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Superpower Meltdown: Difference between revisions
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Less lethally, if the hero/villain is only modestly powered or hit with [[Green Rocks]] to cause a short circuit, then the meltdown might only take the form of their normal power causing random effects. Like telekinesis mimicking a poltergeist rather than de-atomizing everything, or a pyrokinetic setting nearby objects on fire rather than exploding. Should their power require constant concentration to keep stable, then any effect that destroys their concentration could be potentially fatal for all involved.
A common occurrence is for a hero going into meltdown to be [["I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight|coaxed back]] from the brink using [[Heroic Willpower]], or forced to do a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] and fly away to save those nearby. If a [[Love Interest]] is nearby, a [[Cooldown Hug]] can reliably stop the meltdown. Occasionally, a hero or villain might ''purposefully'' trigger it to try and kill their rival, since the [[Sphere of Destruction]] such a meltdown generates tends to be pretty devastating. Whether this works on not depends on if [[The Only One Allowed to Defeat You|they're the lead.]]
Compare [[Spontaneous Human Combustion]], [[Load-Bearing Boss]], [[Unstoppable Rage]], [[Super-Powered Evil Side]], [[Action Bomb]], [[Power Incontinence]], and [[Taking You with Me]]. See also [[Power Degeneration]], [[Clone Degeneration]] and [[Flawed Prototype]].
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* Miroku from ''[[Inuyasha]]'''s power ''is'' a meltdown. More precisely, he has a black hole in the palm of his hand, held at bay with an enchanted string of prayer beads, and though it's potentially the most destructive power anyone on the team has, it ''will'' eventually melt down and eat him regardless of how often he uses it, though overuse will hurry his end.
** [[It Got Worse|This got worse in the manga]] as a result of {{spoiler|Miroku absorbing a lot of [[Big Bad]] Naraku's poison. Though Kikyo purified some of it, the poison that's left cuts deeper into his body every time he uses the Wind Tunnel.}} Considering that he's continually forced into situations that compel him to use his Wind Tunnel, his only chance of survival lies in the other characters killing Naraku before his Wind Tunnel swallows him up. {{spoiler|Which they ultimately do.}}
*** This also occurs in an anime movie, in which Miroku fights a villain who also has a wind scar in his hand. To get more suction to beat Miroku, he takes a blade and intentionally makes the hole wider. You can guess [[Hoist by His Own Petard|what happens next]].
* Chiaotzu and Android 16 in ''[[Dragonball Z]]'' triggered Super Power Meltdowns to try and defeat [[The Dragon]] and [[Big Bad]] of separate arcs as part of a [[Heroic Sacrifice]]. {{spoiler|It didn't work.}}
** The villain Cell threatened to destroy the planet by triggering his own, Goku {{spoiler|teleports them both away. Ironically, while he is the lead, his [[Heroic Sacrifice]] was partly in vain since Cell survives and Gohan has to beat him.}}
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*** [[Engaging Chevrons|He should have easily been able to do it]], {{spoiler|had he not spent thirty minutes saying goodbye to everyone}}.
**** Thirty minutes? He had a few seconds at most.
**** Which by DBZ standards of speed and strength could easily span an entire episode or even two, and '''that''' was reached by Frieza saga itself. Since then... {{spoiler|Goku's mastered Super Saiyan, has instant teleportation and even in base form could have wiped the floor with Frieza.}}
** If you're going to count Chiaotzu and #16, shouldn't Vegeta's [[Heroic Sacrifice]] against Majin Buu count as well?
* In ''[[Zettai Karen Children]]'', Kaoru is nearly killed when her psychic powers begin to go haywire, slamming a helicopter carrying herself and others into a building and being crushed on the ground by the weight of her power. She's saved when her supervisor shows something similar to [[The Power of Friendship]]; she has the guts to then stop her own heart, resulting in the cancellation of the meltdown.
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* Katsumi in [[Silent Moebius|Silent Möbius]] {{spoiler|after she finds Robert [[De Vice]] dead, her [http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/6981/katsumisuperpowermeltdo.gif grief and anger make her magical power leash out, blowing up the apartment building] in a [[Pillar of Light]] as she screams inside the fire with [[Glowing Eyes of Doom]].}}
* In ''[[Heroic Age]]'', the result of two or more Nodos fighting each other for long enough is "Frenzy", wherein the Nodos succumbs to pure rage, gains greatly amplified powers (considering what they're capable of normally, this is kinda scary), starts mutating in decidedly painful-looking ways, and generally destroys everything in its path (ships, fleets, ''planets'', etc) until eventually releasing an amount of energy comparable to a supernova, which also kills the Nodos.
* In ''[[Rosario
* In ''[[Turn
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== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* One of the crises of the first season of ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'' was the fear that Ted would use his literal nuclear powers to level New York. In the end, {{spoiler|it wasn't Ted they had to worry about.}}
** Ted did have a [[Superpower Meltdown]] earlier in the series. It just wasn't as big as they thought. Instead of blowing up New York City, he burned down a house in Odessa, Texas. Still caused quite a bit of damage, and made quite a crispy Claire. It probably would have been as big as they thought, but fortunately Claire was on hand with a tranquilizer gun.
** In Season 3, {{spoiler|Future Sylar loses control and vaporizes Costa Verde after his son is killed.}}
** ( {{spoiler|Also Elle went all electric explosiony when Sylar starts to skullcap her, [[Cardboard Prison|shorting out the circuits of Level 5 releasing it's inmates.]] }})
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* Mega-[[Psycho Serum|Juicers]] in ''[[Rifts]]'' start to become consumed by their power when they near the end of their lives. First their eyes start to glow, then their whole bodies, and eventually they just burst into flame. If/when they die at any point during this period, they ''explode''.
* ''[[Cthulhu Tech]]'' 's parapsychics have a non-zero chance of going into "Burn" every time they use their powers.
* ''[[Mage: The Awakening]]'' has the phenomenon known as The False Awakening, wherein a [[Badass Normal|Sleepwalker]] who's studied under a mage believes that not only have they Awakened, they've discovered a magical path that no one else has before. In reality, they've become infected with a strange form of magical energy that pretty much allows them to go from initiate to godhood in the space of a week... before they pretty much explode from all the power and take out a city block.
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** This happens several times throughout the game, due to the fact that {{spoiler|Fei has a super-powered hidden personality called Id with a penchant for wanton destruction.}}
* ''[[Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis]]'' ends with {{spoiler|the Nazi scientist being tricked into getting into a god-making machine and putting far too much fuel in it, transforming him into a glowing, horned [[Energy Beings|Energy Being]]. [[Explosive Overclocking|Then he explodes.]]}}
* Rion Steiner in ''Galerians'' if he uses the drugs that fuel his power too much can suffer from shorting which is instant death to all nonbosses within the radius but does damage to him overtime. It can be stopped by using a specific drug. Notably there's another drug which can trigger this instantly.
* Inverted in ''[[Mega Man Zero]] 4''. The [[Big Bad]] Dr. Weil tries to crash his [[Kill Sat]] into Earth, destroying the only naturally habitable place left on the planet. When Zero tries to stop him, he merges with the [[Kill Sat]]'s computer core for the final boss fight. {{spoiler|This trope forms the ''premise'' of the last stage of the fight (the boss's second form); if Zero destroys him, the resulting [[Superpower Meltdown]] will destroy the [[Kill Sat]], averting the crisis.}} The fact that {{spoiler|Zero would (and does) also get blown to smithereens in the process}} is a mere trifling technicality.
* At the end of Heavens Feel route in [[Fate/stay night]] {{spoiler|Sakura}} loses the ability to control the Grail's energy, resulting in a potentially world destroying... thingy... requiring first the use of Rule Breaker to separate {{spoiler|Sakura}} from the Grail and then {{spoiler|either Shirou or Ilya's [[Heroic Sacrifice]] to keep from getting worse.}}
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