The Worf Effect / Comic Books

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• In general this tends to happen a lot to whoever the primary Super-Strong, Nigh Invulnerable guy on a hero team is to play up some big-time villain, such as Superman, Thor, Martian Manhunter, The Hulk, The Thing, Wonder Woman, Colossus, etc. This is especially true if they're the team bruiser for Sizeshifter reasons.
• Nightcrawler of the X-Men and The Flash of the Justice League begin at least half of the team fights they're in by getting backhanded into unconsciousness (they do much better when fighting solo). The reason for this is (1) due to their powers (teleportation and Super-Speed, respectively) they're usually the first one to reach the villain, (2) the sooner they get taken out, the less time the reader has to think about how each could kill almost anyone before their opponent even knew they were in a fight, and (3) it demonstrates that the villain has reflexes akin to precognition just to be able to lay a glove on them… in theory. You see it enough times, it starts to look like they just 'port/run right into villains' outstretched fists.

Marvel Universe

• Apocalypse is perhaps the Big Bad most frequently hit by this. He has the power and reputation to stand in the same category as Marvel's biggest bads but is the "youngest" among them (in terms of creation, not in-story age) and thus 9 out of 10 times is the character Marvel looks to when they need to have a truly big villain take a dive for some reason. Black Bolt, Onslaught, Kang the Conqueror and an evil alternate Professor X have all made a whipping boy of the Eternal One to greater or lesser degrees, but the crowning example for Apocalypse and this trope is the 1992 X-Cutioner's Song crossover, which features upstart villain Stryfe effortlessly flinging around Big Blue with his telekinesis in a total Curb-Stomp Battle. Apocalypse doesn’t fare any better in more recent comics, in Excalibur (2019) a pissed off Rogue straight up kills him for his scheming (and hurting Gambit) and after being resurrected for X of Swords, Apocalypse gets badly wounded by his grandson Summoner along with the other Horseman.
• Ares was supposed to combine the viciousness of Wolverine, power level approaching Thor or Hercules with being a military genius all the while being praised and feared as a massive threat. Instead he tended to serve as either someone to show how powerful a new villain was so Sentry could take care of it or was needed for a fight scene that Sentry was too powerful for. He would then lose said fight scene. This culminated in Siege, where he was ineffective against The Sentry to show how dark the character had become. Trying to remember any victories he might have had against any meaningful opponents is much more difficult than all the losses he has had. He gets his ass kicked in his own mini and needs his daddy Zeus to bail him out. Interestingly, this record is pretty accurate to the actual mythological Ares, who was regularly humiliated in battle despite being the god of war (his sister Athena is historically the god of strategic warfare, while Ares is historically the god of Attack! Attack! Attack!-style warfare).
• The Avengers have had several characters serve this role over the years.
  • Wonder Man is often joked to be this. Despite supposedly being as tough as Thor or Sentry he has a very poor record at winning fights, often only serving to make someone else look good. Thor, arguably the most powerful Avenger and one of the most powerful heroes, sometimes suffers from this to establish a new threat as being a real danger. Ares also served this to a point whenever Sentry wasn't around.
  • This has always happened to The Vision since about the 80's. Prior to that, he was often shilled as the Avengers' greatest powerhouse, and had a lot of day-saving moments; however, he since got taken advantage of for being an android and thus destructible, so he is far more likely now to be torn apart or have his phasing tricks turn out to be useless. Viz has better luck nowadays thanks to MCU boosting his popularity, to wit his 2015 series sees him worfing Iron Man, Jane Foster Thor, Captain Marvel, Blue Marvel, Beast, Nova, Medusa, Crystal, Sam Wilson, Monica Rambeau, Black Panther, Spider-Man, Miles Morales, Ms Marvel, Doctor Strange and even Scarlet Witch just to get to his son’s killer.
  • Carol Danvers in her Ms. Marvel days was typically was the go to Action Girl among the Avengers to take a dive, usually due to taking a Leeroy Jenkins approach to fighting. Her most crippling worfing was from Rogue which put her in a coma and instigated a decade long grudge match between the two women. She gets this less often as Captain Marvel at least.
  • Thor got this treatment by most of the Phoenix Five in Avengers vs. X-Men. While in Uncanny Avengers the Thunderer gets his godly ass beaten by Ghost Rider, though in fairness A) GR has always been ludicrously OP even compared to Thor and B) the rest of the collective Avengers and X-Men get their clocks cleaned as well.
  • Iron Man tends to get hit by this, for similar reasons to Wolverine (he's well-known, he's powerful enough for it to be impressive but not so powerful for it to be stupid, the fact that he can just rebuild his armor means that he can suffer massive damage without killing him), but a particular one is his "Buster" armors. After their unveiling, and the initial hype of "Oh, my god, Iron Man built an armor to defeat Hulk/Thor/Phoenix/Galactus/the Celestials!", their inevitable fate is for the person they were designed to defeat to promptly rip them limb from limb. Avengers: Age of Ultron is the only time Hulkbuster has actually lived up to its purpose and defeated the Hulk (who admittedly isn't quite as powerful in the MCU as he in the comics, but still it counts).
  • In Thor's own series Odin is frequently the victim of this trope. Being the God among Gods, whenever Asgard is under threat by the villain of the week either Odin has to be incapacitated prior (in which case he usually gets better and wipes the villain out with a wave of his hand at the last minute) or get his ass handed to him to show just how powerful the villain is before Thor wipes the floor with them.
• Captain America was another popular go-to guy to get the beat-down in a new or relaunched title; to a lesser extent the rest of his fellow Avengers, too. Literally Rogue’s first appearance in Avengers Annual #10 was her chucking the defeated Steve on the ground like garbage.
  • This sometimes happened to his Mighty Shield. Since it was established as practically indestructible (with the times it had been destroyed before that being established as steel copies while Tony Stark tried to understand how to replicate it), damaging or destroying it means that whoever did it has immense power. Thankfully, these instances are quite rare, as it was damaged or destroyed only by the absolute control over molecule bonds of the Molecule Man, the near omnipotence of the Beyonder and whoever wields the Infinity Gauntlet, the enormous power of the Odinforce and the Serpent shattering it barehanded.
  • The shield is also destroyed by Loki (who got a massive power boost from stealing the Odinforce) in The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. However, this is treated with a fair amount of realism, as Cap is unable to repair it and is thus forced to make do with a lesser replacement for a number of episodes before the Black Panther ends up fixing it with some super science.
• Eternals (2021) does this to Thanos in a rare non-fighting, just-talking case. After becoming Prime Eternal, he pays a visit to his grand-uncle Uranos in his cell, where he has been for millenia for trying to wipe all non-eternal life from the universe. The first thing Uranos does when meeting his grand-nephew is calling him a disappointment for ONLY killing half of the universe and claiming that he lacked commitment. His genocidal prowess is later proved true when he gets out of his cell just for a single hour and massacres the mutant population on Mars.
• Fantastic Four:
  • The Thing is often at the receiving end of a beatdown anytime a new bad guy shows up. Thing is often the measuring stick for the most elite strongmen in the Marvel universe as well. If you're stronger than him, you're considered at the top of the strongman food chain.
  • Likewise, Doctor Doom occasionally suffers this, whether from Dazzler, Luke Cage or other new heroes, or to show how tough a new villain is (e.g. Millar's promise of a "Master of Doom"). Thank Kirby for Doombots, eh? Though in the case of Squirrel Girl it appears she genuinely did kick his ass, given Doom has an unmistakable Trauma Button when within Doreen and her squirrels’ presence.
  • Franklin Richards is known to get handed this when he’s involved in cosmic battles. He’s The Chosen One, an Omega-Level Reality Warper who has the power to make a universe in his hand. So naturally whenever the writer wants to sky rocket the stakes, a new threat will typically take Franklin out easy as pie e.g: The Griever, who incidentally beat Molecule Man as well.
  • The Coming of Galactus: At this point of the Marvel Universe, the Skrull empire was the most dangerous menace from outer space (most other threats that you may name had not been introduced yet). So, if they quickly hide their planet from the Silver Surfer (and, by extension, the yet-to-be-introduced Galactus), then we are clearly talking about a menace even higher than them.
  • In the first story arc of Mark Millar's run, newly introduced characters accidentally cause a super-powered robot to get loose with the goal of destroying all weapons in the world (that includes soldiers, police officers, etc). Sue, Johnny, and Ben (Reed being AWOL at the time) are summoned to the Arctic where the robot-makers were based, asking where their backup from S.H.I.E.L.D. is. It's reported said backup, composed of 40 of SHIELD's 'heaviest hitters', arrived eight minutes ago. Cue a following two page spread of a pile of beaten superheroes, all Worfed for the sake of the book's focus team.^note Though to be fair, 'The Fantastic Three' can't dent the super-robot either, the fallen heroes swiftly get a second wind and join in, and no one beats the robot: it ends up teleporting away. Reed has to exploit a flaw in the robot's programming to defeat it.
• Galactus sometimes gets this when the writers want to show how tough a new cosmic menace is. He got smacked down by the Beyonder and Doctor Doom in Secret Wars, and Krona in JLA/Avengers killed him and constructed a fortress out of his corpse. Tenebrous and Aegis take him out in Annihilation for Thanos. Part of this probably comes from having such an easy Worf Had the Flu excuse — his power, unlike that of, say, the Celestials, diminishes when he's hungry, so if anyone is skeptical about one of his defeats they can just say he hadn't fed in a while.
• In fairness to Galactus, plenty of Marvel’s other cosmic beings typically get worfed to establish a new threat or raise the stakes. The Watcher has gotten clocked by Red Hulk (an elderly General Ripper Drunk with Power) and almost killed by the Orb (a man for a giant eye for a head). The Living Tribunal has gotten slain by the Beyonders with their body unceremoniously dropped on Marvel’s moon. The Celestials for the most part have been sparred from jobbing, with Thor only able to achieve Scratch Damage to Exitar. However in later modern comics, the Celestial Gardener in Uncanny Avengers is destroyed by the Apocalypse Twins and in The Avengers (Jason Aaron) the Celestials get worfed by the Dark Celestial forcing Puny Earthling Avengers to have to help them out. There’s also the Beyonder who has been beaten up and defeated a fair amount, though granted he invokes I Let You Win often to make things more interesting for him.
• Adamantium is often a unique non-character example of this (barring the times Wolverine and X-23 are involved) it’s supposed to be completely indestructible with even Thor himself unable to do more than slightly dent it when wacking it at full strength with Mjölnir. However many other times whenever the writer wants the character e.g Hulk or Doctor Doom look extra super badass they will be depicted as physically breaking Adamantium like fine China. Eventually Marvel had to create “Secondary Adamantium” a less tougher but more common and less refined variant to retroactively justify all the times Adamantium failed to live up to its Made of Indestructium reputation. It also helps that Adamantium can still be manipulated on a subatomic level as Magneto and Misty Knight demonstrate.
• There is also a group that serves this effect: The Illuminati (a secret society composed by Iron Man, Reed Richards, Namor, Charles Xavier, Black Bolt and Doctor Strange). They are supposed to exchange information so they can coordinate their respective teams and prevent the great crisis. Still, when each new crisis begins (Civil War (2006), Secret Invasion (2008), Avengers vs. X-Men), the Illuminati have a secret meeting where they decide that there is nothing they can do.
• Omega Red is one of the most recognizable members of Wolverine's rogue's gallery and one of the most badass villains produced by the 90s, but even he is not immune to this trope. The first time he fell prey to it was in the pages of Cable, where he was used as a Bait-and-Switch Boss by the Acolytes, defeated by them off-panel, and shown as their unconscious captive. Fair enough, the Acolytes were being groomed as the Evil Counterpart team to the X-Men at the time... now fast forward twenty years or so to 2016's X Men 92. Though technically an alternate reality counterpart, this Omega Red is absolutely dominated by the book's Starter Villain, Alpha Red, and X-Man Rogue even says "Anyone who can do that to Omega Red ain't someone I wanna face without the whole team!", making it clear Red's sole purpose for being included in that book was for the purposes of this trope.
• The S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarriers, which seem to get knocked out of the sky on an impressive basis. Eventually an angry Maria Hill lampshaded it.
  Maria Hill: I've had the same car since I was sixteen. The same car, and never had a problem with it. This thing seems to fall out of the sky every other Thursday!
  • S.H.I.E.L.D. in general. They often show up just to provide some corpses before the actual superheroes show up to defeat the bad guys.
  • Ditto S.W.O.R.D., S.H.I.E.L.D.'s cosmic equivalent. They're supposed to be Earth's first line against cosmic threats, and yet alien villains still make it to Earth with alarming regularity. When S.W.O.R.D. gets involved, it's usually just so that the bad guys can kill some generic soldiers or destroy the Peak, the organization's base.
• The Sentry. He was based on the Silver-Age Superman, more powerful than anyone, so mighty that he made the comics universe and the real world forget he had ever existed because he was so almighty that the mere memory of him would risk destroying the world. Then he didn't quite take off, so he started getting lunched by everybody. Up to and including the Golden-Age Human Torch.
  • Taken to a ridiculous point in Dark Avengers - during first ten issues Sentry was killed THREE TIMES. Once by Morgan le Fay, once by his wife with his teammate's gun, and once by Molecule Man. He kept getting better.
  • Early in his career when he was still being pushed, Sentry was the beneficiary rather than the recipient of this trope, worfing the likes of Carnage and later Ares to establish his power beyond simple Informed Ability.
  • When Sentry was resurrected, he went back to trouncing everyone the heroes put in front of him.... until the King In Black Event, where the titular character rips him in half in the first issue. Turns out to be a bit of a bad sign for the heroes, whose first and best plan for this invasion was "point Bob at it."
• The Silver Surfer is one of the most powerful beings alive. He has thrown energy blasts that have staggered Galactus, a man in a crazy hat who eats planets. He has taken hits from said man in crazy hat and lived. He's taken hits that would liquefy Earth and given them right back. This is why whenever a new cosmic menace is introduced, generally the very first thing that happens is someone pitches Silver Surfer in through a window. He’s also gotten clobbered by other heroes like Thor and Adam Warlock whenever writers decide the latter two need to be especially cool that week.
• Spider-Man:
  • The Spider-Sense itself is the most common victim of this. It is Spidey’s greatest power and has allowed him to hang tough with numerous powerful opponents and avoid exceptionally fast attacks that would kill him. So it’s a very bad time for Peter when a foe is able to bypass the Spider-Sense, most famously being Venom and Carnage. Mysterio has also pulled this off frequently with his illusions able to fool the Spider-Sense on many occasions.
  • Rhino suffers this all the time. He’s easily the strongest of Spidey’s Rogues Gallery by a wide margin (only the Symbiote characters, Scorpion and Sandman are anywhere near his strength) Rhino is so strong he’s managed to give Hulk and Juggernaut trouble and could even injure Thor when empowered by Jörmungandr‘s tooth. Despite this in most of his appearances Rhino is only there to get his butt kicked by the likes of Luke Cage, Captain America, Miles Morales, Spider-Woman and Spidey himself. Depending on the Writer his superior strength and toughness is noted with Peter needing wits and luck to beat him while at all other times Spidey beats up him as easily he would any other villain.
  • Scorpion is also a frequent victim of this overlapping with Badass Decay. From his debut he was intended to be the Always Someone Better to Spidey as real life scorpions prey on spiders and actually knocked Peter out cold in their first bout. Unfortunately for Gargan afterwards the majority of his fights with Spidey and his superhero allies consist of him getting punked on a regular basis (Carol Danvers kicked his ass in literally her first issue). In Superior Spider-Man (2013) Doc Ock in Spidey’s body accidentally punches Scorpion’s jaw off, making Scorp’s originally billed status as being stronger and tougher than Peter all such empty air. Ironically Scorpion actually suffered this more when he was powered by the Venom symboite, as despite having twice as much strength as the new Venom, all ever he did was get pounded by other characters like Luke Cage and Swordsman III in Dark Avengers.
  • Eric Larsen had Dr. Octopus deliver a severe smackdown to the Hulk during the "Revenge of the Sinister Six" storyarc. In the story, "Doc Ock" was given extremely powerful adamantium limbs which made him far more dangerous. Hulk writer Peter David accused Larsen of a making a personal attack when he wrote that story and responded with a story written for the sole purpose of mocking Dr. Octopus. Larsen explained that it made sense to use the Hulk for the purpose of this very trope.
  • Kraven's Last Hunt: The titular hunter proves he is a force to be reckoned with after years of Villain Decay. He attacks Spidey out of nowhere with a tranquilliser dart, easily prevents Peter from escaping and pulls out a gun and shoots the Wall Crawler… with a sleeping drug but it could have been a bullet as Kraven notes to Spidey after the latter dug his way out of the grave Kraven had built. If that wasn't enough he also single handedly defeated another villain Vermin whom Spidey was unable to defeat without Cap's help. Kraven proved he was more dangerous and superior to Peter which is all he really wanted before committing suicide by in the end of the comic. This comic alone shot Kraven to the top tier of Spider-Man's greatest villains.
  • The 1997 "Hobgoblin Lives" miniseries was created to give original Hobgoblin Roderick Kingsley a large dose of this to re-establish his villain cred after years and years of Villain Decay (and Kingsley largely at this point being a weasel who relied on dupes and stand-ins to do his dirty work). For about a decade, the Hobgoblin identity had been owned by Jason Macendale (aka the Hobgoblin most non-comic readers are familiar with thanks to his excellent adaptational counterpart in Spider-Man: The Animated Series), and despite a long string of failures in the comics Macendale had steadily been amassing power for himself. So along comes Kingsley during one of Macendale's stints in jail to walk in, manhandle him (somehow, despite Macendale being leagues stronger than Kingsley) and unceremoniously kill him after pronouncing him an Inadequate Inheritor. It worked, too, as Kingsley was instantly re-established as the Hobgoblin and to this day remains the most popular Hobgoblin among readers. He was even given Joker Immunity after being killed off by the Phil Urich Hobgoblin.
  • Spider-Verse has been pretty bad with this, having the Inheritors essentially wipe out anyone and anything that gets in their way. They've romped the Fantastic Five, The New Warriors, the Spider-Friends, a city's worth of Beastmen, a Spider-Man with the Enigma Force, even friggin' Leopardon!
  • The Shocker in Superior Foes of Spider-Man gets some serious street cred among New York’s criminal element by worfing the goddamn Punisher sending Frank flying across the city◊ with one Hand Blast.
  • Spidey himself much like Batman is famous for Worfing opponents well out of his weight class simply to show how awesome Marvel’s Friendly Neighbourhood mascot is. The Fantastic Four in his second appearance, the X-Men in Secret Wars (1984) (despite said team having Rogue and Colossus, both of whom are stronger than him), Graviton, Titania, Firelord (a former Herald of Galactus who’s matched Thor) and most famously Juggernaut. Sometimes it’s a case ingenuity and luck from Peter (as it was with Juggernaut) while at other times it’s plain o’l Popularity Power.
• This was the reason Squirrel Girl became so popular; she defeated Doctor Doom with a Zerg Rush of squirrels in her (obscure) first appearance and defeating insanely powerful characters became her shtick. This no longer applies in more recent canon, since Word of God holds that she's a Master of All.
• Doctor Strange: The Sorcerer Supreme himself one of the top tier most powerful characters in Marvel period so in a similar case to Silver Surfer above (just with cosmic space traded out for otherworldly dimensions) he often gets his wizard butt kicked whenever a mystical threat is introduced or other magic users, especially Wanda, need to look especially awesome and OP. Like Thor, Strange is also often used to make Ghost Rider look extra cool when the flaming skeleton makes the good doctor quake in fear in a confrontation. At other times it’s a case of Strange requiring help from other sorcerers like Kaluu and his Action Girlfriend Clea after he’s been worfed. Worth noting Strange does have consistently good luck against more comparatively grounded opponents with even World Breaker Hulk getting wrecked by him.
• In the run of Thunderbolts started by Andy Diggle, Headsman's tendency to get beaten up or otherwise neutralized even though he's the largest and most intimidating member of the team is, rather refreshingly, noticed by the rest of the team. He's constantly razzed by teammates Paladin and Ant-Man, employer Norman Osborn regards him only with barely repressed disdain...once he suggested he get on his flying disc to deal with an airborne threat, only to be shot down with "Please, I've never seen you on that thing for more than 30 seconds."
• The Ultimates: The fight against Hulk had barely started, and he already took down Giant Man for good.
• The Mighty Thor:
  • The Destroyer, Animated Armor designed to fight the Celestials was a classic example of this for Thor. O’l Goldilocks is a Physical God and easily one of the top tier beings of the MU, so it’s pretty intimidating to see him be so overpowered by the Destroyer that he’s forced on the back foot and sometimes even needs his papa Odin’s help just stop it. The few times Thor has been able to defeat the armour is when he’s empowered by the Odinforce or teamed up with Hercules.
  • The Wrecking Crew have an ounce of credibility from being old Thor villains with incredible strength and mystically powered construction weapons, but adamantly yelling that you've fought Thor doesn't mean much when you can be taken down by low-power heroes like Spider-Woman. Spider-Man once joked that everyone seems to beat them up sooner or later; subsequent encounters with the Runaways and The Punisher of all people have showed he's probably right. Some writers have played with this, however... The team shares energy from a single pool. If the leader simply kept all the power for himself he would be a serious threat, but if nothing else the rest of the crew are True Companions, and he's not willing to leave even one of them depowered even if the power boost would make everyone else an actual threat.
  • Gorr the God Butcher from Thor: God of Thunder (2012) is one of the more effective examples of this in recent history. Before we even see him in the flesh he’s killed thousands gods across the universe and Thor makes clear in his thought boxes after having fought him once in his youth he absolutely dreads the prospect of fighting Gorr again. Keep in mind Thor is a Boisterous Bruiser who’s gone up against beings as mighty as Thanos or the Celestials, Gorr however he hates having to fight, because he’s not a warrior just a cosmic Serial Killer. We soon see why Thor’s fear is completely justified with Gorr being able to fight and defeat three versions of Thor and almost kill every god in existence.
• To an end, despite (or perhaps because of) his badassery, a good half of the numerous, seemingly omnipresent cameos Wolverine makes in various issues involve him being beaten within an inch of his life and thrown through something. Fortunately, his Healing Factor fixes him up in a split, allowing him to move to the next. A really hardcore badass kills an alternate reality Wolverine - whom no-one will ever miss - without blinking, thereby proving his badassness without causing complications. Hyperion in Exiles vaporized a Wolverine, and Thanos' goons in New Avengers #24 killed the entire X-Men (including Wolverine) off-panel. The most outrageous example happened in Superior Spider-Man (2013) #33, in which Karn, one of the Inheritors (re: Morlun and his family), who flash-fries Wolverine down to his Adamantium skeleton. Spider-Man remarked "I don't know who he is, but he just killed Logan which I didn't think was possible!"
  • The most notable examples for Wolverine is Gambit. Short after he joined the team, he got a chance at fighting (and winning) against Wolverine in the Danger Room in order to show "how badass the new guy is".
  • Parodied on Newgrounds here. "Ow! ...Bub." (Made even sillier by his stereotypical Canadian accent.)
  • Wolverine and Magneto have a weird back-and-forth history of doing this to each other, most famously in Fatal Attractions (Marvel Comics) where Magneto ripped all the adamantium from Wolverine's body. On Wolvie's end, he's gotten to improbably shish-kebab Magneto in Eve of Destruction and outright beheaded him in Planet X (though that one was quickly retconned, so make of it what you will).
  • Though it's difficult to remember it these days, this was actually Wolverine's original role. It wasn't until The Dark Phoenix Saga that Wolverine's status as a badass was actually established as being real rather than just an informed trait and he started winning fights instead of just getting tossed around like a hairy, Canadian volleyball.
  • Wolverine is regularly beaten up by Deadpool - or Deadpool is beaten up by Wolverine, as they pull the Worf Effect on each other. Deadpool treats it as something of a game, which frustrates the more serious Wolverine to no end.
• In fact Deadpool, like Wolverine, is something of a go-to if you really want to show that somebody is super-tough or really dangerous. He's a highly skilled Professional Killer and Jerk with a Heart of Gold, so the character will not look like a bad guy for fighting him, but his fighting skills, while top-notch, have human limitations; it's his healing factor that sets him apart. Nothing can kill him permanently though, so if you want to show the new guy is a snazzy martial artist, a deadly-weapons user, or a ruthless killer, go worf Deadpool, because the more you worf him, the stronger he becomes.
• X-Men:
  • Rogue often fills this role for X-Men as their poster girl Flying Brick, especially in X-Men: The Animated Series. In the comics a good deal writers love having Rogue’s Power Parasite fail to raise the stakes as despite it working on the likes of Thor, Juggernaut and Genis-Vell, it’s always a Oh, Crap! for Rogue when the absorbing touch doesn’t work such as against Silver Surfer and Loki.
  • Name a fight that Gladiator, Superman Substitute and leader of the Shi'ar Imperial Guard, has actually won. Now for each of those, name five other fights he's lost. Seriously, Cannonball? Justified to some degree in that Gladiator's power is fueled by his self-assurance, which means his strength can vary a lot from day to day.
  • Similar to Gladiator is Exodus, an immortal psychic mutant who at one point was described on-panel as the most powerful mutant on Earth. Originally intended to be the heir of Magneto, Status Quo Is God doomed him to spending the past decade mostly jobbing to various X-Men to make them look better at his expense. He suffered it twice during Messiah Complex and later had it inflicted on him by Brian Bendis in the name of pumping up his Generic Doomsday Villain Matthew Malloy. Bendis swore that last one killed Exodus, but since we're talking about a guy who was up and on his feet a few minutes after having all his organs shredded, the general consensus was that a simple Neck Snap wouldn't keep him down long. The whole affair ended up being made moot when Malloy was RetGonned out of existence, but just two years later Exodus was back to jobbing in the pages of Bunn's Uncanny X-Men (2016). Sigh...
  • In the very short span of time that Danger served as a member of the X-Men she was busted open by Ms. Marvel (Moonstone) and Emplate to establish how powerful they are. And knocked out by Selene's T-O virus. It was almost a mercy when she resigned from the team, as it forced the writers to find new and more creative ways to express the menace of their villains.
  • The Juggernaut plays this role from time to time. In fact, one of Marvel's biggest storylines got started just because Scott Lobdell decided it would be cool to have Juggernaut mysteriously tossed through the sky, able to speak just one word: "Onslaught". (Lobdell hadn't even decided who Onslaught would be yet!)
  • If writers want to show that a telepath, Eldritch Abomination, or Cosmic Entity has REALLY powerful mental abilities, they have the character curbstomp Charles Xavier in a mental battle. Since most every telepath in the Marvel universe has gone up against him at some point, this happens a lot, to the point where Xavier's status as one of/the most powerful telepath on Earth becomes more of an Informed Ability.
  • In fairness to Charles, his successor Jean Grey along with the Phoinex Force aren’t any more fortunate as both Jean and the clingy cosmic bird she served as host to have frequently taken a My Skull Runneth Over from a new foe, or in the case of Cosmic Coven literally shooed the Phoinex Force away like it was a seagull. Hell Jean’s many deaths in Marvel can often simply attributed to the writers wanting to raise the stakes and turning to poor Jean as the low hanging fruit. In more recent history Jean is killed by Moria X in Hellfire Gala just to signify that’s become the Darkest Hour for mutantkind.
• X-23 and Rockslide in New X-Men (and other appearances after the series end) they get stuck with this as they are the strongest and scariest team members...who are practically immortal. Rockslide has been blown up twice BEFORE his power became not dying to physical harm. And X-23 is just like Wolverine.
  • Incidentally, during New X-Men, the original X-Men cast ALL SUCK. If the students are around, every move and strategy and power of the older cast is instantly wrong. In "Quest for Magik" the X-Men are all captured and held in an energy field unable to help and during "Messiah Complex" the X-Men have to hand over the fight to the students due to it being something Sinister's mooks didn't plan on.
  • Laura gets this particularly hard in Avengers Arena. Between her Healing Factor and its secondary effects (heightened senses, reflexes, etc) and Training from Hell by the Facility, she's easily the most dangerous and best-prepared to survive of the teens kidnapped by Arcade for his Murder World. And yet it still doesn't prevent her from having her ass completely handed to her by Apex during the group's first attempt to bring her down after her Face–Heel Turn. Especially egregious considering it's established (in the same series, no less) that Laura automatically sizes up everyone in a room and formulates the best plan for killing everyone in it the second she steps inside, and in this case, her "best plan" would make Leeroy Jenkins proud. The audience outcry was so heated that Hopeless himself attempted to rationalize it in the following issue's letter columns, but rather than Worf Had the Flu, his reasoning just made it a bigger case of Idiot Ball.
    • She gets it again in The Black Vortex crossover: After Beast uses the Black Vortex, Laura tries to destroy it to prevent anyone else from succumbing. Beast effortlessly swats her aside to demonstrate just how much more powerful (Hank ordinarily not being a real threat to her) and Ax-Crazy the Vortex makes its hosts. She's then put down in an attack by J'Son which didn't even knock the rest of the team unconscious, yet Laura is in a coma and her healing factor isn't working properly in the next chapter.

The DCU

• Batman:
  • Bane owes his very existence to this trope. From his inception in Knightfall he was not only devised as someone who would best the Dark Knight physically (similar to Doomsday with Supes) but completely match and even outwit Batman in the Genius Bruiser department. To wit upon coming to Gotham he studies Batman before causing a mass breakout at Arkham, letting Batman get exhausted recapturing the inmates before attacking Batman directly and most famously lifting Bruce up and breaking his spine over his knee. Keep in mind Batman is famous for being a Crazy-Prepared strategist so the fact someone could beat the Dark Knight at his own prep time game is beyond impressive. Bane has suffered his own Worfing and Badass Decay since then as well as DC trying recapture his breaking of Batman in other comics but none of it has topped his first comic.
  • When Green Arrow and Green Lantern came back from the dead (the latter of them in Green Lantern: Rebirth), they both established that they were the real deal in short order by socking Batman square in the jaw. ^note In GA's case, it was implied to be both a gimme for Bats' shoddy treatment and another way of testing whether it was Ollie or an impersonator. The GL case, though, was actually a Shout-Out to Bats dropping Guy Gardner like a sack of potatoes in the JLI book.
  • One of the first things Prometheus (an Evil Counterpart to Batman) did was defeat him in a fight, to show off how awesome his ability to download the skills of other heroes was. Uniquely, this particular event has stuck; the only times Batman has been able to defeat Prometheus is when he messed with his skill-uploading helmet somehow.
  • Batman himself is an enormous beneficiary of this, due to being perhaps the patron saint for writers Running the Asylum over at DC. Entire minis (such as the quasi-infamous JLA: Act of God) have been written basically for no other reason than to give Batman a venue to gleefully kick around anyone who pisses him off. He's defeated more powerful opponents so often, and with such regularity, that "Batman with prep time" has become a meme in fandom circles. Wonder Woman currently stands as the sole big-name hero who has not been worfed by him over the years (at most he’s been able to mind-trick Diana into being a non-threat as seen by Batman: Endgame). Obviously, Popularity Power overlaps a good deal here.
  • Killer Moth is a rare example of this trope where being Worfed has painted the character's entire depiction. In his original appearances he was a Knight of Cerebus Evil Counterpart in running for the title of Batman's archenemy. He wielded all sorts of deadly gadgets, had just as many combat skills as Batman, and even had his own private army that he used in his Moriarty-esque schemes. Then one day the comics introduced Batgirl. The writers wanted to establish her as a badass and worthy member of the Batfamily so they decided to do so by showing her beating the deadly Killer Moth in a fight. This backfired as getting beaten by a rookie on her first night out as a superhero caused reader opinion of Moth to sink like a stone. Nobody could take him seriously anymore, in-universe or out. Thus Moth's characterization was changed forever; he was no longer the terrifying opposite of Batman, but instead the pitiable Butt-Monkey of Batman's Rogues Gallery. Of course, his notoriously goofy outfit didn't really harm the latter interpretation.
  • Killer Croc out of all Batman's Rogues Gallery suffers this the most, despite being explicitly a metahuman. While fellow powerhouses like Clayface and Bane often have circumstantial or technical excuses for their clobberings at the hands of the heroes (Clayface in particular cannot beaten by Batman in a straight fight and requires tools to be defeated), Killer Croc meanwhile just jobs like clockwork to all the assorted Robins, Batgirls, Nightwing, Red Hood and the Dark Knight whenever writers want the Bat-Family to look strong and badass. In one New 52 comic Batman literally bridles Croc like a horse to save a de-powered Superman. Particularly sad considering Croc spent his first appearances being a Smarter Than They Look menace who kicked the shit of Batman, almost killing him multiple times before he Took a Level in Dumbass and got Badass Decay. Ironically, Croc has better luck outside Batman comics as seen in Suicide Squad where he's held his own against the likes of King Shark and even General Zod.
  • The villain Hush plays with this trope in his second storyline, the aptly-named Hush Returns. The Riddler, terrified of Hush's wrath after betraying him to Batman, makes a deal with The Joker. Hush comes after the Joker for getting between him and Nygma... and promptly gets curb-stomped by the Joker and his thugs. Realizing he can't take the Joker alone, Hush recruits himself a henchman — none other than the aforementioned Prometheus (later retconned into the real Prometheus's protégé). With Prometheus's help Hush euthanizes Joker's entire gang and beats Joker himself black and blue (the Joker gets his revenge in a later scheme involving trained pigeons).
  • In Batman (Tom King), Captain Atom (capable of accessing a theoretically infinite amount of energy, thanks to his link to the Quantum Field, first entry on Story-Breaker Power) gets his ass kicked by Gotham Girl (whose powers kill her as she uses them). Later, 65-year-old Thomas Wayne (Flashpoint!Batman) manages to take down every member of the Batfamily at the same time. This is used to establish both villains as a major threat.
  • Once James Tynion IV took over, his first arc involved a new villain called the Designer, who apparently met with Catwoman, Joker, Riddler and Penguin when they first started out, talked them through the process he used to come up with his own masterplans, and gave each of them a scheme more dangerous than any they'd attempted even in the present day. It's a non-physical variant, but the existing villains are used to show us what a schemer and mastermind the Designer is. And then it gets subverted. Turns out the Joker going through the process worked a little too well, and he killed the Designer off-screen and came up with his own plan.
  • In The Attack of the Annihilator, Batgirl realizes the Annihilator is more dangerous that she previously thought when he grabs Supergirl's wrists and starts draining her life force.
• Crisis on Infinite Earths opens up with the Crime Syndicate of America, a Mirror Universe counterpart to the Justice League, being completely annihilated, along with all of Earth-3, by the Anti-Monitor's antimatter wave. By Marv Wolfman's own account, this was to show to readers that whatever this new threat was, it was far beyond the League's capabilities. Notably, it takes a little while for any of the classic League's core five to crop up in the series, to further the idea that the threat would need everyone to help out.
• Green Lantern:
  • During Green Lantern: Rebirth, Kyle Rayner had the tar beaten out of him by Sinestro, until he's rescued by Green Arrow and later Hal Jordan. He does eventually land the finishing blow on Sinestro, but only while aiding Hal during their duel.
  • In Sinestro Corps War, Kyle has a chance to fight Sinestro again and prove himself, now with an enormous power boost courtesy of Ion, but his attacks just bounce and shatter harmlessly off Sinestro and he's easily curb-stomped and has the Ion entity ripped out of him. Both times he's used only to establish Sinestro as a major threat.
  • The Green Lantern: Evil Star is maimed in the first issue so the Blackstars can add his power to their own.
  • The Green Lanterns that aren't the main characters tend to get beaten by the score rather easily most of the time just to show off how incredibly powerful a villain is, this being especially bad with ones that don't have names. It's rather odd that these people possess what is repeatedly stated to be the most powerful weapon in the universe and yet still get mowed down by the dozens or even hundreds as easily as garden variety Mooks.
  • Alan Scott was often a victim of quick takedowns during the more modern day JSA series. Theoretically he should be the most powerful man on the team, but he was often the first to go down when the villain attacked. Occasionally justified since anybody with a lick of sense would plan to take Alan out fast.
• DC’s Wizards and Witches have terrible luck outside their own comics. Zatanna, Doctor Fate and John Constantine are god-like magicians whose powers and feats, especially in Zatanna’s case, often go well into fourth wall breaking Mister Mxyzptlk overpowered absurdity. Yet in the majority of Justice League or other stories Superman: Up in the Sky for example their magic is rendered completely useless by some new power or villain and Zee, John and Fate all get their butts handed to them. Raven from the Teen Titans is in the same boat as she’s easily more powerful than all of the rest of the Titans combined and can even defeat her God of Evil father Trigon when she fully lets loose, but she’s far more commonly sent flying by or knocked out by the regular Villain of the Week just to make them look intimidating.
• Whenever he's in the Justice League, Ridiculously Human Android Red Tornado is notorious for always getting demolished to show off a villain's power. The main reason for this is that the bad guy can tear Red apart and the team can just repair him later.
  • Same goes for Cyborg of the Teen Titans.
    • Lampshaded in-universe. Cyborg eventually builds Reddy a new body made of self-replicating nanites, explicitly stating that he wanted to find a way to stop him from constantly being destroyed.
  • Subverted in one instance; An enemy tears apart Red Tornado, only for it to turn out that the writer for once remembered Reddy's robot body is a shell containing his real self—a wind elemental. The elemental, now freed, beats the crap out of his surprised enemy.
• Solomon Grundy is a Hulk-esque character but not being a hero like Hulk means he's regularly on the receiving end of the Worf Effect. It's strange considering throughout his early appearances in the Silver and Bronze Age, Grundy was actually the one beating Green Lantern and Superman himself multiple times. In modern comics however whenever Grundy shows up he's just there to be a big zombie punching bag who makes other often far physically weaker characters (usually Batman) look cool. In Tom King's run, Gotham Girl beats Grundy up simply for sake of shilling her. Grundy's strength fluctuates, as while he has bad luck against Gotham City characters against other characters like Superman and JL members he's still portrayed as a serious threat fully capable of throwing the Man of Steel around like a beach ball. The explanation offered by DC is that Grundy's strength and intelligence fluctuates depending on his Resurrective Immortality aka he’s Strong as They Need to Be.
• Lady Shiva. Supposedly the top-tier martial artist in the entire DCU, but after her run in The Question and as Batman's trainer in Knightfall, anytime she shows up is to prove how powerful someone else is.
• A curious case is Magog in Justice Society of America, a Canon Immigrant from Kingdom Come. He's supposed to be a meta with power on par with Superman, Alan Scott, and Power Girl. In practice? He usually ends up either jobbing to whoever the villain of the day is or falling prey to someone with mind control. He's already been whammied by Gorilla Grodd, Miasma, and the Brain Trust - all in a single year. And then Max Lord made the fourth time the charm and killed him to boot.
• Deathstroke is an especially noteworthy example as he’s either delivering The Worf Effect to JL (see Identity Crisis (2004)) and more regularly Teen Titans as their nemesis or being on the receiving end himself having been Worfed by Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, Cassandra Cain, Batman, multiple Robins and Superman. In Flashpoint Slade gets killed by Aquaman simply to show how serious it has gotten in the Bad Future. Deathstroke has better luck in the New 52 and Rebirth comics able to fight even Superman in his team up series with Wonder Woman — albeit thanks to a healthy dose of Popularity Power Plot Armour.
• The Martian Manhunter is a frequent victim of this. On-paper, the character is a walking One-Man JLA, having more powers than the rest of the team combined. Unfortunately for him, the rest of the team's members tend to be more popular than him, especially the Trinity, so when the time comes to draw straws to get kicked around by the new Big Bad invariably J'onn draws the short straw. He is regularly rendered comatose by scanning the mind of any Big Bad (you'd think that after seeing "the greatest evil in the universe" some dozen times he would at least learn to stop looking into people's minds), he has physically been worfed by street-level baddies like Prometheus, and in Final Crisis he was even used as a Sacrificial Lion to fulfill Tonight, Someone Dies.
  • This even extends to his adaptation in Justice League, where his phasing ability was almost REGULARLY made useless by various electroshock defenses. Needless to say, people no longer saw it as a big deal.
  • The New 52 put this trope to work for J'onn rather than against him for a change, having that universe's incarnation of him deal an absolutely crushing defeat to Despero, a psychic juggernaut of a villain who is probably the top telepathic threat in the DCU.
  • J'onn is such a frequent-flier Worf recipient that he even lampshades it during the Blackest Night story:
    Black Lantern Martian Manhunter: [while thrashing The Flash and Green Lantern] I'm as powerful as Superman. Why does everyone forget that?
  • J'onn seems to get it the worst whenever he goes up against many of Superman's villains. Because J'onn is a walking Superpower Lottery with nearly all of Superman's powers and several more of his own, you'd think he would be best equipped to fight the Man of Steel's foes in theory. However, what happens in practice is that he'll almost always suffer humiliating beatdowns at the hands of Doomsday, Preus, Imperiex, or General Zod, ending in J'onn being bloodied badly or captured.
• In the DC-published Mortal Kombat X comics, longtime MK Badass Goro is offered up at the altar of this trope in order to build up Shao Kahn's self-appointed successor Kotal. Goro is not outright killed, but does lose all four of his arms to the usurper.
• The Royal Flush Gang are more or less the Alternate Company Equivalent to the Wrecking Crew in terms of this, and for about the same reason: their distinctive theme makes them instantly recognizable and easy to drop into any story without much explanation, and their level of power is high enough to battle most heroes and low enough to then lose to them. At times, they've even been hired to battle up-and-coming heroes and get their asses kicked.
• Salvation Run:
  • It was basically a story where DC Comics' government agencies tried to do away with the issue of cardboard prisons by teleporting as many super villains to a distant planet without a way back), the villains organize into two groups. Teen Titans villain Psimon attempts to take control and suggest building their own society, only for the Joker to beat him to death with a rock. To put this in context, Psimon has very powerful telepathic AND telekinetic abilities, while Joker is more or less a normal man, and Joker kills him effortlessly. Made even worse by the fact that Joker doesn't ambush him or anything: he first beans Psimon with a smaller thrown rock (which just seems to hurt a lot, not stun or disable Psimon) and then runs up to him with a bigger rock in his hand before he bashes Psimon across the cranium and then proceeds with his murder. Popularity Power to the max.
  • Martian Manhunter suffers yet another of his many worfings here, as the villains promptly Zerg Rush him after he is exposed and he just stands there and lets them instead of taking to the sky, or breaking out his telekinesis, or doing any of the dozens of things the character could have done in the situation. He's promptly shoved in a flaming cage and kept near-death for the rest of the storyline. Most of the other cases are Evil Versus Evil matchups, but a particular shout-out needs to be made for the very ugly handling of Monsieur Mallah and the Brain, DC's first confirmed gay villains (and among their first confirmed gay characters period). The duo are savagely murdered in a Curb-Stomp Battle by Gorilla Grodd, who expresses a level of disgust at the mere suggestion of teaming up with them.
• In big DC events, The Spectre tends to stay out of the "mortal affairs" but when he does interfere, he tends to get taken out pretty quickly. Seeing as how if he could affect the Big Bad, he could turn them to dust just by looking at them, it's kind of necessary. During the aforementioned Final Crisis the Spectre was effortlessly manhandled by Darkseid's new Mouth of Sauron Libra, with Libra boasting that he was "unique in the universe" and that the Spectre had no power over him. A truly impressive showing... or at least it would have been, if Libra hadn't been unceremoniously one-shotted a few issues later by Lex Luthor.
• Doomsday Clock: When the superhero forces of the DC universe manage to pin down Doctor Manhattan, Manhattan gets a series of these moments in succession, setting up the final fight against Superman. The greatest mages of DC, including Constantine, Zatanna and Etrigan, can't touch him, and once he figures out what magic is he knocks them out with it. He outspeeds the Flash, takes down Martian Manhunter, two Green Lanterns and the rest of the Justice League in one hit, and takes a point-blank blast from Captain Atom (who can theoretically channel infinite energy) without even having to reassemble himself. Of course, the others are superheroes, whereas Manhattan is omnipotent.
• Surprisingly even Darkseid (a freaking God of Evil who is the be all and end all to the DC mulitiverse) is subject to this having had his clock cleaned by Superman, Doomsaday, Alan Scott as well as Batman in the Hellbat suit. Though as other fans have pointed out these were Darkseid's avatars and his real omnipotent form as shown by Final Crisis cannot be nearly as easily jobbed out without a plot device from the heroes... at least until Justice League Incarnate where the Great Darkness quite literally stomped his true from like a bug◊.
• Supergirl:
  • Bizarrogirl: When Kara fights her counterpart, Bizarrogirl is definitely a match for her. Later, both girls happen upon a godship's spawn which Bizarrogirl attacks right away. Her punch does nothing, and the critter merely tail-whips Bizarrogirl across Bizarro Metropolis.
  • Supergirl Adventures Girl Of Steel: When a Justice League team engages villain Girder, he gloats about being tougher than any of them before stomping over Power Girl and Supergirl.
  • Solomon Grundy is usually a match for Superman. In the first issue of "Girl Power", he is knocked out by newcomer Supergirl in one punch.
• Superman:
  • Superman himself is sometimes tossed around just to show how powerful the new baddie is.
  • In the main page image, Superman was being beaten by essentially the first version of lesser villain The Kryptonite Man, here known as Dr. Kryptonite. Hence, he's beating him with his finger: note the one exposed glowing green finger on his hand.
  • "The Super-Duel in Space": Brainiac is established as a serious threat in his first appearance when the Silver Age Superman fails to overpower him twice, being forced to outsmart him.
  • In The Great Darkness Saga, Superboy Clark Kent is the first Legionnaire to be punched across the place by the first Servant of Darkness the Legion of Super-Heroes come upon. His teammates get the "This thing is dangerous" message right away.
    Servant of Darkness: "But do not seek to challenge me..." (backhanding Superboy away) "Least of all you, Kryptonian."
    Cosmic Boy: "Did you see that— He swatted Superboy like a bug?!"
  • Kon-El gets the crap kicked out of him when he's not a main character in book, and at times even if he is. In Superman Ending Battle Kon gets the crap kicked out of him by the Atomic Skull, whose powers seem to be being a moderately strong robot, some atomic fire shooting powers, and having his head on fire. Strangely enough however, it's not to show off how strong Superman is, it's to show how badass his father is; who shoots the Atomic Skull in the back of his head hurting him badly enough to be distracted until Superman could show up and toss him into space or something. That's right, Kon-El, Superboy was taken out by a villain who was defeated by a badass farmer with a simple shotgun.
  • In The Great Phantom Peril, Faora Hu-Ul quickly establishes her villain credentials by beating Superman up until he is forced to flee, and later bringing all Phantom Zoners to their knees in a single attack.
  • In Superman vs. Shazam!, Karmang quickly establishes how powerful he is by crushing Shazam! nemesis Black Adam with one mere spell on the first pages of the story.
  • "For the Man Who Has Everything": Despite being supposedly "the greatest fighter" in DC, Wonder Woman breaks her hand punching Mongul in the face. Justified because Pre-Crisis Wonder Woman was sensibly weaker than the Kryptonian heroes.
  • Villain Doomsday. Following his impressive feat of killing Superman, the poor thing has had nowhere to go but down. Now he's brought out whenever a new Kryptonian shows up to point out how two Supermen are better (or scarier) than one. They avoided this at first, but ten years later the team that created Doomsday had left, and he started to suffer Villain Decay. Even they at first used Doomsday respectfully, making him the ultimate weapon against a new threat. It was only after he developed intelligence (because people were beating him through smarts) that he became vulnerable to being intimidated.
• In Underworld Unleashed, new Big Bad on the block Neron displayed his badass credentials by effortlessly inflicting a Neck Snap on Mongul, a guy who had previously held his own in personal combat with the likes of Superman and Wonder Woman.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Diana suffers from this regularly in both the Justice League comics and cartoons which is the price to pay for being the main super strong Action Girl of the team.
  • Despite being nearly as strong as Superman and supposedly "the greatest fighter" in DC, writers often have Diana to job against numerous villains e.g failing to kill Apex Lex even with her Atom Slicing sword before getting whooped in Justice League (2018).
  • Not helping this is moments like Batman claiming Wondy has no weakness — yet historically powerful magic, powerful weapons, greater strength and regular old bullets can all seriously hurt or outright kill Diana. Although in fairness, it was more Batman saying she doesn't have a specific Kryptonite Factor like Supes, not that she's literally invincible overall.
  • The most common Worfing technique Diana gets is being wrapped up by her own lasso (something that dates back to her golden age comics), which you would think she'd have ways to prevent from happening by now, but both evil Superman from an Alternate Universe and Batwoman in the Injustice: Gods Among Us comic are able to wrap Wondy's lasso around her throat.

Other

• If The Authority was better known than Star Trek, this trope would be called "The Midnighter Effect". Midnighter is essentially a Captain Ersatz of Batman with Wolverine's personality, and canonically the scariest and most dangerous badass in the WildStorm universe, yet he gets jobbed out in every single story arc just to demonstrate how much of a threat that arc's villain is.
  • In Captain Atom: Armageddon, it isn't Midnighter who is used this way to show how utterly outclassed everyone in the Wildstorm universe is when compared to Captain Atom, it's Apollo, Wildstorm's Superman Substitute. Midnighter doesn't even count as a threat to Atom, and is casually (and entertainingly) dismissed offhand.
  • In the rebooted Stormwatch, Apollo seems to have taken this role from Midnighter in a big way. In issue 7 he gets taken out twice, once at the beginning, then just as the issue is ending, as the bad guy they had (with difficulty) managed to capture escapes, taking Apollo with it. This is not new territory for him, however. In the Authority, he kind of has a habit of rushing into battle, and if he either has to expend all his stored energy and he passes out as a result, or is knocked across the room, you know the bad guy is tough.
• The DNAgents had the appropriately-named Tank, who had Super-Strength and a suit of armor full of guns and missile launchers, who was obviously intended to take point in any attacks the team made. He was also the one who always got punched into the sky anytime the book wanted to play up an enemy as a major threat.
• In Gold Digger Stripe Gia, despite being one of the stronger good guys post-upgrade, has this happen to him all the time. Ironically back when he was a Badass Normal he did a lot better.
• Halo: Escalation: While the Didact was already established as a huge threat in Halo 4, the comic ups the ante by having him single-handedly and brutally killing the entirety of Black Team, four Spartan-II soldiers in the same class as the Master Chief. It doesn't even bother showing the actual fight.
• In The King of Fighters 2003, the Ikari Warriors of Ralf, Clark and Leona were established to have fought and defeated Adelheid Bernstein. In the manhua adaptation of The King of Fighters XII however, to make it clear that he means business this time around, they get their asses handed to them in a rematch — quite severely, as it appears, as Adel has nary a scratch on him while he's nonchalantly kicking Ralf away, whereas Clark is slammed against a wall and Leona's unconscious on the ground with blood trickling out of her mouth.
• Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: Shattered Grid happily applies the Worf Effect onto just about any Ranger team it can get its mitts on. By the end of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers (Boom! Studios) #26, the Time Force and Samurai teams are down to single members, promotional material reveals that the Zeo team all fall and the cover to MMPR #29 seems to imply that the only whole teams surviving at that point are the RPM and SPD teams as only Kira, Kendall, Andross and TJ are the only ones shown from their respective teams (Dino Thunder, Dino Charge and In Space).
• Rom vs. Transformers: Shining Armor: Lampshaded after Astrotrain blows up Auxin; Stardrive remarks that she's never seen a Space Knight die before.
• Manute from Sin City is normally an unstoppable villain, unless Frank Miller decides to make one of the heroes (Marv, Wallace, or Miho) look badass.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
  • The series did this a lot to Bunnie Rabbot, the strongest member of the Freedom Fighters. If she wasn't beaten to a pulp by the villain of the storyline (for example, Mecha Sonic, the roboticized Sonic), then she's getting her robotic limbs taken over and used against her.
  • If you really wanna know how bad things'll get, apply The Worf Effect on Sonic. Issue 175 is the best example of this as Eggman beats the hedgehog to a pulp, then gladly goes on to turn Knothole into a massive crater.
  • Shadow the Hedgehog of all people is mostly this with Knuckles a close second, Shadow one of the most ultimate badasses in the franchise and Sonic's equal, gets his ass handed to him and beat up the most in a battle by himself, and he is usually saved by others like Sonic and other team mates often requiring help to win. Knuckles used to have chaos powers and was the avatar of god in Mobius. Then he got his powers taken away from him, and like Shadow needs help to beat even weak fighters like Fang and Snively. He lost to Snively in a battle with Sonic and Tails.
  • Now that Silver has been established as being incredibly powerful thanks to his Telekinesis, if you want to show somebody can kick ass, you have them give Silver a beating. First he brought Super Scourge to a halt. So if that's awesome, next he's beaten by an Enerjak. After he brought down Enerjak, he was then subjected to a beating by Ixis Naugus (but not without displaying his awesomeness first).
  • A non-villainous example applies to Tails after he loses a Tournament Round to the newly introduced Honey the Cat. Although Honey is not evil, her interactions with Tails is noticeably more bossy and condescending, at least in comparison to her time with Amy and Sonic. Tails's loss to her also noticeably hurts his self-esteem, to the point where Sonic tries to cheer him up.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW): Shadow gets infected by the Metal Virus in the titular arc to show that not even the Ultimate Life Form is safe. Sonic himself was the virus' first victim.
• In Star Trek: Countdown, the prequel comic to the 2009 movie, we see Worf again, 10 years after Nemesis and now a Klingon general. He gets impaled through the chest by Nero, but fortunately he was Only Mostly Dead.
• Transformers:
  • In IDW's The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, Black Shadow does this in record time. He's introduced as a "phase sixer," basically a planet destroyer in bot form. Then his notable battles are listed and (one panel per battle) shown, along with kill counts (one battle numbering in the billions). This is done to get him established as a supreme badass so that the Decepticon Justice Division's effortless takedown of him more impressive.
  • In the first few pages of The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers, Overlord was depicted killing Skyquake (a character established in bios as a powerful general with mostly 9s and 10s in his stats) in a single shot and beating Fortress Maximus (appearing in prior comics as a superb badass and having led the Autobots in some continuities) within an inch of his life. The experience left the latter traumatized and uncertain of his ability to protect others, blaming himself for the resulting slaughter.
• Monica's Gang: Pretty much a Running Gag is that, in order to show just how strong Monica is, she will be pitter against estabilished superheroes from both Marvel and DC (Which are either Lawyer Friendly Cameos or Captain Ersatzes)... and effortlessly win. When she doesn't straight up defeat them in combat, she does some pretty canon-defying absurdities, such as being able to lift Thor's hammer! Nowadays, the gag was dropped as people were tired of her being too much of an Invincible Hero, and she now teams up with the superheroes to save the world instead of taking them in battle.

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