Remembered I Could Fly

aka: Forgot I Could Fly

Nidhiki: Wait a minute, Krekka. I thought Lariska said you could fly?
Krekka: [stops punching handholds in cliff face] Oh, that's right. Forgot.

— BIONICLE

A subversion of Forgot About His Powers usually used for comic relief. We know sometimes characters have trouble mastering their powers, but sometimes, established powers seem to just get forgotten entirely. A character finds themselves in a dire situation where any normal person would be in serious trouble. They start to panic... and then they remember, oh yeah, I have superpowers / magic / advanced technology. Also seen from companions and enemies that forget about frequently-used powers. This is a very common subversion of the Acrophobic Bird.

Can be more or less justified if the powers are rarely useful or too specific, so that the character has not used them for a long time; if the power's use in this situation is an entirely new one; if the character has (or has had) a good reason to avoid the use, and so got into the habit of not thinking of it; or if the power itself was gained only recently, and the character is not used to having it as an option. Also by not having time enough, or being too scared, to think.

Compare Remembered Too Late. Contrast Forgot I Couldn't Swim and Reminder of Impossibility.

Compare and contrast How Do I Shot Web?, Informed Ability, Baffled by Own Biology, New Powers as the Plot Demands.

NOTE: Only include examples of a character not remembering that they have the ability and then remembering it (or being reminded by someone else). Simply forgetting about it altogether is Forgot About His Powers (and often Acrophobic Bird).

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• One Piece:
  • Happened to Chopper during his fight against Baroque Works. Miss Merry Christmas held onto his feet so he couldn't move, while Mr. 4's gun/dog Lasso fired an exploding baseball at him. He screamed as the ball flew towards his head, but then changed back into his smaller hybrid form, resulting in the ball flying harmlessly overhead. He even said "Whew, forgot I could do this."
  • During the Enies Lobby arc, Fukuro was being chased by Franky who kept firing bullets at him, when he suddenly remembered he could Double Jump and had Super-Speed. He said something along the lines of "What am I doing?!" before fighting back.
• The manga adaptation of Disgaea 2 has a dramatic Take My Hand! scene where Adell refuses to let go of Rozalin even after she's spent their entire acquaintance screwing him over, after which they spend a heartwarming moment Laying On A Hillside...then Fridge Logic catches up with Adell and he realizes that Rozalin had wings the entire time. Played for Laughs.
• In the Breath of Fire IV game this also happens, but the fallen person (Nina) isn't caught in time and falls. Ryu rushes down rumping into ledges to try and catch her, and after going past her he promptly (face)falls down to the bottom himself.
• The Charas of Shugo Chara! forget about and later remember their ability to fly in one early episode. Used to scare a character and amuse the audience.
• At one point in Chrono Crusade, a roof hanging over Joshua begins to collapse. Since Joshua is a human boy with demon's horns, he's more than a little insane, so his first reaction is just to stare at it blankly. But right before The Hero saves him, he mutters "Oh, that's right" and uses his powers to stop time to keep himself from getting crushed, right at the last second.
• A very simple, but amusing example in the Martial Arts Fine Dining arc of Ranma ½: throughout the training for the Parlay du Foie Gras, Ranma has been starving herself nearly to death. At the end of the final duel with Picolet Chardin, during which she has been using the technique to force-feed him (and the audience) to get rid of her food (the condition of winning), she has run out of options and is about to lose — she still has food left, she's too weak from hunger to try the Foie Gras anymore, and Picolet is going for the last one — then she says, "Oh, yeah." and just eats the last bits of food herself.
• In Squid Girl, Ika Musume almost drowns and Goro rescues her. Eiko asks her why she can drown. Ika Musume suddenly remembers that she can breathe underwater. She later demonstrates by staying underwater long enough for everyone else to get bored and do other things.
• The writer of Descendants of Darkness after she inflicted this precise Plot-Induced Stupidity on her hero at the end of the Queen Camelia arc. She had Muraki leaving the scene in a helicopter, which defeats her hero...who had the power to fly established very early. She clearly wishes she hadn't done that, but—here's where 'forgot I could fly' comes in—for some reason rather than pretending she hadn't, she footnoted his frustration with the reminder "why don't you just fly after him?"
• Inverted in an episode of Ah! My Goddess, where in one flashback Troubadour tries to depart by leaping off a small cliff, apparently forgetting that he hasn't yet learned how to fly at this point.
• Bakinman from Anpanman is an alien germ that looks more like a human-esque fly. Because of this, he has two tiny wings on his back that he sometimes buzzes around with. As soon as the weapons on his UFO were fully established, he never used his wings again...until the episode "Baikinman and Baikin Castle", where, stuck on top of his fortress, he starts to panic...until he realizes "Oh yeah, there's that." when he sees his wings, as he flies off...but he comes back down when he's guilt tripped into saving the others.
• Bunbee from Yes! Pretty Cure 5 is attacked by Kawarino and falls from a roof, but he can grab a window ledge. And then he remembers he can (transform into a humanoid bee and) fly. His survival allows him to appear in the sequel where he undergoes a Heel–Face Turn in the end. He does this again in Power of Hope ~PreCure Full Bloom~ when he's surrounded by Shadows and Syrup, Kurumi and Nozomi rescue Saki and Mai and accidentally forget him.
• During the underwater battle in Fairy Tail's Tartaros arc, Levy desperately provides Gajeel some of her own air via an Underwater Kiss. Then Gajeel reminds her that she can just use her magic to make air bubbles for them both and the rest of their struggling guildmates, much to her severe embarrassment.
• In one episode of Yo-kai Watch, Nate and Whisper get locked out of Nate's bedroom, and they spend the entire part trying to find ways to get in. At the end of the episode after they've gone through a lot of stuff to try and resolve the problem, Whisper suddenly realizes he's a ghost and so can just float through the door. This makes Nate VERY angry.
• A few episodes of the Pokémon: The Series have Team Rocket putting up a tense battle against Ash's team for a change...until the heroes remember this isn't an official battle and they can send more than one Pokemon in to overpower them.
• In an episode of A Little Snow Fairy Sugar, Sugar comes out of a dream in which she's become full-fledged, and falls nearly off the roof. As she's clinging to the edge for dear life, it's pointed out that, as a fairy, she can fly.
• One chapter of Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: Kanna's Daily Life has Kanna trying and failing to get a suntan due to dragons having a natural resistance to UV rays. Then Tohru reminds her that, as a dragon, she could just alter her appearance.
• The World God Only Knows: In episode 7, the human Keima and the demon Elsie, who was sent to Earth to track down "loose souls" possessing ordinary humans, race around the city looking for an idol singer whose loose soul is making her turn invisible. It's over an hour into the search before Elsie remembers she literally wears a loose soul tracking device on her head.
  Keima: "You should have done this earlier, you brain-dead demon."

Comic Books

• A Bloom County strip had Opus beach himself like a whale. Milo and Binkley stood over him, discussing the tragedy of whales beaching themselves, and then walked away, one of them lamenting, "If only they had feet." At which point Opus did a double take, stood up saying, "I do have feet, don't I?" and was next seen reclining in a chair watching TV.
• In a Heroes tie-in comic, Bennet drives someone who can turn into water into a corner by shooting at him, knowing full well that the man in question is Immune to Bullets. Justified in that he's relying on panic and the fact that the guy is new to his powers and won't use them instinctively. By the time the guy realizes this, Bennet's partner gets the drop on him.
• In one issue of Runaways, Cloak is trying to get away from the Avengers, who think he hospitalized his partner Dagger. It apparently does not occur to him that he can just, you know, teleport away from them until after he's thrown himself headfirst through a window.
• Wesley tries to invoke this with a none-too-bright power stealing villain in Wanted. The villain does remember he can fly but forgets that the power is seconds away from running out.
• An early issue of X-Men has telekinetic superheroine Jean Grey trapped on the second floor of a building, until teammate Beast reminds her that she can fly.
• Preacher: Something of an subversion, as Jesse Custer only remembers that he has "The Word of God" after he's already beaten the crap out of Les Enfants Du Sang. Throughout the series, he often prefers to just fight mano-a-mano, but this time, it's actually lampshaded.

Fan Works

• Played very seriously in Dungeon Keeper Ami:
  • From Generals Plot:
    "Hey! Come back here!" Sailor Moon whined, panting as she looked at the back of the fleeing monster who had remembered that she could fly after being chased for several blocks, and was now taking a shortcut over a building.
  • At the outset of the War on Crowned Death. Once, when assaulted by a priest of Crowned Death, Mercury is confronted by the priest's apparent invulnerability. She proceeds to throw everything and the kitchen sink at him. Unfortunately, this includes the Mantle of the Avatar, a powerful artifact she recovered in the previous story arc. This artifact was itself the object Crowned Death was looking for- and his priest escapes with it in his custody. Turns out the priest was not using a powerful intangibility spell, just a simple illusion that Ami could have seen through easily if she had thought to analyze it using her visor.
• In Garfield in: "Along Came a Splut", Garfield realizes that the DeLorean can fly at exactly the right time, and then proceeds to do so.
• Rosario Vampire: Brightest Darkness Act I: After being thrown out a window, Ruby is freaking out over her impending doom... but then remembers, "Oh, wait. I can fly," and promptly spreads her wings to do so.
• Dragon Ball Z Abridged:
  • This happens with Nappa. What makes this particular example so hilarious is that this realization came after he forgot about it as he was flying and after he had been flying for the greater part of that fight and while he was in midair.
  • Also, Raditz could have avoided being shot through the chest by Piccolo if he had flown, regardless of the lock Goku put him in, as Piccolo helpfully points out (canonically, Gohan had broken his ribs, which prevented him from breaking the hold).
    Raditz: Damn you hindsight! [dies]
  • In the first episode, Krillin was reminded by the others that he could have flown after Raditz but didn't.
  • It's frequently mentioned that Krillin forgets to use his Kienzan attack that slices through anything whenever it would be useful, only to have others (usually Gohan) point out instances where he could have used it better. In the Revenge of Cooler movie, Piccolo comments that he sometimes forgets about using his stretchy limbs, and when one of Cooler's mooks breaks out some electric powers, The Dragon basically says "Oh yeah, I forgot you could do that."
  • Goku panics when Cell is about to kill Tien, remarking that it's too far away for him to fly to his rescue... then suddenly remembers he can teleport and does so.
    Gohan: Did... did he just remember he can do that?
    Mr. Popo: Your father's an idiot.
  • Another instance of this is when Vegeta turned Super Saiyan against Android 15, prompting Trunks and Goku to realize that they can simply turn into a Super Saiyan and does so during the fight against 14 and 13 respectively.
  • Yamcha gets in on it during the Cell Games, when he thinks for a moment that Goku has gotten a ring-out on Cell. Krillin calls him out on it.
    Yamcha: Guys, he ringed Cell out! [Cell stops falling] ...oh.
    Krillin: You just forgot we could fly, didn't you?
• Ultra Fast Pony: From the epilogue of the episode "Utter Lunacy": "Upon returning to Canterlot, Princess Celestia banished Luna to the moon again. This time Luna remembered she had wings and just flew back later that month."
• In Farce of the Three Kingdoms, Sima Zhao and his army are trapped without water. Sima Zhao completely forgets that he's an Eldritch Abomination with vaguely-defined powers - but one of his officers points this out to him, and he produces water very easily.
• In The Heroic Chronicles of a Young Man, everyone, including the teachers, forgot that Izuku's costume comes with a respirator. Since he was pitted against Midnight during the exams, he almost effortlessly defeats her.
• What Tomorrow Brings: After they're captured by Mertil, Marco asks Tom why he didn't morph and stop him. Tom responds that he's not used to morphing of his own volition. Later, Marco tries to morph cockroach... only to realise that he hasn't acquired one yet in this timeline.

Films — Animation

• A major plot point in Aladdin is that, by law, only a prince may marry Jasmine. Only at the very end of the film does it occur to the Sultan that he's the Sultan, and can just change the law to let her marry whoever she wants ^note  Or, to avoid Values Dissonance, that she doesn't need to marry upon coming of age at all .
• In Ice Age: Continental Drift, after the villains' ship is destroyed, Minion with an F in Evil Flynn has to be reminded by the Big Bad that he's an elephant seal and can swim easily;
  Flynn: [floundering] They sunk our battleship! What are we gonna do! We're all gonna drown!
  Captain Gutt: [grabs Flynn by the snout] You're a sea creature you idiot!
  Flynn:...Oh, good point sir! [starts swimming]
• In Tangled, Rapunzel and Flynn are trapped in a cave that's filling up with water. He tells her he can't find an exit, it's too dark, and confides in her what his real name is. Wanting to reciprocate, she tells him she had magical hair that glows in the dark when she sings. It even takes her a few moments after that to make a connection. Justified, as she wasn't accustomed to even thinking of that as a useful ability.
• Winnie the Pooh (2011): Played with.
  • The gang (minus Piglet) is stuck in a pit, with no way out. Piglet is told to get help, but Piglet is afraid to go through the woods on his own. Owl flies out of the pit to talk to Piglet, and gives a rousing speech, convincing Piglet to go off. Owl hops back into the pit, and all his friends stare at him.
    Owl: What?
    Rabbit: Owl...that was a...beautiful speech! I didn't know you had it in you!
  • Just prior to this, Piglet himself does something similar, when he offers to help get them out with a flower, then a book. After Rabbit suggests a rope, Piglet says "Like this rope?" and grabs one that had been there the whole time.
• Finding Nemo:
  • Dory does this with her ability to read human writing. (She forgets plenty of other things, too.)
    [Marlin and Dory are trying to escape a frenzied shark]
    Dory: Hey, look at this! Eskappay! You know, it's funny; it's spelled just like the word Escape...
    Marlin: You can read?
    Dory: I can read? That's right, I can read!
  • She also claims to speak the language of whales, which just involves speaking Fish with a deep and drawn out voice. Marlin scoffs at this, but the whale does understand her so he starts doing it too, leading to this:
    Marlin: Thaaaank yooooooouuu, siiiirrrrrrr!
    Dory: Wow. I wish I could speak Whale.
• The Iron Giant: Before meeting Hogarth, the titular giant robot took some damage to the head which made him forget his origins and abilities. His adventure with Hogarth leads to some rediscoveries.
  • First he remembers he can fly while falling off a cliff.
  • Then he remembers that he's got an arsenal of super weapons after Hogarth appears to die at the hands of the military, and uses them to go on a rampage.
• Wreck-It Ralph: Vanellope gets reminded of her glitching power just in time to use it to save herself.

Films — Live-Action

• In Back to the Future, Marty tries to warn Doc Brown that he will be killed by the Libyans in 1985, but he doesn't want to hear it, fearing that Marty's presence in 1955 has already done enough damage to the timeline. Marty is sitting in the time machine lamenting his failure, then he realizes he's in a time machine; he can go back early and save Doc Brown in 1985. Which he still manages to screw up by only giving himself ten extra minutes and the car not starting, arriving at the mall just in time to see his friend getting shot.
• In The Super Inframan, the title character fights an insect monster. They are about evenly matched, until the insect monster suddenly grows 50 feet tall! Inframan struggles to fight the giant monster for some time before suddenly remembering that HE can grow to 50 feet tall! Which he does, and then defeats the monster.

Literature

• The Animorphs do this frequently, while in borrowed bodies.
  • There are at least two instances of a character taking the shape of a cockroach and forgetting until the last minute that cockroaches can fly. A nice Double Subversion occurs then: Jake remembers just in time that cockroaches can fly, only to then remember they can't fly well.
  • Another good example is after Marco rescues Ax from the Blade Ship they escape and plummet 2 miles up from the air, Marco freaks out until Ax reminds him that he could morph into a bird in midair.
  • In The Familiar, most of the Animorphs are still present in the Bad Future but for no explained reason, besides Jake none of them morph! Future Rachel is heavily maimed and has been for a long time, when morphing heals all wounds. Cassie was the best morpher on the team, but when Future Cassie is thrown from a tower Jake has to choose between saving her and saving the world, as if they've both forgotten she can morph.
• Harry Potter:
  • In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Harry and Ron are being strangled by the vines of the Devil's Snare while Hermione is panicking and trying to remember how to combat the plant. She then remembers that the plant shrinks from heat and light. Harry suggests she lights a fire and the brilliant and talented witch, who has been noted as being particularly skilled at creating magic fire, replies that there is no wood. Ron then manages to scream some sense into her. Justified at that point as Hermione, despite her skill, had spent most of her life as a muggle and has just under a year of even knowing magic exists, whereas Ron had grown up surrounded by magic.
  • In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Hermione gets her own back. Ron panics when he has to "freeze" the Whomping Willow so they can reach Voldemort's hideout and Hermione has to remind him that he's a wizard.
• Heralds of Valdemar:
  • In the foray into Sword and Sorcery, Tarma and Kethry have a Cool Sword called Need. Usually sorceress Kethry carries Need, and for her the sword uses Symbiotic Possession to make her fight with a skill and power she normally lacks. When fighter Tarma carries Need, Need makes her a Mage Killer completely untouchable by magic, breaking any spells put on her and No Selling even a demon on the threshhold to godhood. Tarma dislikes Need, and Need protects Kethry and makes her far less of a Squishy Wizard, but they never seem to remember that they can just hand Need over for a few minutes when squaring off against enemy mages - they only ever seem to do this in a moment of desperation, such as when Kethry falls in battle.
  • In Oathbreakers, when their way is barred Kethry decides that their only option is for her to have a one on one mage duel with an older and more experienced Adept, who defeats and all but kills her. Tarma then snatches up Need and cuts down the Adept effortlessly.
• In Equal Rites, the wizards are standing around unsure of what to do until Esk yells, "You're wizards! Bloody well wizz!" (This was before the "power from not doing magic" thing started, so they weren't doing it deliberately; they just actually were unsure they should wizz.)
• In Jeramey Kraatz's The Cloak Society, inverted. Two characters' loss of their superpowers and feelings of helplessness are played for drama. However, both characters had had Boxing Lessons for Superman; when reminded of them, they prove to be Badass Normal.
• In The Dresden Files novel Small Favor, Queen Mab does this to Harry as a major plot point. It's done so well, only at the end does Harry realize, for the entire book, he hasn't used any fire magic because he would have been killed if he did.
• In The Second Mango Shulamit, Aviva, Riv, and Riv's flying horse are in a falling down tower. Riv's horse had exhausted her ability to fly earlier and hadn't recovered yet. Finally, it became a choice of leap from the tower or risk being crushed, and they choose the jump. At the last minute, the horse recovers the use of her wings enough that they all land safely.

Live-Action TV

• In the finale of No Ordinary Family they spend a good while panicking, surrounded by men with guns and looking for a way out, until Stephanie remembers she can immediately resolve the situation by using her superspeed to disable them. This is an improvement over a previous, similar situation, where it never occurred to her at all.
• Lampooned in the "The Adventures of Young God" skit on The State, which portrays God as a crime-fighting, Batman-style superhero. He and his sidekick (the Boy Savior) have been captured by the bad guys, and are tied up in an abandoned factory next to a time bomb that's about to explode when...
  Narrator: Suddenly God remembers that he's all-powerful, and changes the bomb into showers of blessings!
• A non-superpower version in the Flash Gordon TV series. On Mongo, there is almost no transportation. People either walk or ride in animal-drawn carts. Which means a lot of walking for the heroes to get to distant cantons. Occasionally, Flash will remember that he's an Olympic-level distance runner and get somewhere fairly quickly without breaking a sweat.
• Legends of Tomorrow: In season 1, the Waverider is under attack, and Gideon warns them that the weapons systems have been disabled, meaning they're defenseless. Professor Stein visibly blinks and says "we have superpowers." They then all run outside to fight off the attackers.
• Smallville, Clark, who usually forgets to use his powers in tandem, is reminded by Jonathan Kent that the jocks with Super-Strength he is going to fight only have strength, and none of Clark's other abilities. He subsequently mops the floor with all three by using a combination of Heat Vision, Durability, and Super-Speed.
• Cited directly in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. While repairing a boat together, Sam notices Bucky using a wrench to get leverage, instead of using his metal arm, and asks why. Bucky responds that he doesn't always remember to use it, as it's his non-dominant hand. He later remembers during their work together.
• In one episode of Quantum Leap (2022), Ben is trying to get into an apartment that is about to collapse in order to save an old man, but the man isn't answering. Ben's holographic companion, Addison, suddenly remembers that she's an intangible hologram.
  Addison: Right, hologram! [walks through closed door, walks right back out] He's inside, he's just sitting there in shock.

Music

• Played with in the parody Vocaloid song "Lord of Darkness" in which the title vampire starves to death in a cell, never managing to remember that he is able to turn into mist.

Podcasts

• When Crania gets Dizzy in the Cool Kids Table game Here We Gooooo!, she fails to remember that she can naturally float down from heights and begins plummeting towards the ground after falling out of a warp straw.

Toys

• At one point in the BIONICLE storyline, Krekka has to be reminded that he knows how to fly. He's just that stupid.

Video Games

• Defied in Chapter 18 of Dragalia Lost. After Notte grows to the size of the rest of the party, she starts following along by trying to walk, all while struggling to do so as she isn't used to walking. As Ranzal points out, her wings grew with her so she should still be able to fly. Notte admits that she could still fly, but chooses not to because she feels like learning how to use her legs.
• The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has an instance towards the beginning of the game: two Mogmas, Ledd and Cobal, sit outside the Earth Temple, brainstorming ways to get inside to loot the place like they're in a cat burglar movie. The following exchange occurs:
  Cobal: Can't we just dig in?
  [Beat]
  Cobal: Just sayin'.
  Ledd: You're not as dumb as you look.
• Amusingly enough, due to the severe case of Alt-itis the game encourages, this can be a frequent problem in City of Heroes. What with having so many alts with different power sets, it's not easy to remember that your character of the hour can induce fear over a wide area, or shoot an awesome long-range fire beam, or use arrows that encase their targets in ice, or whatever else they learned to do six weeks ago when you last played them.
• It is possible to die from Bottomless Pits-equivalents in Dark Void, a game whose premise is that its hero has a jet-pack.
• In the second special episode of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky, Armaldo panics and looks for water to put out his treasure map that Igglybuff set on fire before remembering that he can use Water Gun.
• Golden Sun: Dark Dawn:
  • Sveta cowers in fear when the Chaos Hound appears near the end of the game.
    Sveta: Help!
    Tyrell: Are you an Adept or not?! Use some Psynergy on it!
  • She also forgets that as a beastkin she has super-senses, until after the battle when she realizes the Chaos Hound smells like her "dead" brother...
• World of Warcraft:
  • Lampshaded in a quest (though that quest is presented as a complete fabrication told by one of the NPCs):
    When I reached the end of the canyon, I remembered that my motorcycle could fly.
    That would have been helpful to know earlier.
  • Like the City of Heroes example, players running multiple alts can sometimes forget which ones have a Flight License.
  • An inverse example, Stories of players leaping off cliffs planning to shift into flight form or use sometype of movement slowing, thinking they're on their druid, mage, etc., then realizing they're not and dying.
• It's not uncommon in League of Legends to forget that your items have active effects only to kick yourself now that you're just out of range to inflict slow with your Hextech Gunblade.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • In Paper Mario 64, Bombette is first seen stuck in a jail cell. Once she joins the party, she can use her explosion power to break through the wall. She then sheepishly admits that the idea hadn't occurred to her before that point. Apparently it hadn't occurred to any of the four other Bob-ombs locked in the cell with her, either.
  • Paper Mario: The Origami King: In the Scorching Sandpaper Desert, Mario journeys with Professor Toad and Olivia to solve a puzzle involving four ancient stone towers. It involves rotating the towers by activating devices inside them, which results in all three of them falling over from the resulting tremors several times. After activating the final tower, however, Olivia remembers that she floats everywhere and doesn't need to fall down. This causes Mario and Professor Toad to do a Face Fault.
• In Undertale, Napstablook falls down a hole and tells the player to go on without them before remembering that ghosts can fly.
• A rare serious case in Silent Hill: Shattered Memories with Harry Mason. You can't use his phone until Cybil reminds him that he has it on him. Of course, he forgot he had it since he just pulled himself out of a nasty car crash that he didn't even survive; that rough of a time would make anyone forget they were carrying their phone.
• A common bug in Dwarf Fortress is flying creatures that can't figure out how to get from here to there because a valid ground path doesn't exist. If you then build the ground path, they will immediately remember that they don't need it and fly there like they should have done all along.
• Pâquerette Down the Bunburrows: Pâquerette on separate occasions suddenly remembers she has a trapbox, pickaxe, treats, and shovel to progress. The amount that can be used differs in each level though.

Web Animation

• Battle For Dream Island:
  • In BFB, Team Beep is falling down a hole, the bottom of which has a layer of acid that will dissolve them if they touch it. However, Balloony points out that Cloudy has the ability to fly - he lost it in a prior episode, but due to no longer wearing the bandages that restrained him, he has it back.
  • In the next episode, Team Bleh is trapped by lava, and is concerned that they have no way out. However, Lollipop points out that two of their members - Saw and Dora - are lavaproof, and they could swim through the lava to ask Four to get them out of their predicament.

Webcomics

• The Order of the Stick:
  • Vaarsuvius reminding Elan about his bard-magic abilities. Elan forgetting his class features is actually a Running Gag, since he is The Ditz.
  • In another strip, Durkon swings at an attacking goblin with his hammer and misses twice. However, when others remind him about the bonuses he forgot to add to his attack, he realizes that he hit after all — and sure enough, the goblin is retroactively pummeled into submission. He'd be a great fighter if he had a better head for numbers.
  • Also, other characters used to remind V about the familiar that comes with the wizard class. Although that is also poking fun at players forgetting their familiars.
  • When Elan is mortally wounded in the first dungeon and Durkon is paralyzed, Belkar finds two scrolls for the Cure Serious Wounds spell, which he feels is worthless since no one else can cast healing spells. Vaarsuvius points out that Belkar, being a ranger, has the ability to heal, but his Wisdom Score is too low. Vaarsuvius casts Owl's Wisdom on Belkar raising Wisdom Score high enough to save Elan's life. They then dismiss Owl's Wisdom just as Smart!Belkar considers giving up violence.
• Bob and George:
  • Mega Man is working his way through a particularly hard level, not making much progress, and complaining about how much the jetpack he's wearing weighs. One Beat Panel later, he starts flying over the level, wondering how he could be so stupid.
  • When Megaman and Protoman are having trouble fighting the Yellow Demon in the first year, and the author points out that Megaman has beaten it several times before, so he shouldn't have a problem with it this time either. Megaman and Protoman proceed to rather messily destroy it.
  • And when someone points out to George that he did not have to spend months in Unwilling Suspension with his superpowers — he blows up the base.
  • In another case it's first invoked but then subverted. Megaman enters Dr. Wiley's base, but in the course of combat gets his limbs blown off. He desperately crawls on his ruined stumps to Wiley's room, where he finds the other heroes already there. They ask why he didn't use his teleporter. He almost completely loses it, but then quickly remembers that the teleporter's broken, that's why.
• In Dubious Company, Walter forgets that he is a Winged Humanoid and so does everyone else. He mainly seems to remember if Tiren is in danger.
• From Homestuck:
  • This exchange:
    Dreambot!Jade: Realize you can fly.
    There is nothing to realize. Of course you can fly.
  • At another point, Dave forgets that he's able to travel through time.
• In one arc of the Katamari comic, the King of All Cosmos needs to find the Prince (who's off on an adventure). It's only some time after hiring a Bounty Hunter to track him down that he realizes he can just use the Royal Rainbow.
• El Goonish Shive
  • In one strip, Grace spends a few panels trying fruitlessly to escape from a full nelson before realizing that she's a shapeshifter, and she can easily slip out by turning into a tiny squirrel.
  • In another strip, she gets "trapped by mopping", until Tedd reminds her she can fly over the wet floor.
• Inverted in Tower of God (Hell Train: The Dallar Show), when the birdlike humanoid Pompidou talks about how he could fly somewhere but then remembers that he can't fly.
• Darths & Droids: During his first encounter with Darth Maul, Qui-Gon is trapped, until Sally as Jar-Jar reminds him he can just use the Force to jump onto the passing ship and get away. In fairness, Qui-Gon's being played by Jim, who is The Ditz.

Western Animation

• There's a Woody Woodpecker cartoon where Woody falls from a great height, starts flying, and admits, "Hey, I forgot I was a bird!"
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998):
  • In an episode, Mojo ties up the girls in an unbreakable filament, and they shout, "You forgot one thing!" and blast him with their heat vision, something they've actually quite often forgotten to do.
  • In one episode, Buttercup is being chased away by an angry mob in a parody of monster B-movies, and runs away from them... until she exclaims "Wait, what am I doing?", and remembers she can just fly away from them.
  • In "Power-Noia," Buttercup — within her nightmare landscape — tells Blossom she can't fly. But this is through her own paralysis over spiders than it is forgetting how to fly.
  • The girls once have to face a Train Problem in order to figure out where a train collision might occur. As they struggle to find an answer, Blossom delivers a solution: "We're superheroes! Let's just find the two trains and stop them!"
• In an episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the group are stuck in the desert with only a small amount of water in their pouch. Then Momo spills it and Sokka goes crazy... that is until Katara calmly bends the water out of the sand. Sokka sighs and says "Oh, I forgot. Bending."
• Aladdin: The Series:
  • Aladdin asks another character to take a rope to the top of a high tower for him, at which point said character launches into a diatribe about how dangerous this would be for him, and how crazy and inconsiderate a thing it is to ask of him. Aladdin's response is to wait the rant out, as there's no point in trying to reason with him until he's finished, then points out to him that he can fly. At which point, the character, who is the parrot, Iago, says, "Oh, yeah."
  • Subverted in the episode where the Sultan puts on a cursed suit of armor that is turning him evil. After an attempt to trick the Sultan into taking the armor off goes South, Aladdin and crew flee on Carpet. The Sultan is using the armor's super speed to keep up with them, so Aladdin, reminding the Sultan that Carpet is a flying carpet, rapidly gains altitude in order to get away. However, the Sultan just uproots a nearby palm tree and uses it as a javelin to knock everyone out of the sky.
• In Legion of Super Heroes (2006), when Superman and Timberwolf have to deliver Brainiac 5's head to be exposed to a rare metal's radiation in order to prevent Brainy dying from a corruption of his data, Superman has to go to a planet with a red sun (meaning he loses all his powers for the duration). When he and Timberwolf are running from mutant miners, Superman is reminded by Timberwolf that he has a flight-ring that still allows him to fly. Superman's excuse is that he never really used the ring's function, seeing as he can fly on his own.
• In a He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983) episode, Teela and Orko on up on the palace roof during an attack. A blast nearly sends Orko off the roof. Grasping the edge, he cries out to Teela for help, at which point Teela points out that he can levitate. Orko then says something near the trope.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
  • In the second episode the ponies come across a broken bridge. When Pinkie Pie wonders what to do next, Rainbow Dash shrugs and flies over to fix it.
  • In the episode "Dragonshy", Fluttershy is so frightened she has to be reminded that she can fly. This then gets subverted when she becomes so terrified that her wings lock up entirely, stranding her on the ground.
  • A variant occurs in "The Last Roundup" when Applejack thinks she's managed to shake off her pursuing friends behind a long train. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy simply fly over the train instead.
  • Another variant in "Read it and Weep" when Rainbow Dash was running from the pursuing hospital security and comes to a river. Since her wing was injured, she couldn't fly and had to swing across on a vine. She runs, thinking she got away with the river separating them, until the pony security simply ran across the bridge nearby.
  • In "Wonderbolts Academy", Rainbow Dash's friends (two earth ponies, two unicorns, and Fluttershy, a pegasus) fall out of a hot-air balloon. Rainbow Dash saves them with a dense cloud, bouncing them up. The other pegasi in the academy catch them as they fall up. Cloudchaser catches Fluttershy, and she jumps out with a sheepish look on her face as Cloudchaser glares at her.
  • In the season 4 premiere, Twilight hopes she hasn't missed the train to Ponyville... right before Spike reminds her that she can just fly there. Justified as she had just gained the ability to fly and is still not too familiar with it. Teleportation, on the other hand...
  • In "The Cutie Re-Mark – Part 1", Twilight briefly panics after the first travel through the time vortex when she's falling above Cloudsdale, but then she remembers she has wings.
  • In "It's About Time" she's trying to sneak into a forbidden section of the library and is blocked by the door, forgetting she can teleport. She's then let in by one of the guards, because she also forgot that as multiple time savior of Equestria and Princess Celestia's protégé, she's allowed to go in there anytime she wants.
• In the third episode of Winx Club Bloom is caught in one of Darcy's illusion spells, until she remembers that fairies can fly and flies out of the spell's reach. This was justified as the first time Bloom had transformed into her fairy form.
• Princess Flame in one episode of Blazing Dragons. While sneaking out of her tower bedroom, the rope she has made by tying her bed sheets together unravels and she abruptly falls out of frame. She then flits back into frame, hovering in place and smirking. Seeing as she is the Only Sane Woman in this series, that is rather notable. All Dragons have wings, but only occasionally remember that they can fly.
• In Family Guy, Brian the dog keeps forgetting about his superior sense of smell.
• Happens with Squirt the dragon in Nick Jr.'s Mike the Knight when tumbling down a cliff, though there's another dragon named Sparkie who actually can't fly and has to be rescued.
• In Gargoyles, Oberon's Hair-Trigger Temper sometimes gets in the way of him remembering that he's virtually omnipotent and can use his magic to come up with straightforward solutions to most problems.
• In Young Justice (2010), after Mind-Raping a friend by mistake, M'Gann suffers a horrible breakdown and this trope in the result. She can hardly communicate telepathically, her species equivalent to talking, and has to be reminded that she can walk through walls.
  M'Gann: Hmm, what? Oh, yes, density shift. I can do that... I can still do that...
• Looney Tunes: Happens twice to Daffy Duck in the short "The Million Hare" as Bugs lampshades both instances.
• Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines: In "Sky-Hi I.Q.," Muttley is made the leader of Vulture Squadron. Normally, he uses his tail as a propeller to keep him airborne after the Squadron crashes out their planes, but in this episode, Muttley loses his plane to a botched mission and plummets to the ground. Dastardly catches him in a net and receives a puny medal for his efforts. Dastardly unstrings the net and sends Muttley hurtling to the ground again.
• The Blue Racer: Crazy-Legs Crane frequently forgets he is able to fly. In fact, a whole episode was dedicated to his conscience trying to teach him how to do it properly.
• In "A Liking to Biking" on Dragon Tales, Ord bicycles off the edge of a cliff and is left dangling from a tire swing, scared out of his mind that he's going to fall, until Cassie reminds him, "Ord! You're a dragon! Use your wings!" Ord promptly realizes and flies back up to safety, admitting meekly that he forgot.
• In Archer, Ray gets a pair of bionic legs in Season 4... which he has to be reminded of when the jeep that he, Archer, and Cyril are in gets stuck in a sand dune. Of course, that leads to this hilarious exchange when he throws his back out trying to get it unstuck.
  Archer: Are you kidding me? Bionic legs and you lift with your back!?
• Bananaman isn't the brightest superhero, so when he's told to "get on your bike", he starts bicycling through the air, until Non-Human Sidekick Crow reminds him that bicycles can't fly. Cue drop. Crow then reminds him that Bananaman can fly. "Oh, so I can."
• Adventure Time: In "Jake vs. Me-Mow", a very tiny kitten assassin named Me-Mow threatens to inject Jake with poison unless he helps her take out Wildberry Princess. Eventually, Finn catches on and tries to stop her, only for Me-Mow to inject enough poison into Jake to kill a dog 50 times his size. A brief panic is held before Jake remembers he can change his size, resulting in him making his liver fifty-one times bigger in order to effectively neutralize the poison.
  Jake: BIIIG LIVAHH! BIIIG LIVAHH, YEAH!
• Subverted in Uncle Grandpa in "Charlie Burgers", when Uncle Grandpa has to find a way to pick up a ball off Old Man Johnson's roof without going into his yard:
  Uncle Grandpa: All we have to do is turn the world upside down!
  Mr. Gus: Why don't we just ask Giant Realistic Flying Tiger to fly us up there?
  Uncle Grandpa: Because she's in the shower, and we never disturb a lady during shower time.
• Shimmer and Shine:
  • In "Wishy Washy Genie", the titular Wishy Washy Genie tries to cross a bridge without being sure it can withstand him. Suddenly, one of the ends of the bridge gives in and he holds onto the bridge out of fear he'll fall down. He then sees Shimmer, Shine, and Kaz flying into safety and remembers that, as a genie, he can do that as well.
  • In "The Darpoppy", Leah, Shimmer and Shine leap from one spot to another and Kaz is afraid of doing the same until he's reminded that he can float.
• Many many episodes of The Dreamstone have the Dream Maker sending in Rufus and Amberley in to stop the Urpneys' plans, only for them to get captured. All is lost. Good thing the Dream Maker won the Superpower Lottery and is good friends with an army of nearly equally powerful Wuts so can just magic their scheme away easily. Only as plan B though.
• In Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness, Hundun threatens Po by telling him that he'll throw Mr. Ping off a building if he doesn't give in to his demands. Po does so, and Hundun throws Mr. Ping down anyway...only for Mr. Ping to suddenly flap his wings just before he can reach the ground.
• Inverted in The Angry Beavers episode "Muscular Beaver 4". After spending the whole episode playing superhero, the last scene shows everyone flying through the air, and then Daggett remembers "Hey wait, we don't know how to fly!" and everybody plummets down.
• In Vampirina, Demi always forgets that he's a ghost, even though he's been one for centuries. It often takes the format of him wishing that they knew someone who could, for instance, fly through walls. Gregoria usually has to remind him that he's a ghost, and can do it himself.
• In an episode of Hercules: The Animated Series, Zeus is trapped in the Underworld by Hades when he sees Herc in need of his help through Hades' seer portal. Zeus bemoans the fact that he can't do anything to help his son from his position before remembering "Wait a minute, I'm a GOD! I can be OMNIPRESENT!" and takes control of a statue of him from a nearby temple to save Herc.
• A recurring joke in "Monkie Kid" . In the episode "Dumpling Destruction" Mk and Tang are searching for a magical vase in a room of Wukong's magical clutter. They can't find it anywhere, Until Mk conviniently remembers he has golden sight.
  Tang: Why didn't you do that sooner!?
  Mk: Because I forgot I could, Okay?
• Ben 10: Ultimate Alien: Ultimate Kevin tries to beat his way into the Rustbucket III, but Ben exasperatedly reminds him that he has some of Big Chill's DNA and can just phase into the ship.

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