All Your Powers Combined

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"It is all in my grasp. Every petty dream, every grand scheme, every soul, every fear. It all flows through me and from me."

The logical extension of Powers as Programs, this character has the ability to duplicate or steal the powers of not just one, but an entire group of people and use them simultaneously.

Usually this ability is given to a villain who specializes in fighting a particular group of heroes, allowing them to pose a serious threat despite being outnumbered. The character often also has an Achilles' Heel regarding the use of the power that keeps them from being completely unbeatable.

Also commonly given to a villain who has acquired the powers of lesser villains. This is a good way to make a climactic Final Boss battle in a video game.

This trope could be divided into two components, having a power-stealing power and having all the powers of an entire group. While these very frequently overlap, sometimes the emphasis is on one: The X-Men's Rogue didn't make a regular point of absorbing an entire team's powers (since it would knock out and possibly kill them), while the Super Skrull lacked the ability to acquire new powers.

This is often the result of winning the Superpower Lottery. Compare with Power Copying and Ditto Fighter. See also Adaptive Ability, for villains who constantly grow stronger with or without power absorption. Contrast with Full Set Bonus.

A Sub-Trope of Combo-Platter Powers, and a supertrope to Yin-Yang Bomb and "With Our Swords" Scene. When the characters are powerless until they combine, that's Wonder Twin Powers. Not to be confused with (though can be compared to) All Your Colors Combined, where rather than one character combining the powers of others, a group of characters collectively combines powers to attack.

Examples of All Your Powers Combined include:

Anime and Manga

  • In the last fight against Clear Note Zatch Bell! Gash receives the help of about all mamodos he has fought, allied during all events he has gone through. Crowning Moment of Awesome with no freaking doubt.
  • Kitabami in Tende Freeze is particularly notable because one of his copied powers was clinical immortality.
  • The Book of Darkness in the second season of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, who had the powers of everyone whose Linker Core it had absorbed, including both heroines. Insert scene of said heroines flying away really, really fast when it decides to use a magnified version of the title character's strongest attack.
  • Digimon likes this trope:
    • Apocalymon in the first season of Digimon Adventure had the powers of every villain the digidestined had faced up to that point. Not that it helped.
    • Done earlier in the series when the original seven digimon of the team combined their attacks together to give the new member enough power to strike down the third main villain of the series, Myotismon. Which unfortunately didn't work and only caused him to transform into a bigger, more powerful enemy.
    • More effectively, Susanoomon of Digimon Frontier was born this way, combining all ten pairs of elemental spirits and all five of the (surviving) Digidestined into one body to blow the Big Bad Lucemon away.
    • Digimon Xros Wars has this with Shoutmon X7. Taken to Serial Escalation levels with Shoutmon X7 Superior Mode, which is essentially Shoutmon fused with EVERY DIGIMON EVER and is powerful enough to defeat the Big Bad in one strike.
  • In Dragon Ball Tienshinhan, shows the ability to copy other peoples abilities and add them to his own when he first copies Roshi's Kamehameha and his Mafuba.
    • Cell in Dragon Ball Z is made from the combined DNA of most of the Z-team and thus was the sum of their powers as well.
    • In Dragon Ball GT, the One-Star Shadow Dragon, Syn Shenron was able to absorb the other six dragon balls, and in effect, the powers of the six other shadow dragons, transforming himself into Omega Shenron, making him the most powerful foe in the entire franchise.
  • Blackbeard from One Piece. The Devil Fruit he ate is called the Yami Yami no Mi (Darkness Darkness Fruit) and gaves him control over a smoke-like substance which, among other things, allows him to absorb other Devil Fruit powers, either temporarily by touching them or permanently by methods unknown.
    • Blackbeard is an interesting case: although the premise behind his ability is that he "absorbs" Devil Fruit powers, its really just a Power Nullifier. He did steal Whitebeard's Devil Fruit ability after Whitebeard's death and its been mentioned that during the timeskip his crew went around stealing DF powers, but it's unknown how he did it, if its related to his original DF power, or even if the person can still be alive when it happens.
  • Carpaccio in The Law of Ueki had a power to copy the power of anyone he could stay near to for several days, granting him the powers of all his recruits. Notable in that more than half of the minibosses were hard opponents to Ueki, some even got more than one episode devoted to defeating them, and yet Carpaccio himself, who had all of their powers and combined them together for fairly interesting attacks, was curbstomped effortlessly.
  • In Bleach, the Ninth Espada's special ability is to devour other hollows and steal their abilities. Since he is only shown using it once, however, this is a rare example of this trope being an Informed Ability. At least technically, since we know where he got that one ability from.
  • In Shinzo, the last "king" the characters face absorbs the remains of the others, but is then in turn absorbed by Mushrombo, the Dark King.
  • Deconstructed in Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas. Leo Regulus can copy any move by watching it perform, thus he combined all 12 Gold Saints' techniques and used it on Wyvern Rhadamanthys. But not only did Rhadamanthys proved to be still stronger, the combined powers ended up too much for Regulus to handle, killing himself in the process.
  • Late in the Mahou Sensei Negima manga, Negi forms a contract with the imperial princess and gets as his artifact a notebook that lets him summon and use the artifacts of anyone who has made a contract with him, like Asuna's magic-canceling sword. The bigger his harem, the more powerful he becomes. It's apparently only temporary, though, Word of God states that his pactio with Theodora was canceled after the tournament. And it'll become a simple partner-sharing deal when he hits eighteen and has to pick one. Unless he does what his dad did, and ignores that rule.
  • A Certain Scientific Railgun: The true purpose of the "Level Upper" that the manga centers around is to create a subconscious Hive Mind of espers. Although the true goal was sheer computing power, it has the happy side-effect of giving its instigator the free use of the powers of all of its members, when an esper is only supposed to have one. By the time of The Reveal, this count is literally Over 9000.
  • In Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple, Kenichi is fighting an opponent who can read his fighting style and negate it. So what does he do? He cycles between the fighting styles of the Masters he trained under, moving from each one to the next before his opponent can figure out his rhythm. Awesomeness ensues. Kenichi also incorporates elements of all his masters' styles into his self-developed techniques, making them even more powerful.
  • Ronin Warriors (Yoiroden Samurai Troopers) has an Inversion of this trope. When Talpa first invaded Earth, he was defeated by the Ancient and banished from the Earth Realm, but his "soulless armor" did not also leave our plane. Fearing that Talpa could use it as an anchor to return to Earth, he divided the armor into the 5 Ronin and 4 Dark Warlord Armors. Now the Warriors' super Armor of Inferno can only be summoned by the combination of five of the battle armors.
  • The 11th Diary Holder, the closest thing to a Big Bad in Mirai Nikki, has the "Watcher Diary", which gives him the power to spy on the contents of all other Diaries, effectively giving him access to all the other powers.
  • Naraku in Inuyasha got stronger by absorbing other demons/youkai and incorporating their powers into his own. He even got tricky enough to absorb powers from the heroes on occasion.
    • Moryomaru makes it to almost Story-Breaker Power territory were it not for Naraku doing away with him. He can split apart and find other demons, and absorb them into himself. He got a rather neat array of powers through this method.
  • In the Pokémon special, Master of Mirage Pokémon, the villain used a system that could make digital versions of Pokémon to create a version of Mewtwo which possessed all the attacks of every currently known Pokémon.
  • The second book of the Tokyo Mew Mew manga contains a scene where, just after finding the fifth member Zakuro, all the Mews' powers randomly converge into Ichigo to create one powerful attack that she uses to blow the enemy out of the water.
  • The Ryujin (Dragon-God) Orb in Yaiba can use the powers of the other seven Legendary Orbs and some other tricks. during the last battle against Kaguya, he must use this very trope in order to awaken the true power of the Dragon God.


Comic Books

  • The DCU:
    • Amazo, who was designed to emulate the combined powers of the Justice League of America.
      • On the "Playing With" page, the "exaggerated" version of this trope was once explicitly Amazo's power (in the pages of Grant Morrison's JLA). When the JLA recruited more people to fight him, he instead became a Physical God. However, since he quite literally had "all the powers of the JLA," they were able to beat him by disbanding the group, thus causing him to lose all of his powers entirely.
    • The Justice League also fought a one-shot villain named Paragon, who had the combined powers and skills of anyone within a certain radius—Plus One. Thus he was stronger than Superman, faster than The Flash, better at molecular rearrangement than Firestorm, and so on. Paragon's weakness was inability to one-up artificial or non-humanoid lifeforms, making this a Day in The Limelight for Green Arrow and the android Red Tornado.
    • The Composite Superman was a slightly odd example; while he had the combined powers of the Legion of Super-Heroes, his usual opponents were the Superman/Batman team (making him "all their powers combined"). In the Post-Crisis continuity, he was replaced by the Composite Legionnaire, who did battle the Legion.
    • A recent Action Comics storyline has upgraded Legion reject Absorbency Lad to Earth-Man, who has this power, but needs frequent recharges to keep it going.
    • Duplicate Boy has the power to have any power that he wants. He was never more than a minor character, though, and generally only used one or two powers at a time.
    • Animal Man and Vixen have powers that allow them to mimic animal abilities, which is a form of this. They hardly ever mix-and-match though, and usually can't do sapient humanoids like Kryptonians or Atlanteans.
  • Super-Duper was a creature from a 60s Justice League Comic created by a crook using strange energy.It has Wonder Woman's head and lasso, Batman's torso, the Flash's legs, Hawkman's Wings and Green Lanterns arms. However, being made from yellow energy means its power ring doesn't work.
  • Marvel Universe:
    • Super Skrull had the powers of the Fantastic Four (plus a couple of extras). Unlike most of the others on this list, Super Skrull's duplicate powers were not directly taken from the targets, but the result of reverse engineering.
    • After the initial Super Skrull turned out to have some severe design flaws (and never actually did destroy the FF), other Super Skrulls were made to try to improve the outcome. Recently, the Skrulls made a breakthrough that allows them to mass-produce Super Skrulls with any desired combination of powers they have samples of DNA for.
      • In Ultimate Fantastic Four, the Super Skrull appeared in an alternate future where everyone on Earth had super-powers. The Skrull's suit gives him the abilities of every superhuman in the area, allowing him to easily defeat the heroes. In the end, the Skrulls eradicate everyone on Earth except for a non-powered Ben Grimm. Unfortunately for Super Skrull, zero superheroes means he has zero powers, and Ben Grimm beats him with his fists.
    • As a Shout-Out to the Super Skrull, the second live-action Fantastic Four movie had a segment where Johnny Storm temporarily had the combined powers of his teammates.
    • The Super-Adaptoid could theoretically have anyone's powers, but usually specialized in the Avengers. Which eventually led to the most brilliant Achilles' Heel ever, when Captain Marvel intervened. Cap let the Super Villain get his powers, so he could his Cosmic Awareness and his wrist bands to defeat the Super-Adaptoid while simultaneously rescuing Rick Jones from the Negative Zone.
      • "Marvel Adventures: The Avengers" #19 also had the Super-Adaptoid make an appearance, and this version absorbed DNA, memories and powers. What it could also absorb (and which became this version's somewhat-Achilles' Heel) were some elements of the personalities of the heroes as well, so when Quicksilver let it absorb Captain America's powers and skills, it also absorbed the noble and trusting nature of Captain America. It realized the Avengers were the good guys, and stood down, ending the fight. Because, it knew, "it was the right thing to do."
      • The Super-Adaptoid, it should be noted, can also mimic the extraordinary-but-not-super abilities of Badass Normals like Hawkeye
    • The Avengers' frequent foe Count Nefaria once siphoned the powers of three minion-level villains (strength from Power Man, speed and flight from Whirlwind and heat vision from the Living Laser) into himself (amplified to a less minion-y level) so that he could tackle the heroes physically. The result turned him into an evil Captain Ersatz of Superman so that the writers could do an Avengers vs. Superman battle (he can even go toe to toe with Thor).
    • The Mimic started out as an X-Men opponent before undergoing a Heel Face Turn. He can copy anyone's powers as long as they're within a certain radius, but maintains the powers of the five founding X-Men (the ones he faced at the time) as a default.
      • The Mimic from Exiles had slightly different abilities, able to duplicate indefinitely the powers of any superhuman he encountered, but could only hold 5 power sets at a time. When he was turned into a Brood queen, his powers increased to the extent that he could duplicate the powers of all nearby superhumans.
      • Another reality's version of Mimic, with the same ability as the Exiles' version, had copied the abilities of Magneto, Professor X, Blink and Cannonball- the guy had definitely won the Superpower Lottery.[1]
    • X-Men team member Rogue (who started as a villain) is capable of doing this, but the unpleasant side effects of her power have limited her one-woman army moments to a handful of desperate situations.
    • The Taskmaster has the Charles Atlas Superpower equivalent to this: because he has "photographic reflexes" and trains constantly, he can mimic any combat move or other physical feat that doesn't involve any actual superpowers. Being Genre Savvy, however, he decided that being a superhero didn't pay, and that supervillains tended to get the snot beat out of them no matter how good they were at it, so he went into business training Mooks for other supervillains. He did start as an Avengers villain though.
    • This has happened at times to Power Pack, due to their Powers as Programs Super-Hero Origin. if one of the siblings loses their powers for some reason, it usually will migrate to one of the others, and at times one or another of them has held all four powersets at once. One of their villains managed this trick with Applied Phlebotinum as well, but they were able to stop him and get them back (reshuffled once again, of course).
    • Spider-Man fought a one-time villain called Fusion, who could replicate the powers of any and every superpowered being. It was later revealed to be a specific form of mind trick, and Spider-Man could overpower him easily when he refused to accept the illusion.
    • Synch of Generation X could copy the powers of any mutant in a certain range.
  • In the short-lived New Universe, there was Philip Nolan Voigt (aka Overshadow, though he hardly ever used the codename) who gained souped-up versions of the powers of all paranormals he met.
    • The New Universe also has Psi-Hawk, an unexplained being (ghost? psychic construct? who knows) that can be summoned by the teenage members of Psi-Force; it possesses amplified versions of their powers.
  • A variation is present in the JLA/Avengers crossover. Think Superman was powerful before? Well, when Thor is brought down by a swarm of bad guys and Captain America (comics)'s running mission control, he gets Mjolnir and the Mighty Shield.
  • Dmitri's weapons crest in Nikolai Dante has the powers of all the other nine. Oh, and it can negate them as well.
  • The Absorbing Man started out fighting The Mighty Thor and was a deadly threat because of his ability to absorb the physical powers and attributes of anything he came into contact with. Although he could typically only absorb one person's or thing's abilities at a time, one alternate universe version has him figuring out how to tap into anything he's previously absorbed, and combine their attributes into any form he wants. The end result? A guy who's capable of making Super-Hero Gods sweat blood whenever they fight him just became a hell of a lot scarier.
  • Excalibur once combined their powers with the aid of Kitty Pryde to enhance the abilities of Captain Britain. It ... didn't make a lot of sense.
  • In All Fall Down, the protagonist, Sophie, experiences this with every superpower on Earth. Permanently.


Fan Works

"We're waiting for Special Detail. Or Avatar Korra. You don't happen to know where she is?"
"We all have to be together for that to work," Karana said seriously. "Only by all our powers combined can we summon the Avatar."
The cop blinked. "Really?"
Karana snorted. "No," she said. "Don't be a dope."


Films -- Live Action


Literature

  • In Wild Cards, The Radical is Captain Trips' ultimate avatar, combining the powers of all his other avatars.
  • In Running The Risk, book 2 of The Shapeshifter series, the character of Catherine appears to be the most powerful Cola ever. It is revealed that she was just stealing everyone's powers and energy. The explanation to her having such a different power to everyone else and being such a nasty piece of work is that she was a parasite planted into a Sender by their jealous competitors.


Live Action TV

  • Heroes has multiple examples of this.
    • Sylar can obtain the ability of any special he meets, by understanding how it works. Unfortunately, his initial version of understanding how it worked involved cutting off the top of their head and poking around in their brain. Later, he learns he can do this without killing, but he continues to kill anyway.
    • Peter Petrelli was initially an example. His empathic mimicry allows him to learn the powers of any special he gets near. Since Peter is often unaware that he's even picked up a new power, he's the rare All Your Powers Combined example of How Do I Shot Web?. Later, he was depowered, and, when in a deathtrap, injected himself with a Super Serum that gave him a reduced version of his previous power which only allows him to hold one power at a time.
    • Season three had Arthur Petrelli, Peter's father, who can steal anyone's abilities through touch.
  • In Mutant X, Season 2 Big Bad Gabriel Ashlocke is the first New Mutant ever created, and also has several powers from each of the 4 power categories recognized by the show, as opposed to all other mutants, who only get a single power from a single category (although for some reason, after the first few episodes he mostly limited himself to throwing energy balls). Too bad for him, a side effect of all that power is he's eventually going to explode into bits.
  • Appears in several variations in Charmed - a doctor injected with a composite of Halliwell blood in Astral Monkey gains each of their powers (with an inevitable mental and physical deterioration); a demon steals their powers in How To Make A Quilt Out Of Americans (and is defeated when Prue tricks him into accessing her then-uncontrollable astral projection power, leaving his body defenseless); Phoebe's empathic power in later seasons allows her to channel the powers of other magical beings; the Hollow (introduced in Charmed And Dangerous) allows the bearer to siphon powers from others; Cole's period in 'the Wasteland', the show's version of demon purgatory, results in him collecting powers from multiple other demons and becoming invulnerable; and the Source of all Evil is implied (most notably in All Hell Breaks Loose, where this plot point is the crux of his plan to kill the Charmed Ones) to have the powers of all his demonic underlings. the show kinda likes this trope...
  • Very common in the Heisei era of Kamen Rider; in the usual case that the main Rider is a Swiss Army Hero with Multiform Balance, then either the Lightning Bruiser or Super Mode form will combine aspects of all the basic forms.
    • Kamen Rider Agito has Trinity Form, combining his Ground, Storm, and Flame forms.
    • Kamen Rider Blade does it in two different ways. First is King Form, which used the powers of all 13 of Blade's Rouse Cards, and second was an attack that combined the elemental powers of all four Riders.
    • The Perfect Zecter in Kamen Rider Kabuto combined the powers of the Kabuto, TheBee, Drake and Sasword Zecters to give Kabuto his Hyper Form.
    • Kamen Rider Den-O has Climax Form, where all the Imagin lend their powers at the same time. Similar but debatable is Liner Form's DenKamen Sword, which allows Ryotaro to access the abilities and fighting styles of all the Imagin, but only one at a time.
    • Reused almost immediately the following year in Kamen Rider Kiva with Dogga, Garuru, Basshar and default Kiva forms meshed together into DoGaBaKi Form.
    • Kamen Rider Double's CycloneJokerXtreme Super Mode combines all three of his right-half Gaia Memories (Cyclone, Heat, and Luna) with one of his left-half ones (usually Joker, once Metal) to power a very potent Maximum Drive.
    • Kamen Rider Fourze's Cosmic States not only uses all 40 of his Astro Switches, he can combine the powers of those that use the same basement (for instance, Launcher and Freeze are both Cross Switches; he can normally use only one at a time but in Cosmic States he can activate both for freeze missles).
  • In the almost-finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Four, the rest of the Scooby Gang uses magics to combine their spirits and with them their talents within Buffy.
  • The original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers did this once when they gave their combined strength and power to Billy the Blue Ranger so he could take on Madam Woe.
  • Many of the The Objects from The Lost Room can be combined to manifest new powers they did not have separately. One of the many reasons three different organizations Gotta Catch Them All.


Music


Tabletop Games

  • Tiamat, the evil god-queen of chromatic dragons in Dungeons & Dragons, has five heads, each of which has the color and breath weapon of one of the five breeds of chromatic dragon.
    • More broadly (and cheesily) there is the Illithid Savant, a prestige class granting the ability to take others' abilities by eating their brains, and Pun-Pun, a famous exploit allowing a low-level kobold to grant himself every ability in the game at the same time.
    • Another such class: the Erudite, especially the Erudite taken with the Convert Spell to Power option. An Erudite is a psionic class that, unlike other psionic classes, can learn any psionic power that exists, rather than being restricted to a specific category of powers. An Erudite with the Convert Spell to Power option, moreover, can also learn any arcane spell and use it as a psionic power instead. And all they have to give up to gain this option is a single bonus feat. There's a good reason why the Erudite is considered to be in the God Tier by many.
  • Eclipse Caste Solars from Exalted have the ability to learn the Charms of other types of Exalted, as well as those of spirits and other non-Exalted entities.
    • Meanwhile, the Terrestrial, Sidereal, and Infernal Exalted each have the combined powersets of their five patrons (the Elemental Dragons, Maidens of Fate, and Yozis, respectively).
      • The Terrestrials also have several team Charms that get the elemental effects of each type of Terrestrial participating. The Sidereals have several charms that require three Sidereals of different Castes working together to work them, and various other ones that become more powerful the more Sidereals of different Castes are participating.
    • The Abyssals' Moonshadows and the Infernals' Fiends also share the ability to learn other groups' Charms (not surprising, given they come from corrupted Eclipse Exaltations).
    • If any of the above gain Alchemical Charms, which are actually mechanical implants, it becomes kinda obvious.
    • There's also a Solar Circle Sorcery spell that allows a Solar circle to merge into one amalgam form, with the combined Skills and Charms of the entire circle.
  • Many super hero games, such as Mutants and Masterminds, have powers like this built into the frame work.
    • Slivers and Allies. All but a handful of Slivers grant their abilities to every other Sliver (for example, Crystalline Sliver gives all your Slivers the Shroud ability). Allies have effects that kick off every time you play that card or another Ally card, and many of those abilities' effects depend on the number of Allies you have (like drawing a card for every Ally you have).
  • The Yu-Gi-Oh! CCG comes with multiple takes on this trope.
    • Most Extra Deck monsters (Fusions, Synchros, Xyzs, and Links) are summoned via two or more monsters combining into one.
    • There are Union Monsters, which can turn themselves into Equip Spells for other monsters—including one particularly famous group of Union Monsters whose main gimmick was that they were Combining Mecha (see entry on page).
    • There's Relinquished, which can steal your opponent's monster to equip it to himself to boost his own power levels.
    • There's Buster Blader and other monsters (such as Red-Eyes Darkness Dragon, Goblin King, and Gren Maju Da Eiza or the infamous Slifer the Sky Dragon) that gain power for all monsters of a particular type or attribute on the field or in your discard pile (the effect varies; some (like Da Eiza or Slifer) even gain points for cards in a particular SPOT).
    • There's the Element monsters, six monsters that were either Light or Dark attribute and gained fitting effects if Fire, Water, Wind, or Earth attribute monsters were on the field.
    • There's the Six Samurai monsters, which gain their effects only when there's another one of them (of a different name) on the field (and thus got many cards to get them out).
    • There's the Equip Spell 'United We Stand', which fittingly enough gave the equipped monster 800 Attack Points for every other monster you controlled, and then there's the Continuous Spell 'The A. Forces', which was a card that, for every Warrior or Spellcaster you controlled, gave all Warriors 200 extra Attack Points.
    • The Witchcrafters are female Spellcaster crafters, each with a different area of expertise: Edel is a gemcutter, Haine a seamstress, Verre practices glassblowing, Pittore, painting, Potterie, pottery, and Schmietta, blacksmithing. The seem to like combining their talents a lot, as Verre and Schmietta do on "Witchcrafter Collaboration" and Potterie and Pittore do on "Witchcrafter Creation", but without a doubt, their masterpiece is Witchcrafter Golem Aruru, created via all their contributions.
  • Another Magic: The Gathering: Experiment Kraj.
  • Duel Masters's CCGs has this in the "Survivor" creatures, where the more Survivors you have on your field, the stronger your other Survivors become, as they share the abilities.

Toys

  • Several instances in Bionicle:
    • The Krahka has the power to shapeshift, gaining the powers of whatever she imitates. She fights the Toa Metru by becoming a cross between the six of them, gaining all their powers.
    • The Rahi Nui, besides combining the physical attributes of five different Rahi beasts, also possesses the powers of the six main Kanoka Disks.
    • Kaita combiners, made up of three beings, tend to have the powers of all their individual components. There are also Nui combiners made up of six beings, but these are usually never attempted. Legends say, however, that the power of a Toa Nui would rival that of a Great Spirit, so essentially a god.
    • The Golden Armor's function was to extract the power of nearby Kraata (of which there are 42 kinds), and grant them to its wearer. Tahu had the courtesy of being that wearer, but it hasn't been defined which Kraata powers he acquired.


Video Games

  • Mildred Avalon, the Big Bad from Arcana Heart, is capable of using the abilities of all 11 of the Arcana. Their strongest special attacks? Those are Milly's regular special attacks.
  • Marisa Kirisame of Touhou counts, to an extent.
    • Satori Komeiji might be a better example. This Danmakufu script shows what could happen when she begins combining all those copied spellcards together.
    • It should be noted that what Marisa does is actually create her version of some spellcards, most famously her Master Spark, which was taken from Yuuka. Satori also doesn't actually learn the spellcards. The reason Satori was able to use your partner's spellcards against you in Subterranean Animism was because Reimu/Marisa's partner's spellcard patterns were within the reach of Satori's Mind Reading; ostensibly, this is because they have the patterns down in the case they enter into a Danmaku duel with them again, and having ongoing conversations with the usually obnoxious youkai makes it hard not to also think of the associated patterns. The fact that once Satori starts using the spellcards also likely brings out more associated patterns to Reimu/Marisa's foremind doesn't help.
  • And so does Rugal Bernstein from The King of Fighters.
  • PROXY in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is a Sith droid that, using holograms, can assume the form of any person in its databank, including Jedi. Somehow, while in the form of a Jedi, PROXY can fight using their specific lightsaber style (and even use their Force powers!). He turns into most of the game's previous bosses (and finally into Darth Maul!) to fight Starkiller in a mid-game boss battle, and at the end turns into Obi-Wan for a brief fight against Darth Vader.
    • The novelization explains that he uses his droid abilities to mimic Force powers, including using magnetic fields to guide a thrown lightsaber. A machine's reaction time would probably be comparable to that of a Jedi.
    • Interestingly, PROXY somehow knew that assuming the form of Obi-Wan Kenobi (as his younger self) would momentarily disorient Vader.
  • The final boss of Far Cry (PC version) has the combined abilities of all three previously seen mutant soldier types: he has the cloaking ability of the stealth Trigens, the jumping ability of the soldier Trigens, and the incredibly high durability of the Giant Mook Fat Boy Trigens.
  • The protagonists of Persona 3 and Persona 4 were dealt fate's wild card, able to use Personas of all the tarot arcana and combine them to make better ones. There's nothing any other character can do that the heroes can't, balanced by the fact that their Personas level up slower (forcing you to keep fusing to keep them respectable), and it's an immediate game over if they get knocked out.
  • Archer in Fate Stay Night, whose Noble Phantasm involves duplicating Noble Phantasms of other heroes, including the skill required to use them efficiently in battle—the duplicates aren't as strong as the real deal, but they are disposable because he can create more if he needs to.
    • Furthermore, Gilgamesh has a literal case of All Your Powers Combined because as the first historical Hero and the ruler of the (at the time) entire known world, he already owned all the Noble Phantasms (except Excalibur and Avalon, which were created much later, although he does possess Gram, the sword that Caliburn was based on) before they came into possession of the other heroes, and can thus summon them all at will -- though unlike with Archer, Possession in his case Does Not Imply Mastery.
  • The final form of the final boss of Tales of Vesperia, Duke, is capable of using a variety of your party's special abilities and spells against you (complete with one-liners used by your characters just to rub it in). His second (and more dangerous) Mystic Arte is a combination of those of your party members, and in addition to damaging your party it has the side effect of restoring a third of his max HP to him.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • Over the course of Sonic Heroes, Metal Sonic goes around scanning the heroes and gaining their powers. By the end of the game, his final form combines Sonic's speed, Tails's flight abilities and intelligence, Knuckles's strength, Shadow's Chaos Control abilities, and Chaos's ability to merge with water, manifested as control of metal, since he is made of metal. He uses this last power in particular to create a truly monstrous final form by merging with Eggman's armada.
    • In Sonic Colors, the Final Boss is Eggman in a machine (big surprise) that uses a few of Sonic's many wisp-gained powers. Later on in the battle, he starts combining abilities together.
  • Shujinko was given this ability by Big Bad Onaga in Mortal Kombat Deception, and he used this ability against Onaga in the end. He took the powers of all the fighters present, and used them to defeat Onaga and undo the mistake that gave him this ability in the first place.
  • In the The Legend Of Spyro trilogy series, being a rare purple dragon, the titular dragon had access to all four dragon elements: Fire, Ice, Electricity, and Earth.
  • In Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Pokémon Trainer Red has a Final Smash combining the powers of all his Pokémon.
  • Also from Pokémon, Smeargle is notable in the competitive community for one thing and one thing only: the ability to learn any move in the games (other than Struggle and the almost completely useless Chatter.) However, its generally bad stats prevent it from becoming too much of a Game Breaker. It's excellent for breeding, though, because a male Smeargle can pass down any Egg Move that a Pokémon in the Ground egg group can learn.
    • The move Baton Pass lets you pass along any stat boosts (or reductions), as well as a lot of secondary effects that normally go away upon switching out. Properly built and executed teams will steamroll opponents once they get set up.
  • At least one boss in World of Warcraft has this ability. The second-to-last boss of the Zul'Aman dungeon will temporarily copy the class abilities of people in the raid.
  • Chaos in Final Fantasy I shows this trope as he casts spells used by each of the four fiends.
  • Seth, the final boss of Street Fighter IV and Super SFIV, has the ability to absorb the "data" of his opponents, which has given him several moves of other characters, such as the Shoryuken, Sonic Boom, Spinning Piledriver, Yoga Teleport, and Dhalsim's stretchy arms.
  • In Dirge of Cerberus, with the exception of Nero, Weiss has all of the Tsviets attacks. This is because they get all of their abilities from the same source and Weiss took to it the best.
  • In one of the final battles of Kingdom Hearts II, Xemnas, the game's Big Bad and the leader of Organization XIII, will use the weapons of all his defeated subordinates in his Armored Controller mode.
  • Both 'Ōkami and its sequel Okamiden provide examples of this trope, with the protagonist collecting all the cellestical brush techniques held by the various brush gods.
  • In Dissidia Final Fantasy, all of Bartz's attacks are mimicked from his teammates.
  • Mega Man, in the classic series, always accumulates the various abilities of the eight themed robot masters as he defeats them, then uses all of them to conquer the final stages and the endgame boss gauntlet. This also holds true for the sequel series.
    • On the X Series we also have Lumine, who has the ability to use all the previous mavericks Desperation Attacks at any moment, it also works as Final Exam Boss, since if you are not bully upgraded most of those atacks are One-Hit Kill on you, so better make sure you remember how to dodge all of them.
  • Skyrim does this near the end, to dispel Alduin's mist
  • Salamander, the final boss of Martial Champion, has a moveset that consists entirely of special moves from the playable characters.
  • Asura the Destructor from Asura's Wrath uses the Karma Fortresses Mantra Reactor, which contains the mantra of all 8 Gaurdian Generals, which allows Asura to become this form. It's bigger than the planet earth itself, and he can move at Multiple times the Speed of Light through outerspace.


Web Comics

  • Nanashi from Earthsong has the ability to use anyone else's soulstone powers if she can get her hands on a bit of their planet's element.
  • Vaarsuvius of The Order of the Stick was temporarily granted access to a "Soul Splice" which gave that mage the combined spellcasting ability and magical might of three other powerful spellcasters. However, this came with some nasty downsides that mean Vaarsuvius is unlikely to try that again.
  • Parodied in this strip from Queen of Wands:

"EVOLUTION!"
"SURVIVAL!"
"SELECTION!"
"SCIENCE!"
"H-AIIIIGH!"
"[+ BY YOUR POWERS COMBINED, I AM...+ ]"
"Charles Darwin."

  • The "Holiday Wars" Story Arc from Sluggy Freelance focused on Bun-Bun doing this with the powers of Holiday figures (Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Tom Turkey, etc.) Every time he killed one of them, he invoked "right of caste" to claim their role as patron quasi-deity of a holiday. By the end he's claimed enough to have reached Physical God territory.
  • Homestuck has the bunny with the near-ultimate weapons of all four kids. And it seems to know how to use them.
    • Also, Gamzee's Strife Specibus, long thought to be Clubkind, turned out to be Jokerkind, meaning he can use all weapons. And they're all deadly as hell.
    • Lord English upgraded the Condesce by granting her the Psychic Powers of the other Troll spectrums. She has yellow-blood telekinesis, brown-blood animal control, and blue-blood mind control, in addition to her own near-immortality.


Web Original

  • Taltos, from Trinton Chronicles, does this near the end of the third story arc, he uses two stolen powers and his own ability to create a power to counter-act powers at nearly the same time.
    • Jasmine as a side note has this effect during the first and fourth story arcs often enough by copying several powers at once.
  • The Global Guardians PBEM Universe has a character named Paragon, inspired by the DCU character of the same name. Unlike most other power mimics in the setting, 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.
  • Mimeo, of the Whateley Universe, can get all the powers of up to six supers. For four hours. He fought the heavy hitters of Team Kimba and gained their powers, beating them up and getting enough powers to go rob an impregnable diamond exchange. In decades of superbattles he has supposedly been beaten only twice, one of which was when he was only thirteen.


Western Animation

  • The Trope Namer[2] is Captain Planet, who is formed from the power of the five Planeteers' rings; while he's out, the rings are powerless.
    • Which also leads to something of a subversion (and his Narmtastic catchphrase); once he's done, or not up to the task: "the Power is YOURS!"
    • A somewhat notable example involved an episode where the Planeteers tried to summon Captain Planet, but due to being blasted into outer space with the rule of only being able to use their rings within the confines of the atmosphere (or something; it's been a long time), only two of the ring's powers managed to combine (Earth and Heart). Because of this, Captain Planet formed with a radically different color scheme, could not fly, and did not have super strength.
      • Not quite, in that episode they summoned him normally, but when he tried to return the powers to the rings, Wheeler and Ma-Ti had been launched into space and the beams heading to them bounced back of the atmosphere and recombined into the new form.
  • Kevin 11 from Ben 10 absorbed all the powers of Ben's aliens (well, the original ten he had at the time), and can use them all at once. But they're 90% weaker than the originals. Thanks to Ben's advice during the Chained Heat episode, however, Kevin learns that he can combine various abilities to increase their efficiency.
    • The villain Aggregor in Ben 10: Ultimate Alien not only has the same powers as Kevin, but his master plan is much similar. However, he intends to completely absorb the Elemental Powers of the five aliens he has captured.
    • Ben 10,000 in Ultimate Alien can tap into the powers of every alien in the Ultimatrix without transforming or time limits as the "Ultimate Human".
  • Inverted in Jackie Chan Adventures: the twelve talismans grant powers to the holder; combined they can be used to resurrect the Big Bad Shendu, who has all the powers due to them being his in the first place. They were forcibly extracted from him and separated into the talismans.
    • Also happens to Jade in one episode who is infused with the powers of said talismans, in this case being a literal example of this trope.
    • Shendu's son, Drago, initially only possessed the basic powers his father has (minus the talismans), meaning he could breathe fire. In the fifth and final season, his plan was to absorb the demon chis of the other seven Demon Sorcerers (his aunts and uncles). In the series finale, he succeeds and the result is his appearance transforms and he possesses the powers of all eight Demon Sorcerers.
  • In X-Men: Evolution, Rogue, suffering from Power Incontinence, ends up recalling every power she ever absorbed. Driven mad by it, she curb-stomps pretty much all the X-Men (it helps that she could count the powers of Magneto, Storm, and Juggernaut among those she took) until they finally calm her down and purge the excess power.
  • Nerissa, the second Big Bad of WITCH, is one of the previous five Guardians of Candracar, the predecessors to the main characters. One of her goals in the story arc is to absorb the other former Guardians, thereby gaining their powers. She nearly accomplishes this goal, but she, along with season one Big Bad Phobos, are absorbed by Phobos' minion Cedric, and he is the one who eventually gains the powers of all five previous guardians.
  • This was the plan of a villain in an episode of Teen Titans. He set up a tournament for young heroes so he could capture the losers in a crystal which enabled him to use their powers as his own.
    • His plan worked until Robin the champion tricked him into fighting and freed the heroes trapped in the crystal. After the heroes left, he started over with a tournament for heroines.
  • In the Darkwing Duck episode "Jail Bird", Darkwing's Evil Counterpart NegaDuck uses Applied Phlebotinum to steal the powers of the other members of his Quirky Miniboss Squad (Bushroot, Megavolt, Quackerjack, and the Liquidator) to transform into Mega-NegaDuck. The depowered (and de-sized!) villains are forced into an Enemy Mine situation to stop Negaduck from destroying St. Canard and to get their powers back. Of course, as he gained all their weaknesses as well, Mega-NegaDuck was really no more dangerous than his usual Badass Normal self. Or maybe that was just because the episode had to end quickly by that point.
  • In Avatar: The Last Airbender, the titular Avatar is a Chosen One who is the only person in the world capable of bending all four elements (usually, a person can only control a single element, that of their native nationality). When the show begins, however, the current Avatar is an untrained 12-year-old boy who needs to learn How Do I Shot Web?
  • Code Lyoko: Once he is possessed by XANA, William gains a set of powers countering most of those of the Lyoko Warriors. His Super Smoke is Ulrich's Super Sprint with the added bonus of making him invulnerable. He can also deflect attacks (Odd), use telekinesis (Yumi)--unlike her, he can use it on himself to enable flight—and fire energy (Aelita), and use at least one form of Aelita's Creativity (i.e. manipulating electronic locks). Finally, he can enter the Code XANA in the towers.
  • Kim Possible's Nemesis Shego's brothers also have powers of their own. With the help of a rod their Arch Enemy stole their powers and combined them. Later, Shego stole the rod for herself, combined all the powers even better... but lost it very quickly. Earlier, that bad guy had only used one of the powers at a time, when Shego combined them he claimed he didn't know he could do that.
  • Parodied in an episode of Tiny Toon Adventures mocking Superfriends. When the Lex Luthor Captain Ersatz uses a device to suck out everyone's powers, the Bat Man Expy (a blowhard who had been rejected by the "Just Us League" earlier) comes in again and brags about how great he is, causing the Lex Luthor character to absorb his "powers". Specifically, being a pathetic loser.
  • Similar to the Darkwing Duck example above, in the classic Transformers Generation 1 episode "Heavy Metal War", Megatron takes on the powers of his troops to defeat Optimus Prime in one-on-one combat. In a literal application of Powers as Programs, Megatron does this by removing power chips from his Decepticons and incorporating them into his own body.
  • AMAZO's Justice League incarnation was able to use Awesomeness By Analysis to duplicate the superpowers of anyone it looked at, with its only limits appearing to be an inability to copy magical powers. It was even able to take Superman's powers and then overcome his Kryptonite Factor after exposure to kryptonite. By the end of its introductory episode it had already taken the powers of the entire Justice League (minus Batman) and only stopped attacking after using Martian Manhunter's Telepathy to learn that Luthor was duping it. It left Earth to find new ways to evolve and by the time it returned in Justice League Unlimited, it had become the most powerful being in the DCAU by far and defeated the combined Justice League without breaking a sweat.
    • Screw entire Justice League. It takes out OA and the entire resident GL Corps without even slowing down.
  • Batman: The Brave And The Bold: "The Fate of the Equinox!"
    • Which makes Batman looks like a blue version of the Super-Adaptoid, from an above example of this same trope.
  • Though not an actually combination of their powers, D.A.V.E from The Batman possessed the combined brain waves of Batman's greatest foes, giving him their personalities, their knowledge, and their fighting skills. Seeing as how he managed to figure out Batman's identity, it makes you realize how dangerous this combination is.
  • In a two part episode of Casper Scare School, an evil leprechaun intends to absorb the powers of every creature in the underworld.
  • In The Penguins of Madagascar, Eggy the duckling picks up the talents of all four penguins when they look after him as an egg. By the time he hatches, he has Skipper's street smarts, Kowalski's inventiveness, Rico's unstoppable violence, and Private's "adorably phony British accent". He later picks up Julien's dance skills and starts imitating his accent instead.
  • Twice in the Superfriends episode "The Superfriends Meet Frankenstein." First with the monster getting the combined powers of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman and being sent to conquer Europe by Frankenstein, then Robin getting the remaining dregs of their powers (making him a giant) to defeat the composite monster by dosing it with Kryptonite while wearing a lead suit. And where exactly did those "target bodies" come from? The Monster is a giant with Batman's head, Superman's costume, Wonder Woman's lasso and green hands.
  • According to Word of God, Winged Unicorns (either called pegasus unicorns or alicorns) in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic universe combine the natural qualities of earth ponies (strength), unicorns (magic), and pegasi (wings).
  1. For those not familiar with Marvel Comics: this Mimic had Magneto's vast magnetic power, Professor X's telepathic abilities, Blink's teleportation powers, and Cannonball's Flying Brick forcefield.
  2. Well, almost. The actual line is "By your powers combined".