History RequiredSecondaryPowers / LiveActionTV

** The episode "[[Recap/AgentsOfSHIELDS1E5GirlInTheFlowerDress Girl in the Flower Dress]]" features Chan Ho Yin, a pyrokinetic whose RequiredSecondaryPowers (not being burned whenever he used his powers) are a major plot point. [[spoiler:The "Centipede" organization harvests his heat-resistant platelets to stabilize the Extremis component of their SuperSerum. (For more about Extremis, see the RequiredSecondaryPowers/LiveActionFilms sub-page.) The results for Chan are not pleasant.]]

* ''Series/{{Alphas}}'' is built on this trope, or more precisely showing what happens when you don't have them. The title characters are shown as a drastic mutation in the human genome, but their bodies and minds have to adjust dramatically to accommodate their powers. You can read electromagnetic signals? Great, but that means you brain is now mostly a data processor, eating up the neurons used for emotional neural paths, making you severely autistic. One girl has enhanced senses. She's a neat freak because she ''can see bacteria'', CantHaveSexEver because it would overload her sense of touch/taste, and when she supercharges one of them, all other senses shut down because her brain can't handle the information. Bill can trigger his Flight-or-Fight response to become super strong, but has a HairTriggerTemper and using his powers is bad for his heart. Cornell Scipio has a PlayingWithFire-esque power, but only his hands are fireproof. The rest of his body can be burned, same as anyone else. Stanton Parrish is immortal, but he suffers TheFogOfAges effect because his brain isn't built to hold 200+ years worth of memories at one time. He counters this by using an Alpha who can store and retrieve the memories of others at will. Said Alpha also suffers from a lack of RequiredSecondaryPowers: He has no way to distinguish between the memories he has in storage and his ''actual'' memories, making him something of a {{Cloudcuckoolander}}.

** In the episode ''Earshot'' Buffy kills a telepathic demon and accidentally gains the ability to hear other people's thoughts. Unfortunately, the transfer of power did not include the ability to process all of the information it provides, nor the ability to "tune out" the input. The lack of such RequiredSecondaryPowers caused Buffy to collapse when she overheard the thoughts of a cafeteria full of students and it nearly drove her insane.

** DL, the IntangibleMan of the show seems to affect the objects he phases through, rather than affecting himself, given the wavy effect of any object he goes through. His intangibility is also selective, apparently instinctively; he can reach through a door, then reach back with the same hand and unlock it from inside.

* Averted in the ''Series/{{Highlander}}'' television series. Immortals, while not invulnerable, have an extremely fast healing factor provided that their heads remain attached to their bodies. However, they still need to breathe and eat as mortals do and can temporarily die of starvation, dehydration, suffocation or enough bodily damage from ordinary weapons. There is one episode centered around an immortal seeking revenge against Duncan Macleod for marooning him on an island without food or water. The vengeful immortal asks Duncan if he has ever had to endure constant recurring death, resurrection, then death again from starvation and dehydration. This cycle was [[AFateWorseThanDeath implied to have continued for two centuries]] before the other immortal escaped the island.

* ''Series/SevenDays'' acknowledges the positioning problem of TimeTravel by requiring Parker to "fly the needles" when using the Sphere. He still usually winds up several (hundred) miles from the mountain base. One of his predecessors didn't do that well.
** A lot of time, he even ends up back in the hangar.
** Strangely, the scenes of time travel usually show him appearing in orbit and then falling to the surface, which would indicate that he appears "in front of" Earth, as the planet wasn't at the same location 7 days before. However, he seems to be too close for that.
** Another required secondary power for time travel is [[FeelNoPain extreme resistance to pain]]. Parker has it. His back-up Craig Donovan has never actually performed a Backstep, and the one time he tries, he can't handle the pain, so they abort.

* An episode of ''Series/AgentsOfSHIELD'' featured a pyrokinetic whose RequiredSecondaryPowers (Not being burned whenever he used his powers) were a major plot point of the episode in which he appeared. [[spoiler:The "Centipede" organization harvests his heat-resistant platelets to stabilize the Extremis component of their AppliedPhlebotinum. The results for the pyrokinetic character are not pleasant.]]
** The problem they were having with the Extremis component (the newest among many attempts to recreate the [[ComicBook/CaptainAmerica Super Serum]]) was that while it gave large amounts of strength, it also had the minor side effect to cause users to ''explode'' when angry.

* The Creator/{{Syfy}} show ''Series/{{Alphas}}'' is built on this trope, or more precisely showing what happens when you don't have them. The title characters are shown as a drastic mutation in the human genome, but their bodies and minds have to adjust dramatically to accommodate their powers. You can read electromagnetic signals? Great, but that means you brain is now mostly a data processor, eating up the neurons used for emotional neural paths, making you severely autistic. One girl has enhanced senses. She's a neat freak because she ''can see bacteria'', CantHaveSexEver because it would overload her sense of touch/taste, and when she supercharges one of them, all other senses shut down because her brain can't handle the information. Bill can trigger his Flight-or-Fight response to become super strong, but has a HairTriggerTemper and using his powers is bad for his heart. Cornell Scipio has a PlayingWithFire-esque power, but only his hands are fireproof. The rest of his body can be burned, same as anyone else. Stanton Parrish is immortal, but he suffers TheFogOfAges effect because his brain isn't built to hold 200+ years worth of memories at one time. He counters this by using an Alpha who can store and retrieve the memories of others at will. Said Alpha also suffers from a lack of RequiredSecondaryPowers: He has no way to distinguish between the memories he has in storage and his ''actual'' memories, making him something of a {{Cloudcuckoolander}}.

* On [[Creator/{{Syfy}} Sci-Fi Channel]]'s ''Series/TheInvisibleMan'' series, the "Quicksilver" coating warped/blocked out all visible light, but converted ultraviolet passing through it into wavelengths that Darien could see. When invisible, Darien can still see, just in black and white. Not only that, he can see ''other'' invisible people and vice-versa. Occasionally, he would only cover his eyes in the Quicksilver rather than going entirely invisible for the effect. And to [[CoconutSuperpowers save money on effects]].
** He was also cold due to much of the heat passing around him. Somehow, however, he was able to freeze a bomb in the second episode but doesn't turn into a HumanPopsicle every time he goes invisible, or alternatively suffer a heat stroke due to not being able to radiate his own body heat plus absorbing ambient heat.
** In one episode, Darien is also able to see a ghost ([[spoiler:actually, the disembodied entity of a woman killed with a particle accelerator]]).
** In another, what would have been a permanently blinding attack is reduced to a temporary inconvenience because his eyes were coated in quicksilver at the time (and he was still able to see as usual if he quicksilvered them up again while they healed).

* ''Series/RobocopTheSeries'' shows Robo stopping cars several times, thanks to a gadget in his legs that allows him to anchor himself to the ground.

* Both ''Series/TheSixMillionDollarMan'' and ''Series/TheBionicWoman'' would rip their bionic arms right off when trying to lift a big enough weight, unless their entire skeletal structure were augmented to support the stress of heavy lifting, not to mention their running speeds. Acknowledged and gently [[{{Handwave}} handwaved]] away in the 1987 TV movie ''The Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman'', where Rudy Wells mentions adding such augmentation "just as we did for you and Jaime" to Steve's now-bionic son.
** Also averted in the 2007 ''Series/BionicWoman''; her bionics are grown by [[{{Nanomachines}} nanotechnology]], which does a certain amount of general augmentation of her body to support them.
** Averted in Creator/MartinCaidin's original novel, ''Cyborg'', upon which ''Series/TheSixMillionDollarMan'' was based. Caidin expressly states the limitations of Steve Austin's bionics: he can't lift a car, but he has a grip with incredible crush strength. He can't outrun a car, but he can run at a sprinter's pace indefinitely, since he's not building up fatigue poisons.
** Subverted in Warren Ellis' ''Global Frequency'', when a bionic man has to go through several alterations just to use his super strength, making him a hideous, misbegotten freak of nature. The process renders him so unstable that he basically amounts to a LaserGuidedTykebomb slash SuperSoldier. [[PersonOfMassDestruction A nuke without the radiation]]. And then there's the other cyborg, who explains to the Global Frequency agents just ''how'' many augmentations she had to go through to make sure her bionic arm didn't rip itself from her shoulder every time she flexed it.

* Partially averted in the made for TV movie ''Stan Lee's Lightspeed'', in which the titular [[SuperSpeed speedster]] ([[AmbiguousSyntax Lightspeed, not]] Creator/StanLee) gets windburn if he uses his powers without a special protective suit (which, by the way, he purchased at an ordinary sporting goods store) and quickly depletes all of his energy if he doesn't regularly take special nutrition supplements. Also, his base of operations for the duration of the film is the hospital room where he's still recovering from mild radiation poisoning as a result of [[RadiationInducedSuperpowers his origin]].
** He doesn't go even half as fast as [[ComicBook/TheFlash some other speedsters]] so the fact that he only gets off with only windburn is somewhat justified.

* The Founders, main villains of ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', are shape-shifters with more than necessary secondary powers. They possess heightened intelligence, eidetic memory and the attention to detail that allows them to analyze their photographic memory with frightening efficiency. [[spoiler:One Founder posed as chief medical officer Dr. Bashir for more than a month, successfully performing critical surgeries on main characters while mirroring his every nuance, while trying to destroy the Bajoran sector with an [[EarthShatteringKaboom artificially induced super nova]] at the same time.]]
** Odo, a Founder who was separated from the rest of his kind, doesn't have all the secondary powers. While he can shape shift, he cannot replicate the fine details of a humanoid face, causing his face to always have an UncannyValley appearance. He also implies he has this same limitation regarding non-humanoid organisms as well, suggesting that his seagull form wouldn't fool actual seagulls.
** The episode "One Little Ship" features a runabout that was reduced in size to microscopic proportions, which became an important component for recapturing the Defiant from some Jem'Hadar. While the runabout had its own life support systems, for its crew to operate outside the runabout, they needed an air supply beamed out with them, as non-shrunken air molecules would be hundreds of times too large for their shrunken lungs to absorb the oxygen within, and they would suffocate. O'Brien actually came close to doing so.
* In ''Series/TerminatorTheSarahConnorChronicles'', Terminators don't need to breathe; that also means they can't take air into their lungs to float like humans can, and sink in deep water. Terminators that need to infiltrate human society also cannot weigh much more than humans, which is especially important for ones that have to pretend to be lightweight, small human women, like Cameron. That also makes them very easy for other Terminators to pick up and throw around and reduces their physical strength, meaning a Terminator like Cameron can't win a straight slugging match. A Terminator's mechanical nature means that it cannot heal physical damage like a human can and must keep a stockpile of parts to repair itself, and damage to its neural chip means that it cannot repair damage to its programming ''at all''.
* Subverted in ''Series/TorchwoodMiracleDay''. Everyone on the planet becomes immortal, but without the required secondary power of super-healing. So, the guy who gets a metal rod through his chest survives, but still needs to spend days recuperating on painkillers. And the suicide bomber whose entire body gets pulverised survives, even when a flat puddle of muscles and bones on a table, and ''even when they remove his head''. And that doesn't cover the ''real'' FridgeHorror of the story...
** Jack is the only mortal on the planet (mortality was reversed for everyone). So when he suddenly gets sick on the plane to the US, he assumes it's because he doesn't have any immunities due to his former immortality (although he should, at least, have immunities from when he was mortal). It turns out to be poison. Additionally, WordOfGod is that it is only Jack's HealingFactor that is removed by the Blessing, not his ResurrectiveImmortality. Perhaps, this is because a strange hole in the planet should not be powerful enough to undo the actions of the Time Vortex itself.

* An aversion of this is a plot point in ''Series/TheXFiles'' episode "Rush". An artifact in a cave gives a group of teenagers the power of superspeed, but only partially changes their body structure to withstand physical effects. As a result, the physical damage caused by constantly running so fast leads to the teenagers slowly and unwittingly killing themselves through abuse of their superspeed; Scully notes that one of them, age 17, has musculature more similar to a man in his eighties.
** Similarly, another MonsterOfTheWeek is killed because his powers suffer from CripplingOverspecialization. He was an IntangibleMan but could only phase through objects that had electrical energy flowing through them. Thus when someone tried to run over him with a car, he instinctively phased through the car only to be bifurcated when the upper half of his body collided with the non-electrical glass.

* Partially averted in the made for TV movie ''Stan Lee's Lightspeed'', in which the titular [[SuperSpeed speedster]] ([[AmbiguousSyntax Lightspeed, not]] Creator/StanLee) gets windburn if he uses his powers without a special protective suit (which, by the way, he purchased at an ordinary sporting goods store) and quickly depletes all of his energy if he doesn't regularly take special nutrition supplements. Also, his base of operations for the duration of the film is the hospital room where he's still recovering from mild radiation poisoning as a result of [[ILoveNuclearPower his origin]].

*** A variant occurred when a 14th century MonsterOfTheWeek said "no weapon forged" can stop him. Buffy realises that said villain was from a time before mankind started [[UpToEleven forging rocket launchers]]. After the blast, this villain is also disposed of by keeping the pieces seperate after the blast.

* In ''The Comic Book Greats'', Creator/StanLee spent some 20 minutes with Creator/RobLiefeld and Creator/ToddMcfarlane creating a character named "Overkill". Stan, after so many questions about who the character really was, noted late into the process, after gleefully incorporating the comic-book excesses of the NinetiesAntiHero:

%% This page has been alphabetized. Please add new examples in the correct order.

** Early in season six, Phoebe gains the power to sense others' emotions, but can't turn it off. This causes her to uncontrollably act out other people's negative emotions which even leads to locking herself in the basement. It also becomes a nuisance to those around her who don't want their privacy invaded.

** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E17E18TheEndOfTime "The End of Time"]], the Master lacks a Required Secondary Power — creating the energy he uses when he gains the power to shoot energy bolts.

* The ''lack'' of said required abilities - specifically, the ability to filter input from SuperSenses - is a crippling problem for ''{{Series/Firefly}}'s'' [[TheWoobie River Tam]]. Since she cannot filter incoming stimuli due to her [[TheEmpath empathic]] abilities, being in contact with the minds of other people is debilitating, and when others suffer sudden physical trauma it can render her catatonic.

*** Supported in season 3 when Hiro gets a rival who has SuperSpeed. He can slow time down to a "stop", but she's so fast that it merely brings her down to normal speed. She [[LampshadeHanging even says to him]] "You must not stop time completely, or we wouldn't be talking right now."

** Hiro avoids the "flung off the planet" side effect because his powers explicitly affect ''space''time, not just time. It also makes for handy teleportation-- into the ladies' room, but hey.