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"Likewise, in fiction, whatever power a character has must have a downside somewhere, or he becomes a boring Superman type of character who can handle anything and get out of any difficulty, and he won't interest readers for long." — Timothy Zahn
The Kryptonite Factor is an Achilles Heel, where the weakness is a substance or state that only affects the Super Hero. It serves a few purposes.
The artistic one is to show that no one is invulnerable, not even our godlike main character. This is especially ironic if the vulnerability is completely arbitrary and commonplace.
The more powerful a character is, the more likely the Kryptonite Factor will be abused. Writers in particular tend to dislike immensely powerful characters with a single Kryptonite Factor, because not using it creates a drama-destroying sense that the character is never under a serious threat. Conversely, working a rare Kryptonite Factor into the plot repeatedly can seem even more contrived.
The most obvious example is kryptonite, the bane of Superman regardless of how powerful he is being portrayed at the time. A literal green rock, it seemed unusually abundant in supervillainous hands for being radioactive bits of planet that exploded light-years away. Many Elseworlds and spin offs to the Superman mythos include characters who are more resistant to kryptonite, but conveniently, not as strong.
In contrast, writer Joe Quesada has mentioned finding sorcerous characters such as Doctor Strange difficult to write for, because there is no established Kryptonite Factor, as magic tends to have fewer set rules and more contradictions. (What this says about Quesada is something for another page.) Likewise, the DC character Zatanna has very open-ended powers - she just has to say something backwards to have it magically happen. (At times, she may not even have to say it out loud.)
See also Kryptonite Ring and Fight Off The Kryptonite. Contrast De Power and Drama Preserving Handicap. Related to Why Did It Have To Be Snakes. If the character is vulnerable to something comparatively mundane (and even non-threatening), that makes it a Weaksauce Weakness. When this trope turns up far more often than seems probable, see Kryptonite Is Everywhere.
Not to be confused with The Krypton Factor. Contrast Logical Weakness, wherein the weakness logically comes about as a direct result of the powers.
Examples:
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- In Fairy Tail, Natsu is a very powerful mage who often defeats his opponents handily. He, however, is completely incapacitated by motion sickness when on any mode of transportation (including piggy backs).
- In Full Metal Alchemist, The homunculi become vulnerable when they come into close proximity to the body of the human of whom they are a Shadow Archetype.
- In One Piece,anyone who has eaten a Devil Fruit has two, related Kryponite Factors: The ocean, which causes power leeching and an inability to move due to weakness, and Seastone, also known as Kairouseki or as "Sea Prism Stone", which replicates the effects of the ocean and out of which most prisons in the One Piece world are built.
- Smoker also has some Kairouseki on the end of his jutte, despite his being a fruit user himself.
Comic Books
- The color yellow has until recently been a major weakness to the Green Lantern Corps. This was eventually explained by the influence of a fear demon the creators of the rings had entrapped corrupting their powers, but also authorically served to constantly remind them their potential godlike power has limits (a Green Lantern Ring being otherwise limited only by the intelligence, creativity, and willpower of the wielder). For a while, there were rings being used with no yellow vulnerability (and one of these can be seen on Justice League). Once the fear entity was recaptured, the yellow vulnerability was reinstated, but can now be overcome by facing one's fears with sufficient will.
- Alan Scott, the Golden Age Green Lantern, had no vulnerability to yellow, but a similar vulnerability to wood. This was due to his more magical ring being connected to "green, growing things".
- This was retconned into a long story involving one of Earth's first G Ls. He was mad with power, so the Guardians gave him the wood weakness so primitive humans could club him to death. However, instead of dying, he put his soul into the power ring and battery, which collided with a Meteorite, becoming the Starheart. Alan Scott got his ring from the Starheart. Seriously.
- The entire 'wood weakness' may have been a retcon itself; some of the earliest comics indicate he has 'invulnerability to metal' but not really anything else, allowing him to be, among other things, knocked unconscious by a (presumably clay or ceramic) vase.
- It's worth noting however that because of this on-again/off-again vulnerability, the fact that Sinestro always has a yellow power ring is almost a Grandfather Clause.
- Not quite. He was assumed to be dead while the fear entity was out doing whatever fear entities do.
- In the Elseworlds storyline Generations, it was revealed that the yellow vulnerability was just a hoax made up by the Guardians to keep the Green Lanterns from getting too cocky. Alan Scott's wood weakness, however, was psychosomatic and imposed by himself; during his early adventures, while fighting some ruffians, one snuck up behind him and hit him with a wooden club. While the truth was that he just didn't pay attention and thus allowed the foe to get in a cheap shot, he instead convinced himself that he had a weakness to the wood and thus couldn't defend himself. Guess he had a bit of an ego going...
- The Martian Manhunter (who is both powerful and has a variety of useful powers) has a vulnerability to fire. And a rather powerful addiction to cream-filled cookies, though this is more a comedic device. (See 2000's Martian Manhunter #24). In the Silver Age, fire was treated by him as equivalent to Superman versus kryptonite, but Post Crisis, it became more of a crippling phobia. (They seem to keep going back and forth on this one.)
- Early versions of Wonder Woman had her lose her powers if she was tied up by a man, under "Aphrodite's Law", leading to some bondage imagery that must have been blatant even at the time of its introduction. As noted in her entry, that was quite deliberate. In the Silver Age, she went into an Unstoppable Rage if her bracelets were removed. Currently, Wonder Woman has no Kryptonite Factor weaknesses.
- Superman's comics have over the years given him several vulnerabilities: Kryptonite (obviously), Magic (since, well, it's Magic), red sun radiation that (in some incarnations) would temporarily rob him of his power (along with Gold Kryptonite which could permanently remove his powers) and a humongous amount of brute force (In the case where he was "killed" by Doomsday it didn't fully kill him but sent him into a death-like coma while he healed).
- Of course, Doomsday was also from Krypton, leaving the reader to wonder if that gave him some sort of edge over the Man of Steel.
- Recently the Gold Kryptonite part is now, "powerless for 30 seconds" mostly so it wouldn't be overused.
- Ironically Superman is infamous for ignoring Kryptonite through sheer Heroic Willpower. The only thing he is always shown as vulnerable to is magic.
- Superman also had problems with Red Kryptonite, special kryptonite that could randomly alter Superman's powers, doing anything from making his hair grow to actually slowly killing him.
- In fact, Braniac once used a special mix of red and green Kryptonite that gave him a third eye in the back of his head. In order to protect his secret identity, Supes pretended that the kryptonite had addled his brain to make him wear whatever hat is near him.
- One Superboy story had him meet Mon-El, an amnesiac with powers like his, who assumed due to this that he was Kryptonian. Near the end of the story, Clark gets suspicious and lobs lead boulders painted to look like Kryptonite at him. Mon-El collapses, and Superboy flies in to accuse him of fakery — but the trauma has brought his memory back; he's a Daxamite, a member of a race similar to Kryptonians, but with a weakness to lead poisoning instead of Kryptonite. To keep him from dying, Superboy puts him in the Phantom Zone, preserving him for a thousand years until The Legion Of Super Heroes finds a cure.
- Later retellings have Clark and Mon-el seeing if Mon-el was a Kryptonian (whose memories were slowly coming back) getting sick after Clark takes out a lead box containing some Kryptonite, mostly so it doesn't make Superboy look like a massive dick.
- Wait, so throwing fake Kryptonite at Mon-El is more dickish than exposing the guy to actual Kryptonite?
- A small box sized piece as compared to boulder sized pieces? Yes, I think so.
- In Preacher, Jesse Custer's power of the Word (his ability to force people to do what he says) has a catch: the Word must be both heard and understood to work. Among other things, this means it doesn't work on animals, various characters avoid it by covering their ears, and at one point it's rendered moot when a squad of soldiers who only speak French are sent after him.
- Cyclops' optic blasts can be entirely contained by even a thin sheet of ruby-quartz. This is used to his advantage, as he can't normally control his optic blasts at all, and so wears glasses with lenses made of the material.
- This was used against him exactly once, the robot Nimrod gave itself an armor made of ruby-quartz so Cyclops couldn't attack him directly.
- At least twice: he was once ambushed in a supermarket by a human paramilitary commando wearing ruby quartz enhanced fibers.
- Wolverine, X-23 and some other fast healers in Marvel, have trouble healing when having "strange (or foreign) metals (or substances)" on their composition (such as Wolverine's adamantium skeleton, or being struck by carbonium) and thus not heal as fast (read: instantly)
- The New Gods of the DCU, while far from completely invincible (with the exceptions of the stronger ones like Darkseid) are all vulnerable to the very rare element Radion. In Final Crisis Darkseid kills his son Orion with a time traveling Radion bullet. Batman later fires the same bullet into Darkseid to fatally poison him; an act that eventually leads to Darkseid's Final Death.
- The title character of Bolt is a dog on a TV show who thinks his superpowers are real. When he is accidentally placed in a box and shipped to New York, he finds that he no longer has superpowers, and thinks the styrofoam peanuts on the box are the cause of it.
- Godzilla, in the film Godzilla VS Biollante is revealed to be weakened by the ANB (AKA The "Anti-Nuclear Bacteria"). Though, for some odd reason, it's ''never used again'' in later films.
- Unbreakable. David is a horrible swimmer and nearly drowned once as a kid. Discovering this was evidence reinforcing that he was actually "unbreakable" because all heroes have some sort of weakness.
- In a dream sequence in Harold and Kumar go to White Castle (aka H&K get the Munchies) the bullying sheriff gets to say this terrifc line after he gets shot: "Bullets! My only weakness! How did you know?"
- Star Wars got in on the act in the Expanded Universe by having creatures who "pushed back" the Force (in the case of the ysalamiri), hunted with the Force (thereby making them far more aggressive around Force-users, as with the vornskrs), or who had been "severed" from the Force, and so were unable to be sensed or affected by the Force (like the Yuuzhan Vong). The idea, of course, was creating handicaps so that a simple kidnapping plot, for example, would work against Jedi, who would normally be able to shrug off drugs, sense someone walking up behind them, open locked doors, etc.
- Let's not forget the mighty lightsaber's weakness: the totally useless cortosis, which renders a lightsaber useless for a few seconds.
- Oh for most, you can't get them wet, (Jedi from water worlds fix this problem)
- Evidently no one told this to Obi Wan on Kamino, or to Anakin in the clone wars cartoon (both use their sabers under heavy rain without problems). Luke also wades through a swamp and a partially flooded trash compactor with his saber on his belt, the weapon still works well when fighting Vader. His saber is not damaged by being left in snow either. Probably one of those Expanded Universe tidbit written by someone who hasn't even seen the movies...
- If a lightsaber blade is fully immersed in water, it shorts out. The actual device is fully waterproof, and a little (or even a lot) of rain won't do anything. Note that being fully immersed in anything for too long will cause a lightsaber to short out... It's a safety feature to stop the plasma (or whatever it is) from leaking out.
Live Action TV
- Because the writers of Smallville have small[ville] imaginations, they are unable to construe ways of having Clark Kent face danger without invariably introducing some form of the Kryptonite Factor.
- They actually tend to avoid this whenever the current big bad is superpowered or is otherwise a large threat, which happens a lot
- To be fair, they did bring up Clark's vulnerability to magic... but we don't like to talk about that.
- Considering that he lives in a town saturated with the stuff, and it gets shipped all over the world to be studied by every scientist who can get their hands on it, it's not that much of a stretch. Especially since Clark's enemies list includes certain parties who have become aware of its many useful properties and use it as Swiss Army Rocks.
- It also makes you wonder why he doesn't just move away.
- They tried that by having him spend time in Metropolis, which is all of 80 KM away. Still trippin' over the green rocks every two steps.
- In one episode (Season 8, 'Committed'), a serial killer who doesn't even know who he is just happens to be wearing a kryptonite bracelet. How or why is not explained.
- If it makes you feel any better, give him a couple months he may just get cancer.
- Parodied on the Nickelodeon sketch comedy show All That, where recurring character Superdude's weakness was "lactose intolerance", meaning in his case that merely being in the proximity of dairy products was harmful to him.
- Non-super example: James May of Top Gear appears to have mild to moderate obsessive-compulsive disorder. His co-presenter Jeremy Clarkson once drove him offstage by rotating the bezel on his watch until it was out of alignment with the face
Tabletop Games
- The Ravenloft game setting's Van Richten's Guides not only expanded on a lot of creepy D&D monsters' powers, but also gave plenty of them unique Kryptonite Factors of their own. We're not talking about the usual garlic-vs-vampires stuff; in Ravenloft, even golems have their own personalized Kryptonite, which players have to figure out if they're going to use it against the baddies.
- Vulnerability and Weakness are used to represent this in GURPS.
Video Games
- MMORPG Example: In City Of Heroes, one can unlock the "Kheldian" Epic Archetype, a form of Energy Beings from outer space that have merged with humans. Though they possess a greater arsenal of powers than "ordinary" heroes, as well as the unique ability of shapeshifting, they also possess a fatal weakness to a particular form of Quantum Energy. Thus, while playing or teaming with one, enemies wielding Quantum Array Guns are mixed in randomly with the ordinary enemies — as are the lethal "Void Hunters", mercenaries specifically trained to hunt and kill Kheldians, adding implants that protect them from Kheldian attacks to their Quantum Array Guns.
- This weakness was recently toned down due to years of player complaints as the Quantums Weapons were considered to be too commonplace for such a powerful attack. Now the quantum weapons deal less damage and only stun the player for a fraction of a second rather than taking over a third of their life and leaving them stunned for too long to defend themselves.
- Having a Kheldian on the team will occasionally spawn Shadow Cysts that spawn spirits that ruin accuracy and attack speed of everyone on the team. Oh, and they explode when destroyed. And they're surrounded by Mooks who will probably kill you because you can't aim or fight back. For the most part, Shadow Cyst = Total Party Kill. Thanks Kheldians!
- Haar in Fire Emblem 10 is an otherwise One Man Army mechanically, but (also mechanically) is pretty much always 2 hit killed by thunder mages.
- This applies to almost every unit with a weakness in the Fire Emblem games: Attacks with an advantage do triple damage. And pray you don't get unlucky enough to get hit by a critical hit by your weakness
Web Original
- In the superhero spoof Adventure Game The Frenetic Five versus Strum und Drang, the character Pastiche has various powers, the most notable of which is an ability to become an Intangible Man (woman). Her only weakness: she can't phase through rope.
- Tales Of MU: Mackenzie may be partially invulnerable, but crossing yourself is the only thing needed to repel her. In peoples of faith, this actually pushes her away and causes unbearable pain.
- Incredibly powerful mage Fey in the Whateley Universe is indeed one of The Fair Folk, and so she has a weakness to cold iron. And synthetics, which give her really nasty rashes. She has wardrobe problems because of that one.
- Played with by Phase, who's managed to slip a fake Kryptonite Factor into her official file. For the record, it's "dark chocolate administered orally".
Western Animation
- Spoofed in an episode of Freakazoid, in which bad guy Guttierez tries presenting a variety of weaknesses (the color yellow, water, and kryptonite itself), failing each time, as Freakazoid points out that that's some other iconic character's weakness.
- Freakazoid himself has two rather obscure and ridiculous weaknesses, though: he can be imprisoned in a cage with graphite bars charged with negative ions, and he has an aversion to "poo gas".
- In a Dark Future segment on The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy, rebels led by Irwin use frogs as weapons, as they've learned that they are giant worm/planetary tyrant Future Mandy's Kryptonite Factor. They're wrong, as Mandy had leaked that information herself, in what could've been a Xanatos Gambit if it had involved something more mentally-challenging that tricking Billy.
- In an episode of Tiny Toon Adventures spoofing the Superman movies, "Super-Babs" was weak to carrot cake — she couldn't stop eating it, and the villain continued feeding it to her until she was too overweight to fly after him.
- The Justice League cartoon downplayed or ignored the Kryptonite Factor of every character except Superman. Green Lantern's vulnerability to yellow was never actually mentioned (though occaisonally, if you watch closely, you'll see yellow stuff getting through his force barricades). J'onn J'onnz had no particular vulnerability or phobia regarding fire (though he had a bad case of The Worf Effect in the first season, and he would occasionally struggle in situations where there was a lot of fire). Aquaman never seemed overly discomfited by being out of water for extended periods. Wonder Woman... well, she'd lost most of her Kryptonite Factors by the time the series started anyway. Hawkgirl eventually gained a Kryptonite Factor that was more emotional than physical and ended up resolved by series end anyway. The Flash almost never used his powers to their full extent (not unlike Superman), with the idea that he never really pushed himself to excel...and when he did, he was given a convenient excuse not to again. Batman's "Kryptonite Factor"—that he was a perfectly mortal human—came up time and again, but doesn't really count.
- The Thundercats are vulnerable to "thundranium", a rare mineral that is pretty much a poorly disguised knock-off of kryptonite.
- In the Teen Titans cartoon, Starfire is allergic to metallic chromium. The allergy is more dangerous to others than herself, as it causes her to sneeze energy blasts. It even turns out to be an advantage, as it allows the team to track a chromium-based bomb.
- Imaginary Man, a superhero imaginary friend on Fosters Home For Imaginary Friends, is weakened by girly things, particularly flowers. Similarly, his evil nemesis Nemesis, loses her powers whenever her hair is messed up. It later turns out they were thought up by a boy and his sister, respectively, just to annoy each other.
- The Sushi Pack are weakened by heat, and since they have a tendency to announce it, their most recurrent villains usually keep a couple of heat lamps around.
- On The Mighty B, Bessie (who fancied herself a would-be superhero) once tried to find her Kryptonite Factor by going through every food item she could think of alphabetically. By the time she got to zucchini she was so full that she became violently ill, and thus thought that zucchini was her weakness.
- In The Powerpuff Girls the titular girls lose their powers if they come in contact with Antidote X.
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