Holding Back The Phlebotinum - Television Tropes & Idioms

In Blood+, chiropterans can only be killed by Saya's blood. But Haji is a stronger fighter. In the very last episode they come up with the idea of coating a sword in Saya's blood and letting Haji borrow and wield it. One would think they'd have thought of that years ago.
- There's time limit to how long blood can be effective once Saya draws it out. The army tried to do coat Saya's blood with bullets but that didn't work, and Saya often has to redraw her blood during the same battle. Given that Haji and Saya end up being separated from each other in many battles, they more or less can't.
In the very first episode of Yu-Gi-Oh, the main character pulls off a miraculous come-from-behind victory by getting the five parts of Exodia in his hand for an instant win. In the third episode, a minor villain destroys the cards so suspense can be maintained in future duels.
- In a later season, Yugi goes up against a villain with three copies of all five parts of Exodia. After beating him, no one thinks to take the cards away from a potentially recurring minion or for future use. The former is justified by Malik/Marik's You Have Failed Me tendency; the latter is only explained in Japan (the cards are fake and the minion's Duel Disk was rigged to work with them).
  - (Actually, if this troper remembers correctly, Yami tore the guy's entire deck in half, after finding out that the guy's cards were marked. At least in the anime dub.
  - In the Japanese version, the cards were counterfeit instead of marked. Yami still tears them all up.
There are Magic Beans in Dragonball that can cure any wound sans death. In the earlier stories there are literately hundreds of them around. In later books there are less than 10, at any given time, making the preservation of magic beans a major plot point.
Alastor gets to be here instead of Deus Exit Machina because his power is only ever used once, in a manner much more like a Wave Motion Gun ie. a weapon, not someone who really does anything. He isn't used again (besides the obvious) because there's a chance it could kill Shana.
Played straight and then averted (hard!) in Code Geass with the FLEIJA warheads. At first, Suzaku has one and is swearing to whatever god(s) he believes in that he will not shoot it, until he gets careless and goes up against an opponent he cannot beat. This being Suzaku, he's completely unwilling to accept this fact, and when it finally dawns on him he immediately accepts death. This being the trigger for the Geass Lelouch gave him last season, Tokyo goes up in a pink sphere of death and supposedly kills Nunnaly. In the final battle, Schneizel fires one about once every five minutes. Once Lelouch has control of the Damocles, he fires one to prove a point.
In To Aru Majutsu No Index, the eponymous character states she is incapable of magic. However, when Touma destroys the magic seal that kills her if her memory is not erased, the rather lame reason given turns out for why she can't turns out to be exactly that. Her automated defense personality immediately starts throwing massive spells around based on over one hundred thousand magical grimoires. That's one hell of a lot of available magic and power. Naturally, after this the best she manages is the correct evaluation of a golem and taking it down without any magic by shouting stuff at it and the clever use of safety pins. Which is awesome too, but she's capable of far more if people would just tell her she can do that kind of stuff.

Uatu the Watcher is an embodiment of this trope. He is theoretically capable of using his vast power to intervene in just about anything, but refuses to do so for the sake of his vow of non-interference. (Not that he hasn't bent and broken his vow numerous times.)
Showing up in comic books more and more. "Did you guys try calling the Avengers and the Fantastic Four?" "Yeah! The Avengers are on a mission and the Fantastic Four are in another damn dimension! We're on our own!"
Similarly, the chances of Superman being off-planet are directly proportional to how easy it would be for him to bail out the guy with his name on the cover.
In John Ostrander's writing of the Spectre, the titular character and his partner Nate Kane were taking a train. Nate asks why don't they just take a plane because it would be a lot quicker. The Spectre responds, "If speed is your concern we can always do the mirror trick again." to which Nate Kane responds "Forget about it!"
Take a look at Batman who has access to space alien technology. He could use it to easily subdue criminals in Gotham. But no, whenever Batman is in Gotham, he is restricted to real world-level technology (or not too far away from).
Look at the Flash, somebody who can run at supersonic speed should have ABSOLUTELY NO problem in dealing with villains who have ice guns or explosive boomerangs. However, the justification as to why these panels do not end in one panel is that the Flash can only think at the rate of a normal human.
- Averted in Kingdom Come where the Flash uses his powers to make Keystone City truly crime free.
As for the late superhero Impulse, who could run at supersonic speeds, the reasons that normal-speed villains could give him a hard time was that Impulse was such an impulsive thinker and was often his own worst enemy.

Iron Man, no actual evidence. But Tony Stark's philosophy on weapons seem to work. "Some say the best weapon is one that never has to be fired. I, respectfully, disagree. I say the best weapon is one that is fired once. That's how I do, that's how my father did it, that's how America does it and it's worked pretty well so far."
In Star Trek, the Genesis Device would undoubtedly still have been enormously useful as a planetbusting (or, indeed, nebula-busting) WMD, even if design flaws in the prototype made it useless for its original purpose of planetary terraforming. Fortunately, the ST writers made sure to end that particular movie arc with the device revealed to be unstable due to the use of protomatter, which presumably accounted for its abandonment, even though it would've made a hell of a weapon despite the instability, and even though the inventor of the technology, Carol Marcus, was still around (despite being Brother Chucked from the franchise after one movie).
- There's also the fact that, as Star Treks III and especially IV showed, the Klingon Empire was none too thrilled to see the Federation have a planet-killing weapon. Had the Federation been able to salvage the research, there could easily have been a war.
- A non-phlebotnium example: in "Whom Gods Destroy", a shape-shifting impostor captures Kirk and copies his appearance to escape the asylum planet where he is imprisoned, only to be stopped due to Scotty refusing to beam up the Captain without saying the proper response to the code phrase "Queen to Queen's Level 3". The code phrase had never been mentioned before and would never be mentioned again, even in situations featuring impostors running around (such as "Turnabout Intruder" where the omission is quite glaring)
  - Not to mention Garth's shapeshifting power itself, which he was "taught" by the natives of Antos IV. If the skill can be learned, why doesn't the Federation send its intelligence agents to Antos IV to acquire shapeshifting ability themselves?
- Star Trek is practically brimming with Techno Babble innovations fitting this trope. If the Federation actually used every one-shot invention in the franchise, such as de-aging people with transporters or phase-cloaking ships or traveling at transwarp speeds, they'd practically be gods.
  - Most of the one shot inventions have restrictions built into the story: The Federation is barred from using cloaking technology due to a treaty with the Romulans, Transwarp causes turbulance which can destroy ships, etc, etc.
Averted in Star Wars: While the original plan was to use the Death Star once and rule by fear, the Imperium does use it every time they can.
- Which is, incidentally, also only once.
  - Actually three times in Death Star (the novel), or even five if you consider it took three shots to completely destroy Despayre.
In Quest Of The Delta Knights, a made-for-TV movie popularized by its appearance on Mystery Science Theater 3000, the Delta Knights were an organization dedicated to finding Archimedes' lost inventions, and using them to "bring the world out of the dark ages." In the end, the heroes decide to destroy the inventions because "the world isn't ready for such power." Of course, most of those inventions were used heavily in the Renaissance Period, the time period in which the movie is set.

In the third Grey Griffins book, Ernie gains superhuman speed as the result of some weird fairy blood magic or something. But he can't use it. How come? Because it'll hasten his transformation into a changeling. If that's not enough, Natalia is given a magnifying glass that lets her see magic. She tries it out in a world filled with magic, and it nearly blinds her. Too much magic, dont'cha know.

Early in the run of Babylon 5, the heroes discovered an ancient superweapon on the planet below. To prevent it from being misused, one of their allies took charge of it, but promised to help out whenever he could. He was then conveniently absent whenever the weapon would have been useful.
- The forgetfulness was Lampshaded later when, needing power to boost a La Resistance broadcast, Franklin suggests to Ivanova they use the super weapon on Epsilon III to help. Ivanova then realizes that only an idiot would not realize the obvious, and beats a hasty path to the planet below.
- On at least one occasion it was mentioned that they tried to contact the him but their transmissions were being jammed by the forces attacking the station.
- They do use it as a holographic PA system and for spying, though.
- Other attempts at justifying this were set up. Amongst other things, when a large group of Shadows attacked, they purposely moved very close to the station, so that the weapon couldn't fire. Oh, and in the payoff for the Chekov's gun, it's used to solve a Time Paradox.
The Babylon 5 spin-off show, Crusade featured a brand new class of ship with an extremely powerful main weapon. So as not to make the ship all-conquering, firing this main weapon drained the ship of its power, leaving it vulnerable for up to a minute, thus ensuring it was only used as a last resort.
During season five of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Buffy comes into possession of a powerful magic hammer, which is completely ignored up until the final episode, where it is suddenly pulled off the shelf and used to quite handily beat the villain, a frigging god, into submission. After this impressive display, the weapon is never seen or mentioned ever again.
- It has been established that magic tends to backfire on its user. Maybe it was not what the writers intended, but look at the after-effects of said hammer battle. Brutal injuries and deaths all around.
  - This is the implicit reason for never using the enjoining spell (used to defeat Adam at the end of season 4) at any other times - although the power boost would have let Buffy kick Glory or Caleb's asses, the fact that it nearly killed her and her friends the first time makes them hold off.
- Also in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Xander gains a level in badass by the mystical implantation of military fighting prowress. Seasons later, he explains it comes and goes and has mostly just gone.
Over on Angel, the reason why Willow (basically god-like in her powers by the end of Bt VS) doesn't step in during the Illyria arc and help Fred, previously established as a good friend of hers, is that she's "on another astral plane". The (insanely stupid and out of character, but guest-star-availability-motivated) reason Giles doesn't bother trying to contact her is that Angel now works for Wolfram & Hart, and the Scoobies fear he's turned evil. Again. Some more.
Stargate SG 1 and Stargate Atlantis frequently did bring back old phlebotinum, but occasionally it's shown that various political organizations and red tape often make it difficult to pull them out quickly, as a lot of it is being examined or stored by other organizations at Area 51. Whenever they get something truly shattering and usable, it tends to get blown up eventually culminating in the destruction of Area 51 itself during the Atlantis finale
- There was also an interesting case, in which the cast had to trick the Gou'ld into believing that they are doing this, when infact It Only Works Once, as they'd be defenseless to an outright attack at the moment.
Many additional rangers for Power Rangers were supposedly more powerful than their team mates, so as a counter, they were often given some kind of limitation to prevent them from swooping into the fight and running rings around the others. The most common excuse is that they are kept in reserve for when things go bad. Or they were busy doing something else.
- This was actually given a Hand Wave pretty early in the first season, where Zordon explains that one of the core rules of being a Ranger is to never be the one to escalate a battle. Only use more powerful weaponry as necessary to defeat the Monster Of The Week.
This troper can never understand where the heck The Doctor is when the entire planet (or the entire universe, or all of time itself, or half of humanity, or all of humanity, etc. etc. etc) is in danger on Torchwood or The Sarah Jane Adventures. Lampshaded in the previews for the new Torchwood mini-series when Gwen says something along the lines of 'there is this man who saves humanity, his name is the Doctor, he comes when we are in great danger except sometimes he doesn't'
- Well, what she says is, "Sometimes, I think the Doctor must look at this planet and turn away in shame." Which is justified by the Humans Are Bastards plot in which she says it. Her point is that he probably would save the planet, if not for the fact that it was the humans' fault in the first place.
- Maybe it happened in a time period when the Doctor had been vacationing on some remote island and he couldn't come back to that day because he'd already been there.
- Or maybe he found out about if after the fact, saw that Sarah Jane or the folks at Torchwood took care of it and labeled it as "How history was supposed to happen." and left it be. Like Pompeii at first. until he figured out HE was the one to cause that volcano to blow.
In Kamen Rider Den-O, The Lancer Yuto Sakurai/Zeronos is debatably more powerful and skilled than Ryotaro/Den-O. However, he has to leave matters in Ryotaro's hands several times because he has a limited supply of the cards that allow him to become Zeronos, and more troublesome, using them causes people to forget his existence.

Justified Truth In Television- no one wants a nuclear bomb dropped again, but it would take care of some problems (as well as creating many more, which is why no one wants another one to go off.)

Wing Commander Prophecy put it best, concerning a Wave Motion Cannon that was mounted on a space carrier:
"...a fire-and-forget weapon... we fired it once, and now we can forget about firing it again."
In Star Control, the Ur-Quan don't bring their ultra-massive super-duper Precursor battleship the Sa-Matra into play in the first war until it looks like the Alliance of Free Stars may actually stop them. Once it is brought into play, though, the war winds up pretty quickly to an Ur-Quan victory. It's never brought into play afterwards, mostly because it's being held as the prize fought over between the Ur-Quan Kzer-Za and the Kohr-Ah.
- Part of the lore suggests, apparently, that at least part of the reason that the Ur-Quan are so hesitant to use the Sa-Matra is because it's practically a religious artifact to them, representing the power to ensure that nobody can ever enslave them again (long story). Using it except in direst need presumably gives too much credit to the opponent and debases the Sa-Matra itself.
In God Hand, Gene wears a Deitic Brace on his arm in order to seal off the full power of the titular God Hand, requiring a bar to be filled first before he takes the Brace off and goes to town. But considering the game's difficulty, it makes some people wonder why he can't just leave the brace off.
Ragnell in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, in which Ike had apparently been carrying Ragnell since his father's death but doesn't pull it out until encountering the Black Knight. The same sword is held back again in Radiant Dawn, but you get it earlier and there's a reason Ike doesn't have it up to that point.

Pretty much anything Time Travel related in Sluggy Freelance. The Ray Gun that can freeze someone in time or blast them into the past runs out of juice after two shots. Both attempts at building a Time Machine break down after their first use. Time-Turners are gathered up and destroyed by wizards and quickly forgotten about. And, while Timeless Space can be used for Time Travel, it's such a Crapsack World and the Physical God in control of it is such a Cloud Cuckoo Lander that no sane person would ever go there of their own free will.
Done in the Order of the Stick where Xykon holds back the Monster in the Darkness from revealing itself because of how incredibly powerful it is. While it has a very childish demeanor, the times it has given us a taste of what it can do we have seen it create a massive chasm in the ground just by stomping, and launching the most powerful Paladin of the Sapphire Guard miles away during a contest of "Who can hit the lightest."

On Kim Possible, despite achieving status as a regular gadget, Kim hardly ever uses her super-powerful, all-purpose battle suit, which received a weakness in the initial episode of the series' return. Would've made the missions even easier for her.
- Ron's Mystical Monkey Power, that by creating a Battle Aura can defeat ANY opponent, is hardly used and quickly forgotten until the special episodes where Ron can prove his manliness. The lack of Mystical Monkey Power Kung Fu is even lampshaded.

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