Kryptonite Factor / The DCU

The DCU

Comic Books

Comic Books

The following have their own pages:

• Superman

---

• Green Lantern:
  • The color yellow was a major weakness to the Green Lantern Corps. This was eventually explained in Green Lantern: Rebirth by the influence of a fear demon the creators of the rings had entrapped corrupting their powers, but also authorically served to constantly remind them their potential godlike power has limits (a Green Lantern Ring being otherwise limited only by the intelligence, creativity, and willpower of the wielder). When Kyle Rayner was the only Green Lantern, thanks to Hal Jordan's Brainwashed and Crazy Face–Heel Turn, his ring had no vulnerability to yellow. However, when Hal was brought Back from the Dead and the four Earth Lanterns took down Parallax, the Entity of Fear (and thus, the Yellow Impurity that prevented Lanterns from harming yellow objects), it was reinstated and retconned that Lanterns can overcome the weakness by recognizing fear.
  • Alan Scott, the Golden Age Green Lantern, had no vulnerability to yellow, but a similar vulnerability to wood. This was due to his more magical ring being connected to "green, growing things".
  • This was retconned into a long story involving one of Earth's first GLs. He was mad with power, so the Guardians gave him the wood weakness so primitive humans could club him to death. However, instead of dying, he put his soul into the power ring and battery, which collided with a Meteorite, becoming the Starheart. Alan Scott got his ring from the Starheart. Seriously. (It's hard to reconcile the original Green Lantern with the current Green Lantern Corps, and it ain't just down to his different weakness.)
  • The entire 'wood weakness' may have been a retcon itself; some of the earliest comics indicate he has 'invulnerability to metal' but not really anything else, allowing him to be, among other things, knocked unconscious by a teak vase.
  • It's worth noting however that because of this on-again/off-again vulnerability, the fact that Sinestro always has a yellow power ring is almost a Grandfather Clause.
  • Not quite. He was assumed to be dead while the fear entity was out doing whatever fear entities do.
  • In the Elseworlds storyline Superman & Batman: Generations, it was revealed that the yellow vulnerability was just a hoax made up by the Guardians to keep the Green Lanterns from getting too cocky. Alan Scott's wood weakness, however, was psychosomatic and imposed by himself; during his early adventures, while fighting some ruffians, one snuck up behind him and hit him with a wooden club. While the truth was that he just didn't pay attention and thus allowed the foe to get in a cheap shot, he instead convinced himself that he had a weakness to the wood and thus couldn't defend himself. Guess he had a bit of an ego going...
  • The Blue Lanterns are a bit different. Instead of having a weakness to another color, the Blue Lanterns are dependent on another color, namely green, in order to use their powers effectively. This is because green is the color of willpower and blue is the color of hope. You can hope all day long that something good will happen, but that won't accomplish anything unless you also have the will to help your hopes come true.
  • The Red Lanterns will die if their rings are ever removed, even for a few seconds. This is because upon their induction in the Corps, the Red Light of Rage replaces their blood. If someone removes the ring, the light goes out, and their body is suddenly devoid of blood — which is almost always fatal, for obvious reasons.
• Martian Manhunter: The Manhunter (who is both powerful and has a variety of useful powers) has a vulnerability to fire. And a rather powerful addiction to cream-filled cookies, though this is more a comedic device. (See 2000's Martian Manhunter #24). In The Silver Age of Comic Books, fire was treated by him as equivalent to Superman versus kryptonite, but Post-Crisis, it became more of a crippling phobia. (They seem to keep going back and forth on this one.) At least once, his fire vulnerability was explained by saying that he almost died in a fire once, and has feared it ever since. This falls apart when one considered that every Martian who's ever appeared in DC Comics has been vulnerable to fire. Current canon is that it's a genetic block implanted by the Guardians to lock away the burning Martians.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Early versions of Diana her lose her powers if she was tied up by a man, under "Aphrodite's Law", leading to some bondage imagery that must have been blatant even at the time of its introduction. As noted in her entry, that was quite deliberate. In The Silver Age of Comic Books, she went into an Unstoppable Rage if her bracelets were removed. Currently, Wonder Woman has no Kryptonite Factor weaknesses.
    • Partly because she is not as invulnerable as Superman or Manhunter. Bullets can penetrate her skin if she doesn't block them with her bracers and she needs to breathe, just as examples.
    • She does (or at least did — her continuity is a moving target) lose her powers when she changes back to her secret identity, thanks to a spell cast by her Arch-Nemesis Circe. Which raises the question of why she ever turns back to her secret identity, given that they look exactly the same. The only possible benefit to transforming is that it saves her the trouble of changing clothes.
    • In one story, Batman defeats an Amazon footsoldier by throwing a magnetic batarang at her, which sticks her bracelets together when she blocks it and removes her powers. This suggests that the weakness is common to all Amazons and that it survived into the modern age... or possibly that whoever wrote that story was taking a few liberties. This is actually used in one of the incarnations of Superfriends — Scarecrow has captured Wonder Woman and Robin in an attempt to lure Batman into a trap. When Bats arrives, Wonder Woman has her bracelets fused together, thus rendering her powerless.
  • Since the Queen of Fables gets her powers from fiction, she is weakened by anything that forces one to acknowledge the truth. Being bound by Wonder Woman's magic lasso drained her powers and caused her Rapid Aging.
• New Gods: The gods, while far from completely invincible (with the exceptions of the stronger ones like Darkseid) are all vulnerable to the very rare element Radion. In Final Crisis Darkseid kills his son Orion with a time traveling Radion bullet. Batman later fires the same bullet into Darkseid to fatally poison him; an act that eventually leads to Darkseid being Deader than Dead.
• A common vulnerability of aquatic superheroes like Aquaman and the Sub-Mariner is the need to remain hydrated (moreso than a normal person, that is). Generally, it's relatively mild - the need to be submerged in water at least once every 24 hours, for example — and comes up more as a way for villains to keep them prisoner than as something they need to worry about on a regular basis, but it does make them extra vulnerable to villains with heat-based powers, and a Crazy-Prepared villain will always find a way to exploit it (Aquaman was once made to be afraid of water, for instance). Aquaman's hydrophobia is especially notable because it was (albeit indirectly) brought about by Batman, as the contingency plans he had in place to pacify any rogue League members were discovered and put in place by his enemies.
• New 52: Inverted with Ultraman. He gets stronger by consuming kryptonite. However, sunlight weakens him. To counter this, he creates a solar eclipse after being amped up on kryptonite.
• Legion of Super-Heroes:
  • For unexplained reasons, the Emerald Eye of Ekron cannot stand green kryptonite and flees its presence. It will also shut down if it cannot see its host, but given it can see in almost the entire electromagnetic spectrum, this is very hard to accomplish.
  • The Great Darkness Saga:
    • The Oan Servant of Darkness has the same vulnerability to yellow as the rest of his race has (sometimes), and as such Sun boy is able to stymie him with yellow sun bursts.
    • The Superman Servant is defeated when Element Lad makes Gold Kryptonite to strip him of his powers, and Timber Wolf crushes him.
• DC heroines Black Canary and Zatanna both have powers related to their voice (Canary has a Sonic Scream dubbed the Canary Cry, while Zee has a Compelling Voice that can alter reality so long as she says it backwards). Naturally, their weakness is anything that can disable their ability to speak (such as a gag, something that covers their mouth, or injuries to their throat).
• The Flash is extremely vulnerable to the cold; coldness robs molecules of their vibrations, and as a result their super speed is drained by cold temperatures. Though sometimes this is used for environmental threats, like having the Flash struggle to work in a snow storm, its mostly weaponised by only a single enemy, Captain Cold, and to a lesser extent, his sister Golden Glider and her boyfriend(s) Chilblaine. This is one that's not as readily exploited as Kryptonite and the color yellow are for their respective heroes, strangely, despite the trouble often cited with making a challenge for a hero with super-speed.
• In one Deadman story, the CIA uncovers some weird alien technology in a Mayan temple capable of disabling Deadman's intangibility, allowing them to briefly capture him.

Films

Films

• DC Extended Universe:
  • Man of Steel:
    • Exposure to Krypton's native environmental conditions weakens and at first even incapacitates Superman.
    • Zod's Kryptonians similarly initially lose control of their powers and pass out while trying to adapt to Earth's native atmosphere, whereas Clark has had a lifetime to build up a tolerance.
  • Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice has Kryptonite discovered among the wreckage of the Kryptonian World Engine near India after the events of Man of Steel. It's explained as a radioactive isotope that actively harms Kryptonian cells. Before a large chunk is found in the Indean Ocean, the most they could find was only good for surgical tools. In contrast to most portrayals, a small amount has no effect just in proximity. Batman develops Kryptonite-laced gas grenades at his best bet at subduing Superman, with a spear as a Finishing Move. This also applies to Doomsday, who is Kryptonian in origin and just as vulnerable to Kryptonite.
• In Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, Superman's Evil Doppelgänger Ultraman is weak to blue kryptonite rather than green (like Bizarro). Ultraman wised up to this trope being used against him and at some point went out of his way to destroy every sample of blue kryptonite on the planet; the alternate Lex Luthor counters this by bringing a sample from the mainstream Earth with him.
• Superman: Doomsday contains an almost amusing example in that even Superman needed Kryptonite to defeat his clone with identical powers. Admittedly, the real Superman isn't quite at full strength at this point.
  Superman: You have all my strengths... and weaknesses.

Live-Action TV

Live-Action TV

• Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, setting the tone for most adaptations after it, has red kryptonite affect him mentally instead of the comicverse rules of random one-off effects. Just how dark-side it makes a Kryptonian go depends on the tone of the adaptation, but one thing remains the same: under Red K, Kryptonians are dicks. However, this series also had Red K used to power devices that would affect him in different ways. You get dickishness out of merely putting a chunk of it near him, though.
• Smallville made use of this so often it could get to ridiculous extremes...though, it was a Justified Trope in-universe: Clark's shuttle arrived alongside a massive Kryptonite meteor shower, and Kryptonite became a super-useful Unobtainium that provided a Meta Origin for most villains, with the Kryptonite Factor weakness merely an unknown side-effect. Kryptonite radiation induced metahuman mutations and, until season 4, was seemingly the cause of every superhuman (ergo, every super-powered threat Clark faced was also armed with his one weakness). It was also a great power-source and wonder-drug for any crazy scheme a villain could have, as well as seemingly able to do anything, including provide ink for counterfeit money.
  • Outside of weekly villains, Kryptonite was used as a means to intervene in Clark's relationship with Lana Lang (his original love interest). Yes, Kryptonite wasn't just used to empower villains and weaken his superpowers, but also cock block him, too. Lana had a necklace with a piece of Kryptonite on it, and the effect of it made everyone assume Clark just had crush-induced nausea. Later, Lana became a Man of Kryptonite after absorbing a large dose of it to save everyone, forcing the two to separate and never see each other again.
  • As for Blue Kryptonite as Bizarro's weakness, Blue K was introduced in the series in a storyline totally unrelated to Bizarro - it was a total off-switch for Kryptonian powers but otherwise harmless. However, when Bizarro appeared, he was no misguided, well-intentioned dimwit - he was a Phantom Zone criminal who could possess others, causing Possession Burnout, but ended up creating a new, duplicated body when he tried to possess Clark. He was Clark's opposite in every way, including weaknesses - he was hurt by sunlight and fueled by Kryptonite. This means that Blue K, instead of leaving him no power, gave him the opposite - infinite power, more than he could contain, blowing him to smithereens.
• Supergirl (2015):
  • The DEO revealed early on they have access to actual Kryptonite-based tech, and that general knowledge of it as a Kryptonian weakness is limited. They use it to subdue Supergirl, and J'onn uses a Kryptonite knife against Astra. In "Bizarro", Bizarrogirl is hurt with blue Kryptonite. Kara can also be hurt by other alien materials. Apparently, Superman and J'onn had a falling out due to the fact that DEO has been stockpiling kryptonite for use against evil Kryptonians. They finally reconcile, after J'onn hands the stockpile over to Superman.
  • L-Corp has some synthetic Kryptonite, but it's very unstable and has a tendency to blow up. Lena Luthor and Supergirl have a falling out over this, as Supergirl is absolutely insistent that the Kryptonite be turned over to her, which Lena is not happy about. Supergirl says being exposed to Kryptonite is like being tortured, but Lena says she's just being a hypocrite who doesn't want to be vulnerable. Supergirl later apologizes for her actions, saying that Lena was right, but she feels like she can't be vulnerable because she has the weight of the world on her shoulders.
  • Red sunlight, while not actively harmful, quickly renders Kryptonians as powerless as they were on Krypton. It's one of the DEO's primary weapons against Kryptonians. Flashbacks show that shortly before the start of the series, Lex (who wasn't able to get his hands on Kryptonite) somehow managed to turn Earth's sun red. When Lena insisted that humans can't survive with a red sun, Lex just retorted "neither can Superman."
• In Superman & Lois, Superman has the usual weakness to green Kryptonite and red sun. The DOD has developed a number of Kryptonite-based weapons that come useful when they end up having to deal with evil Kryptonians. Bizarro, being an inverse of Superman, is strengthened by the red sun and green Kryptonite but is weakened by the yellow sun and X-Kryptonite.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Initially, Wonder Woman would lose her superhuman strength if her magic belt was removed from her uniform. Similarly, she possessed no resistance to chloroform, which conveniently made its way into a number of Season 1 episodes. When the show was moved to the 1970s, the former weakness was addressed only once (and only then when she willingly removed her belt, lasso, and bracelets to assure an enemy that she did not wish to fight him), and the chloroform was used far less often.
  • There's another, less obvious weakness - Diana Prince needs enough freedom of movement to spin to turn into Wonder Woman. No villains deliberately exploited this (since very few knew about her secret identity in the first place), but several accidentally used it when they handcuffed Diana to a support beam or something similar.

Web Animation

Web Animation

• DC Super Hero Girls: The green stuff is around, and worse, Red Kryptonite has the same mental effects it does in most adaptations, but with one big difference: humans go dark side too. Uh-oh. Lena Luthor created living Kryptonite creatures known as Kryptomites, Adorable Evil Minions who still keep their harmful properties.

Western Animation

Western Animation

• Batman: The Brave and the Bold:
  • When Batman received powers on the planet Zur-En-Arrh, the supervillain Rothul quickly figures out the new Superman-like Batman's weakness: Quartz.
  • Superman fell under the influence of Red Kryptonite. As mentioned above, in the comics, it has a different one-off effect every time Superman is exposed to it, while on television it usually affects him mentally. This show has it both ways: Red K has random effects, and this time, its effect is gonna be Superdickery!
• DC Animated Universe:
  • Interestingly, in Superman: The Animated Series, it was originally planned that Supergirl, being in this iteration not from Krypton, but rather the sister-planet of Argos, would not have a weakness to Kryptonite. This is demonstrated in the "Superman Adventures" comic based on the series. By the time of Justice League Unlimited, though, the weakness was firmly in place.
  • The Justice League cartoon downplayed or ignored the Kryptonite Factor of every character except Superman. Green Lantern's vulnerability to yellow was never actually mentioned (though occasionally, if you watch closely, you'll see yellow stuff getting through his force barricades). J'onn J'onnz had no particular vulnerability or phobia regarding fire (though he had a bad case of The Worf Effect in the first season, and he would occasionally struggle in situations where there was a lot of fire). Aquaman never seemed overly discomforted by being out of water for extended periods. Wonder Woman... well, she'd lost most of her Kryptonite Factors by the time the series started anyway. Hawkgirl eventually gained a Kryptonite Factor that was more emotional than physical and ended up resolved by series end anyway. The Flash almost never used his powers to their full extent (not unlike Superman), with the idea that he never really pushed himself to excel...and when he did, he was given a convenient excuse not to again. Batman's "Kryptonite Factor" — that he was a perfectly mortal human — came up time and again, but, being Batman, doesn't really count.
    • The heroes actually abused this, by having Martian Manhunter pretend to be Superman in front of Lex Luthor to get a confession for a crime. Once J'onn stops pretending to be weakened by the kryptonite, a shocked Lex tries to shove it in his face to no effect.
    • Batman uses this trope against Amazo, a robot who can copy the abilities of superheroes, after he copies Superman. While it works the first time, Amazo eventually adapts and becomes immune to the effects of kryptonite.
    • In Unlimited, when Lex Luthor was in the body of The Flash ("The Great Brain Robbery"), he took down Green Lantern with a cup of (yellow) pudding.
• In the DC Super Hero Girls 2019, this is referenced by name when it turns out Wonder Woman — who is still in high school and relatively young for her age — goes from, in their words, "crushing it" in all matters to losing the ability to function outside of adoring gibberish whenever she sees Steve Trevor, the first man she ever saw in the "World of Man". Supergirl, as one who knows the Trope Namer personally, has issues with her experience being used as a point of comparison. ("Kryptonite is Kryptonite. It's extremely painful, and awful, and that dude [Steve Trevor] is not Kryptonite.")
• A Justice League Action web short called True Colors has Firestorm try to transmute Metallo's Kryptonite into lead, but he doesn't know its composition well enough to do it accurately, and it goes through several of its variants, causing Superman to suffer each of its effects during the battle. Traditional Green has its traditional pain/weakness effect, Red sends him into a rage, and Black splits him into good/evil versions. Gold and Pink make their screen debuts but don't have their usual effects; Gold gives him amnesia instead of depowering him, and Pink turns him into a woman instead of making him act Camp Gay. (He keeps his very male voice, though!)
• In the Teen Titans (2003) cartoon, Starfire is allergic to metallic chromium. The allergy is more dangerous to others than herself, as it causes her to sneeze energy blasts. It even turns out to be an advantage, as it allows the team to track a chromium-based bomb. It's also a big case of artistic license, as chromium is used in a lot of common technologies.

---