Line #74 WeaksauceWeakness/Literature


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6	{{Weaksauce Weakness}}es in literature.
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9	* ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' has one book where the group finds out the Yeerks' BizarreAlienBiology allows both them and the hosts to treat ''instant maple oatmeal'' as an addictive drug on par with heroin. While they plan on dumping a bunch of Quaker Oats' finest into the pool the Yeerks use to rejuvenate, they don't end up using it as a weapon because it plays merry hell on the hosts as well.
10	** This trope gets interestingly subverted with the Orff (an alien race that only appear in the BadFuture in book 41). Their entire bodies are transparent except their eyes and internal organs, which are clearly visible. Jake initially scoffs at this and wonders why any creature would evolve with such an obvious weakness. Later on, he gets grabbed by an Orff and tries elbowing it in the lungs, to no effect. He then suddenly gets the idea that their "organs" are really decoys, and tries punching the same Orff really hard in a seemingly empty space on his body, which knocks the creature out instantly.
11	* ''Literature/ArtemisFowl'':
12	** Fairy magic can be completely stopped by animal fat. That's right, magic that can make you invisible, hypnotize people, heal nearly anything, and in some cases ''travel through time'' can be stopped by ''lard''. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry0TyIJXgoU Praise the Lard!]] Possibly a LogicalWeakness instead. Fairy magic is strongly connected to the power of life, so animal fat, as a substance strongly symbolic of death, counters the effects.
13	** Some of the laws that (most) fairies have to adhere to thanks to some very old, powerful magic-- the most commonly seen are the Ritual for restoring magic (has to be done with an acorn, at the full moon, under an oak next to a bend in the river... or at least to start with. By the second book that's already been thrown out as mere myth.), the 'fairies cannot enter human houses without permission' rule, and by extension, the 'fairies cannot disobey a direct command given by a human eye to eye' rule. [[spoiler: These are handwaved away by [=No1=] in the 6th book.]]
14	* The main weakness of vampires in ''Literature/{{Blindsight}}'' is '''geometry'''. If right angles take up too much of their visual field, they have massive, frequently fatal seizures. Right angles are very rare in nature, but once humanity developed architecture the vampires went extinct until later humans reconstructed them and developed "anti-Euclidean" drugs to counter the special vampire weakness (and keep the vampires dependent).
15	* In Creator/FredSaberhagen's ''Literature/BookOfSwords'' and ''Books of Lost Swords'' series, [[InfinityPlusOneSword Shieldbreaker]], the Sword of Force, can defeat any weapon, and as such is the only thing that can defeat, even destroy, one of the other Swords, but is powerless against an unarmed man. [[spoiler:In the final novel, Shieldbreaker is destroyed by Woundhealer, the only one of the Swords which cannot be used as a weapon.]]
16	* ''Literature/BruceCovillesBookOf Aliens II'': The aliens in ''Brandon & the Aliens'' turn out to be vulnerable to the foam in fire extinguishers.
17	* In ''Literature/{{Bystander}}'' Lucretcia won the SuperpowerLottery. But she has two big weaknesses. First, she is weak against hot weather. A warm summer day means she can't leave the air-conditioned car, or she'll blister instantly. Two, she sucks at using her powers. Especially fighting. Being as strong as Superman isn't much use when you can't HIT the opponent!
18	* ''Literature/CaptainUnderpants'' loses his powers when he's subjected to spray starch. [[spoiler:Actually, he doesn't, but he ''thinks'' he does, in an invocation of the [[PlaceboEffect Nocebo Effect]].]] At least until George and Harold retcon his origin story in book 5 to make him immune to it. His true weakness however is getting splashed in the face with water, which makes him revert to Mr. Krupp and breaks his hypnosis. Tippy Tinkletrousers heavily lampshades this in book 10 when making fun of George and Harold after discovering it.
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20	* ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfPrydain'': The only thing which can subdue the Horned King in ''The Book of Three'' is his real name. Notably, neither the reader nor most of the heroes ever actually learn what it is; only Prince Gwydion knows it, and he's not telling.
21	* In one ''Literature/ChooseYourOwnAdventure'' book, ''The Enchanted Kingdom,'' your character visits a mystical land populated by fairies. You find out that they have the standard folklore aversion to iron, but when some ghouls break your sword, you find out the ghouls are weakened by the presence of ''plastic'' when you pull out the only blade you have left, your Swiss army knife.
22	* In ''Literature/CodexAlera'', all of the various crafters' fury-granted ElementalPowers can be countered by their opposing element (i.e., dripping water on a [[PlayingWithFire firecrafter]] prevents use of fire furies, putting a [[GreenThumb woodcrafter]] in a metal cage nullifies wood furies, etc.). [[BlowYouAway Windcrafters]] have greater difficulty using their wind furies closer to earth, and being covered or surrounded by earth renders their furies impotent. However, they also have another weakness: salt, when it comes into contact with their furies, causes them great pain and disrupts them. As a result, anyone expecting to fight a windcrafter carries bags of salt with them to disrupt their BulletTime, flight, and other powers. Salt-tipped arrows are a specialist weapon against hostile wind furies, and a salt-tipped arrow is [[spoiler:what Bernard uses to critically injure High Lord Kalarus]] in ''Cursor's Fury'' by [[spoiler:disrupting his wind furies in mid-flight, causing him to take a nasty plummet into a forest and introducing him to Newton's laws in a most painful and crippling manner]].
23	* The Hunter from the ''Literature/ColdfireTrilogy'' is one of the most powerful beings in the series, but also fatally flawed in his nature. As part of his DealWithTheDevil to stave off death, the Hunter surrendered his power over life, creation, and light. He can no longer use healing magic without dying, sunlight burns him horribly, and he is completely unable to manipulate ordinary fire. A villain in the first book took advantage of these weaknesses by luring him into a cave filled with crystal and used a mirror to reflect what little sunlight there was back at him, with the light magnified by the crystal. Then he was rendered helpless by being placed in an ordinary bonfire.
24	* ''Literature/TheCosmere'': Aluminum is magically inert, and as such resists or negates most forms of Cosmere magic. Aluminum can't be [[Franchise/{{Mistborn}} Ironpulled or Steelpushed]] and resists [[Literature/TheEmperorsSoul Forging]] and [[Literature/TheStormlightArchive Soulcasting]], an [[TinfoilHat aluminum foil lining in your hat will block emotional Allomancy]], a [[AbsurdlySharpBlade Shardblade]] cannot cut through aluminum, and so forth.
25	* In the ''VideoGame/DiabloTheSinWar'' trilogy, Diablo, the Lord of Terror and one of the three most powerful evil things in existence, is defeated by a reflective surface. Diablo appears as things you fear, and if it's bad enough to scare Diablo, it's pretty bad.
26	* In Creator/NickPerumov's novel ''Literature/DiamondSwordWoodenSword'', magic-users are vulnerable to the herb swamp crower. Its smoke makes everybody cough, but magic-users also temporarily lose their powers.
27	* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'':
28	** The Auditors in ''Literature/TheScienceOfDiscworld III: Darwin's Watch''. There are very logical and clearly worked out reasons why chocolate kills them in ''Literature/ThiefOfTime'', due to some peculiar circumstances. In ''[=SoDIII=]'', though, it just ''does''.
29	** Non-incarnated Auditors can be killed by getting them to say "I", "me", or otherwise admit individuality. [[InsaneTrollLogic Since it's widely]] [[RuleOfFunny known that]] (a) only living things have individuality, (b) all living things die after some amount of time and (c) any living thing's lifespan is practically no time at all compared to the universe's, any Auditor who admits individuality instantly dies. By the perspective of the rest of them, this isn't much of a loss, since there are more Auditors than there is ''anything else in the universe'' and, by definition, any given one of them is supposed to lack any defining characteristics.
30	** Much of the plot of ''Literature/CarpeJugulum'' concerns a group of "modern" vampires attempting to subvert this trope by developing resistances to the traditional vampire weaknesses. [[spoiler:They ultimately fail to do so.]] Discworld vampires play this trope in a weird, AllMythsAreTrue way. ''All'' weaknesses you might have ever heard of apply to ''some'' vampire, but you may have to do trial and error to find out which ones apply to the particular one who's trying to eat you right now. There are also a few with psychological problems that compel them to do things that directly address their particular weakness (such as the vampire flash photographer who works for The Truth, who has a weakness to bright light, and the one who worked at such jobs as pencil maker, garlic stacker, and whole-sale holy water clerk).
31	** Discworld bogeymen are incredibly strong, reasonably nasty, and some of them can teleport to some extent. Their vulnerability is that they're ridiculously susceptible to ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve. If you can get your head under a blanket, then you believe you're safe from the bogeyman and therefore you are. If you can get the ''bogeyman'''s head under a blanket, he goes into "existiental shock", since he no longer believes he exists.
32	* Bram Stoker's ''Literature/{{Dracula}}'' averts most of the popular traditional weaknesses; for example, he can't be killed by most conventional means, and can use his shapeshifting powers during dawn, noon, and dusk. However, he does have unique weaknesses; he can only cross running water during high or low tide (this amounts to 12 hours and 25 minutes per day), needs to keep a small amount of Transylvanian soil in his home, and needs to be invited inside before he can enter a building (considering this is Victorian era England and he is a noble, this is a non-matter).
33	* The Vir Requis a.k.a. {{Weredragon}}s of ''Literature/DragonsOfRequiem'' have a weakness to a common plant. Some have trained themselves (or through so much exposure have developed) to resist its effects, but to the average Vir Requis even being touched by its leaves is so painful they'll instantly revert to their human forms and/or be unable to shift into dragon form. It's no wonder human armies coat their arrow tips in the plant's extract, and when a particular Vir Requis king conquers the known world, he has the plant burned to extinction.
34	* ''Literature/{{Drenai}}'': In ''Winter Warriors'', the BigBad sends nine nearly invincible demonic warriors after the heroes. They have super-strength, inhuman stamina and fighting skill, can track humans by scent, and are immune to edged weapons. In fact, they're only vulnerable to two things -- namely, wood and water. Cue lots of impalement on sprung branches and getting pushed off bridges to a humiliating and watery grave.
35	* ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'':
36	** All Fae are vulnerable to iron. So much so that Queen Mab, one of the most powerful beings in existence, is scared of an iron nail. The Summer and Winter Knights, while human, inherit this weakness as well, but in a reduced form — having their skin pierced by iron or steel completely nullifies all of their Fae powers, which is especially dangerous because one of those powers is the ability to [[FeelNoPain ignore disabling injuries]]. The eldest of the Fae Queens, Mother Summer and Mother Winter, lack this weakness. Mother Winter is shown [[CrossMeltingAura making an iron cleaver rust]].
37	** Spirits from the Nevernever can be sent back instantly, and their earthly bodies turned to goop, if you trap them in a magic circle -- which can be as simple as drawing a chalk circle on the ground and touching it with a drop of your blood. Giant scorpion? Goop. Mob of inhuman assassins? Goop. Ice spiders? Pure goop! The problem, of course, is getting these beings to actually ''stand still'' long enough to draw and empower the circle.
38	** Black Court vampires are the equivalent of the "classical" vampire, with all the same weaknesses, such as garlic, holy water, and sunlight. Harry weaponizes these weaknesses by filling paintballs with garlic and holy water, and in the short story ''It's My Birthday Too'', he manages to utterly defeat a new-ish Black Court vampire by [[spoiler: spitting garlic powder from a Pizza Hut shaker into her face]].
39	* The weakness from ''Literature/TheWonderfulWizardOfOz'' is spoofed in the ''Literature/EnchantedForestChronicles'', where evil wizards can be melted with water -- but only with soap and lemon juice added. The good witch Morwen, on the other hand, explicitly does not melt. It is later theorized that this might be because the wizards never shower while Morwen is something of a neat freak. Eventually, the heroes refined this into a one-word spell with the same effect. One very memorable word, too: [[spoiler:Argelfraster]]!
40	* The giant Ollyphant from ''Literature/TheFaerieQueene'' can easily fell armored knights, but cannot harm chaste virgins, so he flees in fear at the sight of a woman.
41	* Trolls in ''Literature/AFantasyAttraction'' have a weakness for... ''[drumroll]'' flowers. Herbal shampoo by extension.
42	* The DeathWorld creatures of ''Literature/{{Fragment}}'' are averse to salt water and avoid it (it's toxic to them for some reason), which is presumably what's kept them confined to Henders Isle. This is discovered accidentally by a lucky fool who blunders into a saltwater pool while fleeing the orgy of death chasing him, and is later adapted as a defensive measure against Henders creatures.
43	* Leto II, the ''Literature/GodEmperorOfDune'' who lived a few millennia, was vulnerable to [[spoiler:water due to his sandtrout symbiosis, which was how he [[HeroicSacrifice set himself up to be killed]]]].
44	* ''Literature/{{Goosebumps}}'':
45	** In ''Literature/AttackOfTheMutant'', there's a subversion of the trope that's invoked to then play the trope straight. Specifically, the young male protagonist is facing an enemy supervillain who has the ability to change into anyone and anything. The boy knows in advance that if the supervillain were to change into a liquid, he'd get ''[[ShapeshifterModeLock stuck]]'' that way and be defeated, which is the ''supervillain's'' Weaksauce Weakness. Since the villain is under the impression that the boy is a superhero, the boy pretends that ''his'' Weaksauce Weakness is that he's vulnerable to acid, so the supervillain changes into a wave of acid, and after the boy hastily jumps out of the way, the supervillain gets stuck in his liquid-acid form, thus ensuring his defeat.
46	** The kids in ''Literature/HowToKillAMonster'' have to figure out exactly how to do that. Falling three stories doesn't stop him nor does poisoning a pie. Luckily, there's a DeusExMachina way out. [[spoiler:The monster dies after they confirm they're humans, as he's allergic.]]
47	* ''Literature/HarryPotter'':
48	** Slytherin's {{Basilisk\|AndCockatrice}} in ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheChamberOfSecrets'': "The crowing of the rooster is fatal to it." Sure, [[spoiler:Voldemort-possessed Ginny Weasley]] made sure to eliminate all of the roosters on the grounds, but still.
49	** The Boggart in ''Literature/HarryPotterAndThePrisonerOfAzkaban'' seems to be almost an incarnation of this trope. A Boggart will materialize in the form of a person's worst fear (though exactly what that means is debatable). The way to repel one is to forcibly imagine the fearsome thing as something ridiculous, and then laugh at it. Alternatively, the Boggart can't handle trying to frighten more than one person at once, as attempts to materialize into more than one person's fear results in things such as the "half a slug" incident. This is why Lupin advised his students not to face a Boggart alone (combined with the above reason).\
50	''[[AllThereInTheManual Pottermore]]'' goes a little more into detail with the boggart -- since they're nearly impossible to kill and feed off emotion, they're incredibly dangerous to Muggles, but given that Riddikulus is such a simple spell that a thirteen-year-old can learn it in minutes, even a very powerful boggart is a minor nuisance to a prepared wizard. At one point, it describes a boggart that had fed on the fears of local Muggles and become "an elephantine black shadow with glowing white eyes"... only to then note that a Ministry wizard was able to trap it in a ''matchbox.''
51	** Voldemort's inability to understand Love, and ThePowerOfLove, proves to be his ultimate undoing. However, this is more of a FatalFlaw. Harry does not beat Voldemort because of some mystical aspect of love, but because having reliable friends and allies ultimately gives him an advantage over Voldemort, who [[EvilCannotComprehendGood underestimates the capacity of others to behave selflessly because he would never even consider doing so himself]].
52	* In ''Literature/TheHauntingOfDrearcliffGrangeSchool'', Amy reflects that every [[DifferentlyPoweredIndividuals Unusual]] has a weakness of some kind, which she thinks of as a "leaf", after [[Literature/{{Nibelungenlied}} Sigurd]]'s AchillesHeel. One example given is that while the American hero Captain Adonis is invulnerable to almost everything, strawberries will make him explode.
53	* Sun Wukong, the Monkey King of ''Literature/JourneyToTheWest'', is pretty much the most powerful warrior in existence (barring only truly enlightened figures like the Buddha, who ''are'' existence). However, he notes that he's pretty useless whenever he's underwater: being made of stone, he sinks like a rock, so he needs to use water-repelling magic or shapeshift into a weak form to do much of anything down there.
54	* ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'':
55	** The Nazgûl are vulnerable to sunlight and fire, and will not cross running water if they can at all avoid it. The first two are actually a LogicalWeakness- as creatures of darkness and cold; it makes perfect sense that they wouldn't like light and heat - but Tolkien never explains (either in the books themselves or WordOfGod) why they feared water. Tolkien was famous for using existing legends to establish the reason why certain myths are the way they are. The fact that they fear running water is a reference to many mythic demons, who could not cross running water. [[WatsonianVersusDoylist In-universe]], one could infer that it's because their cloaked robes are the only things keeping their wraith-forms contained in any semblance of physical form. Trying to cross rapidly moving water would run the risk of their cloaks being swept away, meaning they'd become intangible and useless until they found replacement clothing to allow them to reconstitute themselves, which is exactly what happened to the ones caught in the flood outside Rivendell. (This also gives them a second reason to want to avoid fire.)
56	** An alternate explanation would be that running water carries the power of Ulmo, the Lord of Waters and one of the most potent Valar. Since things symbolically connected to the other powerful Valar (eagles, the distilled starlight in Galadriel's phial, etc) have been shown to oppose creatures of evil, there is some logic behind this.
57	** The Witch King of Angmar, the most powerful of the Nazgûl and Sauron's [[TheDragon Dragon]], cannot be killed by the hands of men. This invulnerability does not include women or hobbits, so the lord of Nazgûl falls to the blades of Eowyn and Merry, a woman and a hobbit respectively. This is not a standard invulnerability - it was simply that his fate was foretold by the elves that "not by the hands of men shall he fall" (paraphrased). Technically, a man could have killed him; it was simply not his destiny for that to happen.
58	* The Martians, in Creator/RayBradbury's ''Literature/TheMartianChronicles'', are killed ''en masse'' rather early in the book by a human-induced plague of chicken pox. It's a [[ShoutOut knowing reference]] to both American history and ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds1898''. One character muses how wrong this seems: "in the name of all that's holy, it has to be chicken pox, a child's disease, a disease that doesn't even kill ''children'' on Earth! It's not right and it's not fair. It's like saying the Greeks died of mumps, or the proud Romans died on their beautiful hills of athlete's foot!"
59	* The ''Literature/MichaelVey'' series features a character with the nickname "Zeus" who can shoot lightning bolts just like the god of the same name. He is unable to bathe because the water appears to cause his powers to short circuit.
60	* All types of the fae in ''Literature/TheNameOfTheWind'' are susceptible to iron.
61	* In [[Creator/LJSmith L.J. Smith's]] ''Night of the Solstice'' series, the Fair Folk-like race known as the Quislai have many advantages, such as immortality, invulnerability, extreme beauty, the ability to throw lightning bolts, the power to travel to places quickly using secret pathways through space, and freedom from nearly all physical limitations. They can't be imprisoned by normal means, as doors and windows will unlock themselves for Quislai, and they can travel through dimensional gateways between worlds without preparation while everyone else requires a special magical amulet to use them. However, the one thing that can restrain them is a thornbranch tangled in the hair. Unfortunately, most Quislai seem too ditzy to think of cutting their hair short or at least avoiding rosebushes.
62	* ''Literature/TheParasolProtectorate'' has the usual weaknesses for vampires, plus a psychic tether to their hive and a strong aversion to citrus that can be overcome with time. Werewolves are vulnerable to sunlight, silver, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking airsickness, and basil]]. In this universe, pesto sauce was invented to weaponize the allergies of both species.
63	* In "Literature/RawheadRex", the titular creature is nearly immortal and capable of paralyzing his enemies with a gaze. What does him in is his pathological fear of menstruating women. To him, the idea is unnatural and smacks of castration. So strong is his fear, he was able to be entombed in a pit for 400 years simply by being buried with a few primitive statues depicting a menstruating woman. Having one of these shown to him makes him seize up in fear, allowing the villagers to lynch him to death.
64	* Epics in ''Literature/TheReckonersTrilogy'' all have one factor that will at least temporarily negate their powers. They range from incredibly difficult to identify, much less exploit, to ones like ultraviolet light and smoke.
65	** In ''Mitosis'', the eponymous Epic's weakness is his own music - a former musician who loathed his band's songs, he was defeated by a group of people singing at him.
66	** In ''Firefight'', Newton's weakness is [[spoiler: ''being complimented'']]. The instant this is discovered her threat ends.
67	* Eddings' ''Literature/TheRedemptionOfAlthalus'' featured both one protagonistic and one antagonistic FiveManBand, both with similar power arrays. The villains included the evil mind-leech Koman, with telepathy and mind-warping abilities... who was defeated when Althalus thought about random numbers. ''Fractions'' of numbers, even.
68	* ''Literature/ReleaseThatWitch'': [[spoiler:Demons]] require a "red mist" to even breathe, and the only way to create a red mist generator is to wait for the magic concentration to peak every 400 to 500 years or so. As such, they can be killed by damaging the red mist tanks they use to move outside red mist areas, and destroying one of their red mist generating obelisks will instantly turn an entire region of them into a KeystoneArmy.
69	* In the ''Literature/SabinaKane'' series vampires spontaneously combust when attacked with apple-related substances (some examples: Sabina's [[DepletedPhlebotinumShells apple cider bullets]], applewood stakes, and a can of pepper spray loaded with apple cider instead). {{Justified\|Trope}} by vampires' ancestral connection to the Garden of Eden, through their progenitors [[Myth/HebrewMythology Lilith]] and [[TheDescendantsOfCain Cain]]. Sabina, however, is immune, because she's [[{{Dhampyr}} half-mage]]. Garlic is pointedly harmless; in fact Sabina's InternalMonologue states that [[YourVampiresSuck the vampires made that up]] as a smokescreen for the apple thing.
70	* The Tanu in Creator/JulianMay's ''Literature/SagaOfTheExiles'' are much stronger than humans and can survive being hacked up by bronze swords. However, just a scratch from an iron blade is fatal. Iron is also the only way to safely remove the torcs they use to enslave and/or grant psychic powers to humans; attempting to remove one without iron tools will kill the wearer due to psychic shock.
71	* Grettir of the Old Icelandic ''Literature/TheSagaOfGrettirTheStrong'' was considered the strongest man on Iceland, but after being cursed by a revenant, he was afraid of the dark for the rest of his life.
72	* Iron against the chaos mages in the ''Literature/SagaOfRecluce''. Even the strongest bolt of chaos fire can be stopped cold by a thin sheet of iron, and the more powerful a chaos mage is the more they're hurt by iron, to the point that what for anyone else would be OnlyAFleshWound will be a OneHitKill for an experienced chaos mage.
73	* In Vadim Panov's ''Literature/SecretCity'', Nav' are [[TheAgeless non-aging]] {{Magic Knight}}s who will survive anything short of ChunkySalsaRule. Unless the offending item is made of or covered with obsidian. This was successfully weaponized by both Lyud' in sniper bullets and by Chud' in obsidian sword coatings. The only record of an inter-Nav' war also tells of Nav' warriors wielding obsidian blades.
74	* Creator/MercedesLackey has fun {{playing with\|ATrope}} the iron weakness of fae; in her ''[=SERRAted=] Edge'' book series, the good elves not only use their skills as ''race car mechanics'' to work up a tolerance to iron, but also gladly use the metal to shield themselves from enemy elf attacks. Also, elf magic goes haywire in the presence of iron. In fact, the good elves have noticed that iron makes their magic go haywire in extremely predictable and repeatable ways, so they have incorporated it into their defenses and can use it to, for example, negate their enemies' magic while delivering their own with deadly accuracy. In the same series, however, she plays the Trope straight in that her elves have a powerful vulnerability to caffeine.
75	* ''Literature/StarTrekNovelVerse'':
76	** A secondary canon ''Star Trek'' novel (''World Without End'') describes Vulcans as being extremely vulnerable to cold, and sufficient exposure to Earth's winters can kill them much faster than the exposure can kill a human. When staying on Earth briefly with his mother's family as a boy, Spock has to be completely bundled up whenever he is walking outside in the snow.
77	** The Saurians are immensely strong, can breathe almost anything, have incredible stamina... but being nocturnal and having huge, sensitive eyes, they can be rendered helpless by shining a bright light. Saurians serving in Starfleet wear protective lenses.
78	* Tofu from ''Literature/SuperMinion'' has trouble with electricity. Any time he receives an electric shock, it causes the NanoMachines in the area to self-destruct, causing sections of his flesh to disintegrate.
79	* ''Literature/TheyThirst'': Thanks to Father Silvera, the heroes discover that [[spoiler:seawater]] is an anathema to vampires.
80	* ''Literature/ThirdTimeLuckyAndOtherStoriesOfTheMostPowerfulWizardInTheWorld'': Demons are especially hurt by ivory, it turns out.
81	* In the first book of Creator/AnneMcCaffrey's ''Literature/TowerAndTheHive'' series, ''The Rowan''[[note]]Technically the second, after ''To Ride Pegasus'', but most fans consider ''The Rowan'' the first of the series proper[[/note]], Prime-level [[PsychicPowers Talents]] could not travel off-planet, due to Travel Sickness — a severe form of vertigo. They later found out that this wasn't the case — one of their own imprinted her own physical condition on the rest. So now the older Primes consider it a phobia, rather than a medical condition.
82	* The Masters in ''Literature/TheTripods'' had a huge weakness to alcohol. Granted, so does anyone or anything else that drinks too much of it, but in their case, just a small drink of alcohol-laced water was enough to knock them cold and paralyze them. Additionally, they were able to detect when food and drink had been tampered with, with the exception again of alcohol.
83	* The White Queen of ''Literature/TheUnexploredSummonBloodSign'' is an [[CompleteImmortality immortal]] RealityWarper who can NoSell anything... except [[spoiler:the main character Kyousuke, who she's madly in love with. Just being hugged by him can cause her to miss an attack]]. This is parodied at one point in the seventh volume, where she's the subject of an EnemyScan: it states that she is resistant to all elements and abnormal status effects, but also that she can't mitigate her special weakness to [[spoiler:Kyousuke]] in any way.
84	* The aliens in ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds1898'' are killed by [[spoiler:a common disease. The aliens were so advanced and germophobic that they wiped out all microbial life on their native planet. This meant they had no means of developing immunities when they invaded Earth]].
85	* In ''Literature/WarsOfTheRealm'', demons are just as strong as angels, but can easily be weakened and killed [[KillItWithWater by water]].
86	* In ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'', channelers are people and therefore are vulnerable to all the things that squishy humans are (though they can do things to help offset that). However, they are particularly vulnerable to Forkroot tea. In normal humans, it's harmless, if at most a mild sedative. In channelers it cuts off their ability to use their magic and knocks them out.
87	** Not to mention that of those who naturally develop the ability to use the local flavor of magic have a ''75% chance'' of it being fatal without instruction.
88	** Trollocs and Myrddraal (the local flavor of evil Mooks and Lieutenants) have the old folk story weakness of not being able to cross running water. Myrddraal, with sufficient coaxing, could drive Trollocs to cross water, but it needed a damn good reason.
89	* ''Literature/{{Wicked}}'', a parallel novel based on ''Literature/TheWonderfulWizardOfOz'', explores the Wicked Witch of the West's weakness to its entirety, explaining that since birth, exposing her skin to water hurt her, so she had to clean herself with oil and find creative solutions for things which normally involve using water. When she cries, it's like acid flowing down her face. Weakness to water could be the result of the unexplored concept of being "a daughter of the dragon". Its also implied that if Elphaba had ever come into the fullness of her powers, water would cease to be a true threat to her (at one point she instinctively freezes a lake, allowing her to cross it unharmed). TheMusical [[Theatre/{{Wicked}} adaptation]] openly mocks the entire idea of water melting the Witch. [[spoiler:Elphaba uses this urban legend about herself to fake her own death at Dorothy's hands.]]
90	* ''Literature/TheWitchOfKnightcharm'': A rookie witch named Janet at an evil WizardingSchool is able to use magic which turns her intangible. That would be pretty good, but to use her spell, she has to first chalk a circle around herself and then ring a bell, while almost all the other students can cast their magic without needing to first prepare the environment. This nerfs Janet, since her opponents are almost certain to launch their attacks before Janet can cast her own magic.
91	* ''Literature/TheWonderfulWizardOfOz'':
92	** The Wicked Witch of the West was done in by a pail of water. This was explained in the book (but not in [[Film/TheWizardOfOz the movie]]) as due to her being "dried up by years of evil," but no indication was ever given that water would kill her. The book does mention that the Witch would never go near Dorothy when she bathed because she hated water.
93	** The Wicked Witch is not the only one afraid of water; while Tin Man doesn't melt, he rusts to the point of total immobility -- even though he shouldn't.
94	** Another [[Literature/LandOfOz Oz]]-related Weaksauce: the Nome King was an extremely powerful, nigh-invincible subterranean fairy who had armies of nomes... all of them, including him, could be weakened, to the point of being killed, by ''eggs''. This really isn't as bad as it seems at first, though, because there's only one chicken in Oz, and even that one was brought there from Kansas. [[spoiler:Then she started having chicks.]]
95	** Tik-Tok is an impressive clockwork man, whose processes (thinking, movement, and speech) are powered by three separate springs which need to be periodically wound, or he'll run down. And he is unable to wind them himself. Leaving him alone for more than a few hours is all it takes.
96	* In the ''[[VideoGame/CastlevaniaIISimonsQuest Simon's Quest]]'' volume of the ''Literature/WorldsOfPower'' series, Dracula's vengeful spirit can be driven off by bad jokes.
97	* In ''Literature/{{Worldwar}}'', the invading reptilian aliens called 'The Race' had an immense weakness to ... ginger. Not only was it an incredibly addictive narcotic, but it also made the females produce sexual pheromones outside of the normal fertility cycles, turning exposed members of The Race into crackheaded sex fiends. When the humans attacked Race-occupied Australia, they used missiles armed with warheads ''packed with powdered ginger''.
98	** Even before they discover ginger's effect on the Race females, they find that not only is it extremely addictive to the lizards, but it also causes them to temporarily feel nigh-invincible - not a good trait for an infantryman, a tank crew commander, or a fighter jet pilot.
99	* In ''Literature/YouAreDeadSignHerePlease'', the bureaucrats are required to obey any and all Earthly laws, even ones passed in the infamously corrupt and insane city of Dead Donkey.
100	* In ''Literature/{{Zeroes}}'', Crash suffers pain and discomfort when in the presence of complicated electronics, particularly those which use wireless transmission. Needless to say, the proliferation of computers and cellphones has not had a positive impact on her life.
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Context WeaksauceWeakness / Literature