Everyone Is a Super

"One of the few human residents, Marisa Kirisame was just an ordinary girl, flying as she normally does."

— Prologue, Touhou Koumakyou ~ the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

Thanks in part to the fact that Most Writers Are Human, typically, stock, unpowered human civilians are considered the "normal", most populous, average bystander of a setting. Where Everyone's A Super, however, the average bystander is a Badass Bystander. Whether it is because you are in a sci-fi setting where everyone is either a cyborg or robot or psychic, or a fantasy world with dragon-taurs walking the sidewalk next to the Child Mage, there is the assumption that not only are superpowers not worth hiding, but that they can be expected of anyone and everything in the setting. As such, anyone with superpowers are just plain not as "special" as they would be in a world with muggles. Average bystanders may openly use their ice powers as air conditioning.

Sometimes, this is not exactly setting-wide. It can simply be a hidden village of strange superpowered beings that exists with limited access to the "normal" world, and sometimes it is completely divorced from "our world". Regardless, the point is not the fantastic world, but that any superpowers, skills, or abilities that a major character may have are rendered common and unremarkable by the standards of the place they are in.

If a character who is normally special or powerful suddenly stumbles into a place where Everyone's A Super, they may find out they are merely one of The Chosen Many. If the "superpower" is I Know Karate, then Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting.

In serious works, if the hero is lucky, they may have some appropriately more epic power than most, otherwise, the heroes may be little more than Action Survivors, even if they have superpowers. Frequently, however, it is used in comic works, where the notion of superpowers are lampooned by just giving them out to everyone until everyone is so special that nobody is special. If the hero is very unlucky, they might have very weak powers or even be an Un-Sorcerer.

Of course, some supers are more super than others, especially the really dangerous bad guys.

Do note that this isn't for settings where superpowers are unusually common, or where everyone of note has superpowers, but where you could honestly expect unimportant, unnamed characters to whip out superpowers, and where that superpower use is not considered unusual or noteworthy. It does, however, include fantasy settings where everyone possesses a basic capacity for magic, even if they never train in or use it (as mere bystanders could be capable of at least basic magic, and "wizard" might be as common a career choice as "shopkeeper").

Occasionally overlaps with World of Badass. For when it only seems this way from the perspective of an animal or Insufficiently Advanced Alien, see Humans Are Cthulhu. Compare and contrast with Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In A Certain Magical Index and its spin-off, nearly all of the students from Academy City are undergoing esper training, so it is reasonable to expect unnamed street bullies to have some sort of superpower. As one teacher put it, a student not having esper powers is something out of the ordinary and worth researching. The Superpower Lottery is very much in effect though, and most of these powers are entirely useless.
• Black Clover: Everyone in the world is born with the ability to use magic, usually in the form of creating and manipulating a form of matter or element. The class system of this world seems to be based around one's magical ability, the nobles using their magical skills as a way of lording superiority over the less magically inclined peasants. The only character that does not seem to possess any latent magical ability is the protagonist Asta. Ironically, it is this complete lack of magic that allows him to wield the Five-Leafed Clover Grimoire, allowing him to wield swords imbued with Anti-Magic. Anyone else suffers from Mana Drain by simply touching the swords, so wielding them would be out of the question. But without any mana to drain, Asta is the perfect match for this power.
• Sometimes the Digimon's World borders on this trope before humans arrive in it. Digimon Adventure and Digimon Tamers added other powerless creatures so they don't count. X-Evolution is the best example with no humans or anything comparable to them in sight.
• Iris Zero takes place in a world where 99% of children are born with an Iris, which allows them to see visual clues. For example, one girl can see a devil tail grow on people when they lie. However, this causes a lot of problems, because living with a constant Augmented Reality really warps the way you view the world (often in negative ways). The girl mentioned above also wears Jade-Colored Glasses and has problems trusting people. It's a world where the tropes of Kids Are Cruel and Adults Are Useless are in full play. The 1% of kids who are not born with an Iris are known as "Iris Zeroes". Main Character Toru Mizushima is one such individual, and this has made him an outcast his entire life.
• After the second season of Lyrical Nanoha, the title character moves away from a certain Insignificant Little Blue Planet and goes to live in Mid-Childa where almost everyone is a mage like her. All the grunts in the military are equipped with staves to help in casting spells, the Air Force doesn't use planes since they can fly on their own, detectives can Mind Probe criminals to retrieve information, librarians can perform search engine-like scans on thousands of shelves worth of books, Emergency Services are protected with Deflector Shields that keep away heat and smoke and can cast the same shield on victims trapped in a burning building, doctors are equipped with the latest in medical technology and Healing Hands, and students don't need to whisper to each other since they can just use Telepathy.
• In the setting of My Hero Academia, 80% of humanity has some kind of superpower (with the percentage increasing in each generation), which are called "Quirks". Despite this, most people aren't superheroes; it's implied that most people have a minor power and/or use their power only for mundane tasks. The main character, who wants to actually be a superhero, is one of the 20% without a Quirk. This changes shortly after the series begins. It's also deconstructed, however, in that while the majority of the population is a super, people who possess "undesirable" Quirks, such as permanent transformations that give them an ugly or scary appearance, as well as people who don't have any quirk, are often maligned and shunned for their otherness.
  • My Hero (2008) has the same sort of quirk as the series it would inspire. The one glaring difference between the two stories is that its protagonist doesn't get a quirk to help save the day and sticks with his job in weapon sales.
• The hidden ninja villages in Naruto are a mix of this and Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting, because they all have Charles Atlas Superpower. Even the youngest children are in training to use Ki Attacks. Actually sort of subverted: even among the ninja villages only a relatively small number of the population ever go all the way through the academy to even become low-ranking genin. Though it does seems anyone could potentially use chakra for the various things ninja do.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi - Mundus Magicus turns into one of these once the heroes arrive there - especially for those who were previously just Muggles, though the main cast remains leagues more powerful than the average thug in that world.
• In the world of Nurse Hitomi's Monster Infirmary, all humans develop some sort of mutation or transformation during puberty. Similar to X-Men, except there are no Muggles and most variations seem to be physical changes (growing wings, growing gigantic, more or fewer eyes, or turning invisible) rather than powers that can affect others that much.
• The Mink tribe in One Piece. Every single member of the tribe, from the infants to the elderly, are naturally powerful as hell. They have great speed, strength, and combat abilities, as well as the power to channel and use electricity through their fur. They're a Martial Pacifist race, however; they're perfectly able to kick ass, but they'd rather find peaceful solutions to problems instead.
• Slayers has the "anyone can learn basic magic, but not everyone chooses to do so" variant. Notably, the swordsman of the group has a high enough "capacity" to become an incredible mage, but his attention span is too short to remember or focus on the incantations. The light novels present it a bit differently with Gourry being a bit smarter than he gives out... but double-subverted, in that his memory is still terrible.
• Tokyo Underground features an entire underground world of psychics.
• Everyone's a little bit badass in Tokyo Majin. Even the one-note delinquents in the first episode pull off improbable moves like spitting nails at a spinning bat to instantly create a nail-bat, and the nosy reporter girl can bury herself in earth like a ninja. That's to say nothing of the mystic yakuza or the five protagonists with special superpowers.
• Wind A Breath Of Heart - In spite of seeming to be like a normal town, (almost) everyone in the town the story takes place has some kind of special power, often mundane ones, and asking what everyone else's powers are is as common as asking what someone's name is. The reason this is so common becomes a major plot point...

Art

• Beast Fables: Everything in Urvara has the potential to transform. The humans are all werebeasts, and wild animals can become temporary chimeras or permanent Dire Beasts.

Comic Books

• Bill & Ted's Excellent Comic Book has one issue where the duo are stranded on an alternate Earth called Hyper-World, populated entirely by superheroes and villains who fight each other all day.
• In Bizarre New World the protagonist discovers one day he has the power of flight; partway through the series everyone else on Earth spontaneously acquires the power of flight too.
• The DCU:
  • In the post-Flashpoint DC multiverse, Earth-48 is a world where everyone and everything is super, intended to serve as the multiverse's protectors.
  • In the New Krypton story arc of the Superman stories, New Krypton is a planet on the other side of Earth's sun, sharing its orbit and populated with 100,000 fully powered Kryptonians.
  • The Untold Story of Argo City: Every time the eponymous Kryptonian floating city neared a yellow star, Supergirl and the rest of the Kryptonian population gained super-powers.
  • The Amazons of Wonder Woman are a race of superhuman women with Diana, Donna, and Artemis being the most powerful and skilled warriors.
  • In the climax of the World War III storyline, to defeat the Old God Mageddon, the Justice League grants everyone on Earth superpowers to fly into space and fight him.
  • Many of the Legion of Super-Heroes's members' home planets are inhabited by Human Aliens who all share a single super-power. Braalians have magnetic powers, Carggites can triplicate, Tromians can transmute elements, etc. At one point, it was claimed they were all the 30th Century descendents of Earth people kidnapped and empowered by aliens in the present, but that was several Cosmic Retcons ago.
• Lanfeust has the homeland/world of the titular hero, Troy, where every human has one single magic power thanks to specially-trained Sages "broadcasting" magic energy (which may in fact be more accurately called psychic energy; long story) to the nearby citizenry like mobile power relays. Everyone's powers tend to be public knowledge, and often steer those who have them towards a career path where it will be a useful skill (Lanfeust himself's power is to heat any metal, so he was training to be a smith before the Call to Adventure). However, said powers vary wildly, so it's rather common for people to have a power with exceedingly narrow applications or even a virtually useless one (making farts smell like flowers, anyone?). Although a staple of the series is characters using what they have in novel ways to give themselves an unexpected edge, like the leader of La Résistance (an animal entrails-reading soothsayer) using his abilities to plan and coordinate a much more formidable effort than his Ragtag Bunch of Misfits could muster otherwise, or one of his followers, who relishes the chance to use her power to give horrible heartburns in socially and ethically acceptable ways- to incapacitate enemy mooks.
• Marvel Comics:
  • In one alternate Marvel future (may have been published in Epic) all of humanity save one man has gained super-powers resulting in his being ridiculed for it, only for the reveal that the Celestials now come to 'harvest' humanity for some unknown purpose (all of humanity including the normal guy goes with them except for Aquarian, as his null-field power means it's impossible for him to be moved beyond a certain slow rate of speed leaving him the last living sentient being on Earth).]
  • The Inhumans: The city of Attilan is a downplayed example of this, rather than a whole world, it is a kingdom filled with Inhumans who have various powers and special gifts.
  • In Earth X, everyone's a mutant thanks to Black Bolt releasing Terrigen Mists into the Earth's atmosphere. That's one way to get rid of that Fantastic Racism. That is, until you get a load of the Monster Generation or even the new X-Men, whose mutations are so freakish they're pariahs even in a world full of their own kind. Most supers are just normal people who waste their powers or have no use for them, while a substantial number abuse their new abilities for selfish gains. Both types have caused numerous wars and conflicts, to the point that superheroes and supervillains had to step in to maintain governments. Many of the original heroes are totally unable to adjust to no longer being outliers; they've either succumbed to apathy or begun to fight a doomed war against human self-destructiveness.
  • X-Men is a deconstruction since it shows how society would react to a growing population of super-powered beings. House of M is an X-Men story with Scarlet Witch changing the world so that most people were mutants, resulting in a role reversal with regular humans now being the victims of Fantastic Racism instead of mutants. With regular humans who obtained powers through other means pretending to be mutants in order to gain acceptance, much like how in the regular Marvel Universe a "normal-looking" mutant might hide their powers to avoid discrimination.
  • In an Ultimate Fantastic Four storyline, Reed went back in time and prevented the teleportation experiment by fixing the calibration of the teleporter so that Ben Grimm wouldn't have to be The Thing. The result was an alternate world with this trope thanks to the aliens they encountered on the now successful trip with Grimm being the only normal and quite happy about it. Until it turned out to be the aliens' way of killing the entire human race, and Ben had to fix it.
• normalman (note no capital letter) was the only normal in a world full of supers. (Also the Only Sane Man.)
• The premise behind Ordinary is that an event occurs that gives the entire world superpowers, except for the protagonist.
• PS238 is about a Superhero School where the main character, Tyler, is a ten-year-old Muggle Born of Mages. Early on the stories involved him trying to get by without being accidentally killed, resulting in him becoming a Badass Normal (to his own surprise). Eventually, lots of superhero teams wind up moving to town, though Muggles still live there, the technically PS238 itself is hidden as part of a normal public school.
• Top 10: Absolutely everyone in Neopolis from bums to tycoons is superhuman: "science hero/villains" with powers, a costume and an alter ego. Aliens, robots, gods, cyborgs, psychics, all present in the crowds. Incidental details include pizza-delivery couriers with super-speed, cab drivers "guided by the universe" and comics such as Businessman.

Fan Works

• In the Alternate Universe Sonic the Hedgehog blog Always Having Juice, every named character has a power of some sort and rarely is a power repeated unless plot-relevant.
• Thanks to a Mass Super-Empowering Event, humans in the Oversaturated World all have access to a slightly altered version of Equestrian magic. For the most part this just means watered-down versions of the equestrian pony tribes' magics, but there are a couple Physical Gods, hints that other magics from Equestria made their way over, and human magic is in the mix...
• Dungeon Keeper Ami: A basic watch tower guard has been seen casting a spell to make light after some practice from a manual, and goblins, who usually are purely physical fighters, have been taught magic from suitably motivated teachers who can get the information across, imply that anyone can learn magic eventually. Especially when regular non-mage parents discuss teaching magic to their prepubescent children as a possibility once they have access to a magic-capable teacher.
• In Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!, 90% of Earth's population has some kind of superpower, be it a Quirk, a Metagene, magic, or powers gained from toxic waste or a Freak Lab Accident. A major source of conflict in the story is the fact that Izuku is Kryptonian, meaning that his powers don't fall under any of those categories in a world rife with Fantastic Racism against aliens. On the bright side, this all means that he blends in extremely easily since his powers, while extremely varied, don't stick out much at all. There are even characters with powersets similar to his, such as Wonder Woman and Captain Celebrity.
• Story Shuffle: "Peer Review" notes how every sapient species on Ungula uses magic:
  if you could find a civilization completely devoid of magic, inherent or developed, you'd have your ideal customer, but don't ask me where you'd find one.
• In the Xanth-Expy world of New Zork in With Strings Attached, every person has an Ability or physical mutation graded from F to A-Plus, depending on usefulness.

Films — Animation

• The Incredibles: Played with. Syndrome, who feels spurned by not having been born with superpowers and being rejected as a sidekick years ago by Mr. Incredible, plots to retire after his planned career as a Fake Ultimate Hero by selling his superpower-granting gadgets to anyone who can afford them. In his words, "And when everyone's super... no one will be," combining his envy of supers and desire to see them fall with the threat of a world overrun by people who paid to have those powers, and presumably lord it over those who can't, thus creating a different version of the same problem that led to his fall to evil in the first place.

Literature

• In The Amazing Adventures Of Ordinary Boy, the eponymous character is the only person in his city without superpowers.
• In the world of Sharon Green's The Blending series, nearly everyone has Elemental Powers; some have stronger magic than others, but one of the series' plot points is that everyone can be trained to use what magic they do have more effectively.
• In the Codex Alera series, all Alerans (the human civilization) possess a degree of Elemental Powers (the protagonist being a notable exception), ranging from peasants who have limited control over one element to godlike high nobility. On the nonhuman side of things, the Marat all have the ability to telepathically bond with an animal (including large, vicious predators), and while only a few of the Canim actually have magic, any one of them is still a seven-to-eight foot tall centuries-old anthropomorphic canine, and therefore plenty badass enough to hold their own against all the superpowered people running around.
• The world of Mencu in The Crest of Zabutur series is home to the Serenghe, all of whom can manipulate at least one different element at nearly any given time.
• In the original setting of The Darksword Trilogy everyone can cast some form of magic. This is because those who are born unable to do so are killed as infants.
• In Fate/Requiem, almost every single person in the world is either born with or later given a Holy Grail inside of them. This allows them to summon and maintain a Servant, and also gives them eternal youth and life by removing aging, poor genetics, disease, viruses, cancer, and other biological illnesses, as well as the ability to control their physical age with Command Seals. A good example of this is Chitose Manazuru, who is main character Erice Utsumi's grandmother, yet looks like her upperclassman.
• Deconstructed in From the New World, which is set in a future world where all of humanity has attained the power of Juryoku, psychic powers that give everybody the capacity to become a Person of Mass Destruction. Their government has had to take extremely draconian measures just to hold some semblance of civilization together. Genetic and social conditioning is used to suppress all violent instincts, and everyone has had a "Death Feedback" mechanism imprinted in their DNA that kills them if they ever intentionally kill another person. Anybody whose Death Feedback doesn't work or who shows any sign of not being able to control their Juryoku properly gets "disappeared", and all memory of them is erased from everyone who knew them.
• Grimoire's Soul: Almost everyone on Lystrata can use magic, though in Kesterline proper the general populace is under the belief that only male nobles of the Mage core can use magic. Outside of Kesterline issues with or a complete inability to use magic is treated as a disability.
• The wizard world in Harry Potter is one in which everyone has badass magical powers (with the exception of squibs). And all the Muggles... which is most of the world's population. Granted, it could still apply since the Wizarding World is the primary setting for most of the series, but it's an important plot element from time to time that the majority of the planet has no idea magic even exists.
• A small example in Super Powereds. Lander University's Hero Certification Program is located in a secret underground section of the campus. Only Supers are allowed down there (or even know of its existence). All in all, there are around 100 Supers either studying or working at the HCP. The same is likely true at the other universities that have the program. While all HCP students are required to keep the fact that they're Supers and in the HCP a secret from the outside world, in the underground campus, they're among their kind. Supers from small towns, who are used to being special, find it a bit disconcerting to be one among many.
• Every human in Xanth has a magical talent. The power and usefulness of these talents vary wildly, from entirely pointless to world-changing. The few who don't are either immigrants or get exiled to Mundania.

Live-Action TV

• Seattle becomes this in the finale of The 4400.
• Though not to superhero levels, Eureka is based on a town where everyone is super intelligent. Zoey was raised outside, so she has had a normal upbringing and lampshades how different the town being this kind of 'super' is several times. Despite this, she actually has a genius-level intelligence, in stark contrast to her father, who only rates at about 100 IQ (i.e., average) but has street smarts, people skills, and common sense.
• In season 3 of Heroes, Peter is shown a future where a superpower-bestowing serum is readily available to the public.
• Kamen Rider Wizard's Summer movie Wizard in Magicland sees the title character end up in an alternate world where everybody has magical powers and can transform into a spell-slinging Kamen Rider, with Mana even being used as a form of currency.
• In the last episodes of Limitless, the mind-enhancer NZT, which gives you Super-Senses and Super-Intelligence, has become a street drug. Unfortunately, the series ended before we saw the ultimate societal effects of that.
• Monty Python's Flying Circus: Is it a stockbroker? Is it a quantity surveyor? Is it a church warden? No, it's Bicycle Repairman! In a world full of Supermen one of them has a secret identity, with the uncanny ability to fix a bicycle. He changes from his Superman outfit (which everyone else also wears) into a brown mac.

Tabletop Games

• The D&D setting Eberron flirts with this. Because Magitek is common, there's an entire NPC class, the magewright, dedicated to making low-level magic items. Saying "I can use magic" in that setting is like saying "I have a college degree." And then there's the city of Io'Lokar, a City of Adventure with a population of over 90,000. It's stated that the average person in the slummy parts of the city is 8th-11th level; in its origin of 3.x, even an 8th-level commoner with average Constitution can shrug off being stabbed in the gut with a sword multiple times.
• World Tree (RPG) is a setting where literally everyone has some level of magic, though 90% of the population mostly uses it for Mundane Utility. Their technology is based around it(sinks are enchanted bowls that duplicate any liquid placed in them, fire extinguishers are replaced by fire-extinguishing spells set with a trigger, etc), housewives use it to clean dishes and small children will summon cookies to eat.

Toys

• SuperThings: The majority of Kaboom City is made up of object-based superheroes and supervillains, often created thanks to the power of Kazoom. There are a few rare characters that develop their powers through their lives instead, along with a small minority of non-powered civilians. In the case of the Kazoom Kids, they are a far more recent addition to the pool of heroes, turning ordinary humans into superheroes.

Video Games

• City of Heroes: There supposedly are normal individuals in Paragon City, but aside from the random invincible pedestrian (and maybe the occasional contact) you'll almost never meet them. This is especially true for anyone in the roleplaying community, unless the character in question is powerless as a gimmick.
• The denizens of Rapture in BioShock are all addicted to ADAM. Spread across the city are vending machines that turn ADAM into mutations that let you shoot fire from your hands, turn invisible, and control minds. Even the relatively "normal" users of it are much stronger, faster, or smarter than an average human, deconstructed because ADAM comes from little girls that were turned into monstrosities called Little Sisters by getting a sea slug implanted in their bodies because the sea slugs alone weren't producing enough, and later, addiction to ADAM made users insane and violent and brought Rapture that was once a prosperous society to collapse.
• Defenders of Dynatron City: The premise of Lucasfilm's ill-fated Super Hero Beat 'em Up was a Mad Scientist invented Nuclear Cola had turned every citizen into a superhero.
• Dragon Ball Online, thanks to a combination of different aspects that include: Gohan creating a book on ki control, Krillin and Tien founding their own schools, and increasing the number of hybrids, nameks, and majins. The number of people who possess great powers in the year 1,000 is very high. Just counting those that appear in the trailers, there are several dozen, but it is possible that the number is much higher.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • In every game after Arena, absolutely anyone is capable of learning to use magic. While some races are born with greater inherent magical skill, even those who are not can learn spells and be trained to use magic. (And even then, most races get an inherent boost to at least one magical skill, including the magic-hating Proud Warrior Race Nords who get a boost to Restoration magic.) Those who do not use magic simply have chosen to focus on other areas, as opposed to being incapable of casting spells.
  • Certain racial powers and birthsign abilities, though not magic in the standard sense, are essentially magical spells that can be used once per day and require no training, skill, or even magicka to use. They are simply inherent in those races and in people born under that birthsign. For example, even Nords, who typically ridicule magic users, can call on magical frost once per day as a racial power. Similarly, those born under the sign of the Shadow or Tower can magically turn invisible once per day or magically unlock a lock once per day, respectively. (Skyrim does away with the series' traditional birthsigns which were chosen at the start of the game and could not be changed, replacing them with Standing Stones which imbue the same powers but can be activated by the player.)
• The Olympic Lostbelt in Fate/Grand Order is host to a humanity that is universally enhanced with the divinely formed Klironomia. Atlanteans are the outcastes of the setting, but still live for centuries and have little difficulty defeating demonic beasts barehanded that would require the yaga specialized firearms to fight. The denizens of Olympus itself are unaging, possess Resurrective Immortality, and so strong that a centuries out of practice reserve soldier can overwhelm the protagonist's initial party single-handedly.
• In Garry's Mod, everyone normally has superpowers: They can fly, phase through objects, and they can spawn stuff and other things.
• Every named character in Gemini: Heroes Reborn has superpowers. The PC, Cassandra, is oblivious of her powers until she teleports early in the game, and later learns of her psychic abilities (including kicking ass via Mind over Matter). And it turns out her boyfriend, Alex who's working for the Big Bad has geokinesis. Meanwhile the game's main villain Cassandra needs to defeat in the final stage has pyrokinesis (well of course while Cassandra's long-lost sister, Dahlia, is a Time Master.
• Inazuma Eleven, as long as it concerns soccer, even an old hag can create wings if she learns the right skill.
• Kingdom of Loathing It's a very minor part of the setting, but your character will do simple magic - things like lighting your way in dark areas, casting a fireball, etc - in a handful of non-combat adventures even if you aren't a spellcasting class. Perhaps not everyone can do magic, but it certainly seems that all Adventurers can.
• Luminous Avenger iX is set in a timeline where Adepts are now the world's majority population and are essentially the new humans in this universe. This happens to be an invoked example, as this is achieved via Sumeragi's genocidal campaign where 90% of the non-Adept population has been culled (now labeled as "Minos"), with the remaining 10% are forced to hide in slums to avoid being exterminated.
• Mass Effect: Pay close attention, and you'll realize that the 6 classes are simply the 6 variants of alliance training. Although your standard alliance Soldier won't be as tough as Shepard is, they would still have Adrenaline Rush, Concussive Shot, and all the ammo mods. Same goes for the power of the other classes. Infiltrators with the crazy time dilation aim. Engineers with assault turrets. And what about biotic classes? What about Vanguards?
• In the world of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon, the only sapient beings are the super-powered Pokémon. The human protagonists are always transformed into one before their adventures begin.
• Romancing SaGa series game, SaGa Frontier 2 had a world where everyone has magic powers as part of their "anima", or life force. It was a major plot point because Gustav, the heir to the throne, mysteriously did not have magic powers, and was banished from the court for his freakish nature. Most of the Romancing SaGa series will let pretty much anyone use magic, even if they are not particularly good at it, however.
• Ruphand: An Apothecary's Adventure: Arkenvali Academy being able to teach magic to people even without a natural gift at it, implies that everyone in the setting can do magic if they try hard enough, although they need to focus their education on it.
• Scarlet Nexus: The majority of humans in the setting have psionic powers to varying degrees. The rare few who lack psionic capability are discriminated against and derogatorily called "duds". Cities are even built with functions that integrate the latent psionic capabilities of people, which causes inconvenience for those who lack it.
• In the Star Ocean series most magic users derive their powers from special runes, usually tattooed onto the user. Though more complex ones require training and practice anyone can learn basic spells. Some games represent this in gameplay, with basic attack or support spells as a learnable ability, and others restrict it to the canon magic users.
• Suikoden is a similar but even more extreme case of the magic variant. From the strongest warrior, down to the little girl running a card game on your ship, basically everyone can be expected to be armed with Green Rocks of some kind. Though some characters have much greater talent for using magic, virtually everyone can use it.
• Super Mario Bros. uses this, to an extent. Almost every character, with very few exceptions, has some sort of power. Most of these are apparently species traits, but even the human characters have powers.
• Touhou Project:
  • In the setting, Gensokyo, even the common humans are capable of magical powers, and are expected to be more powerful than the common fairies. The heroines are simply the ones with either even greater than normal superpowers, or in the case of Marisa Kirisame, someone with normal magical powers who trained and studied really hard to get to where she is.
  • There's also the interesting case of Sanae, who used to be revered as a god in the outside world and is believed by some fans to have had a hard time adjusting to this trope's effect when she arrived in Gensokyo.
• A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky: Most enemies, and every party member other than Lief who is specialized into dealing tons of physical damage, has magical abilities and attacks.
• World of Warcraft
  • Gameplay example on all but the youngest and emptiest realms. At any given time in the capital cities, level-capped players — many of them armed with epic gear — far outnumber both NPCs and leveling characters combined. When enemy players invade the cities, the city guards can't put up much resistance, but anyone can be a Badass Bystander. Of course, the main reason enemy players would invade a city in the first place would be to kill its ruler, who happens to be a living (or unliving, in Sylvanas Windrunner's case) example of Asskicking Leads to Leadership.
  • In Lore this is completely averted, powerful people with abilities are only a few.

Webcomics

• Likewise for Apricot Cookie(s)!: the main character is the only girl in Japan who can't transform into a Magical Girl.
• The world of Crystal Heroes fits the "fantasy settings where everyone possesses a basic capacity for magic, even if they never train in or use it" example mentioned in the description exactly. Mage is just a title people who practice magic give themselves.
• Gloomverse: The heroine stands apart as the only person in her country ''without'' powers.
• In Middle Ground, all humans are either Grounds—who can speak to animals, or Clouds—who can see into the future.
• In Tower of God, everyone climbing the Tower seems to learn to use Shinsu, which can be used to both make oneself physically more powerful and for Supernatural Martial Arts and firing energy blasts and such. Some people focus more on learning to manipulate probably-Magitek devices such as Observers and Lighthouses. This is in addition to the various other abilities people may already have and often do. Even people who seem to have no special abilities can manipulate Shinsu at least a little, as seen in the "Strongest Regular", where people like Wangnan merely scored lowly in a test of channelling Shinsu rather than being unable to do it. The majority of people just living in the Tower may still be unpowered, but many of even them are not.
• unOrdinary: In this world, everyone has an "ability" though few are to be considered "cripples" like the main protagonist John.
• In El Goonish Shive, everyone in the main cast has access to at least one spell of their own except Ashley who nonetheless is a wizard and thus has the ability to learn other people's spells. Also, everyone possesses a basic capacity to use magic and the potential to gain at least one spell of their own regardless of any awareness of it.

Web Original

• Arrow and Ace uses this as a premise; every person in the world (above the age of puberty) has a power.
• The Defenders of Stan has this as a premise. Everyone in the world except Butt-Monkey protagonist Stan has superpowers, leaving him as the last human on Earth.
• The Origins SMP, Afterlife SMP, Dominion SMP, and New Life SMP are all centred on the Origins Mod for Fabric and variations or derivatives thereof, where each player either chooses (OSMP and Dominion) or is randomly assigned (ALSMP and NLSMP) an origin out of a pool of dozens. As a result, a vast majority, if not all of the cast consists of super-powered individuals, referred to as "hybrids" in the NLSMP.
• RWBY: Every living being possesses Aura, a spiritual force generated by the soul. Aura can be unlocked through training or trauma and can be used like a forcefield to protect people from normally fatal injuries. It can also be used as a Semblance, a single superpower unique to every individual. Not every human can unlock their Semblance. Animals can also use Aura, allowing the dog, Zwei, to help Team RWBY in battle. All humans could originally use magic until the gods destroyed them. Humanity mysteriously returned to existence but, without the gods' blessing, can only use Aura and Semblance instead of magic. The gods tasked Ozma with redeeming humanity. If he succeeds, humanity will regain the gods' blessing; if he fails, the gods will destroy the entire planet. The Big Bad is trying to ensure Ozma fails.
• In Trinton Chronicles it seems like everybody has some sort of supernatural power, ability, or trait. Some are more powerful than others, but it's so commonplace that if you lack powers, you're more of a freak than if you happen to be born with powers, also magic is a normality and anyone can learn it, like any kind of science, but it takes special people with the drive to do so.
• The premise of WarpZone Project is that everyone has the potential to develop superpowers, but the masses are taught that they only exist in fiction so they never try to use them. The minority on which the system doesn't work gets to become superheroes and supervillains whose activities are covered up by a Weirdness Censor.

Western Animation

• In Avatar: The Last Airbender every single Air Nomad could airbend. Averted with the other nations, which all have a majority non-bender population.
• Darkwing Duck episode "Planet of the Capes" centered on an entire Planet of Superheroes. There was only one "Normal" in the entire population whose job it was to be constantly rescued by the supers since without normal people to rescue, the supers just don't know what to do with themselves. Being hounded by them all day caused him to snap and become a gadget-using supervillain.
• This is what Timmy wished for in the Superhero Episode of The Fairly OddParents!.
• Equestria in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic falls into this. The three races of ponies each have either magic, flight and weather control, or improved plant growth and Super-Strength, and all of them can develop talents so extreme that they might as well be superpowers, along with exaggerated athletic ability being common. More mundane species do share the setting but are a minority in the country of Equestria. Other incarnations of the franchise also fit this trope, although the details of their racial abilities differ, and were rarely as strong as in Friendship is Magic.
• The world of OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes is populated entirely by the kind of characters you'd find in trading cards and old-school fighting games, though some people's powers aren't as impressive as others.
• In the Star Trek: The Animated Series episode "The Magicks of Megas-Tu", the title characters all have magical Reality Warper abilities.
• Gem society in Steven Universe seems to be this; just about every Gem we've met had some kind of superhuman powers (even the noncombat technicians have Nigh-Invulnerability), and it was only after postwar cutbacks that it stopped being the case that everyone was capable of shapeshifting.
• Almost every Transformers setting that doesn't feature humans is an example of this trope, such as Beast Machines.

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