Forgot About His Powers / Live-Action TV

Characters forgetting about their powers in live-action TV.

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• Arrowverse:
  • Laurel Lance in Arrow is generally portrayed as a tough, no-nonsense cop's daughter with reasonable self-defense skills. But in the first two-and-a-half seasons, anytime the plot calls for a Damsel in Distress, she will suddenly become incompetent. She has a shotgun during a home invasion! ...with only one shell? She ambushes a drunk man with a baseball-bat! ...and is promptly overwhelmed? The reason she doesn't qualify as a Faux Action Girl is because numerous times, she demonstrates a high degree of competence for an Action Survivor or Action Girl; it's only when she needs to lose that she suddenly becomes feeble.
  • Barry Allen constantly forgets he's the Fastest Man Alive. Numerous times, a villain is able to temporarily blindside Barry, and uses the distraction to run away. Barry never thinks to do a lap of the building and find them. Even if they jumped straight into a car and sped off, Barry can break the sound barrier from a standing start, so a quick jaunt around the block could be accomplished before the villain even had their seatbelt on. In fact, he once grid-searched the entire city in minutes.
  • Elseworlds (2018): John Deegan, who has copied Superman's powers, puts Barry in a headlock and threatens to snap his neck unless the heroes surrender. Barry forgets he could turn intangible to escape, as the special earlier showed Amazo, who had copied Barry's powers, could phase through Superman.
  • Supergirl constantly forgets that she can move nearly as fast as Barry and frequently slugs it out with opponents without using her speed to outmaneuver them. Her cousin appears to fall into the same trap. The same could be said about Mon-El, who is shown to be using his speed maybe once or twice, just to get somewhere fast, rather than using it in combat. For example, when facing off against Reign, he tries to get close to her by running like a normal man rather than accelerating to Super-Speed. Naturally, he fails to reach her.
• The Aquabats! Super Show!:
  • Crash Mclarson, bassist of The Aquabats! has the ability to grow when he gets emotional. In the episode Pilgrim Boy!, he's crying with the band when they hear Pilgrim Boy (in the form of a Michael Jackson-esque singer) sing a song to defeat a giant potato bug; but oddly enough, doesn't grow.
  • Eaglebones Falconhawk has a guitar that can shoot lasers, so when he tries to attack an escaped monster from a zoo in the Mysterious Egg! episode, he uses his guitar as a blunt instrument, and not using the laser.
• Babylon 5: In the early episode, "The War Prayer", the Home Guard members emerge at a meeting with two members of the command staff having been disguised using Black Light Camouflage, which renders them effectively invisible. However, in the ensuing gunfight, they choose to go with "hiding behind the crates" as their method of concealment.
• Charmed:
  • As Piper develops her explosive power, she uses her freezing power less and less, trying to blow up every enemy when freezing them would've been more helpful (some enemies are too strong to be blown up). Phoebe's premonitions were originally intended to help innocents, but she even stopped having them unless they were about herself.
  • The most jarring example is from Season 6 "Hyde School Reunion", in which one of Phoebe's old high school friends, who is now a criminal, threatens Phoebe with a gun unless Paige gives him a disguise. Instead of simply orbing the gun away, Paige glamours him into Chris, who was being targeted by demons at the time, and the demons end up killing him. The Charmed Ones just killed a human being, something they had sworn to never do in the past even if that person was corrupt, and Paige even tells Phoebe that they had no choice when they clearly did.
  • For that matter, how often do they use a Glamour to, say, trick a demon? Leo uses it once for the equivalent to a Danger Room Cold Open, they use it once or twice for Zany Schemes, but...
  • On a less serious note, the levitation power that Whitelighters possess (i.e. the power that gets Leo caught out as a Whitelighter by Phoebe in the first place) is forgotten on several occasions where it could be potentially useful. It is justified that Paige can't use it yet; she's not a full Whitelighter, but Leo has no such excuse until he loses his powers, that is. In a particularly bad example, Leo offers to get a broom to switch off the smoke detector despite having used his levitation power to do the job in a previous episode, forcing Piper to blow it up.
  • Also, Whitelighters are regularly shown "healing" objects, including pipes. This power seems to get forgotten a lot, including for a subplot about P3 getting closed down for bad plumbing. What things Whitelighters are and explicitly are not able to heal is wildly inconsistent throughout the series.
• Doctor Who:
  • The Doctor has several handy abilities, like the ability to go into a temporary death-like state of suspended animation (although at great physical effort) and the ability to read minds that virtually never show up when faking his own death or identifying the killer in a mystery would be useful. He also sometimes loses skills between regenerations, like his Third incarnation's trademark Venusian aikido being replaced with the Fourth Doctor's general brawling. He has also demonstrated that he has Hypnotic Eyes, especially in his Fourth incarnation, but almost never uses the ability in later incarnations. Writers are likewise prone to forget that he is supposed to have Super-Reflexes. His precognition ability has only been used twice — once in the same story it was revealed in, and another time in The Movie in a really weird moment that didn't appear to have much thought behind it.
  • Frequently enough for it to be a character trait, the Doctor and various other Time Lords have displayed something akin to face blindness (in "The Mind Robber" the Doctor struggles to recognise his best friend's facial features, in "Inferno" he can't identify the Brigadier in a photo, in "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" he fails to notice a man is Chinese, he can't tell if women are supposed to be beautiful or not in "City of Death"...), but also displayed the ability to immediately tell who another Time Lord is even after regeneration (in "The War Games" and "The Deadly Assassin"). These abilities/handicaps are entirely dependent on if they would be funny or plot-relevant to have this week — virtually any disguised-Master plot is dependent on the idea that the Doctor can't tell who he/she is, and some Doctors are attuned enough to faces to be quite obsessed with them when they're not struggling to work out if people have makeup on for comic effect.
  • "The Idiot's Lantern": The Doctor uses the psychic paper several times, but not when the police come to take away the faceless grandmother, earning him a punch to the face when he tries to talk them down.
  • "The Vampires of Venice": The Doctor and company need to gain access to the heavily-guarded fortified building where the villains live. The plan they use is to have Amy infiltrate the building as an applicant to join the shady "school" inside so she can unlock the entrance to a tunnel that the Doctor and Rory will use. At no point does using the TARDIS occur to anyone.
  • "Orphan 55": The Doctor has previously used a "respiratory bypass system" that allows a Time Lord to survive on little to no oxygen for extended periods. Here, while outside the dome she uses up oxygen faster than anyone else, and appears to be getting woozy and disoriented almost as soon as her air system's light turns red.
• In an episode of Frasier, Daphne has a fight with Martin's girlfriend Sherry and storms out of Frasier's apartment. She goes to Niles' place and asks if she can stay the night, which he eagerly agrees to, but Daphne then discovers that she left some medication behind. Niles tries to sneak in and get it, but he gets caught resulting in Daphne and Sherry talking things over and making up. Frasier tells a despondent Niles that he knew taking advantage of Daphne when she was vulnerable was wrong and that's why he snuck in and let himself get caught. Niles says that he had no choice but to try and get Daphne's medication to which Frasier replies "You're a doctor. Why didn't you just write her a new prescription?"
• In Fringe an episode pertaining to a flash forward tries to portray Olivia Dunham as having mastered her abilities by showing off her telekinesis. Dunham, a generally already battle hardened cop with lightning reflexes and an inexplicable penchant for headshots (before any brainwashing) is confronted by Walternate, brandishing a gun, and is promptly shot in the face after failing to react.
• Later seasons of Game of Thrones have an odd habit of forgetting Bran's divination abilities, even though they should make seemingly any plot relying on intrigue (i.e. most of them) a joke.
• In the Hercules: The Legendary Journeys episode "Judgment Day", Hercules loses his Super-Strength, but still manages to get the upper hand on Strife and beat him up. Strife begs Ares for help. Ares loses his temper and replies, "Fight him, you pathetic little fool. You're a god. USE YOUR POWERS!"
• Heroes:
  • Hiro Nakamura is one of the most powerful characters in the series with the ability to stop time and teleport; he's just too much of a dork to think of using it when he needs to defend himself. This was even given a nod in the series when his friend, Ando, deliberately antagonized a group of peeved gamblers, assuming Hiro would use his power to put them all down. Hiro, not comprehending the situation, was almost immediately KO'ed by a punch to the face. And when Hiro and his friend have to find out what's in a safe, finally get it open, only to have the document stolen by a woman with super-speed powers, Hiro spends several episodes trying to chase her so they can get the document back and see what it says. It never occurred to Hiro that he could have gone back yesterday and opened the safe and read the document before the thief stole it. He then could have replaced the document if he didn't want to cause a paradox or even replaced the document with a fake if he were really smart. This is also immediately after Hiro spent some time idly making time pass forward and backwards just to see a clock's hands move.
  • Peter Petrelli is far worse than Hiro when it comes to being handed the Idiot Ball, as he has basically every power ever. In the final episode of Season 2, Peter is using up immense amounts of telekinetic energy to break into a vault with a solid 24-inch thick riveted steel door. As impressive as this may have been for the special effects, he can walk through solid objects and could have saved himself a lot of time and exhaustion. This also caused issues with his trust of Adam Monroe, as numerous other characters warn Peter that Adam is using him and can't be trusted, Peter forgetting he can read minds. The best example comes in season 3, where in a Mexican-standoff hostage situation, rather than using telekinesis or time-stopping, he uses newly acquired super-speed to attack one of the enemies.
  • At the end of Season 3, when Nathan is killed by Serial Killer Sylar, Nathan's own daughter, Claire, is nearby and has blood that can bring him back to life. Yet, for some unknown reason, Angela and Noah send away Claire and Peter - who are unaware of Nathan’s death - to “look” for Nathan. Curiously, Noah, Claire's adoptive father, does not mention how Claire's blood can bring people back to life (having been brought back to life with her blood himself) but instead goes along with Angela's crazy plan to pretend Nathan is alive. They shape-shift Nathan's murderer, Sylar, into Nathan's likeness and pump him full of Nathan's memories to make him believe he is Nathan. Needless to say, the whole thing falls apart and Peter and Claire, who were in the dark about this insane plan, are exceptionally pissed when they learn Nathan is dead and it was Sylar who was masquerading as their brother and father.
  • Poor poor DL, who didn't even survive past the first season outside of Flashback, because although he had Intangibility, he kept getting shot. Out of the four times he got shot at, his power only helped him once, and the last time killed him.
  • Subtly seems to be in play in Volume 4 with Mohinder's Super-Strength: when anyone faints (which happens a couple times), he invariably catches them with help from whoever else is standing by, which plays out as if he hasn't got Super-Strength at all: gently lowering them to the floor as if they're a little too heavy to lift and all that. You should put someone in a horizontal recovery position if they're unconscious, but you shouldn't make a difficult, straining, two-person job of it if you're superhumanly stronger than any normal human being.
• Various Kamen Rider shows fall prey to it, oftentimes because the powers would eat too much budget:
  • Every single combat-capable character in Kamen Rider Kabuto possesses Super-Speed so great that it makes rain look like it's standing still. By around halfway through the show, all of them stop using it, and outside of occasional brief usages they all fight at normal speed. For several years it was thought that two characters introduced after this point couldn't use Clock Up because they never did, until they demonstrated that they could over a decade later in Kamen Rider Zi-O.
  • Kamen Rider Wizard gains a Super Mode late in the show that grants him invincibility and Super-Speed, which prompts him to forget all of his other spells because he never needs them to defeat anything he faces until he goes up against the White Wizard. When fighting the wizard, he uses the Super Mode, but forgets that it's invincible and that it has Super-Speed, while still not using any other magic. The White Wizard also forgets his power, previously demonstrated to work against that same Super Mode, to take all of Haruto's magic away with a wave of his hand.
  • Kamen Rider Ghost constantly forgets that he has the ability to fly and turn intangible at will.
  • Kamen Rider Ex-Aid grants one of the secondary Riders a form with both flight and long-ranged weaponry, which he only ever uses a handful of times even when facing opponents with no ranged weaponry of their own. Because all of the lead Riders except the main character are good doctors but terrible gamers, early in the show they also tend to forget that there are power-ups scattered around the area that can provide various forms of assistance. They overcome this flaw by the second act, however, and begin using the power-ups very consistently.
  • Kamen Rider Zi-O rides the line between this and Willfully Weak when it comes to his time manipulation powers. It's implied, but never outright stated, that he stops using his ability to rewind time because it was corrupting him by feeding his existing manipulative impulses.
  • Kamen Rider Zero-One spends the middle chunk of the show with lead villain Kamen Rider Thouser, whose signature trait is Power Copying. Being Unskilled, but Strong even before he started stealing powers, eventually he gets so many that it actually seems to make him worse as a fighter. Thouser ends up defaulting to either using the Attack Drone power from Shining Assault Hopper, which he considers the strongest, or using them all at once for a one-man Combined Energy Attack.
  • Kamen Rider Saber: In late appearances, Kamen Rider Calibur seems to forget that he has the Jaou Dragon Wonder Ride Book, which is much more powerful than his basic Jaaku Dragon and would make most of his fights much easier. In this case it's a case of the costume no longer being available, as the Jaou Dragon helmet was recycled for the Big Bad, but no in-universe explanation is ever offered for why Calibur suddenly stops using it.
• Knight Rider tended to both play to and avert this trope. There were lots of things demonstrated that were used only once or twice and then never used again that would have been very helpful (usually involving scanning something, sensing something, or nearly-telekinetic power). On the other hand, sometimes functions would be brought back after a couple seasons and suddenly used again. A few functions were explicitly mentioned as removed, such as the laser and water hydroplaner, but by and large KITT's functions were a fluid thing and you never knew which new thing might pop up.
• Legend of the Seeker: Zedd's powers, as lampshaded by Flynn, who says they seem inconsistent. There are many times when turning invisible or just burning an enemy would be very useful, but he doesn't.
• In an episode of Lois & Clark, Superman tries to stop a martial artist who has super strength and is defeated because of his foe's superior skill. Superman decides his only option is to take a crash course in kung fu, which pays off during the rematch. It never occurs to him to use his super speed, heat vision, or super breath.
• Over on the TV side of the Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • WandaVision: Vision and Darcy are constantly delayed when trying to return to Westview in the funnel cake van. Subverted when Vision has a moment of clarity that allows him to throw off the effects of the Westview hex and remembers that he can fly. He promptly takes off, phasing through the roof of the van leaving the contrived traffic problems behind.
  • The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: When Sam points out that Bucky could have used his metal arm to tighten a lug nut, Bucky admits that he sometimes forgets to use it because he's right-handed.
  • For the duration of Loki, the titular god of mischief seems to completely forget that he has Super-Strength and durability nearly on par with his brother Thor. He's instead routinely in danger of being overpowered by individual human combatants with no superhuman abilities. It's particularly jarring because, for him, only hours have passed since he hurled Tony Stark 30 feet with one hand and survived a brutal beating from the Hulk with barely a scratch. All of his variants seems to have forgotten these very valuable abilities as well.
• In Merlin, Merlin deserves an honorable mention for deciding that POISONING Arthur is necessary to fake his death, when there have to be a million other ways to do it. Arthur gets bonus points for going along with it. After the first few episodes, Merlin also completely forgets his original innate power of stopping time and telekinesis with nothing but a glare. As soon as he starts learning some spells that don't even have a fraction of this power, he only uses spells which could have him executed if anyone listens to his muttering. (Although time stopping can fall under Coconut Superpowers.) Lampshaded in "The Darkest Hour", when Merlin uses a spell to light the fire while the other knights are gathered around. Lancelot, the only knight who knows about his magic, glares at him. As we saw in Series 2, Merlin can light a fire just by moving his hand and there is no need to risk the knights overhearing him.
• Misfits:
  • Nathan Young started the show with Resurrective Immortality and later trades it in for Reality Warper powers. He never takes advantage of his powers when it is important. For example, he cheats at a casino by changing his dice results. When the casino finds out and sends guards to apprehend him, he runs away, and when he runs into a dead end, lamely tries to distract them by pulling a rabbit out of his anus, and is eventually caught and arrested. He doesn't even consider using his powers to escape. In his case, it's justified because he's a complete moron.
  • In one Season 2 episode this is discussed. A man who believes he's in a video game thinks that one of the Misfits is an undercover cop that he has to dismember. Simon suggests that Nathan say he's the undercover cop because he's immortal. However Nathan points out that it's easy for Simon to say that since he's not the one that will be dismembered.
  • Jess gets this every other episode in the last season. In one case she nearly takes a nail to the eye by using a peephole when she knows she's being pursued by an attacker. Her power is X-ray vision.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000 invokes this in the Gamera vs. Zigra episode when Gamera finishes off Zigra with a blast of fire, Crow commenting "Now why couldn't he have done this in the first place? Did he forget he can do this?"
• In No Ordinary Family Stephanie seems to constantly forget that she has superspeed and could solve their problem in a fraction of a second. It doesn't help that when not using her powers she doesn't seem to have any kind of Super-Reflexes, and terrible normal reflexes, so she's been hit by attacks that even most non-speedsters could dodge. One particularly notable example comes in the finale, when they're encircled by men with guns and after about 30 seconds of them talking and trying to find another way out, she remembers that she can just punch them out before they do anything, and does.
• In Episode 9 of Once Upon a Time in Wonderland the Red Queen is easily kidnapped and almost killed by the local inhabitants. She never uses her magic to defend herself.
• Vampires on The Originals tend to rather frequently forget that they can move faster than the eye can see and are strong enough to snap the necks of people with less effort than it takes to snap a twig, and because of this just stand there and let humans and witches that they could easily kill capture and do whatever they want to them all the time.
• Power Rangers:
  • From Season 1 of Mighty Morphin, after Tommy has lost his Green Ranger powers because of Rita's candle, it doesn't occur to her to have Finster recreate one of his monsters that the five original Rangers—Jason, Zack, Billy, Trini, and Kimberly—couldn't have defeated without Tommy's help, such as Spidertron, his Frankenstein monster, Babe Ruthless, or the Samurai Fan Man. Likewise, in Season 2, after Lord Zedd's monster Turbanshell has stolen what is left of Tommy's powers after he has temporarily regained them (as of the 2-part episode "Return of an Old Friend" in season 1), it doesn't occur to him to have Finster recreate one of his more recent monsters that the Rangers couldn't have defeated without Tommy's help, such as the Lizzinator, Soccerdillo, or Dramole.

  • From Power Rangers Turbo, the explanation for the Turbo powers being used as opposed to the Zeo powers was to go to an island to stop Divatox from summoning a big monster. Yet, after that, they never think to use their Zeo powers ever again. This is especially stupid when you remember that the Zeo powers are always supposed to be getting stronger.
  • Also from Turbo, the episode "Passing the Torch, Part I" has the Rangers being overwhelmed by monster attacks, and them seemingly forgetting that they're Power Rangers for most of the episode, fighting them all unmorphed, despite being clearly outmatched.
  • From the "Super" half of Power Rangers Megaforce, the Rangers gain an entirely new set of powers at the start of the season. The problem, however, is that the Rangers still have their regular Megaforce powers - it would be one thing if they established that the new villains were stronger than the Megaforce powers, hence the need to stay with the Super Megaforce power, the Megaforce powers evolved into the Super Megaforce powers like the Zeo Crystal^note admittedly, that would require the explanation of the suits changing from an angel theme to a pirate theme, but it would be better than nothing or if the Megaforce powers had been destroyed like in Mighty Morphin or at the end of the aforementioned Turbo, but they don't even bother doing that. This is largely due to the decision to adapt both Tensou Sentai Goseiger and Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, and all footage from the former hadn't been used up. The show does somewhat justify this in the later half, when they adapt the final part of Goseiger mid-way through the second half of Super Megaforce^explanationMegaforce, which was the adaptation of Goseiger, adapted the majority of the plot of it's source material; however, the finale, where Brajira/Vrak is dealt with and the fate of Gosei Knight/Robo Knight is resolved, was not adapted, but instead of having the final battle with Vrak result in the destruction of their powers, or them giving their powers up to create a second team, after Vrak is dealt with, the Megaforce powers remain for no good reason other than the fact that they only had 3 episodes left of the series.
  • Power Rangers Wild Force, Ransik and Nadira the reformed main villains from Power Rangers Time Force return but apart from the flashback scene that shows the creation of the Mut-Orgs their powers from Power Rangers Time Force don't return and they are not even mentioned.
• In Quantum Leap, there are several episodes in which Sam has to keep someone from being kidnapped, and the obvious solution — have Al stay with the victim at all times until something happens — rarely if ever occurs to them.^note In one episode, Al uses his ability to spy on twin ladies in a dressing room. But no actually useful spying. Generally speaking, Al's potential for spying is greatly underused. The novels handwaved this by saying that events and people tied closely to That Which Must Be Set Right become ambiguous the closer Sam comes to the moment he has to save them and that Ziggy can't lock Al on to events to witness them. (Which also covered why Al popped in a few times on where the savee is supposed to be only to find out they had disappeared.)
• In Smallville, Clark Kent, all the time. Like in "Legion" when he basically stands there as the Persuader pummels him. There are many cases in which he could have solved problems with Super-Speed, X-Ray Vision, superhearing, telescopic vision or a combination thereof. The worst case is probably flight. It is shown in "Crusade" (Season 4 premiere) that he physically can fly (and he has unconsciously floated before). Thanks to Executive Meddling, lame excuses (mostly involving him having trouble psychologically accepting his alien nature) are made to explain why he is completely incapable of flight until the finale. That is seven. Years. Later.
• M-16 users in Stargate Atlantis and Stargate SG-1 never once use the M-203 grenade launchers that are usually attached to their M-16s, even when faced with squads of Jaffa. In addition, the standard hand-held grenades are almost never used, despite multiple situations throughout both series where a single M67 grenade would eliminate their opposition. Even the M67 grenades "forget their powers" when the one grenade explosion in SGA Season 3, Phantoms, doesn't even damage Shepard, despite the 6 sticks of dynamite equivalent of the grenade and the blast being less than 15 feet away and nothing between the metal fragments lofted by the blast and Shepard. (At that close range, the effect would be somewhat like a hummingbird being hit by a 12 gauge shotgun blast.)
• The various Star Trek series regularly do this. It's the 23rd or 24th century, yet the crew is frequently in peril from threats that even 20th century technology could handle. They repeatedly forget that their own warp drive, shields, transporters, phasers, replicators, holodecks, sickbay, etc., etc., can perform miracles.
  • This is especially jarring in episodes in which transporter failure ("The Enemy Within") drives the plot. No one seems to recall the shuttles, the shuttles' transporters, or the cargo bay transporter system.
  • In any scene where there is a man-to-man on the ship/station, they could put the transporter to work, simply beaming the enemies into the brig or even just erasing their patterns without bothering to reconstitute them.
  • Intentionally done in the episode "By Any Other Name", when Kirk makes the Kelvan leader Rojan jealous by cozying up to Kelinda, until Rojan gets so angry that he completely forgets about his superior weapons that gave him the advantage in their first confrontation and attacks Kirk in rage using his fists, where Kirk is the one with the advantage this time, and manages to subdue him.
  • Another Deep Space Nine example, in the second season finale (which introduced the Dominion formally, with the Jem'Hadar and the Vorta), a Vorta is able to use a powerful psychic telekinetic attack in combat and to escape from a holding cell. No mention of these abilities are ever made again, let alone actually used by a Vorta, even in situations where it could have been a huge advantage for them. Word of God says that only that particular Vorta was given those powers.
  • The variable effectiveness of phasers is a common plot hole in Star Trek, especially the later series. In the Star Trek: The Original Series a small handheld phaser the size of a smart phone could potentially disintegrate a person or blow the side off a building. In Star Trek: The Next Generation Data once vaporized all the water in an aqueduct system stretching miles up a mountain using one. But in Deep Space Nine Federation troops fighting the Dominion are lugging around these huge phaser rifles that fire little bullet-like pops of energy that can barely put a hole in a wall, leading to many combat scenes distinctly similar to their major competing franchise.
  • Cloaking technology is a major source of tension, particularly between the Federation and the Romulan and Klingon Empires, who both use it extensively. The fact that the Federation could potentially counter the utility of cloaking devices by simply recruiting more members of telepathic races such as Betazoids into Starfleet seems to have somehow escaped their thought processes entirely.
  • Deanna Troi's abilities vary wildly over the course of the show. In some episodes she can easily sense beings on other ships or on a planet's surface while she is on the Enterprise in orbit. But when this kind of power would eliminate suspense from the plot, she mysteriously becomes unable to sense people she knows very well, even if they are relatively close by. Almost worse, as shown in the pilot, Will Riker learned to hear her thoughts if she projects them, yet they never use this or work to develop it later on, even though it would be very useful. "Disaster" springs to mind; a fair bit of tension is milked from the fact that the warp core is on its way to a breach, and Deanna and those who are with her know this but aren't in a position to stop it while Riker and Data don't know but are in a position to stop it.
  • Geordi LaForge can see a large part of the EM spectrum with his visor, yet in the episode "Disaster" he can't see a plasma fire behind a panel — Dr Crusher has to tell him that the wall is hot. And yet, in First Contact, he uses his new bionic eyes to find Cochrane from far away.
  • In Star Trek: Generations, the Enterprise D sustains fatal damage when the Duras sisters manage to get hold of its shield frequency, allowing their weapons to pierce the Enterprise's shields. It never occurs to any of the main characters to simply change the shield frequency when this happens, even though it was the first thing they tried during a similar situation in "The Best Of Both Worlds Part 1" (and in that case, Data was able to rotate the shield frequencies so quickly even the Borg couldn't keep up with him, forcing them to drain the shields instead — something the decrepit old Bird of Prey the Duras sisters were using couldn't have managed). The real reason behind this is the producers wanted to destroy the Enterprise D so that they could build a new Enterprise that would look better in the cinema format for the next film, but they could have come up with a better way to do it.
  • In the episode The Doomsday Machine, Kirk destroys the machine by getting the Constellation's impulse engines to overload and detonate when Kirk pilots the ship into it, but no one ever thinks of firing phasers or photon torpedoes into the opening rather than at its hull, which would have accomplished the same thing and would have been much easier.
• Supernatural:
  • In the sixth season finale, Castiel needs a way to ensure that Sam, Dean, and Bobby do not interfere with his plan to open a door to Purgatory. He has the power to render people unconscious with a touch. He could also teleport them to the other side of the planet, so they're too far away to get back in time to stop him. Or he could Reality Warp them into a room with no doors, windows, or other exits, trapping them there until he decides to release them. If he was feeling particularly pragmatic, he could even just kill them and then resurrect them afterwards. All of these are abilities he has previously demonstrated. So instead he decides to tear down the wall Death built in Sam's head to protect him from his memories of Lucifer's cage, leaving him stuck in a Battle in the Center of the Mind, and then tries to blackmail Dean and Bobby into not interfering by threatening not to heal Sam if they do. Of course, this doesn't work, Dean and Bobby interfere anyway and even Sam is able to overcome it at the last moment. Possibly justified by the character's emotional instability — he's very upset with the Winchesters and Sanity Slippage has taken a visible toll. The course of action he chooses is the one that hurts them the most. He also doesn't really consider them that much of a threat. Their attempts to interfere basically accomplish nothing and he achieves his goal with ease.
  • Season 9 has a subplot where Sam is possessed by an angel and doesn't know it. As the season progresses he slowly starts realizing something is up due to strange occurrences like blocks of time he can't remember and Dean calling him Zeke. Problem is, angels possess the ability to both wipe memories and create new ones. Ezekiel could easily just delete anything that might make Sam suspicious and replace it with something benign, but he doesn't because Sam needs to be suspicious so the show can meet its angst quota. Ezekiel does make repeated reference to the fact that he's still weakened by the fall from Heaven and healing along with Sam, so creating false memories might be beyond him at the time. Although he does manage a quick resurrection in one episode, even if it drains him, and near the end of the possession, when he's getting stronger, he's able to trap Sam in an illusion while he takes over the vessel completely.
• In True Blood, Sookie has the ability to read most people's thoughts. There are many times where a character is able to trick her or give her false information, because she doesn't seem to remember this ability. Especially since early episodes imply that she can't turn it off. Possibly justified. Season 5 reveals that the overuse of her powers has caused them to weaken, and she mentions that her telepathy has not been as effective recently.
• In The Twilight Zone (1959) episode "Escape Clause", Walter Bedeker is given immortality and is unable to feel pain. Instead of setting out to have a long and happy life, he defrauds several businesses and confesses to killing his wife, which he didn't do. In court, he works to get himself convicted so he could try out the electric chair, but is then given life in prison instead, although it's not explained what he would have done after going to the electric chair. It is at this point that he uses the "Escape Clause" which causes his own death rather than face life in prison. At this point, he has apparently forgotten that in addition to being ageless, he is also invulnerable. How easy would it then be to escape from prison if he doesn't have to fear injury or death? He could wait for an opportunity and make a break for the barbed wire or electrified fence and just climb over it. What are guard dogs or gunshots to someone who is invulnerable? In the very least, he could wait it out.
• Yet again, Ultraman Cosmos spends Ultraman Orb: The Origin Saga using nothing but Luna Mode, in spite of the Belzebs being Always Chaotic Evil and warranting lethal force.
• Damon Salvatore on The Vampire Diaries uses an ability to create fog in the first few episodes and then never does it again. He also seems to have an ability to compel someone from far away which he also never uses again. It's not clear whether he still has these powers in later episodes, or if this is a case of Early-Installment Weirdness.
• Warehouse 13:
  • Jinks is supposed to be able to detect when people are lying to him. Soon he begins to get lied to as much as the other characters without detecting anything. This ends up getting him killed, although he gets better.
  • The Season 2 finale has a nice subversion. H.G. Wells betrays the team, the kind of thing Pete's vibes should have picked up on as they have before. Myka later confronts him about it, and realizes that he did feel those vibes, but didn't voice them because Myka trusted H.G. Wells.
• In the failed Wonder Woman TV pilot, Wonder Woman tortures a patient for information. Couldn't she have just used, uh, ....HER FREAKING MAGIC LASSO THAT MAKES PEOPLE TELL THE TRUTH?! She even throws it on the bed beforehand, and it's outright stated that her lasso can make people tell the truth! Although, depending on the particular incarnation, the lasso's powers have varied from outright forcing them to tell the truth, to being unable to lie (but they weren't compelled to answer at all), or merely letting Wonder Woman know when she's being lied to/deceived.
• In the Xena: Warrior Princess Twilight of the Gods arc, Xena had to fight the Greek gods. Though basically capable of beating any mortal in hand-to-hand combat and even capable of taking on Ares (the God of War) if he didn't use his powers, Xena still may have found it a challenge facing beings who could attack while invisible, create monsters, open portals to other worlds, time travel, warp reality, choose forms a hundred feet high, destroy buildings from the sky with giant fireballs without even coming near her, etc. Out of kindness they chose not to use these abilities when confronting her.

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