New Powers As The Plot Demands - Television Tropes & Idioms

"Couldn't you have done that earlier?"

— Tristan to Yvaine, Stardust

"OMG, I gotz Magick?"

— Caption from an Agony Booth

recap of the Eragon film

Some superhero comics authors seem to get bored of the same old powers. They add new ones to the same characters whenever they feel that a new power would open up a new story, or a new danger needs a new response, or what the hell, whenever they feel like it. It's bad enough writing in a new hero from nowhere just because you want to include a new power, but a lot of writers are worse than that. They tack new powers onto existing heroes.

Sometimes a retcon, a power upgrade or some bit of Phlebotinum is employed to explain the new power, but often the character just does something they've never done before and when their friends say, "I didn't know you could do that!", they come back with either "I've never needed to, till now," or worse, "Neither did I, till now!"

Not all New Super Powers fall into this category, just the ones resulting from an Ass Pull. Commonly used to bring a character Back From The Dead.

Giving a character a Green Lantern Ring avoids this. Compare Magic A Is Magic A, So Last Season.

Examples:

Superman. He started out faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound and invulnerable to anything less than a bomb. Since then he's learned to fly, to blow like a hurricane, to survive nuclear explosions, chill things with a puff of breath, shoot lasers from his eyes, and use X-Ray Vision. And that's just the powers that have lasted: during the Silver Age, he gained a new power nearly every month (Super Ventriloquism was bad. Being able to travel through time as easily as he could fly was worse). The super-breath (but not the freezing breath), at least, is a logical extension of someone with the kind of lungs he must have.
- The movies were even worse with this. The most gratuitous new power was probably Superman IV: The Quest For Peace's "Rebuild-the-Great-Wall-Of-China-vision", but the weirdest may have been the "Saran-wrap-super-symbol" in Superman II.
- Webwriter Seanbaby effectively skewers this trope on his Superfriends page, as follows: "Superman had at least 150 powers, and the writers were making up two or three more every episode. If a script called for it, Superman would leak paste out of his ears that can control the weather. His fingernails might cure cancer and create food, he may never remember."
- Superman's Mirror Universe counterpart Ultraman actually has this as his superpower: exposure to Kryptonite, rather than harming him, causes him to develop new abilities.
Parodied in Michael Chabon's novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, in which our heroes create a comic strip character, The Escapist, just before the start of World War II. He begins as a detective-escapologist character. By the later years of the war, he's pulling tanks apart with his bare hands.
Lampshaded in the film Sky High, when the hero is thrown out a window by the villain, and hero suddenly flies back in. Just about everyone is surprised, including the hero.
Spider-Man's archfoe The Green Goblin is able to come Back From The Dead (via Waking Up At The Morgue) thanks to a healing factor he wasn't even aware he retained.
Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure has two especially egregious examples of this trope, each used to finish off the Big Bad of a story arc. The first example occurs in Part 3: the villain Dio Brando is virtually unstoppable because his Stand has the ability to stop time, so how do the heroes stop him? Jotaro Kujo's Stand suddenly gains the power to stop time, which also lets him move in Dio's time stop, despite the fact that its only powers so far were Super Strength and Super Speed. Of course, this is somewhat explained by the fact that he has Jotaro's grandfather's Stand, which appears to have the ability of every living descendant of Jonathan Joestar. Part 5's was pretty bad though: Giorno Giovanna stabs himself with a Stand Arrow, evolving his Gold Experience into Gold Experience Requiem, and giving it the power to nullify any action an opponent takes. To be fair, it was shown beforehand that the Arrow could give Stands new powers, but come on! That power is just ridiculous!
- Oh it happens to the villains too. Part 4 had Kira getting the ability to reset time back to the time a kid woke up in the morning so that he could find out who got killed trying to figure out who Kira was because the kid was under the effect of Kira's just gotten the night before power. Part 6 had the main villain of that getting the power to accelerate the spin of the earth so that he could reset time to the way he wants it to be.
In Knights Of The Old Republic 2, the protagonist finds himself in dire straits as he is put into a cell full of poisonous gas. Just as all hope seems lost, one of your Jedi allies contacts you telepathically, and quickly teaches you in the Jedi art of Guybrush-caliber breath-holding.
- Not the only time this happens in Knights Of The Old Republic 2 - Beside Breath Control, Beast trick is taught this way, as well as the force forms gained through killing the Jedi Masters. The classic example becomes all the more jarring for anyone that aquired a Gas Mask ahead of time - which makes the power wholly unnecessary.
  - Even more jarring than that is the simple fact that the deadly poisonous gas does so little damage that you can easily walk around in it with no protection at all. You just have to use the healing force power or a medipack every so often.
Martian Manhunter was prone to this, at times having the power to control magnetism, strain gold from water, and create ice cream with his mind.
Spawn was able to pull pretty much any kind of power he wanted out of thin air.
Anita Blake is the best example of this ever, having morphed from a simple animator/necromancer in the book series to...frankly, this editor lost track of them all a long time ago. But in pretty much every big confrontation, she gets a new Power of the Month.
- These days, they all require her to have sex to activate, in a weird, squicky Character Derailment that is why this editor hasn't read one all the way through since Obsidian Butterfly.
This happens to Seere in Drakengard as part of a ludicrous Hand Wave that was necessary because they were all doomed, and the ending couldn't be "Everyone was eaten."
One Piece does this regularly, but it generally doesn't jar. Except for Sanji's flaming kick and Luffy's Second/Third Gear. Where the hell were they hiding them?
Yes! Precure 5's Cure Aqua suddenly picked up the ability to turn her "Aqua Ribbon" baton into a sword. The reasoning behind this was that this allowed an awesome swordfight. The sword returned during The Movie for exactly the same reason.
On Teen Titans, Raven can do pretty much whatever she wants depending on the situation. She mainly relies on flight and telekinesis, but has demonstrated the ability to use clairvoyance, stop time, pass through walls, see brief glimpses of the future and change her appearance to a monster to "persaude" a villain to help them, among other things. This may be partially justified, because her powers are magic-based.
X-Men's Marrow had her heart torn off her body by Storm, but later was revealed to be alive. How? Spare heart.
In the Legion of Super Heroes supporting characters, Duplicate Boy had the ability to copy any power he wanted, including those he made up. Of course, his abilities were rarely used properly by the writers.
- The villain Nemesis Kid had the ability to get whatever power he needed to fight any single opponent. This one was used just as badly; he was killed by Queen Projectra without her using any powers. Why his power didn't provide invulnerability as well as immunity to illusions wasn't explained (his power is per opponent, not per attack type). And no, he never fought Duplicate Boy.
The Doom Patrol villain "The Quiz" had "every power you haven't thought of". Literally; to fight her, you had to start shouting power names so she couldn't use them.
Ultraman, Ultraseven and the other Ultra heroes are the kings of this. Though they have a set powers base, many develop and use one-shot energy attacks for specific monsters that are never seen again, or, even, completely pointless in the face of a pre-existing energy attack. And each time they would re-appear in another series, they'd only have the very basic forms of Ultraman powers they were known for. However, the worst offender is Ultraman Jack/The Ultraman Who Returned, who has the Ultra Bracelet--a weapon that can shapeshift into whatever is needed at the time: a shield, eye-slugger, blade, sword or--Cross-Shaped Lance to stake an alien named Draculas.
The Heisie Gamera series deconstructed this trope completely. Gamera reveals in the second film to have a "Mana Cannon" that obleterates the enemy of that film. It is learned in the final film that using that attack drained the Earth of its health, and releasing a hoard of Gyaos upon the planet. It is also learned that Gamera bonded with humans in order to gain the ability to mutate and get new powers such as the Mana Canon and Flame Absorbing powers--but the Mana Canon cost him that connection to humanity as well! This causes him to ignore Property Damage as he hunts the Gyaos.
this is such a prevalent trope that most superhero RP Gs have some sort of mechanic to represent it. For instance, the RPG Mutants & Masterminds has a Hero Point mechanic that allows you to turn one of your superpowers into another for a single use. While keeping the new power "in theme" with your other abilities is encouraged, it isn't strictly necessary...
Justified in The Dark Crystal. At the moment when it would be most convenient, one of the two main characters, who are the last of their kind, exposes wings and starts to fly. They have this matter-of-fact conversation:
Jen: Wings? I don't have wings.
Kira: Of course not. You're a boy.

My Significance Sense Is Tingling

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