Toxic Phlebotinum

Her warranty doesn't cover that.

"Unfortunately, the device that's keeping you alive is also killing you."

— JARVIS, Iron Man 2

You've got a nice form of Applied Phlebotinum, and it's pretty powerful. But sometimes it's just not enough. You need more power. So what do you do?

Fortunately, you've somehow stumbled upon a shiny new Power Source, stronger and easier to use than your current model. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Quite a bit, actually. See, your "new-and-improved" power source isn't near as safe as your old one. Sure, it'll get you the power you need, but at a very high price. Explosions, crippling injury, and sometimes even mutations can result if you overuse it. Better hope you can finish the job quickly (or have Phlebotinum-Handling Equipment) or Zorlak the Planet Wedgier will be the least of your health concerns.

Unlike most dangerous forms of Applied Phlebotinum, this one is more likely to be used by the heroes, probably because unlike most other forms, this type's danger lies not in corruption but in simple explosions which would endanger the user more than the environment, making the risk heroic.

One of a number of Toxic Tropes. Related to Toxic Waste Can Do Anything. See also Psycho Serum. Sometimes overlaps with Sentient Phlebotinum, in which case it's liable to become The Corruption or The Virus. Contrast Saved by the Phlebotinum.

No Real Life Examples, Please!

noreallife

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Buso Renkin, it is revealed that Kazuki's Kakugane is actually an unstable black version. The Black Kakugane (which had replaced his heart) causes his body to transform and grants him enormous power as a result. Unfortunately, being in this transformed state causes him to drain the life force of everyone and everything around him nonstop, and while the transformed state can be suppressed at first, it eventually becomes permanent.
• Sakuradite from Code Geass is this, basically. Rumored to be the Philosopher's Stone of old, significant amounts of it were found in Japan (duh) under Mount Fuji. While not used as a power source per se, the primarily electricity-based alternate world that Code Geass universe is based in (as opposed to steam and fossil-fuel based) makes Sakuradite very valuable as a room-to-high temperature superconductor. It is basically the phlebotinum that makes Game Breakers such as the Lancelot Knightmare Frame. The "toxic" part comes in that Sakuradite, especially in liquid form, is very volatile. How volatile? Volatile enough to make it viable as a booster in a nuke-slash-antimatter bomb.
• The imperfect philosopher's stones and red water they're made from in Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), which are extremely poisonous in and of themselves, and have an increased risk of alchemical rebound.
• Inverted in GaoGaiGar FINAL. The villains' power source is the "Loud G-Stone", which has a constant power output which is higher than the G-Stones the heroes are using. Of course, the Loud G-Stone isn't powered by courage. Sure enough, Guy's G-Stone power goes through the roof when he gets pissed off enough, and the rest of the robots follow suit. The Sol 11's "non-toxic" Loud G-Stones can't keep up. Guy points this out in his heroic Breaking Lecture: "Everything is because you were afraid! Afraid the G-Stone's power would transcend the Loud G-Stone! The power born from courage!"
• The prototype GN Tau drives in Mobile Suit Gundam 00 have power only slightly below that of the "true" GN drives but their crimson red particles cause cellular abnormalities in humans that prevent tissue regeneration (just look at what happened to poor Louise) and eventually kill the subject (almost happened to Lasse and maybe Graham) in exchange for being far faster and easier to mass-produce. The final mass-production version fixes this issue which also incidentally changes the particles' color to orange.
• The Symphogear system is very hard on untuned users; without a high natural compatibility, maintaining the transformation causes intense pain and internal damage that can easily land the user in the hospital. Those with lower compatibility can boost it with an injection of Linker, but early versions of the formula were toxic enough to slowly kill the user. These two collide horribly for Kanade in the prologue, where the output boost from her Swan Song causes her to completely disintegrate.

Comic Books

• The DCU:
  • In Forever Evil (2013), Power Ring's Ring of Power is taking over his body. The ring seems to be growing into his finger and there are prominent green veins protruding from his arm to his neck. He is very concerned about this and wants to get the ring off as soon as possible.
  • In the Post-Crisis Superman comics, Lex Luthor is able to harness kryptonite in a variety of means of bedeviling Superman. Unfortunately, Luthor learns the hard way that kryptonite radiation is also harmful to humans with sufficient exposure.
• Marvel Universe:
  • In the Iron Man online Infinite Comics story "Fatal Frontier", the discovery of phlogistone, moon rocks that gained special powers after being exposed to various kinds of Phlebotinum (the Power Infinite, the Phoenix Force, etc.) kicks off a wave of colonization and industry on the moon. Tony eventually finds evidence that phlogistone also corrupts souls. After discovering this, Tony puts all of his efforts into keeping phlogistone out of anyone's hands while looking for a way to depower it.
  • In Spider-Gwen, the Lizard serum Peter Parker created to become the Lizard has toxic side effects; staying in Lizard form for too long is fatal. This is how Peter dies — Gwen toys with him during their fight instead of beating him as quickly as possible, causing him to stay in Lizard form long enough that even reverting to human form doesn't save him.
  • When Spider-Man gets his black suit in Secret Wars (1984), it comes with a slew of useful traits that make it more useful than his original suit: increased strength, unlimited organic webbing, some shapeshifting abilities, and accelerated healing. Unfortunately, it also makes him more aggressive and merciless. It doesn't help that this suit is actually an alien Symbiote, which makes removing it very difficult, and later gives rise to one of Spidey's most iconic rivals, Venom.
  • Attempts to weaponize adamantium in Super Soldiers met problems because adamantium is toxic. One of their first successful subjects was Wolverine, who has a Healing Factor that keeps the adamantium from killing him. The tradeoff for him is that his Healing Factor lost some of its potency.
• Ore-13, a.k.a. Ultra Energon, from the Transformers IDW Publishing comics. It greatly enhances a Transformers' abilities, but burns out very quickly and leaves the user in a very vulnerable state.

Fan Works

• Cycles Upon Cycles: As Kerrigan found out while assimilating the Krogan, Element Zero exposure all but wipes out the victim's psionics, with the bare scraps left over interacting with the eezo to make biotics. As soon as this was discovered, the Koprulu Alliance immediately banned all eezo from being brought into their territories and are systematically eradicating any sources of the substance already present.
• I Woke Up As a Dungeon, Now What?: Life springs release pure mana into the environment in the same way dungeons do, allowing for the growth of plants and animals. However, the mana released by a life spring carries with it some form of corruption that accumulates first in the plants, then later moves up the food web a la heavy metal poisoning. This causes the corrupted animals to first mutate into more monstrous forms, then eventually go into a berserk rampage and have to be put down.
• In Origins, Eridium hits this trope on the head. Its gas form is extremely corrosive but does well for powering certain individuals and killing off almost any organic matter that it touches, like Flood. Slag, the byproduct from mining/refining Eridium, is also hostile to life but makes excellent coolant for Faster-Than-Light Travel or other high-heat applications.

Films — Live-Action

• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • In Iron Man 2, the palladium components of Tony's chest-mounted arc reactor decay over time and emit toxins into his blood, slowly killing him (at least, until he perfects the technology using a hidden schematic from his dead father to make a new atomic element to replace the Palladium). An inversion, since it's the original reactor that is killing him, and the shiny new one that is actually safe.
  • In Ant-Man, exposure to Pym Particles without proper protection (like the Ant-Man helmet) can affect the mind, and exposure to them through the course of his experiments is implied to be part of the reason Cross is so nuts, especially after he starts using the Yellowjacket suit.
  • In Spider-Man: Homecoming, Adrian Toomes uses Chitauri power cores salvaged from the Battle of New York to manufacture deadly energy weapons. Exposure to certain forms of radiation causes the cores to explode. This almost results in Toomes's death as a result of the arc reactor cores he tried to steal emitting radiation that made his flight suit's power core unstable.
• The black liquid from Prometheus, officially dubbed Chemical A0-3959X.91–15, transforms animals exposed to it into Xenomorph-like creatures (and was most likely involved in the production of the first Xenomorphs) and causes complete disintegration at a genetic level if ingested. In the Dark Horse Comics Fire and Stone comic series, it terraforms LV-223, and not even the Xenomorphs themselves are immune to its mutagenic effects.
• In Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, it's revealed that protomatter was used in the creation of the Genesis Planet. Unfortunately, protomatter is highly unstable and dismissed by most scientists and is shown as the Genesis Planet suffers an Earth-Shattering Kaboom due to its properties. In other entries, protomatter has been used as detonation materials.

Literature

• Constance Verity Destroys the Universe: Being a semi-physical force of cosmic entropy, The Key's power has an inherently destructive effect on those exposed to it. When Hiro become its vessel, it slowly kills him, nothing but his "ninjaly" willpower keeping it from destroying him immediately, and every car they take to get him to Patty Perkins' headquarters suffers from some type of catastrophic meltdown. When Patty's men try extracting it, gazing upon it directly causing most of her men to go mad. The only ones who are immune to its effects are Connie, Tia and Byron by virtue of possessing the Caretaker Destiny.

Live-Action TV

• The Boys (2019) has Compound V, a Super Serum Vought uses to provide people with superpowers. Compound V can only be safely administered to infants and children, however; administering Compound V to anyone who is at least adolescent is exceedingly painful and dangerous, with only 20% of adults who receive Compound V surviving. The third season also explores "Temp V", a variant of Compound V that can provide non-superpowered people with superpowers and enhanced physical strength for 24 hours. Unlike normal Compound V, Temp V can be safely taken by adults, at least in theory; in practice, while Temp V isn't immediately lethal like Compound V can be, repeated use causes cumulative brain damage that can be potentially fatal in as few as three doses. Billy Butcher pushes his luck with six doses over the course of the season, which ends with him diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and given a prognosis of 18 months, at best.
• In Luke Cage (2016), Bushmaster gets his power from an herbal mixture that not only decreases in effectiveness the more you use it but also slowly poisons you.
• Stargate-verse:
  • Naquadriah is the variant unstable form of Naqadah in Stargate SG-1. It's the basic form of this trope; more power can be taken from it, but it's unstable. In fact, naquadriah's instability depends on how much energy you are trying to get from it. Higher energy means exponentially higher instability to the point where the X-302 attempted a hyperjump via its naquadriah-powered hyperdrive but the guidance computer automatically and intentionally missed the hyperspace window to avoid the craft being blown to pieces upon entry, and the Prometheus experienced a misjump while using its much bigger hyperdrive. After these incidents and the acquisition of some serious Asgard tech, naquadriah was never used for anything aside from boosting the yield of nuclear warheads - something the stuff is very good at.
  • In Stargate Atlantis, the crew try extracting energy from an alternate reality, which will destroy the reality in question. No one has a problem with it at first since the chances of the reality being inhabited are astronomically small. Predictably, the alternate reality is inhabited and they have to deplete the ZPM (their usual power source) to stop the energy transfer before it is destroyed.
• Star Trek:
  • Trilithium, the dangerous form of dilithium.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation:
    • In "When the Bough Breaks", it's the Aldeans' Deflector Shield and cloaking device that are causing all the trouble, degrading Aldea's ozone layer and exposing the inhabitants to ultraviolet radiation sickness. Beyond being sterile, they're quite close to death before Dr. Crusher is able to treat them and the Enterprise "reseeds" the ozone layer (somehow).
    • In "The High Ground", the Ensata terrorists resort to using a teleporter device called an inverter to carry out their attacks on the occupying Rutian forces without being tracked, although the downside is that it caused severe cumulative distortions in the cellular chemistry of anyone using it, a process which, with prolonged use, could prove fatal.
  • Star Trek: Voyager:
    • The Omega Molecule from "The Omega Directive" is the most powerful and dangerous thing in the universe — so much so that the Federation has a strict policy to destroy them at all costs. Ordinary destructive things just destroy things — Omega Molecules can screw up subspace, meaning warp travel becomes impossible in the area.
    • In "Course: Oblivion", Voyager has created an enhanced warp drive that generates a form of radiation that would be harmless to normal living beings, but is dangerous to beings and substances made of "silver blood", causing the Voyager of this episode (a duplicate of the original created months ago) to demolecularize.

Tabletop Games

• In BattleTech, the Federated Suns developed a type of BattleMech myomers muscles that quadruple their strength when operating at high temperatures. However, it would violently explode when exposed to a certain gas. The FedSuns would go on to leak the flawed design to their enemy, the Capellan Confederation, who promptly began installing it in their battlemechs without realizing the fatal flaw, which the FedSuns used to their advantage in a spy extraction by dosing the battlefield with the gas. The Capellans eventually stabilized the myomers at the cost of dropping to a 'mere' triple strength increase, though pilots still had to operate the mech within the heat redline zone that would cause targeting computer failures and the risk of ammunition explosions in order to gain the strength increase.
• Ghost rock from Deadlands was bad enough, what with miners and scientists using it contracting "rock fever" and spontaneously combusting, and the mineral itself highly explosive. If you want more power (and you're in one of the series' far-future settings), make irradiated ghost rock. Trope Co. not responsible for mutations, cancers, and death.
• In Forgotten Realms, the Shadow Weave is an alternative arcane magic Power Source, mostly incompatible with normal magic which in itself brings some advantages. Its use involves either a pact with one of evil deities or taking mental/spiritual damage.
• In the 3rd Edition of Necromunda, the STC that is the source of House Van Saar's technical brilliance is so badly damaged and incomplete that is has irradiated the entire House, resulting in every member becoming terminally ill by the time they come of age. In-game, the sickness suffered by members of the house is represented by members of the gang being unable to gain more than a single Toughness advancement when they go up a level (rather than the two that other Houses can receive).
• Numenera: Carrying around too many Cyphers (artifacts from previous civilizations) will kill you. Exactly how they will kill you is abstracted because there are so many different kinds of technology, and nobody knows enough science to determine the root causes for certain. A Cypher can kill you with nuclear radiation, unchecked nanotech, psychic interference, alien laws of physics, or something as simple as lead-based paint.
• Warpstone from Warhammer is not merely the setting's local Green Rocks, it can be used to boost magic workings, and the Skaven use it not only as the basis of their economy, but to power their Magitek... everything. As a downside, it's a magical, madness-inducing mutagen. The Skaven use it in their weaponry with the idea that it's more powerful, but less safe. This is characterized by every single weapon team being devastatingly powerful, but having the potential to misfire, which can range from simply not firing to exploding the weapon and everybody and everything around it.

Video Games

• Data Draining from .hack is a form of this, as normal use inflicts status effects on the main character, but overuse is much worse. For one, side effects occur more often when you Data Drain more often (due to increased spread of the virus). However, the worst effect you can experience is your character being randomly, unavoidably, and irretrievably corrupted.
• Armored Core 4/Armored Core: For Answer has Kojima particles, which aren't dissimilar from GN or Minovsky particles, but turn the NEXTs into Walking Wastelands.
• Baldur's Gate III has Karlach's Infernal Engine, a hellfire-powered reactor taking the place of her heart which was forced upon her during her time in Avernus. It runs extremely hot in the best of times, but has been running hotter than usual since she escaped back to the Material Plane, too hot for her to be able to touch others without risk of harm. With some Infernal Iron, she can have a cooling system built and installed into her that would let her touch others safely, but that doesn't address the primary issue with the Infernal Engine: that it simply was not designed to operate outside of Avernus, and will continue to get hotter and hotter until it eventually melts down, killing Karlach. The only long-term solution is to permanently return to Avernus, where the Engine can run safely. Another potential solution is allowing Karlach to undergo ceremorphosis and transform into a mind flayer, which will get rid of the Infernal Engine altogether — but even this solution has significant risks that cannot be ignored.
• BioShock:
  • ADAM and Plasmids in BioShock grant the user temporary superpowers, but at the cost of mental and physical deterioration from prolonged use. It is also extremely addictive, causing people to increase its use in order to maintain their stability.
  • The Lutece Fields (a.k.a. Tears) in BioShock Infinite allow its users to peek or to travel into other timelines. Prolonged exposure to them causes cancer, sterility and rapid aging.
• The ancient civilization in Chrono Trigger was doing well using the powers of the sun and the elements. Then they discovered a certain sleeping Eldritch Abomination and decided to tap its power instead... Well, let's just say it did not end well. In this case, just drawing from Lavos while it slept worked fine, but once they invented a machine to take much larger amounts, the process managed to wake it up, and that was a huge mistake.
• Command & Conquer: Tiberian Series:
  • The games' namesake Tiberium is a virulent crystalline "plant". It leaches minerals from the soil and forms them into easily harvested crystals on the surface, which is a hell of a lot easier than mining. The downside is that tiberium fields emit extremely toxic gases, mutates local flora, kills local fauna and is unstoppably spreading across the world.
  • In later games, blue form of tiberium gives double the resources, but also explodes when you shoot it. And let's not get into the liquid form, which creates explosions visible from space.
  • The Scrin don't suffer from these effects. On the contrary, they actually need regular infusions of Tiberium to survive. This is reflected in gameplay by Scrin units regenerating health while on Tiberium. Makes sense, as tiberium is a Scrin xenoforming agent.
• Dragon Age:
  • Dragon Age: Origins features the magical ore lyrium, whose raw substance is toxic and can only be safely mined by the magic-resistant dwarves, who then process it into a useful state. "Safe" lyrium can make mana potions for mages, enchant weapons and armor, and help Templars develop their Anti-Magic abilities. Too bad long-term use can lead to addiction, mental instability and, in extreme cases, mutation — the codex claims that Tevinter Magisters who overused the stuff stopped looking human.
  • Dragon Age II also introduces red lyrium, a lyrium variant that works faster and has even more dramatic effects, eventually turning you into a lyrium statue or monster.
  • Dragon Age: Inquisition reveals that red lyrium is ordinary lyrium corrupted by the Darkspawn Taint, which has unsettling implications about the true nature of lyrium, given that the Taint can only affect living things... The DLC expansion The Descent then reveals that lyrium is the blood of massive subterranean creatures known as "Titans".
• Aether, often depicted as the source of magic in the Final Fantasy series, is this in Final Fantasy XVI: while casting magic using crystals is relatively harmless, channeling aether through one's body to cast magic — as done by Bearers and Dominants — has detrimental effects on the body. Known as "the crystals' curse", continuous use of magic in this fashion causes the caster's body to gradually petrify. Those who become overexposed to aether run the risk of turning "Akashic", gaining incredible strength at the cost of their sanity with the breakdown of their body accelerating to the point that, upon death, they completely disinitegrate. There is also Blight, the encroaching devastation afflicting the land: the Mothercrystals which provide magical power for the realm draw in such massive amounts of aether that it is rendering more and more of the world uninhabitable.
• Gears of War has imulsion, which after its potential was discovered was used fuel everything from factory machines to civilian vehicles. It also gave most of humanity's remnant a condition known as rust lung and is the main motivation for the Locusts' invasion of Serra's surface. Prolonged exposure to imulsion turns Locusts into Ax-Crazy abominations whose sole reason for being are infecting anyone near them, or killing them.
• Certain kinds of slime in Ghostbusters: The Video Game, particularly the caustic and toxic Black Slime. The byproduct of an imprisoned Juvenile Giant Sloar, the Cult of Shandor used it in their rituals and science.
• Phazon, pictured above, from the Metroid Prime Trilogy. There is no "safe" form of Phazon: it comes in "unstable and uber-deadly" blue and "even more unstable and uber-deadly" orange, unless you have the Phazon Suit from the original Metroid Prime, in which case you take no damage from the blue Phazon. Orange Phazon still hurts, though.
  • The Phazon Suit seems to have a lot in common with the Omega Pirate, which the Space Pirate research notes pointed out led to insanity and a much shorter lifespan. Fortunately, Samus kills Metroid Prime, who tries to kill Samus, but instead removes the Phazon Suit before this happens.
  • Unfortunately, Metroid Prime somehow merges with the suit, gains Samus's intellect, and spends the next two games spreading Phazon across the galaxy.
  • Somehow, it's not surprising that Phazon is actually the substance of an Eldritch Abomination planet out to take over the universe.
  • In Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Samus and the other Bounty Hunters are "infected" with Phazon by Dark Samus early on. After a certain point, entering Hypermode can result in "Corrupted Hypermode", which ends with "Terminal Corruption", where Samus transforms into another Dark Samus, if Samus cannot drain the Phazon from her system in time or holds out long enough for her suit to end Hypermode automatically. Near the end of the game, when Samus lands on Phaaze, the source of all Phazon, it overwrites her DNA to the point where Samus' own gunship cannot recognize her anymore and denies her entry.
• Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain has the source of Quiet's preternatural abilities: a specially-modified variation of the vocal cord parasite. All of the benefits given to her by the parasites — enhanced strength and reflexes, phasing through matter, invisibility, and the ability to subsist on water and sunlight — is offset by the fact that she is infected with the parasites. Worse still, it is a variation of the parasites that is attuned to the English language: if she ever speaks English, the infection will not only eventually kill her, but turn her into a walking plague that can potentially destabilize the entire world by robbing it of its dominant language.
• Notes scattered throughout The Park reveal that Nathaniel Winter's attempts to harness the power hidden beneath Atlantic Island Park were fraught with disasters — most of them involving insanity. Construction workers committed suicide, visitors to the park were killed in all manner of horrible "accidents," a man in a Chad the Chipmunk costume stabbed two teenagers to death, and Lorraine Maillard starts to lose her mind the longer she stays at the park. Actually, trying to infuse himself with the extracted energy transformed Winter into the Bogeyman now haunting the park. The Secret World reveals that the source of this hidden power was almost certainly the Gaia Engine under Solomon Island. Given that Gaia Engines serve as prisons for the Dreamers, it's not all that surprising that things started going pear-shaped.
• In Phantom Dust, the same Dust that made the original Edgar a Reality Warper with The Power of Creation fatally poisoned him. The Dust doesn't seem to have the same effect on anyone else because they aren't really human, though prolonged exposure to it does cause them to lose their memories thanks to some tampering from either the second Edgar or Freya, who seem to be immune to this.
• StarCraft: Terrazine gas is a potent agent used for enhancing psionic powers. However, prolonged exposure to the gas can kill flora and has a wide range of effects on humans, ranging from hallucinations to outright insanity.
• Tales of Symphonia has Exspheres, which are used to power various Magitek and can be equipped for a combat boost... but without a keycrest made of special materials, they eventually turn people into monsters. They're also activated by human souls.
• Theia - The Crimson Eclipse: Orihalcon can make living beings being aggressive and feral, but the people of Ariathale are so desperate for a new energy source that they try to research Orihalcon, despite the risks. Fortunately, in the ending, the Altillians share their methods for safely using Orihalcon. Unfortunately, Orihalcon is eventually depleted without Halcon to produce it.
• Ys: Cleria in Ys I, II, and Origin. It bolstered the titular civilization's rise to prosperity, but also caused its downfall. Said to be a corrupt form of Emelas.
• Zone of the Enders has Mettatron, an energy source that is responsible for making the Orbital Frames as powerful as they are but will also drive humans insane, with the most notable example being series villain Nohman.

Webcomics

• Shinsu, the absolute baseline of power inside the Tower of God, is not always agreeable with the human body. Without a certain resistance, people can die in the denser higher levels.

Western Animation

• The Batman: The Animated Series episode "See No Evil" features a crook who uses a bodysuit made of a material that grants invisibility, but becomes toxic under the electric current that interacts with the fabric to make it invisible. Through his spree of small-time robberies, the man is slowly killing himself. His invisible car, however, is probably harmless.
• The Peacock Miraculous from Miraculous Ladybug was damaged some time in the past, and now its powers can only be activated at the cost of the user's health (as seen with Nathalie, who has trouble walking and goes into a coughing fit after using it). It's eventually revealed to be the reason why Emilie Agreste is in a coma, and it's later revealed that Colt Fathom is another one of its victims.
• Transformers:
  • The Transformers:
    • In one episode, antimatter is created for Megatron to absorb and pelt the Autobots with. He subsequently has to eject it later for fear of death.
    • The Matrix of Leadership is usually a powerup for any 'bot lucky enough to have a high affinity for it. It's also Unicron's kryptonite, so when Scourge (a Unicron-made bot with Matrix affinity) picked it up, he simultaneously got a lot stronger and started melting.
  • In Beast Wars, the Energon found on ancient Earth was in such a powerful and unrefined state that long exposure to it could eventually lead to stasis lock and even death. The reason the Transformers needed beast forms in the first place was to protect themselves from all of the raw Energon on the planet. The destruction of the Vox's planet buster weapon eventually "purified" the Energon.
  • Transformers: Animated:
    • Transwarp energy fuses organic and machine elements, turning Wasp into Waspinator. Unfortunately, it's unstable, and he later fully explodes, teleporting at the same time. (He gets better.)
    • Nucleon. Created pretty much as an excuse for the Action Masters, it was more efficient and more powerful than Energon, but for some reason prevented them from actually transforming - supposedly forever. This, of course, became the excuse for the Powermasters, who could cleanse their partners of the Nucleon, regain their transformation ability, and help boost their power levels to the point they were under the Nucleon.
  • In Transformers: Prime, Dark Energon is extremely powerful and dangerous since it's the blood of Unicron. Megatron's abuse of it has dire consequences for him in the long run: he can never join the Allspark (the Transformers' afterlife) thanks to his contact with Unicron's Anti-spark.
• In Wakfu, there are two forms of magical energy in that define reality in the setting: Wakfu and Stasis. Wakfu is the energy of creation and movement, while Stasis is the energy of destruction and stagnation. The latter is far more difficult to handle and harness safely since it's inherently destructive.

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