History Main / PoorPredictableRock

** Worth noting is that the entire reason Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock exists is because of this trope; Sheldon pulled out a statistic about how players familiar with each other will keep choosing the same options, either tying or disrupting the game and that the much more complicated RPSLS will fix the problem by allowing more options.[[note]][[http://www.samkass.com/theories/RPSSL.htmlRock Paper Scissors Spock Lizard]] [[AluminumChristmasTrees existed before]] ''The Big Bang Theory''. Creator Sam Kass was even given a ShoutOut at least once: "All hail Sam Kass".[[/note]] As you can see above, it doesn't quite work out that way.

** The main focus of the Gym Leaders (and the Elite Four) in ''Diamond and Pearl'' is to use the move type specific to that Gym, therefore being able to have Pokémon with different base types that use the same types of moves.
** Averted almost entirely in ''[[VideoGame/PokemonColosseum Colosseum and XD]]''. Only a handful of Trainers in ''Pokémon Colosseum'' (and most are effectively tutorial fights, the only other being Miror B., a noted eccentric character) and almost none in ''XD'' (only 2 Trainers in ''XD'', both carrying it over from ''Colosseum'', plus a series of IneffectualSympatheticVillain characters stick to such predictable teams), stick to a single type/species. Even the enemy Grunts have ''far'' more variety than typical.

*** [[HilariousInHindsight Hilariously]], the sequel pair to these games, ''VideoGame/PokemonBlack2AndWhite2'', actually ''warns'' you up front that Elesa is packing an Emolga, and that Ground attacks are useless against it, even though this time she only has one instead of the two she had back in the original ''VideoGame/PokemonBlackAndWhite''.
** ''VideoGame/PokemonXAndY'' does this with pretty much every Gym leader - Any trainer thinking to sweep her Bug Pokemon with Fennekin[[hottip:*:The Fire type starter]] will sadly have to contend with Surskit[[hottip:*:A Bug/Water type]], Water Sport[[hottip:*:Halves the power of Fire moves]], and Powder[[hottip:*:A priority move that makes Fire attacks backfire on the user, taking a quarter of their HP and leaving Vivillion unharmed]]. Grant's rock pokemon respectively have Freeze Dry[[hottip:*:An ice move that's super effective against Grass ''and'' Water]] and Dragon subtyping. Meanwhile, Korrina plays bait-and-switch: After many scenes hinting that she's going to use a pair of Lucario[[hottip:*:A Fighting/Steel Pokemon who doesn't have the typical Psychic, Flying and Fairy weaknesses, but is instead weak against Ground and Fighting itself]] against you, you wind up fighting Hawlucha[[hottip:*:Who resists Fighting and is immune to Ground]]. Got those Poison and Steel attacks to take on Valerie's Fairy Pokemon? Her first one is [[OxymoronicBeing the Steel/Fairy Mawile]], who takes regular damage from Steel and is ''completely damn immune'' to Poison!

* In {{Mardek}} powerful highly elementally aligned monsters have a spell, Inversion (of that element), which deals damage to the party based on how much elemental resistance they have to that element. Come in with 110% resistance to fire? Then Inversion: Fire does 110% of your health as damage. Due to this, it's best to apply a moderate degree of elemental resistance in these battles.

* Averted in the crossover ''VideoGame/PokemonConquest'', Where most Warlords have a junior Warrior whose Pokemon is strong against the Kingdom's common weakness. For example, Ginchiyo's Electric types are weak to Ground, but Muneshige uses Flying Pokemon which are immune.

** Some canny [=DMs=], to avert this trope, will feed the player characters misinformation about dragons they'll be facing by abusing subversions of ColorCodedForYourConvenience. Versions this troper has heard about or encountered:

** ''VideoGame/PokemonXAndY'' does this with pretty much every Gym leader - Any trainer thinking to sweep her Bug Pokemon with Fennekin[[hottip:*:The Fire type starter]] will sadly have to contend with Surskit[[hottip:*:A Bug/Water type]], Water Sport[[hottip:*:Halves the power of Fire moves]], and Powder[[hottip:*:A priority move that makes Fire attacks backfire on the user, taking a quarter of their HP and leaving Vivillion unharmed]]. Grant's rock pokemon respectively have Freeze Dry[[hottip:*:An ice move that's super effective against Grass ''and'' Water]] and Dragon subtyping. Meanwhile, Korrina plays bait-and-switch: After many scenes hinting that she's going to use a pair of Lucario[[hottip:*:A Fighting/Steel Pokemon who doesn't have the typical Psychic and Flying weaknesses, but is instead weak against Ground and Fighting itself]] against you, you wind up fighting [[spoiler:Hawlucha]][[hottip:*:Who resists Fighting and is immune to Ground]]. Got those Poison and Steel attacks to take on Valerie's Fairy Pokemon? Her first one is [[OxymoronicBeing the Steel/Fairy Mawile]], who's weak to ''neither''.

* With some exceptions, enemies in the ''{{Disgaea}}'' series have a +50% strength against one of the three elements (cold, fire, wind) and a -50% weakness to another, shown visibly, so you know who to attack with which spell for maximum damage. Additionally, some maps featured enemies with the exact same weakness - Salamander's Breath was a playground for your blue mages, for instance.
** One map in ''{{Disgaea}} 2'' features a group of high-level mages standing on "reverse damage" geo panels. [[OutsideTheBoxTactic They are utterly defenseless against your healers.]]

* Initially, the bosses in the ''DinosaurKing'' DS game embody this trope, having teams of the same dinosaur type. Later, though, they add a dinosaur of a different type into their teams - usually of a type which is strong against the type you would normally use against them-for example, a Wind boss has a Water dinosaur, which is strong against the Fire dinosaur/s that you took along on account of their strength against Wind dinosaurs.

** VideoGame/PokemonXAndY does this with pretty much every Gym leader - Any trainer thinking to sweep her Bug Pokemon with Fennekin[[hottip:*:The Fire type starter]] will sadly have to contend with Surskit[[hottip:*:A Bug/Water type]], Water Sport[[hottip:*:Halves the power of Fire moves]], and Powder[[hottip:*:A priority move that makes Fire attacks backfire on the user, taking a quarter of their HP and leaving Vivillion unharmed]]. Grant's rock pokemon respectively have Freeze Dry[[hottip:*:An ice move that's super effective against Grass ''and'' Water]] and Dragon subtyping. Meanwhile, Korrina plays bait-and-switch: After many scenes hinting that she's going to use a pair of Lucario[[hottip:*:A Fighting/Steel Pokemon who doesn't have the typical Psychic and Flying weaknesses, but is instead weak against Ground and Fighting itself]] against you, you wind up fighting [[spoiler:Hawlucha]][[hottip:*:Who resists Fighting and is immune to Ground]]. Got those Poison and Steel attacks to take on Valerie's Fairy Pokemon? Her first one is [[OxymoronicBeing the Steel/Fairy Mawile]], who's weak to ''neither''.

* Lampshaded & Justified with [[TheAdventuresOfPeteAndPete Little Pete's]] enemy Paper Cut, who, as one might guess, always throws paper...and attacks anyone who throws scissors with deadly homemade origami.

* In ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'', Deidara's sole means of attack are Earth element clay birds. He picks a fight with Sasuke, whose primary attack this point is the Lightning element Chidori and variants thereof. As Deidara loses in ElementalRockPaperScissors, this ends badly for him. Most other ninjas with elemental techniques, however, have techniques of different elements or non-elemental ones to back them up; while Naruto's wind techniques defeat Sasuke's lightning ones, they are weak against his fire techniques. And in general, any ninja can use elemental techniques outside of their specialty element(s), it just won't come as easily to them.

* TableTopGame/YuGiOh also has something like that, with Meta, Anti-Meta, and other. Meta is the best deck at the moment. it can beat any other deck except for Anti-Meta, which is designed to counter it... which because it relies on you opponents to use a certain strategy, a deck not using that strategy can beat them.

* In ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'', Deidara's sole means of attack are Earth element clay birds. He picks a fight with Sasuke, whose primary attack this point is the Lightning element Chidori and variants thereof. As Deidara loses in ElementalRockPaperScissors, this ends badly for him. Most other ninjas with elemental techniques, however, have techniques of different elements or non-elemental ones to back them up; while Naruto's wind techniques defeat Sasuke's lightning ones, they are weak against his fire techniques.

* In {{Naruto}}, Deidara's sole means of attack are Earth element clay birds. He picks a fight with Sasuke, whose primary attack this point is the Lightning element Chidori and variants thereof. As Deidara loses in ElementalRockPaperScissors, this ends badly for him. Most other ninjas with elemental techniques, however, have techniques of different elements or non-elemental ones to back them up; while Naruto's wind techniques defeat Sasuke's lightning ones, they are weak against his fire techniques.

* The related fantasy miniatures games {{Warmachine}} and {{Hordes}} have "tier lists", which give the player small bonuses if their army consists only of certain units. These small bonuses are not enough to counter the fact that an army built without those restrictions is far more competitive.

Compare CripplingOverspecialisation and WhenAllYouHaveIsAHammer.

--->'''Yahtzee:''' There was a Gym fairly early on that might as well had a giant sign saying "We use Electric types!" Every guy in the city asked me non too subtly how I was for Ground type Pokémon, and the whole area was lousy with Ground random encounters. So after [[LevelGrinding grinding]] my newly captured Groundie lads for an hour I challenge the Gym Leader and what does she pull out? A fucking '''Flying''' Electric type! And guess what '''Flying''' types are immune to. I'll give you a hint: It rhymes with pound-ing nails into my eyesocket.

* In the fangame Pokemon Tabletop Adventures, the Advanced Class Elemental Expert embodies this trope of specialization like the gym leaders from the games, but there is a payoff. First the Pokemon of that type that they own gain an experience bonus (which stacks with the experience bonus from their base class), meaning that their mon level at a very fast pace. They also gain bonuses to finding and catching that type of mon, so they can more easily gain the benefits of this class. Finally, attacks of that type deal bonus damage even if their mon isn't that type.

** This bit [[ZeroPunctuation Yahtzee]] in the ass when he reviewed ''Pokémon White''

** Worth noting is that the entire reason Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock exists is because of this trope; Sheldon pulled out a statistic about how players familiar with each other will keep choosing the same options, either tying or disrupting the game and that the much more complicated RPSLS will fix the problem by allowing more options.[[note]] Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Slick [[AluminumChristmasTrees existed before]] ''The Big Bang Theory'', looking at this site http://www.samkass.com/theories/RPSSL.html in the Way Back Machine should confirm it. Creator Sam Kass was even given a ShoutOut in one episode.[[/note]] As you can see above, it doesn't quite work out that way.

* Taken to new heights in TheBigBangTheory with Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock; being the nerds they are, they always pick Spock. At one point Raj even ''[[LampshadeHanging points out]]'' "One of us needs to stop picking Spock." How do they decide? Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock! Guess where that goes...
** Worth noting is that the entire reason Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock exist is because of this trope; Sheldon pulled out a statistic about how players familiar with each other will keep choosing the same options, either tying or disrupting the game and that the much more complicated RPSLS will fix the problem by allowing more options. As you can see above, it doesn't quite work out that way.
** Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Slick was invented far before The Big Bang Theory, looking at this site http://www.samkass.com/theories/RPSSL.html in the Way Back Machine should confirm it.

Interestingly in actual rock-scissors-paper, throwing the same hand every time is a valid tactic against an inexpert opponent. Basically nobody expects a player to play the same hand twice or more. There are even [[http://www.worldrps.com/how-to-beat-anyone-at-rock-paper-scissors names for the tactic, among those who care about such things]]

* Subverted in a strip of the ''Webcomic/{{Adventurers}}'' webcomic, in which the predictable enemy (the Ice Dragon of Ice Cave) paints himself red and convinces the party he's a Fire Dragon, and they give up in disgust (as they've spent all their resources on fire-based equipment)

* Subverted in ''{{Bastard}}!!'' where a fire djinn laughs that Dark Schneider, a Fire Wizard, can't beat him since he only has fire spells. Dark Schneider [[WhenAllYouHaveIsAHammer uses a spell hotter than the sun]] to extinguish him.