"I swear to God, they only call me when there's trouble at a dock. Or a river, or a lake, canal. A jetty."
— The Deep, The Boys (2019)
A situation where a hero's relatively useless abilities turn out to be phenomenally useful because everything's contrived specifically in order to make them useful, even though realistically there's no reason to expect everything to be so convenient. Often involves Locking MacGyver in the Store Cupboard. May be used regularly or as a one-off as part of A Day in the Limelight. If the Aquaman character isn't seen on a regular basis anyway, the day-in-the-limelight version may involve a substantial stroke of luck in the events that lead up to Aquaman just happening to be around at the right time when there's an opportunity to use his powers.
The trope's name stems from Aquaman's now-infamous portrayal in Super Friends, which struggled to integrate his underwater abilities into the titular Super Team's adventures, leaving an entire generation of viewers with the impression that his powers were totally useless outside of scenarios crafted specifically for them.
A subtrope of Plot Tailored to the Party, where the same contrivance is used to make all the members of a team useful with their own time to shine. Benevolent Architecture overlaps with both, such as when the Evil Overlord's fortress has a crocodile moat or other highly specific barrier for the Aquaman equivalent character to circumvent.
If the character constantly uses a power to solve all his problems, but it generally makes sense (if you have a big sword, and fight monsters, it's not exactly contrived that a lot of monsters can be hurt by a big sword), it's When All You Have Is a Hammer….
The opposite is Kryptonite Is Everywhere, when a hero's obscure weakness comes up much more frequently than would intuitively make sense, rather than a hero's obscure strength. Compare Crippling Overspecialization, where an Awesome, but Impractical powerset well suitable for one specific function is poorly fit for anything else; Highly Specific Counterplay, which only counters a specific thing or a small number of specific things; and Heart Is an Awesome Power, when the power seems uselessly specific but turns out to be useful in many situations. Compare and contrast What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?, Handy Shortcoming, Lethal Joke Character, Not Completely Useless.
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Anime & Manga
- Black Clover:
- Although Dark Magic is far from being useless, it's slow to cast and Yami usually uses it more as a supplement for his swordsmanship. However, because the attribute is the polar opposite of light, it becomes highly effective when he fights against Licht, with his magic absorbing his spells by creating small black holes. It's also highly effective against devils due to its power to affect the underworld. His magic is very useful in the fight against Zagred, whose Word Soul Magic can't block it, and when the Black Bulls fight Dante.
- Anti-Magic is recognized in-universe as an overly broken power that allows a simple peon like Asta to stand a chance against mages with years of training and experience. But amusingly, Liebe comes to realize that it's absolutely pointless against Asta himself, due to him being deprived of magic to begin with, and relying solely on his swordsmanship, ki-reading and guts.
- A villain in Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo is specialized in fighting atop moving trains. Even he admits it's an extremely niche skill.
- In Cells at Work!, a series that personifies human cells, the chapter that introduces Eosinophil culminates with a fight against an Anisakis nematode, allowing her to show off her true skill— her Crippling Overspecialization means that while she's not very good at fighting bacteria or viruses, which are more common invaders to the human body, she makes short work of multi-cellular parasites. Seeing as how the series is based on medical science, this carries over to real life as well.
- Dandadan: Taro's ability to reform himself after being broken apart is initially treated as kind of a gag. However, it manages to be extremely useful in the Mongolian Death Worm arc by allowing him to turn his body into a prison for the Evil Eye.
- Season 2 of Darker than Black has the character April, who in the first season used her ability (essentially to make it rain) primarily as support for her partner who can freeze things, gets a freak chance to use her ability offensively. She happens to fight a Fragile Speedster with Super-Speed and none of the Required Secondary Powers, which made each raindrop impact with the force of a bullet. Like running through a shotgun blast of buckshot.
- Submarimon from Digimon Adventure 02 can only used in water because he's... a submarine. However, he has flight abilities, but they were utilized only one time outside of water, during the Grand Finale.
- Dragon Ball:
- Yamcha is one of the weakest members of the Z-Fighters, so he retires from martial arts and becomes a professional baseball player in the timeskip between the original and Dragon Ball Z. When Champa challenges Universe 7 to a baseball match in episode 70 of Dragon Ball Super, guess who Universe 7's star player is?
- The Kinto'un/Flying Nimbus was a cloud Goku could ride on in the original Dragon Ball, but was rendered pretty much pointless once Goku had learned how to fly under his own power in Z. One episode of Super involves Goku having to keep his power level very low so that he can't be found by a group of enemies. This required him to ride the Nimbus once again, since flying would reveal his ki.
- During the Tournament of Power, the other Universes have fighters that rely on enormous stamina to fight. For one reason or another, they end up dealing with Android 17 and Android 18, the infinite energy cyborgs with unlimited stamina.
- This ends up being what gives Universe 7 the edge in the Tournament of Power overall. Nearly every character on the team has some obscure trick that, while being outclassed and long since forgotten when it comes to battles of raw strength, end up being incredibly useful in the more tactical, ring-out focused nature of the tournament. Incapacitating moves like the Mafuba, Lightning Surpise and Solar Flare, defensive options like the Android Barriers and Afterimage Strikes and more indirect and erratic techniques like the Multiform and Hellzone Grenade all come in clutch and help net ring-outs. Even the different levels of Super Saiyan end up coming in handy by allowing Goku and Vegeta to better pace themselves when they need to fight more efficiently and being easier to access jumps in power when they're low on stamina.
- Subverted in Full Metal Panic!. When Mithril initially gets the mission to infiltrate a Japanese highschool to covertly monitor and protect a seemingly Ordinary High-School Student, they quickly remember that one of their soldiers is a sixteen-year-old Japanese boy and move to exploit this convenience immediately. So immediately, in fact, that they forget just what sort of background produces a sixteen-year old combat savant and don't realize how absolutely unsuitable he is for the mission until he comes back from his first day of school dragging the folding chair Kaname had handcuffed him to.
- In Fullmetal Alchemist, Winry Rockwell's only real skill is working on automail, so she's only ever useful when Edward needs his automail limbs repaired, upgraded, or replaced. Fortunately for her, this happens numerous times throughout the series, ensuring she at least occasionally has a productive role in the story.
- While Borma in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is a decent all-rounder agent, his specialty is explosives, and he only gets one shot out of both seasons to show his stuff when he needs to disarm a bomb in 2nd Gig.
- Girls und Panzer: For the big team-up in the movie, the constantly strapped for cash Anzio team show up in a Carro Veloce 33 tankette. Their three-man team can barely fit in the two-seater machine, it has guns that can't stand up to any kind of armor, and everyone else brought actual tanks that they can't do anything to. The closest they get to a cool moment happens when their ride gets flipped upside-down and used as a ramp by another tank. But when the Final Battle ends up taking place in an empty amusement park, they become the MVP of the coalition, running a spectacularly effective intel and recon operation after it turns out the CV33 is small enough to fit on the roller coaster tracks without attracting too much attention.
- In Hunter × Hunter, Komugi has the power to be extremely good at gungi, a fictional chess-like board game, and to improve further every time she faces a tough opponent. This proves to be an essential power when Meruem, the Chimera Ant King, takes over her country and challenges the best board gamers in the country to face him. He quickly beats the others, but the fact that he cannot beat Komugi, no matter how hard he tries or how many games he plays, causes him to focus exclusively on playing gungi with Komugi. This results in Meruem being distracted for days, possibly weeks, and allows the heroes to stand a fighting chance against Meruem and his overwhelming power and intellect.
- While there are lots of techniques and skills that can fit in Inuyasha, none is more blatant than Sesshomaru's Tenseiga, the brother sword to Inuyasha's Tetsusaiga. Inverse to the Tetsusaiga that can slay 100 demons with one sweep, the Tenseiga can revive 100 beings with one sweep. While the base ability only rarely gets used in the series and the sword itself can't even cut, the characters are quick to realize that as a sword of healing and life, it's actually quite deadly when used against the un-dead and malevolent spirits which, while still a rare situation, has come up frequently enough to justify Sesshomaru holding onto it.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- In Stardust Crusaders, Iggy is called in as the Sixth Ranger of the team late in the story. Iggy's Stand, The Fool, allows him to control sand. Normally, this would be a very situational power since it's useless when there's no sand around, but given how the protagonists' destination is in Egypt, he's much more powerful in the desert environment.
- Golden Wind has Squalo's Stand, Clash, a Threatening Shark that can teleport from one body of liquid to another, sizeshifting to match. This would limit his effectiveness if he didn't fight Bucciarati's crew in Venice, where there are plenty of large bodies of water to unleash his full potential. Late in the fight, his partner Tizano is mortally wounded, and makes a point to die in such a way that he leaves a large puddle of blood so that Squalo has one more angle to attack from - Clash needs liquids, not specifically water.
- Stone Ocean has Survivor, which was said to be the weakest, least useful stand in existence by Dio and Pucci. Its power is to cause a weak electric impulse which stimulates the parts of the brain responsible for aggression, and allowing those affected to see their opponents' weak points, turning those affected into expert, relentless fighters who attack anyone they see. The reason why it's so useless is because it affects everyone in range indiscriminately, meaning that the user's enemies become expert fighters, while his allies turn against him. The only situation where it could be useful is if you have someone you really want dead, and they're trapped somewhere with other strong fighters who could probably kill your target if a big fight started. Like say, a maximum-security prison full of dangerous criminals...
- Steel Ball Run has a more literal example in Blackmore's Stand, Catch the Rainbow, which has enough versatility and power to be among the most dangerous Stands in the series... but only if it's raining out. If it isn't raining, it does nothing at all.
- In KonoSuba, despite being a Physical Goddess, Aqua is almost useless; she's lazy, impulsive, and dumb, and her divine powers cause more trouble than they're worth. So she is overjoyed when she finds a quest on the guild job board that perfectly matches her skill set: purifying a corrupted lake.
- In the spinoff crossover Isekai Quartet, Aqua shows exactly how dangerous she is to the undead: with one cast of Turn Undead, a low-level spell, she makes Ainz Ooal Gown shout in pain, and causes Shalltear (a vampire) to pass out just from being nearby.
- My Hero Academia: Froppy is a hero with all the powers of a frog. While she has the ability to jump and use a long tongue, she is at her best in the water. When the Academy was attacked by a horde of villains, she was teleported into pool designed to replicate underwater rescue situations. Deku lampshaded this trope, pointing out that if the villains knew what Froppy's powers were they would've teleported her somewhere without water. Later, when the students are seeking internships, Froppy went to work with the coast guard to make the best of her aquatic abilities. The other coast guard heroes also have water-related quirks, indicating that the Aquamen of this world go out and find jobs that suit their aquatic abilities.
- Note that Froppy herself is an aversion of this trope, as while she has greater capabilities in water, her skillset is very diverse. Overall her powers mirror Spider-Man, as she has a long tongue that allows her to grapple objects, can stick to walls, and has superhuman strength and speed that allows her to smash concrete or dodge bullets
- One Piece:
- In Skypiea, Enel has curbstomped everyone who has challenged him, his Logia powers making him invincible. Cue Luffy beating the tar out of him, his Rubber Man powers nullifying Enel's lightning.
- In Enies Lobby, Spandam is leading Robin to the ship which will take her to Marineford, but Luffy is stuck fighting Rob Lucci and the rest of the Straw Hats are on the other side of a wide channel. The only person who can delay Spandam until Franky arrives is Usopp, who proceeds to snipe Spandam's Marines. Invoked by Sanji, who explicitly tells him to go do what only he can do after he starts feeling useless.
- In Thriller Bark, Perona ate the Hollow-Hollow Fruit, which allows her to generate ghosts that cause whoever touches them to become extremely negative and emotionally hollow. This power has been shown to bring down even the 'Monster Trio' of the Straw Hats, Luffy, Zoro, and Sanji. Usopp, on the other hand, is so pessimistic that the ghosts have no effect on him, and in fact contact causes Perona to become negative!
- In Impel Down, Magellan's poison means no one can even touch him, and he's strong enough to tank most ranged attacks. Much to everyone's surprise, Mr. 3's Wax-Wax Fruit allows him to completely block Magellan's poison, which Luffy exploits by encasing his limbs in wax to fight Magellan to a standstill... at least until Magellan breaks out a poison so toxic it can even infect inorganic matter.
- In the Dressrosa Arc, the situation of the Funk Brothers is pretty much tailor-made to make Kelly Funk's Jacket Jacket Fruit powers actually useful. Kelly can transform himself into full-body jacket that, when worn, allows him to take over the wearer's body, though that method makes it unlikely for him to take over someone who wasn't already willing. Bobby Funk is inexplicably strong and durable but has no fighting ability, and Kelly Funk is extremely aggressive but also relatively weak, with that combination allowing Kelly's ability to take over his brother's body to make them more formidable that way rather than simply fighting separately.
- Also in the Dressrosa arc, Sugar has woken up after having the scare of her life, and is preparing to turn Luffy and Law (both of whom have never met her before) into toys right as they are preparing to fight Doflamingo. The only one who notices this is Viola, who is half a country away and unable to warn them in time. Instead, she warns Usopp, who with Viola's assistance snipes a perfect shot that makes Sugar pass out again. Bonus points because Usopp's Nightmare Face from eating the Tatababasco grape is the reason Sugar passed out the first time, and he shoots a doll in its likeness towards her position.
- In the Whole Cake Island arc, "Soul King" Brook is matched with the perfect type of enemies, soul-powered entities, which he can easily take out with his skillset.
- One-Punch Man:
- Mumen Rider is a C-Class hero who has all the heroic drive in the world, but lacks any actual powers besides being in decent shape and owning a bicycle. Not peak physical shape, just on the level of a guy who bikes everywhere, and not a Cool Bike, a regular bike. He'd be stretching the definition to even qualify for Badass Normal status. But that sheer inexhaustible Heroic Resolve ultimately proves critical in Holding The Line against the Sea King, preventing him from massacring a shelter full of bystanders until Saitama can arrive.
- King's only known skill is to be able to play many video games at a world-champion level. This doesn't see any use as a superhero—at least until Fubuki attempts to forcibly recruit all of the main characters into her gang unless they can beat them in a fight. Knowing that her group have no chance in an actual brawl against Saitama, King, Bang and Genos, she makes it a video-game fight, banking on the fact that she has a professional gamer in her squad. Saitama has played the game and could beat a few of his adversaries but is ultimately overcome. Most of the others have never touched a video game in their lives and, despite their colossal powers, are quickly defeated. Up steps King, who proceeds to demolish all of Hellish Blizzard's other goons - including the pro - all by himself and without breaking a sweat. This comes up again in an OVA, when King demolishes Garou in a VR fighting game simulation, solidifying his legendary status as the World's Strongest Man.
- Pokémon the Series: Ash's Pidove is the Unova regional bird, not used often, and isn't very smart. She also happens to be female, meaning that she's the only one on Ash's team not affected by Snivy's Attract. This allowed her to fight Snivy and let Ash catch her. Funnily enough, a regular Trainer probably would've used Pidove anyway due to the Elemental Rock–Paper–Scissors.
- In SD Gundam Force, the Gundivers were only good for underwater missions, and as such were only useful whenever something important fell into the sea. By the final battle of the series they were upgraded with flight capabilities, becoming the Gunchoppers.
- In Tokyo Mew Mew, while Mew Lettuce's powers are less useful than those of the other Mews, she is useful on a few occasions. In one filler episode, she, being a bookworm, can resist falling asleep as a Chimera Anima made from a book reads aloud, and can counterattack. In another, when the Mews get bound in silk by a spider-like Chimera Anima, she can still use her castanets, which only require her fingers, and defeats the monster.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: The spell card Burst Return is considered one of the worst in its archetype in the real card game due to its highly situational effect that's usually a detriment to its user (returning Elemental HERO monsters to the hand). Jaden manages to use it to his benefit twice, and it rarely shows up in his hand when it's not useful. Most prominently, when two of his other heroes fall under the control of the Maiden in Lovenote , so Burst Return's return to hand effect helps free his other monsters.
- In Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's, Crow's Black-Winged Dragon (though hyped up a fair bit) is considered to be by far the weakest Signer Dragon by players in the actual game, because its only effect is being able to stop Burn damage - a strategy that is niche at best in real life, and it's not even especially good at it. However, nearly every time it appeared in the anime, the opponent played a deck that utilized Burn in some capacity, and the arc after he got it featured the card Speed World 2 (which had a Burn effect) in almost every Duel.
Comedy
- Comedian Dara O'Briain had a bit about various actors who'd played the Milky Bar kid (one of whom actually was in the audience, or so they say). He asked the audience what superpower a hypothetical Milky Bar kid superhero might possess, to which they provided a series of bizarre answers such as "super-taste", "the ability to turn people into chocolate", etc. O'Briain promptly mused that, if the hypothetical superhero possessed such a superpower, each episode of the hypothetical TV series would consist of this (and then provided an example of how absurd a crime for which "super-taste" would be necessary to solve it would be).
Comic Books
- All-Star Comics: In the issue in which Dr. Mid-Nite joins the Justice Society of America the villain orchestrating everything runs into a pitch dark building. The other JSA members stand back to have Mid-Nite run in and fight him, since he is the only one who can see in the dark.
- Discussed in The Avengers (2023) tie-in issues to Blood Hunt, when Kate Bishop points out that while her own talents may focus on shooting "sticks" at people and not measure up to her current teammates (which includes Hercules, speedster Quicksilver, and energy-generating Hazmat), Kate's particular talent is very useful against the vampires that are their current enemy.
- Chew: The series involves a detective who gets psychic impressions from whatever he eats. Fortunately, he works for the FDA, and thus encounters a lot of food-related crimes. And since he can eat things besides food, he's quite useful to other agencies too.
- The DCU:
- Aquaman is the Trope Namer. While he doesn't need to worry about this trope in his own comics, which largely take place underwater and allow his main powers of sea life communication, water breathing, and fast swimming to see a lot of use, he's at risk of this when guest-starring in other books or as part of a team, as none of these powers do anything on land. His older Justice League of America appearances tended to feature aquatic set pieces in otherwise land-based adventures that seemingly only existed to avoid him being left out of the action. Future writers have generally attempted to upgrade or play up Aquaman's powers to avert this in team settings (particularly his Super-Strength).
- This trope is parodied in Shadowpact where, after having his magical trident thrown into the middle of the Pacific Ocean by The Spectre, Blue Devil reappears with it to fight the unleashed Seven Deadly Sins. Someone asks him how he got it back, and there's a one panel flashback of Aquaman retrieving it for him before going off to deal with his own problems. Instead of admitting he needed Aquaman's help, he just says "I'd rather not talk about it" and keeps going.
- In an issue of JLA, as part of the World War III storyline kickoff, Mageddon initiated a riot at a super villain lockdown and the Justice League were sent in to contain it since the warden and all guards had gone cuckoo as well. While the rest of the team was handling things elsewhere in the building, Aquaman all by his lonesome busted into a room filled with about fifty bad guys with light-based abilities. He just stared them down and said, "Most of your powers are dependent on light. My eyes are adapted to see at six thousand fathoms. Think about it."
- In the JLA (1997) storyline involving the White Martians, one of them corners Aquaman and taunts him about his lack of useful abilities, except "talk[ing] to fish." Aquaman responds, and demonstrates, that since Martians, like humans, have a marine ancestor, he can broadcast his telepathy to a specific part of the alien's brain and give him a crippling seizure.
- In Teen Titans (1966), Bob Haney clearly had a hard time figuring out how to make Aqualad seem useful, so he'd often throw in contrived water-based set pieces to give him something to do (such as a swimming pool in issue #4, a high dive tank in #6, and sewers in #8). He was Put on a Bus and replaced by Speedy in issue #19, and after eventually rejoining the team, he ended up resigning in issue #51 precisely because he'd developed an inferiority complex over his perceived uselessness. Ironically enough, Garth became more of a powerhouse once he gained magic powers and became Tempest.
- One Justice League Unlimited comic book adaptation has Vixen baffled about why Merlin insists on having her join the heroes who go back in time to Camelot, and is confused about why he is determined not to risk her life until the big battle, arguing her powers of assuming animal abilities are good but not that good. Merlin reveals to her that dragons are real (but extinct) and she can also mimic their power against the medieval villains.
- Fantastic Four: Before she got her incredibly versatile force fields, the Invisible Woman (then Invisible Girl) was often subject to this because her only power was Invisibility, so the team was put into situations where stealth was required so her power could come off as being useful.
- G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (Marvel): In his first appearance, Barbecue the firefighter is disdained by Shipwreck, who doesn't see the point in a combat unit having a fireman attached to it. Shortly afterward, Barbecue justifies his position with the team by ably dealing with several fires caused by a Cobra surprise attack.
- Justice (DC Comics):
- Brainiac discusses and subverts this trope when operating on Aquaman by explaining that, though Aquaman's powers are sometimes under-appreciated, he believes his telepathic powers are among the most impressive in the JLA. Considering Brainiac is talking to and about Aquaman himself, this may be an attempt to discredit this trope.
- The trope is played more straight — though while still demonstrating Brainiac's point — when Aquaman is able to contact the sea creatures to make a gigantic X pointing to his location large enough to be seen from the Justice League satellite. Good thing Aquaman was being held underwater.
- Marvel Two-in-One: ''And There Shall Come... A Champion!', the issue that introduced the Champion of the Universe, does this for The Thing. His Super-Strength and rocky skin are by no means underpowered, but in the pantheon of Marvel's heavyweights, he's always been quite a distance from the top. But in his quest to face the World's Strongest Man, the Champion refuses to fight anyone who cannot match him in the ring as a boxer. As it turns out, all the other really strong characters out there lack the discipline to make decent boxers (The Hulk, Wonder Man, Doc Samson, Sub-Mariner), don't have the raw durability or determination to slug it out (Colossus, Sasquatch), or have weaknesses preventing them from boxing fairly (Thor stopped being Thor if away for his hammer too long at this point). This leaves Ben Grimm, who has long been established as an experienced boxer who refuses to give up, as the only character in his weight class capable of fighting the Champion and going the distance long enough to convince the guy to back off.
- Mega Man (Archie Comics): One arc dealt with an EMP disabling most of the world's technology, including the friendlier Robot Masters and Mega Man himself. This meant that Plant Man, mostly seen as one of the lamer Robot Masters due to his flower motif and weak weaponry, got A Day in the Limelight: it turns out he actually really is part plant, and therefore part-organic, making him resistant to the EMP.
- The comic Midnight Mystery featured this in a story in the first issue. An old man called Sneely is working for a pest control company designs a new pesticide, but when he shows it off to his bosses, they learn that instead of killing insects to makes them dance around and laugh. Thinking this would ruin the company should it get out but unable to just fire him, they send him off on a trip to Europe to sell his pesticide, so when he returns empty-handed they'll have a reason to do so. However, the plane gets captured by aliens. They explain they're planning on taking over Earth ( and kill off humanity so they can have the living space) as they're in a war with another species they can't win. The other passengers, which include a movie star and a UN diplomat offer their services, but they're rejected for being useless. Then an invading army of these aliens attack and are shown to be man sized ants. Sneely offers to help with his pesticide, thinking he's improved it to where it will kill bugs, but when he uses it on them, it instead makes them laugh and dance as well. Seeing as they're too loopy to fight, the aliens launch their own attack and wipe out the army. They buy his pesticide from him, content that they now have a weapon to keep their planet safe.
- Mister Miracle: The number of villains who think that it's a good idea to put Mister Miracle in some elaborate deathtrap is pretty astonishing, given that his primary selling point is being the universe's greatest escape artist. You'd think sooner or later someone would come up with a plan that did not involve confining him in something he was sure to escape from.
- Moon Knight: Moon Knight is at full power during the full moon, due to his powers having come from a moon god. Usually, Depending on the Writer it makes him slightly below, the same level, or slightly above Captain America. During his stint as a West Coast Avenger, they entered a pocket dimension to fight a villain, but he easily repelled both Iron Man and Wonder Man together. Then the night fell, revealing several thousand full moons. Cue Moon Knight going One-Winged Angel and beating the tar out of the villain.
- My Little Pony: Friends Forever: Thestra is a pony with a unique and highly unusual (even for MLP standards) ability of making skin and muscles invisible. This skill turns out to be perfect and extremely convenient to fight a giant flying orca made entirely of mirrors that showed up out of nowhere. Thanks to this encounter, Thestra is convinced that her talent can be useful, though it ended up being a Broken Aesop - that level of contrivance being required to make it seem useful is Exhibit A for the idea of it being useless. It's been pointed out by fans that it would be of great use in medicine.
- New Mutants: Cypher had his powers being to know any language. Nowadays, he's a big Heart Is an Awesome Power recipient, due to the broadness of "language" being extrapolated into more versatile tricks, but the writers of the original run favored this trope much more heavily: every other issue would have some visit to a foreign country or alien conqueror or long-lost hidden code for him to unravel. What made this one conspicuous was that pretty much every other superhero comic treats language barriers as a nonissue. Any other story would just casually reveal that the hero is bilingual, use Translator Microbes, or show Aliens Speaking English, which made it seem like it was just the New Mutants who had the bad luck to keep running into monolinguals.
- Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: As blogger Chris Sims points out
(with a reference to Knight Boat, no less), DC's annual Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer comic ran on this trope.
- Sub-Mariner: While Namor the Sub-Mariner has some useful abilities on land (flight and super strength), he generally needs to spend some time in the water to keep them optimal. In one early issue of Fantastic Four (1961), where Doctor Doom teamed up with him to try to eliminate the Fantastic Four, only to betray him along with them (since Doctor Doom wanted no super-powered competition from the Submariner either), Namor was only able to power up enough to pull everyone's fat out of the fire because the Fantastic Four happened to have a big tank of water handy in their building for him.
- Superman:
- In Masters of the Universe crossover "Fate is the Killer", when summoning Mer-man to order him to retrieve the Power Sword from "the deepest trench of the Dark Sea", Skeletor points out that he seldom has need of his aquatic soldier's services.
- Before he was given his signature "all the powers of Superman but only one at a time" deal, Ultra Boy of the Legion of Super-Heroes only had the power of "Penetra-Vision", which worked the same as Superman's "vision" powers (Eye Beams, X-Ray Vision, telescopic/microscopic vision, etc), except that unlike Superman, his vision could penetrate lead. Cue Ultra Boy being confronted by people firing lead bullets, falling lead-lined boulders, and killer robots made of lead. Even after, this is how he dodges the Legion's "no two people with the same power" clause; technically, his only unique power is being able to see through lead.
- Matter-Eater Lad's power is the ability to eat and digest anything - and the Legion had a code against killing their enemies if possible, so the one obvious application of that power was rarely an option. He was often considered a joke character because of that. However, in 1979 The Omega Saga, the team faced a being composed of all of the hatred in the universe, which was so powerful that the only way to stop it was by destroying the machine that created it. The problem is, the machine was indestructible - to everything except Matter-Eater Lad's powers.
- In The Girl in Superman's Past!, Superman must deal with a dam breaking and flooding a valley, and Lori -who up to that point seemed to be a normal, paralytic girl-, asks him to let her help out. As flying her to the disaster zone, Superman ponders that the idea of a girl on a wheelchair helping him take care of a flood would have seemed crazy to anybody...who weren't aware that Lori is a mermaid, and she can help him take people to higher ground, build a provisional flood barrier, and rescue houses buried underwater.
- Subverted in New Super-Man. The Justice League of China is made up of imitations of the American heroes such as Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman of China, created by Dr. Omen to have similar powers. When investigating a scientist, the man panics and sends out an enormous xiangliu sea serpent.
Superman of China: A giant sea monster! Shouldn't we call the Aquaman of China?!
Wonder Woman of China: There is no Aquaman of China.
Batman of China: Dr. Omen didn't see the point.
- X-Men
- The comic X-Men: Legacy was a particularly egregious abuser of this trope for a stretch of issues: It seemed like every single crisis could only be solved by two peoples' powers at once, or one person's power with another person's knowledge. Good thing Rogue's power is to absorb the powers, skills, and attributes of anyone she touches. It got to seem like less of a team than a bank of power donors and one person who ever actually does anything, blurring the line between this trope and Plot Tailored to the Party... This Looks Like a Job For Aquaman Tailored to the Party?
- X-Men volume 2 had Rogue and Gambit take Danger on a visit to San Francisco, to visit Cyclops, who it turned out was facing two crises. His students had gone missing and The Dark Avengers were on a rampage. The trio agreed to help find the kids but tried to avoid Dark Avenger conflict when possible. Rogue's Power Parasite abilities were the only thing letting them survive encounters with War God Ares, and none of them had an answer for Moonstone's combination of blinding light, flight and intangibility besides running and hiding. However, they were forced to blow their cover while saving Trance, who would be one of the less impressive X-Men even with the experience she did not yet have. Trance's ability to astral project meant she was the only one who could find and hit Moonstone, who was having her way with the more powerful and experienced X-Men.
Comic Strips
- In one The Far Side comic, the town's karate club are excited to see a group of plank-shaped and wall-shaped aliens invading Earth.
Fan Works
- In Unleash the Fury of the Djinn, Lunpa is surrounded by a type of energy field making all the protagonists' Psynergy inaccessible to them. Since their Djinn's innate unleashes aren't based in Psynergy, they're the only creatures who stand a chance against Lunpa's guards and defenses. There's a second layer of this trope as well: Rime, a Mercury Djinni whose only power is sealing Psynergy, feels incredibly useless next to Djinn whose powers let them do damage, and spends most of the story just following everyone else as they sneak through the town, either just kicking things or creating diversions... until they run into magical suits of armor sustained by Psynergy. The next time a Djinni finds him, he's waging a one-Djinni No-Holds-Barred Beatdown against them, hundreds of dispelled suits of armor lying in pieces on the floor, filling the hallway.
A totally new concept was slowly growing in the Mercury Djinni's mind. For the first time in centuries, he was actually the most dangerous fighter in the battle.
- The Great Alicorn Hunt: While a perfectly respectable cutie mark talent, hairdressing is not usually particularly helpful in battle... unless you're going up against a monster made entirely of hair (plus a pair of sneakers).
- In the Animorphs/Harry Potter crossover Megamorphs: The Wizarding World, when Rachel initially manages to infiltrate Hogwarts, she manages to get around the castle in secret with an early morph she's rarely used since she first acquired it; Fluffer McKitty, the pet cat of her old friend Melissa.
- The Beast Wars fic "Underwater Beast Wars" opens with the Maximals and Predacons each gaining multiple new members with aquatic beast modes (Razorclaw, Spittor, Snapper and Sea Clamp for the Predacons and Cybershark, Armordillo and Claw Jaw for the Maximals), followed by Tarantulas and Rhinox realising that there is stable energon in the planet's oceans. Since the energon would become unstable if brought to the surface, both teams realise that it must be mined under the water, prompting the observation that their new members are ideally suited to such work. Both teams even work on creating small stations that will allow the 'miners' to collect more energon in bulk using the material of their new members' stasis pods, Tarantulas creating Arachnid while Rhinox builds Orchanoch.
- In the Heroes/Twilight crossover "Dark Days", former Volturi guard Alec's power to shut off others' senses initially seems to be useful only as a means of torture and intimidation. However, when Mohinder and Carlisle need to operate on Claire to remove the other half of the superpower-granting formula from her brain, since conventional anaesthetics don't work on Claire due to her ability and neither will agree to torture, Alec volunteers to use his ability on Claire, as he can be selective in his use of it so that he just shuts off Claire's sense of touch and pain while still leaving her able to see and hear what's happening around her, allowing the doctors to operate with ease.
- CN Akumas: The sole power of Mr. Clean basically amounts to "super-cleaning"; while not the handiest in a fight with the heroes, Hawk Moth finds it useful because he wants to get out of Townsville ASAP, and doing that involves cleaning up the currently-quarantined airport.
Films — Live-Action
- In Bloodshot, in a group of cybernetically-enhanced ex-soldiers whose abilities include various artificial limbs, KT's only enhancement is a respirator that controls her breathing. While the only clear advantage this gives her over a regular soldier is that she can tolerate otherwise potentially toxic environments, this allows her to force Harting's staff to evacuate while she destroys his databases using gas grenades in the final confrontation.
- DC Extended Universe:
- Suicide Squad. Killer Croc is really good at swimming and fighting underwater. Unfortunately, almost all of the mission takes place on dry land (to be fair, Croc is physically powerful, but he's basically just very strong without being outright superhuman). However, during the battle against the Enchantress's brother, the team needs an explosive device to be detonated in an underwater tunnel to blow up the brother. Killer Croc actually insists on participating in this task because he realizes how useful he will be during it. This is spoofed in The LEGO Batman Movie where Killer Croc's only role in the Action Prologue is to press a single bomb's button underwater, after which he cheers: "I did something!"
- Aquaman: While all Atlanteans have most of Arthur's powers, he is the only one who can speak to fish. He first uses this to hide himself and Mera inside a whale's mouth, and later is able to talk down the gigantic sea monster guarding Atlan's trident. Speaking of Atlan, he was the original king of Atlantis, and he had this power as well. His trident amplifies it so that its wielder can control all the creatures of the ocean at once.
- The Suicide Squad: While rats can be found damn near anywhere, Ratcatcher II's powers are significantly enhanced by the fact the Squad is operating in a Wretched Hive Banana Republic, the exact kind of place that would have a ridiculous rat problem. Were they somewhere cleaner, she may well have been considerably less useful.
- Not superpower-related, but improbably convenient, is the climax to G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. The organization has a huge (like the size of Lake Huron) underground water tank and probably spends at least 80% of its annual budget on submarines. And not the big, slow-moving submarines that real navies use; we're talking about two-seat submarines that have the speed and maneuverability of fighter jets because they're imported from Naboo. And then it just so happens that Cobra's main base of operations is underwater.
- Gymkata is about a gymnast recruited by the US government to infiltrate a martial arts tournament. He is able to make good use of his skill thanks to conveniently placed gymnastic related items. The worst case is a literal pommel horse in the middle of a town square.
- James Bond always seems to find himself in a situation that requires the use of whatever gadgets Q has presciently seen fit to supply him with. The early movies tended to give him rather generic items that could be used for any number of things (like a briefcase that contains some concealed weapons and a stash of bribe money), and some films had Q specifically join him in the field to provide relevant equipment (a mini-helicopter, a car that can travel underwater) but as the series went on, the tools got more and more unusual and specific-purpose, but still somehow managed to be just what he ended up needing (an explosive pen,note a jacket that can produce a giant inflated sphere, etc.). The films reverted back to a limited supply of general-purpose tools in the Daniel Craig era.
- The murder case in Legally Blonde seems tailor made for someone like Elle Woods to solve. What comes in handy during the proceedings isn't her law training, or her studying and work at Harvard Law, but the fact that she's sorority sisters with the defendant, and knows enough about fashion and hair maintenance to see through a witness's alibi.
- For the cliffhangers in The Master Mystery, Harry Houdini constantly ended up imprisoned, handcuffed, tied up, locked in a crate thrown into the ocean, or otherwise captured in ways that his escape artist skills fit perfectly.
- In Missing in Action, Braddock infiltrates Vietnam on an assault raft with silent engines. It works and enemy soldiers never hear him coming. It also helps that they always have their backs to him and never turn around.
- Parodied in the superhero comedy Mystery Men, in which the "Invisible Boy" can become invisible only when absolutely nobody is looking at him, including himself. After spending most of the movie without finding any use for his powers, he becomes invisible to disable an automated security system which cannot detect him in his invisible state.
- Graham's son in the M. Night Shyamalan film Signs is saved from the aliens' poison gas by his super asthma.
- Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Sea of Monsters begins to feel like at points with Percy. Have to escape from cages in the bottom of a ship? Percy can control the sea to rock the boat until the literal deus ex plot device falls within reach. Percy needs to escape his archnemesis and reach the lifeboat his friends have stolen? Call up a wave and start surfing that bad boy (and also use it to fling the villain into the ocean when he attempts to follow him). Gotta save yourself and your friends as well as a reluctant ally after you've all been swallowed by a sea monster? Take control over the water inside the monster's stomach until it belches you back to the surface again. There's rarely a problem that gets solved in the film by Percy, up until the final boss battle that doesn't somehow require him to use his mystical water powers.
- Richard B. Riddick in Pitch Black had escaped a life sentence from a prison where he was told he'd never see the light of day. So it made sense that he had his eyes surgically altered to see in the dark. Fortunately for him, the ship transporting him after he escaped crashed on a planet that happened to plunge into darkness during an extended eclipse. Coincidentally, this was the only time light-phobic monsters swarmed from underground caves to feed. Guess who leads the survivors to safety?
- Sky High (2005): Three of the main characters have a bad case of What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway? — Zach can glow in the dark, Ethan can melt into a puddle, and Magenta can shapeshift, but only into a guinea pig — and are subsequently dismissed and sent to the Sidekick track. During the climax, they all manage to find ways to use their powers to stop the villain: Zach lights the way through the ventilation shaft so his friends can escape the gym, Ethan figures out how to move around in puddle form and sets up an effective sneak attack on Lash, and Magenta is small enough to get to the school's generator and shut it off.
- Fred Astaire's gambler character in Swing Time runs into an inordinate amount of problems best solved by gambling and/or dancing.
- Team America: World Police parodied this trope with Gary's acting talents, to the point where Da Chief says that sending his agents off to an aerial dogfight without an actor was like lambs to the slaughter.
- Zoolander is a comedy thriller that revolves around male modeling. At one point, the main characters meet up with a mysterious informant (played by David Duchovny) who reveals that throughout history male models have been brainwashed into becoming assassins. Why male models? They are always in peak physical condition, can gain entry to the most secure places in the world (i.e. VIP exclusive parties) and most importantly have low intelligence and tend to do as they are told. All characteristics of the perfect assassin.note
Literature
- The Poseidon Adventure: As the survivors try to reach rescue, there's a need to get a rope across a submerged passageway that's too long to swim across. Oh, wait: as a young woman, Belle was a champion swimmer who once crossed the English Channel. On the other hand, that was when she was young, and she's years out of practice and out of shape. She succeeds in getting the rope across, but the effort kills her.
- Subverted in the Sidekicks series with Exact Change Kid. Just when they actually need exact change for a bus ride to the villain's lair, it turns out he left his utility belt home (with all his change) and they have to go on foot.
- Journey to the West:
- Xuanzang, despite being helpless in a fight, can sit perfectly still for up to three years and he's very proud of this fact. It only came in handy that one time the group was challenged to a meditation duel on their journey. Nevertheless, it still allowed him to last relatively long even when his opponents cheated, unlike his main opponent when Wukong decided to countercheat.
- Played straight with Sha Wujing a.k.a. Sandy, who is a river demon and the party's best swimmer, so he gets called on to fight water-based foes, which is rare (and even then, Wukong, despite being one of the worst swimmers of the party, is often the one who winds up finding a solution to their problem).
- Alexey Pekhov's Peresmeshnik (Mockingbird). The protagonist's special ability is to copy any other person's voice, which, by the measures of his world, is a weak and useless superability (most of nobility there can do much stronger things). This proves useful as he fights the Final Boss, though.
- The Ultra Violets's Cheri has the ability to talk to animals and superhuman math skills. Where would the latter come in handy, you might ask? A poker game.
- The main character of The Caster Chronicles, Ethan Wate, is a Wayward - a mortal whose destiny is essentially intertwined with that of a specific Caster. Waywards are also essentially a guide or compass for their Caster, and instinctively know where they need to go and what they need to do, especially when Casters are about as lost as the next person in the room. Needless to say, this only ever comes in handy when all other options have been exhausted. Comes with plenty of Lampshade Hanging that explicitly references Aquaman and his usually useless powers.
- The Lord of the Rings:
- Frodo isn't the smartest, strongest or bravest of his companions and is constantly overshadowed even by his fellow hobbits. However, his inherent purity and tenacity make the most capable person to carry the ring. While he eventually fails, it's noted that no other person could carry it as far as he did.
- This could also be said of Hobbits in general - their overall contentment/lack of ambition is why the One Ring is less able to affect them than other races.
- In the Xanth series, no matter how obscure or specialized a main character's magic talent is, you can bet they'll get a chance to use it to save the day. For example, in The Source of Magic a character whose magic talent was turning boulders into pebbles was able to help his group escape a cave-in by shrinking the boulders. This is often justified. In many cases, a character trying to solve puzzles to gain entrance to Good Magician Humphrey's castle will have to solve puzzles designed specifically to require a creative use of their magic talent. Other times, a character will be sought out to go on a quest specifically for his/her magic talent, which will have been foretold by Humphrey to be vital for the quest. However, sometimes it just kind of happens.
- In Don't Call Me Ishmael!, the debate team, whose star debater unfortunately isn't there, have to argue that fantasy and science-fiction are relevant in Real Life. They are convinced they have already lost, when suddenly the resident geek Bill, who's usually The Quiet One, launches into a passionate speech full of geeky analogies about why fantasy and science-fiction do matter and are important to many people, providing them with lots of arguments.
- In Worm, Khepri dismissed the Changer heroes as useless during the final battle with Scion. During the last stretch, she realized the best chance to win was by reminding Scion of Eden's death, a perfect role for the Changers.
- Downplayed example in Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary. The unicorn horn the heroes need to steal is protected by alert centaur guards, a maze of invisible walls, a mountain troll, and magic that afflicts any would-be thief with crippling guilt. Seth has just been turned into a shadow charmer. Among other powers, shadow charmers turn invisible in dim light, can see the invisible, can communicate with and easily befriend dark creatures, and are immune to magic that affects emotions.
- A Certain Magical Index: Touma Kamijou is an odd example in that Imagine Breaker is useless for fighting anything that is not magic or an esper ability. True to Aquaman form, though, he lives in an environment where he's surrounded by espers and gets harassed by magic users. As some viewers note, he only ends up looking good at street combat because his opponents aren't very good at it either. Whenever he goes up against someone who has martial arts training, they tend to wipe the floor with him. It's eventually revealed that this was deliberately invoked by Aleister Crowley. Aleister founded Academy City as a city of espers specifically to draw in the user of Imagine Breaker.
- Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and all its derivatives — nobody liked Rudolph until his biologically-improbable bioluminecent nose was suddenly exactly what was needed to save Christmas.
- Marasi in Wax and Wayne is a Pulser, and has the power to create bubbles of time that move slower than the world around her. She thinks it's a useless power at first, fit only for shorter wait times at the theater, especially compared to Wax flying and shooting metal like bullets, or Wayne's Healing Factor. Her uncle wanted her to keep her powers a secret, partially because he thinks they're useless, and partially because it's embarrassing that his legitimate daughter Steris isn't an Allomancer and his bastard daughter Marasi is. Marasi's powers are instrumental in taking down Miles Hundredlives, whose Healing Factor negates any damage. After the crew takes down all of his Mooks, Marasi traps Miles in a time bubble long enough for the police to arrive and arrest him.
- The Venus Conspiracy by Michael Cordy features a version of this with main character Isabella Bacci, a doctor who specialises in treating patients with face-blindness (a unique form of brain damage that prevents people from recognising other peoples’ faces). The main threat of the novel is Helmut Kappel, who intends to distribute a drug across the world that will make everyone fanatically devoted to him, starting with the attendees of his upcoming wedding (having drugged the bride to make her marry him in the first place). However, Isabella (aided by Kappel’s traitorous son Max) is able to stop this plan by using her expertise to discreetly give all the wedding guests a drug that temporarily induces face-blindness; the love drug would only be triggered when those infected recognised Helmut’s face, so with the potential victims all unable to recognise him the drug will pass harmlessly through their system.
- Most witches on the Discworld cure the sick by presenting simple cures as magical (called 'Headology'). For example, "walk to a distant pool and appease its nymph" is really "take regular exercise." New witch Magrat is a trained herbalist who meticulously prepares remedies, and is frustrated when senior witches like Granny Weatherwax get better results with placebo magic potions (i.e. sugar water). Magrat's reliance on herbs and artifacts is gently mocked for a few books, until Granny finds herself with a comatose patient in Lords and Ladies. Granny instantly goes to Magrat because even though she's the better witch, Magrat is the better doctor.note
- The Poet and the Lunatics: Justified via the Anthropic Principle. Gabriel Gale is a painter by profession, and as such has no reason to get involved with crimesolving except when it intersects with his interest in lunatics.
- In the Heralds of Valdemar series, Heraldic Gifts and True Magic can be very limited in their application (not to mention rather weak in power) and/or lacking in direct offensive capability. Nevertheless, Because Destiny Says So will make sure the right person is in the right place at the right time to be effective.
- Herald Griffin in the Arrows trilogy has the Firestarting Gift, which in most circumstances is the equivalent of carrying a pack of matches around. He uses it to take down an enemy mage who was shrugging off conventional attacks.
- Sun Priest Karal in the Mage Storms trilogy has a passive version of the Mage Gift which allows him to (relatively) safely channel large amounts of magical energy. His ability is so crucial at the climax of all three books that you have to wonder if the gods themselves engineered the peace deal between Valdemar and Karse just to get him in place.
- The Earth-sense is another passive ability that connects a person to the physical terrain. Prince Daren of Rethwellan uses it to help pinpoint an enemy mage so a strike team can take him out, since the earth itself despises the man.
Live-Action TV
- Parodied on 30 Rock episode "I Heart Connecticut", with the fictional NBC show "Who Nose?" about an investigative reporter who must compensate for a lack of smell.
Reporter: You underestimated me, Congressman, because I can't smell. But you made one mistake: You let me see the documents.
- It seemed that every villain in Airwolf had access to a missile-launching helicopter(s), which allows the hero to fight them with his helicopter.
- Comically subverted in the pilot episode of Arrested Development. Buster's Establishing Character Moment tells us that he has graduate degrees in a number of apparently useless subjects, including cartography, so when his family attempts to escape the police by boat, they look to him to decipher the map. Unfortunately, he thinks the blue parts are land.
- In Auction Kings, some of the experts have very narrow specialties, but Paul is always glad to know them when that one piece comes in that is in that specialty.
- While all versions have had this to some extent, Batman (1966) cranked it up to eleven with the specifically useful things Batman has in his utility belt at any given time. Bat Shark Repellent is a perfect example. Admittedly that was actually on the aquatic landing helicopter rather than his own utility belt but the point still stands.
- The Boys (2019): Discussed. Deep complains that The Seven only send him in for things in or around water. It turns out that the rest think he's pathetic and a joke, to his annoyance. When it finally is his job to stop the Boys while they are on a boat, he screws it up by grandstanding in the way on a whale rather than simply overturning their boat. The result is one very dead whale.
- Brooklyn Nine-Nine:
- The season six finale has the team working to expose Commissioner Kelly for using a Stingray to illegally spy on the people of New York City. In order to expose him, they plan on staging a kidnapping of a high-ranking NYPD official and planting a bug on Kelly in order to record him ordering the deployment of the Stingray. The only catch is that the kidnap victim needs to be someone who is simultaneously high-ranking enough that Kelly would deploy the Stingray, but also someone whose absence would not impair the ability of the NYPD to function. CJ just so happens to fit that bill perfectly.
- Hitchcock and Scully are normally depicted as the two most idiotic and incompetent detectives at the precinct, meaning that they're useless on most cases. However: their rampant gluttony means that they have a near-encyclopedic culinary knowledge, which ironically makes them hyper-competent at solving any mystery in which food is involved. As such, they near-effortlessly solve the mystery of Captain Holt's missing pie in "Two Turkeys". And in "Manhunter", they prove instrumental in catching an assassin when the squad needs to find a specific New York hot dog vendor who witnessed an assassination attempt.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Xander got in a fantastic shot on Glory using a wrecking ball, shortly after being derided for being a construction worker.
- Almost every episode of Community has Jeff use his lawyer skills (usually in the form of the 'Winger Speech') to save the day.
- Doctor Who: Tegan's experience as a flight attendant saves the day in "Time-Flight" by helping her rally a bunch of passengers who have been timeshifted to the Jurassic so they can be returned home.
- Donna's history as a office temp proves useful in thwarting several alien invasions, such as noticing that nobody in a secretly-Sontaran-controlled factory ever took a sick day, or being able to type so fast that even the Daleks couldn't keep up with her (although that last one was helped by her newly-acquired Time Lord Intelligence)
- Each episode of the 1970s live-action Saturday-morning show Electra Woman and Dyna Girl would begin with the titular heroines being given a newly developed module for their wrist "Electro-comps," giving them a new (and sometimes seemingly useless) power. Later in the episode, the duo would inevitably encounter a villain whose evil plot can only be thwarted by an imaginative use of the new power...which would then never be mentioned again in subsequent episodes.
- In Good Omens (2019) (and the original book), Newt's Walking Techbane "ability" ends up preventing World War III. When he finally reveals his curse to Anathema, she realizes what must be done and tells him to "fix" the computer programmed to launch the nukes all over the world. A few keystrokes later (apparently, he tries to defragment the drive), the whole system shuts down.
- Kamen Rider Fourze's powers revolve around using Astro Switches to have attachments on his four limbs, with each of those 40 Switches having different uses. At one point after another, each of those Switches (as ridiculous as some of them may be) found some explicit use during the course of the show. An egregious example, however, is when the Musca Zodiarts is treated by everyone as unstoppable unless Fourze uses the Net Switch, which just happens to have been confiscated by a teacher.
- Knight Rider remake.
- The show seems to take this backward, in that due to how incompetent most of the characters are other than KITT, the plot always seems contrived to happen in basements and otherwise deep inside buildings more than you would think.
- Considering that in the pilot episode KITT smashes right through a wall to rescue Michael, adopting basements and elevated floors as hideouts may be savvy on the villains' part.
- Lost:
- Charlie possesses musical abilities, but is generally useless to the other survivors. However, during the season 3 finale the only way to turn off the jamming equipment set up by the Others is with a number combination, which happens to be the tune to "Good Vibrations."
- Likewise, the otherwise useless Shannon pulls her weight with her ability to speak French, when French transmissions, maps and documents turn up.
- Juliet and Bernard were, respectively, a fertility specialist and a dentist. These skills came in handy when somebody at camp needed their appendix removed - that somebody just so happened to be Jack, who would have performed the procedure himself if it was anybody else. Bernard's line of work gave him knowledge of anesthesia, and Juliet's medical background, although not specific to surgery, gave her the necessary skills to perform the procedure without incident.
- In teen spy drama series M.I. High every time the agents are given a new gadget a scenario will always occur in that very episode where the gadget is needed, regardless of how unlikely the scenario is.
- Monk: Adrian Monk's eidetic memory manifests itself in some pretty weird ways. In "Mr. Monk and the Class Reunion", he explains to Natalie that he and his wife Trudy met when she used his back to write a note on, and he was able to extrapolate her phone number and call her (which he later called the bravest thing he ever did in his life). Natalie calls it Monk's "superpower", and at first it might seem like the world's most useless superpower, but it proves to be Chekhov's Skill when he realizes that one of his college classmates is about to be murdered by her husband, but since she used Monk's back to fill out her form for the reunion, he is able to extrapolate the name of the hotel she and her husband are staying at. They rush to the hotel and arrive mere seconds before the woman's husband pitches her off the balcony.
- Garry, the Butt-Monkey of Parks and Recreation, is known as a screw-up, and while he can't handle the big, flashy, complicated jobs, he not only handles but rocks at all the small, everyday stuff, like filing, licking envelopes and sending letters, and taking phone calls. Not only that, he's downright chipper about doing it, not even minding if a screw-up requires him to start the whole long, boring process over again. As Ben points out, Garry can't do much, but the things he can do are all things an office needs to have happen in order to keep the place functioning so the big, flashy, complicated jobs can go off without small things getting in the way. Therefore, there are times when Garry's help is absolutely necessary.
Ben: Oh, you wanna photocopy? You wanna do all the mindless work? Yeah, didn't think so. [over intercom] Get me Garry Gergich.
- On Psych, Gus's expertise in prescription drugs from his actual job as a pharmaceutical salesman comes up a lot more than you'd expect during his investigations. Gus also uses his "Super Sniffer" to uncover crucial evidence and can open safes. However, that's a downplayed example, as he's mostly useful as Shawn's minder, as the one who has a steady job and can pay for things, and is a surprisingly decent detective.
- Dr. Johnson from Scrubs occasionally got his moment in the sun as a dermatologist (one had him confirm a melanoma diagnosis), which annoyed the shit out of Dr. Cox, who considered it a mostly useless specialty. Whether it is or not, dermatology is one of the highest-paid medical specialties in the U.S.note which was also mocked and taken advantage of by the other doctors much to Dr. Johnson's chagrin.
- In the Smallville episode "Justice", the Justice League (Clark/Superman, Green Arrow, Cyborg, Impulse/Flash, Aquaman) attacks a LuthorCorp facility that just so happens to be by the docks.
- Can happen occasionally on Stargate SG-1.
- Dr. Elizabeth Weir is assigned as the new commander of the Stargate Program based apparently on her expertise as a diplomat. Everyone (especially her) questions how this qualifies her to run the Stargate Program, which is primarily a military operation. In the Season Eight premier "New Order", she gets to use her skills during a negotiation with the Goa'uld, before leaving to head the Atlantis expedition. It's explained that the whole point of putting a civilian in charge is that the Stargate program shouldn't be a military operation, and since a large part of it involves meeting and trading with other civilisations a diplomat is the perfect person for the job. If anything her appointment inverted this trope, since everyone involved previously lacked this obviously necessary expertise and frequently got in trouble as a result.
- The Asgard, during their war with the Replicators, tend to request the help of Earth, mainly due to the crude projectile technology of their weapons, and their ability to come up with very simple, at times reckless, yet very effective plans that the Asgard are apparently too smart to come up with.
- That Mitchell and Webb Look parodied this trope with a series of sketches about superheroes Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit. As discussed in each episode, poor BMX Bandit's abilities are rather overspecialized and contrived (he tended to come up with complex plans that involved a lot of BMX tricks) in comparison with Angel Summoner (who would just summon angels to resolve the issue).
- In Thunderbirds, Alan and Thunderbird 3 are specialized for space rescues; Gordon and Thunderbird 4 for marine rescues. When these situations don't turn up, these craft aren't used. Gordon rarely plays a significant role when the rescue isn't at sea, but Alan (either because or in spite of the fact that space rescues are the rarest type) often goes on other missions (but not as the prime character, though). Played with depending on the vehicle in the 2015 remake. Thunderbirds 3 and 5 have much greater use compared to the original due to the increase of space missions. In particular, Thunderbird 5 has various modules to allow John to tackle missions close to the space station. Thunderbird 4 still plays this straight but can launch from Tracy Island if Thunderbird 2 cannot be used to transport, and is even adapted for a couple of non-aquatic rescues due to its ability to handle extreme pressure.
- Warehouse 13 has these crop up every so often.
- One was a television related issue that only Pete could solve.
- Pete's archery expertise has come in handy more often than you'd expect i.e. it has been useful at all.
- Wonder Man (2026): The episode "Doorman" features the eponymous superhero who got the powers to have people teleport through him like a portal. This comes in handy when the night club Doorman works at needs evacuation and his door-abilities are the only possibility. Granted, this remains the only real heroic act he does for the rest of the episode, as after that he becomes a Celebrity Superhero instead.
Tabletop Games
- In the Pokémon Trading Card Game, this is the card designers' standard response to when some particular cards run rampant in the competitive scene. Notable examples include:
- Heatmor (Dark Explorers), who has one attack, Hot Lick, that does a measly 10 damage but does 60 damage if the target is Durant—and was released at a time the Durant Mill deck was making short work of most other decks. In particular, Hot Lick needs only 1 Energy of any type to use allowing Heatmor to fit into any deck, including other Durant Mill decks. Unlike most other examples, this did absolutely nothing to stop the deck, and the splashability of the card meant it fit in Durant Mill decks for the mirror matches and merely left other decks slightly better off than before.
- Not long afterward, the major force in the tournament scene were Pokémon SP, Basic Pokémon with decent strength that were augmented by a pretty large amount of supplementary cards. The result was decks centered around Pokémon SP having blinding setup speed and maneuverability, able to shift and adapt to anything any non-SP Pokémon can throw at it. Anything except for Machamp (Stormfront), who has an attack that will immediately KO any Basic Pokémon it targets. Machamp decks aren't designed to do much except end Pokémon SP decks, but there were so many Pokémon SP decks at the time that Machamp decks became an equally common scene in tournaments.
- From the Prismatic Evolutions set comes Budew, who has an attack for 0 Energy, Itchy Pollen, that deals a measly 10 damage, the lowest possible nonzero amount, but blocks the opponent from using Item cards on their next turn. This card has caused a significant downturn in people using decks based on Obsidian Flames' Charizard ex, since, as a deck based on two Stage 2 lines, as it's also accompanied by Pidgeot ex, Rare Candy—an Item card—is usually necessary for this deck to function as intended. As the deck normally lacks the middle stages of Charmeleon and Pidgeotto via Rare Candy taking their place, and Item cards are necessary to search them out, Budew effectively locks them as Charmander and Pidgey, allowing the Budew user to easily pick them off. Other common competitive decks are greatly slowed down by the presence of Budew at the start, due to their dependence on Item cards, while Budew's user can safely use them (provided both sides aren't using Budew), though they weren't as impacted by Budew nearly as grievously as Charizard ex.
- Lillie's Clefairy ex was made to curb Dragapult ex, who was running wild over early 2025. Dragapult ex, for only 2 Energy, can deal 200 damage and place 6 damage counters on your opponent's Benched Pokémon, effectively preventing any decks based on evolved Pokémon from setting up by taking them out as Basic Pokémon. Lillie's Clefairy ex, however, has a passive Ability, "Fairy Zone," which causes Psychic Pokémon (Fairy is represented as Psychic here) to deal double damage to Dragon Pokémon—like Dragapult ex. As a Basic Pokémon, it can show up whenever you have Bench space available. Some players would put a single Lillie's Clefairy ex and a Psychic Energy into their decks, so Lillie's Clefairy ex can attack, solely in the event the opponent is using Dragapult ex.
- Heatmor (Dark Explorers)
- Yu-Gi-Oh!: Chain Burn is a deck based on foregoing a lot of traditional strategies in favor of simply stacking up on heavy-duty direct damage cards like Chain Strike, Just Desserts, and Secret Barrel and attempting to slice chunks out of the opponent's LP. Most of the time, the deck is considered more annoying than effective, as while it can steal games, it lacks any kind of field presence and is reliant on drawing a lot of cards just to keep its damage coming. However, in early 2017, the deck became famous for having a great matchup against Zoodiacs, of all things, generally considered one of the best decks in history. This is because Zoodiac is a deck that generally focuses on building up an extensive field (which meant cards like Secret Barrel and Balance of Judgment, which become more effective if the opponent controls more cards, prove far more potent), use of LP as a cost (obviously problematic against a deck that focused on attacking LP above all else) and interrupting the opponent's strategy through the effect of Drident to snipe cards mid-combo (Chain Burn doesn't really use combos that can be interrupted like this)—effectively, Chain Burn turned Zoodiac's strong points into weak points.
- While they were powerful support for Synchron decks, Shooting Majestic Star Dragon and Cosmic Blazar Dragon were undermined by having rather strict summoning requirements that made the newer boss monsters for the deck relegated to being Cool, but Inefficient in contrast to simpler and more generic options, since they are essentially just powerful monsters who can disrupt enemy plays by negating a card or summon. They do have the interesting application of not having proper "Hard once-per-turn" clauses though, instead simply banishing themselves from the board until the End Phase which in most cases means essentially the same thing... unless you are up against a deck utilizing multiple cards that include secondary effects that can be used in the End Phase, at which point the Synchro Dragons can negate the effect, banish themselves, return immediately, and be in prime position to banish the next effect.
- In tabletop roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons, this can be a tough balancing act. Some abilities are so specific that the DM has to go out of their way to include it into the game, and not doing so makes the player feel like their character has a bunch of useless skills. On the other hand, putting scenarios which utilize these skills can feel so contrived and pandering that the result can feel like the best way to overcome that particular challenge is by not playing a character of that class in the first place. For example, if a DM only places traps into their game when there's a Rogue in the party, the solution is for there to not be a Rogue in the party and have someone else useful in more situations instead (of course, a good solution for the DM is to have traps in the game regardless so the PCs will wish they had a Rogue, but possibly putting more traps in if they have one). The worst offender for this issue is probably the Ranger, who has a whole plethora of skills for challenges in the party (tracking creatures long distances, gathering food, obscuring your own tracks to keep others from following you, managing the weather and travel, etc.) that likely won't come up in games that aren't heavily simulationist. Wizards of the Coast made an attempt to correct this with Tasha's Cauldron of Everything that broadened the Ranger's skills to more generally applicable ones like standard fighting and movement.
Webcomics
- Cursed Princess Club: Frederick is not a great athlete/warrior like his older brothers, having instead graduated from military academy with a specialty in administrative support. His father King Leland finds this wimpy specialty very disappointing, and even his generally kind and understanding older brothers have trouble finding ways to praise him for it. However, when Gwendolyn admits to feeling overwhelmed with a dinner party she needs to hold as a school project, Frederick gladly offers his administrative support skills to assist. Not only does this help Gwen plan the dinner party much more easily than she had been before, but the planning session they have finally gives Frederick the opportunity to make a Love Confession to her after many chapters of interruptions and misunderstandings that prevented him from doing so.
- One Cyanide and Happiness strip has the Purple-Shirted Eye Stabber fallen on hard times and begging for money on the street. A passing citizen calls him out for being a one trick pony and not doing more with his life when giant alien eyeballs with tentacles invade the city and start killing people, prompting the Purple-Shirted Eye Stabber to grab his knife and do what he does best.
- Lampshaded in the infrequent Supers theme of Irregular Webcomic!, when the GM complains that it's really hard to come up with an uncontrived Eigen Plot to fit Dino Boy, Captain Spatula, Refractive Man, and Worm-Master. Hilariously, outside of the one strip where he managed it, Worm-Master is an aversion - his loyal worm hordes are never any use.
- Possibly due to being the daughter of fishermen, Dame Lien from The Order of the Stick is a paladin with a shark mount, a harpoon, and a magic ring that lets her breathe water. So, during the battle of Azure City she gets tasked with guarding the docks. Becomes much more important when the battle worsens and the Azurites have to evacuate by boat, and she is a major combatant for the chapters while they are at sea. (Though it's worth noting that, later, when she's miles from the ocean, she still finds a way to put her mount to good use).
- Oglaf:
- In one strip, some townsfolk beg a wizard to stop a rampaging beast. He protests that he only knows dental magic, but fortunately he's able to subdue and befriend the monster when it turns out to have an impacted molar.
- A man is cursed by a spirit to be "the best at blowjobs in the world", with the spirit claiming that he either has to keep his gift to himself forever, or make use of it and only ever be known as "the blowjob guy." Shortly after, the city is besieged by a barbarian who demands they "send out your best fuck to defeat me, or we will lay your town to waste!" The obvious happens, and the man becomes a national hero and is crowned King Blowjob, who proceeds to solve as many governing problems as possible through really good blowjobs.
- In one strip, some townsfolk beg a wizard
- The Secret Knots: Parodied in "The very brief adventures of the Circle of the Salamander", where the French government recruits a group of surrealist artists to combat the 'surrealist vortex' that is threatening to destroy the world.
- xkcd:
- Invoked in the Alt Text of "Etymology Man", wherein they pedantically dissect the etymology of "tidal wave" until they are surrounded by the rising water.
"I can't believe I'm saying this, but I wish Aquaman were here instead—HE'D be able to help."
- Etymology Man appears again in Wrong Superhero when he gets called by mistake by some scientists who actually needed Entomology Man to help them deal with an attack of giant mantises.
- And who better to deal with rampaging windmills than... HIM. At long last, he's proven right.
- Invoked in the Alt Text of "Etymology Man
Web Original
- Critical Role:
- Fjord's homebrew Paladin class gives him access to Marine Layer, a 30-foot radius sphere of dense fog centered on him that effectively blinds everyone inside it, but becomes see-through when standing within 5 feet of Fjord. It was written off as a useless ability because it blinds both enemies and allies, creating far more problems than it solves. He casts it almost as a joke during the fight against Lucien, Cognouza Incarnate, the campaign's Final Boss... where it actually ends up being incredibly useful, since the majority of the boss's attacks are ranged and require direct line of sight with the target. Fjord was able to snipe down the Eyes of the Somnovem with Eldritch Blasts while using the cloud for cover, Veth could stand next to him and get her Sneak Attack damage without having to hide first, and Caduceus and Jester, the party's only healers, could take cover inside the cloud when both were at 1 HP.
- Fjord also spent 5000 gold on a Ring of Fire Resistance, which gives the wearer resistance to fire damage... right before the party goes to the frozen wasteland of Eisselcross. He eventually gives it to Jester, who attunes to it because she doesn't have any better magic items. The Ring of Fire Resistance continues to get clowned on for the entire rest of the arc... Until the fight against Lucien, when Jester gets hit with a Fireball, the brunt of which gets absorbed by the ring.
Fjord/Travis: YES! SAVED MY BITCH!
- DSBT InsaniT: Fire Guy has his uses, like being a great campfire.
- Parodied in DR. BEES. After the titular superhero goes about making everything worse with his bees, we finally see a situation clearly tailor made for him to solve (a bee convention that has no bees). Dramatic music swells... and Dr. Bees doesn’t show up. Smash cut to his corpse in the middle of the desert.
- Robin and Zephyr: Throughout Digital Devil Saga Demonless, Robin continuously dunks on Heat for being the least fitting party member for the challenge (His grenade launcher has the lowest base power out of the cast and enemy party sizes are rarely large enough for his all-hit ability to surpass characters with random target multi-hits, especially when most boss fights only have one target). However, when the time comes to fight Ravana (whose gimmick is that he turns invisible and hides in one of six possible locations), Robin gives Heat a chance to shine as he can theoretically check all the hiding spots at the same time. Heat takes aim, fires... and then the trope is subverted when Heat's attack misses entirely as Ravana must be targeted directly to be revealed.
- Solid jj:
- Parodied in "Classic Aquaman", where the Justice League sounded the alarm to enlist his help... unclogging the toilet. He was not at all pleased.
- In "Everybody Loves Aquaman", the Justice League were about to embark on a mission in Flint, Michigan, where they felt that the pollution in the water would not be suited for Aquaman, when all the sudden Lex Luthor announced that the Legion of Doom is building a new underwater base and planning to kill all fish. Aquaman was excited hearing that it's a mission that he can do, but as it turns out Lex Luthor is only really doing the plan to humor Black Manta, which is the villainous version of this trope. Lex thought it was stupid and ultimately decided to back out.
- Twitch Plays Pokémon Red: All Terrain Venemoth was the lowest-level of Red's endgame team, but it proved vital to one defeat of Lance after all the other party members had fainted. The Dragonite it was facing was far above its level, but the gen 1 AI has a quirk wherein AI pokemon will always use moves that are super-effective against your pokemon... even if these moves are harmless status buffs that just happen to have the right type. Lance's Dragonite knew Agility and Barrier, which are Psychic (super effective against Venemoth's Poison type) but deal no damage. Venemoth's moves did very little damage, but since the Dragonite wasn't attacking, it had all the time it needed to inflict Death of a Thousand Cuts.
