Tropes A to B (Adaptation Dye-Job) | Tropes C to D (Dub Name Change) | Tropes E to F (Evolving Credits | Famous Last Words) | Tropes G to K (Hate Sink | Heart Is An Awesome Power | Hoist By His Own Petard | Jerkass) | Tropes L to O (Logical Weakness | Nice Guy) | Tropes P to T (Shout-Out | Story-Breaker Power) | Tropes U to Z
In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Story-Breaker Powers are everywhere. The main reason is because one of Hirohiko Araki's biggest Author Appeals is to explore the implications of various abilities and take them to their logical conclusion, so powers that should be story-breaking (invincibility, instant death, almost anything time-related, negation of mobility, causality manipulation and Reality Warping) are often treated as such. Note that these abilities are introduced in the order they are given within the storyline.
As many of these powers are revealed near the end of their respective storylines, beware of unmarked spoilers. Proceed with caution. You Have Been Warned
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Battle Tendency
- Kars achieves Complete Immortality via the Red Stone of Aja. His abilities include an Adaptive Ability cranked up to eleven, an immunity to Hamon due to being capable of using it at even greater power, and finally an immunity to sunlight (which, mind you, are the two only things that vampires are weak to). This makes Kars virtually unkillable, since as mentioned, only sunlight and Hamon could kill vampires. Joseph has to fire him off of the Earth entirely via volcano into space, where his body automatically covers him in stone to keep him alive and Kars eventually stops thinking from the isolation of being unable to do anything.
Stardust Crusaders
- In a way, Hamon becomes this during the battle with DIO. DIO is a vampire and Hamon is a one-hit kill to vampires. If DIO even touched Joseph during their fight at the end of the Part, he would've evaporated. Plus, Joseph can extend his Hamon through his Stand, Hermit Purple. It's a good thing Joseph didn't impart the knowledge to anyone else during their travels or else the climax of the part would've been handled within minutes.
- Jotaro Kujo's Stand, Star Platinum, ends up becoming this within later Parts of the manga after Jotaro learns it has the power to stop time. It's outright described as the strongest ability that a Stand ever had. To compensate, Jotaro can only stop time for shorter periods than DIO, and he often fights enemies that injure him before he can activate his Stand, or that force him to injure himself. And that's when he doesn't simply disappear from the story; in Diamond is Unbreakable, he doesn't take part in the final battle until the end and once he does, ends it in seconds. In Golden Wind he only appears briefly during the beginning and is subjected to Superman Stays Out of Gotham. In Stone Ocean he spends most of the story in a coma, only waking up when Pucci has an even stronger Stand.
- Magician's Red due to the nature of his Stand, along with it being as fast as Silver Chariot with no armor and one of the most powerful in the Joestar Group, combined with Avdol's intelligence, it's unlikely he would have much trouble with many of the enemy Stands with a Stand as powerful as Avdol's. Probably best evidenced when he makes short work of Judgement, a stand of near identical stats, when the man was still injured. Even his foes such as Hol Horse, N'Doul, and Vanilla Ice, consider him to be a very capable and serious threat. This is most likely one of the reasons he is largely Out of Focus and ends up being Killed Off for Real before getting the chance to face DIO, whose natural weakness is fire.
- According to Araki, this was one of the reasons that his idea to have Hol Horse become an ally to the Crusaders never went beyond the "musing" stage. Unlike a lot of the items on this page, Hol Horse's Emperor is a pretty straightforward power: it's a gun whose bullets Hol Horse can control in flight. The thing is, Hol Horse lives in a setting where very few people are outright Immune to Bullets, meaning that anyone who doesn't have such an immunity is guaranteed to die as long as Hol Horse is fighting even remotely intelligently. In addition to this, just the nature of Emperor being a Stand gives Hol Horse a lot of hidden advantages: he can manifest it instantly at will, he can't be disarmed or lose it, he can harm Stands with it, and he never runs out of ammunition, effectively removing all the downsides that a gun would normally suffer from in this kind of setting. Araki mostly got around this problem by, similar to Okuyasu, having Hol Horse never fight intelligently outside of his first appearance, though this would likely have been a lot less funny were he a good guy. Notably, when Araki decided to try writing a gun-user again in the form of Guido Mista, he went out of his way to give Mista a number of weaknesses that Hol Horse lacked, having his gun be an external weapon with limited ammunition that his Stand could improve, rather than the Stand itself.
- Vanilla Ice's Stand, Cream, can create dimensional voids by literally eating itself, and whoever is hiding inside it. While inside his void sphere, Vanilla Ice is invulnerable to pretty much any attack, and can disintegrate enemies by merely coming in contact with them, and is literally invisible! Its only flaw is that the "being eaten by Cream" thing and the invisibility realistically prevents himself from seeing as well, so the only way he can adjust his aim to a target is to expose himself momentarily, and his path can be observed by the destruction left in Cream's wake. In summary, Cream has the dubious honor of murdering Avdol and Iggy, and the only reason why Polnareff ends up as the Sole Survivor of that fight is because he exploits Vanilla Ice's vampirism and Berserk Button to give him a helping of sunlight.
- Part of the reason why Jotaro has such an overpowered Stand is because DIO's Stand, The World, is just a few notches ahead. Jotaro can usually freeze time for one or two seconds and has stamina issues with the ability. DIO can stop time for five seconds and avoids the shortcomings Jotaro faces due to his vampirism. Five seconds of pure immobility in the world around you, giving you all that time to utterly destroy your opponents - and since DIO's a vampire, he can dish out plenty of hurt himself even without using The World to attack physically. Even worse, DIO's inhabiting of Jonathan's body means the true power of The World is yet to unlock. As the fight with Jotaro and DIO continues, DIO finds himself being able to stop time for an even longer period than Jotaro, all up to nine seconds. Theoretically, there may be no cap on the length DIO can stop time. The only reason Jotaro survives in his confrontation with DIO is that he kills him quickly enough to prevent him from becoming unmanageable, and the only reason why anybody survives is that Star Platinum has the same power. DIO even has a ridiculous range for his Stand - usually a close-range Stand is limited to two meters, but The World can operate within ten meters.
Diamond is Unbreakable
- Okuyasu Nijimura's Stand, The Hand. It has physical strength and speed only slightly less than the likes of Star Platinum and Crazy Diamond, and its special ability is the power to erase space by swiping at it with its right hand. With this, Okuyasu effectively has short-range teleportation, the ability to drag his opponents and other objects towards him, and the ability to No-Sell any attack and erase anything from existence in a manner similar to Vanilla Ice, without suffering that Stand's drawbacks. Theoretically, this would include immortal beings such as Kars and Notorious B.I.G. The only reason Okuyasu doesn't break every fight into tiny pieces is because, well, he's a complete idiot and doesn't explore his Stand's potential at all; his entire playbook for most of the Part is use the Hand to get within punching distance and then punch.
- Akira Otoishi's Stand, Red Hot Chili Pepper. It's a Stand fast enough to reach the speed of light, meaning it is fast enough to dodge Crazy Diamond's attacks at close range and it has the power to do a lot of damage, while also possessing a range of hundreds of meters. However, it only reaches story-breaking when it absorbs all the electricity in Morioh, which is where it has the capability to not just outspeed Crazy Diamond, but hit hard enough to pummel him in a couple of blows, with Josuke having barely any way of winning through Speed and Power. The only reason why RHCP lost was that Akira is extremely arrogant. Despite Akira only being an early antagonist, his Stand is more powerful than the main villain's Stand Killer Queen. The reason why he couldn't be an ally was that he would have tracked and defeated Kira quickly.
- Rohan Kishibe has Heaven's Door. Any person who sees an image of the Stand (which Rohan can simply draw in the air with his finger) has their body unravel into pages containing their memories and characteristics written on them, which Rohan can read and rip out. If incapacitating people by turning them into paper wasn't enough, Rohan can also write in the margins of these pages to give the targets fake memories, new characteristics (such as "I can speak fluent Italian") and rules that they are unable to break (such as "I cannot attack Rohan Kishibe"). He can also write on his own body to modify himself to any extent that he pleases. The only thing stopping Rohan from simply writing "I am invincible and I will never lose at anything" on himself is his pride as a mangaka and belief that if he used his Stand that way, it would... well, break the story and make his ensuing work using the event as inspiration boring.
- Echoes ACT 3, which has enough power to go head to head with Kira and defeat his Sheer Heart Attack. His ability is also to make anyone around him a sitting duck by making them fall due to their increased weight and gravity, capable of making body parts sink into concrete. Koichi also never really had many fights after that moment. It's also what allowed them to defeat Killer Queen's third bomb - Bites the Dust at the very end so Jotaro's Star Platinum could finish Kira off.
- Speaking of Kira, his Stand, Killer Queen, has both the power to turn anything it touches into a bomb and the ability to eject a Nigh-Invulnerable heat-seeking bomb that can attack from a distance. However, the former can be dealt with by faster, stronger Stands like Star Platinum and Crazy Diamond (because Kira refuses to develop his close combat skills), and the latter can be halted by Echoes ACT 3. The same can't be said for Bites The Dust, which attaches itself to a host and attacks any person that can get them to divulge Kira's identity by going inside them. Then for added effect, it rewinds time but continues to cause whoever it killed in the previous time loop to die, regardless of the actions of the host. Its only downside is that it leaves Kira himself relatively vulnerable while activated and he's not aware of the time loops while they're going on, but at that point he only has to worry about the host themself (or rather, their ability to exploit his own hubris). The final battle also has Kira team up with Stray Cat, a flower possessed by the Stand of a dead cat pierced by a Stand Arrow, and use its aerokinesis to create steerable bubble bombs at will. Basically imagine Hol Horse's Emperor in the hands of someone far more competent, and the projectiles can explode at will.
- All this comes to a head in the final battle of the series, where Josuke, Okuyasu, Koichi, Jotaro, and Rohan are all present vs. Kira and Stray Cat. The fight only lasts as long as it does because for most of it, Jotaro, Koichi and Rohan are just around the block with no clue what is happening and Okuyasu is forced to make a Heroic Sacrifice to rescue Josuke. Once Okuyasu recovers and returns, it all goes downhill for Kira; Okuyasu uses The Hand to yank Stray Cat out of Killer Queen and then Koichi, Jotaro and Rohan arrive. With the threat of Kira activating the above-mentioned Bites the Dust, Koichi pins down Kira's hand so he can't activate the bomb, allowing Jotaro to get close enough to use Star Platinum: The World to finish him off very quickly.
Golden Wind
- Gold Experience has a diverse set of abilities that ultimately had to be quietly nerfed like the Star Finger and downplayed as to not make the character appear too broken. The organisms created by Gold Experience have the ability to reflect all damage that they receive, and this allows Giorno to curb-stomp Koichi's Echoes without making a move. Later, these living beings can be hit without that effect. Moreover, Gold Experience had the ability to distort the consciousness of the foes that it punches, but this was only shown in the fight against Bruno Bucciarati, and never used again against another enemy bar Black Sabbath No Selling it due to being an Automatic Stand. It's possible that Cioccolata, one of the most Ax-Crazy villains suffered a massive distortion of 2 hours at most during his No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, and he deserved every second of it.
- Pannacotta Fugo and his Stand, Purple Haze is another notable example: Purple Haze's fists have capsules containing a deadly flesh-eating virus which practically guarantees a gruesome death for whoever gets caught in its area of effect. This means that as soon as he gets his enemy in range, the fight is over. This has led to the misconception that Fugo was written out of the story because his Stand was too strong (the actual reason is that Araki chose to scrap the plans for Fugo to be The Mole for the Boss).
- Then in Purple Haze Feedback, Purple Haze becomes even more powerful when it evolves into Purple Haze Distortion, which can now unleash a virus that eats other viruses, including itself.
- Illuso's Man in the Mirror is a considerably overpowered Stand ability despite being one of the earlier antagonists and only the second member of La Squadra faced by the protagonists. It's pretty much like J. Geil's Hanged Man on steroids, being able to separate Stand users from their Stand abilities by having them enter a mirror world where Illuso is near-invincible due to being able to decide what enters and what doesn't. This results in him torturing both Fugo and Abbacchio within his "realm of death" where he is the only one with a Stand ability. Illuso's personality makes things even more complicated as his ruthlessness and determination allows him to escape almost any situation unharmed. Had he been fought one-on-one, he'd likely have been invincible.
- Pesci's Beach Boy is a fishing rod capable of phasing through anything, object or even human, as if it were water. It can also detect heartbeats and thus Pesci's preferred method of killing is by ripping out hearts. Removing the hook means that Pesci can simply phase it back in due to the line's sensor working in a cm radius and any attack directed at the line is reflected back at the target. It says a lot that Pesci is one of the closest to come killing Bucciarati's entire crew and Bucciarati himself manages to barely survive this encounter through determination and sheer luck.
- Diavolo, as far as Stando powah goes, is just a step below the greats of the series. King Crimson hits like a truck in melee combat and is quite fast, but it also possesses Epitaph (which gives him Combat Clairvoyance) and its signature ability, Time Skip. How it works is... complicated, but the practical summary is that Diavolo can "skip" anywhere between .5 to 10 seconds in time, allowing him to move outside of his predetermined actions while everyone else continues as they are supposed to. Once the 10-second limit has been reached, time will resume as normal, with no one besides Diavolo remembering what happened in that time. On top of this being incredibly disorienting, it also makes Diavolo almost impossible to hurt, since he can see any attack coming, skip over anything that might hit him, then step in with King Crimson and punch the opponent's head off. The entire reason Gold Experience Requiem exists is to counter King Crimson; its "nullify anything" trick was specifically because negating Time Skip was the only way to get a guaranteed hit on Diavolo.
- Risotto Nero's Metallica rivals Purple Haze when it comes to insta-death radius within a couple of meters. It has the ability to transform the iron within an opponent's blood into sharp metal objects that can tear through their skin in a torturous fashion. Additionally, even if the opponent manages to survive, the iron is still lost - meaning that they'll have more and more trouble breathing until they die of asphyxiation, and that's if they don't bleed to death first. On top of that, Risotto can use iron particles to turn himself invisible. Risotto's calculated usage of this ability is what makes him so dangerous as he can gain the upper hand in a fight in a matter of seconds, and the main reason his opponent survived was because Risotto underestimated him and had the bad luck for Aerosmith to be nearby - the Stand ridiculously suited to countering the situation he created.
- Notorious B.I.G., Carne's Stand, which takes the form of a blob that relentlessly consumes any matter, and has infinite durability, range and speed. And since it activates after Carne is already dead, it cannot be destroyed. The only reason it failed to wipe out team Bucciarati was that one of them had an ability almost ideal to counter it (to an extent), and they managed to make excellent use of their surroundings. Even then, Giorno and the others never truly defeated it...
- Cioccolata's Stand, Green Day, is essentially Purple Haze with mold, combined with practically infinite radius. It spreads flesh-eating mold that consumes everything organic in a gruesome and painful manner and then just spreads from one carcass to the next after the bodies explode. The mold spreads faster the higher the altitude of the user and activates when the target goes to a lower altitude after infection. This means that something as mundane as tripping over can be lethal. This all culminates in Cioccolata spreading his mold via helicopter throughout Rome while pursuing the heroes which is an in-universe equivalent of a biological warfare nuke. Adding to that, the fact that the user is absolutely insane and the Stand ability has no restraints makes things worse.
- And then we have the crème de la crème: Gold Experience Requiem, the evolved form of Giorno's Gold Experience, potentially making its user one of the strongest individuals in his reality, and that says a lot. In the final battle against the final enemy, Diavolo, his Stand, Gold Experience is shot by the Requiem Arrow, becoming Gold Experience Requiem, and gains the ability to more or less nullify any and all actions and abilities an opponent takes, even ones he cannot himself see. In addition, if said opponent is actually hit by the Stand, the victim is doomed to experience death for all eternity. Needless to say, it's fortunate that this only occurred at the very end of the Part, and it's probably the biggest reason he didn't show up in the following Part, as this ability could potentially have countered the below-mentioned Made in Heaven.
Stone Ocean
- Weather Report (the Stand, not the Stand User) is a contender for one of the most powerful abilities a JoJo ally has ever had in the entire series. By having full control of the weather, it already gives its user the ability to have incredible destructive powers like wind and lightning that puts it on the same punching power as Star Platinum, Kiss and Stone Free, and arguably surpasses them (as Weather Report can suck out all the oxygen in a room or overload it on toxic gases, which is a death sentence to anyone who's in an enclosed space where Weather Report is in action), Weather Report eventually evolves into Heavy Weather, which is revealed to allow just about any kind of power as long as it's tied to the phenomena of weather, and is genuinely believed by the Stand user as such. This manifests into truly esoteric applications from it raining frogs to rainbows encoded with subliminal messages that morph those who see it into snails. It's telling that not only was the full extent of Weather Report's power being limited by its Stand user, Wes Blumenthal, having Laser-Guided Amnesia for the vast majority of the part, but as soon as he got his memories back, he was both Put on a Bus for a similar duration of the story and also came the closest of anyone up to that point to killing Pucci then and there, only failing to do so due to Jolyne and co.'s crashing due to a dust cloud Weather himself created. Even more telling, it ends up being the very thing that lets Emporio finish off a post-Made in Heaven Pucci by seizing on his arrogance and using the Stand DISC made from Whitesnake to acquire Heavy Weather and overload all oxygen in the room, effectively making Pucci a sitting duck to be finished off. After all, having infinite speed is useless if you can't even breathe or move.
- Stone Ocean's Big Bad, Enrico Pucci, starts out as simply clever and dangerous, whose Stand, Whitesnake, is versatile but lacking in a stand-up fight. Then he evolves it into C-Moon, which has less flexibility but a lot more power. Then, just as the heroes figure out C-Moon and have him on the ropes, he evolves it again. Cue Made in Heaven, whose power is the ability to exponentially accelerate time for everything except living things. However, Pucci himself can move at the same speed as the accelerated time, essentially giving him Super-Speed that even the fastest Stands can't keep up with - only Jotaro's Star Platinum can hope to strike Made in Heaven by stopping time, and Pucci eventually gets fast enough to have set up traps for when he does to force a Sadistic Choice. Even worse, the time stopping ability of Star Platinum is drastically shortened by the accelerating time and continues to do so gradually along with Pucci himself getting faster and faster. Thanks to this power and his planning, he surrounds and rips most of the heroes to shreds in seconds and time continues to accelerate to the end of the universe and carries every living being on Earth into the next before they can die. Additionally, Made In Heaven is essentially the powers of the previous time manipulating Stands combined: it has the ability to accelerate time to the point of resetting the entire universe and looping time infinitely similar to Bites the Dust. It's also fast enough to completely disorient its foes like King Crimson. And finally, from Pucci's point of view, Made in Heaven is like The World's time stopping ability but it's on constantly with no limit to it whatsoever, rendering Star Platinum practically useless by this point. Fortunately, Pucci does fall to the final boy Emporio Alnino, but even then it's mainly because of his arrogance and a few Logical Weaknesses of the time acceleration power.
Steel Ball Run
- Funny Valentine, the Big Bad of Steel Ball Run, is dominant in his own way. His Stand, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, accesses alternate universes, with which he could use Weaponized Teleportation, trapping people in them, where if alternate selves touched each other, they would simultaneously disintegrate (an effect Valentine himself was conveniently immune to), transfer his consciousness to alternate selves if his current body was killed, summon aforementioned alternate selves to his universe to assist him and, with the help of another, redirect all "misfortune" targeting him to hit another random stranger on the opposite side of the planet.
- However, it gets one-upped by an even stronger Stand, Tusk ACT 4. Not only does it have excellent physical stats (An A in Destructive Power, which puts Tusk at the same strength level as Star Platinum), it also retains the abilities of all the previous ACTs (being able to shoot Johnny's fingernails like bullets, control the holes created by the bullets, and turn the holes into a pocket dimension that Johnny can move around in), it also uses the power of the Golden Spin, i.e infinite rotation, which will, aside from disintegrating anything it hits into oblivion since every single particle of the target will be spinning, but also that the bullet cannot be stopped, as it will rip through literal dimensions to catch up with the target. The only reason it's used so rarely is due to the extreme circumstances Johnny has to be in in order to activate it.
JoJolion
- Wonder of U, the Stand of Satoru Akefu (or rather, of Tooru, whose Stand is the true identity of Satoru Akefu) has the ability to inflict misfortune upon its target, most commonly through making anything the target runs into deal major damage. While this on its own is a powerful ability, what makes this Stand this trope is the fact that it activates via the mere intent of trying to pursue Satoru. The only way to circumvent this is either 1) the target priorities change to something they consider more urgent or 2) the target is transported by someone with no intent of pursuing Satoru. Even then, the moment the target acts on their own with the purpose of pursuing him, the Stand will reactivate.
- Later on, we learn that there's a few rules regarding what counts as "pursuit" and what doesn't. The most notable one is that any attempt to attack Satoru directly counts as "pursuit", therefore its Stand will automatically counter it. However, if Satoru is the one who attacks first, the target is allowed to defend itself.
- But wait! There is more! Wonder of U has a lot of additional abilities and perks: it has absurdly long range, can teleport itself, can think and act independently from its user, can disguise itself as Satoru, and can show itself to people who aren't Stand users (normally Stands are always Invisible to Normals). This allows the user to stay hidden and out of danger, while the Stand passes itself off as the user. Also, Wonder of U can act as an intelligent ally, allowing for complex plans. Oh, and on top of that, Wonder of U also has the ability to keep going after the user's death, although in a weakened state.
- How does one defeat such an overpowered ability? Why, with an even more broken one! After Josuke realizes that his bubbles are actually created through the Spin, he creates a new type. One which is made out of spinning lines so thin that they're infinitely close to zero. This means that these bubbles don't exist in our reality but can still damage things in it. Or, as Josuke himself put it, they Go Beyond reality. This means that they are an unblockable, invincible attack, that not even Wonder of U can stop. The one weakness Go Beyond has, that being that Josuke can't directly control it, is mitigated by his cooperation with Yasuho, who can use her Paisley Park to guide the bubbles.
