What Kind Of Lame Poweris Heart Anyway - Television Tropes & Idioms

Hyatt in Excel Saga has the amazing ability to die horribly and come back to life. She only has slight control over her super dying power, so she tends to bleed from the mouth and fall over at the worst times.
- When Excel was in control of her body, she was able to cough up blood with enough force to knock people over.
Almost all of the Aasu sisters in Puni Puni Poemi are victims of this trope, which wouldn't be so bad if they didn't make up the entire team. "Super breakfall" (the power to never be injured if you're knocked off your feet), anyone?
- Lampshaded during a fight scene when they realize they can't fight the bad guy since they only have defensive powers.
Played straight and subverted in Zettai Karen Children: Kaoru (the telekinetic) is by far the most powerful of the trio, so Shiho (the mind-reader) DOES carry around a gun to make up for the non-lethality of her ability, leaving Aoi (the teleporter) as the weakest member who constantly worries that her only use is transporting the others to the scene.
In the first season of Sailor Moon, Sailor Mercury was the only team member without an offensive power. Her first power was essentially a cloud of bubbles that drastically reduced visibility (apparently only for the enemy) and lowered the temperature by a few degrees. She received her first offensive power in the middle of the second season, but in the meantime she stayed in the background with her visor and computer, providing useful analysis and strategy. In the third season, Sailor Chibi-Moon assumed the "useless member" role, as her "Pink Sugar Heart Attack" was shown to be so weak and pointless that it mostly only annoyed the villain (it also occasionally just didn't do anything period, and on at least one occasion backfired on her). She got upgraded in the fourth season, by tying Sailor Moon's powers to hers.
- Also, possibly because the anime Overtook The Manga, some anime characters were considerably de-powered compared to their manga counterparts. Tuxedo Mask, who had named attacks in the manga (like the deadly explosive attack La Smoking Bomber) but not the anime (where his only weapons were his cane and throwable roses), is a prominent example. Then there's the aforementioned Chibi-Moon, whose powers were only a joke in the "Chibiusa's Picture Diary" gag chapters, and even then not to the extent that they are in the anime. Another example is Sailor Aluminum Seiren's attack "Galactica Tsunami"; it was rather powerful in the manga, but its anime namesake consisted of... a defeated Seiren throwing around food and drinks just to prove how desperate she was. This would also apply to the other Sailor Animamates, who I don't think got even to use their attacks in the anime. They didn't even really fight. They only had the bracelets and that's it; their own powers were practically nonexistent.
  - Tuxedo Mask's roses had the ability to paralyze or blind those they hit, shatter various power amplifiers, and a couple other such things that generally screwed the monster of the day over, so it's not like he was useless.
  - Tuxedo Mask was also able to use multiple roses to create a circle around the Baddie that would create an energy field, which was actually kind of cool.
  - And don't knock the cane. Whereas all the senshi only had a magic attack, he was able to actually fight (Lita wasn't too bad either). As Usagi was the only one able to actually defeat monsters (Most of the time) this, combined with his roses, actually made him more powerful than the other senshi.
  - Tuxedo Mask was pretty much a Japanese version of Batman at the time of his creation (he did have some superhuman powers, but nothing that would really help all that much in a fight). He kept up with his badass fighting skills relatively well in the manga where the anime... Not so much.
All the Power Users in The Law Of Ueki sound lame on paper. Ueki himself has the ability to turn garbage into trees; Don't laugh, it's a very powerful ability because it can cycle endlessly. Other powers include turning electricity into sugar as long as your eyes are closed (meaning you can drop the sugar on an enemy and open your eyes), turning towels into sheets of metal, turning your forehead into diamonds, etc. Robert, however, has the power to turn thoughts into reality, which is inarguably incredible.
- There are three types of power, roughly and all of them turn something into something else. Ones that use "ammo" (trash into trees, water into fire), ones with limiting conditions (turning a towel into steel whenever you hold your breath, turning your forehead into diamonds when your hands are in your pocket, and a third, looser category that requires a specific condition, but the powers are relatively unlimited after that (staying with somebody for 24 hours to earn their power, making someone love your glasses). The sequel manga does the same thing only you use an item to do something else (Ueki uses a mop to Grab things for example).
- The powers themselves are still pretty lame, even Robert's. They become awesome when the characters figure out how to creatively exploit the loopholes and limiting conditions to their advantage, which can turn a battle between exceptionally lame abilities into something interesting (and often epic).
Yukino Kikukawa's CHILD in Mai-HiME, Diana, is basically a Magical Security Cam. In certain plots this is quite useful like the time she uses it to locate kidnapped or missing people and then tell the others where they are, like in the cases of Natsuki and Takumi, but given how everyone is expected to battle to the death, when it's time to fight this turns out to be useless.
- In the manga, she gets a different CHILD, making her marginally more useful, but only when she works in tandem with Haruka. Whenever Haruka's light-based attacks miss their mark (and they usually do, when her obsession with punishing Mai and Natsuki gets the better of her), Yukino uses her Mirror Wall ability to redirect the beams and set them on the right course.
- Subverted in Mai-HiME: Fuuka Taisen, a doujin fighting game based on the anime, where Yukino is one of the main playable characters. Her CHILD is given plant-like powers to allow her to hold her own in a fight, since she can't rely on Haruka (who is an unlockable character in that game) for help.
Singing to defeat the enemy is certainly a ridiculous power, although it's not so bad in Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, as all seven girls have it. The far more useful Panthalassa powers of Kaito, and later, Rihito are never used until the end, something to do with late awakenings and, in Kaito's case, Laser Guided Amnesia.
Cyborg 009's female member, Francoise aka 003 had non-offensive, surveillance-oriented powers (though she could still use a laser gun).
- Mildly subverted in the 2001 season, where her surveillance powers are augmented and she is given enough weaponry and machine handling skills to not only becoming a pretty good pilot, but to disarm a biological bomb on her own, without Gilmore's guidance. She's still in the sidelines, but at least baby can do more than point out where the bad guys are and can be more of a Team Mom than a standard Chick.
For some reason, writers love to set this up using plant control as a power and then immediately subvert it, showing off how powerful controlling plants can be (see also Chlorophyll Kid in Comic Books below).
- Chai the Wood mage from Magical Starsign was regarded as one of the weaker members of the party — until he used a single seed to break a mountain in half.
Completely subverted in One Piece, where having powers like "being made of rubber" or "changing your weight" are all turned into extremely useful powers by the characters using them. Think being made of rubber is useless? How about giving your punches the energy of a bullet? Or pumping your blood faster around your body using your legs? Or inflating your bones to use giant sized attacks? Or...
- A shining example of such a subversion is (not so) Harmless Villain Buggy the Clown, who's pretty much Arm-Fall-Off-Boy (see the Comics section) after taking a (thousand) levels in badass.
  - Better yet is CP9 member Kalifa's power: making bubbles. "Oh well that sure would be useful in a fight!" you say? Her bubbles allow her to 'wash' anything off a person - including their strength, endurance and, possibly, Devil's Fruit power.
Pretear has Shin, whose ability is to control plants. In the manga version he had an excuse for being useless unrelated to his powers: the Knights apparently use their elements at the expense of their own Life Energy, which is dangerous when the user is too small — Shin is the youngest of the Knights. The anime version removed the connection between Elemental Powers and Life Energy... and Shin still wasn't allowed to fight, neither alone nor with Himeno, instead being set to create Phantom Zones and being almost completely useless when these are not needed. Apparently, even water is more useful than plants, not to mention the abilities to burn or freeze things, or to shoot laser beams. One may wonder if he was like this even before being reincarnated as a kid.
Digimon Adventure has Gomamon, whose rookie "attack" is basically to control fish and is only seen actually battling twice over the entire series. Yet this becomes an inversion when you realise that it works in other situations while the Rookie attacks are only effective one time in the entire series (and Gomamon was helping out for that one too, tripping the monster).
- In Digimon Adventure 02, Armadimon's evolution through the Digimental of Faith/Reliability is into a submarine. It's only slightly more often seen than Gomamon's fighting.
  - One with missiles, and that can operate in air (by the power of an ambiguous background during his firing Stock Footage).
- Heck, Armadillomon's evolved form is the loser of the group as well. All of the Season 2 characters have a Champion with multiple attacks, usually including a projectile/beam attack, he gets a move where he swings his tail, and that's about it. Not surprisingly, near the end of the show he prompted to use Digmon a few times when he could have used Ancylomon.
- And then there's Pucchiemon. The Digimental that would create him (Kindness) never even showed up in canon, but it did appear on a primarily parodical Drama CD, in which his only power was apparently to "increase positive energy" around it's target. Okay.
Koizumi Itsuki, of Suzumiya Haruhi. Officially, he's an esper — a being with one or more psychic powers, generally being some form of clairvoyance, telepathy, or telekinesis. In reality, he has none of these — his only powers are to enter a very specific kind of Negative Space Wedgie and turn into a flying laser spirit ball thing to fight monsters called shinjin. Not much of an esper, the poor guy, is he?
- He even says as much in the novels, but uses the term "esper" because he can't think of anything better.
- Itsuki's real power is making Kyon uncomfortable with his sexuality.
- It should be noted that his power is used for saving the universe from being written out of existence. So while it is lame and ridiculously narrow in focus Itsuki's ability is still very important.
In Mahou Sensei Negima, a character who forms a pact with a wizard gains a personal artifact; some, naturally are more obviously useful than others. Konoka, for instance, has a pair of fans that heal people, and Asuna has a BFS capable of dispelling summons. On the other hand, Nodoka has a book that displays people's thoughts, and Yue has another book (their extracurriculars all revolve around the library, if you couldn't guess) that has innumerable amounts of magical information and that can access the magical internet to update itself. In RPG terms, which the characters of the series frequently themselves use, the latter two artifacts can be considered to have support roles at best.
- Recent manga chapters subvert this, as all characters get some power-ups one way or another: Yue's book includes a Griffin Dragon's weakness, and Nodoka acquired some items that allow her to use her artifact without actually reading it... which she started to use to anticipate and evade attacks, as well as reading the mind of the Big Bad. Nodoka's her own worst enemy when she uses it on herself, though...
- When Kaede makes her Pactio, her artifact is an Invisibility Cloak. Considering how she's already a master ninja, the other characters are quick to point out how pointless this is. Then it turns out that it actually contains a house. Either way, she's probably not going to have an offensive use for it... unless she figures out how to drop it on someone. Of course, she later begins using it in combat to absorb enemy projectiles and catch her falling classmates.
  - Kaede hardly needs another offensive weapon. The cloak could potentially be used to make quick group escapes, and it's possible there's some Time Distortion effect as well. In any case, her artifact hasn't really been around long enough to explore all the possibilities yet; hell, it may have other abilities that we don't even know about.
- The worst will always be Chisame's artifact: a friggin' Magical Girl scepter that allows her to surf on the Internet. Okay, in practice it's "surf physically on the Internet" with l33t haxx0r powers, but aside from that one time, no one cares. It also comes with significant drawbacks: surfing the Internet requires WiFi access, and using the artifact at all requires nearby electronics to draw power from. Consequently, after being stranded in the magic world, her magical artifact ran out of batteries.
  - On the other hand, her artifact does give her access to the "data-spirit clusters" she met on her first trip, allowing them to exist in the real world as her familiars. When the artifact ran out of power, of course, they disappeared too...although it seems that her artifact has been recharged in some city or another, as the data-spirits can be seen with her in the background occasionally.
  - Plus, after they fight Fate's minions, she mentions she used her artifact to "set up a defense." What that means is unclear, since we didn't get to actually see it.
  - It crosses into Heart Is An Awesome Power territory when she uses it to destroy Kurt Godel's illusionary space, easily circumventing the highest level defense systems in existence in the process.
In The Slayers, there were many, many magic spells... from the earth-shattering Giga Slave, to the Ferious Breed, the spell that summons pigeons. But Lina did find a use for the pigeon-summoning spell twice: first time, to break a hole in a pocked universe, second time, to knock off Pocota, who is not much larger than a pigeon.
- Ferious Breed was originally a spell to summon a gargoyle, which is admittedly more useful; Lina uses a custom version for pigeon-summoning purposes. However, there's also the spell Diem Claw, the sole use of which is to create a Dramatic Wind that makes the user's cape flutter dramatically behind them. Not to mention Kyu Kyum Spin and Zelas Gort, which summon sea-cucumbers and jellyfish, respectively. (Not very useful in battle, but they make for great eating!)
- Or how about Meteor Fall, which causes a meteor to fall... but it won't reach the ground, so all you get is a pretty shooting star.
In Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, the answer to the question "What Kind Of Lame Power Is Heart Anyway?" is, invariably, "The kind that can kill you."
- In a moment of sheer irony, the most obviously offensive-based power is downright useless compared to the more obscure ones.
- The main character of Part 5, Giorno, has the ability to turn nonliving objects into living ones. He demonstrates the real usefulness of this ability several times, like turning a gun into a banana, or a bullet into a tree to ensnare a helicopter. If he hits a human with this ability, their senses speed up to the point where their body can't keep up, effectively paralyzing them.
- Then there's the character whose power is making zippers on things by punching them. This sounds stupid until you realize that said character can make zippers on anything he touches, including your body.
Played with the Jusenkyō transformations in Ranma ½: when the Musk Dynasty warriors Lime, Mint, and Prince Herb run into a forest full of murderous monkeys, the latter sense the aura of the martial artists and perceive a mighty tiger, a swift wolf, and an all-powerful dragon. They know they can't beat these great beasts, and wisely keep away. But when Ranma, Ryōga, and Mousse pass by, the monkeys see a small girl, a tiny piglet, and a nearsighted duck. They can win! (The monkeys then proceed to gang-pile the trio, who escape entirely covered in scrapes and bruises.)
- Additionally, the trope is subverted when most of the transformations are thought of as major inconveniences that weaken the cursed victim — when a master martial artist is transformed into a small pink cat or a lazy panda, it's easy to see why, and even Ranma himself loses a great deal of physical strength and reach. But then comes along Pantyhose Tarō, who turns into a nigh-invulnerable, multi-story monster that can fly and level buildings with a punch... or Rouge, a meek and demure maiden that transforms into the flame-spewing, lightning-tossing goddess Asura. Next to those kinds of transformations, what kind of lame curse is "panda", anyway?
  - The Asura form tends to give Rouge deity-level muscle cramps, which is why she is after the MacGuffin of the day.
Da Capo: Junichi, grandson of a witch, has two powers: uncontrollably viewing others' dreams (which he emphasizes is incredibly boring in practice and only makes him lose sleep) and making Japanese sweets appear in his hands. On the plus side, though, the latter is useful with the little ladies, and he himself remarks that it is a good way to lose weight, since the required calories are drawn from his body. He can't read minds, shapeshift, talk to the dead, or warp reality, but whatever.
Shugo Chara: First, Amu and Rima were the only ones in the group of the Guardians who could do Chara Transformations and it was always depicted as something amazing and powerful. When the remaining members of the Guardians finally access their own Chara-Naris, everyone of them gets a cool weapon, like Kairi's Katanas or Tadase's holy scepter of doom... Yaya gets Ducks.
- She also gets another ability that puts people to sleep. Unfortunately, it always seems to affect her as well.
Koyomi from Yoku Wakaru Gendai Mahou has learned exactly one magical skill. The ability to summon basins. She doesn't seem to realize that the way she creates them has some potential application, but even then, the basin itself is still a decent, if somewhat lame, power. They're good for offense and defense.
- Subversion, as its a Magikarp Power the entire time, as she summons basins by internally rewriting Code... which allows her to dispel any spell, period. The Sorceror In White is terrified of her due to this.
In Project ARMS, three of the four ARMS protagonists are fitted with incredible bionic limbs in either their arms or legs, letting them fight bad guys effortlessly. The fourth member is fitted with bionic eyes which lets her forsee events and analyze battles to figure out strategies, but is mostly useless in actual combat (a fact she laments). She is later revealed though to have the incredible power to kill all ARMS born of Alice (as well as Alice), including herself, though she is unable to go through with it).
Seikon No Qwaser: The title qwasars have the ability to control a single element. Joshua ended up with element number 111, roentgenium. To put it in perspective, roentgenium does not exist naturally on Earth, and even if it did, its very short half-life would quickly render it not roentgenium (and therefore useless).
From the Urusei Yatsura manga and anime, we have the alien girls Sugar, Ginger and Pepper. Sugar has the power to blend with the background like a chameleon; Ginger can feign death at will; Pepper can shed her whole skin (while still wearing a set of cloth underneath) to escape grapples. Said capabilities could sometimes be handy, but the trio has a much-inflated opinion of their usefulness. Especially compared to the powers of those they consider their "rivals": Lum (a Tsundere who can fly and shoot lightning bolts), Oyuki (an Ice Maiden) and Benten (a Super Strong Hot Amazon fond of BFGs). The fact that Sugar, Ginger and Pepper are morons doesn't help.
In Canaan, Yunyun revealed that her superpower was having two appendices. In fairness, she is more of a comic-relief character.
Gash Bell had the Majestic Twelve, an American team of superheroes who seemed to really have super powers, but were comically inept at using them. The only one who demonstrated any prowess in battle was Big Boing, whose powers are self-explanatory. Her greatest power was chopping her "boing" to distract the enemy. I am not making this up.
It's not such a lame power in Tegami Bachi, where heart allows you to shoot giant laser beams!
The Clow Cards in Cardcaptor Sakura are about evenly divided between powerful and dangerous cards, cards that aren't powerful but still useful, and the cards that... aren't, for example the card that makes things float, or the one that causes a loop in the scenery. This is present more in the anime than the manga, the former having many more cards and thus more difficulty assigning useful powers, though the latter still has the Glow card, which... glows. Yeah. Generally justified by their creator Clow Reed being severely detached from reality.

Magic: The Gathering has quite a few cards of this category, from the infamous Great Wall (which nullifies an ability that only ten cards were ever printed with) to a 1/1 creature with Trample.
Yu-Gi-Oh! has an assortment of cards like this too. A prime example is "Anti-Raigeki", a trap card designed to counter one particular magic card that ended up being Forbidden anyway.

DC Comics gives us the Chinese superheroine "Mother of Champions" whose power is... being an Explosive Breeder of rapid-aging Super Soldiers. Literally, that's all she can do- a single act of unprotected sex, and 3 days later she gives birth to up to 25 children who age 10 years every day and have Super Strength, making them the ultimate cannon fodder. She doesn't even have the minor level of Super Strength needed to walk unaided during the final hours of one of her pregnancies, spending all of her time either immobile or sitting in a robotic chair.
- Of course, this isn't a stupid power so much as a creative and unconventional one. She also seems to have a very high level of clout in the government and has teammate Socialist Red Guardsman at her beck and call.
In the comics, Aqualad developed concerns similar to Aquaman's (see Western Animation below) about feeling useless as a member of the Teen Titans, which became so severe that he later developed a psychosomatic illness. Once the cause of his problem was realized, Aqualad decided to relegate himself as a Titans reservist, who participated with the team only when they had a mission in the sea.
- The Teen Titans TV series, however, skirts around this by giving Aqualad full elemental control over water (as well as giving him a much-needed redesign). Which is the actual power of the modern day Aqualad, now renamed Tempest.
Angel at Marvel Comics has similar problems to Hawkman and Aquaman. His power to fly is fairly useless in a superhero context. He was variously given razor-sharp metal wings, the ability to shoot poisoned metal pieces from his wings, and a healing factor to make him more powerful. The current version is physically powerful for a similar reason as Aquaman: to actually fly with his wings and survive hundreds of miles per hour winds, he must be very strong and resistant to damage. Angel was largely rescued by Marvel in an issue of Thunderbolts where he literally flies rings around them in their own comic in an awesome "Taking them back to school" moment. Angel also has a little-remembered ability of extraordinarily keen eyesight, comparable to a hawk's. That may not sound like much, but being able to spot movement from a rabbit when you're flying half a mile up is no mean feat.
Marvel Comics also gave us Cypher of the New Mutants, perhaps actually better known by his "civilian" name Doug Ramsey. His mutant power enabled him to instantly figure out any language... and that was about it. It would be useful in the United Nations, or even the Middle East, but in monolingual burly-hero world, his lack of actual "physical" powers of any sort ultimately resulted in his death from a bullet meant for a teammate. A lot of fans think Cypher died before his time, as if he'd been around when computers and the Internet really took off, his power of language comprehension could ostensibly apply to computer language and he'd be the greatest hacker in existence (he was pretty good at computer programming as it was).
- Some fans have also suggested that magic, as depicted in the Marvel Universe, would also qualify as a language. Thus Doug probably could have made himself into a very capable wizard. But the New Mutants already had one of those, so he'd have been redundant.
- Others see DC's second Batgirl — and her ability to read body language — as a template as to how Cypher could have been turned into a combat prodigy.
  - That really shouldn't work for Doug, because "body language" is a metaphor, not a literal language. Of course it shouldn't work for Batgirl either, and since no one in comics seems to realize that body language doesn't work that way, a recently-returned-to-life Cypher now has that ability too.
- Ironically, Doug really started to come into his own... in his final story arc. His power enabled him to properly communicate with the animal-people the New Mutants were trying to rescue, and when the Big Bad set the island they were on to self-destruct, Doug was able to figure out the computer's security codes (in essence learning its "language") and stopped the countdown.
  - Either way, the point is moot in Ultimate Marvel, where Cypher is simply a record-breaking Jeopardy champion. He's not even a mutant.
- The alien "mutant" Warlock, who often ended up being Cypher's partner, was a very literal example of this trope. His "mutant power" was the ability to show compassion and kindness, something which was abnormal for his race. Of course, he wouldn't have gotten very far with this if he didn't also have shapeshifing powers, which was normal for his race.
Prodigy from New Mutants, vol 2, also had a fairly lame ability. He gained the skills and knowledge of anyone nearby, but only for the time that they were nearby. Meaning he can speak French if someone else in the room knows the language, and understand rocket science if he's near a rocket scientist. Well, he could at least work together with the person he was copying.
- In one storyline, it was revealed his inability to keep abilities he copied is a mental block that could be overcome. And that it might not be a good thing if he did.
- It was much less lame than it sounds, once you remember that, while he couldn't copy other powers, he could copy skills. This extended to combat skills. Want to know what this means? He held his own against Wolverine, simply because he could copy his skills and predict his attacks. Granted, physical condition and experience won over, but still...
- He was recently downgraded by losing his power, but then upgraded by having psychics recover his memories so now he has the skills and knowledge of every person he's ever been in the same room as. Which includes a bunch of teachers, scientists, strategists, martial artists, and most of the X-Men.
The Invisible Woman from the Fantastic Four originally only had the power to... be invisible. After it became obvious that she was useless as an action hero in her current form, creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby gave her the additional powers of making other objects/people invisible and projecting telekinetic force fields. Later, in the John Byrne period, she found many different uses for the force fields, such as a powerful attack, and even as a mode of transportation. As such, Susan is now usually considered the most powerful member of the team, and her personality has changed accordingly, as she realized she didn't need to bow to anyone.
Given his Complete Monster personality and huge fanbase, the Joker might not seem like this at first glance, but several writers have portrayed his insanity as a superpower, ignoring the fact that if he's unarmed, he's barely a threat to anyone.
- This is taken to its (il)logical extreme in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, where one of his moves involves using his insanity to charge up his rage meter without moving a muscle.
- Insanity can only get you so far in a world like that. See this:.
  Superman: The Jokester, got it, what's his deal again? Mind Control? Super Strength?
  Batman: He dresses like a CLOWN.
  Superman: No seriously, what is it? Heat Vision? Coz I got that. It's awesome. This guy knows.
  Gordon: No! He carries a knife! Sometimes several!
- The same could be said of Batman. The Dark Knight won't EVER punch out Darkseid, but he could probably figure out a way to get the Magnificent Bastard to wreak a lot of damage on his own empire if it was ever necessary. The Dark Knight showed exactly why The Joker is Batman's arch-enemy — he's every bit as inventive and determined as Batman. Joker's not going to punch out Superman anytime soon, but he'd probably able to figure out a way to torment him to near-insanity if he was ever inclined to try — and he wouldn't need Mr. Mxyzptlk's powers to do it.
The Legion of Substitute Heroes is composed of rejected applicants to The Legion of Super Heroes, who banded together in an effort to show their powers were not useless. Some members included Chlorophyll Kid, who has the power to make plants grow super fast (he also says he can communicate with plants; he can't, but that doesn't stop him from talking to them); Color Kid, who can change the color of objects; Infectious Lass, who spontaneously generates infectious diseases; and Stone Boy, who has power to turn into stone (not like The Thing from the Fantastic Four, but as in an immobile, unconscious stone statue). Surprisingly, several members managed to prove their point and "graduate" into the LSH proper. Of course, considering some of the heroes the Legion did admit, like "Bouncing Boy" and "Matter-Eater Lad", you have to wonder just how bad your powers had to be for them to actually reject you...
- Mind you, Infectious Lass' problem is lack of control, not her powers being useless. Being able to whistle up any disease in the universe? Not a bad trick. Not being able to make sure it's the bad guys who get sick? Trouble.
- Of course, none of them is nearly so bad as Arm Fall Off Boy. It's exactly what you're thinking. To be completely fair to AFOB, his arms are freaking huge and spiky, but even then he has the same powers as a one armed guy with a spiked baseball bat.
- You have to admit that back when yellow was a Weaksauce Weakness for the Green Lanterns, Color Kid would have been a GREAT supervillain sidekick. Frankly, I'd let him on the good-guy side just to make sure he didn't turn evil. There's nothing like having a guy who could turn anything into your greatest weakness running around to spoil your day...
  - Kind of like Kryptonite Man in the Superman comics.
  - That or he just turns everyone's corneas white so they can't see.
  - I do recall reading about a Silver Age story where Superboy and Supergirl could no longer visit the 30th century because of a band of Kryptonite surrounding Earth. So Colour Boy changed the entire band from deadly green into a harmless colour. It's best not to think about how that even works.
  - The Legion newsgroup once had a glorious thread debating the plausibility of Color Kid taking over the universe. With enough stolen Green Lantern rings...
  - Along those lines, Rainbow Girl's recent appearance in the "Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes" arc in Action Comics had her being able to manifest the powers of the seven emotional spectrum corps. She's not quite at the level of a "true" ring slinger, but the idea is there.
- The TV adaptation addressed the simple fact that the Legion's super genius, Brainiac 5, is not much good in a fight. The solution is to make him a super android with numerous weapon functions like telescoping limbs and many, many other things, on top of being super-smart.
- Frankly, Bouncing Boy and Matter-Eater Lad aren't that useless except in combat. Bouncing Boy theoretically could go places a hell of a lot faster than the rest of the Legion, so he's good for recon. Matter-Eater Lad is useful for tunnelling through things, not to mention the fact that he could eat a supervillain whole if he wanted to.
  - AND HE HAS! And then he married Saturn Queen and became President Matter-Eater Lad.
  - In truth, Matter-Eater Lad doesn't even BELONG in this category. In the animated TV adaption, he EATS THE SOURCE OF A SUPERVILLAN'S POWER. The supervillan ends up basically braindead. Bouncing Boy, you can argue for, too, because he can use momentum to knock people out.
  - Re: Bouncing Boy. How would being able to crash into a large groop of mooks like a human wrecking ball not be considered a combat skill? He may not be as fluid or graceful as Karate Kid, but you can't argue with the results. Some retcons even indicated that BB made an intensive study of trajectory and ballistics in order to maximize his talents, aiming himself like a human cue ball for maximum damage.
- Oh, and Stone Boy actually does use his powers effectively; you know Kirby's down+B special in Super Smash Brothers? It's like that.
- If you think THAT'S bad, then just look at the villains of the "Superman and the Legion of Superheroes" arc. The so-called "Justice League of Earth" are people who failed the Legion interviews and were either so lame (or pissed off), they couldn't even join the Legion of Substitutes (and, y'know, are all from Earth). Marvel at Spider-Girl's ability to... use her hair to tie people up, Golden Boy's... turning people into gold and melting at hot enough temperatures... Tusker's indestructible skeleton... yeah. Suddenly Absorbancy Lad AKA Earth-Man doesn't seem so bad. (We find out that mental stability is a factor for Legion membership and the rejects either were crazy or had stupid powers; Earth-Man was the former.) The worst power out of all of them has to be Eyeful Ethel, who can grow eyes anywhere on her body. She makes up for this by teaching xenophobia and historical revisionism to impressionable grade schoolers.
Subverted Possible Reference: In volume four of Scott Pilgrim, Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together, the usually embarrassingly inept and clueless Scott gets his crap together and Levels Up — and gains the Power of Heart. Except in this case, the Power of Heart is a sword with a heart-shape at the bottom of the handle. Since he's being chased by an evil half-ninja with a sword, this is a very useful power to suddenly have.
Tyrone Jessup of the teen paranormal group Psi-Force had the ability to leave his body in intangible astral form. While this was useful in some situations, it still looked pretty weak next to abilities like powerful telekinesis, mind control, healing everything short of death, etc. A later writer made a point of powering him up a bit.
The Top Cow Productions comic book series Freshmen had an entire team full of this. Each character's ability is based on what they were thinking of when a Mad Scientist's machine blew up. While some powers were more traditionally useful (the ability to control other people's minds, the ability to cause earthquakes) some were hard to use particularly well (for instance, the Drama Twins: Renee can telekinetically pull stuff and Brady can telekinetically push stuff; to actually use telekinesis effectively requires them to be touching each other and coordinate), or had disastrous side effects (the Intoxicator can cause everyone around him to be as high or drunk as he is). Then there were abilities like the ability to understand and talk to plants (while being a vegan), the power to make someone fall in love with you, the powers of a squirrel (a weird haircut, a constant desire to hoard nuts, and a limited ability to glide), having an incredibly sticky body, having a 15-foot-long indestructible penis, and an incredible ability to build dams and having super-intelligence... while being a beaver. However, the team's "leader", an incredibly nerdy comic book fan named Norrin, has no abilities (except for a fairly useless utility belt): he was out getting a pizza when the machine exploded. Surprisingly, at least once in the first story arc everyone's power is put to use. Except the Gag Penis. And we can all be thankful for that.
Swift, of morally ambiguous super-team The Authority, has some of this goin' on. Sure, she's the fastest winged mammal on the planet. Sure, she can grow razor-sharp talons on her feet and hands. Sure, she can calculate multiple aerial trajectories in her head in a matter of seconds. Sure, she can take a grenade in the face and come out with nothing worse than a bloody nose. Sure, she's the world's greatest hunter. But on a team where one member can get stronger by flying into the sun, another can wear entire cities as suits of armor (without even damaging them), one can generate enough electricity to kill God, one can make anything, and two can rearrange reality with just a clever phrase, suddenly she doesn't look so cool any more. She doesn't even have the distinction of being the Batman of the team.
- Menagerie is the DC Comics version of Swift. Lorder Hawkgirl is the DCAU version of Swift.
In Marvel Mangaverse, Reed Richards' stretchy power is nerfed to fuckall in the first book, to the point where he actually jabbers excitedly to an admiring young lady, who rather noticeably isn't "Soiux" Storm, that here is the one place where his power isn't utterly useless — he can stretch his neurons to create new connections, making him even smarter than usual and allowing him to formulate effective plans at blinding speed. As uses of his power go it's fairly creative and it's a wonder he didn't use it in the regular comics.
- I don't think Nerfed means what you think it means.
- In the Ultimate Marvel setting, Reed Richards does in fact use his stretching power on his brain like that.
  - In Earth X, he stretches his brain into a copy of the deceased Professor X so that he can use Cerebro.
- It was a Neon Genesis Evangelion parody, and he was "Gendo". Let's move on.
Played straight in normalman. Everyone on the planet Levram has superpowers, but not only do some of them never figure out just what their power are, some people can, for example, turn toast green.
For a brief time, Spider-Man gained some additional powers (which like many other things about the character, were removed in the widely disliked One More Day storyline). One of these powers was the ability to produce stingers from his wrists in a manner similar to Wolverine (he even described it as developing a case of "Logan envy"). While such an ability may seem useful at first glance, their only major use is to physically harm others,thus rendering them essentially useless to a person with such a strong sense of morality.
- Then there was the pretty cool but ultimately useless ability to identify spiders on sight. It served a minor plot function but otherwise wasn't that useful.
Squirrel Girl, with the power to communicate with... ah, you figure it out. She was created as a one-shot joke character, but has become a Running Gag where she routinely defeats the most super-powered villains in the Marvel universe, including Mandarin, Thanos, Dr. Doom and Deadpool. There's a reason she's called The Slayer of All that Breathes.
- To Squirrel Girl's respect, she does have more powers inside her than comes to mind, which includes Squirrel Agility, Knuckle Spikes, Razor Sharp Claws, Super Leaping and Enhanced Strength. Really, her official power ratings states her powers as max!
- It's been implied that she's actually a Reality Warper along the lines of Haruhi, who simply chooses for some strange reason to take the appearance of "Squirrel Girl", though whether this is canon or not is dubious.
In The Umbrella Academy Vanya has the power to... play the violin really well. She ends up being so upset over this (plus a good amount of ostracization and emotional abuse from her peers and father figure) that she eventually becomes the main villain and, using a deadly violin, becomes a Musical Assassin powerful enough to destroy the world.
- In the same series, the Kraken's only power is to hold his breath indefinitely, seemingly relegating him to the role of the team's "Aquaman"- thankfully, he didn't take this lying down, and via a combination of combat skill, knife-throwing and sheer badassery is the team's Lancer, and for all intents and purposes a Badass Normal.
Toad. With all the amazing abilities of... a toad. You GOT to be kidding me.
- He was beefed up because of this reaction. Once upon a time, he could jump really high... and that was it. The jump attacks he'd perform on extremely rare occasion were not lethal like in The Movie, either. The tongue thing, the slime thing, and any super kicking were all later additions to the character.
  - Hey, what's wrong with jumping high?
- Just like a real toad!
The Rainbow Raider's powers were all color-related and totally useless.
- I could think of a use or two for controlling people's emotions. Raider's just kind of dumb, is all.
Turner D. Century. With the amazing power of hating young people.
- ...Plus a flying bicycle and an umbrella that shot fire.
The Ten-Eyed Man. With the amazing ability of having eyes in his fingertips.
The Clock King. With all of Chrono's powers, only ten times lamer.
- Clock King is NOT lame. He's got a page of his own.
Mr. Immortal, whose only power is to come back to life. Something Deadpool takes advantage of, to the extreme, whenever the two are together.
- Mr. Immortal is admittedly played for laughs.
- And while we're at it let's just add all of the ~~Great Lakes Avengers~~, ~~Great Lakes X-Men~~, ~~Great Lakes Champions~~, Great Lakes Initiative.
  - Doorman: The power to become a portal, but only into the next room.
    He's also a psychopomp with vaguely described powers.
  - Flatman: with the power of being two-dimensional.
    He can also stretch à la Reed Richards.
  - Big Bertha: with the power to become really, really fat.
    With accompanying strength and durability à la Blob.
  - Tippy Toe: Squirrel Girl's ~~pet~~ sidekick squirrel, and a full member of the team.
In the PS238 comic, the Rainmaker program is entirely about working around this trope. In it, kids with less-than-spectacular powers, at least when it comes to crime-fighting and world-saving, explore using their abilities in the private sector.
- Don't forget the girl who's the incarnation of Hestia, Greek goddess of hospitality. Normally she's limited to being able to give advice on domestic matters, such as improving one's lovelife. But if someone, no matter how powerful, enters a building uninvited, she can unleash divine asskicking on them.
- Perhaps the most lucrative power is the boy who can turn rocks into edible food.
In J Michael Straczynski's Rising Stars, Joshua Kane has the Awe-Inspiring Power to... levitate and glow (oh, and change genders, but we don't find that out until later). Combine that with his bible-thumping father subjecting him to decades of emotional abuse, and he is so broken that he walks right into the rebooted HUAC and names names.
- Except, when he finally gets over himself, he is able to selectively burn his enemies' eyes right out of their skulls and neutralizes a nuclear weapon with a Heroic Sacrifice.
Yes, there really was a Golden Age crimefighter called The Whistler, who scared criminals by whistling at them.
- It's not as lame as it sounds. His whistles were at just the right frequency to freeze anyone who heard them in their tracks.
- The "Red Bee". Villains beeware of his trained bee, Michael. We repeat: Bee. Singular and otherwise bog standard. And that's his incredibly lame, only superpower. And wait til you get a load of his costume.
In the Howard the Duck section from Civil War: Choosing Sides #0 we have the man that can grow a full beard in a minute!!
In X-Men, there was Beak, a mutant who had bird features, but couldn't fly. He lost his "powers" in the Decimation. Currently, he wears a suit allowing flight, superhuman strength, and energy blasts.
- It was also stated that he was really good at making friends as parts of his mutation. Okay, it still looks quite useless...
The Captain Planet internet meme mentioned above might refer to an issue of the short-lived comic book series inspired by the TV show, whereby Wheeler (is there a "New Yorkers are Assholes" trope, BTW?) mocks Ma-Ti's power almost to the letter of the trope's title. Needless to say, when the other Planeteers are captured by the Villain of the Issue, Ma-Ti and his Heart power are the only things that can save the day.
- This was pointed out by Linkara, who effectively says that Wheeler is the one with the most useless power — as all he can do was release a flamethrower. The others have much more extraordinary powers, that only their Idiot Ball prevents them from using their powers to full force.
  - Wheeler's fire is hot enough to instantly liquefy cement. That would make its temperature a couple thousands of degrees if the cement had an abnormally low melting point, and probably four or five thousand if it was normal. The only thing stopping him from killing everyone who looks at him funny is the shows PG rating.
- Though the comic also explains that Ma-Ti can read minds with his power, and he ends up saving the day by rallying a bunch of jungle animals to storm the villains' base. Having the power still portrayed as useless despite all that makes the story pretty bizarre.
Angelo "Skin" Espinoza from the X-Men comic Generation X, whose power was... extra skin. He wasn't much of a Rubber Man because his bones and organs didn't stretch with it, and it couldn't change color either, so he couldn't really shapeshift. He made a few creative uses of his power in combat, but still got the short end of the Superpower Lottery compared to his teammates.
Lampshaded in Mark Gruenwald's Squadron Supreme, in which the Aquaman Captain Ersatz leaves the team because his water-based concerns mean that he gets outvoted on every issue. Also averted by some of the quirky powers of the Squadron's opponents — Inertia, with the ability to transfer momentum from one place to the next, facilitates the epic beatdown of the Captain Ersatz equivalents of Superman, Flash, and Wonder Woman.
The Zoom Academy for Superheroes graphic novel has this.
Parodied in one arc of Pearls Before Swine, where the crocodiles form a "Fantastic Four" out of three crocs (since they're bad at math), which consisted of Paper Jam Boy, Stapler Head, and Doorstoppo; their powers are Exactly What They Say On The Tin. Paper Jam Boy then proceeds to be "defeated" by a printer that was out of ink.
One heroine lampshaded the problem quite well in Justice League Quarterly #5:
Ice: But then, all the Leaguers are strong — not just in power, but in personality. All but me. What do I bring to the Justice League?
Martian Manhunter: Heart.
Ice: How sweet. All things considered, though, when we're fighting Despero or Starro, I'd rather have Super Strength than heart, thank you. Heart doesn't save the day.
- The story is all about subverting the trope. though. Ice goes on to not only keep the story's villain from killing himself, but cure him of the deadly disease that made him so desperate, just by palming teammate Guy Gardner's Green Lantern Ring and wishing to help the villain "with all my heart."
  - In another Justice League story, Starro had grafted itself to Martian Manhunter's face and created drone starfish to control the other members of the European branch of the League. Starro then demanded that the New York Leaguers transport themselves to him and submit to his control. The first person teleported was Ice, who immediately froze Starro off of J'onn J'onnz's face, breaking his control of Justice League Europe.
How about an early member of the new Justice League: Animal Man. His power was that he could communicate with animals and gain their abilities. If he were around birds, he could fly. If around a bear, he would be stronger and his fingers would cut like claws. The problem: said animals had to be near him for him to mimic their abilities. Take a guess how often that worked out. There was a particularly funny moment as the League was fighting a Big Bad in a sewer:
Animal Man: Hold on, guys, while I... uh... I...
Mouse: Squeak!
Animal Man: Yeah, I think you're cute, too.
- Animal Man later realized he could mimic the powers of microscopic organisms as well, allowing him to regenerate lost cells, manipulate the biological makeup of himself or others by communicating with their individual cells, and asexually reproduce himself into an army of Animal Men. Then after that, he got upgraded further via a vision quest so he doesn't have to be around animals to use their powers, can use them proportionately (such as having the proportionate strength of an ant or fleas to his size, which is huge) or stack and combine multiple animal powers, and can gain the abilities of any animal - extinct or aliens included, effectively making him a God of biology, if you think about it. Flash forwards have implied that Teen Titans' Beast Boy will one day gain these abilities as well.
Teen Titans: Year One has this as a frequent point of contention between Aqualad and Kid Flash, both of whom think the other's powers aren't up to snuff. "Go talk to a fish!" "Oh, like running fast is really all that!"
This is also a bit of an issue in Invincible, where Shrinking Ray feels he is often neglected by his teammates in the Guardians of the Globe because of his powers seeming less than formidable. This isn't exactly helped by the fact that he barely ever gets any lines or character development beyond this frustration.
- Made only worse by the fact that he was eaten by Komodo Dragon of the Lizard League.
Averted in Archie Comics' Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series with the ally Man Ray and villain Armaggon, a mutant manta ray and shark, respectively. Despite being fish, they were fully capable fighters with super-strength on land in addition to being superior swimmers who can breathe underwater. In fact, Man Ray was the leader of the Mutanimals.
In the Doom Patrol Doom Force Special, a parody of X-Force, Shasta the Living Mountain agonizes over the fact that his power, turning into a mountain, has ridiculously limited application. This is probably also a parody of how in team books at least one member tends to have a complex about the perceived poorness of their powers. Since he's the Sacrificial Lamb, he dies, but since his teammates are Darker And Edgier, they not only don't mourn, they're actually happy he's dead because of his stupid powers.
- All of Doom Force was sort of like this, as a parody of the esoteric abilities of X-Force. Crying Boy has nebulous luck powers, Scratch has the ability to take apart any electronic or mechanical device, etc.
Independant character Dishman has the power to telekinetically clean dishes. He has yet to find a practical use for this beyond impressing women with the fact that he actually does household chores, but still seems to think it's interesting enough to base his hero identity around it.
The old What's New! With Phil & Dixie'' comic strip from Dragon'' magazine once had an episode about superheroes, which included a panel about the need to have powers that are actually useful: "Gazebo Boy finds his singular power of metamorphosis useless against the evil Termite!"
Knights Of The Dinner Table featured an in-universe example of this when the Knights played a variant of their usual superhero-based tabletop game that focused on this trope. In the first session, Dave's Pot-Lid Boy (power: creative use of kitchen utensils; his lid armor was as strong as Kevlar) and Bob's The Screecher (power: cripplingly-strong nails-on-a-chalkboard power, plus an inability to be touched by human flesh) were soundly defeated by Shrink-Wrap Man, Edward Tire-Iron-Fingers, and the Human Sprinkler (Exactly What It Says On The Tin).
- On the other hand, their actual superheroes left a lot to be desired as well, primarily due to their perpetual inability to minmax properly. Dave's character could run at incredibly fast speeds for only two blocks due to a severe lack of stamina, whereas Bob's Cockroach Boy had to scurry-to-dark whenever the lights were turned on, and had his ability to survive a nuclear holocaust defeated when said holocaust also caused his hero-vehicle to melt into slag around him.
In Avengers: The Initiative, Dragon Lord's power of conjuring and controlling dragons by mixing potions in his cauldron is derided by the Taskmaster as "not a superpower, son, that's home economics", and the fact that his teammates have to provide cover for him while he prepares for summoning is cited as one of the reasons his squad of trainees is ineffective. After his death, the Irredeemable Ant-Man is amused that the cremated Dragon Lord is "mixed up in a little jar" because "he'd like that."
The original Eel in Marvel Comics' sole gimick in his early career was being really slippery. Eventually this was deemed too low-key to make him a believable danger to guys like Captain America and Daredevil, so he was given electric powers as well.
Empty Vee in The Intimates. An obese girl who is normally invisible, her power is being able to become visible. Yeah.
Pantheon High is about the sons and daughters of dieties attending high school. The main character has the power of luck. But he is also a typical teenage male, so this translates into sexual situations (i.e. seeing boobs). In one instance, two of his female allies were pondering whether the luck powers would allow them to put the smackdown on the baddies or he would end up 'somehow making out with both of us at once'.

Potter Puppet Pals in the live show at least. Dumbledore describes the awesome power of:
Dumbledore: ... The spell we know as love.
Harry: Lame!'''
Marik from Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series can use his Millennium Rod to control minds. Unfortunately, it only works on people named Steve.

The team in Mystery Men included a member, The Invisible Boy, whose superpower — turning invisible — was so specialized he could turn invisible only when nobody was watching him! As unlikely as it might seem, he and the team actually found themselves in a situation where this power was useful. Automated turrets, it transpires, do not count as somebody watching. Of course, many of the other members weren't particularly impressive either; the main cast consisted of a guy that gets angry without actually getting stronger, a fork-thrower, and a man who shovels. He does, however, shovel very well. The movie is based on a comic book of the same name, a spinoff from Flaming Carrot.
- While the movie is based on a comic book, it's worth noting that Invisible Boy was invented while the writers of the film were drunk at a cast party as a joke.
- The Sphinx, whose main power is that he's incredibly mysterious. His secondary power, however, is cutting guns in half with his mind, which is less heartly in and of itself, except he hardly ever uses it.
  - He doesn't even use it when the team's Herkamer is surrounded by armed gunmen inside Casanova Frankenstein's base.
  - Maybe he can only use it when no one's watching him? Maybe lots of superpowers work like that.
- And who can forget the Spleen... well, the less said of his "power", the better. Three words: "Pull my finger". The Spleen is also an example of a particularly lame backstory — a gypsy cursed him to forever be he who "dealt it".
- Some of the Mystery Men wannabees, who auditioned for membership before they settled on the Bowler, had powers that would put the uselessness of the main members' powers to shame. There was the Waffler, who carried a bunch of waffle irons around with him and also boasted a personal Theme Tune; Ballerinaman, who pirouetted in a tutu; and the PMS Avenger, whose powers only worked for 5 days out of the month ("You got a problem with that?!").
- Pretty much the entire point of the film was about a group of heroes who fall under this trope. And how Badass they can be if they just quit Wangsting.
Used in X2 to show that not everyone has the power to blow roofs open with their eyes. One of the kids in the Xavier Institute has the superpower to change the channel by blinking, and not sleep; another one of them has a big blue forked tongue, and little else of note.
- The blue-tongued boy is supposedly Artie Maddicks, who in the comics has the power of making powerful illusions.
X3 takes this to new heights with Kid Omega, whose abilities are... retractable inch-long spines. Apparently inspired by comic character Quill. But while Quill can usually shoot these spines, these just... stay there. While this could be a devastating power if you were intent on killing everyone at a chronic cuddler retreat, in combat with people with guns, psionic powers, and various other super-abilities, it's decidedly worthless. Despite this, he acts as though he is an impressive mutant, using his quills for intimidation purposes on multiple occasions. (Not a bad idea, actually, but useless in the circles he travels in.) It's made worse by the fact that his only on-screen kill is a defenseless, crying woman whom he comforts with a hug then impales on his spines. Some sources describe the spines as poisonous, but still not all that interesting. Meanwhile, the movieverse Callisto gets two powers: super-speed and the ability to tell how powerful other mutants are. I wonder if she even gets a reading when she looks at Kid Omega.
- He should have been codenamed... THE HUGGER! Beware his comforting embrace — of DOOM!!
- Especially silly when the real Kid Omega from the comics, Quentin Quire, was an intensely powerful psychic whose abilities grew to (as his codename suggests) omega-level. He became so powerful through the use of a power-enhancing drug that he essentially outgrew his physical form, causing him to Ascend To A Higher Plane Of Existence.
- The movieverse Callisto may be a reversal of Quentin's situation: in the comics, Callisto has several powers, including enhanced senses and tentacle arms, powers that are not very visually impressive alongside Magneto, Pyro, and the like. Movie Callisto gets a beef-up, combining the powers of Quicksilver (Magneto's Dragon a looooong time ago) and Caliban (one of comic Callisto's fellow Morlocks).
In Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors, each of the teenagers has a special ability in their dreams that they use to combat Freddy. One is super strong, another has the abilities of an Olympic level gymnast, a third gains magic spells (and is no longer paraplegic) and a fourth (usually mute) gains a sonic shout. Then there's the girl who is "beautiful" (i.e. looks like herself with a horrible eighties mowhawk) "and bad" (i.e. she has two knives). Needless to say she doesn't last very long against Freddy.
- Neither does Magic Boy. And the other three are quickly dispatched in the next movie.
Two words: Sky High. The whole movie is about it.
Same with Zoom, its copycat crime.
The Specials features Night Bird. Even though she's applying for a middle-rung superhero team, she's bashful about her own power, which turns out to be laying eggs with "tricks" inside. She can't talk to birds, either, though they do "have an understanding." She commiserates with Minute Man (pronounced my-noot), who can make himself "minute" in size.
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers The Movie: When the Rangers get their new ninja Animal Motifs Tommy gets Falcon, Rocky gets Ape, Billy gets Wolf, Aisha gets Bear, and Kimberly gets Crane. But what does Adam get?
Adam: I'm a frog.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince reveals that Harry's special power is his capacity to love. Dumbledore's explanations aside, Harry's immediate reaction — "So what?" — seems a bit on-the-mark. Taking into account Dumbledore's explanations, though, it's the most badass power of love ever. Just to drive this home, in Order of the Phoenix, the essence of love can melt metal on contact. Further, just being capable of love can banish Lord Voldemort from you if he possesses your body. As well, when Voldemort, in book 4, uses blood from Harry to resurrect himself, he becomes more powerful due to stealing Harry's mother's protection... but in book 7, we learn this unknowingly renders Harry immortal as long as Voldemort survives.
- Not only is Harry not impressed with it, but Dumbledore informs Lord Voldemort that The Power Of Love will be his undoing, along with the fact that Voldemort fails to understand that there are things worse than death. Voldemort naturally disagrees.
  - Don't forget that Evil Cannot Comprehend Good. Harry escapes from Pettigrew just by mentioning he saved his life, and Voldemort ultimately unknowingly commits Suicide By Cop simply because he can't belive that Harry would offer him a chance to surrender. Take That, entropy!
  - In addition to that, Voldemort's lack of love means that he can never put his soul back together to ease his afterlife suffering, because he would need to feel remorse to do that.
Jack, from the Mindwarp series has the power to speak and comprehend any language. Which he freely admits is lame, especially when held against Mad Unarmed Fighting Skills and Super Healing, Water Powers and the ability to split in half into two copies of yourself, Lighting Throwing and Time Travel... It seems a little unbalanced.
- Although to be fair his list of languages included things like: Alien, insects, and fax machine.
In the Wild Cards shared anthologies, "Ace" designates people who gain powers from the Wild Card virus while a "Joker" just ends up horrifically (though often rather poetically) deformed. A "Deuce", though, is a technical Ace with a lame power — the character who coins the term, for instance, is a man who can change color at will.
- The term "Deuce" comes from a quip from said color-changing man: "If I'm an Ace, I'd hate to see a Deuce."
- He made a living as a lounge act, changing colors while singing songs with color-related song titles.
- Then there was the short-order cook who could make his hair grow at will, the man who could stick his hand into a tub of water and get it boiling in just under eight minutes, and the woman who could levitate in her sleep.
Some of the magical talents in Piers Anthony's Xanth are so widely useful and powerful that their possessors are known as Magicians and eligible to rule the magical land. And on the other hand are those with the power to make a small colored spot appear on the wall, play a magic flute, or make people in the vicinity age slightly faster. Much is made in the series out of finding real uses for even the feeblest talents, and a lot of crappy powers turn out to be surprisingly powerful, at least when facing the right plots. The spot-on-the-wall talent, fr'instance, can be used multiple times in order to make pictures, often quite convincing ones.
- Dor was one of those who had a talent that seemed useless at first blush (can make inanimate objects talk), but on closer inspection, is one of the most versatile talents around — for instance, no-one could keep a secret from him; he could just have their clothing tell him what he wanted.
- A bone of contention for Princess Irene was she was only considered a Neo-Sorceress instead of a full Sorceress (Triple A instead of the Majors), despite having absolute control over plant life (there's that gimmick again): being able to grow plants from seed to full in seconds and control their actions. Considering the variety and levels of lethality of Xanth's plant life, she has a point. Especially considering that the only other (known) Magician class Xanthians around were her parents, King Trent (could turn any living being into any other living being) and Queen Iris (Mistress of illusions), Bink (can't be harmed by magic), his son, Dor, and Humphrey (knows pretty much everything). She does eventually get upgraded to full Sorceress. (Though it was only in the context of the clusterfuck that was Night Mare.)
- There are also some Xanth characters whose "talents" actually make things worse for them, such as Anomie (his talent was making bad decisions — which might have been why he thought it would be a good idea to trade his soul for a new talent — that of save states).
Tim Burton's Oyster Boy and Other Stories features a whole array of kid heroes with this trope, one being Stain Boy whose only power is to make nasty stains.
The heroes of Terry Brooks' Shannara series are initially unimpressed when they hear that the Sword of Shannara's awesome power is... truth. Not much of a weapon against most enemies, but it brings about the downfall of the Warlock Lord Brona because he's just a spirit clinging to an illusion of life and a body of dust — and when he's forced to realize it...
- The Sword actually continues to see use even in later books of the series, usually to break cases of More Than Mind Control, but it's pulled off some other neat tricks as well.
Played with by Brandon Sanderson in Alcatraz Versus The Evil Librarians. Most of the main characters have magical "talents" that seem useless, even laughable at first, but turn out to be very useful. For example, one character's talent is arriving late to everything—which includes stepping into a certain spot just too late for a bullet to hit him.
The Fingerprints series features characters with a variety of Psychic Powers: some awesome, some... less so. Lampshaded when the main character Rae, who has the ability to read thoughts from fingerprints, tries to fight a villain with a much stronger psychic power, who laughs at the uselessness of Rae's ability.
In the Apprentice Adept series, the Tan Adept has the totem of the Evil Eye, granting him (later her) the power of mind control — much the same as Lelouch's Geass power, with similar limits (only targets one person at a time and only if they make eye contact). Still sort of nifty, until you realize several of the other Adepts (Blue, Yellow, and Red in particular) could work spells to achieve much the same effect. Along with about a thousand other things which Tan can't do. It should be noted that in Tan's first appearance (Juxtaposition — the last book of the first trilogy), Tan had all the versatility of the other Adepts, limited only by line of sight. Piers Anthony apparently Did Not Do The Research on his own creations.
- In another Anthony lame-o power, albeit a deliberate one, Zane from On a Pale Horse bought an enchanted gemstone with the power to find money. It found him about 20 cents in loose change, then ran out of power.
In A Nightmare on Elm Street: Suffer the Children Freddy gives several teenagers powers, with his plan being to manipulate them into being his servants in the real world. Final Girl Alex gets empathy. She even states near the end of the book that this "power" just sucks compared to the ones her friends got, which included the likes of pyrokinesis, telekinesis and mind control.
In K.A. Applegate's Animorphs, the main characters seem to be in some ways antitheses to the others. Rachel favours bold, direct action, but without much inclination for strategic thought; Marco's observational skills and suspicious mind makes him an excellent tactician, but he thinks every little step do death and can never take definitive action. Ax was extremely loyal, and Cassie was the moral compass of the group who kept them from becoming monsters. All in all, the characters' personalities balanced out, which was what made them such an effective team. But what the hell was Tobias good for? Bitching and complaining? Apart from his woobiness, he didn't bring one goddamn talent or skill to the table. Totally useless.
- Being trapped in a hawk's body made him very useful, as he had no need for school or anything that would get in the way of his schedule, allowing him to spy on Yeerk activity for hours. Also, he got more practice flying than any other Animorph.
In Twilight, some vampires have cooler powers than others. Carlisle got stuck with compassion and Esme with The Power Of Love, while their vampires kids get the much more awesome clairvoyance, mind reading, super strength, ability to control emotions etc. Marcus of the Volturi gets the power to "see relationships" which, while apparently useful, gives the impression that Stephenie Meyer was running out of powers to give people.
- Actually, the clairvoyance is the worst power imaginable. The vampire with it can only see the future if the person doesn't change their mind. So she's God from Futurama, excpet played straight. To paraphrase:
  Bender: So, if you're God, you know what I'm gonna do before I do it, right?
  God: Yes.
  Bender: What if I do something different?
  God: Then I don't know that.
  - The Futurama bit was actually a very clever answer to an incredibly stupid question. The kind of omniscience typically ascribed to God is "Knowing all the possible actions anyone could take, ever". So of course if someone does something different than everything they could possibly do, God wouldn't know it. Hence the clairvoyance in Twilight makes a lot of sense: to know every possible outcome you'd either need to be so cognizant you'd go insane because human minds aren't built to take that, or free will would have to not exist.
- You're also forgetting Victoria, with the power of... having a self-preservation instinct. Yeah, her superpowers involve wanting to not be killed.
In Lawrence Watt-Evans' With A Single Spell, the orphaned apprentice's eponymous lone firestarting spell is pretty much useless and laughable the entire book, until it plays a deadly role in the end. Also, when the protagonist is trapped in a dead mage's extraplanar castle and is going through all the spellbooks for a means of escape, he casts the Badass but extremely lame spell "Jalger's Jar Opener". This spell summons a 9-foot silvery spike-covered demonic entity. To open a jar for you. After which it disappears...
In Michael Grant's Gone series, a lot of kids who were left in the FAYZ develop superpowers. Some of these are powerful and useful, such as telekinesis, shooting powerful beams of light, Super Speed, or Healing Hands. Others...not so much. Astrid has a vaguely defined ability to sense the "potential" of people. In the second book, Duck has the ability to alter his mass and density. He can use this to sink into the ground, float in the air (just float, since he has no way to propel himself), and that's about it. This is lampshaded when immediately after discovering his power, he says, "I'm a moof with a really sucky power!" That said, at the end of the book Duck uses his power to defeat the Big Bad. By increasing his mass as he drops on said Big Bad, burying himself alive in the process. }}Yay?

To defeat the Big Bad in season 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Scoobies combined their different abilities to make a "super slayer". Xander, who considered himself the most useless of the group, provided the "heart" of this amalgamation.
- Although Xander never gets "special" powers like his friends, his courage, humor, and good heart proved to be what made him special. He may not have been the best fighter in the group, but he certainly helped in combat, especially after season 5. The writers summed up Xander's purpose nicely with this bit of dialogue from season 7's "Potential":
  Xander: They'll never know how tough it is, Dawnie, to be the one who isn't chosen. To live so near to the spotlight and never step in it. But I know. I see more than anybody realizes because nobody's watching me. I saw you last night. I see you working here today. You're not special. You're extraordinary.
  Dawn: Maybe that's your power.
  Xander: What?
  Dawn: Seeing, knowing.
  Caleb: You're the one who sees everything, aren't you? Well, let's see what we can't do about that. (gouges Xander's eye out)
- Also, this excellent little bit from Season 5:
  Annoying Watcher: The boy? No power there.
  Buffy: "The boy" has clocked more field time than all of you combined. He's part of the unit.
  Xander: (squeeing) I've clocked field time!
- Despite how lame "heart" sounds, Xander's true value was that he was always there. He was what made a bunch of individuals into a team. Sometimes even something as lame as "heart" can be valuable...
- Also, it is a well-known fact that Xander can drywall you into the next century. And let's not forget when he saved the world with the Power Of Love. Heart's pretty useful when you need to talk someone down.
- Also, towards the end, Xander turns into like the team philosopher. If this was an RPG, he'd have a really high wisdom score.
Parodied in a recurring sketch in That Mitchell And Webb Look, which features the exploits of the crime-fighting duo BMX Bandit (who can ride a BMX bike really well) and The Angel Summoner (who can summon a horde of celestial superbeings to do his bidding); each adventure would begin with BMX Bandit suggesting an over-complicated primarily BMX-based strategy to deal with the threat they were facing (kidnappers, drug-runners, terrorists), only for Angel Summoner to point out that it'd be a lot easier if he just summoned a horde of angels to do it instead. Needless to say, the latter usually proved a lot more useful. Finally, BMX Bandit does get to use his skills — and dies in the process.
- Furthermore, his death was mostly because he stubbornly refused the limited (but not entirely unreasonable, given the circumstances) help that Angel Summoner was offering him, and decided that he could jump the large gulf between two high-rise buildings by himself on his BMX. He couldn't.
- There's also a sketch about a man who has the power to telekenetically levitate... biscuits. Just biscuits.
  - And angsts deeply about how he's Blessed With Suck. Levitating biscuits will ruin your life.
Heroes:
- The graphic novels had a Company agent whose passive ability was absorbing sound, rendering him deaf and mute as well as useless unless up against someone with a sonic power (who could still theoretically take him down through conventional means).
  - Word Of God once tried to justify this guy's power by claiming it can be used for stealth. Sure, he can't hear you, but you can't hear him either.
- Remember Zane Taylor? He was a poor confused fellow whom Sylar eventually ~~ate~~ ~~studied~~ fingerbanged his useless brain for his incredibly LAME power. What is his power you ask? Turning stuff to goo. Lame. Period.
  - You could melt handcuffs, prison cell bars, locks, doors, walls, etc. There'd be no way to restrain or contain you. You could also melt any weapon, provided you got a chance to touch it.
  - On the peaceful side, rescue work, collapsing unstable cliff faces to improve road safety, clearing avalanches and landslides blocking roads, demolition work where explosives aren't workable, or depending how long the liquification lasts, liquifying (for example) crushed cars to be poured into a centrifuge and spun until the former cube solidifies again, a form of room temperature zone refining.
- The web-show spin-off Zeroes was about characters from the Heroes universe with incredibly lame powers. This includes a man who paints the future as stick-figures, rendering them indecipherable, and a girl who could fit her whole fist into her mouth, which is pointed out to be "just slutty".
- Sanjog Iyer, a minor character from the first season, whose power is listed as dream manipulation. He can basically step into other peoples dreams and communicate and interact with them while he's there. Creepy, but still fairly useless.
  - Communication that can't be traced or tapped. Plus the ability to spy on your enemies' dreams which may be useful for espionage and/or torture. Not useful in combat, but not every skill has to be.
  - Also, consider that Mohinder's "dream" took the form of actual past events that neither he nor Sanjog could have possibly witnessed, such as Chandra's murder by Sylar. One comic involves Sanjog's appearance in a dream showing one special the life of a superpowered ancestor—in Ancient Egypt. Given that Sanjog is quite young, and might potentially refine his ability later... The ability to see anything happening anywhere at any time doesn't seem useless at all.
- And then there's Alejandro, who's sole displayed power was the ability to absorb and stop his sister's killing power. Which she learns to do by herself anyway. And then loses her power permanently. Sylar kills him and doesn't even bother to try to learn how he does it.
  - I always thought that Alejandro might've had the same/similar powers as the Haitian, but only knew how to use it on his sister.
- A new character's power to 'see' sounds appears to be this trope, until she discovers she can be quite dangerous with these abilities, somehow.
- The boy Claire met, whose power was to breathe underwater. So, Aquaman, but much less powerful. Nevertheless, it was apparently an issue of vital importance to national security that he be locked up. Thank you Nathan.
At the very beginning of Charmed, Phoebe was stuck with the power of receiving visions of the future at random moments, which she couldn't even control. Meanwhile, her sisters had telekinesis and could stop time and so to have any sort of offensive power, she learned kickboxing.
- She eventually gained the power of levitation, too... though this was long after the show's Jumping The Shark point.
  - She also became an empath.
  - Though, as Prue demonstrated, empathy could be quite badass at times.
In Juken Sentai Gekiranger, the Rangers are martial artists who each have an area of specialization. The four male Rangers' specialties are Unbreakable Body, Fantastic Technique, Iron Will and Amazing Ability (in Gratuitous English, naturally). Ran, the one female Ranger has Honest Heart. "Honest Heart"? Seriously, WTF? It is never explained exactly how that's supposed to help her kill monsters.
- In addition to her "Honest Heart", Ran has the ability to deliver punches at breakneck speed. Also, when training with Master Elehan, we find out that when Ran is enjoying herself, rather than trying not to be put off by Master Elehan's perversion, she can not only flyfish, but use the Geki Hammer. I'd say this is a fairly clear example of where having an "honest heart", unclouded by difficulties or overthinking, makes it possible for Ran to take a level in something resembling badass.
  - In Japanese, the kanji for "Heart" is also the kanji for "Mind" and "Thoughts", making Ran the brains of the team. "Honest Heart" sounds a hell of a lot better than "Honest Mind". Also her totem animal is the cheetah, which gives her the Kenshiro punches.
- Arguably brothers Geki Blue and Geki Violet are also contesting this title. Blue's catchphrase was "Techniques colour this Gigantic Flower", and while his comrades got swords and hammers for weapons, he got a pair of fans. Violet, on the other hand, got a leg-swap for a mech, and had to essentially borrow a couple of hand-me-downs to make a complete robot. Both brothers had a hilarious habit of being thrown into water whenever defeated.
- This isn't the only sentai series to have this problem. In Engine Sentai Go-onger, each Ranger gets an Engrish phrase as well: Speed King, Chaser, Vaga Bond, Cyclopedia (Go-onger loves its Engrish) and Sweet Angel. You get no points for picking the token female out of that lineup. The same goes for Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger, which had Blazing Lion, Noble Eagle, Iron Bison, Surging Shark, Sparking Wolf, and Belle Tiger. Admittedly, "Sparking" isn't very Badass, either. (In Power Rangers Wild Force, the phrases are different for three of them, so if you've only seen that version, no.)
- This is lampshaded by Ziggy in Power Rangers RPM. When Doctor K confronted him of his lack of abilities, he smiled and said that "he can be the heart" of the team.
- In Power Rangers Ninja Storm, each ranger has power over a specific element. Red had the power of air. Blue had the power of water. Yellow had the power of earth. Crimson and Navy both had the power of thunder. And Green had...um..."green samurai power". Though in all fairness, this was because he was a samurai, not a ninja. He was still awesome anyway.
In the Sci-Fi miniseries The Lost Room, roughly 100 random objects have special powers that can be exploited. Some have been weaponized, such as the Glass Eye, which heals or destroys flesh and the Comb that stops time. Many though, are useless, such as the Wristwatch, which boils eggs (nothing else, just eggs), and the Pencil that makes pennies.
- This is somewhat subverted though as when more objects are brought together other powers are unlocked. When the Wristwatch and Knife are used in tandem they produce a kind of telepathy.
Parodied in Mystery Science Theater 3000 in which Crow creates a superhero identity for himself. While he concedes that his super power is completely useless, he jumps into the role of superhero wholeheartedly, even creating a super costume and announcing himself in a deep booming voice. His name? Turkey Volume Guessing Man. His power? To estimate how many turkeys could conceivably fill any given space. Of course, Mike then immediately takes the wind out of his sails by demonstrating that he has the same power.
This trope is the entire point of the Whose Line Is It Anyway game "Superheroes". From just one playing: Suicide Boy, Yodeling-Pogo-Stick Man, Captain Bloodloss, and Cowboy Stunt-Rider. (Other examples include Caught-In-A-Wind-Tunnel Boy and Run-Away-From-Danger Man.)
- From various other games: Panicky-Ski-Jump-Puppet Man, The Super Scooper, The Gap-Ad Kid, Captain Lounge Act, and perennial fan-favorite Captain Hair.
- Don't forget Captain Obvious! "I'm standing."
- "Can't-Control-His-Legs Boy".
- And Greg Proops as "Beautiful Martini Man".
- "Delayed Reaction Man" and "Stinky".
- Honourable mention to "Over-Indulgence Boy" from the UK series.
- And to "Captain Tact".
- The Dutch version (De Lama's) has the same game. Examples include Gilles-de-la-Tourettes-Man, Bad-Pick-Up-Line-Man, Unwanted-Affection-Man and "I-Have-A-Massive-Thing-For-Cameramen-Man".
Scrubs has the medical equivalent with the background character Dr. Johnson who is the attending dermatologist. While dermatologists have their uses in real life, Scrubs treats him as if he has the lame power of Heart. He spends most of his time in the background with nothing to do because nobody ever needs a skin doctor. The one time a patient comes in with badly sunburned skin, Dr. Cox berates him for forcing him to validate Dr. Johnson's "most ridiculous of career choices."
- Nobody in the Scrubs universe ever worries about skin cancer, I guess.
- To be fair, Dr. Cox also regularly mocks surgeons, so this may be more of an example of him being his regular Jerkass self.
In No Heroics we get Fuseboss whose power is fusing two things together. To make the matters worse, he also has a nervous tic that forces him to create new words by fusing two existing, hence we get jems like "bews" (bad news), "prules" (pub rules) and "blob" (...take a wild guess).
Before achieving national fame as "the Science Guy", Bill Nye was a member of the Seattle-based comedy-sketch show Almost Live!. One of his reoccuring characters was a superhero named Speed Walker who fought crime "while maintaining strict adherence to the regulations of the International Speed-Walking Association!" (Heel toe! Heel toe!!)
The primary conceit of Kamen Rider Decade is that the title hero can use the powers, techniques, and weapons of every previous Kamen Rider. Because Den-O relies entirely on the combat skills of the Imagin who possess him, his powers look kind of useless, leading to a hilarious scene when Decade first uses Den-O's powers and discovers that the attack cards simply make him perform the Imagins' Catch Phrases. Later on it's shown that he also gets the traits of Den-O's forms, such as Ax Form/Kintaros' Super Strength, making it look a lot more useful.
Kamen Rider Super-1 subverts this and plays it straight at the same time: Gold Hand is a radar... yeah, not very useful until you get to the fact it can be used as a missile launcher.
Friends had an episode where it was revealed that Ross, as a child, used to write comics about his own superhero, Science Boy! Blessed with the powers of...a super human thirst for knowledge.
A Saturday Night Live sketch featured "The Interesting Four":
- Weather Woman, who could change the air temperature of the room she was in by up to eight degrees in either direction;
- Staple, whose thumb was a stapler;
- Seiko, who, by pressing a button on his watch, would go back in time by one second <click> one second <click> one second <click> one second (this continued until someone else snapped him out of it); and
- Mister Wonderful. He doesn't have any powers, he's just Mister Wonderful!
...and Aquaman, you...GO TALK TO SOME FISH! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
David Letterman made a top 10 list about this trope:
10. Super spelling
9. Lighning-fast mood swings
8. Really bendy thumb
7. Unusually natural smile when posing for photographs
6. Ability to calm jittery squirrels
5. Power to shake exactly two aspirins out of a bottle
4. Ability to get tickets to Goodwill games
3. Power to score with other superheroes' wives
2. Ability to communicate with corn. And the number one least exciting superpower...
1. Magnetic colon
One of the players on Survivor: Samoa made a direct and detailed reference to the original Captain Planet And The Planeteers instance of this trope in describing his feelings of weakness and fatigue.
Out Of This World: On her 16th birthday, Evie is told by her father Andross that she can gain a new power from ten different choices. One of the choices is the ability to change shoes quickly. Andross admits "We don't get a lot of requests for that one..."
On the BBC character profiles for Robin Hood, Faux Action Girl and Shallow Love Interest Kate has her specialised weapon listed as "her imagination". In the eleven episodes in which she appeared, the most imaginative thing she ever did was to use a sword to drag a key toward her whilst she was locked in a cell. In case you were wondering, she was indeed the The Wesley.
Captain Lewis Nixon from Band of Brothers is an intelligence officer whose job is mostly to do paperwork rather than actual fighting, and is therefore just about the only member of Easy Company who doesn't get a chance to do something heroic in combat.

In Greek Mythology the Olympians were considered to be the twelve most powerful and revered of all the gods. They ruled over natural forces like the Sun, the Seas, and Death itself, as well as human concepts like Love, War, Marriage, and Justice. And then you have Hermes, god of giving messages, and Hestia, goddess of hearth fires. Yeah. At least Hermes made up for it by being Olympus's resident Trickster God, but Hestia never does much of anything beyond tending to hearths. Eventually she just gave up her spot among the Olympians so Dionysus (god of grapes, wine, and drunken behavior) could step in.
- Keep in mind that in ancient Greece where hearths are the only way you have of cooking food, staying warm etcetera and of how may other cultures have hearth gods, its more a case of Values Dissonance; we don’t value hearths, so it seems lame. Dionysus also was a lot more than the god of grapes wine and drinking the roman Bacchus was; he had a major mystery cult, was a serious trickster, and was god of actors, mirrors, boundaries and things limminal and out of the ordinary.
- Not to mention, Hestia didn't give up her spot as an Olympian, she merely gave up her throne so she could be closer to the divine fire at the heart of Olympus' throne room. She's still the oldest sister of the gods of Death, the Sea, and Mankind, and don't you forget it.
- We seem to be forgetting why Hermes was the messenger of the gods. He was the god of travel. And in a time when it took weeks to travel a few dozen miles because there were mountains everywhere and no roads, that's BIG. Especially since anyone who traveled by sea ran a 50/50 shot of drowning, and anyone who traveled by land risked dying to brigands, wild animals, enemy armies, evil spirits, monsters or just the elements.
  - Also, Hermes was the best representation of the Greek male ideal among the olympians. Zeus was almost perfect but couldn't keep it in his pants. Ares was almost perfect but was a lunatic and his male children came out insane or retarded. Posseiden had rage problems. (even more than the rest of the gods) Apollo preferred boys to women. Hephestus was a cripple. Hermes represented all the virtues the greeks held dear, with no real weaknesses. Hence why he was the god that always went and DID things while the others ordered things around.

In the tongue-in-cheek roleplaying game In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas (American Tropers might better know its Darker And Edgier remake, In Nomine), character powers are assigned at random from a rather long list. If you're lucky, you can wind up with lightning bolts, holy dancing swords, mind control or even limited time travel. If you're not lucky, you're going to be the guy on the team who can control molluscs, or whose "power" is to have materialized on Earth in the body of a famous rock star (considering most scenarios involve discreet investigations among Muggles, this is all kinds of Blessed With Suck). There's also the unbalance of domain powers, granted by the Archangel/Demon Prince you serve (and by extension, the virtue/sin they embody). Again, some of those are powerful - petrification, turning people into pillars of salt, nightmare curses... but lust demons get Deadly Orgasm, which while somewhat awesome (YMMV) is not exactly useful in a fight. Meanwhile, sloth demons get a power which makes any physical exertion impossible to anyone in a 100m radius...demon included. Not to be outdone in the lameness department, some angels get the power to speed up crop growth.

In Bionicle, Toa of Water tended to get shafted a bit in the Mask Of Power department. Gali has a Mask of Water Breathing — appropriate for a Toa of Water, sure, but pretty useless unless you're swimming in the stuff; and it was recently made redundant because her team just got Morph Armor that could provide SCUBA gear if necessary. Nokama had a Mask of Translation that granted omnilingualism, which required a herd of rhino-like beasts for her to talk to in the Eigen Plot. Hahli originally had a Mask of Detection, whose main power was giving her headaches as she got closer to the arc's Mac Guffin. Thankfully, she broke the trend when she got a different mask that lets her borrow abilities of animals (like immunity to poison, enhanced eyesight, eels' electric shocks, and so on).
- By this point in the series, basically every single power of the original masks have been nerfed/duplicated in a piece of equipment.
- Toa of Plasma have also been mentioned, and Word Of God states that their Elemental Powers are good for melting things but not much else.
- Toa and Matoran of Sonics apparently are highly sensitive to sound, to the point that they get headaches from even a tiny change in pitch. Apparently for most of them, this is a hinderance as it means they get perma-headaches unless everything is mute.
- On the same note, Takanuva's mask is kinda redundant, as it only grants Light powers, but does not provide any bonuses if the user already has them. Ironically, Takanuva is the sole Toa of Light, and sole person who can use said mask.

The first Metal Gear Solid game has an example with Decoy Octopus, who can imitate another person perfectly, even down to the blood. While it sounds good and is certainly useful, it just can't compare to the likes of the Fourth Wall-shattering Psychic, the hulking shaman wielding a BFG commonly found on fighter jets, the Cold Sniper skilled enough to hit you in a blizzard, and the clone of the greatest soldier ever who is Made Of Frickin' Titanium.
- Which would explain why he's never involved in the actual fighting, and was kept more for the replacing the DARPA Chief aspect of the rebellion.
- It also has what is probably the trope's greatest subversion with Revolver Ocelot. When introduced, his special ability was that he used revolvers. And that was it. He got his hand cut off for his troubles within the space of five minutes. But then there's the after-credits sequence and the sequel (prequel?) games, revealing Ocelot's true Magnificent Bastard status, with more power and influence than his teammates could even imagine.
- Back in time we go, to Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid's predecessor and the beginning of the idea of a 'super-powered combat unit'. Alongside run-of-the-mill Black Color/Ninja and stealth masters Predator/Jungle Evil and Night Sight/Night Fright, we have Ultra Box/The Four Horsemen, whose skill is that there are four of them and that they're really good at close quarters combat. Close quarters combat being running up and down walls while shooting everywhere. To take the cake, however, is The Running Man, whose super-speed is not quite Flash-level, BUT he can turn on a dime and step on a mine and keep running. Stepping on 12 mines, however...
- There's also The Fury in the third Metal Gear Solid, whose power is getting really pissed off at stuff. Also, he's good with a flame thrower.
- My vote goes to Marionnette Owl from the gameboy game Metal Gear: Ghost Babel. He can see at night and has puppets that throw knives.
The Top Spin from Mega Man 3. While it's useful to Top Man when he uses it, when you get your hands on it, it's an ineffective suicide weapon that has no damage immunity, has lousy hit detection, and a very glitchy power bar. Except for its use against Shadow Man and The final form of the final boss, there's no sane reason to equip it.
- Then again, considering that MegaMan doesn't have wheels on his feet like TopMan does…
- Also good versus the monkeys in Hard Man's stage. You may want to save your magnet missiles. It has uses, you just need to be willing to risk being burned to find them.
The Eyeclops helmet in Kid Chameleon; in an irritatingly Nintendo Hard game, its primary application is to... fire harmless green beams that reveal invisible blocks, which is useless most of the time (as power up blocks are either clearly seen or easily found without the helmet). It's attack function is its crystal power up, which fires a brief white beam of kill energy that only takes off one hit from normal enemies, doesn't damage bosses at all, yet eats gems like candy per use. The only real advantage it gives you over your normal, unpowered self is an extra hit point (which any of the other helmets can get you, themselves).
The Sleep power up in the Kirby series; all you do with it activated is, well... sleep for a while, not healing or becoming invulnerable or anything, just... sleeping and being a sitting duck. Enemies or powerups that grant Sleep are actually used as obstacles later in the series for just that reason; likewise, it's a Zonk when two or more powers are absorbed at the same time ("Mix"). This was subverted in the latest game, where a treasure lets Kirby use Sleep to heal his health bar. In several games, Sleep does give you invulnerability; there was even a level in one game where you had to sleep through a conveyour belt filled with invulnerable spiky enemies to reach a secret door.
In Super Smash Bros, Jigglypuff, a Pokémon that floats in the air similarly to Kirby (though with fewer jumps) has a similar power, Rest. It is for the most part useless, since it stops her from moving for several seconds, and it only works against an enemy that is overlapping Jigglypuff's hitbox. But if it hits, it turns out to be Jigglypuff's most powerful attack (until Brawl, that is, where it was Nerfed into oblivion). A solid hit with Rest can send people flying to their deaths with infinitely more force that the actual supposed muscle powerhouses.
- The "taunt" ability possessed by characters is similarly useless for the most part, only giving characters points. Luigi's does slight damage in a comedically delayed and very close-ranged fashion, although it will spike someone hanging on the edge, if you position it correctly. Snake's is a little better, especially in range. Kirby's causes him to lose powers he has stolen so that he can steal different powers, or use his ability to suck in characters and spit them out as a damaging star.
Captain Novolin's "superpower" is diabetes. No, he doesn't cure diabetes. No, he can't give people diabetes either. He has diabetes, and dies instantly when he touches junk food. Suddenly Ma-Ti and Aquaman don't seem all that bad.
Super Robot Wars tends to give useless sidekick characters (like Bossborot from Mazinger Z) healing powers in later games.
- Then BRUTALLY subverted to hell in the games where Borot has the Borot Dynamic Special. What amounts to a Beam Spam with grenades, rocks, rockets, and the world's most destructive slingshot is horrendously broken, and when maxed out, does more damage than any other move in the game.
Lily White from the Touhou series is a fairy with the ability to inform others of the coming of Spring. Evidently, the only way she can do this is by launching hundreds of bullets all over the place, with predicable countermeasures being taken by any heroines that she decides to "inform".
- In the poor girl's defense, being a fairy in Gensokyo that can survive more than one shot (or even have a name) is rare enough, so she probably didn't have enough good karma left for a decent power.
- Rin, whose power is that she can carry the dead. With a wheelbarrow.
- The 12th game of the series, Undefined Fantastic Object, brings us another major contender: Kogasa Tatara, whose ability is the "power to surprise people". Aside from the fact that pretty much anyone is capable of it, Kogasa herself isn't even very good at it, according to her official profile. At least Lily makes it pretty clear that it's spring.
- Rumia, youkai of darkness, who can create a sphere of darkness around herself that she can't even see out of, making trees her worst enemy. As she is one of the many young and inexperienced youkai it isn't unreasonable to conclude this is simply the only use she has discovered for her power though, and with Perfect Memento stating her hair ribbon is actually a charm she isn't able to remove, Epileptic Trees about her being a Sealed Badass In A Can have been created.
The game Superhero League Of Hoboken is built on the subversion of this trope. Set in postapocalyptic Hoboken and surroundings, the protagonists are superheroes with... really weird powers. And names. And backgrounds. Such as Captain Excitement, so boring that he can cause animals to fall asleep at will. Treader Man, half man, half boat, who is really good at treading water. Breadbuster, able to vanquish any baked goods. Madame Pepperoni, able to instinctively know the content of any pizza box without looking. (Only pizza boxes, though.) The list goes on. Yet, almost all of them make use of their powers one way or another, either to solve a quest (a hostel is swamped with unfolded road maps; fortunately, Princess Glovebox's power is specifically the ability to handle this), or to assist in combat (causing animals to fall asleep is REALLY useful when you're attacked by Albino Rhinos). In fact, the only hero whose power is NOT useful in some way is Crimson Tape, the main character... and the only one you can't remove from the party. Fortunately, you can give heroes secondary powers to round out the group.
Technically not super powers, but there is much equipment in Splinter Cell which provides little to no use. The thermal vision goggles for example only have very specific uses on specific levels (such as identifying a man with a fake leg) and the EMF vision goggles are only useful to people who can't tell at a glance what types of machines run on electricity.
- The night vision goggles were necessary in the first game, however they have become less useful as the series has gone on as the lighting effects have become more than a little sloppy. By the time of Chaos Theory they're pretty much just there for show. It's no wonder they're considering taking them out of the game altogether for the fifth game.
Ultima IV has eight classes, each of which is associated with one of the Eight Virtues, each of which is derived from some combination of the Three Principles, the principles determining the abilities of the class. So the Paladin is associated with Honor, derived from Courage and Truth, and thus has close-combat and magic abilities, while the Tinker is associated with Sacrifice, derived from Love and Courage, and has close-combat and ranged combat. The Shepherd is associated with Humility, which is what Truth, Love, and Courage are derived from, and thus gets nothing. Heaven help you if you favor Humility during character creation: you start with a nearly-worthless character, stuck on an island, outside of a ghost town full of dangerous creatures who attack you.
- Mind, the shepherd class was intended to be hard mode.
- Inverted a bit in Ultima IX, where the class system returned after a two and a half game absense. It's really easy to choose the Ranger class (Spirituality), which gives you a bonus to all three of your characteristics. However, if you choose the Shepard class (Humility), you don't start with any characteristic bonuses, but you do get some very awesome equipment right at the beginning of the game, which would otherwise take other classes quite a while or a lot of money to get.
Accidental Subversion: In Phantasy Star Online, Heart is arguably the best weapon property around, because it allows Force characters to refill TP (Magic power).
In Okami, the various deities you get your powers from are the gods of things like fire, restoration, water, etc. The cat, Kabegami, however, is the God of Walls, and while being able to walk up verital surfaces may seem pretty handy, in practice it's limited to a few very specific paths marked by Kabegami statues and pawprints. Oh well.
After going through a few last minute sidequests in Tales Of Symphonia, the party can discover Verius, the newly-created Summon Spirit of Heart. Unlike the other summon spirits (yes, Earth, Fire, Wind and Water are four of them), he will not form a pact with the party or aid them in battle. Instead, he exists to see the hearts of everyone in the world. Sure, it's his perogative, but it's still a letdown. He was far more useful as a summon spirit when he was called Corrine.
- Who wasn't exactly much more useful. He was only useful in cutscenes and his crowning achievement was becoming a lightning rod. By becoming Verius he actually became better.
- Suprisingly, Verius becomes plot critical in the sequel. Turns out that the Summon Spirit of Heart is actually really useful for subduing your Super Powered Evil Side.
  - He gets a much better role in the manga where he actually fights Volt after turning into Verius rather than fade away as Corrine once serving his meat shield duty to Sheena in the games. He was able to shut down Volt's power long enough for Lloyd to crack the floating ball of thunder. However, he still disappears afterwards and can't be summoned. Also, it may be implied that Verius was intended to be usable in the game, but was scrapped at the last minute, and the evidence was in a glitched move one could hack for Sheena with which she ~~summons the Time Lord of Black Screens of Death~~ freezes the game.
In the Kingdom Hearts series, one of the primary antagonists, Organization XIII, all has their own sets of elemental powers. The first ones the player encounter are actually classical elements such as Earth, Fire, Ice, and Lightning, then Marluxia sort of sticks out with the power of Flower, although this is revealed to actually have control over plants and some of his powers are actually physical. But then in Chain of Memories, there's Zexion who, in the Game Boy Advance version is only shown to be able to manipulate others and does not actually fight the player. Then in Kingdom Hearts 2 when the others are revealed, they add a few other classical elements such as Wind, Water, Light (Final Mix+ only), but then several other nobodies have elements of Space, Nothingness, Time, and Moon.
- Though to give Square-Enix and Beuna Vista Games some credit, they actually found a way to make these actually not seem like Lame Powers, although Time still has much wasted potential in that its wielder uses it to get rid of others, and Saix uses the power of Moon to go berserk.
- Also, Nothingness apparantly works like a kind of yin yang bomb in the KH universe, along with the power to conjure a MASSIVE amount of lasers. And a sphere to suck out someone's life-force. And some other random things. There is a reason that Xemnas is the one that has it.
  - Actually, the Yin Yang Bomb is only when Xemnas absorbs the power of Kingdom Hearts. Along with only his native element, Xemnas' attacks are mostly blasts of laser beams, extending the same beams from his palms to use as melee weapons, and projecting barriers. So it seems that Nothingness manifests as the fairly simple idea of manipulating raw energy.
- Zexion is subverted in Re: Chain of Memories and KHII: Final Mix when the player fights him and his power is revealed to be Illusion. As crappy as it sound he can actually make his illusions as real as possible while still being an illusion. Tricks he uses include stealing your cards and then using them himself, planting fake cards that hurt you if used in your deck whose only difference is a slightly different color after you retrieve the stolen cards, making clones of himself, hiding in his weapon (a lexicon), and bringing you INSIDE the lexicon to a dimension totally under his control. This ends up with him considered one of the hardest Nobodies to fight in any of the games, while also explaining why he prefers to manipulate others rather than fight them himself.
In The Last Remnant, most (if not all) of the characters that can be recruited into your party have, in addition to their usual compliment of standard "RPG Attributes", a single seemingly-useless attribute which can also increase through combat along with everything else. Some seem as if they may be useful, such as Management, Leadership, and the like. But others, such as Gluttony, or Trivia seem... not so useful. I've yet to have an enemy challenge me to a pie-eating contest or round of Star Trek trivia questions, but when they do, I'll be ready! (And what kind of lame attribute is "Crybaby", anyway?)
Averted in Trauma Center, where Cardia (Greek for heart) covers your patient's heart with rapid-fire lacerations in between laying tumor bombs. Not that bad in the storyline missions, but X-Cardia will kill you dead.
The Interactive Fiction series The Frenetic Five features a group of superheroes in a world where not all powers are awesome. The player character, Improv, has the power of "thinking MacGyver was a rank amateur," (a power which doesn't actually have any effect on the game — the player himself is expected to provide that power in the form of solving puzzles through improvization). His teammates are:
- "Pastiche", each of whose body parts has a different power (her hand, for example, can phase through solid matter, but her Kryptonite Factor is rope and anything wheat-based);
- "Lexicon" knows every word in the English language;
- "Newsboy" has a mystical ability to receive news headlines remotely;
- "The Clapper" can make objects beep by clapping (in one episode, The Clapper is replaced by Medic Alert, a hero with the power to beep loudly until help arrives).
In City of Heroes, the two starting contacts for heroes of the Mutation origin are both also mutants, but their powers aren't exactly super-heroic. One can instantly solve any math problem, the other can see into the infrared and ultraviolet areas of the light spectrum.
- While not great crime fighting powers, both could probably make some good money in the private sector with those. Especially the math one.
- Depending on what counts as a "math problem", any Munchkin given that power in a Tabletop RPG would easily be able to turn that power into a Game Breaker. Pretty much everything can be described by math, so it's a power that's not too far off of "knowing the answer to any question". "Can I build an airplane out of the materials I've got, and if so, how?" is a question that can be turned into a math problem by specifying the properties of the materials and the physics equations describing aerodynamics. And he'd be able to solve questions like that instantly, making him, potentially, the greatest engineer that ever lived. Not making him a Gadgeteer Genius is a clear case of Misapplied Phlebotinum.
Shaman in World of Warcraft use elemental totems to grant a wide variety of buffs to their allies. As a drawback, these totems are stationary, have limited range, limited duration, and only 5 hit points (meaning a level 1 character's attack can kill a max level shaman's totem in one hit). This was fine in the original game and even through the first expansion, but WoW's second expansion brought a round of buff handouts and homogenization that turned all but one totem from powerful unique buffs into unwieldy versions of other classes' buffs.
- Appropriately, Shaman totems correspond to Earth, Fire, Air, and Water. Heart is noticeably absent.
Shirou in Fate Stay Night is terrible at magic and has the super awesome ability to... use the least inefficient style of magic better than anyone else naturally. Which he can do about six times before running out of prana. Oh, and he's really good at visualizing the internal structure of stuff and their history. Completely subverted due to his Reality Marble, which turns him from some kid with huge determinator qualities, high physical strength and poor planning abilities into Archer. And it's still only good on a battlefield because all he can make is weaponry, and - if he struggles - armor.
In The Bizarre Adventures of Woodruff and the Schnibble, after you go back in time and save an injured bazouk, a Chinese-stereotype "guru" (whose existence you've caused) will periodically show up and give you such powers as... the ability to control your hair growth. Subverted when Woodruff asks what use these powers are and is told, "Individually, they are useless. But once you have mastered them all, you will gain the ability to leviatate!" And indeed, levitation is necessary to complete the game.

Mopey hasn't been a Magical Girl for more than one minute, and she already asks that very question.
Basilica in Man-Man has possibly the most ludicrous power ever invented. He turns into a basilica, then the resident priest tells you to knock off what you were doing. Worse, other people can trigger the transformation.
- Not to mention the titular Man-Man. After being bitten by a radioactive man, he got the powers of... a man. It can be called a "power" because it makes him invisible to women. Not to mention the mutant half-head on top of his own.
  - Recently, the extra head fell off and he's now visible to women. So he really has *no* powers now.
In the Metal Gear Solid parody webcomic The Last Days Of Foxhound, we have The Chinaman of the Dead Cell unit. In a team consisting of a giant explosives expert, a superb strategist, and a vampire who can see in the dark, run up walls, walk on water and pin people to the ground by their shadows, The Chinaman is... a special effects expert and a navy swimming champion. Who can also hold his breath for a really long time. Did I mention that he's currently stationed in a desert? Because of all this, he ends up trying way too hard.
Chinaman: I know what you're thinking. "What could a navy swimming champion and special effects expert possibly be good for in an anti-terrorist squad? Especially in a desert where there's no water to swim in?"
Raven: You're a navy swimming champion?
Chinaman: And a special effects expert, don't forget that! But I've got news for you Jack — I just spent four hours under the desert sun in a wetsuit! Pretty stupid huh? But I did it to prove I could, and now I'm gonna pass out!
(passes out)
Jackson: It's for the best. He was about thirty seconds from challenging you to a breath holding contest.
- It should be noted Chinaman (as well as Old Boy, a 100+ year old former Nazi general also from the strip) were based on characters that were going to appear on Metal Gear Solid 2 until Kojima decided to ax the idea (though apparently they're still part of the backstory). Go figure.
  - In regards to Chinaman, he was originally suppose to have water walking and wall-running abilities, but when he was removed they gave them to Vamp instead.
Parodied in this installment of VG Cats.
A short arc in the Sluggy Freelance B Side Comics "Bikini Suicide Frisbee Days" dealt with the main characters getting powers like these. Riff gained the power to make sound effects, Torg gained the "power" of having his life narrated, and Zoe gained the ability/curse to speak a different language each time she opens her mouth (but never English). Gwynn's the only one who got a useful superpower: the power to create an anti-climactic ending, causing all the other useless superpowers to fade away.
Lampshaded in this strip from Least I Could Do.
Subverted in this strip from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.
Apparently the entire point of Irregular Webcomic's "Supers" theme.
This trope is the entire premise of the furry superhero comic Psychic Dyslexia Institute (PDI), where a "psychic dyslexia" is an exceptionally odd superpower; characters include, among many others: a girl who can create completely convincing illusions, but only of clothing; someone who has the power to tell whether or not a building contains cheese; a boy who subconsciously generates a field around him that makes anyone who enters it suddenly feel an irrational overriding hatred towards him, and an anthropomorphic chicken whose eggs glow in the dark. They actually find fairly creative ways to use these abilities, especially with the addition of a team member whose ability is to reverse the ability of any powered character he touches. Pathos, for example, generates a field that makes people become absolutely enraptured towards him while touching Reverso, generally used as an extremely effective distraction.
Elan from The Order of the Stick. His teammates include: a tactically brilliant Genius Bruiser armed with a magical sword that repels the undead; a stealth expert with an enchanted ice-bow; a Church Militant who can temporally become twenty feet tall; a magic-user capable of "telling the laws of physics to sit down and shut up"; and a walking halfling death machine. His ability: playing the lute. And casting simple illusions... poorly.
- Through the power of Character Development (and finding a mentor), Elan Took A Level In Badass. He's now a swashbuckling badass who gains combat bonuses when he makes puns and uses a rapier. His illusions aren't so bad anymore, having saved the day more than once (and added impact to a What The Hell Hero speech to Vaarsuvius). His lute playing (does he even have a lute anymore?) is still pretty bad.
  - His kazoo playing is even worse.
In Super Stupor, one superhero can force anyone to tell the truth by having sex with them.
- This power would be invaluable to any espionage agency. They would be the perfect Honey Trap.
Andrew "Smitty" Smith of Gunnerkrigg Court has the power to subconsciously create order where there was none, or as Parley puts it "his super power is to make everything boring!"
- Parley's recently awakened teleportation powers seem useful... until you realize she can't yet control them. Indeed, they first manifested when Smitty gave her a rose, causing her to transport herself, Smitty, Jones, Annie, and Reynardine to her BED.
8-Bit Theater also counts, since Black Mage learned Blue Magic. It allows him to use any capacity used against him. While it sounds pretty awesome like this, he needs to survive the blow to learn the move, and the tech is exactly the same one that was used on him. So far his two powers are the "Goblin Punch" (a hard kick to the testicles), and "Make Black Mage Vomit Out His Own Organs" (Exactly What It Says On The Tin). When he immediately tried to retaliate against his attacker with the second one, he discovered the spell was designed exclusively to target Black Mage.
- Well, now he learned Sarda's Rewrite Reality spell (depicted by rewriting speech bubbles). But it's not a "rewrite reality according to the caster's will" spell, it's "rewrite reality according to Sarda's will". Too bad.
Nodwick can carry five tons on his back, apparently only by not thinking too hard about it — a very, very special form of Blessed With Suck. He also has a special combat ability in which, as soon as he takes a swing, everyone on his side loses — he's just that bad at combat. His group actually managed to exploit this by sending him to join the other team.
- To be fair, Nodwick also has the (surprisingly uncommon) power of common sense and is Genre Savvy; both abilities that has served him and the party well on multiple occassions.
During the super hero story arc of Dragon Tails, Lemuel's alter ego gained the ability to manipulate emotions and make people happy. Not only did he gain these powers while playing a villain, he couldn't actually stop people from doing things, merely change how they feel about doing those things.
Noah of Path to Greater Good has, at the start of the series, the magical power to not see his own reflection.
In this Dinosaur Comics, T-Rex imagines bizarre superpowers for himself and his friends. "Your super power is shooting sunscreen out of your eyes." "What do yours do? Dribble out salty water, but only when you're sad?"
Average-Man is the world's most average superhero. He's okay at flying.
Susan of El Goonish Shive's stated power is: "bad-ass hair in the wind even with no wind." Also, she can summon hammers from Hammer Space during an extremely limited number of circumstances.
The premise of this Optipess strip.
Hamsterfall from Bob the Angry Flower.
Almost the entire cast of Superslackers. For example, Invisible Right Leg Lad's power is Exactly What It Says On The Tin. One of the few characters with a useful power dies in a somewhat ironic manner exactly two panels after his first appearance.
In here, Mai gets an upgrade to his Heart powers. A giant monkeywrench to smash people in the face with.

Dr. Horrible's roomie Moist from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog apparently has the power to make things... moist. Lampshaded when he laments that at his most badass he can make people feel like they want to take a shower.
- "Do you need anything dampened? Or made soggy?"
The web game For The Win lampshades this. The "Pantheon" figure "Heartia" (based on the lesser-known Greek goddess Hestia), pretends to be a Magical Girl with the power of heart. It's revealed at the end of her description that it's all a lie, but she goes along with it because, I quote, "what kind of power is 'Heart', anyway?!"
In the Whateley Universe, one of the main characters, Jade Sinclair, has what seems like one of the suckiest powers around. She can animate a blanket or a pen or something. For a little while. And, while it's animated, it's technically alive, with a copy of her thought processes and memories. Over a period of months, she learns how to make this stronger and longer-lasting. And she figures out ways to make this more effective. By the end of her first term at Whateley Academy, she has taken out several supervillains. I won't mention that she has a MUCH bigger personal problem than a lame power...
- So much, she probably qualifies as a subversion. She also gets regeneration later on.
- Also, there are lots of mutant teenagers at Whateley Academy who have even lamer powers. Glass can turn see-through. Not invisible, just see-through. You can still see her. And doing so messes up her vision. Lightweight can warp reality by... wait for it... making things around her five pounds lighter. Kamoro can shoot (harmless) sparks out of her hands. There's a girl who has captured the spirit of the squirrel, and she sometimes thinks that at least she didn't get the spirit of the hamster, like another girl on campus (that one came with fur and cheek pouches).
- Miasma. It looks like his power is really bad gas. Which he can't control all that well.
In the online novel Dangerous Lunatics, Victor is a skunk boy who can control his flatulence to a musical degree, among his newfound friends with more traditional superpowers such as super strength, bendiness, speaking to the dead, and immortality. However, later on he finds out he can, in addition, actually blast a veritable tornado of force from his rear, and saves the rest of the team by doing so at a critical moment.
The Spoony Experiment references this trope while decrying the weak plots of the Final Fantasy series. Final Fantasy I's plot, about the four elemental orbs: "The only way this plot could be gayer is if there was a fifth orb for Heart!" (Cue Stock Footage from Captain Planet.)
- Ma-Ti himself appears in the That Guy With The Glasses anniversary video, and since he has a lame power of Heart, he can only say "Heart!" and generally get everyone to kick his ass. But watch out when he packs a gun... no, actually, he still can't harm anyone except Chester A Bum.
  "Suck my big, Fat, FUCKING HEART!!''"
- Ma-Ti's character from that site originated from the Nostalgia Critic's review of Captain Planet... where apparently heart is more than just a useless power.
  Nostalgia Critic: Wait a minute, I thought Ma-Ti was from South America? What's all this about you being Indian? You're not the real Ma-Ti, are you!?
  Ma-Ti: Uhh... Well the thing about that is... uhh..... HEART! (sucker punches the Critic and then runs away)
Selan Pike's EvilFTW has a girl who is psychic, but only when it comes to vending machines; hell, pretty much all but Selanio, Xeno, Professor Pain, Reza, Damon Lords, and Apogee are Blessed With Suck in some form in this series. One might try to argue that Selan is different — right up until she faints from hypoglycemia. She can't use her powers while tired.
In the League of Intergalactic Cosmic Champions Mr. Obvious had the power to see the obvious! So Yeah...
superuseless superpowers.
On Homestar Runner, in the Strong Bad Email "super powers", Strong Bad reveals his secret super-power: removing caps (bottle-caps, beanie caps, etc.) with the power of his mind.
- And when he temporarily displays the ability to shapeshift in the e-mail of the same name, his ability is ridiculously limited; his attempts to become an animal result in the balloon variety (easily affected by the wind, as is his money morph later), he can turn into almost anyone (almost meaning 'most of': as in he turns into Bubs... from the waist down — his torso, head and arms don't exist), and every change was accompanied by a loud "DWAYNE!"
- Bubs had the ability to fly, but due to his weight, this was limited to hovering a few inches. And saying "Sbu" caused him to lose this power forever. He didn't mourn the loss.
The Animutation French Erotic Film by Andrew Kepple, where various animutation characters contribute elements and finally "spleen!" — with "What kind of lame-ass power is 'Heart' anyway?" written in the background.

Parodied and subverted in The Tick, with the character of Sewer Urchin. Basically a useless comic relief hero most of the time, often seeming less than bright with Rain-Man-like speech patterns and frequently the butt of jokes about the way he smelled, one episode suddenly takes place in the sewers. All of a sudden, we learn about a huge subterranean ecosystem in which Sewer Urchin is an intelligent Bad Ass and his aboveground friends are reduced to bumbling Fish Out Of Water. By the end of the episode, the Tick and Arthur have even picked up Sewer Urchin's "normal" speech patterns of stuttering shy bewilderment and Sewer Urchin has begun referring to them with the benign condescension he receives on the surface.
- And then there are guys like Four-Legged Man, Sarcastro, Bi-Polar Bear, and Captain Lemming....
- Chairface Chippendale, while an Evil Genius, well, he has a chair for a head.
- Then there was the Mad Scientist who created a creature that was one big tongue.
- Really the whole point of the series was to skirt, parody and subvert pretty much all the superhero tropes.
The much-maligned Aquaman from Superfriends, who often needed episodes specifically written to utilize his powers without the audience wondering why another character couldn't handle the situation just fine. A mantra of sorts that people use to describe Aquaman's powers is "Swim fast, talk to fish". As lame as his powers were, Aquaman's arch-nemesis on Superfriends, The Black Manta, was even lamer. As Seanbaby's article on The Superfriends pointed out, his main power was that he owned a boat. When you put them on a team with Green Lantern and Superman, everyone looks pretty lame. Aquaman was just worse than the rest.
- A Cartoon Network parody promo starts with Wonder Woman and Aquaman tied up in the villain's lair. He tells Wonder Woman that his ability to talk to fish is of no help to them, to which Wonder Woman merely rolls her eyes. Don't worry, The Powerpuff Girls save them.
- The comics version of Aquaman is significantly less of a wimp, with Super Strength about on par with Wonder Woman and Psychic Powers that go beyond talking to fish. This was explained by noting that his body had to adjust to vastly greater pressures underwater than those that existed on dry land, giving him great strength, and the same considerations gave him superior agility, from having to learn how to move around easily in the water. That said, the original creator of the Justice League Of America noted that, if there'd been another "big hero" around to add instead of Aquaman, he would've used them.
  - And of course he also started with superstrength and durability back in the Golden Age, casually swatting aside cannon shells and pushing destroyers off reefs with his ~~bare~~ gloved hands, but modern comic writers hate doing research. Contiwhatity?
- Grant Morrison lampshades and subverts this within the first four issues of JLA. Issue four has Aquaman called on his lack of powers relative to the other Leaguers, and he responds by giving the baddie a seizure.
- The DCAU uses this version of Aquaman, who ends up a significantly bigger Badass than many other characters in the Justice League. They also do this with their replacement for Black Manta, Devil Ray, who has Powered Armor which gives him enhanced strength and a bunch of guns. Then he gets shot in his second appearance. It's quite hard not to be a badass when your "communicate with sea life" power extends to sharks, giant squids and other sea-based monsters. Who wants to mock the guy that can call in favors from Godzilla? Did we mention that he cuts his own arm off to save his son and then replaces it with a harpoon?
- Seems the solution to Aquaman's Superfriends reputation on these newer cartoons is to... make him more manly, through the use of facial hair, lack of shirt, etc., etc. JLU/comics take is explained above, while Batman The Brave And The Bold takes that and brings it over the top. "OUTRAGEOUS!"
  - Aquaman uses his classic appearance in his first DCAU appearance in Superman The Animated Series; while not badass, he manages to have some use on land by commanding seagulls.
- The episode "Justice" on Smallville has the newly-formed and not-yet-named Justice League attacking a Luthor-controlled base where Impulse is being held. Not only does Aquaman express joy and surprise that the base turns out to be near the docks, but later on, it turns out the facility has an underwater access hatch that seems to exist just to give Aquaman a use in the mission.
- Parodied in The Fairly OddParents: a team of superheroes includes "Wet Willie", whose powers over water are absolutely useless when the team is called to a landlocked area. Nevertheless, he manages to bring his fish buddies anyway.
  - There was also that time Timmy wished the whole world was super. Trixie's best friend got turned to Hawkgirl. She can fly and she has all the powers of a hawk.
- The Ookla the Mok song "Arthur Curry" is an entire song from the perspective of Aquaman bemoaning this.
- Similarly, the Tripod song "Aquaman" expresses sympathy towards the poor hero. "Aquaman, you were last in line for superpowers..."
- In fact, this editor finds Aquaman is nearly as famous as the big-name superheroes (Superman, Batman, Spiderman..) simply because so many people took pity on him for having such lame superpowers.
- Parodied in the South Park episode "Super Best Friends" where all of the prophets and religious figures were given amazing powers, yet Seaman's only abilities were breathing underwater and talking to fish. His powers were put to the test by having him dive to the bottom of the ocean in search of water. His name served as the topic of a running pun throughout the episode — what's more, his animal sidekick was an avian companion named "Swallow"...
- Lampshaded by comedian/ventriloquist Jeff Dunham, who has a superhero puppet called Melvin. While discussing various superhero attributes, Jeff lists some of Aquaman's powers. Melvin's reply: "Yeah, great. He has the same powers as Spongebob!"
- It could be argued that Aquaman's biggest problem isn't so much his lack of useful powers as his irrational attraction to hanging out with land-dwellers (many of whom would probably look silly trying to fight crime in SCUBA gear) in their native environment all the time.
- This essay points out that not only does Aquaman's power means that he controls every single inhabitant of nine-tenths of the Earth's surface, which is not something to sniff at, but that since humanity evolved from fish and technically still have a little bit of that ancestry wired into their brain, he could theoretically control humans as well, but chooses not to.
  - This is sort of backed up by the fact that Aquaman once gave a member of the Hyperclan a seizure even though the guy was a Martian who comes from a planet without any non-frozen water and would never in a million years share any kind of ancestry with anything on earth.
  - Aquaman actually did that in the Detroit era of the Justice League Of America.
  - Out on the Internet, there's a short story where Aquaman uses the telepathic will of every aquatic creature on the planet to defeat Cthulhu.
  - Which some fanart now shows him controling Cthulhu; yet another reason why you don't want to get on his bad side (the others being the Kraken and the Leviathan).
- Parodied on Dragon Ball Abridged when the Justice League assemble to discuss what to do about the approaching Saiyans. Aquaman, who's supposed to be locked in the closet, shouts "We could use whales!! WHAAAALES!!" Later, Nappa blows up an ocean and Aquaman bemoans the fate of the whales.
- "Oh, if you hate starfish, you're gonna be pissed at what I just did!"
Likewise, though not as widely bemoaned, the Superfriends version of Hawkman was almost as useless. He could fly... and that's it. Almost every other hero on the show had this ability and their namesake superpower. To add insult to injury, his wings weren't even real.
- This was generally averted by Hawkgirl in Justice League, as not only did she have actual wings, but her Nth metal mace is probably one of the coolest weapons in the show — not to mention that better writing actually made her personality different from the other characters, giving her something other than powers to stand out with.
- The Batman avoided this entirely by making the wings that let Hawkman fly be part of a suit that also gives him Super Strength, plus the fact that he wasn't being compared to any other Justice League members except Batman. You can tell they were going out of the way for this, as in the scene where he first comes in, he uses his mace to send a shockwave across the ground that smashes through concrete, and effortlessly lifts the entire Batmobile up an entire cliff. The mace also acts like a Precision Guided Boomerang for some reason.
- Hawkman is considerably less of a wimp in the comics. In fact, he's a grade-A Badass. Think Indiana Jones crossed with Conan The Barbarian... with wings! It helps that he's not being constantly compared to the likes of Superman and the Green Lantern.
Even Batman and Robin weren't immune, thanks to the no-violence stance of the Superfriends. While the comic versions could handle themselves quite well with or without Bat-gadgets, you take away the utility belts of the SF versions and they're less useful than Marvin or Wendy, it seems.
The Superfriends also had the Wonder Twins, Zan and Jayna. While Jayna could turn into any animal (including a few alien ones), Zan could only turn into some form of water (like a wave, or an ice sculpture). This was spoofed in a Cartoon Network promo where Zan interrupted a mock-Public Service Announcement to complain about how lame his power was: "I could get beaten by a sponge! It wouldn't even have to be an evil sponge!" At the end of the promo, Zan is mopped up by a janitor, with an indignant "Hey!"
- This was subverted in the Justice League Unlimited episode "Ultimatum". Zan Captain Ersatz Downpour had the same supposedly-useless ability, but he was far more creative with it, using his water transformation powers to become lethal tidal waves or to drown a sleazy businessmen. He still got his butt kicked by Aquaman, though, since he has a severe lapse in logic to try and drown Aquaman.
- Parodied in Harvey Birdman Attorney At Law where Zan uses his powers for perversion when he turns himself into Wonder Woman's bath water.
- Spoofed in The Fairly Oddparents when Timmy's parents get superpowers. One power shown is shapeshifting, where Mom turns into a giant shark, but Dad, like Zan, just turns into a bucket of water: "Um... beware my power?"
  - Another is Meat Vision... which summons meat in the line of sight. Well, I suppose it would keep one from ever starving to death...
- It was the characters, not the powers, that were lame. Imagine an intelligent wave of water pouring into your lungs, or a thick mist obscuring your vision when a gorilla grabs you and dislocates your shoulders, being imprisoned in a block of ice, or squeezed to death by an anaconda, running through a dark alley being toyed with by a huge panther when suddenly an inconspicuous puddle of water freezes your ankles to the ground... well, just think about the possibilities. Replace goody-goody with amoral, add in a Marvel Ultimate Quicksilver/Scarlet Witch incest squick and you could have something pretty Badass.
  - This.
- Janya's powers would be useful... if someone other than Janya had them. She can turn into anything she can say, and due to being a scatterbrained moron, she generaly picks something shitty.
  - If you think about it, she could theoretically turn herself into Superman, or at least Krypto, but never did.
Superhero parodies may deliberately saddle their hero with a lame or useless power just for comedic effect. Meltman from Action League NOW! had the utterly useless ability to melt himself; even he bemoaned its uselessness. In fact, the only time he's ever observed melting is during the intro, when he's clearly under a magnifying glass, suggesting he can't even melt himself as much as he can be willingly melted by others.
Spoofed in the new He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon: in "Mekaneck's Lament", Mekaneck felt bad about the limited uses of his extendable cybernetic neck, and tried to find better powers so he could be of more use to the team. There were, of course, disastrous consequences, and by the end An Aesop about making the most of what you have ensued, as Mekaneck managed quite a few useful stunts with his neck to save the day single-handedly.
- There was also a subversion in the form of Stinkor, a skunk-like villain whose only power is toxic body odor. During his premiere, even Skeletor rejected him for his lame powers... until he learned it was toxic enough to melt rock and knock out anyone who breathed it within a matter of seconds. After that, he was given a suit that let him control the direction of his stink, making him a powerful ally for Skeletor. In fact, Skeletor's reason for exempting Stinkor from the punitive duty he imposed on his other underlings is specifically because he proved he was useful. The really impressive part about this is that this was the first time the character was introduced in any He-Man media outside of the toy line, as the creators of the original ''He-Man'' and ''She-Ra'' cartoons and comics thought he was too ridiculous a character to be taken seriously by viewers.
In the Family Guy episode "Family Guy Viewer Mail #1", the Griffin family all get superpowers. As the Butt Monkey of the series, Meg is saddled with fingernail growth. ("Is that all you can do?")
You'd think that being the leader of your Five Man Band would give you the best power. But there's a rather unlucky example of a leader with lame powers: Will, the leader of WITCH, wielder of the Heart of Candracar, which grants her the power to... give all the other members their powers, and close portals. That's it. Gaia would approve ("Without a Heart to guide them..."). Though this meant the others were severely incapacitated without her present to transform them, it couldn't be as cool for her. She gets a power upgrade in the second season, gaining what turns out to be the exact same powers as the season's Big Bad, only Nerrisa's had lots more practice.
- Naturally, in the original comics, her powers weren't lame at all — she had powers over Absolute Energy.
  - The people who developed the show wanted to go slower, and every guardian had powers earlier in the comic that weren't revealed on TV until the second season.
Subverted in the Ben 10 episode "Big Tick". When Ben first becomes Cannonbolt, he complains that "all he can do is roll around". By the end of the episode, however, he's figured out the trick: curling up in a heavily-armored ball and rolling towards someone at high speeds. From there on out, the form is essentially treated as a free-rolling wrecking ball.
- Played straight with Ripjaw, though. Essentially an alien version of Aquaman that looks badass but has even less powers and abilities. It was only used intentionally in two episodes and one episode by mistake where Ben almost drowned on dry land.
- In Ben 10 Alien Force, Alien X would be the most powerful form he has... except that to do anything as Alien X, even move, he has to negotiate with a pair of perpetually arguing consciousnesses that share the form. They never agree.
  - Not entirely true. They're more than happy to agree when they're voting against Ben.
Played with in Class of the Titans. While the other members of the team have incredible resilience, magical powers, superhuman strength, and super speed (among others), Neil only has the power of luck. While this appears to be incredibly useless (even he laments it), it comes in handy sometimes, such as when he was given a weapon and then proceeded to knock the Big Bad out in one shot, without intending to.
- Played straight with Jay. Whilst all the other members of the team had noticeable and obviously useful powers (super speed, super strength, psychic abilities and black belt or two, extraordinary agility and fighting skills, super intelligence, and the aforementioned freakishly freaky good luck), the leader of the team is blessed with the amazing ability to... lead. And essentially keep everyone else from killing each other over a litre of banana nut ice-cream.
In Transformers: Beast Machines, this trope applies to Rattrap, who can't transform until long after everyone else has, and isn't particularly useful in a fight... His robot mode not only lacks weapons, it also has wheels instead of legs! This leads, among other things, to some particularly irritating Character Derailment. (Not that Beast Machines isn't full of Character Derailment, mind you, but that's another issue entirely.) When it finally does turn out that he can do something, it winds up being the ability to interface with computers.
- Although the ability to interface with computers should be ridiculously useful on Cybertron. It took him a while to put it to any really good use, and he probably never got to his full potential.
What about the original Transformers? You'd think that the Big Bad would have the biggest, baddest vehicle mode, right? The Decepticons turn into jets for the most part, so the main villain should turn into the deadliest thing on wings, right? Wrong. The original Megatron's alternate mode was a gun that someone else had to fire. That someone was usually Starscream, who is the namesake of the trope about wanting to betray/kill/usurp your leader. They fixed this for the 2007 live-action movie by making Megatron a huge spiky Cybertronian jet (who just happened to never get a chance to scan an Earth vehicle to transform into). Predictably enough, there was much complaining, mostly because the usual not-gun alt form for G1 Megatron is usually a tank. So, it's more of a case of They Changed It Now It Sucks... again.
- But for fans of tank Megatron, his new form in the sequel is a tank (though, like the jet, it's a spiky Cybertronian version instead of an Earth tank.) In the comics, he can switch between either of these at will. Sadly, the movie version's not a triple-changer.
- To add insult to injury, the gun he became is a Walther P38. Which as far as handguns go isn't really the top of the line or particular impressive.
- Another take on it, from the Marvel comics, was that the size-changing was entirely voluntary and he could fire himself, but he was generally more accurate with someone else aiming him. In the comics, he was similar to Shockwave, whose gun mode was the size of a Transformer, could fly, and fired blasts that could devastate a mountainside.
- The most recent comics produced by IDW put a twist on this: his normal alternate form is that of a massive, gun-laden tank, but on Earth, provided with much greater sources of energy than usual and having to keep a low profile if he wants to move undetected to areas of battle, he is able to transform into a pistol another can wield... that can vaporize tanks in a single shot. The Decepticons are also slightly less fractious than normal, uniting in the face of a greater threat, so Megatron being used by his treacherous lieutenant (who is quite fine a warrior and does thinks Megatron has lost his way) in battle isn't so far-fetched.
- In the Transformers Mosaics, a collection of may-or-may-not-be-canon one-shots, Starscream locks Megatron into gun mode and reconfigures him into a water pistol. "STAAAAAAARSCREEEEEEEAM!"
Rugrats had an episode where the babies watched a superhero show called Mega Hyper Heroes and acted out an episode of it- Tommy playing the shapeshifting Changeling, Phil and Lil playing Spitball boy and Dotted Line Girl, and Chuckie playing the part of Stinky (who smells as strong as two babies).
- Another episode, probably a spoof on the A-Team, had Chuckie as the guy who drove the bus. Also, due to a Mondegreen, Tommy gained the ability to talk to pants, as opposed to plants (and they didn't even talk back). A Shout Out to Captain Planet had Tommy unable to help in the fight because the villain didn't wear pants.
Referenced and spoofed in an episode of Garfield and Friends. Garfield and Odie end up in a superhero cartoon. The hero team includes Expys of Cyclops and Beast, a superstrong woman... and Curdman, who can manipulate cottage cheese ("all the good superpowers were already taken") and is "laughed every year at the superhero Christmas party." But he later earns self-confidence by discovering his powers work with yogurt.
Odd in Code Lyoko had a special power in the early part of the series in which he could see tiny snippets of future events. However, the power came at random, functioned as an absolute vision, and once resulted in him getting taken out by a Kankrelat immediately following a vision. While reprogramming the avatars of the Lyoko Warriors in the later season, Jérémie noticed the uselessness of this power and removed it, much to Odd's disappointment.
- Let us not forget Odd's Lazer Arrows in season one, where he had 10 and when he's out he can't do anything anymore. In season 2 Jérémie fixes things and makes it 10,000 arrows.
- And we also have Aelita, who's powers before Season 3 included... deactivating towers and "Creativity". The former was essential to most of the missions, but she had to be protected on the way to the tower, and the latter could be incredibly powerful, but it costs her half of her Life Points to use it. When Season 3 comes along, she finally gains an attack and doesn't risk death while on Lyoko.
In the first season of Jackie Chan Adventures there are twelve magic talismans based around the figures of the Chinese Zodiac that each grant a different power. The Rabbit grants super speed, the Monkey allows shapeshifting, the Dragon turns combustion into a super powered laser blast... and the Sheep allows astral projection. Against all of the dangerous and potential lethal powers of the other Talisman, being able to leave your body to enter people's dreams can seem lackluster.
- This was lampshaded many times, but Da Lon Wong used it against Jade and Jackie, and trapped them outside of their bodies. If it hadn't been for Uncle's Awesomeness By Analysis routine in figuring out what happened, they would have been outside of their bodies permanently. Ouch.
In an episode of Dexter's Laboratory, Dexter and his friends are playing a tabletop fantasy game of some kind, and Dexter is stuck with the least useful power: burrowing.
An episode of Darkwing Duck featured a number of mutants who gained their powers by being born and/or raised near an industrial site. Among the many varieties of mutant was an accountant born next to a banana plantation who could transform into a banana. That's pretty much it, he just turned into a banana. He wasn't proud of it either.
- The entire episode would probably be a parody of this. The other mutants have powers like being able to emit ordinary household paste from their body and being able to exhibit cold symptoms at will. At the climax of the episode, where they all band together to fight the Big Bad, they belittle Darkwing's help due to his not having any powers, charge the villain... and are promptly beaten. Darkwing and the one mutant with even remotely useful powers end up stopping him themselves.
- In another episode, Negaduck magically steals all the powers of Darkwing's other foes — including Quackerjack, who Negaduck then taunts for not actually having any special abilities. Quackerjack tells him that he stole "his wackiness," which causes Negaduck to uncontrollably laugh at inopportune moments.
In World of Quest, the magician-in-training Anna specializes in bringing inanimate objects to life. In the beginning, no matter what spell she tries to do, she ends up bringing things to life by accident (lthough considering she brought AN ENTIRE MOUNTAIN to life and then it helped them in a fight, even though the fight was almost over, it might not be so lame). After a while, it seems she has started to be able to do other spells, but animating stuff is still about 80% of her powers. Although, being a parody of fantasy campaigns, most characters are pretty one-sided. Way just shows the way, Prince Nestor can only rarely shoot some energy balls but usually just sucks in a fight, Grair only flies... and most of the other characters only fight. But considering most of those can actually fight well, only Nestor would count as lame.
- And the Catastrophy Brothers, who are normally three pathetic mooks... but if they all get wet together (fall into a pond, stand in the rain, etc.) they combine to become... a slightly stronger mook that the good guys can still easily beat up. Lamer than Aquaman.
Danny Phantom had Box Ghost who was Exactly What It Says On The Tin. He controlled boxes (and bubble wraps). That's it. As a result, it became a prime Running Gag that he is a Harmless Villain not taken seriously by either the heroes and villains. However, this is often subverted as Box Ghost has telekinesis, an ability most other ghosts in the series usually doesn't have or use; thus he can just as use the contents inside the boxes to harm his foes — one of which contains scalpels!
- In one of the movies, an alternate future revealed Box Ghost to be a Future Badass, complete with dead serious attitude and eyepatch. By this time, he's extended his box-based powers to, among other things, creating exploding boxes made of ghostly energy.
  "Beware."
The rather obscure media line Stone Protectors, about a group of very untalented musicians who gained super powers from a bunch of Mineral MacGuffins has some examples. They all gained stronger bodies, but each also gained an additional special ability. One guy became a skilled samurai, one a wrestling expert with super strength, and one became a skilled soldier who could turn anything into a weapon. THEN we have the guy who gained skill at using in-line skates and the guy who gained the ability to climb things. They also all gained actual musical talent, which, while helpful for a band of crappy musicians fighting music hating enemies is not the most awe inspiring power.
Brother Bear, actually. The older brothers are mocking main character for having "love" totem. It's hard to say if being changed into bear counts as superpower, but it's obviously not natural.
The Earthworm Jim cartoon had one episode with a new superhero auditioning for the League of Superheroes. Her power is to spotaneously combust whenever she sings. When one character asks what use that is, another simply replies, "Well, at least it's better than Lower Back Pain Man." The scene then cuts to Lower Back Pain Man himself, insisting that he'll be okay in a minute.

David O'Doherty has Very Mild Superpowers.
A documentary aired on the Discovery channel that examined people with savant syndrome and super-human memory featured a man who, after being struck by a softball at a young age, gained the ability to remember the day of the week and the weather conditions of any date following the incident. His crime-fighting career has yet to take off.
- Might make a good assistant to Encyclopedia Brown.
- Probably many autistic savants fit this trope. A famous pair of twins could almost instantly tell you the day of the week for any date in an 8,000-year span, but they bombed at basic arithmetic.
  - Determining the day of the week for a given date is possible with a strong knowledge of mathematics.
And just to add insult to injury, mathematician John Conway also has that power, but still gets to be one of the world's greatest living mathematicians.
A similar documentary, hosted by a contortionist, introduced such real-life "superpowers" as a man who'd acclimated his body to endure extreme cold, and a man born with skin so smooth and sleek that objects can be stuck to it as if his belly was a suction cup.

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