History Main / ForgotAboutHisPowers

* Parodied on ''ThePowerpuffGirls'' when the townspeople chase Buttercup. She starts running from them before reassessing the situation and flying away.

As mentioned, this is a sister trope to IdiotBall, the distinction being that IdiotBall is when a character does something stupid to further the plot, while PlotInducedStupidity the plot depends on a character ''failing'' to take an action they would normally take or that would make the most sense to solve the current crisis.

As mentioned, this is a sister trope to IdiotBall. The distinction being that IdiotBall is when a character does something stupid to further the plot. While PlotInducedStupidity the plot depends on a character ''failing'' to take an action they would normally take or that would make the most sense to solve the current crisis.

* This happens twice in the Prequel Trilogy of Star Wars, in both cases this stupidity is what ends up saving Obi-Wan's life when he should have died in both cases.
** It happens in the Phantom Menace during the battle between Darth Maul and Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. Throughout the battle Maul is depicted as an agile and powerful Sith Lord, who is able to take on Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan both at the same time with no difficulty whatsoever and eventually mortally wounds Qui-Gon and disarms Obi-Wan of his lightsaber and knocks him down into a shaft. Thinking that he has won already Darth Maul stands over the pit that Obi-Wan is dangling off of and boasts over his victory by giving the young Obi-Wan a mocking glare, Obi-Wan proceeds to dangle there for a good minute or so and jumps out of the pit over Maul's head and uses the Force to telekinetically grab his dying master's lightsaber, ignites it and then cuts Maul in half who then falls to his death in the shaft Obi-Wan just jumped out of. This is stupid in that being the agile duelist Maul is he should have been capable of igniting his lightsaber as Obi-Wan was jumping out of the shaft and cutting him into pieces, or kill him once he lands on solid ground, or you know KNOCK OBI-WAN DOWN THE PIT WHEN HE WAS STILL DANGLING ON THE EDGE. They made Maul an idiot for that short span of time just so Obi-Wan could survive to become Anakin's master.
** It happens once again in The Revenge of The Sith during the duel on Mustafar between Anakin and Obi-Wan. Anakin is in control for most of the duel, constantly pushing Obi-Wan back and leaving little room for him to defend himself, and ultimately their duel tires Obi-Wan out to the point where he knows that if he continues the duel he will run out of energy long before Anakin loses his steam. And so Obi-Wan jumps off the floating platform he and Anakin were fighting on and retreats to the shore alongside the lava river. Obi-Wan then proceeds to tell Anakin that the fight between both of them is over as he has the high ground advantage, Anakin then proceeds to take this revelation as an insult to his power and tries to jump over Obi-Wan, land behind him and impale him through the chest with his lightsaber, only to have his legs and remaining organic left arm sliced off in the blink of an eye by Obi-Wan. Anakin then burns nearly to death on the shore of the lava river they were just fighting on and is cybernetically repaired to become the dark figure we know as Darth Vader. What makes this stupid is that Anakin didn't need to jump over Obi-Wan to continue the duel, he could have thrown his lightsaber at Obi-Wan, used force push and then jump, jump WAY OVER Obi-Wan's head and land farther behind him and push him back against the lava, or you know just jump to another part of the shore and run up it, Anakin didn't have to try such a risky move, and this stupidity is what saves Obi-Wan from otherwise should have been his defeat. What makes it doubly worse is that Obi-Wan defeated Maul who had the high ground advantage in Episode 1, honestly the prequel trilogy made the Sith out to be chumps just so Obi-Wan could survive.

* ''HarryPotter'' has some examples, which are discussed in its ItJustBugsMe page.

*** The best example comes in season 3. In a Mexican-standoff hostage situation, rather than using telekinesis or time-stopping, he uses newly acquired super-speed to attack one of the enemies. The fact he attacked the most harmless enemy is a whole nother idiot ball...
**** Can't forget the fact that he wouldn't even know he had super speed, as he just absorbed it subconsciously. And he should've known about stopping time or his telekinesis, since ''the character who he learned telekinesis from was shouting at him to teleport!'' Teleporting and stopping time were learned from the same guy, and given that stopping time would have enabled him to save the hostage... [[WallBanger * argh* ]]

** Peter consistently failing to make the connection that... healing/regeneration could get him his powers back + he has the power to copy a single person's power by touching them + he's found Claire = he could get his powers back.
*** He's found Claire and copied her powers, which had no effect on his own powers. Plus, it prevents further PlotInducedStupidity seeing as Peter won't have AllYourPowersCombined and therefore won't spontaneously forget that he has a certain power that would be really useful in this situation... like most of the other examples of this trope for the show.

* In {{Smallville}}, Clark Kent is awfully easy to sneak up on for someone with super-hearing.
* When the {{Charmed}} Ones become powerful, they keep on forgetting about their powers. Like when a criminal was holding a gun at Phoebe's head and ordered Paige to cast a spell to disguise him. Rather than just orb the gun, Paige killed him by demon. Piper didn't use her freezing powers several times because she just didn't try. And Phoebe stopped using her premonition powers to help innocents and just focused on herself.

* DiddyKongRacing has quite a massive amount of this, however being a childish game the fact is typically overlooked that the plot is severely flawed. They must defeat a wizard pig who has conquered a galaxy from taking over an island, but rather than working together with everyone to defeat Wizpig, everyone instead ops for friendly racing matches that force the main character (the players character) to work effortlessly at reaching the bosses and Wizpig himself while working against you in every way possible. When you face a boss, just as well, every person is suddenly exempt from the race, forcing the main character and the boss into a 1 on 1 race.
* In GodOfWar II, Kratos starts the game off by deliberately draining his godly powers into a sword, just because Zeus tells him to. A guy who hates the gods and has no reason to trust ANY of them falls for a blatantly obvious trap, only to justify the game's BagOfSpilling.
* SilverSurfer in ''Silver Surfer'' for NES. The guy obviously forgets that he has cosmic powers, and tries to attack the bad guys normally. The results are well documented.

* From ''Avatar: the Last Airbender'': In the episode "The Runaway" Toph and Katara is stuffed in a wooden cage... in a building, built on earth. We have seen Toph can bend even when not directly on earth- in fact, while standing on wood, just like in this episode, yet she doesn't even try.

** ''[[Ptitle0njctfhi Arceus and the Jewel of Life]]''. Ash and co. are thrown into a cell. A simple, no-tech cell. They wait around in it for god knows how long for a Pokemon to retrieve the key when they could've, I dunno, ''used their Pokemon to bust their way out''. And because of this stall, [[spoiler: Arceus gets killed.]]

** ''ArceusAndTheJewelOfLife''. Ash and co. are thrown into a cell. A simple, no-tech cell. They wait around in it for god knows how long for a Pokemon to retrieve the key when they could've, I dunno, ''used their Pokemon to bust their way out''. And because of this stall, [[spoiler: Arceus gets killed.]]

* DragonQuestIX example: Upon first meeting [[spoiler: [[FallenAngel Corvus]] ]], you are given the option of whether or not to [[ChainedToARock set him free.]] You can see him clearly and are also allowed to talk to him, where it is '''[[RedRightHand INCREDIBLY APPARENT]]''' that that is not a good idea, as he is [[spoiler: the [[ManBehindTheMan source of all the Protectorate's troubles.]] ]] [[ForegoneConclusion Guess what you have to do]] [[WhatAnIdiot to continue the story.]]
-->"[[KnightTemplar A crime... Their very existence is an insult...an abomination...a crime...]]"
-->--[[spoiler: [[BigBad Corvus]] ]]

**** Probably more relevant to SupermanTheAnimatedSeries, but how many times has Superman come up against a kryptonite wielding enemy and never thinks to keep his distance and use his heat vision to melt the kryptonite or fry the evil robot (ahem, ''Metallo'') who's holding it?

This is used quite a bit when characters have extremely useful or increasingly powerful abilities or equipment, and [[QuicklyDemotedWoman some unfortunates]] tend to have this inflicted on them ''all the time'', turning a GeniusBruiser or BadassBookworm into a garden-variety [[{{TheBigGuy}} Bruiser]] or {{Badass}}. Only some lines of technological jargon or displays of useless gadgetry will remind the reader that they have more brains than they normally use. Some might consider this a form of InformedAbility, with the "ability" being genius-level intelligence.

** Probably the most blatant example of this is when Kenpachi fights Tousen. Tousen uses his bankai and then proceeds to lecture Kenpachi about his worldview/how his victory is assured because of his abilities/how his abilities work/etc. rather than finish the fight giving Kenpachi enough time to figure out a winning strategy. Now that sounds pretty standard and while dumb, isn't egregious, until you remember that Tousen's bankai removes all of Kenpachi's senses including sight and hearing, rendering him completely ignorant to the fact that he's getting a lecture in the first place, neverming hearing or comprehending it. Plot induced stupidity on Tousen's part indeed.

**** Another example of this from the film would be when they first go down into the Arachnid tunnels. You see a huge swarm of aliens like in the first battle scene, and then 2 aircraft fly voerhead and carpetbomb them, killing all the aliens. Why the hell didnt they just do that to begin with??? Also, why is it that the only weapons the MI has are assault rifles and briefcase-sized tactical nukes with seemingly nothing in between?

** It happens once again in The Revenge of The Sith during the duel on Mustafar between Anakin and Obi-Wan. Anakin is in control for most of the duel, constantly pushing Obi-Wan back and leaving little room for him to defend himself, and ultimately their duel tires Obi-Wan out to the point where he knows that if he continues the duel he will run out of energy long before Anakin loses his steam. And so Obi-Wan jumps off the floating platform he and Anakin were fighting on and retreats to the shore along side the lava river. Obi-Wan then proceeds to tell Anakin that the fight between both of them is over as he has the high ground advantage, Anakin then proceeds to take this revelation as an insult to his power and tries to jump over Obi-Wan, land behind him and impale him through the chest with his lightsaber, only to have his legs and remaining organic left arm sliced off in the blink of an eye by Obi-Wan. Anakin then burns nearly to death on the shore of the lava river they were just fighting on and is cybernetically repaired to become the dark figure we know as Darth Vader. What makes this stupid is that Anakin didn't need to jump over Obi-Wan to continue the duel, he could have thrown his lightsaber at Obi-Wan, used force push and then jump, jump WAY OVER Obi-Wan's head and land farther behind him and push him back against the lava, or you know just jump to another part of the shore and run up it, Anakin didn't have to try such a risky move, and this stupidity is what saves Obi-Wan from otherwise should have been his defeat. What makes it doubly worse is that Obi-Wan defeated Maul who had the high ground advantage in Episode 1, honestly the prequel trilogy made the Sith out to be chumps just so Obi-Wan could survive.

* Grand Admiral Thrawn, of StarWars EU fame, has two despite being an overall extremely GenreSavvy character. The first is his reliance on Captain Ferrier, a ship thief and overall bigmouthed dumbass. Ferrier at various times nearly screws up Thrawn's plans, and gets an entire squad of Imperial troopers killed, in addition to uniting all the major smugglers against Thrawn. Instead of writing the whole thing off as a bad job (especially after he loses a nearly-completed Star Destroyer in the bargain), Thrawn tries one more time to neutralize the smugglers using Ferrier. It doesn't go well. The second is with Mara Jade; Thrawn has just betrayed Mara Jade by tricking her into revealing Talon Karrde's location, leading to his arrest by the torture-happy Imperials, and then smugly mouthes off to her face about it. Mara predictably goes [[BerserkButton berserk]] and attempts to attack Thrawn, at first physically then through the Force. Both of these fail, leaving Thrawn with the question of what to do with a still visibly enraged and always emotionally unstable Jade. Who by the way knows [[spoiler: everything about the safehouse on Wayland, which until then had been Thrawn's superweapon-in-the-hole.]] Instead of [[WhyDontYaJustShootHim killing her]], he allows her to live, and then allows her her [[WallBanger unsupervised liberty aboard his ship]]. Jade then immediately hacks into the computer network of Thrawn's ship and escapes. The next one-and-a-half books can be accurately described as Jade [[TakeThat sticking it to Thrawn]] which eventually leads to his plans collapsing and his death.

** Admittedly, this is because the acrimonious conversation is occuring in English, which Hiro does not speak at that point in the show.

*** It gets even worse, in a more recent episode Hiro [[spoiler: has to go after a precog who naturally knows he's coming. Attempting to catch the precog he gets himself knocked out by a shovel, he then tries going back in time to intercept his ambusher only to get knocked out again by the same guy (who hadn't time traveled). Sure the precog has to power to co-ordinate this but Hiro can FREEZE TIME so that the ambusher would be unable to intercept his interception (less confusing when you watch it). Anyhow Hiro decides to give up using his powers that he barely even used deeming them useless (when they blatently aren't), the precog eventually reveals that this was a test and Hiro passed by not depending * bang* on his * bang* powers * bang* OH FOR CRYING OUT LOUD HIS PROBLEM IS HE HARDLY USES THEM NOT THE OTHER WAY ROUND...]] my head hurts now. At least it was funny.

** To be fair, that worked because it was specifically created [[spoiler: by the Alliance]] spreading the myth of the Pandorica in a way that the Doctor would find irresistable as a mystery and not think of it in any other way. [[spoiler: It was a powerful piece of psychological warfare.]] And to be fair, the Doctor thinks himself [[spoiler: so feared by the members of the Alliance because he's a force for good. He doesn't think of himself as a genocidal warrior, despite what all his enemies seem to tell him.]]

**** Really any time in Star Trek where theres firefights the same thing applies. Why is it that hundreds of years in the future, infantry tactics have regressed to the 18th century? "Whats that you say, elit commandoes from a foreign military are infiltrating the ship? Lets all walk down there in single file without looking around corners or taking cover or using any sort of caution or strategy whatsoever!" Any 20th century military could take over the Enterprise if it were real.

* From ''Avatar the Last Airbender'': In the episode "The Runaway" Toph and Katara is stuffed in a wooden cage... in a building, built on earth. We have seen Toph can bend even when not directly on earth- in fact, while standing on wood, just like in this episode, yet she doesn't even try.

* From Avatar the Last Airbender: In the episode "The Runaway" Toph and Katara is stuffed in a wooden cage... in a building, built on earth. We have seen Toph can bend even when not directly on earth- in fact, while standing on wood, just like in this episode, yet she doesn't even try.

->''"Earthbenders! There is dirt under your feet! There is dirt all around you! Why don't you fight?"''
-->-- '''Aang''', ''Film/TheLastAirbender''

** Not to mention when [[IdiotHero Ichigo]] FORGOT HIS BANKAI FOR THE ENTIRETY OF THE BOUNT ARC! Although really, it looked more like he forgot that the word is "Bankai", as all he would say is "ban-" and forget what comes next, which was actually kinda funny.
*** This is entirely justified, though... He doesn't forget, he just isn't strong enough to use it in the human world. That is explained in Urahara's game with the three konpaku in between the Soul Society and Bount arcs.
*** And later on most of the captains [[spoiler:and vizards]] in the fight against [[spoiler:Aizen]]

** Vegeta does this during the series proper [[OnceAnEpisode Once]] AnArc, first by waiting for Goku to come as opposed to [[NotWorthKilling just killing his friends]], later on taunting Freeza to transform (When his untransformed form was still ''stronger'' than him), letting Cell absorb #18 (When he could have ''killed him'' right there) and finally letting Babidi possess him so he could butt heads (literally) with Goku once more and in the process making [[EldritchAbomination Boo]] revive. The worst part is he showed being smart during the rest of those arcs. Except on the Cell arc, there he got an IdiotBall strapped to his back and never bothered taking it off.

**** Really any time in Star Trek where theres firefights the same thing applies. Why is it that hundreds of years in the future, infantry tactics have regressed to the 18th century? "Whats that you say, elit commandoes from a foreign military are infiltrating the ship? Lets all walk down there in single file without looking around corners or taking cover or using any sort of caution or strategy whatsoever!"

See FridgeLogic for when it occurs to the viewers a little later what the character could've/should've easily done. See ForgotICouldFly when it occurs to the character JustInTime what he should've done long before.

* ''{{Naruto}}''. Just...[[WallBanger Naruto]].