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Self-Harm–Induced Superpower

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Superpowers are awesome; however, many writers tend to give said powers some sort of tradeoff or necessitate an unconventional way of triggering them in order to keep things interesting. One way to do this is to require someone to directly inflict self-damage in order to use/activate their powers. This makes it so one may only use their powers out of desperation; after all, if someone is willing to hurt themselves in order to gain power every time, then surely they mean business, and requiring injury could prevent the powers from being used too liberally. Perhaps the abilities are fueled via The Power of Hate or Unstoppable Rage, and injuring oneself is the easiest way to fill oneself with the necessary emotions. It could also hint at some darker or sinister nature behind said powers (though not necessarily the people using them), since they require a literal flesh and/or blood sacrifice in order to use. Less commonly, it might simply be that they just need to be hurt (perhaps in a specific way), and doing it themselves means they can control how much damage they take before the power kicks in.

Sub-Trope of Power at a Price and Self-Harm. Compare Blood Magic, where spilling blood, especially if it's the user's own blood, is used to work magic. May overlap with Traumatic Superpower Awakening, though not necessarily if the injury or trauma is only required to use or activate the power for the very first time. Can overlap with Cursed with Awesome or Blessed with Suck. In games, it is often integrated into the game mechanics via Cast from Hit Points. Often pairs well with Healing Factor so the injuries don't catch up to you in the long run. Compare Painful Transformation, for a power (shapeshifting) that is itself painful rather than being triggered by pain, and Self-Mutilation Demonstration, for a power (immortality) that can be demonstrated by self-harm but is not reliant on it. Compare Hydra Problem, another power activated by injury, self inflicted or not.


Examples

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Attack on Titan: In order for Titan Shifters to transform, they need to be injured enough to draw blood and have a purpose in mind for their transformation, so most of them will cut themselves or bite their hands when they want to trigger their transformation. Being a Titan Shifter also means having a Healing Factor, so these injuries aren't a big deal in the long run. However, if there's no reason present, as in Eren's case when fighting the Female Titan, no matter how many times he bites his hand, it doesn't work.
  • Bleach: Giselle Gewelle can use her blood to turn anyone into a zombie, meaning she has to injure herself first to do it.
  • Darker than Black: Every Contractor has a specific Remuneration that they're compelled to perform after using their powers. The Gravity Master Louis has to break his own fingers. November 11 sees his remuneration as this trope: he's a straight-edge villain who has to smoke cigarettes. The contractor Wei is the most overt example in the show: His power is to disintegrate anything he's spilled his own blood on, and thus his combat style involves intentionally cutting his hands and wrists and using hand movements to flick blood at his opponents. Making it better for Wei is that his Remuneration is to cut himself, which he has to do anyway to use the power, effectively meaning his power is completely free.
  • In Deadman Wonderland, all Deadmen are able to manipulate their own blood as a weapon. But since they need an open wound to draw the blood from, many of them will bite their thumbs or use other implements to injure themselves. Ganta in particular cannot recycle his own blood, as he shoots it as a deadly projectile rather than circulating it around him. As a result, his ability to engage in protracted fights is limited by the amount of blood he can risk losing without passing out.
  • In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba's Mugen Train arc, Nezuko headbutts Tanjiro hard enough to make her forehead bleed so she can use her Demon Blood Art to try to wake him up from his Forced Sleep.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean: The Stand called Highway To Hell inflicts any lethal damage done to the User on another person in proximity. Father Pucci used Whitesnake to impart its Stand DISC onto Thunder McQueen, a clinically depressed, pathologically suicidal inmate who takes every chance he gets to kill himself such as by hanging with a belt, drowning in a bathroom sink, and even electrocuting himself. Several times, McQueen comes close to committing an unorthodox murder-suicide on Ermes Costello as a result.
  • Downplayed with the Kamui in Kill la Kill, advanced clothes that give superpowers to their wearers but drink their blood in order to sustain the transformation. The blood consumption is handled through a proboscis-like needle in the outfit itself, but the user triggers when it is used.
  • Magical Girl Site: Kosame Amagai received a magic wand from Magical Girl Site that takes the form of a utility knife. By cutting herself with it, she can use her blood to heal others' wounds.
  • Menhera-chan the titular character and her trio were able to transform into their magical girl forms by cutting their wrist.
  • My-HiME: Nagi could always summon Orphans to attack the HiME (with the actual goal being to teach them how to best use their powers so that they could fight each other later). However, in the manga, he has to cut open his skin to summon them, as they form from his blood.
  • Naruto:
    • Ninja activate magic scrolls by biting or cutting the skin at the tip of their finger (usually the thumb) and touching it to the scroll because they require the user's blood to activate. Summoning techniques require the same blood offering, with the caster placing their bloodied hand on the ground to perform the jutsu.
    • Hidan of the villain group Akatsuki has the special ability to link himself to his target, resulting in any damage to him being inflicted on his target as well. Since Hidan himself is both immortal and very resistant to pain, his "fighting style" often boils down to linking himself to an enemy and then repeatedly inflicting self-harm, crippling if not outright killing his enemy without having to run around.
  • One Piece: Played with a little bit with Luffy's Third and Fourth Gear modes, as the self-harm isn't quite what activates it, but it is needed to activate them. To activate Third Gear, Luffy bites into his thumb and then blows air into his own bones. With Fourth Gear, Luffy bites into his arm instead and then similarly inflates his musculature structure instead.
  • Soul Eater: Crona has to bleed to use their Black Blood as a weapon.

    Comic Books 
  • Civil War (2006): The trigger for the creation of the Superhuman Registration Act that would become the cornerstone of the conflict is the rash actions of the New Warriors, who attacked a group of villains hiding out and triggered an explosion that killed hundreds of civilians (including a large number of children). The Sole Survivor is Speedball, whose power is based on kinetic energy. After the explosion, he learns that his powers are now activated by pain and so fashions a new suit with sharp spikes fastened on the inside (so almost every move he makes will draw blood), renaming himself "Penance". It's one of the more infamous examples of Wangst in modern comics and why he got the Fan Nickname of "Bleedball".
  • In Finder, major character Jaeger Ayres has a Healing Factor. Unfortunately, this means that he has to self-harm every so often if he hasn't been injured some other way, because with nothing to do, his healing factor sends his immune system out of control and gives him auto-immune diseases.
  • Husk from Generation X tears her own skin apart to grant herself temporary superpowers based on the material of the skin underneath. It's often a crapshoot (and she's been known to molt past her control), but with concentration, she can influence what she gets.
  • Maximum Carnage reveals that Carnage's symbiote got into his bloodstream somehow during his previous fight with Spider-Man and Venom. As a result, if he's ever separated from the symbiote or it gets destroyed, he'll immediately grow a new one if he gets cut, whether he does it to himself or someone else cuts him. As he was a psychopathic serial killer before bonding with the symbiote, he has no problems with cutting himself to activate his powers though he rarely needs to.
  • The Mighty Thor: Thor's enemy Mr. Hyde uses a potion to add muscles and additional cells to his non-expanding skin; the result is like cramming 10 pounds of stuff into a 5-pound bag (that won't break). Extremely painful, but the result is enough strength to take on Thor.
  • Runaways: Nico initially uses a pocketknife to cut her arm whenever she has to summon the Staff of One (which only appears when she bleeds). After the first arc is over, she can't bring herself to use the pocketknife and instead resorts to more imaginative ways to bleed (including making use of that time of the month).
  • Wolverine: Downplayed example, but the Healing Factor possessed by both Logan and his clone X23 heal the skin over their claws as soon as they retract, meaning that in order to use their claws they have to cut themselves again. According to Logan, it's quite painful.
  • X-Factor: The mutant power of Jamie Madrox (a.k.a. Multiple Man) is to create duplicates of himself (nicknamed dupes) by making use of kinetic energy. The simplest way for him to create dupes is to just slap or punch himself.

    Fan Works 
  • The Bloodstained Hero: Izuku often needs to make himself bleed for his powers to activate. Vlad King, whose quirk allows him to control his own blood, mentions that self-harm tools like bloodletting knives are very common for people with blood-related quirks, and he himself relied on them when he was younger.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In Everything Everywhere All at Once, activating universe shifts and accessing the abilities of your other selves is done by taking "statistically highly improbable" actions. This involves doing something uncomfortable at best or downright harmful at worst, such as giving yourself a bunch of really awful papercuts between your fingers or using a stapler on your own forehead.
  • Some Kind Of Hate is about an undead girl named Mara who feeds off the sadness of bullied victims and will avenge them if they're angry enough to say "I want my bullies dead." In order to attack others, she must attack herself — e.g., to break someone's arm, she must break her own arm. That's how spiteful she is, having been brutally bullied in the past.
  • Star Wars: Pain strengthens the Dark Side of the Force, so some Dark Side users will deliberately hurt themselves to expedite the process. The most well-known example of this is Kylo Ren from the sequel trilogy, who at one point pounds on his own wounds in the heat of battle in order to grant himself additional power.

    Literature 
  • Re:Zero: Petelgeuse always injures his fingers in some manner, such as by biting them, breaking them, or ripping off the nails, right before he activates his Unseen Hand, suggesting that he needs to harm his fingers (or just himself in general) for the power to activate.
  • Wild Cards: The Hero Twins are a pair of Mayan Native Americans with superpowers that need to be activated by shedding a bit of their own blood.
  • Kai of Witch King has powers that require pain to fuel. In order to avoid becoming an Evil Sorcerer like most other magicians of that type, he tends to use his own. The demonic Healing Factor helps.
  • Worm: Marquis, a bone-manipulating supervillain, has to have his bones burst out from his body and break them in order to use his powers offensively, which causes him agony despite his minor healing factor, but he's trained himself enough to not show any signs of physical pain.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Queenie in American Horror Story: Coven is a "living voodoo doll". When she harms herself, an identical wound will appear on her target. She also recovers extremely quickly from such wounds.
  • Gen V:
    • Marie has the power to manipulate her own blood and use it as whips. She just has to bleed herself first, and she carries around a knife to cut herself if need be.
    • In a less conventional way, Sizeshifter Emma has to vomit in order to shrink, thus she's emulating another form of self-harm. At one point she mentions that she is losing the enamel in the back of her teeth.
  • In Misfits, a supernatural event happens where a storm imbues people with superpowers that are based on a person's personality and personal characteristics. Everyone finds their superpowers apart from Nathan, who is confused as to why he doesn't have any superpowers despite being in the storm, spends the first season and the web series trying to find his powers which largely involves injuring himself to test which power he might have. At the end of season 1, he discovers that he has Resurrective Immortality.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Dungeons & Dragons: The Blood Hunter classnote  relies on cutting themselves to gain power-ups, using their magical blood to amplify spells and curses. There are also subtypes: the Order of the Lycan transforms into werecreatures, the Order of the Ghostslayer studies deaths and combats undead, the Order of the Mutant enhances their bodies to become ultimate warriors, and the Order of the Profane Soul makes pacts with lesser evils to fight greater threats.
  • In the Shadowrun supplement Magic in the Shadows, a magician can use Blood Magic techniques to enhance their magical abilities. One way to do so is for the magician to injure themselves and spill their own blood.
  • Epideromancers in Unknown Armies are all about hurting themselves to gain magical power. Many of them start self-harming before learning epideromancy, rather than vice versa; some even spontaneously awaken their magical ability this way.

    Video Games 
  • Bayonetta 3: Viola first taps into her faerie transformation when impaled on the massive claws of Strider during a boss fight with him. The power is unlocked for normal gameplay thereafter, and the animation for triggering it shows Viola stabbing herself on her nodachi.
  • The Binding of Isaac:
    • The Razor Blade is an item that grants a power boost for the room, provided that Isaac harms himself and gives up at least a heart of red health to the item. The Blood Rights item takes the same price but deals room-wide damage instead.
    • Eve can start with the razor, and she also gains multiple offensive bonuses from Whore of Babylon should she have only a red heart of health or less.
    • Samson gains damage the first six times he takes damage per floor. While this bonus can come from simply getting hit by an enemy, he can donate health to blood machines, devil beggars and confessionals to take advantage of this on purpose.
    • Devil deals are a downplayed example of this in the sense that they require payment in the form of your maximum health, but many of them provide temporary hp in exchange (sometimes more than what was given up)
  • Bloodborne: In the Expansion Pack The Old Hunters, one of the bosses who the player faces is Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower. When a third of her health is gone, Maria will stab her sword Rakuyo into her chest coating the blade with her blood allowing her to increase the range with which she can attack and also allowing her to use a few AOE attacks as well.
  • Borderlands 2 has Captain Blade's gear from the Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate's Booty DLC. Each of them has a benefit, but also an ailing that would make said Relic useless, unless coupled with other gear that countered said ailing:
    • The "Captain Blade's Manly Man" shield grants bonus explosive damage to melee attacks at the cost of making the wearer more vulnerable to elemental attacks.
    • The "Captain Blade's Otto Idol" relic grants health restoration upon killing an enemy, but reduces "Fight For Your Life" time, making the wearer more prone to respawning.
    • The "Captain Blade's Midnight Star" MIRV grenade mod has increased damage, but all the child grenades are thrown towards its user.
    • The "Captain Blade's Orphan Maker" shotgun deals a lot of damage, but also damages its user by 5% of all damage dealt.
    • The "Captain Blade's Rapier" assault rifle increases melee damage, but also increases the user's vulnerability to melee damage as well.
  • Darkest Dungeon: The Flagellant is built around this trope. His self-harm essentially gives him the gift of haemomancy, which he can use as either an offensive front ranker or a sacrificial healer. He actually exploits this trope in Darkest Dungeon II; his abilities wind up allowing him to fight off Death herself and become a walking septic corpse.
  • Normally, Dante of Devil May Cry can access his Devil Trigger any time without any special cutscene or fanfare. However, in Devil May Cry 5, after deducing the true ability of his personal weapon, Rebellion, which at this point has been wrecked by Urizen, Dante stabs himself with whatever's left of the sword, letting him absorb his father's sword Sparda and combining the two swords into Devil Sword Dante that grants him the powerful Sin Devil Trigger. Afterwards in gameplay, Dante activates his Sin Devil Trigger by stabbing himself with his own sword.
  • In Dragon Age, Blood Magic requires, well, the spilling of blood... but it can be your own blood, making it this trope. The Magisters of Tevinter use that as proof that blood magic is perfectly fine to study and use and doesn't violate the Chantry's ban on using magic to do harm, studiously ignoring the fact that most blood mages soon find that they need more power than their own bodies can provide...
  • In Dragon Ball Z: Budokai, Captain Ginyu has a special move called "Self-Harm" that boosts his power while damaging himself.
  • Elden Ring has the Seppuku skill; at the cost of a small portion of health, you can stab yourself with your bladed weapon, staining it with blood and increasing your weapon's power while also inflicting Blood Loss.
    • When he's at half-health, Godrick cuts off his arm with his axe, tears the head off a dragon's corpse, and attaches the head to the stump, with the dragon head now becoming sentient and breathing fire at the player.
    • In the second phase of his boss fight, the Fire Giant tears off his left leg and sacrifices it to The Fell God to increase his firepower tenfold.
    • At half-health, the Beast Clergyman stabs through the gemstone in his left hand to unleash Destined Death, and reveals himself as Maliketh, the Black Blade.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Starting with Final Fantasy IV, the signature move of the Dark Knight is Dark Wave or Darkness, a Cast From Hitpoints move with effects that vary from game to game. Some send a wave of darkness across the field that damages all enemies, while others enchant his blade and give it dark-elemental increased damage.
    • In Final Fantasy XIV, Queen Gunnhildr became a god by stabbing herself with the auracite weapon, Save the Queen, to save her beloved Bozja from the Fourth Umbral Calamity. Misija Votyasch accesses the full power of the primal Queen Gunnhildr by raising Save the Queen into the air in the heart of Delubrum Reginae. The weapon then levitates behind her before shooting through her into the Queensheart, a massive crystal packed with aether. This infuses her with the primal's power in the same vein as Ysayle summoning Shiva into herself.
  • Food Fantasy: Bird's Nest Soup is described to sacrifice her own blood to enable "Bleeding Cry", her energy skill.
  • Genshin Impact:
    • Kuki Shinobu can activate a healing and electro field with her skill, but she loses 30% of her HP when she does so.
    • Hu Tao also loses HP when she uses her skill, and her attack increases greatly when her HP is below 50%.
  • The Incredible Hulk Questprobe #1: The game requires biting one's own lip to transform into the Incredible Hulk.
  • Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance: Ripper Mode is unlocked when Raiden is pierced by a sword and decides to disable pain inhibition in his Cyborg body.
  • Persona:
    • Played with in Persona 3. The Evokers that members of S.E.E.S. use are not real guns, but the characters using them by pointing one at their head triggers their fight-or-flight survival instinct that is required for one to summon their Persona.
    • In Persona 5, Persona are summoned by ripping off masks affixed to the face, which seems to peel the skin off and release a lot of blood. However, the masks only harm the characters the first time they summon their Persona, all subsequent times cause no injuries.
  • Pokémon:
    • When used by Ghost types, Curse is a move that halves the Pokémon's HP by half in exchange for the target Pokemon getting cursed and losing some health every turn. In some games, the move's animation even depicts a nail being driven into the Pokémon using it.
    • Similar to above, there is also Belly Drum, which deducts half the user's health to instantly max (4x) its Attack stat.
    • Many meta-strategies also invoke this, such as putting a Toxic/Fire Orb on a Guts Pokémon to force a status ailment on it and get the attack-buff.
  • StarCraft has the Terran Marines and their Stimpack ability. The ability increases the overall power of the Marines at the cost of some HP. In the original 1998 game, prior to the introduction of the Terran Medics in the Expansion Pack Brood War, there was no way to heal back Marines who used the pack, so it was relegated to very situational uses. The introduction of the Medics allowed the Marines to benefit from the effects of Stimpack while getting healed.
  • Voodoo Vince: Being a Voodoo Doll, this is Vince's whole thing. Activating his voodoo powers causes Vince to injure himself in some way, which then transfers the damage to all nearby enemies, effectively making it an insta-kill move. The power needs voodoo beads to work, which Vince can get by attacking enemies.

    Web Comics 
  • Aurora (2019): During the battle with Tynan, Kendal realises that since he is made from Vash's incarnation and holds Vash's sword (which contains Vash's essence), he can combine them as a catalyst to re-summon Vash. Kendal promptly does so by impaling himself on the sword, re-summoning Vash. After defeating Tynan, Vash vacates the body again and tells the rest of the party to tell Kendal never to do that again.

    Web Videos 
  • Critical Role:
    • Mollymauk Tealeaf of Campaign 2 cuts himself to cast some terrifying spells and curses. Taliesin Jaffe specified that for Molly, cutting wasn't about self-harm but acts of sacrifice, since Molly never found any pleasure or relief from using his blood in this manner. He gives of himself to protect and maintain. Upon Molly's death (caused when he cut himself too much in an attempt to blind an antagonist), Lucien is resurrected. The trope ceases to be Bad Powers, Good People and immediately turns into Bad Powers, Bad People.
    • Chetney Pock O'Pea from Campaign 3 as a fellow Blood Hunter uses some of the same abilities. But as a Lycan Blood Hunter most of the focus is placed on his transformation into a werewolf, often described like ripping off his skin to reveal the beast within. Though usually played for Black Comedy rather than horror.

 
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Eren's Shocking Transformation

To protect his friends from being bombed by the Garrison, Eren transforms into a half-Titan by biting his hand, much to everyone's shock.

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