Flight, Strength, Heart

"So far, I've established that she can hit like a Mack truck, selectively alter the flow of time, and possibly talk to plants."

— Spike on Illyria, Angel

We've all heard of the standard superhero power deal, of people with phenomenal cosmic powers^note itty bitty living space not mandatory, and of people whose powers make people point and laugh, because What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway? Sometimes, though, people like to mix things up and give someone with reasonable, or even cool, powers an additional lame, strange, embarrassing, or useless one.

Mostly just because it's funny to list someone's powers as "energy manipulation, one of the greatest healers in the world, super strength and... can talk to slugs", instead of just "energy manipulation, healing, and strength."

Of course, Heart Is an Awesome Power can also apply, which means this power can allow for nasty surprises or emergency exits if no one ever takes it into account or it's just too wildly out of line to suspect. Which means the character is "multi-classed" as a Quirky Bard or Lethal Joke Character and standalone versions of these are avoided.

A Sub-Trope of Combo Platter Powers. May overlap with Required Secondary Powers and New Powers as the Plot Demands. Compare Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Mew Ichigo of Tokyo Mew Mew has typical Magical Girl leader powers that make her a particularly useful fighter, as well as the ability to jump high, always land on her feet, and... transform into a cute helpless kitten. Unexpectedly. This was played up in Tokyo Mew Mew - a la mode to the point where she literally had to turn into a cat after three minutes of fighting in order to let Berii take her spotlight and place as leader.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure sometimes goes this route with its Stands, having Stands that have excellent physical stats, but abilities that seem comparatively useless. Bruno Bucciarati in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind has Sticky Fingers/Zipper Man, which is a powerful close-ranged Stand with the ability to create a zipper on what it touches. This turns out to be incredibly useful for concealment, disabling an enemy either lethally or non-lethally, and even simply for moving around. Ermes Costello in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean has the Stand Kiss/Smack, another incredibly physically powerful Stand with the ability to duplicate an object she places a sticker on, then recombine them while doing damage to the original, and as is par for the course for JoJo, she gets a lot of creative uses out of it. Main character Jolyne's Stone Free/Stone Ocean is another case; a physically powerful Stand with the ability to unravel Jolyne's body into threads, threads that happen to be incredibly strong and malleable.
• Inverted a bit in Pokémon: The Original Series: Misty's Psyduck has Scratch and Tail Whip as its primary attacks (in fact, this is the only time we ever see Tail Whip in the anime). But then the uber-powerful Disable, Confusion, and sometimes even Psychic when its headache is big enough. Bear in mind that Psyduck's time in the spotlight was almost entirely during the first generation of Pokémon, when Psychic was the Gun in the game's Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors.
• Naruto:
  • The eponymous character doesn't always get the summon he wants and is stuck with Gamakichi and/or Gamatatsu instead. "Can spontaneously create a thousand clones of himself, generate and weaponize a ball of pure energy, and summon... a couple of small, hungry talking frogs..."
    • This changes quite a bit in Shippuden, as Gamakichi and Gamatatsu have grown quite a bit bigger (as in, larger than any human, though they're still tiny compared to their father Gamabunta), and even the snack-obsessed moron Gamatatsu can do a powerful combination jutsu with Naruto. And by the end of Shippuden, it goes away entirely with Gamakichi being a mere 10 cm shorter than his enormous father. Toads grow up fast.
  • Played straight/for comedy with Killer Bee, the host of the Eight-Tailed Beast. Being a jinchuriki gives you incredible amounts of chakra (even when not using the beast's power), the ability to transform part or all of the way into the beast's form, and a special power depending on which one. Of what we know of, the One-Tailed lets you control sand, the Two-Tailed can make a weird spectral fire, the Four-Tailed can control/create lava, the Nine-Tailed gives you a Healing Factor, and the Eight-Tails... lets your body produce ink from your mouth. Despite this, the current 8-Tailed host more than makes up for it with his control over the basic forms. In addition, spitting ink is more useful than it may seem, as it can be used to blind enemies or even solidified for a Doppelgänger Attack.
  • Jugo is the originator of the Cursed Seal, giving him great durability and lets him make his entire body a Shapeshifter Weapon. For an entirely different reason he can also communicate with animals, and have them do various tasks like scouting or scattered torn pieces of clothing to throw someone off their trail. Jugo's kinship with nature is actually tied to his transformation powers since both are due to him being a natural Sage, a person with strong ties to the chakra of nature.
• Parodied in Azumanga Daioh, when Tomo plans to take Chiyo's intelligence and Sakaki's athletic ability, Osaka offers her forgetfulness. The theoretical super-Tomo shows up late and without her textbook, but does a triple flip into her seat and gives a perfect translation.
• Tsugumi Ohba of Death Note said that Shinigami, among intangibility, Flight, the ability to see names above people's heads can also... taste even though they don't need to eat.
• The skill set of Negi in Negima! Magister Negi Magi includes various wind and lightning spells, Status Buffs, Flash Stepping, Energy Absorption, etc., etc. Oh, and he also knows a spell for breast inflation.
  • Negi has a secondary one involving his artifact, which borrows the powers of his partners. This includes Telepathy, Anti-Magic, a Great Big Book of Everything, etc. It also includes a Magical Girl staff that allows him to surf the internet.
  • Then there's Jack Rakan, whose portfolio includes Super-Strength, invincibility, ability to disregard the laws of physics, and... can locate enemies with alarming precision by the scent of their panties. Which he stole right off of them.
  • It's hinted that a lot of powerful warlocks will just naturally know one or two useless, crummy spells that they picked up along the way. Negi's most basic spells, learned in the magical equivalent of preschool, are moving tiny objects and fortune-telling. Negi applies this in his battle with Chao; where Chao needs a super-computer hooked up to her battle-suit to Save Scum, Negi merely creates two sprites with each ability that handle it for him, finally robbing Chao of the Game-Breaker advantage she's been abusing through the whole story arc and letting Negi fight her on equal footing.
• Luca of Saint Beast gets flight, strength, and the ability to read minds via his fingertips. In a different story one might be able to find meaningful uses for this, but in the actual series the only thing he can use it for is to read his boyfriend's mind — the reason he actually wished for it in the first place. In comparison Judas' healing kiss/breath is a lot less lame.
• In the manga version of Sailor Moon, Sailor Venus has Super-Strength, Frickin' Laser Beams , control over metals (apparently), and the ability of purifying people corrupted by magic. In Codename: Sailor V she also has the Venus Sulphur Smoke attack, that summons Venus' horribly stinking atmosphere. This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman and Heart Is an Awesome Power are at play: The one time she actually used it, she was facing a small army of cat youmas who had multiple hostages and increased sense of smell, and knocked them out instantly. Also, given the name of the attack, she was probably holding back, otherwise she would have melted everything with a cloud of sulphuric acid.
• In My Hero Academia, Tsuyu's frog abilities are themselves an example of Heart Is an Awesome Power, but they include some things that she admits aren't very useful, like being able to spit out her own stomach to clean it. Also, she can produce a poisonous mucus, but it only causes a mild stinging sensation. But then in the Joint Training Arc, she uses it to confuse Jurota's hypersensitive sense of smell.
• Shy: Pretty much Shy's base powerset. She starts with strength and a jetpack, and the rest of her powers are fueled by her kindness and compassion.

Comic Books

• Aquaman: This is arguably why Aquaman is often seen more as a punchline than a legitimate superhero, since people tend to overlook his more useful abilities like super strength, durability and breathing underwater, and just remember him as "the guy who talks to fish" (and of course, even that ability can be surprisingly useful in large bodies of water... Ever seen Jaws? Yeah, he can make that happen to you whenever he damn well pleases). It does not help that Superfriends mostly forgot about the strength and durability and didn't even bother much to at least make him Badass Normal outside of water. Yet, in some incarnations he is one of the most powerful Justice League members, especially when he also has magic on top of his other powers.
• The Authority: "Seth", a psycho living weapon developed to take down the Authority, had one thousand, two hundred and four unique powers - literally every single ability the world's seven richest governments together could churn out of their supersoldier programs (with all the resources of a World of Weirdness at their disposal). Some of them were typical Superpower Lottery things like telekinesis and super-super-speed. Some of them were quirkier, but made sense in terms of exploiting the Authority's Achilles Heels- "Larynx-Freezing Vision," for instance, stopped the team's Doctor Strange expy from getting a spell out. But then came "X-Ray Strength" and "Nuclear Poop Vision”...
• Daredevil: Daredevil's sonar super-hearing is used relatively often. His super-touch is mentioned relatively frequently, as well. Every once in a while, his super-smell will be referenced and useful. But rarely does his super-taste, which apparently allows him to analyze even trace ingredients of food, work its way into a story.
• Empowered: The titular character's hypermembrane, when intact, grants her an impressive, if unreliable, array of superpowers, such as Super-Strength, energy blasts, Wall Crawling, and invulnerability. It can also turn invisible. Not turn her invisible, just turn itself invisible. You can guess how Emp and her body-image issues feel about that little trick. It also makes phone calls.
• The Eternals: In addition to being a Flying Brick, one-time Avenger Starfox (no relation) has the power to overwhelm people with "waves of pleasure." He mostly uses this to get laid, giving the character a very "date-rapey" sort of vibe. His "pleasure power" would fall more under the realm of Useless Useful Spell. Though the ability to take an enemy out via orgasm is a potentially useful one, it's failed nearly every time he's tried to use it in a fight. Eventually the "pleasure power" became a lot more potent in the pages of She-Hulk, so naturally he lost it in a lawsuit.
• The Incredible Hulk: The Hulk has super-strength and durability... and the ability to see astral forms. Which is more useful than you might think, but not that much more useful. To be even more obscure, he can also always sense his location relative to the place he was "born" in the gamma bomb.
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Mr. Hyde has monstrous strength and toughness, and could see heat. With an invisible sociopath on their team, this did become useful.
• Martian Manhunter: Martian Manhunter has superstrength, flight, invulnerability, laser vision, telepathy, invisibility, intangibility and shapeshifting. He also has nine senses, which are poorly defined and ignored by most writers.
• Savage Dragon: The titular character has superhuman strength, invulnerability, a healing factor, superhuman aim, superhuman agility, and... the ability to speak any Earth-based language. He didn't even realize he had this power until he met someone who spoke Mandarin.
• She-Hulk: Captain Rectitude, in addition to his Flight, Super-Strength, and energy beams, has a strong anti-smut instinct in place of his normal biological drives.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): As in the games, Silver the Hedgehog has telekinetic powers that can do just about anything the writer can think of, with him being able to fly and throw meteorites with his mind. Here his amazing psychic abilities can also give you a headache. Normally he can only read the minds of other psychics, and even then only if they'll let him anyway. But it came in handy in issue 217 when he used a psychic booster to release a herd of walruses from mind control.
• Spider-Man: Spider-Man got one of these in The Other powerup mini-arc before Civil War. He gained such powers as being able to see in the dark, tracing vibrations through his weblines, poison stingers in his arms... and the ability to identify the species of any spider on sight. At least he didn't end up shooting webs out of his behind.
  • Even before that arc, he had adhesive abilities allowing him to climb up walls. That can sometimes come in handy but super-sticky powers still sound puny when compared to super strength and agility. In fact, he once held a small child to his back with no hands, like a spider's egg sac. That's right. Spidey had the power to give spider-piggyback rides! The proportionate piggy-back rides of a spider!
  • Kaine, the second Scarlet Spider, picked up a similar set of abilities after his return... as well as, much to his displeasure, the ability to communicate with spiders. There are several where this power has come in handy, but Kaine, a determinedly serious angsty anti-hero, refuses to use it unless absolutely necessary.
• Star Fox: Star Fox's own Fox McCloud "could fly circles around a flea, endure days of gravity training, recite the Cornerian Constitution backwards and belch on command." ^note Presumably the command was, "Belch, McCloud, belch!"
• Sub-Mariner: Namor has super strength, can fly, can breathe both air and water, can charge his body with electricity, has telepathic control over undersea life... and can puff himself up like a puffer fish. The latter powers (thankfully) haven't been seen since his reintroduction into Marvel in the 1960s.
• Superman:
  • Superman used to have the power of Super-Ventriloquism, which he used surprisingly frequently (because being able to literally throw your voice gives you a way to communicate in the vacuum of space). Also whenever Superman -or other Kryptonian- used to use his powers to do something more efficiently writers would call it Super-<Insert Thing Here>, so "weaving at Superspeed" became "Super-Weaving"◊. The worst case of which is a simple multiplication, which Supes calls "Super-Mathematics"◊ while he gets the answer wrong^note he comes to an answer of 32,000; the actual answer is 3,200. His "Super-Breath" is used only sporadically (volcano eruption, "Fire Wall of Doom"). In War World, Superman and Supergirl use their Super Ventriloquism to communicate in the vacuum of space.
  • Supergirl was created in the late Silver Age and she was so overpowered like her cousin, but she was not liable to come up with new weird powers every issue. Still she used "Super Ventiloquism", in Action Comics #258 she used "Super Aiming" and in Supergirl Vol 1 issue #1 she uses Super-Suction Breath to capture a serial killer (she draws out the air out of a cab so the man in there faints). Supergirl once complained (to herself) how "lame" "Super Breath" was.
• Teen Titans: Starfire is a Flying Brick who can shoot energy beams. Also, in order to explain her grasp of English, she can learn any language by kissing a native speaker. Later a Retcon says that it can be any form of touch, but she likes kissing because it's more fun.
• The Tick: The Tick in the original comics. He has Super-Strength, Drama Power and is Nigh-Invulnerable... And the ability to pull 2 dollar bills out of Hammerspace inside his pockets at will. The Tick uses this incredible power to pay for groceries.
• The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: Squirrel Girl, whose primary abilities push Heart Is an Awesome Power to new levels, gets in on this act. Her useful abilities include Talks To Squirrels and Squirrel Agility, but she also has lips that taste like hazelnuts.
• Wonder Woman: Wonder Woman has flight, superstrength second only to Superman, reflexes fast enough to block bullets with her bracelets (and indestructible bracelets), an indestructible magic lasso that can break enchantments and force anyone bound with it to answer any question truthfully and a razor-sharp tiara she can throw like a boomerang. Did you know she can also talk to animals? Neither did most of the people who write her comic, judging by how often she does it. She can also talk with trees.
• X-Men:
  • It's more a Required Secondary Power, but Cyclops has a natural grasp of spatial geometry: usually he uses it to bounce his eyebeams off stuff, but he has used it for other things (like throwing rocks and baseball) at least occasionally. Wolverine once noted that this means it's a very bad idea to play against Cyke in a game of pool. Captain America also has this as well for the same reason (except with his shield); one can only imagine what would happen if the two of them played pool together.
  • Gambit used to have a power which had no practical applications but meant he could touch Rogue. Though this was useful as the two were lovers. (He lost it, of course.)
    • He also had a "charm" power, which everyone except Chris Claremont completely ignored.
  • Rogue herself, when still possessing Ms. Marvel's powers, had a latent seventh sense that allowed her to detect danger. She used it perhaps twice in the comic books. Ms. Marvel herself rarely used the power, either.
  • Nightcrawler can teleport (taking other people along - or just pieces of them - if he wants), climb walls and ceilings, turn invisible in shadows, and has superhuman agility and a prehensile tail he can use to fence with three swords at once. He also has the ability to know whether or not he's in his home dimension. He can count the number of times he's used this power for anything other than instinctively ending up in the right dimension when he teleports on the fingers of one hand. And Nightcrawler only has three fingers per hand.

Fan Works

• Zany To The Max:
  • When the Warners become superheroes, they all have super strength, flight abilities, etc. They also have their own special power. Yakko's is cutting things up with invisible, giant, or invisible giant scissors, Wakko's is hitting things with rocks, and Dot's is...wrapping things up with paper.
  • It turned out to be useful in the Powerpuff Girls parody, where she wraps Pinky and The Brain up in enough paper to keep them from moving.
  • The Warner Cousins (except Sikko, who has super powers in normal form and doesn't have a Warnerpuff Toon form) have special powers when they are superheroes as well. Zak and Ko can separate, exploding in the process. They become conjoined again if they touch each other. Pakko can use his hands as keys. Makko can shapeshift and make music without an instrument. Jot can make a computer screen appear above her.
  • The Zarner Siblings have special abities in superhero form as well.

Film

• The Pumaman has super strength, flight (kinda), teleportation, intangibility, a danger sense, and the ability to see in the dark. He can also fake being dead. Since Puma Man is basically useless despite his smorgasbord of powers, he at one point uses his possum power to get the villain to leave him alone.

Literature

• Maximum Ride:
  • Angel has Super Strength, Flight, Telepathy, borderline Mind Control, and...can talk to fish.
  • Nudge, can sense stuff about people through what they've touched (important — she can guess any computer password), and she's magnetic (not so important — they play with it on a plane for awhile, then it's promptly forgotten).
• The Sleeper from Wild Cards gained a new form and powers every time he woke up. However, one power stayed with him: He could generate sad piano background music by saying 'Play it again, Sam'.
• In Mistborn: The Original Trilogy Mistborn have Allomancy, the power to "burn" metals to grant them the power associated with that metal. Some of them are obviously useful - pewter grants you enhanced strength and agility, for example, while others are useful in this particular world - copper hides your own use of Allomancy and protects your mind from Allomantic influence. Then there's gold, which allows you to see the person you would have been had you made different choices and is mostly good for traumatizing yourself (because you don't just see them, you temporarily perceive yourself as them — while still perceiving yourself as yourself), and aluminum, which just destroys all the metals you've swallowed. For extra fun, most Allomancers are "Mistings" who can only burn one metal. If that metal is aluminum or duralumin (which grants a massive power boost to the other metals you're burning except that you can't burn any other metals), congratulations, you have the power to do nothing, and get called an "aluminium/duralumin gnat".
• Journey to Chaos: The Enlightenment Superpower that Eric acquires in Ceiha grants him increased spiritual power, vast stores of magical knowledge, and effortless fluency in a dead language. He uses the last one for "outrageous unfair translation fees".
• Journey to the West: The Monkey King Sun Wukong has a massive plethora of powers, including Super-Strength, Nigh-Invulnerability, True Sight, Cloud Somersaulting, Self-Duplication, Voluntary Shapeshifting, Complete Immortality, etc... as well as having authority over horses. The last one was thanks to a brief stint as Heaven's stable boy.
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians: As the son of Poseidon, Percy has all sorts of abilities at his disposal. The power to control water, communicate with sea life, create hurricanes, control boats, outright summon water even when he's far inland, heal whenever he's in contact with water and survive in the depths of the ocean without drowning, getting crushed by the pressure, or even getting wet. He can also talk to horses^note Poseidon first created horses in his contest with Athena and flawlessly navigate while at sea. He gets some use out of the former what with the pegasi and hippocampi he befriends, but the latter hardly gets used at all.

Live Action TV

• Marty Hopkirk in Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) has a bunch of useful Ghostly powers and... voice mimicry. Usually this would be a possibly useful power, but Marty is the type of ghost that very few people can see or hear so it's only useful in Plot Tailored to the Party situations.
  • An even better example would be at the start of the second season (in the remake, anyway), where he gains the ability to... shrink shoes.
• Illyria from Angel initially has the powers of an Old God - including outstanding physical strength, invulnerability, shapeshifting, time-manipulation... and the ability to talk to plants.
• The Secret World of Alex Mack is a show about a girl who, after being dosed by chemicals, gains telekinesis, the power to send out electric shocks, turn into a puddle (which is a lot more useful than it sounds, as she could actually move around while in water mode), change color when upset (which isn't) and, after a power creep, burp bubbles and wield super strength after eating curry.
• In Heroes, Sylar acquires superpowers whether they're useful or not. One of his first powers is "melting things," which he's never seen to use again. His telekinesis, lightning blasts, an incredible Healing Factor are all used often.
• In Misfits, 'Jesus' had the powers of telekinesis and teleportation, but also walking on water and the ability to drive people mad with lust by touching them. Justified by the fact that he brought these separate powers from Seth.
• Jenny McCarthy had a show structured like SNL for a while, and one of her recurring characters was a superheroine who had the usual powers, plus the ability to blast people with quarts of snot that made them chill out.
• All That: Whenever Superdude appears, he states some of his superpowers before mentioning his sensitive side.
• The comics had Wonder Woman as an The Champion of the amazon warriors with Super-Strength and an invisible plane. The Wonder Woman TV series introduced the world to the way Diana Prince could spin to change her clothes to Wonder Woman's, and back into Diana Prince (in the episode "The Feminum Mystique Part 1)", and also gave Wonder Woman the power to talk to pigeons, calm guard dogs, and perfectly impersonate a German spy's voice
• The Doctor: Master of time and space (with their TARDIS), frighteningly intelligent, knows everything about everything, can completely recover from being killed just about any way you care to kill them, and speaks fluent baby. (The Doctor is fluent in basically every language, which includes baby. And horse.)

Puppet Shows

• In the Dinosaurs episode where Earl becomes a super-hero, he has the abilities of Flight, Heat Vision, Super-Strength... and can guess anyone's weight to the nearest pound. A news anchor even refers to him as the "Weight-Guessing Wonder".

Tabletop Games

• Dark Sun sourcebook "The Will and the Way" has a kit "Tribal Psionicist" whose main feature was the combination of usual class development and random wild talents (acquired without learning all the prerequisites and synergetic with normal learning). That may happen to be overpowering or almost useless, at whims of the Random Number God.
  • Best one? Trying to figure out a way to use "You can tell what direction is what." (Well, it could come in handy if you're lost...)
    • Considering most of Athas (the world of Dark Sun) is essentially an arid desert wasteland full of dangerous monsters that getting lost in is usually a death sentence that power would be very useful.
• Solars in Exalted are blessed by the Unconquered Sun. What sort of powers does this give them? They can become awesome at just about anything, fight well enough to kill gods, dodge attacks that are undodgeable, make a person do almost anything with their powers of persuasion, learn the most powerful sorcery in existence, and even shape primordial chaos into concrete reality. But there are two abilities they all have in common: the power to make their foreheads glow, and to know the time of day at will. Hey torches and watches are fiddly and expensive!
  • In Keychain of Creation, Marena used the light-from-the-forehead thing, and Misho was implied to be using it as well. So far, though, nobody has had occasion to use the time-of-day thing.
    • Radiating sunlight is also very helpful when dealing with vampires, if you learn the right charm. Sadly, trying to find vampires is quite difficult, since they don't appear in the setting, but hungry ghosts and darkbrood have reason to fear.
  • Infernals tend to end up in this, due to their Charm trees being somewhat indirect and organised by theme rather than mechanical focus. You can end up accepting better oceanic survival despite the majority of the chronicle taking place in a city located deep in the desert because it lets you anoint your stuff with poison, bleed acid, and turn other people's morning coffee into lashing tentacles. Malfeas's Feel No Pain Charms are separated by one that lets you go without sleep indefinitely, but when you do sleep (usually to recover willpower), you experience a horrible nightmare. Adorjani Infernals, meanwhile, can easily end up supplementing their run-really-fast powers, of which they have a lot, with "hate loud noises", "survive indefinitely on murder" and "undergo mitosis". And, of course, you can access the oddities of multiple Yozis, and indeed have to in order to function at full power, leading to an odd situation where an Infernal is running around simultaneously able to see reality-that-is and a horrible nightmarish dreamscape because he counts running as sleep and has nightmares when he sleeps.
• Not uncommon in Mutants & Masterminds, if the player is quirky enough. Some of these simple powers and feats can actually break the plot if the DM doesn't plan ahead. (Like the ability to make nigh-instant gather information checks, or a Bag of Holding that can swallow enemies whole.)
• The Villains & Vigilantes superhero RPG determined powers randomly, so it was pretty common to get one useful power, one that might be at least somewhat related thematically to the first if you squinted just right, and one that was both nearly worthless and completely out of left field.
• Some D&D Spells and powers can create this effect, especially the optional rules and level 0 spells. Wizards can blow up dragons and turn coins into rings. Clerics can raise the dead and produce water from nowhere. An optional Hexblade ability allows you to create spooky omens for no reason other than to freak people out.
  • Even the mightiest wizard, with powers to challenge the gods themselves, wouldn't think to go out without preparing the "Prestidigitation" spell that morning. It has essentially no gameplay value, but can improve the taste of food and clean your clothes.

Video Games

• Touhou Project protagonist Reimu Hakurei can fly (granted, nearly everyone in Gensoukyou can do that), call upon the powers of the Shinto and Hakurei Shrine gods, create advanced barriers and seals, make herself completely untouchable at a whim, and eat sweets without getting fat.
  • Yuuka Kazami is a youkai with incredibly high levels of strength, endurance and magical energy, and is (possibly) the original creator of Marisa's Master Spark. Her actual power is manipulation of flowers, which is referred to as "more of an extra."
  • Eirin Yagokoro's power is being a super genius who can make any medicine conceivable, which is by no means a lame power but it doesn't sound like it could stand up to many of the overpowered denizens of Gensokyo as far as combat goes. However, she has lived for possibly millions(!) of years, is probably one of the gods who were present during the creation myth of Shinto and has a proportional knowledge of magic. She can form a sealed barrier around the whole Earth and implies that's not even her most powerful spell. Yeah, needless to say she is a Final Boss.
  • Remilia Scarlet might be a case of this. Her power is the "manipulation of fate," which if taken to its full potential should make her a Reality Warper. However, this does not seem to be the case, and her little sister seems to think that Remilia literally made her power up in order to seem cooler than she really is, which would not be out-of-character given that Remilia is as close to being an Evil Eye-type Chuunibyou as a legitimate vampire can be. Common consensus seems to be that Remilia's ability, if it's even real, is more of a luck-influencing power than anything, she can increase the probability that things play out in her favor, but not cause unrealistic events to transpire. Regardless of any of this, however, she is still a vampire, which means she is endowed with Super-Strength comparable to that of oni, Super-Speed comparable to that of tengu, a Healing Factor that allows her to survive basically anything, and enough magical power to wreathe all of Gensokyo in blood-colored mist.
  • Another potential entrant in this trope is Yuugi Hoshiguma, with the "power to wield unexplainable phenomena." In a world where everything is unexplained phenomena and therefore, nothing is, this could be the strongest power of all, or the most useless one. Nothing in canon explains her power in the slightest, and the wiki's stance on the matter is "damned if we know," which makes sense given that explaining the power would be anathema to the power itself... At any rate, she is still an oni, and one of the Four Devas of the Mountain to boot, and among the Four recognized as the physically strongest member. You know you're a badass when a race whose members are known to occasionally shatter mountains gives you the moniker "Yuugi the Strong."
• In Sam & Max: Freelance Police: The Devil's Playhouse, Max has the power to see the future, teleport, astrally project himself and others into films or slides, shapeshift, force words into other people's mouths, compress into a tiny space, read minds, destroy elder gods, eat nightmares, warp reality, and produce an Nutritional Information list of any food item he looks at. This last power isn't even necessary to beat the game.
• In Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly, Spyro can breathe fire, ice, and bubbles. The Bubble Breath is entirely useless except for trapping the MacGuffin dragonflies. Later game "A Hero's Tail" featured Water Breath, which couldn't kill any enemies and was only useful for solving a few puzzles.
• In Kingdom Hearts, the Keyblade can appear at will, assume nearly any form, act as a conduit for magic, annihilate The Heartless, and lock or unlock just about anything that has a lock. Which turns out to be the most powerful of its abilities by far, because hearts lie behind doors.

Webcomics

• In Slightly Damned, Kieri the water angel can fly, shoot icebolts, and has a curse that lets her turn into a cute bunny. Being said cute bunny restricts Kieri's ability to fight and it weakens her magic. However, it crosses into Cursed with Awesome when Kieri becomes unhittable due to small size and increased rabbity agility. After all, Toski did refer to it as a gift!
• In Something*Positive, Super Stupor: While not a weak power by any means, the very...intimate contact necessary for one superhero's truth power to work makes him very reluctant to even admit that it exists [1].
• Dave's kernelsprite, from Homestuck, was prototyped with an impaled crow. This gives him wings & flight, an always available sword, energy beams, insight into the secrets of the game, and apparently the ability to deface posters from a distance while someone is writing on them.
• In Roommates (and its Spin Offs Girls Next Door and Down the Street) Jareth's main power is over time and space (even people's personal time and space perception), he also has some very limited general magic (enough to heal small injuries)...and the power to instant change people's clothing. (Could be highly specialized teleportation, but then where on Earth does he get the clothes from?)
  • Roommates' explanation is that magic is the extension of the caster and the narrative, which means it's Wild. The clothing change is one of such side-effects, but Jareth tends to shamelessly exploit it for his own amusement. The thing is: anybody wielding his powers will get an attire fitting the narrative, no matter if he wants it or not. (Yes. This happened.)
• In The Non-Adventures of Wonderella the title character has super strength and invulnerability and can jump really high, which are all she uses. Occasionally she demonstrates other, more bizarre abilities. For example, the ability to vomit up a live octopus when tied up, the ability to order plants to die, and "oyster sense". She also gets heat vision as an allergic reaction to shellfish.
• In El Goonish Shive, Grace has shapeshifting, telekinesis, immunity to fire and ability to talk to squirrels (later extended to all animals).
  • And Nanase has assorted physical boosts, illusion powers, flight, conjuring and controlling copies of herself, and instantly changing her hairstyle. Both Justin and Sarah regard the last as the most awesome.
  • And Ellen has the ability to fire a variety of transformation beams from her hands, copy the forms of others and apply them to herself or other people, and shine a flashlight-like beam of light from her hand.
  • It's explained that true magic-users like Nanase gain spells that reflect who they are. Most people have some attributes that are big and significant and some that are not. So presumably everyone falls under this trope.

Web Original

• Aquerna, at Whateley Academy in the Whateley Universe. Strength, quickness, leaping ability, and...she can talk to squirrels (although some of the time, this one is her best power).
  • Makes sense once one considers that she gets her powers from a (possibly the) squirrel spirit. She gets overshadowed by many of the flashier super-teens at the school, but it's actually a pretty neat and consistent package.
• SCP Foundation: SCP-076-2 a.k.a. Able: super strong, Made of Iron, can materialize blades from nowhere...and has a great affinity for tending to livestock.
  • He's the Abel (as in, the one from The Bible). The tending to livestock bit is the one that makes sense out of a grab bag of powers that have no apparent explanation either scientifically or from his origins.

Western Animation

• All three of The Powerpuff Girls are superstrong and can fly, can shoot Eye Beams, and have several other cool powers. Blossom also has freezing powers, Bubbles can speak any language (including animal languages), and Buttercup can...roll her tongue like a taco.
• During the second season of W.I.T.C.H., the girls gained some interesting secondary powers. Among the quirkier of their new powers, Irma gained the power of persuasion and the ability to turn people's clothes pink. This is used to great effect to annoy the muscular Knight of Vengeance Frost who apparently doesn't believe that Real Men Wear Pink. Considering Irma is the comic relief of the team this could almost count as Personality Powers. In the comics, some of the first signs of Irma's potential as a Guardian were her "wishing" (implied to be her persuasion powers being used unconsciously)for Mr. Collins to ask her about the only subject she had studied the night before and her wishing for a blue dress and proceeding to turn her entire wardrobe blue. Compared to the second person's example of power-potential-demonstration (Taranee redirecting a firework about to hit Irma in the face and then warding flames away from Will), it does make it seem like Irma got hit with What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?.
• Discussed Trope in Jackie Chan Adventures, where the villains split the 12 talismans between the four of them, letting them rob banks with super strength, laser eyes, and the ability to turn cops into chickens, among other things. Finn, however, gets the powers of astral projection, motion-to-the-motionless and balance (spiritual, sadly). Luckily, he complains enough so that comparatively-Badass Normal Hak Fu trades with him...and then he makes a second trade with Ratso when this gives him flight and two healing powers (which later turn out to not actually be redundant).
• The Fairly OddParents!: Noticing that his parents have to work all day and are too tired for him when they get home, Timmy wishes to his fairy godparents that his parents were superheroes and "toss in whatever superpowers they can think off". Standard powers: superstrength, flight, morphing powers, heat vision and superspeed. Stranger but no less practical powers: spider snot. And then there's meat vision, which they inexplicably retain in at least one later episode.
  • They also turn out to have immunity to magic, which becomes a problem when he wants to hit the Reset Button.
• South Park features Captain Hindsight. Not only can he fly, but he also has...extraordinary hindsight. This is treated as Cursed with Awesome. Interestingly, as denoted by his superhero moniker, the extraordinary hindsight is considered his main power, while his flight is mostly just a way for him to get around so that he can dispense his belated wisdoms. It doesn't even occur to anyone that he could use his flight to save people from a burning building, instead of explaining in detail what should have been done to avoid that fire in the first place.
• Lilo & Stitch: Stitch has super strength, a super-retentive brain (can learn any language, alien, human, or otherwise, in a very brief time period), agility, quick thinking — he's created to be a being of mass destruction. He can also act as a gramophone (stick a claw on a vinyl disc, open Stitch's mouth, and swing to the Elvis). And regurgitate and perfectly reassemble a cake he just ate.
• Superman: The Animated Series: Along with his better-known powers, Superman can exactly imitate other people's voices. He says it comes from "precise muscle control" and incredibly good hearing.
• In The Super Hero Squad Show this applies to just about everyone. Doctor Strange, for example, is good at energy projection, transformation of matter, Bulgarian Cow Tipping, and sudoku.
• In Teen Titans, Starfire is a Flying Brick with Super-Strength, the ability to project energy blasts from her hands and eyes, resistance to the vacuum of space and other harsh environmental conditions, and the ability to...learn languages by kissing a native speaker. (According to the show, it has to be a kiss. See the comic above.)

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