Subtle Superpowering

Intentionally using overt superpowers in a downplayed manner so they go unnoticed by others around you. This could be because using superpowers is considered cheating, or in an effort to preserve a Secret Identity or the Masquerade while still needing to use your powers in an emergency.

In lighthearted scenarios, it might also just be a way for the super to prank someone while maintaining Plausible Deniability, or accomplish some other Mundane Utility they think they can get away with quietly.

Some superpowers lend themselves to this more than others, Psychic Powers in particular tend to have the easiest go of it since they don't leave any visible trace — and who's to notice if you just faintly nudge someone's internal thoughts and feelings? In the case of shapeshifters, subtly may involve a discreet Partial Transformation to activate your powers under the table or behind your back. Winds of Destiny, Change! nearly always has subtle applications, where the user can excuse its manifestation as plausible bad luck.

Note this requires there to be someone else present who might notice if the super isn't intentionally subtle (although other characters having a bit of a Weirdness Censor can help pull it off). Thought Controlled Powers are ideal since they don't require you to perform any incriminating Magical Gesture or Magical Incantation to activate your abilities.

Compare Cover-Blowing Superpower, which is a scenario that is often resolved via subtle superpowering. Also compare Secret Identity Change Trick, for when characters just excuse themselves to use their powers as they normally would. Could result in Power Misidentification.

If the character themself didn't notice they used their power, they might be experiencing a variation of Power Incontinence instead. If the super is just holding back their power's true strength, that's Willfully Weak.

If they weren't subtle but are playing it off as if they were, that's Blatant Lies.

Sometimes results in the invoked form of Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane.

Supertrope to Paranormal Gambling Advantage. Inverse of Showing Off Your Powers.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Diamond is Unbreakable: When Josuke, Okuyasu, and Shigechi are about to be caught with a lottery ticket that Shigechi stole, Josuke uses Crazy Diamond (who can't be seen by the person about to out them) to 'fix' the signature on the ticket so that it no longer reads as the correct name.
  • Golden Wind: Early on, Giorno uses the abilities of his Stand, Gold Experience, in ways ranging from turning bank notes from someone's wallet into butterflies so he can steal them to turning one of his teeth into a jellyfish so he doesn't drink some tea a fellow member of the gang just urinated in.
  • Stone Ocean: After a prisoner refused to pay back the money she borrowed, Jolyne briefly uses Stone Free to drop bits of metal into her drink to make her have a Potty Emergency until she pays back in full.
  • The JoJoLands: Paco Laburantes's Stand, The Hustle, essentially gives him perfect control over his muscles and allows him to flex them in ways that normally wouldn't be possible; his Establishing Character Moment shows him using this to pickpocket people using his back muscles and triceps.
• Naruto: Invoked during the Chūnin Exams. The ninja exam includes a written test portion that is designed to be impossible for the students to pass fairly. What this exam is ''actually'' testing is if the participants can subtly use their various abilities to cheat the answers without being noticed by the facilitators.
• Spy X Family: Anya is terrified of her adoptive parents finding out about her telepathic powers and sending her back to the lab that created her so she always tries to be subtle when she uses her powers. Of course, because she is six or possibly younger she isn't always as subtle as she thinks she is but she has so far escaped discovery.

Comic Books

• In one Avengers/Thunderbolts crossover, it was revealed that Songbird was using her subsonic abilities to subtly influence romantic interests in a member of the Avengers.
• Green Lantern: In Green Lantern: Legacy, Kim Pham made lots of enemies with intergalactic criminals during his time as a Green Lantern. So when the ship she's riding with her husband runs into stormy waters, she hides her use of her power ring by creating giant hands beneath the waves to help keep the ship steady while avoiding attention.
• Superman: It would be impossible to list every time that Clark has used his powers when out of costume to pull off a super feat without anyone noticing. One noteworthy example occurs in Superman/Batman, when Clark uses his super speed and senses to dodge The Joker's mallet swings, moving just slightly enough as to appear lucky.

Fan Works

• Dungeon Keeper Ami: In "A Rescued Princess", the elven princess Julia sees Ami as a threat, and tries to discreetly kill her with (what seems to be) an invisible-sawblade creation spell. She disguises the Magical Gesture for the spell as her just brushing the dirt off her shoulder.
• Here Comes The New Boss: Taylor has an assortment of fifteen powers from all the past Butchers, but many of them are very distinctive and would give her away as Butcher XV. So most of the time, she relies on her Tinkering ability, since most people don't know that Tock Tick was one of the Butchers, and Powered Armor is a handy cover for having Super-Strength and Super-Toughness. However, in some cases, she's able to sneak in other powers, such as inflicting festering wounds on Lung, who will eventually regenerate and thus hide the evidence.
• Triptych Continuum:
  • Talented Unicorns can suppress the horn glow that accompanies spellcasting to be discreet in their actions (although this suppression increases the chance of the spell backfiring).
  • More significantly, earth ponies keep the fact that their tribe has access to magic beyond enhanced strength and the Cornucopia Effect secret from the other tribes. As such, any use of earth pony magic where others can see must be disguised as coincidence, on pain of death.

Film — Animated

• The Incredibles: Dash, having Super-Speed powers, often does this to not get caught out.
  • Dash subtly uses his powers while at school to prank his teacher. When the teacher tries to prove it to others, no one believes him except Dash's mother, who is disappointed with Dash but is not going to expose him.
  • Near the end of the movie, Dash is competing in a foot race. While he runs much, much slower than he normally does, he's still much faster than the other competitors. He even gives them a bit of a head start. Dash's family even tells him to try to get second (which confuses the person sitting next to them) so that he doesn't cheat.
  • Also used by Violet early on in the film when she uses her invisibility power to hide herself when her crush is looking directly at her. While her powers don't work on clothing, in this instance it works because she was hiding behind a staircase wall and only her head was sticking out.

Film — Live Action

• Star Wars: The Phantom Menace: After discovering that Anakin is immensely strong in The Force, the Jedi Qui-Gon Jinn attempts to barter with the slaveowner Watto for the enslaved Anakin and his mother. Since what Qui-Gon is offering is only worth one slave and Watto is big into gambling, he rolls a die to determine which slave Qui-Gon will get. Qui-Gon subtly uses Force manipulation to make the die land on a side that will get him Anakin. Notably, before this exchange, Qui-Gon attempted a less-subtle Jedi Mind Trick but Watto, being a Toydarian, was too greedy to fall for it.
• Zack Snyder's Justice League: One of Cyborg's flashbacks depicting him as a good man sees him using his powers to hack into an ATM to help a Struggling Single Mother recently evicted from her apartment, making it look like she won a million dollars from an out-of-nowhere lottery.

Literature

• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Hermione surreptitiously places a Confundus charm on Cormac McLaggen to ensure he won't win the Quidditch Keeper tryouts. Harry notices the symptoms and later lets Hermione know he's caught her out, but he doesn't like Cormac any more than she does and is glad to have the excuse to keep him off the team.

Live-Action TV

• In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Price", Devinoni Ral is a negotiator who has been hired to represent the Chrysalians during the negotiation for the Barzan wormhole. He has a reputation for closing deals in his favor. While presenting himself as human he's really one-quarter Betazoid, using his empathic powers as a secret weapon. He gets away with it because it could pass for just being an expert in reading body language or thinking like his opponent.
• WandaVision:
  • In the first few episodes, Wanda tried to hide her powers from the people of Westview, and so only tried to use minor tricks. For instance, one intro has her cautiously levitating an item past someone else in a grocery store, only to act like nothing was wrong when they turned around. This concept gets abandoned as the story progresses and Wanda has more to focus on than hiding her magic.
  • Agatha hides her usage of magic while making things go wrong around town, as shown in "Agatha All Along". She used a small jinx to brainwash Herb, used small hand motions to mess with Vision's magic show, and did everything else Behind the Black, where, by sitcom logic, nobody could see it.

Tabletop Games

• In Mage: The Ascension, this is called coincidentality, i.e. using magic in such a way that it can pass as a coincidence. For most mages, this is the preferred way of magic use, because overt magic causes Paradox: reality itself rebounds to fix such a violation of common sense. Since this resilience of reality is literally caused by the common human's common sense, it can be avoided if there is no non-supernatural witnesses: you can toss fireballs to your heart's content if the sole witnesses are other supernaturals.
  • Some Traditions and Conventions have an easier time making their powers subtle. For example, the Technocrats' magic looks like science and technology (and science itself is a stable, predictable byproduct of Technocrats' magic), though they too risk Paradox if they attempt something too sci-fi such as laser swords. The Akashic Brotherhood's magic looks like kung fu from Chinese wuxia movies, so it can fit within the common sense paradigm as "just martial arts".

Video Games

• Mega Man Star Force: At the School Play, Geo briefly transforms into Mega Man during his cue to make his entrance more dynamic to the audience. Before Luna can recognize him, a momentary blackout gives the opportunity for him to switch back into the prop costume.

Web Original

• In Jupiter-Men, Arrio can shoot flames as a Hand Blast with his magic, most frequently making a fist to shoot fireballs. But when he needs to get past a bouncer to reach Jackie, he distracts the man with boxes of pizzas while discreetly setting the man's pants on fire. Later on, he showcases the ability to shoot smaller fire bullets with a Finger Gun gesture.
• RWBY: In combat against people who don't know her actual abilities, Pyrrha only uses her Magnetism Manipulation subtly to adjust their weapons' positioning. This is noticed by Mercury when he fights her.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender:
    • In "The Blind Bandit", when Aang tries to talk to Toph's parents about her secret Fight Clubbing, Toph discreetly smacks Aang using earthbending.
    • In "The Runaway", Toph subtly uses her earthbending to augment the impact of her hammer in a strength-testing game (in addition to using it for Paranormal Gambling Advantage).
    • In "The Serpent's Pass", while disguised as Earth Kingdom refugees, Iroh tries to subtly heat up his cold cup of tea using firebending. Unfortunately, this gets noticed by Jet.
  • The Legend of Korra:
    • Amon subtly uses bloodbending during his fights to maneuver his opponents to his advantage. This allows him to maintain his image as a Non-Bender crusader.
    • Kai secretly creates a gust of wind, which he uses as an excuse to pat someone down and pickpocket them.
• Justice League: In "Secret Society", Gorilla Grodd subtly agitates The League's infighting using his Psychic Powers.
• Samurai Jack: In "Jack Vs Aku", when both Jack and Aku agree to disempower themselves, Aku continues to sneakily try to use his powers during their fight.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars: In "Deception", Obi-Wan Kenobi is breaking out of prison while disguised as Rako Hardeen and he comes across a locked door. He asks Cad Bane and Moralo Eval to stand guard at the ends of the hallway while he rewires the control panel. This is so they won't notice him using the Force to open the door, an ability that Rako Hardeen doesn't have.
• Superman: The Animated Series: In the episode "Solar Power", Clark stealthily lifts up his desk with Super-Strength when no one is looking after he dropped his pen. This scene also serves to foreshadow the villain's plan in that episode as he's only able to lift the desk for a few seconds before his strength gives out. A hint that his powers are being affected in some way.
• Young Justice (2010): In season 3, it's revealed that the Markovian Ambassador to the United Nations, Zviad Baazov, has minor Psychic powers that he can use to manipulate people to further his own goals and that of the Light. The first instance is when he manipulated Prince Gregor into banishing Brion from Markovia in the beginning of the season, when Brion's metagene was first activated. In the season finale, he manipulates Brion into killing his uncle and forcefully taking over Markovia as its new King. His actions led to Geo-Force becoming alienated from his family and friends on the Team, the Outsiders, and the Justice League. It also earned Zviad a seat as one of the leaders of the Light, replacing Granny Goodness.

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