Global Guardians PBEM Universe/Tropes I-P

"Baron Samedi: "We both know you're not going to kill me. You're a hero."
 * I Am Who?: Achilles began his career as a superhero because of this trope, when he found out that his entire life up until that point (all twenty-three years of it) had been manipulated and engineered by his father, whose identity he didn't even know up until that point. Who was his father? LordDoom.
 * An Ice Person: Centigrade (who combines this with Playing With Fire), Fafza Tel ("Winter Willow" in Hungarian), Icicle, El Halcon Blanco ("White Hawk" in Spanish), Flurry (who combines this with Blow You Away), Snowblind, Snowdrift, Chillblaine, Frost, Frostbite, Sub-Zero, Doctor Zero, Tundra, Iceberg, Lady December. and Snowstorm.
 * I Believe I Can Fly
 * Identity Impersonator: The Bodysnatcher lives up to her name by literally trading bodies with you.
 * Idiosyncrazy: The Conundrum has to leave puzzles as clues. The Great White Hunter, who hunts superheroes for sport. The Widdershins Man, who only commits crimes based on opposite concepts.
 * If It's You It's Okay: You should be very clear on this: Fiona Richards is not a lesbian, and has, in fact, dated and even had sex with several different men. Its just that she's madly in love with Margaret Shaw. She doesn't find any other woman attractive at all. And she wants you to be very clear on that.
 * I Just Want to Be Normal: The Fabulous Frog-Man, a mutant hero, is super-agile, can leap the length of a city block, can heal quickly from most injuries, and has a six foot long, prehensile tongue. He's also green, warty, and has big googly eyes. He'd give up his powers and his life as a superhero to look normal again.
 * I'm Going to Disney World: Disney ran a series of these commercials, each starring a particular region's big-name hero. The most popular of this series starred nationally-known New York City hero Free Spirit, the Camp Gay self-appointed "Defender of Greenwich Village".
 * Immortality: You can find at least one of the various immortals of the Global Guardians PBEM Universe in each of the categories. Among others, these include:
 * The Golden Avenger, a Flying Brick who originally fought crime in the 1940s and stopped aging when he gained his powers, has Complete Immortality.
 * Master Mist, the immortal sorcerer who now rules Liberia as a benevolent dictator, is The Ageless.
 * Splatterman is Regenerative.
 * Mister Easter has Resurrective Immortality.
 * The Black Lion is an Undead knight.
 * Abyss is an example of Age Without Youth.
 * The Emperor is an someone with an Immortality Inducer.
 * Major Liberty is the tenth hero of that name, but the general public thinks he's been the same person all along.
 * The Bodysnatcher has Body Surf, being able to switch from body to body whenever she needs a new one.
 * Vivian von Klause is a Projected Avatar; she grows old and dies (or can be killed) like normal, but is reborn shortly thereafter.
 * Immigrant Parents: The parents of Mr. Invincible, one of the Golden Age heroes of the Global Guardians PBEM Universe, arrived in America just in time for Invincible to be born an American citizen rather than a Greek citizen. They both have heavy accents, try to do things as Greek as they can do them, and complain about Mr. Invincible "abandoning his Greekness" by assuming the name "Mike Phillips" rather than his birth name, Mikos Phillipidakos.
 * I'm Not a Hero Im: Battlecat gave this speech to his Arch Enemy, Baron Samedi, right before he dropped Baron Samedi from the roof of the Superdome.

Battlecat: "Not tonight. I'm not a hero tonight. I'm a husband. I'm a father. That's what I am tonight."

Baron Samedi: "No... wait!" (followed by a long drop and a sudden stop)"

"Stone: (dusts his shoulder off and looks at the driver) "That all you got?""
 * Improbable Aiming Skills: The superhero Ballistic is said to be the best shot in the world with a handgun, and qualfiies as a trick shot, a master of Gun Fu, and is absolutely a Quick Draw.
 * Red Eagle, Briar Rose, The Bowman, Obsidian Arrow, Yeoman, Artemis, and Warpath are all "super archers", and are able to skim the wings off flies in mid-flight with their arrow-shots.
 * Improbable Hairstyle: Samsonite is caught in a form of homeostasis that grants her utter and complete invulnerability. This includes her hair, which is always perfectly straight and hangs down to the middle of her back, no matter what she tries to do with it.
 * Similarly, The Shield's power (a skin-tight impenetrable force field) keeps his hair shorn to the scalp.
 * Improbable Weapon User: Super-assassin Demise has this as a super-power. Literally anything, in her hands, can be used as a weapon. If she is armed with something that is already a weapon, she becomes the deadliest fighter on the planet. If she's armed with something that normally couldn't be considered a weapon by any sane man (in the past, she's killed people with a plastic spork, a comb, a snow globe, a smiley-face button, greeting cards, paperback books, chopsticks, cellular phones, toothpicks, paper clips, rubber bands, and music CDs) she also becomes the deadliest fighter on the planet. Of course, while she's a highly trained martial artist and has a body any Olympic-level athlete would love to possess, she's also just a Badass Normal. She tried to do that "deadliest fighter in the world" thing on Ultra-Man, and he just smirked and knocked her out with a flick of his finger.
 * Tom Foolery from the same setting uses weaponized toys, including machine-gun armed teddy-bears, explosive rubber balls, sharpened jacks that he throws like shurikens, acid-filled water-guns, and so on.
 * As her name suggests, Yo-Yo is an expert at using a yo-yo as a weapon. Lots of superheroes who laughed at her ended up bruised and battered.
 * Oddball juggles billiard balls. And throws them with amazing accuracy.
 * Incredibly Lame Pun: Team America, the official hero team of the United States, includes members named Bill O'Rights and Sybil Liberty.
 * Intangible Man: The Wraith is a mercenary thief from the ''Global Guardians PBEM Universe". He specializes in getting into places that cannot get into by way of this power. Phantom Panther is a Chinese martial artist who can not only turn intangible but can become invisible as well. Breeze, as part of her control over wind and air can transform into a humanoid cloud of mist. Several of the speedsters in the setting can vibrate through solid material.
 * Interpol Special Agent: In the setting, Interpol's purview has been expanded to include international supercrime, and they have been given an investigation and enforcement arm.
 * Invisibility: Fatale can turn invisible and teleport. Puck is a mystic martial artist who can vanish from sight (he still shows up in a person's peripheral vision, but vanishes when he's looked at directly). The Gentleman Ghost's body is permanently invisible, but when fighting crime he dresses in an immaculate white tuxedo with tails and a top hat that aren't invisible. As noted above, Phantom Panther combines this with intangibility.
 * Invisible Woman Effect: The Shield originally started out with just the power of complete and total invulnerability to everything. Quite literally, his only power was that he couldn't be hurt. This is cool, but in a fight its not all that useful on the offense. Later, the player figured out that getting hit by someone whose skin was hard as steel would hurt a lot, and that a steel-hard hand made a pretty good lever, and so on.
 * Is That the Best You Can Do: Pulled off once with panache in a Global Guardians story. A mook, trying to take out the Nigh Invulnerable Flying Brick superhero Stone, slams into the hero with a fully loaded tractor-trailer.

"Doctor XX: "Did you really think you'd win? I'm more powerful than any of you!"
 * It's All My Fault: Ultra-Man blames himself for the death of his grandson, who was killed at the hands of his Arch Enemy, Baron Maltus, and he thinks his daughter blames him for it as well. (He's wrong about that last part.)
 * It's Personal: This is how Ultra-Man and his Arch Enemy, Baron Malthus view their long-standing rivalry.
 * Nemesis, the Greek Goddess of Retribution and Punishment, took Athena's freeing of Arachne as a personal insult. This is why the goddess makes Arachne's life so difficult.
 * The Jailer: Der Fallensteller ("The Trapper") is a German superhero. He is a Gadgeteer Genius who specializes in traps and bonds.
 * Jerkass: The Aryan is a Flying Brick hero who also happens to be a white supremacist. He absolutely repudiates violence against non-whites, and saves non-whites as often as he does whites, but is nonetheless a racist asshair and is quite vocal about his views on race relations.
 * Jerkass Has a Point: Achilles, leader of the titular superhero team the Global Guardians, goes to his father for advice on his personal life all the time. His father, by the way, is Lord Doom, one of the setting's world-conquering master villains. This is a slightly inverted example, though, because usually Achilles is the blunt antagonistic one (for a hero), and Lord Doom is generally urbane and polite (for a villain).
 * Jimmy Carter: In the Global Guardians PBEM Universe, Jimmy Carter was the president who ordered the formation of the government sponsored squad of flagsuit heroes called Team America, using them to rescue the hostages from Iran. It was on the strength of these actions that he won reelection as president over former California Governor Ronald Reagan of California in 1980.
 * Jumping On Point: Whenever a campaign recruited a new player, the game master generally used one of these to give them a level playing field to begin with rather than forcing them to hit the ground running mid-adventure.
 * Keet: Fidget, one of the Kid Hero speedsters at the Hyperion Academy is hyperactive, loud, constantly cheerful, and utterly irritating.
 * Ki Attacks: Yin and Yang, the protectors of Hong Kong, utilize Ki Attacks as part of their mystical martial arts training, as does the Lucky Bandit, heroic protector of Shanghai. Tatterdemalion, an Israeli superhero sponsored by their government, does something similar, though its not a Ki Attack in the "oriental martial arts" sense of the word.
 * Kick the Morality Pet: It was this sort of moment, when she recklessly injures one of her teammates in a drunken stupor, that convinces the heroic Swallowtail to seek help for her alcoholism.
 * Kid Hero: * The characters from Hyperion Academy range in age from 13 to 16. The kids at the Venture Institute were about the same age. Similarly, Nicholas Chandler, from Things That Go Bump In The Night is a 14 year old boy who is perhaps the most feared monster-hunter on Earth (he once killed a monster he thinks of as The Boogeyman with a baseball bat).
 * Wake Up, Go to School, Save The World
 * Kill the Poor: Diabolical Mastermind Lord Doom has ended the problems of poverty, unemployment, and homelessness on the island of Bermuda by declaring it illegal to be unemployed or homeless. If you find yourself in either condition, Doom's regime will escort you to a retraining center where you will learn a needed trade, whether you want to learn a new trade or not. After the retraining and re-education, you will then be put to work where you are needed. If you refuse to learn the new trade (or turn out to be untrainable), you'll be put in a job that requires no training. Some of these jobs, like " biological waste disposal worker", are unpleasant, but survivable. Others, such as "involuntary chemical weapons test subject" are less so.
 * The Kirk: In the Global Guardians, Guardsman is the The Kirk, even though he's not the team leader. Achilles, the actual team leader, is The Spock, while Arachne and Ultra-Man are The McCoy.
 * Knight Templar: The Mujahedin are Islamic superheroes who use Shariah law as a guideline to how much force to use against the criminals they face... which means they kill a lot of criminals. They're also fairly harsh against non-Muslims, liberal Muslims, and anyone who thinks the Mujahedin have crossed the Moral Event Horizon a time or two. They also fall squarely into the realm of Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters when it comes to their views on Israel.
 * Kryptonite Factor: Fidget, a Kid Hero speedster, takes actual physical damage if you tie him down and prevent him from moving. If you stop him from moving, his power literally builds up and starts vibrating his cells to pieces.
 * Kryptonite Is Everywhere: Forceful Leaf, a Chinese superheroine, is a faerie creature who takes damage from merely touching iron, or anything with a considerable iron percentage.
 * Kryptonite Ring: The Global Guardians keep a locked file in their comptuer database called the Code Red Omega Scenario. It is a tactical plan to take down each and every member of the Guardians, if it ever became necessary to take them all down.
 * Lamarck Was Right: The Global Guardians PBEM Universe is an "unlimited source" setting, where superpowers can be gained through pretty much any possible way that can be imagined. Nevertheless, and regardless of what real-world genetic science says, its pretty much guaranteed that the child of two superhumans will have either the same powers as one of their parents, or a mix between the two. (Children with only one superhuman parent tend to have a 50/50 chance of getting either the same powers as their parents, or else no powers at all.) Of course, people who get their powers from technology don't count.
 * Large Ham: Most of the cast of The Golden Age. Of course, the fact that it was entitled the Golden Age was kind of your first clue. Not too subtle, the Golden Age.
 * Legacy Character: Major Liberty, a member of the American All-Stars, is perhaps the setting's standout, being the tenth hero to bear that name. The original (an ancestor of the current Major Liberty), fought the British during the American Revolutionary War. Golden Eagle is the third hero to bear that name, and the grandson of the original. The Supreme Six is an entire team of legacy heroes.
 * Legacy Immortality: The current Major Liberty is a direct descendant of the original (it is a family legacy), who fought the British during the American Revolution. The general population think that it's been the same man all along.
 * Leotard of Power / Underwear of Power: Pretty much every other superhero and superheroine in the Global Guardians PBEM Universe wears either a Leotard of Power or Underwear of Power, depending on their gender.
 * Lewd Lust Chaste Sex: This was standard procedure for love scenes in the Global Guardians PBEM Universe. Pretty much everything leading up to "the act" was on screen and fully described. But once it became a matter of penetrative sex, the focus of the story shifted to the curtains fluttering in the breeze, and things faded to black and restarted the next morning, and so on.
 * Licked By the Dog: Stone is a superhero who can be summed up in the phrase "What if you gave a member of the Hell's Angels biker gang super-strength and made him invulnerable". His middle name is "Intidimate the Hell Out Of You". And kids just love him. He puts on this "big tough scary guy" act, and the kids seem utterly immune to it. It mystifies him, but he does think its sort of cool.
 * Berserk Button: It is drastically important that you remember the following rule: Never hurt a child if Stone can possibly find out about it.
 * Lightning Bruiser: Raptor, Mustang, Sidewinder, and Overdrive.
 * Light'Em Up: Neon, Strobe, Spectrum, Photon, Allustria, Fireworks, Peter Pan, Solar, Sunspot, Eclipse (who can also manipulate darkness), Dagger, Tinkerbell, Independence, Blue, Rave, Rainbow, Senhora Luz Solar, North Star, Shining Dawn, Brightstar, Eclat ("Burst" in French), Iris, Ushas, Moonshadow (who, like Eclipse, can also manipulate darkness), Tecza ("Rainbow" in Polish), Prezma ("Prism" in Russian), Ion, and Radian can all generate, control, and manipulate light in various ways.
 * List of Transgressions: Before killing his victim, the Confessor recites a list of his victim's sins. He plucks this information from their own minds telepathically.
 * Literal Split Personality: Prezma ("Prism" in Russian) is a superheroine with diagnosed Multiple Personality Disorder. Normally, she has no actual super powers until she splits into seven individual bodies (one for each of her known personalities, and each matching a color in the visible spectrum). After she splits, each of her bodies has a different set of super powers based on the color they represent.
 * Little Miss Badass: Heart Girl. Imagine Superman as a nine-year-old blonde girl with pigtails.
 * Loads and Loads of Characters: At its peak, the Global Guardians PBEM Universe had 132 active player characters, some 400 inactive or retired player characters, nearly 25 "starter characters" (that is, characters used to allow brand new characters to quickly get their feet in the doors), and 10,232 named, fully-realized non-player characters once the supervillains, support staff, and returning normals were all tallied up.
 * Log Fic: "The Hardest Week of My Life" was a story arc that focused on Diamond. It was told in the form of a series of first-person diary entries retelling the events of the titular "hardest week" of her life.
 * Long Runners: The Global Guardians lasted from 1994 to 2006. Most web-based text games last months. A couple make it to a year. One or two make it to three years. The Global Guardians lasted twelve years, a feat that has yet to be equaled by any other non-commercial online shared world.
 * Loud of War: There are other sound-users in the GGU that utilize sound as a weapon, but not through the expedience of screaming or singing. These include Echo, Hummingbird, Sound Barrier, Mosquito, and Ultrasonico.
 * Lovecraftian Superpower: Shadowspawn is an Eldritch Abomination from outser space who generates tentacles of shadow and darkness that can drain the life out of people. In addition, Shadowspawn itself is a Clingy Costume that is slowly devouring the human being it has engulfed. When it finishes eating its current "host", it will move on to another host.
 * Dagon, another Eldritch Abomination, has fused itself with a human being whose body was transformed into the spitting image of a Dungeons and Dragons mind flayer. The tentacles that have replaced his mouth are not just for show; they can inject a rotting poison into his victims.
 * The Swarm can transform herself into a horde of carnivorous cockroaches. The very thought of having this power has driven her stark raving mad to the point that, now, she's a cannibal serial killer. Similarly, Hive can transform himself into a swarm of wasps, but has taken it a lot better than The Swarm has and uses his powers to fight crime.
 * Bloodstone of the Sinister Circle is a “hemokinetic”. That is, he has telekinetic control over blood. His usual first move in any fight with a hero is to gather up some nearby blood to use as a weapon, and he gathers it from any nearby innocent bystander who is unfortunate to be close enough to become an unwilling donor.
 * Love Potion: Ambrosia is a living Love Potion. She emits super-powered pheremones that cause men to just lose their cotton-picking minds, falling all over themselves to make her happy. The power has made her very, very cynical about the opposite sex.
 * Made of Iron: The most obvious example is The Shield, whose only superpower was a complete and total immunity to being injured. It didn't matter what you used on him... his power would let him survive it uninjured. Bullets? He laughed at bullets. Drowning? Sorry, can't drown, though he doesn't quite breathe water in those circumstances. Having a skyscraper collapse on top of him? Granted, he'd get bored waiting for you to dig him out, but in the meantime he'd be fine. Exposure to vacuum? Doesn't phase him. Drop him to the ground from orbit? Been there, done that.
 * The superheroic Stuntman from the same setting is an interesting variation. His powers revolve around luck rather than simply being immune to injury, so as a result he gets banged up all the time... but never as badly as he should be. Stuntman once was thrown from the roof of a twelve story building, and through a series of lucky breaks and coincidental events managed to walk away from it with a skinned knee and a twisted ankle.
 * Infinity is amazingly hard to hurt as well because of her mutation. Her bones are made of metal and her musculature is far more dense than normal flesh. She gets hurt all the time, but it takes a lot to do it.
 * Anvil is literally Made of Iron. Imagine Collossus of the X-Men, except permanently transformed and iron instead of steel.
 * Mad Scientist: Heinrich Frankenstein, Baron Malthus, Phillipe Moreau, the Evil Genius, Doctor Blight, Doctor Sinister, Emilio Astonishing, Doctor XX, Doctor Devastation, Professor Sunday, Professor Septimus, Penelope Periwinkle, and Doctor Gavin von Leggend. And that's just the bad guys.
 * Mad Scientist Laboratory: As prevalent as mad scientists are, these are all over the place.
 * Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: Diabolical Mastermind Doctor Gladiola Thanos is the doctor of Mad Scientist Doctor Thaddeus Thanos. Her father was an active supervillain in the 1980s and regularly fought the heroic Captain Challenger until he was killed during a lab explosion that resulted from a fight between the hero and Doctor Thanos's minions. While she originally followed this trope by helping the hero fight against her father's diabolical plots, his death sent her into a Heroic BSOD that ended with her following in his footsteps as a supervillain. Her first act of villainy was to find and kill Captain Challenger and his entire family.
 * Magic A Is Magic A: While any sort of magic (from Hermetic rituals to Native American Ghost Magic to Voodoo to Chinese Necromancy to Holy Miracles to Australian Dreamwalking) is possible in the Global Guardians PBEM Universe, each particular type of magic is internally consistent for that type. You don't find Hermetic mages using Voodoo, or a Christian miracle-worker entering the Dream Time, and so on.
 * Magic Knight: Mystic villain The Black Lion is a literal Magic Knight. Once an armored medieval knight, he is now been kept alive for nine hundred years through dark and sinister magic. In addition to his skills with a sword, he is also a powerful sorcerer in his own right.
 * Magic Pants: This trope is standard fare for characters who can grow, shrink, or stretch.
 * Averted with Razor, a supervillain whose power is a destructive aura that not even the most magical of pants can block. He's pretty much gotten used to the fact that any time he goes to work, he's going to end up naked.
 * Magic Versus Science: The rarest truth about the Global Guardians PBEM Universe is that magic exists, and can be used for specific purposes by those capable of doing so. Its described as "the rarest truth" because most people, when they personally experience magic, will go to nearly any length to explain what just happened to them away in mundane, non-magical terms. Most human beings, especially those living in the so-called "First World" (the United States, England, France, Japan, and so on), simply aren't ready to accept the fact that magic is real.
 * Magic Wand: Fairy Godmother, a heroic mystic, uses a wand as a prop but doesn't actually need it to work her magic.
 * Magma Man: There's Magma, Lava, Volcano, Volcania, Kilauea (an incarnation of the Hawai'ian goddes who fights crime and protects the people of Hawai'i., Kazan ("Volcano" in Japanese), Magma Man, and Krakatoa.
 * Make Me Wanna Shout: The Global Guardians PBEM Universe features many characters with this power. Rebel Yell, a member of the White Legion (white supremacist hero group... yes, you read that right), has an ultra-sonic "rebel yell" as his name implies. His twin brother Johnny Reb has the same power, but not the same attitudes toward minorities. The King, the Anthropomorphic Personification of the popular image of Elvis Presley, can belt out ultra-powerful rock-and-roll songs. Crescendo sings into the ultra-sonic ranges as well. Golden Eagle has a super-powerful "eagle scream". Crybaby, Vox Populi, the New South Wailer, Warcy, Heuler, Screech, Grito, and the Voice of God all do the same thing.
 * Make Wrong What Once Went Right: The Warlord is a traveler from the future who came back to the present because he was bored. He and he changes historical events at a whim and with no regard for the normal course of history.
 * Making a Splash: In the Global Guardians PBEM Universe, there's Vulnapyezdka ("Wave Rider" in Russian), who can turn into water, blast it from his hands, and survive underwater; Saraswati, an Indian superheroine who cannot generate water, but can telekinetically manipulate water in the environment (including pulling it out of a human body, if absolutely necessary); River, another [[Whatevermancy. Archdruid could control water telekinetically as well, as part of his overall control of the four classic elements. Maelstrom and Typhoon, who both could generate and control storms, could exercise some control over water, but their use of this power wasn't very precise to say the least.
 * Martial Medic: Fraternal twin heroes Yin and Yang.
 * Martial Pacifist: The heroic Dove specializes in evasion, blocking, and misdirection in combat. He's an expert at somehow finding convenient trees, walls, cars, and so on to duck behind just as the bad guys attack. He only goes "offensive" when he absolutely has to.
 * Mask of Power: Inverted with the Mask Of Justice, in that the eyeholeless mask itself is powerless, but he can only use his vision powers while his eyes are covered with an opaque object...such as his mask.
 * Mass Super-Empowering Event: The Tunguska Event of 1908 released a wave of radiation that encompassed the globe and activated the metagene in humans and apes, allowing for the presence of superpowers.
 * Master of Illusion: In the Global Guardians PBEM Universe, multiple characters are Masters of Illusion. Peekaboo, a member of the Vandolls supervillain team, creates light-based images. Mindscape projects images into the minds of her opponents, as does the Indian supervillain Rakshasa. Amethyst is a sorceress who specializes in illusion magic. Dream Catcher manipulates people's dreams and can bring them into reality as illusions. Figment, a student at the Hyperion Academy, creates holograms.
 * The Masquerade Will Kill Your Dating Life: This trope is why so many superheroes from the Global Guardians PBEM Universe are divorced (in some cases, divorced multiple times). It also explains why so many of them are "girl/guy in every port" types.
 * Me's a Crowd: Los Hermanos of the Global Guardians has this power in spades. He combines this with Hive Mind, as not only can he create thousands of copies of himself, he shares his consciousness between them. (He is somehow capable of dealing with all the conflicting sensory input, and is capable of handling multiple tasks at once, multiple conversations at once, and so on). At any given moment, he's likely got a dozen duplicates active around the world working in as many different occupations. Anything one duplicate learns, all the duplicates know how to do. And at least two of his constantly active duplicates are married. But only one is an active superhero.
 * Aryan Nation is a controversial white supremacist superhero (yes, you read that right) who shares Los Hermanos's powers. His powers are so similar to Los Hermanos that the Global Guardian once hypothesized that maybe Aryan Nation was one of his dupes who managed to gain a separate consciousness. (He found out later this wasn't true.)
 * Posse is a superhero from Dallas, Texas, who can separate into twenty individuals.
 * The Seven Brothers is a super-strong Chinese hero who can split into seven bodies. He is also a Hive Mind.
 * Mob Rule, a South African supervillain from the same setting, has a similar power. His copies, however, are independent individuals.
 * Colony, a British supervillain, can create a dozen duplicates. Like Mob Rule, his copies are independent.
 * Saba Devatao, an Indonesia supervillain, creates eight duplicates and like Los Hermanos is a Hive Mind. She's an expert martial artist who can flawlessly coordinate her bodies in attack routines that baffle most of her opponents.
 * Meta Origin: The Global Guardians PBEM Universe copied the Marvel solution to the question "Where do superpowers come from?" by having Sufficiently Advanced Alien Ancient Astronauts, the P!k Gardeners, experiment on early protohumans millions of years ago, adding the metagene to human DNA, thus allowing the possibility of superpowers. The 1908 Tunguska explosion caused extraterrestrial biomolecules to spread around the world and bond to human DNA, causing superhuman children to be born.
 * Metaplot: The Global Guardians PBEM Universe had two overarching meta-plots during its twelve year history. The first was the slow assimilation of nonhuman intelligences (aliens, sentient apes, and sentient machines) into normal human society. The second was the effects of advancing technology on normal human society.
 * Mighty Glacier: The Troll, favored son and hero of Newark, New Jersey is eight-foot tall, has lumpy green skin, and horns coming out of his forehead. Not the fastest fighter. But it takes a howitzer to even bruise him, and he can lift tanker trucks over his head, so when he does get around to hitting you, you're going to feel it for days.
 * Mini Dress of Power: The only actual example of this trope in the Global Guardians PBEM Universe is the costume worn by Heart Girl. She's a nine-year-old Flying Brick and just cute as a button.
 * Min Maxing: When it came to character construction in the Global Guardians PBEM Universe, this was effectively impossible due to the way the character approval process was used despite it being based on the Hero System's point-buy system. Specifically, every proposed character was examined with a fine tooth comb, the maths were run and rerun, and everything was compared to the character's central concept and the standards of the setting as a whole. Some players found this refreshing and liked the process, while others found it infuriating and hated it.
 * The Mirror Shows Your True Self: Mirrors reveal that Sweet Synn is actually a demonic succubus, regardless of the form she's currently wearing (and she usually looks like whatever you find most attractive in a woman).
 * Mirror Universe: The heroes of the Global Guardians PBEM Universe have encountered two of these. The first is the standard version where the various characters are morally aligned opposite to their normal nature. In this one, the heroic Global Guardians have their counterparts in the villainous Global Gladiators, a criminal syndicate that has taken over the world. The second was a world in which the Global Guardians had taken control of the world "for the betterment of mankind" after a much more severe Xorn invasion had left humanity on the brink of extinction.
 * Mommy Issues: This trope is Doctor XX's whole reason for supervillainy, though in her case its Daddy Issues.
 * Monster Mash: All Hallow's Eve is a villain team made up of a mutant who can shapeshift into a "Man Wolf", a super-strong zombie, a carnivorous alien abomination, a dark elf sorceress, a golem created by mad science, and an animated scarecrow.
 * Monster Clown: Tom Foolery of the Global Guardians PBEM Universe. Scary makeup, spine-chilling laugh, weaponized toys, and an urge to see the whole world go down in flames. He is basically the setting's Captain Ersatz of The Joker.
 * Morally-Ambiguous Doctorate: No one is really sure what specific areas Doctor Heinrich Frankenstein, Doctor Phillipe Moreau, Doctor Blight, Doctor Sinister, Doctor Emilio Astonishing, Doctor XX, Doctor Devastation, Professor Sunday, Professor Septimus, Professor Penelope Periwinkle, and Doctor Gavin von Leggend (all villainous Mad Scientists) hold their degrees in.
 * More Dakka: Sniper from the Global Guardians PBEM Universe is a Punisher-style vigilante who uses gym-bags full of guns. He thinks of himself as a hero; most of the heroes see him as a villain.
 * More Deadly Than the Male: Demise, the super-assassin, is the deadliest fighter on the planet not because she's superhumanly strong or because she's superhumanly fast, but rather because she knows how to turn anything... anything at all... into a deadly weapon, and can figure out ways around your defenses in seconds.
 * Most Common Superpower: Pretty common. As long-time player China Pettinger once put it, "I'd rather have my characters be stunningly attractive than lucky."
 * Mr. Exposition: The Global Guardians PBEM Universe has a villainous example: The Hermit of Tarot has the power to see patterns of cause and effect. By studying literally anything, he can detect the patterns involved and predict what will happen next with almost pinpoint certainty. The Emperor has him study the stock market, news reports, the weather, and pretty much every other type of continually-updated information in order to predict world trends and to explain past events. This makes him Tarot's own personal Mr. Exposition.
 * Multicolored Hair: Rainbeaux has hair that's all seven colors of the rainbow. It is a side-effect of her powers.
 * Multinational Team: The Global Guardians are more or less this, depending on their lineup. The final lineup included a French-Canadian, a Greek, a Kenyan, a Norwegian, a Costa Rican, and four Americans.
 * Multipurpose Tongue: The Fabulous Frog-Man has a six-foot long prehensile tongue that he can use as a weapon in combat, or to grab stuff.
 * Munchkin: Averted hard! Players who tried to act this way were quickly shown the door, permanently.
 * Musical Assassin: The King, the Anthropomorphic Personification of the popular image of Elvis Presley, and Crescendo can both belt out songs. The King uses Rock-n-Roll, while Crescendo sings opera.
 * My Skull Runneth Over: This effect is one of the many reasons why 75% of all mentalists end up going stark raving mad.
 * My Suit Is Also Super: In the Global Guardians PBEM Universe, biofiber is an artificial multi-cellular colony organism that tends to grow in a film only two cells thick. The resulting "fabric" is extremely tough for its weight and will accept dyes of a specific formulation only. Biofiber possesses a small measure of cellular mobility, making a tight-fitting garment of biofiber self-fitting to a certain extent, and its natural biological defenses mean that in large part its self-cleaning. However, it is the fabric's interaction with the exotic metabolisms of metahumans that make it truly amazing. After a short period of acclimation, biofiber adapts to energetic or metamorphic powers. Thus, a costume made of bio-fiber can stretch, grow, or shrink with its wearer, and will not be incinerated, frozen, or otherwise harmed by the energetic emissions projected by its wearer.
 * Nanomachines: Diamond, a Powered Armor heroine, uses these as a means of situational adaptiveness. Her armor (which is thinly plated diamond over a liquid layer of nanites) can be redesigned and rebuilt in seconds, depending on the precise function she needs from the armor.
 * Necromancer: The Bone White Queen, the Anthropomorphic Personification of Disease and the consort of the Blood Red King, is the most powerful Necromancer in the setting. She is fond of killing entire families with various plagues, then reanimating them as minions.
 * Nebulous Evil Organization: TAROT. It also qualifies as an Ancient Conspiracy.
 * Neglectful Precursors: The P!k Gardeners show up out of nowhere, give humanity’s ancestors the potential to develop superpowers, and then vanish into the depths of space without so much as a “now don’t hurt each other with these new abilities we’re giving you…”
 * Never Be a Hero: This was, for the most, completely avoided. It was even remarked upon by in-universe scientists studying the hows and whys of superpowers that only about a half of the people who ended up empowered possessed powers that were... well... powerful enough to become superheroes or villains, and out of that half, only about a third ever did. The rest either did nothing with the powers, or found some other purpose for them (like the super-strong "forklift operator" who didn't need a forklift, or the faith-healing televangelist who could actually heal) than superheroics.
 * Never Was This Universe: The Global Guardians PBEM Universe is Present Day Earth plus mutants, magic, sentient apes, intelligent robots, aliens, demons, superheroes, supervillains, high technology, and pretty much anything else that can be dumped into it by way of the Rule of Cool.
 * New Powers As the Plot Demands: 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 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.
 * New Super Power: The Global Guardians PBEM Universe used the Hero System rules regarding Experience Points, thus allowing characters to purchase new powers. Restrictions were put into place, however, that only allowed New Super Powers that made sense when compared to the character's base concepts. Several storylines involved the player figuring out how to use these new powers.
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The "ape-liberation" terrorist group Prime 8 attempted to detonate a high-yield nuclear weapon in downtown Paris. The Global Guardians stopped the simian supervillains... but during the course of the battle the heroes managed to knock down the Eiffel Tower (which, in turn, destroyed several square blocks of the city during its collapse). Oops!
 * Nigh Invulnerable: The Global Guardians PBEM Universe has characters that fit all of the categories on both sides of the law:
 * Byelobog really is the "White God" Byelobog from Slavic myth, while Ganesha really is the Indian elephant god.
 * Crusader is protected from harm by the power of God himself, as is Mercy, the Anthropomorphic Personification of the popular concept of angels.
 * The Shield and Stone are Made of Diamond, as is the Powered Armor worn by the appropriately-named superheroine Diamond.
 * La Fantomas is Made of Air.
 * Mercury is a liquid metal Blob.
 * Cascade and Sand are Made of Rubber (well, Made of Water and Made of Sand, respectively, but the effect is the same).
 * Splatterman is a supervillain whose regenerative powers are so quick and effective that he's pretty much immune to all harm.
 * Tsugha is an Eldritch Abomination whose "body" is only a part of the larger creature that exists in another dimension entirely.
 * Slave is a remote-controlled Super Robot Proxy that's been destroyed dozens of times. Its operator keeps rebuilding him,
 * Swarm, a mutant who can transform into a horde of cockroaches and seems to conjure new insects out of thin air when the old ones are crushed and destroyed.
 * Los Hermanos has thousands of duplicate bodies and has survived his own "death" dozens of times.
 * Fiasco is lucky, and can cause other people to be unlucky. He avoids injury by following Mr. Myagi's advice: "Best defende, no be dere."
 * Nineties Anti Hero: Battlecat, a cowl active in the New Orleans of the Global Guardians PBEM Universe, is the epitome of this trope from that setting.
 * Ballistic, Fusillade, and Ablaze are all good examples as well.
 * No Eye in Magic: Most people don't know that the supervillain Medusa is the Medusa from Greek myth. She wears very dark Ray Ban sunglasses to keep from petrifying people she actually wants to talk to.
 * Non Player Character
 * Not Quite Flight: A lot of the "flying" characters in the ''Global Guardians PBEM Universe are actually doing this sort of thing rather than true flight. Several geokinetics ride on telekinetically controlled boulders to fly. Forcefield users ride disks of force. Magnetic heroes and villains manipulate earth's magnetic field. Gravity manipulators make pockets of "free fall", allowing them to jump impossible distances. And the super-strong merely use their leg muscles to leap entire city blocks at once.
 * Not the Fall That Kills You: Every super-strong or super-fast hero in the Global Guardians PBEM Universe falls under this trope. Momentum and kinetic energy just never seem to enter into any rescue catches or super-speed evacuations.
 * Not Wearing Tights: The Reliquary campaign featured street-level mystic-oriented superheroes who didn't wear costumes, didn't use code names, and didn't generally get into bi, street-smashing brawls. But they were superheroes nonetheless.
 * Martini, a psychic superhero whose costume is a pristine tuxedo, complete with tails.
 * Stone is a Flying Brick whose costume wouldn't look out of place in a biker bar.
 * Not Your Problem: A lot of the government-sponsored superheroes have this attitude in regards to problems or crimes that have happened in other countries, as long as those problems or crimes haven't spilled over into their own country. Some of these government heroes actually get hostile to "invading" foreign heroes who pursue criminals across national borders.
 * Of Corsets Sexy: A few characters wear these as part of their costume:
 * The Sorceress, a devil-worshipping witch, wears the Stripperific corset-and-thong combo.
 * The Bone White Queen wears a corset in combination with a Showgirl Skirt.
 * The heroic telepath Bella wears a corset-and-skirt combination.
 * Occult Detective: Charles Carr, perhaps the foremost Occult Detective and investigator in the Global Guardians PBEM Universe. No real mystic power to speak of, though he has a strange way of being able to affect mystic creatures with mundane attacks when such actions are called upon. He got into occult investigations because of an encounter with a truly horrific demon when he was a child. Known in the mystic community as a knowledgeable scholar of the occult, and as an effective exorcist and monster-fighter, to the point that most supernatural "monsters" fear to encounter him when they wouldn't otherwise fear a high-powered superhuman.
 * Nicholas Chandler, a fourteen year old boy who is perhaps the only "monster slayer" more feared than Charles Carr. At age eight he used a baseball bat to kill a menacing spirit he still thinks of as "the Boogeyman" to this day. Considered the "creepy little kid" in his neighborhood, and is distrusted by parents and children alike... until the children come to him telling stories of strange things bumping around their windows at night. He lives with his parents, and has said he wants to be a museum curator when he grows up.
 * Omnicidal Maniac: The Blood Red King would quite willingly kill every living thing in the universe, if he had a chance to do so, as long as he got a chance to scare them all first.
 * Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Doctor Simian holds eighteen doctorates.
 * The Omniscient: As noted in the introduction, Los Hermanos, a member of the Global Guardians knows an amazing amount about a lot of subjects because he likes to read and has thousands of duplicates active at any given time, all over the world. He's also Dangerously Genre Savvy.
 * The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: TAROT's Ruling Council is, with the single exception of The Emperor, the leader of the organization, a faceless group of ruthless billionaire businessmen that work from the shadows to further the organization's goals. None of the heroes have ever met a member of the ruling council.. that they know of.
 * Omniscient Morality License: The clairvoyant Domino, one of the closest advisors of criminal mastermind Baron Samedi (and one of the reasons the Baron is so successful) has this attitude. She knows the future (and the present, and the past) from her perfect tarot-card readings.
 * One-Man Army: Los Hermanos is literally this. He's a super-powered duplicator who can make thousands upon thousands of copies of himself.
 * One Myth to Rule Them All: The Global Guardians PBEM Universe is a superhero setting. So... all those historical and mythical warriors we hear about in the stories? You know, Hercules, and Ajax, and Achilles, and Pontiac and Roland and King Arthur? Yeah... they all had superpowers.
 * One Steve Limit: A surprisingly large number of Player Characters were named either "James" or "Anne" in their secret identities.
 * The Global Guardians PBEM Universe also contains no less than three Defenders, two Brawlers, two characters called The Magician, and at least three Crusaders
 * Only The Game Master Can Save Them Now: This was a regular occurrence in the “Golden Age” campaign. However, being set in The Golden Age of Comic Books, the players knew that this would happen frequently going in, and eventually started suggesting bigger- and more-over-the-top ways to implement this trope.
 * Organization With Unlimited Funding: TAROT, a Nebulous Evil Organization out to control the world's economy, has monetary resources on the same level as a mid-sized nation, and easily outpaces most of the world's smaller nations.
 * Our Dragons Are Different: Glaserwyrm and Lord Dragon are both mythical beasts who take part in the "metahuman community" of heroes and villains in the Global Guardians PBEM Universe; Glaserwyrm as a villain, and Lord Dragon as a hero. They are both the last of their kind. Lord Dragon has learned to transform into a human form, while Glaserwyrm just doesn't see the need.
 * Draco is a mutant hero who can transform into a classical western dragon. The aforementioned Lord Dragon treats him like a favorite nephew.
 * Our Werewolves Are Different: Fenris and The Beast share a hatred of the world that cursed them into werewolves (complete with Involuntary Shapeshifting). They are both villains For the Evulz rather than for money or power.
 * Overused Copycat Character: This phenomenon became so prevalent in the Global Guardians PBEM Universe that the various game masters would issue a moratorium on certain character concepts. Almost always, the sudden rush of copycat characters would be in result to outside stimuli. For example, when X Men 2 came out, there was a sudden rush of teleporting martial artist characters. When The Incredibles was released, there was a sudden flood of stretchable characters, and so on.
 * The Paladin: Crusader, a devoutly faithful superhero sponsored by the Roman Catholic Church.
 * Paper Master: Mister Origami, a Golden Age villain, was an expert origami artist, and could mentaly transform his folded creations into giant examples of the real thing that would attack his enemies. (For example, he would make an origami bear, then animate it into a fifteen foot tall angry bear that would attack at his command).
 * Hallmark is a mutant criminal with telekinetic control over paper. For the most part he was considered a joke in the supervillain community of the Global Guardians PBEM Universe, until he took down half the Global Guardians team singlehandedly using the contents of an office supply store.
 * Path of Inspiration: The Society of Human Fulfillment is a Scientology-like cult that masquerades as a nationwide chain of self-help clinics. It's actual agenda is to stir-up anti-metahuman sentiment through very subtle brainwashing techniques.
 * Peking Opera: Rebound and Lion Claw, two members of the People's Revolutionary Superhuman Collective are both "graduates" of the Peking Opera.
 * Personality Powers: While not every character followed this trope, enough of them did to make it rather common. For example, Fidget, one of the Kid Hero speedsters at the Hyperion Academy was literally incapable of sitting still, ever; Oracle, a telepath, was quiet, wise, and serence; Warlock, a powerful mystic hero, was correspondingly creepy, pompous, and deadly serious about his "responsibilities"; Heatwave was an impulsive, fire-wielding hothead; Achilles is quiet and subdued; Bungie, the primary team's Rubber Man, is an irrepresibly cheerful prankster; and so on.
 * Person of Mass Destruction: Quantum, who can manipulate matter and energy on the quantum level. His death (he literally exploded after being mortally wounded while battling an alien invasion fleet) vaporized Triton. You know... the largest of Neptune's moons?
 * Pet the Dog: Diabolical Mastermind Lord Doom was one of the primary researchers behind the AIDS cure. He provided the cure to the world not for any underhanded ulterior motive, but because the AIDS epidemic was killing innocent people and he wouldn't stand for that. He also gives tens of millions of dollars to charities every year.
 * Petting Zoo People: Quite common:
 * White Owl is a winged "owl woman" with heightened senses, wings, and claws.
 * The appropriately named superhero Fox.
 * Winter Wolf. Also, Rottweiler, a street-level crimefighter.
 * Macaco-Aranha is a Brazilian superhero with "spider monkey" powers and a prehensile tail.
 * March Hare, White Rabbit, and Silver Marten from the Global Guardians PBEM Universe.
 * Dragon, from the Global Guardians PBEM Universe, can turn into a man-shaped firebreathing dragon. Lord Dragon, on the other hand, is a fire-breathing dragon who turns into a man. Taipan and Asp both have snake powers. Sebek has crocodile powers.
 * Both the Serpent Squad and the Serpent Syndicate are entire teams of snake-powered villains.
 * Hate is an unspecific bestial supervillain from the Global Guardians PBEM Universe. Harrier, a superhero from the same setting, has the same sort of vague animal look as well, as does Wild Spirit and Salvaje ("Feral" in Spanish).
 * Render is animalistic, but leans toward the bear-like.
 * Physical God: Heroes Ganesha and Ma'at, and villains Kali and Nephthys are aren't just pretending to be gods.
 * Pieces of God: The Church of the Ascendant is a cult that believes superhumans came about because God split his own essence up into millions of tiny pieces and spread it all around the world, and that its only been recently, when the human population approached a certain critical number, that the "power of God" (represented by the various superpowers possesed by the heroes and villains) has been able to manifest again, if only in a limited way. They believe that the higher the human population, the greater the power will manifest until eventually, God himself (herself? itself?) will manifest physically on the Earth and the human species will ascend into the next stage of being. Most people in the GGU think they're kooks.
 * Pimped-Out Dress: These are the only things the Black Rose, a vampiric supervillainess, ever wears.
 * Playboy Bunny: March Hare, White Rabbit, and Silver Marten all wear this sort of costume.
 * Play By Post Games
 * Player Character
 * Playing With Fire: Starfire, Fire Drake, Ablaze, Firefall, Fireworks, Flashpoint, Inferna, Hotshot, Centigrade (who is also An Ice Person), Incendie ("Blaze" in French), Mondfeur ("Moonfire" in German), Ulkataranara ("Comet Man" in Hindi), Matahari Merah, Firebird, Playma ("Flame" in Russian), Salamander, Sunfire, Wildfire, Flame, Ifrit, The Confessor, Morningstar, Komet, Molotov, Inferno, Fuoco Bianco ("White Fire" in Italian), Pumpkin Jack, Tourmaline, Pyro, Dragon, and Red Devil.
 * Point Build System
 * Pointy Ears: Creatures of Faerie and most Moreaus (animals that have been Uplifted to a humanoid form) have pointed ears.
 * Poisonous Person: Viper, a member of the Serpent Syndicate, has a "poison touch". Her teammate King Cobra not only has a poisonous bite, but he can spit his venom as a ranged weapon.
 * Sekhmet is an Egyptian supervillain whose powers allow him to infect others with fast-acting diseases. And fast-acting can be read as "initial infection to full blown presentation" in a matter of seconds) diseases.
 * Power Nullifier: Purge has the power to turn off metahuman powers (but not magic or powers gained through technology, while Scramble can cause metahuman powers to misfire and not work properly (though they do tend to still work somehow).
 * The Power of Rock: 4Justice is a quartet of young singer/dancers who won their place on the team by way of the "reality" TV game show "Who Wants to Be a Superhero". To date, they've not actually appeared in the field fighting crime, but have released four albums, had a nationwide tour, and a TV movie. While each member of the band has a "code name", they are all much better known by their real names among their fans (who are all tween- and teen-aged girls, apparently). Outside of their fans, they receive little respect from the hero community, and not much more from the music community.
 * The King, the Anthropomorphic Personification of the popular image of Elvis Presley, can sing ultra-sonic rock-and-roll songs.
 * Powers Via Possession: Ghostkeeper, a Canadian hero, gains the accumulated strengths and skills of his ancestors by letting their spirits possess him. Maahes and Minhit are a pair of Egyptian supervillains who both get their power from an ancient lion-spirit of bloodshed.
 * Uncle Sam is the incarnated Spirit of America.
 * Power Trio: Ready, Willing, and Able, super-powered bodyguards for hire. They are also Two Guys and A Girl.
 * Powered Armor: Many. Arrowstar, Scarab, Doctor Tomorrowland, Talos, Cyclone, Lawgiver, Liberty Belle, Piping Shrike, Rainbow Knight, Industry, Iron Mask, Steel Tortoise, Dragonfly, Horus, Solar Centurion, Chevalier, Haephestus, To, Tetsuronin, Resolute, Ogun, Myrmidon, the Iron Amir, and Lancelot, just to name a few.
 * The Iron Legion is an entire team of Powered Armor wearer.
 * The Power of Friendship: This happened precisely once in the entire history of the Global Guardians PBEM Universe: When Doctor XX had captured several members of the Hyperion Academy student body, she gloated over her prisoners, proclaiming that as "mere children", they never had a hope of defeating her.

Battlecry: "Yeah? Maybe so... (cue the wall coming down as the rest of the students arrive) but you're not more powerful than all of us!""


 * Power Makes Your Hair Grow: The Israeli superhero Shimshon (the Hebrew form of Samson) has Super Strength that, like his mythic namesake, disappears if his hair is cut.
 * Powers As Programs: Several metahumans can do this sort of thing in the Global Guardians PBEM Universe, though most are incapable of affecting, copying from, or stealing from "trained supernormals" and heroes whose powers come from technology or magic.
 * Jane Doe is literally an identity thief. She steals the appearance, knowledge, memories, skills, and powers of anyone she touches.
 * Chinese hero Unity can copy the powers of any single other metahuman. As part of the forty-plus member People's Revolutionary Superhuman Collective (the largest superhero team on Earth), he's got a lot to choose from, and that doesn't include the villains he fights.
 * Prodigy has "photographic reflexes" and can mimic any athletic feat he witnesses.
 * Mexican hero Gideon copies powers, but has no choice about the target of is abilities. He copies the powers of whoever he is fighting.
 * Noiva de Salteador ("The Robber Bride" in Portuguese) is a Brazilian supervillain who can steal the powers of anyone she touches.
 * The villainous Paragon, another power mimic, is one of the most powerful beings in the Global Guardians PBEM Universe. Unlike most other power mimics, he copies the powers of ever other supervillain or hero within range (and his range is about half a mile) simultaneously... and the raw power of identical powers (superhuman strength, for example) stacks. And he can target trained supernormals as well.
 * Powers That Be: TAROT is an Ancient Conspiracy started originally to take over the world's economy... and they've been more successful in doing just that than anyone suspects. Their unlimitd wealth and influence makes them much more than just the criminal empire most superheroes see them as, to the point that they've been able to decide not only important things like who will win an election (they put George W/Bush in office, among other politicians worldwide), but they can decide little things like what movies will win an Oscar, or what clothing style trends will become popular.
 * Prehensile Hair: Slipknot and Dreadlocks both have this superpower. Slipknot can only manipulate his hair in this fashion. Dreadlocks is a Rubber Man who can stretch his entire body in addition to his hair.
 * Premature Empowerment: The Blood Red King transformed Sister Mary Elizabeth Ross, a Carmelite nun, into Bloody Mary, a total psychopath with a taste for killing. The Blood Red King expected to get a servant. What he got was immediately attacked by his creation.
 * Pretty Butterfly: Swallowtail is a powerful and effective Powered Armor-wearing superhero whose suit is yellow and black and has rather glorious-looking gold-foil butterfly wings (they act as stabilizers when she flies).
 * The Professor: Both Herr Doktor Archeville and The Academician. The former is a world-renowned scientist who uses his advanced technology to fight crime. The latter is the leader of the People's Republic of China's official hero team. Both are among the smartest men in the world.
 * Protagonist Journey to Villain: The general opinion is that this started for Terry "Mister America" Benedict when he testified during the Mc Carthy hearings as a friendly witness.
 * There's also The Dove's slow descent from street-level hero to serial killer, all in the name of fighting crime.
 * Proud Warrior Race Guy: The Xorn, who invaded Earth in 1985, slaughtered nearly a billion people worldwide, introduced alien animals and plants to earth's ecology, and left behind tens of thousands of slaves from other races, all of whom were stuck with no way home when the invasion was defeated.
 * Pstandard Psychic Pstance: About half of the character art for the various mentalists in the Global Guardians PBEM Universe depicted them using some variation on the Pstandard Psychic Pstance, despite the fact that in the actual text, they were never actually depicted as bothering with it. In point of fact, most mentalists avoided calling attention to their use of an undetectable (by non-mentalists), invisible (to non-mentalists) superpower in front of non-mentalists.
 * Psychic Nosebleed: This happens to all mentalists in the Global Guardians PBEM Universe when they overstress their powers past their normal limits.
 * Psychic Powers: There are too many people with Psychic Powers in the Global Guardians PBEM Universe to mention. The best examples are Oracle and Delphi, mother-and-daughter telepaths who may well be the most powerful psychics on Earth. However, in an interesting subversion, not only are Psychic Powers the rarest of all super powers (only 10% of all superhumans have them), most psychics in the Global Guardians Universe are driven insane by their own powers. Because of this, most mentalists in the setting are villains.
 * Psycho Electro: The Electrocutioner is an Axe Crazy supervillain who doesn't need an axe because he's got the lightning!
 * Psycho for Hire: Several. Krait, Glory, Crosshair, Gravestone, Whiteout, Demise, Polaris, and the members of both the Furies and the Iron Legion all qualify.
 * Psychosomatic Superpower Outage: Hazard is a super-athletic martial artist whose powers and abilities depend on the strength of his willpower. Normally, he's able to shrug off things normal folks Able to shrug off things that would completely disable normal people. If his confidence in himself is ever shaken, all his strengths and skills disappear.
 * Puberty Superpower: Mutants living in the Global Guardians PBEM Universe generally go through the activation of their powers between ages ten and twelve, with some cases waiting as late as age fourteen.
 * Puny Earthlings: The Delethai are bigger, stronger, and tougher than human beings, as are the Xorn and the Terhish. The Hsax are smaller and physically weaker than humans, but are much faster and have much sharper senses. Physically, the K'kriki'i are pretty much harmless to humans, having evolved on a planet with about the same gravity as the Moon... but they're a race of Sufficiently Advanced Aliens and much, much smarter than humans to boot.