New Powers as the Plot Demands

""Couldn't you have done that earlier?""

- Tristan (to Yvaine), Stardust

""Anytime a hero is somehow outpowered and/or outclassed by the villain, he will invariably release powers/new moves he never knew he could accomplish... but his old teacher did!""

- The 100 Rules of Anime: #84 The Law of Dormant Powers

Some superhero comics authors seem to get bored of the same old powers. They add new ones to the same characters whenever they feel that a new power would open up a new story, or a new danger needs a new response, or what the hell, whenever they feel like it. It's bad enough writing in a new hero from nowhere just because you want to include a new power, but a lot of writers are worse than that. They tack new powers onto existing heroes.

Sometimes a Retcon, a power upgrade or some bit of Phlebotinum is employed to explain the new power, but often the character just does something they've never done before and when their friends say, "I didn't know you could do that!", they come back with either "I've never needed to, till now," or worse, "Neither did I, till now!"

This is sometimes employed as a form of Deus Ex Machina - having written themselves into a corner with a villain or situation that's too overwhelming for our heroes to handle with the tools they've been given, the writer decides to have the hero instantaneously learn the one ability he needs to save the day. Frequently, without any form of Foreshadowing to suggest that he can do that. It gets worse if he conveniently forgets this ability when it would come in handy in a later situation.

Not all New Super Powers fall into this category, just the ones resulting from an Ass Pull. Generally speaking, this trope is far, far more forgiveable early in the story- a character who has only recently been empowered is fully justified in not knowing what he can do. Likewise, "neither did I until now" in an experienced character can be reasonable, if it's happening in some circumstance or special condition that the character has never encountered before. An inherent power of Science Heroes - other than their Two Fists, they're supposed to be building bizarre devices to deal with bizarre circumstances. It only gets annoying if the writer can't come up with a reason the guy would have that precise device on his person at that precise moment - other than him just being crazy.

Commonly used to bring a character Back From the Dead.

Giving a character a Green Lantern Ring avoids this. Compare Magic A Is Magic A, So Last Season and finally Strong As They Need to Be.

Suddenly Always Knew That is the same type of retcon as this, but instead of "Neither did I", the character will explain that You Didn't Ask.

If the plot was crafted to fit the powers (as opposed to the powers changing to meet the needs of the plot) you have a Plot Tailored to The Party or a job for Aquaman. See also Adaptive Ability, where your power is the acquisition of new powers/immunities. When the new ability is something overly narrow or silly, this often leads to Flight Strength Heart, as was common in The Silver Age of Comic Books.

Is one of the common traits of a Mary Sue.

Anime & Manga
""But how could you-?"
 * Pick a Magical Girl anime. Any Magical Girl anime.
 * In Naruto:
 * Sasuke frequently obtains new Sharingan abilities with the eye's upgraded forms.
 * This has extended to Sasuke's allies as well. Karin and Jugo reveal miraculous healing powers when Sasuke is wounded after their battle with Killer Bee, though they did not use these abilities when Sasuke was bedridden from injuries after fighting with Deidara.
 * In Chapter 562, in order to get all the five kages to fight, we learned Genma's team are able to use a watered down version of Minato's Hiraishin and they quickly use it to transport the Mizukage.
 * Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure has two especially egregious examples of this trope, each used to finish off the Big Bad of a story arc. The first example occurs in Part 3: the villain Dio Brando is virtually unstoppable because his Stand, so how do the heroes stop him? . Of course, this is explained Part 5's was pretty bad, though:   To be fair, it was shown beforehand that the Arrow could give Stands new powers, but come on! That power is just ridiculous!
 * Oh, it happens to the villains too. Part 4 had  Part 6 had
 * Speaking of part 4, this is the whole schtick behind Koichi's Stand, Echoes. It starts out as an egg, which hatches when he needs it to, allowing him to  When that isn't enough, it evolves into a form that can   And later on it evolves again to allow him to   Koichi's pretty much a Swiss Army Knife among Stand users.
 * At the beginning of Part 5, it's showed that Koichi is now able to summon the earlier versions of Echoes when he uses Echoes 2' flying power and greater range to look for Giorgio.
 * Parts I and II only avoided this trope by making ripple powers a sort of Green Lantern Ring.
 * Yes! Precure 5's Cure Aqua suddenly picked up the ability to turn her "Aqua Ribbon" baton into a sword. The reasoning behind this was that this allowed an awesome swordfight. The sword returned during The Movie for exactly the same reason.
 * In Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, the characters are frequently granted new karaoke songs (the weapon of choice in the series) whenever the ones in the previous episode didn't work. This becomes somewhat ridiculous, considering these upgrades are manifested by the goddess the protagonists are attempting to summon, and
 * Oh yeah, and that amnesia kiss? Lucia gets that too. Randomly.
 * In Persona 4: The Animation, Yu tends to gain a new ability, such as Persona Change or Fusion, whenever a boss turns out to be too much to handle.
 * This is justified in the fact that Yu is going through Social Links, resulting in new Personas. He summons Pyro Jack because he's befriended Yosuke, Ara Mitama because of Chie, etc.
 * Teddie conveniently recalling that Kintoki-Douji can cast Energy Shower, which (just as conveniently) cures Enervation ("old" status).
 * Dragonball Z: For most of Dragon Ball, whenever Akira Toriyama wanted to introduce a new technique, or to show off a better version of an established one, it would usually belong to Tien and to a lesser extent, Piccolo. Tien introduced solar flare, Aura Flare's, self replication finger lasers, telepath, telekinesis, flight, and the ability to copy techniques. Piccolo introduced regeneration, size shifting, arm stretching, and mouth blasts.
 * The innate ability to sense energy is meant to be quite rare in DBZ, hence why Frieza's entire army (and even Frieza himself) utilize scouter devices. Vegeta relied on a scouter when we first meet him - although he knew not to trust them entirely - yet by the Namek Saga has randomly gained the ability to sense energy all on his own.
 * Even Goku does this from time to time. He reads Krillin's mind when he arrives on Namek (and then never uses it again), gains Instant Transmission from the inhabitants of a planet he crashed on, and figures out how to turn into a Super Saiyan 3. And he learned all three of these techniques conveniently off-screen.
 * The first example was given some Lampshade Hanging, with Krillin asking "Where did you get such an ability from?!", and Goku replying he wasn't even sure that would work. It was also reused during the Android/Cell saga.

"Muffin Button.""

""Conveniently, my Millennium Puzzle allows me to put souls back into their original bodies!".
 * As for the Ki sensing, it wasn't that Frieza and his minions couldn't do it, but they didn't know that it even could be done. Vegeta mentioned that after he found out it was possible, he easily taught himself the ability.
 * Almost exactly the same happened with Goten. He achieved the Super Saiyan level without knowing that it was a hard thing to do, but being 7-8 years old, he hasn't learnt how to fly by himself.
 * Happens occasionally in Sailor Moon. Generally when a new batch of enemies appear the Sailors tend to get a power-up.
 * More like happens at the end of every arc. After every attack has been thrown at the Big Bad to no effect, and all hope seems lost, Princess Serenity comes out of nowhere with enough power to blast them away. Of course, had she actually used these powers back during the Silver Millennium, none of the events of the show would have had to happen in the first place...
 * Somewhat Lampshaded in the final episodes, where after throwing even Princess Serenity at Sailor Galaxia, still no effect. The last two episodes keep setting you up to believe that the next big mean laser blast or inspiring moment of compassion will finish her off only for Galaxia to laugh it off and smack the heroes around some more.
 * Bleach:
 * Yammy is introduced as the 10th Espada. After the protagonist and his allies have defeated Espada #4-9, it's revealed that he's only the 10th Espada while in released form. When he does finally release his power, he morphs into the 0th Espada. He mocks his opponents with Who said the Espada were numbered 1-10?, a question the fanbase tends to answer with "Arrancar #11, actually". That said, there are occasional hints prior to his reveal that he does have a more powerful form and that he's been eating souls to prepare for a power increase. However, no-one expected his resureccion to break the numerical ranking of the Espada (despite it already having been revealed Ulquiorra had a unique second resureccion form). It's also shown that his in-universe reputation for being so stupid he's incapable of using his power remains true right to the end of him: he may be the 0th Espada, but he is not capable of using that power as effectively as other Espada are able to do.
 * Tousen suddenly reveals out of the blue that he's undergone Hollowfication and that he possesses a resureccion.
 * In the Invasion Arc. the villain's zanpakutou is this. Kageroza's zanpakutou has the power to manipulate space/time. Then it's revealed to have the power to teleport and duplicate. Then it has the power to resurrect "dead" reigai. Then, when Ichigo is about to defeat the villain, his zanpakutou is revealed to have a cloning ability. The apparent damsel of the arc, Nozomi is supposed to be a modsoul who then manifests a zanpakutou. Her zanpakutou is then revealed to have the power to drain reiatsu. Then it's revealed to be able absorb the attacks of anything thrown at it, combine it with her own power and throw it back as a more powerful attack. Then it's revealed that Kageroza's and Nozomi's power are two halves of the same original zanpakutou and, when recombined, the zanpakutou gains all the powers in combination which suddenly results in the power to destroy the entirety of Soul Society with a single activation command. And, somehow, the original zanpakutou never had any of these abilities at all until the owner, fed up with being treated as weak, turned evil and decided to obtain more power by splitting himself in two and recombining himself (how this makes him more powerful and gives him powers he never previously possessed is never explained).
 * Soul Eater has quite a few of these, both in manga and the anime -- most blatantly
 * Many creatures in the Pokémon anime would learn new attacks when the plot required it or evolved at just the right time.
 * In Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, this is effectively the main purpose of Mokona's 108 Secret Abilities power.
 * Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro: Neuro's 666 tools of the Demon World and 7 Tools of the Demon Emperor. That's 673 different powers he can pull out of thin air whenever he needs to.
 * Kogarashi from Kamen no Maid Guy has a large platter of various powers, many of whom only show up once to advance the plot (and cause massive amounts of comedic havoc for everyone else in the vicinity) and are never touched on again. The sheer bizarreness of most of these powers -- like knowledge of every gourmet recipe in the universe and the ability to paralyze people with his voice -- makes most of them fall squarely under the Rule of Funny.
 * Ryoko of Tenchi Muyo! certainly falls into this category when she gets immobilized from the neck down and shoots a bunch of lasers from her hair.
 * In Code Geass, Suzaku's "live" command, which initially took over his body and forced him to survive by any means, is almost completely repurposed in Turn 22. Now it makes Suzaku a better fighter without taking over his body or erasing his memories while it is active. The only way this makes if one changes what "live" is supposed to mean from 'run away from danger' to 'overcome it somehow' but even then it doesn't make much sense.
 * In Transformers Victory, Deathsaurus uses Transformer-eating insects to try and kill Star Saber. They turn out to be vulnerable to cold, and then Victory Leo decides to reveal he has a freeze power.
 * In Yu-Gi-Oh!, the Millennium Items seem to have their standard powers, plus random other powers used in one or two situations, then forgotten for the rest of the show, even in situations where they would have been useful. For instance, in the manga Yugi holds his puzzle asking it to show him where Jounouchi is, and it does it.
 * There's also the Millennium Ring, which near the end of the Pegasus arc showed the power to manifest the effect of Duel Monsters cards as real, allowing Bakura to use Chain Energy to bind Pegasus' goons and summon the Man-Eater Bug to attack him. This power is never brought up again.
 * Duelists also very frequently win duels with brand new cards just revealed, and often these cards are A) highly situational to the point in any real deck they'd be dead weight, and B) never seen again after their one usage. On occasion the new card that is used is a real life card that they just didn't use in the show before (such as Skilled Dark Magician), other times the card is completely made up with powers verging on Game Breaker levels (such as the entire Orichalcos archetype). This is somewhat justified though, as the show is Merchandise-Driven and thus they have to introduce new cards all the times.
 * The Winged Dragon of Ra is clearly this, revealing a new secret ability every single time it gets played. A full list of its abilities: its ATK and DEF are equal to the ATK and DEF of the monsters tributed to summon it, you can pay all but 1 Life Point to increase its attack by the same amount, it can attack regardless of if any card effects would otherwise stop it from attacking, you can pay 1000 Life Points to destroy all monster on the opponent's field, and you can tribute other monsters to add their ATK to Ra's ATK. And that doesn't count the requirement one needs to have Ancient Egyptian heritage and has to recite an ancient chant in order to summon it, and the immunity to card effects it shares with the other god cards.
 * Spoofed mercilessly (along with everything else) in 'Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series''.
 * Spoofed mercilessly (along with everything else) in 'Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series''.

"I activate a spell that allows our monsters to trade places! Which would be completely useless in any other situation."

"I have placed a part of my soul inside the Millennium Puzzle, because apparently I can do that."

"Now I shall use Mega-Ultra Chicken's secret ability that I just this second made up to convert my Life Points into Attack Points, merging me with the beast itself!""

"Barnaby: So this new mode increases our power?
 * Yu-Gi-Oh GX has Trueman, who exhibits a new power in nearly every appearance, ranging from teleportation to cloning to possession to shapeshifting to ripping through the dimensional fabric to thought manipulation.
 * Parodied in an episode of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood where Ed, separated from Al and feeling rather desperate, tries to "CONVENIENTLY AWAKEN TELEPATHIC POWERS!" to contact him. It doesn't work.
 * Ditto in the Manga.
 * Actually, revealed in the manga omake, it did work. He just didn't reach Al.
 * Scar displays a rather odd power during an episode of the first anime. Trying to find out where the Elric brothers are, he places his arm on a stack of their research papers, and gathers all the words into, what can only be called, a knowledge ball. This ability is never mentioned beforehand, and never spoken of after the scene.
 * In Robot Taekwon V, the gang in charge of Taekwon V can unknowingly summon outside forces to aid them in fighting anything that is evil or corrupt.
 * Detective Conan: Conan can do anything. ANYTHING. He can drive a car, scuba dive, shoot a gun, drive a boat, drive a Jetski, fly a small plane, and FLY A HELICOPTER (which is completely different from flying a plane). Why can he do these things? Because he "learned in Hawaii!"
 * Haru, the lead in Rave Master, actually has the power to acquire new powers when he's in a sticky situation thanks to the Rave of Wisdom. The technical explanation is that he has a sword with ten (preset) forms, and he learns a new one whenever he happens to need it most. This manages to avoid being an Ass Pull at several points because he either obtained some powerful artifact to grant him another sword, he had to get some reforging done before he could access one form, and another form was used by a villain before he figured out how it worked.
 * Always present to some extent in One Piece, though normally the powers are natural outgrowths of previously existing abilities or brand new items with some degree of How Do I Shot Web. However, in the Enies Lobby Arc, it's practically endemic, with every single character pulling bizarre new abilities and weapons out of nowhere. Oda has said he doesn't like to do training arcs like in other Shonen series. Instead, he'll have a character pull out a new ability and then go into a flashback about how they trained for that ability off-screen. To clarify:
 * Luffy learned how to use Gear Two and Gear Three. He supposedly perfected both techniques in the roughly week and a half after being beaten to near-death in the previous encounter. Luffy also learned how to flash-step via mimicry mid-battle.
 * As Sogeking, Usopp unveiled a brand new super-slingshot with tech-boosted firepower, range, and accuracy. It's not clear when exactly this weapon was built, as Usopp had been holding the Distress Ball for at least a day and a half before arriving at Enies Lobby, and the weapon definitely would've prevented much of that distress.
 * Nami showed off the upgraded Clima Tact, which Usopp also put together at a vague point in the timeline.
 * SANJI learned BLAZE KICK! He had more time than the others to figure this out, to some extent, as he hadn't been in the same dire battle as the other Strawhats from several hours prior
 * Zoro activated a brand-new nine-sword-style goddess form. Unlike the above, there was basically no attempt to explain this, and the form's properties are still very unclear.
 * Chopper and Franky did display new abilities, but those were not as jarring as the above. In Chopper's case, the effects of Phlebotinum Overdose weren't elaborated upon beforehand, but they were alluded to, and given Chopper's abilities, Superpowered Alter Id wasn't very much of a stretch. This arc was also basically Franky's debut as a fighter, so it's only natural for Franky's arsenal to be explored.
 * Plot Plot No Mi, as the fandom called it.
 * Kenshiro's fighting style of Hokuto Shinken in Fist of the North Star is made of this trope, doing whatever Kenshiro happens to need at the time, including making mohawks' heads explode, giving Lin the ability to talk, making a thug's mouth move by itself to tell truthful answers to Kenshiro's questions, and even making a thug think he knows Hokuto Shinken, try to use it on Kenshiro, and utterly fail.
 * In the final Season 1 episode of Uchuu Senkan Yamato, Dessler appears out of nowhere in a ship and fires a giant energy blast at the Yamato. Sanada activates a device with reflects the beam back onto this source. This device was never seen used by the humans before (only Sanada seemed to know its existence), and despite its seeming usefulness, is never used or mentioned again.
 * Star Driver is particularly bad about this. Practically every single fight in the series ends with Takuto suddenly revealing that he has some hidden power that just happens to work perfectly against whatever enemy he's fighting, and using said power to One Hit KO his enemy.
 * Spoofed in the fifth episode of Tiger and Bunny. When Wild Tiger and Barnaby are in a pinch and almost out of time, their Powered Armor automatically switches to the the brand new Good Luck mode Saito installed and they manage to incapacitate their opponent just before the clock runs out. So what does Good Luck Mode actually do?

Saito:"

"Barnaby: No good! I'm out of ammunition!
 * Also spoofed in the eighth audio drama (a comedic Alternate Universe where Kotetsu and Barnaby are actual Buddy Cops), where the following exchange takes place as they confront the villain.

Kotetsu: Me too, Riders!

Barnaby: But you know, I actually have pretty amazing powers! I just normally keep them secret!

Kotetsu: Whaaat!? ... Actually, I got the exact same powers just yesterday!"


 * Super Atragon gives us a battleship that does this: The Ra gains several the following new abilities with no explanation; most are shown exactly once:
 * A self-leveling bridge.
 * A Star Trek-like bubble-shield.
 * The (completely gratuitous) ability to fly.
 * Weaponized, rocket-propelled anchors.
 * For nearly a hundred episodes in Yu Yu Hakusho the audience has know Kurama to be a plant user. But in the fight against, he used a smoke screen? Where'd that come from?
 * Probably from a plant that releases smoke.
 * Inazuma Eleven anime develops itself into this. At first, many skills the team learn come from books and manuals, but by the third season, characters repeatly pull out new things whenever the plot demands them. In the movie, the protagonists learn to use super power abilities without any explaination just so they can beat the Ogre, who's argubly stronger than the series' world cup teams.

Card Games

 * How the hell did we not mention Planeswalkers? Old walkers are able to do virtually anything according to the comics and novels, and Post-Mending walkers are capable of quite a bit (shown by them getting printed with new abilities). The players themselves are old walkers: literally capable of casting anything they have in their decks (provided certain limitations). But this is kinda the point of playing.

Comics
"Superman: You're different now. You can think for yourself. So think about this. Before, you were a mindless thing. Nothing could hurt you. You couldn't feel pain, much less understand it. But once you have felt it — it changes you — forever. And you'll begin to understand something new. Fear. I've lived with it all my life. You don't want to die again, do you? The agony of what's happened to you affects your speed — your strength... and that little bit of doubt — that you cannot win today — grows.
 * Superman. This is quite possibly the largest criticism laid at his feet: he started out faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound and invulnerable to anything less than a bomb. Since then he's learned to fly, to blow like a hurricane, to survive nuclear explosions (though just barely), chill things with a puff of breath, shoot lasers from his eyes, and use X-Ray Vision. And that's just the powers that have lasted: during the Silver Age, he gained a new power nearly every month (Super Ventriloquism was bad - being able to travel through time as easily as he could fly was worse). The super-breath, at least, is a logical extension of someone with the kind of lungs he must have... although, even so, he really shouldn't be able to do more than emit a single shock-wave of air; he may have a super-strong diaphragm but his lungs aren't any bigger than human lungs.
 * Actually, super-breath is probably the least hard to explain away; wind instrument players master a technique called "circular breathing" to produce a continuous tone through their instrument without running out of breath. If Kenny G can produce a continuous note for 45 minutes, Superman should be able to blow hard for a minute or so.
 * Interestingly, a lot of this stems from various media adaptations, particularly the Superman Theatrical Cartoons shorts; originally the brothers Fleischer wanted to stick close to a relatively limited powerset, but animating him just "leaping" everywhere was time-consuming and expensive (even with their extravagant-for-the-time budget), so they asked DC "can we just make him fly?" DC said "Sure", he flew in the cartoons which introduced a ton of people to the character who then bought the comic and complained to DC, asking why Superman didn't fly like he did in the cartoon... and, well, we were off to the Super-races.
 * Superman's Mirror Universe counterpart Ultraman actually has this as his superpower: exposure to Kryptonite, rather than harming him, causes him to develop new abilities.
 * And Red Kryptonite (occasionally, in some continuities) lets the "regular" Superman develop new abilities, albeit temporary ones.
 * Two Words Obvious Trope: Super Weaving. Out of fairness, this is actually Van-Zee, Superman's lookalike from Kandor, and it's not really a unique power as much as "using Super Speed to weave really fast".
 * In one strip, Lois is going blind and she wants to see a play based on herself before this happens. But the play is only a script, so Superman uses super-puppetry to make it appear that actors are performing on stage (Lois' vision is blurred so she doesn't notice). He also uses "super-memory" to learn the script, even though he could just read it given that he's offstage.
 * Other silver age classic powers: super-hypnotism, super-kissing (don't ask, really), and super-mimicry.
 * A Cracked Magazine Guide for Superheroes encouraged them to simulate super-kissing to improve their love lives. Apparently you use your super-breath to suck all the air out of the room just before you lock lips. The girl passes out from lack of oxygen, and wakes up convinced that she fainted from your kiss.
 * 'Super-hypnotism' - though not called that at the time - was actually acquired at a very early point, certainly by 1940 at the latest (he hypnotises Lois in at least two different stories that year alone.) It's just that it's used so irregularly and the 'super' makes it sound so silly that it seems Silver Age.
 * The original TV show mostly restrained itself from this, but huffed this trope twice, once to give Superman the ability to phase through walls, and once to let him split himself into multiple two Supermen. Both of these powers vanished after the episode.
 * The wall-phasing was at least supposed to be an extension of applied super-speed (vibration of such intensity that his molecules could pass through solid objects, a la The Flash) rather than an entirely new ability. Lois and Clark even borrowed the concept, and justified its lack of re-use by suggesting that the process was extremely taxing and even life threatening. The splitting into two Supermen, however, was not quite so validated.
 * In one episode of the DCAU, Superman teams up with Robin to search for Batman, and displays his super-mimicry, explained as him having extraordinary control of his vocal muscles, to first mimic Batman, then Robin himself. This completely freaks Robin out, and he demands that Supes "Never. Do that. Again." Superman never uses this power again.
 * There's plenty more examples from the comics.
 * The basic assumption was that, for any ability a normal man might have, Superman could do it or learn to do it much better. If a man can blow out a candle, then Superman can blow out a forest fire (never mind that his lungs aren't that big). The problem lay in that the writers didn't consider how ventriloquism or hypnotism really work, so Superman was shown literally throwing his voice, or hypnotizing people almost effortlessly.
 * The time travel ability is a logical extension of the fact that they'd already established he could fly faster than light; the real question is how he ever broke the light barrier without time traveling. See here for details.
 * To sum it up, Superman only has 1 super power, the ability to pull any super power he wants out of his Super-ass.
 * This didn't end with the Silver Age by the way. The modern Superman has been shown to use the psychic martial art of Torquasm-Vo which in one instance allowed him to alter reality.
 * Spider-Man's archfoe The Green Goblin is able to come Back From the Dead (via Waking Up At the Morgue) thanks to a healing factor he wasn't even aware he retained. Then again, it's not surprising that he'd be unaware of a power he had to die to use.
 * Spider-Man also has in his rogue's gallery a villain called "The Answer", whose powers are defined as "whatever is necessary in the current situation".
 * The mutant Lifeguard has essentially the same power. She will develop whatever power will be necessary next to save lives. So, unconscious precognitive adaptation.
 * Also in the same vein is Darwin, whose body will evolve on the fly to meet the problems in the situation, even though Darwin has no control over what evolves or how it works. Lampshaded during World War Hulk when his power decided the best defense against a rampaging Hulk was...to not be there, as illustrated by his teleporting away.
 * Which was pretty brilliant, although the power originally created a Gamma Energy Draining power to drain power from the Hulk to weaken him, but the Hulk is one of those sorts who fit the 'generates more energy than the enemy can hope to drain' trope so Darwin was getting nowhere and after being knocked unconscious by the Hulk his power reasoned it had no hope of defending against the Hulk directly and got Darwin several states away where it was relatively safe.
 * The Legion of Super-Heroes (more uses below) took this specific version and applied it even further. Ra's Al Ghul set the Moon on a collision course with the Earth. This gave off "hypertaxis energy", which caused humans to evolve to survive a threat before it happened.
 * Martian Manhunter was prone to this, at times having the power to control magnetism, strain gold from water, and create ice cream with his mind.
 * X-Men's Marrow had her heart torn off her body by Storm, but later was revealed to be alive. How? Spare heart.
 * But with Marrow, they'd already established that her "super power" consisted of her body pretty much generating extras of everything. The hard-tissues (bones) she HAD to get rid of, or they hurt like hell and tended to pierce internal organs.
 * Speaking of Storm she can slip into this herself (her use of lightning in increasingly improbable ways qualifies), it even bleeds into other adaptations. For instance, did you know that she can apparently use Cerebro in the Black Panther animated series?
 * Might as well put Magneto in there as well. He started off with the ability to control metal magnetically, then developed the ability to fly with a reasonable enough explanation. Then, as stories became more ambitious, he was suddenly able to control the entire electromagnetic spectrum, which effectively made him invincible. Of course, then there's the Planet X story by Grant Morrison, in which he's powerful enough to (somehow) control gravity and time. (Grand Unified Theory?)
 * To be fair to the ol' Master of Magnetism, in the 4th or 5th issue of the original X-Men run in the 1960s, Magneto was also supposed to be one of the most powerful psychics on the planet (second only to Professor X). He even dueled with Xavier's psyche on the Astral Plane. Mercifully, his psi powers were quickly abandoned and forgotten. Later still, they were retconned into low-level telepathy, explaining that this (along with his extraordinarily strong will) allows him to resist any psychic attack short of Professor X going all-out.
 * Grant Morrison used this trope by an Ass Pull a Cerebus Retcon in his run on X-Men by introducing "secondary mutations", which would grant entirely new sets of powers to mutants, even years after they first gained their powers. This was his excuse for turning Beast into a cat-person and letting Emma Frost turn into living diamond for no obvious reason besides Rule of Cool.
 * It was extra fail on the part of Beast since his blue furry ape form was already his secondary mutation, his original mutation was still fairly human looking only with more ape-like build and feet that could work like hands plus the agility and strength. He went blue and furry (and briefly had a super-healing factor at Deadpool or Madcap level) after drinking a mutagen he created, so the ugly cat-like form makes even less sense in light of that.
 * One Chris Claremont story suddenly gave Storm Super Senses, because she could feel the effect everyone around her had on the local air pressure or something.
 * Dave Cockrum used to drive John Byrne nuts by giving constantly giving Nightcrawler new powers almost every issue back in the earlier X-Men days. Such as invisibility in shadows, or wallcrawling.
 * Professor Xavier's less-seen powers include telekinesis and the ability to give other people telepathy.
 * As originally written pre-Retcon, Phoenix was merely Jean Grey's "ultimate potential as a psi." She'd never shown that she was capable of that level of power before, and later stories brought in outside influences, but originally Jean spontaneously unlocked awesome powers when faced with death.
 * In the Legion of Super-Heroes, Tyroc had the power to warp reality with his screams. (Of course, this made the "screaming" part just color...no pun intended.) He could do nearly anything, from teleportation to pyrokinesis to... making it rain glue. The character was soon written out; common wisdom is that the writers had no idea what to do with him. In his recent reintroduction he seems to have been Retconned into having more conventional Banshee/Black Canary scream powers.
 * In the Legion of Super-Heroes supporting characters, Duplicate Boy had the ability to copy any power he wanted, including those he made up. Of course, his abilities were rarely used properly by the writers.
 * He could copy the powers of anyone he's ever met including multiple powers at the same time much like the Super-Adaptoid. So he was effectively the most powerful being in the 31st Century, which is why they had a 'the rulers of your homeworld deem you must remain here to protect it' restriction on him along with the rest of his team for why he in particular never had an impact against the villains that showed up after his introduction.
 * The villain Nemesis Kid had the ability to temporarily gain whatever power he needed to fight any single opponent. This one was used just as badly; he was killed in hand-to-hand combat by Queen Projectra -- without her using her illusion powers -- the only given reason why his ability didn't provide him with invulnerability as well as immunity to illusions was being too intimidated to concentrate on activating his power. One would suppose he would gain invulnerability against physical attacks against any foe capable of throwing a punch... And no, he never fought Duplicate Boy.
 * Nemesis Kid's powers explicitly only worked on one power at a time. That's why Projectra was able to simply beat him to death: His power was occupied nullifying her illusions.
 * The Doom Patrol villain "The Quiz" had "every power you haven't thought of". Literally; to fight her, you had to start shouting power names so she couldn't use them.
 * Gives you a bit of fridge logic as to why declaring 'the power to have every power I haven't thought of' wouldn't eliminate the power and render her powerless since she can't have any power you've thought of and her root power is told to you.
 * Inverted in an arc of Exiles in which the team arrives on an Earth where the Skrulls have ruled since the 19th century, and several of them are thrown into a gladiator arena to fight other superpowered beings. Mimic, a mutant with the power to copy and hold onto the abilities of up to five other mutants, strikingly showcases "all four" of his various powers as he fights his way to higher tiers of the arena, until he finally comes up against "The Champion", that universe's version of Captain America. The Skrulls are expecting an epic fight, when Mimic ends it in ten seconds by letting loose optic blasts he copied from the X-Men's Cyclops. The reader knows he has this power (if he's been paying attention), but the audience is shocked.
 * While not powers, per se, Batman seems to always have that one thing in his utility belt that saves the day, despite there never being mention of it before. This was especially true in the Silver Age, on the TV Show (shark-repellent bat-spray), and on the Super Friends ("You're a mouse? I'll put you in the bat belt mouse compartment!"). Fans have come to expect him to have all sorts of basic toys there (as well as a chunk of kryptonite in a lead-lined pouch because you can't be too careful), and the better writers either have him specifically preparing for a fight or have him MacGyver a solution out of things you would expect him to have.
 * For the record, he actually does have a chunk of kryptonite. Superman gave it to Batman so he could use it to stop him if he ever went insane and became a threat.
 * The writers have also shown that Batman, down in the Batcave, has a set of dossier folders on every single hero and villain on the planet, with detailed plans on how to take down each and every one of them if he ever needed to. This even includes the really, really stupid villains for whom the plan ought to be "oh just kick his ass already."
 * There's been a theory going around for awhile now that the ability to spontaneously generate whatever he needs most in a given situation is in fact Batman's superpower. This combined with his crazy preparedness and ridiculous paranoia easily makes him the most powerful character ever.
 * The movies have their share of oddly specific and convenient gadgets, too, such as:
 * The Bat-Stop-The-Guy-About-To-Drop-Kick-Me-Arm-Apparatus from the 1989 film.
 * The Bat-Ice-Skates and Bat-Heaters from Batman and Robin.
 * The Bat-Van-Cutter from The Dark Knight.
 * Captain Everything from Normalman was the most powerful being on the planet Levram simply because he could defy all laws of physics, exhibiting a new power at every plot twist. Of course, this is just one of the ways in which he's a parody of Superman.
 * If I remember correctly, he was also a complete moron, who forgot that he could fly while in midflight.
 * ... which might also be a parody of the Superman comic writers' tendency toward Forgotten Phlebotinum.
 * Also from the DCU, Infinity Man had the ill-explained power to, uh (googling it), bend all natural laws. He can modify the atomic structure of things. Good.
 * Resurrection Man's powers are literally dictated by the plot; anytime he dies, he'll come back immediately possessing some power that would have allowed him to survive what killed him. Drop him off a cliff, now he can fly, shoot him, now he's bulletproof, etc.
 * New Spider-Man foe The Freak has the same ability.
 * As does Doomsday, the only monster to ever kill Superman- except he develops new abilities that counter anything that harms him. At one point, he develops bony ear coverings to counter a powerful sonic gun.
 * Until he is finally undone by the one thing that he evolved that made him weak: Sentience.

Although that's mostly Superman trashtalking to use psychological warfare on Doomsday, since the very things he says weakens Doomsday in no way have ever stopped Superman because being sentient in no way keeps Doomsday from overcoming that fear and fighting on anyway. There's no reason why Doomsday can't be emboldened by his ability to always return from the dead, plenty of other characters get by just fine with far less power than Doomsday has beyond the ability to return from the dead."


 * Doomsday's power could be summarized as, each time he dies and comes back, his overall strength and power increase AND he's made immediately and instantaneously invulnerable to and has the capacity to kill or destroy whatever it was that killed him.
 * Dial H for Hero is based around a mysterious dial that enables an ordinary person to become a superhero for a short time, by selecting the letters H-E-R-O in order. Each time it is used, the dial causes its possessor to become a superhero with a different name, costume, and powers.
 * In the children's comic Korgi, the magic korgi spontaneously develops the ability to breathe fire.
 * Don't forget Ivy suddenly revealing that she has wings a la The Dark Crystal. These sudden powers are perhaps more jarring because the main story has no dialog whatsoever, and the only indication that the korgis are magical comes from the introduction - we're never given any hint as to how this magic manifests.
 * Darkhawk is an interesting variant on this trope, in the sense that Chris Powell didn't get an instruction manual along with the fancy amulet that transforms him into Darkhawk, so he ended up discovering many of his powers by trial and error, most notably in reacting to new and stressful situations.
 * This sounds familiar.
 * The New Warriors had an enemy/ally named Helix, who adapted to any threat against his body, be it disease, telekinesis, spider webs, or a beat down from multiple super sonic flying, nigh invulnerable, super strong enemies. As soon as he was out of range from whatever threatened him, his body dropped whatever adaptations it developed.
 * The DC villain Paragon has the power to mimic the superpowers of any superhero near to him. But he can also add a twist the originator cannot perform, so he thinks he is superior because he can use any power better.
 * In a non-superheroic example, Thorn from Bone displays more and more ludicrous powers as the plot goes on, everything from simple Psychic Dreams for Everyone to seeing invisible ghost circles to super-strength to flight.
 * Seth, the ridiculously powerful metahuman sent to kill and otherwise maim the members of The Authority, might as well be a walking Green Lantern Ring. Having been designed to take down the most powerful superhero team in the world, he is given just about every superpower that his creators can imagine, at one point stating that he has powers "that [his enemies] don't even have names for".
 * The Mighty Thor was explicitly intended to be the most powerful superhero in the Marvel Universe, and in the early days this seemed to mean "modeled after the Silver Age Superman." He whipped out abilities like time travel and even super-ventriloquism on occasion (making his lame-ass early villains even less challenging) before his powers became more clearly defined (and his villains got much more dangerous).
 * A very '90s miniseries called The Psycho, by James Hudnall and Dan Brereton, is set in a world where people gain superpowers by taking various drugs. At one point the title character develops the ability to breathe water-- or maybe he had it from the start; after all, there's no way of knowing until someone's trapped you in a flooded room...
 * The eponymous Empowered has on at least three occasions demonstrated powers she had no idea her suit possessed: Clinging, surviving in space, and very possibly flight. She's not aware of the third.
 * The female Green Lantern Arisia, a one-time fling of Hal Jordan's, was thought to have perished. She was found years later (somewhat randomly) on the planet Biot in a pod. We were then told that Arisia's species can go into a deep state of mental and physical hibernation while only appearing dead. All this was done so Geoff Johns could put Arisia into the Green Lantern Corp ongoing. Not the most elegant way of bringing someone back to life.
 * Hawk and Dove. Holy crap, Hawk and Dove. Geoff Johns likes them so much that one of them will just have whatever powers they need for the plot to work. Army of unstoppable zombies? Well hey, Dove just happens to have an anti zombie laser inside her. Boyfriend dies? Dove can totally hear ghosts all of the sudden. Dove's in trouble? Hawk just happens to have the ability to sense when Dove's using her powers even though he's never had that power before. Sigh.
 * NICOLE of the Sonic the Hedgehog Archie comic series (and to a lesser extent, the Sonic the Hedgehog animated series), a small handheld device with utilities ranging from a translator, laser device, a protective forcefield and a scanner that can devise info and history from almost any object or area. In later issues NICOLE was evolved into the powerstation for New Mobotropolis from which she can transport or materialize almost any entity to the heroes' convenience, though at least by this point her multiple powers are becoming less of a surprise.
 * Spoofed in Tomorrow Stories with Splash Brannigan. "He followed them into the painting! I didn't know four dimensional ink could do that!" "Well duh! It can probably do whatever story purposes require."
 * In the Buffy Season 8 comics, this trope is done with a dark justification. Buffy suddenly get new powers,.
 * Herbie The Fat Fury got various superpowers from eating lollipops. These powers could be literally anything, from invulnerability and super-strength to hypnotism, talking to animals, time travel, and knocking out uncooperative indian chiefs.
 * The Molecule Man, a Fantastic Four villain can control molecules, so he can do just about anything, but he's not the brightest bulb in the shed and not completely evil, so he's often beaten before he can really use his imagination.

Fanfic

 * In Thirty Hs, Harry Potter is given a wide variety of powers never had in canon, including groinsaws, the ability to punch astral vampires in half, the ability to summon holy fuck fire and meteors with his guitar fuck slayer, and the ability to see subatomic particles by squinting.
 * ultamite nineball's infamous fic "soulless shell" chronicles the adventures of Leif Melyamos, who develops the ability to shoot Frickin' Laser Beams, teleport at will, and outfight any opponent at the age of about three. By the time he's eighteen, he can take on a bizarre One-Winged Angel form with horns and wings, and by the time the story comes to a very abrupt stop, has got hold of a sapient blood-drinking sword. Keep in mind this fic was put in the Redwall section, and said canon is supposed to have no magic whatsoever (bar the occasional prophecies and Instant Expert routines). This fic is in fact a prequel to another fic entitled "Blood omen", in which Leif's descendant Zain is an even better example, literally developing a new power with each fight scene.
 * Legolas By Laura depicts Gandalf as being able to fight Sauron to a standstill and teleport Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin from the Shire to Mordor simply by wishing it. If he could do that, why did Tolkien need three books to get them there?
 * The Adventures of Kitty Pryde by Melodyrider(a series written as an ongoing companion comic to the Joss Whedon run on Astonishing X Men) has this chapter where Kitty, Colossus and X-Factor take on a misguided future version of Kitty, who, while not having any new powers, was able to apply her powers in new ways that Kitty hadn't considered before, including phasing through dimensions, sending bioshocks of people who she phases through and phasing through light.
 * In a Bleach Fanfiction Wiki, Miharu Kurosaki's Zanpakutou is quite possibly the embodiment of this trope, creating anything or having any given effect the wielder (or in this case, the creator of the character) imagines. It's command is even "Improvise".
 * The Subspace Emissarys Worlds Conquest has an interesting non-Ass Pull version. The main characters get new powers depending on what world they're in.

Films -- Animation
"Eddie Valiant: You mean you could've taken your hand out of that cuff at any time?!
 * Lampshaded and played for laughs in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Roger Rabbit meta-explains his ability to escape his handcuffs easily, when he left them to help stabilize the table as Eddie Valiant was trying to saw them off.

Roger Rabbit: NO! Not at any time -- only when it was funny."

Films -- Live Action

 * The Heisei Gamera series deconstructed this trope completely. Gamera reveals in the second film to have a "Mana Cannon" that obliterates the enemy of that film. It is learned in the final film that using that attack drained the Earth of its health, and releasing a hoard of Gyaos upon the planet. It is also learned that Gamera bonded with humans in order to gain the ability to mutate and get new powers such as the Mana Cannon and Flame Absorbing powers -- but the Mana Cannon cost him that connection to humanity as well! This causes him to ignore Property Damage as he hunts the Gyaos.
 * Godzilla could be similar at times. The most famous examples would have to be his gravity-defying drop kick, and his sudden ability to fly at the end of one movie by curling up his body and firing his atomic breath backward so he shoots through the air like a rocket. Additionally, Godzilla randomly decided he had magnetic powers in the climactic battle of Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla.
 * In Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday Jason is ambushed by the FBI which leaves his body completely obliterated, forcing his heart to evolve into a small creature that can hypnotize and possess people.
 * Once Neo realizes he's "The One" in The Matrix, he can pretty much do anything, which is exacerbated played down in the sequels -- presumably the writers realised that having a Reality Warper who could kill the bad guys with a thought would kill any kind of dramatic tension. Of course, this leads to problems of its own...
 * This trope is also justified at different points in the films, as skills and knowledge the protaganists need can be uploaded directly into their brains.
 * R2D2 in Star Wars manages to do just about anything when the plot requires, especially in the prequels. Like fly.
 * Nightmare City, a low budget Italian flick where protagonist Dean Miller has a touch of Commando Concentrate™ (Just add weapons!). A news reporter with no combat training magically knows how to make functional firebombs and handle a sub-machine gun.
 * The Superman movies were even worse than the comics with this. The movies introduced:
 * The most infamous new power, from Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, "Rebuild-the-Great-Wall-of-China Vision". This one is especially egregious considering that Superman could have rebuilt it using his existing powers of flight, super speed and heat vision.
 * The "Saran-wrap-S-shield" in Superman II.
 * Superman's memory-wiping kiss.
 * Kryptonians suddenly also have the ability to teleport/blink at will, and shoot kinetic beams from their hands in Superman II as well.
 * Flying around the world backwards to reverse time, though some consider this a visual metaphor taken too literally. Superman could and did travel through time in the comics.
 * Considering all of the above examples, it comes as a surprise that 1984's Supergirl completely averts this trope. Supergirl has all the powers she's supposed to have, but no "extras" are added.
 * Horribly abused in Midnight Movie. Try to escape through a window or door? The killer makes them impenetrable. Try to call for help? He disrupts phones. Try to get the attention of someone on the outside? He makes it so no one can see or hear you. All that, combined with him being Made of Iron, being able to teleport, and being able to find people wherever they hide due to literally sensing fear and you've got one of the most unfair Slasher Film villains in history.

Literature
""The sand around him stirred. The rocks shuddered, shifted, then began to rise from the sea and the sand as though sifted from them by an invisible screen. Swirling through the air as they sought their place, the stones took shape as broken wall and shattered foundation, as arch and gate and dome-the ruins of Darth Vader's fortress retreat.
 * Parodied in Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, in which our heroes create a comic strip character, The Escapist, just before the start of World War II. He begins as a detective-escapologist character. By the later years of the war, he's pulling tanks apart with his bare hands.
 * Happens to nearly every plot-relevant magician in Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar series at some point or other. The meta main character, Pug, seems to experience as much of his development by being forced into new powers by circumstance as by study and learning. Nakor also exhibits this frequently later in the series, though it's implied that he has known his new 'tricks' for a long time and simply did not choose to use them for whatever reason.
 * Anita Blake is the best example of this ever, having morphed from a simple animator/necromancer in the book series to... frankly, this editor lost track of them all a long time ago. But in pretty much every big confrontation, she gets a new Power of the Month.
 * These days, they all require her to have sex to activate.
 * In every single book, Anita pulls a new power out of her ass, spends a bit in the hospital from "overdoing it", and from then on can use the power whenever.
 * Princess Merry in Laural K Hamilton's other main novel line is just as bad. Starts out as having only a slightly extended lifespan and the ability to craft glamours (illusions) around herself to alter her appearance, making her effectively human in power level. Then gains the power to turn someone inside out by touching them. Then in the second book gains the power to make someone bleed to death in a matter of seconds out of any cut, no matter how small. Then, because it's a Laural K Hamilton novel gains the power to give anyone who has sex with her major mojo. Then gains more random stuff for herself that's typically forgotten by the next book.
 * In the second book of the Night Watch series, we are introduced to a character called "the Mirror", who is capable of becoming more powerful and acquiring complex magical abilities in order to match whatever situation he is facing at the time. It is justified due to the fact that a Mirror is formed from the magical Twilight for the specific purpose of redressing imbalances in the power structure of the magical Others, and once that goal is accomplished, it ceases to exist.
 * Magic, generally speaking, is pretty free-form in Night Watch anyway -- it works by making "signs" in the Twilight, and an exhaustive list of those signs is never given. The only Others held to have limited scope in their powers are the low-level Dark Others like vampires and werewolves -- everyone else just has aptitudes for a particular kind of magic (healing, shapeshifting etc.) or is considered to be a generalist.
 * The resolution of the Telzey Amberdon story "Resident Witch", by James H Schmitz, relies on Telzey's psychic powers including the ability to Body Surf, despite no previous indication that she could do this.
 * Richard Rahl from The Sword of Truth falls victim to this trope fairly regularly. Understandable, since he's also subjected to Only the Author Can Save Them Now at least once a book.
 * The whole Flock in the fourth Maximum Ride book, and Angel throughout the series. All of the flock get this throughout the series, it was just not until the fourth book that Patterson threw up his hands and decided that they were uncontrollably mutating which would cause them to develop random, unplanned powers.
 * Also more of a case of New Powers Because The Writer Feels Like It, as very few (if any) of them are ever actually used for anything useful.
 * Daniel in The Dangerous Days of Daniel X by James Patterson. Almost every chapter he gets a new power. He can create people from thin air, control animals, turn into animals, create different scenes(like turn a messy room into a clean room), has an internal iPod, and is incredibly intelligent. And this is just the first book.
 * Dwarves in Artemis Fowl get a new ability every book. They can tunnel by eating through earth, fire a devastating barrage of digested rocks/mud/whatever they just dug through, propel themselves underwater and ignore the bends because of intestinal bacteria, have saliva that works as a healing balm, can cling to walls if dehydrated, have glow-in-the-dark spit, which can also solidify to trap enemies, have prehensile beards/antennae (very handy lockpicks/emergency automatic surgical needles). I would not be surprised if they were revealed to have chameleon skin or ejectable teeth in later books.
 * Though if you think about it every power makes sense given their overall nature. Their nature as a Fartillery unit was established well in the first book as a side-effect of their digging ability, the jet propulsion is really just an extension of that... the bacteria in the stomach are practically necessary to explain why they don't suffer problems from all the oxygen in aerated soil and the pore thing makes sense from the given explanation; to leech water out of the surroundings if they're stuck far from water.
 * In The Atlantis Complex, they can now expel 1/3 of their body weight out of their rears as a sort of jet-assisted escape. It's stated that this is a natural reaction to life-or-death situations.
 * Elric of Melnibone picks up powers as required from his historical bargains with demons. It's also worth noting that Elric's powers and allies aren't necessarily reliable -- just powerful.
 * The Dragonriders of Pern books are guilty of this when in the 2001 book The Skies of Pern, the characters suddenly discover the foreshadowed power of telekinesis when the book's protagonist's dragon buddy gets attacked by giant cats (and ).
 * The Ohmsfords, main characters in some of Terry Brooks' Shannara books, run on this. Fair enough, their power is actually called "The Wishsong", but it means the plot follows a hundred iterations of "Boy he's screwed," ... "but suddenly the song asserts itself and does whatever he needs!"
 * In The House of Night series, Zoey has this.
 * Molly Moon picks up a new power for each book. She starts out semi-plausible in the first book by learning how to hypnotize people, but from this basis power she begins learning other, increasingly exaggerated, powers: In the second, she learns how to stop time. In the third, she learns how to travel through time. In the fourth, the new power is mind-reading, and in the fifth, it's shapechanging.
 * In the Star Wars Expanded Universe, Luke Skywalker goes through this to a certain degree. After several books, it became known in-universe that he is ludicrously powerful and can learn pretty much any Force-based skill very quickly. Many of these skills never come up again, or only when that same author writes him again.
 * Allegiance has the spirit of Obi-Wan guiding Luke through discovering the unlock code for the room he's locked in.
 * Rebel Force: Luke is captured by someone who's developed a particularly nasty form of brainwashing, involving destroying someone's past and personality to make way for a new, loyal one. He escapes shackles by persuading them to stretch wide enough to let him pull his hands through but is put through the procedure anyway. To all appearances and instrumentation Luke is brainwashed, but thanks to the Force he is in fact completely unaffected. This power also keeps his morale up during the process.
 * In Splinter of the Minds Eye, proximity to the Force-boosting Kaiburr Crystal lets Luke channel Obi-Wan Kenobi to help him fight Darth Vader, come Back From the Dead, and heal Leia from the brink of death. Alas for him, the crystal only gave him such a power boost when in that particular temple on that particular planet.
 * Marvel Star Wars has some.
 * In The Empire Strikes, Luke ends up in a coma and is captured... and later his body fights free of restraints that should have held him when awake, finds his confiscated equipment, and fights off everyone who tries to stop him. While he was in a coma. He came out of the coma completely ignorant of what had transpired.
 * In Saber Clash while fighting Orman Tagge, a man who had had years more experience in the art of the lightsaber, Luke was initially at a severe disadvantage and almost died... but the Force then let him make a comeback that had him fighting without art or polish but with such skill and control that he was able to cut off Tagge's cyber-vision goggles, leaving him unhurt but a quivering, shocked wreck.
 * The Last Jedi has Luke calling on the Force to show him where his enemies are and how soon they'll reach him. The artist chose to portray this in a way visually similar to Toph sensing vibrations, albeit more colorfully and rippling out from his head.
 * Hello, Bespin, Goodbye! has him find and detonate the primers to a number of bombs whose locations he does not actually know in a spectacular display of Stuff Blowing Up... not the bombs themselves, just the primers.
 * In Shadows of the Empire, during a round of hand-to-hand combat against an Expy of a Terminator, he discovers that he can use superspeed.
 * In The Truce At Bakura, he can talk to the parasitic lungworms infesting his body, which will soon kill him, and persuade them to stop chewing on his tissues and crawl out of his mouth.
 * In Luke Skywalker and The Shadows of Mindor, Luke is able to absorb blaster bolts without harm, communicate with meltmassif creatures that do not understand the concept of organic life, 'feed' said creatures so that they are forever free of the Big Bad's control, and in a very trippy mind-battle, when the Big Bad becomes a black hole and swallows him, he becomes a white fountain.
 * The Courtship of Princess Leia has him casually root through Isolder's memories while the other mentions his past, and when they're falling he manages to slow the falls down.
 * The Thrawn Trilogy, and Timothy Zahn's work in general, gives him the ability to read someone's presence like a second face, picking up on emotional states and knowing if someone's had an idea, the ability to enhance his senses, plus a kind of short-term Photographic Memory - he can rewind his short-term memories, within an hour or so, and recall with perfect accuracy things he wasn't paying attention to before. There is mention of him learning this from Yoda, at least.
 * Dark Empire grants him the power to make legions of droids self-destruct, the ability to generate dopplegangers, send two way visual/audio messages across great distances, and in the audio drama, the ability to fix hyperspace anomalies.
 * In the Jedi Academy Trilogy, a prospective student won't come study with him until he's crossed a lake of lava. Half way across, Luke fights a creature living in the lava, which covers up the stones he's been hopping across. Not a problem! He extends the power he's been using to defy convection and just walks across the surface. He's also able to invade peoples' minds to find if they're Force-Sensitive.
 * In I, Jedi he has the ability to retrieve lost memories and damp down any of his senses.
 * The Black Fleet Crisis gives him rather pointless super-architectural powers which would make anyone who's ever worked with stone white with envy. He goes to the beach where his father once had a fortress and finds only widely-scattered rocks.

It hung in the air around and above Luke as it had once stood atop the cliff, a dark-faced and forbidding edifice. [...] As he had redeemed and reclaimed his father, he would redeem and reclaim his father's house.

Now the stones swirled again in the air, joined by others plucked from the sea and stripped from the face of the cliff. Now broken edge fused against broken edge, and the dark faces of the rock lightened as their mineral structure was reshuffled. Now heavy rock walls and floors thinned to an airy elegance as if they were clay in a potter's press.""


 * He then instantly builds a tower that is perfectly camouflaged with its surroundings, has the gravity act however he wants it to, and makes door and window holes open wherever and whenever he pleases. In lieu of furniture he tells a guest to sit and forms an "air cushion" under them.
 * The New Rebellion extends the heat-redirection power, letting Luke literally heat the hollow insides of some hostile acidic balloon-things until they burst.
 * Harry Dresden has a fair amount of this going on, but all of it is rigorously justified. Some of it is off-screen, and he'll remark to various friends or to himself on why he made that Focus or practiced that skill. Demonreach would be an on-screen example, and so would, though   has been predicting that he will do so because he will need to invoke this trope.
 * The only seemingly-inexplicable examples were Hellfire and Soulfire, but those turned out to be justified.

Live Action TV

 * This happened a couple times on the 1950's Superman TV series. Discussion above in the Comics section.
 * Spock was a master of this. In various episodes (and movies) of Star Trek, he suddenly demonstrated the abilities of mind-melding, the Vulcan nerve pinch, a light-protective nictating membrane, the ability to go into a deathlike trance at will, and a detachable soul that would allow him to later come back from the dead. Absolutely none of these were telegraphed before he absolutely needed them (as opposed to say, Wesley Crusher being told he had a great destiny by the Traveler long before he pulled the ability to stop time out of his ass.) This, plus his refusal to admit that his parents were the ambassador and his wife or that he had to have sex with his wife or he'd die, make it almost plausible that as of Star Trek V he could have had a long-lost half brother he never told anyone about. Almost.
 * On a completely unrelated note, "Detachable Soul" would be a Good Name for A Rock Band.
 * Klingons get some of this once they cease being Always Chaotic Evil. For instance, in the Next Generation episode "Ethics", a shaky camera accident breaks Worf's spine, paralyzing him. During the experimental operation to replace his spine, something goes wrong, and he goes braindead. For a moment, it looks like disaster; then his other neural system kicks in.
 * Perhaps he asked for a raise.
 * In the first appearance of the Tenth Doctor in Doctor Who, the Doctor gets his hand chopped off in a sword fight. Luckily he remembers that he has enhanced Healing Factor shortly after a regeneration and grows back his hand.
 * Of course, the Doctor's ability to regenerate is the result of the show's creators needing a way to explain the actor switch from William Hartnell to Patrick Troughton.
 * The Doctor's use of this trope pales in comparison to his sonic screwdriver, which has thousands of settings. A list of everything it has done would be as long as this page. The original series wrote it out as it was becoming omnipotent and the writers used it as a get-out-of-trouble-free card too much. The Movie brought it back, and the new series imposed some definite restrictions on its abilities so as to have a reason not to let the Doctor use it to get out of anything. It's still pretty handy, though.
 * A good rule of thumb is 'Interface with any electronic device from up to thirty feet away', 'open any lock', and 'work as whatever tool is needed to perform the repairs at hand': it's basically the ultimate swiss army knife with built in wifi and lockpicks. It doesn't do wood, though.
 * In the second episode of the new series, Eccleston's Doctor suddenly has the power to focus his mind and walk between the blades of a giant spinning fan. It would have been nice if he'd remembered he had this power before Jabe died...
 * The extent of the Doctor's psychic powers in the new series also depend on whatever is necessary to make the episode work. In 'The Girl in the Fireplace', the Doctor shows he can read minds, though in many other episodes he doesn't even when it would be useful (admittedly, moral qualms might stop him from reading minds without consent, but it is strange that he never mentions it). Likewise, in 'The Lodger' the Doctor headbutts to telepathically implant information about who the Doctor was and why people should take his advice, and again, the Doctor has never used this ability before or since, even when it would make sense to do so.
 * Another, particularly glaring instance of this is in 'Planet of the Ood', when the Doctor is able to sense the enslaved Oods' pain through their telepathic field, yet when he encountered them before in 'The Impossible Planet' and 'The Satan Pit' he made no mention of sensing their telepathic field.
 * A classic series example: the Fourth Doctor reveals he has a respiratory bypass system in 'Pyramids of Mars'.
 * Ultraman, Ultraseven and the other Ultra heroes are the kings of this. Though they have a set powers base, many develop and use one-shot energy attacks for specific monsters that are never seen again, or, even, completely pointless in the face of a pre-existing energy attack. And each time they would re-appear in another series, they'd only have the very basic forms of Ultraman powers they were known for. However, the worst offender is Ultraman Jack/The Ultraman Who Returned, who has the Ultra Bracelet--a weapon that can shapeshift into whatever is needed at the time: a shield, eye-slugger, blade, sword or--Cross-Shaped Lance to stake an alien named Draculas.
 * This happens to the ghosts from Ghost Whisperer a lot. Sometimes it gets a brief explanation. Usually not.
 * Smallville's Chloe Sullivan. Ret-conned into having super-powers in the first place, she initially develops healing powers and then "super-intelligence" which manifests as a machine-like ability to run search algorithms in her head.
 * Chloe didn't develop super-intelligence so much as
 * So she was a great journalist who was able to work at Daily Planet at 17, then a meteor freak who could heal and even resurrect people, then Brainiac attacks her and, let's see, her healing powers are spent restoring her own brain but she develops super intelligence that earns her his secret identity, Watchtower, and now that she lost that her comeback turned her up into a master of Guns Akimbo.
 * Heroes puts some interesting spins on this one:
 * Several characters demonstrate the ability to acquire new powers from other powered people. Peter Petrelli copies them, Dad Petrelli takes them, and Sylar rips them out of their heads (killing them, and he gets to use Peter's copying power later).
 * In general, the whole series operates this trope at a higher level. If the writers need a new power, they don't give it to an existing character, but introduce a new character with the desired ability. One of the benefits of Loads and Loads of Characters is nobody much notices a few more or less.
 * Ando is a particular victim of this trope. His power goes from power amplification to.
 * Power Rangers have been known to dabble in this area, depending on the series. Conner in Dino Thunder for example, is able to access his Battlizer for the first time ever by just...wishing for it I guess... Generally, more technological based teams are better about this, with new weapons and zords being built and tested prior to use.
 * An interesting subversion occurs in Power Rangers in Space, in which Andros has been carrying his own Battlizer for a good portion of the season, using it only to power up his attacks and control the Delta Megazord. Eventually Carlos asks him why he's never used the highest power setting on the device, to which Andros replies that he worries that it may be too powerful. Later, in a battle in which he is unable to morph, the final setting is activated and he becomes the Red Battlized Ranger for the first time.
 * Mind you, Andros isn't the one who activated it--it was pressed by a little girl nearby. For all she knew, the setting was too powerful and it could have blown them all up.
 * Kamen Rider Kuuga and his various forms. All he has to do is wish for a new ability, and the Kuuga Belt will give him a new form for that ability! How'd he get Dragon form? He needed to fly! How'd he get Pegasus form? He needed a gun! How'd he get Titan form? He needed to be stronger! How'd he get Ultimate form? He got really pissed off!
 * Granted, this was mitigated by two things. First, Yusuke needed to learn how his abilities worked (his initial fight using Dragon Form, before he knew it used a staff, was a No Holds Barred Beatdown). And second, in order to get his stronger forms he had to be shocked with a defibrillator.
 * Also take into account that those forms did exist (or there was at least a rough outline, hard to tell) prior to him wishing from them, how do we know that? Because the belt of all thing had instructions for them! Granted they weren't good instructions (but at least they got the point across), and they were in another language that only just got translated right when he needed them the most, but the fact that they were there before Kuuga first activated them shows that he didn't just 'wish' new forms that didn't exist before into existence. Heck after he got Dragon form the fact that there was still text left to translate basically forshadowed that there was more
 * Most Kamen Rider shows have this trope, but the first one to get the ball rolling was Kamen Rider Black RX, which gave Kotaro two forms in the middle of the show, one gave him a Cool Sword, and the other gave him a gun.
 * Sookie from True Blood has gained new abilities as well.
 * Ralph Hinkley from The Greatest American Hero got new abilities as the plot required, sometimes completely forgetting he could do them by the next episode. This could be a possible subversion in the times that he wasn't sure how he'd done them in the first place, but doesn't explain how, in one episode, he suffers damage to his lungs (while wearing the suit that gives him the powers) from smoke inhalation, meaning his lungs are not protected by the suit. In another (later) episode, he's able to inhale a room full of tear gas without harm.
 * In other words, the show justifies this trope, with the reasonable explanation that the main character doesn't know what his suit can do or how it works. What it doesn't justify is continuity-problematic explanations for specific powers that the plot demands (such as that lung-protection thing) or the forgetting powers issue.
 * Benton Fraser on Due South, which is Lampshaded in Paul Gross's commentary on the final episode. By the end of the series, he is an excellent marksman, fluent in at least a dozen languages (most of them obscure Canadian aboriginal dialects), a skillful boxer, capable of putting himself into a trance indistinguishable from death, able to listen to concerts in his head by reading the sheet music and ''able to place the location of a plane by listening-in to the radio telemetry.
 * Mahou Sentai Magiranger made extensive use of this trope; all one of the Magirangers had to do was demonstrate sufficient courage or learn an important lesson, and they would be gifted with a new spell suited for whatever predicament they've found themselves in. Mind, this was because the spells were being granted to them by the Heavenly Saints, who were always watching over them.
 * Hardison on Leverage manages to do this with random skills as they become necessary to the team. As of season 4 he has: painted the office picture, become a lawyer, played a Stradivarius violin, taught himself how to be a forger, topping it off by landing an airplane. This is in addition to his normal roles as a computer hacker and Techno Wizard.
 * Thanks to being dosed with Cortexiphan as a kid, Olivia on Fringe can read minds, move things with her mind, heal rapidly, shift between universes, possess other people, set things on fire with her mind or control nanites in someone else's bloodstream and never usually displaying the same power twice. Basically whenever a power is needed on the show, Walter just goes "Thanks to the Cortexiphan you were given, it should be possible for you to [insert required power for episode here]."
 * In Buffy the Vampire Slayer's season 3 episode "Lovers Walk," Willow and Xander have been kidnapped by Spike. Oz manages to locate them with his highly refined werewolf sense of smell... While in his human form, which had never been shown to possess any supernatural abilities prior to this.
 * In the Spanish series Los Protegidos the villains get new superpowered kids as the plot demands.

Puppet Shows
"Jen: Wings? I don't have wings.
 * Justified Trope (or, more accurately, HandWaved) in The Dark Crystal. At the moment when it would be most convenient, one of the two main characters, who are the last of their kind, exposes wings and starts to fly. They have this matter-of-fact conversation:

Kira: Of course not. You're a boy."

Tabletop Games

 * This is such a prevalent trope that most superhero RPGs have some sort of mechanic to represent it. For instance, the RPG Mutants and Masterminds has a Hero Point mechanic that allows you to turn one of your superpowers into another for a single use. While keeping the new power "in theme" with your other abilities is encouraged, it isn't strictly necessary...
 * There are also the Variable structures, which let you have a pool of points to devote to various powers and that you can reallocate every round, and actual powers such as Nemesis and Adaptation.
 * And few feats are similarly open-ended. "Jack-of-all-Trades" makes every one of your skills that you don't have points in work as though you had points in it.
 * Parodied in Paranoia by the aptly-named "Deus Ex Machina Man".
 * Also, if games use the optional Latent mutant powers rule, the GM is encouraged to throw the players who don't know they have powers into situations where that power would help. While they've had the power the whole time, it certainly seems like this trope for the players.
 * Fantasy Craft, based (loosely) on open source elements of Dungeons & Dragons rules has a feat titled "I can Swim" which allows the player character to place their new skill points at any point before their next level up, instead of doing it right when they gain a new level. This can lead to the same idea, with characters suddenly remembering that they totally always knew advanced mechanics in the same scene that their vehicle or golem breaks down.
 * This is because Fantasy Craft is developed from another system called Spycraft, which also contained this feat (Spycraft, in turn, was loosely based on the D20 Modern rules, but the difference is that Spycraft is actually a good system, unlike its source of influence).
 * The original DC Heroes RPG by Mayfair (later republished by Pulsar Games as the generic superhero game Blood of Heroes) actually included this in a number of game mechanics:
 * The power "Omni-Power" allowed the user to replicate pretty much any power at the same rank as this power by paying a certain fee (the base cost of a power from character creation).
 * The advantage "Omni-Connection" allowed the character to suddenly pull out a contact of either low level ("My buddy from college is a night watchman there!") or high level ("Wow, Tommy boy did good! He's the CEO!") by paying a fee of 'hero points'
 * Buying "Omni-Gadgets" allowed the player to create one use, nebulously defined gadgets. Upon pulling it out, he declared what the gadget's power was, used it, and it was 'burned out', simulating the ability to pull out "Bat Shark Repellant" by declaring the gadget was Animal Control, for example.
 * Later modifications to the rule set included "Omni-Scholar" (pull a specific area of expertise out of your... utility belt), and other New Powers as the Plot Demands type abilities.
 * Changeling: the Lost includes the Goblin Vow merit, which basically combines this with Dangerous Forbidden Technique, allowing the person to make impromptu deals with various abstract things to gain new (temporary) powers in exchange for either doing something, or refraining from something. Breaking the deal is ill-advised.
 * This is one of the tropes that Badass is built on. Buying new powers just requires a flimsy exposition sequence between action scenes (a journey of self discovery about being a dinosaur the whole time, a training montage of you learning kung fu, whatever). Or if you've got "Little do you know I am actually a ROBOT!", you can buy new powers in the middle of fight scenes just by declaring that you were secretly a robot (or a ninja, or a mad scientist, or a shark, or whatever) the whole time.
 * Following the Batman example under 'Comics', GURPS Supers has an advantage for gadgeteer-type superheroes which allows the ill-defined contents of their utility packs to contain just the thing necessary to escape from mortal danger.
 * Dungeons and Dragons has this in the Chameleon prestige class and the Factotum. The Chameleon, at second level, has a bonus feat he can change daily to whatever he has the requirements for. The Factotum has a pool of Inspiration Points, which he can use for a buttload of stuff, such as arcane spells, sneak attack, ignoring spell resistance, as needed.

Toys

 * The writers of Bionicle tried to avoid this trope with their main bad guys, the Makuta. Since at one point, a huge variety of differently colored and shaped Kraata slugs could be bought, they had to come up with 42 different powers for each kind. Since Kraata are basically physical forms of the Makuta's essence, the writers decided to give these powers to them. Fans complained that by doing this, they robbed them of their mysteriousness and took away from their badassery... though it is an Unpleasable Fanbase.
 * They played this trope straight with Artakha, though, keeping the complaints in mind. Tren Krom also seems to show off unknown powers (and body parts) at times, but in his case it is justified, since he is just this side of a god, and we barely know him. In the case of the Toa Nuva gaining new powers, it is handwaved that they're a special kind of Toa, who have not yet learned all of their abilities.
 * Also, it seems that  is going to demonstrate this trope in the near future, as Word of God is refusing to state.

Video Games
"Alfred: I see you've requested another equipment drop, sir. Have you considered a larger belt?
 * Half-Life 2: Episode 1, the Vortigaunts go from electric powers to stealing the essence of Xen creatures to rescuing Gordon outwitting the G-Man himself.
 * In Knights of the Old Republic 2, the protagonist finds herself in dire straits as she is put into a cell full of poisonous gas. Just as all hope seems lost, Kreia contacts you telepathically, and quickly teaches you the Jedi art of Guybrush-caliber breath-holding.
 * This happens to Seere in Drakengard as part of a ludicrous Hand Wave that was necessary because they were all doomed, and the ending couldn't be "Everyone was eaten."
 * In Batman Arkham Asylum, the titular Caped Crusader already has his entire arsenal of weapons on the island - he just doesn't bother to activate or get most of them until the plot requires it. For instance, Batman always had the components for the Ultra Batclaw (the upgraded three-shot version of the weapon), but he doesn't bother to upgrade it until he needs to; . He also has the Cryptographical Sequencer on him from the beginning of the game - but it only works once he gets Warden Sharp's passcodes.
 * The sequel, Batman Arkham City, lampshades Batman's apparent habit of going into danger unprepared.

Batman: Tried it. The extra weight slowed me down."


 * To keep the four Spider-Men's abilities consistent in Spider Man Shattered Dimensions, Spider-Man 2099 gets spider-sense, while Spidey Noir gets improved web-shooting abilities; the changes are Lampshaded by the characters.
 * Spider-Man Noir also loses the revolver he used in the comics, most likely to avoid Moral Guardians complaining about kids playing a hero with a gun.
 * May come up in Persona 3 depending on your dialogue choices.
 * Literally in Psychonauts. Barring three which aren't plot-important, that you get by levelling up, the game basically hands you a new power at the exact time you reach an obstacle that can only be overcome with that particular power. After the first couple of times, they don't even bother giving you some kind of training course to justify it; they just hand you the merit badge and let you get on with it.

Web Comics

 * Aylee from Sluggy Freelance gets this a lot due to periodically undergoing some involuntary Shapeshifting. At various points she's gained the ability to regenerate, fly, breathe fire, extend and retract poison spikes, and emit electro-magnetic pulses. She loses most of her old abilities whenever she assumes a new form, however, so it hasn't made her overpowered.
 * Aside from the involuntary nature of her shape-shifting, she's also hampered by the time it takes to adapt. She could enter a cocoon and mutate a new form to counter the current threat, but emerge only months after said threat has been dealt with, leaving her in a body she has no idea how to operate or maintain.
 * Wonderella totally gets like a spillion powers when tied up.
 * The Monster in the Darkness from The Order of the Stick. The author has stated that he is a pre-existing monster, but we'll have to wait and see how well his abilities synch up with what he is.
 * To be fair, his powers were pretty much just reminders that he's really, really strong, just presented in different ways. Until...
 * It's been suggested that he has Wish as a spell-like ability. And Wish can do practically anything.
 * El Goonish Shive has a magic system seemingly specifically designed to work this way. Any "Awakened" character can just suddenly develop any power the plot needs, any time it's convenient for the writer.
 * Axe Cop, having sprung from the imagination of a young child during playtime with his much older brother, tends to have characters randomly gaining powers left and right. Sometimes its explained, and sometimes it's "the secret technique no one knows" or something one of the characters "always had". The adult drawing the strip and crafting it into structure plays such moments for all the laughs they're worth. This truly meets its apex when Axe Cop gains the ability to fly by asking his creator to make give it to him.
 * In Sonichu, Author Avatar Christian Chandler displays this trope in increasingly absurd ways, up to and including spontaneously bringing his twin sister to life through the combination of a a torch made from Pixelblocks and an ancient Cherokee ritual.

Web Original

 * Quite a few of the people in the Whateley Universe are vulnerable to this, Fey and Jade. Chou is something like this, except hers is more Power Creep, Power Seep. A lampshade is hung in Call the Thunder 6.
 * Jade is an exception. All she can do is "possess" objects using "spirit-selves". After a radiation accident, she can regenerate. However, within the "possessing objects" thing, she has a variety of applications of her power. Her power is closer to a Green Lantern Ring in that respect.
 * But these kids have had their powers less than a year, and they went to Whateley Academy to learn to use them. So most of their powers are Chekhov's Gun (Phase has done this a couple times) and Chekhov's Skill (Chaka) and Training From Hell (everyone in Ito's aikido classes) and Took a Level In Badass (Jade and Lancer, at different times). Still, some of Tennyo's powers are definitely New Powers As the Plot Demands. I mean, the reality warping that ripped open a hole in space-time? Come on!
 * This sort of thing was curbed and curbed hard in the Global Guardians PBEM Universe. While the Hero System experience point rules were being used, there were rather strict guidelines regarding what New Super Powers could be purchased, depending on the character's base concept. If a power didn't fit the concept, then the power was simply not allowed. Period.
 * Characters who used a Green Lantern Ring or a Swiss Army Weapon were often granted more leeway with this than other characters, but even then the players in question had to justify their taking certain of the odder, more "out there" powers.
 * The only character who was really allowed to get away with this was the Blood Red King, but he was a different kettle of fish altogether.
 * Italian Spiderman has this in spades. He can teleport, outrun motorbikes, make chickens lay eggs (or cigarette packets), control spiders, summon penguins, fly, and his mustache can be detached and used as an exploding projectile.
 * Robert Brockway of Cracked points out how pieces of Phlebotinum in a Science Fiction story gain New Powers As the Plot Demands, making technology hard for the viewer to tell from magic. This is one of the 4 Realizations That Will Ruin Science Fiction for You.

Western Animation
"Danny: Awesome! ...Now, how did I do that?"
 * Inspector Gadget. "Go, go, Gadget !"
 * Avatar: The Last Airbender partially has this, in that the powers frequently appear As The Plot Demands, but are logical extensions of the characters' abilities. Katara learns to heal with Waterbending after being burned, Toph invents Metalbending (supposed to be impossible) because she is trapped in a metal box, and Aang
 * In the case of metalbending, another character mentions that metal "is just purified earth" (that is, metalbending is only impossible because it hasn't yet been tried by a bender of sufficient skill and power). Toph isn't actually there for that speech, but they do try to illustrate that she's realizing roughly the same thing of her own accord.
 * A frequent element used in Danny Phantom where the main hero will often get new powers that'll ultimately help him in the end, one of the most blatant being his ghostly wail and ice ability.
 * Although the hero does tend to continue using the same main set of abilities, and only uses the extra ones on special occasions.
 * Except for the ice powers. He ditches everything for ice, for some reason. Season 3 did this with more than just Danny, though -- Danny got ice powers and temporary weather powers, while Kitty got some bizarre kiss-the-men-away power that seemingly came out of nowhere. Johnny better be careful not to upset her now.
 * Played for laughs once. The Batman Cold Open Monster of the Week fired an energy beam at Danny, and he generated a reflective shield instinctively. Once the beam rebounded, he remarked:

"Hawking: I didn't know I could do that."
 * On Teen Titans, Raven can do pretty much whatever she wants depending on the situation. She mainly relies on Flight and telekinesis, but has demonstrated the ability to use clairvoyance, stop time, pass through walls, see brief glimpses of the future, create monsters and change her appearance to a monster to "persuade" a villain to help them, among other nasty things. This may be partially justified, because her powers are magic-based, and she's the daughter of an all-powerful demon lord.
 * As a villainous example, Brother Blood fits as well (in fact, his powers seem remarkably similar to Raven's, apart from the Mind Control). Also overlaps with Power Creep, Power Seep, as he goes from a psychic with a Compelling Voice (in his first appearance) to a near-god who can take all the Titans at once effortlessly and is only stopped by Deus Ex Machina (the season finale).
 * Ironically.
 * Thunder Cats loved this. Cheetara's psychic powers, Tygra's illusion abilities, almost anything the sword of omens did. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
 * While The Galaxy Trio had consistent enough powers for Gravity Girl (play with gravity, usually by making things fly) and Meteor Man (grow parts of body, super strength follows), Vapor Man seemed able to do just about anything by attaching "-vapor" to the end. This included, but was not limited to: combustible vapor, freezing vapor, storm vapor (read: lightning), explosion vapor, and steam.
 * Artha and Beau from Dragon Booster display this a lot. It is explained that Beau has many hidden powers that would manifest themselves with training and experience. This, however, does not explain why the majority of these powers only appear for one episode and then vanish for the rest of the series. Especially jarring in the case of Artha and Beau, as the theme of combining abilities was central to the series.
 * In an episode of Doug, Doug quickly regrets inviting Skeeter in on creating a story about his superhero alter ego Quailman when Skeeter's own avatar the Silver Skeeter starts pulling powers out of his ass left and right.
 * His inspiration, the Silver Surfer, is known for doing the exact same thing. Power Cosmic is more or less a ticket to do this.
 * When Pirates of Dark Water was a miniseries, Tula was just a talented thief. When it got picked up as a series, she quickly gained heretofore unknown (even to her) powers of "ecomancy", effectively making her the heart kid from Captain Planet, but more with plants.
 * Ben 10 Alien Force: The Omnitrix's ability to repair genetic damage, first seen in "Max Out".
 * For that matter, the Omnitrix talking, from the same ep.
 * The adding of new aliens in the original series almost always worked this way (except for the monster aliens), with their powers just happening to be useful towards the Monster of the Week. It would sometimes be done in different ways such as someone with greater knowledge of the Omnitrix unlocking a specific function or just random unlocking from playing around with it
 * Same for Ben himself. The writers decide to give him photographic memory so that he can remember some runes that the Big Bad had activated.
 * Averted on Generator Rex. Rex is limited to six weapons (jetpack, giant metallic hands, cannon, sword, giant metallic boots, and hover-cycle): he isn't able to use anymore than those.
 * So far, the series isn't even one season old. And Rex has already been shown suddenly altering his sword and fist to make them hit harder.
 * Rex also has other powers on top of his nanite weapons; he can heal other EV Os by shutting down/absorbing their nanites and he can control machines.
 * Except that he had those abilities in the first place. He has, thus far, never gained any new powers.
 * As of the season one finale, Rex has . This is, however, the result of a specific bit of phlebotinum that is unlikely to have the same effect again.
 * Cathy from Monster Buster Club has so many wacky alien powers, it'd be easier to list the ones she doesn't have. She has a stretchy Mr. Fantastic body, can levitate and perform telekinesis, can glow in the dark at will, spins her forearm around like a drill... and many, many more, all conveniently described on the spot as something Rhapsodians (like her) can all do.
 * On Batman the Brave And The Bold, Batman uses astral projection in one episode -- an ability he's never even been hinted at having before, or has used since.
 * And which is just a bit out of character, seeing that Batman is supposed to be a Badass Normal, not a psychic.
 * He did explain it, and since it is something he learned from Monks, it makes sense. A black belt in everything is hardly normal. And given that this version is a spiritual brother to the campy 60's series, this may be an Invoked Trope.
 * Robotboy does this. When the title character "super-activates", it's as though his circuitry starts running on phlebotnium instead of electricity.
 * The writers of Futurama admitted that they liked doing this when writing for alien species. Kif's abilities to climb walls and shed his skin were some examples of it.
 * Bender seems to gain a piece of hardware whenever the plot requires, or if the writers need some sort of joke. They all seem to come from his chest.
 * Although not a superhero, in one episode Steven Hawking breaks up an argument by suddenly shooting lasers out of his eyes.

"Roger (after Stan set him on fire): How did you know I was fireproof, I didn't even know! ... You did know, right?"
 * An episode of The Powerpuff Girls centers around Blossom discovering that she has ice breath ability, conveniently in time to stop a flaming asteroid from crushing the city. In what might be a deconstruction, she actually notices that her new power is ostracizing her from her sisters and doesn't want to use it to stop the asteroid. She later uses the ice breath in later episodes, although not really more than her other powers.
 * In The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, Hadji conveniently discovered his "latent" telekinetic abilities in the second season (along with a good many other revamps).
 * Total Drama Island: Harold basically runs on this trope, he's a geeky Napoleon Dynamite Expy most of the time, but whenever a random (and usually incredibly odd) skill is required for a challenge he suddenly becomes useful again.
 * The Venture Brothers: "Dude, no one tells me anything!" While 21 doesn't quite develop new powers, it seems that he's informed of the costume's latest capability the second it becomes necessary.
 * When you consider who his boss is, this might make sense. The Monarch is the type of guy to go on about how their costumes will "strike fear into the hearts of those who oppose us" without thinking to tell them what they actually do.
 * Roger from American Dad is one of the best examples of this trope you can find, to the point where even Roger is surprised to find out he has certain powers.


 * Transformers does this on occasion. In the the original series Optimus Prime revealed he could mentally control pieces of his body after being disassembled by Megatron. Ironhide sprayed a huge variety of liquids from his sprayer-hand, from glues to liquid nitrogen to firefighting foam to oil to paint, and each liquid would be just what was needed for the situation. Beast Wars had Blackarachnia show off telekinesis after becoming a Transmetal 2 (for one quick scene and never again), and there were so many instances of New Weapons As The Plot Demands (in one episode Cheetor pulls a massive missile launcher bigger than he is out of nowhere, fires it once (missing his target and accidentally hitting Optimus), drops it and forgets about it. The various Japanese Transformers series are even worse about it.
 * Near the end of the first season of WITCH, Will spontaneously uses the ability to have the Heart of Candracar duplicate itself to fool the bad guys. She never uses this again.
 * In the second season, all five girls develop secondary powers seemingly out of nowhere--Hay Lin can become invisible (often something related with the element of air), Taranee can read minds, Cornelia gains telekinesis, Irma gets mind control (though this was first demonstrated early in season 1), and Will can talk to electronic appliances. Will also discovers her real element, thanks to Nerissa, and instead of going with 'the Heart' and 'Rebirth', she can use 'Quintessence'. They also, at the very end of the second season, reach their 'zenith' forms, where they each become pure manifestations of their element. The drawback of this is they very nearly lose their minds in doing so.
 * Justified somewhat as it's mentioned that, until then, most of the energy for their powers was going into keeping the Veil up. Once it came down, they all got stronger powers.
 * Pinkie Pie's 'prediction' ability in My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, despite being common knowledge to everyone who had prior knowledge of her in the show, had never been evident before the episode "Feeling Pinkie Keen", and has seen little screentime afterwards. It almost seems like she only had it to provide that episode's Aesop in teaching Twilight Sparkle to not adhere so rigidly to logic and to what can be explained.
 * The Animated Adaptation of Beetlejuice is an unusual variant in that Beetlejuice displays all kinds of weird powers, but since the show is a comedy rather than a "good vs. evil" show, it's typically done through Rule of Funny more than anything else.
 * His power is basically explained as "If he says it, than it happens, no matter how metaphorical or out and out silly the expression was." This was actually used against him in an episode where his Rogues Gallery tricked him into saying "I'm coming apart at the seams."