History Main / WeakBossStrongUnderlings

* ''Anime/CodeGeass'': The rulers of the Britannian Empire are your average nobility -- political-savvy and born wildly privileged in terms of money and influence. Barring some members of the family, they are all just normal humans. They all have under their command the {{Humoungous Mecha}}s known as Knightmares as well as a massive military army.

* ''Manga/MyHeroAcademia'': Nezu is an indeterminate small animal whose Quirk is SuperIntelligence. As such, his value mostly resides in being TheStrategist rather than a front combatant. Nezu is the principal of Japan's best hero school, so his employees and students often possess Quirks with more obvious offensive potential. One of the teachers is the current number one hero and BigGood, All Might.

* ''ComicBook/Robin1993'': While the General does eventually bulk up, he starts out as very YoungAndInCharge. He's an eleven-year-old bossing around gangsters and other criminals and for a short time, the army of a small foreign country, who are willing to listen to him because his brutal plans and strategies tend to work. The General sometimes appears in the ''Franchise/Batman'' comics as well.

* ''Film/CharliesAngels2000'': Compared to the [[Series/CharliesAngels original series]], this trope gets taken to the next level. The Angels now perform more dangerous (and [[RuleOfCool cool]]) stunts while in combat, meaning that they are at Olympic athlete level in terms of physical prowess instead of the reasonably athletic they are in the original. Also, the films have them efficiently use guns of greater caliber and bladed weapons as well as more acrobatic martial arts. Charlie, by contrast, is still the old RetiredBadass he's always been.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Bolt}}'': PlayedStraight in the [[AShowWithinAShow TV show]] Penny and her dog Bolt star. There, she's a normal girl who owns a superpowered dog on whom she depends for protection against the villains. However, it's actually {{subverted}} when they are out of the set because, contrary to what he believes, Bolt is just a regular dog.

* ''Anime/DigimonGhostGame'': {{Downplayed}}. As an angelic Digimon, Darcmon is certainly stronger than others of her level, but she is still just an Adult level. Her servant/pet, however, Manticoremon, is at the Perfect level and is able to quickly defeat both [=BetelGammamon=] ''and'' [[spoiler: Thetismon]], requiring the debut of TheBerserker [[spoiler: Lamortmon]] to take it down. {{Justified}} in that, on their own, Manticoremons are mindless savage beasts and require angelic Digimon like Darcmon to keep them in control and give them direction, lest they attack everything around them in their hunger for Virus Digicores.

* ''VideoGame/DigimonSurvive'': {{Exaggerated}}. The ones leading the attacks against Garurumon might be just Gazimona, but for some reason, they bring several Mega-level monsters like Plesiomon and Magnadramon with them.

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* ''VideoGame/TowerOfTheSorcerer'': The Golden Knight is very beatable even at the ''start'' of the Knight Zone, and when he's [[VillainForgotToLevelGrind exactly the same strength]] at the end of the zone, after all the power-ups you've collected, he's a push-over. But first, you must deal with his army of soldiers, knights, and [[GlassCannon swordsmen]], who each get a free shot at you, with no breaks in between. Ouch.

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** ''Film/BlackWidow2021'': By virtue of his advanced age and lack of combat prowess, NonActionBigBad General Dreykov can barely throw a punch. Luckily for him, he has an army of Widows as well as the Taskmaster at his disposal.
** Pietro and Wanda Maximoff both serve as the Strong Underlings to Baron Strucker's Weak Boss, as they are both enhanced individuals capable of taking on the Avengers, while [[NonActionBigBad Strucker]] is an older scientist with no combat skills who doesn't even try to defend himself when Captain America comes to capture him.
** Due to his old age, General Ross isn't much of a physical threat to any of the heroes. Which is why he has to rely on his soldiers, especially Emil Blonsky, who was a skilled fighter even before he took the SuperSoldier serum.

** DiabolicalMastermind Silco can hold his own with a dagger but lets the fighting to his minions more often than not because, other than his hideous facial scarring, he's not physically imposing at all. In fact, he has to inject a dangerous drug into his left eye to keep his chemical pollution-induced illness to spread out. Silco's power comes from the criminal empire he's slowly built. As such, his minions include the two most dangerous women in the Undercity --MadBomber Jinx and TheBrute Sevika--, as well as other muscly grunts. Later, he starts enhancing his enforcers with Shimmer, an addicting substance that leads to mutation and gives the user a great boost in strength, reflexes, and speed.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': {{Exaggerated}}. Mr. Burns may struggle to crush a paper cup and in one episode had his foot pushed away by an ant he intended to step on, but he is still widely feared because he has a private army of security guards, hired goons, and [[ArmyofLawyers lawyers]] in his personal retinue.

** DiabolicalMastermind Silco can hold his own with a dagger but lets the fighting to his minions more often than not because, other than his hideous facial scarring, he's not physically imposing at all. In fact, he has to inject a dangerous drug into his left eye to keep his chemical pollution-induced illness to spread out. Silco's power comes from the criminal empire he's slowly built -- as such, his minions include the two most dangerous women in the Undercity --MadBomber Jinx and TheBrute Sevika--, as well as other muscly grunts. Later, he starts enhancing his enforcers with Shimmer, an addicting substance that leads to mutation and gives the user a great boost in strength, reflexes, and speed.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Arcane}}'': DiabolicalMastermind Silco can hold his own with a dagger but lets the fighting to his minions more often than not because, other than his hideous facial scarring, he's not physically imposing at all. In fact, he has to inject a dangerous drug into his left eye to keep his chemical pollution-induced illness to spread out. Silco's power comes from the criminal empire he's slowly built -- as such, his minions include the two most dangerous women in the Undercity --MadBomber Jinx and TheBrute Sevika--, as well as other muscly grunts. Later, he starts enhancing his enforcers with Shimmer, an addicting substance that leads to mutation and gives the user a great boost in strength, reflexes, and speed.

The exact opposite of AuthorityEqualsAsskicking; this is when somebody who isn't physically intimidating, or who's even outright weak, has at their disposal plenty of people who are. Call them what you will: goons, thugs, hired muscle, bodyguards, the long and short of this is they're suddenly a lot more intimidating because even if they can't hurt you themselves, they can give somebody much stronger the order to do so.

* ''Videogame/FateGrandOrder'': Jason of the Argonauts is portrayed as an incredibly weak Servant who managed to assemble a crew of some of the greatest heroes of Greek Mythology and whose talent is that of a tactician capable of squeezing out a victory when his back is against the wall. This is shown by how in-game he's of the lowest rarity while his attacks have him calling upon [[WorldsStrongestMan Heracles]], [[MasterArcher Atalante]] and [[TheArchmage Medea]] (all of whom are of the second-highest rarity in the game) as well as having a largely support-focused move set.
* ''Franchise/FateSeries'': Usually, Masters are human mages of variable magical prowess, although there have been cases of normal people being able to summon Servants. However, no matter how strong the Master is, their Servants will always be stronger by virtue of being a suprahuman Heroic Spirit. Pretty much any Servant can butcher the {{Squishy Wizard}}s that the Masters are. Masters only control their Servants because of the contract both parties signed at the moment of the summon, which grants Masters Command Spells to force the Servants into doing their bidding.

* ''VideoGame/{{Cuphead}}'': "Bootlegger Boogie" in the DLC consists of fighting against the Moonshine Mob, a gang of bugs that fight the local ant police with your characters caught in between. The first in line is the spider, a big and tough mobster in charge of the goons who can call in backup and bombs. The second is a seductive lady insect who places down and dances to [[MusicalAssassin a gramophone that emits killer sound waves]]. The Mob's SecretWeapon is a ''giant'' anteater who eats scores of ant police and fly mobsters then spits them out as a BigBallOfViolence. The mob boss is a small snail who's seen in the fight intro and has a single, easily-avoided attack and ''far'' less health than the first three, with his only threat being [[VictoryFakeout the element of surprise]] after the anteater goes down.

* Creator/GuyRitchie was particularly fond of this trope:
** In ''Film/LockStockAndTwoSmokingBarrels'', Harry has Big Chris and Barry the Baptist at his disposal (but Harry's not above getting physical himself, even if the only weapon available is a 15-inch black rubber sex toy)
** ''{{Film/Snatch}}'' features this quite a lot; Bricktop has his thugs (most prominently John and Errol), Turkish and Tommy used Gorgeous George for that purpose, Doug The Head hires Bullet-Tooth Tony both for this and for his abilities to find someone, and Avi has Rosebud.

* The Netflix exclusive ''Film/{{Bright}}'' has Poison, an EvilCripple bound to a wheelchair but surrounded by a couple of [[EthnicScrappy trigger-happy cholos]].
* Comicbook/LexLuthor in ''Film/BatmanVSupermanDawnOfJustice'' is a young, [[GeekPhysiques skinny]] EvilGenius who uses [[HuskyRusskie Anatoli Knyazev]] and his mercenary team as muscle.

* ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'': Most of the Tullu's bannermen have more wealth, larger armies, and wider territories than them. This makes House Tully potentially the weakest of the great houses.

** Spandam, leader of the secret government agency Cipher Pol 9. While his subordinates are all trained assassins and spies with superpowers, he himself is weaker than even a common low-rank Marine troop; Spandam's power level is 9, whereas Kalifa (the weakest [=CP9=] agent) has a power level of 630, and Lucci (the strongest agent) has a power level of 4,000. He does have the "elephant sword" Funkfreed, but what should be a potentially powerful weapon is little more than trash in his hands, which Franky demonstrates.

* In ''Anime/MagicalGirlLyricalNanohaStrikers'', Hayate is this in a sense. She has by far the highest power level of all known mages in the series, an SS-rank, but [[CripplingOverspecialization specializes in wide-area bombardment spells]] that, [[AwesomeButImpractical while as powerful as they sound, are difficult to aim]]. She claims that Caro, the only Forward who was at C rank as of joining Hayate's division, could defeat her in one-on-one combat without the dragons that serve as the source of her offensive power.

* ''Franchise/{{Danganronpa}}'': {{Downplayed}}. BigBad [[Characters/DanganronpaJunkoEnoshima Junko]] is mainly an intellectual mastermind, but her execution in the first game shows that she's surprisingly durable. However, she can't defeat more skilled opponents like Mukuro or Izuru in direct combat. Luckily, she has quite a few strong underlings at her disposal, like an army of Monokuma robots or the Warriors of Hope (who have giant mechs with which to kill adults).

* ''Franchise/{{Danganronpa}}'': {{Downplayed}}. BigBad Junko is mainly an intellectual mastermind, but her execution in the first game shows that she's surprisingly durable. However, she can't defeat more skilled opponents like Mukuro or Izuru in direct combat. Luckily, she has quite a few strong underlings at her disposal, like an army of Monokuma robots or the Warriors of Hope (who have giant mechs with which to kill adults).

** [[Recap/DragonBallZMajinBuuArc Majin Buu Saga]]: While Babidi is very weak, what makes him a threat is that he can easily mind control very powerful fighters, which he ends up doing to [[TheRival Vegeta]]. He also used to command the all-powerful Majin Buu, who could [[spoiler: and did]] easily destroy him.

[[AC: Role Play]]
* ''Roleplay/DarkWorldRolePlay'': Downplayed. [[spoiler: Navy]] can't be entirely classified as weak. However, he still once uses B.T., Bolt, Beta, and Bits as weapons. The first three of them are very strong and could outnumber him if they weren't held under the control of the Blue Teeth at the time.

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