History TheWorfEffect / WesternAnimation

* ''WesternAnimation/JackieChanAdventures'': Happens twice in "The Dog And Piggy Show". Jackie is beaten by [[ArrogantKungFuGuy Hak Foo]] to show how brutal he is. Hak Foo, in turn, is beaten by [[BackInTheSaddle Uncle]] to show how badass [[ImmortalityInducer the Dog Talisman]] is making him.

** Inverted in two ways in the movie. The first person infected by Grandfather's Senior Citi-zombie plague is JokeVillain the Toiletnator and Grandfather's power is showcased by how much more powerful Toiletnator becomes.

* This happens in season 2 of ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales2017'' with Donald Duck. In the shows first season, he has time and again shown to be an unstoppable fighter when he get's mad and to [[PapaWolf protect is family]]. So when General Lunaris is able to take him down (after Donald gets in a few good hits, must be said), we know the seasons BigBad is a threat to be reconned with.

* In ''WesternAnimation/KungFuPanda'', the Furious Five are apparently the strongest Kung Fu practitioners around, and we hear loads of stories about awesome things they've done in the past. The only time we actually see them unleash their full skills in combat, they lose handily to Tai Lung.
** It's even ''worse'' in ''WesternAnimation/KungFuPandaLegendsOfAwesomeness''. Even [[OldMaster Shifu]] gets pwned too many times to count, leaving the arguably least skilled member-Po to fight the baddie all on his own. Taken to insane amounts against Dodai's Iron Claws of Doom V2, the Five and Shifu are taken out in less than a minute. Po ''stalemates'' him. Despite having less training. Despite being the least skilled member. They want to make Po awesome and all...but throw the Five a bone! Throw Shifu a bone! Shifu has ''yet'' to beat his evil counterparts in a one on one fight! While Po's been able to do that every episode.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers'' the neighbor happens to be a powerful necromancer who can summarily handle most threats as if they were farcical or annoying diversions from his everyday dad routine. A couple of monsters of the week do manage to utterly wreck him when they appear on the scene, for instance 'Mother' and 'Dr. Henry Killinger'.

--> '''Storm''': [[ThisIsGonnaSuck Oh... this is bad.]]
--> '''Wolverine''': Yeah. Juggernaut.
--> '''Iceman''': Wait a minute! Juggernaut as in ''The Unstoppable Juggernaut''? The '''totally invulnerable''' Juggernaut!?
--> '''Beast''': That'd be the one.
--> '''Shadowcat''': So ''what'' could ''do'' this to him?
--> ''(Giant red energy Kaiju-looking thing roars and bursts out of a building)''
--> '''Shadowcat''': ...Never mind.

** ''World Tour'', this is the explicit purpose of [[IronicName Team Victory]]. Every single member of the team, excluding [[JokeCharacter Eze]][[MemeticLoser ki]][[ButtMonkey el]], was a very strong competitor in the previous two seasons, making it past the merge and lasting until near the end of the season at least once before[[note]][[ExtravertedNerd Harold]] in ''Action'' due to his [[TheSmartGuy intelligence]] and [[CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass multiple talents]], [[GranolaGirl Bridgette]] in ''Island'' due to her [[NiceGirl ability to make friends and work well with others]] (She was even voted off that season for being seen as a threat by Duncan), [[SassyBlackWoman Leshawna]] in ''Island'' and ''Action'' for her [[ActionGirl toughness and feisty attitude]] (In fact, she only got voted off in ''Island'' by sheer accident. Plus, she was voted off in ''Action'' because Duncan viewed her as a threat.), [[DumbBlonde Lindsay]] in ''Island'' and ''Action'' due to [[NiceGirl her good social game]] and being TheFool (However, she TookALevelInBadass during ''Action''), and [[GentleGiant DJ]] in ''Island'' due to his [[TheBigGuy strength]] and [[NiceGuy strong social game]][[/note]]. Cue [[ManipulativeBastard Alejandro]], who steps in as the new BigBad and knocks every single one of them out of the game way before the merge, effectively ''destroying a whole team single-handedly''.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheOwlHouse'': In "King's Tide", the Season 2 finale, [[spoiler:Belos spends the first 15 minutes of the episode absolutely wiping the floor with Luz. Even when she manages to seal away his magic and reduces him to a rampaging monster, and even with help from Gus, Amity, Willow and Hunter, Belos still takes the kids down by the end, and is seconds away from killing them. That's when King frees the Collector, who intervenes by catching Belos's scythe arm between two of their fingers, nonchalantly starting a game of tag, [[FingerPokeOfDoom and poking Belos's forehead]], which sends him flying into a wall with such speed that he just ''splatters.'' The biggest threat of the past two seasons, and the Collector reduces him to a smear on the wall within seconds.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfVoxMachina'': By the time Vox Machina sets the stage for the final battle against Umbrasyl, the first of the four ancient dragons they must defeat, they have defeated the younger dragon, Brimscythe, taken out a powerful vampire and necromancer and collected three of the Verges of Divergence, items that are supposed to give their wielders power to make dealing with threats like Umbrasyl possible. All in addition to them becoming more skilled themselves, more coordinated as a team, and getting the help of the Herd of Storms. Even with all of that, Umbrasyl proves so powerful that, after escaping their trap, he almost completely wipes out the Herd of Storms and proceeds to completely overwhelm and nearly destroy the party, only losing at the last minute thanks to a lot of luck and Scanlan pulling a last second rescue to kill the dragon once and for all.

* ''WesternAnimation/MightyMax'' Had Norman who skirted this trope. While he did get tossed around a bit more than one would think considering that he had centuries of experience. [[note]]He inspired the legends of Thor, Hercules, Samson, and Sir Lancelot.[[/note]] He did have plenty of achievements under his belt [[note]]He has defeated Ganesha, fought evenly with a OneWingedAngel Naga until the fight was interrupted, battled a god of violence for hours because neither could slay the other, killed a world destroying dragon multiple times throughout history, several episodes being a OneManArmy, defeating a champion of the greek gods to earn his immortality in the past and present, killing mutant scorpions that could take out fighter jets[[/note]] but he would get beaten a surprising amount. Of course Norman could'nt just solve all the problems of the show and sometimes the defeats were believable, no one is going to win every fight no matter how good they are and all manner of creatures appear in this show, other times it could be a little eye raising.

** The Gumball Guardians. Their function is to shout "Evil Detected!" and then get beat up. At their most useful, they might buy [[TheHero Finn]] some time to defeat the bad guy. Most notable against [[BigBad The Lich]]. One of the only subversions happens in "James II", where they successfully hold off an invasion of Ooze Zombies.

** The Gumball Guardians. Their function is to shout "Evil Detected!" and then get beat up. At their most useful, they might buy [[TheHero Finn]] some time to defeat the bad guy. Most notable against [[BigBad The Lich]].