Weaksauce Weakness: Difference between revisions
→Literature: Replaced redirects
(→Literature: Replaced redirects) |
|||
| (39 intermediate revisions by 9 users not shown) | |||
Line 22:
{{examples}}
== Fiction in General ==
* Vampires, the badass creatures of the night who always want to suck your blood, tend to have a ''lot'' of weaknesses. Popular tradition holds that you're fine as long as you [[Weakened by the Light|stay in the sunlight]], have some garlic, stay inside your house and refuse to let them in, or even wield a simple cross.
: The multitude of fiction involving vampires, though, has led to a [[Our Vampires Are Different|multitude of differing weaknesses]]—including varying degrees of effectiveness. In some settings, vampires are weak to silver, and other religious symbols affect them as much as Christian ones. Then there's the older, more obscure, and even more restrictive weaknesses such as inability to cross running water, or obsessive-compulsive disorder causing the need to count piles of beans or other small objects, inability to stand constant bell ringing, and even the need to be invited to enter houses.
: On the inverse, many of the works that tend toward "non-standard" portrayals of vampires also go at length to [[Your Vampires Suck|mock]] the traditional weaknesses.
* [[The Fair Folk]] are terrific—as in terror-inducing—beings of legend and myth ... and yet, they can be beaten by a stick of iron, salt, a horseshoe, a length of rowan wood, clothes worn inside-out, or a ''stick of bread''.
: A popular explanation for the weakness comes from Victorian Era archaeologists, who held that this is all just symbolism for the bronze and stone-working cultures being conquered by iron-working ones. More recent academics (like Dr. Diane Purkiss) have shown there's no archaeological or historical evidence for this.
:* Some stories say that if you accept a gift from them, you should ''never'' respond by saying "thank you", it will make you beholden to them. Give them one in return of greater value and they must leave you unharmed.
:* This is an especially big problem for the Nuckelavee of Orcadian folklore. Widely considered the most malevolent elf in all of Scotland, the Nuckelavee is an eldritch horror that resembles a man on horseback, if the man was fused to the horse and both had all their skin flayed off. It rides through the countryside destroying crops, killing travelers, causing floods and plagues and generally being a harbinger for all things bad. How do you defeat this monstrosity? Fresh water, and burning seaweed. The Nucklavee fears freshwater, so much so that it cannot cross a stream, and hides in its oceanic lair during the winter storms. Likewise, it finds the smell of burning seaweed intolerably offensive. However, don't provoke the Nucklavee, especially with taunting or burning seaweed, as whenever the Nucklavee is offended, it tries to literally kill all of the horses in the Orkneys with a hideous disease called "Mortasheen."
* Werewolves have their share of weaknesses, too; earlier legends provide ones such as having an iron bar thrown over their head, drawing three drops of blood, or having their name announced one to three times.
Line 41 ⟶ 42:
** It should also be noted that Homer's depiction of Achilles does not appear to include the tradition of limited invulnerability. When Achilles takes the field in the later books of The Iliad, a spear (thrown by a mid-level mook) grazes his shoulder and draws blood.
* In folk tradition, salt is often used to repel evil. It was said a circle of salt could protect one from witches, that salt over your doorstep would ward off ghosts and evil spirit. Salt was often seen as a symbol of purity, especially in its uses: Salt is a conservation agent after all, and salt-cured meats don't spoil. Salt as a purifier appears in Shinto (Where it is used as a ritual purifier and small mounds of salt can be used to repel evil spirits) and Christianity (where it is used before mass and to consecrate a church).
* Robots or other sentient machines (especially [[Mecha Mook]]s) often blow their fuses when exposed to water, seeing as there is [[No Waterproofing in the Future]].
== Anime and Manga ==
Line 49 ⟶ 51:
*** And to use the Dance Powder, not only to frame the king in an effort to overthrow him, but also to stop it from raining in the town he was using as a base.
** Blackbeard has one of the most powerful abilities in universe. He can wipe out entire towns in seconds, shoot the debris out like cannon, and negate Devil Fruit powers. But he can't dodge ''anything.'' While most Logia-fruit users can have attacks pass right through them, Blackbeard is quite the opposite, making any physical attack super-effective.
** Speaking of Blackbeard, San Juan Wolf, a member of his crew, is one Devil Fruit user who can easily handle water; as one of the largest giants alive, he can wade through the ocean without it ever coming to neck-length.
** Seastone is the Devil Fruit version of kryptonite; it is a man-made material that is supposedly made by a process that makes sea water so dense that it becomes solid and as hard and durable as diamond. However it is made, physical contacy with a Devil Fruit user both weakens said user and nullifies his powers. The Marines have an abundance of this material, using it to craft handcuffs, weapons (like Smoker's jutte) and jail cells.
* The specialists, the Paper Sisters in ''[[Read or Die|Read Or Dream]]'' can telekinetically manipulate paper... unless it's ''wet''. This was not a weakness for Yomiko Readman, who ''is'' shown on camera manipulating paper while underwater. This is actually [[Justified Trope|explained in-universe]]. The Paper Sisters' powers are essentially imperfect clones of Yomiko's, artificially created by Dokusensha; which is why they are weaker and more specialized/limited. Water naturally disrupts the structural integrity of paper, and their inferior powers are not sufficient to maintain it the way Yomiko can.
* ''[[Super Dimension Fortress Macross]]'' has an alien attack force made up of gigantic [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens]] who are a [[Proud Warrior Race Guy|proud warrior race]] do a mass [[Mook Face Turn]] because of... singing. And souvenirs. In fairness, it does make sense in the story (at least as much as ''[[War of the Worlds]]''{{'}} Martians being vulnerable to Earth's diseases) and is perhaps one of the best logical conclusions to a typical alien's [[Planet of Hats]] treatment. The aliens have no culture to speak of other than fighting, so when exposed to humans and their culture in the form of songs and interacting with the other gender after sending a team of spies to the SDF-1, typical Zentradi start feeling emotions, questioning their purpose, and [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?|becoming similar to humans.]] Because of this, their entire fleet gets deemed "contaminated" by the unexposed Zentradi and programmed for destruction. In the face of this [[Enemy Civil War]], they wisely choose to ally with the humans. Still, it doesn't quite wash away the faint air of ridiculousness when Minmay's singing becomes an ''offensive weapon'' to unbalance the unexposed Zentradi in their attack.
Line 87 ⟶ 91:
* From the manga ''[[Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple]]'', we have Akisame Koetsuji, the Jujutsu Philosopher. Master martial artist, a doctor so skilled he can raise the recently dead, and [[The Ace|master of a bazillion and six other fields]]. He's one of Kenichi's six super-powerful masters... and green peppers make him so ill that he can be held at bay simply by hanging one outside his door.
* [[Kinnikuman]] is weakened by milk. Though after he goes insane during his match against Curry Cook and ''drinks'' the stuff, it becomes apparent that he just thinks it's disgusting.
* The Gundam Aerial of ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury]]'' primarily uses [[Frickin' Laser Beams|beam weaponry]], which in this continuity is greatly weakened by water, meaning rain puts it at a heavy disadvantage. This weakness is ironic, since the Aerial is (officially) from Mercury, which is known as "Water Planet" (水星) in Japanese.
== Comic Books ==
Line 93 ⟶ 97:
** More recently, [[Frank Miller]] parodied the ''hell'' out of this in ''[[All-Star Batman and Robin The Boy Wonder]]''. Before confronting Green Lantern, Batman and Robin paint an entire house, and everything in it, yellow. Then they put on yellow costumes. Then they paint their exposed faces yellow. When GL comes over, Batman goes so far as to offer him a nice refreshing glass of lemonade, while Robin eats some lemon ice cream. Hal was not amused. Readers were.
** The original Green Lantern was almost as bad—his weakness was wood. Since so few people knew it as later Green Lanterns became famous, however, he in many cases seemed ''more'' powerful than the new Green Lanterns because, for example, the Sinestro Corps yellow power rings couldn't even make him flinch.
*** This was parodied in the ''[[Justice League]]'' [[The Golden Age of Comic Books|Golden Age]] [[Affectionate Parody]] episode "Legends", with his [[Captain Ersatz|stand-in version]] "Green Guardsman", who had a weakness to aluminum <ref>Given he's from the Golden Age, this is not as bad ''as'' it sounds: Aluminium, which is common but rarely found pure and needing mass electricity to be refined economically, was expensive prior to modern nuclear/hydroelectric power and several times more expensive than gold before the 1850s.</ref>. Either way, you've got a superhero who could appear on the news after having been beaten to death with a baseball bat—and considering that one of his foes was the Sportsmaster, who ''did'' wield a baseball bat... it's pretty darned weaksauce.
*** It didn't hurt that wood, while very common when Alan Scott first hit the scene, had become rarer in civilization by the time [[The Silver Age of Comic Books]] hit. Villains in [[The DCU]] tend to decorate in metal, plastic, and [[Zeerust]] by then, which means even less to block that strange ring with.
*** This actually becomes a problem for him in the Elseworlds story ''[[Kingdom Come]]''. Like most of the other original heroes, [[Green Lantern]] Alan Scott's powers have progressed to a ludicrous level - he keeps watch over the Earth in a massive emerald [[Space Station]], constructed himself a suit of impressive armor, and carries around a sword made out of pure energy - all from his power ring. None of it helps very much against [[Green Arrow]] in the final battle, since this Oliver Queen's arrows are made out of wood.
Line 150 ⟶ 154:
* The first story of the 2011 relaunch of ''[[Swamp Thing]]'' features a kid villain named William Arcane. William's connection to the forces of Death (or The Rot) allow him to control all dead or decaying matter. This gives him immense power. The only problem is his fatal allergy to ''[[Kryptonite Is Everywhere|chlorophyll]]''.
* The story "The Day Red Turned to Green", in issue #85 of ''Tales of the Unexpected'', featured giant mushroom-like aliens that could be harmed by anything red. The main character found one of their "absorbo-sponges" while spelunking, and anything red that he passed while carrying it turned green.
* [[Justice League]] villain Queen of Fables has strange powers and a stranger weakness. To use her powers offensively, she must base them around a well-known work of fiction (not necessarily fairy tales, but those are her preference) and once she is set on one, she is invincible and invulnerable, ''unless'' her intended victims take advantage of whatever flaw in the strategy the villain of the original story had. If they do, the Queen becomes powerless. For example, she could cast herself as the witch from [[Hansel and Gretel]], forcing [[Superman]] and [[Wonder Woman]] to assume the role of the two protagonists. Trying to fight her the usual way would get the two heroes nowhere, as they'd be as helpless as the two children were, but if they caught on and decided to try shoving her into her oven, the Queen would be beaten. Unfortunately for the Queen of Fables, the stories she uses are just too well known, so under this sort of condition, she is never as much a threat as her powers suggest.
* [[Disney Ducks Comic Universe|In Disney comics]], Scrooge McDuck's nemesis Magica De Spell has an aversion to garlic, much like vampires do; this is not the case in second version of ''[[DuckTales (2017)|DuckTales]]'', where she was seen eating it without any discomfort.
* The Shaper of Worlds (a character most associated with the [[Silver Surfer]]) is as his name applies, a powerful [[Reality Warper]] who can reshape entire planets, able to turn a dead, lifeless world into an idyllic paradise. Only problem is, he has no imagination, and must rely on that of mortals (usually his apprentice, the former earthling Glorian) to do so properly.
== [[Fan Works]] ==
Line 222 ⟶ 228:
* The aliens in ''[[The War of the Worlds (novel)|The War of the Worlds]]'' were killed by {{spoiler|a common disease. The aliens were so advanced and germophobic that they wiped out all microbial life on their native planet. Which of course meant they had nothing to develop immunities to when they invaded Earth}}.
* The Martians, in [[Ray Bradbury]]'s ''[[The Martian Chronicles]]'', are killed ''en masse'' rather early in the book by a human-induced plague of chicken pox. It's a [[Shout-Out|knowing reference]] to both American history and ''[[The War of the Worlds (novel)|The War of the Worlds]]''.
* The Boggart in ''[[
** Alternatively, the Boggart can't handle trying to frighten more than one person at once, as attempts to materialize into more than one person's fear results in things such as the "half a slug" incident. This is why Lupin advised his students not to face a Boggart alone (combined with the above reason).
** Voldemort's inability to understand Love, and [[The Power of Love]], proves to be his ultimate undoing. However, this is less of a Weaksauce Weakness than a [[Fatal Flaw]]. Harry does not beat Voldemort because of some mystical aspect of love, but because having reliable friends and allies ultimately gives him an advantage over Voldemort, who underestimates the capacity of others to behave selflessly because he would never even consider doing so himself.
Line 228 ⟶ 234:
* Eddings' ''[[The Redemption of Althalus]]'' featured both one protagonistic and one antagonistic [[Five-Man Band]], both with similar power arrays. The villains included the evil mind-leech Koman, with telepathy and mind-warping abilities... who was defeated when Althalus thought about random numbers. ''Fractions'' of numbers, even.
* ''[[Discworld]]'' examples:
** The Auditors in ''[[
*** Non-incarnated Auditors can be killed by getting them to say "I", "me", or otherwise admit individuality. Since it's widely known that (a) only living things have individuality, (b) all living things die after some amount of time and (c) any living thing's lifespan is practically no time at all compared to the universe's, any Auditor who admits individuality instantly dies. By the perspective of the rest of them, this isn't much of a loss, since there are more Auditors than there is ''anything else in the universe'' and, by definition, any given one of them is supposed to lack any defining characteristics.
** Much of the plot of [[Discworld]] novel ''[[
*** Discworld vampires play this trope in a weird, [[All Myths Are True]] way. ''All'' weaknesses you might have ever heard of apply to ''some'' vampire, but you may have to do trial and error to find out which ones apply to the particular one who's trying to eat you right now. There are also a few with psychological problems that compel them to do things that directly address their particular weakness (such as the vampire flash photographer who works for The Truth, who has a weakness to bright light, and the one who worked at such jobs as pencil maker, garlic stacker, and whole-sale holy water clerk).
** Discworld bogeymen are incredibly strong, reasonably nasty, and some of them can teleport to some extent. Their
* In ''[[Artemis Fowl]]'', fairy magic can be completely stopped by animal fat. That's right, magic that can make you invisible, hypnotize people, heal nearly anything, and in some cases ''travel through time'' can be stopped by ''lard''. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry0TyIJXgoU Praise the Lard!]
** Also not forgetting some of the laws that (most) fairies have to adhere to thanks to some very old, powerful magic—the most commonly seen are the Ritual for restoring magic (has to be done with an acorn, at the full moon, under an oak next to a bend in the river... or at least to start with. By the second book that's already been thrown out as mere myth.), the 'fairies cannot enter human houses without permission' rule, and by extension, the 'fairies cannot disobey a direct command given by a human eye to eye' rule. Of course, {{spoiler|These are handwaved away by No1 in the 6th book.}}
Line 299 ⟶ 305:
* A villain of the week on ''[[Misfits]]'' turns out to be allergic to peanuts, which gets cranked up to [[Mundane Made Awesome]] levels and treated as a [[Kryptonite Factor]] in the confrontation.
* In ''[[Kamen Rider Double]]'', the Utopia Dopant [[Emotion Eater|draws upon peoples' positive emotions]], granting him incredible power. Inanimate objects, however, ''have'' no emotions to drain, meaning that the series' [[Big Bad]] gets manhandled by the same cute and [[Toyetic]] [[Robot Buddies]] that have been hanging around since Episode 1. In fact, one of the show's copious [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|Crowning Moments of Awesome]] is protagonist Shotaro blocking Utopia's powers with nothing more than his [[It Was a Gift|dead mentor's]] [[Cool Hat]].
* The Gentlemen from the ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' episode "Hush" are demons who ''really'' hate noise of all sorts, but are especially susceptible to human voices. [[Pragmatic Villain|This is the reason for the curse they put on Sunnydale]] before attacking it, stealing the residents' voices.
== Parlor Games ==
Line 307 ⟶ 313:
== Tabletop Games ==
** The magic-eating Nishruu are averse to salt, which is poisonous to them.
▲** Whenever the designers remember that critters [[No Biochemical Barriers|don't all have the same metabolism]]…
** Rakshasas are devils who have always been ''very'' hard to hurt
▲*** Umber hulks are huge and tough, but jade treated in particular way is corrosive to their hides (mechanically, double damage) and nauseating. Drow make Jade Spiders — constructs with jaws and claws of this stuff, as hulks avoid places guarded by those.
** Trolls, while nocturnal, are not harmed by sunlight (except Ysgardian trolls, a different species entirely) and have a powerful regeneration ability, but are very susceptible to fire and acid, which are also very afraid of. They cannot regenerate injuries caused by either.
** Medusas can be petrified by their own reflection, but only in an actual mirror - other reflective surfaces like clear water or polished stone will not work. This seems to be a result of the curse that affected a society of vain, narcissistic and beautiful women who tried to use black magic to preserve their beauty forever. These women became the first medusas, and whether they are [[Gorgeous Gorgon|gorgeous]] or otherwise, not being able to safely admire themselves in a mirror is part of their punishment.
▲*** ''[[Dark Sun]]'' has ranike tree, smoke of which is a repellent for all sorts of insects and insectoids, including abundant monstrous species and sapient [[Multi-Armed and Dangerous|kreen]].
** Vecna, the dreaded Oeridian [[God of Evil|God of Secrets]] in [[Greyhawk]], would likely crush any mortal who dared challenge him. He is a [[Physical God]], after all, and was a powerful lich even before becoming one: in the module ''Die Vecna Die'', his [[Evil Plan]]s cause him to ascend to the power of a Greater God who threatens to destroy the whole multiverse and remake it in his own foul image. Even worse, he is the God of Secrets, meaning no secret can be kept from him; no mortal can plot or plan against him without him quickly learning every little detail of their plan. [[Impossible Task|What are the heroes to do?]] Well, actually, due to a flaw in his plan, he does have a weakness. Anyone who assimilates one of his two infamous artifacts (the ''Hand and Eye of Vecna'') or one of his lesser Relics (the ''First Digit, Second Digit, Third Digit, Last Digit, Incisors, Molar, Scalp, Skin, Heart, Foot,'' and ''Right Eye'', all parts of his original body) is immune to his divine abilities and is concealed from his omnipotence (including his ability to discern secrets), and anyone wielding the ''Sword of Kas'' (a weapon he forged as a mortal lich and gave to his [[The Starscream|traitorous lieutenant Kas]]) can injure him. While the ''Eye of Vecna'' is unavailable to the heroes in this story (Vecna’s rival Iuz gets it first), the Hand, Sword, and Relics are [[Boss Arena Idiocy|in Vecna’s palace in Caviticus]]. In short, they make it so that in the [[Final Battle]], Vecna must face them mano-a-mano - not that this will make it easy, of course.
▲** Rakshasas are devils who have always been ''very'' hard to hurt. In most edition, spells of level 7 or lower are worthless against them, non-magical weapons don't hurt them, and weapons that ''can'' hurt them do reduced damage. ''However'', a crossbow bolt that has been blessed by a Good-aligned cleric (this requires a common 1st-level spell) will kill one ''instantly''. Why crossbows? Nobody knows.
* In ''[[Heavy Gear]]'', the advanced ''Black Mamba'' Gear - one of the more powerful designs in either of the two superpowers' armies - had exceptionally weak rear armour. The result is that Black Mambas could be (and routinely were in gameplay) easily defeated by lightweight ''Cheetah'' scout Gears. While the fluff text initially ignored this, the game's designers eventually acknowledged and lampshaded this weakness by having Mamba pilots clamouring for a solution to the "glassback" problem.
** Most [[Hover Tank|hovertanks]] have weak Underside facing, but it can be hit only when the vehicle moves over placed explosives or uses jump jets (to clear obstacles).
* Most of the monsters in [[Hero System|''Lucha Libre Hero'']] take extra damage from ''lucha'' combat maneuvers. And since the PCs are by default ''technico'' luchadors, there's a lot of these showing up in the fight scenes. But then, the sourcebook was inspired by Mexican ''lucha'' films, and "every problem can be solved with a good wrestling hold" was standard in those films.
Line 327 ⟶ 333:
* ''[[Rifts]]'' has a little fun with the concept of fae weaknesses. Among the ways to protect yourself from Faerie Folk is to turn your clothes inside-out or backwards when traveling through their territory, or by tying colorful ribbons all over you and your gear. But this is less a matter of them being unable to approach you as it is them being too busy ''laughing'' to trouble you.
* It's possible to give a character in ''[[Champions]]'' such a weakness via the Susceptibility Disadvantage. Water, for example, could be worth quite a few points depending on how many dice the character takes from it since it's one of the most common substances in practically any game world. Of course, this would make it impossible for your character to do such simple things as bathe or shower, and any kid armed with a [[Weaponized Weakness|Super-Soaker and/or a bucket of water balloons]] would become a credible threat.
* In ''[[Pathfinder]]'' psychic casters can't cast spells with emotion descriptors if "under the influence of a non-harmless effect with the emotion or fear descriptors". This means one can largely be shut down by demoralizing them, which is easy to accomplish against a player class character because it's a fairly minor debuff to anyone else.
== Video Games ==
Line 332 ⟶ 339:
** It's a curse, and one that actively tries to kill him. Any time he goes near deep water, [[Everything Trying to Kill You|a hand made of water tries to drag Raz in and drown him.]]
* The '''[[Mega Man (video game)|Mega Man]]'' series has plenty of bosses who had a weakness to unlikely-looking weapons and questionable moves.
** The final boss of ''[[Mega Man 2]]'' can only be damaged with the most useless and most difficult-to-hit-with weapon, Bubble Lead.
** The final form of Wily in ''[[Mega Man 3]]'' can be one-shotted with a proper application of Top Spin, a glitchy and hard to aim attack that often damaged you and would drain the entire bar if mistimed. (Thankfully, Search Snakes also work on it—which has much the same movement pattern as the aforementioned Bubble Lead and would be this game's hardest-to-hit-with weapon if not for the Top Spin.)
** In ''[[Mega Man X]] 1'' and ''2'', the final boss forms of Sigma were weak against the Rolling Shield (a hard to aim attack that generally did less damage than a charged shot) and the Strike Chain (a pathetically short ranged attack).
Line 415 ⟶ 422:
* [[World of Warcraft]] is rife with such weaknesses to make otherwise impossible encounters winnable or just for amusement value. One great example is a quest where you have to get an artifact to defeat a pack of imps. The effect of this awesome weapon? It creates beautiful rainbows... cue sound of heads exploding.
* ''[[Castlevania II: Simon's Quest]]'' features the easiest fight against Dracula in the entire series. There are two weapons {{spoiler|the golden knife and the sacred flame}} which cause Dracula to completely freeze in place. All Simon has to do is repeatedly spam those weapons, and he'll win before Dracula can even move.
** Death is also an incredibly easy boss if you know what ''his'' odd weakness is - garlic. (Well, odd seeing as, unlike his boss, he isn't a vampire.) Buy one clove of garlic, drop it in front of him, and Death is ''stun locked'' and will take continual damage that does him in after about a minute, during which all you really have to do is watch.
* In [[Super Robot Wars Z]] 2: Saisei-Hen, The [[Demonic Spiders|DAMON]] are affected by [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awAi36JjFiQ Basara's singing]. They even take damage, making [[Man of Kryptonite|Basara]] [[Weaponized Weakness|a viable choice for fighting against the DAMON]].
* In ''[[Luigi's Mansion 3]]'', Luigi's gooey doppelganger Gooigi melts on contact with water (a squirt gun is enough to damage him) and instantly disintegrates on contact with fire. It's a good thing he can [[Death Is a Slap on The Wrist|respawn indefinitely from Luigi's location.]]
* In ''[[Fatal Frame]]'', in order to fight the ghosts, the protagonist has to take their pictures with a camera. Okay, it's [[Magitech| a magical device]] called the Camera Obscura, but it's still the only weapon that can harm them.
* In ''[[Spelunky]]'', King Yana is a hellish and difficult enemy (he is the [[Final Boss]], after all) but he has a weakness that took the fans over a year after the game’s release to discover - {{spoiler| eggplants. If the player throws it in his face, Yana becomes powerless and is reduced to 2 HP, one of which he loses from being hit by the eggplant, making it incredibly easy to finish him off. The challenge, of course, is getting an eggplant and bringing it there; you have to first get a Mystery Box (buy it from a merchant) and rather than open it, bring it to Kali’s Altar, where it turns into an eggplant. Then you have to carry it there, which is difficult because ''any'' action done with it other than gently placing it on the floor will destroy it.}}
== Web Comics ==
Line 422 ⟶ 432:
* Another spoof of ''[[The Wizard of Oz (film)|The Wizard of Oz]]'' comes from ''[[Darths and Droids|Magicians & Munchkins]]''; the [[Wicked Witch Of The West]] simply [http://www.darthsanddroids.net/magiciansandmunchkins/episodes/0050.html took this disadvantage] to get a few additional levels in magic.
* Toothgnip the goat in ''[[Goats]]'' gets his [[Kavorka Man]] powers from "The Panties of Potency". This had nothing to do with the artist having trouble drawing Toothgnip standing on all fours, honest!
* Parodied in [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0607.html this strip] of ''[[The Order of the Stick]]'', where, since Haley always has her sandwiches without pickles, Crystal thinks they're toxic to her. {{spoiler|They're not.}}
* In one ''[[Bob the Angry Flower]]'' strip, Bob thinks that a superhero has the Weaksauce Weakness of '''''bacon'''''. He turns out to be totally wrong, but we never find out what the weakness actually is.
** Another one has Bob running a hot peanuts stand, recognizing a customer and his friends as a band of supervillains, and [[Strange Minds Think Alike|instantly and correctly deducing]] that they are actually buying ammunition for an attack on Anaphylactic Man's fortress. (He sells it to them anyway.)
Line 440 ⟶ 450:
** And Elites can still go around that with mathematics: Charby is seen weighting both a small sample and the whole heap on pocket scales, and deducing the total number from the sample size.
* Liz's beast-man of a boss in ''[[Dead Winter]]'' doesn't really know how to fight, yet is still able to take on [[Badass|Monday]] pretty effectively due to his sheer giganticness and indestructibility. Monday stabs him in the shoulder, [[Groin Attack|kicks him in a certain area]], etc. but never really fazes him; the heroes end up ''smashing him in the head with a metal pole attached to a fast-moving car'', but this only stuns him temporarily. His weakness? Germs—the imaginary kind. He's such a hypochondriac that slapping him in the face with a dirty mop will [[Freak-Out|give him a panic attack.]] He gets over his fear of [[Zombie Apocalypse|zombie infection]] pretty quickly, though...
* [[Axe Cop]]'s weakness is being surprised. [https://web.archive.org/web/20130217020745/http://axecop.com/index.php/acepisodes/read/episode_72/ He melts.] And his second weakness is [https://web.archive.org/web/20130508122450/http://axecop.com/index.php/acepisodes/read/xmas2010/ cherry rainbow].
Line 459 ⟶ 469:
* In [[Group of Weirdos]], the Iron Knuckles are completely invincible, unless tag-teamed and attacked repeatedly by Link, the hero of time, and Ganondorf, a dark wizard with great power. Or you can just slash them a few times with a Deku Stick.
* [[Asdfmovie|"Kitten Fight!" "No wait, I'm allergic to adoreableness!"]]
* ''[[SCP Foundation]]'': The [[Ret Conned]] version of SCP-166 ("Just a Teenage Gaia") is a child of a nature goddess, and as such, she is sickened by manmade pollutants. Cigarette smoke sickens her so much that even being near a doctor who had ''quit'' smoking and had gone three weeks without a cigarette made her ill.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
Line 508 ⟶ 518:
* ''[[Ben 10: Ultimate Alien|Ben 10 Ultimate Alien]]'' features in [[Monster of the Week|one episode]] an otherwise-invulnerable plant monster that ''dissolves'' on contact with... peanuts. No explanation is given beyond "it's allergic".
* The Imperium, White Martian expys in ''[[Justice League]]'' have an even greater weakness than the usual fire. Direct sunlight causes them to burn and evaporate near instantly. One would think they'd be moving along planet systems ''away'' from suns, but no.
* In ''[[The Owl House]]'' demons have two weakness that King (a demon himself) relates to Luz, purified water and passive-aggressive comments. "Even demons have inner-demons," he claims.
* ''[[She-Ra and the Princesses of Power]]'': In one fifth-season episode Netossa researches and analyzes the weaknesses of each alliance member, hoping to prevent them from falling victim to this Trope:
** [[Wrench Wench|Entrapta]]: [[Attention Deficit Oh Shiny|Obsessed and easily distracted by technology]]
** [[Our Mermaids Are Different|Mermista]]: [[Kill It With Fire|Fire]]<ref>Debatable, seeing as having Elemental water powers would more likely make her a [[Man of Kryptonite|Woman of Kryptonite]] to anyone using fire.</ref>
** [[An Ice Person|Frosta]]: Fire
** [[Green Thumb|Perfuma]]: Fire and [[The Fettered|her reluctance to use her powers to fullest potential, out of fear of hurting someone.]]
** [[The Hero|Adora]]: [[Bad Liar|Cannot act or bluff to save her life]] and her envy of She-Ra's hair
** [[Royals Who Actually Do Something|Glimmer]]: [[Heroic Self-Deprecation|Self-doubt]] and hubris
** [[The Straight and Arrow Path|Bow]]: [[Crippling Overspecialization]]; can’t fight if his bow is damaged or lost
** [[Cat Girl|Catra]]: Her feline nature being exploited.<ref>Again, debatable. Fans of the show might argue that her [[Hair-Trigger Temper]] and [[Green-Eyed Monster|jealousy of Adora is even more of a weakness]].</ref>
== Real Life ==
Line 519 ⟶ 538:
* British sailors in the 19th century hated eating fish or any food from the ocean for that matter, preferring weevily biscuits and gruesome salt pork or beef to fresh fish. Sailors hate the sea, pilots hate the wind, and retailers hate customers—Weaksauce Weakness in its truest form.
* The [[Brown Note|right pattern of flashing lights]] can cause nausea in just about any human, people with epilepsy simply have a more severe reaction.
** This has since been [https://web.archive.org/web/20120108070911/http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/19142/?a=f weaponized]
*** And now you can [http://www.ladyada.net/make/bedazzler/ build your own].
* Tropers: Little do some know it, but the wiki they created is ''eating'' their spare time. [[Tropes Will Ruin Your Life|and if you do know, knowing doesn't help a bit]].
Line 545 ⟶ 564:
* When it comes to YouTube, some would try to censor certain parts of the video with the annotations, which could be easily turned off with a simple chick. If there's an age restriction on a video, it doesn't often work since one can simply access another of anyone at the legal age or fake their birth date to appear much older.
* High-tech thermal imaging will make living beings immediately obvious even against the best camouflage, but is stopped by ordinary glass
* Green-blue algae, aka cyanobacteria<ref>named so due to having primitive cells (though it's not quite the same as other algae or bacteria) and producing a blue pigment along with chlorophyll (but it's not always prevalent - e.g. some of these give Red Sea its hue, some form infamous fish-killing "red tide") -- they redefine "ancient", and those classifications were made for much younger species</ref>. They probably were here before anything else still alive and outlived most species formed in this time by reproducing faster than anyone who eats them and being resilient enough to spread far and wide. The only way they could find to get even tougher is symbiosis with fungi (as lichens). They thrive in the range of conditions nothing else could approach<ref>Quoth Britannica, "Cyanobacteria flourish in some of the most inhospitable environments known. They can be found in hot springs, in cold lakes underneath 5 m of ice pack, and on the lower surfaces of many rocks in deserts. Cyanobacteria are frequently among the first colonizers of bare rock and soil."</ref> until "recently" some apes stumbled on the combination of tool use and faster-than-genetic exchange of "software" adaptations... then some of the latter took a good look at cyanobacteria and it gave them willies. Having green-blue algae in, say, a rice field, can help a lot, since they fix nitrogen (back when they were young, there was no one else to fix it for them). It's not so good to have excess of these paint a fish tank green, because when light is off they may consume enough of oxygen that by morning your fishies go belly up. Worse still, in a fish pond -- some species are highly toxic and kill fish and/or make water in which they float, aquatic plants on which they stuck and animals that eat them too poisonous for consumption by mammals<ref>drinking water contaminated by algae bloom can "[https://web.archive.org/web/20180620104157/http://agriculture.vic.gov.au/agriculture/pests-diseases-and-weeds/animal-diseases/beef-and-dairy-cows/blue-green-algal-poisoning-of-stock kill large numbers of livestock very quickly]", and surviving cattle is likely to remain unhealthy due to liver damage</ref>. And, of course, getting rid of them is a problem because most conditions too inhospitable for a we-were-here-before-Cthulhu species kill ''everything else'' first. Yet these near-unstoppable organisms turned out to have an exploitable vulnerability: hydrogen peroxide gets them even in concentrations harmless to the fish and other water-breathing critters.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Power At a Price]]
[[Category:Superhero Tropes]]
[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]
▲[[Category:Weaksauce Weakness]]
[[Category:Alliterative Trope Titles]]
[[Category:For Massive Damage]]
| |||