Basic Trope: A power that's seemingly harmless turns out to have deadly applications.
- Straight:
- Lily has the ability to teleport herself. Useful, sure, but not very good for attacking enemies — until Lily discovers that she can vaporize objects by teleporting inside of them.
- Lily has healing powers and is treated as The Medic by the rest of the team... until she learns that overhealing wounds can cause cancer.
- Lily has illusion-based powers that makes stealth missions easy but are less useful in combat, then she learns that Your Mind Makes It Real.
- Exaggerated: Lily has The Power of Love as a literal superpower. Said power allows her to stop hearts and brainwash people into loving her and doing her every command.
- Downplayed: Lily is a Barrier Warrior, who, with practice, learns how to use her shields as battering rams or shape them into weapons.
- Justified:
- All powers, no matter how seemingly harmless, have combat applications, but some are less obvious than others.
- Personality Powers is in play. Lily is normally a meek and shy person, but has a vicious side when she gets pissed off- hence, she gets a mostly useful and harmless power than can have lethal applications when used properly.
- Inverted:
- Lily has the power to control heat — by which we mean she can make objects warm or cold, no Playing with Fire or Kill It with Ice to be seen here.
- Lily has the ability to kill life with a touch — but it is so weak that it can only affect microbes leaving it only capable of Mundane Utility instead of being massively deadly.
- Subverted: Other characters realise that Lily's powers have lethal capabilities if used properly, and tells her about this to make her more useful in combat. However, Lily is too much of a pacifist to want to use her powers in that manners.
- Double Subverted: ...That is, until the The Team gets into a tight spot, and Lily decides that it's time for The Gloves Come Off.
- The Touch of Death that seemingly only applies to microbes also applies to various types of cells. Once she realizes this, she can not only kill and dismember with a touch, but it also applies to specific things like blood cells to induce anemia, brain cells to forcefully dumb them down, neural systems to paralyze them, or out-of-control cells to cure cancer.
- Parodied: Lily has Super-Cute Superpowers which seem harmless — unfortunately, the rest of the cast are terrified of her.
- Zig Zagged: Lily has teleportation abilities that can be used to Tele-Frag unfortunate victims, until she's shackled with a Power Limiter that removes that part of her teleportation's functionality. However, she still figures out another way to make her powers lethal — by teleporting really high up while holding onto foes, then letting go and allowing gravity to do the rest.
- Averted: Lily's powers can't hurt others, no ifs, ands or buts about it.
- Enforced: Lily's lack of usefulness in fights causes her to become The Scrappy among the fanbase, so the writers give her powers additional applications in an effort to rescue her from the Scrappy heap.
- Lampshaded: "If you can kill people so easily, then why are we always getting our asses handed to us by the Villain of the Week?"
- Invoked: When the cast is choosing their superpowers, Lily intentionally picks one that's supportive but can be retooled to provide use in combat, so she can help others and still kick some ass as needed.
- Exploited: Lily intentionally saves her power's lethal uses for extremely important moments, causing many opponents to underestimate her at their own peril.
- Defied: Lily can't take the strain of having a power that makes killing so easy, and allows herself to be Brought Down to Normal.
- Discussed: Lily ends up bonding with Jake, a Person of Mass Destruction, over how lethal powers can often separate you from the ones you love.
- Conversed: Lily and Jake are Ascended Fans who have recently received superpowers, and argue over whether a power whose lethal applications are obvious or hidden is more intimidating.
- Implied: Lily, who is a Psycho Knife Nut to go with her teleportation, seem to pull off too much flesh with each strike for what's physically possible.
- Deconstructed: Even though she hates using it to do so, the lethal uses of her superpower cause Lily to be feared by her comrades and shunned by civilians.
- Reconstructed: In response, Lily becomes a Martial Pacifist, only using her killing power for the most important of times.
- Played For Laughs: Lily's friends can never seem to remember that her power can kill others, despite the fact that she uses it to do so fairly regularly.
- Played For Drama: Lily is initially horrified by her power's lethal uses, but as time goes on and she's forced to kill time and again to save her friends, she discovers to her horror that it starts to get easier. The deaths start to add up before long, and by the end of the story Lily has so much blood on her hands that she's become a broken wreck who can barely even recognize herself anymore.
Back to Lethal Harmless Powers.
