The various sword powers in Bleach vary hugely, typically according to their wielders' importance to the plot. Minor characters like Ikkaku get a spear that can bend, while Ichigo, the main character gets a sword that fires energy blasts, cuts through a larger range of objects than what would be physically possible for a katana, and increases his overall strength and speed. Then there are characters like Byakuya and Mayuri, whose swords create a torrent of razor blade petals and cause complete paralysis, respectively. The true winner of the Superpower Lottery in this series is Aizen, who by himself decimates the good guys on his own while continuously gaining absurd amounts of power every couple of chapters in his own arc, while he originally possessed the power to manipulate the senses of anyone who has ever seen his Zanpakuto in its released/"Shikai" state. With just one finger, he casually blocks an attack from Ichigo's Bankai. He takes the crown in this series for having enormous stats in raw power, shikai abilities, kido skill, and shunpo. His Fan Nickname (relating to video game appearance) is "Captain Broken".
Orihime's true power is to to reshape reality at her whim by "rejecting" parts of it. Of course, her powers are limited by own willpower, and in the fight-happy environment she happens to be an Actual Pacifist, so this is rarely a Game Breaker.
Yamamoto is this as well; almost all of his stats are rated 100 out of 100. The only blot on his record is a comparatively low physical endurance, presumably from extreme age (please note that these stats were written years ago during the Soul Society arc, and Yamamoto has shown his physical abilities to be top draw too during the much more recent battle with Wonderweiss, so it's more likely a psuedo-retcon from the author). His Ryujin Jakka is supposed to have the most destructive power of all zanpakuto. Aizen counters this by sending Arrancar that can seal Yammamoto's Zanpakuto, but he forgets that Yammamoto can ignore this and resort to using his fists. Yammamoto is the only Shinigami beside the main character to not be outright stomped by Aizen as well. And that was just when his shikai was known. His Bankai, Zanka No Tachi, takes things up to eleven with its four techniques North, South, East and West, which variously gives Yamamoto exponentially amped attack power (and considering he's already got the highest in the series without it that should tell you something), armor made of The Power of the Sun and the ability to summon anyone ever killed by his Zanpakuto. It carries the risk of destroying Soul Society '''just by being released for too long'''.
Arrancars and Vizards are like half-breed vampires; the powers of a Shinigami with the physiology of a Hollow, or the powers of a Hollow with the weapons of a Shinigami, an upgrade that the main character takes advantage of as well.
Fullbrings are this as a whole. Ginjou can use Sword Beams and Jakie gets stronger the dirtier her boots gets. Really something, right? However, Riruka can trap anyone in a dollhouse for as long as she wants, Giriko imposes time limits to complete tasks (which must be fulfilled; you die otherwise), Yukio can seal anyone in a video game like reality which he controls (to the point where he can manipulate the time inside it), and Tsukishima has a sword that allows him to literally insert himself into the past of anything it hits, including doing such things as inserting himself into the distant past of a piece of floor so that he has been there before and put a trap there. When said floor has only existed for a few minutes.
Shishigawara alters probability. With his fists. Ginjou and Tsukishima talked about killing him after they accomplished their plan, because his powers were too dangerous. Tsukishima thought this was a dick move, but seemed like he was going to do it anyway.
Coming back to Ichigo again, there's being a main character, and then there's breaking the lottery in half. He's got enormous reiatsu, Shinigami powers, Hollow powers, and Quincy powers. On the other hand, Ichigo is hampered not only by his fluctuating power level, but by the fact that he can't use most of the moves associated with his skill sets. He doesn't know Kido, he can't do any of the things Hollows can do outside of when his hollow takes control (And it's up in the air whether he even still has his hollow abilities), he lost all of the unique powers of a Fullbringer, and his Quincy abilities are a recent development, with only one ability shown so far.
Phoenix Ikki from Saint Seiya. Not only is he physically stronger than his fellow saints, he has resurrective powers...that double his power every time he comes back. And his armor does that too! Break into pieces and it will reform itself stronger. Which is why this character is often somewhere else and only comes by to beat up the toughest opponents.
Also, Virgo Shaka. He can fight 3 gold saints on equal terms..and win.
Captain Hiwatari of Busou Renkin. Tokiko gets four bladed arms. Kazuki gets a lance that enables a number of lance-related superattacks. Hiwatari gets a napalm bomb that allows him to generate flame attacks, regenerate from any wound, and fly. And did I mention the fact that it's a napalm bomb? That renews itself?
The Hyuuga and Uchiha clans from Naruto, the former of whom can see in nearly every direction and use Pressure Point attacks to shut down an enemy physically and cut them off from their power source, and the latter can copy techniques after visualizing them. Chakra is practically "oxygen" in Naruto, so the Hyuga have a way to shut down practically any opponent, and the Uchiha can learn any jutsu that isn't solely available to members of a bloodline. With time, the Sharingan can even become the Rinnegan.
The Sharingan can, at a price, become the Mangekyo Sharingan, and then be upgraded to the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan, basically granting unlimited usage of three of the series's most powerful jutsus. But being specific, there are members of the Uchiha who gain "special powers" like Obito, Itachi, Shisui, and Madara Uchiha that become Game Breaker abilities for nearly all of those particular people.
The Rinnegan is another eye technique, allegedly greater than the Sharingan and Byakugan. It has similar sensory ability, lets you master all five elemental forms of nature manipulation plus the non-elemental one (when few can do more than two and nobody else can do all six), and let's the user control six reanimated bodies each given a special power (one of which is bringing dead people/damaged bodies Back from the Dead) and a shared sense of sight between them. The list of people who have claimed it includes a small number of people. The first was the series Physical God, the second a man who had enough raw power to assault a village full of ninjas by himself and almost win, and the third is Madara Uchiha by means of evolution, while the fourth is technically Obito Uchiha/Tobi for stealing one of Nagato's. Though the trade off for the greater abilities is massive, possibly deadly, chakra usage, and for a few even dipping into life-force; such as the aforementioned raising of the recently dead. But the wielder will be kicking a lot of ass before they go down.
Danzo noticed out the two examples above and grafted the First Hokage's DNA into himself in the form of his right arm, which he has had ten sharingan eyes implanted into. That means he possesses the powers of the Uchiha and Senju allowing him to use a forbidden technique that gives him minor reality warping powers in regards to his own person (and since using that technique permanently blinds a sharingan, Danzo put the eyes of all the dead Uchiha he could find on ice to replace any he expends), as well as the power to control the series Eldritch Abominations.
The Sage of the Six Paths is all of the above examples combined, having created the list of techniques for which these ones were based on, and he used them to defeat the series' original Eldritch Abomination that gave birth to nine others of its kind.
The resurrected Madara Uchiha has the Rinnegan, Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan, and the Wood Release of the Senju Clan. His Susano'o makes him Nigh Invulnerable, he can produce Wood Clones equal to himself in strength, can cast meteors and drop them out of the sky, spawn an entire raging forest after his enemies, and bathe the earth in a sea of flames. Oh, and he has an immortal body that wields an unlimited amount of chakra.
The Fifth Mizukage Mei Terumi and the Tsuchikage, Onoki, scored pretty big. The former got to use two unique types of Elemental Powers in addition to the three regular ones they were made from, with their combined forms obviously being more powerful. The latter can fly (a feat that's rather rare in the series), create large objects to smash things with, and carry an turtle the size of a small island with one hand. Not to mention his powerful Cube of Destruction.
Being the host of a Tailed Beast gives you massive reserves of energy, a defense against Genjutsu, and an Energy Shield. The main character is host to the strongest one in the series, acting as his Superpowered Evil Side that tears up parts of the landscape once triggered, but at the cost of shortening his lifespan.
In The Law of Ueki, each participant in the ever-present Tournament Arc has a special power given to them by their heavenly sponsor, usually of the form "turn X into Y"; our hero, for instance, can transform garbage (usually wrappers) into trees (with a degree of Green Thumb). The Big Bad of the first arc's power at first seems to be generating gravity-manipulating bubbles... but, no, that turns out to just be a side effect created by a previous use of his real power: to make anything ideal, which is bordering on (but not quite) Reality Warper territory.
Other people in later arcs display incredible powers as well, most notably Marilyn, who can change one second into ten (e.g. perfectly dodge everything) and only loses because of her own Heroic RROD.
Ueki's power is actually stated to be one of the most awesome abilities that could be given as its true nature is allowing him to recycle his creations (use trash to create trees, tear a branch from first created tree to turn it into more trees). This gives him the advantage of literally having an infinite supply of mediums to transmute.
In One Piece, while Devil Fruit powers that in other series would be mostly worthless are quite useful, the Logia fruits are still absurdly stronger, and appropriately rarer. They're able to become and reform from their element at will, which gives them extraordinary power, grants some of them Not Quite Flight (especially useful given that falling into the ocean is the most dangerous thing that can happen to anybody with Devil Fruit power) and very fast travel, and makes them Nigh InvulnerableBlobs anytime they're able to see a blow coming (some are even able to over-step this by changing reflexively).
Above even the standard Logia fruits are the powers granted to Admiral Kizaru: As a being made of pure light, he is nearly massless, can move at the speed of light, can kick with near-infinite force, and has no clear elemental weakness. It's no wonder he tends to treat combat as an absolute joke and makes small talk with his enemies.
Ceasar Clown as well. He ate the Gasu Gasu no Mi, which allows him to transform into, generate, and control gasses, including deadly poisonous gas, highly explosive gas, and oxygen. Yes, he can (and has) removed all the oxygen from around himself, easily defeating Luffy, Zoro, and Nico Robin through this by suffocating them.
This trope is played quite literally with the Devil's Fruits, as it's entirely possible to LOSE at the Superpower Lottery, since most of the time nobody knows what power is bestowed on the users before they eat it, leaving it up to fate as to whether you're Cursed with Awesome or Blessed with Suck. Blackbeard is a pure example of both, since though he can pretty much neutralise all opposing devil fruit user's abilities and can suck things into pure darkness, he does have one slight problem — he can't dodgeanything. Since his powers are partly gravity based, he pulls in all attacks, and is unable to avoid them like other logia users. Considering most people in the Grand Line have absurd fighting strength — devil fruit or not — this is not at all convenient.
But then, a very useful ability appears later: A complete Mega Manning of a second Devil's Fruit. To note, he chooses Whitebeard's power below.
Meanwhile, Marco is a Phoenix (Mythical Zoan), so he gets the rare flight ability, and regeneration (which works even on wounds inflicted while the power is nullified, as long as he can come out of contact with the Power Nullifier in question), in addition to the 3 zoan forms. Then there's the other reasons he's Whitebeard's First Division Commander.
Paramecia fruits are more of a "huge gamble", as that classification means "anything besides Logia or Zoan", and thus range from "useless" to "impossibly broken". While most of the stronger ones are Logia, many that are arguably the strongest are both Paramecia: Whitebeard's (creates shockwaves which can be strong enough to cause earthquake and tidal waves, which is an even bigger threat than in the real world since the One Piece world is made up almost entirely of islands) and Kuma's (paw pads on his hands... which punt anything they touch flying away faster than the eye can see hundreds of miles away, including abstract concepts like strength and pain).
The lottery gets better for the Zoan-typer Devil powers. Zoan types were usually used for enhancing ones abilities by transforming ones body into full-animal or half animal, essentially having 3 forms (human, animal or hybrid of both). Those who got lucky got the Carnivorous Models, which were considered more dangerous than models previously shown. Now, if you really hit the lottery, you'll find yourself with an Extinct (dinosaur, as in the case of X Drake who turns into a Tyrannosaurus rex) or Mythical (Marco, former Fleet Admiral Sengoku) Zoan power.
The real lottery winners are those with "Haoushoku Haki", or "King's Ambition"; only one in a million are born with it, and it's powerful enough to knock out scores of Elite Mooks, such as the Kuja warriors, who are already well-accustomed to the effects of the regular variety. And this was done by somebody who didn't even realize he had any sort of Haki (or even what Haki was). Currently, only seven characters in the series are confirmed to possess this type of Haki, all of whom are leaders in some way: Luffy, Shanks, Boa Hancock, Silvers Rayleigh, Whitebeard, Portgas D. Ace, and Donquixote Doflamingo.
If you're looking for a true loser of the lottery it would be Pierre, Gan Fall's riding bird from Skypiea. He ate the Uma Uma no Mi, allowing him to become a horse. The problem: he is already perfectly ridable in his pure bird form. So all he got is a cosmetic change into a pegasus at the cost of being paralyzed in seawater.
For the longest time, Brook seemed like an example of one of the lottery losers as well, with his Devil Fruit giving him the power to resurrect himself after being killed one time, meaning that until then, he's just a guy with Super Drowning Skills. The abilities he shows after then are really more just an offshoot of accidentally coming backas a living skeleton than anything having to do with the Devil Fruit itself. However, events after the Time Skip have proved that Heart Is An Awesome Power after all, just with a steeper learning curve than most.
Haruhi Suzumiya series: Mikuru has a Time Travel device that can only be used with permission from her superiors in the future. Plot-important, but lame. Itsuki can enter Closed Space and surround himself in a flying glowing shell to fight giant energy beings. Pretty neat, though he's completely powerless outside of Closed Space. Haruhi is a powerful Reality Warper... but she's Locked Out of the Loop and — limited by her common sense — only uses her power subconsciously. No, the real winner is the Sufficiently Advanced Alien Yuki, who can tie the fabric of reality in knots, manipulate probability at a whim, make herself an Instant Expert in anything she likes, and in the fourth novel steal Haruhi's power altogether, permanently depowering Haruhi in order to totally rewrite reality to her whim and make herself the female lead. Even without the Reality Warper or Techno Wizard part, she still has inhuman computational abilities just by merit of her creator—her hacking the game played against the Computer Club and micromanaging twenty different fleets in real time involved nothing but Rapid-Fire Typing. But the real kicker? Per Kyon's prior "no cheating" command, she deliberately constrained her typing speed within normal human limitations.
Contractors in Darker than Black acquire only a single power, and its usefulness varies wildly — and almost equally random remuneration, which may include things like narcolepsy, having to break your fingers or drink children's blood. The primary culprit would be Amber, who can control time. She can stop or even reverse it, with whoever she wants to remembering what happened prior to the reversal and being able to act on that information, and her remuneration is to grow younger, granting her potential immortality.
Also, Hei, who has a decent electric attack with no remuneration thanks to the means by which he "inherited" his powers. Nice, but not that broken... up until The Reveal that electrons will do for him anything up to substance alteration, so its true potential is unclear. This also leaves an equally open set of synergetic effects, including undesirable ones.
In terms of remunerations, the clear winner is probably April, a Hard Drinking Party Girl with the remuneration of drinking alcohol. Of course, her power is to make it start raining, which is pretty useless on its own. But when your partner is An Ice Person...
Her power isn't actually "make it rain", it seems to be more along the line of "condense water vapour" meaning that while yes, she mostly uses it to make it rain, she can also create a water buble around someones head in an attempt to drown them, which is what she attempts to do to Hei in Season 2.
Season 2 character August 7 comes pretty close to hitting the superpower-remuneration combo jackpot. His remuneration is giving away the secrets of magic tricks which, as a former Stage Magician, is annoying but harmless. His power? Being able to distort the space around him, which not only means attacks go right through him without causing any damage, he is able to pull anything he wants right out of his body.
To Aru Majutsu no Index: On one end, you have people like Mikoto who worked hard to raise their rank and have intimidating powers. And then you have Accelerator. He can change the velocity vectors of anything he comes into contact with, including physical objects, energy blasts, and even UV radiation. This activates automatically as well, to protect him from any possible threat. When a character can theoretically fly, replicate the effects of a variety of other offensive powers, (theoretically) shrug off a nuclear bomb without even trying, and still have time for an Evil Laugh, you have to wonder if something went wrong somewhere...
Then there is Awaki, who is basically Kuroko Up to Eleven. Her only disadvantage is she can't instantly teleport herself; she has a 3 second delay. However, her weight limit is in the tonnes, her distance limit is similarly over blown, and the biggest difference is she doesn't have to touch you like Kuroko. She can send you anywhere she wants just by looking at you. Such as deep underground or into space.
And then there's Touma and his Anti-Magic right hand, which can negate the abilities of everyone above. Later novels have all but stated that his power actually comes directly from God. Furthermore, Volume 22 reveals that the Imagine Breaker is actually a Power Limiter. If it's removed, Touma's shoulder will manifest a terrible power that makes Fiamma's pale in comparison.
How big are the "jackpots" in this series's lottery? In one of the later volumes, the Big Bad becomes more powerful than God... and there are still three characters stronger than him!
In Code Geass, there are many Geass powers, and most are rather limited, such as temporary paralysis or reading minds. Lelouch's Geass, the ability to force anyone to obey his commands, can be applied in so many different ways that it's arguably much more useful than any other power. Beyond just issuing commands, it can erase memories, create latent suggestions that activate on certain triggers, make people commit suicide (either immediately or after carrying out a primary command), force people to perceive him as someone else, make willing slaves out of anyone, or even work as a Super Mode when being ordered to 'live', like Suzaku. All of these are just creative applications of the basic power of: "Obey my command." The only real drawbacks to his power are that it requires direct eye contact with the target and that It Only Works Once on a particular individual.
Arguably his father's power of altering people's memories can be just as big a case: being able to use it lets him read minds (which is Mao's entire power, except Charles can turn his off), could let him have just as much control over people's as Lelouch's power (just alter their memories in such a way that they'll want to obey him), and can be used multiple times.
The main character of the spinoff video game Lost Colors has basically the same power as Lelouch, except that it's based on sound instead of sight. Since Lelouch's commands have to be heard anyway after he catches somebody in his Geass, this makes Rai's version clearly superior. Unlike Lelouch, he doesn't need to be looking his victim in the eye. He just needs them to hear his voice. He has the same one-command limit as Lelouch, though the same person can be under separate Geass commands from each of them (which is a plot point of the game; when they conflict, the more recent command overrides the earlier one).
Lampshaded in Yu Yu Hakusho's anime when Kuwabara complains about Yusuke being able to use a Spirit Gun, while he gets a Spirit Sword. Toguro initially pretends that he had a bad draw in the apparitions' Superpower Lottery, gaining a demonic body and control as a percentage of how much power he puts out. He's being self deprecating- there's a reason he's the Big Bad of that arc.
Toguro's brother is worse. While a weaker fighter, he's effectively immortal due to his shapeshifting powers. It ends up backfiring. How do you beat the immortal guy? And I Must Scream him with a Lotus-Eater Machine.
The artifacts in Mahou Sensei Negima! seem to be like this. Chisame'sMagical Girl staff and attendants give her super hacking powers and limited detection abilities; mostly useless to begin with, and totally so after it runs out of battery power when she became lost in a wilderness without any charged electronics around. Nodoka gets a mind reading book, but she has to know her targets' names (not a problem later on) and be recklessly close to them to use it. Yue's book functions as a magic encyclopedia and comes with a handy flying broom. Asuna gets a nice BFS, even if its power is rather redundant. Konoka can heal anything short of death within a 30 second time limit. Chachamaru gets a Kill Sat which is so devastating that even Cosmo Entelechia's uber summon-demondies with a single shot.
The artifact lottery appears to have a winner: Negi's artifact allows him to utilize the artifacts of any of his partners — especially broken considering the still-increasing size of his harem. Perhaps it's for the best that this is only a temporary artifact. To be fair, it's insinuated that Negi's artifact literally borrows his partners' artifacts, meaning that while it's great for one-on-one fights, in the massive team battles that keep cropping up, it would be less than useless.Which is exactly what Negi wants, actually.
Pactios may not be as random as they seem, as Chamo hints in a recent chapter that the usefulness of an artifact is directly proportional to the partners' compatibility. Nodoka is Negi's first and primary Love Interest*
she was the first to confess to Negi
, and her artifact gives her Telepathy, making her mind-reading of the bad guys' unspoken plans more of a headache than Negi himself. Natsume is Kotarou'sLove Interest and has an artifact that grants her perfect stealth. Chachamaru is a Robot Girl who has a crush on Negi, and when he gave her a big, long, wet one in the process of negotiating with the rules of magic themselves in order to give her a pactio, she got a Kill Sat.
The Thousand Master, Jack Rakan, and Evangeline won the Lottery hard, as their power is basically being completely invincible. They have each been defeated a grand total of once, the former by the Lifemaker, the latter in a flashback that is incredibly improbable to be true, and Rakan when he was essentially removed from existence (and even that wasn't immediate or permanent).
A DVD Commentary for Get Backers had a joke about how Ban kept sneaking ahead of people in the line for super powers. Most of the characters have a basic power and its benefits (Ginji's electricity, Shido's control of animals and ability to mimic them), but Ban has his one-minute illusions, his "Snakebite" grip, and the ability to call on Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine (yeah) who can beat pretty much anyone he comes across. Plus his knowledge of just about anything. He's specifically referred to as a genius when it comes to fighting, but he's very well-read in other subjects that come up, as well.
Also, in the manga, he can do magic. Kinda-sorta. We only actually see him do this once though and it involves snogging another bloke.
Villains in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure frequently have overwhelmingly powerful abilities that are extremely difficult for the heroes to counter. Dio, for instance, has the power to stop time, which makes him pretty much immune to any attack he sees coming and lets him kill people before they know it.
His minion Vanilla Ice got an even greater power, though. His Stand, Cream, has the power to annihilate anything it touches, swallow its user for protection (without harming him), turn invisible, and fly at great speed.
His stand has one huge weakness, though, that makes it not as strong as The World. Vanilla Ice and his stand can't see while they're inside the void, so he has to pop out occasionally to see where his opponent is at.
And King Crimson from Part 5 has some sort of time-skipping ability, which enables him to "skip" any attack used against him. The only way Giorno managed to beat him was by manifesting an even more overpowered ability: the power to nullify the consequences of anything.
Subverted in the finale of part 6: Pucci is defeated thanks to one of his own abilities, which allows him to remove the powers or souls of others and store them as CDs. He accidentally causes Emporio to gain the ability to control weather because Pucci had removed the ability from Weather Report, leading to Pucci's final defeat.
∀ Gundam. In the anime, it exhibits super-strong energy shields, teleportation, regeneration, and myriad other powers. And all this is ignoring the version from the novelization by Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino, where the Turn A at full power can destroy everything from Earth out to Jupiter, is nigh on invincible, can teleport itself, weapons, and even attacks (such as teleporting a beam into an enemy's cockpit), and can regenerate itself AND its pilot. The novel even remarks that the TV version used perhaps 5% of its full power; this, taken with the stark power contrast between the Turn A and everything except its Evil Counterpart Turn X, pretty much makes it undeniably the most powerful Gundam, and certainly high up the rankings for all Humongous Mecha.
NEEDLESS has people called Needless, who control powers such as fire, water, gravity, magnetism and whatnot. It is explicitly stated in the anime multiple times, that each user can only have one "fragment", which is the series' fancy term for "ability". Both the protagonist Adam Blade, and the Big Bad Adam Arclight have the memorization ability — which allows them to memorize and use any skill they have encountered. Of course, Adam Blade conveniently forgets his superpower thanks to Plot-Induced Stupidity during his fight with the Bishojo Squad and gets his ass handed to him.
Big Bad's power is even more broken - unlike Blade's it gives him not an exact copy, but a more powerful version. In their fight, when using exact same copied skills, Adam was completely stomping Blade.
Psi abilities in Psyren tend to have this happen. While training plays an important role, you have some game-breakers like Shiner's teleportation, and Nemesis Q's everything. The biggest winner though would have to be Shao, who is a combination mind-reader, power-nullifier, tracker, a Rise user capable of keeping up with Kyle, and capable of controlling and redirecting other people's PSI.
Kabuto also got pretty lucky with his powers, even though his role in most major battles was relatively small. His "Vision - Menace" allows him to both feel approaching danger, clearly see attacks before they actually happen and casually redirect them with his mind. He is also excellent in the "Sense" department which is essential for developing Super Speed. If he didn't develop his full potential so late, he would've most likely been an invincible Game Breaker.
Everyone who is able to master Nova also got VERY lucky, because it basically enhances the users power by many times.
Most of the lead roles in the Nanoha series. Nanoha is a normal girl who just happens to have enough power to level pretty much anything. (Which she does.) Subaru is a cyborg designed to kick ass, Caro was exiled as a child for simply being too powerful; able to summon a dragon, and another ancient dragon at the same time. Hayate found a book that not only gave her ridiculous magic power, but 4 unquestioningly loyal and incredibly powerful ancient knights. Touma found a similar book, a gunblade that gives him a beam cannon, and a hot love interest who seems to work as a magical reactor. On the other hand Teana Lanstar got a non-lethal gun and Erio got a spear. ...Thanks for playing, you two!
Touma also got a Super-Powered Evil Side, a genetic illness that will kill him slowly unless he kills other people, and a magic tome that will gladly do so for him whether he likes it or not. So it's less jackpot and more 6s all the way.
And then there's Precia, who was one of only two mages in the entire series with an SS rank, and unlike Hayate, hers is entirely natural. She was capable of magic powerful enough to disable a spaceship in another dimension. While she was basically on her deathbed.
Vivio also hit the jackpot. As a descendent of the Belkan Saint Kings, she possesses an unparalleled automatic defensive ability, can learn new spells just by watching someone else use them, and when empowered by the Saint's Cradle, she was able to outmatch Nanoha's raw power. When she was only six years old. Although she got seriously nerfed in Vivid.
Sieg, from Rave Master gets a toned down version of this. While he's not so powerful that he can easily defeat any of the villains, his being unaligned to any sort of element means he has no real weakness, and can easily use any sort of magic.
From the same author, Midnight from Fairy Tail is a more straight example. His "reflector" magic is basically a carbon copy of Accelerator's esper power with the added twist of letting him bend the light entering a person's eyes to create inescapable illusions just like Aizen. No doubt about it, he's 100% broken. Though, to be fair, it does have two loopholes that make it even remotely possible for someone to defeat him. The first one get's around Accelerator's power set: he can't "reflect" living things (i.e. people's bodies). The other one is that he can't reflect attacks if he's using his powers on something else.
Ultear has the ability to control Time allowing her to age and decay anything except people.
Rustyrose is a Reality Warper who's limit apparently is his imagination.
Freed can write runes that can trap people in forcefields that will only let victims out if they can fulfill a specific condition, and will severely punish them if they "break the rules".
Rufus' Memory Make allows him to copy any kind of magic and spells he sees, use them whenever and however he wants, "memorize" an opponent to know their exact location at any time, and cancel his opponent's spells by "forgetting" them. Its only Achilles Heel is casting spells too fast for him to memorize.
Kakeru, the main character from Psycho Busters won the lottery by a mile. Some of the most powerful abilities in his world include seeing the future and telekinesis powerful enough to collapse a building or turn pens into deadly weapons. His ability is to edit time around himself. Essentially giving him reality warping in a ten meter radius, as well as the ability to rewind, slow or accelerate time as he desires as long as he activated his Perfect World beforehand. What's more, the power instinctively kicks in and turns back time should Kakeru be killed, meaning that even a surprise attack will be ineffective.
In Freezing, the Pandoras have the ability to summon weapons, all of them being different but usually being some sort of close range combat type. There is nothing to show that the girls get to pick out the weapons for themselves. For some reason, Elizabeth Mayberry lucked out and ended up with Frickin' Laser Beams.
Julia Munberk's Division Wave allows her to fire shockwaves at Mach 3 speeds.
Demonbane... or at least later on in the visual novels when shit starts to hit the fan. War God Demonbane is so big that the universe collapses thanks to its appearance and is capable of manipulating time. It's so powerful that Nyarlathotep has to go back in time and kill the pilot. Elder God Demonbane (third and final form) is smaller, but its capable of casually beating Nyarlathotep. Heck, during the final battle, it's so powerful that it doesn't need to fight, it calls infinite amounts of War God Demonbane from any reality that exists, will exist, ever existed, and NEVER existed. Its as ridiculous as it sounds.
Umineko no Naku Koro ni has Lambdadelta's wish granting, which is either this or Awesome, but Impractical. Her ability is to guarantee the fulfillment of any wish that a person desires for as long as the required amount of effort to reach it is fulfilled.
Soul Eater has one. Maka won this for having a special 'grigori-shaped soul' and demonslayer wavelength which allow her to naturally resist magic and insanity. Her soul wavelength control is associated with the former, and all seem to have been a matter of luck. Black Star and Tsubaki's skills are based on the latter's unique inheritance, and Kid is an oddity amongst his human friends because, well, he was made that way.
Subverted with Hyouma Muroga. He has basically the same broken abilities as his nephew Gennosuke, but he also can't turn them off. (For different reasons depending on which media we're talking of.) Therefore he must go Eyes Wide Shut all the time, or he risks affecting both friend and foe.
In Dreamland, dreamers become Travellers by overcoming their phobia during a nightmare: the power they have in Dreamland is directly linked to that phobia. Some overcome their fear of fire, cold, thunder, blood or Darkness. Others overcome their fear of fish, imperfection, or swings.
Arguably one of the most ridiculous versions of this in anime and manga history is Tenchi Masaki in his 13 dimensional form, where he is so powerful, just his mere presence causes dimensional quakes that are so powerful it makes the god of each dimension Terrified of him.
In Mai-Otome, otome special powers are like this, but the fact that they're all Flying Bricks tends to normalize them. The exception appears to be Lena Sayers who can bypass all of the normal limitations that otome face. It wasn't enough that she already had a Flash Step and was one of the physically strongest otome. Stack all that on top of her non-otome powers, and she quickly trivializes everyone else in the meta-series. Her only limitation appeared to be her strong distaste for using those powers, but she overcame that.
Alucard of Hellsing. Vampires in this series are already pretty tough: they can heal themselves, have superhuman strength and senses, and can create ghouls out of non-virgin humans that obey their every command. Alucard, however, is in a class of his own. Instantaneous regeneration, walking through walls, practically invincible because he just doesn't die, even to stuff that kills other vampires outright... and that's when he's sealed. If his powers are unsealed... then we get fun stuff like shapeshifting and summoning hellhounds. And at his full strength? He can summon an undead army made up of everyone and everything he has ever killed. All completely under his command and all with the full powers they possessed in life at their disposal. Good luck fighting that.
Ajimu from Medaka Box is probably the most over-the-top example ever. While the series' other characters have one ability each (or two abilities at best), she has twelve quadrillion distinct abilities. Most of them aren't much, but the stronger ones can apparently do things like turn her into God, turn her into Satan, create a planet, create an entire universe, and make her breasts larger. Amusingly, one of her powers is the ability to remember what all her powers are.
While slightly less ridiculous than Ajimu(if only because she hasn't seen everything she can do)Medaka is pretty broken as well. Her ability is called "The End", and it's power is to copy and perfect abilities that are used against her. Hit her with mind control? Now she has it, and she's better at it than you. Super reflexes fast enough to dodge bullets? Now she has them, and they are even faster. And this is on top of her already incredible strength, speed, stamina and resiliance. This has been at work ever since she was born, in a flashback she mentions that she had absorbed all the knowledge of academics she currently posses she had memorized by the age of one.
In the various Yu-Gi-Oh! series, the Big Bads decks tend towards this, but Zone, the Big Bad of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds, stands out with his Temporal Machine Gods.
For starters all of them have 0 attack and defense, but share the common effect of being completely immune to destruction by any effect, negating battle damage and returning to the deck at the beginning of Zone's next turn. They each have their own effects that occur when they battle. There are eleven of them in all: Camion
Shuffle all monsters your opponent controls into the Deck after damage calculation, and inflict 500 damage to your opponent for each monster shuffled.
, Gabrion
shuffle all cards your opponent controls into the Deck, after damage calculation.
, Hairon
If this card battles while you and your opponent have different amounts of Life Points, inflict damage to your opponent equal to the difference, after damage calculation.
, Metaion
return all other monsters on the field of your choosing to the owner's hand, and inflict 300 damage to your opponent for each monster returned.
, Michion
Inflict damage to your opponent equal to half their Life Points, after damage calculation.
, Raphion
Return the monster it battled to the hand and inflict damage to your opponent equal to that monster's ATK.
, Razion
Return all monsters your opponent controls and all cards in your opponent's Graveyard to the Deck. When your opponent draw(s) a card during the Draw Phase, inflict 1000 damage to your opponent.
, Sandaion
Inflict 4000 damage to your opponent at the end of the Battle Phase.
, Tzaphion
Shuffle all Spell and Trap Cards your opponent controls into the Deck, after damage calculation.
(which has the additional effect of drawing five cards when she leaves the field), Zadion
If this card battles while your Life Points are lower than 4000, your Life Points become 4000 after damage calculation.
and last but not least, Sephylon
Once per turn, you can Special Summon as many "Timelord" monsters as possible from your hand, Deck, or Graveyard, and their ATK becomes 4000. This card gains ATK equal to the combined ATK of all "Timelord" monsters you control, except "Sephylon, the Ultimate Timelord". Negate the effects of any monsters that battle with this card.
. This in addition to a series of traps that lets him summon them at will.
In Tiger & Bunny, this trope is played with. Jake was lucky enough to have two superpowers, projecting force fields and reading minds. Then there is Kaede who can mimic the abilities of other NEXT and Maverick who can alter, erase and implant memories. But when Kotetsu, Barnaby and Origami Cyclone visit the HERO academy for NEXT, it's made apparent that many NEXT abilities are fairly useless. So out of a few thousand NEXT, only a small percentage become heroes or villains.
In Toward the Terra most Mu get relatively strong powers and can live a couple of decades of even centuries longer than normal humans. They pay for this with their fragile bodies. Type Blue Mu, on the other hand, can destroy entire armies with their powers, move in the space without any protection, affect large groups of people on a great distance and even Create Life. It usually takes a few normal Mu to pull off something that the Type Blue would be able to do single-handedly. Jomy in the manga wins the Lottery completly, since he not only has Type Blue powers but also doesn't share physical weakness typical for the other Mu.
Although the physical abilities Factors are given by their Machina's in Kurogane no Linebarrel are more or less equal, the actual Machina themselves vary in usefulness. The titular Linebarrel is of mid level power with swords and a beam gun/sword (as well a few hidden supermodes) where as Yajima's Apparition is a rather weak robot with only a non automatic sniper rifle (with regular finite ammo) as it's only weapon. Then you get Masaki's incredibly cheap Glen Nieder, a giant armored battleship that not only has several powerful beam cannons and is totally immune to beam weapons itself, but is also simply an armor unit for the real machine inside, Naked, a super fast robot with a BFS that can teleport. In the manga it's even more powerful as the Nieder form can also turn into a (more giant) giant robotish form as well. When the other Factors fight him it's almost funny how unfair it is.
Comic Books
Doctor Manhattan of Watchmen (pictured above, in center), who is basically a nascent Energy Being who is just discovering that A God Am I. This in a setting completely devoid of superpowers above Badass Normal. He is however also hamstrung by being omniscient along his own personal timeline, meaning he always knows the events of his past and future with perfect clarity and thus has no free will. Every action he takes is utterly deterministic because he views his future actions as having already happened. Furthermore, his mere existence has significantly altered the course of history - and not for the better.
Jenny Quantum and the Doctor in The Authority, as their powers seem to be defined as "anything they can think of". They've occasionally been shown defeating the other members of the team at their own specialties. Suspense usually comes along because the Doctor's powers rely heavily on 'thinking'. Scare the bejeebers out of him (or attack when he's snookered on heroin) and you can slide past his defenses.
The Military Industrial Complex put a psychotic pedophile hillbilly through a 6 billion dollar cybernetics program to give him over 1,000 super powers to kill the Authority. These included X-Ray strength and Psychic Defacation.
In at least one Alternate Future, he marries the X-Men's Rachel Summers, another major winner of the lottery, and has a son. His son, Jonathan/Hyperstorm, of course far eclipses both his parents.
In another, Franklin becomes the next universe's Galactus.
Galactus, Silver Surfer, and any of G-diddy's other Heralds. The Power Cosmic lets them accomplish basically anything he wants, up to and including massive scale reality manipulation. Since Galactus is the primary holder he can bestow or revoke the PC as he pleases.
DC's 90s hero Resurrection Man has a literal super power lottery as his power. Whenever he dies and comes back he has a different power. Played with in a crossover with Hitman.
"Butterflies?" BLAM "Visible Skeleton?" BLAM "Ability to generate fire? There we go."
By DC One Million he wears an armband containing a creature with the most powerful toxin known. To change powers he just kills himself with it for a split second.
Multi-Man, an off-and-on again villain, has similar powers. The Joker kills him many times until he comes up with a power to escape the high security prison (not Arkham) they are in.
The Flash has a tendency to fall into this, Depending on the Writer. While Super Speed sounds simple enough on paper, it's more like a Green Lantern Ring in the hands of an author who knows how to use his Technobabble. He's used his superspeed to time travel, travel between dimensions, become intangible (and make other people or things intangible), become invisible, cure himself of detrimental conditions, increase or decrease the speed of other people and objects (including turning someone into, effectively, a living statue), create whirlwinds strong enough to lift others aloft (sometimes just by spinning his arms), extinguish fires, melt large amounts of snow and ice, fly, and power large machinery, among other things. At one point he started fabricating items from pure speed, whatever the heck that means. One of his famous tricks? Infinite Mass Punch. It's exactly what it sounds like. And it should be able to oneshot anybody that has a physical form, even Superman.
Superman: so many powers that an entire title's worth of X-Men could be fielded with them. They also tend to be at the highest end of the power spectrum for each, rendering him immensely powerful even among other equally strong and widely powered individuals. While quite a few writers have managed to sort it out and write engaging stories with him in defiance of his closeness to being a Deus ex Machina, even other characters in the setting comment on (or become envious of) his many powers. The short form: With Superman around, what are all the other guys in the Justice League supposed to do? (The best JLA writers have a good answer for this question.)
Based on the evidence, it seems that the other superheroes make themselves useful by filling the pretty-glaring-once-you-think-about-it gap in Superman's powers — his inability to be in multiple places at once. If shit is going down all over the city/world/solar system simultaneously, Superman may be able to deal with a huge, devastating catastrophe that would crush other superheroes, but can still only deal with one of them at a time.
Silver Age Superman was far worse. Writers gave him basically anything you could stick the word "super" in front of as a power, including super-hypnotism and super-ventriloquism. And in addition to the array of powers he had during the Silver Age, their power level was also through the roof. Post-Crisis Superman can juggle battleships; pre-Crisis Superman could juggle planets.
Superboy-Prime isn't the only Superboy to win the lottery. Time travel and an Overnight Age-Up have revealed Kon-El will develop all of Superman's Kryptonian abilities, plus his tactile telekinesis will develop into full-blown telekinesis with which he can affect entire city blocks—and block magical attacks, one of Superman's few weaknesses. If he only had telepathy, he'd be a hybrid of Superman and Phoenix, but without Phoenix's issues.
There is also Kal Kent, from DC One Million. "Faster than a speeding Tachyon, more powerful than a collapsing star, and able to leap between planets in a single bound". Full kryptonian powers "evolved into the far future" with a bunch of add-ons like telekinesis, telepathy, and ten additional senses.
Maxima, a Superman rogue, sometimes, abuses this nearly as badly as Martian Manhunter. On top of being near Kryptonians in all physical stats, she is able to teleport herself or others, create force fields, control over metals, manipulate inorganic matter (usually to change her clothes on a whim), Eye Beams, multiple forms of mental power, illusion projection, and telekinesis. Though this may be explained because she is a product of selective gene manipulation to produce powerful offspring.
Wonder Woman isn't much better. Not only does she have strength, speed, and impact resistance within a hair of Superman, but she has a huge array of gear and minor abilities. Most people know about the block-anything bracers and the lasso that's unbreakable and made of truth (which is a "downgrade" from its old 'compel the target to do anything' powers, though recent writers have revealed it works by reaching down and grabbing someone's soul, which is fun), but did you know her tiara can cut anything? That she can speak with animals, and heals at an accelerated rate due to her connection to Gaia? That she's immune to fire? That thanks to the goddess Athena sharing her visions that she can see through illusions? That's not a complete list.
X-Men has a few of these, just from the nature of the shared origin story.
Phoenix gets this, but she went mad with power. Now Jean didn't actually have that much power after she fused with the Phoenix Force, but then she suddenly is more powerful than ever before, and more dangerous: Jean Grey alone can lift upwards of twenty tons with her brain. With limited Phoenix power, she can use external objects as a sense of touch and recompose matter at a molecular level. Unhinged, she can teleport anywhere in the universe at will and devour stars. Then it turns out she has one morelevel beyond that where she can exist outside of reality proper and has total control over space and time itself. On top of all that, if you kill her she comes back basically whenever she feels like it. Winner, winner, chicken dinner.
Wolverine, through the effects of power inflation, has reached this point. In older stories, an injured Wolverine actually required medical treatment when his healing factor could not regenerate fast enough. Modern stories feature him being burned down to a skeleton and healing, or regenerating an entire body from a drop of blood. One storyline brought his regenerative abilities back to a more believable level, hand-waving all its previous exaggerated exploits with magic.
Iceman at his full potential is not just An Ice Person, but has full control over moisture itself. This includes absorbing bodies of water to increase his size, teleportation (not quite, but close enough) by traveling through water vapor, and he's physically immortal, since he can reconstitute his body from any source of moisture, and even killed a villain by drawing the water from her body.
A more recent addition is Darwin, whose power is to grow new abilities based on the situation at hand. His powers were initially supposed to be purely defensive, but apparently the situation then grew out of hand, and writers started adding offensive to overpowered. For instance, when fighting the Hulk, his powers merely teleported him into the next state for his protection... but that same fight saw one of the first offensive uses of his powers, when Darwin sucks the Gamma radiations out of the Hulk.
Sage started as just a secretary with photographic memory, but experienced Power Creep, Power Seep until now she's telepathic, super-intelligent, more Badass than Wolverine, able to control minds, and even able to enhance other mutants' powers.
Occasional Big Bad Apocalypse's mutant powers have never been quite clearly defined. He's generally portrayed with immortality, super-strength, laser beams, shape-changing, regeneration (when he doesn't have Nigh Invulnerability), telekinesis, technopathy, and super-intelligence*
He once used technology to capture Loki, a rare instance of that character facing Science > Magic (though he eventually broke out...with difficulty); also, that thing about Hulk resisting Mind Control? Well guess who managed to make the Hulk his bitch?
and he once demonstrated minor intangibility. Essentially he has every single physical superpower, most of which ultimately could be derived just from his high-level shape-shifting. Most of his higher-end powers though come from taking advantage of Celestial technology that he discovered long ago. As a result he owes the Celestials a favor, and they actually rescued Apocalypse from certain death once just to make sure he couldn't escape the deal. His default powers are immortality, super-intelligence and his bizarre skin colour; he also still had superhuman strength, speed, durability, endurance and healing, not to mention he was something like 12 feet tall, but they were no-where near as nerfed as he is nowadays.
Depending on the Writer, Magneto really lucked out where superpowers are concerned. He went from menacing the X-Men with girders to controlling the entire electromagnetic spectrum, which should make him pretty much unbeatable (after all, he controls one of the four fundamental forces of the universe). And at times he was virtually unbeatable.
In general, any Omega-level mutant falls to this, with the possible exception of Mr. Immortal (depending on whether being absolutely incapable of dying by any means is winning or losing). Essentially, an Omega-level mutant has no upper limit to whatever specific thing their powers control. Note that many famously ultra-powerful mutants like Magneto and Apocalypse are not classified as Omega-level (though Magneto probably should be). Let's not think about Squirrel Girl.
Then of course, there's Mimic, who is basically All Your Powers Combined personified. He can copy up to five other mutants at a time, but only gets half their power. Sounds kind of weak, until you realize that the different powers interact. In his first appearance, he'd mimicked Wolverine, Beast, and Colossus, among others. Yes, his claws were bone, and only half as long as Wolvie's. Yes, he was only half as strong as Beast. But when he turned himself into living metal, those claws became much deadlier, and his animalistic strength got taken Up to Eleven. This is a guy who can rig the Superpower Lottery.
The "normal" Marvel Universe version of Mimic also gets this to some degree. He has permanently taken on the abilities of the original five X-Men, and can take also on the powers of anyone else he's around. He returned after a long absence by proving to be comatose... until Wolverine stands too close. It hasn't happened yet, but he could easily hit god level if he has their full potential instead of being stuck at the level the powers were when he got them. Unfortunately, unlike Exiles Mimic, he is not entirely stable. *
No, really, think of what each X-Man's greatest feat has been, and imagine him or her being able to operate at that level all the time easily. If Mimic's powers are as expandable for them as they proved to be for the original wielders, even Jean's full non-Phoenix potential could move mountains and control matter at a molecular level, as well as giving him influence over every mind within (an ever bigger) range. Scott's eyebeams can amp up to "stagger the Juggernaut or disintegrate a Sentinel" class. The full physical ability of the Beast could make him Spidey-class agile and nigh-Colossus class strong, Iceman's full ability, as an Omega, would be unlimited control of both water and temperature as well as turning to ice rendering him Made Of Air (think a colder Hydro-Man), and even Angel's maneuverability at its maximum could make him all of the above... and impossible to hit. Death from above. If this happened when he was on the 'evil' side of the Heel Face Revolving Door, he could become worse than all the Big Bads combined if the writers didn't have this unfortunate tendency to forget he exists for decades at a time.
Legion. Oy, Legion. At last count, he had a thousand powers, with more developing. Thing is, each power is under the control of a separate personality, and they're the only ones who can use it (although there are ways around even that). A sane and functional Legion would be a reality warper of terrifying scale. As it is, he still caused the Age Of Apocalypse and the Age of X.
How about Rogue? Her mutant power is using her touch to absorb memories and abilities - and that includes powers, be they mutant or not. This, for instance, is how she was a Flying Brick in The Nineties: she had absorbed Ms. Marvel's powers while she was a member of the Brotherhood. Throughout the years, this has brought plenty of trauma to her, putting quite a damper on her relationship with Gambit (at least until Xavier helps bring her powers under control). Though her Mega Manning abilities are usually balanced out by Power Incontinence and the psychological trauma that sometimes comes along with absorbing other people's powers, there have been times where she has had complete control over her abilities, and even briefly having the ability to use any power of anyone she had EVER touched. Simultaneously. That list of people includes nearly the entire roster of the X-Men and the Avengers just for starters.
Speaking of the Hulk, he has unlimited strength, accelerated healing, the ability to breathe underwater, dynamic durability, and the ability to leap as high as Superman, and unlike Supes he has a high resistance to Mind Control. Also, as a bonus, Bruce Banner is one of the smartest men in the Marvel Universe, to the point where Norman Osborn decided he preferred fighting the Hulk.
Doctor Strange, Depending on the Writer, can go from "merely" one of the stronger Earth bound heroes to perhaps the most powerful superhero in mainstream comics. His powers enable him to do almost anything — at his best/worst, he isthe Wizard who does it — as he has learnt to command the most primal eldritch energies permeating the universe and is backed up by a host of otherdimensional magical patrons. But in his own titles he needs that level of power, because his Rogues Gallery is also one of the most powerful in mainstream superhero comics, consisting of multiple Evil Sorcerors, The Legions of Hell, at least one nigh-omnipotent Omnicidal Maniac, and demonic Dimension Lords whose mere presence in our reality constitutes a doomsday event, amongst other diabolical horrors and cosmic menaces. Strange has collected and inherited artifacts that amplify his powers even further or protect him from numerous mystical dangers, and on top of all that he is a trained martial artist and a retired world-class surgeon. Put simply, there's a reason he's called the Sorceror Supreme.
The original Legion of Super-Heroes had a character in the Heroes of Lallor named Duplicate Boy. His power? To have any power he wanted. Fortunately, he was only a supporting character and rarely appeared.
In a similar boat: Nemesis Kid, who had the power to give himself whatever power was needed to defeat a single opponent. (Didn't stop him from getting his neck snapped by Projectra, proving that all the power in the world can't beat awesome.)
Then there is Earth-Man (formerly Absorbancy Boy), who has the ability to temporarily absorb as many powers as he wants, turning him, in his words, into a "one-man Legion". Unfortunatly for the Legion, he's a socipathic xenophobe who wants to wipe out all species except humans.
The Martian Manhunter. His full list of Post-Crisis demonstrated powers covers half the Stock Superpowers page, and his Silver Age version was even more arbitrarily powerful. And yet he is still always a victim of The Worf Effect. "Oh my gosh if he defeated Martian Manhunter how can Superman defeat him?" Apparently the answer to this question is always "Easily".
The mind boggles at how he has heat vision while being weak to fire. It makes as much sense as Superman having kryptonite Eye Beams.
The big downgrade, both post-Crisis and in the DCAU, was dropping an aspect of his shapeshifting — namely, the ability to gain the powers of whatever form he changed into! He would lose his standard set (except for the ability to shapeshift), but who cares? Used sensibly (which it generally wasn't), this gives J'Onn the winning ticket in the Superpower Lottery all by itself.
The Spectre, whose powers are whatever the authors feel he should have. Sort of justified in that the Spectre is more or less an extension of God (as in, the actual God, not some Sufficiently Advanced Alien pretending to be God).
Shade, the Changing Man, Peter Milligan's version. He could create hallucinations, he could create physical objects, he could change himself, he could change others, he could bring himself back from the dead, teleport, make and grow interdimensional spaces, and even travel through time itself! A few reasons why this worked:
Non-heroic comic book. That means all other characters get no gimmicks, so their character development have to be focused on character. And so you had purely normal, believable personalities who were at least as interesting as the guy with the powers, or moreso.
Shade's powers were just as often the plaything of his own issue-riddled subconscious. And the more adept Shade got at using his powers, the more colossally his fucked up mind could fashion a Mind Screw.
The Fantastic Four villain, the Super-Skrull, has all the powers of the F4, the Skrulls' natural ability to shapeshift and his own hypnosis based powers.
Xavin, the Suer-Skrull in-training from Runaways. He has all the powers of the Fantastic Four, but can't use the powers simultaneously.
On Runaways, Nico's Staff of One lets her do anything (with the apparent limit of resurrection being off-limits)...but only once per effect. Lately, she's gained some measure of magic ability on her own, at least enough to fly around on her own power.
She also found out that, in a cross over with the Young Avengers, that she can recast a spell if she says it in a different language. Go count how many languages there are out there, and then look at that "weakness"
Though at times the staff is surprisingly literal, and if she casts a spell from a word with multiple meanings, there's no guarantee which one will take effect.
Green Lanterns have variously been shown to use their rings to control time, teleport, create sentient life, duplicate, become intangible, turn themselves into Kryptonians, temporarily recreate the entire rest of the GLC and pretty much anything you can imagine. Hal Jordan once survived being killed by pulling his own soul back into his body. In order to write workable stories they've slowly been depowered to "making any object they can imagine" which is still pretty awesome.
Sodam Yat. Take Superman, give him a Green Lantern ring, then merge him with the Ion symbiote which makes its host practically nigh-omnipotent and you've got Sodam.
As Kyle Rayner pointed out during the Nero arc, a GL ring can split atoms. Now imagine that power in the hands of a lunatic...
The Blue Lanterns are explicitly more powerful then the Green Lanterns, and can bring other bring users up to their level temporarily. It helps that they have a crippling Weaksauce Weakness, though.
And then there's the Orange Lanterns. They have all the powers of a Green Lantern, are a Hive Mind Virus, and can absorb other energy constructs with ease, something even Sodam Yat has trouble with. Thankfully there's (technically) only one of them.
The Black Lantern rings offer their reanimated hosts the benefits of the standard power aura and energy constructs that most of the other rings can generate, a Healing Factor that makes Wolverine's seem reasonable by comparison, and immunity to magic. This is on top of any superpowers the host might have had in life. Then again, since the ring also turns its host into a flesh-eating murderous zombie that has to (and worse, wants to) rip out hearts filled with emotion and considering the host's soul isn't brought back either and that you have to be dead in the first place, getting one of these rings isn't really a case of "winning" the lottery.
The wielders of the Indigo Light (compassion) can absorb and redirect the powers of other Lanterns of the rest of the emotion spectrum. What really sets them apart: by redirecting the power of a Green Lantern they can remove Black Lantern rings, destroying the zombie Lanterns.
And then there's the White Light, which was the original source of the other seven colors, and can not only override any and all of them, but can bring people back to life. Not that that means much.
Vartox, an alien superhero and rival of Superman in the Pre Crisis days, who once admitted to Superman that he periodically discovered powers he didn't even realize he had.
The final Big Bad of the DC Comics series H.E.R.O. was a serial killer who found the power dial and used it to gain any super-power he could think of. This trope is even lampshaded in the dialog:
Robby Reed: Most of the time, the dial gives you one power, or maybe a couple of related powers. This guy's going to hit the superpower lottery. We're talking Superman levels of power. Nightmare levels.
Spinner of Avengers:The Initiative takes this to its literal extreme; she gets a new power every day (losing whatever powers she had the previous day, of course), and her name refers to the luck-of-the-draw element inherent in this (as in the Wheel of Fortune or the spinner in the Game of Life).
Black Bolt, the King of The Inhumans, is probably the ultimate example of this in the Marvel Universe. If he hadn't been created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, he'd probably get called a God Mode Sue a lot more often. A basic listing of his powers include a supersonic voice that, at max power, can destroy a planet (and, amplified by technology, has split open reality itself twice); telekinesis; superhuman strength; matter and energy manipulation; transmutation; and flight. In nearly 50 years of existence, he's never lost a real fight, at worst being stalemated (or limited by circumstances). The only significant class of superpower he doesn't possess is telepathy, and that's because he's The Voiceless.
The Plutonian, star of Mark Waid's Irredeemable, used to be Earth's most prominent superhero. When he goes rogue, he makes it very clear who won the lottery - it's all his former allies can do to stop him from slaughtering them all in moments. Hell, they can't even protect themselves from his wrath; he lets them get away several times for his own sadistic pleasure.
Then when Charybdis/Survivor got a power boost, it seemed like he and Tony were on equal terms, except Survivor had the edge in actual combat technique. Then it's revealed that Tony is really a godlike Reality Warper and all of his powers stem from him subconsciously altering the laws of physics around him.
Jackie Estacado in The Darkness. The full extent of his power has yet to be explored, but the ones we've seen are impressive indeed. He has enhanced strength, agility, speed, stamina, and what-have-you. Second, he can make just about anything out of darkness. Things like BFGs, Combat Tentacles, and the infamous Darklings. The only limitation on this power seems to be that these creations crumble in direct sunlight. Finally, he has an in-universe form of Contractual Immortality: the Darkness refuses to let him stay dead until he has produced a male heir. After being blown to atoms by a bomb he merely had to wait in Hell while the Darkness built him a new body.
An example of Jackie's "enhanced strength" would be that he made Superman's lip bleed by punching him.
The Mighty Thor, whose list of powers is pretty long even without including Mjolnir. Also, the majority of other name Asgardians; even the weaker name ones tend to have a wide variety of physical powers, a magical weapon or two, and at least one schtick power.
Aquaman. That's right, Aquaman. The Butt Monkey of The DCU for decades, the Trope Namer for This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman and requiring one Plot Tailored to the Party after another to be at all relevant, he is absolutely not as weak as common opinion believes. A combination of Required Secondary Powers (he can swim like a fish and punch people while under 500+ atmospheres of pressure, which is Superman level asskickery) and Fridge Horror (he commands everything that lives in the ocean; guess where Godzilla, Cthulhu, and the Leviathan live?) have had many writers portray him as horrifically powerful and outright feared by heroes and villains alike, and for very good reasons. And that is before considering that he is also the king of a lost civilization with its own military force full of super-technological weaponry.
"He could control every creature that lives in the sea. But I don't think either of you know what that really means. Do you know, do you understand, do you have any idea how much life there is in just one single square mile of sea? I don't think you do... and if you multiply that by lots of miles in every direction... I'd never seen anything like it in my whole life... and God as my witness, I hope to never see it again."
In All Fall Down, as Siphon, Sophie Mitchell has this in spades— but at a terrible cost.
In Luminosity, some people have absolutely no notable powers at all—or are like Esme, who (maybe) has compassion. Then there are people like Edward, who can read anyone's mind for a radius measured in miles. Then there are people like Bella, who can block out mental attacks and also almost anything else, with warning. The Volturi tends to (intentionally) have a concentration of these people, like Addy, who can copy any power.
Averted in With Strings Attached; the C'hovite gods (actually Jeft) deliberately make sure the four have a good mix of powers with minimal overlap and maximum utility so that none of them are left in the dust by the others.
Though their idea of “utility” isn't Paul's by any means....
Although no one had anything to do with Ringo's magic, the others were deliberately maneuvered into specific artifacts, or (in Paul's case) built up, to make sure they could all do different things and be useful in different situations.
All over the place in The Emiya Clan. Some of the kids got their parents' skills equally, some got very watered-down versions, some hit the jackpot.
Film
Jack-Jack in The Incredibles. Previously he was assumed to be a Muggle Born of Mages, but turns out to be a Goo Goo Godlike. Considering how like the Fantastic Four their family is, it's not surprising he has Shapeshifting abilities that mimic not just forms but spontaneously generates superpowers. In the DVD Commentary the writers said that Jack Jack's superpower lottery represents the fact that being a baby he can potentially develop in many different way and, in their minds, his powers will probably stabilise and become more defined as he grows.
In the DVD special features, this is parodied with Meta-Man, who had basically every superpower imaginable and yet died bygetting his neck snapped when his cape snagged in an elevator shaft.
Bolt is about a dog who thinks he's a superhero when in fact he's simply an actor surrounded by special effects designed to trick him. One of his powers in his show is a super powerful bark that can destroy... like 100 mooks, helicopters and cars all at once. To be fair, they seem to work largely in city settings, meaning that the Super Bark isn't an applicable ability unless they want to cause massive scale destruction... Though the laser vision, superstrength, and intelligence are more than enough.
Our Man Flint is a parody of James Bond with way too much Power Creep, Power Seep. Marty Stu doesn't even begin to describe it. Flint doesn't just seduce a beautiful woman or two. He starts the film with a harem that would make Hugh Hefner jealous. Flint is able to go through a battalion of Green Berets with karate chops. He waltzes through the plot with so much ease there isn't even any tension. He has everything James Bond has, but he has it at superhuman levels. In gamer terms, he's a 20th level character taking on 2nd level challenges.
And he knows — not just something, but a lot — about everything. Flint glances at a soldier in passing and recognizes that the man wears a ribbon for the Battle of the Bulge — but there is no ribbon for that battle, so the guy's an impostor. Don't ask how he could tellwhich battle the fake ribbon was for...
Literature
Xanth comes to mind — where every human has a special, unique talent, and people with particularly powerful magical talents are Magicians and are able to serve as king (or Sorceress, the female equivalent). There are weak but useful abilities, for example determining the direction of anything (including 'Source of Magic'), or speak any language. The relatively few useless talents are called 'Spot on the Wall' powers (named after some poor schlump whose talent was Exactly What It Says on the Tin). Magician levels are Illusion (at a range, that you can see through, that encompass all five senses), the ability to turn anyone but yourself into any other living creature, the ability to turn yourself into any other living creature, making things true by agreeing with them (only barely avoiding Story Breaker Power status by the fact that the thing agreed with has to come from someone unaware of her talent), knowing damn near everything, enhancement (of anything, without apparent limit, and including "enhancement" of negative traits), nullification of magic (no matter how powerful), and being immune to magical harm. That last talent hides itself as well, so that people don't wise up and try to hurt him by mundane means either. Not there are very many entirely mundane means available; Xanth is so thoroughly infused with magic that even the simplest objects are probably at least a little bit magical. The talent also indirect magical harm in its protections, so something like magically hiding the edge of a cliff from him and trying to get him to fall off wouldn't work either. It's even theorized in-universe that when the omnipotent demon that's the source of all magic in Xanth left, shutting all the magic down, it came back very shortly afterward solely because of this talent, as putting him in danger by removing magic could be considered indirect magical harm. That's right, it's so powerful that it can even affect its own omnipotent source.
One of them even (without trying to) makes winning the Superpower Lottery a hereditary trait; he impressed the above-mentioned omnipotent demon, who decided that all of the character's descendants would also be Magicians/Sorceresses. The demon never told him about this reward, though.
Another one, perhaps the ultimate winner of the Superpower Lottery, is a character who has the talent of having whatever talent she wants. Each talent can only be used once but eventually regenerates. However, using minor variations can easily overcome that flaw, and a little creativity can produce an almost infinite number of variations on any given talent. Unaddressed is what would happen if she simply picked "omnipotence" as her current talent and never switched to a different one.
In an obscure children's book called Samantha Stone And The Mermaids Quest, Samantha spends much of the book trying to learn how to teleport — both herself and objects. She gradually becomes better at it, able to teleport herself and others, but often not exactly where she intends. But by the end, Samantha is teleporting behind enemies to knock them out, teleporting out of ropes when tied up, and teleporting captured prisoners out of a cell. The villain only undoes this power by binding and gagging her, thus preventing her from casting the spell. However, the story ends shortly after a big rescue and fight scene which involves use of the teleportation power, but on a cliffhanger implying a sequel. So basically, if Samantha keeps her teleportation powers for the sequel (should it get made), then she could easily "break" the whole story by warping out of danger at all times, unless the villains are prepared to bind and gag her over and over — unless something appears to Deus ex Machina her ability down to uselessness.
The Twilight vampires: In addition to super strength, super speed, durability, beauty, and immortality, each one gets a special power based on what kind of latent abilities they had in their previous "human" life. It's pretty clear who's won though. Losers get even more strength, or stubbornness. Winners are mind readers, can see the future, can cause you unbelievable pain at will, control ALL FOUR classical elements, or in Bella's case, immunity to other powers, which can be shared. The only way to kill them? Burn them after tearing them to pieces (to keep them, obviously, from just running around while on fire).
Circle of Magic has Tris. Even living among other powerful mages, Tris comes off as a lottery winner. A powerful storm mage, she has enough power to level a city if necessary. By exercising tight control she can also achieve feats such as using winds to fly, create solid structures out of the rocks in the ground, divert the paths of storms, and scry on the wind, an incredibly rare achievement. Her power makes many of the other mages frightened and jealous, which bothers Tris to no end, and was directly responsible for her lousy childhood. In The Will of the Empress, she actually has to be taken out of action temporarily near the end so the others can get some of the spotlight.
Vanyel Ashkevron, the hero of the Last Herald-Mage trilogy of the Heralds of Valdemar series, wins the lottery and then some. In an accident involving the creation of a Gate, he receives just about every one of the Heralds' Psychic Powers plus enough magical power to level a city. Too bad it's his fate to die in a Heroic Sacrifice after losing nearly everything he cares about.
Somewhat subverted in the Mistborn books — in allomancy (the basic magic system), most people have one of the basic powers (superstrength, super-senses, limited telekinetic control of metal, etc.) while the eponymous Mistborn have all of them. This may seem like (and in many circumstances is) a complete advantage over the lesser "Mistings", but as Vin discovers, having only one power means you get a whole lot more practice with it — in other words, in some ways you're better than any Mistborn, and can be just as useful. Of course, Vin herself in some ways wins the lottery over other Mistborn, as she has some powers they don't have thanks to a nasty bit of Hemalurgy performed by her mother, and being a proto-god.
The Inquisitors from the same series win the Lottery by cheating. They practice the art of Hemalurgy, which lets them steal powers from others and apply them to themselves (by having someone pound giant metal spikes through the still-living victim's body and into their own!). As a result, your basic Inquisitor is basically a Mistborn with even stronger abilities. Later on they even find out that it's possible to steal Feruchemical powers with Hemalurgy, as well, which is even more powerful; by itself, Feruchemy is pretty dangerous, but when you combine it with Allomantic power in a single body, the interaction between the two lets you break several of the basic rules of both types of power.
The real winner of the lottery is the Lord Ruler, who Was born a feruchemist, and then found a metal called Lerasium that gives whoever burns it the powers of a Mistborn. This combination makes him essentially a Physical God - By storing attributes using Feruchemy, and then burning the Metalminds, you can get back more of an attribute than you stored. You can then store this, and so on. Combine that with the regular powers of Allomancy, and you have someone who you need to channel a Shard to stop. That is why the Lord Ruler, although we don't see much of his powers, can slaughter armies without difficulty
In the Alloy of Law, we find that there are no Mistborn or Feruchemists any more - instead, you have Mistings (who have one Allomantic power) and Ferings (who have one Feruchemical power) and the rare Twinborn, who have one of each. Most Twinborn win the lottery (at least withing the setting), doubly so for someone who has the same metal for both powers (allowing them to store the power in a Metalmind, then burn it for a greater return, which they can then store and so on) but their are varying levels of Twinborn.
Some Twinborn combinations are useful, but nothing special - the ability to store warmth (Brass) combined with the power to conceal Allomantic power use (Copper). Others have combinations of powers that are very useful in certain areas - someone who can store wakefulness (Bronze) and has super-senses (Tin) makes a great sentry, while one of the characters, Wayne, can create a bubble of sped up time around them (Bendalloy), while also storing health (Gold) - this makes him a brilliant one on one combatant.
And then you have the protagonist, Wax, and the antagonist, Miles, who have some of the best combinations available. Wax can store his weight (Iron) and telekinetically push metals (Steel). Since when you push on something, the overall motion is determined by your relative weights, then Wax can level city blocks and chuck train carriages at people, not to mention he can push on things to leap great distances, while storing his weight to travel further and survive the huge falls. Miles is a double Gold Twinborn - while the allomantic Gold power (which allows an Allomancer to see what they might have been if they had made different choices in the past) is not particularly useful, by compounding Gold he can give himself a healing factor that puts Wolverine to shame, and he has suffered so many injuries in the past he doesn't feel pain any more - both of which he illustrates when he blasts himself in the face with a shotgun to prove his power to his men.
Fred Saberhagen's Book of Swords gives each of the twelve eponymous swords a superpower. One provides uncanny luck, another instills loyalty, and a third creates illusions. Several tend to kill their wielders. And then there is Shieldbreaker, which instantly detonates any weapon used against it (spells and demons count as weapons), including other Swords, and makes the wielder immune to other Swords' effects like the aforementioned luck and illusions. Its weaknesses are small enough to be the surprise conclusion to both Swords series.
In a more technological vein, the Lazy Guns from Iain Banks' Against a Dark Background novel. Lost Technology from a previous iteration of the book's civilization (which wiped itself out, probably using Lazy Guns), a Lazy Gun kills its target. For small, soft things (like you) this is done in a darkly humorous manner, such as materialising a set of great white shark jaws around your throat. For big targets, like cities, it simply materialises a nuclear blast. It may be assumed that sufficient energy is applied to kill any target regardless of its protection.
Used twice in the Wild Cards series. The premise is that an alien virus, known as "Wild Card", is released over New York City. It kills 90% of the affected population out right (known as "drawing the Black Queen"), turns 9% into deformed "jokers," and turns the remaining 1% into superheroes ("Aces"). Among said Aces, the usefulness and potency of powers are varied (some with particularly useless powers are known derisively as "Deuces." So you have to win one Superpower Lottery just to get the powers, and a second to get something useful.
And then there's the Sleeper, who wins the Superpower Lottery fairly frequently - and lives in fear of the day that he'll lose, because given the math, if he loses, it'll be death in an instant.
Cassie from Animorphs is revealed to be this in the fourth Megamorphs book, Back to Before. She is a 'temporal anomaly', an exceedingly rare creature with a spatial awareness so superhuman that her very presence undoes the timeline-meddling of resident Reality Warper the Drode. Amusingly, the Drode proceeds to throw a hissy-fit, angrily accusing the Ellimist of 'stacking the deck' by including a game breaker like her on the team.
Live Action TV
Sylar and Peter Petrelli from Heroes, and Eden to a lesser extent. Sylar and Peter both have power absorbing powers, while Eden can control anyone's mind. The former two had power loss and Laser-Guided Amnesia, respectively, for most of Season Two as a Deus Exit Machina, while Eden was killed early on (by the Lottery winner Sylar, of course).
Also, Hiro Nakamura. With time travel, teleportation, and the ability to slow or stop time, it would be up for grabs whether he or Peter displayed more Plot-Induced Stupidity were it not for the fact, of course, that Peter now also has these abilities (and almost everyone else's). Somewhat balanced by the fact Hiro's powers are abnormally difficult to master, which would explain why Peter doesn't take full advantage of them outside of his Future Badass version, but when that balance was removed and Hiro gained at least near-complete control over his power, it's shown to be just as powerful as it should be. Even to the point that he could take down Sylar and Elle within seconds, with no visible effort.
All the four characters mentioned above have had at some point in the series their powers neutralized and blocked by the Haitian. The Haitian is able to directly manipulate the neurons of the brain to remove specific memories, andcan block the powers of most supers (though possibly not passive powers like regeneration) just by standing near them. The Haitian might not have won the Superpower Lottery, but he's the guy with the hand on the lottery machine.
And Matt Parkman. He started off with the power to read minds, but then he could control someone's mind simply by planting thoughts into their head, an even more powerful form of Eden's power that doesn't require voice activation, and can trap people in a nightmare world that he controls, with them being unable to escape unless they posses the same power. And, if that's not enough, he may gain more abilities, as another character has told him that, "Anything the brain controls, you control."
Subverted in the online graphic novels with another character who can gain other people's powers, Linda. The other two characters with that ability, Peter and Sylar, are essentially the two most important and powerful main characters in the series — but Linda is viewed as Blessed with Suck because anything she touches dies (leading to her parents locking her in her room and pushing food through the bottom of the door), she only ever gets one ability, and it's pretty lame (she can "see" "ghosts"), and when she tries to take Linderman's power, he kills her rather anticlimactically. (Oh, and her story is told Back to Front for some reason, so you know that even though she's potentially at least as much as a threat as Sylar, she's already taken out).
Hiro and Peter were later adjusted, Peter only capable of absorbing powers by touching someone and only has one power at a time, and Hiro lost his power thanks to Arthur Petrelli but regained the power to stop time thanks to Baby Touch and Go Parkman, but still couldn't teleport.
Castiel from Supernatural. Being an angel, his abilities seem to have no limit: so far, we've seen him display super strength, invulnerability, the ability to travel through time, telepathy, telekinesis, dream-walking, teleportation, element control, a gigantic, winged, eye-searing true form, and immortality (he can only be killed by another angel's sword, but Castiel ramps this up by having what seems like a God-sanctioned get-out-of-death-free card). This was all well and good when he was supposed to be last only the first half of Season 4, but his promotion to regular character forced writers to write in that angel-banishing sigil to make an episode fight last the entire hour. In Season 6 he exhibited the ability to literally change the past (he prevented the sinking of the Titanic and thus "created" 50,000 souls - the descendants of the people that were originally killed, twice ( then he went back to re-sink it after one of the Sisters of Fate convinced him what he did was wrong), and managed to imprint the events as dreams in the main characters' minds (he wanted them to remember). And even later on he absorbed every soul in Purgatory and became a god for a while, becoming nigh-omnipotent.
Delvin a.k.a. Excelsor, the world's most famous superhero in the British live-action series No Heroics (starts September 18th, 2008). His card lists his powers as "Basically Everything". Excelsor's the bane of the B-list protagonists' lives (especially of Alex, a.k.a. The Hotness, a shy 30-year-old office worker with heat-based powers, who desperately but unsuccessfully tries to become famous). Excelsor is also an arrogant Jerkass. Go figure.
Kamen Rider Ryuki features up to 13 of these warriors, whose powers depend entirely on what cards were in their decks when they got them — so we've got one who can call up a Macross Missile Massacre, one who gets up to 3 monsters under his thumb, and a few who don't even have serviceable hand weapons to start with.
Lyta Alexander of Babylon 5 describes herself as the telepathic equivalent of a doomsday weapon. She's pretty much right. It doesn't, however, stop Sheridan from pulling a No Sell on her when she gets in her A God Am I mood and psychically takes over everyone else in the room, as both were Touched by Vorlons.
Ofcourse this is alleviated by the fact that he Casts From Hit Points, and must constantly feed to just stay alive, and is driven even further to insanity by his insatiable hunger.
Dr. Shinkuro Isaka from Kamen Rider Double wasn't content with just the base powers granted by his Gaia Memory...so he did a few "upgrades". The Weather Memory gives Isaka effectively every Elemental Power; at times he's demonstrated intense sunlight, rain, lightning, tornadoes, and Snow. And that's still not enough, as he keeps giving people overclocked Gaia Memories that eventually kill him and allows him to add that Memory's powers to his own. This also results in his Karmic Death when the Gaia Memory connector ports all over his body consume him after the Weather Memory is finally destroyed.
While this does not apply to the main cast of Sanctuary, it works for the Five, who all took the same Super Serum made from vampire blood. Of all of them, Nikola Tesla is the only one who became an actual vampire. Plus, he also got electrical powers. John Druitt gained the power of space-time teleportation. James Watson became a super-genius. Nigel Griffin gained the power of invisibility. Helen Magnus got... longevity, something Tesla got as part of the whole package. These powers, though, are inherited by their children. Notably, Griffin's granddaughter had his power. Also, Ashley Magnus, being the daughter of Helen and Druitt, did not originally manifest any powers. Those had to be activated by the Cabal and were, basically, a combination of Tesla's vampirism and Druitt's teleportation.
In Misfits most powers are fairly unhelpful or useless, but some are just pathetic, while others are incredibly powerful. One girl had the power to turn people bald, and one man could caffeinate drinks. Other characters could travel through time, control the future by drawing it or move objects with their minds.
In The Secret Circle all of the witch and warlock characters have various strong powers and abilities. The powers vary among the witches and warlocks. Some of the common powers include:
Spellcasting: The ability to cast spells.
Conjurgation: The ability to call or summon an object, person, element or spirit.
Elemental Control: The ability to control different elements such as water, air, fire, ice, etc.
Telekinesis: The ability to move objects with the use of the mind.
Multiple Media
In LEGO's BIONICLE line, powers are so common and plentiful, only the most egregious cases can be mentioned here:
First and foremost, the Makuta. They all have 42 standard powers from the get-go, plus the Elemental Power of shadow. By banishing their inner light, they gained an even bigger control over these shadow powers. Being Energy Beings, they can possess soulless bodies and robots, which was a major plot point. Lets throw in that they're also shapeshifters, provided they're in their own bodies.
Skakdi are a violent race of savages that have access to Elemental Powers, vision-powers (laser vision, telescopic vision, etc), and have yet another, random power unique to the specimen — like Adaptive Ability or being able to conjure cages made out of literally anything at will. One Skakdi, Zaktan, became a mass of microscopic insects due to an accident, and could thus fly, shape-shift, seep through holes, and attack in the form of an angry swarm. Their toys also came with multi-functional weapons and the BIONICLE equivalent of guns! Fans complained so much that the following year's villains had to be vastly de-powered.
Tabletop Games
Exalted: The Abyssal splats out of all place lampshades this, mainly to contrast the nature of Abyssal exaltation to the other kind of exaltations (except Sidereal).
While other Exalted receive their power more or less by winning a cosmic lottery, however, Abyssals receive theirs for a reason.
More specifically, "Terrestrial" exalts inherit their chance at winning the superpower lottery through bloodlines. Unlike the Terrestrials, there are only a limited number of "Celestial" exaltations available at any given time. So Solars and Lunars earn their exaltations by being spectacularly awesome when an exaltation is available.
In Touhou, Everyone Is A Super, and powers range from stopping time to manipulating fate to creating black holes. Then we have Yukari Yakumo. Her ability is to manipulate boundaries. Any boundary. Including abstract ones like life and death, day and night, reality and illusion, and fictional and actual. In other words, her ability is whatever the hell she wants; she once opened a portal to the moon by looking at its reflection in a lake and manipulating the boundary between Truth and Lies. Word Of God mentions that she has no weaknesses, is as powerful as the gods, and can annihilate Gensoukyou, the setting of Touhou, at a whim. She's also notable for having a nine-tailed fox as her shikigami, who is powerful enough to be an EX Boss in her own right and in turn has a shikigami of her own.
The description of main heroine Reimu Hakurei's "last word" ultimate spellcard in Imperishable Night, "Fantasy Heaven," is literally "With Reimu's ability to float, she floats away from physical reality and becomes invincible. If it wasn't just for play (with a time limit), no one could beat her with any method." The attack is modified in the fighting Gaiden Games, which don't have countdowns (kinda); there it's just a One-Hit KO, which lasts five seconds, only one of which is actually needed. There's a reason fans joke that she has a spellcard of "Hax Sign 「You Just Plain Fucking Lose」."
Yuyuko Saigyouji is a ghost that can manipulate death itself, meaning she can kill anything that isn't already dead or immortal with a mere thought. It also lets her control dead spirits, and the only truly immortal characters we've seen are weaker than her. Even more than that, because Yuyuko's body is sealing the Saigyou Ayakashi she can't be exorcised, and because she's already dead she can't even really be hurt. Actually getting rid of her would entail unsealing the most dangerous being in the setting, and she's also close personal friends with Yukari Yakumo.
Utsuho Reiuji was originally just a dumb bird with no special abilities beyond what she got by virtue of being a hell raven youkai. Then she was offered the corpse of a sun god to snack on and gained the power to control nuclear fusion. This instantly turned her into a living, breathing star and easily one of the most powerful individuals in Gensoukyou. If she weren't still a rather dumb bird (albeit one capable of operating a fusion reactor) she could easily obliterate Gensoukyou and then the planet with a thought and rampage across entire galaxies with ease.
Flandre Scarlet's power is literally defined as "the destruction of anything and everything." What this translates into is a One-Hit Kill even more broken than Yuyuko's, since she's not killing so much as annihilating, meaning you don't actually have to be alive for it to affect you, nor do you have to be an actual person as objects are just as destroyable as people. Given Touhou logic, this power likely extends to concepts as well. It's not limited to a small scale either, as she considered destroying what amounted to a meteor storm to be not very impressive. She's also a several hundred year-old vampire who's immune to anything holy and has immense physical strength, as well as the ability to shapeshift into a bat, make copies of herself to attack, turn invisible, and wield a FlamingBFS. She's also more powerful than her older sister, who's power is to manipulate fate.
In Wild Arms 3, Maya Schroedinger, The Rival to the heroine, has the power to adopt any power depicted by a character in the book she last touched. She is never a party member, though. She uses this to be a martial artist, a mage, and The Gunslinger, among other things.
The main character of Final Fantasy IX gets this. He's spent sixteen years becoming a master thief and then founds out that he is actually the Angel of Death for his adopted world, complete with Badass powers. Unfortunately, presumably due to his lack of training in use of these powers he can only use them in Trance
The Main Characters of Persona 3 and Persona 4. Whereas the other party members gain the ability to summon a Persona that grants them special powers, the Main Characters can potentially summon any Persona (and can switch between them freely). However, the Persona 3 lead paid one hell of a price for it (specifically, one 'die at age 16 and your soul used as a padlock on the jail for the life-eradicating Eldritch Abomination for all eternity' price), and the reason why the Persona 4 protagonist didn't have the Persona 3 protagonist's problems is due to being literally touched by a Japanese goddess.
It's worth noting that in Persona and Persona 2, every party member could do this. However, they couldn't hold as many at the same time as the characters mentioned above, and were less effective with Persona that had less affinity with their arcana, to the point where complete incompatibility meant they couldn't use that Persona, period (the P3 and P4 protagonists avoid the latter issue presumably because their arcana is The Fool).
Minato may actually take it a step further, since not only can he potentially summon any Persona ever and freely switch between them, but he also can summon two Personas at once for a Combination Attack, with effects ranging from 50% healing and evasion increase... to throwing the freaking Apocalypse at his enemies.
In Fate/stay night, each legendary hero has a Noble Phantasm which reflects some part of their legend, and is unique to their character... Except for Gilgamesh. His Noble Phantasm, "Gate of Babylon", is a portal to his treasury that allows him to summon pretty much every Noble Phantasm except Excalibur, to pull out individually or launch in missile barrages as he wishes (since he's the original King of Heroes, he used to own all of the world's treasures, and thus all the original Noble Phantasms). He also turns out to have another Noble Phantasm atop of this which is classified as "anti-world" in power (the other Noble Phantasms topping out at "anti-castle").
Archer's ultimate technique is pretty similar (specifically his Reality Marble, Unlimited Blade Works), though story-wise he never gets to show its full potential. He can create an imitation of any weapon (specifically swords), that he has ever seen, giving him an endless supply of disposable legendary weapons. A "Broken Phantasm" is supposed to be an unthinkable technique, destroying the hero's proof of heroism (and well, their weapon) for one-time Massive Damage. Archer can do this... Whenever he wants.
Finally, Saber herself has a wee touch of this. She starts out by 'merely' having an invisible sword for a Noble Phantasm, freakishly powerful regeneration and the best close combat skill of all the Servants. She then turns out to be Arthur, the strongest example of this class, and her 'true' Noble Phantasm, Excalibur (which also has a neato wind-based attack as part of being revealed), is a grade A++ anti-castle noble phantasm and the second strongest of all the weapons. She then turns out to have a third Noble Phantasm on top of this, Avalon, whose stated ability is basically to make her invincible — she uses it to block Gilgamesh's abovementioned "anti-world" attack, without it taking a dent. And on top of this she used to possess a fourth weapon, the Sword in the Stone, which is strong enough to kill the toughest servant seven times over with a single blow... And it's weaker than the one she already has.
Just to hammer the point home, the sword she used to take down Berserker was a fake, implying that the original sword is even stronger. And even that is still weaker than her actual Noble Phantasm!
Some of the other Servants from Fate Zero are also really broken. Rider's Noble Phantasm Ionian Hetairoi is a Reality Marble that summons an entire army of Heroic Spirits. And then there's Berserker, aka Lancelot, who has a skill called Eternal Arms Mastership that prevents his fighting skills from being degraded by any mental hindrance, so he gets all the benefits of Mad Enhancementwith none of the drawbacks. And he has a Noble Phantasm that turns anything he picks up into a Noble Phantasm, including an F-15. And then there's his true Noble Phantasm, Aarondight, which is a sword on a par with Excalibur that jacks up his stats even higher. The only reason he doesn't walk all over the other Servants is because his master can't supply him with enough prana for extended fights.
Rider's Noble Phantasm is the only one that is considered on par with Gilgamesh's Ea, an Anti-World Noble phantasm. This means that Rider is theoretically the second strongest Servant, based on pure stats alone, which makes sense considering that in Nasuverse Servant strength is directly proportional to age and fame meaning that Rider who happens to be Alexander the Great, a 2300 year old legend and one of the single most famous people in history would obviously be ludicrously strong.
The Nasuverse has a variety of "Mystic Eyes," ranging from simple stuff like "charm" to rare and powerful ones like petrification ('sup, Medusa). And then there's the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception owned by Ryougi and Tohno Shiki, which allow them to kill the existence of anyone or anything that could conceivably be destroyed and bypass any number of explicit Cannot-Be-Killed-No-Matter-What powers. Combined with convenient anti-demon assassin training, this allows them — mere humans — to take on beings of overwhelming power.
Ryougi much more so than Tohno. For Tohno, using his eyes risks insanity and brain damage. He has to wear a pair of magical glasses that block the effects of his eyes to keep his brain from melting, and eventually his eyes grow too strong for the glasses to contain them, which means he only has a few years left to live. Ryougi doesn't have any of these limitations. And she has an alternate personality that is absolutely omnipotent.
Ciel of Tsukihime was born to an entirely ordinary family, yet she also possessed enough magic circuits of high enough quality that her magic power is considered to be on the same level as Servants. Unfortunately this verges into Blessed with Suck territory for her since her incredibly potent magical power made her a prime target as Roa's next host.
League of Legends features a very diverse cast. Although competitive balance equalises their relative power level, the characters range from a dude with a sword to an ice elemental phoenix, from a pirate with a regular flintlock pistol to a desert god from outer space, and from a fat drunkard with a beer keg and no other powers to an armoured angel of war.
Conduits from In Famous, especially the second game, Cole and his partners Nix and Kuo got off with easily controlled and amazing powers, the second game's big bad, Bertrand, wasn't so lucky, his power involves turning into a fifty foot beserk monster and transforming other people into smaller monsters. An NPC pointed this out in a dead drop.
Although Shepard isn't TOO overpowered. They can't have all those biotic abilities at once, even if you can have a lot. Want the black hole? You can't have teleport ramming. And if you want biotic and tech abilities you can only have the basic attacks of either. Meanwhile the bonus abilities are all very powerful, but you can only have one of them. Life Drain, more shields, holographic decoy? You only get one.
Of all the enemies, Banshees from the third game are the only ones who really fit. While other husks made by the Reapers get some simple ability or weapon (Marauders have guns and Deflector Shields, Ravagers spit acid and have cannons mounted on them, and Brutes are just really strong), Banshees for some reason get an impressive repertoire of abilities, namely: Energy Balls that double as Life Drain, rapidly regenerating force fields,levitation,teleportation,Super Strength (they can pick up and impale a thousand pound krogan in full armor with one hand), and ridiculous durability.
Some of the elite N7 classes in multiplayer are noticeably stronger than normal solders. The N7 Shadow, for example, can project force fields, use Life Drain, surround herself by a damaging field of energy, spam incredibly powerful explosions, release energy in a huge area around herself (a one hit kill to normal foot soldiers), and augment her already Super Strength with biotic Megaton Punches. Oh, teleporting. Lots of and lots of teleporting.
Asura from Asura's Wrath', who is basically The Hulk on steroids, and post Karma Fortress Mantra Reactor surgery no longer has the bad side effect of destroying himself with his anger. He can also Become the size of the planet and travel across the cosmos at extreme speeds, destroy volleys of planets being thrown at him casually with energy blasts, and punch straight through a planet several hundreds of times bigger than his planet sized self with ease. It's noted that even after shrinking back to human size, he keeps all the above powers, and just gets more and more powerful as the finale goes on, even after reverting to his base form.
Mario, of Super Mario Bros. fame. And why not? Sure other platformers have power ups, but Mario is the only case where, upon acquiring or injesting certain objects, he actually gets super powers. First it was growing taller, but that was subject to a retcon later that makes the taller "Super Mario" form his normal one. Which means he can survive a lethal hit by sacrificing height, and normally has Super Strength required to break bricks and smash metal with his head/hands/feet, further supported by being able to lift up giant foes such as King Bob-Omb and even bowser himself. His jumping height is only beaten by that of his brother Luigi, and has shown onseveraloccasions that he doesn't actually need the Fire Flower to shoot fire balls and it's an inherent ability. But with power-ups, be they items or suits, he can fly and hover, turn into an indestructible statue that kills anything it lands on, inflate a cape and fly indefinitely (thought at fixed altitude) and dive to the floor to create a shockwave that kills everything a short distance away, fly using his hat, just fly, overcome death with 1-up mushrooms (and he DOES actually die upon defeat, unlike other kiddy platformers), shoot balls of ice and create frozen platforms along Ice and LAVA, become literally invincible for a short while, become invincible and metallic for a short while, become invincible and giant for a short while, turn invisible an intangible, become a ghost, throw instant kill hammers, lethal balls, Inflate like a baloon for a short while (a power exclusive to him), create clones of himself, turn tiny, become a bee, throw hammers and boomerangs, create cloud platforms, turn into a boulder, turn enemies and objects into cash and finally *whew* gain flying squirrel capabilities like gliding and clinging to walls. In short, the ? block is a super power lottery and Mario's constantly the winner.
In The Legend of Spyro any given dragon has power over one element, be it fire, ice, wind, or lightning. Purple Dragons (and Cynder), however, have access to all the elements. All of them. And Godlike power levels to boot, meaning they don't trade any strength for their versatility. In-universe each of them is considered a Chosen One and his or her birth is a cause for celebration (and fear after the first one went a little crazy).
The time monks, in a subversion. In a fantasy setting with fairly normal levels of magic and with firearms tech up to revolvers, they have bullet time. Despite that, they seem prone to the Worf effect. And the Elves can handily counter the super-speed, once they know to expect it; they taught them the trick hundreds of years ago, after all, and haven't used it themselves since, because it's too easy to counter.
Ian, on the other hand, basically gets phenomenal cosmic power, that seems to keep growing and growing. Unfortunately, With Great Power Comes Great Insanity.
In The Last Days Of FOXHOUND, the take on the team is: Raven, who has precognition (we're told) and a big gun; Liquid, whose Charles Atlas Superpower lets him survive anything and beat people up pretty well; Wolf, the world's greatest sniper; Ocelot, the world's greatest pistoleer and liar (enough that it counts as a power, damnit); and Octopus, who can shapeshift into someone if he drinks their blood. And then there's Mantis, who can read and control minds, light anything on fire, zap people into unconsciousness and use telekinesis.
Chris of Sonichu has this in spades. He doesn't go through an episode without showing off some spiffy new ability. Of course, seeing as he's an Author AvatarGod Mode Sue...
Teleport anything from anywhere to anywhere, change the size of anything, awareness of anything that exists in her universe at the current moment, speed things up to the speed of light or slow them down to a complete stop, immortal except under two specific conditions, fly without using any of the above powers, speak without a chat client or being in a flash animation. That is what she gets from one of her three power sources.
Mishap of the stalled webcomic Mis- has the super power lottery every day. Most of the powers are useless.
Faith of Magick Chicks is an esper with a ridiculous number of powers, to the point that no one can really keep track of them all. The only power that she is confirmed to not have is mind reading. Tiffany theorizes that her powers resonate with the magic of the school somehow, which is why she is constantly growing stronger.
In the League of Intergalactic Cosmic Champions there was The Queue (omnipotent power when they stand in a straight line), Soyburger Patricia (sorceress nicknamed Dues Ex Patricia after one such incident), q (a junior member of Star Trek's Q continuum), although Adon & the Observer tended toward the overpowered side as well.
In The RPG Fanatic the Student Sword claims to be the sword used in all computer roleplaying games until the protagonist becomes a true hero. So far the Student Sword has demonstrated the ability to summon zombies, perform Kingdom Hearts Keyblade-style "unlocking", perform the Soul Shooter attack from Azure Dreams, transform books into dvds and switch the Fanatic's "job" using magic.
In the Whateley Universe, there is Tennyo. She is one of the main characters at the Whateley Academy, and is so massively powered that in several stories, she essentially couldn't find a way to use her powers without damage so massive it would have been life-threatening to people nearby, or without other dire consequences. Also, it seems that serious use of her powers gives off lethal doses of radiation and may cause mind-shattering rips in our reality. And there's the whole "antimatter within her cells" thing that nobody understands. Deconstructed in that she has severe difficulties with using normal techniques. (She can't beat your average 'brick', because the only strength-boost she could use kills people's souls...)
Here's a list of her known powers: Superhuman strength and speed. Flight, both fast and agile. Energy blasts. Energy sword like a light saber that can breach most shields. Insane regeneration (highest known regen rating). IR and UV vision. Total life support (space, etc.). Power over gravity. Produces antimatter. Has survived a nuclear blast. Death Blow, which can rip apart souls. Can warp reality around her, causing massive destruction and insanity. Various other warper powers she is still discovering and has poor control over. Eats demons. Partial immunity to power nullification.
Basically the entirety of Team Kimba is this, with even the less powerful members having some aspect that can blow away most competition.
, or omnipotence. Then again others get the short end of the stick and get the power to know when you're asleep, or God forbid, the power that turns you into a voodoo doll.
Western Animation
In Avatar The Last Airbender, there are regular people. Then there are people who can control the element associated with where they grew up (Earth, Air, Fire, Water). And then there's the Avatar, who controls all four of them. And then some.
South Park parodies this with its Affectionate Parody of Anime, "Good Times With Weapons." Cartman gives himself New Powers as the Plot Demands until Kyle calls him out on it & makes him choose only one. He chooses the power to have any power he wants. Stan takes all his powers away. When the others need him to have powers again, he chooses the power to turn Kyle into a chicken.
In Static Shock, Edwin Alva's son, Edwin Alva Jr., learned to control the Big Bang gas that gave every other metahuman in Dakota their powers, essentially rigging the Superpower Lottery. He was doing pretty well with it, too, up until he took on too many powers at once and Power Incontinence turned him into stone.
The Venture Brothers has the occasional lottery winner. As Phantom Limb put it while convincing some un-powered senior villains to do his bidding:
"I can kill a man by simply touching him. Now what were your special powers again?"
Doctor Orpheus also counts: He can teleport, astral project, shoot energy from his hand, remove souls, set things on fire with his mind, mind wipe people, raise the dead (as long as he has a body and the soul is willing to come back), fly, detect ghosts, create a force of purple lightning that shut down a large robot and liquefied a group of Nazis, remove someone's arms (and not by cutting them off: they actually disappear), telekinesis, and predict when someone will die. And that's probably not all of it.
Professor Impossible, while still defeatable, got stretch powers while the rest of his family got invisible skin, skin that burns when oxygen hits it, and turned into basically one giant callous, so he got off pretty good.
Captain Sunshine can do anything Superman can and shoot beams of intense sunlight out of his chest. It's made up for by his Weaksauce Weakness though: He needs sunlight to use his powers and unlike Superman does not get constant power from it.
Of the Teen Titans, Raven basically has a lot of powers. New Powers as the Plot Demands and Deus ex Machina, for example. The Teen Titans Wiki lists her as having the following: Considerable arcane and mystic lore of both Azarath and Earth, telekinesis, astral projection ("Soul-Self"), levitation, empathy, telepathy, umbrakinetic dark energy manipulation (into energy blasts, a variety of constructs ranging from walls to claws to shields to flying platforms and effective telekinesis), biological manipulation (generally of herself), teleportation (across relatively short distances on the same planet or into other adjacent dimensions), time manipulation (uncontrolled and rare), physical healing (limited) of both herself and others, limited precognition, able to summon all her emotional forms and merge with them as White Raven in the multi-dimensional realm of her mind, ability to transfer power to others and cause them to lose consciousness, control over Trigon's lesser demons and ability to banish them (at least after acceptance of personal destiny), ability to rapidly age self back to normal age (in "white" form). She's by far the most frequent target for depowering or The Worf Effect, but when she's not either, the result is epic.
In Wakfu, followers of the god Xelor (who are also called Xelors) have the ability to manipulate time. The Hero, as well, can bend space by creating portals.
Justice League has the android AMAZO. His ability, to copy those of others, gave him the full set of the Original Seven's powers by his first appearance. Then he went into space for a while, and when he came back, he had enough power to teleport an entire planet. Because it was in his way. The entire extended League and Green Lantern Corps failed to even scratch him. At the end of it all, the person to defeat him was LexLuthor.
In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, a unicorn's magical powers are typically restricted to one specialty, usually associated with their Cutie Mark. Since Twilight Sparkle's specialty is magic, she doesn't have this restriction.
Not only does Twilight have the ability to effectively use any sort of magic, she also has the sheer magical might to back it up. Princess Celestia, resident sun-goddess and half of the Equestrian Diarchy, mentioned she hasn't seen such immense power from one unicorn in centuries.
Octopodes and other cephalopods. They're the closest thing to a shapeshifter we get in nature, able to change shape, skin texture, and color almost instantly to hide anywhere. They're insanely flexible, unusually intelligent for invertebrates, multi-limbed with Combat Tentacles, have underwater jet propulsion, and can disappear in a cloud of ink. If land octopodes weren't impossible (their soft bodies can't be supported out of water and they'd dry up pretty quickly) and didn't only live to be about two years old, we'd be screwed.
The geographic territory of Europe, as Guns Germs And Steel points out. Access to domesticable crops and animals, and their attendant population boost and disease immunity? Check. Broken terrain encouraging a wide pool of highly competitive nation-states? Check. Favorable wind currents allowing for the conquest of two entire continents? Check. Places like Egypt and China may have had a great starting advantage, but regardless of who settled there, Europe was always going to own the late game. Later however, due to the heavily divided nature of Europe, which caused two World Wars that devastated them and let everyone else catch up in terms of technology, which was the only real advantage the Europeans had anyway, unless counting Europe as a group (which Europeans themselves don't) they are no longer the primary superpower and no individual European nation can hope to conquer an entire continent anymore.
Great Britain is the true winner of the lottery, having all the advantages of being in Europe, whilst being an island nation. This means naval dominance from a very early date, which to this date only the U.S. can match, and thats only down to sheer numbers. If only it wasn't divided into 3 (or 4 counting Northern Ireland within the UK) very competitive individual nations, the whole world may have been very different...
Though considering the current political atmosphere since the End of WW 2, The United States ended up being the supreme winner at the moment, being able to benefit from ALL of the Above and especially the economical fallout of the World Wars which devastated Europe and dropped Britain from Global Superpower Status and being the only remaining superpower after the Cold War. It's much more likely that such lotteries are not set to last forever, but in thne foreseeable future the United States and China has started to reemerge as the winners of the so called "lottery"...
Humans. What we got is Weak, but Skilled taken Up to Eleven: we can utilize anything around us in limitless ways and can pretty much do anything. Still it's a Power at a Price, as big head and erect posture don't work together well, and we have to be born way before we are self-sufficient, and even then it's painful for the mother. Opposable thumbs are still awesome.
Being born before we are self-sufficient is actually a blessing in disguise. The young of any species takes in information and learns better than the adults. (that's why many experts suggest that teachings in second languages should begin before the child is 10) While it does leave babies vulnerable, they have much more time to learn new things, which is better in the long run not just for the individual but for the species as a whole.
