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The master at work.
"If those things took down Wolverine in less than two minutes, what chance do we have?" — X-Men
"I have never seen The Undertaker manhandled like that!" — Michael Cole, WWE Smackdown!, several times
When the Monster-of-the-Week or the Big Bad shows up, it invariably picks up the toughest character among the heroes and hurls him across the room (or otherwise takes him out in one blow) in order to demonstrate just how Big and Bad it really is.
Named for the tendency in Star Trek The Next Generation and
Star Trek Deep Space Nine for hostile creatures to do that very thing to Worf.
When this sort of thing keeps happening to the same allegedly "bad-ass" character in episode after episode, to the point that more of their fights end with them in a crumbled heap than not, it somewhat deflates their reputation for badassery. Especially if, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, the series still presents the character as a credible opponent, rendering things downright farcical.
Also known as " jobbing" in certain circles, although jobbing usually refers to a character who loses many fights in order to make the hero appear stronger by contrast (See: Renji Abarai, Vegeta, or the Washington Generals). It usually affects whatever team member is brash and headstrong.
When this gets done too many times on an Action Girl, the result is often a Faux Action Girl.
When done by an already known villain, it may be used to try to counter-act Villain Decay and/or cause You Look Pretty Stupid To Me.
See also Curb Stomp Battle and The Worf Barrage.
Compare Deus Exit Machina and Red Shirt. Also Worf Had The Flu. Rarely ever happens to the Crouching Scholar Hidden Badass.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- Naruto has a lot of Worf clones to the point where you might as well call this trope "The Naruto". There aren't many characters you can name that haven't lost a fight just to show how badass someone is. Recently the entire village of Konoha bent over, dropped their trousers and took one for the team in order to showcase how powerful Pain really is.
- Even the Big Bad Man Behind the Man Madara Uchiha has been victim of this trope not once, but twice. Offscreen. Though at least both the people that beat him are already dead.
- Poor Mamoru. On top of being the show's designated Distressed Dude, he also had the distinction of being a strange candidate for this trope because all he had going for him as Tuxedo Mask were his physical strength and agility, a cane, and roses that rarely had any magical properties. Needless to say, it wasn't terribly threatening when you saw the powerless guy in a suit get his butt kicked to try and show the bad guys were a real threat compared to... the main characters who all have super powers.
- This even happened to his Starfish Character counterpart Moonlight Knight, who was effortlessly beaten down by the villain at the end of the story arc he appeared in for the sake of establishing how dire things had gotten. Needless to say, it wasn't that surprising considering just who he was split off from. At least Moonlight Knight had a sword.
- Just being the title character doesn't earn Inuyasha an exemption from Worf duties. Generally any fight against a major opponent has to open with the same ritual: Inuyasha unsheathes his BFS; headlong running charge into opponent; sword gets blocked (either directly or by some magic force field), and sparks fly for several seconds; then Inuyasha gets thrown back to the practical horizon. (Note that in this case, the big tough character often does prove capable of beating the opponent handily — but still has to give them the chance to toss him. Perhaps it's etiquette?)
- Bleach arguably has just as many Worfs as Naruto. Name a character and odds are they've either fallen victim to this trope or exploited it at least once each.
- Vegeta is doomed to this role for most of the series, after his Heel Face Turn. He eventually realizes this and turns to The Dark Side again. But he gets better.
- Kid Goku is also notable as this during the original series, especially during his first two fights against Mercenary Tao and Demon King Picollo.
- Picollo, Gotenks, and Gohan all suffer this at the hands of Super Buu as well, getting absorbed by him.
- The same goes for Android 17 in the Cell Saga.
- Ultimate Muscle is another one of those series where every good guy except the main character seems doomed to lose every fight they get in. Dik Dik van Dik and Wally Tusket get a lot of Lampshade Hanging about their repetitive losses, but there's also Jaeger, whose ability is lauded far and wide...and who loses every single match he gets into. (Well, OK, he wins one, but that was where he was fighting on a team.)
- Replace wrestling with card games and you have Yu Gi Oh's Mai.
- Meanwhile, its predecessor Kinnikuman was also notorious for Worfing guys... not to mention Worfing guys who had Worfed other guys (Warsman over Ramenman, Buffaloman over Warsman, Akuma Shogun or the Hell's Missionaries over Buffaloman...)
- In Cardcaptor Sakura, Kerberos finally returns to his awesomely Badass-looking true form... and gets hammered every. Single. Time. Often, it's explained by having Kero's creator be the one to send the threat to test our heroes, but not always. It'd be nice to have Kerberos' true form prove non-useless once in a while.
- Somewhat lampshaded in the manga, near the end of the first arc, when they acknowledge Kerberos' vicinity makes The Earthy stronger, and Kero comments to himself "My true form isn't helping at all."
- Happens in Fate Stay Night, especially on Servant Berserker. His Master makes no secret of his true identity as Hercules. He's called The Strongest Servant, with his Class enhancing his already insane power, attacks below 'A'-rank barely scratch him, and he revives 12 times before he can be Killed Off For Real. You'd think he's a shoe-in to win the Grail War. However, he is always eliminated half-way through any scenario, all to show how impressive some other character is or has become. Taking from a modified text above... "If those things took down Berserker in less than two minutes, what chance do we have?" Isn't it sad, Bahsahkah?
- Then of course, almost all of the Servants take the Worf Effect head-on in Heaven's Feel, as True Assassin and the Shadow between them kill all of the other servants except Rider, in most cases insultingly quickly, just to show off how dangerous they are (of course, True Assassin turns out to be pretty pathetic when the Shadow isn't there to distract and slow down his opponent at the same time).
- Saint Seiya's Big Guy Taurus Aldebaran devolved into this after his first fight, serving only to establish that the new antagonists could defeat a Gold Saint and were thus worthy of their place on the Algorithm. He ended up being killed offscreen in the last arc of the manga. At least he got a Tear Jerker and a delayed-effect Crowning Moment Of Awesome out of it.
- Even more ignominious: Shiryu's Dragon Shield, purportedly one of the strongest ever due to being submerged for millennia at the bottom of the holy Rozan waterfalls, is usually the first thing that cracks, splits, or outright shatters when he faces a new class of enemy.
- Some sections of the fandom have made it a drinking game: if it's a movie or an OAV, drink every time Seiya faces the brand new Olympian Of The Week only to be swatted aside by the villain's top lieutenant with no effort whatsoever.
- Need a quick way to show a mage's power in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha? Have them shatter Nanoha's Deflector Shields, which are amongst the strongest in the series and the reason why Nanoha can invoke The Worf Barrage often.
- Meanwhile, after her first battle, poor Vita has often found herself on the receiving end of this. May it be a powered-up Nanoha forcing her to the defensive, or Nanoha giving her an Oh Crap moment with one attack alone, or Zest smacking her out of her Unison form, it's like she's receiving karmic backlash from her initial beatdown of the main character.
- Sanosuke Sagara from the Rurouni Kenshin anime. In the manga he was a much more formidable opponent.
- The AD Police in Bubblegum Crisis. Despite having high-yeld firearms, railguns, powered suits and combat helicopters they often cannot stop rogue Boomers, although to be fair the cases depicted usually involve very out of the ordinary boomers going rogue. Their K11s did stop a BU-12B Combat boomer (both getting destroyed in the process, sadly, although the second one was pure jinx on the AD Police side) in "Blow Up", though. Leon sniped Largo before he could pulverize the Knight Sabers in an orbital beam of death, too.
- How can we forget End Of Evangelion? Asuka reboots out of the Mind Rape-induced Heroic BSOD she's had since the late episodes of the TV series, takes back several levels of badass, and wails on the JSSDF and nine mass-produced EVAs like it's nothing. She thinks she's won just in time, but then she gets pierced with the Lance of Longinus, then the MP EVAs come back to life, descend on her EVA like a flock of buzzards, and proceed to devour it, with her feeling every last bit of pain thanks in no small part to having a 300% sync ratio with her EVA. Finally, she gets hit by more lances, finishing her off in perhaps the most brutal scene in the entire series. Meanwhile, NERV personnel are watching the scene in utter shock and horror, except for Maya, who is throwing up.
- The Fatal Fury OVA had big tough wrestler Raiden give Joe Higashi a very hard time, with Joe just barely attaining victory after finally using his Hurricane Upper. Later on, in Fatal Fury The Motion Picture, Big Bear is taken out in one hit by a brainwashed Cheng Sin Zan.
- Speaking of Joe, in the second OVA he himself is subjected to the Worf Effect, throwing everything, including his Screw Upper at Krauser, only to be taken out by Krauser's basic projectile attack.
- And then almost everyone from the OVAs who made an appearance in the Motion Picture, save Terry, was Worfed either by the Big Bad (Joe, Andy, and Mai) or the Big Bad's henchmen (Lawrence, Cheng). Geese, Billy, and Duck did not appear in a fighting capacity, and as such were spared similar fates.
- Despite not being one of the top tier characters on One Piece, Franky is commonly Worfed by the Big Bad after he joins the crew. Perhaps it's because he's the only member of the cast who is literally Made Of Iron, while for the other crew members it's more figurative.
- While Usopp's informed strength is questionable (he's the weakest crew member, but often wins fights), he often loses easily against stronger enemies that other members of the crew go on to defeat, such as Kuro, Mr. 2, the Franky Family and Jyabura.
- The Big Bad of the arc often does this to Luffy's crewmates before Luffy goes to fight him (Buggy did it to Zoro, Arlong did it to Zoro and Sanji, Eneru did it to Sanji, Robin, Zoro and Wiper, and Moria and Oz did it to the entire crew), typically to establish that he's too strong for anyone except Luffy to defeat. The villains often do it to minor characters to reveal just how strong they are, sometimes offscreen (for example, Mr. 3 supposedly captured a criminal worth 42 million, and this is revealed back when Luffy's bounty was 30 million).
- In the Sabaody Archipelago, nine pirates with bounties of over 100 million berries are introduced to show what kind of competition the Straw Hats face for searching for the One Piece, and are hyped up as strong enough to get that far in the Grand Line. Four of them end up getting Worfed fairly easily by Marine Admiral Kizaru and one of the Pacifista cyborgs- which, while an inferior copy of Kuma, requires the entire Straw Hat crew to defeat.
- to be fair, Kizaru pretty much won the super power lottery when it comes to special abilities, and it took the First mate of Gol D. Rogers to even hold him off
- The Sea Kings often fall prey to this, as the first one introduced manages to eat Higuma and bite off Shanks' arm (although back then, he seemed like an ordinary pirate), and are presented as fearsome creatures. Now, quite a few characters are able to defeat them fairly easily, including giants, marine vice admirals, and Blue Gorillas in order to establish their strength.
- Subverted in Fist Of The North Star. When Jyuza battles Raoh for the first time, he easily manhandles him and humiliates him and his entire army. Unfortunately, while he was kicking the crap out of Raoh it's revealed after the battle that Jyuza fell victim to a Game Breaking Injury that sets up his tragic demise.
- In the Fullmetal Alchemist anime, Basque Grand, a powerful State Alchemist, easily loses to Scar in order to show how strong he is (the battle is mentioned but never shown in the manga). Greed's loss against Wrath in the manga serves a similar purpose.
- Eyeshield21 is based around this principle. Any team which proves themselves to be strong against the Devil Bats (including teams that actually beat them) are never more than fodder for the next team- indeed, the Hashiratani Deers were introduced solely for this purpose, to show off the power of the underdog Kyoushin Poseidons. This also applies to individual players, most egrariously the heavyweight linemen — considering how easily Gaou crushed Banba (previously the standard for strength, tying with the Devil Bats' own center Kurita), Mr. Don (who can smackdown Gaou with ease) should be strong enough to split an anvil by coughing at it!
- Mahou Sensei Negima had the Big Bad of the Kyoto arc releasing a demon god. This demon god seems to exist solely for Evangeline to show off how Bad Ass she is by utterly obliterating it without even trying. Then she tops it by forcing Fate to retreat.
Comics
- Runaways: Molly, who had yet to be in a battle that really tested her strength, came out to show just how powerful she was by quickly dispatching Wolverine (the Marvel Universe's resident Bad Ass) and throwing him through a set of church doors.
- To an end, despite (or perhaps because of) his badassery, a good half of the numerous, seemingly omnipresent cameos Wolverine makes in various issues involve him being beaten within an inch of his life and thrown through something. Fortunately, his Healing Factor fixes him up in a split, allowing him to move to the next. This troper will know they're being serious when the Bad Ass in question kills Wolverine, but given how much he's come back from, that will probably never happen.
- Until his recent death Captain America was another popular go-to guy to get the beat-down in a new or relaunched title; to a lesser extent the rest of his fellow Avengers, too.
- In a few Cross Overs, The X-Men villain Juggernaut was used in this manner, to show that even an "unstoppable" character is no match for Onslaught or Superman (or, in the cartoon series, Gladiator).
- This trope might as well be called the Vision Effect, since this always happens to The Avengers' Vision.
- In the Justice League of America comic-book series, Prometheus's Bad Ass credentials came when he defeated Batman in unarmed combat. For that matter, given their stature in the DC universe, if any of the Justice League are taken down with unusal ease in their field of strength, it's a kind of The Worf Effect. (The nature of comic-book storytelling means this happens quite often.) This was pulled on all of them in Grant Morrison's first arc with the rebooted JLA... except, since it was part of the point of the arc to explain why he was on a team with Superman, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, et al., Batman.
- Upon Red Hulk's introduction, one of the first things he did was kill a Wendigo and Hulk's longtime foe Abomination. Then he tears a SHIELD helicarrier a new one, forcing it to crash, smacking around Iron Man and She-Hulk while he was up there. Then he heads to the base where Bruce Banner is being held, and effortlessly clears the defenses around Bruce. He beats up Bruce's sidekick Rick Jones in his Abomination form, and the Hulk himself. He's interrupted by Thor and beats him, too — with his own hammer, no less — and causes an earthquake in San Francisco before being stopped by Thor and Hulk. The entire Red Hulk storyline was basically him beating up powerful, established characters.
- This frequently happens to the Martian Manhunter who is regularly rendered comatose by scanning the mind of any Big Bad. You'd think that after seeing "the greatest evil in the universe" some dozen times he would at least learn to stop looking into people's minds.
- Eventually, he was killed off, again via the Worf Effect — stabbed through the heart in Final Crisis by Libra, in order to demonstrate how much better a leader of supervillains he was.
- The Sentry of Marvel Comics. He was based on the Silver-Age Superman, more powerful than every-frickin-body, so mighty that he made the comics universe and the real world forget he had ever existed (which he had to do because he was so almighty that the mere memory of him would risk destroying the world). Now he's getting lunched by everybody. Including the Golden-Age Human Torch.
- Happens to items in Ultimate Marvel. New threats will repeatedly be confined in something described as "strong enough to contain the Hulk." Any time something like this is brought in, it's going to be shattered almost immediately to show how powerful this new threat is. You'd think they'd start using one of these threats as the new standard.
- Squirrel Girl has the power to temporarily inflict the Worf Effect on her opponents. Hence her defeats of Deadpool, Thanos,
a Doombot Dr Doom...
- Doom occasionally suffers this, whether from Dazzler and other new heroes, or to show how tough a new villain is (IE Miller's promise of a "Master of Doom"). Thank Kirby for Doombots, eh?
- X-23 and Rockslide in New X-Men (and other appearances after the series end) they get stuck with this as they are the strongest and scariest team members... who are practically immortal. Rockslide has been blown up twice BEFORE his power became not dying to physical harm. And X-23 is just like Wolverine.
- Incidentally, during New X-Men, the original X-Men cast ALL SUCK. If the Students are around every move and strategy and power of the older cast instantly is wrong. In Quest for Magik the X-Men are all captured and held in an energy field unable to help and during Messiah Comple X the X-Men have to hand over the fight to the Students due to it being something Sinister's mooks didn't plan on.
- In the same vein as above, in Uncanny X-Men, Empath dispatched all the X-men with his powers making them feel every pain in their lives unable to attack him. Until Pixie stabbed him in the head. For a moment every character of importance got jobbed.
- Before the Next Generation series was even created, DC Comics had a Klingon member of the Enterprise crew (Konom) & in one issue he was nearly killed by the issue's villain (Redjac) to which a member of security remarked, "What kind of thing can toss a Klingon around like he was a rag doll?"
- In Star Trek: Countdown, the prequel comic to the 2009 movie, we see Worf again, 10 years after Nemesis and now a Klingon general. He gets impaled through the chest by Nero, but fortunately he was Only Mostly Dead.
Films
- In The Lord Of The Rings, the Balrog smiting Gandalf; as well as Lurtz, the explosives at Helm's Deep, and the large armored troll at the Black Gate smiting Aragorn. From the extended editions, you can add Saruman's fireball.
- Don't forget the Lord of the Nazgul (or Witch-king, if you prefer) gratuitously breaking Gandalf's staff in The Return of the King (extended edition), just to show how tough he was.
- In Jurassic Park III, the T. rex (which had been the biggest, scariest dinosaur up until then) is killed by the larger Spinosaurus, which is actually a fish eater, not the unstoppable Big Bad the film made it out to be. Of course, some fans believe that didn't happen.
- Orca, released in the wake of Jaws, opens with a killer whale pwning a great white shark.
- That is amusingly true to Real Life. In one recorded instance, a mommy Orca killed an adult great white shark and fed it to its babies.
- Jaws II fired a salvo back at them with an Orca shown washed up on the beach with enormous shark bites taken out of its body.
- Brawl is, by far the most heavily armed Decepticon... and he spends the majority of the Mission City battle being ripped to shreds.
- Morpheus in the first Matrix film, when he faces Agent Smith for the first time.
- Frozon's only fight in The Incredibles, and he gets knocked down in fifteen seconds.
Literature
- Feral of Soon I Will Be Invincible is a rare literary example of The Worf Effect. A ferocious tiger-man who's ended the entire careers of supervillains, and his entire plot importance consists of being beaten up by a baseline human, being blown away by a mad scientist, being knocked out by a mad scientist, being beaten up by mecha-insect aliens in a flashback, and being beaten up by a mad scientist again.
- In the final installment of The Dark Tower series, Stephen King takes Randall Flagg — semi-immortal wizard, Physical God, Big Bad of several King novels, Dragon to Satan himself — and promptly has him killed and eaten by Roland's half-demon bastard child who's less than a day old at the time.
- In defense, he was not in top condition IIRC, and he kept a man/spider demonic hybrid very close to him.
- In the later novels of Alan Dean Foster's Flinx and Pip series, Pip suffers from this trope. Any time a serious threat to Flinx presents itself, the very first thing it does is restrain or otherwise deal with his minidrag.
Live Action TV
- Sometimes Spock suffers The Worf Effect on Star Trek The Original Series.
- Star Trek The Next Generation and Star Trek Deep Space Nine, as noted above. The many occasions of this on TNG collected here.
- Special mention has to be given to "Conspiracy", where an adversary throws around Riker, La Forge and Worf before someone has the sense to phaser him.
- Another mention is for a weird example that is not quite an inversion or subversion. Worf is at one point captured by the Dominion, and is forced to fight Jem Hadar to train them. He does quite well at first, but exhaustion and more and more skilled soldiers leads to him getting his ass kicked. He refuses to concede, despite barely being able to stand. The Jem Hadar eventually surrenders because he can't actually 'beat' Worf, just break him. Worf got his own ass handed to him to prove how badass HE was.
- This troper had a long conversation with Michael Dorn once on an airplane to Europe. Dorn revealed that the bat'leth, the martial art's moves developed for use with this weapon, and a script allowing Worf to use both to wipe out an enemy were all specifically created to combat the Worf Effect.
- In Star Trek: First Contact, the Defiant gets badly beaten up by the Borg cube... the very enemy it was designed to fight. Guess who was captaining the ship at the time?
- Notably, in one episode of Deep Space Nine, Worf himself deliberately utilizes this trope by letting Martok defeat him in a duel so as to restore his crew's confidence in him.
- Other Klingons suffer from this tendency, too. In the first movie, the opening sequence is three Klingon ships, all looking quite badass... and all three get taken to pieces in about ten seconds by V'Ger. I think it must have something to do with the rubber foreheads....
- And then there's the Borg. In the ten-second-long teaser of the two-parter that introduced Seven of Nine, three cubes were blasted to scrap in one shot apiece from Species 8472 before they could even finish telling them that resistance was futile. Arguably, this is the start of their Villain Decay.
- In Voyager, the ship itself suffered this more than anyone. Whenever they're in a battle, listen to the "shields down to X percent!" calls. This ship's in critical condition by the third volley, whereas other Trek ships can take much more of a beating. The most egregious example is "Prophecy". A Kirk-era Klingon ship that got to the Delta Quadrant the long way attacks, and this eighty-year-old ship manages to take the shields down to something like 20%.
- By comparison, when the Enterprise-D faced a Klingon ship from the same era in TNG, it was essentially immune to the 80-year old Klingon weapons.
- As if that wasn't bad enough Voyager was the most advanced ship Star Fleet had ever produced when it was first launched.
- An argument could be made that Voyager's reliance on gel packs for power puts it at a disadvantage here. Back in the Alpha Quadrant, Voyager might be seen as a highly advanced ship due to the source of its power being fairly plentiful back home. But part of the format of the series is that these people are having to limp along on their own, and improvise solutions to conserve power as they go. Not that there's any real indication of them doing this after about the second season...
- Interestingly, Worf's predecessor as head of security, Tasha Yar, was killed by a monster purely as a demonstration of power. Seems Worf inherited it.
- In Deep Space 9, the Jem'Hadar were first introduced in a season finale that culminated in the destruction of a Galaxy class starship, sister ship to the USS Enterprise-D - also having a balding captain, interestingly enough - with the only Jem'Hadar ship lost in the engagement being the one that intentionally rammed it. One of the writers later admitted that he had drawn this parallel between the two ships to showcase the Dominion as a credible threat.
- In Power Rangers Mystic Force, Daggeron was unstoppable in his first two or three appearances, but after that, he suffered The Worf Effect often. Mystic Force did have tougher monsters than other seasons, and anyone who could beat on Daggeron could maul the main five, but he was always the first one in and the first one down.
- This "Sixth Ranger Syndrome" can be seen in almost every season of Power Rangers — the new, super powerful extra ranger debuts, defeats the enemy in a few hits, and two episodes later is jobbing out to anything thrown his way.
- Bobby Flay, yes, a Food Network chef, an Iron Chef no less, has been accused of excessive jobbing to his "opponents" on his show Throwdown With Bobby Flay. It's gotten to the point where people actually suspect he's invoking The Worf Effect to make the other guy look good and show just how awesome and culinarily beatable the other guy is.
- Bobby made clear in an interview that he wants to lose Throwdown episodes because it's lame when he wins. The show is ultimately about the really cool and interesting people he challenges, Bobby deliberately making himself into a Worf or jobber (though he does try very hard, and to be totally fair I doubt he could honestly win against, say, someone who made wedding cakes for twenty years when he has to pick it up in a week). On Iron Chef America, he wants to win.
- Angel featured this to some extent with Illyria. After a few episodes of her beating the everloving snot out of everyone and being nigh indestructible (although she does get toned down a bit right before this incident), Marcus Hamilton shows up and beats her to a bloody pulp, with as little effort as Neo put into defeating Smith at the end of The Matrix.
- In Crusade, the Worf Effect was in play when the Drakh destroyed the Excalibur's sister ship.
- In the final episode of Firefly, "Objects In Space," Jubal Early's first act upon boarding Serenity is to effortlessly beat up Mal. He also drop-kicks Shepherd Book, knocking him out instantly.
- Likewise, the Reavers in Serenity. Being continually established throughout the series and movie to be full of unstoppable primal rage - so much so that resident Bad Ass Jayne is terrified of them — serves to set up the moment in the movie where River Tam is revealed to have taken out a whole horde of them by herself and doesn't even have a gorram scratch on her.
Professional Wrestling
- In WWE, The Undertaker is often the victim of this (as opposed to more conventional jobbing), as illustrated by the quote at the top of the page, which causes most viewers who have been watching Smackdown! for more than a few months to conclude that Michael Cole has a very short memory.
- WWE has always had a "Big Man Who Loses" for new people to demonstrate their ability over. Until his recent title reign, it was Kane. But this contributor remembers the fan backlash that came when Big Show went from being the Big Man Who Loses to the man who broke Brock Lesnar's — the man who slaughtered Hulk Hogan — winning streak (with a little outside interference) literally overnight.
- Hacksaw Jim Duggan practically made a career out of setting up the Big Invincible Monster for Hulk Hogan.
- How about when Brock Lesnar debuted? Within a week he was throwing the 350lb Rikishi around like a ragdoll. Within a month he was doing the same to the near-400lb Mark Henry. Within a year he was throwing the 500lb Big Show around with suplexes. You tell me you saw all that and weren't wowed and I'll tell you that you're a liar.
- In a very unusual setup, WCW had Goldberg and Meng Worf Effect for each other. Meng would batter Goldberg all over the ring for roughly three quarters of the match, when Goldberg usually tossed opponents around effortlessly. Then at the point where Meng would usually apply the Tongan Death Grip and win the match, Goldberg would rally back, spear, jackhammer, pinfall. The two of them had surprisingly good chemistry in the ring together, and despite Goldberg winning every single battle between them, the fights were popular enough that Pizza Hut shot a commercial with Goldberg and Meng putting aside their differences over a pizza.
Tabletop Games
- Used regularly in Warhammer 40000 fluff and books. Anytime an army or faction is shown in a Codex or article not about them, you better believe they're getting their asses kicked by whoever it is featuring.
- A good example is the opening movie for Dawn Of War: Soulstorm *. Tau Fire Warriors are a devastating unit — a standard three-member team can annihilate a starting squad of Space Marines with ease. So naturally, the opening movie shows their pulse fire bouncing harmlessly off the Sisters of Battle. Before this, Dark Crusade had Space Marines being wiped out by Necrons.
Video Games
- In another dinosaur example, the one-eyed T. rex in Dino Crisis 2 (Who was nigh invulnerable to your weapons, as well as taking on a tank and surviving gets ripped apart in seconds by a Giganotosaurus. This one is even more grievous than the Spinosaurus example above, as the Giganotosaur is depicted as so huge it can pick up the Tyrannosaur in its mouth and toss it around like a rag doll. A real-life matchup would be much more evenly weighted, as the real Giganotosaurus is only marginally bigger than T. rex, posesses a more gracile build, and lacks the Tyrant Reptile's bone-crushing bite strength.
- Opalneria Rain from Grim Grimoire is a powerful necromancer and a respected teacher at the school, yet in every single repetition of the Groundhog Day Loop she is either killed or rendered unconscious, often by the main character (Three times and counting). You begin to wonder towards the end if she's offended some great cosmic force or something…
- Halo 3: As the only competent human still alive besides the player character, Sargeant Johnson falling victim to this trope was inevitable. A Pelican gets shot down? Johnson was on it. Enemies storm the base? Johnson gets pushed back and you have to finish the job for him. Need a third team leader for a crucial operation? The normal human takes the riskiest spot, while the Super Soldier and the Proud Warrior Race Guy get targets that are not directly connected to the nearby enemy stronghold. It gets to the point where our Badass Normal becomes a Distressed Damsel of sorts — and a rescue attempt is mounted by the person whom you'd expect to fill the role.
- Ridley's introduction in The Subspace Emissary of Super Smash Bros Brawl has him brutally wailing on Samus Aran, his classic arch-enemy from Metroid. Considering that Samus is basically pure Bad Assitude in the Nintendo universe, this is a big deal, considering that he gets the bejeezus shocked out of him by Pikachu, of all people.
- Gears Of War 2: Skorges first act in the game is to leap onto the battlefield and immediately saws a tank in half. He then begins to solo both The Big Guy and a Mauve Shirt while the player character(s) can do nothing but watch. Granted, the exact ending of the conflict was never shown and The Big Guy wasn't actually killed, but still. His predecessor, RAAM, proved that he was Serious Business by killing your Lt effortlessly, though the Lt only really showed his Bad Ass-ness in the same cutscene he was killed.
- Umineko No Naku Koro Ni: So, Kyrie and Rudolf have just beaten two of the Seven Sisters of Purgatory, Beatrice's strongest furniture. Eva-Beatrice uses this opportunity to summon her own familiars, the Siesta Sisters, who kill the pair in seconds.
- Both in-game and out, the Heavy is the biggest, toughest character in the game, able to soak up rockets like a sponge and kill multiple people in a second. ("He punched out all my blood!") Over the course of the seven Meet the Teams currently released, he has been gibbed three times, shot to death by a level one sentry, headshotted by the Sniper, and beaten to death in three hits by a baseball bat. He is killed more often than anyone else, and commonly by things he could easily tank, in fact — which has given rise to the idea that all the Heavies who suffer this are imposters, and the real Heavy is the one in his own Meet the Team.
- Worse; T F2wiki.net currently rates the other eight classes as somewhere between 'Highly Dangerous' and 'Extremely Dangerous' to the Heavy. He reclaimed his throne as in-game resident badass after Valve increased his damage and tightened his firing cone; a week later, they released the Scout update - including a weapon whose sole purpose seems to be rendering the Heavy comatose with relative ease.
- The player characters seem to fit that role in the later Metal Gear games. I've heard of a drinking game where you take a shot every time Snake gets beaten up by the Boss or Volgin in a cutscene in Metal Gear Solid 3 (You'll end up TANKED...).
- Inverted in Persona 4, Yukiko laughs at nearly anything even slightly funny, the fact that she fails to laugh at Teddie's jokes shows off just how bad they are.
- In Chrono Trigger, Magus falls victim to this when he tries attacking Lavos, but gets dispatched almost as quickly as the heroes were.
Web Comics
- As this strip explains, Black Mage of 8-Bit Theater functions as both the Worf and the Butt Monkey. Probably from how he almost always uses one spell, that while powerful, can only be used once a day.
- In Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic, Glon the half-orc and Clover Firelight the halfling are pretty much the series whipping boy and girl, respectively, despite being exceptional fighters. (This also works verbally.)
- In Sluggy Freelance, Bun-Bun found himself used like this during "Dangerous Days Ahead". Getting his butt kicked by the monstrous CEO form of clone!Aylee was a major plot point because in the past, Aylee was not strong enough to win a fight with him.
- Their first battle ended in a draw as they both collapsed from exhaustion, although Bun-Bun managed to slice off Aylee's arm before the end (it regenerated). The fact that "Aylee" was a clone whose evolution was controlled to make her stronger helps.
- Oasis sometimes falls victim to this, as while she is a deadly assassin, she also loses against Clone!Aylee, and previously lost to demon-possessed Gwynn.
- Finally, in June 2009 Bun-Bun and Oasis faced each other in a full-out fight. Who would be the Worf this time? Bun-Bun. It was likely decided by the fact that the storyline at the time was all about Oasis and it would have been cut anticlimactically short if she'd been the one to lose.
- The Order of the Stick arguably uses this one when the previously comic relief Monster in the Darkness puts a world of hurt on Miko barely even trying (literally). This is amplified by the fact that Miko has previously defeated the entire Order singlehandedly.
- The Order, however, has never fought the Monster in the Darkness, so it's a bad comparison. The bad guys keep him in shadow "until needed", and so far they haven't needed him. Since he can fling a person miles away by gently poking them, and create earthquakes by stomping lightly, they probably see him as being too overkill to use at relatively minor foes when they've also got a hobgoblin army. Also, Miko was soundly beaten by Roy once he got his sword back, as a storm was on during their earlier battle. Durkon (the healer), did not participate, Haley could not fire her bow straight in the wind, and Vaarsuvius' magic was disrupted by a combination of rain and other distractions. Finally, Roy was only carrying a wooden club and Belkar was quickly knocked out.
- In the second Order vs Miko fight, she did defeat the entire order, save Durkon who (presumably) wouldn't participate. Roy chalked the loss up to Railroading.
- Author Rich Burlew actually described how the fight would've gone on the forums, and practically none of the Oot S members were in top shape for most of the fight. Durkon, as you predicted, did not participate (aside from a failed Diplomacy action and some heals, and even late in the fight, he only healed downed members to keep them from dying), Roy was still wielding the aforementioned club, Haley's bow was very quickly sundered by Windstriker (you can see the snapped string in the above comic), Vaarsuvius was targetted first and taken out by Miko in round one (s/he was later healed by Durkon back into fighting shape, but was unable to cast an effective spell before being taken down again), Elan's few actions (attempting to heal V with a potion and trick Miko with an illusion) failed, and Belkar was kept stunned by Miko the entire fight (the little guy just could NOT make a Will Save; blame his piss-poor Wisdom). In fact, Roy actually had a chance to finish Miko off, but decided against it (since if he DID fail, Miko would have likely killed all of them), instead opting to surrender in exchange for his allies' safety.
- In Roy's one on one with Miko, she had just lost most of her powers as well as her magical items, which only work on Paladins in good standing (according to the commentary in War and [XPs]).
- A more typical example occurs in one of the prequel books. The Order is about to face a guard monster, only to have it hit Roy with a roll of 2. Upon realizing that it can nail the party member with the probable highest Armor Class with such a low roll, they flee.
- Sara and the other Time Monks from Errant Story. The author directly invokes the trope in a commentary comic.
Web Animation
- This particular effect happens to Yellow in Super Mario Bros Z. Supposedly the toughest of the Axem Rangers X, not only does he get his first strike turned into a dud, he's also the first one of the group to be killed off when Mecha Sonic comes calling, followed quickly by the other four. Also, this effect happens earlier with the Koopa Bros. A couple episodes earlier, their Chaos Emerald fueled special attack decimated the heroes. Mecha Sonic blew through them like they were wet rice paper.
Western Animation
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