Basic Trope: A super-power so effective, that it ends up being a detriment for the story's flow, logic and/or development.
- Straight: Carol can warp space and time in a setting where the best everyone else has are elemental powers.
- Exaggerated: Her Reality Warper powers cause the story to literally fall apart.
- Downplayed:
- She uses her time powers for Save Scumming.
- Carol uses her powers of illusion to avoid being detected while she coldly murders her enemies in plain sight, one-by-one, with a knife, and nobody notices something is wrong. However, she still has only human capabilities.
- Justified:
- The enemies they face require that she have these powers.
- Carol is The Omnipotent, so it's a guarantee that she would have overpowered everything in her way.
- Inverted: Badass Normal
- Subverted:
- Her powers become a main point in the plot.
- Carol was lying about her powers.
- Double Subverted:
- ...because they broke the story so much.
- She was pretending to be lying to protect her secret identity.
- Parodied: Carol's space powers apply to... the space bar. She holds it down and causes words to become distant from each other, making the story nigh unreadable.
- Zig Zagged: Carol starts with a usable power level, but Serial Escalation makes her Too Powerful to Live. So she dies, and when she's resurrected, her power is back to how it started. She regains her power over time, but a villain comes up with a useful counter, and tells everyone. Then Carol gets even more powerful...
- Averted: Carol has fairly well-balanced powers.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: "Carol always does everything, do we even need to do anything?"
- Invoked: The villain gives Carol the amazing powers so that everyone else is distracted while they commit a mind-numbing amount of crimes.
- Exploited: ...and then Carol, finding out about this plot, uses her new powers to lead a Faustian Rebellion.
- Defied:
- Carol relinquishes enough power to not be overpowering, but retains enough to be useful.
- The MacGuffin that grants this power is destroyed.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed:
- Because of her overwhelming advantage, nobody is irrational enough to fight her anymore. Those who do have a use for Carol, have to be immensely intelligent and convincing. The people who literally can't catch up with her are beyond jealous, and want to do other things besides getting nearly killed. Fighting is pointless and any real-life story with Carol is literally too predictable, while the objectively weaker members are more interesting.
- Carol suffers Power Incontinence from her extreme power.
- Carol's powers make her a prime target of several criminal organizations that want to either turn her to their side or destroy her at all costs.
- Reconstructed:
- Carol is The Omnipotent, not The Omniscient - she can fix any problem that she knows about, but she can misjudge a problem, or simply miss problems until it's too late. Or vice-versa, she knows how to best act to resolve any problem - but can't fix things on her own, and can only really afford to pay attention to the major (or easily fixed) problems. Either way, the story becomes much Lighter and Softer, but preserves some drama.
- You can still craft excellent stories, even with this trope in play, as long as you make them compelling enough by having great characters, clever twists, a solid emotional core, etc.
- Carol automatically knows every single thing that has ever been written or typed in the past few thousand years, if not in the entire history of writing. In a world where knowledge directly correlates to magical power, this is a lot of power. However, she is constrained by certain rules, meaning that she can usually only pass on hints and not get directly involved in situations-otherwise every book would be about five pages long.
- Carol is Strong, but Unskilled, and the story is about her learning Boxing Lessons for Superman or other types of Training from Hell in order to control her power. Sure, she can punch a mountain in half, but opening a door without breaking it is extremely difficult.
- Played For Laughs: Carol wins. The villain gets an automatic Darwin Award. Everyone eats cake.
- Played For Drama:
- Carol used her power to One-Hit Kill Emperor Evulz... and the realm is now run by the Pointy-Haired Boss.
- Carol becomes a Well-Intentioned Extremist, trying to solve everything with her powers.
- Ultimately, Carol's biggest problems are internal, or relational.
Back to Story-Breaker Power.
