a number of things. He dented a doorknob, shattered the car's window, and cut straight through the plate and part of the table when cutting his son's steak. He's usually in control though.

*** And it was [[CrowningMomentOfFunny HILARIOUS.]]

** It's played up more in the manga version, but [[HotAmazon Shampoo]] often destroys things around her, tearing through walls rather than going for the door or shattering doors when she does use them. It's debateable whether she counts for this, though, as it's just as likely that she just likes to show off that she's a CuteBruiser.

This trope is related to BlessedWithSuck but is specific to strength and to powers which resemble strength (i.e. the ability to crush objects ten times your size using your fists via a kind of Tactile Telekinesis, as was possessed by Superboy in the early nineties) and is not primarily a bad thing; “the empowered individual often finds their strength to be very handy when they're not having to do delicate things like handle children's rattles."

* Muay Thay God of Death Apachai Hopachai in ''{{Kenichi the Mightiest Disciple}}''. Also a GentleGiant on his own right, he is really kind to all living things, being even able to speak with animals. Unfortunately, due to the TrainingFromHell he went through during his childhood (and the fact that he was thrown in life-or-death battles even as a kid) he´s uncapable of sparring with Kenichi without delivering several blows that would have killed anyone less resilient. It gets to a point when Kenichi loses the memory of being hit due to a concussion.

* Ryōga from ''[=~Ranma ½~=]''. Whenever his emotions get too much, or his mind wanders, everything he touches tends to crumble around him. Combine this with the fact he gained the ability to shatter inanimate matter with a finger jab early in the series, and you've got a man who has as much trouble ''not'' destroying Tokyo as he does [[NoSenseOfDirection navigating it]].

** During a mid-manga story, Ranma is weakened by a vengeful Happōsai. The cure involves a painful-looking [[PressurePoints moxibustion technique]] applied on his back -- out of reflex, he tries to swat Cologne off his back, only to find himself smashing a ''solid concrete roller'' (the kind used to flatten sports fields) purely by accident.

* In ''Comicbook/{{X-Men}}'', when Colossus is stuck in transformed form he gets angsty about people seeing him as a monster. He then proceeds to try and call his team from a phonebooth but since he is frustrated, trying to dial the number causes his fingers to punch right through the phone.
** This is somewhat justified, as he is also both much larger and much stronger that before his injury, and had been spending all of his time up to this point at Moira [=MacTaggart's=] infirmary. The caption also says he trashed the phone because he was still not used to his greater strength, not frustration. The cause for his greater size and strength was also implied to be Magneto's attempt to 'heal' him magnetically.

* In ''{{Nextwave}}'', the narration mentions that the Captain once knocked a man's lungs out of his chest by patting him on the back...but in his defense, he was drunk.

* The titular character in ''Monica's Gang'' suffers of this. Since she's only 6, it leads to really funny situations (although not as much funny for her parents, that have to pay for the broken stuff, of for Jimmy Five and Smudgy, that have to ''feel in their skins'' what her inhuman strenght causes. Of course, all in the AmusingInjuries territory, since it's for kids.

* Obelix from ''{{Asterix}}'' does seem to know his strength... he is just appearently unaware that not everyone possesses that strength, hence his failure to understand the diffrence between "knock the door" and "smash the door" and why no one around him is able to carry tiny menhirs.

* Played with in ''Up, Up, and Away''. The protagonist is born into a family of superheroes, but was born without a power. In order to convince his family that he's not a loser, he rigs certain things to fall apart as he uses them, such as taking the screws off the door hinges to make it appear he ripped it off. Played straight with a NoodleIncident for his father, who apparently did quite some damage to his house's foundation.

** Also, few chairs support his weight, any more, but he doesn't always remember this.

* In KamenRiderTheFirst, Hongo Takeshi runs afoul of this trope in a non-comedic manner, trying to save a little girl from being hit by a truck. He scoops her up a little too forcefully, and while he does save her life, she has to be hospitalized anyway due to the pressure he put on her body.

** He also put a ton of holes the walls of his apartment, trying to gently tap in nails.

* The trope is present in ''SoonIWillBeInvincible'' as one of many background details. Doctor Impossible breaks the handle of a toilet, the cyborg Fatale's weight makes hardwood floors creak and cracks tiles, and she can't use normal furniture.

* Lennie from ''{{Of Mice and Men}}'' by John Steinbeck is another example of this trope, breaking the neck of a doggy by petting it too hard.
* Derek Souza in {{Darkest Powers}} is a werewolf with an incredible protective streak over the people he cares about, which leads him to do such things as throwing another boy into a wall and breaking his back, nearly tossing Chloe across a room while merely trying to keep her from stomping off, and breaking Liam’s neck, killing him - and all of this completely on accident.
** Granted, nearly all of the main characters with the exception of Simon could probably fit under this trope, as their DNA has been tweaked, thus making their individual abilities much, much, ''much'' stronger than usual and leading to random outbursts of power. Most notably Chloe’s accidentally raising the dead ''in her sleep'', Derek’s already mentioned feats, and Liz’s telekinetic tantrum [[spoiler: right before she is taken away and murdered because she cannot control her powers]].

** In another version, Linus slugged hercules first. When Hercules was on trial, he was acquitted on the grounds that "everybody has a right to return a slug".

* Played for laugh in ''TheMuppetShow'' episode starring Christopher Reeves (way before his accident). The gest star is explaining to Miss Piggy that he wasn't at all chosen for the role of {{Superman}} on account of his strength... while accidentally tearing apart a cupboard door. Miss Piggy's reaction: "Yeah, right..."

** Possibly slightly averted - The MITD DOES know it's super strong (why else think if a game "who can hit the lightest"), it just still can't control it's strength...

* Common problem in the ''WhateleyUniverse'': Phase can change her density from intangible to super-dense. When she first manifested, she smashed her bathroom, bent her tub, and then went light and couldn't stop sinking through the floor. One of the things [[SuperheroSchool Whateley Academy]] teaches is control of powers. The bricks routinely have assignments like carrying a raw egg around to learn control.

* Alfred, the Bison construction worker from [=~Darwin's Soldiers~=], possess extreme strength. Most of the time he is in control of it but if he is angry then things tend to get destroyed. For instance, he crushed a piece of concrete that he was planning to use as an {{improvised weapon}}. A more extreme example was when he started pounding on Aisha's door and leaves the door looking like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. And he accidentally knocked over a vending machine while trying to free a stuck snack.[[/folder]]

* TheTick had a tendency to leave crumbling footprints embedded in the roofs of buildings whenever he went RoofHopping.

** In Infinite Crisis, a character named Superboy Prime (he's from the real world) attacks the Superboy of Earth-2, beating him badly whilst causing a huge amount of damage to the town of Smallville, until a (fairly large) group(s) of other heroes arrive as back-up. When a heroine named Pantha calls him a 'stupid kid', he retaliates by proclaiming that he isn't stupid, seemingly with the intention to merely smack her across the face...... He ends up taking her head off and killing her, visibly shocked when he notices the blood on his hand.