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Does Not Know His Own Strength
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redirected from Main.AceLightningSyndrome
alt title(s): Ace Lightning Syndrome 
Uh... your door’s broken.
Hulk want hug kitties
But they so easy to squish!
In real life, people can control how much pressure they apply to things. An Olympic athlete that can lift several times his own weight can also pick up a caterpillar without squishing it. This is not always true in fiction. For some odd reason, some super powered characters have a lower limit to their strength. This would make sense if the character had just recently acquired super strength and tried to use the same amount of exertion to pet a kitten as he had done before, but for someone who has had this power their entire life, there would be no such problem.
But that won't stop some writers from using it as a gag. In these situations the character's powers of super strength create a problem when interacting with the real world. They break coffee cups, regularly smash windows, doors and other entrances and egresses and frankly cannot be trusted with a small child's toy. In worst case scenarios, their incredible powers result in damage to important facilities or even living beings. Cue guilt trip.
It's kind of like being Blessed With Suck but relates specifically to strength and to powers which resemble strength (i.e. the ability to crush objects ten times your size using your fists via a kind of Tactile Telekinesis, as was possessed by Superboy in the early nineties) and is not primarily a bad thing –the empowered individual often finds their strength to be very handy when they're not having to do delicate things like handle children’s rattles.
If the hero's family is unaware of his powers, then undoubtedly the blame for the damage will often fall on 'shoddy construction' or on another house member's bad attempts at DIY.
A frequent and more realistic variation of this is that the hero is able to control his strength, but when tempers flare or the hero is startled (or otherwise incapacitated, or perhaps inebriated) that control quickly lapses. Another variation involves Functional Magic or Psychic Powers, where a mage or telekinetic who could decimate armies with their powers have to do chores by hand, because they lack fine control. After all, when you're incinerating enemies, "Too much fire" isn't really a problem.
Compare And Call Him George, when it happens to (formerly) living things.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- During her early life in a highly enhanced prosthetic body, the Major of Ghost In The Shell had some major (no pun intended) difficulties controlling the prosthetics' strength. She mentions (and it is shown in the credits) that she once smashed a doll by being unable to control her own limbs.
- Muay Thay God of Death Apachai Hopachai in Kenichi The Mightiest Disciple . Also a Gentle Giant on his own right, he is really kind to all living things, being even able to speak with animals. Unfortunately, due to the Training From Hell he went through during his childhood (and the fact that he was thrown in life-or-death battles even as a kid) he´s uncapable of sparring with Kenichi without delivering several blows that would have killed anyone less resilient. It gets to a point when Kenichi loses the memory of being hit due to a concussion.
- During the filler episodes leading up to the Cell Games in Dragonball Z, Goku and Gohan had this problem as Super Saiyans. Needless to say, Chi-Chi wasn't amused. The viewers were, though.
- There was also the time Goku returned home after being away from earth for many years. Goku attempted to calm his wife Chi-Chi down with a simple pat on the back, causing her to fly through a wall and a tree. It worked.
- An earlier example happens when Goku returns from space, and he and Chi-Chi do the "happily toss into the air" bit when they reunite. Goku, not knowing his own strength, accidentally tosses Chi-Chi too far (as in, too high to see). She didn't really seem to mind.
- His youngest son, Goten, achieves Super Saiyan for the first time while training with Chi-Chi. He promptly kicks her, assuming she'll still be faster than him and dodge. She's not, and flies about twenty feet into a tree. She's perfectly fine, and not the slightest bit angry, just upset that her youngest son is already an alien killing machine.
- Even Chi-Chi herself gets in on the action. In an early episode, while waiting longer than usual for Goku to return home (he may have been dead at the time), she decides to wash the dishes. About every other dish gets squeezed so hard it cracks, then dropped into a convenient garbage bin.
- Being a combat cyborg blessed with Super Strength, Subaru of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS mentions her fear of performing this trope during a flashback. Also illustrated in the manga during a wall-climbing exercise, when a Teana that just met her asked her to put a little more strength in boosting her up, causing the now terrified girl to achieve her dream of taking to the skies a lot earlier than she expected.
- Since she received her powers by fusing with a Book Of Shadows containing the strongest spells in the multiverse, Hayate literally cannot use low-power magic. As a result, the TSAB normally treat her similarly to a tactical nuke, only calling her in to cast a single spell in certain situations (and after evacuation orders have been given).
- In the Anime/Manga series Get Backers, one of the repeating causes of the main characters' crushing debt is the fact that Ban can't seem to control his strength when he is in a bad mood. As a result, he and Ginji frequently find themselves having to pay for damages to the Honky Tonk as a result of Ban breaking everything from coffee-cups to plates, tables, bars, doors, windows, and even walls.
- While Ryoga from Ranma 1/2 is probably only somewhat stronger than Ranma himself, if that (and it's debateable that he might actually be weaker), he doesn't have the same years of training to perfect his control either. The result is that, whenever his emotions get too much, or his mind wanders, things start to crumble around him. Combine this with the fact he gained the ability to shatter inanimate matter with a touch early in the series, and you've got a man who has as much trouble not destroying Tokyo as he does navigating it.
- There was also a storyline in which Akane gained Super Strength due to accidentally eating food called Super Soba, and briefly fell into this trope. She first discovers her newfound strength when she casually sets her bowl down, and promptly smashes the floor below the table. She would also regularly hit other characters (usually Ranma) with what was supposed to be her usual strength, and instead sent them flying.
- During a mid-manga story, Ranma is weakened by a vengeful Happosai. The cure involved a painful-looking moxibustion technique applied on his back —out of reflex, he tried to swat Cologne off his back, only to find himself smashing a solid concrete roller (the kind used to flatten sports fields) into dust purely by accident.
- It's played up more in the manga version, but Shampoo often destroys things around her, tearing through walls rather then going for the door or shattering doors when she does use them. It's debateable whether she counts for this, though, as it's just as likely that she just likes to show off that she's a Cute Bruiser.
- In Tenchi Muyo GXP, protagonist Seina Yamada has to spend several episodes learning to control this after being given enhanced strength and speed. Of course, this turns out to be a lovely excuse to set up some Innocent Cohabitation...
- While Gaou in Eyeshield 21 knows how strong he is, he doesn't understand the very idea of "holding back", and is thus completely unable to do so in any situation. The same can be said for Husky Russkie Rodchenko. Kurita, on the other hand, is too strong and too friendly for his own good, meaning big, painful hugs all around.
- Shin also does this from time to time, usually with electronic devices.
- Jack Rakan does this on occasion. Such as the time he accidentally blew up a mountain.
 Normally he causes this kind of destruction on purpose.
Comic Books
- The comics version of Superman is the primary aversion of this, where his strength is almost always played as a positive and the negatives are rarely highlighted.
- One story from the '90s saw Supe's strength start increasing exponentially. This trope definitely came into play then.
- Some versions of Krypto the Super Dog apply this trope. Being just a dog, he really doesn't know his own strength.
- On the other hand, Supergirl does this in on occasion, for example in one of Panini Comics' Batman and Superman comic strips. Then again, she was still learning to control her powers.
- One of the explicit differences between Superman and Supergirl is that Superman has mental blocks he imposed on himself so there's an upper limit to how much power he'll use, while Supergirl has no such blocks, allowing her to at times be stronger than her cousin.
- Stronger, not better. When they fought, Superman easily defeated and immobilized her (and actually threatened he could do it any time he wanted to if need be). Supergirl has been using her power for one year or two. Superman has been fighting people as powerful as him since he was twenty.
- Many, many times in various Superman comics would other people gain Superman's strength. This trope almost always applies.
- And the Larry Niven classic Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex.
- An excellent 1960s issue of Superboy dealt with a villain tricking young Supes into thinking he had accidentally killed Lana Lang with a careless display of strength. Grief-stricken, Superboy turns himself in to the police and sits brooding in a jail cell, giving the villain and his mooks a free window of opportunity to commit crimes unopposed. Naturally, it's all a ruse, and Lana turns out to have been merely kidnapped and is totally unharmed.
- In Infinite Crisis, a character named Superboy Prime (he's from another universe) attacks 'our' world's Superboy, beating him badly whilst causing a huge amount of damage to the town of Smallville, until a (fairly large) group(s) of other heroes arrive as back-up. When a heroine named Pantha calls him a 'stupid kid', he retaliates by proclaiming that he isn't stupid, seemingly with the intention to merely smack her across the face...... He ends up taking her head off and killing her, visibly shocked when he notices the blood on his hand.
- Jack in the comic book Next Men cannot control his super-strength and has to be guided places so he does not break objects by accidentally brushing up against them.
- In X-Men, when Colossus is stuck in transformed form he gets angsty about people seeing him as a monster. He then proceeds to try and call his team from a phonebooth but since he is frustrated, trying to dial the number causes his fingers to punch right through the phone.
- Done tragically in The DCU Elseworld story "Created Equal". The second issue of the two-parter starts In Medias Res just as a five-year old Alex Kent has accidentally killed his mother, Lois, by hugging her.
- In Nextwave, the narration mentions that the Captain once knocked a man's lungs out of his chest by patting him on the back...but in his defense, he was drunk.
- The titular character in Concrete is very much Blessed With Suck in this regard, being a half-ton stone man who doesn't dare try to hold anything breakable.
- The titular character in Monica's Gang suffers of this. Since she's only 6, it leads to really funny situations (although not as much funny for her parents, that have to pay for the broken stuff, of for Jimmy Five and Smudgy, that have to feel in their skins what her inhuman strenght causes. Of course, all in the Amusing Injuries territory, since it's for kids.
- In a Wolverine series there was a grown up mutant with super strength but the intelligence of an infant . A horse tried to kick him and he punched it, then he got upset because he couldn't put the horse's head back on.
- The JSA recently introduced Citizen Steel, who literally doesn't know his own strength — the accident that gave him his powers also deadened his sense of touch, meaning he can't feel how much force he's exerting. He walks around in a costume he was cast into so that he can control it.
- Obelix from Asterix does seem to know his strength... he is just appearently unaware that not everyone possesses that strength, hence his failure to understand the diffrence between "knock the door" and "smash the door" and why no one around him is able to carry tiny menhirs.
Film
- Sky High had the Commander keep a couple of those mobile landlines in a drawer in case he breaks one on a rant.
- Also, once Will gets his super strength, he accidentally rips his front door off its hinges by opening it.
- Played with in Up, Up, And Away. The protagonist is born into a family of superheroes, but was born without a power. In order to convince his family that he's not a loser, he rigs certain things to fall apart as he uses them, such as taking the screws off the door hinges to make it appear he ripped it off. Played straight with a Noodle Incident for his father, who apparently did quite some damage to his house's foundation.
- One more word: Hancock. Though in his case, it's more a case of him simply not bothering to check his superstrength.
- In the Fantastic Four movie, The Thing is prone to doing this with drinkwear, though it could also be related to reduced sensation with his new skin making it hard to tell how much he's squeezing.
- Also, few chairs support his weight, any more, but he doesn't always remember this.
- The Autobots of the Transformers movie basically destroy Sam's backyard, though that's mostly due to scale issues.
- In Superman Returns, Clark accidentally breaks the glass in the picture frame he's holding when Jimmy surprises him with the information that 'Lois is a mommy'.
Myth And Legend
- In Greek mythology, Heracles/Hercules got very annoyed with his music teacher, Linus, for telling him he was playing music wrong. So Heracles slugged Linus with his lyre... and killed him. Oops. I guess that makes this one Older Than Dirt.
- In another version, Linus slugged hercules first. When Hercules was on trial, he was acquitted on the grounds that "everybody has a right to return a slug".
- Many of his enemies would use Mind Control to make him angry enough to smash his wife/kids/best friends/cities and then feel so guilty about it he'd go on a near-suicidal adventure in order to atone for it.
- What mind control? Most of the legends have Herc really being like that.
- Depends on the myth. Some versions often had Hera induce these wraths.
- The gods and goddesses of Greek myth wobbled back and forth from being actual physical gods and being embodiments of abstract ideas, depending on who you asked. So there's a thin line between an artificial wrath brought on by Hera's mind control and a natural wrath that gets associated with Hera because Hera, goddess of marriage who is married to the biggest Casanova in the Greek pantheon, is the living embodiment of jealous rage.
- Ilia Muromets, one of Russian legendary heroes, was superstrong, and sometimes hurt people by things like hugging. It didn't help that he just didn't bother to get up until age 32, so he hadn't practiced social interaction much.
- Another hero, Svyatogor, was literally so strong the earth refused to hold him and was thus confined to a mountain range which was somewhat less finicky.
- Some variations of the Muromets story have him receive super strength, and immediately having half of it drained away so that he won't end up like Svyatogor.
Live Action TV
- This trope was formerly named "Ace Lightning Syndrome", after the titular character in the CGI-animated TV program Ace Lightning, who had quite the tendency towards smashing his human sidekicks' household appliances when he arrived in the 'real world', super strength and all (not to mention his need to absorb energy in order to survive resulted in the destruction of much electrical equipment. And apparently Mark's family's electric bill was costing them a fortune).
- Is Ace a good example? Throughout the entire show it's played up that he doesn't understand the laws of reality he's used to don't necessarily apply anymore.
- I don't see why he'd be a bad example. He still broke things because he expected them to be made of tougher stuff than they were. Isn't getting "the laws of reality" mixed up half the point of this trope?
- Maybe. It just seemed to me that by making him the posterboy for this trope, and the description in the first paragraph, they were saying that as an experienced superhero he should know his limits better. While that's true to an extent, as I said Ace's major theme is he doesn't quite "get" the real world, and so it made sense to me that he'd have to relearn his limits somewhat. No big deal.
- Yeah, I think it depends, failing to understand "real world limits" seems to define the trope more than "they should know their limits better" does.
- In short-lived UPN super-spy show {{Jake 2.0}}, the main character mostly dodged this because his powers were mostly by activation; nevertheless, there was at least one occasion where his little brother pissed him off, resulting in him accidentally breaking off the handle to his car door.
- He also put a ton of holes the walls of his apartment, trying to gently tap in nails.
- Sometimes a problem for The Greatest American Hero.
- Played with on Charmed when a spell cast on their police buddy gave him Superman-like strength and invulnerability. Has him accidentally ripping the door off a police cruiser, but only mildly bruising the suspect.
- A sight gag in one episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer had the title character accidentally smash her alarm clock with her super strength, then sweep the pieces into a drawer of likewise broken alarm clocks.
- This troper, until he considered just how much it would cost over time, wasn't sure if that was accidental so much as her standard way of turning alarm clocks off. It still strikes him as a useful means of dissipating some of the stress of having to get up.
- Played with in the episode "A New Man", where Giles awakens one morning as a large and powerful demon after being cursed by Ethan Rayne. He walks through his home, and accidentally tears the banister off of his stairs, smashes a phone when he tries to call for help, and rips through his favorite shirt. The irony of course is that Giles is normally a weak, mild-mannered old British librarian.
- Notably averted with Data, as he has superstrength, but refrains from using it most of the time. The one time he uses it unchecked, his friends realize he's Not Himself. He's actually having his brain messed with by Evil Twin Lore.
- In one episode a Klingon Captain confronted Data concerning his renowned strength and wanted to test his own strength against him. It was one of the few times when Data was in complete control and you could see how much he outclassed any humanoid.
- In another episode the holodeck malfunctioned replacing characters in a Wild West simulation with recreations of Data, with his approximate physical abilities as well. Some of the characters were weasly cowards and were otherwise unaware of their enhanced strength, but others were the Big Bad of the story and also unaware of their strength.
- Don't forget the last Data who was a female saloon owner who throws herself into Worf's arms after he defeated the evil gunmen. Although that was something else entierly.
- Early on, Kintaros from Kamen Rider Den-O suffered from this, or at least K-Ryotaro/K-Masaru(first possessee), breaking everything from park benches to lamp posts
- In Star Trek Deep Space Nine Worf (yes, that Worf) relates a story of when he was 13, playing soccer and accidentally headbutting a player on the opposing team. Since Klingons are much stronger than humans and have ridged foreheads the other kids neck was snapped and died of his injuries shortly after.
- In Smallville, in one episode Clark has his memories removed, resulting in him ripping the door to his home from its hinges as he literally doesn't know his own strength.
Literature
Web Comics
- A common flaw in Magellan Academy, since most of the students are superpowered and in training. A particularly noteworthy case would be the superstrong but not invulnerable Justine Kef, strong enough to lift massive weights but with normal human bone structure. She can break herself if she uses too much strength outside of her super suit.
- In this Sluggy Freelance strip, while Aylee's getting used to being Torg's secretary, she tends to accidentally drive her fingers right through the computer keyboard.
- In The Inexplicable Adventures Of Bob, when Bob briefly gains Super Strength, he manages to stop a bank robbery... but accidentally destroys the bank in the process.
- In The Order Of The Stick, the Monster In The Darkness exhibits this trope, as demonstrated here.
- In Tales Of The Questor, this happens as an one off joke when Quentyn reunites with his friend, Kestral at her engineering school. She gives him a big hug and inadvertently hurts him because her vigorous studies having increased her strength considerably and she is not yet fully in control of it.
- Sidney Burns of Mob Ties displays this occasionally.
Web Original
- Common problem in the Whateley Universe: Phase can change her density from intangible to super-dense. When she first manifested, she smashed her bathroom, bent her tub, and then went light and couldn't stop sinking through the floor. One of the things Whateley Academy teaches is control of powers. The bricks routinely have assignments like carrying a raw egg around to learn control.
- Probably a better example than Phase (who for all her worrying has remarkable fine control over her powers already) would be Compiler, a girl who used her mutant gift for nanotechnology to give herself the superhuman strength and speed her mutation itself failed to provide and that she hasn't quite learned to keep from activating purely by accident yet.
- Another good example is Diz Aster, who is a Brick along the same lines as Lancer - except that her telekinetic field can't produce anything less than 7 tons of force. This also means that she can't even feel anything, since her shields extend to a few millimetres past her skin; by the time Chaka starts helping out, it's been a year since anyone's been able to touch Diz - or since she's been able to touch anyone else.
- An equally good example might be Tennyo - whose powers include the ability to throw around beams of energy that flood the area around her with radiation. Since Tennyo herself is immune to the effects of her powers, she's rarely aware of what's happening until it's too late. This got Lampshaded in a chapter of The Great Shoulder Angel Conspiracy, where the instructors for Team Tactics pointed out that Tennyo can't just throw radiation-heavy energy around wildly without noticing if she wants the rescue mission to be a success... so they gave her a belt-attachable radiation detector, so that she can keep an eye on the levels she's putting out.
Western Animation
- The Incredibles. Mr. Incredible got very stressed out the day he was fired and broke a number of things. He dented a doorknob, shattered the car's window, and cut straight through the plate and part of the table when cutting his son's steak. He's usually in control though.
- Lest we forget, he also threw his boss through seven walls.
- The Tick had a tendency to leave crumbling footprints embedded in the roofs of buildings whenever he went Roof Hopping.
- The live action series has a gag where Arthur shakes hands with the Champion, and Arthur clutches his hand in pain, then the Tick shakes hands with the Champion and the Champion recoils in pain.
- The Tick has done the door thing, too. And generally causes massive amounts of collateral damage. It isn't that he is unused to his strength so much as that he's clumsy, insane and not very bright.
- And Nigh Invulnerable, so he doesn't necessarily notice if he bangs his head on a doorframe hard enough to put a hole in the wall.
- Bulkhead of Transformers Animated has this problem fairly often. In an online short, he's shown causing gale-force winds to blow away a park full of people just by applauding.
- The young Tigress was shown to be like this in Kung Fu Panda: Secrets of the Furious Five,till she learned self-control.
- Mr. Strong on The Mr. Men Show. His Catch Phrase always comes up after an incident involving his strength: "Aw, I barely touched it."
- The Justice League episode "Just a Dream" referenced this trope. When Dr. Destiny traps Superman in his worst nightmare, said nightmare involves Superman losing control of his strength and accidentally snapping Jimmy Olson's neck when he tries to hug him.
- Of course, Superman's World Of Cardboard Speech in the grand finale mentions that he's constantly holding himself back, for fear of hurting those around him.
- The DCAU Hand Waved this by explaining that Superman had precision muscle control (allowing him to flawlessly mimic both Batman and Robin's voices). Not a terrible stretch... the cranes that assemble the space shuttle are so precise that they can hold the orbiter on an egg without breaking the shell.
- The infant Bamm-Bamm on The Flintstones. Later spinoffs (that feature Bamm-Bamm as a child, teenager or adult) usually show him as fully aware of/in control of his strength.
- Kim Possible had a few of these moments when she briefly ended up with the Super Strength of Hego, a Superman Expy.
- Used in Disney's Hercules. In that version, Hercules was unaware of his heritage as a demi-god with Super Strength until he was a teenager; his lack of knowledge and control of his strength made him a male Dojikko and shunned by the local villagers. Until he learned the truth, went off to search for Philoctetes and started taking levels in badass through his Training From Hell...
- The animated spinoff focused on Herc's teen years and had this as a running gag.
Real Life
- There's a nervous system disorder that prevents people from telling quite how much pressure they're applying to something - though unless they're ridiculously strong, it's rarely ever a problem.
- Though no where near as extreme in fiction, some people devoid of any nervous disorders. Common with young men who are just realizing that they've suddenly gained a bunch of muscle mass.
- And athletes. It's not uncommon for water polo players to under-estimate their strength and over-estimate the other player's strength, and dunk someone/give them a nosebleed/really hurt someone without realizing it.
- Basketball player Charles Barkley once hugged a teammate into the emergency room. Ouch.
- Humans don't actually have perfect control over their bodies- anyone who has ever tried to do any very delicate work could attest to that. At a low enough level, controlling your own strength can be hard.
- Not to mention that the perceived weight of an object can be very different from the actual weight in terms of expectations. For example, picking up a gallon of milk expecting it to be full only to find out that it is nearly empty. It can make almost anyone feel like Superman.
- Whenever I hold some extremely small creature, such as an insect, I feel like I'm going to squish them without meaning to.
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