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The Assimilator is terrifying because of its virus-like ability to absorb people body and mind into itself, creating a threat that can spread faster than a Zombie Apocalypse. However, The Assimilator's voracious and indiscriminate appetite may lead to it eating someone who proves Too Spicy for Yog Sothoth. To keep the food metaphor, this person may well cause severe indigestion as they fight from the inside and take control back from the Assimilator, even to the point of usurping the title of Hive Queen.
Alternately, if You Are Who You Eat lets the Power Parasite steal another's powers (or even just regular Mega Manning or cloning), then their theft may go horribly right when their Weaksauce Weakness is also stolen and allows enemies an easy way to defeat it. To make matters worse, the Assimilator probably has no idea it inherited the weakness or how to minimize it or stop it being exploited.
Both types aren't limited to just beings. Certain inanimate objects, such as glass, can be absorbed to still apply for this trope.
Compare No Sell, where the attempted assimilation just plain fails, and Feed It a Bomb, where a bomb is absorbed. A kind of Phlebotinum Rebel. This could also be said to be what happens when you fail to hijack Cthulhu.
Spoilers ahead!
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Dragon Ball Z:
- Buu tries to absorb Vegetto, but the absorption fails and Vegetto (now split into Vegeta and Goku) releases all the victims Buu had absorbed previously.
- The Supreme Kais weakened Kid Buu into Buff Buu and finally Fat Buu when he tried absorbing them. It seems inconsistent considering how high their power-levels are, but its explained that because they are pure good, and Buu pure evil, the two forces diffused each other.
- This is actually a an Adaptation Induced Plothole. Only the Anime explicitly states that Buu got weaker with each absorption. The manga on the other hand, implies that the giant, hulking Buu is stronger, but Kid Buu is more dangerous because he's completely insane.
- The evil Buu's absorption of the good Buu comes back to bite him several times, as the good Buu's memories of his friendship with Mr. Satan prevent Buu from killing his former friend, and he is convinced to wait for Goten and Trunks to prepare for their fight with him when asked to do so by Mr. Satan's daughter Videl.
- Two examples from the Budokai video game series; in the first Budokai game, there's a What-If scenario where Cell accidentally absorbs Krillin instead of Android 18, leading to a severely weakened Cell being defeated by Yamcha and Tien. In the second Budokai game, Buu's absorption move randomly selects a character to absorb out of Gohan, Gotenks, Vegeta, Cell, Frieza, or Yamcha and Tien together. While the other absorptions make Buu stronger, the last one makes him weaker.
- YuYu Hakusho: When Sensui Seven member Gourmet eats Elder Toguro to get his powers, Elder Toguro ends up taking over his body later.
- Naruto: When Orochimaru tried to steal Sasuke's body, Sasuke reversed the process and absorbed him instead.
- Also, there's always the threat that the Tailed Beasts can take control of their hosts and go on a rampage. But a strong enough host can instead summon their power at will, and an even better host can make friends with their beast.
- Fullmetal Alchemist:
- Towards the end of Brotherhood, the Big Bad Father absorbs his Anti-Hero homunculus Greed, and his Ultimate Shield power with it. Having been previously defeated by Edward Elric, who figured out his extreme defensive abilities are merely carbon-based, Greed decides to turn his powers the other direction and turn Father's body into pathetic frail graphite...allowing the heroes to K.O. Father for good.
- Previously, after Pride absorbs Kimblee, he is finally defeated by Ed Elric due to Kimblee weakening him from the inside.
- Rosario + Vampire: When Doppelgänger copies a person, he gets all their powers... and their weaknesses. He's defeated when he copies Moka, only for Tsukune to slap the rosary on him, weakening him enough for them to defeat.
- In InuYasha, this is how Moryomaru and the Infant are defeated by Naraku. Generally speaking, doing this to Naraku's never a good idea.
- In Devil Man, any human who retains his/her reason can reverse Demonic Possession, granting them access to the demon's powers. The main character pulled this off on Amon, one of Hell's most powerful residents.
Comic Books
- Even though Rogue of the X-Men is not an assimilator proper, her absorption power has often enough resulted in assimilation backfire, e. g. absorbing a particularly strong personality may result in her control of her own body to the persona she absorbed. This happened with Spiral, for instance. She also sometimes had to struggle for control of her own body with some other personalities she absorbed, especially with that of Ms. Marvel.
- Superman villain Parasite is a power thief who also gains the victim's weaknesses. This means whenever he steals Superman's powerset, Superman can actually beat him by using kryptonite.
- Carnage, unlike his father Venom, has total control of his symbiote, using "I" instead of "we".
Film
- In The Matrix, Agent Smith assimilates The Oracle, which appears to backfire in some way (since she knew he was coming).
- It backfires because, as she explained to Neo, "We can't see past the choices we don't understand." Smith could see that Neo would die, but not the reason he sacrificed himself. At the end, Neo's assimilation gives Smith a direct link back to the machines, allowing them to purge the rogue AI.
- In Ghost Rider, Blackheart No Sells Blaze's penance stare power the first time it's used on him since he doesn't have a soul. When he draws the trapped souls of San Venganza into his body in a bid to increase his power, Blaze realizes that he's made himself vulnerable to the stare and uses it to destroy him.
- In Wreck-It Ralph, the main villains include Cy-bugs, which take on the features of whatever they eat. A Cybug eats King Candy, who is assimilated a little too well and becomes said Cy-bug's primary consciousness.
- Also, the Cy-bugs from Hero's Duty are metallic from eating the metal environment around them. When they were in Sugar Rush, they ate and became the candy from the game, making it easier for Ralph to simply smash them.
- This is how Freddy Krueger dies in the fifth installment of A Nightmare On Elm Street. He's absorbed the souls of three of Alice's friends, and a vision of his mother spurs them on to tear him apart from the inside.
Fan Fiction
- In a Star Trek/Doctor Who/My Little Pony crossover fanfic titled "My Little Enterprise", the Doctor resolved the whole plot by going back in time to the destruction of his homeworld and impersonating the leader, tricking the Borg Celestia into having him assimilated, which allowed him to disrupt her during the final confrontation.
- During the Final Battle of the Pony POV Series Chaos Verse, Nightmare Phobia absorbs Discord and Fluttercruel in order to feed off their Chaos energy. However, this allows them to attack her from the inside, severely weakening her.
Literature
- In the Discworld novel Carpe Jugulum, the Magpyrs suck Granny Weatherwax's blood and attempt to turn her. She survives the experience without becoming a vampire; the Magpyrs aren't so lucky, however, as feeding on Granny Weatherwax has allowed her to turn them. By the end, they're craving tea instead of blood and even talking like her.
- Animorphs: By morphing a Howler, a race of Psychopathic Manchildren with a species-wide Hive Mind (anything one sees, all of them know), Jake manages to implant the memory of his and Cassie's First Kiss. Because of the Howlers' Blue and Orange Morality, the concept of love is completely alien to them, and now that they've been exposed to it, they don't want to fight the protagonists. The Elllimist tells him that the next time they're deployed, they'll try this novel tactic, which will ensure that they will never be used as shock troops again.
- Arguably, in Cold Days, we find when Harry became the Winter Knight, his power is now directly linked to Queen Mab. Butters comments this grants that person a unique vulnerability to Harry, although the events of the book heavily imply that was precisely the desired goal, for Harry to act as an independent check and failsafe.
- Also, in The Dresden Files, when the Red Court took Susan into their midst, it proved to be an interesting setback in "Changes", when Harry causes a powerful death spell meant for him to genocide the entire Red Court, by backfiring the spell using Susan as a willing conduit.
Live Action TV
- Star Trek: Voyager:
- The series eventually lampshaded the Kazons' Too Dumb to Live tendencies by having Seven of Nine remark that assimilating them would weaken the Borg Collective.
- In the series finale, "Endgame", Admiral Janeway infects herself with a bioweapon before meeting the Borg Queen. When the Queen assimilates her, it infects that entire collective.
- Doctor Who:
- In the Christmas special "The Next Doctor", the Cybermen attempt to upgrade Miss Hartigan, but she's so strong-willed that she not only survives the process with her mind intact but manages to rewrite the Cybermen's programming.
- In the "Daleks Take Manhattan" two-parter, in an experiment designed to save the Daleks from extinction, Dalek Sec absorbs human DNA and mutates itself into a human/Dalek hybrid. The new hybrid-Sec finds himself developing human values and emotions, which eventually causes the other Daleks to execute him in disgust.
- In "Smith and Jones", an alien drinks human blood so the Judoon would think she is a human when bio-scanned. The Doctor tricks her into drinking his blood, so she still looks like an alien through the bio-scanner.
- In "Asylum of the Daleks", Oswin Oswald is physically converted into a Dalek, but fights off the associated mental conditioning. It ends up with the Daleks losing all knowledge of the Doctor.
- In the Hyperdrive episode "Harvest", the Brilliant, but Lazy Jeffers is temporarily assimilated by the Red, Shiny Robots of Vortis. After the crew escape and sabotage the robot ship, none of the robots can be bothered to repair it.
Toys
- BIONICLE:
- Vakama and Onewa managed to defeat a Tunneler, a Rahi which had the ability to take on the form of any force directed at it, by combining their Elemental Powers to transform it into brittle glass.
- In the Kingdom Alternate Dimension, Teridax is killed after he absorbs Matoro, who fights back successfully due to Teridax's weakened will due to his plan's failure in that dimension.
Video Games
Web Original
Webcomics
- The Borg Expy in an early Sluggy Freelance strip
 run into this problem after assimilating Riff and Torg. "Since you have come among us, all we have done is drink fermented hopps beverages and ogle scantly clad females. This has seriously jeopardized our goal of the all-collective. We've never had to do this before... We are kicking you out."
- Done again with Dr. Crabtree, the Nanite Queen, who can assimilate people's knowledge by eating their brains...but gets infected with Sam Sein's stupidity when she tries it on him, and when she eats Christmas Elves' brains she starts unconsciously frolicking everywhere while singing "lolly la!"
Western Animation
- In the 'Neogenic Nightmare' arc of Spider Man The Animated Series, Spiderman is attacked by the Vulture, a villain who uses advanced technology to steal vitality from others. Unfortunately for the Vulture, the mutation that gives Spider-Man his powers is particularly unstable at the time of the attack, and he absorbs some of Spider-Man's DNA, causing him to mutate into a monstrous man/spider hybrid.
- One episode of South Park has Cartman's super high-tech Trapper Keeper begin assimilating all technology (beginning with a calculator, then a computer, then a lamp, then Cartman). "Trapper Keeper ready to ensorb." Eventually it goes on a rampage and heads for Cheyenne Mountain to ensorb the NORAD command center there, but on the way it eats Rosie O'Donnell, weakening it enough for Kyle to turn it off.
- Happened to a brain-eating alien on The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy, when it was dumb enough to consume Mandy's brain.
- In the last episode of The Secret Saturdays, V.V. Argost has assimilated the Kur powers from Zak's Evil Twin from an anti-matter Mirror Universe, and then does the same to Zak himself to become even more powerful. But what Argost didn't realize (but Zak did) was what happens when matter and anti-matter combine, and Argost obliterates himself instead.
- Young Justice had an appearance of Parasite, who was defeated when he stole Miss Martian's powers without realizing they came with a weakness to fire, which the heroes exploit.
- Static Shock: The metahuman Power Parasite Leech was defeated with water after he absorbed Static's powers.
- During Amazo's first appearance on Justice League, he copies the powers of all the League's members while fighting them. Superman turns out to be a subversion; Amazo does inherit his weakness to kryptonite, much like Parasite above, but surpasses it shortly afterward. Played straight when the Martian Manhunter submits at the end, as Amazo gains his telepathy, uses it to discover that Lex Luthor has been deceiving him, and basically calls off the conflict.
- Ben 10 Omniverse: In "Showdown Part 2", Malware manages to absorb Ben as Waybig into himself. Inside, Ben has a flashback and finally forgives himself for losing Feedback, resulting in him reobtaining and transforming into Feedback to escape from Malware from the inside. Malware was doubly surprised for Ben escaping and doing it as Feedback, the alien he had destroyed in the past.
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