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A logical extension of Powers As Programs, this character has the ability to duplicate or steal the powers of not just one, but an entire group of people and use them simultaneously.
Usually this ability is given to a villain who specializes in fighting a particular group of heroes, allowing them to pose a serious threat despite being outnumbered. The character often also has an Achilles Heel regarding the use of the power that keeps them from being completely unbeatable.
Also commonly given to a villain who has acquired the powers of lesser villains. This is a good way to make a climactic Final Boss battle in a video game.
This trope could be divided into two components, having a power-stealing power and having all the powers of an entire group. While these very frequently overlap, sometimes the emphasis is on one: The X-Men's Rogue didn't make a regular point of absorbing an entire team's powers (since it would knock out and possibly kill them), while the Super Skrull lacked the ability to acquire new powers.
This is often the result of winning the Superpower Lottery. Compare Mega Manning and Ditto Fighter. Yin Yang Bomb is a particularly specific Sub Trope. See also Viva La Evolution, for villains who constantly grow stronger with or without power absorbtion. With Our Swords Scene is a Sub Trope.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- Kitabami in Tende Freeze is particularly notable because one of his copied powers was clinical immortality.
- The Book of Darkness in the second season of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, who had the powers of everyone whose Linker Core it had absorbed, including both heroines. Insert scene of said heroines flying away really, really fast when it decides to use a magnified version of the title character's strongest attack.
- Apocalymon in the first season of Digimon had the powers of every villain the digidestined had faced up to that point. Not that it helped.
- Cell in Dragon Ball Z is made from the combined DNA of most of the Z-team and thus was the sum of their powers as well.
- Carpaccio in The Law of Ueki copy copy the power of anyone he could stay near to for several days, granting him the powers of all his recruits.
- In Bleach, the Ninth Espada's special ability is to devour other hollows and steal their abilities. Since he is only shown using it once, however, this is a rare example of this trope being an informed ability. At least technically, since we know where he got that one ability from.
- In Shinzo, the last "king" the characters face absorbs the remains of the others, but is then in turn absorbed by Mushrombo, the Dark King.
- Late in the Mahou Sensei Negima manga, Negi forms a contract with the imperial princess and gets as his artifact a notebook that lets him summon and use the artifacts of anyone who has made a contract with him, like Asuna's canceling sword. The bigger his harem, the more powerful he becomes. It's apparently only temporary, though, and thus far it appears he can only use one at a time.
- And it'll become a simple partner-sharing deal when he hits eighteen and has to pick one. unless he does what his dad did, and ignores that rule.
- There's also the fact that if he keeps going at his current rate, he'll be the most powerful being alive by the time he's a teenager.
- Considering that his dad punched a god in the face when he was sixteen or so, it seems to run in the family.
- To Aru Kagaku no Railgun: The true purpose of the "Level Upper" that the manga centers around is to create a subconscious Hivemind of espers. Although the true goal was sheer computing power, it has the happy side-effect of giving its instigator the free use of the powers of all of its members, when an esper is only supposed to have one. By the time of The Reveal, this count is literally Over Nine Thousand.
- In Kenichi the Mightiest Disciple, Kenichi is fighting an opponent who can read his fighting style and negate it. So what does he do? He cycles between the fighting styles of the Masters he trained under, moving from each one to the next before his opponent can figure out his rhythm. Awesomeness ensues.
- Kenichi also incorporates elements of all his masters's styles into his self-developed techniques, making them even more powerful.
- In Ronin Warriors, the Warriors' super Armor of Inferno, could only be summoned by the combination of five of the battle armors. Apparently whichever armors were used wasn't important (save for the Wildfire Armor) as the three evil warlords were used to create the armor once as well. Also series Big Bad Talpa's own armor was the created by the combination of all nine of the warriors' and warlords' armors combined.
- The 11th Diary Holder, the closest thing to a Big Bad in Mirai Nikki, has the "Watcher Diary", which gives him the power to spy on the contents of all other Diaries, effectively giving him access to all the other powers.
- Naraku in Inuyasha got stronger by absorbing other demons/youkai and incorporating their powers into his own. He even got tricky enough to absorb powers from the heroes on occasion.
Card Games
- Another Magic: The Gathering: Experiment Kraj
 .
- Don't forget about Slivers and Allies (Each creature adds abilities to all other creatures of that type, for example, Slivers give all other Slivers each others abilities).
- The Yu-Gi-Oh! CCG comes with multiple takes on this trope.
- There are Union Monsters, which can turn themselves into Equip Spells for other monsters — including one particularly famous group of Union Monsters whose main gimmick was that they were Combining Mecha (see entry on page).
- There's Relinquished, which can steal your opponent's monster to equip it to himself to boost his own power levels.
- There's Buster Blader and other monsters (such as Red-Eyes Darkness Dragon, Goblin King, and Gren Maju Da Eiza or the infamous Slifer the Sky Dragon) that gain power for all monsters of a particular type or attribute on the field or in your discard pile (the effect varies; some (like Da Eiza or Slifer) even gain points for cards in a particular SPOT).
- There's the Element monsters, six monsters that were either Light or Dark attribute and gained fitting effects if Fire, Water, Wind, or Earth attribute monsters were on the field.
- There's the Six Samurai monsters, which gain their effects only when there's another one of them (of a different name) on the field (and thusly got many cards to get them out).
- There's the Equip Spell 'United We Stand', which fittingly enough gave the equipped monster 800 Attack Points for every other monster you controlled, and then there's the Continuous Spell 'The A. Forces', which was a card that, for every Warrior or Spellcaster you controlled, gave all Warriors 200 extra Attack Points.
- Duel Masters's CC Gs has this in the "Survivor" creatures, where the more Survivors you have on your field, the stronger your other Survivors become, as they share the abilities.
Comics
- The DCU:
- Amazo, who was designed to emulate the combined powers of the Justice League Of America.
- Superman once defeated him by disbanding the League. Cue the android saying just before deactivating: "That's not fair...."
- This would not have worked with the original Amazo who was preconfigured with the abilities of the then current League, but that Amazo would have probably been beaten in this case when Superman called in the reserves (instead of suddenly becoming way more powerful.)
- The Justice League also fought a one-shot villain named Paragon, who had the combined powers and skills of anyone within a certain radius — Plus One. Thus he was stronger than Superman, faster than The Flash, better at molecular rearrangement than Firestorm, and so on. Paragon's weakness was inability to one-up artificial or non-humanoid lifeforms, making this a Day In The Limelight for Green Arrow and the android Red Tornado.
- Paragon recently showed up in Superman, although since he's only facing Superman (so far) the trope doesn't apply.
- The Composite Superman was a slightly odd example; while he had the combined powers of the Legion of Superheroes, his usual opponents were the Superman/Batman team (making him "all their powers combined"). In the Post-Crisis continuity, he was replaced by the Composite Legionnaire, who did battle the Legion.
- A recent Action Comics storyline has upgraded Legion reject Absorbency Lad to Earth-Man, who has this power, but needs frequent recharges to keep it going.
- Marvel Universe:
- Super Skrull had the powers of the Fantastic Four (plus a couple of extras). Unlike most of the others on this list, Super Skrull's duplicate powers were not directly taken from the targets, but the result of reverse engineering.
- After the initial Super Skrull turned out to have some severe design flaws (and never actually did destroy the FF), other Super Skrulls were made to try to improve the outcome. Recently, the Skrulls made a breakthrough that allows them to mass-produce Super Skrulls with any desired combination of powers they have samples of DNA for.
- In Ultimate Fantastic Four, the Super Skrull appeared in an alternate future where the Fantastic Four did not gain their powers from their initial accident. The Skrulls came to Earth and freely gave superpowers to anyone who wanted them; however, the Super Skrull's suit gained the power of all superheroes that had gained their superpower through the Skrulls' intervention. He was "defeated" when the Skrulls wiped out all superheroes on Earth, thus allowing a non-powered Ben Grimm to overpower him, steal his suit, and go into the past to prevent the ploy from occurring.
- As a Shout Out to the Super Skrull, the second live-action Fantastic Four movie had a segment where Johnny Storm temporarily had the combined powers of his teammates.
- The Super-Adaptoid could theoretically have anyone's powers, but usually specialized in the Avengers.
- The Avengers' frequent foe Count Nefaria once siphoned the powers of three minion-level villains into himself (amplified to a less minion-y level) so that he could tackle the heroes physically.
- The Mimic started out as an X-Men opponent before undergoing a Heel Face Turn. He can copy anyone's powers, but maintains the powers of the five founding X-Men (the ones he faced at the time) as a default.
- X-Men team member Rogue (who started as a villain) is capable of doing this, but the unpleasant side effects of her power have limited her one-woman army moments to a handful of desperate situations.
- The Taskmaster has the Charles Atlas Superpower equivalent to this: because he has "photographic reflexes" and trains constantly, he can mimic any combat move or other physical feat that doesn't involve any actual superpowers. Being Genre Savvy, however, he decided that being a superhero didn't pay, and that supervillains tended to get the snot beat out of them no matter how good they were at it, so he went into business training Mooks for other supervillains.
- This has happened at times to Power Pack, due to their Powers As Programs Superhero Origin. if one of the siblings loses their powers for some reason, it usually will migrate to one of the others, and at times one or another of them has held all four powersets at once. One of their villains managed this trick with Applied Phlebotinum as well, but they were able to stop him and get them back (reshuffled once again, of course).
- Spider-Man fought a one-time villain called Fusion, who could replicate the powers of any and every superpowered being. It was later revealed to be a specific form of mind trick, and Spider-Man could overpower him easily when he refused to accept the illusion.
- In the short-lived New Universe, there was Philip Nolan Voigt (aka Overshadow, though he hardly ever used the codename) who gained souped-up versions of the powers of all paranormals he met.
- The New Universe also has Psi-Hawk, an unexplained being (ghost? psychic construct? who knows) that can be summoned by the teenage members of Psi-Force; it possesses amplified versions of their powers.
- A variation is present in the JLA/Avengers crossover. Think Superman was powerful before? Well, when Thor is brought down by a swarm of bad guys and Captain America's running mission control, he gets Mjolnir and the Mighty Shield.
Films — Live Action
- X-Men Origins: Wolverine turned Deadpool into one of these. Flimsiest explanation of his name ever.
- A Denzel Washington movie where Denzel is in the matrix tracking down a killer AI Program played by Russel Crowe. Crowe's character was created by letting AI programs of hundreds of serial killers fight and absorb each others' powers.
- To make matters worse for Denzel, when Crowe gets out of the matrix and into the real world, he gains the power to regenerated by eating glass. Yes, glass.
- The film is called Virtuosity, and the glass thing is because the AI is physical due to nanobots that can reconstruct silicon.
- Warriors Of Virtue ends its climax with the roos announcing their alignments Captain Planet-style — earth, water, wood, metal, and fire — to open a hole that sucks up Komodo.
Live Action TV
- Both Peter Petrelli and Sylar of Heroes have this ability by different mechanisms. Since Peter is often unaware that he's even picked up a new power, he's the rare All Your Powers Combined example of How Do I Shot Web.
- Peter, however, has far more potential for badassery, simply because he can absorb the powers of everyone he meets without having to go through any sort of ritual and notably without killing them. Too bad he's so often the Idiot Hero.
- Both of their powers have changed now. One fan theory is that originally, both Peter and Sylar had the same power, with mental limitations — Peter thought he was limited by the supers within range, and Sylar thought he had to examine their squishy brains. Now, Peter can only hold on to one power at a time (if he copies a new one, he loses the one he had), and Sylar has demonstrated that he can copy powers without killing.
- Peter was permanently depowered, and later, when in a deathtrap, injected himself with a Super Serum that gave him a reduced version of his previous power. Sylar was temporarily depowered, then cured. As far as this troper can tell, he was cured in a way which should have either given him all his old powers back or none of them, but instead it just gave him one back plus the ability to collect again.
- Season three has Arthur Petrelli, Peter's father, who can steal anyone's abilities through touch.
- In Mutant X, Season 2 Big Bad Gabriel Locke is the first mutant ever created, and also has several powers from each of the 4 power categories recognized by the show, as opposed to all other mutants, who only get a single power from a single category (although for some reason, after the first few episodes he mostly limited himself to throwing energy balls). Too bad for him, a side effect of all that power is he's eventually going to explode into bits.
- Appears in several variations in Charmed.
- Kamen Rider Den-O has Climax Form, where all the Imagin lend their powers at the same time. Similar but debatable is Liner Form's DenKamen Sword, which allows Ryotaro to access the abilities and fighting styles of all the Imagin, but only one at a time.
- Reused almost immediately the following year in Kamen Rider Kiva with Dogga, Garuru, Basshar and default Kiva forms meshed together into DoGaBaKi Form.
- Kamen Rider does this a lot. Before Climax Form and DoGaBaKi Form there was Kamen Rider Agito and Trinity Form, and before the DenKamen Sword there was the Perfect Zecter in Kamen Rider Kabuto, which combined the powers of the Kabuto, Drake, Sasword and TheBee Zecters.
- Kamen Rider Blade does it in two different ways. First is King Form, which used the powers of all 13 of Blades Rouse Cards, and second was an attack that combined the elemental powers of all four Riders.
- In the finale of Buffy Season Four, the rest of the Scooby Gang uses magics to implant their powers into Buffy so she can take on Adam.
Tabletop Games
- Tiamat, the evil god-queen of chromatic dragons in Dungeons & Dragons, has five heads, each of which has the color and breath weapon of one of the five breeds of chromatic dragon.
- Eclipse Caste Solars from Exalted have the unique ability to learn the Charms of other types of Exalted, as well as those of spirits and other non-Exalted entities.
- Meanwhile, the Terrestrial, Sidereal, and Infernal Exalted each have the combined powersets of their five patrons (the Elemental Dragons, Maidens of Fate, and Yozis, respectively).
- Many super hero games, such as Mutants and Masterminds, have powers like this built into the frame work.
Video Games
- Mildred Avalon, the Big Bad from Arcana Heart, is capable of using the abilities of all 11 of the Arcana. Their strongest special attacks? Those are Milly's regular special attacks.
- Marisa Kirisame of Touhou counts, to an extent.
- And so does Rugal Bernstein from King of Fighters.
- PROXY in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is a Sith droid that, using holograms, can assume the form of any person in its databank, including Jedi. Somehow, while in the form of a Jedi, PROXY can fight using their specific lightsaber style (and even use their Force powers!). He turns into most of the game's previous bosses (and finally into Darth Maul!) to fight Starkiller in a mid-game boss battle, and at the end turns into Obi-Wan for a brief fight against Darth Vader.
- The final boss of Far Cry (PC version) has the combined abilities of all three previously seen mutant soldier types: he has the cloaking ability of the stealth Trigens, the jumping ability of the soldier Trigens, and the incredibly high durability of the Giant Mook Fat Boy Trigens.
- The protagonists of Persona 3 and Persona 4 were dealt fate's wild card, able to use Personas of all the tarot arcana and combine them to make better ones. There's nothing any other character can do that the heroes can't, balanced by the fact that their Personas level up slower (forcing you to keep fusing to keep them respectable), and it's an immediate game over if they get knocked out.
- Archer in Fate Stay Night, whose Noble Phantasm involves duplicating Noble Phantasms of other heroes, including the skill required to use them efficiently in battle — the duplicates aren't as strong as the real deal, but they are disposable because he can create more if he needs to.
- Furthermore, Gilgamesh has a literal case of All Your Powers Combined because as the first historical Hero and the ruler of the (at the time) entire known world, he already owned all the Noble Phantasms (except Excalibur and Avalon, which were created much later) before they came into posession of the other heroes, and can thus summon them all at will — though unlike with Archer, Possession in his case Does Not Imply Mastery.
- The final form of the final boss of Tales of Vesperia, Duke, is capable of using a variety of your party's special abilities and spells against you (complete with one-liners used by your characters just to rub it in). His second (and more dangerous) Mystic Arte is a combination of those of your party members, and in addition to damaging your party it has the side effect of restoring a third of his max HP to him.
- Over the course of Sonic Heroes, Metal Sonic goes around scanning the heroes and gaining their powers. By the end of the game, his final form combines Sonic's speed, Tails's flight abilities and intelligence, Knuckles's strength, Shadow's Chaos Control abilities, and Chaos's ability to merge with water, manifested as control of metal, since he is made of metal. He uses this last power in particualar to create a truly monstrous final form by merging with Eggman's armada.
Web Comics
- Nanashi from Earthsong has the ability to use anyone else's soulstone powers if she can get her hands on a bit of their planet's element.
- Vaarsuvius of The Order of the Stick was temporarily granted access to a "Soul Splice" which gave that mage the combined spellcasting ability and magical might of three other powerful spellcasters. However, this came with some nasty downsides that mean Vaarsuvius is unlikely to try that again.
- Parodied in this strip from Queen of Wands:
" EVOLUTION!" " SURVIVAL!" " SELECTION!" " SCIENCE!" " H-AIIIIGH!" " BY YOUR POWERS COMBINED, I AM..." "Charles Darwin."
Western Animation
- Kevin 11 from Ben 10 absorbed all the powers of Ben's aliens (well, the original ten he had at the time), and can use them all at once. But they're 90% weaker than the originals. Thanks to Ben's advice during the Chained Heat episode, however, Kevin learns that he can combine various abilities to increase their efficiency.
- Inverted in Jackie Chan Adventures: the twelve talismans grant powers to the holder; combined they can be used to resurrect the Big Bad Shendu, who has all the powers due to them being his in the first place. They were forcibly extracted from him and separated into the talismans.
- Also happens to Jade in one episode who is infused with the powers of said talismans, in this case being a literal example of this trope.
- Shendu's son, Drago, initially only possessed the basic powers his father has (minus the talismans), meaning he could breathe fire. During the last two episodes of the series, he absorbs the demon chis of the other seven Demon Sorcerers (his aunts and uncles). This transforms his appearance and grants him the powers of all eight Demon Sorcerers.
- Nerissa, the second Big Bad of WITCH, is one of the previous five Guardians of Candracar, the predecessors to the main characters. One of her goals in the story arc is to absorb the other former Guardians, thereby gaining their powers. She nearly accomplishes this goal, but she, along with season one Big Bad Phobos, are absorbed by Phobos' minion Cedric, and he is the one who eventually gains the powers of all five previous guardians.
- When summoned, Captain Planet is formed from the power of the five Planeteers rings; while he's out, the rings are powerless.
- Which also leads to something of a subversion (and his Narmtastic catchphrase); once he's done, or not up to the task: "the Power is YOURS!"
- A somewhat notable example involved an episode where the Planeteers tried to summon Captain Planet, but due to being blasted into outer space with the rule of only being able to use their rings within the confines of the atmosphere (or something; it's been a long time), only two of the ring's powers managed to combine (Earth and Heart). Because of this, Captain Planet formed with a radically different color scheme, could not fly, and did not have super strength.
- In the Darkwing Duck episode "Jail Bird", Darkwing's Evil Counterpart NegaDuck uses Applied Phlebotinum to steal the powers of the other members of his Quirky Miniboss Squad (Bushroot, Megavolt, Quackerjack, and the Liquidator) to transform into Mega-NegaDuck. The depowered (and de-sized!) villains are forced into an Enemy Mine situation to stop Negaduck from destroying St. Canard and to get their powers back.
- Of course, as he gained all their weaknesses as well, Mega-NegaDuck was really no more dangerous than his usual Badass Normal self. Or maybe that was just because the episode had to end quickly by that point.
- In Avatar: The Last Airbender, the titular Avatar is a Chosen One who is the only person in the world capable of bending all four elements (usually, a person can only control a single element, that of their native nationality). When the show begins, however, the current Avatar is an untrained 12-year-old boy who needs to learn How Do I Shot Web.
- Code Lyoko: Once he is possessed by XANA, William gains a set of powers countering most of those of the Lyoko Warriors. His Super Smoke is Ulrich's Super Sprint combined with Aelita's flight with the added bonus of making him invulnerable. He can also deflect attacks (Odd), use telekinesis (Yumi), fire energy (Aelita), and use at least one form of Aelita's Creativity (i.e. manipulating electronic locks). Finally, he can enter the Code XANA in the towers.
- Kim Possible's Nemesis Shego's brothers also have powers of their own. With the help of a rod their Arch Enemy stole their powers and combined them. Later, Shego stole the rod for herself, combined all the powers even better... but lost it very quickly. Earlier, that bad guy had only used one of the powers at a time, when Shego combined them he claimed he didn't know he could do that.
- Parodied in an episode of Tiny Toon Adventures mocking Super Friends. When the Lex Luthor Captain Ersatz uses a device to suck out everyone's powers, the Bat Man Expy (a blowhard who had been rejected by the "Just Us League" earlier) comes in again and brags about how great he is, causing the Lex Luthor character to absorb his "powers". Specifically, being a pathetic loser.
- Similar to the Darkwing Duck example above, in the classic Transformers Generation 1 episode "Heavy Metal War", Megatron takes on the powers of his troops to defeat Optimus Prime in one-on-one combat.
- AMAZO's Justice League incarnation was able to use Awesomeness By Analysis to duplicate the superpowers of anyone it looked at, with its only limits appearing to be an inability to copy magical powers. It was even able to take superman's powers and then overcome his Kryptonite Factor after exposure to kryptonite. By the end of its introductory episode it had already taken the powers of the entire justice league (minus Batman) and left Earth to find new ways to evolve. By the time it returned in Justice League Unlimited it had become the most powerful being in the DCAU by far and defeated the combined Justice League without breaking a sweat.
- Batman The Brave and the Bold: "The Fate of the Equinox!"
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