"Cisco Ramon might be one of the most powerful super-humans on the planet. He wields vibrational powers that could, in theory, shake the Earth apart."
— Amanda Waller, Justice League of America's Vibe
Some stories have a character that can generate or control vibrations, which at first could be mistaken for sound powers. The actual fact is those could be a source or result of this trope, owing to sound just being soundwaves moving at different frequencies, i.e. vibrating.
In fact, because sound, light, and radio waves are all just particles vibrating at different frequencies to produce waves of differing lengths, this is one of the most versatile powers one can wield, limited pretty much only by the writer's imagination. Applications include:
- Causing earthquakes and other types of seismic activity.
- Generating powerful shockwaves and blasts.
- Channeling vibrations through objects to destroy them or use them as Improvised Weapons.
- Vibrating one's molecules to become intangible.
- Sensing vibrations to track or locate people or moving objects.
Given its wide applications, it's not uncommon to see this trope overlap with Dishing Out Dirt, Make Some Noise (Super-Scream in particular), Light 'em Up, EMP, and more. Some cases will have this identified as a "Thunder" power, which is closer in nature to actual thunder than is usually shown as many works have electric powers identified as thunder, when it should actually be known as lightning).
Compare to Vibroweapon where the vibrations are a key function of the weapon's use and Bad Vibrations, where an incoming threat causes increasingly strong vibrations the closer it gets. See also Shockwave Clap and Shockwave Stomp.
Of course, to get the Obligatory Joke out of the way, there is also quite bit of Power Perversion Potential associated with this one, but we believe that just leaving that to the imagination will suffice.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Air Gear: Users of the Gaia Road specialize in using vibrations as part of their combat strategy, being able to immobilize opponents, create a type of sonar effect to map terrain and track others, and generating seismic activity to attack.
- Battle Angel Alita: Panzer Kunst is a cyborg martial art that utilizes vibration attacks.
- Claymore: Ophelia's "Rippling Sword" technique has her vibrating her arm, making the sword she is holding appear like a rippling snake. This illusion makes her sword strike near-impossible to anticipate.
- Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: Akaza's Blood Demon Art is a combination of the Soryu Style martial arts he mastered as a human and the ability to manipulate devastating shockwaves.
- Dragon Ball GT: Goku and his friends attempts to stop an alien who can apparently create earthquakes with his catfish like whiskers. It turns out that the alien can't cause earthquakes but can predict them.
- My Hero Academia:
- The Provisional License Test has one of the opposing students, Yo Shindo, whose Quirk is Vibrate. He can vibrate anything he touches and his Required Secondary Powers give him some ability to resist Gang Orca's ultrasonic attacks.
- Nejire Hado can convert her own vitality into energy and release it in the form of spiraling shockwaves.
- Hawks can sense vibrations with his feathers, enabling him to track down people via their heartbeats or their breathing.
- One Piece:
- Whitebeard's ate the Gura-Gura no Mi (Quake-Quake Fruit) which grants him the power to create earthquakes that can reshape the land, generate tidal waves and launch shockwaves through the air.
- The Chinjao family use a martial art known as Hasshouken that let's them use vibrations to augment their attacks and bypass physical defense. This ability even works on Luffy who can normally No-Sell blunt impact with his rubber body.
- Project ARMS: One of Ryo's abilities is generating powerful vibrations that can destroy objects on a molecular level.
- Record of Ragnarok: Beelzebub can make his body vibrate at high speeds, allowing him to cut or pierce through anything. He can also channel these vibrations through his cane.
Comic Books
- DC Universe:
- The Flash:
- A common technique used by speedsters is vibrating one's molecules to become intangible.
- Another, more deadly ability is vibrating all or part of your body into a Vibroweapon. Wally West has used this power to slice through objects rather than phasing through them and the Reverse-Flash infamously used this power to kill Iris West.
- Legion of Super-Heroes: Shanen Dreyus, aka Quake Kid, can create artificial earthquakes by affecting the vibrational field of any area he is in. He applied for Legion membership but was rejected due to his inability to control his powers.
- Superman:
- While not as well known for it as the Flash, Superman has been shown to vibrate his molecules into an intangible state and vibrate his body to increase the damage of his attacks. In The Death of Superman, he defeated Cyborg Superman by punching through his chest and vibrating so fast that Cyborg Superman's body — which was weakened by kryptonite exposure — was completely obliterated.
- Supergirl (2005): In issue #55, Supergirl is frozen by Bizarrogirl and escapes by vibrating her molecules. She credits the Flash with teaching her this technique.
- Shazam!: Back when he was still known as Captain Marvel, Shazam displayed the ability to phase through matter by vibrating his molecules. This was years before Superman or any of the various Flashes displayed this ability. However, Shazam has not used this power since WHIZ Comics #16.
- Vibe initially had the ability to create shockwaves but the New 52 brought his abilities more in line with his chosen name, being more focused on his control of vibrations. His power is such that Amanda Waller actively sought him as part of a counter-team against the Justice League should it prove necessary. Not only that but the nature of the multiverse means his powers can affect space and time when properly applied.
- The Movement has Tremor who uses her vibration powers to reshape the Earth as the Movement needs it and it's mentioned she can use it directly on others if she wished.
- The Flash:
- Invincible: Doc Seismic uses a pair of gauntlets that release vibrational energy waves to create effects similar to earthquakes and avalanches.
- Marvel Universe:
- Black Panther: Moses Magnum can sense earthquakes and generate seismic waves.
- Daisy Johnson, alias Quake, has the ability to generate and control vibrations. Her control is so precise that she can target her vibrations with pinpoint accuracy and have them pass through the outer layer of the body to explode internal organs; she used this ability on Wolverine and a cybernetically-enhanced Lucia von Bardas.
- Dark Reign: The Cabal #1 features Crosta, an Atlantean Mutant who can unleash shockwaves when distressed.
- Fantastic Four: Vibraxas is a Wakandan youth who was exposed to energized Vibranium and gained the ability to create and control vibrations as a result. He is also quite versatile with this power; he can create a vibration field to protect against falling debris and can teleport by using his powers in conjunction with vibration-powered technology.
- Iron Man: Alton Vibereaux, aka Vibro, gained the ability to generate vibrations after falling into the San Andreas Fault while testing an experimental machine.
- Spider-Man: The Shocker wields a pair of gauntlets that can fire a concentrated blast of air that has been vibrated at an intense frequency; despite his name, his powers are not electrical.
- X-Men:
- Avalanche has the power to generate seismic waves from his hands, channeling them through the air, water or the ground. He mainly uses it for earthquake attacks but can affect inorganic matter with his powers.
- Originally, Rictor's powers were limited to channeling vibratory blasts through the air or the ground. Over time, his abilities evolved into full on control over earth.
- Shatterstar can channel vibratory shockwaves through his swords. He rarely uses this ability as it is exhaustive.
- In addition to super strength and durability, Arclight has the ability to generate shockwaves and powerful vibrational force. Her signature move is simultaneously releasing a shockwave while throwing a punch. She can also channel shockwaves through her feet for a Shockwave Stomp.
- Angel Salvadore can unleash powerful sonic blasts by vibrating her wings at high speeds.
Films — Animation
- The Incredibles: According to his NSA file, Hypershock had the ability to generate seismic waves which registered as 6 on the Richter scale.
Literature
- Wild Cards: Mackie Messer can vibrate his hands, making them sharp as knives.
Live-Action TV
- Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Skye manifesting these powers after exposure to the Terrigen mists in "What They Become" is how she is revealed to be the MCU version of Daisy Johnson.
- Black Lightning (2018): Shakedown has earth powers in the comics. The show depicts him with vibration powers instead.
- The Flash (2014):
- Like his comic counterpart, Cisco gradually develops powers like this that let him throw out sonic blasts, use something resembling psychometry that allows him to discern past events or track others, and open breaches that can warp the team to where they need to be or travel to other universes.
- A common technique used by evil speedsters is vibrating their hands into sharp blades. They can also vibrate themselves into an intangible state, allowing them to attack internal organs. Barry also learns this trick and uses it to defeat Solovar, the ruler of Gorilla City, and break one of Savitar's spikes.
- Game of Thrones: In "The Door", the Night King checks the presence of a protective spell at the entrance of the Three Eyed Raven's cave by triggering a small earthquake with nothing but the palm of his hand. As soon as he realizes the vibrations slightly damage the walls of the cavern, he immediately starts his Zerg Rush with the rest of his White Walkers generals and the Army of the Dead.
- Kamen Rider Revice: Kamen Rider Vail has powerful telekinetic abilities which he can use to create shockwaves. He can also channel the shockwaves to seemingly "glitch" in and out of the plane of existence.
- Lois & Clark: The villains of "Don't Tug On Superman's Cape" trap Superman in a cage that trigger a bomb built into another cage containing Lois if he passes through the force field surrounding his. To circumvent this, Superman turns intangible by vibrating his body, a process that is shown to be very draining.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons: Creatures with tremorsense can pinpoint all active creatures nearby by tracking vibrations through the ground (or water). For example, a Giant Spider's tremorsense works at any distance through the spider's webs.
Toys
- Transformers:
- Transformers: Generation 1: Rumble's arms can transform into piledrivers that cause powerful earthquakes when they strike the ground. This ability has earned him the position of the Decepticons' demolitions expert.
- The Transformers: In "Grimlock's New Brain", Computron is able to defeat the Decepticon combiner Abominus by vibrating and causing Abominus to separate back into the Terrorcons.
Video Games
- Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects: Maria Petrova, aka Fault Zone, has a seismic accelerator apparatus grafted onto her body, allowing her to create localized earthquakes.
- Pokémon: Vibrava is a Pokémon that creates vibrations with its wings. In-game, these vibrations manifest as sound-based moves, such as Bug Buzz and Boomburst.
Western Animation
- The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius: In "The N-Men", Jimmy and his friends are exposed to cosmic radiation that grants them superpowers. Sheen, who was in a vibrating massage chair during this incident, gains the ability to vibrate and move at super speed. Appropriately, he takes the codename "Vibrating Lad".
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: To compensate for her blindness, Toph developed the ability to sense even the most minute of seismic vibrations. This ability requires skin contact to the ground, which is why Toph goes barefoot. This ability has been honed to the point that Toph can measure a person's heart rate to tell if they are lying.
- DC Animated Universe:
- Like in the comics, Wally West/the Flash can use his super speed for vibration effects. This includes vibrating his molecules to phase through ice (as he does in an episode of Superman: The Animated Series). When fighting off his robot replica created by Luthor and Brainiac in the Justice League Unlimited episode "Divide and Conquer", he destroyed it by shoving his hand through it and vibrating intensely; Flash avoids using this ability as much as possible because of how destructive the unstable resonance created by these vibrations could be.
- In the Justice League Unlimited episode "The Great Brain Robbery", Luthor accidentally switches bodies with the Flash and shows how dangerous the latter's vibration powers can be when used without regard for other lives. At one point, he threatens to vibrate his hand through a person's head if they don't comply with his wishes.
- Iron Man: Armored Adventures: In "Armor Wars", Obidiah Stane hires three criminals to discredit Iron Man. One of them is Shockwave, whose armor generates shock waves from his gauntlets as blasts or as minor earthquakes.
- The Legend of Korra: In "The Aftermath", Lin Bei Fong displays her ability to sense vibrations through the earth that she learned from her mother, Toph Beifong, arguably the best earthbender from the previous serious and in the entire series.
