The Worf Effect / Marvel Cinematic Universe

• The Incredible Hulk (2008) has veteran special-ops commander of the British Royal Marines Emil Blonksy who competently hunts down the fugitive Bruce Banner... unfortunately, Blonksy wasn’t told his target could turn into a giant, green, raging monster with vast Super-Strength who decimates his entire squad effortlessly. He’s actually quite shaken up over it. It’s especially apparent when he takes a Super Serum and becomes a Super-Soldier himself, as Hulk still owns him with a single kick. It’s not until Blonksy becomes a Hulk-like monster himself that he can actually fight Banner.
• Iron Man 2 has a lampshaded example In-Universe when Anton Vanko (aka Whiplash), with his own Arc Reactor technology, beats up Tony, with the whole world watching. While Whiplash loses to Tony regardless, he’s ultimately showed that Iron Man isn’t an Invincible Hero, and can be matched.
  Whiplash: If you could make God bleed, people will cease to believe in him.
• Thor has an heroic inversion with the titular hero when he takes on SHIELD in order to get his hammer back. Thanks to the Iron Man films, the audience is aware of how competent and effective SHIELD is, and Thor himself has been depowered. Yet, Thor effortlessly breaks into their compound, takes down a whole army of men and successfully gets to where Mjölnir is, with his pure strength and skill alone. Agent Coulson himself lampshades how much Thor worfed them while interrogating him, stating that Thor made his best men, "some of the most highly trained professionals in the world", look like "a bunch of minimum wage mall cops".
• The Avengers (2012) has multiple examples of this:
  • Loki, like his brother, also delivers the Worf Effect to SHIELD, effortlessly overpowering their best soldiers, possessing Hawkeye, and almost killing Nick Fury and Maria Hill. His actions causes Fury to decide to finally round up the Avengers in the first place.
  • Loki delivers this again to Captain America, who we’ve previously witnessed being the Living Legend powerhouse in combat in his own movie, and yet, he gets his butt kicked by Loki, who throws him around like a toy (though to be fair to Cap he only just got out of the ice). Loki, in turn, seemingly gets worfed by Iron Man, who blasts him down, but it turns out he let himself be captured.
  • Iron Man, who’s been effectively established as a badass in two movies, gets this when he fights against Thor, as while he puts up an impressive fight, the Thunder God still puts Tony on ropes and in a Brawler Lock crushes his armour like a soda can, and actually dents Iron Man’s helmet in a headbutt competition.
  • Thor, in turn, gets this from the Hulk, who beats the absolute snot of him during their fight onboard the Helicarrier.
  • Hulk does this again to Loki in the climax, thrashing him so hard, Loki actually develops a phobia of the Jolly Green Giant.
• In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, anyone who faces against the titular villain is easily dealt with. The Falcon suffered a Curb-Stomp Battle while in his wing suit, and Natasha, who put up one hell of a fight, was quickly overwhelmed by his combat ability and shot in the shoulder. The only exception to this is Steve, who early on defeated Batroc and later an entire elevator filled with S.H.I.E.L.D. agents entirely on his own. It's shown that Steve and the Winter Soldier are equals in one-on-one combat, due to being the only physically enhanced humans in the entire film. This is all to build suspense, as while Steve is the only one capable of defeating the Winter Soldier in combat, he is also the least capable person of facing against him, due to the Winter Soldier's true identity as Bucky Barnes, Steve's long-thought-dead best friend.
• Word of God from director James Gunn is that this was the exact reason The Other was killed off in Guardians of the Galaxy.

  James Gunn: So that’s part of it, and then part of it is the fact that you’re setting up this incredibly powerful character, but you don’t want to belittle the actual antagonist of the film, which is Ronan. You don’t want him to seem like a big wussy. So how do you make that work? And that’s why Ronan kills The Other. I thought that was interesting, because we’ve had the Other, who’s obviously very powerful even in comparison to Loki, and then we see Ronan wipe his ass with him.

• An heroic inversion for Vision in Avengers: Age of Ultron: although to him it's a meaningless but polite gesture, his ability to wield Mjolnir — which the other Avengers, including Quicksilver, couldn't wield and Captain America could barely move — cements both his power and status as a pure, good being (although Tony and Cap later both argue that because he's AI, it doesn't count).
  • Earlier in the film, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch both easily overwhelm the other Avengers: Quicksilver is too fast for Captain America to keep track of, and Scarlet Witch is able to implant psychic visions in Captain America and Thor and force Banner to Hulk out.
• Ant-Man: Scott makes it to the roof of the Avenger's Headquarters only to be confronted by The Falcon. In quick succession, Scott enters the Avengers HQ, defeats Falcon in a one-on-one fight, and escapes to reveal he successfully completed the mission. Being able to hang with Falcon proves his mettle as a superhero on par with the Avengers.
• In Captain America: Civil War, franchise newcomers Black Panther and Spider-Man both take on powerful heroes and win; the former chases Captain America, Falcon, and Bucky across Bucharest and only stops when all four are arrested, and the latter steals Captain America's shield, catches Bucky's metal fist with one-hand, webs both him and Falcon to the floor, and even comes up with the plan to take down Giant-Man. Both show how powerful they are and that they are able to go toe-to-toe with the other Avengers. However in Spider-Man: Homecoming Tony claims to Peter that if Cap wanted to lay him out in one on one he would have been able to, and you can see Cap gradually ramping up his level of force, and testing Peter's durability. Peter's apparently stronger, but Cap has much more experience.
• In the first act of Thor: Ragnarok, Hela quickly kills Volstagg, Fandral and Hogun from the previous two movies to show how deadly she is. She also wields and subsequently destroys Thor´s most trusted weapon, the hammer Mjolnir in her first scene before hijacking the Bifrost as Thor and Loki escape and throwing them off to Sakaar.
• Avengers: Infinity War: Wanna show just how strong Thanos is after years of buildup as The Dreaded? Have him put the smackdown on Thor, wipe the floor with the Hulk, and kill Heimdall and Loki. All in the opening scene.
• Avengers: Endgame: To show that Thanos is still no slouch even without the infinity stones, he's the first person in the MCU to damage Captain America's shield with his BFS^note Significant damage, that is. Black Panther scratched it with his vibranium claws.. And when Wanda and Captain Marvel confront Thanos, he has to call a carpet-bombing and use the Power Stone (respectively) just to get rid of them.
• Spider-Man: Far From Home has a particularly egregious example with the Elementals. Mysterio claims that they destroyed his Earth and he barely managed to escape. When they show up in the MCU Earth, he has a much better showing, taking them all on with only little help from Spider-Man. Almost as if they weren't actually the ultimate threat he presented them to be...
• WandaVision: Agatha delivers this to Wanda (the all powerful Reality Warper who we the audience have seen almost kill Thanos) as she effortlessly overpowers and subdues Wanda with magic and carefully explains how out of depth she is when it comes to sorcery. Although once Wanda does tap into her magical abilities the tables quickly turn.
• The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: Bucky gets this much harder than he did in Civil War, as in order to establish the Flag Smashers as a real threat, they repeatedly kick the Winter Soldier’s ass (despite Bucky having more experience than them and having fought tougher opponents like Cap and Iron Man). John Walker the replacement Captain America likewise gives Bucky a clobbering after taking a Super Serum which forces Sam and Bucky to work in tandem to bring him down. ^note  Granted it’s inferred Bucky is trying to be less violent while recovering from his years of brainwashing, but the result makes him look like a bit of a pushover compared to the films.
  • On the flip side Batroc, the guy who gave Cap a genuine fight with pure alone martial arts skill alone in Captain America: The Winter Soldier gets unceremoniously beaten by Sam in a fist fight twice.
• The first episode of Loki (2021) does this to the Infinity Stones themselves to show how powerful the TVA is. You know, the six impossibly powerful stones that were the main focus of the entire Infinity Saga? Yeah, one random TVA agent named Casey has dozens of them lying in his cabinet. He even says they're sometimes used as paperweights.
• In Black Widow (2021) this is the main function of Taskmaster, who spends most of the movie worfing Natasha (who’ve seen take on the Winter Soldier and aliens) and her allies thanks to Awesome by Analysis All Your Powers Combined skills. The only character who puts up anything close to a real fight against Taskmaster is Nat’s surrogate father Alexei aka Red Guardain a Super-Soldier and he still has a very hard time. Black Widow only defeats her by freeing her from her father’s brainwashing.
• What If…? (2021) has it done to THANOS, of all people.
  • Episode 2: Beaten up by his own adoptive children Obsidian Cull and Promixa Midnight from the Black Order and knocked out cold.
  • Episode 5: The fact that he got infected is used as a final, hope-crushing demonstration of just how unstoppable the quantum virus is.
  • Episode 8: Is unceremoniously killed by Ultron within seconds of arriving, to set up Ultron bringing his omnicidal campaign beyond Earth.
• Hawkeye (2021): Kate Bishop as the series shows is a young prodigy, with fantastic archery skills along martial arts, fencing and general Charles Atlas Super Power athleticism. By the climax however she’s up against Kingpin and proceeds to get beaten around like a rag doll and only survives thanks to some special exploding arrows that take out Fisk out of action.
  • Earlier on, when Kate is fencing her mother’s fiancé Jack Duquesne, Kate is a fantastic fencer as Jack compliments with her seemingly defeating him several times, but Kate only gets frustrated that he isn’t taking her seriously. This is confirmed when she thrusts at Jack when he’s turned away from her and he casually disarms her with a single move.
  • There’s also an inversion in Episode 5 with Echo, Kazi and the Tracksuit Mafia antagonists who’ve been a legitimate threat to Clint and Kate and a constant thorn in their sides for multiple episodes... get worfed by Hawkeye himself who has a Let's Get Dangerous! donning the Ronin costume. Clint takes them down non-lethally and makes it clear to Echo and Kazi if he actually wanted to kill them, he would done so already.
• Spider-Man: No Way Home makes sure to show that Spidey’s Rogues Gallery for all their gimmicks are nothing to scoff at, even by the standards of the MCU. Doc Ock overpowers an Iron Spider-Suit wearing Peter and would’ve killed him if not for the nanotech saving Spidey’s life. The Lizard not only wounds Dr Strange off screen but takes on multiple versions of Spider-Man in the climax. Electro immediately overwhelms MCU Spidey in his first scene and Peter needs Sandman’s help in defeating him and by the climax Electro manages overpowers both the Raimi and Webbverse Spider-Men and would’ve killed them if not for Doc Ock’s Heel–Face Turn. The most glaring example however is Green Goblin who brutalises MCU Spidey (whom we’ve seen stagger Thanos BTW) in their first fight and even gets the jump on Doctor Strange, sneaking a Pumpkin Bomb onto the Spell Cube, blowing it up and nearly killing the sorcerer and damaging the multiverse in the process.
• Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: Following Wanda's studying of the Darkhold, she manages to nearly level Kamar-Taj, brutally overpower Doctor Strange and near-effortlessly massacre five out of the six members of The Illuminati of Earth-838 Captain Carter, Captain Marvel (Maria Rambeau), Blackbolt, Mr Fantastic and even Professor Charles Xavier himself (whom defeated Thanos and killed Doctor Strange in their universe). It's only due to a zombie Doctor Strange, Heel Realization and destruction of Wundagore Mountain (where the Darkhold's Runes came from) that Wanda is ultimately defeated.
• Overlapping with But for Me, It Was Tuesday in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania Kang casually mentions he's decimated the Avengers countless times as a Multiversal Conqueror and nonchalantly refers to Thor (the character we've seen smash cites, crack a small planet and kick Thanos's ass) as "the one with the hammer".