Troperville
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The case of a writer not quite getting his own head around his invention. An invention which is capable of great things (and often, of literally anything) is used exclusively for much lesser tasks.
Frequently, the cast themselves fail to even ask what the phlebotinum is capable of, resulting in a Fantastic Aesop.
Compare Forgotten Phlebotinum, No Transhumanism Allowed, Plot Induced Stupidity, and Coconut Superpowers. See also: Mundane Utility and Cut Lex Luthor A Check.
Try to avoid the temptation to add a Justifying Edit. Feel free to add another It Just Bugs Me-type gripe.
When they do use magical abilities for these kinds of things, it's Magitek.
Examples:
Live Action TV
- The Star Trek Transporter. You can store people and materials as data, then transmit them and reconstitute them at will. Best application in-story: fancy elevator. Better idea: Send out a ship large enough to carry a transporter and its data, with the capability to reconstitute something the size of Deep Space 9 wherever it is needed. It doesn't even have to big enough to hold the data needed for replication, as long as we have interstellar internet. Which we do.
- Hell, combine that with a virtual reality for the stored people to exist in, a door-shaped replicator/dematerializer, and some mechanism for time travel and you've got a TARDIS.
- Best idea: create an army of Picard. After all, we're sure that a teleporter can double someone without side effects (with Riker). Just scan Picard and the Federation will have an army of crossbow-wielding, smooth-talking archeologists of DOOM! Even better, create an army of sentient Data. Just use the technology used to transfer consciousness from a human to Data's positronic brain and voila! Or just train a person to command an army of bots via telepresence. All the other stuff you mentioned in the domain of guys like Kurzweil. The Trek 'verse is remarkably organic-human-centric and anti-A-Life. Not to mention anti-genentech, so improving humans or uploading is right out. Growing up, you never realize just how essentially Luddite Trek was, when it came to turning technological progress inward. Some basic cybernetics, sure, but the two regular AI characters were token minorities Hell, the Doctor was basically one of a Slave Race who lucked out. The one genentech-boosted regular had to hide it for fear of arrest and ruin. The other cyborg characters were clanking Body Horror / The Virus monstrosities, while the genentech characters were Psycho For Hire Darwinist Super Soldiers. The new perspective kind of hurts my enjoyment.
- On the other hand, they did eventually hypothesize the Replicator out of it.
- Arguably the best use in story is actually Scottie Montgomery Scott's making a virtual lifepod out of it by storing his own pattern in a transporter pattern buffer for 75 years after the USS Jenolan crashed on the Dyson sphere by means of a clever conjunction of Techno Babble.
- They used the transporter to cure Dr. Pulaski of a premature aging disease in Unnatural Selection. So why does anybody need to get old, ever? Can't the transporter cure all diseases and repair all injuries?
- Yes. Yes it can. In fact, in one of ST:TNG's fun episodes, Picard and three other people end up being turned into children. If I were Picard, and someone just rolled back 50 of my years, there's no way in Hell I'd undo the process. Even if it did mean rooming with Wesley.
- And then there are weapons. DS 9 took this approach once, with a rifle hooked up to a teleporter. If a teleporter can transport a bullet and preserve its velocity, what can't it do?
- Subverted in Supernatural. When a character is discovered to have mind control abilities, he is asked why he is only using it to live a lower middle class life and to obtain some weed and a couple cool things like a rare car. He replies by claiming that he has everything he would ever want.
- Speaking of mentalistic powers, Buffy Summers acquired the ability to read minds. Giles suggested using it for gathering intelligence against her enemies... but Buffy's response was "Way better than that," and she used it to investigate the petty personal questions of how people think about her.
- Sylar's power of "studying something and figuring out exactly how it works" in Heroes. In-story use: fixing watches, stealing supernatural powers. Better use: churning out Nobel Prizes. In anything. Studying just the human body opens up fields like medicine (cure diseases, extend lifespans), neurology/psychology (figure out how the non-superpower parts of the brain work--consciousness anyone?), and genetics (genotype interaction). Of course, this may result from the fact that Sylar is insane.
- Furthermore, the second episode established that Sylar was incredibly well-read; his apartment was filled with nothing but books on a wide array of topics (sorta like an eerily tidy version of Yomiko Readman's pad), suggesting that Sylar had spent the vast majority of his life absorbing information about pretty much everything.
- I'm pretty sure we have a trope for this.
- In New Amsterdam, in the 1600s, a Native American tribe has a spell that makes people immortal. In-story use: reward some random white guy who saved the life of one of the tribe's women. Better use: make all of the tribe's warriors immortal, then easily defeat the white guys that are taking their land.
Film
- The Prestige's matter duplicator. You can duplicate anything, even living beings. Best use in story: a magic trick. Better idea: Have anything you want.
- The droids in the Star Wars prequels, though they're cheap mass produced highly advanced battle robots, they have all the battle tactics and intelligence of an NES console. One game programmer for a game like Halo or Half Life could have quadrupled their effectiveness. Better idea: Cheaply mass produce an army of clones. No, wait. That's not really any better. This one's in trouble.
- While we're in Star Wars, the Force. The best they do with it is shooting lightning, lifting stuff, and making improbable jumps. You never see them lightsaber fighting from ten meters apart or hitting anybody with a Force Cardiac Arrest of a Force Stroke.
- In the various Blade movies, Blade is the only (Half) vampire with the ability to go about in the daylight. Best use in movie: None, he just moves around and talks to humans during the day. Better use: Use it to attack other vampires in their homes or offices during the day when they can't run away. In the comics and The Series, he does actually spend much of his time trying to track down the daytime hiding places of vamps. Not always an easy task, since the vamps know that's when they're vulnerable, so they tend to make hiding well a priority.
- In The Matrix Reloaded, Neo almost never uses the full extent of his powers. Example: Neo stops a ton of machine gun bullets from a half dozen mooks, lets them fall to the floor, and then fights them in a big wire fight. Better idea: Send the bullets back at full speed, shredding the mooks without any real effort at all. Many other scenes throughout the sequels seem to be the result of an unspoken retcon regarding Neo's abilities. Where the end of the first movie implied that what we saw was just scratching the surface of what he could do now, it turns out that no ... he can stop bullets, fly, and fight really well and that's it.
- Charlie And The Chocolate Factory is full of this, but it's lampshaded by Mike Teevee being outraged that Willy Wonka only wants to use his shrinking/teleportation ray for something as "pointless" as candy, when he could be using it on more interesting things, like breakfast cereal and people.
Animated Series
- In Xiaolin Showdown the cast and Shape Shifter Plucky Comic Relief Dojo are captured and put in cages by a corporeal Wuxia. Best use in episode: Dojo points out he can't be imprisoned in a cage since his shape shifting allows him to grow to tremendous size and bust out. The cage doesn't break. Better Use: Become small enough to fit through the bars. It was implied that it was a Magic cage. (The holes in the bars were already bigger than him!)
- Another from Xiaolin Showdown, the Emperor Scorpion, which can control any other Shen Gong Wu. Best Use: defeating four Mala Mala Jongs (giant demon monsters made of Shen Gong Wu) and the locking it in the vault. Better Use: Steal all the villains' Shen Gong Wu.
- In W.I.T.C.H., Hay Lin has the power to turn invisible. Best in-story use: occasional spying, and passing on a secret message to The Mole as part of a Xanatos Gambit to defeat the Big Bad. Better use: sneak into the Big Bad's bedroom and stab him in the back.
- Invader Zim used this trope with relish to demonstrate just how incompetent the titular character is, with him obtaining everything from Time Travel to Humongous Mecha and repeatedly failing to use them for anything other than tormenting his arch-nemesis. One episode had him in the possession of a device that was capable of drawing billions of litres of water into space. His best use: create a giant water balloon. Better use: Drain every lake and river in the world and watch as all human civilisation crumbles in a matter of weeks.
- He did, IIRC, flood all of Earth, but [[Snapback]] meant it had no lasting effects.
- In a Halloween episode, Homer buys a seconhand teleporter from Mad Scientist Professor Frink, and uses it to get beers from the fridge while sitting in the living room. But, hey, it's Homer Simpson.
- In the Justice League Unlimited episode Grudge Match: Lex Luthor has developed a form of mind control that works through Justice League communicators, he uses it to finance his organisation by makeing female league members compete in an underground fighting tournament. He could have just diverted the justice league's huge finances to a Swiss account, set all its members on any immune to his mind control, then have the survivors join his league of evil, or just commit suicide to get them out the way.
Webcomics
- All the technology Tony invents in Real Life is used by Greg for disturbingly mundane purposes. This
 pretty much tells you all you need to know. This is deliberate, and played for comedy, though.
- Mad inventor Riff (well, he's more of a "Meh" inventor) in Sluggy Freelance has ended up playing this trope for laughs by using such things as his dimensional portal for cheap magic tricks, and generally using his prodigious intellect on ray guns and toaster cannons. Is it any wonder his Catch Phrase is "Let me check my notes"?
- Subverted by the fact that his inventions are being applied to better effect (well, slightly better at least) by the evil corporation that employs him.
- Doc of The Whiteboard uses a teleporter to get pizzas delivered instantly. He also once invented a device that could launch paintballs backwards through time (presumably by breaking the light barrier).
Anime
- Even if nobody has the knowledge needed to reconfigure the Robes and Elements in Mai-Otome (which means they can't materialise arbitrary objects), there are still better applications of Otome than mostly-wasted weapons of war. Namely, other areas where flight and superhuman speed can be required, like construction or rapid transit. Why didn't Garderobe send the Corals to help with the castle and thus avoid the whole "it ruined the Windbloom economy" subplot, or just mass-produce underpowered GEMs that don't come with weapons, for civilian purposes?
- The digital world was created from computer programming and could subvert any laws of reality, a programmer could solve any problem plauging humanity.
Comics
- Basically, every superhero. Name one superhero who couldn't somehow make a fortune using his or her abilities for something other than beating up another superhuman.
- Honest livings, though; even robbing a bank is an incredibly stupid use of superpowers. Spider-man, for instance, could make about twenty times as much, have more time free for heroin', and avoid JJJ forever if he just started a courier business.
- DC Comics has (had?) the Kapitalist Kouriers, a set of Russian superspeedsters who indeed used their powers for a courier business. All over the world. However: characters who do that instead of beating up on The Bad Guy of the Week don't get played in RP Gs and don't get their own comic titles. So it's sorta self-defeating.
- An issue of Heroes for Hire (which is Exactly What It Says On The Tin, so at least these guys are getting paid for their work) has one of the "heroes" in a government warehouse where various captured supervillain equipment is stored. Upon seeing one piece of equipment, he notes the idiocy of inventing a gun that turns stuff into gold, then using it to rob banks. It takes him very little time to realize that he ought to steal the gun himself and use it in more intelligent ways. Unfortunately, it's broken shortly afterward in a super-brawl.
- A recent issue of Flash had him do just this. He was hired by an antique film and memorabilia collector. He hired the Flash to watch all of his movies and examine all of his antiques and catalog them. Obviously made for the plot, but ingenious none the less.
- Cut Lex Luthor A Check. The Ultimates do just that.
- Lampshaded in the first issue of the Mark Shaw incarnation of Manhunter. Over a series of panels of Dr. Alchemy using this powers to perform a robbery, Manhunter points out that he could probably make more money a dozen different ways using a stone that would allow him to transform an object into something else, even if it was temporary.
- Subverted by the GURPS supplement SuperTemps, which was filled with supers who used their powers for things like sanitation and garbage disposal, medicine, being a courier, or being a security expert.
- GURPS International Super Teams incorporated SuperTemps into its setting, and expanded upon it. And the I.S.T. chapter of GURPS Y2K had detailed passages on supers using their powers for construction and other mundane occupations.
- Captain Hammer in Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is mentioned by Dr. Horrible as being "corporate"; presumably he takes sponsorships. Given the character in question (an incredibly self-absorbed jackass who takes special pleasure in beating up geeks and seducing clueless women, getting away with it all because he's labeled a "hero"), it wouldn't exactly be surprising.
- To be fair, most heroes fight supervillains not to make a good living, but because they want to save people from being killed by supervillains. And because if nobody fought the supervillains, they wouldn't have an intact society left to make a good living in. Not that Spidey shouldn't be given a good hard smack for not, oh, patenting the gorram web fluid and making a hojillion bucks selling tangleguns to the police, or something.
- Phil Seleski (aka Solar) from Valiant Comics universe has the power to manipulate matter and energy any way he wants. Most of the time, he uses them to stop criminals that, even if powerful, were much weaker then him. Justified because first time he tried to use his powers to the fullest, the entire universe collapsed into a black hole, forcing him to re-create it as the Valiant Universe (a combination of the real world and stories from his favorite comic books).
Tabletop Games
- Most magicians in Unknown Armies behave this way, one major reason why some of the most powerful canon NP Cs are almost completely mundane. The rulebooks frequently mention adepts using their earth-shattering powers and ancient mystic rituals to beat up ex-boyfriends or acquire Star Trek paraphenalia.
Video Games
Other
- Santa Claus has, amongst other things, access to a vast manufacturing complex run by magical elves, a sack that can hold near limitless contents and still be carried, the power to make reindeer fly and some kind of time dilation ability. Best use in story: making illegal copies of copyrighted/trademarked/patented toys and giving them to children. Better idea: world domination.
- Santa has every and any material possession he wants, a happy and stable marriage, a small army of faithful and happy slaves, no neighbors, a 100% approval rating virtually everywhere on the planet, and 100% job security. And he's also immortal. And he only has to work one day a year.
- So why do rich kids get nicer present than poor kids? He easily has the power to end poverty in third-world countries, but he's too busy conquering the Martians and turning into Tim Allen, apparently.
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