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Dr. Jackson: Egeria, Roman goddess of fountains.
Col. O'Neill: Fountains?
Dr. Jackson: Also childbirth.
Col. O'Neill: How do those two go together?
Superheroes sometimes have an unintuitive combination of powers. Sometimes this is a Justified Trope. For example, anyone with All Your Powers Combined will have Combo Platter Powers at least some of the time. (And see the heavy use of Justifying Edit below.) Other times it is the result of either an excess or lack of thematic unity.
This can happen through accretion, as with Superman; as a deliberate change to the character, like the Invisible Woman; or even at creation, like the Martian Manhunter. Sometimes there will be a Hand Wave as an off-hand explanation ("Secondary mutation", anyone?) or a later Ret Con to explain how the powers actually work together; other times, it just happens.
Compare Required Secondary Powers when the oddball minor powers are actually necessary to make the main power work properly. When one of these powers is significantly less powerful than the rest, it's Flight Strength Heart.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- In Naruto, the techniques that ninja can learn are so varied that this inevitably happens to any character that isn't specializing in some specific field. This especially applies to anyone with a kekkai genkai. Far and away the most extreme examples of this are the dojutsu the Sharingan (the regular ones are based on sight/perception/analysis, but the Deadly Upgrade's powers are all kinds of crazy) and the Rinnegan (become an Instant Expert, use all five Elemental Powers when no one else can, see chakra, summon an Eldritch Abomincation that lets you animate six human bodies with their own uniques power, and summon the being that has control over life and death), and the ones with them can still learn other regular techniques.
- Then there's the vampire Alucard from Hellsing who has garnered some criticism due to him so ridiculously overpowered with abilities not limited to immortality (he is a vampire), unbelievable regenerative abilities, superhuman senses, superhuman strength, incredible accuracy with any weapon, intangibility, super speed, invisibility, the ability to defy gravity, the ability to manipulate shadows into physical form, weather control, teleportation, telekinesis, mind control and reading, summoning an army consisting of souls whose blood he has sucked, the ability to gain one's knowledge and memories through blood sucking, hibernation, the ability to sense superhuman activity, and general immunity to vampiric weaknesses. Not even Chuck Norris has that kind of power...
- As his Sdrawkcab Name suggests, Alucard may simply have inherited this trope from someone else on this page.
- Kogarashi from Kamen No Maid Guy has New Powers As The Plot Demands, most of them completely unrelated. In addition to the standard super-strength, inhuman toughness, super-speed and the ability to defy gravity with jumping, he has a paralyzing voice, x-ray vision, levitation, Prehensile Hair, the ability to hypnotize people even without direct eye contact, hands that can evaporate all liquid from anything he rubs on, 37 senses (don't ask), knowledge of every gourmet recipe ever made, the ability to summon and direct underwear-stealing crows, and USB connectivity in his brain. For starters.
- Don't forget the 'Maid Guy Voice Voice Voice' which is apparently either some kind of radio, super telepathy, or super ventriloquism.
- The Dragon Knights in Noein have a boatload of powers. All of them have the following, Nigh Invulnerability, the ability to walk through walls, enhanced perception of time, teleportation. Most of them have some form of energy blast and a secondary Personality Powers set.
- Killer Queen from Jojos Bizarre Adventure can turn anything he touches into a bomb, then detonate it remotely. And he can detach his left hand as a heat-seeking autonomous bomb. And he has a compartment in his chest which contains a flower that shoots invisible air bullets. And he can turn back time to initiate a Groundhog Day Loop whenever a certain person is asked about his secrets, which has the side effect of killing the questioner.
- Haru Glory's Ten Commandments sword from Rave Master at any given time gives its wielder powers to generate explosions, move and attack at super speed, cut intangible objects and seal magic, shoot ice and fire, paralyze and push back opponents, become a ridiculously heavy sword, emit blinding flashes of light, unleash a berserk mode that features enhanced strength and speed, and finally the ability to dispel evil.
- Shunsui's zanpakuto release in Bleach gives them the ability to inflict damage by playing games. So far this has allowed them to create Razor Wind, melt into shadows, create shadow swords, and inflict damage by being a higher elevation than the opponent and calling out colors. Unusual for most zanpakuto though, the enemy can use its powers to their advantage by being aware of what game is being played, and playing it themselves.
Comics
- Wolverine from X-Men: healing factor, retractable claws, enhanced smelling and hearing, adamantium skeleton.
- Many, many Ret Con stories later, it's explained that Wolverine is the product of two mutant families. His mother's family has long been "cursed" with bone claws and mindless animal rages, while his father has the regeneration and enhanced senses. Wolverine gets all of them. The adamantium is added, much later in his life, by government experimentation. They'd been wanting to do it for a long while to produce Super Soldiers, but adamantium is poisonous — a test subject who could heal away the ill effects was perfect. Okay, so it's all convoluted and came in after the fact to explain the platter powers, but damn it, they tried.
- The Movies explained the whole adamantium thingy by stating that adamantium can only be molded in its liquid form - after cooling enough to become solid, it instantly becomes indestructible. Thus, it had to be grafted to the subject's bones in its (really hot) liquid state. Wolverine's healing factor allowed him to recover from the trauma caused by this (and thus was the reason he was chosen for the super soldier program).
- Something akin to this was retconned into the comics too (Depending On The Writer) - adamantium is poisonous, and grafting it onto anyone without a healing factor causes them to weaken and eventually die. This problem affects Wolvy himself on occasions when his powers have been nullified.
- His healing factor IS affected by the adamantium's poisonous qualities. Whenever he had the metal removed his healing factor was empowered greatly, usually to some pretty ridiculous levels. Then, once the metal went back in, the healing factor had to once again work against the poisonous adamantium, reducing it's effectiveness to an extent.
- Superman: Super Strength, Super Speed, Flight, heat vision, X-Ray Vision, and so on. His original powers were mainly exaggerations of normal human abilities; in the first story, simply because he was from an older planet and more "highly evolved" than us mere mortals. Later this was Retconned as from being born on a world with high gravity and a thick atmosphere. Around the same time, Power Creep Power Seep caused Super Leaping to become Flight. Later X-Ray Vision split off heat vision, and so on.
- Do we stop there? Not a chance. According to scans found at Superdickery.com, he's also claimed such powers as Super Arithmetic and Super Ventriloquism (which apparently works through televisual communications... in space).
- Namor the Sub-Mariner has everything you'd expect from a being built to survive underwater: strength enough to survive ocean pressure, agility and speed to swim quickly and efficiently... and tiny wings on his ankles that allow him to fly!? This last was eventually explained as a mutation caused by his surface-dweller/Atlantean hybrid heritage. Thus he's considered one of the first mutants of the modern age in the Marvel Universe.
- Wonder Woman: She has the gifts of the Olympian Gods. Thematic, but one hell of a combo. Also has an invisible jet and magical weapons.
- The magic weapons may fit in; there were lots of magic weapons in Greek mythology. The invisible plane? Not so much.
- In post-Crisis continuity, the plane was a gift she was given sometime around issue 100 to 120, during John Byrne's run. This troper has the issues in question, and the plane has nothing at all to do with the gods. Given that, does the plane really qualify for "combo platter" status?
- Yes. Check the top of the screen, additional powers gained 'through accretion' like superman count towards the combo platter.
- Emma Frost, the White Queen. Telepathy and turning to diamond?
- Justified, but with a vague whiff of Voodoo Shark- see Cassandra Nova below.
- And Emma's not the only X-character who has this:
- Nightcrawler: Physique and coloration give him poor-man's-Spidey agility and camouflage. Then there's the whole "teleport through other dimension" thing.
- This troper remembers reading an "The X-Men vs Arcade" comic in which Nightcrawler's camouflage was explained as a native ability to become slightly out of phase in shadowy areas. An outgrowth of his teleporation powers. Since Retconned away.
- ...and his teleportation ability is explained away in a Star Trek crossover...as the same thing that allows the Enterprise to go faster than light.
- Angel: Wings for flight and the Required Secondary Powers that make flight work. And then there's the whole "can heal people with same blood type" thing. Although the last part was added later because, well, flight is boring.
- 'Coz ya know, healing people after asking their blood type makes for good action scenes.
- Icarus: Wings and associated Required Secondary Powers, the power to mimic any sound, as well as Healing Factor for himself. Unfortunately, the healing factor relied on enzymes produced by the muscles of his wings, so when they were removed, he lost that power and promptly had a Bridge Drop befall him.
- Sage has a mind that works like a computer... and can jump-start the mutations of those with the mutant gene but no powers (or activate the "secondary mutations" of powered mutants, which are often unrelated to their original powers, placing them in this trope's territory.) And telepathy that she rarely uses, despite being nearly on par with Emma Frost.
- Sunfire: Sun-related array of powers, and flight. (The same goes for the Human Torch and his fire powers. Fire might rise, but objects the weight of adult humans when on fire don't.)
- Except that if there's enough flames, then they can act as thrusters, like those on VTOL planes.
- Wild Thing of the MC2 Twenty Minutes Into The Future-verse. The healing factor and animal-like senses and hairdo of her dad, Wolverine, with a smaller dose of the temper, check. "Psychic claws" in the style of Psylocke's psychic blade? Ooo-kay... (It's said it was "taught" to her by Psylocke, the mental version of CharlesAtlasSuperpowers, but no one else without psychic powers has ever been shown to use one, and Psylocke's own ability to use this is at the mercy of [[whatever's going on with her powers at the moment.)
- And Psylocke herself didn't "learn" the mindblade power, it was originally the result of a power-amplifying ring!
- Callisto (not!) from the third movie? Super Speed and the ability to detect other mutants and the nature of their powers, apparently at any distance (she was how Magneto found the caravan transporting Mystique.) A result of telescoping the powers of several Morlocks into one character.
- Monet St. Croix: Flying Brick powers, check. Ability to merge with any mutant member of her family encountered thus far, with different combinations having entirely different personality and powers... eh? This goes, in fact, for all of the St. Croix siblings except for Nicole (who hasn't displayed solo powers just yet.) And telepathy and heightened intelligence... No idea.
- Selene: Animate objects plus suck people's life force to feed her youth and immortality (plus some minor Psychic Powers and Functional Magic, and various inconsistently enhanced physical abilities). Until she got upgraded; as of Chasing Hellfire, it's "turn into living shadow, plus absorb people entirely to feed her youth and immortality, as well as take on the form of victims."
- Emma Frost's diamond powers were part of Cassandra Nova's contingency plan, it turns out, so Cassandra's on the list, too: Psychic Powers and the ability to give (or perhaps catalyze, a la Sage) powers in others.
- Omega Red has a healing factor and life draining powers. Super Strength from draining life, metal tentacles don't fit but were added since healing factor let him take it. Releasing clouds of deadly gas is what doesn't fit.
- Even though that was his original mutant power to begin with. The tentacles were added later; their job is to siphon the stolen life force back into himself, thus increasing his strength.
- Gambit's power is to make stuff blow up, later HandWaved as turning the potential energy in an object into kinetic energy. His charm, though, is sometimes said to be psychic in nature. His agility is also enhanced, sometimes explained away as a subconscious manipulation of kinetic energy in his own body. Also, when he was temporary blinded, he could see glimpses of the future in his cards, a power he's never had before or since.
- And they were dramatically extended in the New Son/New Sun saga - in the end, his powers were basically extended to manipulation of any matter - he gained a healing factor, flight powers, the ability to make stuff explode with a mere thought etc etc etc. The powers had initially been turned off by Mr Sinister, and at the end of the saga, were 'burned out' by his exertions fighting his Alternate Universe duplicate.
- There are also situations where physical mutations have nothing to do with powers:
- Apocalypse's wide array of powers are due to alien/future (his Expansion Pack Past gets complicated, though not as bad as Logan's.) technology. His inborn powers are merely being an insanely good fighter, Immortality... and having gray skin for no good reason.
- Mesmero can control the minds of others... and he's green. (Changed to presumably-not-inborn green facial markings in X Men Evolution.)
- Blink from Exiles has the ability to teleport herself, however she can also teleport objects away from her body by producing crystals from her body which she can throw at persons or objects and if this wouldn't be enough she also has glowing green eyes, pink skin, pink hair and natural face markings.
- Similarly, Marrow's mutation is to have bone weapons growing out of her body, a healing factor to survive said outgrowth and for unkown reasons pink hair and skin.
- Gambit: The aforementioned powers, and red-on-black eyes.
- Almost all of the Morlocks are deformed in addition to whatever their power is, though some are said to be once-normal-looking mutants changed by Masque to keep them there.
- And then, there's the unconventional hair colors, such as white (Storm, Quicksilver, Magneto, and a streak of white in Rogue's case), pink (Blink) and green (Polaris.)
- Magneto? Isn't he like 80? An old man with white hair isn't a superpower.
- Flashbacks have shown he's always had white hair. But your point remains valid.
- Rogue's initial appearance shows her with two streaks in her hair, suggesting she can change it, so it's possibly dyed. There was a letter column in which Wolverine claimed that Rogue's hair was dyed. However, her most recent eponymous series shows her with the white streak even as an infant, so at least for the moment Marvel's canon is that it's natural.
- Whatever the heck Cable's powers are this week.
- Rogue has the power/Life Energy absorption, and used to have the Flying Brick package permanently absorbed from Ms. Marvel. Now she has Sunfire's flames-and-flight combo permanently.
- Even more recently, Rogue has gained voluntary control over her absorption along with the ability to recall any and/or all of the powers she has absorbed in the past.
- Martian Manhunter: Super Strength, intangibility, Shape Shifting, size shifting, telepathy, Super Speed, heat ray vision, the ability to strain gold from seawater, the ability to create ice cream cones with the power of his mind, the power to animate clothing, underwater breathing, and control over magnetism. No, really. Oh, and fire is his Kryptonite Factor. Yes, even though he has heat vision. And the explanation for all this? He's Martian. That's it.
- The more ridiculous powers (ie everything after heat vision) have been mostly dropped in recent years. In his cartoon incarnation, his powers are strength, flight, intangibility, shape-shifting and telepathy.
- More recently, Martian Manhunter's "Martian Vision" is actually pressure vision (ALA Cyclops in X-men) and isn't naturally hot, but can cause things it comes in contact with to get hot (like anything under pressure) and is colored white rather than red. It has also been stated that he does not have increased senses, like Superman. He does have 9 senses (presumably including the five we are familiar with. No hint as to whether he has smision).
- The above retcon causes continuity problems with a number of fairly recent stories that showed him with both microscopic and heat vision.
- Actually, Martians having Heat Vision makes sense if you consider they'd be using it on one-another.
- Spider Man: Most of his powers are supposed to be those of a spider, amped up to human proportions, but with Spider Sense standing in for a spider's multiple eyes. Understandable, this editor would say. But once having got these powers, Peter quickly invents his web-shooters, which are thematically appropriate, but not really connected to the rest of his powers. Later versions of the character have given Spidey "organic web-shooters" to more closely tie his powers together. Over the decades, Spider-Man has developed other temporary powers or devices.
- How about "spider agility"? Are spiders known for their gymnastic abilities?
- A recent secondary mutation gave Peter more spider-based powers including the ability to feel trace vibrations in his weblines, enhancing his spider-sense to where he can practically see in the dark, making his hairs more sensitive, giving him poison stingers in his arms... and the power to instantly recognize what species a spider is by looking at it. However, most of these powers, plus his organic webbing, have been lost in the Ret Con of One More Day and Brand New Day.
- Susan Storm of the Fantastic Four, who started out with just invisibility, then gained force field powers to allow her a more active role in the stories. A much later Ret Con claimed that her invisibility was actually an instinctive use of the forcefield to distort light around her.
- "Danger Man" (nee Dan Jermain) of Marvel Comics was a hapless worker in a nuclear plant who was caught in an industrial accident that made him bigger, stronger, and more powerful. And also gave him energy blasts, the ability to breathe underwater, and he can have a meltdown if he gets angry. His head and hands glow and have little spheres orbiting around them, atom-style.
- Although he's also a huge subversion of the whole "radiation accident" origin; He's not a superhero. He's still a hapless worker in a nuclear plant, but now when he rolls over in bed he crushes his wife, tears his clothes up with one false move because he's so strong, and gets stared at on the subway because of how obvious his situation is.
- Static can do almost anything as long as it can be given a vague connection to electromagnetics. Including listening to CD's without a player — which are optical, not magnetic, storage devices.
- Batman's enemy the Penguin is sort of a non-powered version of the trope. Trained birds, pet leopard seals, and trick umbrellas are all thematically tied to penguins, but not to each other. The Batman goes even further by giving him mad martial arts skillz and creepy silent henchwomen.
- ...trick umbrellas are thematically tied to penguins?
- Empowered's super suit gives her super strength, energy beams... and the ability to make phone calls by speaking into her pinky and forefinger.
- And Wall Crawling and the ability to breathe in space, it turns out. Also, her suit can turn invisible (Not her, just the suit. Please note that none of these share any real theme. Unless you count "classic superpowers" as a theme, and even then, the whole "suit turns invisible without turning the wearer invisible" thing is kind of an odd one.
- The Hulk's not been mentioned yet? Shame. He has super strength, is Nigh Invulnerable, jumps kilometers, can create a stunning sonic boom with his hands, regenerates (yeah, that's official), okay, all fit sort of with the "unstoppable force of rage" idea. However, two other, lesser-known powers: he can see, and HIT, ghosts and astral projections, and can home in on the site where the gamma bomb that created him went off.
- Mattie Franklin, one of the numerous heroines (and villains) who goes by the name of Spider-Woman has the powers of all of them. This includes powers such as: Strength and agility, flight, energy blasts, some low-level psychic powers, psychic webs, psychic spider-legs... Logically she should also have Jessica Drew's pheromone powers, but they were never demonstrated.
- Superman's sons Conner Kent and Chris Kent aka Nightwing have Kryptonian powers and tactile telekinesis. Chris' girlfriend Thara Ak-Var aka Flamebird has Kryptonian powers and pryokinesis.
Literature
- Several of the characters in the Whateley Universe stories are like this. The heroine Tennyo keeps finding new things she can do. Flight, ability to ignore gravity and inertia, super-strength, the ability to move through force fields, the ability to produce some form of antimatter, the ability to cast spheres of plasma, the ability to heal frighteningly fast from incredible injuries, the ability to form some sort of plasma 'light saber', resistance to temperature extremes, she doesn't need to breathe air, etc. She also has thrown some sort of energy ball that temporarily acted like a neutron star, she may be able to teleport (although she was unconscious at the time), she may give off deadly levels of radiation when she's straining hard in a fight, and in one battle against over a hundred armed badguys, she literally warped reality all around her and opened up a rift in space-time. Oh, and she may be the avatar of some extra-terrestrial or extra-dimensional demon. We don't know yet.
- Admittedly, she's got her original imitation power Mode Locked into imitating Ryoko, whose powers are pretty ridiculous by themselves.
- Also, it's heavily implied (if not outright stated at times) that she might well be the avatar of a creature (or creation) which Ryoko's in-universe creators subconsciously based her on. ...it's complicated.
- Also in the Whateleyverse, we have Merry, who started out as a combination energizer/technopath (reasonable so far), then got roped into a secret church order and endowed with mystical powers (notably the ability to heal herself or others with the side effect of sending her own soul to Hell for a brief visit), and the incident that permanently split her up into Petra and Paige (with two personalities each — it's a bit complicated, okay?) also turned the latter into a werecat...
- Jimmy T. can shapeshift, talk to ghosts, and is immune to mind-reading.
- Murphy's powers allow her to warp reality, grow back limbs, and cause dead animals to follow her around.
- Even a single-element Crafter in Codex Alera will get an impressively broad array of powers. As an example, an Earthcrafter can gain superhuman strength, shift rock and earth to create barriers or tear down walls, calm animals, travel rapidly over the ground, induce lust, and sense people's locations if they're on the ground. Tavi is smart enough to recognize the implications of this, and when he is short of combat engineers enlists the local brothel to aid a demolition project.
- The Amberites from the Chronicles Of Amber by Roger Zelazny. The basic package includes superhuman strength and endurance, regeneration, telepathy and dimension hopping; various family members also have prodigous weapon skill, sorcerous powers, or shapeshifting.
- Most of these make perfect sense given their background (part of which you don't find out about until fairly well along in the Chronicles, because Corwin himself doesn't know it). See the series page for more details.
- Any of the titular magic users from Mistborn have Super Strength, Super Senses, limited telekinesis, Combat Clairvoyance, the ability to sense other allomancers, a Healing Factor, and more. They do, however, have to draw each power from a different metal, and if they're out of that metal- well, they're in trouble. The Lord Ruler beats out even the mistborn by possessing the powers of both a mistborn and a feruchemist- the two magic systems are plenty powerful on their own, but he can combine them to produce truly spectacular effects (such as immortality). His Inquisitors also have this because they steal their powers from other people. Combo platters for everyone!
Film
- Jack-Jack of The Incredibles. He can shape-shift, turn into metal or a goblin, phase through walls, fly, set himself on fire, eat wood, and shoot frickin' laser beams, and that's just what we've seen so far... And he's a baby.
- While discussing the film online, some fans came up with a clever theory about Jack-Jack: in the world of The Incredibles, powers may act like languages. A real baby is able to form phonemes of any language at all. Over time, the child sticks to the same sounds he hears the older people around him make most often. It's possible that Jack-Jack will similarly grow to pick his favorite power set.
- Violet from the same movie had the seemingly unrelated powers of turning invisible and generating a force field. As the Invisible Woman's entry further down explains, those powers could be related — you might use a field of some sort to bend light away to go invisible, and if you can project a field that bends away light, why couldn't it deflect other stuff too?
- I read somewhere that those powers parody those babies have normally - getting heavy, moving quickly, getting out of harnesses, turning into little monsters. I think it was The Other Wiki, but I'm not sure.
- It's also worth noting the the characters' powers are all related to their personalities, and in this sense it makes sense for shy Violet to be able to turn invisible and for her more assertive side to be able to form a protective shield. In Jack-Jack's case, his multiple powers relate to the fact that he's a baby, so there are multiple possibilities for his future.
- Pick any Jedi or Sith. Any of them. Psychokinesis, telepathy (including mind control), premonitions, postcognition, the ability to shoot lightning, body manipulation, and the ability to turn into a ghost. And that's just the G-canon stuff. Moving into the Expanded Universe, we have delayed aging, even more energy manipulation, time travel, teleportation (after a fashion), possession, and Mind Rape.
Live Action TV
- The Haitian from Heroes can block the powers of other 'special' people. Also, he can erase memories. Admittedly, all powers in Heroes are based in the brain, and Peter's copycat power works by memory and association, so maybe memory is tied into the part of the brain where powers are controlled.
- And as of season 4, Matt Parkman has gained the power to paint the future, despite already having powers of his own.
- There's also Santiago's father from the webisodes, who has the same power as Santiago himself, plus electricity.
- Heroes is getting kind of goofy with this. Ando eventually acquires the ability to boost the superpowers of others by touch; this ability apparently manifests as red lightning that can blast people with concussive force? Also recently introduced was "Baby Touch-and-Go", whose touch can activate or deactivate electrical and mechanical devices, and... superpowers?
- The Halliwell sisters of Charmed have at various times suggested that their powers are supposed to grow with time and use, and some future versions of them bear this out — Piper freezing whole city blocks, Prue accidentally demolishing part of the house with a careless handwave. But the actual power sets they develop over the course of the series don't match up so well — Prue adds astral projection to her telekinesis, Phoebe adds levitation (and empathy, which sort of works) to her premonitions, and Piper adds blowing things up to her freezing time. All of these were handwaved to some extent, but they certainly don't match at first glance.
- Piper's power combination is at least kind of justified as her first power is not actually "freezing time" per se but rather slowing the molecules in the target object to a complete stop and holding them in place. It looks like freezing time, obviously. So her secondary power (blowing stuff up) is essentially using her primary power in reverse, accelerating the molecules until they lose cohesion (stuff go boom). Although that doesn't really explain why her original power, which was apparently retconned into instantaneously chilling stuff down to absolute zero, doesn't have any lasting effects on people.
- Umm...where the hell is Wyatt? Due to being the twice-blessed child, he has a WIDE variety of powers including a force field, the Charmed world's version of teleportation, using said teleportation as telekinesis, healing, pyrokinesis, energy blasts, controlling molecules like his mother, creating a wave of magic that vanquishes all demons in the vicinity, and the power of Projection, which pretty much is the power to do whatever you damn-well may please. On top of all of that, being able to cast spells, and being the son of an angel and one of the three strongest witches on the planet. Oh, and he can wield the sword, Excalibur. Basically, he can do whatever the plot needs him to do. Oh, and did I mention that these powers have been there since he was in the womb?
- Farscape has a lot of characters with a lot of weird powers, but Sikozu really takes the combo platter to new levels: she can re-attach lost limbs, walk on walls, and, near the end of the series, it's revealed that she is a walking anti-Scarran Doomsday Device, which is quite confusing, given that she was a Scarran spy through much of her tenure on the show
- Actually, it's explained that her wall-walking abilities are due to her being (or more accurately, impersonating) a Kalish, and the other two abilities are due to her being a bioloid. And Sikozu was only a Scarran spy during the Peacekeeper Wars.
Tabletop Games
- Superhero RPGs in which the characters are randomly generated tend to fall into this trope regularly, for obvious reasons.
- Golden Heroes, an early Australian entry in the field, allowed the player to roll for random powers—but then required her to come up with a justification for all the powers working together. Any powers the GM wasn't convinced were properly explained got cut.
- In Super Munchkin, your powers are literally based on the luck of the draw.
Video Games
- With the exception of the epic archetypes, characters in City Of Heroes and City Of Villains may have restrictions on what powers are available to their chosen archetype, but little restriction to the combination of those powers. Any primary power set can be combined with any secondary powerset, making a character who is Fire/Fire just as likely as one who is Fire/Ice or Ice/Fire. Some sets don't have a counterpart at all, like Poison and Force Fields, so they will be seen combined with just about anything. Using non-matching sets often results in more powerful characters due to metagame synergies.
- While not a Super Hero per-se, Mario has had a long list of powerups along the years, among them: A Super powerful Hammer, power to shoot fireballs, to grow in size, temporary invincibility, a flying raccoon suit that transformed into a statue, a Frog suit to swim faster, a turtle suit that gives him an infinite supply of hammers, a giant clockwork boot, a pet Dinosaur to ride on, a Flying cape (which deflects projectiles in Super Smash Bros Melee and Brawl), rabbit ears that allow him to Glide and Super Jump, hats that let him become solid Metal, Intangible/Invisible, or Fly, the ability to puff himself up like a balloon, a water gun that straps to his back, and the latest game gave him Ice powers, and Ghost, Bee, and spring transformations. Not to mention his vanilla standard powers of Super jumping and Super Strength that he always has. New Super Mario Bros. Wii adds a Penguin suit that can swim like the Frog Suit, toss freezing snowballs like the Ice Flower, and walk on ice without slipping. And the Propellor Hat for flying. Plus has the Mini Mario from the DS game that is super tiny and can run across water without sinking.
- Also, he's a doctor.
- And probably plays pro-level at tennis, golf, soccer, basketball, baseball, kart racing... There has to be a superpowered explanation behind all that athletic ability, as he's just some pudgy guy!
- Dude, he's Mario.
- As of Bowser's Inside Story, Bowser has Super Strength, fire breath, inhaling enemies and food, and the ability to momentarily defy gravity letting him body slam and use the momentum of his punches to fly over gaps.
- Dhalsim from Street Fighter. He can spit fire, his limbs stretch like rubber, and he can teleport. Okay...
- His powers are just supernatural exaggerations of stereotypes of people from India. (The Yoga Flame for eating curry, the stretchy limbs for flexibility as a result of actual yoga, and the teleport as a byproduct of REALLY extreme meditation and buzzword-laden philosophy).
- The whole curry-powered fire thing received a Ret Con, presumably due to the Unfortunate Implications; now Dhalsim's fire breath is a blessing from Agni, the Hindu god of fire.
- In an example similar to the page quote above, Dwarf Fortress sometimes does this with its autogenerated gods. In fact, it's entirely possible to end up with, for instance, a goddess of torture, misery, and rainbows.
- Although not a hero, in the same way as the Mario example, Wario in the Wario Land series. His transformations range from the somewhat normal (on fire, flat, etc) to somewhat odd (become a vampire, zombie, invisible, frozen) to the completely insane (head puffs up like a balloon to float to various areas, dizzy/drunk Wario in Wario Land 3 and the weird hats in the first game allowing a head mounted jetpack or flamethrower).
- The simple explanation? Wario's a toon.
Western Animation
- Danny Phantom: Apart from the "Ghost powers" he is supposed to have, like Flight, Invisibility, and Intangibility; he also has various powers like energy blasts, Super Speed, Super Strength, a Supersonic scream, duplication powers, and...Ice powers. Some Videogames have also gave him fire powers to go with the ice ones. The concept of "ghosts" covers enough bases in popular culture for most of these to be easily handwaved in some way.
- If we get started on the alien forms contained in the Omnitrix, we'll be here all day, though Ben can usually only use one Alien at a time. Ben 10K, on the other hand, can use all ten thousand of his aliens freely, resulting in quite possibly the worst case of this in televisual history.
- Technically, Ben's only power is to transform into one of several predefined forms and swap between them. All of the other powers belong to individual alien species.
- Alien Force's writers decided on Ben's new forms by mixing and matching powers from Ben's previous forms. Naturally combo platters have come up.
- Swampfire has: super-strength, regeneration, the ability to effortly sever himself and regenerate for pseudo-intangeability, the ability to reconnect allies' severed limbs, pyrokinesis, and control over corn (presumably other plants as well, though this has yet to be seen).
- Not to mention the stank he emits, which turned into a plot device to get them out of a situation.
- Big Chill has ghost powers (Invisibility, Intangibility, levitation), plus ice breath. He's also a mothman, which gives him traditional winged flight (albeit of the stationary variety) and super-gnawing abilities.
- And then there's Spider Monkey.
- Parodied very well in the South Park episode "Good Times With Weapons":
Cartman: Hold on you guys. I actually have another power. I can see into the future too, but better than Kyle. Let me try it.
Kyle: Goddamnit, Cartman! You can't keep making up new powers!
Stan: Yeah dude, that's like the fifth power you've come up with!
Cartman: I am Bulrog and I have lots and lots of powers!
- In real life children often do this. Ever hear the phrase "No, nooo, because MY guy has *insert power here* so hes immune!"
Religion and Mythology
- This was a rather common attribute of ancient gods, usually either those with very small purviews like the opening quote (probably as a Ret Con so they'd still be significant), or the ones at or near the top of their pantheon (probably to explain why they were in charge). A good example would be the greek Poseidon, who, in addition to the oceans and seas, also held dominion over earthquakes ...and horses. You know what that means...
- Catholic Saints carry on the tradition. St. Christopher, for example, is patron saint of bachelors, travelers, gardeners and toothache. Or traveling bachelor gardeners with toothaches.
- More interestingly, St. Barbara, patron saint against death by artillery, and hatmakers.
- Death by hatmakers?
- The horse thing has a borderline justification, in that it came from a story where Poseidon and Athena were challenged to come up with something both beautiful and practical by some settlers, who agreed to name their city after the winner — Athena came up with the olive tree, and Poseidon with the horse (the city in question is Athens, so you can probably guess who won). Of course, neither of those things has much to do with their initial purview as gods, so the trope still applies.
- A lot of such gods have justifications, that usually don't immediately make sense unless you were worshipping them at the time. For instance, Pallas Athena was the patron god of Athens (obviously), and associated with defensive warfare, wisdom and olive trees- things primarily associated with Athens.
Other
- Dracula is supremely strong, hypnotic, commands animals, can turn into a mist, addict people to his blood, and climb walls like a spider. Most of these powers can be found in folklore about vampires, or previous vampire novels, but not usually all at once. And just what constitutes "vampire powers" is under dispute — see Our Vampires Are Different for further discussion.
- Real Life semi-example: The United States Secret Service is dedicated to protecting the president... and fighting counterfeiters. They started just fighting counterfeiters back in 1865, and didn't get the presidential protection job until after McKinley's assassination in 1901.
- We're a representative democracy with a fiat currency. How are these two things not related?
- See also the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), a federal police agency with wide-reaching authorities which was originally established as a tax-collecting agency.
- To be fair, the BATFE (Now with Explosives!) has shifted mainly from collecting taxes on Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, to enforcing federal laws regarding Alcohol etc. T'other wiki
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