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It's like they had a parrot on the staff during the editorial meetings that just kept pitching "Lois gets super powers! Lois gets super powers!" over and over again...
And they kept listening... ''
Being a Side Kick, Love Interest, or even just general acquaintance to a Super Hero sucks. There's kidnappings, high mortality rates, marriage threats, Super Dickery and the ever present Sidekick Glass Ceiling to contend with.
If a setting isn't insecure about changing its status quo, or wants to change the dynamic from solo hero, to duo, or even Power Trio and beyond, then the supporting cast may catch Contagious Powers and these side characters will permanently gain powers, going up to Super Weight class.
The opposite of the Sidekick Glass Ceiling and subversion of Never Be A Hero. When the Muggle supporting cast of a superpowered hero slowly gain superpowers over time. This is typically done when the series gets a little older and writers are tired of one of the characters always playing the Distressed Damsel in Hostage For Mc Guffin situations. The solution to stale plots like those is to simply give the cast members in question their own fighting powers so as to bring them in line with the rest of the cast, sidestepping questions about how "mundanes" are useless.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- This is explicitly one of the apsects of the Shinigami in Bleach, particularly those more powerful ones with high amounts of Spirit Energy. Normal humans exposed to the spiritual energy their bodies emit will eventually develop unique spiritual powers of their own.
- Doesn't explain why Ichigo's childhood friend, Tatsuki, doesn't get the same powers that Orihime and Chad did. Then there's his baby sisters, the youngest of which explicitly has little to no sensitivity to ghosts...
- Except its explicitly stated that both Tatsuki and Keigo have developed powers. Both can see shinigami and Hollow when they couldn't before. They've just lacked the catalyst to kick them over from passive to active use of that power. With Yuzu and Karin its more a case of inheritance than power contagion.
- Except that Ichigo fought around around Chad & Orihime, but not around his siblings or Tatsuki (at least not until much later, so she may appear at a later date).
- One of the earlier chapters mentioned that Chad and Orihime both had latent powers of their own, which Ichigo's presence activated. Still, that doesn't really explain why Tatsuki and Keigo - who can both perceive Hollows and Soul Reapers - haven't acquired any abilities of their own.
- The most recent filler eps don't count.
- It's simpler, she's a victim of Loads And Loads Of Characters she was simply toss asided like so many others
- Mahou Sensei Negima does this a lot; any girl who keeps a close proximity to Negi will inevitably have either some sort of latent power, or gain a powerful artifact through a pactio.
Comics
- Spider-Man. Whoo. At first it's only Peter with superpowers. Then pretty much everyone he knows gets superpowers of their own. It varies as to if those powers turn them into allies or more villains.
- In vanilla Spider-Man, we've got Harry Osborne, Miles Warren, and most recently Mary Jane Watson who were all introduced as Muggles but later became superpowered.
- Ultimate Spider-Man is a bit of a bigger offender. In the beginning, Spidey is the only character in the main cast with superpowers. By the 100s, the Human Torch, Kitty Pryde, and Iceman are all hanging out at his school, Harry Osborne transformed into the Hobgoblin, Mary Jane got experimental werewolf powers from an evil Spider-Man clone, and mutantphobic Liz Allen was revealed to be Ultimate Firestar, a mutant superhero Canon Immigrant.
- The '90s cartoon introduced almost all superpowered heroes and villains without powers, having them gain them after they had some character development as Muggles. The result being that it made it seem even more like being around Peter Parker for about a week or so was enough to make you into a superhero or supervillain.
- The Spectacular Spider Man does the same, introducing the pre-Goblin Osborns, making pre-Vemon Eddie Brock a regular, and introducing pre-Sandman and Rhino versions of Marko and O'Hirn (using their original names instead of their current, Retconned names of William Baker and Aleksi Sytsevich.) as recurring petty thugs before being supervillain-ized. Black Cat appeared in-costume first, though.
- In Supreme Power, a mutagen spread by Hyperion's falling spaceship mutated the Amphibian and gave the Blur his powers.
- Superdickery.com makes a running joke/drinking game out of this, telling viewers to "take a shot" every time Jimmy Olsen from Superman is shown getting some kind of superpower.
- While not quite a direct giving of superpowers, the most ridiculous example of this can be found here
 . "All right everyone, get your final affairs in order and take one thousand shots!"
- For most of the run of comic series Powers the two main detectives have both been muggles who investigated crimes associated with superheroes and supervillains. Although one used to be a superhero until he lost his powers. Things get turned around, however, when a contagious power acts as The Virus, and one of them gets infected with it. Meanwhile, the ex-superhero is getting a new set of powers as well.
- This is what the parents of Tyler Marlocke in PS 238 hope will happen by putting their non-superpowered son in an environment absolutely dripping with superpowers. In a subversion, it hasn't worked (yet, at least).
Film
- In Reflex, the sequel to Steven Gould's Jumper, Millie gains Davy's teleportation abilities by being teleported by him a large number of times.
Literature
- In Tik-Tok of Oz, Dorothy finds out that Toto can talk, just like all the other animals in Oz.
- The pets of wizards in the Young Wizards series tend to "become strange", with the most common powers being growing intelligence and the ability to speak. Tom and Carl have a dog with super strength and a macaw that can look into the future, while Kit's dog Ponch develops the ability to create new universes.
- After Kit uses magic to fix a remote control that doesn't work properly with its TV, the TV starts spontaneously developing new features, like receiving alien cable stations and hooking into alien chatrooms.
- In the Darkover novels by Marion Zimmer Bradley, the Ardais family's laran- their hereditary psychic talent- is catalyst telepathy, the ability to awaken laran in others, often simply by living in close proximity to or interacting with their targets for long periods of time.
- Not quite a purely accidental example, but: In the Whateley Universe, Generator picked up her roommate Tennyo's regeneration power in a mad science-powered attempt to get her seemingly permanent 11-year-old body 'unstuck' by using Tennyo as a template donor. Of course, then there's also the bio-devisor student Jobe Wilkins who, if he put his mind to it, would probably be able to come up with quite a few ways to create literally contagious superpowers if his lab accident with the 'drow formula' originally meant for a prospective girlfriend is any indication...
Live Action Television
- Oz became a werewolf in Buffy The Vampire Slayer. After four seasons of Character Development, Willow's magic made her more powerful than Buffy. In the last TV episode, Buffy and Willow give hundreds of girls the same powers as Buffy, permanently In the Season 8 comics, Buffy is still the main character, not because she's the most powerful, but because she's the leader of the good guys.
- But poor Xander gets absolutely nothing. Except for that magic army training, but he once said that that had worn off.
- The beginning of Heroes had several Muggle characters. Then they were slowly killed off, Put On A Bus, or caught Contagious Powers of their own. By now the only major cast members without superpowers are Mohinder, Ando, and Noah Bennett's family sans Claire. And really, it's probably only a matter of time for at least one of them as well.
- Some fans speculate that Mohinder's immunity to the Shanti Virus may qualify him for Hero status, though that's iffy considering he's only immune to one strain of the virus. Then again, blood type incompatibilities with his transfusion to Molly, The Haitian, and Nikki haven't come up.
- Apparently, Word Of God is that Mohinder, Ando, and Bennett will remain non-supers. Bennett at least is already a Badass Normal, so he doesn't really need them to kick ass.
- Word Of God was apparently lying, now that Mohinder has gotten Spider-Man's powers. I so wish I was making this up.
- It didn't even stop there: now he's turning into a Brundlefly...or is is it Mohinderfly?
- Not to mention that Ando now has the ability to amplify the superpowers of others.
- The first season of the 1990s The Tomorrow People series, Megabyte is the only one of the characters without powers, but then (surprise!) he gets them in the last episode of the first season
- Smallville Thanks to there dominance in the Green Rocks market, the citizens of Smallville (often kids at Clark's school that he "knew") receive powers quite frequently, and of course Clark's supporting cast gets sucked in eventually.
- Lana gains precognitive visions for one episode. Several seasons later thanks to lightning she gets Clark's
Flying Speeding Brick powers
- Chloe was briefly able to make people tell the truth, before the producers decided to give her a set of Healing Powers
- Lex, it was hinted had an advanced immune system. He also received a set of fancy Kryptonian Powers
- Pete briefly gained Stretch powers for an episode thanks to Stride Gum
- Jonathan is also in brief possession of Kryptonian powers for an episode.
- Lionel was bestowed a number of Kryptonian powers as the plot demanded during his time as Jor-El's emissary.
- Oddly enough, Clark, who already had Speeding Brick powers and getting new ones each season, was gifted with "Dead Zone" Visions for a single episode in the middle of Season 2.
Video Games
- At the start of Persona4, only the protagonist has the power to enter the TV world at will and summon his Persona. Through the course of the game, everyone who joins the investigation team picks up both of these abilities.
Webcomics
Western Animation
- The third season of Static Shock starts out with Richie getting super-intelligence powers and becoming the technologic superhero Gear. Virgil hypothesizes that Richie was exposed to the trace amounts of the mutagenic gas left on his clothes the night of the Big Bang, hence why Richie's powers took over two years to manifest. This makes it a literal case of contagious powers.
- Ben 10: Season 3 Gwen starts training herself in magic, after refusing the call the previous season.
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