"Odysseus Wheeler, Victor of the Seventy-Third Annual Hunger Games. The perpetually and gratefully overshadowed."
— Odysseus (whose Games immediately preceded Katniss and Peeta's wins), The Victors Project
- Along Came a Spider
: Jaune is one of the weakest students at Beacon, but when he fights Trifa who's a White Fang member but doesn't have Aura and specializes in infiltration rather than open combat, he wins easily despite being unarmed. - Avatar: Flare of Redemption: Lampshaded by Azula, who notes that, if Zuko was born to a nobleman or a lesser family, he'd excel greatly due to being both above average in all aspects and having an impressive drive to succeed. However, he's royalty and is thus a failure for being less than completely perfect.
- Once she starts training seriously in Black Flames Dance in the Wind: Rise of Naruto, Sakura becomes a highly skilled kunoichi. However, due to always comparing herself to Sasuke and Naruto she feels incredibly weak. While fighting Ino in Chapter 51, Sakura gets angry at her for not taking her seriously and goes on the offensive, knocking Ino out and fracturing several teeth along with her jaw with a single jab, causing Sakura to realize just how strong she's become.
- Sakura in Clockwork and a Teacup realizes that clearly Naruto isn't as stupid as he's portrayed in canon when she transfers into the academy and takes her first test. Despite the students all being six or seven, the test covers middle school level subjects like algebra which even Naruto considers easy.
- Ends up being Subverted in the next chapter, once we learn that Sakura was given different exam questions than the other students as the higher-ups wanted to stealthily evaluate her due recent events.
- Both Ginny and Alexandra (Sirius's daughter) are far more skilled than most adult wizards at wandless casting despite only being ten in Dodging Prison and Stealing Witches. However, they're both outshined by Luna who's not only more powerful and a quick learner (such as figuring out Harry's spell-swatting in a single day without instruction), but is also remarkably innovative, as demonstrated by firing a spell from her tongue. It's especially notable for Ginny who never once beat Luna in a duel but in her first duel against Alexandra, her opening salvo designed to buy her time to take cover takes out the other girl immediately.
- Averted with Harry's friends compared to him. While Harry is far more powerful and more knowledgeable than the rest combined, each has skills he can't compete against. Daphne is immensely skilled at scrying, something Harry has no talent in. Hermione is a better researcher and potion brewer. And even months later, Harry can't figure out how Luna cast a stunning spell with her tongue.
- Contraptionology!: Applejack's primary issue is that, ever since Twilight arrived in town, her showy magic and dramatic adventures quickly overshadowed plain ol' reliable Applejack.
- Eroninja:
- Defied. Naruto simply can't do everything despite being stronger than everyone else in his Family/harem. The author mentions that he never liked how more characters became irrelevant as the series went on until it was eventually just Naruto and Sasuke who mattered. Thus, not only is the overall gap in power smaller, but sometimes someone else is better suited to a given task or mission due to experience, specialty, or personality.
- Until her Character Development, Shizune felt overshadowed as most people only ever saw her as "Tsunade's apprentice", such as when Ibiki asks her to verify a coroner's report, citing that they were relatively sure but thought it'd be best to have "one of Tsunade's apprentices" double-check. Once encouraged to forge her own path, Shizune shows an aptitude for poisons that surpasses even Sasori.
- Everqueen: Amar Astarte is the best biology specialist of Terra and the creator of the Space Marines. Her work cannot even begin to compare to what Isha, the goddess of life, can do.
- Fate/Stay Night: Ultimate Master: Avenger is a remarkably powerful Servant (strongly hinted to be Joan of Arc), and go on par with Saber, meaning she is technically one of the strongest Servants in the War. The only problem is, her Master is no one else than Ben Tennyson, whose own power is much more unexpected and versatile than hers. As a result, most of the other Masters actually are more concerned with finding a way to defeat Ben than her.
- Akane feels like this due to having gone from one of Nerima's best to among the weakest of the Wrecking Crew. Thus, in Fist of the Moon, she is actually a little embarrassed at how much Rei and Makoto fawn over her incredible strength and skill; she hadn't taken Ranma seriously when he said that she was still better than 95% of martial artists in the world. Her "super martial arts abilities" (as describes by actual ''superheroes'') are enough to let her beat Makoto or Haruka, and she is repeatedly noted as being exceptionally strong by any standard of measurement.
- In the Loonatics Unleashed fanfiction, The Fragile, Rev feels this way since he has the least offensive powers of the team.
- In The Games We Play, Adam's Interlude reveals that he thinks he's this as compared to the rest of his team. He's not a reincarnated Person of Mass Destruction from a precursor civilization (Jaune), one of the strongest Huntresses of her generation if not ever (Raven), a sort of-reincarnation of one of the preceding's peers (Autumn), or a seeming mythic beast reborn (Gou). He's just an above-average faunus who lacks a lot of the exotic things and just lucked out to be found by the right people. Raven's Interlude shows that she disagrees and thinks that he is giving himself too little credit.
- In the backstory of I Am What I Am, Xander Harris always thought of himself as the normal guy who hangs out with superheroes. Then when he's seeking to apprentice under the greatest martial arts master in the world, she has him fight a world-class champion martial artist and Xander wins easily. What he never realized is that he's a veteran demon hunter who's always been comparing himself to people with superhuman physical abilities and/or magic powers. Against anything that isn't superhumanly fast, strong, and tough, he's pretty much unbeatable. Faith even reassures him by saying he's the Batman of their Justice League.
- Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail:
- This is one of the reasons why Chloe Cerise resents Ash so much: how can an unremarkable girl like her compete with a Champion-level Trainer who's traveled the whole world? Especially when her father and Childhood Friend, who are both heavily involved with Pokémon, while she personally doesn't care for the creatures at all, quickly take to him? The toxic mindset Chloe develops from this complex ends up creating half the drama and pain that the Vermillion cast go through in Blossoming Trail when she lashes out at them over it for both legit and perceived slights.
- Hop feels the same way. After hearing his brother gush about Ash's potential to challenge him — right on the heels of Hop's painful loss to Bede and getting lectured about how he was ruining Leon's legacy, he falls into a depression severe enough to attract the Train right to his hotel room.
- Played With through Hilary, Delia's snippy sister-in-law. Hilary blames Ash for discouraging her sons from becoming Trainers themselves, as they fear being overshadowed by their cousin. In reality, however, Trey and Troy have been inspired by their cousin's adventures to become archeologists — Hilary just refuses to accept that because she wants her boys to become just as world-famous, and rejects the idea that they can do so while pursuing their own dreams.
- Hilary's attitude problem is shared by many of the adults in Pallet Town; they think their children are discouraged by Ash's successes, when he's actually encouraging them to follow their own dreams with the same zeal he has for Pokémon training. This is part of why Delia detests Chloe so much; she reminds her of all the pettily envious folk she's had to deal with. That and the pain Chloe's actions subjected Ash to.
- In Infinity Train: Seeker of Crocus (an AU of Blossoming Trail), Chloe also has these same problems which get aggravated during a conference call with the Alola region where all of Ash's classmates just jump on Augustine Sycamore and effectively snubbing the girl who had been on the Train much longer than Augustine (at most two months) and effectively confronting her fears that people love you if you're into Pokémon and shun you if you don't. However, Goh manages to make them realize their insensitivity and they become amaze at how she's been able to survive the Death World that is the Train without a Pokémon on hand.
- While this was not mentioned in Blossoming Trail but Grace Monroe is completely outclassed by Chloe, Augustine and the returning White Gestalt. Despite having to survive on the train for ten years without guidance and creating the Apex as an army to help investigate the Train, her actions are dwarfed due to how she survived — destroying cars and killing denizens — while the heroic groups have saved denizens from destruction (Augustine stopped a space war and Chloe saves the Ninjala Car from an army of Mirage Pokémon).
- Quicksilver in The Last Son takes a lot of pride in his Super-Speed and loves to boast about it. Naturally, he's not amused when he meets Superman who can easily outpace him (among other things), and later has a similar reaction to Flash who is even faster.
- Harry Potter in Metagaming? was The Archmage both in his home world and in Westeros, far above anyone else in terms of magical power and knowledge. On Azeroth, he's still acknowledged as an archmage but is on the lower end for the high tier powers, such as acknowledging Tyrande could definitely kill him and he really doesn't want to provoke any full grown dragons. Notably, Harry offers Jaina the elixir of life, something most would sell their souls for on Earth and Planetos and took him decades to create. Jaina casually turns it down and remarks that if she wants to extend her life, she'll "just use a spell". Though he has realized he possesses more skill and versatility than most, having skill as a mage, shadow priest, warlock, druid, and shaman along with spells no one else has.
- In Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!, Katsuki Bakugou is Always Second Best to his Childhood Friend Izuku, who happens to be Kryptonian. Because of this, his excellent scores on the U.A. Entrance Exam and the Quirk Apprehension Test are just completely blown out of the water by just how overpowered Izuku is by comparison. So when they arrive at U.A., Izuku is all everyone is ever talking about while Katsuki is summarily ignored.
- Gary Oak in Pokémon Reset Bloodlines shows himself a very strong and capable trainer, but there are a few who eclipse him. For starters, he's lost every single of his fights against Red, Ash outpaces him, and during his team up with Paul in the Fuchsia Tag Tournament, Paul had a better show overall. The latter, and a later defeat at Paul's hands, threw him into a funk, but with help from a veteran trainer he improves and by the time of the Indigo League Gary defeats Paul.
- Danny Potter in Princess of the Blacks might be especially skilled for a student his age, but against older and more experienced fighters, he comes across as a Red Shirt. One of the most notable examples being the final task of the Triwizard Tournament where despite Barty Crouch turning his Death Course into something far easiernote , he still finishes in third (of seven) and is only seconds ahead of fourth. The other most noteworthy comes during Voldemort's attack on Hogsmeade. If not for the whole brother wands not working against each other, he would've been a smear on a wall very quickly. Meanwhile, Voldemort, Jen, and Tonks throw around a giant snake made of several buildings, conjure tornadoes, hurl lightning and more.
- Ren in Promotion to Queen is easily the weakest of the three visible heroes (Naofumi has been MIA for weeks). Sure, he's hit level fifty but Malty has raised all of her forces past seventy and she, Itsuki, and Raphtalia have all recently surpassed level one hundred. Against someone like Malty who wiped out the capital of Siltvelt in minutes or Medea whose mere presence killed thousands, Ren doesn't even qualify as a mook.
- Goggles is this is Racer and the Geek, compared to the other three guards. Telny is a proven fighter. Keffiyeh is obviously a veteran who has fought alongside Telny. Shades is doubtlessly a professional operator. Goggles knows more about weapons and fighting than the average pony, but it's acknowledged that if anything ever were to happen to Ponyville, that he'd be The Load compared to the others, even if he is technically capable of getting things done and taking care of himself. The comparison really is like between a special forces veteran and a fresh cadet from the academy.
- In the sequel to Rainbooms and Royalty, it's brought up that several of the weather patrol members feel like this is the case regarding Rainbow Dash. They're good at their jobs, but Dash spends most of her time napping, blasts through her duties, and winds up with all the credit.
- Azula is this in The Saga Of Tanya The Firebender, where she is constantly overshadowed by the meteoric rise of Tanya. Since they first met Tanya has outperformed the Princess, from fighting her to a tie at the age of five to eventually becoming the youngest Admiral of the Fire Nation at twelve. By the time Azula encounters Team Avatar at Omashu, she has been so overshadowed that Aang (who has been fighting in losing battles against Tanya) genuinely thought that the Fire Nation Princess was also taking orders from "The Devil Of The North".
- Slayer and a Half: Rachel Giles is a Badass Normal who has been hunting vampires in Sunnydale since she was at least ten, and the Master comes to see her as a legitimate threat to his plans. Sadly, she gets hit with this around Buffy, showing that Badass Normal though she is, she's still just a normal human. In chapter 4, while Buffy casually leaps over the Sunnydale High fence, Rachel is forced to climb a tree to get over. Later, in chapter 9, Rachel is awakened to this while avoiding vampires in the morgue.Rachel: [thinking] If Buffy were here, this would be so much easier. She's got much better senses than I do, and can actually sense vampires. But on my own, I'm basically flying on instruments!
- In the epilogue of Son of the Sannin, this is how Sarada feels in comparison to the other new generation Uchihas. Shiro and Shizuka are a high ranking police officer and an ANBU captain respectively, not to mention that the latter was taught by Naruto. To make matters worse, her first cousin Naoki not only inherited Itachi's Child Prodigy nature and has two bloodline limits, she also became Chunin a few months after graduating from the Academy.
- Discussed in The Stalking Zuko Series with Suki, she feels compared to the rest of the Gaang: Aang is the Avatar, Katara is a Waterbending master and healer, Toph is a genius Earthbender, Sokka is a marvelous strategist and Zuko is an exiled prince. She feels that she's only seen as Sokka's girlfriend because her skills are outshined by everyone else.
- Cross in This Bites! would be superhuman in the real world once he takes special vitamins to increase his durability, being able to walk off a three-story fall with only a couple bruises to show for it and capable of wielding a bazooka that weighs over a ton. However, he's still physically the weakest member of the Straw Hat crew, roughly on par with the average Mook.
- And he only gets stronger. By the time the story reaches the Strong World Arc, Cross proves himself a badass capable of mowing down mooks without breaking a sweat. And by the end of that arc he's strong enough to crush multiple above-average Paradise Captains at once. And he's still the weakest member of the crew in combat, barring perhaps only Usopp, who is a sniper and not a front-line fighter.
- In the Medaka Box fanfic World as Myth, Kumagawa is considered the only person capable of taking down Medaka in War God Mode, but is ignored by the powers that be in favor of other Abnormals. One reviewer even commented on this.
- Several cases in Zero Requiem. As Maelys Targaryen puts it: "Is there any greater curse than being merely good in the era of great men?". Steffon was hit especially hard with this trope as while he fought well during the course of the war, compared to Lelouch's many victories Steffon's feats didn't seem to be as impressive.
