Outside Context Problem / Anime & Manga

Outside Context Problems in anime and manga.

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• Most serious fighters in Armed Girl's Machiavellism use katanas and kenjutsu, so the three characters who don't tend to catch the others flat-footed:
  • First of all is the protagonist Nomura Fudo, an unarmed fighter whose kinetic vision is on par with the swordsfighters and has a finishing move, the Madan (Demon Bullet), that allows him to cause great internal damage as long as he can lay his hand on them. He's eventually revealed to have been trained in Jigen-ryu kenjutsu, but his trainer was incredibly sadistic to the point he ended up hating swords and so he adapted his training to unarmed combat.
  • Mary Kikakujo uses a rapier and is trained in Historical European Martial Arts, and her skillset includes abilities that regularly catch everyone by surprise:
    • As a rapier user she fights mainly by stabbing, while every other swordfighter fights by slashing. As such she's the only swordfighter at ease fighting in a corridor, provided her opponents all come from the same direction.
    • Every other swordsfighter practices a Kenjutsu style, so they can recognize other styles and gain assumptions on their basic moves, and they read their opponent's moves from their eye movements, making them vulnerable to Satori who practices a hybrid style born from the fusion of ten others and never looks at what target she's going to strike. As someone trained in an European style, Mary has no knowledge and assumptions on how the others will fight beyond slashing and reading an opponent's moves from their limbs and blades, as in European styles it's assumed the opponent will have their face covered by a helmet or protective mask, making her completely immune to Satori's eclectic abilities.
    • As she uses a rapier, everyone assumes Mary is solely a fencer... So they have no idea she's trained in use her scabbard as a support weapon and wrestling.
  • Amou Kirukiru, the main antagonist of the first arc, is tough enough to even shrug off strikes from blunted blades and even a bear's claws and has hands that can cut or pierce flesh and even wood and strike automatically every time she's hit, leaving everyone utterly unable to figure out how to damage her. It's only when she faces Inaba that she's revealed as a traditionally trained Uechi-ryu karateka with the rare Takemizuchi skillset, giving Nomura a chance to actually beat her.
  • Subverted with a number of fighters from Hokkai with rare skillsets and poor luck opponents:
    • Chidori initially appears to practice La Canne, a French martial art using sticks, combined with Savate kicks (in fact La Canne split off from Savate, and some schools in France still teach both), but her opponents include Choka U. Barazaki, who, as Mary's assistant, is familiar with French fighting styles and knows how to counter that. She then reveals she actually practices Kalaripayattu, an ancient Indian martial art that is Savate's direct progenitor and among its weapons uses the whip-like Urumi sword... But Choka is a whip user and very famous at Aiichi, so everyone knows how her weapon moves.
    • Seira is a Zweihander user and practices wrestling, so most fighters from Aiichi wouldn't know how to deal with her... But she ends up facing Mary and mistaking her for a simple fencer, and is caught by surprise when Mary starts using her scabbard as a second sword to counter her weapon. Seira has more luck during the Hokkai invasion, as by the time she starts rampaging Mary and Kobakura, who know how to deal with her, have tired each other out, Haruna, who also knows how to fight her, was taken down by Rin and there's nobody else who knows how to deal with a skilled Zweihander user.
    • Kobakura is another HEMA user, specialized in the use of sword and buckler, and he too ends up fighting Mary, who knows how to counter him... Because he's also one of two fighters in Souta's group who knows how to counter her.
    • Haruna is another HEMA user, specialized in poleax with the backsword as a back-up weapon, and takes on Rin... But his main weapon is close enough to the Naginata that Rin knows how to deal with it, and when the poleax is destroyed his skills with the backsword turn out to be inadequate.
  • Subverted again with Amou's sister: she has the same skills as her, but not only she hasn't mastered them yet, showing up after Amou's defeat means everyone already knows her tricks and even draw a connection between them.
• The Fleet of Fog from Arpeggio of Blue Steel is a globe-spanning fleet of nigh-unstoppable robot warships emulating the fleets of World War II with absurdly advanced technology. It's taken humanity nearly twenty years to come up with anything capable of breaking their total blockade of the oceans.
• Attack on Titan:
  • The Colossal and Armoured Titans, as one is larger than any other Titan by a factor of 6, and the other is heavily armored in a way no others are. But the real issue is that they are clearly intelligent, being humans with the power to transform into Titans.
  • The Titans themselves and the country that creates them. The former being weaponized humans, and the Kingdom of Marley is vastly technologically superior to the people within the walls.
  • Both Paradis and the Kingdom of Marley are this to each other: On one side, Marley has never encountered Paradis' ODM gear nor have they ever confronted enemy Titans on their own soil, so their forces are absolutely wrecked by the Survey Corps and the Titan-shifted Eren and Armin. On the other side of this is Paradis, who, while they're highly experienced fighting Titans, have never fought a conventional war before, and as such would be in real trouble if Marley resorted to a more traditional invasion, as Paradis' technological level is at least 5 decades behind Marley's.
  • The very first Titan is shown to be this. Ymir, after becoming the first Titan, is ordered by the Eldian king to help him conquer his enemies, the kingdom of Marley, and build him an invincible empire. Since no one on earth has ever encountered the tremendous powers of the Titans, the primitive civilizations of 2,000 years ago are easily crushed by Ymir, and Eldia conquers the world. Their empire remains in control until Karl Fritz inherits the Founding Titan and willingly relinquishes the world after growing tired of conflict. He instead uses his power to build the civilization within the Walls, but his power is still so great that the threat of the Colossal Titans within the Walls being unleashed keeps Paradis safe from conventional invasion. Even in the modern age, no one has the means to overcome the Founding Titan; the only hope is to steal its powers before they are used.
• Poor Kingdom of Midland in Berserk. Thanks to Griffith, Guts, and the Band of the Hawk, they had more or less won the Forever War that had plagued the land for over a hundred years. Then, out of nowhere, a huge plague hits them. While they're trying and failing to deal with that, Kushan invades with a nigh-unstoppable army that steamrolls over everything in its path, thanks to a combination of soldiers and Black Magic. And then demons start appearing in the countryside. No wonder they're so eager to put their faith in the resurrected Griffith, who is now (unknown to most humans) a Demon Lord of the highest order.
• Black Clover:
  • Asta is a problem that came completely out of the left field to basically all mages. He has no magic, so people can't sense him, nor can they use any mana-manipulation related power on him. He has an Anti-Magic weapon, which were never even seen before and can deflect and cut through magic. Last but not least, mages rarely, if ever, focus on their actual physical aptitude, since they can fight long/medium-range in most cases and all their opponents will be mages anyway, Asta has a lot of actual physical strength, making him a warrior where there are only mages, making their defenses against magic useless against him and their lack of physical defense becomes a huge problem.
  • Arcane Stages as a whole are this to the Spade Kingdom. Due to their powers being too unconventional to be classified within the power scale of Magic Stages, they, theoretically, could defeat devil users. As a result, one of the Spade Kingdom's missions is forcibly recruiting Arcane Stages, and Dante is pleased to find out that Vanessa and Grey are ones when he attacks the Black Bulls.
• Bleach:
  • Ichigo is easily defeated by Byakuya when he and Renji arrest Rukia for going AWOL and giving him her Shinigami powers, and Byakuya presumably reports later that he personally destroyed the source of his spiritual power. Then, within a month, Ichigo and his friends effectively launch an invasion of Soul Society, whereupon Ichigo starts defeating anyone who gets in his way, up to and including two of the strongest Captains in the history of the Gotei 13, and steadily grows stronger with every fight (to say nothing of the fact that he attains Bankai, something that usually takes even the strongest Shinigami the better part of a century to accomplish, within a measly three days). It quickly becomes clear that the Gotei 13 has severely underestimated the threat that Ichigo poses, due to the unprecedented manner in which he intruded and the sheer determination that he shows in rescuing Rukia. That he's being assisted from the sidelines by Urahara and Yoruichi is even more unexpected, given that they went into exile 100 years ago.
  • Aizen, the true antagonist of the Soul Society arc. The Soul Society was built on the idea that the established system is absolutely flawless. They go along with Rukia's execution no matter how shady it looks because it's an order given by Central 46, the highest governing body of the Soul Society; by the perspective of all watching, there has to be a good reason. It is only when Aizen is found murdered that they start to suspect something is amiss, but they truly never expect to not even be able to trust their own eyes, ears and minds. Aizen is not murdered, it's an illusion created by his Zanpakuto. He had already murdered all of Central 46 and has been the one giving the orders and no one notices, because he didn't want them to notice.
  • Yhwach was a bolt out of the blue for Ichigo's group and the Gotei 13. Mayuri did actually foresee Yhwach coming as a result of Uryuu Ishida's past actions in Soul Society, but when he tried to warn Yamamoto, Yamamoto dismissed Mayuri's concern as paranoid. Had he listened to Mayuri, the Gotei 13 would have had more than 17 months preparation time instead of being caught completely unaware and unprepared by a Quincy army they didn't even know existed. Yamamoto might also have been too complacent to prepare, as he personally defeated Yhwach 1,000 years earlier and had grown even stronger in the interim. He simply couldn't imagine that Yhwach's power might have grown by an even greater margin in the interim. It's also very heavily implied that Urahara, Isshin and Ryuuken have been fully aware of Yhwach's activities for at least nine years and possibly longer but they have kept the knowledge within their tight circle which also left both Ichigo's group and the Gotei 13 completely unaware and unprepared. However, this is implied to be because Urahara's group have their own plans rather than simply burying their head in the sand as Yamamoto did. Ryuuken in particular reveals that he was creating a weapon that could kill Yhwach no matter how powerful he got.
• Used, then inverted in the Cardfight!! Vanguard movie Neon Messiah. We're introduced to a new Link Joker user, which is understandable. He uses a new subclan called Deletors, which resemble Starfish Aliens rather than evil cyborgs like the Star-Vaders and the rest of the clan, which is odd. Then they show off their special power Delete, which cuts the fighter off from unit they're riding and locks it, leaving the fighter totally vulnerable, which solidifies them as Outside Context Villains. Then, to beat them, the hero inverts it and provides an Outside Context Hero, where he pulls a Grade 4 out of nowhere, with 27000 power, which he calls Striding. This is later explained by being an Early-Bird Cameo for the next big mechanic, and all of it is explained, but not even the audience knew what the deal was (a promotional version of the card was given out when it was shown in theaters, but it was intentionally missing a lot of information on how it worked).
• Cells at Work! and related works have a beneficial variant; medical procedures. From transfusions and vaccinations to stents to steroids and antibiotics, these are strange and alien events that just happen without warning and without reason, and no one knows why, other than a vague but positive feeling that there are outside forces with a vested interest in the body's survival. They are often machine-like in appearance (in contrast to the organic-alien appearances of bacteria and the humanoid forms of native cells) and can often be Destructive Saviors, such as when a steroid practically levels an entire area to get the allergenic response to stop.
• In A Certain Magical Index, Touma Kamijou started out as a complete unknown who had the unheard of ability of Imagine Breaker. Several villains had never heard of him and were at a complete loss to deal with him and his abilities.
• Death Note: Light Yagami is the definition of a Villain Protagonist and can easily be seen as an Outside Context Problem. In either case, Light has a huge advantage over his enemies since he can kill them using a magic notebook if he has both their real names and seen their faces, and the world at large is ignorant or didn't believe in the supernatural. Light can control the circumstances of a person's death as well, but mostly just makes people drop dead of heart attacks, so the deaths can't easily be traced back to him, or even be recognized as murder until he's killed hundreds of people and a pattern emerges. The early part of the series is L just trying to figure out how Kira is killing people, and having to slowly realize that Kira is not killing by mundane means.
• Each new villain of Dragon Ball tends to be this to varying extents, but it also applies to the villain's perspective on the heroes:
  • The earliest example is a protagonist one: Goku, a little boy Made of Iron and thus nearly impossible to harm. Yamcha and Pilaf only came close to killing him because he was hungry and he ran out of energy as a result. There is also his transformation into a Giant Ape, something no one saw coming (not even the narrator in the original Japanese version, who exclaimed he was also freaked out!) which saves him and the others from being microwaved in Pilaf's special prison. Only by grabbing Goku's tail do Yamcha and Puar subdue Goku as a Great Ape at the end of the arc, but the damage was done and Pilaf's castle was utterly destroyed.
    • This is made much more overt when Goku went up against the Red Ribbon Army. Before him, they were used to dealing with defenseless civilians, other armies, and maybe the occasional martial artist. While searching for the Dragon Balls they run into Goku, a super-powered One-Man Army Human Alien who is practically indestructible. It's clear from the start that they had no clue how to deal with him and had to hire the best (and most expensive) assassin to try and get rid of him. By the time Goku came to their base, they had nothing that could stop him and were basically defenseless. Not helping matters is that Commander Red all but hands Goku the victory anyway, because he cannot get over the fact that Goku is just a child and thus should be easy to defeat, so he doubles down and doesn't change tactics at all despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
  • The first straight example is "King" Piccolo Daimao. Before him, all of Goku's opponents were human or funny animals. Then Piccolo literally comes out of nowhere and kills a third of the main cast, kills the Eternal Dragon, and successfully takes over the world. His arrival changed the tone of the series forever, kickstarting the Villain Arc formula of a villain appearing who is overwhelmingly more powerful than anybody else and making mincemeat of the heroes from the jump.
  • Raditz is the most straightforward example present: he has an alien background that means he's considerably more powerful than anyone on Earth can comprehend, embarrassing the Big Good and previous Big Bad simultaneously, and generally shaking up the status quo with his mere introduction (and scaring the living daylights out of them when he mentions that he's the weakling of the three Saiyans). All this despite only being the Starter Villain of the new story arc.
  • During the Saiyan invasion, Vegeta and Nappa have a hard time dealing with Goku's Kaio-ken. They know that some races, including the Saiyan, can increase their power through transformations, but have never faced someone capable of suddenly multiplying their power without transforming. Justified in that it's not a technique from the mortal world, having been created by King Kai, a literal god. Even Beerus, the God of Destruction, is caught by surprise when he first sees it, as no other god had ever shown such an ability.
  • Special mention goes to famous Evil Overlord Frieza, whose power advantage over all the protagonists (and antagonists) combined was akin to helpless mortals opposing a god. Even though later villains could make mincemeat out of him, they almost always started out in a similar "tier" of power to the heroes before transforming or powering up. Frieza, on the other hand, started out several tiers ahead, and half of the Namek Arc is spent avoiding him altogether: he was more than twice as powerful as his most elite subordinate when deliberately holding back as much as he could. To put this in perspective, at the time he was introduced a Power Level of 50,000 was considered overwhelmingly powerful. Frieza at his absolute weakest was somewhere around 530,000, with his final level over 120 million. When Frieza returns from the dead he trains to become stronger, and within four months gains power on par with Goku, who spent decades training to achieve the same.
  • For Frieza's army, they have a hard time dealing with the Earthlings because they couldn't track them with their Scouters, treated as the be-all end-all device for fights and fighters. The characters from Earth knew how to lower and suppress their power, so not only did they not show up on the Scouters, but when they did find them Frieza's men underestimated them because they showed a low Battle Power. Almost the entire Ginyu Force got stomped into the ground because they kept assuming Goku only had a power level of 5000 (he lowered it until the moment of impact). They were also caught off-guard that the Earthlings and Vegeta could sense Battle Powers without Scouters, meaning they didn't need one to track everybody else.
    • Subverted with Nappa and Vegeta when they invaded Earth: while they were still members of Frieza's army at the time, Vegeta remembered how Goku and Piccolo increased their power before facing Raditz and rightly assumed all Earthling fighters could suppress their power when not in use and told Nappa to just ditch the Scouter while he observed the fight and figured out how to do the same and sense power without the Scouter.
  • Goku and Ginyu are this to each other: on one hand, Goku and his allies were caught completely by surprise by his ability to switch their bodies, something he had done in the past every time he faced a stronger opponent; on the other Ginyu has only heard of people able to lower and suppress their power and has never snatched a body used to do that, and is thus unable to bring out Goku's full base power, let alone use the Kaio-ken to amplify it.
  • Goku transforming into a Super Saiyan for the first time also counts. Up to that point in the series, a transformation like this had never been seen before and Frieza and Gohan are baffled about what just happened. Frieza lampshades this by saying he knew Saiyans turned into giant apes, but he had never seen anything like this before.
  • Trunks manages to be this to Frieza for being a Kid from the Future on top of being a Super Saiyan. Until that point, Goku was the only known Super Saiyan, and there were only a handful of Saiyans left in the universe, so Frieza had no reason to expect Trunks would be a challenge.
  • Doctor Gero's Androids were this in Trunks' timeline by being creatures stronger than a Super Saiyan whose power couldn't be sensed and wouldn't get tired, and from the technologically backward Earth on top of that. In Trunks' timeline the Z Fighters were wiped out in the first battle while having no idea of what they were facing, with Gohan only surviving because Piccolo realized they were screwed and sending him away and Trunks because, as a baby, wasn't a combatant, and even with Trunks' forewarning the Z Fighters have serious trouble against them as their power being impossible to sense and never decreasing completely throws off their tactics.
    • Android 17 and 18, now on the side of good, do it again during the Tournament of Power, as while the teams from other universes have experience of opponents whose powers can't be sensed they have never encountered someone who just can't get tired. Kakunsa from Universe 2 in particular loses because she's an expert at tiring out her opponents and had the bad luck of picking a fight with 17.
  • Despite monitoring Goku and his friends for over a decade, the Super Saiyan transformation manages to be this to Dr. Gero. Since he fails to follow the heroes to Namek, he's caught completely by surprise when Goku transforms. The only point of reference he has is Goku's Kaioken.
  • The Saiyans on Earth, particularly their Super Saiyan transformations, are this for Babidi and Dabura and their plan to revive Majin Buu. The latter mentions monitoring Earth to see if there was many people who were powerful and found it to be lacking on that front — its importance only due to being where Buu was sealed and little more, and therefore not much of a threat. The Saiyans ended up being a Spanner in the Works for a while, to the point that they border on this for the Supreme Kai and Kibito, who absolutely didn't expect warriors like Goku, Vegeta and Gohan to be present on Earth at all.
  • Buu for literally being an Eldritch Abomination. This bizarre pink genie creature has terrorized the universe, cowed the gods themselves, can transform people into conscious food while eating them alive, or absorb strong warriors by using its own malleable flesh to break off and consume them as it reintegrates with him and transforms into a new form, taking some of the traits of the victims (this happened to the gods), and, sufficiently enraged, he can tear down dimensional walls. His pure, untainted form, Kid Buu, is even worse. Unlike all the other villains, he can't be reasoned with, he has no pride to take advantage of, and no desire except killing everything. In order to beat him, the protagonists literally have to go to the one planet that he can't blow up in one shot. Even then, he's close to being an immortal given his literally endless stamina and being able to regenerate himself from smoke after characters try to vaporize him! On top of all that, he can teleport into the afterlife, and kill off the heroes for good after he kills them the first time. His origin was even retconned to make him this for the entire universe. Originally, it was thought that Bibidi created him using magic.
    • How bad is Buu? In Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F', Frieza says that his father only told him to stay away from two people: Beerus and Buu. We learn later that Buu is as old as the universe itself and no-one knows where he came from or how he was created. And speaking of Beerus...
  • Beerus, for being a god among gods. Even the strongest Supreme Kai was only even with Majin Buu's second strongest form. Beerus makes even the strongest form of Buu look laughably weak and he easily curb stomps the heroes without even trying. Although this is hardly new for a Dragon Ball villain, what makes Beerus stands out among the rest is that he is completely undefeated. Not even Goku becoming a god himself could slow this guy down and he was only using 70% of his power. Even Frieza returning stronger than ever and Goku going beyond godhood is still weaker than Beerus. He's so powerful that Whis states that it would take both Goku and Vegeta working together just to be a match for him. He's so incomprehensible to the cast that they can't even feel his ki, because god's ki can't be felt by mortals. Then it turns out that Whis himself would be this to an even greater extent, if he were actually a villain. Despite being Beerus's servant, he's actually so powerful he could defeat Goku, Vegeta, Frieza (all of whom have ascended to godhood, or something equivalent) and Beerus, maybe even at once.
  • Goku Black Arc:
    • Little is known about Goku Black's motives or where he comes from. He just appeared one day and started slaughtering humanity in the name of 'justice'. He also appears to grow stronger from fighting and getting injured. On top of that, he has accessories only used by the Kais like a Potara earring and a Time Ring. Even Beerus and Whis are confused by what Goku Black is, and Whis suspects that he's a creation of the Super Dragon Balls. A large part of the Future Trunks Saga is devoted to unveiling who or what Black is, how he relates to Zamasu, and how he's connected to Goku. The Reveal clears his identity and motives up, while showing just how much this trope he truly was. He's not only from another universe entirely, something Trunks didn't even know existed when he showed up, he's not even from the same timeline as any of the heroes at this point.
    • Zamasu is from Universe 10, therefore no one even knew he existed except for Beerus and Whis. Nor did even they have any idea of the monster he would eventually become. Future Trunks didn't even know there was a multiverse before the future was attacked by Black. In addition, because up until then everyone had thought Black and Zamasu were the same person if there was any connection at all, the heroes are completely blindsided when Future Zamasu descends from the sky and joins his partner.
    • Merged Zamasu's final form is this, as not only did anyone not expect it, no one knows how to fight him. While Buu was an Eldritch Abomination, Merged Zamasu's final form is a Lovecraftian monstrosity that becomes the multiverse to the point he begins breaking through into other timelines. At least Buu could be fought, Zamasu at this point can't. After all, how do you fight the multiverse itself? It takes Future Zen'o, Story-Breaker Power personified, to destroy the timeline itself to finally kill Zamasu.
  • In Super, the Omni-King Zeno is the one-true "God" on the highest level seen in Dragon Ball. His personality is that of a bored little kid with absolute power over all reality who can wipe out entire universes with a thought, and has done so on a whim. While he may not be explicitly evil, his ability to wipe out incalculable numbers of life forms in a moment's notice and feel nothing about it is nothing short of terrifying.
• Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA: In a series where beings from myth are summoned from other time periods, and in this spin-off where said beings are confined to Class Cards, the heroes assume one of the villains is using the power of Pandora to end the world with her namesake Box. Since the world of Fate heavily observes No Ontological Inertia, defeating the Pandora Class Card should get rid of the box, right? Wrong, because this is the one case in the entire series where the being from myth wasn't summoned; the villainess isn't channeling Pandora, she IS Pandora, an immortal of 6,000 years and counting having "lived" to the present day. She and her Box are very real in this continuity, and not even the Powers That Be can get rid of them.
• In Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, Frieren constantly suppresses her mana in order to seem weaker than she actually is. This trick is useful when fighting demons, who will only suppress their mana when stealth demands it. In demon culture, your mana levels determine your rank in the hierarchy, so even the idea of suppressing one's mana all the time is unthinkable to demons.
• Fullmetal Alchemist
  • At least in the manga and Brotherhood, Scar is this to the homunculi. His attempts to kill alchemists that they need pit him against them.
  • The homunculi themselves are initially this to the heroes, at least in part. When Team Mustang encounters one for the first time, they fare pretty poorly because they didn't expect Healing Factor and Immune to Bullets, and don't fully understand the mechanics of what they're dealing with — Mustang rips out Lust's Philosopher's Stone and believes he's killed her, only to have her start regenerating around the Stone in his hand. Once they get a grip on how the homunculi work, however, tactics change accordingly and Lust dies. Fast.
• In Gate, the nature of the war between the Roman-medieval hybrid Empire and a modern Japan comes as a shock to both parties, though it takes Japan a matter of hours to wise up while the Empire only does in the form of its surrender. The only point in the war in which the Empire ever holds the advantage is in its opening moments, when the Tokyo police simply find themselves unprepared to deal with a horde of sword-wielding, wyvern-riding soldiers trained for open-battle warfare. Which is, to say the least, excusable.
• In Guardian Fairy Michel, Episode 23 has a long-dead evil pharaoh with magical powers arising to kill the heroes, forcing Michel and Salome to team up against him.
• Two arguable examples appear in Hellsing Ultimate. In a show where the enemy supernaturals are artificial vampires, the heroes seemed rather blindsided by the revelation of the Colonel being a werewolf. To say nothing of the curveball that was Warrant Officer Schrodinger.
• Inazuma Eleven has a bunch of this:
  • The Aliea Academy arc was built on this idea alone, as one wouldn't expect aliens using soccer as a method to Take Over the World.
  • Raimon later becomes this to Aliea Academy, while at first were merely minor distractions, are later able to hold up against the Aliea Academy's stronger teams. Subverted, as Raimon opposing Aliea Academy was a part of Seijirou's plan.
  • Kenzaki giving the injured Raimon players, Nishigaki, Shadow, and Sugimori the Aliea crystal to create Dark Emperors.
  • In Chrono Stone, Protocol Omega and El Dorado is this. Soccer mysteriously faded from mystery after Holy Road, because El Dorado has ordered Protocol Omega to remove soccer from this world.
  • Fei is this to El Dorado, as this time traveler saved Tenma, and not even El Dorado knew who he is.
• Izetta: The Last Witch. As the only character to possess magical abilities in an otherwise very realistic alternate history of World War II, Izetta comes as a complete shock to her enemies (and even her allies in the duchy of Eylstadt) when she starts fighting the Germanian Empire. While she can be a One Witch Army at her best, there are limitations to her power, and much of the drama comes from the Eylstadt high command covering up her weaknesses in order to create the illusion of Izetta as an all-powerful force. At the same time, the Germanians assign one of their officers to gather as much intelligence as possible in order to counter the advantage her Outside-Context status gives her.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Stardust Crusaders: DIO's Stand, The World has the power to stop time. No one has any counter to it, even Kakyoin and Joseph fell to it because DIO has the ability to do whatever he wants before they could even react to it. Needless to say, if Jotaro also didn't get the ability to stop time, the Crusaders would have been slaughtered to the last man.
  • Golden Wind: In the end, Giorno's Gold Experience Requiem is this by the power of No-Sell. The Requiem ability can not only negate any attack by an enemy, but also returns the time of the attack to zero, with only the attacker having any knowledge of the attack taking place. Diavolo, already the master of a heavily broken Stand, has no counter to the metaphysics-defying Requiem ability, and is promptly sent into an infinite death loop at the hands of Gold Experience Requiem. Needless to say, there's a reason it happened during the final battle.
  • Stands in general fall into this category: stands give their users supernatural abilities and can only be seen by stand-users (with very few exceptions). For the average civilian, these strange attacks are coming out of nowhere.
• The Lyrical Nanoha series has used this trope repeatedly to shake up the established franchise tropes:
  • The very first sequel, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's, pitted the main characters of the first season against a team of mages who, while still practicing familiar magic, did so in a way that was utterly foreign to them: hailing from a long-gone era of perpetual warfare, their spells were actually geared to maim and to kill, rather than simply to restrain and to disable. Team Nanoha was forced to adopt some of the Wolkenritter's tech (if not their tactics) before they could even go toe-to-toe with them.
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid and its Spin-Off ViVid Strike! both focused on magical martial arts, which is to the previous seasons' combat magic what Olympic fencing is to actual medieval battlefields.
  • Finally, Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force took this trope to its logical extreme by introducing a whole slew of villains whose very existence is antithetical to magic as such, leaving our heroes naked and unarmed, scrambling to find any kind of replacement for their now-useless magic.
• In My Hero Academia, Dabi, aka Toya Todoroki is this to the entire Hero Society, if not Japan itself. No one expected the son of the No 1 Hero to be a dangerous villain, not even the family of the hero itself. Dabi revealing his identity and Endeavor's abuse to the entire nation put a huge dent to the Hero Society, the likes of which Shigaraki can only dream of.
• In Naruto, the Fourth Ninja World War was being fought between the Shinobi Alliance on one side, and Tobi and his White Zetsu Army, Kabuto and his zombie army, and the real Uchiha Madara on the other side. About 200 chapters after the war starts, the Sage of Six Paths' mother, Kaguya Ootsutsuki shows up as the real villain. This is particularly jarring since she appears with almost no foreshadowing though she was mentioned more than a few times to where one wonders if she would play a role and is revealed to be pulling the strings since the very beginning. The audience first knew of her existence barely 30 chapters ago, and no more than 5 people alive in universe at the time knew her name. To top it off, she died centuries ago and her role in the War was due to Black Zetsu using Madara to revive her. There is an in-universe justification for this though: Black Zetsu (who is such a good Chessmaster that he was able to manipulate all of ninja history) erased nearly all records of her existence or the truth of her demise in order to ensure nobody could foresee her revival and/or properly oppose her. Considering the rest of her clan was taken to the moon by her younger son (the Sage's brother) and this was after a period of endless strife and when modern civilizations were springing, it would be easy to destroy whatever records existed and have the rest fade into legend and be twisted into tales, as the only ones who would know about her at all would be the Tailed Beasts, whom were wanted for their power.
• Shu, the hero of Now and Then, Here and There is a very cheerful and optimistic boy. However, for the denizens of the alternate universe he is thrown into where water is scarce, nearly every child is a soldier, and genocides occur on a daily basis, his extremely different outlook and boundless optimism utterly, utterly catches everyone off-guard. That turns out to his strongest asset when he finally convinced Lala-Ru that there is some good left in this world, thus triggering the end scenario.
• One Piece:
  • For the people of the Blue seas, Devil Fruit users. They are so rare that they are often believed to be a myth and those who do have powers are seen as demons. Both pirates and marines are taken off-guard when they're faced with a Fruit user, which is what make people like Luffy and Buggy so dangerous early in the series.
  • The Arlong Pirates are complete Outside-Context Villains to the people of East Blue. Since the pirates of East Blue tend to be very weak compared to other seas, any pirate from the Grand Line is seen as big trouble. Arlong could have taken over all of East Blue since no one knew how to deal with him.
  • For those who don't know about it, Haki. The Straw Hats are initially caught flatfooted fighting people who can predict their movements or harm Devil Fruit users without Seastone or an element advantage. They get better since Haki becomes much more common in the New World.
  • Although far from a villain, Smoker was this to the Straw Hats when he was first introduced. He was the first Marine they met who was competent, powerful, and not corrupted. Most of all, he was the first one to introduce them to the Logia-type Devil Fruits. Luffy was utterly powerless against him since none of his hits connected and would have been captured if it wasn't for Dragon saving him. Until the Time Skip, Luffy always ran if he saw Smoker.
    • In addition to being impossible to hit, Smoker also introduced the concept of Seastone to the story, the Devil Fruit user's Kryptonite. Smoker was the simultaneous introduction of an enemy that couldn't be defeated by any means the characters had access to AND the special thing that could nullify the main hero's abilities besides seawater.
  • When Krieg (one of the strongest East Blue pirates) went to the Grand Line, he had the misfortune of coming across a bored Mihawk, one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea and the greatest swordsman in the world, in his first week. Mihawk slaughtered his crew and sunk his fleet simply to kill time, then chased the survivors back to the East Blue simply because he was still bored.
    • Krieg was really unlucky. It was a starter villain and got caught by one of the world strongest warriors. The fact that he managed to escape is one of the biggest power moves in the series. To put in perspective, the series started 25 years ago and Mihawk is still way stronger than the hero and his crew; his power is just conprehensible now!
  • When Luffy started his pirate career in East Blue, he was an outside context-foe for both pirates and the Marines. Devil Fruits in the Blues are so rare that they are often believed to be mere myth and those who do have powers are seen as demons and monsters. So when Luffy, a rubber man, came along able to deflect bullets and absorb blunt blows without taking any damage, most of his early enemies didn't know what to do except for Buggy and Arlong, both who sailed the Grand Line where Devil Fruit users are more common.
  • Luffy and the Straw Hat Pirates tend to be an Outside Context-Foe for the pirate-Marine conflict as a whole. A key element of the setting is that the world had mostly settled into a political stalemate decades ago (if not centuries), to the point where nearly everyone follows certain rules without even considering other possibilities. So when the Straw Hats come along with no regard for anything but their personal goals, people tend to be taken by surprise. The Marines aren't sure what to do about people who aren't afraid of Buster Calls and the sheer force of The Government (not to mention a pirate crew that's relatively altruistic), and pirates have no experience dealing with people who cannot be intimidated or bribed, or will take a personal stake in a conflict that predated them. Even the more chaotic or maverick pirate crews are consistently surprised about what expectations the Straw Hats will betray.
    • While maybe not to the same extent as the Straw Hats, this applies to all of the 11 Supernovas. They were mere rookies when they entered the New World, but started to actively provoke and defy the World Government and the Four Emperors, causing so much chaos that they got the reputation of being the worst generation since the beginning of the great pirate age.
  • Luffy does it again during his battle against Eneru. Before Eneru met Luffy, he was completely unbeatable and all of his fights ended in a Curb-Stomp Battle. That is because Eneru had the Rumble-Rumble Fruit that made him into living lightning. The Fruit is so powerful that it is classified as unbeatable. However, since Luffy is a Rubber Man, he is completely immune to lightning. Even better, rubber doesn't even exist on Skypiea, so Luffy is outright made of an out of context material. Eneru had no clue that a foe like Luffy could exist. The face he makes when he realizes that Luffy isn't affected by his powers is priceless.
  • Chopper, mostly thanks to his Rumble Balls. Zoan users have three transformations: their default form, an animal hybrid, and a full animal form. Chopper has seven transformations that mixed the strengths and weaknesses of his default three forms, which surprises even people who are used to fighting Devil Fruit users. Then there's what happens if he eats three Rumble Balls within six hours before the Time Skip.
  • Franky when he is first introduced. The Straw Hats don't know how to really fight him since he's a cyborg. They initially think he was a Devil Fruit user. CP9 have a better advantage since half of them lived in Water 7 for five years and personally know him. Those who don't know or understand Franky's abilities have a hard time countering him, especially since he's literally Made of Iron.
  • Of course there's Blackbeard. First, there's his Devil Fruit. The Logia type normally grants intangibility, but Blackbeard's Fruit draws attacks in and causes him extra pain. In addition, it gives him the unique ability to nullify Devil Fruits. Being submerged in water or touched by Seastone will leave a Devil Fruit user unable to move, and Haki will make them vulnerable to attack, their bodies retain whatever powers the Fruit granted. Only Blackbeard's power can completely shut off those powers. Secondly, there's Blackbeard's body: normally, any Devil Fruit user who eats another Fruit dies, but Blackbeard successfully steals Whitebeard's power. As his old shipmate Marco explains, there's something about Blackbeard's body that allows him, and only him, to do this. Buggy mentions a rumor that Blackbeard doesn't sleep, which seems connected to an earlier comment by Ace that Blackbeard has "lived twice as much as anyone else".
  • The true nature of Luffy's Devil Fruit is that it is not the Gum-Gum Fruit, but rather the Human-Human Fruit, Model: Nika, which at its full power gives Luffy the abilities of a Fleisher Cartoon limited only by his imagination. Some of the actions Luffy can do are so out there even the normally dour members of the Beast Pirates can only make the iconic One Piece Jaw Drops.
  • The infamous Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island film has an Outside-Genre Foe in the form of the true villain. The Straw Hats in films and the manga and anime have battled pirates, marines, dragons, assassins, sky people, and fish people, but Lily Carnation, a Botanical Abomination is something so nightmarish and ghoulish that it helps make the film so infamously offbeat.
  • Another Outside-Genre Foe is the titular antagonist of The Cursed Holy Sword; it's a cursed sword that can take over its wielder's mind and control their body itself, even manipulating their flesh to regrow severed limbs or turn them into a more imposing form, with its only weakness being the prayers of a local priestess. Typical foe for a Standard Japanese Fantasy Setting — very atypical for One Piece, which largely restricts its magical elements to Devil Fruits and Haki.
  • Tot Musica in One Piece Film: Red is another Outside-Genre Foe more suited for a Standard Japanese Fantasy Setting than One Piece. It's an Eldritch Abomination formed of manifest human negativity that exists in two dimensions simultaneously, is normally contained in a third dimension that can't overlap with either, but can be summoned forth if the user of a specific Devil Fruit sings a special song. It's even called "The Demon King", emphasizing how weirdly fantastical it is for a (relatively) grounded world.
• One-Punch Man:
  • The Monster Association made excellent plans to counter each S-Class hero, and would have easily succeeded by preying on the heroes' collective overconfidence. Too bad they didn't count on an unknown bald guy who has more power than the entire S-Class category combined in his little finger.
  • Garou turns into this in the same arc, except on the opposite side. The heroes know he is present, but write him off as a decently skilled human who most of them could beat easily. He then evolves rapidly, becoming a combatant capable of destroying the entire S-Class and Monsters by himself. The aforementioned bald guy shows up again, and now Garou is the one caught by surprise.
• Overlord (2012) actually has the protagonist Momonga, a.k.a. Ainz Ooal Gown, as the Outside Context Problem. A level 100 player character lich from a VR MMORPG who gets transported to a foreign land along with his base of operations, similarly overpowered NPC servants and his hoard of god-tier artifacts, and then proceeds to steamroll over everyone in his way in his quest to Take Over the World.
  • This is made particularly clear by the fact that the world he's arrived in uses the same magic-system as the game, sorting spells into tiers. There, it's accepted as fact that humans can master up to 3rd Level spells with suitable study and talent — only those rare individuals called 'heroes' are capable of breaking this limit, going as high as 5th Level spells. Anything beyond that is the realm of The Archmage, mythical artifacts and legendary demigods. An early Starter Villain has his whole dastardly plot based around obtaining and using an arcane artifact capable of enabling someone to cast spells up to 7th Level, albeit at terrible cost. Meanwhile, the main character's army of Combat Maids can casually use 7th Level spells, and Ainz/Momonga himself wields 9th and 10th Level spells with ease — and can bust out the even more obscenely powerful 'Super-Level' spells when pressed.
  • Ainz takes it even further when he shows up out of the blue in the Empire's (currently an iffy ally of Ainz, who they know has horrifyingly powerful magic) arena, having signed up to do battle with the current champion. Not only does he agree to not use magic, he only uses a staff and a pair of daggers. It's still a crushing victory, and having realized that Squishy Wizard does not apply to a lich who can solo a troll, the Emperor promptly pledges himself as a vassal of Ainz.
• Pokémon the Series: XY: Two episodes had Ash, his friends and Team Rocket encounter an evil Malamar. While Pokémon have played antagonistic roles in the series beforehand, they were either under the control of a person or they were just acting territorial. This Malamar was planning world domination on its own and even came up with a weapon to do just that.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica:
  • Akemi Homura is an example as she is a time-traveling oddity of a magical girl whose existence even Kyubey cannot explain. Her powers also work much differently than the other magical girls and no one seems to be able to effectively counter them, at least until she faces the Big Bad at the end.
  • Kyubey is also one, as a race of Sufficiently Advanced Aliens who follow their own Blue-and-Orange Morality with the ability to rip girls' souls out of their body and grant their wishes and with odd ideals, to say the least. Worse, most people have a Weirdness Censor that doesn't allow them to see him. To teenage girls, he literally appears out of nowhere to get them to sign away their lives. In essence, Kyubey and his true motive represents an archetypal sci-fi problem with elements of a Cosmic Horror Story in a Magical Girl show.
  • Walpurgisnacht is a subversion. It is a witch, which are things magical girls are made to fight. The problem is that it is unlike any other witch shown in the series as it is an amalgamation of many witches, something that is basically unheard of in the setting. Not helping matters is that nobody knows anything about Walpurgisnacht and nobody has lived long enough to know anything about it because it is so god-awfully powerful that it kills any magical girl who dares to fight it. Even Homura, who has fought it multiple times using Japan's entire military arsenal only escapes being its victim because of her time-traveling powers.
  • Madoka turning herself into one of these is what drives the plot of Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion. That being Kyubey wants to know what Witches and the Law of Cycles is, and sets up a gambit so he can flat out avert this trope. Then at the end, Homura ends up becoming one of these by absorbing the power of god and corrupting her soul gem by something other than despair. Love.
• Sailor Moon has Sailor Galaxia, the only Arc Villain who is also an experienced and villainous Sailor Senshi, and, differently from her predecessors, acts accordingly and methodically destroys all her opposition. The only reason Sailor Moon can eventually fight her is that her goal, while different in the manga and old anime, always requires Sailor Moon to achieve her full power, forcing her to spare her until the last moment... But not without leaving her as the last one standing.
  • Before her, Codename: Sailor V has the title character pulling this for the Dark Agency, and by extension the Dark Kingdom they're a branch of, Minato Ward's criminals, and even the police:
    • Before Sailor V appeared, the Dark Agency's youma were quietly brainwashing and draining people without anyone even noticing them... And then suddenly this superpowered teenager appeared from nowhere and started killing their youma with little effort, no matter what plan they came up with. It's not until late in Sailor Moon's first arc that the Dark Kingdom finally understands they've been dealing with Sailor Venus honing her skills on their weaker youma and then pretending to be the Moon Princess, by which point they've ran out of youma (partly thanks to the other Sailor Senshi, who also had no idea who she actually was until the Silver Crystal revealed Sailor Moon was the Moon Princess) and three out of four members of the Shitennou have been killed.
    • As for the criminals and the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, Sailor V is a legitimate superhero that appears from nowhere while criminals are doing their thing, beats them up, leaves them for the police and leaves for no apparent reason, making the cops look bad by comparison (this being the entire reason she takes time from hunting youma and her studies: she hates the police and wants to humiliate them). The criminals fail to adapt and halfway through Codename: Sailor V we're informed V has eradicated all crime from the ward (at some point even catching panty thieves because there was nobody else anymore), while the police, whose Superintendent General happens to be a fan of the superheroine, ends up hiring her.
• Spy X Family: Anya, due to having Telepathy, is this to everyone else, who fit just fine into the spy fiction setting of their world. At times, Loid seems to realize she might know more than she is letting on, but always brushes it off because telepathy is so outside the genre that it seems impossible.
• Toriko has the Nitros — a race of bizarre creatures thousands of years old that are multitudes stronger, faster, and more ruthless than any other creature outside the Gourmet World, so much so that only Zebra is able to take them on single-handedly. Not only that, but in a world where everything tastes delicious and ingredients are made out of all living creatures, Nitros are completely inedible. They're also sentient aliens who spend their time harvesting dimensions for food, and are directly responsible for NEO's rise to power.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: Dartz during the Orichalcos season. Prior to this, the main plot and filler had all been relatively connected (even the Virtual World arc was centered around pre-established character aspects in the end with Gozaburo and the Big 5 driving it all). Dartz's organization were connected to a completely different mythology that Retconned the origins of Duel Monsters with magic apparently more powerful that the Millennium Items, and the Great Leviathan didn't even appear to have been a Duel Monster.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V:
  • Despite all expectations, both played straight and subverted. The inter-dimensional war threw a huge curve ball for Heartland, who were pretty much wiped out in months. Subverted by Reiji and LDS, who knew about the invasion and have been preparing to launch a counter-offense for years. To this end, they deliberately broke The Masquerade and told their entire dimension about the war, completely defying this trope.
  • In the Synchro Dimension's City/New Domino City, this is averted and played straight, since the Executive Council knew about the war but kept it a secret from everyone else. As a result, characters from the Synchro Dimension make false assumptions about the protagonists even if they've been told the truth because they think it's too unrealistic and don't believe the main cast.
  • On a meta level, this trope applies for the audience, who expected this show to be about winning card-game tournaments, bringing out the best in villains and befriending them, and eventually fighting off some demonic god or Eldritch Abomination, maybe even several of them. Instead, the Big Bad is the leader of a military organization who actually uses his public resources, and even if there is some Elder God pulling the strings, the enemy forces are attacking en-masse and doing real damage to civilians, instead of using a handful of elite soldiers to target the protagonists specifically.

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