Follow TV Tropes

Following

Playing With / Worf Had the Flu

Go To

Basic Trope: A much stronger character was weakened during a fight against a lesser character.

  • Straight: Badass Normal Amazing Girl needs to fight Flying Brick Superio. While he's far above her league and could kill her easily, they happen to be fighting in extreme heat, which dampen Superio's powers.
  • Exaggerated: Superio has had a very bad day. He only got 1 hour of sleep after having to deal with all the fumes Amazing Girl was creating in her lab. In the morning he was forced to fly from the Milky Way to the Andromeda Galaxy to meet his son, only to remember he had to meet with the Justice Consortium, who were still in the Milky Way. (By the way his son is still on Earth.) He walks in on Amazing Girl, Xander, Sallymander, and The Dark-naught having an argument relating to video games. Superio barely understands Earth's culture, let alone pop culture, and is drawn into the debate regardless. Mission control sends him and Raccoon Kid to deal with Master Death. On the way Master Death ambushes the two, weakening Superio with a special artifact and ripping his arms off. Thankfully they regenerate, but that takes days. He flies home after the mission, still weakened by Master Death's artifact, when Amazing Girl interrupts him to talk about video games. She pulls him into a very hot room, takes offense to his rude comments, and attacks him. The dual amputee, tired, annoyed, and weakened Superio is forced to take a beating from her.
  • Downplayed:
  • Justified:
    • Superio has a weakness that dampens his powers.
    • Amazing Girl is a less powerful Flying Brick, and any nerf to Superio greatly benefits her.
  • Inverted:
    • Superio and Amazing Girl fight in cold weather, which happen to enhance his powers.
    • Amazing Girl equips her Powered Armor to make herself stronger.
    • Amazing Girl was weakened by Dr. Poison's toxin before getting into a fight with Superio.
    • Superio fights Electro-Man in cold weather, where there's no delocalized electrons that Electro-Man can use to his advantage, and where Superio is at his strongest. Electro-Man somehow wins.
  • Subverted:
    • Amazing Girl attempts to weaken Superio with one of her gadgets, it works for a while, but he powers through it and she must fight him at full strength.
    • Superio is merely exaggerating the effect the extreme heat has on him, to hide the fact that he's pulling his punches against Amazing Girl.
  • Double Subverted: ... Her gadget had a delayed effect, it begins to take over mid fight and grants Amazing Girl an advantage.
  • Parodied: Alice picks a fight with Bob, an athlete. Before anyone can throw a punch, a bunch of referees rush over to give Alice a bat and kick Bob in the nuts before either of them are allowed to fight.
  • Zig Zagged: Superio's weakness to extreme heat is not enough for Amazing Girl to defeat him, so she also brings out one of her gadgets. Unfortunately, the extreme heat also causes her gadget to malfunction, allowing Superio's power level to fluctuate in varying degrees.
  • Averted: All characters remain at their natural level of power throughout the work.
    • Any upset victories aren't from Superio being weaker but from taking him by surprise with something which he could easily dodge if he were aware of it.
  • Enforced: "Fans want these two characters to fight, but Superio is obviously too powerful."
  • Lampshaded: ???
  • Invoked: "We need to humble Superio somehow for storytelling purposes."
  • Exploited: Master Death decides to assault Superio whenever he is fighting Amazing Girl and the like, since he's most likely to be weakened then.
  • Defied: Superio himself decides to learn what his own weaknesses are and take measures so he is not severly affected by them.
  • Discussed: ""Now's a good a time as ever to attack Superio, he's weak."
  • Conversed: "I love how Power Levels are so relevant in speeches and fan debates, but whenever a dude with a gun fights an invincible flying dude they always have a reason as to why they can compete."
  • Implied: It's stated that Superio and Amazing Girl fought each other off screen, and the Justice Consortium spends a noticeable amount of time trying to figure out how a regular human woman was able to out perform a literal Superman Substitute.
  • Deconstructed: Amazing Girl accidentally cripples the already-weakened Superio permanently. This causes him to play the trope straight in his future battles which eventually leads to his early retirement.
  • Reconstructed: But despite being crippled, he still wins all his fights through heroic resolve and names Amazing Girl as his successor.
  • Played For Laughs: Superio is weakened and immediately falls to the ground, gets up slowly, whines about old man body pains and how his back is out of shape.
  • Played For Drama: Superio is unable to recover at full strength by the time Super Weight Dominus appears, who proceeds to Curb-Stomp Battle the two.

Unfortunately, we at TV Tropes are fatigued. Thus we cannot allow you to read the playing with section again. We invite you back to Worf Had the Flu

Top