Mundane Utility - Television Tropes & Idioms

Mai Tokiha of Mai-Otome uses her ability to create flaming rings to... cook. Meanwhile, the robot warrior Miyu doubles as a spiffy eggbeater.
- Which was a Shout Out to Mai-HiME's Cooking Duel episode, where Miyu whipped up eggs in less than two seconds, much to Mai and Shiho's surprise.
- Not to mention the ending scene of Mai-HiME has Akira using her awesome Ninja skills to slice an apple.
In Fushigi Yuugi, Tasuke's asked to burn some hairs with his fire powers, so he goes into his usual warm-up pose before tossing a tiny flame.
The Absurdly Powerful Student Council in Code Geass pulls out an old Humongous Mecha to... make a giant pizza.
- Not just any pizza: the World's Largest Pizza. And yes, this is the example used above to illustrate the trope.
- In R2 episode 12, Anya (a Knight of Rounds, no less) uses her mech to aid in what is essentially a massive, schoolwide game of tag-your-crush. She nearly calls in the army to help, too.
  - To be fair, it could be said Anya was mistaken about what was going on, and assumed a panic. That still doesn't excuse that the school got a new Humongous Mecha to make an even larger pizza...
  - Or the fact that Lelouch and Rolo both made ample use of their magical eye powers in the same game Anya busted out her mecha for. Apparently, tag-your-crush is important enough to justify the use of a power that gets harder to control every time it's used...
- In one of the side novels, Lelouch recalls that his mother once used a mech to fend off nobles who were picking on her children. Lucky for those nobles, Knightmare Frames weren't as advanced back then.
- Lelouch uses one of the worlds most advanced Knightmare Frames, capable of destroying hundreds of lesser machines in seconds... as his personal vehicle. Admittedly, he was travelling secretly between countries on business, but still.
One of the hallmarks of Naruto filler is the characters turning their fantastic ninja powers to boring everyday tasks — the titular character using his absurdly powerful Rasengan jutsu to mix noodles, for example.
- Not to mention the Byakugan's potential to cheat at card games.
  - Also see D-rank missions, which consist almost entirely of this trope.
- In the Forest of Death, Naruto jumps into the river with Shadow Clone Jutsu, and forces several fish to the surface. Sasuke tosses kunai at them, and starts a fire with Fire Ball Jutsu.
In Codename Sailor V, the prequel to Sailor Moon, Minako's pen and mirror show the truth. Minako uses said pen on all her tests to churn out expert essays on things she knows absolutely nothing about. Needless to say, her Guardian Cat Artemis, is livid.
- This pops up in Sister Series, Sailor Moon. Usagi tends to use the disguise pen for mundane things, such as turning into an adult to sneak into bar or a Camara woman to sneak onto a boat, much to Luna's horror. Strangely, each time she uses it for something mundane it ends up being someplace she needs to get into to stop the baddies, though it's possible she's used it off screen without this happening.
  - And we were merely spared such episodes as "Sailor Moon Sneaks Into A Live Sex Show And All That Happens Is She Gets Squicked By The Dog"?
In Rurouni Kenshin, The protagonist at one point finds himself attending a fancy dinner party. Rather than use his nigh-unbeatable swordplay in battle, he picks up a knife and performs the: Hiten Mitsurugui Rui - Steak style- to cut up a steak.
In Fullmetal Alchemist, Ed and Al may use alchemy for saving Adventure Towns and fighting homunculi, but they can also use it to repair broken household items. Of course, this is probably why most people become alchemists.
- It should be noted that their teacher Izumi always tells them to fix things with their own hands and not rely on alchemy all the time. It's never outright stated in the anime, but reliance on alchemy in the FMA world may be the reason why it technologically lags behind our world by several decades.
  - Pretty much confirmed by the movie where a disgruntled physicist rants that alchemists have made his occupation worthless.
  - What the hell are you talking about? Amestris technology is similar to Earth's technology around the same time period. The only difference is that Amestris has automail and a complete lack of air technology, and Alchemy has nothing to do with that.
- Then again, considering the cost of performing alchemy, it's probably not a good idea to use it that way.
At the start of the Fate Stay Night anime, Shirou uses his powers to see patterns to sense where broken appliances need fixing. But then, at that point he doesn't know how to do anything else.
- Rin's first order to Archer after he's summoned? "Clean up this mess". The next morning, the first thing Archer does is make tea. Damn good tea according to Rin, but still...
  - Let's further examine this: Shirou has the innate ability to make a complete 360 degree blue print of anything he touches, eventually rising to the point where he just needs to see an item to know how it was made, who made it, why they made it, and so on, and he uses it to fix broken household appliances. Equally, Archer is; a super human nigh immortal Heroic Spirit; capable of taking on entire armies alone; capable of producing an unlimited source of weapons; a master of swordplay; known to have saved the entire god damn world at his own expense who knows how many times; used to perform paltry household tasks.
- The same could be said of most of the other Servants, especially in Hollow/Ataraxia: other so-powerful-they-need-the-mother-fucking-Holy-Grail-to-be-summoned spirits have been shown to enjoy fishing, hitting on girls, shopping, and dating.
In both Trigun and Cowboy Bebop, flamethrowers are repurposed as the world's most dangerous (and wasteful) cigarette lighters. Spike also uses it to broil (well, burn) meat.
- Also in Trigun, a machine gun was once used to light a cigarette.
- On the Cowboy Bebop example, Spike actually fails to light his cigarette.
  - Arguably, Spike succeeded far too well at lighting his cigarette- he reduced it all to ash down to the filter.
Similarly, Super Dimension Fortress Macross a soldier once lit a Zentraedi's giant cigarette with a Valkyrie's gunpod.
Suggested by Vita in one of the Sound Stages of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha when Shamal forgot to heat the water of their bath. Alas, Signum was quite vehemently against the idea of using her Laevantein as an impromptu water heater.
- Hayate suggests using the same with the Book of Darkness' magic, but they agree that if they can't control it, they'll start a fire. Given the type of spells Hayate uses later in the story, it's fairly obvious that this wouldn't have worked.
In an omake for Bleach 6th Squad Captain Byakuya Kuchiki jokes that he uses his Senbon Zakura, an attack known to reduce opponents to a status where their bodies can't be identified as human, in order to give himself a haircut.
- Another character, Ishida Uryuu, appears to use hyper-speed for sewing and handicrafts.
- In a filler episode, Hitsugaya uses his shikai ability, a humongous ice dragon known to freeze anything within it's vicinity, to make ice so the group can cool off on their visit to the beach.
  - Not the group, he makes at the request of Ichigo for Ukitake who'd almost passed out from heat stroke.
Essentially the point of Patlabor.
Season 3 of Ojamajo Doremi (Mo~tto) had the girls baking goods on the side.
- Several of the ojamajo tests in the Magical World involve the girls using their powers like this. Like the Final Test in the original season, which had them performing little favors to other people without them revealing their identities.
Sena in Eyeshield 21 once used his special move, the Devil Bat Ghost, to steal a letter a girl had sent to him from a teasing friend. It was even remarked as "the world's number one useless way to use a technique."
- Another time this happened was when Kurita wanted to give his teammates a bone-crushing hug after several days of training alone, and Hiruma put a big roll of bubble-wrap in his path. He hugged the bubble wrap instead, and popped every single bubble. Suzuna's response: "Completely useless, that kind of training."
- Hiruma himself uses his throwing accuracy to set off explosives and generally harass people.
- And then there was the All-Star Uselessly Badass... pillow fight.
One Inu Yasha episode involved Our Heroes using all their awesome power to clean house, do the laundry, and go on a booze run. Miroku's Wind Tunnel does not actually get applied to vacuum-cleaner duty, but Kagome was considering it. A bit heartless if you consider that it will consume him if he overuses it.
- Also made more hilarious when considering the fact that there are actual vacuum cleaners called Wind Tunnel.
In the first Slayers movie, Lina uses fire magic to light a campfire. Also, in the first series she heats a pool of water with a fireball so she can have a bath. This backfires, though, when her travelling companions hear the blast, think she's under attack, and come running to her rescue only to find her completely naked. Lina, being Lina, reacts as expected and they get a fireball in the face for their trouble.
Mahou Sensei Negima has several examples of this, the most notable being Kaede's introduction. She reveals that she's a Ninja by summoning a bunch of clones to make the search for food go faster and using her throwing knives to catch fish.
- Later on, she does the classic "Ninja-Quick-Change" bit to switch to her school uniform and get a student discount at the theater. Unfortunately the fact that she is six foot tall and rather well endowed for a 15 year old caused the ticket seller to dismiss her efforts as 'cosplay'.
  - Even later on, she successfully gets a discount by using her body manipulation technique to Loli-ify herself.
  - Another character uses temporary magic pills that cost more than the tickets are worth to get the child's discount on the theater tickets.
- Another example: Haruna using her artifact to create multiple copies of herself so she can finish her doujinshi before the deadline.
- Heck, Negi uses this almost continuously early on, he constantly infuses himself with magic so he can keep up with the girls as they sprint to school. It's more obvious after he temporarily seals his powers which makes him totally unathletic. He also tried to help Asuna do her paper route faster by giving her a lift on his flying staff, but it didn't quite work out, as her latent Anti Magic ability screwed it up.
- The whole Library Island arc took place because the Baka Rangers wanted to find a magic book that increases the intelligence of whoever is holding it...so they could pass their finals without having to study.
- Then there was the time that Chisame used her Artifact to make herself the #1 Internet Idol.
An episode of Ryuusei no Rockman entitled "Rockman Delivery Service" is pretty much that. Subaru mistakenly receives a giant pile of packages in the mail and uses his Rockman powers to set it all right.
- Also, in the second video game to the series Geo/Subaru uses his powers to open a locked door from the other side.
Canti in FLCL: He (it?) is the sole character capable of defeating all of the Humongous Mecha that come out of Naota's head. What does Canti do when not fighting giant robots? Laundry. Moving boxes. Cooking. Buying groceries (and porno mags for Shigekuni...). Or, if there's no housework to be done, why not just fly with the birds?
In Suzumiya Haruhi, Yuki is able to manipulate the fabric of reality. What do they use it for? Cheating at baseball. Admittedly, they are doing this to try and save the world. Through baseball. Yes, really.
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, when you discover you can travel through time what do you use this awesome power for? Making sure your sister doesn't eat your pudding.
- And singing karaoke for hours on end!
- Subverted a bit in the fact that there are severe complications that occur due to her time-leaping frivolously.
  - On the other hand, the actual owner of the time-jumping device says that he was relieved that she found it and not someone else, because he knew she would use it on frivolous things and not to severely muck up the timeline.
Basquash rides the line between this and Serious Business with the sport of Bigfoot Basketball, which is what happens when you decide to play basketball with giant mecha.
Loran does this a fair bit in Turn A Gundam, he's used the Turn A to do clothes washing, and to help out on a farm.
- This is referenced in Super Robot Wars Alpha Gaiden when he and Milia use their mecha to wash everyone's laundry. Then Kouji comes and tries to use the Mazinger's Breast Fire to dry them, which ends up burning some of them.
Of course, then there's Mazinkaiser's Beach Episode, where Kouji and Sayaka bring their 'bots to the beach. Sayaka even takes hers swimming, and doubles up on an Armor Piercing Slap by face-planting the most powerful robot on the planet halfway into the ocean floor.
In Darker Than Black, Hei's first onscreen use of his Shock And Awe powers are for the sake of fixing his landlady's TV under the guise of Percussive Maintenance.
In Shina Dark, a mage uses an ice-based attack spell to conjure a giant pointy ice shard... so it can be chipped apart to make sno-cones. He even complains afterward, "It's not like I studied magic for something like this, you know..."
In Ranma 1/2, Saffron, the Phoenix King, is given unbelievable fire- and light-emitting powers because he's supposed to function as his subjects' "power plant," providing them with heat and light so they can carry on with their everyday lives (while he perches quietly on his throne.) Unfortunately, the latest incarnation is quite the spoiled brat, and interrupting his maturation process resulted in a psychotic personality with zero control over his powers and is all too happy to use them destructively.
- Possibly lampshaded, in that Ranma points out, after hearing about this, that the Phoenix People could just get ordinary heating and lighting installed, what with their considerable wealth and bevy of magical eggs that reduce people to mindlessly obedient slaves. Then again, he could have simply been venting, due to believing that his chance at a cure was being threatened with destruction over something so mundane.
In One Piece, Zoro vigorously complains about using his swords to drop a heated rock into a soup pot.
- That's the only one you could think about? Robin uses her extra limbs to read more easily, Luffy's rubber powers allow him to eat more by stretching his stomach, Ace lights Sanji's cigarette, Magellan's favorite food is poison, Franky has a cola fridge in his cyborg body...
- This troper fails to see how the Magellan thing counts as Mundane Utility.
In Zone Of The Enders: Dolores, i, Dolores and James spend time Locked in a Base in a Snowstorm with an enemy pilot they shot down. Honest to a fault, they decide to pay for the power and resources used during their time there with a necklace worn by the pilot. Dolores decides she should get a job to pay the pilot back for the pendant. Incidentally, Dolores is a Humungous Mecha. She's a sweetie.
The fourth part of Jojos Bizarre Adventure includes a couple of Stands that are primarily utility: Pearl Jam (allows the body to undo its maladies with ingested food much more rapidly than normal; not a birth or Arrow Stand, but just awakened by Tonio's culinary zeal), and Cinderella (alters someone's features in a sort of psychic cosmetic surgery, and amplifies that someone's luck in the process).

The Ninja Burger series has the deliverymen use their elite Ninja Skills to... deliver food. However, they need every bit of it.

In several adaptations, Superman is seen using his heat-vision to shave. In Smallville, he uses it to make toast. Then again a single one of his hairs can hold a ton of weight comfortably, so it's not like he could just use a razor.
- He tried using his short-lived electrical powers to shave, with... unexpected results.
- Lois And Clark played this trope up more than any other. Superspeed was commonly used to clean up or paint the house, heat vision was used to heat coffee and ice breath was used to chill champagne. At one point he even played Pingpong with himself.
  - One rather creative and dizzying instance came in the pilot, when Clark, while talking on the phone and deciding how to arrange the furniture in his new apartment, uses his gravity-defying abilities to casually pace along the walls and ceiling.
- In the epilogue to the graphic novel Kingdom Come, there's a nice bit with Superman using his heat vision to "fix" Bruce Wayne's underdone steak.
- Just after Lois and Clark got married in the comics they were moving into their new apartment and Lois was taking advantage of hubby’s ability to pick up the sofa with one hand. "How about against that wall, no that wall, maybe there…"
- In this article, an economist argues that if he were real, Superman should also spend his time making billions of dollars doing mundane things like lifting satellites into orbit or manufacturing diamonds. The author notes that if Superman objects to the crass materialism of the situation, he could simply donate all his money to charity and likely solve world hunger.
  - Superman has tried to solve world hunger... and failed.
  - Superman has also manufactured a ton of diamonds in Superman: True Brit. Unfortunately, he made WAY too many...
  - Diamonds aren't all that rare to begin with. DeBeers is a horrible monster, no joke.
- Silver Age comics basically turned him into a full-bore doormat with this; flying dinosaur skeletons into the Metropolis Museum (with a specially-designed removable roof, no less!), smoothing out a ship's transport for Lois Lane by lifting it over his head...
- Super-Landscaping
The X-Men are known for their members using their powers for mundane reasons.
- The movie X-Men 2 has Iceman using his freezing powers to chill a bottle of soda that's been left out of the fridge for Wolverine.
  - He also created an ice rose to impress Rogue. Awwwww.
  - He does this in the comics as well, when in college.
  - And in X-3 he freezes the fountain in front of the school to make a mini ice-skating rink.
- This◊ set of panels is the epitome of this trope: why bother walk around a hole or, you know, stop walking when you can use your telekinesis?
- Wolverine himself (depending on Media and writer) tend to do this as well, using his sensitive nose to spout out hidden food (in the 90's toon, he was quite aggravated about smelling salami but not finding it), or using his claws to slice open a beer bottle.
  - This is parodied in a MiniMarvels strip where Wolverine cuts bread with his claws... and nobody wants to eat it because of where those claws had been.
  - Wolverine has twice used his indestructible adamantium claws to... trim the hem of Jean and Storm's dresses...
- In X-Men Evolution, Rogue used her ability-absorbing touch to copy Kitty's dancing ability for a school play.
  - And mutant baseball anyone?
- Cyclops picked the lock of the team van when Storm locked the keys inside...with Eye Beams.
  - He's done the same things in the comics. It's something Professor X oddly enough trained him to do.
  - In an interview with Toyfare, the writers of Evolution said that Scott occasionally forgets himself and uses his eye beams on, say, an uncooperative soda machine to get it to work.
An issue of the Flash comics had Wally West musing on a particular superspeed move that his uncle Barry Allen would do... spinning his hand at high speed to create a little wind tunnel. Wally noted that this was weak enough that Barry primarily used it to catch falling curtain rods from across the room. Wally himself was once shown using this maneuver to catch a bee that was flying near his girlfriend.
- Both Wally and Superman also like to pull the "Honey, I brought home Chinese takeout! From China!" thing.
- After getting married and moving to a new house he got impatient and unpacked everything in an instant. His wife Linda was not pleased with the results: "Books do not go under the sink!"
- There was also that one comic where he was using it to do his Christmas shopping.
- When Jay Garrick, the first Flash, got his powers, nearly the first thing he used them for was to save his girlfriend a trip to the library.
- The Chunk, one of the Flash's supporting cast in the '90s, was a large man whose internal organs had been replaced by a portal to another dimension. He needed to send things through the portal to "feed" himself, but he could also use it as a storage facility; when the Flash moved into a large house he'd inherited, Chunk helped him move by sucking up all his furniture and spitting it back out at the new place.
- Bart Allen uses his powers to get away with just about anything possible (eg. multitasking video gaming, eating and/or chores); part of the reason he was sent to live with Max Mercury is so that he could be trained not to do this as a reflexive reaction.
Wonder Woman's lasso of truth. Gift from the gods. Unbreakable weapon beyond mortal understanding. Really good for making your friends embarrass themselves by blurting out the truth at inopportune moments.
Mr. Fantastic (useless though he may be) almost uses his powers more for this than superheroing. Any given appearance of him in a comic, including his own, will have him in his lab, stretching his arms and neck so that he can be doing things at three different workstations at once; he's also been shown using his powers to make the world's greatest shadow animals for his son during bedtime stories (and it comes in handy in other places, Bow Chicka Wow Wow). All of the Fantastic Four do stuff like this to some level or another, considering the "domestic" flavor of the comic.
- This◊ (improved) Civil War panel shows what happens when it's raining, and Sue and Johnny don't have umbrellas.
Spider-Man's webbing. Used for his civilian career AND a bit of kink with the wife! (Who the hell is Joe Quesada?)
- He's also used his super strength to move furniture while helping MJ redecorate.
- Don't forget him using his powers to deliver pizzas.
- One issue of Spider-Girl has him climbing on the ceiling to fix a banner that MJ had put up for their daughter's party.
- His use of his wall-crawling and webbing in taking photos for the Daily Bugle is occasionally lampshaded by comments that his photos look like they were "taken while hanging upside down" or that it looks like he "just put the camera down and walked away."
One of the (many) things that pissed Hal Jordan off about Guy Gardner was Guy's habit of using his ring (a weapon limited only by the will and creativity of the user) to do utterly mundane things like open beers and change the TV channel.
Sara Pezzini has used her Witch Blade, a cosmic artifact of nigh limitless power to move furniture while moving and make toys for her daughter.
Watchmen's Doctor Manhattan constantly uses his god-like powers in the laboratory, and he creates duplicates so he can *ahem* lavish attention on Laurie while working on an experiment.
Jamie Madrox is greatly upset when he discovers that his duplicates are living beings and develop independent identities the longer they stay separate from him. Once he comes to grips with the metaphysical ramifications, he decides to use his power as a super-learning tool, sending his duplicates off to study different walks of life and learn a variety of skills to rival Batman. Another story shows him using his power as a super-babysitter.
Marvel villain Taskmaster has photographic reflexes and can mimic any motion he sees. He uses this to copy his opponents' fighting styles, learn martial arts by watching movies, and also improve his golf swing and learn to ski from the winter olympics. In high school, he became a star quarterback team after watching one pro football game. And thanks to being an Iron Chef fan, he's also an excellent cook.
In The Darkness, Jackie once sent the Darklings, (foul-mouthed lesser demons that he creates and controls, typically used to kill at will) to pick up his dry cleaning.
One advantage of shacking up with a girl with a super-strength granting alien battlesuit? Darned easy to rotate the tires on your SUV.
Hellboy's Liz Sherman uses her pyrokineses to light her cigarettes on occasion.
In the same vein, Mad Jim Jaspers once lit his ever-present cigarette with a fireball.
- An earlier issue, he used his reality-warping powers to liven up a particularly dull party by changing the wine from white to red.

In this Metal Gear Solid fanfic, Raikov uses Volgin's electrical powers for art projects.
Super-competent assassin teams used for crimefighting and bodyguard detail. This is The Open Door. "It takes a thief to know a thief" comes to mind. Assassins are trained to know how to best assassinate people, so they would know best on how to guard against assassinations, simply by knowing what they would do in that situation.

Edward Scissorhands does hedges.
The second Men In Black movie has Jeeves saying he used the exhaust from the Deneuralizer to make hot air popcorn.
In the movie, Dragonheart, as the former knight, Bowen, struggles with two sticks to start a fire to cook his meal, his newly befriended dragon, Draco, uses his firebreath on the pile of logs.
James Bond is always using Q's fantastic gadgets for mundane (or just 'other') purposes.
- Example: at the beginning of Live and Let Die, Q demonstrates to Bond a watch containing a powerful electromagnet. Almost immediately after Q leaves, Bond uses it to open the zippered dress of his latest 'conquest'.
The first Fantastic Four movie has Johnny casually using his flame powers to pop some popcorn in one of those expanding foil bags usually used for barbeque or camp cooking.
- It also has Mr. Fantastic stretching the skin on his face to make shaving easier.
  - And using his stretchy arms to either reload the toilet paper without having to leave the loo or slide his hand under Ben's locked door to open it and check on him.
In Real Genius, Val Kilmer's character uses a sophisticated cutting tool to carve coin-sized slices of frozen nitrogen, which he uses to cheat the vending machine out of free soda.
In Attack of the Clones, Anakin uses the Force (which is supposedly so mighty that the ability to annihilate a planet pales in comparison) to ... make a pear fly to his girlfriend's fork.
- In the same film, Obi-Wan casually uses the Force to retrieve a data module from a projector as he and Yoda are leaving the room.
- Obi-wan also uses the mind-trick get someone off deathsticks(a sort of narcotic) and rethink his life.
Shaolin Soccer stars a martial artist who wants to teach people kung fu techniques that can help them with their everyday lives - for instance, parallel parking by pushing your car into place, or trimming a tree using Wire Fu jumping techniques. To gain publicity, he uses his skills to compete in soccer.
The title character of Jumper apparently uses his power of teleportation mainly to retrieve the remote without having to physically walk to it.
In the MST3K movie, Tom Servo mentions that he uses his Interocitor, a device from the movie they're watching that can do everything from fire disintegrator rays to pilot spaceships, to make hot chocolate.

Horse drawn antigravity wagons for farmers. Dune, for all your anachronistic Schizo Tech needs.
- In Dune: House Harkonnen, Duke Leto uses a jeweled dagger that was given to him by the Emperor... to cut a paradan melon.
This is a training philosophy of the Asha'man in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time; all chores have to be done with their powers. If you can't channel fire, you eat cold food. This contrasts with their nun-like female counterparts, who do not permit such flippant uses by their trainees, since Menial Labour Builds Character (is there a trope for that?).
- While it is menial-labor-character-building, there's a more important reason the Aes Sedai don't allow trainees to use the Power for tasks where it isn't necessary - channeling is addictive, and doing it too much, especially for the inexperienced, risks burning out one's powers entirely, which usually leads to death or suicide. The Aes Sedai like to protect the investment they put into their trainees; the Asha'man, on the other hand, want more-or-less-competent soldiers as fast as possible and don't mind losing a few trainees (or a lot) along the way. Given that every single recruit is doomed to go cackling mad and die from a horrible leprosy-like disease, the chance increases with every passing day (and they knew it before they even signed up), this philosophy is understandable. They need to get men trained and in the field as fast as possible, to have as many days of sane activity as possible.
- There's also the fact that a large fraction of the girls who go to train with the Aes Sedai end up not actually having much power, and eventually get washed out as novices. The Asha'man, on the other hand, seem to only recruit people who have the potential to develop a useful level of power.
  - Actually, there is no way to tell how much power a man will develop untill he develops it. I suspect they just don't mention the weak ones.
Peter Reidinger of Anne McCaffrey's Pegasus books discovers he has powers after becoming a quadriplegic at age thirteen; as a result he uses his "Talent" for everything, including hiding the fact that he's doing it by puppeting his own inert body, which leads to some Uncanny Valley moments (as well as him literally levitating with enthusiasm early on when he forgets where his feet are in relation to the ground...)
- Mostly averted with the rest of the really powerful Talents. It's stated that they actually enjoy manual labor because constantly using their powers makes everything so easy it's boring.
The mighty weapon of Discworld's Chaos is a sword as rule-breaking as he. It is made of blue flame, which burns with absolute coldness. When he's not fighting, it creates a handy freezer that keeps his dairy products cold and fresh. Combining this with teleportation powers akin to Death's he becomes Ronnie Soak, the Discworld's greatest milkman, able to deliver said dairy products anywhere, anytime, always fresh. Most importantly, everyone's milk arrives at 7:00 AM sharp. Everyone's. Sir Terry Pratchett is making this up, not I.
- On a similar note, Susan, Death's granddaughter, has inherited The Grim Reaper's many talents, among them the ability to exist outside of time. She uses this talent to grade papers.
- There's some mundane uses of magic-derived technology on the Discworld, such as using tiny summoned imps to paint pictures (essentially a photo camera), or as (dis)organizers. However, Magic on the Disc is likened to nuclear power- it's good to know it's out there, but you wouldn't want a pile of it in your living room.
  - Imps aren't magic. They're perfectly ordinary occult.
- On a related note, many nobles in Discworld send their children to the Assassin's Guild of Ankh Morpork. There are two main reason for this: A: Knowing how to assassinate people teaches their children how to guard against assassination, and B: it actually is one of the best formal education schools in the world.
- Unseen University's omniscopes are powerful scrying devices that can see anywhere and anywhen. Because of this it's extremely hard to get them to show anywhere and anywhen in particular, so they usually show the blackness of empty space (that being what most of the universe consists of). The wizards mostly use them as shaving mirrors.
The Animorphs frequently use their powers for mundane things, despite the risk that it would blow their cover and lead to the enslavement of the entire planet. For example, doing a science project and watching concerts for free (twice!).
- They technically have a rule against this, which Team Dad Jake is miserable at enforcing—since he wanted to go to both concerts. Lampshaded in the final book, when Marco morphs a lobster to get his car keys off the pool floor, and Jake makes fun of him because, you know, people who can't morph are just screwed then. Marco then asks Jake if he's thirsty, and Jake snarks back, "Why? Going to morph cow and squeeze me out a glass of two percent?"
Keith Laumer has written a series of stories about "Bolo" tanks, super sized military tanks. In one of the stories, it is mentioned that after a war an attempt was made to use them for peaceful purposes, including attaching a blade for demolition work to one and calling it a "tractor". The half-megaton/second firepower still available on it tended to belay the "peaceful" status.
- A later scheme was to use an obsolete Bolo's massively powerful AI and large hull space to create an automated tractor/bulldozer/genetics lab for adapting crops to survive on newly settled colonies. While those responsible were smart enough to remove the Frickin Laser Beams this time, they made a really shoddy job of adapting the AI's programming: the result being that when the colony was invaded by hostile aliens it kicked into combat mode and exterminated them all with customised bioweapons, all while thinking they were just a particularly large type of crop pest.
Miles Vorkosigan in Komarr is given the position of a Barrayaran Imperial Auditor, which means he is above the law and can issue orders to anyone about anything with the Emperor's personal authority, subject to review only by the Emperor himself. At one point he uses this power to bypass paternal consent on a routine medical treatment for his love interest's son. Lampshaded by his comment "Just like swatting flies with a laser cannon. The aim's a bit tricky, but it sure takes care of the flies."
- Ekaterin's own point of view regarding this scene:
  Yes, she realized enviously, he could just wave all ordinary problems out of his path. Leaving only the extraordinary ones... her envy ebbed.
  - Miles also gets one in Memory. He and Simon Illyan aren't having much luck fishing, so Miles messes with his stunner's cartridge so that when he discardes it into the water, it creates an explosion of fish.
In Harry Potter magic is used for nearly everything imaginable. From making animated Chocolate Frogs, to the various practical joke items, transport, Quidditch, enchanted items that do household chores for you, self stirring cauldrons, semi-sentient owls, radio (no muggle radio for them, which works out fine since wizards apparently get better radioes), the list goes on. It's stated that high levels of magic such as at Hogwarts cause Muggle technology more advanced than a wristwatch to fail to work.
- Justified Trope in that, if Arthur Weasley is any example, the magical population of the world hasn't a clue how Muggle technology works. If the wizarding world ever gets hit with an Anti Magic Field or something, they'd die of starvation surrounded by filth.
- The House-elves. A race of powerful magical beings with near absolute loyalty as their Hat, whose magic isn't bound by the same rules as human wizardry, and what do most wizards and witches use them for? Chores. Justified by the condescending attitude most wizards and witches have concerning House Elves. A few wizards do make clever use of their House elves though: Crouch Sr. entrusted Winky with the very important task of keeping his son hidden (and fired her for nearly letting him escape), Regulus Black told Kreacher to destroy Voldemort's locket Horcrux, though even Kreacher's powers weren't enough to break it, and Harry put Kreacher's talents to good use for espionage in Half-blood Prince and for capturing a thief in Deathly Hallows.
Bloodsucking Fiends: Upon concluding that Vampire saliva acts as a healing agent (primarily to keep those tell-tale neck wounds from being noticed), Tommy tries to convince his Friendly Neighborhood Vampire girlfriend Jody to fix his cuticles and get rid of a blister on his toe. Jody is not amused.
Many of Nina Kiriki Hoffman's magic-using characters have creative methods of using their abilities in everyday life. The character of Terry Dane from the Matt Black series is probably the best example. She can cast spells to summon money (in the short story Airborn she mentions that she paid for a new car by casting spells to make multiple minor wins in the lottery), to make oneself more attractive, and to help someone study better by improving memory and concentration, and is constantly looking for new ways to use magic. She even invented a way to create portable spells in tablet form that can be used by nonmagical people. She runs an Internet-based business where she sells weak versions of these spells to ordinary people (her biggest customer base is college students), and although her mother disapproves of the way she uses her powers, she doesn't complain too much since Terry makes more money than she does and pays at least half the rent. However, Terry is careful about how she uses these spells to avoid attracting too much attention or giving too much of an unfair advantage to her customers.
Sorcery in The Belgariad has nearly limitless application, which all of the sorcerers take advantage of to some extent. The extent is simply a matter of a sorcerer's personal preference; the high end would probably be Belgarath (who prefers to take shortcuts in things like physical labor), and the low would probably be Durnik, who prefers working by hand if time isn't an issue.
- In fact Belgarion point this out to Polgara, while she is sewing a mend in a shirt. She demonstrates she knows full well she can use her power to do so and mends the shirt with a wave. She explains she likes to do mundane things as it keeps her hands occupied while she thinks. She then magically causes to rip to reappear and proceeds with her sewing.
In Stephen King's novel, The Tommyknockers, an alien spacecraft is discovered, and it makes the people near it technical geniuses. The main character uses her new abilities to power up her water heater by creating a small sun in it, making a tractor that can fly, and a typewriter that can read thoughts.
H Beam Piper's Uller Uprising features a project to use A-bombs for volcano mining. Justified, because by the point in the future Piper's novels are set in, people have access to weapons like the Bethe-cycle bomb, which creates a miniature sun 2000 miles across at its point of detonation (which has no mundane utility, because it's kind of hard to find a mundane use for a 2000-mile-across fusion fireball lasting several hours).
- How about a really, really, REALLY hot tub?
- Also justified in that the planet they're testing the A-bomb mining on is utterly uninhabitable by humans, with a chlorine atmosphere and an x-ray emitting sun.
Zeddicus Z'ul Zorandor, Wizard of the First Order, AKA the Wind of Death, has been known to use his exceptional and frightening mastery over magic to cook dinner just a little faster.
- A necessary function, as he is a Big Eater.
Harry Dresden uses his magic to light candles and his fireplace, and occasionally to create energy drinks in magic potion form, among other things. Also, Thomas uses his White Vampire abilities to give the most pleasurable haircuts possible, thus earning his rent and "eating" all at once.
In the Star Wars Expanded Universe novel "Yoda: Dark Rendezvous" has a conversations about such uses of the force (But of course using the force for such things leads to the darkside)
One of the perennial complaints of Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy is that he has a brain the size of a planet, yet is assigned only simple household tasks that wouldn't challenge a lobotomized goldfish's intellect.
Good Omens: The divine / infernal powers are nice for miracling up vintage wines into existence and keeping your car dent-free.
- To the surprise of both the Wine, and the Car, apparently.
Mendanbar, king of the Enchanted Forest, wields a magic sword responsible for choosing the succession and powerful enough to make him a match for "any three wizards" within his own territory. The first thing he does with it in his introductory book is place an improvised and stealthy spell to keep a wizard's staff from absorbing magic from his kingdom. The second? To unclog a sink. He offers to let it do the dishes as well, but is told that would be ridiculous.
In Wilson Tucker's 1954 novel Wild Talent, the psychic protagonist uses his ability while growing up to find out who is willing to hire kids his age for various jobs(extremely useful since the character grows up during the Great Depression), and is also able to learn things more quickly during school, job training as a movie projectionist, and military training as he possesses a combination of telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition.
In A Lee Martinez' Monster, the villain of the story, Lotus, possesses an indestructible stone that is responsible for the birth of the entire universe and it's continued existence. And though Lotus mainly uses it as a handy source of power she can leech off, she also uses it as a cutting board, a nutcracker, and a paperweight.
Since absolutely everyone (except Tavi) in the Codex Alera has at least some degree of Elemental Powers, they're generally used for Magitek purposes to make everyday life easier. They use fire for lightbulbs and refrigeration, earth for building and helping along farming, air to fly, and so on. Particularly impressive are the causeways, which let someone using them to travel go three or four times as fast.

The world of Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda includes such wonders as Nanomachines and they're available to pretty much everyone. How does maverick captain Beka Valentine use hers? Instant hair dye.
- And blackmail.
In one episode of The Invisible Man, Fawkes is scolded for using his invisibility to get into movies for free.
In the Stargate SG-1 episode "Allegiance", the "kawoosh" of an opening Stargate is used in a burial ceremony to disintegrate the bodies.
- And the Stargate itself is used by O'Neill and Teal'c as part of an intergalactic game of golf.
O'Neill: "How far away is Alaris, anyway?"
Teal'c: "Several billion miles, O'Neill."
O'Neill: "That's gotta be a record!"
- But the closest star to Earth (other than the sun) is approximately 25 trillion miles away...
  - Maybe Teal'c just doesn't fully know Earth measurements yet.
- When they gain temporary enhanced abilities due to ancient alien wristbands, the team is taken out of action for fear of possible side effects. So they use their super-speed and strength to do things like catch up on their reading and writing, perform experiments, rearrange furniture, and sneak off the base for a big tasty steak dinner.
In Stargate Atlantis, Teyla has some kind of Ancient laser device that she uses to light candles.
- Which was quite possibly its original purpose, at that. The Ancients over-engineered everything.
Leslie from The Big Bang Theory has used an infrared laser to heat up her cup noodles, and liquid nitrogen to freeze and shatter a banana for her cereal because she couldn't find a knife to cut it.
- Also from Big Bang, in one episode the gang rigged Leonard and Sheldon's apartment so that all of the electronics are remote-controlled via the internet. When asked why, they all reply at the same time "Because we can."
- In another episode, after a particularly bad fight with Penny, Leonard takes out his frustration on his action figures...by putting them in the path of a high powered laser beam and melting them!
- In yet another episode, though it may not have ever ended up happening, the guys make great use of their intelligence while helping Penny make penny blossoms...by planning to install bluetooth to help appeal to more men.
Used in Power Rangers Jungle Fury, where one of the Kung Fu trained Rangers uses his martial arts skills for dramatic effect when making pizzas for an appreciative audience.
The Doctor has in his possession the most powerful ship in the universe, able to appear anywhere in time and space in a matter of minutes. It's also capable of towing entire planets and bestowing God-like powers on anyone who looks into its heart. He uses it for sightseeing.
- Metron of the New Gods does the same thing.
In an episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, it turns out that Giles has been using a Mac Guffin needed as the focus to restore Angel's soul as a paperweight (a Continuity Nod; when Jenny bought one the shopkeeper said he'd sold a couple as "new age paperweights").
- Buffy herself uses her superhuman strength to open a crate that her mom was unable to.
  - Buffy also used her superhuman strength as a construction worker for about a fourth of an episode. Subverted when her coworkers got pissed off - they were being paid by the hour, so having someone speeding up the process was not welcome.
- Subverted in Season Six where Willow's usage of magic in mundane life was declared an addiction.
  - And then one sentence uttered by Giles in the first episode of the seventh season tried to make the bad storyline go away.
- On Angel, we see Harmony using her vampire super-strength to lift a cabinet in order to retrieve her shoe from underneath.
  - In Season One, Wesley shows Angel a Kek dagger, which is the only weapon capable of killing a Kek demon. Angel informs him that Kek demons are in fact extinct. Then Cordelia grabs the dagger to cut brownies.
Once the characters on Heroes figure their powers out, they frequently make use of them.
- Claire was the first to do this. In the pilot, she recovers her class ring from the garbage disposal... while it is still on. In Season 2, when something falls into a pot of boiling water by accident, she nonchalantly sticks her hand in to retrieve it.
- Micah uses his technopathy to get his cousin free pay-per-view. Earlier, he helps out his family by taking cash from an ATM.
- Matt Parkman reads his wife's mind to help him set up the perfect night with her - such as putting on a song that's been in her head all day.
  - In Season Two, he tests his mind-control by influencing Molly to finish her cereal.
- Meredith Gordon only appears in a few episodes, but she makes frequent use of her pyrokinesis to light stoves and cigarettes.
  - And not a whole lot else.
- Ted Sprague uses radiation to warm up a frozen car quickly.
- Monica Dawson has rarely used her mimicry powers for anything else, the first time she ever uses them is to creates a tomato rose, a Shout Out to the Marvel Super Villain and Iron Chef fan Taskmaster with the same power.
- Gabriel Grey/Sylar was using his power to fix watches before he discovered what else he could do with it.
  - He uses telekinesis to fetch small objects on a regular basis.
- In Season Four, we see a woman at the Carnival cooking with her powers.
  - Samuel uses his terrakinesis (earth-control) to bury a grave.
- In Season One, Hiro used his time stop to cheat at gambling.
In the original Bionic Woman, her cyborg-enchanced superspeed was used to get dressed in a hurry, and while posing as a duplicate, she used it to hurry up a cigarette's burning (yes, the purpose is mission-base, but it's a rather mundane use).
Phasers in Star Trek have occasionally been used to heat rocks for warmth.
- Also, coffee.
Star Trek The Next Generation: The Enterprise: The federation's finest flagship is used for the odd reception often.
- Sci Fi Debris even lampshaded it:
"Tomorrow: Symposium on Tegas III's History.
This weekend: Closed for Battle to death with Borg Cube.
April 18th: Shriner's Convention.
- Seeing as the Enterprise *is* the flagship, using it to host receptions is not altogether silly. Nothing beats showing off your big guns to foreign ambassadors, as a way to say: ally with us and this'll protect you, attack us and this'll kick your ass. In fact capital ships have been used repeatedly for such reasons, from the Great White Fleet tour of the Pacific to the Japanese signing the surrender on the deck of the battlehip Missouri. There is a reason for the term "Gunboat Diplomacy".
- Star Trek Deep Space Nine: Kor uses the legendary Sword Of Kahless, more or less the Klingon equivalent of Excalibur and the Holy Grail combined, as a fork. According to legend, Kahless himself used the sword to plow a field, skin a legendary monster, and carve a statue of his beloved.
In Farscape, Sikozu's radiation projection has been used not only to kill Scarrans but also to weld control panels and light candles.
- Jool's sonic scream is powerful enough to melt metal; naturally, she's used for welding when power goes out all over Moya.
- Moya's complex amnexus system is often used to clean the crew's dirty laundry.
- D'Argo once used his Qualta blade for blast fishing.
- Occasionally, D'Argo uses his extendable tongue for things besides stunning people: snatching up small objects in a hurry, or hanging from precipices- though this takes "a lot of plactith," according to D'Argo.
- Chiana and Jothee once got in trouble for apparently using "too much lootra oil" while cooking dinner: for those of you who haven't seen "Family Ties," lootra oil is a weapons-grade explosive. However, at the time, Chiana and Jothee weren't all that interested in cooking, If You Know What I Mean.
- When it's not being used to produce hallucinogens and poisons, Noranti's impressive knowledge of botany and chemistry (along with the associated hebarium) is being put to use in cooking.
- Once upon a time, Moya's DR Ds were only used for repairing Moya, healing pilot and assaulting intruders: it all changed when Crichton taught one of them to sing the 1812 overture...
- In the episode "Taking the Stone," the hedonistic tribe has a habit of using looted alien tech for recreation, entertainment and even ritual. One prominent example is the sonic net- essentially a voice-activated safety net used for aerial training exercises- recycled by the tribe for Taking The Stone.
- Scorpius' neural clone (Harvey, originally created to collect and catalogue the wormhole information in Crichton's brain, is now used to bring some Crichton's funnier fantasies into the light. Harvey doesn't seem to mind all that much...
- Suggested by Harvey but tragically never used:
  Crichton: (About Scorpius) If he masters wormhole technology, what will he use it for?
  Harvey: Faster delivery of pizzas.
Mundane Utility was actually subverted in an episode of Angel in the first season. Cordelia accidentally orders coffee beans for the office instead of ground coffee and suggests that Angel grinds them by squeezing the packet with his vampire strength. He tries it and manages only to burst the bag, sending coffee beans all over the office which Wesley promptly slips in when he arrives.
Ned in Pushing Daisies has the ability to bring dead things to life by touch, which he uses both to solve murders and as a baker - he gets rotten fruit cheap and brings it back to life, ensuring that it will always be as fresh as possible.
Merlin, to the great distress of his mentor figure, often uses his magic to do household chores.
Samantha in Bewitched was sometimes seen using her magic to do housework. Even though Darrin didn't approve.
The aliens from Roswell frequently used their powers to do all sorts of mundane things: listen to CD's, reheat food, restyle Maria's hair, etc.
In Warehouse13, Pete uses Lewis Carrol's mirror to play ping pong. To be fair, he didn't know at the time that it houses the murderous spirit of Alice Liddel, so it's not like there was any other use for it.
The Harry Enfield and Chums sketch, The Palace of Righteous Justice; in which a team of He-man style superheros debate how to deal with the dirty dishes on their kitchen table. The table is frozen solid, then cut in half with what can only be described as a lightsaber. They then burn down the house for some reason.

The Far Side cartoon "Moses parting his hair" illustrates this.
- Well, if Moses had a sea of red hair...
A Lio comic has Lio making his giant robot clean the gutters.

The New World Of Darkness game Mage: The Awakening subverts this - while it's possible to use magic for everyday chores, doing so is considered an (extremely minor) act of hubris and dings the Karma Meter. Okay, you have to be a practical saint to actually lose Wisdom over it, but magic is also inherently risky due to Paradox, so using it for mundane purposes is likely to sting you in the backside.
- The previous game, Mage: The Ascension played this straight, though. Doubly so with Sancta, small personal areas where a mage could perform any of their own magic without risk of paradox.
- In Awakening, Demesnes allow the same paradox-free effect as Sancta (though if a Sleeper sees it, all bets are off).
- Over in Geist The Sin Eaters, there's a group of Sin-Eaters known as Bonepickers that use their powers to make money. The good ones simply charge for their "drive ghosts out of your life" services; the bad ones will bind a ghost to a Ferrari and then offer to take away the "haunted car".
The Dungeons And Dragons campaign setting Eberron is based on this: there's the Magewright, a special NPC spellcasting class designed to handle stuff ranging from city light poles to the Lightning Rail.
- The zeroth-level spell "Prestidigitation" is basically this, allowing you to perform minor tricks that can accomplish things like cleaning and mending your clothes, warming and flavoring food, and sweeping the floor with tiny dust devils.
Warhammer 40000 has the ~~METAL BAWX~~ Rhino, an APC, used for farming (which it was orginally MADE for).
- More famously is the Leman Russ battle tank, the main tank of the Imperial Guard. The chassis was originally used as a tractor.
In the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay game, there are a number of arcane and divine spells designed for mundane usage, from spotless cleaning, animal taming and locking/unlocking doors through to perfect cooking, infallible contraception and fertility treatments and gardening. And those are the spells specifically designed for such usage- the Lore of Fire spell 'Diadem of Flame' which creates a flaming crown above the wizard's head is described (in the spell's entry in the rulebook, no less) as being occasionally used for lighting cooking fires, although that requires the wizard to go through "extremely undignified contortions".
- This despite the fact that the setting and rules enforce the idea that magic is really dangerous, with all but the weakest spells having at least 1/10 chance of Bad Things happening. This gets particularly nasty and amusing when the optional (and fan made) house rules for high-end Chaos Manifestations are used. It is possible to destroy the entire world with an unlucky minor spell to (for example) lock your door when you can't find your keys...
In GURPS: Magic knowing really powerful magic almost always requires the knowledge of a bunch of spell with only mundane uses.

In Golden Sun, Isaac's mother uses Psynergy early on to get an article of clothing for him.
- Isaac also used it to fix the roof toward the beginning.
- You can also use the same power to pick nuts from trees.
Seen in SNK's Gals Fighters Spin Off game. The prize for winning the fighting tournament is a talisman that will grant a single wish. Most of the endings result in the winner wishing for something relatively mundane (Athena wishes for her long hair back, Leona wishes away a toothache, etc.). The most egregious example has to be Shermie, who wishes for a larger hamster cage for her pregnant pet rather than summoning Orochi. Yashiro even points this out to her.
Okami features an NPC named Mrs. Orange, who uses Shun Goku Satsu (A.K.A. Instant Hell Murder A.K.A. Raging Demon A.K.A Akuma's signature move from Street Fighter) to make cakes.
- And they're delicious.
- Ammy herself gains a wide range of elemental-based, borderline Reality Warper abilities. One of the very first things she does with them? Helping the aforementioned Mrs. Orange dry her laundry.
Marisa Kirisame from Touhou has a Mini-Hakkero. It can be used for cooking. And for firing gigantic laser beams. And before you start guessing, she is not a Lethal Chef.
- Meanwhile, Reimu uses her Hakurei Yin-Yang Orbs as an air freshener.
- Sakuya Izayoi regularly uses timehax to speed up housework.
- Alice Margatroid micromanages her Doll Army, which can wield weapons and launch danmaku, to do chores all over the house, even when she isn't in the same room as them.
- Utsuho gains the power of nuclear fusion and plans to conquer the world with it. After beating her, she provides free electricity for Gensokyo, and also provides heating for hot springs.
  - She's also shown to cook things with her nuclear fire in fanworks. Satori and family don't seem to show any signs of radiation poisoning.
  - Well, there IS such thing as aneutronic fusion...
- In the fancomic Cold Wind, but Warm Winter, Sanae hangs up the laundry on Kanako's Sacred Logs. The Moriya Shrine "family" as a whole tends to make full use of their divine powers to work miracles on their housework.
- In Eientei, Kaguya uses her power to manipulate eternity to make the mansion timeless, so the house would not degrade over time, and food would not go bad. Shortly before the events of Silent Sinner in Blue, however, she stops doing it, and begins to appreciate the passage of time in her home once more.
- The oni Suika has been shown in fanworks like Miko Miko Suika to use her manipulation of density to collect small things, and grows to giant size to easily collect lumber by plucking whole trees as though they were carrots.
- Even the Youkai of Darkness Rumia has her uses; on especially hot summer days, other youkai and fairies who dislike the sun use her personal bubble of darkness to avoid the heat. Cirno the Ice Fairy is also subject to being used as "Summer Coolant", especially in fanworks.
- Similarly, in the official manga Strange and Bright Nature Deity, Youmu unsuccessfully tries to convince Marisa and Reimu to stop collecting ghosts in jars and using them as air conditioners.
In Sonic the Hedgehog (360/PS 3), Silver, who possesses sufficient psychic powers to lift a large group of cars (during gameplay!) turns his might to... collecting apples.
Crypto, the alien protagonist of Destroy All Humans, is a powerful psychic that can manipulate human minds to his own diabolical ends. What does he use this mind control for when he has no mission objective on hand? Making civilians do the chicken dance for his own amusement.
- Destroy All Humans 2 features a hilarious minigame in Bay City, in which Crypto uses his telekinesis to play a game of tennis with a clone of himself. The "balls" used are actually live humans.
Kyle Katarn's Idle Animation in Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight features him using his lightsaber to cut his beard.
- Of course, this requires balls of durasteel, because... well... it's a plasma sword capable of cutting through starship hull.
  - It's the only thing in the galaxy capable of cutting Kyle Katarn's beard.
Inversion in the DOS game Pickle Wars: Salad Shooters are mundane. They also just happen to be the most effective weapon against the pickle invaders.
- Played straight when the Doomsday Device is said to make good milkshakes.
In Kartia, the cards which are used for devastating magical attacks and creating weapons and armor can be used for pretty much everything else, from transforming into cleaning implements, to transforming one into a tea cup, and the second into the tea itself. Think I'll stay with the leaves myself.
What's the best part of being able to enter and travel through dreams? If you ask Gannayev, it's the extra opportunities for getting laid.
- In the original Neverwinter Nights: how do you open a locked chest if you're a mage? Do you hire the annoying little halfling rogue? No. You hurl a fireball at it.
- That, or have your Pixie familiar take care of it. You did choose the Pixie, right?
- And if you are a mighty barbarian, you just chop the chest into kindling.
Knights Of The Old Republic: "We don't need to pay the landing fees."
It's entirely possible in Jak II and Jak III to use a gun to open boxes. If you've activated infinite ammo, you can use the tank-killing lightning-bomb gun to crack open crates.
In Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney, Maya uses her abilities to channel her older sister Mia...in order to have significant enough cleavage to convince a witness to cooperate with them. She also does it to pass messages to Phoenix in desperate situations by writing a note, channeling her sister who then reads a note, and having Mia go to be channeled by Pearl and pass the message along.
In a skit in Tales Of Symphonia, Sheena asks Genis how he cooks so well. "I always cast Fireball!" While he was joking, Sheena considers the possibility of getting the fire Summon Spirit Efreet to aid in the process.
The planet Democratus, from Anachronox, is equipped with a tractor beam that can affect objects almost as large as the planet itself. After they shrink the planet and team up with the protagonists, the tractor beam is used to... reach things on high shelves. Or pick up a very hot rock. They can also construct a fully functional (if small-scaled) nuclear weapons program, which they use against opponents.
- To be fair, the tractor beam can also be used on opponents, and it's fairly effective as long as you're not using it on bosses.
Shiki in Tsukihime tends to use his Mystic Eyes of Death Perception to quietly open locked doors more than kill vampires, poison, brick walls, evil hair or weird things like that. In fact, it's why Satsuki has a crush on him: He used his eyes to cut the lock on the door of a shed she was trapped in. Also vaporized the arm of a national monument statue after accidentally breaking it.
In Second Sight, John Vattic uses his telekinesis to restart a generator with a missing starter motor.
During the Wits Path of Indiana Jones And The Fate Of Atlantis, Indy finds a mysterious artefact capable of generating a sizeable burst of electricity: almost immediately afterwards, he uses it as a substitute for a car battery.
In World Of Warcraft, the Blood Elves, despite being driven to consuming demons to get magic fix, still waste a lot of that magic on things like self-pushing brooms, floating lamp posts, and parties. Also, the Magical City of Dalaran, now rebuilt and flying over Northend, has mages to turn on the lamps at night.
One may argue that using the Master Sword to mow lawns is a little bit of overkill.
- VG Cats plays with this.
- In Legend Of Zelda Spirit Tracks, Link can use the powerful Spirit Train to carry passengers and cargo as well as travel across the landscape fighting evil. He also has a monopoly on the rail trade because he's the only train out there that isn't possessed by demons.
Multidimensional teleportation device with possible applications as a shower curtain. Though there's no evidence it was every used as such, this was the idea that Aperture came up with first.
Dizzy's attacks in Guilty Gear are named after the various nonviolent uses she came up with for them. "This Was Used For Fishing", "This Was Used To Get Fruit From Trees" and the like. She doesn't want to fight, but her wings have no such compunctions.
In Half Life 2, Alyx says that the Gravity Gun was originally designed for handling hazardous materials, but they mostly use it for heavy lifting. Gordon later repurposes it as a weapon.
During one of the training segments in Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy, Edgar Barrett suggests that they use Nick Scryer's pyrokinesis for a barbecue.
Subverted in The World Ends With You. The pins that give Neku his awesome psychic powers only work when fighting the Noise. Neku finds this out the hard way when he tries to use a pyrokinesis pin to light up a dark room.
Dwarf Fortress lets you use catapults, capable of squishing half an army if they're tightly packed...to transport stone across the map. Handy for dealing with gulags and hauling of rock, though.

The Perry Bible Fellowship proves here◊ that useless superpowers with this can win by sheer rarity value.
The title character of Magical Mina, part of the Tsunami Channel ...uh, franchise?... does this sometimes, with this being a particularly good example. She's also adapted her Sword magic for a scalpel. Of course, she was written to be an exceedingly clever and intelligent Magical Girl. Also, here.
This strip of Adventurers! makes you wish you had an orbital laser for just this purpose.
- There's also Ardam using a lightning spell to recharge the batteries in Drecker's Walk Man.
Dave in College Roomies From Hell has used his laser vision to make popcorn.
Happens all the time in Sluggy Freelance. In one arc Torg and Riff summon a world destroying demon to get them a case of beer.
- Then there's the Unholy Evil Death Bringer sword, which actually complains about being used for mundane tasks like prying things open.
Kimiko Ross goes to school. WITH SCIENCE.
The Adventures of Dr McNinja: "He invented jet-boots, and he used them to kick people." The true effect on the amount of awesome involved is debatable.
Nowhere University's librarian, the book version of Saruman, uses a palantir as a card catalog.
Parodied in a Order Of The Stick strip where Xykon orders Redcloak to use the Speak With Dead on a fallen Mook, thus tearing said Mook's soul from his eternal resting place so Xykon can ask him... where his keys are (in Xykon's pocket).
Xykon: Thanks! The conjuring of his immortal soul saved me the inconvenience of digging out the spare set I keep in my desk.
- There was also a waitress who was training to be a ninja. This allowed her to appear at the table out of nowhere.
- When Belkar decides to multiclass as a Barbarian, part of the guild-leader's pitch is that the enhanced speed the class grants is excellent for getting to the front of a buffet line.
Used in this Exterminatus Now! strip. The next strip actually deconstructs this trope a bit; their mundane overuse of the light saber has drained it of its power.
Pizza Girl (and Chinese Delivery Man) in Questionable Content. Sure, they might just be ordinary people delivering food in embarassing outfits, but you can't be sure of it...
Keychain Of Creation would like to present the Glorious Solar [desk]. Because the Glorious Solar Saber is overrated.
Parodied (like everything else) in 8 Bit Theater.
XKCD: Stephanie Meyer has hordes of rabid fangirls. What does she use them for? Dealing with internet trolls.
Gunnerkrigg Court. Antimony has a Blinker Stone, a lens for psychic powers. She uses it as a torch, and to hold private conversations with Reynardine.
In My Roommate Is An Elf Griswold uses his magic to open the curtains.
- The fact that he uses his Familiar to DM an RPG might also count.
Stanley from Erfworld uses the Arkenhammer, a Tool of the Titans, to crack nuts.
In Everyday Heroes, Summer uses her Eye Beams to defrost a chicken for dinner. However, she doesn't have very good control of the intensity ...
Freefall got extremely unobtrusive service — french ninja waiters. And even robots sometimes have fun at work. Job's to drop ice asteroids to the terraforming planet? A good opportunity to record some music. Or something even more disturbing.
In El Goonish Shive it runs up to Tedd's use of alien shapeshifting device that involves singing in the shower and Nanase's Reinventing The Telephone via Projected Avatar spell.

Some of the Whateley Universe characters have used their powers to dry off after a shower (Phase and Chaka both), dry her hair (Fey), shave her legs (Verdant), unpack suitcases (Bugs), keep her clothes clean (Pristine), have SnowballFights (a lot of Poe cottage), mop floors and fold laundry (Chaka), paint a room (Plastic Girl), move furniture, shop, and on and on.
- Jade's main trick is to split off independent telekinetic extra 'copies' of herself by 'charging' them into objects; when the charge runs out, the copy re-merges with her and both sets of memories integrate. So what does she quite naturally do? Attend two sets of classes at once and use the same trick to study/do homework/clean her room that much faster. Also, be able to go to the smelly parts of the sewers without danger (Copies can't smell!), work a neat costume, be able to keep an eye out for bullies, not need to use anasthetic...Jade is the MISTRESS of Mundane Utility! (Which often leads to ACTUAL utility!)
In Dr Horribles Sing Along Blog, what does the Anti Villain Mad Scientist titular character want to use a freeze ray that stops time for? To help him get over his nervousness about talking to a cute girl.
- No, he CONSIDERS it, then loses his nerve. You've got to love someone so pathetic.
Ed, the man who subconsciously received his brain from the future, built a fleet of Humongous Mechas to save the world from invading aliens, and accidentally erased the Andromeda Galaxy by hacking the universe... puts a time machine to very unorthodox purposes.
Happens occasionally with some of the SCPs of the SCP Foundation. Some examples include SCP-500, pills that can cure anything, being stolen to "cure a hangover"; a young woman who can see and manipulate locations depicted in pictures asked to "punch or stab people over the internet"; and a young man who receives visions about various objects (usually other SCPs) asked to locate lost wallets and keys. When such abuses are found out, the personnel involved are at least reprimanded, if not terminated.
This article from The Onion about the head of NASA borrowing the space shuttle to get home faster.

The Powerpuff Girls once cut the crusts off their sandwiches with their Laser Vision. Enter the Fridge Logic: how do three girls seated at a round table at even intervals make perpendicular eye beams, and did they cut grooves into the walls too?
- The Powerpuff Girls, in general, use their powers for other things when they're not fighting crime or monsters such as cleaning their room.
Coop from Megas XLR abused his mecha's abilities at every possible opportunity, usually just for rather mundane things. And that's not counting all the times he's just showing off because he's bored.
- It's also subverted. Even though he's in a giant mech with enough firepower to destroy planets and can fly at interstellar speeds, he still has to deal with things like traffic and annoying drivers.
  - In one episode, Megas got towed. Coop had to jump through all the hoops, including retaking the driver's exam, to get back a giant robot that could smite the world with the press of a button.
In Xiaolin Showdown, the Xiaolin Dragons occasionally use their Shen Gong Wu to do their chores. For example, Clay using the Third Arm Sash for sweeping. The monks also use their elemental powers at one point for the arduous and life-affirming task of...cleaning the dishes. And then there's the time they used their powers to throw a pool party.
In Avatar The Last Airbender, almost every bender with a decent amount of screen time has done this. On one occasion Iroh blew his cover by Firebending a cup of tea to warm it up. Other good examples:
- Earthbending is used for a soccer like game called Earthball, and Toph uses it to make a tent. Omashu uses it to power a mail system and Ba Sing Se uses it to fashion together a train system.
- Firebending makes a handy torch, and is useful for metalworking. It is also used for powering engines and hot-air balloons, and pretty much every other Steam Punk tech the Fire Nation has.
- Waterbending makes sailing a breeze. Surfing, too. And makes submarines possible hundreds of years before their time.
- Airbending: Two words for you: Projectile Cakes.
  - Aang uses it to play with a butterfly once by making tiny puffs of wind.
- Also one could use water and earthbending for liquid filtration.
  - You mean "removing the flavor" from the water...
- Keep in mind that elemental bending is something that a large portion of this world's population can do. Having it applied to mundane use is hardly surprising.
In the first season of Transformers Animated, Sari used her key for fixing/powering up anything she thought might be amusing. This tapered off during the second season, although she still used it to pirate cable.
- The Autobots themselves frequently use their abilities to repair the city, and once took out a bunch of trash. This is a debatable example, as civilian usage was more or less what they were made for.
In the Futurama episode "I, Roommate", Fry uses the starship's engines to dry his hair.
- Professor: You're getting a massive dose of radiation!
  Fry: ...and great lift.
- In the episode "Brannigan Begin Again", the Planet Express crew arrives at the new Democratic Order of Planets (D.O.O.P.) headquarters in orbit around the Neutral Planet, in order to deliver the oversized scissors for the ribbon-cutting ceremony. Zapp Brannigan destroys the entire station by attempting to use his ship the Nimbus' laser to cut the ribbon, instead of using the scissors.
Professor Membrane of Invader Zim, who invented scores of wonderful and useful devices, is often shown working on the most mundane and/or ridiculous of things. One episode had him welding a fork for some reason.
- Professor Membrane, at his workbench: "Not now, son! I'm making... <electricity fills the air>... toast!"
  - In a nod to this, in a later episode he is referred to as "the inventor of supertoast".
- Not to mention Zim himself, who put Dib into a complete virtual reality world and allowed him to virtually grow to old age... in order to get Dib to admit to having thrown a muffin at him.
The Incredibles uses this a lot. Violet makes herself invisible to hide from her crush at school, Dash uses his super speed to pull pranks on his teacher (moving so fast he can't be seen), and Elastigirl stretches her neck so she can look Mr. Incredible in the eye while she yells at him.
In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Leonardo's swords, in addition to slicing up bad guys, are also used to slice up pizza. In the original movie, he does so in such a manner that each slice lands on one of the Turtles' plates — except for the last one, which lands on Splinter's head.
Everyone in GalactikFootball uses their incredible superpowers to play soccer. This is rigidly enforced by a Jedi Council, who are worried Galactic war will break out otherwise.
3rd ep of Winx Club had a scene where Bloom tries using her fire powers to cut her dress. The 4K version edited it out. Shameless contributor video plug alert.
Danny from Danny Phantom once used his ghost powers to clean up the messy basement (and his flight to vacuum the walls). We have to ignore the fact that Ghost Rays push the objects in their proper place instead of blowing it up.
In the Justice League Christmas episode "Comfort and Joy", Green Lantern uses his Ring to snowboard and make snowmen. Then Hawkgirl gets in on the act, using her Energy Mace to snowball fight with GL.
Same episode: Superman uses his x-ray vision to... peek in the presents and see what he got for Christmas. Which is why his parents have used lead foil for gift-wrapping since he was a kid.
- As mentioned above, Wally is very well known for using his super speed for comparatively mundane things. Such as painting houses. No wonder he's so loved in the Central/Keystone area.
In Lilo And Stitch: The Series, Lilo attempts to get all of Jumba's experiments to use their powers like this. For example, an experiment with freezing breath makes snow cones, an experiment that can melt solid objects is sent to a recycling plant, etc.
Word Girl villain Tobey, who makes robots the size of skyscrapers for the sole purpose of destruction, finds that his creations apparently also like to paint. And play hopscotch. And shield the elderly from the sun.
Eponymous Ben 10 uses his Voluntary Shapeshifting powers courtesy of Imported Alien Phlebotinum for this almost as much as he uses them for superheroism, mostly to pull pranks on his cousin Gwen. Of course, as a large part of the series consists of Ben failing to use his powers properly, this rarely works the way he wants.
While not super-powers per se, Kim Possible often uses Wade's super-techno crime-fighting gadgets for mundane things like homework.
In Teen Titans, Raven is so comfortable with her telekinesis that she's never seen physically opening a door.
- And sometimes she skips the door altogether, and just phases through the wall!
Every episode that is now created by South Park is done with incredibly advanced computer technology. Lampshaded by the creators of the show when they said: "It's like building a sandcastle with a bulldozer.
In an episode of the Super Mario Bros. 3 cartoon, Mario and co. get in a fight with the Koopalings over a wizard's lost Green Lantern Ring wand. When the wizard retrieves it at the end, he reveals that he only uses it to roast weenies.
Family Guy (of course). Aquaman uses his "talking to fish" powers to get a soda. The fish wasn't pleased.

Ted Taylor, a nuclear physicist, used the reflected thermal pulse of a nuclear blast to light a cigarette at one of the atomic bomb tests.
- Some of the early physicists used to stick their heads into the beam path to see if there were bright flashes of light on their retina indicating that the particle accelerator was turned on. Needless to say, they had horrible medical histories later in life, but at the time who knew?
  - What, no superpowers?
On-duty firefighters often use the fire engine to perform routine inspections or even just buy lunch (there are a variety of legitimate reasons to do this, but it's still impressive). And they're also usually wearing at least part of their turnout gear: watching the reaction of people in a supermarket at the sight of a bunch of firefighters coming in the door is priceless, especially when they see them start shopping.
Firefighters, police and ambulance drivers (especially the latter for obvious reasons) will often unabashedly clear gridlocks with their sirens. People are not half as amused.
- Firefighters are all really hot. This mollifies people who can see them. Obviously it doesn't work with cops and medics who are in their vehicles.
Another (and more amusing) real-life example: reportedly, a few Russians soldiers recently used a tank to make a Vodka run. Perhaps just to punctuate exactly how drunk they were, they also proceeded to run over and crush a few cars and the very store they bought the Vodka from in the process.
In World War One, water cooled machine guns were occasionally fired just so that the resulting hot water in their cooling jackets could be used to make cups of tea.
- A more recent example is soldiers doing their washing over a long offroad trip by putting dirty fatigues, water and soap flakes in a sealed container and stashing the whole thing in the back of their jeep. It was even used to advertise the vehicle at one point.
- An anecdote about the first Gulf War was that American Tankers used to put their Meals-Ready-to-Eat packs on the exhausts of their Abram tanks and run the huge engine just to heat their food. British Tankers didn't have that problem though as their tanks have built in kettles ("More tea Guv?").
  - A similar example; during the Second World War, British tank crews in north Africa fried eggs on their tanks.
- Fishing with grenades, enough said.
  - Fishing with a rocket launcher. If it wasn't enough of a Crowning Moment of Awesome by itself, the music makes it so.
  - Soviet aviators used one of the first mass produced rockets to this end — RS has time fuse. Vasiliy Stalin (Uncle Joe's un-favourite son) was demoted after an incident when he and deputy commander were wounded and their weapons engineer killed while fishing this way.
  - The Swedish navy occasionally used depth charges for this purpose.
  - Didn't Bush say fishes and human beings can coexist?! D:
- During World War II, pilots would put kegs of beer in the payload when they were flying planes for noncombat purposes. The frigid jetstream air made great refrigeration.
In the nonfiction book Try Not To Laugh, Sergeant Major, one of the anecdotes concerns several British soldiers stationed in West Germany during the 80s. After sneaking away from camp during field maneuvers for a pint, their reaction to having been arbitrarily denied service in a village's only bar by a bigoted tavernkeeper? To ram the muzzle of their Chieftain tank through the bar's front window and then fire a blank charge, temporarily deafening everyone and shattering every glass and bottle in the bar.
Precision Laser Cutter. Possible use? most high-tech pizza cutter.
- Using a laser to play music or point at things is pretty overkill from a perspective of not too long ago. As formerly complicated things become ridiculously easy, Rube Goldberg rules. (Which is, after all, the point of this trope)
Laptops make such awesome bedwarmers...
Need to soften/bring something up to room temperature? The top of a video card works very well. Of course everything has to be sealed and fairly light, but reactions can be quite amusing.
More examples from [1]:
my personal favourite, a guy who brought food to class every day and warmed his lunch by opening his computer's case and putting his tinfoil parcel onto the CPU's heatsink. Amazingly it didn't cause damage until the stew he brought on the next to last day leaked out and shorted not just his machine but the entire floor of the building. What frightens me most is that he was genuinely shocked that we were shouting at him about it.
A friend worked for a company that made IC's. Every few months, their yields would go down to about zero. Analysis of the failures showed all sorts of organic material was introduced in the process, but they couldn't figure out where. One evening, someone was working late and came into the lab. There he found the maintainence crew cooking pizza in the chip curing ovens!
In 1907, the Stanley Cup was stolen from a house where it was to be photographed. When the thief wasn't able to pawn the trophy, he eventually just left it at the same house. The photographer's wife used it as a flower pot (it was much smaller then) until the team thought to check back there.
Operation Plowshare, research into the use of atom bombs for landscaping.
American soldiers in World War II and Vietnam sometimes heated their meals over campfires fueled by plastic explosive.
- In case you're wondering, you can burn plastic explosive just fine without fear of explosions - that requires far greater heat than an ordinary campfire can provide. Expensive, though.
- It's also quite tricky: although it won't explode, burning PE-4 flames are hot enough to melt aluminium mess tins with any kind of prolonged contact, and have a tendency to throw off sparks in all directions.
- Not that bad for either reason - one merely ignites a pea-sized blob to start stubborn fuel such as soaking wet wood. But when it's time to leave, you have to drown it to put it out - stomping on it will cost you a foot.
Cooling beer with blasts from a fire extinguisher: a costly but effective frat-house short cut, confirmed by Mythbusters.
Many people are surprised to find out that in a nuclear power plant, the radioactive material which can level cities and cause cancer in minutes is being used to boil water.
- Specifically this is how it produces power. The radioactive material boils the water into steam which runs steam turbines that produce electricity.
- It's also interesting to note that Natural gas and coal fired plants operate much in the same way, by burning the fuel to produce the steam.
- The US government had been considering an unorthodox method for making electricity in the 60's and 70's. It involved setting off a large number of nuclear explosives in an underground cave and using the latent heat from the explosions to produce power.
Recently, a million dollar bomb-defusing robot went missing from a military base. The culprits? A bunch of off-duty soldiers had taken it fishing with them.
- The soldiers had been taught to think of the robot as a team-member, given that it worked to save their lives (and their superior officers wanted them to take care of it), so when they took a day off, they felt the robot needed to come too.
What do you get when you take a captured Iraqi tank and stick a pair of jet engines on it? The world's most awesome fire extinguisher.
A few years back in Albuquerque, NM, a few police officers once used a Police Helicopter to make a run down to the just-opened Krispy Kreme. Subverted due to the fact that they got seriously reprimanded. Played straight soon after because of the overwhelmingly good publicity that made for both the donut shop and the APD.
Considering many of the recent advances of the last few decades have been made with computers, and just how much technology has come about through computers, not to mention just how much of society is automated and made easier by computers, why are you using yours just to read TV Tropes?
- Or Youtube. The entirety of Youtube. In fact, 90% of what 90% of internet users use their internet for could probably be filed under either "entertainment" or "convenience".
The IDF had a problem with soldiers using the magazine lip of their weapons as a bottle opener, which damaged them. In response to this, the Galil ARM light machine gun incorporated a bottle opener in its design.
- The bipod legs of the Galil ARM can also be used as a wire cutter when folded.
How to undress a woman with an excavator. The name says it all.

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