|
|
A power that is defined solely by wording, and thus capable of a great deal of stretching what it is capable of. To use an example from One Piece, the hypothetical power of "pushing" could be used to "push" people at massive speed in order to fake teleportation, to push concepts or to push away attacks. Can be used to justify Heart Is An Awesome Power. Done poorly, it comes across as an Asspull unless it's obviously being Played for Laughs.
See also When All You Have Is a Hammer, Imagination Based Superpower, and Swiss Army Superpower.
Examples
open/close all folders
Anime and Manga
- In Maken Ki, this is how Celia's "reverse" power works. Normally, she just uses it to reverse someone's momentum when they attack her, and for a while everyone assumes that's all she can do. However, she can also reverse a fighter's strength (making them weak), reverse the Determinator's aggression (turning him into an apathetic mess) and reverse her own gender (turning her from her natural male gender into a girl).
- It's common in One Piece for Devil Fruit users to not have any obvious limits to their powers, though many of them fall into Heart Is An Awesome Power. In fact, it's stated that one of the true marks of a strong fruit user is how much experience they have with their powers and by extension, how many of these uses for their powers they can figure out.
- A good example is Kuma, alluded to in the trope description, who has the power to repel things. He often uses this to repel attacks, but it turns out he can repel the pain from a person's body, or send someone basically anywhere in the world they can travel to via a straight line (or taking gravity into account, a parabolic curve). That straight line limitation is only as far as one can guess.
- Aphorism is literally this. All the powers of the characters are based on a single kanji. Someone with the character for "flame" can produce flames, for example. It's even possible to change your power by interpreting that character differently.
- The "hundred power" possessed by Kotetsu and Barnaby in Tiger & Bunny is said to increase their abilities a hundredfold. They primarily make use of the considerable boost this gives to their strength, speed, and ability to resist injury, but Kotetsu is also shown using it as a Healing Factor and to enhance his senses when needed.
- In Tsukihime and Kara no Kyoukai there exist the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception which allow you to see the "lines of death" of objects, which cause the object to be destroyed when cut. This has been applied not only to destroy inanimate objects and mortal beings but also numerous immortals, poisons, telekinetic attacks and barriers and even space. The concept of death is stretched to tbe point where it is said that by the end of Kara no Kyoukai Shiki at full power is basically a god.
- Josuke from JoJolion. His stand, Soft & Wet, has the power to "steal" anything from something, which boils down to removing a certain property from something. He has already used it to remove friction from a floor and the "click" sound from a light switch.
- JJBA is actually full of these. The most famous example being a stand whose ability can return anything to zero. It's used to set an enemy's death to "zero". Since he can no longer die, he gets caught in a cycle where he constantly "dies" then wakes back up a few moments before "dying" again. The character profile suggests that this power can expand to nearly anything, such as a person's motivation.
Comic Books
- Mirror Master, one of The Flash's enemies, can do just about whatever the writer can imagine as long as it involves light and/or glass, up to and including creating entire mirror universes.
"I can use a mirror a thousand different ways. Can turn a man inside out. Cut a hole through a seven-foot concrete wall. Make ye see things from yer fantasies—or from yer worst nightmares." ( The Flash vol. 2 #212)
- Cypher of X-Men, whose only power is the ability to understand all languages. After being written as completely useless 99% of the time, writers upgraded his powers to include programming languages and a dozen other things most sane people would never label a language.
Literature
- In Inheritance Cycle, this is basically how the Ancient Language works, with skilled/imaginative magicians able to perform feats using words that have no obvious relation. For example, Selena was able to use the word for "heal" to perform Psychic Assisted Suicide, by "healing" people of their will to live.
- In the Alcatraz Series, the Smedry family have Talents like "being late", "talking nonsense", "getting lost", "tripping and falling" or "breaking things". Doesn't sound like much - until you consider that "being late" to a meeting with a bullet or "breaking" the space-time continuum are fully acceptable uses of these Talents.
Tabletop Games
Video Games
- Yukari Yakumo of the Touhou series is pretty much the embodiment of this trope, in Fanon at least. Her power is, as stated in the manual, manipulation of boundaries, which doesn't sound too great until you realize that "boundary" is meant in the most metaphysical way possible. By tweaking things like the boundaries of life and death, reality and fantasy, possible and impossible, etc., she's basically God. In theory. In practice some boundaries are hard or impossible for her to manipulate, though which ones is incredibly vague (it doesn't help that Yukari can also use magic).
- Suika has the ability to manipulate density. This lets her change size, transform into mist, create mini-Suikas and black holes, and cause people to sub-conciously gather for a feast.
- In the Spell Casting series, the UPPSSY spell turns anything into its opposite, broadly speaking. For instance, it will turn a two-by-four into a four-by-two, a jellyfish into a peanut butterfish, a crooked casino into a straight casino, or a flat-chested girl into a big-busted girl. Likewise, the RATANT spell turns a spell into similarly-sounding but vastly different spell, such as turning the "spell of opposites" into "spell of opossums".
- As shown in the page quote, Skyrim gives us a perfect example in Nocturnal's Daedric Artifact, the Skeleton Key. It "unlocks" anything, in a very broadly-interpreted sense. This means that anything which is restricted, hidden or not used to its potential can be "unlocked" in this way. In the case of Mercer Frey, he uses it to gain Super Strength. However, the player is unable to use it as anything other than an unbreakable lockpick.
Webcomics
- The titular Keys of the Exalted webcomic Keychain of Creation have the simple ability to unlock things, including the seals on the local Cosmic Horrors. However, according to Word Of God, obtaining all five Keys grants the wielder omnipotence, as long as they can phrase the desired action as "unlocking." For example, the Deathlords are immortal, or one might say "locked" to life, and thus can be killed with proper use of the Keys.
- Parodied by 8-Bit Theater: Red Mage is constantly showing his companions that he can make anything a Minmaxer's Delight. Lockpicking can be accomplished, for instance, using the pickpocket skill because it's just removing a lock from a pocket in a door. The interrogation skill is simply emptying pockets of information in people's minds. This being 8-Bit Theater, Insane Troll Logic is completely applicable if you're stupid enough to not wonder how it's at all possible. Likewise, Thief can steal things that are intangible or that don't exist, basically doing anything as long as can be called theft. Fighter can block anything, including the ground from a fall.
- No problem can't be solved with an imaginative and enthusiastic application of the animal husbandry skill.
- The Kayoss Royal Family in L's Empire are all granted a single word. Any definition of that word is available to them as a power. The current king has the power of sound; so he can control sound waves, make whatever he says perfectly believable, and put anything into a perfect (sound) state.
Web Original
- Tales of MU fairy gifts: One character is blessed with the gift of "is always the strongest person in the room". When a dragon enters the same room as her, things start going out of hand.
- Another character has the gift "divine laughter", a sparkling laughter which is appreciated by everyone except demonbloods, who react unfavorably to the "divine" part.
- Lightfoot of ASH has the power to make anything he's touching go faster. Naturally, this lets him make himself go faster but he was also able to make a giant statue that would normally have taken a century to sink into the earth do so in minutes. His power makes things go faster, not move faster.
Western Animation
|
|
