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Hobbes: Is Amazon Girl's super power the ability to squeeze that figure into that suit?
Calvin: Nah, they can all do that.
Whether the superheroine is a mutant, an Amazon princess or an alien humanoid, if she's female, she is straining against the bonds of gravity... but not in a flying sort of way.
This most common of metahuman attributes seems to range from a D-cup size upward for any character just past the onset of puberty (a time when many comic-book characters start to manifest superpowers).
Of course, this may fluctuate under different artists.
Note that this trope applies exclusively to women with actual superpowers, but they don't have to be technical superheroines.
Subtrope of Heroic Build. See also: Form Fitting Wardrobe, Stripperific, Gag Boobs and Gainaxing. If you need Mundane Utility for this superpower, it can be made into Victorias Secret Compartment.
Examples
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Anime and Manga
- Seras Victoria from Hellsing. Apparently, getting bitten by a vampire also increases your cup size by a few letters.
- Lampshaded in one of Tokyopops' "Rising Stars of Manga" stories:
Buxom Villainess: What are you travelling with that flat-chested loser for?
Somewhat Less Buxom Heroine: F-flat chested?! I'm a C-cup!
Buxom Villainess: (comforts heroine) I know, you poor thing.
- The Sekirei in Sekirei may have a variety of Elemental Powers, but the most common power? The boobs. Every single Sekirei but the loli and the few men have huge ones.
- Several characters in Mahou Sensei Negima have this power, most notably Kaede and Mana, two of the most well-endowed students in Negi's class, as well as two of the strongest. Not to mention that the majority of the characters are around fourteen years old! It's not necessarily unrealistic, though. Puberty doesn't always wait, and in some cases starts in the single digits. Besides, Class 3-A runs the whole spectrum, from the "Puberty, what's that?" Narutaki Twins to the two mentioned above. In chapter 235, Natsumi points out that this seems to be common in the magical world.
- Bleach. Rangiku Matsumoto, Orihime Inoue, Tia Harribel, Nel's true form, Haineko... the creator ain't named "Titty" Kubo for nothing. With the exception of Rukia, it often seems like viewers can tell how important a female character is supposed to be by her cup size.
- Signum from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, combined with Boobs Of Steel through being a Lightning Bruiser.
- Tsunade in Naruto. She must be the only character have actually been measured (106 cm if memory serves and Jiraiya is to be believed). Hinata the Shrinking Violet as well. I wonder if Sakura is jealous of her...rice cups. As well as Samui from Kumogakure and Konan from Akatsuki.
- Mai and Haruka in Mai-HiME. And Mayo, heroine of the Mai-HiME Destiny Alternate Continuity novel, outranks both characters in boob size.
- In Tona Gura, Nina Isokawa and Hatsune Arisaka, the latter much to the chagrin of her younger sister Kazuki and Kazuki's best bud Chihaya—and nearly every other woman Hatsune encounters. Partially subverted in that, while he notices them both, sometime Chivalrous Pervert Yuuji Kagura takes pains to not even consider the deeply underaged Nina as a prospect, despite her crushing on him (sometimes literally), and treats Hatsune much like an older sister.
- In Ranma One Half, both Ranma's female form and Shampoo are shown with considerable cleavage, as is Ranma's fellow Gender Bender Herb, and a monkey that was transformed into a human girl with the same spring. In fact, this has resulted in a Fan Wank that the Nyanniichuan has a sub-clause that anyone cursed by it will become very busty, in order to make hiding their condition more difficult. The anime often is accused of amping their cleavage size up further, but this is mainly due to the presence of Gainaxing in the OAVs and Non Serial Movies- particularly Nihao! My Concubine, in which Shampoo and Ranma's chests have been estimated to measure roughly 87cm and '85cm respectively.
- Urusei Yatsura, the previous series by the same author, subverts this in both anime and manga versions. Even Lum, whom both Shinobu and Ataru call "big breasted" in her first appearance, doesn't appear to be much larger than a C-cup. Perhaps they were deceived by the Fur Bikini?
- A lot of the main cast of Kampfer have an ample bust. Of note is the series protagonist Natsuru Senou. Unfortunately, he's a guy, and he doesn't even want to be a Kampfer in the first place.
Comic Books
- The Ur-Example: The urban legend
 goes that legendary comics artist Wally Wood, one of the original artists for Power Girl at DC, started enlarging her chest issue-to-issue to see how far he could go with it before the suits upstairs caught on. Again, this is just a myth; however, it started a tradition, and it's often considered one two of the main features of the character, i.e. that she has even larger breasts than the average generously-endowed superheroine. Plus the "boob window" over her cleavage making them that much more obvious.
- Lampshaded in the Superman/Batman comic when Batman, Superman, Katana and Power Girl are discussing the need to distract the Toyman (a thirteen-year-old Japanese boy genius). Power Girl (in her costume with the big window in the chest) asks why everyone is suddenly staring at her before realizing the obvious. Well, the pair of obvious.
- Although, to be fair to Power Girl, many of the artists and writers over the past decade or so have had other characters point her figure out (such as in the preceding example), unlike other heroines in skintight and revealing clothing that other characters seemingly ignore. Even Power Girl is aware of her figure. She once commented that she doesn't need to wear a mask because "most of the time...they ain't lookin' at my face."
- The line's ridiculous, of course, because we see in her new series that she wears low-cut blouses and a slight change of hairstyle for her civilian look. Even assuming that there's not some cringe-worthy "I recognize those!" line coming (and the series does show that she's patient enough to tell the difference between someone who's genuinely attracted to her and someone who's skeeving, so here's hoping that day never comes), she's one gay man, straight woman, or happily involved anyone away from having her identity exposed.
- Some contemporary artists (from the last decade or so) also draw her as muscular, built like a body-builder. Adam Hughes, especially. He even drew a sketch of her lifting her own breasts for exercise in one of his convention sketchbooks.
- Big Barda, another DC Universe Hot Amazon, is pretty damn stacked. Part of the reason for this is that she's based on a seventies-era Lainie Kazan, who was gorgeous and had a formidible set of twins. She still does, but at 68 and with about 40 extra pounds, the appeal isn't quite the same. Or is it?
- This is so common at Marvel, DC, and even most independent publishers that it'd probably be easier to list those ladies and young women who lack this attribute.
- Played straight and subverted by Caitlin Fairchild from Gen13; whilst in her superhero persona her clothing is frequently destroyed but she's left unharmed, and in civilian attire she complains internally about getting lecherous stares from passers-by; and her teammates - one of whom is a very open lesbian. In the most recent version of Gen13, when Grunge absorbed Caitlin's power, he also acquired her bust size. Apparently, boobs ARE part of her superpowers. In the post-Worldstorm version, she was explicitly genetically engineered for attractive appearance. Regardless of continuity, her large breasts were always part of her powers. In her first appearance, she suddenly turns from mousy and petite to muscular and curvy when her powers activate. This is attributed to an increase in "muscle mass". Well, carrying those around could count as weightlifting.
- The same comic gives us Roxy 'Freefall' Spaulding, who has a far more modest figure, allegedly based on Natalie Portman. In the crossover with Monkeyman and O'Brien, however, we get to see evil alternate-universe versions of the team. Evil Roxy looks much like regular Roxy, except with much bigger boobs.
- Subversion: During the classic "Judas Contract" storyline in the 1980s Wolfman/Perez New Teen Titans, modestly-endowed Tara "Terra" Markov makes several disparaging remarks about the other female Titans' larger bust sizes, including the immortal appellation "Balloon-Bod" for Starfire.
- In the Elf Quest comics, Dewshine is pretty much the only elf without a D-cup. Of course, most of them wear Stripperific clothing.
- Subverted in the Capes backup of Invincible #27, wherein Knockout dons large prosthetic breasts while getting into costume. Her also superpowered boyfriend comments that he wished she "didn't have to wear those anymore," to which she replies that her salary has doubled since she started wearing them, and that "the world just doesn't want flat-chested superheroines."
- Parodied later in that same series. When Atom Eve rebuilds herself using her matter-manipulation powers, in the middle of a life-or-death fight, she takes the opportunity to make some "improvements" by upping her cup-size. Subconciously. She then passes out, and is quite surprised by her new figure when she wakes up in the hospital.
- Boo Cat and Licorice Dust are the least-endowed characters in Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose, which means Jim Balent didn't give them gigantic bazookas like the rest of the female cast. He merely provided them with racks that would look right at home at the Playboy mansion. Raven Hex's diary entries in one issue are a protracted rant against her enormous rack and the reaction she gets from the townies, and then end with a declaration of "I've got it, I'll flaunt it." And why don't we mention the enormously talented Latex Red, who has actually two A-bombs hidden in the enormous boobs?
- Jim Balent gives 99.9% of female characters gigantic, round, shining bazookas ready to explode. He drew Catwoman with a massive rack for a long time, which is against almost all other depictions of the character. As an agile cat burglar, she's supposed to be lithe and athletic. A pair like that would make it tricky to slide through small spaces and leap across rooftops.
- Comic book cover artist Adam Hughes' pinups almost always portrays women with the Most Common Super Power. To his credit, he is one of the few to draw his women with the sort of physique that large breasted women usually have - broader hips and thicker waists.
- The same goes for Frank Cho, the creator of Liberty Meadows as well as an artist and writer on various other comic books. His women tend to be tall, with wide hips, bodacious rear ends and muscles. Adam Hughes himself said that if he could choose between a real-life incarnation of one of his girls or one of Frank's, he'd pick Frank's every time.
- Averted in DC Comic's new Manhunter. Although it varies by artist, Kate Spencer's appearance was deliberately designed to have more athletic proportions.
- Spoofed in the comic Young Justice, when mousy archaeologist Nina Dowd is tranformed into the super-villainess Mighty Endowed, and finds her breasts are now so big she can't stand up without help.
- Likewise, when Arrowette is convinced that she's going to have to turn evil, one of her major concerns is the costume that goes with a lifetime of villainy.
Arrowette: Oh God... I'll have to get a tight, skimpy, black leather outfit that shows off my cleavage. Oh God... I'll have to get cleavage.
- A good 95% of the female characters drawn by Phil Foglio have this power.
- In DC's Final Crisis #3, it was revealed that turning evil and entering the service of Darkseid had endowed Mary Marvel with, among other things, an even larger bustline than her normal. Yes, that's right. Darkseid, Lord of Apokolips, "the god that Satan prays to", now gives boob jobs to minions. Weeell... it's either that or she "Shazam!"ed for it. This could be explained by the fact that she was possessed by Desaad at the time, who is every bit as perverse as his name implies.
- Openly lampshaded and mocked, like a great deal else, in Empowered:
Empowered: "'Racktastic'? Having allegedly large breasteses, that's not a superpower. Okay?" Ninjette: " Au contraire, Count Rackula. Believe me, I would so flaunt them if I had 'em." Empowered: "That I do believe, coming from someone with 'Ninjette' printed across the back of her shorts."
- Luba from Love and Rockets and most of her female relatives. L&R does have a fair share of very busty female characters, but a lot of them are pretty full-figured in general & thus have normal proportions. Los Bros. Hernandez have a thing for chubby girls.
- Gold Digger fulfills this trope to a T.
- Paul Dini's Madame Mirage regularly bounces around in a very low-cut strapless dress without exposing her very voluptuous assets; justified, in that she's a hologram.
- Olga Lawina ◊from the Dutch comic AGENT 327
- Lady Death (not Death of the Endless) deserves mention here too, if only because, like Power Girl, she was unusually stacked even by comic-book standards and combined it with an outfit even more Stripperiffic than usual. More recent incarnations usually have her built more like other superheroines, though she still wears the bikini, stockings, and heels. Lady Death getting her own book was seen as a major catalyst to the "Bad Girl" craze of the mid-nineties.
- Lampshaded in one of the last Bloom County strips. Steve Dallas is showing Opus a comic book, and points out to him that, "all the women look like Dolly Parton in zero gravity!"
- Sin City started out by playing this straight, but with each book the women got less and less curvy. All, that is, but for Nancy, who was comparable to Jessica Rabbit in every appearence she had. And how.
Film
- In My Super Ex-Girlfriend, the advent of G-Girl's metahuman abilities is heralded by an, er, expansion, of her bosom, followed by several other cosmetic changes. Which is a total Big Lipped Alligator Moment, as no one ever points this out and her breast expansion is never once mentioned in the entire film. As well as the fact that in every scene of her as an adult, G-Girl seems to be pretty average sized up top.
- Terminator 3 lampshades this since the T-X is able to adjust its breast size and shape to better win over male humans.
Literature
- Ayla from Jean M Auel's Earth's Children series has so many Mary Sueperpowers that she's just one cape shy of being the superhero of the Stone Age. She just so happens to have huge breasts which are surprisingly firm and bouncy given their size and the fact that she's nursed babies.
- Lampshaded in Perry Moore's Hero, where pyrokinetic Miss Scarlet says during an icebreaker that she grew up by a nuclear power plant and one day in her teens she woke up with her flame powers and "a rack that would make Dolly Parton jealous."
Live Action TV
- Midway through each season of Who Wants To Be A Superhero, the remaining contestants receive cover art for their potential comic books. All the female contestants are inevitably depicted with some serious cleavage, even those that are actually flat-chested. To be fair, all the male contestants were drawn as buffed out, regardless of their actual physique.
Tabletop Games
- Mutant Chronicles has several examples (Valerie Duval, the goddess Ilian), but most importantly the nepharite Golgotha.
- A third party Dn D book "Chainmail bikini" has the feats Anatomically Over-Endowed (also known as My face is up there, combat penalties to those possibly attracted to you) Cleavage (a certain type of secondary weapon, requires the above) and Epic Anatomically Over-Endowed.
- GURPS calls this "enhanced female secondary sexual characteristics". It's a zero point feature that often accompanies a level or two a Appearance.
Video Games
- The MMORPG Vanguard: Saga of Heroes includes a huge amount of ability to customize the look of your character—there's a slider bar for amount of overbite, for heaven's sake. Nonetheless, the smallest breasts one can give a female character are rather generous.
- Similarly, City Of Heroes includes a Chest slider. Diligent research by interested parties has calculated the minimum chest size achievable as a C-cup, average as DD, and the maximum as a gravity-defying HH.
- Champions Online, by the same developer seems to have kept this feature, for what should now be considered obvious reasons. This is further coupled by an overall "chest depth" slider which leads to questionably built human beings with the most powerful of most common super powers.
- It should be mentioned that the default female toon in the character editor has the breast size slider set to maximum. They know their
audience source material.
- Fairly common in 2D fighting games, probably because the low resolutions used don't lend to subtlety... or maybe they do. In any case, almost any female character beyond puberty is drawn with perky chests and marked curves, with few exceptions and regardless of their stated 3-sizes.
- Mortal Kombat. Almost every female fighter in the series sports Stripperific garb, and their breasts seem to range between D and F. Most of them fall near the top end. A semi-exception is Ashrah's primary costume, which is modest but doesn't hide the fact that she has a generous bust.
- Mai Shiranui, to some the embodiment of Gainaxing. This status is made fun of several times, such as in one of the Capcom Vs Whatever games when Dhalsim hints that her breasts add a few pounds to her weight.
- In Soul Calibur IV, most of the concept art for female characters pretty much featured all of them with upgraded 'assets'. The in-game models tend to be a little less buxom, but not by much. Sophitia, in particular, has grown considerably in size from the first game, where she actually looked like a slim teenage girl. The Character Creation mode, at least, gives you the option of a wide range of bust sizes, including flat chested. Interestingly, while the "Physique" scale for male characters changes their body's overall size, for female characters it seems to exclusively govern breasts and posterior.
- Most of the female cast of the Dead Or Alive games have quite large chests, for obvious reasons.
- Let's not forget that in DOA 2 they made a graphics engine specifically for the motion of breasts while fighting, since the assets of the female fighters were what drove many to the series. They also gave an option to turn breast bouncing on or off.
- Ninja Gaiden 2 Sigma is an extreme case - Ayane (of Dead Or Alive), Rachel and Momiji are all "Team Ninja Busty." The ability to jiggle their breasts is even a major selling point of the game.
- Although none of the obviously female racial images are exactly flat-chested, the Mrrshans in the first Master Of Orion game are quite well endowed. What's seen of the diplomat's outfit isn't much like that of Power Girl, mentioned above, but it does have a similar device for putting cleavage on prominent display.
- Tifa Lockhart in Final Fantasy VII probably qualifies, although Boobs Of Steel is more on the mark.
- Final Fantasy X has Lulu, a Squishy Wizard with an emphasis on "squishy."
- The Magna Carta series lives on this trope. As does any work by series illustrator Hyung-Tae Kim.
- Selvaria, oh, God, Selvaria. While no one specifically comments on it, most of her major scenes focus either on her flaming blue badassity, or her.. um, "talents", and the jiggling is truly astounding when the camera's on them. One particularly dramatic scene suffers because of the focus on her breasts bouncing around in different directions.
Webcomics
- In Scott Kurtz's PvP, Jade complains that she can't make a super-heroine on NCSoft's City Of Heroes MMORPG without producing an avatar with a back-breaking pair of breasts. When Brent and Francis explain that this condition fits the genre, Jade retaliates by naming her character the Titillator with the battle-cry macro, "Eyes up here!" On the other hand, she's got a decent pair herself, and her bustier sister Miranda uses hers as psychological weapons. After failing to manipulate a male character on one occasion, she looked down at her breasts and asked, "Are these on?" Brent once dreamed of Jade in a classic comic-book style - appropriately drawn by Frank Cho himself - and was awestruck with the results.
- Alternately parodied and embraced in Supermegatopia, especially by the characters of Buxom Gal, an explicit parody of Power Girl whose breasts expand as she absorbs energy and contract as she uses it, and Distraction Damsel, whose "super power" is to distract bad guys (and everyone else) with her assets and precisely-timed "wardrobe malfunctions".
- Subverted in these two PS238 strips. Villainess "The Kestrel" is blackmailed with medical pictures proving that hers aren't all-natural. She had it done because she's "got a mystique to maintain in this business." Beyond that, author/artist Aaron Williams rarely portrays any of his women with the Most Common Superpower. Especially Piffany, who is short and rather dumpy.
- Ellen from El Goonish Shive has this pretty literally: her "superpower" is to transform anyone, including herself, into a beautiful, busty, long-haired girl. Her own assets have occasionally been refered to as the "Wonder Twins" on this basis, both in comics and within fandom.
- The whole premise of the webcomic Sidekick Girl is that superheroes are chosen because they "look the part" and sidekicks are assigned on the basis of the heroes' needs. This leaves the intelligent and skillful but relatively plain Valerie as Hypercompetent Sidekick to a telegenic and curvacious blonde bombshell Brainless Beauty named Illumina, who has tended to get a long string of sidekicks killed with her incompetence. Valerie was picked because she can't die—and that's it. No Healing Factor, no immunity to injury or pain. She just doesn't die from anything. She can suffer, though. Man, can she suffer.
- Discussed in this strip from Something Positive:
Aubrey: Oh, I wanna be a superhero! All that power and might! The cool abilities and costumes! The shockingly perfect boobie-spheres that have their own unique center of gravity!
Davan: I noticed fighting for truth and justice wasn't in that little wish list.
Aubrey: Davan, super women have super boobies. Super boobies are a "get out of fighting for good" card in the Monopoly game that is our lives.
- Kanazuchi Yuuki of Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki, to the point where she can use "her" breasts as a ''monster detector''.
Yuuki: "Note to Self: Jiggle = bad stuff."
- The character Joule from the web comic WICKEDPOWERED has this power, and a whole lot of it. Example.
- The titular character of The Challenges of Zona and even more so the giantess Liri who would be at least a DD if she was human. Being around 15 feet tall her breasts pretty much demand their own zip code.
- Slick from Sinfest knows this trope. See for yourself.
- Ash Upton is by far the best endowed female character in Misfile, as befits the daughter of a langerie model...much to her chagrin, as she's actually a boy.
- Fa'lina of DMFA, as seen here. It is used as a joke at least once in Abel's backstory.
- Endemic to the Sparkiverse. In fact, this is one of the pieces of evidence collected by Castle Heterodyne that Agatha is indeed a girl.
- Girl Genius artist and author Phil Foglio was asked about this in an interview. His reply? He likes to draw women "realisticly."
Web Original
- Played with in the online story Interviewing Leather: Leather is a supervillain who used to be a superhero. Amongst her reasons for her Face Heel Turn is the fact that she didn't look like a superhero: she was only a B-cup and most heroines had at least double D's. "You know what they call it? Side Kick physique." Then again, she may be an Unreliable Narrator making excuses. Especially given that female supervillains are, if anything, even more inclined toward having supersized breasts and skimpy costumes that barely hide them.
- In the League Of Intergalactic Cosmic Champions Hamburger Pattie lived up to this trope while Frangelica was the inversion. Guess which character was written by a man & which by a woman?
- Justified in the Whateley Universe, since the Exemplar power that a lot of these teenaged mutants possess reshapes their body image to what they subconsciously think it ought to be. Hence, a lot of these teenaged girls have huge tracts of land for their age, just as a lot of these teenaged boys look way too buff for growing high school boys. However, main character Phase is an A-cup, and main character Generator is ecstatic when she gets all the way up to an A-cup, having been flat as a boy beforehand. Having (technically) been a boy beforehand.
- Done (but certainly no more or less justified than in any other instance) in Pokegirls, in which the female monsters were created by the Big Bad Mad Scientist Sukebe, who made the majority of them very well endowed.
- Faun Reinaka of Tasakeru, as befitting her bombshell nature.
Western Animation
- Teen Titans: Raven has the largest breasts out of all the girls in the show. Starfire, on the other hand, has medium-sized breasts when compared to Raven's - a major departure from her comic-book depiction, as discussed in that section.
- In Wolverine And The X Men, every female sans the younger, more underage ones, seems to have this most infamous, yet welcome, trait. And they are not at all afraid to show it.
- The girls of WITCH, both in the comics and the animated series, are all pleased when their powers make their breasts effectively double in size. Some, like eye-popping Irma, are a bit too enthused...tellingly her attempts to take advantage of them ends in embarrassment and her ego getting deflated. It goes without saying Breast Expansion is a common source of comedy in both the comic and animated versions. Played with, in the form of characters Will and Hay Lin. Both are, in their civilian forms, completely flat-chested and extremely insecure about it, especially card carrying Pettanko Will. When they transform, however, they both gets free D-cups which they're very proud of. In one instance though Cornelia's mom accuses Hay Lin of stuffing her bra when she sees her transformed...Hay Lin's response is to look pissed and puff out her chest more. Played straight with Tomboy Irma and Rich Bitch Cornelia: they're rather buxom for their age in human form, and in Guardian form they're even bigger. Of the two Irma is canonically "the biggest" but in defiance of Bigger Is Better her chest tends to be the source of jokes instead of praise.
- Ninja Mutant Leela from Futurama has huge breasts.
- From Avatar The Last Airbender's Beach Episode, we learn of Ty Lee's large...assets.
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