Extra Ore Dinary

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
You might think you're the greatest Earthbender in the world, but even you can't bend metal!
—Xin Fu, Avatar: The Last Airbender, about to eat his words.

Some Elemental Powers let you control fire, water, air or earth. Some even let you control lightning; ice; plants; light; darkness; arcane forces, magic, or the mind; and even heart (when not a victim of What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?). This, however, is power over metal (Not that kind of Metal; the shiny stuff). It generally allows one to control metal, although it may even include being made of metal and using one's body to attack.

This is often an Infinity+1 Element for two reasons:

  • The Inverse Law of Complexity to Power- "metal" is a very broad term, and all metals are very utilitarian, so even if what can be done with the metal is narrowly defined (shaping it, magnetizing it, moving it...), it's still capable of many things.
  • In modern series, Elemental Baggage isn't a problem for metal (if it's even in play at all), so while your enemies may be caught without water or dirt to use, you'll never have to worry as long as you're anywhere near civilization.

See also Selective Magnetism.

Since no one has explained the trope name, it's a pun on "extraordinary". Especially for Monty Python fans with the song about Dennis Moore that states he is, "extra-ore-dinary".

Examples of Extra Ore Dinary include:

Anime and Manga

  • The Elric brothers: It's their specialty in alchemy.
    • The manga/Brotherhood anime also features the 'Silver Alchemist', whose powers work a lot like Musica.
  • Digimon Frontier has the Legendary Warrior of Steel, Mercuremon.
    • Also common in Digimon games is to have a "Machine" element.
  • One Piece has Mr. 1, who, after eating the Supa Supa [Dice Dice] Fruit, got a body literally Made of Steel as well as the ability to form bladed weapons on any part of his body.
    • Eustass Kidd to a lesser degree, who has the power of either Magnetism or Metalkinesis.
  • Fairy Tail has Gajeel, who uses iron dragonslayer magic.
  • Naruto: One of Sasori's puppets made from the corpse of the Third Kazekage can create and manipulate iron sand using magnetism.
    • His successor, The Fourth Kazekage can manipulate gold dust using magnetism.
    • A minor character from the Cloud Village named Toroi had that same bloodline technique (which surprised a Sand Village ninja to find out it was found that far away) which he uses magnetize weapons, which magnetize other objects they hit (including people), making his attacks nearly impossible to avoid.
    • This is also the power of one of the filler villans from the Land of Vegetables arc. Hinata defeated him by breaking his "off" switch with Jyuuken.
  • In Blassreiter one of main advantages the Pale Rider series of low-level body augmentation gives its users is ability to harmoniously meld with equipment such as vehicles and weapons, automatically building intuitively learnable interface that feels natural, instead of all those unwieldy mechanical controls.
  • Musica and Reina of Rave Master are "silver claimers", who can both manipulate silver, though Reina has the slight advantage of being able to create silver out of thin air.
    • In one arc, the pair form an Enemy Mine against Ogre, who turns out to be a gold claimer.
  • In A Certain Scientific Railgun, the title character, whose main power is Shock and Awe, at one time manipulates iron sand into whips.
    • And uses it to stick to walls... and to disarm people with guns... and to instantly form shields in front of herself... And of course the titular Railgun. Seems like this is closer to her main power, in the way she actually uses it. Or rather, the series make no distinction and her power is simply Electromagnetism.
  • It's arguable whether Sailor Venus from Sailor Moon has power over metal since she was created separately, but one of her weapons is a "Venus Love Me Chain" and she was able to escape the Amazon Trio's metal restraints rather easily.
    • Probably yes, though it's mostly implied. Japanese for Venus, 金星 (kinsei, lit. "gold star") implies that its element is metal -- just as Jupiter gets Petal Power and rose earrings (in addition to Jupiter's thunderbolt) for being the Sailor of 木星 (mokusei, lit. "tree star"). The anime uses Vancian Magic mainly to keep the animation costs low, so you don't see a lot of variance in the use of their powers.
  • Risotto Nero and his Stand Metallica from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Interesting that his only use of magnetism crosses with Bloody Murder.
  • A few Qwaser have the ability to manipulate a certain metal such as: iron or copper.

Comic Books

  • Magneto can not only affect magnetic forces and metals, but generally can also manipulate and shape non-magnetic metals just as easily.
    • Polaris had the same powers, resulting in decades worth of wrangling about whether or not she was Magneto's daughter (she was introduced as such but the very same storyline revealed it to be a hoax, and it's been just as back-and-forth ever since). Current continuity says she is; we'll see if it sticks.
    • Also, Magneto's clone Joseph.
    • Magneto takes it further than even manipulation of metals; electromagnetism is one of the four fundamental interactive forces of the universe (the others being gravity, strong nuclear force and weak nuclear force). Unlike many characters with similar powers, Magneto is well aware of this. At times, he's pulled off feats like locally negating gravity (causing killer Sentinal robots to be hurled into space by Earth's rotation), and he routinely uses his powers to create a forcefield around his body, which can even hold in oxygen (needless to say, neither metal nor magnetic) when he feels like spacewalking without a spacesuit.
      • So powerful is his full range of abilities, most adaptions of Magneto in the Movies, Cartoons, and Video Games have to SEVERELY limit his powers down to it's most basic of Metal Manipulation and Electromagnetic Shields. Anymore and it's Story Breaker Hour.
  • In Ultimate Spider-Man, the end of the Clone Saga reveals that Ultimate Doc Ock's control of his arms was actually control over METAL. This leads to a much tougher fight than Spidey was anticipating, and one of his clones being Impaled with Extreme Prejudice right off the bat.
  • In The DCU, the original Doctor Polaris and his successor both had magnetic powers.
  • Lanfeust's initial power is the ability to melt metal, which is why he starts out as The Blacksmith.
  • Milestone Comics' Static has basically the same powerset as Magneto, except visually based more on the electricity side of electromagnetism. He still largely uses it to move metal objects around, though.

Fan Works

Literature

  • Metalcrafting is but one of the Elemental Powers available to furycrafters in Jim Butcher's Codex Alera. Metalcrafters tend to be the greatest swordsmen, since some of the metalcrafter skills include the ability to sense metal around you and act on that, as well as the ability to greatly increase your own endurance and pain tolerance (a famous duel between two metalcrafter lasted days). One character also becomes a Chrome Champion in the fifth book and another character does the same in the sixth. Metalcrafting also allows one to control their own emotions and shield them from having their emotions detected by watercrafters. Lastly, metalcrafting includes some degree of kinetic control over metal, but since only two very powerful crafters have been seen using it (Gaius Sextus and Invidia Aquitaine) it's probably a difficult technique.
  • All magic in the Mistborn series involves metal in some way, but the closest examples to this trope are the two Allomantic powers gained from iron and steel, which allow the user to attract (iron) or repel (steel) nearby pieces of metal. There are three general types of metal-based magic:
    • Allomancy, which involves ingesting and "burning" metals to generate effects, ranging from the aforementioned pushing and pulling of metals to ehnacing physical abilities and senses to detecting or hiding other using allomancy. With certain rare metals like atium, one can see into one's opponents' future. Allomancy is also the power of the god Preservation.
    • Feruchemy, which allows for an Equivalent Exchange wherein the feruchemist takes something from themselves, be it physical strength, knowledge, speed, weight, or sensory ability and "stores" it in metal to draw upon it later.
    • Hemalurgy, an inherently destructive use of metal spikes to steal attributes from others and transfer it to another. It involves killing the "donor" with the spike to extract the attribute from them and then pounding it into the body of the "recipient. Doing both at the same time boosts the effect. Hemalurgy is also how koloss, kandra, and Inquisitors are created. Hemalurgy is the power of the god Ruin.
    • Metal also has one other inherent and very useful magical property: neither Preservation or Ruin can "see" it, as metal and the powers relating to metal look like brilliant, blinding lights to them. This is a critical component of the story, as Ruin can alter written words on anything except metal, and he does this to alter historical records and prophecies. Anything not etched into metal is untrustworthy; even knowledge stored in a feruchemist's metalminds can be altered, but writing on the metal itself cannot. Once this is apparent, the heros are able to keep Ruin from learning their plans by using messages etched in metal. However, Ruin is able to get around this by having his Inquisitors ambush the messengers and read the metal and trnasfer that information directly to him.
  • "Metal morphers" in Those Who Walk in Darkness are almost straight Magneto Expies. The "almost" is because Magneto never made a metal Golem to assault his foes.
  • Daja Kisubo from Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic series is an apprentice blacksmith with metal and fire manipulation.
  • Each Guardian has a unique Gift. Irena's is the ability to manipulate metal, and she supplies all of the Guardian angels with perfectly customized weapons. Her gift works even better in tandem with her ex-lover's Gift of fire.

Live-Action TV

  • One minor villain in Heroes possessed the ability to create and manipulate magnetic fields. We don't see him to do much more than open car doors, close blinds and steal from ATMs.

Mythology

  • Metal is one of the five classical elements according to Chinese Mythology, along with Fire, Water, Earth and Wood.
  • In Enochian esoterism the solar angelic Prince Bornogo is associated with metal.

Tabletop Games

  • In Forgotten Realms, this is the wizard Ghorus Toth's apparent specialty, as many metal-manipulating spells bear his name.
  • Gold Wizards in Warhammer Fantasy Battle Fantasy are metal/chemist magic-users, specialised in modifying existing alloys and chemical components.

Video Games

  • Pokémon has the Steel-type. Mons with this typing tend to be either powerful defenders (like Skarmory), potent tanks (like Metagross and in the lower tiers Aggron), or Lightning Bruisers (like Scizor, Lucario and Excadrill). Part of this is due to having the largest spread of elemental resistances in the game at 11 (including the only resistance to Dragon) and an immunity to Poison and Toxic statuses. It would be a good candidate for Infinity+1 Element itself, except that the few weaknesses it has - Ground and Fighting in particular - are very commonly found in the game and are downright ubiquitous on competitive teams. While Ground and Fighting are powerful attacking types on their own, it's safe to say a lot of their value comes from their ability to hit Steel-types hard. Most dual-typings with Steel tend to negate one or more of those weaknesses though. Moves of this type usually revolve around turning part of the Pokémon's body to metal and using it to attack (Steel Wing, Metal Claw, Iron Tail, etc).
    • Another problem the Steel typing faces is that it is resisted by Fire, Water and Electric types while only being super-effective against Ice and Rock, which already have a number of weaknesses already, therefore, it isn't normally useful as an attacking type.
    • As for Gym Leaders, we have Jasmine from Olivine City and Byron from Canalave City, who use Steel-type Pokémon.
      • Steven Stone as well, although his team is pretty evenly split between Steel and Rock/Ground types.
  • In Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg, orange eggs usually contain metal-themed Mons or power-ups.
  • Spiral is given one move in all of the fighting games she is featured in; the ability to create and manipulate swords. They float behind her and augment her attack.
  • Arcana Heart has Fiona Mayfield, whose default Arcana is Orichalkos, the "all-knowing Mr. Dragon" who is also the Arcana of Metal. With him, she is able to create metal swords and shields out of thin air and attack with them.
  • Given that all the Robot Masters are, well, robots, it comes to know surprise that they are all made of metal. However, Mega Man 2's Metal Man, hence his name, seems to capitalize on this idea.
    • There is also Dust Man from 4 and Junk Man from 7 who attcks by hurling scrap metal at you.
  • Super Mario 64 introduces the Metal Cap power-up that turns Mario into living metal.
  • Character Material says that the Einzbern family of Alchemists from the Nasuverse specialize in manipulating metal.
    • Shirou too, in a strange way. His element is more specifically "swords."
  • Schwer-Muta from Rosenkreuzstilette, a Mega-Man-esque doujin game, follows the same formula as Junk Man above.
  • Patchouli from Touhou has metal as one of the 7 elements she uses.
    • Suwako also has this as part of the her earth goddess powers.
  • Mordekaiser of League of Legends controls both metal the tangible object and metal the music. By this point metal is all that remains of him.

Web Comics

  • K'thonya of Earthsong belongs to a race with the soulstone ability to manipulate metal. Essentially the only thing she can't do with it is turn one kind into another and create it out of thin air (though she can expand a relatively small piece of metal to many times its original size). Her species' hair has a high enough metal content to be subject to her power, and the use of this ability by other members of her race apparently inspired gorgon myths in Earth culture.
  • Wayward Sons: Phastus. Because of this, he's now an extremely valued craftsman, taking the role of The Blacksmith.

Web Original

  • Perepis of the Global Guardians PBEM Universe can telekinetically manipulate metal, as can Ogun (who wears a suit of telekinetically manipulated "Powered Armor"). Mercury, a liquid-metal shapeshifter akin to the T-1000 can form his own body into various metallic shapes.
  • Warrick Kaine of The Descendants has the full suite of metal themed powers; controlling, sensing (apparently it's like taste) transmuting, and creating Instant Armor. Somehow, this also lets him summon sentient Combat Tentacles too.
  • Whateley Universe character Silver secretes mithril and can shape it into weapons too.
  • Kosviel von Einzbern from Fate Nuovo Guerra, owing to her family's specialty in metal alchemy, can create high-quality weapons and metallic familiars. She can also use said weapons very well.

Western Animation

Other Media

  • Bionicle has Iron and Magnetism elements. There is a lot of overlap in their powers, but the main difference is that Toa of Iron can create metal from thin air, and Toa of Magnetism have to manipulate existing metal or just use magnetic energy.
  • Ace Lightning has Random Virus, a morally confused cyborg with limited control over metal.
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